Fastbacks - Gone to the Moon

Fastbacks formed in 1979, broke up in 2001, and went through over a dozen drummers along the way. Near the middle of their lifespan, in 1993, Kurt Bloch, Lulu Gargiulo and Kim Warnick, released "Gone to the Moon" as an EP single off their album, Zucker. I can't recall exactly, but I'm pretty sure I picked up the single in a bargain bin at Vinyl Solution.

While it was only a limited exposure to the sprawling career of these Seattle stalwarts, it was enough to make me look cool by including it on a mixtape or two. The great thing about Fastbacks is their uncanny ability to write a perfectly crafted pop song but still maintain an edge. And their influence on contemporary music cannot be stressed enough. While they may not be a household name in the States, at least outside of Seattle, Fastbacks is huge in Japan. And after their twenty-year run, it's hard to find any J-pop that isn't at least somewhat indebted to Fastbacks.

I saw an interview once with Nirvana and one of them described "Smells like Teen Spirit" as the "song the Pixies should have written." And while the Pixies certainly inspired cult-of-the-individualist lyrics, silly, strange, dark yet still poppy sounds, I prefer to think of Fastbacks as the major musical force that shaped the 90s rock scene. While the 'grunge' movement seemed to be pushed on us pretty hard by the record companies eager to find the next Nirvana, none of it stood the test of time (for me at least) except Nirvana. And Fastbacks is why.

Like Fastbacks' music, Kurt Cobain's musical taste was unabashedly eclectic and nearly entirely ignorant or apathetic about outside opinions. Here we find the middle ground between The Meatmen's harsh baked-in-the-desert-sun delivery, the songwriting skill of David Bowie, the contemporary application of the sacred American pop song, and the marginalized 'guilty-pleasure' of Shocking Blue.

It's a shame there won't be world-wide mourning when Kurt Bloch passes away... but maybe in Japan.

(Buy Zucker at Amazon)

(Photo by Charles Peterson from his book, Screaming Life)

Patrick's Jelly Roll Morton post got me thinking about my first jazz records and experiences and it's nearly impossible to pin it down to any one defining moment or album.

I used to listen the Ska Parade religiously every Saturday from noon to two while I did my weekly chores. Third-wave was just about to break and Tazy had yet to become infamous for 'discovering' Sublime's 'Date Rape.' I can remember responding to Roland Alphonso much more than Monique Powell. (Though I must admit playing 'Date Rape' for my Boy Scout buddies and loving it... At 14 you're at the perfect age for lyrics like "Even though he now takes it in the behind.")

So when the Jazz Band at my high school played during lunch in the middle of my Freshman year, I had no aversion to the horns or syncopated rhythms. And what's more, I thought these guys were the coolest. Perhaps it was an early indicator of my shifted notion of 'cool,' but somewhere between Band Geek and A.S.B. President the social strata of Butt-Rocker Music Nerd seemed like the place I wanted to be. Besides, Mr. Maddux, whom I had for Geometry at the time, was the teacher and I had seen him exchanging tapes with those longhairs in class and knew he was at least into Fishbone.

So over the summer I picked up the bass guitar and signed up for Jazz Band the following year. Maddux moved back to Seattle (I think it was Seattle, but that may have just been the mystical city of that era) and instead we got an already-spread-thin Marching Band instructor. (I'm pretty sure he ran every music program at our school.) It seemed like everyday he was on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown and for a while he rode us pretty hard. We played standards like Night Train, Harlem Nocturne, Misty and Take the 'A' Train. It was then I started to develop tastes for what I did and didn't like about certain songs and styles and realized that CSU Long Beach had a much better jazz station just a little ways down the dial from Saddleback College's pathetic soft jazz format that probably kept me away from the genre for years too long.

Jazz Band played at a few festivals and I had another buddy in the group who was also actually interested in seeing the other jazz bands play. But back in the bus he put on his walkman with The Doors or Morphine in the deck and I'd kick back to Naked Aggression or Aus-Rotten. I suppose I was a closet jazz fan with a Resist and Exist exterior and I can still remember the conversation with my girlfriend that changed everything. "It's okay," she assured me from beneath her Chelsea haircut, "You just really like music."

Then I saved up my lunch money for John Coltrane's Giant Steps because some music magazine said it was good jazz record.

