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Here’s your prime offender, to whom the whole “women singing like little girls” thing can be traced: Miss Brenda Lee, and her song “I’m Sorry.” She is not to be confused with Peggy Lee, who sang “Fever,” as that song is womanly as all get out and makes me a little flushed just thinking about it.
I’m aware that posts like this do nothing to further the cause of online music journalism, but this is for fun, not funds. If I got paid for this, I’d certainly take it a lot more seriously.
Reading about stuff, especially music stuff, makes me happy. I mentioned Seven Ten Twelve recently, but I’d like to more deeply explain why it’s one of the best vinyl sites out there. Yeah, the stuff he covers is a litte hipster-y, but it’s all quality stuff that my local record store carries, so I actually know what i’m getting into. It’s like a second opinion from a friend you trust. A lot of the stuff Paul (Lawton, the fella who runs Seven Ten Twelve) mentions is limited, so it’s a nice heads up regarding things you might otherwise miss out on. And, as an added bonus, he’s from Canada, so you get interesting spellings like “tonne.”
Along the lines of obscure, limited vinyl is the simply-named Limited Edition Vinyl. As one would expect, that’s the subject, be it big name or small name stuff. You get pressing colors, variations, numbers, and (most importantly) where you can get this stuff ASAP. The best part about the site aside from the content is the insanely long list of labels that sell vinyl in the page’s sidebar. You can start randomly clicking and soon find your credit card maxed out. I recommend starting over at Voodoo Rhythm out of Switzerland. It’s run by the Reverend Beatman, frontman for the Monsters. Crazy crazy blues garage rockabilly label.
Lo-fi craziness, as is the stuff over at Douchemaster. They put out a Hex Dispensers 45 that I picked up after SXSW, and it’s damn good. They’ve put out a couple Carbonas singles, as well. Their stuff is a little more limited than the Voodoo Rhythm material, but the site isn’t a hodge-podge of bad HTML and spotty English, either.
the Monsters - “I Wanna Do What I Wanna Do” (from Garage Punk Vol. 1)
the Hex Dispensers - “Taxidermy Porno” (from the Lose My Cool single)
Posted by Jester as mp3, punk, rock 'n' roll, label, rockabilly, vinyl at 9:11 AM MST
“The next big thing” is something that always confuses the hell out of me. First of all, the next big thing is usually from England, and the band that’s currently hot shit and selling 500,000 copies of their debut will be lucky to do 20% of that for their sophomore effort, and that’ll be primarily on the press discussing their possible “sophomore slump.”
Just recently, we’ve seen acts like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen come out, sell a (relatively) god amount of records, play a couple high-profile gigs, do a brief U.s. tour, and then flame out spectacularly. See Winehouse’s various drug-related antics that make her seem more akin to Pete Doherty than Aretha Franklin, as well as Allen’s tour cancellation and sobbing MySpace blog posts for proof of that.
Then we have the actual acts like the Artic Monkeys, Zutons, and the Fratellis - all of whom I talked about last year. The fact of the matter is that for all of those bands whose first albums I enjoyed, there was their second release that pretty much couldn’t live up to the one record worth of good songs each band had in them. And for every band that’s loaded with catchiness and neatness, there’s been a Horrors or Darkness that, based on their influences, I should be fucking on top of. However, they just bore the shit out of me.
In the US, the next big thing doesn’t seem to get plastered all over the news the way it does in the UK. Bands get hyped like mad online, such as the Black Lips or Black Kids or No Age, but they never really make it to Entertainment Weekly, really. We don’t have an American equivalent to NME or anything like that, so the “best” new acts have to bubble along for a good while online before making it to magazine covers.
Vampire Weekend seemed to come out of nowhere for most folks, but online music geeks have been reading about them for a good year now. By the time they were on SNL and assorted late-night talk shows, everyone had already tired of them and moved on.
Case in point of a band that’s starting to make noise is San Francisco’s Thee Oh Sees. Their press bio name-drops the Cramps and they’ve been compared to the Oblivians and the Gories, but I can’t seem to make it past the fourth track on their new album. Two people have told me it’s something I’d like, but damned if I can’t get into it. Maybe you can tell me why they’re starting to bubble under.
No Age - “Eraser” (from Nouns)
Black Lips - “Cold Hands” (from Good Bad Not Evil)
Posted by Jester as mp3, random ranting, streaming audio / video, indie, punk at 3:12 PM MST
The new Dresden Dolls album No, Virginia… showed up last week. I listened to it out of mindless curiousity, not because of any sort of affinity for the band. It’s not so much an “album,” actually, so much as it is a disc of b-sides. So, rather than some sort of cohesive artistic statement, it’s just some songs the group had lying around that didn’t fit in with their last album (Yes, Virginia…), along with a cover of “Pretty In Pink.” Nothing special.
