Great Opener #2 Harvey Milk - Death Goes To Winter

I’ve been playing a lot of music from Athens Georgia’s down tuned noise-rockers Harvey Milk lately. And one song that I’ve paid special attention to is the opener from the 2008 album Life…The Best Game in Town called Death Goes To The Winter.
It’s a pretty weird song. The opening verse doesn’t sound like Harvey Milk at all with its clean guitar and quire boy vocals, it takes just over a minute and a half before it kicks into the usual thumping riff and growled vocals of Harvey Milk.
And what a great outro, with a tight one note riff and a guitar solo where the strings are being loosened until they are completely slack so the guitar solo turns into a low pitched rumble. Oh and after all that it ends with a single big piano chord that replicates that end of song chord on The Beatles A Day In The Life.

Download Harvey Milk - Death Goes To The Winter mp3 from here.

Talk Talk - After The Flood

Laughing Stock is considered to be of the first post-rock albums. I see it more as a sparse post-rock outline, albeit a very good one. Either way, it’s a massive departure from the synth pop of their early albums.
Laughing Stock should be played from start to finish, preferably late at night. The exception is the song After The Flood which I can play anytime of the day. It glides along with a hypnotic laid back organ riff and then sores up in the chorus with Mark Hollis’ restraint but still intense vocal delivery.
Halfway through the nine minutes of the song there’s a one note solo that I believe is played on a wind instrument synthesizer called a Variophone. It sounds like nothing else that I’ve heard before as the note grows a life of its own and is trying desperately to stay in tune. Or desperately trying to wriggle out of tune.
Like in Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl sometimes a one note solo is all the notes you need.

Download an mp3 of Talk Talk - After The Flood from here.

Getting Into Springsteen (But Not The Live Show)

For years I only ever though of Bruce Springsteen as some old overblown stadium rocker. As a kid growing up in the 80s I always used to hear him on the radio, mainly the big singles from Born In The U.S.A. That album was made for the radio, its so compressed and everything is up loud in the mix with no subtlety. Plus its got them massive shouty choruses.
Then about three or four years ago I picked up a copy of The River in the sales. I liked it but like almost all double albums it would be better if it was trimmed down to one really decent albums with no fillers. I soon picked up the stripped down acoustic Nebraska and the breakthrough album Born To Run, both good but it wasn’t until I heard Darkness on the Edge of Town that I really appreciated Springsteen. Then I got Born In The U.S.A which I liked more than I thought I would.

Although I now have and like a fair amount of his work I wouldn’t call myself a Bruce Springsteen fan as such. I will listen to him every so often but I’ve no intention of ever seeing him live as a three hour set in an arena would just be too much to bare.
Everything you need to know about the Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band live show is in the 2009 Super Bowl half time show. It had all the theatrics of a three hour set condensed into twelve minutes.
In the first minute he’s already thrown his guitar in the air, made a preaching speech to the camera telling the people at home to ‘step away from the guacamole, put the chicken fingers down and turn the volume up,' jumped onto a piano, jumped down again and is lying back while down on his knees.
In the four songs that follow all the boxes are ticket.
High fiving the front row. Holding the microphone to the crowd so they can sing. Sliding on knees. Air Punching. Members of the band all singing the chorus into one microphone. Fireworks. Playing back to back with the lead guitarist. Big rock and roll ending.
You feel knackered just watching it.



Great for stadium rock and the half time show but I would prefer to watch the basics of a Neil Young & Crazy Horse show.
So I guess I do still think of Springsteen as an old overblown stadium rocker, but with good songs.

The Hombres - Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)

The Hombres were a short lived psychedelic garage rock band from Memphis. I only have one song of theirs called Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out). Its their most well know and the only one you need.
Its got a simple three chord riff and a laid back swinging groove over rambling vocals that don’t make too much sense.
‘Hanging from a pine tree by my knees, sun is shining through the shade. Nobody knows what it's all about, it's too much man let it all hang out.’

The best place to get it is from the brilliant compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 were you will also find many other short lived psychedelic garage rock bands who recorded one two great songs.

