Juno >> When you turn off the alarm, I turn on you

Juno - "Leave A Clean Camp And A Dead Fire"

(DeSoto Records / Pacifico Records, 1998; Modern City Records [France], 2001)

This song really has it all: A ridiculously long, atmospheric intro, cool guitar textures galore, rocket-propelled drumming, a tsunami of psychedelic axe-mangling, and of course a monster climax to end all climaxes.  And only four lines of of lyrics in ten minutes.  And three guitarists.  Do the math.  You can see by the genre tags I used that this band was not exactly easy to pigeonhole.  I've always wondered where that word came from.

Due to the stealthy escalation of tempo, there is an 85-90% chance that you'll get a speeding ticket if you listen to this on ye olde American highway, so it's better to listen to it at bingo nite or any other time you need a quick pick-me-up without caffeine.  In order to stave off insomnia, I avoid caffeine after noon.  Juno covered DJ Shadow's "High Noon" on a split EP with DeSoto labelmates The Dismemberment Plan.

I first heard about Juno in a Jade Tree Records mailorder catalog in early '98, and almost ordered a 7" by them.  I read reviews of this album, This Is The Way It Goes And Goes And Goes, around the time it came out in '99.  But I didn't buy it until spring '03, when the Wherehouse Music (formerly Blockbuster Music) on Tchoupitoulas St. had a going-out-of-business sale and I snagged dozens of used CDs.  (That's the only time I've ever seen this CD for sale in the used bins in the 13+ years since it was released, since almost no one who buys it is dumb enough to sell it.  If you ever see it used, do not hesitate to open your wallet.)  Articles about the band always mention singer Arlie Carstens' former career as a pro snowboarder, and the grisly accident he sustained which forced him to focus solely on music.  His loss, our gain.  The review of the album in CMJ by Kelso Jacks said "Juno crafts its music slowly.  However, the brilliance of this album more than compensates for Juno's less-than-prolific nature.  The band relies on the powerful interplay of three guitars to churn up an expansive whirlpool of textures.  Juno's blasting, six-string complexities mimic everything from airplanes to waterfalls to banjo plucks.  Unfettered by convention, these Northwesterners follow their sonic muse without paying mind to the clock, allowing sweeping, 10-minute epics such as 'Leave A Clean Camp And A Dead Fire' to unfold with the kind of passionate aggression that makes potentially self-indulgent duration a moot point.  The brutal rhythm section adds to and controls the thunder using carefully measured accents and punctuations.  This raucous din is topped off by guitarist Arlie Carstens' intelligent, surreal utterances, which are processed through a fuzzbox to complete Juno's wall of intensity.  Truly worth the wait."  That's basically a clinic on how to write a compact and informative review, by the way, though he should've mentioned more than just one specific song.  (I omitted one discography-related sentence near the beginning.)  It concludes: "Marketing Data: A summer tour is possible, though Carstens is currently recovering from spinal cord injuries, the result of his severely being injured in a snowboarding accident, earlier this year."

Great live clip at an unspecified venue in an unspecified year:

Also check out the sublimely haunting murder ballad "A Listening Ear", featuring co-lead vocals from Seattle chanteuse Jen Wood.  It has some of the coolest slide guitar I've ever heard.  A band called The Sea, Like Lead named itself after the album's closing song, "The Sea Looked Like Lead."

This Is The Way It Goes And Goes And Goes was not originally released on vinyl, but in 2001 a European tour edition on double LP was pressed on a French label called Modern City Records.  Juno's live shows are the stuff of legend.  They never played in New Orleans, sadly, and believe me, I sat around staring out my window for several years, pining for them to come by and Junoify my city.  I guess Europe was a lot more inviting to them.  The only other three-guitarist band that I actually listen to on a regular basis is Band Of Susans.

2001 gatefold double LP with two different colored records; pic courtesy of discogs.com

Juno's stature in the indie rock community is such that a documentary film was made about their recent comeback, but I don't know if it ever came out, and its website appears to be in mothballs.

Fri. Oct. 5: Despite having some sort of sinus infection or cold, saw Merchandise and Glish at the Big Top.  It was kickass, and each band played the songs I wanted to hear, though it was evident that Merchandise's (very charismatic) singer was wasted off his ass.  More on this show in an upcoming post!  Oh yeah, I donated a book called For The Vegetarian In You to the NOLADIY / An Idea Like No Other guys so they could add it to the Iron Rail library.  And I requested that they order me a copy of the new Possession EP by this Portland band called Arctic Flowers.  Wandered around Frenchmen St. afterwards, mainly to catch the end of a photography exhibit called Velado by Melissa Stryker at Scott Edwards Photography Studio & Gallery.  The photos had naked ppl and were printed on huge aluminum sheets, but in my opinion were not as racy or scandalous as the artist probably thought they would be.  Here's the front and back of the postcard that made me decide to trek to the exhibit:

No, that's not Stryker in the pic.  I saw a few songs by a crazy funk / party band called Yojimbo that was playing at Maison.  Their singer / trombonist is a super-energetic, bespectacled redhead, and I was stunned to see she was wearing this bootleg Sonic Youth Sister t-shirt that is commonly sold by shady sellers online.  I got mine on eBay about a decade ago; I think I gave it away to my internet girlfriend Michelle, whom I am no longer internet dating.

I took some video clips of Yojimbo, if only as proof that the singer had this shirt on.  I didn't go inside due to it being packed and me being sick, but the open door and huge glass windows made it easy to see & hear inside.  This girl, Carly Meyers, will be a superstar.  In between jumping up and down as if on a pogo stick, playing her trombone pointed up at the ceiling, and laughingly wiping sweat from her face with a towel, she guided the crowd in holding up a blanket and urged them to "Get in the love tunnel!"  I found a great Merchandise show poster (a big one, different from the small one shown above) on Frenchmen, so my night was complete.

