What America Means to Us: The Modern Pea Pod's July 2006 Mixtape
Let's face it. If today's flag-waving, self-appointed protectors of American values and principles were to select one group of pop culture writers to represent all that is good about our fair nation, the Modern Pea Pod wouldn't be it. There are bisexuals in our midst, as well as Jews, atheists, socialists, English majors, and one clear product of a miscegenous union. Hell, a few of us have even partaken of the Demon Weed, thus making us law-breakers and hippies. As for me, I read Naked Lunch in high school; my chances of becoming a respected citizen and a patriot are pretty much next to nothing.
But the thing is, just because those "Freedom Nazis" don't like us doesn't mean that we don't like America. And we do. Granted, we might not always like what America does. We might disapprove of some of its choices, or choose not to get involved in its more dubious hobbies. And sometimes, the feeling's mutual; it was much too polite to say so in person, but I heard through the grapevine that America was deeply offended by our May mixtape. See, a relationship with America is a little like any other relationship: off and on, sometimes one-sided, occasionally even abusive. But no matter what happens, deep down, we're always there for each other, and the month of July is traditionally the time when we as a nation recognize that fact. So whether you're on America's good side right now or in the doghouse - did it catch you reading Naked Lunch again? - take some time out, like we did, and think about what America means to you. At the very least, you've got to admit, it's great to live in a country where you can post a vandalized picture of the president with "Faggot" written across his forehead and not get thrown in the gulag. Yes, this First Amendment thing is pretty fuckin' awesome.
God Bless America, Zach Hoskins The Man Who Taught His Asshole to Talk
Side A
0:05 - Patrick Juvet: "I Love America" (5:45) What better way to kick off our musical celebration of the United States than with Patrick Juvet's 'I Love America'...a musical celebration of the United States? And while those words might be setting off alarm bells in you music snobs' heads, fear not, saysJon Cameron. Not all pop patriotism is 'Living in America' or 'God Bless the U.S.A.': "People all over the world love the USA. Kids in the Middle East laugh at episodes of The Simpsons while Japanese teenagers ape the latest American couture; but more than anybody, Americans love America. And in the music business, one of the easiest ways to make a hit song is to tap that well of patriotism, the one that makes your neighbors spring for all of those American flag doormats and pinwheels in their yard (or, on a darker note, Toby Keith albums). So I guess it makes sense that Juvet's "I Love America" was such a hit: number one on the pop charts in 15 countries, including the good ol' USA itself, of course. Juvet, a Swiss man turned German model turned Parisian disco sensation, managed to turn the land of opportunity toward his own opportunity to score a megahit before his career imploded on drugs and sex in the early '80s. Which is, after all, a pretty American thing to do." (Available on Soulseek)
5:50 - The Mothers of Invention: "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" (3:28) But for every blissful celebration of America, there's another song out there that speaks of frustration with the American Dream; a transmission from the 'left-behinds of the Great Society.'Zach Hoskinsintroduces one such song, by one of the most (in)famous 'freaks' in pop culture history: "Before Frank Zappa became a distinguished modern composer, a jazzbo, a maker of dick jokes, a political firebrand, and all of the other various guises his thirty-year career supported, he was first and foremost a very brilliant - and very angry - satirist. And while without a doubt his greatest achievement in the satire field was 1968's We're Only In It for the Money, it's 'Hungry Freaks, Daddy' (the first track off his Mothers of Invention's first album) that set the tone for the rest of the decade. It's a song, as Freak Out! was an album, about the encroachment of outcasts, noncomformists and long-haired, dirty 'freaks' on our precious bourgeois American values, and it's delicious, with a nose-thumbing kazoo hook no self-conscious folkie would have ever had the balls to play. Zappa might have gotten more sophisticated - and, dare I say it, more respectable - since these chaotic late-'60s formative years. But in my mind, at least, he never got better." (Available on Freak Out!)
9:18 - Gary Glitter: "Rock 'n Roll, Pt. 2" (3:01) Sometime in the 20th century, a curious thing happened. Europe, formerly the center of all art and culture for the Western world, began to lose ground in terms of cultural dominance; and America, which had functioned on predominantly received European ideas since its days as a British colony, transformed itself into the world's chief exporter of arts and entertainment. Overseas audiences became enthralled with glitzy Hollywood films, American fashions - and, most of all, the thrilling new sounds of rock'n'roll. But despite the United States' still-unchallenged status as global cultural superpower (for better or for worse), there are times when the international exchange goes both ways.
Megan Giddingsrecounts one such story: the story of a preteen Ted from Oxfordshire, England who falls in love with the sounds of Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Elvis Presley...then, twenty years later, pens a nostalgic ode to those formative years in the glam rock style he pioneered, only for the instrumental flip-side to become a stadium hit in - you guessed it - the original home of rock'n'roll: "You know, there are many, many, many better Gary Glitter songs. I mean, just listen to 'Do You Wanna Touch Me' or 'Sidewalk Sinner' and you'll know exactly what I mean (though you should probably leave out the vastly disturbing 'What Your Mama Don't See, Your Mama Don't Know.') Still, 'Rock 'n Roll, Pt. 2' demonstrates the beauty of American poetic justice. While Glitter himself has become a symbol of shocking and disapproved sexual deviancy, you can still walk into almost every American sporting event and see some of the most renowned members of society skating, shooting baskets, and hitting a baseball to Glitter. America may not be the land of forgiveness, but it is still the land of opportunity." (Available on Rock and Roll: Gary Glitter's Greatest Hits)
12:19 - James Brown: "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, Pt. 1" (2:06) Zach: "For a country that's only 230 years old this year, America boasts an unprecedented number of musical styles to call its own: everything from blues and jazz to rock, country, soul, punk, hip-hop and electronica. But it isn't often - punk, hip-hop and electronica aside - when one gets to hear a purely American form of music in the making, virtually as it happens. James Brown's 1965 hit 'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' is one of those precious moments. It's clear from the opening blast of horns that this is different from 'Please, Please, Please,' from 'Think,' from virtually everything that had come before in Brown's already distinguished R&B career: this is a new kind of music in the making, a subtle infusion of jazz rhythm and groove into soulful grit, made all the more powerful by its simplicity. It may sound tentative in light of Mr. Dynamite's later work - songs like 'Get on the Good Foot' and 'Give It Up or Turnit a Loose' would move light years beyond the foundations established here - but 'Brand New Bag' will forever stand as a living document of the birth of Funk. 'Cold Sweat,' Bootsy Collins, P. Funk and a thousand hip-hop samples stood in the wings. A brand new bag, indeed." (Available on 20 All-Time Greatest Hits!)
14:25 - Cyndi Lauper: "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (3:50) Aaron Kahn: "Unquestionably Cyndi Lauper's most famous song, 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun' also represents a lot about the mentality of our fine nation. It is a track praising all that is youthful and innocent. 'My father yells: "whatcha wanna do with your life?" / "Oh, daddy, dear / you know you're still number one / but girls just wanna have fun."' Much like her bold statement that 'everybody bops,' Lauper knows that this is a universal message, not one specifically related to young ladies. We don't want to think about what the future may or may not hold. That's depressing. Right now, all we want is to enjoy the glories of being young. All American kids feel like this at some point or another, and it's a sentiment reflected in our youth-obsessed mass media and pop culture. Today this is what there is, and tomorrow it will be something different, but let's not worry about that right now... let's go have some fuh-un." (Available on She's So Unusual)
18:15 - Del tha Funkee Homosapien: "Del's Nightmare" (5:19) Not all Americans, however, get to live quite the same charmed life as Ms. Lauper. It's a brutal reality of American history that the Land of Equality isn't quite as equal as it wants us to think, and Zachhas chosen a track which serves as a particularly chilling reminder: "In a nation as haunted by the spectre of African American slavery as the United States, the question of racism will probably never truly be solved. Thus Del tha Funkee Homosapien's 'Del's Nightmare,' from his now out of print, online-only 1998 release Future Development, shocks even when, logically, it shouldn't. In unsparing, vitriolic language, Del opens the wounds of the black experience and shows how deep they remain, drawing troubling parallels between pre-Emancipation slavemasters and the modern-day whites in the halls of power, from the church to the recording industry. It's far from an easy listen; defensive types will probably even play the reverse-racism card upon hearing lyrics like, 'Now it's '96 and white people say, "Forget it / it's all in the past," and some even regret it / 'cause they think we'll set it / Now my mission's to get federal / so I can raise a black family without you devils.' But put yourself in the slaves' shoes for a moment, and maybe you'll understand where this rage comes from. After all, on the plantation fields, 'didn't nobody use the phrase, "It's all good" / Would you?'" (Available on Soulseek)
23:34 - Kanye West: "Jesus Walks" (3:13) It would be a mistake to attempt any summation of what America means without at least mentioning the massive resurgence of mainstream religion (read: Christianity) which has shaken our country over the last few years, sparking everything from the much-ballyhooed "Culture Wars" to one funky-ass Kanye West single.Meganaddresses this phenomenon, and why we might just want Jesus to walk with us after all: "Maybe it would be easier to just choose a Christian rock song, but this track by Kanye West epitomizes the current American interest in spirituality. There's both a true national need for something higher (Thanks a lot, George! I've been a doubting Catholic for 21 years, and you've brought me closer to the church more than anyone else could), as well as a political need. It certainly seems as if politicians have recognized this heightened piousness in the American people, but they never seem to realize that perhaps it's because of their actions that a lot more Americans feel like they need something else. Anyway...let's just say that if things keep going the way they are, I'll be in the club too, throwing my hands in the air and yelling 'Jesus Walks' right along with Kanye." (Available on The College Dropout)
26:47 - Lou Reed: "I'm So Free" (3:09) Even more fundamentally, an all-American mixtape would be truly remiss without an ode to that most American, most nebulous of values: freedom. Zachmakes a case for all Americans' right to freedom...even fuckin' faggot junkies like Lou Reed: "'Freedom' is one of those words that gets bandied around a lot in quasi-political discussions about America. But what does 'freedom' really mean? For many, it's freedom of (or from) religion. For others, it's the freedom to bear arms. And for Lou Reed circa 1972, it was the freedom to mainline heroin, wear Kabuki makeup, make out with David Bowie, and fall in love with transvestites named Rachel. As far as I'm concerned, those freedoms are just as important as any of the above...and, 'I'm So Free' has the added bonus of being a paean to independence that would make a room full of NRA members blush." (Available on Transformer)
29:56 - Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes: "Great White Buffalo" (5:00) Zach: "What's more American than a rock'n'roller who shoots guns, votes Republican and brings kids onstage to read the Pledge of Allegiance? Simple: a rock'n'roller who does all of those things, and writes songs about the persecution of the Native Americans and the endangerment of the American bison. Love him or hate him, the Motor City Madman was rapidly approaching his peak when he wrote 'Great White Buffalo' in 1974 - it still stands as one of his all-time greatest riffs, and it's not like there aren't plenty to choose from. Besides, now that the Nuge is better known for his conservative punditry than for his wango-tango guitar rock, this is probably the last time we'll ever get to hear him complain about white people." (Available on Decades of Destruction)
34:56 - Baby Washington: "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" (3:09) Megan: "It seems to be an entirely American trait to be brokenhearted. A good deal of old movies show Americans mourning lost love while staring out of windows, lying on beds, writing wistful journal entries, or standing outside of an ex's house with a boombox. But there's this weird ideal that other countries are far less despondent than we are; Italians are constantly stabbing each other over a broken heart, the English have a stiff drink and a talent for sublimation, and of course, the French were just using you for money and cigarettes, you silly bitch. But America? We're pussies. We are the home of Bright Eyes, after all." (Available on Atlantic Unearthed: Soul Sisters)
38:05 - Bob Dylan: "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" (6:32) Zach: "From his early days as an acoustic-toting folkie in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan was one of those rarest of artists: a songwriter and interpreter who tapped directly into the mainline of the American experience, joining those hallowed ranks inhabited by the likes of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, Muddy Waters and Blind Willie McTell. By the time of 1965's Bringing It All Back Home, however, he was coloring his folk art with more than a dash of modernist irony, and so 'Bob Dylan's 115th Dream' becomes a sort of surreal odyssey through the fun-house mirror image of America. Referencing everything from the Mayflower to Moby Dick, Dylan stumbles haplessly between confrontations with authority figures, the quintessential American outsider embodied as a sort of drug-addled version of Chaplin's put-upon Tramp. And when the nightmare is over, he runs into Christopher Columbus himself - a historical figure for whom he has only two words: 'Good Luck.'" (Available on Bringing It All Back Home)
Final Runtime: 44:37
Side B
0:05 - Dropkick Murphys: "The New American Way" (3:32) Even 30 years after the fact, debates still rage over whether punk rock originated in America, or across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom. Surely we all have our opinons; but what can't be denied is that, for a while at least, punk was the most effective means for our nation's youth to express another musical form which we may or may not have invented: the message song.Aarongives us one of the more recent examples of American protest punk, via a 2001 track by the Dropkick Murphys: "A lot of us are turning around day after day and wondering what is happening to our country, and I think most of realize that the only hope for change is in the youth. Yet, as Boston Celt-Punk rockers point out in 'The New American Way,' the youth has been corrupted by the system, and put into a state of complacency. 'I know I'll win my battles,' sings vocalist Al Barr, 'But I'm afraid we'll lose the war.' Indeed, it seems that time is running out." (Available on Sing Loud, Sing Proud)
3:37 - Fischerspooner: "Emerge" (4:48) Megan: "Look at the vapidity of American culture at the moment: Queen Paris sits on her throne of tabloids and extensions, more people know about Tom Cruise's recent eccentricities than know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the phrase, 'I'm Rick James, Bitch!' has become a form of meaningful conversation. Hello America! And Fischerspooner's 'Emerge' captures that exact feeling. It's a catchy song which reminds all of us that we can just sit in the tediousness of our current existence; there is no need to be more than nothing anymore. In fact, the most acceptable thing you can be today, is nothing. Thanks a lot, Paris." (Available on #1)
8:25 - Joni Mitchell: "Carey" (3:04) David Koenig: "If America were a person, he would obviously be male, and he would carry an awesome cane. Joni Mitchell would fall under his charming spell, but she could never date him because he wouldn't know how to change his values in order to accommodate hers. Or maybe he wouldn't change his values for the simple reason that they are way better than Joni Mitchell's values. Joni would wonder. She would talk about him to her boyfriend, and the boyfriend would get jealous. She would never cheat with America, but she'd like to think that she could if she wanted to. She'd be wrong. America, you're a mean old daddy but you're out of sight." (Available on Blue)
11:29 - The White Stripes: "The Hardest Button to Button" (3:32) One of Jack White's many uneasy portraits of domestic life in the middle-of-the-road Midwest, the family with "a little place to fight now" depicted in "The Hardest Button to Button" is about as American as they come. But, saysMegan, that's not the only reason why we've chosen this song to represent the USA: "The best reason to include this? Just listen to how Jack White says 'button.' If there is any other true, musical encapsulation of the Southeastern Michigan accent it's that 'button.' And if that doesn't say America to you, then go back to the East Coast, you snob." (Available on Elephant)
15:01 - The Monks: "Monk Time" (2:46) Zach: "Five guys - named Dave, Gary, Larry, Eddie and Roger - meet in the service, while stationed in Germany at the height of the Cold War. They start a band, and call themselves the Monks. They shave the tops of their heads, wear actual monk's robes onstage, and write primitive songs meant to go down rough and ready for American and German audiences alike. Dave plucks on an electric banjo, and Gary shouts things like 'We don't like the Army, what Army, who cares what Army!' and 'We don't like the atomic bomb!' Forget about pretenders to the throne like Grand Funk, Bob Seger and anybody who ever named themselves after a city or state; the Monks are an American Band. After all, not even Ted Nugent ever defended his country in the military." (Available on Black Monk Time)
17:47 - Quintron: "Place Unknown" (3:33) It's tough to talk about America without at least touching on the ideal of the frontier, the vision of Americans as restless, fearless explorers eager to exercize their manifest destiny. And, says Megan, what better way to explore the American wanderlust than with a kickass organ solo by New Orleans' Mr. Quintron?: "America used to be the New World. Even after Columbus landed, it wasn't really until Lewis and Clark started traveling around with that Sacagawea Bitch that anyone had a real, rational idea of what composed all of our vast wonderland. And, while Quintron's fascination with unknown places devolves into some blonde pussy and tits, his song still covers that bold American fascination with travel. He takes us to space, he takes us around the world, and hey, he totally shares that pussy with us. Remember, ask not what pussy your country can share with you, but what pussy you can share with your country." (Available on Are You Ready for an Organ Solo?)
