Why I Taste

Earlier this evening I attempted to make a video because...One, I haven't actually written anything in weeks and Two, because people are on my nerves...



That's all I could salvage but surely y'all have picked up that the question here is...which one of these are straining to be rock stars....



or


If that second one doesn't look like an official video it's because it isn't...they never made one for Summer Babe. Of course, it ends with a big toothy smile...lovely and appropriate.

I'll try to get my act together shortly.

Fever Dream

 

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent - Bruegel

 

This was supposed to be a post about the third season of American Horror Story. Set in New Orleans...the writers, for the first time, take great pleasure in slaughtering some of the locals. Locals in the surrounding area...not New Orleans. They all have a kind of shallow affection for New Orleans...generic shots of the Quarter and St. Louis cemetery, vague Jazz notes...but don't have any interest in actually writing a character that would exist there. They do take great care in reconstructing cliché's of Southerners and ripping them limb from limb.

I couldn't get it written...couldn't get a video made...so, there's this. One note...I do not let the Boy talk to me like this...unless I am goading him. Which I was without mercy. Ha.

  

 

We'll try it again tomorrow.

 

Cover All The Rugs With Cheap Perfume

Over the weekend, Swiss Adam at Bagging Area , featured the excellent Wedding Present single Brassneck in a post. Just so happens that Brassneck was backed with a cover of Pavement's Box Elder. This somehow came up in the comment section...today he featured both the Wedding Present cover and a live version by Pavement.

Those of you who have followed the discussion will know that Singing Bear joined the rest of you miscreants in being banned...not because he doesn't like Pavement but, because he said he didn't "get" Pavement...obviously casting aspersions on your devoted author's efforts at getting the point across. Or did he? Maybe I haven't talked enough about Pavement. Maybe he was unfairly dealt with...maybe we haven't had enough Pavement on these pages...obviously we need more Pavement.

Bear...your ban has been officially rescinded but, we've still got a tight grip on the hammer...so, watch your step.

One thing we need to quickly get out of the way...and C brought this up the last time Pavement graced this site...and it's cryptically referenced at Bagging Area...in the States, Pavement is not the sidewalk. It is black top, asphalt...it's where you break your face open when learning to ride a bike. When Thurston Moore first picked up a copy of Slay Tracks he thought they must be an Industrial Band...."or something more nefarious." It has a very hard connotation here.

Anyway, before moving on let's have a few more covers...

I don't know who these shirtless idiots are...but man they got it. Kentucky Cocktail appears on early live sets and Pavemet's first Peel Session*. The riff is just balls out...in more earnest hands it might have been a hit on classic radio but...Ha. I love this cover...never more than a demo, these kids take the song and just destroy it. He mumbles most of the lines...even seeming to look up for help at one point...perfect. When they come to the break and he yells F**CK! and it crashes right back into the riff...brilliant...like a 5 year old with a flamethrower.



Cage the Elephant. Watch the rhythm guitarist and drummer...the song has nearly driven them out of their minds. Again...this is a b side. False Scorpion backed Rattled By the Rush from Wowee Zowee. They kill it...obliterate it. Awwwwesome indeed.



I don't know who these ladies are but, after a little investigating it saddens me to report that they are no longer a going concern...Good Story have split but, they got this one off before calling it quits...mason jar in hand. Zurich is Stained from Slanted and Enchanted.



Julie gets another appearance just because...and because it'll make it easier for me to pull it up on my phone.



How about a sing a long...get your lighters out. Built to Spill cover the sublime Here.



Even Dough Martsch can't keep from smiling...a couple of times.

Watch this space for more Pavement.

*Peel's love of Pavement owes a lot to that initial introduction by the Wedding Present.

The Fall's Motown Era*

If I don't love the Fall like RL Burnside or Flannery O'Conner then grits ain't....

Still...not even I can find the sexy there. Grooves? Yes! Grooves that cut deeper than the Mariana Trench but...sesssy?

No...I don't think so. Soul? It's hard to have Soul when you're laying waste to every thing in your path.

That's where Jonathan Fire* Eater comes in...to give us a glimpse, five seconds maybe...and they flicker out.



"A girl had a seizure there.../she was putting on her make up in the club car/There's make up everywhere...You little Princess"



Is his brother a cross-dresser or a werewolf?



