MP3 Blog Archives Page 6 (song links most likely dead)
Entry 151: 12/26/2009: CD Reviews & Video Review
I remembered to do the math and I've been doing either a music web zine or blog for ten years, so take THAT my third grade teacher who said I'd never grow up to do anything of importance. I proved HER wrong! Right guys? Right? Fellas? Oh, f--k s--t piss, who am I kidding?
Men At Work:
"Helpless Automaton"
Men At Work: "Blue For You"
Men At Work - Business As Usual (cd review) and Cargo (cd review): It's rare when what I think about something is also accepted knowledge, but I hit Australia's Men At Work right on target. Released in 1982, Business As Usual was twice rejected for American release and then went on to simultaneously yield the #1 song and album. I imagine soon after a suit at CBS Records started over again in the mailroom. Cargo was recorded on the road and released in 1983.
I was a big new wave fan
but not of the most popular songs and bands that 1) didn't sound good to me and
2) were loved by top-40 loving average folk oblivious to music as a treasured
geek niche obsession. Did voices compel them to buy every XTC single no matter
how slight the variation like I did? Hmmmm!? I didn't have anything against "Who
Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under", but after the saturation point I wished to
never hear again the word "vegemite". I never heard these albums all the way
through until last week, and while they're better than I thought they'd be
they're also artifacts of their time and place, which my sundial tells me was
28-ish years ago. As a side note I sample a lot of records I'd only listen to
start-to-finish at gunpoint.
Men At Work were a bar band who rose well above their station in life due to
catchy tunes, winning gimmicks, luck and good timing. To paraphrase one
definition, a bar band is a local music group that makes a name for itself
entertaining in bars by playing crowd favorites in an up-tempo style. Civilians
in the music wars go out to have fun on a Saturday night and wind up drinking
too much beer at P.J. O'Stinkey's dancing to bar bands who wish they could be
Hootie And The Blowfish. Punks similarly drink cheap beer in the back of
Stinky's before listening to garage bands who wish they could be Rancid. It's
all good, baby!
Men At Work were a solid band who mixed up instrumentation and style elements within a rigid format, not unlike Huey Lewis And The News (and I don't mean that as an insult). Everyone contributes equally and nobody showboats. No one instrument dominates and each can be heard clearly, an obvious balance not many records pull off as well. What I called their winning gimmicks were Colin Hay's distinctive Scottish-Australian singing and a world music-tinged new wave sound that owed more to The Police than aboriginal tribesman playing didgeridoos in the outback. Raise your hand if you thought the flute on "Down Under" was really a didgeridoo.
Business As Usual is surprisingly good, with saxophone, keyboards, flute and that "che-che" sounding instrument that looks like a maraca covered with stringed beads adding spice to the usual bar band setup. The mega hits were "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under", and while time hasn't revealed anything new about them they've stood the test of time. "Be Good Johnny" was also popular, and it was probably more effective live as it seems fun and theatrical. My favorite album track is "Helpless Automation", reminding my of The Payolas, my favorite Canadian bar band who done good on a much smaller scale. The album ends with three lesser yet not bad tunes, but they were probably sequenced for a reason.
Cargo is surprisingly end-loaded, with the best tracks closing the show. It's starts off silly with "Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive", which sounds good but doesn't rise above the goofy title. "Upstairs In My House" is peppy but not distinctive. The last three songs is where the cheese is at. "Blue For You" is Caribbean by way of Jamaica by way of The Police. "I Like You" is fast with a nice wig-out near the end. "No Restrictions" is Police-like with a flute part blown hardcore. Cargo is a continuation of the last album, but not as interesting.
I'd say a decent greatest hits collection would be all you need from Men At Work, but from where I sit you'd have to compile it yourself.
All
I wanted for Christmas was for my altered Dead Kennedys logo to come up
sooner on search engines when someone looks for the real thing. I'm
hoping a cover band will name themselves "Picnic Table" and use my
picture. Instead I got a purple rash on my hiney and sweatpants made
from organic recycled dryer lint. Thanks Satan Santa!
Rage: 20 Years Of Punk Rock West Coast Style (dvd
review): 2001’s
Rage is an hour’s worth of interviews and dizzying layers of graphics that
don’t add up to much only because it doesn’t distinguish itself from the fifty
punk documentaries that came before and after it. It doesn’t tell you why the
original California hardcore and punk scenes were different than other scenes,
and the interviewees serve more as personality studies than on-the-scene
historians.
Those interviewed are Jack Grisham, Keith Morris, Duane Peters, Gitame Demone, Don Bolles, Jello Biafra, Harold Bronson (of Rhino Records) and Geza X. You can hear questions of co-writers and directors Michael Bishop and Scott Jacoby, so it’s clear they have a plan for each interview, but they settle for soundbytes instead of pushing for introspective analysis. Maybe pushing wouldn't work in some cases. Gitane Demone gives good interview and both Harold Bronson and Geza X give short and direct accounts of their scene involvement. Bronson traveled to the UK and bought the first lot of Stiff Records singles for sale in the US. Geza X DIY’d the production for some of the first California bands, included the Dead Kennedys, The Germs, Black Flag, The Avengers, and The Weirdos. The rest have loads of personality, some of that personality being a tad off.
TSOL’s Jack Grisham is a textbook example of a smiling sociopath. Stories of his cretinism are legion, and I’m amazed he’s not either dead or in jail for eternity. Keith Morris appears wearing a long gray wig over his dreads, a black cowboy hat and novelty glasses with slanted Asian eyes. He talks at the camera, not to it, giving standard answers to generic questions he’s been responding to since 1979. Is he eccentric or just nuts? Duane Peters has led a few lives so far and it shows on his face. He’s all about the anger, hate and violence, and he's not squeamish about it. Don Bolles has Charlie Chan facial hair and weird eyeliner painted on thick. The Germs movie What We Do Is Secret made him out as a loser, and he was involved in the film, so I find anything he says to be suspect. Jello is Jello, a twitchy bundle of tangential conspiracies, intelligence and jaw-dropping stupidity. Jello's interviews are usually interesting until they crash and burn in his court jestering. Jello’s a modern day Yippie (a hippy who thinks his cleverness is over the head of his enemies) I don't take too seriously. His beautiful mind diminishes his accomplishments. His shirt reads “D.A.R.E. To Keep Kids Out Of Church”. Atheism is a religion too, capable of the same blind, simple hatreds.
I didn’t mind the flashy graphics but other reviewers found it cliché MTV-style production. I like the opening quote: “In The beginning…. the Pistols called collect, and the West Coast paid the bill.” At this point in time a punk movie shouldn’t include any comment that involves how the kid’s punk rock of today sucks compared to the classics. It’s old people complaining and it has no effect on what kids like or buy. It may even turn them off completely. Every generation has their own bands they call their own, and when you’re fourteen the first punk bands you like make up your future “good ‘ol days”, which will one day be laughed at future generations.
Seeing how all the interviews are with California punks I don’t see how this can be called “West Coast Style”. I’ve lived in SoCal for thirteen years, DC for fourteen, grew up in New York and spent some years in Tampa and Las Vegas, so I have a sense of how California's scene differs from others. The NY scene was predominantly, in everything but name, a violent indigenous skinhead movement, with crusty punks filling out the rest. DC’s scene was young, skinny, often prep schooled, and operated as an underground movement. California breeds its own brand of douchebag, steeped in the usual angry and violent contradictions of hippie and surf cultures. The laid-back Californian is as rare as a dodo bird. My theory on causation revolves around bad parenting, popular culture and great year round weather. I’ll save that thesis paper for another day.
Rage: 20 Years Of West Coast Style should have been called Interviews We Managed To Arrange. It’s not all that bad, but it’s not that good either. A stronger narrative would have helped, but I don’t see it considering how most of the interviewees were basically doing imitations of how they pictured themselves being interviewed. Gitame Demone obviously listened to the questions and thought through her answers, while Grisham, Morris, Peters, Bolles and Biafra gave caricatured responses like they were improving in a film about punk rockers. The filmmakers should have beaten the film and the interviewees into a better history and story. Instead, they asked a bunch of key players, “If you were a punk tree, what kind of punk tree would you be?”
Entry 150: 12/19/2009: Analog CyberPunk Third Series I & II (Instrumentals XIX) & Video Review
Here we are with the third and last part of the Analog CyberPunk Project, originally titled "01100110011001100111001011010" until I learned not everyone reads binary code or would get the joke even if they did. The first twelve compilations were based on my memories of the kind of songs played in new wave clubs in the late 70s and early 80s, and as I was choosing songs I often turned off the lights and visualized being in these places. The second series, "Further Readings For The Ears", weighing in at 52 parts, continued and expanded to include songs they wouldn't have played at that time, which may only have existed in my vague memories. The Third Series moves even more outward from my original idea of "U.F.O.s, Giant Robots And Bored East Germans". Enjoy.... or not.
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk Third Series I and II (Instrumentals XIX) (download zip file at Rapidshare)
1.Futurologischer: "Stoned Im
Dschungel"
3 Teens Kill 4: "Crime Drama"
INC: "Pure As Ice"
Kuruki: "Just A Cat" (7" version)
Len Liggins: "The Children"
Modern Mannequins: "The Story"
Nervous Gender: "Push, Push, Push"
Oppenheimer Analysis: "New Mexico"
Plus Instruments: "Between The Wars"
Profil: "1964"
Robert Ellis Orrall: "Call The Uh-Oh Squad"
Taxi Girl: "Petit Jardin Chinois"
Transparent Illusion: "Malice Way"
Van Kaye & Ignit: "Alice Notley"
Wirtschaftswunder: "Kopfgeldjager"
A.T.R.O.X.: "Across The Meadow"
Absolute Body Control: "Total Control"
Art Interface: "Chinese Takeaway"
Dementia Precox: "Coppola 13"
Guyer's Connection: "Die Grille"
Human Puppets: "Funny Men"
Kwalitat 100 (percent): "Schrott"
Metronomes: "Moral Climates"
Perrey-Kingsley: "Baroque Hoedown"
Profil: "Immer Mehr"
Ptose: "1 & 2"
Ptose: "Jazz Party"
Joy Division
– Under Review (dvd review):
I often read customer reviews before I write my own only because I like to know
The People are bitching about. With
Joy Division – Under Review the main gripes are no interviews with band
members and not enough rare concert footage. If those are your criteria you may
not like this much, but otherwise it’s pretty damn decent. One of an extensive
series of Under Review titles, it was put together by
Chrome Dreams, whose catalog is an improbable combination of professional,
even-handed scholarship and public domain grave robbing. Cheerleading Joy Division all the
way via marketing decree, it’s still a great history of the band for fans and newbies alike.
The presentation is a timeline history with analysis and opinions offered by critics and scene participants. There’s Pat Gilbert - former Mojo editor, Barney Hoskyns – author & journalist, Mick Middles – music writer, and Lindsay Reade – ex-wife of Tony Curtis and co-author of The Life Of Ian Curtis: Torn Apart. The production’s best feature is that when someone offers an opinion or insight you’re immediately shown proof of its applicability. Clips from 24 Hour Party People are mixed in as reenactments or as proof of how the film changed the facts. When someone says Ian Curtis sang like Frank Sinatra they immediately switch to Frank on stage singing “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me”, then they go back to Ian’s singing, and he’s right! When they discuss Martin Hannett’s nearly single-handed creation of the signature Joy Division sound, Phil Spector’s name comes up as it often does, so they alternate this clip of the Ronette’s “Be My Baby” with the video for Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”, and holy crap it’s true! Live and studio versions of many songs are sampled next to each other so you can hear the difference between how the band saw the song and how Martin Hannett massaged it in the studio. Hannett recorded one musician at a time and then had Curtis sing alone. He thought of musicians as laborers (“overproduced by Martin Hannett, take four”).
Joy Division – Under Review forgoes gossip and sticks with facts and measured opinion. Curtis’ epilepsy and suicide are given full accounting throughout but it’s not sensationalized. Even just as a change of pace I appreciated not hearing directly from anyone in Joy Division. Critics are outsiders but the right ones can be objective, otherwise it’s vendettas and he said/she said reality television nonsense. It’s more than enough to have Tony Wilson’s ex-wife offer her memories.
Everything you need to know about Joy Division is here on this seventy minute dvd. The rest is obsessive minutia.
Entry 149: 12/12/2009: StatCounter Roundup, New Wave Cross-Over Memories & Video Review
How Humans Find oldpunks.com
By cultural osmosis (so it seems) all hipsters know the intertube's best resource for punk-related rigmarole (written by me, Uncle Punk, your uncle in the punk business) is oldpunks.com © (a division of oldpunks globalcorpse). 95% of my traffic comes from vultures looking to steal images, the very ones I stole myself! That's why smart sites name their pics something like "hghthYO65mmdjeu5".A tiny percentage bookmarked my page and the rest type crazed phrases into search engines and hit the link in desperation for everything they want to know about stuff like the following:
Illuminati Gay Mafia
Child-Killing Sluts From The Psycho Circus Of Pluto
Buttcrack Sailors Of The Unknown Crevice
The Queen's Nose Dumpster
What Is The Tightest P---y Mandingo Has Done A Scene With
Pedophile Boy Anus
Veronica Lake Enemas
Steve Albini Dead Animal De Golf
enemas.kickme.to.porn (this one is very popular)
Film Porno Triumph Of Tushy
British Girl 12 Years Raped Porno Horizon
Buddhist Creme De La Scum
Pivot Oscillator Eating Blur
"The other night, my car was almost out of gas so I took the next exit off the
highway to pull into the gas station. I only had $20 cash on me. He looks poor
and is possibly a cheat Unconditional Love"
Video i’m glad i was disciplined with taking the pills! i grew 2 inches in 4
weeks! and my penis became wider
A wasted mind is a terrible thing.
New Wave Cross-Over Memories
The ancient Chinese secret of creating music trends is to find something that worked in the past and then do it again in ways that make it relevant to people looking for something quote unquote new. Punk as a genre came from the "Nuggets" garage bands in the US and the pub rockers of the UK. New Wave generically rose out of power pop, and before hardcore bludgeoned its way onto the scene there was an accepted overlap with punk and new wave as they were both based on melodic song structures. Circa 1980 "punk" and "new wave" clubs played the same sets of songs that crossed genres, and the best DJs were geniuses at clever segues based on lyrical and musical content. When new wave was at its peak, before Duran Duran and Culture Club killed it good, some mainstream artists gave a shot at the new music - the prime example being The Rolling Stone's 1978 release Some Girls. The Stranglers were unfairly labeled bandwagon jumpers while Graham Parker pulled the same act to only great acclaim. In my experience there were three artists who stuck a toe into the new wave waters and contributed a high quality cross-over hit (or two) that made new wave more acceptable to a wider audience.
Tom
Petty And The Heartbreakers: "I Need To Know" (download)
Tom Petty recorded "I Need To Know" in 1978, and it stands up today as a great American power pop heartland rocker with a beat you can dance to.
Robert
Palmer: "Johnny And Mary", "Looking For Clues"
(download)
Robert Palmer died in 2003? Why wasn't I told?! White Soul singer Robert Palmer released his first solo album in 1974, then five albums later recorded the then hip and now 1980 release Clues, yielding two synth hits that never failed to fill the dance floor. "Looking For Clues" was funkier and the obvious hit, but the gold's buried underneath "Johnny And Mary".
Tom
Rundgren: "Bang The Drum All Day" (download)
Bonus! Toots And The Maytals: "Sweet And Dandy" (download)
Tom Rundgren, the poor man's Brian Eno (or maybe Peter Gabriel), thankfully forced XTC to record Skylarking, the best album of their later years. Much later he committed career suicide by fronting The New Cars, equaled by Devo 2.0 as reasons to never admit liking either original band. The new wave scene was choking on its own vomit by the time "Bang The Drum All Day" came out in 1983, but it's been huge on the radio since then and unintentionally became new wave's "Louie Louie". Ska fanatics probably consider this commercial Caribbean rock, but "Bang On The Drum" never fails to make me smile. The only song happier than this is Toots And The Maytal's "Sweet And Dandy", which I've included to download as it's the happiest song ever recorded. I'm dancing in my chair as I type because "Sweet And Dandy" is playing. If it doesn't make you dance in your chair you're dead inside, and that's a shame because in grade school you showed great potential.
Fishbone:
Critical Times – The Hen House Sessions (video review): Olde timers
remember
Fishbone as the ska band who recorded “Party At Ground Zero” and appeared
as a crazy country band in
Tapeheads. They’ve been around for thirty years, which in music years is 7.5
generations of fans coming, going and sometimes staying.
Critical Times is a 74 minute DVD, released in 2004, of a 2001 recording session at Los Angeles’ Hen House Studios, where they allow bands to record for free as long as they allow themselves to be filmed in the process. There has to be more to it than that, and somebody dropped the ball somewhere because Fishbone felt ripped off having their new songs streamed out over the internet by Hen House, making this unauthorized in the minds of Fishbone. They didn’t use the recordings and ask fans not to buy it. Fight The Power!
Critical Times gets better as it goes along and is informative if you want to know what it’s like to record multiple studio tracks. Once you get a feel for that, boredom can and does set in. It begins with simple camcorder footage of various members of Fishbone cramped into a small rickety room; talking, playing and thinking about it for a while. Here’s where you think it’s going to be tedious, but soon enough they mix it up with interviews with the two remaining original members, scenes of Los Angeles and a tour of charismatic lead singer Angelo Moore’s home – the voodoo version of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. It’s done on the cheap but the DVD is decently put together.
It took a while for my short attention span to adjust to the stoner pacing of stoners being stoned in the studio. Fishbone must be a 4:20 party band now, and I guess it was Hen House’s idea to use a pot leaf graphic zoom in and out and spin around throughout like the Bat Signal.
The songs they recorded in this session are complicated and intricate, and Fishbone are pros who know their material inside and out and know what results they’re looking. They integrate ska, punk, funk, metal and who knows what else into their songs as an organic mix, creating a Big Sound many bands can’t even conceive, forget about create. That’s not to say I’m a fan of this, as I don’t like metal or funk, but I do respect their talents. I thought of it as Hard Rock Oingo-Boingo.
