Category: Blogs A-J

NY residentz! R-rated Promo Post for Jeffrey Jensen’s The Jewish!!

Jensen wrote:

Dear John,


It’s been a turbulent last few months in the life of your favorite band. We lost our manager Stein. We got denied a record contract. And Nightface has Ass-Herpes (again). We’ve also been eschewing a lot of trash talk claiming we’re a no-talent “noveltyâ€Â act lacking the grapes to “really rockâ€Â. Most of this comes from the mouths of the jealous (a rival band from Queens). All this got us thinking. We’re they serious? Do people really question our grapes? What are our grapes? Either way, we took it as a challenge. So this Saturday we’re serving up a set of jamz that is certain to end this discussion once and for all. The Jewish will play an All American Rock ‘n’ Roll Revue!!! No filler!!! No ballads!!! No fat chicks!!! If that weren’t enough, we’re also debuting a new bassist and security guard/manager. Looks like another one for the ages. Bring Boogie Shoes!!!
The Jewish at 9:00
famous gypsters Cass McCombs and Arboretum play after
Saturday May, 5 2007
at DON PEDRO’S

90 Manhattan Ave @ McKibbin St 

Brooklyn, NY

He never gets tired of that ass-herpes joke.

Me over here, reference WAY over there, but there’s a point here…

and it starts off on the right track…

from the Letters section in Magnet 75:

I’ve never quite understood why MAGNET readers take Andrew Earles so seriously. It’s an intentional shtick: 95 percent of the time he’s abrasive or idiotic, five percent of the time he’s actually amusing. I think those are the actual percentages he’s hoping to achieve. Earles reminds me of the frontman for the late-70’s San Francisco band No Alternative; he called himself Johnny Genocide. In the long periods between songs, Genocide would accost the audience by spitting, throwing beer cans and calling us “a bunch of fuckin’ fags.â€Â I always thought this was stupidly hilarious – even funnier when the audience became upset. When Genocide actually got down to playing his guitar and singing, No Alternative was a damn good pre-thrash punk band. Yet I could never quite take them seriously because of the spectacle they created. In the same way, I have difficulty taking Earles seriously when he’s doing reportage or reviewing outside of the Street Team column. That’s the real problem with Earles, not all these other reader complaints. How much of his non-column work can I trust? Eventually, No Alternative disbanded. Genocide went on to dye his hair black and start a band called the Swingin’ Possums, playing rough and exciting punky rockabilly. Genocide dropped the abuse shtick and let the music speak for itself. Earles might want to take a lesson from him.

– William Breiding

Somewhere

 

 

I downloaded Joanna Newsom’s new EP Joanna Newsom …

I downloaded Joanna Newsom’s new EP Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band a couple of days ago from eMusic, and I finally sat down last night to listen to it.

And it’s a freaking revelation. All you Joanna Newsom-haters who want to know why I love her so much must – nay, MUST – hear this version of “Cosmia”. All the songs on the EP are live arrangements, but they’ve brought some serious intensity here.

First of all, she’s obviously taken some sort of voice lessons, because all the little-girl tone is gone, and she’s somehow taken her voice, which I always thought interesting and sweet, and brought a level of passion and power to her singing that just blows me away. I say this as a person who rarely gets excited about the human voice.

Then, there’s the arrangements. Let me say briefly why I liked Ys. so much: where some Joanna-haters just heard self-indulgence, I heard an attempt to recast American folk music as a much older artform. To explain, consider that The Band was a reflection of American folk and country by a mostly Canadian rock band that took elements of this artform and combined them with a sort of art-rock lens to make music that was completely new but sounded centuries old. Now, over in England, the Fairport Convention, inspired by The Band, decided to do the same with British folk music, only they had, y’know, almost a millenium of music tradition to draw upon. Liege and Lief, their answer to The Band, also blended the old and new in a completely original way, recasting the past as a vital component of folk music moving forward. With this in mind, I think Joanna Newsom’s Ys. is a similar work to Susanna Clarke’s book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Clarke took the literary trappings of Dickens and Trollope, and recast British history as one of fantasy with near-realistic (at least in terms of Victorian literature) terms. Ys. is to American folk music what Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is to British literature and Liege and Lief is to British folk music, an attempt to recast American history as if it had 1,000 years and a folkway of fantasy to draw upon.

