Long Fin Killie >> Friday night in a stolen car

Long Fin Killie - "Clinch"

(Too Pure Records, 1996)

I first read about Long Fin Killie in a spotlight article in Alternative Press in 1996 (the article used this exact photo), and later learned that I missed them at Lollapalooza '96.  (It was at the field outside of UNO's Lakefront Arena, not at Tad Gormley Stadium as this poster incorrectly says.  That poster also omits Rage Against The Machine, who played right before Soundgarden.)  My friend Clark was not keen on going, so he went with me under the condition that we would only see Soundgarden, and then leave.  We did leave, right before Metallica came on.  I was such an indie rebel, brah.  But too dumb to wander around and check out the side stage / second stage bands during the long amount of time we stood around waiting for Soundgarden (who kicked ass, by the way) to go on.  Long Fin Killie were an unorthodox group, to say the least, so you must read about them in AllMusic Guide's excellent bio.  The key phrase is "staggering levels of musicianly talent."  I personally recommend their second album, Valentino, with its haunting ambient-pop title track, plus more intense standouts "Cupid" and "Cop".  Mark E. Smith of The Fall did some grating guest vocals on "The Heads Of Dead Surfers" on their debut album, Houdini.  All three of their albums were named after people who garnered the public's fascination before dying young, and all their artwork was intricate wood etchings.  As for fame and dying young, the Killies got in a near-fatal wreck on tour, in N. Europe I believe, but never became even slightly well-known.  I bet the head of Lollapalooza's accounting division resigned when he found out these passive-aggressive art terrorists were being bused around the U.S. on his dime with nary a Beavis & Butt-head or Buzz Bin appearance to their name.

The fact that this song didn't make it onto Valentino is pretty infuriating to me.  The band's artsy, dense music is grounded by bouncy-yet-predatory basslines, and Luke Sutherland's vocals are usually mesmerizing, going from a whisper to a booming falsetto in half an instant.  To call LFK's drummer one of the best and most innovative ever would be pointing out the obvious.  The swaying, tropical-noir feel provided by the bassline has always intrigued me, and has made me return to this song again and again since I first downloaded this EP (Hands And Lips) on eMusic in '03.  The "Dope, sex, protest, rock n' roll" chant at the end of the song has to be one of the most subtly hilarious / postmodern things in the history of music.  When it comes down to it, most musicians' lyrical conceits can be summed up as either: a.) boasting about all the rad/illicit things they do, b.) whining about all the injustices in the world, or c.) reminding us how hard / capably / frequently they rock.  Sutherland simply reduces all these things to a simple jingoistic slogan, repeated as nonchalantly as though it were a child's schoolyard song, thus squashing the previous several decades of popular music into a little ball of putty in his hand.  This is a perfect example of why LFK were so far outside the mainstream, and equally far outside the alterna-stream.  Not surprisingly, their fanbase today is small but very devoted.

From a broader standpoint, while recently thinking back about the fact that my opinion of this song is always in flux, I've realized that one of the coolest things about this song is that it seems to fit and adapt to my mood, or my mood can bend it (the song) in different ways.  You can pay attention only to the pretty vocals and the snappy beat in the verses and it sounds like a breezy jangle-pop song.  Or you can focus on the savage drums in the instrumental breaks and let the bass overwhelm you and it's a post-punk song.  Someone with so-called classical training may follow the violin as the main instrument and hence view the song as a chamber-pop piece.  To use more intangible terms, it can be either a blurry / pastel / 2-D kind of song, or an edgy / primary color / 3-D one.  Sometimes this song just goes in one ear and out the other in a pleasant way, and sometimes I focus intently on it, obsessing over all the dozens of little details.

Fun Packaging Fact: The CD apparently came with a green plastic tray, as seen in this pic of a still-sealed copy:

