Braid - The New Nathan Detroits
Texas Is The Reason - The Magic Bullet Theory
One Hundred Words For Snow - Collide

I don't think 'dissatisfied' is the right word; maybe I was just bored with the same old psuedo-political discussion in the punk I was listening to. Maybe I was getting over the boy-meets-girl, boy-losing-girl anthems of my favorite pop punk records. Maybe I was through with high school and trying to assemble a soundtrack to the larger campus with ashtrays known as Junior College. And while I must credit Dr. Frank of Mr. T Experience and Joey from The Vindicitives for starting the fire, I started looking for clever lyrics that weren't just about the same old stuff. I started getting more into, gasp, Boris the Sprinkler because say what you will, his lyrics and delivery are unlike anything else. But dude, how many songs can I listen to about Pabst Blue Ribbon while I'm reading Buckminster Fuller and Kierkegaard?

And while the bands that I gradually discovered certainly aren't on academic levels of T.S. Elliot or Walt Whitman, they seemed to encapsulate that same sense of being an American. It seems like saying anything about being an American is loaded nowadays. But I simply use the term as a means to reflect a common experience or culture. (While there exists MANY American Experiences, doubtlessly, I refer to some romantically vague notions of collected consciousness.) The concerns and values of 'mainstream culture' are radically different than they were 10, 20, or 100 years ago, but when we encounter artifacts that capture their time, we react. Some say that the history of art is simply each generation improving upon the last, taking what they like, and damning the rest. Each generation has its voice.

And for me these were the Ginsbergs and Kerouacs of my time. As much as I Iove to read Beat work, it feels like I'm engaging in fantasy; these bands were talking about me, right now. Their lyrics were challenging and poetic; and after listening to an entire album I felt like I knew what it was really like in Kansas or Chicago. And far from being preachy or straightforward, I found myself attempting to unpack and decipher the meaning in the lyrics like I was still in English class.

Eventually, a few of these bands ended up on a compilation called "The Emo Diaries." I wish I could say where I first heard the term emo, but I'm pretty sure it was a friend of mine making fun of another friend's new boyfriend. "Yeah, he's emo," Alan said," That means he listens to Jawbreaker and smokes Chesterfields." I took a mental snapshot of this emo-stranger's dress and pins and patches in an attempt to find out more. (Besides, I really liked Jawbreaker... where did that leave me?)

But the next time I encountered the emo-beast was at a One Hundred Words For Snow show at Koo's cafe. Redwood Records put on a veritable emo-fest spanning two-nights, and apparently 100 Words, another band I really liked, fit the bill. Guests could even purchase limited pressings of records with an "Emo Inside" cover that parodied Intel's most likely forgotten identity campaign. That night I took in all the t-shirts and stickers on guitar cases feeling like I'd entered a whole new world. I felt like I was alive and a part of something that was happening now. Luckily, I met some cool folks at work who clued me in to Moss Icon and Rites of Spring before I got too heady over this new 'emo' stuff.

And the more I thought about it (and the more clues I was given), I began to see similarities with artists who were on comps with Born Against. (Let's face it, I never would have bought an Ebullition record if it didn't have that Born Against entry point.) At this point, you could still sort of feel the 'hardcore' element in the music. (Like you could still hear the hardcore through the metal from Integrity.)

I'm not sure if I'm summing it up well, but it wasn't an embarrassing thing to listen to emo records. My punk friends didn't get why a band who's named after a classic Misfits lyric could sound so mellow, but they didn't make fun of me or call me 'emo' because I listened to Texas is the Reason.

But nowadays labeling a band, "Emo," is like a kiss of death. Too many bland and homogenous bands have emerged under the banner of Emo to willing mainstream audience. Same old story. When I mentioned the beats earlier, did you picture Doby Gillis or one of Fred Flintstone's amnesia induced personas? Every event in youth culture is co opted and sold for a profit. I think maybe it just happens faster now.

(Buy Braid Frame and Canvas at Amazon)

(Buy Texas is the Reason Do You Know Who You Areat Amazon)

Nico - I'll Keep It With Mine

Rainer Maria - I'll Keep It With Mine

Page France - I'll Keep It With Mine

I've always been impressed with people who can write songs, and especially those songwriters who seem to just have songs flowing out of them constantly; those two-album-a-year kind of songwriters. And the kind of prolific songwriters who have such an abundance of great songs that even their outtake throway songs become classics? Well that seems to be a category where Bob Dylan stands alone. "I'll Keep It With Mine" is a nice little tune, written by Dylan around the Another Side period where the personal was starting to outweigh the political in his work. It would have fit nice and snug on that album, next to something like "To Ramona", but unfortunately he didn't bother to record it until the Bringing It All Back Home sessions and obviously by that time he was about a million miles and a trip on a magic swirling ship beyond such a simple and straightforward song.

But, according to legend (and to Wikipedia) he never really wrote it for himself anyway, it was intended for Nico. But Nico wasn't a recording artist in 1964 so first dibs on the song slipped through her fingers. (Although, whether Nico ever really became a recording "artist" is debatable. But, hey, while I'm in the parenthesis here - how excited are you to see Anakin Skywalker play Bob Dylan in that Factory Girl movie?) Judy "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" Collins ended up being the first person to commercially release the song; her version is pretty forgettable, but somehow the song went on to attain cool-unknown-Dylan song status and seems like the song you cover if you're a hip indie band who wants to let people know that you still think Dylan is god and everything, but you're not a fat ad exec with a ponytail and a minivan who once wrote a paper in college about the transcendental message behind "Just Like A Woman". By covering "I'll Keep It With Mine" you're basically letting people know that your Bob Dylan is better than their Bob Dylan.

What can I say about the Nico version, from 1967's Chelsea Girl? You know what she sounds like, there's no surprises here: she sings like a tone deaf, transexual, German horse. You either hate that or you find it so odd that it's kind of endearing. If you're of the latter persuasion and you're not familiar with her "I'll Keep It With Mine" it's definitely worth a listen. I don't usually give a shit about things like guitar tone, but I wish I could make my guitar sound exactly like this record. And the violins are killing it on this track.

If you're looking for a similarily Velvety but less braying version of "I'll Keep It With Mine", the Rainer Maria cover practically out-Velvets the Velvet Underground in the best possible way. Their whole new record, Catastrophe Keeps Us Together, captures that hypnotic chanteuse vibe perfectly but with a shimmering pop sense that keeps it from getting boring. I think I was misinformed somewhere along the way that this band was "emo". Whoever told me that was an asshole. Props to Jeff for burning this for me.

"I'll Keep It With Mine" has been covered by a lot more bands than I'm covering in this post, everyone from Fairport Convention to a late-80s throat-cancer-voice Marianne Faithfull. (80s as in the decade, not her age. She was about a thousand years old when she recorded it.) But, other than the actual Dylan outtake, the one on the Bootleg Series not the one on Biograph, my favorite version of the song is an semi-unreleased bedroom recording by Page France. After the lush instrumentation of the Nico and Rainer Maria versions, it's nice to hear just a guy and a softly strummed acoustic strip the song down to its barest essentials. You can forget all the hipster cool points, all the unreleased outtake mystique; all Page France cares about is that this is a great fucking song. Saying things like someone's got more talent in his pinkie finger than you've got in you whole body is a lame cliche, but it's a fitting one here. Bob Dylan's got better dinner table scraps of songs than a lot of bands' entire catalogues.

(Click here to buy Chelsea Girl on Amazon.)

(Click here to buy Catastrophe Keeps Us Together on Amazon.)

(Click here to check out Page France on Myspace.)

Junior Walker - Cleo's Mood
Booker T & the MG's - Boot-Leg
Link Wray - Rumble

Tomorrow is my College Graduation so I went out and got a haircut. Maybe some day in the future I'll do a whole post on just haircut songs, like Smoking Popes "Brand New Haircut," Brent's TV "Hairdoo," Mars' "Hairwaves," The (international) Noise Conspiracy's "United by Haircuts," or Pavement's "Cut Your Hair," but today I want to talk a little about mods.

While I was downloading pics of The Jam for Wednesday's post I realized just how cool these lads looked. I can admit to a certain affinity for that clean and tidy Carnaby Street look for a good few years now and it just seemed like the appropriate move to make. College, which was a near decade long excursion for me, is coming to an end and I have a new job. Just seemed like I needed to make a clean break and so I cut off a good 6 or 7 inches of hair. Maybe nobody else out there puts as much symbolic significance on his or her haircut, but for me it says a lot.

