Author Archive

Songs By People I Know (Kinda).

These tracks are by musicians who I think are better than most performers you’re likely to hear out there. They’re not on major labels, and as well as making top notch songs, they’re all very approachable, nice people. You should get to know them, too. Me, I’m putting them in order of familiarity, from “lifelong pal” to “traded a couple emails once.”

Squeaky

Birdy and #1 For Takeoff

The very first time I ever stood up on stage and sang, Harry was playing bass. It was at a coffeehouse at New College. We were in a bunch of bands together and he’s one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world. He wrote a thesis on Sonic Youth, and loves nothing more than whacking his guitar into some weird-ass tunings and serving people a steaming dish of melodic rock. Which is what he’s been doing in Gainesville since 1995, as part of Squeaky. They played their last show at Harry’s wedding earlier this year, which is a great sadness. Before that, they opened for pretty much every indie band worth listening to who ever hit G’ville. You can get more of their melodic crunch over here, at Nook and Cranny Records. I’d love this band even if Harry wasn’t in it, because they make my feet move, my head nod, and my stomach tie itself in little knots.

Actionslacks

Close to Tears

Actionslacks is a band from California. (Well, now it’s California and Maine. They get around.) Anyway, Marty and I were both in a few different bands at New College, but never the same ones at the same time. He’s the smartest drummer I know – not just smart as a person, but smart as a drummer. His band’s pretty smart overall, too… smart enough to know that music should be fun. Their slick power pop reminds me of Cheap Trick in the best possible way. This track is from their upcoming album, which promises to be lots of fun. It’s on The Self-Starter Foundation Records, and J. Robbins produced it. There are more mp3s at their site. Check ’em out.

Burnside Project

He Never Knew The Benefits of Caffeine.

Burnside Project was one of the bands I found on mp3.com back when I first started putting my own music on the internet. Those were the boom days, when any new technology would get money thrown at it by ravenous packs of venture capitalists. Sebadoh was still relevant, people were still going to raves, and a bunch of us home recordists were getting to hear each other over our 56k connections. Burnside Project (at the time, Rich called it “Beacon”) had a sound I was sort of striving for… that earnest, anguished vocal over simple guitar lines. Only Rich was also really into dance music – breakbeat, acid hop, whatever. His was the first band I heard that put the two styles together: indie lo-fi over techno. I loved it. And the great thing about mp3.com was that I could tell him so. He liked what I was doing, too, and wound up recording most of my new album. (I had to plug myself somewhere, right?) But his new album is so much better. It’s out on BarNone Records, and there are more mp3s and a video at his site. So follow the link.

Krista Detor

Blue Sky Fallen

I met Krista when I was doing some other recording down in Key Largo. She’s the long-lost biological sister of my friend Erynn. (Odd story: Krista was adopted as a baby, grew up other side of the country, but she and kid sister Erynn are eerily alike – same likes, same affinity for music and musicians…). Anyway, her husband (now ex) played bass on a song I was recording. Turns out, I should have got her to sing a few tracks, too. Maybe even co-written a couple … cuz she’s got that modern folk-pop thing that makes me go all goofy inside down pat. She’s got a self-released CD she’s selling through her site. Buy one. G’wan. You’ll like it, too.

Rebecca Hall

Come Around

I found Rebecca Hall mostly at random, cruising around mp3.com at work, looking for something not too objectionable to put in the headphones while I type. And I found Ms Hall. She’s seriously ginchy. Her voice reminds me of Jacqui McShee, the singer of the 60s folk-jazz group Pentangle. And, as it turns out, she’s done some singing for Pentangle’s guitarist John Renbourn. Her voice has the kind of beauty that should be on the radio all the time, but just isn’t, which is proof that there’s something deeply wrong with the Way Things Are. Songs like this, though, give me some kind of hope. (If the above link to the song doesn’t work, blame mp3.com’s new corporate overlords, and click here instead.) We swapped exactly three emails each, then I started ranting about marmalade and she never wrote back. Which is actually pretty reasonable.

princess against the classes

“I Don’t Need Anyone“, Kylie Minogue (with the Manic Street Preachers). Why don’t the Manics write songs like this for themselves? Fools. I was working for a somewhat indie-centric music magazine when Impossible Princess / Kylie Minogue came out, and we ran our review of the album under the headline “KYLIE IS GOD”. Fuck their stupid indie death threats (oh yes). In hindsight the album isn’t actually that good, but perfect pop gems like this remain suspended in time. As for the mystery of the Manics (yeah, they’re a masochistic guilty pleasure), next time a song of theirs is annoying you with its pomposity, just close your eyes, imagine it’s a Queen song and smile. All better.

