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.

You Are My Nightmare And I’ll Never Wake Up



The Comateens “Nightmares” – I once played this song for someone who just naturally assumed it was by one of the new wave/post-punk revival bands who were all the rage in 2002/03. After learning it was from 1981, it seemed to make all the difference. It possesses all the elements both revivals were striving for (the cheap drum machine beat, the rubbery bassline, and the uncomplicated primitive synthesizer sound), but it was created out of enthusiasm for things new and not tailored to adhere to guidelines which are now well laid out. It’s a shame the Comateens couldn’t hold it together past the mid-’80s, and a greater shame still that Nik North passed on before he could cash in on the sound his band helped invent.

Urban Verbs “Subways” – There’s a grand tradition of nepotism in rock. Urban Verbs may have caught the ear of Warner Bros. in 1980 because their frontman Roddy Frantz was the brother of Talking Head Chris Frantz, but that’s where most of the similarities end. The band was more focused on creating sweeping, anthemic new wave soundscapes than they were dipping their toes into the avant garde. Ultimately, a lot of their output was entirely forgettable, but “Subways” is the kind of song which should be remembered alongside “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” and “Telecommunication” as milestones of new wave. (Wounded Bird reissued their first album on cd last year)

A little bit softer now

Captain Beefheart “Peon” – Even if you don’t usually like Mr. Van Vliet (i.e., think he’s too screechy or weird), you might like this song, off Lick My Decals Baby, which my husband was convinced to buy by some enthusiastic record-store clerks. I tend to think of it like “Beefheart does ‘Classical Gas'” except it’s not as up-tempo. Nor is it insanely cheesy. There’s also something about this album that reminds me especially of the first track off Milk Man; guitar tone, maybe? The best thing about this song, though, is its screwy time-signature, which I have yet to figure out because it keeps changing. So if you’re trying to tap your foot along, you can practically feel the neurons of confusion firing in your brain. The album’s very out of print, unfortunately. If you want, you can pay some seller on amazon $89.99, or you could make a trip to Athens and hit the wonderful Low Yo Yo Stuff (next to the 40 Watt downtown), which would probably run you a lot less. They try to keep a copy in stock at all times.

Bill Jones “The Barley and the Rye” – Bill is, of course, short for Belinda rather than William, and I’ve worked on getting my entire family hooked on this album (Panchpuran). She’s Irish-Indian. She plays about a million instruments (accordion! penny whistle!). And she has the liltiest voice ever. I’m not one of those folks who heads straight for the Celtic section of the CD store, at all, but she reawakens my secret love for folk music. I was raised on the stuff. Anyway, get your waltzy folk on. You can buy the album direct from her at the Brick Wall Music site linked to under her name or from amazon.

Fashion or Fuck You

S Prcss: The Sun Provides Vitamin D: At the day job, I watch a ton of TV — eight screens, with at least three turned to the offspring of ESPN at all times — and I hear the Mitsubishi ad which licensed Air’s “Surfing on a Rocket” about 11 (!) times daily. It wouldn’t be generous to say that, eight out of those 11 times, I wish the song that those echoing chords was about to turn into was this one, by the Philadelphia now-duo S Prcss; this track, off their recent EP ‘Taste Like Daughter,” starts off like it’s going to be a gorgeous shoegazy meditation, but it turns into a menacing minor-key rager in a manner as sneaky and quick as a summer cloudburst that absolutely drenches all pedestrians within 75 blocks. S Prcss as a unit is paring itself down (when I interviewed them, 16 months or so ago, they were a trio in search of a bassist; for ‘Taste Like Daughter,’ they’ve stripped themselves down to a duo), but it makes their recorded output only that much more vital; they tumble and rumble the everyday tropes of rock and roll just long enough to ensure that brightly glittering gems come out. (Buy ‘Taste Like Daughter’ from My Pal God records.)

The Rogers Sisters: Freight Elevator: What this track does is, when you think about it, kind of amazing; It takes the ferocious vocals of Lynn Breedlove and weds them to pyrotechnic, spare rock and a straight-outta-Emily’s-Sassy-Lime countermelody. The forthcoming Rogers Sisters EP, ‘Three Fingers,’ has tons of moments like this; as someone whose nascent post-L.A. Guns tastes were weaned on the Kill Rock Stars comps, it’s really heartening (and shake-my-booty-on-the-E-train-exhilarating) to hear a band that distills the greatest moments of the early ’90s into such a potent, fiery cocktail. (Visit the Rogers Sisters’ official site.)

hello special friends!

