Break Up Your Band

Break Up Your Band Is Now On Tubmlr!

2009-01-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

Looking for your Break Up Your Band fix? Wondering why this blog hasn't been updated in a while? Break Up Your Band has moved primarily to Tumblr, and is now your source for daily doses of the best in music from the 90s. Click here to read it, follow it, and spread the word!

Seriously, if you and your friends are on Tumblr please tell everyone you know about it. I'd love to get the word spread on BUYB as I'm working hard on making it an awesome blog.

This version of BUYB will occasionally but updated with lengthier posts and thoughts on new music, but all your favorite 90s music will be cataloged and dissected on the Tumblr version.

Thanks!

2008-11-21T06:56:00.000-08:00

Meat Beat Manifesto, Bowery Ballroom, 11.19.08

Every now and again I'll get exposed to a band that will make me stop and ask serious questions about my life: "Why have I never listened to this before?" "Did someone try to turn me on to this band and I ignored them?" "Where did I go wrong here?" MBM, the highly infuential electronic band, is one of them. They've existed on the outskirts of my personal musical landscape since junior high, along with bands like KMFDM and Lords of Acid, as a musical outfit I'm aware of and have a vague appreciation for but have never bought an album by. Now I realize what a sad mistake that is, one that needs correcting immediately. I was offered a ticket to this show by my friend and co-worker Lynne, and I think I accepted because of a vague feeling that I needed to finally see Meat Beat. I'm glad I did; I owe Lynne a debt of musical gratitude.

When I watch bands that rely heavily on using laptop computers to trigger beats and sounds, I feel like I'm watching fucking magic. "What's going on up there? How are they doing that?" I ask myself as they stare at screens, turning little knobs and pushing buttons on processors and synths connected to their Macs by a forest of cords. It's like I'm on the wrong side of the stage. I want to see what they're looking at, watch the magic happen. But that would take the mystique away from the wizards, I suppose.

They played against the backdrop of a stunning mindfuck of a video show that was synched to the explosive beats and clumpy, swirling brushstrokes of their music. The well-edited collages included a few hilarious minutes of Obama's nodding, smiling head superimposed onto the body of an active drummer. It was like playing Guess The Pop Culture Reference, watching clips from dozens of movies, tv shows, infomercials and political clips flash by. This visual aspect was just as well-crafted as their music was and provided for all-encompassing assault on the senses.

Not being intimately familiar with them, I can't give you a blow-by-blow of songs. But I can tell you that when they played "Helter Skelter," the only song of theirs that I know I know (the "It's in my brain now!" song), everyone went apeshit. Their production was top-notch and each song was a catchy, distinctive party full of thumping electronic grime, glitches and smears. Good thing it's payday, because I have an armload of MBM albums to purchase.

You Reminded Me That I Would Never Be Twenty-Two

2008-02-06T13:54:00.000-08:00

Who's the indie rock nerd working for NPR picking the songs that play in between segments on "All Things Considered?" I just heard Karate's "Same Stars" from The Bed is in the Ocean. That record is ten years old, so it's not like someone would pick it out of a box of CD's sent for consideration by record companies. Well, whoever s/he is, s/he is awesome and I want his/her job. I've also heard a ton of The Album Leaf and Pinback songs, so I imagine this person and I would either totally be friends, or we would have similar social phobias and trying to get us into a conversation would be like trying to put two negative ends of a magnet together.

This is my reward for digging through the vinyl bins at Generations on Thompson Street. I've been looking for this Seein' Red/Judas Iscariot split LP for a while now. Yes, I'm still pretty much just trying to buy all the same records my ex g/f Katie had. What can I tell you? They were good. But actually, that reminds me that as I was sifting through the 7"'s at Generations last night looking to get into something I'd never heard before, I realized that maybe I was just trying to recapture a vibe from 2000 when her and I would drive to Curmudgeon in Edison, NJ and I would drop $30 on records by bands that looked cool. Last night I didn't find anything that looked appealing, and I wound up just buying LP's I didn't have from bands I'm already familiar with. And that makes me think that maybe I don't want to be adventurous; that I just want to be safe and pretend I'm 22.

My tickets for the Be Your Own Pet show on 2/20 came in the mail. Maybe I'll see you there.

Best Invention Ever

2008-01-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

Here's my new toy, ladies and gents:

It's an Ion iTTUSB USB Turntable, and it's chief function is to import my vinyl copy of the SST Blasting Concept compilation into my iTunes as a digital file. It's the best thing I've ever purchased, and if, like me, you have several crates worth of 80s speed metal records that you took from the college radio station you DJ'ed at when said radio station decided they wanted to fully upgarde to CDs and told their DJs they could take however many records they wanted from the library, then this is the gadget for you. Not only does it hook directly into your PC, Mac or laptop, but it also hooks directly into your stereo to play records like any other turntable would, so if you're in the market for a new turntable this is a great purchase. Also included are two software programs: one for Joe Audiophile who just wants to digitize his vinyl, and the other for Joe Serious Audiophile Who's Probably Also A DJ, who along with having a tragically lengthy name also wants to take all the pops and clicks and whatnot out of the digital files once they're uploaded and maybe mix several different tracks together. Both programs are easy to use. I haven't played around much with the more advanced program yet because part of the thrill of this for me is being able to have a digital file that still has the pops and cracks of a vinyl record. I like the sound of a needle hitting a record. And I love how the albums get digitized but retain some of the warm vinyl tone. The software also allows you to break each song into individual tracks, which requires you to babysit the record while it converts but that's a shit of a lot better than having to babysit a child.

