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I tell The Turtlenauts of Zond 5 about the Replacements, Joe Ely, Phil Ochs, the Mekons, and the lack of a true self

August 29, 2014

 

Although tortoises are not mammals, humankind should remain in awe of the achievement of Bek and Lek, two tortoises who circled the moon on September 18, 1968.

This is not fantasy: In 1968, the Soviets Russians were frantically attempting to beat the Americans and the Apollo space program to the moon.  They launched the Zond 5, with Turtlenauts Bek and Lek on board, to see if living creatures could survive a trip to the moon and back.  They did, and our two shell-back friends became the first living creatures ever to reach the moon.   The Soviet’s plan to follow up Lek and Bek’s pioneering adventure with a manned flight was abandoned when it turned out the Apollo program was much further ahead of schedule than the Soviets had imagined.

Yes, I said Turtlenauts.

Recently, I asked myself the following question:  What if Bek and Lek returned from space as fully sentient creatures, but Soviet secrecy and the equally obfuscating bureaucracy of the post-Soviet Russian governments prevented them from leaving the grim lab in the Urals where they had been ensconced for 45 years?  When finally exposed to the daylight of the modern world (having been freed by a quirk of the very same bureaucracy that had imprisoned and forgotten them), what kind of questions would Bek and Lek have that I, a noted pop-culture and music authority, could answer?

Bek & Lek:  Tell us about the fabled American Beauty, the Mayim Bialik.
Tim Sommer:  She inspires great men to stirring deeds. In this sense, she is like Zipporah, the wife of Moses, or Jolene Brand, the wife of Laugh-In producer George Schlatter.
B & L:  I know of this show Laugh In!  “Sock it to me,” and suchlike hijinks.
TS:  Yes.
B & L:  Tell us a little about this band, The Replacements.
TS:  Every musician must recall that at any given show, perhaps 80 or 90 percent of the audience is seeing them for the first and likely only time.  Whether they are playing in front of 8 or 8,000 people, a performer needs to treat their audience as the only audience they will ever play in front of, the best audience they will play in front of.  Therefore, an artist must never throw away a show, and no band, not even the freaking Beatles, is better than the worst show they play. Personally, I saw the Replacements play five times; I guess I saw five “off” nights.  If they were a truly great band, and I understand a lot of people feel that way, the band simply didn’t feel that every audience was important enough to know that, and that’s just horrible.  Also, the alternative music fanbase in the 1980s was largely made up of geeks and the bullied (myself amongst them); I think the Replacements fulfilled a certain need we may have had to believe there was a Van Halen-esque licentiousness and devil-may-care attitude within each of us, when really, we were just people excited about finding out-of-print Lyres 45s and over-paying for Echo & The Bunnymen import 12-inch singles because they had non-album b-sides.  The Replacements are also romanticized for a few over-sensitive ballads, but I can show you a dozen artists from that period who did that sort of thing far better, or at least as well, and they did it without despising their audience and abusing the extraordinary privilege of being able to play original music in front of people for money.  I mean, start with Chris Bailey and the Saints, listen to their fucking ballads.

(Two Sentient Soviet Turtles now know The Saints are infinitely superior to the Replacements)

B & L:  Tell us about Joe Ely.
TS:  Excellent question. Joe Ely, Joe Strummer, and Bruce Sprinsgteen are all essentially the same artist, and that’s a beautiful thing.  Each has attempted to channel Woody Guthrie via Sun-era Elvis; each wants to tell the story of the American experience via the character of a muscular guitar-slinger, sensitive but with sand in their teeth.  Each wanted to simultaneous wear Dylan’s wise-ass bookishness and Marlon Brando’s muscle-tees, each wanted to feel the world through the boots of the workingman yet see the world through the owlish-eyes of Ginsberg.
B & L:  That’s a very impressive description.
TS:  Yes, I thought so too, thank you.  If you want to turn that trio into a quintet, add Patti Smith and Paul Sanchez, each of whom have a very similar worldview and ability to translate that vision into extraordinary art.  Patti adds some shady, shadowy art to the mix, Paul adds some hot sauce.
B & L:  Speaking of “devil may care,” Is there a God?
TS:  You are sentient, talking turtles that have been to the moon.  Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?
B & L:  No.
TS:  Well, there is Abba, and there is Nick Lowe’s production on his Jesus of Cool album — these may be a sign of some higher power.
B & L:  Who are the quintessential American artists?
TS:  I’d have to go with Louis Armstrong and Phil Ochs.  Each told the story of rich, troubled century, spotted with joy and tragedy.  Each spoke in an essentially and exclusively American vocabulary, discarding the frippery of England or San Francisco. Here, you should listen to the Ochs’ song “When In Rome.”  It tells the story of America, a place of hope and disappointment, through the eyes of one deeply troubled troubadour, a once optimistic man that experience has turned cynical.

B & L:  But it’s 13 minutes long.  Are you going to make us listen to that whole thing?
TS:  You watched eight straight episodes of American Horror Story Coven last night, I think you can spare 13 minutes.
B & L:  We’re not sure.
TS:  Tell you what:  just listen, at your leisure, to Ochs’ Rehearsals For Retirement album.  It tells the story of the death of idealism in America.
B & L:  Gee, that sounds like fun.
TS:  If you want fun, listen to Slade or BTO. By the way, “Hey You” by BTO is an extremely satisfying song, plus it is essentially the template for all Nirvana and Pixies songs.
B & L:  If we only have time to listen to one song right now, what should it be?
TS:  “Where Were You” by the Mekons. It reduces rock’n’roll to its absolute essence:  two chords and thwarted desire.

B & L:  I count four chords.
TS:  I am not counting those passing chords between the verses and I don’t think you should, either.
B & L:  We have to go to lunch, and then someone is going to show us how to set up a Kindle account and explain to us the cultural context of the British “Carry On” film series.
TS:  Don’t bother buying Ulysses by James Joyce just because you think you should.  You’ll never read it, or much of it, anyway, and if you want to feel smart yet still be entertained, you are far better off reading Rushdie or William Gaddis.
B & L: — Before we go, Tim, do you have any final words of advice?
TS:  Whenever even the most cursory examination is applied, one finds that the self is made up entirely of non-self elements.  Seriously.  Remove the word “I” from any idea, or dialogue — especially a self-dialogue — and very remarkable things happen.  That’s because there is no “I.”  There is no homunculus sitting somewhere in our brain consistently infusing some consistent or permanent idea of self into all our actions and decisions.  There are just an infinite number of ever-moving, ever-changing parts adding up to the constant reality of dependence arising.  As Chandrakirti said, “Afflictions and faults arise from the false view of a transitory collection.  Having understood that the object of this is self, negate self.”
B & L:  Homo-what-culus?

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R.E.M. Were the Band of Our Time

August 27, 2014

This past Sunday was the 32nd anniversary of the release of Chronic Town by R.E.M.

I tried writing about this event with some objectivity, wit, or erudition, but failed.

That’s because

R.E.M. were the band of our time.

However, here’s what I did come up with:

R.E.M. were the band of our time.  They weren’t necessarily the best band, or the one we loved most or longest, but they were ours, ours, ours, ours.

If the college rock revolution had a July 4, 1776, it was August 24, 1982.
(And like all revolutions it featured many strangely hot girls who owned Big Star records and didn’t shave under their arms)

My generation were the little brothers of punk rock.  We were four, five, six, seven, eight years younger than David Byrne, Pete Shelley, Tom Verlaine, David Thomas, Colin Newman, Andy Partridge, and all the 89.1 heroes whose vinyl filled our lives; even the (slightly) more recent objects of our alt-passions (like Julian Cope, Ian Curtis, or Ian McCulloch) were still notably older than us.  This left us prone to seduction by the inferior tribes of ska and hardcore simply because they were closer to our age.   As we sluiced even further into the 1980s

(like we were riding a subway car full of pink and gray neon posterboard-people trampling on the bluefiush-blue down jackets of the ‘70s, accompanied by the bleat of Ed Koch’s bloated boasts and the confusing wobble of 45’s warped by the flaking bone-colored radiators of our first post-dorm apartments)

We were eager, terribly and beautifully eager, for a user-friendly form of college artrock we could call our own, one that felt like it was made by us and for us, but had the potential to exist on a far greater stage.