21:20 - Pete Seeger: "Solidarity Forever" (2:54) In most visions of the essential American character, it's the bootstrap-pulling, Protestant work ethic-upholding, ruggedly individualistic archetype that wins out. But let's not forget that some of our country's worst calamities - like, say, the Great Depression - were overcome not by bootstraps, but by social reforms, fair employment, and yes, government aid. And surely, the common man's struggle for decent labor must be counted amongst the most catastrophic, perpetual battles in American history. Better Red than dead, says Aaron: "In this rendition of the classic union anthem, we listen as Seeger takes the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic and sets it to Ralph Chaplin's 1915 words praising the might of the oppressed and downtrodden. This is my America. It is a classic American theme, taken from the warmongering establishment (it is the 'Battle Hymn,' after all), and placed into the hands of the masses, who then use it as a means to speak out against the system that keeps them poor and weak. It is a cry against the rich ('It is we who plowed the prairies / built the cities where they trade!'), but also a proclamation that individually, the worker is nothing, and only together can they have a hope of creating a better nation ('Solidarity forever / for the Union makes us strong'). That is what patriotism should mean: making a better country from a system that is inherently flawed. 'We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.'" (Available on If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope & Struggle)
24:14 - John Cougar Mellencamp: "Jack & Diane" (4:16) Still, let's be honest with ourselves: if you were gonna ask the man on the street what America meant to him, it's highly unlikely that "dialectical materialism" would be the first words to cross his lips. Instead, most Americans prefer to consecrate their national heritage with the simple pleasures of life: things like hot dogs, apple pie, and John Cougar Mellencamp. Abby Stotzmakes the case: "Just a little ditty about two American kids doin' the best they can, 'Jack & Diane' captures many of the great things about the Midwest, the geographic heart of America. With its references to sucking on the chili dogs outside the Tasty Freeze, and of course Jack being the football star, 'Jack & Diane' covers all that is good about the small town American ideal. Plus, the music is damned catchy. This chunk of modern Americana lives in all our musical memories, whether we'd like to admit it now or not." (Available on American Fool)
28:30 - Talking Heads: "Don't Worry About the Government" (3:01) It's one of the great paradoxes of the American idiom: we're a country, perhaps the first in recent history, formed in an act of dissent against our rulers; yet give us a wartime president or a widespread call for patriotism, and instantly we become the most pliable, naive and trusting folks you're ever likely to know. It's happened before and it will happen again; and now, Zachexamines how a song written by a bug-eyed art student turned art punk thirty years ago can end up seeming almost prophetic: "When David Byrne first sang 'Don't Worry About the Government' in 1977, one had to wonder just how seriously he meant for us to take it. After all, Richard Nixon's post-Watergate disgrace and resignation was only three years old at that point; and the fast-paced dismissals of Gerald Ford and, not long afterwards, Jimmy Carter showed just how much the American people were worrying about the government. In 2006, however, the song is more relevant than ever. We're now two years into the second disastrous term by George W. Bush, and as a nation, we're still more concerned with praising the menial comforts of our homes and workplaces than rising up and letting our anger been heard; still blissfully ignorant of the world beyond our highway exits. And when Byrne beams that 'some civil servants are just like my loved ones,' it makes me think of the old line that W. was the candidate you'd 'rather have a beer with.' People, the war in Iraq is three years old. Can we please start worrying about the government now?" (Available on Talking Heads: 77)
31:31 - Rogue Wave: "Are You on My Side" (4:18) Perhaps, though, the reason why this nation seems so silent isn't because it doesn't want to speak. Perhaps it's just because our voices are too divided to truly be heard. Meganlooks at the sad truth of America's current separation along political borders, with a little help from San Francisco's Zach Rogue: "Rogue Wave's 'Are You on My Side' captures the feeling of being caught in the middle of an argument. The lyrics are filled with non-sequiturs (the parts which are easy for the listener to immediately discern), leaving one with only the titular question: 'are you on my side?' The whole concept of the song is much what it feels like to be in America at the moment; no matter which side of the argument (liberal, conservative, and everything between and far away), it seems as if no one is telling the complete truth. And the citizens caught in between have no choice but to answer that other fateful question, 'Red or Blue?'" (Available on Descended Like Vultures)
35:48 - Michael Jackson: "Man in the Mirror" (5:19) But hey, don't despair! We're not going the way of the Roman Empire quite yet...and if we believe in ourselves, saysDavid, it's a fate we might just be able to avoid entirely: "America's grand, blustery promise is not of a place where everyone is perfectly happy. It is of a place where your happiness depends largely on your contribution, as opposed to largely on chance. We are nowhere near that impossible dream, obviously, but that doesn't make the dream any less ingenious. And we are getting closer in the long term, god damn it. In this utopia, there would be a consistent relationship between the amount you shape yourself and the amount that the world around you responds. America may still ignore a lot of personal growth, but I like to think that we're doing pretty well. So if you want to be happy and you live in the States, then accept Michael Jackson as your role model and 'make that change!' I know, not very credible, but you can take the message seriously because MJ didn't actually write it. And even if you're unable to buy this kind of bright-eyed Ellis Isle talk, how patriotic is that key change at the end?" (Available on Bad)
41:07 - KISS: "The Star Spangled Banner" (2:37) Finally, we end our celebration - and chastisal - of everything American with a rendition of our National Anthem, by quite possibly the most American band ever: KISS! Take it away,Zach: "Aside from the obvious apple pie, there's probably nothing more quintessentially American than fireworks. And as anyone who's been to one of their concerts knows, KISS use a hell of a lot of fireworks. Besides that, they're also a band of hard-working immigrants - Gene Simmons came all the way from Israel, fer Chrissakes - who struggled their way to the top with nothing but a dream and a driving sense of entrepreneurship through rock'n'roll. So who better to send us off with the Star Spangled Banner itself, as arranged for two guitars, bass, drums...and yes, pyro? So everybody, put your hands on your hearts, remove your hats, and please rise for our National Anthem. LET'S ROCK!!!" (Available on Alive III)
I love EPs, even though there are so many reasons to hate them. EPs are generally overpriced CDs which contain only one good track. They rarely include rare songs that will never be released again (hellllllooooo box sets). A lot of recent EPs just seem to be remixes, too, and for the most part, I despise remixes of rock songs. Yet lately I've gotten two excellent EPs, which remind me of just how exciting a good EP can be. The first one was from Kanine Records' Professor Murder, and the second is the eerie night sounds of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Cursed Sleep.
While the title track, "Cursed Sleep" - from the upcoming Then the Letting Go - is an aching melodic sojourn into the fog of an October night that should steal the entire disc, it's the day of the dead skeleton rattle of second song "The Signifying Wolf" which builds LP excitement for this reviewer. The instruments of "Wolf" capture and entrap a listener faster than a camp of bloodthirsty Aztecs, while Billy aches with more bravado than Indiana Jones could ever dream of...until his inevitable descent into howling animal madness. "The Signifying Wolf" alone is worth that $6.98. And while the languid desert of closer "God's Small Song" doesn't have quite the same fire, it is a much-needed moment of relaxation, where the listener can put away that six shooter full of premium silver bullets and try to get their hands to stop shaking.
The three tracks of Cursed Sleep make it necessary to scramble around, looking for a calendar to mark September 19th in musical notes and stars in anticipation for the release of Then the Letting Go. And if September 19th is too long of a wait, Bonnie "Prince" Billy will be playing Stormy Records in Dearborn on the 18th. Give this EP a listen, and just see if you don't make it to the show.
featuring Cat Power, the Demolition Doll Rods and others At the New Center, Detroit - July 1, 2006
Generally speaking, I'm not much for the Fourth of July. There's the thorny issue of patriotism, for one, a pill I've found hard to swallow ever since my days as an 11-year-old Anglophile forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance before class. More to the point, though, even the purest, simplest, most ideologically neutral aspects of Independence Day just don't appeal to me much. Fireworks are mildly amusing, but nothing to lose sleep over. Grilled hot dogs are food to tolerate, rather than enjoy. And all that sun makes me burn something awful. I guess I'm just not cut out for these summer holidays.
There's one Fourth of July tradition, however, which brightens even my long and lackluster holiday weekends, year after year. It's Detroit's Comerica Tastefest: five awesome days at the beginning of every July when the New Center ropes itself off and turns into a big, sweaty, gluttonous rock'n'roll carnival. And folks, I mean that in the best possible way. Some of my all-time best musical - and culinary - experiences will be forever associated with Tastefest; from those two days in 2003 when I fell in love with Wilco and had my eardrums assaulted by the Dirtbombs, to the following summer, which marked my first encounter with the truly bizarre Mod rapper (yes, you read that right) esQuire. It's reached the point where I can hardly imagine a Fourth of July weekend without Tastefest. And after this year - which just might have marked my best Fourth of July weekend in history - even if I could, I wouldn't want to.
(Loretta spellbinds, lack of country hair notwithstanding - photo by Zach Hoskins)
The musical portion of this particular Saturday afternoon began at Tastefest's Pure Detroit stage, with a set by Loretta Lucas & The Larkspurs. This was a band (or singer-songwriter, whatever) who I'd been meaning to check out since about 2004 or 2005; but as these things tend to go when you're busy and broke, I kept missing my chances. So I came into the set with some pretty specific expectations, fuelled by two years' worth of teasing references to sublime country balladry in the local press, and not least by the images Ms. Lucas' name suggested: naive as it might seem, I was picturing a lot of billowing dresses and big country hair, something like a certain other Loretta, or at least Tracee Miller of Blanche.
What I got instead could better be described as a Jenny Lewis who actually is the girl next door; warm, melancholy and lovely indie Americana, more "countrified" than genuinely "country," and delivered with a voice as pure and crystal clear as a mountain spring. Of course, the other association that popped into my head was a cooler Sheryl Crow, but that had more to do with Lucas' breezy rockers and slight build than with any ghastly concessions to MOR. The Larkspurs, featuring Detroit rock mainstay Eugene Strobe on guitar, were tight and tasteful, always taking the backseat to Loretta's smooth vocals - and that's as it should be, because more than anything it's the vocals that make this band. Maybe it's just my love for a good cover tune, but for me the greatest moments in Lucas' set came when she laid aside her songwriter's hat and became the spellbinding interpreter she is; her torchy version of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Broke Down Girl" in particular left me breathless, and frankly left all of the original material in the dust.
None of which is to say that the originals weren't up to snuff - they were perfectly fine. It's just that the difference in songcraft between an up-and-comer like Lucas and a master like Sainte-Marie fell into sharp relief whenever the singer worked her magic on a borrowed tune. For whatever reason, the older songs just had that indefinable power which her self-penned numbers lacked; and if Loretta Lucas ever finds it in herself to write a song as great as "Broke Down Girl," then we will have something truly special on our hands. For now, though, the Larkspurs made for the perfect soundtrack for a drowsy Detroit afternoon, and that's plenty.
(Cat Power: she came to rock - photo by Megan Giddings)
After a somewhat listless, dehydrated walk along West Grand Boulevard - during which I took in entirely too little of Calvin Cooke's red-hot gospel pedal steel - it was on to the Main Stage, where I had been flabbergasted to discover Cat Power would be playing...with the Memphis Rhythm Band from January's The Greatest, no less! Like many music nerds with too much time on their hands, I'd been wondering how this performance would shape up: Cat Power isn't known for her stage presence, to say the least, and in fact is probably most renowned for storming offstage abruptly in fits which may or may not include tears. Not exactly a top contender for the main stage at an outdoor free festival, then.
Or at least, so you'd expect. Because in the end, it seems like the notoriously introverted singer-songwriter is having the last laugh, bounding onto the stage complete with 24-karat boxing glove bling to the ludicrous announcement of, "Now... Ladies and Gentlemen... The Greatest... Caaaaaaaat Poweeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!" Weirder still, she even seemed to be enjoying herself: looking tan and radiant (and, with her oversized sunglasses and fringe, a bit like a visitor from the pages of a 1965 Vogue), she essayed a few awkward dance moves, obviously geeked to be in front of a bunch of Southern soul masters. Not quite so geeked were the kids with haircuts in front of me, who leapt to their feet at the first sight of musicians on the stage only to sit down a few minutes later, obviously bored by the funky instrumental vamp which served as an introduction for Cat Power's sterling session band. It was their loss, because for my money these were the highlights of the show: while Ms. Marshall's stage mannerisms could be described as tentative at best - it felt like she was reaching for Diana Ross, only to come up with Gilda Radner as Patti Smith - her joy and enthusiasm was infectious, and her interplay with the band, right down to the backing singers, underlined the element of soulfulness in her music which isn't always obvious on, say, Moon Pix.
In fact, it wasn't until the music cooled off and the newly confident (and, according to her stage banter, sober) Cat Power reached for an acoustic guitar when I began to understand what the aforementioned kids in haircuts were going through. Admittedly, to me Cat Power is more of a mood than anything discrete, like songs or albums: I love the woman's voice, and like Loretta Lucas, when given a good cover (or, say, a whole album's worth) she can bring tears to your eyes. But ask me to name my favorite Cat Power song, and I'm drawing a blank. So there were no real highlights on my wish list as I sat there soaking up the music; I'd already heard all I needed to hear within the first five songs or so, just from the way Marshall's voice and the Memphis Rhythm Band's music lazily intertwined. In the end, I ducked out early and grabbed some dinner instead. I'm not sure if it's because Cat Power isn't cut out for outdoor concerts, or concerts in general, or whether, at least that day, I just wasn't cut out for Cat Power; but as beautiful as the music was, something about the show didn't succeed in holding my attention. Still, I can't say that I would pass up the chance to see her again - preferably in closer quarters, with air conditioning - and reservations aside, it was a real pleasure for me to hear in person one of the most gorgeous, moving, and, yes, soulful voices in music today.
(Margaret Doll Rod shows off her bikini wax - photo by Megan Giddings)
You might notice, in my description of these events, a theme of lethargy; looking back and writing about the shows I saw, it occurs to me that I felt almost half-asleep for at least the first two hours of Tastefest. There's a simple explanation for that: it was fucking hot, and all of that sitting and standing and walking in the July sun took its toll on me fast. My condition wasn't helped by the fact that every band I happened to see was of the lazy, wistful summer afternoon variety - certainly no one with the balls to rock me out of my heat-induced stupor. Until, that is, the Demolition Doll Rods took the Park Stage. This band, a mainstay in Detroit's dirty rock scene since way before I have any authority to talk about, has balls like you wouldn't believe, and in more ways than one: on the one hand, their shit-hot raunch 'n' roll is the most reasonable facsimile of classic Stooges you're ever likely to find on a modern concert stage, and on the other, they wear so little clothing that guitarist Danny Doll Rod's actual balls are pretty much clearly visible through his gold lame bikini briefs.
(Danny Doll Rod shows off his bikini wax - photo by Megan Giddings)
It was in the presence of the Doll Rods - and, I'll admit, a smoothie upwards of three feet in height - that what was intended to be a stopgap between dinner and the Main Stage headlining set by Ray Davies turned into a sweaty, revitalizing full-set stay. I told myself I'd leave after the first few songs, but by the time they finished opener "Get It On," let's face it, I was hooked; and by the time they kicked out "On the Way to School," from their recently-released album There is a Difference, my ass was shaking too much for me to care whether the ghost of Gram Fucking Parsons himself was playing across the street at the Main Stage. It's tough to pin down exactly what makes the Demolition Doll Rods so goddamn good; it certainly isn't their chops, which, despite the presence of comely and marginally more competent new drummer Tia, remain gloriously unwieldy. My best guess, I'm afraid, is going to be one of those nebulous explanations critics like to pull out of their ass whenever they're at a loss for rational words: it's their spirit, their soul.
Whether Margaret Doll Rod is gyrating wildly during the guitar solos, paying little heed either to her surroundings or to the physics which threaten to separate her top from her breasts, or delivering a ridiculously campy pro-sex sermon to introduce a cover of Richard & The Young Lions' "Open Up Your Door," or just linking arms with her bandmates to belt out a childish a capella version of "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," she fucking means it, and you can bet that the other Doll Rods do too. Their live show convinces even when it would look worst on paper - especially at those moments. And in the end, it's all just blissful, visceral movement and response. It's little wonder they deal so much in evangelical pastiche; if there's ever been a band to capture the out-of-body ecstasy of a religious experience, and transport it deliciously into the realm of secularism, sensuality and sin, the Demolition Doll Rods are it. And by god, I love 'em for it.
(Ko Ko Louise of the Hard Lessons - photo by Megan Giddings)
After the energizing - but exhausting - effect of the Doll Rods' set, I was torn. On the one hand, I had just seen a rock show which, while a bit on the short side, would have left me perfectly satisfied to just call it a day. But on the other hand, next up on the Park Stage were headliners the Hard Lessons...and if you've been reading this site for long enough, you should already know that I consider them to be pretty much the best live act around. So I stayed, in spite of a lengthy delay due to equipment failures, and I wasn't disappointed. Ko Ko and the Anvil took the stage first with the usual pulsing intro music, and then there was Augie, climbing the nearest available speaker stack and performing an impromptu sparkler dance before picking up his guitar and getting down to business.
(Augie gets down to business - photo by Megan Giddings)
The ensuing few songs (I only stayed for twenty minutes or so, having seen the Hard Lessons' set so many times I could basically perform it by rote in my own living room) roared to life out of Danny Doll Rod's borrowed amp, as thrilling and precision-perfect as Michigan audiences have come to expect. While my enthusiasm for the Hard Lessons' songwriting isn't always boundless - their recent reliance on ballads and what I like to call their "MySpace songs" is beginning to trouble me, truth be told - seeing them in person, mere feet away from the three-headed spitfire of energy, will make any doubt in the material just disappear in the face of near-peerless performance. There are plenty of local bands, in Detroit more so than most towns, but the Hard Lessons have Star Power; much of it concentrated around Augie, whose whirlwind stage antics, jagged-edged guitar heroics and curtain of black hair even call to mind a certain other Detroit rock star we could name.
It's a comparison worth making, simply because like it or not, there hasn't been a band with this much charisma and style in Detroit since Jackie White packed his peppermint-striped bags for Tennessee. And even the most dyed in the wool fans of grassroots homeliness have to admit, it's nice having at least a few rock stars around here for a change. The beauty of the Demolition Doll Rods, after all, is that they're just too wild, too uncensored, too frighteningly libidinous to really hit it big; they're an amazing rock'n'roll band, but the day they're seen on MTV between Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco is a long time coming to say the least. But the Hard Lessons...who knows? I'll stop there, not being in the business of making career predictions; suffice to say that whether or not the Hard Lessons ever do make it big, their set at Tastefest certainly proved that they have what it takes.
