(Arena Rock Recording Co. [U.S.] / Rykodisc [Europe], 2002)
Sorry for neglecting this site yet again, but I'm back in the fuckin' saddle, baby, and all it took was thinking about this song. The lyrics are about someone who is on life support due to being in a coma or persistent vegetative state. (In the class on medical ethics that I took in college, the difference between a coma and a PVS was one of the most frequently discussed topics. See the famous Terri Schiavo case.) "If you were sent to prison, [and] prison was your mind, would you try escaping or would you do the time?" is a boldly chilling way to open a song. For what it's worth, this song is similar in topic to Metallica's masterpiece "Fade To Black" (which is of course based on the book / movie Johnny Got His Gun). The delivery of the line "WAAAAKE UPPPPP!" at the end of this song is the most stunning thing I've ever heard in music, singing-wise. Singer Aaron Perino could've tried to end it with some sort of pretentious bit of phrasing, but the fact that he chose just those two primal words really makes his sentiment hit home. He summoned up his internal passion and just let loose. I'd pay to see video footage of him laying down this song's vocals in the studio. One would never guess that Perino is a blond guy in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses. Frank Black is rightly considered the gold standard for the shrieking style of vocals in indie rock, especially in the Boston scene, but I'd say Perino swiped his crown with this song (especially the very ending). Though hardly anyone knows about it, of course.
This song gives me the energy of 7 PowerBars and 3 to 4 cans of Jolt cola. And it is my personal fuck you to all the shitty imagecore "indie rock" bands of the '00s like the Strokes, Spoon, Arcade Fire, the Hold Steady, etc. Those bands and most of their fans should pretty much be slaughtered after being sent to dig ditches for a few decades in Siberian prison camps, but that's another topic. Search out better music and you shall find it.
I downloaded the EP Secret Society from eMusic in 2003, and was immediately knocked out of my chair by this song, especially since it comes a few tracks after the very cool, restrained and elegant "The Swan". I had read about TSD going back to '99, when their album New Parade was released to somewhat frenzied acclaim in the music mags. In fact, that album predated the whole Interpol / Editors suave Britpoppy post-punk revival thing by several years. (Makes you wonder if Paul Banks & Co. ever caught any gigs by TSD in Interpol's formative days...) Of course, the Sheilas broke up the same year I finally heard them, which was the same year that Interpol became international icons. Not picking on Interpol, by the way. TSD never played in the New Orleans area as far as I know.
AllMusic Guide's terribly-written review starts off by comparing the band to Weezer, then mentions "politely anguished vocals" and John Hughes soundtracks. And of course, the author doesn't even mention "Back To The Cradle." (Guess he was busy answering the door or hosing off his latte machine in the backyard when that song erupted onto his hi-fi.)
Fun Fact: The band's name is Aussie slang for "faggot."
Image I found on Tumblr that has been weirding me out / cracking me up for weeks
Some more songs that end with alarmingly tortured screams like this one does:
You Am I - "Embarrassed" ("Gonna tear it, you'll forGETTTTT ITTTT!")
Pixies - "Tame" ("TEHHHAAAAAAME!")
Nirvana - "Territorial Pissings" (A better WAAAAYY!")
Unwound - "Feeling$ Real" ("The world starts coming DOWWWWN!")
Helmet - "Murder" ([some yelling])
If you hate amazingly tortured screams, go to this concert on Thursday:
Planets with similar climates: Black Flag - "Room 13" (1981), Hole - "Violet" (1993), The Sound - "The Fire" (1981), Buffalo Tom - "Taillights Fade" (1992) & "Summer" (1995), U2 - "Like A Song..." (1982), Catherine Wheel - "Chrome" (1993).
Note: I wrote almost all of this post on July 2nd.
Note 2: The title of this post is a vinyl etching from the stunning "Columbus" 7" by one of my favorite bands, the Church. I found it here years ago and made myself memorize it. See, the band Caspian is named after the Caspian Sea, and... uh, yeah, you knew that. Did you know that seas are smaller than oceans? Ah, you did. Moving on then...
I've seen this rock band three times in New Orleans. They played "La Cerva" the first two times (as their opening song in March 2010 at the Dragon's Den; at an unknown part of their set in April 2011 at the Howlin' Wolf), but alas, they did not the third time (February 2013 at Siberia). Hopefully it's still in their setlist from time to time. Right before Caspian went on at that Dragon's Den show, I helped to save a guy who was overdosing outside on the Esplanade median. I then bounded up the winding staircase as "La Cerva" rained down upon me, just as it is about to rain down upon you.
I first heard this song after on a split Caspian / Constants 7" (upper left in pic above) that I bought at a Constants show in New Orleans in Oct. 2009. I highly recommend this single, as you could imagine. Constants are badass as hell.
Lots of so-called "post-rock" / "post-metal" bands get (justly) criticized for just relying on climax after climax, but son of a bitch if it isn't awe-inspiring when done right. Caspian wastes no time frittering around before getting right to the heavy stuff in this track. I bet even Beavis and Butt-head would've lost their shit over this one. The jazzy drumming (à la Tristeza, Dif Juz, Tortoise) gives this track a certain cool swagger that most furrow-browed "post-rock" bands fail to achieve. The cello playing is credited to a guy named John Rogers.
LIVE PIC (2013) [coming tomorrow]
Planets with similar climates: Trans Am - "Trans Am" (1995), Metallica - "Orion" (1986), Mogwai - "Mogwai Fear Satan" (1997), Sonic Youth - "Death To Our Friends" (1986).
Since the Boston Marathon bombing, I've been definitely catching some of the "We are all Bostonians" fever. So my next few posts will be by Massachusetts bands, even though I've never been to that state.
I can't believe I've never posted this absolute scorcher of a song by Westfield's finest, so here it is. I think some of the lyrics can work as a fuck-you to potential terrorists: "It's twice as hard to fool us" and "Careful as a soldier, we're so strong." And the disarming opening line "Drop your guard, I'll get to know you" gives another way to deal with psychopaths. This one was written by bassist / guitarist Jason Loewenstein, not mainman Lou Barlow. J-Loew seems to have been responsible for some of Sebadoh's more manic / edgy / fleshed-out / non-"lo-fi" songs.
[Note: This mp3 is from the original '94 release, not the recent remastered 2-CD reissue. That one has an alternate version of "Careful" on the bonus disc.]
I bought this album, Bakesale, in October 1996, on the same day that I bought Tool's Aenima on the day it came out. My main reasons were: 1.) hearing the infectious indie classic song "Rebound" on a Sub Pop sampler CD called That Virtua Feeling: Sub Pop And Sega Get Together and 2.) a long article about Lou / Sebadoh punningly titled "Kind Of Blue" in Rolling Stone around that time. (I was a subscriber.) I also bought Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock at around this time through Sub Pop mailorder. Despite the awful nude-Lou cover art, Bakesale is one of the most essential albums in rock history, not just indie rock history, from an era when the phrase "indie rock" meant more than just "a rock band on an independent label." Every song is a cornucopia of inventive riffs, melodies and lyrics, and the band never came even close to equalling it before or after. Some of the songs are slow and shoegazey ("Dreams"), and a few are quick and ultra-poppy ("Got It"). It comes off as a great mix tape seemingly made up of songs by many different bands, yet still retains that certain Sebadohness that fans demand.