When R.E.M. entered our lives between 1981 and 1984, we immediately sensed

they were us, they were ours;

right away, we recognized them from our time spent standing in front of the mirror miming to Velvet Underground records, tossing our hair like Lance Loud, and dancing like Vanessa from Pylon. The discovery of R.E.M. was our Ed Sullivan moment (whenever that moment came, whether it be the indie release of “Radio Free Europe” or their masterpiece, the mushroom-laced kudzu gothic of Fables of the Reconstruction, or the deep, melancholy sweetness of Murmur or Reckoning); much as an entire generation wanted to grow their hair moppishly and pick up guitars after seeing the Beatles on TV in February 1964, when we

First heard R.E.M

we sensed that our time had come and the art of our heart’s desire, formed by cliquish devotion to dBs and Byrds and Big Star and Love and Beach Boys and Kinks and Move and Patti and Brautigan and Groovies, had suddenly found aggressive, physical, charming, and public voice; someone had formed the band we wanted to hear, someone had beaten us to it, and we couldn’t have been happier.  We had found the band we had theorized but perhaps never believed could be realized, the band that blended art and tradition better than any band of our time.

In those years (specifically ’82 through ’85), to us (those of us who were 18 to 25 at that time), R.E.M. became the friend at whose house every party started, that party where we would talk with abandon fueled by coffee and Heineken about all our favorite books and films and records and poets, and where we would meet every girl or boy we would instantly fall for (for at least eight days).  R.E.M. were us, in a way no other band had ever been us

(Us: shifty, sassy outsiders born in the years of JFK and LBJ, now entering the heartbeat of our 20s and shaking off the idea that we were a footnote to someone else’s past.)

R.E.M., and the friends we made through their fandom, were us, sharing our influences, our literary and musical and artistic and social and political interests, our beliefs that music could be popular without apologies. R.E.M. was the first band we loved who were the best versions of us, the first band who we could look in the eye and just know they came from the same place as us, the first band who would know just what we meant when we made a sly reference to Kimberly Rew or Chris Bell or Robert Frank or Wim Wenders and who would agree that the redhead sitting over there who drank John Courage and loved the Wooster Group looked very good indeed.

Some of you will scoff at these strong, romantic, childish words; but I suspect there are many of you out there who will know exactly what I am talking about.  We have to recall that feeling, that love we felt for those rich enchanting arpeggios and those sexy, enigmatic mumbles, and not feel any shame; we were right, right, right. They were the first band of, for, and by generation college rock, and the first band of that generation to get it all right.

(Oh, and by the way, Layne, if you don’t own that first EP and the three albums that followed — once again, that’s Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning, and Fables of the Reconstruction — I have ZERO hesitation in stating that NOTHING you have to say or think about alternative music has any value, and I would be better off talking about Nick Drake or Tim Buckley with  Mayim Bialik or even Allison Mosier, the girl on the Cami Secret commercial.)

Eventually, we would recognize that we were not the youngest child, but the perennial middle child of the alt revolution — too young to be David Byrne, too old to be Kurt Cobain. But there was a little while when our age was perfect: for a shimmering time in the 1980s when we were drunk on youth’s true perfect years

(Youth’s True Perfect Years: the early/mid 20s, when a person is finally old enough to know how to have some genuine fun yet still too young to know better),

everything was right, and R.E.M. was our soundtrack, and R.E.M. told our story better than we could tell our own, and made us believe that our dreams that the words “art” and “commerce” were not necessarily oxymoronic could actually be true.

Thank you Peter, Mike, Michael, Bill, and Jefferson. Somewhere in my heart it is always August 24, 1982.

(And thanks to Glenn Boothe, a great friend and a legendary Triangle club booker, for reminding me of the date).

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All Hail Dada Sitcoms like Luxury Comedy

August 25, 2014

Bizarrely, live-action television has rarely been a particularly fertile venue for surrealism.

This is very odd indeed, for the very premise of most historical (and many contemporary) sitcoms could not be more surreal:  people pretend to act like a “real” family or “real” friends, except they do it in front of an audience in a three wall format, and everything is neatly sewn up in 22 minutes.  The standard sitcom modus operandi has, literally, zero to do with reality, and only its greatest masters (like Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners) can eke any true realism out of such an impossibly unrealistic format.  Think, for a moment:  does a minute of any episode of I Love Lucy or The Brady Bunch actually resembles even a chalk-outline of real life?

So why not take it further? Why do sitcoms insist on building the same old imitation reality over and over again?  Why not try something genuinely different?

For generations, television comedy has been locked into two fairly unyielding formats:  the “domestic” or workplace sitcom where actors perform situational set-ups and jokes in three-walled setting, and the “review” format, where limited-time sketches are performed in the same three-wall setting (although Saturday Night Live has long boasted that there’s a big difference between them and the sketches of The Carol Burnett Show, it’s essentially all the same stuff, just with a few risqué concepts added).  Admittedly, there has been a little bit of healthy re-orientation in the last two decades, thanks to the introduction of the single-camera/no-live audience (or laugh-track) sitcoms pioneered by Ricky Gervais and Gary Shandling.

I am sure there are a few others, but only Green Acres stands out as a sitcom that utilized the absurdity inherent in the traditional sitcom format to explore completely non-realistic premises for comic effect (and, of course, I will note the insertion of the alien Mork into Happy Days, one of the world’s most unrealistic sitcoms).   I also think the often wonderful Scrubs got very close to finding a workable method for injecting surrealism into sitcoms (by the way, I am isolating the consistent use of absurd elements – like Green Acres’ sentient pig – from the bizarre trend in the ‘60s to take absurd premises and treat them as ordinary, like in The Flying Nun, My Mother The Car, Mr. Ed). 

All of this is to underline what a startling, original delight Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy is.  Luxury Comedy has recently started its’ second season on British television (it had a six-episode debut season in 2012; it would be largely pointless and almost certainly confusing to attempt to explain how the British model of television seasons and series renewals has virtually nothing to do with the American concept, so let’s just not go there, okay?).   One barely knows where to start in attempting to explain what Luxury Comedy is; it would be effective to say that what Fielding does in a live-action show is closer – far­ closer – to animated shows like Sponge Bob Square Pants, Superjail, or the marvelous Adventure Time.  There is a relatively steady “situation” – in series 2, it involves Fielding (using his real name) and his gang operating a coffee shop situated on the rim of a Hawaiian Volcano.  Oh, I should mention that Fielding’s cohorts include Andy Warhol, a human/anteater hybrid, and a mod, snarky German woman.  Other regular characters and visitors include a New York cop who drives a cardboard car and whose partner is embedded in his shoulder, a talking Hammerhead Shark who is an experienced recording engineer, Don Quixote, and Joey Ramone (who is just a silent, armless clay figure).

Fielding, of course, was one-half of The Mighty Boosh, the utterly brilliant comedy team whose television show (2004 – 2007) is quite literally one of the ten funniest television shows ever made. Luxury Comedy takes as a starting point the Boosh’s more psychedelic visual elements and more bizarre character factors; Fielding then spins these off into their own self-dependent world.  LuxCom is like an un-tethered balloon released by the Boosh, where the Dada/Dali/Duchamp Happy-Acid-Trip implied by much of the Boosh’s work is left to simmer into a surrealistic gumbo of nonsense that utterly refuses to walk the fine-line between the intellectual and the childish; rather, Fielding’s new show has one foot firmly in both, which is why watching even two minutes of LuxCom will make you think of Antonin Artaud, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, and Samuel Beckett getting together to rewrite a four-year old’s story of the dinosaur living in their closet.  Seriously, it’s a lot like that. 

In its ability to channel surrealism via live action and its’ attempt (only sometime successful, but always riveting) to make live-action comedy that is completely detached from reality (even as it makes a bare effort to adhere to a consistent premise), Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy is the successor to The Goon Show, the British radio show which literally invented modern British humor.  The Goons, who were on the air from 1951 to 1960, abandoned traditional storytelling and replaced it with illogical absurdity that took advantage of the idea that in one-dimensional radio-land, nonsense made as much sense as bad imitations of reality; the Goons also pretty much invented the idea that a non-sequitur could replace a punchline.  I’ll write about the Goons at greater depth in the near future (they are one of the most important cultural forces of the 20th Century), but very, very rarely has their innovations been utilized in setting-based live action comedy, which is what makes Luxury Comedy so very, very exciting.

