the fast break of champions

dEUS - Keep You Close

2012-02-12T10:43:00.003+02:00

You know that eerie feeling when you're just thinking about somebody and then that somebody calls you in that exact second? And it's like magic, or telepathy, or something cool like that? Yeah, it's not magic. But it's pretty cool. Or annoying, if what you were thinking was "God, I hate that bastard, I hope he's dead".

But anyway, that's what happened with dEUS yesterday. Just as I was having this dEUS fit for a couple of days, I find out that they had a new album out in 2011 - Keep You Close. I'm not even surprised anymore that I discover these things centuries after they've been extinct and dead and buried inside rocks. The important thing is that we're all still here and we love each other.

These guys are kind of like Ween in one respect: they can't really make a bad album, it's simply not in their genes. And yes, I'm dropping that particular name again, let me pick that up and wash it. But alas, Keep You Close is not exactly Worst Case Scenario, or In A Bar, Under The Table. Sorry, Sea. Or, of course, The Ideal Crash. These are anybody's favorites, right? As always with most good bands, there comes a time when the music is there, but the boldness is gone. The sheer nerve isn't there quite so much. Because you experiment when you're young and don't know what you're doing. But then you get older and you fall into the trap of knowing. You become polished and sophisticated, huge orchestras start forming behind you and things get epic. Of course, that can lead to a song like "Nothing Really Ends", but how often does that happen? In the end, the feeling that lingers on is that the room is perfectly decorated, but it needs fresh air.

Keep You Close is a good album by itself, but when you put it next to WCS it's like Tom Jones just walked in the room. I mean I prefer the older ones, what can I say? But I will say this: Tom Barman is a fucking poet. This man's lyrics never fail to amaze me. They are simply beautiful, they just float out of him naturally, seamlessly, effortlessly. Dave Gahan has that as well. It's like they don't really mean for it to be poetry, they're just talking, but it just comes out that way. Whenever I listen to dEUS, I come up with lyrics of my own that are based on lyrics of his that I misunderstand. I hear one word instead of the other and yet that's just another beautiful image or concept or whatever. That's how good he is. His voice helps as well, it can be very intimate and tender, as well as cynical and menacing when it need be. I was gonna give you examples of lyrics, but fuck it, listen to the thing yourselves, discover it.

I don't know why I can't post the songs here directly, it's that time of month for Trilulilu.ro again, I guess. But I'll do it this way, I hope it works:

Ghost

Dark Sets In

this is a TEASER

2012-02-10T07:48:00.003+02:00

Due March.

(it's all over the internet, you'll find it eventually, don't burst a vein)
(side note & clue: they used to have truly amazing album covers: what the fuck happened?)

dEUS

2012-02-08T15:34:00.004+02:00

And speaking of the 90s: fucking dEUS, man, right? Remember your first reaction when you saw the video for "Suds & Soda" (still one of my favorite songs from them). It was brilliant. My first thought was "What's this guy's problem, take a pill, Jesus..." and then I sat down and watched hypnothized as he was banging his hand against his belly, yelling hysterically "Friday! Friday! Friday!", while holding Tom Barman's hand. That image was dada, man. Still is.

And I was listening to the second cd from Worst Case Scenario Remastered, cause they did that. WCS is a fucking great album in itself. I remember once on Most Wanted, when they'd just released WCS, Ray Cokes brought them a canto teacher, as a joke. I squeezed a smile. The album is great, shut up Ray.

So, anyway, on this remastered version there's a second cd which has a few unused songs, plus versions and demos and live versions of the songs on the album. And I've said somewhere before that these guys are big Captain Beefheart fans. Well here you go:

Captain Beefheart - The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)

dEUS - Zea Intro Replica

And check out this version of "Suds & Soda". This would be great as a soundtrack for Nosferatu, the Cartoon Network version, it's really camp and weird.

dEUS - Suds & Soda (By Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung)

ANGER IS A GIFT

2012-02-01T12:36:00.002+02:00

Rollins Band - Disconnect

Because I really hate your mall, your mental mold, every malevolent molecule in your mongoloid mind, your million molten maladies, you fucking malfunctioning molestors.

DEAD WALTZING

2012-01-29T15:50:00.000+02:00

Now kids, open your books to the chapter "Funny Madness" and be careful it doesn't jump out and bite your pretty faces off. Check this out:

Fucked up, but with a fashionable sense of humor, right? Don't worry, no one can actually play that shit. It wasn't meant to be played, it was meant to be funny for musicians as well as for the common, sensible man. I mean, I laughed. It's art even a computer can appreciate. It was written (drawn?) by John Arthur Stump, an erudite music fanatic (huge Beatles fan), who also composed music that could actually be played, but apparently his sense of humor got the better of him most of the time. Which I think is great. I mean a good, intelligent sense of humor is about as hard to find as compassion or real tits these days. We need more of John to go around. On second thought, nah: I hear he was pretty fat.

So anyway, there's a lot of confusion going on concerning this particular piece of music, “Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz (from ‘A Tribute to Zdenko G. Fibich’)”. I know I am confused. Although everyone agrees that the John Stump thing cannot be played by any human, some claim that a simplified version of it is humanly achievable (as seen here), when in fact they are talking about a whole different piece of music also called "The Death Waltz"..and the name U.N. Owen was her? keeps popping up, which I think is a cartoon or fuck knows what. Go figure, don't wait for me.

But since this is mainly a music blog, then music you shall have. The second Death Waltz is also impossible to play if you're a silly human with a mere pair of hands. With just two hands you can play the simple version, like the guy with the pink monkey in the link above. That's cool too. But the really really fucked up version can only be played by a computer (with no hands!!) as you can see below:

I had to wipe this video clean before posting it, because Hiromi Uehara drooled all over it.

More about the life and times of John Arthur Stump here.

The 90s. Not bad, huh?

2012-01-28T17:27:00.021+02:00

The 90's were pretty awesome, I now realize for the 28th time. I was watching "Misfits" the other day (quick review: what looked promising in the beginning turned into a "what else can we do we them" kind of show. What if they go back in time and kick Hitler in the balls? Great! Write that down! But make sure they don't actually kill him, cause a reality without Hitler is just beyond my imagination), so anyway, "Dirge" came on. And I felt my heart sink for a second: that was a great song! So, long story short, I went into this 90s thing for a week or so (still in it actually)

Ha!

