Lowercase >> A villain to call your own

California Month, tremor #9:

Lowercase - "Willing To Follow You Down"

(Punk In My Vitamins?, 1998)

Note: Since this site has gotten so few visits / comments / etc., I'm going to be uploading most songs at a lower bitrate from now on, so I don't waste as much bandwidth.

Hailing from Palm Desert, California, wherever that is, though it sounds like somewhere I'd like to visit, seeing as I'm really into palms and desert flora, but later apparently based in San Francisco, Lowercase released two decently angsty LPs on Amphetamine Reptile Records to praise in the indie mag-o-sphere.  Then I guess they got dropped by AmRep, because their third & final album, The Going Away Present, came out on Punk On My Vitamins?, a tiny indie label run by Vern "Redrum" Rumsey, the nicotinophilic bassist of Unwound.  In fact, when I saw Unwound in 1998, Vern was wearing a Lowercase t-shirt, and I've seen other photos of him wearing different Lowercase t-shirts.  I will mention that the supremely irritating Deerhoof were one of the openers at that show, and that their singer girl was wearing a full-body pink bunny costume, as if her vocals were not annoying enough.  Anyway, Lowercase lived up – er, down – to their name by toning back the volume and abrasiveness for this album.  In the end, they came up with a stunning album of slow, brooding post-indie-rock songs.

Imaad even uses the word "thee" correctly in this song, to mean "you."  This song has always grabbed me since I got the album in '03, but there are plenty of other highlights on it.  Apparently the band had already called it quits by the time this album dropped in early '99, making its title very fitting.  Singer Imaad Wasif has gone on to a varied post-Lowercase career, fronting Alaska!, as a sideman for the Yeah Yeahs Yeahs, and also as a solo artist.  I remember that I missed an Alaska! show at the House Of Blues Parish on 3/14/04 because I was at a Beyoncé / Alicia Keys / Missy Elliott / Tamia concert at the N.O. Arena right up the street.  I even considered leaving after Alicia (who completely stole the show and was the only reason I went) in order to hustle over and see Alaska!.  In 2003, I somehow contacted Lowercase's drummer about doing an interview with the whole band over email, but it never happened, and the band has never reformed.

Wall to the left of my computer desk

Driving east at ~45 mph on RIver Rd. in Vacherie at 6:15 AM on 4/3/11, as the file name says.  The Mississippi River is about 50 feet to the left.  The point was to show all the morning mist & the telephone poles which are still tilted from Hurricane Gustav.

Our cousin Ali tipped my sister & I off to this video:

Planets with similar climates: U2 - "Drowning Man" (1982), American Music Club - "Big Night" (1987), Long Fin Killie - "Clinch" (1995), Idaho - "If You Dare" (1995), Slint - "Washer" (1991), Neil Young - "Cortez The Killer" (1975).

Chrome >> Found the answers to the question of the human state

California Month, tremor #8:

Chrome - "Isolation"

(Siren Records / Beggars Banquet Records, 1980 / Cleopatra Records, 1996)

I got this song in 2003 when I downloaded Chrome's box set, which is appallingly titled Chrome Box, from eMusic.  It clicked with me more than their other songs did, due to its slower, more chilled-out tempo and jazzy hi-hat flourishes, and of course its unique, androgynous vocals.  It's the last song on their album Red Exposure, which came out with two equally-bad covers and also contains the shoulda-been-a-New-Wave-hit "Electric Chair".  It's hard to believe that "Isolation" and "Electric Chair" are by the same band, let alone from the same album, so I guess that shows Chrome's diversity, though most of their songs used the same primitive elements of tribal rhythms, guitar feedback and barely-human vocals.  Check out the truly def video for their 1982 song "Firebomb":

It's weird for me to think that this band, as well as one that would end up in my all-time top ten (Faith No More) was making groundbreaking music in San Francisco at the same time that I was living there as a kid. Luckily, I was aware of the 49ers when they were winning several Super Bowls, and my dad took me to many a game at Candlestick Park.  (A young Tom Brady was going to these same games with his dad at this same time.)  Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott would later be two of my main football idols.

Amazing infrared photo of Canary Island Date palms, using a fisheye lens, of course.  By Peter iNova; undated.

Hey, remember a few weeks ago when I said I suggested a really obnoxious P.M. Dawn album title to the geniuses at Warm Voices Rearranged?  They came through for me!

Planets with similar climates: Circle X - "Culture Progress" (1981), Live Skull - "Bootcamp" (1986), Plexi - "Ganesh" (1994), The Sleepers - "B Side" (1980), The Comsat Angels - "Sleep No More" (1981), Pocahaunted - "Follow I" (2008), probably something by Swans.

Loquat >> I spent my time falling down the stairs

California Month, tremor #7:

Loquat - "Swingset Chain"

(Dreams By Degrees, 2001)

Any fan of ambitious, bittersweet pop music will be floored upon his or her first listen to this song, from the San Francisco group's 10" EP called Fall.