Sat. Oct. 6: Went to the Bridge House thrift store and bought some sweet books and NIN's The Downward Spiral on CD ($1), then played hoops at that Annunciation Street court.  One of the dudes was LSU's point guard in the late '80s / early '90s.  He was a stocky redhead who could fill it up from outside.  I mentioned that I went to LSU basketball camp in 1990.  Watched some of the #4 LSU vs. #10 Florida football game with my sister, then we tried to go to the Botanical Garden.  She was impressed by the raw power of "I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart" by A Place To Bury Strangers on the drive over there.  NOBG was due to a wedding, so we walked around City Park and did some obnoxious stuff.  Came back and watched LSU lose in pathetic fashion.  I had lost track of my The Downward Spiral CD long ago, and was blown away by how fresh and visceral it still sounds.  I still have the promo postcard that Interscope sent me when the album came out, and my friend Warren and I listened to it all the time in the mid-'90s.  I had kind of swept the album under the rug of my mind as I got into better music over the years, but songs like "Reptile" and "Mr. Self-Destruct" are just inimitable and stand up to any sort of highbrow scrutiny.

Sun. Oct. 7: This was a pretty interesting day.  A cold front blasted through, bringing the temp. down by about 20º from the previous day's high.  I helped to stake some Chinese pistachio trees on Metairie Rd. with some Parkway Partners people.  I was wearing my red Drew Brees practice jersey since he was gonna try to break Johnny Unitas' streak of 47 straight games with a TD pass that night, and the NFL wisely made sure it was against the team that let Drew go, the Chargers, a team that is so inept that it actually got the name Chargers from the fact that it was founded by a credit card ("charge card") magnate.  Then Em and mom and I went to the zoo; Em said "Oh my God" so many times that mom and I had to tell her to limit it to one time per exhibit, but she couldn't even do that.  Then we ate at this pizzeria called Slice next to Whole Foods, then went to Whole Foods, then went home to watch the first half of the Saints game.  Drew got the record early with a pass that literally hit Devery Henderson on the numbers and in stride.  That means "The ball flew through the air and hit the receiver on the chest, and the receiver did not have to alter his running motion."  Found out that the Godspeed show already started, since the dumb promo postcard and poster had the wrong start times on them.  So Em and I drove over to Tip's, knowing that we had missed the opening act, G String Orchestra.  Luckily Godspeed were in peak form, beginning with a long (10-minute?) ambient drone, the one at the beginning of "The Dead Flag Blues" but unfortunately omitting the ominous dude talking about cars on fire, a thousand lonely suicides, etc.  Minimalistic film clips (sometimes just words) were projected behind them throughout the show; they also did this when I saw then in March '03 at TwiRoPa.  I was disappointed at a few downsized elements: The band was down to only one female member, and no longer had any cello; the venue was smaller than last time; the merch table was way smaller, with only the (brand) new album for sale (and only on vinyl), plus some t-shirts.  These are minor complaints, because it was a really challenging and uncompromising concert, the kind most "post-rock" bands wouldn't even dare attempt.  Even by GYBE's standards, the buildups were extra-long and the climaxes were done with a great flair for layering.  Mom texted me to say the Saints had won; I texted back "Fuck yeah."  Near the middle of the show a dude passed out and hit the ground with a huge thud right behind us, and had to be escorted out.  (This was nowhere near as cool as when a guy slashed his wrists outside a Humpers / Neckbones show that I caught in '97 at Monaco Bob's.  That show continued after only a brief pause, by the way.)  The finale was just incredible, with two of the greatest pieces of music I've ever seen, set to a backdrop of a factory on fire.  I'm pretty sure the last thing they played was "World Police And Friendly Fires."  There was no encore, despite lots of cheering.  Efrim didn't say a word to the crowd, despite the fact that he was practically a stand-up comedian at the A Silver Mt. Zion show in Feb. at One Eyed Jacks.  To celebrate the fact that her computer had not been stolen, despite being parked with one window totally down, we went to this bar called Ms. Mae's up the street.  It was as lame as my sister told me it would be, though I played two Interpol songs and Catherine Wheel's "Black Metallic" on the internet jukebox.  Some guy in a just-bought Godspeed (or G String Orchestra) shirt juked some Pelican and Russian Circles.  Uhh... No comment, Beavis.  A charismatic 59.9 year old art teacher at Tulane sit right down at our table and hit on Emily right in front of me, and kept claiming he had met us before.  So we had to eventually make a daring exit, which prompted him to desperately ask us "Are you guys on Facebook?"  "No, sorry."  We were, as the saying goes, so done with that.

I stupidly trusted the door time on the postcard rather than the door time on the ticket, hence why we missed the opening band

Sorry for all the pics in this post.

Planets with similar climates: Plexi - "Peel / He" (1995), Catherine Wheel - "Ferment" (1992), Kitchens Of Distinction - "Blue Pedal" (1992), The Sound - "New Dark Age" (1981), "Missiles" (1979) & "Whirlpool" (1985), The Church - "Chaos" (1992), Unwound - "For Your Entertainment" (1996), Pantera - "Hollow" (1992).

Bare Minimum >> I can't tell if I own this or if it owns me

Bare Minimum - "Swim In Anxious Moment"

(Rx Remedy Records, 1997)

I had to dish out another Bare Minimum song to show their more atmospheric, shoegazey side.  This song title perfectly sums up the band's aesthetic.  There are no lyrics printed in the booklet, but I think I can make a few with confidence.  The lyric "Corkscrew you... I'm a shaky sugar" always gets a few laughs at cocktail parties, and the line "Yourself in season" (as in: hunting season) is a bit unnerving.
Fun Fact: This song was simply titled "Anxious Moment" on the promo CD.

