Love Of Diagrams >> You broke into my house and you stole it

Love Of Diagrams - "The Pyramid"

(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.

Woman arrested for beating up boyfriend after he got wasted and sang that annoying Macklemore song, "Thrift Shop," 25.5 times on his 26th birthday - "Enraged, Samantha started to shove Lars, but he still wouldn't stop singing the song. So she grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him (wait, now it's the worst birthday ever)."  Couldn't you have at least let him finish the 26th rendition?  Now he'll subconsciously just be wanting to sing it even more.

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).

Trial Of The Bow >> That's not a knife

Trial Of The Bow - ""Inverloch"

(Release Entertainment, 1994)

This is a pretty ethereal and somewhat menacing track, with a timeless feel that makes its origin hard to pinpoint.  It's a shame that Trial Of The Bow (no idea what the name means) only recorded one EP and one full-length.  This is from the EP, called Ornamentation.  I almost posted the more dynamic "The Two Sacred Tapestries Of Persia" or "From The Mountains Of Tangier", but decided "Inverloch" deserves to be better-known as a chillout classic.  They were from Melbourne, and this EP would make a great soundtrack for one of my favorite Aussie flicks, the existentially violent Walkabout, or for Picnic At Hanging Rock, which I just saw for the first time last month.  The song is named after the seaside town of Inverloch in Victoria, Australia.  This one goes out to ManiacEyeball.

AllMusic Guide says "In addition to the use of the standard guitar/bass/drum setup, the duo also uses several exotic instruments, including the tabla, hammer dulcimer, tamboura, manjira, bansuri flute, and e-bow. Their lengthy, evocative, contemplative drones take cues from several ageless sources, alternating from haunting to soothing."
They actually made an official music video for the song, which I have on one of those Rock Video Monthly VHS tapes.  It's also on YouTube, sadly at only 240p.  The video's director (username: warmcola) said "I made this video waaaay back in 1994, shot on Super VHS and edited together on my Uni's brand spanking new AVID... Great to see it again."

Sept. 1995 VHS; Trial Of The Bow's EP cover is at bottom right

This VHS has videos for some amazing, era-defining songs by Buffalo Tom ("Summer"), Matthew Sweet ("We're The Same"), Better Than Ezra ("In The Blood"), and Faith No More ("Evidence"), and is capped off perfectly by the "Inverloch" vid.  I have a bunch of these RVM VHS tapes but since the advent of YouTube I never watch them.

Well, I was pretty mad about the ridiculously poor sound mix that Swervedriver had inflicted upon them by the Jimmy Fallon show (or I guess by NBC in general) last Monday.  It totally neutered their sound and made them sound muddy and amateurish, whereas in reality nothing could be further from the truth about them.  Maybe their sheer volume simply overloaded the limiters / attenuators and caused the levels to be artificially low?

I found this magazine the next day in someone's trash on the curb, a few minutes before a massive storm came through.  It's a beautiful, Anton Corbijn-esque shot in every way.  I think I'm going to frame the cover, since I'm really into desert plants; the pic is of a group of Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), of course.  December '93 was a really rough time for me for several reasons, so this cover helps me reboot my brain when it comes to how I remember that time.

Going back a few weeks...

March 20: Saw Alcest (from France), Deafheaven (from San Francisco), and Whom Do You Work For? (from NOLA) at The Big Top.  It was probably the smallest crowd that Alcest, a hybrid shoegaze-metla band, has played to in years, but they were appreciative.  WDYWF? stole the show, in my mind at least, with their edgy, Slint-y, CAN-y, controlled chaos.  I recommended A.R. Kane's "Green Hazed Daze" to their singer afterwards, and he immediately typed it into his phone as a reminder.  Also bought their new CD-R EP, which comes in several different spray-painted covers.

Flyer showing upcoming shows put on by An Idea Like No Other + a show preview from local zine Antigravity

I snapped a pic even though lots of people were taking better ones up front:

They probably haven't played on a stage this small in many years

March 23: Saw two concerts by Dutch saxophonist Tineke Postma at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge.  Esperanza Spalding is no longer her bassist, unfortunately, but it was very good nonetheless.