Fall came out in 2002, but, if I remember correctly, the song was recorded in 2001.  The band rerecorded it for their 2005 debut album, but I think that version sapped a lot of the song's dynamics and sense of wonder from it, so stick with this version.  The EP also has a very futuristic, nifty remix of "S.C." by some dudes(?) named Atomix And Spindly.  (AllMusic Guide disagreed: "Sadly, the EP is rounded up with a house remix of 'Swingset Chain.'  Predictable and almost offensive in the context of what came before it, it shatters all the playful charm of the original."  Oh, loosen up.)
 Kylee Swensen's voice is so infuriatingly pristine and perfect in every way, and it just dominates the song in every way without coming off as showboating.  She would have been one hell of a jazz singer in another era.  I interviewed them by email in early '03 for my old zine, and a little while later Kylie emailed me back to tell me they'd just put out a music video for the song, which made me feel psyched that they'd soon be storming the indie charts, then playing arenas and whatnot.  It's pretty much just some live clips stitched together, but hey, at least it's a music video:

This song apparently got used in a fuckload of TV shows, including One Tree Hill, and was included as a free download with some national brand of memory card (a brilliant marketing coup), but the band never became well-known outside of California.  The song has inspired lots of cringeworthy amateur cover versions on YouTube, so it's apparently become a cult favorite, which is the main thing I ever wanted for it.  It's truly one of the best songs of its genre ever made, and it deserves to be up there with the classics by The Sundays, Fleetwood Mac, and The Smiths.  (Loquat did an interesting synth-y cover of "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" in 2003.)  The melodic twists and turns are just spellbinding, and the inscrutable lyrics like "It rained a hundred nineteen days of the year / I spent my time falling down the stairs" and "You're a dandelion seed that flies through the years / And lands randomly, and disappears" and of course "The penny drop that broke her arm" are very cool.  You could write a thesis paper on these lyrics, no joke.  By the way, as I teased in my previous post, a loquat is a type of tree that makes a painfully sweet yellowish-orange fruit; it's also known as the Japanese plum tree, though it's not related to plums.  They're ubiquitous around here in the Southeast, but are not quite considered an invasive species, due to how slowly they grow.  It's pronounced "LOW-qwott," and is not related to the kumquat.

During a break in the rain from Tropical Storm Lee on 9/3/11, I was moving some of my cacti & succulents to more protected spots, and decided to do a group photo.  My camera didn't really focus properly b/c the humidity level was about 98%, sorry.

There are cacti, succulents, aloes, agaves (tequila plants), yuccas, and a dyckia (DEE-kee-yuh) in there. Not shown is a Mammillaria cactus that I've had for 13 years, because it's in New Orleans.

Planets with similar climates: The Sundays - "I Feel" (1992), Club 8 - "We Set Ourselves Free" (2002), Pale Saints - "Featherframe" & "Thread Of Light" (1992), Rainer Maria - "The Imperatives" (2002), The Cardigans - "Your New Cuckoo" (1996), The Delays - "Stay Where You Are" (2003), The Psychedelic Furs - "The Ghost In You" (1984).

Negativland >> Place someone's head inside of a bell and ring it

California Month, tremor #6:

Negativland - "Methods Of Torture"

(SST Records, 1987 / Seeland Records, 1999)

Negativland is named after a sinister instrumental by the German band Neu!, which is one of only a few non-terrible songs Neu! ever did, in my opinion, and which arguably invented "post-rock."   Though it's not as infamous as Negativland's song "Christianity Is Stupid" or their "cover" of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," or as satirical as "Drink It Up," this song has been a longtime favorite of mine when I've needed to fill in a minute or so on a mix CD.

I got this album, Escape From Noise, on CD in the early '00s and on LP a few years ago.  (Original LP copies came with a yellow-and-black bumper sticker reading "CAR BOMB," after one of the album's more notorious songs.)  It was reissued on Negativland's own label, Seeland Records, after a messy legal dispute with SST; in fact, I can only think of a few bands that did not have legal disputes with SST.  (This mp3 was taken from my SST CD, not the reissue.)  I also have the fascinating book (which comes with a free CD) about Negativland's crippling legal battle with U2's lawyers, called Fair Use: The Letter U And The Numeral 2.  Notice I specified "U2's lawyers," because U2 themselves had no problem with Negativland spoofing their hit song, and The Edge actually spoke out in Negativland's defense.  This didn't stop indie knuckleheads from knee-jerkingly casting U2 as bogeymen in the whole situation, and SST even famously sold "FUCK BONO" t-shirts for many years.  (In fact, seeing this shirt in SST mailorder catalogs in the '90s is a big part of why I hated U2 for many years before discovering how great their early '80s stuff is.)  Anyway, if you're a band making "plunderphonic" sound collages, things can get pretty ugly if someone disapproves of your samples, or even cover art, so choose them wisely.  Nowadays when I make collages based on cut-up magazine images, I try to write down who the photographers of the original images were, just in case I ever have to credit them in the future when I become famous.
Anyway, the story behind Negativland's next album, Helter Stupid, is pretty fascinating, so go read about it.

A fictitious (I think) Joy Division GameBoy; from retrojapan.tumblr.com

Creepily cool green spider I found on my ginger plants, 10/1/09.  Apparently a non-native species that hitched a ride in on some plants.

This date palm (Phoenix dactylifera; unknown cultivar) which I bought three years ago had grown so much that its roots had cracked through the bottom of its (approx. 20 gallon) pot.  Palm roots tend to look like white gummi worms, much different than the roots of regular trees, and they tend to go to the bottom of a pot and circle around like crazy, often raising the plant up in its pot.  So I got fed up and decided to throw it in the ground today rather than finding a new pot for it.  You can see how big it is by using the air conditioning unit in the background for scale.  Those are some little pups growing at the base of the mama plant.  I planted it in a spot where I'd accidentally killed a small loquat tree last winter by using too much copper fungicide on it.

Speaking of loquats... (Ooooh, cliffhanger...)

Planets with similar climates: The Styrenes - "The Social Whirlpool" (1977) & "Drano In Your Veins" (1975), Hüsker Dü - "How To Skin A Cat" (1984), Was (Not Was) - "Hello Dad, I'm In Jail" (1987), Ween - "The H.I.V. Song" (1994), Milk Cult - "Clown Party" (1992), a few of the the Tetris theme songs.

