June 29th at PA’s Lounge in Somerville, Massachusetts.
It’s a 21+ show. Bummerrwtfrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!
Category Archives: Music
Song of the Day: “Brian Eno”
It seems like “Brian Eno” is a dividing jam. Maybe some electro-pop freaks are scared away by the so called “tinny garage rock” that is this track. It’s Congratulations best tune. Check it out:
Anyone else hear any influence perhaps from Jay Reatard, who would have turned 30 years old yesterday?
Henry Rollins On Ween
Very Hicksian here. Ahh what a better world it would be if beautiful women flocked to bands like Ween (and their fans :) instead of puerile, corporate cocksuckers.
Chris
CD Review: Warm Slime
Band: Thee Oh Sees
Release: 5/2010
Label: In The Red
1. “Warm Slime” – B-
2. “I Was Denied” – A-
3. “Everything Went Black” – B+
4. “Castiatic Tackle” – A
5. “Flash Bats” – B-
6. “Mega-feast” – B+
7. “MT Work” – B
Comments: Prolific in both quantity and quality, Thee Oh Sees have been kicking out jams for years at the rate of two or three albums a year. Maybe more. Damn, the phrasing in that first sentence is a little redundant, but it sounds good. Speaking of redundant, how about a 13 minute opener? That’s more than twice the length of Mark Sultan’s $ premier number “Icicles.” Damn, I hope Pitchfork doesn’t give Stephen Deusner the call-to-the-mound, so to speak, to review this album. That hater will just hate. So, anyway, if I am going to pitch in my two cents, I might as well do that at this time. It’s only appropriate. Around the 5:00 mark things slow down from consistent beats to an A Capella (but not really) repetition of some sentence that is not comprehensible to me. A speed up, of course, follows and is actually kind of awesome. The drums remind me of when I try recording myself playing drums on the computer. It’s just a sequence of loud bass drum bangs that sort of take center stage and make everything else… off-center-stage. That makes no sense. But I continue. Let’s be real here. In the age of the information superhighway and not of the vinyl long-player, this opener is hella skippable. Listen up, though. I could see if I was reading a book or something and popped this on the record player. Yeah, that’d be fun. But fucking eh! “I Was Denied” is a loud noise club bang her with a very simple progression and an irresistibly in your face chorus. “Everything Went Black” has another classic Oh Sees drum scheme. These drum schemes work to some degree, but don’t get me into some kind of frenzy. “Castiatic Tackle” is the shit! Hot shit! That’s the way I like it, dudes. To borrow a phrase from the great Cole Alexander (and thousands of others…thanks Google search), this shit is “psychedelic as fuck!” “Flash Bats” doesn’t keep pace with the one before it, but is very good. “Mega-feast” has a cool hook and all. What a fun closer “MT Work” is.
Grade: B (86)
“The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth”
This might be my favorite Clap Your Hands Say Yeah song:
Mark Sultan To Music Reviewers:
“I DONT GIVE A FUCK”
“People are always going to rag on me and my music, but I believe in it and don’t give a f—,” he says. “Take my [recent] Pitchfork review for example, aside from an incredible lack of research and knowledge, it’s all a big joke. Had I made an album full of shorter tracks, the same reviewer would have asked for something else.”
Sultan might be unfazed by criticism, but he wishes music journalists weren’t so eager to tack the garage rock tag onto his latest batch of songs.
“I still love rock ‘n’ roll and garage and all of that, for sure, but I think this is easily something else,” he says. “People are lazy; I hardly think they actually listen [to my music]. The average knowledge of one of these f–king music dudes is like 1981 and up.”
God bless Mark for being the man.
——————–
Side note: Sultan is a big hit at college radio. $ got an impressive #3 spot on the Chart Attack top 50 last week.
Black Lips Feud W/ Beethoven
Yo, Beethoven, less time in front of the mirror…more time on the piano.
Favorite band of at least two KLYAM writers, Black Lips don’t actually hate Beethoven, even if they say they do. It’s all good.