March 24: The annual spring Record Raid at Tulane.  Got a bunch of stuff I never thought I'd find, such as Band Of Susans' Love Agenda (LP), the influential ambient compilation Ambient 4: Isolationism (2xCD), and other stuff like some Massive Attack, Idaho, Miles Davis, and Breathless.  Talked to this girl Candice who remembered talking to me at a Broken Water show two years ago, and even remembered that I was wearing a James Chance & the Contortions shirt that night.  Wow.  She showed me a Wipers tattoo on her tricep; I think it said "Is this real?"  Bought a New Bloods 7" and a Hell-Kite cassette from her booth, plus she tipped me off to a zine with a semi-nude photo of Broken Water on the back cover, so I of course bought that.  Also met some other really cool people, including a guy who was at a Trans Am show I saw in '99 (see upcoming post on that) and his wife, Kathi.  She was, unbeknownst to me, DJing when I called in to WTUL to ask about a song (which turned to be from Belong's latest album) a few days later, and recognized my voice, so we talked for a few minutes.  I requested something by Seefeel, whom she had never heard of; I told her to pick any song and she ended up choosing "Climactic Phase #3".

March 29: Was driving around in east Baton Rouge near Prairieville and saw a Blockbuster Video that was going out of business, so I hit it hard for a few hours and got some obscure foreign films.

March 31: Went to the annual Dept. of Parks & Parkways plant sale at Dillard.  Got a huckleberry tree, a spicebush, and two little flowering plants.  Talked about lots of obscure plant topics with a DPP employee named Skip; decided to name the huckleberry tree after him because his praise of the species led me to buy it.

This post's title is everyone's favorite line from a certain famous Aussie movie, duh.

130 Simpsons episodes at once

Planets with similar climates: Steve Roach & Robert Rich - "Touch" (1992), Miles Davis - "He Loved Him Madly" (1974), Brian Eno - "Lantern Marsh" (1982), Bark Psychosis - "Pendulum Man" (1993).

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

Hex >> When I feel bigger than life, I hold a mirror up to my breath

☿ Hex - "Mercury Towers" ☿

]]] (First Warning Records / Demon Records / Rykodisc Records, 1989) [[[

Since I don't know a lot about this band, and the members are very wry and articulate, I'll just give a little background info and then a bunch of quotes from them.  Steve Kilbey was the main singer/songwriter/bassist for Australian band The Church; Donnette Thayer was a guitarist/singer in Cali bands The Veil and Game Theory.  Somehow they hooked up and started a little minimalist-pop side project called Hex circa 1987.  They also may or may not have dated; Donnette in a 1998 interview:

"Here's the Starfish story I've been holding out.  After many such conversations, Steve wrote me a postcard saying that he hoped that I would soon be a star, or at least a starfish.  Thereafter, during that period of time, when I wrote to him, I would sign my name as Starfish.  Naturally, I was astonished to see that the title of the record was Starfish.  Steve covered himself though, so as not to get in trouble if these postcards popped up, by adding that vinyl note about droogs and 'The Starfish is [The Church's drummer Richard] Ploog.'  I've been a musician long enough to know that the Starfish very well could have also been Ploog.  But it was me first."

"Taken in a photo booth somewhere on the East coast of the U.S."

She said Steve "covered himself" with that excuse because he was then dating Karin Jansson, singer of Curious (Yellow).  Donnette is also an unabashed math nerd and overall Renaissance Woman and possible genius.  This song is from Hex's self-titled debut album.  I got it in the early '00s, I believe at the CD Warehouse on Veterans Blvd. in Metairie, which was going out of business.  I bought about 125 CDs from them in one day during this clearance sale, and about 75 on another day, all for an average of a dollar.  (You guys had literally like 40 copies of R.E.M.'s Monster clogging up your racks [all with the distinctive orange jewel tray, except for the one with a regular black jewel tray that my sister bought, for which I chided her], and you wonder why you went out of business?)  Few songs can put me in a more chilled-out mindframe than this one every single time.

