So here's the only other Shady Crady song that has been released. If you are one of the 7 billion people on earth who missed my previous post, read it for more info on this band. The Sonic Youth influence is very apparent in this one, and Live Skull was surely another big influence, since S.C., S.Y. and L.S. were all from New York, trafficking in arty experimental rock that actually rocked. This song is just a total masterpiece in every way, and deserves to go down as one of the key noise-a-delic indie songs of the '80s. If someone were to give it a fake band name (using all of the currently trendy words in band names, and I'll be very specific: Crystal, Twin, Bells, Beach [or anything beach/coast/wave-related], White), and a fake song title (say, "Evil Flourishes"), and date it 2011, and post it to some lame Pitchforky mp3 blog, it'd become an instant sensation. Well, no, probably not, since it doesn't sound like warmed-over Erasure or A Flock Of Seagulls, so it doesn't exactly fit in with the recent '80s bubblegum-synth-pop revival. I do wish this song had more singing, like "Clamor" does. The loud-soft contrasts are just insanely cool, and Suzanne Thorpe's forlorn "Evil flourishes... evil flourishes..." backing vocals near the end always send a chill up my spine. Comparing this song to Mercury Rev's late-era schmaltzy pop-rock is just an exercise in futility.
Drawing by Maura; I presume it uses an actual bit of dialogue from the cunning TV show 30 Rock
Planets with similar climates: Sonic Youth - "She's In A Bad Mood" (1984), Band Of Susans - "Mood Swing" (1993), Poem Rocket - "Small White Animal" (1995), A.C. Temple - "Chinese Burn" (1988), Broken Water - "Boyfriend Hole" (2009), Pixies - "Gouge Away" (1989), Live Skull - "Fat Of The Land" (1987).
Currently feeling less: Nauseated than I did last night upon seeing Lebron James make it to the NBA Finals. I honestly couldn't even eat for the rest of the night. Way to go, Carlos Boozer.
Still sporadically laughing at: The Roots covering Weird Al Yankovic's "I Want A New Duck" last night as Gilbert Gottfried walked onto the set of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. This has to go down as the most brilliantly withering walk-out music ever played on any talk show, considering last month's Gottfried incident.
Just a great song I've been listening to obsessively the last few days, "All Sideways" (re-recorded '95 version) by Scarce:
Shady Crady were a band from Buffalo, NY, which evolved into alt/art rock/pop icons Mercury Rev. They recorded an 8- or 9-song demo tape in 1988 in Fredonia, NY, which is known as the "Fredonia demo" among fans. Only two of its songs have ever hit the webs, and I am posting the other one in my next post. This one, "Clamor," is mainly intended as a teaser for the next one, "In Bloom," which is much more intense and unsettling. But "Clamor" has its own cool charm, from its insistent, Krautrockin' beat, to its lyrics about being stuck inside a wall, to the singer's brilliant/hilarious/badass rap-style vocal phrasing, to its droning note which magically turns into an ascending psychedelic guitar riff, to the subtle bongo drum fills, to the almost orchestral, noisy finale. Shady Crady opened for Sonic Youth in 1987, which must've been an amazing show. You must read this whole page for all the info that is fit to print about Shady Crady, via the great Mercury Rev fansite Before The War. I got these two songs when they first hit the internet and have been absolutely dying to hear the rest of this demo tape ever since. I'm pretty upset that the rest of it has never been released. For what it's worth, here is where the two songs were originally foisted upon the world. "Clamor" found its way on to Mercury Rev's 2006 career retrospective double-CD called Stillness Breathes, so some of you may have this song and not even know it.
Interestingly, singer Dave Baker's erratic (many would say drug-fueled) behavior got him kicked out of Shady Crady, just as he later was from Mercury Rev, in '93. And if you get kicked out of Mercury Rev for being too weird or doing too many drugs, you can rest assured that you are one weird druggie. After this, he borrowed the word Shady from Shady Crady as his recording alias for his bizarre '94 solo album, the cult classic World, which featured song titles like "Rap Soda," "It Sucks Being An Astronaut," and "Narcotic Candy". Note that Baker apparently did NOT sing on the Fredonia demos, so I don't even know why I'm mentioning him so much here, other than the fact that he rules. Here's the lineup for the demos: Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak (vocals, bass), Mike Huber (drums), Jonathan Donahue (guitar), Suzanne Thorpe (flute, some backing vox). I wish Grasshopper had gone on to be Rev's lead singer after Baker left, since I think he brought a more charismatic singing style to the table than that of Jonathan Donahue.
