June 25, 2009
May 11, 2009
Black Monk Time
(Audio of The Fall playing the Black Monk Theme) A few months ago I saw Lucia Palacios's and Dietmar Post's bittersweet movie about the brief rise and fall of The Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback. It spun the tale of how the Monks played together while in Germany, and how their lives ravelled upon return to the States. I had first heard their music as noisily covered by The Fall on Extricate, and then on the revelatory american recordings re-issue in the '90s. Although I had heard that the Monks were GIs on a lark, I did not know the depths to which their image as a nihilist, surreal rock'n'roll combo depended on their Continental impressarios.... Read more
May 5, 2009
In which there is no second-guessing
One of my fave-rave summer tunes from '08 reappears. Be sure to use the Track and Pan buttons for extra nuttiness.... Read more
April 25, 2009
In which we set an idol to the tune
Tarkovsky's Mirror Set to Arvo Pärt's Mirror in the Mirror :... Read more
April 20, 2009
April 8, 2009
In which we go out on a high note
"Folks, brace yourselves; hold on to something. Here's Sonic Youth. Yeah!" vs and, although I cannot embed the video for Do You Believe in Rapture?, it gets me all worked up every time I watch it. The McCarren Pool show (from '06, not '08) had a nice version: This next song is called, I'm sorry, I forgot to tune my guitar before we went on-stage:... Read more
March 13, 2009
In which a turk sings a bicycle
A bicycle built for two thousand.... Read more
March 10, 2009
In which they lack a sense of humor
Update: I changed both Lolita from 'Erotica' and 'Pride and Prejudice' from 'Chick Lit' to Classics. You Literature majors all lack any sense of humor. was the precursor to Virgil Griffith's Music That Makes You Dumb. I am off to listen to The Counting Crows.... Read more
March 6, 2009
In which we make a joyful noise
Or, The Mother of All Funk Chords (and then some).... Read more
February 18, 2009
In which the economy is touch and go
Greg Kot reports on the shrinking indie-rock giant Touch & Go. Here's a little Shellac to ease the pain: and some more:... Read more
January 10, 2009
On listening to Albert Ayler while walking down West 22nd St
At Ninth Avenue, my iPhone crashed; I did not realise it, as I was enraptured by the Albert Ayler improvisational piece playing at the moment. I did notice the crash, as the on-screen photograph (above) still showed; and because the Ayler composition was looping, imperceptibly, in just the right way. The blurting saxophone suited the piece, but after a half-minute I figured out that the phone was playing whatever had been in its buffer at the time of the crash, repeatedly. Such beauty in decay: as the phone crashed, it continued playing; as the mouse died, it enlivened a block of pavement with colour.... Read more
January 3, 2009
December 4, 2008
In which weasels ripped my flesh
Necessity is the mother of invention.... Read more
December 2, 2008
November 13, 2008
Witchi Tai To
Witchi Tai To. WITCHI-TIE-TO, GIMEE RAH WHOA RAH NEEKO, WHOA RAH NEEKO HEY NEY, HEY NEY, NO WAY WITCHI-TIE-TO, GIMEE RAH WHOA RAH NEEKO, WHOA RAH NEEKO HEY NEY, HEY NEY, NO WAY... Read more
October 28, 2008
September 30, 2008
June 17, 2008
Oddly, the law won
From Wikipedia: Just after "I Fought The Law" became a top ten hit, Bobby Fuller was found dead in a parked automobile near his Los Angeles home. The police considered the death an apparent suicide, however many people still believe Fuller was murdered. The investigation was botched from the start. The scene was not taped off and no fingerprints were taken from the scene. A witness also had clamied seeing a Police Officer throw a can of gasoline found at the scene into the trash.[1] Police later changed the cause of death to "Accident". He was found with multiple wounds all over his body and covered in gasoline leading many to speculate that the perpetrators fled before they could set the car on fire. He is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles. Dead at age 23, Fuller barely outlived his idol, Holly, who died at 22.... Read more
May 12, 2008
In which more is more
Andrew Bird wrote a piece about recording songs for his new album. Part of the New York Times's Measure for Measure blog, it has insight and humour and beauty. I love reading about the minutiæ of recording, especially about the contemporary music I really enjoy. Seeing large tape machines rolling, thinking about sliders and pots and mics and speakers and amplifiers, it's all quite exciting. Thanks, Aram, ever keen to the intricate technology of sound recording, for pointing this out.... Read more
May 7, 2008
In which I found that essence rare(r)
Aram pointed out, via the excellent Brooklyn Vegan, that stalwart Gang of Four rockers Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham are leaving the band (again). Did I write stalwart? I meant totally awesome. I could hope to fit all of that cool and kickass into my whole lifetime — they stuck it into each of their records. I got a copy of their first record from a girl at my high school who was moving to California (to attend Berkeley, if I remember correctly); I was a couple of years younger than she, and received a stack of her hand-me-down records (Psychic TV amongst them) when she cleaned house. I was not prepared for what came over the speakers when I first put the needle down: the rhythm! the energy! the anger! Give me punk rock! Give me funk! The first video is from The Old Grey Whistle Test television programme twenty-five years ago, the second from the Electric Picnic festival recently.... Read more
April 29, 2008
In which we honor Mariah Carey; Or, lies, damn lies, and number-one singles
A few nights ago, the Empire State Building was lit in honor of the singer (and, lest we forget, actress!) Mariah Carey. With her new album (E=MC2) and its first single, she now stands second only to The Beatles for number-one singles on the Billboard Chart. (Does her new album count as "math rock"?) I like Mariah Carey: her voice, her songs, and how criticism about her enriches my vocabulary. I wonder how she ends up driving the music industry and having the lights on the Empire State Building honor her; why not Thurston Moore?... Read more
April 19, 2008
Crazy
Since seeing Bryan Louie's video for Gnarls Barkley's Crazy in an exhibition about innovative electronic media, I cannot get the song ("Best Song of 2006!") out of my head (where have I been?). The band's televised performance of this same song is equally hypnotic. Why do large insects and bug-spray invariably call to mind my friend Wm. S. Burroughs?... Read more
April 3, 2008
In which we are in the taco bizz
This one goes out to the trumpet player on the Lexington Ave. line, whose unexpectedly jazzy version of this song caught me unawares mid-day. I had a big-hole single of this song which split, perhaps from overplay, rendering it forever unplayable. I taped it to the front of the shoe-box which held all of my seven-inch singles. Consider the above video vs this one (warning: animated content).... Read more
vs (This is a public-service announcement, with guitar)
vs The former has amazing footage of a breathtaking band at its best; the latter is delightfully perverted. Neither is artful, but both make a point.... Read more
April 1, 2008
vs (slack and tight)
vs shout out to Aden and to Mark Athitakis, and to the Hillel House concert where the former played this song with the name of the latter cleverly substituted into the chorus. I never especially enjoyed Superchunk, but the familiar name made the melody so much more appealing. Now, these fifteen years later, I find myself humming the refrain at all sorts of odd places (killing time on trains, for one).... Read more
February 16, 2008
The spirit of socialism is all over the internet / The Vertical Color of Sound
Eric Tamm's magnificent study of Eno is officially and freely available online (download the zipfile). Although most writing about music is like dancing about architecture (a witticism attributed variously to Frank Zappa, Elvis Costello, and Laurie Anderson), Tamm brings history and perspective to Eno's inventive notions about the development and creation of music. Eno's own liner notes to his 1975 composition Discreet Music include an excellent explanation of his process in treating Pachelbel's Canon in D; three of the resulting pieces form the B side of the album.... Read more
February 14, 2008
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Neutral Milk Hotel album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. I would not have noticed were it not for coming across a crisp cover of the title song and following links. The Lazy Catfish presents video interpretations of the album this Thursday at nine o'clock; the poster above is the advert for the gig.... Read more
February 8, 2008
In which we rock out to math