As with most B-Min songs, there is not a reliable verse-chorus-verse structure, so the listener has to don the ol' thinking hat.  But it never gets tedious or feels like the band is being pretentious, since there are always plenty of visceral pleasures to be unearthed as the song unfolds.  This song goes through enough twists, turns and tempo changes to last most lesser bands a lifetime, and there are some baffling handclaps in the middle.  Joe Plummer's drumming is spectacularly understated and jazzy. The guitar tone starting at the 4:30 mark is about as good as it gets, creamy (as guitar tone freaks would say) and lullaby-esque, yet menacing and disembodied in that way that Sonic Youth perfected circa Bad Moon Rising & EVOL before they (S.Y.) became a "rock" band.  As I mentioned in the last post, Brian Speckman loved to sing about eyes, and this song was no exception.  He also used a very Southern-sounding drawl in this song, which sounds quite unique compared to your standard flock of male indie rock singers.  For such a creative band, this album's cover art really sucked, especially compared to their self-titled debut (which had different covers for the CD and the LP).  All Music Guide gave the album a brief but glowing 4-star review: "While more refined and accessible than their self-titled debut, Bare Minimum's sophomore outing is still a dense and difficult record; Brian Speckman and Mark Pinkos – credited with left and right guitar, respectively – together create a mighty racket, with the Branca-esque dynamics of their twin attack employing intricate rhythmic patterns and thick, atonal chord structures to forge an amorphous yet strangely taut post-rock sound."
All three of Bare Minimum's Rx Remedy releases used to be on iTunes, but I guess they were yanked due to slow or nonexistent sales.

I did a "Lost Classics" article on this album in February 2003 for my old online zine, Cold Comfort.  I began it by saying "This is one of those albums that lit a fire under me when I got it in early '99, and led to me inflicting this zine upon you all.  And the current dearth of albums like this is the reason why I'll probably discontinue this zine in the near future.  [I did.]  So... how can an album from 1998 already be a 'lost classic'?  Well, the sounds contained on this disc are indisputably classic, but as for the 'lost' part... let's just say this was destined to be lost before it even came out.  Zero promotion, practically zero touring, zero college radio-friendly tunes."  Then under the entry for "Swim In Anxious Moment" (I always did a song-by-song analysis), I said "Most horrifying guitar climax I've ever heard."
In the closing section, I said "For whatever reason, the even numbered songs on the album tend to be delicate, whereas the odd numbered ones are aggressive. (...) This is definitely not beginners' stuff.  For example, the listener has to be familiar with all the Sonic Youth and Slint clichés (i.e. atypical song structure, dissonant guitar work) to appreciate how brilliantly Bare Minimum avoids them, and even obliterates them. The album was produced by Phil Ek, best known for producing all six Built To Spill albums, and albums by almost every other Northwest band, including my beloved Lync.  Ek nestles this album in a womblike aura that suits the vocals and intricate guitar work perfectly.
For more on why this is a lost album, aside from the extremely difficult music, let's put it this way: Rx Remedy is (was?) a tiny daughter label of Sub Pop which apparently was a clearinghouse for S.P.'s acts with little commercial potential, and Rx Remedy never even had a website.  And their mail order catalog was always just a postcard sized scrap of paper included with the big Sub Pop catalogs.  The interesting thing is that, since Sub Pop has been 49% owned by Atlantic Records since 1995, every Bare Minimum release was theoretically funded by profits from the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, Phil Collins and Aretha Franklin.  Heads probably rolled when some Atlantic exec found out about Bare Minimum's existence.  Plummer went on to join experimental Unwound side project Replikants, and I don't know the whereabouts of the rest of the group.
Note: After putting this review up, I went to bed and looked through the new issue of Magnet magazine, and saw a photo of Joe Plummer as the drummer in the Black Heart Procession.  So it's good to see he's found a gig (although BHP are crap compared to Bare Minimum)."

I took this pic not long before the sun went down today, hence the lusciously long shadows coming from the blades of grass:

I couldn't find that promo CD I bought in '99, unfortunately.  I actually painted over the front of its paper-sleeve packaging with translucent pearlescent paint right after buying it, so it's one of a kind.  It has a press photo of the band in which one member is wearing goggles like it's no big deal.

Fun Fact 2: There's only music on sides 1 to 3 of the double LP; side 4 is just smooth, blank vinyl... smooth and reflective enough to use as a mirror, in fact.  I don't think I've ever seen that on any other record, though I've often seen etchings put onto sides of records where there is no music.

Fun Fact 3: You can see the series of dour little symbols on the CD, the CD jewel tray insert, and on each side of the records.  The first is a butterfly, the second is an umbrella, and the other two are hard to decipher.  When you open the CD booklet, it seems to be laid out so that each symbol corresponds to each band member's headshot.  Maybe this was some sort of spoof of Led Zeppelin's ZOSO?  Like I said before, Bare Minimum were some cryptic m.f.'s.

The most anxious moment I've ever had involving swimming was in early '94 at John Marriott's house next to UNO.  He was about 5 feet tall, a new student at my high school fresh off the boat from England, and really outgoing.  He and his mom had left for an errand or something while I was staying over there for the weekend one time.  For some reason I decided to teach myself to do a flip off of their pool's diving board.  This was in February or maybe early March, hence quite cold out, and I just stood there at the end of the board in my swimsuit for pretty much an eternity, pondering how to flip without over- or under-rotating, because I didn't want to somehow do a bad belly flop and be knocked unconscious and die while no one was there.  The longer I waited, the colder it got and the more I tried to talk myself out of doing it, but I finally did the flip and that was that.  I think we watched part of the movie Judgment Night that weekend but didn't like it.

Tue. Feb. 28th: I shot hoops at Ama Park and got pretty sunburned.  Later I went to a show at a little place in the 9th Ward called The Mudlark Theatre.  It was a Japanese guy named Tatsuya Nakatani on percussion, local cellist Helen Gillet, and local guitarist (and Anxious Sound booker) Rob Cambre on guitar.  (I had seen all of them separately over the years, but this was a very intriguing three-way pileup, so I had to go check it out.)  I got there late and only saw the last 5 minutes, but it was ultra-intense:

Since it was over pretty early (10:00ish), I walked around the French Quarter for a while.  I saw a woman playing cello for tips on the street, and asked her if she had heard of Helen Gillet.  She said yeah, and was incredulous when I showed her a video clip of what I'd just seen.  "Helen Gillet played two blocks from my house and I missed it!"  I ended up in a little Rouses grocery store and got some German honey, among other stuff.

