Rude boy loot and shoot on a whim

Desmond Dekker died of a heartattack last Thursday night. This is very very sad. He helped to competely define ska back in the first-wave days. We're talking 1960s stuff. This is a big loss for music across the board. This man was a genius with a wonderful voice.

There's more to say about different things but that will wait until later on. Dekker deserves his own post.

http://www.desmonddekker.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Dekker
http://www.flaviosantanna.com/dekker/

I've been dead the last couple of days, sorry. I'm lazy so I'm just going to repost something I cooked up back in 2004 for a blog I used to write for. It's a top five favorite bands thing. I don't think that the bands and/or the order would necessarily be the same today, but it's still interesting.

I'll stop being lazy and have something original to post after the weekend.

Here you go:
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1) Antioch Arrow
This band sounded like snotty punk rock to an extent. Then they sounded like a run-of-the-mill spazz "spock-rock" band but with a singer who sounded like he never really had control of his voice or what he was saying. Then they went goth and made easily the best album to ever be recorded, "Gems Of Masochism." It took me two long years to actually get a real copy of my favorite album. Luckily it was rereleased last year so everyone can get a copy easily and without having to wait like I did. Anyway, it always surprises me when a band can play more than one style effectively; these guys did three perfectly, I think. "Somba" on their album "In Love With Jetts" is my favorite song ever; great keyboards, spazzy like a mug with odd lyrics about talking to the devil, racecars, and going bump in the night. These guys are my favorite band lyrically, they seemingly make no sense until you think for a second and dig deeper into them. Not to mention the singer stutters, lisps, stops at odd times, breathes into the mic and other such tactics which give the lyrics an even more intense and urgent feel. I say Aaron is the best singer ever. "Gems Of Masochism" STILL amazes me when I listen to it. How much do I like this band? I've always said if I get a tattoo it'll be the drawing on the cover of "In Love With Jetts" or the odd picture on the inside cover of "Gems Of Masochism."

2) Indian Summer
First of all, these guys are a VERY, VERY, VERY close second to Antioch Arrow; if you catch me on the right day, I'll say wholeheartedly that these guys were better than Antioch Arrow. I had a bootleg copy of all their songs long before they FINALLY rereleased all of them offically a year or two ago; lucky for me. But even that discography is ridiculously limited, which blows. EVERYONE needs their songs; everyone. I actually just recently aquired a digital copy of their even harder to find live album (I got it from unixpunx and let me say I used to check unixpunx like once a month for it and never saw it and I just randomly checked for the first time in like a six months-a year a few days ago and there it was!) That album is just over-the-top ridiculous. You can hear the Bessie Smith in the backgroud almost the whole time as well as other members of the band (besides the singer) just whispering shit along with the song if you turn it up enough. Nine songs and one more unknown one on the live album. That's it. Ten songs, one of the two best bands ever, done. God I love this fucking band. I used to say to anyone who'd listen, "I'd kill you if it meant I had a time machine to see Indian Summer just once." I mean fuck that getting back together shit. They captured a moment; it would be ruined by a reunion. Speaking of bad reunions:

3) Moss Icon
They did a reunion in Ohio in 2000 that I almost went to. I didn't go for two reasons, although if I remember correctly I told my girlfriend at the time it was because she couldn't go (I was trying to make her feel better I guess.) But the real reason was I found out it was only two of the orginal members NOT including Tonie Joy; so what the fuck was the point. I hear that performance was terrible. Without the album "Lyburnum" I wouldn't have made a lot of mistakes. I'm not sure what that means, but for some reason, it makes sense to me. Jon Vance's ultra-poetic yet absurdly cryptic lyrics still make no sense at times for me while making all the sense in the universe. I still can't be sure what the song "Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly" (an eleven plus minute song about religion) means, but I think I have a good idea and it suits me ridiculously well. "Gravity" is still the song I listen to when I'm down and I want to feel better and probably always will be. I believe "Memorial" to be the best anti-war song ever. After they broke up they reformed into the more ridiculous Breathing Walker which is about as hippy as I'll get in my musical tastes.