Download The Hombres Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out) mp3 from here.

Lou Reed's Best Album

While most of rock music’s elder statesmen lost their way during the 80s, Lou Reed ignored all the glossy production values of the time and found his way again. There’s no synth stabs or linen snare drums on the guitar driven The Blue Mask from 1982. Then at the end of the decade he released his finest solo album.
New York was my first introduction to Lou Reed. Sometime in the mid 90s when I was about seventeen or eighteen my dad suggested that I listen to it, saying “If you like Bob Dylan then you might like this album.”
My dad was right. Lyrically I would put New York on par with any Dylan record. Set mainly to a late period Velvet Underground sounding backdrop (though there is a lounge jazz sort of song that somehow doesn’t feel too out of place) its full with stories set in New York City and takes swipes at many public figures and highlights many political issues.
“Americans don't care too much for beauty, they'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream. They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach and complain if they can't swim.”
From New York I went on to Velvet Underground albums then back to the solo records. Some of his solo stuff I wish I hadn’t bought like Sally Can’t Dance and Berlin (I know Berlin is supposed to be one of Reed’s finest albums but I find it extremely dull), and some I still regularly listen too like Street Hassle and Transformer.
But in my opinion New York is Lou Reed’s finest Moment.

Moonhearts

Around this time last year I got a self titled album by a band called Moonhearts. I played it once and then forgot about it. Until last week that is, and now its on heavy rotation. I know little about the Moonhearts. All I know is that they’re a three piece band that used to be called Charlie & the Moonhearts who play stripped down garage punk rock and are on Tic Tac Totally Records.
When I first gave them a listen it was just after I'd recently purchased the Gangliens album Monster Head Room. I think that took up my drenched in reverb rock quota for a while. Maybe I just needed to give Moonhearts one more listen.
Whatever, its doesn’t matter, it has my attention now. It’s a short energetic album, where the guitar is loud and the vocals are buried. There’s a few goofy titles (like Eat My Shorts) and a couple of mid tempo songs with strong melody’s. All which sound as if they have been recorded in a large bathroom.
I’m now going to see if I can get my hands on the album they did when they were called Charlie & the Moonhearts.



Download Moonhearts - I said mp3 from here

Caverns - Kittens!

If you’re an instrumental band then its much harder to name a song. You can’t just take the first or last line in the chorus when there is no chorus. Even more thought might go into naming the album. Or maybe you can just open a book and put your finger on a random word and stick with that. That’s what the Washington DC progressive/math rock three piece Caverns seemed to have done by naming there 2008 album Kittens!
Today I heard Kittens! for the first time in a while and its just as fucked up as I remembered it. Over the shredding riffs and crashing drums there's a piano that's sometimes playing in a grand orchestral way and sometimes just plink plonking along.
If I listened to this sort of music for too long I would soon tire of it, but Kittens! doesn’t tire as its a short album of twenty four minutes.

Download an mp3 from Kittens! called Dance You Son Of A Bitch from here.

Music Podcasts To Download

I’ve downloaded many music podcasts, tried them out and then deleted them. There are so many out there but most of them are ill informed rubbish or slow and boring. Podcasting is like radio. It can’t meander about. It needs a flow and that’s where the students who think they can record a podcast on their laptop after a joint or two go wrong.
Here are some music podcasts that are well worth a listen:

Sound Opinions
A Chicago public radio show that also comes out as a podcast. Its hosted by well informed music critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. The show includes music news, record reviews, sometimes has live in the studio performances, sometimes has a feature on a theme or classic album.

NPR: All Songs Considered
Another Public Radio podcast this time from Washington D.C. It’s a varied one that could be a discussion about the best new music discovered at a recent festival. Could be an episode devoted to a certain genre. Could be a well known musician that comes in to have a chat and play some songs.

Word Podcast
No music is played in this podcast. It’s a few people from the Word Magazine - sometimes with a guest- who sit around talking. Music is discussed but it moves onto other stuff. The way that conversation does.

