I Like All This Stuff! Part # 3

The Barbaras

Some geeky lookin’ guys, all rejoicing in those endearingly whiny voices that as a non-American I thought only belonged to comic relief characters in teen movies, The Barbaras are possessed of a singular vision of homemade pure pop Or rather, a not at all singular vision, since heavy elements of such are creeping in all over the map, particularly with groups like Smith Westerns etc…. but I think it’s The Barbaras who are perhaps tking this notion furthest and doing it best. What notion, you ask? Well “Budget Spectorisms” proclaims their myspace headline, and that’s hard to beat as a two word descriptor. For yes, unlike scary uncle Phil’s productions, there is usually a rock band heart still beating behind The Barbaras songs, but beyond that they sound like they’re way into some wonderful and strange ‘studio as instrument’ perfectionism… only without the studio. It’s a fine sound they’ve got going, sounding psychedelic by accident rather than by intention, with just enough bubblegum rock n’ roll backing to keep things solid, but balanced out by vocal harmonies, overdriven xylophones and bouncing, lurching, cosmic sugar. Mini pop symphonies hewn from the same sonic infatuation experiments that Spector and Brian Wilson used to define the sound of ‘60s pop, but without all the sleaze, egomania and cynicism that followed, all sounding like it’s being worked out with just a tape recorder, some outboard effects and the contents of a school music room. It’s terrific songs like ‘Flow’, ‘Topsy Turvy Magic’ and ‘Heaven Hangs’ that really seal the deal though – beautiful, straight-faced, innocent odes to the joys of looking at yr girl’s hair and visiting her house, with real world creepiness left over the hills and far away. So well do these guys capture a 21st century geeky boy equivalent of The Crystals and Ronettes Wagnerian teen-romance universality, it’s hard to imagine them ever getting wrecked or cracking dirty jokes or hanging around with Jay Reatard or any of the other stuff that 21st century geeky boys in bands like this presumably do. Lovely, lovely stuff from a simpler, happier world that you’ll want to file next to Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans instead of Psychedelic Horseshit.

http://www.myspace.com/thebarbaras


Fergus & Geronimo

More atavistic ‘60s purity reasserting itself here I think – Ruan of ‘Nick Thinks’ recommended these guys in the comments after my last post, and good grief, I nearly fell off my seat when I got back from the pub and hit the link. Fergus & Geronimo are, I’m assuming, a kind of vocalist & keyboard/instruments duo from Denton, Texas, and OMG, they’re AMAZING! Everything about their sound communicates a love of early ‘60s soul, but rather than the tedious, gurning, horrid pastiche that you’d fear might result from the meeting of soul homage and lo-fi white boy capers, this music sounds fresh as the breeze – foot-stomping, up-with-people love songs carrying that same unquestionable FUCK YEAH spirit as vintage Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. So ok, maybe some random kid from Texas stretching his voice to hit the high notes doesn’t equal the greats, and some guy with a casio and a tambourine doesn’t equal Tamla Motown, but they’ve got the feeling and they’re putting in the fucking effort to make it work when no one else is even daring to try, and that’s what counts – an out-of-time blast of jump blues, gospel honesty, pop melody, and now with added punk rock, as righteous as a true love’s kiss.

http://www.myspace.com/fergusgeronimo


Pens

For a thoroughly scrappy DIY trio who started playing out in London scarcely more than a year ago, Pens have gone pretty far pretty quick – a US tour, an album forthcoming album on LA label De Stijl, name dropped in all the right places… we could be seeing the crest of another tedious Vivian Girls / Wavves style hype washout here, but let’s not dwell on such things. Pens absolutely killed when I saw them at that Upset The Rhythm thing on the Old Kent Road a few months back – definitely the best band I saw there, although I never would have expected record labels and tastemakers start agreeing with me about stuff like that, y’know? With one foot in the same deconstructionism and 100% rejection of book-learned male musical orthodoxy as The Corey Orbison and Ethical Debating Society, Pens are a thoroughly self-taught, self-sufficient proposition, banging it out with a raw, organically developed thunk, shaved of the artificial barriers of chops and reference points for some direct anger/noise/fun/listener/hit/face connection, if you will. Added to that, they’ve got a big, fuck-off metal-derived noise of distortion pedal casio and viciously fuzzed guitar to fall back on, and a really winning pop sensibility that becomes clear on repeated listens, from Troggs/Monks style love chants to fascinating densely-packed, ambiguous urban chaos laments – that’s CONTENT by any other name, chaps. At their best, Pens is like the kind of The Fall that every forty-five year old bloke ever bangs on about, only it’s a three-headed girl and it’s happening now. We’ll see what transpires, but world-beating, potentially. Did I really just say “urban chaos laments”? – urgh, I need a holiday.

