Southpacific >> New cold dream

Southpacific - "Analogue 9"

(Turnbuckle Records, 1999)

I got this CD in a pretty strange way.  I had written to upstart indie rock label Turnbuckle Records in spring of '97 after learning that one of my favorite bands, Bailter Space, had signed to them after being dropped by Matador Recs.  They sent me a free copy of B-Space's new 7" and also a free B-Space shirt, because they were late in shipping their new album, Capsul, to me.  Cool label.  One day in early 2000, their online mailing list had a quiz made up of three softball questions about Bailter Space.  The first person to respond correctly would receive a copy of the new album Constance by Southpacific.  Well, I won it (I knew two of the answers, but sheepishly had to look up the other one online), and they sent me the CD and a bunch of promo postcards for it, and I was pretty much blown away by it, and it became the soundtrack to that summer for me.  I like the irony of a Canadian band naming itself after a balmy tropical locale.

Both of SoPac's albums got glowing reviews in the Canadian music press, and from a lot of U.S. scribes as well.  AllMusic Guide curiously said "Southpacific's songs are cacophonous photographs taken from the window from a falling 747."  Amazon staffer Matthew Cooke (yes, Amazon is one of the few online music sellers to have its own music writers who pen reviews, and not simply license reviews from AllMusic) said "All instrumental except for one song (and even then, the vocals are barely there at all), Southpacific's debut record is a slow-motion feedback loop, with shoegazer guitars swirling around whispery, half-suggested harmonies. Hypnotizing and noisily repetitive, the sound bears a resemblance to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless-era, fuzzbox-overload approach, but there's a quieter energy at the heart of these songs. While flirting with the fringes of glum, lonely-guy rock, the band's music still has its head too high in the clouds to be morose or 'sadcore' in the vein of Codeine or emotionally naked like Red House Painters. Short pearls of bright melodic snippets ('Alamo') mix with sleepy and repetitive dirges ('E10 @ 182'), all wrapped up in a sense of vastness, like the ocean of the band's namesake."  CMJ (1/31/00) described the album as "an evocative blur of shadowy streaks that coast over steady, deliberate percussion....outstandingly played, smart...and downright spectral in grandeur."


Though guitar is definitely what most people think of when this band comes to mind, the absurdly great basslines are what grab me.  The production levels are incredibly high, despite being self-produced (by SoPac drummer / sampler / guitarist Graeme Fleming).

From Toothpaste For Dinner

The band broke up not long after this album came out; the online label Orchard later picked it up and has continued to make it available online in mp3 form.  The album has attained a deservedly-big cult following among shoegaze / post-rock fans.  I have personally gotten at least a dozen people into this band / album, so I like to think that despite cheating a little bit to win this CD, I have "paid it forward" many times over.

The title of this post is a pun on the title of the album New Gold Dream by Simple Minds.  I saw this phrase in an old issue of NME or Melody Maker as the title of an article about Curve (or possibly some other band, but come on, it perfectly describes Curve), and I just knew I had to recycle it someday, and that day has now come.

About ten years ago I read about a slender tome called Warm Voices Rearranged, comprised of record reviews that are anagrams of the letters contained in the artist name + album name.  I have still not tracked down the book, despite having it on my eBay automatic alerts for all those years, which I guess means that a very small amount of copies have been sold, or that it's so good that no one wants to part with it.  Here are my favorite new ones (ones not included in the book) from their new blog:


Butthole Surfers - Independent Worm Saloon
SW bores emit another dud LP. No neurons left!

Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans

These cosmic oafs play ornate prog.

Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Black men complain noisily about the USA. No folk ditties!

GG Allin And The Murder Junkies - Brutality And Bloodshed For All
I'll rally at drug den, shoot junk and die right before album lands.

Nurse With Wound - Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella
A chic English noise band's inane debut, named for Lautréamont. [Wincing] Ew, what a glum scene!

Carcass - Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious
An imbecilic grindcore act scans its thesaurus, son!

The Rolling Stones - England's Newest Hit Makers

The white-skin men sell translated Negro songs.

John Lennon And Yoko Ono - Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions
"Any hit on it, Johnnie?"
"No."
"Music?"
"No."
"Skill?"
"No."
"Oho, flesh? Nude 2nd wife?!"
"No."

Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures
Ian's joyless vow: "I die, punks. No urn!"

Incredible String Band - Wee Tam And The Big Huge
Acidheads bring enlightenment. Dig, but beware!

Radiohead - The King Of Limbs
Kid A methods fail. Boring, eh?
(Submitted by the otherwise despicable Mark Prindle)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

Sulky hipsters play one-note instrumental feedback dirges, noon-five. Okay?

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Source Tags And Codes
Sonic Youth soundalikes wowed retarded fanboys. All dug act!
(Alternative anagram: Atonal Austinites' rock drones fully awed dowdy douchebags.)

The Doors - Waiting For The Sun

Oh, four stoned twits are nigh!

Their Fiona Apple one is sure to become legendary.  Hopefully they'll come up with a good one for my submission: P.M. Dawn - Of The Heart, Of The Soul And Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience.

Planets with similar climates: Tristeza - "Building Peaks" (2000), Tortoise - "Glass Museum" (1996), Swervedriver - "Never Learn" (1992), Slowdive - "Morningrise" (1990), Poem Rocket - "Contrail de l'avion" (1994), Simple Minds - "Shake Off The Ghosts" / "A Brass Band In African Chimes" (1984).