Amanda Palmer’s voice is something rather special, though. She sings like a woman. I hadn’t realized exactly how much a woman’s voice is missing from current popular music. Yeah, pop music is the voice of youth and all, but it’s frightening to notice how far the child-like female voice has penetrated into all facets of current music.
You have your actual children, such as Miley Cyrus or the cast of High School Musical. Then there’s pop, which has spawned Nellie Furtado, Britney Spears, and Jewel. Pop-punk’s just as bad, what with Paramore and (even tho’ I like ‘em) the Dollyrots. Hell, indie rock seems to be the worst offender - Kimya Dawson, Joanna Newsom, Martha Wainwright…
It’s frustrating. You’ll hear the occasional burst of something reminds you of Annie Lennox, but it just doesn’t do well. I think it has to do with what the idea was back when Crash Test Dummies had their single - the American aural experience is not geared towards a seriously deep voice. We expect our female singers to sound a lot like little girls (sadly). Even the guys have a slightly feminine quality (see any male solo pop star since Michael Jackson, as well as any boy band since the Backstreet Boys).
Still, when one starts digging into the past, you get these big, boisterous women like Rosetta Tharpe or Big Mamma Thornton and you can’t quite wonder what the hell happened. How’d we get from there to Jewel? How’d we go from Wendy O. Williams to Hayley Williams? Why the hell isn’t Cinder Block still fronting Tilt, dammit?
I’m not even going to get into the whole furor over that Miley Cyrus picture, either. The idea of women who sing like little girls and little girls who act like women is far too much pop psychology for me to deal with. Suffice it to say, it makes me feel a little icky.
Paramore - “Misery Business”
Big Mama Thornton - “Hound Dog“
Posted by Jester as mp3, random ranting, pop at 2:03 PM MST
Anyone else getting tired of hearing about the “vinyl resurgence”? We’ve got articles about record stores going under in the New York Times, Wired’s story about vinyl making a comeback, and even NPR getting in on everything with their story. The most ridiculous is Utne’s recent bit about Wax Poetics, in that it’s a magazine article about a magazine about record collecting, which is a little too meta for my tastes.
Frankly, I don’t like reading about record collecting. I collect records, and like to find out what’s out, where I can get it, and the usual obsessive collector details like pressing runs and color distribution. Stories about how it’s easier to get records, and how more people are buying records follow a pretty set format:
“Vinyl was once thought to be dead, but never seemed to really go away.”
*Insert bit about indie / punk labels*
“CDs are so impersonal blah blah blah. Vinyl is warmer. You have to get up and actually put the needle on the record blah blah blah.”
*Insert bit about vinyl sales being up*
“I’m an indie rock musician from some band that’s got name recognition among the liberal NPR-listening / Utne-reading public, and this is what I think about records and why they’re so neat.”
*If a radio story, end with some song that has cracks and pops*
*If a magazine article, end with a quote about some record store*
Boring boring boring. Then again, your average one-record-a-month music fan probably couldn’t give two shits about the news from the Vinyl Collective or the incredibly detailed minutiae of pressing info over at Seven Ten Twelve. I’m a tofu and hummus eating, recycling and gardening, two cat and two kid having, farmer’s market shopping, college radio DJ’ing guy who lives in a college town with easy access to the newest vinyl releases, to say nothing of the ability to dig for old obscure shit in antique malls and thrift stores. Your average person who gets cds at Borders or Barnes & Noble or Best Buy isn’t going to be aware of any of this.
However, being as how the story has been made known through every media outlet possible, let’s let it die before I see Oprah or Rachael Ray showing some soccer moms how easy it is to play a record, or Martha Stewart giving a demonstration on making a tasteful hand-screened turntable slipmat that matches your living room decor.
the Bouncing Souls - “That Song“ (really, it’s relevant, I swear)
Posted by Jester as mp3, random ranting, vinyl at 10:31 AM MST
My son’s downstairs practicing for his chorale concert in two weeks.
Thus far, I’ve heard “Build Me Up Buttercup,” “Help!,” “Freeze Frame,” “Mr. Blue Sky,” and (most humorously) “All Night Long.” Yep, the Foundations, the Beatles, the J. Geils Band, ELO, and Lionel Richie, all in the same concert. Sung by junior high white kids.
