I don't understand what all the fuss is about. They're nice, I guess, but I can think of a few bands who do (or did) this sort of thing better. But bloggers are drooling over Warpaint, so I thought I'd ask you, dear non-commenting readers, just exactly what is so damn special about Warpaint that warrants all the attention? Do I need to get my ears checked? Am I too jaded? I suppose I could throw these on a "Dreamy Mellow Mix," but I know I'll never listen to it. Oh, wait a second, I do sometimes listen to this level of mellowness when I'm fading off to...Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z ...
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To imagine how all-women bands were viewed in the eighties, you really do have to take into consideration the high visibility of the Go-Go's and the Bangles. Both we're cutesy bordering on coy, and safe enough to take home to Mom. Though both bands had their earlier trashy days, they had no problem letting record companies spit shine them into polished bland girl band crap. (It's really hard to believe that both bands were actually interesting in their earliest incarnations.) In 1985, along comes a bona fide all-women band that turned it up to 11. Similar only in locale (L.A.) and gender, L7 rocked hard. Simply put, they were a band whose in-your-face-ness rendered their sex a non-issue. And this was before the Riot Grrrl movement was in full swing.
Bless their stained hearts, L7 were all but unmarketable. Though they did try. In 1999, in what be one of the best nose-thumbing of a gender trap, they hired a plane to pull a banner over a Lilith Fair show reading "Bored? Tired? Try L7." The next day, over a Warped tour show, they were up to it again, this time taunting the predominantly male line-up with a plane pulled banner reading "Warped needs more beaver...love, L7." Lest their attitude seem choreographed, there's always the moment at the 1992 Reading Music Festival, when guitarist Donita Sparks, tired of being the target of the mud throwing audience, took out her used tampon on stage, and threw it at them, saying "Eat my used tampon, fuckers!" Sound disgusting? Complain to the Go-Go's.
Program notes:
"Shit List" contains staccato shrieking that is, at first, repelling, as it should be. "Hanging On the Telephone" is a cover of a Nerves' song. The Nerves were a power pop band, who notably put on the earliest L.A. independent punk shows, featuring debuts of the Zeros, the Germs and the Weirdos, and one of the last Dils shows as a four piece. "Pretend We're Dead" is one L7 seemed to have banked on, at their peak. "Question My Sanity" is of note because the solo repeats the same six notes over and over. If you've been taking aural notes, that's three times more notes than the Buzzcocks' Pete Shelly used in his solo on "Boredom."
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You're looking at the very first UK independent punk release, the Buzzcocks' 1976 Spiral Scratch EP. As such, it was a sort of template, and it was about as no frills as it gets. Recorded, pressed, and sold by the band, meant it was also one of the first to need distribution. That's when it became apparent that there were other factors of DIY music that might not have been taken into consideration. (We've got a record. Now what?) Once that was set up, exporting punk records was the next step, and before the Sex Pistols had even found a place in the U.S. record store bins, the Buzzcock's Spiral Scratch showed up.
The four song EP was recorded in three hours, and took two hours to mix. Only 1,000 were originally pressed, yet as Simon Reynolds, in his book Rip It Up and Start Again, wrote "People were buying Spiral Scratch...for the sheer fact of its existence, its existence as a cultural landmark and portent of revolution." My brother bought it, without hearing it, for that very reason. Because, there in the bins of Tower Records, was a homemade 45 from the other side of the world. (No stranger to private pressings found in thrift stores, he knew that earnestness went a long way in negating technical shortcomings.) It became our first real taste of UK punk, and a marked rawness that contrasted with the Ramones major label package.
The Buzzcocks reunite with Devoto, 1978, only two years after his exit. Devoto points out "This is not nostalgia."The Buzzcocks went on without him, touring as late as 2010.
The Buzzcocks would, like the Ramones, evolve quickly. With Howard DeVoto leaving the band after Spiral Scratch (and on to form Magazine), the Buzzcocks got a little more polished and signed to a major, and are still clunking around today. But that record has never lost it's significance. Enough so, that it has its own Wikipedia entry.
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Hardest working man in show business? "The Popcorn" was recorded after playing a show at Dallas Memorial Auditorium (in 1968). Who goes in the studio right after a gig, on the same night? Sure, there are barely any vocals on the cut, but, still, who dragged everyone there?
James Brown was not a saint. he did have his run-ins; and he wasn't what you'd call modest. And, really, in quite a few of his songs, there are minimal vocal duties. Would the JB's, his amazing backing band, have existed without him? With or without everything above in the equation, is there anyone who delivered the groove more consistently?