Now, Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band takes one of the songs from Ys., “Cosmia”, and re-arranges it to play up the Appalachian sound. The result is just flat-out gripping, and I barely breathed through its 13 minutes. It starts similar to the album version, just quiet voice and harp, but the other musicians, at first building on Van Dyke Parks’ album arrangements before abandoning them, slowly add intensity until by the final chorus, Newsom is almost hollering, a drum is pounding, and the musicians sound like they are about to break their instruments. As I lay in bed last night, listening to this, breathless, I felt like I was discovering her music all over again, with all due excitement.

NEED NO CAUCASIAN GUILT!

When I was a teen I had a habit of falling asleep at night with the clock radio on, only to wake up around 3 or 4am to turn it off. Most of the time I’d doze to KFJC, my local college radio station, and I was such an adept snoozer that even hardcore punk, screaming early industrial noise and The Birthday Party, three of KFJC’s specialties circa 1981-84, couldn’t stir me. I did get into trouble twice. Once some late-night program was playing a song called “The Boilerâ€Â by a spinoff band made up of members of THE SPECIALS. The song, as I remember, was fairly musically pedestrian but spooky ska number with a spoken-word tale of a woman dodging an attempted rape. At one point in the song she starts screaming, and that coincided with some hideous dream I was having, culminating in me awaking in total, abject terror. Good times!

The only other time I remember that happening was getting startled awake by a song I’m posting for you today, 1979’s “Caucasian Guiltâ€Â by a short-lived San Francisco duo called NOH MERCY. Ah, I recall it like it was yesterday, the mellifluous notes that floated into my slumber as vocalist Esmerelda Kent shrieked, “I didn’t put no JAP in a CAMP!!â€Â. I didn’t hear the song again outside of 1-2 more times that year until an LP compilation came out in 2000 of rare, weird, ultra-DIY, 70s-80s artpunk noise called “I HATE THE POP GROUPâ€Â that had this track on it. It originally was part of another comp, a 7â€ÂEP from 1979 called “EARCOM 3â€Â that I used to see around in the bins, and which had a handful of other noisy acts + two tracks from THE MIDDLE CLASS 45 (!). The other one from them on this EP – the only other song in NOH MERCY’s brief discography – is called “Revolutionary Spyâ€Â, and it’s nowhere near the caliber of “Caucasian Guiltâ€Â. I’m posting it for you completists.

This covers all the bases – drums, vocals, muffled sound, anger, screaming, alternately great yet often painfully lame lyrics, admirable socio-political statements, nasty words, and wonderfully bizarre echo-chamber recording techniques. I love it. I’m including a picture of the band playing live in ’79 at San Francisco’s MAB, courtesy of Steve Harlow, whose punk photo site you should check out. Bombs away!

Play or Download NOH MERCY – “Caucasian Guiltâ€Â
Play or Download NOH MERCY – “Revolutionary Spy”

This past weekend, I watched the documentary Danie…

This past weekend, I watched the documentary Danielson: A Family Movie, which is about the band/musician also called The Danielson Famile, Brother Danielson, and Danielsonship. I have been a tepid fan of the band for a little while, liking some of the aspects of their music but finding the overall sound a bit offputting. The documentary made a convert of me, and this is language the band might appreciate, as most of its songs are overtly Christian.

The documentary focuses on the discomfort many of the band’s fans, who are primarily indie music people, have with the band’s explicitly Christian message. Some acknowledge that they have no problem when gospel or country singers sing about their faith, but they find it strange when indie bands do so, especially bands as oddball as Danielson. I should take a minute to describe the band and the sound.

