tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48720747955972367582024-03-05T03:32:12.447-08:00. - ` - . - ` - . - ` - . - ` - . - ` - . - ` - . - ` - . - ` - .Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-1552461160186518292023-11-21T17:22:00.000-08:002023-11-21T17:22:35.867-08:00You think I want to end up like you?<p></p><br /><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Jb_JehFX6FirJ5yq7pw8TXg1qdxPB54pIbWcl5rPo708bHFFGHDYVqzWmu-kqloeKZGiA85OSa2XpZI-geeB5gzkJF6PwX9lOgnGYx1NEzMs_R1sSj24TIO-bDQ142L7Q-YIRMZ11_3S/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Jb_JehFX6FirJ5yq7pw8TXg1qdxPB54pIbWcl5rPo708bHFFGHDYVqzWmu-kqloeKZGiA85OSa2XpZI-geeB5gzkJF6PwX9lOgnGYx1NEzMs_R1sSj24TIO-bDQ142L7Q-YIRMZ11_3S/w400-h226/_13-47+screenshot+%25281%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=563785673/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="https://notnormaltapes.bandcamp.com/album/nnt-067-ct-85-self-titled-cs">NNT#067 CT-85 - Self-Titled CS by Not Normal Tapes</a></iframe></p><p>There was a gap, maybe 18 months long, between when Torches to Rome broke up and when their LP came out on Ebullition. The record's insert kind of acknowledges it: "a big apology to anyone that wrote to us and got an untimely response or no reply at all, especially anyone that sent money for a tape - if you sent for a tape and never received one please send a post card to Ebullition Records and we'll send you a free record, sorry about the hassle!" It was in this interim that I read a long, unfocused complaint about Torches to Rome in a now-forgotten zine. I hadn't heard that band yet, and as a result I couldn't follow the argument, which never described how the band sounded or what their songs were about, but instead focused on how annoying it was that everyone was talking about Torches to Rome. How exhausting to hear about them all the time, to have to have an opinion. Once I heard the record I understood exactly why the person was upset. Because among the condemnations of police and bureaucrats and corporate boards, the biggest target described on that record was the punk scene. </p><p>On the opening song, "Mass For the Dead," Sarah Kirsch sings: "They took the sharpest blade/and cut out the part that mattered." I always love the use of unnamed "they" in punk songs, the acknowledgement of power, how power is nebulous, how it shifts from individuals to structures. "They" could encompass both the systematic racism of policing and a single cop punching a kid in handcuffs. In "Mass For the Dead" the ambiguity serves another purpose - forcing the listener to determine <i>who</i> cut out the part that mattered most. Was it the major labels treating our scene like minor league sports, a training field to find talented prospects? Was it the bands like Green Day and Jawbreaker quitting our scene for major label contracts? Was it Antioch Arrow singing about "gummy worms" or Promise Ring singing about "kissing sounds" or Quicksand singing about anything? Kirsch might not name the villain explicitly, but she does challenge someone in the refrain: "What's this mean to you?" and "What's this mean to me?" </p><p>This indictment reminded me of another record that perennially angers people, 'Start Today' by Gorilla Biscuits and its callout: "Why play for us/if your heart's not in it?" So much of punk is built on the camaraderie of shared enemies—Reagan/ Thatcher/Police/War/Shell/Parents/etc—and punk has been so incisive about/ vicious to these enemies. So when the target shifts to bands that sound similar and people that look similar, when that acid rage is directed at someone standing next to you at the show, it grows tense very quickly. This feels different than infighting to me, in part because Torches to Rome implicate themselves ("We are guilty!") but mostly because I've always connected to these criticisms, understood this frustration. That is self-serving, I know, and not really constructive, but the sore-throated distress of "what might seem dumb to you/is pounding in my heart" or "I'm not afraid to say/I'm not afraid to say/I'm not afraid to say/I'm not afraid to say I care" is unconditionally convincing to me. No one strikes these positions and reveals this betrayal with any kind of angle. It's just too raw. There can't be any clout in this vulnerability.</p><p>The CT-85 tape opens with a song against Christianity and an anti-boss/work song. These are important songs to write! But the tape really clicks for me on the third song, "Punk Frat" with the lyrics: "You rock and roll/I nag and control/you have fun with the guys/I'm stuck up and roll my eyes." It reminded me immediately of the jab I'd hear when trying to keep people from bashing into each other at shows, or snapped at someone for spilling beer on someone: "fun police." You could hear people yelling it toward the stage at a 3000 person Fugazi show, and you could have someone spit it in your face at a house show with just 16 other kids there. My response, always, was that there are a million bars and bands playing boring AC/DC style music in every city in the world, if you want to punch your friend and throw a beer just go do it at one of those shows. A different thing can happen here. I appreciate that not everyone agrees with this.</p><p>There's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxYRIQ8_GJk">a live video of CT-85</a> that opens with the singer explaining that they were playing with a substitute drummer because their regular drummer had been in a gruesome van accident. "He's okay," she explains, and "He would want you to know, he would want you to be mindful of making sure that the way that you have fun doesn't make it so that somebody else can't have fun in the space." Everyone claps but I bet there was at least one person mad about this instruction. It is sometimes funny to imagine that the singer of a punk band could spend all 20 minutes of their set talking about extreme injustices, war and racism and inequity and billionaires and for some part of the audience the only time they're actually outraged is when someone in that same band tells them not to shove a stranger. </p><p>But this outrage is constructive I think, or maybe it is like proof of concept? Because I often worry that punk is ineffectual, diffused energy. That George Trow quote: "Punk art is allied to what an extraordinary prisoner might do in his cell. Not ask for parole, for instance, or bone up on his case, but etch crazy feathery patterns into certain secret places." I have no trouble imagining these patterns, I feel like I'd know where to look for them. I think I could make the case for them too? For stepping away, for refusing to ask for parole, for refusing to wear the tie and look remorseful. "You think I want to end up like you?" as shouted at the end of CT-85's "The One About Your Boss." What does it suggest, then, that we can outrage each other to such extremes? It is in "I'm not afraid to say I care" and "we believed the same things" and "you're nowhere to be found when this shit really counts." I appreciate this sense of responsibility to others, and I think it's not wild to expand it to a notion of how the world could/should work. That Huggy Bear quote on the back cover of the 10": "CAN SUCH A WEAPON AS YOU AND ME BE DISMISSED AS MERE NUISANCE?" The outrage of the guy yelling "fun police" proves we cannot.<br /></p><p>CT-85's songs are fast and dynamic. They swarm. The drumming is exceptionally devouring, overwhelming. My jaw hurts after I play the tape, my whole body sore from the tension and fury. But I think about that live video, all the jumping and grinning the band does. There is fun in this music, a fun made overt in the last song on the tape, "No One Ever Said Punk Was Gonna Be Easy." The song is four lines repeated over and over: "Fuck everything you love/we're having way more fun/This life don't make sense to you/we'd never want it to." The "you" in this song is that same unnamed "they" mentioned above, but it is reassuring to know exactly who CT-85 means. And it is reassuring that the foundational value understood in the song is "way more fun." <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4wuX4DbwAPEi4Y3cKSFpCV6eIwcr9lw5ERVvXyqqnXwZXOm13R1enxg_nNLuz5i3CbrbCy5Rd2nHNKrpFmO45nmGgtP3C4zITKf5CPe1vGx0z5ZAmq6hxbpEwoBsxIdcdKoDqCc6Z4Lug/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4wuX4DbwAPEi4Y3cKSFpCV6eIwcr9lw5ERVvXyqqnXwZXOm13R1enxg_nNLuz5i3CbrbCy5Rd2nHNKrpFmO45nmGgtP3C4zITKf5CPe1vGx0z5ZAmq6hxbpEwoBsxIdcdKoDqCc6Z4Lug/w400-h225/_5-0+screenshot.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p></p>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-16778024767470908742019-10-17T11:02:00.001-07:002021-10-04T08:50:30.108-07:00In the morning rise up singing/again<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=913678473/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=2271466614/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://brontezpurnellandjasonkendig.bandcamp.com/album/lay-down-your-burden-boy-i-swear-my-love-will-lift-it">Lay Down Your Burden Boy I Swear My Love Will Lift It by Brontez Purnell featuring Jason Kendig</a></iframe>
<div><br /></div><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Brontez Purnell + Jason Kendig - He Never Knew What Kissed Him</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Brontez Purnell once asked me if it was still affordable to live in Long Beach. He started to describe a fantasy about retiring there, the foggy mornings and dancing at night, but drifted off mid-sentence, clearly lost in the daydream, in the vision of this person there next to him. I understood his jitters and the way he sank into them. It was like a fever. You just have to wait it out.</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">For a long time I could only think of two great songs about this experience. The first is <a href="https://youtu.be/0lS_nUurx8I?t=96">"Intertube Tomorrow"</a> by the Frumpies. "East coast/west coast/I think I hate them both/Another day/It's always two thousand miles away from someone/I care about." So much disappointment, a sense of something unsolvable, of wanting a miracle technology to solve the distance. The halting delivery of the lyrics, the notes held too long, all tells the story without needing words in this way. </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The song itself tells the same story, running past you, breathless and precise. There's this one bell sound, I think you can make it with a guitar, something you hear in "For What It's Worth" or "Nowhere Man." When it appears in "Intertube Tomorrow" it feels nostalgic but also cuts through with this awful presentness. </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The other one I think about is</span><span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo0CMuUXI40">"West Coast Love Affair"</a> by Unrest. This song is all warmth and closeness. That first little descending string of notes tugs you up next to the speaker. In that intimacy, the strain is just apparent in their singing, but the promise of a reunion, the steady, oath-like repetition, keeps everything hopeful. The notes grow closer and closer together, the song doesn't get faster but it feels like a heart beat quickening. </span><br />
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<span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">"He Never Knew What Kissed Him" stands between these two songs. Reverent, dismayed, wistful, far-seeing. Feverish. Brontez sings with such understanding, the plainness of a line like "it's a mistake/my darling/but it's okay/my darling" feels revelatory. The organ notes pull with an identical energy to "West Coast Love Affair," the feeling of sinking. It's unavoidable but without despair. There's also a timelessness, sounds that feel lifted from the droney, delicate tapestry of forgotten 60s records but a language that could only live in these days. </span><br />
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<span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">The song is full of surprises, compressing months of wondering and daydreaming: the surprise of a postcard, the sting of an unanswered phone call, the circled date on the calendar with scribbled flight information. In the New Yorker in 2013 I read that one of the primary, debilitating effects of sleep depravation is that it suppresses the ability to discern from the past and the present. "In a sleep-deprived brain," a scientist explained, "there is only an eternal present." That is how this song makes me feel. The ache of distance, the anger at ineffective technologies and the thrill of pending reunion all live so vividly in the song that for 134 seconds I am pinned outside an empty mailbox, standing in an airport with a bundle of flowers I couldn't really afford, listening to voicemails over and over and over. Brontez absorbed all those moments and laid them bare, adding this supremely generous brush of hope, making "Never Knew" one of the truest and kindest songs I've ever heard.</span><br />
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<span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br /></span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-42123007552391443482019-09-02T01:59:00.000-07:002019-09-02T01:59:25.493-07:00It murmurs in my ears/it never stops<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="50" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YD6tehR-JzU" width="500"></iframe><br />
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Judee Sill - "Sunnyside Up Luck"<br />
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Judee Sill released two records during her lifetime - 1971's <i>Judee Sill </i>and 1973's <i>Heart Food</i>. There's a special, easily-shared reverence for these songs by people who know them. Tara Jane O'Neil once told me she'd been covering "Jesus Was a Crossmaker" live because she loves it so much, and gets so much joy out of singing it. But she would only play it overseas, where people were less likely to know the original and hold her's up against it. Vicki McClure, a friend and collaborator of Sill's, said in an interview, "Judee's songs have always been a great source of comfort to me." On one tour, driving from San Diego to Tucson, we played both CDs in a row, no one speaking a word across 140 minutes of the albums and bonus tracks. And then remained silent still until the next bathroom stop, when our minds were re-set enough by the racks of candy and noise of gas pumping to get back to normal.<br />
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On that same tour, I made a controversial statement that I "didn't like music about christianity, and didn't like music about drugs but Sill's music is so special I don't notice or care." That declarative attitude and starkly drawn line was so annoying to Ariel he didn't talk to me for the rest of the tour, who could blame him? And though I don't stand by that statement I do think it makes clear something special about her songs. Sill had an especially tough path in her short life, her wikipedia biography lists more profoundly sad experiences than years lived, including homelessness, addiction, prison time, abusive home life, and neglect. The songs are never explicit about these traumas, but they lurk in there for sure. By contrast, her yearning for redemption is right at the surface, and more importantly, infinitely approachable. In "The Phoenix," she sings, "Ever since a long time ago/I tried to let my feelings show/I'd like to think I'm being sincere but I'll never know." It comes from a very dark, exposed place, and the shifts that brought her to it are maybe tough to relate to for most listeners. But the precise, crystalline result of them, evidenced in these couple vulnerable lines, are accessible to anyone. Art Johnson, who played guitar with Sill, said this very clearly in <a href="http://thedevilsviolin-artjohnson.blogspot.com/2014/09/judee-sill-flight-of-angel-part-two.html">an essay about her</a>: "it was straight from her heart to yours, whoever you may be."<br />
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The songs were also inviting in a similar way as the lyrics. Judee Sill worked well with session musicians, and string quartets, horn sections, and wide-grinning drummers augment a lot of her arrangements. There's a way that could feel a product of the era, the way the Emitt Rhodes and Nick Drake records always feel like there's one too many instruments. But Sill pieced things together so carefully, sometimes holding the rest of the band until the end of songs, or backing off herself and letting them carry the melody. I've always tended towards her emptier songs, the piano/voice closeness of "When The Bridegroom Comes" or the emptiness of "Abracadabra" (until the coda I guess) but I can get carried away by the dense ones too.<br />
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"Things Are Looking Up," from her unreleased third LP, is one of her most rollicking and lush songs. It's a half step from Carole King/Brill Building pop radio style, you can almost picture Judee swaying from side to side, eyes half closed, lip synching on the Johnny Carson show. It makes a lot of sense, the lyrics have a delight to them, love for the moon and sky. Her darkness is unescapable, of course—"things are looking up/things are finally looking up" signals a lot without actually saying it. But she "can't quit grinning since the lightning struck" which is such a magical way to talk about new love.<br />
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There's a less magical but very sweet list of dares she would take to spend time with this new love: "I would scale the steepest peak with you/Just to be by your side/I would dive through hoops of fire/Or cross Niagara on a real live wire." She also offers to "Brave the open sea with you" and somehow this feels the most fitting in the song, as she looks up at the stars and wonders at the world. The shared isolation and wide view offered by time in a boat makes a perfect setting for these reflections.<br />
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Songs for this third record were recorded by Bill Plummer in 1974 but never released during her lifetime. A two CD set, <i>Dreams Come True,</i> came out in 2005 with the complete session, along with demos and home recordings. One of these home recordings was "Sunny Side Up Luck," a demo version of "Things Are Looking Up" that's so profoundly weird and hazy it took me years to absorb the connection between the two recordings.<br />
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"Sunny Side Up Luck" is driven by seasick harmonium, Sill's nimble fingers picking out a sturdy melody that feels like the Velvet Underground's "Hey Mr. Rain" but also has a clipped repetition that feels like some 8-bit mind numbing. A few guitar sounds appear and submerge like a lazy dolphin or a dickish roommate wandering in and out of the kitchen with a crummy acoustic guitar on his hip. The "Brave the open sea" line from the finished version of the song is expanded here to the entire song, the metaphor extended to include riptide and a lighthouse, and some really specific sailing language revealed: "Over swells we're flying/We go slicing through the surge and we curl the foam... Hear the engines humming/As we're smoothly making knots through the eventide." Both songs share the strangely specific lines, "I would rise through raging water/And get the bends and have to send for a doctor." It shouldn't work, it's too mundane and direct to act as a metaphor or connote any urgency. Even on a level of pure sound, the collected syllables are simply too blunt to sing. But of any part of either song, it's the one that settles deepest into my brain. She's a magician.<br />
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The other part of "Sunny Side Up Luck" that I cling to is at the very end where she's repeating the lines, "You bring me sunny side up luck" and laughs a bit, and trying to stifle it, ends up laughing again. It's so rewarding to hear her laughter, such an unabashed glee. It's a very welcome counterbalance to the desperate, unresolved staring of "The Phoenix."<br />
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<i>Dreams Come True</i> is an excellent collection, I maybe have spent more time with it than with either of the LPs. She obviously was continuing to grow as a songwriter, and it's part of the tragedy of her short life. I was also lucky to have heard the songs before <i>Dreams Come True </i>came out, via Bob Claster's Judee Sill website. A friend emailed me the link, for a long time it was the only email in my Jackpot Records email account, because I wasn't in front of a computer enough to actually use it, but it was worth it for that one kind email. Over the years, Claster had collected cassettes of Sill's work, and decided to make them all available through his website. The release of <i>Dreams Come True</i> complicated this generosity, and at some point I went looking for it and it was gone. Here's the internet archive version of it [<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040208144014/http://www.webnoir.com/bob/music/">LINK</a>]. Listening to the remastered <i>Dreams Come True</i>, I sometimes miss the unsweetened versions of these songs from the website.<br />