But rather than posting 'Mr. PC' or 'Cousin Mary,' my two favorite tracks on Giant Steps, I thought I'd sum things up with a pair of Rolands. (Insert synth joke here.) If Roland Alphonso got me tuned in and turned on to saxophones, Roland Kirk kept me a believer. While Alphonso seems to float on a haze of ganja with a syncopated populism, Kirk (at least on this 'early roots' record from 1956) provides a sort of jazz history lesson without resorting to imitation. Kirk was invoking the greats from the jazz shrine long before there were any college courses on Jazz History or African-American Music Appreciation. So while you get to hear the history of jazz—a little New Orleans, a heavy dose of Bop, and a bit of the blues—in Roland Kirk's early work, you can also trace my personal music history to the point of being proud to own records like this and gloating to Patrick (and you blog-readers) about this record rather than hiding it.

It should also be noted that Roland is playing three different types of saxophone simultaneously on 'Triple Threat.' Find out more about Roland Kirk.

(Buy Roland Kirk Early Roots: The Bethlehem Years at Amazon.)

(Buy Roland Alphonso Something Special at Amazon.)

[Mr. T: Again, you don't know my M.O. If you know my M.O. I was punk rock before punk rock came in!! Dig?!]

The Futureheads - First Day

The Futureheads - Decent Days and Nights (Max Tundra Remix)

It was a big week for me. I had one of my last painting crits at school and I started a new job. I've started a few new jobs at this point in my life, but never the first-job-outta-school. It's the mythological transitional period you'll tell your grandkids or future students about. These stories seem to go two ways: Either the big pay off for working so hard in College or the most depressing, College-was-a-waste tales of misery and torment. Quite frankly, after nearly a decade in 'higher education' I am totally sick and tired of these stories. I don't want to hear about your post-art-school blues or your $100,000/year job straight outta school. And yeah, we all have loans and debts to pay off but wasn't the whole point of paying for that degree to ensure no further minimum wage jobs? It wasn't a noble sacrifice; it was an investment.

And with all that baggage I show up for my first day as real-life, all growed-up Graphic Designer. One thing I learned from punk rock was the importance of a uniform, so I arrive in my Steve Madden shoes, messenger bag in tow, and gray cords from Modern Amusement. And actually, getting out of the apartment/studio, dealing with people new, different and completely opposite of myself, and learning the systems and idiosyncrasies of a whole new environment, is pretty invigorating. I'm certainly not the most gregarious person but there's something about a 'team effort' that motivates me. So after a whole week at my new job, I'll relish this weekend, but not entirely dread going back on Monday. And all that work and money that went into college is worth it just to not feel that dread and anxiety. Maybe I'm really lucky to have found a line of work that I can be passionate about and get paid decently.

And of course, before I left on Monday I burned a CD of The Futureheads because like it or not I knew this song would be playing in my brain all day long. And how often can you mutter-sing "You are so lucky on your first day...First Day!" and really feel it?

The Futureheads might just be one of a select cadre of bands that represent most of the things that Patrick and I look for in music: unique vocals with lots of harmonies, genre-staddling, punk aesthetics, and just damn well-written tunes. Just to give my blog partner some ups, he showed this to me on imported vinyl way before the US release date. And because I feel a little guilty just giving you a readily available mp3, I've also posted this remix from the Decent Days and Nights Pt. 2 import single by Max Tundra.

(Buy The Futureheads from Amazon)

(Buy Decent Days and Nights Pt. 2 featuring Decent Days and Nights (Max Tundra Remix) from Amazon)

Penpals - Tell Me Why

Sometimes dating someone can make you ten times cooler, ten times geekier, and very rarely it can do both at the same time. Certainly the upside to watching volume after volume of fan-sub anime was discovering the intro song to Berserk. The series is available in America now, but back then it was like finding the perfect record for your collection at a garage sale: rare, a gem in the rough.

Maybe not everyone goes for the Japlish/Engrish lyrics or the sugary sweet power pop the Penpals dish out, but I spent hours and hours and a lot of money just one import CD so I could have this 30 second clip from Berserk's intro. A full album is available, with the FULL version of the song, but still at import prices. But at least with the internet all you have to do is click.

I tried to track down an mp3 of the full version but with no luck... So I hope you enjoy every second of Penpal's Tell Me Why because I paid a buck for each of them. (It's really a minute, fifteen.. but I couldn't do any wordplay with that...)

Here's the lyrics, though I doubt they'll help you understand:

Feel no shame about shape
weather changes their phrase
even mother will show you another way

So put your glasses on
nothing will be wrong
there's no blame,there's no fame,it's up to you

The first words should be found
whatever holds you back
I can get it off

Tell me what you want
I don't know why are you afraid
Tell me what you wanna say
I don't know why,but it's too late

(Buy Americaman at Amazon)

Michael Andrews - Signs
Michael Andrews - Heaven in Five

I have to completely ignore the film or this post will be at least three screens long, but one of the most striking elements of Miranda July's film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, was the score. As I watch a man light his own hand on fire in some impotent gesture to ceremony, the garage sale electronic symphony instantly forces me into perspective: while naive, quaint and not-entirely-helpless, the characters and instrumentation exude an inner beauty in their futility and failures.