The Danielson Famile is primarily composed of Daniel Smith on vocals and guitar with his siblings singing and playing flute, glockenspiel, or drums. One of his oldest friends plays keyboards, and marriage to any member of the band seems to bring along band membership. His friend’s wife plays violin and sings. Daniel Smith’s wife comes aboard as a singer. One of his sisters’ husband joins the band late in the movie as a bassist. His friend Sufjan Stevens, who is a brilliant artist in his own right and many times more successful in finding an audience than Danielson, passes in and out of the band (and as a fan, I could have lived without learning of Stevens’ nebbishy/needy personality, but what are you going to do?).

There’s a scene in which Daniel Smith’s parents joke about how the indie music press always compares the Danielson Famile with bands they’ve never heard of. With that in mind, the math formula I have for the Famile would be (The Shaggs + Pere Ubu + The Pixies) covering (early Talking Heads + Deerhoof) fronted by (the guy from The Flaming Lips screeching at the top of his lungs + the Partridge Family). Odd, odd, odd music. Did I mention that they all used to dress in modified nurse’s uniforms, that Daniel Smith occasionally performs solo in an elaborate tree outfit, or that they’ve constructed an elaborate mythology around the symbols of the band?

Anyway, the documentary was thought-provoking, tackling not just the band for the band’s fans’ sake, but also the band’s faith and acceptance by pop culture mavens and indie rock fans. There’s a subtle suggestion in the movie – maybe not even a suggestion, but just a hint – that Sufjan Stevens stole ideas from Danielson to achieve his success, but I have to say that I don’t hear a lot of Danielson in Stevens’ music. And Stevens’ support of his friend appears to be heartfelt, so I don’t think the archetypical theme of the hanger-on who steals the real genius’s work and makes it more mainstream really applies in this case.

Oh, and a final note. My friend Michael Sherer of the band Padre Pio appears in the background of a scene in which Daniel Smith’s artwork has a showing at a gallery in Brooklyn. He appears to be representing the way in which Brooklyn hipsters dig Danielson, although he assures me via email that he isn’t really a fan of the band, but was there to check the artwork of Tim Rutili (of Califone). But it’s extra-cool, anyway!

THE HARD ROCKING, NO SCHLOCKING CAREER OF SCOTT “DELUXEâ€Â DRAKE

SCOTT “DELUXEâ€Â DRAKE is an individual whom I’ve proudly been acquainted with for well over sixteen years now; back in my young twenties, his nascent band THE HUMPERS would crash on my floor and back up my toilet every time they came through San Francisco. Given their (undeserved) lack of profile at the time (1991 and 1992), a layperson like me was even given the opportunity to help book them shows at out-of-the-way dives across town, which they of course blew the doors off of. Of course, a limited subset of residents of Southern California had already been thrilling to the rock hijinks and shenanigans of Scott Drake and his older brother Jeff for almost a decade, with Scott in the glamtastic, HEARTBREAKERS-esque punk group the SUICIDE KINGS and of course vis-à-vis Jeff’s fantastic glory stompers THE JONESES. When The Humpers roared in with leather jackets blazing in the hot SoCal sun at the dawn of the 90s, the rest of the planet began to take some notice as well, and The Humpers cranked out several great loud-ass, Cleveland-punk-revering albums and 45s through the rest of the decade. Three of them came out on Epitaph Records not long after that particular label had generated a boatload of cash from several crossover punk rock hits, which enabled the smaller, more true-to-form bands on the label (like The Humpers) to tour to infinity & the great beyond, and to also generate a rabid, if small, following outside of the LA basin.