4) The Locust
So here's how I got into The Locust, most people don't know this story. I made a HUGE Ebullition order, like $100-$150 after I got a bunch of money for Christmas. They said on their website at the time that their catalog isn't always accurate and things run out and the more things you want, the more alternates you should list so they wouldn't have to send you a credit slip and you'd still get music. I listed the three inch Locust CD as an alternate. I had NEVER heard the band at the time; all I knew was that it was members of Swing Kids. I LOVED Swing Kids at the time so I figured I'd list this as an alternate. I got the Locust CD because something ran out. I put it on and something like twenty minutes and twenty-three songs later The CD was over and I wasn't sure what just happened. I wouldn't be the person I am today without getting that album at that excat time; I'm sure of that. They might be on Anti now (NOTE: I don't think they are under contract with Anti as of now), but I don't care because "Plague Soundscapes" was better than just about any other album in the past two years. Joey Karam might be the best keyboardist on the planet (not just because of the The Locust but for the first Supoena The Past album too.) Great cryptic socially-conscience lyrics, Devo on coke keyboards, one of my favorite drummers and the genius that is Justin Pearson all in one band. Sweet, sweet awesome.

5) My Bloody Valentine
This was the hardest one. Boys Life (just for "Departures And Landfalls"), Mohinder, Le Shok, Page 99, Usurp Synapse, Saetia, and Still Life were all making a ridiculously good case to be number five. But I gotta go with My Bloody Valentine. "Loveless" is easily one of my top five albums. So cloudy and murky with those two beautiful male-female vocals. I still don't know what's going on half the time in that album. It's the hardest to describe album in the history of music I'd be willing to say. Kevin Shields is a genius and he proves it with that record. I wasn't really into them in their earlier stages, but I adore "Isn't Anything" and "Loveless". "No More Sorry" on "Isn't Anything" I've dubbed my scotch song; it just sounds good with Johnny Walker. I don't know what else to say about this band, those two albums (especially "Loveless") are near impossible to describe in terms of sound. You just start sounding like you're contradicting yourself if you try; watch: they're cloudy, catchy, abrasive, comforting, depressing and happy. If they were a place they'd be a murky swamp. You'd be standing in the middle of the dense fog kinda sad that you're in such a yucky place but then kinda happy you're outside because it's such a nice night out and you kinda feel at home with the cherping insects.
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Anyone remember 120 minutes?

So I hear Matt Pinfield is coming back to TV in some capacity on VH1. This is definitely a good thing. Although he can go on and on and seemingly doesn't know when to stop a story and goes on ridiculous tangents in the middle of said stories, he knows a lot and he's definitely entertaining.

Speaking of VH1, how about this show Super Group? I thought this was a neat idea until I heard Sebastian Bach was going to be a singer. Is there anyone more pompous and annoying? Maybe. I don't know...

So I heard this band Velvet Cacoon over the weekend. They're like a healthy mix of Burzum and My Bloody Valentine. Yeah. Needless to say it's pretty ridiculous, but damned good. Honestly there is NO better way to describe them other than saying it sounds like Burzum and My Bloody Valentine all together. Well except for the vocals. The male vocals sounds like he's super sick, spitting/coughing up blood, bed ridden with a mic in front of him. Oh wait, that's excatly how the vocals were recorded on one of the albums...

I was looking in my attic for some old mix cassettes a friend gave me a very long time ago and in the process I found tape copies of two soundtracks from the mid/late '90s that I had forgotten about: Batman Forever and Lost Highway. You have to love soundtracks that are amazing for movies that are terrible.

Oh news about the actual site. So I'm getting a very high number of unique hits on here which is rad. I got even more this weekend as it seems that ads have popped up in the comment section. I'll be deleting those after this post and instituting the whole word verification nonsense.

Crack-cocaine

That's a hell of a title for a post Mike.
It sure is!
You must mean a band that's named after the drug, right?
Nope! I mean the drug!

So let's talk about crack...
Crack is addictive. Insanely, unpredictably and overwhelmingly addictive to be excat.
Upon use, crack makes you feel good despite it's addictive qualities; it'll still make get you feel wonderful, make you feel different after using it. It's so addictive, to stop would be making yourself go through a ridiculous amount of suffering.
Who wants to say that they use crack? No one. There's such a huge stigma with this drug. It's sooooo plain out bad that no one would ever admit to using it. Even if it makes you feel great, as the high would do, you wouldn't want to tell your friends that you smoke crack in your free time.

Okay.
The Postal Service.
The Postal Service is the musical equivilant of crack-cocaine.
No.
The Postal Service is crack.

