After years of service, Arthur departed the material plane today.

He died as he lived—free, high and a-dreaming of love, ‘neath vultures’ terrible gaze.

This poem by Peter Lamborn Wilson was published as a letter to the editor in the final issue of Arthur, No. 31 (Oct 2008). It was in response to the piece by Alejandro Jodorowsky in the previous issue, an excerpt from his newly translated memoirs, The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky, detailing his informal apprenticeship to Leonora Carrington in Mexico City in the late ’50s…

FOR LEONORA CARRINGTON

# 1
Mexico City is absolutely.
Or was.
With a claridad that would’ve seemed
glossy as bone except for the fecality
of its plutonian fruit. Especially
Leonora Carrington – the secret hardness
of colonial baroque – its refusal to be
reasonable – its crown of owls

#2
Chocolate is Mexico’s great
contribution to Surrealism.
With unbroken incantations in the
voice of a lion prepare (on wild rocks)
a soup made of half a pink onion, a bit of
perfumed wood, some grains of myrrh, a
large branch of green mint, 3 belladonna pills
covered with white swiss chocolate, a
huge compass rose (plunge in soup for one minute)
Just before serving add Chines “cloud” mushroom
which has snail-like antennae &
grown on owl dung

#3
As modern Hermeticist she ranks with Fulcanelli
a Madame Paracelsa who tells yr
fortune in the sense of buried treasure.
It seems you yourself have psychic gifts
which are only exacerbated by her soups.
Molé as Dalí realized surrealizes all
dishes via its resemblance to excrement
e. g. over boiled lobsters (serve
with pink champagne). Shit you can sculpt.

#4
Like gunpowder which was invented solely
to exorcize demons – a secret passed
along the Silk Road to Roger Bacon
who unfortunately leaked the recipe
to the uninitiated – Carrington
embodies both the siesta & the
anti-siesta. A Madam Adam
with a handcranked gramophone with a horn
lacquered black with gold pinstriping that
plays only beeswax cylinders of Erik Satie
or Gesualdo. Here alone exile
attains an elegance & impassibility known
only to stoned Rosicrucians.

#5
To live absolutely. A tricky trajectory between
clinical dementia & the sloppy lace
curtain Irish kitchen gemütlichkeit that
usually passes (present company excepted
of course) for life outside literature &
even for true love. Or else it’s
the altitude — mushrooms & chocolate — under the
asphalt the bloodsoaked landfill —
cactus cowskulls &
drunken fusillades of flowers.

(NOTE: Soup recipe by L. Carrington; see The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky.)

Peter Lamborn Wilson
New Paltz, New York

HIGH FIVE
Detroit’s visionary MC5 receive a film tribute that aims to rewrite rock history
By Steffie Nelson

On New Year’s Eve, 1972, the MC5 took the stage at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, a vast psychedelic venue where they’d held court as the “house band” between 1966 and 1969. Their live shows had been so incendiary, the five band members so arrogant, that even a huge star like Janis Joplin, no slouch in the live department, once refused to go on after them. This gig, their swan song as it were, was sloppy and dispassionate; the ghosts of past glories even more unforgiving than the sparse, cynical crowd. Guitarist Wayne Kramer took off mid-performance to go cop dope, and the MC5 never played again. Kramer and guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith were 22; singer Rob Tyner and drummer Dennis Thompson were 24; bassist Michael Davis was 26. In the end they’d effectively been “pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition,” which their manager John Sinclair had railed against, perhaps presciently, in the liner notes to their now-legendary debut album Kick Out The Jams.

The MC5 hold a curious place in rock history. Their ascendance represented a moment in America when art and commerce converged, when all that was vital and visceral was also the pinnacle of hip. As the flamboyant and badass musical mouthpiece of the White Panther Party, the MC5 did embody the soul of the late ‘60s counterculture: one foot in the optimistic past and the other in the disillusioned, deadly future; one hand holding a guitar, the other a shotgun. It’s an irresistible image, one which was unappetizingly co-opted by Levis last spring for a series of T-shirts. A promotional performance in London by the three surviving Five (Rob Tyner suffered a fatal heart attack in 1991; Fred Smith died of heart failure in 1994) was seen by detractors as a final, sad sellout.

The question of whether or not the MC5 failed at the end of the day is much debated in the riveting feature-length documentary MC5: A True Testimonial, directed by David Thomas and produced by Laurel Legler. All parties agree, however, that for a fleeting, incandescent moment the MC5 were “at the center of the yin-yang,” as Michael Davis philosophizes in the film, “and it was our job to keep it going in a positive direction.”

But the proverbial yin-yang was already spinning into darkness, and it took the MC5 with it. Like fireworks on the fourth of July, they rose with a bright, beautiful bang and, as far as mainstream America was concerned, disappeared with a puff of smoke into the night. They were, ultimately, sacrificial – the artistic entity that was the MC5 didn’t survive more than seven years—but their legacy has continually inspired legions of punks, rockers, artists and freaks, who got turned on to their music through word-of-mouth, or more than likely though the persistent echo of a call to arms that rings with timeless resonance: “kick out the jams, motherfucker.”

As David Thomas says, “The people who know, know. The other people don’t get it.” The Chicago-based Thomas and his wife Laurel Legler began working on MC5: A True Testimonial in 1995, spurred on through financial troubles and licensing hassles by sheer love and respect and the determination to do justice to these American legends. As Legler points out, few bands have received this sort of filmic treatment, and if they have their way MC5: A True Testimonial will revise rock history. On the eve of a limited theatrical release and the worldwide release of a nearly four-hour DVD edition of the film (including deleted scenes, complete live performances, interview outtakes and fan testimonials), David Thomas and Laurel Legler are ready to testify.

ARTHUR: What was your initial personal attraction to the story?
LAUREL: The impetus for my even looking into this was a close friend of mine who was a rock ‘n’ roll journalist had made some MC5 compilation tapes for me, and he said, ‘Someday before I die, man, I’d like to see a movie about those guys.’ And I thought, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. And I started looking into it, and it’s like, there’s nothing written about these guys, I got nothin’ here, what’s the deal? And of course that was what piqued my interest—what happened? These guys looked fabulous! They’re fabulous and scary and incredible and their music was astonishing. So it started out with a sense of mystery…And the first thing we had to do was contact some of these folks to find out if they were even interested in having a film made. We didn’t presume anything. We didn’t step into this and say, ‘We’re going to make this movie and here we are, deal with us.’ It was quite the opposite. And everybody said yes. So once everyone was on board it gave us both the permission to pursue the dream and also the responsibility.
DAVID: We really worked with everybody on this. We couldn’t have done it without their cooperation. It was really a labor of love, not just from us, but from all the people involved. It actually became something of a healing process because obviously there was a lot of bad blood and a lot of broken dreams.

How do you hope that will impact on the audience? What do you think the film’s ‘message’ is?
DAVID: My feeling about this film is that yes, it’s the story of a particular group, a particular time and place in American history, but ultimately it’s the story of individuals who are chasing their dream. And they make some mistakes, and they do some good things and some not so good things. In some ways it’s almost like the MC5 story is the archetypal story of artists, creative people who band against the establishment or whatever you want to call it, and the beauty that wells up from their art in spite of all that resistance. It’s a little bit about that real human drama that happens to everybody in their own lives. Which was why we worked so closely with all the people, to try to get some sense of their personal loss and their personal accomplishment because those are the things that we all strive for. These guys are, on some level, just like you and I.

Considering the state of our nation, is the MC5 story more relevant than ever, or is it more like some quaint vestige of a bygone era called ‘the sixties’?
DAVID: I think it is more relevant than ever. We couldn’t have foreseen what’s happening in Iraq when we started the project in 1995, but I think that not unlike what’s said in our film: it’s all a circle. History is cyclical, and here we are again: embroiled in a war that has divided people in terms of their opinion about it, which could largely be seen as an unpopular war.
LAUREL: Has the country been this polarized since Vietnam? I can’t really remember a time that it was, over issues as important as this. The country really was divided, it says in our film there was a war not only in Vietnam but in the streets here. Unfortunately we don’t have a war in the streets here, I wish we did. I talk to people all the time, ‘Why aren’t we in the streets marching?’ ‘I don’t know, can’t get a permit.’ It’s just ridiculous! …When we started the film we really thought there would be some elements of it that would be kind of unbelievable to younger people—you know, National Guard troops on the streets in their town—and then suddenly 9/11 happened and we were seeing that for ourselves.
DAVID: Who would have thought, a year ago, that the Dixie Chicks were gonna be ostracized for their political views by the very media that brought them to that popularity? I mean it’s not as if the Dixie Chicks are saying ‘kick out the jams motherfuckers,’ but y’know…

Can there ever be a legitimately revolutionary band again? Can there ever be another youth revolution? In a way it’s almost like it’s been set up by the media and the culture so that it can’t ever happen.
DAVID: I think that’s very true, in fact, and that’s one of the things that’s really interesting about the MC5 story. The story happens at a point when the record companies and the media are all trying to get their arms around this thing which is still kicking pretty wildly. There’s no containing it yet, and the MC5 phenomenon occurs before people are aware of the ramifications. I mean, who thought that the Vietnam War would result in Napalm falling out of the sky on villagers, soldiers disabled by chemicals; these are almost futuristic, science fiction kind of ideas. Whereas now, as a culture we’ve had those kinds of experiences, and there’s this continued effort to keep the voice of dissent stifled. The powers of the media and marketing and pop mass culture conglomerations are not the least bit interested in a message that rocks the boat, that bites the hand that feeds it.

What happened with Elektra Records? Danny Fields signs the MC5 and The Stooges at this big ‘signing party,’ and then they were dropped six months later. What do you think the label expected from them when they signed them?
DAVID: When Elektra Records signed the band in the fall of 1968 we were just beginning to hear the first rumblings of what came to be called ‘the revolution.’ And Danny Fields has told us that Jac Holzman and Elektra Records really saw this revolution as a money-making thing. Here was this group that was the ‘band of the revolution’ and for a brief period all the record companies were really jumping on that bandwagon. I remember there was a Columbia Records print ad at the time that had a picture of a protester inside a jail cell and the caption to it was: ‘But the Man can’t take away our music.’ And it was really this whole idea of packaging the revolution. What happened, though, as John Sinclair tells us in the film, ‘We were being the people that we said we were.’ They meant it. The total assault on the culture: rock ‘n’ roll, dope, and fucking in the streets—they meant it. And I think that was a little too hot for Elektra to handle.
LAUREL: They weren’t good little soldiers for the record company, and as we all know, if you’re going to be successful with your record company the record company has to like you. And they would show up at the offices and they would smoke pot and they would be loud and all these things were happening. They were just getting signed and the CIA office in Ann Arbor is bombed [an act that was widely attributed to the Trans Love House]…
DAVID: …And they’re playing the ’68 Democratic Convention [Abbie Hoffman’s Festival of Life protest in Chicago], and the FBI is all over them. Even before the record is released, this is a band that has FBI files. People really did see them as a dangerous entity, because on a cultural level they do represent the nexus, the coming together of a white, long-haired, counterculture, anti-war movement and an increasingly militant, revolutionary, armed, black power movement. Obviously, if there had been a true coalition of say, SDS and Black Panther, there really could have been revolution in America at that time.
LAUREL: We would be completely remiss as the people who made the documentary about the MC5 if we were to attempt to say to people that the MC5’s revolution was strictly a political revolution. It wasn’t. It was a revolution of the mind. Rob Tyner was interested in the mind, he was interested in how culture can change, how individuals can change, and how that collective mind can change the world around you, what energy can do when it’s combined with other energy. So in that sense a revolution is always possible but it seems like it really has to start at home, with the individual making a decision to turn the television off, to stop buying the motherfucking SUVs and to discover something new, take a stand, go to a political meeting, something. But if I were to go to downtown Chicago right now with a megaphone and call for revolution, my ass is going to jail. Like Michael says, ‘We didn’t wanna have a shoot-out with the FBI.’ But he did want to get up on stage and bend minds, he wanted to go out as far as he possibly could with his music and the images and the whole package, the sound, the lights, the music, and change the way people think.
DAVID: Ultimately that’s the responsibility of the artist, isn’t it? To make people think, to make people question their world. Isn’t that the goal of art?
LAUREL: Was it David Cronenberg, who when asked if the artist has any social responsibility, said that’s where the paradox is: that it’s really an artist’s responsibility to be irresponsible. His exact line was something like, when you talk about social or political responsibility then you’re amputating the best limbs an artist has, you’re plugging into the system already.
DAVID: You know, it’s not as if these artists don’t exist and that there aren’t artists who are taking some kind of a stand.
LAUREL: It’s a two-edged sword: you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You go out on this tour and you decide to do press conferences and discuss the situation and then people call you a sanctimonious asshole and tell you to shut up and just play music.
DAVID: It’s not unlike what John Sinclair said in our film: On the one hand they tell you it’s a hype, on the other they throw you in jail.

Let’s talk about the White Panthers. I feel like their history is full of contradictions. Some people say, ‘Oh, it was just a joke, it was the MC5 fan club,’ yet Wayne Kramer denies this. Even the name of the organization – is it true that there was a guy named Panther White?
LAUREL: Yes, there was. He was sort of a con man. ‘Panther White wasn’t the chairman of a chair!’, as John Sinclair would tell us.
DAVID: In a certain sense it’s a con, but there’s a sincerity to it as well – an idealism, a revolutionary spirit. It’s like a carnival barker: ‘Step right this way, you’ve got five seconds of decision. Step right up, brothers and sisters.’ It’s a jive, it’s a come-on, but it’s not what the media perceived as a hype, because on a certain level they do mean it.
LAUREL: Wayne still carries with him the political importance of what the band was trying to do. I think he felt that the White Panther party was important because it was in solidarity with the Black Panthers, that for all their pot smoking, acid-taking and cracked ideas, they did mean it. He says in our film, ‘We were ready,’ and then you see some of the other members of the band and they say, ‘What do I care if they vote for Republicans or live in a commune? I don’t give a shit.’ There was even that sort of division at the time within the band.
DAVID: And even that is a reflection of the culture as a whole. You had people like Martin Luther King saying that peaceful resistance was the way to go, but you also had people like the Weather Underground that were blowing shit up.
LAUREL: John Sinclair will say things like ‘We were fearless, we were righteous, we were connected to the universe.’ In the sense of a revolution of the mind, a cultural revolution, I think it did have an impact and it meant something. But they were nuts. [laughs] They would stay up all night and chew drugs and get up in the morning and try and act out the ideas they thought of the night before.
DAVID: But John was quite serious about the formation of the White Panther Party. [Maybe some of it] was fueled by his legal troubles, because he was looking at going to jail before the White Panther Party was formed–you know, his reaction to the establishment coming down was to become increasingly radicalized and increasingly militant.

Do you think that they needed John Sinclair to survive?
DAVID: What John brought to the band I think was really important. If John hadn’t become their manager, would the MC5 just have remained another American garage band? Perhaps. I don’t know for sure. But I think that he brought something very special to the group; he gave them a purpose, a direction, a program, for whatever it’s worth. But at the same time, the thing that he brought to the equation is the same thing that sowed the seeds of their destruction.
LAUREL: At the point when John Sinclair and the MC5 part ways, they no longer needed John Sinclair. It clearly wasn’t working, from a professional or personal standpoint.
DAVID: At the same time they had changed record labels, this guy Jon Landau had come in, and Sinclair had already been convicted, he just hadn’t been sentenced yet. He was waiting to go to jail. As Michael says in the film, ‘Here’s our manager. How’s he gonna manage our business if he’s in jail?’ It was pretty ludicrous. And there were people from Atlantic records that were saying, ‘This whole Trans Love Energy thing, this White Panther thing, this shit ain’t working. Fellas, half your money is going to support all these hippies that are living in this commune. You gotta split from this.’ And that Back In The USA record is a reflection of that change in their aesthetic. John Sinclair’s assessment of that record is that it’s complete crap. But he made the arrangement that brought in Jon Landau in the first place. He sows the seeds of what the band would continue to be at that point. It’s interesting, it’s full of contradictions. That ultimately is why we could spend seven years on this film, because the deeper we got into it, the more interesting it became.
LAUREL: I think that we continue to be intrigued and surprised by the complexity of these people, individually and collectively. There was something truly magical that happened when these five guys came together, it’s undeniable. I think they tapped into energies, I think they did tap into the universe. I think that had the equation been different it never would have been the same. I just continue to fall in love with their complexity and their intelligence and their mystical side and their magical side, and they’re all still like that today.

You named your film production company Future/Now Films, which is the name of an MC5 song. What do you think they were plugged into 30 years ago that we weren’t ready for?
DAVID: ‘Future/Now’ is a Rob Tyner-composed song and those are Rob’s lyrics, and specifically, the line from the song that we had in mind when we named the company was, ‘The future’s yours right now, if you rule your own destiny.’ And that was the idea we were coming from with this thing, even before we could get funding, that we had to do this. I don’t think this was a case where we just said, ‘Hey, let’s do this groovy movie about the MC5!’ It didn’t really work like that. There was a whole series of synchronistic events, the witnessing of occurrences, everything in our lives had led us to this weird crossroads where we could take five seconds of decision and decide either that we were gonna make this MC5 movie or we were not…My favorite part is the very last line of the song, and Rob Tyner goes, ‘the key to the mystery…’ [thinking the phone has been disconnected] Hello? Yeah, that’s it. Ya get it? Fill in the blank, it’s up to you. It’s all here for ya, I’m givin’ it to you. I think he’s really amazing. I think that he was a shaman, and I think that he was a magically inspired person. On the liner notes of the first album, Rob Tyner is quoted as calling the MC5 ‘a working model of the paleocybernetic culture in action.’ Right? 1968. What the fuck does that mean? Except that now we are, arguably, paleocybernetic.

What do you think he meant by that?
DAVID: I think that he saw the MC5 and the process that the MC5 was going through as a model for the types of processes that we might actually be going through in the future. For instance an artist could work with other musicians in a tribal and/or communal setting, cut off from the influences of mainstream culture, and develop their individual ideas—compose, record, and actually get their music out to the masses, separate from the corporate power structure.

Do you think that there’s something about what happened in Detroit and with Trans Love Energies before they recorded Kick Out The Jams—like it was this self-contained universe or laboratory where all this stuff could happen, and then once they took it outside of that environment it lost…
DAVID: …the energy is dissipated? Perhaps. I mean, I think that there are a lot of really deep and interesting ideas that percolate throughout this whole MC5 thing. There are ideas of music and art as shamanistic and/or magical processes, by which one opens the gates, so to speak, by which one perhaps communicates with other levels of consciousness or being, other energy forms. There are interviews with Rob Tyner from as early as 1967 where he’s talking about music and sound’s ability to alter the molecular structure of the human body, and in fact we know that to be true now. These theories are confirmed, that if you play tones at the proper level, you can get people to perspire or feel anxious or feel calm. You can in fact affect their consciousness and their physicality. Rob used to refer to it, ‘They have to get the music in their meat.’

That’s very William Burroughs.
DAVID: Exactly. And he was a great fan and reader of Burroughs. It’s like that Parliament/Funkadelic thing, ‘Free your ass and your mind will follow.’ These ideas are all in there. There were ideas within the MC5 performance—not always conscious—which were drawing upon whole realms of ritual performance, like that whole JC Crawford ‘Brothers and Sisters’ speech at the beginning. That was all part and parcel of the shamanistic thing they were trying to do; they were trying to create this orgiastic, ecstatic union with the audience, whereby they could transcend their earthbound consciousness.

What else might have inspired this? I know they considered Sun Ra a mentor…
DAVID: You know what? Can I tell you something? Sun Ra laid his hands on me, about twenty years ago. It was in the early 1980s, I had just come back from England and my girlfriend at the time and I went to see Sun Ra. It was the first time I’d ever seen him and he was playing at the Jazz Showcase here in Chicago at the old Bismarck Hotel. I happened to be sitting on a corner chair on the two aisles, and at some point he did the processional around the room, and as he passed, twice, he laid his hands on my shoulders. And I looked up into his eyes and they were doing ‘Space Is The Place,’ and I will never forget the feel of the touch of his hands on my shoulders. It was not as if he pressed down on my body, but when he laid his hands upon my shoulders it was like they weighed a million tons. It was the heaviest physical touch, and it was the most profound physical touch that I have ever felt.

Wow.
DAVID: Yeah. And a couple years ago I was relaying that story to Michael Davis when we were in Arizona with him. We were talking about Sun Ra and I said, ‘Michael, you know Sun Ra laid hands on me.’ And after I told him the story Michael looked at me with a very sort of piercing look and he said, ‘You know, maybe that’s when this all started.’

On the Winter Solstice, Eliza Swann met with Frank Haines (above) in his studio to discuss his work for the show “Under the Shadow of the Wing of the Thing,” up now through March 27 at Lisa Cooley Gallery. Their conversations revolved around the subjects of art, philosophy, form and concept as seen through the lens of darkness…

Eliza Swann [E.S.]: Since we’ve been talking about the properties of darkness, let’s begin at the beginning. Darkness represents the Absolute Unmanifest. In mythology this is often represented by primordial waters and the formlessness that precedes form. How does the concept of the Unmanifest figure into your art practice? What catalyzes your urge to make forms? How do you reconcile form and formlessness in your practice?

Frank Haines [F.H.]: BLACK! Darkness, before the big bang, all that was before. All potential. A contemporary metal band, Watain, named their recent album Lawless Darkness. The way they explained it, light is an impulse of restriction and definition. Darkness represents an absence of such restrictions. The dark is the primordial wellspring. While I definitely do not feel aligned with the path the Watain brain is on (satanism), I appreciate and relate with the sophistication of this articulation of the black. Of the absence of light. Of the unmanifest, it is the color of all potential. Light exists inside of the all that is darkness. It is the all pervasive background from which to return to. Look how good any color looks next to black. The black that surrounds the stage of a theater. Maybe there was/is a first cause. But what of the black that preceded it. Is the brain even able of thinking on such things?

E. S.: Restriction and definition are necessary for the act of creation to occur out of primordial ooze. Your work with grids hints at a Platonic geometric conceptualization of matter—a way to use limitation and restriction to understand the living world.

F.H.: Much of the sculptural work I have done has referenced the main Egyptian creation myth: “In the beginning all was only the swirling watery chaos that was called Nu. Out of this rose the primordial mound, of Atum.” This mound of earth rising out of the primordial waters. Something rising out of a bigger something. Such fertility and expansion is a major reason why I have used the color teal for so long.

A grid is a modern invention, a symbol in which to map out and contemplate the manifest. I can’t get away from the grid. It is a short step from a grid to the spider’s web, and then to consider what sits in the middle of that web. Like the super massive black hole, Sagittarius A which sits at the center of our swirling Milky Way galaxy. From manifest back to unmanifest.

I titled my last solo show “Form is the Graveyard of Consciousness.” This was a direct quote from Manly P Hall in his book Lectures on the Ancient Philosophy: ‘Throughout the inferior creation consciousness lies buried in form. Form is the confusing, resisting, limiting, inhibiting, and imprisoning part of existence. Nothing in whose nature even a trace of form remains is capable of absolute consciousness. Form is the graveyard of consciousness.”

Hall’s talk immediately reminds me of the genius of Yves Klein and “La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée, Le Vide” (The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void), where he exhibited an empty gallery. I’m not sure if it is for this specific show, but Linda Montano told me Klein once energized an empty room by doing a lot of Judo in it, then allowing people to come in.

E. S.: Looking around your studio there is an abundance of demonic imagery which immediately makes me think of the Greek origin of the word demon—daimon. Originally this word referred to a guide which was somewhere between human and god, and carried neither negative or positive connotations. Socrates credits much of his work to his daimon or guide. Christianity gave an unsavory character to demons to ensure that no one would find guidance outside of the church. How do demons figure into your work and your inspiration?

F.H.: 2010 was a really intense year for me. Year of the tiger. I did find it to be ferocious and at times devastating. Elements that were joined together were suddenly and painfully ripped apart. I did not welcome this energy. It was the type of thing best represented in the Tarot card of the Tower. Sudden dramatic upheaval. Like a tiger stalking it’d prey in the grass.

I bring this up because it goes to the root of the idea of demons or the devil. The word devil comes from the greek word Diabolos which literally means to tear apart. This diabolic is the antonym of “symbolic” which comes from the root sym-bollein which means to throw together, or to unite.

Such bringing together and tearing apart seem like the polar energies of this universe as we know it. Matter is eternal, the compounds of matter fleeting. I can resist it and hate it as much as I want, or I can ride this universe wave and see where it takes me. Such a response is best articulated for me in the Tarot card of the Hanging Man. The paradox of an individual enlightened through powerlessness.

E. S.: I wouldn’t say “powerlessness” as much as “surrender” in the case of The Hanged Man. There is a great deal of power in surrender – the trust in the “bringing together” even when you are in the “tearing apart” space. Jesus, one of our more famous Hanged Men, at the end of the crucifixion scene said “Into thy hands I commend my spirit”, words of surrender.

F.H.: I agree with you, but sometimes your hand gets forced. And you find yourself in this place of having to be the yielding branch. While the Jesus man did say those words, prior to saying them he asked his dad why he had forsaken him.

I was bullied into Christianity as a youth. I say bullied because I had no choice and there weren’t any other options. I also say bullied because it is a belief system largely guided by the unsustainable and unproductive tenets of fear, suppression and guilt. In such a system was planted seeds of fear about those things outside the church which were labeled demonic. Life forces such as sexual desires are labeled as evil and shameful as opposed to being sublimated.

While I definitely like to ponder that which is the demonic (as one of many books on the shelf), I don’t fuck with it. Whether that energy is something that a high magician can conjure into a triangle from the protection of his magic circle, or whether it is something deep rooted in one’s subconscious, I’d rather leave that potential energy alone. I state this out of respect, not fear. Josephine McCarthy, a contemporary consecrator and exorcist, is a real forward thinking author on this subject.

E. S.: Exorcism! Absolutely! I had always approached that subject in a Jungian, metaphorical, psychological (disbelieving) way until I began working with intense energy healers who did a lot of very literal exorcisms. I just watched a beautiful documentary by Margaret Mead from the 1930s called “Trance and Dance in Bali”. The dancers enact the struggle between “fear of death” and “the living” and become possessed by spirits during their frenzy – they begin to plunge daggers into their chests without leaving a scratch.

E. S.: In Jung’s opinion the first step toward individuation, or self-realization, is confronting the shadow aspect of the self. In his opinion the key to surviving the descent into darkness, repressed areas of the psyche, and unconsciousness is to remain aware of the shadow without identifying with it. He also saw the shadow self as the seat of creativity. In what way does your shadow self figure into your practice at this moment?

F.H.: I feel like most, if not all, occult or metaphysical practices are best done in tandem with some kind of psychological therapy. They really compliment one another. In this way I think one can best maintain sanity and see that which is above as that which is below.

The abyss is something to be looked into, but not the only thing. Some of the most bitter people do yoga every day (as do some of the happiest). Facing, accepting and shaking hands with one’s darkness is a major step to evolving as a human. Because that darkness is there, always has been, always will be. Whether it is recognized or forces its way out in a terribly awkward way, there it is. Hello. You can do tons of drugs or any other type of medicating but it will still be there until it is faced. I go to therapy. I had to deal with this. The only way out is through.

The multitude of stories in all mythologies are guiding lights, roadmaps to such experiences. They also serve as reminders to how universal that life template is. Facing that dark night of the soul. Thinking you will find an abomination only to find a god.

David Foster Wallace did such a good long form analysis of personal darkness (and so many other things in Infinite Jest). Two passages stand out:

“Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing, too big to see, rising” (pg 651)

and

“As the two vibrations [exhaust fan and violin] combined, it was as if a large dark billowing shape came billowing out of some corner in my mind. I can be no more precise than to say large, dark, shape, and billowing, what came flapping out of some backwater of my psyche I had not had the slightest inkling was there.” (pg 649)

E. S.:I completely agree with you about the occult/psychology nexus . People often ask me how to learn the Tarot – I usually direct them to M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Travelled” and Annie Besant’s “Man and His Bodies” – basically two psychology textbooks. In any “occult” study the “key” or “philosopher’s stone” appears from within – not from an external study of symbology. Meditation is also a phenomenal tool for understanding – in every aspect.

E.S.: In some of your recent performances and photographs, there is an abundance of liquid, pouring, and paint ooze baptisms happening. Water is often associated with darkness and unconsciousness and floods figure heavily in mythologies surrounding cleansing and purging – as in the great flood which destroys the face of the earth and the recedes, leaving one pure human being. What is being transformed during these pigment baptisms?

F.H.: Those color baptisms are a direct homage to the Vienna actionists and most specifically to Otto Meuhl, my favorite of that pack. They were a volcano that keeps giving. I wish more eruptions like those of the actionists would happen today. I have also considered a Tom Marioni piece from 1969, one second sculpture, where he threw a coil of metal tape into the air. Those actions have existed for a very short period of time, becoming these grotesque action painting sculptures that sometimes live on in photographs.

While I think a lot about water, those works seems more like some fucked up mess. They feel closer to blood sacrifice than a baptism. Baptism is a water grave that one is re-birthed from. It must have looked amazing on those mayan pyramids when they were cutting all those hearts out of people and the blood ran down the steps. Tragic, of course, but then we get led into territory of the terror of the sublime. In a recent Wire interview William Bennett of Whitehouse mentioned that his intent was “taking people to places that are completely unfamiliar to them. Basically dragging people into the woods.” He put it so succinctly, as being dragged into the woods sounds at once so sinister yet also transcendent. While the performance work has a long list of identifiable influences, I’ve always wanted it to have a ritualistic framework yet at the same time be short and entertaining! The word entertaining has always been a important criteria, because so much, dare I say most, work that defines itself as performance work in murderously boring and usually embarrassing.

E. S.: I am so glad you mentioned the “terror/sublime” dance – I love the quote by Edmund Burke “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.” While I definitely thought of you upon seeing Hermann Nitsch’s “60. Painting Action//60. Malaktion,” your drips and pouring also remind me of my Kundalini studies in India. I was warned before beginning that the work could lead to madness if not handled properly – in a sense being “dragged into the woods.” After a day of intense and difficult meditation a common symptom was the sensation of nectar dripping down the top of the head into the spinal cord. In your performance at P.S. 1 when you dropped to your knees to have paint poured over the crown of your head I thought “A- HA.” The sublime.

F.H.: We live in an age where we have so much to inherit. That is a thing to celebrate. We have generations of experiments in music and the visual arts to work from. There are many things in the past that do not need to be repeated, but inevitably are. Why not quote Kandinsky’s opening remarks in The Spiritual in Art:

“Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel as did the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who strive to follow the Greek method of sculpture achieve only a similarity of form, the work remaining soulless for all time. Such imitation is mere aping. Externally the monkey completely resembles a human being; he will sit holding a book in front of his nose, and turn over the pages with a thoughtful aspect, but his actions have for him no real meaning.”

E. S.: Since we are largely talking about the properties of darkness tell me about “Noiry” from your performance duo “Blanko and Noiry.” I am also curious about the addition of “gray.” The dynamic seemed to shift from Father and Son to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

F.H.: There needed to be three. If you have two things there is always the relationship between them, in essence the third. That needed to exist on the stage, the visual triangle, the Osiris. It is such an instinctive template. It really felt that simple.

E. S.: Tell me about your musical selections for Blanko and Noiry and how you came to work with Chris Kachulis.

F.H.: Chris was good friends with Bruce Haack and did a majority of the vocals for the Haack’s Electric Lucifer. Electric Lucifer became an instant favorite of mine. It has all these forward thinking ideas about light immersed in warm electronic tones. I loved that they were claiming Lucifer in a tone that wasn’t entirely dark or sinister.

I saw Philip Anagnos’ documentary on Haacke (which I want to say for the record really falls short of being a complete film on such a visionary). On it, Chris sang a few numbers from a still unreleased record he and Haack did together (Electric Lucifer 3). Chris seemed like such a weird old tripper, I wanted to know more about him. I contacted the website and they put me in touch with him. I went to meet him at his old job of 40 years, ABC TV near Lincoln Square. I had just started performing by myself a few times. It just sort of evolved from reworkings of midi files I had been messing around with in Garageband. From those templates, we started doing really damaged versions of numbers from the American Songbook. Chris’ brain is an immense database of popular music. Chris has a grasp on most music that was produced in the 20th century and often an anecdote to go with it.

As I said, I had performed before, but they were always super-ceremonial, and based on an equinox or solstice. People were asking me to perform, but I felt like what I was doing was too sensitive to timing and place. It felt like Blanko and Noiry could be the secular outlet for performing. But slowly, the ritualistic elements creeped in and now it exists as a merger of the two. This was further accelerated by the addition of the transitional third entity, the grey one, Reuben Lorch Miller.

Chris is a really special man and we plan to record really soon. I also have some videos planned with him as the star. I really want to commit his performed database to media and not just memory.

E. S.: How does your performance art relate to ritual magic, and what other popular modes of performance do you draw from?

F.H.: HMMM. All the pictures and descriptions of operations of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn are huge inspirations. I feel like their aesthetics and ideas still have yet to be tapped by anyone in a public way.

But there is such a huge amount of influence, a Nurse with Wound list array and magnitude of life influences. From Jodorowsky to Al Jolson to the Roxy Music pic of Brian Eno to old pictures of the Victoria de Los Angeles to Robert Blake in Lost Highway to Process Church to the long shadow cast by the genius of Genesis P Orridge to Linda Montano to all those actionist trippers in Vienna to Whitehouse to Kevin Drumm to Camus and Absurdism to Beckett trips to Bruce Haack to Sissel Kardel to Flipper to Manson music to Church times to Father Yod to Neil Hamburger to the white man married to the black woman who was a neighbor to the Jeffersons to Waylon Jennings to all the different incarnations of Faust to Kardinal to fucked up energies in Vienna to the Banana Splits to The Theosophy Library on 53rd and 3rd to mineral worship to GG Allin to Marlene Dietrich to Chris Johansen to that weird millisecond after you burn yourself to warm and cold showers to Biff Rose to Israel Regardie to Tarot times to BOTA times to Mason aesthetics to being stoned and alone with the sun out to night walks to Christopher Garrett to lessons from and in Love.

The main point is to make it yours. To quote Linda Montano “Now it’s your turn”.

E. S.: St. John of the Cross wrote “The Dark Night of the Soul” describing the despair that occurs at many stages along the spiritual path – does this figure in to your investigations right now?

F.H.: Most definitely. When does that part end?

E. S.: That’s a good unanswerable question! The poem “Dark Night of the Soul” ends with the lines:

Death is shrouded in darkness because it is a step in to the unknown. There is that amazing scene in the 7th Seal when Antonius asks Death what he knows and he says “I AM UNKNOWING”. What aspects of death both physical and metaphorical figure in to your work right now?

F.H.: It just keeps happening. I feel that work that starts and ends with the intention of being didactic usually ends up being terribly boring and failing in it’s intent. I believe in what can happen through relational expansion.

There is so much to be gained in a misread. Reading meaning into a work that the artist did not consciously intend, that action creates new roads to new destinations. This is one reason why I hardly ever title pieces. I wouldn’t want to guide people in that fashion.

E. S.: One of the primary functions of a shaman is the passage through underworlds and shadow realms to obtain knowledge and healing for people. One could argue that heavy metal bands perform this same function. Can the artist also heal in this way?

F.H.: For the first part of that I’d like to refer to an interview my friend Pat Delaney did with the SF band Saviours. I will let this interview speak to that:

“How do you define Saviours’ brand of Satanism?

I just write about shit going on in my mind and the references to Satanic shit is about my approach to life. Most of our songs are just about our journey; partying, fucking, and having a killer time. No fucking rules. If it feels good, do it – raw animal lust.

Do the members of the group participate in the “”Satanic Alchemy” mentioned in the lyrics? If so in what way?

Yes. Being stoked, doing whatever the fuck you want, and living outside the world.”

I don’t know if I believe an artist can heal, at least through artwork itself. Our mutual friend the artist Linda Montano is most definitely a healer. But she has always worked towards making a merger of her life and her art, to a degree that is largely unprecedented with artists. So she is an exception to that. I don’t want to discourage anyone from trying. I think art can work as one of the best therapeutic and meditative exercises. But whether that exercise needs to be shared with a public is another thing. I am really willing to learn more and more from life and experience about this very thing.

E. S.: The philosopher Gurdijieff breaks art into subjective and objective. Subjective art is compared to vomiting – the artist feels better after relieving himself of nausea, and the audience is left to look at the vomit. Objective art illuminates “the peak and the valley both”, and encompasses the breadth of human experience objectively. I think artists can certainly be curative for the collective psyche. The ideas of Yves Klein, Linda Mary Montano, Jack Smith, and on and on and on have certainly changed my approach to living for the better. Genesis Breyer P. Orridge’s Pandrogyny work is moving culture to a broader place of understanding. As for objects themselves having healing power—I guess that depends on how you view physical matter and the space in between. Having seen a great Sphinx rising out of the sand in Giza I am lead to believe that they can.

F.H.: That’s one reason why I am glad we are friends, Eliza.

Frank Haines lives and works in New York. He has shown extensively in the US and internationally, most recently he has been featured in group exhibitions at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York, Krinzinger Galerie in Vienna, and B Gallery in Tokyo. In addition, Haines stages intense, mystical performances that are frequently timed to co-inside with celestial events, most recently at MoMA/PS1 and Performa09. He also performs music with Chris Kachulis as the duo Blanko and Noiry.

Eliza Swann is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York who has shown her work in the US and internationally – most recently at Guest Projects in the UK. She is currently the co-director of the Heliopolis Project, a storefront in Brooklyn dedicated to experimental art and literature, and a tarot counselor.

Recently Discovered Musical and Sundry Delights
By Eddie Dean

Chango Spasiuk, free concert at the Millennium Stage, Kennedy Center
“I refuse to look like an old woman knitting,” said tango great Astor Piazolla, who broke tradition by always playing his bandoneon while standing. And here’s Chango Spasiuk, another Argentinian bandoneon master, sitting in a chair onstage with his instrument slinking over his knees draped with—a QUILT. But the wild-eyed, long-haired son of Ukrainian immigrants by way of Misiones province looks more like Rasputin than a knitter, like he’s ready to ambush the black-tie Bushcovites gathering down the red-carpeted Hall of Nations at another gala benefit for the masters of war. This isn’t the city music of Piazzolla. This is chamame, a down-home country music like the kind you’d hear at a backwoods wedding in northern Argentina when everybody’s had too much vino tinto and a summer storm’s brewing and the bride and groom have fled the scene. Spasiuk’s chamame has his own touches, a Marc Chagall-fiddler and “cajon peruano” percussionist. His bandoneon is a magic box that breathes, stirring the stilted, conditioned air inside the Kennedy Center, as the chandeliers weep and even the ushers prick up their ears, while outside the Potomac River turns into the coffee-hued, snaking Rio Parana. After the show, Spasiuk talks about his influences: “My father was a carpenter and musician who played at local dances and parties, and my uncle was a singer. I grew up listening to the music from the region of the rivers, the folk music, the polkas and the shotis, and chamame is the strongest color of this mestizo music. I didn’t become a musician after I saw or heard music being played on TV or in a movie or on a stage. Music was everywhere, in every social situation. My music is an utterly happy music but at the same time melancholic and sad.” His favorite musician, he says, is Beethoven.

Magnificent Fiend, Howlin Rain (Birdman/American, 2008)
The Black Crowes have been trying to make a record this good for 20 years, and these young bucks nail it right out of the shoot. Horns of plenty, and heaping helpings from the bottomless well of deep groove. As Greg Allman sang, “The road goes on forever.”

Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost by Tony Russell (Oxford Press, 2007)
You’ve already heard about Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, now meet their kinfolk, the thousand-and-one tongues of pre-Nash Trash hillbilly music: Seven Foot Dill and his Dill Pickles, South Georgia Highballers, Bascam Lamar Lunsford, Red Fox Chasers, Dr. Smith’s Champion Hoss Hair Pullers. They’re all here looking alive as you and me. Old-time music fiend Tony Russell came from England to travel the dusty backroads and knock on many a screen door to find the stories behind the mysterious names emblazoned on the old 78s. The meaty bios are salted with rare photos and period illustrations, such as a Depression-Era newspaper ad for a $3.85 Disston Hand Saw (“Mirror polish, striped back, beautifully etched, Applewood handle, fully carved”) of the sort played by Highballer Albert Eldridge, whose expert bowing “produced a sweet otherworldly humming that anticipates the oscillating electronic sounds of the Theremin.” Seems like it’s always Brits like Russell and Dickens and D.H. Lawrence with the keenest insights into the old, weird America.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Vintage, 1990)
Before Sam Peckinpah and Cormac McCarthy, the Spanish-American Southwest had Willa Cather to make an epic of its bleak and beautiful landscape. Instead of horse rustlers and outlaws, the male-bonding celebrated in this novel is the friendship between a pair of French Catholic priests out to save souls in mid-19th-century New Mexico. They’re not just packing Bibles and rosary beads, though, they’re packing heat: “‘You dare go into my stable, you [blank] priest.’ The Bishop drew his pistol: ‘No profanity, Senor. We want nothing from you but to get away from your uncivil tongue.’” Gimme that old-time religion, it’s good enough for me.

The U.S. Navy Band Brass Quartet show at Rockville Town Center
Good to hear the tuba out in the open. A century ago, it was the original Miami Bass, and it can still get to the bottom like nothing else. Except Bootsy.

Maryland Redbud Tree
A few years ago, at a local Arbor Day celebration cut short due to a thunderstorm, I received a redbud sapling in a soggy plastic bag from a volunteer. “Keep it wet and give it some love,” she said, handing out samples in the downpour. It looked like a dead twig with a defeated tail and I planted it knowing it would never have a chance. It has survived but not exactly thrived, a source of annual disappointment: some plain-jane leaves and an antler of spindly twin branches barely taller than my kids. And what about the vaunted red buds? Then, this spring, as if to spite my lack of faith, the little redbud tree burst forth in a fierce torrent of burning scarlet. Its proud, haughty redness rages on.

Cruising Paradise by Sam Shepard (Vintage, 1995)
Lost my wine-stained copy of Shepard’s Motel Chronicles a few years back, but I can still remember entire passages. Even better is this later collection of road pieces from the man who gives Americana a good name. His specialty is digging into mundane situations when nothing seems to be happening and everything is revealed. The sharpest story, “Colorado is Not a Coward,” has a film crew on location in a remote Mexican backwater, where “Not one child in the whole village is crying.” An old peasant rides his mule right into a scene and stalls a shoot, until he’s finally shooed away like a bothersome fly. Then Shepard finds his moment: “The director suddenly changes his mind and wants the charro back. He thinks it might add something authentic to the background, but it’s too late. The old man has disappeared into a mango grove, and the [assistant director]s can’t find him. He’s completely vanished.”

Popkrazy blog
Some people read The Onion, but it don’t make me laugh, and smirking gets old quick. I like my satire savage and unfiltered, not hammered out by committee. This blog site is the real McCoy, a shrine to pop-culture apocrypha past present and future, torn from pages of tattered issues Mad and Creem and beyond. www.popkrazy.com/pop

Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound by Paul Drummond (Process, 2007)
“Tommy Hall, wasn’t he guy who played the jug?” It’s the sort of flip comment from a rock snob that sets you off, like when some boob says Ringo was a crappy drummer or Dylan can’t sing. It’s time to set the record straight. The Elevators had another visionary besides Roky Erickson, and the proof’s in this astounding tome of garage-rock archeology. Lyricist, conceptualist, and yes, a damn fine jug player, Tommy Hall may have paid an even greater price than Roky did for his excursions into extreme non-recreational psychedelia. On the Halloween ‘66 broadcast of American Bandstand, he sounded the battle cry for the counter-culture when Dick Clark asked, “Who is the head of this group, gentlemen?” and Tommy made his immortal reply, “Well, we’re all heads.” A prophet is without honor in his own country, especially Texas in the mid-‘60s, when mind expansion was low on the list of “things to do.”

A Huey P. Newton Story (2001)
I caught this late night at on a motel TV, and didn’t move until the final credits. It seared my mind. Spike Lee directed this version of the one-man play by Roger Guenveur Smith and he wisely lets Smith steal back his own show with a performance that is breath-taking and heart-breaking. If this isn’t already in classrooms, it should be.

“Rag and Bones” White Stripes (2007)
Not since the classic ‘70s duets of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn has male-female repartee sounded so sweet on record as Jack and Meg do here, milling through a yard sale, trying to score a deal on busted trumpets and toilet seats: “Awwwww, Meg, don’t be rude.”

“Eclectic, Reminiscent, Amused, Fickle, Perverse,” by George W.S. Trow (1978)
My old buddy Calhoun told me this portrait of Atlantic Records’ demiurge Ahmet Ertegun is the greatest musical profile ever written. As usual, he’s right. When someone who at 15 saw Captain Beefheart perform with Ry Cooder makes such a pronouncement, you best pay attention. So I did, and I discovered 30 years late a tour de force of Boswellian reportage and pure style. Trow circles his subject, a hypnotic figure of leonine grace and bearing, with the utmost patience and care, seducing the reader the same way Ertegun seduced everyone around him, from record-biz royalty and hipster sycophants to Ray Charles and the Rolling Stones. With all its nuance and digression and episodic jolts, the piece conveys a very simple point: Once upon a time, in the very heart of the dark dominion of the pop music industry, there was a record mogul who not only loved music but loved and honored the musicians who made the music. The money and power ultimately meant little next to the feeling Ertegun had witnessing Duke Ellington’s band at the Palladium in 1933: “They were such great stars. They were such powerful men. There was this thing, you know?”

