There ain’t a big enough ASCAP



Robbie Fulks – “Fuck This Town” – Sometimes, I hate living in Nashville. And I’m not even a struggling musician. This city eats its own and shuns the outsiders. Take the case of Robbie Fulks. In “Fuck This Town,” Fulks not only tells the tale of what “Music City, USA” did to him, but puts the stories of countless others into a concise and appropriately bitter 2+ minute song. When metal was big in the ’80s, naive kids from all over, desiring fame and acclaim, were wounded and heartbroken by their experiences in Los Angeles. The same can be said of the grunge boom in the early ’90s. Nashville, however, has been doing this for many decades, and continues to do it to this day. How do they get away with it? Smoke and mirrors. The rest of the world thinks it’s just a happy-go-lucky bunch of bumpkins releasing country records, crossing their fingers for success, and saying their prayers before bed. Wrong, world! Music Row is a haven for bloodthirsty opportunists with their ears to the ground, chewing up and spitting out singers and songwriters for big profits. Nashville is where artistry goes to die. (Click here to buy the album South Mouth)

And He Went For a Ride

Johnny Cash (w/Krist Novaselic et al) “Time of the Preacher” – My first guest-post here on Fluxblog is a joke about two different covers of the same classic song. (Walk into a bar, etc.) The first one is by someone whose main work in the past few years has been with covers, although this track isn’t taken from one of those albums. It is instead from a collection called No Depression: What It Sounds Like, Vol. 1, wherein Johnny covers this near-perfect Willie Nelson song backed by various Seattle folks, including (sigh!) Krist Novaselic and, apparently, various members of Alice in Chains, presumably in some sort of quid-pro-quo for Cash’s cover of “Rusty Cage” on Unchained. (Apologies for the vagueness; my knowledge of this is somewhat limited.) Oddly enough–or not, depending on your opinion of the folks involved–it’s not particularly good, the halfway-between-rock-and-country bassline aside. It’s too fast, a bit too rote, and whoever mixed it didn’t seem to do justice to the usual sludgy AiC sound while also not going down the nice and dirty route taken by Van Lear Rose, on which the guitars here would have made considerably more sense. There’s a certain value to the switch between wanking and tentative, almost unschooled tail-off at the end of the solo (around 2:10), but the rest of it just doesn’t work very well, especially not as some sort of statement of what No Depression sounds like. (This doesn’t sound like Uncle Tupelo to me, but then…) As much as I’d like to blame this on the my-personal-definition-of-“better-off-dead” Alice in Chains, I think the problem is mainly Johnny’s–he sticks too close to the original and fails to really reimagine it, which means that he doesn’t entirely convey the story behind it, an almost fatal flaw in a song that was intended to stand as part of a whole. Hearing those iconic first six notes played all metal instead of on a solo nylon guitar is an interesting inversion–you almost think they’re going to launch into a Don Caballero song or something–but as a whole, it’s more an interesting curiosity. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Carla Bozulich “Medley: Time of the Preacher/Blue Rock Montana/Red Headed Stranger” – For reinvention, it’s hard to beat this cover, which takes two tracks totaling 2:49 in length and stretches it into an insanely beautiful 6:42 monster. Taken from Carla’s song-for-song cover of Willie’s original album, this is one of the multiple styles employed thereon, roughly classified as Dirty 3 without a drummer and then, uh, Dirty 3 with a drummer. And a vocalist. Who kicks ass. It takes the open spaces described in the lyrics and literalizes them with the music, spreading out the chords and reducing the attacks to slight whispers in the breeze while pedal-steel and static float on top like dust, foregrounding the vocals as the interior monologue made flesh. Bowed upright bass approximates an organ and the violin joins in tentatively. Then the drums crash in. Like in some Westerns, the power here comes from the combination of deliberateness and confidence: they are moving at this speed because they do not need to move any faster, and were they, something would be lost. Listen to it after the Cash version and I think it emphasizes how much this is a burst of steady sunshine on a dry day in an open landscape. It is slow-moving but profoundly happy, in spite of the sadness of the lyrics, or maybe even because of it. As Carla’s guitar locks in with the drums and the pedal steel fills in the gaps, it gets louder, but not faster, and sort of reluctantly. When those toms kick in you’re all like “yes, this rocks!” like the rock-out section in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” you eventually realize that it doesn’t necessarily rock any more or less than what came before. It is not ecstatic because it has been this ecstatic already. It is a lovely little thing. (Click here to buy it from Carla.)

Energetic, Boisterous, Rollicking, Rousing, Confident, Manic, Quirky

Jules & the Polar Bears “Good Reason” – Sound quality on this is admittedly horrible (mp3 from LP) but worth persevering through and crank it the eff up. Jules Shear hasn’t ever had a hit, but he sure has created them for other people, most notably “All Through the Night” for Cyndi Lauper and “If She Knew What She Wants” for the Bangles. The thing is, he’s burdened with this voice that a lot of people can’t get past, but this song (off J&PB’s second album, Fenetiks, which is as out of print as it gets and may not ever have been on CD) at least is super ticky-tocky and of its time (1979) and danceable in a white-boy way, and it’s even got good lyrics, which is pretty much par for the course. You might be able to pick up a copy of his Best Of here in the used section, which has some of these early cuts, and here’s the full selection of what’s available CD-wise. You’d probably be best off digging through the dollar bin at a rekkid store.