Juan Torres “Alma Llanera” hello everyone in fluxland! i (m s1ocki) am thrilled and privileged and honoured to be but a brief and surely insignificant element of this mighty cultural gatekeeper, which has brought so much joy to so many hearts. today i would like to share with you what may be one of my favourite songs ever!

i found this song on an old record left out in the trash with a bunch of other, not-so-good stuff, outside a weird & slightly confused-seeming local record, comic, book, and hipster novelty store. the artist is mexico’s juan torres (not to be confused with cuban musician juan pablo torres–i think), and the album was called, i think “juan torres y su organo melodico vol. 2”–though the volume number may be incorrect. as i was sifting through these discarded records one fine day in, i believe, 1999 or thereabouts (as the media beat its war drums and y2k hysteria was reaching a wild, fevered peak), this little gem popped out at me and nothing has been the same since.

“alma llanera” is a venezuelan folk song (the title means “soul of the plains.”) and it is really something special, especially in sr torres’s spirited organ arrangement–the opening bars alone are worth price of admission (in this case, totally free), and soon it explodes into a sparkling, syncopated (though this may not be the right word as i don’t know from musical terminology like at all) explosion of joy and shivery incredibly amazing incredibleness. i liked this song so much i used it to soundtrack a vaguely ambitious art film i made on super-8 (featuring guerilla footage of european modern dancers!–but i digress). i hope you love it as much as i do!

My 2 Best Listening Experience in the Last 3 Months

If there’s anything we all agree on about music, I think, it’s that your subjective evaluation of it is deeply influenced by the context in which it is heard, and as it happens, my two best listening experiences of the last two months have been not because of a great album or song, but almost entirely because of context. Well, context and good songs. Let me explain.

#1 Liz Phair “Love/Hate” – I was feeling claustrophobic one Saturday morning/afternoon in June–we’d stayed in Friday because we were too tired or too broke or too lazy, if I recall, and while video games are nice they do sap your will to live after a while–and so I decided to take a little walk around Miss Clap’s neighborhood up in Washington Heights with my discman at my side. I loaded it up with my obsession of the moment, the self-titled Liz Phair album, and as it was a brief walk, I skipped through to my favorite songs.

Miss Clap’s apartment building is a block away from the famous buildings that perch impossibly above the huge expanse of I-95 leading to the George Washington Bridge (if you’ve ever driven from New Jersey to Brooklyn via the George Washington and Triborough bridges, you’ve seen them), and when you walk up the street just outside, Audubon, you can walk on what feels a lot like a freeway overpass but what is actually a major Manhattan thoroughfare, with nice views north and south. And so as I set out, I walked down to the park running beside Riverside drive, and there I heard “Extrordinary” and “Why Can’t I,” the latter of which I usually love uniquivically, but which wasn’t really doing it that day. I cut up 178th for a block and heard “Rock Me.” And as I started to walk over the interstate, I clicked onto “Love/Hate.”

And it was perfect. Those opening chords pounded in and I looked down at those 16 or whatever lanes of freeway with cars going down them in the bright sunshine on a weekend morning and it felt like exactly what I wanted to do, like I was a fool not to be driving somewhere right then. I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and I looked over–something I enjoy doing regardless–and I listened to the song and I could almost feel myself blaring it from a stereo as I tore down the freeway. I wasn’t, but it felt like it anyway.

Besides the great feeling, it also drove home to me the difference between “Why Can’t I” and “Love/Hate”: the former was a pop song, and the latter was a rock song, and in their way they were almost archetypical examples of each. “Love/Hate” felt good in sunshine with cars; “Why Can’t I” felt good walking through a park downtown on a quiet day. The difference is that Love/Hate has its rock beats on the 1 and 3, and “Why Can’t I” has its pop beats on the 2 and 4. Easy schmeazy.

#2: Wasteland “HH Babies” – I think it was Simon that wrote how the Wasteland album, Amen Fire, was an entirely interior album, one that sounded like indoors, especially like dark indoor places, tunnels and basements. But I really only grew to appreciate that album while listening to it on a Greyhound bus pulling out of Youngstown, Ohio. Maybe it’s because I don’t get a lot of chances to listen to music on speakers in isolation, but it was only once I got a chance in an admittedly enclosed place to listen on headphones to the things on that album that made it interesting. But while I was in an enclosed bus, I was looking out at buildings and traffic lights and sparse trees aligned besides railway tracks and grey skies, and this was how it made sense to me.