Generally interesting, intermittently boring and sometimes fascinating (like when Angelo gets in the zone and works a theramin), Critical Times is worth watching, even if you don’t feel that way while you’re actually watching it.
Entry 148: 12/5/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears LI (that's 51 for all who didn't graduate but aged out of high school) and LII (Instrumentals XVIII) (+ video review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears LI and LII (Instrumentals XVIII) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
LI (Popular Music From Your Youth, Assuming You're Like REALLY Old)
Laurie Anderson: "Let X=X"
B Movie: "Nowhere Girl"
Big Black: "Bad Penny"
Devo: "Beautiful World"
Thomas Dolby: "Flying North"
M: Pop Muzik"
Gary Numan: "I Die You Die"
ODW: "Target For Life"
OMD: "The New Stone Age"
Robert Palmer: "Looking For Clues"
Peter Schiling: "Major Tom (Coming Home)"
The Stranglers: "All Roads Lead To Rome"
The The: "Uncertain Smile"
Ultravox: "Sleepwalk"
LII
Ceramic Hello: "Staticarnival"
Christian Lunch: "Tears F.J.W."
Copycat Massacre: "Munsters Go Egyptian"
Der Modern Man: "Neues Aus Hong Kong"
Ester And The Totem: "One"
Ensemble Pittoresque: "O.B.W.T."
FDJ: "Chaos-Ende Von Modernes Kriegsspiel_Freiheitlicher Rechtsstaat"
Harald Grosskopf: "Synthesist"
Hot Butter: "Tequila"
Moog Cookbook: "Ziggy Stardust"
Paay: "1a"
Tattoo H.: "To Reason Why"
Berlin:
Intimate (DVD review): When I first
watched this I thought it was
Kelly Ripa up there and not
Terri Nunn.
Singer,
actress and sex columnist,
Terri Nunn put this DVD together to promote 2002's Voyeur, the first Berlin
album in sixteen years. Filmed in a tiny studio with a small SRO audience
seemingly seeded with models,
Berlin: Intimate is as spontaneous as an infomercial, alternating between
pre-recorded song intros and live performance,yet it succeeds because of her
band and Terri’s winning personality, strong voice and towering stage presence.
She’s professional, likeable and milfy.
Waaay back when I wasn’t a Berlin fan and didn’t even consider them new wave because of their disco-annoying “Sex (I’m A…)”, which soured me some to the two Berlin songs I did like, “No More Words” and “Metro”. I'd also dropped them into the singer showcase category (read: not a real band) when they were referred to as “Terri Nunn and Berlin”. When two female dancers came out periodically to dance, bump and grind in assorted costumes I thought Berlin: Intimate was a promo reel for prospective Las Vegas shows. All that aside, it's not all my cuppa tea but I realize it’s a decent show for what it is.
My two Berlin hits are played perfectly, a crunchy and abrasive guitar for “Metro” and Terri’s voice pitch-perfect and gruff for “No More Words”. I must ask what’s up with the pound of body glitter she rolled around in, but she looks good, I mean, real good, and her perfect white teeth reflected light with a pulsating magnetic hum. Terri worked the stage and the crowd like a champ, and the interview segments were intelligent, honest, and open. Terri’s so clear in her thoughts there’s nary a pause or extraneous word. She’s good.
Berlin: Intimate is an odd duck but it works.
Entry 147: 11/28/2009: Anti-Flag CD Review & Video Review
From the film Big Rig: "Do ya know the difference
between a fairy tale and a trucker's story. A fairy tale begins "Once upon a
time." A trucker's story starts "This ain't no bulls--t!"
Anti-Flag
- The People Or The Gun (CD review):
Kiddie punk, trend-mangling anti-capitalists
Anti-Flag channel
The Clash through Rancid to record eleven catchy blender-smoothies of
sounds and styles, with lyrics that demand their target audience of
suburban white kids reject everything they think they know for a sludge
of revolutionary leftist politics conceived and practiced by middle
class white people who've never known anything but the freedoms of
capitalist societies. It translates into paranoia, false ego and
reflexive belligerence, but at least they have Noam Chomsky to think
for them instead of parents and schools, so all's well. The world
always needs underachievers to unload trucks for long, long hours at
short, short pay.
Hail The Destroyers Of The United Colors
States Of Benetton Halliburton
Capitalism Has Been Berry Berry Good To
Anti-Flag
I don't believe for a second that any song on this record wasn't the result of a committee's work of experts on what sells in the modern children's punk marketplace. Modern technology makes it easy, but this is as orchestrated as a Moody Blues record. I'm impressed by how good it all sounds, and the transitions and mixing of its checklist of building blocks is impressive, but it's ultimately a contrived product by a band whose existence is a contradiction if not a massive fraud of cowardly hypocrisy. My inner punk sheds a tear every time I read some kid's review of this as "real" punk rock, as if they would know what real punk punk is anyway, and as if there was such a thing to begin with. I'd like to see Justin and his fellow fashion accessories pull this off in North Korea or Cuba, unless of course they make the 2% adjustment to sing how it's a deserved death sentence to question the will of the masses as embodied by The State.
Signing with RCA was as subversive as traveling on the Warped Tour and being now distributed by a Warners subsidiary. I wager Justin puts his earning into tax shelters with investments in the war machine, just like Michael "Dinty" Moore. You know, as always to destroy the system from within while making a healthy return on investments. Smash The Steak, you bow-legged vegetarian putz.
As you may have guessed I have nothing but contempt for anyone who proselytizes nihilism to children. If Anti-Flag really wanted kids to think for themselves they wouldn't only link to revolutionary small and big "C" communist websites. Oh, that's right, they're socialists, which is what communists call themselves in mixed company.
You Weren’t
There: A History Of Chicago Punk 1977 – 1984
(video review): Chicago’s had a great punk
scene for a long time, but the city suffers from an angry inferiority
complex. The phrase “You Weren’t There” could be a whiny complaint or a snobbish
brush-off to anyone not involved in whatever original punk scene someone
remembers themselves being a major part of. From where I sit the Chi-Town Second
Windy City Of Big Shoulders has, as Tony Soprano would say, enough on their
plate, and the supposedly great punk scenes of larger cities weren’t that
great anyway. The scene in the far away zine isn’t always better than your own,
and all it takes to have a great scene is a few bands, decent music, enough fans
to make it run, and fun had by many (if not all). Cheer up, Chicago!
You Weren’t There may not be complete, but it sure is crammed, and at 126 minutes it’s 36 minutes too long. It’s just as easy to create a follow-up feature for DVD release. It presents a wide ranging and interesting retrospective on what called itself punk between 1977 and 1984, the beginning and end having little in common. 1977 looked like John Water’s 1972 Pink Flamingos period while 1984 saw dimwit children mixing and matching second wave UK street punk looks from old record covers, flummoxing the early 80s transitional bands who made Chicago America’s #1 quality-over-quantity choice for great music. Stiff upper lip, Chicago!
Chicago had/has great record stores (Sounds Good, Wax Trax) bars (La Mere Vipere, Oz, O’Banion’s), zines like The Coolest Retard and the Gabba Gabba Gazette, and the support of WZRD DJ Terry Nelson. All three of the main punk bars were also gay bars in gay neighborhoods, which probably made for an interesting mix. They also had great bands like Naked Raygun, Big Black, Articles Of Faith and The Effigies. Let’s also thank Chicago for giving us Wazmo Nariz and Skafish’s nose. The film doesn’t cover others like Screeching Weasel, Masters Of The Obvious, Pegboy, The Methadones, Sludgeworth, Breaking Circus, and The Boll Weevils. Repeat after me, Chicago, “I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”
You Weren’t There interviews, among many others, Steve Albini, Jeff Pezzati, John Haggerty, Cynthia Plaster Caster, Santiago Durango, and Vic Bondi, the latter still in a neck-and-neck race with Steve Albini for assputz of the year. Bondi works himself into a lather of resentment for Albini and calls him out on camera for things said a quarter century ago. It’s like threatening Don Knotts. The consensus is that Albini weighed 75 lbs. Show violence was commonplace, and The Effigies and Articles Of Faith feuded over politics. I laughed approvingly at stage skanking referred to as “The Huntington Beach Strut”.
The film is visually effective, with a solid mix of old footage, archival materials and point-specific interviews. Structurally it confuses the timeline of events by skipping back and forth in time. Like most music films it’s too long as is. They correctly assign Naked Raygun as the most important band in Chicago punk history, with Articles Of Faith, The Effigies and Big Black following. You Weren’t There is a great ninety minute film on the Chicago scene from 1977 to 1984. Your results may vary on those extra 36 minutes.
Entry 146: 11/21/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXXIX & L (that's 50 for you maroons) (Instrumentals XVII) & Video Review
My Favorite Bit From My Favorite Year, To Be Seen More Than Once
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXXIX and L (Instrumentals XVII) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
Absolute Body Control: "So
Obvious"
Dark Day: "Chameleon"
Dog Faced Hermans: "Wings"
Feltman Trommelt: "Out Of World"
Fred: "Reactor Lightning"
Heute: "Frohling"
Komputer: "International Space Station"
New Musik: "The New Evolutionist"
Pink Turns Blue" I Coldly Stare Out"
Plastics: "Robot" (7" version)
Rational Youth: "Beware The Fly"
Red Tapes: "Falling"
SSQ: "Anonymous"
Surplus Stock: "Anecdote"
Young Marble Giants: Brand New Life"
A.T.R.O.X.: "Voices"
Absolute Body Control: "Numbers, track 05"
Bal Pare: "Bal Pare"
Brian Brain: "Brainstorm"
Cabaret Voltaire: "Landslide"
Cermanic Hello: " Theatre Matrix"
Coil: "Clap"
Der Kunftige Musikant: "La Luna"
Harmonia: "Notre Dame"
Nash The Slash: "In A Glass Eye"
Picky Picnic: "My Toast Time"
Sutterlin: "Leichte Leiter"
The Human League: Live At The Dome (DVD review): 2003’s
Live At The Dome is a nicely recorded show by The Human League, but the
disc also contains a long interview with the three remaining original members
that’s interesting as hell and more entertaining than the gig itself.
Here’s a hyperbolic summary of every moment of the DVD that’s funny in its
brown-nosed breathlessness.
The concert is a corporate set (think the B-52’s) in that they play the hits with an ear for the widest possible audience, which works out for the best because they avoid the disco-remix sellout mentality that can turn simple synth-pop into techno nightmares. They open solidly with a curtained and dark stage while drones from “Hard Times” fill the hall. Segments of the curtain rise to reveal band members and by the end of the song everyone is accounted for and the lighting comes up for good. Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall take their places far from each other stage right and left, while Phil Oakey appears with sunglasses, a nearly shaved head (dictated by pattern baldness) and a glittery silver Uncle Fester overcoat. Oakey soon reduces his outfit to pants and shirt while the women change their clothes a few times during the evening. A dull sameness settles in mostly due to Sulley and Catherall endlessly hip-shaking and clapping their hands above their heads. Oakey works the wide stage as best he can but he sings in a monotone baritone and the songs are mostly mid-paced. Being the end of their tour his voice is also strained. The four-piece backup band is professional and they seem to be having fun, which helps. At the end of the day it’s sterile yet lighthearted, and it gets the job done. I let out a triumphant snort during the DVD extras segment on their US tour when it showed them playing one of the Station casinos in Las Vegas, since from minute one I saw their stage show as Vegas-ready.
I skipped through most of the set because I was never a fan of most of their material, and in 1981 I detested “Don’t You Want Me” for all the right reasons. The songs I do like (“Seconds”, “Sound Of The Crowd”, “Things That Dreams Are Made Of”, “I Am The Law”, “Being Boiled” and “The Black Hit Of Space”) I love a lot and wouldn’t pass up a chance to hear them. The set includes "Hard Times", "Love Action (I Believe in Love)", "Mirror Man", "Louise", "The Snake", "Heart like a Wheel, "Darkness", "All I Ever Wanted", "Open Your Heart", "The Lebanon", "One Man in My Heart", "Human", "Things That Dreams Are Made Of", "Love Me Madly?", "(Keep Feeling) Fascination", "Tell Me When", "Don't You Want Me","Empire State Human", "Together In Electric Dreams" and "The Sound of the Crowd".
The interviews are great because the questions are researched and probing while the answers are honest and open. Oakey, Sulley and Catherall sit on a couch without airs or an agenda. I remember Oakey being full of himself and full of crap back in the day (Rip It Up And Start Again offers examples of the arrogance of Oakey and his peers), but decades of beatings by the reality stick of his place in the universe seem to have made a humble and likeable man out of Mr. Oakey. He considers The Human League a “bleepy synth band” and they put the heady fame period of Dare into the proper perspective of low-rent thrills, little money and being too busy to know exactly who they were or where they were heading. It’s rare I see interviews that succeed as well as these do.
Live At The Dome was put together by the band itself to capitalize on the success of the 2002 Virgin Records DVD release of their greatest hits videos. They come out and admit their long-term goal is to be maybe more but no less than a working band, and I cheer their initiative. I wouldn’t want to go from having the #1 single in the world to being the cashier in aisle #1 of Wal-Mart. On a tangential note it broke my heart to learn Molly Harvey worked odd jobs while performing with The Residents.
Their 2003 schedule took them to Australia for two weeks in a package tour and the US for four weeks as headliners. They rehearsed 2½ hours of material but played only thirty minutes in Australia, where they toured with the likes of Kim Wilde, Belinda Carlisle and Paul Young. Some performers played three songs with a house band, which must be like Clem from Buffy The Vampire Slayer appearing at a Sci-Fi show at the Boise Holiday Inn to sign autographs.
Entry 145: 11/14/2009: Editors CD Review & Video Review
Does this look like the toughest man in the world?
It's Fedor Emelianenko, or as I respectfully call him, F--kin' Fedor.
Editors
- In This Light & On This Evening (CD review): Here's another band
whose name I'll precede with a "The" whenever I damn feel like it. Put that
in your pipe and smoke it. The
Editors were
overshadowed by Interpol as a neo-retro-Joy Division homage, but their first
record, 2005's
The Back Room, probably provided more bang for the buck in the realm of
Ian-Curtis-You-Can-Dance-To. 2007's
An End
Has A Start wanted to be just as good but seemed to be stalling for time
until better riffs raised their hands. The new one is an abandonment of guitars
that takes some time getting used to, like switching from Joy Division to New
Order. In This Light & In This Evening isn't as good as The Back Room but it's a
formula that can work for them as long as they don't write too many songs that
in concert inspire fans to loiter at the concession stand on the way back from
the can.
Maybe part of it is technology overshadowing organic songwriting, or songwriting being uncomfortable with technology. It's not as big a leap into the chasm of electro-nics as Bob Mould's awkward Modulate, but at first listen you might suspect it's teetering on the edge of the same hole. The disc opens strong with "In This light And On This Evening", creating tension and building anticipation, but it leads to a crescendo of real drums (and stuff) as an extended fade out, as if they're kissing off the old sound as an afterthought. It's not as bad as all that, as the next song, "Bricks And Mortar", the best track, is a keeper. "Papillon" is straight-on New Order, cutting directly to the 12" remix version of what I first expected to hear. Maybe they were jealous of Franz Ferdinand's success with their take on "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" they titled "Take Me Out". Part of me can't admit to liking some of this one, but I'm generally repulsed by any song you can dance to with the your hands over your head.
"You Don't Know Love" has an annoying disco beat leading to a clumsy synth line and off-key backup singing. "The Big Exit" tries to be weird but comes off as slightly odd. Singer Tom Smith fails at the high end of the vocal register here and elsewhere. "The Boxer" has a nice xylophone effect going for it, and it's not bad if you're patient. "Like Treasure" is decent. "Eat Raw Meat=Blood Drool" reminds me of Peter Gabriel circa 1980. "Walk The Fleet Road" ends the album on a slow note, with Smith crooning his way into the hearts of the world.
I didn't like In This Light & On This Evening when I first heard it, but repeated listening has acclimated me to their new direction. I hope they avoid the disco remix mentality in the future. Tom Smith should also stay within the confines of his vocal range.
The Tomorrow Show – Punk And
New Wave (DVD review): (This review is filled with spoilers)
Shout! Factory must be in a full-blown race with
Rhino to repackage every remaining piece of kooky-culture flotsam and jetsam, and
until it bankrupts them both I say hurrah! Wee-hours talk show host
Tom Snyder
was a one of a kind, bridging the gap between the erudite talk of Dick
Cavett and a local cable access show run by the owner’s nephew. Tom was
a square Swingin’ 70s chain-smoking goofball either drunk or high, a
silly man trying to be serious. Within any given five minutes he’d
alternate bluntness with irrelevant tangents, probing questions,
leading condescension and strange lines of reasoning, punctuated with
guffaws and billowing cigarette smoke. One quick shot of Tom in this
collection has him speaking normally while smoke shoots out of his nose
and mouth like a dragon. A true WTF moment here in the Ought Decade.
While Tom never knew what to make of these dangerous and mentally deficient punk rockers, and he never stopped asking them why they didn’t normal-up their act, he nonetheless booked them on his show early and often. In New Jersey there was The Uncle Floyd Show, another early punk-promoting pioneer, but to get reception you had to connect your TV to the toaster with tin foil. (Offstage Voice: “Hey Floyd, ya hear about the nurse they thought drowned?” Floyd: “No, what?”, Offstage Voice: “They found her under the Doc!”) This two-disc set would have fit on one if it didn’t include full shows with unrelated guests like Frank Capra and Rick Schroder. The DVD menu lets you see only what you want, but Tom’s fun to watch no matter what.
The first disc opens with a group discussion with Joan Jett, Paul Weller, Bill Graham, Kim Fowley and the LA Times rock critic. Then there’s live songs and couch time with Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, and Wendy O. Williams. The tension is always high and Tom can’t decide if he should be afraid or dismissive. It makes for great television.
