Its been just over twenty years since Slint released their second and last album Spiderland. I only had to hear Spiderland once to realise that the hype about how it’s such an influential and must have album is justified. No I wasn’t one of the very few who bought it when it first came out, and no I didn’t champion it in the mid-nineties when the record was starting to get some recognition, and no I didn’t even get a copy when Slint were being mentioned by some of the bands I liked.
The thing is, is that I only heard it for the first time about a year ago. I was angry with myself. Why wasn’t I into Slint before? Okay so I wouldn’t have known about them when they first came out, but I first heard of a band called Slint about twelve years ago. I could have been listening to them then. And I definitely would have gone to see them play live a couple of years ago on their reunion tour.
Many times I saw the CD in records shops with its very distinctive album cover and thought about buying it. But until a year ago I never did. Oh well, better late than never I guess.
I’ve since bought their first album Tweez. It’s good, nowhere near as good as Spiderland, but they were only teenagers when it was recorded. It sounds like a good demo recording (Steve Albini’s tinny production is a factor) of a band that has potential but needs a bit more time to refine their songs. And that’s what they did on Spiderland.
Get Breadcrumb Trail mp3 From SpiderlandHere
Get Pat mp3 From TweezHere
I’ve heard people say “I hate guitar solos, they ruin the song.” Well it depends on the song and how it fits. For instance I don’t think that many people hear the solo in the Jimi Hendrix version of All Along The Watchtower ruins and think it ruins it.
But I’ve known guitar players who just want to show off their guitar soloing skills. Doing that diddly diddly wank thing that Eddie Van Halen does with his strumming hand up on the fret board. They don’t care about the song, for them the solo is the song. It’s just showing off and its boring. Stop playing so many notes, let them ring out a bit and try finding some melody in there.
I would take Kurt Cobain’s solo on Come As You Are or Neil Young’s one note solo in Cinnamon girl over any Steve Vai or Van Halen solo.
In this months The Word Magazine there are interviews with both Robbie Robertson and Josh Homme. Both are great guitar players and they can play great guitar solos, but only if it serves the music, for the good of the song.
Homme’s solo in Feel Good Hit For The Summer certainly serves the song. It’s fast and intense but it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Its seven seconds long.
Get Queens Of The Stone Age: Feel Good Hit For The Summer mp3 Here
Well that was a long winter I have to say, but it looks like the season has finally changed. Spring is here, and to confirm and make it official last night the clocks changed to British summertime. Yeah I'm not happy about losing an hours sleep last night but I'm sure the long evenings will make up for it. I just hope that the British summer gives us more than the usual few weeks of warmth this year.
So here’s a couple of songs to celebrate the coming of the summer. First of all Spiritualized. Okay so you might not think that Spiritualized are the obvious summertime band, but occasionally Jason Pierce writes a good time feel song, such as Lay Back In The Sun from the album Pure Phase. ‘Hey take it right down,
Lay back in the sun.
Gonna have me some good times, good, good dope and good fun.’
Lambchop are hardly the most summer good time band either. But their song Up With People is one of the most uplifting songs that I know of. Right from the opening clean guitar chords, to the hand claps, then the choir like backing vocals and then the horns come in near the end to soar it up to a whole new level of bliss.
I once knew a girl who I had no musical compatibility with at all. None, not one song. She only listened to whatever was in the charts at the time and crap R&B like R Kelly. Nothing wrong with this, I mean of course you can still get on with someone and be into different music, but one day she tried to turn me onto the music of Kelly Clarkson.
“What the hell makes you think that I would like Kelly fucking Clarkson,” I said.
“I think you’d like her new song as it’s more the sort of music that you like. It's more rock.”
I tried to explain to her that just because Kelly Clarkson and Ashley Simpson have guitars in their songs and even though they are trying desperately hard to be so, it doesn’t mean its rock music.
Here argument was "What is the main component of rock music? Why stupid its guitars of course! There is an electric guitar in the song and so its rock."
“You wouldn’t have even noticed the electric guitar if it wasn’t for you seeing the video where she's dressed in a 'look at me I am a rock chick' outfit.” I said back to her.
Needles to say I never did get around to listening to the Kelly Clarkson album.