Recently, drama on television has taken enormous leaps; following the pioneering lead of Six Feet Under, shows like House of Cards, Hannibal, Breaking Bad, American Horror Story, and many others are, for the very first time, consistently bringing cinema-quality events into the living rooms of America.  It’s now time for live-action comedy to play catch-up, to move on from the done-to-death innovations of Office-type mock-docs and realize the rather stunning potential the medium has for capturing, exploring, and exploiting entertaining surrealism. Go ahead; stop putting a bunch of people in an apartment or an office and writing jokes about their relationships and their jobs and what’s in their refrigerator.  Instead, I challenge you to go all Duchamp and do the equivalent of sticking a urinal on the wall (or as Luxury Comedy does, have a regular character who Wikipedia, in it’s best dry fashion, describes as “an anthropomorphic chocolate finger biscuit who works as a PE teacher and once served in the army. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and often talks about how depressed he is because his wife passed away”).  I hope Luxury Comedy is a harbinger of the future; in the meantime, it’s just a gorgeous, original, psychedelic delight, a brave attempt to bring the beautiful non-logic of animation to the world of live-action.

 

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Rock’n’Roll is Dead, Long Live Rock’n’Roll! (Of course, this is about Scott Walker)

August 22, 2014

Reeves Gabrels plays guitar like a scientist getting ready to torch his lab for the insurance money.  He is an alchemist who ignores all genre boundaries and summons the spirit of Sun Ra saddling up Steve Vai for a ride to see Mick Ronson jamming with the Sex Pistols playing Jefferson Airplane’s “Embryonic Journey.”

But anyway.

About 25 years ago, while briefly working at a particularly dysfunctional record label, I made Mr. Gabrel’s acquaintance.  Reeves and I talked of many things (he was, and is, a dear, sweet man), but together we plotted a rather masterful project that never came to fruition:  we wanted to team up his friend and collaborator, David Bowie, with an occasional musical associate of mine, the avant-noise composer Glenn Branca.  We imagined that Bowie’s keening, artful skills would brilliantly compliment Branca’s city-block wide slabs of spark-shooting metal, metal so feral as to defy chords or song-friendly length.  Even though this project never even achieved the earliest stages of realization, I can still hear it in my head as it could have/should have been, and that sound is actually visual to me:  I see a cool man in an ivory-colored camel hair coat riding the shoulders of a metal Golem, the Golem in turn dragging giant, thick sheets of iron down the empty dawn streets of lower Manhattan, the din echoing through, between, and around the canyons of Bowling Green and the bottom of Broadway.  Huh.

I mention all this because we now have a 90-second long preview of a project that is, to my mind, the next best thing to the Branca/Bowie project that never was:  the Scott Walker + Sunn O))) album, to be released on October 20th.

This preview – presumably of a song called “Soused” – is everything I would have imagined: the brutal, beautiful low-end metalscapes of Sun O))), the sound of Sabbath reduced to its’ logical black-hole 16 RPM monk-chant conclusion, accompanied by the begging, wailing, crooning, desperate, deeply personal vocals of the amazing Scott Walker, vocals that don’t so much defy rhythm and melody as much as dare the listener to re-assess your definition of it.  In these 90 seconds, I hear the sound of cities falling back into the sea, the sound of the Caves of Lascaux filled with subways, and I hear the groaning of the Seven Trumpets that herald the biblical apocalypse.  To be frank, the FIRST thing that occurred to me after I heard the short preview was this:  “The first angel blew his trumpet, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were hurled to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up…”(Revelation, 8/7).  But to be honest, Scott Walker’s records for the last 20 years have always conjured up these sorts of visions for me.

Certainly, it’s difficult to assess the quality – or the potential legacy – of an entire album based on one short preview, but Scott Walker’s recent (i.e., post ’95/Tilt work) have always hinted that he was seeking to be the first “mainstream” melody-based vocalist to find a lyrical, melodic, and textural vocabulary that matched the startling and attractive dissonance of Xenakis, Penderecki, Branca, Stockhausen, early Swans, etcetera; to match his ambitions with a group that have also been attempting to find a new (and entirely logical) avenue for metal and post-metal that achieves the same kind of power and originality is an extraordinary notion, and based on this preview, the results may live up to the startling promise implied by the concept.

Very few artists have so fearlessly and fearsomely renounced their past as Scott Walker has.  From the Spector/Wilson-esque high-drama high-pop of his early hits with the Walker Brothers, to the Weill/Brecht and Brel psycho-cabaret of his middle years, to groaning, pulsing, pounding, hissing, whirring, gristle-y, grisly, glassy, and ghastly music he’s made since Tilt, literally no mainstream artist has so challenged himself and his followers, and there seems to be such a terribly, essentially logical “rightness” to the idea of Scott collaborating with Sunn O))).

And I hope it opens the doors for many more suchlike ideas and collaborations.  The potential always existed for rock’n’roll to find a new but entirely logical setting for the power that existed in the frantic hollers of Little Richard and Huey Piano Smith, the train-racing sprints of the Sonics or the Bad Brains, the God Machine pump of the Ramones or Bo Diddley.  The time has come to encourage a breaking away from the Brill Building/Beatles habit of insisting that rock’n’roll is synonymous with “songs” that conform to the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus virus.  West German rock’n’roll artists arrived at this conclusion 45 years ago (Neu!, Can, Astra Tempel, Tangerine Dream and many others), and it’s time for the Anglos to catch up.  GOD, just IMAGINE what Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, or Neil Young could have achieved if someone had told them that they didn’t have to make music that conformed to the same rules that Stephen Foster had invented over a 150 years ago!

And it makes me recognize that Reeves and I sorely missed an opportunity back in 1990, when we took the first steps towards making that Branca/Bowie record.

By the way, Reeves has a new album out, in collaboration with the amazing Bill Nelson, titled Fantastic Guitars.  I will speak more about that shortly.

Finally, I’ve had many years to consider this, but I simply don’t approve of interleague play in Major League Baseball.  It doesn’t feel right, and it severely mutes the noisy singularity of the World Series.   Yesterday, I heard someone on the radio give the score to the Yankees – Astros game, and I thought to myself, “What kind of fuckery is this?”

UPDATE:  I’ve just been informed that the Astros, are, in fact, NOW in the American League (a detail I now recall from the dusty, gloam-hued attic of my much assaulted memory, teased by time and the distortion of half-a-centuries fantasies and optimism; I now remember that at some point they “traded” leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers).  But my reaction remains:  THE ASTROS IN THE AMERICAN LEAGUE?!?  What kind of CULTURAL SODOMY IS THIS?!?  In 1963, it was found that the Astros original home, Colt Stadium, was built ON TOP of a burial ground for  the esteemed Karankawa Tribe; surely, the ALREADY DISTURBED SPIRITS of these brave elders will be further COMPROMISED, and indeed their hallowed bones will be REVOLVING MIGHTILY  at the THOUGHT of the Astros competing in the American League.

 

 

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ROCK DISCO PLAYLIST, 1979

August 21, 2014

Linda Rizzo is a DJ and photographer whose efforts do great honor to the ghosts of the Kingdom of the Outsiders: her visual work is alive with peeling window sills,  brash bodegas, and  shadowed skyscrapers. Behind the turntables she respects the disparate din of New York, sounds danceable and punkable and trashbilly-rilly-sock’em-rockable.

Linda – under her DJ persona, DJ La La Linda – is DJ’ing tonight at The West End, 955 West End Avenue at 107th Street. The theme of the night is Party Like It’s 1979, and Linda promises to spin the music you would have heard in the clubs at that extraordinary time.

This got me thinking…1979 was my first year as a full-time resident in that grim and glittering, peculiar, perfect, slanting, shitty, shadowy, spectacular land that was New York, New York 1979.

In 1979, even if it was a chilly November of the Soul on the outside, the inner spirit smiled brilliant and full of bright pretension. The Soho Streets were still gold-dark and full of aqua-green stairways to paradise and art, the East Village was still gutted and hazy with the smoke from eight dozen garbage can fires, and the Upper West Side was still Needle-Park shabby and chilly with wind-tossed garbage; and there were a half-dozen clubs or more, dim cellars like TR3 or mirror-brite discos like Hurrah, where we watched bands and heard new records and cheered local heroes and conquering Britishers, 4/5/6 nights a week.

Inspired by Linda’s event, I considered the following question, and considered it quite gravely: when I walked into those clubs at age 17/18, WHAT SONGS WERE BEING PLAYED? What music – and I mean specifically DJ music, not the live music on stage – accompany the memories of my evenings in the music clubs of NYC during that extraordinary time?

