Can’t You Hear Me Going Insane?

Drexel “East Dayton Saturday Night” – Feeling at once pleasantly familiar and strangely unique, Drexel play a sort of white trash cabaret music that sounds a bit like Tom Waits after a serious drinking binge. Set to lonely piano chords and vocals which tread a fine line between histrionics and soulfulness, the song describes an average night in economically depressed East Dayton, complete with methheads, crack whores, pregnant teens, and lots and lots of booze. There’s a ragged elegance to this music which is quite lovely and evocative; it’s really a shame that more people haven’t picked up on this band yet. This ought to be a classic. (Click here to buy it directly from the band.)

The Mo & Kris Le Mans “Nostalgia Locomotive” – God bless the Swedes, not just for creating a pop song as delightfully weird as this, but also for the fact that they have collectively made this a successful hit in their country, peaking at #13 on their pop singles chart. This is basically a huge, melodramatic modern stage theatre sort of song; a duet between some alt-glam dude and a woman who sounds as though she’s trying very very very hard to sound like Kate Bush. You have never in your life heard anyone sing the words “choo-choo” with as much passion and intensity as these two Swedes. As they say, the “Nostalgia Locomotive gives one hell of a ride.” And they look like this! (Click here to visit The Mo’s official site.)

You Can Say What You Want, But It Doesn’t Mean It’s True

Pixeltan “Get Up/Say What (DFA mix)” – On this song, Pixeltan drops the busy, intense percussion that dominated their first EP in favor of the kind of sparse, pulsating disco beats that we’ve all come to expect from the DFA. It all seems a bit goth to me, not so much in the Crow make-up/vampire fetish/ripped fishnets sense, but in the “I am dancing to my pain” post-apocalyptic-themed warehouse party sort of way. If you love the gloom disco, this should work for you.

Har Mar Superstar “Body Request” – I’d prefer to think of a song like this less as some kind of stupid retro joke and more as being part of a tradition cut short by pop fashion. After all, we only really think of recent genres and subgenres as being time-specific because of the economy built around pop music which demands a high turnover in musical trends to make marketing easier and to keep press shills from wanting to kill themselves out of boredom. On previous releases, it was more obvious that Har Mar’s music was clearly meant to be taken as a selfconcious parody, but “Body Request” is straight-faced enough to fit right in with hits by Billy Ocean or Rick Astley. In other genres, I may be a bit alienated by such faithful devotion to convention, but in this case, there are so few artists currently keeping this sort of tradition alive with such earnestness that I feel respect is due. It certainly doesn’t hurt that it reminds me of the lite FM that I grew up on as a kid – WHUD, represent! (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Also: If you haven’t already seen this, I am quoted in this New York Times article about Music For Robots posting a song by the Secret Machines that was sent to a whole bunch of MP3 blogs (including this one) by Reprise/Warner Brothers. I don’t really have any problem with labels sending music to mp3 blogs, and I’ve been getting a lot of records sent to me for a while now, though it seems that less than 10% of it ever actually makes it to the blog. I try to keep this blog focused on my own experience with music, posting music which I am interested in on a day to day basis. The way I see it, finding music that excites me on a record sent to me by a label or artist is just as valid as discovering it via tv/radio/the press, so it’s not a big deal to me.

I considered posting that Secret Machines song because I do genuinely like that tune, but a few things got in the way – it arrived during my week off, MFR posted it first, it was already getting airplay on MTV. I’m glad that they are having success with that record, and I applaud the label for embracing the internet and being creative with its marketing, though I do think it was tremendously lame for them to send the song to blogs which have nothing to do with indie/prog rock and to (apparently) post fake praise in the MFR comments box. If labels seriously want to embrace mp3 blogs as a way of marketing records, then I suggest that they develop relationships with individual blogs rather than treating the lot of us as though we are some kind of monolithic entity.

Also: Here’s another article about marketing potential of mp3 blogs from Billboard via Reuters, including a quote from Scenestars curator Rachel Hurley.

Freedom At Last

Sonic Youth “Brother James (live somewhere in Europe, 1992)” – Dear Sonic Youth – Please play “Brother James” tonight at Webster Hall. It would be very rad, and apparently it wouldn’t be entirely out of the ordinary for you to play it. I may have lost count, but I’m pretty sure that this will be either my thirteenth or fourteenth Sonic Youth show since I was 14, and “Brother James” is one of the few live staples that I haven’t seen you perform over the years. (“Expressway To Yr Skull,” “Mote,” and “Silver Rocket” would be the other songs on that short list.) Thanks a bunch. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Sonic Youth @ Webster Hall, NYC 8/13/2004

I Love You Golden Blue / Stones / Pattern Recognition / Unmade Bed / 100% / Mariah Carey & The Arthur Doyle Handcream / Paper Cup Exit / Teenage Riot / Karenology / New Hampshire / Dude Ranch Nurse / Drunken Butterfly // Rain On Tin / Pacific Coast Highway /// Expressway To Yr Skull

Okay, so no “Brother James.” That’s fine. “Expressway To Yr Skull,” “PCH” and “Teenage Riot” trump that anyway.