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I'd been contemplating throwing some more reggae up, so when I ran across "Call On You" from Burning Spear's Studio One era, I had my excuse. You don't usually run into his earliest stuff. It's got the mellow, sometimes sullen, voice of his, juxtaposed with the classic bubbly Studio One sound. It's a must. The rest are from his mid-career, and his voice is still the same. The pace of his music, and his voice, make you feel like it's oppressively hot. The horns, primarily trumpeter Bobby Ellis, seem to magnify it. Everything is so slow and steady, it seems like you're conserving energy. Even with his new stuff (none here), his voice has this tone, it's distinctly Burning Spear. And no one else has that. So, here's Burning Spear:
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I like the "The Rent Is Too Damn High" guy. Old school zeal, platform at his disposal, with a message for the people. What's not to like? You go, you weird bearded, glove wearing, "had it up to here" shit stirrer.
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Is there a greater voice in soul music? Is there a greater voice, period? And it's embarassing really, so many of us take her music for granted, because there are so many songs, and hardly a stinker among them. I had reason to pause today when I heard that the Queen is ill. She was released from a hospital a few days ago, from an undisclosed illness, and told not to perform for six months. Now, I'm not one to get all new-agey on you, but if you believe in positive vibes (or prayer for that matter), now would be a good time to put them in the out box.
When I think of Aretha Franklin's music, I always go to "Rock Steady." That hasn't always been the case. But, one night when I was DJing, roughly twenty years ago (yikes!), a friend of a friend requested it. She was a poet, who loved baseball and playing pool, and was sort of tomboy-ish. Not really in the crowd that I hung with, but the sort of person who is so innately cool, they don't even play the game. Needless to say, I trusted her song selection, and when I played it at a volume much louder than I was used to at home, it was about eighty times more powerful. The place went nuts. But that's how Aretha Franklin's music is. Even the most jaded hipsters will cop to the Queen.
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There's a bunch of reasons to post "Check Out" by Us Kids, not the least of which is to hep you to Garage Hangover. It's a really great, very focused blog about obscure garage bands from the first garage era. It's been linked over in my sadly neglected blog list ("Get Lost") pretty much since day one, and it's provided me with hours of digging and reading about bands that don't mean a trifle in the overall rock n' roll scheme of things. Yet each band has their own special, if sometimes mundane, story.
Us Kids was a band of 11-14 year olds, from the early sixties, "Check Out," the one mp3 posted, is pretty good, and not just kid good. It's hard to believe the writer was something like 13 years old at the time. I listened and tried hard to imagine the song done in a somewhat creepier style. The very title of the song, and the riff, were already headed there. Some sort of teenage Link Wray, this kid was. That's when I started hearing the Cramps. I was thinking how cool it would be if the Cramps covered it. Then I realized that they practically did, with their version of Ronnie Cook and the Gaylad's "Goo Goo Muck."
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I'm a cynic, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Any band that puts a Circle Jerk (Keith Morris) and a Redd Kross member (Steven McDonald) together would sound enticing to anybody my age. First thought: What kind of way out wacky shit could they be putting out? Then you throw in a former member of Burning Brides and a Hot Snake, and it starts to sound like something that could be the hottest shit in town. Right? Well, what it actually resembles is a retread, bordering on cash in. That's a little harsh, but...[turn to camera 3] Come on guys. Even though you say "we're not a punk supergroup," you know that's what some nuts will say. At least you're going to get a little inventive, right?...wait, what? You mean to tell me that it's going to sound an awful lot like late 70's L.A. hardcore? Have you learned nothing? I'm not saying that I don't like that type of stuff. Hell, just like you, I was practically weened on it. But, c'mon, you're probably only going to be working with this combination of people for a while. How 'bout you blow some old fart minds?! Sure, old farts don't sink their teeth into stuff like kids do, they don't buy as much music. Well, bully for you. I'll take it, and I'll find in interesting, but I, rather we, really could use some help over here. This shit's getting...old.
Here's a whole bunch of good blues. A lot of it may be familiar. There's some lesser known stuff here too. Check out the recommended sites at the bottom. You'll want to bookmark them, there's way more than one visits worth.
