The Mystical Beast

2005-10-30T07:00:00.000-05:00

In the end, it comes down to lack of time. I didn't want this blog to degenerate into a catalog of my likes and dislikes, but I haven't had the time to spend on researching, returning emails, shopping, writing, etc. And it's not going to get any easier, so I'm pulling the plug. Two years is a pretty good run.

Newsworthy items that I won't be writing about: The Orchids are back in the studio working on new material (and their reissues are selling like hotcakes over at Parasol). The band's website is here. I'm advised that Farewell Aldebaran is getting reissued in the UK in November.

Mysteries not solved/pieces not written: I never did find out anything about Mass Tango. Even though they offered to help, I didn't have time to do a piece on the 2nd Rat At Rat R album. I didn't have time to do a full piece on Linda Smith (someone else really needs to do that, especially with regards to her 3rd and 4th tapes which are mostly unavailable). Didn't have time to write about the Sunny Sunday Smile compilation (sorry Mike, and thanks for helping with that). Never wrote the bit on The Technical Jed (in addition to their pretty-good albums proper, I wanted to post their split single that includes Kurt Heasley's first co-writes, on two tracks by Twitch Hazel...mostly of historical interest). Never tracked down the Christmas demos that I've heard exist. Never managed to interview Steve Groves. Never did a comprehensive piece on Mofungo/The Scene Is Now. Even though I went through all kinds of trouble to get a copy of The Beats (nee Upbeats) CD, I won't be doing a final bit on them (some Pete Buck fan can do the honors) so you'll be spared my complaints about the omission of Jello Party Mania from that. The list goes on and on.

And I never did manage to find out anything about Alison Farthing, who wrote the book that gave this blog its name. I wonder whatever happened to her.

Thanks to Matthew Perpetua for (mostly) inventing the mp3 blog format, and for helping me get started way back when. Thanks to all the musicians who took the time to answer my questions, send mp3s, etc. (and I'll single out Rick Brown who went well beyond the call of duty). Thanks to everyone who's read and/or commented. Special thanks to the members of The Wayfarers (my first big "scoop") for being so damn nice and helpful, and I hope your album gets reissued someday.

I'll continue to respond to comments and emails, as time permits. I assume that, until he gets his act together, I'll remain the go-to guy for Hilly Michaels fans desperately seeking Calling All Girls.

It's been much more fun than I ever would have expected.

Time by Paul Williams
Have We Time by The Wayfarers
Confidence by Linda Smith
Jello Party Mania by The Upbeats
Side 1 of ??? by ??? (someone else gets to do this band...if you've always thought that early Royal Trux doing The Fall was a good idea, here you go)

I guess I'll have to update this final post from time to time, due to compelling circumstances. For example, Leslie Medford of The Ophelias just posted a comment, complete w/email address, in which he invites correpondence. Send him your questions.

2005-10-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

Still working on a final wrap-up. I'll probably get to that on Sunday.

Meanwhile, did I mention that my sister has an album out? I guess I should do that. Her website is here, and includes a link to CDBaby where you can buy the CD.

My favorite track (mainly because it skews closest to my taste) is the bouncy 4 Seconds of Silence, which rarely fails to put me in a good mood. Backing vocals (the "ooh-ooh-oohs") remind me of some Jonathan Richman song or other, and the vibe is actually as sunny as Richman's best. But, um, she doesn't sound anything like him. I just want to be clear on that point. I haven't had a chance to check the CDBaby streams, but by all means give the track Symmetry a listen too, assuming that the sound/length is good enough to get a sense of it.

There's also a fairly radical reworking of Somewhere Over The Rainbow that does some interesting things with the song.

4 Seconds Of Silence by Nora Paoli

2005-10-27T21:12:00.000-05:00

Sigh. I should have known better, given this blog's history with comments.

So I'm picking the Men Without Hats show, and I pick........Montreal.

Because it's the only one I have that includes anything from Pop Goes The World. I'm not kidding, by the way. Pop Goes The World is an utter classic and you're seriously missing out if you don't have it. I'm not being cute.

The show also has possibly the best sound, and my favorite (live) version of I Like which is possibly my favorite track off of Rhythm Of Youth. Also, the version of Editions Of You is especially good. Freeways too.

I should add that I'm somewhat dying to hear a concert with more PGTW material. If anyone wants to help me out with that, you'll have my serious thanks.

Men Without Hats Live at the Montreal Spectrum in 1985:

Intro
Heaven
I Know Their Name
Antarctica
Moderne Dancing
I Sing Last
Jenny Wore Black
Freeways
Security
Ban The Game
I Like
Editions of You
The Safety Dance
I Got The Message
Where Do The Boys Go

2005-10-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Hi, I'd like to tell a story about something that happened to me. I was sitting at home just the other day, watching some tv, when there was a knock on my door, and I went to the door to see who it was, and it was a woman with no eyes, and she had a stack full of comic books...

Oh, that's another story.

Hi, I'd like to tell a story about something that happened to me. I was on Soulseek, trying to download something or other, when someone who had apparently been scanning my files sent me a message and asked if I was interested in some rare Men Without Hats tracks, and I (being a late-to-the-party huge Men Without Hats fan, stop your snarky laughter ignorant one) said yes, please, and they proceeded to hook me up with four live shows, a rehearsal tape from 1983, demos from 1980, and the Freeways EP.

It was somewhat stunning.

I don't have time to get into it, but I've grown more and more firm on the point that Men Without Hats are a seriously important band. I loved the whole damn Rhythm Of Youth album back when it came out, but didn't really grasp the group's true greatness till years later. I'm pretty convinced at this point that Pop Goes The World is one of the great concept albums of our time (though what exactly the concept is, I'm still not sure).

I'm aware that MWH have an unusually devoted fanbase, so I doubt that anything I'm posting will be new to them. I thought I'd offer the rest of you a chance to vote on what to hear. I have the following (tracklistings don't vary much, sound is uniformly excellent):

Montreal Spectrum 1985
Edmonton 1984
Toronto 1983
Washington 1984

Thursday evening I'll post the show that gets the most (or any, as the case may be) requests.

In the meantime, here's a rehearsal version of Roxy Music's Editions Of You. And a few tracks that I've been obsessively listening to from The Adventures of Women & Men Without Hate in the 21st Century:

Hey Men by Men Without Hats (kind of their T Rex song)
Everybody's Selling Something (kind of their Mott The Hoople Song)
I'm In Love (I don't know, you tell me, but I loves it)

If you ask me, Allmusic seriously underrates this album.

2005-10-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

The TV Sounds Worried, Part 2

See yesterday's post for details.

Astronaut by This Living Hand
Flood by This Living Hand
December by This Living Hand
Drugstore by This Living Hand
Marshmallow Girl by This Living Hand
Nothing by This Living Hand
Wimp by This Living Hand

2005-10-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

The TV Sounds Worried

I'm kind of trying to decide which loose ends to try to deal with during this final week. There's a lot that I, sadly, won't get to.

I recently received a comment regarding my old post that mentioned This Living Hand. It read:

It's hard to believe that one of the few mentions in existence of this album "The TV Sounds Worried" calls it good, but not a classic. For years I've only had a dubbed over many times cassette copy and still I can't stop listening to it. I suggest listening to this album again. The lyrics alone are so specific and haunting in a way that few others (maybe Gillian Welch or Red House Painters) have ever affected me. I appreciated the link to the article rightly calling "The TV Sounds Worried" a lost classic.

I popped the CD on yesterday for the first time in a while, after a run in Prospect Park, and kind of enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I also realized that people who 1. like Neilson's voice more than I do (he sounds vaguely like Michael Stipe) and 2. like slowcore more than I do (Low, Codeine, etc.) might really flip over it.

[For those of you who aren't familiar with The TV Sounds Worried, it's an unreleased album by a group called This Living Hand that included Garrison Starr and Neilson Hubbard, both of whom recorded under their own names later. Promo copies on CD exist, and Parasol unearthed a box of them some years back and sold them cheap, right when I happened to be on the lookout for it. Lucky timing.]

I agree with the commenter that it is sad that one of the only online mentions of this album is my kind of half-hearted dismissal (though the Trouser Press review, originally appearing in Badaboom Gramophone, is a rave). Seems reasonable at this point to post the whole thing. First half today, second half tomorrow, time permitting.

Where You Are by This Living Hand
Copilot by This Living Hand
Greaser by This Living Hand
Baby Doll by This Living Hand
Basket Case by This Living Hand
Sideshow by This Living Hand

2005-10-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

Liz Phair week ends. Taking stock.

I hope everyone has enjoyed this special feature on Liz Phair as much as I've enjoyed putting it together. She's a special woman, with many years of great music ahead of her, and it seemed important to set the record straight after some of the unfair press that she's received along the way. It's all so ridiculous, and I probably shouldn't feel the need to address such stupidity. I mean, do you realize that people were accusing her of being a "sell out" back in 2003 when at that very time she made sure to wear a CBGB t-shirt in her publicity photos just to show how much respect she had for rock traditions and passionate songwriting. (In case you don't know, CBGB was the club where punk rock -- stuff like Green Day for example -- was invented. Wearing a CBGB shirt pretty much shows that you know your rock history and that you're not just a pretty face with a record contract.) Anyway, that's the kind of ignorance that she's had to overcome.

I haven't mentioned her new album, Somebody's Miracle, yet, mostly because I don't want to ruin any of its surprises for you. But you can take my word that if you loved Liz Phair, you'll love this one even more. Just as an example, the record review site Pitchfork has given it two whole points more than they gave Liz Phair, which ought to tell you something right there.

On Somebody's Miracle, Liz sings:

You can count on my love
An umbrella when it's raining
When you feel your hope is fading
You can count on my love
With me you'll feel protected
And you'll never be rejected
You can count on my love

This is the sort of thing that Liz Phair could never have written years ago when she was young and immature. It's straight to the point, simple, and beautiful. You can imagine Jesus saying something like this back when he was alive (although I guess they probably didn't have umbrellas back then).

Liz will be singing God Bless America at the World Series on Saturday night this week, in her hometown of Chicago. I don't know about you, but I can't think of anyone else more suited to sing a song composed by one of America's greatest songwriters of the past, Irving Berlin, than Liz Phair. And when she gets to the line, "Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer," I know that I'll be thinking, "Let us all be grateful for a land so Phair!!"

Thanks for reading.

I Know What Boys Like by The Waitresses

2005-10-20T18:00:00.000-05:00

Liz Phair Week continues...

Judas!

When Liz Phair decided to record her breakthrough album Liz Phair, she knew she was taking a big risk. From Fleetwood Mac to Pink Floyd to Genesis, the history of Rock and Roll is littered with bands who lost everything after trying out a more accessible sound. Often, you see, the people who initially like a band or singer are kind of strange and don't enjoy catchy melodies or decent production or lyrics that normal people can understand. These people are mostly concerned with "being the first" to be fans of a new group, and they don't really care what the music sounds like. When the band or singer finally learns how to make good records, it seems to annoy this early group of admirers (probably because they don't want to share their "discovery" with other people), and though they're few in number they wield an incredible amount of power over what songs get played on the radio, much as the liberal press has a disproportionate influence on the news we read. Suffice it to say that Liz Phair risked losing her career as a singer, and she knew it!

But, in her heart, she knew that she had a message to deliver and that she didn't want to spend the rest of her life singing to tall pimply boys in college who couldn't get dates, who only enjoyed poorly recorded music, and who thought that Liz Phair's lyrics meant that she wanted to sleep with them. Liz wanted to empower women, and so she forged ahead.

The only other artist I can think of who really succeeded in a similar way is Brian Wilson, the lead singer of an old band from the 1960's called The Beach Boys. When Brian Wilson first decided to record a rap song, his overly conservative fanbase was horrified. But Brian, a musical genius with a vision (much like Liz Phair), ignored the naysayers and the result was one of his best songs ever: Smart Girls. As we all know, rap is now generally accepted as the most popular, and in fact best form of music, so obviously Brian Wilson knew a lot more than his audience. Think about how many people today even remember the Beach Boys vs. how many people like Eminem, and I think it's obvious that musicians should pursue their own path and not pay attention to what clingy selfish fans might think.

And that's just what Liz Phair did with Liz Phair. From the cover art, to the lyrics, to the catchy songs and great production, she delivered an innovative and high quality product, old fanbase be damned. If they couldn't follow along with her, she'd leave them behind. Keeping up with Liz Phair started to feel like chasing the whirlwind: exciting, and just a bit dangerous!

Tomorrow is the last edition of Liz Phair week. We've covered a lot of territory over the past few days. Don't miss the wrap-up!!

Smart Girls by Brian Wilson

2005-10-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

Liz Phair Week continues...

The Early Years/The Early Tapes

Liz Phair first came to prominence when a graphic designer named Tae Won Yu discovered her during a vacation in Chicago. At the time she was working long hours at a menial job, struggling to make ends meet, and pouring her heart into song after song during her precious spare moments late at night. Tae decided to review her demo cassette in a small but influential magazine called Chemical Imbalance. Unfortunately, right around this time Liz had a misunderstanding with a friend of Tae's who also didn't know about "writing in character" (see yesterday's post for an explanation of what that is). Miffed, Tae retaliated with a savage review in which he called Liz's tape only the thirteenth best thing he'd heard that year (13 being an unlucky number, the implication was obvious). For a while, Liz thought that this might be the end of her chances to be a big star.

There were two saving graces. Tae had printed Liz Phair's address in the article so that readers could write to her and tell her what a lousy musician she was. Liz turned the tables on him by personally duplicating and mailing out tapes of her music to each and every person who wrote, so they could judge for themselves. The hundreds who received tapes from her quickly began to spread the word that the Chemical Imbalance review was way off-base, and Liz Phair's fame began to grow.

Secondly, though Liz was upset by Tae's savage review, she kept her cool and sent a very polite letter to the editor of Chemical Imbalance in order to explain that his reviewer might have been biased. She wrote it in the form of a fable, ostensibly about several small pigs and a wolf who wanted to eat them. Reading between the lines, the editor of Chemical Imbalance realized that his reviewer had been biased against Liz Phair and he fired Tae Won Yu on the spot.

Satellite by Kicking Giant
Ruby Red by Kicking Giant
Throw by Kicking Giant

Don't miss a single edition of Liz Phair Week! Tomorrow: "Judas!"

2005-10-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

Liz Phair Week continues...

The Innovator

While Liz Phair has always gotten props for her blistering live shows and her insightful interviews, few credit her for her most important innovations. She was the first female singer to use a flat, affectless voice, a move that was copied endlessly by lesser talents who followed her. A singer named Lou Reed had attempted something similar back in the 60's with so-so results, but Phair perfected the technique, allowing her to create an aura of detachment from the words she was singing. One more weapon in her arsenal.

She also was the first woman to pull off the trick of writing songs that were simultaneously intimate and non-confessional, with ramshackle arrangements underplaying her early work's pop hooks (such as they were). And unlike other "grrrrl" artists in the 80's and 90's who clung to a predictable set of folky and/or female influences, Liz wasn't afraid to take inspiration from masculine groups such as The Vapors (whose minor hit Turning Japanese she claimed as her own on an early single).

As for language, Liz Phair broke down walls there as well. Prior to her, female singers might have occasionally sung "goddam" or "bastard" but Liz was unafraid to use direct language such as [edited] and [edited]. This initially shocked male critics who weren't used to hearing these kinds of words from a woman, especially one who they related to, at the time, as a simple folk singer.

And lastly, Liz Phair pioneered the use of "writing in character" and "unreliable narrators." Let me explain. In general when someone writes a song, they sing about things that actually happened to them, or that they wish had happened to them. So, for example, when Kiss sang, "I want to rock and roll all night and part of every day," the listener knew that either Kiss had done that, or that they wanted to.

In contrast, Liz Phair wrote songs about things that she herself hadn't done and didn't want to do, but that might have happened to someone else or that someone else might have wanted to do. This occasionally lead to misunderstandings. One of the funniest involves her first meeting with Gerard Cosloy, head of a small "indie" label called Matador (this took place back at the beginning of her career). Liz arrived for the meeting expecting to talk about her contract, but when she walked into Gerard Cosloy's office, she found him sitting on a couch with no pants on! When she asked him why he was dressed like that for a business meeting, he said that he had assumed from listening to her songs that she was "easy" and that she would perform oral sex on almost any man she met. Liz was shocked, but explained to him that she often "wrote in character" using "unreliable narrators" and that she personally did not behave the way her characters sometimes did. Luckily, Cosloy wasn't angry, and he did end up signing her to his label.

Druscilla Penny by World of Pooh
Straw Man by Barbara Manning
Mark E. Smith and Brix by Barbara Manning
Turning Japanese (Live) by The Vapors

Your Dragon by Suckdog
Jokes About Women by Suckdog

Chicken Pussy by Bongwater

Stay tuned for more of Liz Phair Week! Tomorrow we look at Liz's early days...

2005-10-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

Liz Phair Week begins

We begin just after the end of the beginning...

Through the 90's Liz Phair was an unknown singer/songwriter, one of thousands across the US. She dreamt of becoming a star, but her original material was a little weak and her ideas only half-formed, with the bulk of her songs being hastily jotted reworkings of old Rolling Stones tracks. Luckily, in 2003 a team of skilled songwriters, after conducting a nationwide search for promising talent, decided to work with her and the result was her first genuinely decent album, simply entitled Liz Phair.

While her early work was marred by poor production, derivative hooks, and muddled and inscrutable lyrics, Liz Phair saw Liz Phair finally succeeding in her goal of empowering women through song. This, of course, pissed off the male dominated critical establishment to no end. Clinging to the simplistic Liz Phair image presented in her early work (basically a compliant, uncomplicated "girly" girl), they initially unleashed a hailstorm of derogatory reviews. For a while things seemed bleak.

Luckily, a scrappy and independent minded writer named Gina Arnold was gutsy enough and smart enough to silence the critics with a devastating article published in the East Bay Express. She was the first critic to acknowledge that older female artists (with children) who dared express their sexuality were traditionally pilloried by reviewers. This pretty much put an end to the reactionary carping and led many a music fan to open their ears to one of the best new artists of 2003.

Aroma Of Gina Arnold by Trumans Water

Forklift performed by Trumans Water

I have never heard Beck's version of AOGA.

Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again? by Amy Rigby

Liz Phair week continues tomorrow...

2005-10-16T20:39:00.000-05:00

Coming soon...the long delayed and not nearly as good as I originally planned, but what the hell, Liz Phair Week!! A full week devoted to Liz Phair!!

(I'll do the best I can. I really had something much fancier in mind when I first conceived of Liz Phair Week!! but I'm short on time, as we all know by now.)

Anyway, we'll be covering everything you need to know about Liz Phair, the indie rock sweetheart who made good, recently releasing one of the most anticipated albums of 2005. Don't miss it!! It's really going to be great, even in truncated form.

2005-10-15T19:50:00.000-05:00

Amazing News

I just found out about a great blog called Raw Like Sashimi that's exclusively featuring a new album by this artist who calls herself Bullette. I'd never heard of her before, but after reading that she sounds like Jewel and Fiona Apple and Joss Stone, I had to check out the mp3s. Really incredible stuff, and I'm incredibly thankful that the people behind Raw Like Sashimi were kind enough to share these tracks. Hurry over and download, 'cause it's a Raw Like Sashimi exclusive and I'm not sure you'll be able to find it anywhere else.

This is a perfect example of why I'm so happy that the mp3 blog phenomenon has spread to the extent that it has. There's really no other way to keep up with the most current music news and releases!

2005-10-09T19:56:00.000-05:00

Indie Rock Ephemera

Oh what the hell...as long as I'm at it here's The Archers of Loaf with a brief homage to Magic Dirt's Adalita at the begining of Distance Comes In Droves from a live set (not their posthumous live album). The groups were touring together.

A recent Largehearted Boy link lead me to an attempt to rehabilitate the final AoL album White Trash Heroes. I read the piece, it's great. Got excited. Pulled out the CD. Still a dud. Damn.

Funny to think about how much Xgau loved 'em, how they were the next Pavement, etc. I still sort of like Vee Vee when I (rarely) think of it. The one track I continue to play (which is not the same as saying I think it's their best song, but it seems to have aged well) is Assasination on Xmas Eve (from the same live set as the above). The live tape is kind of disturbing, as there are a number of moments where it sounds like Eric Bachman is imitating himself (i.e. that he doesn't really sing like that). At those moments, he sounds kinda dumb.

2005-10-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

More on Magic Dirt...my continuing fascination with a band that was pretty great at one time

For a group that was once into some pretty Heavy Business, Magic Dirt have been treading some very mainstream waters recently. In my last post on them I mentioned Liz Phair, which isn't a completely off-base comparison given that MD covered her Supernova right at the start of their radio friendly days.

The differences are probably more illuminating though. Phair was known for songwriting first and performing skills last, where Magic Dirt started out as Sonic Youth Heavy and learned to write pop along the way, which strikes me as a more interesting pathway to wanna-be stardom. I know that there are any number of "betrayal" issues relating to the Liz Phair backlash, but what always strikes me is that she seems like a "small" artist (small voice, small stature, poor live performance, songs about little things) who looks slightly ridiculous trying to play a rock star. Magic Dirt, in contrast, seem to be trying to suck in their tummy and squeeze into their market constraints, which leaves open the possiblilty of a burst seam here or there.