So I tried to bring myself back to that time, tried to sense

those rooms (smelling of cigarette smoke and sweat and fruity alcoholic drinks and the odd rusty odor of tip-change piled on the bar),

and I tried to focus only on the DJ music, and not on

the bands (thin-legged and spiky-topped and clad in black or metallic blue),

nor the treasured trips to and from the clubs (cold walks down Canal Street, wide cruel and bright, and long 3:38 AM waits in briny and empty Columbus Circle Subway stations),

nor the company I kept on these visits (friends wide-eyed and NYU snarky like me, or kohl-black-eyed girls in long-white shirts and fishnets);

and I asked myself, which is to say I asked memory, that unreliable and ecstatic witness, to recall the DJ music filling the room. Oh, and I expanded the parameter through 1980 (and a wee bit of ’81 may have even limbo’d under memories’ shaky bar). So here’s what I came up with — not an attempt to reflect my favorite songs or favorite bands — but what I recall as the DJ soundtrack of those evenings:

1. “PLANET CLAIRE” THE B52s


I still cannot hear this extraordinary track without thinking of emerging from the gray landing at the top of Hurrah’s stairs onto the candy-lit, mirror’d dancefloor/bandroom. Perhaps this was playing the first time I ever walked into that historic room (I think – though I am not certain – to see the Yachts). The tic-tock signal indicator beat, the pronounced and well defined highs and lows, and the sinewy kitschy/sexy “Peter Gunn” riff makes this perfect for club play. As an aural-sensualists aside, the moment at 1:15 when the LOW bass comes in under the riff is one of the top 25 goose-bump moments in pop music.

2. “AIN’T YOU” KLEENEX

This beautiful, strange foreign artifact of punk/noise/screech/Kinks-riff via Wire/big beat anticipates about half a dozen different major movements in music; it’s a terrific 45, and a reminder that there were some brave discos where you could play this kind of muffle-drag garage holler right alongside the Chic songs.

3. “GANGSTERS” THE SPECIALS

The swooping, skipping bass – sounding like Wobble with a hot thumb up his ass – made this perfect for the big club sound systems, and the chop-chop-ska-cha-cha and whiney post-punk vocals made this just right for NME-reading trendsters eager to slap the slabby bottoms of their creepers onto the dance floor. I will also note this: the very first time I heard this song it was played at the wrong speed – at 33, instead of 45 – and I thought it was a very amazingly fucked up PIL song.

4. “ENOLA GAY” ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK

Just a gorgeous, emotive, evocative song, it moves and flies and gums up the memory apparatus, with a cinematic spread tailor-made for club P.A.s. From the time when us college-rock geek types made no real distinction between synth/drum machine driven music and the latest punk rock, post-punk, neo-soul, or ska song.

5. “BELA LUGOSI’S DEAD” BAUHAUS

See, a lot of these songs have GODDAMN BIG BASS on them, because that’s what sounded GREAT over the club sound systems, especially the well-tuned-for-dance ones at Hurrah And Danceteria. Once PIL and Joy Division opened the door for songs that retained a relic of punk’s attitude but were centered around bass and drums (and used guitar for color, not attack), a lot of intense and riveting music followed. Despite the clear PIL antecedent (for, indeed, Public Image Limited were the Ramones of space’n’bass post punk), this was, is, and always will be a very rare and compelling track.

6. “I WILL FOLLOW” U2

When this first came over the speakers in the fall of 1980, you immediately sensed that something very remarkable was going on: the bass – once again, bass, bass, bass, bass, bass – was all PIL (in fact, the bass part itself is virtually identical to “Public Image” by PIL, and that’s most certainly NOT an accident); but there was a skip to the guitars that recalled the Skids, a precision and poise to the vocals that bought to mind Ultravox’s Midge Ure (and like Ure, was completely removed from any of the grunt, groan, or hoarseness of punk), and a sheen to Steve Lillywhite’s production that seemed to have more in common with classic rock than the more brittle and close-mic’d work of popular punk/post-punk producers like Martin Rushent or Craig Leon. Which is to say, that this track really announced itself – it was not a desperate or overt plea for success, more like a charismatic appeal for timelessness — and made you very, very curious about what was to come.

7. “BABYLON’S BURNING” THE RUTS

I’m not sure a better true punk rock dance song was ever recorded; the hugely adept rhythm section is clearly rooted in rocksteady skip and are thinking they are making a dance song, but the vocalist and guitarist know this is a punk rock anthem (though the guitarists right-palm string-mute also alludes to UFO and Judas Priest). Wrap four stunning, sincere musicians in a ball, bounce ‘em down a staircase which starts in a punk rock pub but ends up in a disco, and add a stirring reminder that Ferguson, Missouri and all the Ferguson, Missouri’s are just a day away, and you’ve got a monster track.

8. ‘MODERN DANCE” PERE UBU

Like the Kleenex song discussed above, this was just one of those very fucked-up, metal-bucket-kicked-down-the-train-track songs that gorgeously passed for dance music at the dusk of the 1970s. Listening to it now, on one hand it sounds about thirty years ahead of its’ time, and on the other hand it sounds like the progenitor of every aspect of R.E.M.’s sound that wasn’t borrowed from the dB’s.

9. “OPTIMO” LIQUID LIQUID

When this herk-jerk hop-an’-bang big bag o’ rhythm came over the PA, you were happy and freaked out; there seems to be some allusion to Pere Ubu and the random snaps, clacks, honks, chugs, chimes, and thumps of New York City’s streets, but beyond that, this was all fucking new, and Liquid Liquid remain one of the most original bands NYC ever produced, and a delightful reminder of the amazing, random goldshit that was played in dance clubs back then.

10. “CHANGE” KILLING JOKE

Again, with one-third of a century past, it’s hard to visualize this as a popular song on the dance floor; but the beat, at least in the verses, is 100% neo-disco (even if the drums goes all flubby-wubby rock’n’roll in the chorus), the whole rhythm track shimmying over and under a rotating-motor of a riff that reinterprets the traditional James Brown funka-wunka over a Hawkwind chukka-chukka with a little bit of Steve Jones Pistolian slug-sound folded in (read that last sentence again, it’s really worth it, and I swear it makes sense). By the way, if you take this song plus “Babylon’s Burning,” you have a forecast for the future of heavy metal, but one that didn’t really come into fruition until well into the ‘90s.

Thanks for going down memory alley with me. P.S., isn’t Vaginal Ultrasound a pretty good name for a band?

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The New York Times is Idiotic, AGAIN, and It Gives Me an Excuse to Rave About Echo & The Bunnymen

August 20, 2014

Dear New York Times:

Once upon a time, when we wore Adidas, watched Melba Tolliver, were confused by the suicide of Peter Duel and sang sweet songs about Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge, the New York Times was known as The Paper of Record. As a young man, I would scan your pages, fingers becoming ashen with The Ink of Wisdom, knowing that what I was reading was reliable and true.

You, New York Times, were my friend. You did not tell lies.

This weekend, New York Times, I read the following in your pages:

“Echo & the Bunnymen (Saturday and Sunday) Long before Garbage, Echo and the Bunnymen were only happy when it was raining. These British goths pioneered echoing, foreboding effects in their gloomy post-punk, and spurred on many future rock malcontents, especially with their hit single “The Cutter.” Still clad in black, literally and sonically, they released the album “Meteorites” this spring. Saturday at 8 p.m…”

In the words of Ralph Nader, “One hardly knows where to begin.”

First of all, Stacey Anderson (for she is the writer of the seemingly random assemblage of irrelevant words and adjectives quoted above) appears to have scribbled this brief and woefully inaccurate assessment of Echo & the Bunnymen solely based on the fact that they may have once been pictured dressed in black and have a song called “The Cutter.” Let’s address these things:

After R.E.M., Echo & the Bunnymen are the second greatest elegiac guitar-based alt band of the 1980s. Yes, seriously. The Bunnymen channeled the Doors, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Love, and the bittersweet melancholia of 1960s high-style Britpop (Small Faces, Pet Clark, PJ Proby, Chris Farlowe, even Gene Pitney) into an absolutely original mofungo of majesty, grace, power, and drama. First of all, Ms. Anderson (if I may now address you more specifically), they were not a “gloomy” band, a la Bauhaus or the Cure; the Bunnymen were a band of many remarkable hues, were constantly joyous and life-affirming, and honestly, they had more in common with the Beatles than Bauhaus. Secondly, you may be the FIRST person to you use the word “Goths” when talking about the Bunnymen; for some reason, you have lumped them in with the aforementioned Curehaus (apparently you saw a picture of them wearing black), and to be absolutely honest, that’s just a ridiculous error, no less glaring than calling (and I am being totally serious) Matchbox 20 a grunge band (they used guitars, too! They were around in the ‘90s too!). You could even make a better (better, but still not correct) case for the Smiths being a Goth band, because at least the Smiths, unlike the Bunnymen, sang regularly of things like comas and child murderers.