There’s something perfect for me about listening to music while on a Greyhound, and I don’t really know what that is. It might have something to do with that connection in my brain between rock and cars that I mentioned above, but as often as I’m hearing, say, the Starlight Mints in an exciting way, I’m also hearing Jay-Z with clear ears. I rarely feel good about putting out my own music without getting a session in with it on the ol’ Greyhound. And so when I go off on these trips, I know what I listen to will be important.

I had set off on an Independence Day weekend trip back home with a full CD case but with no real agenda. I spun through a few things and it was OK. But then, after the sun set–oh then–it started in on a thunderstorm. I was perplexed; I love thunderstorms, but what to put on, knowing how it would hit me? The new PJ Harvey? Lightning Bolt? Nah: the new Wasteland EP, Spirit Shots. And oh yes, it was the right decision.

This track is a reasonably good indication of the basic Wasteland formula: hip-hop beats under a bevy of noises, especially extremely high-pitched digital noises. And I’m at a loss to explain exactly why this worked so well, aside from the obvious parallels with the lightning-y noises here. But there was something about the combination of the sealed-off, air-conditioned bus compartment, the slumbering passengers, the lightning strikes in a dark sky illuminating a soggy pastoralia, and these tones and rhythms that made me feel entirely different. It felt like a fog had enveloped the riders and that I was somehow unaffected as they lay unconscious. It felt like everything had slowed down and that the lightning bolts were cracks in the sky. It felt like I was listening to the weather play a song. It felt perfect.

And so I am, I guess, asking you to do things with these songs: if not to stand above I-95 while playing Liz Phair, to at least blare it in a car; if not to rush onto a bus during the next thunderstorm and listen to Wasteland, to at least put it on during a good hard downpour. Give it a try and see.

My Computer Mechanism Wants You Mentally

with each passing year, the idea of fatboy slim becomes more and more untenable. it’s been four years since his last album and, really, that one only got a pass because of the video with christopher walken making like jules munshin. clearly, big beat has run its course, finding refuge in the occasional x-games commercial — even madison avenue is blanching at it at this point. if anything, however, norman cook is a sage man, demonstrating a penchant for reinvention. after four years of deliberation, monitoring trends, finger on the pulse, he has emerged from the lab with a novel idea: he will be the new uncle kracker.

at first sight, it makes as much sense as, i don’t know, sampling jim morrison, but the more one thinks about it, the more it makes (business) sense. “the joker” features bootsy collins on vocals, and, if your classic rock q(104) is low, it’s a song by the steve miller band, probably better known to most as either “some people call me the space cowboy,” “some people call me maurice (guitar sound replicating a wolf-whistle),” or even “the pompatus of love.” unlike uncle kracker’s “drift away” or any of his hits that kinda sound like “drift away,” norman’s take on “the joker” doesn’t have that down-home, front-porch feeling, probably because norm has an e-mail account — perhaps it’s more akin to uninspired smashmouth (and, hey, if you’re thinking “it’s summer, where is the obligatory smashmouth hit” be sure to pick up the princess diaries 2 ost; honest-to-goodness uninspired smashmouth, but we know you’re picking it up for lindsay lohan’s debut anyway). given that this is the same man who participated in the housemartin’s #1 u.k. cover of isley-jasper-isley’s “caravan of love,” perhaps this is a logical progression. even so, that record, a capella, of all things, is downright revoultionary when compared to this desultory recasting.

it’s a hard song to say much about and an even harder song to hate. still, given how massive it’s bound to be, you may find a way before summer is over. “the joker,” it should be noted, is cook’s u.s. single: i imagine that steve miller’s brand of good-natured boogie didn’t take the u.k. by storm. and, yes, u.k. fans, if you think a cover of a thirty-year old fm rock standard is retro, wait until you hear what he’s got lined up for you: apparently, it’s about the internet.

Believe what you want, he’s not my boyfriend



Well I think if we’re all going to live up to the Fluxblog summer gangbang promise, there has to be some inter-poster interaction. And I think the uber-theme this week here is context.

You see, Eppy posts one song he thinks is no good, to provide context for another song that he thinks is great (and I kind of agree, though it’s great in a very non-Fluxblog way, which I guess is the point). Tom comes up with a theme which is about how nostalgia recontextualises music (and in the baggy post he talks about how different subgroups can recontextualise the same era in totally different ways). Paul gives us a song in the context of the city it sings about, and Jebni gives us some songs in the context of a personal tragedy.