So. 90s, eh? I was just thinking yesterday that, man, I wish the 90s caught me a bit older, like 28-30 max, you know, just old enough to appreciate what was going on. Back then I was devouring MTV London, cause it was still pretty good then, and everything was magical. Staying up late to watch Most Wanted, 120 Minutes, Alternative Nation, Headbanger's Ball and all that. Taping it all! Thinking a band like The Verve was way beyond my intellectual capacity, getting goosebumps whenever they played Bull In The Heather or Animal Nitrate or Killing In The Name Of. Fuck, I even miss The Offspring!

I still think that Placebo and Smashing Pumpkins would have sounded a lot better without those two whining little bitches doing vocals, but man do I air-guitar the fuck out "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" or "Bruise Pristine" NOW! There was this beautiful feeling of "we are here to ROCK" then. We are here to piss on your wall, and dye our hair red, and wear shitty jeans, and make some noise, and fucking be young. It was great, I now see in fucking retrospect. Like punk, you know, but with music.

I used to lip-synch Kurt Cobain's impossible lyrics, just moving my mouth like a dribbling moron, not knowing what the fuck he's on about, but I just loved it. Used to jump in the air at the beginning of "Purr" (it's simply impossible to sit down on that one). Used to wear suits like Nick Cave. Make up like Manson. Used to not give a shit about Pearl Jam and all their deep-deep I-miss-you-daddy stuff. Now I love them. Cause I just watched "Pearl Jam - Twenty" and Eddie Vedder blew me away. I'm glad I can still be blown away. I even liked Courtney Love, even though I think it hardly gets any trashier. And oh, you should really see me now, 35 and making pancakes in my kitchen while performing NIN's "Burn" using a hammer for a mic, holding the cat hostage and using her for an audience! My God, that's not Youtube worthy, that's Comedy Central right there. Cause I so fucking feel it. Fuck gym, I sweated 3 kilos right out and Marlboro smoke came out of my ears. And Primus!! Fuck me, I used to think Flea could hold a bass guitar in his hands, where did this Les guy come from? Bam!

And all the hearty-feely ones, Street Spirit, Fuzzy, Lightning Crashes, Waiting For The Night (my god!!!), the lot of them. When I went to the cinema and saw Natural Born Killers, I heard Waiting For The Miracle right at the start of the movie and nearly fainted. I mean, to hear that in a cinema (speakers blaring) just a few years after communism, when nothing got through...fuck me. I went to see that shitty Spawn movie just to be able to hear "The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell" in surround sound. It wasn't the whole song, just, like, 30 seconds, but it was almost worth it! "Antichrist Superstar" changed my life, man! It was all downhill from there, haha.

Even the girls fucking rocked back then: The Breeders, Throwing Muses, Hole, Veruca Salt, Belly, Republica, Siouxie & the Banshees, Elastica, L7, Garbage. Now it's all uuuuh and aaaah and look at my plastic boobs and my one-note drama. Cranes, man! Cranes knew how to play the fuck out of one single note. So simple, so incredibly sad and beautiful.

I may be out of touch with what's happening these days (that's more than a possibility, I'm pretty sure it's a fucking pledge), but it's quite hard to argue with exhaustion. I'm tired of listening to bands today. Some of them do sound good (Gotye, Get Well Soon and all the G ones in general), but I can't help feeling that everything today lacks true passion, true angst, it's all too polished, the roughness and immediacy of it is gone and it feels like everybody's just ad-libing, getting angry in 5...4...3....2......go.

Ahhhh...Blur, Oasis, Nine Inch Nails, Primal Scream, Fun Loving Criminals (Reservoir Dogs was cool,.huh?), Shakespeare's Sister, Red Hot Chili Peppers (look at the shit they're doing now, man, it's really not fair), REM, Beastie Boys, Prodigy, The Pixies (I got a broken face. Aha! Aha! Uuuuh!), Stone Temple Pilots (flies in the vasoline we are, sometimes it blows my mind), dEUS (friday friday friday), Tool, Live, PJ Harvey, Depeche Mode, Rage Against The Machine, Mazzy Star, Salad (Salad!), Soundgarden, Pogues (Johnny in That Woman's Got Me Drinking...even though I think that was a different Shane McGowan band, don't care to check), Cranberries, Jesus & Mary Chain, Jane's Addiction, Whale, Rollins Band (Liar!!!), Daisy Chainsaw, K's Choice, Scarce (aaaall sideeewaaaays!), Blind Melon (the bee girl!), Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, At The Drive-In, did I mention the Pixies?...fuck it, there's too many of them. Not to mention the fucking music that fucking Ween fucking came up with in the fucking 90s. Granted, Ween doesn't represent any decade in particular, just all of them, but still I feel kinda silly not mentioning them in every goddamn post.
And yeah, of course, some of these guys are still around today...but are they?

Anyway, here's a few songs that I love from the 90s. The list would be very long, just picked a few almost randomly. They're good ones, albeit a bit on the grunge side most of them, but that's the 90s for you, so there.

Death In Vegas - Dirge

Smashing Pumpkins - The end is the beginning is the end

Stone Temple Pilots - Lounge Fly

Hole - Violet

Pearl Jam - Animal

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Money Rock'n'Roll

COHEN 2012

2012-01-21T10:03:00.001+02:00

Damn. Once again he took the words from my mouth and used'em better.
Old Ideas, new album.

BALLS

2012-01-19T12:34:00.000+02:00

I think it takes a truckload of balls to come out with a video like this. I'm tempted to say that I love truckloads of balls, but somehow it feels wrong.

OOPS...

2012-01-18T13:09:00.002+02:00

So here's the story again: in the 80's Mick Jagger went a little disco crazy and a little solo. He kept coming back from Studio 54 with all these great groovy tracks in his mind, laying them on Keith and thinking he'd composed them all when in fact they were just songs he'd heard at the disco two weeks before. Anyway, he was a sponge, his memory probably gave way to make room for yet more incoming and the wheel kept on spinning.

So. One day he comes up with "Anybody Seen My Baby". They record it. Great song, pat on the back and all that. But then Keith's daughter along with a friend of hers listen to the track one day and suddenly start singing "Cooooonstaaant Craaaaviiing" instead of "Anybody Seeeeeen Myyyyyy Baaaaabyy". Keith goes stiff. He calls the lawyers, tells them to check it and sure enough they get back to him with the answer: yep. "Anybody Seen My Baby" is a bit of a steal when you listen to KD Lang's "Constant Craving", so now she's credited on the Rolling Stones album. Funny.

KD Lang - Constant Craving

Rolling Stones - Anybody Seen My Baby

TOOK THIS ONE STRAIGHT IN THE KIDNEY...

2012-01-18T11:07:00.000+02:00

Feel free to cry your rotten heart out.