Best abysmal video found this week:

"The running of the Porta Potties at Preakness 2008"

Seefeel >> I can see you feel climactic

Seefeel - "Come Alive"

(Too Pure Records, 1993 / Astralwerks Records, 1994)

+

Seefeel - "Come Alive (Climactic Phase #1)"

(Volume, 1993 / Too Pure Records, 2007)

London-based Seefeel evolved into Scala in the mid-'90s; if you missed my Scala post from a few months ago (the song "Hold Me Down"), then you really have no one to blame but yourself.  Go check it out.

I was planning for months to post the dubby, hypnotic title track from the More Like Space EP, and in fact that song is one of the reasons I began this blog.  But I decided this song from the same EP is more immediate and just as compelling.  The dense, claustrophobic production style of this song somehow reminds me of the style used by The Bomb Squad, e.g. on Public Enemy's "Brothers Gonna Work It Out."  The punishing bassline and industrial-style drumbeats (I'm not sure if those are real or fake drums) take this song into uncharted waters, genre-wise.  It turns out that a wall of multi-tracked flutes can sound pretty eerie.  At about the 2:45 mark, the beat settles into a nice simulated lock-groove thing for about a minute, lulling you into a bit of a trance.  Then at about the 3:45 mark, the drums sort of run off of their tracks and go all free-jazz for a while, and then the last minute is all ambient and liquid-y.  I wish the spoken-style vocals were louder in the mix, so I could hear what singer Sarah Peacock is saying.  I'm quite sure that she says "I can see you" at the 1:51 mark.  I believe this exact mp3 was taken from the 1994 compilation of Seefeel's early tracks, called Polyfusia, which was designed to introduce the band to U.S. listeners concurrent with the belated stateside release of their debut album Quique.

"Come Alive"

An awesomely spacey, disorienting instrumental remix of this song called "Come Alive (Climactic Phase #1)" appeared on the 2007 "Redux Edition" reissue of Quique.

"Come Alive (Climactic Phase #1)"

This song was originally released in 1993 on a compilation called Volume Seven.  It was that bimonthly(?) compilation series that came with a nearly 200-page glossy CD-sixed book and always had a bizarrely charismatic species of fish on the cover.  It's hard to explain what the Volume series was, but this page has info & pics about installment #7.  (Note that Sub Sub had not yet turned into Doves, The Verve still lacked a "The," and Radiohead had yet to transform from a mediocre rock band into a mediocre techno-rock band.)

I first heard Seefeel via a track called "Charlotte's Mouth (Avant Garde Mix)" in 1999, and then I took a chance on buying Quique on cassette for a dollar the following year.  It became a roadtrip favorite in my Acura Integra (R.I.P.).  Seefeel reformed with only two original members a few years ago and put out a mediocre album, but at least it helped to stir up a lot of attention for the band's earlier works, which are finally reaching classic status.

That's a time-lapse photo of a moonset in Rio, taken in April 2011 by Babak Tafreshi; click on the photo for lots of info on it.  He's the founder of The World At Night, which describes itself as "a program to produce and present a collection of stunning photographs and time-lapse videos of the world’s landmarks against the celestial attractions."  I found it at NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day site.

Planets with similar climates: Curve - "Blindfold" & "Galaxy" (1991), Slowdive - "Missing You" (1993), Bailter Space - "Get Lost" (1992), Scala - "Naked" (1995), My Bloody Valentine - "Soon" (1990), Bleach - "Fragment (1992).

Soul Whirling Somewhere >> When will you make up your mind?

Soul Whirling Somewhere - "Every Female Werewolf Ever, Listed Alphabetically By Crime"

(Projekt Records, 1997)

Soul Whirling Somewhere was the musical vehicle of a guy from Arizona named Michael Plaster.  He released four albums on goofy goth label Projekt Records.  This song is from the EP Pyewackit.  The name refers to his pet mouse that died, and the EP is dedicated to this mouse; that's also presumably it on the cover.  Not the most gothy thing ever done, to be sure, but it took some amount of balls, I guess.  As for the name of this song, its origin is anyone's guess.  The defeatist lyrics and Red House Painters worship are pretty overt on SWS's somewhat unintentionally humorous debut (double CD) album, Eating The Sea, which I bought in '08 and listened to only once.  I bought this EP a few years before that.

If you like the little synth drone that comes in at the 2:38 mark of this song, you must hear the truly stunning ambient piece called "God In Heaven" that closes this EP, since it's built off of that same synth sound.  It's 11 minutes of perfection, and probably the best pure ambient song I've ever heard, truly an out of body experience for the inner mind.  I wish he had done many albums of ambient music rather than just one track.

No, not Trent Reznor... It's Michael Plaster, still shoegazing in 2006

Best headline of the week: Juggalos Boo, Pelt Charlie Sheen

Second-best: Abercrombie to pay 'Jersey Shore' cast to stop wearing its clothes

I guess America is finally getting fed up with douchebags?  If so, this is a good development.

Best abysmal YouTube video found this week:

"The Rock electrifies Lilian with the People's Strudel"

Planets with similar climates: Red House Painters - "Drop" (1994), Slowdive - "So Tired" (1992), Glide - "Worlds Away" (1992), Verve - "On Your Own" (1995), Long Fin Killie - "Valentino" (1996).

