Archive for category RECORDS.
Trail of Dead | So Divided
Before I saw this band a couple weeks ago at Maxwell’s, I had only heard their one record Source Codes & Tags from 2002. After I bought the ticket online, I figured I should listen to it a little. I mean I had listened to it but not in years. Why go to that show then? Just seemed like the kind of show I would see at Maxwell’s; a semi-obscure new(ish) band I wasn’t even sure I liked. I’ve just never been into seeing the same few bands over and over, that was not really my scene. I’ll miss it the same but let’s keep moving in the direction of new bands, right. Anyway, turns out I no longer had a copy of any of their albums. I must have deleted the folder one day sorting things and I just couldn’t get over the full name of the band messing up my alphabetization. (The same fate has befallen “!!!”.) I guess I didn’t feel they were good enough to make an exception and I didn’t think of just using the shorter version. This was during my drinking period when I just made these kind of decisions easily. I got angry that they had this outlandish name and yet somehow did not really back it up on record. Wasn’t the hype with this band how crazy they were live? I made a mental note to just see them live one day because I was not getting it. The record is not crazy enough.
This record is much, much less crazy. Now that I have seen them live, I get the hype. Ten years later, they must have mellowed out a little as no one in the band went to the hospital that night, which was supposedly a regular occurrence in the past. I can only imagine what they were like then, but it was still pretty great. Super high-energy, noisy guitars, switching out of instruments, leaving the stage with extended guitar solos in the middle of the pit, it was like anything could happen. They even had multiple problems with the sound cutting out on the PA and various amps and it didn’t even slow them down. With no intention of doing so, I got really into it. More than any other Maxwell’s show I think. It was not even like going back to a typical early 00s show for me, it was like a 90s show with a full pogo-skank mosh thing going on.
A couple days later I got my paycheck so I thought of buying a Maxwell’s shirt online since I didn’t have any money at the show for one. (Didn’t even get a last meal or beer there, had barely enough to even get there. Sucks but what can you do. I was glad to go at all.) Then I thought that was dumb. I’m not carrying the torch for this place that’s voluntarily gone under, lemme actually buy this band’s records instead. That’s what I’m supporting. Stick to yr guns, man.
So…I figure I almost can’t go wrong here with albums. I pick this one because the cover is so weird it doesn’t seem to match what the band is about at all, looks like a CGI anime soundtrack. Yeah, the sound of the record doesn’t seem to match what the band is about at all either. Doesn’t quite sound literately like an anime soundtrack, but doesn’t sound like the band I just saw. This is kinda interesting actually, to me, and I don’t hate it. I just don’t get it. Like there’s so many keyboards and layered harmonies. I don’t expect a band to sound exactly like a record, like I don’t think you should hold back on a record just because you’re not going to able to replicate whatever exactly. But live they have no keys of any kind and mostly yell everything. Not terribly, but nothing remotely smooth or Beatle-esqe like on this thing. I think the title track has some representative moments that really capture the band, but no one has posted that anywhere. Here’s the single from this album:
Pretty decent to me. Not anything like them but it’s a good tune. Ends with what might be a rousing audience sing along if they ever played it live which they do not of course. Because live they do not have acoustic guitars and keyboards and six bongo players. And an accordion. One of the opening bands at that show, The Red Paintings, actually had an accordion player and a violin player. This just seemed random and weird at the time, but I would have seen it as an awful tease if I knew. (Also the band Ume played who are like noisy-period Blonde Redhead, which I like. Did I mention there were girls at this show? Much higher percentage than an average metal show. That was nice.)
Anyway, I like the album, but I think this type material should be under a different name tho, it’s more like a side project of the singer(s). And again, the name of the band is goddamn ridiculous so how could they even think of crossing over? No one is going for that.