I was totally crestfallen to miss a Sebadoh concert at the Howlin' Wolf (now called Republic) at the end of January '97. As in: I fucking sat in the living room and watched an episode of 7th Heaven (yes, I remember exactly what I was watching) by myself and felt like such a poseur for liking Sebadoh but not knowing anyone to go see them with. I think this was actually a transformative moment for me, in that it made me determined to go see bands I wanted to see even if that meant sometimes doing it alone. And I later found out that Sebadoh had played just a few months earlier at House Of Blues, with a then-unknown moper / budding junkie named Elliott Smith as an opening act. Then they came back and played somewhere in early '99 in support of their disappointing swan song The Sebadoh. Have still never seen them, and have skipped lots of dates on their recent reunion tours, because I just don't go to reunion tours. And because aside from this album, Sebadoh's overall discography is very hit-or-miss. The only other songs by them that I'd say are in the same category of intensity as "Careful" would be "Beauty Of The Ride," "Crisis," and the speed-metal ending of "Mean Distance."
Loewenstein put out a well-received solo album about a decade ago, but I've never heard it. Dinosaur Jr.'s reunion has taken Barlow away from his Sebaduties. Dino are stuck in a classic rock rut, so I personally would rather take in the more varied stylings of Sebadoh, if given a chance to see one of them or the other. At one point in my life, I would've shouted "Just gimme indie rock!" It's a new generation of electric white-boy blues!
Funniest / truest thing I've seen on Tumblr in a while:
#voodoofest #jazzfest
Sat. Apr. 13: Went to a crawfish boil at Sprague's new house, and he decided to let me landscape it after we talked about trees for an hour or so.
Fri. Apr. 19: Skipped a Crystal Castles / Doldrums concert at HOB because it was $31 plus a $10 "service fee." I had been wanting to go for months but I just couldn't justify the cost. I'm sure it sold out anyway.
Sat. Apr. 20: Caught the end of a Record Store Day concert at Euclid Records. Saw Truth Universal (politically-charged hip-hop), AF The Naysayer (futuristic beatmaking), and Peace Love Technicolor Dream (collaborated on sax with AF, then did a solo house set on MacBook). I then by total chance caught a free happy-hour show by the hilarious Alex McMurray (honestly, he's funnier than any stand-up comedian I can think of) at Siberia, and got some of their excellent Slavic / Russian food.
Tonight and tomorrow night: Skipping Deerhunter for about the infinityith time because I still think they suck, aside from half a song or so per album. The amount of press they continue to get is nothing short of baffling to me. In the '90s heyday of indie rock, a band with their talent level would've barely merited a mention in its own hometown's zines, but I guess by today's standards they're considered edgy / inventive / cool, thanks to the ongoing wussification & dilution of indie rock into mere sonic wallpaper in which bands try to relay to the listener "Okay, on this song we show that we're into the Beach Boys, and on this next one we do an homage to the Replacements, and then we're gonna blow everyone's minds by showing that we dig synth-pop!," etc. "Record-collector rock," it's been wisely called. Well, Deerhunter seem to be one of the token RCR bands of the '00s, so more power to them, I guess, and I do feel bad for the singer since he has Marfan Syndrome and presumably doesn't have too many more years left to live. I don't even know if they have any synth-pop songs; I was mainly referring to the Strokes with that one. I guess I should just shut up at this point. If Deerhunter has any songs that I should like, let me know; I only like "Helicopter" by them, mainly b/c it sounds unlike any of their regular output.
Planets with similar climates: Dinosaur Jr. - "Let It Ride" (1988), The Sound - "The Fire" (1981), Sand Rubies - "Drugged" (1993), Polvo - "Tragic Carpet Ride" (1994), Sonic Youth - "Stereo Sanctity" (1987), Fugazi - "Sieve-Fisted Find" (1989).
(Matador Records [U.S.] / P-Vine Records [Japan], 2006)
Since I was befriended by an Aussie on both RYM and Tumblr last week (two separate people), I knew my next post on here had to be a killer Aussie song.
With a killer bassline, spiky guitar, mammoth drumming, and a set of memorable lyrics, this song should've made Love Of Diagrams into instant indie rock royalty. This song just destroys on so many levels, and is one of the most addictive songs I've ever heard. Sonic Youth have been unable or unwilling to craft a tune like this since the mid-'90s, so I guess it's good that they finally kicked the bucket, but the point is that their progeny will always continue to churn out great music. Just look at the list of bands at the bottom of this post for proof.
Note: Matador Records is still giving this song away for free; download it here. That link is where I originally acquired this song, though this rip is from my own CD, bought in 2010.
I had been hearing a bit about this band as part of the whole post-punk revival of the mid-'00s, and thought about going to see them open for Ted Leo at the Spanish Moon in 2007. Really, really regretting that. They have apparently been broken up for a few years now, and, being from Australia, the chances are less than zero that they'll ever trek to Louisiana again. The lyrics are apparently about rape, with "the pyramid" representing the vagina, which the intruder "broke into." And what he "stole" was presumably the protagonist's innocence and/or trust in humanity. So it's a fun & thought-provoking protest song in the best Gang Of Four tradition, but hopefully the lyrics are not autobiographical.
The video mainly involves the band members physically playing their instruments, which is the stupidest fucking thing in the world for any music video to feature. But an edgy "house" theme is used in it, tying in with the lyrics, and the visual effects are pretty amazing. In fact, you'll never be able to get these colors out of your head whenever you hear this song in the future:
My sister had her appendix removed last week, so I made her this mix CD. Last weekend, I met my future sister-in-law Mila, and lent her some CDs to copy (The Church's Heyday, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation). We also went to brunch at Commander's Palace with the whole fam, and to the Spring Garden Show at City Park. It was my first time going to Commander's in almost 20 years. Also went to Parkway Bakery & Tavern (best chicken po-boy of my life) and Angelo Brocato's later that night. (Thought I was pretty clever for including a song about having a sliver of herself removed... And the Black Flag song has the lyric "Keep me alive / Only you can do it." And so forth with some other medical-related lyrics.)
I snapped this pic of an impressive Mammillaria bombycina (Silken pincushion cactus), a recent addition to the cactus / succulent greenhouse at the N.O. Botanical Garden.
I have three of these myself (tip: get one right now at Lowe's or Home Depot), but none of mine have clustered like this one, which must be 10-15 years old.
On Monday, I skipped the 2nd half of the college basketball championship to see a rock concert starring Merchandise, White Lung, and Glish. Glish were great as usual, and debuted two new songs, but sadly didn't play longtime set opener "Collider." Luckily they played the quite similar song "Sex." White Lung just kicked all kinds of ass, especially on my two favorite songs of theirs, "Bag" and "Take The Mirror." I expect them to go down as the key hardcore band of this generation. Singer Mish Way seemed a bit annoyed with the crowd's passivity, and I was thinking to myself how their set would've spawned a serious mosh pit back in the '90s. Oh well. Merchandise now have a human drummer, and crooner Carson Cox now plays guitar, and they now have a sax player on a few songs. So their sound was much fuller (and I would say sometimes too full / busy) as compared to last fall, when they only had two human-played instruments (guitar and bass), plus a drum machine. DJ Wesley Stokes played some good stuff, such as Slowdive's "Morningrise," My Bloody Valentine's "You Made Me Realise," and CHVRCHES' "The Mother We Share." And speaking of Sonic Youth, Carson wore a Chelsea Light Moving t-shirt.
I planned on seeing the movie Spring Breakers, but its theater run seems to be over. I will say without shame that I've seen Ashley Benson's movie Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal about 5 times. One of the most quotable movies ever.