I've amassed lots of different colored CD trays over the years, from gold (Primus' Brown Album), silver (Sonichrome's Breathe The Daylight), seafoam green (some CD by Pure), glittery gray (Eve's Plum's Envy), neon green (Alice In Chains' Alice In Chains), purple (Alice In Chains' Alice In Chains) (alt. color scheme), white, red, neon pink (Bagman's Wrap), yellow, orange (REM's Monster, bane of all clearance bins nationwide), taupe, etc.  But I had never seen a green one until this one.
Sutherland gained underground fame (incl. comparisons to Morrissey) for his cryptic lyrics, and he was no pretender, later becoming a minor literary sensation upon the publication of his books Jelly Roll, Sweetmeat, and Venus As A Boy.  The latter was later adapted for the stage, and its title rings a bell to me only as the title of one of Björk's best songs, but I'm sure it has some deeper meaning.  A multi-instrumentalist virtuoso (violin, guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, saxophone, hammer dulcimer, thumb piano) in LFK, he also played some violin on Mogwai's downer LP Come On Die Young.  Definitely a genius of some sort.  Read an informative little article on him here – "So I started reading everything I could lay my hands on: fiction, history, mythology. You name it, I devoured it in an attempt to create a wider context for myself. And all the rigid constructs of race, nationality, sexuality just fell apart."

Press photo from mid or late '90s; Luke Sutherland is second from right

Since LFK broke up in the late '90s, Sutherland has helmed Bows and Music A.M., which are more trip-hop / downtempo / "glitch-pop" type projects.  Fun German Fact: Music A.M. included bassist Stefan Schnieder of To Rococo Rot and Kreidler.

My cousin Shane is studying killifishes and cocahoe minnows in grad school at Mississippi State University right now, so this song goes out to him by default.  The tropical killifishes kept by aquarists are often mind-blowingly gorgeous, so one can understand why Long Fin Killie chose its name.  Here are some drawings I made ca. age 13, when I had recently gotten my first saltwater aquarium:

Blue Ring Angelfish (Pomacanthus annularis)

Some species of Rainbow Wrasse (Thalassoma spp.). No idea which one b/c their colors morph dramatically from juveniles to adults

I've long disowned these as somewhat pathetic, since they're just factual representations of these two species of fishes, and the white backgrounds always made them look incomplete.  But I guess a tweenager can't be expected to do much more than simply try to be a Xerox machine, and there is a certain beauty in giving someone or some critter an accurate, detailed portrait.  I now find the white background kind of cool, since lots of films / music videos have used it to create a disorienting feel.  My grandmother Marcie made sure that I signed & dated them, though I didn't understand why at the time.  I went on to have at least one saltwater aquarium, & sometimes up to three, between 1989-2010, excluding the year right after Katrina.

Sorry for the long, graphics-intensive post, but the study and care of fishes was my main obsession for about half my life, and I planned to become an ichthyologist or marine biologist.  Even notched a 102 test average in ichthyology @ Loyola Univ. New Orleans, which trumped my ~96 test avg. in herpetology (reptile / amphibian biology).  I took both of those courses in '98, and the field trips for each were extremely fun, especially the trip to the Ozarks in Arkansas for ichthyology and the trip to the swamps around the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for herpetology.  I still jaunt over to the latter site every few years to look around, but mainly for botanical lifeforms now.  Since I never even finished my last year of college, all the studying was for naught, but I think any sort of intensive learning of data makes one's brain better at gathering & manipulating info.  So in a weird way, my studying of scaly beasts made me better at remembering songs by obscure bands, and vice versa.  As I told Shane 2 weeks ago, "All I did in college was study and go to concerts."

It's a steal! How Columbia House made money giving away music - "On top of that, the clubs generally weren’t buying their records from labels and then selling them. Instead, the clubs would acquire the master tapes of records and press their own copies on the cheap. Moreover, remember those 'bonus' or 'free' records you got for signing up for the clubs? The clubs generally didn’t pay any royalties at all on those, which further slashed their costs."

2 great videos from The Onion:
New ad urges hipsters to go to Applebee's ironically
New Prius helps environment by killing its owner

Planets with similar climates: Simple Minds - "Sons And Fascination" (1981), The Dears - "We Can Have It" (2002), Lowercase - "Willing To Follow You Down" (1998), Bark Psychosis - "A Street Scene" (1993), Plexi - "Change" (1996), Cocteau Twins - "My Love Paramour" (1983).

The Autumns >> Birds of the night cry out and swoon like the blood won't dry

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #55:

The Autumns - "Boy With The Aluminum Stilts"

(Risk Records, 1999)

I wrote this entry a few weeks ago and it vanished on me, so this is a more bare-bones version of it that I'm writing from memory, sorry.  The quality of the song itself is readily evident, so I don't need to sit here and explain why I'm posting it.  It's really close to the perfect song, and even the way it comes to a sudden end is pretty cool.

