You’re Still a Friend of Mine
So around 1998 I got a copy of the new hot CD-based music magazine Launch. It was an odd look into the future of the Internet, as, in retrospect, it functioned almost exactly like a Flash-oriented website in the mid-2000s. There were a few simple games, music interviews with audio clips, &c &c. What I remember most, however, was a clip from a music video for "Drop Dead Gorgeous" by Republica. You may have heard the band's much more popular sing "Ready to Go." I had not heard of the band aat that point, but I instantly fell for them. The lead singer was space-agey in her metallic dress and red-streaked Louise Brooks coif. The guitar licks nice and smooth and there were plenty of electronics in there for contrast. The lyrics were in-your-face self destructive Of course, I didn't actually grasp any of this at 13. All I knew was that I loved the hell out of this song even though I'd only listened to 30 seconds. Over and over. This was the first band I discovered with complete independence, without the guiding hand of someone more knowledgeable or, ahem, cooler. This was the first band that I could truly call my own.
Image co. Last.fm
Of course, this all took place before the MP3 and filesharing revolution. Hell, the computer I was using the play this magazine-of-the-future ground to a halt a year later when I tried to play the first MP3 I had ever downloaded - Nirvana's cover of "Lake of Fire". Well, not to a halt, precisely, but doom metal wasn't exactly popular yet and that is exactly what was came out of my speakers. Fortunately, I eventually received Republica's self-titled album for my next birthday. I wore it out. By the end of the month, 14-year-old me knew every word on that entire CD. I'm sure if I got my hands on it now, I'd be able to sing along to an embarrassing degree. And here is the video which started it all:
Ruh-Roh
If you've had your ears open in the last few decades, you've heard the Amen Break. It's in everything. Commercials use it all the time and drum and bass and hip hop rely on it for the basic beat behind practically every track. What started as a drum solo on the B-side of a soul 45 from 1969 became the groundwork for an uncountable amount of music. Take a listen, you'll recognize it immediately even though it's about six seconds long:
Clip from "Amen, Brother" by the Melvins. Audio co. Wikipedia.
The Amen Break. Got it, right? Now think back to watching Scooby Doo. Remember the brief sound clip that happened every time a character would dash in mid air and then zoom off? It was a quick bongo beat and then a “zip!” That's sound effect is called the Bongo Run:
Audio co. 8bitcollective
Logo by glomag.
Well, animalstyle of the 8bitcollective chiptunes music group had a brilliant idea. What if you were to make tracks revolving around the Bongo Run instead of the Amen Break? Well, the result spawned one of the tiniest and most insignificant yet incredibly entertaining electronic music subgenres ever: Scoobycore.
TALKTOANIMALS' breakcore track “Scoobie's Doobie 48 Hour Challenge” is my favorite:
hartfelt's “I Would Have Gotten Away With It” is a close second:
Oh, and if you've got twenty free minutes, you can also check out this short documentary on the Amen Break. The video isn't particularly relevant, so you can just have it on in the background:
Doing It For A Thrill
I can’t really explain why I enjoy La Roux as much as I do. Her voice is shrill, her overly-repetitive beats were found in a box outside of the Human League’s apartment, and she honest-to-god rhymed “box” with “locks” in one of her songs. But still. I’ve listened to her self-titled album over and over again these last month or so. I have more creative music, but I don’t care. There’s this odd, effortless-pop niche she fills for me and I am glad for it.
Photo, edited, co. La Roux.
Maybe it’s the guilty pleasure of hearing a twenty-two year old sing breakup songs, or the fact that her entire aesthetic is 1995 by way of 2015. Or maybe the fact that she made a name for herself (she’s had a #2 album and a #1 single in the UK) without either being conventionally attractive – and emphasizing the fact! – or particularly original. What I really think it is, is the earnestness of her sound. She knows she’s cribbing, but the doesn’t matter to her. She sings her heart out to obvious lyrics over remaindered rhythms and it just works. And I can’t get enough of it.
Ashes, Ashes
Saturday night, some friends and I went to a show at Cake Shop. Ostensibly, we went there to see Zola Jesus, but ended up leaving before her set – in fact, I felt a little bad as we put on our coats pretty much two feet away from where she was waiting to use the bathroom. I'm not completely familiar with her work, but I wanted to see her live as she was one third of the quasi-supergroup Former Ghosts, whose debut album was one of my favorites this year. She'll be opening for Xiu Xiu when I see them in April, however, so no big loss.