yes can do

I am totally in love with Hall & Oates’ “Kiss On My List” and “Private Eyes“. Okay, so I made this reappraisal based on a recent vogue amongst the type of people who wear very expensive ripped denim, but fuck, they’re right for once: Hall & Oates peddle a version of white rock’n’soul that’s actually good. Well, at least sometimes. I’m a sucker any old shifting set of endlessly chiming chords on a keyboard. I’m a chiming keyboard slut. And the middle-eight in “Private Eyes” is one of the best middle-eights, uh, ever, turning the song inside out for a moment, like the best ones do. With these songs, H&O manage to make good on The Beach Boys’ somewhat yelpy and claustrophobic attempts at rock-pop in the ’70s, which never seemed to gel. We have the technology. We can rebuild. When he strains for the notes in whiteboy soul mode, Daryl Hall channels a slicker version of Carl Wilson’s “choirboy-gone-gruff-troubador” act, and it works. Thankyou Lord. And thankyou, Flux.

The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

The Stooges – TV Eye

Geraldine Fibbers – Get Thee Gone

Price – Kiss

First things first: go listen to “A Hard Day’s Night” and get about 1:18 into the song, and notice the scream. It comes right before they launch into the solo, and oh, it’s a thing of beauty. But it’s also a weird bit, from today’s perspective. For one thing, it reminds you that the Beatles, for all their seeming bubblegumness, were regarded as reckless musical troublemakers at the time, because they did things like scream in the middle of songs, even if that had been a rock ‘n’ roll staple for 6 or 7 years. But this just doesn’t usually strike us as a scream, partially because it’s being used as a transition (as opposed to your traditional drum fill or scratchy-move on the low E string or melodic pickup transition), and partially–and this is the important bit–because it’s a happy scream. And oh dear me, isn’t it? It’s an absolute whoop, a yawp, a yell of joy, of oh-man-I-just-got-to-the-end-of-the-chorus-and-what-a-fucking-chorus-it-is-holy-shit-I-just-have-to-yell! And it’s (I think) Paul and John screaming at the same time, as they’re backing away from the mic into that great, tumbling solo. But it doesn’t sound like a scream to us anymore, because screams aren’t supposed to be happy.

Viz: “TV Eye,” the opening scream of which does the descending “into the abyss!” thing that psychadelia likes, this from the Stooges’ most psychadelic album, Fun House. Don’t get me wrong–it’s a great scream, and a great song. But it’s a long way removed from the Beatles’ scream. And at the time, that was probably good; the dark turn pop took after the sixties was a useful thing. But the problem is, it’s never gone back. The Iggy-scream is still the scream of choice for most of your discerning lead vocalists in the last twenty years, as are the little yelps that the big opener leads into.

A slightly different variation can be found in one of the best songs from one of my favorite bands, the Geraldine Fibbers. The scream here is not placed at the forefront, but rather under a song, much like how feedback went from “whoa that’s a cool squeal, let’s mic it real loud” to “hey, that would be a neat drone to put behind a song.” Carla can often be found bansheeing away behind a particularly good section of vocals (“Dragon Lady”) or instrumentals (“Get Thee Gone”), presaging and, if you ask me, beating the whole screamo thing to the punch by quite a few years. One article (which I can’t seem to find) even focused in a pretty convincing way on the scream Carla lays over the 2nd-half instrumental break of “Get Thee Gone,” which is a wonderful piece of ecstacy-rock, but here’s it’s scream-as-epiphany or response to the power of the music, rather than the exuberance and joy of the performer, like you might find in a soul or early R&B record. (There’s not a whole lot of happy Geraldine Fibbers songs anyway, but that’s OK.)

I won’t even dignify scream-as-expression-of-pain by classifying it, but suffice to say that unless you’ve got a gaping bullet wound at the time you’re recording your vocals, it’s probably a bit too literalized.

The garage-rock revivalists do a half-hearted version of the Beatle-yawp, but it comes out “Ow!” which is half-cribbed from Axl Rose anyway (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and misses the full-throated exuberance of the “AAAAAAHHHHHH!” you hear at 1:18 in “Hard Day’s Night.” It’s not cuttin’ it, fellers.

Maybe the closest thing we have in modern times to that yell is Prince, whose myriad Tourettic outbursts seem of a one with the exuberant music, and seem drawn out of him in much the same way the Beatles’ were. And there’s that same sense of joy mixed with being a little at the end of your rope–the Beatles with exhaustion, Prince with horniness (Prince seems like he’s been through some hard day’s nights himself, if you know what I mean). But especially you hear this in “Kiss,” at 3:28, where after tensing and building and stroking for a good amount of time he just utterly loses control of his voice as it screeches to the absolute top of his range to yell something like “AIN’T NO PARRAAGHHHUURRAL RRRRAG, grr-AM grr-AGATA WITH!!!” because the music’s just that goddamn good, that exuberant and joyful, that there was no other choice at that moment than to have a verbal fit and yell it like someone who just doesn’t give a shit about being composed or cool anymore. And then, beautifully, it comes all the way back down. Now that’s a joycore yell.