Aaron, free man

2012-01-17T11:01:00.004+02:00

Dude, dude, DUDE! like, OMG! OMFG, Dude! He's alive, like, he's alright, dude, he fuckin speaks!!!

Ok, now with that out of the way:
GENER SOLO.
No Ween, just Aaron, brand new first solo album called

MARVELOUS CLOUDS

out in April.

Here's Aaron and the cover:

I'm not sure if this is the cover for the album or for the single and who cares really.
Now here's the tracklist:

As I Love My Own
Jean
Marvelous Clouds
A Man Alone
The Beautiful Strangers
Doesn't Anybody Know My Name
One By One
Pushing The Clouds
The Lovers
Mr. Kelly
Love's Been Good To Me
Lonesome Cities
The World I Used To Know

Beautiful. To be honest, I'm expecting sentimental fluffy shit, most of it, which I'm gonna love anyway, not because it's Gene we're talking about and I swallow any crap from him, but because he IS indeed Gene and Gene very rarely comes up with crap, no matter how mooshy it may sound.
Details about the album HERE, I'm not gonna re-write the whole thing like I'm telling something new.

So here's the trailer for the album as well. Looks action-packed.

Jeff Jeffty-Jeff. Born on the first of Jeff Nineteen-Jeffty-Jeff

2012-01-11T15:53:00.003+02:00

I went to this website the other day...they had this top 25 on display, best albums of 2011 in their humble opinion. Thought I'd buy me one of those. I listened to all of them, some more than others, some I just deleted after 1 minute of listening, some I listened two or three times already. But overall, the whole thing was kind of a sad display of craftsmanship. If this is the music today, I want none of it. It's pretty weak. It's not horrible (I've listened to that top as well, the Rhiannas and the Gagas. I did try.) But it used to be better, you know. I am becoming more and more aware of the fact that I'm turning into an old and smelly fart who constantly reminds everyone that "back in the day..." But really now! This is what we've come up with? This is OUR music? They had the fucking 50's, 60's and we have this?

Anyway, here's Jeff The Brotherhood with a song (not an album) that actually sounds like something:

Jeff The Brotherhood - Ripper

JACK...

2012-01-10T11:48:00.000+02:00

Like I've said before, I found this song to be the only one worthy of some attention on the Rome album. It seems that the band agrees with me, they made a video for it:

COMMODORES. HUH!

2011-12-29T11:01:00.003+02:00

The Commodores - Easy

Wait, what? You knew this? You sneaky little...argh. Alright, we'll talk home, you do the dishes.
So, turns out that this track (on which we've all made out at one point or another and which all Patton fans are surely sick of) was not written by Faith No More after all. I just found out. It was written by Lionel Richie, way back in 19something. He was part of the group Commodores, which I've always confused with The Communards and so gasped in awe at the idea that Jimmy Somerville might have come up with a song like this. But no, we're ok, he didn't. Richie and his gang, who used to open for the Jackson 5, wrote this. It all makes sense now, doesn't it?
And what was I doing checking out The Commodores? Well...what? I do like Motown stuff and...I'm a Lionel Richie fan? Alright, alright, I'm not. But it might interest you that another pretty cool band took some interest in The Commmodores some years back, so much so that they designed their '94 album cover as a tribute to them. Drum-fucking-roll, prrrrrrrrrr oh, nevermind, you've already seen it:

THE WHO

2011-12-13T12:59:00.031+02:00

Yeah, no. Not really. I tried. I mean, I adore characters like Pete and Keith, but you'd think that with guys like these two in a band, the music would make glass freakin' shatter, ears would bleed dry and drop, all would be sore and continents would shift. But instead you get "Fa la la la la" all over the place, choir boys pasted over a (sometimes) grungy backdrop. Thank God the Beatles only have one "Obladi Oblada", these guys have thousands. Or should I say townshends, ha ha? Hilarious...aaahhh, I'm killing me.

Anyway. Yeah, I think it is said that Pete singlehandedly came up with the concept of rock-opera, which...well, I guess it seemed like a great idea at the time. It's the 'opera' side of The Who that doesn't quite do it for me. And also, I listen to album after album and, I don't know, nothing really sticks out. Are the four of them each crazy in his own corner? Cause I would listen to a song like "Armenia City In The Sky" and wait and wait and fucking wait for it to come together, to start. And nothing. It just ends after almost 4 minutes of flat, boring nonsense.

Oh well, it's probably me...

On the other toe, these people really knew how to tear a stage apart. Man! I'm still confused as to why a band like, say, Nirvana had to come only 20-odd years later when Pete Townshend and Keith Moon left the door wide open for bands like that. The door was actually off its hinges, broken to bits, burned and pissed on. "And that was on a Monday!", to quote Ricky Gervais.

Keith's hobby was blowing up toilets with dynamite. Yeah, yeah I know, petty stuff, I should be more concerned with the music than the gossip, but I think I've covered that in the first paragraph: not really into it. The personalities behind it, however...

So.

Keith would come into the room through the roof. Keith would dive into an empty pool, thinking he'd hit water. Keith would blow up his drumset and half the tv studio with dynamite, again (causing Pete's partial deafness, as well). Keith would pass out on stage and Pete would ask an audience member to fill in for Keith for the duration of the show. Keith would get the band banned from something like 4 hotel chains because Keith would destroy hotel rooms, set fire to stuff etc. Keith would turn the limo around, back to the hotel, 'cause he'd forgotten to throw the tv set out the window; he'd go back to the room, throw the telly into the pool, then back in the limo and off to the airport. I find this hilarious. But then Keith would take 32 pills, of which 6 were enough to kill you, so Keith would finally die. He was 32 when he took the 32 pills: how very OCD of him.

Now, that's what I want from my rock star!

So here's Keith kickin' it:

The Who - The Ox

And here's a weird one.
The Who - Boris the Spider

P.S. The perfect one-gig-wonder band:

Keith Moon - drums
Keith Richards - rhythm guitar
Pete Townshend and/or Jimi Hendrix - guitar
Les Claypool - bass (don't really know crazy bass players. Flea?)
Shane McGowan - vocals

This band would dismember in less than an hour on stage. And it would sound shit.

90s...

2011-12-05T11:54:00.001+02:00

Remember them?

Grant Lee Buffalo - Happiness

Grant Lee Buffalo - Fuzzy

MY MORNING JACKET

2011-12-02T11:58:00.005+02:00

My Morning Jacket - Victory Dance

Nice scene that was...
This one's pretty good as well:

My Morning Jacket - Dondante

THIS COULD BE HEAVEN FOR EVERYONE

2011-11-30T15:24:00.000+02:00

The Rolling Stones - Heaven

I'm pretty sure I don't need 21st century music now.