In the end, I'm embarrassed to say, I walked away from Tastefest without hearing any more from Ray Davies but his closing renditions of "Lola" and "You Really Got Me" - which, I'm even more embarrassed to say, are probably the two songs I most wanted to hear from him anyway. Yes, that's right, I was less than a block away from the man who wrote "Waterloo Sunset," and I opted instead to watch some local bands do the same old thing I've seen them do a thousand times, from the Magic Stick to the Blind Pig to the East Quad Music Co-op. But the thing is, my favorite part of Comerica Tastefest has never been the big names. It's the exemplary way this event showcases homegrown talent, from the dozens of local restaurants hawking their wares to the local bands who pack the smaller stages night after night. So maybe I missed the frontman and founder of the Kinks, and one of the greatest pop songwriters of all time; fact is, skipping the Hard Lessons for him would have been a little like opting to see Hoagy Carmichael in 1964, instead of the Kinks in their prime. No disrespect to Ray (or Hoagy), but his time is past. The future of Detroit's music, from promising upstarts like Loretta Lucas to vintage standbys like the Doll Rods, beckons. And if I do say so myself, it tastes pretty damned good.
The trouble with talking about a discrete movement in pop music is that there's only so much one can say; and more often than not, what one can say is probably a woeful generalization. Take, for example, Andy Cabic of Vetiver. Willfully nebulous though it may be, there's probably no current movement more discrete than the quote-unquote "freak folk" Cabic and his more famous friend, Devendra Banhart, have been slowly and steadily bringing to the indie limelight since 2002 or so. It can be traced to just two record labels (first Michael Gira's Young God Records, and now Cabic's and Banhart's own Gnomonsong imprint) and a small handful of musical influences: British folk, pre-glam Marc Bolan, the Incredible String Band. But while it would be easy enough to begin this review simply by rattling off Cabic's various indie folk credentials, or perhaps engaging in a side-by-side beard comparison with Devendra, that wouldn't give much of an idea about To Find Me Gone as an album, now would it?
So instead, I'll just say that To Find Me Gone - the second full-length by Vetiver, and the first since they became almost a household (or at least dorm room) name - is both exactly what you might expect from the movement of its origin, and a hell of a lot different. The acoustic, spidery instrumentation and Eastern textures of latter-day freak-folk albums like Cripple Crow and Feathers are all present and accounted for; in this case as early as opening track "Been So Long," which blooms from a simple pattern of tamboura drone, ethereal backing vocals and deliberate hand percussion like a time-lapsed flower. What's missing - or more neutrally, the area where Cabic makes his departure from form most felt - is the sprawling, communal feel of those aforementioned records and others. Freak-folk, in general, tends to put equal emphasis on both sides of the hyphen, breeding music which sounds casual, recreational, almost incidental in its creation. Tin Pan Alley, it ain't. But with his latest Vetiver release, Cabic is branching out into a new kind of songwriting, one which sounds at least as much at home in the studio as on the festival stage. In short, he's turning into a bit of a - gulp - professional.
Which, by the way, is not in the least meant as a slight. If Banhart will always have the edge on his frequent musical partner in terms of pure wild-eyed oddness, then Cabic is the McCartney to his Lennon in the best possible way: he inhabits the same musical space, sharing influences and backgrounds as well as the occasional chord-change trick, but his quirks are less thorny, more tempered, and ultimately, a lot more accessible. There's no Bolanesque mewling to be found on this disc (except that which is contributed by Devendra himself, on closing duet "Down at El Rio"); instead, Cabic's voice is as pleasing and smooth as Egyptian cotton, coming off like a blissed-out Elliott Smith on the hushed Americana prowl "You May Be Blue" and like a more mannered Ryan Adams on the gently cascading "I Know No Pardon." He even finds the time to contribute what could arguably be freak-folk's most potentially marketable single yet: a warm, playful, and just the slightest bit askew love song called "Idle Ties." And with its wispy vocals and lightly plucked banjo, "Red Light Girls" sounds a lot closer to that friendlier, prettier face of indie folk, Sufjan Stevens, than anything Gnomonsong has released yet...that is, until about the four-and-a-half minute mark, when the song explodes into a squall of fuzzed-out Lou Reed guitar noodling and double-time drums.
Indeed, it's at that precise moment when one realizes just how bizarre this album could have been; and maybe, just maybe, regrets that Cabic doesn't seem to share as much of Banhart's recklessly adventurous spirit as their constant associations suggest. As beautiful as To Find Me Gone can be - and, more often than not, it's transcendantly so - it can still look a little bland when stacked up against the strengths of its genre. After all, maybe there's more measurable musical songcraft in Vetiver's country rocking "Won't Be Me" than in Cripple Crow's Portuguese language oddity "Pensando Enti," but while the latter sparkles with otherworldly, eccentric beauty, the former's charms are as obvious and down-to-earth as its origins: namely American roots music, as filtered through the sun-kissed lens of California. Still, that's movement-based criticism for you; and if To Find Me Gone strikes you as both too polished to pass for freak-folk and not twangy enough to file under alt-country, then there's always the option of enjoying the record purely on its own merits. They exist, and they're radiant.
Hey y'all, who else remembers Whirlwind Heat's Flamingo Honey EP (or mini-album, depending on whose word you take) from 2004? The record consisted of ten one-minute songs. There were some which you were relieved lasted for only a minute, some which made you shake your fist and yell at the clouds for just two more minutes, and some that probably made you think, "man, if only Liars had done this song instead." Well, for those of you who are thoroughly nodding and agreeing with this nostalgic trip down memory lane, then you'd best run to the record store and buy the debut EP by Professor Murder, Professor Murder Rides the Subway.
Professor Murder... is a dancefloor flurry that could inspire nuns to make rosaries out of minature cowbells, force that four-eyed accountant down the hall to electric slide, and inspire a groove session of beer bottles, trash cans, and subway tokens. The EP begins with the Pitchfork-adored "Champion," and while I make it a habit to roll my eyes at almost everything that unfortunate magazine snarks from on high (I like snarkiness a lot, but does anyone truly like hyper-literate snarkiness dealt from the lost temples of music snobbery? You tell me.), I have to agree with their take on the opening track, only without all of the requisite complaints. "Champion" is the indie dance floor track of 2006. Any club that fancies itself a hipster hangout will play Champion. And if not, they are pussies.
But wait, wait, wait, don't turn off Professor Murder just yet. Just listen to "Mountain," which begins to take the listener straight toward a dancefloor freak-out, but instead builds into a darlingly mindness chant. "Mountain" is the biggest tease of a song I've heard in a long time; we should be getting something loud and raucous, but instead they break us down with a robot voice from the school of Beck Hansen, and throw us for a loop with how damn melodic the whole shebang is. Yes, darlings, I did just say "shebang." And I should be as furious as a kid whose mother keeps promising ice cream with extra whipped cream for doing the chores after listening to "Mountain," yet Professor Murder's casual manipulation of the listener makes the record more exciting. I want to listen to them even more for denying my expectations.
While "Pedigree" - with its whopping 22-second running length - as well as "Cameron's New Color (Pt. 3)" and "Free Stress Test" aren't as completely exciting as "Champion" or "Mountain," they are still immensely catchy and invigorating songs. It's like going back to the good old days of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, when all of the EPs were blowing people's minds and they were the trendiest kids on the block. Professor Murder deserves all of that critical acclaim as well (and hopefully, for once, they'll be able to dodge the inevitable indie tsunami of backlash); they've made an EP which dives deep into some of the trendiest sounds of the beginning of this decade and comes up with a treasure chest full of diamond cowbells. Welcome to the surface, Professor Murder. Long may you rock.
I have compiled a list of several prerequisites for nautical-themed rock. Number one: it should either sound like the ocean, the shore, the wind, or the creaks of a boat. This is hard to do without getting all spiritual and New Age, but it's still a requisite. Two: it should be able to catch the mood of pirates. While Johnny Depp is currently the king of pirates, one of my housemates put it correctly when he referred to Tom Waits as "pirate rock." But I'm going to one-up him and refer to Tom Waits as the King of Pirate Rock. Long may he and Mr. Depp reign. Three: the songs could deal with a compelling nautical theme. Split Enz's "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" is so good simply because it does capture that wild childish urge to escape from all troubles and just head to the open, shimmering sea. And number four: the song is explicitly about drinking rum and having a parrot sit on your shoulder. Yo-ho-ho.
So, does the clearly nautically inclined White Whale fit into my requirements of "Nautical or Pirate Rock?" No. But is that an unfortunate thing? Not really. The lyrics are there. The name is there. But at the same time, never should a band be pigeonholed into such a singular genre. Really, does the world need another Decemberists? Helllllllllll no. And so, the White Whale have more in common with what would happen if some of the members of the Arcade Fire were thrown onto a desolate rowboat. Their music rings with the echoes of shadows, wind, and grit as they battle both the metaphysical waves of loneliness and the true madness of the sea.
Granted, it's nowhere near as emotionally compelling as the aforementioned Arcade Fire's stunning Funeral. But before ye abandon all hope (sorry, I couldn't resist at least one line of pirate talk), listen to "I Love Lovely Chinese Girl." A song which should be utterly trite, with its Disney-fied idea of Eastern music at the beginning, somehow rises above my initial eye roll to become an interesting tale of love broiled within a slow-moving dirge. I'm not going to say it's not stereotypical at all, but the song is arranged in such a way as to minimize a good deal of the annoyance I should be feeling. Trust me, though, while "I Love Lovely Chinese Girl" is good, it's nowhere near the Dump-like beauty (indie group, not landfill) of the gentle "Fidget and Fudge." "Fidget and Fudge" is a piece of musical stained glass; it shines darkly and gleams darkly beneath its layers of gloss and swirls of shimmer. And if you won't believe me on that, then fine. Go for the best track on the album, closer "One Prayer," which pulls, swirls, and pummels a listener into giving White Whale the chance they so greatly deserve. And yes, that is a foghorn you are hearing underneath that indie rock.
So go to the store, put on your captain's hat, shine your boots, and bring a heart ready to slowly crack and wilt like leaves hitting the end of September. Like the sea, WWI is an album of constant change...one which will either wrap the listener into a wild love affair, or repel them with the force of a fifty-foot squid.
The Legend of the Wu-Tang: The Videos (BMG Heritage)
It's a good time to be a music video fan with a DVD player. Seems like every time I look around, there's a new video compilation to snatch, and for kids like me who have an ample amount of grainy little MPEGs on their computers, usually encoded by god knows who and probably obtained from a junk server of dubious legality, it's nice to upgrade. The present is also a wise time to release a DVD of definitive Wu-Tang Clan videos: ODB's death has put the cap on the Clan's lineup, RZA just wrote a bestselling book about "the philosophy of the Clan" or some nonsense, and the Wu Wear clothing line is decreasing rapidly in popularity. Strike while the iron is hot, or at least while the market exists, anyway.
But even pushing those things aside, the Wu-Tang Clan videos are worth being released of their own merit: they're fun, quirky, important, and above all else, very entertaining. These videos did, after all, catch the public's attention and contributed heavily to the Clan's booming popularity back in the early '90s. And if you see them as an extension of the members' imaginations, as snapshots of where they were at any particular point in their careers, then watching them is an even more crucial step in fully scoping the Clan's artistic ethos.
The videos are presented in chronological order, and are probably best watched that way: Wu-Tang's four albums have fairly representative videos, and plenty of them. 14 videos for four LPs is a pretty hefty number, after all. Meanwhile, the individual videos themselves stretch in appeal from gritty street scenes to warped, imaginative fantasy scenarios. We're talking about the rap group who refer to themselves as "the killer bees" and reference shlocky kung fu flicks, after all: the imagination of the Clan is a skewed one. The last music video disc I reviewed was the Sugarcubes' video set, which had some pretty weird stuff crammed into its grooves as well. But the Wu-Tang clan might have an edge on them with the bizarre happenings in these videos. A violin gets thrown down a stairwell and explodes. The Wu-Tang Clan goes back in time. A swarm of killer bees attacks downtown New York. You get the picture.
Legend of the Wu-Tang begins with the fairly low-budget street epics of 36 Chambers, the Wu's debut album. These are pretty standard, although the huge posse element of the music, and thus the videos, was pretty unheard of in 1993. The shift from this dark grit to the overblown indulgence of 1997's Wu-Tang Forever is by far the steepest transition on display here. The Clan goes from grainy, burnt-out facades in the projects to montages of the members rapping for huge crowds of white kids and sitting around in furs, while archetypal video-girls make eyes at them in posh limos. Luckily, this only lasts for a couple of videos, until "Triumph," the third single from Forever, kickstarts the group's tastes for bizarre kids-on-a-playground scenarios and special effects on a budget. It was even directed by action/comedy somebody Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, X-Men: The Last Stand, and perhaps most strangely, producer of shlocky 2005 slasher Santa's Slay. Seriously, look it up.)
The most entertaining video on the disc, and certainly my favorite, might be "Gravel Pit." This inspired video's premise is that the Clan step into a time traveling elevator and go back into the Stone Age, where they encounter dinosaurs, flash prehistoric bling...and fight ninjas. Think The Flintstones meets King Hu meets Jurassic Park. It's the second in a sort of trilogy of music videos from the 2000 album The W, the first part being a trip back to the flashy, break-dancing '80s, and the end being a sort of thugged-out club montage.
On the technical side, this DVD's image quality could probably be a little better; still, it's decent. Those early videos were grainy to begin with, but I'm usually expecting a little more detail out of my DVD transfers. The extras are somewhat lackluster, but ample. You get a documentary from '94, half of which is rather uninteresting live footage of an early concert, the other bits being members of the Clan talking about their craft. The alternative edit of the "Method Man" video isn't essential stuff, but it's alright, and the last video to feature ODB, Masta Killa's "Old Man," is a nice bonus. In addition, the "Careful" video was an Internet exclusive until now, and the videos are mostly unedited, so that's always a plus.
I have to say that I'm kind of depressed that there will be no more Wu-Tang Clan albums in the future - plenty of side project stuff, I'm sure, but the quality tends to decrease for most of those. These videos, if anything, will show you how great the Wu were back in their heyday, and how they mostly kept true to their musical roots - and, perhaps more importantly, to their imaginations.
During his hour-long conversation with the Modern Pea Pod, Mick Collins brought up the weather. And who could blame him? We're boring people. But when he mentioned Michigan's infamously volatile atmosphere, something about his choice of words was telling. "I like the constant change," Collins said. And at least mentally, my reply was, "No shit." After all, if anyone knows about "constant change," it's Collins: the man whose prodigious gifts when it comes to side project juggling are as well-known as his bands' lightning-fast lineup changes; who practically midwifed the entity known as Detroit garage with his legendary late '80s band the Gories before leaving the fledgling scene in the dust, forging forward with one loud'n'dirty art-punk experiment after another while producing albums by everyone from the Demolition Doll Rods to the Black Godfather himself, Andre Williams.
His most famous musical achievement yet, and probably his most fully-formed, ended up being the Dirtbombs: a band whose rise to cult fame, ironically enough, came at the same time as the new generation of Motor City bands for whom the Gories had been a crucial inspiration. Cynics, then, might say that Mick Collins owes his post-2001 status to Jack White...but if you ask me, the reverse is true. In any case, it was my distinct pleasure to sit down for an interview with Mick Collins, presented here in its entirety - minus the weather chat, anyway.
Modern Pea Pod: So my first question is just out of personal interest: when is the next Dirtbombs record going to come out?
Mick Collins: Not this year. This year it's gonna be all singles - we've got to get an LP's worth of singles out before August. (laughs) Because they've gotta be recorded and out before we do any actual shows. These days it's so easy to get music that recordings are put out to support the tour, rather than the other way around, the way it used to be. With peer-to-peer and everything, music is so easy to hear, so a record is just another piece of merch. But yeah, this year it's all singles, maybe an EP...I'm not planning on doing another LP until next year.
MPP: The Dirtbombs have always put out a lot of singles. Now I know you guys are all collectors; does that have anything to do with all the 7" releases, is it like an incentive for people who collect vinyl?
MC: I think it actually has a lot more to do with my having a short attention span. I probably buy more LPs than I do singles, but when it comes to listening to new bands, I have an attention span of about 30 minutes. It doesn't matter how good it is; after 30 minutes, I'm like, "I'm done." (laughs) And our singles come out in different countries all over the world; the latest batch has records from Canada, Spain, Brazil and Serbia. And the singles on our first comp [2005's If You Don't Already Have a Look], one of them came out in an edition of 300. So there was a point when no one person could own every Dirtbombs single...and if you did, I'd probably be a little scared. (laughs)
Anyway, we're all big record collectors, sure, but the rest of aren't like the super freak Ben [Blackwell] is. [laughs] He's not buying a 45 for $10 because of the music; his 45s are getting to the point where it's like, that's just collector scum stuff, why even bother?
MPP: So what about these new records? Are we talking covers or originals?
MC: Like every time, it's gonna be a little bit of both. I don't know what cover songs we're doing just yet...but the five songs I've been working on are all originals. I know we're gonna do "Sherlock Holmes" by Sparks for an In the Red single. We jokingly talked about covering that song for years, and now that In the Red is putting out the new album by Sparks, I thought that would be the perfect opportunity. So we're doing "Sherlock Holmes" and "Nothing to Do," but nobody knows how to play "Nothing to Do" yet! It's a pretty tough song.