Zumm Zumm “By 30 Years Your Money’s Gonna Ruin Everything” – 45 seconds of Athenian cute punk goodness. I know almost nothing about these guys. They play occasionally here in town, and I haven’t made it to a show yet. I think their lyrics could turn a lot of people off, as they’re pretty standard anti-corporate bla bla, but when they’re hard to understand, you don’t even have to. I have a big weakness for a tempo this fast. Plus, you can order the little CD this is off of (Gerald Bronson) for a mere $5. What’s not worth $5?

Rediscovered Treasure (the music of second chances)

Bill Cosby “Don’cha Know” – I discovered the album Silver Throat (Bill Cosby Sings) back in the late ’80s, looking for stand-up comedy in the used record racks (mainly for filler in mix tapes). I figured it’d be great material for samples, a little singing and a lot of comedy. After all, 1. It’s Bill Cosby; 2. It’s obviously from the mid-60s, the height of his comic career; 3. Cover art has Coz with a big, white cowboy mustache. Well, I soon discovered that the subtitle did not lie. It’s a genuine rhythm & blues album, sung by Bill Cosby, with absolutely nothing funny about it except the (unfortunate) cover. Most of the tracks are covers of blues and R&B hits by people like Jimmy Reed and Ray Charles. I stuck it on my jazz/blues shelf and forgot about it… until Flux posted “Hikky-Burr” a few weeks ago. Forget about comedy, this is an amazingly solid record, with a few songs (like this one) credited to Cosby himself as composer. It’s pretty hard to find, but apparently, old copies are for sale at Amazon’s zShops.

The Fascinators “Fascinators’ Minor” – Years ago, the summer before I left home for college, I became caretaker to a burned out house down the street – mowing the lawn and keeping animals out of the structure, mostly. The former residents were an old couple who left behind a great book and record collection. I took two of the less-fire damaged records because I loved the cover art – very 1950s-looking calypso albums. I listened once and thought, eh, if I ever throw a theme party, I’ll pull it out, and forgot about ’em. Then, about five years ago, I started putting an “album of the month” out on display in my living room, and I’d play each one from beginning to end. Well, Champion Steel Drum Bands of Trinidad was a real winner, with a sound unlike anything else I’d ever heard. I only regret I hadn’t gone over to that house with a milk crate and pulled more stuff off the shelves before leaving town. You’ll be lucky to find this record anywhere I think, but I imagine any of the others put out by Cook Laboratories will be similar. Coincidentally, yesterday morning (the day after Flux so kindly uploaded this file), there was a “musicians in their own words” piece on NPR by steel pan player Andy Narell, who covered some of the history of the form – beautiful, upbeat music made by thugs out of recycled metal trash.

Neil Young “Computer Age” – I have a strong feeling I rediscovered this song when most people did, after Sonic Youth covered it on the early 90s tribute album

The Bridge. But I bought the original album, Trans, shortly after it came out in 1982 – in the “used” rack, obviously chucked out by a disgusted Young fan who couldn’t figure out what the heck all this computer crap was doing in his countrified rock and roll. I bought it because I’d heard this song on a New Wave show, and fallen in love with its bridge – to my teenage ears, that haunting, alien vocoder melody promised something new and strange and beautiful just around the corner. After a few listens, like everyone else in the world, I grew to loathe the album, because it’s two-thirds proto-electronica sci-fi soundtrack, and one-third failed folky art-rock (most of that being the one, interminable song “Like an Inca”). Listening to it again, though, some of it is absolutely brilliant, about 15 years ahead of its alternate timeline, and I fall back in love with this particular song every time I hear it. There’s an import version of Trans on Amazon, but according to the reviews, some songs have been remixed by Swedish producers to appeal to the “European techno-pop crowd.”

Thanks for listening. Yours sincerely, grant.

Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival (Part 2)

Shaft “Roobarb And Custard” – Inasmuch as dance music can have a ‘self-image’, it’s one of progress: read anyone who writes a lot about dance and you see a healthy fear of inertia and a love of the new. But at the same time there’s always been a revivalist streak there, often deep-buried. The marketing reissue cycles seem to be much shorter when dealing with the (perhaps more frazzled) club demographic than the rock one – ‘old skool’ can mean four or five years ago, ‘…ever!’ means ‘last year at most’ and retro parties are common. You see it particularly with early-90s hardcore rave music, which (very simplistically) arrived close to fully-formed at the top of the British charts, fell from favour and mutated to become darker, and then drifted into stagnation. Lookbacks to 1990-94 or some slice therein have been popular ever since.