Also in contrast with Liz Phair, Adalita (Magic Dirt's rock-chick front) must have put some major time into learning to sing while dreaming of stardom. It's kind of fascinating that the wonderfully trashed voice on Ice (Peel Sessions version) is coming from the same person who would sing Envious (posted yesterday) years later. It's like watching aging/decay in reverse or something. It's even more interesting given that the band was once on a major international label (back when they were stylistically inaccessable to that label's market, hence their best album Friends In Danger's selling price of a cent or so these days) and now, when they might actually have some serious commercial appeal, they're exiled to an Australian division of their original big label. On some fundamental level, nothing much about their career makes sense, and it throws a light on the bizarre rules that the music business operates by.

Clearly I miss the days when Magic Dirt were cranking out riff-heavy monsters like I Was Cruel (vinyl version, different from the CD version, guitars better, vocals less perfect). That's my preference, and if I have any real problem with mainstream music fans it's the fact that they generally make it impossible for bands to make a living playing the kind of music that I enjoy. I also think it's odd/sad that a group whose strength was its guitar/bass/drums has to hilight its vocalist to get ahead. So be it.

At the same time, it's occasionally neat to hear the way they're adapting their sound now that they've finally gotten big-time production down with Snow White (after two somewhat failed attempts). Sleep, in particular, invites you in with big-bucks vocals up front, leading into the chorus where a glossy rainbow of Adalitas in the foreground duke it out with feedback in the background. By songs end, we're back in Friends In Danger territory with all the lovely buzz and whammy that sucked me into the band in the first place. Tying it together is a bass/drum part that'll probably make this a very different (better?) song live. Shame they can't seem to find a producer who can make the vocals and the guitars sound great at the same time.

Another one I'm liking is Dyin', and more and more I'm thinking that it is the drumming that's keeping me around. Also some neat slide guitar. And ok, the little vocal swoop on the chorus is pretty great (Phair probably would have done it with that vocoder thing) and somewhat justifies the vocal lessons. The old Magic Dirt pops up to say hi on the last verse as things strip down for a moment, then comes on full throttle in the last thirty seconds or so.

Fans of The Old Magic Dirt ought to know that there's one track that's pretty much a straight throwback to Young And Full of the Devil, though again the new production isn't really up to their old pound and chant and squeal stuff. Not to mention that I've never really warmed to YAFOTD anyway.

It's all a little confusing, but not entirely pointless. I'm sure Aussies are thoroughly sick of them, and again I'd probably be less charitable if I were having this record shoved down my throat. But I'm not, and I still don't quite get why this group continues to be effectively shut out of the US. Makes me wonder what other long lived, English speaking, top-40 compatible, semi-worthwhile groups we aren't hearing about. The idea of geographically fractured markets for culturally compatible products at this moment seems odder and odder.

(And in view of this, yes I do have an awful lot of tracks posted considering that Snow White is a new release. I'll request that any readers who also enjoy Vegemite be good enough to either buy the album or post nasty comments about the band and how you wouldn't buy their CD if I held a gun to your head.)

2005-10-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

Oh, you knew this was coming. The old Magic Dirt is gone, gone, gone (though they keep dropping hints that they could, if they wished, blow your head off...said hints being kind of besides the point these days).

The fact that I didn't review the first single and it's b-sides should be taken as a sign.

The mail from Australia arrived yesterday, and I've finally had a chance to hear the whole album. Full thoughts over the weekend (someone in the US has to do it) but for now I can't quite fathom that a power ballad as great as Envious isn't going to be heard by much of anyone in my country.

Please have Cheap Trick, The Bangles, and the Pretenders in your thoughts while listening. Without having heard the latest Liz Phair offering, I'm going to guess that the new Magic Dirt would be a better use of your money if you want to subsidize a sell-out.

For what it's worth, I have nothing against sell outs.

2005-10-04T09:13:00.000-05:00

I wrote about the 2nd New York Rock And Roll Ensemble album some time ago, but it took me forever to get a copy of their first record. For those of you reading this who can't be bothered to click that link, The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble were a late 60's group that featured several Julliard students (who loved to mention this fact) and combined classical tidbits with some often very good orchestral pop. They probably annoyed some people back in the day who (correctly) realized that rock wasn't going to get anywhere much by kissing up to trad classical. A poster advertising them on a bill that also includes The Stooges, MC5 and Sun Ra indicates potential problems, but thirty-five years later distinctions like that are moot and we're left with some very nice albums that ought to be more widely known.

As it turns out, their self-titled debut averages out to being about on par with the second album Faithful Friends. The very best songs are slightly better, while the cheesy Broadway-isms that bugged me on album #2 are slightly cheesier. Put together, the two records would have made a really worthwhile CD reissue as they include about an album's worth of great material combined. The debut finally came out on CD earlier this year (without any bells and whistles) but Faithful Friends remains vinyl-only as I write this, and there are apparently a couple of uncollected early singles. Hopefully someone will do a better job eventually.

I was poking around the internet recently and found this very fascinating discussion, which includes some reminisces about TNYR&RE as well as info about film appearances and live tapes.

From the debut, here are two of the best tracks. You Know Just What It's Like has an especially cool bridge, with backing vocals panning around all psychedelic like. And the fuzz-meets-Eastern Studeao Atlantis is probably the most interesting thing the group recorded. As best I can tell, the lyrics include all the band members' names. The song also demonstrates what the group might have achieved if they'd looked to more exotic musics than Bach for their inspiration.

As an example of everything that could go wrong with their ingredients, here's Pick Up In The Morning which starts out promisingly until the cast of Harold & Maude (The Musical) jumps onstage for a rousing chorus that'll have toes tapping in theaters throughout the midwest.

Our cable is due to be fixed on Thursday. This post brought to you via the magic of dial-up America Online, reminding me of the days when I started this blog and spent two hours every day uploading songs. Ah, memories.

2005-09-29T14:48:00.000-05:00

Not quite gone yet...just waiting (still) for the cable repairman...

2005-09-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

It just didn't seem right to wrap up without one final visit to The Island of Living Puke, you assholes.

Over the past few years I may have advanced one or two controversial theories, it's true. But I think we can all agree that a certain movie would've been vastly improved if the screenwriters have taken my suggestion and included a scene where Zoogz Rift bursts into a record shop, throttles John Cusack in a sleeper hold and proceeds to body slam him repeatedly until John concedes that he's a self obsessed yuppie with middle-brow musical taste and that Zoogz is indisputably looser than clams. Then Zoogz sings High Fidelity, fade to black. Best movie ending ever. I don't know why no one ever listens to me.

2005-09-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

Red, Hot, and what the fuck?

Old record shopping story. I'm leafing through 10" records at a Park Slope music store that doesn't exist anymore (not Holy Cow) and I noticed the above. It's got great packaging, I'll say that. Kind of a collection of essays (that will not change your life) about young artistes and the horrible problems they have dealing with disease, starvation and...oh, I mean dating and deciding whether or not to try out bisexuality.

Anyways, I'm reading through it and suddenly have a minor heart attack as I notice that there's a (oblique and non-incriminating) reference to my wife in one of the articles on couples and how awful they are!

(Before meeting me, she had dated a somewhat well-known DC musician who was kind of in Fugazi for about ten seconds. He's very nice, so don't take that "about ten seconds" thing as snark. Both she and he have distinctive names...even though the reference is along the lines of "x is dating y" with "x" and "y" being an example of a couple, there's not a chance in hell that it's anyone else, especially given the people behind the project.)

Now I did used to be friends with someone who turned up in a Mary Gaitskill story in a not-so-flattering light, but this was just freaky. My wife was amused, having had no idea that she'd been immortalized in print. I'm told that I sat at Mary Gaitskill's old desk when I worked at the same used book store that she once worked at, back in the early 90's. Not sure how exciting that is.

Other than that, I have not much to say. The magazine part seems to feature a lot of slumming NY Press artists (like that evil Sara Schwartz who did her small part to help inflict Amy Sohn on the world by drawing her so damn cute) and the usual indie rock suspects of the time. For an alternate (and more generous) review, go here.

I was happy to get the Grifters track, Empty Yard. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Someone who wants to lose money doing a very good deed should really put out a Grifters anthology. They have quite a few very worthwhile non-album tracks, and their current profile seems awfully low.

To go with that (btw, it can be found on a CD that compiles the two Red, Hot + Bothereds as well) here's an early Grifters single called Evol Skull. I mean Sister Crown. I mean Daydream Riot. Damn, I'd better start eating those gingko nuts that grow in our front yard: this memory thing is getting worse. I'm taking Daydream Riot from the Grifters' Kingdom Of Jones compilation. The liner notes say that this has the full ending, where the single versions don't. Hoorah!

2005-09-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Tin Tin: The Saga Concludes

As someone noted in the comments, a timeline for all of these Steve Kipner projects would be nice, and I apologize for 1. not having enough time 2. or knowledge, to prepare a good one.

So the 2nd Tin Tin album Astral Taxi wasn't a hit. Steve Groves and John Vallins returned to Australia.

Steve Kipner kept on recording as Tin Tin with various collaborators, since working under that name got him studio time. This version of Tin Tin released a handful of singles. The only online source that I've found giving any details on these is this mysterious page on the internet, though much of its info is inaccurate.

What's interesting about these songs is that they start to cut loose from the whole Bee Gees thing that hung over Tin Tin (and Kipner's later projects Friends and, to a lesser extent, Skyband). You can hear a bunch of 70's influences creeping in, but I think that I'm mostly reminded of varying aspects of solo Paul McCartney.

Without further ado, here's the pretty hard-rocking Talking Turkey, written and sung by Geoff Bridgford. I'm told by a reliable source (who supplied most of the info for today's post) that this was Geoff's first songwriting experience. It turns out that Geoff also sang the b-side, Come On Over Again, which is that track that got added to the first Tin Tin album in the US (also a track that's not really of a piece with the rest of the record).

In news that surprised me, a second Tin Tin single involved Pete Beckett. I had thought that he and Steve Kipner had first worked together in Friends, but I was wrong. Pete wrote the a-side, I'm Afraid. I'm not sure who wrote the b-side, Handle Me Easy, but it's essentially just Steve and Pete in the studio. I'm very fond of the female (?) backing vocals on the chorus. For everyone who hasn't been following this whole convoluted saga, I'll remind you that Pete Beckett wrote Baby Come Back for his band Player. Trust me, you've heard it.

Yet another unusual sounding one is Back To Winona which features Steve Kipner's former Steve & The Board bandmate Carl Groszman on vocals. This really reminds me of either a strange take on glam rock, or of some of the things Paul McCartney was up to on Ram, like 3 Legs, for example (presented here, for no particularly good reason, in the mono mix). Carl is also known for writing Down The Dustpipe which was a top-20 hit single for Status Quo.

I wish I could give a more definitive look at this period. I expect that the CD reissues of Tin Tin (when they come out) will do a much better job. It's kind of all over the place musically, but the quality remains surprisingly high.

I should add that there are all sorts of aspects of Steve Kipner's career that I'm skipping. I haven't posted anything by Steve & The Board or any of the Bee Gees tracks where he sings backing vocals (that might be pushing things) or his later, post-Skyband, collaborations with Pete Beckett.

I have a feeling that at some point someone's going to come along and turn all of this into a pretty amazing article for Mojo. In the meantime, this little blog will have to do.

2005-09-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

It's taken me an incredibly long time to get around to Astral Taxi, the Tin Tin album that I personally consider to be a Great Lost Classic of late sixties/early seventies Beatles-derived pop; this opinion apparently shared by the Allmusic reviewer. It came out in 1971, and though Maurice Gibb is still listed as executive producer, the heavy lifting on the production was actually handled by engineer John Pantry (now Rev. John Pantry) and the band. Not that the first Tin Tin album sounded like garbage, but Astral Taxi is a vast improvement with a warm, lush, orchestra-abetted sound that's about as good as these things get. It's not something I'd really want to argue about, but I kind of feel that a certain kind of rock production hit its peak between '68 and '72. I suppose it's a matter of taste, but I'd hold Astral Taxi up as a prime example of how I want an orchestral-pop record to sound.

Why the delay in writing about it? While researching Tin Tin, I found a number of interviews with the better-known member Steve Kipner, but noted that he often couldn't remember details about the recording sessions (in all fairness, he's been pretty busy over the last 35 years). On several occasions he suggested that the other guy behind the band would have a better recall. So I set out to interview Steve Groves who lives in Australia these days. For reasons that I don't completely understand, though they most likely derive from the fact that I had to communicate with him through his son as Steve Groves doesn't have e-mail, I haven't yet managed to complete the interview. Since I'm wrapping up in a few weeks, I can't wait any longer, but I hope that someone will succeed where I failed as it's about time that the whole Steve Kipner/Steve Groves partnership got sorted out for posterity.

Astral Taxi has come out on a bootleg CD together with the first Tin Tin record, but that's not easily found and there's never been a legitimate CD issue. I'd humbly suggest that every single person who likes the early Bee Gees needs to hear this album ASAP. It has broad parallels with Odessa although it also features a major Crosby Stills Nash and Young side, as well as several other possible influences that I'll get to later.

If it weren't going to be reissued, I'd probably post the whole album as it's got a really nice flow and features several surprisingly worthwhile instrumentals that need context to really make sense. Since it is, in fact, supposedly going to be reissued I'll settle for posting two tracks. Here's the album opener, Astral Taxi. Those of you who were around for my Skyband post may recall a song from that album called Dream Machine that featured a line about an astral taxi: clearly a lyric/image that struck Steve Kipner's fancy. A number of songs on Astral Taxi seem to have to do with sailing and travel, to the point where it sometimes seems like it's going to turn into a concept album. It never quite does, at least as far as I can tell. The fact that it was written by a couple of Australians "exiled" to England probably has something to do with the mood.

One of the things I've always found intriguing about the various Steve Kipner albums that I've written about is that they always seem to include at least one "oddball" track that deviates from the usual Bee Gees/Beatles mix. On Astral Taxi, that song is Jenny B. While one review I've read dismisses it as bordering on yodeling, I find it pretty fascinating. If it reminds me of anything, it's some of Lou Reed's early 70's stuff (compare the instrumental parts of Jenny B. to the end of How Do You Think It Feels from Berlin) and that includes the vocals up to a point. The song is written by the two Steves, but it's so different from almost everything else I've heard by them that I'd love to hear how it came to be and who's singing. The liner notes include thanks to "Jenny B's mum." Hmmmm.

What I've posted is fairly representative of the quality of the rest of the album. I've left out a Gibb-sound-alike track that would almost certainly have been a semi-hit if the Bee Gees had released it, called I Took a Holiday, a heavily orchestrated tour de force called Tomorrow Today that simultaneously reminds me of the Moody Blues and Bowie's Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud, and another song called Ships on the Starboard that's notable for 1) screaming CSN&Y (also includes the phrase "Southern Cross") and 2) being one of the few songs I've heard to use the word "focsile."

Liner notes on the album are somewhat sketchy, but Johnny Vallins and Billy Lawrie receive some songwriting credits and were most likely members of the band, and Geoff Bridgeford (better known as a Bee Gee) is the suspected drummer. Presumably either Johnny, Billy, or Geoff is featured on the cover photo along with the two Steves. What is it about Steve Kipner albums and inaccurate or incomplete liner notes?

[The "group" as depicted inside the gatefold]

For a long time, I thought that this was the end of Tin Tin, but it turns out that there's an interesting handful of subsequent singles that I'll touch on in the next post. They're not exactly what you'd expect.

"Our destiny is solitude, for there the river flows on sentimental strong. From this moment on regretted thoughts will be forgotten and tears are only tragedy, not puerile waterings from a grieving heart. But perhaps we shall never live to tell of sadness or tragedy, as the gates of man's ultimate sorrow have never been opened to us. We only know the pathways of the garden of content and of the innocence that lies behind the eyes."

[Strange poem or whatever that appears in the liner notes, connected to track number three which is in instrumental called Our Destiny, written by Steve Groves.]

2005-09-08T17:41:00.000-05:00

Continuing from yesterday, here are the only Steve And Stevie tracks I've thus heard. Quality very high on both. Makes me extra excited to hear the reissue when it comes out.

I've been having a fascinating back-and-forth with the other person in the world who cares deeply about all this. Apparently, Steve Kipner is currently writing for Natasha Bedingfield, who's somewhat better known than Tin Tin these days.

Birds by Steve and Stevie
Shine by Steve and Stevie (heads off into pop-psych territory a bit)

2005-09-07T10:15:00.000-05:00

Tin Tin, finally...

We've done Friends, Skyband and The Fut. Now I'm finally getting around to the central part of the "golden age" of Steve Kipner's early career.

This is all prompted by the fact that someone is finally planning on doing CD reissues of this period (see previous post). As such, I'm posting fewer tracks than usual.

So, before Friends and Skyband but after breaking up his band Steve & The Board, Steve Kipner teamed up with one Steve Groves. Initially they released a single and a self-titled album as Steve & Stevie which came out in 1968. It's (as far as I can tell) on the rare side: a lot of people who know Tin Tin don't know it, and I still haven't found a copy, though I now (finally) have a couple of mp3s. Pending permission from the guy who sent them to me, I'll post one of them. From what I've heard, it's pretty high quality Beatles/Bee Gees inspired late 60's pop, as is much (most) of Steve Groves'/Steve Kipner's work from this period. Cover photo is here.

Following Steve & Stevie the two Steves formed Tin Tin (I have no info on an intermediate group called Rombo's World...anyone?). Their first album, Tin Tin, was recorded with a fair amount of help from Maurice Gibb, who's credited as producer and as a player on five tracks.

There's a Bee Gees-like tendency to overemphasize ballads at the expense of pacing, and as with early Bee Gees, the upbeat Tin Tin songs make me want to hear more in that vein. Otherwise, though, this is a "lost" "British" "late 60's" classic. Quotes due to the fact that it's finally going to come out on CD, it's recorded by a gang of Australians, and the release date is 1970.

The big hit, which has been anthologized, is Toast and Marmalade For Tea, which honestly isn't one of my favorite tracks. Here's a relatively faithful cover by The Liquor Giants that preserves the original track's distinctive wavery sound. Interesting question for the lawyers to sort out: on the Tin Tin album, the track is credited to Steve Groves alone, but the liner notes to Kipner's later Friends album call him a co-writer. Hmmmm.

More interesting to me is the weird two-track combo titled Flag/Put Your Money On My Dog. Foes of retro rock instrumentals should be patient through the Flag part, as the song switches into a great Revolver-style song after the longish intro. They could really do the Beatles when the mood struck. Like almost dead on.

Another favorite is the rhythmically interesting He Wants To Be A Star, with Maurice Gibb on bass and piano. Reminds me a lot of the Bee Gees' demo Mrs. Gillespie's Refrigerator, which also kind of lurches from part to part.

There's a hint or two of outside influences in tracks like the Moody Blues-ish She Said Ride or the vaguely southern rock Come On Over Again (added to the US release of the album). On the whole, though, it's strongly recommended to anyone who's looking for more things that sound like c. 1967/68 Beatles/Bee Gees (especially the latter), and of a similar quality. Not easy to find, actually, though any number of people have tried.

This site lists a number of unreleased Tin Tin outtakes. I've got my fingers crossed that someone, someday, will put them out. The recording info on these tracks comes from RSO tape library records.

More on the 2nd Tin Tin album and subsequent singles in a day or two.

Toast and Marmalade For Tea by The Liquor Giants
Flag & Put Your Money On My Dog by Tin Tin
He Wants To Be A Star by Tin Tin

2005-08-30T11:39:00.000-05:00

Yikes, it's almost September. Did I spend August writing pieces for Mystical Beast? I did not. I'll muddle through till October, but it may not be pretty.

Some exciting news on the horizon, though MB will be gone by the time it comes out. I've been contacted by someone who's working on a CD reissue of Steve Kipner and Steve Groves' Steve & Stevie record, which pre-dates their Tin Tin albums. This to be followed by reissues of the two Tin Tin albums plus a few non-album singles.

(Anyone who's been reading MB for a while knows who these guys are, but I'll refer newbies to pieces on Skyband and Friends for more details. Incidentally, I'm currently sending the Skyband tracks to the person who's working on the re-release, who's planning on forwarding them to Steve Kipner who apparently doesn't have his old band's recordings. Meaning that the Skyband tracks are available for a day or so for anyone who missed them. Just click on the links in the old Skyband pieces -- they work again. You need to hear Bang! Ooh! Ya Got Me!) [Tracks down as of September 7th...sorry, you missed the boat.]

In other news, there's a website up now devoted to Pete Beckett, former member of Skyband and Friends (briefly) with Steve Kipner. Wow, I'm actually feeling like I may be remembered as the guy who got the ball rolling on the great Skyband reunion of 2009!

I guess I'll resume writing next week with some brief bits on Tin Tin. I'd originally planned an extravaganza, but since reissues are on the way, I'm scaling things way back. For my money, Tin Tin's 2nd album Astral Taxi is a contendor for Great Lost Bee Gee's Album (not that it's exactly a carbon copy of the Bee Gees, but I don't think you'd have much trouble shuffling it in with Odessa on your iPod).

2005-08-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

So it's come to this....

Readers of this blog and the Lacunae blog may recall that back in the ancient 90's, following two fantastic full-lengths and assorted singles etcetera, underrated glam-folk-pop-shoegazers The Nightblooms ceased to exist. Some years later, singer Esther Sprikkelman and guitarist Harry Otten reappeared faintly on the radar screen as Safe Home. They released a self-titled CD EP, five limited-edition 7" singles, and a full-length CD (which, annoyingly, collected the EP and limited-edition 7" singles) on the semi-dormant Sunday Records label.