Planets with similar climates: Drop Nineteens - "Delaware" (1992), Bleach - "First" (1991), A.C. Temple - "Miss Sky" (1988), Gang Of Four - "It Is Not Enough" (1982), Springhouse - "Enslave Me" (1992), The Black Watch - "Come Inside" (1994), Catherine Wheel - "Chrome" (1993), Moonshake - "Spaceship Earth" (1992).
Every great band has a song on which it eclipses its influences and creates an entirely new form of music, and for me this is that song for Poem Rocket. The guitar feedback seems to levitate and take on a life of its own, like a cobra swaying to lull its prey to sleep. A sinister, Ron Carter-esque bassline churns away underneath, and a robotic drum pattern forces the listener's mind into lock-step. Michael Peters' lyrics are as confounding and dense as ever: "Thousands of incorporeal pieces / Fragments of the new form / So lucky you will never forget me." It seems that he's singing about feeling insignificant in this big universe, and the cover art of the 7" (sort of a faceless take on Munch's The Scream) does nothing to dispel that. The "small white animal" in question could be the moon, though, considering the line "I've seen the moon sink to the ocean." Sandra Gardner's backing vocals add an element of disembodied coolness and mystery that most bands would kill for. How has she not become a go-to vocalist for today's leading trip-hop bands? There are no leading trip-hop bands today, but there could be, if only they would enlist Sand-Gar's services.
To see two short clips from the (apparently stunning) official music video, go here. These clips should give us all impetus to pester the band to upload the full video (and the video for "Ka-boom") to its YouTube channel. Even if this song is not your cup of tea, you have to take your hat off to the band for having the balls to actually release a song like this as a single, and to shoot such a cinematography-intensive video for it. Though unthinkable to budding young noise rockers of today, back in the mid-'90s MTV would occasionally play videos by bands like this. So I guess it was worth a shot for Poem Rocket to make several videos.
As for what I said about "an entirely new form of music," that might sound hyperbolic, and I thought about changing it until I stroked my chin and pondered the collision of space rock guitarscapes + industrial-style drumming + rubbery basslines + high-art lyrics + diametrically-opposed coed vocals. This recipe is very different from the one used by most bands that could be classified as "noise rock." If they had dumbed their sound down for the Neanderthal crowd, they could've easily become stars of the AmRep, Skin Graft, or Touch & Go stables, but instead they signed to PCP Entertainment, which was apparently a subsidiary of Matador Records that focused on NYC bands. I'm not sure if PCP started off on its own and then was incorporated into Matador, or Matador created it out of thin air, but it had quite a varied roster. Peters said he was a fan of The Church, which would explain his knack for cryptic lyrics. The Church's Steve Kilbey is probably my favorite or 2nd-favorite lyricist ever, mainly because decoding his verbal webs is part of the fun. The simple line "Nothing is stopping me" could be a high school football team's weight room motto, but if you look deeper into the phrase, it could also mean "The only thing that is stopping me is the concept of nothingness / insignificance." Maybe I'm just reading too much into it and I should go back to rocking out on air feedback guitar while jumping up and down. And that's the real beauty of a creation like this: Anyone, regardless of his or her care for, or knowledge of, specific types and subgenres of music, can just let his or her ass get rocked by a song like this. It speaks in a primal, unspoken language, the one that impelled our amphibious ancestors to crawl out of the primordial ooze and head for higher land to build some sort of proto-life. It has that visceral edge that the brain subconsciously craves in order to sharpen its fight-or-flight response. Try getting that from a song by Guided By Voices, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Spoon, or any other Pitchfork favorites. (My hatred of Pitchfork is deep and longstanding, as you might know by now. That site has literally never printed a single thing about Poem Rocket, at least not since 1999. Maybe they did sometime between 1996-98.)
This is such a great photo, and one of the few live pics of the Rockets that can be found on the web. All I know is that it's from Brownie's in NYC, dated 1994:
I've been wanting a semi-hollowbody guitar like that, since they are notorious for their tendency to create unwanted (or wanted) feedback, and having three pickups rather than one or two would obviously help with feedback creation too. Then again, maybe he used a totally different guitar to record this song in the studio. Plexi's Michael Barragan is the only other guitarist I know of who had such a consistently abstract, feedback-laced guitar sound, and he always used Gibsons with P-90 pickups.
Here are my two invaluable Poem Rocket t-shirts, bought as a lot on eBay in late 2003:
I have recently been able to determine that the design on the left shirt is by Michael Peters himself, an accomplished visual artist (as well as singer, songwriter, guitarist, experimental author, college literature professor, biographer, etc.). See / buy more of his art, and watch him give a rather intimidating book reading, here. I miraculously stumbled onto & bought his incredibly bizarre book Vaast Bin; n ephemerisi at a bookstore in Houma earlier this year.
The shirt on the right is based on the striking cover art of the band's Into The Aether (a.k.a. Blue Chevy Impala) 10" EP. And their old website uses a similar design for site navigation.
Noth'd Rookery by Michael Peters
Sorry to scatter out so much stuff about Poem Rocket, but like I said, any bit of info that can be shared about them is important, since this was not a band that practiced much self-promotion. Those types of "secretive" bands, including many of my all-time favorites (e.g. Unwound, Hovercraft, Bailter Space, Bare Minimum) are the ones for which I am proud to take up the promotional mantle, to help "pay it forward" to the next generation of music fans.
Planets with similar climates: Live Skull - "Fort Belvedere" (1986), Bare Minimum - "Night We Streak, Divine Failure" (1995) & "Swim In Anxious Moment" (1997), Bright Channel - "Final Stretch" & "Night Eyes" (2004), Helmet - "Sinatra" (1990).
This is from the band's debut and only release, the CD EP Meet The Universal Chrome. In my opinion, and I've said this since buying it in 2002, it's the finest disc ever released by a New Orleans rock band, and nothing else comes even remotely close. I say this because it avoids all the clichés of "New Orleans music" in favor of the musical palette used by '80s / '90s Brit bands and their U.S. counterparts. There's nary a trace of funk, zydeco, blues, etc. on this disc, which sounds like a dumb or naïve thing to even point out, but you'd be surprised at how heavy the peer pressure is in NOLA for rock bands to include at least some native signifiers. After two crushingly dense opening seconds, "Helium" cruises along at sort of a moderate, dream-pop-y pace, sounding like nothing too special for its first two minutes. But at the 1:55 mark, the weather suddenly changes and it becomes a white-knuckle ride into paranoia ("Suspect the one who knows everything") and fight-or-flight aggression. With wah pedals alfutter in dramatic fashion, singer Zac Wilson announces very bluntly: "I'm in full control, so if you're fucking with me... Don't." It's simply one of the most amazing vocal performances ever laid to tape, in my opinion. I often like to say that certain songs "singlehandedly make the wah pedal cool again," and this is clearly one of them.
The CD and the inside of the booklet; took me 10 years to notice the naked lady. The CD is actually totally grayish silver, in fitting in with the "chrome" theme, but the lighting gave it a pinkish cast that I couldn't fix:
The band was originally known as Flux, and my introduction to them was hearing a live interview on corporate alt-rock station 106.7 The End on a cold, dreary night in latte December 1996 while driving around uptown New Orleans. I made a mental note to check them out, and I wish I had a recording of that interview. I'm sure the band does somewhere. A year or so later, they had to change their name due to a dispute by the group Flux, which was led by James Plotkin, who would later front the hilariously lame metal act Khanate. I still don't know what the band's name means, but I've seen it used as the finish color for certain auto parts. I had originally thought it was an homage to Catherine Wheel's classic heavy shoegaze album Chrome. The album cover is an image of a car engine's drive belt, so the band's name is probably indeed a car reference. Anyway, they opened for national touring bands like At The Drive-In, the Jesus Lizard, the Starlight Mints, etc., as well as big local bands like Burnversion, Rigid, and Weedater. And of course they opened the killer Hum / Swervedriver show I went to in '98. It has a hidden track, "The Last Resolve," which slays just about any song, hidden or non-hidden, in the history of music, and yes, I will be posting it someday.