The group discussion must be from the early months of the UK 77’ explosion, when “new wave” and “punk” were still battling it out as what to call the music. It’s so new nobody knows what to make of it, even the musicians. Tom reads from his notes that it started in England, which nobody corrects. Weller, edgy and speeding (if how he chews gum is an indicator), hates “punk” as a media term and goes with new wave, as in the French film movement. Jett looks sixteen and is either tipsy or scared. She speaks well but later phases out and forgets what’s going on. Fowley looks like The Joker as a Bowie fanatic, with pancake makeup an inch thick. Snyder blurts out “You look ridiculous”, to which Fowley replies “I’m an Oxford man posing as a mug.” He has a beautiful mind but he’s also a prick and Svengali, seen in full glory in The Mayor Of The Sunset Strip. Graham says it’s a novelty as opposed to a fad, and he detests the nazi imagery. The LA Times critic is smart and level-headed. Tom’s worried about violence and is told it’s mostly implied. Tom refers to bands as “organizations” and says “There’s no music, just chords, and ranting and raving, and put-downs.” Fowley says punk is a “B-movie on record.” Graham shies away from saying he’ll book punk bands but admits he’d probably do so if demand increases. He wouldn’t be proud of himself though. “Demand” vs. “Talent” is also discussed. Every minute of it is fascinating.
Elvis Costello comes on to support his 1981 release Trust and he’s wearing the same over-sized sunglasses from the cover. He and The Attractions bore with live versions of “New Lace Sleeves” and “Watch Your Step”. Asked why he didn’t get asked to be on talk shows, Elvis stares at the floor and says “We’ve never been asked.” He also explains the SNL “Alison” controversy half defensively and half off-handedly. In the interview he’s funny, withdrawn and short-fused. In typical Tom fashion he talks about Costello’s musician father and asks “Do you love him?” Tom’s well–prepared and keeps it lively.
Iggy Pop appears to promote 1980’s Soldier and sings Stooge-powered versions of “Dog Food”, “Five Foot One” and “TV Eye”. Tom says of Ig’s music “It’s easily heard.” Iggy smiles like a maniac and he’s missing a front tooth. I’m waiting for Tom to ask about it but he must be too afraid because Iggy’s energy is a riot about to break. Iggy slouches in his comfy chair and he wants to curse so much but he fights it like a demonic possession. Talking about stage monitors he says “You can’t hear what I can’t flush in my hotel all the time”. He says he’s inspired by Sun Ra, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and Howlin’ Wolf, and charms Tom by saying the first time he vomited on stage was out of frustration, and that he cut himself because that was “the truth of the moment.” That's our Iggy! Ya gotta love 'em.
Wendy O. Williams famously blew up a car on Tom’s show, but she didn’t really blow up a car. It was a theatrical explosion and the car separated as designed. Geez, ya think they’d allow a car to be dynamited in front of an audience?! Tom introduces her by saying “Tonight Wendy is back to play two more hits that I know are favorites in your house as they are in mine.” As he introduces the live songs he quips “Well, it’s time for another moment in the history of quality television.” Keep in mind Tom’s beyond amused - he’s giddy. Wendy & The Plasmatics play “Head Ranger” and “Master Plan”, and Wendy truly is the female Iggy Pop. In the interview Tom asks a dumb leading question about how many people don’t have TVs and guitars to destroy on stage, so isn’t it wrong that she do so? Eloquently nuts, Wendy says it’s because the world is out of whack, “It’s normal for rape and murder to go on, but it’s not normal to smash a TV set, and I think things are out of proportion.” Tom’s always asserting that if punks quieted down they’d expand their audience, and he seems curious how people like Wendy wind up being how they are, as if they can become Joe and Jane average if they got a haircut and just stopped it. I cringed when he asked Wendy if she’d kiss a TV on stage instead of smashing it. She smiled. She’d heard this crap her whole life.
Disc two opens with Patti Smith - giddy, patriotic, positive and religious about The Creator – either in the Catholic sense of her upbringing or a more generically spirituality. In her poetry she set herself up as a Christ figure, so it’s hard to say. Her language is peppered with poetic images, saying she took a picture of Johnny Carson’s parking spot with her “polarized memory” and calling herself an “illuminated apprentice” of Carson, whose talent she calls a “human parachute”, always landing on his feet in any situation. She’s a big kid for Tom, who for once doesn’t feel threatened by a punk rocker. She says “Little Richard was a person that was able to focus a certain physical, anarchistic and spiritual energy into a form, which we call Rock N’ Roll”, and “Death is a magical extension of being in love… you feel that you’re not alone.” She cracks up the crew by describing her poetry this way: “I always hope that people will have some kind of orgasm through my work… whether it’s just a sense of relaxation, a sense of release, an illumination … and also a good laugh.” Her slogan for the evening is FTA (Focus Thine Anarchy). Patti doesn’t sing in this segment.
The John Lydon & Keith Levine interview is the big attraction of the DVDs, and it doesn’t disappoint. Ostensibly to promote P.I.L., Lydon is such a monumental prick I’m amazed someone, for the love of Pete anyone, didn’t hop on stage and beat him into a coma with a tire iron. About as threatening as a man weighing 140 pounds can be, John randomly alternates between anger, dismissiveness and insults. He’s angry Tom asks basic interview questions and didn’t know the P.I.L. corporate credo. He’s dismissive of everyone and everything, and he spews insults with run-on sentences that serve as his mantra. Levine, David Spade with no chin, tries to bring some structure to the interview but is stopped repeatedly by Lydon, prompting Tom to say “Excuse me for talking while you were interrupting.” John asks for a smoke and Tom says “I’ll find a way to your heart yet, fella.” Going to a break Tom smiles and says into the camera “We’ll continue, not for long, with this fascinating discussion right after these announcements. Isn’t this fun gang?”
As only he can, Tom asks “P.I.L. What is that? Is it a band, is it a public relations firm? What des it do, and what is it?” John drawls out We ain’t no band. We’re a company. Simple. Nothing to do with Rock and Roll. Do da…” Tom: “Why do you dislike Rock and Roll?” John: “It’s dead, it’s a disease, it’s the plague, it’s been going on for too long, it’s history, it’s vile, it’s not achieving anything, it’s just digression, they play Rock and Roll at airports. That’s about as advanced as it can possibly get. It’s too limited. It is too much like a structure, a church, a religion, a farce.” Tom: “Let me try this. What do you like?” John: “Not very much. Being allowed to get on with it, without record company hassles. We’re not very intellectual. We just do it.” Tom: “It’s unfortunate we’re all out of step except for you.”
The only other person I’ve seen be so unrelentingly douchebaggy without provocation is GG Allin, and John has to realize that without two commercial sell-outs, “This Is Not A Love Song” and “Public Image”, P.I.L. would have gone down in music history as a challenging yet unfortunate side project.
The Jam appear in another segment to sing “Pretty Green” and “Funeral Pyre”, this being Paul Weller’s second time on the show, possibly chewing the same piece of gum as the last time, like a British gangster on uppers. Tom, from another cultural planet, refers to them as “An organization called The Jam.” The sit-down is short and friendly, the major topic being how British bands are commonly compared to The Beatles.
The Ramones feel ripped off that Tom was on vacation when they finally made it to the show. They wanted to argue with Tom “about anything!” Sitting in is journalist Kelly Lange, a friendly and efficient type-A personality who, like a mom, can’t stop brushing Joey’s hair away from his eyes and telling him how dangerous that is. Joey looks down the whole time and all you can see are his nose and chin. The band’s there to promote Pleasant Dreams and sing “We Want The Airwaves” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away”. They sit on a couch scrunched together like Siamese quintuplets, and as usual Johnny does most of the talking. Dee Dee gets a few words in and I’m sure Johnny’s steaming inside. It’s a standard Ramones interview, the only highlight being when Lange asks of the band’s clothes “Isn’t this a uniform?” Johnny tells the lie that it was how they dressed every day, but it's common knowledge now that Joey and Dee Dee weren’t too pleased with it.
I’d recommend watching this by yourself just so you can take it all in and mull it over, or maybe a group setting with crullers and coffee.
Entry 144: 11/7/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXXVII & XXXXVIII (Instrumentals) (+ video review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXXVII and XXXXVIII (Instrumentals) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
Aerial FX: "Hold Me"
Aroma Di Amore: "De Dobberman"
Art Interface: "Real Pretty-Like"
Faith Global: "coded Word"
The Future: "Pulse Lovers"
Im Namen Des Volkes: "System Uberlastet"
Ken Klinger: "Waltzing Again"
Krisma: "Gott Gott Electron"
Metropolis: "See No Reason"
Nullset: "To The Point"
Olney: "Sewn Into My Heart"
Polyphonic Size: "Party"
Portion Control: "Diving"
The Stupid Set: "Relaxin'"
Tara Cross: "I Won't Cut It Away"
XXXXVIII
Art Interface: "Dance Hit"
Bizarre Leidenschaft: "Bizarre L."
The Dead Goldfish Ensemble: "Ace"
NES - Ygar: "Underground Cave"
P.C.R.: "Damon Organ"
PLX 15: "Lufteturen"
Port Said: "Indian Ocean, Voyage 2"
Resistance: "Glimmer"
Second Decay: "Laboratorium I"
Solvent: "An Introduction To Science"
Suttterlin: "Intermezzo"
Young Marble Giants: "Sporting Life"
Young
Marble Giants – Live at the Hurrah Club (video review): I’m not sure
if the short-lived
Young Marble Giants had a style or an aesthetic, or if I even know the
difference. If you’re not paying attention you might categorize them as
twee pop, but singer Alison Statton and brothers Phil (bass and keyboards)
and Stuart (guitar) Moxham recorded the angriest quiet music of the post-punk
era. The songs are also really short. With headphones, crank up 1980’s
Colossal Youth in a dark, quiet room and you’ll notice the Moxham brothers
are struggling to not rip asunder their instruments. There’s a subtle rage
underneath the minimalism, while Alison Statton is hauntingly emotive within the
confines of her pathological detachment and inability to blink more than halfway
shut.
Separated At Birth: Alison Statton and Small Wonder
Live At The Hurrah Club (commonly known as Hurrah’s) is a live set recorded on November 21, 1980. The lighting is dark and shadowy, with the brothers barely visible and Alison stepping out during songs to where you can only see her orange-lit, unblinking face. She only smiles between songs and mostly in the dark. They appeared on the BBC program Something Else on August 26, 1980, on a brightly lit set, and while the BBC set is nicer to look at, the NY show is closer to the sight of their sound.
Unless you’re a big fan you might have to watch this with the same rapt attention as their recordings require. It’s darkly lit and not loud in the traditional sense, but if you focus on it the presentation comes across well, if not just accurately. When I listen to Young Marble Giants I get into them in a big way, but when it’s been a while I tend to forget how much I like them. That’s why to me they’re more an aesthetic than a style.
Entry 143: 10/31/2009: The Greatest Thing Ever, Apers CD Review, Love Of Diagrams CD Review, Video Review
Sadly I can't find an embeddable copy of the video, so here's a link to Youtube and a 1983 clip from SCTV of their take on The Sex Pistols et al. as The Queen Haters. John Candy is on drums, Martin Short sings, Eugene Levy plays lead guitar, Joe Flaherty plays rhythm guitar and Andrea Martin is on bass. The best is Candy's apathetic stare.
The Apers: "Put Down The
Hamburger"
The Apers: "Little Lost Girl"
The Apers – You Are Only As Strong As The Table You Dance On (CD review): Rotterdam’s The Apers have been around since 1996 and have aged-up to where they’re no longer snot-punks with a decent enough four-chord power-pop-punk sound. Sonically they put out mid-to-fast paced songs in line with The Queers meets The Riverdales. What stands out are their lyrics – funny, heartfelt and unencumbered by PC politics. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed lyrics as much as I do on The Aper’s latest release. Power-pop-punk as a genre has a bad track record when it comes to writing above minimal expectations of snottiness, junk culture and whatever one imagines Dee Dee Ramone could come up with. The kings of junk rock, Sloppy Seconds, also write great lyrics, hiding sadness and loss under layers of drunken belligerence. .
Here’s some tangential Seinfeld: George: What is Holland? Jerry: What do you mean, 'what is it?' It's a country right next to Belgium. George: No, that's the Netherlands. Jerry: Holland *is* the Netherlands. George: Then who are the Dutch?
I can’t find full lyrics so here’s some segments, such as the first part of “Put Down The Hamburger”: “Sometimes I wonder what is wrong with the world today / So many people living f—cked up lives in many different ways / Instead of opening a beer I open my eyes for a change / This one goes out to all the fat kids / Put down that hamburger, it’s not worth it, and one day you will regret it, and it’s not gonna make it any better in the end / Put down the hamburger, you don’t need it, you don’t wanna be the fat kid, all it takes is some discipline my little chubby friends.” The chubby hamburger part is fairly random to what the song itself is about, but the anti-PC take is bold to say the least.
Then there’s most of what I could figure out of “Whatever It Takes”, which goes down the same road as The Buzzcock’s “I Believe” and is as fine a piece of songwriting as you’ll find all year:
“Wondering what I would do, I’d swim straight from here to Peru, I’d take the sun out of the sky, hurt animals, make children cry / I’d sell cocaine to teenage moms, switch on the chair, I’d drop the bombs on New York City and Japan, Jerusalem, Afghanistan / Dress up as Hitler, smoke some crack, confuse (?) that monkey on my back, I’d move to Texas, grow a beard, stop checking up (?) to Britney Spears / I’d sell my body to the night, I’d drink some urine, start the fight, between the Germans and the Jews, take bets on who will win or lose / Go! / Wondering how far I’d go, sell Chinese kids to Mexico, I’d eat my veggies, get a job, play air guitar to Blitzkrieg Bop / Join Greenpeace, start an emo band, steal money from my closest friends, tell prostitutes go f—k yourselves, start caring more about my health / Star in a pornographic movie, take a crap in the Jacuzzi, do my homework, pay the rent, hide rusty nails under the sand / I’d nuke the world, I’d sweep the floor, I’d steal the booze from Gary Moore, f—k all of you, my parents too, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do, oh yeah… // I’d do it every day, to get over you, I’d ???? to come up with something better wouldn’t do…/ Because the way things are right now I’m sorry no can do…”
Catchy as a box of fishing lures, You Are Only As Strong As The Table You Dance On is a lyrical breath of fresh air, making it a strong release and well worth owning.
Love Of Diagrams: "Form And
Function"
Love Of Diagrams: "Interlude"
Love Of Diagrams – Mosaic (cd review): Australia’s Love Of Diagrams are firmly within the range of Allmusic’s takes on their Influences and Similar Artists categories (their site won't allow me to link directly), and while they aren’t the best of their division these two Sheilas and one Bruce do a hell of a job cranking out punk post-punk music that’s never quiet even when it’s not loud. The drums, guitar and bass are given equal weight and they intertwine and shoot off on their own with an interesting internal logic, Unpredictability is one of Mosaic’s finer qualities, along with the music not being as much about melody but of fluid and random energy with smooth torque. There are melodies fer shure, but that’s only a starting point. The singing alternates between a touch of Siouxsie Sioux and the duet singing of the B-52’s, while the sound is grounded in a faster and louder Gang Of Four feel, sans funk.
As a piece, 2007’s Mosaic probably repeats itself aesthetically more than it should, hitting the same high points with a regularity that should be more metered out. Besides that, I ain’t gots no complaints.
Not
A Photograph: The Mission Of Burma Story
(video review):
Not A Photograph is a bit of a letdown. It drags itself across the finish
line at seventy minutes and is the straw that broke the camel’s back in how
music films beat the theme of the importance of the band at hand into the ground
with muted desperation. Guitarist Roger Miller speaks of a 2002 resurgence of
Mission Of Burma brought about by a big reunion gig at NY’s Irvng Plaza, the
band documentary film of which we speak, and the “book”, a chapter in
Our Band Could Be Your Life, whose author appears to say MOB tastes great
and is less filling. In the end it's a trip down memory lane for middle-aged
hipsters excited to have a reason to leave the house, and a valid excuse for
rock critics to flex their rhetorical muscles.
Mission Of Burma is a great and important band in American punk and post-punk history, but they weren’t bigger than what they were, and today they’re not as big as they were back then. They played their fair share of ill-attended gigs. I have to compare this to the Naked Raygun DVD What Poor Gods We Do Make, which also tries too hard to make the case a band is legendary. Mission of Burma was America’s Wire and Naked Raygun was Chicago’s Mission Of Burma. A film on Wire can easily argue their importance on a relatively large scale. The Naked Raygun film is a nice treat for fans in an era when technology allows people to do this on their desktop computer. The Mission Of Burma film tries to be more than it is and it shows.
The problem with Not A Photograph is that it reaches for gravitas when all it deserves is fond remembrance. The MOB story is one of a local Boston punk band who recorded a few great records, broke up, and along the way influenced other punk bands. As is, the footage would work better as a section of a film based on Our Band Could Be Your Life. Not A Photograph should have been a concert film of the Irving Plaza gig, spaced out and elaborated on with the other footage that populates the finished product. I knew the project was doomed when they showed a camcorder interview with bass player Clint Conley’s mom. I felt like a fly on the wall for slow-paced memories of boring randomness.
The film also trips up over issues of fame and relative fame. MOB were a noisy yet melodic punk band who rose as far up the ladder of punk rock success as their talent and the punk consuming public allowed. That they influenced other bands, like Nirvana, who went on to sell many more records, is almost irrelevant to the place of MOB in the music hierarchy. There’s two realities – the one preached to you by music critics and the empirical one you see in records sold and concert attendance. This could be a false memory, but even in their prime MOB were more important than they were popular. Their context is not within popular music and widespread fame, and you can see in the pained look on band member’s faces as they fight the need to honestly say fame in the punk rock ghetto is a teeny tiny thing.
Trivia of note: Roger Miller wears large noise-reducing headphones and drummer Peter Prescott plays behind a plexiglass shield. Someone describes their music as “Anti-pop in a pop way”. The “one album short of fame” balloon is both set free and shot down. The warm-up shows find the band rough and unready. Prescott owns a record store in Boston called Smash City Records. Their albums since the reunion have been less MOB than a side project using the original name to draw attention and move units.
Entry 142: 10/24/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXXVI (+ video review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXXVI and (download zip file at Rapidshare)
Anne Cessna & Essendon
Airport: "Lost In Madagascar"
Central Unit: "Saturday Night"
Clock DVA: "4 Hours" (Original Single Mix)
Eurythmics: "Never Gonna Cry Again"
Gloria Mundi: "Fight Back!"