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I went looking again todau, and found Bob Claster's new website, which saved a bunch of the text and some of the tracks from the original site, you can find it <a href="http://www.bobclaster.com/Judee/">HERE</a>. Both sites share this explanation of where all these songs came from:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I hope you all enjoy these with my compliments. I've gotten quite a bit of email asking me my involvement with Judee Sill and her music, and here's the story. Back in 1991, I had the idea of putting together a one-hour radio documentary about her for NPR, which I eventually abandoned. Many people have asked me why I abandoned it, and here's the short answer:</span><i style="font-family: Verdana;">The more investigation I did, the more I realized that the best memorial possible to Judee Sill is her songs. It's a life that's frustrating to learn about in many ways, characterized by many strokes of just plain stupid bad luck, with some foolish decisions and carelessness thrown in for good measure. So, I think it's probably better left undone. She wrote some amazing songs, and let's enjoy them and leave it at that.</i> </blockquote>
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I've been thinking about this a lot. I like stories so much, and I devoured the texts I could find about Judee Sill in the CD reissues or whatever I could find online. People loved her, loved working with her, and they're eager to share their memories, I don't know that I can think of another artist who's made such a specific mark on people. But when I want to talk about Judee Sill, I have a really difficult time doing anything but playing the records for people. The stories about her sex work, bank robberies, or sleeping in her car feel vulgar and unacceptable in the face of these songs. Again, I'm not sure I can think of another artist who makes me feel like this. Which is maybe best articulated by the memory of sitting silently with a bunch of boys who were babies when Sill died, the shared isolation and perspective of time in a van, absorbing these songs like sunlight, like love.Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-27104373635261986052019-08-21T01:51:00.000-07:002019-08-22T09:08:34.615-07:00There are those that don't bow to it and some who don't bow as low<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="no" height="100" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/667389233&color=%23080808&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />
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Amps for Christ - Pure Hammond<br />
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"My friend just put out a 7" by one of the guys from Man is the Bastard, it's called Amps For Christ. But don't freak out, I'm pretty sure it's not Christian." - K. Mack, 1997.<br />
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And how could it be? Man Is the Bastard were such a pure, obliterating force. Their records marked the bleak, singular endpoint on a path of metal, industrial, and hardcore musics, this far edge of precise, destructive sound. I don't think there's another band that has such a profound completeness. The records look like they sound, the vocals feel identical to what the lyrics mean, even the blunt clarity of speaking the band name feels the same as hearing one of their songs. A grueling bassline usually framed their songs, a decisive arrangement of notes, a rhythmic unevenness matched by the drums. The five syllables of MAN-IS-THE-BAS-TARD lurched in the exact same way. There is no room for faith or fealty in this project.<br />
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When I was eighteen I heard the words "ETERNAL WAR AGAINST THE DICKS IS ALL WE CAN RESPECT" at the end of their song "Remember Thy Creator." Written out, it seems kind of triumphant and defiant. But when you heard it screamed, each word crisp and venomous, it betrays the loneliness of this position. It's heartbreaking. It's also one of the more alienating MITB songs, absent bass and drums, leaving only the gurgling, vibrating electronic sounds that normally lurk between notes on their other records. Sustained notes on an organ, somewhere between a horror movie soundtrack and a church service, loom over the whole thing. The composition is credited to Henry Barnes (or as the liner notes read, "BARNES"), one of the core members of Man Is the Bastard, alongside Eric Wood. In a 2008 interview, Wood recalled how he met Barnes: "Around town, he was known for being this weird guy who built bikes out of other bikes. That was his thing: making new things from neglected other things." Barnes was the one who started Amps For Christ.<br />
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The name seemed suspect to me, but I was excited to hear this 7", and the listed instrumentation - "strings" and "electronics" seemed like a natural trajectory out of his work in MITB. It was not. Notes tumbled out of guitars with an almost carefree, front-porch/campfire feeling. Other songs buzzed warmly like an electric sitar. But at the center was "Pure Hammond," an entirely electronic composition, drones and frequencies unlike the rest of the record, unlike the rest of the records in the world.<br />
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"Pure Hammond" is a devotional song. It's weighty, grounded by a sequence of low organ chords that make my ribcage tremble. A pair of single-note melodies skate atop these chords, refusing to match each other but somehow never jarring. One is slightly more assertive, it reminds me of a child: unable to sit still, full of questions, full of faith in the answers it's given. The other voice moves more slowly, is more used to the ritual. I'm always awed by its restraint, especially halfway through the song when the former grows more insistent, jumping octaves and pleading. There is a moment where it all peaks, the notes grow so high and needy I can feel myself reaching out to assure them. The moment stretches, breathless and pained, when a third voice lasers through the whole song, a definitive, wise blast of sound. It can feel overpowering, but it can also feel fortifying. I generally don't listen to music at high volumes, but in this moment of truth I almost always push it as loud as I can bear. I want it all.<br />
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I've never tried to figure out what Henry Barnes's relationship is to Christianity. The 7" with "Pure Hammond" comes with an insert, one side of which is at the top of this text, the other at the bottom. It's the right amount of opaque, I think, and there's something very sweet about the way it loops back again to making a song, a record. And I like reading "Love >> Hate." "ETERNAL WAR" is a valid path, I think, and maybe a necessary one. But I appreciate the acknowledgement of some who don't bow as low, too, and for sure the wordless truth of "Pure Hammond."<br />
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<br />Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-6574294091478279992019-07-19T00:18:00.005-07:002021-10-04T08:51:25.165-07:00Between genesis und sixsixsix<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJUEJ3BTMROx0olTSlRAH59ZP1neNcflgPQRjcWlKqf9b4L_ck1x7NiOXk3TWIOPUWps0206tzzzhIF0Fzs3NOhc-H3JvrgW0te1ayoxwqtCZwvPrPOXjUq9HAYFpJTHcQsnrd-RoGQ_Xp/s1600/en+saat15.png"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJUEJ3BTMROx0olTSlRAH59ZP1neNcflgPQRjcWlKqf9b4L_ck1x7NiOXk3TWIOPUWps0206tzzzhIF0Fzs3NOhc-H3JvrgW0te1ayoxwqtCZwvPrPOXjUq9HAYFpJTHcQsnrd-RoGQ_Xp/s400/en+saat15.png" width="255" /></a><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">At the age of 16, this photo changed everything for me. It was included in the booklet for <i>Strategies Against Architecture II</i>, the 2CD compilation of Einsturzende Neubauten tracks from 1984-1990. I borrowed the CDs from a friend at school mostly because I recognized the band's logo from tattoos on Henry Rollins and John Schoen. </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The comp opens with the tremendously unfriendly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaXjqeZsWc8">"abfackeln!"</a> which loops a single note from a broken keyboard like an upstairs neighbor incessantly and methodically bouncing a ball above your bed. This thump is the only structure in a song that's otherwise clattering shards of metal, microphones sweating above bonfires, guitars played with powerdrills, and a single voice shouting irregularly in German, "free our souls of mould!" (as translated in the liner notes). I really wanted to like this music.</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">In high school most of my friends were into death metal, they practiced for hours and were fixated on the kind of superhuman virtuosity practiced by Bill Steer or Paul Masvidal. I knew I could never catch up: always distracted, always unwilling to sit and do the work. By sophomore year I couldn't really play music with any of them anymore, even when it was just joke covers of Biohazard songs or whatever. I needed another way to think of making music.</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Bjorn Copeland talks about this in the <a href="https://know-wave.com/">Black Dice oral history on Know Wave</a>: "I knew about music but I had no idea how to do it." It's not included in the final piece, but during that interview, he talked about ways he tried to short circuit his late start: "I had never played a guitar before. I wanted to be in a band but I was always like, 'if I get a guitar it’s going to be obvious to people that I don’t know how to fucking play it.' Maybe I should get a dulcimer, you know? Thinking of every other instrument. I remember Eric trying to brainstorm with me: these only have a couple of strings on them and you could maybe make it work." </span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I knew exactly what he meant, and so the photo of F.M. Einheit nonchalantly perverting the shopping cart opened a lot of doors in my mind in terms of what was possible in music, and what was required. Almost immediately after seeing it, I started a band with all found percussion, and the time I spent walking to and from school became a hunt through dumpsters and parking lots for new instruments. The basement at my mom's house filled with discarded car parts, appliances, paint buckets half full of broken glass, table legs, and the shopping cart we stole from a liquor store. We practiced every week, played three shows total, and mostly made tapes with hand drawn covers. At the end of one of them, you can hear my mom yelling down the stairs: "there better not be anything getting broken down there that's not supposed to get broken!"</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I haven't listened back to those tapes in years, but I'm certain they're not 1/10th as upsetting as a song like "abfackeln!" We did a lot of yelling, but the music mostly marches along with a straightforwardness that took more from the punk records we liked than the industrial music we were trying to get into. We thought about things like verses and choruses, counted off "1-2-3-4" at the beginnings of songs. There was none of that on <i>Strategies Against Architecture</i>. This music felt like it came from a profoundly different place and era. What could we even fathom about the Berlin Wall, or cities full of new buildings, reconstruction and legacies of failed empire? The band was </span><span face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">answering questions we never could've thought to ask. Although they freed us from learning chords or mastering the double bass pedal, Einsturzende Neubauten still had to sit and do the work, demonstrating that dismantling also requires patience and consideration.</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The collection ends with a punchline, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fULxWhyySX8">28 second commercial</a> for Jordache jeans that's all badly timed string bends, a bassline pumped in from the wrong studio, the brand name whispered like an awkward dad at the department store, unsure if he's pronouncing the thing his kids asked for correctly. It's also precise, demanding the commitment and labor of all five members. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Even </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPq7WuZgFcQ" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">"Bildbeschreibung,"</a> <span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">the shopping-cart jam that inspired our entire band-concept, </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">was sophisticated and broken in a way that we couldn't dare approach. Instead I found it easier to consider them terror artists, to visualize wrecking balls and power sanders whenever I listened.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br />It took me a couple of years to find my own copy of <i>Strategies Against Architecture</i>, but the record store near my house had a cassette copy of Neubaten's 1989 LP, <i>Haus der Luege</i>. It was a surprise, propulsive and metronomed. I could recognize the pre-programmed sounds of the same inexpensive keyboards we could access, and was shocked by the dancefloor throb of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCQ5Fv1rPaM">"Feurio!"</a> It had that driving beat that made me wary of Wax Trax and Nettwerk—we were not interested in dancing. Still, I loved <i>Haus</i>'s spoken prologue, with its intermittent wall of noise and that one line "auf und ab und ab und auf" which was somehow the most abrasive and harsh moment on the record. And "Ein Stuhl In Der Hölle," all foot-stomps and folk intonations, demonstrating the potential for distemper and hostility in any context. I quickly learned to stop listening to the tape on the walk to school because I would get to homeroom during the snarl of the title track and immediately try to pick a fight, it riled me so completely.</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">While it had obviously developed, the music still felt so otherworldly and distant, from another time. There was no way these people were walking the same earth as us. But just a year later, Einsturzende Neubauten put out a new record, <i>Tabula Rasa</i>. We were all young and wide-eyed, hadn't yet learned the only-like-the-early-shit cliche, and we were PSYCHED. It was so cool that they were still a band! We snapped up copies of the CD and dedicated ourselves to listening. It was a struggle. </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">The song that I struggled with the most with was called </span><a href="https://vimeo.com/36592054" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">"Blume."</a><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"> We didn't talk about it for a long time, then Sachin finally nailed it. "It sounds like the music they play at the end of an NPR segment." He wasn't even being mean, he was just trying to find a way to understand it. When I moved away from home the next year, <i>Tabula Rasa </i>remained on the shelf in my childhood bedroom. It was for grownups.</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">This week I did the math and learned that the members of Einsturzende Neubauten were between 28 and 36 years old when they released <i>Tabula Rasa. </i>Yes, it had also been 13 years since they formed the group, but they weren't quite the elder statesmen I imagined when I played the CD as a high school junior. I was curious to hear how the record sounded now:</span><br />
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It's pretty good! The reference point I keep returning to is Paul Simon's <i>Graceland </i>or <i>Rhythm of the Saints</i>. There's so much musicianship, a truly thorough understanding of composition. I'm convinced there are sounds you can't really hear throughout the record that psychically enhance the sound. There's a profound confidence, once again everyone in the band happily defers to the totality of the song. I am especially charmed by the artifice of chance operations shown in the music video with all the objects dropped and tossed, particularly from 4:15 on. There's also a slightly unsettling globalization on view. The vocalizations that show the influence of American rap music, the dignified hop of an English court dance. It's cut out of this video version but the album version of this song opens with Bargeld uneasily inflecting the oscillating force of a muezzin's call to prayer.</span><br />
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am curious about how this video was made. Did someone at Elektra think this would get played on MTV? Or even on 120 Minutes? I tried to imagine myself up late on a Sunday night, seeing this video sandwiched between The Lemonheads and Blur. If I had no knowledge of the band, would it have caught me? I fear it wouldn't have stood out at all, the quick cuts and lipsync performance so typical. But if I'd stayed long enough to see the percussion setups, the springs and rusty sheets, I probably would have needed to see more. It wasn't the visceral, petulant thrill of the shopping cart, but it looked weird. Truly weird, not at all performative. It would've stood out. And that would've kept me hooked long enough to see the moment at 3:42 where F.M. Einheit walks away from the camera and you can see he's wearing a Metallica shirt. Which is so unexpected I believe it would've won me over forever. </span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-27291314425364691442019-07-15T00:55:00.001-07:002019-07-15T08:25:13.182-07:00I might be mad about the way things are turning out<span id="goog_1811142262"></span><span id="goog_1811142263"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjeTXg2nSQuMvoYv5bzliFrUz0vHivu-FIr2WX4n934Wc3n8znZ5sngOL_YSYk34FY6hD8Xy0KT3yv8oEYd-gpyEmM7tGFZZxXaP11K7ivlNBuK3scxQ9Z52wI-FBHFpY7KaUvc8Apgun/s1600/Poison+Idea+-+Mating+Walruses+A+video+history+%25281982+-+1989%2529+Full+3-39+screenshot+%25282%2529.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjeTXg2nSQuMvoYv5bzliFrUz0vHivu-FIr2WX4n934Wc3n8znZ5sngOL_YSYk34FY6hD8Xy0KT3yv8oEYd-gpyEmM7tGFZZxXaP11K7ivlNBuK3scxQ9Z52wI-FBHFpY7KaUvc8Apgun/s400/Poison+Idea+-+Mating+Walruses+A+video+history+%25281982+-+1989%2529+Full+3-39+screenshot+%25282%2529.png" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Poison Idea - Think Twice</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In winter 2000, Amy and I organized a concert for All Scars, who were on a month long tour. 17 Nautical Miles had just closed, and Portland Robot Steakhouse wasn't open yet. It was a weird time for D.I.Y. shows in Portland, and we ended up putting the show on at Reed College, in that funny ski-lodge looking building. For some reason we couldn't get any money from the school, so we set up a table at the door to charge non-students $5. I remember Elliott Smith and Joanna Bolme showed up and were surprised and a little scandalized that the show wasn't free but were very gracious about paying.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The All Scars got to town </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">early, and hung out for a couple days. We were close with Chuck Bettis, but it was the first time I had spent any time with Dug Birdzell and Jerry Busher, who were both a touch older than us and had a lot of stories about bands we didn't get to see and moments we missed out on. At one point, Jerry said something like, "this is a big deal for the two of us - Dug and I have never played a show in Portland before." He went on to explain that Fidelity Jones had a show booked in Portland in 1988 or 89, but the guys in Poison Idea found out they were on Dischord and got them blacklisted. He told the story with a laugh, but I felt awkward and sad.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When I moved to Portland, I didn't like Poison Idea. In high school I'd bought an Alchemy Records sampler with two of their metal-ish songs and they didn't stand out among the Melvins and Neurosis songs that anchored the record. Then I'd seen their <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Poison-Idea-Ian-MacKaye/release/567616">"Ian MacKaye"</a> record cover and wrote them off as bullies, clowns. A couple of years later, working at the record store, I was sent home with a copy of "Darby Crash Rides Again" and quickly fell in love with Pig Champion's guitar style. It's hard to articulate what's special about it - he plays a lot of power chords and it's never <i>weird</i> but there's a perfect balance of smoothness and force to it, he pounds and hacks and will hammer the same riff for an entire song relentlessly, but he also has that kind of boneless strum you'd hear on an Unrest record. He's always in the right spot, precise and on-time. He knows how to use feedback. The songs all sound distinct.