Labels: apologies, blather, lameness, plugs, self promotion

Labels: best of 2013, lameness

Labels: lameness, pissing and moaning, ranting

Labels: 8 Tracks, lameness, winter

7 Songs / 7 Days.

So, this blog’s been getting a tad stagnant in the past few weeks. Business as usual for the summer time perhaps, but September is a month I’d earmarked as a good time to get a load of writing done, goddamnit. Work hassles, moving house, recording some new songs etc have seen to that, needless to say.

Plenty of music stuff I could write about, but I just haven’t had the time or enthusiasm to crack my knuckles and get on with it. Still, you can’t stop the rock, so I thought it might be a good idea to compile and expand a bunch of bits of rock-write I’ve accidentally splurged out in other places recently (tumblr mostly), and present them here, with accompanying tune links.

Seven songs / seven days – pretty self explanatory. Beginning tomorrow.

This isn’t one of them, but any old excuse;

Boom bip-bip, boom bip-bip, YEAH!

Labels: lameness, Love

Apologies/Updates/Blah…

Agh, wouldn’t you know it. Just when I finally got some time to work out some new blogposts, blogger went down for 24 hours. Anyway, that’s no excuse, I haven’t posted for bloody weeks.

Needless to say: life since Easter has been pretty manic. Some of that has been good (hanging out with The Sock Puppets at Trev’s Oddbox weekender, seeing great sets from One Fathom Down and The Wendy Darlings and Horowtiz and discovering The Choo Choo Trains, who are a lot better than their name suggests, and playing records and dancing ‘til the venue politely asked us to get going – that was all brilliant), and some less good (job is bugging me, accommodation situation after next few months is still pretty uncertain), but, uh, yeah – net result is no action here. I had some posts queued up for my other blog, but no such luck with the music stuff I’m afraid.

This is particularly annoying, because one of my priorities over Easter was to try to find time to write about some of the many, many fine albums I’ve heard this year that deserve to be written about, some of which their makers were even nice enough to send me copies of after I expressed an interest. No time; didn’t happen. Urgh.

So anyway, that leads us to a couple of announcements:

1. The flyer above should be pretty self-explanatory. COME ONE, COME ALL. It’s the aforementioned Trev, and Carys from The Give It Ups and myself, and we’ll all be playing some fucking brilliant shit, if I do say so myself. No requests, unless a)I like it anyway and b)it’s good for dancing. (Pet peeve: you wouldn’t believe the number of tunes people usually play at indie-discos that have NO BEAT, just so that fans of the band in question can cheer cos they recognise it and then sorta shuffle round dolefully for four minutes trying to find the rhythm section – none of that in my set thanks, although maybe the others will be more flexible…). Er.. well anyway, half-finished website with a probably incomplete round-up of what he played last Sunday can be found here. The venue has a high ceiling, so pogoing is mandatory. As much Ramones and derivations thereof as is necessary will be deployed in aid of this.

2. ALBUM CATCH-UP: As mentioned above, I’m really gonna blitz it this weekend to try to pay tribute in words to some of the LP-length things that have been pleasing me of recent. Watch this space.

Labels: apologies, lameness, self promotion

Frightwig.

Ok, so I wasn’t really planning to leave that last dumb post at the top of the page for more than a day or two, but life got in the way, etc.

To give you a taste of the kind of urgent investigations that have been consuming my spare time when I should have been writing new stuff here, here’s another dumb video post.

Specifically, here’s a band called FRIGHTWIG, who’ve previously escaped my attention, bringing sloppy, f-ed up downer-punk and unhinged singing-drummer mania to Berkeley, California, 1987.



It’s a shame they didn’t have ladyfests back in 1987 - these guys’d hit the joint like a cheesegrater.

A brief survey of their later (presumably ??) recorded output on Youtube reveals ‘the grunge sound’ and a lot of immoderately applied wah-wah, but no matter - this video shreds.

Labels: Frightwig, lameness, spacefiller, videos

Rockin’ Chairs.

So I was going to put up a new post this weekend based on my observations re: a forty minute video of sessions from Alex Chilton’s “Like Flies On Sherbert” period that someone put online a couple of months back.

Unfortunately though, the video has now disappeared, and posting my stuff without reference to it wouldn’t make much sense. Oh well. Maybe I’ll rework it into something else at a later date.

I’ve got a bunch more singles reviews to post, so I’ll get through them this week – thought I’d start posting ‘em one at a time from now on rather than in big batches, now that I’ve got a pretty constant pile awaiting review.

In the meantime, it has come to my attention that Stereo Sanctity has been presented with some kind of award by a company who sell theatre seating.

There is nothing I can possibly add to that.