Miscellaneous show notes:

* “Pattern Recognition” comes off much better live than on the album, with a greater sense of urgency and dynamics. I’m still a bit mystified as to why it’s one of the more popular songs from Sonic Nurse, but I think I understand a bit better now.

* I hadn’t ever paid much attention to the lyrics of “Stones,” but last night they made a lot of sense to me – it’s all about refusing to fall under the power of politically motivated fear mongering, isn’t it? Don’t bother telling me otherwise, I like the song so much more this way.

* “100%” started off with a few minutes of drumstick-guitar noise, and was played a bit slower than usual once the song proper kicked in. I don’t mean that they were playing it like some kind of ballad, it was just a lot more blues rock than punk. Thurston didn’t play any guitar until the outro freakout, and took it as an opportunity to ham it up with the crowd.

* “Paper Cup Exit” was one of the night’s highlights for me, which is no shock since it’s my favorite off of the new record. The song seems far more epic and rocking when played live. I get the sense that this song will be sticking around in the setlist after the Sonic Nurse touring runs its course.

* “Teenage Riot” was preceded by a bit of a rant about “right wing Fascists” from Thurston, who was encouraging the audience to protest the RNC when it comes to town in a few weeks. The song itself was amazing, reinforcing my perception of it being the ultimate Sonic Youth song. Those riffs and chords are magical, there’s just no other song quite like it.

* Seven songs out of the set were either preceded by or punctuated with long improvised sections, which is obviously par for the course for the band, but it felt as though they went a bit overboard this time. “Karenology” and “Expressway” already have those bits integrated into their stuctures, but the extended noise jam after “Teenage Riot” just felt a bit superfluous. It was a very loooooong show, which I definitely appreciate, but after about 70 minutes (roughly around the time “Dude Ranch Nurse” started), I felt extremely exhausted.

* “Rain On Tin” is a great live song, but it makes so much more sense outside in the sun than indoors. That song feels trapped by the roof and stifled by the darkness, you know? It’s not the best choice for an encore, either – it’s too long, it’s not old enough, it’s too easy to get distracted during it when you’re tired from standing up for four hours or so.

* “Expressway To Yr Skull” was just as amazing as I always thought it would be, and feeling quite tired and woozy only seemed to make it feel better. The same goes for that mellow middle section of “PCH,” which just felt incredibly appropriate at the time.

Magik Markers were the first of the two opening acts, and they were just unbelievably great. They played some high quality art-punk noise that sounded quite a bit like SY on Confusion Is Sex and Bad Moon Rising. The lead singer was intensely charismatic and loveable, and “shouted the poetic truths of high school journal keepers” like the singer from “Skip Tracer.” I’ll write some more about them in the near future, I promise. If you’re going to see one of the SY shows with them as a support act, please do yourself a favor and arrive early.

White Magic were a major let down. The singer was overly dour and entirely lacking in enthusiasm, and too much of the set sounded too dirgey and samey. It wasn’t completely awful, but after the Magik Markers’ rather euphoric and exciting set, it was too much of a downer.

Note to White Magic: though I realize that going back and forth between instruments throughout a set can be a hassle, I strongly question the wisdom of breaking up your setlist into clusters of nearly identical songs. Also, on those slow guitar numbers, are you attempting to be an off-brand Cat Power, or more like an Amerindie Beth Orton? Either way, if you play your cards right, you might be able to get on the soundtrack of the forthcoming episode of The OC in which half of southern California is devastated by terrorists, and Seth Cohen must struggle to nurse his orange-skinned girlfriend back to health on an irradiated beach.

This site has a series of photos from the show. There are a few really wonderful shots in there, waaaaaay above average for amateur rock show photography.

The Jealous Games People Play

Skinnyman “Love’s Gone From The Streets” – I promise you that it is only coincidental that this is the third track by a British MC to be posted here this week, but it is certainly indicative of the steady flow of quality hip hop records coming out of the UK this year. Unlike Dizzee, Wiley, and the rest of the grime gang, Skinnyman doesn’t have a background in garage, and so this is a fairly straight-ahead hip hop track. This is somewhat dated in terms of the US mainstream, owing a lot to the most melancholy Wu, Nas, and Biggie tracks from the mid-90s, but all of that stuff is pretty timeless ten years on, so it doesn’t quite feel retro. Bonus points are given for making great use out of a Todd Rundgren sample. (Click here to order it from Rough Trade.)

Fun Boy Three “Our Lips Are Sealed” – Lately, I’ve become semi-obsessed with watching VH1 Classic. It’s just about the most addictive non-fiction programming on television, aside from the I Love The (____)/Best Week Ever snarkfests on regular VH1. VH1 Classic is essentially the only music video channel which even comes close to approximating the free form aesthetic. Though there are some obvious limitations, you never really know what to expect while watching the channel – it’s one of the few places in contemporary American culture where you can be genuinely surprised to hear what comes next on a playlist.