I was overjoyed to find this flyer a few years ago at TUC's MySpace page, since I had never seen it back in the day:
Anyone who went to that concert (see ticket here) knows how the Chromies tore shit up and just about stole the show. I mean, jeez, they sure ate their fucking Wheaties that morning, as I like to say. They knew this would be one of the biggest moments of their lives, and they played like their lives depended on it. The singer was a manic ball of energy with his eyes almost bugging out of his head, like Frank Black on speed. And Melissa played her strong, Pixies-style basslines clad in her trademark red and white candy-striped leggings. I even bumped into my Loyola ichthyology teacher, Frank Jordan, there. (There was later an indie rock band named Frank Jordan, but I don't know if there was any connection.) Dr. Jordan saw Sonic Youth in Florida in the mid-'80s, so you know he knew what was up. I even lent him my Screaming Fields Of Sonic Love VHS around this time and never got it back. About a year later, he admitted to me that he had never gotten around to watching it.
Back on topic... The Universal Chrome were one of the best-loved local bands of the late '90s, but I only saw them that one time. Still kicking myself. They moved to NYC in 1999 to make it big or somewhat big, and in a less douchey world they would have. The most tantalizing fact: They recorded an unreleased full-length album, titled Closer To Shine, around the time of this EP. Their Facebook page said they planned on releasing it digitally in August 2010, but I guess that never happened. God damn. I can only take so much suspense. Luckily Meet has been released on iTunes. In the '00s, drummer Keith Hajjar was a member of Rock City Morgue, along with former White Zombie bassist Sean Yseult and singer Rik Slave of Rik Slave & The Phantoms. RCM had some success and garnered international interest; they even toured Europe in 2005. Their sound was on the glammy, proto-punky '70s NYC side (NY Dolls, Dead Boys, etc.), very different from The Universal Chrome. In other words, RCM was dedicated to recreating a bygone era, while TUC tried to forge something new, edgy, and dangerous. So it's no surprise that I never saw RCM live or paid much attention to them. Like anyone who was a teenage male in the '90s, I had a crush on Sean, and I have to say that White Zombie was one of the most fun and entertaining live bands I ever saw. (Opening for Pantera at Lakefront Arena in '96.)
Tue. Oct. 16: Went to GW Fins, it was loud as hell, got some non-seafood, tried to block out the noise, great bread, great waiter, it got noisier, I got peeved. Seemed overpriced, and the portions were on the small side.
Thur. Oct. 18: Went to Pelican Club for my sister's birthday. Finally met her fiancée's mom, Mary, who immediately praised my palm paintings that she had seen. Aunt Ann flew in from Savannah and Vanessa came too, along with mom and dad. Afterwards we went to the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone briefly; was my first time doing so. Definitely swank city. Missed the second Obama-Romney debate due to all this, but Obama dispatched the creepy dude easily, based on highlights I saw and according to the general consensus of political pundits.
Fri. Oct. 19: Ann, mom and I went to the NOMA Sculpture Garden, had lunch in NOMA's café, then went to the Botanical Garden. These things are all literally yards apart from each other, making for one of the most interesting couple of blocks on the planet in which to feed your brain and pass some time.
Sat. Oct. 20: Went to Kathleen & Jay's Halloween party for the first time. This is a big-ass deal, and they even have cops close off the block to traffic. They were screening The Avengers on the side of the house via a video projector outside. I went as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in a shirt I had found at a thrift store the previous day. Good clean fun, as Cat Power would say. Stuck a bony hand decal / sticker thing on Ashley's face. On WTUL's concert listings I heard that my favorite local jazz band (since Christian Scott no longer lives here), Tarik Hassan Group, was playing at AllWays Lounge, so I headed over there. It was Hassan's birthday. They were great, as always, and I was amazed to see the jazz singer I had met recently (Meghan Stewart) come into the club wearing a rather provocative red outfit. I was hoping she'd sing with them, but it turned out she was there as a bellydancer(!). So yeah, she danced / twirled / jiggled in rather stunning fashion to a few songs and really got the crowd going.
Sun. Oct. 21: I finally joined last.fm. My username is a Magic Dirt song that I should've already posted on here by now. Some other possible usernames that made the final round: HighwireDays (song by the P-Furs), FiresInMotion (lyric from Simple Minds' "Speed Your Love To Me), InvisibleKnife (lyric from Sand Rubies' "Drugged"), TheNewSunrise (song by The Joy Circuit), ExitBodyExitmind (lyric from New Fast Automatic Daffodils' "Music").
You may remember a few posts ago I pointed out the fallacy of the attempts by the Tea Party / Birther faction of Republicans to convince their peers that Obama would snatch up everyone's guns upon taking office. And how paranoia has driven gun & ammo sales to record highs in the U.S. Well, I had assumed everyone had come to their senses on this topic, but just the other day, I saw this ad in Baton Rouge's The Advocate newspaper:
Translation: "If the black guy gets elected again, you'll need something a little more powerful than that paltry shotgun or revolver that you have." It's kind of chilling how the phrase "We lost a game, we didn't do enough" is right above this ad in the football recap. And to answer the question asked in this ad, my answer is: Yes, as a matter of fact I am worried what you fucking rednecks will "bring" over the next 4 years. (A bill is about to hit the Louisiana legislature that proposes automatically granting a concealed weapon permit to anyone who buys a gun. Think about that for a second.) Gun sales are already up around 70% between 2008 and 2012.
Mon. Oct. 22: Obama simply eviscerated Romney in their third debate. He did so even though the debate focused on foreign policy, which means the challenger can simply lay into the incumbent on any little thing the incumbent has done overseas in the last 4 years. In other words, the red carpet is laid out to the challenger, and the incumbent has to be on his heels the whole time. I've honestly never seen anything like it, and I think it will be studied by future generations. I mean.. wow. This was just an all-out humiliation for Romney, in which he walked right into trap after trap that he set for himself, such as the topic of the outsourcing of jobs to China (a practice which Republicans all but patented) and the size of the U.S. military. For an average person, I would worry that he or she would have major psychological issues for the remainder of his or her life after having such a thing done to him or herself on live television, but for someone as smirky and used-car-salesman-esque as Romney, I think he'll be able to shake it off on the strength of his utter inability to have any spine or sense of self.
Sorry for all this personal diary type stuff, but it's been an eventful month, and the next few will definitely not be. Concert-wise, this may go down as one of my best ever, along with March '98 and March '04.
R.I.P. David S. Ware. Even if you're not an Aquarius like I am, spark up his serenely hypnotic "Aquarian Sound", one of my favorite jazz tracks ever.
Planets with similar climates: Catherine Wheel - "Waydown" (1995), Pixies - "Gouge Away" (1988), Quicksand - "Dine Alone" (1992), ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - "Prince With A Thousand Enemies" (1997), Unwound - "Stuck In The Middle Of Nowhere Again" (1992), Bailter Space - "Control" (1994).
(DeSoto Records / Pacifico Records, 1998; Modern City Records [France], 2001)
This song really has it all: A ridiculously long, atmospheric intro, cool guitar textures galore, rocket-propelled drumming, a tsunami of psychedelic axe-mangling, and of course a monster climax to end all climaxes. And only four lines of of lyrics in ten minutes. And three guitarists. Do the math. You can see by the genre tags I used that this band was not exactly easy to pigeonhole. I've always wondered where that word came from.