At its peak of populism though, rave itself was shot through with a nostalgic spirit. “Toytown Techno” – fast and cheap dance tracks using samples from old kids’ TV themes or adverts or computer games – was hated by the purists but SOMEBODY was buying it in droves. And it turned out that the name producers didn’t mind it either, or didn’t mind cashing in – Aphex Twin put out a Pacman single, and Shaft turned out to be then-hot ambient craftsmen Global Communication in disguise.

Kids TV and rave made a perfect match: the sudden appearance of a half-forgotten tune could trigger “what the fuck??” hysteria in a crowd, and many children’s themes had a faintly demented aura which worked well with the ever-quicker breakbeats. Roobarb And Custard, a cartoon about a yellow dog and a purple cat locked in conflict, was particularly suitable – its main theme was sharp, springly and nagging and (even better!) it had been animated in such a way that every character vibrated and shuddered non-stop at great speed. As an example of the crasser end of dance music, it’s glorious.

Could cartoon rave come back? It barely went away – happy hardcore track makers have long known that filching the break from a familiar tune can bring the rush on nicely – but its chances now seem greater than ever. The massive familiarity of listeners with simple theme tunes (from computer games as well as TV) and the power of the net as a vector for home-made novelties suggest that while it may never be cool again, toytown techno will truly never die.

(Vote for rave in the ongoing poll if you fancy hearing some at the end of the week.)

Peanut Butter Is the New Cupcake?



I’ve been subletting an apartment in Manhattan for the last month as a way to clear my head and get some serious work-related writing done. And it’s afforded me a lot of things: a chance to just walk to my place of residence after getting screamingly drunk, rather than toughing out the 45-plus minute drive back to New Jersey (God’s country). I mean, there are some nights that I’ve driven so drunk that I couldn’t even begin to tell you whether or not I hit something. Or someone. I don’t think I ever did though.

Temporarily living in NYC has also given me a chance to experience some of the finest restaurants in the world. There’s a Manhattan-only pizza chain called Two Boots that is positively excellent – their pizza is nowhere near as cheesy as Domino’s or Papa John’s – the only pizza you can get in my neck of the woods for over twenty-five miles – and they name each different pizza after a funny character from a movie or television show!

But the place that I’ve truly fallen in love with is called Peanut Butter & Co. on Sullivan Street. I have no fucking idea how to make the previous words light up magically and take you to their website, but their URL is www.ilovepeanutbutter.com . I mean, beat that name! And you’d better love peanut butter if you plan on eating at this place, because that’s what it’s all about. They’ve got tuna fish sandwiches on the menu as well, but how much of a douchebag would you feel like eating tuna fish at a place called Peanut Butter & Co.?

I walked by the place one night and looked in their window. I was intrigued, so I made a lunch date with myself for the following afternoon. The thing that I found most appealing was the act that you were presented with: once you’re inside, everyone must uphold the illusion that a peanut butter sandwich should actually cost five dollars. And it’s not like some mammoth peanut butter sandwich either; it’s the kind that you would bang back in thirty seconds when you were eleven. Everybody was just going along with the act, pretending that they weren’t getting hosed. Why? Because it’s funny that a place would just sell peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

I wasn’t going to order the normal PB&J, nor was I going to go for the kitchy heart-clogging ‘Elvis’ (grilled PB&J with bananas and honey, bacon optional – $6.50). So I got the Peanut Butter Club ($6.00), which turned out to be a normal peanut butter and jelly sandwich done up club-style. So I paid a dollar more for a single piece of bread. Whee!

Ordering was fun enough, with the guy behind the counter helping me craft my Club. ‘Will you have that on white or wheat, sir? Would you like smooth or crunchy? What type of jelly would you like?’ So ten minutes later – TEN MINUTES!? – I get my sandwich. And I eat it. And it’s good. Really good. Really Really Good. But it’s good because it’s FUCKING PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY. This was the first restaurant I’ve ever eaten at where I knew I could walk into the kitchen and teach the cooks (sandwich chefs?) a thing or two about the artistry of their foodstuffs.

As I said, it was good. But by the fourth bite, it was just okay. And I was sick to my stomach by bite number six. Too much of a good thing? I dunno. But I left Peanut Butter & Co. knowing I would never return.

Except I did return this afternoon. And I had another Peanut Butter Club. And I felt sick at exactly the same moment as last time. So either I’m more out of practice eating sugary shit than I thought – I gave up all sweets and snacks about two months ago, along with caffeine and soda – or this place is onto something. They give you the full rollercoaster experience: anticipation, satisfaction, a creeping disgust followed by nausea, which is chased by a creeping temptation to return. Weird. So do I recommend eating there? No. But I will continue to overpay for their magnificently gross sandwiches.