Rack and ‘Pinion

I just thought that everybody should hear this if they haven’t already. It’s TV on the Radio’s “Mr. Grieves” cover.

Let’s all drop our jadedness for a split-second and recognize when somebody’s done something really cool. This the ultimate cover — a twist, a wink and a faithful homage.

Ain’t it shocking what love can do?

Morris Day, “Fishnet”

“Fishnet” is the great lost coulda-woulda-shoulda single by the Time. Bitch, please: listen to the guitar solo, totally Jesse Johnson. Listen to the party feel of the track, especially on the full-length version (not the single edit, only half the fun in less time), the Jam-and-Lewis crowd factor (cf. Alexander O’Neal’s Hearsay and the Time’s 1990 reunion album, Pandemonium). Lyrically, the only diff between this and a Time single is a switch from an obsession with camisoles (included in at least three separate Time singles I’m aware of, likely a myriad more I’ve somehow missed) to fishnet pantyhose. The clever wordplay – comparing a woman’s fishnet hose to getting caught in a fishnet like little Nemo. And for the love of God, do you hear those high, whining keyboards? That’s so Time you’d think you were listening to What Time Is It? instead of a not-entirely-successful Morris Day solo album. I know your shoulders are rocking – and I know ya bobbin’ ya head. ‘Cause I can see ya. Morris would deserve fame and fortune and obscene riches just for this one song, even if he’d never fronted the Time. But he did, and I’m glad, and you should be, too.

western civilization’s last sigh

“Columnated ruins domino.” Even if you factor in Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys’ “Surf’s Up” — written just a few months later for the Smile sessions — is still a revelation. Brian Wilson singing about an inner emotional world is one thing, but a wistful/bitter, apocalyptic lullaby to bourgeois decadance is another entirely.

A blind class aristocracy

Back through the opera glass you see

The pit and the pendulum drawn

Columnated ruins domino

Decline and Fall, indeed. Wilson’s partnership with Van Dyke Parks was inspired, and this song is the shit. Even after the rest of the Boys ghoulishly resurrected Brian’s original, ghostly demo and spliced various arrangements and overdubs over it for this “official” version (the title track of the 1971 Surf’s Up album), the result is still the shit. That said, it’s Brian’s original and slightly off-tune double-tracked vocal in the second half that’s the true killer, and it’s one of those rare Beach Boys moments that benefits from brother Carl shutting up. I can just feel our folly of a civilization sliding into the sea. If the surf is up, it’s the tsunami that smashes everything. You want more surf songs, Mike Love? ‘Ere you go. Magnificent. This is Ben from Antipopper, signing off.

PJ Harvey – Rid of Me

PJ Harvey was responsible for something in my musical education; I just can’t remember exactly what anymore. Maybe it was the experience of turning on music and that gets your friends yell at you to turn it off, damnit, a life-lessons checkbox which Four-Track Demos helpfully blacked in. At any rate, the point is that when Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” hit big on MTV and everyone was talking about how empowering and strong it was, I could yawn with a jaded assurance. All Alanis wanted to do was make the ex feeeeel bad, whereas Polly wanted to tie hers to a chair so he would never ever leave. And how empowering is that, right?

But it wasn’t the dumb kind of empowerment, either, not simple or straightforward. (Polly has said she isn’t a feminist, and while I disagree, I can understand the sentiment–who wants to be a feminist when Sarah McLachlan is a feminist?) This was ambivalent and nuanced. It wasn’t just “I am woman, hear me roar!” breast-beating–even in her most female-power anthem, “50 Foot Queenie,” she’s not going on about the hard work women have to do and the godess and etc., she’s saying “tell you my name F U and C K!” And the fact that all this is elevated to a comedic degree should be clear in the final runup, where she repeats “You come on and measure me / I’m X inches long” and X keeps getting bigger and bigger. (Hahaha.)

Same thing in “Rid of Me”: it actually starts from a position of traditional weakness, with the woman desperate and clinging to a man who is going to leave her. It’s a torch song, in a way (something she’d get much more involved with in later albums), but with a clear twist: instead of letting him go and bemoaning her fate, she is clinging in this very literal way to the person who should have the power. And so she’s taking on this powerful position, but whereas the Lifetime version would be to get together with her girlfriends and drink margaritas and talk about how men suck and they’re not going to compromise and are going to stand strong, the narrator here is saying no, I am not going to wait; I am going to get what I want now. It’s a crazy act, an irrational one, but it’s one of passion and control. It’s a scenario that isn’t reductionary about human nature–it admits our weaknesses when it comes to the opposite sex, but it also finds a way to work with that directly.