(And by the way, that Cyndi Lauper track is absolutely ESSENTIAL – that has made my week, despite the sad context)

And me, I think context is the big bugbear for everybody today. Is it “noise” i.e. does it interfere with our appreciation of “pure” music? Or is the context part of the fun? Is Toxic more fun because it’s Britney singing it? Or is that just irrelevant?

Well, frankly, to use a Barbelith injoke in a public forum, anyone who says it’s irrelevant needs to take a quick trip to selfawaria. We’re stuck with context. Just as you can’t know your own mind by looking at it, you can’t separate your enjoyment of music from what you think that music ‘means’ culturally.

But it struck me in a cab this morning, listening to Def Leppard on headphones, that if I imagined this record (“Hysteria”) as electronica, which sonically it almost could be, how almost completely shorn of context it could be. Electronic sounds somehow (to me anyhow) seem to mean contextually less because there is more diversity both sonically and culturally around electronic music than almost any other recognisable sound.

So to illustrate that I offer two instrumental electronic music mpegs. Partly because after surveying what’s been posted so far this week, I think that’s what’s missing. And I ask – what do you think the context is? Which one do you like more? Because, me, I think shorn of context, these two are very similar. And they both make me smile. And they’re both reminding me of someone who never says quite what she means, leaving a lot to context and ambiguity.

Some music

Also some music

(contextual spoilers coming up – do not read until you have listened)

One of these tracks comes from an LP on the Karloff label, and the other from a 12″ EP on Aftershock. The latter is probably no longer available to purchase having been released about 5 months ago. But in either case, your best bet to buy em is Juno.

What should be noted about both of these tunes is that both of them are more lighthearted, melodic and poppy than one would normally expect from the allotted contexts of the artists. But you already knew that, right? (and if you didn’t fuck off, lightweight) (or congratulations true believer)

Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival (Part 3)

Frank Black “Big Red” I wrote something about the Pixies once which even in these reunited times still holds up. Pertinent here is the idea that Frank Black sounded most human and engaged when he was singing about aliens and spaceships: “Big Red”, which I hope you Fluxblog readers all know, is from his second solo album and is a charmingly hooksome song about the colonisation of Mars. It sums up for me the breezier, more joyful side of ‘Alternative’ music in the early 90s.

Alternative music has been criticised, or rather, the idea that ‘alternative music’ exists has been criticised – it was a marketing conceit, a branding exercise that reduced the colorful, creative patchwork of 80s independent music to pigeonholed homogeny. I can see that point, and later in the 90s things did get pretty awful as the bubble burst. But at the same time as soon as Nirvana hit big ‘Alternative’ was inevitable. Post-Nirvana there was a swell of interest in the people who’d been doing ‘that kind of thing’ for ages – what resulted wasn’t always enjoyable but it was interesting, a one-off opportunity for a generation of indie musicians to make commercial music which would be marketed heavily. A grab at the brass ring, in other words. Throwing Muses, Tanya Donelly, Evan Dando, Dirty-era Sonic Youth, Kim Deal, Bob Mould and Frank Black – from my side of the Atlantic it looked in ’92 very much like these people, more-or-less familiar from well-thumbed Melody Makers, had decided to try and make pop music and see where it got them. Mostly it got them nowhere, or back where they started from. But some fun music resulted.

There are two ways Alternative (in its early 90s, Gen X marketing buzz sense) could revive. People making music that rips it off, sure – but the paths these artists trod have hardly been short of walkers since. More interesting maybe would be another indie boom – a new commercial consensus that would lead to the underground heroes of today being given the chance to ‘sell out’. The sounds would be different, but the spirit of ’92-’93 would linger.

(Meanwhile the poll goes on.)

Advance, Australian Ford

“You Should Have Killed the Monkey First” Adam Ford – To date, I think Adam Ford is the person from farthest away who I met first on the internet and then in person. He’s from Australia. It was in New York, the winter of 2000, when I went up to Fliptone Studios to do some recording and timed it so a bunch of Barbelith people were meeting at the same time. Adam was there just to be in New York, I think. He gave me a copy of his book of poems Not Quite the Man For the Job. The title piece from that book is a kind of retelling of the Green Lantern origin story, only funny and poignant at the same time. Adam Ford is my kind of person; a man of letters, a man of science, and a man who’s not afraid to let his geek banner fly high and proud. A man not afraid to demand his pedipulator. Not all of his poems or spoken word pieces (or even his novel) are about comic books, but some of the best ones are. This is one of those.

