Posts Tagged mike watt
Minutemen | Project: Mersh
My long overdue mission of owning all of the Minutemen records that are not Double Nickels on the Dime begins with this, the cheapest one. When I set out on this mission, I realized why I did not already own these records: they are not readily available as dirt cheap used copies. (A large bulk of my collection.) It’s not hard to figure out why. People who buy Minutemen records tend to know what they are getting into, first, and once they have the records, they are actually good, second, and third, the band is consistently well-regarded over decades by fans and critics alike, so their records are non-embarrassing to own and therefore resistant to purge, even if you never listen to them.
This is not a very typical record for the band, it’s more of a proof-of-concept EP, which I like. In particular the opening track The Cheerleaders, because it illustrates perfectly why I hate the band Cake so much. Here they take all of the political message of their earlier work over a much simplified and easy to swallow version of their music. The band Cake would then take this kind of sound, with the semi-funky clean guitar and the trumpet, and remove the political message, which is not the worst music in the world by any means, but what’s the point? I guess the point is that is the kind of thing that could get mainstream radio play. Not this so much. It’s like they took all the notes that people had been telling them was “wrong” with their music and applied them literally. No one really wanted to say they didn’t agree with the message, or the overall package so they would pick apart the rough edges of the music. Remove all those rough edges and there should be nothing holding it back!
There’s some other songs—they cover Steppenwolf, they were a good band, it’s not entirely ironic. C’mon.
Tour-Spiel is my favorite track. The words alone, repeated as a mantra, could almost be any words without reading along. I heard “torch me out” the first several times. I dunno what it means, but it seems evocative of what happens when you jam econo too long. The jam turns literal(ly figurative) on More Spiel, which seemingly runs the concept off the rails, but is similar to the ‘Bonus beats’ tracks of the day, which also turn up on Watt’s collab with Sonic Youth The Whitey Album, but that’s something else entirely.%
buy mp3s on amazon 4 cheap or I guess it's regular price, there's only 6 songs
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. %
繕った [records tumblr]
Visitors
Recent Comments