Will Oldham & Jim O'Rourke >> Light had brightened certain textures

Will Oldham & Jim O'Rourke - "Ebb's Folly"

(Atavistic Records, 1996)

This song is from the soundtrack to the black and white 1996 documentary film Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back.  It's about the effects of the encroachment of modernized society on the traditional lifestyle of the Aleutian people, specifically those of Unalaska Island.  (Though my research finds that Dutch Harbor is actually on its neighboring island, called Amaknak Island... hmm.)  Read more about the flick here.  This is the only song with vocals on the whole album, plus it's the penultimate track, right before a gentle lilting piece, so it really stands out.

Read the incredibly cryptic lyrics here, though I'm not sure if they're official, since they're not printed in the CD booklet.  I've still never seen the film, but I did buy the CD right when it came out, through Atavistic Records mailorder in summer of '97.  It was just a good hunch that paid off.  It is impossible to not be moved by Will Oldham's fragile vocals, and in my opinion this song shows it off better than any other song by him in all of his guises (Will Oldham, Palace, Palace Music, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, etc.), aside from maybe Palace's "Stablemate".  Oldham is credited with vocals and acoustic guitar, while Jim O'Rourke did all the background soundscaping, including the atonal noise finale.  The melodic flow of the song is very dramatic and soul-stirring, especially when you know that the climax is coming.  I also bought Palace's Arise Therefore album that summer, though I stupidly skipped a Palace concert at the Mermaid Lounge the previous fall.  (I finally saw him live in 2004.)  Anyway, I can't urge you strongly enough to buy or download this soundtrack.  I remember the summer of '97 as being very hectic, with me finding out about all kinds of new bands, going to lots of concerts, transferring to a new college, meeting girls from AOL in real life, getting an array of reptilian pets, etc.  This soundtrack provided a perfectly serene and haunting counterpoint, a head-clearer.  The album as a whole is credited to The Boxhead Ensemble, a nebulous "all-star" group made up of cool dudes from the Chicago / Louisville post-rock (the original meaning of the term "post-rock") axis.  It included members of Tortoise, Gastr Del Sol, Pinetop Seven, Eleventh Dream Day, etc.  Each track has a different lineup of members playing a semi-improvised tune, ranging between 1 and 13 minutes, for a total length of 70 minutes.  I really believe future generations will place this soundtrack on the highest pedestal of achievement within the genre.  Even the photos (film stills) in the CD booklet are stunning, and everything is done in grays and white, with some silver accents.

Back in the day, I cut out a 4-finger (4-star) review of the album from Alternative Press, by Mitch Myers.  Here's an excerpt:
"The net result of this altered summit is a series of compelling instrumentals that ranges between the brittle and the atmospheric.  Operating in several similarly manned configurations, the Boxhead Ensemble exhibit the ability to change themselves musically without losing sight of their job as empathetic accompaniments to a visual art.  As an added bonus, Palace brother Will Oldham sings a song with O'Rourke that the two wrote expressly for this project.  Serving as a perfect introduction to the cutting-edge Chicago improv scene as well as an unusual soundtrack recording, Dutch Harbor provides a safe and sumptuous haven for those in search of adventure."

VHS cover

After 14 years, I'm still dying to see the movie.  If you can somehow rent it or procure it in some fashion, Blowtorch Baby will hold Movie Night at your house; you are to supply the movie, big-screen TV or film projector, appetizers, nonalcoholic drinks, full dinner, alcoholic drinks, board games, and anything else, while I will supply companionship and thought-provoking conversation.  Note: The conversation will take place before and after the film, not during it.  The film came out on VHS (No Choice / Atavistic) in 1998, and on expanded DVD (Plexifilm) in 2003.

Planets with similar climates: Cat Power - "Keep On Runnin'" (1998/2003), American Music Club - "Big Night" (1987) & "Will You Find Me?" (1992), Palace - "Stablemate" (1996), Idaho - "If You Dare" (1995).

Lubricated Goat >> You feel like the animal who dies for the animal who lives for the animal

Lubricated Goat - "New Kind Of Animal"

(Amphetamine Reptile Records / Black Eye Records, 1990)

Lubricated Goat were semi-stars of the noise rock scene in the late '80s & early '90s.  My first exposure to them was in Mr. Beachy's geography class in 1993 when Ryan Massey or Michael Loeffelholz or Deegan McClung told me their name, since we had a habit of writing the most obnoxious possible band names on the sides of our textbooks.  At the time, I found it hard to believe that this was an actual band name.  Singer / guitarist Stu Spasm married Babes In Toyland's singer, Kat Bjelland, for a while; they formed the band Crunt, which released one album.  Lubricated Goat are infamous in their native Australia for playing (lip-synching) nude on live network television in 1988.  Here's the very NSFW clip of them performing their sludgy opus "In The Raw," which is sure to be yanked from YouTube again any day now:

(Hey, I just noticed that if you look in the background, e.g. at the 4:10 mark, you can see the John Wayne Gacy painting that was later used as the cover art for Acid Bath's terrible "classic" album When The Kite String Pops.)  That stunt inspired a recent documentary short film called In The Raw.  I saw a reformulated lineup of the Goat play at the Circle Bar in New Orleans in March '04 to a crowd of two or three people.  I got this album, Psychedelicatessen, a year later on CD at a pawn shop, but sold it on eBay for a pretty high sum.  This is the only song I saved from it on my hard drive, though I'm wishing I had burned the whole thing.  I redeemed myself by buying it on LP in 2007, though.  The song is superior to almost every other song in the genre due to its strangely spacey guitar in the background, which comes to the fore during the "calm before the storm" section (call it a Guitar Solo if you must) starting at the 1:05 mark and again at the 2:00 mark.  The scream at the 2:28 mark is truly scary, especially since the producer pushes the master volume up until the scream starts to distort and sounds like shards of glass exploding.  Stu is kind of short and very friendly / loquacious (I talked to him for about half an hour after the '04 gig, causing me to miss a performance by Broken Social Scene a few blocks away; well, actually, it was mostly him talking a mile a minute and me listening), so he's not nearly as intimidating as this song and the photo below would indicate.  I even bought a L.G. t-shirt, which I immediately donned and wore to a Calexico concert down the street, the show Broken Social Scene was opening.  (The band Stars played first but I missed them too.)  That was a crazy day because I actually actually saw yet another concert, headlined by An Albatross, that afternoon.  2004!

