Sunday, May 15, 2011
Song of the Day: FIGURES OF LIGHT "It's Lame"
Yesterday I was out driving around, checking out the radio... WNUR had a snoozer of a Northwestern U. baseball game on but WLUW had guest DJ Miss Alex White of White Mystery spinning some of her own 45s on the Minimal Beat show. Everything she played sounded good... the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" sounded heavier than ever to me and I'm guessing it was because of the vintage mix and mastering job on the old-and-scratchy 45 she brought in. I guess I've really only heard it on CD, or on FM radio via CD. She also played Status Quo "Pictures Of Matchstick Men," which always sounds good, a little more so when it's not by Camper Van Beethoven... a newer band from Calgary, Canada called Myelin Sheaths that sounded pretty cavernous... a song called "Pepperoni Eyes" by that band Personal & the Pizzas (I chuckled)... but the real head-turner was a skeletal yet blasting mid-set garage punk number with a distinct psychedelic edge, sounding surely pre-1980 and maybe even pre-1970, just two chords with some sort of dubbed-out pause after each chorus, minimal backing, and the singer snarling about how "Your life, it's just a dream, about as real as a bowl of steam!" He says that in two different verses! When I got home I ran to the stereo and tuned in the station, just in time for Miss Alex to back-announce what she'd played, and learned that the band in question was called Figures of Light, which led me to the internet and the further knowledge that not only had the song in question, "It's Lame," been released on a 45 way back in 1972, but that the singer I had just heard snarling those words had gone on to be my film professor at the University of Nebraska some 25 years later! Go get 'em Wheeler! He was certainly one of the more mind-blowing professors I encountered at UNL, and, because he was a still a bit of an old-school self-promoter, I knew he used to hang out at The Factory, was good friends with Gerard Malanga, and had made a ton of independent films. And yet, somehow, I had not been aware of his proto punk musical endeavors. Seems the band was formed in 1970 to accompany a Rutgers University multimedia happening in which they drove a motorcycle onto the stage and destroyed 15 television sets (or was it 27?). I wonder if any future Plasmatics were in the audience...
UPDATE: Download an archive of this radio show here!
Saturday, April 02, 2011
ALICE COLTRANE live in Warsaw, 1987, with Ravi Coltrane, Reggie Workman & Roy Haynes.
Absurdly heavy harp solo:
"Lonnie's Lament." Alice on piano. Ravi is good!
"A Love Supreme," Ravi ruling on soprano as well.
"Lonnie's Lament." Alice on piano. Ravi is good!
"A Love Supreme," Ravi ruling on soprano as well.
"We gotta stay fuckin' humble. The minute men! The tiny men! It's okay!"
"In our sets we would do little jams sometimes, tiny little things like a minute long, freeform. Just as a release or just to reassert some kind of humility. Everything doesn't have an answer, everything can't be explained, everything can't even be put in the right question."
"You just gotta ponder, like in that way, way beyond state. Like the way before. You know, music's a link with the way before, before the verbal. I think that's why it's so popular with us, because it links us and then it's very obvious, with someone like John Coltrane, you know, there's a link. We found joy, we found meaning before we found language. Music was probably one of these ways, and that's why it's still with us and we hold it up as sacred."
"And D. Boon, beautiful lead guitar - just enough notes! So econo! Beautiful!":
"And again, I only played [June 16th] for him once... You don't know, it was the easiest thing teachin' D. Boon a song. I grew up with him. I just play it. He'd fuckin' play right into it like osmosis, just soak right into it."
All above quotes by Mike Watt from http://www.hootpage.com/hoot_watt-fournier06intrvw.html
"Some big thunder law forces me to eat shit." Nice, somebody posted all the lyrics for Double Nickels On The Dime on a webpage where you don't even have to close a pop-up ring tone ad before you can read it!
It's been over a month since I saw the Chicago band Econoline play Double Nickels On The Dime by The Minutemen in its entirety, all 45 songs (even "Take 5, D" and "You Need The Glory"!), and they were incredibly good at it, really almost perfect, and even though I'd barely listened to the album in years, their show stirred everything up again, all the thoughts and questions and answers and melodies, riffs, licks, change-ups, epiphanies, asides, jokes, poems, ideas... shit from all our old notebooks... and I've still got the vinyl out six weeks later, though I've been listening more to some sweet vinyl-ripped mp3s of the album on the always demonically handy iTunes. I know how all the song titles go, and I know how all the songs go, but now I can actually figure out which go with which! And, I can easily jump right to the specific track I'm reading about in Michael T. Fournier's Double Nickels on the Dime 33⅓ book, which draws heavily from his above-linked-and-quoted interview with Watt, so all kinds of deep cuts are getting suitably deeper examination, and naturally new favorites are emerging... I mean, "Spillage" with its transparent Descendants roots but played mellower, folkier, D. Boon-ier, with that good ol' "my stoned (police state) mind just spilled that line" refrain... "No Exchange" with its nothing-but-the-build structural flip (transparent Pink Flag roots) holding yet another beguilingly sweet D. Boon melody and a lovely bass melody from Watt... "There Ain't Shit On TV Tonight," always a favorite, given new light after being sung at the Econoline show by one of many guest vocalists, Ian Adams. He was in The Ponys but I know him as the guy from Happy Supply, so I knew he would be perfect for this sly bossanova pop (and then he stayed on stage, suddenly cast against type, and led a perfect barnstorming classic-HC singalong version of "This Ain't No Picnic"!) Let's see, what else... love the two wistful beach-town instrumentals, "June 16th" and "Love Dance"... love the all-time classic port-town beer-hall sing-a-long dirge "Themselves" (come on and join in with me, "And aaaall the men who learn.... to hate them!") ... love the intro Big Ben chime of "The Big Foist"... love it when he says "Some big thunder law forces me to eat shit"... "Jesus and Tequila" was always a favorite, how couldn't it be, but damned if it doesn't sound better than ever... Carducci's lyric is so spot on, not a word is wasted... it helps knowing the back story as recounted in the Fournier book (that Carducci wrote the song for a whimsically projected D. Boon country music solo album to be called Hard Working Man), and also that Bobby Conn tore that song up at the Econoline show. Other guest vocalist highlights were Rebecca Flores from Tyler John Tyler, who tore up "Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing," a guy from Pelican who tore up "Shit From An Old Notebook," Damon Locks from The Eternals who did some killer dancing to "Mr. Robot's Holy Orders," and a teenage kid named Ruadhan Ward from Girls Rock! Chicago, the organization which the whole show was a benefit for. She did "History Lesson Part Two," a challenging tune to do justice to, and she was 100% perfect for it... which made me realize how great the lyrics to that song are because even though they are so autobiographical that they use "real names," they are not particularly gender-specific...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY D. BOON (April 1st, 1958)
This is soul music:
So this is the third time I've been disappointed with a new Kurt Vile record after my first listen. The other two were the Fall Demons 7-inch and the Childish Prodigy LP, both of which I now love. I'm still not sure if I'm going to love Smoke Ring For My Halo, but I am currently on my fourth listen and yep, I'm liking it more and more. There's no denying that the album has Kurt's most radio-friendly clean production-sheen, which initially put me off a little, but I also think his songwriting is less immediate here than in the past. The first song "Baby's Arms" is really great, in fact it's one of KV's top 5 ever, but after that, the songs are taking a little longer than usual to insinuate. I'm pretty impressed by the album closer, a dreamy and shiny beast called "Ghost Town," and there's a nice reprise of his old song "Red Apples," with different lyrics, called "Runner Ups," the tune not immediately recognizable (I always enjoy Kurt's 'cubist repertoire' moves). The song "On Tour" reminds me of a slightly sunnier take on Neil Young's "Bad Fog Of Lonlieness," with the line "I see through everyone, even my own self, noooowwwww" striking as a good musing on the downside of traditional hardcore/punk inquiry and scrutiny (and here we were, just talking about that all-time punk inquiry classic Double Nickels On The Dime). So far, my favorite tune other than "Baby's Arms" is a great dreamy song in the middle called "Society Is My Friend," the Violators laying down their distinctive drone-rock dream-style, backing one of those KV concepts that you kind of roll around in your brain along with him as the song plays out. Yeah, okay, it's already happening, I like this album quite a bit, and that slick production that might've been holding me back might be just the thing to make it a break through to a bunch of other people... but I do hope they get to hear Constant Hitmaker too... http://www.matadorrecords.com/kurt_vile
The word that keeps coming to me regarding the Milvia Son label is "gross." Gross artwork, gross album titles, gross band names, gross typefaces, and of course, gross music. For example, they just sent a new 7" by their flagship band Bad Drumlin Grass, and it has a buncha gross naked people on the cover! They also sent an LP by one Jaki Jakizawa, and his grossly smiling hippie biker face fills the front cover via a gross screenprinting job, and the title of the record is Can You Feel The Juices?, which is totally gross! But, here's the kicker... gross isn't always a bad thing. Take the Jakizawa album. You could call it a synth record, and there are certainly a lot of synth records clogging the bins these days, but this one is a gross synth record. The A side is called "Period Fart" (hey, farts are gross!) and it's some sort of gross grinding synth techno-rave, a 13-minute excerpt from a jam that apparently went on for a few hours. It's goofy and kinda wrong, but hey, I'd much rather listen to it than some new "fully realized" album of very pleasant and of course very cosmic arpeggiator demonstrations packaged with full-color photographs of completely non-gross things like water and trees. And then Side Two, "Eros In Neon", isn't even gross. It's a more gentle synth soundscape that is actually somewhat legitimately cosmic, and certainly more loose, zoned, and malleable (both when it was performed and when it's subsequently listened to) than the work of any and all aforementioned unnamed equipment demonstrators.
As for that 7" by Milvia Son flagship band Bad Drumlin Grass, it features not only that gross picture sleeve but another left turn by the group. They did hardcore Saturnian blues and goofy punk improv on their first LP, they did some extended cosmic music of their own on their 2nd LP (also preferable to the work of all aforementioned unnamed synth collectors/demonstrators), and now on this 7" they're doing that classic avant-punk 7" move where the band does an avant-punk rock jam while a dude profanely rants over the top. Actually, it's not too profane, it's mostly awesome nonsense, except for one f-word... which apparently was enough for them to repeat the same song on Side B, but without the offending word! A clean radio version! What a weird hardcore punk improv novelty single. The music and vocals are actually excellent and kinda remind me of The Geeks. Milvia Son is giving this record away free for $3 shipping, go to milviason.com for details... If you can handle the cover art laying around your house, you should do it!
"You just gotta ponder, like in that way, way beyond state. Like the way before. You know, music's a link with the way before, before the verbal. I think that's why it's so popular with us, because it links us and then it's very obvious, with someone like John Coltrane, you know, there's a link. We found joy, we found meaning before we found language. Music was probably one of these ways, and that's why it's still with us and we hold it up as sacred."
"And D. Boon, beautiful lead guitar - just enough notes! So econo! Beautiful!":
"And again, I only played [June 16th] for him once... You don't know, it was the easiest thing teachin' D. Boon a song. I grew up with him. I just play it. He'd fuckin' play right into it like osmosis, just soak right into it."
All above quotes by Mike Watt from http://www.hootpage.com/hoot_watt-fournier06intrvw.html
"Some big thunder law forces me to eat shit." Nice, somebody posted all the lyrics for Double Nickels On The Dime on a webpage where you don't even have to close a pop-up ring tone ad before you can read it!