Math and music, but not math rock: "Guthrie's daughter Nora eventually figured out that the [mess of wires] wasn't a bomb, but rather a recording of her father on a device that predated magnetic tape. After a year of searching, she managed to track down someone with the equipment to play it." "Fortunately, math can help. Howarth had developed algorithms to correct these recordings. He looks for extraneous sounds, like an air conditioner or fan in the background that creates a rhythmic sound. Instead of simply removing these sounds, he uses them as a clock, a kind of built-in foot-beat in the recording that tells him what the true timing should be. When a recording is made, this background rhythm is even. But when it's played back, it speeds up and slows down in perfect timing with the errors in the recording. That allows Howarth to adjust the timing of the recording to make it much more similar to the original sound."... Read more
January 13, 2008
In which I turn pro
You don't have to be weird: I don't know why I only looked for "The Fall" on YouTube now, but a trove indeed lies within. The Fall colour more of my memory than any other band, I think, from discovering "Live at the Witch Trials" (and the cover of Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister always reminds me of Live at the Witch Trials, not of The Trial), to obliquely bumping into Brix in college, to finally seeing them perform in concert for the first time (after years of swapping cassettes, — yes, cassettes — over Usenet), to chatting with a Kiwi who walked past the stoop only to find that he was their number one, yes, indeed, he was at the recording of Fall in a Hole. It's like that, see: The Fall bring people together. Big New Prinz and Cruisers Creek. I should also note that this morning, while waiting for a table at a popular bar-café, I asked the barman (at the four-seat bar) for a drink. A slightly greying man came back inside from smoking a cigarette, saw the barman pulling out a small jar of pickled pearl onions from a corner of the bar and remarked: "Must be an old-timer in here. No-one orders drinks like that," and looked around -- expecting what? someone rail-thin and in a three-piece, a slightly worn fedora atop a mostly bald pate? A comfortably portly man of prosperity, a well-loved tweed jacket over baggy trousers? And saw me, chuckling at being called an old-timer. The greying man went on to say that the Gibson is a great drink, and we agreed that it was good for mid-day (check), sunny weather (check), early afternoon (check), in fact, just about any time. "My father used to make those," he said.... Read more
December 9, 2007
December 6, 2007
Total Fucking Godhead
This weblog trucks in repeats, but "total fucking godhead" really is the necessary phrase. This is the mid-nineties, and I am still enraptured by its music. Luna's sublime "Bewitched" (with its guitar melodies like liquid valium -- who wrote that?); The Magick Heads' very very pretty "Before We Go Under" with none of the twee attendant Belle and Sebastian et al.; the Tindersticks heartbreaking 1995 album, with its lush orchestration and sonorous vocals. Gastr del Sol's "Mirror Repair" EP — which for me holds the images of Jean Cocteau's movie rather than the quotidian computer-monitor problems which actually inspired the title, and the records is mine to deconstruct — ; and Tortoise. The mid-Nineties brought stunning indie-pop albums, too, with Pavement's concept album about their California and The Magnetic Fields' concept albums about the road and travel. I suspect those had a lot to do with my itch to move to the West Coast, or at least to get moving, although Tindersticks' "Travelling Light" (and the flip-side, "I've Been Loving You Too Long") figured in there heavily. June of '44 and Rex rocked the math, Rachel's did something that transformed how hipsters listened to instruments, and bringing together the frenzy of the rhythm section, the inventiveness of instruments, and a captivating stage presence, Tortoise. Although Elvis Costello's GIRLS +£÷ GIRLS =$& GIRLS covers music from another decade entirely, I include it for completeness. It presaged math rock. And Tortoise.... Read more
November 14, 2007
In which it is like science fiction
Designing Tesla coils to play a video-game theme is all sorts of ultra-geeky: Where's the video of the gas-flame musical instrument?... Read more
October 16, 2007
In which I like your manifesto
I'd like to say that this is all Aram's fault, my leaping about the apartment and hollering in accents somewhere between Stoke-on-Trent and the Shannon. ... but really, since that day that I walked into his apartment on E. 55th St and heard the first Sea & Cake album, I know that he knows the tunes ("Junkie Nurse", Ken Vandermark, whoever the hell he is, Pong) and myriad other pieces of rock and roll. This reminded me that on the past few occasions I have visited Grumpy the music playing on the diminutive jukebox has sounded entirely different than my stereo -- than any of my stereos. A few days ago, "Mad About Sadness" enchanted me (so much that I bought a copy the next day), and then the first Arcade Fire album, which I never especially liked. The combination of the brick-wall acoustics and the deliciously heavy aroma of coffee must be driving my music taste.... Read more
September 2, 2007
On the medley
... one of my favourite medley songs, from a concert set (thanks to Metafilter. I couldn't find another, "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame / Rusholme Ruffians" by The Smiths &mdash as captured on their fantastic live album, Rank.... Read more
June 4, 2007
In which we back up
I backed up all of my CDs today. That's all twenty years of buying CDs (from The Wailing Ultimate (an anthology of Homestead Records' superstars, cheap at $10 from Phantom of the Attic), to Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, which came with a bonus DVfuckingD jam session), piled on to about 120' of shelf space. They now take up three (logically) massive hard drives which fit into less than 1' of shelf space. Most of the CDs which I was super-duper-extra excited to find -- say something by the Brotzman/Drake Duo, or the Ubu Dance Party double-disc tribute to Pere Ubu -- have close to nil resale value, because until that special someone comes along to go through a similar frisson of joy, these just take up shelf space. Then again, my ultra-limited Duophonic promos from the 90s do not have the value I thought they would hold -- they are not going to put my kids through college. The corresponding elpees and singles, though -- those have some cash value. Still, the time has come to move these out: they take up too much wall space, and space is precious.... Read more
May 7, 2007
On a day like today
"Check the record, check the record, check the guy's rock record."... Read more
April 24, 2007
In which I am superstitious
I took it as auspicious that the first song that played off my new, headless iPod was "Cruisers Creek" by The Fall -- almost certainly the most buoyant, cheerful song I know.... Read more
March 26, 2007
In which we have no independence
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story on the survival of some few independent record shops in the Bay Area, with only the briefest mention of Down Home Music in El Cerrito (with its new neighbour, Berkeley exile Mod Lang). I am still recovering from the sudden closure of my local shop, Open Mind Music. Village Music in Mill Valley will go out with a bang: "In the meantime, Village Music will get a bang-up goodbye. [Elvis] Costello has agreed to perform in the store sometime in May, and DJ Shadow (Marin resident Josh Davis) has designs on playing every day in September until the doors close for good." The struggle to remain open reminds me of all the book stores that have shuttered in recent years. When I moved to the Bay Area ten years ago, I printed out a forty-page listing (from the Internet!) of local booksellers, and started visiting each of them as often as I could, weeding out the shops that did not interest me (Rex Stout first editions, Greek texts and scholarly commentaries, contemporary American fiction). Now that list might be a fifth as long, and hardly as interesting. Similarly for the record shops.... Read more
February 4, 2007
In which the King is dead, but there is no usurper
Robert Christgau, the self-styled "dean of American rock critics", no longer writes for the Voice. I just found this out, which shows how often I read rock criticism these days.... Read more
February 2, 2007
In which we listen to more live rock
Fabchannel has all sorts of live rock shows, viewable only through their embedded Flash player. Still, this site plus some patience plus Audio Hijack leads to nice mp3s. The Search widget is really nice. And the sound quality is great.... Read more
January 22, 2007
HOWTO get video onto yr ipod
In order to get .mov, .avi, .mp4, and other files shoe-horned onto an iPod, try VisualHub, successor to iSquint; for DVDs, the (free!) Instant Handbrake, a sibling of the full-featured Handbrake. Alas, the excellent DVDBackup is not to be found any longer. Most of these pieces of software are drag-an'-drop; should a more detailed explanation be necessary, read Mark Pilgrim's HOWTO.... Read more
November 28, 2006
In which we return to (short) form
