Speaking of Tapes

Burger Records gets your favorite band to let them put all your favorite songs on cassette so you don't have to download them! I don't know why! But I love it! Orange County! This video explains nothing!

Roman Intellectuals

I heard the song "A Cheap Religion" and couldn't help but order this Shit Music for Shit People tape release of The Intellectuals's In the Middle of Darkwhere. They're from Rome and they play dark rockabilly and R&B with lots of machine noise and a steel splinters ground in. I was a little afraid of getting some in my eye the whole time I was listening to side A. They remind me of Black Time or like a hayseed version of Lost Sounds.

The unmarked tape comes in a plastic baggie with a download code and a post card of a tasteful nude, so it's well worth the Euros and the album might be my actual true summer playlist. With songs like "The Joke is on the Sun," it's perfect for everything I have planned, such as staying inside and nursing my reverse seasonal affective disorder.

Dig it:
  The Intellectuals - A Cheap Religion by smfsp

Jet Rock 'N' Roll Dreams

A long cherished dream came true last night! I finally saw Guitar Wolf in concert! They played the Knitting
Factory with Cheap Time!

As often happens when my dreams cross over into reality, I spent most of the night screaming. In this case it was because the show was loud and fun as I ever imagined and I can now die happy.

It was a little disappointing that Guitar Wolf's mic didn't shoot real flames like in Wild Zero. Maybe the Knitting Factory said no. But three encores more than made up for a lack of literal pyrotechnics. During the second one, Guitar Wolf/Seiji/Most Amazing Frontman Ever got a few members of the audience to climb up and form a human pyramid at the very edge of the stage. It was so that he could climb to the top of the pyramid and have someone pass him the mic so he could finish singing "Koukosei Action." This man is an icon of bad ideas.

Finally, a memo: the members of Guitar Wolf are allowed to wear leather pants. You are not.

All Photos Credit: Ann Yoo. Thanks again.

Shannon & The Clams "Sleep Talk" Video! Glitter Tears!

Speaking of Shannon and the Clams and other things that are actually fun. I really like the new video for "Sleep Talk." Shot on a new super 8 film stock!? Read all about it at The Bay Bridged!


Shannon and the Clams - "Sleep Talk" from The Bay Bridged on Vimeo.

You can also read the lengthy result of a phone conversation I had with the band at Stomp and Stammer's website. We mostly talked about their new album and Roy Orbison. Sleep Talk is even better than their first album and they were great when I saw them with Hunx and His Punx at Cake Shop just now, but the show was kind of housed in much the same way that Nobunny's Cake Shop engagement was last year.

You can stream all of Sleep Talk at Punknews.org

Shannon & The Clams

I'm getting hyped on them. Wish I could go to the Mess Around in Atlanta, but I have other plans.

I Want to Die in the Ocean!

Total garbage from Shangai! Watch the video! The band is called Pairs! The song is called "I Want to Die In The Ocean!"

Here is a picture of the art from their brain-benumbing self-titled album, which you can get for free at Bandcamp. Cheaper than a six pack and almost as effective, it features such standouts as "Yangpu Qu" and "Old Blowjob." Oh, and lots of screaming. 

Crust Punks

You can stream Personal and the Pizza's new album Raw Pie (get it?) over on their profile page at Punknews.org.

You may have heard some of these songs before, but some of them you haven't. I'm pretty into the song "Pepperoni Eyes". (They're so romantic.) Overall Raw Pie sets a new and inspiring standard for humping The Stooges and The Ramones at the same time. I'm not insulting them. They know what they're doing. It's like they heard someone use the phrase "unabashed Ramones worship" and said "You call that unabashed Ramones worship? We'll show you what unabashed Ramones worship is" and proceeded to make good on the promise. Also, "Don't You Go in That Ground" is kinda moving. You can get the thing from 1-2-3-4 GO! Records. I'm probably just telling you so I have an excuse to post this picture:

New York Shitty

I know I said I wasn't posting for awhile but the Nobunny show at Cake Shop last night was messed up and I need to talk. I missed Fostercare, but Daddy Long Legs and Apache were super cool and fun. Especially Apache, masters of the micro-genre I will call comedy garage rock. (Quote of the set: "Can we get some more beer in the mics?")