(The Dirtbombs, 2001 model: ready for the limelight.)
MPP: Now, one thing that's always in the back of my mind about the Dirtbombs is it was never really meant to be your main thing. You've always juggled a ton of side projects, and this one was maybe even less major than some others. So what changed, how did this band become the focus?
MC: Well, we got famous in England and we had to keep touring. I had to put my other projects on the back burner for a while; suddenly we had to take time off from everything else. That's one reason why we're not touring much this year, because we've all got other stuff going on. We just want to cut some singles and concentrate on the rest of our lives.
MPP: Would you say the Dirtbombs became "full-time" around the time of Ultraglide in Black?
MC: Yeah. They picked up on Ultraglide along with every other record by a Detroit band in 2001, so we all trooped out there and went. And we've been touring pretty much constantly ever since. We actually had a tour that started on October 17, 2003 and ended October 24, 2004...more than a year! We went to Europe twice during that time. We don't tour like that anymore. Or at least, I don't tour like that anymore.
MPP: And the other thing about the Dirtbombs, at least according to your liner notes on the single records, is that you've got a definite end for the band in mind. Is this something you're serious about?
MC: Oh, absolutely. It always was finite; it's just that nobody ever paid attention when I said it. I've always said, the Dirtbombs have a beginning, middle and end. It doesn't matter how famous or not famous we are before we reach this thing - at some point, I'm gonna be there, and I'm gonna be done with this idea, this concept, this way of making music.
MPP: What's the concept?
MC:[pauses] Well, I don't really have an answer ready, because I don't think anybody's ever asked me that before. Basically, it's just to see how many different kinds of music I could make with that lineup: two drummers, a bass, a fuzz pedal and a guitar. I made a list of the stuff to do with it, and that's what I've been going by since 1992. We got sidetracked once, actually; I moved things around. Ultraglide was supposed to be the fourth album, not the second one, but there was a song I wanted to cover so bad that I had to finish it before anybody else did. On an artistic level, personally, I think it was a bad move. But I did it, and it's done.
MPP: So the Dirtbombs is like Star Wars?
MC:[laughs] I'm getting that more than I used to, now that people realize I was being really serious about it. Now people are astonished. Basically I think they thought I was making it up. I mean most bands are not done like that, most are just guys who get together and jam into existence. I actually have a spec sheet that I made in June of 1992, and I think that's what offends people more than anything else. [laughs] It's like going for ISO certification or something - that's pretty much the only thing I haven't done.
But no, nothing about the Dirtbombs was natural or organic, the whole thing was contrived from the beginning. And especially in Europe, people want to talk about how natural it is, how much soul...the Dirtbombs are the fakest band in existence! The shows are good, the music is good, but it's a sculpture, just like a living one; it's artwork like anything else, and it's highly conceptual. I mean, Ben is the only actual rock'n'roller in the band - the rest of us are all like jazzbos and classical people! [laughs]
("The fakest band in existence": 2006's Dirtbombs mock nature.)
MPP: How far are you into this list, then? Is there more territory to cover? Should we start to worry?
MC: Oh, there's more territory - quite a bit, actually. I mean how many different types of hyphenated rock are there? When I first started thinking about it, I was like, "this is probably way too much work, I'm gonna narrow this down just to things I like." But that's probably the overall statement of the band, this whole business of hyphenated rock. It's like, how did we reach this point? People who don't listen to electronic dance music don't realize that there are like 30 different kinds: I mean, progressive house, deep house... And it's the same thing with rock - if you don't listen to it, you have no idea. I'm just taking the mickey, just poking fun at this whole idea of hyphenated rock.
MPP: As a critic, I can say that the Dirtbombs are one of the hardest bands to describe without essentializing them or reducing them to a caricature in any way.
MC:[laughs] Well, I've gotta make it interesting for you, too! You're not the first person who's complained to me about that. When I started, that was the thing, I wanted a band that was as hard to describe as anything else. I mean, how do you describe a band that has two drummers, two basses and a guitar? And they sort of play rock, but sort of...don't? It's like, [mock indignation] "This isn't a rock thing at all! It's a conceptualn art thing like Henry Cow! I hate these people! The new Dirtbombs record sucks!" [laughs]
MPP: But the only problem is that you guys came to the forefront right at the time of a readily identifiable genre in Detroit, which was garage rock.
MC: Yeah, that's the thing that fuckin' sticks in my craw. We came along right at that time, and Ultraglide happened to be the record we put out. So one thing led to another, and suddenly we were a garage band. I'm sure there are a ton of my railings about that online already...it's been a big pain in the ass, frankly. People would come see us, and we'd be onstage sounding like Slade or something, and they'd go away mad. Rather than feeling like the hype and the press had lied to them, they felt like we'd lied to them. That pissed me off, man. And we weren't the only ones, we were just the only ones who decided we weren't going to take it. Everybody else was just happy to be getting work!
(Can garage rock do this? Live Dirtbombs, 2002 - photo by What a Way to Die)
MPP: How have the years since the big garage explosion changed things, then? Do you feel like it's better for the Dirtbombs or even for Detroit to have the spotlight off for a while?
MC: Basically, now that the spotlight is off, we're still doing what we've been doing for the last 25 years. People looking or not looking doesn't change the way we do bands here - I mean, we've been here before. Suddenly having the spotlight turned on what we do naturally in Detroit is not new; you can pretty much be sure it's going to be happening every five, ten years. So it doesn't matter. We'll still be going to the same clubs with the same people. Or more importantly, going to the same clubs to see the same people. And there's always gonna be people who want to do soul music in Detroit.
MPP: That's actually something that surprises me...you almost expect there to be more of a soul revival going on in Detroit.
MC: Well, if you want to do soul music, then everybody right away forces you to sing modern R&B. You can't play classic soul the way you can play classic rock. That just hasn't happened in black music yet. I, for one, would love it. That would be something I'd be happy to do - I mean, I wouldn't make it my own thing, but...
MPP: Why do you think that is, that black music isn't looked back at the same way as white music?
MC: I just think we can't be convinced that our past is worth anything. It's pretty much what happened to rock'n'roll...most people don't know rock was a black art form, originally. But there was a moment when punk rock could have swept the inner cities, and it didn't happen because of hip-hop. It just came down to the fact that a turntable costs $60 and a guitar costs $300, and that was that. But there was a time when I was a kid, at least in Detroit, when everyone in the neighborhood had a punk rock band with three or four black kids. Then in '82 or '83, hip-hop swept Detroit and that was the end. So I always say, I'm not the only black guy in a punk rock band in Detroit, I'm just the only one who's still there after 20-odd years. [laughs]
(Collins and Jerome Gray: the Voltaire Brothers, 2003 - photo courtesy Fanatic)
MPP: You've already done a few sort of tributes to classic black music on your own, though; first with Ultraglide in Black and then with the Voltaire Brothers album [I Sing the Booty Electric] in 2003, which is one of my favorite projects of yours. Are there any plans to do a second Voltaire Brothers record?
MC: Yes, there are. We started pre-production already, and I actually think we might get around to recording it in January. It's unlikely that we'll be able to do anything but write the songs until then, though, because Jerome [Gray], the other Voltaire Brother, works a 9-5, and he can't really get away to tour the way I can. We've had offers to do live shows across the US and Europe; we always say we'd love to, but we can't.
Also, the musical focus is on old-style '70s heavy funk bands, which always had really elaborate stage shows like P-Funk or something. So what would probably happen before an actual tour is a video, like a 30-minute movie starring the Voltaire Brothers. Unless, of course, Jerome decides he's sick of his job, in which case we're hitting the road. [laughs]
MPP: Is there anything else going on?
MC: I have a couple different things - there's a techno 12" coming out, that should be out this summer. It's just sort of been languishing, because the guy who runs the label has been out on tour. I'm probably doing another one of those this year, too. Other than that, I'm just doing some solo recordings, and also I've got another band called Man Ray Man Ray. Hopefully we'll be getting a recording and some shows done, too.
MPP: I always ask people who dabble in a lot of different projects what the difference is from one to the other, and usually they just say it's because there are different people involved or something like that. But you strike me as a person who definitely has some reasons to distinguish between one band and another.
MC: Oh, yeah. The difference really is that they're all different types of music. The Dirtbombs play rock, but others are a lot less rock. Man Ray Man Ray is still rock, but less rock than the Dirtbombs. And the Voltaire Brothers are a funk band, obviously. Years and years ago, I thought that if I was gonna play different music, rather than try to shoehorn different styles into the same project, why not just do another band?
(The Dirtbombs: survivors)
MPP: Back to the Dirtbombs, it seems like you guys have gotten fairly famous without really even trying. Why do you think that is?
MC: It's just because we've been at it since 1992. By pure dint of surviving, we've developed a following. It's not much to do with anything else except that we've been around forever; the records don't sell anywhere near the numbers you would need to sell out the places we sell out. We've just been doing it for so long.
Recently I read about some band who didn't even have a record - Jimmy Eat World or something, or Hawthorne Heights - who just hit the road and stayed there. And that's what we did. People went to see us, went home and told all their friends. So for every one person who came the first time, there's three the second time. There's a lot less pressure to succeed when all you're doing is playing shows, and from what I've heard, our live show is apparently quite good. I mean, it's the kind that people go home and tell all their friends about. We played Denver on our last tour; we'd played there two or three times before, and gotten kind of average crowds. But last time the place was packed. It was because the seven or eight people who came out the time before managed to tell all their friends. And in France, we've played there for the last five years and never had good attendance; suddenly, last time, you would have thought we were the Rolling Stones. I was like, what happened in the intervening time?
MPP: The Dirtbombs are sort of unique among the recent wave of Detroit bands in that there's never really been a backlash against them...do you think this kind of natural growth has to do with that?
MC: Right. Word of mouth is the best possible way a band can get their following. When you're not being talked about by the press every week, people don't get burned out about you. Actually, probably the only real thing about the Dirtbombs is the fact that our fans love us. [laughs] And we're pretty thrilled to have them, too.
MPP: Next, it seems like it wouldn't really be a Dirtbombs interview without mentioning the infamous lineup changes. But the band's been pretty stable for the last few years.
MC: Yeah, Troy [Gregory]'s still playing bass and Ko [Shih] is still on fuzz. This lineup's going on its third year, actually, which is a record for the Dirtbombs.
(Two of these Dirtbombs will be gone in about five minutes...can you guess which ones?)
MPP: At the same time, when Jim Diamond left, he'd been in the band for longer than pretty much everybody but you. Did that take some adjusting?
MPP: Actually, because Diamond talked so much on stage, I think it actually tightened up our live set. He didn't really like to play; he liked to play a song and stand there and talk, play a song and have a cigarette, play a song and have a beer... Now we just play songs. [laughs]
But the lineup changes, most of it has stayed true to my ideas I've had since the start. The actual changes have been minor. There have been more and less talented people in the band, but overall the changes have been small, almost cosmetic, really.
MPP: And just to end on what's probably another familiar note: how about that bubblegum pop album? Is it still coming?
MC: Yeah. It's next, actually.
MPP: Covers? Originals?
MC: Originals, mostly. I'm sure if I find something that would make a really good bubblegum song, I'd do it.
MPP: This is just always the project I've wanted to come out, ever since I'd heard of it. Just hearing a bubblegum song with the Dirtbombs fuzz.
MC: Yeah, I mean, there are bubblegum songs with fuzz bass. I'm trying to think of one off the top of my head...maybe "You Are the One" by the Sugar Bears. But there were four Archies LPs, so I can't imagine they made it through four without cutting a fuzz track. I'm actually surprised when I hear it, though, how good the Archies actually were. Some of those songs have been covered by recent rock bands! There's one that I really wanted to do with the Dirtbombs, actually, called "Feelin' So Good." But somebody else got to it first.
Mick Collins will be playing with the Dirtbombs in Ann Arbor tomorrow night, at the Blind Pig. Support by the Lee Marvin Computer Arm and the Terrible Twos; cover is $10, doors are at 9 pm, show is for 18 and up. For ticket info, check the Blind Pig website.
The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions The Miles Davis Quintet (Prestige)
By 1955, Miles Davis had been recording on the Prestige label for four years. But as his career began to gain momentum, getting a group together was an inevitable career decision. The Miles Davis Quintet consisted of Paul Chambers on bass, John Coltrane on tenor, Red Garland on the keys, Philly Joe Jones on the sticks and Miles on the trumpet. With this group, Miles had more than a steady performance group; he had a vehicle. In the space of about a year, the quintet recorded five full-length LPs...and that was just for Prestige. This was one of the busiest and most headlong periods for Miles Davis.
Let me first say that the music collected in The Legendary Prestige Sessions box set is infallible. The albums that these sessions spawned - namely The New Miles Davis Quintet, as well as the legendary 1956 quadriptych Relaxin', Steamin', Workin' and Cookin' - are among the finest I've heard in Miles' catalogue: the kind of songs that move you in a way only Jazz music can. Sure, it's not perfect, but it didn't have to be; Prestige wanted it hard and quick, and they got it that way. Far removed from Columbia's relaxed, multiple session approach to album recording, or even the future extremes of Mingus' perfectionism and sophisticated techniques, the quintet recorded straight, with no retakes.
In fact, since these sessions were so quick and dirty, there are no alternate takes or unreleased numbers here; in that sense, the box set might seem perfunctory. What we have here is the music which comprised the original records on three CDs, plus one fourth disc exclusive to the box: it features radio and television broadcasts, as well as transcriptions of Miles' solos comprised of remastered live broadcasts. The quality on this bonus disc is a little poor, but listenable. You'll notice, as well, that I said "the music which comprised the original records," not "the original records." That's because these are the sessions, in exact chronological order; you can actually hear the quintet get tighter and tighter as they go along. For those who want to hear the records as released, however, the booklet does give you extensive information, so it wouldn?Äôt be hard to piece the tracks into original album order. These discs are also ostensibly remastered, although I'm no audiophile to have the last word on that; I'm sure some effort was put toward the reconstruction of those round, hissing live recordings that make up disc four, in any case.
So I guess the big question is, is it worth it? If you already have all of the original Prestige albums and they're still in good shape, probably not. The book is gorgeous, of course, with its glossy pictures of the legendary trumpeter's face and its essay by jazz critic Bob Blumenthal, but informed jazz hounds will already know most of what the liners have to say. The extra disc is really great, too, and having transcriptions of the solos is a good bonus, though I don't think anyone but the biggest collectors (or perhaps just interested trumpet players) would be interested in a $60 set just for that.
Still, for someone new to this era of Miles, or who hasn't heard any of these recordings at all, buying this set is definitely worth it. There's something about a box set that puts the music into history definitively. And this particular music? "Its legacy," writes Blumenthal, "remains one of the most satisfying chapters in the history of recorded jazz." After listening to this set, I don't think many are bound to disagree.
You can't find a female anywhere who hasn't dreamed of being in her own band. Almost every girl I know wanted to be the singer or lead guitarist, and belt it out with a "who gives a shit" attitude. They would write songs about scumbag boys or that bitch in geometry class, and wow the crowd with the explosive energy and talent that few females have been able to master. Personally, I'd always fantasize about wearing fierce heels and fishnets, with crazy-ass rock girl hair, and playing my guitar or drums or tambourine like a mofo. The entire crowd would be agape with wonder at my utter badass-ness. When I think about those days of rock star daydreams (hell, I still daydream about being a rock star), I start to wonder why I never actually took a shot at starting a band. And then I remember. It's hard.
So when I saw this CD by The Vibration, I got a little giddy. The all-girl foursome looks like a band I'd like to be in, all dark-haired and hip (with the exception of the lead singer, whose hair is pink - that's even cooler). The disc is riddled with cute doodles like a girl band member would scribble, and the cover shot is charming, with darling scrawls over each band member. Everything was great...until I began to listen to the album. I wanted to like Amarilla. I really did. But the bleak, somber overtone is not what the package promised, and Ann Fitzgerald's voice and I have developed a love-hate relationship. She walks a fine line between sounding exactly like The Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan and, at times, like Bjork. Really, the voice resemblance is striking, especially with O'Riordan.
Of course, after I got over the initial shock of how much of a downer the record is, I grew to tolerate it, and even like it in parts. Although The Vibration is playing further into the emotionally dismal whirlwind female groups tend to get swept up in, they seem to be on the same page throughout most of the CD. The New York group works well together to produce each song with an equal dose of depression. Trouble is, sometimes it's even hard to distinguish one song from another. They all start with this sad overtone and Fitzgerald's light, droney vocals. Fitzgerald is hard to listen to continuously, and her voice seldom surfaces with any true emotion. But when she does seem to express herself, it's impressive.
"Master Exploder, Pt. 1" is Amarilla's best song. It has more of a beat, and although I loathe Fitzgerald's voice in the beginning, she starts to bring it toward the end. You have to wait about 50 seconds before we hear anything with some quality, but it's worth it. Lead song "Muscle Memory" also has a good beat and a bit more energy than the rest of the songs, but fails to stand out elsewhere. "There You Have It" is less than two minutes, which is a shame because it's just the right recipe of rhythm and controlled vocals. But just as the listener gets into it, it's over. Meanwhile, the other seven songs on the album blend together into this creepy, mucky swamp of sadness. "Sweet Oil" is by far the most gloomy track and is coincidentally the longest, over four and a half minutes. "Old News" is just weak, with tepid vocals and melancholy guitar accompaniment, and the rest of Amarilla follows suit.