I managed to crash iTunes twice while working on this relatively straight-forward playlist: songs recorded in the past forty years, shorter than 2' 46" (that cutoff was intended for some specific song, but I can't remember which —), and that I have either played more than ten times or have rated four stars or more. (Aside: iTunes keeps the rating as an integer from 0-100, so through AppleScript one can pick at ratings to far great wankiness^W precision). The real point, though, is the playlist. The traditional rock'n'roll radio anthem clocks in around four minutes, or one side of a big-hole single. Punk rock, throwing convention to the winds, cut this in half. This playlist does have variety: deliriously good 80s American punk in the form of The Minutemen and Mission of Burma; some hilariously succint late-70s British punkrock rebellion from Wire's first album; eerie California hippy music embodied in "Witchi Tai To" by Harper's Bizarre; a few songs to pull out the rusty razor, by Tindersticks; but, unfortunately, no Elvis ("The King"), as I lost the great boxed set (during a move?) some years ago, and never digitized any of the LPs. Some other bands represent the pop side of rock'n'roll: The Minders; The Apples in Stereo; The Shins. Fortunately, this playlist magically skips the progressive rock in favor of some musique concrete, and art- in favor of post-rock: Chicago Undergound Trio, Tortoise, and . Red Norvo and Theolonious Monk show up as well. Plenty of Elvis Costello, whose brevity shines. In fact, I bet all of the forty-plus songs from the Get Happy!!! elpee appear on this list, and probably another several dozen from the 2 1/2 Years era. Plenty of completely mind-blowing pieces by Wire, whose first three albums are again available tasty box set that includes two early concerts. Listening to these songs makes me laugh aloud. Some odd songs: "Mr Pink Eyes" by The Cure; the pretty ballad "The Ballroom" by Paul Kelly and The Coloured Girls (that name was not suitable for the album's release in the States, and was changed to The Messengers). A few tracks from a Movie Sounds generator, the audio equivalent of clip art, appear: Ship Alarm Under Attack, Rain Falling with Thunder. I also sheepishly found no fewer than three different recordings of "I am a Scientist" turned up. Such a pretty song! I think that's the reason I splurged on the Live at the Threadwaxing Space limited-edition album (now available for under $3 through Amazon dot com!). There are some other all-time fave-raves: "Unfair" by Pavement; "History Lesson Pt I" by The Minutement; and the hypnotic, insistent driving song "The Thing" by The Pixies. Rock. Punk rock.... Read more
November 26, 2006
In which we get wiped out
It's almost too much: I walked into Jerry's Fine Used Records last weekend, and the very first record I saw was a copy of Number One Cup's Possum Trot Plan. Hotcha! Then I flipped through a few more bins (Good Stuff! Good Stuff Overflow! Rare Good Stuff! Weird Stuff!) and found a 12" of the Fat Boys collaboration (and I use the term loosely) with the Beach Boys. Imagine the dulcet harmonies of the Beach Boys overlaid with the big-bad-wolf sound of the Fat Boys beatboxing, and layer on some guitar, and then add in a Latin Rascals remix (!!), and you have this particular slice o' vinyl. Jerry's has no web site, and maintains no catalogue. All of the inventory is scattered physically and mentally amongst the various rooms and curators at the shop, in the former Leslie Dresbold Office Supplies building on Murray Avenue. Jerry Weber, who has run the shop for at least as long as I have been buying records (I walked past the shop every day on my way home from summer jobs my fifteenth through seventeenth years, and this led to a substantial expansion in my record collection) recently tried to sell the shop, but found no takers. He then formed the Squirrel Hill Co-Op, which will add video and CDs to the space currently overflowing with vinyl (a half-million 45s!). I was pretty happy to stumble in during the 33 1/3% off sale, so I picked up an armload of excellent stuff (yes, the Fat Boys, but also a nice Aisler's Set 12" single and a copy of David Thomas & The Wooden Birds' Blame The Messenger — of which I have at least one other copy, on the David Thomas CD anthology — and a couple of weirdie-but-goodies) for about fifty bucks. And the seven-inch big-hole of Jimmy Cliff and Elvis Costello singing "Seven-Day Weekend", which later turned up on the Blood & Chocolate 2xCD. It's a sweet song, and Cliff's vocals add a certain mellowness to the plaintive lyrics. UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Dweezil Zappa plays the guitar bits on the Fat + Beach Boys rekkid. Weird and weirder. I have, or had, a seven-inch of this same song, somewhere.... Read more
October 27, 2006
In which our hero is a Chrome Tubby
When the extent of my apartment was a record player (sadly broken on my move to San Francisco), an amplifier, and pair of ten-year-old speakers (now almost twenty, and still rockin' steady), oh, and probably a bed and a lamp, I would sit on the floor and listen to a few songs again and again. Metronomic Underground, the lead track on Stereolab's yellow glitter double elpee, Emperor Tomato Ketchup -- I have a nagging sensation that my purchasing this record with Aram's coöperation (and massive employée discount!) led to some difficulty back in Chicago --; Viva Last Blues, the rockin' incarnation of Will Oldham; The Serpentine Similar, the magical and precise difficult full-length by David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke that introduced me to the Louisville-Chicago-Oberlin triangle; and Travelling Light, a heartbreaking (and, some would say, wrist-slitting) single by the wretched Tindersticks. (Whose second, untitled album I bought because Mark Athitakis unhesitating recommended it, and because the NME review cited on the sticker read "Total F***ing Godhead!", a phrase apparently coined by a SubPop exec to describe Soundgarden, but, eh.) In fact, at one of the house parties we threw on Wightman Street, I received a visit from the local police, responding to a complaint by neighbours that our music was too loud. At the back of the house we found someone lying on the floor of my bedroom, playing the only available record at earsplitting volume: Metronomic Underground (aka Chrome Tubby). Now here I am listening to Metronomic Underground again and again. Apparently the lyrics are Socialist and complicated, but I really cannot ever make them out enough to interpret. I stopped Laetitia once outside a San Francisco gig, but she was (understandably!) more interested in feeding the baby than in redacting her poetry, and left me with a signed tour single that reads "Help Salim! I am a rock!" as she dashed back to the tour bus. That's it, that's the law, that's the whole of law. Whoops. Different song. None of my record players has an endless repeat feature. The first one I had -- the only record player in the family, an all-in-one hi-fi unit with a tuner and amplifier and pair of speakers -- cheerfully accommodated 78s as well as big-hole 45s and longplays, and had an endless repeat. One could also go all out and stack the records one atop the other! I rarely listen to records these days; so many songs and albums are in my iTunes Library, and the songs that aren't I miss only rarely (but then, when I miss them, I miss them immediately and deeply. Tart's "Kite", a song that will never appear properly mastered on a CD, is one of these songs. I learned the word "inchoate" from comments scrawl across the WHPK radio station copy of the single; I think Will used it in his review). CUT TO FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER: I have dug through several dusty boxes of neat, alphabetised forty-fives only to realise that I probably searched for this record sometime within the past few years, and thus probably filed it somewhere in the stack of records directly beneath the turntables. Aha. Here it is: Tart. "single." Michael Lenzi plays drums on this. Joy Gregory, who was teaching at the Lab School at the time, sings the delirious "I'm a kite, twisting, turning in the wind / maybe I can catch some lightning". $3.25 from Ajax Records in November 1994. CUT TO ONE DAY AND ONE GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH LATER:... Read more
September 6, 2006
In which we rock the roll
Greg excitedly pointed me to this interview with Corey Rusk of Touch & Go Records in advance of the phenomenally cool Twenty-fifth Anniversary part at The Hideout. ... to which I am not going, alas! The schedule is as "insanely precise" as a Shellac record. On a similar note: Steve Albini kicks ass.... Read more
September 1, 2006
In which I do not know HOWTO get ogg and flac files onto my ipod
Although this page hints how to get files from ogg and flac into mp3 format, I still want to play them directly from the ipod. Can't.... Read more
August 28, 2006
In which we defend and relocate