Great band photo from the Psychedelicatessen LP sleeve; Stu Spasm on far right

I don't know if the lyric used in this post's title, "You feel like the animal who dies for the animal who lives for the animal," is correct, but it's the best I can make out, and I like how it illustrates the food chain in an existential way.

The other night, I watched the end of the Teen Choice Awards, which should just be renamed the Pattinson-Gomez-Bieber Achievement Awards by now.  The final moment involved host Kaley Cuoco standing on some sort of DJ platform with lead dude will.i.am from art-rockers The Black Eyed Peas.  As the song "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO began to play in the background, I could practically hear what was going through his sunglasses-clad head: "I cannot believe how blatantly these fuckers ripped us off..."

I'll also fess up to watching the last few episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, mainly due to the unfathomably gorge (like a younger Stacey Dash) and talented Sasha Mallory, who ended up finishing second:

I need a Signature Move.

Planets with similar climates: Mudhoney - "In N' Out Grace" (1988), The Stooges - "1970" (1970), Helmet - "Murder" (1989), Sonic Youth - "Death Valley '69" (1984), Unwound - "New Energy" (1995), At The Drive-In - "Cosmonaut" (2000).


Currently watching: An In Living Color marathon on VH1

Carved SUK FOR HONESTY on my chest

I realized that, except for in my profile, I haven't laid out a modus operandi or anything like that yet.  This is because I tend to find it really irritating whenever someone lays out a modus operandi.  So... here's mine:

i.) I only post one song at a time because there are thousands of other sites / blogs / torrents which apparently take great pride in giving you huge amounts of mediocre stuff, but how many are there that prescribe a small dosage of truly great stuff?  Isn't your hard drive full enough already, without force-feeding it another live concert by your 174th-favorite band, or b-sides by that teenage Bulgarian punk band from 1982 that someone told you about?  It's astounding to me, from legal, ethical, and logical standpoints, that so many sites simply give away entire albums, even major-label ones, as though it were no big deal.  It is a big deal, and I don't take this responsibility lightly.  I believe strongly in the concept of intellectual property rights, and I always feel somewhat queasy about giving away someone else's intellectual property.  The name of this blog is of course stolen from a lyric to a song (by A.C. Temple), so I still feel a little guilty whenever I look at it.  And the photo image at the top of the page is a photo I swiped and heavily cropped & color-altered almost beyond recognition, creating essentially a whole new work.  (Yes, it was green palms against a blue sky.)

ii.) It sounds selfish, but I've discovered that my favorite thing about doing this site is that it gives me my own little permanent online jukebox of my favorite songs.  After I post a song, I usually listen to it at least a dozen times on here over the ensuing few weeks, trying to get into the minds of those people who are just hearing it for the first time.  The main criterion for a song to make it onto this blog is that it has to be something that I want to listen to over and over, no matter how many times I've heard it over the previous months, years, or decades.

iii.) I don't know how to publicize this site, and I don't feel like learning how, so I just sort of rely on word of mouth, or on people doing an online search for a certain band or song and stumbling over here.  I've gotten comments on only one post (Feverdream) in the last four months, so I'm obviously not doing this for the praise or glory.  My rule in life has always been something to the effect of "Don't let the size of your audience dictate the quality of your work."

iv.) Going back to the major-label topic, I obviously only give out independent-label, or no-label, or live, recordings.  It's mainly because I don't want to get sued.  It's not because I'm some Ian MacKaye-esque indie purist; most of my favorite bands have been on major labels for some amount of time or another, and those bands (Sonic Youth, The Church, Brian Eno, Miles Davis, My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, Faith No More, etc.) have had the biggest trickle-down influence on the indie bands that I like.

v.) Yes, Blogspot* is owned by Google, so it's quite a corporate thing, but I like the fact that it's entirely free, and the fact that if I were to get run over by a bus tomorrow, these songs would still be on here for all eternity.  Whereas if one buys one's own URL / website, it has to be paid for annually, and so if you stop paying for it, it gets mothballed and all your work was for nought.
* Google is changing the name Blogspot to the fantastically lame Google Blogs any day now.  Sad.
** I recommend Ixquick over Google, though I'll admit I do use Google more often.

vi.) For over a decade, I would just email mp3s to people I knew online, so this site offers a better-structured way of doing that.  In the mid-'00s, I got really enraged by hype-based blogs that turned mediocre bands like Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah into stars overnight, so I vowed that if I ever did a music blog, it would be totally different.

vii.) The "Planets with similar climates" section of each post is the part about which I am secretly the most proud.  As for how I came up with that phrase, it happened during a late-night brainstorm session.  I told myself I had to come up with something better than "RIYL" ("Recommended if you like") or "Similar songs," and the phrase "Planets with similar climates" popped into my head rather quickly.  It was a pretty cool moment; you should've been there.

viii.) I want people to put songs from Blowtorch Baby up onto YouTube.  YouTube is always my first choice when trying to hear some obscure song.

ix.) I often do slight modifications to posts over the ensuing day or two after making them.  If I edit / modify something at a later date than that, I put "Update:" to introduce the new stuff.

x.) It may look like I often mess up when assigning a year to a song, but that's because I give the year in which it was recorded, which is often a year or more before it gets released.