A new Safe Home website has since winked in and out of existence. The front page is here, but it doesn't currently lead to anything useful. Those of us who keep a close eye on such things, though, noticed a handful of realaudio tracks that were briefly linked some months ago (they're still sitting here, hidden behind some socks and underwear). I wrote to the group a while back, and was assured that a new album was forthcoming on a label called Now Here Records (no website that I can find). Since then, nothing, though a new mp3 called Nog Niet Voorbij appeared recently in the dresser drawer. My best guess (any Dutch speakers want to correct this?) is that it means "Not yet finished" which would almost seem like the band is sending out tiny messages in a bottle. We're still here.

Safe Home ditch the louder side of The Nightblooms, and concentrate on a pastoral hum, with tiny electronics popping out of the cracks of a well-worn acoustic. Which is often an electric guitar, actually, but that messes up my beautiful imagery, and it's a very subdued electric anyway. If you own either Nightblooms album, Safe Home sound like the final track. Esther's voice remains as lovely, breathy, and distinctive as ever, and the overall effect is of whistful nostalgia (like you get when you think about a band you used to love who live far away and can't seem to get their records released anymore).

I'm hoping that a 2nd Safe Home full length will emerge someday. Ok, I'm really hoping that they'll reunite The Nightblooms and put out a hyper-produced monster of a follow-up to 24 Days At Catastrofe Cafe, putting everything this side of Bohemian Rhapsody to shame. Unfortunately, at present I find it hard to believe that more than a handful of people are still paying any attention at all. Here's a quick Safe Home/Nightblooms sampler, including a few of the new unreleased tracks converted to mp3 from realaudio.

Birthday is a track I've posted before, from the You Can't Undo What's Already Undid CD. It's probably the closest Safe Home have come to The Nightblooms, though it's much softer than most Nightblooms tracks. If you imagine the production dialed up to 11, this could have fit onto 24 Days at Catastrofe Cafe.

They Say It seems to be the most fully realized of the new (unreleased) tracks.

Dear Dusty is also from You Can't Undo What's Already Undid and the Safe Home EP. The Nightblooms/Safe Home have never been coy about their CSN&Y side, and this is a pretty clear example. Is it me, or does the word "elegiac" spring to mind with regards to almost every aspect of this band?

Leda is also currently unreleased. Some of the best-conceived pop minimalism I've heard this side of Young Marble Giants.

For some historical perspective:

Never Dream At All from the early Nightblooms single Crystal Eyes. There's a song in there somewhere.

Never Dream At All from 24 Days At Catastrofe Cafe. Oh, here it is. We will rock you.

A Thousand Years from the Nightblooms' self-titled debut album. Early evidence that the group could do amazing things with extended song-structures. The track Shatterhand from 24 Days is kind of the tour de force of this side of the group, and one of my favorite songs period.

Since this is probably the last time I'll write about The Nightblooms, I'll once again note that there's a one-sided live album that Allmusic can't be bothered to mention. It documents the band much as they sounded during their one US tour (i.e. the noisy Nightblooms). Seek it along the winding paths of the internet. The fact that I saw the Nightblooms live (at Brownies, I was there to see someone else) is one of the greater strokes of luck in my concert-going career.

2005-08-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Thin Lizzy, AC/DC: Alternate Universe

Thought I'd briefly come up for air. While not knocked entirely out of socks, I'm pretty happy with Drunk Horse's 70's-o-rama In Tongues lately. With a few fewer melodic charms than prime Urge Overkill, but a redeeming lack of (audible) smirk, it's the album that I'd be playing on my car stereo if I had a car or a car stereo. Here's Priestmaker, which was previously posted (and is still available, along with another track) over at Ugly Music for Beautiful People. The label site is here, and contains two more mp3s. While it's true that, as Aquarius Records notes, there's a major improvement on the vocals on the new album, don't ignore previous releases. Here's the utterly fantastic Legions from Adult Situations, which discovers a great "whoo-hoo" melody/harmony about 3/4 of the way through.

Drunk Horse might be going down so well in part because I've actually been listening to my Upper Crust albums lately.

The Upper Crust: one of those irreducable hilarious jokes. You see, they're funny because they dress like French royalty and play AC/DC soundalikes. Which is funny because people dressed like French royalty are playing songs that sound like AC/DC (though with period-appropriate lyrics). The clever part being (etcetera...)

Possibly the most fun live show I've seen, though I can't vouch for them nowadays. I'm still not sure why I felt compelled to buy two of their CDs (and there's more that I don't have) but CD #2, The Decline And Fall of the Upper Crust, holds some glimmers of the genius that is/was their stage show. At their best, on tracks like Rabble Rouser, they manage to rock out mightily while bringing a major chuckle to anyone who thinks too much about the "Revolution!" in question. Another Spinal Tap-ish highlight is Boudouir, which operates at a melodic/lyrical level that, unfortunately, they're not always able to sustain. As said, it all works better on stage than on CD, but I'd be lying if I said they weren't one of my favorite bands in concert at one time. The track Vulgar Tongue (which you'll just have to find elsewhere) is pretty damn funny.

Have to say that between Drunk Horse and the (fantastic) new Part Chimp album, I'm not quite as un-hopeful about the state of unpopular music as I've been for most of the year.

Priestmaker by Drunk Horse
Legions by Drunk Horse
Rabble Rouser by The Upper Crust
Boudouir by The Upper Crust

Oh, one more:

Rock 'n' Roll Butler by The Upper Crust

2005-07-31T06:00:00.000-05:00

I've never been so embarrassed. I'm sure most of you have read the piece that I wrote on Sally Crewe last week, and the subsequent correction. It turns out that I was horribly mistaken with reference to the photos I posted that were supposed to be of Gerard Cosloy.

What finally cleared things up is that Gerard IM'd me (he's "murderjunkyboy133" in case you ever want to chat with him) and we kind of hashed things out. It turns out that at a very critical moment during "Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King" I was in the kitchen making a peanut butter sandwich, and thus I missed a very important plot point that completely altered my understanding of the film. Gerard was really nice about the whole thing, and even added me to his friendster list, so there's a happy ending.

Anyway, this is what he really looks like, and I am so, so sorry for screwing this up so badly.

I plan to take August off, for the most part, to concentrate on some non-musical projects. I should be back in September, though I kind of plan to pull the plug on Mystical Beast on its two year anniversary (in Rocktober, I think). That seems like a decent run.

We finish July with one song from an album called Monarchs by Jad Fair (an early solo album that includes some help from Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. It got reissued on CD several years ago, though where to buy it now I could not say) and one bonus track from an Annette Peacock reissue (as per a request). And you know what. I've posted Things I Noticed by Love Child before, but I was just listening to it again the other day and I really do think its greatness is somewhat overlooked. Maybe because it was a Will Baum song (Will = not the sexy one and not the noisy one)? I have this feeling that if it had been released as a one-off single by some unknown band in the late 70's, it would be a complete collector's item, but maybe I'm wrong. It's just so frickin' tightly put together, almost like a twee-geek version of Wire or something.

All Shook Up by Jad Fair
What's It Like In Your Dreams by Annette Peacock
Things I Noticed by Love Child

2005-07-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Three Covers Three: The Moonbabies, Snow & Voices, David Bowie

During the first week after my knee operation I couldn't concentrate well enough to follow anything with a plot, so I spent a lot of time reading The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg, a totally geektastic work that gives details on just about every Bowie song, album, concert and video through 'hours...' Very well-written, open-minded, and ludicrously well-researched, it's one of the best guides to an artist that I've ever seen.

Reading it inspired me to go over some of the Bowie nooks and crannies that I've missed. One big one was his Pin Ups album. I have an occasional bad habit of deciding that certain records aren't worth listening to, and for some reason I decided long ago that I felt that way about Pin Ups. I think I was expecting an album full of things that sounded somewhat thin along the lines of the live Ziggy Stardust record (which I don't hate, but it didn't seem hugely appealing either). Anyway, I was totally wrong, especially with regards to sound/arrangement quality. Among my favorite tracks is the cover of See Emily Play. Actually, most covers of early Floyd that I've heard have been pretty good. The songwriting is so quirky that it's pretty hard to ruin.

The Moonbabies tackle Arnold Layne on a recent EP on Parasol called War On Sound. I have a feeling that they could ultimately be the band that puts Parasol on the map (the *big* map, that is) but time will tell. As it is, they're the closest thing I know of to my beloved Thou: boy, girl, pop melodies, guitars, electronics. Yum.

Finally, a pseudo-band called Snow & Voices have a recent self-titled album (also available from Parasol) that might interest some. It's a little lacking in distinctive features, but does sport smooth female vocals and warm guitar/classy synth backgrounds that would work well at your next brunch. The highlight for me is a lovely cover of Fleetwood Mac's Go Your Own Way, a great song that's a little too familiar in its original version. If I wrote for The Believer I might declare Snow & Voices the Best Album Ever (which it isn't, but it's easy to listen to and generally inoffensive).

See Emily Play by David Bowie
Arnold Layne by The Moonbabies
Go Your Own Way by Snow & Voices

2005-07-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

It's not just about Nono

Dad came in for a visit and continued our education in "20th Century classical with an emphasis on things that would appeal to a rock loving ignoramus." The piece he wanted me to hear this time is kind of the "I Saw Her Standing There" of this sort of thing, apparently, and it's conveniently pop-song length. This is "Iron Foundry" by Soviet composer Alexander Mosolov, in which he anticipates Pussy Galore's sheet metal percussion by a few years. It reminds me a bit (inevitably) of cartoon music, and I wonder if it's ever been used as such. Also seems to predict minimalism in some ways (I got that from Wikipedia, but agree completely). The noisy part near the end is pretty amazing.

Another version of the piece plus info and some interesting semi-related items can be found here. The version I'm posting can be found here.

Iron Foundry by Alexander Mosolov

2005-07-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

The music column in some copies of Mystical Beast yesterday carried an incorrect caption for a photograph and an incorrect quotation. It appears that Gerard Cosloy, well known non-founder of Matador Records, did not say, "If I could find a spunky white chick who had the negro sound and the negro feel, I could make a billion dollars." That language was added by an editor and was to have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production error, it was not. Also, the gentleman in the photo that topped the piece was mis-identified as Gerard Cosloy. A current photo of Gerard Cosloy is appended. Mystical Beast regrets the errors.

Love Me Tender by Annette Peacock

2005-07-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

Above, Sally Crewe and husband Gerard Cosloy contemplate her next move

Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves
"Shortly After Take-Off"
Rating: 3 out of 5 Scruffy Cats

We pretty much hate power pop around here. Like to call Fountains of Wayne "the joke-us from ho-ho-kus" which always gets a laugh before we unload one of their promos on some sucker. Don't listen to any Big Star except for the third one, and that's just 'cause we thought it was some of that fancy European porn when we bought it. We're the wrong people to review a gal described thusly: "If Sally Crewe hadn't happened, Nick Hornby would've invented her." She loves to sing about cars, and since we love not listening to songs about cars, things got off to a bad start.

We do, however, kind of like one mp3 we downloaded by Mrs. Crewe and it was free, which meant we had a buck left to give to the toothless creep over on St. Marks who feeds us all our baseball gossip. This is Good Morning, Aston Martin. We think it's about the guy who married Demi Moore, but we're not sure why Sally changed his last name. Damn lawyers. It reminds us of a Game Theory song, but we're pretty sure Sally's never heard that band as rumor has it her husband won't allow Scott Miller music under his roof.

If we had to choose a favorite group that likes to sing about appliances, our vote would go to the currently in-the-shop Beachbuggy. But while they're up on blocks, Sally Crewe will do as this year's model. If we hadn't written it, Nick Hornby would have had to invent that last sentence. We're still waiting for a decent band that sings songs about nothing but sea kayaks.

Good Morning, Aston Martin by Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves
Quarter Mile Machine by Beachbuggy

ALL BACK ISSUES OF MYSTICAL BEAST ARE SOLD OUT, SO DON'T EVEN ASK. OK?

2005-07-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

For all your Mold needs

[continued from yesterday]...but that's not all they could do. Here's another unreleased track that draws some interesting lines between post-Children of God Swans and the post-rock crowd e.g. Sigur Ros, etc. This is Sleepwalker. First half is very close to a Jarboe track, then with three minutes left a pretty wonderful instrumental bit takes over. Some might also call it Pink Floyd for the 90's. I like this muchly.

Pretty much all the info you're going to find on Mold online is located in this post from a few months ago. How sad that I seem to be the only online teller of the tale.

Like I mentioned, I watched every movie ever made during the first week post-surgery back in June. One of the weirder moments came while watching a French film. Middle aged protaginist walks into a bar off the highway to get yet another drink. It's in France, we should be clear, and it's not a rock 'n' roll movie. And I'm thinking that the song in the bar is awfully familiar. It's...it's...it's...The Warlocks!? I might have known of this by reading about it online, but I hadn't and thus didn't miss a really surreal moment of sudden recognition.

They have a new album out (leaked) that I've not heard yet. I went back to some of their older stuff and confirmed that Shake The Dope Out remains a pretty great cross between the Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. (To some of you that's going to sound like I'm saying it's a cross between crap and crap...I am not a party to your twisted hate.) Imagine the Warhols' Boys Better with an actual chorus, and as a bonus it turns (somewhat) into the Modern Lovers' Roadrunner near the end. Hurrah!

Sleepwalker by Mold
Shake The Dope Out by The Warlocks

2005-07-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

This Song by a Band With a Forgettable Name Did Not Change Your Life

I woke up at 4:00am this morning, full of dream logic conviction that this was the instant that the Angel of Indierock4eva throws open the door-sans-lambsblood and breaths death upon the day's victim. I thought of getting up and sitting at the computer and clicking refresh over and over, so I could witness the moment. Does it happen at daybreak, or after the family has left the house. Does the Angel make mistakes? Is a victim ever returned bloodied and bruised to its shocked parents, thanks to a misinterpreted double-irony? A more suitable victim?

A Duchamp follower if there ever was, the Angel brought us the dubious gift of criticism as readymade. I fell back asleep and half-dreamt that centuries had passed and all that remained of mankind was an internet replete with a series of signs that said, "Look at that, isn't it?..." with addresses at the bottom for forwarding mail.

Not at all, said my neighbor. The trouble is that they're so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he's been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbor. Before the week is out he's quarreled so badly that he decides to move...You see, it's easy here. You've only got to think a house and there it is. That's how the town keeps on growing. -- C.S. Lewis

Time To Go by Mold didn't change anyone's life, largely because nobody outside of the band and friends heard it. Mold was a band from 90's New York that had one "hit" as they say over at WFMU, where hits are based on consensus rather than sales figures. If Time To Go had appeared just post-climax on the soundtrack to a film based on a Rick Moody novel, it's just possible that millions of people might associate it with a sad sense of missed opportunities. Instead, millions of people haven't hard it and never will. Along with this, there's a full album that you'll probably never hear as it was mixed wrong, with the master tapes then thrown out by a now-defunct studio.

Would Time To Go have changed anything? Who knows. It seems sewn from the right cloth: simple guitar beginning, lyrics about departing, band enters on second verse, swell as we hit the chorus, last lyrics over guitar, cut. Worse songs have turned up on any number of break-up mixtapes. It reminds me of Bongwater in one of their more serious moments. It reminds my wife of Mazzy Star. By next year, no one will remember this piece, this blog will be gone, and it'll be forgotten again.

Time To Go by Mold

2005-07-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Busy week, this one was. The next will suffer.

Coming up on two years posting and I haven't put up a single song by The Grateful Dead. Today we fix that. Here's the folk/psych duo Fit & Limo with a nice sitar et acoustica take on Dark Star. It's from their CD The Serpent Unrolled.

I'm not quite into post-Incredible String Bandia enough to have followed up on Fit & Limo, aside from The Serpent Unrolled, but my sense is that they're worth checking out. I do know that they're not always gentle and folksy, having once bought another of their albums (That Totally Tore My Head Off) for a friend who discovered that Flying Saucer Attack/J&MC figures into that one. I guess the title was a clue, eh?

Info here. They're not as hippy-drippy as the website's name might imply.

In other news, Dusted has a review up on the Lee Miller album that I've been going on about.

Dark Star by Fit & Limo

2005-07-14T12:06:00.000-05:00

Forgive my narcissism, but today marks the 2nd time I've seen myself quoted in an eBay auction. I feel so authoritative (even if they spelled my name wrong).

Incidentally, it's a comment on an old post so some of you might not have seen it, but a member of Rat At Rat R popped by to say hello recently. Send him some encouragement...that first album needs to be on CD badly. I'm working on a piece on their 2nd album as we speak.

2005-07-14T06:01:00.000-05:00

Bratmobile with There's No Other Way

This is probably the best cover version I've ever heard. I wouldn't throw the original out of bed, but where Bratmobile are tight and focused, Blur are sloppy, repetitive and enervated. Bratmobile cut the song down to its essential one minute and add an inspired opening in which Graham Coxon's noodly guitar work is replaced by a lovely a capella vocal. While Damon sounds sleepy and bored as he drones on, Allison Wolfe's passionate delivery makes it clear that there really is no other way. She sounds like a woman at the end of her rope. Her feelings of helplessness are palpable. Torn by regret, love and disappointment, she has no time to repeat choruses or dabble on a keyboard. The sense of urgency is emphasized by a ragged guitar part that cuts to the bone, especially noteworthy as it crests from :55 through :57 of the song. Bratmobile's There's No Other Way retrieves the lost emotional core of the Blur track, and often after listening to it I find myself curled into the fetal position, crying and hugging my cat.

There's No Other Way by Bratmobile

2005-07-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

Magic Dirt Video

Hey, there's a video for the first single from the forthcoming Magic Dirt album. View it here.

Ok, some explanation is in order. You know how you keep buying Sonic Youth albums even though they haven't done anything worthwhile since [fill in the blank].

So my situation with Magic Dirt is similar. They put out some incredible stuff before going for the gold in Australia. As best I can tell, they've done well for themselves there. Over their past three releases they've gotten awfully, awfully, awfully mainstream, to the point where their new fans would probably be very surprised to hear their early material. So they're not really the group I used to love, but somehow I still manage to enjoy their albums. There are tiny flashes of their old guitar sound and it's all very nicely put together in a hard rock top 40 way. Adalita and Co. look great in the new video. Like Rockstars. (And they still release the odd b-side from time to time that harks back to the old days.)

So, you know, I'm happy for them. Indulge me. You don't have to watch the video unless you're already invested. I have no doubt that under certain circumstances (probably involving beer or a car) Locket could be the greatest song on earth.

[Fans of US hard rock/power pop may actually quite like this. I'm still not clear on why Magic Dirt get, like, no attention whatsoever in the US.]

2005-07-13T07:28:00.000-05:00

Keep him far, far away from Marianne Nowottny

First slam on the Bullette album appears. I'm surprised it took so long. For a large number of people (a number at least equal to the size of Arcade Fire's fanbase) this review is completely spot-on, so don't look to me for dissent.

Monika has a new mp3 up at her website (cover of a Cole Porter song). It's really awful, so don't download it.

2005-07-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

So, just finishing up with Bleach today. You can buy their most recent album here. I've done so, and shipping was fast etc. You still have to go through Paypal, but it's not particularly inconvenient...and it's much cheaper than mail ordering from Japan.

When I first heard Shikai No Haba (posted yesterday) years ago, I'd thought there was no way they'd ever top its spazzy godlike bizarro-ness. But surprisingly there are several tracks on the new album that, while constructed completely differently, deliver the same "what the fuck was that" experience. And the rest of the CD is no slouch. In some ways it might be a good intro to the band, as the first half is a little more subdued (that's a relative term here).

As a sampler of the less-subdued stuff, here's Howling. It's got the usual stops-starts, twists-turns, screaming, etc. but (also as usual) is really tightly put together. Also features an actual catchy chorus that pushes into the red at a point when you thought things were already in the red. You were wrong. I don't really know what the right term is for this stuff. Post-hardcore prog pop? It sure isn't noise.

As a special bonus, here's the video mentioned yesterday. It's a small file/small picture and Windows Media (sorry), but gets the point across. No rollerskates.

They actually play the US fairly frequently, and I've managed to miss every single one of their New York shows, which is one of the great tragedies of my life. Keep an eye out, as I've read (and believe) that they're incredible live.

Howling by Bleach03
Video by Bleachmobile

2005-07-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

Compilations part 6: Japan Nite Sound Sampler 2001

This is a surprisingly strong compilation of a number of diverse-sounding bands from Japan, put together by some sort of foundation dedicated to raising the profile of Japanese artists in America. There's a series of Japan Nite samplers, none of which are for sale. They turn up on eBay reasonably often, and never seem to cost too much.

As far as I know, the most successful band from this particular CD in the US thus far is Petty Booka, who perform mostly low-key cover versions. They got a US CD release in 2003 called Let's Talk Dirty in Hawaiian that compiles a bunch of their stuff. I remember being extremely surprised to see that at J&R Music World. Here's their version of I Wanna Be Your Boy Friend. Discography, video, and more mp3s can be found here.

More than one person I know holds the opinion that it's not real Japanese pop music unless a girl with a cutesy voice, wearing rollerskates and dressed like a cheerleader, is singing about bananas. For others who feel the same, here's Mummy The Peep Show with Kick Off! Not sure about current info, but they have several English sites (which look old) and this one seems like a decent place to start. I'm ever so slightly curious about their cover of This Charming Man. Quote from website: "MTP has a sense to select their cover songs. Their choise for this album was THE SMITH! "This Charming Man"!!"

Ok.

The real reason I hold this compilation so dear is that introduced me to the Japanese band Bleach, subsequently known as Bleachmobile, subsequently known as Bleach03 (damn Christian band Bleach!). I've posted tracks by them before, but I still think they're absolutely incredible and strangely overlooked in the US. The good news is that as Bleach03 they finally have a US label after all these years. More on that in a bit.