Conversations With Eudora Welty (Washington Square Press, 1985)
The second-greatest music profile remains “Powerhouse,” a short story Welty wrote in a white-hot draft after seeing Fats Waller and his band perform at a dance in Jackson, Mississippi in the late 1930s. It’s the closest this supreme Southern writer ever got to stream-of-consciousness, a testament to the incredible force and presence of Waller. In one of the interviews collected here, Welty recalls how high-minded magazine editors took the hatchet to the ending, a predicament every scribe can commiserate with: “They censored my selection of a song that ended the story. It was ‘Hold Tight, I Want Some Seafood, Mama,’ a wonderful record. They wrote me that The Atlantic Monthly cannot publish those lyrics. I had to substitute ‘Somebody Loves You, I Wonder Who,’ which is okay but ‘Hold Tight’ was marvelous. You know the lyrics with Fats singing, ‘fooly racky sacky want some seafood, Mama!’” Hearing Eudora give the low-down, a couple things come to mind: First, you can’t keep a good writer down. Two, I gotta find that record.

Julio Cortazar on yerba mate, from Hopscotch (Random House, 1966)
“He studied the strange behavior of the mate, how the herb would breathe fragrantly as it came up on top of the water, and how it would dive as he sucked, and would cling to itself…its steaming crater, its own little petulant volcano.” And all these years here I’ve been slurping my mate and spouting nonsense and flying blind in the face of an indifferent universe, while Cortazar sees an entire world in a gourd of frothing green muck. By God, I want whatever he was smoking.

Olympic Hi-Fi Stereo Console
My neighbor Ruben dragged over this vintage record-player cabinet he found when he was renovating an old row house last summer. I stored it in the garage barn out back and forgot all about it. When the weather broke this spring, I ran an extension cord from the house and found the Olympic standing patiently on its spindly legs just where I’d left it. I plugged it in and damn if the 16-33-45-78 turntable didn’t fire right up, so I threw on a JJ Johnson album (In Person) that was gathering dust nearby. Both the stereo and the record were made in the late ‘50s, an era when a high-fidelity console was also a fine piece of furniture, and both sound great a half-century later. Especially Nat Adderly’s cornet.

Some books to check out: Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer by Bill Gifford (Harcourt 2007); The Boys from Delores: Fidel Castro’s Classmates from Revolution to Exile by Patrick Symmes (Patheon 2007); Gringos by Charles Portis, (Overlook TP, 2000)

C & D: Two guys who will remain pseudonymous reason together about new records

C: [While rummaging through the teeming mail bin.] Hey, look at this. It must be from that new guy who’s always lurking around. What’s his dealio anyway? He’s what my gran would call a nosey nelly.

D: I think he’s here to like, streamline shit. [Reading aloud] To Whom It May Concern: “In my private meetings with Arthur staff and contributors, we have received many disturbing reports regarding the personal, professional and spiritual-energetic conduct of C & D, or as they fancy themselves, ‘The Arthur Music Potentate.’

“There is widespread unease amonst Arthur staff about C & D’s taste in mucic, which has been described to us as ‘bewildering,’ ‘psychedelic parochial,’ ‘arguably harmful,’ ‘contrary to the public’s interest,’ ‘more narrow than their trousers’ and ‘frankly vampiric.’ I don’t quite know what all that means but it’s interesting.

“Moving forward, I have been unable to confirm that C & D are receiving payola from 86 record companies and nineteen out of our fair nation’s top twenty coolmaking marketing firms, but verification of such nefarious activity is only a matter of time.

“I am also unable to confirm their membership in the ‘Brownie-Meinhaus gang.’

“However, in my own cross-examination sessions with C & D, in which, I am preparted to testify, we did not waterboard at all , I was able to determine that they have indeed ‘lost the keys’—their words—for two of Arthur humor/motorcycle advisor Peter Alberts’ Royal Enfield motorcycles; they have indeed borrowed Arthur contributor Paul Cullum’s all-region DVD player for an ‘increasingly indefinite period’; they confess to doing two cut-and-runs at Sugar Hair Salon in Silver Lake; plainly abused Mandy Kahn’s standing offer to drive them to and from various watering holes of ill repute; and, as you may have surmised, it was indeed they — or them? I can never remember ;-( — who affixed ‘Ex Libris C &/or D’ label-plates to all the reference books in the staff library.

“Furthermore, C & D have charged 38 parking tickets to the Arthur expense account since last June. Woe betide their decision to start chillaxing out in Malibu.
“C & D have presumptuously intercepted others’ mail, especially advance vinyls from the Holy Mountain label. They play the Carbonas self-titled LP at bicuspid-crushing volume everyday before lunch. They crack each other up at staff meetings by prefacing every statement with ‘You must learn, we are the Gods of this magazine!’ They are always ordering curry. Plus they’ve used up all the paperclips, and not, I am saddened to report, in a fashion that paperclips were designed to be used.

“The Editor-in-chief, art directors and even the printer have complained that C & D are always late with their copy, which in turns holds up production of the magazine and inhibits crucial cashflow, all for something that, quoting the Editor, ‘nobody really reads or cares about anyway.’

“In my many years of optimal-sizing firms, I have been forced to make many difficult and even gut-wrenching decisions. This however is not one of them! - C & D should be shown the door, and the sooner the better. We will call it a suspension of enduring duration. Now would really be the time to pull the trigger on this. I know people who can do it.

“JUST SAY THE WORD.”

D: [gulps] Doh!
C: I always told you we would are the men who knew too much. [puzzles] But how did they find out about the brownies? I told you to watch out for those new surveillance cams.
D: I thought they were fake. And chicken tikka is not a curry.
C: Ha! And neither is lamb biryani. Wait a second… Fake surveillance cams? That’s a GREAT idea.
D: I know a guy! Just say the word!
C: [cackling] Okay but first let’s get one more column in, shall we? “They” never read this so we can say whatever we like and they won’t know til it’s at the printer, hahaha! The funny thing is we REALLY ARE the potentate around here. But if our services are no longer required here, we’d like to say one thing:
D: SAYONARA BITCHES!!!
C: Because we are in control of the horizontal. We’re the last people that see this bad boy before it’s sent to the printer…
D: Oh yeah! Heh heh.
C: …which means whatever we type here gets printed.
D: Which means…

The Carbonas
The Carbonas
(Goner)
C: They come from Memphis, they sound like Wire and the Buzzcocks, nine songs in 22 minutes. You know what you have to do.
D: Wire and the Buzzcocks? More like attach a wire to your bollocks! [helpfully] And they have a song called “Assvogel.”
C: That’s not a song, it’s a movement. And I think you know what kinda movement I mean…
D: Ahem. It is on the Goner record label. Which is what we are now. Goners.
C: Memphis is the one place I’d be interested in moving to. Start the car, I’ll get my duffel. Here’s to life in exile after abdication!
D: [brightens] I’ve been a goner since the beginning.
C: Being a goner is a serious thing. Who do you think is the original goner?
D: Robert Mitchum, no question. Yeah, that’s it, the Carbonas are the Robert Mitchum of rock!

Dead Meadow
Old Growth
(Matador)
C: I’ve been into these guys since before everyone else!
D: Except for me. I invented these guys. I put a bunch of purple pills in a blender along with a soiled Led Zep patch from my older sister’s jean jacket. Shazam!
C: ‘Old Growth’ is on the shortlist for greatest album title ever, and it’s a pretty good description of the music.
D: Here’s a better one: take a grandfather clock made of diamond-cut crystal, fill it with molasses and drop in on your head!
C: I can’t believe they’re firing you, D. You just keep getting better. Woah, this song is some serious blues shufflage. It’s like a beer commercial for really stinky homebrew.
D: There’s something about this guy’s voice that hits me like a arctic wind. Pass me my mittens. And the b-o-n-g. It’s been a bong time since I rock ‘n’ rolled!

Graveyard
Graveyard
(Tee Pee)
D: Graveyard, eh. Must be a Goth band.
C: Actually they’re not Goth. They’re not even American!
D: [listening to first track, ‘Evil ways’] Right away you know that no matter what happens, you’re gonna at least hear good tone guitar. This is far too good to be American.
C: You are correct sir. They are in fact Swedish.
D: The world’s greatest mimcs. The arch-inhabitors.
C: He pitches his vocal a bit Danzig, a little bit Bobby from Pentgaram. A little bit Jim Morrison. A little bit of the mighty John Garcia.
D: And it must be admitted, a little Cornell.
C: A little bit’ll do ya. This is Ween-quality mimicry here! Reminds me of that band Witchcraft in that they’re going further out. [listening to “Lost In Confusion”] That’s basically the Doors, right there.
D: It is like Witchcraft, but this singer has more hair on his chest.
C: … So, what do you think of that drumming?
D: Kinda…jazzy.
C: Well you know, all those old rock drummers used to play jazz drums too: Ginger, Graham…
D: Keith, Charlie…
C: I listened to this album several times without realizing it. Just kept coming back. I keep coming back to the Graveyard, D.
D: That’s where you’re gonna end up. Might as well get there early and check it out.

Harmonia
Live 1974
(Water)
C: Vintage live recording from krautrock greats Harmonia, never-before-released!
D: How is this possible? Harmonia are some of the original electronic goners.
C: If you turn it up loud enough you can hear people talking—
D: I can’t hear anything except analog electronic perfection.
C: Frankly I am perplexed by the liners which talk that like this Harmonia are barely known, even to konfirmed krautrock fans. Says here, these guys exist somewhere out beyond the “how to buy Krautrock section in your local record shop.” Is this guy insane???
D: There is no local record shop!
C: No, I mean I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Krautrock section at a record store that DIDN’T include Harmonia. And there is a local record shop, actually. It’s not final for vinyl just yet, my friend.

Cloudland Canyon
Lie in Light
(kranky)
D: Oh ho-ho, here we go. Straight from Harmonia into their young disciples.
C: Steady pulsing kosmiche jam. two-man band from Memphis. Or Brooklyn. Or Germany.
D: It’s roadtrip music for a midnight drive on the Autobahn. I’d like to see these guys in a steel cage match versus Fujiya & Miyagi. Then we’ll see who’s the real king of next-gen krautrock!
C: Cloudland Canyon scores early by using “Krautwerk” as a song title. They’re certainly inhabiting a role.
D: I prefer inhabiting a roll, if you dig my way. Anyway, I dig their seriously skulled-out drone vocal dual harmony trip too. And, as a bonus, they appear to have put photos of their seriously babetastic girlfriends on the inner sleeve.
C: Don’t give up hope, D. Those may be their sisters.

Monade
Monstre Cosmic
(Too Pure)
C: It’s Laetitia from Sterolab’s band.
D: [definitively] Stereolab arranged by David Axelrod.
C: Axelrod would say he could make this 5000% better. And he’d be right!
D: I still think it’s pretty good.
C: Stereolab is one of those bands for me like where one day you realize you own 11 albums and you can’t remember how that happened. Like Tom Petty or something. They’re just there, they sound good all the time, never totally essential but always dependable.
D: Musical comfort food.
C: Not the deepest stuff but something pitched a bit differently—more steady, life isn’t so bad while we’re playing this rhythm.
D: It’d be a finer world if people hackysacked and threw their frisbees to this rather than to Umphrey’s McGee.
C: But would it really?
D [thinks]: Maybe it IS the hackysacking itself that’s the problem.

Clark
Turning Dragon
(warp)
D: I say heck no to techno.
C: I say turn it up! I love to rave as long as I don’t have to leave the house. Ooh, nevermind chocolate and peanut butter, I wanna know who got the crystal meth grit in my tub of Vick’s Vap-O-Rub! [leaps off couch and begins swinging arms like a baboon in heat] Does the Aphex Twin know that Clark is running away with his fanbase?
D: It’s like the saying goes: Last night a DJ stole my wife.
C: This album is immense, mind-melting, and has big digi-balls under it’s crushed microchip-covered bib. Phwwwaaaargh!!

Earth
The Bees Made Honey in the Skull of the Lion
(Southern Lord)
C: …And then turned my bones into gelatinous masses.
D: E – A – R – T – H: beautifully decaying, slow gothic western-toned dark time music.
C: I nominate this as the soundtrack to the books-on-tape version of that book The Pesthouse.
D: Great idea!
C: Let’s make it happen.
D: I know a guy!

Dirtbombs
(In the Red)
D: New Dirtbombs.
C: Sounds like old Dirtbombs.
D: Dirt don’t change.
C: Can you imagine ol dirty dirtbombs?
D: I can, actually.
C: A band that sprang fully formed, tupla-like from the brain of journalist and tchoupitoulian bear farmer Gabe Soria.
D: I believe Gabe Soria also is the original creator of the Felice Brothers.
C: But Staggerin’ Stan Lee always takes all the credit.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
Real Emotional Trash
(Matador)
C: A blastmaster from the past, back again! Just when you thought the Malk had done already his best work, he returns with a masterwork.
D: He’s kinda like Roger Clemens in that sense.
C: Wellll…..I doubt Clean Steve is shooting HGH into his jugular. He did something way better and got Janet from Sleater-Kinney to play drums in his band. Now that’s playing with power.
D: If there was a Cy Young Award for drummers, Janet would have won it more than once.
C: [listening to the breezy fretwork of "Cold Sun"] Dude, where’s my hackysack!
D: [eyes pop out as the next track's choogle-blooz-boogie revs up] This is the best guitar playing, since, since, I, uh…
C: You are actually dribbling down your chin in disbelief!
D: Once the Malk was a preppy wiseacre, now he’s a sage-like poetaster. His music is heavier than it’s ever been, and I daresay he’s grown into his trousers. “Can’t be what you wanna be/ gotta be what you oughtta be.”
C: That’s pretty good, but how about this lyric: “He was dancing like a pit bull minus the meat.” The song’s called “Hopscotch Willie”—it’s like a dimestore crime novel with a dimebag inside.
D: Yeah a dimebag of high-grade Quicksilver riff pummelage! Listen man, this is just too good. We should call the Malk.
C: You sure he wants to talk to you? What about you hijacking his golf cart at the Dinah Shore open back in ’99?
D: The cart-jacking? That’s bongwater under the bridge, my friend. Here, I’ll call him… [dials on his cell phone while C looks on incredulous] Hey, Steve.
Steve Malkmus: Yo.
D: Um, Steve, first things first, I hope there’s no hard feelings about the golf…mishap…of some years ago.
SM: We’re cool.
D: But, I mean, what is it about you and golf courses?
SM: Well, golf courses and country clubs — which is what I wrote my thesis about — use all this iconography from old England. It’s an English game, in England it signified money, so you’re belonging to something older, like the Mayflower or something. Golf courses themselves… in America they’re kind of a perfect fit with Manifest Destiny, and with the idea of the West being this wide-open nature, this big American image in people’s minds, and a golf course is like a perfectly… it’s like nature, it’s wild, but it’s been refined by man a bit. You’ve conquered nature but you’ve just mowed it so it’s just right, so you’re sort of in the wild but it’s an American wild. Our golf courses are much different than English golf courses. How it started was the courses were just next to the beach. They didn’t refine them really. They were just flat hills, rolling hills that you played on. But we’ve made these ones that are just perfectly manicured. You can put a Hawaiian-style golf course in Minnesota.
D: Are there golf courses in Portland?
SM: Oh yeah. There’s a lot of water here. It’s not like Palm Springs. I went to Palm Springs there with my dad. They have these little tiny watering things, little black strips, for every little plant. There might as well be CIA bugs at every corner. You don’t even know, it’s so manicured and manufactured. But here, it rains a lot. All you need is a lawnmower, I guess, and good drainage. I’ve been with these sort of wild guys, they’re like contractors, almost Jackass-inspired, you know, they get a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and drive around and gamble on every hole and be sort of like hooligans. They’re not really taking it back so much as getting a little rowdy within the system. But that happens on $27 public courses, so it’s not like they’re not sharing a locker with the oncologist or something.
D: “Sharing a locker with the oncologist”? Steve, you are a great man, and we thank you.
SM: No problem. I mean, you’re welcome.
C: Wait, before you go Steve, any endorsements?
SM: Amplifone guitars.
C: Political endorsements?
SM: Well, we’ve been told, and it seems it’s gonna happen, that John McCain… I’m not saying I like John McCain or anything but my dad’s friend is running for the Senate seat of that guy that got caught in the bathroom of Minnesota, and it seems like McCain is their guy, he’s not only gonna win the Republican thing, he’s gonna win the whole election and it’s already decided, you know? Like that’s how the Republicans think: four steps ahead. Even if it’s not true, they just believe the hypnotism. They really understand hypnotism. “It is because I say it is. Until it isn’t.” I don’t know. Giuliani tanked. McCain’s like the guy that’s at the golf course with guys like my dad. The white males relate to him. At least he thinks for himself, he’s slightly in that tradition of Goldwater, where being Republican almost blurs into liberal in terms of individual rights and stuff like that. We’re pulling for Obama here. My wife’s from Chicago. He’ll be our candidate til he loses. We’ll vote for Hillary if she beats him. I can’t imagine a president being named Huckabee but then again: “President Obama”? I’d probably be surprised by that too.
C: Thank for the real talk, Steve.
D: And for rocking our day!
SM: Bye guys.

Beach House
Devotion
(Carpark)
C: Great record for rainy days with your sweetie, if you have one. And if you don’t, you should!
D: [singing] “Because she’s a BEACH…house!”
C: And with that, we are out of here.
D: SEE YOU BEACHES!!!

White Magic: Meanwhile, outside the city gates…

Black Hole White Magic
By Chris Ziegler

Reviewed:
Sunn O))) & Boris
Altar
(Southern Lord)

White Magic
Dat Rosa Mel Apibus
(Drag City)

I had Altar complete in my head before I ever heard it: Sunn O))) and Boris together to make the heaviest thing ever, an album that would burst cochlear membranes and the confines of three-dimensional spacetime. Modern music’s two most immovable objects: what would happen when they met? Maybe nothing—in fact, hopefully nothing, and Altar would be pure void, a subatomic drone that would go beyond Sunn O))) and Earth and Flood to the low slow B-flat hum NASA heard coming from a black hole around the same time Sunn O)))’s White 1 came out. “A million billion times lower than the lowest sound audible to the human ear!” NASA said, complete with exclamation point. That was the true sound of the universe, and if any humans could play along, well, here they were: two bands with discographies so colossal that you couldn’t deploy anything less than three syllables per adjective without feeling cheap and weak. (Cyclopean? Titanic? Hephaestean?) NASA called this new science “black hole acoustics” and that was the best explanation yet—better than the New York Times’ cutesy ‘heady metal,’ anyway.

But Altar is the un-heaviest. Six or seven minutes into opener “Etna” (played in the spirit of the volcano that will devour Sicily) presents the riff-vs.-drone grappling match the collaboration demanded, and it is satisfactorily hephaestean. Last year’s Black One and Pink anticipate these moments—Pink’s intro “Parting” especially, though Boris drummer Atsuo rarely pushes a straight 4/4 rock beat, instead mating drums to drone with a rush/recede dynamic that must have cheered the Coltrane students in Sunn O))). Black hole acoustics is science for space and gravity and not amplifier athleticism, though, so credit to Boris and Sunn O))) for Altar’s sidewise moves. Sunn O))) provokes orgasm and Boris melts minds—we know that and so do they, so let’s improv something else.

“Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)” is probably the songiest thing to ever bear a Sunn O))) stamp; Internet drones are straight-facedly calling it “folk pop” and while that’s a bit broad, it’s … understandable. Earth’s Hex had passages of twilight-zone quiet and “Sinking Belle” collects them together: reverbed piano that blooms and dissolves like ink into water with Jesse Sykes (singer from Seattle’s Sweet Hereafter) sounding like Nico at her frowniest, or actually sounding a lot like Sybille Baier, another dissipated ‘60s teuton-chanteuse. After that is “Akuma No Kuma,” an all-synth-no-guitar track (with Joe Preston growling through a vocoder) that fits the fire-and-fog Blade Runner opening, and after that the desolate “Fried Eagle Mind,” a wave of tube tone washing over Boris guitarist Wata’s ghost vocals. “Blood Swamp” has to float back home: rumble finally turns to roar as Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil gets a guitar to sound like something that breathes mud—or blood?—to stay alive. A hephaestean finale, sure, but not the truncated concussion both bands favor. There is clear-to-cloudy precedent for everything on Altar in the million billion minutes of discography belonging to Boris and Sunn O))), but it’s softness as much as the UNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNworgworgUNNNNNNNNNN we’ve known and absorbed. Three songs into Altar, the album start to float. Heavy is light.

* * *

I would hate to just bluntly ask White Magic if they actually believe in magic—too obvious, too impolite. But even a lump like me can tell that Mira Billotte’s songs about trees and wine and sun and sea refer to more than just a holiday fit for Fairport Convention. White Magic sings one thing and secretly means another, or several secret other things aligned in symbolic harmony. The band put a labyrinth on the back cover where they could have put a map. So I can’t say I wasn’t warned.

Billotte and a new set of supporters—including partner Douglas Shaw, Jim White from Dirty Three, Tim DeWit from Gang Gang Dance and noted New York percussionist Tim Barnes—built White Magic’s first full-length Dat Rosa Mel Apibus around her famously agile voice and the cascading piano melodies she plays to match Bert Jansch’s precision fingerpicking. Rosa is gentle on solemn guitar-and-voice songs like “Katie Cruel” (also covered by probable White Magic inspiration Karen Dalton) and “What I See,” but spins into psychedelic experiment like the sitar raga on “All The World Went” and the dub/reggae arrangement (and production!) for finale “Song of Solomon,” which is almost an Althea and Donna song until the accordion starts pumping toward climax. That’s a dizzy finish to a record that begins with a single piano note, and a happy release for the ideas half-hatched on 2004’s Through The Sun Door EP.

Billotte’s voice is (as always) a bird in flight, and she writes lyrics in careful camouflage, packing love songs and lonely songs with loaded notions of sleep and night and sun and light. It’s potent imagery that just begs projection from the listener. One verse of “Hold Your Hand In The Dark” and I was convinced we’d read the same Philip K. Dick essay: he said, “Sleepers awake!” and she sings, “You’ve been sleeping well, my friends/sleeping well/but if you wake, it may be too late.” Her tense mention of hands in chains and waiting in secret are from a particular idea Dick had about … well, too much of this might put this review to sleep. Different listeners discover different things.

Maybe that means Billotte is just writing easy absolutes—like everyone else, she loves love and dislikes… chains? But of course not. That seven-petaled rose on the cover is too close a copy of a Rosicrucian engraving; the translated title “the rose gives the bees honey” was a line used by alchemists to distinguish the search for spiritual truth from the search for worldly gain, and on Rosa’s second song Billotte sings, “Gone was our need for the things of this world/all we had was love.” Rosa feels full of these century-to-century connections. Hidden in this post-Pentangle piano-psych record is something ferociously righteous. White Magic believes in good research.

C & D: Two guys reason together about some new records

AKRON/FAMILY
Meek Warrior
(Young God)
C: [Looking at publicity photo of band] I’m surprised these guys haven’t featured in Arthur magazine yet. They appear to meet many if not all of this magazine’s apparent requirements for coverage.
D: What, they have beards?
C: Yes. I think the magazine is pretty clearly a beards-only policy. It’s pretty clearly where the underground beard was re-born. Or should I say, re-grown. Remember Alan Moore on the cover of Arthur No. 4?
D: That was a beard to be reckoned with. No razors and shaving cream in the Moore household!
C: Total ‘Lord of the Beards.’ On the other hand, Alan’s finger armor stylings haven’t caught on yet.
D: I will keep an eye out for the beard as we check out these records today. I assume there will be ladies, too?
C: Yes, of course.
D: Who presumably are not of the bearded variety.
C: One never knows, does one? [arches eyebrow meaningfully] Anyways, Akron/Family not only have some beardage, they have four-part harmonies, great cascading drumflows, sprawling late Trane skronk, and that’s all on the first track! I saw these guys once in L.A., they were like a devotional Animal Collective…
D: [smiling upon hearing the refrain "Gone, gone, gone/gone completely beyond."] Ah yes. Beyond. One of my favorite places.
C: [ignoring, continuing] … in Oshkosh overalls, without the echo delays. Like Lubavitchers gone Sun Ra or Ya Ho Wha—
D: Say wha?
C: [snobbishly] Those who know, know. [continuing] They were awesome, in complete uni-mind synch. The audience made backward-and-forward ocean ripples and sounds at their command: ‘Shhh, shhh.’ It was beautiful.

BEACH HOUSE
Beach House
(Carpark)
C: Lovely—possibly perfect?—debut album from this girl-and-boy lovebird combo who sound like they’re living down by the sea on some magic moonlit beach that stretches from France to Baja to Bali.
D: [looks at biographical notes and photo] Actually they live in Baltimore. And there is no beard.
C: Waiter, get this man a beard, se vous plais.
D: [ignoring] But Victoria Legrand—
C: Is that a real name???
D: —is definitely a lady. A lady who knows how to wear an aqua dress.
C: [looking at the photo] And a big gold amulet as well.
D: I would say this is late summer music, recorded at the beach house after everybody else has gone back to the city.
C: It’s kind of minimal naturalismo—organ, drum machine, gorgeous female voice: Stereolab, minus le krautrock propulsion. Midway between Brightblack slow-to-stillness, Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” melancholism and Air and another Carpark artist, Casino vs. Japan. Also, what the heck, I’ll throw in that first Bjorn Olson record on Omplatten [Instrumentalmusik: Instrumental Music...to Submerge in...and Disappear Through, 1999]. Nordic beaches. As you can see, D, it’s a very particular, yet universal, mood. I see soundtracks in their near-future. [picks up phone] “Hello, Beach House? This is Sofia…”
D: Her voice reminds me a bit of Sigur Ros. Hey, whatever happened to those guys? It’s like they evaporated.
C: She can really SING, when it’s called for, which is in creamy middle of the album on the song “Auburn and Ivory.”
D: Is Auburn the new Ebony?
C: All the songs have some sophisto pop songwriting going on: bridges, key changes, et cetera. And the sounds… when the organ comes in on “House on the Hill,” it’s like Captain Nemo down in the Nautilus playing pipe organ for the octopi. Whew! Can you imagine these guys with a big budget…?
D: Ahoy! Captain Nemo: ANOTHER famous bearded musician.

MICK BARR & ZACH HILL
Earthship
(5RC)
C: New summit album by underground instrumental speed kings: guitarist Mick Barr of Ocrilim, and drummer Zach Hill of Hella. It’ll tighten yer wig!
D: Well, I won’t need coffee for the next five months.
C: They’re going in for the kill like two old ladies speed-crocheting. Mind the wheedlework.
D: They are the speed criminals who no doubt are under surveillance by the authorities of rock. There’s a NEW MOTHER IN THE TEMPLE if you know what I mean!
C: It does have that High Rise/Mainliner/Musica Transonic thing going a bit. Ah, Japan. Some people may also be put in mind of the Peter Brotzman Octet classic assault album, Machine Gun.
D: That’s a ripping title, “Earthship.” [considers] If you lived there, you’d be home by now.
C: Sometimes they’re against each other, sometimes they unify.
D: I must ask: is there a beard?
C: [looks at publicity photo] Have beard, will rock.These guys are the opposite of Sunn o))): they do as many notes and beats as possible per hour. It’s anti-void music, filling everything with sound.
D: Without the benefit of riffage.
C: There ARE riffs—you just need to adjust your attention to catch them. It’s condensed free rock. Like the instruments are too hot to handle. Except for this one song I keep coming back to… [plays "Closed Coffins and Curtains."]
D: Whoa! What…is…THAT???
C: It’s like some super-processed symphonic tri-guitar. Like what that weird Godley & Creme instrument was supposed to sound like, remember that? The Gizmo. They made a whole triple-album with it, and Peter Cook too. Bonkers stuff.
D: [playing the 30-second track again] I am totally spooked. [musing] Perhaps if Mr. Ocrilim slowed down and contemplated like this occasionally, he’d get to somewhere really rewarding.
C: Rewarding to you.
D: [laughs] Of course, me! Who else matters?

THE HORRORS
The Horrors ep
(Stolen Transmission)
D: [Reading song titles] They have a song called “Sheena Was a Parasite”? I worship them already.
C: Frantic organ and guitar-driven psychobilly freakbeat rock’n'roll by five sharply dressed’n'coiffed Dickensian Brits from the belfry.
D: They look like they live in chimneys and spend all day drinking red wine and listening to The Cramps, Tav Falco & Panther Burns…probably the Hives too, and the Birthday Party and Screaming Jay Hawkins (who they cover here) and Screaming Lord Sutch and of course the right honorable Arthur Brown. I think they like bourbon and some pretty nasty stuff.
C: [listening to “Excellent Choice”] They’ve got a good look and a good sound and they seem up for a good party. They’ll come to your town and help you burn it down. And then dance in the ashes.

PRIMAL SCREAM
Riot City Blues
(Capitol)
C: They’re been around approximately forever. And this is their once-a-decade “rock n roll is dumb fun” concept record, apparently.
[C & D cringe for 15 minutes]
C: Talk about the horrors.
D: Where’s the pooper scooper?
C: Rock n roll should be fun, it can be stoopid, but it should never, ever be tedious. One hates to witness someone failing at slumming. It’s embarrassing to all involved. Does [Primal Scream singer] Bobby Gillespie seriously think this band can boogie? Ha ha ha. Poor Mani…
D: [thoughtful] Every once in a while an object is mysteriously withdrawn from stores by its manufacturer shortly after its introduction. That kind of decisive action may be appropriate here.

THEUSAISAMONSTER
Sunset at the End of the Industrial Age
(Load)
C: You will recall that both members of THEUSAISAMONSTER are members of Black Elf Speaks, which is one of the great band names ever.
D: What did Black Elf have to say?
C: I don’t know, it was this kind of gibberish? But it seemed important. [sadly, as if narration] ‘And Black Elf spoke, but no one could understand what he said.’
D: [helpfully] Maybe he had something in his mouth.
C: ….
D: Or, he might have a speech impediment.
C: …
D: [looking at album cover] Naturally I am wondering, what kind of monster?
C: Probably some kind of troll. On PCP.
D: That’s pretty negative. … Um…. Idiocracy got you down again?
C: Yeah… Between seeing that and re-reading Chris Hedges’s War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning last week, I guess I’m feeling more bleh about human life than ever. The idiots don’t know when to stop. And there’s more and more of them. They want war and fast food and spectacle. They’re bad at learning. We’re outnumbered, and it’s only getting worse because the herd never gets culled, since we lack exterior predators.
D: [considers] No more trolls.
C: What are we gonna do? I don’t see a way out. Ah, hell. Maybe that’s why the industrial age is going to end, as it says here on the album cover. [reading from the press sheet] “Of course The USA Is A Monster wants to turn the tide and prepare us for the time after the lights go dim on Western Civilization’s exhaust pipe party.” Sounds good to me! Let’s engage. [starts “The Greatest Mystery”]
D: YEARGH!!! THUNDERAMA!
C: Whoa. [45 minutes later…]Whoa.
D: A shining path indeed! Was that all one song?
C: Unbelievable, just ridiculous. The Who, Bruford-era Kid Crimson, Oneida, minutemen, Lightning Bolt, Liars, Rush. Homeopathic progrock with a lot of heavy spiritual-political truths and theories (“We are only holograms”) and jokes and accusations (“You’re a liar! And a CROOK!”) and digs (“My favorite subject is…me!”). That last song, the three-section “The Spirit of Revenge”…
D: What a giant marching groover that one is! These guys must be super-fit. I’m guessing it’s a lentil and walnut-heavy diet.

WOLF EYES
Human Animal
(Sub Pop)
D: [listening to “A Million Years”] This makes me insanely happy but I can’t put my finger on why exactly.
C: I feel like it’s 4am at the docks and we’re hearing the soundtrack to some new-millennium industrial-environmental horror show. To update Funkadelic: Mother Earth is REALLY screaming now. [listening to “Lake of Roaches”] Especially now that these noise dudes have a horn. Yikes.
D: I see scrapheap monsters vomiting spare parts and microchips.
C: Urgh, this is uncomfortable in a really good way, like a good ol’ Khanate death-slog through the bog. It’s the feel-nothing hit of the fading summer.
D: “Rusted Mange” sounds like somebody getting run over.
C: “Leper War” is more queasy listening. I’m thinking of torture gardens and animal abuse science labs. All the atrocities going on behind the curtain. Machines playing with their prey. Angry dogs chomping on kids’ talking playtoys. Trains full of prisoners.
D: [thoughtfully] This is music to blow up Monsanto to.
C: Wolf Eyes: for when you want to detonate your day.

THE THERMALS
The Body, The Blood, The Machine
(Sub Pop)
C: Melodic meat-and-potatoes punk rock trio from the Pacific Northwest. Two women and a beardless man. This is a concept album about being on the run from a Christian authoritarian USA of the future.
D: [in Chuck D. voice] Fear of a Christian Planet. Fear, baby.
C: In other words, it serves as science fiction adventure, prophecy and soundtrack for real life in half of this country. It’s okay—I like the sentiment and the ambition—but I’m bored.
D: None of the hooks go in deep enough. It’s probably good to drive to, though.
C: The guy’s voice reminds me of Lee Ranaldo’s, which makes me think I’d rather be listening to Daydream Nation. Ha!
D: That should be the new Arthur bumper sticker: “I’d rather be listening to Daydream Nation.”

Good God!: A Gospel Funk Hymnal
(Numero Group)
C: Here’s another shining path: Christian funk-soul music from the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, which, let’s face it, that period was insane in every genre, every medium.
D: The first two minutes of this album provide everything I need from music.
C: This makes me love Jesus a lot more than when they come to my door and yell at me. Another Grade AAAA reclamation project from Numero Group, America’s most consistently great record label. No one runs a dig like they do.
D: They live in the crates.
C: They were BORN in the crates.
D: [boogieing] I’m happy as a Christian on the pipe and there’s nothing Bobby Gillespie and the Thermals can do about it! [thinking] If Christian soul is so good why is Christian rock so bad?
C: Well, you know what they say: the The Lord records in mysterious ways. And nu gospel metal is one of the most mysterious.
D: Christian rock has more preservatives and additives and pesticides and weird chemicals in it, which gives it big hair and a nasty sheen. This, on the other hand, is organic soul. Black granola Jesus.

THE BYRDS
There Is A Season boxset
(Sony Legacy)
C: Four CDs and a DVD for you, the gracious few. Their sound really sounds good right now. It must be those harmonies. In the book McGuinn talks about how none of the three of them had a distinctive enough voice for pure lead—but together the three made one beautiful voice. Then you’ve got those great jazz drums, that guy’s got interesting stuff going on all the time, and is willing to stop it all when it’s called for. And the guitar solos are completely nuts. People always think about the Byrds and the chiming 12-strings, band there is that, but the guitar solos are these wonderful jagged raga/jazz stop-start-scatter runs, if that makes any sense. I guess I just never had ears to hear it before. Music for golden hours in the forest, by the river. Pretty good for cleanly shaven gents. They were always tasteful ‘til they got shaggy in the ‘70s—played folk songs, played contemporary stuff (Dylan covers), some beautiful originals.
D: [sings along to “5D (Fifth Dimension”] “I opened my whole heart to the whole universe and I found it was loving/and I saw the great blunder my teachers had made/Scientific delirium madness…” Still one of the best descriptions of the spiritual side of an LSD trip I have ever encountered
C: David Crosby’s extremely gentle three-way plea “Why Can’t We Be Three” is pretty astonishing in its brazenness. You want to know how it will be/me and you/or her and me?’ Etc. And their version of “Wild Mountain Thyme”—“we’ll go gathering mountain thyme across the wild purple heather”—with harmonies and orchestra is as goosebumpraising as that Ravi Shankar at the Kremlin album.
D: Live cuts on disk 4? Not so happening.

TRAINWRECK RIDERS
Lonely Road Revival
(Alive)
C: Really good cosmic country-tinged Bonnaroo-ready indie rock from San Francisco by dudes who can write hooks. Shit, I bet they can jam it out too.
D: I don’t know why I’m filing it under “guilty pleasure,” but I am.
C: No need to feel guilty. But yeah I can already hear the hacky sacks being hacked, or kicked, or whatever it is they do. Still, you can’t judge a band by who you think their fans will be…

THE BLACK KEYS
Magic Potion
(Nonesuch)
C: I guess their fan Robert Plant didn’t end up joining the band on bass after all. Maybe he forgot to file for his post-beard exemption.
D: Excellent! The Black Keys. They take this stuff so seriously. There’s axle grease on their denims at all times.
C: So, after their tremendous levee-busting EP of Junior Kimbrough covers, here’s their major label debut. Are diminishing returns setting in?
D: It’s already a cult classic with me! And that’s the only one who matters.
C: You know, I hate to say it, but this is really underwhelming material from an incredibly talented band. I’m not hearing a single one of those choogling grooves that they used to mine so effortlessly. Sometimes low fidelity does not equal authenticity, it just means it sounds like crap.
D: Well it’s good enough for me to want to fire up the grill and have a cookout.
C: I’m hungry for something more.

Ed Rosenthal’s Big Buds Calendar
(Quick American Archives)
D: The best month is the Dutch still life with the other herbs and stuff:
C: It’s called “after the harvest” of course. [laughs] They totally have this calendar hanging by the desk at all the farms up in Humboldt. [Reading] Ha, “Slacker Thanksgiving” on Nov. 23, that’s a funny one. “As the bud ripens.” Heh.
D: To paraphrase AC/DC: Ed Rosenthal has the biggest buds of them all.

BUFFALO KILLERS
Buffalo Killers
(Alive)
C: Trio from Cincinnati—stomping ground of Bootsy Collins and Afghan Whigs—with two lumbering looking beard brothers who make a sweet racket that recalls the Black Crowes, Mountain, Hendrix. Definitely some Beatles on the first two songs.
D: From the same label that first signed the Black Keys. They must have scouts all over Ohio.
D: My main concern is why don’t they call themselves The Buffalo Lovers. [suspiciously] Were any buffalos harmed in the making of this album?
C: I love an album that builds and starts hitting its stride by the halfway point. All “River Water” needs, if it needs anything more, is P.P. Arnold singing backup. Then they destroy you with the next tune…
D: [listening to “With Love”] Now THAT is a ballad.

BLIND FAITH
London Hyde Park 1969 dvd
(Sanctuary)
C: Well this is pretty cool. They’ve issued the DVD of this great film of this short-lived supergroup playing for free to 100,000 at London’s Hyde Park back in 1969.
D: It was so weird living through the decade called the ’80s and witnessing Steve Winwood wearing a leather trenchcoat and making sterile radio pop. And now to see Winwood here, looking so young. [The band kicks into "Sea of Joy"] He really was a great soul singer. Whoa check it out, they pan the crowd and there’s is Kenneth Anger himself in epaulets and sideburns and black lips waving his wand of joy.
C: Did you ever notice that every object or action is suddenly improved if you add “of joy” to the end of it?
D: Let’s see…I think I’ll grow a beard of joy. Shitbonger, you’re right!
C: Nice to see that bearded Ginger Baker brought along his handpainted drums on this occasion. Ginger in the ’60s was the equivalent of Gary Young from Pavement in the ’90s: a wild older dude who’s really good, but may not mix well with the others.

GRAHAM COXON
Love Travels At Illegal Speeds
(Parlophone/EMI)
C: Here comes the resolute ex-guitarist from Blur with just a corking great solo album, his best one so far.
D: Blur? I did not appreciate that bloodless dress-up party called Britpop.
C: Well between this and that Dirty Pretty Things single I’m ready to get out my Fred Perry shirts again.
D: Yet if you hadn’t told me about the Blur connection, I would simply be feasting on this short spiky guitar nugs. He sounds like a long lost friend of Wreckless Eric, which makes him a friend of mine.
C: Listen, Graham’s even written the essential tune addressing the new beard conundrum. Dig this song, where he’s watching a guy and girl get off together, it’s kind of an thematic update of Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” [puts on "What's He Got?" and turns up the lyric "He's got a lot of hair on his face and on his head/ So why I get my hair cut so short instead?"]
D: Apparently in cleancut Graham Coxon’s world, the beard gets the girl.

THE NEW HERBALIST
By Molly Frances

The holiday commonly called Christmas brings with it general feelings of dread and depression, as well as the intrusion of traffic, crowds, family, chocolate-covered everythings, large rectangular boxes, turtlenecks, and relatives with weird hair giving even weirder gifts. Well friends, I’m here to tell you: It has nothing to do with that!

Whichever winter holiday you choose to celebrate, from the Winter Solstice on down to Kwanzaa, I think we can do it better. We can make new rituals and traditions to define what these holidays are really supposed to reflect: faith, love, and rebirth.

The recently published Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Inner Traditions Press) is a fascinating resource to explore the origins and varieties of our holiday traditions. If you thought Christmas was a time to lay low the libido and close your heart for the season, this book begs you to reconsider. Resist the mood-killing family gatherings and neutering woolen sweaters and breathe in the seductive aroma of the ages. The very spices, plants, and incense that make us cringe when encountered in uncomfortable holiday environments have been used for hundreds of years to invoke fertility, love, and magic during the winter “feast of love.” Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, anise, saffron, ginger and vanilla were used in ancient Roman kitchens in baking and beverages, and many of these spices were considered to be aphrodisiacs. The authors instruct that “in medieval times festive meals were sprinkled to the thickness of a finger with spice powder, most often pepper, nutmeg, and cloves.” So gather the freshest ingredients you can find and get to work on those gingerbread houses, cookies, and spiced ciders to rekindle ye olde ancient holiday magic.

The greatest burden of the holiday season is of course the madness surrounding the selection of gifts, but it needn’t be this way. Why not offer your friends a bowl of steamed kale greens garnished with olive oil, lemon juice and a festive toss of dried cranberries? Tell them you offer this bowl of nutrient-rich greens to open their heart chakras. They will be so overcome by your gesture of goodwill and caring that that marshmallow santa will be thrown to the ground in favor of real nourishment. Give your beloved a pomegranate, the symbol of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. This deeply romantic gift will sweep away all previous longing for that iPod or riding lawnmower they were expecting. Traditional and modest gifts of candles, plants, and incense are often the most potent and symbolically rich. Frankincense is described in the book as stimulating feelings of intense sensual joy and, due to its THC content, can create “pharmacological effects.”

When we decorate and give gifts of green plants and flowers we are maintaining an ancient connection to faith and the hopeful message that winter will pass into spring. This is a time to celebrate the cycles of life, the light that we know will follow the dark winter days. Pagan Christmas reminds us that the Christmas tradition contains many holdovers of pagan rituals that were adopted by Christianity due to their undying presence in the popular mind. The disconnected presence of the living room tree can bounce back to a joyous significance when you consider that “pines are a symbol of immortality and resurrection. The idea that lucky children could find treasure hidden under them may come from the tree’s long history as an object of pagan worship. Like fir and spruce, the perfume of the pine needles and pine resin was considered forest incense.” The beauty of nature can thrive even in the dead of winter—or the suburban horror of Uncle Frank’s den.

Let’s not allow the manufactured and cynical distractions of the winter season to bully the magic from our thoughts. Creativity and passion can inspire us to cultivate new ideas about sharing time and and gifts with the people we love most. The authors of Pagan Christmas point out that even normally bummed-out Nietzsche would perk up in anticipation of Christmas approaching. Instead of dredging your defeated soul to the mall, pay a visit to your local farmers market and browse the bounty of the fall harvest. Spread nature’s sweetest gifts of tangerines or bags of pecans. Plant a tree in someone’s name (http://www.americanforests.org/planttrees) to celebrate the proliferation of nature. Break out of your Jello mold and create a spicy new holiday dish. And If you find yourself alone this winter, as all of us do one time or another, why not adopt a cat or dog? They will keep you warm, and if you feed them they will love you forever. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

THE NEW HERBALIST
By Molly Frances

“Wise Walnut”

Fall is here. Embrace the wisdom of the squirrel and gather up your nuts. We need them more than they do.

One of the most ancient of foods, walnut fossils have been found dating from the Neolithic period over 8,000 years ago. Rumors of the walnut groves in the hanging gardens of Babylon have been circulating for some time, and King Solomon is said to have often strolled among his walnut trees “into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley” (Song of Solomon 6:11).

In the Middle Ages, the “Persian” walnut became known as the “English” walnut as colonial-minded English sailors carted off loads of the nutty bounty and spread them about Europe, and eventually the “new world.”

Jupiter’s royal acorns, as the ancient Romans liked to call them, bear a suspicious resemblance to the human brain. That makes walnuts brain food in every sense of the word. They’re loaded with Omega 3 essential fatty acids, vitamin E, and minerals necessary for mental and heart health. It’s no coincidence that as our intake of omega 3s have decreased drastically, depression and heart disease have risen. Get this, slim jim: Your brain is 60% fat, and cell membranes will build themselves out of whatever fats are available. Omega 3s are the optimum choice, but most people fill up on omega 6s, found in polyunsaturated vegetable oils and animal products. An imbalance skewed towards Omega 6 fats are associated with inflamation, degenerative diseases, and mental disorders of all kinds, including increased violent activity. Sound like anyone you know?

Dr. Andrew Weil believes that the lack of Omega-3s in our diet is “the most serious nutritional deficiency we have in this country.” This deficiency is believed to be responsible for a wide range of diseases such as alzheimer’s, arthritis, ADD, diabetes, heart disease, PMS, and severe and manic depression. Omega 3 oils are found in oily fish, walnuts, flaxseeds, hemp seeds, and sea greens such as hijiki and kombu. They are essential for retinal function and vision, immunity, promoting good cholesterol, and cancer prevention.

Got the blues? Skip the sundae and go right to the nuts. Omega 3s stabilize moods and increase energy levels. They are also beauty oils, keeping skin youthful and glowing and hair soft and shiny. Get healthy and happy by replacing some of those 6s with 3s. How about a handful of walnuts as a snack or on a salad? How about some ground-up flax seeds? Why not? Let’s all learn how to cook up some delicious sea greens like Hijiki; it’s fun to say and more fun to eat.

Make certain to store shelled walnuts in the refrigerator (up to six months) to keep the oils from going rancid, as they can become carcinogenic. Chopped and ground nuts go bad more quickly than whole raw nuts. You can tell a bad bag of nuts by the smell – if they have the aroma of oil paint throw them away.