Which brings us to the most egregiously moronic thing in Ms. Anderson’s blurb, an error so outlandish as to be actually, well, beautiful: Ms. Anderson’s conclusion that the Bunnymen must be goth and spur on “malcontents” because they have a song called “The Cutter.” It is true that the lyrics to “The Cutter” do, in fact, seem to deal with the consideration of suicide. Well, another Liverpool band called The Beatles had a song called “Run For Your Life” which included the lyrics “Id rather see you dead little girl/Then be with another man…catch you with another man/that’s the end, little girl” — SO I GUESS THE BEATLES SPURRED ON MANY STALKERS AND DATE RAPISTS, CORRECT?!? The Bunnymen, like the Beatles, had songs about a lot of other things, too, and very, very little of ANYTHING ELSE about their music, their lyrics, or their overall gestalt conform to this idea of goth/suicide/darkness, EXCEPT FOR THE TITLE AND SUBJECT OF ONE FUCKING SONG (and the music to the song itself is actually quite glorious and upbeat).

(Damn, Curehaus is a good band name!)

Now as for your comments about their “sound,” apparently, Miss Wellonmellon, I mean Ms. Anderson, you can’t tell the difference between a musical palette that is creative, sonically investigative, and elegiac and one that is “foreboding.” You use this crappy and simplistic word to dismiss the entire range of (guitarist) Will Sergeant’s skills; Will Sergeant is a fucking painter, Ms. Anderson, he is influenced by Phil Manzanera and Bill Nelson and Michael Rother and Vini Reilly and other great custodians of The Land Beyond Bar Chords; he is an artist, and to dismiss him as some fucking goth with an effects pedal, is, well, moronic.

Listen, Ms. Anderson: I was there. I knew Jack Bunnymen, and Bauhaus, Sir, were no Jack Bunnymen. Wait, where was I? Oh, okay…Listen, Ms. Anderson: I was there. Echo & the Bunnymen, with their indescribably rich, layered template of electric and orchestral sounds, punk-sired power and middle eastern flavors, all tethered to a constant and rewarding quest to mix the sugary with the epic, were one of the very, very best alt bands of their era, and deserve far, far better than the be dismissed as just another gang of Goths clad in black churning out music for the gloomy masses. Not only that, but the Bunnymen were a deeply powerful, spontaneous, whipping, soaring, sexy live band, full of rolling rhythms and lissome, serpentine poise; they were the ONLY band of their era who could come close to matching the drunk-angel poetry-party joy of ’82 – ’84 R.E.M. Sadly, although the Bunnymen made PHENOMENAL singles, like “The Cutter,” “The Killing Moon,” and “Lips Like Sugar” (their incredible run of majestic, crafted, whip-smart and whip-sharp singles, rife with towering venetian-glass pop glory, were actually NOTABLY superior to any similar span in the career of R.E.M. and the Smiths), they never quite brought it together for one epic start-to-finish album, as Smiths and R.E.M. did (or even The Cure – my god, when’s the last time you listened to Faith? WHY, oh why don’t more people talk about what a singular achievement that album is?!? But that’s another story, isn’t it?). But regardless of this flaw, the Bunnymen deserve far, far, far,

far, far, far, far

far better than to be the subject of such ignorance in the Newspaper of Fucking Record.

Oh, by the way, I guess Bob Dylan was a British invasion artist because he had a song called “Like A Rolling Stone.” Seriously, Ms. Anderson, that’s the level you’re operating on here, which is terribly, terribly sad, because, THIS ATROCITY, this erroneous and ludicrous dismissal of a great and important and popular band, occurred not on some annoying blog site run by Fieldston grads peeing into sinks in Bushwick, but

IN THE NEW YORK FUCKING TIMES.

See, dear New York Fucking Times, YOU ARE THE NEW YORK FUCKING TIMES. Once upon a time your pages RANG with the rich, pointed, erudite, learned and descriptive words of Tim Page, John Rockwell, Karen Schoemer, even Jon Pareles, people who knew about music, who never would have made an error like this, who wouldn’t have made an erroneous, generalized assessment of a once (very) popular band JUST BECAUSE THERE WAS A PICTURE OF THEM DRESSED IN BLACK AND BECAUSE THEY HAD A SONG CALLED ‘THE CUTTER.” I guarantee, Ms. Anderson, that there are many, many young writers out there, perky alumni of Barnard or Reed or Emerson Hamilton or NYU or god forbid even Fordham, who could JUST AS EASILY ERRONEOUSLY SUM UP AND DISMISS AN ENTIRE BAND’S CAREER SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF A PICTURE AND A SONG TITLE. See, even I can do it! “Nirvana, who appeal to followers of Cream and the Police because they are a power trio, are much loved by fans of classic sitcoms due to their song ‘Floyd the Barber’.”

Ms. Anderson, I am sure you are a perfectly nice person, but this is important: re-read that last quip about Nirvana. See, that’s exactly what you did, and that’s why I am so angry. You wrote something that dumb. You may be a nice person, you may be a good writer, when you were at Oberlin you may have impressed a member of the Strokes by making a reference to the Lemonheads, but you just made a really offensive mistake, the kind that indicates that either a) your shouldn’t be writing for the New York Times, or b) that the New York Times standards have plunged lower than the neckline on a slutty cockroach (see, the NECKLINE ITSELF is low, because the cockroach is a SLUT, and BECAUSE it’s a cockroach, it’s particularly LOW to the ground; SEE WHY THAT WORKS?).

Actually, cockroaches reproduce facing away from each other, so I am not entirely sure a plunging neckline would enhance the seduction proceedings, which is to say that a well-displayed décolletage would not necessarily denote that a cockroach is slutty; and I suppose if the cockroach was on a bed or a lamp or a windowsill, it wouldn’t even be particularly low; so really, I should rethink that whole metaphor. Tell you what: if this piece makes it to the anthology, I’ll re-address the end of that whole last paragraph, okay?

Finally, Ms. Anderson, you’re probably the type of person who listens to a lot of Radiohead. Some advice: if you’re listening to anything except for The Bends (a thrilling and remarkable true rock record of almost Who-like depth and power), you are wasting precious time, nodding your head sagely while wearing headphones, scanning all those pauses and anti-melodies for deepness. Stop wasting your time and listen to Porcupine Tree, who are the real thing.

Oh, and consider taking the LSATS.

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Billy Rath R.I.P, and the Heartbreakers Rock Forever

August 17, 2014

Despite all our ascents into art and madness

(decade-long day trips to the hills to hear the humming airsome arpeggios of Pink Floyd and the teen-high whimsy of Kinks; forays through dark foreign alleys to be happily harangued by Nick Cave or Scott; even the years spent banging our heads against the broken-glass walls of Branca),

there is still nothing
Utterly nothing

Like a rolling pin beat-down by the boogie of pure rock’n’roll, when it’s done just right and infected by the spirit of Hadacol and Café Bustello and bar-call leaf-chalk whiskey and dumb angel punk.

I’m talking about

Gene Vincent ’63 (his face screwed tight against the pain, beating Long Tall Sally like it was by the Bad Brains), Jerry Lee live at the Star Club (hammering so fast that the band lifted off the earth to escape the law and the shadow of the Good Book and the Bad Girls), Bo Diddley (crossbreeding the drums of Congo Square with a coughing guitar reinterpreting the jet age roar),  Wynonie Harris (stapling his balls to his heart and baritoning the blues and inventing Elvis and modern rock’n’roll signing), The Pretty Things (pinning the VU meters into the red and saying to the Stones “You think you’re the Stones? We are the Stones you pale Edwardian fuckshits!”)…

And on and on and on —

Slave ship archetypes and fishnets thieved from Sex and Blue Moon Saloon two-step hollers and Extra Place bar chords and Sun Studio slap-back all reduced to a ruby-red rock’n’roll roux for our shabby pleasure;

And the best pure rock’n’roll band I ever saw, whirring and hissing and rolling and flying like preachers and carnys and hounds and heroes, was the Heartbreakers

Johnny Thunders, Walter Lure, Jerry Nolan, and Billy Rath.