I started out with Bastro Diablo Guapo, and then Gastr del Sol's excellent The Serpentine Similar, and then followed the Louisville-Chicago connection through Bitch Magnet, from the Oberlin spur. From there to Seam, to Tortoise (and their excellent Lazarus Taxon), and then winding up with the Lounge Ax Defense & Relocation CD, which is consistently outstanding. The first five tracks all hug the course of mid-nineties Chicago indie rock, with grinding guitars and start-stop rhythms: The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Sebadoh (unexpectedly concise, and a neat fit to follow the "surgically precise" rock of Shellac of North America), June of '44, and the Cocktails. The Compact Disc was put together to save the Lounge Ax, a remarkable club on the stretch of North Lincoln which had more than its share of debauchery and rock'n'roll. I spent many, many evenings here, arriving on bicycle, in a private automobile, via the L, even on a university-sponsored shuttle bus. I heard The Red Krayola on my 21st birthday; I took strips of grainy black-and-white pictures in the photobooth; I bugged Adam, that guy who recorded every show, to hook me up with a tape of the ear-shatteringly cool Yo La Tengo set in which Richard Rizzo of Eleventh Dream Day joined Ira for some first-class guitar wig-outs: the two of them freaked out on their instruments while studiously jumping on the dozens of pedals on the floor. I nodded off to sleep after moving apartments one steamy June or July afternoon and then heading up to catch a Combustible Edison set; I sprawled out on the steps lining either side of the club for dozens of shows; I think I even drank a drink there on occasion. Most of all, I rocked out, just as the CD does. For a compilation CD it is pretty consistently awesome; I could do without the four minutes of Guided By Voices, though.... Read more
August 23, 2006
In which we find Lazarus Taxon
In another joyous moment of serendipity, I noticed Tortoise's new release just as I was leaving the record shop, unhappily empty-handed. Lazarus Taxon is a gleeful collection of everything that realises Tortoise's redefinition of rock: video collage; concrete photographs (automotive accidents, so ultra-real that I thought they were staged, cinematic); remixes by punk-rockers (Mike Watt), noise ( Nobukazu Takemura), and Yo La Tengo. Lazarus Taxon contains many of the more rare Tortoise tracks ("Goriri", from Macro Dub Infection Vol. 1; "Yaus", their awesome, slanted construction from the Stereolab split single; and so on), and some outstanding video compositions, including "Dear Grandma and Grandpa".... Read more
August 9, 2006
Songs I have heard at Zeitgeist
Some music is indelibly marked in my mind with sitting outside at Zeitgeist. It was while drinking a quart in the shade of the eternally-resting tow truck that I heard the bouncy rock and roll of "I Will Dare" and promptly bought all of The Replacements albums on CD. A few years prior, I rediscovered The Minutemen when I heard "This Ain't No Picnic" blaring over the cook's holler. The title track from the silly "Must've Been High" album by The Supersuckers suits the quiet anarchy of Zeitgeist very well; the plaintive cowpunk of The Geraldine Fibbers, who have now disappeared from the jukebox. Another outstanding jukebox is the wee ipod at Hotel Biron. Th' other evening when I walked in some part of XTC's "Skylarking" was playing.... Read more
July 19, 2006
In praise of the box set
I finally opened up two box sets that deserved close listening: the anthology of The Fall Peel Sessions, and the Billy Bragg box set. The Fall are, according to myth and legend, a favourite of Radio One personality John Peel, and recorded music for his show no fewer than six gazillion times. A set of six discs collects these appearances. The Billy Bragg box, from our friends at Yep Roc, not only collects the EPs and album that made up the US release Back to Basics, but adds outtakes, concert recordings (audio and video, including two DVDs), and plenty of descriptive propaganda.... Read more
May 11, 2006
In which we are kurious, oranj
Greg forwarded this article from Pitchfork about The Fall's recent, uh , tour-uh: According to Williams, the peel-throwing was the culmination of days of frustration with Smith. In a MySpace bulletin entitled "FUCK MARK E. SMITH HE SUCKS," Williams wrote: "MARK E. SMITH a.k.a MR. BURNS has managed to piss off his band so bad they quit and left him in america with his crazy wife slash one fingered keyboard player... MARK pulled a corkscrew on his bass player poured beer and ashed on the head of his tour manager while driving (who has also quit the tour) and played only one full set without slithering off stage to his R.V. to dive into a bottle of scotch." (The Fall's booking agent confirmed that the tour manager had quit, but countered that Smith had indeed played full sets at all of the trek's three previous shows.) Williams continued, "the man is in his late 40's and looks older than my dead grandfather i'm sorry to those out there who are fall fans but you do not know this guy he is an idiot the three other members of the fall are great guys nice as can be and i wish the best for them..." As far as the incident in Phoenix, Williams wrote, "i was told by the falls tour manager he and the rest of the band were going home without mark knowing and this would be the last show this really pissed me off BAD!!! if this had happened a few years ago i would have beat the shit out of him but i'm older now so i picked up a dirty banana peel ran onto the stage and threw it in his face as hard as i could and walked away he ran after me with some 1800's English boxing hands and wanted to fight i laughed and walked away knowing in my head this man has only a few years left..." The Fall's official website said only, "Apologies to all for the curtailed set, caused by technical problems." I guess bananas do technically count as technology...if you're a monkey. as Aram said: How will Mark E. extricate himself from this? hahahahahaha. I will provide the historical anecdote that: one of the oldest usenet contributions I made was to the Fall FAQ, and to the Lyrics Parade (for "Cruisers Creek"). I just looked on the ipod and see something like sixty albums by The Fall. For crying out loud!... Read more
May 1, 2006
In which mí casa es su casa
This Land is Your Land: In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple; By the relief office, I'd seen my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, Is this land made for you and me. and protested the institution of private ownership of land with the verse, As I went walking, I saw a sign there; And on the sign there, It said, 'NO TRESPASSING.' But on the other side, It didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me. This land is your land, this land is my land From the Redwood Forest to the New York Island The Canadian mountain to the Gulf Stream waters This land is made for you and me. As I go walking this ribbon of highway I see above me this endless skyway And all around me the wind keeps saying: This land is made for you and me. I roam and I ramble and I follow my footsteps Till I come to the sands of her mineral desert The mist is lifting and the voice is saying: This land is made for you and me. Where the wind is blowing I go a strolling The wheat field waving and the dust a rolling The fog is lifting and the wind is saying: This land is made for you and me. Nobody living can ever stop me As I go walking my freedom highway Nobody living can make me turn back This land is made for you and me. -- Woody Guthrie... Read more
April 19, 2006
In which we remember Lot's wife
As Lot the righteous evacuates his family from the burning Sodom and Gomorrah (cities which have given their names to the webservers that run this site, in fact), his wife turns to a pillar of salt when she looks back. What happened to her? As inexplicable as are many passages in the early, murkier pieces of the Bible, what is the literary precedent for being rendered into spice? Orpheus looked back and saw his beloved reclaimed to Hades; other protagonists who failed to adhere to the "Don't look back ...!" advice may suffered similar, more understandable consequences. But a pillar of salt? ... all this from listening to the Gang of Four's superlative "Return The Gift" early this morning. I was so completely wrong about not wanting to see their reunion tour.... Read more
March 30, 2006
In which you'll never wait so long
Many years ago I turned my ears in disgust from a band called The Pixies, who were opening for (my favourite band at the time) Love and Rockets at the (late, lamented) Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh. The bassist could not play three notes without stumbling through the transitions, and the guitar sound was a little more abrasive than the goth-pop I was there to hear. And again, they opened for L&R on their return trip to Pittsburgh (also at the Mosque?). A few years later, the student activities board at College proudly hosted The Rollercoaster Tour with fuzzbox favourites The Jesus and Mary Chain, Curve, and headliners The Pixies. I went with a small group of friends, and we sat in the balcony until the band started playing "Here Comes Your Man", which was so completely awesome that it brought down the house (Mandel Hall, in this case). I have not seen The Pixies since then, the defining point of their music to my ears, but have come to enjoy their albums. I finally bought Surfer Rosa / Come on Pilgrim, Doolittle, and Trompe le Monde my last year of college, and still play them loud. I also have a curious 10" anthology copy of Death to the Pixies.... Read more