Enjoy a bag of organic raw walnuts or whole fresh walnuts from your local farmer’s market. Nothing says “I have arrived” like a big bowl of walnuts on your table and a nutcracker placed just so. You’ll have a potential moneymaker on your hands as well, playing the shell game with your friends. The increased walnut-fueled brain power is sure to benefit your sleight of hand.

The New Herbalist
By Molly Frances

“A Better Way to Cool Off”

As spring fever’s eager blossoming inevitably withers into the summertime blues, we seek quick relief among the abundance of icy blended concoctions that our advanced civilization offers us. Unfortunately, though that iced coffee provides a momentary respite on a balmy day, it will also quickly return you to a state of dehydration and turn up the heat of your internal thermostat.
The ingredient for the most soothing and refreshing of summer drinks is probably already growing in your garden. For a deeply cooling drink, brew up a tasty pot of mint tea.

A handful of the fresh herb plucked from your garden and tossed into a carafe of hot water will have you living the good life in no time at all. Be sure to include the stems of the plant. This tea may be served cold as well, but resist the temptation of pulling out your blender. Frozen drinks and ice cream will hold heat in your body and freeze digestion. To really keep extra cool this summer, avoid your freezer and enjoy your summer beverages without ice.

For a truly sublime experience, serve your friends a pot of Atay bi Na’na’. Made from boiling water, fresh mint, a small amount of green tea and honey to taste, Morocco’s most popular drink is consumed all day long. Usually served in ornate silver pots and small decorated glasses, it is customary for three servings to be offered by the host, who pours the tea from a distance of up to several feet above to aerate the brew and show off his skills. Practice this before the guests arrive.

In addition to its cooling properties, Mint tea settles the stomach and digestive disorders, eases migraines, and helps draw out infection upon first signs of a sore throat. The powerful antiviral properties of peppermint are due to its main active ingredient, menthol oil, which opens and heals sinuses, bronchial tubes, and vocal chords. It is also said to create a mentally stimulating and relaxing vibration that reduces stress and anxiety.

So what have we done to deserve this magical leaf? As the legend goes, Hades, god of the underworld, was busted by his wife Persephone in mid-frolic with a hot young wood nymph named Mintha. Persephone, who had been somewhat rudely snatched down to the underworld by Hades in the first place, was in no mood to overlook this infidelity and stomped the little nymph underfoot, transforming her into the plant we know today as Mint. In a gesture of atonement to Mintha, Hades would endow the plant with its sweet and unmistakable aroma.

Persephone may have extinguished Mintha in the flesh, but her spirit has lived on in this most promiscuous of plants. There are few lands that the wildly propagating mint has not traveled to, and few cultures that she has not seduced. As 16th century herbalist John Gerard declared, “The smelle rejoiceth the heart of man.” From Egyptian temples to Roman baths, Mint has been used for all varieties of healing and pleasure. The Pharisees even paid their taxes with it, as revealed by this scolding from Jesus: “Woe to you, Pharisees! You tithe mint and rue and every edible herb but disregard justice and the love of God.” Ouch!

While perhaps more prized for its pleasure-inducing than medicinal properties, the mint julep has been the preferred drink of the Southern Aristocracy. Accept nothing less than fresh mint, water, sugar, and Kentucky bourbon. As one of its key proponents, S.B. Buckner, Jr. warned in 1937: “A mint julep…is a ceremony… a rite that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician, nor a Yankee.” He instructs, “Go to a spring where cool, crystal-clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip up a little water at the source. Follow the stream through its banks of green moss and wildflowers until it broadens and trickles through beds of mint growing in aromatic profusion and waving softly in the summer breezes. Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots and gently carry them home.”

As Mintha clearly gets around, she has crossbred into hundreds of varieties including chocolate mint, basil mint, ginger mint, Persian mint, Corsican mint and Pineapple mint. All this intermingling frustrated one ninth-century monk, who declared, ” I would rather count the sparks in Vulcan’s furnace than count the varieties of mint.” The most popular forms are spearmint and peppermint, the former most often used in cooking but the latter more medicinally potent.

As Buckner proclaimed, “bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods.”

Bad Guys
The Road to Guantanamo is a thoroughgoing demolition of the lies and unlimited incompetence of Powell, Bush and Rumsfeld says John Patterson

“We are Americans. We don’t abuse people who are in our care.” Thus spake Gen. Colin Powell in reference to the United States’ grotesque and immoral confinement of “unlawful combatants” at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Those remarks would have been news to the prisoners who committed suicide there recently, but also to the three kidnapped and incarcerated young Britons of Pakistani descent known as the Tipton Three—if they’d had access to news of any sort at Gitmo. It turns out that, having also been deprived of access to lawyers, the Red Cross or even their own families, the Tipton Three knew as little of the outside world for two-and-a-half years as the outside world knew of the goings-on inside Guantanamo’s gruesome Camp Delta.

Not any more. Thanks to co-directors Michael Winterbottom (24-Hour Party People, In This World) and Mat Whitecross, the Guantanamo genie is forever out of its bottle. Using interviews with the three men, who were finally released from Gitmo in March 2004, interspliced with harrowingly persuasive recreations of their journey to Guantanamo via Pakistan and Afghanistan, and of their terrifying experiences in US military custody, The Road To Guantanamo constitutes the first corroborated witness account of America’s Gulag to stand a chance of being widely seen in the United States, whose populace has hitherto seemed disturbingly content to snore its way through the progressive dismantling of its Constitution.

The shattering experiences of Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rusal – which included being abducted by Afghanistan˙s Northern Alliance and sold to US Forces as Taliban members (for a cool $10,000-per-head bounty—this is where our money is going?), solitary confinement, torture, 5-on-1 beatings, hoods, shackles, blinders, sensory deprivation and being witness to extrajudicial murders—make for a thoroughgoing demolition of the lies of Powell, Bush and Rumsfeld. American viewers, long accustomed to our child president˙s characterization of Gitmo inmates as “bad guys,” may find themselves asking how their own military could be so fascistic, so cruel and, most dispiriting of all, so fucking stupid.

Named for the West Midlands town where they grew up, the three young men flew to Pakistan, the home of their parents, to attend the wedding of one of their number, but also to enjoy a holiday in their land of origin, in the aftermath of 9/11. Foolishly, they took a side-trip into Afghanistan, where they were caught up in the US bombing of Taliban bases and cities, and then captured in the confused retreat from Kunduz.

Accused of consorting with Bin Laden and the Taliban, the Three in fact had watertight, easily verified alibis. Two of them were—and how hard is it to check this out?—on police probation in Tipton for petty criminal acts, the other had a full-time job. That wasn’t enough for their captors, gut-wrenching proof that American military xenophobia extends not merely to hated enemies, but also to valued allies. Unlawful combatants: meet unlimited incompetence.

The imagery confronting us in The Road to Guantanamo suggests that the United States has abandoned its sanctimoniously proclaimed fealty to such secular gods as Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, only to replace them with Orwell, Kafka and Koestler. Two years of nonstop torture, interrogation and physical abuse—stress-holds, strobelights, earsplitting death-metal, enforced silence, isolation cells —strongly recall Gestapo or KGB information-gathering techniques, Room 101, Darkness at Noon. All that is lacking are electrodes, waterboards and clocks striking 13. And Big Brother? He’s already here. Learn to love Him.

At Home, At Work, At Play
A listener’s guide to Sparks’ first 20 albums by Ned Raggett

There aren’t many recording artists in their fourth decade of recorded work whose new albums consistently merit not only attention but, more often than not, a round of applause. But Sparks were an unusual band from the start, so perhaps, perversely, their virtually unprecedented no-fade career arc is to be expected. The full story of the musical partnership of brothers Ron and Russell Mael is worthy of a thick book or two (or at least a really good documentary), but the basic body of their musical work—20 studio albums preceding their newest, the forthcoming Exotic Creatures of the Deep—can at least be talked about here. Not all are front-to-back classics, some may not even be keepers, but the standard of excellence is so high, the continuous artistic risk-taking so audacious, and the number and range of artists they’ve inspired in the last 35 years so vast—from Queen to Morrissey to Pet Shop Boys to Faith No More to Bjork to Franz Ferdinand—that even the rare misstep deserves examination. Onward, then…

SPARKS (1972)
Though L.A. performances and a number of demos helped get the initial word out about their distinctly unusual take on pop and rock—the demos still for the most part unreleased, though noted Sparks freak Morrissey has showcased a couple here and there over the years via compilations and show intro tapes—it was the self-titled debut album that first brought the Maels and company into the public eye.
Getting Todd Rundgren as producer was key. Probably no one else in America had both the relatively high profile to get the recording ball rolling and the artistic appreciation for the curious yet compellingly catchy pop the Maels and their band were creating. Balanced between a whimsical fragility and a dramatic rock punch that stacks up to any proto-metal group of the era, it’s not merely the tension between the sides that makes Sparks’ first album so memorable, it’s the fact that it’s so instantly enjoyable.
If, as the story goes, opening track “Wonder Girl” was a hit in Montgomery Alabama and nowhere else, it wasn’t because it couldn’t be hummed. It can. The band’s whole approach can be heard in this single song: the intentional use of a cliché in the title, Russell’s sweet-with-a-twist-of-sour singing (then and now, one of the most uniquely beautiful vocals in modern pop), Ron’s sprightly keyboards and lyrics which are sunny only if you’re not listening closely. But it’s also a tour de force of production—listen to the crisp hits of Harvey Feinstein’s cymbals and the almost electronic smack of the beats. On the rest of Sparks, songs change tempo on a dime, harmonies swirl in and out of nowhere, strutting rock snarling melts into boulevardier swing, with the monstrous album closer “(No More) Mr. Nice Guys” rocking just as hard as the similarly-titled song by Alice Cooper that it predates. The sense of theatricality so integral to Sparks is already present, but this is as far away from the inanities of such ‘rock’ Broadway efforts as Rent as you can get—and thank heavens for it. The whole shebang really is art rock without apology.
Note: This album was released under the original band name of Halfnelson, with the brothers then switching to Sparks after the prompting of their then-manager/label head Albert Grossman, who was convinced this was the key to success. There have been stranger solutions.

A WOOFER IN TWEETER’S CLOTHING (1973)
In some ways A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing is the first album redux. Unchanged lineup, same number of songs, and the first song on the album is, again, about a girl. But this time the stakes were a little higher:

Oh, no! Bring her home and the folks look ill
My word, they can’t forget, they never will
They can hear the stormtroops on our lawn
When I show her in…

Imagine that being sung by Russell with an almost sweetly diffident air over a chugging rhythm, with a chorus that soars down to the backing pseudo-Col. Bogey whistles and you’ve got “Girl From Germany,” one of the wickedest songs ever. From there Woofer’s could do whatever it damn well pleased, and did. Beergarden polka singalongs crossed with minimal drones that transmute into a rapid roll of drums, frenetic high-speed instrumentation and a mock Mickey Mouse-style letter-by-letter cheerleader/gangshout for the titular character, “Beaver O’Lindy.” A tune called “The Louvre” sung, but of course, in French, sounding—at least initially—like a random 1968 Beach Boys number drop-kicked across the Atlantic, trailing sparkling keyboards in its wake. A concluding song, “Whippings and Apologies,” begins like Stereolab warming up for a 20-minute freakout and then keeps stop-starting—including a great fake ending —so Russell can discuss the situations a tender-hearted sadist must face. “Do-Re-Mi”—yes, THAT “Do-Re-Mi,” from The Sound of Music, not one of the lyrics changed, turns into a high-speed gallop halfway through the second repetition of the words and gets even more over the top after that point. Nearly the whole album is so insanely fractured, and once again, so astonishingly catchy, that it’s hard to know what to highlight.
At the heart of the album lies “Moon Over Kentucky,” the only song bassist Jim Mankey wrote for the band (with Ron sharing the credit), and arguably the landmark of the first incarnation of Sparks. It’s all five members at their most dramatic, with the opening piano and wordless vocals given a steady, darker counterpoint with Mankey’s bass. This gets contrasted with verses shot through with a nervous keyboard rhythm, Feinstein’s rolling drums and a snarling riff that sounds like a Tony Iommi line delivered in two seconds. Russell yodels like a lost ghost somewhere in the woods and the end result feels like what Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald would have done if James Whale had directed one of their films, down to the horror-movie organ final flourish.

KIMONO MY HOUSE (1974)
What to say about an album that endless amounts of musicians openly refer to as a touchstone? The one that was Bjork’s first record she bought with her own money (“My mum and my stepdad didn’t like it and I did, so that was my statement.”), the album that turned Morrissey into the massive fan he is (“Ron Mael’s lyrical take on sex cries out like prison cell carvings. It is only the laughing that stops the crying. Russell sings his words in what appear to be French italics, and has less facial hair than Josephine Baker.”), the album with the cabaret-rock-opera sound that Queen, who were opening for Sparks at the time, would appropriate immediately? Where to begin? Easy—the beginning.
It starts, not like a thunderclap, but like a gentle shimmer of spring rain, a keyboard figure easing up in volume step by step. Then a voice zooms in, almost but never once tripping over itself at high speed, building up to the briefest pause, and then: “This town ain’t big enough for both of us!” A massive pistol shot rockets across the speaker range. “AND IT AIN’T ME WHO’S GONNA LEAVE!” The full band kicks in and it is all OVER. And it’s only just begun.
Kimono My House shouldn’t have been; had Ron and Russell decided not to take the chance they did in moving to London and signing to Island Records after initial UK appearances before the release of Woofer turned out splendidly, it wouldn’t have been. They did, and “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” crashed into the UK Top Five in early 1974 and what had been a low-key pleasure for some turned into pop star mania. Tales of suicides happily singing down to girlfriends in the still-living world, celebrations of the most exclusive genealogical background ever (concluding with “Gonna hang myself from my family tree”) and specifically uncelebratory non-holiday carols were suddenly all the rage. The lunatics hadn’t taken over the asylum, but their observers were genii at portraying their foibles in entertaining form.
The new backing band—guitarist Adrian Fisher, bassist Martin Gordon and drummer Dinky Diamond—weren’t necessarily as outré as the first, but as a crackerjack combo, perfectly in tune with the over-the-top glam hysteria of the day, they were essential. “This Town” is just one example of many songs displaying Ron’s ever-increasing compositional talents—consider other smash U.K. singles like “Amateur Hour,” with its quick, ascending main guitar line completely working against the typical descending rock melodies of the time and place, or “Talent Is an Asset,” a music-box riff accompanied by hand-clapping and foot-stomping rhythms celebrating the young life of one Albert Einstein. If Ron’s keyboards often times seemed drowned in the mix of the songs that he himself wrote, they weren’t absent—the organ adding further beef to the mix of “Here in Heaven,” the combination barrelhouse R&B swing and cabaret glow on the concluding “Equator.” Perhaps the album’s most emblematic song was “Hasta Manana, Monsieur,” with its lovely piano melody at the start and Russell’s bravura extended vocal break towards the end … oh, and the words too:

Leaving my syntax back at school
I was thrown for a loss over gender and simple rules
You mentioned Kant and I was shocked
You know, where I come from, none of the girls have such foul tongues.

And that was just one verse.

PROPAGANDA (1974)
Propaganda—featuring the band’s first outright classic album cover, showing the Maels as bound and gagged kidnap victims—was a logical follow-on from Kimono, much as Woofer’s had continued onward from the debut. The producer remained the same. The backing band jiggled a bit, with Ian Hampton replacing Martin Gordon on bass and Trevor White starting to handle the guitar. (Queen’s Brian May alleges the Maels tried to persuade him to join them by proclaiming his band were “washed up”—which makes that group’s Sparks-like breakthrough hit “Killer Queen” all the more eyebrow-raising.) Otherwise Sparks kept up the same glam-rampage approach. But here, everything was more in sync then ever.
The album begins with something new—an a cappela performance from Russell, his overdubbed singing providing wordless melody and rhythm as well as words, packing wartime slogans, militaristic imagery and that thing called love into about 20 seconds. Then a stentorian delivery from the full band heralds “At Home At Work At Play,” whose combination of volume, giddiness, hyperspeed melodies and Sparks-trademarked tempo shifts and pauses is clear evidence that by this time Sparks had come pretty close to being sui generis. Even songs like “BC,” which on this album feels just a touch like a “typical” Sparks number, would be utterly atypical for practically anyone else.
There’s a winsome jauntiness on Propaganda at points, musically if not necessarily lyrically, almost as if Ron and Russell were creating World War II vaudeville singalongs for their temporarily adopted home country. “Reinforcements,” playing around again with ideas of love and/as war, almost begs a high-kicking chorus line to back Russell on stage. In a different vein entirely is a power ballad of the most arch sort, “Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth,” which has it all: strings, heroic guitar solo, a lot of background echo (check out the drums at the end!), Ron on what must be harpsichord, and a beautifully alien mid-song break where Russell sings in fragile tones over heavily flanged violins. On the lyrical front, Ron’s eye for the knowing cliché in the title again reigned supreme—besides “At Home At Work At Play,” we get “Thanks But No Thanks,” “Something For the Girl With Everything” and the concluding “Bon Voyage.” And then there’s “Achoo,” probably the only song in existence with a sneeze as its title. And even if it isn’t, it’s definitely the only one that starts, “Who knows what the wind’s gonna bring when the invalids sing.”

INDISCREET (1975)
Indiscreet ended up being the conclusion of Ron and Russell’s first run of hit UK albums, as well as their English residency. If nothing else, they wrapped it up in style, working with an emblematic producer of the era—fellow US expatriate Tony Visconti, whose collaborations with T. Rex and David Bowie helped define the times as much as anything. It turned out to be an inspired combination as Visconti’s ear for orchestral arrangements, familiar from T. Rex’s many singles, was in top form. The result is a rich sounding album, a big-budget effort that doesn’t sound overblown.
The band personnel remains essentially the same from Propaganda, though songs like the opening “Hospitality on Parade”—part neo-Gilbert and Sullivan triumph, part hypnotic proto-Suicide drone—suggest that the Maels were starting to feel that their band was holding them back creatively as much as they were crucial to their success. That tension shoots through the entire album, with more conventional rock-band compositions contrasting sharply to such songs as the merry 1930s kick of “Without Using Hands” or the wonderfully energetic big-band recreation of “Looks, Looks, Looks.” “Under the Table With Her” is that tendency in excelsis, with string and flute accompaniment as the sole musical element to match one of Russell’s most elfin vocals.
That said, the Sparks instinct for pop smashes in their own particular vein remains strong. There’s the careening blast of “Happy Hunting Ground”—the mid-song dropout to just drums and vocals is sheer pleasure and opening single “Get In the Swing” is an everything-and-the-kitchen sink affair with a marching band strut, band majorette whistles, a message from God to his creations and the memorable line “Well I ain’t no Freud, I’m from LA.”
The sleeper hit, though, has to be “Tits”—a thematic sequel of sorts to the previous album’s “Who Don’t Like Kids,” but which, in its slow unfolding musical drama, resembles the epochal “Moon Over Kentucky,” shot full of sequins. For all the celebrations of the female bosom in pop music before and since, this is probably the only one narrated by a married man complaining over an increasing number of “drinks that are something warm and watered down” about how the presence of a kid alters a certain dynamic in their household:

For months, for years
Tits were once a source of fun and games at home
And now she says, tits are only there to feed our little Joe
So that he’ll grow.

THE BIG BEAT (1976)
The final album the Maels did for Island has a straight-up brilliant cover, created by famed portrait photographer Richard Avedon. Russell is bare-chested but vulnerable behind folded arms and tousled hair; Ron looks to the side, his face in shadow. If only the music on the album were as striking as that image.
The Maels had returned to Los Angeles just as their star began to fade in the UK, where the punk and New Wave soon-to-be stars they’d inspired were only beginning to gear up. In L.A., Ron and Russell recruited drummer Hilly Boy Michaels, bassist Sal Maida and guitarist Jeffrey Salen from local bands and made a punk/power-pop album, featuring sharp Rupert Holmes production, tight arrangements, generally quick running times and a neo-’50s bite (“Fill ‘Er Up).” It was a new approach, but opening song “Big Boy” captures the problem of The Big Beat in general —it’s strident and forced where earlier rock-out efforts had felt nearly effortless, the emphasis placed on Salen’s competent but fairly earthbound riff instead of Ron’s piano. There’s still much to recommend The Big Beat: “I Bought The Mississippi,” “White Women” and “Everybody’s Stupid” show that the Maels’ just-off-center view of the universe remained intact, and “Nothing To Do,” certainly The Big Beat’s highlight in its catchy portrayal of random boredom, is so good that Joey Ramone later claimed that he wanted his group cover it. Still, there’s a sense of compromised horizons, of narrowing scope and less ambition, especially in the wake of the Technicolor widescreen impact of Indiscreet. Thus, it’s no surprise that “I Like Girls,” the album’s grandiose cover, actually dates from the first incarnation of the group.

INTRODUCING SPARKS (1977)
After six albums of often avant garde pop, the bizarrely titled, hilariously packaged Introducing Sparks kept the band’s wit but removed the musical edge. The whole thing was recorded with very capable L.A. session musicians (Lee Ritenhour and Mike Porcaro among them) but their airbrushed professionalism is deflating and pointless; flashes like the merry Russian Cossack kick of “Goofing Off” aside, this is an album of occasionally inspired songs struggling to break through—and failing. The opening “A Big Surprise” features smoothed-out, tame pseudo-Spectorisms and the slightly revolting presence of generic backing singers cloyingly adding their unwelcome voices to Russell’s. These backing singers would stick around for the whole album. And so it goes. With Ron’s piano pounding and Russell’s unique vocals, you’re never gonna get a bland-sounding, anonymous Sparks album. But Introducing comes close.
Introducing Sparks does have its defenders, and perhaps the live performance of its songs as part of the upcoming London residency/retrospective will help bring it more positive qualities to the fore. Yet in the end Introducing can be summed up by this simple fact: until the band finally re-released it themselves in 2007, it was the only Sparks studio album for years and years that had never officially appeared on CD. But they say it’s darkest before the dawn, and the follow-up to Introducing would be one of the most amazing albums ever made.

NO. 1 IN HEAVEN (1978)
There’s a story that David Bowie tells that goes like this: During the recording of one of his late ’70s Berlin albums with Brian Eno, he was in the studio when Eno burst in with a copy of a new single, excited as all hell. “This is it, this is the future of music for the next 15 years,” Eno allegedly said. The record, “I Feel Love,” would indeed become an epochal, era-defining smash for Donna Summer, part of her continuing collaboration with producer Giorgio Moroder and drummer Keith Forsey.
Ron and Russell heard it as well. Rather than imitate Moroder and Forsey’s sound, they decided to work with them directly.
Just hearing the start of No. 1 in Heaven is like a message from the future still, but hearing it in 1978? It must have caused jaws to collectively drop around the world. “Tryouts for the Human Race” was unlike anything that Sparks had done before—no keyboards, no guitar, just gentle space tones and a bit of synth glimmer, a hint of motorik starting to speed up and up and up until a trademark Moroder synth-bass line comes in, Forsey’s beat suddenly moving into a massive propulsive push (his fills and breaks later are pure drama in the space of seconds), topped off by Russell’s voice materializing:

We’re just gleams in lovers’ eyes
Steam on sweaty bodies in the night
One of us might make it through
All the rest will disappear like dew.

The four-way collaboration at work throughout No. 1 is just perfect—the frenetic melodies from Ron, with Russell’s beautiful voice, suddenly seeming so much more freer than before, set against the relentless electronic hyperactivity Moroder conjures up along with Forsey’s just plain monstrous drums. Even the non-singles on the album—out of six songs, three were hits—have all the pieces in place, but man, those singles. Besides “Tryouts,” there was “Beat the Clock,” another bona fide classic, Russell semi-whispering the title like a mantra and breaking into glorious falsetto on the chorus, Ron’s melodies riding on top of a rhythm so clean and strong you could run transit systems off of it—dig Forsey’s breakdown on the mid-song break—and lyrics saying, among other things, “Entered school when I was two/PhD’d that afternoon.”
And then there’s the close, “The No. 1 Song in Heaven,” all seven and a half minutes of it. In a career of perfect songs, this might be the most perfect song Sparks ever did—and it’s one of Moroder’s best as well—a moment of pure sonic celebration and exaltation, its vocal overdub intro sounding like (but of course) angels singing down from on high, a stately first half transforming into an explosive concluding section: dance fueled by atomic energy.

In cars it becomes a hit
In your homes it becomes advertisements
And in the streets it becomes the children singing

No. 1 In Heaven marked the beginning of Sparks’ ongoing association with dance and electronic music scenes, it’s the album that showed that Sparks were keeping their ears open to what was around them, and it holds up (and then some) today. In short, it is one of the greatest records ever made.

TERMINAL JIVE (1979)
The artistic and commercial success of No. 1 in Heaven bode well for the follow-up next year, Terminal Jive. The Maels had demonstrated that their combination of pop ears and lyrical invention could appealed to a mass audience in more than one musical setting. Working again with Moroder (assisted this time by Harold Faltermeyer), Sparks seemed to be primed for a run of records capturing a time and place like the Island/glam-era releases did, perhaps with similar amounts of fame and fortune.
That didn’t turn out to be the case, though. Going back to guitar heavily on a number of too-strident songs—the title “Rock’n’Roll People in a Disco World” says it all—just didn’t work much of the time. Terminal Jive really is the proverbial album that would make a good EP. There’s one big highlight, though: “When I’m With You,” a beautiful love song with a gorgeous chorus, just a bit of guitar snarl to add to the beats, and another example, like “The Number One Song in Heaven,” where a bit of self-conscious referencing proves a perfect touch: “It’s the break on the song/When I should say something special.” “When I’m With You” was literally, as they say, big in France, and further added to Sparks’ reputation as genre innovators; here they helped kick-start the entire ’80s synth-pop era without intending to. The fact, however, that the band had to fill out the album’s length with an alternate instrumental version of said hit gives an idea as to how inspiration was sadly running a bit low again.
(Note: Some fans give a bit of love to “Young Girls,” though to be perfectly honest it’s actually just a touch creepy—and given some of the songs Sparks had written up until then, that’s saying something!)

WHOMP THAT SUCKER (1980)
Sparks’ first album of the 1980s found them back with a three-piece LA-based rock band as collaborators—essentially the same set-up they had at the beginning of their career. This time around, the Maels recruited most of an entire group, Bates Motel, namely guitarist Bob Haag, bassist Leslie Bohem and drummer David Kendrick (the latter two also continued to record separately as Gleaming Spires). With Ron now playing his complex melodic runs on a bank of early digital synthesizers, and Giorgio Moroder partner Mack handling production, the crisp Whomp That Sucker placed Sparks firmly in the New Wave movement that they had no small part in inspiring.
This ’80s rock and roll version of Sparks was a much simpler and direct one than those of earlier years—instead of frenetic performances and instant stop-start changes, the feeling here is steady riffing and straightforward rhythms, immediate but less astonishingly unique (though if anything, songs like “The Willys” indicated how Sparks were listening to bands that had followed in their wake, like Devo and XTC). Even compared to the Big Beat-era band, everything here is pretty easy to get one’s head around—not a criticism in this case, since the arrangements can often be fun, but the feeling is still quite basic. In ways, this is the sound of a new group still finding its feet, and the end result is a bit uneven. Still, plenty of songs have the sensibility of Sparks at its most theatrical, such as “Where’s My Girl” and “That’s Not Natassia,” while Russell’s voice is as vividly dramatic as ever, especially in the choral overdubs.
But it’s the in-your-face numbers that score the most here, such as the hyperactive smack of “Upstairs,” the absolutely hilarious “Tips for Teens” (“Don’t eat that burger/Has it got mayonnaise/GIVE IT TO ME!”) and especially “Funny Face,” with a gorgeous “When I’m With You”-style chorus anchoring the tale of a man so perfect in appearance he despairs of never being left alone by admirers. He tries and fails to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge and lives a happy life from there, after his appearance is permanently marred. This was one of the album’s singles, by the way.

ANGST IN MY PANTS (1982)
Angst in My Pants consolidated the strengths of Sparks’ early ’80s incarnation into a smash commercial success—at least within a certain context. While they’d long had a strong cult following in the area since they started, at this point Sparks were near-gods in their hometown of Los Angeles at long last, establishing themselves as favorites on local radio powerhouse KROQ. But this didn’t translate into national success—a pity, since in many ways Angst is one of the group’s most playfully daring releases, hinted at by one of their best album covers, featuring Russell dressed as a groom in a spangled suit and Ron the blushing bride.
With keyboardist James Goodwin added to the group and Mack following up on his Whomp production duties, Angst starts out with one of the Maels’ all-time winners, the title track. Russell sounds downright sad and desperate in the opening words of each verse as well as the chorus, and the bite of the lyrics (“You can be smart as hell, know how to add/Know how to figure things on yellow pads”), as well as the pun of the title, doesn’t hide the sheer frustration he slyly captures, the sharp, stripped-down arrangement shot through with low synth moans. It’s a striking starting point and the rest of the album lives up to it, ranging from the proto-industrial stomp of “I Predict”—deep electronic bass lines set against psychic parody lines like “Somebody’s going to die/But I can’t reveal who”—to the John Barry/Ennio Morricone tribute of “Nicotina,” which makes the simple act of smoking a cigarette seem like apocalypse. (Why longtime Sparks nut Mike Patton hasn’t covered this yet is a mystery.)
The giddy, almost epic “let’s go out and hit the town” spirit of “Sextown USA” and the explosive (and deeply hilarious) “Moustache” are also among the winners, while the murky melodies and rolling drums of “Sherlock Holmes” and “Tarzan and Jane” demonstrate that the stage-show musical heart of the Maels was still strong, if somewhat de-emphasized. If there’s an established Sparks fan favorite beyond the singles, though, it might well be “Mickey Mouse,” the Maels’ long-running Disney fascination made manifest. It’s a bit surprising that the Disney monolith didn’t try and sue the song out of existence for copyright violations, but such is the weird nature of multinationals.

IN OUTER SPACE (1983)
Sparks finally got their first—and so far, their only—American Top 40 success with the lead song on this album, “Cool Places,” a duet between Russell and Jane Wiedlin, then riding the peak of her own fame as one of the Go-Gos. Wiedlin was herself a Sparks fan since the ’70s—she also appears later on the album with “Lucky Me Lucky You”—and the resultant single, although one of the Maels’ most straightforward compositions (especially lyrically), is a fun kick. It’s also one of the most straight-up synth-pop style numbers the band had ever recorded—drummer David Kendrick sounds more like a drum machine than Keith Forsey had done back on the late ’70s albums—and reflects In Outer Space as a whole, with a number of songs being practically guitarless, though the core backing quartet remained unchanged from Angst. (Note that Bob Haag is credited with playing guitar synthesizers as well as his chosen instrument.) Perhaps the Maels, producing themselves for the first time since the debut album, wanted to experiment a bit more with other electronic approaches, rather than replicating their successful work with Moroder. Whatever the motivation, a new slew of Sparks highlights are the result: “Popularity,” a dryly hilarious portrayal of hip young things out on the town, and its brilliant lyrical flipside “I Wish I Looked a Little Better” are both winningly sung and performed electronic pop at its best, an enjoyable tip of the hat to groups like Depeche Mode and Bronski Beat, among others, who had worn out their copies of No. 1 in Heaven long before.
That said, In Outer Space can be a bit too stiff for its own good—a song like “Prayin’ for a Party” tries to replicate the monster stomp of “I Predict” without much success. Add in some more uninspired lyrics and arrangements at points—“Please, Baby, Please,” despite a few good lines, sounds scarily MOR towards the end—and this isn’t a start-to-finish winner like Angst. But it’s still one of the band’s finer efforts, and any album with songs (and titles) like “All You Ever Think About Is Sex” (“All right with me!”) and “A Fun Bunch of Guys From Outer Space” has its snarky heart in the right place.

PULLING RABBITS OUT OF A HAT (1984)
Though In Outer Space had its moments and even a top 40 hit single, the Maels clearly felt a little change was needed for their next album. They switched back to using an outside producer, in this case Ian Little, while concert keyboardist James Goodwin departed to be replaced by John Thomas, who would eventually become the Maels’ studio mixer and engineer, and the group’s longest regular collaborator. Also, they reversed their recent tendency toward lyrical simplicity, amping up their continuing amused critique of the human species out in the field instead of relying on the performance to imply it, admittedly “Cool Places” had admittedly done so well.
The resultant Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat—featuring another classic Sparks cover, this time a none-more-’80s style painting showing a typically stone-faced Ron operating Russell as a hand puppet—made less of a commercial mark but feels much more cohesive all around. It also includes that relatively rarest of Sparks efforts: a straightforward love song. “The gentle, warm chorus and sprightly arrangement of “With All My Might” recalls “When I’m With You” in its winningly romantic spirit, this time minus any self-conscious verse. That latter sentiment, however, appears in full on another one of the album’s high points, “A Song That Sings Itself.” Even if it doesn’t capture the outrageous heights of “The Number One Song in Heaven,” Ron’s sparkling keyboard loop, the great full-band performance, and Russell’s calm but still almost heroic vocals, make the song a fan favorite that has endured.
If Pulling Rabbits is Sparks starting to sound less like its own distinct take on New Wave and synth-pop and a touch more like what the ’80s mainstream did with it—check the already-starting-to-be-overused orchestral synth-hits on the otherwise great title track, opening the album with an energetic bang —it’s still more varied than In Outer Space and more intent on showing that the clever brain lurking deep inside Sparks is still operational. Squelchy keyboard break aside, “Pretending to Be Drunk,” with the narrator arguing that his plan was to try and impress an unnamed love with his behavior, is an absolute highwater mark on this album, while “Everybody Move,” the most basic song on the face of it, has this great take on exercise/aerobics culture: “Unwanted pounds will disappear/You’ll have a itty bitty rear/Better lay off of the beer.”

MUSIC YOU CAN DANCE TO (1986)
It may be pushing the parallels a bit, but Music You Can Dance To is most nearly equivalent to The Big Beat in terms of Sparks’ ’80s versus ’70s career—namely, the point where returns on a recording strategy are definitely diminishing. The core band remained on board and inspired moments aren’t absent by any means, but compared to the ’80s incarnation’s previous albums, this, its fifth and final one as a fully operating band, feels more like a collection of songs that filled out an album, with low points outstripping the best efforts.
Those high points are enjoyable enough. “Change” is a huge-sounding, epically lovelorn yet ultimately positive ballad. It’s the first recorded instance of Russell speaking verses rather than singing them, something he’s done on almost every album since. And “Modesty Plays,” originally conceived as a theme song for a proposed Modesty Blaise TV series and re-recorded here from its first 1982 single version, is fun too. But generally the band is starting to sound a little stranded. What had previously been energetic and modern sound has become shopworn and clichéd. Missteps abound. The execution of “The Scene” is flawed, but in its multipart structure there’s at least some ambition, especially compared to the cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips,” which sounds far too much like the dull horrors of so many other washed-out Motown remakes from any number of ’60s burnouts during the Reagan years. Sparks were starting to show their age—a state of mind that they weren’t yet going to escape for a little while, though calling the most trudging song on the album “Let’s Get Funky” demonstrated their sense of humor was still present.
As a weird final note, the album was later re-released on CD as The Best of Sparks, a thoroughly inaccurate take on the contents and as appropriate a name as Introducing Sparks was a decade earlier. Caveat emptor, and then some.

INTERIOR DESIGN (1988)
If Music You Can Dance To was the decline, Interior Design is the fall, equaling Introducing Sparks as a well-meaning but ultimately troubled career low. In retrospect, it’s clear that this is an album that’s not important for what it is but for how it was made—that is, this it’s the first effort fully created by Ron and Russell in the comfort of their newly completed studio, built in Russell’s Hollywood Hills house. Initially nicknamed the Pentagon, this is where all their subsequent albums have been recorded.
The fact that this is the most notable thing about Interior Design, though, tends to indicate the quality of the album as a whole. No longer working with their ’80s backing band of Bob Haag, Leslie Bohem and David Kendrick—keyboardist John Thomas had begun the transition to being the group’s regular engineer, while guitarist Spencer Secombe completed the ad-hoc line-up—the Maels have a few flashes of their trademark wit and melodic gift at play, but it’s just not enough here. At best Interior Design should be seen as a home demo record that didn’t deserve release —it’s there, but for most listeners it’s not needed.

GRATUITOUS SAX AND SENSELESS VIOLINS (1994)
After Interior Design Sparks seemed to hibernate for six years, quietly but steadily working on other still-unreleased projects and a one-off single or two. When the Maels focused their attention back on a straight-up album, presumably they hoped at the least just to reestablish themselves a bit in a musical environment that had radically changed in their absence. But Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins did more than just that: it kicked off their third great period of extended commercial success, this time starting in Germany. Far from being out of it, Sparks ended up back in the thick of things, in Europe at least, seemingly without effort.
The key to success lay in Ron and Russell keeping their ears open to what was going on around them, much more than they had done in the late ’80s. In the same way that hearing “I Feel Love” led them to work with Moroder, they realized that electronic Europop offered a set of musical approaches that, as Ron remarked in one interview, hadn’t yet become clichés. Sparks took to techno like ducks to water—it didn’t hurt at all, certainly, that the music’s fast temp perfectly suited Ron and Russell’s predilection for swift-as-heck melodies. Another clear inspiration was the splashy, theatrical disco that the Pet Shop Boys had cooked up on Very. The Pets’ had borrowed much from Sparks’ overall approach in the Moroder years, down to Chris Lowe’s near-perfect impersonation of Ron’s unemotive appearances at the keyboards. The song titles on Gratuitous Sax— “I Thought I Told You To Wait in the Car,” “Now That I Own the BBC”— have the air of barbed homage.
This isn’t a perfect album but there’s so much to enjoy, from the surging conclusion in “Let’s Go Surfing” to “Tsui Hark,” one of the all-time oddest Sparks numbers, featuring the legendary Hong Kong director talking briefly about his body of work. And that’s about it. Other highlights are “When I Kiss You (I Hear Charlie Parker Playing),” which features Russell doing his best version of rapping—not too surprising given his own abilities with rapid-fire tongue-twisting vocals—and the gorgeous “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’?”, the tale of someone waiting for his chance, whatever it might be, which ends up referencing both Sinatra and Sid Vicious. Sleek and winning, Gratuitous was just the recharge that Sparks needed – and it wouldn’t be the last.

PLAGIARISM (1997)
The Sparks’ 17th release was their most unusual yet. The initial idea was for Ron and Russell to curate a tribute album of other artists covering Sparks songs. But, at some point, they decided to pay tribute to themselves instead, revisiting their now massive back catalog and rerecording the selections in new or different styles. The perfect extra ingredient for this was their old collaborator Tony Visconti, who had done such a stunning job with his production on 1975’s Indiscreet.
With Visconti handling full orchestral arrangements throughout the album, plus an eight-person choir to boot, Plagiarism showcases a variety of approaches: some featured Sparks’ more recent techno-influenced style, while others, like the dramatic opening take on “Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat,” see the Maels adding relatively little to the string-swept settings Visconti was creating— a strategy that foreshadows where they’d be going in the near future. A further example of the depth of Plagiarism’s inspiration lies in its choice of songs: relative obscurities like “Big Brass Ring,” from the misbegotten Interior Design period, and In Outer Space’s “Popularity,” receive wonderful makeovers, the latter turned into a lovely high-speed gallop, while recent hit “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’?” becomes a Visconti-scored epic, toning down but not removing the strong beat of the original. Hearing Russell ably tackling the challenging “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us,” 23 years on, is a further treat.
The original plan for a tribute album wasn’t forgotten, however, and a variety of tracks also appear that turn out to be full-on collaborations, including an absolutely mindblowing dance/rock take on “Angst In My Pants” by Eskimos and Egypt. Faith No More, whose fractured, spazzed-out art-metal is clearly in retrospect derived from Sparks’ own maniacal exercises in the early ’70s, prove to be perfect partners on “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” and “Something For the Girl With Everything.” Mike Patton’s yelping bark is a particularly fine contrast to Russell’s sweetness. Erasure takes a bow on “Amateur Hour,” while one of the few singers to sound even more angelic than Russell, Jimmy Somerville, knocks the ball out of the park with his stately take on “The No. 1 Song in Heaven.” The end result is unique—a tribute album that’s actually worth listening to more than once.

BALLS (2000)
In the same way that Gratuitous Sax and the more electronic reworkings on Plagiarism drew on fluid techno pulses, Balls incorporates ideas from harsher hip-hop and dance influences. The brawling, drum-heavy attack of the title track, which opens the album on a fierce note, is more than a little touched by the Prodigy’s “Firestarter,” though Russell’s gleeful singing is hardly Keith Flint’s rasp—and a good thing too, since that idea is pretty hard to imagine —while the core melody remains a pleasant affair, in spite of all the air-raid siren noises. “Aeroflot” and “It’s Educational” also ride the electro-riffs hard. Russell’s voice is as supple as ever and memorable melodies abound, along with Ron’s usual dry wit. The Mael gift for cliché-reworking song titles is in full effect—the horn/string-tinged and very Gratuitous-like “The Calm Before the Storm,” “More Than a Sex Machine”—while “How to Get Your Ass Kicked” is, naturally, one of the gentlest songs on the album. Meanwhile, the concluding “The Angels” makes for a sweet, lush end not merely to the album but to a lifecycle of the group—and not only that, it gets away with lines like “I saw the angels cry/They feel ashamed/Because you look so fucking good.”
In retrospect Balls can be seen as the farewell to an era, with the Maels seeing out their dance-influenced ’90s on their own terms rather than clinging to an exhausted approach as they had done at similar points earlier in their career. Like Gratuitous Sax, Balls falls short, but it’s a stronger album than others in the band’s extensive history.

LI’L BEETHOVEN (2002)
Each new decade seems to find Sparks introducing a new set of musical ideas or tones that they will then work for the duration of the decade. Li’l Beethoven continued the pattern. Indiscreet’s “Under the Table With Her” showed what a combination of Russell’s vocals and Tony Visconti’s strings (and nothing else) would sound like, but Li’l Beethoven pushed the idea to the limit. Working again with Tammy Glover on drums (she’d joined the band ahead of Balls) while completely jettisoning their previous dance-beat approach, Sparks created a series of lush, orchestrated numbers that, in a way, finally brought the theatrical aspect of their work completely to the fore.
All this would be conceit if the songs didn’t live up to the inspiration, but the band was on a total creative roll. “The Rhythm Thief” is a statement of purpose for the whole thing (“Say goodbye to the beat”), while the hilarious trashing of the nü-metal hangover with “What Are All These Bands So Angry About?” and the equally funny “I Married Myself” (“I’m very happy together”) are high up there too. “My Baby’s Taking Me Home,” though lyrically one of the simplest songs the band had ever done—the words are the title, and one spoken word break from Russell aside, that’s about it—is a masterpiece, as close to a Steve Reich tribute as can be imagined in a pop format, topped off with some slamming drums from Glover.
But it’s the final two songs that are the best. “Suburban Homeboy,” a witty-as-hell rip on upper-class fake gangbangers that allows them to once again indulge a fondness for the show tune style, is flawless. And “Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls,” with muscular guitar riffs suddenly exploding into the mix as Russell ponders the mystery in the song title, is even more notable, forming as it does a bridge back to a crucial element of early Sparks: loud electric guitar. There was more to come.

HELLO YOUNG LOVERS (2006)
After Li’l Beethoven’s, the band not only recruited a new full-time guitarist in that album’s guest player—Dean Menta, from the Maels’ Plagiarism partners Faith No More—but played the entirety of Kimono My House back-to-back with Li’l Beethoven at a memorable 2004 date in London as part of a Morrissey-curated festival. It’d be easy enough to say that Hello Young Lovers is a combination of Kimono and Beethoven, but it would also be inaccurate. Rather, as Sparks weaved more rock instrumentation into still predominantly classical orchestrations, they also returned a bit to the world of dance music, making Hello Young Lovers not only one of Sparks’ greatest albums but perhaps also their most truly wide-ranging.
The opening “Dick Around,” introduced with multiple Russells singing “All I do now is dick around,” moves from sweeping flourishes to loud-as-hell guitar/bass/drum rampages, Russell tackling everything from soft crooning to insanely quick and precise deliveries matched by equally high-speed performing from Ron, all the while singing lines like:

Through with you, through with you, through with you, through with you
Yes I think I got the point and bam there goes my motivation
What to do, what to do, what to do, what to do
All that I could think of is that I’m tendering my resignation.

If Queen had ever swiped anything from Sparks—and they did—then not only had the Maels taken it back, they had completely upped the ante.
And that’s just the start. Touching on everything from more straight-up orchestral numbers (“Rock, Rock, Rock”) to sly, finger-snapping grooves (“Perfume,” the lead single and yet another example of the Maels’ knack for pop at its best and most immediate) to a multipart concluding epic, “When I Sit Down to Play the Organ at the Notre Dame Cathedral,” at once a Parisian song of romance and a paranoid tale of work jitters. Highlights come fast and furious, but two of their most outrageous numbers ever will serve as examples—“Baby Baby (Can I Invade Your Country?),” which takes the words to the US national anthem and goes from there into uncharted but appropriately martial waters, is one of the few post-9/11 songs worth a damn, while “Waterproof,” like “Dick Around” a perfect fusion of classical strings and rock epic moves, details the story of a lover’s heart crushed by a heartless bastard—told from the point of view of the bastard, naturally.
While not a perfect song-for-song album, Hello Young Lovers comes so very close. Astonishing.