Unfortunately, The Vibration failed to find a home in my heart, but the fact is that I'm just sick of all this girly, weepy, sad, bland music. Don't be tempted by the appealing cover art or fancy names, unless of course you want to be wrangled into the flush of Amarilla's flavorless depression. My advice: let's add a little pepper to our potatoes. Make me want to be sad and enjoy your music. Because the way it sounds now, I wouldn't even want to use the majority of these tracks to lick my wounds after a pissy day.
Living up to the live show must be the greatest of all challenges for your average stripped-down rock'n'roll act. Onstage, even the weakest of bands can impress when the audience is right, unleashing a blitz of volume and energy the potency of which is only exacerbated by close proximity, dive bar acoustics, and the copious amount of alcohol being consumed by your average patron. But once that same band heads into the studio, it's a whole new ball game: what felt like pure rock fury on Saturday night, with your lungs full of second-hand smoke and your bloodstream full of PBR, can sound flaccid, even antiseptic on Sunday morning; tiny flaws in songwriting and performance, so minor while they were pouring out of a Marshall stack or two, begin to stand out in sharp relief once the tidal wave has been reduced to a shelf-speakers trickle. It's little wonder, then, why our first instinct when we run into someone who doesn't "get" our favorite band is just to shake our heads sagely and say "you've gotta see 'em live." Sometimes, the records just can't do it justice.
I can't say for certain whether the latest release by Portland, Oregon blues-rock duo Hillstomp does their live show justice - I haven't had the pleasure, unfortunately - but I can report on reasonably good faith that they sound like a sight to behold, with "percussionist" John Johnson apparently eschewing a traditional drum setup in favor of overturned buckets, cans and Weber barbeque lids. And you might read that teasing description, or glance at the kick-ass cover art for The Woman That Ended the World, and wonder (as I did) what was not to like. Or, you might just read the album title over and over to yourself and decide that anyone who uses "that" as a pronoun in place of the proper "who" just isn't worth your rock'n'roll time. Whatever your reaction, however, you'd probably be wrong: The Woman That Ended the World is both more interesting and less so than any such extreme position would suggest, an altogether thornier and less inviting album than you and I would have any right to expect.
Presumably, you can chalk some of the trickier aspects up to that dreaded loss in stage-to-studio translation; at least on first listen, the ass-shaking mountain wildmen of various rave Hillstomp reviews is tough to reconcile with the fairly listless covers of "Coal Black Mattie" by R.L. Burnside and "Can't Be Satisfied" by Muddy Waters which help open the record. On disc, at least, these guys don't ratchet up the punk energy in the manner of the Gossip, nor do they burn with quite the same revivalist fire as the Black Keys, probably their closest musical antecedents. Instead, Hillstomp's music just seems to exist: they hit some cool grooves, especially on slow-burner "In the Hole," but I've lived with this album for a few months now, and I'm still having trouble sinking my teeth into it. The judicious part of me wants to blame it on the recording, which makes sense when you hit a more obviously engaging track; well-placed organ stabs and harmonica honk help make "Shake It" deserving of its name, for example, though it's difficult to ignore that Tom Waits has already turned in a masterful approximation of a juke joint from hell on his own song of the same title. But does it stand out because it's actually a good song, or just because it's one of the few on the first half of the album that doesn't sound strangely muffled - as if the guys are reigning it in, afraid that if they really cut loose they'd blow out their vintage microphones?
For my money, it's a little of both. Granted, the Soledad Brothers' first album rocks harder than this partly because Jack White just likes to mix as many tracks in the red as he can get away with - it's a great fucking rock record because it sounds like one. But I'd be lying if I said Hillstomp singer/guitarist Henry Kammerer had the same rough-hewn charisma as a Johnny Walker or a Dan Auerbach, and that's a deficiency that's harder to shrug off. And yet, even so - how many times can I contradict myself, you're asking? - there's something here...that much is undeniable. As The Woman That Ended the World progresses - see "Jackson Parole Board Blues" - it takes on more and more of a hypnotic, spell-binding character, drawing you in with its deep, muddy grooves, reminding you that while these guys hail from the Pacific Northwest, they do claim the North Mississippi voodoo blues of Burnside and Fred McDowell as their spiritual home. In the end, however much I doubt that it can hold a candle to a Hillstomp concert, the album gives me a vague outline of what that concert would be like: it would smoulder rather than burn, captivate even when the music isn't through the roof; and when they finally do take it up a notch (on "Boom Boom Room East Blues," say), the impact would be all the stronger.
So yes, if you're patient enough, Hillstomp is worth your time on record just as much as they probably are in person. Not that The Woman That Ended the World is going to change the universe or save your soul; it's more like the kind of record you pick up at a merch booth, after your soul has already been saved and the universe has been made better for just one night. But if you check it out before having witnessed Hillstomp in person, like I did, just keep this in mind: that friend of yours from Portland is never gonna stop telling you just how much you've gotta see these dudes live. Maybe you and I should both take his advice.
A Winter Romance Happy in Love / Dino - Like Never Before (Collector's Choice)
Dean Martin was the Snoop Dogg of the Rat Pack. He was detached and cool at all times. His unemotional voice perfectly reflected that coolness. His tolerance for substances was legendary. He wasn't as talented as his buddy Sinatra (Dr. Dre), but he might have been the bigger pimp.
Martin left Capitol Records in 1961 in favor of Reprise, a label run by Sinatra. Capitol wasn't too upset about losing Martin; American kids were growing tired of crooners, and Martin's career seemed to be puttering out. It came as a surprise, then, when Martin experienced a second surge of popularity in the early to mid-'60s; it was more surprising still when the surge stayed consistent. In the end, he did even better in the Beatles decade than he had in the Rat Pack decade.
Now, Capitol Records has reissued three rare Dean Martin albums - two of which come packaged on one disc - originally slated for release before he left the label. A Winter Romance, dating from 1959, is more or less a Christmas album, while Happy in Love (recorded between 1950 and 1958, released in 1966) and Dino - Like Never Before (recorded 1950-'54, released '67) feature mostly love songs. Both discs are good; neither are great. It really just depends on how much you like Dean Martin.
The man sounds even more relaxed than usual on A Winter Romance. His delivery is playful, and the loose fun in his voice is contagious. Martin's warm, smooth arrangements are perfect for Christmas music, which has always been about unabashed sappiness. Interpol fans would hate this stuff. On the other hand, Dean Martin would probably hate Interpol fans. Both sides have a point, but I think Martin is more right.
Happy in Love / Dino - Like Never Before, meanwhile, features a younger, slightly less confident Dean Martin. He delivers good performances, but the song choices are inconsistent and it just doesn't add up to the level of his powerhouse albums. The tracks range from exciting and interesting to blandly well-executed. My personal favorite is "Rue de Mon Amour (Street of Love)," a rare look at Dean Martin, the songwriter. He can actually do it quite well.
Again, neither of these albums are essential for music lovers, or even for casual fans of Dean Martin. However, both are filled with skilled arrangements and expectedly fantastic vocals. Happy in Love/Dino - Like Never Before contains a few mixtape-worthy songs, and I will definitely bust out A Winter Romance this Christmas season once I get sick of Phil Spector. Buy the discs as a late Father's Day gift, then...or just for a friend who is particularly smarmy.
Aretha Franklin: Live at the Fillmore West King Curtis: Live at the Fillmore West (Atlantic/Rhino)
It may be hard to imagine today - after Michael Jackson broke MTV's race barrier and got "Thriller" played alongside Duran Duran, after Prince made a career out of toying with the divisions between black and white music, after everyone from the Beastie Boys to Eminem turned the tables yet again, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that white folks can play "black" styles and vice versa - but there was a time when the divide between "rock" and "R&B" audiences seemed insurmountable. As for the idea of a soul artist playing legendary rock venue the Fillmore West, it was all but unheard of; even in 1971, even in a city with the free-spirited, bohemian reputation of San Francisco, and, most startlingly, even when the performer was Aretha Franklin, a woman whose massive, magnetic talent should have been able to wipe out the demons of American racism singlehandedly.
In the liner notes for Aretha's now-classic Live at the Fillmore West (reissued this week by Rhino), Atlantic Records main man Jerry Wexler is quoted as saying that he "went to the Fillmore with great trepidation, wondering what we were going to get." But on the strength of this incredible music, 35 years' removed from its original concert setting, his concerns might as well be transmitted to us from some bizarre alternate universe. Live at the Fillmore West doesn't just capture Aretha Franklin at her absolute peak; it is easily the most thrilling live album, and one of the most thrilling albums, I've ever heard. If a single person in the audience on the three nights captured here walked away unconvinced of soul music's, and Aretha's, place in the mainstream, then the problem had nothing to do with race or culture or even personal taste. It had to do with the lack of a heart and soul, simple as that.
Giddy praise aside, however, turn a critical eye to Aretha's Fillmore West and the "trepidation" felt by Wexler and others becomes immediately obvious. The setlist, drawn almost entirely from potential crossover hits and covers of then-current AM radio pop hits, feels a mite calculated, even patronizing to the Fillmore's mostly white audience of "longhairs": "Love the One You're With," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Eleanor Rigby," hell, even Bread's flaccid "Make It with You" all get the R&B treatment, and that's two thirds of the original vinyl Side A right there. Furthermore, some of Aretha's stage banter is so tentative and apologetic, it's downright laughable; "I promise when you leave here, you will have enjoyed this show as much as any that you've ever had an occasion to see," she pleads during opener "Respect," while at the end of the show she somewhat backhandedly praises the audience for being "more than I could have ever expected." Who did she think she was performing for, white people or aliens?
On second thought, who cares? Even if the white population of San Francisco had been body-snatched in March of 1971, they still would have been putty in the Queen of Soul's hand for at least those three nights. Fillmore West demonstrates a kind of unparalleled momentum - admittedly artificial, as the reissue's second disc proves with its expanded track listing, but ultimately preferable to hazy, warts-and-all "reality." A breakneck, exhilirating version of "Respect" launches straight into the Stills cover, skipping the original setlist's "Call Me" and "Mixed-Up Girl," and from there to an impassioned gospel reading of "Bridge" which makes the Simon & Garfunkel version look rather like the wan pop hymn it is. In general, to say that Aretha takes the somewhat tired cover songs of the first side and makes them her own would be an understatement; "Eleanor Rigby" in particular is rendered almost unrecognizable, a funky workout where Paul McCartney's proselike lyrics become just another percussive instrument alongside Bernard Purdie's unstoppable backbeat and Truman Thomas' pulsing electric piano.
But the real treat comes on the original album's Side B, which opens with a downright orgasmic medley of Franklin's own "Dr. Feelgood" and "Spirit in the Dark," upwards of 20 minutes (presented here in unedited form) which takes us from the bedroom to the church and demonstrates the oft-ignored parallels between the two. And then, it gets even better: after a brief pause, Ray Fucking Charles comes out for a reprise of "Spirit" that clocks in even longer than the original take - try 19 minutes, 24 seconds - and isn't a moment too long. This meeting of soul giants would be easy to hyperbolize, but fortunately there's no need for that here; Charles' impossibly soulful bark is tailor-made both for the song's gospel roots and for its spontaneous performance, and if Aretha remains the set's indisputable star, her interplay with the Genius of Soul grants a new kind of levity to the proceedings that's just beautiful. Finally, the disc's closing take of Diana Ross's "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" feels absolutely necessary as a chaser and a comedown from the last three tracks' climactic high; Aretha brings the performance back to earth masterfully, and leaves us, as with all the best live albums, not just feeling as if we were there, but wishing we had been, too.
For all that the Fillmore West performance is Aretha Franklin's sparkling achievement, however, it's the twin release by King Curtis - who served as both opening act and bandleader at the Fillmore - which underlines just how much she owed to her incredible backing musicians on those three nights; not the least of whom was the legendary tenor sax player from Fort Worth, Texas whose own Fillmore disc became, tragically, his final crowning achievement.
While by no means possessing the star power of an Aretha Franklin or a Ray Charles, Curtis was just as crucial to soul music history in his own way. As the tenor player for the Coasters at their late-'50s height, he established the archetype for wailing R&B saxophone all but singlehandedly (yes, that's him blowing on "Yakety Yak"), and his robust, powerful sound has been an influence on everyone from Motown's Junior Walker to P. Funk's Maceo Parker to the E Street Band's Clarence Clemons. Mere months after his Fillmore performance, however, Curtis was stabbed by a junkie in his New York City apartment; an apparently random act of violence which prematurely claimed his life. As such, it's difficult not to think of King's Live at the Fillmore West as a final testimony for the seminal musician. Fortunately, the record is good enough to live up to such proclamations and then some.
That's not to say, though, that the album is without its flaws. Like Aretha's Fillmore performance, King's includes some hilariously desperate attempts to appeal to the audience - seriously, dude, "A Whiter Shade of Pale?" But, also like Aretha's set, the material is redeemed by the performer's virtuoso chops and bandleading ability. Curtis underlines the shared blues roots of soul and hard rock with his rendition of Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love"; he makes his saxophone sound like Jimi Hendrix's wah-wah pedal on Jerry Butler's "I Stand Accused" and Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe"; and on original "Memphis Soul Stew," performed as a closer in concert but wisely chosen as the recorded version's opening track, he brings to the fore the great instrumental performances you may have overlooked when stacked up against Aretha Franklin's megaton-powerful pipes. "Memphis Soul Stew" is the best song on the album by a mile, but it's also quite possibly the funkiest thing I've ever had the pleasure to hear - just wait until about the one-and-a-half minute mark, when Purdie's "pound of fatback drums" kicks in, and you'll see what I mean.
That emphasis on the band, one of the most impressive to be assembled in the history of R&B - we're talking Curtis' Kingpins, fantastic in their own right, coupled with none other than the Memphis Horns and Billy Preston on organ - extends to the disc's bonus tracks, which include an excellent live take of Preston's cover of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord," stripping the song of its "Hare Krishna / Hare Rama" backing vocals and its similarities to "He's So Fine" to make it the timeless spiritual it is. There's also an alternate cut of "Soul Stew," here restored to its original position at the end of the set, which may not match the original take for musical magnetism, but does display more of Curtis' effortless chemistry with his bandmates. My only real beef is that, rather than including the "fast-and-furious" version of Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood" teasingly described in the liner notes and released on Rhino Handmade's now out-of-print complete Fillmore concerts box set Don't Fight the Feeling, the compilers saw fit to include inferior alternates of "Them Changes," "Ode to Billie Joe," and "Soul Serenade." While the bonus tracks are certainly welcome, these particular choices don't even boast the benefit of giving us a better idea of the actual setlist, the way Franklin's bonus disc does - nor do they include as many unintentionally funny moments, like when the original R&B diva pulls an Ashlee Simpson before "Mixed-Up Girl," introduces the wrong song and then blames it on the band. Instead, these songs feel a little arbitrary, making one wish that if Rhino was so hell-bent on giving us alternate takes, they'd just expand King's Fillmore reissue the way they did Aretha's.
But in the end, despite their (admittedly few) flaws and their lack of the absolute completism of Don't Fight the Feeling, Rhino's Fillmore West reissues end up being the definitive word on these monumental concerts. It's the original albums, after all, which presented this music the way it was meant to be heard: they capture the spirit of the shows with none of the fat or the missteps, creating an infinitely appealing alternate universe where King Curtis still wails with the best of them and Ray Charles joins Aretha Franklin every night for a rousing, uplifting chorus of "Spirit in the Dark." We may never be able to truly recall the days when a mere three nights of music could mean the shattering of barriers between Black and White, Deep South and West Coast, Soul and Rock. But with the help of these seminal albums, we can at least understand why those walls finally fell.
Louder Now, the third album by Amityville, NY emo kids Taking Back Sunday, isn't really "louder now." In fact, I'm tempted to say that it might actually be more sugary than their first two albums - it's riddled with hints of pleasing a younger, more pop-driven audience. Not that Taking Back Sunday's earlier releases were shrouded with cryptic, brooding, off-center hymns, but there was a sense of originality and that genuine feel I got when I heard those older songs that just doesn't strike much of a chord when I listen to Louder Now. It's hard to define what their drive and intentions were when developing the new album; the songs vary from the TBS ensignia of rageful, synchronized ballads to songs that I couldn't even discern as theirs - at some points hipsterish, even feminine jigs.
Although the album misses the mark that previous material hit with great precision, frontman Adam Lazzara's and copilot Fred Mascherino's voices continue to stun, with pure, clear vocals that are perfectly manicured to maneuver side by side. Lazzara's voice strikes higher notes in a number of the songs that tug with a delicate crawl and can turn instantly into strong power presses - both of which are hypnotic. The band is still able to unleash a flood of rage with a great beat and clear vocals, which won them so much acclaim early on. But the lyrics are juvenile, at some points even ridiculous, and the collaborative flow of the songs is muddled - does TBS want to attract younger listeners? Are they trying to experiment, and it just ends up sounding incredibly manufactured and geared to 15-year-olds everywhere? No matter their intention, the band's latest effort sadly sounds like they're straying from their roots.
The first single and the best song is "MakeDamnSure," which exhibits the aforementioned vocalists' ability to manipulate dismal lyrics into something moving, with great expression and variability. The song rises in intensity and caps with the chorus. As a classic TBS song does, it drives you to turn it up and rip it out along with Lazzara. The video for the single is also fantastic; Lazzara and company are visual extraordinaires, with such performance savvy you can feel their intensity. Their vocals melt together so absorbently and with such a fanatic anger that it's easy to fall under their spell with "MakeDamnSure," but alas, that's one of the few highlights of the disc.