It's been over a month since I saw the Chicago band Econoline play Double Nickels On The Dime by The Minutemen in its entirety, all 45 songs (even "Take 5, D" and "You Need The Glory"!), and they were incredibly good at it, really almost perfect, and even though I'd barely listened to the album in years, their show stirred everything up again, all the thoughts and questions and answers and melodies, riffs, licks, change-ups, epiphanies, asides, jokes, poems, ideas... shit from all our old notebooks... and I've still got the vinyl out six weeks later, though I've been listening more to some sweet vinyl-ripped mp3s of the album on the always demonically handy iTunes. I know how all the song titles go, and I know how all the songs go, but now I can actually figure out which go with which! And, I can easily jump right to the specific track I'm reading about in Michael T. Fournier's Double Nickels on the Dime 33⅓ book, which draws heavily from his above-linked-and-quoted interview with Watt, so all kinds of deep cuts are getting suitably deeper examination, and naturally new favorites are emerging... I mean, "Spillage" with its transparent Descendants roots but played mellower, folkier, D. Boon-ier, with that good ol' "my stoned (police state) mind just spilled that line" refrain... "No Exchange" with its nothing-but-the-build structural flip (transparent Pink Flag roots) holding yet another beguilingly sweet D. Boon melody and a lovely bass melody from Watt... "There Ain't Shit On TV Tonight," always a favorite, given new light after being sung at the Econoline show by one of many guest vocalists, Ian Adams. He was in The Ponys but I know him as the guy from Happy Supply, so I knew he would be perfect for this sly bossanova pop (and then he stayed on stage, suddenly cast against type, and led a perfect barnstorming classic-HC singalong version of "This Ain't No Picnic"!) Let's see, what else... love the two wistful beach-town instrumentals, "June 16th" and "Love Dance"... love the all-time classic port-town beer-hall sing-a-long dirge "Themselves" (come on and join in with me, "And aaaall the men who learn.... to hate them!") ... love the intro Big Ben chime of "The Big Foist"... love it when he says "Some big thunder law forces me to eat shit"... "Jesus and Tequila" was always a favorite, how couldn't it be, but damned if it doesn't sound better than ever... Carducci's lyric is so spot on, not a word is wasted... it helps knowing the back story as recounted in the Fournier book (that Carducci wrote the song for a whimsically projected D. Boon country music solo album to be called Hard Working Man), and also that Bobby Conn tore that song up at the Econoline show. Other guest vocalist highlights were Rebecca Flores from Tyler John Tyler, who tore up "Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing," a guy from Pelican who tore up "Shit From An Old Notebook," Damon Locks from The Eternals who did some killer dancing to "Mr. Robot's Holy Orders," and a teenage kid named Ruadhan Ward from Girls Rock! Chicago, the organization which the whole show was a benefit for. She did "History Lesson Part Two," a challenging tune to do justice to, and she was 100% perfect for it... which made me realize how great the lyrics to that song are because even though they are so autobiographical that they use "real names," they are not particularly gender-specific...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY D. BOON (April 1st, 1958)
This is soul music:
So this is the third time I've been disappointed with a new Kurt Vile record after my first listen. The other two were the Fall Demons 7-inch and the Childish Prodigy LP, both of which I now love. I'm still not sure if I'm going to love Smoke Ring For My Halo, but I am currently on my fourth listen and yep, I'm liking it more and more. There's no denying that the album has Kurt's most radio-friendly clean production-sheen, which initially put me off a little, but I also think his songwriting is less immediate here than in the past. The first song "Baby's Arms" is really great, in fact it's one of KV's top 5 ever, but after that, the songs are taking a little longer than usual to insinuate. I'm pretty impressed by the album closer, a dreamy and shiny beast called "Ghost Town," and there's a nice reprise of his old song "Red Apples," with different lyrics, called "Runner Ups," the tune not immediately recognizable (I always enjoy Kurt's 'cubist repertoire' moves). The song "On Tour" reminds me of a slightly sunnier take on Neil Young's "Bad Fog Of Lonlieness," with the line "I see through everyone, even my own self, noooowwwww" striking as a good musing on the downside of traditional hardcore/punk inquiry and scrutiny (and here we were, just talking about that all-time punk inquiry classic Double Nickels On The Dime). So far, my favorite tune other than "Baby's Arms" is a great dreamy song in the middle called "Society Is My Friend," the Violators laying down their distinctive drone-rock dream-style, backing one of those KV concepts that you kind of roll around in your brain along with him as the song plays out. Yeah, okay, it's already happening, I like this album quite a bit, and that slick production that might've been holding me back might be just the thing to make it a break through to a bunch of other people... but I do hope they get to hear Constant Hitmaker too... http://www.matadorrecords.com/kurt_vile
The word that keeps coming to me regarding the Milvia Son label is "gross." Gross artwork, gross album titles, gross band names, gross typefaces, and of course, gross music. For example, they just sent a new 7" by their flagship band Bad Drumlin Grass, and it has a buncha gross naked people on the cover! They also sent an LP by one Jaki Jakizawa, and his grossly smiling hippie biker face fills the front cover via a gross screenprinting job, and the title of the record is Can You Feel The Juices?, which is totally gross! But, here's the kicker... gross isn't always a bad thing. Take the Jakizawa album. You could call it a synth record, and there are certainly a lot of synth records clogging the bins these days, but this one is a gross synth record. The A side is called "Period Fart" (hey, farts are gross!) and it's some sort of gross grinding synth techno-rave, a 13-minute excerpt from a jam that apparently went on for a few hours. It's goofy and kinda wrong, but hey, I'd much rather listen to it than some new "fully realized" album of very pleasant and of course very cosmic arpeggiator demonstrations packaged with full-color photographs of completely non-gross things like water and trees. And then Side Two, "Eros In Neon", isn't even gross. It's a more gentle synth soundscape that is actually somewhat legitimately cosmic, and certainly more loose, zoned, and malleable (both when it was performed and when it's subsequently listened to) than the work of any and all aforementioned unnamed equipment demonstrators.
As for that 7" by Milvia Son flagship band Bad Drumlin Grass, it features not only that gross picture sleeve but another left turn by the group. They did hardcore Saturnian blues and goofy punk improv on their first LP, they did some extended cosmic music of their own on their 2nd LP (also preferable to the work of all aforementioned unnamed synth collectors/demonstrators), and now on this 7" they're doing that classic avant-punk 7" move where the band does an avant-punk rock jam while a dude profanely rants over the top. Actually, it's not too profane, it's mostly awesome nonsense, except for one f-word... which apparently was enough for them to repeat the same song on Side B, but without the offending word! A clean radio version! What a weird hardcore punk improv novelty single. The music and vocals are actually excellent and kinda remind me of The Geeks. Milvia Son is giving this record away free for $3 shipping, go to milviason.com for details... If you can handle the cover art laying around your house, you should do it!
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Had to check out some ODD FUTURE aka ODD FUTURE WOLF GANG KILL THEM ALL aka OFWGKTA and no, I do not enjoy rampant violent misogyny, not even when they're "just playing," but anytime someone comes up with a track like this, I'm gonna keep paying attention:
Basically, that's one of the sweetest R&B songs I've heard in the last 20 years. Its creator is named SYD THA KYD, and she is the only female member of the collective. She plays along with their particular brand of dubious punk theater, but under that surface she's the one who quietly does all the engineering and mixing for the group. ("Syd the Kyd sits and makes sure the shit we record sound good.") Then I check out her tumblr and it's a deep, erotic, no-nonsense LGBT presence titled "get it, bitch." So what's really going on? Fuck being hard, Odd Future's complicated?
On that note, here's another deep and brilliant smooth-tip avant-garde hip-hop ballad from OFWGKTA member FRANK OCEAN's debut album Nostalgia, Ultra. Unreal:
You can download all this stuff and much more from their website, http://www.oddfuture.com/ And in case you haven't seen it, I'll leave you with the formidable video for "Yonkers," by the de facto leader and founder of Odd Future, TYLER THE CREATOR:
Basically, that's one of the sweetest R&B songs I've heard in the last 20 years. Its creator is named SYD THA KYD, and she is the only female member of the collective. She plays along with their particular brand of dubious punk theater, but under that surface she's the one who quietly does all the engineering and mixing for the group. ("Syd the Kyd sits and makes sure the shit we record sound good.") Then I check out her tumblr and it's a deep, erotic, no-nonsense LGBT presence titled "get it, bitch." So what's really going on? Fuck being hard, Odd Future's complicated?
On that note, here's another deep and brilliant smooth-tip avant-garde hip-hop ballad from OFWGKTA member FRANK OCEAN's debut album Nostalgia, Ultra. Unreal:
You can download all this stuff and much more from their website, http://www.oddfuture.com/ And in case you haven't seen it, I'll leave you with the formidable video for "Yonkers," by the de facto leader and founder of Odd Future, TYLER THE CREATOR:
Monday, February 28, 2011
BEST OF 2010 revised
OKAY, I know I already posted this once and that 2010 is already a distant hazy memory in these post-millennial times but I was just revising my Best Of 2010 list a little bit, plugging in a few more I forgot (thanks to the Permanent Records Best of 2010 zine for a couple reminders) and shuffling a couple other things around. Stay tuned because you know one of these days I'm gonna hafta add one more LP to make it an even 30....
1. SUN CITY GIRLS Funeral Mariachi LP (ABDUCTION)
2. CRAZY DREAMS BAND War Dream LP (HOLY MOUNTAIN)
2. CRAZY DREAMS BAND War Dream LP (HOLY MOUNTAIN)
3. MI AMI Steal Your Face LP (THRILL JOCKEY)
4. BALACLAVAS Roman Holiday LP (DULL KNIFE) This may not technically be the 4th best record of 2010, but considering its particular golden ratio between recorded excellence and public ignorance, this is where it ends up.
5. KURT VILE Square Shells 12" (MATADOR) This guy gets me every time.
6. ANIKA s/t LP (STONE'S THROW) Came out in November, didn't hear it until February 1st, have listened to it like 20 times since.
7. GRASS WIDOW Past Time LP (KILL ROCK STARS) I called this "progressive folk" on twitter and that's seriously what it feels like to me... with a sweet punk edge of course...
8. LOCRIAN The Crystal World LP (UTECH) Territories, also from 2010, was a definite "best one yet" and then they top it like three months later.
6. ANIKA s/t LP (STONE'S THROW) Came out in November, didn't hear it until February 1st, have listened to it like 20 times since.
7. GRASS WIDOW Past Time LP (KILL ROCK STARS) I called this "progressive folk" on twitter and that's seriously what it feels like to me... with a sweet punk edge of course...
8. LOCRIAN The Crystal World LP (UTECH) Territories, also from 2010, was a definite "best one yet" and then they top it like three months later.
9. LOCRIAN Territories LP (AT WAR WITH FALSE NOISE/BASSES FREQUENCES/BLOODLUST!/SMALL DOSES)
10. LA VAMPIRES Meets Zola Jesus 12" (NOT NOT FUN) Best chillwave and witch house record of 2010 was neither chillwave nor witch house.