Killed by hype before anybody knew who they were...the hoopla was ridiculous. Matador scoffed...but, only after they'd failed to singed them. They signed to a major label...released a fantastic but unappreciated album and then disappeared.

In the aftermath we got the Walkmen...eh.




*Stax woulda signed 'em.

NHS Glasses. Do What?

There seems to be a consensus, among our readers, on the U2...that they're vile. These clowns, I'm guessing, are a more complicated proposition. Before we pick up this tar-baby I'd like to explain how it happened that I've posted a picture of The Smiths on this blog.

It's the fault of Swiss Adam at bagging area . Last week he had a series of posts featuring The Clash...the last one coming on Friday.* I spend most Friday's confined to my office with little to do. I watch a lot of videos and documentaries on Youtube. So, a week ago, after reading a post on Rock the Casbah...I found myself searching for Clash documentaries.

I have issues with The Clash that sometimes spoil a listen...these, I believe, are probably mine alone but, I am fascinated by their story and the disintegration of the band. It still boggles my mind that Mick Jones was told to get out. Splits happen but in what dimension is it a good idea to fire Mick Jones? I still don't understand exactly what happened...and then there's Strummer in the Medicine Show video...like what, months later?

Anyway, there are bands, like the Clash, whose story is as interesting to me as their music. I went through documentaries on early Who...then Quadraphenia and the Mod revival in the 70's.. a little bit about The Jam. One on Mods, Rockers and Beatniks in 60's England. On the sidebar...the Smiths kept popping up. I don't know how I feel about The Smiths as a band...I can't decide, but their story, the phenomenon, and the convoluted bits about their break up I knew made them perfect for that day's viewing...then the next and the next.

The more I heard the more confused I became.

Everybody kept talking about how they were unique for presenting themselves as average Northern, working class kids...so, your average Mancunian swags around with a fragrant bouquet in his britches?**
Of course, everything has it's context

 

Compared to the new wave acts they charted with...it's a fair assessment. Besides Marr and the other two do seem right off the road. Even Morrissey with his flowers and Mardi Gras beads doesn't seem that flamboyant. Them glasses. I didn't think anything of them. Then I heard they were a prop...and now I know they were NHS glasses. At the time I wouldn't have understood what that meant. If he had been swinging a block of government cheese...that would have translated. Well, there's no hiding your glasses so, now I can see it as a very decent, or maybe a very clever, gesture. These things we're completely lost on most of us.



A lot of this is hindsight from the late 80's early 90's. I was 9 in 1982 and only bought one Smiths record while they were still together...a 12" single for Panic. (A song that still tickles me). By 1986 I was practically living in a record store and I know how they were thought of generally.  Not only were they grouped in with The Cure...but also with New Order.

So, it made me laugh every time they would talk about The Smiths as a guitar band or when Marr would go on a tangent about New Order. Looking back it's easier to see just how different they were but, at the time, to half of the underground, indie, whatever, record buying public they were just another Depeche Mode.

I don't know how bands like the Smiths viewed their success in the States but, in that world, the college radio world or whatever, they were like superstars. They had catchy songs, videos, and they were used to presenting themselves to wider audiences. MTV did the rest...which actually lagged behind the life of the band.***

There was a level of resentment from certain quarters toward all these "English" bands. On More Fun in the New World, X complains with I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts...

"The facts we hate
You'll never hear us
I hear the radio is finally gonna play new music
You know, the British invasion
But what about The Minutemen, Fleasheaters, DOA, Big Boys and The Black Flag?
Will the last American band to get played on the radio please bring the flag?
Please bring the flag!
Glitter-disco-synthesizer night school"

The obnoxious kid from Salt Lake City Punk (set in 1985)...gives a very foul-mouthed taste.



The funniest and most childish outburst came from The Dead Milkmen...You'll Dance to Anything. If Marr was aware of the song I'm sure he was horrified to have The Smiths grouped in with Book of Love and the Communards. Ha. Yeah in comparison to Human League The Smiths were a back to basics guitar band...but, it didn't really translate and nobody confused them with Husker Du or Sonic Youth.