The software programs also include a massive library of album names and track titles to help name and catalogue your files and which is so far two for four with me, as it recognized Rainer Maria's Past Worn Searching and The Blackheart Procession's 3 but it didn't recognized Bikini Kill or Song of Zarathustra. Actually, that's not all that suprising.

My only two complaints about the iTTUSB are that it doesn't come with a dust cover (there is a different model made by Ion that does) and that it doesn't have an automatic return on the tone arm. But those are far fewer and less egregious complaints than you had about your iPhone. This wonderful little gadget retails for about $159.00 at Best Buy, but I also hear you can buy it at Urban Outfitters, which would give you the added bonus of buying the turntable and being SEEN buying it. You can also get it from Insound.com if you enjoy the suspense of wondering if an expensive piece of electronic equipment can withstand being tossed around in a Fed Ex truck.

So buy it now, and thank me later.

And if you're coming here for new music recommendations, I don't have much for you aside from Shipwreck's new Rabbit In the Kitchen With A New Dress On LP. You can read my review of it somewhere on AmplifierMagazine.com.

Also, Be Your Own Pet's new album Get Awkward is coming out March 17th, and they're playing The Mercury Lounge on 2/20 and Maxwells in Hoboken on 2/21. Tickets are not on sale yet. Speaking of exciting new LP news, Tokyo Police Club is actually going to put out a full-length record. Details to follow.

First Time Long Time

2007-10-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness gracious, my dear readers, I am so sorry that I have been so neglectful of this blog. Isn't that just like me? What do you mean of course it is? How dare you say that about me. You are a terrible, vicious person. You don't care about me. Get out of here. No, stay! I love you! Don't touch me! Okay touch me. Give me a weird, prosthetic handjob like on HBO's "Tell Me You Love Me." Is handjob one word? Does it matter?

Since we last connected via this truly visceral medium, the IT guy at the major, multi billion dollar international corporation I work at (and they are a multi billion dollar corporation, they just like to let their shyness and humility be conveyed through the payroll department) came to my desk personally to uninstall my iTunes. Apparently this company considers iTunes an illegal program due to various licensing issues, and has therefore deemed to cut me off from one of the few things that keeps me from going absolutely crazy from the realization that I am still working here. One of the amusing things about this department is that people are constantly being hired from outside the company for the position directly above mine and then inevitably leave within six months, while I have stayed here for over two years without a promotion. I consider myself like the guy who has a crush on the girl who only dates abusive jerks, and every time she gets hurt by one of these cro-magnons she calls the guy who has a crush on her for consolation, but will never realize that he loves her and is the right guy for her. You'll probably recognize this archetype as played out in the Descendants song, "I'm the One," on their album Everything Sucks. I guess that analogy would be more accurate if I didn't despise this job to my bitter core and if I actually did more than about two to three hours of work-related work.

So regarding my loss of iTunes, I've had to revert back to my Windows Media Player until I can afford one of those neat little iPod docks for my desk. Since I never planned on losing iTunes, I deleted all of the music I had loaded onto the WMP pre-iTunes, so now I have a bare-minimum of mostly older music to listen to. But, at least I can reflect on how great Karate's The Bed is in the Ocean is.

It's not a good time for music-related technology in general, now is it? Saturday, my roommate in my awesome new Astoria apartment offered me one of his unused Oink.com invitations, which I gratefully and with much excitement accepted, only to have the site shut down yesterday and its proprietor dragged away in handcuffs to have a rat cage strapped to his face. Fortunately, this all happened after I downloaded Hum's rare, out of print first album, Filet Show and Song of Zarathustra's also out of print last album, A View From High Tides. See, I'm more than willing to pay for new albums when they come out, in fact I'd prefer to do that, even though it makes me more behind the current state of music than many of my friends. I would rather know that the bands that I love are at least getting what tiny, tiny percentage of the money they get from record sales. To me, it's a show of confidence in the bands I love. It's like voting: sure, my vote might count for very little, but it's better than not voting at all. At least my voice gets heard. It's different from voting, of course, because I don't have to worry about electronically buying the new Tokyo Police Club EP (hey TPC, make a full-length already!) and having it turned, by the company that owns the technology, into the new Nickelback album (yes, Nickelback is as horrible a band as George W. Bush is a president). I am well-aware that bands make more money touring than by making albums, and so a stronger show of support is to buy a concert ticket, but it's much easier to fit a trip to Generations and dozens of subsequent listenings into my schedule than it is to hope Pinback's NYC tour date doesn't fall on a night when I have a previous engagement (which, btw, it did).

Besides, what's the excuse for opting to spend zero dollars on Radiohead's new record? I could easily have downloaded that album when it came out, but since I am determined to show my support for them and their new system by paying at least $10 for In Rainbows, I will have to wait until I get paid again to download it (moving into a new apartment sucked all the money out of me, dear readers). In that instance, there is no distro, no label, almost all the money is going to the band, so why would you be so douchey as to pay nothing for it? Because "information wants to be free?" I hope my company's payroll department doesn't decide to adopt that attitude. Oh, wait, it almost looks like maybe they kind of did.

But so my point about Oink and sites like it is that their appeal to me has always been the ability to get rare albums that I've been looking for since high school (Hum's Filet Show) and albums that I bought on vinyl but can't play since my record player broke and Insound.com is out of stock of (S.O.Z.'s High Tides). To a certain degree this might be considered hypocritical, but I don't believe that it is because like I said I have paid for most of the music in my possession, and a lot of the stuff I've taken for free off of the Internet is stuff that I previously purchased on cassette or vinyl, and wanted an updated digital copy of.

So, hopefully this blog entry will get introduced into evidence when authorities round up every single person who's ever been on Oink.com ever in their lives and strap rat cages to thier faces. Give it to Julia!