Christian Scott >> Fear the whisper

Christian Scott - "Litany Against Fear"

(Concord Records, 2007)

Here's another track from my piano-favsies list.  It's the epic opening track to trumpeter Christian Scott's 2007 album Anthem.  (His 2006 album Rewind That also had an epic opening track, which I will post in the future.)  He's been on my radar for many years now, but I've only seen him live once, at Jazz Fest in 2010, where he was in the lead role in a tribute to Miles Davis called Tutu Revisited, accompanied by Marcus Miller and an all-star band.  It was the only reason I went that day, and yeah, it was pretty awesome.  (Update, 8/16/11: In response to the comment this post received about NOLA shunning C. Scott, I will point out that I have never seen any musician receive as many ovations, or ovations of such volume/fervor, as Scott got during that Jazz Fest '10 performance.  And it was even more impressive considering Marcus Miller was technically the headline artist of that group.)  Aside from that, he essentially never plays live here.  I have no idea why he has shunned his hometown so blatantly.  Can you at least give us an explanation, Christian?  In the meantime, I'll just be over here having my soul stirred by whatever the first song on your latest album is.

All About Jazz said:
"Anything but predictable, Anthem opens with Scott's dramatic "Litany Against Fear." The track takes on the characteristics of a Sunday sermon, starting off with penetratingly introspective blue notes, rising to rebellious anger, and then ending with a moment of peaceful resolution. The percussive playing of pianist Aaron Parks, the muscular sound of drummer Marcus Gilmore, the resonant bass lines of Esperanza Spaulding* [sic], and the explosive riffs of guitarist Matt Stevens blend masterfully with Scott's brooding lyricism.
Very much like his idol, Miles Davis, Scott has a very laidback style, but as is the case with so many players from New Orleans, he definitely possesses the ability to swing."


*Yes, the Esperanza Spalding, surprise winner of Best New Artist at this year's Grammys, the first-ever jazzbo to win it.
To understand how Scott gets those cool hushed tones on his trumpet, arguably even cooler and more hushed than those of, say, Miles Davis or Chet Baker, read this paragraph about his "whisper technique".

April 2010 issue.  I saw him this very month, and I would've bought this ish(ue) if I had known about it at the time.

Speaking of trumpeters with cool, hushed tones, I mentioned getting a Chet Davis CD retrospective last month.  Here's the luridly effective opening page from the essay section of the booklet:

Hopefully Scott won't go down the road to drugs / ruin / mediocrity the way Chet and Miles did soon after their primes.  Maybe that's one of the reasons why he ditched NOLA in the first place?

A photo I took today of my Agave bracteosa (Squid Agave), which I've had for about 5 years, meaning it's about 7 years old:

It's in a 12" diameter pot.  This species is one of the few agaves (tequila plants) without vicious spines, and it's allegedly hardy down to 10º F, making it one of the hardiest agaves, hence everybody should own one.  It looks very wimpy, but the leaves are actually leathery and tough.

Planets with similar climates: Stanley Clarke - "Black On Black Crime" (from Boyz N The Hood), John Coltrane Quartet - "Wise One" (1964), Isotope 217 - "Beneath The Undertow" (2007), David S. Ware - "Aquarian Sound" (1992).

Michael Krassner >> Use your Aleutians

Michael Krassner - "Telegraph Hill"

(Atavistic Records, 1996)

This is another time-stoppingly haunting track from the Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back soundtrack; see previous post for more info if you missed it.  Gotta love the eerie samples of wind-ravaged surf in the background.  It kind of brings me back to the mid-'80s, on my dad's sailboat called the Green Toad* in San Francisco Bay, where the waves violently pound you nonstop, requiring the passengers to dart from one side of the boat to the other every few minutes/seconds in order to keep it from tipping over.  And the water is freezing cold year-round, not to mention a favorite haunt of great white sharks, and to top it off, the hulking corpse of Alcatraz is always looming in the background... Truly a miserable experience, but, as Calvin's dad always told him in Calvin & Hobbes, "It builds character."  Other than the sailboating thing, San Fran was absolute paradise to me.  Coincidentally, there's a famous Telegraph Hill in San Fran, the one with all the parrots which inspired a movie, but the one in this song title is apparently in Alaska.
*Our family's Buick sedan was called the Blue Bomb; my dad traded it for a bottle of wine ca. '85 before getting a Honda Accord and a GMC Jimmy.  He drove up to Oregon to get it because there's no sales tax there.  FWIW, today's Honda Civics are much bigger than that era's Honda Accords, since all American cars are incrementally getting bigger and more overpowered each model year in order to satisfy moronic American carbuyers, while people drive smaller and more efficient cars in Europe every year.  (The Civic is the Accord's little brother, if you didn't know.)  Despite its 90-or-so horsepower, that Accord was my favorite car to drive when I got my driver's license in March of '92, due to Honda's patented type of double wishbone suspension, which gives all Hondas / Acuras almost telepathically effortless steering.

As for this track, I've never seen a photo of Michael Krassner, but I can almost picture some gaunt, wild-haired guy sitting at a piano in a few feet of water on the Unalaska coastline in 30-below weather, plinking away at the ivories.  Astute readers will recall that this track was mentioned a few months ago in my National Skyline post, when I gave a list of my favorite piano performances.