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But the thing that really caught me about Poison Idea was the lyrics. They were vicious, pushed to the edge: "Look in my heart/see the pain/look in my mind/see the hate/it's pure" or "This is my life/this is my curse/this is my headache/it's getting worse" or "The next thing you hear might be an atomic blast." Or my very favorite, from "Think Twice" the song linked above: "There's one way out and it's not up." I was not surprised or shocked by the nihilism, but I was stunned by how ruthless they were. There was no daylight on these records, no inspiration. Or if it was there, it was there to be mocked, like the character affected in "Reggae (I Hate)." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There was one song on the record that felt like it was at least looking forward to something. In "Castration," Jerry yells at an abusive husband, "they're planning against you and you don't even know." The final lines of the song are sung almost with a smile on his face: "You think you're so macho/your girlfriend's waiting for you with a broken bottle." It hit me hard at a time when I was souring on hardcore because of the treatment of women, from "Jealous Again" to "Banana Nut Cake," it was all so discouraging and hateful. "Castration" felt like a shocking turn, and differentiated Poison Idea from every other hardcore band I could think of. So despite my early dismissal, by the time the All Scars came to Portland, I considered Poison Idea one of my favorite bands. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jerry A came into the record store regularly. He was always very kind; I made him sign my copy of "Dutch Courage" and he gave me Poison Idea shirts pretty much every time they made a new batch. I asked him why there wasn't a studio version of "Spy" and he explained the different pressings of "Pick Your King" to me with no end of patience. We even tried to organize a basement show for Poison Idea and Emergency but every house we asked had too many weird conditions and lineup demands it just never worked out. So I felt like we were friends and I felt comfortable asking him about the Fidelity Jones story. "Shit, yeah," he confirmed. "But that was all Tom - he just hated Dischord, thought they were such hypocrites." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I knew from other stories Jerry told me about the Misfits or the Smiths or Devo that he and Tom were serious fans of the stuff they liked, obsessive and emotionally invested in a way that I relate to. Over these last 18 or 19 years since we had that conversation I've thought about it a lot and I think these strong feelings come from strong feelings. That is, Tom's hatred of Dischord probably comes from a love of Dischord, or at least closeness. The observations in Minor Threat songs are the same as those in Poison Idea records - adults have broken this world. There's an outrage surrounding that observation, and a further outrage surrounding the acknowledgement of powerlessness to fix it. But Poison Idea looked down while Minor Threat looked up. It's not that big a difference, really, but I can imagine it felt like a profound betrayal for Tom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jerry wandered around the store for awhile after we talked about Fidelity Jones. It was tenser than I expected, and I couldn't think of a way to repair it. Eventually he said, "hey, if you talk to your friends, tell them I'm sorry about that" and ducked out the door. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_4TCIn7wCfvnNLNfUN3qdj7SZMyFbBDYynacfX6ihbA8xF6QxiybWhcK_TunhU1f_JaqYGpBYFbbsMLwdrJZZ_3PwfVe71YCM_SIzYftjpc-W9uAHy0EqNRPdbjaG6Ec4kbCb8VCz54Ro/s1600/Poison+Idea+-+Mating+Walruses+A+video+history+%25281982+-+1989%2529+Full+2-35+screenshot.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_4TCIn7wCfvnNLNfUN3qdj7SZMyFbBDYynacfX6ihbA8xF6QxiybWhcK_TunhU1f_JaqYGpBYFbbsMLwdrJZZ_3PwfVe71YCM_SIzYftjpc-W9uAHy0EqNRPdbjaG6Ec4kbCb8VCz54Ro/s400/Poison+Idea+-+Mating+Walruses+A+video+history+%25281982+-+1989%2529+Full+2-35+screenshot.png" width="400" /></a></span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-14030734593061823532019-06-30T15:48:00.001-07:002019-09-02T02:12:23.055-07:00Out there looking for me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Kate + Anna McGarrigle - Heartbeats Accelerating</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Been thinking a lot about context lately, about the expectations and immediate history that surround a record. What does it do to the songs once all that stuff has passed? I remember first hearing Big Pun (who at the time went by <a href="https://78.media.tumblr.com/90b6c4e91ce2732eb45c3048c2c7cb77/tumblr_p7sq9xJXwD1qf5rv3o1_1280.jpg">Big Dog Punisher</a>) on Fat Joe's second LP. He was menacing and bloodthirsty, and fit right in with Joe's violence. Which felt totally normal, a stop on the trajectory laid out by that Method Man/Raekwon interlude, any Kool G Rap song, or "stab your brain with your nose bone." </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When "I'm Not a Player" came out I remember thinking it was so funny and unexpected, a delightful turn of persona. But that became the persona! And now the scary lyrics are the outliers, the surprise. People don't really even believe them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Or I always bound the late 70s Factory Records bands together, picking up records by, like, A Certain Ratio and Section 25 as I wore out the Joy Division ones. That wasn't an unusual position; <a href="https://www.ltmrecordings.com//index.php?target=/crispy_ambulance.html">here's a 1982 review</a> of <i>The Plateau Phase </i>by Crispy Ambulance that's just brutal: </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">Slavish imitation of Joy Division doth not good music make. All the trade-marks are there—relentless inverted drumming, ominous bass lines, dramatic flanged guitar, bleak synth washes and a lone desperate voice." </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I liked the sharp edges and haunted vocals of </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArMnpj-KMo8" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">"Deaf"</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> by Crispy Ambulance a lot, but thought </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc7DX_K2X80">The Plateau Phase</a></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> was too erratic and unfocused, every song too long. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I resold the LP just a year after buying it, but heard it recently by accident and was knocked over by its totality. It's an epic, indivisible piece, it feels like a movie. Of course there was no "Transmission" to play at our living room dance parties, no "Colony" to startle a mixtape tracklist. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It didn't work like a Joy Division record because it isn't one</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">. I wonder if the guy who wrote that mean review ever heard <i>The Plateau Phase </i>again and reached a new way to think about it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">My parents played Kate + Anna McGarrigle a ton when we were kids. Those first two LPs just all the time. Jordana could do a hilariously mean impression of the slight vocal tremolo during "Heart Like a Wheel" from a very young age. The songs were intimate and conversational, they sang "you" and "me" and "tell my sister/to tell my mother" so regularly that they quickly felt like people you knew. The songs also felt like they belonged to everyone. We went to a lot of folk festivals when I was a kid and someone would always end up singing "Foolish You" or "Come a Long Way." Like the end of the night when anyone who was still around and had an instrument at hand would make it to the stage to play along, the audience singing as loud as the people with mics. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">The other record we heard a lot during that time was Loudon Wainwright's <i>Attempted Mustache</i>, particularly "The Swimming Song." Wainwright, we knew, was married to and divorced from Kate McGarrigle, and there was a bitterness to the McGarrigles' version of "The Swimming Song" which you might not recognize until two songs later when you heard Kate sing "Go, leave/She's better than me/Or at least she is stronger/She will make it last longer/That's nice for you." That song is the least ornamented on the record, and you can hear her fingertips raise and settle on the guitar strings, the deep humanity and age of the instrument itself.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">"Heartbeats Accelerating" came out on the 1990 Kate + Anna McGarrigle LP of the same name. It had been eight years since their last record, and obviously was entering a different world than the one that had preceded it. My earliest memories of the song are hearing it in my mom's first apartment after my parents divorced. The McGarrigles' voices are accompanied here by synthesizers, not acoustic guitars. There are accents from accordion but they're fragmented and snapped in with a precision that feels more like samples. The sisters sing the way we're used to hearing them, but the tremolo feels spectral, their voices powerful but sounding like they're sinking down from the attic, or calling from across the woods. It's scary and exquisite, making incredible use of the negative, inhuman connotations of keyboards to create a haunting distance. "Love, love where can you be?" they implore, "Are you out there looking for me?" It's so far from the conversational admissions of "Go Leave" or "Heart Like a Wheel."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">A <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-14-ol-1733-story.html">Los Angeles Times review from 1991</a> sets this transformation in a trajectory laid by Peter Gabriel and Suzanne Vega, mentioning</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"> the record's "</span><span style="background-color: white;">atmospheric production touches and rhythmic embellishments." The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/28/arts/recordings-view-lonely-melodies-lyrical-moods.html?mtrref=www.google.com">New York Times described this decision</a> as</span> "a bold and successful acknowledgment of contemporary developments by introducing computerized elements into their music." Both reviews make really resonant observations about the record: "</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is an overridingly dark and ghostly album" and "</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The record's special achievement is its suggestion of the physical and psychic space where that question reverberates and assumes a metaphysical weight." </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But both reviews ultimately consider the addition of keyboards to be a product of the era, and not fundamental to the songs. For the LA Times: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">"</span><span style="background-color: white;">There's nothing on 'Heartbeats Accelerating' that couldn't be sung in a parlor, after all. </span><span style="background-color: white;">But the loneliness and chill in the songs might make that parlor audience want to throw an extra log or two on the hearth.</span><span style="background-color: white;">" </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and the NY Times conclusion is even more airy and romanticized: </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"one is transported northward to a barely furnished house on a chilly Canadian night... sitting side by side in rocking chairs, in front of a small fire crackling in the hearth, two women do needlework."</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I like that they both involve fire, acknowledge coldness. But I feel like it's so reductive. The songs on this record, and in particular, "Heartbeats Accelerating" do something that none of their other songs have ever done. For a group that's lauded for their honesty and openness, there's something more vulnerable about this song than anything they did, a clearer version of the human experience that's entirely reliant on the synthetic distance created by the instrumentation. To frame it as a product of the era, a result of the success of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAWGw8meEDE">"Book of Dreams"</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjEq-r2agqc">"Don't Give Up"</a> ignores the decisions made by the McGarrigles, their understanding of what these songs needed.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">The same year that <i>Heartbeats Accelerating </i>was released, there was a television special about the McGarrigles that included this clip of them playing the song "Heartbeats Accelerating" in a style similar to their old records, with guitar, violin, mandolin, and accordion. There's a part about 90 seconds in where they show a tapping foot in a red sock. It feels like being at home. I played this clip a few times in a row and wondered if the reviewers were right, if the song did the same thing without the synthesizers. But I keep going back to those eerie notes that open the album version. You could loop them, put a bass tone underneath and slip it onto one of the Aphex Twin ambient records. They're disorienting but close sounding, the sound cue for a kindly spirit in a Miyazaki film. The acoustic version is very nice, and probably a preferred version for my parents, for the singers at the Mariposa Folk Festival. But it can't communicate the same thing as the keyboard version. There's a line in the song where they sing, "Will it come on a Saturday night?" and it's nearly jarring on the album. Because this disembodied future spirit shouldn't even know the days of the week, to be honest. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif;">Around the time that we were listening to this CD in my mom's apartment, Mick Harris was getting ready to leave one of my then-favorite bands, Napalm Death. He invented the blast beat, but he was sick of it, and wanted to experiment. He ended up making this lurking, low-end electronic dub music in the band Scorn. My friends and I were scandalized that our favorite drummer was instead using a drum machine, but there's a scratchy, mournful humanity on those records you couldn't find on <i>Harmony Corruption</i>. A year later I heard Godflesh's <i>Pure </i>in an Ottawa record store and bought it immediately, listened to the cassette on a walkman and missed the entire ferry tour we took that afternoon. Up until that point, drum machines felt like a hack, like a way to streamline. Like that Henry Rollins side project, <i>Wartime</i>, or the Malhavoc records which felt like a guy who didn't know how to collaborate with other people. When I think of those years, of the path to Skinny Puppy and Laibach, it feels like it was Scorn and Godflesh that showed me how electronic instruments could create a new way to indicate anxiety, weightlessness, and yearning. But in retrospect, it was probably two Canadian folksingers in their 40s who made this visible for me.</span><br />
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Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-85066123200232808442019-06-21T14:16:00.000-07:002019-07-15T20:27:05.153-07:00Handed down to me like some thoughtful blur<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Germs - No God</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When Dave Van Ronk died in 2002, I read an obituary that discussed his early fascination with the U.K. folk ballad tradition. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these narrative, mostly unaccompanied songs were collected by Francis James Child in the late 1800s, preserving them at a time when younger generations had stopped learning to sing them from their grandparents. The eight LP collection of ballads sung by A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl brought the songs to life for Van Ronk in the 1950s, and he traveled to London to hear these folk songs firsthand. When he connected with the young English and Scottish singers continuing this tradition, they were thrilled to meet an American. "Tell us all about Woody Guthrie!" they asked. "Do you know Harry Smith? We love the American Anthology of Folk Music." If Van Ronk was stunned to learn that the new U.K. singers weren't so interested in their own musical inheritance, he was similarly surprised that they were more aware of American traditional music than he was. Their admiration for this, his local history, refocused him on the American work songs, protest music, and storytelling that became the core of his career. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Around that time I was in touch with these kids in Oxford who did a label called Youth Club Tape Club and we traded records. At first it was stuff we'd put out, but then it turned into stuff we found around town. They would find cheap Raincoats or Liliput 7"s and I would send them back the Proletariat LP or the Contortions "Buy" with the corner punched. The undervalued UK records for the undervalued US records. We both thought it was really funny, and I kept thinking about that Dave Van Ronk story, wondering if I was part of the process of ignoring the records closest to me, of fixating on things from far away. In response, I mailordered a Wipers t-shirt from Greg Sage, wrote a fan letter to one of the members of Reversible Cords, and started finding new things to love about the Minutemen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A couple of months ago, my friend Jeremy asked me to come on <a href="https://xray.fm/shows/mutant-pop">his radio show</a> to play some songs and tell stories. He started a list of songs we could play and asked me to add some favorites. I put Bomber Jackets, Way Through, and Vital Idles. Honey Bane, Huggy Bear, Sara Goes Pop and Gareth Williams. He wrote back and was like, "hi let's see if we can open this up a little bit" and I laughed so hard at this reminder of my continued fixation on music from the U.K., I really thought it had passed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One of the new LPs I sent to Youth Club Tape Club was for <a href="https://soundcloud.com/amy-suzanne-heneveld/sets/emergency-lp-the-less-i-know">a band I sang in</a>, and I remember being anxious about the English kids listening to it. I figured they'd see through my mimicry of the singers I liked, dismiss it as a crummy American attempt at affecting a kind of British post-punk sound. A year or so after that band broke up, Dana and I were talking about why I didn't love how I sounded on it, and I had an epiphany. "Instead of listening to the Fall and Wire, I should've been listening to the Germs." I thought the detachment and enunciation of those British singers was the right model for voicing my discontent. Their choice to cram a bunch of words in each line, to signal tough feelings via breathlessness rather than volume, felt closest to my panic in those years, and to the way I thought I should resist. A lot of words, a lot of information. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What I realized, what I was trying to say to Dana, is that instead of convincing, I should have been taunting. Ideas are great, but so is feeling. Darby Crash's lyrics are SO GOOD but he communicates so much more through a snarl, through repeated syllables and the sound of his tongue stopping up his throat. He starts "No God" with a rising buzz that sounds like a kid imitating a motorcycle driving by. The broken way he drops the word "worry" signifies more actual dread than the word itself. There's a part in that oral history book about the Germs where someone recalls how surprised all their friends were was when the "Lexicon Devil" 7" came out with the printed lyrics, and how thoughtful the lyrics were. They said something like, "I didn't really even know there were words!" But I wish there'd been a follow up quote where someone else said, "but no one was surprised at the content of the songs." Because no one should have to read the lyrics to unpack Darby's exasperation, his knowledge of the systems operating on him, his refusal to obey. Maybe if I'd come across Van Ronk's origin story a little earlier, I would've taken the lesson to pay attention more to my immediate surroundings and legacy, and probably would've done a better job of voicing my own indignation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-60165370401267325872019-06-14T16:55:00.001-07:002019-06-23T14:41:28.817-07:00Channel changes so does your mind<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKRWc97naWyOUzwhR6E8UvJ9a0e-hSJLA9BwyfWFHQxM_qC6DgkoeLq8hWsXh2cUq_kRL0Qnp1drxuZbGgORCFLfuOywIGjT4U6-EStrfT24oUCSfqoRJqdUEuE6_58HfT7O5w0mZzQ_w/s1600/5792428104_b4d15611f6_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="640" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKRWc97naWyOUzwhR6E8UvJ9a0e-hSJLA9BwyfWFHQxM_qC6DgkoeLq8hWsXh2cUq_kRL0Qnp1drxuZbGgORCFLfuOywIGjT4U6-EStrfT24oUCSfqoRJqdUEuE6_58HfT7O5w0mZzQ_w/s400/5792428104_b4d15611f6_z.jpg" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Universal Order of Armageddon - "Stepping Softly Into"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ian told me a story about working the door at DC Space the summer of 1994. Places like that always intend to have a rubber stamp so they can mark people's hands as they paid, but somehow it's always missing, or too smudgy, or the ink pad ran dry. So Ian and the other volunteer used a marker instead, at first putting an X like we're all used to, but as they day went on and boredom grew they started drawing elaborate scenes up and down people's arms.