A quick word about Filet Show. Hum was one of those bands that got exponentially better and more mature with each release and then tragically broke up after years of labouring without any significant mainstream success (most people know them from their one radio hit "Stars," off of 1995's gorgeous You'd Prefer An Astronaut). Filet Show proves this path of growth and at the same time is a great album on it's own. The sound is a lot more fuzz-rock oriented than the intricate, spacey sound they'd later achieve on You'd Prefer... and Downward is Heavenward, and it's reminiscent of Sunny Day Real Estate's first album except it's not quite as well-engineered. It's a great introduction to one of the 90's best, secretly influential rock bands and if you can get your hands on it despite the mass shutdown of P2P sites, I recommend it. At the very least, you should pick up any of their other three still-in-print jammies.

Okay see you in like three months when I update this again.

Chocolate Rain Oracle

2007-08-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Tay Zonday has not only created the ultimate Summer banger, he's also created a frighteningly insightful and accurate fortune teller and problem solver. Go ahead, ask any question burning on your mind and then click the link below to get answers your life depends on.

Chocolate Rain Oracle!

Ask as many questions as you want and hit "refresh"! The Oracle's insight is amazing and endless!

New Pinback Song Released

2007-07-12T11:01:00.002-07:00

Pinback, the masters of post-hardcore layering and harmonies, have released a track from their forthcoming album Autumn of the Seraphs, the follow-up to 2005's Summer in Abaddon (they now have two more seasons left to match up with mythological/religious symbols). You can stream the new joint, "From Nothing to Nowhere", at the Touch and Go Records site (or click this handy link) . The album comes out on September 11, 2007.

Zach and Rob have been winding the rhythms of their songs steadily tighter since their debut s/t LP, and if this new song is any indication, Autumn will see that trend continuing. The common elements are there: urgent guitar strumming, tight verses that give way to an airy chorus, a prog-like penchant for structuring, and the layering of all these elements over each other at the end of the song. This layering is one of my favorite aspects of Pinback, and I never get tired of the way they do it.

Rumors around the internet are that this album is a little more commercial than their previous efforts. But this is nothing new; Pinback's albums have grown increasingly more commercial as they've gone along. Pinback had all the marks of an album recorded partly in a bedroom and partly in a garage, and the sweet harmonies and catchy melodies generated in that minimalist setting--along with the prior reputations of the ultra prolific Armistead Burwell Smith IV and Rob Crow--helped generate a small but strong critical buzz for the record. Blue Screen Life presented a denser Pinback more focused on expanding their songwriting and adding richer colors to the palette they drew from previously. It also yielded one of the most popular Pinback songs to date, the one everyone seems to know even if they haven't heard a Pinback record, "Penelope", an endearing love song for a goldfish (another part of Pinback's charm is that they write great songs about things like computers breaking and drunken hecklers).

The Offcell EP feels like a brief experimental exercise in multi-part structuring, it's kind of like the equivalent of Rocky Balboa going to Russia to train for his fight against Ivan Drago. The 11:07 "Grey Machine" is not only worth listening to every second of, but is one of the few eleven minute songs that feels more like five. It's a key piece of empirical evidence in the case for Pinback's brilliance.

So Summer In Abaddon could be considered their first attempt at a more mainstream acceptance. Singles were released, videos were made, with MTV2 appearances to promote them. The album took another huge step forward from where they were with Blue Screen Life, with guitar parts that curled around each other and hung gently from breathy harmonies and rich piano lines. The results were evident when I saw them at Irving Plaza, and was surrounded by people who could sing every word of the new songs (and "Penelope"), but weren't quite sure what show they'd wandered into anytime anything from the first album was played.

It's important to note that Pinback has never traded any bit of their musical integrity in exchange for growing success. If their songs have become more commercial, it has not been at the expense of what makes them so lovable. There's has been a process of steady maturation that has not as yet seen them falter and produce a sub-par record.

If you need any further proof of their steady push for an increased listener base, they're playing NYC's Nokia Theatre on October 9th. Nothing says mainstream like playing a theater named after a mobile phone company, in the heart of Times Square. Hopefully a TRL appearance will precede the gig. OMG i luv Zach and Rob 4eva!

Touch and Go Records
Pinback Official Site
Pinback on MySpace

Take A Load Off, Annie

2007-07-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. I know I've been terribly delinquent in sharing with you my musings on music, so while I hammer away at some pressing writing projects that have distracted me from my hordes of comment-leaving fans (yes I have heard of Cloud Cult, they're pretty good), please tide yourselves over by checking out my profile of The Autons at Amplifier Magazine.

From the "Yeah John that was like a million years ago where you been?" file, I was visited upon by a nasty bugger of a stomach virus on July 3rd-4th, and while confined to bed I finally got a chance to see the movie about manic-depressive songwriting genius Daniel Johnston, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston". If you like Daniel Johnston, you've probably already seen it. So, if you don't know Daniel Johnston's music, and you want to know about one of the major influences on alt-folk and alt in general, check out this movie. It's very well done.

Another one of my favorite music-related films, "The Last Waltz" was also running on July 4th. If you've never seen this Scorsese-directed documentary of the last concert by The Band, check it out. It's no "The Song Remains the Same" ("Doesn't anybody remember laughter?!"), but it's great.

Maybe this blog needs a "Ten Great Concert Films" article. Maybe this writer needs more time in the day.

So here's my music recommendations for the week. Most of these are not new, but they are what I've been listening to lately.

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Swell Maps - Jane From Occupied Europe

Daniel Johnston - Fun

Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Everybody's listening to this now, why shouldn't you?

Nine Inch Nails - And All That Could've Been (Live)

See? No swear words or abusive demands...