But you don't even need a guitar to play rock music. How can that be? You can’t possibly play rock music without a guitar can you? Funk music needs a bass, jazz needs a trumpet, pop needs a chorus, classical needs an orchestra and opera needs a big fat bloke.
Well no. The band Morphine were a three piece that played what at the time was labelled ‘bluesy low end rock music’ that consisted of drums, a saxophone and a two stringed bass played with a slide.
Then there’s Rhode Island’s Lightning bolt who with just drums and bass play a very very loud brand of noise-rock.
But one of my favourite rock songs without a guitar is by a band that you wouldn’t usually describe as rock at all. The track Dead Bodies from Air’s The Virgin Suicides soundtrack is a space rock juggernaut of a ride that by two thirds of the way through I defy you not to be playing air drums to.
Frank Zappa once ironically asked the question 'does humour belong in music?'
On the surface you wouldn’t think that there’s much to laugh about in the dark twisted southern gothic of husband and wife alt-country duo The Handsome Family. Brett Sparks deadpan baritone voice adds extra dark gravitas to Rennie Sparks lyrics that are often tales about murder, suicide, and ghosts. ‘A woman drove her Saturn into the black water.
Killed herself and her two kids trapped in the back seat.
She'd lost her job and didn't want her kids to be poor.’ -Snow White Diner.
But humour can sometimes be found in the darkest of places, and there’s plenty of black humour to be found in The Handsome Family. Like on a song on their second album Milk And Scissors called Drunk By Noon. For a start it has a great title but it's the line ‘Sometimes I can't wait to come down with cancer. At least then I'll get to watch TV all day’ that really gets me.
Apparently the most covered song is Eleanor Rigby. To me it’s just another Paul McCartney little ditty that he specialises in.
If you’re going to record a cover version then make it your own or don’t bother. Some songs have been covered so many times that there is no point in doing it again. Like Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah. It was shot dead when it become a song to sing on X-Factor. Knocking On Heavens door is a song often covered both on record and by pub cover bands. Out of all the great Bob Dylan songs to choose from I don’t know why one of his weaker songs is so popular to play. Maybe the reason is that as it’s not such a great song they think they can give it a go. Try to improve it. I’ve heard the Guns N’ Roses and the Eric Clapton versions. They didn’t succeed.
Blue Cheer’s debut 1968 album Vincebus Eruptum only has six songs on it and three of them are covers. Summertime Blues and Rock Me Baby make fine primal blues-rock interpretations of the songs. But for me the best one is when they take jazz pianist Mose Allison’s brilliant song about doing time on Parchment Farm prison and turn it into stoner-rock blueprint.
Not so long ago The Astoria in London closed down to make way for a new railway station. It’s a shame as it was a great medium sized venue right in the centre of the city. Today I found out that The Luminarie on Kilburn High Road has closed it’s doors for the last time. Along with The Borderline it was my favourite venues to see a band play. Small, with reasonably priced beer is always better than a larger venue like The Troxy(over four quid for half a larger! Go fuck yourself) or The Sheppard’s Bush Empire (with it's low stage you must be right up the front, upstairs in the seats or over six foot five to see anymore than the bands heads). It was a place that didn’t treat it’s punters like how a J D Wetherspoon’s pub does on closing time. It was a place to go and watch a band, not a place to go and spend more time chatting with your mates. To emphasise the point they had a sign on the wall that said 'Quiet if you’re talking when the band is playing we’ll tell you to shut up.'
One of the best gigs I saw at The luminarie was from San Francisco psych rock band Comets On Fire. On records they sound like an insane sonic mess that’s somehow being held together, but even more so close up at such volume.
It’s a same that small venues like The Lumanaire struggle to stay afloat. It shall be missed.
Get Comets On Fire: Antlers of the Midnight Sun mp3 Here
What with it being St Patrick’s Day why not celebrate it with some music from one of the finest bands to hail from the emerald isle. No I’m not talking about the multi-million selling supergroup U2. Or fellow Dubliners The Pogues with their fine punked up traditional music. Or My Bloody Valentine. Or The Cranberries.
Must be Thin Lizzy then? Na, not really my thing, ‘There’s gonna be a jailbreak somewhere in this town.’ Well I guess it’s going to be in the jail.
