Album Review Radical Hips(EP): You never know what the week will bring sometimes. Either you’re in luck and you find money in a pocket or your inbox has a note from an old friend. Please meet Billy Alpha via Yab Yum Records. Most north Jerseyites know him from The Alphamales or his is more recent joint WJ & The Sweet Sacrifice. Solo and in his room Billy sings songs about his alarm clock as his girl makes sad faces on his arm. There are no solos just a man buried and hunkered over his acoustic guitar only reaching out to take a swig of some booze from a dirty glass that Bruce Springsteen may have touched once. The deep voice sounds somewhat like Nick Cave or Elvis but mellower walking you home in a wet silent snowy night. Where you may hear what silence sounds like. These are songs for the end of the night or the begining of your day depending on your alarm clock but if you listen carefully you can hear the clank of the beer bottles being cleaned up in-between chords and tracks.
Album Review: Oh, Thunder by Olympia Washington’s songster and enchantress Eleanor Murray. The tremelo timber of her voice could easily kick start any campfire with a few chords. The film visual are burning embers each embodying a thought or feeling. This is her third release coming out on Bicycle Records and first I’ve ever listened to so I’m a bit of newb. One of the stand-out tracks word-wise is “When A Heart Becomes A Heart” in the tradition of folk addressing these feelings. Creating a definition to song about crying and honesty. Another is a track called “Scream” which is photographically introspective and has a great example of her vocal detail abilities caring the sentiment around in voice while you look at her under a photo loop. This is really quite good so if you if you are into something mellowliciously Nico check her out.
MP3 Scream by Eleanor Murray from Oh, thunder [Buy]
Bonus MP3 Tracks: Jesus Of The Moon by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds from Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!! – Quit an awaking from this artist. Super mellow but yet totally musical and thick. You can hear the dust kicking in this song from the resurrected rock star. Abschied by Nico(1938-1988) from Desertshore(1970). I have no idea what she is singing about since this track is in German but interesting to know that the heroine died after being mis-diagnosed from a heart attacked while cycling. Ms. Murray’s voice reminded me of her — somehow sad in some way but as expressive.
7 Inch Friday: I remember hearing “You Don’t Love Me Yet” on WFMU and then stumbling on the 7″ in a west village record shop so many moons ago and recall thinking this music is so some crafty stuff even if they were both covers –what a way to do it. Bongwater was Kramer and Ann Magnuson (actress) and were always backed with some great musicians and song writers David Licht and Dave Rick plus a bunch of others. This record like all of the other Bongwater tunes were produced and engineered by Kramer at his studio Noise New York. He would later move recording studio to New Jersey and record bands like Ween, Mars Needs Women and False Front. One of the many shows I caught at cbgbs in 1991 was Bongwater. Magnuson was already a redhead but came out with all this super long wigs wearing some crazy boas and sexily vocalizing with her spoken wordish ways.
If these are the first two songs you hear by underground legends Bongwater they are great ones but if can find it pick-up Double Bummer first which contains some of the early releases and then work your way to Power of Pussy, Too Much Sleep or the The Big Sell-Out from their discography. I hear there is a bootleg I need to try and find but anyway. For many years after the break-up the two did not get along over some shady business dealing that ended in Kramer’s label Shimmy disc going under. Everybody was ready to sell-out in those days with no fear of prosecution. They were a great musical pair in a very new york hip sonny and cher kitchy kind of way. Kramer would play his Hoffner (Beatles bass) up into his gut with out a strap and she would rant about celebrities any where from Bowie, Nick Cave or Lenny Kravitz. One way to think about them is a pre-curser to the band She & Him but the rated X version. Half their set were covers built on soundscape assaults interwoven with Magnuson’s spoken word dream journal and super sexy burlesque outfits. The music painted a picture in my imagination alright that would be soundtrack to many a night. Magnuson still acts and lives in Silverlake and Kramer has moved himself to Florida still offering his reverb mixing services.
Richard Metzger‘s Video for “Power of Pussy.” This song was a super hit except the title would hold it back from any sort of public airplay. It is a cult classic done for $1,000. Great video description and write-up on the Daily Swarm.