Flushed Chest

2007-06-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry about this week's blog silence. Hopefully you've all been in heated speculation as to whether my lack of blogging represents my being killed or just a representation of "life goes on" futility.

While I'm hard at work on other projects that are of a higher priority than blogging (yet pay exactly the same, oddly enough), you can quench your thirst for my critical prose by reading my review of Joan As Police Woman's essential new album Real Life. I told you to get this record last week but I know some of you haven't heeded my advice.

This is the point where, if I knew more about HTML, I would insert a YouTube video of JAPW, and my blog would look all neat and professional. Next time.

Freak Scene

2007-06-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I covered the Dinosaur Jr. show at The Filmore at Irving Plaza (Yes, it's now "The Filmore at Irving Plaza". Soon it will be "The American Express Traveller's Cheque Theater at The Filmore at Irving Plaza") for AmplifierMagazine.com. I won't spoil the review by going into too much detail here, but I will say that it was awesome. And loud. Very loud. The place was packed w/Dino Jr. fans young and old. I think there was more thrashing going on closer to the stage, but in the back where I was standing it was mostly "Woo" and "Yeah!", except for the guys to my left who were drunk and looked like the kind of guys who in high school would've punched me in my Dinosaur Jr. t-shirt and who during the last few songs tried to start one of those ridiculous four-person thrash circles that people with mountains of excess aggression try to start amongst their group of friends toward the end of a show when they're drunk and that quickly become aborted when they see a hot chick or someone knocks over a beer. I figure everyone else was filling the time between cheering, when Dinosaur Jr. was actually playing, to think about what their SecondLife characters were going to say about the show.

Don't forget to check out The Loose Marbles in Washington Square Park this Saturday, New Yorkers. And if you like this blog, spread the word about it. If for no other reason than to help me test the counter I set up to help me track the traffic to here.

Thanks, Government!

2007-06-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally got around to depositing my income tax return check, and I decided to use some of it to purchase some albums I'd been wanting to get, but always wound up abandoning for something else entirely when I got to the record store. Would I have had the opportunity to do that on the flat tax system? I ask you, Steve Forbes. I ask you.

(Btw, "something else entirely" in this case means doing things like replacing my cassette copies of Cracker's The Golden Age or NIN's The Downward Spiral with cd copies, as further evidence that my constant quest to be well-versed in current music is hindered by the fact that I'm still obsessively listening to the same music I listened to during my senior year of high school.)

So I'm going to share with you, adoring reader, my selections from yesterday's larger-than-normal shopping spree. Then you will fulfill your end of the bargain by following my advice implicitly, telling your friends that you get all your information about what to listen to from me, and then directing them to my blog. I will in turn sell this blog for millions of dollars and hire a Panamanian child to write it while me and the YouTube guys play "Rock Paper Scissors" over who gets to fuck which model.

Tiger Army -- Music From Regions Beyond
They're described as "Psychobilly punk", but the songs on this album encompass a lot more than that. The psychobilly tremolos are present in a lot of the songs alright, but there are also songs like "Where The Moss Grows Slowly", which sounds like country-flavored Morrissey, and the very Joy Division-esque "As the Cold Rain Falls". The album opens with the aggressively speed-punk "Prelude: Signal Return" and "Hotprowl", and the pop-punk takes over from there. Fans of Bad Religion and Man or Astroman! will like this, as will anyone else who gets off on driving, catchy guitar hooks.
Highlight: "As the Cold Rain Falls"

Amy Winehouse -- Back To Black
Holy crap! Why did I take so long to buy this album? I'll tell you why: b/c I got caught up in the anti-hype. I blame Lady Sovereign, I bought her album only b/c everyone else was talking about it and couldn't believe what a turd it was, and I became jaded. But I'm here to tell you I'm sorry, and I hope you're not making the same mistake. Minimalist R&B production lifts Winehouse's gritty, soulful vocals into the stratosphere, while her lyrics wallow in the bars, back alleys and bedrooms. Excellent.
Highlight: "Me and Mr. Jones"

Kaiser Chiefs -- Yours Truly, Angry Mob
Yours Truly bursts out of the gate with song of the year candidate "Ruby", and doesn't let up on the infections Brit-pop for one second. Every song is a bright, catchy winner, with muscular guitar hooks slinking and crashing around fuzzy bass grooves accented perfectly by bouncy piano and keyboard lines. If you like Duran Duran, you'll love "Love's Not a Competition (But I'm Winning)".
Highlight -- "Ruby"

The Fratellis -- Costello Music
Another band deserving of the hype they're getting, and another album I should've bought like a month ago. Solid, glitzy pop with its left foot on Franz Ferdinand and its right hand on Radiohead.
Highlight -- "Chelsea Dagger"

Battles -- Mirrored
Guitars, drums, synths, and assorted other instruments grind, churn and jitter against each other to create this textured album of mostly-instrumental math rock. Where there are vocals, they are there more for instrumentation than for coherent lyrics. You know who would like this? Anyone who likes bands like The Advantage or The Minibosses, those bands that play songs from Nintendo games. For the record, I count myself amongst that crowd. If you like Turing Machine you'll like this album too. If you've heard of Turing Machine, that is...
Highlight -- "Atlas"

Feist -- The Reminder
Everyone's talking about this album, and with good reason. Her vocals are delicate, the production is sparse and airy, and the elements combine to create supple songs that are vulnerable in all the right places, for all the right reasons.
Highlight -- "Brandy Alexander"

There you have it. And don't think I wasn't eyeballing that new Afghan Whigs compilation, because I was. Maybe next time.

Listen Up!

2007-06-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hello readers. Did you miss your favorite bloggodocio yesterday? Just because I have other matters to attend to (ogling Parker Posey's pic in this week's New York Magazine is time-consuming!), doesn't mean I don't care. You are my bread and butter. My gin and tonic. My Salt-n-Pepa.