TWO MORE STONES

2011-11-28T11:11:00.004+02:00

'Cause they're too good to ignore.
Notice the woman's shriek in the word 'Murder!" around 3.02 and Mick's reaction to it: Whoo!
They woke her up at 3 in the morning to do this and this is what she sounds like at that hour. Amazing.
Martin Scorsese used this song in three different films (Goodfellas, Casino and The Departed). When filming "Shine a Light", Mick joked that this will probably be the only Scorsese film that won't feature "Gimme Shelter" on the soundtrack.

The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter

And then this one, 'cause it's just so damn moody and funky and harmlessly spiteful.

The Rolling Stones - Under My Thumb

KEITH

2011-11-25T13:02:00.007+02:00

I'm gonna try to keep a straight face while bringing up The Rolling Stones. It's only 2011, not too late, is it?

See, what happened was, I read this book called "Sway", and it's about the Stones, Charles Manson and Kenneth Anger. The name Rolling Stones doesn't appear anywhere in the book as long as I can recall, which is not very long. They're just Mick and Keith and Brian. Charlie isn't mentioned, he's just "the drummer". But I'm gonna mention Charlie: man, is he the funniest drummer you've ever seen or what? He's a good guy, I'm sure, but when he drums he looks like a ventriloquist doll. That face he makes, the way he moves it's like he's a wind-up toy, it's so funny. That and he sometimes talks.

Anyway.

I read this book and Mick and Keith suddenly became very real to me, vivid characters with lives and thoughts and moods. I loved them, especially Keith. But, you know, what's there left to say about Keith? He's just cool. There, end of story. I can't really pretend that I get him. He strikes me as a hugely talented and introverted guy who got tougher and cooler with every joint and every fucked up live show. Just went out there and did his thing, charismatic, graceful and passionate, no matter what sort of shit was going on around him. This guy has grace, man. And that's a hard one for a guy. But just look at him making love with that guitar, the way he touches it, man... He says that being in the Stones, the live shows, never got old and boring for him, cause he just loves what he's doing. I'll fucking bet.

I've been watching live shows and documentaries lately and they're fucking amazing. I couldn't help but wonder what the Beatles would have done had they been at Altamont. The shit went down famously there. I was watching "Gimme Shelter" and I was fascinated. By everything. By the bands, the music, the violence, the energy, the way Mick tried to handle the situation, the Hell's Angels and their 500$ worth of beer deal, the way people felt in '69, everything. That's one huge chunk of rock history right there. It's been called the anti-Woodstock, right? And you can certainly see why.

But time for some music. No obscure b-sides, I'm not quite there yet. But these following songs have become iconic for very good reasons: ............. fuck it, I'm speechless, just listen.

The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil (live)

Did you hear that in the beginning, "Paint It Black, you devil!"? Some drunk chick making my day some 40 years ago. 40! Feels like yesterday, man, and I'm only 35.

And that solo. Oh, Keith is having fun. But but but! Have you seen Martin Scorsese's "Shine A Light"? I loved that one because they were old, you know, nothing left to proove anymore, let's just jam, motherfucker. That one with Buddy Guy - "Champagne & Reefer" by Muddy Waters - boy, oh, boy. One of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. Keith's cigarette, the guitar thing at the end....fuck that was good. And "Loving Cup" with Jack White? Pfff, fuck it, let's just call it a day.

Now one for the drunk chick in the front row there:

The Rolling Stones - Paint It Black (live)

I've loved this song for a million years. I loved Eric Burdon's version, both brilliant and hilarious, but the original is simply glorious. Hear that bass towards the end, man, going crazy in his corner. And Keith's smile when he plays that intro. Mastercard, I swear :))

Oh, here's one of my favorite Keith moments:

I think that one speaks volumes. He may not look it, but the guy thinks on his feet. His explanation was that he had to cover Mick's back, that's his job. He also said that he personally bailed that guy out of jail afterwards, 200$. One tough, loyal cookie.

I could go on and on, but books have already been written on the subject. One of which I am supposed to recieve one of these days soon: "Life" by Keith Richards. Never had this little word weighted so much, eh? He should've called the book "Keith" (or Keef, for big breasted groupies), would've been just as revealing and all-encompassing.

Here's one last beautiful song.

The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want

P.S. Next band project will probably be The Who. That Keith Moon was quite a card, wasn't he?

P.P.S. I'm getting there, I'm getting there. As I go back in time the music just gets better and better, there's no reason to stop, really.
P.P.P.S. I pray it'll never come to that, but if I had a gun to my head and a pitbull hanging off my cock, I would have to say the Stones rather than the Beatles. Good thing I can enjoy both without too much fuss.

Sainkho Namtchylak

2011-11-17T17:33:00.002+02:00

Diamanda Galas

Shelley Hirsch (strong with this one the force is, Master Yoddel says)

Billie Holiday

Nina Hagen

Björk

Blixa Bargeld

Gry

What do these people have in common? Besides the obvious fact that they're all women (yes, Blixa too). Oh, and they're all singers (yes, Blixa too). Well, apart from Billie Holiday, they're all pretty experimental and all of them - Billie included - have unique, memorable voices. Yes, they can be annoying sometimes, that's why I said memorable.

You know who else has a voice that makes my glasses break? Sainkho Namtchylak. Yep.

Says here Diamanda Galas has only a 3½ octave-range to brag about, whereas this woman has, like, 7. Seven! Chihuahuas are furibundly digging back to China, fetus jars just crack and burst, man!

She's into overtone chanting, which basically means that one of her is never enough. She talks to you with several different voices one on top of the other, simultaneously. Let's see, does she have kids?..............Hm, can't find anything, I'll take it as a good sign.

Anyway, she's Mongolian, she's 50something, she wasn't supposed to learn all these singing techniques when she was young, because back in her village only men were allowed to know them, in '97 she's been attacked by some mad Tuvinians and slipped into a coma for weeks, then came out of it, felt scared for a while, but then recovered and continued singing. You go, girl! Frida Kahlo would be proud.

Here's two songs. One that I like and one which demonstrates many of the above (except maybe the coma thing). OMG, which is which is which is which?