The Black Watch >> I won't skip over anything

California Month, tremor #5:

The Black Watch - "Terrific"

(Doctor Dream Records, 1991)

I got into this song via a 1992 Doctor Dream Records (yeah, I had never heard of that label either) compilation CD called Doctor Dream Records Super Sampler.  I bought it in a pawn shoppe in Laplace for 50 cents in late 2007.  I'd already owned the band's '94 album Amphetamines for around a decade, but had only listened to it once or twice.  It has the awesome single "Come Inside," but not much else on it has grabbed me.  You can find it in almost any used CD bin, since Zero Hour apparently pressed up an enormous quantity of them, thinking the band would hit it big.  So they erred on that, but at least they had faith in the band, unlike Doctor Dog.  (Read more about this below.)
"Terrific," from their sophomore album Flowering, didn't do much for me at first, until I grew to anticipate the huge shift from jangly lite pop to urgently passionate intensity, specifically at the 2:30 mark, and then an even more dramatic shift at 3:10.

Like R.E.M.'s "The One I Love," it comes off as a love song, but is actually quite a bitter breakup song.  Or maybe it was written in two parts to illustrate how the mind works when it realizes it can't have the object over which it obsesses, and resorts to looking for every bad thing about that object in order to convince itself that it doesn't really want that object.  Violinist and occasional backup singer J'Anna Jacoby delivers some really inspired playing, and the evolution of the John Andrew Fredrick's singing over the course of the song is impressive too.  According to the interesting bio page on the band's website, he has a Ph.D. in English from U.C. Santa Barbara, and later received an award for Lecturer Of The Year while briefly teaching there, before they laid him off.  (Which makes me wonder if the lyrics of "Terrific" were aimed at UCSB rather than at an ex.)  And he has written two books, The King Of Good Intentions and The Knucklehead Chronicles.

I forgot where I found this; presumably on someone's Tumblr page

The song really has that "California feel," with effortless chordal propulsion and easygoing melodies, making it ideal as a car song.  I read something about how TBW really believed in this song, and quite rightly wanted Doctor Dream to push it heavily to radio and release it as a physical 7" single or CD single.  When the label refused, the band got really ticked off, and I think that's why they left the label, signing to Zero Hour Records.  Of the album, one of my idols, Jack Rabid of The Big Takeover & AllMusic Guide, said:
"Right from the brilliant opening song, "Terrific," the listener is clearly in good if familiar hands -- a brisk, clipped power pop / U.K. new wave rocker that eschews feedback in favor of a clean punch, all topped by the lovely violin work by Jacoby, showing why she's been in demand as a side person on a number of other recordings, and a sweet-and-sour lyric sung by both Frederick and Jacoby."

Option (the best music mag of the '90s, in my opinion) said:
"Often the group sounds English, sometimes recalling The Cure's poppier moments... Flowering works best when Frederick's winsome voice is dragged fiercely along by Jacoby's endearing fiddling and the twin strum of acoustic guitars."

(Note: "Terrific" can also be found on the band's 2000 album Lime Green Girl, which for some reason has seven of their early songs tacked onto the end of it.)

That's my grandparents, Paul (Pop Pop) and Marcie (Mom Mom), with their kids: my uncle Tom in blue shorts, my dad Steve in green shorts, and my aunt Kathleen.  My uncle Mike, the oldest of their four kids, took the pic, according to my dad.  The back of it states "This Is A Kodacolor Enlargement, November 1959."  Yes, I had to take a photo of this photo, since I don't own a scanner... sorry.  This was likely taken in Hawai'i, since Pop Pop was stationed on O'ahu, presumably at Pearl Harbor, at around this time.  I think my dad said that the family lived in 15 different places by the time he (my dad) was 13, including Germany, Savannah, Albany, and of course Hawai'i.  Pop Pop is my idol, by the way, and my middle name is Paul.  He and Mom Mom were married for about 50 years until his death in 1994.

That's a photo I took in the French Quarter of some women (I believe only two or three), using a long shutter speed, from my car, probably on Royal Street facing west or Bourbon Street facing east.  The file is dated 11/25/04, but I'm not sure if that's the exact date it was taken.  I rarely go down there, since the Quarter is mainly a tourist destination that locals avoid, so it might've been on the night I went down there to see Cat Power, which was on 9/20/04.  I can make out the word "Bistro" on the yellow sign, and the Stop sign means it was at an intersection, if that helps anyone to ascertain exactly where this is.  Despite the poor resolution / quality, this has always been one of my favorite photos that I've taken, maybe because of how the multi-tiered building right behind the women sort of looks like it's a kaleidoscopic extension of them, and it melds with the refraction from the big white light at the top.  Overall, it just has a good sense of motion and mystery.  The Quarter is one of the best places to do nighttime "drive-by" photography, since all the neon lights really blur well when using a long shutter speed, and there are always drunk m.f.'s doing stupid or entertaining stuff, because they feel they are obliged to do so the second they set foot in this city.

Planets with similar climates: The Smiths - "This Charming Man" (1983), Felt - "Penelope Tree" (1983), The Lotus Eaters - "The First Picture Of You" (1983), R.E.M. - "The One I Love" (1986), The Go-Betweens - "Streets Of Your Town" (1988), Film School - "Nothing's Mine" (2010), Sand Rubies - "Goodbye" (1993), Matthew Sweet - "We're The Same" (1994).

Tape >> Would it help if I screamed?

California Month, tremor #4:

Tape - "Fill In The Blank"

(Trank City, 2002)

Tape featured Norm Block of Plexi on drums and was fronted by onetime "paisley rapper" Justin Warfield.  (Check out his interesting Prince Paul-produced 1993 rap album My Field Trip To Planet 9, which is somewhat of a cult classic.)  He later fronted the more commercially successful neo-post-punkers She Wants Revenge, but Tape was definitely his musical peak, though Tape only released six songs and two song snippets.  Tape formed in L.A. in 2001 and were apparently done by late '02 or early '03, unless I'm mistaken.