Reminds me of the Faith No More lyric "I want the brightest, I want fluorescence, every day and night for the rest of my life"

Felt >> Nothing seems to matter when I'm on your side

Felt - "Fortune" (re-recorded version)

(Cherry Red Records, 1984)

I'm not a huge fan of this band, but this song is exceptional, and should come pre-loaded onto every iPod / iPad / car stereo / boombox / etc.  It originally appeared on Felt's 1982 debut album Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty, and was re-recorded for an '84 single, albeit just as a b-side.  Yes, one of the greatest songs of the '80s was just a b-side.  I took it off of the Felt retrospective CD Absolute Classic Masterpieces, which I downloaded from eMusic in 2003.  The original version is tentative and mumbly, whereas this one is more energetic and dayglo, while maintaining its mysterious melancholy undercurrent.  The opening guitar note and bass note are each just so perfect, and things just get better from there.  I heard that Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins does the backing vocals at the end, but I'm not sure if that's correct.

Back cover

The last two lines of the lyrics are great.  Guitar prodigy Maurice Deebank's jazzy, bright style was quite influential on the whole '80s U.K. indie jangle pop / rock scene, most notably on Johnny Marr of The Smiths, and probably David Gavurin of The Sundays.  Singer Lawrence (just Lawrence) was quite indebted to Lou Reed, but added this weird sighing technique that made his vocals unique.  He was quite a strange dude, forming Felt with the sole intent of releasing exactly ten albums and ten singles in a span of ten years, after which he would break the band up.  He did just that, and then promptly formed a group called... Denim.  L... O... L.  The word "Felt" is great because it has several different meanings (touched; had an emotion; a type of fabric).  Like I said, I don't like most of Felt's stuff, though the surging "Penelope Tree" is pretty great.  Too bad it has to have a girl's name in the title, my biggest musical pet peeve ever, but I think I mentioned that at least once already.

Cool little things that have happened since I've started doing this blog:
¬ A few days after the Hex post, I found Game Theory's Lolita Nation double LP in a thrift store for $3.  (Donette Thayer was in Game Theory before becoming the singer of Hex, and I'd been wanting this album for many years.)
¬ On July 14, I found A.C. Temple's Blowtorch LP for $4.  (Its song "Chinese Burn" contains the lyric "Blowtorch, baby," after which this blog is named.)  I never thought I'd find that one on vinyl, and in fact it was my first time seeing anything by A.C. Temple in person.  It was filed under the "T" section of the store, which kind of made me crack up, but kind of made me sad, since if this really hip store (Domino Sound Record Shack) doesn't know who they are, then who does?
¬ A few minutes before getting my speeding ticket in April, I was holding Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" cassingle, deciding whether or not to buy it.  (I didn't.)  Then in late June, I heard the song "I'd Rather Be With You" by Bootsy Collins on the radio and realized Adina stole the entire melody of it for "Freak Like Me."  I called the station and told the DJ about Adina's song, but she'd never heard of it.
¬ Compare the random photo I used in the Honeyburn post to this now-infamous photo of disgraced Oregon congressman David Wu:

This dude had to recently resign due to his bizarre behavior, likely the result of mental illness; I had no idea about this photo until last week, though it technically did come out before the post I made.

Today (well, technically yesterday, since it's a little after midnight) I went to a Saints practice for the first time, from about 4:30 - 6:30 PM.  I mention the time of day because the sun was in full splendor, casting a 97º glow on us mortals, but it was totally worth the heat, and it was free.  Newly-acquired weapon Darren Sproles, Reggie Bush's replacement (upgrade), repeatedly stunned the huge crowd into gasps with his slippery breakaway runs.  Like, seriouisly, I had never heard anything like that from a crowd at any sporting event.  This little dude is legit.  And rookie tailback Mark Ingram (yes, the Heisman winner) is a wrecking ball in the mold of Deuce McAllister.  Someone mentioned to me that all five of the Saints' offensive linemen are Pro Bowlers.  The hitting was pretty fierce, with lots of after-the-whistle contact.  There were 11 wide receivers listed on the roster sheet, so I guess about half of them will have to be cut in the next few weeks.  I believe this squad is far better than the one that won the Super Bowl two seasons ago.  I parked my car directly under a weeping willow, so it was cool when I got back to it, and my Skywave 7" ("Don't Say Slow") did not warp.  I then drove down to Houma and bought that greenhouse that I mentioned last month.  The music in the car fir the last several days has been Warpaint's Exquisite Corpse EP and Puro Instinct's Headbangers In Ecstasy.  I missed the NFL Hall Of Fame induction ceremony, and I forgot to wear my Marshall Faulk jersey.  He's from New Orleans, if you didn't know.  I followed him pretty closely in college starting in '92, when he was dominating college football.  After his first game as a pro in fall of '94, I put up a black & white newspaper photo of him on my wall, and it stayed there for many years.

Planets with similar climates: Simple Minds - "Someone Somewhere In Summertime" (1982), U2 - "Love Comes Tumbling" (1984), The Lotus Eaters - "Set Me Apart" (1984), Plexi - "Change" (1996), The Feelies - "It's Only Life" (1989), The Sundays - "More" (1992), Pearl Harbor (Puro Instinct) - "Slivers Of You" (2010), The Durutti Column - "Never Known" (1981), Hinterland - "Dive The Deepest" (1990), The House Of Love - "Feel" & "Yer Eyes" (1992).


Currently trying unsuccessfully to: Stop reading Natasha Vargas-Cooper's blog.

Opal >> She knows the rain

Opal - "Supernova"

(SST Records, 1987)

Here's a classic from Opal's only album, the excellently-named Happy Nightmare Baby.  The band consisted of guitar god David Roback (formerly of Rain Parade), singer Kendra Smith (formerly of The Dream Syndicate), and drummer Keith Mitchell, but they were essentially just a duo of Roback & Smith.  Opal played basically a more autumnal, noir version of the rather lame "Paisley Underground" scene of the early '80s.  I first heard "Supernova" in summer of '97; not this actual song, but rather a faithful cover by the Texas band 7% Solution, on a covers cassette they sent out to fans on their mailing list.  7%'s male singer actually has a more effeminate and beautiful voice than that of Kendra Smith, so I will try to post it once I obtain the technology to rip audio from cassettes to mp3s.  I got HNB on CD not terribly long afterwards, but stupidly sold it about a decade ago.  And I stupidly passed on buying a used LP copy of it a few years ago.  Damnit, Chris.  Oh well...

