Category: Blogs A-J

That music writer that you hate….

Another music writer recently expressed a fear that he might be becoming “that guy that we used to hate.â€Â Specifically, it’s the music writer that can only pull passion, or maybe just general interest, out of old music. We used to make fun of “that guy.â€Â We convinced ourselves that no matter what the future year might be, it would yield amazing new sounds for us to go nutz over.

“l’ll never end up like that. What an old, jaded asshole.â€Â

Well, guess what happened?

BUT THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING TO THIS PHONED-IN POST!!!!

These albums came out this year. They did it for me. AND….I’m leaving some out (not intentionally). AND….we’ve got 3.5 months to go.

Thurston Moore Trees Outside the Academy (Ecstatic Peace) – I can’t review this because I’ve already done so for Vice and The Onion (look for it next week). Great album.

Shocking Pinks s/t (DFA) – Review forthcoming in October issue of Spin. That and, I don’t feel like it.

Liars s/t (Mute) – It’s no “lieâ€Â that this is a fine album!!

Pelican City of Echoes (Hydrahead) – Breaks absolutely no new ground, but the damn thing is catchy!! Well, catchy for something that gives off very little emotion.

Jesu Conqueror (Hydrahead) – J.K.B lookin’ healthy for his age!! Granted, he did form Napalm Death at age 4.

Pinback I’m a Humorless Dick (Touch and Go) – First three songs? Unbelievably catchy. I’d like to attribute them to the guy from Three Mile Pilot.

Shellac (the new one) (Touch and Go) – Dunno the title. You know the Earles drill re: looking things up! SOMETIMES I DON’T FEEL IT!!! I’ve only heard a collective four minutes of this album. Clearly I’m qualified!! I felt some rocking within the rigid confines of a Shellac record, where you get what’s expected. It shines with amazing cover art and packaging that exceeds the combined cost of every rainbow bumper-stickered Ford Ranger in the parking lot of a Lisa Lampanelli show. HeyOhhhh!!!!

RELAPSE TRIPLE-SHOT COMBO #5: Brand new albums by Coliseum, Baroness, and High on Fire – Coliseum could probably kick my ass. In the street…not with their music. I like the idea of Baroness. I like that Savannah, GA is on the map. Oh, if I just felt the same about this guy’s vocals….. High on Fire? The only band with a name this bad that I’ve listened to repeatedly…..

 

 

 

Ponys

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Slacker Cats: Second Pass (of sorts)

I don’t remember my first mentioned ABC Family’s Slacker Cats. I could go back through my blog and read the exact post. Because I control the weather here at failedpilot.com, the decision has against any research (at all). I do remember the tone. I didn’t find it especially funny. I found it weird and crude for an ABC Family program with Walmart spots. My first impression of the jokes? Early South Park (pre-good); maybe Family Guy’s pop-culture-references-as-a-crutch. Good news! Slacker Cats has changed for the better, or I’ve lost more of my mind. Your choice. I must reiterate: Cats are the thinking-person’s pet. Please allow five minutes for my trademark critical train wreck:

“Buckleyâ€Â (voiced by Harland Williams) – The overweight cat. The cat with a heart. Gets along with owner (a single white female). One of two main characters. The flawed hero. Wears a fanny-pack that became a bad punch line. Sleeps under a specially-made “Best Cat in the Worldâ€Â blanket. The still-unfortunate slang “Slackerâ€Â does not apply to Buckley.

“Eddieâ€Â (voiced by the Ebony/Redbook-approved Sinbad) – The bad cat responsible for the schemes that make up each plot, as well as most of the “adultâ€Â humor.

“Dooperâ€Â (voiced by Emo Phillips) – Homeless, possibly drug-addicted cat. Lives in a fridge box. Other than my affection for all things CAT, the V.O. is the only reason this post is being written. That and the fact that I’m obviously out of material (saving the good stuff for an upcoming live performance – I spread it thin). Ten years ago, I made a career-killing joke about Emo Phillips. My career…his died in some other fashion.

“Tabithaâ€Â (voiced by one of the Desperate Housewives) – Not a Tabby. Fills the batty, air-headed, “all women are crazyâ€Â stereotype. Most of the show’s pranks end with her as the butt.

“Mrs. Bootsâ€Â (voiced by the hilarious Niecy Nash, a performer rocking the previously unknown void created by the need for a poor-man’s Wanda Sykes) – Fills the all-hefty-Black-ladies-are-sassy-and-act-like-underpaid-student-loan-customer-service-employees stereotype.

Why am I doing this? Why was it allowed to go this far? Did I just write all of this? Lisa Lampanelli is enjoying her first appearance on my TV (I’ve yet to endure the female Don Rickles, the white Carlos Mencia), I have a couple of deadlines burning a hole through my brain, and I’m absolutely beat ragged…..