A NOTE ON VARIOUS SPARKS COMPILATIONS, RARITIES AND VIDEOS
The number of compilations released over Sparks’ career has been extensive, ranging from repackagings of the first two albums as a full set to any number of “greatest hits” sources on a variety of labels—the perhaps inevitable end result of the Maels’ label-hopping over the years. Rhino’s 1992 two-disc Profile compilation remains the best starting point but even that is incomplete, stopping as it does with “So Important.” Meantime, rarities, b-sides and remixes abound, some collected on re-releases (the four Island albums got a much improved series of CD remasters last year, augmenting some previous bonus cuts with even more extras), many others still floating free. (Track down 1993’s “National Crime Awareness Week” if you can.) To top that off, the amount of wonderful TV one-offs and appearances over the years, not to mention a stream of underappreciated videos, deserves a serious study of its own—for now, search for their original Top of the Pops appearances for “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us” and “Looks Looks Looks,” as well as their Saturday Night Live performances of “I Predict” and “Mickey Mouse.”
Until the day of the ultimate Sparks box set—or if that day ever even arrives, given technological and music business trends both—have fun out on the happy (musical) hunting ground.

Originally published in Arthur No. 29 (May 2008) (which also featured a massive Sparksography by Ned Raggett), available from the Arthur Store…

SERIOUS FUN
Chris Ziegler and Kevin Ferguson visit veteran sui generis pop duo SPARKS in L.A. as they prepare to perform their 240-song oeuvre in a single month-long London engagement in May. “We’re actually better than we thought,” say the brothers Mael…

Sparks have about 60 days to finish learning the five million notes necessary to reproduce live their entire 38-year discography—20 old albums, select b-sides, one new album, and a special song for anyone willing to buy tickets for the entire month-long event in London—but brothers Russell and Ron Mael remain relaxed and ready in Russell’s home studio, where a portrait of Elvis watches over rehearsals so intense that Russell can’t stop singing his songs even in his dreams. Brand-new album Exotic Creatures Of The Deep will debut live this summer in London after prior nights each dedicated to an existing Sparks album—a marathon physically and psychologically and an occasion to revisit a band almost totally untangled from the industry music mess just miles away from Russell’s Los Angeles home…

Arthur: Ron said that you’ll be playing 4,825,623 notes during the complete 21-show run. That works out to about 230,000 notes per album and maybe 34 notes per second. Does that seem accurate?
Russell: On some of the early albums it’s probably true—the Island albums are probably 64 notes per second. Those were really hyper.

Did doing that kind of statistical analysis on your lifetime of work reveal any greater truths?
Ron: It’s actually a leveling. A lot of the ones we had maybe less love for are kind of good in retrospect. It would have been sad to go back and realize they weren’t very good.
Russell: Fortunately that wasn’t the case.
Ron: But we are prejudiced.
Russell: We’re actually better than we thought.

So you’re not nervous.
Ron: We’re still nervous. It’s awesome.

Awesome in the sense that building a pyramid is awesome?
Ron: On all kinds of levels. It’s like going back to school. We haven’t even heard most of the songs for 20 or 30 years, and most of them we never played live anyway, so part of the process was figuring out how to do that. We couldn’t cut any corners—we’re doing everything, including a lot of b-sides as well. We’re figuring out how to be true to the original records and doing it live. It’s a good concert experience.

Are you offering any kind of Sparks Value Pack for the entire run?
Russell: The golden ticket! For that you also get—we’re gonna record one song and give a CD of this one song to the people that choose to dedicate an entire month of their lives to Sparks. That warrants receiving a song that no one else will get.
Ron: And there’s gonna be at least one book or maybe two about the whole experience afterward, and we’re thinking if we can get up the energy, we’ll try to keep a journal.

Why no hometown show in Los Angeles?
Ron: We have a larger following in London. It’s so expensive to put this on that the only viable way was to do it in London.

Will you be including any Sparks alumni in the live bands?
Russell: Each of the bands had a certain character to them—someone even suggested it’d be great if we had each of those bands. In a conceptual way, that’s good. In a practical way, I don’t know if it would work. It’s a real test to find people—the fans who are going to spend a month of their lives with us, and then for the band, musicians who want to stick it out for three-and-a-half months of preparation, which is unheard of. When you prepare for tour, you have maybe 20 songs, and this is 240. And you might say, ‘Oh, that’s not so hard,’ but when you think of songs on the albums that fade out and you have to have an ending for that song now. To figure things like that out times 240 is so time-consuming. Just the sheer volume you have to digest.

Are you dreaming Sparks songs yet?
Russell: I’m singing songs when I wake up—I swear. And it’s not a happy dream. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t even shut them off!’

Can you think of an equivalent to the total creative energy invested in the Sparks discography? Half a cathedral or the Pennsylvania tablet from the Epic of Gilgamesh?
Ron: It could never be done by a visual artist, really—we don’t feel like we’re doing imitation, and we don’t see them as finished, necessarily. When we play live, we’re kind of inventing them again. You hear of classical musicians that do a composer’s complete piano works—that kind of thing. But this is kind of trickier. I don’t know for a fact because I’ve never done that, but it seems like more things are involved.
Russell: We’d be allowed to read music, but we don’t read music.

Will you be correcting anything when you play the albums live?
Ron: There are things we’d like to do that for—a couple lyrics here and there—but that would be kind of cheating the process. The things we’d like to change the most would ruin the whole affair.
Russell: Because somebody might like that album!
Ron: There are maybe a couple of tunes that don’t feel as relevant to the current psyche as they did at the time. But in general, I’m kind of surprised—it’s lucky because it could have been more depressing than it is now.

It’s depressing now?
Ron: Daunting, not depressing! But we’re not fazed by it. You just have to sort of plow ahead and those shows will be there and we’ll be doing it! There isn’t even real fear about it—that implies we could back out, and we can’t.

After four decades, what have you learned about the nature of timelessness in pop music?
Russell: Sparks was timeless even when we did it originally. It wasn’t of an era—it wasn’t some trend happening then. Even songs like ‘This Town,’ which is probably our most known song in Europe—that’s not a typical pop song. It didn’t fit in at the time, but it’s really striking—powerful lyrically with structure not typical of a pop song and kind of this faux-classical feel to it. You can kind of say that in a general way, maybe that made stuff timeless. We wanted to fit in as much as the next guy because when you’re in a band, you like as many people to see you or hear you as possible, but part of the reason it’s sort of timeless is it hasn’t really ever fit in, even though it’s connected with the public in the world at various times. I think the people that really like Sparks the most feel they’re part of a little club that’s sort of outsiders. They understand what we’re up to and they don’t want it to fit in with the rest of the pop world. They want it to be their own secret band they don’t have to share.
Ron: There’s two kinds of timeless. There’s timeless like Bruce Springsteen, where the songs sound like a part of history in a way—like a form that’s always been there. And our kind of timeless is just that we’ve been able to do it for a long time, and the sensibility is almost part of the longevity of what we do, and that’s continued despite stylistic changes. And also the sensibility is not something we applied to it—it was sort of there since the beginning without even thinking about it, and that’s one part of the process.

Do you think of yourselves as outsiders?
Ron: We’ve always straddled the commercial side and the outsider—for want of a better word—artistic side! We were always a little bit of those things—sometimes they negate one another. We had a problem in the ‘70s in England. We were taken as one thing once, and when the screaming started, we were taken as something else. Obviously, when you’re working you don’t think of this stuff. But when you look back, you do feel more comfortable in periods of commercial success—but you know there’s something more to what you’re doing than typical pop music.

What about the European model where musicians can get government grants? Or how visual artists can work the same way in America? What do you think about musicians in America having to make it totally on their own?
Ron: Obviously it makes it more difficult. But having to think a little how you’ll be accepted—maybe that’s helpful to what you’re doing. It makes it more difficult knowing you’ve got to fit in some way that’s commercial, but to have that a little in the back of your mind is a good thing. If you were given a grant and you could do anything you wanted working any kind of way, maybe there’d be so many possibilities—you would kind of have no guidelines about what to do. I’d love to have that situation—it’s kind of tragic, especially in the U.S., that there’s so little of that—but I think it kind of weeds out the people that don’t have the stamina to play within those rules. We’ve been lucky. We would never have 21 albums if we weren’t fortunate to have some things work really well commercially, so we have the luxury of being able to do what we’re doing. But I’m not so sure that not having any concern for commercial aspects is completely positive.

When was the last time you felt like giving up?
Ron: Yesterday? At times you’re so frustrated at the lack of commercial success at something you thought was good—both in a creative way and a commercial way—but then a week later, something happens or you move on to the next thing or kind of forget about it. There aren’t other things we can do. It kind of helps with there are no other possibilities. It makes you more accepting of bad situations you do go through.

How many people have you met in the music industry that were musicians themselves?
Russell: The whole thing about A&R people—it’s a nebulous job description! You don’t know where those people come from. It seems to us that the people that have some musical side to them are the ones we always got along with. Tony Visconti we worked with a lot—he’s both got the sensibility and is totally into pop music, but he’s a musician, too, and a really talented engineer. He’s got all the facets covered. It’s the people who see it as a business—kind of—but are kind of musical that we seem to get along with better.

How long until Sparks separates from the industry and becomes completely self-sufficient?
Russell: The new album is something akin to that. I’m not sure what the situation in the states is gonna be, but we’ll have distribution by Universal in England, and then having the label and all that is our own thing. In England especially you can compete against the big guys because the system is smaller and there’s BBC radio. Other stations, too, but you have the same access on the BBC as anybody else. In any case, we were offered a situation with the best of both worlds—you can guide your own destiny, but have distribution by a good distributor so you know it’ll be out and about. And we have an English manager.

It seems Sparks becomes more self-contained with every album.
Russell: The last few albums are exactly that. We are really self-contained—it’s the two of us working in a room. The new album took a year. We worked exactly one year in this room without any sort of outside stimuli. Our mindset has been that we want to make what we’re doing to be as extreme as possible—still being accessible, but to make it not conform. You know the pop music world just seems sort of bland—it feeds off itself. There isn’t enough kind of adventuresomeness with people, and with the last three albums, we wanted to make them as uncompromising as we can. But we always feel in the back of our heads that we’re a pop band. And the more albums you have, you want to not repeat yourselves as much as possible. If not, it’s a real slog. We just find new ways to impress ourselves. Ninety percent of pop songs, in the first couple seconds you can kind of tell where it’s coming from and where it’s gonna be, and for us that’s really sad. What you really like about pop music—it’s kind of about shocking you. Not in a spitting-on-the-ground way, but jolting people in some kind of way. And when pop music becomes really safe, then it’s not what it originally set out to be achieving—something that would jolt other people. Now there are few things that do that.

What do you think of the idea that the TV commercial is the new hit single?
Ron: Obviously the way a band can sustain itself had to be opened up to other possibilities. It was a stigma before to be in an ad, and now all that’s kind of gone. I hear some cherished songs—sacrosanct—used for baby’s diapers and all. Kind of necessary in a way, if you’re not going to have any other means of promoting your song. It’s just a fact of life. One thing we’re both a little conservative about is the idea that a song can be cherry-picked from an album. An album can be an amazing thing—bigger than the sum of its parts. Now with iTunes and iPods, people can kind of go through what you’ve done, and that sort of democracy is not something I’m liking too much. When we do record, we see it all as one thing, though we love singles as much as the next guy. But when someone can take track five out, the whole structure collapses.
Russell: Even now artwork isn’t really relevant, too. That’s troublesome. It’s the whole package! It’s part of the fun—opening up the package—and now more and more no one cares. Even the thing of CDs—that shrunken-down image is the first step in the image getting smaller and smaller, and now you buy it online and download lyrics or something. It’s part of the tactile thing. It’s like a book—you like to touch it and stuff, too. Something more than just the music.

You’ve talked before about modern pop being conservative music for conservative times.
Ron: It seems pop music is so out of the basic psyche of things. In our minds, politics is almost more of an adrenaline rush than pop music, to be honest. It’s hard to put them together—when ‘Johnny B. Goode’ was played when McCain won, it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s… something.’ I’m really not sure how the back-and-forth political aspects work or what the effect is on pop music with the crossing of the two. It seems like sometimes the biggest pop stars are the politicians, and they look better than the pop stars!

That’s a little generous.
Russell: Well, at least Barack Obama.
Ron: I was being selective!

After four decades, what broad changes can you spot in popular music?
Ron: Sometimes it’s hard to know how much is you. You’ve heard so many records and experienced so much, maybe you’re dulled to the initial excitement of a record. But looking back—which always makes me kind of sad to say that!—when you heard a record and it just kind of made your hair stand on end—it kind of was such an important thing at that time! You couldn’t believe it! Both of us—our musical education, if there is such a thing, is from records.

How did that affect the way the band works?
Ron: We don’t feel like we’re slumming by doing pop music. It’s not like classical musicians who moved into that area. It sounds kind of banal but we’re genuine about what we’re doing.

Are you accused of not being genuine?
Russell: Sometimes if you have humor at all in music, if one doesn’t investigate what it is fully or get into the lyrics, you can think it’s kind of lighter weight. Not as meaty if it has humor to it! Where if it’s something about relationships only on one level where you know exactly what it is and it’s done seriously—‘Oh, that person has a lot of integrity!’ But if you have humor—it can’t possibly have depth to it because it has humor! You think sometimes people may like what we’re doing, but it’s ‘Oh, they’re FUN!’ To be honest, we hate when people just think it’s FUN. There are maybe some fun aspects to some of this stuff, but we see it as more to it. If you look at all the lyrics—even the lyrics that are fun—the fun-ness is coming in a way that is… I don’t know how to say it.

Serious fun?
Russell: Serious fun! There’s a lot of thought in it.
Ron: And reconciling the thing of having this be our 21st album but still doing pop music—you can’t even analyze the ridiculousness of that! You just have to do it! We’re not really into doing soul-searching kind of music in that way. We think our music is revealing of our personalities but maybe not in a way other people have done albums—we’re not interested in that kind of exploration of our backgrounds. It’s really really difficult to do music in the general area we’re working—to be able to do it at this stage and not in a nostalgic kind of way. Particularly in England—we have a certain audience still there from the ’70s and we get offered package tours.

Cruise ships?
Ron: Shows of ’70s bands, and maybe we’re delusional but we never considered us a ‘70s band. Or an ’80s band—in L.A. we get offered ’80s things! We’re playing music for people that are maybe born in a different decade, but we feel there’s something about what we do that appeals to some of those people. The live shows—so many new people are coming to see what we’re doing now! That’s what’s really exciting, and that’s the reason we’re doing these twenty shows before the 21st—in an utterly pragmatic way, it’s a way for us to call attention to what we’re doing now. Not our audience so much but people like press and radio who are so blasé about what we do—‘Another Sparks album…’—so this is kind of an attention-getting device.

Was there a need to announce it?
Russell: We’re really proud of the new album and we think it’s really good, and we didn’t wanna run the risk of it trickling out and only a couple people hearing it. We really want people to hear what we’re doing now. And this was the best idea we came up with.

What was the second best?
Ron: Killing ourselves! Maybe looking back—‘They actually were underrated!’ And this is only slightly more of a pleasant experience.

Ethan Miller of Comets on Fire onstage at ArthurFest, 2005 (photo by Jeremiah Garcia/IceCreamMan.com)

C and D: Two fellas reason together about some new records

C: We resume not far from where we left off last issue. Only without D, our lovable excitable German, who has vacated the rumble seat to return to Der Fatherland to observe the World Cup. In his place, quaffing D’s beers for this issue only, ladies and gentlemen of the court, may I present to you: F.
F: Happy to be here, C. Those are big shoes to fill.
C: Relax. After three beers and the proper auditory stimulation, your feet will swell to fit.

Comets on Fire
Avatar
(Sub Pop)
F: After five seconds of this record, I can confidently say: Comets on Fire, you made an excitable German out of me. Pummely stuff.
C: This blasts off from where their last record left off: frequent flyer acid rock mentality, virtuous verses and choruses, oodles of audible poem lyrics, spry jams, and serious assblasting. A couple songs are slow burners…
F: …that put the power back in balladry.
C: The album-opening epic “Dogwood Rust” slithers into a Hawkwind-Ash Ra Tempel-Stereolab-Oneida locked groove around the six minute mark, then ignite into dueling guitar spirals, then some Von Harmonson echotronix. Plus the kind of casual avant garde move that’s so natural you almost don’t notice it: the electric birdsong at end of “Jaybird,” a nice fresh-air breather.
F: A muscle-relaxer for the brain.
C: For me, this album plugs back into what their labelmates Sleater-Kinney did on their most recent album: laying sweet waste to the center of Ted Nugent’s mind by power tripping from the top of the randiest redwoods. This is the Comets’ answer record, at least in my personal universe.
F: I grok that. Fight fire with Fire! Those dark noontide chimes at the beginning of “The Swallow’s Eye,” and the chorus guitars on “Lucifer’s Memory”…it’s crystal clear: Cosmic soul rock kills pain dead.
C: And it arrives just two months after the Howlin’ Rain album. Howlin’ Rain, of course, is the new band spotlighting Comets on Fire singer-guitarist Ethan Miller’s songwriterly aspect, which leans to the Allmans/Dead/Faces side of the highway. And just a few months after Comets guitarist Ben Chasny’s latest Six Organs of Admittance pan-cultural acid-folk stunner, The Sun Awakens.
F: Not to mention Comets pianist/drummer Utrillo’s nuevo Elton John/Bill Fay song project, The Colossal Yes.
C: That one 11-minute song on the Colossal Yes album? Wow… [listening to “Holy Teeth”] But back to the album at hand. This is total High Rise/Acid Mothers Temple/Kiss destruction boogie.
F: A strange thing about “boogie” is it’s been Not Cool for a period about ten times longer than it was Cool. [standing up from the couch] But it never left my behind!
C: [averting eyes, mumbling] Christ, F. Boogie if you must but please do it where I don’t have to see it. This one [“Sour Smoke”] is like keyboard-driven Fela Kuti meets Television. Can a band be this good?
F: Felavision: I wish they had that on the Dish.
C: Call your cosmic cable company…
F: To paraphrase Foster’s: Comets on Fire—it’s American for rock.

Vetiver
To Find Me Gone
(diCristina)
F: The second album from San Francisco’s haziest, gentlest canyon-folk drifters, Vetiver.
C: There’s a bucolic feel to this I love.
F: True, but what’s up with the word “bucolic”? The sound of words should correlate to their meaning, and there’s something about “bucolic” that always makes me think of a baby with a wet, hacking cough.
C: Whereas this music would more likely cure a baby of such a cough.
F: Readers with babies might let us know how it works…
C: Vetiver’s music evokes all those little phases or episodes along a dayhike in the country: the initial entry into the wilderness…the part where you’re making serious headway, alone with your thoughts…the moment when the senses are overwhelmed by the nature stimuli, the dew and the sap, the sun’s heat and the insects’ hum…when you finally you stop for water by a brook, and take a nap in the shade. When Andy Cabic sings, “I climbed so high/the sky dropped down to teach me,” he’s tapping into the naturalist in all of us.
F: I heard somebody say you could call this kind of music ‘naturalismo.’
C: I also heard somebody say that the real reason music originating from the West Coast underground—all the aforementioned bands, Brightblack Morning Light, etc etc etc—is so beautifully gone right now is because of the high potency of the marijuana out here.
C: While I am not stoned at this time, I swear I just looked out the window and saw a burrito fly past.
F: Yeah, that’s Vetiver, working the California tradition: Flying Burrito Brothers, Neil Young, the Mac of course, the original Charlatans from San Francisco…
C: And of course the late under-lamented Beachwood Sparks, whose final EP had some of this same swooshy nature euphoria and next-afternoon melancholia. Not that this is mimicry. Cabic’s songwriting here goes beyond recidivist texture gesture. It’s a very subtle, tricky thing Vetiver does, mellowing the harsh but resisting the corn. They use violins instead of fiddles.
F: Whoa, this song ["Red Lantern Girls"] is amazing! It’s like a horse just trotting along, and then alluvasudden, this squalling and sustained one-note electric guitar solo [courtesy of guest Brad Laner (Medicine/Electric Company guitarist-composer)] kicks in and the band breaks into a gallop.
C: Vetiver: cures coughs, cleanses palates. Use hourly.

Awesome Color
Awesome Color
(Ecstatic Peace/Universal)
C: Whoa!
F: Yowza!
C: These guys get on that train and ride it back to Cincinnati 1969! Total Stooges in Iggy’s-Got-the-Peanut-Butter-Again mode…
F: Yeah, but even more than that— Sound of Confusion-era Spacemen 3, especially on this track “Dinosaur”: that’s the sound of a band refusing to learn more chords or grooves because they already found the best ones.
C: Concentrating on tone and psychotic drive, like all the greats, like our national treasures The Cramps and Tav Falco and of course the 13th Floor Elevators…Awesome Color are…uh…awesome.
C: I’ve got to admit that my inner adolescent thinks this is the coolest shit possible.
F: I hope they’re all under 18, and there better be some brothers in this band.
C: This song [“It’s Your Time”] features some actual choogle.
C: Which brings us to the question that has haunted many a rock fan: what, exactly, is the difference between the boogie and the choogle?
F: Would that be choogie or boogle?

Zizek! dvd
(Zeitgeist)
C: Dude, I’m trying to play this DVD, but you totally messed up my system while reconnecting the TV to the stereo so you could watch the World Cup in surround-sound.
F: I think that D, absent as he is, would’ve approved. Anyways, it was worth it to hear the Mexican TV commentators hollering so sonorously.
C: Okay, here we go… This is a documentary about Slavoj Zizek, the Solvenian philosopher who’s known as “a one-person culture-muncher” and “the Elvis of critical theory.”
F: He looks more like Klaus Kinski. Or Yakoff Smirnoff.
C: Blame it on the beard. Zizek’s basically this super erudite dude who is also a willfully contrary polemicist commentating on everything under the sun as he goes. As he says, “The duty of philosophy is to redefine problems, not to solve them.” Here he is on a tour of colleges…he sees a girl carrying some Evian and remarks, “Water in a bottle —it reminds me of socialism.”
F: This guy’s great! Reminds me of the biting, death-obsessed comedy of the late great Brother Theodore. I believe Zizek speaks as a friend although he expounds with fiendish fervor.
C: Fiendish fervor is right. Zizek is a pre-postmodern man. He was raised in Communist Yugoslavia, but when that all went to bloody hell, he became a Christian atheist.
F: I knew I dug this guy. He’s got some zingers, like when he talks about being “up to your shit in ideology.”
C: Zizek cuts through the tripe. Here he is watching an old televised broadcast of Lacan giving a lecture. Lacan is one of Zizek’s primary influences, but he is not in awe of Lacan: “I find his emphasis and gestures ridiculous…. I’m a total enlightenment person, I believe in clear statements.”
F: Like Zizek says: “I always tell the truth. Not the whole truth, because one can’t.”
C: My favorite part about this film is where Zizek proudly shows us that he keeps his clean laundry in the kitchen cupboard.
F: You’ve got that much in common…

Beavis and Butthead: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume 2 DVD
(Paramount)
C: Meanwhile, at the other end of the philosophical spectrum…
F: Beer me!
C: Y’know, there’s so much product that comes out these days, so many records, DVDs and CDs, but I still feel like there’s a void Beavis & Butthead left that remains unfulfilled.
F: Hey, Zizek’s doing his best.
C: Hard to imagine Zizek calling Lacan a “dillhole” though. It would be so cool if they made a new Beavis & Butthead movie, like, checking in with them ten years later…
F: In the meantime, creator Mike Judge is putting out these super-packed DVDs, and it’s amazing to watch the classic cartoons uninterrupted by erase-your-blemish commercials.
C: The titles alone are remarkable: “Wet Behind The Rears” — “Premature Evacuation”—”Here Comes The Bride’s Butt.”
F: “Bang The Drum Slowly, Dumbass.”
C: I love when the screen goes dark, right before the show starts, and you can only hear their immortal “hunh-huh-unh” laughter. Ohmigod, I love this one, where they go in to the plastic surgeon to get their “thingies” made bigger, but [uncontrollable laughter] instead the doctor gives them boobs! [falls off the couch]
F: Settle down, C. How many brownies did you eat?
C: I dunno. Is the baggie half full or half-empty, buttmunch?

Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan dvd
Directed by Robert Millis
(Sublime Frequencies)
F: Feature-length film about a weird three-day street festival in Thailand, sometimes referred to as “Mardi Gras from Hell.” Whoa. Talk about awesome colors.
C: You see, this is what America should have learned from pre-Katrina New Orleans. All this industrial technology and computer whatsits and the Intervoid is so much unnecessary fuzz. To coin a paraphrase, what the world needs now is less competitive work-laboring and more communal partying.
F: Preferably in blazing demon masks made from cocount husks.
C: Yes, decadence on the cheap. Whiskey drinking at dawn and total second-line parades featuring guitar-and-flute ragas on flatbed trucks, amps powered by car batteries, people waving hand-painted papier mache phalluses with strange tips. When the grid crashes, this is how I hope we’ll party. Of course we’ll probably have to wait til then. You’d never be able to get a permit for something like this in public in America, home of the so-called free.
F: I like the Sublime Frequencies approach. They stand in awe of this planet’s inhabitants’ strange beauty: they bear witness. They just say LOOK, they don’t even try to explain—well, not much—what’s going on. Their approach is, This shit is so deep you don’t even have to know anything about what it is you’re seeing to receive some its power. It’s that rich. They’re busy grokking. They’re feeling fascination.
F: They are the real human league.

A Visit to Ali Farka Toure dvd
dir. Marc Huraux
(Digital Classics)
C: I stand in awe of Malinese guitarist Ali Farka Toure. His death earlier this year was a tremendous loss: his playing was part John Lee Hooker, part original African dance blues, all sensationally blazing and lyrical and celebratory, as well as appropriately contemplative and entrancing, and he was notoriously…well, as they say, touched. I never got to see him play live, because I was very foolish in my younger years. And of course now that he’s gone, I finally get to see him…on DVD.
F: This is a feature-length documentary film made by a French film crew in 1999, apparently, around the time that Toure cut back on his international touring in order to work his farm, not far from Timbuktu. “My main concern here is to grow enough food to be self-sufficient,” he says. “Whatever you do in life, you need a full stomach. When you’re hungry, you can’t think about anything.”
C: The whole story is just so perfect you keep laughing in disbelief at each new revelation or claim—it’s your choice. He talks about being the tenth son (the other nine died), the word “farka” meaning “resistance,” living in a town called “Niafunke” (say it aloud), enduring a childhood of near-slavery (“I had to push a 200lb barrel of water all by myself”), speaking and singing in three languages but reading none, having a grandmother who could communicate with nature spirits, and his year-long stay with witchdoctors at age 11. Or when he says, “There are millions of things that can be explained but some things can never even be mentioned.” And there’s the performances, like the one where Toure says, “I have to tell you that tonight is different from other nights. It’s true. I’m with the devils tonight.” He’s totally sexy, abandoned, rocking, almost disturbingly unguarded.
F: One thing’s for sure: the guy had huge hands and beautiful clothes.
C: And he knew how to bend desert air.

Tony Allen
Lagos No Shaking
(Honest Jon’s/Astralwerks)
C: [listening to track 1] Okay, that’s it. I hereby rescind the dance ban. [gets up from couch] I gotta close these blinds.
F: Mr. Tony Allen is, of course, the brilliant drummer and co-creator with Fela Kuti of the Afrobeat sound. They say he played like four drummers, but that was a long time ago. I think now he’s up to six.
C: [air drumming wildly] If only all the songs on here were this good. Unfortunately half of them feature vocals that are just inappropriately slick singing with banal lyrics that borrow from Fela’s righteousness but not his wit, bite or joy in metaphor. But when Rolling Dollar sings, it’s a vintage Afrobeat clinic session that’ll make your feet weep.

Eccentric Soul: The Big Mack Label
(The Numero Group)
F: Talk all you want about digging in the crates, but first someone’s gotta dig up the crates.
C: And the Numero Group’s Eccentric Soul reissue series—of which this is the latest—is excavation par excellence.
F: I’d never heard of the Big Mack label, but apparently even if you lived in Detroit in the late ’60s and early ’70s you probably didn’t hear of it either.
C: [Listening to Mae Young's “The Man Put Sugar In My Soul”] Is this CD on the wrong speed?
F: Only if you can’t dance that fast. What incredible energy. I nominate it as One of the Best Songs Ever.
C: Big Mack—more than a burger.

James Hunter
People Gonna Talk
(Rounder)
F: For a moment here I thought this was a missing disc from my Charlie Rich box set, and this was 1962. But in fact this is new. It’s just got that sweet soul something, yet it’s got a rock’n'roll backbeat, but really he’s singing exquisite torch songs. I gotta say, James Hunter, a pompadour-sporting white British guy, reminds me of chiefly of Sam Cooke.
C: The fact that he recorded it at London’s noted bastion of analog purity Toe Rag Studios makes sense. Almost nobody does this kind of music in this style. Hunter’s craft is so fine, his commitment so total. Listen to “People Gonna Talk”—his guitar lick’s so tasty, the roll’s so sweet, it captures that swinging moment when ska evolved into rock steady but still bore the clear influence of American soul records.
F: I would say Hunter is brown bread to Edwyn Collins wry.
C: One more quip like that and you’re going straight into the pun-ality box.
F: I’ve been yellow-carded for wordplay.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
I Stand Alone
(Anti)
F: Original folksinger Jack Elliott is 75 and from the sound of things, he’s knocking on heaven’s door.
C: What a beautiful, perfect album. The songs here sound happy but the words—about favorite dogs, old trains, the suckiness of arthritis—are by turns sad and ruminative. He’s know what’s been lost, and he knows the ramble is probably nearing its end. But he’s not entirely sad about it, which gives the songs—and banter—a mischievous tone.
F: Jack’s just doing the ding-dong-ditch on ol’ Death, I betcha.

Loren Connors
Night Through: Singles and Collected Works 1976-2004 3-cd box
(Family Vineyard)
C: Slow chilling weird blues arcs carved by a graveyard guitar instrumental master. No ghosts, though—just a man before the Big Empty.
F: Dark, dark, DARK.
C: Definite dark night of the soul stuff.
F: It’s gorgeous, but I’m terrified.

Charalambides
A Vintage Burden
(Kranky)
C: Almost unbearably beautiful new album from this long-running co-ed guitar duo, now apparently based in Texas. [listening to the perfectly titled 20-minute instrumental “Black Bed Blues”] A warm breeze on a summer night, the windows’ curtain flutters. Outside the tall Texan grass sways. You’re sleeping with your girl in somebody else’s bed. The sunrise is cloudy, gentle…
F: Two people underneath the Unnameable Vastness, instead of one. Pure mutual longing.
C: My recommendation? Give this to someone you love.

The Golding Institute Presents Final Relaxation
(Ipecac)
C: Informed Arthur readers know that the Golding Institute is associated with with notable non-comedian Neil Hamburger.
F: [reading sleeve] “Your ticket to Death through Hypnotic suggestion.” This should go over well with the Doom crowd. Zizek will dig it, and maybe Ramblin’ Jack Elliot too!!! [puts CD in player]
C: Oh dear. I think if you slipped this into amongst every commuters’ positive reinforcement self-help tapes, you could really change some lives.
F: By “change” I think you mean “end.”
C: Give this to someone you don’t love.

PETER RELIC’S BOOK CORNER

Rage, Rage Against the Stuffing of the Couch
Two poets delve deep into worlds of work and non-work

Reviewed:

Alex Mitchell
Life Is A Phantom K-Mart Horse Starting Up In The Middle Of The Night
(Yahara Design Press, Madison, WI)

John Tottenham
The Inertia Variations
(Kerosene Bomb Publishing, Los Angeles)

If their styles couldn’t be more contrary, they do have one thing in common: poets Alex Mitchell (neckburned nailgun grindhouse tripper) and John Tottenham (couch-crowned prince of lethargy) have both created, by force of will or resigned declension, their own poetic form.

Mitchell is a rock’n'roll addicted sweetly emotional fellow traveler. His poems are as much about himself as the characters they co-star: a mushroom-juicing buddy from back in Pompano Beach with a suicidal brother; a friendly transvestite crackwhore outside a Hollywood 7-11. He is as much of the barroom as he is anti-boardroom, his impulsive tales [impulsions] leading us through corners of associative memory emotional and imagistic. There is a lot of power in his poems—they inspire you to write, my highest praise. In a poem called “if penguins could talk” Mitchell is a bruiser with a bruised heart (“once a speedfreak, always a speedfreak,” he writes) trying to quit Starbuck’s. After going without coffee for two weeks (“although I was feeling better physically I was jonesing for a blast”) he caves: “I greedily slammed down some of / evil black poison.” And then he’s off on a tale that goes for five pages.

Tottenham’s eight line withdrawals from ambition barely give the reader time to get out of bed, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. A resigned indentation is what he wishes to leave (if he aspires to anything at all). In poems like “Time Moves, But Not I” and “I’m Not Tired,” he discharges himself of will, while subtly sublimating his own state of stagnation. He declares he lacks the energy required to laugh, and one chuckles. The brief nature of his poems allow him to maintain the guise that he isn’t doing shit—but when you read them together, you feel the import of the block he pushes up against the eternal pyramid of poetic ambition, and one realizes: all progress is incremental…to the point of imperceptibility..despite any onanistic self-recrimination.

Illustration by Arik Roper; click to enlarge

News From the Upper Nine
Henry Griffin goes back to New Orleans

“You are entering the city at your own risk. Police and fire services are limited. There is no 911 service. Traffic lights are out throughout the city. Observe a citywide speed limit of 35 mph, and proceed with extreme caution, especially around downed power lines. You are not permitted to go beyond your designated ZIP code area. Do not drink, bathe in or wash your hands in tap water. Standing water and soil may be seriously contaminated. Limit your exposure to airborne mold and use gloves, masks and other protective materials. Apply mosquito repellent and sunscreen. Bring sufficient food, water, gas and any medical supplies required to sustain you and your family, keeping in mind the curfew and store inventories may limit access to supplies. Gas stations are not fully operational. Fuel is limited.” —from a list of “tips” from the New Orleans Mayor’s office for dealing with the “urban hazards” of life in the 9th Ward in September, 2005

I’ve long used the introduction “I live in New Orleans” to break the ice at parties. This usually cheers people up, often sparking memories of a particularly debauched vacation. “How can you people live down there?” someone would inevitably ask, meaning “How do you keep from becoming an alcoholic?” Now the same question connotes differently, more of a “How could you live in that city knowing that you were doomed by its very design?” Of all the tragedies of Katrina, this hurts the most: our carefree lifestyle, our legendary tolerance, for alcohol, for iniquity and corruption, is now less a punchline than a cautionary tale.

You’d think from the apocalyptic prognostications of the national media that there wouldn’t be much of a city left to return to. Not so. Some areas are straight-up ravaged, that’s for sure. But your “average block” can be quite a mix, and even in the so-called “spared” neighborhoods, a hundred year oak may be splintered across some power lines.

My house is still there, a raised Creole cottage at the eastern-most tip of the upper Ninth ward, three blocks north of the river. I describe it this way, as that’s how I first re-located it, via a satellite photo posted on the web, after the cataclysm. I found my neighborhood from space, then my block and then my house. It was easy to pick out: there is an 80-foot pecan tree leaning against the roof. The good news is that it hasn’t fallen through and bisected the building. The bad news is that the tree has been there since July 5, a symptom of long forgotten Tropical Storm Cindy. In classic New Orleans fashion, it hadn’t been seen to by the proper authorities by the time Katrina hit eight weeks later.

Three weeks after Katrina, I returned to find my basement apartment had taken three feet or so of water. It had dried out by then but waterlines and a veneer of detritus told the story: my life had been coated with waste, human and otherwise. To keep the effect from being entirely humorless, the Almighty had thrown in a few frogs, who were now living in my office.

My urban salvage operation actually lightened my mood. Like most folks, I’d imagined losing everything I’d left behind. To get back even half of my stuff seemed almost unfair. I couldn’t breathe the spore-clogged air or touch anything with my bare skin, but rescuing keepsakes from the rising mold was as thrilling as the prize choosing finale of Wheel of Fortune. Things I’d owned and lost were now won back from oblivion. I was in such a good mood that first night that I almost brushed my teeth in tap water, mistaking this for any other major American city. Spill bottled water on the brush, I reminded myself. Like you’re in Haiti.

Some people suffered their share without losing a shingle. My friends Dave and Jennifer had to watch the whole storm from a vacation in Thailand (being late August, lots of folks were out of town). They returned to find their recent home purchase in fine condition. Then they noticed the stench out back. An unpleasant excavation followed, and a more unpleasant discovery: a visiting country’s National Guard, after having barracked in a nearby Catholic school, had used these civilians’ yard as a dump for their rotting garbage.

Things could have been far worse. They could have had a pile of trash dumped on their lawn by the enterprising earth mover, who was leaving his business card for the follow-up call to remove said pile (in order to dump it on his next intended customer). They could have been arrested for a curfew violation by the Wyoming National Guard or the NYPD, who’ve been patrolling New Orleans due to our cop shortage, and been put behind bars at the bus station, which is Orleans Parish’s prison since the real one was flooded. They could have been blindsided by a hit and run driver who speeds off, uninterested in trading insurance information without the rule of law (I witnessed such an incident). They could have had their house gutted by looters. They could have absentmindedly opened their refrigerator.

Those early weeks after Katrina, people were very well-behaved. Streets were empty and quite peaceful, passersby waved hopefully. The de-electrified environment and low population lulled us into a sense of temporary historical atavism. By which I mean, the neighborliness was positively Amish.

Imagine that all the things you loved about your home were taken away. Instead of food you get 24 varieties of MRE (avoid the Thai Chicken); drinking water comes in cans supplied by Anheuser Busch. Where your favorite vegetable truck used to park, now there’s an upside down Volkswagen that had caught fire. Long tree-lined avenues like St. Charles and Esplanade have been given arboreal crewcuts by the storms, leaving the shade compromised. Friends and neighbors aren’t around too much, but you do get daily visits from assorted rescue workers, most double-checking that each house’s spray-painted sigil is still accurate.

And, after a while, civilization returns, one service at a time. Electrical power! Gas! Cable! DSL! Sanitation! Could the mail, once the invincible standard of civil service, be far behind?

* * *

The anarchic spirit of a functional ghost town couldn’t last forever. As the population rose in September and October, the town got crankier. Four-way stops, once an opportunity to wave at a kindly stranger, now began to prompt the waving of just a single special finger. The long-awaited return of recognizable first world civilization tested the patience of many thousands.

And yet…Each restaurant or bar that reopened became an opportunity to rejoice. By Halloween, the city’s Dionysian personality was returning in force, and celebration was beginning to become a goal in and of itself, which seemed familiar. What festivities there were spilled into the streets, as they used to do. For Halloween, the most popular costume was a refrigerator wrapped in duct tape, spray-painted with the address of George W. Bush or Tom Benson, the reviled Saints owner who intends to move our hopeless but beloved football team to San Antonio.

There were a lot of smiles, a lot of back slapping and story trading, even among people who had just traded introductions. We all knew this one new thing about each other. That we would, and did, come back. Even redefined, this tainted city, one that wasn’t exactly in mint condition when we got it, would be ours again if we want it.

* * *

If everybody doesn’t return (and how could they all?), will New Orleans lose its most essential asset, its culture? It’s hard to say. But maybe it isn’t so tragic. Maybe it’s the case that every person who doesn’t get back is somehow happier somewhere else, where they have air conditioned schools, and a lower murder rate, and better jobs—jobs that aren’t in the tourist, service and gambling industries. Who can blame them? Who in their right mind would come back, to a city of corrupt politics, looting cops and dwindling protection from the elements?

The answer, of course, is those who can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Henry Griffin, a fifth generation New Orleanian, is a writer and director whose films include Mutiny and Tortured by Joy. He organizes his books by color, trading organization for the pleasing effect of his shelves viewed from a distance. Since the storm, he is fresh out of blue books.

Our tipsy author, right, with fellow revelers at the Rex Parade, Mardi Gras morning.

Weird Shit’s Still Going Down: Notes From Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 2006
By Gabe Soria

I’ve been in love with New Orleans since the day in May, 1993 when I first set foot on its soil. Since then, I’ve been a resident of the city three times and have gone back over and over when I wasn’t. Mardi Gras, for all its faults and gross public image, is important to New Orleans residents and expatriates alike, so when the chance came to visit my city for the first time after Katrina during Carnival, I jumped at it, but not without some second-guessing trepidation. What follows are rough impressions of my experience being back in town from Saturday, February 25 through Mardi Gras to March 1, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the season of Lent…

Touching Down
Disembarking from the plane and already the Twilight Zone schisms from reality are apparent. This scene happens in the first couple minutes of the episode, the part right before the credits when the Rod Serling voice-over comes in and lets the viewing audience know that some crazy shit is about to go down. What’s Louis Armstrong International without its perpetually open souvenier stands and ersatz French Quarter bars? Too much like the Salt Lake City airport, that’s what. Outgoing passengers ain’t got nowhere to buy their last minute cans of Tony Chachere’s seasoning, authentic cookbooks or Hurricane mix. Incoming passengers don’t have anything, except for the baggage claim, and that is hardly a picnic. Everybody seems a bit hunted, a bit guilty.

Nothing makes you realize how much you’ve given up until someone’s taken away the lights, and the “Arriving Flights” underpass of Louis Armstrong International is a third world kick in the nuts: the absence of ambient light is palpable, and the illumination provided by taxis, shuttles and pick-up cars feels like interrogation by headlight. At the same time, though, it’s kinda eerily beautiful, as though everything is powered by steam and gaslight. We hear later that they’re still working to restore normal power. The airport of a major American city still doesn’t have full power six months after a disaster? What the fuck is going on here, I ask myself, resigning myself to joining the chorus of people asking that same question.

T-Shirt Slogans
The town is aswarm with bootleg political shirts, jockeying for space in Decatur Street tourists shops with your typical novelty T-shirts about states of tequila intoxication. Most of these shirts feature embattled mayor Ray Nagin in Photoshopped Willy Wonka drag, making some sort of sport about his now infamous Martin Luther King Day “Chocolate City” speech, possibly the biggest effect a George Clinton song’s ever had on the political scene. React how you want to the speech—reading a transcript in retrospect, it’s obvious to this writer at least that Mr. Nagin’s frustration with his black contemporaries left him feeling a bit loose at the mouth, but I ain’t mad at him—you can’t help but realize that there’s a little bit of smug racism at the core of the these shirt’s makers, that they finally feel justified at putting the screws to a black mayor who, admittedly, said some dumb-ass shit. But then I realize an important fact: I don’t think I’d ever really want to hang out with someone who wears their politics, left or right or straight up centrist, on their literal shirt-sleeve. I mean, I’m all for band t-shirt propaganda, but this? Nah. One T-shirt maker has gone the extra satire mile, though: for sale at the Circle Bar are “Ernie K-Doe for Mayor” tees, featuring the smiling face of the late and lamented Emperor of the Universe. Bumper stickers can be had, too. One drunken night, I find myself fervently wishing that K-Doe wins in a write in. In the storied history of corrupt Louisiana politics, the election of a deceased and much loved R&B singer has got to be an improvement.

Chased on a Bike
Weird shit’s still going down, though. On a perfectly fine afternoon, the wife and I mount bikes to ride down to a parade to meet a friend. Normally, yours truly is a bit more savvy about the safe routes to travel, but the hurricane-depleted lack of population has thrown me for a loop. Why not take a jaunt down a clear street a block closer to the river? The answer becomes clear when we make a left on Josephine Street towards St. Charles. A group of kids—12 to 14, black—are hanging out in front of a corner grocery/liquor store and begin shouting out warnings about how “Y’all don’t know where you ridin’”, etc., etc., and one kid’s bold enough to do a little mock run after the wife, who’s trailing behind on a too-small borrowed bike. The kid’s pursuit is half-assed, and he stops almost as soon as he starts, but it’s a neon-lights reminder that New Orleans is still a fucked-up place, race-wise.

In fact, this little incident is an anomaly. While statistics may not prove me right, the general impression one gets during Mardi Gras is of détente, peace. Sure, fratboys might get beaten down by cops along Bourbon Street after one Huge-Ass beer too many, but for the rank and file of the city, a “we’re all in this together and ain’t it fine” feeling pervades, usually. If you say “Happy Mardi Gras,” to anybody, they respond in kind, and mean it. But this little incident… well, they’re kids, so it doesn’t really mean much. It means that they’re acting like they think they’re supposed to act; it means that they actually think that their corner store is something to be protected; it means that they’ve learned that being young and black and aggressive can freak the fuck out of people going about their own business. Still, it’s days before I can stop picturing kicking the kid’s head in if he tried to touch the wife, and my subsequent murder at the hands of his numerous cronies. Yikes.

The 9th Ward Marching Band
Not that it needed saving by anybody, but the wife’s and my Mardi Gras is definitely given a soul-rousing boost by seeing the Mr. Qunitron-led 9th Ward Marching Band parade with the Krewe of Proteus on Lundi Gras night. For the uninitiated, Quintron and his wife Ms. Pussycat were and remain the owners and operators of the Spellcaster Lodge, a house/venue located on St. Claude Avenue in the 9th Ward. They’re both musicians, as well as puppeteers. Long time fixtures of the weird underground of New Orleans, they’re more like good spirit elementals rather than impeccably dressed scenesters, which they are as well. The 9th Ward Marching Band started as a loose-knit, almost renegade marching assemblage, but over the years they’ve gotten their weird act together, and while sharp and somewhat professional, they still make the squares nervous. While watching them march in their smart red and white outfits, playing “Rock me Like a Hurricane,” I notice that the crowd lining the parade route is going BANANAS for them. Everybody can feel that this ain’t no sarcastic, ironic hipster bulllshit—it’s true American weirdness and beauty at its finest. But you can also tell that they make some folks delightfully nervous. This can probably be best attributed to the bands in-between, resting music. When there’s a lull in their routine and things calm down, the 9WMB’s glockenspiel players start tapping out the theme from the slasher film “Halloween,” with the tubas coming in every now and then to deliver an ominous “bruuummmmmm.” It’s the film score equivalent of the fabled brown sound—you can tell by the looks on people’s faces that they recognize the minor key tune, and they like it, but don’t like it at the same time. It’s a brilliant moment, and I want to buy whoever thought of it a beer or ten.

