Two Dishes But To One Table

TJAMC

Pitchfork reviews the re-issue of Psychocandy by Scottish duo The Jesus and Mary Chain:

"Sometimes people tell you that a 20-year-old album “sounded like nothing else,” but when you listen with today’s ears, it seems rather quaint and unsurprising. Psychocandy is not one of those albums. Its noise isn’t the thick, tactile noise of the new millennium: It’s thin, trebly, and drowned in indistinct reverb, such that this record still sounds like it’s being played in the apartment across the street at staggering volume while someone intermittently runs glass through a table saw."

I can't claim to like these guys even 1/10 as much as this reviewer seems to.   My impression was based just on their visuals, JMC seeming to be  a skinnier, more hetero, scarier Scottish version of the Cure.  Their main proponent in our dormitory, circa 1986, was a skinny goth fellow whose two piece thrift-store windsor plaid suit had been carefully adorned with a Sharpie-tracing of  the Bauhaus profile (or maybe it was the Neubauten Man).

The Bad Plus

Hallelujiah. Hall-e-jazz-a-loo-yah.  The Bad Plus are in town all weekend, two shows a night at the Village Vanguard.   

For me, the drumming is the whole point.   The dude plays beautifully, with some swing, but also some dischordant, deliberately surprising stuff.  Last year he got halfway through the set and started pulling out trash and yardsale items to beat on.   I have seen David King hit every imaginable part of his kit (tripods + clamps  included) with every end of every possible mallet, brush, and stick.

G-Fun 2006

Fans of Detroit Ska witnessed the first Gangster Fun show in 10+ years tonight.

The down side was many friends were turned away at the door.     I think I only talked my way in, ticketless, on the strength of my yellow tie.   What are the odds that I would wear a necktie to a rock show and, further, what are the odds that yellow neckties would be the trademark of one of the bands? Here are Mustard Plug, the yellow-tied Grand Rapids band.

And here are Gangster Fun, a good 16 years after I saw them last at the Cubby Bear:

Another founding father of Detroit punk, Ewolf (behind plate), was the anonymous drummer, sitting in for MIA G-Fun drummer Brian Bowie.

Fans of G-Fun:

The headliner was actually Mustard Plug, the band which I got mistaken for since I was coincidentally wearing the yellow tie.  Good guys.  Less silly theatrics and more punk rock  strut than Gangster Fun.  Plug maybe are like Green Day but with a three piece horn section added. 

And this is Sue Stephens with a zealous  fan of the Plugs.

 

Funky Drummer, Pt I

If you are in New York and need a place to bang on some drums there's a place on Jackson in Williamsburg.  It's a small garageband practice space (literally a garage) where you can go and rock out with your friends for $15 an hour.  Call 646-624-9807.
I just go there alone to practice.  As a beginning drummer I look for easy pieces to try to play along with:

• "Flim" by The Bad Plus
• "Thank You" -- Led Zeppelin
• "In My Life" -- Beatles
• "Stand" (and any) Sly Stone
• "Initials bb" by Serge Gainsbourg
• any old Kinks
• "Funky days are back" by the British-Pakistani band Cornershop
• "Sexy Boy" by Air and of course
• "Jungle Boogie", so basic yet encouraging that we may properly think of it as a Fur Elise for rock drums.

Bustle in Your Hedgerow

I think a good name for an all-Gordon Lightfoot cover band would be "Icewater Mansion""

But my idea is too late!  A subsequent search engine query  revealed existance of a Van-Halenesque outfit in Utica NY by this name.

On  the subject of appropriating the songs of others, a radio host this morning noted that we seldom hear people covering the wonderful songs of Paul Simon.  Is it futile?   It's not just that we acknowledge emotional ownership by Simon, but it's also, as the DJ put it,  "the way the recording was made, the way it was produced. It's too difficult to abscond with."  (Jonathan Schwartz -The Saturday Show, a local show on WNYC)  The Lemonheads' pale Mrs Robinson comes to mind.

Elucidation of the Zep lyric of the post title may be found here.

Let's Do "Ein Tiden Blir Skrudd" Again!

My youthful roomate surprised me by knowing  all the songs in a movie from the 1970s.  She a had come home yesterday while I was playing the Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack and she could sing all the words to even the songs noone likes.  The most impressive part?  She was somehow following along to a foreign soundtack that was completely in Norwegian.