Peter Godwin: "Images Of Heaven"
Grauzone: "Traume Mit Mir"
Hepatitis Risk: "Wet Dreams"
Hubert Kah: "Rosemarie
Magnetique Bleu: "Starwars Dan Ma Tete"
Moderne: "Switch On Bach"
Nervous Gender: "People Like You"
Silicon Teens: "Sun Flight"
Trem: "My Robotic Friend"
Young Marble Giants: "Wurlitzer Jukebox"
Law And Order: Criminal
Intent Quote Of The Week: I'm
a nutter for Criminal Intent and Special Victim's Unit. Vincent D'Onofrio as
Robert Goren is my favorite, a hulking, eccentric mad genius of sleuthing from
The Columbo School of such things. I fall over whenever he says "One more thing"
or leans into a suspect with a tilting head and a snort like a bull. This
exchange involves guest characters but the reply is worthy of a tombstone:
Antiques Appraiser: "What wonderfully idiosyncratic tastes your father has."
Son: "He only shopped when he was drunk, and he only bought what made him laugh."
Einsturzende Neubauten
- Palast der Republik (DVD review):
I don’t listen to
Einsturzende Neubauten (EN) for general entertainment but I reviewed a
video and have enjoyed some of their recordings. My last video review sums up
my take on them, so I proceed from there. I have no idea how to pronounce their
name and don't care to learn it. Nothing personal, but it
seems like a lot of work to sound like I'm mumbling. This 81
minute show was recorded on Nov. 4, 2004 at the now demolished Berlin Parliament
building known as the
Palast der Republik. If you look directly at the symbolism of EN closing
this venue your bone marrow would curdle.Entry 141: 10/17/2009: Teenage Bottlerocket CD Review, Video Review & Cartoon
Teenage Bottlerocket: "Forbidden Planet"
a new one
Teenage Bottlerocket: "Patrick"
an old one
Teenage Bottlerocket – They Came From The Shadows (CD review): If there’s anything the internet knows for sure it’s that I loves me my Lillingtons. Something magical happened when Kody Templeman met producer Mass Giorgini, and since then Kody owns the four-chord power pop punk wasteland. Nobody comes close to his one man walls of sound. The Lillingtons were from Newcastle, Wyoming, 250 miles from Teenage Bottlerockets’s hometown of Laramie, separated by what they call God’s Country because nobody else would want to claim it. Teenage Bottlerocket were doing ok on their own but became the #1 power pop punk band in this dimension once Kody came to stay. I just watched the new video for “Skate Or Die” and was so happy I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, so I laughed and tried not to cry. My favorite track is "Bigger Than Kiss", and I always scream along when Kody orders me to "Rock!", just like when below he tells me to "Go!".
They Came From The Shadows is their third full-length and alternates between Kody’s Lillingtons-type songs and ones sang by original TBR singer Ray Carlisle, usually harder and more serious. There’s an even split on the fourteen tracks. There’s no louder or harder power-pop-punk band than Teenage Bottlerocket. Beyond that and it’s into a whole other genre. I’m not going to dissect the tracks except to say I’m going to know every fricking word of it when they play here in November. I’ll try not to be a dick and scream out Lillingtons song titles, but, uh, who am I kidding...
The Gits (video review): Never having heard of
The Gits except in passing, and not being a fan and seeing no reason to
become one, I watched director
Kerri O’Kane’s emphatic 2005 documentary
The Gits with a detachment that said “I’ll take your word for it!” The
trailer gives you a sense of how important The Gits were according to the makers
of this 81 minute film, but the intro is so over the top in saying they were one
of the most important bands in rock history it made the next scenes look
like a mockumentary. Well made and earnest, it’s a story about an important band
in the history of Seattle’s early 90s parallel, less well-known non-grunge
scene. It was probably the alpha and beta for those involved, but like I say I’m
mostly indifferent. It was as much rock as it was punk – the kind of rock
that’s hard to describe but everyone knows it’s rock. “Second Skin” is a toe-tapper.
Fronted by charismatic lead singer
Mia Zapata, in some ways the Janis Joplin of her scene, The Gits formed in
1986 at Ohio’s Antioch College. They relocated to Seattle a few years later and
moved into a cheap dwelling they dubbed the “Rat House”, where they played
often, built a following, attracted the attention of Atlantic Records and
inspired the formation of the more popular 7 Year Bitch. Zapata is lauded for
her lyrics of honest, straightforward empowerment, but from the songs in the
film I felt they were didactic statements of facts with all the subtlety of
Minor Threat. I would have preferred something closer to Exene Cervenka, but
once again I wasn't asked for my facts opinions..
In the early hours of July 7, 1993, on the way home from a favorite local Seattle watering hole, Zapata was kidnapped, raped, murdered and left in the street. This begins the second part of the film and the reason it was made in the first place. In the aftermath a non-profit group was formed called Home Alive, teaching both non-violence and self-defense classes, which might sound as contradictory to you as it does to me, but I’m glad they exist and I hope they non-violently castrate as many rapists as they can find. Ten years later the case was solved through the national law enforcement DNA database, so hooray for science! A college friend of mine’s murder was recently solved with DNA, so I know this story firsthand.
The film shifts from band history to police procedural, a first in my experience, but I loves me my Law & Order shows so I was happy when it did as I was getting bored with hearing how The Gits were a revolution of sounds and ideas.
O’Kane gathered a load of material to put together her film, even acquiring the rights to the Monty Python Sketch about Gits that inspired the band’s name. She had access to band members, scene friends, Mia’s dad, Joan Jett and Kathleen Hanna, along with old home movies, news reports and concert footage from Hype!, the definitive Seattle music film. Equal parts social agenda and Gits band history, The Gits will float your boat if you enjoy either. OK, now git, y'all!
anti-hippie chart from cracked.com
Entry 140: 10/10/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXXIV & XXXXV (Instrumentals) (+ video review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXXIV and XXXXV (Instrumentals XV) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
Bal Pare: "Palais D. Amour"
Craig Sibley: "You See Art, I See Clay"
Die Kapazitat: "O.S.R.L."
DUR: "Machinemusik"
Experimental Products: "Modern Living"
Futurologischer Kongress: "(stoned im) Dschungel"
The Government: "Hemingway (Hated Disco Music)"
Industrials: "Idiot Dancers"
Last Four (4) Digits: "City Streets"
The Nails: "88 Lines About 44 Women"
Neon Judgement: "Schizophrenic Freddy"
The November Group: "I Live Alone"
Odd Stories: "Hjarten Al Glas"
Saal 2: "Angst Vorm Tanzen"
Tone Set: "Life Is Busy"
Bill Nelson: "Dada Guitar"
Chris & Cosey: "Heartbeat"
Colin Potter: "Quick One"
Conrad Schnitzler: "Ballet Statique"
Event Group: "Lost In Bass"
Harald Grosskopf: "1847 - Earth"
Michael Rother: "Zyklodrom"
Nash The Slash: "Danger Zone"
NES - Goonies 2 "Room"
Red Zebra: "Graveyard Shuffle"
Sutterlin: "Es Ist Mai"
Underground Life: "Slow Excitation"
Better Living Through Circuitry
(video review):
1999’s
Better Living Through Circuitry is probably outdated by eleventy generations
since the
rave scene prides itself on always being three steps ahead of itself, both
physically impossible and a load of crap since without drugs much of it sounds
the same. My favorite bits from the coming-of-age rave film
Groove are when the new DJ succeeds by making his first song sound exactly
like the song before it, only thumpier, and the zen overload of The Nod:
Guy: Why do you do this to yourself? Don't even get paid, risk getting arrested, for what? Ernie: You don't know? Guy: No. Ernie: The Nod. Guy: The Nod? Ernie: Happens to me at least once every party. Some guy comes up to me and says "Thank you for making this happen... I needed this. This really meant something to me." And they nod... and I nod back. Guy: [scoffs] ... That's it? Ernie: That's it.
The Nod. Dude. I watched an hour of this because it repeats itself and I should receive combat pay for having to listen to music I despise with a genocidal fury. I know people who like raves and rave music, and god bless their pointy little heads, but that scene is a cocktail of the worst utopian, drugged up hippie shite and the horrors of the disco era. That’s my version of hell. I keep my mouth shut, but my typing hands won't keep quiet.
If you’re looking for a fast-moving, loud, colorful, informative and positive overview of rave you won’t be disappointed by Better Living Through Circuitry. I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest. I try not to piss on other people’s fun as long as it’s ultimately harmless, and if all I had against rave was music I don’t like and the annoying exuberance of the young, dumb and full of fun, I’d give it as much consideration as I do Swedish Death Metal. It’s not that simple. I’m not a fan of addictive drug use with harmful long-term effects, or of creating a positive culture around it. The film's title is a riff on Better Living Through Chemistry. It’s the 60s all over again, with Timothy Leary taking the Magic Bus to a beautiful future of love, peace and sugary drinks. That works out well as long as the welfare and trust fund checks keep rolling in. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. If you want to fry your brains, fine, but if you do please do the right thing and don't burden the system with your long term care needs. Cliffs exist for a reason.
Genesis P-Orridge, the strangest person this side of Venus, appears throughout to make definitive statements like “The origins of punk… there was an enthusiasm for taking back the means of production. I think with techno, we’re actually, we’re seizing the means of perception.” GP is way too impressed with his/herself. Just like with hippies and rich white anarchists, ravers talk of the threat of their scene to the police and the existing power elites. Their freedom, happiness and love threaten the status quo, and that’s why the cops shut down raves. It’s not the drug dealing, rapes, ambulance parades or ecstacy-induced car fatalities. No, it’s the feelings of family and everybody wanting to be your friend. It’s that everyone is a participant. The hugging. The fun. The love. Why do pigs hate love? Oh, If I had a penny for every person who thinks they’re being targeted by The Man because they make people think. Ah, life lived as theory......
Entry 139: 10/3/2009: Life Without Buildings Review & Video Review
I was
chatting with an old drunk acquaintance at a local Los
Angeles-area scum bar tavern, and he told me a few things about
ye olde L.A. scene. He witnessed the original punk
Masque-centered scene
succumbing to the jock nihilism of the emerging hardcore scene, and said the
L.A. mod scene soon became populated with former Masque-types repulsed by the
next degeneration of degenerates. He also noted that certain
hardcore bands were recorded well in the studio but were horrendous live. No
surprise there. I asked about
El Duce and he laughed. Mr. Mentor was a funny drunk who'd lay down in
garbage and drink. Then we talked about receding hairlines, irritable bowels and
these damn kids today, and eventually waved each other off while mumbling
incoherently about how nobody listens anymore.
Life Without Buildings - "PS Exclusive" (live at The
Annandale Hotel)
Life Without Buildings - "Young
Offenders" (live at The Anndale Hotel)
Life
Without Buildings - Live At The Annandale Hotel (cd review):
It's only a good thing that Glasgow, Scotland's
Life Without
Buildings recorded one
cd and a few singles in that their battering average hovered around .950. I
would have taken a chance on another full-length, but on a cult level at least their
legacy is assured. They've been compared to a
set of diverse groups, but my
take on them has always been if Altered Images lead singer Clare Grogan grew up
a bit and put together a band of former Coyote Records (NJ label) artists to
play Velvet Underground music behind her Blackboard and Pointer lyrics, which is
math rock with a visual component. I'll 'splain. Here's the long-form lyrics for
"Daylighting":
listen
daylighting
listen daylighting
i let you, i let you
when we were young, when you were mine
listen daylighting
listen daylighting
what's the matter?
listen daylighting
listen daylighting
i don't mind
listen daylighting
listen daylighting
i let you, i let you
when we were young, when you were mine
close the summer, i don't want lessons
close the summer, i don't want lessons from you
listen daylighting
listen daylighting
i don't mind
listen daylighting
listen daylighting
i let you, i let you
when we were young, when you were mine
listen daylighting
listen daylighting
i don't mind
what's the matter?
staring, listen daylighting
listen daylighting
i don't mind
i let you, i let you
when we were young, when you were mine
to the left, what can i offer you?
conversation in the rain
close the summer, i don't want lessons
close the summer, i don't want lessons from you
kino, kino, kino, das kino
kino, take me to the kino again
das kino, kino, take me to the kino again
das kino, kino, take me to the kino again
it's easy
das kino, kino, take me to the kino again
it's easy, ask me, take me to the kino again
listen daylighting
i don't mind any more
i let you, i let you
when we were young, when you were mine
As you might have noticed, this can be reduced to many fewer lines. Sue Tompkins repeats phrases with an infallible internal logic, like a record skipping forward and back. I picture someone on stage with a blackboard and pointer, keeping up by going up, down and across rows of lines that don't repeat on the board. I do this in my mind when I listen to Life Without Buildings, as I have nothing better to do with my endless free time.
Live At The Annandale Hotel was from a set of 2002 concerts in Australia, and both the band and recordings are studio quality. Tompkins has an endearing, eccentric personality, introducing songs and commenting on everything she's doing. At the end of "Love Trinity" she says "Thank you... we're here tomorrow so we're just gonna do the same songs in a different order... that's what we're gonna do... it's cheeky." She has the kind of voice and personality that's endearing and entertaining until it most likely becomes flighty and infuriating.
In their highly satisfying set the standouts are "PS Exclusive" , "Juno", "Young Offenders" and "14 Days", the latter a speedier "I'm Waiting For The Man". The last song, "Sorrow", evokes another Lou Reed tune, "Coney Island Baby". It's all good if not great, and while I can recommend this and any other Life Without Buildings material more highly, I won't because then I might appear desperate, and I hear you should never show weakness on the internet.
New York Dolls:
All Dolled Up (video review):
Filtered from a treasure trove of forty
hours of early 70's video footage from famed photographer
Bob Gruen and his wife Nadya,
All Dolled Up is an archivist's dream. It's not fancy but it's put together
well and is as gritty and raw as you're going to find, filled with concert
footage, casual interviews and promotional toomfoolery. It's not a documentary
but it tells you most of what you need to know about the NY Dolls at the time it
was shot in grainy, single camera black and white, with mono sound. The Dolls
are young and hungry, and not just for heroin.
Does it drag and repeat itself? Boy Howdy it does, but these are opportunities to microwave a burrito or check your fantasy NASCAR standings. You can stop and start it at any time because there's no plot. It's raw footage of groupies bitching they're on the guest list, the boys getting dressing in thrift store drag, backstage meets and greets, interviews sitting on the sides of highways, and of course playing at clubs like Kenny's Castaways, The Whisky, The Matrix, and Max's Kansas City. If your eyes drift from the screen, don't fight it. It's your body's natural defense mechanism. My favorite parts were the band winding themselves up and down for simple band photos, and the local NY CBS news report on a new and potentially dangerous trend coming out of lower Manhattan. Why, Iggy Pop needed sixteen stitches after a recent show!
David Johansen is the charismatic center of the band, and you can tell he's the only NY Doll with an IQ above junkie. I loved it when he stares into the camera and deadpans in all honesty "I can't wait to get home and get out of this ridiculous costume." Everything he says is worth hearing. If he ever gets around to writing a book about The Dolls it'll be the final word.
I turned off All Dolled Up after an hour because the film makes its points within twenty minutes. There’s enough hurry-up-and-wait parts to make you feel like a voyeuristic ghost doomed to eternity. The concert segments find them in top form, so at least there’s that, and also the anthropological thrill of a time when men and women looked alike. Especially the hair. A Trash & Vaudeville Rolling Stones from start to finish, The NY Dolls spend their days as straight drag queens stoned out of their minds and nights on stage as the KISS of glam.
In San Francisco at The Matrix, Rodney Bingenheimer introduces the band and has nothing to say. Did he suffer from stage fright? Jeez, Rodney, you traveled 400 miles to do this, so at least say something interesting. Pretty much for fans only, All Dolled Up might be worth seeing for its organic cinema verite. The shocked reactions of bystanders are priceless, and you’ll learn a lot about the Dolls and the 70s if you can stay awake long enough. The early and mid 70s were an ugly time to be alive. Androgyny, no muscle tone and acres of Brillo Pad pubic hair. You do the visual math.
Entry 138: 9/26/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXXIII (+ video review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXXIII (download zip file at Rapidshare)
ADN' Ckrystall: "Tam Tam
Samba"
Bera Maor: "Manner"
Berlin: "The Metro"
Blago-Bung: "Auto-Suggestion"
Cracked Mirror: "Obituary Column"
Guerre Froide: "Gloria Victis"
The Housekeepers: "Solar Ferris Wheel"
Kiem: "Behind"
Mechanical Servants: "Study Up"
Perfect Vision: "Repetition"
P-Model: "Art Mania"
Polyrock: "Your Dragging Feet"
Product of Reason: "Your Song"
Sandi And The Sunsetz: "Alive"
Wirtschaftswunder: "Analphabet"
Moogfest
2006: Live (video review): There's a few kinds of music I simply
don't understand. I neither like nor dislike them, but I do feel as if my time is
not only being wasted, future time is also destroyed. Millions of people
like free form jazz and jazz rock, but to me it's a foreign musical language
with a logic system beyond my solar system. I know what a
Moog is generically
but had no idea what to expect from this nearly 2 1/2 hour concert marathon.
Damn
was I bored. I didn't know it was possible to wank and
noodle around
at the same time, and it's like sitting in detention with sounds that distort
time and space. No crapping you - I descended into a pit of ennui.
Moog is pronounced "Moeg", as in "Hey Moe!". I went to summer camp in the 70s with someone nicknamed Moog, as in the cow goes "moo". He had no sense of rhythm and when music played people would clap along so they could see Moog fail to do the same in time. He was always game for it. A Moog can either replicate an entire orchestra or be just a fancy electronic keyboard. Keith Emerson thankfully appears at the end to supply a few ELP songs I know ("Living Sin" and "Lucky Man"), and he owns an old Moog with patch cords like in old movies where telephone operators put through calls. My understanding of Moogs is that when you bought one you had little understanding of what it could do or how to make it do things. They're like Cray computers and Model-Ts all in one. It takes a lot of money, skill and patience to excel on a Moog, and gosh bless all the musicians who've made the effort. Still, Moogfest is not for the drug-free or easily bored.
