Will Beg 4 Money

Full disclosure:  it is entirely possible that the back of my head features fairly prominently in the above video.  While I understand that giving a glowing write-up to my pals in Rib Cages could be seen by some as a shameless fame-grab, I assure you that it is nothing of the sort.  Yes, the back of my head BADLY wants to be famous.  No, that is not my motivation for writing this piece.

Instead, I write to address an imbalance that has been giving me the fits lately.  To wit:  if the media is to be believed, my city's (Portland, Oregon) music scene is full of fucking WIMPS.  The Decemberists.  The Shins.  Stephen "Pencil Neck" Malkmus.  Modest FUCKING Mouse.  This is to say nothing of the legions of soundalikes (And And And, my Pavement records and I are looking at YOU), folk-rock candyasses (Shaky Hands, you PUSSIES) and out-and-out ABOMINATIONS (Sallie Ford And The Sound Outside).  

But!  This perception is FALSE, I tell you!  Rock and/or Roll live and breathe in Portland,  despite what those demented scribblers of the Music Press would have you believe.  Rock (and/or) Roll of the sort embodied by RIB CAGES.

What we're dealing with here is yr basic garage-rock with a few crucial innovations.  One!  The guitar (played by "Nation") is an electric twelve-string, so every chord is turned into a blizzard of noise and chaos.  Two!  The rhythm section ("K-SE" and the more reasonably-named "Josh") play like they are fucking POSSESSED,  with the end result that Three! the tempos never dip below "blistering".  Which, for those of you who remember this earlier lesson, goes a hell of a long way to making your band "awesome."

My gift to you today is the only Rib Cages 7-inch that made it out before the band's (temporary?) dissolution (if any of my readers are in the Chicago Metro area, please tell K-SE to get his ass back here so his band can start demolishing clubs again).  Four songs.  Seven minutes (not even).  Flawless victory.  You should buy a copy from 'em so yr not a total deadbeat.

In related news, The Best Show on WFMU recently played "Lock Horns" from this very 7-inch.  I think this is the best thing that has ever happened to anyone I know, ever, and YES that includes your stupid marriage/kid/promotion/Nobel Prize.  This is the goddamn Best Show we're talking about.  Congrats, boys.  I'm super jealous.

It'll End In Tears

Picture it:  Olympia, 1998.  The Make-Up are in town to do their post-situationist Fake Soul puppet show and I am the kind of guy who WILL NOT MISS THAT PUPPET SHOW.  There is an opening act, because that is how These Things Go.  The opening act is (somewhat unfortunately) called The Starlite Desperation.  They are a shamelessly recidivist blues-inflected rock band.  They have a singer named Dante who has really high cheekbones and wears his silk shirt with the top three buttons unbuttoned.  They rock effortlessly and don't give a fart about politics.  While Ian from the Make-Up disguises his sexual come-ons with a massive dose of Critical Theory, The Starlite Desperation opt for sped-up Gun Club riffs and a whole lot of strutting and pouting.  It is not a very good disguise.  Olympia Washington realizes that The Starlite Desperation are trying to fuck her.  Olympia Washington is displeased.  In the extreme.

I, fool that I am, love the shit out of The Starlite Desperation.  I dance Right Up Front By The Stage.  I Give It Up.  And then I wonder why none of the vagina-having population of Olympia will talk to me.  Perhaps I have an incomplete understanding of Critical Theory.


So, here we are in 2011, and is anybody still listening to their Make-Up albums anymore?  I think not.  Instead, please give this highlight reel from The Starlite Desperation a try.  Included are two jams each from their first two albums (Show You What A Baby Won't and Go Kill Mice) and the Hot For Preacher seven inch. While it's totally inspiring and politically awesome that most punk bands just formed yesterday and can barely hold their instruments AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE, th' Desperation sure make a valid case for Knowing How To Fucking Play.  Witness the effortless drum/guitar dialogue on "What I Want" and the EPIC (eight minutes plus) "Go Kill Mice".  Dig how quickly "New Year's Bathroom Magic" goes from pretentious amateurism to manic perfection (hint:  52 seconds).  Consider that "Messed Up Head" was released by the same label that dumped The Locust on an unsuspecting public, and marvel at how much better The Starlite Desperation have aged than their wimp-violence candy-ass sci-fi meth head contemporaries.


