mbv

where was i this weekend?

th ATP festival in new york!

here's some mbv to tide you all over until i recap...

i forgot to turn on my grunge pedal

first, some fun and maybe a little context i guess, though it only is the first minute or so that's relevant... but it's kind of fun seeing early free kitten footage, plus some mocking of the commercial mess that the subject of this post really was....



yeah. that's right. grunge. everyone's favorite marketing term slash genre slash fashion statement slash meaningless buzzword from the early 90's. even cars were grunge! (sadly, the car commercial which called it's subject grunge seems to be unlocateable on the interwebs).


so i got the new Mojo, and the main feature is on the history of grunge, particularly sub pop records which turns 20 this year and how... umm.. important it was...

ummm...

sure. why not.

i'm not going to pick at the article. it's mostly published history, old friends getting together, some reminiscing, some complaining about the "fall of grunge" and some talk of sub pop's current status...

so okay, i was sort of a "Grunge" person back in middle school/freshman year of high school. i don't deny it. hell, i even had a history of grunge poster from melody maker on my wall - hell, in knew my stuff. but it lost me fast, aside from a few bands who i still like today and a few who i can pick an album or two i think is good (soundgarden only got really shitty after the tour with metallica and guns and roses; pearl jam became listenable to eventually; alice in chains don't count because they were just a glam band wearing flannel...) i still like mudhoney, nirvana, ummm.... ummm.... so it's tough trying to define grunge beyond a few bands that were idnetified with the "genre," since most of the bands labeled as grunge were second generation knock offs of combinations of the aformentioned bands -- yeah, there were a lot of bands from seattle: the melvins, tad, etc etc etc who certainly were "grunge" but... eh... anyway... grunge was the closest thing to a music "phase" i had. while many of my friends and classmates went from metal to hip hop to grunge back to hip hop (snoop and dre, specifically) to "Alternative" i quickly saw through the flannel and realized that "grunge" was as meaningless a word as "punk" or "soul" or, hell, even "alternative."


then we had bands like bush. and stone temple pilots. hell, even ugly kid joe - who were basically a 1978 van halen knock off that wore flannel - were labeled as grunge. it became a joke, something mudhoney satirized in videos and in song (putting a song about how grunge was overblown on a soundtrack for a movie that sort of represented the height of "grunge" as a commercial commodity is kind of genius, really... hmm... no wonder they were never really all that popular...)

anyway. hmm. memories...

so the magazine has a top 20 sub pop releases as well as a nifty cd covering their history... which seems woefully incomplete to me though i can't really say off hand what's missing... maybe i'm mad that there was no velocity girl included (still probably my favorite band to ever have anything to do with sub pop, and not "grunge" in the slightest.). but does Earth's "Earth2" - 3 songs, 73 minutes - really count as essential? i will agree, though the dwarves are entirely un-listenable to me for the most part, with a lot of their list. (interesting seeing a magazine talk about sunny day real estate's "Diary" that doesn't use the word term emo - yet another meaningless "genre" term - though i guess that owes in some part to it being a british magazine).

the cd, titles Sub Pop 300 does a pretty good job of covering the label's history, starting off with green river - who i only ever really had any interest in because they covered bowie's queen bitch and had members of mudhoney in them. then the b-side to mudhoney's most famous single, touch me i'm sick (though sweet young thing ain't sweet no more is a fine song, i don't see why they didn't go for broke with the more famous song...) then Tad's "Wood Goblins." I never really cared for Tad, and this song kind of proves why. L7's "shove" (was that released on sub pop? apparently it was... huh... )still, not a great song by any stretch, and for a band who really didn't have a lot of "great" songs, well, yeah. my favorite L7 moment is their appearance in John Waters' "serial mom" (as "camel lips"). screaming trees... mark lanegan has done some much more interesting stuff since then that it's weird hearing his old band. kind of dull, honestly. afghan whigs... another off choice, with "retarded" from Up In It instead of anything from Congregation (which was the album of theirs picked in the 20 best releases). the whigs were never really "grunge" and are kind of placed at the turning point of the cd's chronological view. red red meat's braindead (who? i have a christmas 7" they did where they cover the who's christmas song from how the grinch stole christmas. umm... obligatory inclusion of postal service (such great heights) and the shins (new slang), the two bands who really saved Sub Pop in this century. and then pissed jeans and eraser, who are in a lot of ways - pissed jeans, especially - a call back to sub pop's roots, with a nice bit of fast, loud, noisy rock.

it also includes the brilliant flight of the concords "bowie" which is such a brilliant parody of both bowie's music, and of the man himself (though i doubt when he travels in space, his nipples really do become antennae...)

the cd also made me feel old. nostalgia for my early teen years is just weird...

hang the dj hang the dj hang the dj

pile of craft 2.0... or 2008.... or II... or, whatever you wanted to call it cos it was the second one DJ setlists! woo!