Generally my rule for a good haircut is to take a style from the repertoire of The Beatles. There's a lot to choose from. I sometimes go for the Abbey Road era longer hair, sometimes I'll bring back the Cavern rock-and-roll look, but I seem to go back to the Ed Sullivan mod cut. I first cut my hair that way after a life-changing live show by The Makers the summer after I graduated high school. To a big music geek like me, having a 1960s garage haircut, or even British Invasion coif, seemed to draw a line of continuity to my little pop punk band through rock-and-roll history. Then The Locust came around and it seemed like everyone was into the longer bowl cut. It was bizarre when Justin Pearson finally razor cut his locks and suddenly ever person in front of you at their shows now had a palmade bird's nest protruding off the back of their heads.

So I sit down in the stylist's chair and she says, "Let's figure out what we're doing." I think my keywords were "clean cut but not too clean cut," "still long on the top but short in the back," and "mod." She showed me some pictures and I picked out the one that looked closest to what I wanted. And since I'm already writing an entire blog about it, I don't mind telling you, she did an excellent. In fact, I almost went into a post-art-school diatribe about the need for contrast in order/randomness and how the shears represent order and clean lines, where the razor shears really make it all work with their element of randomness. But I just said, "Wow that razor thing really makes a big difference."

So on the way to and from work today I listened to my Live Jam album I had out from the other day. It was great to sing along to their classic originals and even more fun to hear their versions of classic 'mod' pieces like "Move on Up" (maybe you know it as the sample from "Touch the Sky,") and "David Watts." So I felt like maybe I'd give the blog a sort of mini-soundtrack for my new haircut.

So, if you consider the mod movement an outgrowth of the International Style or modern art or design, there are some certain tenants that prevail. In keeping with the idea of internationalism, a lot of best tracks are instrumental. Without lyrics adding a level of cultural meaning, a great floor stomper can get feet moving in Osaka and Oxford. And there's something very anti-nationalist about middle-class UK kids recreating or replaying the soul records produced in the impoverished (read: soulful) parts of the US. (Maybe it's like how kids today latch onto those strange card-game-based anime.)

But beyond all that, what the mods did was dig dancable soul music. And some of it fetches prices of over $2,000 and some of it can be picked up cheap at thrift stores and used record shops. And like Patrick said in yesterday's blog, we need a new oldies playlist. Sure I love most of the Motown artists that everybody loves and get played 5 times an hour on K-Earth, but you're lucky to hear Jr. Walker's "Shotgun" between all the Aretha and Monkees. Where's is "Cleo's Mood" on that playlist? Do they just have those Motown gas station comps over there? I'm not the most avid crate digger ever but even I found a copy of Walker's greatest hits on vinyl... and I don't have a new music accrual budget like they do. (Or maybe that's how they make their profit... by never having to buy any more music.)

Also, Booker T and the MGs need to be rescued from simple movie soundtrack fodder. Yeah, "Green Onions" is a great instrumental track... but this was a real band here. Most folks will recognize the tune but have no idea the name of the track or the band who recorded it. And for all you Clash fans out there, Mick, Paul, Joe and Topper cut a great version of The MG's "Time is Tight," which I believe was a song on their infamous jukebox of classic soul, ska and just generally rude music. (Note: though I'll take Grandmaster Flash's version of "Hang 'Em High" over Booker T's.)

And Link Wray's "Rumble" should be as well known as The Troggs... even if few people know the name of either. Those reverb soaked fuzz guitars were groundbreaking and should instantly recognizable. But I doubt even among the aging Boomer demographic if Link Wray is remembered. Seems I'd more luck with the racist misogynists at the annual Hootenanny. And, dude, that's just sad. (Especially since Wray was part Shawnee.)

And besides all that, my life would be near meaningless if it hadn't been for Wray's most significant contribution to the guitar wielding adolescent: the power chord.

(Buy Jr. Walker at Amazon.)

(Buy Link Wray at Amazon.)

(Buy Booker T and the MG's at Amazon.)

(PS... If there's anyone out there who can school me on mods or Northern Soul... or clue me into some less surface level acts than The Who or Small Faces, I'd absolutely love it. PPS... I heard the Royal Air Force actually copyrighted the mod target?! True? Does Ben Sherman pay the RAF a small royalty?)

Gloria Jones - Tainted Love

Gloria Jones - Come Go With Me

Gloria Jones - Heartbeat

While Rihanna's brilliant, "Tainted Love"-interpolating, early pop song of the year contender (definitely best pop song since "1 Thing") "S.O.S." is still topping the charts, and with such a perfect set up mention of Northern Soul yesterday, now seems like a good time to talk about Gloria Jones. As you may already know, Gloria Jones was the first artist to record "Tainted Love" for Motown back in 1964, even though she didn't achieve nearly the level of success that Soft Cell had with their synth heavy new wave cover in the 80s. But if you never bothered to look further than her one non-hit classic, or if you've never even heard that song, her catalogue is definitely worth paying attention to.

There was an episode of The Simpsons I caught on a rerun a couple weeks ago, the one where Homer gets his own show to replace Krusty's and he has a discussion group with Moe and Barney and some of the other Springfield regulars. At one point one of the guys in the group complains about oldies. His complaint is "where are the new oldies?" The joke is that it's supposed to be an oxymoron, but I kind of see his point. Can we get an updated playlist on the oldies stations already? I love "My Girl" as much as the next guy, but there were more than five artists on Motown you know. And it seems that obscurer artists like Gloria Jones never get their time to shine.

Because it's not just being obscure that makes Gloria Jones cool, it's not just that music nerd one-upsmanship where you pretend to like someone just because the average person has never heard of them. Gloria Jones is just as good as any other Motown artist and it's a travesty that her singles can't be found on most generic Motown compilations. She's a little rawer than what some Motown fans might be used to though, maybe that's why she's not as nationally beloved, but to me it's what makes her so exciting to listen to. She seems to bridge a gap between two of my favorite 60s genres, Motor City soul and garage rock.

It makes a lot more sense when you take in to account that "Tainted Love" was written by Ed Cobb, who went on to produce L.A. garage legends The Standells. The singles from her classic mid-60s period like "Tainted Love", "Come Go With Me", "Heartbeat" share plenty of DNA with those suburban kids banging out "Louie Louie" in their parents garages; three chord guitar figures, simple driving drum beats, swirling organs, fuzzy strained vocals. If Gloria Jones had been a white boy who played guitar she could have been on Nuggets.

Then the musical degrees of seperation game gets even weirder, after being dropped from Motown she married Marc Bolan from T. Rex and actually joined the band for several years in the mid 70s, singing back up vocals. They had a son together, Rolan Bolan, and she was driving the car when she got into the accident that killed Marc Bolan in 1977.

Insert your own "tainted love" joke here.

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - (Love is Like a) Heatwave
The Jam - (Love is Like a) Heatwave (Live)

Unlike Patrick, I remember just about everything (aside, of course, from when my passive aggressive tendencies tend to rear their ugly heads.) The first girl I kissed was Laura Welzig on May 5, 1991 in the IMAX theatre at The National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Maybe I forced myself to remember or maybe it’s just easy because it’s Cinco de Mayo. But a lot like Patrick, if a song or band is tied to a moment, the two are inseparable and unforgettable. One bad example comes from the summer a few years after that first kiss. I can distinctly remember lying on a cot during our summer family vacation with my new portable CD player and the few CDs I had. One of my newer CDs was U2's Zooropa. Now maybe you can make a case for Joshua Tree or Rattle and Hum but you can't really say anything redeeming about Zooropa can you? I know a buddy of mine who I really looked up to was way into U2 and I wanted so desperately to like that CD. (Plus the $16 price tag was like a fortune to me then... wait, how much was a CD in 1993?) But there I am, on that cot with the hot smell of Northern California Summer in the air, realizing that I really didn't like this album. Then I can remember getting upset because I knew that whenever I thought back on this summer vacation I would remember that insipid, 'don't think, don't drink, don't drive, don't stink,' song that the guitar player spoke/sang. (Yes, I know his name is Edge, but I thought I'd sound cooler if I feigned ignorance.)