Due to the stealthy escalation of tempo, there is an 85-90% chance that you'll get a speeding ticket if you listen to this on ye olde American highway, so it's better to listen to it at bingo nite or any other time you need a quick pick-me-up without caffeine. In order to stave off insomnia, I avoid caffeine after noon. Juno covered DJ Shadow's "High Noon" on a split EP with DeSoto labelmates The Dismemberment Plan.
I first heard about Juno in a Jade Tree Records mailorder catalog in early '98, and almost ordered a 7" by them. I read reviews of this album, This Is The Way It Goes And Goes And Goes, around the time it came out in '99. But I didn't buy it until spring '03, when the Wherehouse Music (formerly Blockbuster Music) on Tchoupitoulas St. had a going-out-of-business sale and I snagged dozens of used CDs. (That's the only time I've ever seen this CD for sale in the used bins in the 13+ years since it was released, since almost no one who buys it is dumb enough to sell it. If you ever see it used, do not hesitate to open your wallet.) Articles about the band always mention singer Arlie Carstens' former career as a pro snowboarder, and the grisly accident he sustained which forced him to focus solely on music. His loss, our gain. The review of the album in CMJ by Kelso Jacks said "Juno crafts its music slowly. However, the brilliance of this album more than compensates for Juno's less-than-prolific nature. The band relies on the powerful interplay of three guitars to churn up an expansive whirlpool of textures. Juno's blasting, six-string complexities mimic everything from airplanes to waterfalls to banjo plucks. Unfettered by convention, these Northwesterners follow their sonic muse without paying mind to the clock, allowing sweeping, 10-minute epics such as 'Leave A Clean Camp And A Dead Fire' to unfold with the kind of passionate aggression that makes potentially self-indulgent duration a moot point. The brutal rhythm section adds to and controls the thunder using carefully measured accents and punctuations. This raucous din is topped off by guitarist Arlie Carstens' intelligent, surreal utterances, which are processed through a fuzzbox to complete Juno's wall of intensity. Truly worth the wait." That's basically a clinic on how to write a compact and informative review, by the way, though he should've mentioned more than just one specific song. (I omitted one discography-related sentence near the beginning.) It concludes: "Marketing Data: A summer tour is possible, though Carstens is currently recovering from spinal cord injuries, the result of his severely being injured in a snowboarding accident, earlier this year."
Great live clip at an unspecified venue in an unspecified year:
Also check out the sublimely haunting murder ballad "A Listening Ear", featuring co-lead vocals from Seattle chanteuse Jen Wood. It has some of the coolest slide guitar I've ever heard. A band called The Sea, Like Lead named itself after the album's closing song, "The Sea Looked Like Lead."
This Is The Way It Goes And Goes And Goes was not originally released on vinyl, but in 2001 a European tour edition on double LP was pressed on a French label called Modern City Records. Juno's live shows are the stuff of legend. They never played in New Orleans, sadly, and believe me, I sat around staring out my window for several years, pining for them to come by and Junoify my city. I guess Europe was a lot more inviting to them. The only other three-guitarist band that I actually listen to on a regular basis is Band Of Susans.
2001 gatefold double LP with two different colored records; pic courtesy of discogs.com
Juno's stature in the indie rock community is such that a documentary film was made about their recent comeback, but I don't know if it ever came out, and its website appears to be in mothballs.
Fri. Oct. 5: Despite having some sort of sinus infection or cold, saw Merchandise and Glish at the Big Top. It was kickass, and each band played the songs I wanted to hear, though it was evident that Merchandise's (very charismatic) singer was wasted off his ass. More on this show in an upcoming post! Oh yeah, I donated a book called For The Vegetarian In You to the NOLADIY / An Idea Like No Other guys so they could add it to the Iron Rail library. And I requested that they order me a copy of the new Possession EP by this Portland band called Arctic Flowers. Wandered around Frenchmen St. afterwards, mainly to catch the end of a photography exhibit called Velado by Melissa Stryker at Scott Edwards Photography Studio & Gallery. The photos had naked ppl and were printed on huge aluminum sheets, but in my opinion were not as racy or scandalous as the artist probably thought they would be. Here's the front and back of the postcard that made me decide to trek to the exhibit:
No, that's not Stryker in the pic. I saw a few songs by a crazy funk / party band called Yojimbo that was playing at Maison. Their singer / trombonist is a super-energetic, bespectacled redhead, and I was stunned to see she was wearing this bootleg Sonic Youth Sister t-shirt that is commonly sold by shady sellers online. I got mine on eBay about a decade ago; I think I gave it away to my internet girlfriend Michelle, whom I am no longer internet dating.
I took some video clips of Yojimbo, if only as proof that the singer had this shirt on. I didn't go inside due to it being packed and me being sick, but the open door and huge glass windows made it easy to see & hear inside. This girl, Carly Meyers, will be a superstar. In between jumping up and down as if on a pogo stick, playing her trombone pointed up at the ceiling, and laughingly wiping sweat from her face with a towel, she guided the crowd in holding up a blanket and urged them to "Get in the love tunnel!" I found a great Merchandise show poster (a big one, different from the small one shown above) on Frenchmen, so my night was complete.
Sat. Oct. 6: Went to the Bridge House thrift store and bought some sweet books and NIN's The Downward Spiral on CD ($1), then played hoops at that Annunciation Street court. One of the dudes was LSU's point guard in the late '80s / early '90s. He was a stocky redhead who could fill it up from outside. I mentioned that I went to LSU basketball camp in 1990. Watched some of the #4 LSU vs. #10 Florida football game with my sister, then we tried to go to the Botanical Garden. She was impressed by the raw power of "I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart" by A Place To Bury Strangers on the drive over there. NOBG was due to a wedding, so we walked around City Park and did some obnoxious stuff. Came back and watched LSU lose in pathetic fashion. I had lost track of my The Downward Spiral CD long ago, and was blown away by how fresh and visceral it still sounds. I still have the promo postcard that Interscope sent me when the album came out, and my friend Warren and I listened to it all the time in the mid-'90s. I had kind of swept the album under the rug of my mind as I got into better music over the years, but songs like "Reptile" and "Mr. Self-Destruct" are just inimitable and stand up to any sort of highbrow scrutiny.