According to Wikipedia, "Smith left the group during the Happy Nightmare tour, storming off-stage half-way through their gig in Hammersmith, U.K., effectively putting an end to the band.  Roback continued with vocalist Hope Sandoval, playing shows as Opal and planning an album to be titled Ghost Highway, but in 1989 this band became Mazzy Star and Ghost Highway was presumably released as [Mazzy Star's debut album] She Hangs Brightly."  ("Ghost Highway" is the name of one of the songs on that album... the best song on it, in fact.)  The rest is history.  Opal has never reformed; Smith went off to live in a cabin in the woods and then had a brief solo career on 4AD.  I had her album Five Ways Of Disappearing, but sold it a good decade ago.  I had a photo of Hope hanging in my locker in my senior year of high school ('94-95), which I had cut out of an issue of Rolling Stone.  It was just a slightly blurry photo of her wearing big sunglasses and standing there looking pasty and waifish, but there was something exotic and cool about her that I didn't find in high school girls.

None of the other songs on Happy Nightmare Baby are in the same league as "Supernova," though the poppy title ditty is pretty good and was allegedly a minor college radio hit:

I remember "Soul Giver" was particularly psychedelic, with lots of wah guitar.  "Rocket Machine" is pretty much indistinguishable from most of the Doors' songs.  "She's A Diamond" was used in the movie Boys Don't Cry.  I still hear "Supernova" from time to time on WTUL's Saturday night institution "Alternative Oldies," which only plays stuff that's at least 15 years old.  Note: XM Radio channel Sirius XM U does a similar show on Sunday nights, creatively named "Old School," and hosted by the very annoying trend-follower Jenny Eliscu, but you can hear some occasional gems on it.  Speaking of gems, I often wish that my birthstone could be opal rather than amethyst.


I have to call out one of my all-time favorite bands, Poem Rocket, for essentially stealing the drumbeat from "Supernova" for their song "Ka-boom," though it's possible they had never heard the song at the time.

Also, "She knows the sun" is "Supernova"'s first line, and a "crescent moon" is mentioned in its last line.  Well, a band called the Cowboy Junkies, with a sound very similar to Opal's (and a singer who sounded all but identical to Kendra Smith), were just coming up at this time, and, coincidentally or not, they later put out an album called Pale Sun Crescent Moon.

Opal: David Roback & Kendra Smith circa mid-'80s

I didn't mention it in my post on Saturday, but that morning I gave a ride to a guy who was embarking on a walk along Metairie Road past the cemetery to the Canal streetcar line.  And then a little later I did not give a ride to a woman who was frantically pleading for one in the Bywater area.  I was trying to figure out why I gave a ride to him (a young African-American guy wearing headphones) rather than to her (a tall, gothy-looking thirtysomething white woman with black hair and a skimpy black outfit).  I think it was because he was not asking for any help, and she was desperately trying to get help; maybe I just like helping people who are more of the self-starter type, though I generally do go out of my way to help those who are on the pathetic side.  So it to have been something more oblique, such as the fact the he was not likely to be offered a ride, whereas she would probably get one within a few moments of me passing her by.  Or that she may have been a prostitute or vampire, and if the former were true, I would not want cops to spot her getting into my car.  My instant assessment of her was that she was on drugs, and I think it was an accurate one.  They both had obstacles in front of themselves on that 100º heat index day, he a mile-long walk in zero shade, she a bridge.  In both cases, it was a snap decision, and it's hard to quantify how many things go into those kind of moments.  In hindsight, I think that bridge is one that doesn't allow foot traffic, so she may have had a valid reason for needing a brief ride.


Planets with similar climates: Concrete Blonde - "Scene Of A Perfect Crime" (1989), Yo La Tengo - "Decora" (1995), Lid - "Up" (1992), Acetone - "Sundown" (1993), The Bevis Frond - "Requiem" (1997), Warpaint - "Warpaint" (2010), Soundgarden - "Fresh Tendrils" (1994), Juned - "Pretty New Song" (1994), Poem Rocket - "Ka-boom" (1997), Magic Dirt - "Eat Your Blud" (1993).

Moonshake >> I have to hide behind mirrors

Moonshake - "The Taboo"

(C/Z Records / World Domination Recordings, 1996)

This song is fittingly bittersweet, evocative and mysterious, making a far cry from the angular confusion of their early years.  It's the final song on Moonshake's third/final album, Dirty & Divine, and I think it lives up to the album title.

Dave Callahan (ex-Wolfhounds) finally learned how to sing on this LP, replacing his snarl with a more relaxed, melodic delivery.  Mary Hansen and Katherine Gifford, both of Stereolab, provided some vocals on this album; someone named Kate Blackshaw is credited with the female vocals, specifically "South Pacific vocals," at the very end of this song.  Moonshake were named after a mediocre 1973 CAN song.  Their 1992 debut album, Eva Luna, is a fractured masterpiece of post-punk rhythms, illegally funky basslines, sampler-based hijinks and edgy, surrealist lyrics, with vocals split between Callahan and Margaret Fiedler.  Their 1993 EP Big Good Angel is even better.  Here's the video for the punk-funk onslaught that is "Capital Letters" from Big Good Angel:

Fiedler and (mind-bogglingly amazing) bassist John Frenett then quit Moonshake to form the band Laika.  Moonshake's sophomore album featured vocals by friend & frequent tourmate PJ Harvey on five songs.  Since Dirty & Divine featured neither Fiedler nor Frenett, most fans don't consider it to be a true Moonshake album, but as it's the first one I bought, in March '99 for about $3, I'll always have some loyalty to it.  I had first heard about Moonshake in a summer '95 issue of Alternative Press on this list, a list which sort of changed my life.