— Tom Scharpling

I’m a Different Person.

hello. no, i am not matthew perpetua either. worse yet, i don’t even have a link to an easily-consumable, tightly-compressed version of the song i wish to discuss today, but fear not, if you know me — and here’s where i’d insert a link if i wasn’t mildly embarrassed about my site’s dormancy — you know that i tend to write about things right of the dial, i.e. things easy to purchase … if you live in the u.k. or don’t mind import fees, that is.

still, we’re not out of the woods yet: i don’t really know much about dance music. normally, this isn’t a problem; today it is, since i plan on discussing the shapeshifters’ “lola’s theme” which is shaping up to be the summer anthem of 2004, according to those who know better. to paraphrase justice stewart, though, i know it when i hear it and i know what i like and, my, do i like this.

the cognoscenti can correct me if they see fit, but “lola’s theme” makes better use of a seven-second sample than any song i’ve heard since “music sounds better with you.” as with much of the best art (and all of the most pretentious), what makes “lola’s theme” work is the shapeshifters’ judicious selection: the sample comes from a johnnie taylor record (“what about my love” for the trainspotters) from 1982, a good six years after people stopped keeping tabs on him, if they were keeping tabs on him at all. on taylor’s record, the strings and counterpoint horns are slower and reserved for the chorus; the shapeshifters’ maximize the tempo, giving them a majesty that only taylor’s voice lends to his original, and skip the vegetables getting right to the dessert, fading and filtering the sample to keep the listener from getting a bellyache.

there are lyrics, to be sure, but despite my own looping of the song, the most i can recall are from the chorus, something like “i’m a different person … turn my life around.” which may not be exactly right, but no matter the wording, i’m certain the sentiment is the same: it could be about a boy or a girl; it could be a metaphor for music. like all the dance music i love best, “lola’s theme” sounds like saturday night without a sunday morning to come. it’s a pair of eyes meeting across a room without the morning after. it’s a distillation of that exact moment when everything seems as if it is changing for the better. it’s there for you when you need it, again and again and again.

monday mourning soundtrack

I’m in no mood to be hip or oblique, to make interesting choices of song, or even to even write well. A friend of mine has just been killed, so indulge me some schoolboy-style literalism, because I’m sure Josh wouldn’t — indeed, he’d probably tell me I was a sentimental wanker, but fuck it.

It’s appropriate that my songs of mourning have all appeared in film soundtracks. To those who are alarmed that Hollywood films are turning into big music videos, we must reply, “so fucking what?”. The overpowering prominence of pop songs in film is often great, my favourite example in recent memory being the use of Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels” in Donnie Darko’s slo-mo school corridor scene — what Katy Stevens has described as “diegetic choreography”. And right now I feel like some diegetic choreography, some collusive sense that there’s some meaning in the world, that its seemingly random movements, including mine, can be given some kind of context, some kind of dance.

Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come” — That this was left off the soundtrack album of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X is inexplicable, because for me, Cooke’s song is the most affecting thing about the film, its elegiac tone perfectly harnessed. The strange thing is, I don’t even remember if Lee used this version of the song. The manifest lyrical content — about the weary optimism of the struggle against racism in America — was given an extra mournful context when the song became a hit immediately after Cooke’s death, and as Malcolm drives toward his death in Malcolm X, this becomes heartbreakingly eerie, full of sweetness, ambivalence, doom and hope.

Oasis, “Stay Young” — This song got me up in the morning for years, and I need it now. As the B-side to “D’you Know What I Mean?”, it marks the period that even most fans acknowledge as Oasis’ slide into shiteness, but for me it’s proof that there was still some defiantly earnest pop-rawk left in mid-period Oasis. “Stay Young” was also the end credits song for that fantastic B-movie The Faculty, and Celine Dion’s legacy notwithstanding, the moment when the credits roll can provide a rich context to an entire film. Stay young and invincible. Cos we know just what we are.

Cyndi Lauper, “I Want a Mom That Will Last Forever” — This song appeared on the Rugrats in Paris soundtrack (oh yes). I posted it on my blog recently, but it’s getting a second outing because I think it’s one of the most heartbreaking songs ever written. Like Brian Wilson, Lauper has grasped that the most insanely simple and heartfelt stuff need not be bathetic. Sometimes creepy, perhaps, but not something to be dismissed. And it is a bit creepy, like much Beach Boys material is utterly lovable, but still a bit “wrong”: it’s seemingly so unadorned and plaintive that one can’t help reading the lyrics somewhat literally, hearing them turn into strange, insatiable demands for an indestructible android mother, with supertoys that last all summer long to match. I can imagine the robot boy from Spielberg’s (fascinatingly “wrong”) A.I. singing it, with that same obsessive yearning, overflowing from such a small body. And an overflow of yearning is something in which Cyndi Lauper specialises — listen for the stunning moment at the end (3:25) when her voice almost cracks into a sob. And yet, androids aside, “I Want a Mom” not an irony free zone. The most inescapable irony is that as far as I can tell, Cyndi Lauper, who was 47 when she recorded the song, is singing the part of a two-year-old boy, and strange, structural resonances abound. To equate irony solely with tone, and thus with sarcasm, is to utterly misunderstand it, and so my love of this song is a plea for resonance over rhetoric.