And just a few days ago bassist Billy Rath passed to another side, forward or backwards or sideways or no ways at all.  And we honor him, a handsome man who anchored the booming, snaking, shaking, sliding, slumping, spitting, self-defeating and profane rock’n’roll machine that was The Heartbreakers.  The Heartbreakers, who

Churned out a beautiful sibilant grind of blues-and-R&B-based rock and roll, the sugary juice and the tart rind of almost a century of whoreshriek fruit, birthed from the sassy shortin’ bread boogie of Bolden and Jelly Roll, schooled and ass-slapped by Louis Jordan and Fats Waller and Eddie Cochran, infected by the sad speed-death of punk and for a few moments alive alive alive under the low black ceiling of Max’s Kansas City.

I never ever never saw a better pure rock band, awesome and awed, heretical and respectful of the church located at the intersection of Basin Street and Highway 61 and the Kings Road, unclean yet beautiful, teetering like a wine’d-up wire walker between Twin Towers of Beale Street and Bowery. And when they were on I never saw such a perfect specimen of the boogie animal, barely leashed and hungry and humping the neighbor’s record collection.

I have seen other acts approach their careening abandon, or achieve it for a few sacred moments, manifesting the sound of a spit and shit-stained subway laden with refugees from the jubilee of the 12 bar beat down; but I’ve never seen anyone sustain it, be such perfect examples of it.  And although it’s worth honoring those who I saw with my very own eyes come close (Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers, the Marc Riley-era Fall, even Hanoi Rocks), no one else was it and nothing but it, no one else played the hopped up Hayride/City-side truth and nothing but the truth, the way the Heartbreakers did.

“When they were on…when they were on…when they were on…”

I can hear myself intoning that qualification to “the truth,” over and over; because about two-thirds of the time, Thunders was only there in body but not spirit, and the awesome auto-tiger didn’t purr but limped along on three wheels.  But  despite that fatal and tragic flaw, it’s all there, thumping and roaring and twitching and soaring like an electric eel dancing to the Treniers and Brother Ray, on their exquisite LAMF album, oh and by the way, get the original “flawed” mix; the mad compression and lack of high end on the much-criticized original mix was, in fact, perfect for the Heartbreakers’ blend of old school Rocket 88-isms meets Neat Neat Neat speed, and when the Clorox of modern technology was applied by some well-meaning hacks, the result dimmed the seismic muffle shuffle of the original boogie boulder; so accept no substitutes.

And although Billy Rath has passed, as has Johnny and Jerry, Walter Lure not only lives but keeps the spirit very, very much alive; like Neil Young or McCartney or Leonard Cohen, Waldo still steps out on stage and careens and hops and prays to the rock’n’roll saints like he was doing it for the vey first time, like every moment mattered, like every audience member had to be won over for the four thousandth time.  The soul and life force of The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band is still alive in his high top sneakers and gold top guitars, it is a reunion of the heart of the Heartbreakers every time he steps on stage.

Much peace to Billy, Johnny, and Jerry. Long live Walter Lure, and long may he rock.

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The Solution to All Our Problems: Not Your Average Goat and Your Average Goat

August 15, 2014

There is a great beauty in confusion.  The seemingly random assembly of events, geometry, words, sounds, forms, colors, and dimensions can stir emotions, engender communication, inspire ideas, and motivate action.  Just ask Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, Dali, Antonin Artaud, and the scores upon scores of mainstream artists they inspired.

In order to be engaged in the world around us, and in a more localized sense compelled by the art and music we are exposed to, we must be startled.

As my friend, Dr. Jennifer Brout, has articulated, in order to maintain our attention the music we listen to must be filled with elements of harmony and melody, but it also must contain components that keep us engaged with the proceedings and alert our attention; otherwise, we are likely just to drift off of the road and run over a monkey, and none of us want that to happen.  This would be especially tragic if the monkey was dressed in a Mad Men-style business suit and wearing a fez.  Perhaps the monkey had wandered away from a film set where someone was shooting a Mad Men parody featuring monkeys, because, as we all know, nothing is funnier than a monkey in human clothing.  Now, you may ask, “If the monkey was dressed to resemble a 1960s’ advertising executive, why then would the monkey be wearing a fez?”

The often beautiful, but just as frequently frustrating ubiquity of modern music requires more harmonious instability than ever.  We are all wandering in the desert, a Sinai of sound that is free and everywhere, and we need an Artful Moses to lead us into the promised land: a Canaan full of music that shocks and soothes and is ripe with myth, mystery, and rumor.  This Moses must be confident – nay, even arrogant – in his or her ability to unify the disparate masses of music listeners (casual and avid), via charismatic confusion; with a firm grip they must metaphorically carry Michelangelo’s David up Escher’s stairs, or failing that, bravely and adamantly announce:

“In one hand, I hold the Spear of Destiny, and in the other, I bear a puppy who personifies all the hopes and vulnerability of failing humanity; and with my monkey-like tail, which I borrowed for this occasion from my friend The Lord Hanuman, who may or may not be an incarnation of Shiva himself, I firmly grasp a mono copy of the Sgt. Pepper album, because it is essential for the world to understand the extraordinary, inarguable superiority of the mono mix of Sgt. Pepper.”

For the sake of this discussion, let us presume that it is I who is standing on the Mountain and god, or someone who sounds a lot like Carl Wilson or Tim Buckley, has whispered in my ears the un-spoken name of the Lord of Redemption via Confusion, and here I reveal those names.

By no means am I claiming to be Moses, or even Mo Howard, or even Frank Howard, who is the sort of 1960s/70s power hitter who looms large in my memory, like a cross between the Golem, Paul Bunyon, and Burns and Allen sidekick Harry Von Zell.  Fearsome as he was, I imagine Frank Howard as someone who would be kind to children and would, perhaps, even drive his car into a tree in order to avoid hitting a Fez-wearing monkey.  Regardless, I am no Moses, though he was married to Zipporah (who circumcised Gershom with a sharp stone, to which Gershom said “Jesus Christ!  Did you sanitize that stone first?  Or even maybe wipe it down with some Purell?”), and I knew a girl back at Great Neck South in the ‘70s named Zipporah Friedman, and she was a fox, let me tell you, she would come to Social Studies class wearing a peasant blouse with nothing underneath, and you would, indeed, think you had seen The Holy Land.

Where were we?

Although I am not fit to stand in the shadow of the chalk outline of Moses (nor his 20th-Century manqué, Tom Carvel), I have seen the future of music as a unifying and provocative force for positive social and political engagement, and here it is:

I want to form two completely different bands called YOUR AVERAGE GOAT and NOT YOUR AVERAGE GOAT.

Both will frequently be confused with each other but both will be completely independent and autonomous acts.  In this respect, I am taking a cue from two bands from the Krautrock movement, Amon Duul and Amon Duul II.  Notwithstanding the rather acute similarities of nomenclature (and the fact that they existed both simultaneously and in close geographic proximity to each other), Amon Duul and (the far superior) Amon Duul II were completely different bands.

Despite being completely independent acts, Your Average Goat and Not Your Average Goat will both record concept albums about the Five Holy Wounds of Christ. It will all be an intentionally over-complicated and difficult to execute attempt to sow confusion.  In order to add further okra to this gumbo of puzzlement, at least one member in each group will be masked.  When you read that, it is likely that in your head you are seeing Mexican Wrestling style masks; as amusing as that might be, that’s not what I have in mind.  The masks I foresee (one being worn by a member of Your Average Goat, another different one to be worn by one, perhaps two members of Not Your Average Goat) will be accurate facsimiles of Presidential Death Masks.

To further complicate this picture, Your Average Goat will insist on releasing their album one audio channel at a time — first the left channel, then the right channel — and Not Your Average Goat will do the same, only in the reverse order.   In other words, although each artist will record their albums in two-channel stereo mixes, they will only release one channel at a time (I am uncertain, however, if the released albums will feature that single channel spread across both left and right speakers/audio channels, or if the released version will only have music coming out of one channel/speaker.  These are details that can be worked out later in consultation with the performers).