Thanksgiving Day Massacre MP3 by The Chinese Stars
You dig prog and are anti-holiday then you will love “Thanksgiving Day Massacre” by The Chinese Stars from their 2009 release Heaven on Speed Dial from Anchor Brain label. Think Deerhunter but with more screwed up vocals. A perfect track for to screw people up in your holiday music mix. Features Craig Kureck and Eric Paul formerly of Arab on Radar in this noise unit + another from Six Finger Satellite make up this bastard rock. Chances are if any of these guys were invited to your Thanks Giving celebration they certainly would say something uncomfortable to help get party going or start a fight. Like did you know that in “In 1868 you could get a room, a hooker, and a bottle of whiskey for $2.75. Those were the days… Now that costs $1570.53” – Joke courtesy of @kirkfox. Ok maybe we’re taking you way out but that is sort of the point with music. It’s dark, creepy and surly. Enjoy!
Short music mix for fisting turkeys and waddlers: Thanksgiving Day Massacre MP3 by The Chinese Stars [Buy] My Mind Is a Muffler MP3 by Arab on Radar from Yahweh or the Highway [Buy] Hot Food MP3 by Six Finger Satellite from A Good Year for Hardness [Buy]
ALBUM REVIEW: The immediate happiness of Tapes n’ Tapes one feels comes to mind when listening to Warship by The House Floor band. Mainly due to the timber in the singing and low-fi-nesss of the recordings. Cheap microphones I don’t think so but certainly DIY in most respects meandering in spots while building you up in other places. I’d go deeper but the influences verge and teeter on Camper Van Beethoven and hum stylistically something closer to The Loon or The Shins. For more local reference totally remind me of Montagna & The Mouth To Mouth (track from them below). Certainly has just as much reverb as the song craft does not stick to any particular formula which makes this recording ambiently-free with just the right amount of twangy guitars for my taste. I am thankful there are no crappy keyboards or lame use of drum machines to be found so that is a big huge +. Nothing more annoying than that junk and having engineer like Andrew Maury give this mix some love certainly helps the end result. I can’t wait for their next record already.
My favorite part though are the song titles what I don’t like is that lyrics/singing are unaudible in parts and not a in a wrens sort of way but like small random pieces of paper you find that you wrote to yourself in your pocket only you may know what you scribbled. Some of these treasure titles are like kid’s notes from a childhood past or straight out of the song writers notebook. I’d say about 10 years of age or so. Which makes it a interesting theme album somehow tying the worlds together with an adult dialogue. I’d send you to one of their sites but it’s in Japanese or some shit but feel free to grab the whole record over at Listen Before You Buy. Great site they run there.
All Aboard / MLWR(LOL!) lead track from Warship With Awkward Speech by Montagna & The Mouth To Mouth from L’avenir The Day That Lassie Went to the Moon Camper Van Beethoven from Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985) – Totally grab this record. Will give you an idea of what can be laid down without fear of what your cool indie friends will say in particular since all the words are clear in this style of jangle pop.[BUY]
I’ve been on eMusic since they began and have dealt with their changes and growth throughout the years. Always linking to them for almost every post in hopes of inspiring a purchase for other rabid music fans. This new deal with Universal Music Group is not a great one. Although the numbers sound good(250,000 addition to catalog) the fall-out is bad for fans of what got the digital music club there in first place.
Emusic was always been the one place you could get a true read on what was being offered in Indie music land. Now with Merge Records gone a whole slew of awesome labels
under the Beggars Group which includes Rough Trade, 4AD, Matador, XL, among others there is little in a way of choice.
It will be interesting to watch the Emusic charts for sure but One of the key things(ok actually there are several) with emusic was that the cost of entry was low so you could sample several new bands all the time.
I loved it. They also did a great job of championing new bands that were not part of any of the aforementioned labels who otherwise would never be on their radar unless Emusic bubbled them up and gave them a chance.
Now songs are anywhere from 79 cents to 49cents! Where they used to be half that and then half that before. Still cheaper than iTunes standard 99cent or 1.29! but man have they made up the difference. I’m not going to get into a long cost analysis but the analogy is consitent with the target crushing your local mom and pop shop. Imagine if your cool local indie suddenly started charging you more suddenly unilaterally for everything. No more nice price. And even more if it was popular! WTF. Should you not pay less if something is popular? Not more. We obviously are not privy to the exact offer that the indies rejected if any. Their statements reference terms but that is the confidential stuff.