Wed. 29th: Shot at the court on Annunciation Street, then went shopping on the Westbank, then played some full-court 5-on-5 at Ama Park.  After the other dudes all left for the night, I played some 21 against a guy who said he was 50 and had played for the U. of Texas and then for the Cleveland Cavaliers and in several European leagues.  I beat him in the first game, but he beat me easily in the second.  I never got his name, but if someone knows a player who went to UT, finished college ca. '84, then later played for the Cavs, then I'd have an i.d. on him.  He was 6'6", had messed up knees, and looked like Rick Fox, meaning sickeningly handsome, and looked closer to 30 than to 50.  It gave me inspiration that I'll be able to play at that age or beyond, assuming I take good care of my knees.

Thur. March 1st: Went down to Houma and got two more LP shelves from Office Depot, and some clay pots at an evil store whose name I won't mention.  Researched the Canadian indie blog sensation Grimes (Claire Boucher) in anticipation of seeing her live the following day, even though I didn't dig her music.  It's amazing how fast she has usurped the spotlight from the likes of Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, Liturgy, etc.  Some sample reading:
Is Grimes the next BIG Indie Diva, or an overhyped product of the Corrupt Indie Machine?
Deconstructing: Grimes
(That Ohio kid who killed some of his classmates last week was apparently a Grimes fan and had recently posted at least one of her vids on his Facebook page.)

I should mention that she played at a local dive-y bar called The Saint last fall, opening for fellow Canadian techno-poppers Austra.  It was on the same night (Nov. 4th) that I was at the Boris concert, otherwise I would've gone.  I actually planned on going to both, but Boris ran long.

Fri. March 2nd: Drove into NOLA through a bad storm, put down some mulch at Barbara's herb garden, then went to the Grimes show, which was outdoors at Tulane.  I only caught the last song by the opening act, shameless '80s synth-pop replicators Born Gold.  For 30 entire minutes, Grimes sat on the back of the stage chatting with Born Gold.  This was her sound check period, so I wondered why she didn't at least pretend to fiddle with some knobs or check some wires or whatever.  All her equipment was set up before BG even played, so my point is, why not just play immediately after they finish, especially with a monster rainstorm looming?  So I was a little annoyed right from the outset.  Amazingly, the rain never arrived, and the front swept away the muggy 85º heat, replacing it with beautiful, breezy 70º perfection.  She finally came on, played two songs solo with some technical glitches.  Then Born Gold came on as her backing band for the majority of the set.  It was surprisingly good, and she's pretty entertaining.  She had more technical problems and exclaimed "Fuck! Fuck!" at some points, but soldiered on.  After 45 mins. she finally told us that the sunlight was giving her problems, since it was making it hard for her to see all the lights on her various electronic devices, and that she hence couldn't keep playing.  I only took three pics, and here are two:

She was shaking her head side to side pretty hardcore during at this moment, so I was surprised to have gotten such a nice focused shot.
Yes, that is a Bob Marley poster in the dorm window at the left; this is a college campus, 'member?

I bought two boxes of Girl Scout cookies that were being sold right behind the stage, then wandered around the campus for a bit looking for a show flyer.  I was going to give one of the boxes to the Mushroom, so I started walking back towards Pocket Park, where the concert was held.  I saw Claire was still there, talking with a Born Golder (Calvin) behind the stage, so I made the impromptu decision to give her a box of the cookies, and told her she did a good job despite the technical problems.  I later noticed that the cookies were fittingly called Thank U Berry Munch.  I probably should've shaken her hand or something, but she's so incredibly petite and skinny that I guess I subliminally thought I might injure her?  Sorry for all this info on Grimes.  If you get to see her or talk to her you'll find her energy contagious, and it becomes hard not to like her or her music, so I think she deserves all of the fame that's coming her way.  Compare her spazzy, unpretentious nature to the cool, calculated, detached demeanor of a St. Vincent (I like SV a lot, for what it's worth), or a Lana Del Rey (no opinion yet), or a Steve Malkmus (despise him), or a Laurie Anderson (dig her), etc.  Speaking of musical things that are grime-y, this show was better than the Dizzee Rascal "History Of Grime" tour that I saw in '05.

One last thing: An interview with her done in WTUL's studio right after the show.

Wow, I just realized that I have now contributed to the internet's Grimes Overkill.  It's funny how things work out sometimes.  I guess I'm just as fascinated by fame, hype, etc. as anyone else is.  And for some reason I just love seeing electronic music live, even if an artist's studio recordings are not something I'd want to listen to very much.

To cap off an interesting Friday, the lowly (to the untrained observer) Hornets shocked the defending-champion Mavericks despite having four players, three of whom are starters, out with injuries.  It's looking like a sure bet that someone will buy the team this month and thereby relieve the NBA of its ownership role involving the Hornets.  (For those who don't follow basketball, here's a summary: Rather than possibly let the team relocate to Seattle or somewhere else, the NBA stepped in and bought the Hornets last year when the team couldn't find a buyer.  This had never been done before in league history.  The Hornets lost superstar point guard Chris Paul to the L.A. Clippers in December and immediately became one of the league's bottom-dwellers, fueling speculation that the team would move, especially since a really wealthy computer czar from Seattle wanted to buy them.)
Unfortunately, the "Bountygate" scandal involving the Saints broke this same night.  The team will probably receive the biggest penalty in the history of the NFL for it.  Thanks a lot, Gregg Williams.