Dave:
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Ennio Morricone
Kites Are Fun - The Free Design
Slash Your Tires - Luna
World Cup Fever - Air Miami
Johnny 99 - Bruce Springsteen
Watercolors - The Postmarks
Ramblin' Man - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Krafty - New Order
Blue Angels Air Show - Bright Eyes
Joe Hill - Billy Bragg
The Hymn For The Coffee - Hefner
Happy Birthday - Altered Images
Walkin' With Jesus [Sound Of Confusion] - Spacemen 3
Rock & Roll - The Velvet Underground
Don't Go Away - Talulah Gosh

Ann:
Good Vibrations - The Langley Schools Music Project
The Big Guns - Jenny Lewis With The Watson Twins
Another Travelin' Song - Bright Eyes
The Ballad Of Sean Foley - Maria Taylor
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? - She & Him
Isn't It Great to Be Alive - Spearmint
I Love My Jean - Camera Obscura
I Can't Get No Satisfaction (Thank God) - Talulah Gosh
Mission Bells - The Aislers Set
Rainbows In The Dark - Tilly & The Wall
If You Fall - Azure Ray
Solace For Pain - The Gentle Waves
Wouldn't It Be Nice (Stereo Version) - The Beach Boys
The Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle & Sebastian
(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone - The Monkees
Lightness - Death Cab for Cutie
Neon Bible - Arcade Fire

Dave:
Pass the Dutchie - Musical Youth
Wu Tang Clan - The French
Marathon Not a Sprint - Camera Obscura
Billy Liar - The Decemberists
Here Comes The Summer - Fiery Furnaces
The Brown And Red Divide - Ladybirds
Come on! Feel the Illinoise! -Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition -Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream - Sufjan Stevens
Part Time Punks - Television Personalities
Southern Belles In London Sing - The Faint
The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) - They Might Be Giants
Andrew Ridgley - Black Box Recorder
You Want The Candy - The Raveonettes
X-French Tee Shirt - Shudder To Think
Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story) - !!!
dinner with yoda - Kid Koala
Ann:
Straight To Hell - The Clash
(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea - Elvis Costello
Shame For You - Lily Allen
Posed To Death - The Faint
Gangsters - Special AKA
Baggy Trousers - Madness
Dare - Gorillaz
Friendship Station - Le Tigre
Death Goes To The Disco - Pulp
Face Up - New Order
Something Against You - Pixies
Rock the House - Gorillaz
Cartoon Capers - Automator
Birdhouse in Your Soul - They Might Be Giants
Pocket Calculator - Kraftwerk

Dave:
Oh My God - Kaiser Chiefs
Munich - Editors
T-Shirt Weather - The Lucksmiths
Spring Came, Rain Fell - Club 8
I Worked Myself Into A Calm - Gemma Hayes
Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out - The Replacements
Summer Here Kids - Grandaddy
waterloo sunset - The Kinks
Sound It Off - Mates Of State
No Depression - Uncle Tupelo
Ashes To Ashes - David Bowie
Slender - Tompaulin
Shoot Out The Lights - Saint Etienne
Closed Captioned - Fugazi
Viet Nam - Minutemen
Metronomic Underground - Stereolab

Ann:
No Love Lost - Joy Division
Tracy Jacks - Blur
You're In A Bad Way - Saint Etienne
Sight Of You - Pale Saints
Crash - The Primitives
Sunday Girl - Blondie
Lips Like Sugar - Echo & The Bunnymen
Some Candy Talking - The Jesus & Mary Chain
Everyday Is Like Sunday - Morrissey
Subterranean Homesick Alien - Radiohead
Waterfall - The Stone Roses
Play For Today - The Cure
Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
Soon - My Bloody Valentine