Maybe a band from Northern Ireland like The Undertones (Teenage Kicks was John Peels favourite song you know. Yes I do know. It‘s mentioned every time the song is played on the radio!). Or Ash their first album had some great songs like Girl From Mars, Angel Interceptor and Kung Fu. No then it must be Therapy? After all Troublegum is a great indie/metal record.
No the band in question is the only band who could fit Dostesvedy and Polish footballer Zbigniew Boniek into a line of a song about S & M sex.
Who have a song about Nottingham Forest striker Nigel Clough.
About Telling someone who talks too much to shut up.
About thanking the urinal makers Armitage Shanks.
About A fish who likes to rock ‘n’ roll.
About loosing your jumper at a disco.
About liking Japanese girls.
About a sheepdog.
I’m of course talking about Cork City’s finest, The Sultans of Ping FC.
The last couple of days I’ve been listening to a lot of ambient electronic post-rock with a decent mix of shoegaze thrown into the mix.
First off is music made by Mike Magoo who goes under the name Bitcrush. The 2010 release Of Embers is a mix of synths, soundscapes and crashing live drums. The central focal point of the album is the Fray The Middle To Meet The Ends that clocks in just under fifteen minutes.
Then I spent some good time with an album called Hansuru by zxyzxy which is music from multi-instrumentalist Gregg Pappas. It doesn’t have a dull moment on it, with lots of intricate rhythms over acoustic guitars that build and build. There’s also a couple of post-rock distorted beasts that are let loose.
Then zxyzxy takes is up another level with the album C.A.B which has four pieces of music that range from fourteen to almost twenty two minutes.It’s an album to lie down and listen to as you’ll be transported into another world as it lifts you up, shakes you around and carefully lays you back down again.
It's a long ride of an album that I strongly recommend.
It was this time last year when the band Alcoholic Faith Mission came under my radar. Who are Alcoholic Faith Mission? They sound like a whiskey guzzling psychobilly band from South Carolina. Well no, they’re a Danish (the only Danish band I know) band who play beautiful folk/digi-folk/ambient/elements-of-post-rock/indie-pop type music.
A year on and they’re still buzzing around my radar. Infact so much so that in the last year the song Nut In The Eye from the album 421 Wythe Avenue is the most played song on my iTunes. What do I like about it so much? Well for one thing I would say that it’s one of my favourite Male/Female vocal combination on any song. I say combination because it certainly isn’t a duet. They don’t sing to each other. In the outro they repeatedly take turns to sing the line: ‘Complacent by the choices everyone is making for me, evidently I’m sinking deeper, deeper’
I would put it up there with the duet of Some Velvet Morning by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood. Though I wouldn’t really call that a duet as it sounds like two completely different songs cut and pasted together.
Get Alcoholic Faith Mission: Nut In The Eye mp3 Here
One song that certainly is a duet is Alone In The Makeup Room by Cambridge’s finest and now sadly defunct The Broken Family Band (yes I know that Pink Floyd were formed in Cambridge, sure they had some good songs and they sold a few records but I would say they are the second best band from Cambridge).
It’s a dirty slagging match between two ex lovers. As you can see from the first line in the song: ‘I want you to die with my hands round your throat, or with me in the castle and you in the moat and everyone you know stood around laughing.’
Get The Broken Family Band: Alone In The Makeup Room mp3 Here
Some albums take a while to get into, the first couple of listens just wash over. Nothing stands out then maybe on the third or fourth listen some of it sticks and the next few listens fill in the gaps. That’s all fine, but it’s so much more gratifying when on first listen you know you like it. When on second listen you already recognise the songs. The picture has been painted and it’s imprinted in your head.
In 2006 it only took me one listen of Austin Texas band The Black Angels (named after the violin screech of a song that everyone skips on The Velvet Underground’s first album) debut album Passover to realise it would be one of my top records of the year. It’s a record of dark psychedelic drone filled with guitar hooks and menacing vocals.
Then in 2008 came Directions To See A Ghost. The first listen blew over me. I thought that maybe the second or third will catch me, but no. the fourth listen. Nothing. I just couldn’t get into it. There was a more dense drone and the sound was darker but the hooks were gone. The sixteen minute closer Snake In The Grass is such a struggle to get through I think I only managed it once.
