Poem Rocket >> I don't want to be your satellite

Note: In order to declutter this site and keep it more focused on the specific musical artist at hand, I'll be posting most of my personal photos, musings, etc. on a conveniently-URL'ed Tumblr page from now on.  This is just one of the many services that is provided to the Blowtorch Baby reader.  Subscribers of course get free landscaping advice (USDA climate zones 8 & 9 only) and the ability to stop time for up to four days.

Poem Rocket - "Flaw"

(Bear Records, 1994)

If you've been paying attention to the little "Planets with similar climates" sections at the bottom of every post for the last two years, you've seen this band pop up constantly.  And the previous post probably tipped you off to what was coming next.  I think the reason I haven't gotten around to posting anything by a lot of my all-time favorite bands yet is that I get sort of paralyzed by what to do, since I often have to decide between several photos, maybe a promo poster, a live pic that I took long ago and have on some disc somewhere, a review from some zine that's being stored in a closet, a music video that got yanked from YouTube, a tour t-shirt, etc.  The problem is that I want so badly to do a band justice that I don't want to leave any pertinent info out.  This especially applies to a band like Poem Rocket, about whom information & photos are quite scarce.  Any tidbit of information that can be unearthed about them is important.  So if you know of any review or live gig listing or photo, etc., please post it online somewhere so that it doesn't become buried beneath the mists of time.  This song is a great representation of Poem Rocket's quieter side.  It's the b-side to their "Period (Punctuation Or The Interval Of Time Required For A Cyclic Motion)" 7", which came on orangey red vinyl pressed at the audiophile-friendly speed of 33 rpm.  Like most of the band's chameleonic early non-album tracks, it can be found on the great compilation CD Felix Culpa.

Maybe due to the opening lyric "I'm waking up," as well as the sluggish tempo, this song makes me think of an alligator or capybara emerging from hibernation.  The drumming changes dramatically over the course of the song, and for what it's worth, Poem Rocket had a ton of drummers.  The core of the band was always singer / guitarist Michael Peters and bassist / singer Sandra Gardner.  They got married in 2003.  I think my online zine Cold Comfort was actually responsible for "breaking" that news in 2003, when I did an email interview with Peters, but for some unknown reason, it didn't shake the indie rock world to its core.  I'll post excerpts from that interview soon.  Peters' slide guitar brings a bluesy, desolate, wounded feel to the song, in an era when slide guitar was probably the most uncool thing on the planet.  (Juned also used it that same year in their great song "So White.")

As you can tell by the band's name, the cover art of this 7", and the use of a satellite as a lyrical metaphor, this band was kind of obsessed with outer space, but not in an overt or obnoxious way.  I think they viewed it as a good prism through which to deal with the subtleties of human relationships, e.g. the (real or imagined) distance between two people, rather than in a simplistic "Hey, let's jump on a rocket and go to Mars" way.  People who actually know about space know just how stupid most of those ideas are, mainly due to the fact that most cosmic distances are measured in a little thing called the light year.

Some publication called Sound Views praised this single's "guitar-powered concoctions that slowly bloom into atmospheric/noise-rock":

This came in my Into The Aether 10" EP. Flower was a mighty fine Wipers-esque band that evolved into Versus, by the way.

L-R: Michael Peters, Sandra Gardner, Andy Nelson (I think), someone (probably Dennis Bass, a.k.a. Dennye)

I bought this 8x10" promo pic on eBay about 5 years ago, and, amazingly, it seems that it has never appeared anywhere on the internet.  Way to go, Poem Rocket's publicity team / person.  I even asked the (really nice) guy at PCP Records mailorder for one in 2003 to use in my interview, and he sheepishly told me they didn't have any.  If that is indeed drummer Andy Nelson, the pic must be from the mid to late '90s, since he was apparently in the band from 1993 to '98.  I know this because I created P.R.'s Wikipedia page and lots of people proceeded to add lots of details that I never knew about, such as exact years of tenure in the band.

Check out this hilarious review I found in the April / May 1995 issue of the California skatepunk zine Flipside:
"These guys could take up a whole side just with their guitarist's introduction and just as his guitar work was approaching a solo on the level of Led Zeppelin, in jumps the singer who has a rather annoying style of purposely changing the inflection in his [sic] voice in a manner which makes him [sic] sound very off-tune.  In jump the other instruments as the songs play on and this whole scenario appears so overly self-indulgent as to make one want to vomit.  They bring new meaning to the word 'obnoxious.'"  The review was by their usually-reliable scribe Michele, who must've mistaken them for some sort of classic rock-influenced grunge band angling for a major-label deal.  (Flipside was obsessed with trying to valiantly sniff out and expose those types of bands.  If you thought that review was harsh, you should read some of their Lollapalooza reviews.)