But, through no fault of Nobunny's own, his set turned weird and disturbing. And not in the awesome way that you expect. There were some technical difficulties early on with instruments and mic stands falling apart but that didn't seem to be too much of a problem. Nothing our heroes can't handle, even with the spotty vocals. I didn't care. I was there to feel the love, the laying on of grimy hands, as it were. Nobunny wasn't feeling the love, hard as he tried.


Some young dudes (and a young lady) up front had gotten pretty riled up during Apache's set and had turned the foot of the stage into a mini mosh pit. Broken glass appeared underfoot, seemingly out of nowhere. This is a bit odd for a Nobunny show, or almost any garage show really, and it was harshing what was left of the bunny's mellow. He requested that the aggro scene disperse and get a clue (my words) and this led to an immediate and significant improvement in the ratio of girls to boys happily bopping around up front. (This golden ratio is generally a major perk of garage shows vs. some other punk flavors.)


Everything seemed fine until someone launched a paper deli bag of shit onto the stage. Presumably, the perps were the banished moshers. Presumably, the feces belonged to one of them. I saw the thing sail onto the stage clipping Nobunny on the thigh, just below his slightly-too-tight briefs.

It was an attractive crowd last night, but it didn't smell pretty, so I did not at first connect the ensuing odor with the projectile. When Nobunny left the stage to dispose of the bag I still had no idea what was going on.  When the horrifying reality penetrated my power-pop addled skull, it seemed the show was over, and ending on the lowest note possible. Situations like this aren't good for my misanthrotonin levels, which are dangerously high under normal circumstances, and I can only imagine how Nobunny felt about things. But he went on to finish the set with "Chuck Berry Holiday," movingly demonstrating that one monkey really don't stop no show. Even if that monkey is in fact flinging poop at you. "Nobunny loves you."


Is he coming back? I don't know. (I hope so.)

 So we're all on one page when he does come back:

In other news

Black Lips will be on Carson Daly tonight. Whoa. Carson Daly is still on TV?

The End!

 

Now that Christmas is over and everyone else in the world has sent out their end of the year lists and I have successfully avoided reading the ones most likely to annoy the hell out of me, here is the Bad Idea Potluck Year in Quality Music Recordings. Bands and musicians will be in bold on first reference in homage to Joe Carducci. (If you want the condensed version you'll have to wait until it comes out in Stomp and Stammer in January.) I've arranged it into categories because it's a long list. First, I'd like to draw your attention to/remind you of the many feminine divinities who tossed us a perfumed flower this year just when we were sure we'd never hear from them again.

Among them is Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, whom Momar liked so much. And I could include The 5.6.7.8's because of the rad double LP of their singles that came out.

After years of absence from the music scene, the legendary 

Buffy Sainte-Marie's Running For The Drum appeared with an odd mixture of rhinestone-cowgirl adult contemporary songs to puzzle over and tracks featuring native American drumming so sick that M.I.A. or Diplo should hurry up and see if she wants to do lunch sometime.

Almost as surprising, Exene Cervenka's somewhere gone is a great soundtrack for whatever you plan to do to revisit the '90s now that it's time, and I mean that in the best way possible. It's a poetic statement from Exene the wandering troubadour that reminds one of punk's roots in beatnickery. 

Then, even though their newer dub-reggae-gypsy-punk side is comparatively more orthodox than the

primitive stylings they’re known for, The Slits are in many ways more bizarre than they’ve ever been on Trapped Animal and, in fact, more bizarre than anyone else currently making music.