Photo montage by Josh Helfferich of cell phones before and after the iPhone; I think the relative sizes are incorrect, but you get the idea:

Sorry for all the pics and videos in this post, and I will try not to do it in the future.  It's definitely the most media I've ever put in one post, and I generally hate when people do that because it can cause your computer to slow down or freeze up.  But sometimes you have to live on the edge, and I have a big backlog of images and videos to share, so.  I'm a technical Luddite compared to most interneters of today, so I was surprised when I thought about all the various software programs and physical devices that were used in the making of this post:
Blogspot (blog software / website hosting) (duh) [free]
iTunes (mp3 player) [free with any Mac]
DivShare (mp3 hosting) [free]
Canon SD870 IS digital camera (photos) (also takes mediocre videos) [passed down from my mom when she got a new camera]
Flip Video camcorder (both videos) [given by my dad, who got it as a freebie at a business meeting]
iPhoto (photo editing) [free with any Mac]
YouTube (video hosting) [free]
PageSpinner (HTML editor) (excerpts from Cold Comfort article) [free trial software that I got in '99 and never paid for]

Planets with similar climates: Bright Channel - "Airborne" (2005), Bleach - "Seeing" (1991), Interpol - "Obstacle 2" (2002), Bailter Space - "Orbit" (1992), Slint - "Good Morning, Captain" (1990), Juno - "The Sea Looked Like Lead" (1998).

Bare Minimum >> Marking the unmarkable pristine sea

Bare Minimum - "Night We Streak, Divine Failure"

(Sub Pop Records, 1995 / Rx Remedy Records, 1996)

Here's one of the most intense songs I've ever heard, by a band that is tragically unknown.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of bands with this name, so be sure to demand the real one (born in Cali, raised in Seattle) at your best record store.

The intensity is ramped up masterfully over the course of the song, with a fairly astonishing ending section.  This song was recorded in March '95 by Barrett Jones and released as a 7" single by Sub Pop later that year:

Mediocre pic taken from an eBay auction; evidence of olden days when indie labels were apparently not prohibited from using black vinyl by arcane guild rules.

Amazingly, this single didn't turn them into the new Nirvana or even the new Dickless or Cat Butt.  Despite this, Sub Pop obviously dug the song, because it was included on the band's Night We Streak EP the following year, on a short-lived Sub Pop imprint called Rx Remedy.  I think this label was some sort of minor league where Sub Pop's less-commercial bands could develop for a while, but none of them ever gained any notoriety.

I once read an interview with Bare Minimum in which they talked about being the Foo Fighters' opening act in summer or fall of '95.  (This is possibly related to the fact that Barrett Jones also produced the Foos' early stuff, and previously had done some production for Nirvana.)  The thought of a few thousand teen grunge fans being subjected to Bare Minimum's angular chaos when all they really wanted to hear was "Big Me" or some Nirvana covers is really amusing.  I would kill to hear some live recordings of B-Min from this tour.  Props to Dave Grohl for taking them on the road.

I first got into this B-Min when I bought a promo CD* of their proggy opus Can't Cure The Nailbiters in January '99 at the Mushroom on a whim.  (I'm pretty sure I also bought my promo CD of Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime there on the same day.)  I then tracked down all their other stuff, including a very rare self-titled EP from '93 that I recently downloaded.  But I have yet to corrall the "Night We Streak" 7", or the split 7" with post-hardcore icons Angel Hair.

Bare Minimum had some quirks: Singer Brian Speckman sang about eyeballs a lot, e.g. "Cursed with black widow eyes" in this song.  Their two guitarists are credited as "left guitar" (Brian Speckman) and "right guitar" (Mark Pinkos).  Their song titles were generally complex and impenetrable: "Star Raise Iodine Failure Drainpipe To The Bottom," "Substitute Genius For Jesus And Poke His Eyes Out," "Zero Discuss", "Waterfight Or Firefight, Sand Or Baking Soda," "Swim In Anxious Moment," "A Dime's Body Makes Him A Diver," "Platinum Eyes Three Quarters Open."  Definitely one of the artiest and most oblique of all the so-called "post-hardcore" bands of the '90s, often treading into abstract realms that their apparent idols like Unwound, Fugazi and Sonic Youth seldom did.  Their dense, dueling guitars have been was compared by All Music Guide to those of early Glenn Branca orchestras.

The lyrics from the Night We Streak CD booklet:

They are mostly accurate, though he does not actually say "on the outskirts of" or "when I've sunk back into the sea"; I think he says "emotional" instead of "motion"; and he substitutes "their" for "black widow" near the very end.  And the line "marking the unmarkable pristine sea" is ominously intoned by a different, lower voice while Speckman shrieks "Marking! The pristine sea!"  It's probably Speckman doing both voices via overdubbing.  After about 10 years of thinking this song has something to do with drowning or dying, today I realized it's pretty obviously about sex and the guilt related to it.

Drummer Joe Plummer went on to play in mediocre-to-dismal pop bands like The Black Heart Procession (mediocre), Modest Mouse great to mediocre), and The Shins (dismal), and participated in the Boredoms' 88-drummer performance in 2008.  Of course, his shoddy Wikipedia page makes no mention of the words "Bare" or "Minimum."  I don't know what the other members have been up to, but if anyone knows, please leave a comment.

Discography:
Angel Hair / Bare Minimum - split 7" EP (Titanic Records / Gold Standard Laboratories [GSL], 1994)
"Night We Streak, Divine Failure" 7" (Sub Pop, 1995) ✇
Bare Minimum CD (Rx Remedy, 1996) ♨
Bare Minimum LP (Rx Remedy, 1996) (alternate cover) ♨
Night We Streak CD EP (Rx Remedy, 1996) ☠
No Cure For The Nailbiters (promo CD) (Rx Remedy, 1998) ✈☂
Can't Cure The Nailbiters CD (Rx Remedy, 1998) ☂
Can't Cure The Nailbiters 2xLP (Rx Remedy, 1998) ☂

Incredible Notes:
✇ - Translucent paper sleeve
♨ - Recorded in '95
☠ - Mostly recorded in '95; one song in '96
✈ - The promo CD for their last album is titled No Cure For The Nailbiters and has slightly different titles for several songs
☂ - Recorded in '97

How bots seized control of my pricing strategy - "...a computer program, pretending to be human, hawking a book about computers pretending to be human, while other computer programs pretend to have used copies of it. A book that was never actually written, much less printed and read."

