This picture of Kaz (aka PWRFL Power) was taken by sarah joann murphy at the “Unscrew the Croc” benefit at Chop Suey. He looks like he’s up to something.

Find more user-submitted music-related photos in the Stranger’s Flickr Pool.

$6.99 plus tax from Value Village, with the RCA cable thrown in for free. Now I can listen to Penicillin on Wax as it was meant to be heard—with Dolby C noise reduction.

I dug out my tape collection the other day—100 cracked and battered relics from junior high to junior year of college (something dumb in me resisted CDs far too long).

Tim Dog is just the tip of the analog iceberg.

Stay tuned.

Fuck you.

With Hawks frenzy taking over the town, local country radio station 100.7 the Wolf has recorded a couple songs for the team: “Thank God I’m a Seahawks Fan” (done to the tune of “Lucky Man”) and “Seahawks Fan” (done to the tune of “Red Neck Woman”).

You can click here to listen to “Seahawks Fan” via their website, www.seattlewolf.com.

In 1:17 it contains gems like:

“I like to watch my boys play in those tight white football pants.”

And

“Hasselbeck’s got muscles, Tatupu tackles like a pro.”

Go Hawks!

You’re welcome. And I’m sorry.

I guess it’s my upbringing, but when I saw this headline I naturally expected this to follow.

A quarter-century is a lifetime.

Who’s tougher: Fucked Up or Swallowing Shit?

Poll closes when I feel like it. Results, as always, are binding.

MTV is first on the scene, investigating this phenom.

(hat tip to Idolator)

I dare you.

We are only a couple of weeks into 2008, however, I’ve already found my favorite new record of 2008. The Million Dollar Orchestra, which is a project put together by UK producer Al Kent, has just released a new full-length LP entitled, Better Days, and the record is nothing short than brilliant. At first listen you might be asking yourself if this is a disco reissue from 1976, however this record is as new as Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” record(which is also really good, I might add). Kent put together a large group of musicians to record two years of compiled original material with the hope of producing a record that sounds like it came straight out of the ‘70’s. After a few listens, you can say that Mr. Kent definitely “hit it on the head” here, with Better Days, putting together a very solid disco production. The record definitely has a 70’s analogue disco feel that’s very dancefloor friendly. The music includes multiple female vocals, keys, strings, solid bass grooves, funky percussion, and a horn section. The whole eight track record is pretty exceptional, with my favorite cuts being “Doncha Wanna Get Down”, “Get It Boy”, and “Keep On Doin’ Whatcha Doin’ ”. I know it’s way to early in the year to be having “record of the year” discussions, however The Million Dollar Orchestra’s Better Days LP can at least already be a strong candidate in my mind. If your a fan of Brooklyn’s Escort, you’ll definitely enjoy this. Nice work.

The Million Dollar Orchestra - Keep On Doin’ Whatcha Doin’
The Million Dollar Orchestra - Doncha Wanna Get Down

Seen at: Gabriel Teodros & Khingz, Bambu, Sleep of Oldominion, and Orbitron at Neumo’s on 1/10

Are you having a good time?
Yeah, it’s great!

What’s your favorite part about the local hip hop scene?
For me, it feels like family. It feels like everyone is real. You see them out on the block, you see them hanging out, you see them getting coffee. They are polite. Also, it’s all about the lyrics for me.

Has a lot of great stuff on it like… well… Here’s the playlist:

TV Coahran “Ogygia”
Pleasureboaters “S.O.U.”
Siberian “Soft Rains”
The Translucents “Don’t Push”
Kris Orlowski “Jessi”
The Maldives “Whidbey Island Blues”
Throw Me the Statue “Lolita”
Curtains for You “Heaven’s Waiting”

Why should you listen? Because now you don’t have to go to each individual Stranger Bands Page and click on each song to hear it. Ari and I did that work for you. Just click right here and it’ll stream straight onto your computer for free without having to subscribe to anything or sign up for anything or really do anything at all but push your index finger against your mouse. And what’s more, we’ll tell you where to find the band this week so if you like what you hear, you can go see ‘em live.

Now here are some pictures of some of the bands you’ll hear:

Vampire Weekend. They’re that cheeky, east-coast ivy-league-meets-the-islands manifestation of Wes Anderson soundtracks, the Beach Boys, and Paul Simon’s Graceland that you’ve been hearing so much about. I love them in an I’ve-only-heard-four-songs way, but luckily their much-anticipated LP drops on the 28th of this month, hopefully not destined to be a disappointment.

In the meantime, here is the brand-new video for “A-Punk”:

And here’s the older video for “Mansard Roof”:

“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” was stuck in my head for much of 2007; it’s fun, it’s breezy, like sipping mamosas on a yacht. Which I don’t have, and which I can’t do anyway because I’m underage (and therefore missed them last time they hit Seattle at the Croc). Luckily the band is playing at Neumo’s on March 26th, (let’s make that shit all-ages, please).

Tonight at High Dive: Saturday Knights, Dyme Def, and Cancer Rising.

My Philosophy Larry speaks with Cancer Rising Gatsby:

Larry: This is a helluva bill tonite. For my money, the best night of local hiphop possible.

Gats: Oh, “for my money”? Dumbass, you’re broke. Keep kissing that ass, clown. Assclown!

Larry: Dunno why you’re so goddamn surly…nobody’s coming to see you guys. Oh wait, there’s the reason!

Gats: You my friend can suck it. Our show is widely known to be fire…

Lar: (yawns)Uh Huh.

Gats: …and our record is killing KEXP right now!

Lar: Whatever.

Gats: Yeah, whatever. It’s your fuckin fault we can’t get any ink anyway!

Lar: Wah. Cry about it. Anyway, The Saturday Knights are the shit. They’re infectious. Nobody is making music like them, anywhere. The local hiphop scene better scramble to claim them as theirs before they blow the fuck up and the indie rock crowds tell us ‘told you so’.

Gats: Oh listen to Critic Guy talk! You’re right of course. There is no better song than “Motorin”.

Lar: Thank you. And as far as straight-up hiphop, Dyme Def are killing everything, they’re outta control and I know their next record is gonna blow minds. If this town has any chance of producing breakout major-label rap stars it’s them.