And.  Then.  Bask in the utter perfection that is the Hot For Preacher seven inch.  Produced by the legendary (ex-Gun Club, Ex-Bad Seed) Kid Congo Powers, this is one of the finest Rock Singles Of.  All.  Time.  Subliminal screams.  Echo and swagger.  Vocal hysteria.  Feedback.  And, at two minutes twelve, some of the BIGGEST GODDAMN GUITARS it will ever be your pleasure to meet.


And the b-side ain't too shabby, either.


So.  Blues-rock.  Without irony.  Overt sexuality.  Again, without irony.  We used to call this rock n' roll, and we used to not think so goddamn much.

Look Out! Grunge is Back!

HEAVY CHAINS /// STONED STRIPPER from Patrick Cruz on Vimeo.

Above, find the video for "Stoned Stripper" by Vancouver punk super group (ugh) Heavy Chains.  You'll be getting Andrea from Nu Sensae, Anne-Marie from White Lung, and Brodie McKnight from Sex Negative.  They've got this EP thing called A Very Real Hell and it's pretty goddamn fantastic.


Basically, Heavy Chains take the classic "Grunge" formula and deconstruct it into punishing, warped, incoherent minimalism.  And as long-time readers of this fine publication can tell you (hi, mom!), I like punishing, warped, incoherent minimalism QUITE A BIT.


The video track is the closest that Hell gets to standard songwriting, in that it actually has lyrics.  The vocals on most of the other songs are just bloodcurdling shrieks, usually slathered with a heavy coat of crazy outer-space effects.  The guitars and bass are ostensibly rooted in classic grunge tropes (mid-to-late seventies metal, psychedelic blues/punk) but the riffs are approached with such brutal repetition that they cease to offer the listener any reference points, so the only guides to where the songs are going are the drums and those awful, awful screams.  Oh, and the guitars have crazy outer-space effects on them, too.  Taken as a whole, it's like listening to old Nirvana albums while caught in a particularly violent hurricane.


So, here's "Shit Burning Piss Tubing" and "Commo Wire" off A Very Real Hell.  No, you don't get the whole album.  It just came out!  Go buy it from Nu Sensae and White Lung, they're ALWAYS on tour, and god knows they can use the money.
 

Anytime, Cowboy.

There is a question that every practitioner of the rockwrite has learned to fear:  "So, who's your FAVORITE BAND?"

On its surface, this query is innocence itself.  All I do around this joint is opine about musics.  Surely there must be one I like the best... the toppermost of the poppermost, as the Limeys like to say.  It should pose no trouble at all to name that Blessed One... hell, one might even expect such action to give me PLEASURE.

But.  Such things are not simple.  Such things are not Clean Cut.  After a few decades of immersion in The Rock Game, most scribes find their tastes becoming... mercurial, I suppose.  Rather than One True Love, we find a series of dalliances, changing our affections to fit a certain mood or fancy.

All of which is a lot of poncey bullshit cooked up to keep from answering a question that you, in all honesty, did not ask:  Who is my favorite band?  Well, this is where things get awkward (it is?).  Because I must now admit (in mixed company) that my favorite band (at least twenty percent of the time) is a bunch of racist, misogynist, homophobic cowboy art-punks.  From Scotland.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you... The Country Teasers.

Calm down.  Be still.  Cease your sputtering, "What... do you mean to say... how can you... are YOU... if... but then... ARE THEY REALLY?!"  Yes.  They are.  And no.  Or, at least, not entirely.

Perhaps singer/guitarist/mastermind Ben Wallers puts it best when he says "There is no bias on my hates... I will pick you all off, one by one, as you walk through the gates."  Or perhaps he puts it best when he says "We are the Hitler of comedy, and everybody else is the Jew."  Or perhaps "Personally I think, and this is just my point of view, ALL HUMAN LIFE SHOULD BE DESTROYED."  

The Country Teasers exist in that magical place where one is so exhausted by the horrors of the world that a sob turns into a hysterical laugh.  Where, upon viewing the grand agonies and tiny tortures that humans visit upon each other daily in the guise of "civilization", one sneers, takes a sip of whiskey, and says, "Aw, fuck it, what the hell."  And then begins to laugh, long and loud and clear.