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White Stripes | De Stijl
Since Maxwell’s announced it was closing I’ve been thinking about great shows I seen there. Seems like everyone is talking about having seen R.E.M. or Nirvana playing there when they first started out even tho there can’t have been that many people there at the time. When I saw the White Stripes there, it was a packed house. Maybe that makes it not that special. It was pretty much the point when this record hit; they might even have booked this gig last-minute after selling out a bigger NYC venue, I don’t remember. Everybody knew they were going up from there, and they got pretty big for quite a while, uh, remember? But they didn’t Change Rock Forever or whatever you’re supposed to do to be remembered a couple years after your band breaks up. Maybe it’s a relatability thing. People like the music of the White Stripes, but they don’t seem like your buddies. They did not start doing this for fun one day and become successful in spite of themselves. Everything they did was calculated and intentional. Despite the simplicity of their early work, the commitment to their singular aesthetic seemed bizarre. Even the Ramones gave you the impression that they just dressed like that all the time. These two clearly did not; it was impossible. They were spotless.
I want to say that I bought this record at the show, because that justifies telling this whole story. I may have already had it. Because it was definitely in stores and I was spending a lot of time on stores then (this was like summer or fall of 2000). I remember I bought their first record at that show because it was harder to find. I also painfully remember not buying any of the 7-inches they were selling that are now worth hundreds at least. Didn’t have a record player at the time. And it wasn’t worth carrying more than a couple CDs the 12 blocks to the PATH station. (CDs fit nicely into a back pocket.) Anyway, I hardly ever listen to that first record anymore so I guess I’m not reviewing it. Good record, like all their records, but I like this one best.
When I first heard the White Stripes, it was on the radio, WFMU. I thought it was a rare Led Zep outtake:
I was dumbfounded to learn this was a new band and that no one was even making the comparison at the time. (Also, I was drunk.) Hello Operator was also in heavy rotation then. The stripped-down nature of the band is much more obvious on this track. But the band was first popular not with fans of classic rock, but with underground garage rock scene out of Detroit. All of these bands are very blues-based, but mostly filtered through the Stooges, not Zep.
But I don’t need to tell you all that, somebody else could do it better. This was just my first impression from where I was coming from at the time. This band paralleled a dovetail of several interests and ideas I was having then, as I had just left art school to play in a garage rock band which almost immediately broke up as soon as we were all fully committed to it, right before these types of bands were getting popular. I don’t need to go into that (“we were almost laughingstock also-rans!” it’s kinda funny, the turmoil in hindsight), but these ideas were all still on the surface of my brain. I was also obsessed with female drummers.
Being a drummer, I have thought a lot about what it takes to be good. Possibly more than I have practiced being good. My theory is that the female drummer is superior for a certain type of rock music because she is less concerned about showing off and more about complimenting the feel of the song. It’s a weird, sexist but positivist theory that girls can rock harder inherently because guys have confused rocking to be a macho thing, which it really isn’t. They (we) will build up these bullshit arm muscles to hit the drum harder. For a girl to play hard, she’s going to put her whole body into it, which is going to give the music a better feel. Meg White is the coincidental embodiment of this idea. Some people think she’s a shitty drummer, but put Jack in front of a human metronome and you’d have a band no one would give a shit about. He’s great as player and songwriter, but you need the feel and the push of that not-giving-a-fuck style. That was what elevated the group into something original. (Which is apparently why the group broke up, she really didn’t care, it was not a put-on. How long is rock group supposed to last, so what.)
THE REST OF THE SONGS: Besides the heavy early blues influence (up to and including straight covering early blues songs) that is simply something shared with Zeppelin (if you ignore the Robert Plant-ish delivery) that rules most of the album, you’ve got the song I’m Bound to Pack It Up which is soo Zeppelin III. I love it tho. But there’s also a few songs with piano that really stand out, if that’s a direct homage to someone else I can’t place it. I bet someone else has. How about that triple tremolo? Did he even use that? The guitar seems pretty straight up. The visuals and text of the booklet really seem designed to throw you off. It’s pretty pretentious but they didn’t have the budget yet to make it seamless and really cool. It’s exactly as silly as it should be. Maybe that’s that why I like it best. Maybe not I just need a way to wrap this thing up already.