Man, this could've been a legitimately huge hit song, which is something I say a lot, but I mean it every time.  The whole EP, Amplified / Push Escape, can still be downloaded here, which is where I downloaded it several years ago.  I highly recommend downloading the explosive psychedelic rap-rock cut "True Crime" and the atmospheric "Dream Club."  (In fact, I planned to make this entry about one of those two songs, but ended up choosing "Fill" because it's so dang catchy.)  Definitely a hidden gem of a disc.  "Fill In The Blank" also appeared on Tape's 3-song EP Signal Level Will Now Increase, released June 2002.  Well, just squint your eyes and read the article from Kerrang! below, which calls them "currently the hottest band in L.A. bar none":

L-R: Kirk Hellie (guitar), Thomas Froggatt (bass), Justin Warfield (vocals, guitar), Norm Block (drums, backing vox)

It's pretty weird that a big U.K. metal magazine was covering Tape, yet U.S. music mags apparently had no idea they even existed.  What's that, you say?  Another U.K. metal mag covered them?  Yeah right...

Article in Metal Hammer, Sept. 2002

As you can tell by now, Norm is pretty tall; 6'5", in fact.  Anyway, thanks, U.K. metal mags.  Carry on.

Tape's website used to be www.tapenation.com, but that URL is now owned by an adhesive tape company, so the band's site is currently archived here.  It's tricky to figure out what to click on, but there are lots of surprises waiting, such as a set of dozens of live photos:

Live at the Knitting Factory's Hollywood branch, 11/22/02

I don't usually like to give a bunch of pics of any band, but when the band is as unknown as this one, and has as vague of a name as this one, I tend to make an exception.

Well, not a great day today.  I got bitten by a few dozen fire ants on my bare feet / legs / hands.  Then the garage door came off its track for a second time, and almost scalped me for a second time, so I made some calls to Sears to get the ball rolling on getting that fucker replaced.  And I'm pretty sure I have a cavity, which would my first since that one I had in the '80s.  And it's been raining nonstop for two days due to the tropical storm.  Life goes on.  As this song says, "Life has a cruel sense of humor / Shit is not as bad as it seems."

Here's a collage I made on Nov. 18, 2000, using only comic strips from that same day's newspaper (the New Orleans Times-Picayune).  I've never shown it to anyone:

(As with all images on this site, click it to see it full size.)  I never named it, but I guess "Only Momentarily" would be a good name.  I remember that it was a rainy, gray day, just like today but way colder, and I had just read through this fairly pretentious metal zine called Lamentations Of The Flame Princess (LOL) that I had picked up for free that day.  For some reason it was interesting reading, even though I had completely sworn off metal several years earlier.  It was my first time ever hearing of Opeth, whom I saw a few years later and then promptly forgot all about.

Planets with similar climates - Bailter Space - "Pass It Up" (1997), Plexi - "Dimension" (1996), Pluto - "When She Was Happy" (1996), Social Distortion - "Let It Be Me" (1990), The Sound - "Heyday" (1980), The Pharcyde - "Passin' Me By" (1992).

Plexi >> When I was looking at you, I didn't mind your foggy weather

California Month, tremor #3:

Plexi - "Forest Ranger"

(Sub Pop Records, 1996)

This song demonstrates every weapon in Plexi's arsenal: catchy choruses, strangely brutish charisma, artsy guitar heroics, leather, a cryptic sense of humor, etc.  The seemingly nonsensical / suicidal / environmental lyrics can be a turnoff to some.  I personally despise Marxist mass murderer Che Guevara, who helped Fidel Castro and other such louts to overthrow and essentially enslave millions of people by deciding that the underclasses would be better off if he removed them from the supposed shackles of capitalist society, and helped to almost bring about nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, but that's another topic.  For what it's worth, Plexi guitarist Michael Barragan is Cuban, or part Cuban at least, based on YouTube commenter cubanpapi2010, who said "Thanks for posting this..My cousin played Guitar for them..Michael Barragan.....hes amazing:)."  As for Carl Lewis, Phyllis Diller and Salman Rushdie, I'm more open to accepting their contributions to the world.

Note that this is the original 1996 Sub Pop version of "Forest Ranger," not the (slightly inferior) radio remix from the 1997 reissue on Lava / Atlantic.  Hence I feel comfortable in posting it here, as it's a true "indie" recording.  A "forest ranger" is allegedly someone who gets a lot of access to a part of the female anatomy, in the pre-Brazilian-waxing era, to put it politely.  I guess it was SoCal slang back in the day.  By contrast, NorCal is most famous for inventing the extremely irritating word "hella."  This is the music video, which I earlier mentioned aired a whopping one time on MTV, in September 1997:

Bathtubs, leather, and explosions, my friend... I had a little 10-second or so .avi excerpt of this video which I watched for around a decade, until I finally got to see the whole thing on YouTube.  It was directed in Aug. '97 by this guy David Meyers, who went on to direct a lot of famous rap videos (including OutKast's "B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)," Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On," and Jay-Z's "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)," as you can maybe guess by the gratuitous usage of fisheye lenses, blinding lights, and general chaos.  I guess the world can thank Atlantic Recs. for footing the bill for this video, so that's at least one good thing that came of Plexi's major-label signing.  (I can't think of any others.)

Elaborate 1996 Sub Pop Digipak packaging; the trifold part (at top) folds up and slides into the black outer case (at left).
The Atlantic reissue is pretty much identical, except that the design on the CD itself is slightly different.