It’s pretty clear that the people at VH1 Classic enjoy fucking with your expectations too, because they often play non-hits by familiar artists. Sometimes this is fantastic, and either gives you a new perspective on an artist you may have written off or lets you hear a less-than-obvious song by a well-loved artist. Other times it’s just aggravating, because you’d much rather hear a hit than some lame second-rate single which never caught on. Often it seems as though the programmers are deliberately attempting to embarass famous artists by airing cringe-inducing videos for songs from their most marginal, lackluster albums. It’s not unusual to see, say, two videos back to back from Lou Reed’s awful 80s period, or a double-shot of post-Ozzy hair metal Black Sabbath from the late 80s.

I suspect that the true intention of VH1 Classic is to show us how virtually no one who was successful in the 60s and 70s made it through the 80s without making at least one spectacularly awful record and/or fashion statement. A great example of this would be a recent Tuesday Twoplay airing of two Stevie Wonder videos, the first being a live performance of “Superstition” from German television circa the mid 70s. In this clip, Wonder looks like the coolest guy ever. He’s got some rad sunglasses, a nice little black hat, a black leather outfit – this look was clearly one of the templates for Andre 3000’s current style. Flash forward to the 1985 video for the sappy ballad “Overjoyed” and we have Stevie walking around an airport in a drab baggy purple sweatshirt with a dragon design on the chest, with its head forming some kind of Rob Liefeld-ian shoulder pad. It’s just tragic to behold. Stevie is a slightly obvious example, given that he’s well known for wearing clothing only a blind man could appreciate, but what’s the excuse for Roger Daltrey going from mod rock icon to a look in the “You Better You Bet” video which suggests “dreary home-permed used car salesman”?

Anyway, this is the long way of saying that I first heard this slightly goth new wave cover of the Go-Gos “Our Lips Are Sealed” on VH1 Classic a few weeks back. It was good timing, since the Hillary and Haylie Duff version of the song has recently made me realize just how much I adore this song, no matter who is performing it. I don’t enjoy this version as much when compared to the candy-coated Duffs recording (on which Hillary sounds strangely similar to Tammy Ealom from Dressy Bessy) or the classic original, but this certainly has a period charm to it which I find pleasing. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

I Know It Sounds Filthy

Infinite Livez “The Adventures Of The Lactating Man” – Hip hop has always been a genre well suited to giving voice to cartoonish, perverse sexuality, and Brit MC Infinite Livez exploits this to the fullest on his debut LP Bush Meat, indulging in a series of high concept gross-out gags which revolve around scatological references to foodstuffs and animals. “The Adventures Of The Lactating Man” tells the story of, er, a lactating man who gets all “milky” when women touch his nipples. It’s equal parts freakshow and erotic fantasy, alternating between stock porn scenarios (naughty nurses! facials!) and bits which suggest that this lactation is a serious medical concern for the protagonist. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

(The Real) Tuesday Weld “The Ugly And The Beautiful” – Is there a proper (sub)genre name for this kind of alt-pop? There ought to be, since there seems to be quite a few artists (almost always on major labels, but never with much chart success) since the mid-90s covering this ground – breathy singsong vocals, arrangements which attempt to make their lushness seem understated and laid back, canned beats or heavily treated percussion, occasional samples. Perhaps my memory is short and the breadth of my knowledge in this area is narrow, but I really don’t remember there being much of this sort of thing before the Eels had their MTV hit (or perhaps more accurately, before Nic Harcourt came along). Either way, this is a lovely little song with a pleasing melody which stops just short of being a slow version of “She’s Electric” by Oasis. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

One Two Three, Let’s Make It Work

Dead Prez “Hell Yeah (Pistol Pete Remix)” – This is a Fluxblog exclusive! Pistol Pete has outdone himself this time, matching up Dead Prez’s “Hell Yeah” with the music from The Slits’ version of “I Heard It In The Grapevine” (aka One Of The Best Pieces Of Music Ever). It’s a perfect fit, easily one of the most inspired bootleg mixes from the past two years. I’m not essing around, you need to hear this. (Click here to buy the original mix from Amazon.)

Wagon Christ “Saddic Gladdic” – For those of you familiar with Luke Vibert’s work as Wagon Christ, this song shouldn’t come as any surprise. It follows the typical Wagon Christ formula – elegant bass grooves, light funk percussion, lots of great keyboard textures playing nice little melodies. Though almost all Wagon Christ songs sound alike, they certainly aren’t all equal. “Saddic Gladdic” has this wonderfully joyous, floaty sound to it; as though it should be the soundtrack to the most confident, pleasurable moments of your life. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: The Morning News has just published a roundtable interview about mp3 blogs featuring the writers of The Mystical Beast, Said The Gramophone, The Tofu Hut, Cocaine Blunts & Hip Hop Tapes, Soulsides, and er, Largehearted Boy, which isn’t exactly an mp3 blog, but hey.