 

 

BRAIN-ERASING DUB, ACT 3

If you visit frequently enough, and download every infrequent dub track I post here (at the rate of about two tracks every three months), then sometime late into 2008 you’re gonna have yourself one hell of a compilation CD. For the first two editions of the Brain-Erasing Dub series, please click here and here. They represent the finest in drop-out, shimmering, echo-filled 70s Jamaican dub. This round I’ve got one from BLACKBEARD’S ALL-STARS that I procured from the “Trojan Dub Raritiesâ€Â 3xCD box set. The only information I can glean on the web about this here gem is that it can be found on said box set – that’s it. Blackbeard, are you out there? Come home and tell us about yourself. The other is a killer from MORWELL UNLIMITED & KING TUBBY, from the excellent “Dub Meâ€Â CD on Blood & Fire. Track one, even! The whole CD’s great. More for you in November.

Play or Download BLACKBEARD’S ALL-STARS – Bridgeport Dub
Play or Download MORWELL UNLIMITED & KING TUBBY- Sky Ride

Corwood 0789

                               JANDEK
                   BROOKLYN WEDNESDAY
_________________________________________
                              SET ONE
                             DISC ONE
1. PUT ME THERE                                           (11:21)
2. DESTROY THE DAY                                     (10:43)
3. OBSCURE PHYSICS                                       (8:26)
4. STRUCTURE OF WORDS                                (9:02)
                             DISC TWO
1. ALL I WANT                                                 (5:11)
2. LONELY WORLD                                           (8:32)
3. CHANGE MY BRAIN                                       (9:51)
4. I’LL SEND A THOUGHT OUT FLOATING          (5:09)
5. I LOVE YOU                                                (10:51)
                              SET TWO
                             DISC ONE
1. HOW ‘R YOU                                               (13:31)
2. CITY POUNDING DOWN                              (12:12)
3. DIFFERENT BLUES                                       (9:21)
4. MY NECESSITY                                             (8:21)
                           DISC TWO
1. SEA OF PEOPLE                                            (7:59)
2. SORRY, SORRY                                             (9:13)
3. TEQUILA GIRL                                            (10:54)
4. JUST ENOUGH                                            (10:15)

RECORDED LIVE: ISSUE PROJECT ROOM

BROOKLYN NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 7, 2005
__________________________________________
©(P)2007 CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
               P.O. BOX 15375
        HOUSTON, TEXAS 77220
                      U.S.A.

The Berlin Avant-Garde Takes Another Hit

Once upon a time, the 18th Century Podewils’sches Palais, built for Count Podewil, whoever he was, was the headquarters of the FDJ, an arts-and-crafts center, and the place where East Berlin bands wanting permits to play passed their proficiency and ideology exams. Starting in 1990, however, the former “House of Young Talent” became just plain Podewil, an arts center specializing in media art, avant-garde music, and dance. The music program in particular, curated by a woman named Elke Moltrecht, who must know everything there is to know about the current “out” scene, brought some amazing shows to town, and it was there that the Transmediale Festival held its first few years. Podewil also had money from the city to provide grants to artists wishing to work in Berlin, and the city’s cultural scene was enriched by this. (Or, in some cases, not. But that’s how it is with the avant-garde).

Now, I don’t follow this city’s cultural politics too closely, but somewhere along the way, a split developed between the more visionary (Podewil) and more academic (Transmediale) factions, and the latter won. Moltrecht and her merry crew were exiled to Ballhaus Naunystr. in Kreuzberg and the other folk moved into the Palais as Tesla at Podewil. Not that they were exclusively dull, although I never really saw anything on their e-mail newsletter that would induce me to walk over there for a show, because one thing they managed was to produce Zeitkratzer’s famous live concert of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, at which Reed famously showed up himself. But far more frequently, Tesla showed the tired old art-proceeds-from-theory symptoms which make so much artistic production in Germany so dull.

Last week, though, Tesla got some bad news: the city, after only two years of funding, had decided to pull the plug. As they put it in their latest newsletter (original orthography preserved): “kulturprojekte berlin gmbh, which commissions t e s l a with the cultural program in the podewils’sches palais, has decided, together with the senator for the arts, to reverse a previously confirmed extension of t e s l a’ s contract until 2008. our yearly budget of 500.000 euros will be completely redirected towards use for a cultural education program, the details of which remain to be more clearly defined. we will lose our space and our financial support at the end of this year.”

I’m not positive, but there might be a subtext lurking here. Besides the city’s wanting to save money — they’ve been slashing away at the cultural budget without really addressing the question of how many opera houses we really need here, and if there isn’t something that can be done with the orchestras, both of which suck up a lot more money than Tesla ever did — there were several incidents in the past when the Podewil group were threatened with eviction so that one or another branch of the federal bureaucracy could move into this nice building. (Nice facade, anyway: behind it stretches a lot of rather grim DDR addition).