The lite industrial drum beat is just jarring enough to propel the song without obstructing the delicate vocal and piano/synth parts.  The wanderlustful line "It's only an hour away from here" is very reminiscent of the line "And it's only a day away... We could leave tonight" in The Church's outstanding "Metropolis" from the following year:

The U.S. LP had this write-up on its inner sleeve:

"The music is rich and seductive, a bewitching mix of acoustic, electric and electronic instruments, capped with alluring lyrics.  Call it post-psychedelic rock 'n' roll, future-folk, melodic prose and poetry or musical moods for ultra-moderns, Hex is an indescribably enticing album that will enchant you."

From the press kit that came with promo copies of the LP:

"Hex is neither a group, nor an album, but rather the musical spirit that comes from the union of singer Donnette Thayer (formerly of Game Theory) and Steve Kilbey (bassist and principal singer and songwriter for The Church).

"It really started as an experiment," explains Thayer.  "I'd given Steve some tapes of me singing, and he liked them, so he suggested that we do a song together.  I thought it would just be a fun thing, but after the first song we did" -- "Silvermine," included on the album -- "the music started taking on a life of its own."

Kilbey's prolific songwriting often includes music that isn't intended for The Church.  "I've always wanted to do an album with a female singer, but never found the right one," he explains.  "Then I heard tapes of Donnette, and realized that she was the voice I'd been seeking."

During a break following The Church's Starfish tour, Kilbey and Thayer went into the studio to work on some musical ideas Kilbey had come up with while on the road.  "The music started out as sequences," recalls Donnette, "but soon it began developing its own personality, like some character from a book that gets up and starts walking around the room."  Working in various locations around New York City during the winter of 1988-89, the duo came up with ten songs that seemed to naturally coalesce into an album. 

Says Donnette, "It was strange how Steve and I found ourselves thinking the same. I could really trust the way he'd express what I'd been feeling."

That magic is indelibly impressed into the tracks that became Hex, creating a spell that even brought about a name for their collaboration.  "We were playing Scrabble one night, and HEX came up as a word, and there it was," says Kilbey.

Adds Donnette, "It was worth a lot of points, too.""

She talked further about this story in 1998:

"Ho!  You remember the Scrabble anecdote!  For our listeners who may have just tuned in, Hex came up in a Scrabble game that Steve and I were playing.  Steve had used an X and I placed an E in front of it.  He expected me to spell out SEX, but I spelled HEX instead.  I was hesitant to do this, because Steve uses every bit of inspiration that comes his way.  I was worried that this metal-rock word would haunt me.  It did.  Nothing against the word Hex, it’s a great word with an interesting history and many engaging and hidden connotations.  It just didn’t match the music.  Everybody knows that I play arena rock."

Since it has a languid sound with atmospheric synths and electronic drums, and of course female vocals, a lot of people consider this album to be a forerunner of trip-hop music, but I think that's too much of a stretch, though it definitely has a proto-"downtempo" vibe.  It is certainly quite an unexpected detour from the sounds of their previous bands.  Another great song from this LP is "Fire Island," followed closely by the erotic "Silvermine" and the rustic "Ethereal Message."  I was surprised to find out a year or two ago that there was a music video made for the latter (Kilbey does not appear in it for some reason), so here it is:

I could just watch that video all day long.  Not that it pertains to the music, but wow, Donnette was traffic-accident-causingly gorgeous, despite the Desperately Seeking Susan hair...  Remember, folks: A math geek.  The song "Diviner" from this album was used in the 2003 film Tarnation.  I've gotten most of this arcane info from here and here.  I was shocked to see Donnette say, somewhere on one of those pages, that Hex's first album went double platinum; maybe she meant in Aussie sales or was just joking altogether.  According to my research, double platinum in Australia means 140,000 copies sold, in a nation of around 20 million people.  Hmm.  Paging all math nerds...

Note: The ☿ symbol I used in the song title field is the glyph for Mercury.

Planets with similar climates: Area - "I'll Gather Flowers" (1988), Portishead - "Roads" (1994), Insides - "Skin Divers" (1993), Zero 7 - "In The Waiting Line" (2001), Over The Rhine - "Iron Curtain" (ca. 1990), Suzanne Vega - "Big Space" (1990).