11. CLOCKCLEANER Auf Wiedersehn 12" (LOAD) My favorite Clockcleaner record is their last one ever.
12. PUERTO RICO FLOWERS "4" 12" (FAN DEATH) John Sharkey of Clockcleaner also turned in quite a good solo record.
13. INTERNATIONAL HELLO s/t LP (HOLY MOUNTAIN) Monoshock reunites under a code name and lays down some of the most serious psychedelic heaviness of their career. Compared to other sporadic but currently active post-Monoshock bands like Bad Trips and Liquorball, both of which I've enjoyed quite a bit, that arcane original chemistry really leaps out of the grooves.
13. INTERNATIONAL HELLO s/t LP (HOLY MOUNTAIN) Monoshock reunites under a code name and lays down some of the most serious psychedelic heaviness of their career. Compared to other sporadic but currently active post-Monoshock bands like Bad Trips and Liquorball, both of which I've enjoyed quite a bit, that arcane original chemistry really leaps out of the grooves.
14. EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING Rush To Relax LP (GONER) So nice to hear a "garage" rock band with actual breathing room in their sound.
15. MOUNT CARMEL s/t LP (SILTBREEZE) Incredible no-scene time-capsule heavy-rock soul from Columbus, OH. This interview illustrates that yes, they are serious about this.
16. GROUP DOUEH Beatte Harab LP (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
17. OMAR SOULEYMAN Jazeera Nights CD (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) This music is all about keyboardist/composer Rizan Sa'id to me, Omar Souleyman is like his killer hype man. But yet the words Souleyman sings are written by poets.
18. M AX NOI MACH In The Shadows LP (WHITE DENIM) Just the album I was hoping he'd come out with.
19. TIN MAN Scared LP (WHITE DENIM)
20. SWORD HEAVEN Gone LP (LOAD)
16. GROUP DOUEH Beatte Harab LP (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
17. OMAR SOULEYMAN Jazeera Nights CD (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) This music is all about keyboardist/composer Rizan Sa'id to me, Omar Souleyman is like his killer hype man. But yet the words Souleyman sings are written by poets.
18. M AX NOI MACH In The Shadows LP (WHITE DENIM) Just the album I was hoping he'd come out with.
19. TIN MAN Scared LP (WHITE DENIM)
20. SWORD HEAVEN Gone LP (LOAD)
21. DAN PECK TRIO Acid Soil LP (HEAT RETENTION)
22. MARY HALVORSON QUINTET Saturn Sings CD (FIREHOUSE 12) Dan Peck Trio and this are tied for my #1 Jazz Album of 2010.
23. U.S. GIRLS Go Grey LP (SILTBREEZE) 2nd best chillwave and witch house record of 2010 was neither chillwave nor witch house.
22. MARY HALVORSON QUINTET Saturn Sings CD (FIREHOUSE 12) Dan Peck Trio and this are tied for my #1 Jazz Album of 2010.
23. U.S. GIRLS Go Grey LP (SILTBREEZE) 2nd best chillwave and witch house record of 2010 was neither chillwave nor witch house.
24. PURLING HISS Hissteria LP (RICHIE/TESTOSTERTUNES) This could be ranked higher, I just noticed it down here.
25. TOM SMITH & KEVIN DRUMM Mud CDR (KARL SCHMIDT VERLAG) Didn't know what to expect and it still took me by surprise.
26. KEN CAMDEN Lethargy & Submission LP (KRANKY) Solo cosmic improvisational electric guitar by member of Implodes. P.S. Implodes Black Earth comes out in April on Kranky and judging from an advance copy it's going to be on this list next year...
27. HAYVANLAR ALEMI Guarana Superpower LP (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
25. TOM SMITH & KEVIN DRUMM Mud CDR (KARL SCHMIDT VERLAG) Didn't know what to expect and it still took me by surprise.
26. KEN CAMDEN Lethargy & Submission LP (KRANKY) Solo cosmic improvisational electric guitar by member of Implodes. P.S. Implodes Black Earth comes out in April on Kranky and judging from an advance copy it's going to be on this list next year...
27. HAYVANLAR ALEMI Guarana Superpower LP (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
28. VOICE OF SEVEN THUNDERS s/t LP (HOLY MOUNTAIN)
29. SHAWN DAVID MCMILLEN Dead Friends LP (TOMPKINS SQUARE)
REISSUES/ARCHIVAL
DADAWAH Peace And Love (DUG OUT)
REISSUES/ARCHIVAL
DADAWAH Peace And Love (DUG OUT)
PHIL COHRAN African Skies (CAPTCHA)
PARSON SOUND box set (SUBLIMINAL SOUNDS)
LES RALLIZES DENUDES Heavier Than A Death In The Family (PHOENIX)
as usual all the archival stuff on Sublime Frequencies (OMAR KHORSHID, KOES BERSAUDARA, KOES PLUS, DARA PUSPITA, etc.)
BRAINBOMBS Urge To Kill LP (LOAD)
WITCH Introduction CD (SHADOKS)
SONG OF THE YEAR: Celebration "I Will Not Fall"
BRAINBOMBS Urge To Kill LP (LOAD)
WITCH Introduction CD (SHADOKS)
SONG OF THE YEAR: Celebration "I Will Not Fall"
I feel like I hardly bought or listened to any 7-inches this year. The only one I can remember enjoying this whole entire year is that BRAINWASHED YOUTH goofery on RICHIE RECORDS... what does that tell you? Actually, I enjoyed that same label's BIRDS OF MAYA WITH HARMONICA DAN 7-inch too... could it be that they are The Only 7-Inch Label That Matters (in 2K10)? (Answer: Probably not, I just have a bad memory.)
Saturday, February 19, 2011
CUTTY RANKS
Reblogging this reminder by Kick To Kill of another of my all-time favorite youtubes, CUTTY RANKS live with the Stereo Mars sound system at a 1986 PNP Rally in Kingston. The minute from roughly 1:45 to 2:45 ranks even higher than Patti Smith's "You Light Up My Life" as one of the greatest vocal performances of the 20th Century.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Yet Another iPod Commercial
Yeah, LPs are the best, but let's face it, I'm addicted to the iPod, so in its thrall that I even spell its name with the correct trademarked capitalization. Furthermore, I'm addicted to the album shuffle setting, one album at a time to infinity, always at random. At home, at work, and on the train, I have in fact had my iPod and iTunes on album shuffle for almost two or three years straight. The times in 2010 that I actually put on an album of my own choice, vinyl and CD included, could probably be counted on two hands... well, four... maybe six... okay, eight at the most (that's a mere 40 in a whole year, and at least 10 of those were the new Sun City Girls)...
How could I stop the shuffling when sequences keep coming at me like they did today and tonight, sweet gradational shifts through modern folk forms, from a Canadian man to two English women to an African-American man... it started late this afternoon with a concert by Leonard Cohen, live at BBC in 1968. All Leonard Cohen is great, his recent concert tours have looked exquisite, but my particular love is for the early stuff. McCabe & Mrs. Miller era. Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs From A Room (1969), production by John Simon (who did Music From Big Pink) and Bob Johnston (who did Blonde on Blonde) respectively. The high young reedy voice, great lyricist, killer acoustic guitar player. To quote one extremely accurate YouTube comment, "wintery hymn(s) of the soul's interior!" These BBC sessions are gorgeous... forget those legendary producers I just named, the music here sounds as good as anything on the albums, and so does Cohen's singing. Lenny is one of those guys whose lyrics stay nested and emerge gently, and only on repeat listens, even when they twist like knives. Tonight the one that stuck was the 8th stanza of "Teachers": "I ate and ate and ate, no I did not miss a plate, well how much do these suppers cost? We'll take it out in HATE." I have no idea who the backing band is, even after googling for almost 10 minutes! (I guess some folk/rock mysteries are still sacred... though there was a mention somewhere of "Dave Cousins and The Strawbs").
And after the Cohen, the shuffle goes right into Bridget St. John and her album Ask Me No Questions. Can you imagine the gradational shift from 1968 Leonard Cohen to 1969 Bridget St. John? The voice goes from male to female, and the mood is different, but there is still so much in common. She is a decade younger, born in 1946, part of the global beat/folk/hippie boom, with acoustic guitar playing as idiosyncratic as her contemporary Joni Mitchell, but with a much different singing voice, deeper and richer, almost like a British Nico. And that's what a lot of this album is focused on, just her acoustic guitar and voice, with only sparse backing. Her songs aren't immediately hook-filled, but they are complex and intriguing and often lovely. Progressive folk for sure, like when she sings "And as for me I'll eat a buttercup sandwich and wait 'til the shower is over."
And then the iPod shuffle goes from 1969 Bridget St. John to 1967 Shirley Collins, can you believe that? Had to be on purpose... talk about gradational... another British lady singing beautiful folk songs in the late 1960s. Shirley is a little older, more Leonard's age, more pre-hippie, and for the intents and purposes of this album The Sweet Primeroses even pre-beat, in fact sounding like she could be singing from 500 years ago. Her voice is as clear as a bell and she sings over the sparsest of accompaniment, most notably her sister Dolly on Portative Pipe-organ (which she plays on six tracks... Shirley accompanies herself on 5-String Banjo for another four), which she plays at least 14 times more beautifully and hauntingly than this guy (who is fine, don't get me wrong... the costume changes are a plus, as is the cat cameo).
In a way, the shift from the Collins album to the next one is even more gradational; even though the change is from a British woman singing folk songs in 1967 to an African-American man playing fusion jazz in 1976, it took me a few minutes to even realize that it was a different album. I literally thought that Lol Coxhill himself, or someone like that, had been drafted by the Collins sisters for a rousing album closer, the old weird Britain meeting the new, if you will... but it was actually this odd mostly acoustic chamber fusion jazz LP by Michael Gregory Jackson that was released in 1976 on legendary label ESP-Disk. At that time the label was a bit past their prime, kind of like being on SST in the '90s, but this album, called Clarity, is a good one, some sweet, spiky, and exploratory 1970s music by an excellent and unconventional group: David Murray, Oliver Lake, and Wadada Leo Smith, all on horns/reeds/woodwinds/etc (no piano or rhythm section), while Jackson plays acoustic and electric guitars and sings occasional proto-neosoul vocals over a mix of composition and free improvisation. Almost as importantly, he's holding a cat on the cover. This was his debut, at the tender age of 23... he went on to record "career defining records on Arista/Novus in the 80s and 90s."
I swear these all came up today on random, in order, without me stopping the iPod. And after Michael Gregory Jackson, it jumped from folk forms (or did it??) and went into a perfect palate cleanser: the "T.V. O.D." b/w "Warm Leatherette" single by The Normal. As the brilliant A side came pulsing through the room, my son yelled from the next room "I LOVE THIS MUSIC!!" He was a little weirded out by "I don't need a TV screen/I just stick the aerial into my skin/let the signal run through my veins," but it was cool, I told him it was science fiction.
How could I stop the shuffling when sequences keep coming at me like they did today and tonight, sweet gradational shifts through modern folk forms, from a Canadian man to two English women to an African-American man... it started late this afternoon with a concert by Leonard Cohen, live at BBC in 1968. All Leonard Cohen is great, his recent concert tours have looked exquisite, but my particular love is for the early stuff. McCabe & Mrs. Miller era. Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs From A Room (1969), production by John Simon (who did Music From Big Pink) and Bob Johnston (who did Blonde on Blonde) respectively. The high young reedy voice, great lyricist, killer acoustic guitar player. To quote one extremely accurate YouTube comment, "wintery hymn(s) of the soul's interior!" These BBC sessions are gorgeous... forget those legendary producers I just named, the music here sounds as good as anything on the albums, and so does Cohen's singing. Lenny is one of those guys whose lyrics stay nested and emerge gently, and only on repeat listens, even when they twist like knives. Tonight the one that stuck was the 8th stanza of "Teachers": "I ate and ate and ate, no I did not miss a plate, well how much do these suppers cost? We'll take it out in HATE." I have no idea who the backing band is, even after googling for almost 10 minutes! (I guess some folk/rock mysteries are still sacred... though there was a mention somewhere of "Dave Cousins and The Strawbs").