March 4, 2006
In which I lament the ipod
Although my ipod has suffered from neglect since the arrival of the Mac Mini -- the two simply do not get along! the ipod refuses to sync through the mini, for reasons that seem somewhat obscure even after running various profiling tools -- I have begun to really miss listening to records. The music room which has most of my records does not enjoy much use, either. I went looking for The Pogues' If I Should Fall From Grace With God and could not find my copy, although I turned up a digital copy replete with the navvy "South Australia" bonus track. That Pogues album gave me such a start when I first heard it that I nicked myself while shaving: it was like a rowdy party all on vinyl. And the cover, as with the Pogues' first three records, was awesome. I cannot find the two-disc set of Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West, either. Did I ever have one?... Read more
February 5, 2006
In which ipod.NaturalLife = ipod.Warranty+1
The New York Times columnist Joe Nocera describes the "five stages of ipod grief," and, more importantly, how Apple has conditioned the public to accept a $400 device as, essentially, disposable.... Read more
January 5, 2006
In which th' other shoe has yet to drop
John Cage composed a piece of music, and his successors have drawn it out to a 639-year-long piece ("What, you started with 4'39"? We can make that initial rest a year and a half!").... Read more
December 3, 2005
In which I found that essence rare
Hot diggity dog, Gang of Four's re-working of their industrious first album (vide supra) bursts with energy. They -- the original Gang of Four, not the ersatz mid-80s or workmanlike 90s incarnation -- overflow with the corruscating sound of their early live recordings. I want to be this punk rock when I'm their age. Hell, I want to be this punk rock at any age. The new album, Return the Gift, begins with "To Hell With Poverty" and includes new recordings of several tracks from Entertainment!, which have a sort of irresistible dance sheen to them. The new, faster take on "Anthrax" -- what a creepy title for a love song! -- is edgy and even more disillusioning than before: "I feel like a beetle on its back / and there's way to get up / Love will get you like a case of anthrax / and that's something I don't want to catch"; all the while the bass and drums are caught in a lock groove while guitars feed back over the split-channel vocals. This recording rivals their stellar '81 Peel Sessions. Their second single, At Home He's A Tourist, actually made the UK Top 40, and Gang Of Four had been due to appear on Top Of The Pops, but were dropped at the last minute when they refused to remove the word 'rubbers' from the lyrics. Having retained their artistic integrity but missed their chance of wider fame, they were destined to remain a cult band, and they never again reached the singles chart. Aside: having a "six-degrees-of-Gang-of-Four" would be a fun past-time. If I recall aright, one of the Shriekback anthology CDs included a family tree, of sorts. How many bands does it take to span Mekons and XTC?... Read more
November 25, 2005
compere
com·pere (k?m'pâr') Chiefly British. n. The master of ceremonies, as of a television entertainment program or a variety show. compere, a word I first noticed in the Tour Dates section of ol' Big Nose's web site. I just dusted off the two-record set of "the first 21 songs from the roots of urbane folk music", it makes me want to polish up the ol' dancing shoes and go find Maggie's grave. It was'n't until the difficult third album and the poignant (really!) love songs that Billy Bragg became more than a protest singer to my still-young ears. The politics and attitude enchanted me first and foremost, and, feeling justly disenfranchised from the machinations of the Reagan government, I soured on the establishment. I snuck two tape recorders and several cassettes into the pockets of my parka one wintry evening when he was playing a concert, again with Michelle Shocked! and dutifully bootlegged the proceedings. After I wore that recording to shreds, I found myself becoming dissatisfied with his politics when he started selling out stadia -- emphasis on the selling -- and although his albums still bore artwork, not HMV stickers, insisting that the weary consumer "pay no more than £5.99", he struck me as more commercial and less activist. Shades of Jimmy Thudpucker, but not Bob Dylan. He still wrote and sang great songs, and won some measure of redemption when he researched the unpublished Woody Guthrie material that eventually formed the two glorious two Mermaid Avenue albums.... Read more
November 17, 2005
In which we only have this excerpt
I am listening to "Kill the Poor (Live)" by the Dead Kennedys, from a record I have not heard in years, because, "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features punk roots, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality and electric guitar riffs." Thanks to Pandora, which programs internet broadcasts selected especially for me (or for you), and has some amount of collaborative filtering and personalization. Yuck! Now they are playing Stiff Little Fingers. This all started out with my trying to stump the personalization engine. I seeded it with legitimate but obscure musicians: Bonzo Dog Band, Cornelius Cardew. But these did not lead anywhere, and it was'n't until I stuffed in "No Xmas For John Quays" that it leapt into life, and started playing an old song by The Fall (you know how some broadcast radio stations devolve to a gimmick of playing all Elvis, or all John Denver, for a week? I could play All Fall All The Time. For months. In fact, I could have a long weekend dedicated to versions of Cruisers Creek.) Every time I give the 'thumbs-down' to a song, the radio falls back to playing The Fall, which is fine by me. It has stuck in several new (to me, at least) artists, and has handy "buy this from iTunes" and "buy this from Amazon" widgets built into the nifty little Flash-based player.... Read more
November 8, 2005
In which we turn old-fashioned
As my ipod has turned into a brick, I am amusing myself by thinking about album names like Ix-Nay on the Hombre (although, for some reason, I thought it was a grifters record) and Sheik Yerbouti. Ad-propos of FZ, the cover of Ship Arriving Too Late to Save A Drowning Witch also cracks me so consistently up. To wit: I put a copy of this image, sans title, on the window of a cube I occupied a few years ago. I walked past a few days ago and it was still there, the current inhabitants either blithely unaware or laughing quietly.... Read more
October 21, 2005
In which we are not quite east of the ryan
Or, In which we party like it's 1996 At last night's Daniel Tortois show at the Independent, the two records to which I listened the most in 1996, "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" by Tortoise and "Wrecking Ball" by Emmylou Harris, came together. I never imagined that I would hear Johnny Machine and Doug McCombs performing a heartbreaking song by Emmylou! The Tortoise hour of the set was surprisingly good: these musicians show so much enthusiasm for their instruments (all of them, as each player switches amongst vibes, drums, electronics, guitars, and melodica with each song). They had nice visuals, too, courtesy a 12" Powerbook -- Greg, who who has big news, described them as "organic". They had a nice Rorschach effect, in much the same way that clouds do: I could imagine at one moment a crowd of people in Tokyo, at the next a quiet morning in Washington Square Park. Aram came back from the merch booth and said, "The guy who made these posters says he drove across country with you." And lo and behold, Lil Tuffy himself was selling the hand-screened gig posters. Indeed, Lil Tuffy and I spent three weeks rolling cross the great US of A, with the Sterns' "Roadfood" as our guide. We saw armadillos on the road in West Texas, stayed up three days straight in New Orleans, and played pool in just about every bar we could find on our lugubrioius route from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. Daniel Lanois noted that one composition was an homage to Samuel Barber, but without strings. After five or six minutes of quiet noodling, Tortoise launched into a tight lock-groove and Lanois rocked out on the guitar. Lanois ended with a brief encore, in which he played a waltz on the pedal steel. This was the second night running that I had the a particularly catchy song stuck in my head, both times prompted by drinking in the company of an Australian. The walk home did not clear it, either, so I would up listening to "A Digest Compendium of the Tortoise's World until the wee hours.... Read more
September 20, 2005
In which drunken sailors are blockin up the main road
