Archive for category RECORDS.
Fugazi | Kansas City, KS USA, 8/28/93
This is my first dive into the live Fugazi vault. I never got to see them so one’s as good as any. I saw a lot of shows as a…youth. It was mostly a random thing back then. I remember mostly buying walk up tickets to shows that had no hope of selling out. Fugazi shows, unlike the band itself, always sold out, fast. They were popular and cheap. You had to have your shit together to get those tix. I did not, as they say, have the straight edge. Sometimes I think about how things might have been different…if I had gotten into one of these shows. It was that time in life when any little thing can Change Everything. I definitely had one of those moments when I bought my first Fugazi albums on cassette at the local comic book shop. First the Margin Walker EP, then Repeater. Mind-blowing stuff, but not the same as a live show. Certainly not the same as a Fugazi show, which by most accounts was a very guided experience. I used to get pretty wild at shows, not violent—I was not into the hardcore scene—but it got dumb. Crazy. A bit much, perhaps. Maybe if someone I respected gave my a stern talking to I would have toned that shit down. But for a time, getting completely retarded at shows was like all I had. It was a lot of fun. I could imagine instead that whole time just hanging back, shaking my head, feeling superior…everything coulda turned out different!
Or maybe not. I’m basing that whole idea on what I thought these shows were like. It’s a space that lives in my head, built up over the years by second-hand reports, that Instrument movie, bootleg tapes of out-of-context stage banter, and seeing Ian talk in person once at the Wetlands. He’s a completely reasonable man who seemingly can back up every suggestion with both a warm heart and cold logic. But you know he has this wild screaming alter-ego that can swing into this weird recess monitor mode. How did all these things resolve in reality?
I have looked for the answers in YouTube clips, as one does. Of course there’s plenty of live clips, but there’s plenty of Ian talks. They’re all pretty good if you need a general motivation boost, he’s good at that kind of thing, and you know he’s not bullshiting you with some positive thinking nonsense or made-up stories. It’s the real Punk ideas. But it’s even better when he gets real specific:
You’re gonna wanna watch this whole thing, but it’s at around the 40 minute mark that he describes the details of this Kansas City gig. With the magic of the internet and this meticulous archive, the full show was easily found, and upon the clearing of my meager paycheck, purchased and downloaded.
What comes through in these recent talks and the full shows in context is the band’s sense of humor. Even the strictly enforced $5 ticket price, which people are still today having friend and career-ruining arguments over after 20 years of inflation, was originally done because they “thought it was funny” (and perhaps more importantly for any note-takers: “because they could”).
Although there are some serious and practical matters behind some of the banter (around the 1 hr mark in the above talk Ian discusses some very real and unfortunate consequences of show violence), there’s times when you listen to some tapes of the stuff when you have to ask, “are these guys fucking kidding?” YES. When you listen to the whole show it’s clear they are at times actually attempting to lighten the mood. Like this thing with making the audience sign a petition? It happens pretty much exactly like he tells it in the story. And then turning all the lights off is just fucking with people—these guys are having a ball. That is Rock’n’Roll. That’s all Punk is, right? It’s about what’s possible with the reality in front of you. That’s so great that you can hear this story and then hear the actual thing and it all matches.
Oh, and there’s the music. I don’t know if they had any bad gigs, really, but this is good one. Great recording. I’m reminded that, even tho I’ve gotten all the albums over the years, I barely remember the ones that were not on Margin Walker (more commonly known now as the second half of 13 Songs) or Repeater. Played the shit out of those tapes, still have em. I’m also reminded of the song Rend It, which was put on a mixtape for me once. A mixtape I may have missed the point of, but which I also played the hell out of and still have. I’m not really a hidden message guy. It might seem stupid but my message is usually “check this music out”. I mean at times it could be “let’s have sex”, but that really seems better left to the moment, and would be said in those words. Rarely it could be “I am eternally devoted to you and there’s nothing you, or even I, can do about it” but that is almost always taken as deeply creepy, and rightly so. Never would you get that message in a Fugazi song. These guys are on that level level. Comparatively speaking. I’m way off. Sorry.
This is like when, uh, your lover turns over to you on the pillow and says ‘but now I can’t see your genitals’, it’s a lot like that. That ever happen to you?
—Guy Picciotto, on turning off all of the lights
Great version of Waiting Room. Bang, pow, smash.