Dave:
Add Your Light To Mine, Baby - Lucky Soul
Make Out Club - Unrest
Bang - Blur
Dust - The Faint/Bright Eyes
Star Sign - Teenage Fanclub
Debonair - The Afghan Whigs
Der Kommisar - Falco
Weathershow - The Gentle Waves
Up For Sale - The (International) Noise Conspiracy
Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
Les Sucettes A L'anis - France Gall
The First Five Times - Stars
Timorous Me - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
Did You Ever - that dog
I Want To Die In the Hot Summer - I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Don't Stop Believing - Badly Drawn Boy



so, a nice mix of stuff. i'll probably post more about the event itself, later... though i will say i am quite liking my formerly bike intertube now belt.

the plusses of minus

http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus.html

so this might be one of the cutest, sweetest, and really most wonderful "webcomics" in existence. minus is the story of a girl with magical powers who can grant wishes and basically make whatever she wants to happen happen, though mostly she does what she does for other people - though sometimes, she does things just because, like switching the heads of everyone in a diner or turning herself invisible or into a puddle. it's a little like that twilight zone episode (remade for the movie), and she definitely has some sinister moments, especially early on.

the writer/artist, ryan armand says:

"Each minus strip is painted on a 15x20" piece of Illustration board. With this comic I am
pretending I am making a comic strip for a newspaper in the early 20th century. A special
newspaper that lets me use as much color as I want, because real papers have limitations
on that sort of thing. Or maybe they did in the past I'm not sure! "

most recently in the strip, after bringing some people back to life - which briefly created a zombie outbreak of sorts -, she has caused the entire human race to die (they asked to be reunited with everyone who died).

this is one of my favorite strips:

although there are several that are simply amazing.

new music?

yeah.

i fail.

seriously, you'd think i'd have learned by now that i just can't keep a regular blogging schedule. it's not like i'm "too busy" or anything. and i have been doing the listening end of things, just the actual blogging about it has lapsed.

that said, a few new things have been taking over my listening recently...


so nevermind that i have a gigantic crush on zooey deschannel, which pretty much guaranteed i'd like this cd no matter what (well, i guess had it been an album of celine dion covers i might have had an issue with it). this cd is completely adorable and brilliant. a nice mix of sun soaked acoustic pop, 50's/60's girl group-esque songs, with a little elliot smith mixed in. the cover of the beatles' "i should've known better" is simply amazing, turning an already pretty brilliant early mid-period beatles song (was it in help? or hard days night? i forget...) into a sunny, Hawaiian tune (slightly silly, as evidenced by Zooey's audible giggle during M.Ward singing the chorus). amazingly, she actually wrote or cowrote all the songs (other than the aforementioned cover, and the covers of "you've really got a hold on me," and "swing lo sweet chariot.") especially amazing considering that usually when most actresses make that attempt into music, they don't (jenny lewis being an exception). i really truly hope the title "volume 1" means there's going to be a volume 2, as it would be wonderful to hear more of what this collaboration might produce.

check them out on their myspace page!



so it's been over a decade since their last poper studio album, and almost as long since their live album. they did pop up a couple of years ago on a serge gainsbourg tribute, but otherwise the past ten years have nee nothing but rumors and silence from the portishead camp (there was a beth gibbons solo album in there too i think...). so the big question is, was it worth the wait?

well... was it???

YES!!!!

a little less sample heavy than the last two (actually, i'm not sure there's any sampling on the record), it continues on their gloomy, noirish, not quite trip-hop sound where we last left it. beth's voice is still amazing - haunting and wavering, but never weak. a comparison can be drawn between this album and some of the better parts of radiohead's last few albums - a mix of electronic beats and krautrock instrumentalism. there's a few tracks that seem to channel joy division ("we carry on" in paticular), though this isn't a bad thing. this is everything this album needed to be (though, really, had it been just a rehash of Dummy or Portishead, it still would have been an amazing record.) apparently you can download the entire album pretty much everywhere online, especially since it leaked about a month early. but it really is worth shelling out the 13 or 14 bucks you'll pay for it to have it in hand.

so possibly back to some of me regularly scheduled blogging later... maybe...

shiny happy Apocolypse!

ok, never mind why Beast is so tiny (which might just owe to the varying degrees of size that Apocalypse has been depicted over the years). why the hell is the most powerful, evil mutant EVER grinning and waving? he just seems so... friendly... you'd never know that he's probably getting ready to send a new wave of 4 horsemen out to get you! this is almost as bad as the DC Superfriends Batman, with it's knowing smirk. way to blur that line between good and evil Marvel Superhero Squad.... (and looking at their other figures... i mean, if everyone else, good or evil, were grinning all happy and friendly like, it would maybe make sense. but other than a few - and mostly bad guys - other smiles, it's a lot of looks of determination but nothing so overtly... joyful... i mean, this Apocalypse is one i wouldn't mind playing in a tree fort with whereas this Apcolypse:

would probably make me run and hide. (although he does kind of look like he's wearing a puffy sleeved pirate shirt, doesn't he? hmm....))