Talk About Things You’d Like To Do

Dizzee Rascal “Dream” – Ever since Boy In Da Corner came out last year, I’ve been slightly mystified by some of the intense praise for Dizzee Rascal coming from several critics whom I respect and admire. With only a few exceptions, I think that record is only alright. It’s above average, for sure, but certainly not a work of genius. After hearing “Dream” from his forthcoming second album, I get it. Only a person of frightening brilliance could put something like this together; an archetypical “let me tell you about what I was like before I was famous, but in the context of my new success” rap (see: Notorious B.I.G. “Juicy”) matched with the chorus from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Happy Talk”, accompanied by a backing track from the Captain Sensible cover version which sounds like something from a low budget children’s show. This could very well be the most adorable hip hop song of all time, and not just for how childlike the singing and the music sounds. Dizzee is relentlessly endearing from start to finish, reaching the peak of his cuteness when he tacks on a parenthetical “thank you” after announcing that over a 100,000 people bought his first album. This is essential listening, without a doubt one of the finest songs of 2004 thus far. (Click here to preorder from HMV UK.)

Baby “Free Los Angeles” – This is one of those songs which sounds as though it was engineered precisely to make riding around in cars in California seem like the summit of human achievement and spiritual fulfillment. Baby is Craig Wedren’s new band, and this song is taken from his first proper non-soundtrack album since Shudder To Think’s severely underrated swansong, 50,000 B.C. The Baby record picks up right where that album left off, with an emphasis on jubilant, summery glam pop, but this time around mixed with electronic textures and a occasional nod to glitch and broken beat. Though Wedren mostly leaves the proggy touches of his old band behind, he still has a fondness for unlikely song structures and sudden dynamic shifts. If you’re a fan of Wedren’s work, the album will certainly feel familiar in spite of its cosmetic differences – it’s a bit like meeting up with someone whom you’ve been out of touch with for years, and immediately falling back into the old rhythms of your relationship as though no time had passed at all. (Click here to buy it from the band’s website.)

Also: If you haven’t heard it yet, Into The Groove has “Chewing Gum” by Annie, which is so good that it makes me feel deliriously happy every time that I hear it.

As of today, everything is back to normal on Fluxblog. Thank you to everyone who helped out over the past week – Tom Scharpling, Tom Ewing, Ben Hoh, Maura Johnston, Hillary Brown, Paul Cox, Douglas Wolk, Joe Macare, Grant Balfour, Mike Barthel, Mark Slutsky, Fred Solinger, Jacob Wright, Geeta Dayal, and Chris Conroy. There were a handful of people who intended to post over the week, but never got around to it – hopefully they can participate in something else here another time.

underwater

Midnight Oil, “Weddingcake Island” — I have an ambivalent attachment to these guys, who’ve always flitted rapidly between self-conscious “artificiality” and “authenticity”, thus making even their best albums very strained affairs. Plus there’s the weird mix of fundamentalist Christianity, green politics and nationalism. So those who only know Midnight Oil for their rock-monumentalist declarations might be surprised by “Weddingcake Island”, from their 1980 EP, Bird Noises. It’s a gorgeously delicate instrumental that pays homage to their origins in the early 70s as a pub band for surfers.

Sorry about the whole not posting that Dave Tarras MP3 thing!

but i am very sick, dizzy with fever, and encoding mp3s just isn’t going to work out for me today. thank you all for reading my humble contributions over the last week, and a big hand for mr. perpetua, who so kindly hosted all of us guests. now i’m going to pass out! bye!

Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival (Part 6)

Dr.Alban “No Coke” And the winner is…EUROPOP! With 27% of the ‘Nineties Revival’ poll vote, the bouncy sounds of Europop stand as the style you most want to come back: record industry be warned (or not). This is the track I wrote about on Thursday, it seemed only fair to give you it.

Midi Maxi And Efti “Ragga Steady” And this is another Swedish track – from the (as far as I know) only album by Midi, Maxi And Efti, who were three Eritrean-Swedish teenagers plucked a from Stockholm obscurity to which they have probably and sadly returned. If I am ever asked to contribute to any kind of ‘great lost albums’ project the MME record is my likely pick: yes it’s primitive but there’s an atmosphere to it which I’ve never heard anywhere else, a kind of resigned nonchalance, like making a pop record is just an everyday thing to be doing, halfway between homework and dancing. Maybe in a better world it would be.

(Final notes: 1. Thanks enormously to Matt for inviting me and to you lot for reading my stuff. 2. You may have noticed that yesterday’s entry never materialised. Blame the heat. If you do want to find out more about Crusty, I’ll be talking about it on NYLPM later this week, with an MP3 – though not one for the faint-hearted.)