I was talking to my lovely and talented friend/colleague Bridie Harrington last night, and she practically tore her slept-upon-while-wet hair from her head begging me to advise her, by way of all of you, some new music to check out. Now, listen, I may not be four steps ahead of everything like the big fancy-shmancy, in-good-with-record-companies music sites or blogs, but I like to think myself relatively on top of things. Also, I'm not in the habit of gobbling up the leaked new Radiohead tracks and whatnot, mostly because my own personal computer is currently in storage until I find a new apartment, and the computer I'm using at the house I'm staying at (my dad's--I'm super-hip) has processing speeds slightly above that of the Apple II E. So while I can't tell you how great the new songs from the album that Neko Case is going to release in 2009 are, I can tell you what I'm listening to right now, and I can implore you to give it a listen.

And please, if you like this blog, the least you can do is forward the link to Rupert Murdoch.

So, here's some shit you'd be a total fucking asshole not to check out.

Von Sudenfed -- Tromatic Reflexxions
Mark E. Smith from The Fall pins the guys from electro duo Mouse On Mars to the dance floor with his knees, while they counter-attack with tentacles of squiggly synths and crunchy hammer-fisting beats. It's a supergroup that works so well precisely because it shouldn't. Highlight: "Family Feud"
www.myspace.com/vonsudenfed
Or read this stunningly well-crafted article about them.

Dan Deacon -- Spiderman of the Rings
This Baltimore madman makes a candy-coated mess of sugary Casio melodies and roller-coaster drum loops for those who've proudly jettisoned their attention spans.
Highlight: "Wham City"
www.myspace.com/dandeacon

Chris Garneau -- Music For Tourists
Beautiful, layered and deeply-emotive piano ballads. Garneau's voice barely breaks the volume of a whisper, but these are some of the most powerful songs you'll hear this year. Take a seat, Vanessa Carlton.
Highlight: "Black and Blue"
Chris Garneau's homepage
A Pulitzer-worthy live review

Datarock -- Self-Titled
This Norwegian duo throws a surprise party for Devo and Kraftwerk in a disco hall, and we all get cake. Word is they released this album by themselves two years ago or so, and it's just now getting attention. "Computer Camp" has a chorus that cribs "Summer-Lovin'" except it's about...computer camp. If you can't get into that, you're dismissed from this blog.
Highlight: "Bulldozer"
www.myspace.com/datarock

Joan As Police Woman -- Real Life
Former Dambuilder and Jeff Buckley band mate Joan Wasser makes an absolutely beautiful and stunning new album. Expertly written, introspective lyrics are pushed along by bouncy pianos and jangly guitars. Antony (of Antony and The Johnsons), another former band mate, makes a guest appearance. Do not miss this album. Don't be all cherry-picking from iTunes, either. Buy the whole thing.
Highlight: Hard to pick one, here. Either "Feed the Light" or "Christobel"
www.myspace.com/joanaspolicewoman

The Snake The Cross The Crown -- Cotton Teeth
I don't think I could say anything about them that would be better said than what this brilliant and probably quite sexy reviewer had to say about it.
Highlight: "The Great American Smokeout"

That's it for now, folks. Get listenin'.

A Word From The Loose Marbles

2007-06-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

I sent an e-mail to the Loose Marbles, letting them know how much I liked their stuff and that I'd written about them on my blog (see entry below). Here is the response I got from Ben, the trumpet player:

"Just read your 'blog' and really enjoyed it. The only things I would say are that there is no drum kit OR washboard on our cd's. Our washboard player does play kit, but not with us. And, we play on the street becuase we prefer to. We like no myspace, website, fancy packaging-- our priority is bringing music to the streets-- to the babies and old ladies and everyone, and this is what we do. We also play plenty of 'gigs', all of which were gotten by playing on the street... See ya in the park..."

I think maybe I might like them even more, now.

Also, apparently they spend the whole Summer playing in the park, so, make sure you go check them out and buy their stuff and tip them well.

"I Wanna Be Your Salty Dog"

2007-06-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

Walking through Washington Square Park Saturday afternoon I find a band playing authentic New Orleans Dixieland blues pomp and stomp under the shade just west of the fountain. They must've just started, and shortly after I plant myself in front of them a larger crowd begins to gather around, attracted by the full spectacle of their sound. It smells like sweat and heat and a little bit of booze around me in the breeze that slinks between the freckle-faced girls in dresses and the curious tourists overdressed for the sneak attack of NYC heat. This is when I love this city the most: I was looking for a place to sit and read Richard Hell's "Go Now", instead I find this raucous band.

Rarely do musicians in the park or on the street or in the subway capture my attention as overwhelmingly as this band does (the last time I was so riveted to an act was the guy on the West 4th Street subway platform who beatboxed through a flute), but this is like walking straight into Mardi Gras, and I'm instantly enamored.

The band's name is The Loose Marbles, as I learn from the guy in charge of announcing such things as their name and that they have cds for sale which were recorded in New Orleans two weeks ago. He does this in between punctuating the effect of the band's authenticity by jitterbugging with a pale-skinned redhead in a blue flapper dress, which is apparently a regular part of their act, and one that the crowd just eats right up. I willingly hand over my ten dollars for one of their cds--a burned disk slipped into a plain white sleeve with the band's e-mail address rubber-stamped on the back of it and bearing no indication of album name or song titles. They also do not have a website or a MySpace page. Gentlemen, your marketing strategies should not be of the same era as your music.