But it gets better. The Hollywood version of “Rid of Me” would doubtless end with the woman either subdued by the man or dragged off by the authorities, and someone would probably mutter, “Crazy bitch.” But this is being told from her perspective, and it doesn’t end; the man is not released, but held captive for the song’s duration, and we don’t really know what ends up happening to him. Instead, we first get the narrator taunting him (“I beg you my darling, don’t leave me, I’m hurting”–remember he’s tied up at this point) and then taking sexual pleasure, both from the situation and from the lover in question. There’s no question in my mind that the moment when the slightly off-tune guitar combines with Polly’s ready-to-snap keening of “Lick my legs and I’m on fire, lick my legs and I’m desire,” totally out of context at first, but then repeated until it makes sense–to say nothing of the desperate, a capella howl it becomes at the very end–there’s no question that it’s a key component of what I think of as rock ‘n’ roll.

As cool as it is to hear the Albini-miked drums crashing in on the first version of “Rid of Me,” I’ve always preferred the take that leads off Four Track Demos for its sheer power and intimacy; without the other instruments, it’s like you’re the one she’s got tied up in the chair (or so I’d like to think!). But even this didn’t prepare me for seeing her do it live. This was two years ago, at the Hammerstein Ballroom, a venue that holds a few thousand people. She’d already done one encore with the full band and she came out with just this open-body electric guitar and a mic and a spotlight. And as soon as she launched into “Rid of Me,” there was not another noise in the house for the duration of the song. She had those 3000 people absolutely, perfectly transfixed. And it was beautiful, and quiet, and wonderful–and then she turned on the distortion. Now, I knew, as an experienced guitarist, that that noise just shouldn’t sound very good without drums and bass behind it; much of the power of turning on the distortion comes with having the low-end and sharp-attack beats to back it up. But when Polly hit that pedal and started yelling, more than any noise-rock I’ve ever heard, it felt like my skull was being pried open with a flathead screwdriver.

It wasn’t until some time later, though, that I realized what she was at that moment: a chick with a guitar. In that sense she was no different from Ani or Sarah or Dar or whoever. But at the same time, she wasn’t. After all, when you say “girl with a guitar,” you do think folk. You don’t think Polly Jean playing as loud as she can and yelling, “I’ll make you lick my injuries!” And that’s too bad. Not because folk, or even McLachlan-esque empowerment, is bad per se, just because “girl with a guitar” shouldn’t just mean that; it should mean so much more. PJ’s been around for a good ten years now, but still most women in bands are singers or not-very-proficient instrumentalists there to provide “stage presence,” i.e. titties. There are many great female musicians, and thank Christ–I’d hate to think what modern music would sound like with the kind of sausage-fest we’re used to. But there should be more. There should be more women like PJ, or Linda Perry, or Georgia from Yo La Tengo. Women who are great musicians first, and not pretty faces or pretty voices. No offense to the pretty voices–I know singing’s hard–but I just wish more parents would give their girls guitars, that’s all. Give ’em guitars or drums or bass or sax and tell ’em to listen to “Rid of Me,” goddamn it.

The Raveonettes – ‘Little Animal’

Ninety per cent of the time I use the word ‘retro’ as an insult. Now and again, however, a band manages to evoke a period of pop history (or just history) without being enslaved by the sound of the day. The most successful approach seems to be to embrace the very mythological nature of pop history, adding your own little twist of interpretation or perhaps mis-remembering, so that the picture being painted is of an era that never quite existed. This is what The Raveonettes do beautifully here: I here echoes of ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Leader Of The Pack’, but they’re wrapped in fuzz reminiscent of the Jesus & Mary Chain. It’s not just mythic, it’s cinematic: we find our hero leaving his baby asleep in bed and heading out into the dark, deserted center of a godforsaken town to meet the Devil at a crossroads – heading out, no doubt, on a motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket with the collar turned up, hair slicked back with too much gel, and definitely no helmet.

‘Little Animal’ has mud on its shoes and a dirty mouth, and so paradoxically, what might be thought of as the ‘modern’ touches serve to remind you of the truth about the past: that people were fucking and fighting to ‘Leader Of The Pack’ – of course they were, of course. The polite sanitization, the cheerfully deadening respectability that sets in whenever rock’n’roll is sealed in amber by canonists and nostalgia, is stripped away to reveal the vitality that made it endure in the first place (see also: The Detroit Cobras, The Dirtbombs, maybe even Jonathan Richman). This is the good kind of retro.

And “My girl is a little animal, she always wants to fuck” is surely a contender for opening couplet of the year…

Sheena Easton, “Sugar Walls”

No, frankly, this Scottish lass has never been that talented. But she’s got just enough personality (and not an iota more) to pull off a record as delectably smutty as “Sugar Walls,” written for her by Mr. 1984, Prince. Really, the success of this record comes down to three things:

1. It’s dirty without being dirrty.

2. It, surprisingly, doesn’t sound like a Prince record.

Hell, I forgot the third thing, because I started listening to Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life” – a far more interesting record, one of the finest singles put forth in the ‘80s – and stopped caring about Sheena’s vagina.