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If you know the history of the Beach Boys, you may know that the Murry Wilson, (father of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl) was an abusive, over controlling father. Frustrated over his own lack of success in music, he took it out on his sons. He may have had veiled good intentions, but when he got pissed, he really let go, doing all sorts of incredibly cruel shit. Things like taking out his false eye and making Brian look at the empty eye socket. Once he got so pissed off at Brian, that he hit him upside the head (with a piece of lumber, if memory serves), so hard that he became deaf in one ear. So it was a strained relationship, to say the least. As with many abusive parents, the dynamic changes as the child ages. Some children handle it well, and take it stride. When the Beach Boys were riding high, they became less submissive, and actually started to stand up for themselves. And, thanks to the trend of releasing every outtake and fart ever recorded in a studio, you can hear the Wilson family dynamic as the boys started to realize that they may in fact have the upper hand. So, with no further ado, here are two mp3s of the night a drunk Murry Wilson tried to commandeer the recording session for "Help Me Rhonda." The first version is 40 minutes long, admittedly a little much, even for a Beach Boys freak. The other is a twelve minute edit with the highlights.
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Many moons ago (okay, several), Sub Pop had a singles club. You send them a lump sum, they sent you music by mail. The pressings were small (a few thousand, I think), so, as you can guess, some of them, particularly the early ones, are hot items among people who clamor for that sort of thing. So, when I run across them, I'll let you know.
This one is from 2000; the White Stripes doing three Captain Beefheart covers. In case you clamored too late.
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It is just one of the many remarkable things that have changed in music in the past ten years. International music has gone, uh, international. Before the availability of just about any music, at any time, was commonplace, even the largest record stores devoted only a sliver of shelf space to music from other countries. Now that there are consumers actively looking for obscure titles, collectors are out hunting, and labels with long stagnant titles are issuing compilations at a dizzying pace. All this is great, especially if you're the sort of person that has found themselves bored with familiar music, and the regurgitation of long established styles.
Frank Gossner, of Voodoo Funk, takes the record hunt to new levels in Africa.
Early on, before the internet made international music readily available, many of the recordings issued in the U.S. were rather academic in their approach. Labels like Folkways, and early on Elektra, took anthropological tacks, and though the music may have been inviting, the lack of flair limited their appeal to, for lack of a better description, music eggheads. One pre-mp3 label that tried to change that was David Byrne's Luaka Bop. Byrne's obsession with Brazillian music lead to licensing deals, and after being coupled with some snappy packaging, before you knew it, hipsters of yore were listening. After the label gained popularity, Byrne found himself annoyed enough with the marginalizing of international music by the labeling of it as "World Music" that he wrote an excellent essay entitled "I Hate World Music." It pretty much makes the case that we (Westerners) are jerks to put so much emphasis on Western music, that we lump everything else into one umbrella category.
Today you can find international music smattered all over music blogs, with artists initially known very little outside of their geographical homes now given second lives, with some becoming full-on internet driven icons. The music below is just some of the music on one post alone at Mixtape Riot. Nigeria, Peru, and Columbia are represented. And on his next post (which is what reminded me how awesome it is to have international music at our fingertips) he covers some Middle Eastern music.
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If you were going to throw a decent Halloween bash, how hard would it be to round up a bunch of Halloween music without having to resort to "The Monster Mash" or, worse yet, "Thriller"? How about over 300 songs, in 16 mixes? Rev Frost has posted a bunch at his super fine blog Spread the Good Word. And he has great taste. Where else are you going to find Akira Ifukube's "Frankenstein At Lake Biwa"? And what Halloween would be complete without surfing monsters, eh? I just ran across the Deadly One's "It's Monster Surfing Time" with "Igor Goes Surfing" and, yes, "It's Monster Surfing Time" (and ten others). I've no idea what the vintage is of this double edged cash-in, but it's got the Vee Jay label, so I'm guessing 60's (though the artwork is so perfectly corny that it may be faked). Dig in at Rock n' Roll Ichiban.
Now it's getting personal. Gregory Isaacs, the Cool Ruler has passed away. He died yesterday of lung cancer. I had been listening to him for a few years by the time I first saw him live, but I was unprepared for how he would absolutely own the audience that night. The whole room swayed, ladies swooned, and the entire club had a unified vibe, including the bartenders and staff. He reminded me of Al Green, with his laid back style and impeccable appearance. Like Green, he sang love songs, but he also sang of social injustices and songs for the downtrodden. I remember thinking that night that there was no more fitting moniker than the one I had heard so many times before it had real meaning. I got chills. I was witnessing "the Cool Ruler."
Gregory Isaacs - Tune In (1978). It doesn't get any smoother than this.