For the record, I like ‘70s style cinema seating, with very low seats, leather seat covers and big moulded plastic and metal frames with chunky drinks holders that give the impression that each seat is sort of armoured and separated from it's neighbours. Downstairs at the Prince Charles cinema in central London is a good example.

Labels: awards, lameness, spacefiller, theatre seating

Genres are Silly.

I enjoyed reading Marceline Smith’s post about the iTunes genre box over at Diskant today, and it reminded me that I’d been meaning to do a similar post on genre-related silliness a while back.

I download a lot of mp3s, and borrow/auto-recognise/create a lot more, and looking at my list of genres always gives me a chuckle.

I typed *very few* of these in myself I should add. That would just take the fun out of it, wouldn’t it?

“Girls” is my favourite genre, I think, although “Strut” and “Terror” are also quite pleasing.

Labels: genres, lameness, nerds, spacefiller

So, Uh...

I was going to stack up this blog with lots more singles reviews over the next few weeks, but somehow none of them got finished, and I forgot to take account of the fact that I'm now on holiday in Wales, and don't have any singles with me, or a record player.

Hmm...

What's that you say, internet?

An absolutely astounding video of the late Rob Tyner of the MC5 rocking the fuck out on an electric autoharp...?

Testify!

Labels: awesomeness, lameness, MC5, Rob Tyner, things of interest, videos

Advice.

I'm sorry for breaking my post-at-least-once-a-week rule again. Rest assured, I've got the final part of that singles round up ready to go for tomorrow or the day after though.

In the meantime, some advice for winners from Stripe Savage:

Labels: funnies, lameness, Stripe Savage

Placeholding Video Awesomeness

Apologies as usual for the recent lack of blogging action – I got back from Copenhagen a few days ago (had a smashing time), and now I’m down in Wales preparing for a weekend’s camping, whilst the USB stick with all my half-finished bits of writing on it remains in London.

So as much as I hate to do another placeholding post comprising some videos blatantly picked up from other blogs, here it is, and damn, do I ever love the videos.

First, via WFMU, here’s The Bendaly Family; awesome Kuwaiti pop from 1978. I don’t know *what* to make of these guys – they look like the kind of mixed up family unit that Wes Anderson would probably make a film about, with the single-minded patriarch/singer coercing his children and loved ones into joining his quest for pop stardom, his relentless optimism blinding him to the strange effects this lifestyle may be having on them all, etc. etc. Or maybe not. I dunno. I mean, it’s not like I’ve actually bothered to do any research into who they are or how their career progressed. I also like how they somehow manage to rock a contemporary ‘indie pop’ kinda visual style, twenty plus years too early on the wrong side of the planet. Go figure.

I love how the song sort of opens with a darkly mournful, vaguely political lament, then veers into a kinda cheesy Middle Eastern radio hit ballad bit, and hits a huge ‘altogether now’ DIY pop chorus at about the two minute mark. It makes me sad to note that most of the comments following this video, both on Youtube and WFMU, lean toward mockery – I think it’s just ace. Totally beautiful.



Next, courtesy of Honey is Funny, here’s John Lee Hooker playing on the BBC in 1964, backed by an early line-up of The Groundhogs. Man, I LOVE John Lee Hooker – his stuff’s so minimal, so razorsharp, so… punk, like a big fuck-you to anyone who’d wish to reduce the blues to some morass of sloppy, meandering crap that you can’t dance to. And he is ON here. Wonderful footage of the early ‘60s BBC’s idea of a hip crowd getting their groove on too – dig the chef! (More of the good stuff, with the band really giving it some on 'Boom Boom Boom', to be found here.)



Los Shakers were Uruguay’s answer to The Beatles – and WHAT an answer! This promo clip for their (totally bloody fantastic) hit song “Break It All” was posted on WFMU a while back as “the greatest pop video of all-time”, and having tried my best to watch it at least once a day since then, I’m not going to disagree. The editing alone marks it out as a work of genius, the “let’s just film as much cool stuff as we possibly can and cram it all into two minutes” conceit even more so. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and Richard Lester, but Los Shakers WIN. You’ll be aware that I often stand in awe of ill-defined ‘awesomeness’ on this blog – so, in case you were wondering, this is two minutes and twenty seconds of pure, unadulterated awesomeness for you to refer back to at any point: “and when the music starts, don’t stand there like a fool..”



Oh, and finally, here’s a brief movie from The Sock Puppets set last Friday. A great band, righteous people, tons of killer three chord songs - here’s hoping we get the chance to see them playing more gigs, releasing great records etc. in the near future!

Labels: awesomeness, John Lee Hooker, lameness, Los Shakers, The Bendaly Family, The Sock Puppets, videos

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

News in Brief.