Free download of Rocky Horror Picture Show in Norsk from WFMU in New Jersey.
Best bets:

• Bryllupsangen (damn it, Janet)
• Alltid Lys Hos Frankenstein (there's a light)
• Science Fiction Dobbeltforestilling

Els Pets

Among the many nations that want to exist but don’t, I find Catalan especially interesting. Catalan has its own language and perhaps more significantly, their own FIFA sanctioned soccer team.  They also have their own dinosaur rock band ,Els Pets, which, though possessing a greatest hits box set I bought in Barcelona, don’t show up anywhere on the so-called AllMusic.com.   

I confess I listened to the box set twice in 2002 and never took it out again.  The promo images in the accompanying booklet portray a band passing through a variety of late-80's looks (respectively post-Torpedos Tom Petty, Motorhead, postrelevance-Stones-cum-Peter Max), as well as photos of what seems to be a symbol of their country or maybe hometown, the hazelnut.

Back on the subject of Els Pets homeland, in contrast to Non-Nations like Kurdistan, Basque, and Chiapas, Catalan has no terrorist bombing campaigns.   One rebel blog (Bye Bye Spain) is civil enough to remind commentors "Agresion linguistica no gracias."   

The Catalan are civil but not neccesarily content: I remember being in a risible nationalist crowd at a Barcelona soccer match that joyously chanted “Fuck Spain”(more or less) as they pogoed up and down.  I think the actual chant was an ecstatic “Puta Espana”.  The visiting national team, China, was pretty clueless about the whole experience. 

I watched that game from the back of the upper deck  “foreigners section” behind the Chinese Pep Band, a dozen fans carrying Chinese Opera instruments (gongs and other exotic Oriental sounds).  We all sat on our hands, cordoned off from the flag waving, flare-lighting, garbage-throwing locals that roamed the remaining 90% of the F.C.B.. Stadium.  China lost 5-0 and the cheery-but-not-beery crowd flowed out into the streets, dancing, singing, and smiling.   

Els Pets recently played the September 11th Festival in Barcelona, a rock concert commemorating a 1714 victory of Catalan over Spain.

Brief  El Pets Wikipedia entry.

40 years ago today

The Who on the Smothers Brothers Show.
I like it because:
    1.  Roger's hair is a bouffant or something

    2.  The drums are not mic'ed and Keith finds it hilarious that he is not allowed to hit them during the performance.

    3.  Tommy Smothers is seen as "The Man", as in square, establishment, contemptible.   
What a weird difference from now, where we're all in on the joke and authority figures are "cool" too.  I think it was better when there were two worlds, the overground and underground. 

UPDATE.   I'm so naive.   The more I look at this video the more it seems these mod fellows are just pilled up.  Pete is especially on-edge -- weird, jerky, detached, but look also at the head movements of Roger and Keith.  John Entwistle is smooth-over everything but everyone else is radiating the kind of feelings I have after too much coffee.  They're definitely not high on anything soothing.

UPDATE: It took all these years for me to understand via Allmusic.com, that "unlike most rock bands, the Who based their rhythm on Townshend's guitar allowing Moon and Entwistle to improvise wildly over his foundation, "

Bands Blogs

I really like seeing photo essays and journalism covering a band when it is self-generated by said band.  Here, Radiohead , snapping pictures in the studio this month.  Warts and all.

And The Bad + check in with awesome advice to acquire a sham expertise in Kafka.

Woody's Rag

The lyrics to "Woody's Rag" are fantastic. If you like Bob Dylan's "Bob Dylan's Dream" you'll recognize the influence here.  The lyrics of the song seem to describe much of Guthrie's hard work experience. I tabulated here all that he quantifies in the song, ending up with a sort of Guthrie resume done in the style of Harper's Index. But in the end I was happy to see it is less resume than love song.

Woody recalls:

125 head of wild horses handled
14 loco broncos rode to a dead standstill
314 arm loads of stoved wood chopped
1 gallon of kerosene carried 18 miles
48 rows of short cotton weeded
13 acres of bad corn chopped 
11 back yards cut the sticker weeds out of
97 hands shook
73 babies kissed
1 time robbed for cash
1 time robbed on credit
9 barnloads cleaned out
31 automobiles cranked
42 hound dogs, licked by (all over)
7 times bit by hungry dogs
2 times chewed all to pieces by water moccasins and rattlesnakes
9 church meetings played the fiddle for
11 separate denominations joined
3 cars pulled out of mud holes
4 cars pulled out of snowdrifts.
5 cisterns of water dug
7 trade unions joined
3 deserts crossed
1 time struck by lightning
1 time struck by Congress,
3 times struck by cars on the highways

All on account a 'cause I wanted to
show her that I was a man and I liked to work

I been hit and run down and run over and
walked on and knocked around and I'm just
settin' here now trying to study up what else I
can do to show that woman that I still ain't afraid
of hard work.