This week I’ve been listening to The Black Angels album Phosphene Dream. Yes I know it came out last year but with my disappointment of their second album I was in no rush to get it. Straight away the first song Bad Vibrations signalled a return to form, and the songs Sunday Afternoon and Telephone are very much 13th floor elevator influenced. Well they been Rocky Erickson's backing band for some shows. I might not go back to this record as much as I do with Passover but I’m certainly glad I got around to hearing it.
Over the weekend I watched the Martin Scorsesse directed film about The Band’s last concert.
I’ve seen The Last Waltz before and it was my first introduction to The Band’s music. But watching the film again I think I like and dislike it in about equal measures. Some of the performances are top draw, such as The Weight with The Staple Singers and Ronnie Hawkins singing the Bo Diddley song Who Do You Love. But some not so great. Out of all the great songs the could have played with Neil Young why play the CSNY song Helpless. It’s an alright song but The Band and Neil Young doing something more full on like Cinnamon Girl would’ve been so much better. And then there’s Neil Diamond. Yawn. Van Morrison was alright but even in 1976 I’m sure a maroon jumpsuit with sequins wasn’t a good look.
Also the film smacks of self-importance, no more so when all the cast come on stage at the end to sing Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Realised. Oh and look there’s Ringo Starr on a drum kit and Ronnie Wood is strapping on a guitar. Look at us all on stage, we are the people who make music. We are music.
At the time punk rock was beginning to make noises.
'You know the bottle ain't to blame and I ain't trying to, it don't make you do a thing it just lets you.
When I'm six feet underground, I'll need a drink or two, and I'll sure miss you.’
It’s the weekend, I don’t know what it’s like where you live but around these parts the weekend is drenched in booze. There's nothing like a cold beer at the end of the week and a soundtrack to go along with it.
Well the country rock southern swaggered sound of the Drive-By Truckers fit’s the bill perfectly. Not just that but have some great songs about drinking. Whether it’s about a four day bender that ‘was a lot of fun until I shot my gun and the neighbours called the law.'
Or a man who needs a drink when he gets home to deal with his mundane life. Or falling asleep on the floor again, with boots still on and a cut on the chin. Or going to a rock concert, getting drunk and being pulled over by the police on the way home. Or finding a new best friend called Jack Daniels.
Right, it’s beer o’clock time!
Jetscreamer were a three piece band formed in Denton Texas consisting of singer/guitarist Will Kapinos, guitarist Samantha Moss and drummer Alex Maples. No bassist and both guitarists mostly played slide guitar with Moss sliding crunching power chords and Kopinios taking up lead with full on attack that sounds like Sonic Youth playing blues rock.. In 2002 they signed to the UK label Bella Union Records and released their only album Starhead in 2003. I was lucky enough to catch them live at The Buffalo in Highbury on what I presume was their only tour over here.
Front Porch, the opening song on Starhead perfectly shows right from off how the two slide guitars work together, it also has in my opinion one of the best middle eight break downs recorded. No exaggeration, the song is going along like a train up until 2:40 when it sounds as if a Bowing 747 aeroplane is taking off.
Since listening to last weeks NPR Music: All Things Considered Podcast about music in the 90s I’ve been going back to some records from that decade. Specifically ones that I haven’t heard for a while. Now I’m not really one for nostalgia, when I listen to music that I loved in my formative years it isn’t because I try to remember a time back when. I listen to it because it’s good music. Though sometimes when hearing a certain song I can’t help thinking about the a person or party or night out that it reminds me of. Though the memory might not always be a good one as documentation of life in songs means some songs are hard to listen to and tainted.
One song picked on the podcast as the anthem of the decade was Loser by Beck, and if I’m pushed to choose a song that defines that period in time then I can’t look much further than the song with slide guitar riff, sitar, hip hop brake beat drums with nonsensical lyrics ‘don't believe everything that you breathe you get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve’ and the most catchiest of choruses.
The album Mellow Gold that Loser is from is nowhere near as good as the follow up Odelay but going back to it over the last few days as well as the song Beercan there’s realised that there’s so many other great songs that I haven’t heard in years.