"The transparency of sound makes it all the more visible," "You can move the wall with your voice [force?]," and "And we feel the clamor there / And we feel the power there" are just a few of this song's cryptically cool lyrics. "Move it!" That would make a great line in an aerobics or Jazzercise tape, e.g. Richard Simmons' "Don't Tell Me." Yes, that's a dope Richard Simmons song. His niece Evelyn was in high school with me and now lives a few blocks from my parents.
Artist's depiction of funeral for the late Randy "Macho Man" Savage, via Hugging Harold Reynolds
Planets with similar climates: CAN - "I'm So Green" (1972), Pharmacy Lounge - "Building A Compound" (1996), Mercury Rev - "Trickle Down" (1993), Medium Medium - "Hungry, So Angry" (1981).
Despite their name, The Werefrogs were not a joke band like The Frogs, Dead Milkmen, Ween, etc., but rather a dynamic rock band, with songs veering from passionate and dramatic to meandering and atmospheric. Perhaps due to their British sound/aesthetic/influences, they were the only U.S. band signed to British indie label Ultimate Records. Before that, they formed their own little indie label called Part Trance and released two singles, "It's Real" and "Pearl Baby Flower." I might add that the "It's Real" single (with b-side "Tin The World") is stunning and essential, but I haven't heard that other single yet. I'll be posting a song from the "It's Real" single later, or you can just go download it now from the same place where I originally got it. The band then put out four 7"s on Ultimate, including the surprisingly aggressive "Nixie Concussion". (Check out the trippy visual effect starting about the 2:07 mark.) For some reason, the back of the "Don't Slip Away" single, the cover of their album, and this video all feature an oscillating fan; the video also has several other oscillating things.
They played live with some heavyweights who were also stylistic peers. Their website says "The band toured the U.K. with various bands including the Kitchens of Distinction. Their last major tour was with Radiohead, on the Creep tour, of the eastern U.S. After this tour the band returned to the U.K. for a final time, performing in support of Yo La Tengo." They also opened for Lush at SUNY-Purchase College in New York. Despite this exposure, but probably owing more to the fact they released only one album that never got much radio play, they remain almost completely unknown, even amongst indie rock archaeologists. I consider myself an obsessive seeker of this kind of music, but had never even heard of them until I bought this CD single for $1 last year on a complete whim. Needless to say, I was blown away. I like to imagine "Don't Slip Away" having been used over the closing credits of some dramatic movie (Titanic, anyone?), and hence being super-famous all these years later.
7"
Back cover of CD single
You can see in the pic above that it was recorded & produced by fairly famous shoegaze producer (and Laika member) Guy Fixsen. I should mention that the b-side "Between Tomorrow & Sleep" is freakin' awesome. I googled that phrase "All Sorrow Belongs To Hate" on the back cover, but found nothing. The Werefrogs broke up in 1994 after six years of activity, but like I said, they were doomed by releasing only one LP which, in my eyes, was too much of a departure from their earlier stuff. (And did not even contain "Don't Slip Away"! Talk about a boneheaded omission...) Bassist Matt Valentine has gone on to become a leading light in the underground/experimental folk scene, first with the bands Memphis Luxure and The Tower Recordings, and later as a solo artist and as half of the duo MV + EE (Matt Valentine + Erika Elder). Long story short, I was into The Tower Recordings for 13 years before I even heard of the Werefrogs. I'm not sure what the Werefrogs' singer/guitarist, Marc Wolf, is up to, but the young man could sure belt out a song like his life depended on it. He could've been the Morrissey of this side of the pond.
The drought that I mentioned in a few earlier posts, which is now up to around the two month mark, has had an unexpectedly positive consequence: The parched earth has been able to absorb lots of the water unleashed at the Morganza Spillway, thus saving the state millions, if not billions, in flood damages. After playing basketball in Thibodaux on Wednesday, I made an impromptu drive down to beautiful Morgan City. It was only my fourth time ever going there. There was a pretty grim feel in the air, with lots of shops closed up and people going up on the concrete levees to take pictures of the rising river, which had already covered the main wharf. I bought a dwarf Key Lime tree for 10 bucks in Pierre Part on the way back. It's only about a foot tall and wide, with tiny limes starting to form on it. Badass. I listened to disc one of The Orb's first album over and over.