And after the Cohen, the shuffle goes right into Bridget St. John and her album Ask Me No Questions. Can you imagine the gradational shift from 1968 Leonard Cohen to 1969 Bridget St. John? The voice goes from male to female, and the mood is different, but there is still so much in common. She is a decade younger, born in 1946, part of the global beat/folk/hippie boom, with acoustic guitar playing as idiosyncratic as her contemporary Joni Mitchell, but with a much different singing voice, deeper and richer, almost like a British Nico. And that's what a lot of this album is focused on, just her acoustic guitar and voice, with only sparse backing. Her songs aren't immediately hook-filled, but they are complex and intriguing and often lovely. Progressive folk for sure, like when she sings "And as for me I'll eat a buttercup sandwich and wait 'til the shower is over."
And then the iPod shuffle goes from 1969 Bridget St. John to 1967 Shirley Collins, can you believe that? Had to be on purpose... talk about gradational... another British lady singing beautiful folk songs in the late 1960s. Shirley is a little older, more Leonard's age, more pre-hippie, and for the intents and purposes of this album The Sweet Primeroses even pre-beat, in fact sounding like she could be singing from 500 years ago. Her voice is as clear as a bell and she sings over the sparsest of accompaniment, most notably her sister Dolly on Portative Pipe-organ (which she plays on six tracks... Shirley accompanies herself on 5-String Banjo for another four), which she plays at least 14 times more beautifully and hauntingly than this guy (who is fine, don't get me wrong... the costume changes are a plus, as is the cat cameo).
In a way, the shift from the Collins album to the next one is even more gradational; even though the change is from a British woman singing folk songs in 1967 to an African-American man playing fusion jazz in 1976, it took me a few minutes to even realize that it was a different album. I literally thought that Lol Coxhill himself, or someone like that, had been drafted by the Collins sisters for a rousing album closer, the old weird Britain meeting the new, if you will... but it was actually this odd mostly acoustic chamber fusion jazz LP by Michael Gregory Jackson that was released in 1976 on legendary label ESP-Disk. At that time the label was a bit past their prime, kind of like being on SST in the '90s, but this album, called Clarity, is a good one, some sweet, spiky, and exploratory 1970s music by an excellent and unconventional group: David Murray, Oliver Lake, and Wadada Leo Smith, all on horns/reeds/woodwinds/etc (no piano or rhythm section), while Jackson plays acoustic and electric guitars and sings occasional proto-neosoul vocals over a mix of composition and free improvisation. Almost as importantly, he's holding a cat on the cover. This was his debut, at the tender age of 23... he went on to record "career defining records on Arista/Novus in the 80s and 90s."
I swear these all came up today on random, in order, without me stopping the iPod. And after Michael Gregory Jackson, it jumped from folk forms (or did it??) and went into a perfect palate cleanser: the "T.V. O.D." b/w "Warm Leatherette" single by The Normal. As the brilliant A side came pulsing through the room, my son yelled from the next room "I LOVE THIS MUSIC!!" He was a little weirded out by "I don't need a TV screen/I just stick the aerial into my skin/let the signal run through my veins," but it was cool, I told him it was science fiction.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
NEW RELEASES OF NOTE (DECEMBER 2010)
M AX NOI MACH In The Shadows LP (WHITE DENIM) At the time of his interview in the most recent issue of Blastitude, Robert Francisco had yet to release any full-length vinyl as M Ax Noi Mach, but now that time has come and it fulfills all the promise shown on the 7-inches and the tapes like Chaser. Not only did quality-driven fellow Philadelphian label White Denim step up and pay big bucks for mastering in order to successfully groove the thick frequencies, but Francisco did his part and showed up with his best series of tunes to date. His music continues to never settle into any one obvious subgenre... power electronics would seem to the closest genre description, although his vocals seem rooted in 90s hardcore/grindcore more so than 70s/80s industrial... harsh noise doesn't fully work either, because what might start or otherwise sound like a harsh noise track is frequently pushed, via driving dance beats and that mastering job, into a radio-ready club dance feel (just listen to the way the opening track "Creeper" hits). And the real club hit on this album should be "Devil City"... I really want White Denim to bankroll an early 90s style hip-hop video in which Francisco lip-syncs out on the streets dressed in winter wear. They'll have to cut a censored radio version due to the gigantic hook based around the phrase "buncha fucking animals," but it'll be worth it. Side one closer "Fetico" is a weird quieter 'talking' track that nicely demonstrates that crucial trait of all music, the ability to change it up a little. (Some call it dynamics.) Side two is also very heavy and it has another (welcome) version of "Creeper" called "Creeper Sits." All in all, a perfect and readily available introduction to what this guy does.
PHIL COHRAN African Skies LP (CAPTCHA) Can't say how beyond-stoked I was to walk into Reckless and see this on the wall, a brand new funky colorful gatefold vinyl version of the wonderful African Skies by Phil Cohran. I did not know this vinyl release was in the offing, but I am familiar with the album, having bought a CDR version of it for 10 bucks off of Cohran himself a few years ago at one of his Ethiopian Diamond gigs (he's still doing it every other Friday night at 7PM, go to 6120 N. Broadway in Chicago for fine food and good music). In fact, familiar is an understatement, as this is possibly one of my favorite albums of all time, certainly one of my most-played this decade. It was recorded in 1993 for Chicago's Adler Planetarium, and not only does it sound excellent as a soundtrack to viewing galactic depths, but, with Cohran's extensive harp and frankiphone themes and solos over sublime deep string arrangements, it's also like experiencing ballet in ballrooms, fairy tales in bedrooms, and folk songs and stories on the savannah, without any rooms necessary. (And really it's just the deepest of cosmic jazz by one of its all-time great composers.)
GROUP DOUEH Beatte Harab LP (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) For my money their best album yet. The first two were compilations spanning different years and different recording situations, but this seems to be a complete work of new material, laid down possibly in a single committed studio session. It's also his first album to be largely acoustic, with little (if any) electric guitar, and more traditional Moorish instruments such as the "tinidit (three string Mauritanian lute), ardin (kora-like harp played traditionally by women), tbal (clay drum) and the kass (tea glasses)." Apparently there is also Korg synth on here, but I haven't even really noticed it yet after three listens. The raw 'VU bootleg' thrill of the first 2 LPs is gone, but in its place are deep roots laid down with sweet clarity, and the interplay between Doueh's tinidit and his wife's ardin is unreal, sometimes like Joseph Spence jamming with at least three Magic Band guitarists all at once, the speed of the notes sometimes suddenly doubling or even tripling until the music sounds like a school of silver-jeweled turquoise hummingbirds bending backwards to fly concentric circles around a tiny heart-shaped cathedral made from golden vases at the exact center of your mind.
AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE #1. "To those of us who are here now, Noise Culture (as we're calling it on the cover) is really exciting and worthy of detailed investigation. There are differences between good and bad noise, and there are ways to explain this in print." So writes co-editor Chris Sienko in the premiere issue of this long-awaited and finally-published Noise Culture magazine, something that he's been illustrating for years with various online writings, many of them right here in Blastitude starting way back in early 2001, but it is a fine thing to have so many of his observations and opinions on paper and in such a nicely designed book (because really, this magazine is a book, as much as the Industrial Culture Handbook was a book). And there is indeed much, much more than Sienko's contributions, including a whopping 38 page oral history of the Broken Flag label (by the magazine's other editor, UK-based Steve Underwood of the Harbinger Sound label), and features on Carlos Giffoni, The Haters, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Climax Denial, Sewer Election, Putrefier, the IDES label, the Apraxia label... and that's still not all. 164 pages, perfect bound.
One last note about some nice Cluster-related reissues coming to us from the Bureau B label... first off, there's a CD of the Cluster 71 album, their first as the well-known Moebius and Roedelius duo, created after they parted ways with founding member Conrad Schnitzler and changed the spelling of their name from Kluster. This is a truly groundbreaking album of "epochal, experimental electronics" that so many post-No Funners would still kill to create in 2011 (wow, that's 40 years later)... and if you're a fan of the later beat-driven pop-inflected Cluster albums like Zuckerzeit, this album will probably scare the shit out of you with its yawning chasms of deep-space noise that somehow always... seem... to.... BE.... GETTING... LOUDER.......... On a much prettier and more pastoral tip, Bureau B is also doing CD/LP editions of two solo albums by Roedelius called Selbstportrait and Selbstportrait - Vol. II. These were originally released on the Sky label in 1979 and 1980, and are completely solo recordings, one man sitting at a Farfisa organ and getting deep. The tracks are beat-oriented constructions with melodic cycles and improvisations playing out gently over the top, closer to the aforementioned Zuckerzeit style but with an additional aura of high-lonesome freedom of movement. Again, I think a lot of today's young chillmagogic artists would love to make albums like this, but let's face it, they just don't have the musical depth to do it... they're just gear-collectors and button-pushers who don't seem to have any idea how to improvise actual heartfelt and/or philosophical melodic statements. In other words, rad sounds but no songs, and these tracks, however "sketchbook" they may be, are ALL songs.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
I LOVE THE STACK OF LPs BY MY STEREO RIGHT NOW, IT'S LIKE IT'S CHRISTMAS OVER HERE
ALVARIUS B Baroque Primitiva LP (2011, POON VILLAGE)
CHRIS & COSEY Heartbeat LP (2010 reissue, CONSPIRACY INTERNATIONAL)
MRR # 331 (December 2010, Kylma Sota, Articles Of Faith, Total Abuse, Frankie Rose)
M AX NOI MACH In The Shadows LP (2010, WHITE DENIM)
ROSCOE MITCHELL SEXTET Sound LP (2009 repress, DELMARK)
KELAN PHIL COHRAN & LEGACY African Skies LP (2010, CAPTCHA)
ORNETTE COLEMAN Town Hall, 1962 LP (1997 reissue, GET BACK)
ORNETTE COLEMAN Dancing In Your Head LP (1977, HORIZON/A&M)
JOSHUA ABRAMS Natural Information LP (2010, EREMITE)
GROUP DOUEH Beatte Harab LP (2010, SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
BRAINWASHED YOUTH The Trilogy 7" (2010, RICHIE/TESTOSTERTUNES)
KURT VILE Square Shells EP 12" (2010, MATADOR)
JOHN FAHEY The New Possibility: John Fahey's Guitar Soli Christmas Album LP (1968, TAKOMA, probably 2nd or 3rd pressing)
HAYVANLAR ALEMI Gurana Superpower LP (2010, SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
CHRIS & COSEY Heartbeat LP (2010 reissue, CONSPIRACY INTERNATIONAL)
MRR # 331 (December 2010, Kylma Sota, Articles Of Faith, Total Abuse, Frankie Rose)
M AX NOI MACH In The Shadows LP (2010, WHITE DENIM)
ROSCOE MITCHELL SEXTET Sound LP (2009 repress, DELMARK)
KELAN PHIL COHRAN & LEGACY African Skies LP (2010, CAPTCHA)
ORNETTE COLEMAN Town Hall, 1962 LP (1997 reissue, GET BACK)
ORNETTE COLEMAN Dancing In Your Head LP (1977, HORIZON/A&M)
JOSHUA ABRAMS Natural Information LP (2010, EREMITE)
GROUP DOUEH Beatte Harab LP (2010, SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
BRAINWASHED YOUTH The Trilogy 7" (2010, RICHIE/TESTOSTERTUNES)
KURT VILE Square Shells EP 12" (2010, MATADOR)
JOHN FAHEY The New Possibility: John Fahey's Guitar Soli Christmas Album LP (1968, TAKOMA, probably 2nd or 3rd pressing)
HAYVANLAR ALEMI Gurana Superpower LP (2010, SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
Thursday, November 25, 2010
PETER "SLEAZY" CHRISTOPHERSON 1955-2010 Nice tributes at Brainwashed, and Holy Warbles posted a great early pic and YouTube.