Eye-catching vertical typography on the back cover & spines

This "sleeveface" randomly self-generated in my computer room, so I had to take a picture of it, after chuckling at it for a few weeks each time I walked by it:

The Scott Walker album cover reminds me of the somewhat famous (at least if you've been on a message board in the last year or so) "exasperated Jerry Seinfeld" meme, which people post in response to a dumb statement:

I got an amazing grilled Mediterranean chicken pita sandwich for lunch today at this restaurant & coffee shop in Arabi called Touché Cafe, which opened in January, right down the street from Chalmette Battlefield.  I'm kind of sad that I'm missing a big family reunion up in Vinalhaven, Maine this week.  I went there for my uncle Tom's wedding in '84, then in '95 and '97, but not since then.  So... sorry, fam.


Planets with similar climates: Rip Rig + Panic - "Sunken Love" (1983), The Werefrogs - "Between Tomorrow & Sleep" (1992), Primal Scream - "Higher Than The Sun" (1991), Massive Attack feat. Liz Fraser - "Black Milk" (1998), Bush Tetras - "Rituals" (1982), Tipsy - "Space Golf" (1996), Moloko - "Boo" (1995), Poem Rocket - "Contrail de l'avion" (1994), Morphine - "Whisper" (1995).


Most telling headline of the week: Apple now has more cash than the U.S. government


Currently watching: Thunderball

To Rococo Rot >> Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

To Rococo Rot - "Prado"

(Mute Records / City Slang Records, 1999)

The palindromically-named To Rococo Rot shared bassist Stefan Schneider with the band from the previous post, Kreidler.  In addition to being based in a differrent German city, Berlin (through which my sister may be wandering at this very moment), TRR were much more electronic, and rarely funky or rock-ish like Kreidler, instead mining a more clinical, laboratory-friendly vein.

This track, from their album The Amateur View, transports me away to some sort of beautiful, near-empty house or art gallery, or any kind of empty, sanitary building with white walls and lots of glass, located in a cold place.  The album cover might have something to do with that, as might the fact that the track is literally named after a famous art museum.

Cassette version, released only in Poland

If you listen closely, it sounds like there's some harp buried low in the mix, or maybe just a simulation of a harp on a synth.  For such a minimalistic song, there's really a lot going on in it, and it rewards repeated close listenings.  The real bass guitar lends a smoky jazz café feel, and some of the drumming sounds real too, though the backing track is clearly digital drums.  Check out these photos of the band (+ guest I-Sound, a.k.a. Craig Willingham, who played on "A Little Asphalt Here And There") from the CD booklet:

Yep, lots of white space... so very Euro.  Even the bars are all called "Bar" over there.

I got into this album in '99, around the time I got into Kreidler, simply because I liked Kreidler and hence had to check out their sister band.  This album is definitely not as great overall as Kreidler's The Amateur View, but has some nice little gems on it, such as "I Am In The World With You" and "This Sandy Piece."  The album is apparently considered a classic amongst those who are experts in the genre, so go figure.  The single "Telema" starts off pretty weak, but becomes decent:

(Warning: Cute cats at the 2-minute mark.)

On Monday, I dropped off some pups from my amazing agave which I've had for about 5 years.  Pups are the little baby plants that some plants, and most desert plants, put off at their bases, as a way of asexual reproduction; they can be removed and stuck into their own pot, and presto, you have a new free plant.  I gave one to Hebert's Nursery in Thibodaux and another to Starke's in Houma.  I also brought the mama plant, as I always do when giving pups from this particular plant, which I believe is either an Agave parryi or an Agave potatorum, or a subspecies of either of those, or a hybrid between the two.  I took a photo of the parent plant that morning:

This plant is really solidly built, even for an agave.  It practically feels like it's made out of concrete, especially the center spear/rosette.  You can see the outlines of the teeth on adjacent leaves, from when they were pressed firmly together for months before opening.  As with all agaves, it will die after flowering, but that should be more than a decade away.  This thing is my baby, so I can't even bear to think about that.  Here are two articles about agaves by an expert in the subject:
Introduction to agaves
Selected large agave species

After visiting the nurseries, I got this 7 oz. little thing of booze called Alcatraz Sour Apple (by some company called Johnny Bootlegger) at a Shell station.  Then I got two little cacti at Lowe's.  They had this nice portable walk-in 8'x6' greenhouse set up, for $200, and I decided to get one in the fall for my exponentially-expanding collection of desert plants, rather than lugging them all inside or into the carport.  Then I haggled down the price on a big Serenoa repens (Saw Palmetto) at the Home Depot across the street (yes, Houma is growing rapidly) which I plan on returning to buy next week, then found a basketball court in Gray that was too covered in rain puddles to play on.  But I was psyched to find it, and will be playing there a lot.  Then I drove back up to Thibodaux and played some hoops on a very puddly court.  This guy ran up to me and asked if I wanted to play him, so I said yeah and he squeezed my hand so hard during the handshake that I thought he might've broken it.  He said he hadn't played basketball in a few years, but had boundless confidence.  We played 21, and I beat him 21-0, then he thanked me and went back to sit with his two female companions under a gazebo, so I shot around some more, then he comes running back and I thought he was going to stab me or something, but he told me that I had to let him redeem himself, so we played again and I won 21-4.  Then I shot around some more and went home, stopping along the way at Chackbay Nursery to right this big juniper that always tips over in the wind.  This nursery has been pretty much abandoned for a year or two, but they left a lot of big trees & plants there.  This being the "country," there's no front gate or anything, yet no one ever steals anything from the place.  Can you imagine any store doing that in New Orleans?  I made a note to bring some bricks down next time to put in the juniper's pot to prevent tippage.  On this trip I listened to The Cure's Wish twice, specifically to a spare copy of it that I got at the Record Raid on Saturday for 50 cents.  I heard a few people talking about Amy Winehouse's bucket-kickage the previous night, but no one exactly seemed surprised.  Some other good or potentially good stuff I got:
Christian Scott - Rewind That CD ($3)
Chet Baker - Career 1952-1988 2xCD compilation in a mini box ($3)
Pharoah Sanders - Love Will Find A Way LP ($4)
Sade - "Never As Good As The First Time" 7" (free)
Psychedelic Furs - All Of This And Nothing compilation CD ($1) (already had it on CD & cassette)
Mats Gustafsson & David Stackenäs - Blues CD ($0.50)
Dayna Kurtz - The Beautiful Yesterday Sessions EP CD ($0.50)
U2 - 18 Singles compilation CD ($3)
Terence Trent D'Arby - Symphony Or Damn CD ($1)
Crowded House - Crowded House CD ($1)
Lous Armstrong - Louis' Love Songs CD ($0.50)
M83 - Before The Dawn Heals Us CD ($3)