It’s all bitter and sweet. And I’m tired. Goodbye Josh. This is Ben from (Anti)popper, signing off.

The Rhythm of the Saints

Brother Danielson “Our Givest” – I still can’t believe I’ve seen almost nothing from this album making the rounds on the mp3 blog scene, but maybe it’s because it really is more of an album than just a collection of songs, which I know isn’t privileged on here but is nice sometimes. It certainly is in this case. So this is just a taste, a song with lots of energy to hook you in. Dan Smith’s voice sort of goes between a more normal range and the usual talking to the angels, and there are very cool chunky rhythms and many parts of the song going at the same time. There is fine jingle-bell stick work. There is a soft, tappy drum bit at the beginning that is probably on the edge of something. And there are also some of the detuned harmonies that go throughout the album and that are one of my favorite things about it. You listen and it goes from a little off to annoyingly off through the rules and into perfect harmony (that is, it doesn’t change; you do). I wrote about this a bit more a while ago.

As far as comparisons go, I do find it difficult to make any except to the Danielson Famile, which there isn’t much point in doing since it’s the same guy. I encourage you to listen to it about as many times as you can stand, and then you’ll start walking to the beat as you make your rounds, and the spirit (of the music) will be alive in the world. And then you’ll go and buy the album and realize how good the rest of it is and how this particular song fits into the structure. And you’ll make it to the last song in the right frame of mind for it to resurrect the eff out of you.

—Hillary

Dead On Arrival, The 90s Revival

Paris Angels “Perfume (All On You)” – No, sorry, that isn’t an error: there’s a song name there but no link. You see, the server we use at Freaky Trigger can’t sustain many MP3s, so we’re going to have to be selective. Or rather – you’re going to have to be selective.

When Matthew asked me to be part of the Fluxblog All-Stars I knew I had to do something themed. At the weekend, during a conversation with my brother, it came to me: the 90s Revival. There’s no point in denying it, we all know it’s on its way: the cycles of pop and memory demand no less. But what is going to be revived, and by who? It’s best to be prepared, after all. So from Monday to Saturday I’m going to be talking about six ripe-for-resurrection genres, with an example from each for the curious to try and track down. And on Sunday I’ll (finally!) post an MP3, from one of the six genres, as picked by you. Without further ado, we start with BAGGY.

Baggy was a parochial English pop moment that hit in ’89 and had vanished by the end of ’91. It was also known as ‘indie-dance’ which gives you a fair idea of its priorities: “indie” i.e. bad singing, meets “dance” i.e. the funky drummer sample. I was 16 in 1989 though and to me this stuff was a major breakthrough, a call to all the kids to drop their tribal loyalties and groove on together. I still love a lot of the music.

One of the strange things about revivals is how very hip people and very unhip people move in chronological step. The rise of punk-funk Gang Of Four knockoffs and the turn back of clubland to coke’n’dresscodes is roughly contemporary with the rise in ultra-naff ‘school disco’ club nites playing Duran Duran. When the 90s come to this parting of the ways most baggy records will be firmly on the school disco side (The Farm’s monster “Groovy Train” springs to mind). Paris Angels’ “Perfume (All On You)” though might make the jump to hip approval: it’s fairly obscure, it’s very good and its ideas weren’t strip-mined quite as ruthlessly as the more generic shufflers of the era.

The brackets are important – “Perfume” without them is an un-rocking 7″ plod; “(All On You)” is a 12″ remix and is also a wave machine in a pool of champagne. The Extreme Makeover remix treatment (then still a daring novelty) for once produced a real gem: jangling guitars mix with twinkling sequencers, a love-in between supposedly clashing sounds that suddenly twig that they’re beautiful together. And the stretch from four to six minutes gives the song room to uncurl and impress, the rough-cut vocals changing before your ears into something hopeful and tender. How could it come back? Well, if the dance-rock crew decide to go for ‘beautiful’ on those difficult third/fourth albums, they could do worse than start here.

I’m not some little puppet, alright?



Hello and welcome to amateur hour at Fluxblog. I do hope we don’t disappoint…

Nio – “No strings” (Calypso mix) – Words and meaning aren’t always the same. It’s a neat trick to say one thing, mean another and still have your listener understand the hidden meaning rather than the obvious one. Often people that can do this are called “witty”. Saying one thing and meaning another is done pretty often on the internet because it’s a universal get-out clause if you’ve said anything stupid and/or offensive. One of the nice things about Flux is that he’s very capable of this kind of wit (unlike many of the practitioners), but mostly he just says what he means instead. That’s disciplined and shows a nice lack of ego.

This song is massively sonically inventive and I could talk for ages about that, and about how mixes like this one only ever appear on 12 inch singles and that’s one of the joys of the format. But I won’t. I’ll just say instead that although he’s singing about freedom, you get the sense from this song that Nio is actually telling somebody that he wants to commit to them, that he wants to be bound. He’s just doing it in a kind of roundabout way. Which isn’t witty, but is terribly moving.

You can buy this, and a variety of other Nio singles at Juno.