Krassner put out a solo album in 1999, which is marred by Elliott Smith-y Sensitive Singer-Songwriter vocals and contains nothing like "Telegraph Hill," unfortunately.  He appears to be mainly a composer and/or producer.  In any case, here is hoping he does more of this minimalist piano stuff someday.  While I have indeed posted two tracks from this soundtrack, note that neither of them is by the main group (The Boxhead Ensemble) which did the majority of the album's music.  You'll have to just go get the album yourself to find out why I've raved about it so much.

Since your eyes need more Dutch Harbor-related imagery, here is a French DVD poster:

The one movie poster that out-pretentouses even the French

I recently dug up a slender 1978 tome that I've had for many years called Crazy Laws, by the unfortunately-named Dick Hyman.

I've almost given it away to thrift stores many a time, but each time I skim through it I am engulfed by a white-hot desire to keep it for a little longer.  Here are some highlights:

• "In Tennessee, you can't shoot any game other than whales from a moving automobile."

• "It is unlawful to throw coal at another person in Harlan, Kentucky -- if the size of the lump exceeds three inches."

• "Lions may not be taken to the theater in Maryland."

• "In Garfield County, Montana, it is ordered that no one shall draw funny faces on window shades."

• "In Georgia, it is unlawful to slap a man on the back."

• "Unrestrained giggling is forbidden on the streets of Helena, Montana."

• "It is unlawful in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, to remove icicles from buildings by taking potshots at them with a gun or rifle."

• "A Chicago law forbids eating in a place that is on fire."

• "In Lawrence, Kansas, you can't carry bees around in your hat on the city streets."

• "It is against the law to tickle a girl in Norton, Virginia."

• "In Memphis, it is against the law for a woman to drive a car unless there is a man either running or walking in front of the car waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians."

• "A Trenton, New Jersey, ordinance states that it is unlawful to throw any tainted pickles in the streets."
• "To catch a whale in the inland waters of the state of Oklahoma is contrary to law." [I think this is the only whale-related item you'd find there.]

• "In Tulsa, Oklahoma, you cannot open a pop bottle unless a licensed engineer is present."

• "It is illegal in Nebraska to picnic twice on the same spot within any thirty-day period."

• "In Wilbur, Washington, it is against the law for a person to ride upon the streets on an ugly horse." [Please, folks, no Amy Winehouse jokes... It's just too soon.]

• "Providence, Rhode Island, law forbids you to leap over local bridges."

• "International Falls, Minnesota, forbids cats to chase dogs up telephone poles."

• "Vermont says that a woman cannot walk down the street on a Sunday unless her husband walks twenty paces behind her with a musket on his shoulder."

• "It is against the law to speak English in Illinois."

• "In Glendale, Arizona, it is against the law for a car to back up." [Except over an "illegal" immigrant, presumably, considering AZ's immigration stance.]

• "Kansas makes it unlawful to eat snakes on Sunday."

• "The town of Brawley, California, passed a resolution forbidding snow within the city limits."

• "In Atlanta, the law forbids diaper service trucks from having horns that play 'Rock-A-Bye-Baby.'"

• "The law says you can't drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at one time."

• "In Illinois, Macomb makes it illegal for a car to impersonate a wolf."

• "In Muskogee, Oklahoma, there is an old city ordinance that states that no baseball team shall be allowed to hit the ball over the fence or out of the ball park."

• "A Georgia law prohibits persons from saying 'Oh, Boy' in Jonesboro."

• "Women in Joliet, Illinois, can be jailed for trying on more than six dresses in one store."

• "Beards more than two and a half feet long are forbidden by law in Altoona, Pennsylvania."  [Hear that, Brooklyn hipsters?  No more ironic field trips to Altoona for you.]

• "In Massachusetts, it is against the law to put tomatoes in clam chowder."

• "You can't say 'delinquency' on the streets of Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania."

• "In Winchester, Massachusetts, a young girl may not be employed to dance on a tightrope except in church."

Planets with similar climates: Harold Budd & Brian Eno - "Not Yet Remembered" & "The Plateaux Of Mirror" (1980), Roger Eno - "Whispering Gallery" (1994), Liz Story - "Speechless" (1988), Györgi Ligeti - "Musica Ricerata (Movement II)" (ca. 1951-53) (made famous in Eyes Wide Shut), (George Winston - "January Stars" (1982).


Currently eating or drinking: Stonefire Tandoori Naan flatbread; Mirassou 2009 California Pinot Noir; iChill Blissful Berry "relaxation shot".

Actual size; available at finer gas stations.

Will Oldham & Jim O'Rourke >> Light had brightened certain textures

Will Oldham & Jim O'Rourke - "Ebb's Folly"

(Atavistic Records, 1996)

This song is from the soundtrack to the black and white 1996 documentary film Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back.  It's about the effects of the encroachment of modernized society on the traditional lifestyle of the Aleutian people, specifically those of Unalaska Island.  (Though my research finds that Dutch Harbor is actually on its neighboring island, called Amaknak Island... hmm.)  Read more about the flick here.  This is the only song with vocals on the whole album, plus it's the penultimate track, right before a gentle lilting piece, so it really stands out.