Glide >> So close I trip and fall under your wheel

≈≈≈≈ Glide - "Water Falls"

(Medical Records, 1992) \\\\

In honor of the first rainfall here in over 2 months, I'm finally posting this song.  (Note: Do not confuse this Glide, from Australia, with the Glide from England that is the solo project of Echo & The Bunnymen's guitarist Will Sergeant.)  The volume and bass levels are mastered very low, so please play this very loudly...  I bought this CD totally on a whim at a thrift store a few summers ago, despite its lame title, Shuffle Off To Buffalo, which I later found out is a tap dancing reference, but, based on the EP's lyrical themes, presumably also references the breakdown of a relationship.  I vividly remember cranking this song up loudly after hearing the Cocteau Twins-esque wimpfest that opens this song, and then being walloped by the drums and guitars, and then hearing the huge chorus and wondering how this band was not world-famous.  I'd accuse Hum of ripping off their hit "Stars" from this song, except that they had probably never heard of this little shoegaze band from Australia.  Then again, who knows?  "Stars" is one of my favorite songs ever, and Hum were tremendously great when I saw them in '98, so I won't sit here and rip on them, but I had to at least float that theory.  Then again, the opening chords of "Water Falls" sound an awful lot like those in The Cure's giganto-hit "Just Like Heaven."  This EP is mastered pretty quietly, especially by today's "Loudness Wars" standards, so play it at maximum volume.  Oh yeah, the EP is utterly amazing, and it's one of the few things to which I've ever given 5 stars on rateyourmusic.com.

A few more songs from the Shuffle EP will be posted on this blog in the future, such as the devastating acoustic track "Worlds Away" which shows that some shoegaze bands can sound great even with the loud guitars stripped away.  "Water Falls" song also appears on Glide's 1997 EP/single compilation CD called Shrink Wrapped Real Thing.  According to Glide's website, they formed in 1991 and played live with Swervedriver, Ride, Lush, Morphine, Blur, Juliana Hatfield, Clouds, The Dambuilders, Luna, Live ("Her placenta... falls.... to the floor"), Longpigs, and many others.

I'm not sure if this is the lineup that played on this EP; William Arthur is second from right.

Singer William Arthur committed suicide in 1999, a few months after Adrian Borland of The Sound did the same thing.  I've read some of Arthur's tour diaries posted on some Glide fansite (I can no longer find the diaries or the site), and I have to say he comes off as a cocky, sexist prick, delivering bluntly withering critiques of the physiques of women who were so rude as to talk to him, and general criticisms of the U.S. and life on the road in general.  Which is the opposite of how I thought he would be, based on his existentially vulnerable and poetic lyrics.  Maybe they just caught him in a bad mood.  With what could politely be called an extremely limited singing voice, he was able to wrest some pretty impressive vocal stylings over the course of this EP, letting the edgy guitars and drums keep their place in the spotlight.  After this EP, the band drastically changed its sound to more of a Sunny Day Real Estate kind of thing, pretty much ditching its majestic shoegazeness for more of a gnarled post-grunge sound, which is not as pleasing to the ears without the soaring vocals of someone like, say, Jeremy Enigk.

Planets with similar climates: Hum - "Stars" (1995), Catherine Wheel - "Texture" (1992), Plexi - "Forest Ranger" (1996), Sunny Day Real Estate - "Seven" (1994), Bailter Space - "So La" (1997), The Cure - "Just Like Heaven" (1987).


Currently eating or drinking: Pillsbury Simply... Rustic French bread; Otria Greek Yogurt Veggie Dip; Mandarin oranges (from a can, embarrassingly, since my Mandarin orange tree hasn't made any fruit in the last 2 years).


Currently bewildered by: The existence of this 1983 video game: 

(Found via Can't Stop The Bleeding, a sports blog run by the head of Matador Records)

Update: A few days later, I found out on WIkipedia that this game is a recently-created spoof, but I bet ol' George would've been proud.