I Don’t Know What’s Good For Me

The Futureheads “Hounds Of Love” – My ex-boyfriend strong-armed me into becoming at least a mild Kate Bush fan over the course of our relationship; he made a point of buying me Hounds Of Love after about a month and a half of dating. He told me to pay particular attention to “The Ninth Wave,” the bizarre mini-narrative-album that makes up the disc’s second half, but I never could get into it at all; I vastly preferred the skewed pop of the first five tracks, especially “Hounds Of Love” itself, and now The Futureheads have gone and re-made it into the song I always wanted it to be. That “Oh oh oh” hook sounded great surrounded by Bush’s oh-so-80s drum patterns, but it sounds even better when snuggled into a backing track that sounds like a bizarre fusion of The Proclaimers and The Jam. (The Futureheads are this week’s Band Of The Century in the UK press, or so I gather. Their album is readily available from Amazon UK, and I thank my friend Stuart for the tip-off to this track.)

The Twilight Singers “Hey Ya! (Live In Rome)” – “By God!” I hear you saying. “An alternative rock band covering ‘Hey Ya’? That’s soooo December 2003! Fluxblog is losing its edge, to the kids etc. etc.” Well, at least one Fluxblog All-Star needed to peddle you something tragically un-cool or out of date in order to make the others look even hotter, and I suppose the task should fall to me. Greg Dulli’s version of this song is clumsy, and he rushes or fumbles more than a couple of the hooks, but there’s just something about hearing him cut loose with the full throat-shredding “HEEEEY YAAAAAAAAAA” that’s actually managed to at least temporarily obliterate the original in my mind. Maybe it’s just Dulli’s well-documented enthusiasm for cover songs that sells it for me — I’ve been thinking a lot about covers lately, in ways both profound and ridiculous, and The Afghan Whigs & Twilight Singers’ fetish for playing as many covers as possible at any given time is immensely appealling to me right now. (The Twilight Singers covers album, She Loves You, is released Aug. 24th, but “Hey Ya!” is not on it. The full concert this track is taken from is readily available on Soulseek.)

putting my foot down

Promqueen – Dibs on the Wallflower When I first heard this relentlessly catchy melody, I had no idea Promqueen was actually Nitsuh (of Pitchfork and I Love Music fame). Nitsuh has a penchant for writing about cute electro-pop tunes, so it would seem to make sense that he writes (and sings on) cute electro-pop tunes, too. Nitsuh explains: “I’m pretty sure this song is about a very shy Gang of Four fan who builds a robotic Cristina Aguilera to be his girlfriend, with poignant and inspiring results.” Lyric that pretty much sums up the shy, conflicted indietronica mentality: “I’m putting my foot down/On top of yours.” Aw!

Night Rally – The Day That Devin Pissed Blood I saw these guys play the last time I visited Boston, and their set made me excited about rock again. And I don’t mean that in some lame Nick Hornby-esque “this reminds me of my youth” way. Sometimes Night Rally reminds me of Mission of Burma, in Burma’s darker, weirder, more “Trem Two” moments. If you’re in Boston, you can catch a triple bill featuring Night Rally, White Magic, and Fluxblog faves the Fiery Furnaces in September. (Click here to go to their website.)

THAT CREEP CAN ROLL

When you have that thing that’s special to you, you don’t want it corrupted. And ‘The Big Lebowski’ is special to me. It wasn’t always that way. When I saw it upon its initial release back in 1998, I was still in a post-‘Fargo’ lovefest. ‘Lebowski’ seemed slight in comparison, like the Coens were falling back on their worst habits – casting and production design straight out of an Alka Seltzer commercial, lazy plotting, etc. (see ‘The Ladykillers’ for a textbook study). It was a fun movie. I laughed. But it just didn’t mean anything. And ‘The Big Lebowski’ slipped from my memory.

Jump to earlier this year. I needed to watch ‘Lebowski’ for work-related purposes. I picked up the $9.99 DVD and watched. My jaw hit the pavement. Suddenly it made sense to me. Every scene is a comic masterpiece. It features the best performances that Jeff Bridges and John Goodman will ever turn in. And it’s got heart. Lots of it. Sure, it’s loaded with the Coen Bros’ usual camera tricks, and so many of the characters are outsized to cartoonish levels. But it all made sense in a way that is just dead on great. I got it.

Some people complain that the ending to the movie is weirdly dissatisfying. But the Coens are just playing by the rules of Los Angeles crime fiction: iconic detectives way over their head, small fish in a big pond, things almost never get wrapped up in a nice neat package. Always plenty of guilt and suffering still left on the table. And even though the ‘mystery’ has been ‘solved’, the truly guilty just keep on keeping on because they’re the ones with the biggest bank accounts.

That’s how it went for Jake Gittes. And Jim Rockford. And Philip Marlowe. (The Coens make no bones about where they want their film to fit in: ‘The Big Sleep’? ‘The Big Lebowski’? Get it? It took me waaaaay too long to pick up on that one.) One exception to the rule is ‘Columbo’, wherein the title character would regularly bring down some of the biggest fish in Los Angeles. But that show is minimalist to the point of being theoretical. It takes place in a vacuum. I mean, forget about the running gag about Mrs. Columbo – we’ve never seen Columbo in a fucking police precinct!