The very first song I can remember ever is "Let's Hear It For The Boy," by Deneice Williams, made popular by (and played on the radio a lot due to) the Footloose Soundtrack. I'm not sure exactly why that song stuck in my fragile little head, but I can remember a little story about my dad and me. (Which actually might sum up where my twisted sense of humor and music come from, as well as point out that I was always little 'different from the other boys.') When I finally got the Red Butler doll from Rainbow Brite I had pined after for what seemed like years, I was very excited to show my dad when he got home from work. Maybe I was conscious of the fact that this was a girl's toy or maybe I just couldn't communicate through all the excitement, but I ran up to my dad and said, "I got the boy! I got the boy!" I can remember his smile on a face that seems foreignly young now, as he replied, "Oh really. Like, 'Let's hear it for boyyy' ?" and sang out the melody.

Flash forward about half a decade and one day at recess my three friends and I decide that The Beach Boys are cool. Not based on the music, I don't think, I'm pretty sure that this was what we thought the surfers listened to, and we sure did think those surfers were cool. Now my dad didn't have any Beach Boys tapes so I borrowed his gas station compilation entitled Summer Surf. It had an orange and blue cover and a lot of great songs. It was definitely the coolest thing my parents owned. (The Sgt. Pepper vinyl hadn't entered in yet.) Needless to say I played that tape until it wore thin.

One of the songs on Summer Surf was "Heatwave" by Martha Reeves and The Vandellas. It's also, as you might know, one of the hand full of songs played on the Los Angeles oldies station. So I definitely got more than enough chance to learn all the words, and according to my mother, attempt to sing the lead parts and backing parts at the same time, resulting in a mish-mash of lyrics.

Flash forward yet again. My Jimmy-Z button up and Bugle Boy slacks are replaced with a Clash t-shirt and thrift store pants with patches. My friends and I liked a lot of the same bands from Devo to Crucifix, but none of them ever loved The Jam the way I did. It wasn't until years later that a little research and contemplation cleared things up. Apparently I couldn't hear it through my thick punk skull at the time, but The Jam were heavily influenced by Motown. (And it wasn't for a few more years that I knew what Northern Soul was.) In fact, their live record even includes a cover of the Martha Reeves track I fell in love with so many years ago.

(Buy The Jam Live Jam at Amazon.)

(Buy Martha Reeves and The Vandellas at Amazon.)

Otis Redding - Wonderful World

I was running late for work yesterday, and I'm the kind of person that doesn't like to be late. So I was a little frustrated, nervously fidgeting and staring at the time on my cell phone, cursing every driver on the road who was going the speed limit. I was all set for my running behind to set the precedent for a bad day. And then "Wonderful World" came on the radio. And in three glorious minutes it reassured me that everything was going to be alright.

For those of us who are in love with songs, it can be difficult to articulate just how much power they hold in our lives. I'm not talking about people who like songs, I think everybody likes songs, most people enjoy music on some level. I'm talking about people who love songs, whose pivotal moments in life are remembered with a soundtrack, who can write pages of words every week day about why a song is great. I can't for the life of me recall the name of the first girl I ever kissed when I was a freshman in high school, but I can remember in every detail the exhiliration I felt the first time I heard the Misfits, which incidentally happened on the same day. Strange (or sad) as it may sound, hearing a warbly cassette tape copy of Walk Among Us seems, in retrospect, like the more earth shattering event.

I can't exactly remember the first time I heard "Wonderful World", it's one of those songs that was always on the oldies station growing up, but I always liked it. The first time I ever bothered to learn who sang the version I was most familiar with, the Sam Cooke version, was when a history teacher in high school played it while handing back our first test. ("Don't know much about history..." get it?) While the other students in class were worried about their test grade, I was more curious about the song. I talked with my teacher about it after class and after that the War of 1812 seemed pretty unimportant compared to the copy of Sam Cooke's Greatest Hits that he let me borrow.

I don't think normal people have memories so vibrant about things like this. But I think I'm glad I'm not like normal people. I'm glad music can be such a trasformative experience for me, I'm glad it can make bad days seem a little brighter. I'm probably going to be running late again today, since I'm sitting here writing and leisurely enjoying my afternoon coffee instead of getting ready for work. But I'm listening to Otis Redding's take on "Wonderful World" (after years of discerning listening I must confess a preference for Otis) and, yeah it's a little corny, but I'm telling you, the world really does seem kind of wonderful when I hear this song.

(Click here to buy Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul on Amazon.)

Run!!! - Two Songs
Run!!! - Bendy (Can't Wait)

I can admit to certain advantages to 'going out' to see a band. Some are taken for granted, like being to able to watch to your favorite musicians belt it out right in front of you, like experiencing the music with a group as it is created, or simply being able to finally hear the songs as loud as you'd ever hope for. Then when the music is over you get to go home and someone else cleans up after you. On the other hand, of course, is the trauma of trying to find parking, the drama of asymmetrical haircut cliques, and the barf-o-rama (sorry) of overheard conversations.

I can remember a letter written to Profane Existence that said something to the effect of, "I no longer hope to achieve a complete social revolution; now I focus my efforts on carving out a space for myself and people like me to exist." And while that certainly has a shadow-side sentiment of elitism or isolationism, the idea of creating a sort of 'safe space,' was something that resonated with me. A few years later I found AAA Electra 99 in a strange office complex right next to John Wayne Airport. An artist co-op/museum/gallery that seemed to literally be a space carved out of a landscape littered with office buildings, Electra offered space to whoever wanted it and was willing to pay a small lease every month. That location has since been turned into a parking lot and Electra was forcibly removed and relocated to Anaheim. (Trust me, that's the short version.) The new location allowed Electra to focus more on bands than they had before and it became the only venue I'd ever really go to. Nowadays I usually stop by at least one night every weekend.

Over the course of the five or six years Electra has been in Anaheim I've seen a lot bands come and go. I've seen a lot of terrible bands and a lot of really strange bands and a few really good bands. There's some bands who build up their chops on Electra's homemade 'stage,' (created out of discarded shipping palettes and recycled carpet) and then move on to be 'too big' to play a 55-occupancy warehouse next to the dump. But, seriously, good for them. Some end up in films by your favorite director and some trudge along endlessly without ever finding that big break. Some bands disappear as quickly as they came.

Run!!! was the greatest band that nobody got to hear. Consisting of two bassists, a drummer and a singer, Run!!! consistently kicked the shit out me every time they played. Fronted by an enigmatic singer who sounded like a schizophrenic evil Elvis or overly anxious Glenn Danzig, Run!!! delivered hard-hitting music with a strong arty bend. One bass player would typically lay out the melody or chords and the other would completely go off with the best use of effect pedals I have ever witnessed. I can't describe what it was like to see the straight-laced, white button-up, short-cropped-hair young main, affectionately dubbed "The Mormon" by the front-room crowd at Electra, open up his suitcase full of pedals and completely annihilate everything I thought about how a bass could be played. He kept a second set of strings already strung on his bass, but duct taped to the back, for a quick and easy string change at a moment's notice. Yeah, he played that hard. When you listen back to their recorded work, it's almost impossible to figure out the instrumentation used, but most often that strange sound you can't quite pinpoint is coming from his bass. And it never sounds like Guitar Center employee wanking... it always serves the song. The beats are constantly strong and innovative and loud. While I picture the rest of the band rocking out to Lightning Bolt or Black Dice, the drummer always struck me as more into Venom or maybe just Zeppelin... but definitely coming from a Hessian line of rhythm. But the thing about Run!!!'s music was that it works for both these sensibilities.

Run!!! used to drive three hours or more from Ojai to Anaheim to play for a room of 10 people, and they always gave more than their all... they took all the crowd had and served it back to them. Their sets were always loud, tight, blistering conscious altering experiences. And then they were gone.

I'd like to post all three songs from their final self-released CD-R EP, but I'd rather save some for Patrick, cus I'd love to hear his version of why Run!!! was so epic. (And I think I left some open spaces...right?) And the thing is I could write a whole week's worth of blogs about bands that came out of Electra or that I saw play there... Run!!! is the just the saddest travesty of what can happen to great bands. I have thirteen tracks from Run!!! and they are all worthy of posting, and as I listened to them as I write this, they seem even better a few years later. But we need bands like that for the Nuggets of the future. Maybe Rhino will even release an Electra 99 Anthology.

Gravy Train!!!! - Hella Nervous

I should have posted something about Gravy Train!!!! right after my Rappers Delight Club and Bratmobile posts. It would have made a neat little thematic thread. Little girls rapping + riot grrrl = Gravy Train? Something like that. I would have had a more eloquent essay to make the connection, but I kind of messed the order up and now I'm rushing through this as it is. I trust you guys are smart enough to fill in the blanks.