So, can one fault an artist for holding up a mirror to society if the reflection is TOO ACCURATE?  TOO UGLY?  Not when the artist is HILARIOUS.  For such are The Country Teasers.  All this misanthropy and gloom would be indescribably tedious if handled with po-faced seriousness  (Michael Gira, I'm looking at you) or fake-macho aggression (Whitehouse, I'm looking at you), but the Country Teasers remember the cardinal rule of Being Offensive:  You can get away with anything as long as you're funny.

So, what have we got here?  Why, it's my own primitive stab at a Teasers Career Retrospective... a "Best Of," if you will.  No, it cannot hope to capture the full glory of their vision.  No, it cannot give a proper accounting of the subtle nuances (yes I said it shut up) that allow their songs to transcend shock comedy for the realm of the absurd, the triumphant, and (yes, even) the tender.

To business.  First album, The Pastoral Not Rustic World Of Their Greatest Hits gives us a cover ("Stand By Your Man", which is always a chortle when a bloke sings it), a pseudo-cover ("Black Cloud Wandering"), and a stone-cold fucking classic ("Anytime, Cowboy") which serves as fine advice for any young couple hoping to manufacture a happy relationship in These Modern Times.  The lads are in basic art-garage-country mode on this one.  A fine effort, but it pales in comparison to...

Satan Is Real Again or Feeling Good About Bad Thoughts is what we in the trade call "A Fucking Masterpiece".  Choosing which songs to share on this behemoth is a challenge for which my drinks-addled brain is not well prepared.  You are receiving "Panty Shots", "It Is My Duty" (which has the above bit about Hitler in it, along with loads of other chuckles), and "Thank You God For Making Me An Angel" (which blatantly rips off Joy Division and is probs my favorite Teasers song of all time).  I could have given you anything else off the album and you'd thank me for it.  Find yrself a copy posthaste, and get me another bottle of rye while yr at it.  Something seems to have happened to mine.

Destroy All Human Life is next, and it marks the point at which the few critics who bothered to show up started shitting on Our Boys.  No, it's not a career-defining pinnacle like Satan, but it DOES feature a sort of thoughtful melancholy that would help the band to escape the horror/shock corner they were in danger of painting themselves into.  I have, of course, chosen to showcase exactly NONE of the gorgeous heartbreak jams ("David, I Hope You Don't Mind" and "Golden Apples" are both weepy stunners that I can perhaps play you if you want to come over some night with a bottle of something medicinal).  INSTEAD:  "Hairy Wine" (about the dangers of being a stupid junkie), "Destroy All Human Life" (which showcases a burgeoning experimental vibe that would, along with the moodier numbers, keep this shit fresh for Ages Yet To Come [it is also possibly The Teasers' most offensive song yet, if yr keeping score]) and "Song Of The White Feather Club" (mainly for the bit where Wallers announces his intention to play the "KKK Klassic, 'Even My Shites Is Whites Whites Whites'".)

Science Hat Artistic Cube Moral Nosebleed Empire (nice album titles, fellas) is a singles comp that I bought on double vinyl after watching The Country Teasers share the stage with Wesley Willis and a Burlesque Troupe from Seattle.  While the heathen tough-guy assholes in Seattle chose to heckle the ladies, The Teasers proved to be perfect gentlemen, eventually coercing several of the scantily-clad lovelies onto the stage during The Teasers' set.  "Let's Have A Shambles" is a pretty standard Country Teasers jam about having sex in a public lavatory, "I'm A New Person Ma'am" is a personal favorite but won't play on my computer... maybe you'll have better luck?  Oh, and here's a cover of "No Limits" by techno-jock-jam favorites 2 Unlimited.  Giggles.

 Recorded entirely on 4-track, Secret Weapon Revealed At Last received a whopping 3.1 rating from the stupid cunts over at Pitchfork.  While easily the least cohesive (and coherent) record in The Country Teasers discography (a good portion of it is so fucked and experimental as to be almost unlistenable), it does feature some BRILLIANT material.  "Deaths" is perhaps the most touching song Ben Wallers has ever written (about the deaths of early Teasers guitarist Alan Crichton and Wallers' Aunt Pen), while "Please Stop Fucking Each Other" and "Man V. Cock" are both hilarious and expertly recorded.  And "The penis mocks the soul for not fucking around more," is an amazing lyric.