Another disturbing thing is that because it’s a download site and you went back to grab a copy of something because it got corrupted the prices you see are the new ones. Does this mean I have to rebuy? Well it seems that is the case. The whole advantage of having a download site like emusic is that you could go and get a copy of your file in case you wanted to post some of your work computer vs your home machine.
So basically as of Nov 18th some of the cooler independent labels won’t be available for some time. Emusic will need to do some serious price-point re-tinkering with their system to bring back the labels that have said no thanks. Hell even create a different set of charts because lord knows I don’t want to see Kenya competing against Matt and Kim or whatever.
On the other hand this is great news for insound and the other independent download hotspots and maybe make other cool shops like ubiquity records update their cart system or if amoeba music expanded theirs? It creates an opportunity for music fans to utilize the blogs and go direct if possible but where do we send them? Merge Records right now has a great online store but that’s just one label. So they umbrella an pool their resources? Ironically, the one band I always wanted to get some tunes from was Sonic Youth and now their awesome back catalog is part of the defection. So now what?
If mog.com were smart they’d add a ecommerce layer so if somebody really wanted to own something they could; but lets see if their new app is cool enough. Last.fm can’t because of the sheer conflict using itunes data scrobbler and who knows what is in store for ping.fm.
Sister by Sonic Youth was one of those records that changed my opinion on what was punk back in 1987. What sealed the deal was seeing them play live at CBGBs for the first on a hot summer in 1988 months before Daydream Nation came out. It’s was one of those shows where they played the whole record from front-to-back. Everybody in the audience also new Sister and Evol but it didn’t matter. This was a double dose of their next steps. I remember all the fucked up guitars on the stage with large letters on them all set-up for each particular tune. When the drums kicked in on Teenage Riot the whole place lit up and people disappeared into the speakers and into the guitars.
These two records are probably the two best things on Emusic right now. Everything else that followed pales in guitarnovation then and now in my humble opinion and at 50 cents a song is not a bad deal considering I payed about that to own these on vinyl and are still my go to Lps when I need to escape into some sweet blissful noise. Over the years I’ve seen Sonic Youth and honestly they are still the same. Back then they were on the edge and they kept working and making these cityscapes out of walls of sound using the hand manipulated guitars and a rhythm section that just drove it in. Other times it was slow space jam which had the same effect. It’s the sort of thing that can not be replicated or hacked on a computer. This was BC(before computers) with the right amount of distortion and feedback made all the difference. What you committed to tape either worked or it didn’t. That was the magic and every time I hear even a glimmer of “it” in anybody’s music these days I get excited and my ear perk up like I’ve been starving for years . So get me excited.
NJ ROCK SCENE HISTORY: New Jersey has always been a breeding ground for so many amazing bands. The Feed Me I Love Trash record (1990) was put out by the Rodriquez brothers on their Behemoth Records label and is a artifact of the fact. Some of the bands made it out of the pond, some festered and stayed in town while others bred and get out there. The four bands featured on this compilation were Big Nurse, Blisters, Nudeswirl and Leather Studded Diaphram(aka LSD) who unbeknownst to them maybe brought a couple scenes together from New Brunswick and the Jersey shore starting a whole tradition of quality music and cross pollination of sounds and influences on this collectible piece of vinyl. Sure The Smithereens and others were a part of it too but what they all had in common was they played Court Tavern. Here is where they strutted their stuff a club that was open till 3AM on weekends. Those were long nights. All of these bands got drunk in the basement club way back in 1990, destroyed the paneled sealing over and over again and somehow ironically the place is still standing escaping taxes and corporate greed thanks to some serious and devoted music fans. The Court is still in business.
I miss the small back room bar where they used to serve up 16 oz margaritas for $5 bux or shots to candle light while bands blasted the front of the stage. They still make a stiff drink and if luck were a little different folks would be talking about the Hub City Rock City not Seattle but alas it took just one teenage spirit to change an industry that was doing just fine otherwise.