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The singer of Universal Order of Armageddon came in as the silliness reached a peak and very politely asked if they could refrain from drawing all over him, that he was worried about the chemicals in the marker ink. In they end, they offered to let him in without even the compulsory X, saying, "oh we can remember you." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I believed it, letting his sharp words rattle around my brain: </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"This your industry/I will not let inside me/NO." They m</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ade perfect sense coming from a person who'd be clear eyed about Xylene the same way he'd repel any other toxin in his atmosphere.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I loved the song they were from, "Visible Distance," how it opened with unaccompanied drums. It was melodic, jarring and fearsome, it sounds like the hardest a snare had ever been hit. And then the guitar reached these alien frequencies, so much precision and dexterity, but also a prickling clamminess that I'd never really heard before. It's such a rager, so focused. But in a way, what it does best is set up a dynamic to be undermined by the last song on that side of the record, "Stepping Softly Into." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That song's opening words were a refusal: "You broadcast/what it is to be a man." The line repeats five times in the song, and every repeat hits the same extreme of defiance. A couple times through he repeats the word "man" after pushing through the phrase, his distaste contagious. The rest of the band follows his energy, hammering twice, all at once, and then pulling all the way back into silence. The song is consistently dour, weighted so heavily, led by this seesaw two note guitar part. There are occasional moments of momentous rage but it's gone after mere seconds, shoving listeners back into that stark, two note clarity. You could imagine frustrated audiences, breathless as the restraint holds them hostage, finally unleashed as the whole band joins in, only to vanish after the count of five. Next to the propulsion of a song like "Visible Distance" it must feel a bullying. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ian and I saw Universal Order of Armageddon a few months after he told me that story. A friend's parent had moved and the old house was still vacant so we were sleeping on the floor of an empty, unheated Maryland home. It was November and in my memory I was sick all the time. I carried around an entire box of tissues for the entire of this show, snot and tears constantly pouring down my face. I remember laying down between bands. It was one of the most fun, impactful shows I can remember ever seeing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I taped the show on a walkman with a microphone pinned to my shirt, and I've gone back to the tape regularly over the years. On the records, the songs are so distinct and crystalline, so I was struck how they threaded them all together live, the drums for "Visible Distance" starting immediately at the end of "Switch is Down." So much momentum and power! The</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> locomotive punch of "Benedict" is especially forceful here, played a touch faster than on the record, yet never losing control. But my strongest memories from that show aren't captured on the tape. One is the moment when Tonie Joy breaks his guitar and looks up to see if the other bands will lend him one. It felt like everyone just shrunk back into the crowd, all momentarily afraid to trust him with their instrument after seeing what he'd just done with his. The other is the singer's bearing, the way he twisted himself around the mic stand while the whole band stormed around him. Like a sailor clinging to the mast mid-squall. I never saw anyone look so frail and defiant at the same time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You can see on the tape where I tried to write out the set list. Probably I only had "The Switch is Down" 12" at that point since I didn't recognize any of their other songs. You'll notice they didn't play "Stepping Softly Into." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The second time I saw Universal Order of Armageddon was in 2010. There are some good photos from the show <a href="http://www.brooklynvegan.com/universal-order-1/">HERE</a>. They did play "Stepping Softly Into" and it was great! But felt weird too. In the 16 years between the two shows, the singer of U.O.A. covered both his arms in tattoos, shaved his head, and got very visibly, physically strong. All the snarl remained, but I was uneasy at him shouting out, "what it is to be a man." He looked so much like a man, like an archetype of a man. I don't know anything about what he'd been up to in the intervening years (though I do really like <a href="https://theuniform.bandcamp.com/track/my-thoughtful-response-to-human-behavior">that Uniform record</a>) and it's unfair for me to make any guesses about where his head is at singing those lyrics. But the clenched fist of 2010 looked really different than the clenched fist of 1994, and I was wary of it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This difference troubled me for awhile. I got thinking about those 90s Morrissey records where he's obsessed with boxing, how it became a proxy for a kind of stoic masculinity ("Losing in front of your home crowd/You wish the ground would open up and take you down/And will time ever pass?/Will time/ever pass/for us"). What happened to the 19 year old Morrissey who wrote in a letter, "Society is sick and the world is in a mess thanks to men." It struck me that 16 years had passed for Morrissey between that observation and the release of the song "Boxers." What did this say about the inevitability of a turn towards masculinity for dudes that wouldn't have dreamed of it when they were younger?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But again this conjecture isn't helpful or reasonable, and blurs the questions I really want to answer. I got thinking again about that show in 1994, the kids who saw my box of tissue and asked for a few so they could plug their ears after Brooks Headley sat down at his drums and banged through the toms. They could guess how loud this band was going to be. But also that they knew I would say yes, that we'd have a shared moment that would resonate again when the band was done playing and we stood there, ears ringing, shaking our heads. I remembered the guy selling records ("7"s are $3 each or 2 for $5") suggesting I go get Ethiopian food after the show, that spicy food would clean up my congestion and there were a ton of vegan options right around the corner. I thought about the kids working the door offering to remember someone's face so they didn't have to get marker on their hand. In that context, there was endless opportunity to ask a singer what they meant by "What it is to be a man." It would've been ordinary, and would've also been easy. The 2010 show was at a D.I.Y. space in Brooklyn, so not such a different context, but the "event-ness" of this reunion show, the pent-up anticipation meant the band wasn't going to be at hand in the same way, and the dynamics between people had shifted. I am willing to concede I am romanticizing. But the more I think about it, it wasn't the lyric or the delivery that was different between those two shows, 16 years apart. What was different was the depth of opacity and the potential for scratching away at it. And I think it could've been there, but I know that community is something you have to build, and you can't just recall from some other moment when it was there in your life. Even if it was all you had at that time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anyway, I've digitized the U.O.A. tape I made, now 25 years old. If you're interested, you can download it <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/n52velfvzv5ya5y/UOA.aif?dl=0">HERE</a></span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-76824383118641419672019-06-08T00:31:00.002-07:002021-10-04T09:09:40.391-07:00Not a cure at all<br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=6679738/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=132182842/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 42px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://ironlungpv.bandcamp.com/album/a-line-in-wet-grass-7-lungs-055">A Line In Wet Grass 7" (LUNGS-055) by FLESH WORLD</a></iframe>
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">This song has the most urgent guitar lead I can think of. There's no startle reflex, no door kicked down or sudden violence, it's just there. It rises like panic, perfectly mirrors the alertness described in the lyrics: "Not a soul, not a tear at all/See a kid/Or so it seems/See a sight/Untied/Not a soul." </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">All through my childhood we visited my cousins in northern New York. I think their closest neighbor was four miles away. As teenagers we would head up the road a bit until the lights of their house were no longer visible, so we could watch for shooting stars. One time I freaked out and demanded we head back to their house. I felt the absence of people around us, tkept pleading, "what if something happens to us???" knowing that no one would ever hear us call for help. Jessica laughed and said, "what could possibly happen to us!" She grew up in that quiet and knew its safety, but for me it was agitating. "Agitating" feels clumsy and not exactly right, I tried to think of another word for it but "unease" and "dread" are too slow moving. Those feelings sink, they cool, they obscure. This was the opposite: a rattle, an alertness. It's the sound of five or six notes snapped out of a guitar, each one chiseled and gravid, but also nimble enough to skip along on the heels of its predecessor. </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I first heard Flesh World mentioned in that shorthand way we talk about bands when we talk about bands too much: "oh, Jess from Brilliant Colors has a new peace punk band." I love peace punk! Right around that time I was asking friends for recommendations of a band that would make me feel like Zounds. A song like "Demystification" which obviously comes from a place of intense emotion but is sung with a numbness. I don't mean it's tuneless or flat, just a sense of overload. I felt that a lot in 2013, and since I couldn't really articulate it I wanted to hear someone else manifest it. Many friends gave it thought but very few had suggestions! It is how I heard that first Rank/Xerox record, which was close, but I could still feel that rattle, that rising/clenching feeling and was desperate to know someone else had felt it. So I was excited about the possibility I felt in Flesh World. </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Their first 12" was good. "I Lost My Heart In Transit Through the Post" felt like Talulah Gosh playing two blocks away, thoughtful and clever and directed, yet also out of grasp in this really compelling way. But a lot of the guitar parts on the record felt too muscular to me, burly in that way that punk records often feel, those ringing chords filling too much of the air. I was not strong enough to be overwhelmed in that way. </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">It was the second record, the 7" for "A Line in Wet Grass" that answered all my hopes. The cobwebs and tight grip of the 12" are cast off in favor of glass-shard feedback and a skittering approach to notes. The drums are way louder. If the first record has a head-hung-low, downcast posture, this one stares you in the eyes, unblinking. "A Line in Wet Grass" has such an incredible momentum, and then lurches in the end, unwinding and losing speed with a very intentional damage. But it was the B side, "Not a Soul," that just destroyed me with its perfection. It conjures these disorienting moments I never could describe, it shoves and shoves but also holds fast in a way that keeps me on my feet. It speaks with the clarity and inevitability of a witness. It is what I imagine peace punk could be - bold and honest, demanding and unflinching. Overloaded yet moving forward.</span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">Their subsequent records are excellent, <i>Wild Animals In My Life </i>in particular a bright and moving development of "Not a Soul," with all shadows cleared and even more breath around the notes. A line in the press release for their 2017 LP, <i>Into the Shroud </i>(that title! what a contradiction of the narrative I've claimed here) mentioned that they "took their name from an XXX magazine," which led me to the image above. <i>Flesh World </i>(as far as I can tell) wasn't a skin mag that existed on newsstands, but instead was created for the first season of <i>Twin Peaks</i>. The website <a href="http://twinpeaksprops.blogspot.com/2011/06/flesh-world-page-pilot-version-original.html">Twin Peaks Props</a> shared an image of an interior spread, and noted that the pictures are all of crew members and their friends. It's a cute bit of trivia. But it also got me thinking about the band Flesh World, and their insight. The potential irresponsibility of making a "peace punk" band in 2013, a moment when a lot of punk bands sound/look like they're participating in historical reenactment, exacting replicas of Detroit in 1982, or Tokyo in 1984. A similar issue was raised on twitter recently by <a href="https://studentsofdecay.com/">Students of Decay</a>, who <a href="https://twitter.com/studentsofdecay/status/1136390933900079104">noted</a>, "it's a shame that experimental music has more or less ceded its long-standing aim to make work that is new/confrontational/surprising in order to focus on the less admirable goal of making work that sounds correct/expected/true to genre." </span><br />
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<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">I think this is a key to understanding why Flesh World make such apt, urgent music. If they are looking backwards at all, they are instead looking into a fiction of the past, an uncanny and disorienting world. Nothing glib like, "what if Laura Palmer owned <i>Let The Tribe Increase</i>?" but a strength taken from the secret languages of past subcultures. Hanky codes and band logos, the subtext in personal ads or the books you carry around with you. What if these were shifted just enough that they were no longer direct correspondences with history and all its cemented tyranny, but instead drawn from a recognizable, similarly terrible world where the main difference is all the strangeness is visible and drawn to the surface. Those are the hopes I feel, the panic I engage, the threads that ground me when I hear the song "Not a Soul."</span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-5361148570316336942008-02-01T08:16:00.000-08:002012-06-15T14:19:03.541-07:00Who the king piece in the chess game?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUMsv4lU7lr4fa93BoJ_pXij0OpQi3nIbXKGR065oUTBB3u6qfTeKDBiP55piRsc_i5ldHSWqnN-RJt5-ADdIJIv7-NWPDMfZ2SrEqQkbftVTplhCTTv_5iNEy5TdFrkR5B63b0HsNrzGm/s1600-h/slick+rick.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5155500019874780722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUMsv4lU7lr4fa93BoJ_pXij0OpQi3nIbXKGR065oUTBB3u6qfTeKDBiP55piRsc_i5ldHSWqnN-RJt5-ADdIJIv7-NWPDMfZ2SrEqQkbftVTplhCTTv_5iNEy5TdFrkR5B63b0HsNrzGm/s320/slick+rick.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Slick Rick - Underwear is Wet<br /><br /><br />Today is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday Jordana. A little while ago she wrote a </span><a href="http://ethanswan.blogspot.com/2007/12/best-of-2007my-friends-part-5.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">top ten of 2007 list</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> for me that was at least half rap music which was, of course, no surprise to me since we share an apartment, and I heard her listening to these songs for months, some of them for years. A few years ago she lived in a Philly apartment crowded out with all of my records. She made the best of it, running through piles of 12"s and assembling genius mixtapes. When I showed up to the fort she had made out of cardboard sleeves and dirty clothes we spent weeks laughing and freaking out over songs. Barely letting two verses of Biggie songs play out before we shoved </span><a href="http://ethanswan.blogspot.com/2007/07/love-tracks-setbacks.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Foster Sylvers</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> onto the turntable, followed quickly by "If I Had No Loot." It had been a minute since we had seen each other, and the themes that emerged in her hasty playbacks nudged me to ask if she had discovered the Slick Rick white label in the shelves with the B-side "Underwear is Wet", claiming that it was the exact sort of misogyny that she appreciated.<br /><br />In the late 90s I lived in Portland Oregon and there were so few stores to buy rap records that I ended up figuring out the internet so that I could keep up. It turned out a good thing, because between sandboxautomatic.com and hiphopsite.com I found a ton of weird stuff that barely made it to stores beyond midtown Manhattan and Los Angeles. When Slick Rick was released from prison in 1998, I obsessively fantasized about how great his comeback record would be. I think it must've been in 1999 when this 12" came out, listed on one of those sites as "I Sparkle" b/w "Underwear is Wet" which is funny since the 12" only says "I Sparkle (clean version)" on one side and "I Sparkle (dirty version)" on the other. "Sparkle" is a Large Professor produced cut that's confident, easygoing and steady graciousness, the kind of thing that Jay-Z's grown man rap music should've aspired to. But "Underwear" was the real winner, a fearsome battle track with him twisting and turning over a ridiculously simple beat that basically flips the "there's a place in france where the naked ladies dance" theme.<br /></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">The song is full of quoteables, nearly every line hits with that hurt-your-feelings sharpness, but Rick sounds nonchalant and grinning the whole time, so clearly in control of the situation. I think it was that era where everyone started describing MCs as sounding "hungry" and it was a sound I was very compelled by but on "Underwear is Wet" Slick Rick outdid the hunger of Shabaam Sahdeeq or Ill Bill or whatever it was by sounding well fed but a gourmand, like he was just eating for the taste of it. Appreciating the flavor of demolished MCs. Quick favorite punchlines:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">"my record will be barking all through your broke project"</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">"if a rapper wants to eat he better never cry battle"</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">"put you and your family on welfare"</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">And then of course the chorus, which features the eye-widening, nudge-your-friend-in-disbelief line which made me think my sister would love the song so much: "no period and still have to put a pad on." Always with the grin on his face, I can't think of another rapper who you can so clearly hear his smile while he's rapping.