This song obviously goes out to the people of the Atchafalaya Basin in the path of the Morganza Spillway. I figured that the reason for me posting it might be too subtle, so I decided to go ahead and point it out. It also can go out to everyone on earth, since we luckily evaded the predicted May 21st apocalypse.
Eerie update, May 24th: I just found out that the episode of the post-Katrina-based HBO series Treme from this night, May 22nd, was entitled Slip Away!
Planets with similar climates: The Veldt - "Until You're Forever" (1994), The Smiths - "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" (1986), Glide [Australia] - "Taste Of You" (1992), The Sound - "Love Is Not A Ghost" (1984) & "Golden Soldiers" (1984), Catherine Wheel - "Salt" (1992), Talk Talk - "Living In Another World" (1985), Goo Goo Dolls - "Long Way Down" (1995).
xxx Liberty Horses - "King Of A Rainy Country" xxx † (Rough Trade / Rhino Records, 1992) †
I bought this CD, Joyland, on a total whim for a dollar two years ago, because it was on Rough Trade and because the band name and song titles seemed pretty evocative. Yeah, I use that word a lot... I like things that are evocative. Provocative things can be good, but evocative things are always good. I learned that this band evolved out of an '80s Britpop band called The Bible, who apparently had some cult classic songs in a Smiths-esque vein back then. So I checked them out, but wasn't too impressed. The band featured Neill MacColl and Calum MacColl, brothers of famed chanteuse Kirsty MacColl; sister Kitty MacColl also sings backup on two songs on the album, including this one. The lead singer's voice has a beautifully fornlorn quality without sounding too much like an old wizened mariner or something. I love how he never specifies what country the protagonist rules, so I can pretend that he's singing about my rainy part of the U.S. Every aspect of this song is flawless, but I think its secret weapon is the seductively propulsive, and deceptively funky, bassline, which steps to the forefront at the 2:45 mark. I think that if this song had come out 5 years earlier, rather than in the dance- & grunge-oriented early '90s, it would've been a huge hit. Amazingly, this song was not even released as a single. Wow. Nice job there, Rough Trade. Hence I am doing what they failed to do, which is to publicize this song and make it into an international sensation.
Here's a review by Martin Aston of Q magazine, printed on the back of the promo version of this CD: "Formed by ex-members of pop sophisticates The Bible, Liberty Horses' leading lights are Neill and Calum, sons of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, brothers of Kristy [sic]. Their tradition of sombre, bittersweet folk ballads runs deep through Joyland. The irony starts as early as the album title; Neill's world-weary timbre only accentuates the frayed despair expressed throughout. It's an everyday urban love-it-hate-it daymare, then, and it's beautifully expressed. Fraternal harmonies, arresting lyrics, and a band that really swings too; Joyland is a joyful exorcism all round."
Literally a few minutes after posting this entry, I found the video for the single "Shine," which I never knew existed until minutes ago. (It's not on YouTube.) It's my first time ever seeing what the band looks like, in fact. It takes a while to load, but here it is, another LH song that was a hit in an alternate universe:
Planets with similar climates: Crowded House - "Weather With You" (1988), Tears For Fears - "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" (1985), The Smiths - "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" (1986), The Church - "Tear It All Away" (1981) & "Ripple" (1992), The Comsat Angels - "Be Brave" (1981), The Go-Betweens - "Streets Of Your Town" (1988), Peter Gabriel - "Red Rain" (1986).