They are mostly young guys. The percussionist looks like he's the youngest, in his mid-twenties and wearing a Sonic Youth "Washing Machine" t-shirt. The clarinet player looks the oldest, but it's not so much that he looks old as it is that his slicked-back salt and pepper hair and black suspenders over a madras shirt open to the chest give him an air of sophistication that makes him look like he just stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Two acoustic guitarists, a bassist, a trumpet player and a Morrissey-looking accordion player round out the band. The trumpet player keeps the beat with a high hat on a tiny pedal he operates with his left foot. The bassist uses a broomstick bass with the string leading to a wooden box instead of a bucket (though on their cd he plays an upright). The percussionist plays a washboard with a cowbell, tiny cymbal and bent tin lid attached to it (he plays a regular kit on their cd, which I am somewhat disappointed to hear). No one is botching the beauty of the stylized music they're playing by making a point to show off their technical prowess. They leave it to us to figure out how goddamned good they are, and we do. Or at least I do. To hell with everyone else, I'm the one with the blog.

At this point they've earned a larger and more consistent share of the crowd than any of the park's current acts, with onlookers ignoring a low-budget hip-hop video being shot at the fountain's 5:00 edge and a guy at the base of the Garibaldi statue blowing blues harmonica over an instrumental backing track. I could listen to The Loose Marbles play their carnivalesque melodies and gleeful multi-instrumentalism all day. A lot of this traditional, early-to-mid twentieth century music--Dixieland, bluegrass, jazz or even 30s and 40s pop (which is amazing and highly recommendable, all the Irving Berlin stuff and the like)--evokes in me this feeling that everything was simpler and a lot more glamorous back then, and that therefore had I been alive back then I would've been simpler and a lot more glamorous, while the reality is that I'd probably have been that era's equivalent of the procrastinating, noncommittal misanthrope, with little interest in marriage and even less interest in breeding, that I am in this era.

The other thing I love about this kind of music and that I realize as I listen to a heavily-tattooed lady lend her bluesy and blaring vocal styling to a lovelorn duet with the guitarist/vocalist, is the moonshine-and-humidity-soaked lyrics, usually confessing either heartbreak or longing for something which of course almost every song ever written does in some way and so in the end it comes down to your personal preference of how you want those messages presented to you and there's just something so wonderful and innocent about how it's done here. There's a sense of confidence in the simplicity of lyrics like "I don't wanna be your man at all/I just wanna be your salty dog" and this feeling like even if you don't get that woman in the end, you'll still have your friends and your music and your whiskey.

The Loose Marbles take a five-minute break. Most of the crowd disperses, heading off to continue whatever their original plans for the day were before they were drawn in to watch a free concert by a band that should be playing well-paid gigs at established venues instead of briefly displacing drug dealers to play for tips and cd sales. Few people opt to take in the man fifteen yards to the left who is doing handstands and balancing a bike on his head. A park official orders a man to remove his dog from the fountain under threat of fine, but takes no issue with the diaper-clad babies which are certainly as much if not more of a health hazard. The hip-hop video shoot has wrapped and the blues harp blower is gone. It's still too hot for early June. I love New York.

"Decisions Will Now Be Ours"

2007-06-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

Today I found an awesome soundboard recording of Fugazi at Philly's Electric Factory in 1997. I saw them there in 2002 with Lungfish and The Ex, and the set list here is relatively similar to what I remember it being then: heavy on songs from my personal favorite album of theirs, End Hits. It makes sense, since that album would be released soon after this show was played, and their next album The Argument wouldn't be released until after I saw them. They played for three fucking hours that night, and I remember thinking how awesome it was when they came out for (what I'm almost positive was) a third encore, and not having any intention of leaving because who knew when I'd get to see them again.

I didn't see them again, and now they're broken up. The fact that Fugazi is currently broken up or on hiatus or whatever term they're using that basically means yeah sorry we're pretty much done is a fucking severe-level travesty. It got me thinking about bands like Fugazi and Sleater-Kinney and Hum and all the other awesome bands that break up or go on hiatus while shit-sucking devil-music makers like Bon Jovi continue to blight our society with their cliche marathons ("It's my life/It's now or never/I ain't gonna live forever", etc. That song is one continuous cliche topped with the cherry of calling Frank Sinatra "Frankie", as if Jon Bon Jovi would've lasted five minutes in a room with Sinatra without getting hung from the balcony by his mullet) and a keyboard player who seems to be consumed by the superstition that if he changes his look by even one degree from what it was when they recorded Slippery When Wet, all of their good fortune will be retroactively annihilated.

Bands like Fugazi, Sleater-Kinney, et al played their music with integrity, and served no one but themselves and their music. That's how they wanted it, and that's how they kept it. No major multi-media stadium tours (unless you count S-K opening for Pearl Jam, which I don't, but if you do you can feel free to start your own blog: it's free), no million-dollar deals, just music. That's what made them so good, and that's why All Hands On the Bad One and You'd Prefer An Astronaut are such great albums and why they are devoid of filler and why they still hold up eight and twelve years (respectively) after being released. When you do that though, when your only allegiance is to the integrity of the band and your band mates, it's a lot easier to call it quits when things aren't working out or when other interests take over.

But when you're in Bon Jovi, man, you've got all that money and fame and success coming at you, and there ain't no way you're breaking up or leaving. Once you get to that level it's like marrying a wealthy man/woman who turns out to be abusive: you get dependant on that wealth and luxury to the point where all you see when you look at your welts are dollar signs. In that kind of setting where you're getting money thrown at you to make shitty music you become willing to overlook any personal issues you might have with your band mates and the music they make, or any aspirations you might have outside the band. And believe me I'm just using BJ (ha, their initials would be "BJ", wouldn't they?) as an example here, there are plenty of other bands you could include/substitute. What they want is to be successful, they want to make lots of money. And how are they going to do it? Music. Let's use our limited musical talents to make lots of money and surround ourselves with people who will tell us our hair looks fine. At the base level, they are no different from the cover bands that tour up and down New Jersey (the real cause of our pollution and foul stench, I'll have you know) collecting appallingly large paychecks for playing cover versions of the very same Bon Jovi songs.