<br /><br />Jordana and I have secretly fought over this 12" for years. I have no count of how many times it's changed hands over the years. Always without a word or discussion. It's just suddenly gone one day, and then the next time I see her I sneak it into the bag with whatever I just bought. I think we've both looked for extra copies on the internet but never with any luck, the fact that it doesn't say "Underwear is Wet" anywhere on the record doesn't help. A year or so ago <a href="http://www.cocaineblunts.com/">Cocaine Blunts</a> aka the gold standard of talking about rap records on the internet ran an entry on <a href="http://www.cocaineblunts.com/blunts?p=353">Slick Rick rarities</a> that had some gems but both of these songs were absent. "I Sparkle", by the way, did surface on the "Wild Wild West" soundtrack but as far as I know "Underwear is Wet" has been hidden forever. Anyway, it's now here and on her computer so no matter what happens to the 12" we can always hear a favorite. </span></div>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-25465551324358036492008-01-13T20:17:00.001-08:002008-01-14T16:16:33.049-08:00And I play "couldn't-be-much-boreder"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3WcVaEU2LpiYly-ZSyNJe_lFRLROHBQ0tiZk-9AdBDNWD2Jwmp4Vn_vXqIBqZwrG0jkCN77UvBWvtU3Abl9e2U_KMF6Du85dbPcfO7KEzfAL9PofK1C9vRnGKA5L1vutYbSKbaQzSec2A/s1600-h/shudder+to+think.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3WcVaEU2LpiYly-ZSyNJe_lFRLROHBQ0tiZk-9AdBDNWD2Jwmp4Vn_vXqIBqZwrG0jkCN77UvBWvtU3Abl9e2U_KMF6Du85dbPcfO7KEzfAL9PofK1C9vRnGKA5L1vutYbSKbaQzSec2A/s320/shudder+to+think.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5155489389830723106" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br />Shudder to Think - Corner of My Eye<br /><br /></span><object style="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf" id="audioplayer2" height="24" width="290"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf"><br /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerID=2&soundFile=http://www.rvcaclothing.com/images/ethan/audio/cornerofmyeye.mp3"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><br /><param name="menu" value="false"><br /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /></object><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br />A couple of months ago this movie came out, called "Control" that was about the band Joy Division and specifically their singer, Ian Curtis. A few years ago, I read the book that "Control" is based on, called </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Touching From a Distance</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">. It was written by Deborah Curtis, who was married to the singer. They even had a daughter. The book, um, debased me of a mythology that I had carried about Curtis since I was a teenager - that he committed suicide by hanging himself in an empty room, leaving a mystery for the authorities. They eventually figured out that he stood atop a block of ice to place the noose around his neck, which he knew would melt and leave no trace before they found his body. Anyway, it's not at all true, although it is true that they found a copy of Iggy Pop's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">The Idiot</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> on the turntable beside him.<br /><br />Beyond movies, the internet is doing a good job of removing all of these weird legends that we carry about our favorites - like how Debbie Harry wasn't actually almost abducted by Ted Bundy, or how Sinbad didn't die last year, or how Lars Ulrich isn't HIV-positive. But it sometimes feels like a fun robber.<br /><br />Anyway, when I first heard Shudder to Think it was this song on a mixed tape, and the friend who made it for me said that the singer had trained for the opera before getting into punk, which is why he sang so uniquely. I resisted his voice for awhile; the leaps in pitch, the near-constant vibrato and smoothed-out vowels sounding so much like good posture and all the other stuff I joined punk to avoid. But I really liked the way he sang "and I just want to see my girlfriend, cause her hugs are the best I know", because his inflection actually adds to the emotion of the line, makes it believable and bright in a way that Blake Schwarzenbach or Billie Joe wouldn't have been able to. That scratch of ache that I felt so deeply when I first heard it and feel again on a night like tonight was enough to carry me through the song over and over and over again. I liked the poetry of his lyrics, it was sweetly teenaged and facile, full of images like "housefly hair" and alcohol described as "forgetting sauce", the types of conceits that never appeared in the underground where everyone simply said what they meant. "At least I can fucking think" and "if I started crying, would you start crying?" and "put your hand in my hand and look me in the eye when you're talking to me" are all potent, but they sometimes fade and stop registering with their directness. While I still think about Shudder to Think's "neurotic time" when I'm on the subway.<br /><br />The song itself is another kind of magic, a take on the sound of their friends that's just skewed enough to sound unlike everything else. On the Dischord Records </span><a href="http://www.dischord.com/band/shuddertothink"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">biography</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"> of Shudder to Think they describe the band as being "inspired by, but also independent from" the Dischord scene. I like the way they take the insistent, melodic guitars of Revolution Summer and slowed them down just a touch, releasing a bit of the tension but creating some kind of nobleness that matches the singer's tone. As the verse begins, there's a chugga-chugga guitar riff that would feel muscular and heavy-browed in another band's hands, but in "Corner of My Eye" feels pensive and wide-eyed in the way the lyrics feel.<br /><br />The thing is that there are a million punk songs about feeling isolated in a crowd, about the weight of the mainstream, the pressure of their lifestyles. And there's something great about kicking out, and spitting and causing a scene like the songs do, but most of the time I just feel tense and so quiet and wishing I could shrink or vanish. And more than anything, I watch: the secret interactions of the people around me, the way they hold their bags, the way they care about other people's gazes or else the way they make a show of not caring. But I never found a song that said that until "Corner of My Eye." And I just spent an hour reading every bio I could of Shudder to Think's singer Craig Wedren and I can't find a single reference to him training for the opera. And I'm annoyed to have to let go of another amazing myth but I feel even better coming to terms with the brilliant cohesion of the entire band, with the way their every gesture reinforces this sense of movement surrounding me and forcing me more and more inward, wishing for faraway hugs and wondering about the lives of the people across me on the train.</span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-50164200563063106732008-01-04T22:48:00.000-08:002012-06-15T14:15:39.262-07:00A certain something asphyxiates my breathing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgeQDjo6MEGWqyEZZlzSe-qwQseQOx6nEpyFxsFGZ5pCxBMyN1_5XPi_rBLgVRsMsHmnj6EvxRKu2IJZ1frLnmSD3ldBgIoVepQMcMM7jisVggtOmXz36pjA_kKjlZHJlaIhcTAwrI4sJw/s1600-h/phantomtollbooth.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5151883653116581394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgeQDjo6MEGWqyEZZlzSe-qwQseQOx6nEpyFxsFGZ5pCxBMyN1_5XPi_rBLgVRsMsHmnj6EvxRKu2IJZ1frLnmSD3ldBgIoVepQMcMM7jisVggtOmXz36pjA_kKjlZHJlaIhcTAwrI4sJw/s320/phantomtollbooth.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a>
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Hardcore has always felt the most potent to me when the music reaches the same kind of frantic violence as the world that it's responding to. The first song on the Necros LP. Crossed Out. <a href="http://ethanswan.blogspot.com/2007/07/cmon-give-us-some-more-stupid-looks.html">Die Kreuzen</a>. The entire second side of the Heroin LP. There's something so compelling to me about the balance, these short, super-tight songs where it feels like everything is at the breaking point. Drummers hitting every single surface in front of them, exploding bursts that cut and jab but always remain concise. Guitar and bass careening, like their strings are a staircase the players are falling down. Listening to "Jack of All Phobias", the first song on Phantom Tollbooth's 1986 self-titled EP, I sometimes can't believe there's only three people in the band.
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I spent a lot of the 90s feeling breathless and aghast, and those years were thankfully escorted by hardcore records. When life felt hectic, instead of finding a song that could calm me, I looked for one that felt just as hectic. There was a few years there where it seemed like Born Against were clearly the most succinct expression of this feeling; the songs swarmed and kicked in a way that I wished I could. Their abrupt endings made the two seconds of silence before the next song feel like a new kind of violence, a sudden elimination of air.
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Somewhere along the line I explained to someone how deeply I felt for Born Against, how original and telling their records were. In a very friendly, hey-check-this-out kind of way he suggested I look for a 7" by the band Mecht Mensch. A few weeks later I saw a copy in a record shop in Rochester and paid $50 for it unheard, begging my sister not to tell my parents how much I spent. I loved it. Ran around the living room stagedive off the loveseat unspeakably happy. It felt like fighting every person that's ever made me feel worthless, irrelevent, or unfit, and winning! It was everything I knew hardcore could be.
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A while later my friend Isaac gave me the first 12" EP by Phantom Tollbooth, knowing my love for this kind of brutality. The first song, clocking at 1 minute, 52 seconds, feels like it has somehow lasted from the moment I put on the record until this moment, and will extend its savagery for the rest of my life.
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What was going on in New York in 1986 when this record came out? The history books seem to think there was just the Cro-Mags "Age of Quarrel" and Youth of Today's "Break Down the Walls", leaving no room for this kind of storm. The art-damage of D.N.A. was far enough in the past that it wouldn't even signify, and the band's reliance on sheer noise as a foundation seems to distance it from any of the midwest hardcore acts that reached their levels of aggression. Their thank you list includes Sonic Youth, Das Damen and Yo La Tengo, which suggests the company they were keeping. But if I try to imagine going to see Sonic Youth, even in their feedback-swirl mid-80s mode, and hearing this, I can only think of it like waiting for the train and suddenly getting stabbed in the ribcage with a screwdriver.
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The track begins with an evil squall, which fades just enough to introduce the bassline before the drums and vocals kick down the door. Their initial impact is one of the harshest openings I can think of. The song rages forward with a wild-eyed fury, the drumming running so many fills that it seems like he recorded three different takes. It's a paranoia-inspiring flurry, makes me feel surrounded and harried. Just at the moment that you could become acclimated to the pace, the song stops with a neck-grabbing precision, which isn't at all showy but does make you realize that everything is carefully placed. Then they leap back into the fight.
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This is where the song almost derails, with a dis-ease and drama that only heightens the sense of paranoia and harassment, with the bass peaking into this Minutemen-ish high-end speed, while the guitar restrains itself to tight, sparse chords. The drums almost manage a typical 4/4 beat. Then the noise swells up underneath while the vocals maniacally repeat "laugh, laugh and survive." It's harrowing, but clearly encouraging.
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The other five songs on the 12" are good, they don't kill me the way "Jack" does but there is some gleeful dement on it, the lines "blood on the stairs/still mine" from "More Paranoia" or the haunted nonsense of "Little green girls with little green tails are telling tales, they're telling tales/about me" in "Sweat Blood." The thing that does kill me is how much this record means to me and how little it's entered any kind of hardcore canon. These days Phantom Tollbooth is best known for the <a href="http://www.offrecords.com/phantom.html">remake</a> of their 1988 LP "Power Toy" by Bob Pollard and by the bands they went on to form/join. Apparently the $50 I paid for the Mecht Mensch 7" is nothing compared to what it's <a href="http://www.popsike.com/php/detaildata.php?itemnr=260088429267">fetching today</a>, but you can buy a sealed copy of the Phantom Tollbooth 12" for $9. Really. It's on ebay right now. And when I can't breathe, and there are enemies on every side, it's impossible to say that one record signifies more than the other. And the Phantom Tollbooth has a better cover.Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-36063642531464348272008-01-01T11:19:00.000-08:002012-06-15T14:23:24.961-07:00I'm looking for amusement, please believe me<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fIld99Wngd5KK3UwIOP18YvawUvoNV6uSLIL6hbzuodORPn5qhiCmM_2aPsgvVHdaOtpvbxR4Tn9PDXXv5Rphyo0-oNg2PAjd5BZWLYj4jtTYmROKLoB6volM-EctCVh4QPeo3yq0aes/s1600-h/roy+harper.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fIld99Wngd5KK3UwIOP18YvawUvoNV6uSLIL6hbzuodORPn5qhiCmM_2aPsgvVHdaOtpvbxR4Tn9PDXXv5Rphyo0-oNg2PAjd5BZWLYj4jtTYmROKLoB6volM-EctCVh4QPeo3yq0aes/s320/roy+harper.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150414142941156866" border="0" /></a>
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<br /><br /><br />Something's that's been <a href="http://whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com/2007/08/9th.html">discussed</a> before is that amazing process where you learn about things in isolation. Reading Maximum RocknRoll and noticing that every third band in the review section gets compared to Green Day so you buy a Green Day record. Green Day thanks Crimpshrine on that record so you get one of theirs. They're both on Lookout Records, so you start checking for other records on that label.<br /><br />Or a roommate played Nick Drake for me and I absolutely flipped. It was the best! Like the music my parents played around the house when I was a kid, but more ghostlike, closer to my ear. And then I found a biography where the author claimed that there's nothing special about Drake's guitar playing, he just knocked off Bert Jansch. So go buy one of his. Bert Jansch was famous for his cover of "Angie", written by Davy Graham. Davy Graham made a record with Shirley Collins. Their version of "Nottamun Town" is on the boxed set "Electric Muse: The Story of Folk into Rock" which has this one perfect, precious love song. "Forever" by Roy Harper.<br /><br />Everyone likes Roy Harper. Led Zeppelin made a song about him called "Hats off to Harper." Pink Floyd had him sing "Have a Cigar" on one of their records. Kate Bush traded duets with him on her record, then his. This past September, Joanna Newsom called on him to play a show with her in London. But when I heard him sing that song, the weight of his reputation, really the whole world, just fell away. It was me, cross legged on the floor with headphones on, like a teenager on TV, and Harper, playing this perfect, fingerpicked guitar that felt like warm water, that certain softness, roundness maybe, of bathwater, the weight of it on your body when you lay all the way back. His voice is clear, with one haunted touch of roughness. It sounds like he wandered in the forest for days or weeks, sleepless and alone, only emerging after finding the right words to tell someone how dearly he loved them.<br /><br />So then go after the record the song is from: <span style="font-style: italic;">Sophisticated Beggar</span>, released in 1967 and rereleased as <span style="font-style: italic;">Return of the Sophisticated Beggar</span> in 1970. The record is full of the same beautifully rich, dancing guitar work as the song "Forever", and that same gentle, modest voice. And this magic little surprise, "Mr. Stationmaster" with no guitar at all and its jaunty organ marching along like some perfect night in a yellow-lit pub, dark wood everywhere and crooked-teeth smiles inviting you to new friendships.<br /><br />Honestly I don't know enough about the condition of the English railways circa 1967 to understand why Harper needed to write a song where he declares, "oh Mr. Stationmaster, you're a national distaster" and I think he's mostly trying to make a listener laugh. But I don't really even hear the actual comedy, all I can hear is the laughter behind his voice, the steady skip of the drums and that merry organ bending its elbows and swinging its wrists in some smiling, marching dance. And it makes me so ridiculously happy.<br /><br />So, new year, old song. I like having the reminder that a song can just be a cheerful pump of organ chords, steady drums, and an insolent but good-natured voice singing out snapshot images and almost-jokes. And listening to it reminds me also that I'm much more drawn to that simple joy than all the careful programming, sophisticated song structures, or accomplished musicianship that I normally fret over.Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-90176195844942849572007-12-27T23:15:00.000-08:002007-12-27T20:38:05.676-08:00Best of 2007=my friends Part 7<span style="font-family:arial;">All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtgk7oaF2XcS6ZubAS9NRjq-d85CBSTOJL2xL6peFgj9G0hyphenhyphendV57vb86tNJYQDiIlW7tt0v07dR0jgUmn5uifyOrvDTHV3FOmiGMQ_4JPO2GHHmXLIrzHCtM0bhFw67IIKVdqmKEUTgONw/s1600-h/ANDREA.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtgk7oaF2XcS6ZubAS9NRjq-d85CBSTOJL2xL6peFgj9G0hyphenhyphendV57vb86tNJYQDiIlW7tt0v07dR0jgUmn5uifyOrvDTHV3FOmiGMQ_4JPO2GHHmXLIrzHCtM0bhFw67IIKVdqmKEUTgONw/s320/ANDREA.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5148876883951605218" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Andrea Longacre-White</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Andrea took one of my favorite <a href="http://www.andrealongacrewhite.com/2LA.html">photographs</a> of all time. I like the way she sees things, the way she exists in all the same spaces as the rest of us but is constantly uncovering secrets. But she does it in a way where she has a voice, isn't just some observer, and she also does it with a respect that makes her prints so heartachingly emotional. After she DJ'ed at Lit, the CDRs that she burned a bunch of songs onto floated around Brendan's car for weeks and they were thick and frantic, high-energy and bright. The combination of her appetite for bangers and that sense of understanding makes her list feel like summertime with open windows:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Int'l players anthem</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- UGK featuring </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198740564_0" >Outkast</span><span style="font-family:arial;">; could there be a more perfect dance song (or opening lines)?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Uh-Oh</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198740564_1" >Ja Rule</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198740564_2" >Lil Wayne</span><span style="font-family:arial;">; could there be a more perfect runner up to the most perfect dance song? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Barr</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- Summary, every corner of every song</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Animal Collective</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- Strawberry Jam and its array of ever shifting favorite songs</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Lil Love</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198740564_3" >Bone Thugs-N-Harmony</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> and Maria Carey; haven't loved her this much since the highest notes of 'Someday' </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Every live <span style="font-weight: bold;">Car Clutch</span> performance I've witnessed</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >First bonus track from Honk Honk Bonk (song 13)</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- Soiled Mattress and the Springs; they always play this song live and I feel embarrassed to not know the title but Avi won't text me back with answers! Wait, he just did only to say that there are no bonus tracks on the album! Lies! </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Comfy in Nautica</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- Panda Bear; a song that slowly, relentlessly pulls and stretches time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >2 step remix</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- Unk featuring </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198740564_4" >T-Pain</span><span style="font-family:arial;">, E40, </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198740564_5" >Jim Jones</span><span style="font-family:arial;">; first song to create true concern about the system I'm listening to it on's bass integrity. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Go Getta</span><span style="font-family:arial;">- </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198740564_6" >Young Jeezy</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> featuring R.Kelly, its melodrama amazes me.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Boyz- </span><span style="font-family:arial;">M.I.A., whatever, I love her. </span><br /><br />----<br /><br /><div><s style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >Okay friends, thank you for reading. I know it's a lot but I really loved seeing these and hope you did too. Happy new year and to steal from an email I got from my friend Devon recently, good dreams or none at all. Peace.</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"></span></s></div>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-34334299563442787782007-12-26T20:10:00.000-08:002007-12-28T12:28:48.029-08:00Best of 2007=my friends Part 6<span style="font-family:arial;">All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.</span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfX_PddcsgPtjq3TNL7501h32AifX9gaDra9N2wul9T8smbdol-N2l-tQhvUg3iaBAf1GX3jLjC6wcUEfiE3vcEACAmnPAn4akjUOv3R9hbsiS-OuIg2JBtvw59lifDCl4Svg0nt693q5-/s1600-h/seprock.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfX_PddcsgPtjq3TNL7501h32AifX9gaDra9N2wul9T8smbdol-N2l-tQhvUg3iaBAf1GX3jLjC6wcUEfiE3vcEACAmnPAn4akjUOv3R9hbsiS-OuIg2JBtvw59lifDCl4Svg0nt693q5-/s320/seprock.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5148873018481038802" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">Giuseppe Catania</span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Sep is one of my oldest, dearest friends in the world. We met when I was playing a Mobb Deep record in Amy's dorm room, he walked by and paused, glad to finally hear rap music at college. We spent every weekend at record stores, eventually working together at <a href="http://www.jackpotrecords.com/">Jackpot</a> where we engaged in a good-natured but aggressive competition, writing reviews of new 12"s and those sketchy reissues. On his day off I would frantically try and hit as many records as possible, bouncing back and forth between the tiny Baltimore Club section and anything with a Queensbridge connection. When I would come back to work on Monday he would've reviewed entire bins of records, effortlessly covering the DITC crew, current radio hits, all the Rap-a-Lot warehouse find stuff and then hit up the soul section to tag all the records that got sampled by KMD. The summer before he moved to New Orleans he just went crazy, covering Ghostface's "Back Like That" with like half a sheet of paper talking about love and mourning. He also was behind the brilliant tag for Lil Wayne: "Your favorite blogger's favorite rapper". Here goes:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I moved to </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_2" >New Orleans</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> about a year ago and for my job I have to drive to Baton Rouge twice a week. At first I hated the drive, pretty much cause I suck at driving and I-10 gets all treacherous with idiots and rainstorms, but then I started a ritual where I pick and listen to albums all the way through. Even if the songs start to suck, I don't let myself fast forward through them. I listen to a lot of old cds and tapes I'm already familiar with, screaming rap lyrics at the top of my lungs. I also listen to a lot of new cds. I learn the rap lyrics fast and then I scream them at the top of my lungs just like the old songs. Here're some of the albums that make the trip feel like I just got my license and am finally getting to play dirty raps out loud.</span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;">I should also mention that the car I'm driving is an '88 <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_3">Camry</span> with a blown stock system. Everything that comes out of the speakers sounds like a dub of a dub: It's like a machine that can turn the smoothest <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_4">Dr. Dre</span> production into some Tical sounding ruggedness.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lil' Wayne "Da Drought III"</span><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;">Before "DDIII" came out, I saw a Juvenile show where he threw a bunch of fliers into a crowd that showed the now infamous Wayne and Baby kiss. People were going crazy, and for a second it seemed like Weezy F. might get <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_5">Ja Rule</span>'d over the whole thing. Instead, it turns out that Wayne was on a spaceship or something, listening to "It Was Written" over and over again recording a million songs. "Sky's the Limit 2007" was an NO anthem for a second (I would turn off the car and another car would drive by playing it, or I would be in the corner store and there would be some kid wearing a 3XL <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_6">Scarface</span> t-shirt playing the cd on one of those <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_7">portable DVD players</span>). The song even sounds like the city: violent, angry, funny, and soulful. There's this part at the end of the song where the instrumental is riding out and Wayne keeps spitting these increasingly fucked scenarios ("use your head 'fore I take it off your shoulders, mail it to your mom with a dozen roses") and then mumbles, "now that's fucked up." Then, the music fades out for a second and Wayne makes like a second line trumpet and sing/scats the chorus one last time, spitting out the entire evolution of music into that one moment. Word to Gizmo.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Devin the Dude "Waiting to Inhale"</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">UGK "Underground Kangz"</span><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;">Another thing about the car: there's no air conditioning. Once May hit, I started having to bring a change of clothes along because I was always totally soaked once I got to BR. Ethan once told me that he understood why Screw comes from <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_8">Houston</span>, 'cause of the slow traffic. That's good.<span style=""> </span>It makes sense, but in my mind, Screw's it's-too-fucking-hot-to-actually-have-your-brain-work-to-comprehend-what's-being-said- at-normal-speed music. The Devin and UGK albums perfectly capture the feel of a Screw tape without the creepiness, both albums' beats and choruses are beautiful, even though the raps are on some hide-that-shit-under-your-bed shit, especially Devin's verses. Although, his rhymes are delivered so criminally smooth he might be able to get away with singing to your grandma about how his "dick is so clean, you can serve it with some lima beans" and she would still say, "that young man has a nice voice." The UGK album is a little harder to think about with the recent passing of Pimp C. My favorite track on the album, "Living this Life," seems especially ominous in retrospect, going from what was in my mind a post-prison song about heaven to some Tupac shit ("died young, oh well, I had a good life"). Of course, Bun murderizes that shit with the non-glamorous hustler life, "I'm a pawn in this neighborhood chess game/having to see a man 'bout a dog and sell him a cat."<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Freeway-"Free At Last"</span><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:arial;">Freeway sounds like he hasn't really listened to a rap album since he put out "<span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_9">Philadelphia</span> Freeway" four years ago. He's still rapping in that crazy rhyme pattern and his voice sounds like a wounded elephant trying to speak some kind of strange human language. He didn't get any new Just Blaze or Kanye tracks- just a bunch of producers that make beats that sound like four year old Just Blaze and Kanye tracks before they got all smoothed out by success. It's a great look though, Free knows he's not gonna be doing any HP commercials, so he just decides to rhyme as cold as he possibly can: there's this Rakim moment where he goes from biblical reference, to the jungle, to space in the span of two bars ("I am Noah, I will throw you off the damn Ark/ feed you to the fishes like spare parts, don't you dare start. Boa constrictor flow, constricting your airlines, like you outerspace with no oxygen. Tell your man, 'Halt'"). Free also drops one of the most painfully confessional rhymes this side of Fatlip about his grandparents dying. And then he rhymes, "(I cried) when I realized that they died on the wrong religion. Hope Allah forgives 'em." Even though it's been like 80 degrees for most of December, this shit brings the winter.<br /><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_10"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Will.i.am</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">-"Heartbreaker" from "Songs about Girls"</span><br /><br />The poor man's <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198742423_11">Justin Timberlake</span>. This song almost makes amends for "Humps" (and makes me want to hang a little disco ball from the rear-view mirror). </p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal">PS </p> <p style="font-family: arial;" class="MsoNormal">Someone should make a video where a kid puts a Freeway tape in his walkman and he starts rapping along while putting on his jacket and when he walks out of his house has a Freeway beard. Then his girlfriend asks to hear the tape and she ends up rapping with a Freeway beard. And then she lets a baby hear the tape until a bunch of people have Freeway beards. Then they play a baseball game against State Property.</p>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-20713754275293857332007-12-25T20:02:00.000-08:002007-12-27T20:35:52.956-08:00Best of 2007=my friends Part 5<span style="font-family:arial;">All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQL9tsQnJ3Kxgg0avNdt2XDcMYDvfiPHMr-64EiQEddE9uILb6nOu751MxhggAtXCi8TW8wCVW2-YxpE65Gl3bU_bpamb3irSXet1akBG_Ab6XhZsfo1AVdOfv09UqaUBp9FDxfLy2clTk/s1600-h/DSCN0189.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQL9tsQnJ3Kxgg0avNdt2XDcMYDvfiPHMr-64EiQEddE9uILb6nOu751MxhggAtXCi8TW8wCVW2-YxpE65Gl3bU_bpamb3irSXet1akBG_Ab6XhZsfo1AVdOfv09UqaUBp9FDxfLy2clTk/s320/DSCN0189.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5148870913947063746" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Jordana Swan</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">My sister! It never ends! From when we went to see Sonic Youth (she was 14, I was 19) together to a couple of weeks ago when I was reading in my room, listening to Burial, and I went to get a cup of water and heard her listening to the same LP, two songs ahead of me while reading in her room. She makes plants grow in our tiny, sunless apartment and she just made a video for the BARR song "Context Ender" that made the floors, walls and lamps cry with its sensitivity and beauty. Her list:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">1. In Paris I mostly got the feeling that people are losing all concern for each other. We can all have a different experience of a place and that was mine. For a lot of fucking months. BARR played two nights there. First one, my dad was there too and I just kept sponging as many 14euro drinks I could with the tickets. That nasty ‘spensive proper gin, nah mean? Second night though was like, for the people, on a boat, on the east side, friend’s birthday, and ralph darden was there and buckets of cans of beer. For the people! Well so you know how the polyamorous kids who proselytize anarchy and then get crumpled jealous when they girl’s up on someone D… well cos anarchy don’t work without work, or at least the promoter don’t cos right as BARR went on their set got cancelled for time. UPRISEHELLAWHATTHEFUCK! Says the crowd so he said “ok shit just play one song” and then… go big baby kevvy… they compress an entire set’s worth of “THAT TALK IS POISON NO SERIOUSLY” break-the-keyboard energy into one song and then it don’t stop cos kevin does go big and he just starts playing another song and this dangerous medley and there’s dancing and ethan and I end up on the floor like we’re kids and we reclaim our professional wrestler names.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">2. no age “weirdo rippers”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">3. lilly allen record and yes I mean it<br /><span style="font-family:arial;">4. kmd “mr. hood” reissue</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><!--</span-->5. curtis mayfield “no place like america today” reissue<br /><span style="font-family:arial;">6. when AC played “essplode” in nyc. trip the fuck out! thank you again!</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">7. panda bear (duh)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">8. cam’ron “public enemy”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">9. notorious b.i.g. (yeah that means that)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">10. best of mac dre vol 3</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">10. the BARR/no age show in london cos jeremy abbott was in attendance</span><br /><br /></span></span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-29746927355746713732007-12-24T19:49:00.000-08:002007-12-27T20:35:32.938-08:00Best of 2007=my friends Part 4<span style="font-family:arial;">All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7sm2J_gjN_5RcxsLN16FsSqLZEVUuc1gsHAXxmDZ0-7HyZSxNhA1VNRwJHKMzlCyfyDEBqThrkXd0WFJK0MENU71cTN7PvYfBZyVobunDIh9ws1d9Z2JiE6AD3fwVcvSXs77LVS3A-eNz/s1600-h/liz+harris.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7sm2J_gjN_5RcxsLN16FsSqLZEVUuc1gsHAXxmDZ0-7HyZSxNhA1VNRwJHKMzlCyfyDEBqThrkXd0WFJK0MENU71cTN7PvYfBZyVobunDIh9ws1d9Z2JiE6AD3fwVcvSXs77LVS3A-eNz/s320/liz+harris.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5148877334923171314" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Liz Harris</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Liz, as Grouper, made one of my favorite records of the 2000s: "Way Their Crept." She also made me a mixed CD for a housewarming present that had DJ Assault's "Asses Jigglin'", Soulja Slim's "If I Really Want It" and a picture of a daschund in a party hat on the cover. We saw <span style="font-style: italic;">Descent</span> together and she's braver than me. </span></span></span> <div><span style="font-family:arial;"><s style="text-decoration: none;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">2007 top tens</span> </s></span></div> <div><span style="font-family:arial;"><s style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Fuyuki Yamakawa at TBA festival in Portland</span>—He manipulates his breathing and heart rate to affect light and sound. A visually romantic display of control. It felt like a magician’s performance. Some gothic and demonic things happening.</s></span></div> <div><s style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Sud. Grenze ---DEREVO</span><span style="font-family:arial;">. Someone in Bristol who worked on this film showed it at their house. Super beautiful, hard to describe. Strange metaphors and breathtaking cinematography. By the performance/art group DEREVO from Russia. Its not from this year but I saw it this year. From their website:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“One time you find yourself in a park, on a bench, looking into space, and for a second you forget which country you are in, whether it's morning or evening; you are pierced by a pang of loneliness, your heart becomes light and sad, what is important separates out from all the noise of the world, and the slipping, sliding shadows fill with meaning profound...</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >Words come to mind...</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >‘South. Border’ is my present to myself, a little window to the house I will never be able to build, a house of silver and light.”</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Valet @ Rotture, in Portland. </span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Inca Ore—Churpa Champurrado</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >. 18 minutes or so of new recordings by Eva Saelens of Inca Ore. A return to something dark and private. Really nice, and haunting.</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Pink Reason, “By a Thread”</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >–It’s the By a Thread side that we listen to a lot in my house. It has a dusty and scratched-up catchiness, dark and suffocated.</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Yo Majesty @Holocene, Portland.</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > This show was amazing. I went mostly expecting a raucous show, which it was, but their raw lyrical talent caught me off-guard. Weird intertwining rhythmic stuff not on the recordings that I’d heard, and at the end one of the MC’s sort of broke down in a way that made a lot of the audience cry. Not that crying or making other people cry automatically makes your show good, but sometimes it does, and this time it did, because it was all about this humble feeling of still appreciating your audience, even though you have the same amount of talent as a lot of folks that could easily at that point choose to just be super cocky and forget about anyone but themselves. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >DJ Yo-Yo Dieting: Nonexistences of the Eyes Mixx/Unborn Faces Withering Mixx.</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > When I think about Glamorous Pat I think about the time he disappeared into the bathroom for half an hour a couple years ago at a gallery party in Portland, and how when he emerged he told me that he’d taken so long because he was lost in the mirror. I like his remixes because it keeps all the good parts of the song, or just condenses and amplifies them. Everything else is fuzzed or just not there. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >http://youtube.com/watch?v=aUgcFiLA0_o </span></s></div>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-23800766574382705352007-12-23T19:44:00.000-08:002007-12-27T20:34:32.977-08:00Best of 2007=my friends Part 3<span style="font-family:arial;">All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.</span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOf0jt1hfvAhZoJkf9UvU__Hy_OGDeNaQTqz6o0tcHuF260eNq6JHF2_epIcczXYV1k6lwv7A_rO-XcwawLSa_jJ2Y2C8GxDeEgzxTI3bemSKq0iYZ1fJUFoHuaZGM6vUkQsKMYPWeh6l/s1600-h/liz.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOf0jt1hfvAhZoJkf9UvU__Hy_OGDeNaQTqz6o0tcHuF260eNq6JHF2_epIcczXYV1k6lwv7A_rO-XcwawLSa_jJ2Y2C8GxDeEgzxTI3bemSKq0iYZ1fJUFoHuaZGM6vUkQsKMYPWeh6l/s320/liz.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5148865257475134882" border="0" /></a><br /><s style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="text-decoration: none;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Liz Rice</span></span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >I met Liz in Portland when she was working on a project that involved three of my favorite artists: Ashley Macomber, Rich Jacobs, and Matt Leines. They didn't have very much time, and it was a crummy time of year with the rain and cold, but she was so casual. I feel like I laughed relentlessly from the moment they got to town to when we said goodbye. And the piece was amazing, like I don't even know how they were able to do it, and the party to celebrate it was complete excitement. Every time I get an email from Liz she says that I am sweet and like I'm in a movie I speak out loud to the computer screen, "no Liz, you're sweet!" </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >MY LIST OF FAVORITE RECORDS - these aren't in order - it's hard there are so many bands and different genera of music that I love.</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Billy Joel</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Billy Squier - Don't Say No</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > (All my record players broke and I was going crazy because I could not understand how all 6 of them would break at the same time. I dragged them into the living room, trying everything I could. Last cry I grabbed Billy Squier (Don't Say No) placed it on my favorite record player and she started playing. Forever grateful to Billy.