Sainkho Namtchylak - Who Stole The Sky

Sainkho Namtchylak - Lonely Soul

FREE DISSOCIATION

2011-11-16T16:27:00.006+02:00

A girl at work was telling me about these bands she's gonna see at some festival or something. I didn't know any of them, so I checked them out and then realized why I didn't know them: hipsters. But anyway, she did mention a name which I first mistook for Bastard Dirty, then she corrected me - Bastard Dury - and this eventually turned into Baxter Dury when I googled it. I listened to his recent album Happy Soup (2011) and was not impressed. I was just about to toss it in the bin when I thought I'd give the guy another go. So I listened to his earlier records, Len Parrot's Memorial Lift (2002) and Floor Show (2005) and things got way better, especially with the first one. But obviously this guy fell in love with an elevator after 2005 and started writing songs for it. It's so minimalistic you don't even hear it. Oh well, to each his own.

Here's one from his first album, when songs had melodies:

Baxter Dury - Beneath The Underdog

After that I dug even deeper and what do you know? This guy had a father! Am I good or am I good? His name's Ian Dury. As in Ian Dury & The Blockheads. Ha! I knew the name sounded familiar. Not that I have really payed attention to that band either, but now that I have, I come here to say that you should too. It's that kind of New Wave / Punk thing that was going on in the 70s and 80s, a thingy I usually avoid politely because hair-spray makes me sneeze like I am siamese, but in this case it's really not bad. That cockney accent talking about sex coming out of a charismatic guy who once had polio...it really doesn't get any better.

Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Spasticus Autisticus (Live)

And then I grabbed the shovel once more and found out why Nina Hagen sounded so good at one point: "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" is actually Ian's song.

Don't you think that Nina Hagen and Diamanda Galas should eventually meet and, I don't know, scare the shit out of each other just by saying 'Hello'? I mean, honestly... Oh, fuck me, I just checked: they're both 56. Shit, I think they're twins.

So, check out the bass line on this baby. Originally played by Norman Watt-Roy of the Blockheads, it sounds just as funky and tight and juicy here:

Nina Hagen - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick (Blockheads Cover)

GOTYE, VIDS

2011-11-07T18:19:00.001+02:00

Gotye, your fans want to know: How Do You Do It?

I just want to know when (the fuck) do you do it? Two new vids, when did this happen? Both animations, just so it would take longer. Both good, by the way.

The first one, Bronte, reminds me of Bambi, but I refuse to cry.

I'm putting the creepy one last so you'd be left with the taste of corrugated iron in your mouth.

Gotye said this song divides people in two: some totally love it, some totally hate it, there's no middle ground on this one. I totally love it. Even though I kinda got sick of this voice distortion listening to too much Fever Ray, still this is a brilliant little song with a brilliant little video. As usual with this guy, there's something very vintage about the whole thing. Parts of this song sound like what the future used to sound like back in the 80s, I guess. And the video reminds me of sci-fi / horror B-movies from pretty much the same era, back when you could simply open the dictionary randomly at any noun and then write a script about that particular object coming to life. P for piano in this case. Cool. I'm pretty sure there's also a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'm in it just for the fun.

LONDON 2011

2011-11-05T14:48:00.011+02:00

London again.Three concerts: Gotye, PJ Harvey, Throwing Muses.

I'm gonna start with Gotye because I can and because I'm in love with this guy.

I went to London to see him, the other two were a bonus. I didn't have tickets for the show. The suspense nearly killed me: am I gonna be in or out? The gig was so small (King's College Student Union) that the ticket smuglers didn't even bother. For once in my life I was looking for them and not the other way around. None. My friend and I had to stand there like beggars hoping somebody's friend got into a car crash and couldn't make it. Eventually something similar did happen and we got ONE ticket. My friend was kind enough to let me go in and she went home. I still feel bad about that, but, as she put it, war is war, we had to make a decision.

The room was minuscule, everything was so close, everybody was a student except me so I kinda felt like a thunderstruck stork among ducklings. Young people look like martians to me now, I don't even speak their dialect, so I just stood there like a black totem pole, beer in hand, taking in the hundred young beautiful bodies. Then the openning act started, another bunch of loud, joyful youngsters who made me feel like I was in the wrong place at the right time. But I tucked my belly in, switched to water and bravely waited.

Gotye came. Relaxed, chatty, funny, cool. Talented. I should hate him, but I grew oh so wise over the years. He did his best even though the technical conditions left a lot of room for improvement. I thought he was gonna be the drummer/singer, but he had another drummer and he just added solos on another drumkit. He rocked so hard on those drums that one of his drumsticks broke into three pieces. Of which I, of course, got one. I'm such a hamster. Why do I do these things? Note to self: talk to therapist about why I'm one lame-ass hoarder.

Below you can watch one incredibly beautiful version of "Somebody That I Used To Know", unfortunately not the one I saw. The one I saw featured the lead singer of the openning act band singing Kimbra's part, this one features the public as Kimbra and it's 10.000 times better. I do love the original version, I do love her vocals, but there's something either wrong or right with me: my hair stands on end when large groups of people do beautiful things together. I hope it's a disease and I hope it's contagious.

So check this out, does this make you weep with pleasure or do you really have no soul?

PJ Harvey at none other than Royal Albert Hall. She's come a long way, sweet Polly.

I have to say I'm hardly active politically. I'm the more passively awesome type. Don't really care about politics because I don't really get its nature and...use? But then again, I'm naive.

Anyway. Let England Shake is a political album, right? And she got the Mercury Prize for it. Congrats. I have been tempted to think that she got the prize because of the album's subject matter and not because of its musical merits (which are by no means to be dismissed), because...you know, it's become quite predictable that the Holocaust movie is gonna get the Oscar. That kind of thing. Or if there's no Holocaust movie, then the story of an autistic, paraplegic, down with the syndrome kid who speaks Aramaic in his sleep and finds a cure for cancer while battling centaurs with his laser eye, you know, that always works as well. But then again, Polly has won this award before - on 9.11.2001 - for her album "Stories From the City....", a non political album as far as I know. So, see? there doesn't have to be a political reason for artists to get their fair share of respect. Or, wait a minute...when did she get that?
Just kiddin'
...or am I?

Polly didn't mutter a word of response to the crowd's cheer, except a "thank you" at the end. I felt that was very gracious of her. The subject didn't exactly call for friendly chatter and jokes with the audience, she acted like a vessel for the message to get out, she didn't matter. Appropriate, I thought.

I think she played the entire album, I'm not sure, and then some. "Down By The Water", "The Sky Lit Up", "Angeline", all there. I also think the concert was recorded and it's gonna be out on DVD at some point. Worth buying, she was beautiful.
Oh yeah, and Mick Harvey was there with her.

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Throwing Muses.

This one wasn't on the menu when I got there. But then I saw a list of concerts somewhere and saw that Throbbing Gristle, Tori Amos and Throwing Muses were all performing November 2nd. So I had to choose.