Currently repotting: Some Medjool date palm seedlings and a dwarf Key Lime tree About to repot: Some Tabasco pepper seedlings and an Arizona cypress ('Carolina Sapphire' cultivar)
This is a case where everything just came together perfectly: the music, the band name (a "theme land" at Disney's Epcot Center), the album name (Stereoscopic Soundwaves), the cover art. I received this CD in '97 as a subscriber to Darla Records' mailorder-only "Bliss Out" series of post-rock / ambient / electronic / dream pop recordings. I got the first 12 in the series, since I got a one-year subscription... one disc per month. See the full list here. Alternative Press magazine, to which I subscribed, and which was pretty much my bible at the time, gave this disc 4 out of 5 fingers (stars). Their review said of this track: "The hum travels onward into the closing space behemoth, 'Kepler Planet Harmonies,' gathering electromagnetic barnacles as a digitally looped quartet of synth tones bounce off the satellites. Radio waves get caught in the crossfire and seep in through spackled corners: the updated ambient theme to The Outer Limits." Michigan was the center of the lo-fi space-rock universe in the mid-'90s, with Windy & Carl, Tomorrowland, Auburn Lull, Füxa, Asha Vida, Monaural, Five Way Mirror, and the whole Burnt Hair Records roster going all interplanetary like it was Germany ca. 1974, or Neptune ca. 3974.
This just might be my favorite ambient track ever, and it's probably the one that I'd play in order to indoctrinate an ambient newbie. I feel this one is set apart by its vast feel, due to running the synth parts through lots of delay, creating a more layered and "tingly" or "alive" feel than in typical ambient music. In other words, I think it has more of a "neon" feel than a "pastel" one, if one considers that most ambient music could be described as "pastel" in sound/feel/coloration. An unnervingly sinister bass drone comes in at about the 2-minute mark, which changes the complexion of the whole thing, and then a little later on, if you listen closely enough (or, uh, far-ly enough), it sounds like a new track is being born out of the main one! Epic, I know... but that's how my mind hears it, and I don't even do drugs. At a certain point, you have the tingly high synths, the bass drone, and a new part that comes in, making for a triple-layered creation. It later gets winnowed down to a high, flute-like drone and a quieter bass drone, making for an extremely eerie finale which is likely inspired by Tangerine Dream's "Sequent C'". My only problem is the distracting tape hiss; maybe one day, some label will give this album the deluxe remastered red carpet treatment it deserves, and remove the hiss.
Terrific image showing all three of Johannes Kepler's planetary laws; borrowed from Vleeptron Z
The title of this post is a bit of dialogue said during the famous Apollo 11 mission. (Yes, this is the same mission in which Neil Armstrong said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.") It was utilized as one of the most brilliant samples ever in a few tracks on The Orb's super-essential debut album The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld in 1991. (Used in "Supernova At The End Of The Universe" and "Back Side Of The Moon".) Tomorrowland seem to have broken up with no fanfare; I wonder if Disney was pressuring them to change their name.
Speaking of music named after Epcot references, check out Moonshake's propulsive 1992 behemoth "Spaceship Earth" from 1992, and Trans Am's 1999 album Future World (feat. the barnstorming title track).
'Member last month when I said I'd try to go a month without a microwave after blowing mine up? Last week I got a new one, on April 9th in fact, the exact one month anniversary.
Planets with similar climates: Tangerine Dream - "Phaedra" (1974), Troum - "Sigqan Pt. 2" (2003), Biosphere - "Chukhung" (1997), Rapoon - "A Softer Light" (1997), Pteranodon - "Adrift" (2001).
Note: I originally posted this on May 10th, but it somehow got wiped out during the sitewide collapse that Blogspot had last night. So here it is again, though I had to rewrite lots of it based on an earlier draft.
•••• Telefon Tel Aviv - "My Week Beats Your Year" ø ø ø ø
•••• (Hefty Records, 2004) ø ø ø ø
This song is really def in many ways, to say nothing of the fact that the beat is so bangin' that it literally should be used to test out the stereo systems of new cars. First, the title, which sounds like it might be a taunt lifted from a bumper sticker, a Muhammad Ali press conference, or a tween t-shirt design. Well, it's actually the last line of Lou Reed's liner notes to his infamous ambient noize room-clearer Metal Machine Music! Definitely one of the coolest phrases ever, period. I've used it as an AOL away message for many years. For an example of the cool little sonic details that TTA employed, check out the "helicopter chopping" effect on the drums at the 2:38 mark.