So, here we are, almost caught up (there's a newish split 12-inch out that I've been too poor to import).  The Empire Strikes Back finds The Country Teasers back in prime form... it's easily their best record since Satan.  "Spiderman In The Flesh" cops from Pink Floyd while painting a masterful portrait of postmodern alienation and ennui (perhaps I WILL have a bit more whiskey, thank you!).  "Points of View" ties together Zyklon B, English Football, and toast to scorchingly incisive effect.  Finally (whew!) "Please Ban Music/Gegen Alles" praises "The woman-loving Taliban" for their progressive stance against noise pollution while urging the listener,  "Do not conform to type, and don't mock the avant-garde.  You only mock the avant-garde... because it's a bit too hard."


And with that, I take my leave of you.  Thanks for yr patience.  A terrific interview with Wallers is HERE.  Good night.

I'll Funk Them All With The Greatest Of Ease

That's Marion Barry up there, and he's dancing to DC Go-Go Legends Trouble Funk, and HOLY CRAP the Drop The Bomb LP is OUT OF PRINT?!  That's fucking STUPID.  Here you go, gang!

So, for those of you who are perhaps unclear as to what you're getting... the DC Go-Go scene is mainly remembered as that thing Black Folks liked that helps Minor Threat fans feel less conflicted about "Guilty of Being White" being their fourth-favorite Minor Threat jam.  But WAIT!   The Go-Go scene actually had MUSIC in it, and it was fucking amazing.  We're talking about HARD early 80's Funk chock full of Latin Percussion, call-and-response vocal lines, crazy synthesizer noises, and some sweet proto-rapping.

This party crusher came out in '82, and it's a goddamn BEAST.  Six tracks, not a one under four minutes (it was damn near impossible to pry these guys off a groove once they locked into it).  Only one slow jam, and it's the last track so you can just pull the album off early if you aren't ready to ditch the dance party for a make-out session.  TONS of (fake?) crowd chatter in the background, so the listening experience is sort of like:

YOU:  THIS IS A GREAT PARTY!

DROP THE BOMB:  Chatter mutter party yeah! Chatter DRUMS!  SHOUTING!  SPACE NOISES! 

YOU:  WHAT?  I CAN'T HEAR YOU!  THE BAND STARTED PLAYING!


DROP THE BOMB:  BUBBADABUBBADABUBBADABUBBADAWHEEEEW!


YOU:  AWESOME.


 So get the party started, already.  And my apologies for the skippy-poppy nature of these files, but this LP is MUCH LOVED.  I play it way more often than I play my Minor Threat records, and I view that as a sign of profound maturity.
 

I Seem To Be Uninjured

A strange and intricate saga sees one of its earliest steps here.  This little gem, a tour-only single from Stiffs, Inc. and Jonathan Fire*Eater, offers a glimpse into the tangled web of mid-nineties New York indie/punk.

Released around 1995 (if the accounts of the drug addicts and liars involved in its creation can be believed) to coincide with a joint Stiffs/JFE road trip, today's exhibit finds both bands engaged in fairly important breakthroughs.  Th' Stiffs had just been snatched up in the clutches of a dreaded Major Label Deal (with American Recordings, who were signing barely-viable indie bands like it was going out of style... which, to be honest, it WAS) and Jonathan Fire*Eater were transitioning from the awkward Birthday Party-isms of their first album (which I can post if you guys are really gluttons for punishment) into the swaggering goth-glam stomp that made them such a (temporarily) hot commodity (if a two-and-a-half star review in Rolling Stone and ZERO SALES equal "heat").  Both bands had Stunning Masterpieces in their future, but that's a Story For Another Day.

Anyway.  Stiffs, Inc. turn in a scorching cover of "One Chord Wonders" by The Adverts, as well as "Engineering 2," a drone-y and mutated version of a song off the Major Label Debut Album, Nix Nought Nothing.  The "original" version is more of the pop(eqsue) punk that dominates the album, but is s'posed to be more in line with their initial vision for the song.  It also provides a very useful indication of the MASSIVE shift they would go through on Album 2, Electric Chair Theatre, which saw them ditching the Pop-punk sound for a deeply bizarre art-punk-prog sort of... something.  Something pretty goddamn great, frankly. Did I mentioned that they dressed like Edward Gorey Chimney Sweeps and would stage Goth/Victorian Performance Art Pieces when they played live?  Amazing.