Lady Sovereign – “A little bit of shhh!” – On the other hand, Lady Sovereign is witty as hell. It took British people about 10 years to crack rock and roll. It seems like hip hop was a trickier beast, as it’s taken at least 20 years, but now the UK is motoring.

This tune has all the things you’d expect from a grime tune – the flat planes of bass, the atonal squawks and the slightly ramshackle beats. And as you’d expect the delivery of the MC oozes London-ness. But forget all the genre signposts – what makes this special and different is that it’s packed with little gags, little “ohhhh shit!” moments and far more personality than you’d credit possible to someone so tiny (she’s 5’1″ and likes to wear Adidas). Which is why ‘grime’ is such a terrible name for a genre as it appears to preclude the possibility of any sort of fun. Which is clearly not the case. Also, this tune has pianos, as they are careful to point out. But “don’t joke with us small folk”, kay?

The video to this song is on her website.

Also available at Juno.

Courtesy of Laces

Is It True That Honky Dory Means OK?

Burka Band “Burka Blue” – The Burka Band are the world’s first all-woman Afghani electro band, apparently put together by a German record label who were holding music workshops in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban. The authenticity of this is somewhat questionable, and I’m not entirely sure whether or not this is for real. Either way, this is a fine novelty pop single, functioning well as both a curiosity (or joke) and as a song. The single includes some video files, and remixes by Barbara Morgenstern and A Certain Frank which are both fine, but lack the charm of the original mixes. (Click here to buy it from Atatak.)

The Married Monk “Tell Me Gary” – At their best, The Married Monk sound like an intriguing cross between late-80s The Fall and mid-90s Pulp filtered through an effete French sensibility. “Tell Me Gary” has a great sense of self-aware, tacky faux-decadence; setting up a tense, sinister groove with low-budget keyboard brass and orchestra hits like something out of a tv movie. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

I’m going to be taking a brief vacation from regular posting on this blog next week so that I can recharge my batteries and take it easy. In the meantime, I’ve put together an all-star team of guest bloggers who will be filling in starting on Monday. As it stands right now, the Fluxblog All-Stars include Mike Barthel, Joe Macare, Jacob Wright, Sasha Frere-Jones, Maura Johnston, Fred Solinger, Keith Harris, Douglas Wolk, Chris Conroy, Jessica Hopper, Ben Dietz, Hillary Brown, Grant Balfour, Ben Hoh, Mark Slutsky, Tom Ewing, Tom Scharpling, Julianne Shephard, The Professor, Geeta Dayal, and Paul Cox, plus a few more people yet to be confirmed. It’s going to be crazy and fun, so don’t miss it.

You Will Be Hazed, You Will Be Amazed

The Mae-Shi “Power To The People” – Spazzy art punk is such a tricky and underrated thing. It often seems that for every gem of the genre, there are literally thousands of other attempts which either don’t quite work or miss the mark entirely. This normally comes down to a lack of discipline on the part of the bands – they’re usually amateur musicians with limited technical skill who are just fucking around and aren’t totally concerned with songwriting so much as the physical and emotional release of performance. There’s nothing really wrong with any of that, but it definitely makes cherry-picking the best songs from art-punk records a somewhat tedious chore at times. The Mae-Shi are definitely above-average in this respect. Several tracks from their album Terror Bird click, but “Power To The People” has just the right balance of song structure and physical momentum to make it the obvious highlight of the record. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia!)

Air “Alpha Beta Gaga (Mark Ronson vocal mix)” – Against all odds, a celebutot DJ (Mark Ronson) has remixed a lite pop tune best suited to being the background music at a boutique (Air’s “Alpha Beta Gaga”) with vocals by one of the most unfortunately named rappers of all time (he’s called Rhymefest! for real!) and the results are actually quite good; a definite case of the sum being greater than the parts. Rhymefest makes up for his intensely lame moniker by delivering a strong vocal performance similar in style to that of the GZA and Kool G Rap, and Ronson reshapes Air’s original arrangement into something falling halfway between contemporary mainstream pop and old school hip hop. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Leave All The Things That Haunt You

The Concretes “Diana Ross” – I can barely resist young Swedish pop groups under normal circumstances, so obviously I cannot help but to adore this swoon-inducing girl group bolero about listening to Diana Ross records. This song is a selection from the band’s self-titled album; a lovely, wintery pop record which works best on the upbeat numbers, but loses my interest somewhat when they veer off into Velvet Underground-style balladry. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Improved Sound Ltd. “Leave This Lesbian World” – This peculiar little song was written and recorded for the soundtrack of the German film Engelchen macht weiter – Hoppe, hoppe Reiter back in 1969. Though I do understand that the film was about beatniks and hippies living in Munich, I cannot imagine what the context of these lyrics could be, unless that film presaged the plot of Chasing Amy. It seems to be a song written from the perspective of a man who is interested in being with a woman who he believes has become a lesbian because she has been raped and traumatized in the past. He is apparently urging her to leave her “lesbian world” so that she can, um, be with him. I’m not sure whether the lyrical content of this song is misogynistic and homophobic, or just very dumb and misguided, but it’s still a pretty good song nevertheless. (“(Click here to buy it from Juno.)