Although I have listened to precisely zero tunes on the old iPod in the past few weeks, this page describing a shuffle for Pere Ubu tunes captivated me. Pere Ubu are another band I found through a brief record review in Rolling Stone magazine, probably for Story of My Life. Hotcha. David Thomas claims: Pere Ubu is not now nor has it ever been a viable commercial venture. We won't sleep on floors, we won't tour endlessly and we're embarrassed by self-promotion. Add to that a laissez-faire attitude to the mechanics of career advancement and a demanding artistic agenda and you've got a recipe for real failure. That has been our one significant success to this date: we are the longest-lasting, most disastrous commercial outfit to ever appear in rock 'n' roll. No one can come close to matching our loss to longevity ratio." I bet The Fallcould give Pere Ubu a run for the money!... Read more
August 24, 2005
In which we uncover the financial mechanics of a popular band
At the Shellac show th' other day, the band made good use of their customary mid-concert Q & A session to endorse Anne Eickelberg of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 as the "best bass player", and explain that Shellac (of North America) are an Illinois S-Corporation. This latter answer, by Steve, came in response to the question "Does Todd get paid more because he rocks so hard?" The trio appeared more loose with both their music and the organisation of the concert. They ad-libbed the set list, very obviously enjoyed themselves, and rocked hard. At the conclusion of Monday's set, Steve and Bob turned off their guitar amplifiers and then began dismantling Todd's drumkit -- while he was still playing. Always the models of efficiency, they took away the hi-hat, cymbals, kick, snare, and tom, and all that was left was Todd himself. They carried him off without further ado.... Read more
August 16, 2005
In which we discover a savvy use for the ipod
William Bright put together a site where users can share transit maps designed for iPod Photo. UPDATE:Okay, this is a little lame because it does not actually provide an interface that takes advantage of the scroll-wheel function on the iPod, but instead relies on the user to know how to manoeuvre about the city anyhow.... Read more
July 17, 2005
In which I get my knuckles ground down
While cleaning out a closet (why on earth do I have two tuxedo jackets? and who wears shirts requiring separate collars these days?), I found a notebook in which I had scribbled initial impressions of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I poked fun at them for poking fun at R.E.M., but little did I realise the extent to which they did so until I picked up the extra-special Tenth Anniversary Edition of the album, which includes a whopping 49 tracks, including the sly "Camera", a take on R.E.M's song of ditto title. And, of course, the best band from Sacto Northern Cal also rib the Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, and Dave Brubeck. And probably others.... Read more
June 22, 2005
In which this isn't some kind of metaphor.
Goddamn, this is real. Once again, props to Greg for having his ear to the ground: Shellac are hitting the road in August. Lest you forget, shellac is both a noun and a verb (third denotation for both).... Read more
May 20, 2005
Total fucking godhead
Or, I'd like to check out your public protest. Another list? -- stop reading, stop reading for me now. I need a formula to tell iTunes to list albums whose consituent songs all have four or more stars, or where the overall star rating averages to greater than four. This needs some sort of declarative language -- aha! Apple Script! I suspect that the list generated will include: The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" (mono version ; stereo version ; studio out-takes) Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band's "Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)" and possibly also "Ice Cream for Crow" Emmylou Harris' "Wrecking Ball" The Fall "Live At The Witch Trials", "Totale's Turns (It's Now or Never)", "458489 A Sides", "This Nat-ion's Saving Grace" Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" Pere Ubu's "Dub Housing" Radiohead "OK Computer" The Replacements' "Let it Be" Talking Heads' "Fear of Music" Tindersticks "Tindersticks" (the one that NME called "Total f**king godhead") Wilco's "Summer Teeth" and "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" Yo La Tengo's "An then nothing turned itself inside-out"... Read more
May 6, 2005
We're going to rip 'em out now!
I am very happy to have a copy on CD of The Replacements' "Let It Be". And I must give props to the most suggestive (provocative?) jukebox in San Francisco, at Zeitgeist: a few years ago hearing "This Ain't No Picnic" reminded me to dust off my copy of Double Nickels on The Dime -- what an evocative title! -- and a few nights ago I caught the strains of "I Will Dare." -- which has one of the best, bounciest riffs of any punk rock song. Now I have a chubby stack of 5 1/4" albums next to me, at long last the replacements for the records I never listen to any more. Uh, no pun intended. The Replacements landed a spot on Saturday Night Live, but they were roaring drunk throughout their performances and Westerberg said "f*ck" on the air. Their concerts had became notorious for such drunken, sloppy behavior. Frequently, the band was barely able to stand up, let alone play, and when they did play, they often didn't finish their songs. The Replacements also refused to make accessible videos -- the video for "Bastards of Young" featured nothing but a stereo system, playing the song -- thereby cutting themselves off from the mass exposure MTV could have granted them. ... this is something very similar to when some people in 1987 walked into a record shop and found The Beatles' records finally on CD. Or when "Pet Sounds" finally came out on CD.... Read more
April 25, 2005
April 20, 2005
Rediscovering the oldies
Thanks for my l33t sk1||z with smart playlists in iTunes, I've been pleasantly surprised this past week with Wire's seminal Pink Flag, Eleventh Dream Day's luminous cowpunk indie-rock El Moodio, and Portishead's first. For a thirty-year old album, Pink Flag really holds up with style. Listening to it over headphones (was that the first time I've ever done that?), I realised that it even has good production values. For a punk-rock masterpiece. Now I need to write a playlist that grabs albums where most of the songs have four stars or more.... Read more
March 30, 2005
Everything was fine at Coney Island
'though it's too early in the season for the Sideshow at Coney Island to be open on a slow weekday, David Grubbs has a nice piece entitled "Coney Island, 2001" which will put you in the mood for Eak the Geek and others. Anna and I went to see Ivak the Walrus and his consort at the Aquarium. When we arrived, we were just in time for the morning walrus feeding! I love these sessions, because the keepers so obviously know and love their charges, and spend much time explaining the social behaviour and natural science of the walrus to the attentive audience (someone always asks "Where are the tusks?" -- at the Aquarium, all of the walruses have developed tooth infections, and thus the tusks were removed to prevent further infections and decay). But to our surprise, only a scuba diver with a gasping air hose was in the enclosure, and he was lying prone and helpless-looking on one of the rocky outcroppings. We watched him do nothing for a while, and then wandered off to look at the beluga, ignominously hidden behind a massive construction site; the wetlands, undergoing reconstruction; the jellyfish, mobbed with school-children (note to self: never, ever visit a zoo during the school-day!); and the seahorses, many of whom were mysteriously absent from their tanks. Somewhat disappointed, we made our way back to Ivak's tank, and from the underwater viewing area saw him mock-fighting with one of the teenage females. We later took in the early-afternoon feeding, before going off to do some of our own. Yum.... Read more
March 29, 2005
Place-holder
The Big Takeover tells me what to do, a welcome guidebook to new records and CDs (if it were the New York Times, that would be "records and CD's").... Read more
March 23, 2005
You don't have to be weird to be weird
My faithful correspondents filled me in on the latest in old-fogey rock and/or roll: The Fall are releasing a six-disc anthology of their Peel Sessions, and Carsickness' Chris Konigsberg has finally posted some mp3s. Greg was good enough to give me a ride home through the rain, and kept up a constant stream of The Fall ("two CDs of their Rough Trade singles!") on the car stereo. We mused over which bands we'd like to see reunite ("Did you get tickets for Gang of Four yet?"). I actually do not care to see Gang of Four, unless you can transport me to a seedy club in Leeds, ca. 1979. Ditto Wire, Talking Heads (well, not Leeds, but CBGB or something), The Smiths. The Fall I don't mind seeing, because they're as current as they ever were.... Read more
March 5, 2005
Like a giraffe needs a pie
Everybody gets some of the good stuff in the adorable animated video for Mr Scruff's funky "Sweetsmoke" tune. Yum!... Read more
March 2, 2005
Congregate, devastate
June of '44, a band that knocked my socks off when I first saw them (either Mpls or Chicago, '94), have an excellent "In The Fishtank" EP, to which my ears have been stuck all day. The bass is delectable, and the song structure makes word problems out of math rock (duh).... Read more
February 14, 2005
What does it mean???