Michael Andrews came into film score composition when his band, The Greyboy Allstars, was asked to score The Zero Effect, Jake Kasdan's first feature film. He also scored the cult classic television show, Freaks and Geeks, and the ubiquitous MySpace-must-see, Donnie Darko. In fact the cover of Tears for Fears' Mad World (with Gary Jules on vocals) was a number one hit in the UK and charted across Europe. He's also done production work like Metric's Old World Underground.

Andrews read a copy of July's script and it blew him away. Meanwhile, July listens to the Donnie Darko soundtrack and thinks Andrews is way out of her league but concocts strategies to approach him anyway. Like the characters in the film, fate brings them together.

Rather than simply commission Andrews to score the film based on images or dialog, July becomes an integral part of the composition. She doesn't want the music to sound "like movie music." She wants it to sound as if someone who didn't quite know how to play music had performed it. The pair sought to create mistakes that somehow work, happy accidents.

Andrews crafts the sound with an orchestra of vintage synths, garage sale Casios and drum machines. He works with the concept of using sterile, amateur and inorganic instruments to create emotional and magical music. One of the film's musical motifs features a melody played on a calculator with a built-in 12-note keyboard. Andrews also makes use of a modified piano where the hammers hit a piece of felt rather than the strings directly.

Andrews' hit Tears for Fears' cover, Mad World (with Gary Jules), was just posted yesterday over at Indie Girls Fly Kites. So go download that too...

(Buy Me and You and Everyone We Know Soundtrack at Amazon.)

(Find out more about the Me and You and Everyone We Know film... winner of just about every indie-film award and deservedly so.)

Tim and Geoff Follin - Silver Surfer (NES)
Tim and Geoff Follin - Gauntlet III: Subtrack 2 (Commodore 64)
Tim and Geoff Follin - Plok: Akrillic (SNES)

Somehow or another I got onto this Nintendo trip recently. I never actually owned the system growing up; I always played it at friends' houses. On a spur, I did a quick look online at latest emulators and games ports. It was scary how quickly I had a little NES running on my Mac OS X. The advantage to coming into the NES emulation game so late is that the emulators are at reliable versions and a good number of games are available. And at an average size of about 150k the ROMs download quicker than mp3's and award with an instant gratification the childhood urges your allowance had suppressed.

I never played Silver Surfer but the Marvel character was always fascinating to me so I went ahead and downloaded the game. Without having to do the ritual puff-puff-blow, my Mac was soon swirling with 8-bit blipps and blopps. And within the first few seconds I realized I had stumbled upon a gem. The game plays out a lot like 1942 with the WWII plane replaced with Norrin Radd post-Galactus conversion: the Silver Surfer. But it's the musical soundtrack that dwarfs any possibility this game had of being remembered. In fact, the soundtrack seems to be the only redeemable factor of this lackluster comic-to-console video game.

Written by a pair of brothers, the Silver Surfer theme opens with an analog descending scale that sounds like it could be on the radio today. The driving beat and bass line propel the song into low resolution dance frenzy as the echo-y lead bounces from planet to planet.

Between their co-written tunes and solo work, the Brothers Follin account for a good number of games across the chronology of home consules: the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga, NES, Super Nintendo and even Dreamcast and PSP. (Tim even did the music for the 2003 Starsky & Hutch game.) I couldn't get soundchip emulators to work for every system the Follins wrote music for, but I did compile a small sampling, including Gauntlet III from the Commodore 64 and Plok from Super Nintendo.

As the technology advances to the 16-bit Super Nintendo, you can hear more clearly Tim and Geoff's influences. While the limited technology of C-64 makes for innovative uses of the technology, the more 'realistic' sounding SNES seems to allow the composers to get closer to 'what they want.' The soundtrack to Plok spreads across genres from cowboy novelty to pulsing 90s dance, but Akrillic sounds closer to The Stranglers or Yes. At times it slips into tragic sampled instruments that come off as too-early 90s nostalgia... maybe the next generation will be ready for that.

Tim Follin shared these thoughts on composing for the various systems with the now defunct webzine in 1998:

The thing I liked about computer music, especially on the C64, was that it was like playing an instrument in its own right. I also liked the fact that you couldn't be pretentious with something that sounded so unreal. But this is also its curse. The general public thinks computer music and computer sound FX might as well be the same thing; unless you know the limits of the sound chip, you won't understand what the composer is doing. If you expect an orchestra and get an electric guitar solo, you'll be disappointed. If you've never heard an electric guitar, you'll just be confused!