I saw Telefon Tel Aviv at the highly anticipated CD-release show for this album, Map Of What Is Effortless, in March '04 at the State Palace Theater (R.I.P.) in New Orleans. I guess TTA had already relocated from New Orleans to Chicago (much like a lot of NOLA's jazz superstars did decades earlier), but I could be mistaken. I don't know if they played this song, which really annoys me, because one of my deals with going to concerts is to make myself vividly remember a band's performance of its best song. Local newsweekly Gambit or Lagniappe did a long article on how TTA had been practicing really hard to perfect their new, "full band" sound, replete with female backup singers, and (I think) a live drummer; I have the article somewhere. One of the opening acts at this show was a completely unknown local electronic drone duo called Belong, doing one of their first shows ever, or maybe even their first. They shot to baffling internet hipster fame a few years later when their mediocre debut album came out. For some reason they have refused to play here ever since this show, if I'm not mistaken. Weird. Another opener was excellently-named local dude The Madd Wikkid. (I also saw Josh Eustis of TTA do an Aphex Twin-ish solo set under the name Benelli the previous month, opening for Texas dub/post-rockers Echo Base Soundsystem. He used only an Apple laptop for this performance, and I recall that he literally never said anything or even looked up at the crowd.)
It is likely that my week, this particular week in March 2004, actually did beat your year, at least based on all the concerts I saw and the cool critters I added to the 90-gallon reef tank I just gotten. Anyway, the vocals on this song are done by Lindsay Anderson of TTA's Hefty labelmates L'Altra. I had been wondering this for 7 years, actually, and, in a way, I kind of preferred not knowing. I liked thinking it was some random stoned teenager they recorded rambling after an all-night rave or something. This song was released on 12" single and on promo CD-R, both of which featured the album version and an extended remix, plus the beautiful b-side "I Lied." If anyone can send me the extended version, I would really love to post it on here.
Planets with similar climates: Dirty Vegas - "Days Go By" (2001), Fluke - "Atom Bomb" (1996), School Of Seven Bells - "Dust Devil" (2010), Moloko - "Day For Night" (1995), Pet Shop Boys - "Two Divided By Zero" (1985), Suzanne Vega & DNA - "Tom's Diner" (1987/90), Suzanne Vega - "Blood Makes Noise" (1992), Scala - "Naked" (1995), Lamb - "Cotton Wool" (1996), Monie Love - "Monie In The Middle" (1990).
Observe Fluke's incredible "Atom Bomb" video, which was made 15 years
ago but has better visual effects than most of today's Hollywood movies.
This is from Idaho's debut EP, The Palms. A nice trove of information about it can be found on this page at the excellent Idaho fansite Sliding Past. Make sure to click on the "reviews" link, which shows that for a moody, completely unknown band's debut EP, it got near-universal acclaim from all corners. Even Sassy liked it! Also click on the somewhat amusingly-written "press release biography."
The cameraman said "Uh, guys, I realize 'You are there,' but the camera is over here, so if you could just..."
This song appears with alternate lyrics (but identical music) as "End Game" on the band's essential, genre-defining debut album Year After Year, released later the same year, which is not coincidentally my favorite year in music history. The singing on "Endgame" is more restrained, and you can actually make out most of the lyrics, but it lacks the wallop of "You Are There." Idaho's first three albums are actually all essential purchases, though they are all out of print and are not even up on iTunes. Starting with the third & fourth ones, Idaho's sound changed dramatically, becoming much quieter and eventually relying mainly on piano and whispered vocals. I personally think the band name Idaho should've been retired ca. '97, but that's another story. So now you know why "You Are There" stands out in the band's canon so much. If you like it, you are guaranteed to like Year After Year, and are guaranteed to hate almost everything else by Idaho in the last dozen or so years.
Check out the evocative video for "God's Green Earth" off of Year After Year:
Despite their name, Idaho have always been based in a slightly different state, as this t-shirt of theirs humorously reveals:
Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Martin has always been Idaho, with varying levels of help from various dudes he's dredged up, most notably John Barry and Dan Seta. Being based in Los Angeles has its perks: Martin was said to be dating Naomi Watts at one point in the early '00s, but I think it turned out that they were just friends. He also was the musical director for a short-lived soap opera in the mid-'00s, which I'm pretty sure was on NBC.