From My Telescope I Can See You Grinning

The Sunshine Fix “What Do You Know?” – If I ever get to make a film in which there is a scene set at a psychedelic saloon in the middle of a desert (which is very doubtful, but you never know), I really ought to use this as the soundtrack for that sequence. The Sunshine Fix is led by Bill Doss, formerly of Olivia Tremor Control, who were the best of all of the Elephant Six bands as far as I am concerned. The new Sunshine Fix record isn’t quite as “let’s make our own Beatles record!” as OTC’s best work (I’m not exaggerating – Dusk At Cubist Castle is such a thorough aping of late period Beatles that there are even fake George Harrison songs!), but it’s still stuck in the late 60s, in terms of style and influence. I don’t have much of a problem with that, though – aside from The Shimmer Kids Underpop Association/The Society Of Rockets, no one else pulls off neopsychedelia as well as the Elephant Six folks. (Click here to buy it from Spinart.)

The Shimmer Kids Underpop Association “Black Heva Vs. The Ruby Satellite” – It seems wrong to mention the Shimmer Kids and not also post something by them, given that they were/are so obscure and underrated. “Black Heva” is a lost classic; an epic sci-fi love song which sounds like the musical equivalent of Jack Kirby comics from the mid-60s. Unfortunately, this recording has never been properly released, and was only ever available as an mp3 and on a limited edition cassette EP.

Nonsense In Extensia

The Fiery Furnaces “Quay Cur”/”Straight Street” (Live on East Village Radio, 6/26/04) – This is a solo acoustic recording taken from Eleanor Friedberger’s appearance on the radio program “Gay Beach” on East Village Radio from only a few weeks ago. Eleanor only plays the slow acoustic section of “Quay Cur,” and explains to the DJ that that part of the song is mostly in Inuit. At the time, I had no idea that it wasn’t in English – I had just assumed that she was mumbling!

Thanks to Grant Balfour, I have come upon this excerpt from Richard Hakluyt’s Voyages in Search of The North-West Passage, which includes a glossary containing nearly all of the Inuit words included in the lyrics. It seems that this book was very likely a source of inspiration for the song in general.

This is a basic English translation of the Inuit passage:

half hour sandglass / seven saker round shot/ ice for the moonshine / and chichsaneg / kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, don’t say no / tie tight my coat /

in comes the fog / fallen down in the sea, go fetch / look yonder / get out my knife / I mean no harm, I mean no harm / weave us on shore / give it, give it to me / will you have / and I gave a bracelet / kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, don’t say no / tie tight my coat / in comes the fog / fallen down in the sea, go fetch

“Chichsaneg” is the only word that I cannot find anywhere online – my guess is that it is some kind of food or beverage. Also, I am not sure if a “sasobneg” is strictly defined as being a bracelet. I suspect that it may be a reference to the lost locket from the beginning of the song.

For more detailed analysis of “Quay Cur” (and very soon, the entirety of Blueberry Boat), I strongly recommend visiting Clap Clap Blog frequently over the next few weeks.

(Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Spizzazzz ‘s 40 Days Of Spizz Blends is currently in progress, with each new day bringing us a brand new homemade mash-up courtesy of E Crunk. So far, this highly ambitious project has yielded some nice material, including remixes of Trick Daddy, Ludacris, Usher, and 50 Cent. My favorite, unsurprisingly, is their mix of Ce’Cile “Hot Like We,” which is just ridicously great, especially when the music from “99 Problems” kicks in. Hats off to the Spizzazzz folks for taking the audioblog format in different direction. It’s a bit like the old days of Boom Selection, which was one of my biggest inspirations for starting this blog.

There’s Something You Don’t Want Me To Know

Stimulator “78 Stimulator” – How ’90s is this? It’s like a half pound of Garbage, 2/3 cup of pureed Elastica, a teaspoon of Veruca Salt, and a pinch of Shampoo. I have a major soft spot for artists who make music which would have gone over very well in a previous era, but it must really sting for these guys, to be highly proficient with a style which was huge only seven years ago. This single could have at least have been as big as that one Republica song, you know? (Click here to buy it from CD Baby.)

Shakedown “Love Game (Mousse T Vs. Eraserhead 313 Dub)” – Though this is the same Shakedown which gave us the brilliant single “At Night” from two years ago, this really doesn’t sound much like that song at all. That’s a bit of a let down for me, but this is still a fairly strong track. This particular remix sounds as though the producers wanted to ape The Rapture’s (or, I don’t know, one of the hundred other bands who sound like The Rapture) style, which may have yielded some very predictable results were it not for the contrast with the singing, which is more typical of house music. It’s a refreshing change of pace to hear this type of music without the customary squawking atonal man-pain vocals. Ten years from now, this track is going to seems as “early 00s” as the Stimulator song is “late 90s,” but don’t let that bother you too much. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Also: NYC area Fiery Furnaces fans should note that tickets for a September 25th show at the Bowery Ballroom are now on sale.