Apologies as usual for the lack of recent words here. By my own shambling, lethargic standards, this past week or so has been pretty busy, and yesterday in particular was a strange and somewhat frantic day, with news of celebrity deaths coming at rate of knots, as I found myself seeing through an evening of no money, no food and much free beer.

So, in the absence of any proper writing, here’s a… bunch of stuff:


1. Sky Saxon died yesterday.

Mysterious to the end, his age was unknown and the ailment that killed him remains unidentified. To wax lyrical re: the extent to which The Seeds ruled and the almost subliminal influence they wielded over the direction of both mainstream and underground rock from the late ‘60s onward would seem somewhat redundant, assuming I’m speaking to an audience who’ve ever taken an interest in good, weird rock n’ roll. I guess I’ve always envisioned Sky Saxon in his prime almost as a cartoon character, the ultimate fusion of punk and hippie, marauding down “The Strip” swinging his love-beads, ranting slurred diatribes against The Man before heading to Pandora’s Box to blow some wretched losers like The Doors off the fucking stage with a set of pre-Monks, pre-Fall grinding, semi-improvised visionary mayhem.

Everybody knows “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine” of course – indeed, the latter would definitely be my tune of choice should I ever stumble upon some mythical garage-punk karaoke bar of my dreams… not that I’d have much of a chance of replicating those incredible, lovelorn “Aaaa-AAAAWWWWwwwwww!”s; simply one of the most genius vocal performances of all time. But The Seeds were also one of the only Nuggets bands who successfully managed to channel their initial energy into making great albums too – “The Seeds”, “A Web of Sound” and “The Future” are all totally wonderful, nutzoid LPs that demand a place in anyone’s collection.

Saxon’s resurgence in the past few decades is a bit more problematic for me, given his ongoing association with The Source cult, but he still managed to play his barmy, mysterioso awesome dude role to perfection. I mean, this is the guy who, when somebody in the early/mid-sixties presumably asked him to come up with a new stage name, immediately blurted out “SKY SAXON”, for no apparent reason. What a hero. R.I.P.

Good obit by Nels Cline, via Arthur, here.




2. The Gories are back!

Well, I mean I knew they were back since they dropped the news about that joint, one-off European tour with The Oblivians last year, but still. Man, The Gories! As you’ll recall, I got so over-excited listening to The Gories a couple of years back, I even drew a picture of them.

There’s an absolutely terrific feature on the history of the band over at the Detroit Metro Times – a great example of the kind of straightforward, well-constructed overview I’d love to be able to read about more of my favourite bands of the 80s/90s/00s. (Thanks to Jessica Hopper’s blog for the link.)

There’s a lot more to The Gories than the ‘garage revivalist’ tag they’re often stuck with, so if that descriptor has ever put you off taking an interest, I’d recommend firing up yr last.fms or spotifys or whatever it is you kids have these days and taking a listen to their debut album ‘Houserockin’ – the sound of three untrained bozos in a shed making what’s pretty much a working definition of The Best Music Ever.

Here’s what happened the last time they quit the stage:




3. Veronica Falls

Veronica Falls – an ensemble previously known as The Draculas, before that Sexy Kids and once a faction of Glasgow’s The Royal We – headlined last night, and verily did they blow me away. With their dense Velvets strummage, minimal floor-tom/snare pounding, dreamy girl/boy harmonies, killer tunes, Flying Nun-esque understement and eerie graveyard atmospherics, it’s hard to imagine a band who could tap more perfectly into my current tastes. And that’s BEFORE they played a swoonsome cover of Roky Erickson’s ‘Starry Eyes’, casually breaking the Michael Jackson news to the thirty or so onlookers in the process. They were really something: go listen and befriend.


4. Sonic Youth Raid my Dreams

News at eleven: the new Sonic Youth video is like some kind of dream I’d probably have.

In fact, scratch ‘probably’, I think its entire stock of imagery is ripped straight from my nocturnal mind circa 2003-2004, thus rendering it unintentionally haunting viewing, for me at least.

It’s a great video, although I fear the band missed a trick by rather snootily portraying themselves as vague ‘overseers’ of the radical girls’ scheme, rather than placing themselves (with a wink & a nod) amongst the yuppie-cognoscenti victims.

It’s sad too that the song pretty much goes in one ear and out the other. Oh, hey, it’s another short, punky Kim one. I’ll file it with the rest.

Labels: deathblog, internet round-ups, lameness, Sonic Youth, The Gories, The Seeds, Veronica Falls, videos

Five Years!

No, not a tribute to the best song David Bowie ever wrote, unfortunately. Just a lame ‘happy birthday to me’ post to acknowledge the fact that, unlikely as it my seem, I’ve been doing this shit for five years.