[I’m on an ’80s R&B/pop kick today, or can you tell?]

Stevie Wonder, “Skeletons”

“Skeletons” is Stevie’s last truly great single, combining all of his strengths – astutely topical lyrics (regarding our scandal-plagued society, particularly prescient in 1987, when the song came out), his great voice, and hard synth-funk. I’ve always heard this song as an unwitting analogue to Prince’s classic single from the same year, “Sign ‘O’ the Times.” Not only does it cover similar subject matter, it’s also a surprisingly sparely-arranged record, stripped down (largely) to its essentials. In direct opposition to much of his work of the last two decades (especially the florid, overbaked, and overproduced balladry he’s unfortunately become so fond of), this is Stevie harkening back to his ‘70s heyday of “Living for the City” and “Higher Ground,” revamped and retooled for the late ‘80s; it really was a sign o’ the times. Also of note: listen to how much of this single presages some of the techno which was to come, especially in the random blips and wooshes half-buried throughout the mix. Wonder was from Detroit, after all. “Skeletons” still sounds shockingly contemporary; in some ways what higher compliment is there, musically speaking?

I am submeat, hear me roar.

Jennifer Warnes, “Song of Bernadette”

Written by Leonard Cohen with his former backup singer Jennifer Warnes (yes, the one who had the time of her life with that guy from the Righteous Brothers; the one who was lifted up where she belonged by the love of Joe Cocker), “Song of Bernadette” originally appeared on Warnes’ criminally underavailable 1986 collection of Cohen songs, Famous Blue Raincoat. There have been a number of subsequent covers, but this remains the standard by which all others are judged. I’m not as technically adept as everyone else here so I haven’t the faintest clue as to how to put up an MP3, but here’s a link to the lyrics, and here’s an extract from an interview with Cohen where he discusses the song (search for “Bernadette of Lourdes”).

As the lyrics and the interview both show, this is a song about failure and forgiveness. (And also, of course, some crazy French chick who had visions of the Virgin Mary.) What makes Warnes’ version especially vital is the spare arrangement behind it, the piano in the empty hall accompanying the singer’s voice. Warnes takes the song and soars, letting loose a mouthful of grace notes in every chorus.

“Song of Bernadette” is, obviously, meant to be uplifting and comforting. I, for one, find it terribly sad, concentrating as I do more on the former part of the chorus than the latter, but this says more about my failures as a person than any possible failure of the song (in fact, my only quibble comes at the end of the track, when Warnes swoops far above register in the third repeat of the final line; it overeggs the pudding). Any song that can be equally appreciated for both its sorrow and its compassion is probably a work for the ages; however you choose to hear it, I’d be very surprised if you aren’t moved.

(I can usually be found here, by the way.)

Out on bail, fresh outta jail, California dreamin’

I’ve made some thematically Californian mix CDs for my girlfriend, a native of the Golden State. Each song has “California” or a California city in the title. I like to make mixes this way because it sends me to the file-swapping dungeon to find hidden gems, based only on a word in a song title. (I’ve done this with seasons, too — “Autumn” is particularly weird.)

So in my searches for “California” songs, I inevitably cross quite a bit of that old Eagles standard. You know the one. I refuse to put it on a mix for my girlfriend, because, well, I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man. But in the spirit of The Big Lebowski, I have used that Gipsy Kings cover of the song, performed almost entirely in Spanish.

The Al B. Sure and Edi Fitzroy versions never made it onto a mix, because, well, they’re pretty long and repetitive and just not that good. But as curiosities, they’re pretty amusing, especially Mr. Sure’s dramatic reading. The links in this paragraph go to em-pee-threes — I don’t think I was clear on that in my last post. So, enjoy, and pop by my site sometime if you get a chance.

News on the Radio: Happy Birthday

Morning y’all. My name is Emily and I’m seriously honored to get to do this. I’m going through ideas of more stuff to post later – about my favorite band, Game Theory, and possibly about punishing myself with severe Cub inundation, and some other stuff – but before all that I had one song I wanted to post in honor of our fearless leader.

When I was a kid my parents would call the college radio station and request this song on my birthday for me, and I guess I’m still fond of it for that reason. I totally felt like I controlled the airwaves when it came on, and it made me really happy, so I’d like to dedicate it today to the owner of Fluxblog, with a superabundance of joycore birthday wishes.

“Happy Birthday” by Concrete Blonde.

Nick Drake – River Man

As is well-documented on my blog, I invariably find myself reverting back from many musical phases back to quiet, introspective art. Nick Drake is one of my favorite discoveries.

Nick Drake’s career only spanned six years and three albums worth of music. He was said to be a painfully shy performer and an artist that was crippled by depression for the duration of his life. In 1976, Drake was found dead of an overdose of prescribed anti-depressants. The coroner ruled it suicide.