Bikini Kill/Huggy Bear | Split LP
Split LPs create a unique problem in titling blog post reviews. But forget about that. I love the split LP as an object unto itself, but am annoyed by it when it comes time to organize. I just came across this split the other day in a folder marked “206”, the Kill Rock Stars catalog number. That’s how it came when I bought the download last year direct from the KRS site. Since then they’ve been moving their digital sales to bandcamp, except for the Bikini Kill stuff because they bought the rights back or whatever. This release gets unfortunately gets lost in the shuffle. To prevent it from getting lost again in my own collection, I’ve split the release up into the respective artist folders because it’s really just 2 EPs released together for convenience sake. Convenience as a sell-able item that is. It’s the kind of thing that makes sense as a physical object. Except it doesn’t of course if you like to keep your records in order. Then all you can do is put it with the other split releases, possibly by catalog number. It’s almost enough to make you not care about anything at all, ever. Why even buy records, or talk about them? Maybe it’s time to delete all your blogs, stop checking your email, there’s no goddam point to anything if you can’t even keep a record collection in order. A record collection? Why?
But then you get over that cause there’s not really that many of them. And you can always sell them. You don’t even have to review them. It’s all right. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine and good. The mp3s can go in separate folders, it’s going to be ok.
Huggy Bear, come over here for a second. I just want to talk. I got this for you guys. I like Bikini Kill fine, but all the songs on their side are on their other records in better versions. The slower version of Rebel Girl is interesting, I can’t believe that started out as a slow song. Not much else to say about it. But the cover is great. Don’t really get what you were going for with your cover. It wasn’t posted on the site when I bought it. I like to think that the BK cover is the the real cover of the entire release but we know that’s not true. It’s ok. I remember the 90s. I wasn’t really “around” for the early Riot Grrrl scene, but I remember all the reactionary aesthetic moves that seemed necessary at the time. So, a lot of things about this release seem a little jarring compared to your comp album Taking the Rough with the Smooch, but not that much considering the context. That comp has a real timeless feel to it tho. It’s one of my favorite 90s punk albums (even if it wasn’t conceived as an album). I didn’t even know there was more, I thought you guys were like the Germs. I don’t know why it took that long to find you had more albums. I’m going to have to check out the later stuff. Anyway, I like how this stuff matches the sound of the stuff on the comp, but I can see why none of it made the cut. I don’t really get what most of the songs are about; seems to be some British scene-related fashion policing. And there’s non-politicized young romance stuff, complete with a Charlie Brown sample. THAT’S SO 90s. I just mean, it is. Maybe you just didn’t think of the band as having a real set in stone image but I thought of it as a super angry, kinda beatnik/anarchist thing. Those angry songs were also the catchiest. I guess I get it, with the cover and all. This is more real autobiographical stuff about just being young people in a band? And the other early stuff is the ultimate fantasy of Super Punks…unless you guys were really killing cops in the streets. I’m not saying you weren’t…it just seems like that would be more known. I didn’t research it if there’s some open cases there. If there is, don’t answer this. I mean, it’s a blog post. That would be pretty stupid to give yourself up in a blog post comment after all this time. Not saying you would do that. It’s just…ok enough of that.
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If you people out there want a legit copy of this thing you’re going to have to get the vinyl used from a 3rd party, which will get the bands exactly as much money as if you torrent it or whatever it is you do, but you’ll have that piece of vinyl that going to stare at you from whatever random shelf you put it on cause you don’t know what to do with it…for the rest of your days. You’ll want to put it on sometimes tho, it’s pretty good.
...apparently you will find another band that is like kiddie techno or something if you look for the mp3s on amazon (but they have the other albums).
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Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno| IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno
AMT is a band I have always respected more than listened to. No matter how great they are to experience live, I can’t find a record that changes this. I mean I think they’ve put out some good recordings of some memorable songs, but I don’t know any of their records front to back. Until now. I mean like right now. Because while writing this post I had to really listen to the song and pay attention to the parts of it and I’m pretty into it. I was going to go more with something like, “well, you have to be there”. “There” being in a crowd of people dancing inside a cloud of pot smoke illuminated by lasers. While that helps, this is hardly an aimless jam. (“This” is a single 51 minute track, not entitled “IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno” but “OM Riff From the Cosmic Inferno”.)
First, some words on “The Cosmic Inferno”: I can’t really tell the different incarnations of this band apart. I don’t really know why they do it, but I like that they do it. You can get more info about that some place else. What am I, gonna rewrite a Wikipedia article? I’m not. It’s just something that should be mentioned. I didn’t put it in the title of the post at first so it would fit in one line, but it didn’t fit in one line anyway. This really bothered me, so I put it in and now it fills out two lines very nicely. But maybe your screen resolution is different and it looks terrible. I’m trying not to think about it.