Gats: Cosign. I’m also amazed you didn’t use the word ‘swagger’ there. Everybody else does.

Lar: Clever. How’s that working out for you?

Gats: What’s that?

Lar: Being clever.

Gats: …Dick.

Lar: Ding-Dong!

I cannot get enough of this video:

Broken Disco: Egyptian Lover

(Chop Suey) Egyptian Lover (born Greg Broussard) is nothing short of an electro/hiphop pioneer. In 1984, his debut single, “Egypt, Egypt,” solidified on the West Coast a template laid down back East by Afrika Bambaataa: 808 drum machine beats, simple (often sampled) synth lines, record scratching, and cool-ass deadpan raps. Bambaataa may be better known (for his Zulu Nation mythology, his John Lydon collaboration, etc.) but the Lover’s tracks (“Egypt, Egypt,” “And My Beat Goes Boom”) are every bit as archetypal, and his Egyptology pillow talk is, if anything, more goofy fun than Bambaataa’s Planet Zulu shamanism. Live, Egyptian Lover still does it old school—an 808, two turntables, and a microphone—time-warping modern dance floors back to ancient Egypt, circa the 1980s. ERIC GRANDY

This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, the Pharmacy, Vena Cava, Pleasureboaters, Ima Gymnist

(Fusion Cafe) Let’s be blunt: The Fusion Cafe is not an ideal place to see a show. You’re basically watching a band play on the floor of a conference room, with more or less the kind of limited sightlines and sound such a setting suggests. But who gives a shit when the place is booking bills like this one? Headliners This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb hail from the same Florida folk-punk backwoods as Against Me!, although they’ve yet to outgrow the basement show quite so dramatically. Like that band’s earlier incarnation, TBIAPB holler political rally cries—antiwar, pro–Dumpster diving, etc.—over stomping punk hoedowns. San Diego’s Vena Cava recall golden-age California pop punk (Lookout Records and the like) before that genre came to mean smirking MTV douchebags—they’re smart, cute, sloppy, and barely held together by duct tape. Teenage Smell protégés Ima Gymnist round out the bill along with the Pharmacy and Pleasureboaters, two local bands poised for a banner year in 2008. ERIC GRANDY

Peter Parker, Guns & Rossetti, Young Sportsmen

(Jules Maes) Dick Rossetti is the frontman of Guns & Rossetti (which explains the band name), and you might recognize his name from his former status as afternoon DJ on 107.7 The End. The man had such a cult following at the station that when he left (and was replaced with the talk-heavy, not-so-funny “Church of Lazlo”), fans made a MySpace page begging for his return. The dry wit that made him popular on the airwaves bleeds into his lyrics (“Word to the wise, stay out of Bellingham”), and his love for ’80s cock rock obviously fuels the band’s lo-fi arrangements (lo-fi in the sense that they’re lacking the huge stadium-worthy guitar solos and have a less glam, more punk attitude). While theirs is a more bitter sound, Peter Parker’s power-pop has crunchy guitars and lovely boy-girl harmonies that will complement Guns & Rossetti nicely. They’re just as bitter, mind you, but it’s hard to hear that under their catchy melodies. MEGAN SELING

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Concern, Baby Panda, Ghosts & Liars

(Vera Project) Online videos aren’t the most romantic way to discover music, but La Blogothèque’s Les Concert à Emporter #8.2 is a beautiful introduction to the well-stocked canon that is one-man band Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. In the video, Owen Ashworth stands alone in a telephone booth on a wet, abandoned street. The characteristic drone of simple chords and beats emanates from a cheap keyboard, and in his unapologetically imperfect voice he sings to no one in particular, “Some days I think about moving up north, the rent is cheaper I can have a house and a porch to watch the rain, walk out in the rain, stand under the rain… and let Seattle wash me.” When the song ends and the camera pans away, Ashworth says, “That was the first song I ever wrote”: In the 10 years since he started CFTPA, his songs—and maybe his reverence for Seattle and its rain—have only gotten stronger. MOLLY HAMILTON

From the Stranger Suggests:

Lupe Fiasco

(Showbox at the Market) Lupe Fiasco’s headlining slot at last year’s Bumbershoot was a star-making performance. Lupe, wearing all white, owned the stadium, shaking its foundations with deep, bass-bomb beats and flying around the stage while still nailing his intricate rhymes. His sophomore album, The Cool, is a conflicted record—misfired cheeseburger rap gives way to a comic-book narrative starring characters named the Cool, the Game, and the Streets—but it’s wall-to-wall dexterous wordplay and grand, summer-blockbuster production. (Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Ave, 628-3151. 8 pm, $22.50 adv/$25 DOS, all ages.) by ERIC GRANDY

Lemmy is in a psychobilly band. Lemmy, infamous frontman of Motorhead, is in a psychobilly band with members of the Stray Cats and Rockats, and it is called… wait for it… the Head Cat. They are playing El Corazon tonight with Hard Money Saints and Mark Pickerel.

My first instinct is of course to make fun. I will not for two reasons. First: their music is not particularly bad, just disarming. I don’t know if I was ready to hear an amalgamation of the Stray Cats and Motorhead. Second: Lemmy will find and eat me for disrespecting him. Do not make fun of Lemmy when he is within your own city limits.

In 1989 I spent a summer traipsing around Europe buying tunes in every port to bring home to impress my friends with. At the time Acid House was just coming into vogue. It was light airy dance music that took repetitive piano lines and slightly squelchy synths sounds and layered them over some heavy four on the floor bass beats. Often sung over by people who really shouldn’t have had any right to be singing on a track (like Baby Ford). But this lent a diy attitude, a sort of pre-indie independence to this style of music.

In England at the time, the big names were Baby Ford (“Children Of The Revolution”), S-Express (“Theme From…”, “Superfly Guy”), Guru Josh (“Infinity”), Lisa Stansfield (“People Hold On”), Coldcut (“Stop This Crazy Thing”) and Yazz And The Plastic Population (“Docterin’ The House” and “The Only Way Is Up”).