The year was better for all of them, but the strange and beautiful and only briefly absent Antony may have bested them all with the strange and beautiful Crying Light. That is, he might have were it not for Is It Love Or Desire, recorded by the even stranger and equally beautiful Betty Davis and only released this year thanks to Light in the Attic.

The ladies had a good, good year and as did rock music. Those two lines converged for me in Screaming Females' Power Move, which was absolutely the best rock album this year. I have no idea why Screaming Females isn't selling out stadiums where people buy expensive tickets so they can go inside and cry and cut themselves in abject worship.

Mika Miko put out a fun-to-the-point-of-being-meatheaded album and then split up, leaving a void that was quickly filled (at least in my little world) by any number of exciting all-girl messes.

Though nothing for me can top the rush of C.Y.S.L.A.B.F, Pens in particular seems to reach for the Pony Thrash Crown with Hey Friend, What You Doing? I include Vivian Girls in this category easily, because the band's sophomore album Everything Goes Wrong shows off a capacity for wild energy formerly concealed by the cool perfection of the eponymous debut. And then there was Brilliant Colors' Introducing and Finally Punk's Casual Goths. Get them all and make a mix and then jump around on the bed. 

(But if you really want to dance put on Kid Sister's debut Ultraviolet. I'm listening to it right now and it's making me feel like taking crazy risks, like, I don't know, buying another hip-hop album again someday. Plus, I want nails like she has on the album cover. I want them badly.) 

It all takes the sting out of letting go of Mika Miko. And Vivian Girls are coming close to filling the gaping hole that Sleater-Kinney left in my life. It works out see: Sleater-Kinney has a song called "I Wanna Be Yr Joey Ramone" and Vivian Girls has a guitar player named Cassie Ramone and they are both badass trios. Okay, it's working out for me.

The second best rock album of 2009 was In the Valley of Sickness by Thomas Function. Other favorites that didn't disappoint include Reigning Sound with the gently heartbreaking Love and Curses, Hunx and His Punx with the Gay Singles collection, The Dutchess and the Duke teaming up with Greg Ashley on Sunset / Sunrise, Pissed Jeans' King of Jeans, The Ettes with Do You Want Power, King Khan and BBQ Show with Invisible Girl, and especially The Mountain Goats with The Life of the World to Come.

And my beloved Stuart Murdoch went off on quite a tangent with God Help the Girl. It's a lovely, but not incredibly memorable album. It makes my list because it tells a memorable story that I plan to revisit. Still hoping the movie comes out.

I discovered new music this year too. Check out: Bloody Panda, Summon. I saw them live and the singer/screamer genuinely frightened me. They're some kind of art/death metal and I'm in love. 

But most of the stuff I got into this year is a lot easier on the ears. Pick up on: The Beets, Spit in the Face of People Who Don't Want to Be Cool; Thee Oh Sees, Dog Poison; Nite Jewel, Good Evening; Those Darlins, Those Darlins (Like Patsy Cline, Holly Golightly and a hot toddy. Extra points for random drunk driving PSA.); Music Go Music, Expressions; Madeline, White Flag; and Paramore, Brand New Eyes, because Jessica Hopper made me do it.

The best of all of these that I heard only this year were Thao with the Get Down Stay Down with the stunning, stinging Know Better Learn Faster; the ridiculously catchy and deliciously dark Blank Dogs, Under & Under; and The Rural Alberta Advantage,  Hometowns. This last one has love songs on it that give maturity a good name. The kind that make you want to go home and hug your old man. I hadn't heard anything like that in a long time. 

One last phenomenon that I really appreciated was the smattering of wide releases of previously obscure gems. Light in the Attic released, not just Is it Love or Desire, but gave Serge Gainsbourg's 1971 Histoire de Melody Nelson to Americans on CD this year. Then Drag City gave us Death, ... For the Whole World to See. The Numero Group gave us the amazing double LP of '70s soul that pairs with the photography book Light: On the South Side. Putting things like this in CD stores where the feckless likes of me can find them is the lord's work, I tell you. Special thanks to these great and wise record labels. So, that's it. Or at least that's how I remember it.