By Bleach, here's Shikai No Haba which is one of two songs by them on this Japan Nite CD. [I guess you could say it's my mission to make sure that every man, woman, and child in America hears this song.] One of the only outright stupid comments I've ever gotten since the start of Mystical Beast was from someone who called it just a lot of screaming and yelling and noise. It's a pop song for Christ's sake! (A pop song with a lot of screaming and yelling and noise. It's also got a very beautiful and surprisingly melodic guitar break, so I hope you'll give it a chance.) I was so happy to see that someone else out there in Internet land recognizes Bleach for the popsters that they really are.

That song can also be found on a CD called Three Girls From Okinawa, which came out in England on a subsidiary of the Cherry Red label. That CD also includes a pretty great video of the band, lead singer in kitty-ears-hat and all, making huge amounts of noise in a studio somewhere. For whatever reason, though, the sound on Japan Nite is better. Or maybe it's just louder...it's hard to tell.

The other Bleach track from the Japan Nite compilation isn't quite as mind blowing as Shikai No Haba, partly because its bass part is somewhat more subdued, and partly because it only sounds like two songs being played at the same time (instead of three) but it's pretty great as well. Here's Otoko Ichokusen, which comes from an early single. I sometimes wonder if it might be possible to convert System Of A Down fans to this. (Oh, wait, I am a System Of A Down fan.) As with Shikai No Haba, Otoko Ichokusen unexpectedly breaks into a normal-tempo melody at one point.

I'll have a bit on their new US CD in a day or so. They played at SXSW this year, you know, not that anyone much seemed to care enough to write about it.

I Wanna Be Your Boy Friend by Petty Booka
Kick Off! by Mummy The Peep Show
Shikai No Haba by Bleach
Otoko Ichokusen by Bleach

2005-07-11T06:00:00.000-05:00

Compilations part 5: Freedom of Choice - Yesterday's New Wave Hits As Performed by Today's Stars

Talk about a mismatch.

This compilation came out on Caroline Records in 1992, with all proceeds to be donated to Planned Parenthood. The list of artists is a bit of a who's who of late 80's/early 90's indie: Sonic Youth, Muffs, Redd Kross, Tiny Lights, Mudhoney,Yo La Tengo, The Connells, Big Dipper, Polvo, Hypnolovewheel, Superchunk, etc. The song selection is fine, with items by the Go Go's, Missing Persons, Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, Soft Cell, Flock of Seagulls, Blondie, Kate Bush, Split Enz, Pete Shelley, Wall of Voodoo, Adam & The Ants, The Human League, B-52's, Devo, etc. And not one single track on this CD comes remotely close to equaling (bettering is out of the question) the original. Well, maybe one.

Sad, 'cause it was a nice idea.

So anyway, "le blah blah blah can't sing sloppy drummer out of tune can't sing too serious not serious enough lousy production." I think that gets us through to the first halfway decent track, #13 where we find Big Dipper covering Homosapien by ex-Buzzcock Pete Shelley. You know, Big Dipper sound great on every compilation (that I own) that they appear on. I should probably stop ignoring their albums.

Following that, there are a couple of reasonably credible efforts. Polvo don't ruin Mexican Radio (surprising, as the two bands would seem to have little in common) and ditto for Superchunk's Girl U Want which gets by on manic energy.

In between though, we have to suffer through Chia Pet doing something horrible to Don't You Want Me Baby (for the younger readers, Chia Pet was the house band for the legendary Sassy magazine. I have the feeling that some horrible deal with Satan explains their presence here. That's Jane Pratt, of Jane Magazine, on lead violin. Kramer produced this, though I don't think he was ever featured in "Cute Band Alert." Hey, maybe I missed an issue and he was).

In truth, you'd get a much better compilation by simply assembling the original tracks that get covered here, or by just picking up a few of those Sedated in the 80's collections.

It occurs to me that one major omission (among many) is The Vapors. I have a feeling that the organizers of this album could have found somebody who could do something with Trains from the first Vapors album. Here's that, which I've posted before. I don't want to say it's better than Turning Japanese, but let's say it's better than Turning Japanese for someone who heard Turning Japanese several million times while growing up.

To make up for even mentioning Chia Pet, here's Big Dipper with Lou Gehrigs's Disease, which is just about definitely the best track from the None Whatsoever compilation on Vacant Lot records from c.1987. I don't think that came out on CD, but I'm not 100% sure. I'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of Big Dipper's catalog, so I'm not sure if this track ever turned up on CD, though it's good enough that I'd expect (hope) that it did.

Today's post would probably go well with this one from Vinyl Mine (on the Volcano Suns, related to Big Dipper) and this one from A Million Miles Away (which featured one track that I'm featuring, but oh well).

Homosapien by Big Dipper (Pete Shelley cover)
Lou Gehrigs's Disease by Big Dipper
Girl U Want by Superchunk (Devo cover)
Trains by The Vapors

2005-07-10T17:27:00.000-05:00

Mais pourquoi est-il si méchant?

The real Monday post will be up soon. I try not to use this blog for non-musical things, but make exceptions occasionally. Do I have any readers in the NYC area who know of any stores that still sell Orangina Rouge? I've been craving it like crazy lately, and it seems to have vanished from Brooklyn. So evil to introduce something so wonderful, then take it away.

2005-07-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

Mouse Explosion

Someone else will have to do a full piece on Exploding White Mice, but during my recent weeks off I did manage to find a copy of their Blaze of Glory 7" single (referenced in this piece a few weeks ago).

So, the b-side is a cover of John Kongos' He's Gonna Step On You Again. Not amazing, but not bad, and here it is. I like the multi-guitars, which are slightly Band of Susans-esque, but the vocals need more oomph or something. The original is pretty much perfect, so there wasn't much room for improvement. It's certainly a step up from the Happy Mondays' desecration.

Here's the original for anyone who doesn't own it and/or missed it the first time I posted it. If you don't know who any of these people are, John Kongos managed a couple of pretty amazing pseudo-glam-rock tracks on his Kongos album, the rest of which is good-to-great singer/songwriter stuff a la Billy Joel or Elton John. He never really followed up the sound of his glammier tracks. Too bad.

He's Gonna Step On You Again by Exploding White Mice
He's Gonna Step On You Again by John Kongos

2005-07-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

Operating via dial up today, and the cable guy isn't due until tomorrow afternoon. Rather than kill myself trying to upload over the telephone line, I refer you to this spot, where you can find some nice Flying Nun related stuff, including the Pop Art Toasters.

2005-07-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

Vodka: more Jenny Wade! (Part one in a series on bands who were never sexually harassed by Bob Guccione Jr.)

So, Jenny Wade came up in a recent piece on the early 90's band Timber. Jenny is known to many as the lead singer of Rude Buddha (not the current Rude Buddha...an older band). A friend of mine had a crush on her, and thusly I heard their records long, long ago but I'll be damned if I can remember thing one about them. Anyone want to do a Rude Buddha piece someday?

Anyway, after that and after Timber, Jenny was in a band called Vodka who are, shall we say, underrepresented on the internet these days. Neither fantastic nor terrible, they have a handful of songs worth preserving and their full-length CD is well worth plucking from the dollar bin. Also, the family tree is interesting.

The group was made up of Jenny on bass and vocals, Greg Talenfeld on guitar, Bob Bannister on guitar and keyboards, and Celia Farber on drums.

Jenny is apparently essentially retired from the music biz. Greg Talenfeld would go on to be a producer of note. Bob Bannister is a well respected guitar player around town. Celia Farber is a journalist, like her dad.

Vodka strike me as the sort of band who might easily have ended up working with Kramer. I'd locate them in the same general wing of the Museum of 90's Rock that holds Mold, Lida Husik and Bongwater (musically, not lyrically), among others. Whisps of psychedelia flutter around the edges of 60's-inspired but 90's-sounding well-produced guitar pop/rock. When they try to get less melodic and more jagged the going gets tough, but a handful of tracks with repetitive verses building to a semi-anthemic chorus work really well.

A song called Christmas from their King Jesus EP was either rerecorded or remastered (I'm not sure which) for their full length She's My Dream as XMAS, and it's probably the best thing they did.

I didn't like it initially, but the title track from She's My Dream ended up growing on me a lot. Here's that. I should probably insert a note here that Jenny Wade's voice is kinda unusual and quavery. I suspect it's a like-it or hate-it proposition. I like it.

Another favorite is Martin Luther (Green & Pink & Blue) on which Celia Farber sings. Again with the anthemic chorus. I keep thinking that Celia would have been well-suited to sing Reflex as well. Just a hunch.

For more of the Farber singing voice, you might want to check out her sister Bibi Farber's website. My favorite thing from that is this wonderful picture:

That's Bibi smiling radiantly in the center as Celia looks on from the margin. Photo taken by Ulla Farber. Some might say it explains a lot, though I personally don't subscribe to crackpot conspiracy theories.

XMAS by Vodka
She's My Dream by Vodka
Martin Luther (Green & Pink & Blue) by Vodka
Reflex by Vodka

2005-07-02T20:08:00.000-05:00

More reasons to envy Sweden

Good god! 18th Dye have a reunion concert planned in August? In Sweden? Website. This is kind of huge news, not that it really does me much good. I wonder how one gets ahold of the Peel Sessions.

Can U Wink (Demo) by 18th Dye

2005-07-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

Weekend Update

I guess weekends are when I tidy up various loose ends.

There's a nice article in the LA Times on mp3 blogs, written by Douglas Wolk who (unlike a number of the early newspaper writers on mp3 blogs) knows what he's talking about such that the article actually has something to say beyond, "There's these mp3 blogs, y'all." And I'm not just saying that because he was nice enough to link to me.

In his honor, here's God Is My Co-Pilot with I Fuck Who I Want To (Slut). It's not all about Frank Sinatra 'round here, newcomers.

[Just so this isn't misinterpreted, Douglas is very fond of God Is My Co-Pilot and that track happened to pop up in iPod shuffle mode recently.]

Moving on, the Lee Miller album that I enthusiastically reviewed back in April has happily become available for sale from Aquarius which, despite the fact that I've never set foot inside, is probably my favorite brick & mortar record store at the moment. They blurbed it in their New Arrivals section last week. I've restored one of the Lee Miller mp3s (Tarn) so check out the post if you missed it the first time around. Fans of Circle, you've been alerted.

Monika Bullette got played on Morning Becomes Eclectic. Congratulations!

This may be unprecedented: Largehearted Boy's list of new bittorrent downloads for today includes shows by neither Wilco nor Radiohead. Hop on over to download live Barbara Manning and Liz Phair, then compare and contrast. (I give you permission to skip the Liz Phair one if you're so inclined.) The Manning show has pretty great sound. I, um, skipped the Liz Phair one.

2005-07-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

Jake Holmes week concludes: Watertown

Having scared off most of the younger crowd with yesterday's post about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, I'll finish the job today. The other 1969 collaboration between Jake Holmes and Bob Gaudio was Frank Sinatra's Watertown. Run for the hills!

Everyone else, have a seat. May I offer you a cucumber sandwich? Tea? Kids these days!

If I were being dramatic, I probably would have posted about Watertown on Wednesday and then finished up with Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. GILG is effusive and catchy and clever and fun, fun, fun (even when the lyrics don't follow the general mood). Watertown is subdued (like its cover art) and "adult" and takes time to grow. It's also really wonderful, and probably a good example of an album that failed because it was inappropriate to its creator's fanbase. Which still surprises me, as it's not that far out by any means. There's only one very short song that pushes the envelope in a way that's apparent 30-something years later: She Says, which is more of an interlude than a real song.

In most other respects Watertown is a subdued slice-of-life record that was meant to accompany a television special (which never happened) centered around the story of a man whose wife leaves him, hints that she might come back, then doesn't. The most detailed discussion of the record I can find is here. As that writer notes, it's slightly difficult to write much about Watertown because it's been almost completely ignored by Sinatra fans and biographers. Apparently it was his worst-selling album and his last to appear on CD. Regarding that: one of the CD versions comes with a good bonus track and isn't expensive, so that's probably what you should look for. Amazon seems to have a decent sized stock of used copies.

Incidentally, the liner notes to that CD are informative, but what especially struck me is that they drop a few tantalizing hints about recordings that someone much better-connected than me might want to try to track down. One would be the demo acetates of the album with Jake Holmes singing, and the other is a version of a song called Elizabeth that Frank Sinatra supposedly recorded as a demo to send to Elizabeth Taylor for her birthday.

Since I didn't grow up with Frank Sinatra, listening to Watertown initially took some mental recalibration. With the exception of people who are specifically "doing Sinatra" (e.g. Neil Hannon) his style of singing is a relic and it takes a few attempts to hear it as a voice rather than a tribute to a voice. Listeners older than me may not have the same problem.

That aside, there's no reason this record shouldn't be more popular, and I'll especially point Divine Comedy fans in its direction. The orchestral parts are never schmaltzy, and continue with GILG's practice of keeping the arrangements spacious. I've read criticism of Sinatra's voice here and there, but I'd guess that unless you're a connoisseur you'll never know what that's about, given the level of technical quality that we accept from singers these days.

There are only ten songs on the album (plus the one bonus track) so I'm only going to post one other. Here's the soaring What's Now Is Now which would probably have been my pick for a single.

Longtime readers know that I'm somewhat prone to conspiracy theories based on flimsy evidence. I don't have a full-blown one, but I've wondered from time to time if Lou Reed might have heard Watertown before composing Berlin. Or if there was some zeitgeist thing going on.

I have no smoking gun, just little things here and there. Both albums have a track called Lady Day (Lady Day was cut from the original Watertown, then restored on the CD reissue). The beginning of Michael & Peter from Watertown sounds ever so slightly like Caroline Says, and both albums have an "x Says" song (or two). Obviously there's the sense that both albums take place in a specific geographic location, and both start with a song about that spot. Both have a song about children who aren't being raised by their mother. Both tell the story of a relationship that's ended before the record begins. I could probably get ingenious and come up with more, but that seems like a good place to stop. Someone with time on their hands might want to do an article comparing and contrasting the two.

She Says by Frank Sinatra
What's Now Is Now by Frank Sinatra

2005-06-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

Take the expressway way out and then turn right. Continue left until detour, then continue right. Head due west and you are there.

Hey, let's move to Watertown!

[Directions provided by The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette]

Soul of a Woman by The Four Seasons

2005-06-29T15:17:00.000-05:00

Jake Holmes week part 2: The Four Seasons in Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Unless you're very young, you know Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons so there'll be no introduction, but I'm going to quickly emphasize that Frankie Valli's soprano voice will not be found anywhere in today's post, so relax. Around 1969, The Four Seasons got caught up in the excitement of Sergeant Pepper and flower power and funny cigarettes and decided to record a psychedelic album. Bob Gaudio (main songwriter of the Four Seasons) wrote the songs, Jake Holmes wrote the lyrics, and the result was a commercial dud and one of the best pop-psych albums of the 60's.

No one, and I mean no one, is going to deny that this record has some of the best packaging evah. It's a full scale mock-up of a newspaper, and I don't mean a half-assed job like Thick As A Brick [a commenter points out that this wasn't the best example to give]. You get comics, coupons:

a crossword puzzle (if you click this, you'll be able to read it):

movie listings:

("Andy Warhole's 'Dandruff!'" Ha ha.)

and so on. It's amazingly detailed and I'm going to point out right this instant that it was a flop on a major label, which means that finding used copies in good shape is a piece of cake. Buy a vinyl copy (even if you don't have a turntable)! This has come out on CD a few times, but is currently out of print as far as I know.

Anyways, you can have The Beach Boys and whatever version of Smile tickles your fancy, and I'll take Genuine Imitation Life Gazette as a substitute, and everybody's happy.

GILG sounds like a million bucks, with stacked harmonies, top-notch songwriting, orchestral bits galore, and a really playful and fun approach to psychedelic production. Instead of cramming a million "strange" noises into their pop songs, they seem to have put a lot of thought into keeping space in the arrangements. The drums, in particular, are a lot like Ringo's in the way they're both sparse and perfect.

There are a number of great pop-song-length pieces, like Mrs. Stately's Garden, which is sort of like Ray Davies meets John Cheever, or Genuine Imitation Life which does some brilliant things to open up the original (posted on Monday) but the really, really amazing parts are the epic tracks that bookend the album. Here's the opener, American Crucifixion Resurrection, a pretty daring album opener for 1969. If enough people are interested, I'll post the other long one tomorrow.

Mrs. Stately's Garden by The Four Seasons
Genuine Imitation Life by The Four Seasons
American Crucifixion Resurrection by The Four Seasons

2005-06-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Jake Holmes week

The funny thing is that you've heard Jake Holmes' music. Out of all of the artists that I've ever mentioned in Mystical Beast, Jake Holmes is the only one for whom I can say that for certain, assuming you own a television.

To get that part out of the way, I'll start with a rundown of the songs that he wrote that you know: Be All That You Can Be, I'm a Pepper, Raise Your Hand If You're Sure. You may have also heard some others, but those three seemed like the most likely suspects.

He also wrote Dazed And Confused, which appeared in an altered (and uncredited) version on Led Zeppelin's debut. These are the basic factoids that you're going to find in any article on Jake Holmes.

Not so long ago his very, very out-of-print records from the sixties and early seventies became available again, and by download at that. If you're impatient, feel free to hop on over to It's About Music or eMusic. The two albums that you most likely want are The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes and A Letter to Katherine December. Be aware that these are remastered from vinyl, and sometimes that's very obvious. If you're really uptight, you may still need to track down original copies, which aren't cheap.

Even though it doesn't really make much sense, I've always been somewhat hesitant to post MP3's from albums that are available for legal download. So today, the pickings are going to be kind of slim: here's a sparse, haunting, and maybe slightly overwrought/creepy song called Genuine Imitation Life. I think the strangeness I hear comes from the delivery, since the version that I posted last Wednesday and the one I'm going to post later this week come across as much less earnest.

Why do you care about Jake Holmes? Aside from the Trivial Pursuit aspects detailed above, I can think of a couple of good reasons. One: his first two albums feature a deceptively oddball and really unusual approach to folk/rock. Album #1, The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes is accurately described by Perfect Sound Forever as "spartan like a slab of concrete." It's not exactly minimalist (though the combo playing it is minimal i.e. acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, no percussion): the chords and lyrics aren't at all stripped down. But I don't know if I've ever heard music that's simultaneously so interesting and so emotionally evasive. Something about the flat sound of Jake's voice seems at odds with the lyrics and arrangements. Album #2, A Letter To Katherine December, has a full band and goes down a little easier, but some of his production ideas are way ahead of their time, like the way orchestral bits will flip in and out of songs as if they were samples. And again, there's the voice. Imagine Crispin Glover singing lead for Love, and you're headed for the right territory.

Reason number two revolves around two amazing records Jake Holmes co-wrote in 1969 with Bob Gaudio. I'll be posting tracks from those for the remainder of this week.

A lot of info as well as video of a 1967 live performance (!) and streams of a number of tracks (including Jake's original Dazed And Confused) can be found here. Perfect Sound Forever did a nice article/interview recently here. Jake Holmes has a small but helpful web site here.

Genuine Imitation Life by Jake Holmes

2005-06-25T12:58:00.000-05:00

Recent Developments

Added Record Robot to list of mp3 blogs. It's new (got the link via Largehearted Boy) but seems to be one of the good guys.

Finally watched Thank God It's Friday after all these years. Great movie to see while recovering from knee surgery, and I spent the whole thing thinking that one of the leads was awfully cute and surprisingly talented, then found out it was Terri Nunn (of Berlin) at the end. I feel like I should have known that.

Glad to see that others share my dim view of the Believer snorefestmusicissue. On the balance, I have to note that one of the more engaging things I read just post-op was a Heidi Julavits story in this collection. I was on a lot of Percoset at the time, so I can't vouch for it in the light of day. I believe that a portion of the profits from sales of that book go to help young white people with lousy taste in music, so help support a good cause.

2005-06-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

Timber

As promised before the break, here's a short piece on a somewhat forgotten early nineties combo from New York. I previously posted one track of theirs, The Crankcase, which was one of the highlights on a Matador Records compilation called New York Eye & Ear Control.

Timber was, for the most part, the trio of Rick Brown, Mark Howell, and Jenny Wade. The group started as an improv duo of Rick and Mark (joined once or twice by John Zorn for live gigs), then expanded to include Faye Hunter, who eventually left and was replaced by Jenny.

Drummer Rick Brown has come up on Mystical Beast a bunch of times. He was involved in the early No Wave scene, played in V-Effect (a personal favorite), and would later form a band called Run On with the ubiquitous Alan Licht. Mark Howell played guitar and has a website of sorts here. Jenny Wade sang for Rude Buddha (no relation to the current band with the same name) who existed on the fringes of my consciousness during the eighties, as well as Vodka (who'll be making an appearance here shortly).

As with a number of Rick Brown projects, Timber were all over the place. At various times they featured spirited attempts to destroy 4/4 time signatures, hints of Mofungo meets Minutemen folk/post-punk, scattered remnants of No Wave, and signs that they'd been in the Knitting Factory once or twice. There are off-kilter pop songs, tricky instrumentals, and "experimental" tracks capable of enthralling or annoying, depending on your tastes. I'd be tempted to compare Parts and Labor to a better recorded version of Tape #1 but that strikes me as one of those ultra-obscure comparisons that people tend to (rightly) complain about. Read about Tape #1 here [I never did fix that one mp3 in that piece...sorry].

I'm going to post some of the more accessible tracks from Parts And Labor today. If you like your difficult music More Difficult, be aware that there's stranger stuff on the CD. If you like your pop More Poppy, be aware that there are some tracks that you're just plain not going to like on the CD.