I first saw Gravy Train at a Bratmobile show and despite having a very different approach to feminist politics, the things that made me love Gravy Train are the same things that drew me to Bratmobile. The political bands that I like, the ones that I still find myself listening to well past my crusty punk phase, seem to all have one thing in common - a sense of humor. Fronted by a full figured Mexican girl ordering guys to suck her "muff like a vaccuum cleaner", kicking rhymes about sex and eating (and sometimes both at the same time) in simple but clever couplets, Gravy Train may push the humor to the forefront but the ideas are still there.

And even if you can't get down with the vulgar in-your-face lyrics, you're gonna find it hard to resist the beats. I defy even the most prudish of listeners to not want to shake their ass to "Hella Nervous". It's glitchy and homemade on cheap Casios and drum machines but it's ridiculously catchy. I've seen Gravy Train live a couple times and it's basically a non-stop dance party. I haven't seen them in years but I bet when they play this song, shit still gets out of control.

Not only haven't I seen Gravy Train in a couple years, but I haven't really kept up on their releases much either. A few months after I saw them open for Bratmobile, and bought their self-released four-song EP with "Hella Nervous" on it, they got signed to Kill Rock Stars and put out a record called Hello Doctor. "Hella Nervous" was still the best song on it. I think they've got a few more releases now and I heard somewhere that they went through a line up change or two, but I'm still content to keep replaying this song. The drawback to Gravy Train is that they're kind of a one-trick pony; there's only so many songs about burgers and bouncing titties you can listen to before the novelty wears off. But if you haven't heard them before, download this song because the one trick is fucking brilliant here.

(Click here to order Hello Doctor from Kill Rock Stars.)

Maritime - Tearing Up the Oxygen

Let's dispense with the obligatory statements right up front. 1) Maritime consists of Davey von Bohlen and Dan Didier (formerly of The Promise Ring), and Eric Axelson (formerly of The Dismemberment Plan). 2) We, The Vehicles is a more focused and successfully rendered album than their debut, Glass Floor. 3) The majority of indie-kids and punk-rockers really don't want to be called "emo."

You can get any one of those points (and often, all three) from just about any review of Maritime; all three can be disputed or rebuked.

While Maritime was founded by two members of Promise Ring, this fact is just about as useful as knowing Davey was also in Cap'n Jazz. I suppose to a degree, if you are a fan of his writing, or just curious to see how he turned out, you might want to know that Davey is writing lyrics and music for this new project. But the vocal delivery is so developed and refined on We, The Vehicles, that one might have a hard time even believing this the same singer. It gives hope to those of us who cut our teeth with shredded vocal chords.

And sadly, Eric Axelson, well regarded as one of the best bass players in the indie scene today, has left Maritime. He cited a longing to stay home rather than tour and didn't want to hold the band back. Whether or not he'll appear on future records is anyone's guess, but it does make We, The Vehicles more essential. Axelson's basslines manage to be both humbled and humbling; they are neither showy nor simplistic. They add another layer of melody while laying the foundation for von Bohlen's sharp counterpoints and stripped-down-to-necessity arrangements.

Now I can't really weigh in on the first album versus this one; I haven't heard Glass Floor. I'm only writing about Maritime now because Patrick shared "Parade of Punk Rock T-Shirts" with me a few months back. (I believe the blog he downloaded it from has slipped our collective memory.) Seems a good number of internet trolls point to Wood/Water as an indicator of We, The Vehicles and deride the lazy reviewers' attempts to suggest the The Vehicles is a quantum leap from anything any of the band members have done before. (But other folks think Wood/Water was an experimental mistake akin to Glass Floor.) You'll have to make up your own mind... just wanted to let you know.

Finally, if 'emo' means Rites of Spring or even Promise Ring, hell yeah, I listen to emo. (I don't think I'd say I AM 'emo,' but that's ridiculous high school stuff and mostly semantics.) I suppose somewhere between genuine, sincere expression and hardcore kids growing up, emo became another fashion and ultimately ended up another mold to fill. That doesn't mean I won't sing out "Oh Amy! Don't hate me!" or "I don't know Billy Ocean. I don't know the ocean floor," driving down the freeway or alone in my apartment. Busted. I'm emo.

But Maritime really has nothing in common with 'emo,' unless you use too broad a definition. It's cheap way out of really reviewing a song. Next thing you know, the writer has told you all about the people in the band and their history without giving you much description of the actual music. Sort of like I just did.

(Buy We, The Vehicles at Amazon.)

X - Turn My Head

X - Police

Reading Jeff’s post on Supernova yesterday, it’s amazing to me that in this internet age bands are still picking names that are already taken. How hard is it to do a Google search to find out if there’s already a band called Supernova? And I’m sure the Fox lawyers have more thorough tools than Google to do copyright checks. But I guess if you’re an Orange County punk band nobody respects your band name (see also M.I.A.). And I’m sure it just adds insult to injury to Supernova that the band stealing their name is, in all likelihood, going to totally suck. (It has Dave Navarro in it after all.) It makes me think of the great 70s funk band Poison, who either weren’t around or didn’t have the money for legal bills to stop a cheesy 80s hair metal band from stealing their name. I’m not sure if it makes it better of worse for the band X from Los Angeles that the less famous band with the same name as them is not an aging rock and roll footnote supergroup or an awful power ballad band. The band X from Australia, the band whose songs I’ve posted above, may be less well known than X from L.A., but once you’ve heard them you will forever stop associating the letter X with John Doe and company.

Ian Rilen, Stephen Lucas, Steve Cafiero and Ian Krahe formed X in the late 70s, by all indications completely oblivious that a poetry-loving couple, a rockabilly guitarist who never smiled and a drummer who no one ever remembers were calling themselves X around the same time but on the other side of the world. But aside from the name and a general categorization as a “punk” band, Australia’s X has little in common with their American counterparts. Their entire first album, Aspirations, recorded in 5 hours at a studio in Sydney in 1979 and self-released a year later, is classic but “Turn My Head” and “Police” are my two favorite songs.

Original guitarist Krahe died of a heroin overdose just before the release of Aspirations, which meant a line-up shift for the band. Lucas picked up guitar in addition to his vocal duties and X became a leaner, meaner three piece with more focus on rhythm. (The picture above is the original line-up, from 1978). As sad as Krahe’s passing was, it solidified the uniqueness of X’s sound. While Lucas’ harsh, scratchy singing, great screaming indiscriminately or belting out a poppy chorus, was the immediate draw, Rilen on bass and Cafiero on drums formed a ferocious rhythm section, equally capable of stomping hardcore and droning post punk syncopation.

“Police”, the fourth song on the record, is a perfect example of their trademark hypnotic dub beat. The guitar pattern and the lyrics (basically just “Police in the streets UH, police in the streets UH” repeated over and over) show more than a little debt to the Clash’s cover of “Police and Thieves”, but in the context of what could have been an otherwise generic blistering early hardcore album, “Police” is a welcome breather. By the time you get to “Turn My Head” a couple tracks later it should be clear that the second-hand reggae influence is just one of many inspirations that X meld together. “Turn My Head”, has the same driving rhythms and sparse guitar stabs, but in the guise of a 2 minute punk rock song is funky, soulful and unbelievably catchy.

X have had a lengthy career since Aspirations, putting out several more studio and live records, breaking up and reforming and breaking up again, but this first record is the one that has stood the test of time. It has since been reissued a number of times on various small labels, my vinyl copy was put out in the U.S. by Rocknroll Blitzkrieg in 2001, the CD copy available on Amazon is from Amphetamine Reptile. But your local independent music store should have a copy. I got mine at Vinyl Solution in Huntington Beach and when I bought it I got an approving look from the guy behind the counter. I think he knew I was about to fall in love with X from Australia and forget all about that Los Angeles band. Like the liner notes that came with the record said: "I’m sure someone out there who, after hearing both the Los Angeles band and the Australian band, still prefers the Los Angeles band.

Somewhere, maybe..."


(Click here to buy Aspirations on Amazon.)

Supernova - Calling Hong Kong
Supernova - Long Hair and Tattoos

Maybe I'm starting to understand all those folks who get so into St. Patrick's Day. I suppose I just never got into it 'cus I'm not Irish, but now that a part of my 'culture' is being threatened I can sort of relate to those folks who have one day a year of cultural celebration. Most folks will recognize Orange County punk as a claustrophobic version of melodic hardcore and rattle off names like Agent Orange or The Adolescents, but like all scenes there is a lot more to it. Of course there are certainly seminal bands to the 'scene,' but those weren't the bands I was going out to see or recording onto mixtapes for friends.