http://www.myspace.com/penspenspenis


Mazes


Also currently turning up on all the right rackety bills and picking up a fair amount of UK press, it’s nice to discover that unassuming home-recording trio Mazes are actually pretty good. Guided By Voices and The Clean are the self-acknowledged chief reference points here, and whilst obviously Mazes aren’t remotely as revelatory as either of those groups, theirs is a straight up blend of roaring, rough-hewn subterranean power-pop that hits all the right buttons. At worst, file under “thoroughly satisfactory”, and at best, songs like "Bethesda" are f-ing superb; strong song-writing, goofy immediacy and a killer sound that recalls GBV’s ‘Propeller’; crashing drums, churning guitars, clear vocals and EQ-pushing skree – the kind of totally efficient blare that makes you wonder why any self-respecting guitar/bass/drums band would feel the need to venture beyond the 4-track or do overdubs. But then of course, you just need to listen to any number of crappy, unlistenable 4-track bands out there to remind yourself that, oh yeah, that’s what studios are for. Mazes are just getting it right, that’s all, and god bless ‘em for that.

http://www.myspace.com/mazesmazesmazes



The Sock Puppets

I’ll admit there’s maybe a little bit of self-interest here, as The Give It Ups are playing with these guys in Copenhagen next week, but heck, that aside, I really like ‘em! Full of enthusiasm, and coming from the punkier end of European indie-pop (my favoured end), they remind me of a rougher, lo-fi Those Dancing Days, with swearing and shouting and metronomic drums. Thumbs up to all that, needless to say! It occurs to me I don’t actually know much Danish music… hopefully our forthcoming holiday can help rectify that.

http://www.myspace.com/socksandpuppets



The Traditional Fools

Ah, The Traditional Fools! You know what you’re getting with a name like that. Idiocy with a pedigree. Looking back over these posts, I guess I’ve been heavily hinting at the notion that all this stuff is kinda modern day garage rock, perhaps to the point of tedium. The great thing is, this is not so much through direct imitation and pastiche, ala the ‘80s Garage Revival (who always tended to be overproduced and have 3 minute+ songs anyway), but simply because it’s just coming from the same place and speaking the same language as all those legendary teenage cavemen. Listening to the second volume of Pebbles the other way, it suddenly struck me that cuts like ‘Feathered Fish’ by the Sons of Adam and ‘You Rub Me The Wrong Way’ by The Roads, (along with any other punk-ass ‘60s relics that happen to be free of the usual period tells like harmony backing vox, wiggy organ etc.), could just as easily have been made in 2008 as 1968, but probably NOT at any point in between. Surely this forty year disjuncture is unprecedented. I mean sure, people go about reviving moribund musical styles ‘till they’re blue in the face, and that’s great… but for a whole generation to end up sounding *exactly* like their grandparents, without even particularly trying to? That’s just weird. Further evidence can be gained from the fact that if you’d told me that The Traditional Fools’ killer version of Love’s ‘Flash On You’ was taken from a long lost ’65 bootleg of Arthur Lee and co, I’d probably have taken you on your word, been flabbergasted by it’s noise and ferocity, and begged you for a copy on bended knees. But I don’t have to beg, because The Traditional Fools (featuring current it-dude Ty Seagull) are here, and they’re drinking beer and growing beards, and making funny skateboarding based videos, and probably playing the beach party near you, if you live where they live. Alright! Isn’t this so much more fun than when everybody was trying to be like Shellac? And it’s easier too – nobody needed the second-string Albinis, but every town should have some Traditional Fools.

http://www.myspace.com/thetraditionalfools

Labels: Fergus and Geronimo, garage, I like, Mazes, Pens, punk, soul, The Barbaras, The Sock Puppets, The Traditional Fools