Video clip of a mind-boggling collection of Mammillaria cacti in Russia:

Due to their small size, toughness, abundant flowers, crazy spines, etc., Mammillaria is the main genus of cacti that I, and most other cactus fanatics, collect.  But this collection rivals that of any big-time botanical garden, and this clip proves there's a new Cold War, or dare I say a new Hot War, brewing.  So we need to develop a nuke that can kill all the male citizens of Russia, but spare all the women and cacti.

Planets with similar climates: Unwound - "What Was Wound" (1993) & "Petals Like Bricks" (1995), Bleach - "Headless" (1991), Fugazi - "Sieve-Fisted Find" (1989), ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - "Homage" (2001), Drive Like Jehu - "Here Come The Rome Plows" (1994), Helmet - "Murder" (1990).

Tagging Satellites >> Things that were stolen from me were never meant to be mine

Tagging Satellites - "Sun Damage"

(Mag Wheel Records / Recovery Records, 2000)

I bought this CD on eBay last June for next to nothing, after being impressed by the 90-sec. sound samples on iTunes.  I then listened to it over and over on a nighttime drive to Baton Rouge (to see a band called This Will Destroy You) the same day it arrived in my mailbox.  Singer Zera Marvel uses her "goth voice" on this song, though she generally uses a higher, prettier timbre on the other songs.  So this song is not really representative of their overall sound.  The Sonic Youth-y guitar squalls and cavernous "pendulum-style" bassline are like crack to my ears.  "I don't care if you don't wanna go, you're coming to the sun with me" is a pretty interesting / sexy threat.

This song was written entirely by Z.M.  Influential Seattle music mag The Stranger said "Like that dark-haired poet you had a crush on in high school, there's something mysterious and slightly dangerous about Tagging Satellites. The band's second album, Abstract Confessions, is almost a flashback to the moody, art school-influenced underground of pre-breakthrough Jane's Addiction L.A. – wonderfully detached, on-the-verge-of-a-breakdown female vocals paired with music that finds the middle ground between ethereal and the razor's edge."  Uh, what?  Jane's Addiction?  Huge reviewing fail there, unless he/she meant Psi Com.

Results of a poll done by The Stranger's online blog in April 2009

The Abstract Confessions CD comes with a bonus music video for the bleak, Codeine-esque "Time On My Halo," but unfortunately it's in RealPlayer format, so I can't upload it to YouTube to share it here.  So here's a clip of Marvel and her husband / bandmate / producer Graig Markel snorkeling:

Pic stolen from an eBay seller; this might be the exact CD I ended up buying.

Remember what I said a few posts ago about how most of my favorite bands end up ditching their shoegaze / noise / post-punk beginnings in favor of more low-key, parent-friendly music?  Well, Marvel put out an Americana-y solo album in 2009, completely forgoing any sort of experimentation or dark undertones.  Oh well.  You can hear the natural twang in her voice even in "Sun Damage," and she lived in South Carolina right before moving to Seattle to co-found Tagging Satellites in 1997, so she does have Southern credentials, and hence I'm not saying her current sound is a put-on, but still.

Last Wednesday at Delgado I saw a truly awesome experimental video projection as part of the Prospect.2 art biennial called Below Sea Level by Paweł Wojtasik.  Make sure to watch it in 720p:

I took that video when I went back to see it again on Friday.  Sorry for the constant panning, but that was the only way I could show everything that was going on on the approx. 350º circular screen.  The dude spent three years making it, so you can spend 15 minutes watching this excerpt of it.  It was deeply moving for me to see my nook in the world portrayed in such a hallucinatory, abstract way, and I'm sure this guy has a bright future ahead of him.  The ambient score is by someone named Stephen Vitiello.

On Friday I watched the 2-hour Chuck series finale, even though I'd never watched the show very much.  I laughed out loud at the scene where the bomb is set to go off as soon as the orchestra stops playing, and as soon as the last notes are dying out and you're bracing yourself for impact, this weird guy Jeffster busts onto the stage doing a keytar rendition of aHa's "Take On Me".   I have to say I wish I had watched this show more.  Today I sprayed some weeds and then played basketball for almost 4 hours at Lutcher Playground w/ Bruce, Chris, Meatball, and about 6 other dudes.  Today everyone called me "Larry" not as a Larry Bird reference, but rather because I was wearing a Larry Johnson Hornets jersey.  Then I watched Alcatraz, but I'm sure Fox will pull the plug on it as soon as the ratings dip by even one viewer, as Fox is notorious for doing.  So I suggest watching this show now if you have any desire to.

Well, this post pretty much had it all in terms of high-octane entertainment value.

Planets with similar climates: Bleach - "Can" (1992), Sonic Youth - "Ghost Bitch" (1984), Esben And The Witch - "Marching Song" (2010), Slint - "Good Morning, Captain" (1991), Warpaint - "Beetles" (2008).

Juned >> Would you wait for me?

Juned - "Kyuss"

(Up Records, 1995)

Juned was an all-girl quartet from Washington, active only from about 1993 to about 1996.  They put out two LPs on Up Records, a subsidiary of indie behemoth Sub Pop.  Their name, pronounced "Joon'd" (one syllable), is skateboarder slang for learning a lesson from being fucked over.  Their second album, Every Night For You, is in my opinion the greatest album ever put out by an all-female band, and nothing else comes even remotely close.  I immediately ordered this CD after hearing their stunning song "Titanic" on an incredible 4-band promo 7" that Up put out the previous year.  ("Titanic" will be posted on here someday.)  The other three bands on it were Modest Mouse, The Pastels, and 764-HERO.  I received the CD in early January 1997, put this song on, and my jaw just about went through the floor at the genius evinced by this, the opening track.