Shrinkwrapped 1997 Atlantic CD

Back of 1997 promo CD (mine)

1997 cassette (mine)

Well, the tropical storm damaged several of my trees and killed the power for about 2 hours, but overall we escaped almost entirely unscathed.  Imma go drive around and check the neighborhood for damage now, then shoot some hoops and watch #4 LSU vs. #3 Oregon tonight.  Here's a strange photo I took after Hurricane Gustav (or Ike) (both hit a week apart) three years ago.  No, it's not the name of the latest lame indie rock band... If you live around here, you'll immediately know what it is:

Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits sign; Airline Hwy. near Williams Blvd., Kenner, LA, 9/9/08.
Notice there's a piece of it across the drainage canal in the background.

And in honor of hurricanes, check out the hurricane-esque radial symmetry of this cactus:

Somewhat epic angled closeup of my new Golden Ball Cactus (Parodia magnifica, a.k.a. Notocactus magnificus), on 8/30/11.
This astounding species is hardy down to 20-25º and can be bought at almost any Home Depot or Lowe's, believe it or not.
(Only $5 for this bad boy.  See, Che, capitalism can be fun.)

Planets with similar climates: The Cure - "The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea" & "Open" (1992), The Psychedelic Furs - "Highwire Days" (1984), Film School - "Compare" (2007), Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (1991), Bleach - "Surround" (1991).

Plexi >> Cut me to pieces that I'll understand

California Month, tremor #2:

Plexi - "Simple Man"

(Boy's Life Records, 1994)

No, this is not a cover of the Lynyrd Skynyrd dud of the same name, but it has huge guitar riffage aplenty, generated by only one guitarist rather than Skynyrd's three.  And Plexi guitarist Michael Barragan was (is?) a member of the NHRA, so I'm sure he had to put up with Skynyrd songs whilst participating in that hobby.  This is the first song on the first thing that Plexi ever released, 1994's Plexi EP, and it sure makes a big first impression.  It has a morbidly catchy singalong chorus that bands like The Cult and Bauhaus would kill for.  The way the drums and guitar lock into a tribal, rap-style beat has always impressed me, and I don't think I've ever heard guitar mixed so loudly in the mix, almost to the point of eardrum laceration.

I still can't decide if Michael Angelos is singing "Cut me to pieces that I'll understand" or "Cut me to pieces that I understand," and this is important to me because I think it'd make for a great epitaph or tattoo, so I want to get it right.  I had been singing it as "I'll" all these years, but now I think it's just "I."  In this speedy live version, he definitely says "I'll":

(Recorded at The Dragonfly in L.A. on 6/25/97; taken from Plexi's "Mountains" CD single, which has three live cuts from that gig.)  Angelos displays a love of particle physics by mentioning gluons in the next line, which reminds me of how The Church's song "Antenna" mentions Faraday cages.  And yes, Barragan uses a toy spacegun on his guitar pickups during this song (the live version) to create wild sounds.  I was actually planning on posting the shoegazey "Na-Na," but I decided that "Simple Man" shows Plexi's radio-friendly side (and biting humor) better, and is just one of the most unique and uncategorizable songs I've ever heard, and it shows why the band became such an instant sensation on the L.A. scene.
This EP originally came out on limited clear orange 10" vinyl in '94, then on CD the next year with a shuffled tracklist and slightly different cover art, plus a promo cassette with no cover art.  It was on Boy's Life Records, founded by Plexi's pals The Campfire Girls.  The EP was recorded in L.A. not long after the whole O.J. Simpson fiasco, and some of those gory, lurid vibes definitely seem to have rubbed off on the recordings.  Keep in mind that at in the vacuous U.S. indie rock scene at this same time, Pavement were busy singing about haircuts, Weezer were busy singing about unraveling your sweater, and Guided By Voices were busy singing about kicking elves.  Uh-huh.  Yay indie rock?  Plexi were like a motorcycle-mounted AK-47 that was aimed squarely at those limp chumps, yet to this day, if Rivers Cuomo so much as gets a hangnail or Steve Malkmus double parks, Pitchfork issues an urgent report on it, so I guess vacuous indie rock won out in the end, but I digress.

Titled "old-school Plexi"; I believe it's one of the few pre-'96 Plexi photos in existence

Well, tropical storm Lee is bearing down hard, and is forecast to be direct hit on my town and then on New Orleans as well.  So I might be knocked offline for a few days if there's a power outage, but fear not.  Just trimmed a bunch of trees to make them more aerodynamic in storm winds and hence less likely to fall over, and moved my desert plants (cacti, aloes, agaves, succulents) indoors.

So I was digging around in some old digital photos and decided to start posting some of the best ones on here.  Sorry if they take a long time to load.

Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans right before sunset, 8/30/06.
Was riding my bike (bicycle), saw this random guy, and had to snap a pic.

A cemetery statue store in New Orleans, on City Park Ave. at I-10, 12/18/03.  This is now a police station.

Cropped version that I made to use as the header image for my online zine in '04, but I don't remember if ever used it.

My saw the day it arrived from eBay, 9/3/06.  I paid about $300 for it, plus over $100 on repairs.  They're about $550 new.  18" bar.
The "Pro" designation means it has a decompression valve for easier starts, and certain internal parts are stronger.

My Bismarckia nobilis palm putting out a nice new leaf a few months after I planted it, 11/24/09.
As far as I know, this is the first one, and perhaps the only one, ever planted in my parish (county).

Planets with similar climates: Guns N' Roses - "You Could Be Mine" (1991), Band Of Susans - "Plot Twist" (1990), Bailter Space - "So La" (1997), Poem Rocket - "Small White Animal" (1995), Helmet - "Exactly What You Wanted" (1997), The Mission - "Heat" (1988).