I bought Five Leaves Left on a whim one day, after having Drake recommended to me as some forefather muse to Elliott Smith. I was instantly blown away by this song: the simplicity of the guitar, the beauty of the strings, the timeless lyrics. Since, I have done all I can to get anything and everything by and about Nick Drake.

download song

Related Artists: Tim Buckley, Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith

[you can find me at feministe]

Mclusky—‘Gareth Brown Says’

Mclusky are a fairly unknown Welsh band that has put out a couple of very good albums in the last couple of years. They sound like pretty much every good noisy rock to come out of America in the late 80’s/early 90’s, and this song comes from their second album, Mclusky Do Dallas. I guess it would be pretty easy to dismiss them as derivative no hopers: there’s little new to their sound, but there’s a sense of twisted fun going on in all of their songs, both musically and lyrically; a blurring of the line between high silliness and catharsis that really makes them stand out from the crowd. Their influences are all glaringly obvious, but Mclusky are one of those bands who have a larger than life personality all of their own despite that sort of thing.

And man are they writing some of the maddest lyrics out there at the moment. ‘Gareth Brown Says’, for example, jerks into existence with the following beauty of an opener:

“All of your friends are cunts/ And you’re mother is a ballpoint pen thief

Notoriety follows you/ Like beatings follow rain”

To which the only sane response is surely: “Yes. Quite.”

There’s an element of the schoolyard taunt in these lyrics. They’re really petty in a wonderfully barmy and sarcastic way that Mclusky seem to be reallyfond of. Check out the second verse of this tune, (“All of your tales are lies/ You’ve never been to Alton Towers”) or any given line from ‘To Hell With Good Intentions’ (“My dad is bigger than your dad/ He’s got eight cars and a house in Ireland, sing it!” ) for other examples of this—it’s everywhere in their music. Which isn’t to say that their lyrics are dumb—quite the opposite in fact. There’s a sort of warped, imaginative wit at play here, but it’s a wit that draws on a kind of childishness that matches the trashy kick of their music perfectly.

The vocals in this particular song serve as a particularly neat example of this interplay between temper tantrum and pisstake, with the deadpan sneer of the verses butting up nicely against the bloodied wailing of the choruses. Except that it’s not that simple—there’s a hint of hysteria in the deadpan bits (the choppy guitars and rumbling bass have a lot of urgency to them, and there’s always something nasty going on in Andy Falkous’ voice) and the screaming in the chorus has an oddly sarcastic ring to it. So there you have it then: it’s a song that is at once frantic and detached, and while this may not sound like this should work on paper, it’s a combination that Mclusky pull off with alarming regularity.

Oh, and by the way—I’m David Allison (Big Sunny D), and I’m glad I could join ya’ll at the weeklong Fluxblog house party.

Essay Time: Camper Van Beethoven.

My Favorite Band. By Grant Balfour.

My favorite band is Camper Van Beethoven. I think they are really, really good.

They made music in the 1980s, and now they are making music again. This makes me very happy. Like, stupid happy.

Why does this make me so happy? I am glad you asked. Here are some of the reasons why….

_{(Note: all these mp3s are available for free from the Camper Van Beethoven website. You just have to find the “More” area and then keep hitting “Refresh” to find these and a whole lot more.)}

Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1984):

The Day Lassie Went to the Moon.

Yanqui Go Home.

II & III (1986)

Sad Lover’s Waltz

Telephone Free Landslide Victory was their first album. The big hit was “Take the Skinheads Bowling” – a song so laden with mid-80s cultural references (mod-ska dancing, skateboarding to the Circle Jerks) and so full of a goofy, joyful punker-than-thou attitude, it was tailor-made for that era’s college radio fans. This was the same scene that made REM into a supergroup, but CVB was still a little too “weird” to pack arenas. They were from California, and it showed. You could kind of tell that when REM would go home and listen to The Byrds, the boys from Camper would go home and listen to Captain Beefheart… if you even knew who Captain Beefheart was. And in the days before “world music” had its own racks in the record store, the whole ethnic ska thing was considered a little odd, too. But, as the track from II & III shows, they were obviously more than just a novelty act. I got my first Camper Van Beethoven record from an avid REM fan who didn’t know exactly what to do with it.

Camper Van Beethoven/”Led Zep Zoso” (1986):

The History of Utah.

This was that album. I took it from the REM fan mainly because there was a cover of “Interstellar Overdrive” on it, and I was in love with Syd Barrett. But for me, the standout track was “The History of Utah,” which is sort of a folk song about Mormonism, and sort of Western rockabilly, and sort of a dream about UFOs and teenage friends. After I’d listened to this song three times, I was hooked. The Pink Floyd cover was good, too… but this was good in a whole different way. Was it folk rock? Was it psychedelia? What WAS it?

Then, two years after the first time I heard this song, CVB had a record put out on Virgin. You could actually find them in the mall. A couple years later, grunge hit, and suddenly “alternative” music came with its own strict set of guidelines. But for a while, that window was way open.