I must say that I was tickled pink to see a copy of Number One Cup's last album, "people people why are we fighting?" in the "Christmas" section at Open Mind Music yesterday. I didn't realise that this band was born at the Gastr del sol / Unrest / Stereolab show at the Metro at which I first heard Gastr. What does it mean???... Read more
February 2, 2005
Punk as fuck
Lately I've been listening to the American Analog Set's gorgeous fourth album, Know by Heart. The cover is twee, yes, but the songs are dreamy (like Bedhead, say, or Codeine), and a little uptempo and slightly poppy (like Luna, say, or Broadcast). ... and I'm using Sizzling Keys (check the size of the download) to control it all. Ha! Double ha!... Read more
December 20, 2004
One damn song that could make me break down and cry
On the bus to work, listening to David Bowie's oeuvre, as so wonderfully encapsulated by Rykodisc's Sound and Vision box set. When the set came out, I skipped school (11th grade), met my parents for lunch in Oakland, and walked down to Jim's Records (now Paul's CDs) in Bloomfield to pick up the $60 4-cd set (packaged in an elegant album-sized box). At the record shop, I bumped into Josh, also skipping school to buy the same collection, and then walked back homewards through a light rain. Drive-in Saturday. Young Americans. Station to Station. Speed of Life / Be My Wife. Not only is this the last show of the tour ... it's the last show we'll ever do. Ryko issued the box set as the precursor to their lavish reissue of Bowie's back catagloue on CD (again out of print!): in addition to remastering all of the albums, they made CDs as beautiful as the original albums. And they put out "3-sided" LPs, in a fit of audiophile geekiness. Their Ziggy Stardust reissue ranks with Capitol / EMI's much-anticipated Pet Sounds box set. Damn I sound like an old hippy.... Read more
December 8, 2004
Here's what's for dinner. Yo.
Have I mentioned how excited I am that the impossibly influential Slint are playing a reunion concert in San Francisco? Very excited. And O'Farrell Street is closer than Camber Sands.... Read more
December 3, 2004
I sing to understand you
Doesn't it just figure that a lot of cities would declare a Guided By Voices Day? Goddammit. Pound-for-pound, this band has put out more crap than The Fall.... Read more
November 21, 2004
Who needs TV when I've got T Rex?
Went out for drinks with Tyson; hadn't seen him in years, years (and wasn't certain if I'd recognise him, even). He asked what I'm listening to, and I must confess that there isn't too much in the way of new music that I've found compelling. Telling him about Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie was like taking coals to Newcastle, and sort of old news anyway, and then I thought about what's been playing a lot in the ol' iTunes: Bowie (and Mott the Hoople, T. Rex, Eno); Zappa, Beefheart; Sonic Youth (and Wilco). Tortoise, of course. Some Neutral Milk Hotel. Oh, and a lot of Shellac.... Read more
November 15, 2004
Tell me what to listen to.
Once musicmobs has sucked in my iTunes Music Library, I can enjoy Mobster's telling me what to listen to (on a sliding scale of "Hipster" to "Mainstream", where, presumably, the former entails Decembrists and The Faint, the latter Coldplay and Interpol).... Read more
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan &c.
Thanks again to acquisition, I can listen to crap like .... Read more
November 6, 2004
Cease and desist yr emotronica
The New York Times reports on indie-rock experimentation and trademark law.... Read more
October 21, 2004
October 13, 2004
Good morning, captain
From Aram comes word: All Tomorrow's Parties are very proud to announce that legendary Louisville, KY musical pioneers Slint will surprise and delight fans by reuniting to perform at and curate the first weekend of All Tomorrow's Parties of 2005, on February 25th, 26th and 27th at Camber Sands Holiday Centre, East Sussex, UK. Core Slint members Brian McMahan, David Pajo and Britt Walford will be selecting an eclectic line-up for the weekend and will themselves be playing music from their albums "Tweez" and "Spiderland" as well as the posthumous untitled ten-inch single. Soon after the 1991 release of the acclaimed "Spiderland," Slint disbanded but their remarkable music went on to inspire and influence an ever-widening legion of fans. Now, for the first time since their separation, Slint returns for this very special edition of All Tomorrow's Parties. Although I abide by the sticker on the back of the Spiderland disc and only listen to the vinyl copy of the album, I was able to find a shared copy of tweez, and thereby proceed to irritate the bejeezus out of my cube-mate.... Read more
October 6, 2004
I started something
Picked up a copy of "The Sound of Settling", b/w a listless cover of The Smiths' "This Charming Man". Which only made me dig out a copy of Hatful of Hollow to hear the original.... Read more
October 4, 2004
Yeah, I'm the real one
Through its online store, Apple are offering free downloads of the recent Presidential debate. Now I can mutter about it while looking cool and disaffected.... Read more
October 2, 2004
Último tren i miel
After reading the story of how Apropa't, the Savath and Savalas album from Scott Herren and Eva Puyuelo Muns, I like the soft, wistful album's concertinas and petulant vocals even more. I dug out some older releases -- the beautifully-titled Folk Songs for Trains Trees and Honey and a Prefuse73 10". And get your damn Putney out of my mix. On a slightly-related note: I bought Pere Ubu's "The Tenement Year" and Crowded House's "Temple of Low Men" both because of the intriguing write-ups in a then-hip Rolling Stone magazine. Now I read The Big Takeover.... Read more
September 19, 2004
Brian Wilson and the Significance of an Abandoned Masterpiece
Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote mightily in the New York Times that Brian Wilson's "Smile" LP should remain unfinished.... Read more
September 11, 2004
The name of this band is Yo!