I was weirdly compelled to watch and re-watch ‘The Big Lebowski’. I ended up seeing it five times in a week. I’ve since watched it a handful of times since. And it went from being great to being The Perfect Movie. And while it’s still one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, it’s not really a comedy to me anymore. I don’t laugh at it. I admire it. Some of the shots are just so fucking Beautiful that I could cry, like when one of Julianne Moore’s goons punch The Dude in the face, and the impact explodes into a giant firework, which takes us into the first of The Dude’s two fantasies. Oof!

I saw ‘Lebowski’ a couple weeks ago at Anthology Archives as part of The Onion Film Series. It was slightly unsettling to see the movie with an audience after watching it by myself for the better part of 2004. The crowd was partying with the movie. Cheering when John Turturro makes his first appearance, laughing at every little joke… it’s clear they’d all seen it at home and were laughing at all the subtleties, but a movie like ‘The Big Lebowski’ has five hundred small moments. And I wouldn’t mind hearing the fucking dialogue now and again.

But that’s my problem, not theirs. The movie turned into something that it wasn’t necessarily designed to be. And that’s why Lebowski-Fest scares me. (Again, I have no idea how to make the words magically light up with hyperlinks, so I will just write out www.lebowskifest.com ) If the Anthology Archives experience threw me for a loop, I can only imagine what watching the movie in a theatre full of people dressed like Jesus Quintana would do to me. As undeniably fun and quotable as the movie is – put it up there with ‘Caddyshack’, no problem – I don’t want to see ‘The Big Lebowski’ turned into some sort of participatory ‘Rocky Horror’ experience. ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ sucks. It’s a lousy movie. ‘The Big Lebowski’ is a masterpiece. And you don’t piss all over masterpieces. So I’ll probably be at home next weekend watching The Dude in the comfort of my little home, marveling at the Coen Brothers’ best movie by far.

Tom Scharpling

Vie Tsvie Is Naftule Der Driter

Naftule Brandwein “Nifty’s Freilach” “What accounts for the powerful and vivid memories that veterans of the New York Yiddish music scene still have of Brandwein some three [now four –ms] decades after his death? Stories about him abound, and sound as though they were written by a press agent with an overactive imagination. Such as: appearing on stage wearing an Uncle Sam costume adorned with Christmas tree lights and nearly electrocuting himself due to excessive perspiration; his penchant for performing with his back to the audience (à la Miles Davis) for fear of other clarinetists stealing his fingerings; spontaneously dropping his pants while playing at parties; the ‘Naftule Brandwein Orchestra’ neon sign he wore around his neck as he played; being summoned to the Brooklyn headquarters of the notoriouos Murder Inc. to entertain; drunkenly weaving up and down the median of a busy Catskill mountain highway while playing Brahms’ ‘Lullaby.'”

–Henry Sapoznik, liner notes to Naftule Brandwein: King of the Klezmer Clarinet

so, naftule brandwein! rivalled only by the more refined, classical klezmer clarinetist dave tarras (i’ll post an mp3 of his tomorrow), and one of the more memorable, and brilliant, figures of early 20th-century american jewish music. “klezmer” (the word actually kinda means “musician,” only later would it become a genre of its own) underwent the same transformations as so many non-american music forms when transplanted to the new world, with all-day-and-night performances (intended for weddings) gradually honed down to pop-song size, so that they could fit on the side of a 78. this music evokes “the old country” for many, but really it is the epitome of the transformative powers of the new country (and that’s ok).

click here to buy naftule brandwein: king of the klezmer clarinet (keep wanting to spell it “klarinet”) from amazon

ps: a “freilach” is a jewish dance (not to be confused with the hora)

pps: happy birthday matthew perpetua!

A Little Bit Francer Now

Je Suis France “Fantastic Area” – You’ve gotta love a band that not only calls itself and its album title out in its songs (bringing the rap sensibility into indie rock), but creates an entire mythology for itself. No one can accuse the France of not having a sense of humor, but they’re emphatically not a joke band. You could compare them to Ween that way, in that it’s easy to see the party, but harder to see the craft. But there’s clearly craft going on, with nice, riffy guitars and a good drumbeat behind ’em. It might take 30 seconds to get going, but it kicks the album off God in Three Persons or Flood style with a metabang.

Je Suis France “California Rules” – Another song off the same album, with a great guitar hook that sucks you in and a lot of “come on, come on”s. It would be hard to drive down the coast without playing this song. Or not even the coast. You could be driving down any backroads Georgia highway. Coincidentally, their record label’s site, under the listing for this album, picks the exact two tracks that I picked, which I didn’t even realize until a couple of minutes ago, but must mean they’re the ones that will suck you into the vortex that leads to the Franceverse. I also recommend you poke around their website, which seems all austere and bauhaus at first, but reveals its true colors in, for example, the “releases” section, where you can see the range of album covers. So: they’re a fun band, they’re a rock band, they’re a party band, they’re a hard-working band, they’re a band that will put the Statue of Liberty getting attacked by a bear(?) on their album cover and take their promo pictures at the Six Flags over Georgia arcade, they’re a band without pomposity, and they’re a band that needs to make a video. You can buy this album on the Orange Twin site, and you can buy others from the France site.

Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival (Part 5)

My Life Story “(You Don’t) Sparkle” The question for future Britpop fans is how you revive something that was a revival in the first place, a mass act of will to recreate (albeit ironically) some imagined groovy London. It’s not a question that’s likely to trouble us for a few years – Britpop has only recently fallen out of favour, with the dwindling commercial fortunes of the main players and tell-all accounts like John Harris’ The Last Party combining to cast the whole affair in a rather tawdry, shabby light.

Oddly, though, the further away we are from ’94-’95 the less derivative the music seems. For foes of Britpop at the time the very idea of making jaunty pop music in a gtr-bass-drums-vox line-up was horribly played-out and gauche: now it seems obvious that it wasn’t JUST Pulp who had their own style. For all that you felt a band like My Life Story had to be derivative somehow, you actually have to work quite hard and dig quite deep to spot the exact influences: a bit of Anthony Newley, a dash of Peter Wyngarde, a smidgen of ABC… But even if you never heard them you could imagine what they sounded like – a mouthy londoner singing arch pop songs with a 12-piece orchestra playing backup. They put the brash “Sparkle” out four or five times trying for a hit that never really came: a typical story of the era. There wasn’t much depth of talent in Britpop – beyond the big four or five groups nobody was terribly successful. But the idea of it – handsome cheeky boys and girls making ‘proper’ pop – is so seductive and marketable that it’s sure to be back.

(A reminder: as some disgruntled readers have noticed my posts this week haven’t had MP3s attached. This one doesn’t either: this is a bandwidth thing. The idea is to do a thematic series of – hopefully interesting – posts with an associated poll and have people vote on what kind of MP3s I do finally post on Sunday. My apologies to anyone who feels their time has been wasted, hopefully you’ll enjoy the files when Sunday comes around.)

Pop in my Vitaminic

These next two songs were both finds from Vitaminic, a European-centric MP3 site that launched in the late 1990s. Sites like these, when I had a job that was a bit less pay-attention-to-everything-around-me intensive, filled the void that MP3 blogs do today in a way; although the focus of MP3 blogs is tighter because of their single-editor nature, the earliest iterations of these sites had pretty valuable editorial content. Ah, for the days when money flowed to dot coms like Aquavit at a launch party!

Huckleberry: Morocco: A very pomptastic tune from a Scottish band that I (still) don’t really know much about — you’ll probably not be surprised that this band is somewhat difficult to Google — this song, when I first heard it, filled my y2k void for songs that could easily be the accompaniment to stomping around and making grand gestures. Tom was nice enough to send me a copy of their not as drama-filled, but still catchy “The Lives of the Saints” single a few years back; you’d think that would help me out in terms of hunting this band down, but all my searching has only turned up a bunch of English lit curriculum pages. Curse you, Mark Twain! (Visit Kaleidoscope Records, which has some Huckleberry singles for sale.)

Elks Skiffle Group: Beep Beep Cyberbaby: Yes, the cyberocity of this song is a bit clichéd (although at least they didn’t go the ‘let’s embed ICQ sounds into our song so people know what we’re talking about’ route), but the song itself is so delicate, my mind conjures up something floating away on a fluffy cloud every time I hear it. Could that something be … a puppet? It could very well be; Elks Skiffle Group is, apparently, made up of puppets from outer space. (Visit Happy Beat Records, the Elks Skiffle Group’s label.)

(Addendum, a self-promotional one: I’ll be spinning records at WPRB this afternoon, from 1ish-4 p.m. ET. Listen in, and request songs — you can send your requests to the IM name “WPRB DJ”. Hooray, Internet!)

The Joycore Supremacy

No-one can be told what joycore is. They have to be shown it.

With that in mind, please go and watch the video for ‘Odyle’ by Heloise and the Savoir Faire Dancers over at Heloise’s website. While you’re at it, you can watch the one for ‘Members Only’ too, if you like. But we will mostly concern ourselves with ‘Odyle’ for the purposes of this guest appearance. (It’s not the first time the song has featured on Fluxblog, but bear with me.)

I can’t remember exactly when Flux started using the term ‘joycore’, but it caught on pretty fast with a cabal of weird geeks dedicated to neologism and new religions, who promptly started propogating the idea in small but hostile circles. The hostility stemmed from the prevalence of borecore in the world, a most pernicious syndrome. Borecore is anti-fun, anti-sex (unless it’s Pitchfork-endorsed sex, the kind that “climaxes in rage, regret and release”), and most importantly anti-pop. The war between the two ways of thinking is ceaseless and intense.

(Incidentally: this is, to my mind, a preferable duality to ‘rockism’ and ‘popism’, whilst suggesting many of the same conflicts. I know many rock fans who are deeply offended by the suggestion that something about their taste in music makes them humourless plodding bores, and rightly so: School Of Rock is a deeply joycore film, ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ a joycore song. Equally pop can be borecore: Westlife are the proof.)