The Dead Zone
The night of Lundi Gras finds the wife and I and our friends Judson and Courtney taking a shortcut on a drive downtown to hit a Quintron/Peaches show. The shortcut takes us through the area of town known and Mid-City, where Courtney lived previous to Katrina. Her new home features a handful of possessions salvaged from her house and cleaned of mold, but she’s basically begun anew. But driving through her old neighborhood… yikes. Once you get a few blocks off St. Charles, heading away from the river, a frightening change takes over the streets. They’re empty. They’re dark. Everything looks haunted and miserable. A few FEMA trailers are parked here and there, and on occasion someone seems to have managed to get a porch light working, but on the whole, it feels as if we’ve driven directly in a George Romero zombie flick. Any moment now I expect to see a shambling corpse slouch into the street, attempting to suck the brains out of our car’s passengers. No such thing happens, of course, but I am glad when we eventually make a right turn onto relatively populated, lighted Esplanade. The fact that a few moments earlier I was half-joking about wishing I was armed with a shotgun kinda makes me want to cry. I’ve NEVER wanted a gun in New Orleans, not even in my worse moments.

Mardi Gras Day (and on into the night)
Mardi Gras morning rolls around and all seems to be aback to normal in the city, at least for a few hours. Working on a few hours of sleep, the wife and I roll out of bed and into our costumes (I’m going as a jerk dressed in a jumpsuit and furry cap; the wife’s going the classy route by masquerading as a magical French schoolgirl). Walking over to St. Charles, we begin to see a parade of friends walk by; everybody seems to be well on their way to drunk before noon, but nobody’s got a mean buzz on. It’s all hugs, everywhere. Families lining the filthy parade route in their chairs and ladders look bleary-eyed and happy. When Rex starts to roll, you see people catching beads… and handing them to little old ladies and kids next to them. Everybody’s saying, “Hey, darlin’,” and “Excuse me,” and you’d be hard-pressed to spot your usual line of sweaty guys being led plastic-cuffed into a paddywagon (though I’m sure it’s happening somewhere—you can’t buck tradition in one year). The hours melt away—at one point, the wife and I are eating hamburgers with friends, the next, we’re at our home base eating red beans and rice cooked with a nice hamhock, the next, we’re being dropped off downtown. But by the time the Morning 40 Federation hits the stage at Checkpoint Charlie’s for their annual Mardi Gras night show, as the festival comes to its natural inevitable end, the feeling in the air is undeniably powerful, completely ecstatic. You can feel the desperate urge in the club to let loose, to raise one’s arms high above and scream. And as the Federation lurches into their first amplified ode to boozing and 9th Ward living, everybody in the room does exactly that. I’m grinning from ear to ear—it’s the feedback and the beer, most definitely—but it’s also the hope and love I’m seeing right now, that I’ve seen all weekend. Sure, folks are cynical and tired, but they still believe, much more so than I think anybody else in any city would or could, for they know that’s there’s an ineffable something to New Orleans, something that just can’t and won’t quit, ever.

C and D: Two fellas reason together about some new records

D: We have some severe time and space restrictions today because there’s 25 records to examine and I only brought four beers.
C: [disbelieving] I told you all week.
D: Yes, well. We’ll have to be efficient and precise, like the German defense.
C: Always with the soccer metaphors when he’s supposed to bring the beer.
D: [looks at stack of CDs] Hmm, I like this pitch. [smiles broadly, uncaps a Foster’s] Come on man! It’s time for kickoff.

MARVIN GAYE
The Real Thing: In Performance, 1964-1981 DVD
(Hip-O/Motown/etc)
D: Marvin Gaye, the sweetpeacelovevibetenormaster of all time.
C: Sometimes things really are essential, and this nine-dollar DVD is one of those times. Or things. Anyways, the reason I’ve been watching this all week long is pretty obvious. There’s nobody like Marvin, no one even close; it’s a blessing just to watch him lip synch.
D: [grabs DVD case] Give me that. Especially when it’s Marvin duetting with Tammi Terrell at something called “Swinging Sounds of Expo 67,” singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” in a futuristic phone booth under a plastic dome with a people mover going by in the background.
C: Look at those Dentyne smiles. It’s like a commerical for some future utopia where they are the fertility king and queen.
D: [thoughtfully] A world where you’re not afraid to have a baby
C: Hey, you’ll like this: the a capella option lets you hear Marvin singing in the shower.
D: No it doesn’t.
C: Okay it’s actually just isolated studio tracks. Beautiful. He really can make you swoon with just a voice and a snapped finger. That’s all he needed.
D: Very efficient.
C: “War is not the answer/for only love can conquer hate… we’ve go to find a way/to get some understanding here today”—man, if you sing that today, you’re called a master of the obvious, and yet maybe it’s only a lovesinger who can bring the super-commentary that lasts. He reminds us there’s better things to do with our time.
D: [musing] Lovers and poets make the best peace advocates.
C: This is footage from the film Save the Children—
D: —which should be released on DVD immediately—
C: —which includes live renditions of “What’s Going On/What’s Happening Brother” from a 1972 concert where they did the whole album, and you get Marvin at the piano and the legendary James Jamerson on bass guitar.
D: [sipping beer] Unbelievable. Total butterland.
C: Total ethnographic film of Black America in the early ‘70s: broken windowed skylines and gang grafitti, soul food joints and black pride bookstores, men in dashikis, women in flares and kids in corduroys with spaghetti on their faces, street basketball and barbecue, balloons and checker pants and sweaters.
D: Excellent fashion!
C: He sings like his voice is a horn—and his voice actually has the grain of one. So amazing. Plus there’s multiple appearances on the Dinah Shore show—[notices puzzled D]—that was an afternoon TV show for bored housewives back in the ‘70s.
D: That was the time before they started making all the women work all the time too, in addition to the men. What happened?
C: [ignoring] He talks about What’s Goin On: “I don’t recall much about making it. I feel it was very personal, very divine. I don’t hardly remember writing the songs, it was like I was in some sort of other dimension when we did it, so I know it was a very spiritual.” We could spend weeks talking about everything on here: the polyester jumpsuit future-Chic-soul-P-funk—
D: Somewhere The Juan Maclean is crying.
C: —about getting down on the moon with floor fog that is the promotional video for “A Funky Space Reincarnation”— “COME ON BABY, let’s go peace loving and check out this new smoke/Naw this thing I got, it ain’t classified as dope/Smoke I got from Venus/Have had it all week, it’s getting old/come on and try this new thing with me baby….”
D: This song is my new national anthem.
C: And your new wardrobe, if the world is lucky.

GNARLS BARKLEY
St. Elsewhere
(Downtown)
C: This is a collab concept duo album by two geniuses-in-progress: Dangermouse, the guy who did the Beatles/Jay-Z album-length bootleg mashup, and Cee-Lo, the short guy from Goodie Mob with the voice and the lyrics and the concepts. Goodie Mob, those guys were part of that Georgia crew in the ‘90s, all of them interesting—Goodie and the Dungeon Family and Organized Noize and Outkast and Witchdoctor and Cool Breeze—
D: Who had a dream, he was in a place called Butter.
C: Here’s something bonehad obvious: this song “Crazy” is the song of the year—very apropos for these times, in so many ways that [looking at D opening his second Foster’s] we have no time to count. Three seconds and you’re hooked, three minutes and you’re done and ready to begin again. [looking at promotional photo] These guys are total half-bus refugees.
D: The revenge of the nerds is neverending. [listening to the song’s music] Somewhere, The Juan Maclean are crying another tear, alongside N.E.R.D. [repeating lyrics] “I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind/There was something so pleasant about that place/Even your emotions had an echo, and so much space/And when you’re out there ,without care, yeah I was out of touch/but it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough/I just knew too much/Does that make me crazy?” Whew. I’ve been to that place—I think I lost my mind there too once.
C: [laughs] Once?
D: [glares] SILENCE in the lower ranks!

RUFUS HARLEY
Sustain
(Discograph)
C: Philadelphian bagpipe-playing long-ago jazz dude with new studio record. Coltrane indebted. Whoa that’s a nice double-deep in the pocket beat underneath the drone on the second track. It’s weird how the bagpipe drone works, immediately.
D: It’s dronetime once again.
C: Sometimes I’m not sure he’s playing the same song as his band—
D: [singing that Gnarls Barkley song] Mayyyybe he’s crazy?
C: —which, according to these liner notes, includes his son Messiah, one of 17 kids?!? Is that right?
D: Could it be a misprint?
C: What, he had 1.7 kids? That’d be hard to do, then again it might not be hard for a guy that plays bagpipes in 7/4.

THE BLACK KEYS
Chulahoma
(Fat Possum)
D: I am very happy sitting in front of this speaker.
C: This is the Black Keys doing six Junior Kimbrough songs.
D: One thing’s for sure: Junior had a lot of riffs.
C: One other thing’s for sure: Junior had a lot of kids. 36, to be exact.
D: [The Black Keys’ singer-guitarist] Dan Auerbach is not one of them.
C: Not that we know of. But yeah, it is uncanny how his guitar tone, style and voice can all echo Junior’s so much—on “Have Mercy On Me” at first I thought it was Junior. Who knows why what pops up where. As they say in Africa, the wind blows the seeds. Nice to hear the Keys branching out on the track, by the way, with the organ and tabla—it’s a good sound for them. And that knotty riff.
D: Wasn’t Robert Plant gonna join these guys on bass?
C: He didn’t make the cut. Re: Zeppelin, it should be said: the guitar does have that tone and bottomlinenastiness that Jimmy Page could get sometimes. So good. Great, varied drums from P. Carney, his best work yet. And here comes another long snaking moan riff.
D: Junior’s music wasn’t done evolving, even if he’s gone.

THE RACONTEURS
Broken Boy Soldiers
(V2)
D: Yes meets the Eagles?
C: That’s a bit harsh. I know you’re a stict Megitarian, but come on: you’ve always liked both Jack White and Brendan Benson. There’s some good cuts on here, especially the Deep Purplish stutter funk on this one [“Store Bought Bones”].
D: [sagely] Sometimes when you split the difference, the difference gets split.
C: …

EAGLES OF DEATH METAL
Death by Sexy
(Downtown)
C: Another supergroup, featuring Jesse Hughes and his boomerang of love, plus Josh Homme.
D: Unlike the Raconteurs, this group knows what it’s doing.
C: And what it is doing is very simple: retarded Rolling Stones riffs that you can go-go to.
D: This music encourages sexual tendencies and is proud of it.

THE CUTS
The Cuts
(Birdman)
C: Quality high-fiber retro guitar-and-organ pop and ballads from Bay Area sweethearts.
D: That the Raconteurs would, uh… raconteur for.
C: Dude, you gotta stop ranking on the Raconteurs. You need another beer. [hands fresh Fosters to D with ridiculously gay(e) smile] As Marvin would say, ‘Here, my dear.’

FUTURE PIGEON
Future Pigeon
(RecordCollection)
C: Very nicely done modern retro-dub from the Arthur office favorites, with guestwork from Ranking Joe, Mikey Dread, Ras Congo, the Scientist. You can’t argue with a band that uses a six-foot-long papier mache electric doobie—with smoke machine and lights—as its onstage prop.

THE AGGROLITES
The Aggrolites
(Hellcat/Epitaph)
C: Very nicely done retro rocksteady, with just the right amount of grit and spit, from members of bands I don’t usually care about.
D: A pleasant shockah.

THE FIERY FURNACES
Bitter Tea
(Fat Possum)
C: Our favorite geniuses. Some may say this is the record they’ll be remembered by, but I say this is just them scraping the gravy off the ground. The endless Disneyland Electrical Parade keyboard squigglery and backmasked vocals and whatnot sure sounds to me this is a band trying to stay ahead in the weirdness sweepstakes.
D: [smugly] It’s not nearly as weird as Gnarls Barkley, and not nearly as good. And I bet you they know it.
C: Don’t they know competition is so 20th century? The key is to listen to the album in reverse order, last track first. That way you’ll listen to all of it, and you’ll be sure to hear the best song, “Whistle Rhapsody?”, which is also one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard.

ESPERS
II
(Drag City)
C: Okay, this is sadder.
D: I like these Espers. I sense naked hippies dancing around the maypole. After dark. Drinking the stuff from the milk of the frogs… [closes eyes]
C: It does have a certain Sandy Denny/Pentangle quality. I bet they get tagged with the New Wave of Ren Faire thing, but I bet they wouldn’t be caught dead at that party—they’re gloomy gusses and sad-lifed maidens who’d rather be in the woods than the castle, anyway. I’m speaking metaphorically of course.
D: [continuing, rhapsodic] Or they they may be playing in that town called ‘Machine’ in Jarmusch’s Dead Man. Which featues Robert Mitchum in his last performance. [opens eyes, smiles] One of this nation’s finest weedsmokers.

JOSEPHINE FOSTER
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
(Locust Music)
C: Okay, this is even sadder.
D: An American woman singing all 18th or 19th century German folk songs for children, in German, is the personification of melancholy. It might not be the right music to listen to when you’re deciding whether to live or die, deep at night in those grey hours.
C: As Marvin would say, That’s not livin’! But it sure is singing. Absolutely beautiful.

SCOTT WALKER
The Drift
(4AD/Beggars)
D: Excellent art-rock that doesn’t rock from a living legend, but I’m afraid this music encourages morbid tendencies. This is immense, this record. But what is it? The mood somehow implies a seriousness that might not have to do with worldly events. It is religious? spiritual? There is an urgency! Dreadstorms coming. I think of Japanese ghost music…
C: We’re running out of time, D. I think this is one we’ll have to come back to next time.
D: At least we let the people know that the mighty Scott Walker has returned.

FRED NEIL
Fred Neil
(Water)
D: The great freckled Greenwich Village folk soul who wrote “Everybody’s Talkin’,” which Nilsson had a top ten hit with in 1969 off the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack.
C: [puts on "That's The Bag I'm In"] Check out the morning he’s having: “toast was cold and the orange juice was hot.” There’s so much soul in his singing, this is an album for the dinosaurs.
D: Not the dinosaurs man, the dolphins!
C: It’s true, these are songs for the dolphins. Seriously.

BELONG
October Language
(CarPark)
C: I’ve been let down by NASA, what with the militarization of space and all, but this gives me some insight as to what it feels like to be launched into space. Beautifully fluttered and static-drenched, like those between-song passages of Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine.
D: [blissed out]
C: [blissed out]

BORIS
Pink
(Southern Lord)
C: Okay. One more beer, we’ll split it. This is the new Boris, the co-ed heavy guitar sludge march trio from Japan who in the last year have dropped the overt Melvins moves and become a band of varied powers—
D: [Stands on couch with bepuzzled-in-happy-way face] Majestic dry ice fog riffage that can’t be turned any louder!
C: A landmark record, a virtual catalog of extreme rock guitar strategy—Godflesh/Jesu ethereal rings and reversed dread, overdriven High Rise-style rhythms, post-Sonic Youth squall, Kim Thayil-style tone, Grand Funk/Montrose laying-it-out-there vocals—all on the first two songs. I don’t know if any of that makes sense but I’m trying to give people a general idea.
D: Unbelievable, neighborhood-destroying pummel drumming here [on title track].
C: [listening to ‘Woman on the Screen”] Wow. Reminds me of really, really good Nirvana-style punk/grunge, only somehow much huger.
D: [listening to “Blackout”] A mighty behemoth from the Far East is throwing mountains!
C: I think we are all in agreeance. Rock album of the year so far, easy.
D: [Dancing to “Electric”] You can lose fingers to this album.

HOWLIN RAIN
Howlin Rain
(Birdman)
C: One last supergroup: Howlin Rain, which is Moloney from Sunburned Hand of the Man on drums and Ethan Miller from Comets on Fire on vocals and guitar, working out their common interest in that seemingly lost-forever continent of great 1968-1973 American rock ‘n’ roll, when the hippies went back to the land and kept on rocking until the Man pulled all but a few back into his lame grip. Allmann Brothers, Creedence, Grateful Dead, Neil Young…
D: I sense benificent Jerry Garcia vibes coming from smiling visage of Ethan.
C: He is singing at the edge of his capability like Jerry —it’s a high, roasted voice. But, curcially, not shrieking. He sings like he’s losing his throat. One of those guys whose vocals get quieter the louder he sings. He’s got the goner’s high moan.
D: Like that guy in Canned Heat. [listening to “Calling Lightning With a Scythe”] Or Faces-time Rod Stewart. [laughs] I call this album Another Side of Ethan Miller, Workingman Rock Star.

C and D: Two guys bro down over some new records

D: I’m looking at the stack of stuff we’re going to talk about and I am noticing an absence this time round of certain records, or styles, that I am particularly fond of. I am worried about the lack of brash super-volume riff-monster guitar and backbeat.
C: Well D, the way I look at it is: We certainly can’t review everything that we come across—who has the energy for that? And we can’t even cover everything that’s obviously worthy—there’s just not enough space. So it’s a bit down to what most interests us at the moment. As Allen Ginsberg pointed out, “Mark Van Doren used to write book reviews for the Herald Tribune and almost every one of the reviews was intelligent and sympathetic; he was always talking about something absolutely marvelous. I said, ‘What do you do with a book you don’t like?’ and he said, ‘Why should I waste my time writing about something I’m not interested in?’” And anyways, don’t worry. There’s some riffs on the way.

Mountains
Sewn
(Apestaartje)
D: [Listening to “Sewn One”] Hmm… Could it be the mighty Growing?
C: Close, but no cigar. This is Mountains, a duo from New York who I only recently became aware of because Mr. Plastic Crimewave selected them to play at his 2 Million Tongues festival. Their second album. A nice electrical nature hum. I’ve also been hanging out recently in the mountains, so I feel a special affection for them automatically.
D: An orchestral shower with the warm drone reminiscent of Herr Klaus Schulze on the synthesizer.
C: And then, little acoustic guitar lines and horn tones, foregrounded, or deeply backgrounded. It’s pretty great isn’t it? Total mama nature kids in a low-wattage electronic garden. Reminds me of what Ginsberg’s “great peaceful lovebrain” would sound like, slowly comfortably spinning drifting slowly in eternal wombspace. An alternate soundtrack to Silent Running‘s opening sequence, or a lost instrumental Talk Talk aria…
D: You’ve been on quite a Ginsberg kick lately.
C: [smiles beatifically] Why bother to paraphrase already perfectly put words of wisdom? I say quotate away til we have something new to say… I like to listen to this at Arthur HQ with the windows and front door open, hoping birds will fly by or neighborhood animals will walk in, and we can all be at peace together, for once… Of course, it’s also useful to drown out the car alarms and sirens and lawnmowers and leafblowers and helicopters. It’s not sentimental flashy hot leftbrain human, not cold technical rightbrain robot: strictly ahuman, objective in a naturalist’s sense.

Citay
Citay
(Important)
C: Continuing in the rural mode…
D: Psychedelic canyon and meadow music such was made in ye olde ’70s! [starts air guitaring to closing ascending twin electric guitar line of "Seasons Don't Fear the Year"]
C: They’re really nailing that rich acoustic-electric rolling tabla honey harmony sound that all those heavy bands—Sabbath and Zeppelin, especially—used to do, back when all the best musicians were inspired by what the Incredible String Band were doing, and were still able (or willing) to express a feminine side to go with their preening barbarian or depressive wail aspects…
D: [reminisces] When the maidens were fair and wore flowers in their hair instead of covering themselves in tattoos and piercings. I am awaiting Sandy Denny’s entrance at any moment.
C: Total “Battle of Evermore” vibe, especially on “Nice Cuffs.”
D: Nice title. I also like this one: “What Never Was and What Should Have Been.”
C: More like “What Always Is and Will Ever Be.” This is an album without a sell-by date, with a song for every season.
D: [listening to "Shalom of Safed"] Monumental. Like the best parts of Deep Purple and the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd.
C: Making music for horse-drawn sledrides thru the driving snow to the lodge in the distance, where pale ale and a fireplace and friends are…
D: [10 minutes later] Was that all one song?

The Duke Spirit
Cuts Across the Land
(Startime)
D: [listening to “Stubborn Stitches”] Could it be Heartless Bastards?
C: Yeah, a little eh? It’s actually the first album from an English band, three blokes with a woman in front who does have a voice not too far from Ms. Bastards, or Ms. The Kills, or Ms. Polly Harvey, or here, on “Darling You’re Mean” …
D: Great title!
C: …which opens like an old Spacemen 3 or Spiritualized tune, she’s got that Hope Sandoval reverbian thing going on, but she doesn’t just mope-pout, she howls too. Pretty standard tunes but a great voice and an interest in building to liftoff, repeatedly. The band reminds me a little of their contemporaries and fellow Englishpeople the 22-20s here and there, which of course takes us back to The Gun Club and X. And I also hear, especially on “You Were Born Inside My heart”…
D: ANOTHER great title!
C: …the sound of Come, of the great Thalia Zedek, an underappreciated true believer voice of blues trauma/”I’m having an episode” rock & roll darkside… This music says: jeans and threads, fringes and belt buckles, whiskey and sunglasses, late nights and tough mornings.
D: They strike me as… promising.
C: What do they promise?
D: Dirty glares, at first. But later? [smiles] Sex with slapping.
C: ….

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Ballad of the Broken Seas
(V2)
D: [listening to "The False Husband"] Well the obvious recent comparison would be that Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue song on Murder Ballads. Also Serge Gainsbourg and Ms. Bardot, or Lee Hazelwood songs, or Jimmy Webb, or Johnny Cash…
C: It has a classic vintage feel. There’s a real string section (which more artists should do instead of cheaping it out with the synthesizer), and a darkness and a ’60s country and western duet swirl to it, with an almost inappropriately sexkittenish breathy femme voice—
D: Julee Cruise. Or, Marilyn Monroe singing to the president—
C: She’s a better singer than that, but you get the feeling listening to this—
D: [smiling broadly, with raised eyebrows] I get many feelings listening to this—
C: I have no doubt that you do, but anyways you get the feeling that she’s holding back singing, doesn’t trust her voice so much as she should. But her reticence doesn’t hurt her here because the songs are so accomplished, and she’s got Mr. Mark Lanegan, probably our nation’s greatest wounded survivor voice, to harmonize and duet with.
D: And they’re all HER songs! Interesting…
C: Except for “Revolver,” a really spooky nighttime shortness-of-breath anxiety thing written by Lanegan, and a clever reworking of Mr. Cash’s “Ramblin’ Man.” Yeah, how often do you see women writing for men anymore? It’s great. Lullabies and laments, offers and pleas, thoughtfully arranged with appropriate decor: a fiddle here, reverbed tabla there, an instrumental intermission at just the right point.
D: Which could have been a track on the Citay album!
C: And the pop tune here — “Honey Child What Can I Do?” is pure singalong AM radio gold.The album closer—”The Circus Is Leaving Town”—is an all-timer for closing time.
D: This is the kind of heartsong Tom Waits used to write.
C: What a song, what lyrics, what a melody, what a feel. I wish we could run all the lyrics for this: “The party’s over now/stop howling at the moon/you need a different beat/you need a different tune/Remember that old song/we had when we were young/Life was an empty page/the world would write upon/Do you recall the meadow grass, we’d sit and watch the hours pass/ You were such a good girl then/Oh Ruby dry your eyes/The circus is leaving town/Oh Ruby, roll your stockings down…” When Lanegan sings, “You could make me think/the sun sets in the east” and then hums at the end? Whew!
D: That’s when you know a singer knows how good a song is. When he still wants to sing it even when there’s no more words to sing.
C: Obviously, hopefully, this is just the beginning of a beautiful, enduring partnership.

Beth Orton
Comfort of Strangers
(astralwerks)
D: Wow. Total laugh-cry masterpiece triumph to the 32nd degree. And I was never a huge fan. What happened?
C: Maybe a weekend at Esalen helped? Who knows. It’s a huge creative breakthrough, for sure, on every level. There’s more good words in the first minute of the album than most songwriters come up with in their entire career. And the music is tremendous, really dry and warm and thought-out.
D: It’s called craft at service to a group of great songs.
C: Maybe it’s down to the guys she’s working with—Tim Barnes on drums, Jim O’Rourke on other instruments and production—but it seems like they totally gelled creatively in a way where it doesn’t really matter how it happened. I mean, O’Rourke was involved with those Judee Sill records finally seeing the light of day last year, and I can hear echoes of her work here—that melancholy, that minor joy, those major choruses in spite of everything, that lovely canyon feel, etc. So it makes sense. Still… Man, every song is a hit. Listen to the breakdown on the chorus of “Rectify.” Amazing. Only a live band can do that. Same thing on “Shopping Trolley,” which is practically anthemic, with zero cheese content, and “Heart of Soul,” which she just BELTS. Amazing. Bare music, bare soul. I’m crying here!
D: Coffeehouse denizens of America rejoice, we have a new masterpiece to sip our lattes to.

Belle & Sebastian
The Life Pursuit
(Matador)
D: [singing along to "Act of the Apostle Part 1] “What would I do in Germany?” I find myself wondering that sometimes.
C: [smugly] I have no doubt that you do.
D: Enough with the sarcasm, you, or there may be damages! [listening to "Another Sunny Day"] Who is this?
C: Belle & Sebastian, from Scotland. Your friend Isobel Campbell used to be in this group.
D: I don’t recall them being this fun.
C: Yeah, it’s total record store pop, isn’t it? Almost like Ween in its variety and craft, when you think about it. Just a ton of styles they didn’t have mastered before: 12-string Byrds country-soul, Gary Glitter glam beat with Sweet-style melodies and harmonies, upbeat melodic Creedence chug rock & roll, a stylish Jam dance number, a Stevie Wonder Synclavier summer sunpop hit, all sung in choirboy stylee. Lotsa great music hall stuff, but it’s all perfect for a stylish afternoon-into-evening garden party.
D: Rufus Wainwright, eat your heart out.
C: Clever observational storytelling lyrics too, which they’ve always done well. “Sukie in the Graveyard” is Sly & the Family Stone-style organ riff funk with Kinks kharacter lyrics and long-line melody. “Funny Little Frog” takes me back to Pulp, who I dearly miss.
D: “For the Price of a Cup of Tea” is an undeniable number one hit in the harmony pop heaven of my inner music-lover mind.
C: …

Sparks
Hello Young Lovers
(In the Red)
C: [listening, slackjawed] …
D: [listening, eyes bulging] …
C: Talk about genius.
D: Talk about masterpiece.
C: How do you even start to talk about this?
D: I’ve never heard anything like it.
C: The best I can say is if you ever liked Sparks—any of their many, many startling inventive endlessly idiosyncratic innovator phases during the last 30 (!) years—this will destroy you. And if you never liked Sparks, ever, you need this, just to know that pop music, pop lyrics, pop personae could be so much…MORE.
D: They should be on the cover of Arthur.
C: Stop the presses!
D: I gotta say I didn’t see this one coming.
C: A surprise knockout in the 20th round! Or, in Sparks’ case, the 20th album.
D: [opens window, yells outside to passers-by] C and D are down for the count! [pause] Again!

C AND D: Two guys bicker about new records.

TV on the Radio
“Dry Drunk Emperor”
(Touch and Go)
D: I’ve listened to this probably a hundred times by now, and I still find it overwhelming. It’s a devastator.
C: For those out there who haven’t heard it yet, this is the song TV on the Radio released in the wake of Katrina, free to everyone via the Touch and Go website [go here]. This is what they said at the time: “we were back in the studio thinking and feeling again and made this song for all our everybody… in the absence of a true leader we must not forget that we are still together…. hearts are sick … minds must change … it is our hope that this song inspires, comforts, fosters courage,and reminds us… this darkness cannot last if we work together. let us help each other… heal each other …. look after one another … the human heart is our new capitol…. this song is for you…. us…..we….them… it is free. pass it on. TO THOSE AFFECTED BY HURRICANE KATRINA: NEW YORK CITY’S HEART IS WITH YOU… STAY STRONG! WE LOVE YOU.”

We don’t usually do this sort of thing, but this is a special case. Here are the song’s lyrics:

DRY DRUNK EMPEROR
baby boy
dying under hot desert sun,
watch your colors run.

what if all the bleeding hearts
took it on themselves
to make a brand new start.
organs pumpin’ on their sleeves,
paint murals on the white house
feed the leaders LSD
grab your fife and drum,
grab your gold baton
and let’s meet on the lawn,
shut down this hypocrisy.

C: The harmonies they get on this are just shattering. And the chorus…
D: This is soul, with zero retroism. That’s not supposed to be possible anymore and yet here it is. Pure righteousness.
C: I find this song overwhelming too. Not just for the song itself, but for the spirit in which was recorded and offered to the public, and the immediacy and selflessness involved. That’s what being an artist is about, in times like these. They get to something really tragic about the current situation: all those poor idiots who have been buying the Bush balderdash since 9/11… because they did that, now we are all paying for their mistakes, and will do for decades. And I’m broke, man. My pockets are empty. And I’ve got it easy. Think of all the unnamed, uncounted dead civilians in Iraq, all the dead and mistreated in New Orleans, all those detained in the secret torture prisons in Poland…
D: This song is so good I can’t believe somebody made it. The build and release, the chorus, the singing, the lyrics, the fife and drum…
C: It’s a call to imaginative action, for less talk and more walk. This is prime Fela Kuti-level stuff, seriously: talking truth directly to power, giving comfort and uplift to the powerless. I’ve never heard this song on the radio, yet it’s exactly the kind of song radio was made for.

Cast King
Saw Hill Man
(Locust Music)
C: Debut album from 79-year-old white fella. Recorded in a shack in Alabama.
D: Seniors rock. Look at this guy. I think our friend T-Model Ford might have some new competition!
C: He recorded eight songs for Sun Records in the ‘50s. He he had a touring country and bluegrass band, Cast King and the Country Drifters, but it didn’t work out and he never released an album.
D: Sweet baby Jesus, what is wrong with this country?
C: I find myself wondering that often these days…
D: The first line of this song is “I don’t care if your tears fall in my whiskey.” What more do you need?
C: The guy’s voice is so rich, it’s a pleasure just to hear his singing. The sadder the lyrics, the brighter the music. The songs are clever, catchy, simple. How could nobody care for three decades? This nation is so cruel to its artists.
D: There’s some Johnny Cash here for sure.
C: To our modern ears, of course. But I’m starting to wonder. Who came first? Not that it matters as much as, well, just how many other guys are out there still who are this good, who we’ve never heard? Maybe it’s a lot more than we think. People who got skipped over by accident of history or circumstance. That’s the lesson of the reissue culture that’s so strong right now—the Numero Group label’s releases, the stuff they talk about in Wax Poetics, all the rediscoveries of people like Vashti Bunyan and Gary Higgins and Simon Finn—all of this teaches us that actually the cream doesn’t always rise to the top. It often sinks to the very bottom.

Nina Simone
The Soul of Nina Simone dual disc
(Legacy/RCA/Sony BMG)
C: You’re not going to believe this, either. A new dual disc release: one side is a greatest hits run, the other side is vintage live footage. Deep vintage.
D: [looking at track listing] Whoa! None deeper vintage. Pure black power, 1960s. Look at this!!! [Reading aloud scrolling text on screen] “By the end of the ‘60s, the civil rights movement was in a shambles; its key leaders were dead, and race riots had erupted in several U.S. cities. ‘It felt like the shutters were coming down on anyone who dared to suggest there was something seriously wrong with the state of our country,’ said an angry Nina Simone. A ray of community hope appeared in the sammer of ’69, when the Harlem Festival—called ‘a black Woodstock’ by its producer, Hal Tulchin—came to Central Park. Crowds of up to 100,000 flocked to six free concerts. The stars included Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Simone. These excerpts from Simone’s performance have never before been shown in America.”
C: I’ve never even heard of this festival.
D: Me neither.
C: How is that possible? I thought we knew our shit. My god. Are they saying this footage has just been sitting there since 1969? Listen to her go. Listen to this band. Look at that set, look at this audience. Look at the songs she’s playing—“Revolution,” “Four Women,” “Ain’t Got No—I Got Life” and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Look at the setting. Look at the situation is which this was performed.
D: This is right before she went into self-imposed exile.
C: She looks absolutely purposeful. There is a resolve in her voice, in her comments to the band and the audience, in that gorgeous face of hers as she sings that is just absolutely… She looks like a woman about to leave, because she’s been wronged. You know she’s gonna slam that door.
D: No whining. “My life has been much too rough,” she sings. [Listening to “Ain’t Got No—I Got Life”] Listen to the band swing! Unbelievable.
C: She’s holding back tears for the entire performance… She finally breaks—just a bit—on “To Be Young Gifted and Black.”
D: I think this is the greatest single live performance I have ever seen.
C: Especially when you consider the context. This is just extraordinary. Le Tigre and other no-skill apologists who say technique is irrelevant would do well to watch this. The reason people are listening to what she has to say is because she had skills beyond even her conviction.
D: It’s an absolute travesty that the American public hasn’t seen this footage until now.
C: Can you imagine what the rest of this festival must have been like? Look at that lineup. Sheesh. We’ve got to ask again: WHY HAVEN’T WE HEARD OF THIS UNTIL NOW? Where are our cultural historians? Why do we know about Jimi liberating the national anthem and not taking the brown acid and all that other Woodstock jive but not about this? It’s criminal.

Niger: Magic & Ecstasy in the Sahel dvd
by Hisham Mayet
(Sublime Frequencies)
C: And now for somebody who knows how to document and distribute important stuff immediately, rather than waiting for 36 years…
D: [spills beer in joy] YES! The mighty Sublime Frequencies strike AGAIN!
C: 70 minutes of footage of hot blast from the streets of Niger, one of the quote poorest unquote nations in the world. Oil can drum duos, one-stringed instrument maestros, harmonizing ululators, invocation dances. Divination ceremonies and informal nighttime initiation rituals, Taureg trance funk at the end.
D: Absolutely riveting.

OOOIOO
[Untitled]
(Thrill Jockey)
C: New album from project featuring Yoshimi who is in Boredoms. Don’t really understand the provenance of this album—recorded in 2000 but only released this year? Weird vocal calisthenics, big tribal drum thrusters, chimes and flutes and birds and trumpets, synthesizers, tablas, loopage and harmony chants, Sean Lennon and Yuka Honda amongst the guests, the best album booklet I’ve seen in 2005—it seems to illustrate a place directly midway mushroom wonderland of the Allmans’ Eat A Peach album centerfold and the post-toxic landscapes of Lightning Bolt—and check it out, here on Track 7: straight-up female Tuareg ululations!
D: Sometimes I think Bjork gets all the attention for trying to do what Yoshimi is already doing.

Pearls and Brass
The Indian Tower
(Drag City)
C: We really shouldn’t be reviewing this til next issue cuz it’s not out til January 24. But excuse me, I think I need to turn this up.
D: Cream covered by Kyuss?
C: Yeah, kind of, huh? It’s actually three dudes from Pennsylvania.
D: These are some pretty knotty riffs. Quite a brush. A hedgerow.
C: Thorny stuff, but they still give you a riff. Here, have one.
D: Why thank you.
C: Total air guitar and drum practice CD. “The Face of God” is the face they make when they play, I bet. And there’s the vocal harmonies, and the fingerpicked acoustic blues.
D: This is bigrig truck driving music.
C: Forty-wheeler stuff—for the poor dudes trying to forget about the price of gas as they drive the nation’s clogged freeways. If it’s time for a Convoy remake, then this is the soundtrack.

The Fall
Fall Heads Roll
(Narnack)
D: The Fall is now at its best since the ‘80s, and I can say that with some authority.
C: This is the kind of spare, rocking Fall we all want. I like the words—Mr. Smith’s is still a totally idioscyncratic lyrical approach—but sometime I think just hearing his caffeinated bark against a good beat is enough. It’s a very rhythmic thing—the words are almost secondary to the song’s breath. There’s something about that “ah” that he still does at the end of each line that just feels good when you imitate it. I know that sounds weird but try it-ah.

Tarantula A.D.
Book of Sand
(Kemado)
D: Classic early King Crimson sound. Excites one’s nerves, doesn’t it?
C: If Marc Ribot likes them, that’s all I need to know. But yes, this does get the blood racing down the alleyways, I must say. “The Century Trilogy II: Empire” is power metal Crimson, cello beautiful acoustic guitar, hugely romantic pastoral, hugely alarming screech and crunch. I don’t usually like something that has such a self-consciously stark, exaggerated dynamic. But both parts are pretty tremendously great in and of themselves, on their own terms. Maybe it’s those kinds of times now, eh, where the loveliness, the absolute beauty and love can exists side by side total horror. As the Irish philospher Mark Patrick Hederman said, “Singing is a way of proclaiming a better world, a refusal to give in to the grimness of the past.” [listening to "The Century Trilogy III: The Fall"] Whoa… like Jeff Buckley in his full, abandoned gypsy mode and his secret sisters fronting Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
D: They are equipped with maximal music range.

Mi and L’au
Mi and L’au
(Young God)
C: Taking it down a notch… Like old weird Tom Waits fairground songs sung by a Finnish waif in the key of air and a humble-voiced post-Nick Drake haunted gentleman from France. It’s closely recorded , delicate songs—that is there’s tape hiss and falling rain and throat-clearing—written to each other, based on a lived natural intimacy.
D: Reminds me of Mojave 3, when Rachel sang…
C: Mi and L’au apparently lead quite the reclusive, romantic life together in the Finnish woods. Life beyond electricity. This seems to be happening a lot lately: younger musicians and artists retreating, or withdrawing, to rural settings, refusing to engage modern civilization except when necessary. Little Wings and Brightblack Morning Light definitely. But nature is already providing the setting for more promotional films and photographs: see Cat Power’s live DVD, or Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods, or Growing’s work, or Six Organs of Admittance and Devendra and Feathers’ album covers, and stuff from the New Energy movement people, or those photos of Pearls and Brass…
D: I think she’s whispering along with her singing. A secret recording technique that few know about. I think Jim Morrison did it sometimes. Or I like to imagine he did.

Bjorn Olsson
[untitled album with lobster on the cover]
(Parasol)
C: We’re almost out of time so we gotta make this quick. New album of vaguely Morricone guitar an et cetera instrumentals from Union Carbide Productions/Soundtrack of Our Lives co-founder. That first album on Omplatten was a keeper. Frosted goodness, magically delicious.
D: I think he has long ago retired from this world.
C: If this was the soundtrack to your life, what would your life be like?
D: More candles. More seaside town time. More fish. Probably more wine. More chopped parsley, more diced onion. More time riding horses and picking buttercups. Less inner rage…

Biff Rose
The Thorn in Mrs. Rose’s Side/Children of Light
(Runt)
C: Nicely done reissue of 1968 and ’69 albums by long-forgotten bright eyed groom of the psychedelic morning dew piano roll: Biff Rose, a white fella from New Orleans best known as the guy who wrote “Fill Your Heart,” covered by Bowie on Hunky Dory. He’s a Randy Newman, incapable of cynicism; a Beefheart for kindly eared folks, a goofball master punster writing advice songs about human and animal and god follies and foibles. A whimsical male Mary Poppins, singing at an anti-war saloon or a soup kitchen. Free to Be You and Me for adults.

Lavender Diamond
The Cavalry of Light four-song EP
(lavenderdiamond.com)
C: Lessons in harmony (of all kinds) from the love and peace actionists who stole the show at ArthurFest: four songs in the key of love, reviving the lost tradition of the uplifting psychedelic pop. All sung by one of the most charismatic women I have ever witnessed.
D: Supremely gorgeous music. I might not be at DefCon 5 all the time if I listened to this regularly…

LIFE AGAINST DEMENTIA
by Joe Carducci

Anyone familiar with the roiling currents and tidal motion of American popular culture knows that the film and music industries are delivering less interesting work than ever. Melodies, rhythms, songs, voices, characters, stories and genres seem colder, more processed and, in general, received rather than inspired. There’s nothing wrong with referencing or even stealing plots or melodies as long as the stealing’s done by an artist or madman who revives them too, in some new personal way. But with the explosion of University film departments and rock and roll courses in the last two decades the American arts are filling up with professional careerists who better belong in business college, or law school.

The action film fell of its own overblown weight; you’d hardly know that it grew from such lean, tightly-scripted productions as Dirty Harry (1971), Death Wish (1974), Rocky (1976), First Blood (1982), and Terminator (1984). And whereas Jaws (1975) remade film marketing, Titanic (1997) threatened to remake the action film itself: fusing the male action film with the woman’s film takes another hundred million dollars and an additional hour in running time. The resulting summer behemoths trod the marketplace with such strong-arming confidence that the studios practically demand they be made without costly stars so as to pack in more explosives and effects and advertising.

The music industry’s dilemma was clear at this year’s Grammies. In a normal year Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), would have slammed Republicans on non-Industry social policy grounds, but Bush got off easy this year as the country ain’t in the mood and Greene’s house was not in order. Big recording stars are lobbying in Sacramento to void the record industry’s exemption from the seven-year personal contract limit, and they want to own their own master recordings. And over all the bogus proceedings on Grammy night loomed the specter of the computer-software-hardware-internet juggernaut’s paramount killer app—free music. (NARAS is no longer Greene’s playpen due to sexual harassment lawsuit—a real Clinton Democrat, apparently.)

So the questions become:

- Have the media, which now dominate content, so divided programming into blindered marketing niches that’s they’ve cut the cords to our rich musical and film traditions?

- Has the evolution of Pop—its computer generated virtual musics and films—superseded any organic folk motion within our music and film traditions?

- Has the Organization Man of International Entertainment corporate culture proved incapable of recognizing and delivering music and film of the level that sundry Sammy Glicks and juke-box mobsters did for decades in their sleep?

- Has the music underground rejected all tradition but either the line of nihilism diagrammed by Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces, or a backstop of kitsch (such vicarious ex-pat pursuits as French chanson, Exotica, Canto-Pop, J-pop)?

Sorry I asked…

We can’t be sure whether the current thin gruel might not be the only possible art deduced from the slim pickings of the last nearly thirty years. The teenagers just starting their bands and the twenty-somethings still prepping their first film will be the artists shaping what American pop culture will become. But they have experienced pop culture of little depth or personality their entire lives. What humanity persists in the art tends to be negative, reactionary traits: cynicism, indifference, contempt….

Radio was formatted in the early seventies and so ambitious recording artists quickly began to format themselves. An entire generation of willful rock bands—Ramones through Flipper—refused to format themselves. These were the last bands to have grown up listening to the cultural mix of pre-1973 radio and TV variety shows (not to mention walked through the high grade “amateur” musical environment Americans of all ages once experienced at County Fairs, Corn-boils, church socials, and school dances). But unformatted, these Punk bands were then, not programmed. Those that attempted to format themselves for hits (Talking Heads, Devo, X, Replacements…) ensured they would not be the bands that carried the torch forward; perversely, it would be the unprogrammed misses (Ramones, Avengers, Black Flag, Minutemen, Descendents…) that would launch a million bands.

Since the music left the South in the late fifties the natural grace of that early rock and roll has gradually dimmed, leaving a more studied rock music in its place. The British bands of the decade between 1963 and 1973 had studied the music, though you couldn’t say they were grounded in it. The American punk bands that formed before 1980 were the last to be grounded in this folk tradition aspect of rock and roll (though they were warped as well by that new Brit influence). Thereafter, even the most important bands (Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Tool, Kyuss/Queens of the Stone Age, White Stripes…) are necessarily more conceptual in approach. It may be that our distance from the South of that day, and the input from today’s constricted media-driven musical environment might ultimately dry up the musicality of even bands that do not depend on the programmers of radio and MTV.

Hollywood today, courtesy of marketing science and Sammy Glick IV, offers CGI (computer-generated imaging) Potemkin villages and villagers for pulverizing in CGI thermidor for the boys, tearjerking emo-porn for girls, and nihilistic puzzle pictures for the sophistos. Generations of filmmakers have been destroyed by the Star Wars saga with nary a wobble in the force detected. (In my unrequited meetings with film producers in L.A. and N.Y. the life-size star-trooper models in the office corners never relax their guard.) More noxious influences on film narratives are tramping in from TV, music videos, advertising, videogames, pornography, and all the film deconstruction bonuses included on the typical DVD release.

Recently passing on through the obit pages have been American cultural figures such as Peggy Lee, Budd Boetticher, Joey and Dee Dee Ramone, Dave Van Ronk, Pop Staples, Katy Jurado, Ray Brown, Anthony Quinn, Waylon Jennings, Dorothy MacGuire, Harlan Howard, John Lee Hooker, Richard Farnsworth, Bernard Klatzko, Carl Perkins, Ed Roth, Hilous Butrum, Rod Steiger, Otis Blackwell, and John Fahey. Never mind the heftlessness of the obits in decades to come, Britney Spears may never die! The biotech nerds (not known for their ability to hear music) are forging new frontiers in unintended consequences.

Our meta-sentient pop culture has foreshadowed this immortality. The explosion of cultural choices via cable and satellite has reached critical mass via the web—it’s now become something different, a constant ambient hemorrhagic din. Kids watch Ozzie and Harriet and The Osbournes; the Randolph Scott rides again; Buster Keaton falls down and springs up again; and even the sword-and-sandal genre returns! We are either jacked by contemporary offerings (Survivor, Cops, Robot Wars, Dismissed…) or calmed by our immortal ghost culture (Lawrence Welk, Audie Murphy, Cheyenne, Father Knows Best…).

While it is true that a musical/societal syncretism such as Elvis Presley can never be repeated, it is also true that there are no longer coherent pop and social cultures from which a given Elvis might be launched from and against. The Fifties pop consensus was bisected first by generation (Frank v. Elvis), then by gender (Eastwood v. Redford/Welch v. Streisand), and then chopped into smaller and smaller fractiles (Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, R. Crumb, splatter films, death metal, lesbian romances, the Olsen twins, post-rock, abasement comedies, Daniel Johnston, Dolomite…). Instead of backwater geniuses being shuttled into the media spotlight for the benefit of a sincerely interested audience, the media turns its spotlight onto itself, in effect, for the amusement of a fallen, cynical audience. There was one Elvis; there are millions of Kim Fowleys. People lived vicariously through Elvis in that small part of their grounded lives they reserved for dreams. Today, American work-lives generally require no physical labor and this has loosed us to live in a veritable dreamland. And one can only laugh at a Kim Fowley as he chases his weightless dream.