Yes, it was on May 6th 2004 that I sat down before my old PC in my palatial rented room in Swansea’s Uplands district, mucked about a bit with the blogger template you still see before you and wrote:

So I’ve decided to do a music blog. Well why not?

REASONING:

1. It seems like every other fucker’s got one, and some of them actually have ones that other people bother to read, thus making the whole enterprise seem slightly less masturbatory.

2. Whether I like it or not I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to, and collating opinions upon, music, and opportunities to get a copy of my print zine together or post decent reviews elsewhere are few and far between, so what better form than a weblog in which to chronicle my day to day adventures in the world of popular music?

3. Maybe if I prove to be good at it, people might eventually start sending me free stuff (seriously – anybody out there who has the power to send me free records, please, go ahead, I’ll be sycophantic as hell, I promise..)

MY UNIQUE SELLING POINT: whereas most other music bloggers are fairly hip and down with all the latest tunes and able to brush aside huge swathes of MP3s ‘twas if they were matchsticks on a daily basis, my music consumption is far more eccentric and random; basically, I don’t have much spending money, I don’t have a fast internet connection, I don’t live in a cool, hipster-saturated community and I don’t listen to daytime radio. Hence the music I end up digging is almost entirely down to chance most of the time, so prepare for many wild tangents about stuff I recorded off John Peel, stuff I just borrowed from the library, stuff I bought in a clearout sale because I thought it looked cool, pointless mix CD tracklistings etc., as well as the occasional standard drivelling about new releases from my favourite currently active bands and so on..

Labels: announcements, birthday, lameness, rambling

Easter Everywhere.

Sorry as ever for the lack of recent posts. General busy-ness, lack of internet access, etc. It's seems though that we've hit Easter - always one of my favourite times of the year. Sacrifice, rebirth, resurrection, winter into spring, blah blah blah - good stuff. As such, rest assured I've got some new posts coming up later this week. And, in the meantime, why not pay oblique tribute to the 13th Floor Elevators' easter-tastic 2nd LP by enjoying my new 8 Track full of choice Texas garage band madness:

Labels: 8 Tracks, lameness, Psychedelia, punk, Texas

This Post is Brought to you by the Gods of Awesomeness.

I'm moving house in a couple of days, and as such, haven't had time to write anything.

That means another lame video post, but thankfully we have three of the flat-out AWESOMEST pop videos I've seen in all my days, all of them of a power-pop/bubblegum/punk persuasion, and all of them hailing from that golden year for such things, 1981.

First, The Modernettes (not to be confused with UK post-punk band The Mo-dettes, who are also ace), doing 'Barbra'. What can I possibly say.... I think about half the youtube playcount on this one is me.



The B-Girls - 'High School Dance'. Again, just The Greatest. Great tune, fantastic lyrics, big guitar riff, killer backbeat - I so want to cover this song. Sadly, I don't think the B-Girls ever actually recorded it in this form - or at least, the only version of it on the retrospective CD of theirs I ordered immediately after watching this video is an acoustic muck-around, retitled "Boys Are Drinking". Even sadder, most of their other material isn't half as rocking as this clip, with most of their studio recordings serving to reinforce the worst women-in-rock cliches by just sounding really weedy and... 'candy-assed', I believe is the term, whilst the sleevenotes seem to imply that they were more notable at their day for the amount of time they spent hanging out with Johnny Thunders, Stiv Baters, The Clash etc. than for their own achievements. It's particularly galling to discover that their version of "Who Says Girls Can't Rock?" (as memorably covered by The Riff Randells) just plain... doesn't. Oh well. Such is life. For these three minutes on Canadian TV at least, they RULED SUPREME. Dennis The Menace jerseys, white cowboy boots, Rickenbacker - now there's a look you can't fuck with.



A dead cert for "best ever power-pop band from Milwaukee", here's the oddly-named SHIVVERS, with "Please Stand By"! (I can only assume there must have been another local group called Shivers or something.) I know I'm only restating what I said at the top of the post, but man this video is awesome. What a singer! It's like if Lydia Lunch had packed it in and joined Blondie instead! Look at her eyes in the close-ups! Amazing! And what a song! Number one w/ a bullet! And say what you like about the guy with the hangglider collar and the red stratocaster, he can't hear you, he's too busy livin' the dream.



CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE: I first saw the Modernettes video over at Last Days Of Man On Earth, as part of a fucking fantastic Canadian punk video post. (There's a similarly great round-up of Japanese punk on the front page at the moment too - check out Friction and The SS - wowza.) Also, my friend Pete sent me links to the B Girls and Shivvers videos, thus meaning nothing in this post is actually the result of my own scholarly pop-culture type investigations.

Labels: 1980s, awesomeness, lameness, power pop, punk, Shivvers, the B Girls, the Modernettes, videos