Supernova stood out as an anomaly among the bro-core from the Beach Cities, the retro-77 striped shirt crowd, and the black-clad anarchists. Wearing homemade outfits constructed of tinfoil, Art, Jo and Dave sang songs about Wookies (which you may remember from the Clerks soundtrack), space travel and haircuts. It's no wonder they were apt to write a tune called, "Costa Mesa Hates Me." More Godzuki than Godzilla, they were about as aggressive and hardcore as low budget Hanna-Barbara cartoon from the 1970s.

As I write this, Supernova is in the midst of a giant legal mess. Seems the folks producing the second season of Rock Star for CBS have opted to compile an 'all-star' band this time around rather than resurrect a singer-less blast from the past. With Tommy Lee, Jason Newsted, Gilby Clarke and Dave Navarro signed on to play "The Band," the vocalist could be anyone... Hey, it could even be you! But where this program goes from just bad TV to an unethical assault on the icons of my culture is in naming the band.

Despite Costa Mesa's Supernova releasing a few albums and doing a few national tours (including a much hoped for appearance at SXSW a few years back), CBS has decided to call this amalgamation of bad-hair-metal Supernova as well. And according to Newsted on his Camp Freddie show, “That’s all been worked out, and we are the one and only Supernova.”

Of course, Supernova is not going to simply take this in a hyperbolic compression chamber. No, they have returned to our spheroid-home from the deep recesses of space to fight the case and engage in as much "legal neener neenering" as is required.

So download these tracks and then go out and support the one true Supernova by purchasing one of their records or go see them play at the El Rey, this Friday, May 19. Or at least leave them a message on MySpace and let them know you care.

(Supernova's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/supernova_army)

(Buy Pop As A Weapon from Amazon.)

(This posts relied heavily on Ziegler's piece from this week's OC Weekly. And the photo is from a fan on Supernova's MySpace.)

Bratmobile - Gimme Brains

Meeting people is easy, but meeting anybody worth talking to seems to be nearly impossible. Every time I start talking to someone who seems like they might be interesting, inevitably at some point in the conversation they drop some kind of massive deal breaking bomb on me, like their favorite band is Cold or they have a tattoo of Tinkerbell on their shoulder. And I’m referring to girls here but I don’t mean it in any kind of misogynistic way, its just I don’t spend much time trying to talk to other dudes. I just tend to get along with girls better than guys, if only because girls seem less inclined to drive Hummers or wear sideways trucker hats. But seriously, my frustration is mounting on a daily basis here: where are all the intelligent girls in the world? Why aren’t more girls like Allison Wolfe?

I was a little too young to get in on Riot Grrrl on the ground floor; when Allison Wolfe’s Bratmobile broke up in 1994 after releasing a handful of 7 inches and one full length (1993’s Pottymouth) I was just barely starting to figure out that punk rock might have existed before Green Day. But luckily for me, Allison, Erin Smith and Molly Neuman reunited in 2000, right about the time I was caught up and ready for them, and they toured like crazy. I’m not sure exactly what their itinerary was but they seemed to play in my hometown a lot, and I went to see them every chance I could. I had always enjoyed Bratmobile on record, their smart lyrics, unique minimal poppy punk and catchy bouncing melodies always spoke more to me than any of their scene peers, but seeing them live (even if it was past their prime) made me appreciate them even more.

My favorite thing about Bratmobile’s songs has always been their perfect balance between politics and humor. Their live show always captured that same balance: there was a message to be heard and you could make out the ideas over the music, but the band was still putting on a show, full of energy and having fun. It was never preachy but it was never flippant. And of course, being a teenage boy at the time, Allison was always particularly captivating for me. I’m not talking about just being attracted to her physical appearance (although I am a sucker for girls with glasses) but I was attracted to her creativity, her talent, her intellect. When she pogo-ed around the stage and looked into the audience taunting “gimme brains... a girl could starve on a boy like you” I always fantasized that if only she would come talk to me after the show, maybe I could prove to her that not all boys were stupid.

Bratmobile broke up again in 2004 and the members have since moved on to various other projects. Molly is the co-owner of Lookout! Records and also manages several bands including the Donnas and the Locust, Erin works with Lookout, and Allison has lent her vocal and songwriting talents to a slew of new bands. Her latest, Partyline, has a record out now on Retard Disco. Bratmobile may never get the props that other Riot Grrrl bands like Bikini Kill do, but I can’t remember the last time I pulled out a Bikini Kill album – I still listen to Bratmobile all the time. In fact, I hum a lyric or two from them almost every day. Every time I’m talking to someone at work who I think may have half a brain and something interesting to say, I secretly hope to myself: gimme brains for breakfast baby.


(Click here to buy Bratmobile's Ladies, Women and Girls on Amazon.)

Electric President - Metal Fingers

I was having dinner with a friend at Red Robin, enjoying one of my favorite salads, when something different came over the PA. It was some poppy electronic stuff with a fair share of glitches, synths and video-gamey sounds. Maybe it only sounded so great in the context of the generally bad piped-in music, but it was enough to get me to ask if my friend knew who the band was. "I think this is Postal Service," she said.

And like the painter who thought he created a whole new art movement by splattering paint on his canvas because he had never encountered Pollock or the Ab.Ex'ers, my jaw didn't quite drop far enough for me to pull my foot out of it. (And I told the waiter no crow on this salad!)

So maybe I'm only half a hipster. I might let a band's reputation and fanbase keep me from actually checking them out, but if given a chance I will honestly assess how much I actually do like them. (And I could list off a ton of "lame" bands that I actually love... bands I'm "not supposed to like." And in full disclosure I often feel just as guilty for liking bands I'm actually supposed to like.)

I got the second hand details of conversation two friends of mine were having the other night. Essentially it was one of those uber-music-nerd debates over Jenny Lewis versus Neko Case. Now I don't think either of my friends would say that these two singers are mutually exclusive, but to sum up one end of the argument, "Why would I listen to Lewis when I could listen to Case?" And I'm not sure I have an answer. I know that I would, given the choice, go for Jenny before Neko... but hey, that's just me.

But it seems to bring to light some other issues, especially considering my Postal Service story. When I was bit younger I read a review for Zoinks! which described their music as "what Green Day would be playing if they had remained punk." In hindsight, that's probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but my 15-year-old self thought that sounded like the perfect band. I might secretly like this "sell out" band Green Day but if I say I like Zoinks!, I am that much more punk... that much cooler. (But then I actually ended up really liking Zoinks! but never forgetting that silly review.)

So on the way to work this morning I was listening to my new Electric President CD and I thought to myself, 'You know, this sort of has a Postal Service vibe going on.' But of course, Electric President's self titled release is on Morr Records based out of Germany, so I'm still cool. (And if someone in another car overhears what I'm listening to I don't look bad... c'mon, you know you think about this too!) And then I start to think about how ridiculous all that is. I start to think about what it is about Electric President that I like, rather than what he sort of sounds like.

Linda Rondstadt sort of sounds like Carol King and maybe Neko Case sounds something like Jenny Lewis, but that really doesn't mean all that much. A lot of oil paintings look like other oil paintings, doesn't mean that I don't respond to one artist over another. I think that you can like Picasso and Braque. It's just a shame really that more people know Picasso.

You can like Postal Service and Electric President. It's just a shame that any mall rat knows about Postal Service but Electric President, who are from Florida, have to have their record released by a German imprint. And like every artist's hand is different, every artist's view of the world is unique and every artist has something to say, I won't respond to everyone's work. Some bands work for some people.

The beauty of this current re-invention of the singer/songwriter with Pro Tools is that more and more folks like you and me can create quality, challenging and expressive music. I'm not going to be into every post-emo kid with a computer who puts out a record...but if it's good, I just might be. So don't hate on Bob Motherwell for Franz Kline; you can be down for both... and you don't have to be down for either. But don't suggest that everyone should pack up their paint cus Bob and Franz, Pablo and George, Electric and Postal, did it all before.

(Buy Electric President at Amazon.)

PS... I had my very last painting critique this week which means that I have now lost my outlet for artist, art movement, and obscure critical theory references... so expect a whole lot more to follow in the coming days. Bear with me as I adjust to a more concrete reality.

[Ed. Note - After writing and posting this I discovered this band has been featured in a Fox television series named after the place I'm from... which I think casts my argument in a whole new light.]