ENO STILL SMART Great insight about improvised music by Brian Eno in his recent interview with Pitchfork: "I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time." -- http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7875-brian-eno/
LAST COUPLE DAYS PLAYLIST:
MORTON FELDMAN String Quartet 2 (MODE) Listened to maybe half of this at work, in other words a mere 3 hours. One delivery driver who stopped by thought it was coming from the mail machine, and didn't even seem to think that was weird.
D'ANGELO Voodoo (VIRGIN) That guy from Time Magazine who said each song is like a cat waking up was really onto something.
SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE There's A Riot Goin' On (EPIC) After D'Angelo I had to go back to the source.
HARRY BERTOIA Space Voyage / Echoes Of Other Times (SONAMBIENT 1023)
HARRY BERTOIA Swift Sounds / Phosphorescence (SONAMBIENT 1024) Thanks to Holy Warbles.
BILLY BAO May 08 (PARTS UNKNOWN) Side A maybe not up there with previous releases Fuck Separation and Dialectics Of Shit but I like the side-long Side B cut quite a bit. Intense cover design. It appears that all Billy Bao releases can be downloaded at http://www.mattin.org/2_Billy_Bao.html.
OMAR SOULEYMAN Dabke 2020 (Folk And Pop Sounds Of Syria) (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) Every album is very heavy. As I've said before, keyboardist Rizan Sa'id gets massive credit for this.
INGRAM MARSHALL Fog Tropes/Gradual Requiem/Gambuh 1 (NEW ALBION) A nice continuation from the Feldman and Bertoia, though maybe not as well known as either of them... "Fog Tropes" is a haunting and beautiful 1982 masterwork "for brass sextet and tape"... http://www.newalbion.com/artists/marshalli/index.htm
ERIC COPELAND Hermaphrodite (POST PRESENT MEDIUM) Interesting & weirdly grooving 2007 solo album from member of Black Dice... what the hell, maybe this fits in with Feldman/Bertoia/Marshall as the latest in modern composition from the Eastern Seaboard... or maybe it's more of a Byrne/Eno kind of thing this time, especially now that more African and Eastern reissues than ever are spinning on turntables in NYC lofts.
BRAINBOMBS Singles Compilation (LOAD) Finally an actual record... everything else was on MP3... this is the notorious Swedish band's earliest stuff, from 1986 to about 1989, when they released three or four 7-inches and appeared on some compilations. As I listen, I'm trying to decide who was better at late-80s bugle-and-noise bludgeon rock, the Brainbombs or America's own The Cows. Both bands started around the same time, and both have a remarkably similar approach, even though (I'm going to go ahead and assume that) the bands had never heard each other. Having seen the Cows play a show four different times, I can vouch that they could be a devastating live band. I've never seen the Brainbombs live (which makes most of us), but the recorded evidence here suggests that they could be pretty great at it as well. And, throughout their career, their recordings seem better and more natural than the Cows' ever did. I love a lot of songs on Cows records, of which I have like 5, but really all of their albums sound kind of terrible, as they never really figured out to record and master their gargantuan and grotesque live sound. (Their best album was their last one, Sorry In Pig Minor, on which they finally stopped caring about what they sounded like live and had producer King Buzzo encouraging their mischevious tendencies.) So, Brainbombs win on record, but I have to wonder if their vocalist gives off even half of the all-around entertainment value that the Cows' Shannon Selberg did. For all of his implied misanthropy, there was something playful about Selberg, including not only his well-done prop comedy but also his sly lyrics and the deceptively melodic way that he used his non-voice. The Brainbombs, of course, are funny in a different way that is more blunt and horrible. Either way, the Cows never did make a top-to-bottom album as good as Urge To Kill, the other Load reissue of a Brainbombs album, which I'm going to play next.
HERE'S A COUPLE FOR THE "MIDDLE 40" Ah, the Shadoks label of Germany, well known for their catalogue of what seems like over 100 reissues of different unknown 1970s progressive rock albums, not to mention their $43 list price for a single 12" vinyl record. They have reissued some records I truly love, like all-time favorites Rayne s/t and Africa by Amanaz, as well as Witch Lazy Bones!!, the stuff by Bunalim . . . Los Blops . . . Pete Fine . . . Terje, Jesper & Joachim . . . and surely more, but most of it I haven't heard, and most of it I've always suspected as being just decent, okay, middle-of-the-road... certainly of automatic interest due to one obscuro-European, South American, or African heritage or another, certainly filled with fine mild-progressive pop-folk-rock instrumental interplay, which is certainly in the service of catchy songs (or at least songs that sound like catchy songs even though they are not actually catchy songs). It's all fine but it's also often rather beige and gets buried under all the various layers of inoffensive pop-culture history, mostly with good reason. And that is mostly the case with this latest batch of Shadoks reissues. Three of them are by mild-progressive groups from turn-of-the-60s Iceland. The only real heavy group among them is called Odmenn, and Shadoks has reissued their first and only album, a self-titled 1970 double LP (list price $55). The two other Icelandic groups being reissued are Svanfridur and Trubrot, both of which sounded interesting and pleasantly rocking while on, and both of which I remember very little about, except that Trubrot had a somewhat charismatic lady singer named Shady Owens... but I only know that from looking at her picture in the high-quality booklet, not so much from actually listening to the music... I don't remember the Odmenn too well either, but it was my favorite and the only one I'd recommend to the serious archivists. We also received a new Shadoks reissue CD called The Cooperville Times by the South African duo of John & Philipa Cooper, which I thought would be yet a fourth nice-but-uninteresting slice of late-1960s progressive pop (I don't even like the Blossom Toes that much, why would I like a second-tier Blossom Toes?), but the South Africa origin gave it a little more intrigue (see what I mean... even when the music is mediocre, Shadoks is great from a multi-cultural perspective), and then upon actually playing the thing, it almost immediately won me over all the way with its gentle but firm and just slightly haunted folk-pop vintage, particularly on Track 3 "I'll Be More Than Satisfied," a John Phillips imitation so nice that it's almost as good as listening to John Phillips himself, with the added bonus of knowing that the singer/songwriter is, unlike John Phillips, probably not an incest-committing junkie headcase. (It is a rather quirky coincidence that this duo is called John & Philipa though, isn't it?)
