So I'm off to Toronto end of next week. I'll be there for the Toronto International Film Festival and my fantasies include fighting a member of Sloan for the last package of Raisinettes just before we all attend the latest Ang Lee movie. There is more to this fantasy, but I digress...
I thought while in Toronto it would be great to catch some bands but oddly, according to Tourfilter (an excellent web-tool to ensure you don't miss any bands coming your way) there are only like 4 bands playing every night, and weirdly the most notable one is Red Rider. You know, "Lunatic Fringe" Red Rider? Yeah, them. Talk about reunion shows that would never happen in the USA. I suppose it's only by the grace of God I'll be there a day after The Barenaked Ladies. I would not fight them for Rasinettes, on no. Just take the Rasinettes and leave me alone Barenakeds. Ick.
A brief field trip to the Borders near my job revealed Tegan and Sara, The New Pornographers, and Rilo Kiley on nearly every music magazine cover. I am not going to go through the dignity of linking their names here as there is ample opportunity for you to find out about them in music publications of both the indie and major league varieties as noted in first sentence.
I know this is not something unheard of, but it does kind of make a sad statement. I know from personal experience that when you're a music reviewer your mailbox gets stuffed full of new CD's every day, so I guess my question is, in a month, are there really only a small child's handful worth talking about, or are we just not doing our job to find out about other artists, and/or shortlist bands whose labels don't have the funds to buy nice big glossy ads? Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of suck out there which can be thrown out immediately, and I do like The New Pornographers, but like the lady says "Is that all there is?"
Dear Shins, Editors, Interpol, and everybody else who this pertains to,
You know how you thought it would be so cool to have your CD be flat black with a very subtle watermark of the name of your band imprinted on it? Thought it would really set you apart didn't you? Well guess what. Everybody else thought OF THE EXACT SAME THING.
Next!
The one thing I really liked about the 80’s hair band videos that needs to come back, the one recurring motif, were the bands that would rock so fuckin’ hard they could change the physical properties of things! Like they would blow holes through walls with their rocking, or they’d go up to your shitty Honda Civic and go “squibbely doo!” and all of a sudden it’s a sleek Lamborghini! Like Hey! Thanks Night Ranger! That needs to come back. Y’know? Like System of a Down or Queens of the Stone Age have to do a video where they’re going “That cheese sandwich isn’t grilled – squibbly flabbily doo!” And all of a sudden it’s a melted cheese! Oh god damn, you Armenian geniuses!
- Comedian Patton Oswalt from "80's Metal" on "Feeling Kinda Patton"
He is also known as the voice of Remy the rat in Disney's Ratatouille
Les Sans Culottes may be a band comprised of musicians with made up names singing songs with absurd lyrics in fake French (that’s “Franglais” to you), but there’s something a bit more serious about them since a 2005 lawsuit split the band in two. Half went one way to become Nous Non Plus, and the other half recruited 5 new Culottes and the battle of the Fake French Bands from New York City was declared. I’m not going to pronounce a victor in this messy fight, which if one trolls the web for any length of time can see stinks like week old fromage, but I can say that from recent shows and repeated listenings to LSC’s latest release “Le Weekender”, the new Culottes are far better off without the old. The reason is simple – the old Culottes could be fun, but the new Culottes really and truly ROCK.