</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Holly Golightly - Slowly But Surely</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Patrick Fitzgerald</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Roxy Music </span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Johnny Cash</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Willie Nelson</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >BARR</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Modest Mouse</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >The Highwaymen</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >The Vibrators</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >The Sunnyboys</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >La Peste</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Generation X</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >The Cramps</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >The Lost Boys</span><br /></s>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-18379680414678027522007-12-22T19:37:00.000-08:002007-12-27T20:34:54.863-08:00Best of 2007=my friends Part 2<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.</span><br /><br /><a style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQj2V1hyphenhyphenSWFI2bimkMWrfPmTMTpqqCDXZN-OSM4HI3hSYOTqN26detIDBaz_0xmE1jWfJj7ZD8iLwabBELbuoGCMHDrQq1MypXTt7QdI-RmZCW4Kq9BJHsGjbbnLfkOCnooWR4i2gMocov/s1600-h/nate+denver.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQj2V1hyphenhyphenSWFI2bimkMWrfPmTMTpqqCDXZN-OSM4HI3hSYOTqN26detIDBaz_0xmE1jWfJj7ZD8iLwabBELbuoGCMHDrQq1MypXTt7QdI-RmZCW4Kq9BJHsGjbbnLfkOCnooWR4i2gMocov/s320/nate+denver.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5148863479358674322" border="0" /></a><br /><s style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Nate Denver</span></span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >Oh Nate. Nate plays in Total Shutdown, who I liked enough to buy his solo record, "Prepare to Die". I flipped. I listened to it a thousand times that summer. I quickly learned that songwriting was only one of a thousand unbelievable skills that Nate posessed. Others include drawing, storytelling, baking, interviewing The Rock (and getting him to talk about The Geto Boys), careful listening, and laughter. I think that all animals like Nate, and seven of the eight hummingbirds I've seen in my life have been in his presence. He is an ideal human being. His list:</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >1. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >Ratatouille </span><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >(Disney) </span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >2. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >Deicide: The Stench of Redemption</span><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" > (Earache)</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >3. </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198745766_0" >No Country for Old Men</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >4. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >John Adams biography by </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198745766_1" >David McCullough</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >5. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >Superman</span><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" > (written by </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198745766_2" >Grant Morrison</span><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >, illustrated by Frank Quitely)</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >6. </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198745766_3" >Flight of the Conchords</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >7. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >Black and White Cookies</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >8. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >"Campfire" on Wu Tang's 8 Diagram</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >9. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >Meet The Robinsons</span><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" > (Disney)</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >10. </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:arial;" >Watching my neighbor squeeze off four shots at another neighbor and all four shots missing.</span></s>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-37990400094527663442007-12-21T19:32:00.000-08:002007-12-27T20:35:14.065-08:00Best of 2007=my friends Part 1<span style="font-family:arial;">All this blog was ever supposed to be was my favorite records. A bad habit I have is promising to make a tape for someone that I never do. Most of the songs I've written about have appeared on a mixtape, some of them have appeared on nearly ever one I've ever made. Anyway, what that means is that it's sort of superfluous for me to make any sort of year-end list. You already know what it's going to be. But! There are many reasons to have year-end lists and my favorite have always been the ones written by people that didn't spend the whole year writing about music already. So! Here are seven different lists written by people that I love. I hope you have fun reading them.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLLlVAikVGczg1FsYAeo084BWx929clERey36Nns-IZARiu47JUs3BkN6scCsgIhOoMoA7TlTDUBvZaXrBglWoqT9OG6OSzidduk9L13Gf2bg3cP6w-ZDgieOCOPRjUlfTPZ_OX7E7l4Ja/s1600-h/numbers3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLLlVAikVGczg1FsYAeo084BWx929clERey36Nns-IZARiu47JUs3BkN6scCsgIhOoMoA7TlTDUBvZaXrBglWoqT9OG6OSzidduk9L13Gf2bg3cP6w-ZDgieOCOPRjUlfTPZ_OX7E7l4Ja/s320/numbers3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5148862319717504386" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><s style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="text-decoration: none;font-size:130%;" ><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Fred Thomas</span></span><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >Clearly the person mentioned most often on this blog, Fred Thomas has been a part of every monumental event in my life for ten years. Even if he is far away, his songs have been right nearby to comfort, revel, or sympathize. One time he told me that when I start laughing, it makes him start laughing, and then I laugh harder and on it goes until we're both gone. That's how his top ten list makes me feel:</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >I feel like the best record that came out this year or any year ever is </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >"Person Pitch" by Panda Bear</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >, though I really think he should have stuck with the original working title "The Witch Comes Home To Roost", or the runner-up title "Grab The Lemons and Make A Smoothie, All You Strange And Overly-Excitable People With Your Person-Face Persony Pal People". But the alliterating front-runner is just as good, and any name would have been just another detail on the outside of this treasure trove of sample-based sonic bliss pills. The real strangeness and success of the PB record is how the simplistic approach to these songs could have come off as small-minded, too skeletal or coyly twee, but instead breaks through all that to usher in a new kind of pop music. Simple and repetitive in both musical form and lyrical content, barren and unchanging for long stretches of time, running intricate counter-melodies over what are essentially one-chord songs, but never ever boring or boneheaded. In fact, this is one record that I could listen to all day actually, not just the way where you say "I could listen to this all day!" and that means twice or maybe four times in a week. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >In the same way where what seems like less-than-stellar musical choices actually sound surprisingly great, the somewhat overlooked record </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >"Star Destroyer" by Alex Delivery</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: none;"> handed up lots of corny synth runs, elongated jams that went all over the place with no direction in mind, quick-turning and overbearing prog-y song structures and in general a ton of goofy shit... AND IT RULED! Taken out of context or looked at on paper, any of the gurgling schizophonic elements that make up the Faust-worshiping fare of this record would be really lame, but somehow there is a glue that both holds it all together and makes the bad tastes taste great together. Not many people I've talked to got this record on their radar, but it's a sweet strange sound worth hearing.</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Phosphorescent's "Pride"</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > stood as the best he's done as of yet and a calming and sad symphony of vocal loops and low-light joys.</span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >The Chromatics' "Night Drive"</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > took the band from basement rat dissection and re-wired skree tactics to straight up Italo Disco, all the songs at a sturdy and hypnotic 107 bpm, setting a thematic vibe somewhere between </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198746494_0" >Kate Bush</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > and Goblin. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >A Sunny Day In Glasgow </span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >might be the first in a long line of new bands in a time where the world is out of band names. It's not their fault and it's too bad because their debut full-length "Scribble Mural Comic Journal" is a clever and jittery scrap book of bedroom laptop drum sounds, twee-informed vocals and a new breed of shoegazey guitar wash that doesn't really owe as much to it's historical reference point as the composer's ideas of those reference points. Deerhunter's record was kind of like that, too, but less twee, and seemingly more fake crazy. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >High Places</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > made a new 7" and had a bunch of songs online this year, and also happen to be the best band in Brooklyn. They might not have an album-of-the-year or an album this year, but they still make the list on charismatic, inspiring and waterfalls-of-joy style sound alone. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Thurston Moore</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > put on the best show I saw at South By Southwest this year, backed up by Samara Lubeski and Steve Shelley. It actually felt like a show instead of a beer commercial, and the atmosphere was so thick with the sound and vibe the trio was putting out, you felt like you were watching some new amazing band for the first time, enough so to forget the somewhat inhibiting indie mythos that surrounds the "Your Band Could Be My Life" icons. This show was pure fall feelings, rising above the hungry mob and the free vodka and Red Bull energy of the surroundings. The record that came out later was pretty good, too, but nothing like the show. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Vashti Bunyan's "Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind"</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > collection sounded like more than fodder for completeists, and the icy quality of the second disc's low-pressure demo tape is beautiful in a way the fully-produced records can't capture. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >I wasn't all that into Jens Lekman's new record, "The Night Falling On The Hill Of The Dusk Central Public Transit Glarbrel", but I did get to see him play a really nice show at the Troubadour in LA very recently, and there were a couple of moments that will stick with me for a long time. He has a song with a </span><span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;font-family:arial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1198746494_2" >Beat Happening</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > sample and the entire sold-out crowd sang the sample in deep Calvin Johnson-y voices, half of them, I'm sure unaware of the source material. It was strangely sad and also really cool. Then he played a cover of Paul Simon</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >'s "Call Me Al" where he omitted the chorus because he hated it, and that, too was strangely sad and really cool. </span><br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" >The </span><span style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Karen Dalton live reissue</span><span style="text-decoration: none;font-family:arial;" > is close to speechlessness.</span></s>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-38386727222344764102007-12-09T19:55:00.000-08:002007-12-18T18:04:52.494-08:00Truth to the people<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsNzGq6xAzevVFydwLj74ZisMV_nzO_R8fonul-4ueoMCLP1yXvwk9yV4c3o39HAfMhQGHEpoxPqQ24m4bC0vAjHfaN-GVr6PORZ8ZaXUr2XaeKN7MIHMKS5yPaU3qD_0y4fzmTcw0bqsJ/s1600-h/sc01400feb.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsNzGq6xAzevVFydwLj74ZisMV_nzO_R8fonul-4ueoMCLP1yXvwk9yV4c3o39HAfMhQGHEpoxPqQ24m4bC0vAjHfaN-GVr6PORZ8ZaXUr2XaeKN7MIHMKS5yPaU3qD_0y4fzmTcw0bqsJ/s320/sc01400feb.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142810943282982706" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">King Tubby - Ethiopian Version<br /><br /><object style="font-family: arial;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf" id="audioplayer2" height="24" width="290"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf"><br /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerID=2&soundFile=http://www.rvcaclothing.com/images/ethan/audio/EthiopianVersion.mp3"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><br /><param name="menu" value="false"><br /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /></object><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Travelling with Ajay <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Saggar</span> for a month was absolutely one of the most rewarding and sweet experiences I had this year. Ajay is a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">monstrously</span> talented <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">soundperson</span>, and I think a big part of the key to his genius is how carefully he listens to music and how clearly earnest his love for it is. He's also methodical, and when he toured with Dinosaur Jr. he played the same song by the Fall every night when he first arrived at the club, in order to hear the limits, the strengths and weaknesses of the system.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But for Animal Collective he needed a different song, one that would push the limits and reach and twist and flex the way their music does. This is the song he chose.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I first heard dub music in a completely ridiculous, far-removed context. I was living in Washington D.C. and had just heard the first This Heat LP. I thought it was the best thing ever, was completely overwhelmed by its genius. It was crushing. I scrambled to find information about it, this was in a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">pre</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">internet</span> world or at least for me so my resources were scant: libraries and magazine stores and the guy at the record store. I found an article in The Wire about Charles Hayward, drummer for This Heat, where he talked just a bit about the band. At one point he was weirdly dismissive and said something like "we never really did anything groundbreaking, all we did was take the strategies of Lee Perry and King Tubby and moved them out of a Jamaican context to a rock/punk context." I knew who Lee Perry was because of that <a href="http://www.beastiemania.com/qa/grandroyalmag.php">Grand Royal cover story</a> but King Tubby was a new name to me. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">What's your favorite song on </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" ><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Illmatic</span></span><span style="font-family:arial;">? Around that time all my friends liked "One Time for Your Mind" best but I was running "Represent." It took me four months of arguing about it to realize the difference was that I didn't smoke reefer and that's why the resonant, echo-y boom of "One Time" didn't read for me the same way it hit my friends. I felt the same way about King <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Tubby's</span> "King of Dub", which felt all rumbling and lost. It took me a while, years really, to find the strain of dub I was really interested in, the soulful, achy kind where the effects lurk and attack with a sinister restraint. Where I feel like I'm listening to one song and suddenly I'm listening to another. Keith Hudson's "I'm All Right." "Place Called Africa" by Jr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Byles</span>. The entire 2<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">nd</span> LP on the deluxe version of "Heart of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Congos</span>." But I'm pretty sure "Ethiopians Version" is the best example I've ever heard.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I can't think of a way to say this without sounding fucked, but I really like reggae slang. I think "live-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">icate</span>" instead of "dedicate" (read "dead-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">icate</span>") is brilliant and a beautiful shift. When Nate explained "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">overstand</span>" instead of "understand" to me after "What Goes Around" came out I felt blurry with excitement. And when I would order reggae records for the store from our salesperson in Brooklyn, and he would respond to my "goodbye" with "bless", or when I knew him better, "blessed love", it sailed my heart for the rest of the day. But the thing is, I cannot get away with it. Those words come out of my mouth and I sound like Sean Connery saying "you're the man now, dog" at the end of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Finding Forrester</span><span style="font-family:arial;">. A nightmare. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But with that introduction, I can't think of a better description for Rod Taylor's vocal performance in "Ethiopian Kings" than righteous. This is the guy whose debut record was titled "Where is Your Love Mankind?" His politics are fierce, hopeful, and most of all, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">uncompromising</span>. The opening lyrics make for one of the starkest drawn lines I've ever seen; power on one side, and righteousness on the other. In a voice that rings with as much bravery as it does grief, he testifies: "King David he was a bad man, King Solomon he was a bad man, King Moses he was a bad man." King David who defeated Goliath. King Solomon the wise. Moses who led the slaves from Egypt. It's a brutal recasting of history, an acknowledgement of the corruption of power that handles honesty like a weapon, like a slap, like a sharp blade.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But this is where <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Tubby's</span> version begins its rise, like hands reaching out of the darkness. The vocals hook on a syllable, echoing out with a ghost's mourn before descending like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">stormclouds</span>. Sounds expand and cave in underneath you, every bar crumbling a bit more, the song's foundations as unstable as the world Taylor describes. It's almost gruesome, the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">destabilisation</span> of the song, in just a minute it's devolved from a rocking battle cry to a quicksand lurch. But it never feels like two <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">separate</span> songs, somehow Tubby manages to drift from one to the other without seams. And just as quickly, it becomes three songs, as the expansive, demonic fragments merge back together for a meditative, pulsing finish. Like he knew you needed a minute to think.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I don't write about Animal <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Collective's</span> music because I don't much know how. But these kinds of seamless twists and drastic mood-changes, indescribably subtle and more than that thoughtful, are maybe the thing I like best about them. Ajay is one of those people whose life was so clearly saved by music, that it's almost like he's repaying it by listening so reverentially. I don't know how many songs he has in his computer to choose from, but I'm sure I could go through every single one of them and not find a better way to test a room for Animal Collective than "Ethiopian Version." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The image up above is a page from </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" ><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Ansul</span> Pull</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> magazine, maybe circa 1998? <a href="http://citycenternyc.blogspot.com/">Fred Thomas</a> made it, and I like it because it makes me laugh and feels really serious and heavy to me at the same time. It's been on the wall of every room I've lived in since 2003, from Philly to San Francisco to Portland to New York.</span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-19354325830244934522007-12-04T19:45:00.000-08:002007-12-04T22:20:18.514-08:00Give you an earful, it's tearful<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik-bykrszJceaQCo2B7HLHADI-ounNPnL66qd26Bo_raoDcIbvglW2ocvhbG7LcjnPXM9ysmI9yEcYDkljJEsQrPuTJJ6jtSMTIuD8siQiTtKXcRWmDMbL_Bfm_WyR2HxuTOARH_QAKW5K/s1600-h/soiled+mattress.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik-bykrszJceaQCo2B7HLHADI-ounNPnL66qd26Bo_raoDcIbvglW2ocvhbG7LcjnPXM9ysmI9yEcYDkljJEsQrPuTJJ6jtSMTIuD8siQiTtKXcRWmDMbL_Bfm_WyR2HxuTOARH_QAKW5K/s320/soiled+mattress.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5140330032733859602" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Soiled Mattress and The Springs - <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Someone's</span> Drinking Water</span><br /><br /><object style="font-family: arial;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf" id="audioplayer2" height="24" width="290"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf"><br /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerID=2&soundFile=http://www.rvcaclothing.com/images/ethan/audio/SomeonesDrinkingWater.mp3"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><br /><param name="menu" value="false"><br /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /></object><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" > </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Avi</span> Cohen, drummer for Soiled Mattress and The Springs, once mentioned to me that he read the Mike Bones post on this blog. "You sure like words," was his only comment.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">He's right, and when I'm acting overblown and boring I tend to make really dramatic blanket statements like "I only listen to the words" or "I don't like guitar bands" or "the Anne Briggs LP on Topic is my favorite record of all time" [1]. And it's true that I have always been pulled towards lyrics, that I remember all four verses of "8 Ball" but have a hard time humming the melody; but if you ask me what the brightest, most life-changing absolute moments in my relationship with music are, every one of them would be wordless. The part in "Catholic Block" right after he says "come back to me awhile" and the guitars breathlessly leap up and down the stairs; the light skip of the Isaac Hayes <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">studder</span> gliding over the grimy lurk of "Mind Playing Tricks on Me"; the willful, pin-sharp electronic tones that stab up and derail "In the Singing Box"; and for sure, the way that the Hill Street Blues theme song broke my tiny 9-year <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">old's</span> heart with emotion, even as my parents chased me out of the living room and up to my room, "way past bedtime!!"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">So there is a tremendous sense of justice in the realization that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Avi's</span> band is one of the great new examples of any of the emotions conjured above: in the way they make me feel untethered and nonchalant and then they annihilate my bliss with a sudden dark turn; the way they build finely-textured, unified landscapes and then suddenly, gleefully, skip a pretty bit of sound across it, just barely disturbing the surface; and, most of all, the way they work right into my heart with a mysterious nostalgia, like I'd heard these songs my whole life and hearing them again brings back every heavy, beautiful and important emotion I'd ever felt.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The first time I saw Soiled Mattress and The Springs they were touring the west coast with No Age, playing all-ages D.I.Y. spaces and sleeping on people's floors. The kids that go to these kinds of shows have a sense of what to expect, and even seeing keyboards and saxophones just signals some kind of no wave or whatever band. Definitely not this. And so the band just dives into their first song, and people can't tell if it's a put on, some kind of ironic joke or maybe a prelude to something else? The old-fashioned lettering on the bass drum spelling out the band's name, the keyboards strolling and warm like a roller skating rink, and then the guy with the saxophone jumping in the air and zipping from one side of the room to the other, just as breathless from playing as he is from running around. Everyone in the room asking themselves, how did this get here?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">But the songs are remarkably sincere, played with more conviction and bravery than one hundred heartbroken singers or rebellious songwriters. The band clearly loves to play this music, and once the audience realizes, they're trapped. And the songs are brilliant.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">It's a thing that you don't ever have to notice, how well-structured and clever they are, because that's a part of their deftness. It's like Dr. Dre or something, how you're never conscious of the interlaced themes, the sounds that vanish and reappear with a calm, strategic genius. You don't have to be, because it's better just to feel great about them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The second LP by Soiled Mattress and The Springs, "Honk Honk Bonk", features two songs called "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Someone's</span> Drinking Water." They're both live favorites, and each one has its own brightness. The first one has this really dark-sky minor passage about a minute in that kills me every time, but I wanted to write about the second one because, besides being one of the boldest, most unabashed jams on the record, it also shows what a great job they did recording the LP. During the song, Matthew Thurber switches from saxophone to xylophone during one section, giving the middle of the song a resonant, distant coolness. Keyboardist Peter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Schuette</span> gets into some heavy sound effect territory during this part, and the entire transition feels like some exotic distance, like seeing the beach for the first time. Live, this section signifies most in the steady economy of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Avi's</span> drumming, a work-hard focus that tethers the helium sounds of the keyboard and xylophone. On the record, the section is unified, diamond edged and above all poised; it makes the energetic explosion that follows a heart-leaping joy, a grin-filled celebration. The LP catches every little sound and weaves them all together with an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">unfelt</span> precision.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Not only is the newest LP Soiled Mattress and The Springs available now, but the band is also on tour if you really want a chance to join in the fun:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 5 2007 Tampa, Florida @ New World Brewery</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 6 2007 Backyard Bash in Tallahassee, Florida</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 7 2007 Miami, Florida @ NADA Art Fair Party</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 8 2007 Miami, Florida @ NADA Art Fair</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 9 2007 Atlanta, Georgia @ The Drunken Unicorn</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 10 2007 Athens, Georgia @ Caledonia</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 11 2007 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Asheville</span>, North Carolina @ Gourmet Perks </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 12 2007 Chapel Hill, North Carolina @ Night Light Club</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Dec 13 2007 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Charlottesville</span>, Virginia @ Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">(<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">endnotes</span>)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">-A lot of people have written about this, but really, Pimp C R.I.P. This one's a total <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">heartbreaker</span>, I mean, I can't really think of a sweeter friendship between two men than Bun B and Pimp C. After five years spent apart, it really hurts that they've been <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">separated</span> again in less than two years.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">-I am really proud to be a part of </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.worriednoodles.com/index10.html">this.</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> Please come if you can.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">[1] Actually true.</span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-11058840297242359362007-11-29T22:00:00.000-08:002007-11-29T22:46:27.149-08:00It's flowing with dread because it's all we know<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwYyaXfBRIc4qKma6hS_RyZLyVABilOoEk9KjZcn901V0pfOKB7JoeBrQeHFvdUipsabwlkCOzGtesJSH7Oqu7yOhqQcmQGL5xL36979cjzdyWWvMiqgGgWR0VMMDqjPPq_MrjE5MIIXhr/s1600-r/morrissey+5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcJIwebSC4CB5M8jRrb_cf7exaPvKpeVGglScCxRJcwgF1AFvclfeN72S8CwIlkqEDYxLoO1ArXBezv_XPJbQEb2OCFp_8qngfmmniKj7aLB4V8z7eMrvlrqyLMsUbTLaxqe4PBjwv4zgd/s320/morrissey+5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138519795073584850" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Talk to Morrissey </span><br /><br /><object style="font-family: arial;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf" id="audioplayer2" height="24" width="290"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf"><br /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerID=2&soundFile=http://www.rvcaclothing.com/images/ethan/audio/talktomorrissey.mp3"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><br /><param name="menu" value="false"><br /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /></object><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" > </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Morrissey - Born to Hang </span><br /><br /><object style="font-family: arial;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf" id="audioplayer2" height="24" width="290"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf"><br /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerID=2&soundFile=http://www.rvcaclothing.com/images/ethan/audio/BorntoHang.mp3"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><br /><param name="menu" value="false"><br /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /></object><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" > </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">So the idea of a casual Morrissey fan is pretty ridiculous and my guess is that if you didn't know this song it's because you couldn't care less about the guy; but if you haven't checked out </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://members.aol.com/kmpradlik/secretwebsite.html"> this site </a><span style="font-family: arial;"> yet and if you were not involved in heavy tape trading scenes then there are some pretty good surprises ahead. In a way I just wanted an excuse to post the radio call in session although it seemed a lot funnier when I was fifteen, and these days I mostly just feel a monsterous empathy for this girl's loneliness. </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Did you ever hear of this zine the Diane Files? This guy from Cleveland made it in the early 90s, he posted a suitably vague and somewhat suggestive fake classified ad in the back of Maximum RocknRoll [1], posing as a girl named Diane who was looking for friends/allies/partners in crime. I lost most of the details, but I remember the phrase "into violence as beauty" and also at least two references to darkness and/or black. The idea was to print all the responses from asshole dudes asking for a naked photo or dirty letter or whatever but he got such a massive response from the lonely children of the punk underground that he had to refigure the entire project; instead he filtered out the letters by most desperate, most crazy, most entertaining and most troubling and printed a cross-section in this free zine that was just left around at shows. He did another zine a while later that had a really bitter piece about how people totally misinterpreted the concept, thought that it was just this freakshow where you could laugh at the fucked up creeps who read MRR. But his intention was to show how isolated and friendless everyone in the scene actually was, how such a basic and unspectacular plea for friendship could draw so many responses, how there's obviously a problem that we need to address. </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">If you look at MRR right now there's barely one page of classifieds in the back, as opposed to the 10-15 pages there were back when The Diane Files happened. There's an easy reason for this, and it's the internet. Clearly if you wanted to sell Misfits 7"s, trade GG Allin videos or, and this is the big one, meet penpals, there's a much easier way to do it now. A part of me feels crazy about it though, because I used to scour those classifieds looking for this one SS Decontrol LP and now I can just search ebay or whatever, and I don't have to look past all the kids desperate to meet someone else into "anarchy, Crimpshrine, sk8ing, and fucking with cops" to spot it. I'm still totally sincere when I say punk shows saved my life but how ever many years later there are different things that are saving my life. At the same time, there's also a ton of kids whose lives are being saved right now by shows and records and patches and the excitement of a new community, and I'm at least one-third oblivious to it. And I'm 99% oblivious to the kids that are slipping through those cracks, that are so lonely and pained they'll fall for fake classifieds and call Morrissey and just scream and bawl until they cut her off. I guess I don't know what good it does to acknowledge it, but it's amazing to realize how easy it is to avoid it.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">So "Born to Hang", recorded during the "Kill Uncle" sessions in 1992, is considered "unfinished" (as described by co-writer Mark Nevin in an interview) although I don't see what's missing. I like it because it has super fast, propulsive drums and you could definitely dance to it, the sloppy guitar totally begging for bent-wrists and serious faced neck-swinging like Molly Ringwald. I like it because Morrissey totally owns his own loneliness and difference, "I never have to live like you" coming off more taunt than lament; it's clearly the same guy who sang "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" but he has a different take on the whole thing. The girl who was so alienated by "those stupid shiny black shoes" and New Kids on the Block is well over thirty now, and I can imagine her living a life where she doesn't even remember how important the Smiths were to her, and maybe even has a daughter of her own who is all flipped out and friendless and she can't even relate. I can also imagine her completely on her own, three rows up at the movie theater sitting by herself, "not to have kids" and totally content with that path. Both visions tug at different parts of my heart, but I'm sort of rooting for her to have a burned CD of "Born to Hang" that's years old and she totally thinks it a waste of time for me to repost it as if </span><i style="font-family: arial;">everyone</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> hadn't heard it already.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">[1] by the way if you haven't checked lately MRR completely rules right now, columns especially at an all time high of interesting and informative.</span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4872074795597236758.post-61863938184280176642007-11-27T22:33:00.000-08:002007-11-28T07:00:50.715-08:00Try to unlearn bouts of despair<span style="font-family:arial;">His Hero is Gone - Anthem for the Undesirables (live at Columbus Fest 1997)<br /></span><br /><br /><object style="font-family: arial;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf" id="audioplayer2" height="24" width="290"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.rvcaclothing.com/blog/ethan/audio/player.swf"><br /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerID=2&soundFile=http://www.rvcaclothing.com/images/ethan/audio/AnthemFortheUndesirables.mp3"><br /><param name="quality" value="high"><br /><param name="menu" value="false"><br /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><br /></object><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvpoPvn42y0V3u6nsWZ9to-qvAP_kVrVLbL06RWb77PHlOWpZeJp0MdYERhODbnNyNaEFfXJSzhZyeTMCrHND2h9AjBRCQk-QIR33zuNuiDZcqO4J6syiH41GI3KJ2jONy8wtazK0ULlWk/s1600-h/his+hero+is+gone.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvpoPvn42y0V3u6nsWZ9to-qvAP_kVrVLbL06RWb77PHlOWpZeJp0MdYERhODbnNyNaEFfXJSzhZyeTMCrHND2h9AjBRCQk-QIR33zuNuiDZcqO4J6syiH41GI3KJ2jONy8wtazK0ULlWk/s320/his+hero+is+gone.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137778668401888962" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">There are those defining instances where a song or even just a line connects with you so fiercely that the entire history of music seems stretched to create this electric moment. They seem heaviest in adolescence, maybe because people are more open then or maybe because they're thirstier to find a relevence. During those early teenage years they seem so monumental I still feel guided by the shock of hearing Metallica or the Beastie Boys for the first time. And by extension, sometimes I try to piece together how all of my middle school friends and I created our own identities from the same pool of references - Carcass, N.W.A., the Misfits - and still ended up in wildly different places.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In any case, at a certain point it feels like those moments are a thing of the past, that you've gathered up all the breath-taking, eye-opening first shots at Rites of Spring or Tiger Trap or Irma Thomas and you no longer get hit in the same way. New records are still exciting, but they're probably not going to save your life.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">At age 21 I got talked into going to the More Than Music Festival in Columbus Ohio. I was mad about Promise Ring, hadn't heard of Charles Bronson, and wasn't nearly punk enough for Code 13. In a way the whole thing was as baffling and inpenetrable as if I were one of my parents, and it had only been a couple years since I stopped going to hardcore shows. But of course the turnover is fast and the evasive tactics of the scene cut you out pretty quick. I kept wandering off when the bands would play, there was a lot of metal-influenced hardcore, not good like crossover but bad like Florida. I just kept feeling like I was getting yelled at, like the band was right and I was wrong.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I will confess that I wasn't particularly caught by His Hero is Gone's set, again it was a lot of screaming and pick slides and guitar guitar guitar but this introduction, oh it was one of those moments that changes everything. It distilled everything that brought me to hardcore in the first place, this refuge from polo shirts and haircuts and SAT scores and phony smiles. I felt foolish not being able to scream "I! Fight! Every! Day!" along with the rest of the room. I almost wrote "the rest of the tribe" and I even meant it, without irony or scorn. At fourteen I loved that punk said "we're fucked, come join us" and even when it didn't I was too crushed out and dreamy to care. I feel like I must've stopped hearing it at some point, and this song, this introduction returned me to the fold.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">When I went to More Than Music the next year I had all the His Hero is Gone records. </span>Ethan Swanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13054973469361143951noreply@blogger.com2