Like most of Louder Now's tracks, leading song "What's It Feel Like to be a Ghost?" does provide a great beat and kick-ass vocals. There are some good riffs and some cheeky sassiness. But the song slows down about 2 minutes in, and Lazzara's expressive voice winds its way in, showing a change of pace within the first song that we haven't seen much of in their earlier work. Of course it picks up intensity, but then it levels off with a meager repetition of the title. "What's it feel like to be a ghost / What's it feel like to be a ghost / Louder Now / Louder Now." If that's the inspiration for the album's title, then we're in trouble.
"Liar (It Takes One to Know One)" follows "Ghost," and just by the title I think we know the lyrics are going to be a bit childish. They are. Lazzara's and Mascherino's voices continue to tag each other, and the song's catchy chorus would've been less embarassing if the lyrics hadn't been written by my 12-year-old brother. "Liar" is the second sign of a sweeter, lite-version of TBS, and usually the lite entrees aren't as filling and never as good as the original.
Songs to skip altogether include "Twenty-Twenty Surgery" and "Miami." "Twenty-Twenty" is a slimy little bastard. It starts kind of like one of their older songs would, and then slowly builds up to a point where Lazzara's vocals promise an intense chorus. You might even feel a sigh of relief that maybe TBS found their ground again, but no. All of a sudden, out of left field, "twenty-twenty surgery, twenty-twenty surgery for cheap" swings into the song, and it just doesn't belong. The chorus reeks of a shallow skin, and it's strangely reminiscent of Rooney. Yes, Taking Back Sunday sounds like "Blueside" Rooney in this song. Plus the chorus sticks in your head all day, and that's not a good thing. Avoid this track at all costs. Meanwhile, "Miami" starts with luscious vocals; promising - just like "Twenty-Twenty." It's a bit slower and a bit more seductive, but the lyrics reek of such childishness, it's hard to stand. "Miami" crawls along, and at two minutes we hear a guitar riff that's straight out of an '80s hair band and absolutely doesn't flow with the rest of the song. The lyrics make me want to vomit. Most ralph-inducing lyrics of the entire song, and possibly the CD: "Unhand me, Miami / God damn me, Miami."
TBS sounds more genuine in "Error: Operator," where the intensity that was lost on the rest of the CD finds its way back into this song. There's a long guitar riff here too, and if you're looking for stuff that sounds more like the original, this would be the choice track. "Up Against (Blackout)" chimes of older material also, but I didn't warm up to it like I did "Error: Operator" and "MakeDamnSure." It's very repetitive, like most of the album, but slows down at parts that completely lose the listener. Variable rhythm is usually something TBS tends to master, but not with "Up Against." Fellow track "Spin," on the other hand, pounces you; it's crazy-fast and loud. Once again, the lyrics are repetitive, but they get away with it. The problem is that "Spin" is so high-strung, it kind of drains you of energy.
Lighter sounds can be found in "My Blue Heaven" and "Divine Intervention." I actually love "My Blue Heaven" to an extent. Lazzara starts slow and soothing, and picks up the fervor eventually. Background vocals are super-high, and it's a side of TBS I haven't seen. It's not so soft that it resembles Rooney. More devout followers of TBS might hate it, but if "My Blue Heaven" were a person, I might hug it. The vocals blend with the instrumental whimsically and displays Taking Back Sunday's strong points without the screams. "Divine Intervention," on the other hand, is the token acoustic song of the CD, and begins soft like "My Blue Heaven." It comes off as embarrassingly feminine, however, with Lazzara whispering "these are a few of my favorite things," as I think a tambourine and maybe even a triangle accompany his guitar's tap. The beats grow, becoming weirder and weirder. It's easy to stray from the song to figure out what sort of instruments they were actually using. Maybe they made their own maracas with dry rice and empty butter containers. Still, the song is entirely too fragile to enjoy on its own merits, and the lyrics add to this unfortunate delicacy: "if you're calling me out, then count me out." Lines like that might show more strength in a harder song, but in this context, they add to the wimpiness of "Divine Intervention."
You can tell this was more of an experimental album for Taking Back Sunday when you listen to the disc's closer, "I'll Let You Live." It starts with a steady, guitar-based rhythm and some screaming, and then all of sudden there's some Shangri-la whispy hippy-like twist. It's weird. Too weird. The rhythm obviously changes drastically throughout the whole song, and they never seem to find their niche; it's a problem that's symptomatic of the disc as a whole.
Bottom line: Louder Now is just lukewarm. A couple of songs are worth listening to, even on repeat, but some just slide so far off Taking Back Sunday's beaten trail that it's kind of disappointing to listen to them. I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish with this album, nor what demographic they were trying to cover. Maybe they were just trying to cover all bases at once, but it didn't work. This album could spur an entirely youthful fanbase, which is already happening. When a band grows in popularity, a younger, usually more annoying audience follows in tow. That's fine, but when the band starts to cater to these new listeners and, in doing so, leaves their older fans in the dust, there will be some qualms. This is the point in the game where TBS has to huddle, rethink and strategize: a haphazard, aimless CD won't suit anyone.
In this, the modern age of pretension, it's often hard to tell the difference between those who are actually having fun and those who are having ironic fun. It's like the difference between Electric 6 and Stephen Malkmus. While Electric 6 does have its ironic overtones, when Dick Valentine bounds across the stage cracking jokes and yelling that iconic "YES!", there's no mistaking the real glee that emanates from his batch of Motor City madmen. But then there's Malkmus; he's enjoying himself on stage, but it's in an "I'll drink two gin and tonics and make some ironic jokes" kind of way, mixed with a dash of whole-hearted indie pretension. It's not that I hate the Malkmus at all (I really love him deeply), but would I ever invite him to start a fire on the dance floor with me? Helllllll no.
So what about CSS - the Brazilian Brat Pack of babes everyone seems to be talking about? Well, if anyone exists far away from the word "irony," it's them. Actually, from listening to their album, I can't tell if they even know the word "ironic" in English yet. And while CSS nevertheless strike me as the girls who everyone loved to hate in high school, it doesn't mean that they can't be immensely fun.
CSS is a clique of girls (with a dude on drums) who make catty, flashy, pop-culture oriented and contorted pop music that borders more on the territory of No Wave than the traditional New Wave genre. It's not music that you put on while doing math equations or pondering the meaning of life; it's music that you put on while pre-partying, wearing a big pair of bitch goggles, and a short skirt that says, "Look at my legs, Tina Turner ain't got nothing on this shit!" But is this music which you really want to listen to all of the time? Not really. Much like those girls in high school, it's really easy to start rolling your eyes at CSS. They say "fuck" a lot. They say "bitch" even more than they say "fuck." They all chatter at the same time. They trash-talk a lot of people. You want to hang out with them and like them because they're so much fun, but while you're applying to big-deal academic schools, wearing your glasses, and actually studying for the AP exams, they're the ones calling you to go put some misguided highlights in your hair, flirt with guys with the IQs of farm animals, and sneak vodka out of their parents' liquor cabinets. If any band ever captured one of the reasons why people get so disillusioned with high school, it's CSS. And while that's not bad, it's not really something anyone firmly away from that environment wants to revisit time and time again.
Of course, maybe I was just incredibly lame in high school. Maybe I'm incredibly lame now. But whatever, bitches. I'll just have a couple of drinks, listen to CSS, and then avoid making contact with them in the hallways on Monday.
Further proof that the hip-hop world moves too goddamned fast for us rockists: just when we'd gotten the whole "is DJing a legitimate art form" debate through our thick-as-Led skulls, along came Kanye, Danger Mouse and the Neptunes, and they went and turned it into a producer's medium. Now, aspiring Timbalands can even create reputable music on their own home computer - aren't those the things Jack White hates? - with just a vast MP3 collection, a decent sampling program and a good feel for rhythm as the necessary prequisites. Those still unconvinced that it takes talent to spin, listen well: the age of the armless DJ is finally upon us. Get with it or get out of the way.
Unless, of course, your name is Lucas Macfadden, in which case my advice is to guard your arms like the precious endangered species that they are. Macfadden, better known as Cut Chemist, is perhaps most renowned as one of the two DJs (the live kind, with turntables) behind Jurassic 5; a band whose fading critical prestige nevertheless can't obscure the fact that their defiantly analogue samplescapes are among the most progressive in recent memory. But now, freed of his association with that group (he won't be appearing on their forthcoming third release), Cut Chemist is putting out a solo album, his first "proper" one after more than ten years of live performances, guest spots, remixes and limited releases. And part of me - the part that really, really hates ProTools - wanted it to be a tour de force, a definitive statement that would fly in the face of every act of digitalized nob-tweaking 21st century bloggers and philistines have had the nerve to dub "progress."
Needless to say, The Audience's Listening isn't quite that album; it's humbler than that, and in a way, that's a good thing. Manual and digital turntablism aren't really diametrically opposed, after all, and my love for Kanye and Danger Mouse is well-known, despite those two artists' tendencies toward "production" rather than classic sampling. As for the idea of the live DJ as a dying art, one need only look around at one's local clubs to see that the form is alive and well; you just won't find it scale the masterful heights of a Terminator X, a DJ Shadow or, yes, a Cut Chemist on the Top 40 anytime soon. So without the sense of melodramatic urgency, without the "Us vs. Them" approach I so naively invoked, what is The Audience's Listening after all?
In simplest terms, it's a virtuoso record: a place for Macfadden to demonstrate his considerable skills sans group expectations, sans track breaks, and, on two of the twelve songs, sans MCs. And while that undoubtedly sounds like great news to those of us who have been anticipating an official full-length from the Chemist, its ramifications stir up another moral quandary entirely: why, for any reason other than nostalgia or the anti-digital Luddism already explored, should we listen to a turntable virtuoso with glee, while rock virtuosos like Yngwie Malmsteen remain the stuff of derisive snorts and wisecracks?
Give it some thought - it's a legitimate question. Take, for example, the Avalanches-style PoMo pranksterism of opening track "Motivational Speaker," which hardly boasts a soul beneath its kitschy samples and lightning-fast cuts; I'll be the first to admit it's a lot funnier than the average Malmsteen solo, but isn't part of the usual guitar-wankery critique that it lacks meat, a real reason for existing? Nor is "Motivational Speaker" the only song here that seems to exist only as a showcase for Cut Chemist's magic fingers. "(My 1st) Big Break," into which "Speaker" segues, is scratchtastic, but there's little substance in the structure; meanwhile, the trippy but sometimes numbing "Metorail Through Space" resembles little more than an exotica version of the Final Fantasy theme with a backbeat. Predictably, it's the two rap cuts here which grant the most leverage to Chemist's musical dexterity: the Edan and Mr. Lif-fronted "Storm," in particular, goes down like a hearty second helping of Grandmaster Flash's classic electro opus "Scorpio," and makes you hope for J5's sake that they're bringing their "A" game to that new record.
It's unfair, however, to deride this album on grounds of it being a self-indulgent DJ showcase (the words of the Devil's Advocate, not me). Dance music is supposed to be fun, after all, with nowhere near the amount of premium placed on craft as in rock music. And though it's been established that Cut Chemist is far from a craftsman, the crucial element I've left out in critiquing songs like "Speaker" and "Big Break" is that they're a hell of a lot of fun to listen to. There's a lot more where they came from, too; "Spoon" cruises on the funky, melodic economy of a prime Public Enemy instrumental, while "A Peak in Time" actually ascends to some truly organic heights, a shining instance of electronica as perhaps modern music's most relevant form of composition. Even the tracks which smack more of interludes than of actual songs - "The Lift," for instance, which sets a spacey mood and then proceeds to go nowhere - are over soon enough for their textures to be appreciated without looking like blemishes on the canvas. So maybe you won't find yourself humming a Cut Chemist hook the way you hum the Beatles or Sufjan Stevens or even Three 6 Mafia; most of us don't go around humming Coltrane tunes, either, and it's not like his place in musical history isn't assured.
So to go back to that moral dilemma: no, digging Cut Chemist isn't the same as digging Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, simply because DJing will never be as self-important as guitar-wanking, no matter how empty it may seem. Nobody goes to DJ school, or studies classical turntable. It doesn't take six years' worth of music theory to muddle your way through the ins and outs of a good scratch; you just listen and enjoy. In that sense, the turntable is the ultimate populist art form - it's simple and complex at the same time, like a Jackson Pollock painting. Pretty much every kid with a modicum of artistic talent I've known has DJ'ed in their own primitive way at some point, taping cool sounds off the TV or their favorite records and arranging them in their own image. Even I made some particularly nerdy, pop culturally backwards stabs at the medium in my day, juxtaposing a Badfinger CD with an audio book of The Lord of the Rings so it sounded like Gandalf was singing "Without You." It's that natural, postmodern urge of rearrangement, of pastiche, which makes artists like Cut Chemist stay relevant, no matter how much of a niche their market may be, no matter how many flashy producers, bedsit DJs or misunderstanding rockists might try to cramp their style. So relax, folks, and let the magic fingers take the wheel for a while. You might be able to make hip-hop in your bedroom these days, but I'm almost positive you aren't making it like this - and maybe, just maybe, that's the point.
Songs from the Coal Mine Canary Little Annie (Durtro Jnana 1967)
Every once in a while you read a review that describes the album in this manner: "it's like [insert currently trendy band here] meets [incredibly obscure, vanity band] being raped by a bunch of aliens." You can replace "being raped by a bunch of aliens" with "thrown in a blender" if you prefer your reviewers to be ashamed of their past Star Trek heritage. But either way, I always felt this was a lazy way of reviewing. I mean, who even really knows what a person sounds like when they're being raped by an actual alien?
And yet, Little Annie's latest album Songs from the Coal Mine Canary inspired this sort of criticism from me; just minus all of the musical vanity. Would you like to hear it? Brace yourself. This album sounds like an angry gypsy queen meets a lonely night club singer meets a crazy pirate bitch from hell.
And while that description certainly makes Songs from the Coal Mine Canary sound especially exciting, it doesn't really leave any room to consider whether it's good or not. And that's exactly the point. Little Annie infuses her album with such an aura of drama, excitement, and otherworldly fog that the listener is swept away in the majesty of her creation. It's akin to a piece of imagination: it simply exists, and to either praise it on the highest mountain or condemn it to the shit hells of your local K-mart dollar bin doesn't do this record the justice it deserves.
So what kind of judgment can be passed on Coal Mine Canary? Well, it is definitely not an album for those who dislike big sweeping statements or melodrama or flights of fancy. Nor is it an album for anyone with a disdain of spoken word poetry along the lines of Gertrude Stein. The kind of person Little Annie is meant to appeal to is the kind of person who has never entirely left the fortress of imagination. They want their music not to just be in the background; they want to be able to pretend along with it. They want to become the troubled, sultry night club singer in "Diamonds Made of Glass," the mythical pirate-queen personality which appears in "Absynthtee-ism" or on the "The Good Ship Nasty Queen," the gypsy-queen of a Miss Havisham in "Strange Love." Other people can appreciate this album, but the edges will rub them raw and keep them far apart from the red, purple, gold vision that is the new reality which Little Annie creates. This is a record meant for those who still succumb to flights of fancy, not for the weak of heart or for those with a strong hatred of the theatre. But what about anyone else? Well, they better run for their lives; the pirate bitches from hell are here!
The 15th Annual 89X Birthday Bash featuring Yeah Yeah Yeahs, AFI and others At the Fox Theater Complex, Detroit - June 18, 2006
Dear Friend,
For a lot of girls, there is always that one best friend they can count on. The friend who you've had since at least high school, who knows everything about you. The friend you've done really stupid things with; the friend who, even in the midst of a giant storm of annoyances, you automatically called when everything was going wrong; and the one friend (who you aren't fucking) that you can stay up all night with and not get grumpy. So imagine a day right before the absolute beginning of summer that you spend with your best friend, listening to music, interviewing a band, taking photos, dancing, and going on a mini-road trip to Detroit...
The 89X Birthday Bash took place in Detroit in the Fox Theatre Complex. The Fox and the older (though only by three years) State Theatres are the glossy-gold caverns of art and culture which should have disintegrated with the advent of the Great Depression. The glamour which lies within them has a bright, mythical quality, filled with all the ghastly, materialistic thrills of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel (or, for that matter, a biography). While they are often not associated with modern day perceptions of Detroit, these historical and lovely pieces of real estate are enough to make anyone fall in love with the old, dead Detroit - as well as begin to feel stirrings of compassion for the new Detroit slowly beginning to rebuild itself at the dawn of the 21st century. When I learned that Laura and I would be heading to the theatres, I knew that I would at least slightly enjoy myself.
A word of note, for not-so-frequent readers of the Modern Pea Pod: I am usually not one for modern mainstream music. All of my favorite records are either old, sound old, or veer onto the railway tracks of the bizarre. Every once in a while, there'll be a new album which gets me really excited, but those are few and far between. So when I went to the 89X Birthday bash, I at least consoled myself with the fact that I would get the opportunity to finally see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But then things started to change after I received the upcoming record by another group of 89X performers, Love Arcade (out August 8th on East West). While not everything was to my taste or sensibilities, I began to fall in love with their track "Can't Stop" as Laura and I listened to it in the car. "Can't Stop" made both of us feel as if we were fourteen years old, and the only thing we had to do all summer was look forward to going to a skating rink dance and eating popsicles. We listened to it at least three times on repeat as we drove all over East Lansing and Okemos, thinking of interview questions and ideas. We even mentally outlined a schedule of which shows to cover. Isn't it interesting how whenever anything is planned, it completely falls apart? But that is the nature of both life and Mapquest.