Why not start with a cover version? Here's Timber's take on Bad Education, a song originally by The Blue Orchids (the group that Martin Bramah formed after leaving The Fall).

Reminding me somewhat of Yo La Tengo in Ira-goes-crazy mode, here's I'm 30, I'm Having a Heart Attack, I Just Wanted You to Know That. This track was written by Rick and one Ruth Peyser. I didn't know who she was, so I asked Rick, who replied, "Ruth is an animator. She did some record covers also. She also played guitar in Bump, The Biggest Square Thing, and Broken Box (the last group never recorded but included me and Tim Harris of Antietam and Jim Biederman. Go here for details. Bump made a great 7" on LOST Records and Biggest Square Thing did one for Buttrag and have a song on the NY Eye & Ear Control compilation."

[Buttrag was Peter Margasak's label, also a magazine; Peter Margasak wrote for Spin at one time, though subsequent to reviewing Liz Phair's first album and subsequent to Liz Phair whispering sweet nothings into Bob Guccione Jr.'s ear, Peter mysteriously decided to leave the magazine and is currently a rock critic in Chicago; I did a bit on NY Eye & Ear Control the other day; Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo makes a brief appearance on the Timber CD, playing organ on one track.]

One of my favorite songs is Puddle, which really strikes me as what DNA might have sounded like if they were picked up and moved several giant steps towards the mainstream. [Rick was surprised to hear me compare this to DNA. To me, Puddle sounds like it's cut from much the same cloth as DNA's You and You. Drum pulse, minimal bass riff that gravitates back to one note, guitar breaks up the rhythm, vocals delivered like a poem over a backing track. Obviously Timber makes more concessions: the guitar plays notes, the singer sings. Let me know what you think.]

Finally, here's the album opener There's Always 1 & 9 which combines a lot of the things that Timber does well into one short sweet knockout punch. Interesting use of samples or whatever that is.

The CD originally came out in 1992 and used copies don't seem that hard-to-find. Failing that, it looks like you can order directly from Mark Howell at the above-linked web site. Rick and Mark continue to record together, and Rick is also currently finishing up tracks for Les Batteries (his long-standing but largely dormant collaboration with French drummer Guigou Chenevier) with the likelihood that some of them will appear on an upcoming CD release of their first LP Noisy Champs (originally on the French label AYAA). For that record the band included Charles Hayward, best known from This Heat.

Rick, Jenny and Mark were nice enough to forward one unreleased Timber track. As I told Rick with relief, it's very good. Here's Bats. Many of the finicky details of this piece were supplied by Rick Brown. His wife, Sue Garner, is a also a musician and her doings can be tracked here.

Bad Education by Timber
I'm 30, I'm Having a Heart Attack, I Just Wanted You to Know That by Timber
Puddle by Timber
There's Always 1 & 9 by Timber
Bats by Timber
You and You by DNA

2005-06-22T06:00:00.000-05:00

Genuine Imitation Life

As a teaser for next week's feature, here's a 1967 single by future Apple recording artist Jackie Lomax. The song is Genuine Imitation Life, credited to J. Holmes. The b-side is a Bee Gees cover called One Minute Woman.

Both tracks can be found on various bootleg-ish CD compilations. I'm afraid that my copy of the 7" is slightly scratchy, but you can hear better (though lower bit rate) versions here and here. In fact, though it's not noted on the website, you can hear streams of a bunch of his tracks here by clicking what's ostensibly a link to lyrics. Some work. Some don't.

Genuine Imitation Life by Jackie Lomax

2005-06-21T18:58:00.000-05:00

Public Service

I recently got a request from a reader who wanted to hear the Dustdevils' cover of The Fall's Hip Priest, a song that I've posted here a few times. Since the Fall have been in the music news lately due to the recent release of their Peel Sessions box set, I decided to post the track again publicly. So, here's the opener of my favorite album of all time, on which the Dustdevils achieve the unthinkable: taking Mark E. Smith's signature song and improving it. Yikes!

Regarding the Dustdevils, to the best of my knowledge Michael is living in England and raising a family and Jaqi has settled in Australia with her husband Keith Gregory (ex-Wedding Present). Neither one seems to be making music anymore, which is fairly tragic in the grand scheme of things.

Hip Priest by The Dustdevils

2005-06-21T12:30:00.000-05:00

How To Write A Good Song

Today Pete Dello explains how to write a good song. Young musicians might want to pay special attention to the last line, an often overlooked factor.

The album this is on, Into Your Ears from 1971, has been reissued again recently with ten bonus tracks (on Hanky Panky, ltd. edition). The album as a whole is similar to (though generally less gimmicky than) the song I've posted. Think the folkier side of the late Beatles, with vocals that fall somewhere between Ringo Starr and Ray Davies' "drunk" voice. I haven't googled myself to death, but it looks like US fans would be best off ordering this via eBay if your local record shop doesn't have it.

A Good Song by Pete Dello

2005-06-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

Compilations part 4: Manhattan on the Rocks/New York Bands on the Verge...

Thus far, the compilations that I've dealt with have been basically good straight through. No such luck today. Manhattan on the Rocks came out in 1992 on Pow Wow Records and a lot of it is kind of blah. There's a point in the early 90's where bands that previously would have been content to play the East Village indefinitely started to think seriously about becoming big, with often dubious results. Ironically, a lot of the bands on this CD probably could have done ok...if they'd waited about five more years to release these tracks, some of which could have fit really well into the hard-rock radio formats of the mid-to-late 90's or into the record collections of teenagers beginning to grow bored with Marilyn Manson.

Running down the list of people that I'm not posting, there's Stigmata A Go Go, False Prophets, ISM (not to be confused with the post-No Wave act Ism), Motherhead Bug (who used to get a ton of press around town though I don't think it helped their record sales), Virus, Emergency Broadcast Network, Lysdexic, Black Car Nation, Some Weird Sin, and 700 Miles. A lot of these are overproduced (compensating for all the 80's NYC bands with terrible production, I suppose). There's much long hair in the band photos.

Anyway, we're here for an appearance by Rat at Rat R, one of the best of the early NYC noise-guitar bands. Their debut album, in particular, is long overdue for a CD reissue. On that, they sound something like a cross between early Swans and Confusion-era Sonic Youth. Later they moved in a more conventionally rock direction, so while you can hear some skree-guitar on The Way, it doesn't scream "Lower East Side" like their first record. Really great stuff with all the power that Kim and "The Drummer" could never muster, and I hope I won't annoy too many people by noting that things like this seem to be aging much better than The Grateful Youth. I mean The Sonic Dead. I mean...

Rat At Rat R, for this track, is John Myers, David Tritt, Walter Sipser and Victor Poison-Tete. Here's the Trouser Press entry on the group. The Way is apparently the last song they released, and it doesn't appear elsewhere.

The other reason I hold on to this CD is Big Stick, one of New Jersey's greater contributions to the world of music. For once, there's a website! There's also a nice overview here (wow, that site takes me back to the 80's! Be careful as many of the links are not so work safe. Among other things, I learned that there's a new-ish alt-porn director named Eon McKai, ha ha). By Big Stick, here's Freddie & Me, which sometimes sounds like a distant, distant cousin of Ton-Loc's Wild Thing. Did I say distant? WFMU's Beware of the Blog recently posted another very nice Big Stick song called Drag Racing. Find it here.

The Way by Rat At Rat R
Freddie & Me by Big Stick

2005-06-17T15:42:00.000-05:00

17 Pygmies... Part Five of Five...

The band vanished again for three more years after the release of Welcome. In 1991 the album Missyfish was released by the label Nate Starkman And Son out of Chicago. This weird little record (24 minutes or so) has the feeling of unfinished sketches or demos, with several short instrumental throwaways. The record came with the tracks from Hatikva placed first, further enhancing its secondary status. No lineup info (or any info) at all. Here's two tracks from it, they sound like they could be from any point in the band's career. Where are they all now? Who knows.

"Under The Freeway"
"Coat Of Many Colours (Missyfish)"

Thanks for all the comments, folks. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Mystical Beast programming, as Dana is hopefully healed and off the painkillers!

For those intrigued by the last two weeks I have a music-geek website called Made Explicit, visit me there until the next time...

2005-06-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

Nearing the end of our 17 Pygmies overview...

The band seemingly went dormant for a few years... Captured In Ice is from 1985. The next record, Welcome, appeared in '88 on a subsidiary of Island Records (!!). Ruza and Spinelli were gone, replaced by Louise Bialik and a host of guests. The album was a fairly radical deparature, featuring bizarre spoken "theatre pieces" written and performed by Charles Schneider and a much wider range of songs over the course of a 53-minute LP. A carnival/circus theme pervades throughout. We're getting a little tight on space here at the Mystical Beast, so I'm only including three of the best tracks.

"Drunkard" features Moris Tepper on banjo and cornet along with Savage Republic/Medicine player Brad Laner on drums.

"Reek Of Life" features Laner and Saccharine Trust's Jack Brewer on vocals and lyrics (!!).

"Kristalnacht" is one of my favorite guitar instrumentals ever...

The album seems to have sunk without a trace. Although it was on CD, I have never seen one. Again, not reissued.

As I go through these records I find myself wondering - can anyone out there in internetland tell me if these people ever played live? I've never heard anything about it.

Tomorrow we get to the strange last album!

2005-06-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

17 Pygmies, Part 3

Once out from under the shadow of Savage Republic, the band created its first album consisting exclusively of their vision. And their vision said "GO POP". The Captured In Ice LP was also apparently released by Resistance in the U.S., although my copy is a French version on the Lolita label, seemingly their next-to-last release. As usual, this has never been reissued on LP or CD.

Perhaps "pop" is a little blithe when referring to these sophisticated songs, but it sure has the sound. Check it out:

"Suit Of Nails"
"Shade"

Of course, there were divergences, including two instrumentals. Here's one:

"Autumn Cathedral"

And my favorite, a soaring, sad, and passionate tune:

"Icarus"

The record also begins to introduce other notable L.A. figures who would guest with the band. Fey Ruza is added to the full lineup, Nels Cline guests on "Autumn Cathedral", Ethan James (of the Radio Tokyo studio) plays keyboard on "Shade", and another track features former Beefheart guitarist Jeff Moris Tepper (who I highly recommend, by the way).

2005-06-14T15:08:00.000-05:00

17 Pygmies, Part 2

In 1984 Savage Republic split apart while recording their second album. The 17 Pygmies axis (Drucker and Loveless) released the record as the LP Jedda By The Sea with new band member Debbie Spinelli. This included some material that was supposed to be part of the Sav Rep album, albeit in different versions. Supposedly Bruce Licher has masters of the "Sav Rep" version that have yet to be released. It's all a little bit confusing, but the relationship between the bands appears amiable.

At any rate, this album is solid freakin' gold and easily in my 1984 top 20. It has a wide variety of styles, ranging from bliss-filled poppy "songs"

"Words Never Said"
"Lazarus"

to Savage Republic-esque instrumental tracks

"Moment In Ceylon"
"Last Grave At Dimbaza

to percussion jams

"Tropical Grasslands"

to gorgeous soundtrack-style instrumentals.

"Still Waters"
"Nocturne"

As a previous comment from Monday noted, some of these records were hand-painted and all are very beautiful with inserts, et cetera. The album has never been reissued and has never been on CD. Tragic.

Tomorrow 17 Pygmies go totally pop on their second album! Don't miss it!

2005-06-13T15:42:00.000-05:00

Here we go into the next week. This time we'll be talking about the California 80's band 17 Pygmies. They were very closely related to Savage Republic, with members bouncing back and forth over time. The Trouser Press website has a pretty good overview of the records, and there is an extensive article on Savage Republic at Perfect Sound Forever that covers a lot of the information around the bands. With those available for reference, I'll be talking more about the music this week.

I think the best way to start is to show what Savage Republic sounded like before Philip Drucker (aka Jackson Del Rey) and Robert Loveless left to form 17 Pygmies. From their classic first single, here's

"Film Noir"

The vocal melodies and keyboard parts are what migrated over to the new band.

The first real 17 Pygmies release was a 12" EP called Hatikva. Originally put out on their own label Resistance Records, it was also reissued by an Italian label called Viva. Pretty much impossible to find, at least I've never seen a copy. Fortunately, it was included with their last release Missyfish, so I can bring you two extremely different tracks:

The very Sav-Rep influenced

"Lawrence Of Arabia"

And the very 17 Pygmies-sounding

"Vows"

Tomorrow we will discuss the debut album and include a bunch more MP3s. For extra credit, you can read the linked articles above...

2005-06-10T10:15:00.000-05:00

Tiny Lights, Part 4...

In 1994 the band put out their second CD (5th album) on Doctor Dream, marking the first time they had been able to release two consecutive albums on a label. Trouser Press raves about Milky Juicy and says it's their favorite. I'm not quite so enthusiastic, but it does have some great stuff . As the review notes, it's one of the more diverse albums. Here's two tracks:

"I Don't Enjoy Life"
"Circle Sky"

Also in 1994, some fans in Iowa released a 7" single with two tracks from a live gig including a long-time live favorite which never made it to LP (I think it was one of the lost Know It You Love tracks). Here it is:

"Horsehead"

By the time 1995 rolled around, it seemed that Doctor Dream had also become defunct. I can't find any info on the web, a Google search just gets me a lot of albums that the label released. At any rate, the band signed to New Jersey label Bar/None and put out a career-spanning retrospective called A Young Person's Guide To Tiny Lights. This record includes several tracks from the Know It You Love sessions, although I find it's track selection a bit odd.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, all of the MP3s from this week function as an alternate retrospective. There are no tracks in common with the Bar/None CD, which I believe is still in print (hint, hint...). Bar/None also released what appears to be the band's last studio record in 1997, The Smaller The Grape The Sweeter The Wine. Even though it seems to still be in print, I'm including one track from it for completion's sake, and because I think it's a nice closing piece:

"Would You Like To Float"

So I hope y'all have enjoyed this feature. Next week I'm going to be talking about 17 Pygmies, another "lost" band that has considerably more documented information. No personal anecdotes and recordings this time, but there will be some great rare tracks. Please support Tiny Lights and buy their records from Bar/None...

2005-06-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

Tiny Lights, part 3...

After Gaia's collapse in 1989, the band moved to a fairly new startup label, Absolute A Go Go. They reissued the debut LP (Prayer For The Halcyon Fear) on CD, with the 1st 7" included as bonus tracks. At the time, this was quite exciting - A Go Go had a distribution deal with Rough Trade and that seemed like a good thing. They also put out a new studio album, Hot Chocolate Massage. In many ways one of the band's best, this turns up the volume considerably and brings in some funkier classic rock motifs.

From that record, here's one of my favorite tracks:
"Moonwhite Day"

By this point, original cello player Jane Scarpantoni had left the band to become session player for the stars. Although she recorded H.C.M. with the band, she didn't tour the record. Some of her best known work post-Tiny Lights is on records by Kristin Hersh ("Your Ghost") and 10,000 Maniacs. There are a lot more records that feature her, I'm just blanking out right now. The band (with replacement cellist Stuart) was still touring like demons, forging the studio tracks into ferocious improv-oriented jams in a live setting. The only recorded example of their improvisation skills is on a CD bonus track for the H.C.M. album (there were two other extra tracks included as well, definitely get the CD version).

"Tuesday Afterdinner (improv)"

Two years later, Absolute A Go Go was gone as well, taken down by Rough Trade's collapse. For a firsthand account (somewhat bitter but seemingly accurate) you can check out Absolute A Go Go's history page. It was here that I learned Tiny Lights were briefly labelmates with Phish, which on reflection totally fits.

Next up in the label parade was Orange County's Doctor Dream Records, who released the 4th album (Stop The Sun I Want To Go Home) in 1992. From that, here's two tracks:

"Curlyeyed Open Stare"
"Facedown (For Serge Gainsbourg)"

In 1993 the band released a single on Kramer's Kokopop label, produced and recorded by the man himself on yummy bubblegum-pink vinyl. Out of print and never reissued, it contains two of my favorite tracks by the band, at this point a 4-piece without cello.

"I Think I Just Want To Go Away" (A-side)
"Pull It Together" (B-side)

Tomorrow we'll wrap things up with the last two albums and another rare single.

2005-06-08T02:48:00.001-05:00

Continuing with the story of Hoboken's Tiny Lights... in 1988 the group released their 2nd full-length album, Hazel's Wreath. It was on a new label called Gaia Records, which I remember John telling me at the time was a "jazz label". Now, when I Google it, most of the results are for a newer techno label. However, some are clearly for the older one. I found a result for jazz artist Nelson Rangell's 1st LP, but only the cached version of the page has this telling sentence: "Rangell's 1987 debut album was released on the obscure label Gaia Records, but he soon found a more satisfying environment at GRP Records." Ominous harbingers of things to come!!

The record itself is, indeed, a tasty jazz-inflected expansion of the debut (see Mike's comment from Tuesday for more about their jazz background). Here's two tracks from it:
"Around It Goes Around"
"Before You Go"

They toured the country in support of the LP, and this was when we met (see Tuesday's entry). Us Hoosiers were so blown away by their show in Bloomington (Indiana) that we followed them to Louisville the next night - the sure sign of a good band. Somehow, I found the presence of mind to tape their second set of the night on a boombox. It came out pretty good, all things considered.

The first song of the set was from what was intended to be their second Gaia release, a record called Know It You Love. It has an especially nice Andy Demos sax solo...
"Close My Eyes"

I also am including a live version of another Hazel's Wreath song for contrast:
"Green Instead"

Some time between this tour and the end of the next one, around 1989, Gaia went bankrupt. The record, which had been recorded, was never released. Several songs ended up on the Bar/None collection I'll be discussing on Friday, but the album as a whole remains unheard. Bummer. On the other hand, Hazel's Wreath is quite easy to find used, and was even put out on CD.

Tomorrow we're going to cover the next two albums (on two different labels), discuss a reissue and further label catastrophes, and post one of the longer MP3s that this site has had (although Rhys Chatham stills beats it).

2005-06-06T23:20:00.000-05:00

*insert cool JPG of Tiny Light's debut LP cover here*

This week I shall tell you, dear readers, of a great band from Hoboken, New Jersey. I will also tell you of their sad fate at the hands of three consecutive bankrupted labels. Let us begin...

I don't believe any of the folks in Tiny Lights had previous musical history in terms of being in bands that released albums. They formed in Hoboken in 1984 or so, and at one point my Indiana roommate Ian Brewer lived with one of them. When they first toured Bloomington in the summer of 1988 Ian put them up in our shared house, and we became friends. But at that point they already had two albums out, so for today I'm going to back up a little.

As is common among the artists we deal with here at Mystical Beast, there is no current website for the band. I was able to find a semi-complete fan discography, a 1997 bio of the band written when they signed to Bar/None, and a glowing Trouser Press review that really says it all in the first line:

"Tiny Lights were a perfectly lovely jumble of plaintive pop, Close to the Edge-style epics, jazzy forays and neo-hippie lullabies that, if not for a procession of label failures, might have found an audience as broad as its tastes."

So the first thing they released was a 7" single on their own Uriel label, "Flowers Through The Air" b/w "Zippity Do-Dah". Typical small pressing, even I don't have one. An LP (Prayer For The Halcyon Fear) soon followed, also on the Uriel imprint.

This first version of the band was something to be reckoned with. Augmenting the standard guitar, bass, and drums was Donna Croughn's electric violin and Jane Scarpantoni's cello. Drummer Andy Demos would come out from behind his kit to play soprano sax and tabla, and bassist Dave Dreiwitz also played trumpet. All of them sang, with Croughn and guitarist John Hamilton taking leads. This allowed a fairly vast sonic palette and made for quite the live show.

One of the people impressed by their live set was Fred Gianelli, then of Turning Shrines and later in Psychic TV. If I remember correctly, his enthusiasm was what resulted in Temple Records reissuing the first single (as a 12") and LP (in a different cover, both remastered) in the UK. As I was a huge PTV geek at the time I met the band, I quizzed them extensively about this. I still remember their tales of going to a grim tenement block somewhere in England, in the grey rain with the locks and the dogs, watching TV and smoking lots of pot and wondering when these weird people were going to talk business.

I wouldn't include Temple in the list of failed labels that has plagued the band, but I doubt these records were ever repressed, and I don't think Temple has been active since Genesis P-Orridge was forced to flee to the US on trumped-up charges in the early 90's. They did do an incredible job on the remasters (something I also confirmed with the band) so all of these here MP3's are from those pressings.

from the debut single:
"Flowers Through The Air"

from Prayer For The Halcyon Fear:
"Sweet Solution"
"Blue Dot Cleanser"

By the way, all of these MP3s this week are designed as an alternate version of their collection A Young Person's Guide To Tiny Lights (we'll get to that on Friday). The week's total tracks will (just barely) fit on one CD.

Tomorrow we'll talk about the second album, the tours, and the first label downfall...

2005-06-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

Briefly interrupted

As you might have gleaned from previous posts, I'm going be having knee surgery tomorrow to repair a torn ACL (knee problem). Since I'm expecting that I'll be drugged up and unhappy for a week or two, my regular guest host Sleeve will be taking over starting tomorrow.

Assuming that all goes well, I'll resume regular posts on June 20th. Because I have limited space to host Sleeve's files, I'll be deleting the majority of my MP3's later this afternoon, so if there's anything you want, now's the time to download it.