“Metamorpho” The Songs and Stories of the Justice League album – Some time in 2001, Mr. Ford was generous enough to not only tell people about this album, but also to record it and swap it for mix tapes. It’s a treasure from 1975, although it feels between 10 and 20 years older, alternating short “radio play” pieces with theme songs for the various heroes. The Justice League roll call is pretty funny, but the Metamorpho song has this weird kernel of pathos buried under the forced “let’s be hip, kids!” tone. It tells its own eerie story, complete with a heart-wrenching narrative twist at the end. Plus, you can dance to it. Well, maybe that’s just me. Anyway, you can read more about the record and see scans of the covers over here (scroll down to “music”).

“Music is Crap” Custard – The flip side of that same Justice League tape got really worn out. It was a mix of Australian surreal spoken work performers and indie pop bands like Custard that I’d never heard of, but were beautiful, catchy, and should have been global superstars. Unfortunately, not too many people in the States seem to have heard of any Australian independent popsters other than Ben Lee and Darren Hanlon. But the country is full, I say! Full of rich, earthy indie pop loam! Vast herds of bizarre, docile-eyed indie pop animals, grazing in plenty! This song doesn’t really have anything to do with comics, but it is about aliens who hate music, and is really, really happy about it. The only Custard I can find on Amazon is this album, and a record by some speed-metal band I can only assume is totally unrelated.

True love 4ever, grant.

A Less Nutty Robyn Hitchcock

Love Tractor “I Broke My Saw” – Love Tractor tends to be more known for their instrumental stuff, since that’s how they started out, that is, if they’re known much at all these days. But listening to their songs with vocals, I can’t understand why they never hit it totally huge. Mike Richmond, who I actually worked with for a year or so without making any kind of connection, was described in the Trouser Press guide as the title of this post, and he is all yelpy and great. This song kicks off Themes from Venus and is based on a poem by the late John Seawright, another Athens notable. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but their lyrics never do; i.e., they make a sort of dream sense in the way words get played around with sonically, but there’s not usually a coherent narrative.

Love Tractor “Satan” – Here’s another track from the same album. As far as I can tell, it seems to be anti-New Wave and pro-metal, but then, it might also be a big joke, since it’s certainly not Motorhead-esque in sound or anything. Both of these make me think of parties in Athens, parties that involve a lot of hanging out on the porch of an old house bedecked with Xmas lights and feeling the stillness of the air in the summer (breezes are a rare thing) and the condensation from a beer bottle trickling slowly down your arm. This town can be very cliquish, but it can also be pleasingly laid back in a way that I think of as very Southern. If you hit the magical moment, you could go right from talking about them silver britches into Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility.” Basically, I wasn’t around when Love Tractor was playing shows. My college days were way after that time. And yet, these songs come with built-in nostalgia, even when you’re hearing them fresh. They also make me want to dance, which is something I don’t do in public. Looks like it’s not available new from Amazon (or anywhere else), but there are some used copies for purchase.

You Should Be What You Wanna Be

Hans Appelqvist “Zenna & Marie” – A few years ago, I was in a car in deep New Jersey, very late at night, with a driver who was flipping from station to station, and happened on some hip-hop station that was having a call-in talent hour. Two young girls had phoned in and were doing a complicated clap-and-slap-and-rap routine; I still remember the sound of it, like they’d never had this much fun before and didn’t even think it was possible. The recording that’s come closest to the feel of that moment for me is this song, from the Swedish composer Hans Appelqvist’s 3-inch CD Att M?ta Verkligheten, on which he plays with recordings of people’s speaking voices in a bunch of languages. Hint: keep listening–it goes places by the end that aren’t at all obvious at the beginning, and it sounds awesome at the same volume, at the same deep-night hour, and through the same speakers you’d use for a hip-hop station’s call-in show. I don’t think the two little girls here realized that there was going to be music added to what they were saying… but what song are they trying to remember, or sing along with?

This track appears here by kind permission of Mr. Appelqvist. Americans can buy Att M?ta Verkligheten through Forced Exposure, here; you can also get it through the extraordinary Swedish experimental label that released it, Hapna (Also highly recommended from them: the wild organ/accordion/drum duo Sagor & Swing’s Orgelplaneten.) And you can download a bunch of Appelqvist’s other work here.