The advertising industry runs on applied schizophrenia; its hacks work not to express themselves or even their clients, but to anticipate and produce what their potential customers might wish to hear, all the while serving their clients’ interests. It’s this wheedling Madison Avenue energy, not just its money, which fuels the media and increasingly the art itself. If there are great garage-styled bands now attempting to get heard on radio and cable, why is it we’ve been hearing garage-style in major ad campaigns for the Gap (Troggs), Powerade (Monks), Pepsi (Sam the Sham) and others for a year or more? Clearly there are sharper and more desperate minds in advertising than in programming. Still, you’d think that advertisers would be the most concerned about tune-out factor as listeners are already predisposed to bail to another station when the ads kick in; this is a measure of just how retarded programmers have become.

An energy with a similarly desperate kick shoots prospective talismans of the zeitgeist, such as The Osbournes and mullet haircuts, through an increasingly dim popular culture and before the even dumber cultures of media, politics and the academy whose leading cement-heads can always be counted on to belabor the slightest of pop culture throwaways. We first saw this kind of mass impulse after Elvis’ death when his name and image became punchlines. The late-Elvis talisman continues to ward off the fear of being caught uncool, and naïve–it’s a default setting for the subhip. This double-dealing desperation to trump the hip has leaked into pop culture from advertising.

Still, the gravitational pull of the marketplace and individual artistic consciousness tugs at notions from all these cultural shards and remakes of them something akin to the old A-film or hit record that once offered something for men and women, girls and boys, hipsters and squares (Then, full-throated: John Ford, the Beatles, George Stevens, Led Zeppelin; Now, sotto voce: Steven Spielberg, No Doubt, Steven Soderbergh, Weezer).

Refusal to grow up was very nearly the defining characteristic of the boomers so it’s no surprise they might refuse to die. Their pop culture likewise appears immutable. Kids and young adults–those born in the seventies and eighties–have been keeping inherited styles like Hippie, Radical, Soul, Folkie, Beat and Bop alive. Alternatives such as Punk, Metal, Garage, and Rap date back to very nearly the same period. But that these styles survive does not make them vital. They each now exhibit the dementia of a played-out mind, no matter the condition of the body. And in youth-culture terms, when a style will not die, then the hollow posturing of the neo-neophytes within it tends to foreclose the use of that style’s original statements by any ambitious musician seeking to create something new informed by the best of the past–this past the only possible source of ammunition to fight a sterile present. So, while the emptied forms of these styles thrive (think reggae, punk, metal, blues, jazz, you name it), vital young musicians are discouraged from rooting themselves in these traditions because their high school nemeses are camped out within them. Again, this matters because these young players’ music will soon be what we all have to listen to. Garage might have been predicted as the most viable option to revive because, though it’s been bubbling under in collector/retro-pop circles forever, it’s been absent in the high school social universe.

The slow organic rise of neo-country since the eighties (Blasters, Panther Burns, Gun Club, Jason and the Scorchers, Souled American…) to the point that it has become a sturdy parallel economy augurs better for a musically rooted revolution today. Commercial C&W radio is as utterly irrelevant to this underground as commercial rock radio was to the Ramones twenty-five years ago; this can be a good thing if you’re patient enough to wait for Nirvana. The garage underground is probably more reactionary than the country underground. It’s an old scene that often cleaves to bad formless junk because it betrays no trace of pop, metal, punk or whatever gets their goat and so can’t sell-out to anybody and embarrass them. Luckily it has a great fanzine voice in Ugly Things, and the scene’s arbiters appear to be losing control of bands that deserve a wide audience, in the same way that the Gilman Street commandants lost control of Green Day. The Fat Possum label roiled today’s well-oiled blues industry simply by trolling the delta for seventy and eighty year old bluesmen–the last of their genus sadly. The city sophisticates of the blues didn’t immediately cotton to these rural eccentrics (R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford…); that’s how far from musical truth even music obsessives can drift when a subculture’s weakness inspires defensiveness.

Hollywood’s dilemma is different. Filmmaking is capital-intensive and it is art-by-committee of nominal adults. The old studio system was crippled by the Supreme Court’s 1948 Paramount decision that forced the divestiture of the studios’ theater chains. Then it was destroyed by the growth of television, and its history rewritten via the Auteur theory, which re-evaluated throwaway B-films at the expense of fussed-over A-films. It took until the end of the sixties for new production and aesthetic equilibriums to be reached. The unexpected successes of Sergio Leone’s westerns (released in U.S., 1967-8), and Easy Rider (1969) woke Hollywood up. But too soon after that, the pulpy seventies small film (The Hired Hand, Two-Lane Blacktop, Badlands, Night Moves, Rancho Deluxe…) had morphed into a comicy template hammered out by Rocky, Jaws and Star Wars (1977). The human scale satisfactions offered by time-honored Hollywood B genres were soon inflated with A budgets and A stars to the point at which 2nd unit directors, stunt coordinators and CGI-designers have become crypto-auteurs (Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Pearl Harbor, Minority Report…), when in fact there need be no actual auteur of any script. Here too, it may be that the films offered for two decades now have corroded filmmakers’ ability to deliver, and audiences’ ability to demand better work.

The Auteur theory seduced the independent film world from the start. Here, where the screenwriter’s contribution might’ve carried more weight, young directors succumb to a false imperative to direct and write their films, a la Bergman. But without a true writer’s sense of tragedy or comedy, these writer-directors (Tarantino, Smith, Jonze) are left with little but their own fandom impulses to display personal cult bonafides. Others simply puzzle up their narratives (Mulholland Drive, Memento, Exotica!…), using alleged formal innovation to disguise lack of content. Hollywood is a long, long way from Henry Hathaway, Henry King, Jacques Tourneur, Joseph H. Lewis, Don Siegel, Anthony Mann, ad infinitum it once seemed….

What is there left in this culture that can be built upon? Who is there to build it? I’m glad you asked.

Today a kid is drafted into extracurricular activities by boomer parents who can’t stand the idea of letting him or her roam around in this world that they made. After WWII when the sexes got back together and everyone was having kids, American culture was kid-friendly. You rode your bike anywhere you wanted so long as you got home by dinner. Other adults, parents themselves, would look out for you if you got near trouble. Now with parent or parents working, a kid’s time is booked up to keep him occupied and supervised until evening. Individual sports are becoming more common than team sports for boys, while girls are now pushed into team sports courtesy the Title IX diktat (volleyball scholarships crowd out formerly abiding wrestling program budgets).

The web, television, videogames and cell-phones are ubiquitous, and the post-scarcity fastfood obesity apocalypse is accommodated by the skate/hip hop fashion world of XXXXL sizes and the faux-biker pseud-culture of tattooed tubboes with fu manchus. In early 90s NBA-style, the older players hid balding pates by shaving their heads and bluffed the rookies into shaving off their own full heads of hair. The NBA young eventually turned the tables. There are always style options for a new youth culture, though even I hesitate to observe that hotpants and afros are the most obvious one for the NBA (sure enough, Madison Avenue’s there already). Today MTV’s music videos are larded with the fantasies of fat rappers, while its reality shows are stocked with the ripped abs and bared midriffs of model American youth. (These docs never show you the three hundred stomach crunches a day these poor desperate bastards perform–that might be too real, like a Warhol film.)

Boys skate, game or surf the web for porn; girls play soccer or politic amongst themselves. There’s plenty of fan interest in music and film but it has been failing to develop beyond simple consumer response or artless careerism. The sex-roles that rise from skate culture, hip hop, videogames, girl-world, Maxim, Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and MTV are the mook and the model, or the player and the whore. Girls may get something out of these roles, but at base they float the male fantasy that the dude-as-slob can get the hot chick in heels. This is culture, not life of course, but where might a youth-style go from here? The rainbow tribe bubbleheads occupy the more naturally androgynous hippie option, the snobs are still wearing black, and even cheerleaders have tattoos.

There will be some new equilibrium that settles around these challenges to the classic cultural venues from the web, videogames, and corporate oversell but it can’t be seen yet. But one can see already that the mass markets, the passive ubiquity of the web, and the aggressive ubiquity of the cell-phone has prompted a localist reaction that champions artisanship, literature, homemade culture, and lost media like 78 Victrolas, PXL-2000 cameras and 8-track cartridges.

Females are still evolving under new pressures and opportunities. When sex, the orb around which the female psyche’s one abiding question revolves, is decoupled from reproduction as it has been since the pill was introduced in 1960, then new things begin to happen:

1) That existential question shatters into dozens of leading questionlets about mere sucking and fucking, fueled now with venal status-seeking consumer agitation,

2) Girls’ behavior to each other gets more contentious, and this anxiety might be expected to prove better for art than the traditional female code, or more recent willed solidarities,

3) And fashion, once mere social coloration, becomes instead an index of this new hysteria. When such hysterical energy is ideologized, as most everything is in this world of college grads, female artists are wont to overshoot their mark yielding work that loudly postures politically but won’t declare its art. (Art is not a hammer; a hammer is a hammer.)

Male culture seems to be either in denial about its nature (Emo, Pagan, Rave) or wallowing in it (the rest of ‘em). New options for females tend to allow males to sink into their worst impulses (see ghetto social breakdown or Maxim for this in extremis). Only the male board-sport culture seems to be creative within this confusion. After the U.S. team swept the Olympic Halfpipe event, silver medallist Danny Kass was breathlessly prompted by NBC to describe what he expected from his moment on the podium and he responded with pitch-perfect new-male bravado, “I guess I’ll try to cry.”

Women’s tennis might be the most interesting female subculture at the moment. Beginning with Martina Hingis it’s burst into a new upgrade. The Williams sisters are plenty girlish, even as they unload a wild new power onto the game. Those following are less flamboyant and all business for this new game having been secured. (The soft-focus Kournikova game never arrived.) Women’s figure skating is too trapped inside its aestheticized erotic fantasy world to break out into anything new (back-flips, etc., are illegal). Reigning billiards champ Jeanette Lee is literally the Frida Kahlo of the pool table and therefore unfortunately probably too like a forbidding Pain Goddess to become a standard for young girls. The young black women lately raging through MTV’s reality programming (Real World, Road Rules) may mean more than Richter scale abuse, or maybe it’s just racist misogyny at MTV.

But the young must work in and around a male dementia of beer ads, “Jackass,” Emo, Metal, Anime, WWF, games, gangsta-rap, Hefner, Guccione, and Flynt, and a female dementia of Alanis Morissette, Mariah, Melissa Etheridge, Enya, Eve Ensler, Louise Erdrich, Lifetime, Le Tigre, and Sex in the City. And so many of the young attend college now that urban bohemias no longer collect idiosyncratic rule-breaking drop-outs so much as they endure annual graduating classes of operators who have already interned halfway up the bowels of the Man. Recent American low-rent drop-out bohemias in Williamsburg, the lower eastside, Wicker Park, Silver Lake, and the Mission were set upon and consumed by dot.com yuppies, design students, starter execs and trust-fund babies as if by swarms of locusts.

We can cheer ourselves by supposing that the worse it all gets the greater the opportunity for some 21st Century Elvis. But can these rookies hit the efus pitch?

When Norman O. Brown wrote Life Against Death in the fifties he was trying to redeem the narrow protocols of Marx and Philosophy by insisting they contend with Freud. This he did under the pressure of an American culture unnaturally coherent due to the collective effects of the Depression and the War. But with the sudden de-mobilization that followed WWII we got a real revolution, though it did not come wearing the clothes that frustrated intellectuals expected. The GI Bill (1944) began the destruction of in loco parentis discipline at colleges via the horde of smoking-fucking-killing jarheads come to learn, and the boom in suburban life began to let the air out of the old urban tribal patterns.

Brown’s book remains important, but today his subtext of sexual frustration is of course dated. His End of Repression that frees Life to become as Play, became co-ed Hillary’s search for more ecstatic modes of living and Charles Manson’s free-love/creepy crawl a long time ago. Today we stand in the ruins of real existing Liberation, where, as Camille Paglia has noted, regression rather than repression seems the greater threat. Post-war Academic rebels took one look at Stalin and turned inward. They sought to rationalize and neuter sex so as to have a lot of it. So now an ideologized school nurse pushes safe sex to sixth graders. A century after Gauguin, radicals still dreamt of an escape from Judeo-Christian strictures. Instead they merely laid groundwork for the thorough commercialization of now de-contextualized sex in popular culture. Because, of course, to the trusty teenage mind (the male one anyway) this all translates as porn and blow-jobs all around! And there was nothing, NOTHING!, Madison Avenue more desired than the cultural license to jack directly into the factory-wired Pavlovian sex drive of its subjects.

The young remain victims of a dementia locked into our culture by the continuing demographic power of the baby boom. Brown was not entirely wrong, but his subtle turn was bested in the real world of the sixties boomers by scoundrels like Margaret Mead and Alfred Kinsey. These two have recently been unmasked as having in the main, simply projected their own sexual self-loathing out onto the naturally occurring social equilibrium of the less pretentious–those de-mobed out of war into adulthood who raised the many children of this baby boom out of a kind of inspired relief that the killing was over. Mead and Kinsey, et al., would catch the zeitgeist of these children—a new class, one insulated from the imperatives of war and privation, but lost in an accelerating virtual world of pop culture and pop philosophy, and looking for a new criteria in which to best their parents (today all but officially referred to as “The Greatest Generation”).

Much was wrecked, but the radicals still lost because American culture is a moving target; it is alive, reparative and evolving. In a richer musical culture teenagers in their garages cooked up amazing music. Today it’s more likely to take twenty-somethings to have a shot at that. But that was the case twenty-five years ago with punk rock too, despite all its romantic talk of The Kids. For film, the low overhead of digital home computer post-production and the proliferation of cable and satellite outlets plus internet dispersion bodes well for a renaissance. And DV has already opened up the film festival snobs to video productions they’d have rejected out of hand just five years ago.

Radio and the major record labels ignored punk when the Ramones began in the mid-seventies and throughout the eighties. Nirvana’s breakthrough in 1991 was in no small part due to the arrival in Hollywood of Sony, BMG, and Matsushita—foreign capital and personnel from smaller national markets that had long made popular successes of American as well as British punk music. Today, after decades of corporate consolidation the market seems to be saying we’re due for a period of divestment if not actual trust-busting. (AOL bought Time-Warner just a year and a half ago and now separated out, AOL’s market value is less than zero.) If the markets and/or feds turn on these culture cartels (AOL/Time-Warner, Vivendi Universal, Disney-ABC, Viacom-CBS, News Corp-Fox, Sony, and Bertelsmann) it won’t be pretty; it’ll be beautiful. The radio/concert promotions behemoth Clear Channel SFX is the likely first target of any government action. They have more clout and fewer friends. (AOL/Time-Warner, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann, and Clear Channel SFX have each ousted a COO, CEO, or Chairman recently.)

The market is squeezing waste from the bloated entertainment sector, and man, ain’t there a lot of it! This squeeze is from all directions: from Shareholders to pirates, from the Web to the War, from Artists demands to Audience rejection. The revenue effects of format revolutions (CD, Video, DVD, cable, satellites) and a mini-baby boom which juiced the teen pop and teen film markets led to outsized profit expectations which amplify the present despair. There is probably one more format change left for both film and music before its all delivered by wire or satellite. From that point the economics will be more easily rationalized: rewards paid out on merit after the fact rather than in upfront advances, which lead to trying to make killings on new talent to pay for the bath they take on veteran talent (Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen…).
In the end these corporations will have to radically restructure themselves to cut the costs of developing, producing and delivering music and film. The large corporations that bought into Hollywood over the last twenty years have made half-hearted attempts before, but that was about debt service after the purchase. Now it’s about survival: whether Wall Street judges the entertainment industry as something worth holding. And money moves faster than ever. Wall Street’s (and Bakunin’s) “creative destruction” never sounded more rockin’! Any resulting opening of the culture structures will beg for new musicians and filmmakers with better to offer. We’ll then know if we still have it in us.

©2002 Joe Carducci

Photo collage of (and by) Geologist and Deacon

DIVERS DOWN
Animal Collective’s Geologist and Deacon share the scuba experience with Morgan V. Lebus

Arthur: When and where were these photos taken?
Deacon: We went diving off the east side of Marathon Key in Herman’s Hole. The visibility underwater was crystal. Herman is a very large moray eel who no longer lives in his hole–he’s relocated to an aquarium in Miami.

Isn’t scuba diving expensive?
Deacon: The toughest part is getting certified, which costs about $500. I was lucky enough to have a dive master friend who certified me for free. The most expensive part of scuba diving is the travel. You can dive almost anywhere, but unless you’re pretty gung ho about it, diving in the local quarry is less than choice. You want to go somewhere that has a a tropical vibe, with lots of reef life and clear waters. Once you’re there, a full day of diving with boat and and gear rental will run less than $100.
Geologist: While this is true, if you are into cold water diving, there are some good lake spots in New England. I’ve never done any cold water dives because you need to buy a dry-suit.

Your most fascinating underwater find?
Deacon: It’s all fascinating: scuba diving is the best drug ever. My first open water dive (off a boat, away from the shore) was in South Carolina. The visibility was low and we didn’t see much more than a few barrucada and some flounder (a flat bottom feeder fish with both eyes on one side of its head). On the way up the surface I couldn’t see the bottom or the surface but off in front of me about fifteen feet away was a jellyfish. A very simple translucent specimen, but I could’ve watched sway it for hours.
Geologist: In the Gulf of California I went diving off the coast of an island that was home to a sea lion colony. The pups had just been born and they were extremely curious. I also saw a seahorse there—they’re pretty rare. My big dream though, is to see whale sharks, mantas, leafy sea dragons, and a school of hammerhead.

If you could dive anywhere on earth, where would it be?
Geologist: The arctic or antarctic. The way the light filters through the ice is supposed to be amazing. I´d also like to dive in the Andamen sea off the coast of Thailand, but further north, closer to Burma.
Deacon: I think for me it is more a matter of when. Coral is being damaged at an intense rate and a lot of marine life is gone. I imagine that diving 100 years ago would have been a dramatically different experience, regardless of where you did it.

Your deepest dive, ever?
Deacon: South Carolina at about 68 feet down.
Geologist: Deep dives are not necessarily the best because your bottom time is extremely limited. With a normal tank rig you get about 15 minutes of dive time at 90 feet before you have to to a shallower depth and decompress. However, a 30-foot dive can have amazing stuff as well and your dive can be an hour long. My deepest was just above 100. The limit was 90 feet but it was a wall dive—the sea floor was about 65 feet and it stretches out from the island and then you reach the edge and the wall drops 6,000 feet! We swam over the edge and dropped to 90 feet and viewed the wall along our side. It’s an amazing feeling to look down and see nothing but darkness and try to comprehend the bottom being 6,000 feet below you.

REVIEWS BY C and D

C: I feel dutybound to advise you that we shall be reviewing many records today that have shall we say significantly progressive overtones.
D: It should be no problem. I came prepared. [smiles mischievously] With beer.

Jana Hunter
Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom
(Gnomonsong)
D: This is Cat Power covering Patsy Cline. After a plate of lasagna.
C: Are you sure?
D: I cannot be sure, but I feel it to be true. I am trusting my intuition. My blink-of-an-eye insight.
C: Looks like you got something in your eye. This is Jana Hunter, from Houston, Texas.
D: The home of Mike Jones?
C: The same.
D: I see. What would you call this?
C: I dunno. Downbeat lo-fi folk music with a touch of glum? But it’s more lonesome than depressing, and she tries a lot of different approaches in arrangement, texture and just general aesthetic.
D: There is definitely a deep longing at work here.
C: The album title hints at a sense of bleak but playful humor—you know the way it mimics doom metal phrasing, half believing it, getting off on how suited to these times this exaggerated language is becoming, what with all the war, pestilence and natural disaster. But sonically this is obviously not High on Fire, so you get a little wink there. Her guitar lines can descend towards doomland like Sabbath.
D: Sometimes I see where she gets the title from…

Vashti Bunyan
Lookaftering
(DiCristina)
D: Spectacularly beautiful.
C: Quiet English folk artist who made a single, slightly psychedelic album in 1970 with various Incredible String Band personnel and so on, and was then lost to the world. Championed by Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective and Four Tet, who’ve all collaborated with her during the internet era. I think some of them are on this but you just spilled your beer on the notes from the record publicist.
D: Sorry!
C: Anyways, her first album was re-released last year and here’s the follow-up. Next album is scheduled for 2037.
D: She sounds the same as last time. There’s an almost Burt Bacharach-like feel to this.
C: Yeah the orchestral hook is sweet.
D: They’re very shy, mellowcholic songs.
C: There’s more piano than one might expect. Very pretty, very modest. Quite a comeback, eh?
D: She saved a little…

M.O.T.O.
Raw Power
(Criminal IQ)
D: [instantly] I like this band. Make it louder!
C: [turning it up] Andrew W.K. meets Guided by Voices: power-pop played with Marshalls.
D: A melodic Fear. Big influence. [increasingly ecstatic] Perfect music for smart hooligans! You can quote me.
C: I am.
D: “Let’s Nail it to the Moon” is like Blondie’s first record. And “Spend the Night On Me” is full-on Lazy Cowgirls.
C: [quizzical look]
D: Aha, you don’t like them, but they have mighty hooks! “Teenage Frankenstein” is righteous rock, I’m telling you.
C: Who on earth would call their record Raw Power? At first you think they don’t know what they’re doing, then you think they’re just stupidly audacious, then you find out they’ve been around since like 1988 and so it’s just a great reverse inverse record-geek joke.
D: I never heard of M.O.T.O. But they have heard of themselves. They are their biggest fans. They’re like, ‘This is our Raw Power.’ And they’re right: it’s two giant balls on fire!
C: [looking at sleeve photo of mixing board] Notice that everything’s recorded at level Infinity. [calculating] The singer must be like 40 years old. Perhaps he is a schoolteacher too…
D: “Flipping You Off With Every Finger That I Have” is song title of the decade.
C: A good ol’ American fistfight. Those don’t happen too much anymore. What if fighting was in? I don’t mean Fight Club. But you know, hipsters going to other areas of town to get drunk and fight in public.
D: [repeating lyrics] “The moon in the sky/Kicks the ass/of the stars/they all fade.” This is true. Every song has a certain drunk-at-midnight, howling-at-the-moon-in-the-bar-parking-lot anthemic quality.
C: Their label has the best name in recent memory: Criminal IQ.
D: [confiding] It is said that there is a certain IQ where anyone who has it will eventually commit a crime. It’s like 116 or 115 or something.
C: Interesting. [listening to “Girl Inhale”] Anyway, this is an homage to the Beatles tune “Girl” that is so obvious it’s great. And is so great because it’s so obvious. It’s the folk tradition: this is how songs used to change over generations. The keyboard solo is a rip of “In My Life.” I wonder if every song is like that and we only are catching the most obvious ones.
D: I am saluting the mighty M.O.T.O. with every finger of my hand.

Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up
(Numero Group)
C: Another start-to-finish classic from one of America’s very finest record labels, the Numero Group out of Chicago.
D: They are number one!
C: This one is a collection of singles recorded between 1960 and 1980 in Belize. Amazing stuff, lots of covers of American soul hits, some reggae stuff too, all infused with this special feel. There’s a warmth—an ease—that’s absolutely seductive. You can just get glimpses of their accent.
D: [repeating lyric] “You can’t go half way, you got to go all the way/to have all my love.” Song of the third date.
C: Numero Group specialize in upending every notion you have that there is, or has ever been, a meritocracy in pop. They prove that human achievement on this planet is continuous and happens wherever people have time on their hands. It does not take place in the easily circumscribed times and places and sequences that VH1 or self-appointed music experts like ourselves—
D: [Snorts, beer comes out of nose]
C: —like to place it in. The energy is always-there-everywhere, it’s just a matter of whether you’ve found out about it yet. Remember M.O.T.O.? They’ve been going since 1988, they’re in our own country, and we only just found out about them. Think what’s been going on in other countries for decades! We don’t know anything! Admitting ignorance is the first step towards enlightenment.
D: [definitively] Numero Group are international cargo crate diggers of the first order. They should be awarded United Nations medals of honors for service to mankind.
C: Okay, time for a snack. [Offering a jar of tiny pickles from Gelson’s] Tiny pickle?
D: That’s what she said. Wait a second! That’s not what I meant.

Choubi Choubi! Folk & Pop Sounds From Iraq
(Sublime Frequencies)
C: Songs from our musically oriented friends in Iraq, much of it recorded in the Sadaam Hussein era.
D: I like this! You know, maybe we wouldn’t bomb them if we listened to their music.
C: Sublime Frequencies, who were spotlighted last issue in Arthur, also deserve special recognition and financial reward for service to humanity.
D: [looking at sleeve] It says here that this song, “They Taught Me,” is in the style of “1970’s Socialist Folk-Rock.”
C: Very helpful, D. Now, please pass the shisha.
D: [listening] This one sounds groovy… I am at a loss for words—
C: But not at a loss for beer—
D: [glares] Silence in the lower ranks!
C: It turns out that my favorite is the “Choubi” style, which sounds very Indian movie soundtrack to my untrained ears: odd rhythm, acoustic string instruments, orchestral strings, a woman ululating with a choir.
[listening to track 5] Is this one called “bee attack”?
C: No. Although there is an instrument being used called, which is Arabic for “wasp.” By the way, it says here on the sleeve that music was regarded as very important by Sadaam Hussein: he apparently called musicians the “seventh division” of his forces. But musicians themselves are not really highly regarded in Iraq. They aren’t really stars. Professional musicians are usually outsiders and outcasts, who play weddings and parties and illicit nightclubs, a recording is made to keep the artist going between gigs… gigs as income, recordings as low priority… songs are immediately public domained and any popular, locally pressed recordings are pirated… Is the music better or worse for existing in this way? I dunno. If you were to judge American music solely on the basis of each year’s 20 best selling albums, you wouldn’t say our system is outputting much to speak of. Could it be that music is worse in a corporation-ruled market system than in a dictatorship with zero intellectual property laws? If you were a musician and you’re being pirated and you’re not getting songwriting royalties and nobody is getting rich off your labor—stall merchants were just getting by, selling tapes, and in the process getting your name out there—would you care about piracy? You might be pissed off a little, but then again, chances are you built on what was there before you too. And anyways, you’re doing fine.
D: I would like to drink to this and swivel my hips. Generally just do that thing.
C: I don’t think you could get in a bar fight to this.
D: Or a war.

Radio Pyonggyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom
(Sublime Frequencies)
C: Paging Mike Patton, please come to the Lost & Found. We have your Mr. Bungle demo. But seriously: this is a whole record of North Korean stuff: “field recordings, television/radio intercepts and live performances” from 1995-1998. Album two in Sublime Frequencies’ Axis of Evil collection. I guess Iran will be next.
D: There is something special here but I think it takes a certain mind to appreciate it. [smiling] Which I have.
C: I dunno, this is a bit too schmaltzy for me. Where’s the funk? Sounds like that shitty Thai pop you hear sometimes. In the interest of peace between nations, I want to get to this but I can’t.
D: [musing] How can we hate them when they’re so awesome?

Residual Echoes
Phoenician Flu and Ancient Ocean
(Holy Mountain)
D: [explodes] Whoa! WHOA!!!! What have you let into this place?
C: This band almost caused a riot at Arthurfest when they played the first day downstairs in the theater. Socks were blown off. Heads were on their cel phones telling people to get over here NOW.
D: I can hear why. WHOA. Fuck me, this is some full-on majestic streetwalking cheetah thruster guitar rock in Satty-like collage. Man!
C: Year they’re like cousins to the Comets on Fire bros, spiritually speaking.
D: Another strike force from Santa Cruz!?!
C: It’s a question that needs an answer: What exactly is going on up there in the banana slug republic to generate this kind of Hawkwind power gazer goner stuff? I can hear some Dead Meadow blisswork bursts in there too—and Crazy Horse search-soling as well. And Acid Mothers Temple yawning-sound journeying, heavy Bonzo drumming. Amazing.

Lightning Bolt
Hyper Magic Mountain
(Load)
C: New riff-blat super-attack from the Providence, Rhode Island artcore guitar-drums power duo.
D: The cover art matches at least the first eight seconds.
C: [reading sleeve] “Humans chill out! There is no back-up planet!”
D: Cathartic art attack. They must be a ball to see live.
C: They have some definite hits here., like track 2, “Captain Caveman.” Reminds me of Unsane, Big Black, Helmet, Killdozer, Slayer: everything on that label Amphetamine Reptile used to sound like this. I guess that sound went pretty mainstream with more ink and noserings but there was always some infant-mind tantrum rapping on top of it. But this is more like the original stuff to me, more imaginative and nature-loving, and, as they say, “mastered for metal loudness.” You gotta dig the lyrics: “Health is all the wealth I need/birds and squirrels and bees and trees/all the things that ride the breeze/money makes the world go round/drags it down and burns it out/I am the caveman/I am the timebomb…”
D: Time for another beer. I’ll be in the fistfight in the other room.

We Are Wolves
Non-Stop Je Te Plie En Deux
(Fat Possum)
C: Another band with a wolf-related name. From Canada. They are Canadian wolves: hear them howl.
D: [Returning with two newly opened beers in hand, enthusiastic] I like this! It sounds like what doing really good coke feels like.
C: Um. I was gonna say these guys sound like it what I had hoped ARE Weapons or that second Faint album would sound like but that’s damning with pretty faint praise.
D: It’s almost like the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” Or Devo, even.
C: An agitated, slightly angry Devo. Or Fat Possum’s own gonzoid Bob Log III: churning stuff, guitar and vocals set to high-distort.
D: Canadians freaking out with a drum machine.

Boards of Canada
the campfire headphase
(Warp)
C: We are surely not the first people to say this but: bored of Canada. Dull down-tempo, melody-free, quasi-postrock beats for snoreheads. I’m sure they’re perfectly serious about what they’re doing but it all says soulless doom to me.
D: They need to move to Santa Cruz as soon as possible.

Danger Doom: The Mouse & the Mask
MF Doom & Dangermouse
(Epitaph)
C: MF Doom all over this doing funny, smart stuff. [singing along] “His name is Doom, they wonder just who is he…” And Ghostface is on here still rhyming like he’s got a number one album out.
D: The beats are knee-deep Dre-Tang. And the story-sketches are ticklish. [imitating] “East-sigh-hide.” Hip-hop album of the year, no question.

Fiery Furnaces
Rehearsing My Choir
(Rough Trade)
C: Fiery Furnaces one-upping Danger Doom, doing an album-length story thing. And no, that’s not Larry Bud Melman, that’s Eleanor and Matt Friedberger’s grandmother Olga Sarantas.
D: If that’s really her name.
C: It’s a family art project. You see, the Furnaces have the family values everyone else has abandoned. The family that records together stays together, D.
D: It’s a Friedberger Family Affair. It’s also obviously beautiful but I can’t tell you too much about it. I can tell you about some other things.
C: We all know that without a steady beat you are lost in the wilderness.
D: It’s true, I have to admit.
C: So you’ll like the disco hit here. And
D: Best dance song this year not made by the Juan Maclean!
C: My favorite other part of the album is when Eleanor sings, “Once upon a time there were two Kevins,” and Olga harrumphs, “You mean two jerks!” Perfect. Everyone loves feisty old women who take a stand. It’s a cool album—a record you actually have to sit and pay attention to, and you actually enjoy doing that for once because the music is unpredictable but never trying, there’s interplay between distinctive voices, the lyrics are fantastically evocative and funny, and of course there’s Eleanor.
D: Obviously a work of advanced idiosyncratic genii. Their fourth in a row. Unbelievable!

Van der Graaf Generator
Pawn Hearts
H to He Who am the Only One
The least we can do is wave to each other
(EMI)
C: Speaking of idiosyncratic genius: here’s three reissues of prime Van der Graaf Generator from 1970-1.
D: You warned me of the coming of the progressive rock, but…! [smiling] I can tell you one thing: we’re not in M.O.T.O. anymore, Kansas.
C: Totally visionary, harsh and beautiful stuff that never gets insulting or hairy dippy. They went for it.
D: They were always like the single prog band you were allowed like if you were punk, because Johnny Rotten mentioned them in interviews. Which meant it was approved with a capital A with a circle round it.
C: How great and defiantly, proudly varied Johnny’s taste was: he was talking Beefheart, VDGG, Can, dub reggae while constructing the snide glam that we call punk rock. It shows. Pete Hammill’s voice here goes all the way out to a sneer or cry in the same way that Johnny would eeenunnnnceeeaate. [thoughtfully] You could argue that punk was exciting to the degree that its makers allowed in something musically beyond the Ramones… That’s why of all the so-called punk rock to follow in the wake of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, almost the only good stuff came through SST, where the bands were extremely open-valved. Black Flag listened to King Crimson and the Grateful Dead, fer crissakes.

Unknown Instructors
The Way Things Work
(Smog Veil)
C: Speaking of SST: Zappa-essque California collab improv between vets George Hurley, Mike Watt and Joe Baiza and Dan McGuire. Baiza works out some knots on the guitar, given jamspace by minutemen/fIRESHOSErs Hurley & Watt with McGuire on the mircophone spouting the observational storytelling. “Metaphors unfurling… justice contaminated by sentiment!/shutting the drapes/I imbibe on quintessence from the skulls of old masters.”
D: It’s not SST 1986 but it’s close. And that means it’s very good.

Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom
The Days of Mars
(DFA/astralwerks)
D: [leaning back] And now, we journey deep into the heart of the Moog analog synthesizer and its universe of possibilities. Could this be Cluster? Tangerine Dream?
C: It’s actually a male-female duo—two visual artists who make music together too. They are two Americans alive in Berlin. [thinking] You know, I would like to be an American living in Berlin right now…Whoa: we are three minutes into the first track and it keeps getting louder.
D: Yes. It’s beautiful and hypnotic and changes slowly but when it does… Wow… [eyes closed, smiling]

REVIEWS BY C and D

Ween
Shinola Volume 1
(Chocodog/ween.com)
C: Ween, the house band of Arthur.
D: Not that they’d ever come to our house.
C: Coming through with an album of outtakes. But it doesn’t—
D: [singing along to opening track “Good on the Bun”] “Tastes! Tastes! Tastes good on the bun! Tastes! Good on the bun! Tastesssss…”
C: Another great Ween album. I mean, this is just a guide vocal, and a Miami bass drum pattern and the Deaner wanking away.
D: And we wouldn’t want it any other way.
C: Once I was talking to the singer of a band who shall remain nameless who went on tour opening for Ween. All the people couldn’t wait til Ween came on, and when they played a 20-minute version of “Push the Little Daisies,” people were in tears, just losing it. That’s when he realized his band was never going to make it.
D: Which is a terrible thing to realize.
C: [listening to “Boys’ Club”] “You can talk of the future/you can talk of the past/you can go find yourself a nice piece of ass”: What is this, a jingle for the Catholic Church? Amazing. And “Israel” is a Jersey Jew, perfunctorily giving a benediction, backed by the greasiest Sopranos saxophone possible…
D: It’s a one-man bar band at a bar mitzvah—
C: He just pressed the “pan flute” button on the Korg.
D: The cheese is frying on this one, that’s for sure.
C: I heard someone say these guys are one step removed from Weird Al—
D: Totally ridiculous.
C: Weird Al changes the words to popular songs. Ween write the best songs all of your favorite bands should’ve written. That’s a big difference, bro. “Gabrielle” is total Thin Lizzy action—
D: [spilling beer, exclaiming] Thinner Lizzy!
C: Please, D, contain yourself.
D: Like you’ve never spilled a beer! [muttering] So arrogant!
C: [continuing] And “The Rift,” which I think is “Roses Are Free” slowed down—is like the worst slash greatest Styx song possible. “I am the commander of time/in my vessel of god/I go through the rift/to the palace of ice … we may not come back from the palace of ice/because the rift is a door”—it’s prog written by the guy who got held back in eighth grade. I know I’m not saying anything new here but they’re the closest thing we have to Zappa, sending up everything they love, without mercy. These guys are a national treasure. And like Zappa, just as scatologically obsessive.
D: Pass the Shinola, bro!

Shel Silverstein
The Best of Shel Silverstein
(Columbia/Legacy)
C: Speaking of national treasures, here’s a compilation of stuff by Shel Silverstein.
D: I must confess, I do not know him.
C: Sure you do. He wrote Where the Sidewalk Ends and Light in the Attic, which is like required reading for the young and intelligent. Funny poetry for kids, he does these hyperdramatic readings of them here—
D: Sounds like Joe Cocker’s creepy uncle—without his pants on.
C: Plus, he wrote story-songs like “Cover of the Rolling Stone” and “A Boy Called Sue”—
D: I know that one, of course—
C: —and then there’s tracks like this “I Got Stoned and Missed It” and this one by Dr. Hook, the orgy ode “Freakin’ at the Freakers’ Ball.” [reciting lyrics] “Everybody’s kissing each other/brother with sister, son with mother/smear my body up with butter/take me to the freakers’ ball/pass that roach please/and pour that wine/I’ll kiss yours and you’ll kiss mine…”
D: Sounds like a pretty good time at the freakers’ ball.
C: “Well all the fags and the dykes/they are boogieing together/the leather freaks are dressed in all kinds of leather/The greatest of the sadists/and the masochists too/are screaming, ‘please hit me/and I’ll hit you’”… A funny guy into music, drugs, storytelling and kink—who drew gag cartoons for Playboy? He must’ve been the most popular dude alive in the ‘70s…
D: And looking at these pictures of him, I bet—
C: I know. Total human bonobo.

Devendra Banhart
Crippled Crow
(Beggars Banquet)
C: Devendra has a lot more hair on his head than Shel, but I think there’s a certain similarity in sensibility. Good times, weird times, you know he’s had his share.
D: He knows where the sidewalk ends.
C: So this is Devendra stretching it out in studio splendor, playing solo, playing with a band, playing a ton of acoustic guitar and piano songs. In English, in Spanish, in jest, in all seriousness, in duet…
D: [listening to “Now That I Know”] In the style of St. Nick Drake.
C: Such a range on the album as a whole, you can hear it in just the first five songs [out of the album’s 22]: whispers, tropicalia, a gentle piano protest lullaby, dreamytime-in-the-hash-den psychedelic-folk…
D: These songs… [listening to “Mama Wolf”] Every syllable is soothing, which is not something you hear done that often anymore. [seriously] Listen to me: Something magical is going on here.
C: Check out the singing, probably the best he’s ever done: that’s a guy who’s going for it in a heavy, trembling way—without losing it. He didn’t used to be able to sing like that. Incredible. And the lyrics, “Yeah when they come over the mountains/we’ll run yeah we’ll run right round them/we don’t have no guns/no we don’t have any weapons/just our cornmeal, and our children…”
D: I’m joining Devendra’s unarmed forces.

Silver Jews
Tanglewood Numbers
(Drag City)
D: [grimacing after a few seconds of the first song] I think I’m going to need three more beers. Immediately.
C: Don’t worry, I’ve got this one covered. [pulls out sheet of paper, clears voice] And to think this man formerly claimed he was nearly “hospitalized for approaching perfection”! Whatever D.C. Berman’s been smoking, his voice is shot. He once had a stentorian authority on par with Kristofferson and Robert Frost, now it’s lost. This might be a mere symptom of his decline —
D: Or the need for throat-coat tea and a personal trainer.
C: —or at least to mix the vocals up front—
D: Maybe he’s been freaking a bit too much at the freakers’ ball?
C: —but it dovetails with another problem, which is that since he is not a performing artist, he has never learned how to improve his craft by translating it live to an audience.
D: Which doesn’t help when it comes to making a record.
C: He now sounds as if he’s reading from a script rather than singing songs. His lyrics are great though, maybe as good as ever, like this choice couplet from “Sleeping Is the Only Love”: “I had this friend named Marc with a c / his sister was like the heat coming off the back of an old TV” altho’ his never ending quest for the ultimate bohunk cliche—”I’m getting back into getting back into you”—can be a little trying. There are a couple nice guitar moments, probably attributable to the Malk—
D: Who?
C: Steve Malkmus from Pavement, who’s on this album. [continuing] Otherwise the music is a detour-round-this junction of indie and bar band. Oh waitaminute, the seven-minute “The Farmer’s Hotel” is a sprawling gothic masterpiece: Breece D’J Pancake meets Stephen King meets Rick Brautigan in, apparently, a pernicious country inn where “there was no air of slumber/ there doors they had no numbers”…call it an analogue to being a Silver Jews fan: you can check in but you can never check out.

Sinead O’Connor
Throw Down Your Arms
(Sanctuary)
C: Sinead does an album of extremely faithful reggae covers, recorded in Kingston with Sly & Robbie. It had to happen.
D: [stroking chin, deep in thought] I believe Sinead was the first celebrity I’d ever heard of who checked herself into a rehab center for addiction to that demon weed. Sometime in the mid-‘90s, it was.
C: And didn’t she retire from the music industry a couple of years ago? So this is an interesting turn of events.
D: The main question is whether she has grown the dreads or not. The answer, thank Jah, would appear to be no.
C: I gotta say combining the stridency of the Irish with the righteousness of the Jamaican reggae artist doesn’t seem like the best strategy, and most of this album is the dull hybrid I feared it would be: too serious, too austere. Missing is the sense of playfulness.
D: She is just doing the songs she wants to do, without regard for what anyone else thinks.
C: Respect to her for that. It is weird to hear a woman with her range do songs that offer her so little room to exercise her pipes. You get the feeling that these are songs that she’s sung along to a thousand times…the versions are so faithful, at this point, she’s more of a mimic than an interpreter.
D: I think as usual you are being too hard. If you were sitting there and a girl across from you started playing “Downpressor Man” on acoustic guitar and singing, it’d be all over.
C: Her take on Lee Perry’s seduction ballad “Curly Locks” is certainly seductive.
D: And “Untold Stories.” And “Vampire.” Come on, man!
C: I’m just saying, when Sinead does an album of Ween covers, then we’ll really be getting somewhere.

Buckwheat Zydeco ils sont partis band
100% Fortified Zydeco
(Shout! Factory)
D: I am not what you would call an expert exactly, but I do not detect too much zydeco here.
C: It is pretty generic—I keep seeing John Belushi doing backflips down the center aisle. An authentic practitioner shouldn’t be caught delivering this stuff. Then again if I had an alligator po’ boy and a cup of Dixie Beer in my hand, I might have a different opinion.

Terry Reid
Superlungs
(Astralwerks)
C: The legendary Terry Reid gets a long-overdue compilation. A soul singer more than a rock singer, he came up in the ‘60s at the same time as Steve Marriott, Rod Stewart and all those guys. He’s best known as the guy Jimmy Page asked to front Zeppelin, who had to turn it down cuz of contractual obligations.
D: Doh!
C: They said Plant sang like a woman, and Terry Reid does too. Guess Page knew what he wanted. To paraphrase My Fair Lady,…
D: [singing] Why can’t a man sing more like a woman?
C: In that case, it’s a man singing like a woman singing like a man. In the tradition of Tina Turner and Mavis Staples or Inga Rumpf from German blues rockers Frumpy
D: This guy is a super-rocker. A mod-era master. He fucked it up, though.
C: Not as bad as Dave Mustaine. Better to have Led Zeppelin yelled at you on the street by the local smartcakes than Metallica.
D: [listening to “Stay With Me Baby”] Ian Gillan of Deep Purple totally took from his voice.
C: “Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace” is unbelievable—the propulsive, tuneful, template for Slade, and by extension Oasis.
D: But Liam’s not a soul singer.
C: It’s very Faces. “Tinker Taylor” is the same thing. Word to the Djs out there: this is the only album you need to keep the dance party going…

The 88
Over and Over
(Mootron/EMK)
C: Second album from The 88 from around Silver Lake…
D: Ha! That’s L.A. guys doing late-‘60s U.K. vision of California a la the Kinks’ Muswell Hillbillies. I like it. This is MUCH more potent that that Paisley Underground revival stuff that was going down in ’84. Silver Lake, eh?
C: But it’s not just Kinks stuff. That’s a big Elton John roadhouse ballad on here, which they can do cuz that guy can really sing.
D: If you’re going to do this, you better be able to take on El Dorado.
C: [Listening to “You Belong to Me”] Such a good singer, great voice. Too bad about the completely unrepresentative album cover, which doesn’t do them any favors.
D: Surprisingly sophisticated, this shit. It’s like known puzzle pieces being put into a new revised order… Man, if this comes from Silver Lake, this isn’t such a bad area! Maybe I should come by every now and then on a Saturday afternoon to hang out with these guys? Because they’re basically hip-hugging mod-haired Sixties guys, on a mission to pull through the gates of rock. That’s what I am too.
C: …
D: Although I am a bit older.

Flamin’ Groovies
Shake Some Action
(DBK Works/Runt)
C: Weren’t they the band that made rock dangerous again?
D: Yes. This came out in ’73, can it be? They wore white shirts and black tailored suits — they were the best dressed band besides the Band. During the glam period. The good ol teenage rock band but played by some slightly older guys. Critics’ favorites who never had a hit. I think Shake Some Action was their only popular song, though they had plenty more worthy ones that got ignored.
C: [Reading liner notes] “Dave Edmonds, formerly of Love Sculpture, produced.” For garage rock, it’s pretty reedy and thin.
D: But it’s not garage, it’s…well, it was retro even back then. They were going for the high school hop sound. They were the conservatives of rock n roll. Which is not a very conservative thing to be.
C: While you are busy speaking paradoxically, I am reminded of the time I went to a Johnny Rockets with my father and he said “This is exactly what diners were like in the ’50s!”
D: Ah, so you see, retro can be a happy place to be.