Most of these songs have infinity for a middle and a beginning and end that might not even exist. It's like one-sided paper that way. I didn't watch the video that often but did listen to it while I accomplished a whole lotta nothing around the apartment. If you can both watch AND listen to this at the same time you must be some kind of alien stoner god I'm glad I watched it so I know what goes on at Moogfest, but that's about it.
Entry 137: 9/19/2009: The Riverdales, Oblivion When? Now! &What We Do Is Secret DVD Review
The Riverdales: "Gemini Man"
The Riverdales: "Crawling Eye"
The Riverdales - Invasion USA (cd review): Ben Foster is a talented fellow with a gift for singing endearing, nearly off-key melodies, and dispensing three or four chords of power-pop punk He's also a producer, author and miscellaneous other thing guy. I've never found him to break new ground, but he goes down roads I like and winds up on top by putting out consistently good product. It's been six years since the last Riverdales cd, and I'll wager six internet monies it's here because Ben's collected enough "Riverdales" tunes for a CD and it seems about time to revive the band name since the demand exists. Invasion USA is better than Phase Three, almost as good as Storm The Streets and not as good as The Riverdales. Pretty much by the default of the skill level of those involved it's going to be one of the best discs of it's kind in any given year, but some thematic/lyrical bits of laziness stand out like midgets in the NBA.
The Riverdales began as a Screeching Weasel side-project influenced as much by The Hanson Brothers as The Ramones. As with The Hanson's, hockey is the sport of choice. The new one's directly influenced by The Lillingtons' sperminal 1999 release Death By Television. Most song titles are from Mystery Science Theatre 3000, but the lyrics are mostly surface and disinterested, as if Ben figures lyrics are besides the point by design. I was hoping for a little more cleverness, or maybe lyrics that tell me he's at least watched the movies in the titles.
The best tracks are "Gemini Man" (half the lyrics sound like real words but I can't figure them out), "Time Of the Apes" (sounds like "Pet Cemetery" with Joey-inflected singing), "Atomic Brain", Crawling Eye" (Queers-like guitar riff sounds like "Borstal Breakout") and "Teenage Strangler". The songs with insta-lyrics are "Agent For H.A.R.M.", "Squirm", "Prince Of Space", "King Dinosaur" and "Werewolf One".
For either good or bad. Invasion USA sounds like it was recorded at the same time as every other Riverdales release. It's more than good enough but not great. It's great compared to most power pop punk, but you know what I mean (wink wink, say no more, say no more).
I don’t know how glossy promo postcards for Oblivion, The Series would up in a Long Beach, CA bar, or why I grabbed one without looking at it, but this might not suck as much as I initially feared. Three of you might remember the retail abomination scenestersworld.com, which seemingly only exists now as an old blog entry. Some lucky dollar store warehouse must be packed with plastic figurines and keychains of random punk stereotypes. I’d buy the whole set if I could, the good lord willing.
The promo for Oblivion The Series reads “Portraying the interlocking lives of a band of outsiders” and then lists the characters: Fay – The Romantic, Darla – The realist, Cutter – The Gambler, Cliff – The Mod, Vince – The Greaser, Rat – The Schemer, Pox – The Poseur, Blair – The Schitzo?, Frankie – The Neurotic, Ziggy – The Cynic, Arsenic – The Cheater, Joy – The Activist. You can almost smell the scenesters kids, and they’re adults now, with adult problems!
The trailer isn’t that bad, and the site looks professional, so maybe creator Mike Cuenca can pull it off at least at the low expectations of the free internet. It started on the 16th, so check it out if there’s nothing good on public television. In my experience there’s no such social group as a one-of-each alt.culture reject stereotype, but I’ve been wrong before. If a second Mod showed up, would Cliff The Mod go nuts like Daffyd on Little Britain?
What We
Do Is Secret (DVD review): 2007’s
Darby Crash biopic
What We Do Is Secret is an accomplishment on some levels and a failure in
others. First-time Director/Writer/Producer Rodger Grossman spent fifteen years
formulating his film and shot it in three segments over three-plus years as
money dried up and more was canoodled from anyone, god, please, anyone. Based on
the intertubes you either love or hate this. I’m somewhere in the middle.
First, the negatives. In an unnecessary and possibly counter-productive effort to win the cooperation and approval of everyone involved with The Germs, Darby is canonized, and while most of the events on screen might be "accurate" they probably sweep a lot under the rug and therefore, at least to me, don’t come across as realistic and honest.
The script is clichéd, forced, and oddly enough tame (ex: Darby’s sexuality), jammed with bullet points of events, quotes, name-checking, and even the posing of Darby lying on stage as pictured on the cover of The Decline Of Western Civilization. Everyone’s laundry list of Darby memories is packed in, stilting the script with declarations of meaning in all its forms, useless information and the unintentionally funniest bit of the film, a concert scene where the first thing Darby does before singing is smash a break-away beer bottle over his head into 3,000 shards of sugar with no apparent effect. I guess it had to go in there somewhere.
The portrayal of Darby as a person, place and thing is all over the map, a result of the conflicting interests of personal agendas and moviemaking as an art and business. Shane West does a commendable job as Crash, impressing original Germ members enough to take him along as singer on their reunion tour. In the film Darby’s a little of everything “Darby Crash” yet ultimately a lot of nothing to grasp as a whole. Was Darby smart because he had “deep” thoughts, or was he an idiot because of the words that came out of his mouth? Was he a sensitive creature or a cretin? Did he have talent or did he fake it in a genre that often spits on it? The film fails spectacularly on this level. Take fifty people who’ve never heard of Darby Crash and make them write a personality profile on Crash based on this film. I guarantee no more than five people will have the same take.
What We Do Is Secret is a small film about a small “i” interesting character in a small regional music scene, but as a film it still has to make sense to people unaware of a thing called a Germs. The characters have to get from point A to Z in interesting ways that make sense and seem real. Pat Smear’s character goes from consistently passive to ultra-violent with no transitory event, so who knows what unfilmed scene was left on the cutting room floor. Bijou Phillips as Lorna Doom is consistently sweet like a member of the Go-Go’s who never moved on. Drummer Don Bolles is portrayed as a putz and a doormat, along with Masque owner Brendan Mullen. It’s as if they got a young Emo Phillips to play Rodney On The ROQ Bingenheimer, a choice I can't figure out. As a last negative comment, the many wigs used are horrible!
Given the tiny budget and other limitations of indie filmmaking, technically this is a good looking film with great sound editing and rich color palettes. The concert scenes are beautifully lit and Grossman does the best he can with cramped spaces and partial sets. A more experienced director might have been able to pull off a sparse group of extras pretending to be a club crowd, but Grossman gamely moves the camera and has everyone jump up and down as punks are known to do when agitated. Definitely an A for effort.
My list of negatives is longer than my positives, but all things considered it’s almost a wash. The acting is generally good, putting aside the expedience of having Captain Sensible, Dave Vanian and others shown as insta-cartoons. The film looks and sounds decent. The Germs and their fans seem to be happy with the finished product. What We Do Is Secret could have been better but it could have been a lot worse. Trust me.
I’ve never liked The Germs beyond “Forming” and “Lexicon Devil”, and as with Flipper I find them often a joke at the expense of the audience. Sometimes when Darby sings I think he’s moving his mouth to form the sound “Wah-ooo, Wah-ooo”, while also garbling the lyrics. The live album is unlistenable. I don’t find Darby to be a tragic figure and have little interest in the beautiful minds trapped in the personalities of destructive nimrods. I’ve met a few people who knew Darby Back In The Day ©, even a guy who claimed to be his boyfriend. I always ask, and I’m always told there was an intelligent person underneath all that Darby Crash he had going on. I could shorthand it by saying Darby was America’s Sid Vicious, but Sid was mentally retarded underneath all that mental retardation.
My favorite bad line of the film is “He’s like a Jim Morrison, but for our generation!”.
Entry 136: 9/12/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXXI & XXXXII (Instrumentals) (+ video review)
The
Global Warming Climate Change Run, It's
Weather! Song
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXXI and XXXXII (Instrumentals XIV) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
Comix: "L'amour C'est Magique"
Esplendor Geometrico: "Moscu Esta Helado (Moscow Is Frozen)"
Familie Hesselbach: "Certo Fascino"
Hit Parade: "Bad News"
Ian Elms: "The Street Enters The House"
Indoor Life: "Madison Ave."
Kas Product: "Mind"
Kosmonautentraum: "Juri Gagarin"
League Of Nations: "Systematic Eyes"
Martial Canterel: "Shrapnelle (K7)"
Neon Eyes: "Communication Without Sound"
Null And Void: "Japanese Forest"
Starter: "Minijupe"
Kim Wilde: "Kids In America"
Xex: "Delta Five"
Crash Course In Science:
"Crashing Song"
Harald Grosskopf: "Transcendental Overdrive"
Mark Anthony Heide: "Dance In Juxtaposition Part One"
Michael Rother: "Karussell"
NES - Duck Tales: "The Moon" (computer game music)
NES - Shadowgate: "Ending" (computer game music)
Paul Nova: "Summer Breeze"
Perrey-Kingsley: "One Note Samba-Spanish Flea"
Selenite Vox: "Voix Dans Le Tunnel"
Solvent: "Radar Receiver"
Armando Trovaioli: "Kinky Peanuts"
Underground Life: "Horizon Border"
The
Cars Unlocked (DVD review): I was shocked and awed by how much I
enjoyed
this 2006 release. Expecting an old concert of The Cars plodding through
their hits, I found an energetic and funny pastiche of concert and home
video footage, complimented with archive images and bits of the videos
that made The Cars the most successful of the original new wave bands. I read Frozen
Fire: The Story Of The Cars, and it went out of its way to describe them as
boring in concert. I thought it would be Throbbing Gristle in parachute pants
and feathered hair, but in footage covering at least eight years the boys move
around pretty well and seem to be having a blast.
This 72 minute production moves quickly and cuts from scene to scene with the right amount of ADD (All band-related films should be exactly sixty minutes, but that’s against the Laws Of Marketing.) Visual techniques come and go without being intrusive or self-conscious, and there’s just the right mix of live and other materials. Some complained on Amazon that there weren’t enough full songs, but when you decide to make your film more than a concert reel the inclusion of complete songs can destroy its tone and pacing. I was happy as a dog with two tails to see a number of Cars songs interrupted by backstage tomfoolery. Which leads me to…
I liked The Cars well enough when they came out but never called myself a fan. Part of it was their crossover top-40 appeal, and also that their music just didn’t excite me. They were the Hall & Oates of new wave, writing cookie-cutter hits in their sleep. Years later I picked up the two-cd Just What I Wanted collection and listened to it over and over again until I figured I'd figured them out. They were a 70s power pop band with regimented drumming beating out asexual dance rhythms, and they accomplished a lot within the confines of simple melodies and mid-tempo pacing. “Gimme Some Slack” sounds like Devo, who consciously accentuated robotic stops and starts. The band to really compare The Cars to is New Musik, whose drummer was so accurate it was assumed they used a drum machine. There’s shimmering production value in both band’s recordings and a force of melodic will that makes their catalogs more compelling than their surface shortcomings might dictate.
On stage The Cars are technically flawless and put on a fun yet workmanlike show, but backstage and in interviews they're a hoot, taking everything and everyone as seriously as they deserve, which means not at all. They’re playfully sarcastic yet alarmingly non-threatening. As an interviewer asks Ric Ocasek a series of pretentious questions about world affairs and a musician’s abilities to transform reality, Ric stares ahead with the slightest of smiles and deadpans “I never think about it.” Asked. “What’s your relationship to the other members of the band?” Ocasek shoots back “It’s purely sexual.” Other band members are interviewed by The Denver Post and the guy’s bombarded by comments like “I don’t like granola. Can you swim?” and “A joint is a vegetable!” I knew I’d like The Cars Unlocked when it opened with a radio interview with added cursing and heckling of everything nice said about the band.
Second singer (and bass player) Ben Orr looks like Rutger Hauer early on and ages into Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel. He passed away a few years ago. Ocasek is a punk rock god because he produced The Bad Brain’s Rock For Light and Suicide’s second album. His son Eron Otcasek (that’s the original family spelling) directed and edited The Cars Unlocked, which for less than twenty clams also comes with an audio cd, a 28-page lyrics book and an order of fries. It’s put together with dry wit, no grand agenda and no effort to be subliminal, which comes across as trying too hard to be clever. Nicely played, sirs!
Entry 135: 9/5/2009: Rockabilly Three-Way Video Reviews + free hillbilly music
If you ain't country, you ain't s--t
And
if you're country you are
I found a spider in my closed laundry basket filled with wet gym clothes, so now I know spiders either can't smell things or they're perverts.
Ray Campi: "Rockabilly Music",
Johnny Legend: "The South Is Gonna Rise Again",
Mac Curtis: "This Ain't Nothin' But Right",
Charlie Feathers: "That Certain Female",
Gene Vincent: "The Rose Of Love",
Jimmie Lee Maslon: "Salacious Rockabilly Chant",
Ravenna And The Magnetics: "The Turning Tide",
Jackie Lee Cochran: "That Gal's Wicked",
Colonel Jim Silvers: "The Last To Get The News,
Johnny Carroll: "People In Texas Love To Dance",
Ezra Charles: "Just Be Friends",
Mac Curtis: "Crazy Crazy Lovin'",
Tony Conn: "Tuff Knocks And Hard Rocks",
Ronnie Mack & Black Slacks: "Hey Pretty Girl",
Johnny Legend: "Soakin' The Bone",
Jackie Lee Cochran: "They Oughta Call You Miss
Heartbreak", Jimmie Lee Maslon: "The Haunt You Baby
Rock", Colonel Jim Silvers: "Ain't It Strange",
Tony Conn: "Goin' Back To Boston Town",
Mac Curtis & Ray Campi: "Rollin' Rock Rock"
Reverend
Horton Heat: Live & In Color (video review):
I don’t always listen to country-fed punkabilly, but when I do, I prefer the
Reverend Horton Heat (official site
here). I’d probably never buy on of their cds because it’s simply not my
thing, but after seeing this amazing live show from 2003 I can say that in the
world of punk there are bands just as good but none are better than Horton Heat.
Their skill, energy, melodicism and showmanship are off the charts, and The Rev.
himself (real name Jim Heath) is an anachronism on par with
Robert Gordon and
Leon Redbone. His mastery of the guitar is something to see, mimicking if
not rivaling the
recently deceased Les Paul.
The set list is “Big Blue Car”, “Galaxy 500”, “Like A Rocket”, “The Party In Your Head”, “Big Sky”, “Baddest of the Bad”, “5.0 Ford”, “I Can't Surf”, “Wiggle Stick”, “400 Bucks”, “Loco Gringos Like A Party”, “Wildest Dreams”, “Marijuana”, “It's Martini Time”, “Jimbo Song”, “The Devil's Chasing Me”, “Psych-Billy Freakout”, and “Big Red Rocket Of Love”.
The show sounds and looks great, and Live & In Color is flawless all around. I laughed when the Rev. called slap-bassist Jimbo “The Michael Landon of the rockabilly world”, because it’s true! He wouldn't have said it if it wasn't. Dude, seriously, this is a great DVD.
Rebel
Beat: The Story Of L.A. Rockabilly (video review):
Rebel Beat is a loosely structured combination of the fascinating and
mundane, lingering too long on what should have been extras footage of Los
Angeles and Las Vegas locals talking about themselves and their interests. Just
when you think the filmmakers have a firm grip on the story they want to tell
they allow those they interview to steer it into other areas, which they then
follow as tangents which repeat what's brought up in later, larger parts of the
film. As with most music docs, shorter and tighter would have made this great. I
liked it until I decided I didn’t like it much anymore.
I recently watched two great documentaries, The King Of Kong and A League Of Ordinary Gentlemen, and you’d be amazed how self-evidently nerdifying it is to rave to co-workers about films on Donkey Kong and professional bowling. My half-defeated follow-up statement was “Documentaries are just as much about people as they are about ideas and events”, which elicited nods of I have no idea what that means but it sounds thought out. Rebel Beat starts off strong by defining rockabilly and having scene founders and fanatics say flat out what they think about it. The first half of this ninety minute film is fun, fast moving and edumafacational. The second half runs low on script and falls back on letting scenesters relate their personal stories. What starts out as a history of rockabilly ends as amateur video diaries.
The history of rockabilly isn’t about these scene followers on a casual, personal level, so my profound dictum on documentaries doesn’t apply to Rebel Beat and pretty much all semi-professional music docs. The standard should be sixty minutes of informative, interesting, entertaining and consistent filmmaking. The “feature length” mindset diminishes most music films, if it doesn’t ruin them first. Rebel Beat and others like it are edited well in both video and sound. What they lack is coherence. As labors of love, indie films are made with passion and perseverance, but they desperately need outside story editing, done after the filmmakers give it their best shot. Post-production is like the 10th month of a pregnancy – you just want it to be over. Structure and editing always start off strong, but the grind depletes the ability to do both, and even with the best intentions I see in these films a creative energy arc that resembles an arrows’ flight. Just like with writing it’s difficult to edit your own film. Unconscious blind spots prevent obvious mistakes from being caught.
In the case of Rebel Beat, they say rockabilly means this, but it also means that, and half of that is actually almost something else completely, and in the end it means almost nothing at all besides some variable aesthetic that evolves as quickly as viruses. Hardcore retro-rockabilly gets equivalenced into a mush of swing, Tex-Mex, Ricky Ricardo suits, Betty Page, hair grease, custom cars, pin-striping, tattoos and multi-generational family picnics. I accept these make up a large portion of the rockabilly scene, but I thought to myself a few times during all this “Hey, isn’t this a film about rockabilly?” The eyes drift from the prize, and outside story editing could have worked wonders.
Here’s something odd: At various points the film is thematically divided into sections labeled “PART ONE. California Cowboy Rock”, “PART TWO: Bringing Back The Beat”, “PART THREE: You Gotta Have Grease”, etc. The thing is, the film zigs and zags so much these delineations are fairly meaningless.