And although each album will be completely different, each complimentary channel can be played TOGETHER compatibly (i.e. Your Average Goat’s RIGHT audio channel can be played TOGETHER HARMONIOUSLY with Not Your Average Goat’s LEFT audio channel).  That is to say, if you play just the left channel of Your Average Goat’s debut release SIMULTANEOUSLY with just the right channel of the debut release of Not Your Average Goat, the listener will hear an entirely new and original piece of music.

Also, even though both Your Average Goat and Not Your Average Goat’s debut albums will concern themselves with a musical description of the Five Holy Wounds of Christ and the manner in which these notable and historic wounds were inflicted and received, when played together in the left/right format which I have just described, an entirely new theme and concept will emerge:  when played simultaneously, the co-joined work will detail The Four Seals of Buddhism, namely

All Composite Phenomena are Impermanent
All Contaminated Phenomena are Unsatisfactory
All Phenomena are empty and devoid of self-existence
Nirvana is True Peace.

However, if this left/right dyad is not accurately synced up, who knows what will happen; the entire English-speaking world will be lousy with differing interpretations. “I believe they are singing about the Two Darrins,” someone will suggest.  “Ah, an inspiring paean to Emperor Constantine’s vision of the cross before the battle at Milvian Bridge!” someone else will say.  “This is a touching homage to the Lonesome Death of Tommy Cooper,” another person will offer.  “But Tommy Cooper died on live television,” a friend of the third person will counter,  “What could be less lonesome than that?”  “Ah, but you’re wrong,” their friend will say, with a sagely nod. “What could possibly be more lonely than dying on live television?”

Millions will become obsessed with this confusion, and inspired, endlessly, by the potential for its’ resolution. This confusion will be the balm for the modern world’s generalized despondency.

As for the specific musical genre(s) in which Your Average Goat and Not Your Average Goat will operate, that can all be worked out at a later date, though I somehow suspect that Not Your Average Goat will be a very good band, and Your Average Goat, well, not so good; and by “not so good.” I am not talking about Nickleback, Kansas, or Creed levels of suckage, but a subtler Atlanta Rhythm Section or Toto level of crappiness, with a certain Skafish, Wazmo Nariz or early-Devo quality of herky-jerky mixed in.  In regard to Your Average Goat, perhaps we will start simply by saying “Give me something that’s a cross between Toto and bad Pere Ubu” and take it from there, but don’t get all Primus-y on me.”  That should confuse the musicians suitably.

Because in confusion, we will find resolution.

For God so loved the world, that he gave the world Monkeys wearing Fezzes and Betty Rubble, that whosoever believeth in non-self and emptiness should not perish, but have everlasting life considering why Betty Rubble and Fred Flintstone have “normal” eyes with pupils and whites but Wilma and Barney have eyes that are all-black/all-pupil (except in certain episodes where Barney’s eyes are just circles with nothing but skin-color inside them, which is really, truly disturbing).

Dedicated to James Lyons and Dean Johnson, two extraordinary artists who I somehow associate with Wazmo Nariz. 

 

 

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FIVE GREAT SONGS (Just Because!)

August 13, 2014

Because it’s Wednesday, and because it would simply be tasteless to engage in a detailed discussion of the Rule of Threes, I am presenting the FIRST edition of Tim Sommer’s Five Great Songs Just Because list.  Which is exactly what it sounds like. Now, the theme today is, uh, guitars, with a sub-theme of SONGS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN GIANT HITS THAT YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T HEARD BEFORE (there are two of these here).   Let’s begin, shall we?

“BLUE BOY” by Orange Juice

Orange Juice were Scottish (which is obvious from the first few bars here), the flag-bearers for the extraordinary Postcard label, and the prime exponent of a kind of vaguely tennis-racket-strummy thinking man’s guitar pop that quite significantly influenced the work of Aztec Camera, the exquisite Go Betweens, (very notably) the Smiths, and probably at a later date Arcade Fire.  In fact, it surprises me a bit that more people haven’t picked up on the Orange Juice influence in Arcade Fire, since Arcade Fire kind of sound like Orange Juice + Pere Ubu multiplied by the Feelies (have I ever mentioned that I think most bands can be effectively reduced to an equation?  But that’s another story).  I wonder if Layne agrees with me about the depth of Orange Juice’s influence.  I must ask him.  Anyway, this is from 1980 and has the most wonderful and difficult blend of grace and clumsiness, vulnerability and cave-stomp, and I LOVE how the opening vamp-up chord subtly moves up a half-step.

The Rule of Threes in regard to Celebrity Deaths, that is.  Of course you already knew that.  You’re a smart reader and it did cross your mind that, oh, Mary Tyler Moore just might be looking over her shoulder.

“JUST ANOTHER DREAM” by The Professionals

Shortly, perhaps, I will write about the enormous tragedy of the Sex Pistols; by that, I mean that thanks to the presence of three world-class songwriters and distinct musical talents (Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, and John Lydon), each evolving fast circa 1977 and growing in a direction that could have been harmonious to the whole, the Pistols need NOT have been a one-album band; with three people like THAT in a group, each capable of leading yet each clearly able to collaborate, they could have been The Who.  But that AWFUL, AWFUL MAN, Malcolm McLaren, had a different plan; in one of the most TRULY MORONIC band management moves of all-time, he replaced one of the band’s primary writers (and best musician) with a guy who couldn’t play or write, JUST BECAUSE HE LOOKED BETTER AND WAS EASIER TO MANIPLUATE.  Imagine if Chris Stamp had replaced Pete Townshend after “My Generation” with some dumb, good looking mod who couldn’t play, but “looked” right; that’s what McLaren did when he engineered the ouster of Matlock in February 1977, and the Pistols were dead in the water from that moment on.  Evidence of the universal brilliance and talent of Jones, Matlock, and Lydon would come very shortly, via the Rich Kids, Public Image Limited, and the Professionals; imagine if all that talent could have gone into one band.  Often overlooked when telling the post-Pistols story is this track, the first single released by Jones and drummer Paul Cook as the Professionals (it also features a different line-up than the later Professionals recordings).  Although the Professionals went on to do some very damn good work, it never got better than this, perhaps the only Professionals song that can stand up to the best of the Pistols.

Is Nancy Reagan still alive?

“HEADS ARE GONNA ROLL” by The Stunning

I was an A&R person for a little while, during which time, to be honestly immodest, I had enough success to indicate that I vaguely knew what I was doing.  Sometimes, both in and out of that context, I would hear a song and go ‘WOW.  THAT IS A HIT RECORD.”  For reasons that may be simple to explain or might be very complex indeed, perhaps that song doesn’t become a hit record (and in the cases noted here and immediately below, I did not sign nor was involved in the release of the record in question).  The Stunning were Irish, and when I first heard this song about 20 years ago I thought it was a certain hit, and when I hear it now, I feel the same.  Hell, it still could be, if someone wants to cover it.  I don’t fully recall WHY I didn’t make an attempt to sign the Stunning, and I know few details of their career, so any effort to stretch this into an amusing or tragic anecdote is not realizable.  So just enjoy.  Oh, please note the gorgeous, melancholy, and ridiculously hummable single-trumpet melody line; British bands seem to do these kind of parts very well, and I have a theory why: I suspect it has something to do with classic English TV Themes – seriously, follow me on this – which have long contained just these kinds of melancholy but melodically compelling solo melody lines, usually played on horn or harmonica (as heard in the theme tunes to Coronation Street or Last of the Summer Wine, to name just two).

I’m going to put some “outside” money on Al Molinaro.

“REMOTE CONTROL” by The Age of Electric

As noted above, every now and again a song that you’ve never heard before stuns you, inciting a desire to hear that damn thing over and over again, and share it with as many people as possible, friends and strangers alike. I was strolling through a field of happy Molson-guzzling foreigners under a blue Canadian sky sometime in the 1990s, at some incomprehensibly large rock festival, when somewhere way off in the distance I heard this song; I think it was actually being played live. I turned to my companion and said, “THAT is a HIT record.”  My friend explained to me that the tune was “Remote Control” by Age of Electric.  SOMEONE COVER THIS FUCKING SONG, OKAY?  By the way, Age of Electric was led by the amazing Todd Kearns, who has played bass with Slash for quite a few years now; I will also go on the record and state that I have met very, very few people who deserved to be a rock star as much as dear Todd.  Seriously.  When you Google “rock star,” a picture of Todd Kearns should come up.  In the annals of all-time great up-beat furiously fulsome heavy guitar pop songs, “Remote Control” should be RIGHT UP THERE at the top, alongside the best work by Undertones, Buzzcocks, and Cheap Trick.