Sun. Oct. 7: This was a pretty interesting day. A cold front blasted through, bringing the temp. down by about 20º from the previous day's high. I helped to stake some Chinese pistachio trees on Metairie Rd. with some Parkway Partners people. I was wearing my red Drew Brees practice jersey since he was gonna try to break Johnny Unitas' streak of 47 straight games with a TD pass that night, and the NFL wisely made sure it was against the team that let Drew go, the Chargers, a team that is so inept that it actually got the name Chargers from the fact that it was founded by a credit card ("charge card") magnate. Then Em and mom and I went to the zoo; Em said "Oh my God" so many times that mom and I had to tell her to limit it to one time per exhibit, but she couldn't even do that. Then we ate at this pizzeria called Slice next to Whole Foods, then went to Whole Foods, then went home to watch the first half of the Saints game. Drew got the record early with a pass that literally hit Devery Henderson on the numbers and in stride. That means "The ball flew through the air and hit the receiver on the chest, and the receiver did not have to alter his running motion." Found out that the Godspeed show already started, since the dumb promo postcard and poster had the wrong start times on them. So Em and I drove over to Tip's, knowing that we had missed the opening act, G String Orchestra. Luckily Godspeed were in peak form, beginning with a long (10-minute?) ambient drone, the one at the beginning of "The Dead Flag Blues" but unfortunately omitting the ominous dude talking about cars on fire, a thousand lonely suicides, etc. Minimalistic film clips (sometimes just words) were projected behind them throughout the show; they also did this when I saw then in March '03 at TwiRoPa. I was disappointed at a few downsized elements: The band was down to only one female member, and no longer had any cello; the venue was smaller than last time; the merch table was way smaller, with only the (brand) new album for sale (and only on vinyl), plus some t-shirts. These are minor complaints, because it was a really challenging and uncompromising concert, the kind most "post-rock" bands wouldn't even dare attempt. Even by GYBE's standards, the buildups were extra-long and the climaxes were done with a great flair for layering. Mom texted me to say the Saints had won; I texted back "Fuck yeah." Near the middle of the show a dude passed out and hit the ground with a huge thud right behind us, and had to be escorted out. (This was nowhere near as cool as when a guy slashed his wrists outside a Humpers / Neckbones show that I caught in '97 at Monaco Bob's. That show continued after only a brief pause, by the way.) The finale was just incredible, with two of the greatest pieces of music I've ever seen, set to a backdrop of a factory on fire. I'm pretty sure the last thing they played was "World Police And Friendly Fires." There was no encore, despite lots of cheering. Efrim didn't say a word to the crowd, despite the fact that he was practically a stand-up comedian at the A Silver Mt. Zion show in Feb. at One Eyed Jacks. To celebrate the fact that her computer had not been stolen, despite being parked with one window totally down, we went to this bar called Ms. Mae's up the street. It was as lame as my sister told me it would be, though I played two Interpol songs and Catherine Wheel's "Black Metallic" on the internet jukebox. Some guy in a just-bought Godspeed (or G String Orchestra) shirt juked some Pelican and Russian Circles. Uhh... No comment, Beavis. A charismatic 59.9 year old art teacher at Tulane sit right down at our table and hit on Emily right in front of me, and kept claiming he had met us before. So we had to eventually make a daring exit, which prompted him to desperately ask us "Are you guys on Facebook?" "No, sorry." We were, as the saying goes, so done with that.
I stupidly trusted the door time on the postcard rather than the door time on the ticket, hence why we missed the opening band
Sorry for all the pics in this post.
Planets with similar climates: Plexi - "Peel / He" (1995), Catherine Wheel - "Ferment" (1992), Kitchens Of Distinction - "Blue Pedal" (1992), The Sound - "New Dark Age" (1981), "Missiles" (1979) & "Whirlpool" (1985), The Church - "Chaos" (1992), Unwound - "For Your Entertainment" (1996), Pantera - "Hollow" (1992).
Another song from the Beads' stunning Transfixed EP, which was included in its entirety as bonus tracks on CD pressings of their album Black Aspirin. The mastering volume is quite low, so turn the volume and bass up.
Cover of my cassette bought on a whim in '07
As if you needed more proof that any band from any rainy country can, when needed, stop navelgazing and decide to rock way harder than those douches from Slayer, Converge, etc., this song provides it. I think this may actually be the most intense song I've ever heard. The speed is blinding, the precision is machinelike, the passion is unbridled. I love how the singer uses both "Did you fall or were you pushed?" and "Were you pushed or did you fall?" in the lyrics, in order to fit into two rhyming schemes. And probably also to show how some people tend towards having a victim's mentality ("I was pushed") while others have more of a self-blaming mentality ("I fell on my own"). I've been listening to Unwound's self-titled debut album a lot recently, and this is one of the few songs I can think of that can give the most savage ones on that album a run for their money. Another anthemic song on Transfixed is "Wolf On A Chain", but "Reckless Hope" (from Black Aspirin) could've been a genuine hit song:
Marla Fury tangling with The Baroness, from the allegedly influential comic Miss Fury
The best basketball that I've ever owned, a black Baden Explosion, died of a puncture wound last week, so I set out to find another one online, as no stores seem to sell them anymore.
I found this mind-blowing 5-star review on Amazon by user Brockeim:
Perfect for Shooting Free Throws in a Park with a Lovely Woman (June 21, 2010)
The Baden "Explosion" basketball didn't sit long after purchasing it. We bought it to use, and to labor we have put it. We brought it to a park just a ten minute walk away in early July.
Nancy and I shot for hours. I took ten shots; she took ten shots, neither of us gaining an advantage as we repeated this game throughout the late morning.
The Baden "Explosion" basketball bounced well as we tossed it between us. Perfectly balanced, it never went askew... always into her welcome hands as I made a pass.
Black, but almost navy blue, with orange lines, the ball rolled straight and true. With each revolution, the lines flickered like an old movie film. We stood mesmerized as we watched it settle in soft grass, ready to be shot again.
Whether the board deflected it, or points were scored, the game didn't matter. The shared smile, knowing we are shooting together, meant more than the tally.
A rain shower brushed by, but the composite leather basketball was unaffected. A few bounces, and a shot piercing the net was enough to shake off the dampness.
We have returned to that park a few times since, and will many times more. May your basketball bring you into the company with someone as beautiful as Nancy.
Though it has been used in commercials for everything from cars to athletic equipment to movies, the much-mocked/reviled genre known as dubstep officially jumped the shark today. The opening full-cast dnce number on So You Think You Can Dance today was performed to a dubstep remix of Marilyn Manson's much-reviled "The Beautiful People." And it was even worse than it sounds in theory. The genre's main practitioner, a chap named Skrillex, earns around $100,000 (or $250,000, depending on the source) per 1-hour "performance."
Sun. July 15: Dropped off a mix CD and a best-of Bleach mix CD-R for Sam. She wasn't there, and I found out this guy Mike (whom I had gotten into Sonic Youth years ago) had recently quit, possibly because the store was robbed at gunpoint a few weeks ago. Also gave them a live S.Y. bootleg CD-R (Cleveland, '85) and an amazing Faith No More one (Phoenix Fest in England, '93).
Chicken nuggets: Made from pink goo - "...the goop is then disinfected, re-flavored and bleached back to the whitish color we all associate with cooked chicken breast. According to McDonald’s, a four-piece serving of McNuggets contains 190 calories, 100 of which come from trans fat."
Planets with similar climates: Unwound - "Antifreeze" & "Rising Blood" (1992), Dub Sex - "Then And Now" (~1987), ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - "Prince With A Thousand Enemies" (1997) and "Blood Rites" & "Homage" (2001), Metallica - "Fight Fire With Fire" (1984), Band Of Susans - "Twist Of Fate" (1990), Hüsker Dü - "Deadly Skies" (1983), Polvo - "Crumbling Down" (1996), Nirvana - "Territorial Pissings" (1991).
(Skysaw Records, ca. 1987/1988 / Cut Deep Records, 1989)
I got an excerpt of this song in the mid-'00s somewhere online, and quickly became pretty obsessed with it, then bought the actual 12" EP (self-titled) in 2008 on eBay. This band was a favorite of John Peel, recording a whopping four Peel sessions despite never releasing a full-length album. In fact, this song was performed on his show as early as January of '87, so it was surely written in '86 or earlier. If I remember correctly, one band member did some time in The Fall, which would explain Peel's affinity for Dub Sex, since he had an inexplicable allegiance to Mark E. Smith's abominable band.