Tonight’s show finds the band giving more nods to the past than their set in Boston a month ago. It includes nuggets like “Sa Sabine”, the Babar inspired “SOS elephants”, and “Allo Allo”, but they really tear it up when they get to newer numbers like “Les Yeux Grands Sauvent Le Monde”, "La Semaine A Deux Jeudis" (complete with choreography), and oddly, a killer cover of “My Sharona” (in French of course). The girls all have great legs and wear great shoes, bandleader Clermont Ferrand gives his best Serge Gainsbourg, and the rest of the band are tight as the cork on a bottle of Dom Pérignon. In a word: "Oui".I had an entirely different expectation of The Octopus Project than how it all turn
ed out. From the tracks I’d heard already (thanks Nick), I’d pegged the Austin quartet as being more of a bloop and blip kind of affair, but on stage, surrounded by amps disguised as giant light up bunnies (or possibly, as a friend pointed out, bunny-klansmen) and a screen that ran a series of creepycute images that were more creepy than cute, they jolted their way through their instrumental set with more electricity and sweat than they had to. I mean, as it was I would have paid good money to simply stare at the gravity defying hairdo of keyboardist Yvonne Lambert and get the measurements of her fabulous asymmetrical dress. The rest of the set, including heart churning versions of “The Adjustor” and “Tuxedo Hat” were merely gravy.I hadn’t been thinking much about Stereo Total lately but it was hard to not be convinced by their brilliance after tonight. One large stage, two small people, a bare bones drum kit for chanteur Françoise Cactus and a small keyboard for everything else man Brezel Goering. Long and lean, Goering spends the hour running around the stage, drumming on the plumbing pipes protruding overhead, pressing various buttons on his tiny keyboard to release the preprogrammed samples, reading lyrics off a piece of paper, and occasionally diving into the audience to crowd surf. Cactus wears giant glasses, spits out her eccentric twitterbird warbles through a thick accent, reads music off a music stand and stops occasionally to blot sweat from her face and cheerily comment of the nightclub temperature “So I guess the A/C is kaput, eh?” Songs come fast and furious from covers of The Plastics and Salt n' Pepa to originals like “Musique Automatique” and “Ta Voix Au Telephone”, each rendered in somewhat minimalistic form, but the band are so enthusiastic its impossible to not get caught up with their fervor. The sold out crowd spill onto the stage for songs like "L' Amour A 3" and by the time they end with “Everybody At the Discotheque (
I Hate)” the sold out crowd are all pumping their fists in the air and singing along. It’s my friend Rob’s third time seeing Stereo Total and before we leave he shakes his head when he admits he was thinking about not coming out tonight but now is so glad he did. Aren’t we all?
There’s something fishy going on at Bust Magazine. The mag in this month’s music issue profiles Art Brut singer Eddie Argos as a sweet English boy to get all dreamy over. The 2-page profile shows a significantly slimmed down, coiffed, and repackaged Argos talking about his favorite places to go on a date, rather than the out of shape and weasely moustacheed one seen just a little over a year ago in the “Good Weekend” video.
My problem with this? Isn’t Argos married? And if he’s not, why has he been wearing a wedding ring both times I’ve seen Art Brut play Boston (conspicuously absent from photo shoot photos)? I’m old enough that I notice these things you know…
Years ago Sassy magazine was famous for running these kind of profiles with their “Cute Boy Alert” feature – for instance profiling indie-hunk Evan Dando as a new focus for readers desire, but as they would talk about his sensitive soul and share his recipe for homemade chocolate sauce they’d leave out key details like that Dando was at the time of publication was a serious heroin addict. Not very dreamy that.
There are plenty of precedents for celebs to fake for their audience that they are single, younger than they are, etc. etc. but that still doesn't really make it right, does it? Isn't it enough to just be Art Brut? Can't people just like music even if its made by married people?
And Eddie, if you're not married, then take off the ring. You're confusing us old ladies.
I shouldn’t even get started about my obsession with Scrawl. It’s a sick thing that started with a cassette copy of “Plus Also Too” that was played until the notes nearly wore away and culminated last Halloween when I met Scrawl singer Marcy Mays hanging out at her current gig, proprietor of The Surly Girl Saloon. There at Columbus Ohio’s hippest eatery/venue (I vouch for the egg salad sandwich with gusto damn you bet), she sat at our table, told me to not get a bloody mary and complimented my vintage Cheap Trick t-shirt. Better than an autograph that.
From 1987-1998 Scrawl accumulated a catalogue of songs which detailed a rock girl’s life with a nearly uncomfortable honesty and vulnerability. Painful relationships, drinking, band practice, bad choices, fights with lovers, and the emptiness left in their wake were recounted like so many bent, torn, and beer stained snapshots, pasted with fading yet sparkly nail polish into a well worn heart shaped photo album. All this and they could rock too.
“Bloodsucker” was an EP that came out in 1991 on Feel Good All Over and has since been re-released on Simple Machines. Every song is a vinegar tornado of guitars and heartbreak plus an outstanding cover of Cheap Trick’s “High Roller” (and weirdly Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted Snake”). When it comes to love, Scrawl make it hurt so good.
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I just wanted to say, this is the #1 search that brings up this blog. If so many people are searching on this, how can it not be true?
I’ve been rediscovering my own vinyl lately and felt compelled to write a bit here about The Bangles. No, not the embarrassing Egyptian-walking Bangles you remember, I mean the first IRS EP Bangles.
The year is 1982 and it’s a time when people still release EP’s to intro a new band or to add to a collection of someone more established. People buy EP’s even. It’s a wild time before the Internet even existed. Imagine that. It’s a time so deep in the past that The Bangles have not yet met Prince, and are unaware that they will one day give in to trading on possessing a total of 8 human breasts between them in order to get airplay. But I digress...