We still bought the records though. The Cure, The Smiths and Echo and The Bunnymen...Joy Dvsion via New Order were in the collection of every teenage record collector. We didn't share the older kids resentment. Most of us came up on New Wave. Duran Duran is the reason I started going to real record stores as a little kid. It was almost inevitable that the next round of American bands would be steeped in British post-punk or indie-pop. You could see it coming with the Pixies. Nirvana pimped the Vaselines and Raincoats...Pavement were obsessed with TV Personalities, Swell Maps and of course The Fall.

Still, Morrissey was a special case. Try for a moment, to imagine that he isn't in the music papers, that all you know of him is on the records. The public spats, the punch lines, the self references and...none of it translates. There was little nuance and humor for an audience so far out of the loop. He just seemed like a self-obsessed, melodramatic, bore (which I suppose he is everywhere to some extent). As far as I know, in the States, Marr is still held in the highest regard while Morrissey has no presence to speak of except among a small obsessive following. I was completely taken aback to hear that his most obsessed fans in Britain were male...that point kept coming up. I liked the Smiths alright and I knew other fellas that liked them but, the obsessives were always girls.

Anyway with some distance and reams of context...a lot the songs seem more clever and even funny.  I still can't listen to the songs that are driven by Morrissey meandering through a maudlin melody...or the songs where the band fades to background music but, I have developed a new appreciation for songs I hadn't thought about in years.



"the grease in the hair
of a speedway operator
is all a tremulous heart requires"

That's pretty good...I can't deny it.

That's also enough of this rambling mess.

__________________________

P.S. It was the sweet Southern husk of Mary Huff's voice that also made this post possible...she broke the noise lock that morning on the way to work...when this one slipped past the censors.



Not entirely inappropriate...if only Morrissey had actually been a girl. They may have been the perfect band.

* It's actually the week before last now.

**As a Southerner...Morrissey is obviously Truman Capote (don't be fooled by the exotic surname...he was born a Persons). Not in any way typical but, still a legitimate Southern character. If you're wondering Mark E Smith is Mary Flannery O'Conner.

*** See Perks of Being a Wallflower for an example of how The Smiths were still a living entity in the minds of U.S. high schoolers as late as the early 90's.

Up Next Yoko Ono

Two Days!...after 8 dreary sepia months, we crack the screen door open on Oz...if Oz had bourbon and smoked pigs....a four month Technicolor Southern block party. Actually, considering the emotional scars, the intractable grudges, the fact that we will get drunk and yell at one another ...maybe it's more appropriate to call it a family reunion.



I love the song on this one...but, the true beauty comes at the 1:09 mark.

 

I can't wait. There's a delicious irony to this time of year. Universities all over the US are gathered into athletic conferences...the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is really the only one that's still regionally and culturally cohesive.* So, when SEC teams play outside of conference we are more Southern than ever...we are one fanbase. It drives a lot of people crazy but, SEC football is a Southern institution and we are loyal people and we are not them. It's also one of the only times a goodun can celebrate being Southern without somebody screaming racism in your face...just before they go into the RocknRoll hall of fame in Cleveland, Ohio...to eat bbq and drink Cokecola in the café while finishing off the last chapter of Absalom Absalom. Uh-Hmmm Anyway.....

On the other hand, during Conference play, we can forget about all that and get down to what we truly and dearly love...beating hell out of the only worthy foe...one another.

That's Thursday...this is still Tuesday and we need to go ahead and get some things out of the way...maybe deal with a few recurring topics before things go pear shaped.

PAVEMENT



Other than the sweet sweet degeneration**....the best thing about this about this clip is the flippant political statement. Earlier during the set he said "We're here for turrets...I mean Tibet." Ha. I know a lot of y'all are true believers in the political power of music...y'all and hippies :)...but, many of us were horrified and scared, as young'uns, watching you punk rockers become hippies with mohawks...pestering us about workers and the sandinistas or whatever. We were dismissed for being willfully uninvolved with reality...as Slackers. Yeah. I guess. 



Speaking of politics spoiling everything....this bastard.