Feverdream >> I'll take you where you really wanna go

› › › ›  Feverdream - "Never Letting Go"  ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹

› › › ›  (Viridian Records [Australia], 1995; Satellite Records [U.S.], 1997)  ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹

This song is massively important to me, and I've been waiting 12 years to share it with this ever-rotating world, and it was almost the very first song I posted on this blog.  I'm into "pretty" vocals as much as the next person, but this song is a case where you have to take the singer's rough voice for what it is, and appreciate the surprising amount of acrobatics he can do with it, despite how limited it sounds at first.  I've noticed that bands from Australia in the '80s & '90s were heavily inspired by the Stooges, Sonic Youth, & the Byrds, with a great sense of melody and a certain tough, but not macho, sense of cool.  (Well, AC/DC were macho douchefucks, but I have a theory that most Aussie bands were embarrassed by them and hence consciously tried to be the anti-AC/DC.)  Feverdream were based in Melbourne and put out three albums and an EP.  Feverdreams are those weird dreams you sometimes have when you're sick, due to elevated brain temperature, I would assume.

Note: Do not confuse the Aussie Feverdream with the more prolific and simplistic Dutch punk band of the same name; the Aussie one came first and put forth superior recordings.

For a complete adrenaline overload, watch this clip of my favorite car chase scene ever (on full-screen and w/ the sound on mute, of course) while blasting this song.  It's freaky how the lyrics, especially the "gone off the rails" part and the bridge jump, sync up with the music...

(Start each of them at the same time, of course.)  It takes a little bit of user interaction, but trust me, it's worth the effort!  And if you don't trust me to provide mind-blowing entertainment, then why are you even here?

I got into this song thanks to a compilation of Feverdream's work intriguingly titled You Don't Know Us, But We Know Who You Are, their first-ever release on a U.S. label (Satellite Records in Pasadena, CA), which I bought for a few bucks in Jan. '99.  This song doesn't have the shoegaze quality that most of their songs had, but I will post some of their shoegazey songs in the future.  Satellite Recs. put this sticker on the front cover:

SUGGESTED RADIO TRACKS:

1. Never Letting Go

2. In Way Over

3. No Stone Unturned

To buy other tracks from this album, and to read a great bio about the band, go here and click the "Read more..." button.  I'm pleasantly stunned that this CD is still available.  I had read a gushing article about them in Jack Rabid's The Big Takeover magazine from the fall '98 issue, which was the first issue of it I ever bought, so it was serendipitous that I found the CD shortly thereafter, and I made sure to pounce on it.  It took me many years to track down the CD that originally housed this song (Moniker, on Viridian Records, distributed by Shock), via eBay.  The guitar solo in this song is possibly my favorite ever, and I have to recommend it to anyone who is burned out on guitar.  It's completely transcendental, and I always get a rush out of the way it kicks in right as the singer says the last word of the chorus, which happens to be "Go," and he even takes down the pitch of that word to allow the guitars to come in at a higher pitch, and of course the drummer starts playing like he was shot out of a cannon.  Just... wow.  But if you listen to it while driving, don't blame me for the ensuing speeding ticket.  (This band featured a triple guitar attack: Tim James, Ben Keenan, and David Wroe.  The only other good three-guitarist bands I can think of are Band Of Susans and Juno, and maybe Temple Of The Dog, and of course the guitar ensembles of Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham.)

This band's singer/bassist, Ewan McArthur, also played some bass for the gothy band Eden on Hyperium / Projekt Records.  Strangely, he soon completely ditched rock music and went on to a career in electronic(a) music!  I interviewed him for my old online zine in '03-ish, so I'll have to put that up here at some point, though I'm probably going to post those interviews on a WordPress site instead of this one.

At Jazz Fest yesterday, I stuck around in 90º heat to see one of my least favorite bands ever, The Strokes, just to see if they would suck as bad as I always thought.  They did.  During a pause due to equipment troubles, the "singer," who resembled nothing if not a human coatrack crossed with a Basset hound, actually said the following thing to kill some time and to be witty: "I stopped following jazz in the '40s."  Then his head probably realized that he may have just offended tens of thousands of jazz fans in the birthplace of jazz (though he had little to worry about, as about half of the crowd was teenage girls*), so he made a clumsy follow-up / explanatory comment and the band mercifully went back to another lame song that sounded just like their previous ten.  He later pointed out that the band was in the shade on the stage while we were all stuck out in the full sun.  Really classy.  The good stuff yesterday included the Nicholas Payton SeXXXtet, Khris Royal & Dark Matter, Shamarr Allen & The Underdawgs, and, to an extent, Lauryn Hill, who performed as though she had just chugged ten or so Jolt colas.  KR & DM covered two of my favorite songs, Tears For Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" and Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express," in elegant jazz-funk style.  Badass.
*I once knew (online) a girl who had sex with him when she was about 16, ca. 2004.