Out of left field (and out of Sheffield) came the group The Funky Worm. Made up of producer Mark Brydon, Carl Munson, DJ Parrot and Julie Stewart on vocals, this band was coming from a different place, but arriving with force at the same destination.

There sound was a mix of northern soul, with shuffling disco beat. The piano, heavy bass and electronic sounds were icing on the cake. This truly was what disco would have sounded like by the 1980’s had early electro not gotten in the way. It was sexy, loose and kept the feel good vibe that seemed to be disposed of my so much early electronic and new wave. The Funky Worm were out to have fun and wanted you in on the party.

I found them to be totally refreshing and bought all the singles I could find from the group. The one that sticks best today is their first, “Hustle! (To The Music…)”. It doesn’t shy away from early house trappings, but brings in this groovy disco vibe that really set it apart from people like Baby Ford and S’Express. Julie Stewart’s vocals, while definitely week and a bit labored just lend it the feeling that these guys had the idea, and just got it out the best way they could.

“Hustle!” still holds up, and I can even imagine it being thrown into some of the Nouveau sets your hearing today.

One of my favorite mixes of this track is the Manchester Shuffle version by T-Coy. T-Coy was Hacienda DJ Mike Pickering and Simon Topping of A Certain Ration (how weird is that?!?). They tended towards latin sounds on some of their mixes and this mix is one of their best. T-Coy stood for “Take Care Of Yourself”, a classic line during these early ecstasy crazed party days.

So check it out, and go back to the future when House truly met Disco for the first time.

Samples here!

Her and Tom Petty duet this:

Then and only then would it be worth it to allow her to appear.

Joshua Roman is no exception:

Roman plays cello and engages works by Olivier Messiaen and Radiohead. His alter mullet-ego shoots 12-gauges and molests chickens.

Invert the mullet for near-hair synchronization:

An email:

From: a.howellchicago@REDACTED
Subject: Erroneous Race Statements in Lupe Fiasco Article…
Date: January 9, 2008 4:13:20 PM PST

Hello Jonathan,

I love your piece on Lupe Fiasco, but you purveyed a false statement. Matthew Santos is of filipino/Spanish decent, not a so-called “white-boy”. Please, check your facts.

It’s funny how prevalent of a role race has in todays media relations, no?

Thank You,

—
Andrew Howell
Director of Marketing
Soltis Arts, Inc.
2940 N. Allen Av
Chicago, IL 6061

My response:

Hey Andrew, thanks for writing.

Apologies for misrepresenting Santos’ ethnicity. It’s an assumption I made based on appearance (and the sound of his voice, to be totally honest); I never considered the ramifications of that assumption being wrong. My guess is that Santos gets that pretty often, but perhaps not. To be safe I should’ve said something like “non-black soul singer,” which sounds totally dumb, but would’ve covered my ass. I wanted to make the point of the black/white crossover, which is clearly part of a larger trend as noted in the story, so I decided it was important to mention some aspect of race. I checked out a bunch of articles about and pictures of Matt Santos and none of them gave me any indication he was anything other than white. Again, that’s an assumption made on my own white-boy behalf, and it’s not fair.

As far as the role of race in today’s media relations, sure it’s prevalent. It will always be prevalent. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just how it is. Race is real and differences are real and assumptions are real, if misleading. The point is not to make excuses but to see the meaning behind the roles as clearly as possible.

_{Matthew Santos, from his MySpace}

A similar error was perpetrated by this staff before.

We are, somewhat apologetically, white folks over here in the music department. As a so-called “white boy” myself, I have no qualms with the term, even if I could be more specifically described as a “Jew boy.” That doesn’t excuse the error, and Santos and his people have every right to set the record straight. Apologies to Matthew Santos and non-white, non-black people everywhere.

Here’s what the all-ages scene has to say to the “fucked up” 21+ scene (the lousy drunks that you are):

I’m kidding.

The all-ages scene has just as many drunks as the 21+ scene.

I’m kidding again. (Sorta.)

But actually, this is a more accurate representation of what I meant when I said the 21+ scene is currently fucked up (one of the first videos I saw when I tried to find the band Fucked Up playing “Nervous Breakdown” at SXSW [which is here]):

Whoa.

(Funnily enough, this video also perfectly captures the picture in my head I have of certain commenters.)

Hey, Paula: Ms. Abdul might also be playing the Super Bowl. Why can’t they just stick with Petty and call it good?

“Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts”: Documentary on composer to debut nationally later this year.

Another one bites the dust: Sony BMG makes a deal with Amazon to offer unrestricted mp3’s; the site will be the only location where DRM-free files from all four majors can be downloaded.

Clear Channel taken private: FCC approves the media giant’s privatization for $19.5 billion.

I like the way you move: Big Boi joins Atlanta Ballet for dance production set to Outkast hits.

“Danger! Danger! High Voltage!”: Introducing the all-in-one Taser/mp3 player.

Follow up to the shower scene in “Elf”: Zooey Deschanel collaboration project with M. Ward, titled She and Him, will release LP in March.

Taken by Life As Art.

Last night at Town Hall was one of those events pairing classical music (read: serious art) with popular music (read: common entertainment). The music in question was Olivier Messiaen’s “Quatour pour la fin du temps” (apparently a favorite of Radiohead’s and, according to Jen Graves, a bit of a cliche), Dan Visconti’s “Fractured Jams,” and selected works of Radiohead.

This was only my second visit to Town Hall (the last time was for another Joshua Roman joint), and I’m still kind of impressed by the very otherness of the experience. Everyone is so orderly and quiet and old and white (maybe a little less so on all counts last night). The biggest disruption is someone’s cell phone audibly interrupting the music. It’s all very different from, say, the Comet Tavern or Sing Sing.

Probably the single most disorienting thing about the concert experience is the silence. In that big chamber, with (for most of the night) acoustic instruments, the audience’s silence plays a huge part in the sound. At an amplified rock concert the sound blasts out of speakers, vibrates up from the ground, envelops you like a blanket; here, you’re surrounded by silence as much as you are by sound.