The Bangles don’t have bassist Michael Steele yet, they have a lady named Annette Zilinkas in the band, who in a move that years later will be sure to make her think about the fickle finger of fate, will depart to sing in Blood on the Saddle before the Bangles on their next record become a big commercial success. So the first Bangles EP (and for that matter the instrumental track “Bitchen Summer Speedway” which appears on compilation Rodney on the Roq Volume 3) is a snapshot of the Bangles before fame has tainted them, and before Susanna Hoffs mistakenly believes she is an actress.
On The Bangles EP, the production isn’t much, so what is most noticeable are the million part harmonies that collide and shimmer all over the place. On tracks like ‘Mary Street’ the band sound as lush as a female choir delivering the chorus, and on “The Real World” Hoffs’ vocals sparkle with little girl sweetness over an irrepressible jangly mix that epitomized that Paisley Underground sound so popular in the early 80’s LA scene. It’s a shame that as time went by The Bangles just became less a band and more a vehicle for Hoffs’ bedroom eyes and less a vehicle for jangle pop. Some remnants of this early Bangles does spill over into All Over The Place on tracks like “James” and more fully developed single “Hero Takes a Fall” but by Different Light it’s a whole different band. Farewell to youth, hello to ick.
Violent Femmes Embroiled In NY LawsuitViolent Femmes Turn Litigious In NY Court Dispute Over 1980s Hits(AP) Fresh off their latest tour, 1980s folk-punk favorites The Violent Femmes are headed for a surprise gig in federal court.Bassist Brian Ritchie sued lead vocalist Gordon Gano on Wednesday, saying he was deprived of credit for some of the group's songs and a proper accounting of its earnings.The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, also accuses Gano of trashing the band's reputation by allowing its signature hit, "Blister in the Sun," to be used in a Wendy's commercial.Gano, reached by telephone at his Manhattan home, called the lawsuit "a complete surprise" _ especially since the band still regularly performs and just returned from a tour in South Africa."We just played a really, really good tour," he said. "Since the early '80s, everything's really good. We're playing better than ever."In the suit, Ritchie claims he founded the band in 1980, taking on drummer Victor DeLorenzo that year and Gano in 1981.After releasing a self-titled debut album, "Violent Femmes," in 1983, the band gained fame with hits including "Blister in the Sun," "Add It Up" and "Special." It recorded at least 10 albums and toured the world at least a dozen times, the lawsuit said."This action is the unfortunate culmination of an ongoing intra-band dispute between Ritchie and Gano over Gano's misappropriation and misadministration of Ritchie's interests in the jointly owned songs and assets of the band, misappropriation of assets solely owned by Ritchie, improper accounting and nonpayment of royalties," the lawsuit said.The Wendy's deal was a buzz-kill for the band's fan base, the suit says, causing one fan to comment in an online blog that after hearing "Blister in the Sun" in a commercial, "My ears perked up. Then my jaw dropped. Then my heart sank."The suit seeks a ruling declaring Ritchie half owner of the band's songs and an accounting of past and future royalties and unspecified damages.Gano declined to respond to the claims in detail, except to say he wrote the band's songs with one or two exceptions.Thanks Sharon!
I have to admit, as a kid, I was never a giant Kiss fan. These were albums my teenaged babysitters had and which, like my copy of Queen Night at the Opera, I was mildly scared of the possibly satanic overtones of (hey I was 6 then give me a break). So it was only yesterday when wandering the stacks at WMFO with my friend Brad that I became aware of the amazingly strange and often incoherent “notes from the band” tacked on the inside of the gatefold of Kiss Alive!
Below is what I believe to be a mostly accurate reprinting of each note. I have sequenced them in “best for last” order:_____________
Dear Earthlings, The gravity on Earth isn’t quite the same as my planet, but I'm slowly getting used to it. I always wanted to play lead guitar and express myself usually to an audience. When I play guitar on stage its like making love. I work so you get off every time. Thanks for helping me get off. Love, Ace
___________
Hi Cat People, Well you should get your claws into this album. I know its gonna make your tails stand up straight up. The Cat himself stalked it from front to back and it tasted great, so all u alley cats and tom cats, rock your rolls right off, Or should I say tails?? Love ya, Your silver-nosed tomcat, Peter Criss
______________________
Dear Victims, I love to do all those deliciously psychopathic things to you that make you writhe in pain and groan in ecstasy. My spiked 7-inch boot heels are at the ready should you be in the mood for heavy sport, and my mouth is there to tell you all terrible things you never thought you'd hear (but love hearing)!! I can see you from the corners of my eyes, and I know what you do when the lights go out. I bleed for you and breathe fire for you and you wonder if I’m crazy-I AM! Gene Simmons
________________
My Dear Lovers, Nothing arouses me more then seeing you getting off on me. It makes me work that much harder to please you. My body is yours, yours is mine. We explode together when I'm on stage, I'm yours..............take me. Paul Stanley
All I can say is, we need more notes from bands like this.