2005-06-04T19:04:00.000-05:00

Compilations part 3: Wakefield Volume 3/Superstars On 45

If you ever wanted to drive yourself insane, you could do worse than try to collect every single release on Teenbeat records. With a bewildering array of cassettes, 7" singles, alternate versions, alternate-alternate versions, and non-musical (sometime non-tangible) items with catalog numbers, it makes collecting the Sarah catalog look like child's play.

Which is why the The Teenbeat Story series of CD compilations can be semi-invaluable. There were four (also available as a box set, which I don't have) and today I'm talking about the third one, Superstars On 45, which compiles 16 tracks from various Teenbeat singles.

As with previous compilations discussed here, I can imagine a number of paths that would lead you to this album. Depending on what items you already have in your music collection, you might want Big Head On by Versus or So Sick by Unrest (from a promo only single released in 1993, and I'm pretty sure it's available elsewhere but I'm so sick of keeping track of Unrest's discography ha ha ha ha). Andrew Beaujon obsessives might want the track by Scaley Andrew, and there's a nice Barbara Manning cover of a nice Robert Scott (best known as leader of The Bats, but here it's the Magick Heads) song called B4 We Go Under. And there's a Cath Carroll A-side, Eggs, Tuscadero, and those note splattering maniacs Gastr Del Sol, and so on. Eclectic, thy name is Teenbeat.

But, yet again, I'm here for The Dustdevils. 'Cause this CD is also the only digital appearance of a track called Seen Heat from their Is Big Leggy 7" single, which immediately preceded the Matador/Teenbeat co-release Struggling Electric & Chemical. I'll quickly note that while this track is amazing, it's not necessarily the song I would use to convert people to the way of the Dustdevils. It's got structure and melody, but neither is immediately apparent. Sounds way better than the vinyl. Play it loud.

And my reason number two for drawing attention to this CD: a track from an EP by a band called Sexual Milkshake who are probably better known for their packaging [keep the mouse away from the matchbook if you're at work] than for their music. Here's Peanuts, which is ever so slightly like Flipper and The Fall performing the end of Iggy Pop's Here Comes Success. (Or, in English, a really sloppy and repetitive song with an insistent group of backing vocalists). It's fantastic, especially when they get to "Shut Up! Shut Up!"

2005-06-02T22:12:00.000-05:00

I'm just Mr. quick-note today. If you missed the Inflatable Boy Clams downloads here or elsewhere, take heart. The whole thing is available over at WFMU, along with a ton of other worthwhile downloads.

If you don't know the band, please trust me when I say download now and ask questions later.

2005-06-02T18:09:00.000-05:00

Hell frozen, shame on Canada

Two unrelated items. glenn makudonarudo over at furia has begun posting mp3s. An explanation is provided. As a former opponent of downloading myself, I feel like a nun-turned-porn-actress who just found out that the pope is planning to star in Chitty Chitty Gang Bang. Guilt begone, and at last a chance to fill in those holes in your Roxette collection!

And w/all the Canadian bloggers out there, I still had to learn that Martha and The Muffins' This Is The Ice Age has finally been issued on CD from some guy in Wisconsin who did the follow-up that I forgot to do. He has mp3s and a nice write-up.

2005-06-02T14:51:00.000-05:00

Compilations part 2: New York Eye and Ear Control

Back before Matador records was kind enough to introduce us to Liz Phair and all the subsequent happiness that she's brought the world, they put out a very nice compilation called New York Eye and Ear Control. Copies of the CD can usually be found cheap on the highways and byways of the internet, confusing Albert Ayler fans to no end. (The original New York Eye and Ear Control is a free jazz album and/or movie that Rick Moody could probably tell you all about...just be careful if you buy a copy, as it might make you uncomfortable, and we wouldn't want that).

If you know Matador as the home to great bands like Guided By Voices, The New Pornographers, and the lovely Ms. Phair, you might be surprised by the sound of this CD. Gerard Cosloy wasn't always the happy guy you're proud to call your friendster, and early Matador could be a dark place to visit, full of scrapy guitars and squally saxophones. A scary place. Boo!

And what lead me there? The Dustdevils, but of course. For NYE&EC is home to a very cool alternate version of one of their best songs from the best album in the history of time. Here's Throw The Bottle Full, a long version that's not actually quite as good as the one that ended up on the album, but who the hell cares!

Elsewhere, there's cool stuff galore: an otherwise unreleased Cop Shoot Cop track called Dive, a Circle X remix, a great version of Jet Pet by Royal Trux that's different from the one on Twin Infinitives (and it's not on their singles compilation)(and fans of The Fiery Furnaces really ought to check out early Royal Trux to hear about 1/2 of the genetic material of that band). If you must hear everything that Thurston Moore ever did, he's here too on a Rudolph Grey piece called The Hall.

My second favorite song on the CD is by yet another Rick Brown (V-Effect, Run On, Fish & Roses, etc.) vehicle, Timber, who actually sound a little bit like a less-jazzy V-Effect. Here's The Crankcase, and there'll be more on Timber at some point down the road.

2005-06-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

Compilations: the Big Time Syndrome

Thought I'd get started writing about various compilations that seem somewhat slightly important.

I can think of a few reasons why someone might be interested in the Bigtime Syndrome. This CD came out in 1987 and documents a number of good to very-good indie bands who got screwed over by the Bigtime label before and/or after it died. I'd guess that a lot of people will have heard a lot of the songs elsewhere (though my guesses on things like that are often wrong). If you don't know Truck Train Tractor by The Pastels (one of the best fake What Goes Ons ever recorded) or Play My Song by Redd Kross (a remix, but I see no reason to pick it over the version on the reissued album) or Rebecca Wants Her Bike Back by The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, I'd strongly advise you to either get this comp or, better, to track down the album(s) that these songs appear on.

Fans of The Exploding White Mice who don't have turntables might want to check in for a CD appearance of Blaze of Glory (no relation to Game Theory) though I'm really jonesing for the b-side, a cover of John Kongos' He's Gonna Step On You Again.

As for me, I wanted the CD because it's the only digital appearance of a fairly strong song by Christmas (they turned into Combustible Edison; leader Michael Cudahy lost on Jeopardy to that braniac guy) called Babyman, featuring an especially strong guitar on the chorus that always reminds me momentarily of something or other by Live Skull. Weird.

In fact, I'd stake a claim that this is the best non-album Christmas song, not that there are all that many. It definitely beats their overly reverent cover of Ring My Bell (b-side of the Stupid Kids single). What else is there? Hmmm, there are those cuts on Bands That Could Be God (thank you Gerard, we love you) and the Throbbing Lobster comps., the Ballad of the Invisible Girl/Wilhelm Reich 7" and a live track from this comp, also home to a very good live Richard Davies track and various other things that might interest various people (though some of those various things, including the Davies cut, can be found for free on epitonic).

I used to have a friend who had heard Christmas demos, so they're probably out there somewhere. If I've missed anything, it'd be great to find out. They're kind of underdocumented on the ol' internet thing.

Babyman by Christmas

...and as I think about it, I'm not sure how easy it is to get Rebecca Wants Her Bike Back on CD these days, so here it is, just to be safe:

Rebecca Wants Her Bike Back by The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy

[Brief note. The new Believer music issue is out and is just about exactly as ghastly as I expected. The one redeeming part, also as predicted, is Douglas Wolk's essay on the Fall and their new Peel Sessions box, and conveniently it's available online in full. So spare yourself several hours of blithe-wit-induced euphoria and click here for the Fall piece. Or ignore me. If you do, let me know if you think Rick Moody really meant to reference Branca rather than Chatham. Or rather, if referencing Chatham was an obnoxious way of avoiding a name that his readers might know thanks to that copy of Goo that they love so. I just get a little suspicious about a list that's so specific, except when it comes to naming any one particular free-jazz artist...indication of grandstanding beyond the call of duty, not that the opening line, "I like music that makes other people uncomfortable" isn't a great big red sign with flashing lights.]

2005-05-30T10:05:00.000-05:00

Happy Memorial Day

To celebrate, I'm fulfilling a request and posting two more Dyan Diamond tracks. Here's Nervous and Baby What You Want Me To Do. Chris Spedding wrote the former, Jimmy Reed the latter.

Haven't written about New York Noise in a few weeks. First off, computers are nice but just don't compare to sitting around and watching videos on TV. I finally saw the Trachtenbergs, and it was about what I was expecting, unfortunately, though if Meg ever quits the White Stripes, Jack should consider this band's drummer as a replacement. I'm still not really warming to Adam Green's Jessica Simpson or Beck's Hell Yes (two videos that are on heavy rotation) but am convinced by My Favorite (who appear every week). Their (old) song Burning Hearts is a must-hear (regardless of how you feel about The Smiths) and the video is wonderful. Despite being a concert piece, it gives you the impression of watching an early set by a group that later went on to be world famous. You can read a brief history and interview here. And you can download the Burning Hearts mp3 and the video and some other stuff here.

Also promoted last night was The National. The live clips weren't doing it for me, but I did like their videos (thought to be honest I was only half paying attention). Have to give it more thought. Their website, with mp3s and video, is here.

2005-05-26T23:30:00.000-05:00

Dyan Diamond, continued

So, before I had my musical world rearranged (see previous two entries) I was about to post a bunch of tracks from Dyan Diamond's not-on-CD solo album.

[Better comments forthcoming, as soon as I tear myself away from The Secrets.]

Animal Girl - the feminine correlate to Fowley's Animal Man?

Hot - Heart?

In The Dark

Mystery Dance - Costello cover

Someone Like Me - The hit.

Western Avenue - What Kim Fowley, in glam mode, would have sounded like as a teenage girl.

2005-05-26T08:39:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note: Spoilt Victorian Child has a piece up on the Bullette album today [and has been joined by a number of others]. People, this one is seriously something special, so believe him if you don't believe me! Take a break from the Wilco bittorents for just a day, ok? You'll survive.

2005-05-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Presses stopped: Bullette

(We'll get back to Dyan Diamond tomorrow.)

There's not a track on the new album The Secrets by Bullette that couldn't be improved by lopping off a minute (if not more) and that's the only negative I can think of, so why not make it the lead.

In all other respects, the most original and intriguing album of 2005 is likely to be this out-of-nowhere mp3 download. Not sure if my recent post on her pal Rob Montejo's old band Smashing Orange created a psychic pull or if it was just a coincidence. I woke up at 2:00am on Monday night and reflexively checked gmail. Found a message sent at 11:00pm earlier that night that was just "off" enough to pique my interest (the photo, in which Ms. Bullette looks not unlike someone who might have hung around with Lisa Carver back in the day probably didn't hurt), clicked a link, and gave a quick listen to two mp3s. I'm not the sort to download a full album and give it three consecutive listens at 2:30am on a weeknight, but that's exactly what happened next.

Influences are listed, and include Nancy Sinatra (very apparent in the vocals, plus there's clearly some Lee Hazlewood in the songwriting), Marc Bolan, Alex Chilton, Loretta Lynn, etc. It's tempting to think of her as an outsider artist, especially after listening to some of the synth pieces that come at the end of the album (one of which is a Rob Montejo production), but her blog makes it clear that she's smarter than your average cookie, and very aware of what's going on in past and current music. Call her an insider/outsider artist, but there's nobody (to my knowledge) making albums quite like this in 2005, full of dropped beats, stream-of-consciousness melodies, un-selfconscious lyrics, and ultra-creative-on-a-shoestring-budget arrangements. I catch the occasional similarity to Linda Smith (another generally solo female artist, who has a number of shared influences) but that's about as close as I can come, and it only applies to a few tracks. Overall feel is more like this should be a forgotten cult album from fifteen years ago, 'cept it's brand new.

I checked out her old band Nero's mp3s (the video makes for interesting watching) but nothing they did is preparation for her solo stuff.

As mentioned, the whole album is available for free at her website, but for the lazy:

We Are Not From Sugar, possibly the most accessible track. Not entirely unlike Stereolab, and will leave you unprepared for...

Lemonade. It's not as easy to dodge a beat as the guitar part on this makes it seem. This one, in turn, sounds nothing like...

Don't Start Believin'. If you think you know exactly where this one is going after the first two verses, you're either psychic or mistaken. Very Nancy and Lee, up to the point where it hits the bridge.

I could go on. The weirdness of this album generally isn't the dramatic, in your face kind (e.g. screaming, yelling, overtly clever lyrics, production overload). It has more to do with an artist (sort of a la Daniel Johnston, but without the amateurness, creepiness, etc.) pushing normal song structures slightly around the bend. Lyrics are also posted, and are worth paying attention to. If she hooks up with the right producer, her next album could be an out-and-out classic, no apologies needed.

2005-05-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

D. Diamond: interviews that didn't happen, part one.

This is part one in a series of posts on artists who I wanted to interview but didn't, for various and sundry reasons.

The "D" in D. Diamond stands for Dyan, but I didn't learn that until years after I first saw the name in print. For reasons of his own, Kim Fowley decided to credit her for her cowriting assistance on his Sunset Boulevard album by initial. I always wondered who this mysterious person was, since the songs that they cowrote (especially In My Garage and Love Is A Game) were among my favorite tracks from one of my favorite albums. There are a few D. Diamonds in rock-and-roll, and since Sunset Boulevard was recorded all over the world (and since the liner notes were kind of sketchy, and since Kim Fowley could theoretically have worked with just about anyone) and especially because I'm pretty weak when it comes to the LA punk scene, I never connected some dots that a better informed listener might connected.

A few years ago I stumbled across a copy of Dyan Diamond's first and only record (on MCA,1978) called In the Dark. Bought it because Kim Fowley was credited as cowriter on a few tracks, because Chris Spedding (former Womble) had a songwriting credit, and because it contained a cover of Elvis Costello's Mystery Dance (just because Elvis Costello bores me doesn't mean I'm not interested in hearing other people cover his songs). Got the record home, looked it up on google, and had one of those Eureka moments. I probably would've made the connection quicker had I ever heard anything by her old band Venus and the Razorblades.

One of the more unusual things about all of this is that Dyan was something like fourteen when she started working with Kim Fowley, and was still well under twenty years old when she recorded her album. She sounds a lot older. From some research online I learned that she never followed up In The Dark, though she apparently continued to perform live for several years and included non-album material in her sets. I wanted to track her down to find out 1. if any of her post-In the Dark material was ever recorded 2. how she and Kim went about collaborating on songs and 3. if she had any good Kim Fowley stories. That was about two years ago.

At this point, here's what I have: I managed to get in touch with one of her former bandmates, but got a kind of a bad feeling after a few back-and-forth emails. Let's just say that if I had wanted to do a piece made up of snarky putdowns, I'd know where to go for material. Since they didn't actually know where she was currently, I dropped the subject. After that, I tried to get in touch with Kim Fowley, but never got an answer (since my e-mail didn't contain any get-rich-quick schemes, this didn't surprise me). Finally, I put the word out that I was trying to track her down to various Internet types who might know.

I never got anything definitive. My best guess (could be totally wrong, but several unrelated sources seems to think this) is that she went to law school and is currently working as an attorney and isn't particularly interested in being tracked down. It's funny: I always operate with this assumption that semi-forgotten music types are just dying to talk about their pasts. Of course, the reality is that talking about your past doesn't necessarily put any money in your bank account or, when you get right down to it, enhance your non-rock star life in any way. For those of us who've never released a record or vied for stardom, this can be hard to understand, but at this point I've been friends with enough former musicians to realize that having your name in Trouser Press/Allmusic/etc. isn't the highlight of everyone's life.

I'll have a big chunk of In The Dark on Wednesday. It's a pretty fun mix of early Heart, Fowley-trash-rock, and retro-rock along the lines of the aformentioned Elvis Costello cover. Meanwhile, here are the three songs that Dyan helped with on Sunset Boulevard: In My Garage and Love Is a Game and Blow-Up. It's tempting to assume that that's her singing backup vocals on the first two, but I just don't know and probably won't unless I hear from her or from someone who was at the sessions. Blow-Up ("What do you think of my fingernail polish?") doesn't sound much like anything else I've heard by Dyan. Presumably, Kim was the one who came up with lines like, "Junkyard dog in the hardware store, you got back door possibilities, a whole lot more."

Kim Fowley's Sunset Boulevard still isn't on CD but is, strangely enough, available from eMusic. Vinyl rip, so don't get too excited if you already have the record, and I'll say again that this is one release that really works best on vinyl, with cryptic liner notes, the unusual cover-art, etc. On some level, I hope it never does make it to CD.

I haven't heard every record ever made, obviously, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that there is no other record quite like it (this may not be immediately obvious from listening to the tracks I've posted today.) A look at Fowley's CV makes it clear that he's in love with rock and roll, which makes his ultra-cynical attempts to pretend that he isn't incredibly touching. You have to love a guy who thinks that a fake Dylan accent is the key to cracking the youth market in 1978.

2005-05-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

Lilys substitutes

Just got an email from the Pas/Cal people, with a link to a new mp3 here, which I'm liking a lot right from the get go.

While the band often got compared to Belle & Sebastian in the past, I really think that the Lilys are more on point. Fractured but poppy wandering song structures coupled with a 60's vibe, and it's surprising to see them pulling this off nearly as well as the Lilys do, given that the Lilys often seem like a high-wire act. Very nice, since for my money Kurt Heasley is the most interesting pop songwriter working today.

Lately the Lilys' production has taken a turn for the strange, which seemed to put a lot of people off. Possibly Pas/Cal, who hew closer to the softer side of the Kinks and the aformentioned B&S, will be more succesful with the prog-60's pop formula. I'm very much looking forward to their full-length, if they ever manage to finish it.

2005-05-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

The Orange Peels Circling The Sun

Keep hearing albums this year that I wish were slightly better. I'm starting to feel like a guy with a house full of half-empty glasses.

Disclaimer: when I scan reviews and see a combo of the words "Beach Boys," "California," "Summer," and "Power pop," my brain usually shuts off and I have to run into the other room and play the Axemen's Three Virgins for a while until I wake up.

But I did get a copy of the new Orange Peels album Circling The Sun in the mail, and I listen to everything I get in the mail (because I don't get very many CDs in the mail, so it's still kind of exciting). I know the band well, having spent an inordinate amount of time trying to like their first album (unsuccesfully). I've realized at some point that what I'd really like is if head Peel Allen Clapp would hook up with a Scott Miller type weirdo (if not Scott Miller himself) because Allen's good with the verses and the singing, bad with the lyrics and bridges and the little odds-and-ends and fiddly bits that transform good pop/power-pop into greatness.

About half of Circling The Sun is top-notch, even to this doubter, and I'm pretty sure that people who frequent Notlame will love it, love it, love it. A few songs have the feel of early 90's US indie doing 80's UK indie-pop (think some of the non-shoegaze parts of Spin Art's One Last Kiss comp.) and it's a direction that I find peppier and more interesting than the more California-sounding tracks. If you can find it elsewhere, check out a bouncy track called What's It Like Mary Jo? for an example of what I'm talking about.

On the other hand, the "radio ready" song is pretty clearly I Don't Wanna Shine, the story of a young light bulb who dreams of being a dentist. If only. Perfect example of mediocre lyrics futzing up a killer power-pop hook. Note how the song gets way more interesting on the third verse when we start to get a little creative with the mixing desk. More of that, Allen!!!

So, if you liked their old albums, this one's a no brainer. Buy it (Parasol.com yadda yadda yadda). Not sure it's the CD to break them to a super-wide audience, and there are a couple of tracks that I personally find flat out icky: every time Boy In Space comes on ("Standing here, before you now, hoping for, something somehow, looking for, an open door, this is what, I'm hoping for") I dive, dive, dive for the fast forward button. That's the exception, not the rule.

2005-05-17T19:00:00.000-05:00

Didn't want to follow a noisy post with another, so today is current poppy stuff that I've been liking.

I checked Technorati (hint: if you're thinking of posting about, oh say, Wilco and want to check to see if anyone else has ever done that, you can go to technorati.com and find out) but it looked like only one person had posted Canal Street by Love As Laughter, from their new album, and I'm not sure if it's still available.

I'd written about LaL some time ago, under the heading of "bands that come close to being great, but miss." Despite the deserved great reviews that LaL's new CD is getting, I still hear some basic problems. Underwritten endings, missing guitar solos, a slight shortage of hooks (compensated for by a charismatic looseness). That sort of thing. When I first heard Canal Street, I was surprised that a West Coast band had written the best NYC song I'd heard in some time. It sounds more like an NYC band than most bands that actually come from the city these days. Then I found out that LaL had relocated, making me feel incredibly smart for a moment. Wish they'd come up with a real ending for the track, but I'm not complaining too much.

As a reminder of glories past, here's my other favorite LaL track, #1 USA which still needs a friggin' bass. It's from their #1 U.S.A. album on K records.

Stumbled across what I think is the forthcoming MF Doom/Ghostface Killah album, but I'm not 100% sure [it's not...see comments...but still don't know what it is that I found]. Any experts, feel free to let me know if this is something else.

I'm not sure if Doom's sound is getting too familiar, but the album isn't knocking my socks off like Vaudeville Villain did. On the other hand, it's got another one of those weird, off-kilter things that I only ever hear Doom do. Here's Helpless Fool, produced by RZA (so it says) which isn't lyrically the strongest thing around (not horrible, not great) but I love the piano bit every bit as much as I loved the Beatles sample on Tick, Tick way back when.

2005-05-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Did I say I wasn't going to run out and get the new System of a Down album?

...'cause if I did, I totally lied.

Personally, I use the word "great" in several different ways when talking about music. There's "great" as in "fit to share a mix CD with the Dustdevils" and "great" as in "way, way better than I ever would have expected." The new System of a Down album turns out to be great.

Recent article in the Times gives them grudging respect, but goes to more than the expected amount of trouble to try to drag them down (via lyrics) to the level of their quasi-peers Linkin Park/Limp Bizket.

