Coursing Through The Wires #3
Housecleaning note -- As some of you may recall, "Coursing through the Wires" was a regular segment of FB, in which contributors offered lists of what they were digging at a particular moment in time. The entries were scattered across food, music, books, videos, and cultural ephemera -- the equivalent of selective inclusions from a list of "ten most recent Google searches." I always liked the title for its multiple connotations. In this new venture, I decided to bring back the title exclusively for recurring posts focused on music reviews. [Egg nog lattes really aren't quite the novelty they were ten years ago (and are now made in some locales with a mutant Torani syrup instead of the real deal like Wawa Gold), the original Austin-based Celis White is long gone (but resurrected now in Michigan), and my cross-cultural consumption habits have really never seemed as broad as those of my peers]. Not a big deal, but something that was bugging me a little -- thanks for bearing with me.
Reviews/Commentary this time around -- Radio Birdman, and the curious case of bands that should have stopped after one song (or at least stuck to that one song, in the model of Lungfish or Stereolab in their respective early periods).
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Radio Birdman -- For more years than I'd like to admit, I couldn't understand the general fascination with this band. I was into multiple generations of Aussie punk as much as the next guy (the Saints, the Scientists, Celibate Rifles, et al.) but I just never got Birdman. I lost track of the number of times I'd pulled out "Radios Appear" for a radio show but never got around to playing it.
Now that I've spent some quality time with the SubPop reissue / compilation, I kick myself for not realizing one simple thing -- "Burn My Eye" is just a dull song. It might have been the band's first single, but it really belongs to the New York Dolls -- a fact that would be more immediately evident with a saucy piano trill (or three).
Focusing instead on the Alice Cooper-worthy "Descent Into The Maelstrom," the stomp of "Murder City Nights," or the sing-along choruses of "I-94" or "Hand of Law," you can feel Deniz Tek bringing his Michigan-bred swagger and snarl to the similarly (and lovably) unrefined Aussies. In my (revisionist?) sense of history, Radio Birdman marks the hybridization of and cross-over point between cockrock and punk. Sure, the catalog veers uncomfortably close to the former by the end, but there will always be faltering steps at the early stages of evolution. I'm still trying to chase down a copy of the first great Aussie bootleg comp, "Where Birdmen Flew" (since I seem to have lost my cassette dub in one of my cross-country moves) but this time I know to skip over "Burn My Eye" in favor of Razar's "Task Force" and the Victims' "Television Addict."
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One-song wonders -- Sometimes, a band only has one brief moment of brilliance. You'll spend time chasing down other releases, becoming further and further disillusioned by the stunning mediocrity (or worse), until you nearly forget that there was something worth listening to in the beginning. In some respects, these are the bands for which the 7" single, the compilation album, and now the downloading music stores (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.) were designed.
My favorite example is a pedestrian bar band orignally from Connecticut called the Gravel Pit. I first heard of them on some hole-in-the-wall compilation many years back, with a song called "Focusing On One Specific Goal And Achieving It" -- a beautiful organ-drenched piece of neo-psychedelic sing-songy dirge rock. I tried in vain to enjoy subsequent releases by this band, even catching up on the band's more recent history a couple weekends ago through the wonders of this here inter-web-a-ma-gig, but came back to the same conclusion.
Within the span of two songs on one compilation CD released with Jim Ellis' outstanding CLE zine in 1995, Cruel, Cruel Moon captured one sublime moment ("Anything") and then promptly ran in the opposite direction ("1,000,000 Miles"). "Anything" is a subtle, slow, melancholy look at a relationship's end, punctuated by the refrain "I don't believe in anything at all." It miraculously avoids being trite by wisely taking sonic and atmospheric cues from Galaxie 500, who [of course]once turned a winter afternoon trip to a CVS into a source of inspiration for thousands. I've also spent a little time searching what became of this outfit -- "Yeh, You" from a Chunklet sampler, cops its basic structure and chords from CCR's "Born on the Bayou" but lacks the rhythmic depth or the fuzz-guitar solo.
One last example for today -- Green Magnet School. "Windshield," the best song on the compilation Where's Stanton Park?, also turned out to be the best song on the subsequent album, Bloodmusic. I recall the SubPop singles club release being decent, but nothing lived up to the promise and the standard set in the beginning... the skritchy guitar strings, simple swelling structure, and the coda -- "I feel things flowing through my head, drowning me and making me nervous."
Having never been in a band, I can't say whether finding and exposing that "one song" really is enough for a musician. As a once (and perhaps again) DJ, however, I stand behind and root for the gold nuggets emerging out of the mud.
So much to respond to, my dear SKM! I'm with ya on the Birdman theory... "Burn my Eye" is totally unspectacular in comparison to their other tracks. When I got around to discovering them at WPRB, I'd already been on a steady diet of Celibate Rifles and Hard Ons LPs for years prior... "Aloha Steve & Danno" hooked me with a cornily heisted guitar solo from Hawaii 5-0, and it was all downhill from there. The song that took the longest for me to "get" on that LP is actually "The Man with the Golden Helmet" but I'd be comfortably now calling it one of my faves. Also, a lot of the stuff on the 2nd LP is equally great, but seldom gets the lip service it deserves. Not sure if that Sub Pop thing is a full re-ish of both LPs or a greatest hits type package, but "Crying Sun" and "It Breaks my Heart" should both be heard pronto if you've not heard them yet. Also, if you missed out on the "Where Birdmen Flew" boot and the subsequent "Murder Punk" CDs (which comped all the same songs and then some) you might try the "Tales from the Australian Underground" 2xCD (which is a legit release and should still be in print) for those more obscure nuggets of OZ punk.
Also, the Gravel Pit song is on the comp "My Companion" which was released by an iffy label based outta Connecticut, I think. (I only remember this because I recall reviewing everything else they'd sent to WPRB, so why not do the comp too.) It has a passably listenable Alice Donut song on it, and that's about the extent of what still kicking around in my brain. The Gravel Pit song IS excellent and the fact that I don't have an MP3 of it that I can post here is totally pissing me off right about now. And yes, everything else they ever did totally blew chunks.
Finally, I also agree with you on the Green Magnet School thing -- "Windshield" is a heartstopper, the best song they ever did. But the "Bloodmusic" LP is pretty solid, albeit in a more noise-rock, bordering on 90s Am-Reperisms, kind of way. "Package" is a spooky song that never fails to stoke up the embers, in my estimation. Their subsequent EP on some other label (Sonic Bubblegum, maybe?) was weak, but they had a good split 2x45 with Six Finger Satellite on which they did an admirable tackling of Neil Young's "Don't Cry."