Musicheads
This is from the Minnesota Public Radio station The Current. Each week host Bill DeVille and two other dj's from the station give their opinions on three recently released albums. It’s a standard format that’s done well.

Holy Fuck, Names With Fuck In Thier Name

In a previous post about rock without guitars I didn’t mention Holy Fuck who are an electronic band that rocks a whole lot more than most skinny white boy bands like say, Razerlight. One of their hardest rocking songs is the last track on their second album Latin called P.I.G.S. It has the most overdriven pounding bass, industrial Nine Inch Nail type drums and a keyboard riff that sounds like Thin Lizzy’s twin guitar attack.
Why a band would have the word fuck in their name I don’t know. Its hard enough to get on in the music world without giving yourself such a handicap. Its supposed to be edgy I guess, like saying ‘yeah we don’t want to be in your corporate machine anyway man, fuck you’. Yawn. If you type Holy Fuck into Google their website is at the top of the list, but when they first started out it must have been well difficult. Especially if you then clicked on images.
For every reasonably successful band like Holy Fuck, Fucked Up or Fuck Buttons there’s hundreds of bands who fought that putting fuck in their name would be a good idea but got nowhere. Fuck People, Fuck The Facts, Fuck The World, I Just Wanna Fuck, Fuck Your Shadow From Behind, Fuck You And Die, Fuck On The Beach are some of the band names with fuck that I found on Myspace. Most of them Metal bands or Hip Hop because of cause its fuck you and the horse you rode in on music.



Download Holy Fuck - P.I.G.S mp3 from here.

Liverpool's Best Band

I don’t own a lot of music that comes from the Merseyside area. I had an Echo &The Bunnymen album on cassette but that’s long gone. There was a whole sleuth of Brit-Pop bands in the nineties such as The Boo Radleys, Cast, The Lighting Seeds and Space. Cast had a few good singles but I didn’t care for the others at all.
Half Man Half Biscuit, The Coral and Clinic are alright but I’ve never really got too deep into their music.
The Zutons and The Wombats don’t interest me. As for A Flock of Seagulls and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, no thanks.
There’s some other band that I’ve forgot to mention. Some band from the sixties… Gerry & the Pacemakers, no. Oh yes of course, The Beatles. Yeah sure I can appreciate that they made some great music but the only songs that I have are a few that I ripped from an old flatmates CD.
My favourite band from around the Liverpool area are unlike all of the above. They’re a psych-space-kraut rock band called Mugstar. If you’re into that sort of thing then you won’t be disappointed my Mugstar. Their latest album Lime is very good, but I would start with Technical Knowledge As A Weapon. Its full of big riffs and freakouts, and ends with a thirteen minute mammoth of a song called Faurklausundbo.
I’ve yet to see them live but will make sure that I do the next time they play in London.

Download an mp3 of the song Ouroboror from Technical Knowledge As A Weapon here.

Song For A Festival

The festival season has kicked off. I have no interest in going to any as I don’t want to camp and don’t fancy watching a band in a muddy field while the rain is pouring down. But I did tune into some of Glastonbury and will do when Reading is on on the TV. One of the TV ‘highlights’ last year was Guns N’ Roses with a band of 'all boxes ticked for the cliché rock star look' and Axl Rose’s painful performance of November Rain. It was hilarious.
So anyway, a song for a festival… Chillout Tent is one of the stand out songs from The Hold Steady’s breakthrough album (well a breakthrough of sorts) Boys And Girls In America. It’s a song about going to a festival taking too much drugs and hooking up with someone in the tent where you get medical attention. I guess that happened a few times at Glastonbury last weekend.

The Sleepy Jackson - Lovers

Luke Steele of Empire of the Sun has had more commercial success Empire of the Sun than he ever did with The Sleepy Jackson, so a third Sleepy Jackson album might not come anytime soon. Their first album Lovers from 2003 is maybe one of my favourite of the last decade. Well its in the top twenty or so. Its an eclectic mix to say the least. Psychedelic, alt-country, 80s synth pop all mixed in along side one another.
When I saw them play a set in Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street they looked like a mixed up band too. The guitarist had a cut down sleeved Guns N’ Roses t-shirt, shades on and was pulling rock star poses, the rhythm section seemed like a couple of surfer dudes that Steele dragged from a beach in western Australia and Luke Steele himself had the looked like a new romantic crossed with Robert Smith. Still whatever, they sounded great.