(Have I ever written about the fact that some years ago I very nearly became related - by marriage - to the guy most responsible for gracing the world with Linkin Park? Had that happened, could I have used my influence to bring about the Jad Fair/Linkin Park mashup that I dream of so often? The fate of the world can turn on things like that.)

I was kind of struck by SoaD's SNL performance despite the typically crappy sound. Then what's-his-name over at Stereogum took a potshot and promptly got his ass handed to him (his final post being a swiftly back-peddling "So, people who I've just insulted: please give me advice on this band that I know nothing about") and that was the straw that motivated me to get the new album Mezmerize.

I doubt it's going to end up in my top 10 of 2005, but it's easily the best (or most interesting, maybe) album I've heard in recent memory that I'll actually be able to discuss with the rest of the world, and I can just about guarantee you that it's a better use of your dollar than, for example, the forthcoming Believer snoozefest (I have so many reasons for being annoyed by this that I've decided to keep them to myself, so we can agree to disagree if you feel differently).

Back to SoaD: it reminds me structurally of Opeth in the way it quick cuts from chugga-chugga metal to a totally different genre. While Opeth go from cookie-monster grind to prog-psych (and are much heavier) (and better) this one seems to go from metal to rock-influenced Armenian folk (I mistook the latter for fake reggae during their SNL appearance. My bad).

On one level SoaD are sort of easy to stick daggers into, and if I were the type to make fun of bug-eyed guitar players with strange hair, I might. Maybe it's the Armenian thing or maybe it's their competition, but I find myself willing to cut their affect/lyrics more slack than usual, especially in the face of some surprisingly sophisticated songwriting. Clearly I don't get out much, but I haven't heard anything on the charts recently that twists and turns and eschews standard verse/chorus to the extent that SoaD do.

I have a feeling that posting an mp3 might be asking for trouble (powers that be: I'll be happy to take this down asap if it's a problem...I'm not terrifically invested in promoting things that are already popular) but I'll give it a shot. Here's the final track on the album, apparently part 2 of a Hollywood-related theme, Lost In Hollywood. It's mellower than the rest of the CD, though that's not the reason I'm posting it, and the loud songs are good too.

And since I may get asked to take that track down, I'll put up my favorite Opeth song as well. Here's Deliverance. Learn to get past the vocals, if that's a problem. Al Johnson is a great singer. Arto Lindsay is a great singer. So is this guy. Deliverance is long and kind of a big download (around 20Mb) but completely worth the effort: a well plotted multi-part epic with an incredible pay-off at the end that makes a lot of mathematically-inclined indie look pretty silly.

[Update: on May 18, Fluxblog (of which I'm much, much fonder than Stereogum) takes shot at SoaD as well. Ass-handing in progress. Strange how people fixate on their looks, which are really no weirder (in the grand scheme of the world) than anything else. Mezmerize continuing to rock the iPod, as they say. I suspect that it's going to be a tough one for a lot of people, as it's an undeniably strong album from one of the most casually dismissed - I'm guilty too - genres in current music. I'm expecting to see it on a lot of year end polls from people you wouldn't have predicted.]

2005-05-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

Smashing Orange reissue

Possibly the most unfortunately named band since Fuschia Sabbath, Smashing Orange were probably doomed to semi-obscurity from the moment they picked their monicker. Too bad, as their first EP-and-singles are somewhat legendary among shoegaze aficionados. Back in the day, they were hailed as the one US bandwagon hopper worth checking out.

Ebay watchers may have noticed that the early, out-of-print stuff has been popping up recently , and as usual the cynics among you would be right. There's an extremely belated CD reissue of "the good stuff" out, on Elephant Stone Records and titled 1991. Among others, the nice folks at Parasol are selling it. From the reissue, here's Sugar.

Fans of this stuff always seem to be horrified by Smashing Orange's subsequent transformation into a shoegazey biker rock band (or something like that). I'm not going to go all revisionist, but I've always had a soft spot for Something Comes Down from their 1992 CD The Glass Bead Game. Maybe you're pickier than me, but I say that a song that 1) kicks off with the singer going "Let's get it on!" and 2) includes the lyric, "Skintight leather across your ass!" and 3) has the singer imploring "Rock me one more time!" before the second wah-wah guitar solo, cannot possibly be all bad. Take it as fake cock rock or something, but it's totally catchy at the proper volume.

The rest of the album is decent enough. If you see a used copy for a buck or so, it's well worth a listen, though it's probably not going to change your life and you really don't want to spend more than a dollar or two at most. Seriously. Other tracks feature more vestiges of shoegazing past, but of course the song that I like second best is yet another over-the-top hard rocker, Look Behind You, which blasts off of the trailing notes of a much mellower song called Indians Say. Love Medication, Love Penetration! Whooo!

(Wow, you know it's something like ten years since I've listened to this album, and I gotta say I'm enjoying it more than I expected to when I filed it in the "I never listen to this, but something tells me to hold onto it" binder.)

2005-05-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's post about hearing Paul McCartney's Junior's Farm at work sent me straight for the Lee Harvey Oswald Band's cover of same. I didn't feel like this post got enough attention the first time around...some of these tracks are seriously amazing. So here's the original piece back for a second time.

If your boss is standing right behind you reading this, you might want to find some way to distract him/her while you casually re-direct to a page about boss things (as opposed to a blog about music by horrible people named Zowie Fenderblast and Dredge and James Meat, who seem to think that young girls and japanimation characters doing heroin is the height of wit, and who write songs with titles like Getting Wasted With The Vampires and Green Like The Color Of Blood).

For a history of the Lee Harvey Oswald Band, you can start with Allmusic, though after you think about it for a while and start to wonder why a band that formed in the 70's only released product in the 90's, and on Touch and Go at that, you might want to mosey over to Trouser Press for an alternate history.

One nice thing about the LHOB is that you can own everything they did by buying two CDs, both of which can usually be found cheap and used (how appropriate). Especially on their first CD A Taste Of Prison (which includes their first EP) they kind of sound like a bootleg recording of David Bowie jamming with the Stooges, except there's a real Urge Overkill "This is Rock And Roll, Baby" feel to the whole proceeding. I wish the album was a little bit...better. The idea of an uber-trashy Bowie-esque fake-relic is a great one, but when it's arguable that the rockingist track on your CD is the Wings cover, you might want to spend some more time in Badass Songwriting 101 and less time writing your liner notes in Japanese.

Jesus Never Lived On Mars is what I want them to be doing, but they only manage that level of quality a couple of times. A Taste Of Prison sounds cool, it sounds real, it sounds nasty, but it doesn't always sound good.

The second album Blastronaut has better sound (like a good bootleg this time) and better songwriting. The opening sing-along track The Greatest Man Who Ever Walked The Face Of The Earth runs smack into an extremely Man Who Sold The World sounding ultimatum called Surrender Earthlings, kicking things off in style.

[Between that track and Hilly Michaels' Close Encounters and Graham Coxon's People of the Earth, I'm getting tempted to put together a mix of "Earth people, we have come to destroy you...or something" songs. Any other suggestions?]

And, Rocket 69 (Hmmm, the first three songs on the CD are the three I'm featuring: that doesn't bode well!) is possibly the best thing they ever did, getting the proportions of beer, lust, and catchy chorus just right. Actually, the rest of the CD is pretty good, ok, fairly great if you're in the right frame of mind. Again, I want it to be faster, louder, and most of all funnier, but that's a "glass half empty" way of looking at a fairly strong album. I still think that the Dwarves and Urge Overkill did this sort of thing better, but LHOB carved out their own distinct niche in the land of fake (but real) Rock Stars.

2005-05-11T14:41:00.000-05:00

mp3.org people, don't click on this. No mp3s!

Just a random thought...the gym where I work has some sort of streaming radio thing, and in the past there's been an 80's/90's program that's often amazed me: Ultra Vivid Scene being one in particular that freaked me out, with X's "Hungry Wolf" a close second. Recently they seem to have switched into a classic rock mode. This morning, Junior's Farm (followed by Smokin' In The Boys' Room -- Motley Crue, not the original) with some Rush song that I didn't recognize in there somewhere (probably post-Signals). I'm getting kind of excited.

2005-05-11T11:25:00.000-05:00

Brendan O'Malley has ruined rock for an entire generation!

(Ok, not really, but I needed someone for the title.)

Recent events (a Sammy diss at another blog, unexpected contact with a relative of an original member of Love Child) have had me thinking about Alan Licht and Co. yet again, and it dawns on me that I've referenced the title of one of his old records a gazillion times without ever explaining.

Long ago, Alan Licht put out a little 7" single with the arresting title "Calvin Johnson Has Ruined Rock for an Entire Generation." I remember seeing it in the rack at Kim's Underground (the shop that pretty much spawned the evil Other Music) and thinking "Oh no!" for I was besotted with Beat Happening at the time. There's a list somewhere of my "top 10 albums" that I wrote up in 1991 that includes three Beat Happening albums. Why I did that, I have no idea...meaning of course that in ten years I may be writing about my favorite band System of a Down and looking back with self-pity on the delusional freak who spent all his time writing about Tin Tin.

(I want to take a moment to go on record as being slightly intrigued by System of a Down's Saturday Night Live performance, with the fact that they've been recently dissed by Stereogum only upping my interest. I was kind of reminded of Alice Cooper/Zappa which seemed sort of refreshing for an SNL band. I'm not saying I ran out and bought their album or anything...)

Anyway, right or wrong, it was a great title for a single. Later, Kim Gordon's band Free Kitten would reference it, and then everyone had a group hug and read a copy of Sassy together.

Here's the single:

Six Million Licks for Tone Loc

Tone Poem for Nikki Sixx Million

[For everyone who doesn't follow Vassar alumni quite as closely as we do, Alan Licht is "the guy who wrote the liner notes for the Television reissues" or "the guy who played in that Text of Light band with some guy from Sonic Youth, but it doesn't sound anything like 'Goo' and I want my money back" or "this guy who opened for this band we went to see who did this weird thing with a Donna Summer tape" or "this guy who used to be in a band with the founder of gurl.com"]

2005-05-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Joy Zipper's Other New Album

Joy Zipper are now inhabiting parallel universes. If you go to their US website, you can read all about their new CD American Whip. If you go to their UK website, you can read all about their new CD The Heartlight Set.

How this all came to be is kind of complicated and I've explained it before. Still, this US/UK split seems like a weird way to handle things, given, you know, the internet. The band is currently touring the US, and I'm wondering how exactly they're dealing with the whole situation (how do you promote a two-year-old "new" album when you have a real new album available in another country). A concert review here describes them playing "a brand new song called 'Window' that has yet to be recorded" (it's not brand new and it's been recorded twice now) but I can't tell if the band is lying to their audience or if the reviewer is just misinformed.

The Heartlight Set seems a little too unfocused to get Joy Zipper a major publicity upgrade. The CD opens up with Go Tell The World's drumbeat sounding for all the world like Gary Glitter until Tabitha Tindale comes in singing with her angry voice (the one that sounds like Kim Deal) and for a short while I was thinking that this was going to be the "the drugs wore off" record where Joy Zipper rock out. Not exactly a direction that I expected or wanted the band to pursue, but interesting enough.

For the most part, though, the opening is a false start. The album quickly settles back into a mix of mellow-ish ballads and American Whip style fuzz-touched drones (one track sounds almost exactly like a mix of Summer In The City with Spacemen 3's Hey Man). If you've been collecting EP's, you'll recognize revamped and slightly improved versions of several familiar tracks: 1, 2 Dreams I Had and Window. There's at least one mostly acoustic ballad (You've Changed) that sounds almost like a bid for mainstream radio, with Vinny's thin voice, the failure to go into a hard-rocking 3rd verse, and a sudden unexpected transformation into Sweet Home Alabama being the only things holding it back from world domination. Not bad, actually, though surprisingly normal.

The only spot where the wacko Joy Zipper that I first met really surface is on the wonderful For Lenny's Own Pleasure, which sounds like it comes straight from their first album: no chorus, oddball druggy lyrics delivered in Tabitha's happy voice, and an unfocused trajectory that seems like it could go on indefinitely, in a timeless smoking-pot-in-your-parents'-basement sort of way.

There's some strong material here, together with a few tracks that sound disturbingly stripped of most of the quirks that make this band such a source of fascination for me: sans quirks, Joy Zipper can get awfully close to post-Breeders 90's alt. girl rock and/or California 1970's singer songwriter. The overt My Bloody Valentine-isms of American Whip are mostly gone, other than the odd echo here and there. Kind of hard to make sense of what the group is up to here, though that probably describes everything they've ever done.

If you don't yet know Joy Zipper, I'd probably lean towards American Whip as a better introduction. If you're a fan, Heartlight Set is definitely worth picking up, though Americans might want to wait for a domestic release. On the other hand, given this band's history with record labels, it might be wise to jump on the import when it comes out in June. Who can say.

2005-05-06T10:52:00.000-05:00

Reruns again: V-Effect

[Used to do a column a day. Then three a week. Now even two a week is tough. Mystical Beast slides slowly towards oblivion. Here's another rerun, one that probably deserves a bigger audience than it got the first time around. Also, No Wave made one of its semi-regular appearances over at I Love Music the other day, and as usual this band nearly got left out. Here's the original post with some very minor revisions, and one extra track.]

I was still in high school in the early 80's, and I don't want to pretend to be an expert when I'm not, so I'll refer you to this article at Perfect Sound Forever which gives a lot of background for the bands that followed and were influenced by the original No Wave groups. (I had no idea that Amy Rigby was once part of that scene!) [After this ran I did a piece that expanded on that a little bit, here. I'm still very proud of the photo on that one.]

I do mean "influenced": V-Effect don't sound like anyone on No New York. They were much less chaotic, noisy and aggressive, and will probably remind you more of "downtown" or "Knitting Factory" music. My working definition of "Knitting Factory music" (which is no longer the right term, since the club books differently now): music with annoying saxophones that Americans don't like.

As you might guess from that definition, it's not a kind of music that I normally take to. But, V-Effect have a few things in their favor. Their songs have fairly tight structures, there's a lot of post-punk evident in their rhythm section, and their lyrics, which often sound like a Seven Sisters version of the Minutemen, are especially sharp. From their one album Stop Those Songs, here are my three favorite tracks: A Tree Grows in Managua, Boyce Life and New Song (Old Story). If you have to pick just one, I'd go for Boyce Life which features a clever take on its theme of cold war spying (see The Falcon and The Snowman for background details). [Not sure why I didn't post Master-Slave the first time around, as it's also utterly fantastic. Here it is.]

Band members were Rick Brown (who I know the best due to his later band Run On, formed with his wife Sue Garner and ex-Love Child guy Alan Licht), Ann Rupel (later in Curlew and probably other Downtown Music Gallery-type acts that I don't follow), and David Zonzinsky (about whom I know nothing).

The album is very much out of print, and has never been on CD. I kind of think that now might be a really good time to reissue it, given the recent resurgence of interest in this sort of thing. [Hasn't happened yet, and I sense that the No Wave revival-of-sorts is losing steam. Maybe in 2025. V-Effect also appear on a 1982 compilation called Peripheral Vision.]

2005-05-04T13:06:00.000-05:00

Checking up on Jessica Bailiff...

...is something I do regularly, ever since she helped nudge David Pearce of Flying Saucer Attack somewhat out of retirement with their Clear Horizon album several years ago. I'm still not sure that that album has gotten the proper amount of appreciation, especially given how well liked FSA were at one time. In case you didn't listen to me two years ago, here's another chance to hear Watching The Sea. For my money, it ranks up with FSA's best and beats the pants off of Smile in the "getting the older generation back to work" competition.

According to her website, there'll be another Clear Horizon album someday, and I'll keep one of my many eyes out for that, though my eye isn't holding its breath.

Meanwhile, she has a few new projects that are scheduled to come out soon. Most involve EPs and such, so I'm not posting any tracks.

One is a collaboration between Jessica and Rachel Staggs (of Experimental Aircraft) called Eau Claire (to be released on Clairerecords ha ha). An awful lot of bloggers, myself included, have posted Experimental Aircraft's wonderful song Symphony, one of the better shoegaze attempts in recent years, surprisingly created by a bunch of Texans. "Better" especially in the sense that they took the time to write an actual memorable melody before swathing it in gauze. I'm not going to post the track again, but if your button-clicking finger isn't out of wack, you can still get it at their website. Note that they too have a new album on the way.

Getting back to Eau Claire, you can hear some (kind of mid fi) samples here. The track Song For is surprisingly poppy and might please folks who find Jessica's solo stuff a little too spacy, while Freefall is more what you'd expect from these two. Kind of depressing that fewer than 400 people have heard these songs, if the stats on the myspace page (at press time) are to be believed.

Elsewhere, Jessica has a forthcoming 4-song 7" single that includes a cover of FSA's Come and Close My Eyes. The original is from Further, which is my favorite FSA album. Rather than try to describe FSA's sound, here's the original track. (FSA were influenced by a lot of people: old Pink Floyd, various Krautrockers, My Bloody blah blah blah, and the sonic limitations of a 4-track cassette recorder, but ultimately their sound was their own to the extent that comparisons are kind of pointless).

And finally, while I'm not really a fan of Low, I know that a lot of indie-types are. Jessica had a track on the Low tribute We Could Live In Hope that came out late last year. I'm mostly mentioning that to try to make her relevent to any god-forsaken soul who's thus far failed to hear Flying Saucer Attack, Clear Horizon, or her solo albums. Ultimately it may be the least interesting reason on this page to check her out. She was probably more interesting covering the other slowcore band (the one that didn't quite make it) Codeine. Here's her not-always-gentle version of their song Cave In, from an old split single (which, like much of her work, was produced by Alan Sparhawk, so I should probably be nicer about Low. Sorry.).

Foo Fighter fans may be interested to know that the original Codeine song was the inspiration for the not-very-Codeine-sounding band Cave In.

2005-05-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

We found a box full of CDRs of unmastered mixes of Shannon Worrell's The Moviegoer. Why you might care:

For years J&R Music World seemed to have an endless supply of cut-outs of a CD called Lucky Shoe by a band called September 67, and I often thought of buying a copy because it was produced by David Lowery (of Camper Van Beethoven and, um, some other band) and because it was on the Enclave label, which was briefly the home to Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister before folding. Ultimately, neither of those reasons seemed compelling enough to get me to pony up $6.99.

Had I bought the album, I might have followed up on the two members of the group, one of whom was Shannon Worrell.

I also would have heard guitarist David Immergluck in one of his post-Ophelias appearances, as well as a bunch of other people related to Sparklehorse, playing the backing tracks. I might have bought Shannon's debut CD Three Wishes, which currently sells for $50-$80. Had I done that, I would have heard a song called Eleanor that features Dave Matthews on backing vocals. (That last bit isn't so exciting. Also, don't let it scare you away. Shannon came from the same scene that birthed Dave Matthews, she was pals with him, and I forgive her.)

More to the point, I would have known who she was yesterday afternoon when my wife and I were out walking around Park Slope and passed a cardboard box full of CDRs sitting on the curb, waiting for the garbage man. Most of them were wet. I liked the cover art:

...which reminded me a bit of Belle and Sebastian. As did the presence of a song called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (see B&S's The Loneliness of a Middle-Distance Runner). Also, something about the CD just looked like it might be interesting...I've gotten pretty good at judging books by their covers. So I grabbed the three least-wet copies.

Interestingly enough, on the way home we passed a stringy bearded guy with a guitar and I snidely said to my wife, "Buffalo Soldier will be performed tonight," and my wife said "Phish, more likely," and we had a conversation that briefly touched on the Dave Matthews Band, and then we saw a squirrel doing something cute and the topic changed from jam bands to squirrels and we eventually got back to the house.

Later still, we played the CDR and discovered that it is, in fact, pretty good. Make that very good. File it under interestingly arranged jazz-inflected orch-pop girl-folk, if you can find a copy to file (it's out of print). I'm reminded at times of a number of Suzanne Vega derivatives, Camera Obscura and Lois (of K records). These are unmastered mixes, but aside from some bass-heavy EQ at times, they sound pretty good. Here's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which is one of several somewhat jazzy tracks that I tend to like the best, with very nice horns on the chorus. [As I think about it a few days later, I'm pretty sure that this song is an overt B&S homage, between the lyric about the "Bell(e) who broke the world" and the very B&S coda and the title.]

A little research showed us that the proper album The Moviegoer is kind of an under-the-radar cult classic among the cooler members of the post-Lilith set, who occasionally turn out to have better taste than they're often given credit for. We also learned that John Linnell of They Might Be Giants played accordian on the album, and that his wife Karen Brown produced it. I wonder if they live on Prospect Park West (site of the CDR spotting).

Here's semi-jazzy track #2, Shoot The Elephant, which finds a meeting place for folk influenced 90's alt-rock and Portishead. I'm liking this one a lot.

I don't have a copy of the real CD, so I'm not entirely sure, but my CDR contains a song not listed on the tracklisting of The Moviegoer over at Amazon. Here's that one, the echoey piano and spoken word Deep Sea Swimmer which sounds like it was written as an album-ender. If you go here, you'll see a tracklisting for the album that matches my CDR (unlike Amazon's) but the stream for Deep Sea Swimmer is actually the acoustic version of Movie Star Mom that ends the album according to Amazon, leading me to believe that the song order/selection was revamped at the last minute.

Ok, so it's not like discovering a Velvet Underground acetate at a garage sale. Still, pretty neat find. I'll be buying a copy of the real CD and will report on any interesting differences. Anyone who aleady has a copy, feel free to comment.