- Throbbing Gristle: too noisy and abstract and weird. Not in the mood.

- Tori: I like Tori, but only in small amounts. Very feminine, very feminist. And I'd already seen her. Not in the mood.

- Throwing Muses: 90s alternative rock? Chicks rocking? Kristin's serpentine neck moves? My youth? Bright Yellow Gun? Hells yeah!

I got to Shepherd's Bush an hour too early apparently and there were two (2) openning bands. The wait was a bit of a horror since you're not allowed to smoke inside. The two bands were predictably plain and forgettable. I've rarely seen a good opening act. The second band was better though, they had a really cute girl on bass.

Kristin came dressed in a...camisole is it? Jeans and slippers, no bullshit. She looked like she lived upstairs. I found that very refreshing: no fancy lights, no visuals, no costumes, just rock. Kristin was very talkative, she thanked the person in the audience who'd sent the home-made sushi backstage, among other things. Or something. The show was pretty long, I guess nearly two hours, two encores (I was so dying for a smoke), but good times, good times. At the end, last song, she told a funny story about a girl Mary (?) she knew back in school, who was...I don't know, a retard, or anorexic, or had a funny hat, or something and she was "legally blind" and still wore glasses that made her useless eyes seem huge and everybody looked away from her, only Kristin felt compelled to look AT her, "cause she was blind anyway, so it was okay", and then in sports class they were all supposed to climb the rope, which "nobody can do, it's physically impossible", but then the teacher made Mary go first up the rope and she weighted less than a feather so it was easy for her to climb, but then was afraid to come down cause she was blind and she couldn't see the floor and so she just hung up there for 45 minutes and won a medal. The last song was about this girl and it was really good. I'm not very familiar with the entire TM discography, so I'm not sure what the song is called, but it was so cool you guys oh, you should have seen it....ha.
(They didn't play this one, Tanya Donelly used to do the vocals on it,if that's any reason to skip it):

Throwing Muses - Not Too Soon

This one they did play:

Throwing Muses - Bright Yellow Gun

So that was about it.

Oh, one more thing. A funny thing happened on the way to the counter in an HMV. I was browsing idly through the Nick Cave pile (like I down own it and know it by heart) and found a Dig Lazarus Dig! with autograph. It says "To Mark with love Nick Cave '09" Now, I don't get it. How did that CD end up there at HMV, which is not exactly an obscure second hand store. Who's this guy Mark that discards something like that? At HMV! And how come I bought it for the regular price, sealed?

A mystery. But a happy one.

Cheers.

.

2011-10-25T21:51:00.003+03:00

Stuart A Staples - Somerset House

Good night lovers. You fluffy idiots.

BAD AS ME

2011-10-22T14:41:00.000+03:00

As the great philosopher Gregory House once said, "Anybody can hate humanity after getting shot. Takes a big man to hate it beforehand." I'm not talking about Tom Waits, I'm talking about me because, to paraphrase, anybody can dig great music, but it takes a special kind of man to get bored with it. I mean, it's Tom Waits, okay? he can't really screw up, can he? The man has never put out a bad album. You can prefer some and skip others, but there's really no bad music on any of them.

But I'm special.

I am bored with him being so great and perfect. And, while Bad As Me is a good album, it's not his best. I want him to fuck it up big time, I want to listen to Tom's Nocturama. If he never fucks up, things just get boring. If every album he makes is gonna be above average (by his standards - which means "fucking amazing" for nearly everybody else) and since Tom always sounds like Tom, well then, where's the surprise? Good and better songs will keep on coming, but, since that's become a norm in his case, I kinda feel the need for either extreme: his best or his worst. Something to stand out.This album has maybe three songs that stand out a little: "Chicago", "Raised Right Man" and of course "Bad As Me", which I'm not gonna put up here cause everybody else will. The rest are either Tom Waits leaves-in-the-wind kind of songs or Tom Waits big-throat-bark kind of songs. The instrumentation is what you'd expect: stomping, clapping and the blues, you know the drill. No big experiment here. And maybe it's my fault for always needing one. What's wrong with me, really?

So, yeah sure, I am impressed, but, again, by his standards (and mine) this is a work of average genius.

Tom Waits - Chicago

GOOD MORNING

2011-10-16T20:16:00.003+03:00

Skinny - On A Beautiful Day

KWOON

2011-10-01T20:24:00.003+03:00

Why is it that on their website it says they're gonna play at Kulturhaus on the 22nd of October, while everywhere else it says they already have, September 24th? When has the internet become such an unreliable source of information, by Jove?
Shit.
Hold on a sec.
On the other hand, the Oct 22nd date seems to be holding its own on various other websites...My god, you do realize what this means. It means I actually have to get out of the house, go there and ask a real person.
Shit.

Kwoon - Schizophrenic

A BLAST FROM THE PRESENT

2011-09-27T13:48:00.003+03:00

11 years, man. I used to listen to Suck On This obssesively back then. "Everybody say: Larry, you're a bastard!" - "LARRY YOU'RE A BASTARD!!!" Ah, good times. Well no, actually I was a miserable fuck back then. Now I'm just miserable, fuck is out of the question. No, I'm not miserable, I'm....how the hell did we get to me?

So, yeah, anyway: Primus, new album. I've listened to it more than a couple of times. That's how I do it. I listen to the new album, not too focused really, and wait for one track to stick out. They usually do. Like, for instance, "Somebody that I used to know" stuck out immediatly, like an honest smile on Madonna's face or a good line in a Killers song. It just popped out there. And only after I'd put the song up here I saw that it was actually the first single from the album, had a video and everything. So it works, you see.

I've listened to Green Naugahyde till my ears went sore. And guess what? You're not gonna believe this: it sounds like Primus! I swear to god, it sounds EXACTLY like Primus. It's like 11 years ago was yesterday, like not one day had passed, as if time froze and caught Les mid-sneeze. This album could have easily been released in '94, somewhere between Pork Soda and Tales from the Punchbowl, or even earlier. At some point they seemed ready to change gears and style (Southbound Pachyderm, Eclectic Electric), but then they changed their minds instead. So there.

Primus - Jilly's on smack

how far would you go?

2011-09-26T12:52:00.000+03:00

I'm such a geek. I just got this:

Fantômas - The Director's Cut Live: A New Year's Revolution

2011-09-19T11:39:00.008+03:00

Why isn't Kylie Minogue married? Why doesn't she have any kids by now? Why is she still available? Can anyone answer me that?

Oh, and for Christ(ina)'s sake, leave Britney alone.