Editor's Note: I don't know what to tell you about what's going on with all the fonts and typefaces here. Sorry.

Brilliant Colors

San Francisco's Brilliant Colors' Introducing is the kind of album that makes you yearn to see the band play. It feels like a hurried communique reading something like, "We're over here! Come see us!" Some albums transport you to impossible places; this one takes me on a magical journey to what I think their live set would be like. As happy places go, that suits me fine.

The imaginary show in question sees me waving tightly wadded fists in the air to some messy, pretty rocknroll that skitters across every possible intersection of punk and pop. But I'm not paying too close attention. I'm jumping up and down, especially when they play "English Cities." Sorry, what? Did you say something?
There's something about the production that suggests an outdoor concert on a sunny, dry day.

The album's out on Slumberland but the the veil of noise and vague air of disaffection marks this trio as part of the Captured Tracks/Woodsist family of animal. And a particularly vigorous example of the breed at that. The spacey, hazey '60s pop influence is there and invites comparisons to Vivian Girls but Brilliant Colors is less composed in every sense of the word. This debut full-length feels like a hastily assembled collage of colored tissue paper. (Brilliantly colored tissue paper of course.)

While there's plenty of art here, there's more life to be found than in Vivian Girl's arguably flawless debut. At least musically, they skip the Gen Y/Urban Outfitters blankness in favor of a sound with some hair on its chest and, as a former persistently high-spirited D student in high school, I tend to champion the sloppy and the lively when I come across it. Drummer Diane Anastasio has a satisfyingly bashy approach to her instrument, and it is not surprising that guitarist Michelle Hill has been a touring guitarist with The Slits.

Frontwoman Jess Scott yaps out a lot of her vocals, but sings in a sweet, unaffected voice when she chooses.  After hearing "English Cities" and "Mythic," she is my new lady du rock pin-up. With that delicate Riot Grrrl/Valley Girl drawl, she takes it back and brings it up to date at the same time. Alas, the band is on the West Coast for the near future.

Stomp and Stammer turned thirteen

The party was last night at Star Bar and it might have been my last show in Atlanta before I move. If that's the case, I'm glad the Barreracudas and the Soulphonics & Ruby Velle were on the bill. The Barreracudas were around 10 to 20 times better than I expected. They have some sweet, juicy garage punk going on. Their jam "Dog Foods" especially got the crowd moving. It might actually be about dog food.

Here is singer Adrian Barrera doing his best impression of John Bender from The Breakfast Club. That's a Personal and the Pizzas badge on his lapel.

 

Ruby Velle was just nuts. I have to see her act live again. All the old soul covers you wish someone would do plus originals. Ms. Velle's voice and charisma are such that you can't help but be bummed Amy Winehouse gets to be famous while our lady remains a best kept secret. (Bear in mind that I have a weakness for horn sections.)

Judi Chicago was cool, if you like getting pelted with glowing orbs and/or Gang of Four's later stuff.

 

Boy, am I ever gonna miss this place.

 

Spit in the Face of People Who Don't Want to be Cool

I love it, but sometimes I think all this fuzz and mumbling and submerged vocals and general intelligibility enjoying a certain vogue in the musical underground can be pinned on the Bush administration. People follow their leaders. This can be really very subliminal, and, for the last eight years preceding this one, our leaders were as insolently vague and hard to pin down as they could manage to be. They have been the political equivalent of My Bloody Valentine. As much as I hate to see that sort of thing quoted in the newspaper and treated as if it were coherent, I sure like the way it sounds through my little boom box speakers. But with Obama in office I say it's time for something new.