I’ll admit I was completely without critical footing for Messiaen. The quartet—Joshua Roman on cello, Grace Fong on piano, Amy Iwazumi on violin, Bill Kalinkos (a member of the Aphex Twin-covering ensemble Alarm Will Sound) on clarinet—played beautifully, trading solos, weaving up and down scales, clashing dissonantly, but I kind of tranced out. I’m told this is an appropriate response to the piece.

Visconti’s jams were equally foreign for me, like some kind of vaudevillian slapstick with unrecognizable gags. Kalinkos would blow toneless wind through his clarinet, Roman and Fong would examine their instruments quizzically, and so on. Only “Kaleidoscope Rag,” a sort of record scratched ragtime made immediate sense. Reading the program now, I can sort of see Visconti’s references to Spinal Tap, barnyard animals, and wind-up toys.

Finally, there was Radiohead. After some protracted setting up (microphones had to be used to compensate for the presence of a drummer on some songs and to allow vocals from Roman, Kalinkos, and Sarah Rudinoff), someone shouted “Ok” from the back of the room, and the band launched into a gorgeous quartet rendition of “Street Spirit (Fade Out).” For “Everything in its Right Place,” Roman and Fong switched places (this little pun was fucking hilarious to the Town Hall crowd). For “Optimist,” the quartet was joined by Rudinoff, Doug Marrapodi on drums, and “Awesome“‘s John Osebold on guitar. An older guy a couple rows in front of me started nodding his head, quietly rocking out (later a friend tells me that he saw an older gentleman sleeping through much of the Radiohead; several people trickle out during the Radiohead section).

It has to be said: Though a gifted vocalist, Rudinoff is totally wrong for Radiohead. Thom Yorke has a rather limited range of whimpers, falsettos, and growls, but the way he plays with that idiosyncratic voice is genius. Rudinoff, with her (classically-trained?), big, brassy pipes was an odd fit. Where Yorke would mumble or trail off, she would annunciate; where he would crack and whine, she would practically scat.

Still, there was something dorky and triumphant about the set. On numbers like “Idiotheque,” where Radiohead’s Kaoss Pad percussion was replaced by organic drumming, and “Paranoid Android,” you could see exactly how stoked Roman was to be playing these songs. He was shredding, smiling, lost in a rock star moment. Osebold busted out the theremin for a song, and there’s just no overstating the otherworldly cool of that instrument. The band encored with “Pyramid Song,” with Roman on piano and beautifully restrained vocals. Afterwards, but before the polite applause, one enthusiastic “Woo!” echoed through the hall. Classic.

Local band The Fascination Movement have signed a deal with Aube records (owned by electro/nouveau italo star Jupiter Black of “We Love Moroder” fame) and are preparing for the release of a new remix of the brand spanking new Starcluster feat. Marc Almond single “Smoke And Mirrors”.

Fucking H.O.T.

The band sound like the love child of Giorgio Moroder, Claudio Simonetti and New Order.

They took the original, stripped out everything except Almond’s vocals and rebuilt the song with heavy italo frequencies. Arpegiations, true vocoder-ized vocals and heavy basslines.

Already getting played by taste makers like DJ I-F, Alden Tyrell and soon to be available for order of of the Clone website, this record is bound to be a sensation on the dance floors.

You might know one of the guys in the group, Sean Wolcott, by his fantastic website The Red Room (he’s one of the “Friends Of Line Out” to your right).

Thanks to Sean here’s the new remix.

Starcluster Feat. Marc Almond - Smoke And Mirrors (Fascination Movement Remix)

Make sure to check out their myspace page soon, as they’ve put up some great demos from their upcoming Aube full length album.

A curious line from this week’s Underage:

So maybe you’re still just a kid. It’s okay—the 21+ scene is kinda fucked up right now and the kids appear to have their shit together.

Wha?! Fucked up because we’re over 21 and drinking? Or does the 21+ scene not “have their shit together” just because some venues closed/changed hands (as happens from time to time, even with all-ages venues)? Or maybe you mean Fucked Up like this:

(If that’s what you meant, then we’re totally cool.)

…besides the extension of basic financial and creative justice to the writers, of course, is so I can watch Jay-Z win the Oscar for Best Original Score.

There can be no denying that American Gangster deserves the honor—it’s the most exciting original-song score since Purple Rain, and one of the best records Jay-Z’s ever made. (According to my late-30s-white-guy math, its only competition is the mighty Reasonable Doubt. Both the lightly overrated Blueprint and lightly underrated Black Album are killer singles albums with iffy filler, while American Gangster—like Reasonable Doubt—is a killer album with deep thematic unity loaded with killer songs. Current faves: “Blue Magic” (!!!), “Hello Brooklyn.”)

So please, striking writers and greedy media conglomerates, work something out. I want to see Jay-Z accept his statuette in a good, old-fashioned, seven-hour-long Oscar ceremony, not some makeshift bullshit half-ceremony like last week’s People Choice Awards travesty. (RIP Queen Latifah.)

P.S. To all those who have Oscar dreams for Kimya Dawson for her contributions to Juno: Give ‘em up. Nominated songs have to be written expressly for the film, not preexisting tracks selected for the soundtrack. Bah. Still, how nice to live in a world where Kimya Dawson wrote nearly half the tracks on a top-ten album.)

Did you know he was and/or had done this? From his MySpace bulletin:

Pardon my mass missive but I wanted to spread the word that I am now a published author. Thanks to the trusty/crusty crew of the Continuum imprint, I now have my own contribution to their 33 1/3 series of books, complete with an ISBN number and a Library of Congress Data tag and everything. My book is called Twenty Jazz Funk Greats and it is about the album of said name by the English band Throbbing Gristle. It weighs in at 176 (teensy) pages. It features original interviews with all four members of Throbbing Gristle, some never-before-published photos and/or drawings from their private notebooks, and lots of interpretive blood sweat and tears from yours truly. Check it out!

From the Amazon book description:

Drew Daniel creates an exploded view of the album’s multiple agendas: a series of close readings of each song, shot through with a sequence of thematic entries on key concepts, strategies, and contexts. (For example: noise, leisure, process, the abject, information, and repetition.) The book argues that on Twenty Jazz Funk Greats, Throbbing Gristle modelled a critically new and highly promiscuous way of relating to or inhabiting musical genre - where punk rock was passionate and direct, TG were arch and mysterious, perverse and cold.