I bought this CD in '02 or '03 on eBay. It turned out the seller was Brandon Capps of the Arizona shoegaze band Half String, which had toured opening for Idaho in '93. He mentioned that the two bands had gone bowling in New Orleans, presumably at the "world famous" Rock N' Bowl, before their show here. TMI, I know, but I think it's pretty cool that such "serious," artsy bands would cut loose and go bowling rather than take in the seedier side that NOLA has to offer. I also know that Idaho and ethereal U.K. dream-poppers Cranes played at Jimmy's in spring '95 on their U.S. tour together. A very strange bill, especially since just 2-3 years earlier, Cranes had been the openers on The Cure's arena/stadium tour... Well, now you know a bit about the strange musical entity known as Idaho. By the way, for a great live rendition of this song, recorded in '93, check out the band's live album People Like Us Should Be Stopped.
Okay, now to a real-world tragedy that is about to unfold over the next few days: The opening of the Morganza Spillway in Louisiana. I had never even heard of the Morganza until a week ago. CNN just posted a story showing how dire the situation is. Tens of thousands of people will lose their houses in the central part of the state, in order to ease an overload of water coming down the Mississippi River due to ice that fell and then melted up north in last winter's "Slowpocalypse." The overall goal of opening this spillway is to save the New Orleans / Baton Rouge area. This will surely make the rest of the state resent New Orleans even more than it already does, but N.O. got flooded a few years ago in Katrina, and it pains me to say it, but it's now someone else's turn. Imagine being the Army Corps Of Engineers and having to decide over the next few hours which part of an American state to annihilate. One part has to be annihilated to save the other; both areas cannot be saved. It's that simple. Ominously, I heard on WWL radio today that part of the levee protecting my town, Vacherie, is leaking; I live a few blocks from the river.
The decision to open the Morganza could come literally any minute now, but will probably come tomorrow. It is obligated to be opened when the river's water volume reaches 1.5 million cubic feet per second; it is currently at about 1.42 million cfps. My grandfather was the head of the Army Corps Of Engineers' Georgia / South Carolina district, meaning he designed lots of the levees / roads / bridges / harbors there. I wonder what he would think of all this... (Update: While I was writing this, the decision was made to open the Morganza. So while I'm glad that N.O. and B.R. will be spared, my thoughts obviously go out to my compatriots upriver, since this will surely be the biggest natural disaster in Louisiana history, dwarfing Katrina. This flood's overall destruction, from Illinois down to the Gulf Of Mexico, and its rebuilding costs, will probably make it one of the top natural disasters in U.S. history.)
Planets with similar climates: American Music Club - "Sick Of Food" (1991), Codeine - "Realize" (1992), Failure - "Golden" (199?), Hush Harbor - "Sunflower" (1995), Lowercase - "Floodlit" (1998), Alice In Chains - "Dirt" (1992), Joy Division - "Dead Souls" (~1979), The Chameleons - "Soul In Isolation" (1986).
› › › › (Viridian Records [Australia], 1995; Satellite Records [U.S.], 1997) ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹
This song is massively important to me, and I've been waiting 12 years to share it with this ever-rotating world, and it was almost the very first song I posted on this blog. I'm into "pretty" vocals as much as the next person, but this song is a case where you have to take the singer's rough voice for what it is, and appreciate the surprising amount of acrobatics he can do with it, despite how limited it sounds at first. I've noticed that bands from Australia in the '80s & '90s were heavily inspired by the Stooges, Sonic Youth, & the Byrds, with a great sense of melody and a certain tough, but not macho, sense of cool. (Well, AC/DC were macho douchefucks, but I have a theory that most Aussie bands were embarrassed by them and hence consciously tried to be the anti-AC/DC.) Feverdream were based in Melbourne and put out three albums and an EP. Feverdreams are those weird dreams you sometimes have when you're sick, due to elevated brain temperature, I would assume.
Note: Do not confuse the Aussie Feverdream with the more prolific and simplistic Dutch punk band of the same name; the Aussie one came first and put forth superior recordings.
For a complete adrenaline overload, watch this clip of my favorite car chase scene ever (on full-screen and w/ the sound on mute, of course) while blasting this song. It's freaky how the lyrics, especially the "gone off the rails" part and the bridge jump, sync up with the music...