Read the incredibly cryptic lyrics here, though I'm not sure if they're official, since they're not printed in the CD booklet.  I've still never seen the film, but I did buy the CD right when it came out, through Atavistic Records mailorder in summer of '97.  It was just a good hunch that paid off.  It is impossible to not be moved by Will Oldham's fragile vocals, and in my opinion this song shows it off better than any other song by him in all of his guises (Will Oldham, Palace, Palace Music, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, etc.), aside from maybe Palace's "Stablemate".  Oldham is credited with vocals and acoustic guitar, while Jim O'Rourke did all the background soundscaping, including the atonal noise finale.  The melodic flow of the song is very dramatic and soul-stirring, especially when you know that the climax is coming.  I also bought Palace's Arise Therefore album that summer, though I stupidly skipped a Palace concert at the Mermaid Lounge the previous fall.  (I finally saw him live in 2004.)  Anyway, I can't urge you strongly enough to buy or download this soundtrack.  I remember the summer of '97 as being very hectic, with me finding out about all kinds of new bands, going to lots of concerts, transferring to a new college, meeting girls from AOL in real life, getting an array of reptilian pets, etc.  This soundtrack provided a perfectly serene and haunting counterpoint, a head-clearer.  The album as a whole is credited to The Boxhead Ensemble, a nebulous "all-star" group made up of cool dudes from the Chicago / Louisville post-rock (the original meaning of the term "post-rock") axis.  It included members of Tortoise, Gastr Del Sol, Pinetop Seven, Eleventh Dream Day, etc.  Each track has a different lineup of members playing a semi-improvised tune, ranging between 1 and 13 minutes, for a total length of 70 minutes.  I really believe future generations will place this soundtrack on the highest pedestal of achievement within the genre.  Even the photos (film stills) in the CD booklet are stunning, and everything is done in grays and white, with some silver accents.

Back in the day, I cut out a 4-finger (4-star) review of the album from Alternative Press, by Mitch Myers.  Here's an excerpt:
"The net result of this altered summit is a series of compelling instrumentals that ranges between the brittle and the atmospheric.  Operating in several similarly manned configurations, the Boxhead Ensemble exhibit the ability to change themselves musically without losing sight of their job as empathetic accompaniments to a visual art.  As an added bonus, Palace brother Will Oldham sings a song with O'Rourke that the two wrote expressly for this project.  Serving as a perfect introduction to the cutting-edge Chicago improv scene as well as an unusual soundtrack recording, Dutch Harbor provides a safe and sumptuous haven for those in search of adventure."

VHS cover

After 14 years, I'm still dying to see the movie.  If you can somehow rent it or procure it in some fashion, Blowtorch Baby will hold Movie Night at your house; you are to supply the movie, big-screen TV or film projector, appetizers, nonalcoholic drinks, full dinner, alcoholic drinks, board games, and anything else, while I will supply companionship and thought-provoking conversation.  Note: The conversation will take place before and after the film, not during it.  The film came out on VHS (No Choice / Atavistic) in 1998, and on expanded DVD (Plexifilm) in 2003.

Planets with similar climates: Cat Power - "Keep On Runnin'" (1998/2003), American Music Club - "Big Night" (1987) & "Will You Find Me?" (1992), Palace - "Stablemate" (1996), Idaho - "If You Dare" (1995).

Lubricated Goat >> You feel like the animal who dies for the animal who lives for the animal

Lubricated Goat - "New Kind Of Animal"

(Amphetamine Reptile Records / Black Eye Records, 1990)

Lubricated Goat were semi-stars of the noise rock scene in the late '80s & early '90s.  My first exposure to them was in Mr. Beachy's geography class in 1993 when Ryan Massey or Michael Loeffelholz or Deegan McClung told me their name, since we had a habit of writing the most obnoxious possible band names on the sides of our textbooks.  At the time, I found it hard to believe that this was an actual band name.  Singer / guitarist Stu Spasm married Babes In Toyland's singer, Kat Bjelland, for a while; they formed the band Crunt, which released one album.  Lubricated Goat are infamous in their native Australia for playing (lip-synching) nude on live network television in 1988.  Here's the very NSFW clip of them performing their sludgy opus "In The Raw," which is sure to be yanked from YouTube again any day now:

(Hey, I just noticed that if you look in the background, e.g. at the 4:10 mark, you can see the John Wayne Gacy painting that was later used as the cover art for Acid Bath's terrible "classic" album When The Kite String Pops.)  That stunt inspired a recent documentary short film called In The Raw.  I saw a reformulated lineup of the Goat play at the Circle Bar in New Orleans in March '04 to a crowd of two or three people.  I got this album, Psychedelicatessen, a year later on CD at a pawn shop, but sold it on eBay for a pretty high sum.  This is the only song I saved from it on my hard drive, though I'm wishing I had burned the whole thing.  I redeemed myself by buying it on LP in 2007, though.  The song is superior to almost every other song in the genre due to its strangely spacey guitar in the background, which comes to the fore during the "calm before the storm" section (call it a Guitar Solo if you must) starting at the 1:05 mark and again at the 2:00 mark.  The scream at the 2:28 mark is truly scary, especially since the producer pushes the master volume up until the scream starts to distort and sounds like shards of glass exploding.  Stu is kind of short and very friendly / loquacious (I talked to him for about half an hour after the '04 gig, causing me to miss a performance by Broken Social Scene a few blocks away; well, actually, it was mostly him talking a mile a minute and me listening), so he's not nearly as intimidating as this song and the photo below would indicate.  I even bought a L.G. t-shirt, which I immediately donned and wore to a Calexico concert down the street, the show Broken Social Scene was opening.  (The band Stars played first but I missed them too.)  That was a crazy day because I actually actually saw yet another concert, headlined by An Albatross, that afternoon.  2004!