bootlegs, singles, and new romantics oh my

another walk through parts of my music collection. hooray.

this entry:
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - the Tyranny of Distance; Jimmy Eat World - bleed american; My Superhero - Solid State 14; Duran Duran - Rio; Mates of State - Bring it Back; Hefner - I Took Her Love For Granted (single); Belle & Sebastian - Une Nuit a Paris (bootleg)

so when i saw ted leo a few years back, opening for belle and sebastian, i had no recollection of actually having this cd, largely because - as evidenced by the big "Add Date" sticker slapped on the front - this was a Radio promo, so i didn't buy it as much as liberated it with my station manager's approval (truthfully, he didn't really give a shit about anything but letting his buddies do whatever they wanted at the station). Ted Leo draws from a wide variety of influences on this cd, from punk to new wave (definite echoes of elvis costello) to 70's rock (specifically Thin Lizzy, especially on the track Timorous Me which has some definite "boys are back in town" like moments). and just, well, damn this record is good!

bleed american - and the copy i have, is also i guess being a radio promo from around the same time the ted leo came in, this i remember actually being a "second copy" so my taking it wasn't so much liberation as it was taking the giveaway copy, since nobody listened to the station enough to have any sot of contest for it. they renamed it after the 9/11 attacks, because "bleed american" was, i suppose, a bit controversial (and they were on major label at this point, so we wouldn't want to offend the big radio markets or anything). the album, anything but. jimmy eat world were, to me, always a sort of weak jawbreaker imitation. so, of course, just like jawbreaker when they released a watered down attempt at some mainstream acceptance, so did jimmy eat world, the biggest difference being that they succeeded (though i don't think the critical reception was as good as Dear You's). unfortunately, jimmy eat world are not jawbeaker - they will not be looked upon fondly in a few years, except maybe on "hits of the 2000's" style compilations. so let's get to the hits - "the middle" and "sweetness". the middle is an innocent enough song . poppy, great hook, no wonder it was a hit single. but so goddamned annoying! i think if it hadn't been as big a hit, it might not seem so terrible in retrospect, but it was and so it does. it's just one of those stupid, motivational songs that seems to always be a hit (see "Rockstar" by... umm... that annoying band that sang rockstar...). "sweetness," on the other hand, is overproduced gabage - jimmy eat world trying to be U2 or something. big verses, big choruses... blech. the rest of the album is largely forgettable, except maybe the third - and less popular - single, "praise chorus" which is actually not a bad song, has the guy from the promise ring on it, and references not just the promise ring, but crimson and clover, our house by madness, and don't let's start by they might be giants. so at least on an "i'm a big music nerd" level, it works (on another song they complain about a dj not having "automatic" by JaMC. but by that point i just wanted the album to end...)

ahh. more ska punk... i guess... is it? hmmm... it has the guitar sound that basically defined the supposed genre, certainly. i don't know. i'll give my superhero a little bit of credit for having an accordion (i really like accordions in pop music i think, it's sort of a problem i have). there are definite highlights - their cover of "groovy kind of love" (just titled "groovy") is actually quite good - and i'll give them a pass on the "obligatory cover" problem, as this isn't really an 80's song, but a 60's song, despite phil collins' brutalization of it. the song "another kind" is also pretty good, with a guitar solo that apes the melody of "kids in america" and "sunday" (which i'm fairly certain is also a cover, or at least an adaptation of another song). then they kind of crap it up with an "intermission" (are they trying to be blur?) and then close the cd with an acoustic love/breakup song that just sounds so much like a bad beach bum tune that it's hard to listen to. mostly, the cd is just too serious. at least a lot of the other ska/punk bands - good or bad - seemed to be making fun music (the supertones aside... man did the supertones suck! jesus ska!! with generic horn lines and even more generic guitars!). it's not a bad cd, it's just too wistful in the sad way to really enjoy much (plus, honestly, there's just no "punch" to most of the songs - it's just very very blah). i think i bought it because of the song "another kind" which was on some ska compilation i picked up somewhere and liked it - yeah, i had a bit of a ska-punk phase, even though i probably would have listened to most of the bands with or without the little trend that happened between pop punk and swing.

