February 2006 Archives
Continuing in the "free association" mode of recent editions...
- The one-song wonders of the world persist... my latest find being The Holy Ghost and their psychedelicious rocker Or Dead (mp3). It's not entirely fair for me to judge a band on the basis of five or six MP3s when I haven't purchased or spent significant time with any of their 3 full-length records (or the stray EP and singles) -- but I am working from what the band chose to share with curious pikers like me. For the most part, I see this sound as the death throes of early 80s angular postpunk stripmining ... the sound starts to get thicker and "shouty" (including bullhorn vox to open "Ghettobird" while still claiming some of the hip-and-trendy elements exploited years before by countless Crooklyn cognoscenti. Someday, a DJ 10-12 years younger than me will post a collection of MP3s cataloging the late 90s rediscovery of Gang of Four, much like Mike's recently-published Volume One of mid-90s "post-Fugazi wankery."
- Mike (and his new friend) also pointed me to this lovely photo of a rugrat gnawing on a well-worn copy of Paranoid. Is this a sign of good taste by the baby and parents, i.e. "ingestion is just another form of osmosis", or should I be offended at this apparent desecration of a much-loved touchstone?
The PFW trip down memory lane also led me back in a slightly different direction... to a sunny summer drive down Lawrenceville-Pennington Road (in the heart of Mercer County, NJ) when I was inspired to (but thankfully didn't) jam on my brakes immediately so that I wouldn't miss anything from whatever Peg was playing... this ungodly mishmash of whirligigs and carnival barkers and tribal drumming. What I thought was perhaps an on-the-fly mix turned out to be "Tattoos Fade," the debut single from the World/Inferno Friendship Society. Happily, the song hasn't lost a step (though I have, from the looks of the W/IFS web headquarters).
- Where the hell was I when Electrelane came on the scene? How did I miss the spoken shoutout to them in Saint Etienne's "Finisterre"? Yes, one might dismiss or disparage Electrelane as just another Stereolab wannabe, but damn if they didn't get it just right. The choir on "The Valleys" absolutely slays me. Check out this recent post at Shake Your Fist for some samples, or head promptly to the marketplace of your choice to obtain more complete examples of the wonder and brilliance.
The Washington Post offers a surprisingly interesting Anti-Valentine's Playlist in honor of the madness and hysteria wrought on us all by the Hallmark car(d)tel. I really never thought of "Mannequin" as a song of "rage" -- it was always more of a "buzz off" experience -- "you don't even start / to interest me / it's not animosity / just don't interest me."
One song they're really missing from the survey, however, likely belongs somewhere between the "rage" and "regret" columns... "Dalliance" by the Wedding Present. "I was yours for seven years / that's what you call a dalliance? // I don't care / after all you've done" ... and the fury unleashed when everyone jumps on their fuzzboxes at the same time -- a moment that really came across better on the import vinyl EP than the US-released CD (something must have gotten lost in the production and compression and conversion to digital.) [*]
UPDATE: Another entry from the Post, offered with tongue firmly in cheek -- why Lloyd Dobler is better than Jake Ryan (at least in the retrospective mythos of 80s teen filmdom). At least we're confining the self-pity to one day that has some historical relevance (a martyred saint's feast day) as opposed to the torn-from-whole-cloth "Sweetest Day" nonsense.