Song credits from the inside flap of the Felix Culpa Digipak:

Planets with similar climates: Live Skull - "Bootcamp" (1986), Bardo Pond - "Tantric Porno" (1996), Opal - "Supernova" (1987), Bleach - "Crimson 'O'" (1990), Warpaint - "Warpaint" (2010).

Currently drinking: Three intriguing dark beers - Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout, Sierra Nevada Narwhal Imperial Stout, Fuller's London Porter.

The Aqua Velvets >> Amber waves of sand

California Month continued, tremor #26:

The Aqua Velvets - "Nomad"

(Milan Records, 1996 / Riptide Records, 2006)

Not much to say here... Just a dope, chilled-out surf instrumental.  This kind of thing is actually quite hard to make, since most surf shredders play way too many notes and hence fail to nail that blissful, electrolyte-depleted sundown feeling that you have after a good day at the beach.

I don't really know anything about this band and haven't made any effort to fix that.  I bought this CD in summer of '09 at a Baton Rouge thrift store on a whim for one or two bucks; the main coup of that day was buying Suzanne Vega's fantastic self-titled debut CD for about five bucks.  This Aqua Velvets CD, Nomad, came out in 1996 on Milan Records and was reissued ten years later on Riptide Records, which is the band's own label.  (Riptide released their debut album in '92.)  The mp3 I'm giving is from the original '96 CD; I'm not sure if the '06 version was remastered or not.

Their next album is pretty good and has one of the best covers ever:

Today this Spanish bullfighter got gored in the head and had one side of his face ripped apart from the inside.  I watched a clip of it in slow motion and felt quite nauseous afterwards.  Of course I'm happy whenever a bull gores a matador, but this took it to another level, so I'm not going to link to it.  Other stuff I did today: Listened to some Toro Y Moi on iTunes to decide if I want to see them on Monday or not.  The answer is probably "or not," despite the greatness of their song "Still Sound."  Watched #1 LSU crush Florida.  Watched this movie Catfish, which turned out to be a documentary, not a psychological thriller / mockumentary as I had anticipated.  Ate a banana.  Checked on Kreayshawn's tumblr, a guilty pleasure for the last month or two.  Listened to some of Insides' album Euphoria in the car.  Played basketball for two hours at my favorite court, the one at Lutcher Playground.  I was the only non-black person there out of about 100 people, as it was some sort of family reunion / block party, with a DJ playing smooth jams under the pavillion.  (I think he was just playing a mix CD and announcing each song in between over a PA system, but I didn't mind because the music was good.)  Most of the basketball players were teenagers, and none were in my league skill-wise, so it got a little tedious, especially since some of them would randomly start texting or walk away to get barbecue or whatever.  Probably 15 different guys cycled in and out of the game overall.  A cop car pulled up and told them to turn the music down at one point, which was not surprising, since the police station is about 50 feet away.  When the sun set, I decided I was too sweaty and tired to stop at Winn-Dixie to get groceries.  Listened to some of Savage Republic's self-titled CD in the car on the way back.  Did laundry.  Wrote this.  Still in shock over the Phillies being shut out last night at home in an elimination game.  Ryan Howard injuring his ankle on the game's final play was fitting, but I still wore my Howard jersey today.  He batted about .100 in the series.

Today I also skimmed through the "Index of First Lines" appendix at the back of The Contemporary American Poets: American Poetry Since 1940.  (Signet Classics edition, 2000.)  Tell me you don't want to read every one of these after reading their first line:

One that is not shown in the pic since it's at the bottom of the left page is "I walk the purple carpet into your eye."  This is from Diane Wakoski's Inside Out.  Fun Fact: The line "inside the blood factory" was used as the title of a 1968 compendium of her poetry, well, actually closer to prose, that I bought last year.

Notice in the following list that I'm not just throwing out tracks by well-known '60s surf bands, e.g. Ventures, Shadows, etc., like most people would do.  So it's a good example of how I like to dig a little deeper into the soul / essence of a song when finding its kindred spirits, and that usually means going outside of its accepted genre.  None of them are surf bands, and none are even from the West Coast, but the tracks all have haunting, bluesy guitar melodies that have been stuck in my head for many years.
I think my favorite "similar planet" recommendation so far has been Concrete Blonde's "Dance Along The Edge" in the post about The Sound's "Burning Part Of Me."

Planets with similar climates: Yo La Tengo - "Return To Hot Chicken" (1997), Eric Clapton - "New Recruit" (1992), Polvo - "Snake Fist Fighter" (1990), Scenic - "Ionia" (1996), Tortoise - "I Set My Face To The Hillside" (1997), Felt - "Fortune" (1984).