So if you rushed to order “This Machine” b/w “Foolish Hand Shake”, by Mr. F (aka Grandpaboy aka PW) the vinyl has sold out but have no fear another pressing is coming. I can’t wait to add to my collection of basement recordings from Paul Westerberg’s alter ego or should I say Wintrope Marion Percival the V! In any case here are a couple older rockers from the ex-replacements front-man. I’d love to be able to stop by his place to hear all tunes he just has laying around. This single came out in 1997 Soundproof and Monolythe records. “I want my money back” swings fast alla early chuck berry or AC/DC – what ever you prefer. He’s a fast talking and guitar picking maniac. If you play it 33 1/3 it does not sound half bad. Lots hootin’ and hollering. With a little precise break where he says “Fuck-it.” It’s a quick throw-down kids. On the flip side is something more country about his shirt giving to him by his sister and maybe you can be the one to help these buttons come undone. Classic Westerberg Lyrics.
MUSIC REVIEW: The mega Girl Talk single really abuses something the Beastie Boys and other more awesome mix-ologists and hip/hop Rapper samplers started over 20 years ago. It’s a pretty masterful piece of work although I prefer DJ Red Alert (BC) Before Computers myself – that was art. So all I have to do is walk into a club connect a bunch of 15 second samples and boom chuck-ala, Boom I am done? Ok may it’s more involved but lets about talk capturing all these melodies into one bastard piece of music. I love a good mash-up and all but this is retarded. It gets you in a groove then it changes faster than a raver on crank and ecstasy with some serious memory lapse issues. Maybe it’s all those caffeinated drinks that are coming off the shelves? Would be nice if there were a theme or storyline. Something to connect the dots between jams. I am big fan of less is more and this is not it if idea is take everything that sounds cool from the creative commons bin and jam it all together. Much respect to the rapping on this and all the little pieces of music: Radiohead, Sweet Leaf, fugazi, New Order, etc Crap there are like over 500 different Artists and Musicians sampled. I was afraid this day would come.
Girl Talk is Gregg Gillis
Additional production and assistance by Frank Musarra
Mastering and assistance by Jonathan Schenke
Track Listing if you grab the separate files:
1. Oh No
2. Let It Out
3. That’s Right
4. Jump on Stage
5. This Is the Remix
6. On and On
7. Get It Get It
8. Down for the Count
9. Make Me Wanna
10. Steady Shock
11. Triple Double
12. Every Day
TOD performing “The Rest Will Follow” on the David Letterman Show.
SINGLE REVIEW:The Trail of Dead have jumped labels more than any band I’ve ever tracked with each release and quite consistently. Competing with the Poster Children and a few others with a decent stint on a major label ok maybe not as many as the pkids. Their upcoming release is going to be on their own label – Richter Scale Records. Never had the pleasure of meeting …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (at least not yet) and or since i knew about their sonic existence (thank you Benny of the Highway) they have been one of my favorite heavy and noisy bands of all time. Well at least since 2001. Everything is really fuzzy before that. Conrad and the boys have persistently managed to bake in all the right elements of guitar swagger, big dumb drums and vocal angst. Giving you this huge soundscape of music. I can hear why Hemispheres was influence on this one with SIDE 1 and Side 2 of continuous music. I can’t wait for Tao of the Dead all to obvious album title. I’m still a devoted fan of their music> Their notereity will be there in a black flag kind of way with many a splinter and broken drum set in their path. The pre-release of Summer of Dead souls track is exactly what you can expect. Check it out on Spin.com. I encourage you to go to town if you dig these tracks and get the whole discography or at least parts of it. The new track is great. Feels right and the good payout is that they did not belabor the output. Less vanilla more rock. How’s that for a short review?
Sample some shit: Gargoyle Waiting from S/T …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (1998) Trance Syndicate Records
Totally Natural from Madonna (1999) Merge Records. Totally out of character for the bands that were on merge at the time but damn wouldn’t it be funny if they returned like spoon did?
Another Morning Stoner from Source Codes & Tags (2002) Interscope. This is the record that put them on the map blah blah blah. Dude the cool kids picked them up.
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