MIRO

Today, during my trials and tribulations on the road (I left home without a wallet...and had to wait for an hour at a gas station to be rescued by Martha with credit cards), I tried to listen to a series of podcast on Miro. These were put on by the Tate...good...they turned out to be on MIro and politics...bad, very bad. The stream of profanity that I unleashed on the windshield was so intense that it blocked sunlight for a nanosecond. Look up there...look at it. Who looks at that and thinks about politics? It turns out, people whose definition of politics includes every possible human activity...that's who. Then they set about explaining his paintings through politics...even when political statements, in the paintings, were vague at best.

It's one thing to say a storefront mannequin unavoidably evokes Plato...it's quite another to say the worker who put the mannequin together had Plato in mind. I'd rather be bit on the forehead by a mosquito than listen to this nonsense.

Rude Talk

Did y'all hear Richard Dawkins the other day? He said it was "immoral" not to abort a fetus with downs syndrome. That's nasty man. Then, under the guise of an apology, he doubled down. At least he didn't actually apologize. I'm sick of people saying something...something they've obviously meant to say...something they'd given some thought to...then coming out the next day and apologizing like they'd merely burped at the table. You said it...stand by it. Shit.

What I want to know is this...what did he mean by immoral? He didn't say it was undesirable. He didn't say it shouldn't be allowed. He said it was immoral...as if he had some absolute authority in mind. I'd like to know exactly why he thinks it's immoral to have a baby with Downs. Why it's wrong...and what authority he's drawing on? I could infer...but, that would just be rude. Where does a machine go for moral authority?

Adamparsons Hates on the Fall

An oldie but a goodie (as a topic on the blogs...the song is timeless)



Me

Who am I kidding...we gon' keep talking about me....but, this gives me an excuse to point you all in the direction of Hugh Marwood's blog. He is an artist...a good one. He has been kind enough to recount some of our recent conversations on his blog. He's also put some of my really fantastic photos on there. So go look at it. He talks about Tom Wolfe too...so it's actually worth a click. :). Hugh's work is really good.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but, that should hold us over for now.

*If the money grubbers keep expanding the Conference we'll have Yankees in it...at that point we will seriously be looking to immigrate...it'll all be over at that point.

**If only Pavement had given this much "effort" in covering The Classical.

Pull My Lips Back

I guess I shouldn't have assumed there would be any familiarity with the originals covered in the last post. So, in fairness to our readers....

Here.



If I have the story right...this video was cobbled together for the UK market where the song had gotten some slight traction. This is the version that appeared on Slanted and Enchanted. They played a much noisier version for John Peel.

Gold Soundz



As was typical after they'd actually become a band...this is a very pretty song but, it has a seedy side.
"Did you remember/In December/That I won't eat you when I'm gone." :0

Shady Lane



Hmmm...the best thing about this version is the first break in the song...the look on his face before informing the crowd they'll get to "cheer twice for this one" is probably all you need to know about them by 1999. Though I should point out we saw them not long after this in New Orleans and they ripped the curtains down.

Home



Just awesome...that's all...and no I won't settle down about it.

HA

Edit: Here's the band five days after playing a private show for C and a few other people from town....at Reading in 92



Perfume V and In the Mouth a Desert.

We're Coming to the Chorus...eventually

Last Saturday I sat on our back porch drinkin' beer in the hot air...

...a buzz in the afternoon staring at the lake...listening to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. There may be other music that is also suitable for drinking in the afternoon but, I don't think there's a better one...certainly not in the summer time.

In fact there's not a better record from the 1990's full stop. Really it has to be on a very short list no matter what decade you consider.

We'll come to that shortly...me and The Boy are preparing a video review of the record for your edification.

 

Crooked Rain is an inevitable consequence of Summer...it just happens. This year it was a cover that set it off. Gold Soundz is a sun baked slab of gorgeous...as good as anything Brian Wilson ever wrote. This cover version may actually make a better case than the original.



It's like that sometimes with covers...so, let's have a few more before moving on.

Julie Doiron from Eric's Trip goofing on Shady Lane from Brighten the Corners. Brighten the Corners was not the best album of the 1990's...in fact it was quite a disappointment. Horrible bloodless, deliberate production and almost any version of the songs not on the album is an improvement. This one's fun.





Nobody need ever bother with this one again...it has been obliterated.

Lotta folks have taken a stab at Here...Grandaddy, Built to Spill...but Tendersticks owns it.



Next up we take a long hard look at the business of RocknRoll....and watch with glee as it's burnt to the ground.