Great band photo from the Psychedelicatessen LP sleeve; Stu Spasm on far right

I don't know if the lyric used in this post's title, "You feel like the animal who dies for the animal who lives for the animal," is correct, but it's the best I can make out, and I like how it illustrates the food chain in an existential way.

The other night, I watched the end of the Teen Choice Awards, which should just be renamed the Pattinson-Gomez-Bieber Achievement Awards by now.  The final moment involved host Kaley Cuoco standing on some sort of DJ platform with lead dude will.i.am from art-rockers The Black Eyed Peas.  As the song "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO began to play in the background, I could practically hear what was going through his sunglasses-clad head: "I cannot believe how blatantly these fuckers ripped us off..."

I'll also fess up to watching the last few episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, mainly due to the unfathomably gorge (like a younger Stacey Dash) and talented Sasha Mallory, who ended up finishing second:

I need a Signature Move.

Planets with similar climates: Mudhoney - "In N' Out Grace" (1988), The Stooges - "1970" (1970), Helmet - "Murder" (1989), Sonic Youth - "Death Valley '69" (1984), Unwound - "New Energy" (1995), At The Drive-In - "Cosmonaut" (2000).


Currently watching: An In Living Color marathon on VH1

Carved SUK FOR HONESTY on my chest

I realized that, except for in my profile, I haven't laid out a modus operandi or anything like that yet.  This is because I tend to find it really irritating whenever someone lays out a modus operandi.  So... here's mine:

i.) I only post one song at a time because there are thousands of other sites / blogs / torrents which apparently take great pride in giving you huge amounts of mediocre stuff, but how many are there that prescribe a small dosage of truly great stuff?  Isn't your hard drive full enough already, without force-feeding it another live concert by your 174th-favorite band, or b-sides by that teenage Bulgarian punk band from 1982 that someone told you about?  It's astounding to me, from legal, ethical, and logical standpoints, that so many sites simply give away entire albums, even major-label ones, as though it were no big deal.  It is a big deal, and I don't take this responsibility lightly.  I believe strongly in the concept of intellectual property rights, and I always feel somewhat queasy about giving away someone else's intellectual property.  The name of this blog is of course stolen from a lyric to a song (by A.C. Temple), so I still feel a little guilty whenever I look at it.  And the photo image at the top of the page is a photo I swiped and heavily cropped & color-altered almost beyond recognition, creating essentially a whole new work.  (Yes, it was green palms against a blue sky.)

ii.) It sounds selfish, but I've discovered that my favorite thing about doing this site is that it gives me my own little permanent online jukebox of my favorite songs.  After I post a song, I usually listen to it at least a dozen times on here over the ensuing few weeks, trying to get into the minds of those people who are just hearing it for the first time.  The main criterion for a song to make it onto this blog is that it has to be something that I want to listen to over and over, no matter how many times I've heard it over the previous months, years, or decades.

iii.) I don't know how to publicize this site, and I don't feel like learning how, so I just sort of rely on word of mouth, or on people doing an online search for a certain band or song and stumbling over here.  I've gotten comments on only one post (Feverdream) in the last four months, so I'm obviously not doing this for the praise or glory.  My rule in life has always been something to the effect of "Don't let the size of your audience dictate the quality of your work."

iv.) Going back to the major-label topic, I obviously only give out independent-label, or no-label, or live, recordings.  It's mainly because I don't want to get sued.  It's not because I'm some Ian MacKaye-esque indie purist; most of my favorite bands have been on major labels for some amount of time or another, and those bands (Sonic Youth, The Church, Brian Eno, Miles Davis, My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, Faith No More, etc.) have had the biggest trickle-down influence on the indie bands that I like.

v.) Yes, Blogspot* is owned by Google, so it's quite a corporate thing, but I like the fact that it's entirely free, and the fact that if I were to get run over by a bus tomorrow, these songs would still be on here for all eternity.  Whereas if one buys one's own URL / website, it has to be paid for annually, and so if you stop paying for it, it gets mothballed and all your work was for nought.
* Google is changing the name Blogspot to the fantastically lame Google Blogs any day now.  Sad.
** I recommend Ixquick over Google, though I'll admit I do use Google more often.

vi.) For over a decade, I would just email mp3s to people I knew online, so this site offers a better-structured way of doing that.  In the mid-'00s, I got really enraged by hype-based blogs that turned mediocre bands like Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah into stars overnight, so I vowed that if I ever did a music blog, it would be totally different.

vii.) The "Planets with similar climates" section of each post is the part about which I am secretly the most proud.  As for how I came up with that phrase, it happened during a late-night brainstorm session.  I told myself I had to come up with something better than "RIYL" ("Recommended if you like") or "Similar songs," and the phrase "Planets with similar climates" popped into my head rather quickly.  It was a pretty cool moment; you should've been there.

viii.) I want people to put songs from Blowtorch Baby up onto YouTube.  YouTube is always my first choice when trying to hear some obscure song.

ix.) I often do slight modifications to posts over the ensuing day or two after making them.  If I edit / modify something at a later date than that, I put "Update:" to introduce the new stuff.

x.) It may look like I often mess up when assigning a year to a song, but that's because I give the year in which it was recorded, which is often a year or more before it gets released.