This weekend I have been listening to these two girls. Yes, I was. Well, it was a couple of hours, but that's all it takes. I can't remember how I ended up listening to Britney Spears, I think it was a South Park episode that did it. I really felt bad for her. And I wanted to see what I was talking about all these years, cause I've never really listened to any of her songs before. Not really. And now I did. And I was right: she's not the worst pop star you've ever seen. Brandon Flowers is. And she's not the worst spoiled bitch around either. I think Manson is. Alright, alright, alright: Paris Hilton.

As for Kylie....

How can anyone not like her. How can anyone compare her with Madonna? She's 10 times better. And I'm not talking about the music, because...well, why mention music in this context? Kylie's just...normal, decent. I've been watching clips with her and Nick and I always loved the chemistry between them. So I ask again: why is she still single? There was this one clip in which Nick Cave was telling a joke. A penguins joke! Buaha. And Kylie refused to tell the one about the snail colliding with the turtle. And Ray Cokes told a pretty funny one which nobody (including himself) seemed to get: A skeleton goes into a bar and asks for a pint of beer and a mop. Hahahahahahahaha. Ha.

Oh, and I actually downloaded her documentary "White Diamond", it took me days and hours (mkv) and when I finally pressed Play it was a fucking Werner Herzog movie! Herzog!! Again!! I swear I'll never get rid of this curse, I'll just keep on stumbling on his dumbass movies wherever I go. I mean it was like closing your eyes and openning your mouth expecting a sweet chocolate surprise and then realizing you've been tricked and you are, in all actuality, chewing on pure manure.

Oh, right, yes. The Fantômas DVD. Yeah, I watched it. My eyes are still coiled with fear and disgust of what they had to endure. Who did that? And why?? I demand an explanation for what happened there, because all the therapy in the world ain't gonna get me through this one. Who the fuck thought it would be cool or fun or edgy or, God forbid, artistic to fuck up a perfectly decent video recording with all (ALL) those special effects, which weren't special AT ALL! Fucking DEFAULT fucking Photoshop fucking Filters throughout the WHOLE fucking thing. That guy didn't miss ONE single filter. Not one! It was beyond ridiculous, it was a really gross joke some intern from Adobe probably found terribly funny, but not I. Oh, and the farting thing at the end just topped it all up majestically, it really did, Mike, thanks. If Mike Patton's actually insane (I personally think he's posing), he's insane for letting this material be released as it is. What was wrong with the original recording? Plain and simple rock concert video, two three cameras at the most, left, right and close ups. What? I swear the guy who did that shit has never actually listened to Fantômas. I mean, if he thought the music would be boring and that these FX would actually enhance the experience....For FUCK"s sake, man, at "Rosemary's Baby" Mike's eyes literally turned RED. Come on, why?? Dude, the music is a handful as it is, your artistic take on it was really uncalled for...

The rest of it is fine.

Here's one sample, but this one is actually decent compared to the rest of it. It's the only one I could find, though:

PRIMUS

2011-09-08T14:42:00.001+03:00

So they did listen to me.
New album by Primus, out September 12th. Hold hands, say yay.

THE BOOK OF KNOTS

2011-09-07T11:44:00.003+03:00

The Book Of Knots. This band has, like, members. These members have names. And their names are known., for they have been playing with various bands that are known. So there you go. I won't go through the list. It's artsy stuff, don't worry.
The Book Of Knots has three albums. All conceptual! I guess you could call it a tryptich! I don't know, one of them has to do with towns built near water, one has to do with metal or rust or something and the third has to do with aerial thingies, stuff that flies, falls, floats and other words that start with an F; such as pheasant.

I don't know what I'm talking about and you can tell. Not to worry. If you think this bloggin' blog is about me knowing what I'm talking about, then you're in for a neat surprise.

Personally, for me, in a subjective sort of self-centerd manner, The Book Of Knots sound alright, but it seems to me it's the kind of band that approaches the creative process a bit too mathematical, you know, like every seemingly random squeak and squeal, every unforeseeable feedback noise HAS to fall exactly there. Programmed sponteneity. There's a song in there, can't remember which, where a guy talks and talks and he sounds exactly like Blixa Bargeld. So you can see how the Unifying Theory of Premeditated Whim came to me one windy morning.

Hold on a sec.

God. I'm either incredibly brilliant or incredibly stupid, it's really hard to tell at this point. I just checked: it IS Blixa Bargeld. The songs's called "Drosophila Melanogaster" and why am I not surprised by that name. This guy shames entire shelves of dictionaries and, dude, that's not a compliment.

And even though, along with Bargeld, Mike Patton appears on their latest album Garden og Fainting Stars (2011), with the very conjuring and brooding "Planemo", I'm still not entirely digesting this.

But anyway, some songs are really good and others are tiny pockets of festering farts. Whatchagonnado?

I don't have time for this, but maybe Swans fans wanna pick this bone a little, cause it's that deep and artistic and poetic and oh, for the love of God...

Here's one they did with Tom Waits, he managed to bring them down to earth died screaming...

The Book Of Knots - Pray

END

2011-09-05T11:07:00.005+03:00

DOOM!: You can't go wrong with it.

END's debut album Sounds Of Disaster was probably an easy pick for Mike Patton at Ipecac Recordings. It's just what the doctor recommended: fractured, diusturbed, frantic, frothing at the mouth and yet quite soothing and melodious at times. The sound of our blissful floating straight to hell. No, wait, not floating, not blissful. This album has a brick firmly thrust upon the throttle, we're tied and gagged and blind-folded in our seats and the edge is getting closer and closer. Some songs, like the one I'm putting up here, live right across the hall from any song on Suspended Animation: beady eyed madness.

END also reminds me of C'mon & Kypski and of, whatsisface, Tom Barman's project Magnus. And probably a milion others, but I don't really listen to electro music.

This album is by no means mysterious in its intended theme and purpose: it's about the end of the world. Any and every review mentions at least three random titles from this album to undreline this fact (I literally underlined it, how come the others hadn't thought of that) aaaand because the titles are really funny: "To hell with everyone", "You only live once", "Ruin anyone, anywhere, anything", "Good riddance", "Fit to die" and so on and so forth.

There was another little band called Error which only has one EP out, but check out the titles here. You can't go wrong, I'm telling you.

Anyway, what I really really love about this album is that it Ends. Haha. It ends with a track entitled Untitled which samples Skeeter Davis' "The end of the world" and it really sounds like you're slowly sliding through a spear or something. You're dying each second of it. It's so sadistically tender. This song - the original - reminds of the movie "Sea of Love" based on the song of the same name. In that film somebody always dies on that song and Al Pacino has a really hard time for 2 hours trying to figure things out. It really works, you see, to pick a melancholic, soft song, preferably sung by a woman with a very longing, craving, dreamy voice and add the element of brutal death and/or imply some sort of insanity related to it. It's really creepy. It's like lullabies echoing through cemeteries. Rosemary's Baby kind of shit. Brrr. I've listend to Nina Gordon's version too, but that sucks ass.