Download The Sleepy Jackson - Miniskirt mp3 from here.

Great Cover #6 Drive-By Truckers - People Who Died

For the last show stopping encore of a Drive-By Truckers show Patterson Hood will often downs his guitar, grip the mic tight in hand and frantically spit out the first verse of the Jim Caroll song People Who Died - 'Teddy sniffing glue he was 12 years old, fell from the roof on East Two-nine. Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug, on 26 reds and a bottle of wine. Bobby got leukaemia 14 years old., he looked like 65 when he died. He was a friend of mine.'
The band then come in on the chorus, and the song charges along with more verses about friends who’ve died, choruses that get louder and louder and duelling guitar solos. It speeds up and up until it crashes down into a heap. Then just as you think its about to end it goes back into it at an even faster speed. They’re never released a studio version of the song, though it does appear on their early live album Alabama Ass Woopin', and there’s a much better version on their live DVD at The 40 Watt Club which captures it well.

As does this version on Youtube



Get a pretty good live version of the Drive-By Truckers playing People Who Died from here.

Going back To Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

Recently I heard Ryan Adam’s 2000 debut solo album Heartbreaker for the first time in maybe two or three years. Rediscovering a really good album all over again is so satisfying. Heartbreaker was my first introduction to Adams as I didn’t know his previous band Whiskeytown, but I soon did and became a fan.
Then his second album Gold soon followed and although not as good as the debut it was still decent (if patchy). Then their was an album held back by his record company. Then came Demolition and soon after Rock & Roll, neither of which I was taken with. Adams seemed to want to release every song he wrote. I would read interviews where he would state that he’d just finished his second song that day. It was quantity over quantity and like many I was loosing interest in his work. It didn’t help that I saw two really bad live shows by him.
The first was at the Sheppard’s Bush Empire where there was a two minute gap between each song as him and his band fumbled around, tuning up and just not getting on with it.
Then I saw him at the Brixton Academy. He came on late and mumbled for a bit while his band sorted their gear out. He drunkenly rambled between songs, the set was sloppy and the crowd became restless.
Still there’s always that great debut, and on the strength of that I might go and check out some of his later work to see if it matches up to Heartbreaker.

Download Ryan Adams - My Winding Wheel mp3 from here.

Top 3 Neil Young Albums

Do I like Neil Young? Yes. Do I like all, or almost all of his work? No, of course not. Surely even the biggest Neil Young fan doesn’t. Still listening to Fork In The Road or This Note’s For You? In-fact for every good album there are almost as many stinkers. But because of the good albums you can overlook the stinkers because, well he’s Neil Young and he does what he wants to do in his own erratic way.
So Here are my top 3 Neil Young albums:

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Young’s second and the first with Crazy Horse. Only seven songs on it, four of them of decent country-folk but the focal points are the opener Cinnamon Girl and the two long songs that are Cowgirl In The Sand and Down By The River with there improvised jamming. I never get tired of Neil Young’s lead and Danny Whitten’s rhythm guitar interplay on Down By The River.

On The Beach
Tonight’s The Night is often cited as one of his best not just out of the so called ‘doom trilogy’ but out of everything. It’s alright but for me On The Beach is much better. It’s mainly a downbeat album in minor keys, like the excellent title track that has the lyric - ‘I need a crowd of people but I can’t face them day to day.’

Ragged Glory
After a long run of dud albums in the 80s Young gets back with Crazy Horse, cranks up the volume and in 1990 released this loud rocking album. Yes this is an electric guitar record with Young thrashing out solos on his trusty black Gibson and Crazy Horse Doing their minimalist backing band thing, but there are great songs there with loads of catchy choruses.
It’s the album from Neil Young that I play the most.