This song later appeared on a compilation of the band's material called Splintered Faith, which I have on vinyl rip and CD rip; the LP version has 15 songs, and the CD version has 18. I'm intentionally uploading the crackly vinyl rip so that folks will be inspired to seek out and purchase the actual LP or CD. Both are long out of print, so you'll have to buy secondhand, hence the band won't actually see any profit from your endeavor, but at least you can say you have something by a band called Dub Sex, whose sound is not remotely dubby and is definitely the polar opposite of sexy. The singer's voice is one of the most unpleasant things I've ever come across, but I can't imagine anyone else singing "Then And Now" other than maybe Henry Rollins. I also couldn't imagine the EP without its arrestingly unforgettable cover pic, credited to a photographer named P. Hoare:
I have no idea if Unwound were ever fans of Dub Sex, but their early, manic stuff sure seems to be in a very similar boat. Early Swervedriver had some musical and geographical similarity to D.S.; coincidentally D.S. had a song called "Swerve," replete with a bare-bones, but professionally-shot, music video:
They had a slightly cooler video for "Time Of Life" in 1989, which shows bassist Cathy Brooks more clearly. She had some pretty sweet basslines in many of their songs, such as "Voice Of Reason," "Man On The Inside," "Every Secret (That I Ever Made)," "The Underneath", and "Caved In." So you could say she was the only one who contributed anything remotely resembling dub music to their sound. Some interesting YouTube comments from "The Underneath": "I saw Dub Sex supporting the Stone Roses in 1989 at the International just after the Roses had released their debut album...two great bands" and "what happened to these guys? they are at least as good as Fugazi." Your only chance to see the band members in living colour is probably this performance of "I Am Not Afraid" on Tony Wilson's TV show The Other Side Of Midnight. (Wilson ran the club The Haçienda and co-founded Factory Records.)
Last week, after I loaded about half a ton of these white landscaping bricks into my car in 95º heat; note the chest sweat:
Best live bands I saw in the first half of 2012:
!!!, School Of Seven Bells, Whom Do You Work For?, A Silver Mt. Zion, Kindest Lines, The Neville Brothers (Jazz Fest), The Flaming Lips, Grimes (w/ Born Gold as her backing band), Tatsuya Nakatani + Helen Gillet + Rob Cambre, Tineke Postma (two shows in one night), Foo Fighters (Jazz Fest).
Good but nothing to write home about:
Alcest, EXITMUSIC, Shabazz Palaces, Magnetic Ear (French Quarter Fest), Dayna Kurtz, Sasha Masakowski (French Quarter Fest).
Ones I should've seen:
White Hills, The Weeknd (show sold out literally as I was about to buy tix online), Chairlift, Twin Sister, Har Mar Superstar (missed him twice so far this year; have still never seen him), No Joy, The darkness, Thurston Moore, Nautical Almanac, etc.
Speaking of the lyric "I used to live in this town before things started spiraling down," check out this YouTube video and/or this one. Disclaimer: I'm a full-spectrum atheist, meaning I don't believe in any god(s) and am against all religions. I have the least problem with "Far East" religions, since they're mainly centered on introspection and personal discovery. I think any reasoned survey of the facts will show that Mormonism, Islam, and Scientology are cults, not just religions. I like lots of aspects Arabic / N. African culture, and in fact I have over baby 100 date palms outside my window, have owned a Mali uromastyx lizard for 15 years, just noticed a CD called Moroccan Spirit on my desk, get chicken shawarma at a Metairie restaurant called Byblos on the regular, have The Kite Runner on DVD on my rack about 6 feet to my right, bought a copy of the Qur'an last year at a thrift store on a whim, etc. And this is all despite having some Jewish blood on my mom's side. I know that might come off as a "Some of my best friends are [black / Jewish / etc.]" type of rationale. My point is just that I have no problem with Arabic people or culture, I just don't care for Islam, e.g. the fact that kids in the region are forced to join it from a very early age, that drawing Muhammed is punishable by death, that Jews are a mortal enemy, and other inhumane aspects. From a broader perspective, I've long said that white people are the illegal immigrants in this country and that Native Americans and Mexicans have much more right to this land than we white people do. I just don't know if this country can survive another wave of militant immigration, since the white influx of 1492 tore it apart pretty quickly.
Planets with similar climates: Venus Beads - "One Way Mirror" (1990), Unwound - "Lucky Acid" (1993), Prosaics - "Teeth" (2004), Hüsker Dü - "Lifeline" (1983), Live Skull - "Fort Belvedere" (1986), Quicksand - "Lie And Wait" (1992), Helmet - "Murder" (1990).
Since a teenage user on a music rating site that I use recently made a rant against Faith No More's supposed "rap-metal" stylings, repeatedly expressed misogynist beliefs, and said that I partake in "feminist bullshit," I figured I'd post a song with a female singer rapping over a shoegaze background, if only to see if his head would explode at encountering all these things he hates rolled into one pie. I mean, one can insult me all one wants, but when Faith No More is brought into it, a line has been crossed and things shift to a different level. This person apparently has no idea that FNM's original lead singer was black, and hence the Rock Police would thereby have granted him leeway to do some rap-style singing. (Chuck recently put out a solo album cheekily titled Will Rap Over Hard Rock For Food.) His favorite bands are Neutral Milk Hotel and Bright Eyes... No, really. So one song immediately popped into my mind, since I already posted the other one ("Burn", also by Bleach). The feral intensity of the guitars in this song will never cease to impress me. The tremoloed guitar at the beginning adds a bit of surfy twang, but that is quickly massacred by a tsunami of drums and what I call "Godzilla roar" guitars. I always looked at this as sort of a novelty track until about 5 years ago, when I realized how addictive and well-contructed it was.
This song apparently caused a minor stir in the U.K. indie scene when it was released as a single (on CD, 7", and 12") in 1991. It was then wisely included on Bleach's sole album, Killing Time, in '92. That's one of my top ten fav. LPs ever, but I'm sure I've mentioned that before. If you don't know which version of "Shotgun" you're listening to, the single (indie) version is 3:51 long and the album (major-label) version is 3:42. The versions sound identical, except that the album version has four drum taps at the beginning. And on the single version, Salli ends the second stanza with "Spin me around," whereas on the album version she uses "Fucking around."
Salli's sharp-edged vocals in this song can be discussed forever, both pro and con. Being someone who listened exclusively to rap / hip hop in that particular year (1991), I can say that she knew exactly what she was doing, and did it with zero hesitation or "Ha ha, check this out" sarcasm. (If you want the latter, check out Sonic Youth's "Master-Dik.") Her vocal starting at 1:55 is very badass, playing off the beat in a nimble way that noted clumsy rapper Kanye West should take notes from. What I mean by that is that she slows down for a line, then speeds up and uses the bass drum hits to provide emphasis/punch underneath certain words near the end of phrases. You can even hear her waiting a split second to say the second syllable of the word "homespun" right on the kick drum (bass drum). It takes skilled breath control to be able to do this stuff; for someone who was known for her somewhat reedy / fey voice, she stepped up and really delivered the goods here. I've spent years trying to figure out what she says at this 1:55 section; I know it contains "You do and say what you think I'm not supposed to" and "I don't say what I'm allowed to."
The single's cover art features a silver-painted foot with a blue string tied around it. The string could either be for an i.d. tag in a morgue, or a way for a person to commit suicide by tugging on it whilst its other end is on the trigger of a gun. Parasol Records was clearancing this 7" for 50 cents for several years, and I always swore I'd get around to ordering a bunch, but recently was miffed to discover they no longer have it. The b-side is the extremely poppy and passionate "Bone," which should have also been released as a single. I would recommend buying the CD or 12" version instead of the 7", since in addition to "Bone," those formats add the stunning 10-minute "First & Last." An absolutely essential and groundbreaking EP, which I give 5 stars without any reservations.