Plexi >> It's better over there / The moment never seems to begin

California Month, tremor #1:

Plexi - "Peel / He"

(I.F.A. Records, 1995)

For the last couple years, I've been noticing that the new generation of California bands has been killing it, so I've decided to devote this month to them and their forebears.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that I lived in the Presidio, a decommissioned army base in San Francisco.  We lived there from 1980 to '86 and I'll always be very fond of it, though I haven't set foot in that state since the day we drove away.  Some of my best memories include walking across the Golden Gate Bridge (and back!) with my Cub Scout troop, going to the awe-inspiring Monterey Bay Aquarium, picnics in Golden Gate Park, the Exlporatorium in GGP, having several friends named Brian Lee at my elementary school which was half Asian, driving along the PCH to wine country in Napa, rafting on the Russian River, driving to Marin(?) County to see Halley's Comet, and so on.  The songs that I liked the most at this time were "When Doves Cry" by Prince, "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, "Shout" by Tears For Fears, and "Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band.

My first choice for California Month was an easy one, since the band over which I obsessed for the second half of the '90s and still worship to this day hailed from Los Angeles.  The choice of song was pretty easy too, since their only album came out on Sub Pop at a time when Sub Pop had recently sold 49% of itself to a major label.  (And the album was reissued the following year on a full major label, Atlantic.)  So that left the band's two indie EPs and one 7" single.  I chose the double track "Peel / He" because it shows the band's haunting, introspective side and its aggressive, manic side.  And has any band ever kicked off a guitar solo by having the lead singer do a "b-b-b-b-b" thing with his lips?  (At the 3:51 mark.)  "Peel" has cryptic lyrics and a gentle groove that lulls even the most caffeine-addled Seattleite to a trance.  (This song is from the I.F.A. EP, recorded in Seattle in January 1995.)  Then "He" bulldozes the entranced listener to the ground.  The guitar solos in this song and in the previously-posted song ("Kyuss" by Juned) are among the most badass ones ever.

1996 or '97 Cheer Up press photo; L-R: Michael Barragan, Michael Angelos, Norm Block

Plexi formed in 1993 around singer / bassist / songwriter Michael Angelos, guitarist Michael Barragan, and drummer Norm Block.  All members wore black leather and a good deal of white face paint, and were heavily tattooed, making them curiosities in the mid-'90s slacker-rock scene, when you had bands with names like Archers Of Loaf and bands that dressed like, well, Archers Of Loaf.  (I'm picking on them only because Plexi toured as the opening act of Loaf's west coast tour in late 1994, and again in late 1995.)  This song goes out to Anne Lenhart, who, on my advice, bought Cheer Up in early '97 and dubbed it onto a cassette... on shuffle mode!  I remember thinking how cool that idea was, and wondered why I had never thought to do it.  I don't think she has ever heard this song, and I know she was upset at never getting to see them live.

Pre-empting your local broadcast ca. 1996/'97

A re-recorded (and in fact far superior) version of "Peel" can be heard on the band's debut, and so far only, album, Cheer Up.  That album is a landmark in my life for so many reasons.  I honestly could write so much about Plexi, and how they should have become legitimate arena stars, but I'll spare you all.  Anyway, the second version of "Peel" has even spacier guitar textures and a cooler intro scream (Barragan screams directly into the pickups on his Gibson) (I saw him do this live when they played "Peel").  But more importantly, it has an entirely new second half to it (essentially replacing "He" with a turbocharged shoegaze riff-fest and family-friendly lyrics like "She was gonna swing from her neckbone.")  As a guitar tone fanatic, that song will always remain my holy grail of celestial gtr tone, aside from maybe "Blue Pedal" by Kitchens Of Distinction and "Interstate" by the Sand Rubies.

For some reason, I think this is one of the best, or at least one of the most fitting, pieces of cover art ever.  It captures Plexi's take on the decaying of decadence, and their humorous attitude towards L.A.'s favorite species, the floozy.  Compare this choice of female to the type of female that adorned countless covers of L.A. hair-metal bands in the prior decade.  It's hard to tell, but the band & EP name are printed in sort of a faux-pearl/abalone color.

Plexi broke up in 1999, though the three dudes remain great friends, and reformed for a couple of shows in 2002.  The sophomore album they recorded in Amsterdam in 1998 has never been released, and my life will not be complete until I hear it.  Do go check out Plexi's Wikipedia page, which I created about 5 years ago.  Rather than gracing the covers of guitar magazines worldwide, Barragan hot-rods motorcycles for a living, and his talents are apparently in pretty high demand in SoCal.  Block has drummed for many bands, including Jack Off Jill.  Angelos got into independent filmmaking and was recording a solo album in 2002, the last I heard of him.  His solo project is apparently called Cruelty To Animals.

My personal Plexi timeline:

Jan. 1996: I first hear of them via an ad for this EP (I.F.A.) in an issue of Alternative Press with the Flaming Lips on the cover, which I buy at the Tower Records in Richmond, VA.  I only bought it because I had seen the Lips live two years earlier and was so unimpressed by them that I basically wanted to read the article just to laugh at their shmucky asses, or at least to figure out why on earth everyone seemed to take them seriously.  Anyway, this ad quotes a review comparing them to Bailter Space and Metallica.

Summer '96: i write to Sub Pop begging for a free promo compilation CD "to get me into your new crop of bands," and am sent a free compilation called That Virtua Feeling.  I hear Plexi's frenzied 2-minute song "Caught Up", and immediately scramble to find out more about them.  The writeup in this CD's liner notes says "Tentatively scheduled for release on Sub Pop sometime in 1996.  Plexi are a freshly inked Sub Pop band from beautiful Los Angeles.  A new heavy psychedelia should your hypothalmus be overweight."  (Note the pun in the word "inked," which can also mean "tattooed"... Only took me 15 years to figure this out.)