Rappers Delight Club - First Ladies Anthem

It’s about time somebody took the concept of The Langley Schools Music Project and updated it for the hip hop generation. There have been plenty of children’s chorus records since Langley and I’m sure this isn’t the first time somebody’s recorded kids rapping, but I’m not talking about Kidz Bop or Lil’ Bow Wow here. What distinguished Hans Fenger’s Beach Boys and Beatles covers as essential outsider music classics is the same thing that puts Rappers Delight Club ahead of its Disney Channel peers – it’s actually good.

The idea of rapping 12 year olds doesn’t seem so strange when you remember that double dutch, little girls skipping rope and rhyming to the beat of plastic clicking on concrete, was basically an early form of hip hop. And the girls (and one boy) of the Rappers Delight Club definitely keep it old school like that. They stick to that earliest of rap subjects – takin’ out sucka MCs. It’s almost a lost art nowadays; rappers still talk about being a better rapper than everybody else but nobody does it with the style of original legends like Rakim and Run-DMC. “First Ladies Anthem” is filled with plenty of golden age flavored one-liners and clever, quotable disses. Well, clever for a little kid. You can be cynical if you want, but I know when I was in elementary school I never came up with anything as funny or as good as “I know everything and you know this/I can even say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/I’m ferocious/All you bad MCs need some coaches”.

And it’s not just the witty wordplay or female-empowerment message of “First Ladies Anthem” that makes it enjoyable; some of these girls really can flow. Listen to the girl who rips into “what up man/my name is Miss Thang/when I get on the mic/oh it’s like damn” with perfect dirty south inflection. Sure there are a couple weak verses but that’s bound to happen when you have like 20 kids taking only a handful of bars each. The ratio of quality MCs to lackluster ones is still higher than your average G Unit posse track. And where stuff like Kidz Bop always leaves me with a kind of cold, exploited feeling, like a bunch of wanna-be child actors blew the Annie auditions so they took the Modest-Mouse-covers gig instead, Rappers Delight Club feels genuine. It sounds like kids that grew up with and love hip hop music, and it sounds like they’re having a lot of fun making their own.

The beat of “First Ladies Anthem” is unfortunately the weakest part, but when you’re working with elementary school kids there’s probably not a lot of money around for expensive production software. (Which is a shame because as few female MCs as there are, there are even less female producers in hip hop). The song they’re rapping over is Sufjan Stevens’ “They Are Night Zombies” (also used in a hip hop context in Two Faced John McCartney’s “Zombies Walk” mash up) and I mention it only because if nothing else convinced you to download “First Ladies Anthem” maybe that will. It’s what first drew me to Rappers Delight Club, from a bulletin posted by Sufjan on Myspace that said “pssst” in the subject line. So thanks to Sufjan (or more likely, the person who runs Sufjan’s Myspace page), but although you may come for the sample, you’ll stay for a group of girls that rock the mic. "But girls aren’t supposed to rap... psych."

(Click here to check out Rappers Delight Club on Myspace.)

Figurines - The Wonder
Figurines - Wrong Way All The Way

Figurines could have been my new favorite band a whole year ago if I paid a little more attention to the indie scene in Denmark. Maybe I need a subscription to NME to keep up with all the new music coming out of Europe. Or maybe there's some uber-hip journal out of Germany that clues overseas readers into the latest from the old country.

And you know, Diesel jeans used to be those hideously fitting colored denim numbers oft accompanied by the ubiquitous fanny pack... nearly as fobby as liederhosen. But things shifted at some point. Diesel is totally hip and The Strokes can pull a Jimi Hendrix by making it across the pond first. Could Europe really be hip again? I mean, Prague, Paris and London have always held their bohemian chic, but what about the other counties that American students can't find on the map?

Certainly the history of rock music has been a dialog across the Atlantic, but in this era of globalization and borderless commerce, I don't think I should have to wait a year to hear the best new music from Luxemburg or Switzerland. (I suppose I should be grateful to The Control Group for eventually releasing Figurines Skeleton album here in the States.) "Silver Ponds" has already made an appearance on the Danish charts but for me they're a breaking new band... and it's not fair!

Now how do I even begin to address the music contained on Skeleton. Pitchfork went on and on about the indeterminent meaning of "catchiness" and used the word "signifier" three times...and gave them an 8.3. Rolling Stone had a difficult time listening through their thick rectal wall but said, "-like Franz Ferdinand but much closer to a first-album Strokes with Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue yelping at the helm." (And, goddamn, Rolling Stone heard this record before I did!?!)

The first song I heard was "Continuous Songs." It's one of those quieter songs where the vocal melody is doubled by the guitar... so the songs feels sparse, minimal. But what got me to scrawl down "Figurines - Continuous Songs" on my notepad at work was the genius chords at 1:05. The next song I encountered was "Rivalry," which is more representative of the album, but still restrained and mellow. I was expecting Figurines to be more like your typical indie pop but with their 'imperfect,' quirky vocals and musical moments. And that was enough to make we want to hear more... to buy the album.

Skeleton opens with "Race You," a disarming ballad. I didn't expect Figurines would go that route based on what I had heard and was prepared to be disappointed. But as soon as "The Wonder" kicked in I knew I was hooked. From the opening pick-scraping guitar lines when the drums kick in, you're in for a ride. There's a sense of urgency reminiscent of punk, a strange pre-chorus from the best of the indie rock annuls complete with voice cracking white-boy-melisma melody, and the strongest hook of a chorus since Cheap Trick. (There's those darn signifiers!) I defy you not to sing along with the Ahhhh-ah on that chorus... just try. And Skeleton is brilliant hook after brilliant hook with lots of genre-mutations and plenty of arty moments.

Besides the beautifully jangly guitars and bizarre arrangements, what I love about Figurines is vocalist Christian Hjelm's melodies. It seems he always manages to slip in the most unexpected note or two and make it work beautifully. It's like he's doing it accidently, effortlessly. But it feels so sincere... like the antithesis to The Strokes bedroom-luring coos. It's so anti-sexy; it's sexy. (And as a not-so-closet Neil Young fan and avid Talking Heads/David Byrne fanboy... these vocals are just about as close to perfect as you can get.)

So do your part to bring down the border and check out the "most hard working Danish indie bands at the moment."

Figurines official website (http://www.figurines.dk/)

Figurines MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/figurinesdk)

Buy Figurines Skeleton from Amazon... there's some used ones for $7)

Blind Willie McTell - Broke Down Engine

Is there any genre of music that has been more corrupted and ruined than the blues? Whatever you may think of the movie Ghost World, you gotta admit that when Steve Buscemi goes to the bar and sees the band Blues Hammer, it's a pretty spot-on depiction of what white people have done to the blues. A couple nights ago I was in L.A. to see a show and, for whatever reason, squeezed on to the bill was a guy who was a real life version of that band. Now, I’m not saying you can’t like the blues. I’m not even saying fat bald white guys can’t be influenced by the blues, but there’s a thin line between tribute and insulting parody. And this guy definitely fell into the latter category.

I think a couple mandatory rules have to apply if you’re a middle aged white guy playing the blues. First of all, if you’re going to use a bottleneck to play slide, do it as part of a song, don’t just do it in between songs to show off. Second, pick some better covers. Don’t cover “All Along the Watchtower”. (This actually applies to all bands, regardless of genre. You cannot do a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”. Ever.) Covering Bill Withers is OK (although I would have picked something less obvious than “Ain’t No Sunshine”) but don’t insult the audience by snidely asking if anyone has even heard of Bill Withers, especially if your cover is going to be so godawful that it prompts me to wonder if you’ve ever heard of Bill Withers. Third, don’t talk in a stereotypical black accent between songs and say things like “I’ma play some blues fo y’all now.” You might as well have walked out on stage with burnt cork on your face you racist fuck. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, stop singing like that.

I’m not sure if I can describe what “like that” sounds like, but if you’d heard this guy sing you’d know what I was talking about. It seems to be the standard voice that white guys trying to sound like black blues singers use. It’s a kind of growling guttural yelp, a ridiculous shouting that apparently requires contorting your face into pained, constipated expressions to pull off. The aforementioned fictitious Blues Hammer, or if anyone remembers him, Johnny Lang, are pretty good examples of “like that”. My problem with this singing style is - who exactly are you imitating? What blues singer sounds like that? I may not have the most extensive blues record collection in the world, but I’ve got my fair share and I can’t think of anybody who sings like they’re trying really hard to squeeze out a shit.