That’s Dr. Drew Daniel, to you. And who better?

R U THROBBING YET?

Just got the news from Light in the Attic’s Matt Sullivan: Dave Havlicek, aka Dave Day, guitarist and banjo player for legendary proto-punk band the Monks, died today. According to Sullivan, Day, who was born and lived in Renton, suffered a stroke or a heart attack on Sunday morning. He spent this week in the hospital before finally succumbing this morning.

According to the Monks’ wiki:

All the members of the Monks were American GIs stationed in Germany in the mid-’60s. They began playing together in 1964, calling themselves the 5 Torquays. The Torquays differed little from other bands of the time: They covered Chuck Berry songs and played music inspired by the British beat groups. But the band experimented together musically.

and

Dave Day replaced his guitar with a six-string, gut-strung banjo upon which he played guitar chords. This instrument sounds much more metallic, scratchy, and wiry than a standard electric guitar.

and

The Monks are one of the many bands mentioned in the song “Losing My Edge” by LCD Soundsystem.

There’s a huge backstory to these guys, which I’ll leave to our resident garage rock savant Mike Nipper to tell in a proper obituary tomorrow. Suffice to say the music is really something else, something unique—primal, tribal, freakish, stylized, and made all the more so by the fact it was originally made in 1966.

This is one of those times when you feel like an asshole for catching on to what’s clearly a very, very cool thing after somebody dies. I talked with Dave Day a couple times at Light in the Attic events—he was a badass and a sweetheart, he and his wife Irene hanging tough with the kids, drinking beers, smoking cigs, and shooting the shit. He told me he invented punk rock and opened for Jimi Hendrix. Watching these YouTube vids—and there are several, mostly taken from German TV in 1966—I believe the claim.

RIP.

Earlier today, Zwickel put up a great post about Tim Dog. I had completely forgotten about dude and was incredibly happy to hear TD’s special brand of gritty, gravelly, punch-you-in-the-neck-rap again.

However, Zwickel seems to think the era of the hardcore MC is over. While I’ll admit there are very few rappers left with the authoritative boom of Tim Dog, I’d like to throw a bone to Brooklyn’s own M.O.P.

I’m not going to run down M.O.P.’s storied history for you. You can go look at their Wikipedia entry for that. However, I will say that Billy Danzenie and Lil’ Fame make some wonderfully angry hip-hop, and may be the successors to Tim Dog’s east coast hardcore throne.

Sure, they’ve done a song with LFO and they’re currently signed to G-Unit, but the Mash Out Posse will still steal your shoes and punch your grandma if you start talking slick.

One of the groups that I can’t seem to get enough of lately is the Philadelphia based soul-funk/disco group MFSB. They released many classic and influential records like 1973’s Love Is The Message”, 1975’s “Universal Love”, and 1980’s “Mysteries of the World”. Recently I picked up a copy of their 1976 classic LP, Summertime, and it’s pretty safe to say that this record pretty much blows me away everytime I listen to it. With classic cuts like “Picnic In The Park”, “Plenty Good Lovin’”, and “Summertime”, I feel like this is MFSB at their best, smooth soul influenced disco-funk that heavily resembles anything from the early Salsoul releases. Even though MFSB had a huge presence as being a studio backing band for many legendary groups like the The O’Jays, Blue Magic, and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Summertime is a prime example of the solid original work that this band produced throughout their legendary existence.

MFSB - Plenty Good Lovin’
MFSB - Picnic In The Park

Today I bring you an excellent classic-country-music book, released just a few months ago: Live Fast, Love Hard, by Diane Diekman, the official, and only, biography of the amazing Faron Young [swoon]. This book is so compelling, I plowed through it in only a few sittings.

I’ve professed a lot of love on this blog for certain honky tonkers, but I’ve been keeping Faron Young, one of my most cherished, to myself. Yes, I have mentioned how handsome he is, but otherwise there’s been no timely reason to write about him. While I’ve been a huge fan of Faron’s music for years, I can’t say I really knew much about him, other than that he’d killed himself in the ’90s. I always felt so bad for him, because he was so great and once so popular, and he’d been forgotten.

Diekman was personally acquainted with Faron, and she did a ton of research for the book—it’s full of so many tiny details and anecdotes from many sources, including Faron’s family and peers. Her research is impressive. There are lots of great stories about Faron and other country stars of the ’50s and ’60s. I was kind of shocked by what these twentysomething men were doing while out on the road back then; let’s just say nothing has changed where sex and drugs are concerned.

Tears were streaming down my face once I got to the end of the book. I knew how the story was going to end, but I didn’t know how much turmoil Faron lived with and inflicted on others throughout his life, dealing with depression and alcoholism and severe daddy issues. When he was sober, he was a kind, fun, generous man; when he was drunk, he was mean, manipulative, and downright cruel. There is a lot of punching in this book—Faron punching various people, various people punching Faron—and most disturbing is the number of times throughout his life that he threatened suicide, and even faked suicide to freak people out (and, I assume, as a cry for help). Despite all that, he remained incredibly loved by and endearing to practically everyone who knew him.

It’s a fascinating story about a man who had a lifelong struggle with depression and intimacy and insecurity, but who hid it so well behind a larger-than-life personality. I guess that’s not really a new story—we all know men like that—but I had no idea the extent of his problems; sadly, his friends and family had an inkling, but they seemed to be helpless due to his stubbornness and a general ignorance of depression back then. While this is a comprehensive portrait of a troubled man, I do feel like there could’ve been more detail about his early career and his songs. But, his story is heartbreaking and exciting, and Diekman nailed it. Get the book.

But who is this guy, other than a mean drunk? Why do I love him so? Well, he’s not just a pretty face; he’s one of the greatest country singers ever. Period. He had an amazing, beautiful voice (and perfect pitch, I learned from Diekman’s book): It could be high, low, nasal, smooth, soaring. His recording career began in the early ’50s and went all the way through the ’70s and into the ’80s; he kept it country all the way. And he was insanely popular.