I passed on a copy of Faith No More's first album on vinyl for $15, and I kind of regret it.  I was vaguely planing on going to see Jolie Holland at Tipitina's that night (Saturday), but I decided her voice still annoys me like it did the last time I skipped her, ca. 2007, so I passed and drove back home, stopping first to buy a baby Dracaena draco at a Home Depot, even though I swore I would never get one.  Then I stopped at the WalMart in Boutte, which was the first time I'd gone to a WM since deciding to boycott them in '05.  The reason is that I wanted a new pair of the black Brahma boots I'd gotten there, and apparently no other store carries Brahmas.  The desire for a specific product can sometimes win out over idealism.  I was impressed by their gardening section.  I listened to the Christian Scott CD twice in my car that night; look for its first track to be posted on here sometime soon.

Planets with similar climates: Not sure yet; maybe some Autechre, Bark Psychosis or Seefeel

Kreidler >> That's okay, I keep the pictures

Kreidler - "She Woke Up And The World Had Changed"

(Mute Records / Kiff SM Records, 1998)

Kreidler (pronounced "CRIED-lur," not "CREED-lur") was a post-rock group based in Düsseldorf, Germany, which seamlessly combined "real" instruments with electronics to create retro-futuristic music that can appeal to both club kids and serious avant-garde music geeks.  For some unknown reason, the album is called Appearance And The Park.  The strange, glitchy beat/riff of this track always amazes me, with its sort of tropical feel, maybe because it reminds me of steel drumming.  Seriously, why are cutting-edge rappers not sampling beats like this?  Every song on the album is instrumental, except for two versions of "Coldness," which was apparently their jokey attempt at writing a pop hit:

I first heard Kreidler while we were drawing in an art class at Loyola called Foundations 2, in March '99.  (I was a biology major and art minor.)  That probably sounds really pretentious or made-up -- American art student hears obscure German electronic band on college radio while in class -- but it's true.  (The class consisted of me, a gay dude, and 13 females.  The gay dude literally overdosed on GHB that semester during class one day, and had to be taken to the hospital, but that's another story.)  That was the month that this album came out in the U.S., after having been released the previous year in Germany.  We were allowed to play the radio sometimes, and I usually made sure it was tuned to WTUL, the station of the college right next door, Tulane.  The song was the rubbery and strange "Au Pair," whose video I discovered about a decade later:

Kreidler's drummer, Thomas Klein, is one of the best to ever pick up a pair of sticks, period, and is obviously massively influenced by his fellow countryman Jaki Liebezeit of CAN.

It's always hard to come up with a title when I post an instrumental song.  This one comes from the strange bit of writing on the back cover:

Uh, okay.  Richard Brautigan would be proud...  I think the coffee & tea bit might be a reference to CAN's "Bring Me Coffee Or Tea" on their seminal LP Tago Mago.

Yesterday, during some rain I finally joined the local library, which is only a few blocks from me, but not exactly a bastion of modern literature, this being a town of 6,000 people.  It's one of those little country libraries whose parking lot is usually empty except on days when there are a few school buses due to a school scheduling a field trip to it, which always gave me the impression that it was some sort of children's library.
"Hi, I'd like to join."
The chubby, flaxen-haired, somewhat cute, twentysomething girl at the front counter under the fluorescent lights looks at me with a blank, bored expression.  I remember that she was sitting in that very spot the only other time I had come here, 3 or 4 years earlier.
"You mean get a library card?"
"Yeah. [Pause] ...What else would I mean?"
I felt kind of bad about that last part, but I mean, come on.  Do I want to join your swinger's club, or your African safari group, or your fondue workshop?  No, probably not, I mainly just want a library card.