I Like All This Stuff! Part # 2

Super Vacations

Definitely one of the more ambitious and mysterioso bands of this run-down, Super Vacations provide a perfect example of a group turning the limitations of home-recording to their advantage, assembling a beguiling psyche-rock sound from the palette of slightly warped rock n’ pop elements at their disposal. Their debut album burns through sixteen songs in about twenty five minutes, each of them a swirling wonder of crisply recorded hi-hat n’ snare grooves, twangin’, FX heavy surf guitar, hazy layers of psychedelic jangle, occasional bursts of chaotic space-fuzz washout and ultra-compressed vocal tracks that range from pristine, chanted harmonies to distorted answering machine skree.

Recalling the spirit of classic-era Guided By Voices records, these one-to-two minutes cuts are veritable bonsai trees of weird beauty that make their point and then disappear into the void, providing tantalising glimpses into what we assume to be a whole universe of unguessed at four-track wonderment. Inevitably, Super Vacations’ songwriting is sketchy and indistinct in comparison to the heights scaled on a daily basis by Ohio’s finest in the mid-‘90s, but nonetheless, they’ve got a good handle on the kind of sound they’re going for, and the material at hand is up to the task, allowing them to stand proud alongside the very best of the ‘90s neo-psych-pop mob (Lilies, The Swirlies, pre-ego meltdown Brain Jonestown Massacre etc.) without ever having to venture beyond their basement. (I'd like to think this band's stuff was recorded in a basement. It... has that kinda feel to it. I'd be disillusioned to discover actual sunlight was involved at any stage.)

Then, about halfway through the album they seem to get bored of all the dreamy, haunted psyche and throw down some of the truly groovin’ surf instrumentals that the lead guitar & drums have been hinting at throughout, sidestepping the pitfalls of redundant Dick Dale pastiche and instead recalling garage-racket oddities like The Nick & The Jaguars’ “Ichi-Bon No#1”, with a gleeful mix of rough-hewn rockin’ and out-of-control tremolo, and a lovely sense of Ventures-esque melodic purpose. Fab gear!

Add a propensity for “let’s turn this fader all the way up and see what happens” type mixing desk experiments and more alien-planet reverb than the devil’s own bathtub, and Super Vacations start to sound eerily like they're channelling the last cloud of psychic detritus to escape through Joe Meek’s fireplace before the forces of darkness closed in. One of the most beguiling and effortlessly enjoyable albums I’ve heard since…. hang on, what year is it again…? No way, you're kidding me!

http://www.myspace.com/meetthevacations


Brilliant Colors

Pushed by the strange whims of the interweb from first-on-the-bill anonymity to next-big-thing notoriety within – literally - a couple of weeks, here’s San Francisco’s Brilliant Colors for ya, with two 7”s and a handful of shows under their belt. Everett True says “I have a New New Favourite Band – OFFICIAL”. Doug Mosurock says band leader Jess Scott has “Rose Melberg’s sing-songy voice, the guitar skills of a beginner, and only a haphazard idea of how to write memorable songs”. What do you say? I say that they sound pretty much like the generic Band I’d Probably Like. Sweet, minimal, energetic, fuzzy, girly punk rock with a venerable K Records kinda shambletopia edge to it, no more no less. Wearing shades, drinking gin & lemonade and breaking amps from here to eternity. And to hate on ‘em for that would be like hating on The Alarm Clocks cos they didn’t write “Forever Changes” or turn into The Magic Band. Plus, “Should I Tell You” off their EP is sweet as sin, and probably twice as healthy – a readymade classic. Sometime in the future, there’ll be a blockbusting Nuggets-style compendium chronicling the current era, and Brilliant Colors will be present and correct whilst Grizzly Bear or whoever are gathering dust in some digital bargain bin, so fuck art, let’s rock.