My complaints about Rebel Beat are mostly structural. Legends like Glen Glenn, Janice Martin, Ray Campi and the amazing Ronny Weiser jabber at length, telling it like they’d like to remember it. Weiser, born in Italy in 1947, idolized American music but didn’t make it over until the late 60s. He single-handedly revived rockabilly with his Rollin’ Rock zine and label, where he championed “Real rock. No more of this hippie scum s—t!” The Stray Cats are denigrated for their 80s hair, but Brian Setzer isn’t a trend-humper. He’s done a lot for that scene. He recently played Long Beach and the town was crawling with rockabilly fans in full battle gear. I suspect their success pissed off some of the entrenched rockabilly underground, who didn’t appreciate their culture being appropriated by trendoids. I’m 50-50 on these things, depending on how close they are to my heart.
Rebel Beat: The Story Of L.A. Rockabilly contains sixty minutes of win, diluted by thirty minutes of meh. Better than the average, but still the standard. :-) :-| =D :-o :_ (
Rockabilly
Vampire (video review):
Once I saw the "Troma Films Presents" opening I knew what to expect from this 1995
micro-indie film. A few laughs but not much else. I was hoping for prosthetics
and gallons of Kayro syrup, but no such luck. I only made it half way through
Rockabilly Vampire, but that was plenty. The promo blurb says it all, and
being able to write like this is either a blessing or a curse:
“The Troma Team is proud to present a movie where the tunes are hot, the chicks are sweet, and one hellcat cool-daddy bloodsucker is flashing his fangs, rocking the big city, and lovin' every minute of it! Rockabilly Vampire is a scary, sexy romp with rock-n-roll soul. Come on and shake a leg with the living dead! Luscious Iris M. Daugherty (Margaret Lancaster) is a 50's obsessed investigative author out to prove that Elvis Presley is still alive. While conducting research, she runs across a dead ringer for the King (Paul Stevenson) who'd like to make her his Queen of the Damned. Tarnation! Seems the pompadoured hunk was bitten by his vampire brother, played by Troma Superstar Stephen Blackehart (Tromeo & Juliet), on the way to the Elvis look-a-like contest back in 1956. Four decades later, he's loose in Manhattan and looking for a wild time. Will Iris succumb to this surly, swingin' Nosferatu? Only one way to find out. Sink your teeth into Rockabilly Vampire, the horror groove-party that just might live forever.”
Besides a few funny lines and one funny character there’s not much to enjoy. It’s about $3,000 worth of Five Boroughs high concept. Conversations run long to make this feature length, and there’s a whole lotta ‘nuthin goin’ on throughout. Acting is at the standard Troma level, but on the plus isde Rockabilly Vampire offers a character mix of various ages and types. The best character is someone named Beatle Boy, a Beatles fanatic in love with the female lead in love with Elvis’ memory. He speaks in a fake Liverpool accent and wears a black Beatle suit and mop-top wig. Threatening to see a witch doctor to make her fall in love with him, Beatle Boy says “He’ll make you love me do!”
Our reluctant vampire hero looks up to heaven before biting into a deserving victim and says “Forgive me for what I’m about to receive.” A lowlife says “Sest Levi” instead of “C'est la vie”, and in a regional piece of comedy the heroine’s perfume is called “Scent Of Bayonne”, another way of saying “Eau de New Jersey”.
As in old John Waters movies there’s no soundtrack but music plays constantly in the background. What I heard didn’t sound too rockabilly. Part is filmed at an East Village kitsch store called Atomic Passion, and there’s the quid pro quo of being allowed to film in the Miss Liberty Diner as long as their menu is held up in front of an actor’s face in close-up. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Entry 134: 8/29/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXX (+ video reviews)
Herman
Munster 
Punk
God Part II
♪ I
love you, love you baby
And all that kinda groovy junk
If you be my swingin' baby
And I'll be your ever-loving punk
Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah ♪
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXX (download zip file at Rapidshare)
49 Americans: "Beat Up Russians"
A Popular History Of Signs: "Justice Not Vengeance"
Alien Skull Paint: "Nowhere"
Art Interface: "Wardance"
Autumn: "Synthesize"
Chrisma: "Rush '79"
Conrad Schnitzer: "Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal"
The Dodgems: "Science Fiction"
Familie Hesselbach: "Blut Im Stuhl"
Fujiya & Miyagi: "Ankle Injuries"
Kuruki: "W.S. Remake"
Minny Pops: "Footsteps"
No More: "Suicide Commando"
Testcard F: "Unfamiliar Room"
Volkstanz: "Revolving Purple Monkees"
Devo -
Live 1980 (DVD review): This is Devo at their peak, no ifs, ands, or big
buts. From
Target Video,
Devo – Live 80 is Devo on the knife’s edge between new wave and punk, a
balancing act they performed alone, if not at least the best. By definition the
new wave band that should have known when to call it quits, this is what
you show your punkier-than-thou friends to rub their faces in their ignorance. F-yeah,
baby! Boo-yay!!
Shot on August 17, 1980 at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, CA in support of Freedom Of Choice, it’s all things to all people. Opening and closing with video, the set list is: "Freedom of Choice Theme Song", "Whip It", "Snowball", "It's Not Right", "Girl U Want", "Planet Earth", "S.I.B. (Swelling Itching Brain)", "Secret Agent Man", "Pink Pussycat", "Blockhead", "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Uncontrollable Urge", "Mongoloid", "Be Stiff", "Gates of Steel", "Freedom of Choice", "Jocko Homo", "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA", "Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)", "Come Back Jonee", "Tunnel of Life" and "Devo Corporate Anthem". The film quality is VHS but for Target this is Citizen Kane.
The spuds are in top physical form. Gerald, the Dee Dee Ramone of Devo, incorporates crisp dance moves into his razor-sharp robotic ticks, while Mark, thin enough to be almost transparent, performs jumping jacks throughout “Be Stiff”, their best underrated song. Featured on the cover, Bob 1 is the most charismatic and coolest member of Devo, stepping forward to deliver riffs with the calm assurance of Billy Zoom. Human metronome and Artie Ziff look-alike Alan Myers keeps it all together to little acclaim near the side of the stage. No matter how you slice it Devo are at the top of their game.
Fashion this evening began with white paper jumpsuits, red belts and red energy domes, moving to black shorts, black t-shirts and kneepads, and ending with V-shaped pullovers that spelled D, E, V, O.
Devo – Live 1980, ask for it by title or item number.
Devo:
Live In The Land Of The Rising Son (video review): Thanks to Netflix
I watched this for free on my computer, so I can’t vouch for the sound
quality. It’s the only Devo video I’ve never seen, and I didn’t feel a need to
buy it after picking up
Devo Live, most likely from the same comeback tour.
Devo: Live In The Land Of The Rising Sun is the better of the two, but the
one to see is
Devo: Live 1980, when the spuds were in their prime and you don’t
focus on their bloated middle age and say out loud to nobody in particular,
“Hey, Mark doesn’t need the money since he does all those soundtracks and
commercials and stuff.”
The set is: “Good Thing”, “Girl U Want”, “Whip It”, Satisfaction”, “Uncontrollable Urge”, “Mongoloid”, “Blockhead”, “Jocko Homo”, “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA”, Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy”, “Gates Of Steel”, “Freedom Of Choice”, and “Come Back Jonee”. Between songs are band interviews, awkward media events and crowd shots. One fan owns 300 Devo records from all over the world. Monk would be proud. As usual the Japanese fans are happy, excited and polite.
Comparing this to the Whatafuknloser (I mean Lollypopaloser) concert on DVD, The difference is mostly in the drumming. The US show employed Josh Freese, a studio pro and human metronome, while the Tokyo show features David Kendrick, who played with Devo late in their original run towards obsolescence. The US show technically sounded better but it was also consistently average and above without much to recommend it beyond nostalgia. Kendrick isn’t great at steady beats that require accents of power, but he does create an interesting racket on complicated songs like “Mongoloid” and “Blockhead”. In other words, you want Freese for Freedom Of Choice and Kendrick for Q: Are We Not Men A: We Are Devo!” Another difference is Mark’s keyboards, set in Japan to abrasive whenever possible. The Japanese set was grittier – the Roadhouse version of Devo. I generally prefer the metronome Devo songs, but as a change of pace it was nice to hear other songs stand out. Bob #1 on guitar is also more out front, and that’s good (hey, a Devo reference!).
I never pass up the opportunity to call bassist Gerald Casale a sad and angry little man, and in the interviews he doesn’t disappoint. He adds creepy and inappropriate to his repertoire of an insecure egomaniac demanding vindication for De-Evolution. In his mind the media should flock to him for insights on current events, and this makes him grit his teeth and ball up his widdle fists with his thumbs tucked under the fingers. Asked the difference between this tour and the olde days, Gerry says back then it was easier to score free teenage sex. He unfortunately keeps on talking. Being fat, elderly and obnoxious might provide answers. He then tells a story about Japanese groupie action from before many in tonight’s crowd were even born, and the Icky Meter takes off like a helicopter. Inquiring minds also want to know why he dresses like David Lynch.
Entry 133: 8/22/2009: Grrrlz Video Reviews (boys must wear a dress while reading this):
The Anti-Scrunti Faction:
"Boys Will Be Boys", "Slave To My Estrogen", Bikini Kill:
"Magnet", "Rebel Girl", Bratmobile: "I'm In The
Band", "It's Common (But We Don't Talk About It), Le Tigre:
"Seconds"What's Yr Take On Cassavetes", Sleater-Kinney:
"I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone", "The Ballad Of A Ladyman",
Third Sex: "At Least I Got Some Cool Clothes", "More Than Your Friends".
Last Minute Note
From The Edit-Whore: I was walking through the mall today and saw
waddling towards me a young couple around twenty years old, holding hands. She
was plain and dumpy while he was a suburban white trash Baby Huey who less
likely graduated from high school than aged out of it. She wore on her face the
content look of a simpleton relieved to be with anyone, while his aggressive
smirk couldn't compensate for the fact he probably hadn't had direct eye contact
with his private parts for most of his remembered life.
He wore a t-shirt that read in large letters "I Love Tattooed Bitches". My Terminator visual recognition program froze because sarcasm, disgust, and hatred blew the fuse in my cerebrum. Some asshole came up with the idea for that shirt. Another asshole designed it while another manufactured it. Then another one bought it to sell to any asshole who needed a billboard on their chest that told the world they love tattooed bitches. Let's assume everyone in this process were men. Problem solved because men are assholes.
Then there's the woman who would date a man who owned such a shirt and then let him wear it in public when they're together. Her smile only accentuated the fact she's pathetic and deserves anything short of threats and physical abuse from her choice of men.
Men are assholes and
women are crazy. Men do the wrong thing while women make wrong choices, and
statistically that's normal. Fantastic.
Rise
Above: The Tribe 8 Documentary (DVD review):
Rise Above: The Tribe 8 Documentary is an artfully made mix of band history
and identity politics exercise for a band that never did anything for me
musically. When they slowed down for novelty genre tunes they could play
decently, but their native sound was sloppy and shapeless gutter punk with
slurred lyrics, like fast heavy metal played badly (by dirty stinking hippies!).
I’m male, white and straight, but also being Jewish I have a test to see how I feel about the appropriateness other groups’ identity issues. I call it the “Jew Test”. I substitute “Jew” for the other group and imagine how I’d feel in a similar situation. It’s inexact but it keeps me honest. As Jews in Hollywood can’t make enough holocaust-era movies, gays produce an endless parade of films about being gay for an audience that demands to see their lives on screen as lessons to the straight world and as affirmation of their lives. In stand-up comedy, when dealing with the wide definition of politics, there’s two types of applause, one for laughter and one for agreement. Rise Above is a gay experience film about a punk band, so while I enjoyed the filmmaking on a punk film level I knew parts of it were geared strictly to those applauding in agreement. Like Razzles, first it’s a candy and then it’s a gum, if you know what I mean.
On the music side of things, Tribe 8 made a lot of noise, jumped around with loads of energy, put on silly S&M bits, and acted, by their own admission, as goofy as possible. Sex toy props are used and some are even castrated, making as big a political statement as can be made in smelly bars to crowds in the high tens. It means something and absolutely nothing at the same time. The Meatmen put on a similarly goofy display, unburdened by context. Rise Above presents Tribe 8 as equally silly and serious on stage, a fine trick if possible.
At the personal level, the movie succeeds spectacularly in showing the off-stage lives of each band member, answering the biggest question I always have about punk bands – how do they make a living? Singer Lynn runs a courier service and is a published author. Bassist Leslie Mah, a hero of mine for being in The Anti-Scrunti Faction, is an accomplished tattoo artist. Former guitarist Silas Howard owns a coffee house and has a career going in films, while drummer Slade is a FedEx driver. Some band members were previously hardcore drug users, one is getting married and another lost her “wife” to flesh eating bacteria. That couldn’t have been good.
Politically, the band talks about their gay identities but don’t wallow in it. The dramatic centerpiece of the film is their invitation to the 1994 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, where they were picketed for promoting violence against women. At a teach-in after their set, they patiently answer questions from a tent filled with womyn’s studies undergrads straight out of central casting, politically correct to the point of sub-zero humorlessness. The band wins the day and were invited back for years.
In the film’s opening they coerce some boys at their shows into making clichéd statements about women in punk bands, failing as scripted agitprop because the guys were laughing as they acted out their lines. There’s toplessness galore but let’s call it Anthropological Nudity and be done with it.
Tribe 8 weren’t a good band but they’re interesting people. Rise Above, a five-year project of editor/director Tracy Flannigan, gets the job done.
Don't
Need You: The Herstory Of Riot Grrrl (DVD review): If you're looking
for a deep history of the Riot
Grrrl movement you might want to start with the book
Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now!.
Don't
Need You: The Herstory Of Riot Grrrl is forty minutes of remembrances with
snippets of factoids added in no particular order. It starts off strong with a
goodly number of original participants speaking eloquently about their
involvement, but it eventually dawns on you that it's not telling a story with a beginning, middle and end. There should have
been more narrative structure and less "what I did on my Riot Grrrl
vacation". The parts it has were well put together but it should have been at
least sixty minutes and a real history of the movement.
The film's mostly scenesters talking about the past like it was 100 years ago, which seemed odd because everyone's still so young when the film came out in 2005. Here's a list of participants. Ian MacKaye tells a funny story about political correctness where he's told he shouldn't sing Fugazi songs that "exploited women's issues to sell records." He told them to 1 2 FU. My favorite piece of Riot Grrrl lore is of the show where the flyer said the admission price was $3 for women, $4 for men, and $3 for men wearing dresses. I'd seriously like to know the actual number of hetero guys who showed up in dresses. Gunk Fanzine creator Dasha Bikceem blows the lid off Riot Grrrl by pointing out it was a white, suburban, middle class movement. Which of course it was, like all hardcore. Madigan Shive looked like Daryl Hanna in Blade Runner. She has a neat website and the sample song is impressive. From her bio; "Her mother called her Running Pony until she was about six years old, and regularly changed her name. Shive eventually chose one of them, Madigan, as her permanent name when she was a teenager." I knew a man whose hippie parents raised him in a cave. He rebelled by dressing formally, calling himself Charles and talking like a butler.
Riot Grrrl is easy to define dispassionately, but it's generally verboten because it's steeped irrevocably in identity and victim politics. To do so would invalidate it, or something. Riot Grrrl was a 1990s punk culture sub-genre based out of Olympia, WA that emphasized female and feminist bands, fanzines and scene involvement. For giggly grins let's call it feminist straight-edge. I'm all for feminism as long as it's not of the superior-victims-seeking-truth-and-justice kind. I have no time for tales of the oppressed master gender, as I don't for the oppressed master sexuality, political view, religious affiliation or skin color. I'd like to know what percentage of Riot Grrrl fans drank the Kool-Aid of its manifestic rhetoric. Don't Need You spells out passages from the Riot Grrrl playbook, and please think of Patty And Valerie as you read these samples:
Patty Hearst Revolution Girl Style
Now! 
Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto Nutjob
"because i believe with my holeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will, change the world for real"
"because we don't wanna assimilate to someone else's (boy) standards of what is or isn't "good" music or punk rock or "good" writing and THUS need to create forums where we can recreate, destroy and define our own visions."
"because we are angry at a society that tells us Girl=Dumb, Girl=Bad, Girl=Weak"
Did you catch the female anatomy reference in that first line? Niiiice. The term "Riot Grrrl" is self-trivializing. Seriously, stand in front of a mirror, raise your hand in a claw and say "Grrrrrrrrrrrrr". Then imagine what kind of a riot you'd get from battle-unready college kids. Add to that the slogan "Revolution Girl Style Now!" and you might understand why the media saw Riot Grrrl as an odd cultural footnote. I like the bands, and up to the point of intellectual scream therapy I agree with their goals, but I didn't take their rhetoric seriously. They also didn't have me at hello when their literature told me I'm no more or less than a dick. Everything Riot Grrrl accomplished could have happened without the 47 layers of intellectual grandstanding. But without it, I guess, how's the world supposed to know how really important it was?
Entry 132: 8/15/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXVIII & XXXIX (Instrumentals) (+ video review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXVIII and XXXIX (Instrumentals XIII) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
2.3 Children: "Harry Bop
Slow"
Brian Brain: "I Get Pain"
Christof Glowalla: "Erde 80"
Comateens: "Overseas"
Dalek I: "The Retailer's Dream"
The Days: "Ewigkeit"
Einzelganger: "Einzelganger"
Exhibit A: "Platform 6"
The Fast Set: "Junction One"
Gina X Performance: "Plastic Surprise Box"
Mi-Sex: "Computer Games"
Polyphonic Size: "Mother's Little Helper"
Sluik: "I Felt A Bit, I Was"
Solvent: "My Radio"
Tiny Tribe: "Bay Street"
XXXIX
B.E.F. : "Wipe The Board
Clean"
Chrisma: "Thank You"
Cleaners From Venus: "This Rainy Decade"
Dachau Philharmoniker: "Hollenlarm"
Der Plan: "Commerce Exterieur Mondial Senti"
If-Then-Else: "Warhead"
Mark Anthony Heide: "Factory Dance"
Polyrock: "7"
Rheingold: "Abfahrt"
Tattoo Hosts Vision On: "To Reason Why"
Tom Ware: "Chinatowne"
Gil Trythall: "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"
Kill
Your Idols (video review):
The love-hate thing with
Kill Your Idols isn’t helped by creator
Scott Crary’s baton-passing dialogue editing and an expansive editorial
agenda that doesn’t become clear (it’s murky but there) until the end. Some
people think it’s a No Wave documentary, which it is, until minute 18:15, when
the focus switches to 1982 and Sonic Youth, marking Thurston Moore’s 1,000th
speaking appearance on film. At 30:00 this musical platypus skips to 2002 and
bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, and Gogol Bordello, the latter the best
transplanted Ukrainian punk band in town. The rear is brought up by No Wavers
lobbing their two cents about new bands, and… The End.