SORT OF OFFICIAL TOP 100 BLASTiTUNES FOR 2010
1. CELEBRATION "I Will Not Fall"
2. CRAZY DREAMS BAND "Feels So Good"
3. KURT VILE "He's Alright"
4. THE BREEDERS "New Year"
5. EYEHATEGOD "30$ Bag"
6. WELTON IRIE & SOUND DIMENSION "Chase Them (ver.)"
7. FREE "I'll Be Creepin'"
8. LONE RANGER "Barnabas Collins"
9. LOW THREAT PROFILE "Time For Rebirth"
10. THE NECROS "IQ 32"
11. U.S. GIRLS "Turnaround Time"
12. WILLIE LANE "Hill Top Lane"
13. ALTON ELLIS "Live And Learn"
14. BILLY RILEY & THE LITTLE GREEN MEN "Red Hot"
15. THE CLEAN "Hold On To The Rail"
16. FEEDTIME "Ha Ha"
17. GROUPER "Hollow Press"
18. KEITH HUDSON "I'm Alright (Version)"
19. MECHT MENSCH "Acceptance"
20. NAMELEZZ PROJEKT "Obscure Impulses"
21. SARCOFAGO "Satanic Lust"
22. SCISSOR GIRLS "A Dedication To Cronies And Goats"
23. ALTON ELLIS & THE FLAMES "Cry Tough"
24. BARRY BROWN "Two House Department"
25. ERNIE BARTON "She's Gone Away"
26. BLACK SABBATH "Tomorrow's Dream" live 1972
27. BLUE OYSTER CULT "True Confessions"
28. COLOR DREAM "Untitled" (from Reminisce)
29. CURSED BIRD "A Page Of Madness (1926)"
30. DIM STARS "Monkey"
31. EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING "Gentleman"
32. THE GAYLADS "It's Hard To Confess"
33. GENE SIMMONS "Drinkin' Wine"
34. HAROLD JENKINS (aka CONWAY TWITTY) "Crazy Dreams"
35. HAYDEN THOMPSON "Love My Baby"
36. JACK EARLS & THE JIMBOS "Hey! Jim"
37. JAY TEES & BRENTFORD ROCKERS "Buck Town Version"
38. KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS "Hunchy's Back"
39. LAUREL AITKEN "Mas Charlie"
40. LUNGFISH "Cleaner Than Your Surroundings"
41. MADBALL "Discriminate Me"
42. NIGHT KINGS "Bum"
43. NO BALLS "Forgetting To Suppress It"
44. PETER GREEN "Slabo Day"
45. RANK/XEROX "Basement Furniture"
46. ROY MONTGOMERY "Fantasia On A Theme By Sandy Bull (Slight Return)"
47. SCORPIONS "We'll Burn The Sky"
48. SICK LLAMA "untitled #8 from Put Down"
49. SILICON TEENS "Memphis, Tennessee"
50. SLICES "Medusa"
51. SUN CITY GIRLS "Voice Of America #3"
52. SWELL MAPS "H.S. Art"
53. THE THREE TOPS "Do It Right"
54. U ROY "Train From The West"
55. WARREN SMITH "Ubangi Stomp"
56. AGNOSTIC FRONT "No One Rules"
57. ANGST HASE PFEFFER NASE "La Bamba"
58. THE BATS "Made Up In Blue"
59. BERNARD FEVRE "Impressionism"
60. BIRDS OF MAYA "Ready To Howl"
61. BLACK DEVIL "No Regrets"
62. BLIGHT "Real World"
63. BO ANDERS PERSSON "Proteinimperialism"
64. BRETT FAVRE "[Side A of The Underlying Focus Upon Single Negative Entities]"
65. BURMESE "Only The Good Die"
66. CARAVAN "Golf Girl"
67. EARLY B "History Of Jamaica"
68. EDWIN BRUCE "Rock Boppin' Baby"
69. FAUST "Untitled - all on saxes"
70. FIRE ENGINES "Discord"
71. FONDATION "Quelque Part"
72. FOR AGAINST "Shine"
73. FUNGUS BRAINS "Hairbrush"
74. GILA "This Morning"
75. THE GLADIATORS "Don't Fool The Young Gal"
76. GLEN BROWN/KING TUBBY "Termination Dub"
77. GONE "Insidious Distraction"
78. GRASS WIDOW "To Where"
79. IKE & THE CRYSTALITES "Ilya Kuryakin"
80. THE INNER SPACE "Agilok & Blubbo"
81. J.F.A. "Count"
82. JAKOB OLAUSSON "Cornered In Your Circle"
83. JIM FERRARO "Remote Control Under The Couch"
84. JOHN TERLAZZO "Lookin' For Love (A Vision Of Love Lost)"
85. JOY DIVISION "Atrocity Exhibition"
86. KAREN DALTON "Little Bit Of Rain"
87. KITO-MIZUKUMI ROUBER "A5"
88. LES VAMPYRETTES "Biomutanten"
89. LILIDA MOLIPAVIR (AND SISTER) "Sept Ans Sur Mer"
90. THE MEATMEN "Snuff 'Em"
91. MICHAEL HOENIG "Departure From The Northern Wasteland"
92. MAX ROMEO "The Clock"
93. MOUNT CARMEL "Hear Me Callin'"
94. MRS. ARCHIE MACDONALD "Hi-Ri-Ri-O"
95. NICODEMUS "Dog Better Than Gun"
96. THE NORMAL "T.V. O.D."
97. ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER "[Side A of Ruined Lives]"
98. PEAKING LIGHTS "[untitled from Space Primitive]"
99. THE PIONEERS "Long Shot (Buss Me Bet)"
100. RANGDA "Waldorf Hysteria"
CHANTAL & BABETTE But seriously, I'd like to seriously recommend three films made by filmmaker Chantal Akerman in collaboration with cinematographer Babette Mongolte: La Chambre (1971), Hotel Monterey (1972), and News From Home (1977). All three were filmed in New York City while the Poland-born Belgium-raised Akerman was living there, and they make up Disc One of her recent Criterion Eclipse Series 3-DVD set. I had never seen them before and I don't think I even knew about them, but as a trilogy I actually prefer them to the (still great) Akerman/Mongolte masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, 201 minutes). If anything, these three films are documentaries... or are they memoirs? Long-form poems? Dramatic ellipses? Either way, if you've got the time (161 minutes total), watch all three in a row... you'll know it was all worth it when you reach the 10-minute tracking-then-stationary shot that closes News From Home, having gone from chamber to chambers to hallways to streets and finally the great outdoors (without leaving New York City). I would also highly recommend watching the first two as they were released (and presented on this set), without any sound. There's a 7-minute clip of Hotel Monterey on YouTube, but I don't wanna link to it because the uploader added some sensitive and austere piano music... perfect, of course, for the lingering shots of beautiful unoccupied furniture, but totally unfortunate when one has already seen the much more powerful silent version. So don't go to YouTube, just get hold of the Criterion, buy it, rent it, stream it, whatever, the important thing is WATCH IT.
ENO STILL SMART Great insight about improvised music by Brian Eno in his recent interview with Pitchfork: "I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time." -- http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7875-brian-eno/
LAST COUPLE DAYS PLAYLIST:
MORTON FELDMAN String Quartet 2 (MODE) Listened to maybe half of this at work, in other words a mere 3 hours. One delivery driver who stopped by thought it was coming from the mail machine, and didn't even seem to think that was weird.
D'ANGELO Voodoo (VIRGIN) That guy from Time Magazine who said each song is like a cat waking up was really onto something.
SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE There's A Riot Goin' On (EPIC) After D'Angelo I had to go back to the source.
HARRY BERTOIA Space Voyage / Echoes Of Other Times (SONAMBIENT 1023)
HARRY BERTOIA Swift Sounds / Phosphorescence (SONAMBIENT 1024) Thanks to Holy Warbles.
BILLY BAO May 08 (PARTS UNKNOWN) Side A maybe not up there with previous releases Fuck Separation and Dialectics Of Shit but I like the side-long Side B cut quite a bit. Intense cover design. It appears that all Billy Bao releases can be downloaded at http://www.mattin.org/2_Billy_Bao.html.
OMAR SOULEYMAN Dabke 2020 (Folk And Pop Sounds Of Syria) (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) Every album is very heavy. As I've said before, keyboardist Rizan Sa'id gets massive credit for this.
INGRAM MARSHALL Fog Tropes/Gradual Requiem/Gambuh 1 (NEW ALBION) A nice continuation from the Feldman and Bertoia, though maybe not as well known as either of them... "Fog Tropes" is a haunting and beautiful 1982 masterwork "for brass sextet and tape"... http://www.newalbion.com/artists/marshalli/index.htm
ERIC COPELAND Hermaphrodite (POST PRESENT MEDIUM) Interesting & weirdly grooving 2007 solo album from member of Black Dice... what the hell, maybe this fits in with Feldman/Bertoia/Marshall as the latest in modern composition from the Eastern Seaboard... or maybe it's more of a Byrne/Eno kind of thing this time, especially now that more African and Eastern reissues than ever are spinning on turntables in NYC lofts.
BRAINBOMBS Singles Compilation (LOAD) Finally an actual record... everything else was on MP3... this is the notorious Swedish band's earliest stuff, from 1986 to about 1989, when they released three or four 7-inches and appeared on some compilations. As I listen, I'm trying to decide who was better at late-80s bugle-and-noise bludgeon rock, the Brainbombs or America's own The Cows. Both bands started around the same time, and both have a remarkably similar approach, even though (I'm going to go ahead and assume that) the bands had never heard each other. Having seen the Cows play a show four different times, I can vouch that they could be a devastating live band. I've never seen the Brainbombs live (which makes most of us), but the recorded evidence here suggests that they could be pretty great at it as well. And, throughout their career, their recordings seem better and more natural than the Cows' ever did. I love a lot of songs on Cows records, of which I have like 5, but really all of their albums sound kind of terrible, as they never really figured out to record and master their gargantuan and grotesque live sound. (Their best album was their last one, Sorry In Pig Minor, on which they finally stopped caring about what they sounded like live and had producer King Buzzo encouraging their mischevious tendencies.) So, Brainbombs win on record, but I have to wonder if their vocalist gives off even half of the all-around entertainment value that the Cows' Shannon Selberg did. For all of his implied misanthropy, there was something playful about Selberg, including not only his well-done prop comedy but also his sly lyrics and the deceptively melodic way that he used his non-voice. The Brainbombs, of course, are funny in a different way that is more blunt and horrible. Either way, the Cows never did make a top-to-bottom album as good as Urge To Kill, the other Load reissue of a Brainbombs album, which I'm going to play next.
HERE'S A COUPLE FOR THE "MIDDLE 40" Ah, the Shadoks label of Germany, well known for their catalogue of what seems like over 100 reissues of different unknown 1970s progressive rock albums, not to mention their $43 list price for a single 12" vinyl record. They have reissued some records I truly love, like all-time favorites Rayne s/t and Africa by Amanaz, as well as Witch Lazy Bones!!, the stuff by Bunalim . . . Los Blops . . . Pete Fine . . . Terje, Jesper & Joachim . . . and surely more, but most of it I haven't heard, and most of it I've always suspected as being just decent, okay, middle-of-the-road... certainly of automatic interest due to one obscuro-European, South American, or African heritage or another, certainly filled with fine mild-progressive pop-folk-rock instrumental interplay, which is certainly in the service of catchy songs (or at least songs that sound like catchy songs even though they are not actually catchy songs). It's all fine but it's also often rather beige and gets buried under all the various layers of inoffensive pop-culture history, mostly with good reason. And that is mostly the case with this latest batch of Shadoks reissues. Three of them are by mild-progressive groups from turn-of-the-60s Iceland. The only real heavy group among them is called Odmenn, and Shadoks has reissued their first and only album, a self-titled 1970 double LP (list price $55). The two other Icelandic groups being reissued are Svanfridur and Trubrot, both of which sounded interesting and pleasantly rocking while on, and both of which I remember very little about, except that Trubrot had a somewhat charismatic lady singer named Shady Owens... but I only know that from looking at her picture in the high-quality booklet, not so much from actually listening to the music... I don't remember the Odmenn too well either, but it was my favorite and the only one I'd recommend to the serious archivists. We also received a new Shadoks reissue CD called The Cooperville Times by the South African duo of John & Philipa Cooper, which I thought would be yet a fourth nice-but-uninteresting slice of late-1960s progressive pop (I don't even like the Blossom Toes that much, why would I like a second-tier Blossom Toes?), but the South Africa origin gave it a little more intrigue (see what I mean... even when the music is mediocre, Shadoks is great from a multi-cultural perspective), and then upon actually playing the thing, it almost immediately won me over all the way with its gentle but firm and just slightly haunted folk-pop vintage, particularly on Track 3 "I'll Be More Than Satisfied," a John Phillips imitation so nice that it's almost as good as listening to John Phillips himself, with the added bonus of knowing that the singer/songwriter is, unlike John Phillips, probably not an incest-committing junkie headcase. (It is a rather quirky coincidence that this duo is called John & Philipa though, isn't it?)