Tim recently retired from the console music scene and is focusing on low-budget films. Geoff has become a school teacher.

Download all the emulator music you can from the Follins (and a handy 'discography') at The Follin Drome.

And find out more about Tim Follin at his expertly designed website: Dr. Follin's Home Surgery.

The Traditional Fools - Please
The Traditional Fools - Rock and Roll Baby>

Orange County has a tendency for squelching the creative flame and the two possible means for survival seem to be either clustering into niche groups or taking any chance to just get the hell out of town. One of the most frustrating things with trying to continue to live in OC is that whenever a good band just starts to get going, someone moves away or decides to go to college. But sometimes these can be fortuitous departures or new beginnings.

Moving away from home can be isolating and lonely and sometimes loose knit friends can be brought back together. Andrew, David and Ty were known to be seen and heard around the scene, or at least my corner of it, in bands like The Epsilons and The Clamour but it wasn't until all three of them relocated to San Fransisco this past semester that The Traditional Fools were born. David ran into Ty at Amoeba and once Andrew moved up, it was on.

Load up the USF dorm room with drums, guitars and amps, borrow a four-track, upload the mp3's onto your new MySpace page, and, viola, you're a 'real' band.

The trio shares an obsession with garage rock past and present, from the Mummies to Redd Kross, from Link Wray to Billy Childish. But the marked departure from a simple clone or neo-revival, is Traditional Fool's strangled sound and lyrical approach.

The guitars wail away at the same blues progressions that have echoed out of suburban garages for the past five decades or so, but they don't sound like the drenched-in reverb or Blues Screamer Distortion you're used to. The sound is closer to Jon Cougar Concentration Camp or Scared of Chaka than Chocolate Watch Band or The Troggs.

The lyrics, when audible, are far removed from the clichéd garage rock material. And this is where the missing piece 'falls' into place. The other shared obsession among the band is The Fall. The focus of the lyrics seems to be more on surrealism or absurdity and how they sound rather than conveying a simple message or telling a tale of unrequited romance. I'm told the ridiculous lyrics to "Rock and Roll Baby" were inspired by Guitar Wolf, and at times I'm even reminded of Pere Ubu.

Maybe it's quite simple: garage rock goes to university.

Two more songs are available at The Traditional Fools' MySpace.

Sheephead - Shooter

With nothing to do on a Friday night, Dathan and I headed out to Koo's Cafe (back when it was still in Santa Ana). I think Litmus Green was playing one of their ubiquitous Orange County shows, and like I said, we didn't have that much else to do. I was leaning up against the pinball machine in the back corner when five young men in matching suits, devilocks or pompadours took to the stage. (It was really just a section of floor designated as "the stage.") According to the liner notes of their split seven-inch with Multi Facet, ”Sheephead always wears fine suits. It's a statement; they're just well dressed. They're also usually well-mannered young lads...”

My jaw dropped as Sheephead unleashed an unabashedly poppy but loud and angry and dark onslaught of raw rock and roll. Imagine The Misfits obsession with horror and gore replaced with a gritty, personal portrayal of life in a place with the worst of both the rural small town and the urban big city: Antioch.

“Shooter” describes the relationship with an estranged father that teeters on the edge of melodrama. But the beat remains so danceable and the melody so hauntingly sincere, that when the chorus hits, "And if I'm crying it's just because I'm happy / Not because you remind of me my dad," you can't believe that they make it work so well. By the final chorus, Sheephead has you singing along to the melancholic lyrics of betrayal... but somehow there's a tone of acceptance, recovery or closure. I think the final lyrics sum it up best, "And everything he ever said never meant a goddamn thing anyway." And curiously enough, that snippet at the end, is the catchiest part of the song.

Sheephead still has copies of the split seven-inch this song comes from, (East Bay Explosion No.1, on Zafio Records), as well as a full length CD. They also have four songs on their MySpace page available for streaming. (“March of the Flying Squirrels” appears on this split seven-inch as well)

Sheephead's MySpace also features this photograph:

Dance Disaster Movement (DDM) - Turn On “On”

Late Spring hinted at warmer weather and longer nights just after dusk at a nondescript warehouse in Costa Mesa. I had convinced myself that I was over whatever illness I had been struck with the previous week. (As I recall, I thought it was just a bad reaction to Melatonin but it turned out to be the onset of Juvenile Diabetes.) Dim lighting in a dingy garage-space and loud, youthful and noisy music left me with one desire: to dance. The Flying Saucers and The Pomp provided destructive garage punk, Miracle Chosuke stroked their egos in 7/8 time, and Dance Disaster Movement blasted out the building's foundation.