I hate this band. I'm using the word hate here. I HATE this band. Fuck! However, I haven't been able to stop listening to the album "Give Up" since it came out. There's so many bad things about this band. The music sounds like a first generation NES game for God's sake! The lyrics are so sickly trite and overly sappy that it hurts to hear them. It's so bad and I know it is but damn it if I don't listen to them on a fairly regular basis.

The thing is I'm not alone. I know many many people who have confided in me, telling me that they own the album, they listen to it all the time. The question is how deep has this horrific addiction seeped into society?


So let's talk about The Postal Service...
The Postal Service is addictive. Insanely, unpredictably and overwhelmingly addictive to be excat. Upon listening, The Postal Service makes you feel good despite their addictive qualities; they'll still make you feel wonderful, make you feel different after listening to them. They're so addictive, to stop would be making yourself go through a ridiculous amount of suffering.
Who wants to say that they listen to The Postal Service? No one. There's such a huge stigma with this band. They're sooooo plain out bad that no one would ever admit to listening to them. Even if they make you feel great, as the music would do, you wouldn't want to tell your friends that you listen to The Postal Service in your free time.

Fuck.

Knock three times on your coffin if you want my love

So over the weekend I bought five new CDs. I was fairly broke so I just raided the "budget bin" and got the five discs for ten cents under twenty bucks. Yesssssssssss.

So first off I got this three song album called "Absolution" by a band called Autumn Tears. Now I had NO idea what this was going to be, but it was ninety-nine cents and it easily looked like it could have been some kind of Ulver-esque metal. It turns out to be folksy goth kinda stuff, honestly they sound like a poor man's Black Tape For A Blue Girl with less production and instead of dual gender vocals, it's two girls. Both girls have a better voice than the female vocalist in Black Tape For A Blue Girl, which is saying a lot. Even though some of the percussion sounds odd and out of place at times it's a steal at ninety-nine cents plus the line "The certainty of fate pinned to my heels" is definitely thought provoking.

Speaking of Black Tape For A Blue Girl I ended up buying a Projekt Records compilation; it seems to be the newest one out. So there's a bit of history with me and Projekt Records comps as in I've never seen one in a store that I haven't picked up and bought. I don't know what it is. They're an alright label, not excellent, I don't know any of their acts all that well save for Black Tape and Voltaire, but there's something about their comps, they are ALWAYS great and so I can't not buy them. =( This CD was no exception. It begins with a great track by a band called Android Lust entitled "Dragonfly." I ended up listening to this song a few times over, it's really quite good. Very simply done, just some beepy snyths with a light drum machine under some very sensual vocals singing some odd lyrics. This is a band I'm definitely going to be looking for in the future. The Voltaire track was basic Voltaire. It was a little too cute, tongue-in-cheek to know if I actually like it or could stomach it for an extended amount of time. Like I said before, the comp like all their others is on point and of course the best track does come from their flagship band, the aforementioned Black Tape For A Blue Girl. Thi song is a weird sort-of/sort-of-not cover of Tony Orlando's "Knock Three Times." First off this thing sounds like a finger snapping Stray Cats song. You know, if Stray Cats wore all black, were completely androgynous and wore all sorts of eye liner. The lyrics are about a dead lover and turn out to be quite clever. "Knock three times on your coffin if you want my love." And there's this recurring lyric about how cute the girl is that definitely had me smiling and almost laughing at times. "She's kinda cute in a skinny kinda way" "She's kinda cute in a why don't you get out and see the sun kinda way" "She's kinda cute in a why don't you put some meat on those bones kinda way" I don't know, I thought they were amusing. Here is a fourty-five second clip of their song from their website.

The next one is Ink & Dagger's self-titled album (the fact that I didn't already own this is unacceptable.) This is a definite classic for it's genre. Noisy, punky, addictive. Great great lyrics, very dark. "Creatures like us never live forever, I need to be right twice in my life." Hell the lead singer thought he was a vampire (before he died...) "despite our vicious appetite are we really what we eat?" Fans of Le Shok should already know this, but if not, get up on it. And if you don't know who Le Shok is and you're down with The Strokes or The Hives, check them out they're like a grittier, dirtier, punkier version of those bands. Then you'll fall in love with Le Shok then you'll go find this Ink & Dagger album, not like it for a year, pick it back up and find it to be the best thing you've heard in months. Yeah.