After The Beep

These answering machine excerpts are taken from old episodes of WFMU‘s The Audio Kitchen, a program which showcases a wide range of found audio. The archives containing these particular calls are no longer online, but the most recent season of the program (summer 2003) is available on the Audio Kitchen website.

Mark’s Answering Machine – This is from the answering machine of a man named Mark, who was apparently heading out on a trip to England following his birthday, which passes over the course of this collection of messages. The tape is notable for a set of messages left by a woman who seems to be Mark’s jilted ex-lover. Her calls become gradually more intense and emotional, revealing a devastating mix of impotence, rage, and pettiness.

Toby’s Answering Machine – Toby apparently belonged to some kind of dating service, and this excerpt from her answering machine chronicles three calls from potential suitors. The first caller seems to be a confused mess; the second man calls in spite of the realization that they have absolutely nothing in common; and the final call is from some dude from Rome.

Bizarre Answering Machine Tape – This is the entirety of a microcassette which was found in a dump and restored to the best of the ability of both the Professor and the original finder. As a whole, it seems like some kind of bizarre audio collage combining incidental room chatter, automated messages, distorted ring tones, typical messages, inexplicable music, weird gibberish from children, an irate foul-mouthed matriarch, and some drama involving an extremely depressed, lovesick guy in a hospital. (Please note that all expletives have been omitted and replaced with electronic noise, so that it could be aired on the radio.)

Also: Could this be the best dvd set of all time?

Everything’s Unreal

Freeform Five “Strangest Things” – The Freeform Five have a genuine gift for writing ‘evil’ boy band songs, foregrounding the subtext of that genre into something openly seedy, lascivious, and intensely physical, while sounding essentially the same on a surface level. This is everything that JC Chasez tried and failed to accomplish on his solo record, primarily because he didn’t have the tunes, but also because he seemed so desperate to shake off the old context, rather than play with it and use it to his advantage the way Justin Timberlake has. The Freeform Five exude the same kind of cocky charm as Timberlake, whereas Chasez’ solo music is smarmy and in denial of its own insecurity, like a creepy dude who will hit on every woman in a room until one of them says yes. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Seelenluft w/ Jim Reid “I Can See Clearly Now” – Yes, that Jim Reid, the one from the Jesus and Mary Chain. It’s kinda funny how J. Spaceman and Jim Reid’s vocal deliverary are so similar now that this track ends up sounding more like a danced-up version of Spiritualized than JMC. Either way, it’s as druggy and dronetastic as you would expect. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Also: MP3Blogs.Org is an excellent new site designed to help keep track of all of the audioblogs with feeds on a daily basis. It has a very simple design and interface, and is covering most everything of note. I’m all for this sort of thing, though the wget leeching that’s been going on elsewhere raises my hackles quite a bit. To me, the written aspect of the mp3 blog is a major part of the appeal, and to shut that out is both rude and ill-advised, since context counts for so much, especially when it comes to rare music.

You’re So So Stup’, It’s All Disrup’

Jonathan Vance “Slyvia The Eagle” – I know next to nothing about this artist. This song was on a promo cd sent to me by Vance’s label, Run-Roc Records, but they have no information about him on their site, and I can’t find anything anywhere. Anyway, this is an interesting little song with driving percussion which implies dance music without actually being very danceable, and punk-inflected vocals which fall halfway between shouting and spoken word. It has a nice simmering intensity to it, but it’s not overbearing. This is set to be released sometime in the near future as a 7″, so keep your eyes open.

The Fiery Furnaces @ Village Voice Siren Festival, Coney Island, July 17 2004

My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found / brief improv / I Broke My Mind / Spaniolated / Single Again / South Is Only A Home / Quay Cur (one verse) / Bow Wow / I’m Gonna Run / Leaky Tunnel / Blueberry Boat / Asthma Attack / Crystal Clear / Tropical Ice-Land / Chief Inspector Blancheflower (sections two and three) / Quay Cur (another verse) / Don’t Dance Her Down / Inca Rag/Name Game / Chris Michaels / Leaky Tunnel (reprise) / Quay Cur (final verse)

Of the three Fiery Furnaces shows that I have seen, this is obviously the weakest, though that mostly had to do with the technical problems which plagued their set. The band was pretty sloppy for most of the show, occassionally seeming as though they were just trying to get it all over with. Nevertheless, most of the set was quite fun, but that’s primarily because I love the songs so much – even rushed versions of “Inca Rag/Name Game” and “Chief Inspector Blancheflower” are going to make me flip out with joy. I’m not sure what this set must have been like for the uninitiated. I imagine that much of it seemed incomprehensible and overly weird, particularly “Chris Michaels,” which is already quite difficult but was made less coherant when Matt’s mic was nearly inaudible for several of his vocal parts. Overall, this was a decent show, but I know that they can do much better.