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This is some good stuff. Exceedingly tight West coast funky soul, with everything thrown in. A little Tower of Power, Fela, Santana, Isaac Hayes, B.T.Express, Philly soul..., there's a lot to dissect here, if you're the dissecting sort. The guitar, the horns and the percussion all command repeated listens.
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Every once in a while I get backed up with different oddities that don't necessarily merit their own post (but of course, the Impossibles' "Mr. Slow" sure did). They might be of interest to some of you, and they may never pop up again, so there you go, reason enough to put them up anyway. The first is "Strip-Tease" by Nico, with former man about town, Serge Gainsbourg. That one may be known by some of you more well heeled Nico or Gainsbourg fiends, but it was new to me. The other is by Turbogeist, your standard newish owe-a-debt-to-punk type band. It's of interest for two reasons. One is that the singer/guitarist is Mick Jagger's son, and the second reason is, while it isn't earth shattering by any means, it's better than anything the Stones have done in recent years.
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Leonard Cohen aged gracefully, from early Dylan comparisons to elder statesman of songwriting, without giving much thought about record sales, airplay or any brand of hipness. I mean, he practically makes Dylan look like a sellout. He's an artist's artist, and he'd probably still be doing what he does, even if it meant playing coffeehouses for decades on end. And with those calm emoting hand gestures he does up near the microphone, it's really no wonder all literate women love him. He can do more standing in one place then Jagger or Iggy Pop can do hurling their osteoporosis bound bodies all over the place.
Here's a few live cuts from a 1993 Zurich show. The quality is really clear, and the arrangements about as good as it gets. This stuff is timeless. Check out the entire show, and four other live cuts at Captain's Dead (the same site that posted a slew of live Tom Waits stuff a while back).
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It's anybody's guess how sane Lee Perry really is. Some say he's a sonic genius, some characterize him as a semi-crackpot, and the universally praised recordings he's produced as a long string of fortunate accidents. But his track record, primarily the records he produced in the seventies, speaks for itself. Bob Marley, the Heptones, Junior Murvin, Max Romeo, Augustus Pablo, Gregory Issacs, the Melodians, and I Roy are just some of the artists he worked with in that decade alone. And that was in addition to recording his own solo records.
The Black Ark, his studio, was primitive, with only basic recording equipment. It was his manic style of throwing everything at the wall that made him unique. When it came to mixing seventies era reggae, his template was his own, and as off the wall as some of his techniques were (inserting sound effects, mixing live on the fly), it made his sound hard to duplicate. When other reggae producers were playing it safe, and making cookie cutter records using tried and true methods, he seemed to do whatever he could to break that mold.
A look inside a recording session with the Upsetters and the Heptones, at Perry's former studio, the Black Ark.
By the time the eighties rolled around, the Black Ark was no more. It burned to the ground, with the erratic Perry claiming responsibility. He went to England worked with On-U Sound's Adrian Sherwood, and later the Mad Professor. The quality of his work waned, but he remained in demand. In 1998, he popped up doing vocals on a Beastie Boys album (two cuts on "Hello Nasty") and, after meeting Andrew W.K. in 2006 (oh, to be a fly on that wall!), asked him to co-produce an album that also featured Moby, Ari Up and, as strange as it seems, Don Fleming (from Gumball). Since then, he's been all over the place, and after his music drifted further away from reggae, he was reined in, collaborating again with Adrian Sherwood in 2008 for a return to more straight up reggae, the album "The Mighty Upsetter."
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Just minutes ago, I opened an email from my friend Mikel, who I've known since our fanzine days back in the early punk scene. Reading the email, my heart sunk. It was just a forwarded press release, saying that Ari Up, lead singer of the Slits, had passed away at the age of 48:
"Ari Up (born Ariane Forester), the German-born lead vocalist for seminal British punk band The Slits has died at the age of 48 after a long battle with illness. Her immediate family has asked for privacy at this time and no public service is planned. She is survived by three sons, her mother Nora, and stepfather Johnny Lydon (also known as Johnny Rotten)."
Video of "Lazy Slam", just released today
Regulars here (all four of you) will know that know that she held a special place in the Trastos heart (uh, punk crush #17). I wrote about her a little over a year ago, when the revamped Slits had just released a new album, their first in years (that post can be found here). A certain amount of innocent exuberance has been lost, but photos of that smile will be be around to remind us of the joy inherent in following one's own path. And something tells me that she's not one to rest in peace, more like run amok in peace.
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