(Incidentally, there were about ten other copies in the box. After I found out what it was, I took the bus back up to see if I could find the rest, but they were gone. So, somewhere out there, there are copies of this floating around. Who knows who found them. As I reread this piece in the morning, I'm struck by the fact that my comparisons kind of suck...if I listened to more college-folk and alt rock I'd likely have done a better job. Still, that one song does sort of sound like Lois doing Belle and Sebastian, kind of. I read elsewhere that she sounds like Shawn Colvin, who I've never heard. See previous post about living in a cave.)

2005-04-29T21:29:00.000-05:00

Ok, it's been four months since I've posted about Magic Dirt. That's enough, right? They're currently working on a new album, which will presumably only come out in Australia. As usual I'm nervous, as I have been ever since Adalita learned to sing and the band made the decision to pursue a more sophisticated (ha!) alt. rock market. Nonetheless, there were hints here and there on their last album that they could still, if they wanted to, put out an absolutely crushing electric guitar record. Or at least b-side. Fingers are crossed.

My iPod conked out a week or so ago, so I've been making do with my iPaq, which holds about two CDs. And the result is that I've been listening to Magic Dirt's Friends In Danger over and over again. Which is fine, since it's probably one of my five favorite albums. From it, here's Heavy Business, which I don't think I've posted before. It's not the most instantly catchy of albums -- this may be the most immediate song -- but once it gets you it does. not. let. go. ever. Totally loving the "Know no fear" chant on this track. Friends In Danger, I should mention, features (in my opinion) the best guitar sound on any record ever made in the history of mankind. Yes, that includes [fill in the blank].

Someone requested help finding Skeletons by Inflatable Boy Clams. Here it is. If you're reading this and you don't know who Inflatable Boy Clams are, just trust me: you're going to want this track for your Halloween mix tape.

I was lazy and didn't finish the post that I intended to have for Friday. I'll try to be diligent over the weekend.

2005-04-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Haven't done stream of consciousness in a while...

I often have to explain to co-workers that I live in a small cave in Flatbush where my access to news is controlled by evil and perverse robots, which is why I haven't heard of [popular record that's topping the charts][famous movie star][new diet book][funny new sitcom] but can tell you that Claire Hamill recently released a new album.

And so, I may be the last person to learn that Robert Downey Jr. covered a Yes song on his solo album last year. I was so excited, though the reality turns out to be an epic battle between a fantastic song and a singer bent on killing it dead. I think the song, though losing a lot of blood, wins in the end with some help from its original singer. In case you also live in a cave somewhere, here's Bob Jr. doing Your Move. All he is saying is give peace a chance. Wouldn't it be fun if the next Dave Matthews Band album was a complete cover of Close To The Edge? It was? Damn robots.

In other news, I've been trying to remember the name of that wonderful mp3 blog that started up back in the early days of mp3 blogging and introduced me to The Hudson Brothers. I linked to it, I loved it, and now I can't remember its name. I feel so cheap. Last week I was trying to remember what it was, and I pulled out the Hudson Brothers compilation that I was inspired to buy and spent a wonderful afternoon with its fake (good-to-great fake) Beatles/Paul Mac/ELO brew. Here's one of the tracks that that late lamented unknown mp3 blog posted, the multi-part Medly. If anyone knows the blog that I'm talking about, please comment/email. It's driving me bats that I can't recall its name.

Anyway, that led me in the direction of the forthcoming Ringo Starr album Choose Love which is (really) pretty darn good (and I'm not one of those no good liars who's always trying to convince you that the new Paul McCartney album is a real comeback). It's produced (as has become customary) by Mark Hudson (guess what band he used to be in) and contains a song with one of the best fake endings I've heard in a while: here's Don't Hang Up. Much of the rest of the album is surprisingly strong too...I believe it's due out in June, and it's worth investigating even if you're not normally the type to buy boomer rock.

Your Move by Robert Downey Jr.
Medly by The Hudson Brothers
Don't Hang Up by Ringo Starr

2005-04-25T11:07:00.000-05:00

Still catching up with Jennyanykind

If you've been reading Mystical Beast for a while, you've heard me rave about Jennyanykind's one and only major label album Revelater, in which a previously indie shoegaze type band ditched that skin and turned into semi-slacker Americana (Dylan, etc.) with surprisingly fantastic results. It remains one of the best CDs that you can count on finding used for less than $1 (one cent at Amazon, at press time).

The follow up to that, Big Johns, was a smaller affair, coming out on a little label and recorded at home. While it's not bad, I've always felt like it walked a little too closely to alt. folk/country for my liking. I was vaguely aware that the band kept recording after that, but just assumed that they were going to continue in a stripped down vein. I also knew that they had an album called Peas and Collards. I'm not really a fan of the whole rootsy, down-homesy thing (or of Bob Dylan, actually), so I stayed away until recently, when I finally heard Peas and Collards while doing a bit on the Morisen label that released it, and discovered that it was better than I'd expected and more in a liquored-up and lazy swamp-blues vein.

So I decided to fill in the blanks, and a few weeks ago discovered that I'd totally missed their best album (unless the live disc that's on order blows my mind).

I Need You came out in 2000 and doesn't seem to have gotten much press nationally. Thanks especially to its production, it's a major change of direction after Big Johns. The band describe it as their dub album, which isn't totally off base. The vocals remain indisputably Dylan-esque (my wife always asks me why I'm listening to Bob Dylan when I play this, so I'm not just getting that from a press release) but the music is way stretched out and spacy, although the foundation remains shuffle-y drums, acoustic guitar, gritty electric guitar, and organ. What's interesting is that, at times, Jennyanykind seem to have arrived someplace not far from American Analog Set's early sound, though they got there via a completely different route. The most obvious example of that is Price Of Love.

The album has a tendency to get farther out as it goes along. My favorite tracks at this point are the last two. In A Village Square gets more and more trippy as it ambles towards its unresolved conclusion. And I Need You kind of flips back and forth between normal and weird, till weird wins in the end.

I can see why the record failed to thrive. It's clearly coming from a trad. Americana place, but the production positions it closer to drone/psych. It's an interesting mix that I haven't heard much of elsewhere (though late Yo La Tengo occasionally springs to mind, Jennyanykind's vocals are much more authentic sounding and really make a huge difference). Too southern for the Stereolab fans, too weird for the jam/alt. country set, it seems like a tough record to market. Allmusic says, "Mostly, though, this is music for the No Depression crowd," which is, I think, exactly wrong. In a way, Jennyanykind sometimes remind me of the Lilys, in the sense that after emerging from a noisy shell, they proceeded to take a sound from one genre and put it to a largely unrelated use, confusing everybody.

The band is pretty much defunct, but their website is still worth checking out (poke around and you can download some live tracks, and preview Revelater).

One of the twin brothers who fronted Jennyanykind is currently recording an album with Dean Wareham producing, and I'm extremely intrigued, though it's hard to tell from the demos on the site what this might end up sounding like.

Price Of Love by Jennyanykind
In A Village Square by Jennyanykind
I Need You by Jennyanykind

2005-04-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

Yearly Announcement

Tomorrow marks the beginning of one of the most important holidays of the year. I speak of the brief period, lasting several weeks, when Coca-Cola is available sweetened with sugar, rather than with that corn syrup garbage. Thanks, as always, to Jews everywhere (oh wait, that includes me) for helping keep decent tasting soft drinks available. Look for bottles with Kosher For Passover marks, and stock up.

Next week: interviews that I didn't do.

2005-04-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

Shack Week Part 3: HMS Fable and singles

This is the last day of a week spent with one of the best English bands to fail to make it in the US. Maybe there's an indication of a problem here [list of all the yearly best-ofs that HMS Fable appeared in, and then Christgau giving it a "dud" rating]. I'm not a Christgau hater, but if you ever wanted evidence that he has the capacity to blow something big-time, this is probably it. The online Ink Blot magazine did its bit to salavage America's reputation by putting HMS Fable in their top 10.

You could argue that Fable came a couple years too late to cash in on brit-pop, but I doubt that all the people who'd bought What's The Story Morning Glory four years previously had died in the iterim. Oasis were still selling in 1999, and Travis shifted a record or two as well, without half the hooks that Shack were bringing to the table. Fable's production is inarguably radio-ready, and it's got something like 6 or 7 songs that could easily have been promoted as singles. And on Fable, Shack finally go uptempo anthemic, with tracks like the opener Natalie's Party crying out to be played for a stadium full of teary-eyed fans.

I'm very aware that there are solid reasons why a lot of the music that I like never makes it to mainstream radio. I can't think of a single artistic explanation of the failure of HMS Fable.

To add insult to injury, Shack released two singles from the album (Comedy and Natalie's Party) in the typical UK manner: two versions of each with two b-sides apiece. And the sad fact is that if you put together the eight b-sides with the one non-album single Oscar (and please, please listen to the words of that one...Shack were decidely not Oasis when it came to lyrics) you get a nine song album that's good enough to have been a hit on its own.

At this point, the most cost effective way to collect all this might be via The Fable Sessions, which collects most Fable material under one roof. On the other hand, you'd miss a gem called 24 Hours, and with used copies of HMS Fable going for a buck or two in the US, it might be smart to start with a used copy. If you like it, be aware that the b-sides are at least as good as what's on the album.

After Fable sank without a trace in the US, I wasn't expecting to hear from Shack again. When they resurfaced in 2003 with Here's Tom With The Weather (see Monday's post) it felt like the somewhat muted morning after a huge party. Michael and John Head are still theoretically writing songs, so who knows how things will end.

Natalie's Party by Shack
Oscar by Shack
24 Hours by Shack

2005-04-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

Shack Week Part 2

This week is all about doing a casual overview of the British band Shack, who might just be a little bit too unknown in the US.

Shack's first album was Zilch, and I wrote about it last week. Get it fast if you're going to...Japanese reissues have a way of going out of print.

Following Zilch there comes one of the better "recording disasters" stories, which has been written about frequently by all sorts of people. In short, Shack went back into the studio and recorded a follow-up, Waterpistol. Studio burns down, master tapes destroyed. One DAT survives, but oops, we left it in the glove compartment of a rental car. Huge search, tape located, and several years later the album comes out (not on the biggest label in the world), long after whatever momentum Zilch had generated has fizzled.

Waterpistol fixes most of the production flaws that affect Zilch: the drums are appropriate and there's a fuller and warmer sound all around. Some vestiges of Manchester remain, as in the great track Dragonfly. Otherwise, you get largely restrained, top-notch songwriting in a classic 60's vein. A fair number of Shack fans rank this as their best album. It's worth noting at this point that Michael Head has a very warm, very English, and very distinctive voice, such that any song he sings is immediately identifiable as his. Meaning that Shack rarely sound like imitators, even when they're flat out stealing other people's riffs (e.g. So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star, On Broadway).

In 1997, a few years after the belated release of Waterpistol, Michael and brother John Head of Shack put out an album as Michael Head And The Strands. This is probably my second favorite release by Shack and related bands. It crystalizes the Love/Byrds axis into a beautiful, largely acoustic album that's as classic, warm and fuzzy as you could possibly ask. Another blog, coincidentally, featured this album on Monday and posted the song that I would have posted, so go here to download the indispensible X Hits The Spot (hint: it probably should have been "H" hits the spot) from the Strands album. As a special bonus, here's a demo of the opening track Queen Matilda, a lovely acoustic piece with pretty and haunting lyrics. I'm so not a words person, but I'll go on record as saying that the line:

What would you do
If the sun hits the ground
And the trees poked through
Beneath the sea

Food everywhere
And fog on the waves
And the fish float by in gravity

especially as sung by Michael Head, qualifies as poetry, in a good way.

One more day where we get to HMS Fable, possibly the best ever hit album that no one (well, virtually) in America knows. And the best batch of b-sides that I know of.

Dragonfly by Shack
Queen Matilda Demo by Michael Head & The Strands

2005-04-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

Shack Week

Nothing fancy, and not chock full of rarities, this week will be an overview of Shack, following up on last week's post about the rerelease of their long out of print debut album Zilch. This may be more for Americans than for people from other countries: I know that Shack aren't big stars or anything at home, but my sense is that they're really, really not well known in the US.

I'll start with their most recent album.

Here's Tom With The Weather came out without much fanfare in 2003, taking me by surprise (click here to see a short clip that includes the sketch that gives the CD its title). The CD that preceded it, HMS Fable, was an incredible failed shot at a hit, somewhat along the lines of Oasis but smarter and subtler. In contrast to that, Here's Tom feels like a band come back down to earth.

[If you're not a regular reader, you might be under the impression that I'm a huge Oasis fan. I'm not, though I do think their first album was sort of promising. For one album, Shack were kind of comparable to Oasis, but it's not that great a similarity and probably has more to do with production than anything else. It's just that if HMS Fable had hit, it probably would have hit with the same people who made Oasis big in the US. Make sense?]

Reviews of Here's Tom tend to use words like "lush," "gorgeous," "understated" and "autumnal," which is often a bad sign, indicative that someone has just put out an album full of nicely recorded crap. Initially I wrote Here's Tom off as boring. After a few years, I've decided that the problem with it has more to do with sequencing, and the lack of one or two more upbeat tracks to pick up the pace. Song for song it's fine, but taken as a whole it's one of those mid-tempo records that can bog down if you're not in exactly the right mood. My advice: shuffle its tracks in with poppier things, and they'll sound just fine.

From it, here's Chinatown which harks back a little bit to HMS Fable (since I'm spending the whole week on the band, and since Here's Tom is in print, I'm going to be stingier than usual with the mp3s). This is one of the more upbeat tracks, so if you drink a lot of coffee, look elsewhere for your entertainment needs. Be aware, though, that you'll be missing an amazine Love-style song, complete w/mariachi interlude, called Meant To Be, as well as a number of quasi-folkie gems. I've known a fair number of people who were underwhelmed by this album, but as of now I'd call it a worthwhile, though slow-growing, investment.

For anyone who's not interested in Shack or Chinatown, here's Twinn Connection performing 6th Avenue Stroll. The twins are backed by Carolyn Hester's Coalition, Carolyn Hester being the woman who gave Bob Dylan his big break. This is from the Twinn's self-titled (and only) album from 1968, which apparently came out on CD in Korea (I haven't a clue on the details but it seems to be available here).

Chinatown by Shack
6th Avenue Stroll by Twinn Connection

2005-04-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

Lee Miller, the band, not the photographer.

I posted a song by the Finnish group Circle on Monday this week. In case you didn't download it, they've done a fantastic job of dragging a Krautrock/Space Rock template into the present, without sounding like revivalists. You can find reviews of a ton of their (often out of print) albums over at Aquarius Records.

Lee Miller (the band) is made up of two guys who played in Circle (Jyrki Laiho and Janne Peltomaki) and one person who may be familiar to fans of the NY noise scene. Jordan Mamone has been keeping the flame of early Swans etc. alive with his band Alger Hiss, still theoretically together though there haven't been many external signs of this lately. Jordan Mamone also has a special place reserved for him in heaven for being the first person to write a decent overview of my favorite band The Dustdevils, said review initially appearing in Badaboom Gramophone before being adopted by Trouser Press.

Lee Miller results from a trip that Jordan took to Finland in 2004, and it's an album that you'd probably learn about in Post-No Wave History 101 if it had come out twenty years ago. Since it's not yet released, I'll have to settle for calling The Futility of Language one of the best CDs of 2005 that you can't buy.

Why this sound hasn't been done more often, I have no idea. Rock solid drums make for a perfect framework for Mamone's noise guitar, informed by Swans, The Dustdevils, and any number of bands that I've probably never heard of, and spruced up with the occasional spiraling lead by Laiho. The effect is unlike, and I'd venture to say superior to anything I've heard by either of the component bands. Lee Miller has more bite than Circle, but more momentum than Alger Hiss. The songs often move along like 18th Dye (i.e. very German sounding drums) if that group had been less about minimalism on the guitar side of things. A more powerful Sonic Youth EP (the out of print debut, which I probably listen to more these days than anything else they've done) also springs to mind.

At this point my favorite track is Tarn, which I'd easily nominate for a spot in the hall of guitar-noise classics. It kicks off with a guitar playing relaxed circles around a steady drum kit in subtle 5/4 time. After being joined by bass, the group plays through permutations for a few minutes, a chugging rhythm guitar propelling things forward, before wind-chime guitar and a switch to 4/4 kick off a steady increase in the noise quotient, soon anchored by a two-note bass riff. The vocals come almost as an afterthought, very Dustdevils-like and also appropriate given that the subject matter is "the futility of language", and the song ends with a perfect series of atonal chords ringing out. I've been playing this over and over and over, and it strikes me as the sort of thing Branca might have come up with had he merged The Static with his more formal work. It sounds more composed than most improv noise, while retaining enough swing to avoid the kind of stiffness that hampers early-early Sonic Youth.

Second fave track is the album ender Unwelcome Words, which takes a Flipper-esque, beat-it-into-the-ground, guitar riff and tacks on noise like Flipper never imagined, with great shouted vocals alternating with a spoken bit...the most audible line being "scar on her face" which seems about right for a song that's about a vaguely unsettling drink shared among three strangers in a cold bar in the middle of nowhere.

One great track from the album is due to appear on a forthcoming book/CDR tribute to Bruce Witsiepe (from early no-wave group Circle X) called Anti-Utopia: The Swan. I'll post details on how to order that when I get them. Hopefully the Lee Miller album will be out sometime this year.

Otherwise, Jyrki Laiho is in a group called Hotguitars, and Jyrki and Janne play together in a group called Stalwart. And you can actually buy those bands' CDs!

Tarn by Lee Miller
Unwelcome Words by Lee Miller

2005-04-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

Zilch resurfaces: get it before Japan catches fire and we have to look for the copy of Japan that we left in the glove compartment of the rental car.*

Shack are a British band, plagued with bad luck and a generally low profile that's even lower in America, to the point of nonexistence. Next week will likely be devoted to them.

A fast, fast, fast overview for everyone who doesn't know them (which is pretty much...everyone in the US). They're an often glorious pop group who've released a number of albums that might be described as Beatles/Byrds/Love filtered through the sound of late 80's England turning into early 90's England (i.e. Tha La's edging into Oasis, especially if Oasis had been composed of introverted Love fans). If I had to try to hook your interest quickly, I'd mention that they were Arthur Lee's backing band for one of his tours where he performed his old catalog. A bootleg of that was subsequently issued legitimately...details are here.

I make the Oasis comparison with hesitation, given that the word "Oasis" conjures up a lot of associations that have nothing to do with Shack, but Shack's big pop move (1999's H.M.S. Fable) had the makings of an Oasis-level, 60's-updated-to-90's, hit. It wasn't. Around the same time, the group released a series of import-only singles that, assembled, could have formed a second hit record. The story of Shack is filled with disasters, labels folding, great material going unheard, etc. Their true fans are gluttons for punishment. A month or so ago, these fans had to suffer through a bit of good news.

The joke goes that Shack's first album, Zilch, was named for the number of copies it sold. Pretty much since its release, it's been incredibly hard to find a copy. That finally changed very recently, when the good folks of Japan, the music lover's favorite country, saw fit to reissue it with bonus tracks (if you've noticed copies of Zilch showing up on eBay lately, now you know why). In one of the most astounding examples of the glories of the modern world, I ordered a copy of the reissue on a Saturday from HMV Japan and received it the following Monday. Total cost with shipping was 4800 yen, which is probably several million dollars at this point, but I'll find out when the credit card bill arrives.

I'd been making do with a CDR, and the reissue is beautiful, coming in one of those pretty replica lp sleeves (thankfully missing the ugly logo in the picture above) and including a number of bonus songs that I'd never heard, plus what appear to be extensive liner notes that I can't read. It's a very nice package.

Zilch, with some held-over-from-the-80's production, isn't the album I'd use to convert the unconverted. The drum sounds can be distracting, and the songs, while great, are subtle and need time to grow on you. But, for people who follow the band this is pretty big news. I'll try the unconverted-converting thing next week, but meanwhile here's John Kline and Who Killed Clayton Square. On the latter track, you can hear the group kind of nosing around the edges of the Manchester sound, something that they wouldn't really end up pursuing. With the exception of a dated remix of I Know You Well, the extra tracks on the reissue (mostly singles and b-sides) are worth having.

*Where I give in to the rock writer's urge to make semi-obscure references in the title of the piece. Google "shack waterpistol glove compartment" for details.

John Kline by Shack
Who Killed Clayton Square by Shack

2005-04-12T21:10:00.000-05:00

New York Noise report

Just in case you're not watching what seems to be NYC's best local tv show. It gets rerun later this week.

Best videos (in my opinion of course) were Human Television (the 80's are back!) with I Forgot (mp3 clip and a video for another song here). Also The Dears with Lost In The Plot (the 80's are back!) which seems to be in heavy rotation although it's not exactly new. My wife loves their album (the page I've linked fails to mention a major Blur aspect to the band's sound).

Ivy stopped by with their somewhat old Let's Go To Bed (the 80's are back!) and it's nice to know that Adam Schlesinger is good for something other than proving that Rick Ocasek was right when he decided not to use Cathy as his poetic muse. And finally, a very nifty Regina Spektor video (for Us, also available on her website, though it looked better on tv) that made me temporarily forget Nellie McWho.

Elsewhere Spoon sound like Elvis Costello, and somewhere Nick Hornby is smiling. Mando Diao look like the Beatles and will presumably get blown off the stage when they appear with the Raveonettes. Smoosh looked a little shaky live. Unicorn spotted in the Beck video (there seems to be at least one unicorn a week these days in video land). And I finally got to see video of the Danielson guy's famous tree costume.

A real post will appear tomorrow morning.