Jonathan Fire*Eater give us a cover of "The City That Never Sleeps" by Nancy Sinatra with new lyrics about making "A date with New York City" and how they are "gonna take her pants off".  The 60's garage guitars keep this thing from getting too circus-y (the organ having not exactly found "the pocket" yet), and the youthful exuberance of the whole thing made this my "getting ready to go out theme" for a couple of years.  It never really helped me with pants removal, but I did end up happily married, so... thanks, maybe?  Anyway, these guys had a little bit of a hike ahead before hitting their stride (the Tremble Under Boomlights EP being the peak, and yes, I'll hook you guys up with a single or three from that era... soon) and then label pressure (thanks, Dreamworks) and "Creative Differences" (thanks, Heroin) strangled the band in the crib, if I may mix metaphors for a bit.  They then sacked their singer and reformed as The Walkmen, recorded one decent album, and turned to Dylan-inflected horseshit. 

More on these fine combos will be forthcoming, as well as a post about a THIRD band with odd links to both them.  I hope that's what you people want, 'cos it's damn sure what yr getting.

Afrika Islam In Beast 661

Okay, that's enough mind control youth-cult Pop Music(k) for now.  Time to get back to records that I actually believe in.  So go ahead and hit "play" on the video clip, and then check back in with me when these cats are done taking you to school.

So, Lake Of Dracula.  GodDAMN what a fabulous band.  This was one of a million short-lived projects that popped out of the No-Wave scene in late 90's Chicago.  LOD were unique in their scene because they actually did regular band stuff like play shows and put out an album, and also because they were (and this is relative, y'understand) a Straight-Up Punk Band while all their pals (and, to be honest, their side projects) were all free-jazzing and post-punk-noise-progging themselves to the absolute limits of endurance.

And this is the best thing they ever put out.  This is not to slight their excellent self-titled album (which, Portland Pals, is available for SEVEN BUCKS AT GREEN NOISE RECORDS RIGHT THIS SECOND GO GO GO), but this little number is FLAWLESS.  This is the LOD contribution to the "Kill Rock Stars Singles Club", and it features the same line-up from the full-length (former Couch member and future techno fop Marlon Magas on vocals, Heather from Scissor Girls on Drums, Weasel Walter from Flying Luttenbachers and a million other things on Guitar, and U.S. Maple's Al Johnson as THE MANHATTANITE), plus former JAKS member Jessica Ruffins on bass.


Now, maybe I'm prejudiced toward my own instrument, but I think there's a lesson here for all these new-fangled bands that think they're too cool to have bass players.  The lesson is:  YOU AREN'T.  Check the Lake of Dracula math:  no bass player equals great (if slightly monotonous) album, bass player equals BEST RECORD OF YR CAREER.  And she's not even playing particularly noticeable parts (except for on "Violators" when the bass sounds like an airplane).  All Jessica Ruffin is doing is holding the rhythm down like a pillow on the face of a comatose child (where the hell did that come from?).  A simple and unappreciated act (cos she's not on ANYTHING else these dudes did) that allows...


Well, shit, go download the thing.  Bask in the glory that is "Four Teachers," with its ludicrous and overblown intro suddenly clenching into the tightest Balled Fist of a Riff I've ever heard.  With its insane repetition and noise-wash bridge.  With Magas snarling that "Darby Crash is Afrika Islam in Beast 661" before that fucking monster riff comes back in.  I don't know what it means either, but it's fucking rad.

And then "Violators"!  With an Even More Preposterous Intro!  And another basic riff getting beaten into abstraction through a process of repetition repetition repetition.  And airplane bass.  Not as epic (and therefore not as essential) as "Teachers" it's still the sort of thing that lesser bands could (and should) build their careers on. 


So.  One single, one album, and out.  There's a bootleg live 7-inch floating around (I can put it up, if yr interested), and that's about it... oh, except they did a rarities album a few years ago that has some extra live stuff and alternate album takes (basically the same songs but with no Al Johnson, if that makes any sense to you).  It's all great.  But not as great as this 7-inch.