Which is ironic because Fuzzy Bunny Slippers, a cover band who I saw a few times at Jenkinson's Pavilion (now "Jenks") in Point Pleasant where I used to go watch cover bands and drink expensive beer because I was an idiot, used to play a cover of Fugazi's "Waiting Room".

A Modest Endorsement

2007-05-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

People, I have a fantastic idea for you. Bear with me, this is going to be great. Record execs who read this blog, call me in for a meeting immediately. Readers who are friends w/record execs, call them in for a meeting where you will tell them to read this blog and then spend the rest of the hour eating expensive sushi with money that you're not giving to your employees as Holiday bonuses.

Okay, so I was thinking about this problem of record companies hemorrhaging money due to lagging album sales, and I figured out a solution that will enable these companies to increase revenue off of the dying business model of cd production, since they have waited so long to get off of that sinking ship that they have no choice at this point but to go around setting all the clocks.

What the music industry should do is, it should take a page from the television and film industry, and let advertisers influence the content of songs and records. Next time Jessica Simpson gets set to put an album out, get the marketing team from Maybelline together and have them craft an entire brand and subsequent brand story for Ms. Simpson to write her songs around. Scratch that--for them to write songs for her around!

Bands are selling their songs to commercials the second after they purchase their instruments, so why not reciprocate the relationship by having Train's next (piece of s)hit song be titled, "Burger King Queen", a song about a guy who meets a "real Whopper" of a woman while working in the fast food establishment's drive through, and it was after midnight because they are open later than their competitors, and his love for her is almost as valuable as a King-Size Value Meal? By the end of the song, he will ask for her hand in marriage, and she will joyfully reply, "Have it your way!"

People, this is sheer brilliance right here. Ogilvy and Mather, call me in for a meeting right now.

In years past, advertisers had to buy songs from artists, and tailor the lyrics to suit the needs of their product. Say goodbye to that jive, marketing reps. Why not fulfill your need for higher profit shares in the third quarter of FY'07 and your dream of being a hit songwriter at the same time?!?!

The release of Trent Reznor's new Nine Inch Nails album, Year Zero, was preceded by a multi-platform advertising campaign that led fans on a real-world hunt for zip drives containing new songs and clues as to where they can find other zip drives and album-related stuff. Certainly this opens the door for the next Matchbox 20 album to be written entirely by reps from Target, who will design a game that leads listeners on a cross-country tour in search of specially-labeled "Target Matchboxes" underneath pairs of shoes and pieces of affordable furniture, which will eventually lead one lucky Matchbox 20 fan to a key and the location of a lock which upon turning will pull the trigger of a gun that will blow their shitty-music-addled brains all over a huge Target Bullseye behind them as Rob Thomas sobs openly about it into a mixing board and sells it as the B-side to their new single, "My Heart Was Your Target and You Hit The Bullseye, What A Great Deal I Got From You Baby".

Companies get to make more money for their products, the record industry sees increased revenues, and we get what should be the deeply personal experience of listening to and interpreting an album corrupted for us as we listen to it! Everybody wins.

People, I am a maven in the making. Green Day, get me on the phone right now.

Critical Thinking

2007-05-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Onion AV Club's review of the new Shapes and Sizes album:
http://www.avclub.com/content/music/shapes_sizes

My review of the same album:
http://amplifiermagazine.com/reviews/cds/shapes_and_sizes_cd.php

I know comparing myself to other people isn't exactly the best idea, and certainly not the healthiest idea from a creative standpoint (considering that I'm already all like, "Oh what's my blog going to have that a hundred other people's blogs don't have?"), but it fills me with a certain sense of satisfaction when writers and critics that I admire and aspire to be like express an opinion that is somewhat similar to my own. The AV club's review maybe might say what I was trying to say about the record in language that is a little more concise, but I think if I'm reading correctly that we are saying essentially the same thing about this colorful but unfocused record.

Actually, this happened once before. The first review I wrote for Amplifier was of the band 31 Knots. Here's my review:
http://amplifiermagazine.com/reviews/cds/31_knots_cd.php

And here's the review from the behemoth of online music journalism, Pitchfork:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/42131-the-days-and-nights-of-everything-anywhere

To find that the general gist of my review so closely mirrored one from the website whose tone I am constantly striving to emulate was quite the day-maker, I assure you. Certainly I'm not suggesting that my review is as good as theirs, technically or otherwise, the point here is that it gave me a little bit of confidence in regard to whether or not I actually know what I'm talking about.

Of course, in the end it's all subjective, right? I mean what is it that makes a good write-up of an album? Should a good critic be able to trace the origins of a band's sound back to the 19th century? Should they be able to parse every lyric in every song on the record, taking them completely apart and putting them back together again in a way that illuminates an overarching theme and connects said theme to the greater course of human existence? Or should it just be an unspoken contest of who has the best metaphors? And does it even really matter anyway, now that most hardcore music fans are hearing albums through leaks at the same time that critics are receiving their review copies? If the purpose of an album review is to make people want to run right out and buy said album, is the function of the reviewer becoming steadily obsolete with every drastic drop in record sale revenue? Or is it now just that a well-written review makes people want to run out and download an album for free? Why not just go to Amazon.com or the iTunes store and peruse the hastily written, rife-with-poor-sentence-structure user reviews and make your decisions from there? Besides, isn't it much more fun to insult people you'll never meet over their clearly ill-informed opinions of the sound quality on the latest Venetian Snares album?