(Start each of them at the same time, of course.) It takes a little bit of user interaction, but trust me, it's worth the effort! And if you don't trust me to provide mind-blowing entertainment, then why are you even here?
I got into this song thanks to a compilation of Feverdream's work intriguingly titled You Don't Know Us, But We Know Who You Are, their first-ever release on a U.S. label (Satellite Records in Pasadena, CA), which I bought for a few bucks in Jan. '99. This song doesn't have the shoegaze quality that most of their songs had, but I will post some of their shoegazey songs in the future. Satellite Recs. put this sticker on the front cover:
SUGGESTED RADIO TRACKS:
1. Never Letting Go
2. In Way Over
3. No Stone Unturned
To buy other tracks from this album, and to read a great bio about the band, go here and click the "Read more..." button. I'm pleasantly stunned that this CD is still available. I had read a gushing article about them in Jack Rabid's The Big Takeover magazine from the fall '98 issue, which was the first issue of it I ever bought, so it was serendipitous that I found the CD shortly thereafter, and I made sure to pounce on it. It took me many years to track down the CD that originally housed this song (Moniker, on Viridian Records, distributed by Shock), via eBay. The guitar solo in this song is possibly my favorite ever, and I have to recommend it to anyone who is burned out on guitar. It's completely transcendental, and I always get a rush out of the way it kicks in right as the singer says the last word of the chorus, which happens to be "Go," and he even takes down the pitch of that word to allow the guitars to come in at a higher pitch, and of course the drummer starts playing like he was shot out of a cannon. Just... wow. But if you listen to it while driving, don't blame me for the ensuing speeding ticket. (This band featured a triple guitar attack: Tim James, Ben Keenan, and David Wroe. The only other good three-guitarist bands I can think of are Band Of Susans and Juno, and maybe Temple Of The Dog, and of course the guitar ensembles of Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham.)
This band's singer/bassist, Ewan McArthur, also played some bass for the gothy band Eden on Hyperium / Projekt Records. Strangely, he soon completely ditched rock music and went on to a career in electronic(a) music! I interviewed him for my old online zine in '03-ish, so I'll have to put that up here at some point, though I'm probably going to post those interviews on a WordPress site instead of this one.
At Jazz Fest yesterday, I stuck around in 90º heat to see one of my least favorite bands ever, The Strokes, just to see if they would suck as bad as I always thought. They did. During a pause due to equipment troubles, the "singer," who resembled nothing if not a human coatrack crossed with a Basset hound, actually said the following thing to kill some time and to be witty: "I stopped following jazz in the '40s." Then his head probably realized that he may have just offended tens of thousands of jazz fans in the birthplace of jazz (though he had little to worry about, as about half of the crowd was teenage girls*), so he made a clumsy follow-up / explanatory comment and the band mercifully went back to another lame song that sounded just like their previous ten. He later pointed out that the band was in the shade on the stage while we were all stuck out in the full sun. Really classy. The good stuff yesterday included the Nicholas Payton SeXXXtet, Khris Royal & Dark Matter, Shamarr Allen & The Underdawgs, and, to an extent, Lauryn Hill, who performed as though she had just chugged ten or so Jolt colas. KR & DM covered two of my favorite songs, Tears For Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" and Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express," in elegant jazz-funk style. Badass.
*I once knew (online) a girl who had sex with him when she was about 16, ca. 2004.
Planets with similar climates: Kitchens Of Distinction - "Within The Daze Of Passion" (1991) & "What Happens Now?" (1992), The Chameleons - "Return Of The Roughnecks" (1985), The Sound - "The Fire" (1981), Compulsion - "Delivery" (a.k.a. "Basketcase") (1994), The Veldt - "Soul In A Jar" (1994), Unwound - "Kantina" (1993), Swervedriver - "For Seeking Heat" (1993), Catherine Wheel - "Chrome" (1993).
Currently thinking about the following things I ate or drank yesterday: Mango freeze/smoothie thing (at Jazz Fest), couscous in yogurt sauce w/ raisins (at Jazz Fest), a Blue Moon beer (at Jazz Fest), Maas Lander jong belgen cheese that my sister brought me from Amsterdam, a Guinness Draught beer.