Idly poking through the "Recent Used Arrivals" bin at the record shop, I picked up a couple of interesting records and hummed a few bars from I Zimbra, but couldn't find something that really grabbed me. And as I walked up to the register, I saw a CD of The Name Of This Band. Yo! ... this beautiful record (the series of photographs on the inner sleeves are as imprinted in my memory as are the songs themselves: David Byrne with a big guitar in a living room; Jerry Harrison waving energetically from behind a keyboard; and Eno's name, everywhere) has always been a record to me: but the CD has such beautiful, clear sound, and it's not like yesterday anymore. It gets better: next to the Talking Heads reissue was a CD copy of Caroleen's Taking Tiger Mountain cover CD. Hot diggity! All in all, an eno-riffic mid-day. And all I meant to pick up was a salami and baguette for lunch.... Read more
September 9, 2004
Something to ipod about
http://homepage.mac.com/amake/shared/docs/essays/backup.html And when we see the next-generation iPod, what will the new feature be? Photo sharing and a colour screen? Rendezvous-enabled wireless broadcast capability? An open spec, so that third-party developers can write (or reverse-engineer) the OS and make it more flexible? Thanks to this nifty script, iTunes can find album cover art to complement whatever's playing. Alleluia. Yeah, I feel better now.... Read more
August 12, 2004
... this is the sound of settling
The high-definition beauty of last year's breath-taking Transatlanticism forms the audio track for two television shows, Six Feet Under and The O.C.. Meanwhile, Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard hits the road to advocate a Vote for Change.... Read more
July 24, 2004
Phlebotomist lobotomy
Here I sit listening to my jukebox, what sits down in a closet somewhere, bumping through my stereo upstairs. And what are we mashing today? Ergo PhizMiz covering White Light / White Heat. Ergo Phizmiz plays Banjo, Bass Guitar, Ruler, Music Box, Violin, Toy Piano, Electric Guitar, Accordion, Squeezebox, Euphonium, Ukulele, Kazoo, Xylophone, Pixiphone, Uumskither, Mbira, Pod, Delay, Turntable, Percussion. "Uumskither" appears to be a hapax legomenon. via http://boingboing.net/, via http://www.metafilter.com/. I can never forget Kurt Loder's liner notes to the Verve reissues that introduced me to the Velvet Underground: On "Sister Ray": "sailors and drag queens doing god knows what -- and presumably the record-buying public did not care to know ..."... Read more
July 15, 2004
Another side of ...
Today got off to a slow start: the coffee shop was inexplicably shuttered, and I couldn't focus on work. But then I found a trove of Royal Truxxx CDs on my way out the door, and spent myself listening to their distrait song "Junkie Nurse". As Aram (in whose 55th St. apartment I first heard this song) put it, "Putting the win back in heroin." ... speaking of which, now I'm listening to Jonathan Fire-Eater's stellar "Tremble Under Boom Lights" EP.Why don't I listen to something uplifting, like James Brown?... Read more
June 15, 2004
Can you bounce with me?
Listening to "Tusk" from the album Greatest Hits (European) by Fleetwood Mac. On the bus to work this morning, I patiently waded through the 700-odd songs by The Fall that turned up on the iPod. "Big New Prinz" is probably the best song ever, and it has what, two notes on the bass riff? Dug out my CD of Otomo Yoshihide's dynamic trio with David Moss and John King, and I'm bumping that against the Jay-Z Unplugged CD.... Read more
June 14, 2004
Sudden organ
I forgot my iPod in its cosy dock this morning, but remembered the "Radio" feature in iTunes; imagine my joy (and surprise) when I tuned in a station described as "Vintage Punk Rock" to hear the kick-off of The Fall's "Rowche Rumble." I got an addiction like a hole in the ass: note to self: go home and listen to 4 tunna brix EP.... Read more
June 3, 2004
So dangerous
After months of hearing about Danger Mouse's Grey Album, I finally got copy onto my iPod. Bumpin', perhaps unfair use (of Jay-Z's Black Album and of the Beatles' White Album), but bumpin'. And what's the bottom line? Gilbert O’Sullivan’s 1991 lawsuit against Biz Markie for the uncleared use of 20 seconds from O’Sullivan’s "Alone Again (Naturally)" was a major turning point in the evolution of hip-hop. Markie lost the case; the judge told him, verbatim, "Thou shalt not steal." With that, the era of carefree sampling was over. Sample-heavy albums in the vein of Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back or the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique became impossibly expensive and difficult to release. Many artists continued to sample but retreated into using more and more obscure source material.... Read more
May 22, 2004
This isn't some kind of metaphor
Prayer To God from the album 1000 Hurts by Shellac Listening to "History Lesson - Part II" by Minutemen.... Read more
May 19, 2004
The power of independent trucking
After about two hours of steadily pounding the keys yesterday, I took off my headphones and wondered why I was feeling so energetically angry. And then I looked at the iPod and realised that I'd been listening to a mix called "Surgically Precise" full of Shellac and Big Black. And I've got the 8-track playing really fucking loud. The mix also has a song ("Il Duce") from one of the very first CDs I bought: The Wailing Ultimate. I got it from the Phantom of the Attic back when they sold vinyl as well as comix. Independent truckers in the Bay Area are on strike to protest rising gas prices (an increased monthly expense of $1500). Me, I'm a-lying on my back enjoying the sunshine. To-morrow is Bike-to-work Day.... Read more
May 13, 2004
The Dude abides.
Heading down to the ol' corporate shuttle (as the steelworkers had the inclines, so have we our company transport), I hopped on the J-Church. For the second time in as many weeks, the driver had taped newspaper over the window and pulled it to: the fare-box was broken. Unsurprisingly, because the guy who repairs them was indicted for pilfering last week. On return trip, I jumped over to the ever-expanding BART and promptly ran into Celeste, who was riding a bicycle saved from my basement (she has recently added a spiffy new saddle). Then I walked up to the front car and saw Anna! And the whole excursion took us over to Chez Shumariley, where we, along with Jender and He-Who-Is-Full-of-Wrath, took in The Big Lebowski. Although I still don't care for the movie, I did enjoy hearing The Monks as background music in one of the early bowling scenes. This led me to a side-trip through the M section of the ol' iPod: The Minutemen ("West Germany"), Mission of Burma ("This is Not a Photograph"), and, of course, Modest Mouse ("Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset"). How full of vitriol the Ms are!... Read more
May 6, 2004
Respect to Studio One!
Legendary Jamaican record producer Coxsone Dodd died this week. A few weeks ago, Brentford Road in Kingston was renamed in his honour.... Read more
April 23, 2004
Why they were concerned for my welfare, I don't know, but they were from Belgo Nord
Listening to the sentimental style of San Francisco's A Minor Forest: So, Were They In Some Sort Of Fight? The location, usually oral, of introducing a new clause after a full stop (.) with "so" but without a logical or sequential context, irritates me. Particles lend indispensible amazing power to sentences, but there's something about so that grates on me; all the more so (!!) in writing.... Read more
April 21, 2004
Because they were real squirrels!
Second coffee of the day, and I'm listening to Shellac of North America. Who described this band as surgically-precise rock & roll? I mean, goddammit, I miss the Lounge Ax.... Read more
April 8, 2004
The Nine Taylors.
Thurston Moore writes about the solid legacy of Kurt Cobain, and more so about the importance of continuing to innovate music at its boundaries. Today I'm listening to the vaguely sinister "Ali Click" in its myriad incarnations, but this was moving music slightly further towards the middle, a decade ago. Where now? Eno composes traditional peals for conceptual bells (perhaps inspired by Partch?).... Read more
April 7, 2004
Revolution is on the rise.
Revolution is taking place / and you better watch out / for it's righteous The Youth Be Getting Rizzestlizzes. I don't have enough speakers for this song. It is, as they say, off the hizzle.... Read more
April 2, 2004
... where there used to be a motorway.
While listening to XTC's bucolic Apple Venus Vol I, I for the first time hear the lyrics: I want to see a river of orchids / where there used to be a motorway This from the band who sang of the nonsense of the "English Roundabout"... Read more