The band I want to speak about is White Ring, composed of Bryan Kurkimilis and Kendra Malia. According to the band playing after them, this was their first live set ever. Their set-up was pretty bare-bones: Malia was on the mic, with enough reverb to make it sound as if she were in a hallway nested matreshka-style within a dozen other hallways. Kurkimilis had a Yamaha (?) and a Macbook. The synth drum-beats (offsetting the drones) were incredibly, almost insultingly simple and her lyrics were incomprehensible. This didn't affect my enjoyment of the group at all. They got their dark, minimalist-gothic ambience just right. The simplicity and complete artificiality of the set was a conscious departure from both dissonant and untuned folk-Goth on one end and dramatic synth-dance productions on the other.
Image, edited, co. White Ring.
Two aspects of their set stuck out for me – the use of gun samples and the shrieking. I don't usually hear samples of guns cocking (chick-chick) and shooting (boom) outside of hip-hop, but their presence, played to the beat of the music and simultaneously creating their own, was not only attention-grabbing, but genuinely interesting and novel. Malia's shrieks and screams were also well-placed, bringing the rising tempo and mumbling lyrics to a head.
An aside: as someone with crippling stage-fright for even the most inconsequential of presentations, I'd like to commend Bryan Kurkimilis on keeping his own in check. The dude was scared and it showed, but it didn't affect the quality of the show at all. On the other hand (and equally likely), if intense fear is part of his stage persona, I'd like to congratulate him on his successful wholesale embodiment of the emotion.
Here's one of their newer tracks, entitled “Roses” and set, inexplicably, to either the opening or ending scene of Stanley Kubrick's Lolita. I'm not sure if this is a fan video or not, but it's notable that the creator of the video kept the gunshots in from the original soundtrack. I've been told that White Ring will be releasing an EP this spring:
UPDATE
Courtesy of Pendu Magazine, here's a video of Saturday night's set:
Never Did No Wanderin’
I've always loved the the incredibly varied musical performances in Christopher Guest's films. As an example, here is a scene from Guest and Rob Reiner's 80s metal film Spinal Tap; the titular band – played by Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Guest himself – plays “Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight”.
What's really special is how Guest and Reiner run down the history of music between the inception of modern rock and roll from blues, country and R&B in the 50s, to the "present", which at that point was the glammy, technically proficient heavy metal of the 1980s. And now here's a scene from earlier in the movie showcasing the Thamesmen, the skiffle band which would eventually become Spinal Tap. Skiffle was a style of American country music which became very popular in the UK during the 50s. Notably, the Beatles were born from the Quarrymen, John Lennon's skiffle band - Guest takes this fact to heart, as you can see.
Later on, the film encounters Spinal Tap, now carrying their name, in a different configuration. Most likely this is directly referencing the psychedelic/blues group Earth, which eventually became the seminal heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Of course, it is also a great parody/pastiche of the popularity and subsequent de-weirdening of 60s psychedelic music.
Roughly 20 years later,Chrristopher Guest directed a folk music mockumentary entitled A Mighty Wind. One of the featured groups, The Folksmen, bore a striking similarity to Spinal Tap.
Yep. That is, once again, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest, reunited in a wholly different style. In fact, during Spinal Tap's reunion tour, the Folksmen would play as the opening band.
Certain Prides Thus Obliged
I rode the wrong train home, adding an eight block-long walk to my odyssey from Brooklyn's hip north end. As I plugged away at retaining consciousness on the preceding line, a headful of red wine shifted my attention away from the conductor's garbled announcements and toward the bored young blond sitting across from me. My shirking faculties robbed me of heed for the proper transfer and I boarded my second-choice train, which arrived with a merciful expedience.
It was the wrong end of five in the morning when I came to and debarked – staggered off – at the correct stop in my neighborhood. This was a laudable accomplishment in itself; I was afraid that enjoying a drink and living in Brooklyn's southern boondocks would, yet again, add up to a firm rise-and-shine prodding, indelicately administered by a police officer walking the graveyard terminus beat at Coney Island. I had originally planned to sit out the night, made timid by the radio's apocalyptic pronouncements of the upcoming weather. Fortuitously, the snow had lingered long enough for my night to resolve itself, and lazily tumbled from the stars as I plodded home through the orange silence which descends hand-in-glove with every nocturnal snowfall.
Parenthetical Girls - This Regrettable End
Lemme See Yer Gavel
When, at age 20, I first started working at Freaks – the punk boutique formerly found on the East Village's renowned St. Mark's Place – my manager and I got into a conversation regarding embarrassment of one's own taste in music. Rob, who was in his 30s, told me he enjoyed the first wave of emo. I immediately responded “and you … openly admit that?” He explained that no one with a sense of self-worth should ever be ashamed of owning up to their taste. Who is anyone else to judge what you receive enjoyment from? Who worth knowing would peg an individual as a worthwhile human being based on how they like their pop music?