His music is swoon-worthy. His ballads make me melt, with their perfect combination of aching steel guitar and Faron’s gorgeous voice: songs like “Tattle Tale Tears,” “My Two Open Arms,” “I Miss You Already (And You’re Not Even Gone),” “Sweet Dreams.” But he can also rock out, as evidenced by upbeat hits like “Three Days” (written way back when by Willie Nelson) and “Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young.” And he’s got plenty of shuffles, like the absolutely perfect “Wine Me Up.” And have you heard “It’s Four in the Morning” from 1972? My god, what a song.

I’ve got a couple greatest-hits albums, and I’d highly recommend Live Fast, Love Hard: Original Capitol Recordings, 1952–1962. I wish I had the cash for the $100 Bear Family Records’ five-disc box set. Live Fast, Love Hard: Original Capitol Recordings, 1952–1962 is basically flawless. It’s got all the aforementioned tracks (except “Wine Me Up” and “It’s Four in the Morning”), plus many more, including “Country Girl,” with its bitter chorus, “Now you’ve gone and left me/you’re with somebody new/but I wonder if you told him/I bought the clothes on you”; the equally bitter “A Place for Girls Like You”; the upbeat “Alone with You”; hell, they’re all great songs—I don’t really need to list them all. And note the hot cover photo:

Really, anyone who likes classic country and hasn’t heard Faron Young needs to check him out. You will be an instant convert.

Here’s “Hello Walls” (also written by Willie Nelson, and a more poppy number), which was my introduction to Faron Young, via my dad. My dad seems to have had this song perpetually stuck in his head since it came out in 1961; he’s been randomly belting out the opening “hello walls” for as long as I can remember. Sometimes he answers the phone that way.

And here’s “My Dreams,” a more upbeat number.

Tomorrow night is Broken Disco at Chop Suey. The one and only Egyptian Lover will be in the house.

This is how it will go down:

At the moment the music getting me through the work day is a DJ set from local funkster Danny Massure. It’s just over an hour of funk/soul breaks originally recorded for the Monotape Radio Show, and it’s well worth a listen. You can get it here if the player below doesn’t work for you (or if you want the MP3).

powered by ODEO

If you’re looking for the same kind of flavor live, Massure and his band (Danny Massure Breakdown) are playing tonight at the Highway 99 Blues Club from 9pm to midnight. Here’s a video of them playing.

This album:

KATE NASH
Made of Bricks
(Interscope)

**

Kate Nash is the heir apparent, or the version 2.0, of fleeting British-music-tabloid darling Lily Allen (it depends on whether you liken the British pop-music system more to a royal family or a planned-obsolescence assembly line). Both are young, comfortably posh North London girls who—shock! horror!—aren’t afraid to speak their minds; Allen even effectively anointed her successor to the popular world by placing Nash in the highly visible top eight of her now legendary, apparently career-launching MySpace page.

“Foundations,” the Made of Bricks lead single, has more sparkly momentum than Allen’s relaxed R&B breakout, “Smile”—sometimes that momentum gets the best of Nash; she has a habit of running off rhythm and into spoken word, struggling to cram more syllables than can fit into her lines. “Mouthwash” mixes propulsive instrumentation with superficially introspective lyrics (“this is my face/covered in freckles with the occasional spot”). Old B-side “Birds” is a sweet enough urban bohemian love ballad. The softly rapped verses and gaudy R&B chorus (“I just want your kiss, boy”) of “Pumpkin Soup” are built to chart. The slightly morbid romantic lilt and well-placed violins of “Skeleton Song” suggest a more polished Nick Diamonds. But the distorted drum break and repetitious stutter of the throwaway intro “Play” unfavorably recall both Nash’s red-herring debut single, “Caroline’s a Victim,” and the electro-fop routine of Calvin “I Created Disco” Harris. “Why you being a dickhead for?” even when delivered in a well-practiced, slightly world-weary jazz croon, is not exactly a compelling chorus (“Dickhead”).

Nash possesses a clear, classically trained voice, capable of pulling both jazzy pouts and Björk-lite wails, and she’s surrounded by slickly professional acoustic production—clean guitars, bright pianos, tight but unremarkable rhythm sections, big choruses, occasional blasts of horns or Pro-Tooled synths. And her particular inflections and self-conscious snatches of pub slang (a “fit” here, a “twat” here, a “wot?” there) will appeal to a certain indiscriminating brand of twee Anglophile. Others will be thrown by Made of Bricks’s constant flirting between confessional singer-songwriter and teen-pop modes.

…has grown on me since last deadline. I even taught myself “Foundations” on the piano. That’s all.

(Also, that’s not all: Everett “I Created Grunge” True interviewed the young starlet for the Village Voice; you can read it here.)

Cat Em-Power-ing!: Chan Marshall doing humanitarian work for charity: water.

Heretic Pride: New Mountain Goats on the way, John Darnielle will also be writing a 33 1/3 book about Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality.

Wouldn’t Miss It: Slipknot and Disturbed will co-headline the “Rockstar Mayhem Tour”, sponsored by Rockstar Energy Drink.

“Honey, I’m going to run to the Snoopermarket”: Snoop Dogg is making huge plans for 2008, including a line of pet-care products, a chain of grocery stores, and a few high-profile collaborations.

Update on American’s favorite train wreck: Britney might be in Mexico?

The Rise and Fall of Thuggy Stardust and the Hustlers from Mars: David Bowie (unauthorized) mash-up includes classic raps from B.I.G., Jay-Z, and Wu-Tang.

Taken by tea.., who, I should mention, has added bunch more Band of Horses shots to the Stranger’s Flickr Pool. This was my favorite.

There’s a chance that many of the albums you’ve illegally downloaded have been tampered with. Not pumped full of viruses or digital anthrax or anything, they’ve just been slightly altered sonically. Added to. Changed. This is the work of the Overdub Tampering Committee, who released their manifesto earlier this week.