http://www.myspace.com/brilliantcolorssanfrancisco


The Cave Weddings

I’ll admit, I just discovered these guys last week, following a link from Trev’s Oddbox blog. They’re… I mean…. uh… I just love ‘em. I guess these little band write-ups probably haven’t been amongst the more incisive critical broadsides you’ve read from the online music community recently, and, um, here’s where words fail altogether I guess. Like so many of these bands I like, these guys are just playing good-natured modern day garage rock, and why not? Done this well, it never gets old for me. Their song “The Last Time” is so good I nearly cried. They’ve got two guitars and no bass, and they’ve got “bah bah bah”s, and kick-ass little lead riffs and their songs are sad and funny, and…. well, they’re called THE CAVE WEDDINGS, for goodness sake! They are the sound of all things being right with the world. It’s enough to make me wanna get married in a cave. I’ll marry the coloured vinyl version of their 7” single, because it’s so darn pretty and unobtainable, and they can provide the soundtrack, and everyone will dance and cry.

http://www.myspace.com/thecaveweddings


Jungle Fever

Another super-fresh discovery, I found these guys – or perhaps ‘this girl’, I guess – when I was searching for stuff by Wild Weekend, San Diego’s all-girl tribute to one of my favourite punk bands of all times (and one of yours too by the time you’ve watched the linked video), The Zeros. Sadly, Wild Weekend have split up, presumably due to the world not being awesome enough to accommodate a concept such as theirs for long, but Kelly from the band is rocking solo (I think) as Jungle Fever, and her singing/fuzz guitar/drum machine tunes are making me even more happy than listening to the Zeros retrospective CD on Bomp for the 578th time. The overall effect is akin to a cleaner, friendlier Dum Dum Girls, with some great, wry, snarling Girls in the Garage inspired pop-punk nuggets standing in for all the shoegazery. Totally, totally super-wonderful stuff throughout… I think “I Won’t Tell You Wife” is the greatest song I’ve heard all week, and I’ve heard a fuckload of songs this week. “Little Yoko” and “Two Zero One Two” are second and third best. The latter is a particularly lovely number based on the good old Mayan calender end - a bittersweet ode to sitting alone for want of someone to kiss as the world explodes. Swoon. So, uh, yeah, personally I might have set the drum a few BPMs higher in places on these, but such a complaint is petty in the extreme in the face of such perfection.

http://www.myspace.com/junglefeverxo

Labels: Brilliant Colors, I like, Jungle Fever, Super Vacations, The Cave Weddings, The Zeros

Happy Birthday, Roky Erickson!

In Castle Drac, Transylvania
On St. Swithin's Day he was born
Eyes stare through the darkness with no form
He makes his night harm

Tonight, is the Night of the Vampire.

Labels: birthday, horror, Roky Erickson, St Swithins Day

8 Tracks: Fuzzbox Baby


I put together a new 8 Track today. The intro I wrote that wouldn't fit in their text-box goes as follows:

They may have been preceded by the timeless ‘overloaded amp w/ knitting needles’ approach, and they may have been succeeded by their more refined cousins the overdrive/distortion pedals, but it’s still the mad, farting one trick fuzzboxes I love the best. I think the introduction of cheap, widely available fuzz in the ‘60s marked a great democratisation in music-making, for the first time allowing lazy, sloppy or inexperienced musicians to say EAT THIS, and make people’s hair stand on end at the stomp of a footswitch. Here are some god-fearing folks from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘00s to tell you more about that. (The Zeros track is included for its sweet fuzztone, not its lyrical sentiments, and the Rallizes track is an edit for space reasons.)

(Link.)

Labels: 8 Tracks, fuzzbox meltdown, mixtapes

I Like All This Stuff! Part # 1

Let the reckless positivity commence!