I picked out three books, then drove down 20 miles to Thibodaux, got a little white-spined Mammillaria cactus and some dwarf cattail bulbs at Lowe's, and then shot hoops after the rain had ended there, which had brought the temperature down from about 95 degrees to about 80.  This gangly blond kid of about 13 rode his bike up and started shooting on another goal.  I never watch other people play while I'm playing, because I like to be the center of attention when it comes to basketball, my all-consuming passion; but I couldn't help noticing that he shot the way that most people do before developing enough arm strength to shoot the right way, meaning above one's head rather than off of the shoulder.  So when one of his bricks careened over to my court I said "Can I give you a suggestion?  You should start shooting the ball over your head, because when you shoot it from your shoulder, the ball blocks your vision as it passes in front of your eyes."  He didn't say anything, and went back and kept shooting the same way as before, and bricking as much as before.  I was like: "The fuck?"  So I just went back to draining three after three, hoping that my actions would speak more clearly than my words.  I understand the whole "Don't talk to strangers" thing, and I didn't talk to strangers when I was a kid, but this kind of annoyed me, thought he fact that I was shirtless probably played into his lack of desire to talk to me.  I then went to O'Reilly's auto parts and got some wiper blades, and then went to the Rouses grocery store, and weirdly enough, while I was walking in, he was walking out with his parents.  Probably thought I was stalking him or something...  I wanted to ask his parents, "Didn't you see Scott Loeffelholz play?"  See, the thing is, I used to shoot from the shoulder.  In 8th grade, I practiced with the high school team every day (after my middle school team's practice got out), and started on the JV team.  So on game days, I played the 8th grade game and then the JV game.  After one 8th grade or JV game that season, in which I went 14 of 15 from the line in an overtime win, my best game of that season, I was feeling pretty good about myself.  Joel Loeffelholz, father of the high school team's star player, Scott Loeffelholz (one of my idols), pulled me aside and... you guessed it... solemnly told me that I should start shooting from over my head.  He told me the same damn thing I told this kid 20 years later, the only difference being that I actually realized the importance of his suggestion and actually started shooting from over my head, which changed my life.  Joel was/is a lawyer, and helped get me out of a minor traffic ticket a few years later, so I owe him doubly.  His son Michael, one of my classmates (we moshed together at the aforementioned Tool / Flaming Lips / Failure concert in '94), now apparently works for Atlantic Records.  The weird thing is that Scott is 6'5" and Michael is like 5'7", supposedly due to his bad asthma.  I think he's the one who got me into Quicksand in spring of '93, but that might've been Ryan Massey or Blake Massey.  I know Michael first told us to check out the band Morphine, in early '93.

Sent to me by my sister the other day:

Remember Razr phones?  The rest of it reads "Raveonettes, Church, and...Kele haha)"

Weird novel I checked out from the library

Well, I'm off to the Record Raid at Siberia & the Hi-Ho Lounge now.

Update, 8/14/11: Printed at the bottom of my library receipt:
What did the sheet of paper say to the pencil ?
You've got a good point !

Planets with similar climates: Euphone - "Newscast" (2000), Trans Am - "American Kooter" (1996), Kraftwerk - "Nummern" ("Numbers") (1981), Oval - "Shop In Store" (1994), Stu Phillips - "Knight Rider Theme" (1982), Schema - "We Think We're Sane" (2000), Harald Grosskopf - "So Weit, So Gut" (1980), FCS North - "Things Will Change" (2003).

Flying Saucer Attack >> And I hardly feel surprised as I look up in the sky

Flying Saucer Attack - "Up In Her Eyes"

(Drag City Records / Domino Records, 1997)

Well, as you may notice, I've decided to stop doing the little embellishments to each song title, but it was exciting while it lasted.  Flying Saucer Attack, named after a terrible late '70s New Wave hit by the Rezillos, was masterminded by a guy named Dave Pearce.  In a current music scene populated with band names like How To Dress Well, Pissed Jeans, I'm From Barcelona, LMFAO, and Pygmy Lush, it's good to know that there used to be bands with names like Flying Saucer Attack, one of the few truly tattoo-worthy band names ever.  Based in the rugged multicultural seaport city of Bristol, famous as the birthplace of trip-hop, Pearce had initial help from Rachel Brook, who was later in ambient slow-poppers Movietone.  FSA released a huge slew of music in the early to mid '90s, but only performed live about a dozen times, probably due to the logistics of recreating all the strange tape loops & noises from the studio recordings.  The maelstrom of ambient feedback and noise seems to be on the verge of overwhelming this song's delicate melody, but the melody stays strong and wins out.  In addition to Pearce's beautifully enunciated vocals, the throbbing bassline is what really puts this song over the top and into an unclassifiable genre.  The weird thing is that, having been reared on Sonic Youth, I didn't even notice all the noise in this song at first, but several years later I realized "Whoa, dude, that's a lot of noise."

All Music Guide said:

"While the more experimental parts of New Lands aren't really Pearce completely trashing his general aesthetic and trying something new, they do show him attempting and often succeeding at introducing further variety to his murky, intriguing field.  Thus, 'Up in Her Eyes' has a very familiar vocal and guitar style, but the obsessive, upfront yet still shadowy percussion -- sounding more like a chugging train engine than anything else -- dominates the track, at least up until its slightly more ambient, free-flowing end... Through it all, the combination of Pearce's tender, dark folk vocals and skybursting guitar provides the central point of the experience, making for some fascinating, entrancing results."

I borrowed this CD, New Lands, from friend Andrew Mister in '99, around the same time I bought FSA's self-titled '93 debut album.  About ten years later I found out that "Up In Her Eyes" was originally released as a free 7" flexidisc in issue 6 of Stop Smiling magazine in 1995.  The album version is a re-recorded one, since its liner notes say "album recorded late 96 / early 97."  I got a huge-ass fold-out glossy promo poster for New Lands on eBay in 2005, surely the biggest promo poster I've ever obtained, and I have hundreds of promo music posters and concert flyers up several art portfolio folders in several closets in multiple area codes.  The cover art of this album is particularly unsettling, yet Zen-inducing.  A page from the CD booklet:

Drag City Records' fall '97 press release:


the long-awaited follow-up to further has been a long time coming -- over two years, to be honest. since that acoustically-tinged offering, the sound of fsa has revolved into metallic pastures...
this new fsa sound steers through the past pop music into the direction of rhythmic loopery. bass anchors the familiar guitar fuzz, edgelessly felt through the wall of sound and giving it a beat where one was only imagined before.
previously only hinted at, this pulse booms forth in a bigger way, although still obscured by clouds.
phase two. the beat is the new thing. previously only hinted at, this pulse booms.


A photo I took of my Philodendron, var. 'Burle Marx,' leaning towards the sunrise on Tuesday at about 7 AM:

This plant variety was named after this guy

Planets with similar climates: Colfax Abbey - "Feel" (1996), My Bloody Valentine - "Several Girls Galore" (1988), Unwound - "Lady Elect" (1996), Plexi - "Dayglo" (1996).