We are a group of musicians who have downloaded newly leaked albums by popular artists, quickly recorded many subtle overdubs over the work, and then re-leaked it to the internet. We have done this for about three years now. We used all kinds of instruments with recording techniques that matched the audio quality of the album in question. We used a varied amount of re-leaking methods including but not limited to Soulseek, OiNK, The Pirate Bay, Limewire and zipped files hosted on sites like YouSendIt or Mediafire with links spread out on hundreds of message boards. Our turnaround time was usually very short so often our version of the artist’s album was online for download within hours of its original leak. If you illegally download music on the internet the chances that our work is in your collection is very, very likely! In fact, you might have a whole lot of us!

So what’s the point?

One of the things that’s always shocked us about people “illegally downloading” music is the blind faith that what they’ve downloaded is the actual finished product that the band has released (or is about to release). We download and we had this faith too. But one day, about 4 years ago, one of us downloaded a newly leaked album by a very popular band. Excitedly listening to it for the first time we noticed a very out of place death metal song in the middle of the album. The obvious genre change and the ability to check the track listing and run time for each song on a reliable website made it easy to sniff out that this leak had been tampered with. We discarded the leaked files and waited patiently for the actual release where upon we bought it in a store.

This got us thinking: what if this problem got more insidious, subtle, and widespread? What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet?

We imagined a scenario where someone would get in a car with their friend, he would put on the new _____ album, and you would say, “Where’s all the piano parts?” to which the driver would say, “What piano parts? This album is all guitars and drums.” Finally, you would scratch your head and say, “Not my copy!”

It would be bewildering.

It would be irksome.

It would be annoying.

We set out to make that specific bewildering, annoyance a possibility.

I remember downloading a copy of Built to Spill’s You In Reverse with a “Who is Mike Jones?” sample every two minutes, but I doubt that was them. The best part about this whole debacle is that it may itself be a scam. Maybe they didn’t do anything, and just said they did. From a post yesterday on their blog:

…Jon Parales of the New York Times wrote us with this short, reasonable request: “A scintilla of evidence would be nice.”

We wrote back: “Jon, Thanks for your email. We won’t be providing any more evidence than what is presented in the manifesto. We know what we’ve done, we’ve had fun doing it, and now it’s in the public’s hands. We don’t believe the burden of proof lays on our shoulders. Part of our goal with the project was that no one would ever know for sure how many albums we worked on, which ones, or if they resided in your digital music collection. In this way we highlight certain aspects of living in present day U.S.A. Often times proof is nothing more than general public consensus.”

The members of TOTC claim that they are all musicians themselves in bands whose music they have seen distributed illegally online, and that their albums have been tampered with as well.

thanks Brother for the tip.

Have you ever gotten excited about a show solely because of the number of red flags along the path to it? To review:

* A flyer whose art is a photocopied NES controller
* A band web site hosted at this URL, for real: greatestbandever.com
* A sign at the show’s entryway informing fans that, unfortunately, opening act Beefy couldn’t make it out tonight
* A robust, two-microphone recording rig in the Jewelbox’s tiny room that would confound even the most dedicated Wilco taper
* The band opening the show by giving a shout-out to the guitarist’s girlfriend in the crowd

But the best red flag of them all, of course, was the band’s name: Press Start to Rock. Holy shit. They’re an instrumental four-piece out of Kirkland who specialize in “rock” versions of old video game background music, much like national acts The Advantage or The Minibosses. PStR are, by far, the worst band I’ve ever seen. And I absolutely loved them.

It helped that their crappiness was so shameless. Their equipment was trash across the board—like they’d bought their guitars, bass, drums and amps in a bulk set from Costco, just to make sure their tone matched the sound of an 8-bit synthesizer. Between nearly every song, the drummer yelled, “Improv solo!”, and the rest of the bandmates would yell back at him as if this were an actual threat. And in spite of the drummer obviously making everything up as he went, the two guitarists held their own as best as they could—to be fair to these guys, they did a decent job with the complicated riffs that were originally meant for a computer sampler. Their struggles with the songs made me rethink my opinions about bands like The Minibosses—if you want to call their source material a shtick, at least give them credit for nailing some relatively complicated tunes.

But nothing-no-nothing topped their plump dynamo of a bassist, a man who looked like he had dreamed about this concert for his entire life, and he had a special hand-signal to prove it. At the beginning of a song? Devil horns in the sky. When his left hand didn’t need to hold a fret? It needed to rawk. Perhaps the middle of a song required a horn interruption? Fuck yeah it did. End of song? Conclude with pinky and index finger bah-lazing. This man, by himself, put more horns in the air than the entire crowd at the Family Values Tour.

Also, don’t tell him the theme from Tetris doesn’t slay—he headbanged the hell out of that jam (and most of the others) while the rest of the band stood pretty much frozen in fear. And how else to prove that you’re a member of the greatestbandever.com than to take your left hand off the frets to drink a beer mid-song, only to earn pissed-off stares from your guitarist duo? But my favorite moment came after only 20 minutes of the band’s complete shlub of a set, off tempo at all times: “We’re gonna do the Mega Man 3 medley, and then we’re going to take a 15-minute break. After that, we’ll do Zelda.”

You might wonder what the rise of Guitar Hero has wrought; ladies and gentlemen, it has wrought this.

Press Start to Rock plays again on March 6 at the Skylark Cafe. One can only hope that in the meantime, the guy with the two microphones uploads last night’s show to the Internet.

Gabriel Teodros and Khingz, Bambu, Sleep of Old Dominion, Orbitron, DJs B-Girl, Phatrick, Tecumseh
(Neumo’s) The first big local hiphop show for 2008 features Mass Line’s Gabriel Teodros, Seattle’s most progressive rapper and one-half of Abyssinian Creole. The other half is Khingz, who also performs tonight and is expected to drop a solo effort this year. As Abyssinian Creole, Teodros and Khingz were at the center of the powerful discharge that instigated, in 2005, the current wave of local hiphop that is led by Blue Scholars. Abyssinian Creole’s contribution to that remarkable year was Sexy Beast, a CD that in sound and themes is opposite to the mood and climate of the Northwest. What Sexy Beast made apparent was the diversity of local hiphop: It can come from anywhere (East Africa, Haiti) and be about anything (love, immigration, meditation). CHARLES MUDEDE

Quartet for the End of Time (Town Hall) For the latest installment of Town Hall’s TownMusic series, cellist Joshua Roman has scrapped the standard notion of a classical concert. Instead, he’s assembled a compelling program that mixes rock and classical without watering down either genre.