The Rantouls

Man, now this is a band who embody everything I was going on about below! Will, Gavin and Lauren are The Rantouls. They purport to live in some place called Frontier Village, and they like to play total, unashamed bubblegum pop stupidity that grins in the direction of 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Gentrys and the like, but with overdriven guitars, primitive punk momentum and ‘ooh-ooh-oh’ surf harmonies thrown in to boot! Yes, like The Queers before them, The Rantouls satisfy my inner shitkicker by playing both kinds of music – Beach Boys AND Ramones! In fact, their debut EP opened with a tune called “Chugalug”, presumably in tribute to the Beach Boys frat-party classic of the same name, a song whose spirit has been quietly written out of history by the ‘Brian is a Genius’ gang, and noisily reinstated by anyone who’s ever felt the urge to get totally blitzed and lurch around dangerously to the strains of ‘Fun Fun Fun’. The second Rantouls single meanwhile leads off with “Little Green Hat”, perhaps the most mindless, annoying song I’ve ever heard… which has gotta be some kind of a recommendation, I guess. But it’s their latest 7” – the oddly titled “Songs of the Frontier Villagers” – that’s really blown my mind. Both songs on it, “Little Dune Buggy” and “Still 16”, are absolute winners – two minute definitions of wondrous, raucous summer fun with a wistful undertone of unfulfilled teenage fantasy that will speak to you like the very word of god… assuming that you want nothing more out of life than to be drunk, sixteen and riding around in a dune buggy. Homer Simpson would absolutely love this band. And you’d better believe that’s a recommendation. Yummy yummy yummy, The Rantouls have got love in their tummy, and they feel like loving you.

(Looks like that 7” is self-released and shows only, so if you don’t live in Frontier Village and don’t want to miss the goodness, you can pick up a sneaky d/l from here.)

http://www.myspace.com/therantouls


Graffiti Island

Currently rising to prominence amid the latest wave of East London trendsterisin’ that’s also given us Pens and Male Bonding, Graffiti Island haven’t been around long, but they’re a band who seem to have had their aesthetic and musical identity clearly mapped out from the word go. And where’s their wagon heading? Off the fucking map altogether, dude! For make no mistake - whilst their feet may be stuck in the Old Blue Last, in their minds Graffiti Island are busy living out some kind of monumentally twisted, early ‘80s shot-on-video Italian b-movie. Their songs – almost all clocking in the right side of two minutes – are glorious exercises in fucked up literalism, dealing frankly with such day-to-day concerns as cannibal orgies, demonic cats, treasure-filled caves and ‘bad potion’, never letting good taste or societal norms stand in their way. Musically, they express all this via a striking blend of psychotronic art-punk, fusing a Back From The Grave strain of treble-thrashing garage thunk to deathly, monster mash repetition, reverb-drenched barked/chanted vocals out of a rockabilly nightmare and queasy, Pere Ubu-ish electronic murk – brilliant, unhealthy, instinctive fun that’s not quite like anything I’ve heard before. Seriously: if you only buy one record this year with a scary dayglo caveman on the front, make it Graffiti Island’s debut 45, and, if your world is half as maladjusted as mine, these guys’ll rock it.

http://www.myspace.com/graffitiisland


Garbo’s Daughter

Is that the sound of party-starting, fizzbomb bubblegum grrl-punk I hear wafting over from Orlando, Florida? Why yes it is, and Garbo’s Daughter are responsible! Like the first Donnas record with a better sense of humour and some 60s melodic chops, like The Riff Randalls before they got all boring, like the B-Girls but not disappointingly crap, this gang are just TOO PERFECT. If Garbo’s Daughter were cast in the kind of dodgy slasher flick that Graffiti Island are probably all too familiar with, I bet they’d feed the knife-wielding loony to a crocodile in the first ten minutes and spend the rest of the movie cracking wise, eating Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and listening to awesome, obscure pop records. And it would be a GREAT MOVIE. Just look at their ‘influences’ box on the myspace – it’s the funniest thing I’ve read on the internet in weeks. I think they just threw all their rejected band name suggestions in there, mixed up with the real and semi-real pop cultural shout-outs (and if anyone wants to help me make Bangs Askew or Headlock & The Noogies a reality, my email’s at the top of the page). Doesn’t look like they’ve got any records out yet, but a tape – A TAPE – is due shortly. Good times ahead for anybody undertaking a short car journey. These girls are the greatest!

http://www.myspace.com/garbosdaughter

Smith Westerns

Yet more levels-in-the-red bubblegum, this time from some consummate Nobunny affiliates hailing from Chicago. The Smith Westerns are boys who like to sing about girls, and the cosmic pleasures of relations with, and frankly probably just daydreams about, them. They choose to deliver this to us via some wide-eyed Rubinoos power-pop, hard-riffin’ Chilton folk-punk and – best of all – a whole load of shiny, slinky, mid-period T. Rex groovin’. Smith Westerns self-titled album is a sickly sweet blast of warped, loved up glam-pop from start to finish, with stand-out cuts like ‘Be My Girl’ and ‘Girl in Love’ sounding like Visconti let a dragon drool all over the master tapes of demos from a much better, bizarro world version of ‘The Slider’. Aw, yeah, take me…, as our lord Marc was apt to put it pre-guitar solo.