Two popular misconceptions exist regarding joycore. The first is that it is primarily provocative, intended mainly to annoy. It’s true that like any list that splits the world into binary categories (‘You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On’), joycore and borecore were always going to generate controversy. The fact is, it’s very, very easy (and fun!) to annoy Mars Volta fans, regardless of whether you’re doing it on purpose or not – but this is a joycore bonus, not a raison d’etre.

The second misconception is that joycore involves a relentlessly upbeat façade of cheer and smiles that refuses to recognize the nasty things in life and thus quickly becomes wearing (this misconception also crops up in discussions of the related ideology ‘poptimism’). We can illustrate the fallacy of this by paying close attention to ‘Odyle’. The lyrics are full of signs of the apocalypse: the sky is falling, and a psychic has foretold Heloise’s impending death. But this world can’t end without a new one beginning, and so the dancing goes on. There’s anger there too, in the defiant shouty-shouty bit of the chorus, like a great lost Le Tigre song. ‘Odyle’ has room for all of this, as well as for big ideas. But it’s still unmistakably pop in the simplest, most fun sense – just listen to the way that beat pulsates and builds like ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, or the hint of Blondie melody in the way Heloise sings the title.

And then there’s the dancing. One of the crucial fundamentals of borecore is that borecore does not dance, and it most certainly does not do the kind of dancing engaged in by the Savoir Faire dancers. Borecore’s puritanical attitude says that anything ever done by Britney Spears etc is forever tainted – out goes the baby with the bathwater. Joycore knows that choreography is not in itself a bad thing. The hegemonies that often go with it in pop’s less fine hours (being thin, being bland) can be dispensed with without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Those moves can be for everybody.

Reclaim the dance.

(This post sponsored by The New Hip Hop, Political Correctness Trend.)

Murder most FLUX!

Sister Sledge “Pretty Baby” last night i had a dream about what i would post to fluxblog today, and it was so much more interesting than what i had planned! it would be difficult, and probably a little boring, to describe the dream in its entirety, so let’s just say it involved a string of terrible, brutal murders, and that i was somehow searching for clues in the fluxblog comment boxes. it was actually a little upsetting, which is why i present you with this song, a glorious disco-pop number, chic-produced, which is not upsetting at all. in fact, this song is so explosively upbeat (musically, maybe not so much lyrically) that i once used it to psyche myself up before doing something particularly nerve-wracking. i’ll leave you to guess what that was.

Arabesque “Someone Is Waiting for You” now this is a song so spectacularly chipper it makes “pretty baby” look like a diamanda galas number. (again, musically, not so much lyrically.) anyway, it’s so sweeping, so just HUGE-feeling, i feel like it should be used in some big glamourous montage sequence in a movie set in a big city, where the heroine is experiencing some marvellous moments of great personal triumph. i hope you like it.

love, your friendly neighbourhood s10cki

(click here to buy the best of sister sledge from amazon)

Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival (Part 4)

Dr Alban “No Coke” When I started my own MP3 blog, the now-defunct PopNose, this was the first record I selected for it. I chose it with a certain trepidation: “Tom,” I told myself, “People will think you’re just going to stuff this blog with any old tat that catches your passing fancy. They’re right, of course, but isn’t this giving the game away a bit?”. Then I remembered that “No Coke” is in fact a masterpiece that anyone with half a heart and half a hip would enjoy. It starts with a really filthy synth waggle then lopes into an infectious digi-ragga groove while the singing Swedish dentist Dr Alban gives a very reasonable account of the Perils Of Drugs over the top. “crack in the morning, crack in the evening, crack in the night and crack non-stop” he warns before talking about his DJ mate Denniz Pop for a verse, not because he takes or shuns drugs but just because he’s a nice bloke and deserves a mention.

I have been voting for Europop in the ongoing poll to decide what MP3 I should put up on Sunday. Because I love Europop. In my darkest hours, when pop in America seems scarred with a disfiguring glamour and pop in Britain crippled by a smirking self-consciousness, Europop delivers. It understands that hooks and tunes are supremely important, that concepts matter, that one should take oneself entirely seriously while being absolutely unconcerned with non-sonic trends. It also understands – and this is crucial – that being ‘good at rapping’ need have no bearing whatsoever on whether a rap works in your song. Dr Alban would disgust and horrify Rakim but I have gradually come to realise that my appreciation for his avuncular, polite flow goes well beyond ‘irony’; I just think he’s a marvellous MC.

The Europop formula has in some ways changed dramatically since the early 90s. Socially-conscious Swedish reggae is out; a dance-tinged return to the melody-rich days of Polar Studios is in. But most of the personnel stayed the same. Poor Denniz Pop didn’t make it – he died of cancer in the mid-90s, shortly before his partner Max Martin started writing for the Backstreets and Britney and conquered the world. I love Alcazar, Annie, A-Teens and all the rest but in some ways the early-90s stuff is what I love best – on the surface it seems unlikely that its sound will be back other than as a nostalgic pleasure, but the hipster cachet of ‘bad rappers’ like Fannypack, Northern State and the Beastie Boys suggests that there may be a place in our heart for rapping dentists yet.