Spinner Talks W/ Jared + Cole: http://www.spinner.com/2010/04/28/black-lips-beef-wavves-ryan-seacrest/
Also, on a related note, check out this interview from about three years ago with Spinner: http://www.spinner.com/interface/black-lips. It includes three performances of tracks off Good Bad Not Evil and then a humorous Interface that has Joe asking Cole questions.
Randy Hustles Up!
Advice To Wanna-Be Hustlers: Just keep making music as much as possible. Finish every idea you have or at least run the numbers on an idea to see if whatever cash you currently have will be enough to help you accomplish what you wanna do. Don’t wait for someone to give you what you want, just go out and take it. Don’t be afraid to beg, borrow or steal whatever you need to get the job done. At the end of the day, no one will hear your almost-finished demo. You need to have something completed, no matter how good you think the finished product it. You can always take what you learned from making the first song/record/project and apply those new ideas to the next song/record/project. People don’t expect you to be perfect right out of the gate, so you shouldn’t expect perfection either. Having room to grow is what being a full-time artist/hustler is all about. If your first thing kills it, people will only be expecting bigger and better things from you, which is rad. You always wanna have the next bigger better idea brewing in your head, no matter how crazy it might sound to you right now. Stretching your comfort zones will only mean that you are growing. Don’t be afraid to fuck up or fail. Nobody ever got what they wanted by sitting on the sidelines. You gotta get your hands dirty and make mistakes to know where you need to improve and get stronger.
Check Out The Complete Feature: http://hustleup.wordpress.com/
Concert Review: Harlem, Tulsa, Girlfriends, DJ Carbo @ Great Scott (4/25/10)
Artists: Harlem, Tulsa, Girfriends, DJ Carbo
Location: Great Scott, Allston, MA (not Austin, Texas as my French Professuer thought I said lol)
Date: Sunday, April 25, 2010
Act I: Girlfriends: For starters, they were a notable opening band, a treat I as a fairly common concertgoer am not always acustom to. The songs were modestly catchy, meaing they didn’t hit you a la Box Elders, but they had an inviting aura, which kept me paying attention and possibly will make me check out their music further, a rare feat for opening acts, for me at least. The guitartist displayed some sweet showmanship: playing guitar with his teeth and behind his back. As a whole they rocked out and delivered a rather energetic performance.
Glen: Girlfriends are pretty special. About two or three songs deep into their set, I became convinced that they are awesome. Their flavor of power-pop/garage rock/punk was simply catchy and fun. It was nice to see the guitarist/vocalist rock out and play with a kind of passion that seems to be lacking from most openers. If I was forced to compare them to some bands I’d go with Blue Album era Weezer and The Ponys. They have a shit ton of local and national dates booked up through August. If you like this kind of music, do some reading up, yo.
Act II: Tulsa – I don’t have much to say here. About two songs in, I was mentally through with them. I just couldn’t wait for the singer to say, “this is our last one tonight.” They’re talented musicians and all, but their songs don’t come through to me. It’s more of a case of individal parts, rather than a sum. It’s the sum that matters to my ears. That’s what makes a memorable band. In other words, they bored me.
Glen: Tulsa, guys. You had me going for a little while. A little while! It’s kind of hard to describe your sound; all I know is that I was feeling all fast-paced and shit until you came on. Buzzkill, kind of. Listening to you after the fact (aka right now on MySpace), I actually dig y’all. That said, your set was draggy and maybe you shouldn’t have played that extra fan request at the end. Just saying. Random pairing I guess?