Eight years later, and after a brief one-album pit stop in a rawkin combo called THE VICE PRINCIPALS, the now-Portland, Oregon-resident Drake is still putting out hotshit new records under his own moniker, with longtime collaborator JEFF FIELDHOUSE (ex-Suicide Kings and Humpers, currently of 8-FOOT TENDER, who put out a 2003 CD with Drake as well). The brand new one is called “GRAND MALâ€Â, and I was so impressed by the keep-the-faith roar of the thing, I reckoned it was time for a Deluxe Drake mp3 retrospective. Here are five love bombs from the man’s storied career – and do keep your eye peeled for the “Grand Malâ€Â CD; it comes out officially on June 12th. (two tracks from it are below).

Play or Download THE SUICIDE KINGS – “Take Yer Medicineâ€Â (from 1985 7â€ÂEP on Adult Negro records)
Play or Download THE HUMPERS – “Up Yer Heartâ€Â (from 1992 CD “Positively Sick on 4th Streetâ€Â)
Play or Download THE VICE PRINCIPALS – “Snitch” (from 2000 LP “After School With The Vice Principals”)
Play or Download SCOTT “DELUXEâ€Â DRAKE – “Grand Malâ€Â (from 2007 CD “Grand Malâ€Â)
Play or Download SCOTT “DELUXEâ€Â DRAKE – “Shanghai Cabaretâ€Â (from 2007 CD “Grand Malâ€Â)

MARZIPAN – RARE SAN FRANCISCO 90s EAR-GRINDER POP

This 45 from a short-lived San Francisco band never really found a home in the ears of the rock and roll cognoscenti when it came out in 1992, and quite honestly I don’t even know how I came into contact with it. It was probably a promo I received during a time when packages of 45s were a dime a dozen, and most that I got sent (I did a fanzine at the time) were from labels who could afford to blast their records out to anyone & everyone, which usually meant they were marginal-to-terrible. But this MARZIPAN single, on Echonet Records, grabbed me quickly, and it’s still a favorite to this day. First, it’s one of the loudest records I’ve ever heard, despite being an ostensible (garage) pop record. Mastered so far into the red I could barely even record it for you, both “I Believeâ€Â and “Last Train To The Sunâ€Â benefit from a wall of guitar that defines everything else about the songs – which, at the end of the day, are happy little ditties of simple strum & sunshine. Some might attempt to link it to concurrent UK bands like My Bloody Valentine and the like, but you – you know better.

MARZIPAN were around at the same time as the heyday of Tom Guido’s PURPLE ONION nightclub in San Francisco, so not long after this single came out, I went to see them play to an audience of about 30 there one night. They were great! I went with the head of punk rock label Empty Records, then better-known for slammin’ near-HC bands like THE FUMES or wild garage punks like the SINISTER SIX. He made an attempt to sign the band on the spot, distinct pop leanings be damned – they were that impressive. Several months later the band was gone, and I’ve heard nary a soul speak positively or negatively of them since, which is a shame. Here is their one and only recorded legacy – hope you enjoy it.

Play or Download MARZIPAN – “I Believeâ€Â (A-side)
Play or Download MARZIPAN – “Last Train To The Sunâ€Â (B-side)

The Mooch

The Jensen part of the Earles and Jensen comedy partnership recently assumed a character, traveled over the pond, and harrassed the Arctic Monkeys for the purpose of creating a viral video YouTube craze. All parties were in on this, though band and management didn’t really understand what they bit off.

Here’s Jeff’s message to the people:

“So as some of you may or may not know, I went Europe a few weeks back to terrorize the Arctic Monkeys. They’re a hugely popular â€Ârockâ€Â band from Britain. Here’s a couple installments of the â€Âviral videosâ€Â. Unfortunately the label and Band’s management and I didn’t see totally eye to eye on this and I feel that most of the truly fucked-up stuff stayed on the cutting room floor due to it’s crude and abusive nature. C’est la vie. There’ll be a few more installments. Feel free to check youtube in a week or so. Query ’Artic Monkeys and Mooch.’â€Â

Check some of it out….RIGHT HERE.


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