Also, this is basically an extended semi-stealth cover. I didn’t know this until I read the notes on this bootleg which I mentioned in the last meta post.
Om Riff *a musical portmanteau of Gong’s “Master Builder” and Steve Hillage’s “The Glorious Om Riff”. Also known as OM Riff, also known as Om (or OM) Riff From the Cosmic Inferno.
OR IS IT. Short answer: yes. That’s kinda it. Resorting to wiki, we find Om Riff is just Hillage’s remake of Master Builder. Hear both here (or not).
Alright, so they just remade it again and added the chanting part. Well they added some stuff and stretched it out, but the “chant” is from another version of Master Builder from the live album Gong est Mort, Vive Gong. It’s at this point I start to become concerned about my inconsistent usage of italics vs. quotation marks but I am resolved to continue regardless, but why? Why do I do it. Why does it keep—oh. Here:
AMT’s version adds sections of ambient monk-like chants at the beginning, end and part of the middle. It’s not until about 2:30 the the “IAO chant” and The Riff begin. Rhythm guitar sticks to that over a propulsive beat and among swirling synth sine sweeps while main man Kawabata Makoto embarks on a wild noodly solo that eventually becomes an open-ended counter-riff. Then around the 18 minute mark the beat fades. The synth and rhythm guitar relax into drony washes. The counter riff continues but recedes into the background. After a few minutes a slow beat returns for another long solo backed by a one note dirge on rhythm until we hit 30 minutes. Then both guitars lock in to a simple gradually accelerating crescendo figure which becomes a phasy bridge which leads back to the beginning: the beatless chant (but this time with bagpipes? Nope, it’s hurdy gurdy.) and the triumphant return of The Riff and all the rest of that. They ride that for another fifteen minutes, which is a bit much, and towards the end it’s barely the song anymore, it’s kind of a glorious mess that even the main riff is buried in, but, eventually (45:20) the keyboard comes through with the actual Master Builder melody. Which, if you have the liner notes you can sing along to. (They don’t.) But it’s a pretty good payoff once you know it’s coming. Without noticing these separate parts it seems pretty structureless. And if you come in at the middle (like if you’ve got in the car or an iPod) it seems to end too quickly, the chanting part and feedback as everything falls apart at the end is only a minute. But they already ended the song once at the halfway point. It seems like a logical compositional choice. Or maybe they were running out of studio time and overestimated how long they could pad out one song to album-length so it just turned out that way. I don’t know.
Btw you can see all the liner notes at this site.
And you know what, of course the entire thing is also on youtube. Sure it is.
But wouldn’t ya rather buy it? Because you can get it for a buck. I mean the CD is regular CD price but it’s only one song and these guys don’t give a fuck, clearly, about trying to charge you more just because they had some some fun with it. Support that! And yes, the track is mistagged as “IAO Chant From The Cosmic Inferno”. Why you gotta be so uptight about everything? You can change it if you want. You can do that. Go do that. Enjoy. Listen to it more than once. %
Slayer | Decade of Aggression
I was definitely going to write about this record at some point because altho this is not a “real album” (favorite Slayer album would be Seasons), D.O.A. is my most listened to Slayer record. But now guitarist Jeff Hanneman has untimely departed and I need to write something now. This is not just any live record, it’s the greatest of greatest hits comps, which is why it was a favorite of high school road trips. On cassette, this album was blasted on repeat and was the soundtrack to what I’m simply going to call “shenanigans”. This would be when I was a Freshman and we would have school trips where they actually let Seniors drive. This can’t possibly still go on today, but I think some of the people responsible are still employed by the school system somehow so that’s all I’m going to say about that.
We don’t need to go all the way down Memory Lane, but while we’re there I’m guessing I first heard Slayer on Headbanger’s Ball: (yes, a wiki link for those not nearing death)
Seasons in the Abyss, a Hanneman composition, is not really a representative work. It’s a slow song, with a semi-melodic, weirdly catchy chorus.
The version on D.O.A, like almost all the songs on the record, is nearly the same as the studio recording. A testament (what other word could you use) to Slayer’s commitment to consistent quality (of their sort). The liner notes famously boast:
Unlike most other live recordings, this is Slayer completely “LIVE”. No overdubbing exists on this recording.