A few days ago I discovered that Bleach made a video for "Decadence" in 1990. This made my week. The last third or so of the video has lots of psychedelically-tinted sea creatures:
This means that they had at least three videos, the others being the exuberant "Dipping" (1991) and the stylishly vertiginous "Surround" (1992). Does anyone know if there was a video for "Shotgun"? I also just found an ferociously spirited and bloodthirsty Peel session from July '91, which is neither for those who are faint of heart nor for those with flimsy computer speakers. Fun Fact: This was the same approximate month that I bought Above The Law's Livin' Like Hustlers, an album that brilliantly combined rap with jazz & rock instrumentation. I wouldn't even find out about Bleach until about a decade later. Also in '91, Public Enemy and Anthrax were touring together after having done that (awful) "Bring The Noise" collabo with each other.
Here is a pic from the May 4, 1991 issue of Melody Maker, with Curve on the cover. As far as I know, this image (photographer credit: Patrick Gilbert) has never been posted online before:
In 1993, a live version of "Shotgun" appeared on Bleach's Trip & Slide & Live promo CD EP, which I've been trying to get my hands on for years. That EP's artwork also starred the dead silver foot, this time on a bed of red grapes. In 2006, the song was included on an impressive and much-needed compilation called Like A Daydream: A Shoegazing Guide:
Tracks 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13 & 15 are among the best songs ever recorded, and most of the others are quite nice
It's been a record-setting week of heat across the U.S., with Denver over 100º for 5 straight days and the area near Colorado Springs ablaze. It's said to be Colorado's worst disaster ever. Tropical Storm Debby thankfully went to Florida instead of here last week. No rain here for about 2 weeks now, with temps in mid to upper 90s.
Sat. 6/23: Went to two Louisiana Nursery locations in Baton Rouge, both for the first time. Was very impressed with their plants.
Wed. 6/27: Got a picturesque & hardy species of prickly pear cactus called Opuntia santa-rita at Home Depot to replace a flimsier Opuntia that I already have.
Thur. 6/28: Saw the Flaming Lips set the Guinness world record at HOB. Grimes dropped off the bill with no notification or explanation. She was replaced by the somewhat (intentionally or unintentionally?) hilarious MNDR, sort of a combination of Madonna, Har Mar Superstar, and Grimes. She was decked out in slutty black and white mid-'80s Madge garb, letting her love handles jiggle provocatively, and ordered a guy and girl from the crowd to come up on stage to dance during one song. MNDR played only about 15 minutes. Then Wayne Coyne was paraded up Decatur Street to the front of the HOB, with local boys the Stooges Brass Band leading the way. The Lips kicked off with their two biggest hits, "Do You Realize??" and "She Don't Use Jelly." I was kind of jaded towards their stage prop tricks, having not seen the Lips since 1994, but I have to admit it was pretty transcendent. I raised my can of Guinness Draught at the moment the Guinness record breakage was announced. They played for about 70 minutes, despite averaging only 15 minutes at the previous seven stops. Thanks for the free tix, Butch! And thank you Ashley for making it through your terrible day (moving problems + flat tire) and coming out with us. It was too hot and humid to walk around the Quarter, so afterwards we got some grub at Lucy's (Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar & Restaurant) afterwards, and my sister taught me what a well drink is. I had my eyes glued to the NBA Draft. In addition to the somewhat overrated Anthony Davis, we got human highlight reel Austin Rivers, as I'd been hoping. I've also heard a rumor that Chris Paul wants to come back to the Hornets...
Fri. 6/29: My sister has been mad @ Grimes for canceling, so I texted her a self-deprecating Grimes tweet ("I'm not trying 2 be cute, I have a fucking speech impediment.") Went to dad's surprise 60th birthday party at Pelican Club. Tom, Ann, Kathleen, Shane, Ali, Roxanne, Preston, Sprague & wife, Jay & wife, and Jack & wife all came. It was also Vanessa's bday so she was included too. Emily cleverly wrote "You're sixty and you know it!" on dad's card, and dad actually crooned a bit of said LMFAO song. Do not ask me how he knew about it...
Sat. 6/30: Went to Dat Dog's new location for the first time. We had to sit outside in delightful 95º heat. I got the Guinness (beer) Dog again, but found it overbearingly greasy, so I probably would not get it again. Got aunt Ann a little Stevia plant at Freret Street Nursery directly across the street. We did not make it to the NOMA sculpture garden as I had hoped. Shane ripped lots of my CDs (e.g. Ween [R.I.P.], The Church, Acetone, Gil Scott-Heron, Faith No More, Miles Davis) to his Mac on my recommendation, after quickly selecting Herbie Hancock's Headhunters on his own. Roxanne decided that she and Shane should get a Uromastyx after she held mine and fed her by hand. Went to get snowballs at Sal's with dad, Preston & Roxanne. Used Sears gift card (received as collateral during garage door repair last summer) towards a little Sony HDR-CX190 Handycam, mainly to record bands in concert. Overall, one of the most eventful & strange 48-hour spans I've had in many years.
Here is a painting I finished on Super Bowl Sunday 2012, whose silver and blue reminds me of the Shotgun cover art. Yes, the palms are supposed to be leaning towards an implied ocean on their right, since the sand is always shifting / sinking a bit on the ocean side as compared to the dry land side. And I guess it goes without saying that these are supposed to be coconut palms. It's the first palm painting I've done on a circular or oval canvas (bought at Hobby Lobby, I think), and I will definitely be using them again:
That's the painting's info card; I try to remember to make one for every artwork I do, just in case I become famous in a few decades. I posed it on the pot of my 'Blue Elf' aloe for no reason. Some interesting tidbits are often buried in these cards, such as the fact that those are not black stripes. The dates also remind me that that silver-coated oval canvas sat on my coffee table for almost a year while I thought about what to do with it. Note that I only sign the backs of my paintings, never ever ever the fronts, since I grew up admiring album cover art, which essentially never have anyone's name scrawled on them.
Deciding whether I will go see a mediocre band with potential tonight called Widowspeak at Circle Bar, if only because I haven't been there in almost two years. I don't know if they have A/C post-renovation; they never did before. Widowspeak sound just like Mazzy Star's first two albums, down to the most minute detail, for better or for worse. The problem is that they remind me of a more lightweight version of the band EXITMUSIC, and don't yet have Mazzy Star's knack for penning at least a couple memorable tunes per album.
10-year-long video game creates 'hellish nightmare' world - "He doesn't play every day but returns to what he called a 'hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation' when he has some free time. Now in the year 3991, his world is down to three super-nations, each competing for dwindling resources, and a planet left scarred by multiple nuclear wars. His Celts are locked in a 1,700-year war with the Vikings and the Americans. All other nations have been destroyed or absorbed. Because of the continual fighting, he was forced to abandon his democracy and adopt a communist state, because his Senate kept overruling him when he wanted to declare war. Also, his cities are filled with starving people (90% of his world's population died from nuclear annihilation or famine from global warming) because, he says, he has to keep building war machines to sustain his combat efforts."
Planets with similar climates: A.C. Temple - "Chinese Burn" (1988), Lush - "Blackout" (1994), Poem Rocket - "Small White Animal" (1995), Bailter Space - "Pass It Up" (1997), Swervedriver - "Son Of Mustang Ford" (1990), Faith No More - "From Out Of Nowhere" (1989), Feverdream - "Vortex" (1995), You Am I - "Embarrassed" (1993).
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