I think the money I spent on tickets will be well worth it. However, I’m making sure that I don’t know if they do the African breakdown in the middle of “All Night Long.” If I know it’s coming, I won’t be able to hold back the giggles.
ELO - “Mr. Blue Sky”
the Foundations - “Build Me Up Buttercup”
Lionel Richie - “All Night Long”
Posted by Jester as mp3, live music, covers at 5:14 PM MST
The Architects – “Vice”
(Anodyne Records)
The Phillips brothers have been making records since the mid-90s, and with each release, they get better. This should be – as one would assume – their best release yet.
It’s not. The Architects have serious soul - Brandon Phillips has always been able to wail like Wilson Pickett, and on Vice, he’s got brother Zach and new guitarist Keanon Nichols singing along with him. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve seen the band three times in the past month, but the recording doesn’t really boom the way their live show does. This album has more hooks and sing-alongs than the last two. Songs like “Pills” and “Help” both feature three-part harmonies that soar, while “Daddy Wore Black” is (as Brandon puts it live) “a song about daddies – my daddy, your daddy, his daddy…” It’s a rocker.
Unfortunately, the production values just don’t live up to what could have been. This is an album that could have been the band’s breakthrough. The hooks are there, it’s the catchiest thing they’ve ever done, but Vice doesn’t have that big room-filling sound that’s need to really get these songs to blast out of your speakers. The aforementioned songs come close, but “Oklahoma” and other, slower numbers just sound flat and dim. It’s a great rock record, but only when you hear the band play it live. On your stereo, it’s a bit of a letdown.
Posted by Jester as mp3, reviews, rock 'n' roll at 4:45 PM MST
Flight of the Conchords – “Flight of the Conchords”
(Sub Pop)
Much as I love Jermaine and Bret, the novelty of these novelty tunes wears off a bit after a few tracks. Honestly, the best tracks were on the EP that came out at the end of last year. And, yes, the case can be made that Flight of the Conchords are a laid-back Tenacious D. They’re a far more self-deprecating duo than the D, but it’s still two guys with acoustic guitars playing silly songs. The album has its moments, however.
“Foux de Fafa” is a note-perfect Serge Gainsborg take-off, and the way it riffs with French nonsense is a fantastic opener. “Inner City Pressure” is an unfortunate choice for a follow-up, and sets up a series of alternating good-bad tracks that nearly cripples the album. Were the boys to have cut this album in half and released that, we’d have a perfect EP – especially with “Bowie” as a closer. Seriously, starting with a riff on Serge and ending with the best Bowie impersonation I’ve ever heard? Fucking awesome. The sad thing about that is this, however - they already put out that perfect EP.
Last year.
It’s half the price, and the live version of “Robots” is better, too.
Although, really… maybe the poster that comes with the full-length is worth the extra five bucks.
“Business Time”
“Ladies of the World“
The current post of McSweeney’s Internet Concern is brilliant.
I really want to tell you the best line, but it’d spoil the whole thing. Suffice it to say, McSweeney’s wins again. For a greater number of amusing anecdotes of a dry and witty nature, I’d also like to recommend Mirth of a Nation and its various offspring. After a point, one gets super-tired of reading real music journalism, and wants to read something funny.
Jimi Hendrix - “Voodoo Chile“
Posted by Jester as mp3, random ranting at 5:11 PM MST
One of the first bands I saw at South By Southwest this year was Municipal Waste. I’d heard the name, and about fifteen people had told me that I’d fucking love them if I listened to them. Well, they played at Red 7 the night before the music portion of the conference kicked off, and they were almost more of a draw than Naked Raygun.
Really, I’ve never seen a crowd go off like that. It was crazy and amazing, and full of finger-pointing, and “Headbanger Face Rip” was stuck in my head for two weeks afterwards. It’s fucking fun in the way that no band since Murphy’s Law has really been able to be. They sing about partying, beer, and thrashing, combining Suicidal Tendencies’ thrash, Murphy’s Law’s hardcore, and every Thrasher skate rock act ever. It’s a party.
Earache just issued The Art of Partying on picture disc, but deleted the regular vinyl - meaning you now have to pay too much money on eBay for a record that will actually play. A note to record labels: if you release a record as picture disc, you are morally obligated to release a regular vinyl version (colored is okay) for those of us who like to actually play our records, rather than just look at them. Picture discs are pretty, but they either sound like ass, or skip like crazy. Either way - you need to get The Art of Partying, either via eBay, compact disc, or shitty sounding (but pretty) picture disc.
Posted by Jester as video, metal, hardcore, vinyl at 6:11 PM MST