Now for the most disappointing of the five; a darkwave compilation put out by Cold Meat Industry entitled "...And Even Wolves Hid Their Teeth And Tongues Wherever Shelter Was Given." Yeah, long title. I would imagine anyone who has this bought it because there's a Mortiis track on it, but that track like just about all the rest of the album gets very old very quick. All very sparse, almost ambient at times minimal darkwave. There's nothing wrong with this, but it doesn't seem like the best way to showcase your label. I mean there were times where I thought, "Wow I can't believe this track is this long!" and it turned out that was two tracks away from where I thought I was, it just bleeds together. There are a few brighter spots however. It gets a bit more industrial-y near the end of the album with bands like Sanctum, Atomine Elektrine and Mental Destruction. While better, even these tracks aren't necessarily great although the Mental Destruction song sounded like an evil version of the Foo Fighter's song "Weenie Beenie," so that was amusing. Besides that there was a sort of Depeche Mode sounding beat to the song "Malebolge" by Memorandum, but by that time in the album (track 13) I had all but given up, despite it and the less sparse industrial tracks.

The last album was something I was looking to get for a while now, Head Wound City's first EP. This was released by one of the truly innovative and great labels out there today, Three One G. Not unlike the band Holy Molar, this band is a sort of side project for a couple of different bands giving them a once in a lifetime kind of lineup for this genre. Within the disc you get the combined music geniuses of JP and Gabe (one of the best drummers around) of The Locust, Jordan and Cody from The Blood Brothers and Nick from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The result is the speed, fury and uniqueness that is The Locust, the completely and utter sassyness that is The Blood Brothers and the stylized musical fashion the erupts from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. In the end while the album is very good, the members of the band have done some better things with their talents. I would say only buy this album if you already own and enjoy the two Locust albums "Plague Soundscapes" and "Flight Of The Wounded Locust" as well as The Blood Brothers album "This Adultery Is Ripe." Although after hearing those albums you might find this album to be more than a little trite.

Also look for a cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by The Melvins (off of their album "Crybaby." ) Leif Garrett does vocals, no that's not a typo. I find it better than the original and when trying to describe it to a friend I ended up comparing it to the old mid 90s band Stabbing Westward. It's a weird yet great track that to me proves that Kurt Cobain shouldn't have sung on that, 70s teen heartthrob Leif Garrett should have. I can't believe I just said that...

What a great album cover

Yeah, that's funny. If you see this album, buy it. First off VMW stands for "Virgin Mega Whore" so they gets points for their band's name right away. The album mostly consists of odd minimalist post-wave, just Mark McCoy (of Charles Bronson, Das Oath and Holy Molar fame) singing over sparce keyboard/synth beats. Oh and every now and then they throw in a thrashy song. Weird. Song titles like "My Favorite Hooker," "All Lubed Up, Nowhere To Go," and "Chained To The Radiator" make this album just as ridiculous as you'd expect from the cover art.

This is getting out of hand.

Okay seriously, what's with the wealth of hard rock bands popping up? When did it become so amazingly cool to try and sound as much like Sabbath and Zeppelin as possible? Those are good bands but these new bands aren't bringing anything new! They just sound like cover bands!

Hearing Wolfmother (who is a great example of this "Oh my God! We have to sound more 70s!" horseshit going on) in an iPod commercial makes it a scientific fact that this is gone waaaaaay too far.

A simple truth: Retro 70s hard rock is the new indie rock and black metal is the new prog-rock.

And in the beginning there was "Your Song"

This is the first post in what will surely break down into pretentious whining about music.

So why did I decide to start this damned thing in the first place?
Well sit back kids, let me explain. It all started at a McDonalds in Westminster, Maryland. I'm sitting with three friends when "Your Song" by Elton John pops up on the speakers. I begin to explain that the song is in fact, my song. There was a limited amount of laughter and at that point I decided to be a jerk and not really let the joke go. So I just kept explaining why it was indeed my song. When the lyric "and you can tell everybody this is your song" came on I replied, "Do you see? You see? It's my song! I'm telling you guys, everybody that it is my song." At this point one of my friends loses his last tiny bit of thought that this was in any way funny and says to me, "You're a fucking jerk."
So with that I decided I needed a forum to be a jerk about music.
...Well that and there's been many friends who've said in passing that I should start a music blog anyway.

Yeah.