Rock Star Journalist

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“

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)

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”

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.

“Daddy Wore Black“

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.

SELECTIONS FROM THE FORTHCOMING QUANTUM AESTHETICS:
THE BEST OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS’ MUSIC-REVIEW SECTION.

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“

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.

“Headbanger Face Rip”

Despite the fact that I lack any serious musical talent, I think I could be a pretty good frontman for a grindcore band. Especially the ones that seem to be in vogue with all the crust kids. You know - bands that have pseudo-ironic lyrics and songs that don’t clock in over 45 seconds. Bands with names like Raw Sewage, Anal Cunt, and Napalm Death, grunting into a microphone pretty much typify the genre. There’s also the extremely high-pitched flipside, where you’ve got a chick yipping over the same chugga-chugga machine riffs that sound like an unbalanced washer going through the spin cycle.

Of course, you can make all of your songs completely serious, calling them something like “The Reticence of Your Salvation Is My Destruction.” You say the song title, add another line such as “You can’t take this any further” and drag the end of “further” out into a grunted scream, then end with “ugh!” There’s your song. Five more of those, and you’ve got half a split 7″. Ten more, and it’s your own EP.

What to title the EP? You can’t call it Monkeys Ate My Penis, because that was a song on the split the band did with a jazz-fusion-crust act from Florida two years ago. Sample lyrics to “Monkeys Ate My Penis” (actually, all the lyrics to “Monkeys Ate My Penis”):

“Monkeys ate my penis
Monkeys ate my penis
Monkeys ate my penis
Shouldn’t have painted it yellow.”

It charted on a metal show on a college radio station in Oregon, if memory serves. Failing that, you do what the Ultimate Warriors did for a split on Moo Cow Records and devopte most of your songs to pop culture figures. “The Olson Twins” lyrics are nothing more than “Gremlin, you look like a gremlin.” In theory, you could devote an entire record to songs about Tom Selleck. You’d lead off with “Magnum, PI”:

“We love you Magnum
Not Higgins
Not Higgins
Not Higgins
We love your mustache
Thomas Magnum!”

Make sure it’s on vinyl, limited edition, and in some obsessive-compulsive amount of colored vinyl: 100 on red, 100 on white, 100 on marble purple, and 100 on black, with a test press on clear taupe. Now you’re ready to start your own grind band! Go forth and have fun.

the Ultimate Warriors - “Mr. Fuji’s Magic Dust“

From the Asian Man Records newsletter:

Things continue to be busy as we launch into the re-presses of a lot of vinyl and the first breath of air for tons of releases that never got the vinyl treatment.

Here’s a list of what we plan on putting on wax:

ALKALINE TRIO-S/T(first time on wax)
ALKALINE TRIO-MAYBE I’LL CATCH FIRE(re-press)
BIG D AND THE KIDS TABLE-GOOD LUCK(first time on wax-DOUBLE GATE FOLD)
THE BROADWAYS-BROKEN STAR(re-press)
THE BROADWAYS-BROKEN VAN(first time on wax)
LAWRENCE ARMS-GUIDED TOUR(first time on wax)
LAWRENCE ARMS-GHOST STORIES(first time on wax)
LAWRENCE ARMS-COCKTAILS AND DREAMS(first time on wax-DOUBLE GATE FOLD)
MIKE PARK-FOR THE LOVE OF MUSIC(first time on wax)
MIKE PARK-N HANGOOK FALLING(first time on wax)
MATT SKIBA/KEVIN SECONDS-SPLIT(re-press)
SLAPSTICK-S/T(re-press)

But yeah… It’s a lot of work, but we’re slowly getting to these records. And of course all the new releases will all be coming out on vinyl.

So, most of my extra money is pretty much gone. Seriously, the Big D is probably what I’m most looking forward to - well, it’s tied with Slapstick. Man, this “vinyl resurgence” thing is amazing, but expensive. Thank God Asian Man sells their vinyl for nine bucks.

Big D & the Kids Table - “Myself”
Big D & the Kids Table - “Fatman” (live)

So, KU beat North Carolina last night 84-66 in a knuckle-biter.

Downtown is slightly less than a mile away from our house, and you could hear the roar of the crowd down there from our front porch immediately after the win. We threw on jackets and sweatshirts and hauled ass to see the celebration (as well as be a part of it). As the wife and our friends Craig and Sarah and I made our way downtown, you could see the line of cars stretching from Mass. all the way back up 6th, almost all the way to Iowa.

We got downtown, and it was insane. Craig and I’s hands nearly went numb from all the high-fives we were trading with people. We just walked around, marveling at the amount of people. About the time we hit 8th and Mass., and you could see all the way down the street, it was crazy… it was just something that words can’t even describe. The mass of humanity that had converged on downtown Lawrence was just huge and moving, and a group of drunken happiness.

Chuck Newman was there, too. He had the best spot - standing in the back of the 92.9 the X truck.

By the time we hit the Jackpot, and there were four or five people yelling at me and wondering if I was coming to the Black Gasoline show, it was time fro us to leave. The amount of people had reached a slightly scary level, and folks weren’t exactly being polite in the circumstances. The girls in front of me seemed to think that I was pushing them on purpose. Yeah, never mind the several hundred people behind me - you’re just so hot that I can’t refrain from touching your bared shoulders.

Fun times, but the ladies were short, and people didn’t seem to notice them. Being as how nobody wanted crushed womenfolk (least of all the womenfolk themselves), we headed back to the house. It was fun, but since none of us drink, there really wasn’t any point in hanging out for the next several hours. We made plans for a meet-up at the house tomorrow night, and went to bed.

For further info, the local paper has some stories and photos that do a pretty good job of telling the rest of the story. Monday’s going to be a fucking blast.

“the Rock Chalk Chant”
the Aquabats - “(Look At Me) I’m A Winner“