%
Major Lazer | Get Free
I don’t love everything Diplo does and am not really a Dirty Projectors fan but when you combine this goofy Major Lazer project with psudo-serious (or I-don’t-know-what) singer Amber Coffman the result was pretty nice. I fell in love with the song after seeing the video and pretty soon it was stuck in my head 24/7.
This goes on for a while. I need a copy of the song before I lose my mind but the album is not out yet at that point and am I really going to go for a full Major Lazer album? Hell no, who am I trying to kid. I make the rare single purchase from Amazon before realizing I already had a copy of the song on my hard drive which I downloaded before they even made that video. So that happened. But I got the full release with the remixes. It turned out I had also downloaded them before too. Hell. Some impression they made, huh? I listened to them enough times now to feel like I got my money’s worth and I feel fine about it. Fine. According to wiki, Amazon gypped me a remix. I don’t know what that’s about but probably wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t just check how many there were.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re fine remixes. It’s hard to screw up a song with a nice lilting melody like this one, but they’re all uptempo versions which undermines the slo-mo post-party mood of the original. I also like the low synth sound on the verses, the fake tuba bass line that is a direct stylistic lift from whatever but it sound good, man. None of that in the remixes. They just make up whole new backdrops for the vox, whatever. Nice, but not really revelatory. I’m sure they would sounds great in a club after you are sick of the slow version being played out. Weirdly (or not) the slow version is more uplifting emotionally if not adrenaline pump-inducing.
It’s a good little record first thing in the morning to slowly ramp up your mood into consciousness and some kind of physical activity. (If that’s your thing.) %
PS: I noticed there are some performances where Ms. Coffman omits what some have dubbed “the Tarzan yell”, probably because someone told her it was racist right before she went on stage or something. Dude? It’s a Morricone reference. Good the Bad and the Ugly? Are you ok, dude?
Hand to Man Band | You Are Always on Our Minds
I’m a big fan of Mike Watt but don’t have much of his post Minutemen/fIREHOSE stuff. I don’t even have all those albums, which I should really get to. I just like the dude. He does a lot of stuff. His solo albums often have a heavy personal theme and I haven’t been able to give that kind of stuff my full attention to appreciate it, but I felt like I had to get at least one of these newer records and check it out so I got this one. To be needlessly honest (almost the entire point of this blog), I may have confused this project with Floored By Four, which has Yuka Honda in it. I guess I’m gonna have to get that record too. He started two whole bands almost at the same time while he was already doing solo stuff. That’s just the kind of guy he is.
But hold on, this is not just Watt and some random obscuros either. You got guitarist John Dieterich from Deerhoof on this thing, who also does some vocals. Watt does his semi-spoken thing too. But it’s almost an instrumental record. If you took typical Watt basslines and Deefhoof guitar and just mashed it up, you would get a record that sounds nothing like one. It’s more like a mashup of the kind of low-key indie rock that drummer Tim Barnes is associated with, and the atonal free jazz of pianist Thollem McDonas.
I’ve just got the mp3s and even tho I don’t have a really strong opinion on any of the individual songs, I’ve racked up quite a number of plays on this thing. I usually put it on at night and fall asleep to it, or have it on in the background during the day. It’s all pretty laid back. I think the cover, which is pretty kickass, is a little misleading. I recommend this album if you have a severe anxiety problems, or if you have a habit of ingesting so much caffeine you think your heart might explode if you don’t fall asleep immediately. Something about matches up with my brainwaves around bedtime: tired but tense. Or, if I’m trying to work on something, it kinda unsticks me; I can just keep going, sleepy, shambolic, confused, but moving forward. If I was a critic, which I am not, I don’t know if I would give it a high score for musicianship. These are great musicians kinda sleepwalking their way through a record. I happen to like it. I think this resonates the way late-period Radiohead does for a lot of people who are, like Radiohead, more or less conventional rock people who just got bored with rocking out. So they throw in some downtempo free jazz. This band is more like for people who see free jazz live. This record is like a 2am set in a club after an evening of the members’ respective bands tearing shit up. You know, the kind of club that has 2am sets? Yeah, there’s not too many of those. %
Sadgiqacea | Submerged in Manichea
These guys are local (South Jersey/Philly) but they’re starting to get big. Bigger than local. Big for sludge-doom metal. Big enough that a google search actually brings up the band instead of whatever they are named after. [Actually, the name is pronounced like some Native American word but it turns out to be completely made up.]