My sneaking suspicion is that the guy I saw play on Saturday might be a bigger fan of Johnny Lang than of an artist like Blind Willie McTell. If more contemporary blues players were trying to imitate McTell’s haunting, androgynous wail instead of the simulacrum of stereotypes that seem to constitute what they think a blues singer sounds like, we might actually get something new and interesting in the genre. But as it stands now if you wanna hear the blues you’re gonna have to pull out records from 80 years ago, a song like “Broke Down Engine.” All the revivalists, movie stars with sunglasses and harmonicas, bar band minstrels and fat bald white guys in the world will never touch this song.

(Click here to buy The Definitive Blind Willie McTell on Amazon.)

Nightmares on Wax - Flip Ya Lid
Nightmares on Wax - Pudpots

I hope I don't get too conceptual on this one, but I want to mention something about the communicative power of music. I'm not talking about lyrical content or 'the way a song makes you feel;' this is about ideas.

I was asked in a job interview once, what's the difference between good design and bad design. I paused for an appropriate amount of time to think and then said, "Design" just means that someone has thought about the problem to be solved. A good design actually solves the problem; a bad design doesn't. (I'm sure my pitch actually went up towards the end, like I was asking if that was the right answer.)

A lot of art and design get so tangled up in the concept, they forget all about the problem. Now, I have my fair share of noise records, art-rock and glitch-core, but more often then not, their records fall into the 'sounds like a modem in a garbage disposal' critique so prevalent of avant garde music. But as some sort of artist-designer-musician hybrid, I can't always get into that.

When I first heard Nightmares on Wax, the musical brainchild of DJ EASE (aka. George Evelyn), I thought to myself, "NOW is going for the same thing I am with music." That's a loaded thought if ever there was one. What's NOW going for? What am I going for? How can I tell this just by the music? What's in the music that makes me think that? What am I responding to? Of course, I don't unpack the thought; I just keep grooving and wait till I have to blog about it for careful introspection.

So as I research NOW, I come across a lot of the ideas we have in common. I realize that we have similar concerns in music production and having attempted to solve similar problems, I can recognize them when they appear.

George Evelyn grew up in Leeds listening to his father and sister's soul tapes. He's a bit older than me, so when the b-boy crossed the pond, Evelyn was there for early hiphop records and breaking crews. Though I can still remember buying MC Hammer and Kid and Play tapes, and having my mom drive me to the BEST Grand Opening to see Sam the Olympic Eagle and a break dancing performance in the parking lot, I don't think it's quite the same. In fact, my true appreciation of hiphop didn't come from the streets or MTV, it came from a graduate's thesis released as a book, Making Beats: The Art of Sample Based Hip Hop. So when I launch Garageband to make a beat today, I'm thinking some of the same thoughts as NOW when they recorded their 1991 album, A Word of Science: The First and Final Chapter. "The album had to be something that identified with the b-boys," says Evelyn, "We wanted to do tracks that had hiphop beats but experimented with ideas."

NOW didn't release anything else for the next five years. George spent his time compiling his own personal collection of dusty records out of carboots, obscure vinyl and soul samples into his own version of Ultimate Breaks and Beats on two-inch tape. And the result was Smoker's Delight; an album that proved NOW was a contemporary reinterpretation of soul/hiphop rather than a techno group. And this next quote reaffirms my own attempts with blips and deconstructed sounds, "Although a lot of people labeled NOW as an early techno group or bleep group, we never did," says George. "As far as A Word Of Science went, there were so many different elements of music in there. It's an evolution from that album to this album. Everything was always about being funky. That's why the idea for Smoker's Delight is nothing new. I just wanted to do something with hiphop."

You'll notice NOW (and myself) never claim to be making hiphop, just recognizing how important, influential, and fun the music can be. And recognizing that we are outsiders to the culture, but that we do have something to say, something to bring to the table. It isn't about exploiting the soul classics laid down on vinyl before I was born. It isn't about re-treading the same ground as soul, funk or hiphop.

"Today's music is inspired by whatever has gone on before. That's what fascinates me. Soul music is the earliest form of hiphop. That's why I want to create it. It might seem like recreating what was done in the past, but what I want to do is merge soul and hip hop together. That's why I'll bring in the live aspect of what happened back then into current hiphop trends. That's the angle I'm arriving at."

But one key element NOW retains even with live musicians is the drum machine. It's not because NOW couldn't find a good enough live drummer, it's the sound of the beats that makes NOW. And George is very conscious of that. It's a far cry from The Roots being heralded as more legitimate because they play instruments; it's attempting to bring the entire history of hiphop into focus. It's about recognizing the disaffected youth music continuum. It's bringing the soul into hiphop and the hiphop into soul... and not forgetting the funk in-between.

Goddamn, Nightmares on Wax have some good ideas... and it's what I could hear through all the layers of "Flip Ya Lid." Maybe a simple way of saying it is, "This guy loves hiphop but isn't just making more of the same." (You can also hear a lot of dub influence on this particular track, which is another genre I feel is misunderstood.) It's downtempo but still chock full of soul and defies you not to at least bob your head if not scrunch up your face.

"Pudpots" seems to better encapsulate the ideas addressed in this blog. You have a beat that is totally hiphop, but not an unoriginal old school nostalgia or Timbo knock-off. Featuring a great horn-line and progressive structure, you can almost see men in all-black Blues suits, funky soul brothers in afros, and b-boys with shell toes all getting down to the same beat.

The rest of NOW's latest album, "In A Space Outta Sound," explores even more musical material. Referencing Vocal Jazz on "Damn,” more Eno-esque atmospheres on "Passion," a smidge of Motown on "Chime Out," and 'exotic' tribal polyrhythms on "Deepdown" and "African Pirates." None of the songs sound the same, but they all offer up alternative solutions to the same problem, how to take hiphop forward as an outsider.

(Buy In A Space Outta Sound from Amazon.)

Eagles of Death Metal - Chase the Devil

Jeff getting a new job has basically been the best thing that’s ever happened to my record collection. Every week now I’ve been getting an mp3 CD packed to the breaking point with new music. Some of it stuff I’ve wanted to buy but haven’t been able to afford and some of it stuff I never would have bought but am grateful I now have. I never had much more than a passing interest in Eagles of Death Metal’s new album Death By Sexy; I’d skimmed through a couple of articles and some generally positive reviews, but it just didn’t sound like something I’d be excited about.

Now I can’t stop listening to it.

I’ve never had a harder time singling out a track to post from an album, because every song on Death By Sexy is my new favorite song. Josh Homme and Jesse Hughes have somehow taken all the bands that I love and mixed them into one cohesive rock and roll monster. Led Zeppelin, T. Rex, The Damned, The Sonics, The Cramps; all would be appropriate reference points, but even if you don’t like any of those bands (and definitely even if you don’t like Homme’s other band Queens of the Stone Age, because I don’t really either) you will find something to enjoy on this record.

It’s amazing to me how Eagles of Death Metal are able to avoid every wrong turn. This band could have so easily devolved into a lame narcissistic ego-fest to earn Josh Homme some money in between Queens records. Their commitment to a decidedly retro 70s rock sound could have sounded like a corny Spinal Tap-esque joke. But Eagles of Death Metal are too smart and too innovative to fall into those traps. “I Want You So Hard” is a hyper frenzied deconstruction of “Summertime Blues”, “Solid Gold” is the best song Marc Bolan never wrote and, the track posted above, “Chase the Devil” is a frantic rockabilly stomper (with a couple steel guitar breaks that allow you to catch your breath before the rollicking beat erupts again) that sounds something like the Misfits’ “American Nightmare” on a heavy dose of methamphetamine. “Chase the Devil” doesn’t really sound like anything else on the record, but it’s an adequate demonstration of the fun and ferociousness that the Eagles manage to summon on every track.

The only thing harder than narrowing it down to just one track today (and yeah I could have posted more, but I think one is all the incentive you’re going to need to just go out and buy the album right away) is going to be what I’m going to post next Monday. I seriously doubt that anything else but Death By Sexy will have found much time in my CD player by then. No mere rock star side project or vanity jam session, I’m pretty sure this is a record that’s going to endure for a long time to come.

(Click here to buy Death By Sexy on Amazon.)

The PC's Ltd. - Fast Man
The 'Great' Deltas - Tra La La

I'm sure this will come as no surprise to our loyal Cacophony readers, but independent record labels didn't start with punk or even the first wave of garage-rock. It's hard to imagine but there was a time most of the labels were 'independent,' and often generated regional hits and geographical stars. I'm sure Patrick could tell you more about this than I, but my point is simply that there is a ton of great music hidden away in obscurity. Sometimes 45s only had 1,000 copies pressed and once they were gone, they were gone. And while the collector's mystique still lingers on dusty records, the internet and the CD format has changed our relationship to these rare records. Before eBay, Google and Rhino Records, collectors visited thrift stores in every town, the swap meet on weekends and read the obits for hot tips. Now a simple keyword search can get you just about anything.