I got into The Autumns in 1999 or 2000 via the shoegaze-oriented Blisscent mailing list, and I guess I bought this CD around that time.  I found out they played in New Orleans in December of '99 (I think) and literally not a single person showed up.  I don't even know if they played, or just left for the next city.  I can't believe I missed it.  This band had everything needed to become huge: a cool name, an ideal producer (Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins), passionate songs (verging on "emo" territory, in fact), pretension, cool haircuts, tight shirts, proximity to Hollywood, etc.  As for pretension, this album is actually titled In The Russet Gold Of This Vain Hour.  It came out in 2000, but "Boy With..." was released as a 3-track CD single in '99.  (Local store The Mushroom has it for a few bucks, and I plan on going back to snag it any day now.  It has a cover of "Garlands" by Cocteau Twins.)  The Autumns had a pretty fervent online fanbase, and I assume they still do, though I'm not sure if they are still recording or touring.  I had their debut album The Angel Pool and debut EP Suicide At Strell Park, but sold them both long ago.  I should probably undo that.

The music video is not superb, and I doubt it was ever shown on MTV:

Went to Winston's Pub last night for the first time and had some interesting happenings in less than an hour; drove Vanessa's new car for the first time while the music of pop phenom Rihanna was blasted.  Apparently every man, woman and child in America has a huge crush on her, and I can't say I blame them, but she is one messed-up individual.

Some trees flooded by the Mississippi River in Bridge City, LA; 6/13/08, not long before sundown:

Maybe it looks mundane, but to me those willow leaves at the top center really add the most amount of interest to it.  Especially since that species (Salix nigra) is considered a "junk tree" by plant geeks, since it's fast-growing, weak-wooded, and and susceptible to lots of diseases.  It's pretty much the predominant tree along the edge of the entire Miss. River, since it can grow on pure rocks and can take lots of flooding.  Anyway, I like how the willow leaves look like fingers or claws in this shot, and the pleated look of the water's surface shows that there are lots of tumultuous cross-currents going on underneath, due to all the big boulders there that you can't see.  It's just a really queasy and ominous photo overall, at least in my mind.  I remember this night well because it was insanely hot and humid, and I ran diagonals on the concrete sidewall of the levee, and when I got home, all the TV stations were doing lengthy tributes to Tim Russert, who had died that day.  I wish there were more dudes like him in our political media.

Planets with similar climates: U2 - "The Unforgettable Fire" (1984), Sunny Day Real Estate - "Disappear" (2000), National Skyline - "A Million Circles" (2001), Simple Minds - "Someone Somewhere In Summertime" (1982), The Joy Formidable - "Whirring" (2008).

Psi Com >> The city bleeds rosy veins to empty streets

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #51:

Psi Com - "City Of 9 Gates"

(Mohini Records, 1985 / Triple X Records, 1993)

The post I wrote about a band called The Autumns mysteriously vanished, so I had to turn to a quickie alternate plan, and my oh my what a Plan B it is.  I mentioned my longtime obsession with this song in my other Psi Com post, so I decided to finally pull the trigger and post it.  I think the lyrics might be about an acid trip, but hopefully not.

I've had a crush on Alex Wagner for some time now, based on her frequent guest appearances on The Rachel Maddow Show and other such cable political shows.  She even helped me forget about my huge crush on fellow MSNBC contributor Ana Marie Cox, which is no small feat.  So I was overjoyed to see her get her own show this week, NOW With Alex Wagner.  I was pretty surprised to learn she was the editor-in-chief of hipster rag The Fader from 2003-7.  I'll admit that I used to skim that magazine strictly to determine what bands to avoid, but I still think it's neato that she was so immersed in music.  Wagner is a pretty powerful last name in showbiz, but I don't know anything about her ancestry, other than the fact that she appears to be at least half Asian.  (A guy from Psi Com looked Asian too, but I forgot his name.)  She looks like she's about 15, and constantly has this infectious ear-to-ear grin, as though she knows she has the winning Powerball ticket in her back pocket, even when casually eviscerating a douchebag pol.  Much like Maddow, she has a mind like a supercomputer and totally guides any conversation she's in.  I've never really seen anything quite like it, so check her show out.  There are hardly any clips on YouTube of her talking politics, and there are only a handful of pics of her on the Google, but I assure you this will soon change as America falls in love with her charming ways and makes her its first female President in about 25 years.  You heard it on Blowtorch Baby first.  Hopefully she won't tap any of those stupid Fader-approved hipster acts to play at her Inauguration.  (Can you even imagine how much America's worldwide standing would plummet if The Rapture or Sleigh Bells screeched their way through the Star-Spangled Banner or "Jesus, Take The Wheel" or whatever it is that they sing at Inaugurations?  We'd become a third-world nation overnight.)
In the meantime, mouth-breathers on conservative websites are having a field day disparaging her for her comments about the Second Amendment.  For example, this unflattering pic in a post at a site named Ammoland.com (really) is titled Freedom-Hating-News-Annalist-Alex-Wagner.jpg:

"I will squash your guns into non-deadly metallic implements such as silverware or paper clips, and you won't even be able to shoot me while I do it."