They’ve got a new one coming out on Candlelight Records, but I just got around to this one, which is their debut EP. I think it’s just a cleaned-up demo, in that it’s probably the first thing they recorded, done entirely on their own and then they got a label to put it out pretty much as is. But I’m just guessing. That makes the most sense, but it’s the music business. Maybe there are demos of this album, one dude on a beat-up acoustic, the other beating on a cardboard box, recorded onto micro-cassette in a basement bedroom. Epic 10-minute songs like that. Just the thing the people at HORROR PAIN GORE DEATH Records are looking for. (That is really the name of the label.) So maybe they do that and get an advance to buy real instruments? I really don’t know.
It was recorded at the Savage Rock School by Mike Britt. Savage Rock School is, or was, an actual place of musical instruction, not a clever name for a recording studio. Maybe a lot of bands record there. It is a mystery. South Jersey is sometimes a mysterious place. Mostly mind-numbingly boring, but sometimes mysterious. (The answer to the mysteries is usually also boring; in this case the answer is probably “sometimes”.) Mike Britt is the dude who records pretty much every band around here and even has a recording studio in a storage bin…somewhere. (Some mysteries are due to “lack of proper permits”.)
Anyway, those are the facts of the recording but it’s not like you can tell cause it sounds pretty good. I didn’t even get the record from the label, I just got it from Bandcamp. So I got the mp3s. It sounds about as good as any metal album like this. It was mastered by Chris Grigg of Woe at his studio BS1 in Philly, but just like mediocre mp3s of a good recording sound better than bad recordings in hi-fi, you can’t really fix a bad recording just by mastering. So I’m gonna say it’s a good recording. On earbuds it seems a little muddy, but this is not earbud music. I think of bands that write 3-5 minute songs, no matter how extreme, are making pop music. You can put a bunch of that of shuffle and just have fun (or, like, walk the dog or whatever.) This music is more like a soundtrack to an epic stoner brodown or solo space-faring sesh. I no longer do drugs or have a social life, but luckily I did put a new stereo in my car with an iPod jack, and this album is awesome for blasting down the turnpike. It really sounds huge; for two dudes in back room of a former dentists’ office or whatever that building is, just massive. (Britt sometimes gets into recording sessions, is there additional guitar on this? I thought it was only bass and drums, but it must be guitar through a bass amp. I think the dude is playing out of multiple amps. It’s pretty stupid I have not seen this band live at this point.)
I’m most impressed by getting the vocals sounding right in this style, the Melvins-esqe bellow. It’s overall that Melvins sound with more of a Neurosis feel in the format of the songs. There’s definitely room to develop in the area of composition when you go that route. Personally, I don’t know how much I can get into it, but it’s a band to watch. %
En Vogue | Best Of
I was looking through Who Sampled to research my HALCALI samples for my Spotify playlist which should get at least a post or two of its own. I wasn’t sure about LL Cool J’s Boomin’ System. Isn’t the chorus a vocal sample from a previous song? I should include both songs maybe. Couldn’t find that but it turns out that song samples the beat from Hold On…[or both songs sample James Brown’s The Payback…yep.]
Damn, Hold On was a great song. I took my case to twitter, with multiple tweets of praise for the song and group in general. As is usual, The twitterverse stood silent in awe. For a normal person, this would be enough. “Hey, remember this group? They were pretty good.” Fine and dandy. But nope, I can’t just leave it at that. What am I talking about, liking En Vogue so much? I don’t have any En Vogue records. What kind of asshole poseur am I? I needed to buy at least one En Vogue record to back up this outlandishness.
Specifically, I was praising early En Vogue. Because I was there, man. Hold On was the first single. I needed to get the first album. Ahh, but Never Gonna Get It is not on that one? Jeez…how deep am I going into this?
Sidenote: Remember this started with an inquiry on Hip-Hop references in J-pop songs. In addition to praising the group in general, I suggested that J-pop acts should be trying to rip-off En Vogue more. (Early En Vogue.) But Check out the mp3 samples on that first record. Impossibly Corny skits, horrible throw-away ballads, a 40s Jazz tune? J-pop albums are already like this. Or they were until recently. Hold On, with its soulful intro, smooth natural harmonies, modern (non-80s cheese) production, and minor key shift in the pre-chorus (challennnge meee), is the outlier on this album. So why didn’t I just say they should copy that one song? And spare myself agony and embarrassment? Because I was thinking of Namie Amuro’s In the Spotlight (which is not a bad video, I’m a jerk, whatever. I also assume you regularly read and recall my opinions, it’s a total ego trip. Anyway.) It has the same kind of minor key shift in an uplifting song. I like that. Every song should be like that, and I don’t see how I could regret that statement.