Mapquest somehow chose the longest and most arbitrary way for us to get to Detroit. Maybe they found a way for us to avoid traffic stops and construction, but no matter what it was, they certainly did not want to give us a chance to check out Rogue Wave that afternoon (which is now my third sabotaged attempt at seeing the Sub Pop darlings). Oh, well. After very little decision-making, Laura brought us over to the Fox Theatre stage to begin our concert-going adventure. Laura, who is much more kind than I am, wrote this about our first experience in that area of the festival:
To start things off, Megan and I ventured into the Fox Theatre to check out Say Anything, a California punk pop band that breathes cutesy surfer boy hardcore; and although over the radio their songs offer a nice chuckle and memories of high school afternoons outside in the parking lot vandalizing people's cars, in concert Say Anything was less than pleasing. In fact, they were annoying.
The band itself wasn't half-bad, but frontman Max Bemis, 21, performed poorly, lacking energy and charisma. Their songs dragged, and the set crawled with forceful vocals and a sluggish candor. The California natives even seemed a bit pompous. But Bemis might be fully aware of his talent's shortcomings - he won't play any songs from the band's previous two albums, presumably because he thinks they're so bad.
See, isn't she so much nicer than I am? Here's what I thought of the whole Say Anything experience:
To appreciate a Say Anything set, you have to be either a fan, or the obnoxious lead singer's relative. While the band in general sounded tight and totally together, I was put off by the singer's attitude. This led to a heated argument between myself and the much more understanding Laura:
Me: Can I pan them for the singer being a total douche? Laura: I don't think that's fair. Give them a chance. Me: Oh my God... Listen to him! Laura: I'm trying to watch the show. Me: Ugh. I hate him. ... Me: They're singing a song about a girl touching herself and trying to make it all deep and shit. Laura: I've heard this song on the radio. It makes me laugh.
I felt as if Say Anything's set personified a young teenager's need to make growing up less a fact of life and more of an epic romance where everything is heart-rendingly sincere. Yes, I now know that Say Anything's lead singer is bipolar, and it's not entirely fair to instantly dislike the mentally ill. Nor is it fair for me to judge him from my usual stance on emo, since he actually has gone through a ton of shit. It's more of a dislike I take to seeing a large group of middle-class American teenagers, who on average haven't experienced any great pain or sorrow, yet revel in the pain of others. Music such as Say Anything's, though admittedly not of their own accord, encourages a good deal of young adults to think of pain as a great gift which makes you artistic, interesting, and thought-provoking. Pain becomes more than a necessary part of life, but a part of life to be pursued. It's a self-destructive drive that some teens take too far. I'm not saying that emo music causes suicides, but it does encourage a good deal of dramatic stupidity for the high school set.
(Love Arcade saves the day)
A welcome change of pace, however, was Michigan's own Love Arcade, whose set directly followed Say Anything's on the Fox Theatre stage. Love Arcade is a collection of five very down-to-Earth, very funny guys who love music and attention. While one of the (non-subjective) problems of Say Anything's set was that all of the songs often blended together, Love Arcade, both in person and on their forthcoming CD, never treaded towards the monotonous. Love them or hate them, they're hard to forget.
One of the most interesting things about Love Arcade is the effect they have on their fans. Now that I've reached the wise old age of twenty-one, rarely do I see people actually acting excited about music. Indie shows involve a lot of drinking, a lot of smoking, a lot of thick glasses, and a lot of nonchalant arm-crossing. Only once in a while does the band earn furtive whispers, flirty mock threats, and screaming bleach-blonde/dyed-black haired fourteen year old girls. Even before Love Arcade took the stage, a fleet of girls behind me were eyeing the band, calling them by name, and pondering the all-important question, "Does Christian have his angel wings on?"
(Yes, Christian has his angel wings on)
And despite all of the built-up hype, Love Arcade surpassed all expectations. The bassist, Seth (who Laura and I only got to meet for a few fleeting moments), whirled around as if playing bass was less of an activity and more of an addiction. Lead singer Christian and guitarist Thomas leapt and jumped, forcing the photographers in the pit to scuttle and rush around like a pack of tigers fighting over two lone and wily gazelles. The band had a fierce intensity which stopped all of the self-pitying of Say Anything's set and led to a full-on dance party. The Fox Theatre security guards, who, while nice and accomodating to me as a photographer and a (young) member of the press, had built up a stonewall of "no"'s, glares, and basic intimidation movements for the mostly high school crowd, began to crack under the pressure of Love Arcade's live show. If anything would have convinced you of this band's future musical success, it would have been their 89X perfomance. They demonstrated their likeability and potential radio popularity with a quick, sweaty set that left their fans raving and even some of the beleaguered adult chaperones grinning.
While I snapped away in the photo pit, Laura wrote quickly and furiously into her reporter's notebook, obviously inspired by the performance. Enclosed, dear reader, is a mini-review which she roughly scribbled between masses of squealing, energetic 14-year-old girls:
Love Arcade, the up-and-coming band out of the Detroit Area, was our next stop. The five performers cemented a youthful stance to the opening acts, and a cacaphony of young girls swarmed the Fox Theatre awaiting their performance. I was shocked at the energy the local band brought to the stage. No wonder these girls were into them - I was into them. They were a visual cornucopia of color: the bass player wore a plaid blazer, the lead guitarist had an amazing baby blue glitter guitar that matched his aqua Chuck Taylors perfectly, and the lead singer, who magically appeared right before the vocals of the first song, was a sight all in white, and even wore lustrous angel wings for a portion of the set. The music was poppy and sugary, but that was easy to overlook with their amazing stage presence and charismatic, laid back style. Some of the band's moves were even synchronized (which gets me every time).
The only drawback I had from the performance was that I felt like they were geared toward a much younger audience; which is a smart move for a large fanbase, but opening with lyrics like "Play with me, just like a toy" is a little too juvenile, even for the youngsters. Everyone in Love Arcade was excited to be performing, they enjoyed it and the audience could tell, which is always a good thing. I doubt this show was just a gig for them, but if it was, we didn't catch on and that's how a performance should be - that's more than I could say about Say Anything. The guys - frontman Christian, bassist Seth, drummer Dorman, guitarist Thomas and keyboardist Nate - worked well together, and I'll be surprised if I'm not seeing 15-year-old girls draped in Love Arcade-branded accessories in the next year or so. The set itself gave us a much-needed energy boost, not to mention hope after Say Anything dampered our day.
A major downside of the show, though, was that it left Laura and I much more intimidated by the near-future of a Love Arcade interview. Laura, the more experienced journalist, was infinitely blown away by their stage presence and began to grow more and more excited at the idea of meeting them, although her intimidation was beginning to slowly grow. And me? Because this was my first interview ever, my stomach began to curl smaller and smaller as if it had become a black hole. It wasn't like I was expecting a Lou Reed reception, but still. Things became even more nerve-wracking when we attempted to find a place where we could actually hear what the band had to say. We would have used the bottom lounge outside of the woman's bathroom at the Fox Theatre, but a female security guard was set up to bar entry to all males. As Laura and I sat on one of the vast velvet couches, we overheard several ridiculous exchanges which led to our knowing, come hell or high water or a mysterious and hidden vagina which did not match the outsides of Love Arcade, they were not going to be allowed in. And while eventually the band found a place for us to talk, their choice of venue - backstage - heightened the nerves of both of us. Still, despite all of the gloom of my interview perceptions, it really went off well. I guess. [Interview forthcoming. -Ed.]
After the epic highs of both seeing and learning to love Love Arcade, Laura and I went to the Woodward stage to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at 8:15. I had fallen in love with Karen O, Brian Chase, and Nick Zinner at the end of my senior year of high school, and ever since I had been trying to catch one of their shows. Yet everything from being broke to a final exam to a lost ID had stopped me from experiencing their rock and roll freak outs. And Laura, being Laura, composed an epic metaphor about Karen O's voice, Rilo Kiley, and her great love for women singers. I would repeat it, but it would only make sense to, well...us.
Before the show started, adding to the weird mood of the day, we ended up meeting the bus driver for AFI. He was a grizzled man in his thirties who was going around talking to every unaccompanied nearby girl (or set of girls) he could find. While he never told us his name, he was an interesting man. Enclosed is a reasonable facsimile of some of the many life lessons he taught us:
AFI Bus Driver: Man, this business will chew you up and spit you out. Laura: Have you driven for a lot of tours? AFI Bus Driver: Oh man. I did Ozzfest... Warped Tour... Megan: Which was your favorite? AFI Bus Driver: Oh, totally Ozzfest! Laura: Why? AFI Bus Driver: Number one: the tits! Number two: awesome people! Number three: good money! I wish I could go back. Megan: The tits? AFI Bus Driver: Oh man, you see the most tits at Ozzfest. Megan: Why can't you go back? AFI Bus Driver: Because this business is not about you or you or me. It's about them. If you mess up, people who were once your friends will never speak to you again, because that's the business. A mistake is a mark that can spread to you and your friends. I was only ten minutes late for an hour early call time. Fired. Just like that. And now, I can never, ever drive for Ozzfest again.
That dude was a cool, weird guy, which was really the flavor of that day. After we finished talking to him, I headed into the photo pit to prepare to take pictures of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. This left an excited Laura to once again write and dance by herself on the side of the stage. Even I had no idea how excited she was to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, until I read this later on...
(Karen O testifies)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs were the most anticipated band for me to see live. I was sure they would serve a juicy slice of raw talent, and they did as the sun began to set past the outdoor stage between the Fox and State Theatres. Singer Karen O, guitarist Nicolas Zinner and drummer Brian Chase wowed the crowd, and were another band who obviously loved what they were doing. Karen O smiled and sang in a pure, crystal-clear voice, each ark and swoop perfected with the rest of the band's accompaniment. There was nothing bad to say about this set; every song I wanted to hear was performed flawlessly. Karen O's eccentric black and gold leotard outfit, red and black sequin scarf, red fishnets and colorful face art made me swoon even more for a band I already loved.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are known for their stage shows, with Karen O doing everything from slathering herself with olive oil to jumping in a pit of peppermints with Jack White. The thing that no one ever mentions is the pure joy the frontwoman seems to get from being on stage. She spent most of the 89X set with a large grin on her face as she danced around the stage like a demented harlequin from the '80s. Most of the time, Karen O reacts to the songs as if it were the best day of her life, her favorite song has just come on the radio, and the only legitimate thing for her to do is motherfucking dance.
(Motherfucking dance!!!)
And it's not as if she's the only one in the band having fun: look up at the first picture of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs again - Brian Chase has the biggest grin this side of Wisconsin. And while Nick Zinner and touring member Imaad Wasif weren't as expressive about their emotions, both looked as if they were in completely different zones of reality, where the only thing that mattered was the guitar and the music.
(Well, the guitar, the music and the Nick Cave haircuts, anyway...)
Though I had read that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were playing mostly new material on their current tour, such as "Warrior" and "Cheated Hearts," their set at the 89X Birthday Bash was mostly dominated by songs from 2003's Fever to Tell. The audience sang along to "Maps" and danced feverishly (if you will excuse the pun) to "Date with the Night" and "Y Control." Karen O was fantastic with her howls and screams between some of the most gorgeous female vocals out there right now. There is rock and roll, and there is rock and fucking roll, and Karen O is rock and motherfucking roll.
(Karen rocks and motherfucking rolls)
And while the day could have just ended for me after the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show, Laura had other ideas as she demanded we stay for AFI's set...
(Quick, spot the phallic symbol! AFI's Jade Puget reenacts Triumph of the Will)
Evening set in as AFI invaded the outdoor stage. I'd heard they were great live, but Davey Havok, Jade Puget, Hunter Burgan and Adam Carson blew any sort of expectations I had out of the water. AFI was nothing short of amazing. The energy Havok brought to the stage was staggering as he erupted into a vocal rampage that was felt by the entire audience - who, in turn, began crowd surfing (which is never a good thing when half of the show-goers are 14-year-old girls in tube tops). Havok was all over the place, pouncing on the raised drummer's pad more than once and emitting his intensity to the furthest brim of the stage on either side. Although the performance was exciting and energetic, it wasn't overdone or immature in any way. Havok's voice was distinct, unhindered and resonant, and the band's chemistry was wonderful. Havok's tightly-clothed body, by the way: also flawless.
(Laura's Adonis in eyeliner: Davey Havok)
Personally, I had never been too interested in AFI. I heard many an awed review from friends I had in high school, but I hadn't really believed them. But then there was a moment, even before AFI's set began, as I stood in the photo-pit cleaning my lens and leaning against the stage, that I realized I was in for an adventure. The crowd was so excited and built-up that I could feel their body heat pressing against my body, as if it were an electrical shock. And then they took the stage. I'm not going to pretend that I will ever buy an AFI album or wear one of their shirts. But there's no way I can lie and say that AFI are not an amazing live band. Davey Havok became a whirlwind of black hair, black clothes, and pulsating voice. It was more the equivalent of seeing a caged tiger begin to sing than any man. There are some performers who transcend the boundaries of personal preference and genre, forcing you to acknowledge their talent, and Davey Havok is one of them.
(Cage that tiger - Havok erupts)
Overall, the 89x festival was a fun time; both for high school emo kids (see the State Theatre and Fox Theatre lineups) and dance hipsters who rarely see the sunlight (see the Woodward stage schedule). If you get a chance to attempt next year's festival, honestly, give it a chance. You will be exposed to the weirdest, the youngest, the trashiest, and some of the friendliest members of society; and if you're lucky, you might see as much great music as we did, too.
posted by Laura Misjak & Megan Giddings at 2:27 AM
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
I Stand Alone
Ramblin' Jack Elliott (Anti-)
The title of Ramblin' Jack Elliott's latest album doesn't lie: amongst the traditional folk giants with whom he once ran, Elliott really does stand alone. Woody Guthrie, his mentor and friend, is of course long dead; as is their old mutual traveling buddy Cisco Houston. Pete Seeger, who frequently shared the stage with Elliott and counted him as an influence, performs only rarely because of age. And then there's the man whose early persona was so indebted to Ramblin' Jack that his first show saw him billed as the "Son of Jack Elliott" - one Bob Dylan. Needless to say, that particular disciple moved past traditional folk a long time ago.
But Ramblin' Jack has stayed strong, continuing to play the music he learned as an itinerant folkie more than half a century ago. Even as popular attention has shifted to rock and roll, and from rock and roll to hip-hop, he's continued on his own singular path; sometimes with those timeless, dusty-edged, more and more infrequent albums, but more often as a sort of specter, haunting the musical landscape, brightening it piece by piece. Now he's onstage with the Grateful Dead; now he's carousing through America in the modern gypsy caravan that was Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. He stands alone, but more importantly, he walks alone too.
So with these things in mind - his massive and persisting influence on Americana, his increasingly solitary role, and not least his age, 75 this year - one might expect I Stand Alone to be a somber meditation on individual and cultural mortality, perhaps something along the lines of Neil Young's recent Heart of Gold film, and in a way it is. The music Elliott plays, after all, is arguably not even meant to exist in the recorded medium, let alone in the age of iTunes; there's something strange and ancient about these spare, scattershot-brief songs, as if they were recorded in the 1930s by Leadbelly or the Carter Family (or Woody Guthrie), instead of in 2006 with Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker on harmony vocals and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on bass. And as for the singer's own age, it's all but impossible to ignore, right down to the track listing: "Arthritis Blues." "Remember Me." "Drivin' Nails in My Coffin."
That said, let's just not belabor the point too much, because if Jack's latest ramble sees him confronting the twilight of his life, it's nowhere near the somber tone of Johnny Cash's last two American records. Instead, I Stand Alone finds Elliott full of fire and even humor, turning rheumatism into a defiant joke with Butch Hawes' "Arthritis Blues" and looking forward to the hereafter as a place to reunite with his beloved dog on Cisco Houston's "Old Blue." Best of all is "Rake & Ramblin' Boy," a traditional which could have been penned by Elliott himself and ends with the cackled monologue, "Now when I die / Don't bury me at all / Just place me away in alcohol / My .44 put by my feet / Tell everyone I'm just asleep."
And even when Elliott isn't literally laughing in the face of death, his voice and guitar picking are in equally robust form; enriched, not depleted, by age. The man who hollers out the lyrics of "Call Me a Dog" like his life depends on them couldn't be a day younger than 75 for experience, but for lung power it's a feat plenty of 25-year-olds would kill for. Elsewhere, Ramblin' Jack brings an eerie celluloid cabaret quality to Hoagy Carmichael's "Hong Kong Blues," his nimble fingers plucking out the "story of a very unfortunate colored man" with enough empathy to obscure the 60-year-old song's glaring Orientalism. And on "Driving Nails in My Coffin," his ragged, confident pipes make the usually shrill Corin Tucker sound downright demure.
The only time when Jack actually sounds old, in fact, is on closing track "Woody's Last Ride": a spooky, atmospheric spoken-word story recounting the last time he saw Woody Guthrie. It's an odd, low-key end to an otherwise invigorating record, and it has a way both of bringing us back down to earth, and of bringing Elliott's whole career full circle. He got his start as a solo performer playing traditional songs and telling stories about Woody Guthrie; now, here he is in a whole new century, doing much the same thing for all too brief a time (my only complaint about this album, and it's a selfish one, is that its 16 songs clock in at only 32 minutes total). The fact that Jack Elliott stands alone, and to be frank has been doing so for quite some time, is a sobering reminder that he, and his music, are not long for this world. But should he go the way of either Guthrie or Seeger before we get to hear from him next, then I Stand Alone will make one hell of a last will and testament - for Elliott, for folk music, and for an old, dying America.