in defense of duran duran, if it weren't for mtv highlighting how photogenic they were, i kind of doubt they would be as maligned as they seem to be these days. honestly, they could have easily been another Roxy Music, but instead they became the poster boys for style over substance - did they have to look so good in blush and eyeliner? - which was apparently the only thing the whole new romantic thing had to offer to the music channel. so they went from art/glam rock to teeny bopper music, and then to whatever the Reflex was (one can blame the decline in quality from Rio until their early 90's comeback as to the bloated egos that came with their MTV notoriety, something they couldn't even escape when a few members went to form power station with robert palmer, who also became a style over substance mtv idol with his own flashy videos). but Rio is a great album. yeah it has the singles - "rio" itself is a good song which served it's "let's break america" purpose quite well. "hungry like the wolf" is possibly the best song on the record, with it's background female moaning hinting only slightly what the song is rumored to be about. things get a little darker at the end - most noticeably on "the chauffer" which is all dark, and nervy and sinister sounding - not something you'd expect based solely upon the bright pop of "Rio" and "hold back the rain." and admit it.... you all sing along to any of these songs when they come on, whether it's on the radio in your car, or in a shopping mall. my sister was a huge duran duran fan - as a teenager at the time, it made sense. honestly, i probably never really thought of them as much more than an 80's band until their 90's phase - all glam rock and "hey, we actually are musicians!" attitude (it didn't help that i actually liked the ska/punk heavy tribute album, which renewed my interest quite a bit). i think i may have, at times, passed my liking of duran duran as ironic, but i state with all honesty, that no. it's not. i love duran duran. period.

mates of state do an awesome cover of david bowie's "starman". it's not on this album, but i bring it up because i heard the original "starman" on the radio the other day and realized how awesome that era of bowie really is. and also, how awesome it is to heard bowie on the radio at all (seriously - he doesn't really fit any of the major radio formats anymore: he's not really classic rock, though i guess "ziggy stardust" or "changes" might pop up there periodically, his new music tends to be ignored or terrible, such has his brief flirtation with nine inch nails industrial-light). but this has nothing to do with this review (neither does their awesome cover of nico's "these days", also not on the album). i first heard mates of state on internet radio, downloaded a bunch of stuff from previous albums (team boo being my favorite). it's not "cute" music (though the whole husband and wife/ keyboards and drums angle might seem to some as a bit cute/twee). but they pretty much rock. it's unique. it's fun. their voices meld well together. and... yeah. they kind of fit musically with tilly and the wall - that same variety of indie pop. hence, why i love them, as i happen to love that variety of indie pop (ooh. they have a new record out in may... ).

i own a lot of hefner singles, bought in the uk where they seemed to be pretty easy to get a hold of in the record shops. they cover jonathan richman on one of the b-sides on this one, very well i might add, which makes sense. i actually first got a hole of hefner because of the album this song also appears on, the fidelity wars. it's a single so it's short - hefner singles are always top notch though, a sides and b sides. here's what they wrote on the back of the cd, for what i suppose can be called liner notes:

Granted, Babies, and Thought all recorded by Miti. 'To Hide a
Little Thought' was recorded at the BBC Maida Vale studios for
the Steve Lamacq Show (12th April 1999) where Miti was
assisted by Rupert Flindt (p) BBC 1999. Jack Hayter played the
stylophone and has joined the band, well at least while the sun
is out. John wrote another recipe for you inside. Eat yourself
fitter. antony has bought some congas though he didn't have
them when we recorded this.

which, i think sums it up pretty well...

so i really don't own a lot of bootlegs, and most of the ones i own are belle and sebastian. i was never a fan of the shoddy, by from the crappy dealer at ocean city "live" recordings of various bands - everything from the outcesticide comps people assembled of nirvana rarities to other live shit. i think i have a couple of things on cassette - the pixies in newcastle and the housemartins at glastonbury 83 or 4. but mostly, just the belle and sebastian ones. everything from bowlie weekender to radio sessions (man, they should just put out a peel session comp like every other british band), this was the first one i ever bought, right after telling someone at a record show in Reading that, no, i didn't have enough money to spend 300 pounds on an original vinyl edition of Tigermilk. i believe it's the black session - sort of like a peel session, but longer, done for paris tv (or radio? hmmm). most noteable, it's the first appearance of the song "the wrong girl" which made me very excited for fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant. it's probably also the best quality of the bootlegs i own.

next episode (episode? what??): ska comps, tributes with too much damned irony, and some all time favorites... and yes, it will probably be a long one...