I also say The Beets get grandfathered in. Their album, Spit in the Face of People Who Don't Want to Be Cool, came in the same envelope as Thee Oh Sees. I'll take their word for it that this is "a collection of 12 songs about being cool" because I can really only make out the odd sentence fragment here and there, however, I can tell that it is a pleasant lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon type collection of extra down-tempo garage rock. If there is a day when you don't think you can handle the Black Lips or even the Strange Boys, put this album on. They rather elegantly neglect to rock out here but nevertheless have a swingin' scuzzy time. So, if the Sunday in question involves day drinking next to someone else's pool, well, so much the better. The obscured vocals are also obnoxious and nasal, giving the whole album a stoned, frat rock appeal. On the other hand, the songs all tend to run together, even with repeated listening. Then again, you will enjoy the process of listening repeatedly just to make sure.

Warm Brother

I've seen Digital Leather live before and not been blown away, but that was, like, two years ago. Now I have a full-length record from them classing up my iTunes and I'm pretty pleased with it. It would appear that the title Warm Brother is WWII Nazi slang for being gay. This is interesting because the album bears the melodic markings of Joy Division, who were also named, like this album, for a piece of Nazi street arcana.

Digital Leather comes off here like a version of New Order or Joy Division or some similarly un-American post punk outfit, as perpetrated by a pack of greasers from the U.S. If there's something I'm more in the mood for than that right now I'll have to think of it after I've had more coffee.

The greaser part comes in where they imbue the synthesizer and electronic noise with the same nasty grit as the guitars. It always does my heart good to see production skills used for good instead of evil. Sometimes, like on "Homesick for Terror," they get into darkwave/industrial territory with shades of Suicide's least musical moments. Then a little acoustic strumming and whistling here and there adds a light patina of intrigue.

Such digressions keep Warm Brother interesting but without them you would still have a solid chunk of pretty, messy, elegiac dance pop worthy of the Psychedelic Furs' contribution to the Pretty in Pink soundtrack."Kissing," for instance, makes me want to do the Molly Ringwald while dressed as Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club. Like Sheedy's character, the seeming innocence of the melodies is belied by harsh beats and all that black gunk piled on top. To that end I may make a mix with these guys, Blank Dogs, Jay Reatard and Lost Sounds. I'll kick it off with track seven, "Bugs on Glue." That's a manic jam.

With the synth, it's all a bit Lost Sounds-ish too, so it's not surprising Jay Reatard has taken them under his oily black wing. Lord help them.

Humanbeing Lawnmower!!

This is pretty much the best name for a zine I have ever encountered and it gets extra points for containing mostly comics for degenerates. I read all of those first. It also contains reviews and features focused on rock music for degenerates past and present. The first issue even has an interview with Baby Shakes.

One of the reviews of a Gentleman Jesse seven inch in the second issue contains this incisive observation:

"However, if I were thee Gentleman Jesse, I wouldn't title the first song 'I Don't Want to Know (Where You Were Last Night)' [sic] I personally would have written 'Bitch, Pack Your Shit and Get Out.'"

www.myspace.com/humanbeing_lawnmower

Slade v. the Monkeys

September of 2007 found me in Memphis for Gonerfest, a week-long festival put on by Goner Records celebrating the kind of garage rock and power pop that makes you feel violated and then makes you blame yourself.

It's all a hopeless blur of humidity and horizontal stripes but this picture does it some justice:

I know it was real because I still have this copy of a book called Slade Vs. the Monkeys, which I do remember buying at Goner Records.
It's a collection of rock caricatures by someone named Crowbar. Some of the drawings, such as "Beatle zombies eating Chuck Berry's brains," invite an allegorical reading. Others, like "Jerry Lee Lewis riding a crab through a pubic forest" and "James Brown blowing up a beached whale" are clearly just innocent fun. Either way, these are some of the finest artworks I have ever encountered.
You can get it here:http://www.goner-records.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2741
If you are ever in Memphis for any reason eat as much as possible and go to the Stax museum.