After DDM's set, Kevin stepped outside, where I was chugging 2-liter bottles of water and smoking a cigarette. He said, "This was the best show Costa Mesa has seen in decades." And whether it was too many $1 Pabsts in my reduced-to-100-pounds frame or a blood glucose level of around 600, I wholeheartedly agreed. It wasn't just the music or the people; it was something in the air. A sense that liberation was just within our reach, that maybe we could carve out someplace to exist.

I danced like I never danced before and when I ended up the hospital a week later I thought a lot about that night. Somehow that night I lost track of myself and was just able to be, to take in the scene. Maybe I've been trying to replicate that feeling ever since. Maybe the whole reason I wanted to start a 'dancey band' was to provide that feeling for others. It's easy to get idealistic with hindsight and it can be tempting to mythologize certain moments, but something in me really sees that night as a turning point, as an epiphany.

Since then, dance-punk has been turned into a dirty word and the pose has been taken up by all sorts of typically non-subterranean bands. But DDM keep it glitchy and repetitive enough to defy any sort of cashing-in criticism. At times Snow on the TV comes off a bit self-conscious and pretentious but I admire what they're going for. Without the minute and a half of powerdrill beats, DDM could come too close to being Rapture-clones. Without the open ringing guitars and ham-fisted synth chords, DDM would be nothing more to me than an idealized memory.

(Buy it at Insound)

Brent’s TV - Parisian
Brent’s TV - Hairdoo

Born from four students at Humboldt Univeristy in 1988, Brent’s TV and Appliances (the ‘Appliances’ was later dropped) brought their brand of rootsy rock-and-roll and skiffle to the people the best way they knew how: the laundromat. Imagine the scene: dozens of students and young people dancing, clapping, pounding on the warm dryers while brotherly harmonies echo over a snare drum, spaghetti colanders and a few acoustic guitars. Their jamboree-like live shows became legendary and when Brent's TV embarked on their laundromat tour of the Pacific Northwest, a caravan of ‘fans’ followed. Aaron Cometbus describes the phenomenon, “Brent's TV was really a whole group of extended friends much more than the four members of the band.”

Brent's TV released Lumberjack Days (Lookout! 36) in 1990 and quickly broke up as friends and band members moved away from Humboldt. The band reformed briefly a year later for a West Coast tour with Green Day. (Six people crammed into a 1978 Toyota hatchback... Green Day missed the first few dates but caught up after they borrowed someone's mother's car.) And aside from one reunion show two years later, Brent's TV was over.

In 1994 Lookout! released a compilation of Brent's TV material as a tag-along with a Sweet Baby compilation, Hello Again. While the bands are similar, share a history, drum set and a pair of brothers, and present a sort of proto-East Bay pop-punk, it seems a shame that Brent's TV doesn't warrant their own retrospective compilation. In fact, a few internet trolls seem to regard Brent's TV as an unlistenable predecessor to the Hi Fives. It seems Lookout! still has copies of this seven-inch, which is either a gross injustice that no one ever bought them... or a case of repressing a genuinely important record. I'm feeling slightly optimistic, so I'll stick with thinking that Lookout! has repressed this record just so that folks like me who weren't around in 1990 can listen to a bit of history, and a one of a kind sound from a one of a kind band.

The Lookout! website offers an mp3 of Superwoman from Hello Again


(Buy it from Lookout!)

Wanda Jackson - Tunnel of Love/Funnel of Love

Here's a reverse cliche, a new snowclone, if you will: I don't love rockabilly, but I do love a great song. And there's a lot of personal taste, a mix of memories and emotions, and a whole laundry lists of intangibles that make up why someone loves a song, or thinks it's great. I want to dive into those gray areas and hear all about it. I don't want to resort to cannons, or dismissals or overly academic discussions of meter or key.

You might not like Wanda Jackson and might not have even heard of her. Apparently she has a new CD out called "I Remember Elvis" and if you want some Queen of Rockabilly hype, her website is gag-inducingly chock full of it. It would be easy to write this song off as movie soundtrack fonder or maybe something you heard on the Country Music Channel once, but for me there is something that sticks. Maybe I have a soft spot for those low, growly vocals, or maybe I can still hear this song the way I heard it first: in a low lit Airstream on the outskirts of Orange County. Maybe it's impossible to divorce your identity from music.

And I think I'm glad for that.

(Buy at Amazon)