Now, I just peeked at a site that sets odds on such things, and the name at the TOP of the list was Wilko Johnson.  Seriously.  And that just pisses me off.

“GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS” by Blue Oyster Cult

There’s a lot one can say about Blue Öyster Cult, the band who sought to bridge the gap between the Doors and the MC5 with a little bit of Floyd and a lot of biker acid mixed in.  They kind of succeeded at that mission, too.  In general, they are a vastly underrated band, from the twisting Motor City-esque boogie of “Hot Rails to Hell” and “ME 262” to the proto-Stoner rock mega-sludge of “Cities on Flame With Rock’n’Roll” and “Godzilla” to the Classic Rock treasure of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Burnin’ for You.”  Goddamn good band, and, in fact, if you don’t have Secret Treaties or On Your Feet Or On Your Knees, you probably need to remedy that problem somewhat immediately. Anyway, when the genius of BÖC is discussed, this song is often not included in the conversation, which is terribly unfortunate; that’s possibly because “Going Through the Motions” (from 1977’s erratic but still essential Spectres album) sounds like one of those instances when a band records a song that sounds very little like them just to get a hit; but rarely does such a mercenary endeavor lead to such happy results. There were other times, before and after this track, when BÖC aspired to pure contemporary pop, and with many varying and sometimes comic results:  but on this occasion they knocked it OUT OF THE PARK, very likely due to the presence of co-writer Ian Hunter. An insanely atypical BÖC song, but a toothy and sugary and utterly memorable delight, and I love how at the 2:00 mark they throw in three BIG FAT GUITAR CHORDS just to say “Fuck you, we are Blue Öyster Cult, in case you might have forgotten, which, uh, you probably did.” 

I’m just going to put a fin on Garrison Keeler and be done with it.

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Arts and Entertainment, Existential Stuff, Music, Opinion

The New York Times Pisses Me Off Endlessly

August 12, 2014

A rather grievous error in the New York Times – yes, yet another one – has set me off AGAIN.

Dear New York Times:

Serge Gainsbourg is one of the more remarkable vocalists and composers of the 20th Century. He is an immediately distinctive singer and picaresque songwriter, the bridge between Sinatra and Nick Cave — as charismatic and rich with the fruit of the pop century as the former, and as rife with the epoch’s twists and social confusion as the latter. Serge is the epitome of every deeply sexy, deeply ugly, brilliantly artistic and profane French or German artiste; his strange, erotic, even gruesome music carries arrogance and vulnerability; and he is, without any doubt, a genius, even if you hate him (love him).

Did I use “picaresque” correctly, New York Times? Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t, but it just looks so damn good there, doesn’t it?

Serge’s daughter, Charlotte, is a startling and fearless actress and musician. SHE SPELLS HER LAST NAME GAINSBOURG, LIKE HER BRILLIANT FATHER, NOT GAINSBOROUGH, LIKE THE FUCKING PAINTER.


(These are Charlotte Gainsbourg’s parents.)

OH in case I have to refresh your memory, New York Times (because I understand you may be very, very busy running stories in the Real Estate section about a couple you want us to FEEL SORRY FOR because they had to SETTLE for the 6.75 million dollar condo in Tribeca WITHOUT the fireplace), my grievance refers to the following, from a story in the August 6th’s issue by Vanessa Friedman (who I am sure is a very nice person):

“Still, when it comes to muscle flexing via marketing imagery, perhaps nothing beats Nicolas Ghesquière’s first campaign at Louis Vuitton, which offers up a triptych of big-name photographers (Bruce Weber, Annie Leibovitz, Juergen Teller), each telling a story with one of four models (including the actress Charlotte Gainsborough) that runs as a gallery of images — not just an ad, but an exhibit unto itself.”

Charlotte Gainsbourg (NOTE; GAINSBOURG, GAINSBOURG, GAINSBOURG!) is NOT ONLY the daughter of a famous singer, her mother, Jane Birkin, is one of the fashion icons of the 1960s. Oh DID I MENTION THAT THE FREAKING BIRKIN BAG WAS NAMED AFTER CHARLOTTE GANISBOURG’S MOTHER?!? I presume, since YOU ARE A FLIPPING FASHION REPORTER, you have heard of the Birkin bag…

…but apparently you had NO idea HOW to spell the last name of a famous cult actress who is the daughter of a famous fashion icon and a legendary cult singer; or perhaps, if I may inject a soupcon of charity into the proceedings, you, dear Vanessa, did spell the name properly and it was “corrected” by a drooling, unshaven, L-Train riding, codeine-popping INTERN in an ironic Doobie Brothers t-shirt who THE NEWSPAPER OF FUCKING RECORD TRUSTS TO DO ITS PROOFREADING.


(This is a Doobie Brothers t-shirt, to be worn ironically by someone who pays too much attention to LCD Soundsystem)

Ms. Friedman, I am most certain you are a really nice person, I really do mean that, but someone who writes about fashion in the New York Fucking Bloomberg Sucking Off Times and DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO SPELL CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG’S LAST NAME SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THEIR FUCKING POLI SCI DEGREE FROM OBERLIN (or was it a semiotics degree from Brown?) AND GONE TO LAW SCHOOL LIKE THEIR MOTHER SUGGESTED.

Seriously, this kind of mistake is an ATROCITY, and it sets of an ANSCHLUSS OF DESPAIR IN MY HEART. Yes, I said an Anschluss of Despair. Which, by the way, would make a good title for a Cradle of Filth song. Are you familiar with Cradle of Filth, Vanessa? No, I didn’t think so. Their song “Temptation” is one of the great musical guilty pleasures of the last ten years.


(This is “Temptation” by Cradle of Filth, and everyone should stop and listen to it and not pretend they are “too cool” to think it’s freaking amazing)

New York Times, please take you collective Timesian head out of the lap of the nearest Russian Billionaire and note the following:

A) A fashion reporter who CAN’T spell Charlotte Gainsbourg’s last name correctly probably SHOULDN’T BE A FASHION REPORTER and instead should have taken the LSATS like her cousin Deborah did, and/or B) If your fucking proofreaders can’t pick up a mistake like that you probably should START PAYING THEM instead of just handing the job off to an unpaid vacant-eyed Fieldston grad with an Adderall Addiction and a ukulele.

Now, because I am a KIND AND FAIR MAN and lover of Krautrock and Borges and Rushdie and Graham Greene and Jerry Brown and Wim Wenders and Morrissey, and because I am a good and fair person, I am willing to CONSIDER the idea that this was an error of the afore-mentioned Strokes-loving proofreader and not necessarily the ATROCIOUS mistake of an errant fashion reporter who might have been distracted by seeing Bjork in CVS or something like that.

Again, no offense is intended to Ms. Friedman, I really do mean that, though she should do herself a favor AND STOP PRETENDING TO LIKE THOSE CRAPPY RADIOHEAD ALBUMS FULL OF DRIFTING, POINTLESS SONGS, the world will STILL revolve on its’ axis if you JUST COME OUT AND ADMIT YOU DON’T “GET” THOSE RECORDS, instead you should spend some time listening to Porcupine Tree, who are the “REAL” Radiohead. And personally, now that I’ve had a moment to think about it, I think you were right to have not listened to your mother about the LSATS; the future lies in jobs in the health sector. Seriously, Vanessa, I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but if you had worked towards being a Nurse Practitioner, you would have been in A LOT better shape in 8 or 10 years than Deborah (yes, yes, I know it’s pronounced De-BORE-uh). I mean, she is working 16 hours a day at that law firm, and she will NEVER make partner, mark my words.

With kind regards,

Monsieur le Docteur Ralph, a/k/a Timothy Andrew Sommer Le Parrain du Slocore

P.S. The preceding is purely the opinion of Monsieur Sommer, and any insinuations about the character or history of Ms. Friedman are entirely for amusement purposes only. I am certain Ms. Friedman is a very nice person who I might have had coffee with 30 years ago while discussing Japanese cinema, R.E.M., Richard Brautigan, and performance art, though the conversation might have gone slightly wrong when I got a little too enthusiastic about the films of Leni Riefenstahl. However, any anger directed at the New York Times is most certainly intentional and deadly serious.

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