Camper Van Beethoven is Dead, Long Live Camper Van Beethoven (2000):

Klondike

This is the track that later became “The Fool” on that major label breakthrough, 1988’s Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. That instrumental version launches side two with a punch-in-the-guts, brass band waltz. But this melancholy version has lyrics, weariness, a violin, telemetry beeps, and a minimal, scratchy loop track holding it all together. Actually, the whole CVB is Dead… album is a bit like this – sort of the leavings off the table after the band finished eating. It’s probably a mark of something about the band that this was the second helping of leftovers, after violinist Jonathan Segel released the Camper Vantiquities outtakes and singles album in 1993.

Tusk (1987/2002):

Tusk

So, after their “dark” sixth album, 1989’s Key Lime Pie, was released and got MTV play (making it their best seller), the band broke up. David Lowery went on to form Cracker, Jonathan Segel formed Hieronymous Firebrain (and played with Sparklehorse, Granfalloon Bus and a bunch of other bands), and the rest of the band joined David Immergluck in The Monks of Doom. Usual story, really.. except within a couple years, Immergluck went on tour with Counting Crows, and then ex-CVB personnel started showing up on stage at Cracker shows.

And then, last year, Camper Van Beethoven issued a comeback album. Greatest hits? All new songs? Nope. It’s a track-for-track cover of Fleetwod Mac’s Tusk. Most of it was recorded in 1987, during a ski retreat when they were supposed to be writing the songs for Our Beloved…. The tapes got put away, damaged, rediscovered and then messed with. At least one song does Electrelane one better by replacing Stevie Nicks with a speech synthesizer. The thing is, the band obviously loves the source material. They just love playing with music more.

They’re out on tour now.

If you get a chance, go see ‘em.

Thank you India

I always knew Bollywood soundtrack music was cool, but I never knew what to buy. Enter the Monsoon Wedding soundtrack, featuring a pop song that makes that Punjabi MC/Jay-Z collabo sound like mush. “Chunari Chunari” is credited to Anurhada Shriram and Abhijeet, neither of whom I’ve been able to find out much about.

But the soundtrack also features Mohammed Rafi, who’s become a personal favorite of mine, and highly recommended, if you can find him on a compilation. Any recommendations for a compilation of more recent Bollywood hits? Come visit me at Waking Ear and let me know.

Hole – Awful

I kept to the party line on Celebrity Skin at first–i.e. it was a half-assed Billy Corgan ripoff, and why wasn’t Courtney still in mourning for Kurt, blah blah blah. But then a kid wanted to sing “Malibu” and asked me to play guitar, and lent me the CD in order to learn the song. And besides falling head-over-heels in love with “Malibu,” I discovered what I think, along with “Violet,” is the real gem of the Courtney Love catalog: “Awful.”

You can’t even pin this one on Billy, since the song is basically the same chord progression over and over, with little minor variations, so it’s really the lyrics and the delivery that carry it. And oh, the lyrics. First off is a theme Courtney’s gotten majorly into of late, and one I really, really like: the way the structure of the music business has an effect on the art that comes out of it. And it’s way more nuanced and informed than your usual “they don’t, like, respect the music, man” stuff we’d usually get. The little callout that starts it all (“they royalty rate all the girls like you”) is a cool little reference to the internal legal structure of the biz, where labels use the power they have over new bands to enforce a uniform royalty rate (usually 11 X 3/4) that limits the one thing most artists make money from: the publishing (songwriting) royalties. It’s a bit too much to get into in a guest-blogging spot, but Courtney has written about it a good bit in the last two years, both in the widely-circulated speech (which contains some errors, but never mind that now) and, if you’re willing to parse her reference-laden syntax, on numerous posts on the Velvet Rope. Maybe I’m biased, but I do think understanding the way the biz works is vital to any musician or even music fan who’s into pop. (Jay-Z, for instance, is lots more enjoyable at that point–“I know who I paid, dawg–Searchlight Publishing.”) Courtney, more than almost anyone else I can think of, has done a lot to make people aware of how the legal structure of the biz works, and that’s a valuable thing.

Then it’s on to another great theme: the whole self-aware Eminem stuff that we all like so much. (“I was punk! Now I’m just stupid! I’m so awful.”) Court’s had shots taken at her by everybody at this point, so it’s nice to see this, especially in relation to the rest of the song. Then a brief detour to some teenage-girl-power stuff (“just shut up, you’re only 16”), which, honestly, I’ve always loved. Girl nerds need all the help they can get, because they can turn out the kewlest anyway.

But then: oh then, then comes what must be one of the best couplets in all of pop music. And it comes and goes really fast, Courtney doesn’t linger on it or repeat it, but I’ll be honest, this makes me cry every goddamn time I hear it:

If the world is so wrong, yeah, you can break them all with one song.

If the world is so wrong, yeah you can take it all with one song.