So…I just bought the Best Of, of which there are several. This one has the best cover. Why bother with CD? Used, it was cheaper than the files. Plus, full liner notes. Did you know Grover Washington, Jr. is playing sax? Of course not, the people who edit wikipedia do not give a fuck about Grover Washington, Jr. Well, some of them so, but not the same ones that like En Vogue. (I obviously do not give a fuck about him because I just found out he was dead.) Produced and written by Thomas McElroy and Denzil Foster. Most of their good songs were, it turns out.
So I’ve got my hard copy of both Hold On and Never Gonna Get It, twenty-something years after I first heard them. These songs are now as old as the Led Zeppelin I was listening to at the time. So I rip the CD, put it on my iPod, and take the dog for a walk. Even tho these are quality songs and not what you might call a guilty pleasure, I felt a little odd listening to them on purpose without the video. You know, those videos are pretty good. And the girls…I don’t have to tell you Terry is my favorite, but I will. I mean, they are all amazingly hot. But Terry, c’mon. Clearly remember that face in the Whatta Man video, something about her is just cute to me. Wait, she does have a cute face but there’s some other stuff in this video which obviously distracted me from the song because at this point in the record I fully hate myself for listening to this and it’s only 3 songs in. (I think the other best ofs don’t include it because it’s really a Salt-N-Pepa song, but I wanted this one. It’s not the worst song ever, but these raps, they are not so good. They were better in other songs, right? I’m not even checking.)
Then there’s Free Your Mind which begins with an In Living Color reference, wow. It’s one of those kind of message songs you can’t argue with but man there’s some corny lines. It’s overall a good…it’s basically a rock song. Which they never came back to as a style as far as I know, but I’m admitting I don’t have the entire discography. And yeah it’s probably all on Spotify. That’s great. I do have Spotify. Yes, thank you, normal person. That must be great.
Don’t Let Go (Love) is a good song. Forgot about that one. I like the guitar line. It’s played by…Tommy Martin. Or Martin Terry. I guess it doesn’t matter.
Giving Him Something He Can Feel is the only other song I really remember by them. Which is a Curtis Mayfield cover, and it’s well done, because they are good singers. And it’s even further out from something I would normally be listening to in that it’s not either really, really good, or strange in some way. So I get that feeling from it that is not full-on self-hate, but the odd feeling of being in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. Which is a feeling I used to go for as much as possible, but now that I’ve listened to every type of music, I get it from music I’ve heard before and neither love nor hate. Because there’s not really a reason to listen to it, not because I’m not supposed to be listening to it. It’s not quite the same feeling. I’m not breaking some kind of self-imposed taboo, I’m just wasting time.
This album goes on for over an hour. It almost includes their cover of the Beatles’ Yesterday, but then it doesn’t. It’s just part of Give It Up, Turn It Loose, which is not a James Brown cover. It’s ok. It’s pretty good. I’m starting to like it a lot. It would be a lot better without the Beatles/skit in the beginning.
The whole thing is not at all chronological, so you’ve got an another song from the first album later on (Lies, a decent song with an awful rap in it for no reason) and there’s some other early singles later on that were supposedly hits but I don’t remember them. And Runaway Love which was supposedly their only single to really flop, I’m gonna say deservedly. Let It Flow is an odd later album cut, like that one.
I just noticed my mp3s are mistagged. Don’t know how that happened. Someone entered it into the database wrong. It’s not an important detail for you to know, but it does increase my time spent with this record, cause I’ve gotta fix that shit and I guess I’m taking it out on you. It’s completely uncalled for, sorry.
Whatever was a good later single. With the BUM BUM BUM BUMMMs and some nice production touches…I’m a complete asshole. “Early En Vogue”, jeez. It’s mostly all good. There’s no irony about it. There was no irony. I’m glad I bought it. Would buy again.
Oh man, I forgot about the awful remixes at the end. I actually deleted the mp3s of those. No reason for that. %
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