Later that summer: I track down both of Plexi's EPs (Plexi and I.F.A.) online and order them; I remember that one was from a record store in Orlando.  Yes, this was in the days before file-sharing.  I also call Sub Pop's hotline (1-800-SUB-POP1) to pester them about when Plexi's debut album is gonna come out, and I find out that it's October 6th.

Oct. 7, 1996: At Underground Sounds, I buy Cheer Up the day after it is released, on promo CD in a cool black slipcase, with a fold-out poster filled with fun (mostly made-up) facts about the band, as part of a tongue-in-cheek attempt by Sub Pop to mythologize them, as they had done earlier with the likes of Tad and Nirvana.  I am slightly disappointed with the album at first (keep in mind this was only a month after I had bought My Bloody Valentine's Loveless), but I very quickly become totally obsessed with it.  I dub a copy of it on cassette and listen to it endlessly in my Integra.

Fall 1996: Alternative Press runs a full-page article on Plexi.  Michael A. opines about his love of Ziggy Stardust as the ultimate album to put on while you're getting ready to go out on a Saturday night, and about how Plexi's goal was to make an album that can fill that role for a new generation.  In the final line of the article, after being asked how he would feel if any listeners took the band's lyrics about suicide seriously and killed themselves, M.A. coolly says "Well, as long as I don't die..."  This one line perfectly illustrates the band's morbidly irreverent sense of humor, and solidifies their their place in my mind as my new favorite band.  I make a point of hoarding every little Plexi-related thing I can get my hands on, because I had always heard about how some people were lucky enough to have followed their favorite bands from their infancy all the way to superstardom, and I knew this was my chance to do the same thing.  I wanted to have the souvenirs along the way.  (The only other bands I've "collected" in this obsessively creepy way are Hovercraft, Bailter Space, Unwound, and Swervedriver.)

Jan. 1997: An Alternative Press scribe, one of my most trusted ones, in fact, gives Cheer Up a lackluster 2-finger (2 stars out of 5) review.  I send them an irate, tangential, fairly obnoxious letter in protest.  (For what it's worth, one of A.P.'s head writers, Jason Pettigrew, writes me back to tell me that most of the staff disagreed with the 2-star review [hence why they decided to print my response letter], but they had to print it anyway since album reviews are not allowed to be vetoed there.)

Early May, 1997: I receive the May issue of A.P. with L7 on the cover and see my letter printed first in the "Incoming" (reader mail) section, along with a pic of the band, apparently from the same photo session that spawned the Cheer Up album cover.  I knew it was coming, since they had told me a few months in advance, but it was still quite an arresting feeling to see it in print and know that every indie rock dude & dudette in the country was gonna be reading it.  (Keep in mind this was way before A.P. turned into a laughable emo / metalcore mag.)

Saturday, May 3, 1997: I wake up particularly early, for some unknown reason.  My clock radio is tuned, for irony value, to local pop station B97.  The DJ is reading off a list of bands playing around town that day (something they never do on that station), and he says that a band called "Flexi" is playing a free show at the Aquarium downtown.  I just about have a heart attack, since I know I have to hurry down there on the chance that it's Plexi.  After calling my then-semi-girlfriend Johanna, who turns down the opportunity to go with me since she has never heard of Plexi, my dad drops me off at the foot of Canal Street and I jog on a block or so of train tracks leading to the pavilion, while the eerie descending chords of "Forest Ranger" echo through the ether, causing me to just about die from excitement.  I see my heroes play a great set to a crowd of only a dozen or so people, right on the edge of the Mississippi River, as part of some sort of ESPN X Games tryouts, with cyclists doing aerial tricks in the background.  Very surreal.  (This was the last weekend of Jazz Fest, so most NOLA music fans were over at the Fairgrounds across town.  On the other hand, I did meet an LSU student who had driven about 90 miles from Baton Rouge to see Plexi.)  I remember there was a strong breeze, and the weather was just incredible, and quite cool for this time of year, and that I wore a white t-shirt with a huge UPC barcode on the front, a t-shirt of my friend's band, Fiddlehead.  Afterwards, I meet them and show them the A.P. letter I had ripped out and brought with me.  They are genuinely blown away / humbled, and Michael A. mentioned that they had really felt hurt by that A.P. review.  They give me lots of free stuff, including a t-shirt, a promo CD single for "Roller Rock Cam," a few posters, stickers, etc., and they sign them all.  It's dope as fuck; I'm suddenly "in the club," just like that.  Norm even signs the drumstick of his that I had scooped up when he threw it out into the non-crowd at the end of their set.  It just kind of sat there for a while in the sun on the brick terrace, so I sheepishly picked it up.  (He wrote "Fuck this guy" next to the name Vic Firth on the drumstick; I never asked him why.)  Norm tells me Plexi have signed to Atlantic, and that Cheer Up will be reissued soon.  I feel crushed, my indie self feels betrayed, but I'm happy for the band's growing momentum.  I suggest to him that the two EPs should also be reissued, on one CD, and he says that sounds like a great idea.  Michael A. tells me that Plexi are trying to set up a last-minute show in New Orleans that same night, but I don't know if that show ever happened.  Knowing me, I'm surprised I didn't call every single club in town that night to see if Plexi, or "Flexi," were playing there.  Considering that Plexi had given me their beeper number, I can't believe I didn't just dial it and have them call me back with any show info.  What a dumbass.  But to summarize: A day on which I saw my favorite band play outside at my favorite spot (I was such a fish fanatic that I had my mom take me to the opening day of this aquarium in August 1990), for free, and got free stuff, including their freakin' beeper number?  Are you kidding me?  Easily the most memorable day of my life.  To top it off, I went to Jazz Fest the next day on a blind date with two girls I met off of the internet.  And the next day, I bought my pet Uromastyx lizard, Molly, whom I still have and cherish to this day, though she is now named Holly.