As for Ms. Moltrecht, she’s hanging on, and her Interface Festival, which started Friday, is more star-studded than anything Tesla’s done recently, but if you check the posters hanging around town, she’s also gathered together an impressive array of sponsors to help her produce it.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Berlin’s reputation as a center for artistic innovation owes plenty to Podewil and Tesla. No amount of play-it-again-Wolfgang opera productions is going to change this. Without support from the city, this scene can easily pick up and go somewhere it’s wanted, and Berlin will cease to be so hip! and edgy! and become the provincial backwater so many elements here want it to be. The avant-garde thrives on synergy, so having a city chock-full of art galleries but no venue for cutting-edge dance and music is an empty triumph.

One wonders if anyone in the Rathaus cares.

THE NO-COUNT GARAGE BLUES OF ART PHAG

There was this compilation that came out, jeez, I don’t know, I want to say 1987 (?), called “IT CAME FROM THE GARAGE IIâ€Â. It was a bunch of Detroit-area garage bands, most of them extremely raw & quite more fulfilling than anyone else at the time who sought to connect 60’s raunch with CRAMPS-style lurch-n-roll. Even THE GORIES made their debut there, and they, along with ART PHAG, were the ones that made the most immediate impression. (I seem to remember an ode to porn stars by SNAKE-OUT that started with the line, “Hey Ginger Lynn / What’s on your chin?â€Â, as well as a hideously racist song by someone going by the nom de plume of JERRY VILE. Classy!). ART PHAG’s contribution was equally distressing – a two-minute, bottom-feeding sludge-o-rama of the most guttural garage sounds imaginable called “Golfâ€Â, interrupted by occasional angry rants from a guy yelling at his girlfriend for messing with his golf clubs, followed by the sound of her screaming in sheer terror as he goes on a rampage. Like I said, tre classy.

So a couple years later the ART PHAG album comes out. It’s got a spray painted cover, each one handmade – you know the way every Tom Dick & Harry noise band does it this century. Kinda cool back then. “Golfâ€Â is on it, and all the politically incorrect DJs at my college radio station rush to be the first one to play it. But hidden in its grooves are other songs – much better songs, I thought – that proved that ART PHAG weren’t a one-trick pony, and that they engaged in a primitive level of subdued raunch as well as anyone else going – sounding very CRAMPSian for sure but also with nods to the Panther Burns and 60s punkers of all stripes. I’m posting two of the best from the LP – oh yeah, and “Golfâ€Â – as testament to a band undoubtedly lost to time if not for the Interweb.

Play or Download ART PHAG – “A Boy And His Gunâ€Â
Play or Download ART PHAG – “Molly & Bobbyâ€Â
Play or Download ART PHAG – “Golfâ€Â

15. “Radio Nowhere”

When I interviewed Bruce Springsteen a few weeks back, among the many fond memories he shared of his friendship with Paul Nelson was how, in Paul’s review of The River, he had correctly identified the influence that London Calling had had on that album. Springsteen told me about the great affinity he’d always had for not just the Clash but punk rock as a whole. “I felt a deep connection to those things,” he said, “and it kinda runs right through [The River].”

It’s a connection that continues, as demonstrated by the recent release of the first single from Springsteen’s upcoming album, Magic. Following in the tradition of great radio songs like the Clash’s “Capitol Radio” and “Radio Clash,” Elvis Costello’s “Radio, Radio,” and Van Morrison’s “Wavelength,” “Radio Nowhere” is an all-out rock & roller that best describes itself:

I just wanna hear some rhythm
I want a thousand guitars
I want pounding drums
I want a million different voices
Speaking in tongues

Flat out, “Radio Nowhere” is the best thing to hit the airwaves in years.

Copyright 2007 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved. 

THE SHEARING PINX: CANADA’S NOISY YOUNG STARS

Here’s a fantastic recent track from a double 3″CD (!) from Vancouver’s SHEARING PINX, one of the better debuts I’ve heard in a great long while. At times abstract noise, the grande majority of the release finds the band pummeling a tight-ass riff into the ground, with lots of skittering, creepy noises making the nature scene around it. Take for instance my favorite, the opening, “New Gospel”. You’re gonna get glimpses of funkier early 80s acts like The Pop Group, PiL and Gang of Four here, whereas a good chunk of the rest of the discs veers off into avant-noise territory of recent vintage. I say it’s all good – and this one’s the best.

A list for your wallet…

Thank me now, or thank me later, but I live in these zones:

Olive-Free Zone

Tomato-Free Zone

Dog-Free Zone (this one has wiggle room, but do not bring a dog into my house)

Mr. Bungle-Free Zone

Yoko Ono-Free Zone

Mushroom-Free Zone (come on, people, the kind on the menu)

Squash-Free Zone

Kevin Smith-Free Zone

William S. Burroughs-Free Zone

 

 

 

 

For chrissakes….

….last night’s post was by far the dumbest item ever posted on this site. I have deleted it. Apologies to those that spent 56 seconds of their day reading it. Some of that leftover late-90’s, ill-conceived vitriol surfacing. Anyone that’s read anything I wrote in the late-90’s (there was only one forum), might recognize it as crap sitting around on the floor. I perpetually have trouble sleeping, and infrequently take Xanax before bed, a drug that last night had a strange reverse, idiotic impact on my brain.