Lately, there seems to be a formula for making a radio hit album. Give it a Franz Ferdinandesque backbeat, a sprinkle of whiny lyrics, and a shitload of influences that will please the shaggy-haired kid who still buys vinyl (assuming, of course, he even listens to the radio). And then, the final touch to our peachy keen delicious dessert: add a thick layer of shiny, saccharine production that could have been slowly forced out of a Duncan Hines red and white frosting cup.
This is not to say that all modern production is bad; I mean, how can I say that during a decade when the Neptunes exist? But a good deal of modern production scars and twists most radio-friendly music to sound, well...the same. And hey, I can't even fight about music which occasionally sounds the same; sometimes there's nothing more satisfying than listening to a big, steaming hunk of a Gary Glitter playlist. It was the sameness in Glitter's music which made it so appealing; almost always you knew it was him, and intuitively, a Gary Glitter fan could raise their fist in the air and yell, "YEAH" out their car window at those fucking self-righteous Zeppelin kids.
So why am I, an admitted Gary Glitter fan, against this modern trend which rears its head on most of the songs on Sound Team's Movie Monster? Because unlike Glitter, Sound Team doesn't trick me. I can obviously tell that Sound Team is an interesting band - I hear touches of Silver Apples, as well as some very, very, very gay-oriented electronic-based '80s bands underneath that slick, "Woooo! I looooooooooooove U2!" production - and they deserve better. But what stands out on this release is the fact that producers so obviously know that most young kids don't listen to the radio to enjoy music. They listen to the radio as background chatter behind their cellphones or the sound of their friend's voice in the passenger seat. And unfortunately, for accompanying those inane activities and others, Sound Team's latest would work just fine.
Still, Movie Monster is an odd entity, because despite all of my consternation at its production, it's also a highly appealing album. Energy pulsates and crackles and consumes a listener underneath the surface. Listen to album-closer "Handful of Billions," which rises and falls with the intensity of a dangerous relationship: I know I should not love or even appreciate this song, but the more I listen to it, the more I want to hear it over and over again. "Handful of Billions" is the song that blasts through the radio and can become a five-minute, twenty-four second soundtrack to your life, as the car speeds beneath the gold-green city lights, the wind licks and runs her manicured hands through your hair, and your heart beats through your chest, into your throat, and reminds you as everything blurs and becomes one living breath for living moment, that you are alive.
And maybe a song like "Handful of Billions" isn't worth buying an album which encourages a much slower love affair, but at the same time, it is worth that 99 cents still lingering in an iTunes account. And from "Handful of Billions," there is definitely room to start falling in love with the rest of these songs. And if it wasn't enough? Well, if you will excuse a much-used cliche, it's better to have loved and lost, then to never have loved at all.
American V: A Hundred Highways Johnny Cash (American Recordings)
Not everyone feels as if they must accept death. With such concepts of ashes being launched into space and bodies turned into diamonds, death no longer is a solemn disappearance, but has shifted more into a spooky permanence. A person may be forgotten in the ground, but never when they're winking expensively on a relative or a lover's ring finger. There is a human wish for immortality which can surface subconsciously with every written word, recorded song, or brush stroke. There may not be any artistry to the creation; but the presence of its creator will always be contained slightly within it.
Yet, there are some people who don't need to become immaterial objects to linger in the public's eye. Johnny Cash's latest release (but certainly not his last; longtime producer Rick Rubin has already stated that there will be an American VI) should leave an indelible mark on the consciousness of all who encounter it. American V: A Hundred Highways captures a legend of American music reflecting on what he knew and understood was an inevitable death with dignity, sadness, and hope.
American V is a revelation because it stops being a CD and becomes a reflection of the mental state of the slowly dying Cash, as well as a weathered monument which touches upon and can compel complex intellectual and emotional thoughts about Cash's life and the very meaning of death. This album reveals the mortal side of Cash, the legend, far better than any Hollywood biopic, remembered anecdote, or lingering biography ever could. It's a troubling album to review for this very reason: this music transcends the common arena of an album and instead reaches the level of a farewell letter, both to the world and to a beloved wife. Who really has the authority to judge anyone's reactions to an inescapable death?
At the same time, American V is not really a place for the ever-growing Johnny Cash fanbase to begin their journey. Younger fans who have begun an interest from watching Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon on screen might not yet have the patience for the vocal sounds of an older man. It's not even that Cash's voice sounds terrible or unpleasing; it is simply the fact that it is not usually within the limits of human nature (especially younger human nature) to begin with an idol who is no longer a legend, but a man slipping towards the grave. Less seasoned fans would still be advised to either start with the more recently famous American IV: The Man Comes Around, which is more of an accessible launching pad; or, if they're more of a classicist, to head much further back in time to Folsom Prison. Yet, for any person who has loved Cash and considered him an American legend, American V is a must for their collection.
Despite the fact that backing tracks were not completed until two years after the singer's death, Rick Rubin has done a wonderful and tasteful job with these final parts of Cash's catalogue. Cash's final written song, "Like the 309," is funny, tasteful, and feels like a slightly modern update on the songs which originally thrust him into fame. And while the humor lifts an otherwise grey-toned CD, a listener doesn't always long for that relief. American V allows Cash's fans to mourn with him for June Carter Cash on songs such as his soul-stirring cover of Hank Williams' "On the Evening Train," as well as to worry and mourn for Cash himself on tracks such as "Help Me." Yet, at the same time, there is also a relief that even if the listener doesn't believe in a hereafter, Cash had the firm hope that all of this suffering was worth it, because in the end there was a better place. And even for a doubter such as myself, doubt can begin to dissipate with songs such as Cash's "I Came to Believe" or album closer "I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now."
American V is one of the few, real testaments to the end of life. While it may be hard for some to take and immerse themselves in, it is not a record which should be shied away from. It is a work of art, from one of the legends of American music - and from a great and departed man.
I knew I would like Johnny Dowd. His latest disc came on recommendation to me from a publicist (don't laugh) whose taste in music I almost always agree with, and the fact that he is frequently described as an "alt-country" artist put him, I thought, firmly in place for my ongoing love affair with American roots music. So it came as no surprise that I liked Johnny Dowd; just about from the moment I heard him, in fact. What did throw me for a loop was how much I liked him, and for what reasons.
First, let's get this out of the way: Johnny Dowd has about as much in common with American roots music as Beck has with old-time rock'n'roll, and his classification as "alt-country" has everything to do with how absurdly wide one's own definition of "alternative" is. You might not know it from looking at the unassuming cover art, but Cruel Words is a veritable Pandora's Box of labyrinthine jazz, frenetic post-punk and hard-hitting metal, where genres are jumped and collapsed at the shrug of a shoulder, often several times in the same song. Sure, it's all sung with a Southern accent, and Dowd's lyrics are concerned almost exclusively with the misfits and losers on the margins of American life; but these tenuous connections aside, Cruel Words is about as far from traditional honky-tonk country as you can get without employing a drum machine (oh, wait...there is a drum machine on a couple of tracks). And let me tell you, it threw me for a loop. I came in expecting George Jones - albeit with a visage more like Jim Jarmusch's. What I got instead was some kind of alternate-dimension Devo from below the Mason-Dixon line.
Good thing, too, because as pleasant as another alt-country record would have been, Johnny Dowd's newest offering makes for the kind of glorious "what the hell is this?!" musical experience that's all too rare these days. Opening track "House of Pain" sets the tone, with blasts of overdriven guitar and Dowd's own quavering, Texan Lou Reed speak-sing vocals relating the story of a frustrated cowboy who decides to shoot off his own testicles. And then he's off, hooking us in with more gallows humor and even more restless musical acrobatics. "Miracles Never Happen" references Junior Parker via Elvis while shaking its fist at the heavens, and "Praise God," with its glibly-delivered monologue by a formerly jingoistic, now wheelchair-ridden Iraq War veteran, resembles a Bruce Springsteen song ghostwritten by Iggy Pop. "I don't care," Dowd spits on the chorus. "I'm in a wheelchair!"
Through it all, the connective tissue between disparate songs and styles is a kind of bristling, all-consuming, often morbid sense of rage. Dowd's anger manifests itself against targets both societal (the working-class rant "Anxiety") and individual (the jilted-man complaint "Unwed Mother"); his concerns are often existential ("Ding Dong"'s funeral ruminations), and occasionally hallucinatory (the stream-of-consciousness woman-troubles hysteria of "Corner Laundromat"). And most of the time, like any of rock's great anger merchants, he's at his best when he's at his maddest - certainly Dowd has his way around a venom-soaked turn of phrase, as lines like "Poverty House"'s "love can be so beautiful, like Jesus on the cross" amply demonstrate. But it's the very issue of Dowd's rage - his Cruel Words, if you will - that brings up one of my few misgivings with this album. Simply put, if Dowd's more apparently confessional songs draw from personal experience, then one feels almost sick listening to them for pleasure. And by that same logic, if Dowd is the one inventing these stories, for his own pleasure and for ours, then isn't he sick, too?
It's a question, granted, that won't affect the joy of a casual listen or three; after all, if Dowd's domestic nightmare "Cradle of Lies" sounds like something out of a JT Leroy novel, then plenty of other songs remain equally harrowing while delivering a (somewhat) lighter-hearted side of black comedy. Take "Drunk," for example, where Dowd follows up troublingly desperate observations ("the razor, it's tempting / if you have not been blessed / and in your own body you feel like a guest") with a shambling, tongue-in-cheek sinner's gospel chorus ("oh, what I'd give for a drink"). The juxtaposition is as darkly funny as it is squirm-inducing. But at the same time, it's one of those moments when you're unsure whether Dowd - a fifty-something musical misfit for whom a cult following would probably be the apex of his career - is playing authentic outsider music, or whether he's just an insider pretending to play outsider music.
In the end, though, does this question really matter? Whether Johnny Dowd's lyrical demons ring uncomfortably true to the listener, or just as uncomfortably false - for me it's both, depending on the song - his musical inventiveness is undeniable. And assuming for a moment that he really is as troubled as he seems, one has to guess that his music grants a sort of catharsis; this is his sixth album since 1998, after all, and if the guy still hasn't done himself in, then he must be doing something right. Fact is, if the closing track is any indication (a cover of "Johnny B. Goode" with Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" riff grafted onto the finale), he even seems to be having fun in the process. So don't shed any tears for Johnny Dowd, at least not yet. Just sit back and enjoy one of the weirdest, wildest and most wonderful records of 2006 - even if it does make you grimace a little.
Despite the fact that Grant-Lee Phillips is a regularly occurring character on the new CW's Gilmore Girls, he appears to remain fairly unknown. Perhaps it's because Phillips, as Stars Hollow's town troubadour, never makes out with either Lorelai or Rory Gilmore. Perhaps it's because he has only really taken the spotlight on the show twice, once when his character challenged the authenticity of a rival troubadour in a town hall meeting, and once in season six's finale, when he ended up opening for Neil Young and inspiring Sparks and Sonic Youth, among others, to come to the town in hopes of being discovered.
Or maybe it's because Grant-Lee Phillips isn't playing music that would inspire most of the Gilmore Girls' main audience to stop and toss him a quarter. With his honey-streaked vocals and drifty, dreamlike sound, Phillips can often sound like an unassuming man's Ryan Adams. This is not to say that he is any less interesting or talented than Adams, but he lacks the drama (and occasional craziness)which has thrust Adams much more clearly into the public eye. While Phillips' latest release, nineteeneighties, will probably not shift him further into the spotlight, this album will beg the question: why isn't Grant-Lee Phillips getting the fame he deserves?
On nineteeneighties, Phillips takes some of the best and most iconic songs of the '80s, and creates blissful cover versions which are covers in name alone. Forget the wedding band and high school garage band notoriety of the term "cover songs" - Phillips takes classics like the Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation", Nick Cave's "City of Refuge", Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon", and the Cure's "Boys Don't Cry" and creates something new and different and natural.
If anything, nineteeneighties proves that Grant-Lee Phillips' voice is akin to a force of nature. On tracks such as REM's "so. central rain (i'm sorry)," Phillips' voice is as aching and tender as rain slowly pulling down the red-gold leaves of October trees. Or listen to the evocative "Wave of Mutilation," where his voice becomes the wind forcing the ocean to sparkle silver and slowly pushing the green palm trees back and forth in a creaky dance. He becomes the jagged road and the ominous thunder - as well as being more Nick Cave than Nick Cave was on the original cut - on "City of Refuge". This is the sound of a voice that can circle the group, trail up into the stars and moon, become the grey dew death of late August fog, and finally turn into the sweet yellow sunlight of spring. It may not be theatrical, but for those who are not interested in the modern, the sleek, or the novelty, Phillip's voice will be similar to finding a box of fragrant poems, postcards, and pictures explained in the slippery script of your relative from the 1930s.
Despite the fact that this album is solely composed of covers - or maybe even because of it - nineteeneighties may very well be the best record that you haven't heard all year. Seriously, give it a chance. You won't regret it.
One Big Soulful Family: Atlantic Unearthed: Soul Brothers and Soul Sisters Various Artists (Atlantic/Rhino)
There are certain things in life which almost always have positive connotations: easy examples of these items are pizza, Chinese food, sex, and bubble baths. It doesn't matter if the pizza is bad, it's still better than the crazy half-baked casserole concoction your roommate will try to feed you. Same with bubble baths. It doesn't matter if once you get out of the bathtub, your body is covered in itchy hives because you used your little sister's ten-year-old package of Mr. Bubble; it was still a bubble bath. And honestly, do we really have to get started on the virtues of sex?
I didn't think so.
But what does this philosophy have to do with Soul Brothers and Soul Sisters, the twin compilations of soul rarities from the Atlantic Records vaults recently released by Rhino? Because much like sex, bubble baths, pizza, and Chinese food, rarely is there an occasion when a soul song can be entirely terrible. There can be mediocre soul songs, but even a poorer quality track still has more true emotional power and resonance than most modern-day pop music. Listen to Wilson Pickett's never-before released version of "Can't Stop a Man in Love" - while this track by no means falls into the category of "mediocre soul music," between the combination of that funky-as-shit production and the heart-stopping vocals of the Wicked Pickett, "Can't Stop a Man" captures all of the best aspects of soul music in three minutes and fourteen seconds. And while that track alone is worth making Soul Brothers a part of anyone's music collection, other rare cuts such as Sam & Dave's version of "You Left the Water Running", as well as Mighty Sam's cover of Johnnie Taylor's "Lovebones," make the male side of Atlantic's familial collection one of the most enjoyable compilations to cross this reviewer's path in quite a long time.
Soul Sisters, on the other hand, may be even more essential; oftentimes, the female aspect of soul music is downplayed. While many people know of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam Cooke, few of the great female soul singers are immediately attributed to the genre. Aretha Franklin is one of the few that break that mode, and she personifies passion with her wonderful recording of Frank Sinatra's "My Way." But what about the women to whom time hasn't always been so kind? Listen to Dee Dee Warwick's cover of "Rescue Me." It doesn't entirely eclipse Fontella Bass's version; there's an odd note of desperation between the layers of sound which doesn't quite surface in the fiery original. But while Bass' version is iconic, Warwick's take is much more relatable. Baby Washington's take on Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," meanwhile, sounds like one part Nina Simone's baby sister and two parts the husky nightclub singer of everyone's blue velvet and whiskey-sour dreams. And if that's not enough to tempt someone, check out Dee Dee Sharp's "My Best Friend's Man." Sharp captures remorse, regret, and a fiery, bittersweet lust for love that strengthens the track's girl group production, as well as begs the question: why did those girl groups always feel the need to be so damn sweet?
Although the odds-and-ends nature of these compilations may not make them the best place for newcomers to start (with the exception of those hard-to-find, but worthy, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett cuts), the two editions of Atlantic Unearthed should be enough to tempt even the most fanatic and jaded of soul aficianados.
Let's face it. If today's flag-waving, self-appointed protectors of American values and principles were to select one group of pop culture writers to represent all that is good about our fair nation, the Modern Pea Pod wouldn't be it. There are bisexuals in our midst, as well as Jews, atheists, socialists, English majors, and one clear product of a miscegenous union. Hell, a few of us have even partaken of the Demon Weed, thus making us law-breakers and hippies. As for me, I read Naked Lunch in high school; my chances of becoming a respected citizen and a patriot are pretty much next to nothing.
0:05 - Patrick Juvet: "I Love America" (5:45)
14:25 - Cyndi Lauper: "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (3:50)
29:56 - Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes: "Great White Buffalo" (5:00)
0:05 - Dropkick Murphys: "The New American Way" (3:32)
17:47 - Quintron: "Place Unknown" (3:33)
31:31 - Rogue Wave: "Are You on My Side" (4:18)
Let's face it. If today's flag-waving, self-appointed protectors of American values and principles were to select one group of pop culture writers to represent all that is good about our fair nation, the Modern Pea Pod wouldn't be it. There are bisexuals in our midst, as well as Jews, atheists, socialists, English majors, and one clear product of a miscegenous union. Hell, a few of us have even partaken of the Demon Weed, thus making us law-breakers and hippies. As for me, I read Naked Lunch in high school; my chances of becoming a respected citizen and a patriot are pretty much next to nothing.
0:05 - Patrick Juvet: "I Love America" (5:45)
14:25 - Cyndi Lauper: "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (3:50)
29:56 - Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes: "Great White Buffalo" (5:00)
0:05 - Dropkick Murphys: "The New American Way" (3:32)
17:47 - Quintron: "Place Unknown" (3:33)
31:31 - Rogue Wave: "Are You on My Side" (4:18)
