Don't Burn The Fires

... On a more wholesome note, I give you the crowning couple of the husband-and-wife band trend, which has spread like wildfire throughout indie scenes since. Toody and Fred and their various drummers still wear the belt for hardest working, most solid and sonically consistent performing, producing independent artists. With a recorded output that didn't quit for eighteen years, Dead Moon have left in their tombstone shaped shadow a legacy of life changing and heart breaking anthems. The legacy began with this record, packed with ballads of rock 'n' roll's seedy past and foreboding future. From the opening twang and drum hit of In the Graveyard to the chillingly somber singing and dreamy guitar of Dead in the Saddle, from the meddling drones of Don't Burn the Fires to the bitter sorrow of I Hate the Blues, In The Graveyard is the prototypical Dead Moon trip, and a fantastic introduction to one of Portland's longest running music/culture institutions.

I'm never comin' home

Don't shoot the messenger

Disclaimer: I in no way take lightly, am unsympathetic to experiences of nor, least of all, condone rape. I have known both women and men who have been sexual assault and rape victims. My contact with these issues on a personal level has fixed my stance to be staunchly intolerant of the moronic "cultural" insensitivity that arises around these issues. However, I am an enemy of any kind of censorship or inhibition of freedom of speech, including PC-motivated forms of this. If the issue exists in our society, it must be talked about. Making people afraid to use the word 'rape' or address the fact - in any light - that such inhumanities exist is several steps backwards in regards to ever resolving or dealing with such an issue. Music has been the only platform for much discussion of omnipresent social taboos over at least the course of the last half a century and more. I refuse to accept that there is any subject that cannot be addressed through music and lyricism as we have very thoroughly closed so many other doors to avenues of discussion of these topics culturally. With that, I give you both one of the most controversial and influential bands of the 1980s:

Whether you love or hate him (I go back and forth), Steve Albini's impact on electric guitar-based music, record engineering and independent music making is indelible. While his assumed "politics" (remember that term audio-politics I coined?) and overall anti-populist approach to every aspect of the music business has polarized general opinion of him, the sonic signature he left is far from being forgotten. This short-lived, highly provocative follow-up band to his Big Black, named after a disturbing Japanese manga series, are an example of Albini's musical memorability, in spite of negative public reaction. The fact that the comic book which the band cited as the source of the name garnered nowhere near as much criticism (if any at all) from protesters of the band evidences a late 80s PC mentality that was not in search of addressing larger issues but prefered they be skirted and not brought up at all. In case you were wondering, the music here is not overly offensive nor explicit, in fact I'd say less so than most of Big Black's output. Sonically, this is confrontational music, like the rest of Albini's catalog. Being the first band of his with drums, there are amazingly audible similarities to the sounds of bands he would later engineer, such as Nirvana. Vocally, Steve really comes into his own here, defining the soft/loud approach that would mark the grunge era. The recorded sounds themselves are impressively defined, marking the beginning of his thorough 'precise presentation of performance' style of strategic mic placement and minimal effects/overdubbing. Nods to the Cockrock canon of bands like Golden Earring and ZZ Top, with numbers like Radar Love Lizard and a cover of the latter's hit, Just Got Paid, continue what I see as Albini's career-long satire of rock patriarchy. This is where I feel the lyrical subject matter of Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac are most widely misconstrued. It is one thing to be a man making rock music with other men obliviously, another to self-criticize and try to eschew that cliche and another entirely to try and embody all the negative implications of the cliche. I, for one, commend Mr. Albini for his attempt at the latter. After all, isn't that what punk was all about?

This file is really big for some reason...

ABOLISH ALL YOUR IGNORANT THOUGHTS NOW !

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it. There is so much shit going on in the world, especially my world, right now; people fighting for what we assumed too long to be our given rights and getting tear gassed. Students on strike because they've learned something from school and those that haven't opposing to keep blindly feeding into the business model that will make our Universities into men-in-suits-with-briefcases factories and leave the concept of class mobility and personal betterment through public education in the dust. We need this kind of apocalyptic idealism right now, or I do anyways. Take a bite out of that Crunchy Bar guitar tone and the bludgeoning drum machine gun precision of Mick Harris, who bashed buckets on Scum the very same year this came out. Be confused by the 20sec-1min tributes to the band's favourite cartoon cat and friends. Be astonished by the nihilistic brutality that accompanies them. Look into your nuclear crystal ball and see the end times. Abolish all your ignorant thoughts now!

Uninformed

Here I am a blog post on a webpage: some text with a JPEG and a link, OH!