It’s Linda’s birthday, and for Linda’s birthday, she gets what she wants.
Linda wants to see Jon Whitney spin new wave videos at Rivergods, so we do!Linda wants to go see local art-trash-rock-combo Neptune at Great Scott’s, so we do!
The front end of the evening is lovely, Jon spins videos that are well remembered (“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” – Tears for Fears) and also terribly obscu
re (“Dr. Mabuse” – Propaganda). I protest when Linda tries to make us leave during Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” as a guy at the bar and I have bonded over our secret affection for this video, one which I recall so clearly being banned from MTV for its obscenity, though as I watch it now I can’t imagine why. Showing ladies bare bottoms? Oh how far we’ve fallen.But we do escape, run across town and in a matter of moments have entered Great Scott’s door hoping Neptune will play soon. But no, it is not to be. We have arrived during the set of Tristan Da Cunha who are apparently having a record release party tonight. They are math-rock or as a random fellow at the bar complains “too much like some jazzy Berklee band trying to impress us with their key and time signature changes”. Our eyes mutually roll, I buy Linda a drink. We wait. I figure next will be Neptune, it is nearly midnight on a Thursday, but then the same gent points out no, there are 6 bands on this bill. But why? But why?Next up is Martin Gordon. “Who is Martin Gordon?” I find myself asking just in time to have my question answered by a 3-minute long PowerPoint presentation projected onto a large screen hanging from the stage ceiling. Come to find out, Martin Gordon has done a wide array of things, but for my money his biggest achievement has been being the bass player on Sparks’ “Kimono My House” album.
“This is his first gig in America!” the excited voice over tells us
“The first time anyone has heard his songs in the US!” “Here he is!”
“Martin Gordon!”
And he is!
Terrible!
And he should be!
So much better!Gordon’s band is a group of fellows I’d guess are in their mid-forties, and their music for some reason makes me think of The Yachts. I know that’s obscure, so please fill in your own early 80’s small time euro-guitar band that had maybe one hit here. Or alternately think very early XTC, but imagine them if they sucked. Because the thing that’s really annoying me about Martin Gordon’s set is I should love this music because it’s based on the kind of power pop I will always have a lasting affection for, but Martin Gordon and his band are terrible, terrible songwriters, and behave as if they have never heard of that verse chorus verse thing. It isn’t long before we I are on the pavement outside the nightclub along with about 75% of the other nightclub patrons not smoking, but merely waiting for the torture to be over.
It’s 1 AM now, we’re tired, but we’ve come to see Neptune and damn it we’re going to see them, and after a strangely overlong, awkward and otherwise inexplicable baton twirling performance by local twirler Laurel Sparks, we finally do.
In the future it is easy to imagine that all music will sound like Neptune. It will be cruel, sterile, hostile, cacophonous, upsetting, nailbiting, wonderful, gorgeous, breathtaking; or at least that’s what I like to believe. I’ve been going to see Neptune for more than a decade and I never tire of it. The band has always been led by Jason, who welds many of the band’s instruments from scrap metal into things that resemble but hardly sound like guitars, and though lineups fluctuated for sometime, the current trio, with Dan drumming and Mark playing just about anything he can get his hands on seem to have stuck. Together the three burn white hot, propelled by Dan’s insane rhythms and while the other two add layer upon layer of gorgeous noise resulting in music that sounds like a rock and roll garbage truck convention, and I mean that in the best possible way. Neptune’s fans are crazy in love with them, dancing and jumping so hard that the floor beneath my feet shakes and threatens to give way and plummet us all into the basement. It’s too exciting for a school night. It’s too exciting for 1:30AM. I am too old and have to go home. But was the pain worth the pleasure tonight? Yes. God yes.
Happy birthday Linda, you got what you wanted.
This just in, a friend of mine sat next to Paul Weller from The Jam on a plane last week. The king of the mods was coming home from a holiday in Spain with his family. During the flight they got to chatting and Weller expressed that as far as he was concerned all of these new wave bands reforming is "rubbish". Well I guess that puts to bed any dreams of a Jam reunion. No word on what his in-flight meal was though.
So I'm off to Toronto end of next week. I'll be there for the Toronto International Film Festival and my fantasies include fighting a member of Sloan for the last package of Raisinettes just before we all attend the latest Ang Lee movie. There is more to this fantasy, but I digress... 