http://www.myspace.com/smithwesterns



Ethical Debating Society

Anyone who would seek to belittle the achievements of Riot Grrl (with capitals) as a valid musical and cultural movement need only take a look at London’s Ethical Debating Society, comprising girls who were probably barely even born when Bikini Kill were still putting out records, but who take their inspiration straight from the fanzines and photocopied manifestos, from the more oblique, formally challenging British wing headed up by Huggy Bear and Skinned Teen, and from the hilarious, vicious polemics of Alison Wolfe. Even more so than contemporaries such as Pens and The Corey Orbison, EDS make their lack of musical ‘know-how’ into a direct political statement (see “A440” on the myspace), taking The Raincoats original refusal to submit to a male-defined language of rock band playing and pushing it further out into a no wave wilderness of yelling and tangled, wirey fury. Here’s hoping they’ve got a happy future in store for them, splitting opinion and terrifying audiences the world over. For better or worse, Everett True is already hip to them from his cabin in the outback, and he did a neat little interview here.

http://www.myspace.com/ethicaldebating

Labels: Ethical Debating Society, Garbos Daughter, graffiti island, I like, punk, Smith Westerns, The Rantouls

Thinkpiece: Stupid is the New Smart

(Disclaimer: As ever with these sort of torturous state-of-the-nation rambles, I pretty much thought this one up as I went along and am not presenting what follows as any sort of coherent manifesto. Critiques and mockery welcomed in the comments, and I reserve the right to violently disagree with myself by about, ooh, this time next month maybe? – Enjoy.)

There are so many great, fun new stupid, noisy, great bands popping out of the woodwork at the moment, I’ve been a bit lost for words trying to get my head around ‘em all.

I’ve been thinking recently about how the nature of myspace, last.fm (not that I use last.fm), hype machine and quick downloads of singles/mp3s have changed the way I approach new music, and presumably the way everyone else does too. Yeah, I know all of those things have been around for a while, but... uh, I dunno, maybe it’s taken a while for their wider ramifications to filter down to the heart of our listening process?

The last year or two has seen a lot of people (myself included) trying to formulate a rationale/explanation for the “lo-fi/DIY boom” or whatever you want to call it – y’know, the one that’s seen an ever increasing number of scrappy, home-recorded bands of variable quality finding themselves pushed into the public eye, with results both pleasing and deeply silly in equal measure.

And naturally, we aforementioned commentators have been quick to call bullshit on all these oft-times lazy, arrogant, unimaginative, borderline unlistenable groups, deriding the whole business as a cynical hype perpetrated, presumably, by soulless, unsavoury, self-regarding characters of some ill-defined description. Meaning, perhaps: people from the generation below us…? Scary thought, huh?

Anyway, as far as the established model of music appreciation goes, bullshit calls = fair enough. I mean, if that guy from Wavves lived across the street from me and gave me a tape of his stuff, I’d probably think he was a pretty cool kid to be blaring out such a ridiculously silly Muppet Babies do The Dead C type racket in his spare time, and I’d wish him well. But at the same time, anyone who would consider him a World Class Prospect on the indie-rock circuit, able to stand alongside all those clever, consummate, committed bands that top all the end of year polls and charm festival crowds across the globe, would clearly be some kind of abject fool or simpleton. Not because his music is worthless or doesn’t have its place in the world, but, y’know… it ain’t exactly The E Street Band is it? Multiply by the fact that he also seems like a bit of a dick, and finish this paragraph with yr own comment re: his 15 minutes sliding down the drain.

But clearly this disjuncture between ‘Local’ and ‘Global’ approaches to appreciating music requires some thought. I guess the two levels have always been there, but it’s the world-shrinking power of the internet that’s caused this strange rupture in the relationship between the two that people are still trying to get their heads around.

And, pondering this, it suddenly occurred to me that this here “lo-fi-whatever boom” is not so much a trend or movement or hype that can be analysed via the codified music industry pattern we grew up with - it’s more the result of a basic sea-change in the way we’re experiencing music.