I can say that it is one of the most life-changing songs I've ever heard, from the stirring opening guitar notes to the thunderous drum intro, to the opening "Going faster, my time" lyric, to just every miniscule detail of it, man... to the very last note.  Every note of this song has an urgent purity which most bands would kill for.  Every note of this song is necessary for world peace and for understanding of the cosmos.  Even the guitar solo (from 2:09 to 3:07) massacres anything by Slash or that satanic guy from Led Zeppelin.  The 3:08 mark is crucial because the guitars suddenly end their duel by hitting matching resonant notes one octave apart, and a mini post-punk bass part kicks in.  And then when the rhythm guitar comes back in with venomous, distorted power chords at the 3:15 mark, it knocks your socks off once more.  The vocals after this point are sung slightly higher and more desperately than in the beginning of the song, leading to the final climax of emotion: "And I couldn't bring you along / Would you wait for me?"  It's presumably the most staggeringly amazing final minute of any song, ever.

Elegant back cover of LP

I remember that this was the second most-played song on my 2002-2008 Mac's iTunes, trailing only "Until You're Forever" by The Veldt.  Part of Juned's power was the fact that all four members sang in some capacity, though they had two main lead singers, Dale Balenseifen and Claudia Groom.  To this day, I still have no idea which of them sang lead on this song, which drives me crazy.  As for the song title, in fall of 1994 Juned and Kyuss went on tour as the opening acts for Dinosaur Jr., so I guess all three bands became good pals.  In fact, Juned's bassist Leslie Hardy briefly married Dino Jr.'s bassist Mike "I'm Not Lou Barlow" Johnson.  Those crazy bassists!  I WANTED TO GO TO THIS SHOW IN NEW ORLEANS, mainly b/c Dino had an MTV hit at the time with "Feel The Pain", but I was only 17.  Anyway, Kyuss is fucking lame, and Josh Homme is a douche, so I'm always ticked off that Juned named such an amazing song after them.  What the hell is a kyuss anyway?  I guess the name refers to the '70s dueling-guitar / arena-ready aspect of the song, e.g. the same '70s territory mined so clumsily by Kyuss.  "Sisters Of The Red Sun" is a long, instrumental psychedelic (sorry, "post-rock") tour de force that is overtly inspired by Jimi Hendrix's lengthy space-fest "Third Stone From The Sun."  Remember, Jimi was from Seattle and is a huge hero to most bands up there.  Juned had already broken up by the time this album was released in early '96.

Clockwise from left: bassist Leslie Hardy, drummer Lenny Rennalls,
singer / guitarist Dale Balenseifen, singer / guitarist Claudia Groom

Dale's Facebook photo, making the same exact face as in the above photo, but with heart-shaped cleavage(?) in place of fur! 

I had an Every Night For You promo poster (as well as a promo poster for their self-titled debut album) on my diagonal attic ceiling from '97 to '05, despite its comically-Photoshopped stars.  You can see the self-titled album poster in this little clip I shot on 3/26/04:

Juned's bassist went on to join the incredibly mediocre bands Love As Laughter and Murder City Devils.  I saw LAL at a dive bar called the Hi-Ho Lounge in July '98, and I wanted to say something to her about how Juned changed my life, but I chickened out, even though she's about 5 feet tall, so I just walked right by her on my way to the bathroom.  I even remember that I wore my Unwound shirt to that show to try to impress her with my knowledge of Seattle / Olympia bands, ha.  (My white one; I now have that white one and about 4 black ones.)

As for Kill Sybil, I have two 7"s by them, but I've never gotten their full-length.  (One of their 7"s is a split with Cher, no joke.)  This is the part where I physically restrain myself from going off on the one all-female band that received all the acclaim during the '90s and beyond, while Juned remain almost totally unknown.  Yes, it's Sleater-Kinney to whom I refer, they of "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" fame and ear-rupturing vocal stylings.  The band with effortlessly catchy choruses, angelic vocal harmonizing, and accessibly melodic riffage gets ignored, while the one with primitive uh, everything, become stars.  I guess S-K's more masculine sound appealed to male rock critics and zine writers, while Juned's more feminine, shoegaze-influenced quiet storm would've made them superstars in England in the late '80s / early '90s (especially the Sundays-esque "Hearts To Bleed"), but was totally out of fashion in the boorish mid-'90s U.S., a nation which actually gave the Melvins and Butthole Surfers major-label recording contracts.
Fun Fact: Juned's song "Groovin' On You" was on the soundtrack to the 1996 flick Grace Of My Heart, but was allegedly not used in the actual movie.

May 1996 issue of Lollipop magazine w/ an article on Juned

Or you can ignore all the ravings I've just issued and listen to what an iTunes reviewer named die die my love had to say in 2007, in proto-Twitter form:

"there a graet band that all"

Planets with similar climates: Bleach - "Seeing" & "Push" (1991), Lush - "Sweetness And Light" (1990), Swervedriver - "Blowin' Cool" (1993), blueScreen - "Anon" (2002), Concrete Blonde - "Dance Along The Edge" (1986), Kill Laura - "False Dawn" (1994), The Emerald Down - "Stars" (2001), Earwig - "Everything's Just Fine" (1991), National Skyline - "Reinkiller" (2001), Ride - "Here And Now" (1990).


Worst thing I had to do today: Cut down my 10 foot tall Celeste fig tree after learning it has a fatal and very contagious fungus called ganoderma.


Worst thing I learned yesterday: "Pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of a flight: the takeoff and the landing." - From an article called Are airline pilots forgetting how to fly?