Ok so this oddity of an historical musical act in the 70s rock arena has been a bit of an obsession of mine lately. A couple of Manchester lads with a smashing studio set-up in Stockport who anonymously worked their way up the charts under various band names until finally landing a #2 with the questionable hit "Neanderthal Man" under the Hotlegs moniker in 1970. It was as 10cc that the team of Creme, Godley, Gouldman and Stewart redefined themselves as hopelessly Zappa-obsessed album rockers with plenty of music industry cynicism and studio experimentation to fill at least two volumes with material strange and fascinating enough to catch the ear of one J-Dilla. Oh and hooks, they had lots of those.

Hum drum days

The band's s/t debut traverses the rich lyrical ladscapes and sonically iconic soundscapes of 50s & early 60s rock cliche, all the while with tongue protrudently in cheek. Opening with the memorable martydom of Johnny Kowalski ("aka Johnny Angel"), and effectively that of the motor-accident subgenre which created him, 10cc begin their extensive project to lampoon each of the rock's idiomatic inventions and their inherent cultural givens. The project continues with the portrait of the classic idle femme in "Donna" (which shamelessly borrows from "Oh! Darling") and the application of real life law enforcement temperaments to the "Jailhouse Rock" tradition in "Rubber Bullets". On all accounts, these bubblegum homages raise questions of identity within the framework of rock 'n' roll subject matter. Interestingly, in looking back to this earlier framework - as many of their glam and proto-punk contemporaries were - 10cc would seem to find and get at these issues more directly rather than simply emulate a retro aesthetic, while writing fun and catchy ditties that stick in your head for days. Perhaps my favourite cut from this disc, "The Dean and I", exemplifies this: an epic journey from adolescent innocence and its corresponding popular contexts and sentiments through sexual maturity and nuclear familial fulfillment and into the oblivion of moral responsibility: capitalism! 

Play Me

Very easily the band's opus, Sheet Music is an intricately crafted journey through the ins and outs of success in the rock world of the 70s, with a handful of ingenius melodies and recording techniques to boot. Opening with the Neil Young meets Spoon infectiousness of "The Wall Street Shuffle", 10cc turn their scathing critical eye upon NY's financial gravy train, recently the site of some kind of pinko occupation or other. Having set the tone for an economic commentary that will run throughout the album, the band turns that same fiery beam of cynicism upon themselves in the now highly coveted (RIP Dilla) "The Worst Band In The World", a track that really shows their mad scientist sound engineer side. It seems to me what Dilla did with the aforementioned track (retitled "Workinonit" on his Donuts) is exactly what pop music used to do: reappropriate something timelessly appreciated by all and update it. This is, of course, exactly what 10cc were doing themselves on their debut. It's Dilla's adaptation of their song that highlights exactly how ahead of their time they were in certain regards. "Old Wild Men" is a simply beautiful tribute to their rock forefathers while "Silly Love" showcases again the band's chameleon quality, with it's Marc Bolan-esque fuzz leads and ADT-ed barked shouts. "Somewhere In Hollywood" is a majestically beautiful odyssey through yet another commercial American cityscape and features a totally unecessary "The Long and Winding Road" melodic quote. "The Sacro-iliac" is an appropriately relaxed look into the future of the cushily retired rock musician, giving us a sense of where 10cc saw themselves in a decade and not a bad guess at that!

The whole affair brags lush textures, untouchable 70s drum sounds and a treasure of oddball samples for the hungry digger. DIG!    

What's a boy to do?

In returning to my "great over-looked local records of 2011" theme I am realizing that, in trying to cast a far-reaching analytical gaze beyond my city's borders, I have, on two accounts now, overlooked the closest & earliest influence on my musical tastes: my older sister. While in my adolescence it was her years ahead that benefitted me greatly with an early knowledge of life-changers like the Ramones and the Cure, in recent times I've become exposed to amazing Montreal musicians she happens to know personally. Ensorcelor are one such case, as are tUnE-yArDs. The latter's 2011 release is truly a marvel. An extremely dynamic and ecletic pop record that weaves words and themes as intricately and effortlessly as it does complex rhythms and soaring melodies, W H O K I L L is a trip, to put it bluntly. It is a trip through a neighbourhood, through the minds of the people and the events that make it one like no other. It is a trip through a bleeding heart's arteries, showing us where personal indifference dead-ends and where emotion derails political meaning. I certainly have yet to and doubt I ever will hear a record that so perfectly captures the simultaneous socio-political claustrophobia and expressive freedoms that intersect haphazardly in this city. Merril steps on toes lovingly, shouts revolution unforgivingly and all to highly rhythmically complex and frenetic arrangements and lush melodies. Her current explosion onto the larger North-American "indie" scene comes as no surprise when I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that a little city like Montreal contained such a larger-than-life artistic persona this long. If you haven't heard this yet you probably already have a friend who loves it, get ready to join in the fun.

Doorstep