Put it this way: I’ve always loved trashy, slapdash, noisy, weird, amateurish, geeky, fun-loving, indifferently talented punk-ass bands. In fact, I probably enjoy them a hell of a lot more than most of the ‘World Class Prospects’ out there, and it’s always been comforting to know that pretty much any populated area in the western world will have a few of these kinda bands, just kicking around and having some laughs for the benefit of whoever’s around, without ever having to worry about becoming World Class or, god forbid, ‘proper’.

What’s changed is that now THE WHOLE WORLD can hear these bands, where previously the mechanics of record distribution & critical approval would have kept them below the radar. And we can all listen to them on the same day that somebody first brings a mic and a 4-track/laptop to one their practices too. And, apparently, a lot of us are enjoying the opportunity to do just that. And, in essence, that’s PRETTY AWESOME, right?

If we can get past the tiresome critical notion that ‘innovation’ is somehow prime currency in music (as if it were a research project or something… but sorry, that’s another rant entirely), then can’t this be seen as the original spirit of the Desperate Bicycles and Television Personalities (and Dead Moon and The Gories, and Jim Shephard and Maureen Tucker?), writ large across America in permanent marker?

So a few shitty bands might accidentally create a hype snowball, and end up touring the world without a clue what they’re doing, as everyone yells “huh?? I thought these guys were supposed to be the future, they can barely even play, and they just sound like a shit version of [insert cultish ‘80s band here] anyway! I paid £10 for this! What a bunch of crap!” Yeah, well… what of it?

Personally, I’ll go on record as saying I’m happy to grab the opportunity to share in whatever racket a bunch of hip teenagers in Galeburg, Illinois are banging out this week in preference to having to make do with whatever Matador or Secretly Canadian deem to be a real strong release. And if a few people get burned as the indie establishment tries to engage with the garagebound masses…. well, so it goes.

Not that I’m suggesting that the hype perpetrated by limited edition 7” labels, by the bands themselves, and by certain shadowy conglomerates of guys who I assume probably wear baseball caps indoors and speak ominously of “jams”, is necessarily benign or well-intentioned. Indeed it often has a rather toxic feel to it that I would wish to avoid if possible. And neither am I advocating blanket acceptance of any old rubbish – many of the names more frequently thrown around in the ‘noisy & badly recorded’ sphere do nothing for me, and indeed can easily seem almost offensively useless to the untrained ear. But the negatives, I feel, are more than outweighed by the positives.

Namely, to return to my initial point, by the vast amount of music that’s streaming my way every day that’s fun, that’s energetic, that’s positive, that makes me want to jump around and praise the heavens. More of it than I can really find the time to compose any worthwhile thought about to post for you here. And it’s not like a lot of these bands require much thought from me anyway…. they’re just doing what they do and it’s good fun and it makes me grin. Hence: posting quandary.

So I’m going to do about it is: three or four brief posts, each of them throwing out the names of five new bands in this general vein who get the thumbs up from me. Some of them you might have heard about, some of them not so much, it depends where you do your reading/listening I suppose. But all of them in their own weird way embody what I love about rock n’ roll.

Just don’t expect ‘em all to be the new Guided By Voices, for that kind of genius comes but once in a lifetime. Just imagine you’ve had a few beers and you’re watching ‘em play at a barbeque or in a garage or something and all will be well in the world for a few minutes. And if it turns out any of them actually are the new Guided By Voices, well.. BONUS!

Nodzzz we’ve already done of course, and Dum Dum Girls, and I’ve written tons about The Vivian Girls, not to mention Hotpants Romance, Cheap Time (damn, those guys are great) and Thee Oh Sees. They’re all still my faves – probably my tips for the brightest sparks of 4-track sunlight out there - but they’re increasingly looking like the surface of a very groovy, everlasting iceberg, so….. man the boats, people!

Labels: punk rock, rambling

The Runaways on The Old Grey Whistle Test



YEAH! Eat this Bob Harris, you boring folkie git!

...

(Proper posts coming soon, honest!)

Labels: 1970s, JOAN JETT IS GOD, lameness, The Runaways, TV, videos