FCS North >> Ride the darker wave

FCS North - "1222"
(Pacifico Recordings, 2000)

This track is probably the most epic achievement since Homer write The Iliad in one weekend on the backs of some napkins at his local Olive Garden restaurant, which was literally just some tables in the middle of an olive grove at the time.  FCS North (pron. "Focus North," often abrv. FCSN) was a jazzy / post-rock-y / electronic-y group from Seattle, featuring some former members of the impressive post-punk band Satisfact.  I say "was" because I think nowadays they stick to doing DJ sets, remixing, and general electronic(a) stuff, rather than the complex organic recipe on their debut album.  Andy Sells of FCSN is my favorite or second-favorite drummer ever (probably only second to Jack DeJohnette), and he has literally been a drum teacher for many years as his day job.  The way the bass (played by Josh Warren) stealthily enters the song reminds me of the way the T. Rex walks up to the campsite(?) in Jurassic Park, with the viewer only able to see a glass of water trembling with each of its footsteps.  Who says great cinematography can't be found in the most unlikely places?  I didn't even know what cinematography was when I saw that in a tiny theater on Hilton Head Island when it came out, but I'll always remember that scene.
"1222" is preceded on the album by an untitled recording of 3 whole minutes of waves crashing... Top that, "chillwave" bands.  This tidal action fits in perfectly with the CD cover, which is just a photo of the ocean, devoid of any writing, though the cover of the LP version apparently does have some writing.  I've always thought of the album as having a "sky blue" feel to it; to top it off, the band's record label was called Pacifico.  I remember listening to this CD on a sweltering September night in 2003 while driving over to see The Sea And Cake, who also have one of the most insanely great drummers ever.  Before heading out that night, I watched the premiere episode of a show called One Tree Hill, haha.  Man, talk about a cutting edge evening of entertainment... I also used a car phone for possibly the only time in my life, one with a cord attaching it to a '95 Chevy Suburban which I inherited a few years later after my car was lost in Katrina.  Anyway, the way the keyboards swell up and envelop the listener in the beginning of this track will never cease to fascinate me.  There is also a great contrast of speeds -- the fast, crisp drumming vs. the slow, eerie keyboards & bass -- that gives a disorienting overall feel.  (I keep saying "track" rather than "song" because a song must, by definition, have vocals, you know.)  "1222" was also released as a 12" single/EP, backed with "Police Laughter" and "High Rize"; I will be posting the latter on here someday.

Pic: Can't think of one now, though I did plant an olive tree last week, so I should probably show it here. (See first sentence of this post.)
Update, 7/21/11 - Here's a pic of the top of that olive tree, which is about 5 feet tall and is named Gregg, taken right after I planted it on April 1st:

Planets with similar climates: Tristeza - "I Am A Cheetah" (2000) & "Halo Heads" (2005), Miles Davis - "Rated X" (1972), The Mercury Program - "Tequesta" (2002), Fela Kuti - "Confusion" (1975), The Orb - "Star 6 & 7 8 9" (1991), Macha - "Light The Chinese Flower" (1998).

Replikants >> This is our machine

Replikants - "Patty's Trip"
(5 Rue Christine, 1996)

Replikants were a side project of Unwound, with that band's singer/guitarist, Justin Trosper, and its original drummer, Brandt Sandeno.  Trosper is one of my musical heroes and Sandeno is just a ridiculously great drummer.  He stepped away from Unwound's kit in the early '90s and was replaced by his friend, the equally great Sara Lund.  This album has the blunt manifesto This is Our Message as its title, and it was the inaugural release on Kill Rock Stars' experimental sublabel 5 Rue Christine.  (Fun Fact: The label was named after Gertrude Stein's address.)  Replikants were sort of a "post-everything" band, using tape loops, jazzy drumming, ambient soundscapes, Krautrock-style beats, Dadaist vocal samples, and some sax.  Though the liner notes claim "No samplers or drum machines were used on these recordings," they did do lots of actual tape splicing in order to sample from other songs; they just didn't use digital sampling devices / drum tracks.  Yes, tape splicing, where you cut the audio tape with a razor blade and literally tape it to another piece.  "Machine" samples Henry Rollins' primal shrieks of "I'm not a machine!" from Black Flag's "Machine."  The liner notes also say "Dedicated to music deconstructionists past and present and future," and "We recommend listening with headphones and on shuffle mode for the CD."  I bought this CD from Kill Rock Stars mailorder in summer of '98 when my Unwound obsession was consuming me, and got the LP about a decade later.  The CD version of this album has 11 bonus tracks (#'s 14-24).
I'm not sure what "Patty's Trip" is about, since it's built of apparently random word samples, including possibly ones from a Speak N' Spell toy, and some devastatingly cool drumming.  I kind of wish that I knew what the female voice was singing, or that the Dadaist samples made some sort of sense, but part of the mystique of the song is its reliance on chaos theory.  I put this song on a mix tape for a guy named David Reilly, singer of the band God Lives Underwater (whose sole hit "From Your Mouth" you probably know), in '99, after meeting him in a chatroom.  By a stroke of luck, he was friends with Trosper, and passed the tape to him later that year while they were hanging out on the West coast.  Reilly was one of the nicest and most musically knowledgable people I ever knew... He was a big Plexi (one of my top 5 fav. bands ever) fan and admitted that he once threw up at a Mogwai concert due to the sheer loudness.  He died of an apparently accidental drug overdose in 2005, after battling addiction most of his adult life.  Big-time tangent there... As usual, you can feel free to stop reading any of my paragraphs about halfway through, before they devolve.  This song goes out to END, and of course to David.

I'll post a drawing I made of this CD's cover art about 12 years ago once I find it... It's in my old journal for art class.

If you live in the South, you get inundated with bands every March as they travel to or from SXSW in Austin, so I saw 11 bands last week for $10 total.  The best were Des Ark (like Fugazi fronted by Patti Smith), Caspian, Pygmy Lush (like Three Mile Pilot), and Native; Low were a bit disappointing, since they only played new stuff; Thou were their normal sludgy screamy selves; Marathon are a spazzy new local post-hardcore type band; Chiaroscuro played slow, elegant instrumentals; Screaming Females had a lot funkier sound than I'd anticipated; locals Aiúa will probably get signed to a hip post-rock label any second now.  One band, Moving Mountains, cancelled.  I also got a cool little cactus on the day I saw Caspian, and decided to name it Casper as a nod to that band's name and the fact that it's very silver, in fact practically white under certain lighting.


Planets with similar climates: Ciccone Youth - "G-Force" & "Platoon II" (1988), Zoviet*France - "Look Into Me" (1990), Tortoise - "Djed (Bruise Blood Mix [by UNKLE])" (1996), Future Sound Of London - "Dirty Shadows" (1994), Massive Attack - "Teardrop" (1998).


Currently waiting for: The sky to share her quenching bounty