Great Cover #5 East Hastings

There are so many crap cover songs on Youtube, some by bands in a rehearsal room, some by well known bands (like the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing Subterranean Homesick Blues) or someone in their bedroom with an acoustic guitar. But I came across a very good acoustic guitar in bedroom recording of a Godspeed You Black Emperor song called East Hastings. Its from a Japanese guy that for some reason has a scarf wrapped all around his head and is wearing short shorts. He does a great job of taking such an epic song and scaling it down to a basic acoustic guitar arrangement.

Hüsker Dü - Remastered, Reunion, If Only

Hüsker Dü is on heavy rotation at the moment, and what I’ve noticed is that if any band really needs their back catalogue to be remastered then its Hüsker Dü. Zen Arcade is such a good album but the drums sometimes sound as if they were recorded by one cheep microphone at the other end of the room, the guitar sound is so thin and the bass low in the mix. I can imagine is sounding better on vinyl but it needs a brighter sound on the CD and maybe a remix. Their later albums on a major record label sound better but when I have my ipod on shuffle and something from Candy Apple Grey or Warehouse: Songs and Stories pops up its considerably lower volume than whatever was playing before it.
Hüsker Dü are also the one band that I would like to see on a reunion tour, every other band that broke up ages ago seems to be doing it so why shouldn't they cash in? From what I've read it sounds like Brett Hart and Bob Mould still can’t stand the sight of one another so I don't see a reunion or a remastering of their back catologue happening anytime soon.

Download or preview Husker Du - Pink Turns To Blue mp3 from here.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Ramble Tamble

Sometime around the early to mid part of the last decade I got a copy of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s greatest hits. The only song I thought that I knew by them was the bouncy one about the end of the world coming called Bad Moon Rising. But when playing it I was surprised just how many more songs I recognised from films or a pub jukebox.
After a few listens of the greatest hits collection it wasn’t enough, so I went the whole way and bought the box-set that contains every song they ever did and a bunch of live recordings. It was money well spent.
The bulk of their work is punchy three minute bar band chugging rock &roll. A perfect soundtrack to drink a beer to. But there’s also a few songs with extended jams that stretch out to seven minutes or so. Like Ramble Tamble that’s filled with memorable riffs, tempo changes and an instrumental part that builds and builds until it breaks down and goes back into the original riff. For me it’s a hidden classic.

Download or preview Creedence Clearwater Revival - Ramble Tamble mp3 from here.

The Devil Has The Best Tunes

There are many songs about the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub or whatever you want to call the big bad red guy with horns. There’s gospel songs about keeping the Devil at bay and loads of old blues songs like Robert Johnson’s Me And The Devil Blues. To Black Sabbath and other hard rock and metal bands. Then there’s death metal that usually celebrates Satanism to Norwegian black metal which took the joke, well let’s say too far.
My favourite song (for today at least) about the dark side is called Living In Sin by the now sadly defunct The Broken Family Band. It’s about falling in love with a Satanist, something we’ve all done right? Well maybe not.
“You’re a devil woman, your heart is black but your body drives me crazy.
You’re a sick satanic lady, you’re full of hate and I just love that.”

Download or preview The Broken Family Band - Living In Sin from here.

Otis Gibbs - Get Me Out Of Detroit

Otis Gibbs is a county/folk songwriter from Indiana. The first time that I was ever aware of him was when I saw him playing at What’s Cookin’ in Leytonstone. I only caught the last three or four songs but I heard enough to make me by his album Granpa Walked A Picket Line. As the title suggests Gibbs is somewhat of a politically left leaning activist. In the vain of Billy Bragg (who he’s toured with) and Steve Earle.
One of favourite songs of his is Get Me Out of Detroit from the album One Day Our Whispers. As the title suggests it’s not a homage to The Motor City but about a shity time there, getting stopped and stripped searched by the police, being bored stiff in a hotel room and wanting to get the hell out of the place.



Download Otis Gibbs - Get Me Out of Detroit from here.