Currently happy for: Former Hornets Peja Stoyakovic and Tyson Chandler, who helped the Dallas Mavericks eviscerate the Lakers today and sweep them out of the playoffs. It was honestly like watching the Harlem Globetrotters toying with a high school team. Jason Terry was 9-of-10 from downtown, and Peja was 6-of-6. Phil Jackson was exposed as the mediocre chessmaster he's always been, completely unable to adjust to matchup problems or to motivate his pouty team. I'll never like Mark Cuban, but he has put together a near-perfect team that will win its first title, probably against the Heat, which would be a rematch of the '06 Finals.
º.º.º Isotope 217º - "Kryptonite Smokes The Red Line" º.º.º
(Thrill Jockey Records, 1997)
You can tell by now that in addition to tremendously stealthy basslines, I love & require splashy, trebly, off-kilter ("syncopated"), jazzy drumming, even in non-jazz music. You don't need a big Neil Peart-size monster drum kit do this, just a little jazz-oriented one like a Gretch Catalina Club. Look back at old pics of the innovative jazz drummers and they were almost all playing Gretsch, except for a few who were paid exorbitant sums to use other brands. I have no idea what this track's name means, though another standout track on the album (The Unstable Molecule) is named "Beneath The Undertow" in homage to Charles Mingus' 1971 autobiography Beneath The Underdog... So I assume this one has some clever meaning behind it too?
Jeff Parker & Rob Mazurek, Nov. 2000 issue
This snazzy group was comprised of John Herndon (Tortoise, 5ive Style, The For Carnation), Dan Bitney (Tortoise), Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Chicago Underground Quartet), Rob Mazurek (Chicago Underground Trio/Quartet/Orchestra, solo career), Matt Lux (Heroic Doses). Several Isotopers went on to form a group called Exploding Star Orchestra, though Tortoise continues to be their mothership. Despite being the only non-"famous" member of Isotope, Matt Lux really steals the show with his drumming, full of shading and restraint, often sounding right on the verge of breaking out into pre-emptive strikes. If your jaw is not near the floor during this song, then you have a lot to learn about drumming, my pal, or you just have no soul. Lux has an amazing knack for playing like a hybrid of a human and a machine, drifting into rigidity and then breaking back into loose, funky stuff. This album is only 35 minutes long, but is flawless and is simply beyond essential. I got it on LP in March '98 while dying to hear the new Tortoise LP (which I got at the end of that month through mailorder, a little before it officially hit stores) and was pleasantly stunned by it. To this day I still marvel at all the cool little details in it, and once I try to listen to one song I invariably end up playing the whole album at least once or twice, feeling like I'm being transported in time to a much cooler era either several decades behind ours or several centuries ahead of it.
In early '05, this guy Colby who owned a record store called Rocks Off RPM in New Orleans told me he had just gone out to eat with his old pals Tortoise while they were in town for a concert; he knew them from when he lived in Chicago. He asked them about the status of Isotope and was told that they had no plans to get back together. I remember sort of shrugging and thinking about how anticlimactic the breakups of one's favorite bands can be, when those bands fly so far under even the indie radar that they don't even bother to put out a press release to tell people they're done, and then their fans have to find out months or years after the fact. I guess most bands just sort of realize that it's time to move on once the momentum is dwindling. No one wants to be the band that hangs around for a few decades after its prime.... well, Sonic Youth do want to be that band, but they're Sonic Youth, so they can. And everyone always cites R.E.M. and Neil Young, but they never even had a "prime," in my opinion, just some random great songs, usually an average of one per album, but I digress.
Note: This album came out in Japan with two lengthy bonus cuts, and in Poland with just one of them. I'm trying to acquire those tracks (the 7-minute "Ode To Philophony" and the 23-minute "Expedition Rhombus") for possible posting on here.
I just found out about 5 minutes ago that Osama Bin Laden is dead. America, fuck yeah.
Planets with similar climates: Jack DeJohnette - "Dream Stalker" (1978), David S. Ware Quartet - "Aquarian Sound" (1992), Miles Davis - "Bitches Brew" (1969), Super E.S.P. - "Everything Seems Prescribed" (1998), Nicholas Payton* - "Velvet Handcuffs" (2003).
Currently wondering if: Marky Mark's mom called him Marcus Mark when he acted up as a kid.
*Might finally get to see him live this weekend, at Jazz Fest