Which brings me I think to the point (finally!) of what record reviews are, if nothing else: quality journalism. Record reviews, or criticism of any sort, is an art and an exercise unto itself. Learning how to say as much as possible with as few words, and making each word count, is a skill unto itself (a skill that this post is damming evidence of the fact that I have not mastered), and good reviews are just as rewarding to read as a good song is to listen to. That's what makes a site like Pitchfork so great: it is to music what Slate.com is to news and culture, which is to say that they are writing thinkpieces about music. That's why part of their application process is being able to name your five favorite albums from the past four decades; they really actually do want you to be able to trace the origins of a band's sound back to the tune that J.W. Booth blasted out of Lincoln's head.

So and but in the end that's what I strive for when I sit down to carve out my little 250-word reviews: something that is entertaining to read, and hopefully gives someone an idea of what the album sounds like and whether they should go buy it if they are so inclined to actually still purchase music. But any hope that someone might read what I write and be influenced by it should probably be largely squashed, for the fact remains that there are probably hundreds of other places a person can go to get an opinion about a band/song/album, and they can even then turn around and start a free blog where they can run said opinion through their own mental machinery to produce a more personalized opinion to blog about. Hell, there are even criticisms of the Onion AV Club's criticisms under their criticisms! Which is why I believe that record reviews are not only like great journalism, but like great paintings: interesting to look at, unique to a degree, and open to wide interpretation by people who are not necessarily qualified to do so.

And if you disagree with me, I'll see you in the comments section.

Introductory Miscellany

2007-05-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hello all and welcome to my brand new blog. I have decided to finally cave in and go the Blogspot route, mostly because it is far more suited to presenting me with the sort of instant gratification that I am forever on the hunt for than trying to figure out how to get a blog onto my website would be. Historians and future biographers may want to note that I was reading fellow writer/performer and technical aficionado Pat Baer's blog when I finally surrendered to unspoken peer pressure. But that's all irrelevant and neither here nor there nor anywhere else in particular that I could find.

I write about music (www.amplifiermagazine.com) and comedy (www.ucbtheatre.com/ny), and this blog will be sort of an extension of all that. Hopefully. Otherwise, I'll maybe post to it twice and it will proceed to sink into the internet's vast muck of unused web pages. Most of that muck being, of course, sketch and improvisational comedy groups/shows that decided to create myspace pages for their two-month runs and went out and got 300 friends (said friends being not quite so much potential new audience members as fellow performers who probably really only accepted the befriending as a means to promote their own shows that the person(s) befriending them would've come to see anyway). The musings in this blog are strictly reflective of my own personal opinions, not those of the entities mentioned above, or of any pets I might've owned during the course of my life. In perpetuity.

When not writing about music and comedy, I work a ridiculous and mind-shredingly boring day job; another in an endless series of much-hated work that relates in no way to any of the things that I prefer to be doing with my life other than that every two weeks they deposit a certain amount of money into my bank account which allows me to purchase records.

So, this blog will probably, in some form or another, encompass all of those aspects. Others too, perhaps.

I just listened to the new brakesbrakesbrakes album The Beatific Visions (www.brakesbrakesbrakes.com), which I bought b/c I'm reviewing their show at Maxwell's in Hoboken in two weeks and I hate going to write about bands that I am completely unfamiliar with. I'd prefer to know the songs they're playing at least vaguely, so when they play them I can say, "Oh yeah that's that song" and then scribble some lyric or bit of the song in my notebook so when I get home I know what to look for if I need to reference it in the piece. I'm not sure where they're from but while I wait for their MySpace page to load I'm going to speculate that they are either from Scotland or they are Scotsmen from England. Oh, they're from Brighton, UK. Listening to it a second time through now, I'm kind of enjoying Eamon Hamilton's frantic, hyper vocals. However, lately I've been finding myself disappointed with bands who's records waver too much between two or more different tones. I felt that way about the Shapes and Sizes album that other reviewers seemed to enjoy, and my snap-judgement opinion about this record (should I be making snap judgements about records instead of letting them sink in more? Sure! Why not?!) is along the same lines. There's a lot of simple and engaging guitar rock jangle in these songs, but they move from blasting power-pop to alt-country to 60's Brit-rock in a way that sort of just makes me want them to stick to one of those things. That being said, tracks "Beatific Visions" and "On Your Side" are really good and lead me to believe that they are better when they hue closer to their country-and-blues-influenced-brit-pop influences. "Margarita" sounds like The Cars being fronted by John Lydon coming off Percocet. I mean that as a compliment.

A far more enjoyable album, one that grabbed me instantly and has yet to let go, is by a band named Pela and is called Anytown Graffiti. They are opening for brakesbrakesbrakes at Maxwell's, and I got their album first because it was cheaper and I didn't have as much money last week in the new music account I've partitioned off (which is not so much an account as it is me deciding I want to buy new music and making unresearched guestimates about how much money I have in my bank account and what I can afford to spend). The repetition of "Come sit next to me/'Cause I have become your enemy" in opening track "Waiting on the Stairs" should go on a lot longer than it does, but the fact that it doesn't just keeps me coming back to it. If you like Les Savy Fav (I'd prefer to think I live in a world where everyone likes Les Savy Fav), you will enjoy Pela. If you like Interpol and Modest Mouse, you will enjoy Pela. If you like babies and kittens and freedom, you will enjoy Pela. www.myspace.com/pela.

Wow, what a long initial post. The bar has been set, folks. Tell your friends that this blog exists so they can "tag" me and I will have to answer revealing questions about myself.

And yes, the title of this blog is a reference to a song by the band Chavez. They may very well be my favorite band ever.