SORT OF OFFICIAL TOP 100 BLASTiTUNES FOR 2010
1. CELEBRATION "I Will Not Fall"
2. CRAZY DREAMS BAND "Feels So Good"
3. KURT VILE "He's Alright"
4. THE BREEDERS "New Year"
5. EYEHATEGOD "30$ Bag"
6. WELTON IRIE & SOUND DIMENSION "Chase Them (ver.)"
7. FREE "I'll Be Creepin'"
8. LONE RANGER "Barnabas Collins"
9. LOW THREAT PROFILE "Time For Rebirth"
10. THE NECROS "IQ 32"
11. U.S. GIRLS "Turnaround Time"
12. WILLIE LANE "Hill Top Lane"
13. ALTON ELLIS "Live And Learn"
14. BILLY RILEY & THE LITTLE GREEN MEN "Red Hot"
15. THE CLEAN "Hold On To The Rail"
16. FEEDTIME "Ha Ha"
17. GROUPER "Hollow Press"
18. KEITH HUDSON "I'm Alright (Version)"
19. MECHT MENSCH "Acceptance"
20. NAMELEZZ PROJEKT "Obscure Impulses"
21. SARCOFAGO "Satanic Lust"
22. SCISSOR GIRLS "A Dedication To Cronies And Goats"
23. ALTON ELLIS & THE FLAMES "Cry Tough"
24. BARRY BROWN "Two House Department"
25. ERNIE BARTON "She's Gone Away"
26. BLACK SABBATH "Tomorrow's Dream" live 1972
27. BLUE OYSTER CULT "True Confessions"
28. COLOR DREAM "Untitled" (from Reminisce)
29. CURSED BIRD "A Page Of Madness (1926)"
30. DIM STARS "Monkey"
31. EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING "Gentleman"
32. THE GAYLADS "It's Hard To Confess"
33. GENE SIMMONS "Drinkin' Wine"
34. HAROLD JENKINS (aka CONWAY TWITTY) "Crazy Dreams"
35. HAYDEN THOMPSON "Love My Baby"
36. JACK EARLS & THE JIMBOS "Hey! Jim"
37. JAY TEES & BRENTFORD ROCKERS "Buck Town Version"
38. KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS "Hunchy's Back"
39. LAUREL AITKEN "Mas Charlie"
40. LUNGFISH "Cleaner Than Your Surroundings"
41. MADBALL "Discriminate Me"
42. NIGHT KINGS "Bum"
43. NO BALLS "Forgetting To Suppress It"
44. PETER GREEN "Slabo Day"
45. RANK/XEROX "Basement Furniture"
46. ROY MONTGOMERY "Fantasia On A Theme By Sandy Bull (Slight Return)"
47. SCORPIONS "We'll Burn The Sky"
48. SICK LLAMA "untitled #8 from Put Down"
49. SILICON TEENS "Memphis, Tennessee"
50. SLICES "Medusa"
51. SUN CITY GIRLS "Voice Of America #3"
52. SWELL MAPS "H.S. Art"
53. THE THREE TOPS "Do It Right"
54. U ROY "Train From The West"
55. WARREN SMITH "Ubangi Stomp"
56. AGNOSTIC FRONT "No One Rules"
57. ANGST HASE PFEFFER NASE "La Bamba"
58. THE BATS "Made Up In Blue"
59. BERNARD FEVRE "Impressionism"
60. BIRDS OF MAYA "Ready To Howl"
61. BLACK DEVIL "No Regrets"
62. BLIGHT "Real World"
63. BO ANDERS PERSSON "Proteinimperialism"
64. BRETT FAVRE "[Side A of The Underlying Focus Upon Single Negative Entities]"
65. BURMESE "Only The Good Die"
66. CARAVAN "Golf Girl"
67. EARLY B "History Of Jamaica"
68. EDWIN BRUCE "Rock Boppin' Baby"
69. FAUST "Untitled - all on saxes"
70. FIRE ENGINES "Discord"
71. FONDATION "Quelque Part"
72. FOR AGAINST "Shine"
73. FUNGUS BRAINS "Hairbrush"
74. GILA "This Morning"
75. THE GLADIATORS "Don't Fool The Young Gal"
76. GLEN BROWN/KING TUBBY "Termination Dub"
77. GONE "Insidious Distraction"
78. GRASS WIDOW "To Where"
79. IKE & THE CRYSTALITES "Ilya Kuryakin"
80. THE INNER SPACE "Agilok & Blubbo"
81. J.F.A. "Count"
82. JAKOB OLAUSSON "Cornered In Your Circle"
83. JIM FERRARO "Remote Control Under The Couch"
84. JOHN TERLAZZO "Lookin' For Love (A Vision Of Love Lost)"
85. JOY DIVISION "Atrocity Exhibition"
86. KAREN DALTON "Little Bit Of Rain"
87. KITO-MIZUKUMI ROUBER "A5"
88. LES VAMPYRETTES "Biomutanten"
89. LILIDA MOLIPAVIR (AND SISTER) "Sept Ans Sur Mer"
90. THE MEATMEN "Snuff 'Em"
91. MICHAEL HOENIG "Departure From The Northern Wasteland"
92. MAX ROMEO "The Clock"
93. MOUNT CARMEL "Hear Me Callin'"
94. MRS. ARCHIE MACDONALD "Hi-Ri-Ri-O"
95. NICODEMUS "Dog Better Than Gun"
96. THE NORMAL "T.V. O.D."
97. ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER "[Side A of Ruined Lives]"
98. PEAKING LIGHTS "[untitled from Space Primitive]"
99. THE PIONEERS "Long Shot (Buss Me Bet)"
100. RANGDA "Waldorf Hysteria"
CHANTAL & BABETTE But seriously, I'd like to seriously recommend three films made by filmmaker Chantal Akerman in collaboration with cinematographer Babette Mongolte: La Chambre (1971), Hotel Monterey (1972), and News From Home (1977). All three were filmed in New York City while the Poland-born Belgium-raised Akerman was living there, and they make up Disc One of her recent Criterion Eclipse Series 3-DVD set. I had never seen them before and I don't think I even knew about them, but as a trilogy I actually prefer them to the (still great) Akerman/Mongolte masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, 201 minutes). If anything, these three films are documentaries... or are they memoirs? Long-form poems? Dramatic ellipses? Either way, if you've got the time (161 minutes total), watch all three in a row... you'll know it was all worth it when you reach the 10-minute tracking-then-stationary shot that closes News From Home, having gone from chamber to chambers to hallways to streets and finally the great outdoors (without leaving New York City). I would also highly recommend watching the first two as they were released (and presented on this set), without any sound. There's a 7-minute clip of Hotel Monterey on YouTube, but I don't wanna link to it because the uploader added some sensitive and austere piano music... perfect, of course, for the lingering shots of beautiful unoccupied furniture, but totally unfortunate when one has already seen the much more powerful silent version. So don't go to YouTube, just get hold of the Criterion, buy it, rent it, stream it, whatever, the important thing is WATCH IT.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
NEW TOP 40 (2 through 40 to follow)
1. SUN CITY GIRLS Funeral Mariachi LP/CD (ABDUCTION) I feel like the guy who cried wolf here, because as you may have noticed I like everything Sun City Girls do, even their terrible albums, and I always say so, but this time I REALLY LIKE WHAT SUN CITY GIRLS HAVE DONE. In fact, I think Funeral Mariachi can finally give Torch of the Mystics a rest and take its place as The Great Sun City Girls Album. Or at least the most recommendable Sun City Girls album; whether or not Mariachi is better than Torch is an apples-and-oranges comparison, but there is no doubt that Mariachi is, as the press release says, more accessible. A good 30 of its 40-odd minutes could be described as some sort of Italian-soundtrack MOR-music mood piece, made up of tracks that could possibly be played in a grocery store, or a dentist's office, without anyone present doing a double take. This is not a bad thing, and the reason is that it is done beautifully, and invested with unbelievably sincere emotion. After all, the album was conceived as the band's final album; it was begun a couple years before drummer Charles Gocher passed away in 2007, then finished a couple years later by the surviving Bishop brothers and associates, and cry-wolf be damned, the band has done a perfect job of creating this farewell. It's like their whole career of evil, all the confrontation, provocation, and outright shrieking, has been one long set-up to the final joke, which was to drop the masks and calmly and seriously record one of the most beautiful post-punk albums of all time. "Ben's Radio" is an incredible opening song, but not characteristic of the whole album. It's comical, jagged, and uptempo, the closest thing on here to their history of gnarly pranksterism, and it is followed by a couple more relatively feisty numbers (a triumphant song called "The Imam," which they were using as an opening segue into "Kickin the Dragon" on the Brothers Unconnected tour, and "Black Orchid," which kind of sounds like a sequel to "Cafe Batik" off of Torch, sorry to non-headz for the details), but at that point Funeral Mariachi begins to spread out and expand into the aforementioned Mediterranean beach-resort-in-heaven dreamland, with a widescreen lushness that is beyond any fidelity they have previously achieved, including such terrifically recorded albums as Torch and 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda. In fact, the way this album is arranged and performed is closer to something like Pet Sounds than it is any previous Sun City Girls album. It seems like a mostly instrumental album, but at the same time there are a lot of vocals; another song with clear lead vocals emerges on Side Two, called "Holy Ground," and I can say without hesitation that it is the greatest English-language song this band has ever composed. I mean, it's just that kind of album. I could sit here and draw superlatives from it for probably another 500 words, but I'll stop. All you have to do is go get it, in an LP edition of 500 (Forced Exposure still has some as of this writing, October 24), or in a nice non-jewel case gatefold CD edition of 1000.
Friday, September 03, 2010
TOP 40
(in no actual order whatsoever except for #1 and #2 which are like a combo pack)
1. TOUCH AND GO: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine ’79–’83, by Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson, Edited by Steve Miller (BAZILLION POINTS). The entire original run of 22 issues, now reprinted in a one very big book. In case you didn't know, this fanzine, the work of two writers Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson, pulled together basically everything that happened in the USA after the Ramones & CBGBs, with the Midwest given its proper place as bands like The Fix and The Necros are covered right along with bands like Black Flag and The Teen Idles. And the UK, Japan, and more are covered too. Anyway, Tesco's so famous that I didn't even really know about the writing of Stimson before getting this book. His low-key pen-name "DS" must not've called too much attention, but now I can see what a great writer this guy was (is?). Plain, tough, honest, and, yes, passionate. Definitely some inspiring stuff here, although as another great music zine writer Jimmy Johnson recently said, "The words in Touch And Go can't be reproduced anywhere in the human language. It's the product of a time and a vantage point that can't be recreated." True, though I'm still ripping off their Top 40 idea for this post... stay tuned next week for the Bottom 40! Aw, forget it, we'll do it right now since it's so obvious: 1. Pitchfork website, 2. Altered Zones website, 3. Best Coast, 4. Best Coast saying "slow my roll" while smoking weed with Freddie Gibbs, 5. Vampire Weekend, 6. MGMT, 7. almost literally any band that sounds like Animal Collective... man, it's gonna be boring to think of 40 of these... oh look, somebody already did it for me! (Actually I like Zola Jesus and Tamaryn alright, and I might even like a couple other bands on that list, but the only other one I've actually heard is Best Coast.)
2. WHY BE SOMETHING THAT YOU'RE NOT: Detroit Hardcore 1979-1985, by Tony Rettman (REVELATION RECORDS). I've been reading (and in fact editing and publishing) Tony Rettman's writings on hardcore punk since his January 2002 piece on the Killed by Hardcore LPs basically blew my mind and maybe yours too. Now it's almost a whole decade later and Tony's been busy doing various things, such as writing this definitive history of Detroit and Midwest hardcore. Great read, tons of photos and repros, great companion with the Touch & Go book, etc. Interviews with everybody except Corey Rusk, which isn't as big of an omission as you might think... the story of his involvement in the scene certainly still gets told.
3. THE GORDONS 1st LP. Way into the bass on "Right On Time."
4. FUNKADELIC Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On LP (WESTBOUND). From 1974, possibly their 2nd best album, possibly even their best. "Alice In My Fantasies" and "I'll Stay" double shot just basically destroys everything... and if all Side B filler could be as heavy as "Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts"...
5. TO LIVE IS TO DIE: The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton, by Joel McIver (JAWBONE PRESS) I don't know if I'd call it a great biography, but this book still does a great job of bringing Cliff to life as a friend, bandmate, and all-around well-adjusted music-lover. Until reading this, I didn't realize just how much his sounds, music, and melodic/harmonic sensibility has inspired me over the years, and how much it is always reverberating deep inside. Also keeping an eye on Jawbone Press... I've gotta read their book A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio!
6. METALLICA Kill 'Em All LP (MEGAFORCE)
7. METALLICA Ride The Lightning CD (ELEKTRA)
8. METALLICA Master of Puppets CD (ELEKTRA)
9. EDDIE HAZEL "California Dreamin'" on the stereo at Myopic Books.
10. THE BEATLES Let It Be CD (EMI). New remastered version, impulsively bought by Angelina at the counter of a Casey's General Store in Des Moines, IA during a car trip from Chicago to Omaha. Listened to it about 25 times on said car trip and its return... dude I love "The Long And Winding Road"... Sir Paul thought of it as a Ray Charles type song, which makes me like it even more, and wonder if this exists, and of course it does... definitely not as good as the Beatles, mainly because it's too slow...
11. sweet clutch of un-named ROBERT HOOD tracks on a mix CDR, will research and get back
12. RED FAVORITE s/t LP (STREAMLINE) This was slated for LP release a couple years ago on the Spirit of Orr label, but that ended up being a CDR-only edition of who knows how many, and has now been released on vinyl deservedly but quietly by Drag City's Streamline subsidiary. I got mine for a mere $8.99 used at Reckless, but it's a really fine psych-folk record of stony acoustic guitar dreamscapes augmented by carefully applied vocal support and some far-off ingredients that sound like the world's tiniest mellotrons or something. It's been in the works since 1998, and it indeed sounds very much like that year to me, when people still found out about new bands and even upcoming festivals by reading actual paper (or, for the futuristic, subscribing to the Drone-On list-serv) and the first Six Organs of Admittance LP had just come out of the shrouds of Northern California with hand-painted covers... if you were there, you'll dig the Red Favorite LP.