Reminds me of the Faith No More lyric "I want the brightest, I want fluorescence, every day and night for the rest of my life"

Felt >> Nothing seems to matter when I'm on your side

Felt - "Fortune" (re-recorded version)

(Cherry Red Records, 1984)

I'm not a huge fan of this band, but this song is exceptional, and should come pre-loaded onto every iPod / iPad / car stereo / boombox / etc.  It originally appeared on Felt's 1982 debut album Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty, and was re-recorded for an '84 single, albeit just as a b-side.  Yes, one of the greatest songs of the '80s was just a b-side.  I took it off of the Felt retrospective CD Absolute Classic Masterpieces, which I downloaded from eMusic in 2003.  The original version is tentative and mumbly, whereas this one is more energetic and dayglo, while maintaining its mysterious melancholy undercurrent.  The opening guitar note and bass note are each just so perfect, and things just get better from there.  I heard that Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins does the backing vocals at the end, but I'm not sure if that's correct.

Back cover

The last two lines of the lyrics are great.  Guitar prodigy Maurice Deebank's jazzy, bright style was quite influential on the whole '80s U.K. indie jangle pop / rock scene, most notably on Johnny Marr of The Smiths, and probably David Gavurin of The Sundays.  Singer Lawrence (just Lawrence) was quite indebted to Lou Reed, but added this weird sighing technique that made his vocals unique.  He was quite a strange dude, forming Felt with the sole intent of releasing exactly ten albums and ten singles in a span of ten years, after which he would break the band up.  He did just that, and then promptly formed a group called... Denim.  L... O... L.  The word "Felt" is great because it has several different meanings (touched; had an emotion; a type of fabric).  Like I said, I don't like most of Felt's stuff, though the surging "Penelope Tree" is pretty great.  Too bad it has to have a girl's name in the title, my biggest musical pet peeve ever, but I think I mentioned that at least once already.

Cool little things that have happened since I've started doing this blog:
¬ A few days after the Hex post, I found Game Theory's Lolita Nation double LP in a thrift store for $3.  (Donette Thayer was in Game Theory before becoming the singer of Hex, and I'd been wanting this album for many years.)
¬ On July 14, I found A.C. Temple's Blowtorch LP for $4.  (Its song "Chinese Burn" contains the lyric "Blowtorch, baby," after which this blog is named.)  I never thought I'd find that one on vinyl, and in fact it was my first time seeing anything by A.C. Temple in person.  It was filed under the "T" section of the store, which kind of made me crack up, but kind of made me sad, since if this really hip store (Domino Sound Record Shack) doesn't know who they are, then who does?
¬ A few minutes before getting my speeding ticket in April, I was holding Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" cassingle, deciding whether or not to buy it.  (I didn't.)  Then in late June, I heard the song "I'd Rather Be With You" by Bootsy Collins on the radio and realized Adina stole the entire melody of it for "Freak Like Me."  I called the station and told the DJ about Adina's song, but she'd never heard of it.
¬ Compare the random photo I used in the Honeyburn post to this now-infamous photo of disgraced Oregon congressman David Wu:

This dude had to recently resign due to his bizarre behavior, likely the result of mental illness; I had no idea about this photo until last week, though it technically did come out before the post I made.

Today (well, technically yesterday, since it's a little after midnight) I went to a Saints practice for the first time, from about 4:30 - 6:30 PM.  I mention the time of day because the sun was in full splendor, casting a 97º glow on us mortals, but it was totally worth the heat, and it was free.  Newly-acquired weapon Darren Sproles, Reggie Bush's replacement (upgrade), repeatedly stunned the huge crowd into gasps with his slippery breakaway runs.  Like, seriouisly, I had never heard anything like that from a crowd at any sporting event.  This little dude is legit.  And rookie tailback Mark Ingram (yes, the Heisman winner) is a wrecking ball in the mold of Deuce McAllister.  Someone mentioned to me that all five of the Saints' offensive linemen are Pro Bowlers.  The hitting was pretty fierce, with lots of after-the-whistle contact.  There were 11 wide receivers listed on the roster sheet, so I guess about half of them will have to be cut in the next few weeks.  I believe this squad is far better than the one that won the Super Bowl two seasons ago.  I parked my car directly under a weeping willow, so it was cool when I got back to it, and my Skywave 7" ("Don't Say Slow") did not warp.  I then drove down to Houma and bought that greenhouse that I mentioned last month.  The music in the car fir the last several days has been Warpaint's Exquisite Corpse EP and Puro Instinct's Headbangers In Ecstasy.  I missed the NFL Hall Of Fame induction ceremony, and I forgot to wear my Marshall Faulk jersey.  He's from New Orleans, if you didn't know.  I followed him pretty closely in college starting in '92, when he was dominating college football.  After his first game as a pro in fall of '94, I put up a black & white newspaper photo of him on my wall, and it stayed there for many years.

Planets with similar climates: Simple Minds - "Someone Somewhere In Summertime" (1982), U2 - "Love Comes Tumbling" (1984), The Lotus Eaters - "Set Me Apart" (1984), Plexi - "Change" (1996), The Feelies - "It's Only Life" (1989), The Sundays - "More" (1992), Pearl Harbor (Puro Instinct) - "Slivers Of You" (2010), The Durutti Column - "Never Known" (1981), Hinterland - "Dive The Deepest" (1990), The House Of Love - "Feel" & "Yer Eyes" (1992).