The best old Onion article I've found recently: I'll Thank You Not To Call My Collection Of Sequential-Art Erotica 'Dirty Comics'

Band Of Susans >> Riot of shooting stars in dislocated skies

Band Of Susans - "Ice Age" ¬¬¬

(Restless Records / Rough Trade Records [Germany], 1990) ¬¬¬

Band Of Susans formed in 1986, and were fronted throughout their 10-year history by Susan Stenger (vocals, bass, lyrics) and Robert Poss (guitar, vocals, lyrics, production), along with drummer Ron Spitzer.  They originally did have three Susans, but, thanks to some freak organic gardening accidents, were down to one Susan by the time of this album, though they did manage to add an Anne.  This is yet another song that I considered for the first-ever post on this blog, due to its seismic impact on me, its addictively technicolor feel, and its overall vastness / timelessness, not to mention the fact that it's just a great pop song at heart.  The bassline is all but unsurpassable, and when you play it on a bass, you can feel the earth being thrown briefly off its axis under your feet.

I've decided to post the original 1991 song rather than the "1994 Remix" (just beefed-up via mastering) version on the band's best-of compilation (2 CDs / 3 LPs) entitled Wired For Sound: 1986-1993.  That version basically just has beefed-up guitar sound, which unfortunately drowns out the vocals, since the vocals were stupidly not beefed-up.  I point this out because BOS were known for mixing their guitar parts louder than any other band, and they used a triple-guitar attack.  That means three guitarists, holmes.  They were also known for their excruciating attention to sonic details, particularly as pertained to guitar tone / sound / effects / feedback, making them arguably the ultimate "guitar band" for guitar geeks with an ear for melodic noise.

Right from the opening guitar feedback, to the police siren, to the ultra-sinister bassline, to the krautrock-y drums, you know you're in for something that is more badass than just about anything you have ever experienced.  Since this was the first BOS song I ever heard, it made quite a dandy first impression on me, and now I'll say what I always say: "Amazingly, this song was not released as a single."  Stenger just destroys on this song, and on most of the other songs on this album.  I love how she starts off by just singing the phrase "Still life," and then pauses for a long time while the instruments use the breathing room to do their thing.  It's a subtle and effective thing that very few bands do, and it always makes me think of Dark Side Of The Moon-era Pink Floyd (e.g. "Us And Them").  It's also cool how the opening two guitar notes which kick in at 0:28 foreshadow the "Still life" lyric, even using the same exact notes.  Black Sabbath were relentlessly mocked for having their lyrics follow the same notes as the guitars (think "Has he lost his mind..." from "Iron Man"), but BOS do it in a much more tasteful and sleek way.

Page Hamilton left BOS right after their previous album, Love Agenda, to form the way more famous nu-metalers Helmet, whom I completely worshipped in the early to mid '90s, and saw at Tipitina's in Jan. '95, but my point is that BOS didn't suffer at all from his loss, and actually bounced back stronger.

1990-96 lineup, clockwise from left: Mark Lonergan, Ron Spitzer, Anne Husick, Robert Poss, Susan Stenger

I had heard about this band for many years as stalwarts of the NYC melodic noize scene alongside Sonic Youth and Live Skull.  I finally bought this album on cassette in Dec. 2000 in the dollar clearance rack at a local Wherehouse Music (formerly Blockbuster Music, originally Sound Warehouse).  I also bought its equally great follow-up, 1993's Veil, on cassette that day, and just about wore both of them out in my car over the following few years before I got them both on CD.  Someone put up some nice pics of the cassette packaging, including full lyrics, here.  I'm not sure if I've put any song on mix tapes/CDs more than "Ice Age" over the last decade.  There was a point when it was so automatic that it wasn't a question of if I'd use it, but rather a question of whether to make it the first song or the last one.  While writing this post, I realized I had already written a big song-by-song analysis of this album for the "Lost Classics" section of my old online zine in 2002 or 2003, so I'll try to post that somewhere, sometime.

Susan Stenger & Robert Poss, 1988; photo by Michael Lavine

The cover designs of The Word And The Flesh and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless are suspiciously similar, but I know the BOS album came out slightly earlier, I think only by a few weeks or months.

vs.

Both albums were actually recorded in 1990, so it's kind of a moot point.  After hearing "Ice Age," it goes without saying that fans of Loveless will find much to like on TWATF.
In the movie Empire Records, there's a BOS poster right outside the office of the boss or manager guy.  The legendary Leo Fender, creator of the Fender guitar company, was a big BOS fan and invited them over for a tour of his G&L guitar / amp factory.  (G&L is the company he founded after leaving Fender.)  That's a G&L on the cover of this album, and several of them on the cover of Wired For Sound.  It's a shame that Leo died right before this album came out... I could list tons more factoids about Band Of Susans, but I'll let you seek that stuff out.  I don't like writing a whole lot about bands on here, and I usually end up deleting a lot of what I've written in order to make the posts shorter.  But I'd suggest checking out some of their live posters over here, including gigs with A.C. Temple (astute readers will remember that this blog is named after an A.C. Temple lyric), Dinosaur Jr., Live Skull, Rollins Band, Throwing Muses, Butthole Surfers, and other notable rock acts.  Members of BOS got their start in the experimental guitar-drone orchestra of Rhys Chatham, a.k.a. the guy that Glenn Branca ripped off.

1989 or '90 video for the awesomely pummeling "The Pursuit Of Happiness," with the band's tour of the G&L facility starting at the 3-minute mark:

Planets with similar climates: Bleach - "Seeing" & "First" (1991), My Bloody Valentine - "Only Shallow" (1990), Bailter Space - "Now I Will Live" (1987), Verve - "Slide Away" (1993), Juned - "Kyuss" (1995), Jawbox - "Savory" (1993), Catherine Wheel - "Black Metallic" (1991), Tamaryn - "Mild Confusion" (2010).