My take on the film is that Crary is enamored with the NYC urban decay heydays of the mid-70s, when parts of Manhattan looked like they were carpet-bombed and never re-built. Either that or it's the city seen in Escape From New York, The Warriors, and Taxi Driver. Or Detroit today. No Wave was the artiest anti-entertainment of those golden years, when junkies shot up in abandoned apartments and rats the size of cats ran over mountains of garbage in the street. Rents were cheap though, and bars cheaper. It’s then an awkward shift to Sonic Youth and The Swans, who serve as the film’s bridge between No Wave and random indigenous local bands from when Kill Your Idols came out in 2004.The whole time it's hard to tell if the film’s about music or NYC as a decrepit arts cesspool. A better film would have stuck with the original eighteen month rule of No Wave and how it was sparked by the city. You then have newer bands give modern perspective on it all, avoiding bands that have never performed to more than fifty people.
Kill Your Idol opens strong with Martin Rev speaking while Suicide’s “Ghost Rider” plays on the soundtrack. He sums up the era well, pointing out the glam of the NY Dolls was in response to the bloody reality of the Vietnam War. Suicide promoted themselves as a punk band back in 1971, a term Lester Bangs used to describe Iggy Pop. Archival footage is plentiful and artfully arranged in this opening segment. Lydia Lunch appears and gets a lot of attention throughout, looking in new footage like SNL’s Victoria Jackson with red hair. She revels in the olde days of “desperate, dirty, impoverished times.” She got her stage name by being the Dead Boys groupie who showed up to rehearsals with lunch for the band. Arto Lindsay of DNA says he wanted his band to be as different from other music as possible, and someone else says No Wave was “short, brief, aggressive outbursts of anti-music.” Most No Wave was either organized or random noise, and it never had a chance to be bigger than it was as the latest crazy thing in lower Manhattan, where snobs rubbed shoulders with slobs in search of danger and freaky misadventures. You don't need to be on drugs or psychotic to appreciate No Wave, but it certainly don't hoit!
Jim Foetus Thirwell is interviewed, and he now looks like William H. Macy with a curly mop of hair. I took notes on the newer bands, but that segment, sadly half the film, is a leap of faith as far as relevance goes. That’s probably the biggest mistake the film makes, thinking you can mix legends with unknowns and then give the latter most of the attention. A new wrinkle on annoying in my experience, various speakers’ words are cut together as if they’re completing the same sentence, and not only is is visually confusing, original context gets lost in the mix.
You can watch Kill Your Idols for free on Netflix, and the first eighteen minutes are worth your time. The Sonic Youth/Swans/Glenn Branca section is decent if you like those bands, and the last half I’d skip if either there’s something good on the Home Shopping Network or you see a bird outside your window. Tweet tweet, little fella.
Entry 131: 8/8/2009: Punk Can Take It (video review)
"Well, there he is, my
son-in-law, the 150 year old teenage punk."
1964 folks
1964!
Punk Can Take It (video review): Truly one of punk's great WTF buried treasures, Julian Temple's 1979 short masterpiece Punk Can Take It is the best way to spend twenty minutes short of, you know, that thing you like to do too much and too often. You can buy it cheap, watch it for free on Netflix, or catch it in six parts, starting here, on YouTube.
Most likely Temple's first attempt at writing and directing, it's the test film for 1980's The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, a film so dishonest he felt compelled to correct it in 2000 with The Filth And The Fury. Punk Can Take It's Edward Tudor-Pole (Tenpole Tudor) and Helen Wellington-Lloyd (punky Little Person) also appear in Swindle. A mild parody of British WWII newsreels, Punk Can Take It satirizes punks without diminishing the horrors of The Blitz. Here's the original 1940 newscast of "London Can Take It", upon which this is very loosely based. The national slogan of resolve was "Britain Can Take It"
The announcer in Punk Can Take It is John Snagge, "Head of BBC Home Service Presentation, and one of the primary voices of radio, he announced such important events as D-Day, VE-Day, VJ-Day, and the deaths of King George VI and Queen Mary." I'd love to know how Temple got the BBC's Walter Cronkite to narrate his goofy little film.
The UK Subs appear on stage and as actors. They play about five songs from their debut greatest hits collection Another Kind Of Blues. The film alternates between concert footage, narrated comedy sketches and stand-alone comedy pieces. Time and effort went into props, costumes and sets, and hats off to Julian for creating and maintaining an original and silly sense of fun. Punk Can Take It is a winner. It's only twenty minutes. You can't be that busy.
I've transcribed it below, because that's what I do, for you, Da Kidz!:
The searchlights poke long, white inquisitive fingers into the blackness of the night. The wail of the Subs sounds and raw chaos unfolds. These are not Hollywood sound effects, this is the music they play every night in London – the Symphony Of War.
For three long years Britain’s punks have withstood the ruthless aggression of the enemy, held back each successive media blitz unleashed against them, and laid waste to the incestuous apathy of a stagnant England. At stake are the punks themselves. The wild teenage anarchy within them is besieged by the cloying decencies and passive violence of civilized life.
This is not a pleasant way to spend an evening, but punks accept it as their part of the defense of the frontiers of freedom. Hairdressers, bank clerks, street urchins – unemployed by day, they are heroes by night.
***
During the blackouts of ’77, unseen dangers awaited punks in the dark. Caught off-guard by the active extremism of their own children, the initial reaction of the enemy was the result of censorship, slander, and outright violence.
The punk didn’t take its beating lying down. After all, there’s no sense in running away when you’re wearing a pair of bondage trousers. A violent reaction to a violent set of ???. Punks were born with their backs to the wall. Those that can fight, will fight.
***
The menace of war has served only to steel the punk resolve, but you would knock people’s minds about as well as their bodies. Realizing the terrifying power that radio, television or the printed word can have over the minds of men, the enemy enlisted the subtle cobwebs of the media. An army of flatterers, journalists and skilled deceivers was called up to suck the blood of punk.
***
Even children’s hour, in peacetime the very sanctuary of innocence, was mobilized to play its part.
***
Fashion mongers were encouraged to copy, dilute and sell utility uniforms of punk. What had been a weapon they tried to make a toy.
***
On the black market, record companies wave their magic checkbooks at those punk bands still outside captivity. Many quisling groups were signed and broadcast like Lord Haw Haw on commercial radio.
***
The nation succumbed. Within months penguins were pogoing and hippies had cut their hair as the enemy strove to implant an identity crisis in the heart of punk
***
Casualties were heavy, but punk has never pandered to reality. The bland tedium of everyday life presented innumerable targets for retaliatory action. Each fresh atrocity was more obnoxious than the last. The servant (?) of media, punk was easily regurgitated and thrown in the enemy’s face. Inoculation had failed. Punk was a contagious disease.
***
Carless talk costs lives. The enemy is always listening. Autograph hunters and rumor mongers, with their slack minds and silly, babbling mouths, through interviews and gossip columns, cause stars to be born. Punk has had its share of traitors. Ordinary kids, even idiots elevated to the rank of idols.
But each time a collaborator is exposed, a hundred punks spring up to take his place, adamant in their belief that musicians are no different, and no more talented, than their audience.
***
Punk is dead. Long live Mod, or should that be Rude Boys or Teds? How often have you heard the enemy make this fatuous claim?
Seeking to transmute the volatile energies of punk into safe commercial profits, an unholy alliance of aging rock stars and child molesting media business men have exhumed the faded fashions of the 50s and 60s.
But punk won’t go away, and punks themselves are becoming younger and nastier every day. Punks are the shock troops of the 80s, the children of the oil crisis, they have no time for the vicarious thrills of nostalgia, nor for its trivial rules
***
Punk morale is higher than ever before. Punks are fused together not by fear, but by a surging spirit of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.
The enemy will continue to devise its vile and treacherous stratagems, but it cannot kill the unconquerable will of Britain’s punks.
Punk Can Take It
Entry 130: 8/1/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXVI & XXXVII (Instrumentals) (+ dvd review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXVI and XXXVII (Instrumentals XII) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
Attack Under Attack:
"Operating Instructions"
Cold Dogs In The Courtyard: "Nagisa Oshima"
Comix: "Touche Pas Mon Sexe"
Conceputol: "The Space Invaders"
Egoslavia: "Lost Song"
Instant Music: "Everybody's Gotta Mutate"
Moderne: "Dilemma"
Normal Brain: "Music"
Olney: "Springs And Gadgets"
Operating Theatre: "Blue Light And Alpha Waves"
Pope Paul Pot: "Plastic T.V. Land On Acid"
Strange Circuits: "Industrial Living"
Taxi Girl: "Cherchez Le Garcon (solitaire)"
Thomas Leer And Robert Rental: "Day Breaks, Night Heals"
X-Ray Pop : "Mireille"
Darmstorung: "Rin Rut
Blank"
Der Zyklus: "Mathematische Modelle"
Dok-U-Ment: "Live In Fear"
E. G. Oblique Graph: "Black Cloth Behind De Gaulles"
E.M.A.K.: "Tanz Der Vampire"
The Freed Unit: "M2"
Glen Nelson: "Move In reverse"
Heavy Mental Music: "Phase 1"
Perverse Teens: "Electrostatic Perversion"
Port Said: "The Trail Of The Sphinx"
Solvent: "Background Noise (don't become)"
Thomas Scholz: "2-3"
Siouxsie
And The Banshees: Seven Year Itch (video review):
I’m a fairly disinterested party in this review. I like Siouxsie’s
old hits but haven’t put her music on in ages. I’m not a follower of
hypnotic goth tribal pounding I’ve seen hundreds of people dance to by standing
next to mirrors while checking themselves out moving like they’re hypnotized by
a snake charmer. I know people who worship her, so, I'm happy for their
happiness. I worked security for a show of hers around 1982. The Professionals
and 999 were also on the bill. She was an amazon, at least in height and bone
structure. Someone told me she’s known to be tiny, so she must be skinny because
she’s tall and has big bones. Either that or she wore platform shoes and I
didn’t notice.
Seven Year Itch is from their 2002 tour, and it’s loved and disliked by Siouxsie fans. Based on customer reviews you either drank her Kool-Aid or were sadly let down by her limited singing range (she may have been sick that night) and how the show was staged. The singing sounded decent enough, but I had no expectations of certain notes being hit out of the park. The show was professionally filmed but edited to create nausea. I had to look away a few times. I want to feel like I’m watching a performance from interesting angles. The last thing I want is the sensation I’m being catapulted across the venue while performing the Triple Lindy. The way this was filmed also removed most of the live feel of a show. Even though the images were clear it was like looking into another dimension. I felt the same way watching Bowie’s Reality Tour. Siouxsie is dressed smartly in a pinstripe suit and tie, and throughout the show she takes off her jacket and shirt, leaving her in a bra attacked by a rabid Bedazzler.
The show opens with the drummer slowly pounding with mallets while the guitarist plays notes that sound pretty much like “Three Blind Mice”. The entire song sounds like “Three Blind Mice”. The set is filled with mid-paced material, some from b-sides. There’s usually a reason why things end up on a b-side, but I digress. I did get to hear “Happy House”, “Christine” and “Spellbound”, performed like they’ve played it 10,000 times before. Rote yet professional. Even if this were a greatest hits tour I’d probably lose interest soon enough. It’s professional musicians going through their paces, filmed annoyingly. For Siouxsie fans though, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Entry 129: 7/25/2009: Bob Mould - Life And Times (CD Review) & The Shield Around The K: The Story Of K Records (video review):
If you require a daily shot of Lynchian weirdness you can do a lot worse than Interview Project, directed by Austin Lynch, the director's son. More info here.
The Dirty Punk Rock Anarchy Machine will delight and entertain your co-workers with its endless combinations of wank, cliche and state-sanctioned fun.
Laff your ass off with Stavros Flately And Son.
Bob Mould: "Life And Times"
Bob Mould: "The Breach"
Bob Mould – Life And Times (cd review): Released in April of 2009, I've waited over three months to review it because I didn’t have an open mind about the cd. When I first heard Life And Times I screamed internally “This again?” and knew I couldn’t be objective until all recent memory of Mould’s music exited my brain, along with most of my other memories. When District Line came out in 2008 I didn’t review it because I didn’t want to write it was inspired laziness with sad lyrics that rang untrue. By inspired laziness I mean Bob knows how to write decent music in his sleep and should go the extra mile to record more than killer filler material. Bob’s been negligent with his blog as he's writing his autobiography, but I once read it daily and was gobsmacked by how much fun Bob had on an hourly basis. He was the king of whatever city he was in, so I wasn’t falling for his Yearn Holocaust. If Bob’s Emo he’s doing it as a character known as Bob Mould.
The cd starts strong with Life And Times, but the slow-groove restraint that runs through District Line is here. No matter how well produced or how many cool sounds are layered and cycled in each song, there’s little sense of urgency or danger for someone who knows what he's capable of, and that’s the Bob I want and miss. The faster songs, all mid-paced and loud, are descended from Sugar. The slower ones are electrified, highly orchestrated white groove numbers from his for-all-intents-and-purposes acoustic solo career. The standard formula is a slower intro anticipating a blowout along the way, which by this point is cliché no matter how much I like it when it kicks up to another level. To his credit Mould jiggers with standard verse-chorus expectations by adding noisy walls of sound. I noted in each song how long it took for that to happen. Here ‘tis: “Life And Times” 1:37, “The Breach” 1:49, “City Lights (Days Go By) 1;55, “MM17” 1:25, “Argos” none, “Bad Blood Better” 2:20, “Wasted World” :50 and 1:54, “Spiraling Down” 1:41, “I’m Sorry Baby…” none, “Lifetime” none. “Lifetime” let me down because as an album-ender it needed a super-blowout in the middle. The disc ends without a bang but a really loud whimper.
Listening to each song in isolation there’s a lot to recommend but as a whole it’s not as good as its parts. Does that make sense? Maybe it’s just the part of me that loved Husker Du, learned to appreciate Sugar, and never fully accepted Bob’s career as a singer-songwriter. I think I demand more punk and less balladeering. I don’t care enough about Bob’s contrived melancholy to even consider that valid. Tell me how you freaking feel in concrete terms or clever word choices. Don’t show me the gaping maw of your yearn. You’re Bob Effing Mould, king of the world. Cheer up! Oh, what I’d give for him to be as lyrically outward as he was in “Folklore” and “Newest Industry”.
The Shield Around The K: The Story Of K Records (video
review):
This 2000 documentary on Olympia, WA indie label
K Records doesn’t stink as much as it’s not very good. A shame because the
subject deserves better, and it could have worked if more thought and planning
went into it. It evades the basic rules of journalism and documentary filmmaking
to present an incomplete timeline of the career of Beat Happening, with sidebars
added for flavor and context. Interviews are squandered on he said/she said and
“oh yeah, I remember” trivia, and there’s no bigger picture than whatever is on
the screen. Now there’s a chance a better film won’t ever be made because this
is, as Bill McNeal hated admitting, adequate.
Maybe The Shield Around The K was meant to be no more than a walk down memory lane for Olympia indie scenesters, and as such it can’t fail because a goodly number of original participants are on screen in what’s definitely fancier than a home movie. It tries to be more, at least in the proto-K opening, but the absence of an outline and mission statement cripple its chances. A documentary has to do two things right: seamlessly answer the Five W’s of who, what, where, when, how, and why, and also present a winning argument there's a larger meaning and importance. Everything has to combine to say this is big and worthy of your time. Jean Smith of Mecca Normal is on screen throughout to be sarcastic, flighty and improvise unfunny comedy. Not knowing she’s a small “g” lo-fi inde goddess I wondered why this snarky person was given so much time. It would help greatly to be in lurve with K Records to make it through its 1:25 running time, bulked up with full performances when samples would have kept things moving. I like Beat Happening and Lo-Fi well enough, so I was looking forward to a good time. If The Cramps were 1950’s beatniks they’d be Beat Happening.
Writer/Director Heather Rose Dominic had access to soft-spoken Calvin Johnson yet didn’t make him the charismatic center of the film as he was the center of K Records and the local scene. She interviews Ira Robbins of The Trouser Press and zine kingpin Jack Rabid, yet Rabid says little while Robbins churns out vague memories and cursory opinions. Johnson should have been the tour guide of local lore with Robbins and Rabid providing the bigger picture. I wanted to know more about the “hipster punk rocker types” vs. the lo-fi college kids from Evergreen State College, where there are no grades, no tests, no required courses and no tenured professors. I pray one day my heart surgeon isn't an Evergreen grad. Shoulda coulda woulda, that’s all I have to say!
A fun story from the film is how K started as a DIY label with the motto of the “Cassette Revolution”. When the first Beat Happening single came out someone asked Calvin about the slogan, and his reply was “Didn’t you hear? We Won!” The woman who stood on her guitar and kicked and scraped the strings with her shoes is also noteworthy. They should have asked her what that was all about. Dominic had access to everything she needed, from participants to videos and concert footage – she just didn’t know what to do with them.
Entry 128: 7/17/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXV (+ dvd review)
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXV (download zip file at Rapidshare)
A Blaze Colour: "Cold As
Ever"
The Buggles: "Video Killed The Radio Star"
Cebere: "Hommage"
Cosmic Overdose: "Rattan"
Decade of Dreams: "Days Of Sun"
Disco Volante: "Click!"