Planets with similar climates: Kitchens Of Distinction - "Within The Daze Of Passion" (1991) & "What Happens Now?" (1992), The Chameleons - "Return Of The Roughnecks" (1985), The Sound - "The Fire" (1981), Compulsion - "Delivery" (a.k.a. "Basketcase") (1994), The Veldt - "Soul In A Jar" (1994), Unwound - "Kantina" (1993), Swervedriver - "For Seeking Heat" (1993), Catherine Wheel - "Chrome" (1993).


Currently thinking about the following things I ate or drank yesterday: Mango freeze/smoothie thing (at Jazz Fest), couscous in yogurt sauce w/ raisins (at Jazz Fest), a Blue Moon beer (at Jazz Fest), Maas Lander jong belgen cheese that my sister brought me from Amsterdam, a Guinness Draught beer.


Currently happy for: Former Hornets Peja Stoyakovic and Tyson Chandler, who helped the Dallas Mavericks eviscerate the Lakers today and sweep them out of the playoffs.  It was honestly like watching the Harlem Globetrotters toying with a high school team.  Jason Terry was 9-of-10 from downtown, and Peja was 6-of-6.  Phil Jackson was exposed as the mediocre chessmaster he's always been, completely unable to adjust to matchup problems or to motivate his pouty team.  I'll never like Mark Cuban, but he has put together a near-perfect team that will win its first title, probably against the Heat, which would be a rematch of the '06 Finals.

Curious (Yellow) >> Give me your hand but don't ask me for more

Curious (Yellow) - "Taken By Surprise"
(Red Eye Records / Polydor Records, 1990)

Okay, here's a quickie.  I was actually gonna post Bleach's "Burn" since I burned my thumb taking buns out of the oven yesterday -- please, folks, no childbirth jokes -- but fate intervened.  In 1967 a movie came out in Sweden called I Am Curious (Yellow), followed a year later by its sequel / sister film I Am Curious (Blue).  (The colors just refer to those of the Swedish flag.  My mom gave me a little 4x6" one last year because I'm part Swedish, albeit on my dad's side; on hers I'm Lithuanian & Austrian.)  The films were allegedly pretty scandalous due to their nonchalant sexual content.  I heard about the movie years ago but was not excited enough by its plot to seek it out.  Today I got the book for 20 cents at a thrift store in the not exactly hip town of Gonzales, La., giving me a perfect excuse to post this song, which I got a few years ago while scouring the Side Projects section of The Church's discography site.  The book has 250+ film stills in it, which makes it unlike any book I've ever seen before... I guess they had to do that because there's so little actual dialogue in the movie?
So anyway, this Aussie band was helmed by the very Swedishly-named Karin Jansson, who co-wrote The Church's worldwide hit "Under The Milky Way" a few years earlier.  Head Churchster (and then-boyfriend) Steve Kilbey returned the favor by producing and playing bass on C(Y)'s sole album, Charms & Blues, which was fittingly pressed on transparent blue vinyl.  The song's devastatingly cool n' sinister bassline will tell you it's Kilbey before you even look it up online.  The bicycle-rrific video is kinda hokey but memorable.  Jansson was previously in a feminist punk band called Pink Champagne.

The Fall had an album called I Am Kurious Oranj, but they're one of my most despised bands ever, so take my word that it fucking blows as hard as everything else they ever did.

Planets with similar climates: The Sundays - "Here's Where The Story Ends" (1989), Juned - "Hearts To Bleed" (1995), Camera Obscura - "Let's Get Out Of This Country" (2006), Jale - "Back On Track" (1996), Film School - "Time To Listen" (2010), Cat Power - "Cross Bones Style" (1998), R.E.M. - "Driver 8" (1985).

From 1970

Currently eating or drinking: Ritz Cheese Bits; Steel Reserve 24 oz beer / malt liquor thing (only $1.50 at a gas station; surprisingly good); Hubig's pie (blueberry).