Plastic Crimewave
Galactic Zoo Dossier No. 5
(Drag City)
C: New ish of Mr. Crimewave’s completely hand-drawn and hand-lettered magazine, great features as always on everything underground and psychedelic from all eras and levels of obscurity, plus tons of Acid Mothers Temple photos…
D: And best of all, these two CDs of Crimewave picks. This is some primordial freakbeat stuff! The Four O’Clock Balloon, whoever that is, covering Don’t You Need Somebody to Love.
C: It sounds like a live recording from a psychedelic cantina in Baja. I wish someone had the courage to record something like this now, with this trashed up fidelity…
D: [reading from magazine ] This song is from a battle of the bands in Ohio in 1967.
C: You don’t hear about too many battles of the bands these days.
D: This song is called “Pippi Longstocking.” It’s like in Spinal Tap, when the guy says “That’s pretty, what’s it called? ““Lick My Love Pump.” Only this is really ugly and primitive but has a pretty name.

The Time Flys
“Fly”
(Birdman)
C: 90-second Ramones party songs. Four-second solos. One of the dude from The Cuts.
D: Sounds like really early, VERY tuneful punk. Pre-Stooges DMZ without the amps. And like Wire on the drums. Tss-tss-tss.
C: [listening to “Jailbait”] Not just punk—bubblegum, too. 1974. Sweet and their kind. Or closer: Kim Fowley.
D: The mighty Runaways.
C: There should be a track on here called “Paging Rodney Bingenheimer.”
D: [looking at sleeve] Whoa, do you look at the protrusion in the pouch of this punk’s jeans? How do you like his cucumber?
C: More importantly, how does Jimmy???
D: You know what they say: Put your best something forward.

Big Star
In Space
(Rykodisc)
C: Well last issue we had the first Teenage Fanclub album in four years. And so, poetically, here is the first album in 30 years from the band that inspired them…
D: I am almost hesitant to put this on. Big Star were so special, they were Memphis digging London. To me they were always incredibly melancholy, to the degree that you couldn’t bear to listen to the words, it was too much pain. And there were these beautiful melodies and harmonies and then also this deeply layered Memphis beat soul music. That song “Holocaust” on Third/Sister Lovers cannot be listened to. That’s what Chilton must’ve felt after his mother died in the fire. The original drummer and the bass player died like a lot of them did in the ’70s, from heroin. They and Alex Chilton’s old band the Box Tops were criminally ignored just because they were from Memphis, and not from L.A. or New York. Or so they say.
C: Chilton and Jody Stephens, the band’s drummer and other surviving member, have been doing gigs with these two Posies guys form some time, off an on, under the name “Big Star.” But over the last 30 years he never seemed to into doing Big Star records again.
D: [Puts disk in] Well, here goes something.
C: [listens quietly for some time] This is the real deal. If you love Big Star then, you will want this now.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Howl
(Virgin)
C: [after listening to “Ain’t No Easy Way] You’ll never guess who this is.
D: Full-on Led Zeppelin. with the harmonica, slide guitar and the fucking Bonham stomp in the house. [looks at sleeve] Whoa. A double gold star surprise. Before they bored me to death with their one-two chord guitar bullshit, which is good for one song on the first record. But now they come back as the guys who stole the spear of destiny, a full-fledged rock ‘n’ roll monster.
C: It’s a pretty amazing transformation. I guess Spiritualized’s path is what they’re following, headed into gospel and blues stomps.
D: [starts waving hands around enthusiastically] Tav Falco says the blues was a howl before it became a song. People were hollering about their pain, in the kind of land where you hope a train will come through and take you far away. Music…music can be about the EQ, not the IQ. The emotional quotient is what’s important here. Here they display the will to break through the final door, which you have to do to be a good band. What the hell happened? I am floored again, in a good way.

Chris Cunningham
Rubber Johnny short film DVD and image book
(Warp Films)
C: We should let the people know that it’s a four-minute Aphex Twin music video—and a very good one, I’ll admit—with a minute padded to each end to make it a “short film.” For 12 bucks. And the revolting photos on the DVD cover and inside the books are not images from the film. So…
D: It’s Joel Peter Witkin meets Floria Sigismondi, but this stuff is ten times better. All this creepiness comes from this guy Gottfried Helmvein (shouting people with bandages on). It’s just the sort of thing that comes from being a lanky weird kid being permanently confronted by non-lanky weird-in-the-other-way kids. And probably suffering beatings from them.
C: Basically it’s The Elephant Man in a wheelchair shooting lasers out of his hands in time with the music, between snorting lines off a camel’s scrofulous rump. Unbelievable editing. But…yikes.
D: This is the alternate ending of Eraserhead. [thinking] Which it’s kind of like, in another way. They asked Lynch questions, and he always changed the subject. “What about the baby?” “What was that?” “Is it real, or is it not real?” “Did you kill it?” This guy Cunningham likes to leave things open like Lynch did. What are those photos of?
C: [looking at screen] Well, that’s definitely a chihuahua.
D: I think I just dropped my chalupa.

Bjork
the music from Drawing Restraint 9
(One Little Indian)
C: New one from Bjork, the soundtrack to the new film by her bugaboo Matthew Barney, who is at the art museum edge of the New Grower Cinema—
D: I don’t give an ant’s fart about Bjork—
C: Well I adore her, but I gotta say this one might be for collectors only…
D: Always the same thing: Starts low, goes high. Whoa-ohhohhohh-ah! Same trick she’s been doing since the Sugarcubes.
C: She’s barely singing on this one though. Just a lot of very musically simple interludes, a weird curiosity tune with Will Oldham that’s interesting the first time you hear it—
D: Excuse me while I yawn.
C: —and then a lot of grunting and what I guess is a holy man’s tuneless mewling and—
D: To quote Beavis: This sucks!
C: To quote the dad of Lars Ulrich: I would say, delete that.

Saturday Morning With Sid & Marty Krofft DVD
(Rhino)
C: The pilot episodes of seven Sid & Marty Krofft series. Original stoner television—not especially clever but deeply weird. Essential to understanding certain kinds of people. Some of these are pretty lame and kind of unrepresentative of what the series would be like later. But Lidsville and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters are wonderfully bananas and make you wonder how this stuff got on the air. And what were they smoking?
D: Whatever fell out of Sinead’s dreadlocks.

Birds
In the World
(Important)
C: Some 3-D Monsterism going on on the cover here. Good ol’ Peter Fowler.
D: Let me look at that. The Super Furry Animals designer guy scores again!
C: It’s Cotton Casino from Japanese cosmic freakout collective Acid Mothers Temple, with another dude from Iceland. Recorded in Osaka and Oslo.
D: What a package vacation that would be….
C: Yeah, lots of people booking that one. This reminds me a bit of the Boredoms’ latest record, in that it opens with a woman doing a lengthy a capella piece before going into something totally different.
D: Although this isn’t a drum circle in a hurricane.
C: Naturalist psychedelia without special effects: just nature and her voice. Like they recorded it in the nude.
D: I dig this song but it might be one of those over-the-edge things. It’s music that you play after a catastrophe with stuff that’s lying around. The lost souls are still flying around trying to find out what happened to them.
C: Yep, I know that feeling.

August Born
August Born
(Drag City)
C: Another duo collaboration between people at long distances from each other. This is West Coast guitarist-singer Ben Chasny from Six Organs of Admittance and Comets On Fire, in quiet, experimental mode, working with the Japanese guy named L, who was in Ghost at one point and has been involved in other cool stuff through the years.
D: Difficult music.
C: There’s a song here where there’s three melodic lines going along and they shouldn’t work together— they sound so separated—and yet it all works.
D: It’s like tuning your ear to accept unusual signals from the old psychedelic music man up on the mountain, hanging out above the fog clouds with Popul Vuh.

Coco Rosie
Noah’s Ark
(Touch and Go)
C: Pretty much same as the first Coco Rosie record: two gifted American sisters making music box speakeasy music that’s part Billie Holiday homage, part experimental ageless whatsit. Sublime to some, unbearably mannered and pretentious to others. I go back and forth, honestly.
D: I do not enjoy this style of music, but “Beautiful Boys” with Antony is a sad knockout.

Modey Lemon
The Curious City
(Birdman)
D: A facemelting beast machinery soundtrack. Like Suicide, the band.
C: Oneida’s march-thrust crossed with Fiery Furnaces’ unapologetic quirk factor five.
D: With some of the driest singing not by a band called Om.

The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons
(Shout! Factory)
D: Sly & the Family Stone live on television in 1970? A full hour of performance and interview with an extremely nervous David Bowie in 1974? Stevie Wonder in 1970?!? A full disk of Janis Joplin… Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Paul Simon, Jefferson Airplane?
C: Whoa, look at Grace Slick! Her spray-on tan seems to eerily predict Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke. But I would buy this whole thing just for the Sly Stone segment, where, after showing up late—of course—he and his band put on the funkiest bar none live television performance I have ever seen. They make it look effortless. The greatest band of all time, even when Sly has a cold. And when he tells Cavett he writes music in the mirror, well… I won’t ruin it, except to say this DVD is a good argument in favor of television.

Sonny Sharrock
Black Woman
(Water/Runt)
C: Reissue of vintage Sonny Sharrock, a mighty out-there jazz guitarist in the ‘60s. He wanted to play jazz like Coltrane but he couldn’t play a horn cuz of asthma. So he got a guitar. Here he’s with his wife Linda, who’s just singing her soul out. He’s playing these weird drone chord progressions that cloud out into clusters-clots…
D: I couldn’t even begin to find words to try to describe this. When everything is so constricting, you need a place to be where you’re allowed to expand into these sorts of orgasmic explorations. She uses her voice like a hawk. Does anyone dare to sing like this today?
C: Do you know any couple that dares to get this gone in public, today? With this naked go-for-itness? Just mindblowing. Coley says “they were ready to collapse the universe” here in the liner notes.
D: Sounds accurate to me.

Earthless
Sonic Prayer
(Gravity)
D: This is the Kyuss shiznit.
C: Two songs, fortysomething minutes, totally instrumental like a more straightahead Ash Ra Tempel. One song is called “Flower Travlin’ Man,” a homegrower’s nod to the Japanese Sabbath-Zeppelin chopper-riding groop the Flower Travelin’ Band.
D: They’re holding the torch again. New blossoms in the desert…
C: They’re actually from San Diego but I know what you’re saying. They’re jamming it out and they keep going, he just keeps riding that groove—
D: Yeaaaaah. you can run but you can’t hide from the wall of thunder! [thoughtful] I’d like to review this record every month.
C: Who knows? We just might…

REVIEWS BY C and D

Sleater-Kinney
The Woods
(Sub Pop)
D: Before we begin, I would like to say that today I am in the mood to rock.
C: Well, my friend, you have come to the right place.
D: [first song starts, D leaps out of chair immediately] Is this one of those Japanese bands? With a girl?!? Who is this singing?
C: That woman is not a girl—she could show you a thing or two. [dramatic pause] It’s Sleater-Kinney, produced by Dave Fridmann.
D: [Jaw hits floor] Really?!? SLEATER-KINNEY?????!!!!???? Fuck, man! [shakes head] This is a MAJOR statement of psychedelic riot woman super-rock power! Rock ‘n roll album of the year! God DAMN!!!!
D: I know. Maybe the decade. Superfuzz-heavy in the Northwest tradition of Blue Cheer-Nirvana-Mudhoney, expansive like Neil Young with Crazy Hors…Hendrix… Built to Spill? There’s stuff on here that is out as Comets on Fire, possible even further. Who’s going to top this? Absolutely gigantic sounds…amps out of the red and into the black… a 14-minute song at the end that goes as far out as Comets On Fire, even into Les Rallizes Denudes and Ash Ra Tempel territory…
D: I have to admit I would never have thought these three women would make a record that’s this relentlessly face-melting.
C: I don’t know if they’d thought it possible either. There’s some precedent in Babes of Toyland, or early Hole, maybe, but this is just so much further… Well, I’m not sure that they’d call it psychedelic but it’s definitely psychoactive in an urgent kind of way.
D: [musing] There’s a bit of Jefferson Airplane in here, that’s for sure.
C: There’s a structure to everything but there are these void spaces, too. And then there are straight songs too, which rock in this tight, urgent way and then blow into something else via a drum charge or a panned guitar solo or I don’t know what. I know I’m going Beavis here but I don’t know how to [clears throat] …ahem… properly articulate the sensations I am feeling as I listen to this album. For a long time I didn’t like Corin Tucker’s voice, but here? It’s like this is the setting it’s always been looking for.
D: And that’s some hotshit drumming for sure.
C: [dancing] I can’t believe it, but seriously, one must acknowledge what is happening here. This is higher than High on Fire. They are Queens of a more stoned Age!
D: An unheard of power monster, that singlehandedly, forever eradicates the notion that women have no balls.
C: [Gives puzzled look at D, then continues] I cannot account for what I am hearing. Cannot assimilate. How did this happen? Seriously. It’s a lidflipper, a real wig-frier. Can you name another band that seven albums into their career, supernovaed into this kind of territory? This is so rare. It reminds me of something that Michael Moorcock was saying the other day: “In the ‘60s, Dylan, Beatles, Beefheart et al. were all thinking on their feet, if they were thinking at all. While Dylan remained a Guthrie sound-a-like he had no real credibility (although he did bring Guthrie a wider audience, I’d guess). As Dylan dumped the Guthrie cloak, especially when he went electric, he gained authenticity. The less like Buddy Holly the Beatles sounded, the better they got. Eventually, you went into a studio not knowing what you’d come out with.” I think that may be what’s happened here with Sleater-Kinney. Maybe this record just happened. Maybe we are witnessing the joy of unplanned, no-thinking, no-rules spontaneous creativity, of these three amazing women following and trusting their muse, confident in their abilities and each other to give it a trust that most other artists cower from giving these days? In any event, it’s an extraordinary creative breakthrough record made at precisely the right time by artists working at the peak of their collective rock power. That they are women in a stupid, male-centric culture doing this makes the whole thing even more important and inspirational. I want to go door-to-door like an evangelist for this record: “Hey sisters and brothers, have you heard the Good News?” But the old doors don’t exist after this album. They’ve all been blown open.
D: Word to your moms, Sleater-Kinney drop bombs.

Oneida
The Wedding
(Jagjaguwar)
C: New one from New York underground trance/art-rockers Oneida: a favorite around the Arthur offices for years now.
D: [Listening to “The Eiger”] They’re using strings?!?
C: Yes! This sounds amazing. The songs are catchier, there’s more dynamics in the structure, the arrangements are more varied. And the production is just nuts. This is another huge artistic breakthrough. Damn…
D: Something is in the air… Something good. A new scent.
C: Shit! Listen to how the keys get sucked out of the soundfield [on “Lavender”]… Listen to the almost-Espers psych-folk that is “Run Through My Hair.” “High Life” is an optimistic vocal over a total Kraftwerk/Cluster/La Dusseldorf electronic bed that changes into something more organic… “Did I Die” is like Wolf Eyes without the noise, [chuckles] whatever that means. Wow. I can’t believe this album…
D: It’s true, it’s beautiful.
C: Listen to how massive the drums are on “Spirits” and “Heavenly Choir,” and how majestic the guitar is. These are their “Kashmir”’s, their “When the Levee Breaks,” and this album is their Physical Graffiti…
D: We are in the presence of genius, manifesting itself.

Angels of Light
The Angels of Light Sing “Other People”
(Young God)
D: Who is this? It sounds like Johnny Cash with the Up With People choir or the Beach Boys singing backup.
C: It’s the new album by Angels of Light. You know, Michael Gira from Swans’ new band. Well, if you can be on “new” when you’re on your fourth album.
D: The most brutal, dealing-with-ultimate-things band ever?
C: None other. He moved away from that a while ago, but this one is sort of the moment when it all comes together for him. [listening to “Destroyer”] Listen to how amazing this: is that a mellotron, or strings? [Skipping through the record] And glockenspiels? Shit! This whole record is soaked in the most resplendent bittersweet textures, never getting sappy or fruity or corny in any way. Not an easy thing to do, for anyone. And for it to come from the man who wrote “Raping a Slave”? Fuck…
D: [smiling beatifically] I am shocked, once again, in a pleasantly happy way. He’s aging well, into something elegant and striking in his own way. Kinda like Nick Cave.
C: It is really beautiful, and represents the third risky, radical creative breakthrough THAT SUCCEEDS we’ve heard this session. So exciting to be in the presence of artists when they’re going for it like this.

Boredoms
Seadrum/House of Sun
(Vice)
C: And now…would you believe…? NEW BOREDOMS! Yoshimi sings a capella…and then this…[wave of drums crashes in]
D: [musing] We appear to be living in magical times.
C: 45 minutes, two tracks, completely different from each other. It says one thing: “Fuck off (in a good way). We are Boredoms. And we cannot be denied. We will now share this with you.”
D: Please place this on infinite repeat while I unclog every stuck nerve ending in my elderly body. Music…music…music…Boredoms… Boredoms… is…life.

Brain Donor
Brain Donor
(MisterE/Revolver)
D: I don’t whether to pump my fist in the air or punch myself in the face.
C: Who would have guessed that Julian Cope would be making this sort of rubber-burning rock’n'roll what, 25 years down the line?
D: His head is out on the highway. And he’s stuck in sixth gear.
C: Julian calls them a stupor group. Doggen, the guitarist, plays in Spiritualized, as does drummer Kevlar. They wear neon facepaint and have empty thought balloons over their heads. They’re like the Rutles version of the Stooges: songs that are just as good, with better lyrics. Dig the song titles: “My Pagan Ass,” “Shaman U.F.O.”
D: [shimmying] My pagan ass! My pagan ass!
C: This is a compilation CD, selections from the Brain Donor’s two previous discs that were only released in the UK. Now America can welcome Brain Donor with open heads.
D: If these gentlemen are really donating their brains, I need to go to the brain bank and get one.

Turbonegro
The ResErection DVD
(MVD)
D: Aha, Turbonegro! “IT’S DEATH TIME!” They ARE rock ‘n roll! In the gay sailor style of Norway!
C: I will explain D’s outburst of Turbonegroist passion to the gentle readers of Arthur.
D: [muttering] So arrogant!
C: I heard that, D. And I will remember. Oh yes. I will remember.
D: [muttering] So smug!
C: Shut up and let me do the thing that needs to be done. [to tape recorder] This is Turbonegro’s Some Kind of Monster, the story of “how the bandmobile went off the road in 1998,” it says here, and what happened next. Could Hank von Helvete recover from heroin addiction and other assorted mental problems and don the black cape and Alice Cooper makeup again? Could the Absolut-guzzling band of self-professed “death punk” godfathers successfully re-buddy after four years apart? Would anyone care? Would—
D: OF COURSE PEOPLE CARE! This is Turbonegro! [singing] “Whoa-oh-oh/I’ve got ERECTION!”
C: The other difference between Turbonegro and Metallica is that Turbonegro seem quite comfortable being gay. I do not know if they are actually gay, but they play a gay band onstage and on camera with a great deal of affection and commitment and sense of humor. Fear of a Gay Planet is the general concept.
D: [Watching Hank show off a vat of cod liver oil outside the local maritime museum where he worked for a couple of summers.] Look at this! This is better than A Mighty Wind!
C: We visit Hank’s seaside sanctuary, where he lived for four years, rebuilding his life. “The only thing that kept me alive were my grandparents and my belief in God,” he says, then compares himself to Napoleon in exile: “I was supposed to be emperor of Europe, but I’m kept prisoner of reality.” We do not know if he is joking, which is how the entire film is, it’s as outrageously straight-faced as comic atrocities like Alan Partridge or The Office or League of Gentlemen or—I’m feeling generous—Neil Hamburger in his most sublimely awful, banal moments. That kind of rare, supergenius thing. I don’t know if I’m doing it justice…? [looking on screen] But Hank is now showing us around his hometown: “Let’s stroll in the realm of dry fish…”
D: I still think they based their entire sound on the Dictators!
C: Ha! You’re right! Hank’s real stage name should be Gruesome Dick Manitoba.
D: They are like the Hives’ evil reverse twins.
C: The Hives give 1000% every time, but as Happy Tom says here, Turbonegro give 50, maybe 60 percent. The interviewer asks if they may get 80% this time? “I don’t think that’s ever happened,” says Tom.
D: It’s a cracker! A classic! [Thinks hard.] It’s This Is Spinal Tap—by Chris Morris!!!

BBQ
Tie Your Noose
(Bomp!)
C: Now here’s a one-man garage band, do it and doing it well. Makes the two-piece garage band seem passé.
D: Does that mean he practices in a one-car garage?
C: Fire up the grill, this is a fatback slab of that raunchy, rib-rocking goodness. It’s like Bob Log III and Doo Rag in one.
D: Yes, in one big barbecue pit! Which he probably dug out behind his garage.
C: “Don’t Hold Out On Me” is the hit.
D: I think it sounds like someone singing the Hives in the shower. Really, it’s that good.
C: Nice to see such a fine release on the Bomp! imprint, furthering the cause of Bomp! honcho Greg Shaw, may he rock in peace.

Radar Bros.
The Fallen Leaf Pages
(Merge)
C: One of Los Angeles’ subtle treasures, and group that explains the pastoral side to LA that only residents really know about. This music has a calming, benign presence.
D: It gives me the feeling I get from “Dear Prudence.” Or my very favorite song, “Something In The Air” by Thunderclap Newman.
C: The Radars absolutely own this gentle shuffle tempo. But I think they’d loan it out to anyone who wanted it. Although sometimes the lyrics are darker than you’d expect…
D: I believe he just sang, “I am the stable in which the ass has laid his manure.”
C: Walk, don’t run to pick this up. Or better yet, lope.
D: Yes, amble on.
C: There is something about this that puts me in the mindset of lightning bugs in a jar. And the most wistful of Muppets songs. You can always count on Jim Putnam to take one great whistling solo per album, and he comes through here again.
D: This truly Floyd-ian, I mean Mettle-era Floyd. The dreaminess of it, it’s positively molassesfying.
C: David Gilmour is on the phone, says the Floyd is playing the Pyramids again, and will the Radars kindly open? Could happen.
D: Should happen.

Lee Perry
I Am the Upsetter four-cd boxset
(Trojan/Sanctuary)
D: “Satan is public enemy number one.” You know, this may be my favorite music have to do with organized religion.
C: Sweet soul singing by Max Romeo. The production on these… it’s like all these sounds aren’t allowed to exist anymore, I can’t imagine a contemporary producer getting anywhere near this. Anyways, since Lee Perry was rediscovered about ten years ago, there’ve been a lot of re-releases and vaultpilations…including the Arkology three-disk set which was a big hit with a lot of people. But this is really special—it’s digestible, it’s got all the great shit on it, it covers everything from the obvious Bob Marley and the Wailers stuff to cuts even dedicated Scratch diggers may never have heard before—like “All Over” by Eccols & Neville, which is actually Clancy Eccols and Bunny Wailer. Spans 1968 to 1978, so much went by, the world changed so much. So many artists went from next-level to the pits, but Lee Perry maintained this wonderful, playful energy…
D: I am a great admirer of the well-played unison horn line.
C: [listening to "Black Panta"] I mean what’s going on here? There is a spatial distance in dub music, a relationship between the listener and the music that’s just completely, profoundly different from any other kind of music.
D: It’s like growing a third ear from the center of your forehead.
C: Seeing a stretch of the color spectrum that you’d never been shown before. I love that there are all these skank songs on here. [Looking sternly at D.] Ahem. The ORIGINAL meaning of skank, which just means Lee is gonna scratch a certain rhythm that’s gonna make you dance the Jamaican version of the funky chicken…
D: [with eyes closed] The echo makes the music sound like it’s talking to itself. For someone who uses so much delay, he certainly was on time.
C: I always thought Lee Perry’s physique, short and lean, so much finely toned power in his arms, was represented in his music. I always think of him as the producer, working the board, making compact energetic music. Totally dynamic. Full presence, just infusing everything. All sides of him are there: the playful side, the mischievous side, the judgmental side, the father side where he puts his child in there, crying. Wailing. Pleading. And mixing that in to a song that says “for god’s sake give more justice to the people”? Amazing.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
Worn Copy
(Paw Tracks)
C: [listening to opening instrumental] This sounds like one of those cheap John Carpenter scores, recorded underwater. In the wrong kind of water.
D: Cheese is not a virtue, except in certain hands.
C: These are not the right hands. [listening to “Jules Lost His Jewels”] Although…you know, some of this is actually pretty catchy. If only Mr. low-budget Wings here weren’t so stuck on recording underwater with such tragically awful sounding instruments.
D: So judgmental, you are. I think this might be a grower not a shower. [grabbing the CD out of the player] I will examine it more at home and report back next issue!

Animal Collective and Vashti Bunyan
Prospect Hummer EP
(Fat Cat)
C: Playful, rules-less, suffused with love…. Vashti and the AC boys harmonizing on these quiet little melodies… Whistles and phased waves of glowing acoustic guitars and… Is that a steel drum? Whoa. These guys are on such a hot streak right now. So wonderful to hear Vashti’s voice again, last year’s duet with Devendra wasn’t enough. This is a wower. You could play it for anyone: children, grandparents, sullen teenagers even…
D: [listening to title track] I think the oompa-loomas are coming.
C: Unbelievable dub-like production—there’s a real unique sense of space and place here too. Where do these people live? Somewhere in Sweden, Lee Perry awakens from his slumber…
D: [blissed out] It’s womblike. Feels like coming home from the greatest picnic ever.

Colleen
The Golden Morning Breaks
(The Leaf Label)
C: …And this is what it feels like when you’re in REM sleep, later. Music in miniature.
D: Mini-minimalism. Beatless.
C: So still. Satieists. A phased, handcranked music box. If a Joesph Cornell box had a sound… Wind chimes, plucked guitar figures.
D: Very cinematic. Makes me think of Bjork, Kubrick, City of Lost Children, Jeunet/Caro.
C: Colleen are (is?) Aphex Twin’s ambient grandchildren. Like Eno was for a while, Aphex Twin is no longer a man, he’s an adjective.
D: This is what I always hoped ambient music would sound like. Don’t throw the baby out with analog bubblebathwater!
C: … [pauses] Can I have some of whatever it is that you are on?

The Geto Boys
The Foundation
(Rap-A-Lot)
D: Who is this?
C: You know who this is.
D: The Geto Boys! Scarface, Willie D, and Bushwick Bill, together forever. Unless my mind is playing tricks on me, which is has been known to do.
C: You were right the first time, D. You may now take off the blindfold.
D: After all these years, they certainly are keeping it gangsta.
C: And yet it’s soul music. From the soul, of the soul, and the slower songs on here are actually sweet soul music.
D: You know, when I’m feeling homicidal, this music calms me down.
C: I appreciate that. More than you know.
D: Well if I didn’t know, now I know!

Neil Hamburger
Great Moments at Di Presa’s Pizza House
(Drag City)
C: On the other hand, when I’m feeling suicidal…I think of Neil Hamburger, self-proclaimed “TV comic” and “American funnyman.” [Listens to CD for a few minutes.] Well, this is a new low. Which is what you catch yourself thinking every time there’s a new Neil Hamburger album, but by now it’s clear that there is no bottom.
D: What is this? [to stereo] Tell some jokes already!
C: Heckling a CD is not the same as heckling a performer, unfortunately. One thing you can say about Neil Hamburger is he’s remarkably consistent. No matter where he plays—an expat nightclub in Malaysia, a greyhound racing park in Tempe, Arizona, a pipe organ-equipped pizza parlor in Northern California—he’s always just terrible, just desperately unfunny. You know what you’re getting with Neil Hamburger. The only surprise is how much worse he’s managed to get since the last time you heard him.

Yellow Pills: Refill
(Numero Group)
C: 33 power-pop 45s by super-obscure one-shot artists, compiled with mindblowing meticulousness and liner note cleverness by an obvious labor-of-lover: this guy Jordan Oaks, who used to do a zine called Yellow Pills. I gotta cop to it, I never heard of the zine, never heard any of these songs.
D: Man! A lot of these really should have been hits. Especially the Toms? As Dr. John and the Meters would say, They were in the wrong place.
C: This drawing of Jon Brion is incredible, when he was like 14 and a member of a band called The Bats.
D: I don’t know about this one…
C: If you don’t like one song, another will be along in two minutes. You’ll be able to find a seat on one of them. [pauses] You know D, we’ve received a lot of letters asking why we are called C & D…
D: We choose to remain anonymous.
C: I bet these bands didn’t want to be anonymous.
D: Well… life’s like that, sometimes.

The Ponys
Celebration Castle
(In the Red)
D: Must be The Ponys. Cuz it sounds like Voidoids and Television.
C: Yep. Less Hellish than before, though, I think.
D: [listening to the chorus of “Glass Conversation”] Now they are rocking!
C: And check out this guitar sound. It doesn’t matter what they play on their solos—although what he’s playing is cool—the sounds they are getting are enough for me. Yes! The solo on “Discoteca” is really simple but it SOUNDS wonderful. That’s like their second signature, after the dude’s voice. [listening to “Today”] Wow this goes into a blues thing in the middle, very cool. No wonder they were on that Junior Kimbrough tribute record, it’s all making sense now.
D: [philosophical] This is more like the first album than the first one was… [listening to “We Shot This World,” shaking head like a tumbler.] The difficult second album is not so difficult for the Ponys!
C: Our little Ponys have all grown up.

Spoon
Gimme Fiction
(Merge)
D: Sounds like the Kinks in a troubled mood.
C: But look they pull out a chorus—a melody like what the Walkmen wish they could do, and I don’t mean to damn with faint praise there.
D: Great album opener.
C: It’s like they’re gonna confront the Kinks Klone critique head-on and then go from there… This is their best shit ever, and their shit has always been fresh. The songs are better put together… listen to the counter-melodies and harmonies… even strings… Like the Left Banke, except not so fussy, or even SF Sorrow-era Pretty Things… Tight psychedelic-tinged upbeat soul rock. This song [“I Turn My Camera On”] is total disco! When he does falsetto, he sounds like what Beck tries to do. If they has strings swoop in we’d have Chic…
D: Maybe they’re saving that for the next album, which I am already eagerly awaiting.
D: [listening to “My Mathematical Mind”] Another cinematic record. There is a hint of John Barry in the air. I picture Oliver Reed in 1965 on the prowl, on the way to a party, or the scene of a crime, whichever he reaches first. Americans are making great English music again!

Weird War
Illuminated by the Light
(Drag City)
C: In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that Weird Warlord Ian Svenonius is an Arthur contributor.
D: That guitar tone sounds straight from a robot’s butt. Is he playing one of those keyboard guitar things?
C: It’s called a keytar.
D: I don’t know if I can take anyone playing a keytar seriously. I believe this is supposed to be funky but it does not swing.
C: Svenonius output always divides the crowd. I dig some of this album, but the real undeniable gemwork here is the album art, which is like a Neapolitan version of what Pedro Bell used to draw for Funkadelic LPs.
D: Yes, keep the great artwork, but maybe they should head in a different direction musically.
C: I’ve heard they’re going to do a Grateful Dead tribute called Weir War.
D: …
C: Sorry.

Death in Vegas
Satan’s Circus
(Drone)
D: New Death in Vegas? Excellent! That song with Hope Sandoval and the Indian violinist on the last album was a high point global civilization.
C: No guest vocalist this time.
D: It’s very krautrockian. And Human League. And Gary Numan, the guy that we all hated, because he had bad teeth… always trying to combine the robotic and emotive. He had that pretentious super-serious look mixed with looking like a yuppie. It was bound to fail. Now he’s a cult hero. Just goes to show that every shit you throw against the wall might come down as gold. Write that down!
C: [Writing it down] Very Cluster. And the second track here…listen to this…
D: THEY ARE COVERING KRAFTWERK’S ‘TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS’!?! Unbelievable! That’s balls!
C: These guys have got to be total stoners. They are just fucking around, having fun. You can hear how much they’re digging this.
D: Roedelius, Harmonia, all those guys… I can hear this being played in a German countryside on a nice Sunday afternoon. Very evocative, simplistic—I love it. There’s a track called “Heil Xanax”? Another one called “Sons of Rother”? I give up. They are the victors.
C: The record is so committed to the style.
D: To me, this could be played in a stadium. “Reigen” is a German word for the old-world, Middle Ages a come-together, a joyous come together where you dance around the maypole, so there’s a Wicker Man aspect to it. This shows insane respect and love for a very specific genre. They are saying, Excuse us while we pay tribute to our love.

Josephine Foster
Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You
(Locust Music)
C: Speaking of Wicker Man.
D: Speaking of Jefferson Airplane.
C: Speaking of genius.
D: Speaking of…speechless.
C: She’s been in Arthur before, but… Damn. This is my favorite work yet by one of my favorite voices in the world. Her most conventional songwriting, really, with fantastic arrangements and playing. All by Josephine herself. It’s not harsh like Born Heller could be, not as histrionic as last year’s Supposed album was… I think people will now find out what the big deal is…
D: So many big deals right now, most of them female!
C: I know. Feels like a new dawning, a new birthing, a new burst of feminine energy is going on, doesn’t it?
D: Yes.
C: I can’t wait to hear what happens next…

REVIEWS BY C and D (and E…)

THE GRIS GRIS
The Gris Gris
(Birdman)
C: Okay D, we’re gonna start this one off with something I know you will dig—the debut album from San Francisco psych-rock three-piece Gris Gris, who are led by that kid Greg Ashley, whose solo record we dug last year.
D: Yes I remember Mr. Ashley well! He is the new Syd Barrett and [listening to keyboard run] he is advising us to join him on an interstellar overdrive magic carpet ride.
C: The carpet’s in the garage, and it’s kind of greasy. It’s not used, it’s vintage.
D: Rock bands were doing this in garage basements in the Bay Area of ‘60s, after they got their first Yardbirds records. And all across Milwaukee in 1987. Mister Ashley is singing his ASH off! I also like the simplicity of the drumming.
C: …Milwaukee?

THE BLACK KEYS
Rubber Factory
(Fat Possum)
C: Third album from Akron’s finest, once again produced by themselves.
D: [listening] I am not sure if they needed to make another album on their own. There’s not enough progression here.
C: It’s more mellow than the last one. But I like it. Listen to the solo here on “Desperate Man.” And this one on “Stack Shot Bully.”
D: Hmm, definite burning there. This is a 7.5 moving up to 9.3…
C: And this Kinks cover, “Act Nice and Gentle” is great, really blissed out, reminds me of going down to the river in the summertime. I didn’t think I ever wanted to hear another take on “Summertime Blues,” but…
D: That’s a rocker with extra thrusters, baby! It still is summertime and yes I still have those blues! Even though it says “do not duplicate,” can I duplicate it?

THE FAINT
Wet From Birth
(Saddle Creek)
C and D: [blank stares]
C: Um… Pretty belabored electro dance new wave blah blah.
D: I am in Berlin getting down with the transvestites.
C: I see 16-year-old girls dancing poorly.
D: Who are they? I wish he woulda left the transformer effect at home.
C: They come from Omaha. This is their second album.
D: Really??? [listening more closely] They’ve finally written a song good enough for Victoria’s Secret commercial. Congratulations!
C: Maybe we just don’t have an ear for this stuff, but, sheesh, this is painfully shitty. Crap new wave is a joke that didn’t need to be told, ever again.

MOUSE ON MARS
Radical Connector
(Thrill Jockey)
D: This is so bad in such an obvious way. They don’t even number their tracks! So inconsiderate.
C: What, you’ve never heard of glitch in Milwaukee or Berlin?
D: Yes yes, but this… Mouse on Mars have lost it. This trying-to-be-funky-and-clever thing is not working in their favor.
C: You are not happy with the Mouse’s progress.
D: They are progressing to a place where nobody wants to dance. And I am a dancing kind of fellow!

TWILIGHT SINGERS
She Loves You
(One Little Indian)
C: An album of covers by Greg Dulli’s Twilight Singers project. He used to lead the Afghan Whigs, about four decades or so ago.
D: Never heard of ‘em. I am not a fan of the ‘90s.
D: Really? [listening to cover of “Hyperballad”] This sounds like U2. Agh, can’t stand it. Even the guitar is ringing! Can we please listen to something I might like?
C: Dulli does sound like Bono when he tries to hit those trailing Bjorknotes.
D: Is that her voice in the background? [sarcastic] Are they holding hands? This is ghastly! [listening to cover of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”] Now he sounds like Marianne Faithful. I’m getting a drink. Okay, maybe three drinks. [heads for kitchen]
C: I only like the songs where Mark Lanegan sings, really. This version of the blues “Hard Killing Floor” where Lanegan sings lead is all nice and charcoal and moonshine… But basically, I like this album more in concept than in execution. The world doesn’t need an easy listening MOR version of “A Love Supreme,” in my humble opinion.

THALIA ZEDEK
Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch of Madness
(Thrill Jockey)
C: [to tape recorder] D’s in a bad mood, again! Sheesh. Okay, guess I’ll keep going here. This is the new album by the sublegendary Thalia Zedek, who lead the great lost rock ‘n roll band Come for many years. Unforgettable voice, jointly sponsored by Jameson’s and some devilry, I think. Like later Marianne Faithful, actually. Anyway, this is pretty straightahead sad-eyed twilight rock ‘n roll, with some violin on it, which of course sends me back to another lost-‘90s-rock-n-roll-band-with-a-great-female-singer: the Geraldine Fibbers. They also had a violin. Yep.

MIKE WATT
The Second Man’s Middle Stand
(Columbia)
C: Mike Watt from the minutemen and fIREHOSE and current Stooges bassist doing his first album in six years, a total concept piece about his near-terminal illness, plus Dante and one thousand and one other layers of meaning, played by a storming organ-drums-bass three-piece. 9 songs, with eight of them over 5:30, which means this earns Prog certification. Like a particularly smart Deep Purple, subbing out the ponderousness for some art-punk new-beat spastics, splatter and stutter. Do you need a lyric sheet to make sense of it? Yes you do.

PAUL WESTERBERG
Folker
(Vagrant)
C: One of the worst album titles in recent times, but let’s not hold that too much against it. Continuing in the ‘90s-semistar series here, the new solo album from the former singer of the Replacements, who were also doing traditional American rock ‘n roll when that wasn’t exactly called for by the times. Never really dug his solo work, but this is ridiculously good at what it’s doing: really melodic mid-tempo rock ‘n roll that you listen to at the gaspump and then hum the rest of the way home: kinda Oasis, actually, and kinda Tom Petty. And “Looking Up In Heaven” is gorgeous perfection. Yep.

RICH ROBINSON
Paper
(Keyhole Records)
D: [walks back into the room holding big coffee mug, mumbling to himself] People can’t tell you’re an alcoholic if you drink it out of a coffee cup…
C: [oblivious] Solo album from the guitarist for the Black Crowes, who are on some kind of trial separation. Very in-the-pocket, and lovely harmonies, just solid rock ‘n roll songs for longhairs washing their VW bus on a Sunday afternoon.

THE WHIRLWIND HEAT
Flamingo Honey EP
(Dim Mak)
C: This is the new EP from the Detroit band Jack White called the closest we’re gonna get to a Devo in this generation.
D: Hmph. I will be the judge of that!
C: 10 songs, 10 minutes, each song almost exactly one minute.
D: [listening to “The Meat Packers”] Sounds like when the White Stripes covered all those Beefheart songs on that Sub Pop 7-inch.
C: You’re totally right! Good call
D: These guys sound a little too smug to me. They’re just good enough that they’re getting laid.
C: I like conceptual limits, generally. Sometimes it gets you out of a creative jam, makes you go into a new space you wouldn’t’ve otherwise thought of. It necessitates invention and problem solving, keep you from getting too set in your ways. Standard John Cage theory, right? Brian Eno…
D: These guys should work with Eno!
C: He did produce Devo’s first album, didn’t he? Hmm. Perhaps it can be arranged.

COLONEL CLAYPOOL’S BUCKET OF BERNIE BRAINS
The Big Eyeball in the Sky
(Prawn Song Records)
C: Okay, I think I’ve had enough Primus for one lifetime but this looked interesting. It’s Claypool on bass, Bernie Worrell from P-Funk on keyboards, Buckethead on guitar and Brain on drums. Like one of those old Axiom jams that Bill Laswell used to put together back in the early ‘90s with Bootsy and all them.
D: I used to listen to Primus. They had one good album, I don’t remember what it was called but it certainly wasn’t Pork Soda. That was the worst.
C: [cracking himself up] The wurst, you mean, ha ah ha!
D: …
E: [entering room] Hey guys, what’s going on? This sounds great!
C: Whoa. The notorious E dares to enter Arthur’s inner sanctum.
D: We have not seen a woman here in sometime.
C: But your presence here has been foretold.
E: You guys might have more company if you guys didn’t lock the door all the time!
C: Sorry… So, you really like this, E?
E: I love Les Claypool’s voice. I admire his integrity. And can you say “Pork Soda” without laughing? I think not.
C: Er… I believe no one should imitate Zappa. Well not like this, at least.
D: I do like things that are circus-y. It’s like a Fellini movie, you’re waiting for the transvestite to pop out of the tent…
C: I think I’d like it more if I was 16 and playing Nintendo.
E: This is great. What’s your problem, C? If it said “Ween” on the box, you would totally dig it. They’re clearly incredibly smart and having fun.
C: Hmm. Okay, maybe if I was 14.
D: This is totally late Residents and is making me want to get very high right now. I could get a lot of cleaning done to this.

ANTIBALAS
Who Is This America?
(Ropeadope)
E: Fela? Tony Allen? This is cool, of course.
D: Is this from Nigeria? If I had to DJ a wedding, I would definitely play this. You can do any kind of dance to it, there’s so much going on. You can meringue to it.
C: But it’s not Fela Kuti, it’s Antibalas, that group from New York trying to bring back that original Afrobeat. They’re so good now, I can’t tell the difference, really.
D: Don’t they have like 86 people in their band or something?
E: [dancing] More like 20! It’s between them and the Polyphonic Spree for largest band in the Arthur world…
C: I have to say that as good as they are, their lyrics still aren’t there. Fela’s was always really biting and clever. Most of this is too straightforward, there’s none of that really cutting, mordant wit.
D: [dancing with eyes closed] Who cares, this is phenomenal! It makes me want to put my ass into it!
C: [to tape recorder] He said he was a dancing fellow, and now he is proving it.
E: Hey, did you guys hear that Rick James died today?
C: A lot of people owe him big time.
D: Especially those guys who had girlfriends who became superfreaks!!!

MELVINS/LUSTMORD
Pigs of the Roman Empire
(Ipecac)
E: Now for something completely different.
D: Fudgetunnel?
C: Is it Godflesh?
E: It’s actually the Melvins with Lustmord.
C: Awesome dark sludge from some creepy condemned industry at the edge of town.
E: [listening to “The Bloated Pope”] I think this music is really erotic! Much more than easy listening or slow jam, because it’s dark and there’s an element of mystery.
C: And the fifth song is called “Pink Bat,” which is almost as good a title as “Pork Soda,” eh, E?
E: [smiling] Yes, exactly.
D: It’s not my favorite kind of music, but I could scrub the walls to it.
E: Hey D, what are you drinking in that coffee cup? It doesn’t smell like coffee…

LUCIFER RISING
Original soundtrack by Bobby Beausoleil
(Arcanum Entertainment)
C: Speaking of dark and mysterious, here is the original soundtrack for Kenneth Anger’s legendary Lucifer Rising. The original composer was supposed to be Jimmy Page, but Anger ended up using this score by Bobby Beausoleil, an old Manson associate who recorded it in the ‘70s while in prison…
D: UNBELIEVABLY black! Black turned to 100, with lizard eyes. But subtle and beautiful, somehow. This is a high point of human culture.

WOLF EYES
Burned Mind
(Sub Pop)
D: Throbbing Gristle!!!
C: Yeah kind of, right? It’s actually Wolf Eyes, who we reviewed last ish.
E: [reading song titles] “Black Vomit.” “Urine Burn.” And of course, “Stabbed in the Face.” I think they need to get some grooves going. That’s their problem.
D: I used to go see a lot of bands like this. Then I stopped.
C: You have to see it in a small space where the sound of just overwhelming and crushing and inescapable and you are just being confronted with it. I can’t really picture listening to it at home—
E: Me either.
C: —but maybe that’s my problem?

HOPE OF THE STATES
The Lost Riots
(Sony)
D: [disgusted] Is this the new Billy Corgan album?
E: Ouch.
C: It’s Hope of the States, young band, they’re being hyped as the greatest thing since buttered bread and bangers by the British press. One of the guitarists hanged himself in the studio before they finished the album.
D: [listening to “Don’t Go to Pieces”] I have a theory about the suicide. Maybe he did it because he heard the singing on this song!
E: [groans] Double-ouch. No need to be so callous, D. You might want to lay off the vodka a bit… But yes, this singing is really awful.
C: I thought I’d like this because they’re supposed to be dark and political and grand but it just sounds like the dreary precious bits of Radiohead. No thank you.
E: Hype of the States!

SIGNER
The New Face of Smiling
(Carpark)
E: My Bloody Valentine plus post-rock.
C: One of those doesn’t belong. And My Bloody Valentine always had good melodies.
E: I’d give it some more spins, but yes, this is one for the connoisseurs of shoegazism or whatever it’s called.

THE DELGADOS
Universal Audio
(Chemikal Underground/Transdreamer)
E: Reminds me of Belly. Or Suzanne Vega. “Oh woe is me, I’ve got a spot on my blouse”-type stuff. [in teenage girl voice] “Tori Amos was the one person who could understand my heartbreak.”
C: I think it’s sort of pretty, but yeah it is another record from these Scots who never change their mood from guarded pessimism.
E: This gives women a bad name. Let’s listen to that RTX album so I can feel better about women in rock.

THEE SHAMS
(Fat Possum)
C: [digging around in CD pile] I can’t find the RTX. That figures. It’s already been stolen from the Arthur offices.
D: Hey man, don’t look at me.
C: So anyway here’s thee Shams. Young band on Fat Possum label.
E: Sounds like the Standells, recorded with modern equipment.
D: Finally something I can dig here, I’ve been going NUTS!!! New garage rock to smash your beercans too!
E: They’re not doing anything new, but they’re doing it very well.
C: [thoughtfully] Seems like that’s what we’ve been saying about everything lately.