Family Fodder: "Cerf Volant"
Fizik: "History"
Glass Actors: "Changes"
Idol Death: "Sticky Death"
Los Reactors: "Be A Zombie"
Moral: "The Average Life"
The Nightingales: "The Happy Medium"
Paul Nova: "Julie Ann"
Trick 17: "50 KmH In Geschlossenen Ortschaften"
Control
(DVD review): I’m of two minds about this
biopic on the life of
Joy Division lead singer
Ian Curtis, but being schizophrenic I’m of two minds all the time.
It succeeds as art but huffs to the finish line as entertainment. It’s better
upon reflection because of the production values, but the pacing is only a
tad peppier than Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law, bested in existential loitering
only by Eraserhead and a senior center performance of Waiting For Godot. My eyes
often drifted from the screen, and I found
myself yelling “cut” when scenes ended but the cameras kept rolling. On the plus
side, the performances are excellent, the actors sing and play Joy Division
covers expertly, and eventually it did get to the point where the final credits roll.
Accomplished photographer and music video director Anton Corbijn mortgaged his house to raise funds for this, his debut motion picture, filmed in color then converted to B&W because B&W film stock was of inferior quality. He directed the video for Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”, and in the commentary he says he was dead set on his first film being about Joy Division. Corbijn does a phenomenal job creating atmospheres of malaise and tedium.
The vivid whites and grays that crowd every shot reveal the cracks and crevices of the dingy dullness that envelopes Curtis’s existence. It’s not a hopeless world but surely a mundane one, and Curtis is portrayed as a listless actor in his own life, making rash decisions early and often. It’s one thing to show him bored in a loveless marriage – partly due to his own apathy – but to then have him decide to have a baby he quickly grows tires of speaks poorly of his adult skills.
A topic for discussion is if we should feel pity over his suicide. Pity as in it was a tragic loss. Control calmly makes the argument Ian ran out of reasons to live and by his own actions was as equally to blame as any outside factor, in his case stemming partly from immaturity. His epileptic seizures were harrowing and worsening, his true drug use is never touched on in the film, and his mood swings never make it to the screen either. The film suggests he didn’t want to take his medications, and maybe to paint him as an innocent soul his personality runs the gamut from polite to withdrawn to apologetic. As I see it he done too much, much too young, he was married with a kid when you could have been having fun with Joy Division. That and the seizures. His death was a shame but not a pity. Their third album would have been one long dirge anyway.
When Curtis died in 1980 some spoke of the correlation between his suicide and the release of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” in hushed tones like it was a DaVinci Code revelation, proof of life on Venus, or Bigfoot. Whatever it was, it helped sales. A suicidal guy wrote a depressing song. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!
A big golf clap goes out to Sam Riley as Ian Curtis, a dead ringer expect he lacks Ian’s black eye circles. His full-on spastic dancing was unnaturally fast for him and he strains to keep up, but otherwise Sam Riley is Ian Curtis in Control, a Anton Corbijn film. The other actors are cast so well you can barely tell the difference when you watch the three real Joy Division videos included on the DVD, requiring additional kudos for lighting, wardrobe and set design.
Control was based on a book by Ian’s wife Deborah, and she also co-produced the film. Some customer reviews rip into her with as much moral authority as Ed Gein, concluding: “Deborah never really seemed to be all that close to Ian”. She was in love with him, married him, had his baby and put up with his nonsense until the day she found him dangling on a rope in their flat. Who knew him better, his mistress? Other members of Joy Division? Rule #3 of music journalism is never believe anything a musician tells you. It’s like asking criminals why they steal.
Is this a good story on its own, a dull story with a good soundtrack, or a dull movie that moves too slowly? Was Ian Curtis too beautiful for this world? Did I actually type that last sentence?! Control is a well-filmed enactment of most of the Wikipedia page on Joy Division and Ian Curtis, and while it’s a fairly interesting story it's also somehow a small one.
Entry 127: 7/11/2009: Context Review Of History Of The Units - The Early Years 1977-1983 (CD review):
"Art is about context. A romanticist like Monet painting flowers at the dawn of the machine age isn't the same as a 21st century woman painting the same flowers at the dawn of the cyber age. The message IS different." - artist Sylvia Snow, on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, defending her art forgeries as originals, her response met with a smile and a blank expression punctuated by blinking.
The Units -
Dirk Dirksen concert opening
The Units - Cannibals
The Units - I-5
Units co-founder Scott Ryser wrote me a while back in response to my insta-take on their career, stated thusly: "The Units get a little too much respect in underground electronic circles, with a career paralleling Our Daughter's Wedding. At times it seemed they didn't know what they wanted to be, and while I have a soft spot for new wave-cabaret-art school shenanigans, I don't for the kind of line dance music where you clap your hands, turn in a circle as you move in a line, clap your hands, then turn in a circle on the way back, once again ending with a hand clap. The earlier on the discography the better they sound, as is the code of the universe. Their "Bug Boy" stands as the most awkward and heavy handed metaphor I've ever heard fail as music. "Digital Stimulation" gets it right. Digital means both electronic and manual. Huh. If you like this, please do seek The Epoxies." Skot knew that all that mattered was for his named to be spelled correctly, and with good cheer he promised to send me the compilation he and other Units founder, Rachel Webber, were putting together, titled History Of The Units: The Early Years 1977-1983. We've batted a few e-mails around, and I must say he's won me over with pleasantness, though I admit he had me at "cash or cocaine?"
I call this a context review because context is the cousin of subjectivity and objectivity, and to give Scott his coke's worth I'll have to give the Units consideration outside the comfort zone of myself. I stand by my original assessment of their achievements in the big picture of new music synth bands, but after reading the exhaustive materials at Sythnpunk.org and listening to the new collection, I realize they were operating in a context firmly and partly removed from other bands I was comparing them to. They did conk out at the end, recording clap-your-hands-line-dance music that once hit the disco charts, and this might be acknowledged by Ryser and Webber themselves in how they avoid later vinyl and substitute unreleased tracks that looked backwards for inspiration. History Of The Units repositions the band as a solidly provincial 1970's San Francisco multi-media performance group. They weren't ahead of their time but firmly grounded in the seventies, peaking creatively in the modern context in 1980 and falling back on commerciality later on.
I didn't realize how much The Units were influenced by prog and kraut rock, seasoned with glam. Scott was previously in a glam band called Ace Jet, and I assume if you own a mini-moog and other synths you have to go where the technology allows and takes you. The scissor and glue manifesto that comes with the CD (sample pages here) says little about the band itself, but it does show they had a themed message to compete with Devo's de-evolution, in the Unit's case consumerism and social norms. Scott also really hated guitars. The Units made videos too, which they projected during performances. A sample is on their MySpace page. The term "all-synth" came up in my readings, but their drummer was live and a major part of the band, driving their sound and sometimes assuming a lead role. [I thought I made the prog rock connection on my own, genius that I am, but here it is in the promo sheet that came with the disc.]
Here's more context: whenever I hear a man and woman (or a man and a man for that matter) singing the same lyrics in harmony I think of campy hippie musicals from the 70s, like Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. At first I was going to consider X an exception, but I'll toss them in there too. I associate pure synth bands, granting that many had live drummers, with alienation and robotics. These were what were considered ahead of their time - pessimistically assuming the future was Orwell's 1984. This well-written review from the SF Weekly sets the tone the band wants to promote, that of insightful yet playful merriment a la Ken Kesey and his day-tripping Merry Pranksters, yet the title is a false lede. "The Units punked the system, played JC Penney". Huh? It was part of a multi-day performance art event at an abandoned building. No states were smashed. Here's another winner: "Many of their songs possess a fidgety energy and driving beats; they're paced like races against apathy. Live shows by the Units were chances for the group to smash up the ruling class." Some reviewers also make hay out of the Dirk Dirksen concert intro that opens the new disc, as if it were not a goof but serious insults they had to overcome. These are examples of making something out of nothing to make a non-existent larger point, proving intentions don't mean squat when they're based on falsehoods.
The Units played with many great bands and were part of a thriving arts and music scene. On these levels they succeeded spectacularly. My guesses, and I really am just guessing, as to why they didn't make it to the next level are as follows: 1) They were too prog rock in a synth scene based on layers of simple overlayed patterns and drones. 2) The singing was steeped in the tradition of show tunes and stage performance, and didn't match the music or normal expectations of what synth singers should sound like. I'm not calling anyone a bad singer, and I do like Rachel Webber's voice a lot, but the singing didn't fit the larger genre. 3) Lyrics were too obvious and simple. 4) I wouldn't know, but based on what I've read I'd guess their live shows were campy. Smashing plywood guitar cut-outs against a mounted car hood with "boo! hiss!" images projected on them may work as performance art in a "space", but after you've seen Wendy O. Williams' chainsaw, sledge-hammer, and explosives it's impossible to be impressed by jig saw tracings. Here's bands the Units played with. They're the freaking Forrest Gump of my musical life!: Negative Trend, Los Microwaves, The Screamers, Tuxedomoon, Pink Section, The Dead Kennedys, The Bags, Crime, Nervous Gender, Voice Farm, The Plugz, XTC, Impatient Youth, Romeo Void, Ultravox, The Police, Iggy Pop, Gary Numan, The Psychedelic Furs, OMD, Sparks, Bow Wow Wow, Soft Cell, Our Daughters Wedding. How diverse is that, and how many other bands could open for such a diverse roster?
The 21 tracks on History of The Units have been remastered and sound great. Some tracks were previously unreleased. Here's my quick take on each, fresh from the ass part of my brain:
"Red" (1977):
Reminds me a lot of Devo's "Words Get Stuck In My Throat" (watch
here). Great, weird minimalism with Lou Reed-inspired singing.
"Zombo" (1977): A cold, throbbing soundscape becomes a playful and
hopeful Kraftwerk Autobahn-era instrumental. Highly recommended space-age prog.
"Contemporary Emotions" (1978): Prog wig-out becomes a local music
theatre's ode to either Bowie's long-hair period or Let My People Come as
arranged by Gary Numan.
"Bird River" (1978): Hey, anyone up for some
Rick Wakeman?
"Cannibals" (1979): Now this I'd call synth-punk, at least at the
beginning, then once the singing kicks in I'm reminded I've never actually seen
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. One can choose to bang their head
with the breakdown starting at 1:55.Or not. I immediately thought of the guitar
solo in any 'ol live version of Bowie's "Moonage Daydream".
"High Pressure Days" (1979): This is cool. Before you say The Units
ripped off The Talking Heads "Once In A Lifetime", consider this was recorded a
solid year before Remain In Light. Not that The Talking Heads couldn't have been
an influence like they were to the
Urban Verbs, but still. The singing works better in the Heads context than
the show tunes one.
"Cowboy" (1979): A wind-driven landscape becomes an instrumental prog
rock workout for the entire family. Very nice.
"Work" (1979): A synth is set for acid-rock guitar while another is set
for bass guitar. The lyrics must have been written by a dirty, smelly hippie. A
total wig-out for go-go dancers and freaks (hippie context)
"Bug Boy" (1980): Prog rock with lyrics that read like portions of a
police report. Dig the Rick Wakeman breakdown at the end.
"i Night" (1980): A Rick Wakeman workout of all his keyboards is
interrupted by impassioned singing that made me look up Eric Burdon and The
Animals.
"Town By The River" (1980): A nice, peppy instrumental that functions as
great intro-music a band plays before the singer runs out.
"Tight Fit" (1980): Wagnerian in scope, there's either a real xylophone
or a synth that sounds exactly like one, and the drumming/percussion dominate.
My favorite Units instrumental.
"Warm Moving Bodies" (1980): Rightfully a hit, the robotic singing is
still so off-Broadway theatrical I wish they'd written a space opera for Klaus
Nomi. All their instrument choice are correct in spades.
"Go" (1980): The bleeping-blooping synths are fun. Drums pound with
authority. More synths wig out. Somehow I'm reminded of Mission Of Burma's
"This Is Not A Photograph".
"The Mission Is Bitchin'" (1980): Remember I called The Units
S.F.-provincial? Ladies and gentlemen, Exhibit A. The junkyard band parts are
really nice. For more schoolyard hi-jinx, please see
The Go! Team. The unbridled fun
of this tune more than makes up for referring to something as "Bitchin'".
Totally.
"Digital Stimulation" (1980): Another hit from their creative peak, I
finally find the singing appropriate to the music. The tone is sincerely
futuristic. My favorite Units tune with lyrics.
"East West" (1981): An instrumental with appealingly strange video-game
sound effects, modulator noodling, scratchy right speaker mono-drumming and a
synth that sounds like bass guitar played like lead. Now this sounds
ahead of its time in a forward-retro way. Actually pretty amazing!
"Run" (1981): Tribal, pounding drums crash left and right. Synth-jets
soar overhead. The "Run Jack Run" lyrics are light of weight.
"I-5" (1982): A pleasant instrumental you can segue with Wall Of
Voodoo's "On Interstate 15". The I-5 and I-15 connect in San Diego, for those of
you keeping score at home.
"Straight Lines" (1983): Slow, robotic, with robotic, fade-in echo
singing.
I uniformly loved the instrumentals and instrumental parts of all these songs, and would love to see a prog rock opera based on their music. It might be wrong to call The Units a synth band at all because it screws up the context of what they really were. Damian Ramsey grouped The Units with Nervous Gender, The Screamers, Our Daughters Wedding, Tone Set and Voice Farm under the banner of Synthpunk, to me an arbitrary grouping with an internal logic that escapes me.
I'm glad I see The Units in a new context, where they had great depth and accomplishment.
Entry 126: 7/3/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXIII & XXXIV (Instrumentals) (+ dvd review)
To celebrate
commemorate the passing of child-lover (He loves kids!) and plastic surgery disaster
Michael
Jackson, here's The Residents' cover of Hank William's
"Kaw-Liga", arranged to
sound like "Billie Jean", the most self-evident chorus ever conceived.
Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXIII and XXXIV (Instrumentals XI) (download zip files at Rapidshare)
AD Conspiracy:
"Conspiracy"
Autumn: "A Night In June"
Begin Says: "The Begin"
Chrisma: "Black Silk Stocking"
Comateens: "Summer In The City"
Glamour For Evening: "Monsieur Muscle"
Grauzone: "Der Weg Zu Zweit"
Komputer: "Valentina"
Life In General: "That's Life"
Martin Dupont: "Just Because"
Metronomes: "I Like To Waltz"
The Rev: "Tiny, Tinny Radio"
Scientific Americans: "Fascist"
Soft Cell; "Walking Make-Up Counter"
The Vets: "World In Action"
AK47: "Autobiography"
Autumn: "Close Rays Of Light Attack"
B.E.F.: "Rise Of The East"
BC Gilbert & G Lewis: "Hung Up To Dry Whilst Building An Arch"
Chris & Cosey: "Moorby"
Ende Shneafliet: "De Romant"
Ich: "Speicher 8"
Man Ray Band: "I Feel So Bad"
Matthias Schuster: "Umarung"
Michael Heinkel: "Samstag Ist Nur Einmal In Der Woche"
Thomas Leer: "Kings Of Sham"
Vorgruppe: "Miteinander"
Kraftwerk
and the Electronic Revolution is not an authorized history of
Kraftwerk, but their music and videos are used freely. Karl Bartos, with the
band from 1975 through 1991, provides level-headed and informative commentary.
The Kraftwerk book from fellow second-tier member
Wolfgang Flur was poorly received. Historians and scene band members tell
their stories, many of which go on and on, and often on and on from there. Is it
rude to edit people’s comments in that part of the world?
I’m indifferent to Krautrock, so I won’t get into how Kluster wired a kazoo to a car battery and electrocuted band member Klaus Von Shtoopenhauser, to the delight of 3,000 unsmiling hipsters. I did enjoy how Bowie and Eno came in during the mid-70s, when the German scene was stagnant, and gave post-punk a kick-start with Low and Heroes. I don’t like disco, so I’ll mention in passing that Giorgio Moroder stole from Kraftwerk to create the evil anti-Kraftwerk of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and its hell-spawn. In a slow and laborious transition, Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter moved from flute-flavored experimental jamming to structured rhythms and lyrics. They created asexual dance music and a healthy portion of new wave, only to have it bastardized into sex music so that funkless white people could put their hands in the air and bump their hips while making the “Ooo I’m naughty” face that made the 70s as embarrassing as the 60s. It's suggested Kraftwerk became dormant after 1981’s Computer World because the sounds and technologies they created were taken to the next level by hip-hop and every form of music that requires hallucinogens to tolerate. I used to think they didn’t want to cheapen their signature sound by dumbing it down, and that’s why their 2004 world tour, documented as Minimum-Maximum, rolls olde skool! But, in 1986 they did release Electric Café, which I shut out of my mind because it’s sad – a bear farting sadness sad.
Kraftwerk were long-haired hippies until they traveled to America to tour off the success of a radio edit for the 22:43 song “Autobahn”, their unintended answer to Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells”. They brought the flute. From then on they created strict visual and conceptual themes for each record, seeing themselves first as retrograde German youth from an idealized, imagined past where there was never a Hitler, ending up as robots from the Man Machine who toured with real robots for Computer World. 1975’s Radio-Activity was there first all-electronic album, followed by their best reviewed work, 1977’s Trans-Europe Express, then the almost as good The Man Machine in 1978 and 1981’s Computer World.
Karl Bartos reminisces that the band thought “The Model” would have been a bigger hit if it had a chorus. I imagine the opposite is true, at least in how the song would have aged. Bartos has no problem with UK synth bands who added indigenous Brit-Pop to the Kraftwerk sound, but he mocks Gary Numan, who brazenly swiped the Man-Machine visual motif. Numan’s mannerisms were pure Bowie. Dave Ball of Soft Cell recounts how he and Marc Walnut recorded their demos, collected as The Bedsit Tapes and worth a listen, as their take on punk rock Kraftwerk. France’s Metal Urbain was the real deal in that regard, but for Soft Cell it was pretty close.
I’ve collected a bazillion songs influenced directly and indirectly by Kraftwerk, and you can download them all for free here. Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution runs long but you’ll learn more than you need to know about German electronic music, which is only a bad thing if it displaces vital information like remembering to flush the toilet the first time you take a monster dump at your girlfriend’s parent’s house.
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