Currently trying unsuccessfully to: Stop reading Natasha Vargas-Cooper's blog.

Opal >> She knows the rain

Opal - "Supernova"

(SST Records, 1987)

Here's a classic from Opal's only album, the excellently-named Happy Nightmare Baby.  The band consisted of guitar god David Roback (formerly of Rain Parade), singer Kendra Smith (formerly of The Dream Syndicate), and drummer Keith Mitchell, but they were essentially just a duo of Roback & Smith.  Opal played basically a more autumnal, noir version of the rather lame "Paisley Underground" scene of the early '80s.  I first heard "Supernova" in summer of '97; not this actual song, but rather a faithful cover by the Texas band 7% Solution, on a covers cassette they sent out to fans on their mailing list.  7%'s male singer actually has a more effeminate and beautiful voice than that of Kendra Smith, so I will try to post it once I obtain the technology to rip audio from cassettes to mp3s.  I got HNB on CD not terribly long afterwards, but stupidly sold it about a decade ago.  And I stupidly passed on buying a used LP copy of it a few years ago.  Damnit, Chris.  Oh well...

According to Wikipedia, "Smith left the group during the Happy Nightmare tour, storming off-stage half-way through their gig in Hammersmith, U.K., effectively putting an end to the band.  Roback continued with vocalist Hope Sandoval, playing shows as Opal and planning an album to be titled Ghost Highway, but in 1989 this band became Mazzy Star and Ghost Highway was presumably released as [Mazzy Star's debut album] She Hangs Brightly."  ("Ghost Highway" is the name of one of the songs on that album... the best song on it, in fact.)  The rest is history.  Opal has never reformed; Smith went off to live in a cabin in the woods and then had a brief solo career on 4AD.  I had her album Five Ways Of Disappearing, but sold it a good decade ago.  I had a photo of Hope hanging in my locker in my senior year of high school ('94-95), which I had cut out of an issue of Rolling Stone.  It was just a slightly blurry photo of her wearing big sunglasses and standing there looking pasty and waifish, but there was something exotic and cool about her that I didn't find in high school girls.

None of the other songs on Happy Nightmare Baby are in the same league as "Supernova," though the poppy title ditty is pretty good and was allegedly a minor college radio hit:

I remember "Soul Giver" was particularly psychedelic, with lots of wah guitar.  "Rocket Machine" is pretty much indistinguishable from most of the Doors' songs.  "She's A Diamond" was used in the movie Boys Don't Cry.  I still hear "Supernova" from time to time on WTUL's Saturday night institution "Alternative Oldies," which only plays stuff that's at least 15 years old.  Note: XM Radio channel Sirius XM U does a similar show on Sunday nights, creatively named "Old School," and hosted by the very annoying trend-follower Jenny Eliscu, but you can hear some occasional gems on it.  Speaking of gems, I often wish that my birthstone could be opal rather than amethyst.


I have to call out one of my all-time favorite bands, Poem Rocket, for essentially stealing the drumbeat from "Supernova" for their song "Ka-boom," though it's possible they had never heard the song at the time.

Also, "She knows the sun" is "Supernova"'s first line, and a "crescent moon" is mentioned in its last line.  Well, a band called the Cowboy Junkies, with a sound very similar to Opal's (and a singer who sounded all but identical to Kendra Smith), were just coming up at this time, and, coincidentally or not, they later put out an album called Pale Sun Crescent Moon.

Opal: David Roback & Kendra Smith circa mid-'80s

I didn't mention it in my post on Saturday, but that morning I gave a ride to a guy who was embarking on a walk along Metairie Road past the cemetery to the Canal streetcar line.  And then a little later I did not give a ride to a woman who was frantically pleading for one in the Bywater area.  I was trying to figure out why I gave a ride to him (a young African-American guy wearing headphones) rather than to her (a tall, gothy-looking thirtysomething white woman with black hair and a skimpy black outfit).  I think it was because he was not asking for any help, and she was desperately trying to get help; maybe I just like helping people who are more of the self-starter type, though I generally do go out of my way to help those who are on the pathetic side.  So it to have been something more oblique, such as the fact the he was not likely to be offered a ride, whereas she would probably get one within a few moments of me passing her by.  Or that she may have been a prostitute or vampire, and if the former were true, I would not want cops to spot her getting into my car.  My instant assessment of her was that she was on drugs, and I think it was an accurate one.  They both had obstacles in front of themselves on that 100º heat index day, he a mile-long walk in zero shade, she a bridge.  In both cases, it was a snap decision, and it's hard to quantify how many things go into those kind of moments.  In hindsight, I think that bridge is one that doesn't allow foot traffic, so she may have had a valid reason for needing a brief ride.


Planets with similar climates: Concrete Blonde - "Scene Of A Perfect Crime" (1989), Yo La Tengo - "Decora" (1995), Lid - "Up" (1992), Acetone - "Sundown" (1993), The Bevis Frond - "Requiem" (1997), Warpaint - "Warpaint" (2010), Soundgarden - "Fresh Tendrils" (1994), Juned - "Pretty New Song" (1994), Poem Rocket - "Ka-boom" (1997), Magic Dirt - "Eat Your Blud" (1993).