At first glance, the second half of the concert may exert the broadest appeal; Roman and a chamber quartet back up singer, actor, and Stranger Genius Award winner Sarah Rudinoff and John Osebold of “Awesome” in a medley of songs by Radiohead.

Musicians love the odd structures and the let’s-write-a-pocket-symphony ambition that emanates from Radiohead. I do, too. I’m curious to listen for sonic links between Radiohead and the first half of the concert, which begins bravely with music by a living classical composer—Dan Visconti’s Fractured Jams,written in 2006—and one of the most intense chamber works of the 20th century, Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen. Scored for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano, Messiaen (1908–1992) wrote the Quartet in 1941 while imprisoned in POW camp. CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI

A Gun That Shoots Knives is releasing a six song EP called Love on Seattle’s Bad Horses Records. The CD release show is Saturday night at Sunset Tavern. They’re playing first and last with the Resets doing the middle set. Your $6 cover gets you a free copy of the EP. A Gun That Shoots Knives is Stubby Abbot, Jimmy LaRue, Jeff Greenwood, and Kurly Sorbel. They play deranged pop that touches into metal, groove, and soul balladry. In Love they sing of sushi and making you wet. If Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a band from Seattle it would be A Gun That Shoots Knives. They’re odd, they fly, and they have the power to make dreams come true.

AGTSK has toured four times. They have collected and worn over a dozen wigs, eight jumpsuits, five false moustaches, one chicken suit, one cow suit, one horse head, six mexican wrestling masks, several pieces of lycra, twelve two-dollar thrift store suits, a jetpack, and one pair of knee-high six-inch tranny boots.

I met the band at the McDonalds Playland in Ballard to speak about the making of Love. We sat waist deep in the Pac-Man plastic ball pit:

How was the recording? Where did y’all do it?
AGTSK: Well, Trent More-man, it was great. And we don’t mean that to sound sarcastic. We recorded at Titan Studio, with our dear friend Scot Michael. It’s a classic basement studio environment, complete with spiders, spiders everywhere.

Did you do any pre-production? (They are throwing the little plastic balls at my head.)
Yeah, we started by practicing the shit out of the songs we were going to record. I’m talking at least twice a week. We pre-recorded everything as if we were going to be mixing it ourselves so we didn’t have to dick around a ton once we got there. We’re all vaguely capable of playing each other’s instruments and have a lot of input on each other’s parts. More of that comes out when we listen back to a multi-tracked version of a song and we can hear the individual notes/beats we’re playing. Scot uses Nuendo, and has an awesome collection of newish and vintage mics. (His condenser that we used for vocals is a trippy, old, and Russian.) We ended up throwing all six tracks down in three afternoons, five the first two days and one on the third, which was pretty fast for us. We took the better part of two years trying to record a full-length on our own. It was nice to hand most of the board work off to someone who’s a lot faster and has a better ear than you.

Talk for me now about any drum pad type gear you might have used. PLEASE do this, and do it now.
Drummer Kurly says: I used a Roland sampler that has nine indivdual trigger pads. That sampler then gets run threw anlog and digital effects that can be minipulated manulay by my own damn hands. The idea is to incorporate all that crap with an acustic set and keep it real. Also, it (the sampler) allows me to fill “sonic gaps” as well as being able to perform songs live the same way they are done on recordings. Eventually there will be more crap.

Continue reading "The Making of Love" »

Lupe Fiasco is taking soft hiphop to places it’s never been: Kid’s smart and senstive but politically savvy, socially aware, and funny at the right moments. He looms over The Cool with a conceptual gameplan that’s so broad and deep that it could be considered impressionist. Lyrically, Lupe tends towards the abstract spiked with specific detail, but his subjectmatter is easy enough to parse (child warfare, hood nutrition, wealth porn, fame and fortune, etc). There’s mass-appeal potential in The Cool, and its wit is sly and subtle, leaving a lot to look into for those that like to dig deep. As I said in my review in this week’s paper, pop doesn’t get any smarter, and smart doesn’t get any catchier.

For that we should rejoice. For that we should also get some contrast. There was a time when hard was hard. And nobody in all of hiphop is as hard as Tim Dog.

In 1991, “Fuck Compton” set the standard for dis tracks; there’s never been a musical smackdown more inflammatory and more effective. Tim Dog was the hardest of the hard, and his debut, Penicillin on Wax, played like a drill sergeant’s verbal abuse set to an air-raid siren and a kettle drum turned up to 11. “Fuck Compton” first drew my attention to the Bronx-dwelling, high-top-fade rocking, megalomaniacal screamer. While the rest of my high school friends were falling for NWA, I stood firmly by my East Coast origins (if you can describe South Florida that way) and backed Tim Dog’s Eazy-E-bashing boot camp. Production by Ultramagnetic MCs was far harder than anything Dre did for NWA, and Tim himself was so freakin’ large and loud and straight-up HARD that he became a legend in his own time.

Having that gang war? We wanna know what you’re fighting for.
Fighting over colors? All that gang shit’s for DUMB MOTHERFUCKERS!

Thing is, Tim Dog was so goddam muffuggin HARD that he was a caricature. I’m sure the Dog himself knew this—he was fucking serious, yeah, ready to dish out beatdowns to “happy rappers, overcommercial rappers, bullshit rappers,” but Penicillin had some flat-out hilarious moments. Sample lyric, from “The Dog’s Gonna Getcha”:

“AAAAAAAAHH! I can’t believe how DOPE I am!/ I’m the motherfuckin man!/ Smackin MCs with one hand!/ Don’t cry you little bitch!”

and from “Sexual Fantasy,” wherein Tim waxes to Kool Keith about banging En Vogue in their dressing room:

“And then the short one, you know, the one with the fat ass/ OOPS..they all have a fat ass/She wanted me to pee in her face/So what did you do?/I pissed in her face.”

Ho shit! There’s so much to love. Penicil