Act III: Harlem: I can see why they named their album Hippies. Looking and behaving like mellow, “yeah dude,” hippies, really enthusiastic to put on a show. They must have taken giggle juice before the show, because they were lit up with laughter and smirks, snickering the entire performance. It was amusing as a crowd member. Their joy came through in their energetic, astonishingly fast (not of the Jay variety, but pretty damn quick) performance. Unfortunately this energy didn’t seap into the audience, whom were really boring fucks! I mean I was rocking out and pogoing and what have you, and a few others were too, but most just stood and stared. Alas, the trio didn’t seem as into the show as one may have hoped and their set was under 30 minutes, if I’m not mistaken. I appreciated their humor about the situation. They constantly amused themselves and the audience with their lighthearted demeanor. I really dug the way the members switched back and forth from drums to guitar, something I rarely see live unless it’s just for fun, which of course all of this is, but these dudes were playing some of their best material, not just random strummings lol. In mellow, hippie fashion, they asked each other on stage which songs they would play, without having a big Congressional hearing about it either. So, one could find humor in it, without getting impatient with the artists. I must say they have a great pop sensability and I hear a lot of the Kinks in their music. Maybe it’s just me… Most of their songs sound the same or very similar and I DO NOT mean that in mean manner lol. It’s a great sound and it works like a charm. If it was AC/DC’s sound I can only deal with that for a few tunes, but not Harlem, it works everytime for me. In other senses, their numbers are not all the “same,” but I really dig that big ass drum beat, the jangely, garagey guitars, and the poppy, sing along vocals. But, I digress… Anyway, they played many of my favorites from their recent LP: “Friendly Ghost,” “Be Your Baby,” “Gay Human Bones,” “Torture,” and others. FG and GHB were wise openers and closers, respectively. I wish they played other Hippies tracks like “Poolside” and “Pissed,” but what are you going to do? My other complaint was the length. I expected them to play wayyyy longer, oh well, if the crowd was more engaging than perhaps we would have seen/heard more jams. They came back for what I call a “reluctanct encore” and then goodnight.
Glen: So it’s pretty known. Hippies is currently the best long-player (out of about fifty) I’ve heard in the Year 2010 and that’s that. You probably know Harlem’s deal: they got a huge ass bass drum leftover from the Middle Ages AND Michael Coomers and Curtis O’Mara alternate between drums and guitar. That’s that. It was a pleasurable concert experience for me having them bang out ditties in Jay Reatard 25 minute fashion. I also noticed that most songs were way more sped up live than on record like the opener “Friendly Ghost.” “Beautiful and Very Smart” was touching, as was the encore “Caroline” — both of these off the band’s 2008 LP goodie Free Drugs;-)
Set Included (no particular order, save the first one):
1. “Friendly Ghost”
2. “Torture”
3. “Number One”
4. “Be Your Baby”
5. “Gay Human Bones”
6. “Tila And I”
7. “South of France”
8. “Caroline”
9. “Beautiful and Very Smart”
10. “Someday Soon”
Final Grade:
Chris: (B+)- I enjoyed myself and was stunned at how great Harlem sounded, but I just needed more! Overall, a good show.
Glen: (A-) —–> A great show, but I wouldn’t say a top one.
Chris and Glen
Chris On…
The “Fall of the Roman Empire.”: I saw one documentary on the history of Rock and Roll in which Pete Townshend was asked about the music of the 70s and he commented that it was the “Fall of the Roman Empire.” My interpretation is that he was saying that Rock and Roll was the equivalent of the Roman Empire in its own way and that by the 70s it had completely plummeted. It began in the 50s as rebellious, black music with strong black roots that crossed over into white america and broke down the color barrier, to an extent. It was something that belonged to kids and not their parents. This continued in the 60s as the music progressed and expanded, which I won’t get into here. Much of popular music matured, sonically and lyrically, with artists developing a social consciousness and often expressing such sentiments through their songs. I suppose one could point to Woodstock, being the pinacle of this era. The early 70s served simultaneously as the leftover of the 60s as well as the precursor for what would come next. By this time Rock was losing its soul, slowly becoming a big business game. Technically, it had corporate backing most of the time since it’s creation, but the word “corporate” began to come up in association with Rock music more and more. Cameron Crowe’s film, Almost Famous (2000) takes place in 1973 and nicely chronicles these final days of the orignal empire of Rock and Roll, as it was dying. Then it was recessitated via Punk and what have you, but that’s a whole other story…
More Chris ONs a comin….
Chris
Kids Like You & Me (KLYAM) 