Now, how beautiful is that? What I love is the turn that happens between these two lines, a turn that I think a lot of the grunge kids were heading towards, but got sidetracked, by and large: from the nihilism of wanting to destroy the world to the hope of trying to engage with it. It’s in the continuum of “I’m mad and going to do something about it!” Black Flag LA hardcore -> “I’m depressed and going to get stoned” Seattle grunge -> …well, I’m not exactly sure what ->. But maybe, I think, it’s all coming back a bit in the sort of dance-music-embracing, pop-loving music that’s starting to bubble up right now; it’s no accident (and not, as some have implied, only frontrunneritis) that’s led Court to embrace the Strokes & co. Grunge was an undeniable anomaly, a space of freedom that opened up for a brief time and then closed, the result of which was to lead people back to the righteousness of the underground, even though we’d all hope that we could at least learn that lesson from grunge; but we never do, do we? We saw daylight for a bit, and instead of chasing it, we either did way too many drugs (Kurt, Kirkwood, the Deals, Jimmy Chamberlain, Kristen Pfaff, etc. etc.) or burrowed our heads back underground. But I think we’re starting to dig out again, and this is a couplet we could all stand to remember.

And that “if”: it’s a challenge to a certain assumption, that the world is corrupted and debased and saying well, if so, then this music we all love and which seems to have such power should be able to do something about that. And the fact that it doesn’t means that either you’re going to have to give up and accept that the world is irredeemably fucked up; that you can fix it, you just need to write that one song; or that the world is actually OK, which is why one song can’t actually make that much of a difference (c.f. art-under-oppression theories). The second choice is a good one–I’m all for people chasing the perfect song–but I think I prefer the third.

Still, Court goes for the chase-the-perfect-song thing with the final lines: “They bought it all, just build a new one, make it beautiful.” It’s a good point, and a great turn, and the emphasis on beauty–well, not what you’d expect from a star-fucking junkie whore, is it? No it’s not, and maybe that should clue us in that Courtney, crazy though she may undeniably be, is more than just the ex- we all love to hate. The lovely way the “I was punk! Now I’m just stupid!” comes back at the end–how she’s admitting that yeah, she’s just stupid; she’s not morally pure and righteous and indie. She likes having songs people listen to. She wants to actually do something with it, not just stay within a certain circle of people who all agree on everything anyway. And yeah, I think that, set to a great melody and a great arrangement, is about all I can ask for in a song.

Sonovac – ‘Human Fly’

This is a cover of a song by The Cramps: I have no idea what the original sounds like and I don’t particularly care. Forgive me, ageing punks: it’s early on a Monday morning, I’ve had about four hours sleep, and my first cup of tea of the day is still too hot to drink, so I’m not feeling particularly eloquent. And I don’t know much about Sonovac either, other than that they’re from London and are a brother and sister duo. Cover versions seem to be a speciality – they’ve also done the Ramones’ ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ and Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’ to name but two. They may also have some connection with Japanese multi-instrumentalist and disco wizard Zongamin.

But all this is of little importance: what’s important is that ‘Human Fly’ is a terrific slab of sleazy electro pop. Albeit one which is very hard to categorize, like a lot of sleazy electro pop these days – you know, all that stuff that sounds different but somehow all fits together. The song has this jittery, stop-start rhythm to it which makes it ideal dancefloor music for me (…to be a dancing fool). There’s a nice unity of form and content in the way the lyrics suggest involuntary movement – “I go buzz buzz buzz and it’s just becuzzz” – while the song itself induces it. And even though the semi-detached “hey I might fuck you and not even notice I’m just THAT modern” vocal is being done to death right now, it still sounds drop dead cool in this context. Which makes it the perfect soundtrack for me to surf Friendster, checking out all the booty ghetto tech minor celebrities. Mmmm.

You can hear the song by clicking on the image here at Sonovac’s website. Speaking of flies: my name is Joe, and I’m proud to be the first guest blogger for this very special week at Fluxblog.

We Got That Beat That Makes You Jump!

The pop won’t stop for me, folks.

Though I said that I wouldn’t be posting again til next week, I have to break the silence early so that I can bring some vital pop to you before I leave on my jet plane. There’s just no way I could wait a week to offer the fantastic new Missy Elliot/Beyonce Knowles/MC Lyte/Free single, “Fighting Temptation”. It’s just too damned great. Though Beyonce gets top billing in the video, Missy is obviously the star of this ensemble track, and it’s her best single since “Work It” last year.

Also, you all need to head on over to the Antipopper store and buy one of their “Onward, Britney” items. If you don’t have access to a credit card, this stuff may be reason enough for you to seriously consider credit card fraud. Support Antipopper, defend Britney and pop, and show no mercy for the borecore infidels.

(Special note to the guests who will taking over tomorrow: you can feel free to post a link to yr blog/site in each of yr posts.)