Will "Quantic" Holland is one of those record collectors and a notorious musician with his band the Quantic Soul Orchestra. But lucky for the rest of us, Quantic is generous enough to share. He's compiled some of the rarest and best deep funk sides onto one party-strarting disk, Quantic Presents: The World's Rarest Funk 45s.

I've posted two tracks for you to sample, and it was pretty hard to narrow it down. "Fast Man" comes to us from 1969/1970 in Carolina and serves up deep, heavy funk with lip-smacking grooves and the oft coveted and allusive party-vibe. "Tra La La" opens with a strange, funhouse beat but moves into a howling Hammond, perfected bass-horn interplay, and some of the most pathogen-like grooves ever captured on wax. And I definately have a soft spot for tracks were the band breaks down to just the drums and then reintroduces the instruments individually.

Unfortunately, it seems this album was only released in Europe, so you'll have to pay import prices or find the mp3s. (Like at, let's say, allofmp3.com). But here's some links anyway.

(Buy Quantic Presents: The World's Rarest Funk 45s at Vibrantsounds.)

(Buy Quantic Presents: The World's Rarest Funk 45s at Jazz Man Records.)

Morgan - No Diggity

Blackstreet - No Diggity

Bill Withers - Grandma's Hands

I knew I liked John Albert, the lone member of Morgan, as soon as I heard him say “thank you” to the venue he was playing at. I’ve been a volunteer at this venue for several years and bands that show any kind of gratitude are unfortunately a rare commodity. You’d be surprised how many bands who can’t draw 10 people to a 49 person capacity art gallery think they’re giant rock stars. So it was so refreshing to hear someone with manners who then doubly surprised me by also being extremely talented.

Early in John’s acoustic set he announced the title of a song called “Young And In Love”. I was bracing myself for some kind of sappy emo cliché, but instead was treated to a smart and affecting tale of a violent relationship, with the title words taking on a painful irony. Morgan proved to be a band full of delights like that, constantly subverting my expectations, and weaving through material that was personal and intimate but also maintained an affable sense of humor. By the time John pulled out his show highlight, a tour de force cover of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity”, I was officially blown away.

As a general rule I am skeptical about hip hop covers. (Although technically, as I pointed out to John after the show, “No Diggity” would be better classified as New Jack Swing.) There’s just something that makes me uneasy about songs like Dynamite Hack’s mellow acoustic take on Eazy E’s “Boyz-N-Da-Hood”. They sound disrespectful to me, like they are mocking these songs rather than paying tribute. I’m not sure if this is their intention, but it makes me uncomfortable none the less. But I had no such reservations about Morgan’s lovingly faithful rendition of “No Diggity”.

Morgan wisely sings instead of trying to rap Dr. Dre’s opening verse (and cuts Queen Pen altogether) and focuses on the main (borrowed) melody. It quickly becomes apparent that this is not parody but recognition of a great pop hit. “No Diggity” was the last distinguished single of the New Jack Swing era, written and produced by New Jack godfather Teddy Riley, whose group Guy defined the hip-hop/R&B hybrid genre (and who passed on the baton of his legacy to two fledgling producers called the Neptunes when he took them under his wing and gave them their first gold plaque for Wrex-N-Efx’s “Rump Shaker”). New Jack Swing seems to be mostly discarded as a musical genre now, clinging on by only a few cultural touchstones; New Jack City, Bobby Brown's Behind the Music, Nelson George books; but its importance in both the history of R&B and hip-hop shouldn’t be overlooked.

Now it’s a given, but when Teddy Riley first started layering buttery smooth R&B vocals over rugged hip hop beats it was damn near revolutionary. The rapping guest verse is now a staple of any major R&B hit, same with the incorporation of hip hop vernacular (I suppose you could make the argument that Curtis Mayfield was kind of doing the same thing in the 70s with the Superfly soundtrack, but still, I never heard Curtis singing about "eargasms") and “No Diggity” perfectly illustrates perhaps New Jack Swing’s most obvious contribution: introducing R&B to sampling,

I’ve included “Grandma’s Hands” by Bill Withers for those of you who like to hear the original material being sampled. It may be cooler to prefer an obscure 70’s tune to a massive 90’s pop success, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think “No Diggity” was vastly superior to “Grandma’s Hands”. I love Bill Withers, but this song is a pretty minor work. And that of course is what makes it rife for sampling. Teddy Riley finds a mostly forgotten song, salvages a great beat and a vocal snippet, and then covers it with rapping, harmonies, a catchy bridge and one of the best nonsensical choruses of all time. Some people might be inclined to write “No Diggity” off as a novelty-esque one-hit-wonder, but John Albert and I know better.

(Click here to check out Morgan on Myspace.)

(Click here to buy The Best of Blackstreet on Amazon.)

(Click here to buy Lean On Me - The Best of Bill Withers on Amazon.)

Bix Beiderbicke - Why Do I Love You?
Miles Davis - Why Do I Love You?

I believe it's been well established just how much I love cover songs. And it may belie more than a pre-adolescent obsession with Weird Al, maybe it represents how I look at everything, maybe it's easier to recognize innovation in the form of a cover. Perhaps it's a symptom of my generation to long simultaneously for nostalgia and novelty, but the cover-song fills that void with ease.

While it's become passé now, there was a time when nearly every skate company and band had some sort of parody logo. The free fonts websites still have tons of these famous logo-mimicking typefaces as evidence. The phenomena became more widespread and I'm sure we've all seen the Marlboro box converted to read Marijuana, or Coca-Cola to Cocaine. Maybe it all goes back to Mad Magazine or Honoré Daumier... but simply mimicking a song doesn't a good cover make. I still have my Weird Al tape collection and I'm not looking to adding more to my Parody collection.

When a song is no longer played note-for-note or with minor changes for comedic effects, when a known song is used primarily as a structure or guide, and when new musical aesthetics are advanced by means of reinterpretation, you have more than a cover or parody. As each generation attempts to reinvent musical history for themselves, the cover songs are often encountered with varying degrees of success. It's difficult enough understanding how we get from The Untouchables covering "Stepping Stone" to any of the Fugazi records, let alone where are right now and where we might be headed. It's much easier to draw an analog from the past.

In the late 1940s Miles Davis began to tire of the limitations set by the conventional small jazz groups of the day. He was playing with Charlie Parker's quintet and began organizing live sessions with more players on the side. Eventually, he organized live performances of his nonet (nine-piece band) but they made no money so the group broke up. About a year later Miles reformed the nonet in order to record some 78s for Capitol, as he was contractually obliged. The twelve 78 sides were later collected and named, "The Birth of Cool." Besides the expanded instrumentation, what these songs demonstrate is Miles interest in retaining the vivacity and vigor of bop, but expand its range and possibility. And though these songs represent a more restrained, toned-down, and less aggressive style of playing, they don't get quite as intimate or romantic as their cool jazz progeny. (Which I'm really not that into.)

Wikipedia labels Birth of the Cool as "Hard Bop," so I'm not about to tell you it's a good example of "Cool Jazz." It's laid back departure from bebop, prevalent at the time, are what marks its place in history.

Nowadays you can buy THE COMPLETE Birth of the Cool, which includes some bonus live tracks recorded by nonet around the same time as the 78 sides. (Unfortunately, it also features a revision of the cover art which was a bad idea.) One of the songs features Kenny Hagood on vocals, a rendition of the DeSylva/Gershwins tune "Why Do I Love You?" As a manifesto for cool jazz, the nonet's approach to this classic tune, which their audiences must have been familiar with, surely comes close.

And since time will make the contrast stronger, I've also posted Bix Beiderbecke's ragtime version. Of course I wasn't there at the time, but Bix seems to be to jazz what Green Day is to punk. A wider audience was into Bix and listened to his work, but he was taking a lot from the underbelly of New Orleans. All this to say, Bix's version represents a popular tune in a populist genre. People liked it. (Even Miles was fascinated with him... and hey, I like Green Day too.)

A few decades later Miles reinvents the tune. What he changes and what he keeps speak not only about what Miles is interested in, but just how much the art form of jazz has evolved over such a short time.

(Buy The Complete Birth of the Cool at Amazon.)

(Buy Bix Beiderbecke, Vol. 2: At the Jazz Band Ball at Amazon.)