CRIME
San Francisco’s Still Damned
(Swami)
E: Vintage punk rock from ‘70s San Francisco.
D: “Baby you’re so repulsive!” If you don’t have it, buy it, this is awesome American history. It’s not that stupid staccato punk of the last 20 years, it’s closer to original rock ‘n’ roll. [spills drink] Coffee cups aren’t made to drink ice cubes out of.
C: Would you like a bib?
D: Only if I can have some lobster too!
E: This is really good shit, man. Why can’t people sound like this anymore? Oh, when punk was young.
D: You know why? Cuz now if someone gets punched in the face during a show, they have to quit! For a month! [everyone nods, sadly]
E: Okay, I’m outta here, guys. No more nostalgia for me! Tra la la.

THE LIBERTINES
The Libertines
(Rough Trade)
C: New one from the Libertines, England’s most troubled band. Somehow they made another record.
D: It’s pretty good for 1981. I just hope the next song is about his happy knickers.
C: Sassy! But seriously, this is good stuff, English beyond belief of course. Poetic skiffle mod punk rock n roll rockabilly with good riffs and close harmonies by young guys living the bohemian dream in the Old Smoke. [dreamily] It’s all very romantic…

MUSHROOM
Glazed Popems
(Black Beauty)
D: I can’t put my head around this. The cover makes it look like it’s a compilation of ‘60s Italian psychedelic softcore porn soundtracks.
C: It’s actually this band out of the Bay Area… Somewhere around Miles’ more out-there stuff in the ‘70s, when he was playing a keyboard.
D: Nervy. There’s a fine line between experimental and self-congratulation.
C: I dig it. There’s a lot of fine contemplative electric piano stuff on here too. More music for Sunday afternoons, drifting off into siesta after a couple of mint juleps…

FESTIVAL IN THE DESERT DVD
(World Village/Harmonia Mundi)
C: A full-length documentary about what may be the music festival in the world—out in the Sub-Saharan dunes in Africa, in Mali, near Timbuktu. Besides the nomads who live in the area, the only people there are people who’ve made a real effort to be there.
D: Look at those robes! The greens and blues really pop. [definitively] This is what people are supposed to do – sit around fires and talk and make music.

REVIEWS BY C and D

Fiery Furnaces
Blueberry Boat
(Rough Trade)
D: [extremely puzzled] Is this the Residents?!?
C: It’s Fiery Furnaces. Second album in one year. Usually when you say “difficult second album,” you mean it was hard for the artist. But this is actually hard on the audience!
D: [grimacing] I am not sure if I like this much.
C: It’s… it’s… it’s completely nuts. But: interesting nuts.
D: I remember them now! They were interviewed in Arthur. Brother and sister. But I thought they were blues-rocking New York people? What is all this synthesizer-ragtime stuff?!?
C: It’s like low-key prog. [looking at CD player] We’re in the ninth minute of the first song here… 13 songs, 75 minutes… The whole thing is a wigged-out concept album, man. I dig it.
D: [irritated] I do not have time for concepts! I am a ramblin’ man, that’s what I am.
C: Don’t spill your Dr. Pepper, Popeye. There’s a lot of good stuff on here, it’s just sorta tucked away in pockets within pockets in a large spangled coat of many prog colors.
D: This is too wacky and too wordy. [Brightens, listening to riff midway through second song] I like that, though. I think these guys may be too smart for their own good.
C: A singles-only edit of this album would be nice for the Short Attention Spanners out there…

Comets On Fire
Blue Cathedral
(Sub Pop)
C: The new one from Comets On Fire, full-on super-rock five-piece from the Bay Area. They keep the demons at bay.
D: Yes! Big super-blaster balls-nailed-to-the-wall heavy power rock from a space cannon!
C: Amazing, visionary wizardstuff. And they give you a break in the middle of songs—there’s these lighter sections, they’re even choogling here and there, mellowing the crunchy harsh.
D: [listening to keyboard-heavy “Pussy Footin’ the Duke.”] There is a taste of the prog here, too! But I don’t mind because the riffs are deep canyons and the singer is a yowler and the drums are mighty!
C: It’s like the best of Japanese power-rock plus Quicksilver Messenger Serivce or Meddle-era Pink Floyd plus Kiss. Album-of-the-year contender.
D: I am going to make a pilgrimage to this Blue Cathedral.
C: Which is right next door to the Acid Mothers Temple, no doubt.

The Reigning Sound
Too Much Guitar!
(In the Red)
D: The Reigning Sound! Mister Greg Cartwright! Long may he reign. I doff my beer in his general direction. Heartfelt thrashing songs with a zest for life!
C: [nodding head] The is one of those records that gives garage rock a good name. Which is pretty hard, considering there’s like 45,000 bands out there who are trying to do the same thing over the last three decades.
D: I am getting old. But I will get out my leather jacket for these guys. And stitch their name on it, as is my duty.
C: They’ve got actual songs, it’s not just the two-chord mono-grind smear. And listen to this ballad [“Funny Thing”]. If you’re not a connoiseur of this sort of stuff, it sound like something between the Stones and the Hives. And the Hives are taking them on the tour, so there you go.
D: Giving them that big Swedish stamp of approval!

The Concretes
The Concretes
(Astralwerks)
C: Speaking of the Swedes. A girl band…
D: They have the big Spector beat. A little Mazzy Star, don’t you think? [the chorus comes in on “Say Something New”] The Ronnettes! It cannot be! I am 9 years old again…
C: Yeah. A little Cardigans, perhaps: she doesn’t have the most unique voice, she’s not the greatest singer. But it’s pretty. A lot of this is pleasant music for cleaning house or driving with no traffic and the windows open on warm summer nights… And by coincidence “Warm Night” is my favorite song. It has a waltz rhythm and all these harmonies…
D: [listening] It has a sea chanty quality. Beautiful and SUPER-romantic. Ah, what goes on in the Swedish woods…
C: If there had been an ecstasy scene in the The Muppets Movie this is what it would have sounded like, and I mean that with all respect and seriousness.

Martina Topley-Bird
Anything
(Palm)
C: This reminds me of Morcheeba, and I know that isn’t fair, cuz Martina was with Tricky and they were first, but… Lady can sing okay, a hint of blues pain, acoustic guitars, brushed drums, ‘70s keyboard, lush strings. Yep, this is ad agency music.
C: Totally! I see the car commercial now. Volkswagen?
D: BMW, maybe.
C: Okay, let’s skip to the track with Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age and Mark Lanegan.
D: [listening] Eh. It’s Okay.
C: Well, at least this song has more energy…
D: [thinking deeply] I must say, I always preferred Portishead.
C: The texture of trip-hop stuff is just…worn out. Do we need another record of this stuff? Even Beth Gibbons has moved on.
D: That album she did last year was the most…
C: Yes! Out of Season, Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man, on Sanctuary. Arthur readers, just buy that instead. I weep openly when I listen to that record. But here…
D: I yawn openly.

The Obsessed
Incarnate
(Southern Lord)
D: [Looking at High Volume track listing] Stoner rock, but no Kyuss…? Hmm…
D: Gas Giant are gaseous. Hello, Monster Magnet?
C: They’re not on here either. But Clutch and Orange Goblin and Nebula are, and a ton of other longhaired stoner rock lifers.
D: [looking at the sleeve] Hidden Hand and High On Fire are on here!!! Let’s skip to those. High On Fire march on like warrior kings of peace!
C: Some of it’s like speedmetal but then there’s these weird chord sequences and that six-limbed drumming the dude does. Everything they do smokes. [smugly] And where there’s smoke, there’s High On Fire, ha ha.
D: You make yourself laugh. Now for Hidden Hand, “Falcon Stone.”
C: Your basic Hidden Handiwork. Solid riffage, a firm construction.
D: Wino’s new band, bringing the master pummeller once again! [opening record sleeve, with picture of girl with clothes falling off] Hmm, I like this centerfold, I mean record sleeve.
C: There’s some cool stuff on here, like the Suplecs track, but…
listen: Stoner rock lyrics are like the male versions of girls’ bad high school poetry. It would be cool if they’d trade lyric sheets. Then we’d get stoner rock with lyrics by Jewel. And adult contemporary with lyrics by Bad Wizard.
D: [distracted, gazing longingly at record sleeve] I really like this centerfold. I’ll be right back, I’ve got to to take care of something. [leaves room, taking sleeve with him]
C: Oh geez. I don’t believe this. Anyways… If Arthur readers want some classic heavy rock, the kind of stuff that begot this High Times comp, check out Incarnate, the new Obsessed archive job that compiles a gobload of ‘90s Wino & Company stuff that went lost or mal-released. Music for driving a bulldozer down Main Street to. Heavy is as heavy does…

Wolf Eyes
“Stabbed in the Face/Rat Floods” 12-inch
(Sub Pop)
C: [to tape recorder] Well, we’ve lost D to…um… Let’s just say… Um… Pornography claims another victim. Erotic imagery. [yelling] Tits ‘n’ Buds, bro! Whatever. Fortunately I am prepared to solider on alone. Arthur readers will recognize Wolf Eyes as a Bull Tongue perennial—well, they’ve somehow made it on to Sub Pop despite being pretty brutal and weird and just generally artfuck. For some reason I am reminded of Killdozer. Anyways “Stabbed in the Face” is angry vampire rock on a disco tape loop. Forget the Dead, this is the real skullfuckery. Beware! There’s blood in the grooves of this 45rpm record, which is why on Side 2 the thing locks into a repeater groove, sending the listener down the Wolfhole into a negatory dimension where one is bed-fed codeine by the leering nurse-corpse of Ronald Reagan.

The Fall
The Real New Fall LP…Formerly Country on the Click
(Narnack)
C: There’s little to be said here besides: the Fall are on a full-forward-rock mission again and your surrender is imminent. The guitars are propulsing, broken hip priest Mark E. Smith sounds wonderfully surly and declamatory, almost drifting into dreamtalk sometimes, the other cats in the band are singing some refrains and choruses and this is very important: you can dance to almost every song. It’s full of WFMU-world hits! You people know what I mean. If this were a young band, rather than one that’s been around since 1848, this would be the now-shit of rockcrit and fashion magazines and art schools across the planet. This is as much a return-to-form as Wire or Mission of Burma have done in the last few years: these original post-punk artniks are back on the trail, it can’t be rationally explained. [listening to “Sparta 2”] Shit’s positively magestic! [sighing] We are Fallstruck, once again.

Black Dice
Creature Comforts
(DFA Records)
C: Never really dug these guys and their electro-spazz-randomonica-epic trip before for some reason, although it sounded good in theory. This, though, I dig. I am a digger. I mean, “Cloud Pleaser” is a great title. People who dig early Tangerine Dream, and I mean very early, will dig this. Also some of the more out-there Popul Vuh stuff. It’s a strange mix of electronic stuff and abstracted organic noises with forward motion, enough rhythm for you to keep it on while you’re doing dishes, but enough weird noises and soundfloods and collagework for you to pay attention to it. Kinda meditative, actually… [To D, who has re-appeared] So, everything work out okay?
D: Yes, yes. [irritated, listening to “Treetops”] Do people get paid to do this?

M83
Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
(Mute)
C: Mostly instrumental compositions with occasional sighs. Big and grand and emotional and beautiful. Sounds like it was fabricated by Tokyo-made cyborgs with tearducts, on vacation in France.
D: Like a darker Air… Dark Air should be their name!
C: Reminds me a bit of Casino Versus Japan, and Spiritualized too. Really lovely, hugely evocative, cinematic stuff.
D: Somebody alert Sofia Coppola!

Legendary Pink Dots
The Whispering Wall
(ROIR)
D: Hmm. Creepy creepy! Music for creepy crawling in dismal English towns.
C: Sort of a psychedelic haunted disco thing, yeah. Very stylish, but melodic too. They’ve been around forever but somehow I’ve never cottoned to them until now.
D: [listening to “A Distant Summer”] I like this. Such a strange, dislocated feel.
C: It’s ominous, sinister pop. Again, something that very much has its own feel. Crushed velvet, light rain, spooky carnivals…
D: A new record for all the pale people.

SUNN O)))
White2
(Southern Lord)
C: [reading the sleeve] It says here, “Maximum volume yields maximum results.” We better turn it up.
D: [smiling] Ahh. You can always count on SUNN 0)) for that maximum slow throb ambient guitar doom. They are the legendary black dots.
C: The first track is 14 minutes long! No drums, no vocals… Sonic qualudes. It’s so slow it isn’t even there. Totally enveloping.
D: It’s doom-bliss for your needy skull!

Eccentric Soul: The Capsoul Label
(Numero Group)
C: 19 tracks from an an obscure Columbus, Ohio soul record label who put out a dozen 45s, one album and had a few regional hits during the early ‘70s. Normally I wouldn’t care, there’s got to be a zillion compilations like this out there, right? But…
D: [listening to Bill Moss’s “Sock It To ‘Em Soul Brother”] This is really something. This is as good as the JB’s!
C: When you hear stuff like this, it makes you realize how much luck plays a role in what songs make it into general public’s consciousnsess. Some of this stuff, you can tell why it didn’t go beyond being a regional hit—the voice isn’t unique enough, or the lyrics are prosaic, or whatever. But there’s no reason that most of these songs weren’t big hits, other than that they were recorded and released in Ohio rather than Detroit or New York or L.A. It’s tragic that this is all we’ll ever hear from these folks, because of an accident of geography and timing. Just listen to this: Ronnie Taylor’s “Without Love” is a stone cold church-organ classic from the opening second. What a riff, what a voice.
D: [listening to “Hot Grits!!!” by Elijah & the Ebonites] Incredible! Instant dance floor groove sensation! [very seriously] Listen to me when I tell you this: This is the best soul compilation I’ve heard in 20 years.
C: [dancing] I know what you mean. Damn!

REVIEWS BY C and D

Eagles of Death Metal
Peace Love Death Metal
(Rekords Rekords/AntAcidAudio)
C: [singing along to “Kiss the Devil”]: “Who’ll love the devil?/Who’ll love his song?/I will love the devil and his song!”
D: Ha! This is party-starting rock n roll music! They should’ve called it, “There’s Beer in the Fridge.
C: No doubt. Doubtless. No doubt about it. Doubt-free. [sings along:] “I will kiss the devil on his tongue!”
D: He is the male Peaches!
C: The singer-guitar player Jesse ‘the Devil’ Hughes has the best moustache going in rock, and he knows it. I can hear him now: “C & D, you’ve been rocked by The Moustache.” Have you seen his cape?
D: This cannot be. What year is this? It’s like Mick wearing the Omega at Altamont. Totally Rolling Stones.
C: Jesse is Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Josh Homme—he’s the guy from Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age—is just here to do Beat Number Three on every song and help shift some units. They say it’s “Canned Heat vocals with stripper beats” and you can’t beat that description so let’s not even gonna try. It’s a pretty raw recording, sounds like a rehearsal tape with all the talking.
D: We will have to subtract points for that.
C: Yeah, all that between-song tech talk is the rock equivalent of skits on hip-hop albums. Funny the first time, maybe, but after that?
D: Eagles of Death Metal, you were rocking the party, and then you’re talking amongst yourselves about when to come in on the beat?!? Thanks for fucking it up!
C: “Speaking in Tongues” is the coolest song. Can you hear that sound?
D: Is that a car honking?
C: It’s the CD! They mixed it in! Totally brilliant! [singing along] “Toot scoot! Boots! Scoot scoot!” I have no idea what he’s saying but I like it, I like it. I said, I like it.

Pink Grease
This Is for Real
(Mute)
C: Okay, let’s get this party started again…
D: It is the Cramps. Wait, it can’t be the Cramps. Is this that “Fire in the disco” band?
C: Not it’s not Electric Six, it’s Pink Grease. Which sounds like a nightmare lubricant. Really good name for this band…
D: [hearing the riff kick in o “Fever”:] Whoa! They’re the house band for a creepy kind of party.
C: This is music for the wasters, and their married friends who are tying one on again, just this once.
D: In the right circumstances, this could finish somebody off. This is music for that kind of party where you do something you regret for weeks. [musing] Possibly even for the rest of your life…
C: They’ve got a cool thing going on—garage rockin’, good drums, new touches when you don’t see it coming: saxophone, a good chorus, some slide guitar, an out-there keyboard solo. [dreamily] They should tour with the Dirtbombs and Eagles of Death Metal and Peaches and Ween…
D: Could someone tell me why there are so many good-rockin’ dance bands right now?

John Wilkes Booze
Five Pillars of Soul
(Kill Rock Stars)
C: Then again, there’s this.
D: “John Wilkes Booze”? Terrible name.
C: I know. I gave it some time on the hi-fi cuz of the booklet. I mean, how bad can a band that salutes, in text, at length, Albert Ayler, Marc Bolan, Yoko Ono and Citizen Tania be?
D: Very, very bad, from the sound of it!
C: Is this a Make-Up and Jon Spencer parody band? Talk about putting the high back in high-conceptualism.
D: ‘Five pillars of soul”?!? Fake soul is the worst!!!
C: I’m embarrassed for these people—they have some cool inspirations and ideas about what they want to do but they don’t have the chops or the instincts to pull it off yet. Maybe they’ll get better…
D: They’re from Indiana? HA HA HA HA HA !
C: I’d like to see them try this in New Orleans.

The Thermals
Fuckin’ A
(Sub Pop)
D: [Definitively:] Guided by Voices. But harder, with more of that old piledriver beat.
C: It’s actually a whole different band, a trio called the Thermals. I like ‘em. It’s urgent. Reminds me of Lee Renaldo from Sonic Youth, bashing away in his garage with the neighborhood teenagers cutting school. Oops, dude just knocked over the ten-speed.
D: [shaking head furiously] I just spilled my beer!
C: This guy’s got one of those voices where you don’t care if he doesn’t really sing. 12 songs, 28 minutes. No solos, but it’s not hardcore or screaming emoters. Just cool. He’s determined, he’s holding on.
D: These are high-energy super-tight anthems! Where’s the towel?
C: [singing along] “Anything you break, you can probably mend/Anything you can feel, you can feel again/Hold tight, remember today.” Shit, those are words to live by.
D: Wisdom from a man called Hutch Harris. Thank you, Thermals! Yo don’t have a moustache but you have rocked C & D!

Mission of Burma
ONoffON
(Matador)
C & D: [stunned silence]
C: How can it… How did they…
D: How can it be this good?
C: They haven’t made a record in 22 years… Some of the people in this issue of Arthur were born and grew into adults in the time between Mission of Burma albums.
D: They sound hungry and creative. [singing along] “Now I live inside the circle!”
C: Inside the circle, but still outside the box. How to describe the pleasures of Burma for the people…hmmm.. well, it IS guitar rock, it has melodies and punch and strange flair, and again, like that Thermals record, there’s a sense of no wasted breath, no gloss, no glamour, just direct intention-into-thought.
D: It’s like a greatest-hits record from the last 22 years, except not only were these songs not hits, they weren’t even released!

The Icarus Line
Penance Soiree
(V2)
C: I saw these guys last year. Their singer reminded me of Richard Ashcroft in the vintage Verve days, when they were at their most cosmic and loose and desolate and swaggering… 1995… Skinny dude with cheekbones, just GONE, going for it—
D: [hears guitar break in on “Up Against the Wall”] YES!
C: —amidst the maelstrom. This one is called “Spit On It.“ Okay, this is what you call RIGHTEOUS SQUALL. Mixed by Alan Moulder, who did stuff with My Bloody Valentine, so there you go…
D: [laughing] Alan Moulder spat on it! That’s holy spit. The old Moulder grease…
C: [listening to “Spike Island”] See, and just when you think it’s all shaped noise, here comes a song with a solid, almost disco rhythm and a guitar refrain—something to pull you, something to grasp onto.
D: They’re an L.A. band. There’s a little Jane’s Addiction in them, isn’t there? Especially in the vocals!
C: That’s true. But Perry always had something interesting to say, I don’t know about these guys, I can’t understand a single word he’s singing.
D: He’s hiding behind the Wall of Squall.
C: Then again… [listening to the beginning of the 9:07-long “Getting Bright at Night”] Well, here we go.
D: They bring it down to earth so they can go back into space!
C: I just want to tell the people that at 6:15 in this song, this simple thing happens that makes you love rock n roll turned up to overwhelming. I know we were talking about finishing people off earlier, but maybe this is the real Finisher right here.
D: Right now, my ears love me.
C: Searched, destroyed. Now let’s see if they can write a song on an acoustic guitar.

The Secret Machines
Now Here Is Nowhere
(Reprise)
C: Well, they’ve got a good drum sound, that’s certain. But…um… Is he going to do that same tempo for 9 minutes?
D: Sounds like it. I think I’ll be needing to smoke some more of those special cocktails for this one. [Leaves room, returns happier.] Ah, now it’s changing. This is good. They’re originally from Texas, this really takes me there, out to the nudist lakes, drinking some Shiners, laying back in the sun with your girl, nobody around, music coming up over the sand from the box, lookin’ up and just tripping out to the great big… big I don’t know..
D: The big Big.
C: Yep…
C: [repeating lyrics to “Road Leads Where It’s Led” ] “We communicate by semaphore/No language/We’ve got flags of our own.” I like that.
D: They’re so laidback, they’re almost out of the pocket. A big cinematic sound with lots of air between the different sounds…
C: They’ve been watching Zabriskie Point, I‘m guessing.
D: They’ve definitely been visiting the dark side of the moon. Especially on this song [“Pharaoh's Daughter”].
C: You know it. “Breathe, breathe in the air.” [listening to the concluding/title track] There’s the Neu/Can/Kraftwerk motorik rhythm, done right–this is like Flaming Lips used to sound sometimes, back when they’d let it out a little more when Ronald was in the band… [listening to the song explode around 7:00] Yes!
D: Big but not pompous, psychedelic but not goofy. Yes! I nominate these guys to do a co-headline tour with The Icarus Line.
C: Good stuff from secret machines and special humans. Thank you again, Texas.

The Veils
The Runaway Found
(Rough Trade)
D: Echo & the Bunnymen?
C: Ha! He DOES have a bit of the Ian McCulloch in him. This is a 20-year-old fella from Australia. There’s some real beauts on here, D… [clicks ahead to “The Leavers Dance”]
D: Radiohead. Starsailor.
C: Yeah, I guess… But listen to those strings come in… it’s so gorgeous. I think sometimes people like us get too caught up in “spot the influence.” It’s one thing when you’re hearing straight, passionless, contrived mimicry—plagiarism—but it’s another when folks’ voices are just…similar. What are they supposed to do? Not sing at all cuz that voice is taken already?
D: [thoughtful, agreeing] To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: “A good song is a good song is a good song.”
C: Anyways, I think it’s beautiful stuff. There’s some vintage Britpop rave-ups, there’s ringing guitars. There’s some middling tempo numbers, which are hard to do, when you think about it… And there’s these autumnal, oceanside ballads. [listening to “Vicious Traditions”:] You can see how it could get all histrionic and spittle-flying, but he reins it in just right.
D: [quietly] So young, and so anguished already…

White Magic
Through the Sun Door EP
(Drag City)
D: At last, a female voice!
C: [listening to opening track “One-Note“] This is one of favorite songs of the spring.
D: Charging piano!
C: It’s serious, but not Tori Amos melodrama. “Some-thing is a-bide-ing!” Hmm…
D: “White Magic.”
C: Best name since Comets On Fire. Lotsa witchy stuff going on right now, eh? [Listening to “The Gypsies Came Marching After”] Wow here’s another stormer. This is probably referencing Fairport Convention or Incredible String Band or Pentangle but I just don’t know that stuff well enough… I guess you’d call it folk-rock—it does swing, you can move to it—and they use traditional acoustic and electric instruments and so on.
D: I like her voice. Strong, feminine, with hints of tenderness and loss.
C: This song [“Apocalypse,” the EP’s final track] is a sorta blues groove—it’s like Heart, if they were amazing.
D [musing]: PJ Harvey, with flowers and beads in her hair.

Espers
Espers
(Locust Music)
C: More really lovely, absolutely spellbinding boots-over-pants modern two girls-one boy psychedelic chamber folk-rock for you…
D: [eyes closed, rapt] My, my, my.
C: Reminds me of Damon & Naomi and Ghost. Very, very pretty, and not at all dippy or precious, which is the way these things can so easily go. [listening to “Meadow”] See, cuz they can write actual songs, they’re not just inhabiting a texture or a form…
D: It cannot be possible. What woods are all these people coming from?
C: They come from the Shire, sire. Actually they come from Philadelphia.
D: [listening to “Voices”] There’s no drums, there’s no backbeat, but, [quietly, seriously] I can dig it anyway. Listen to me when I say this: This is music that lifts the veil.

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.
Mantra of Love
(Alien8)
C: Speaking of lifting the veil: here’s the new Acid Mothers Temple studio album, two very long tracks. The first is a traditional vocal, with Miss Cotton Casino singing, that goes…
D: [6:25 in] There it goes now, off into the universe… Happy trails everywhere.
C: For those out there who don’t know, the Acid Mothers are a Japanese psych outfit known to the acid cognoscenti for volume, trance and hair frizz. They’re on a serious far-out trip and they’re gonna do it, sometimes on the turn of the dime, whether or not anyone else is interested. I’ve seen them play a 100-person room like they were playing for the galaxy…
D: This is the best-recorded AMT album I’ve ever heard!
C: You can actually hear the bass beneath all the Hawkwind psych-bleeptronics and Acid Mothers “super guru” Kawabata Makoto’s super-guru-guitar guru-ifying all over the place. A proper mix, finally. [listening] Aaaaand then back down to the central melody. This is humanity at its finest: dignified—cooperative—transcendent.
D: So good! I must nominate the Acid Mothers as this planet’s ambassadors to the Galactic Council!

Merzbow
Last of Analog Sessions 3-CD box set
(Important Records)
D: Ack! What the???? Something’s wrong with the needle!
C: Oh, D. So easily confused. This is Japanese noise artist Merzbow, that’s what the stuff sounds like…at first. Then you get into it. You have to listen closely.
D: I will NEVER get into this!
C: Well, that’s your problem. For the non-philistines out there in Arthurworld, I want to say that his packages three Merzbow albums—Catapillar, Medamaya and Springharp—recorded from ‘97-99 by Masami Akita, in his final analog tantrums before he went digital. As it says on the back of this beautiful silver-on-black package, “Akita plays Self-built junk—”
D: Yeah this is junk alright—
C: “—with contact mics, various filters and ring modulators, various effects pedals, EMS Synthi A synthesizer, EMS VCS3 Synthesizer, Moog Synthesizer, GR-500 Guitar Synthesizer, Tapes, EXD, Drum Machine and Oscillators.” It’s good stuff, although a little of this goes a long way and I couldn’t tell you what my favorite track is. You’ve got to be in a very certain and very open mindset to listen to this stuff, but it’s worth it. Shit is meditational, bro!
D: Listen, I get this when the DVD isn’t connected right to the stereo, and that’s free of charge.

Loren Connors
The Departing of a Dream Vol. III: Juliet
(Family Vineyard)
D: Much better. Lonesome guitars sounding occasional hopeful notes in the desert.
C: It occupies its own unique space. Not quite ominous, but not settled either. Restless, haunting. Just one man doing “guitars, tapes, sounds.”
D: This is what that Daniel Lanois guy wishes he could sound like.
C: It’s only 30 minutes, but I swear it feels like six hours. This will slow you right down, just like yoga or a good bath or chopping vegetables… Wow.
D: [asleep]

Thee Silver Mountain Reveries
Pretty Little Lighting Paw
(Constellation)
C: Four tracks, thirty minutes. “More Action! Less Tears!” is a great title: it’s like Godspeed You! Black Emperor gone early Spiritualized, with a sense of humor. [Listening to “Microphones in the Trees”]: Now we’re getting down to the REAL anguish of the evening. Guitarist-vocalist Efrim is Wayne Coyne realizing all hope IS lost, actually and death is no comfort. But there’s this ease at the end of the song, a moment of brightness. Epiphany? Or maybe it’s just the street lights buzzing on, like in Antonioni’s L’Eclipse…
D: [stirring deep into the 10-minute “Pretty Little Lightning Paw”]: What is this…? A choir from the dark stars…

Craig Taborn
Junk Magic
(Thirsty Ear)
C: Future jazz from nowtime. Reminds me a bit of Carl Craig’s Innerzone project from a few years ago. Whatever happened with that, anyhow? Jazz and digital electronics: a treacherous and therefore unexploited frontier? Tonight at 10!
D [drifting]: …Cinematic Orchestra….
C: This is heavier, swings a bit more, and goes further out, leaving the drums behind altogether. A little more intense. These are compositions, not jams, you have to follow it along. It’s cool in a tough situation.

Vetiver
Vetiver
(DiCristina)
C: This is my other new favorite record. Really lovely folk stuff from some San Francisco cats, led by Andy Cabic on vocals, guitar and banjo.
D: He sings so nakedly. There’s some Nick Drake here…
C: It reminds me of that third Velvet Underground album. Or any Velvets when they’re quieter: that sort of foggy country-folk that Lou would do then. Kind of hushed and candlelit, away from the streets and the squall and the squalor, in a bohemian garret in the city or a tent in the woods. It’s a balm, like that last Six Organs of Admittance record.
D: There is a gauzy, dreamy feel to this.
C: The songs are really well structured and arranged–there’s cello and violin all over the album. [looking at the CD booklet:] And gaze upon this centerfold, it looks like a vintage Satty image! That’s Joanna Newsom playing harp on “Amerlilie,” and of course that’s the ubiquitous Mr. Banhart sings and plays guitar on a couple songs that are almost hoedowns. Colm O’Ciosoig, from My Bloody Valentine and Hope Sandoval’s band, plays drums on a couple of tracks… and then there’s Hope herself, singing backup on “Angels’ Share.” Goosebumps…
D: There is a real Mazzy Star thing going on here! It is Mazzy Star with a sensitive boy singer.
C: They both go back to the Velvets, don’t they. Oh, the Velvets! I’d give this to the people in the coffeehouses of America digging Cat Power and Beth Orton. Such beautiful songs.
D: These are modern songs, but these are not modern world people.

Blanche
If We Can’t Trust the Doctors…
(Cass Records)
C: Another stylish country-folk softie, with a distressed cover, and banjo and quietish voices by people less than happy with the present day and their present circumstances.
D: A little bit Lyle Lovett, a little bit Buck Owens…
C: They’re from Detroit. This first song has Brendan Benson singing backup, and there’s a perfect little Jack White guitar part…
D: This is nuts. How can there be so many good bands coming out of one city at one time?
C: It does boggle the mind. It’s not just the music, though, which bypasses the alt-country tedium you might be fearing and heads for that stately old country bluegrass thing, it’s good lyrics too: “Who’s to say that I’m obsessed with everything you do/just because it seems my schedule seems to shadow you/who’s to say that tired cliche, there’s more fish in the sea/I don’t mind treading water, you’re the one for me.”
D: And male-female duets — always good, rarely done, rarer still done well.
C: [reading lyrics] “Life once again is carefree/where we tiptoed, now we waltz/past the black cats and the mirrors we cracked/without our fingers crossed…”
D: They are admirers of the old ways, but they are not worshippers.

Los Lobos
The Ride
(Hollywood)
C: What can you say? It’s the new Los Lobos. Fucking buy it already.
D: One of America’s greatest living bands.
C: They’re the house band for America. They can do everything, and they do everything with taste, and they’re not afraid to venture out. Always. Year after year! I mean, what do you call them, how do you categorize them? A jam band? Okay but they’ve got SONGS! A rock n roll band? Sure, but they’ve got so much soul, they can do traditional Mexican folk stuff, and they can flip into so many musical spaces and styles, for all the occasions of life: carnivals, barbecues, funerals, weddings, lonely drives. They’re the ascended masters, they’re our nation’s poet laureates. They should be on the radio all the time, on Leno and Letterman ever week. The true music fans know this, the true musicians know this. This album is like a testimonial to Los Lobos—it’s the band with a ton of guest stars doing new songs, some covers, all over the map stylistically. I’ll just list em: Cafe Tacuba, Willie G, Dave Alvin from the Blasters, Bobby Womack, Tom Waits & Martha Gonzalez, Ruben Blades, Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello, Mavis Staples…
D: Wow. Somebody call NPR!
C: That’s some heavy hitters, but I’d be buying this anyway, bro. I found an amazing quote from Mickey from Ween the other day on Los Lobos. He said, “I love Los Lobos, that’s a band that’s out there that really does it for me that I’ll go see. I don’t know why people aren’t really hip, because Los Lobos, to me… Like people say that Phish filled in a void for the Dead when they were gone, for a variety of reasons. You know, they played long sets, they jam a lot, they changed their set list every night. [But] Los Lobos play a very long set, they change their set lists all the time, it’s as much good, quality guitar that you could want. They’ve been doing it forever and they give off the vibe on stage that they have. They have that telepathy going.”
D: So true, so true.
C: When I hear David Hidalgo’s voice, I tear up, just automatically.
D: Like War said, the world is a ghetto. But the world is a barrio too, and I want to be there.

Toots & the Maytalls
True Love
(V2)
C: Let’s wrap this up with another celebrity testimonial album… Toots Hibbert—
D: Toots & the Maytalls!
C: —joined by a bunch of folks doing some of his old songs, and some new stuff, with a constellation of stars. There’s some total sheened-up clunkers on here, but damn, any time there’s a chance to hear Willie Nelson singing reggae, I’m there.

REVIEWS BY C and D

Guitar Wolf
Red Idol DVD
(Narnack)
D: Hey, I can’t make this DVD work.

The Von Bondies
Pawn Shoppe Heart
(Sire)
D: This is the Detroit garage guy who had his face bashed up by Jack White.
C: Right. Jason Von Bondie is apparently the town asshole, or so I’ve been told. But, do you know that song, “Pablo Picasso”?
D: Of course! Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers! They were the best! [singing:] “He could walk down your street/And girls could not resist his stare/Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.” But this doesn’t sound like Jonathan Richman…?
C: [sighs] Okay D, I’ll spell it out for you: Pablo Picasso was an asshole. But he also made some great paintings.

Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand
(Domino)
D: This is what the Strokes and the Rapture should have done on their last records. But they were incapable.
C: Every song is a sure-hit on the dancefloor. Plus the guy can sing. And check out what they do on this track (#3), 55 seconds in…
D: Whoa….
C: The tempo slows down… And listen to that guitar playing! Then here comes that descending disco bassline again.
D: This is ridiculous. Can I use your phone? I’ve got to call my financial advisor. I’ve got to buy stock in this band! They are the new kings!!!
C: I know, eh. It’s like all the those other bands, including those Interpol guys, were all just warm-ups for the Ferds. Amazing stuff. Album of the year so far, easy.

The Walkmen
Bows and Arrows
(Record Collection)
D: Ah, I see what you’re doing…
C: Yes, I am Clever Man.
D: These guys, they’re good, they’re kind of like the Ferdinand and the Strokes and…
C: Dude’s got a bit of the crooner in him. And he’s a more interesting lyricist than Julian Casablancas. Then again, just about everyone is.
D: Watch it.
C: Oh right, sorry, I forgot about your inner 14-year-old girl self.
D: …
C: Um… Okay, sorry, that was uncalled for.
D: You can be so ARROGANT sometimes… [listening] The sounds they get are so cool.
C: Organs, guitars, tacked pianos. But check out this next track, you’re gonna lose it.
D: [listening to “The Rat”] It’s the Strokes with their pants on fire! That guy’s mad!!!!
C: Madder than Jack White. He’s fucking going for it, damn, and you know, when a crooner spits blood, you better look out. Anger always means more when it’s coming from a guy who usually .
D: This shit is banging. “You’ve got a nerve to be asking a favor/You’ve got a nerve to be calling my number/I’m sure, we’ve been through this before/Can’t you hear me, I’m beating on the wall.”
C: I’d pay $15 for this song alone. And you know what? There’s ten more songs on the album!!!
D: And they’re good too. Shit. This is gonna be some year.

Oneida
Secret Wars
(Jagjaguwar)
C: You wouldn’t know this–
D: Again with the arrogance!
C: Well, you wouldn’t–
D: Wouldn’t what?
C: Wouldn’t know what the title is based on.
D: Well…
C: ‘80 Marvel Comics. Which I read. And I bet you didn’t.
D: …
C: So fuck off! [laughter] Big battles between superheroes and the main guy who summoned them to the “secret wars” : The Beyonder.
D: [wistful] Ah, the ‘80s…
C: Or it’s based on something else! Anyways. I dig this.
D: [Listening to “$50 Tea”] It’s frantic. Hypnotic. Like strobe lights for your ears.
C: But it stretches out too, and there’s melodies. It’s a lot like that last Primal Scream record, Evil Heat. Difference is that Oneida won’t let the machines do any work.
D: The Beyonders is the name of my new band.

Weird War
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Bite ‘Em
(Drag City)
C: From Secret Wars to Weird War, get it?
D: You are so clever. Almost too clever to bear. I cower before your cleverness.
C: [laughs] As you ought. Now check this shit out…
D: [listening to “Grand Fraud”]: Is it supposed to sound like that? Listen to all that hiss.
C: Yes, it’s nice and raw and funky and kinda fucked up. They used some old mixing board that Sly Stone and later the P-Funk guys used. Um. I guess it’s possible…
D: [2:45 into “Grand Fraud”]:WHOA!!!!!
C: That’s the shit right there. That’s IT.
D: Who is the singer?
C: Ian Svenonius, Arthur astrologer, on vocals. He’s been around forever. Nation of Ulysses, Cupid Car Club, Make Up, Scene Creamers… The Make Up split up just when they were getting good! Now I think he’s got it going on again, especially with this new guitar player, that guy has some tasty chops, as they used to say back in the day. Do you remember, back in the ‘90s, when it was a point of pride to be less than competent?
D: Stupid indie rockers, I never liked that stuff. Weird War is a weird name.
C: You’re right. Like, what do you call the people in the band?… Weird War-ers?.
D: Weird Warriors! [Ears pop up as female voice rapping begins on title track breakdown] Is that Peaches????
C: It’s Jennifer from Royal Trux.
D: Whoa. I think she can quit her dayjob! And Peaches should call her lawyers.
C: Always with the lawyers, this guy.

TV On the Radio
Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
(Touch and Go)
C: Another band with a difficult name.
D: “TV on the Radio”? What does that mean? What are they thinking? This is crazy talk.
C: Just listen to the music. You can’t judge a band by its name! The Beatles is the stupidest name ever, right?
D: Yes, okay. [listening] What do you call this kind of music?
C: I have no idea, but I like listening to it.
D: It’s dance music, but it’s got all this…
C: All these weird elements, used in weird ways. Horns. Backing vocals. Dance grooves.
D: He’s got a voice like Peter Gabriel. There’s something kind of scary about this stuff.
C: It seems like they’re holding it together in the face of something. [Quoting song lyrics:] “You were my favorite moment/of a dead century.”
D: This is really good. It’s genuinely new—I can’t say that I’ve heard something like this before. And I want to hear it again.

The Paper Chase
What Big Teeth You Have EP
(Southern)
C: Speaking of scary.
D: Super-tension crisis music!
C: Drills. Angst. Space. Rolling bass. Piano stabs. Guitars at angles.
D: It’s like a soundtrack to a murder.
C: Reminds me of Jesus Lizard. Drive Like Jehu… But there’s an almost… symphonic, I guess…component to it. They’re from Texas, they thing big.
D: Violins too. Genuine horror movie stuff! But not in a cheesy way. No organ grinder.
C: You should see the video that‘s on here: it’s like low-budge Lynch meets Cunningham. Okay, onto the next track, which is a Brel cover…
D: Of course. “My Death.” Scott Walker did this!
C: The drums are so big on this record. I think it’s a Texas thing. Those guys love the big Bonham drum thing down there. Lift to Experience, Secret Machines, these guys… Maybe it’s from all those years of Flaming Lips coming down to Austin from Oklahoma, that dude is an epic drummer. So is this guy.
D: The guitar is now being strangulated. It’s almost too much. Psychodramatic, just at the edge of being too much.
C: Yes. This last song is a Roger Waters cover from The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. It’s massive.
D: Whoo-ee. We need to keep an ear on these guys!
C: Their next album is gonna be on Kill Rock Stars… A label with a violent name for a band with a violent streak as wide as a Texas mile.
D: They are the new Texas chainsaw murderers, only they use guitars. Murdered by music.

Casual Dots
Casual Dots
(Kill Rock Stars)
C: Speaking of Kill Rock Stars, here’s a record on the label by a new band.
D: More angularity.
C: Angularity is the new strumming.
D: A female voice, finally! Why do we always listen to men records?
C: That is a very good question to which I don’t have a very good answer. Anyway, in case you were wondering, this sounds to me like Stereolab meeting Deerhoof with, oh, Poison Ivy from the Cramps on guitar. It’s indie rock vets from bands like Autoclave and Bikini Kill, but they can play their instruments.
D: Progress has been made. Miracles, they never cease.
C: This song, “I’ll Dry My Tears” is a cover, right?
D: It must be. Very nice, so different from the rest. We can ask the Internet about it.
C: Poison Ivy is so underrated… This whole record sounds like a tribute to her guitar playing.
D: Cool stuff on record, now I wanna see ‘em live. Women rock!
C: …

Hella
The Devil Isn’t Red
(5 Rue Christine)
C: Instrumental mathcore by men.
D: Excuse me while I yawn.
C: I’m sure it’s all very difficult and very intense, but why should people listen to this when they could listen to, oh, King Crimson or Magma?
D: This is so difficult. Oh so very difficult. The nerds of rock, shredding away. Maybe it is fun for them.
C: The drumming on this bugs the shit out of me, it’s busy beyond belief. For what? I don’t get it.
D: Off it goes. Bye bye!

Deerhoof
Milkman
(Kill Rock Stars)
C: Speaking of Deerhoof, here’s their new one on…Kill Rock Stars.
D: Which rock stars do they want to kill exactly, that’s what I always wondered.
C: Of all the people to advocate killing, why rock stars? Why not…um…first-world capitalist greedheads? If you’re going to go down that route, I mean… Not that I’m advocating anything.
D: We are peace people.
C: But rock stars? John Lennon was killed. Are these John Hinkley sympathizers, then? That’s pretty fucking stupid.
D: Disgusting!
C: Hey anyway, guess what? This sounds like the other Deerhoof records! Cute dreamy vocals in the same key by Japan-born singer Satomi Matsuzaki, I don’t know what she’s saying but it good, and lotsa riffs glued on, stomping and stopping and starting.
D: They’re supposed to be amazing live.
C: Yeah, I can see that. But they still don’t quite do it for me on record.
D: Well, that’s your problem. I am digging it. Next!

OOIOO
Kila Kila Kila
(Thrill Jockey)
C: Continuing on from our “kill” theme, and also on the Japanese theme, here’s the new record by the band that Yoshimi from the Boredoms leads…
D: This is boring twiddling thumbs music. Where are the drums? I need some drums.
C: You may get your drums. Just sit still and listen for a second, will ya? Patience is a virtue.
D: Hey what about that Guitar Wolf DVD? He’s Japanese.
C: Oh yeah. Lemme see if I can make it work. [tries to make it work] Nope.
D: This is getting better, but it’s taking too long. I am a busy man.
C: Okay, okay. I just want the Arthur readers to know that this is an interesting, minimalist art-trance-experimental record that rewards multiple listens by the genuinely curious. I mean, shit D, this song is 10 minutes and 40 seconds, you gotta let it develop. It’s like the opposite of Deerhoof. Deerhoof is for people who need it NOW and OOIOO is for people who can wait.
D: I am definitely a cannot-waiter. I apologize to Yoshimi, but that is how I am!

Ghost
Hypnotic Underworld
(Drag City)
C: I have prepared a statement regarding this album, that I wrote while in what we shall call ‘alternative consciousness,’ which I will now read. [clears throat] “Pure, total towering all-encompassing humble acoustic-electric-Mellotronic psychedelic-pastoral-rock-art-prog-outre accomplishment, the summation of a career, a flowing highlight reel that takes every angle that Batoh’s Ghost band (who come from Japan) have ever explored during the last decade and a half and multiplied the richest parts by a factor of 48. (It’s like The Love Below, in a way, right?) The band is sympathetic, tremendous, stunning: the electric guitarist Michio Kurihara deserves particular recognition for his restraint, his launches, his trails. Lower the lights, turn on the fog machine, put a candle in the wine bottle, turn the stereo up loud and gaze lovingly at the gatefold. I want to tell you something: my friends, whoever you are and whatever language you speak, This album is why Music exists.”
D: Yeah, it’s pretty good.

The Coral
Magic and Medicine
(Deltasonic/Columbia)
C: New album from the Coral.
D: Liverpool young guys that sound old!
C: Yeah. This is a solid record, pleasant. More lightly psychedelic folk-country-rock-I dunno.Melodic. But…
D: There’s nothing urgent about it.
C: Exactly. It’s kind of timeless, but not in a cosmic-eternity Ghost way, it’s more just timeless in an England way. You get the feeling these songs might’ve been written at any time in the last few hundred years, but whenever they were written, they never meant much to anyone.
D: They don’t draw blood—they suck it!
C: [laughs] Well…there’s just this distance to them. They have such a warm, welcoming sound, but…well the singer’s kinda flat, it‘s like he never breaks this character he’s playing. Safe but harmless. He’s no Shane Macgowan.
D: The Pogues!
C: Shane had bite, even when he was gumming it. You wanna be a poet, you can’t just sit by your fireplace all the time. You gotta get out there and take some blows for the home team, soak something up, whether it’s your own experiences or what you witness. I always get the feeling these guys sit around playing records and watching flicks. That don’t do it.
D: You could be wrong, though.
C: Well… As T-Model says, that’s true now!

Greg Ashley
Medicine Fuck Dream
(Birdman)
D: Is this new? It sounds like early Pink Floyd or…
C: It’s new. It’s Greg Ashley, he’s from Texas, used to be in a band called Mirrors down there (not the Mi