13. FREE s/t (ISLAND) I feel like bassist Andy Fraser doesn't get talked up enough regarding this band. Not only did he and Rodgers do all the songwriting, but he was also the perfect set-up man for the band's power trio sound... his bass lines grooved hard (the most important thing) but also (via tricky upper-register turnaround melodies) covered tons of arrangement space so that Kossoff and Rodgers could really stretch out their respective wailing styles.
14. UFO Phenomenon LP (CHRYSALIS) Possibly my 2nd-favorite Schenker-family hard rock record of the 1970s. (Right now Virgin Killer is still #1.) I'm not sure if Lights Out has aged as well, but this, UFO's third LP and first with Michael Schenker, still sounds great. For me it's ultimately because of their way with a hard edged folk ballad, especially on my favorite numbers like "Space Child" and the glorious "Crystal Light".
15. This YouTube of a rather feral UFO, live in 1975 on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. Schenker is pretty fantastic in this clip, though Pete Way is a little hard to take with his 'blatantly make love to the lead guitarist' move. I do enjoy the 'laying on back' move, though... he must be totally waysted.
16. CACTUS "Evil, Part One" live clip on YouTube. This should actually be in the Top 5 but I just remembered to put it on here. It was posted on Facebook.com a while ago by sometime Blastitude contributor Charles Lieurance, and it's been haunting me ever since, especially when it gets into Jim McCarty's extendo guitar solo throwdown, backed only by Carmen Appice's increasingly grooving/stomping drums. It starts really getting good around 3:26, and is also particularly unbelievable around the 5:40 mark.
17. PAUL KANTNER & JEFFERSON STARSHIP Blows Against The Empire LP. Got this weirdly heavy album for 4 bucks during a quick nostalgic visit to the most important record store of my life, Kanesville Kollectibles in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Also grabbed TANGERINE DREAM Stratosfear for 4 bucks, which remains a little more oblique at this early stage of listening.
18. BLUE OYSTER CULT "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." Along with all-timers "Vera Gemini," "Morning Final," "Debbie Denise," and new rising fave "True Confessions"... love Allen Lanier's wry lead vocal on that one, his only lead vocal as a member of the Blue Oyster Cult.
19. ALTON ELLIS & THE FLAMES "Cry Tough."
20. TODD RUNDGREN Something/Anything MP3s. Cranked while driving around in the 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The reason I'm not too into this Altered Zones type stuff nowadays is that it had already been completely done by 1974 or so, with actual songs, better playing, and much better recording quality. Sure, you could say that this music is simply the new DIY punk response to bloated corporate art rock, but this stuff is also bloated, intentionally, in all of its possible aesthetic choices, while basically saying "Yeah, but I barely wrote a song and then I recorded it terribly" as its only saving grace.
21. Snack of the week: FUJI APPLES WITH ALMOND BUTTER
22. EPMD Best of Mix by Cosmic Strictly Skillz Kev, and lots more Cosmic Kev elsewhere on the same notably Philly-themed blog...
23. DONNA SUMMER "I Feel Love." Live version... don't miss her doing the Robot and the Queen Tut halfway through... this "Last Dance" is cool too, I think from the same concert... basically the closest I can get to enjoying Broadway show tunes... and here's another great clip of a mixing session with Moroder for the Live and More album (1978)... dig her speaking fluent German...
24. THE CLEAN "Point That Thing Somewhere Else." Live version from Syd's Pink Wiring System.
25. EYEHATEGOD "Take As Needed For Pain." This page has the entire lyrics to this song as "Breast Fed From A Dog/Since The Day I Was Born/Severe Allergic Infektion/Lousy Lust Pimp/Narcotic Induced Hypo-Thermia," and I don't doubt that it's correct, even after listening to the song and not being able to really make out any of them.
26. SEALINGS. Here's a band that's pretty lo-fi, heavy, two guys playing guitar and bass to a drum-machine, song titles including words like "dead," "ghost," and "witch"... Altered Zones should be all over this! Could it be, have I SCOOPED the Zone? Anyway, these guys are from England and yes, they are somewhat lo-fi, but they have actual heavy riffs and strong vocals, so it doesn't matter. Driving and detached ("zoned" out, indeed!) and just melodic enough to remind me at times of... Nirvana? http://www.myspace.com/sealings
27. Chrissy Murderbot's Year of Mixtapes Week 26: Ragga Jungle. Nice spot around the 50-minute mark when heavy Cutty Ranks "Limb By Limb" remix gives way to what sounds like a chopped-in sample from "Live and Learn" by Alton Ellis, or some other Studio One single... and then a few minutes later Dawn Penn's all-time great "You Don't Love Me No No No" makes an even-more-ethereal-than usual appearance.
28. HAWKWIND Space Ritual. "Welcome to the oceans in a labeled can/Welcome to the dehydrated lands/Welcome to the self-police parade/Welcome to the neo-golden age."
29. VARIOUS ARTISTS Greasy Truckers Party. I LOVE BRINSLEY SCHWARZ. (And HAWKWIND.) (And MAN.) (Not so much MAGIC MICHAEL, but sure, why not, him too.)
30. TANGERINE DREAM Frankfurt Universitat 6.19.1971. (live bootleg downloaded from this WFMU page, links may still be active)
31. As always, the first four FAUST albums. Especially the debut, which surprises me every time, for some (wonderful wooden) reason.
32. JOHN COLTRANE Live At The Village Vanguard Again! LP (IMPULSE!) One of the truly sick jazz lineups of all time with Coltrane joined by his wife Alice Coltrane on piano, Pharoah Sanders on tenor sax, long-time bassist Jimmy Garrison, and Rashied Ali on drums. Love the band photo on the cover... what a buncha nerds! Except for Rashied, who looks cool as hell. Anyway, there are two songs on here, old favorites "Naima" and "My Favorite Things," and the band takes them so absurdly out, while remaining so absurdly musical, that it's just mind-scrambling. On "Naima" Pharoah sounds like he's playing his sax inside a giant fishbowl for like six minutes straight. Plus, David S. Ware is on this record... he was in the audience!
33. YAHOWA 13 I'm Gonna Take You Home (from the box set on CAPTAIN TRIP). Wow, no matter how soft your spot may be for the Golden Sunrise album, this is possibly the best Yahowa-related album other than Penetration, and it has a far better cover than Penetration, so you know.... Very raw but well-recorded live power trio jams that actually remind me favorably of their Swedish contemporaries Trad Gras och Stenar. Yod's singing only ruins it in a couple places!
34. DEMDIKE STARE Symbiosis CD (MODERN LOVE) Wow, this is like the 2nd band on here from this decade! I'm getting so contempo! This might even be a "witch house" band, are you with me Altered Zones? Thing is, they are "witch house" without trying, because they're from over there in England, while Altered Zones seems to exclusively promote bands that are really trying hard and have like 7 superimposed triangles per blurry image and/or band logo.
35. TIN MAN Scared LP (WHITE DENIM) Oh hey, this is new too! Also roughly 20 times better than anything ever thought of on Altered Zones. Minimal techno but with completely narco-fogged pop vocals. Like 80s synth pop with a house music twist ... but the vocals are played back at 16 RPM! (Those alt-zoners love it when shit is slowed down! It's totally influenced by DJ Screw! It's just like you've been drankin' dat sizzurp!)
36. SCISSOR GIRLS We Space With Phantoms CD (ATAVISTIC) Released in 1996 but I still can't believe Azita's bass playing, such cool rhythmic patterns over the rock-solid drums by Heather M.
37. INCANTATION Onward To Golgotha CD (RELAPSE). Really good technical but ferocious death metal from John McEntee's long-running Johnstown, PA based band. This is their debut album from 1992, and look how good they still are 17 years later, in this live clip from 2009!
Also, this live in Mexico clip from 2003 has a nice eerie look...
38. DADAWAH Peace & Love LP (DUGOUT) AKA Ras Michael & band, heavy Jamaican album from 1974... don't file under dub, this is deep and slow Nyabinghi-derived groove. Should also actually be #1 on this list.
39. "Regard du Fils sur le Fils" ("Gaze of the Son upon the Son") by Olivier Messiaen. Steven Osborne, piano.
40. LINDSAY BUCKINGHAM "Trouble." I've been in love with this song since I first heard it 29 years ago on the clock radio that sat beside my bed. Drums are by Mick Fleetwood, but according to Wikipedia they only used a 4-second loop for the entire song! I'm actually not sure if that's true listening to it... there are little two-hit pickup fills throughout the song, seemingly in different places. These may have been overdubbed later by someone else, but they sound like Mick's style to me, something he would play live. Either way, I'm not surprised if it is a loop, as the song is such a great example of that subtle new wave technoid feel that was always Buckingham's ace in the hole.
Monday, August 30, 2010
POST-PUNK
"Clause one: Rough Trade and dot dot dot agree to make records and sell them until either or both of the parties reasonably disagree with the arrangements. Clause two: We agree that once agreed recording, manufacturing, and promotional costs have been deducted, we will share the ensuing prophet equally."
Yeah, that's basically it, the entire manual on How To Fairly Conduct The Music Business. Except that nowadays there aren't that many records to sell. There's still plenty of great music, but I can't see a record company like Rough Trade ever existing again, unless all personal computers suddenly stop working. That's a little cynical, though... couldn't a band still sell 30,000 copies of a record on this level? That's what the "TV O.D. b/w Warm Leatherette" single by The Normal sold. For all I know, maybe Pitchfork-approved bands can still sell 30,000... how many copies has the Best Coast album sold? I guess what I'm really asking is couldn't a GOOD band still sell 30,000 copies of a record on this level?
Anyway, I'm way into all this 1978-1984 stuff right now because I'm reading Simon Reynolds's book Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. I was never really a big Reynolds fan, having read his techno history Generation Ecstasy and various random articles over the years, but this book is just great, gathering up all the stray ends of an amazing time when music exploded with creativity and individuality. Plenty of great descriptions of the music, like this one: "Another Cabaret Voltaire hallmark was the dehumanizing of Mallinder's voice via creepy treatments that made him sound reptilian, alien, or, at the extreme, like some kind of metallic or mineralized being."
So many sweet tunes, like "TV O.D." (better than its more famous B side "Warm Leatherette")...
Thomas Leer "Private Plane"
Desperate Bicycles "Smokescreen"
Cabaret Voltaire "Nag Nag Nag" (so killer!)
Orange Juice "Falling and Laughing"
Scritti Politti "Skank Bloc Bologna"
And last but totally the opposite of least, Public Image Limited doing "Death Disco" live on Top of the Pops in 1979. Keep smilin', Jah....
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
BEATLES TALK TO PETER SELLERS
This is actually kind of a creepy vid. If Yoko is a witch at 1:42, delivering a rather desert-dry drug riddle ("shooting is exercise"), well then John and Paul are rather warlocky, John with the harsh drug patter and Paul chiming in with a desert-dry "Too much, Pete" as they seem to want to get rid of Mr. Sellers, who, consummately talented as always, knows when to play the (American-accented) straight man, complete with early exit.
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