It might not be clear now why you would need to say this when there’s bootlegs of every show anywhere and bands no longer put out a double live record every five years, but in Rock History this kind of record was usually seen as a bit of a sham. Besides being a simple money grab by the label or an easy contract fulfillment on the band’s part, vocals and solos on these kinds of records were often redone in the studio, giving a false impression of what the band (and/or their recording equipment) was capable of live. This is especially important with a band like Slayer where technique is a lot of the point, obviously. On first listen, it’s pretty mind-boggling that they can play these impossible songs perfectly (only songs with added sound effects like Raining Blood and Dead Skin Mask are really different at all) but if you pay attention you can notice that they are in fact, humans. It doesn’t take away from the songs; you respect them even more for presenting the performance as is. This is a great live band.
However, I have not seen them live myself. So, now I will never see the original lineup of Slayer. I’m pretty bummed about this. I don’t know how else to say it. The band did not really inspire emotional closeness with its members. So much so, that I shouldn’t even refer to them in the past tense, as they will be continuing on with Gary Holt of Exodus. It won’t be the same, but it’ll still be a good show (unless you’re a fucking poseur) and I’ll still try to see it before the rest of the band dies. Er, I just mean, I plan on outliving them. I…don’t want them to die of course, but I mean…I will, hopefully. Who knows. I grew up loving these bands that I never even planned on seeing live really. These big bands were just out of my reach. I could see GWAR or whoever five times for the price of one of these big shows, and so it was. Then a couple years ago I figured, holy shit, half these dudes could die at any minute. I think it was when Lemmy admitted to still drinking daily and btw, he’s a diabetic! I searched for tix to their next show that day. That was top priority. Slayer was next on the list after Tom Araya’s neck surgery. I didn’t think one of their deaths was imminent, but they are starting to become less-abled. Can’t really headbang like they used to to. Can still play tho, and that’s what I want to see. Well, fuck. If they don’t get Lombardo back I don’t know if I will now. That’s life. Can’t do everything.
After that surgery, Hanneman got bit by a spider, which was bad. It got worse. Holt filled in. I waited.
Some people still seem to think that the spider bite killed Jeff. Uh…sure…might have been the last straw, but it’s like saying someone who had AIDS died of the flu. Not to really dwell on this cause I’m not anti-every drug or anything but get real. Unlike Lemmy, Hanneman did not really play up substance abuse as part of his ongoing persona—he seemed like a regular guy. He wasn’t a talker, he was a doer. Do he did. Don’t deny it is all. Let’s talk about something else tho. What about his old guitar with all the stickers? That was great. Got into the Dead Kennedys just because he had that sticker. Of course he also had the Nazi death’s head on there at one point, in the photos in this booklet he had already replaced it with a regular pirate skull & bones. I didn’t get a copy of this until the late 90s, ordered it from BMG or Columbia House I think, def worth it. There’s also older photos when the band was starting out when they had a lot of studded leather and nail gauntlets and shit like that. I thought it was cool that they just stripped out all that gimmicky shit. They even performed under simple, steady red lights, supposedly. I mean it’s cool when bands go all out with a bunch of nonsense but sometimes I think, “didn’t Slayer decide this was over 20 years ago?”
Slayer were (are) not Nazis or serial killers, or insane. I have mixed feelings about the metal scene in general what with the…occasional actual insane killer Nazis. People wanna call those guys “true” metal; I feel like those are the people that don’t get it. What if Steven King was really a killer clown or a not even a person but a kind of fog monster that turned people inside out? That…that would be pretty goddamn cool…but it wouldn’t have anything to do with his books, right? I remember in the car, in high school, hearing “I Am The Anti-Christ” for the first time. I was not that many years out of transferring from a Catholic school then and it seemed like the wrongest thing you could say in a song, it was so great. Then he gives the fucking speech to crowd:
Listen: you guys in the front here, you see someone going down, help ’em out, that’s what you’re here to do, help each other out.
Then of course it goes into WAAAAAR EENNNSEEEMBLEEE. I’m almost crying. That is “it”. Not…that, the whole thing, all of it. I think there’s another show ( shitty bootleg) where they say they don’t give a fuck and everybody should kill each other, but that was just the liquor talking. Get a sense of humor.
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