I can't say that conversation miraculously cleansed me of prejudice. I still harshly judge people based on their preferred genres (along with just about anything else), but I now have a little voice in the back of my head rendering me unable to ignore my own snobbery and constantly reminding me of my own guilty pleasures. I try to remember that someone who listens to – in my opinion – disposable trash may have tastes which are, for whatever reason, unrefined. Not everyone makes the time or the effort to sort through the reams of mediocre music out there. Or, god forbid, music might not be particularly important to them. I find my own habits an unreliable yardstick because I'm an obsessive, at best. If they have made conscious choices that do not meld with my own, I try to keep in mind that doing so is a respectable act in and of itself.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: listen to whatever you want and enjoy it all the same. And if you genuinely love music, feel absolutely free to be a snob! But a respectful snob. Turn your nose up at the music, not the individual inflicting it upon you.
As a sort of act of contrition for my by-gone days of judgmental prickdom (which some would say I am still smack in the middle of; all the more for writing the above) I present a guilty pleasure of which I can't get enough:
How We Won the War
Today, take a quick tour of the Technology Wing of the War on Artistic Constraints Memorial Museum
Roy Lichtenstein wields the nigh-unstoppable Image Duplicator...
...while the Dead Boys pack the mighty Sonic Reducer.
Synthetic Sharing Machine
I spent last night browsing YouTube for live sets of bands that I like and came up with two gems I've been ever-so-giddy to share. The first is a live set featuring Rap (a.k.a. Dragon, a.k.a. video artist Hari Ziznewski) opening for wunderkind Beirut in 2006. He is accompanied by the incredible Alaska in Winter. While Rap remains relatively – needlessly! – obscure, Alaska in Winter has been all over the place; his track “Your Red Dress” was featured in an episode of Gray's Anatomy (season 4, episode 15.) AIW's 2007 LP Dance Party in the Balkans has been one of my most listened to albums this year and one track features a young(ish) Zach Condon (of Beirut) on vox. So here's Rap and Alaska in Winter with “Sega Song”.
Now, this one is the real treasure. YouTube's own goldenpuppy1 has been slowly and steadily releasing a live set Neutral Milk Hotel played in New York in 1998, on their tour for the seminal indie album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Neutral Milk Hotel are responsible for some of the greatest music released during the 1990s and, in my opinion, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is their crowning achievement. If you have never heard this album you absolutely, absolutely must. To certain individuals of certain tastes, lead Jeff Mangum's nervous breakdown and complete resignation from the world of music was an event with as much resonance as the death of Kurt Cobain. Considering that a twelve year old VHS transfer isn't the best introduction to this band, I'll make this offer: if you want to listen to this album that I absolutely fucking insist you listen to, drop me a line and I will hook you up. No one who claims to enjoy music should go through life without hearing In The Aeroplane at least once. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying you'll necessary like it. Much like the styling of John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, it is easy to dislike Jeff Mangum's unique vocals and abstract lyrics, and the band's insistence on bizarre, noisy instrumentation. Whatever. As far as the experimental aspect of 1990s indie rock is concerned, they're the origin of the species. Considering that there has been an absolute dearth of quality NMH recordings on YouTube – there are a good videos of Mangum's solo sets however – these videos are a revelation. Now here's Neutral Milk Hotel with “King of Carrot Flowers pts. 2 and 3”
And here is my single favorite song of theirs, “April 8th” from the album On Avery Island.
The rest is here and seems to be irregularly updated.
P.S.: I've gone through the archives and categorized all my posts featuring live music with the live category-tag.
Au Français
Valerie (MySpace) is a French synth-pop/new-wave-revivalist collective. I don't have much information on them as 95% of their written communiques to the outside world are in French and I don't really care enough to translate invitations to parties halfway across the world. One of their better known artists is Anoraak, and he has released the entirety of his album Nightdrive With You here. His - and by extension Valerie's - music is at once simple and nostalgic, with the occasional hilariously misstep (seriously, dude? "I had sex with another girl"? That's not a song lyric.)
What I really wanted to write about was their album cover design, which, due to my previously professed 80s futurism fetish, hits all the right notes. I love everything about it: the neon coloring on dark backgrounds, the style-over-substance sexuality and especially the technological imagery reduced ad absurdum to afunctional gadgetry:
...and here's my favorite Valerie track: Anoraak's remix of College's "Teenage Color."
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