July 1997: Cheer Up is reissued with little fanfare on Atlantic Records, home of arena stars Led Zeppelin, King Missile and Laura Branigan, paving the way for Plexi's global conquest.  Well, technically it's on Atlantic's "alternative rock" subsidiary Lava.  I buy it on promo CD with no cover art at Underground Sounds.  (The only sonic difference between the Sub Pop version of the album and the Atlantic version of the album is that opening track "Forest Ranger" was subtly remixed to beef it up and make it more radio-friendly.)

Mid-1997: Atlantic releases a CD single containing "Mountains" plus three live tracks.  I join Plexi's fanclub (or maybe just mailing list), and soon receive a sweet signed glossy 8x10" black & white photo, and some little form letter, and probably some more stickers.

August 1997: I buy the regular (newly out-of-print) Sub Pop CD of Cheer Up at Tower Records.

September 1997: MTV airs the video for "Forest Ranger" once, on a Sunday night, on either 120 Minutes or Alternative Nation, whichever of those was on Sundays.  I missed it, despite staying up all night to watch it.  Plexi tours huge venues at around this time as the opening act for labelmates Smash Mouth.  (Seriously.)  Smash Mouth had a huge hit with "Walkin' On The Sun" at this time, so lots of people were presumably lucky enough to catch Plexi as an opening act.  I consider driving about 10 hours to see this tour in Texas, but I figure I'll have at least another decade of chances to see them live in NOLA, so I don't go.

Dec. 1997: I buy the reissued version of Cheer Up on cassette, meaning that I have now bought this album four different times.  I remember getting into a little argument with the cashier, after telling him it had come out the previous year on Sub Pop; he was like "No, it came out this year."  Dave Navarro (Jane's Addiction guitarist and close friend of Michael Barragan) names Cheer Up his favorite album of the year in some magazine.

Summer or fall 1998: The notoriously drug-o-philic Plexi go to, of all places, Amsterdam to record a follow-up album.  (I talked to Angelos a few times on AOL, where his screennames were IVMORPHINE and PUREHEROIN.)  They record an album there, play a bunch of shows there, and break up for unknown reasons in early '99.  I'm crushed, of course.  According to Plexi's MySpace bio (2006), the breakup was due to "lack of communication skills and emotional unavailability."  Haha.

In the ensuing years: I buy the regular Atlantic version of Cheer Up on CD every time I find it for sale used, to give them to friends.  I also get the somewhat disappointing "Part Of Me" 7", which is redeemed by having "Caught Up" as its b-side.  As Plexi were local legends in SoCal, the members are in high demand by other local groups.  Norm forms the band Tape, fronted by ex-rapper Justin Warfield (future singer of She Wants Revenge).  Tape release two excellent EPs circa 2002, but no album.  Norm also goes on to be a part of Gift Horse Project, Meow Meow, Sweethead (featuring Troy from Queens Of The Stone Age), and Victoria (featuring Spacehog's former singer).  Both Barragan and Block tour as part of Mark Lanegan's backing band.  Barragan is in a California "supergroup" called Loaded, also featuring Duff McKagan (Guns N' Roses), Dez Cadena (Black Flag), and Taz Bentley (Reverend Horton Heat).  He also records with a band called Broken, who were/are presumably based in L.A. 

Fall 2002: I email a set of interview questions to an online friend (Carla; her AOL screenname was Vespertine) who tells me she will show them to Michael A., whom she knows in real life.  I never get any answers back, so I get ticked off and pretty much never talk to Carla again, since I felt she embarrassed me in front of my favorite band.

April 2003: I finally buy the Plexi EP on limited orange-vinyl 10", on eBay.

Sometime later: I get the "Forest Ranger" promo CD single
Mar. 2006: I buy a signed copy of I.F.A. on eBay.  At this point, I own everything Plexi ever released, aside from Cheer Up on LP and Plexi on promo cassette.  Here's pics of that signed I.F.A. CD:

That's a cat on the CD

Another cat inside the CD booklet

I don't think I ever dialed Plexi's beeper, by the way... Something about not wanting to bug them after they had been so cool to me on that day, I guess, and the fact that they were just so many levels cooler than me.  But I still have the scrap of paper with Norm's distinctive handwriting, the same kind he used in the lipstick-on-bathroom-mirror pics in the Cheer Up CD booklet.  I'll post a photo of it when I find it.  I've been wanting to start a Plexi fansite for over a decade; in the late '90s there was one called Plexi Online, and there was a young Plexi cover band called Dayglo.

Fun Facts:
Sub Pop band Sunny Day Real Estate were fans of Plexi, and were the ones who told Sub Pop about Plexi, which led to them being signed.
Angelos has "Damned" tattooed across his stomach, in Tupac "THUG LIFE" style, but his probably predates Tupac's.

Visit Michael Angelos on MySpace

Planets with similar climates to that of "Peel": Joy Division - "I Remember Nothing" (1979), American Music Club - "In The Shadow Of The Valley" (1994), Tram - "High Ground" (1998).

Planets with similar climates to that of "He": The Chameleons - "Return Of The Roughnecks" (1985), Catherine Wheel - "Chrome" (1993), Unwound - "Kantina" (1993), Jawbox - "Mirrorful" (1996), Quicksand - "Lie And Wait" (1992).