ROFL... "Annalist"?  Was that supposed to be a clever pun, or was it just a typo by their tobaccy-chewing intern goon?
She inspired this hatred by using her pesky First Amendment rights to say:

This face kills fascists

I don't necessarily agree with that, but I don't disagree with it either.  In a perfect world, guns would have never been invented, but they have been invented, so you have to face about the old adage "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."  And by "outlaws" I mean "Republicans and some random crackheads n' thugs."  (Go look up the origin of the word thug; it's not what you think.)  When I'm President, guns will still be legal, but it will be like in Holland where you have to prove you only want it for hunting, take a comprehensive course on using one, and submit to frequent home checks.  And even the tiniest offense will result in a lifetime loss of gun privileges.  Like, if you even cough on an American flag or pet a bald eagle's feathers in the wrong direction, NO GUNS FOR YOU.

Yesterday I donated some plants & a little cypress tree to Parkway Partners, then sold a bunch of CDs to Skully'z for the first time in 1.5 years.  Right before driving in to NOLA, I gave a baby Live Oak tree to an elderly guy who was walking down my street, who told me his name is Donald or Ronald Brown.  He was ecstatic.  While driving down Bourbon Street to Skully'z, I noticed a jazz singer with a great voice crooning in a courtyard, so I parked and then walked about a dozen blacks back to see who it was.  Her name was Eilleen, I think, and the place was called Cafe Beignet, you know, that place with those corny statues of Pete Fountain, Louis Armstrong, and Chris Owens out front.  It was my first time ever actually going in it, since it's so tourist-trap-y.  I watched her sing for about half an hour, with little finches perching on my table and on nearby wire chairs begging for crumbs, while I ate a blueberry yogurt on a crystal-clear, crisp (65º) afternoon.  It was pretty much my own little slice of paradise.  It was just her, a black lady, accompanied by a seated white dude on jazz guitar.  I finally went to Skully'z and bought Simple Minds' New Gold Dream on CD.  (Already had it on LP & cassette.)  We chuckled at a $400 Smiths box set he had just gotten in.  Then I headed to Domino Sound Record Shack and donated some free seed packets I'd picked up at Parkway Partners; I bought a nice Rahsaan Roland Kirk LP for 6 bucks, and the owner (Matt) let me have a bunch of The Wire magazines for free.  One of them has the band Broadcast on the cover, so I was reminded of their singer's recent death; I never liked their music too much, though.

Today I randomly ended up back to that part of town and saw that some sort of festival was going on, so of course I had to check it out.  Zion Trinity and Sharon Martin performed; I got some bland macaroni & cheese for $3.  An obese lady was sitting a table to sign copies of her book titled Wet, but I decided not to check out if it was about... that.  Apparently no one else wanted to either, because her table had no visitors.  I bought a few more things at Domino, including a Chameleons 7" I'd been wanting for many years.  Matt played some of Matana Roberts' new album and said he thinks it's a masterpiece.  Just another weekend of stumbling onto lots of cool shit in NOLA.  Not to rub it in or anything, but why anyone would want to live anywhere else on earth is beyond me...  Oh yeah, the heat, humidity, crime, govt. corruption, bad schools.  Well, they build character, as the dad in Calvin & Hobbes used to always say.  And another bonus is that Nicholas Cage recently moved away from here (I think), though he is allegedly constructing an elaborate pyramidal tomb in one of the cemeteries downtown.

Speaking of people with minds like supercomputers, I found this clip at about 2AM last night.  Many YouTube commenters have accused it of being a backwards video, but it looks legit:

Planets with similar climates: Catherine Wheel - "Ferment" (1992), Plexi - "Peel / He" (1995) & "Peel" (1996), The Sound - "Missiles" (~1979) & "New Dark Age" (1981), Christian Death - "Cavity - First Communion" (1981), The Chameleons - "Second Skin" (1983).