End - You only live once

Skeeter Davis - The End Of The World

MAKING MIRRORS (and the man in the mirror)

2011-09-02T12:15:00.006+03:00

Gotye...Jean Paul Gotye.

He always mentions how his name is pronounced correctly, because there's always a couple of dumb shits like me who don't know how to do it. Well, I've know how to do it for an year now and I feel better for it.

So, the drummer - huh! - has a new album out, it's called "Making Mirrors" and I had to steal it because iTunes won't sell it here. Sorry, dude. You're not the first and you won't be the last. Just so you know, yesterday I pre-ordered the new Fantômas DVD, I actually paid for it, so rest assured I do do that from time to time. However, this is not that time: I liked your first two albums more. Maybe this one will grow on me, as it has tremendous potential to do just that.

The first two had songs that simply dazzled me, they were bursting with joyous little sounds coming from seemingly everywhere and twirling into a glorious, melodious bouquet. This one is glorious and melodious enough, sure, but, at a third listen I still miss the little sounds, you know.

In my mind, for easier reference, I have bunched up Gotye with Sufjan Stevens and Get Well Soon, all in the same drawer, the "Glorious Bald Bombastic Poppies" drawer. GWS is a bit different, but a guy can only have so many drawers. Anyway, I like this pop. It's what pop should sound like. Some of Gotye's melodies give me such a Motown feeling, you know? I mean, that's gotta be good stuff. It's that particular brand of joy only black people can muster and only white people could be so naive as to try and copy it. Lungs full of gospel and funk and blues and huge-breasted mammas shattering the stained glass with their voices. But, you know, thank God we have Coldplay to keep those rabid dogs at bay, pheew. Give'em hell, Chris!

I have listened to Making Mirrors four times now and I do like it and it does make me feel better. This kind of album / band is the reason why I think bands like Tool should get a night job at a petrol station, while away the hours in a coffin the rest of the day and leave us the fuck alone with that one-note gloomines. I'm so sick of deep frowny guys like me. I'm keeping my eye on Steven Wilson as well, that fucking nerd has it coming, I swear.

Anyway - SMILEY FACE - I don't know why, but this album reminded me of one beautiful little album by Michael Jackson before the crotch-grabbing, heee-heee era. The album's called Farewell My Summer Love and it's beautiful and perfect and I've listened to it 2036 times.

So, of all the happy-go-fuck it tunes on this album, I'm gonna pick a sorry-ass sad one because that's the way I was raised.

And just for good measure, send your friends home, pretend you're just dying for a Morrisey fix and try this little album for size: Farewell My Summer Love. It could be just me, I don't know, I'm just sayin'...

Michael Jackson - Here I am (come and take me)

Fantômas, finally

2011-09-01T11:43:00.000+03:00

Fantômas - The Director's Cut Live: A New Year's Revolution

Preordered.
I'll just have to choke on my own drool till then.

SHAPE SHITTER INC.

2011-09-01T02:11:00.002+03:00

Different people are just different types of special effects applied on your average soul, mind and body. You are a different person each time you talk to a different person. It's tiring like a trombone out your ass, it sounds like shit, but we need the music.

Gnarls Barkley - Transformer (Live Abbey Road 2007)

careful with the lyrics, delicate things, don't drop 'em.

MOISTBOYZ

2011-08-29T16:31:00.004+03:00

I'm gonna pretend this is not a Ween related post and so should you. I can be diverse, yeah? I can shuffle, baby.

Check out this Moistboyz song: it doesn't sound like Moistboyz. I cannot listen to this song without thinking of that video for "Pink Cigarette" that some Mr Bungle fan put up on Youtube. "Pink Cigarette" used to be a romantic song, if a bit on the suicidal side, until that video came out. Now it's song about stalking. As is this one.

Do I sense a Butthole Surfers vibe here?

Jeff?

Nevermind, it went away.

I'm not really a Moistboyz fan. I do love Mickey and I'm proud of his health and fishing trips and life style altogether - "This is living!" ha ha - but, you see, Moistboyz "are men, they enjoy this existence." And therein lies the problem: by many definitions (including my own) I am not a man and nor do I enjoy this existence. I'm probably gonna wait for Aaron to form a side-project with all the people in his head, that sounds more like my kind of jam.

But this Stalker song, though very repetitive, is sleazy and demented enough for my taste. Well, I'm more of an aftertaste type of guy, me, but..ah forget it.

You know who walks like this song and is not a stripper? Remember that guy who flirts with Mallory in Natural Born Killers? He puts his beer bottle on his cock and totally walks toward her like this song, I swear. Either him or Christopher Walken waltzing with Olive Oil.

For some reason I love the following lyrics in this here rhythmic blues that never ends: "I tried to call you 14 times but you won't see me / Okay thats it, I get the hint, I'll just say that you raped me". What's wrong with me, why do I like these words so much?

Mommy?

Mommy needs a bath?

Ta-na-na-na-na-na

Moistboyz - The Stalker

p.s. Pink Cigarette is 11 times classier, no doubt about it.

LIKE A MAN

2011-08-27T13:10:00.002+03:00

I had no idea Leonard Cohen had a son. And why shouldn't he? After all, Leonard was (and in my opinion, still is) a "ladies' man". But I realized I don't know much about the family life of many of my favorites. Up until few months ago I was pretty positive that Nick Cave had only one son, Luke, and that because I had read a biography about him, like, ten years ago and it contained a picture of Nick and Luke as a very small boy. In my mind Luke still was 5 years old, to be honest. But then I stumbled upon the fact that Nick has four sons by three different women. Hm #1!

Also, until very recently I have been entertaining very vague ideas about Gene's and Dean's respective family trees. I knew they had some sort of offspring, but I had no idea who had what and why and how many. I didn't even care about their ages. They are both 41, apparently, Aaron has a daughter and Mickey has a son. Good for them. Hm #2!

I have absolutely no idea how Mike Patton's doing in that area. All I know is he had an Italian wife. That's it. Hm #3... Tom Waits? Hm #4.

Do I care? Not really.

So Adam is Leonard's son. Huh. That must have been tough. I pity all the children of great men and women. The trouble must be double for them to make something of themselves. Trying to grow up into something, keeping one on that your father's legacy, making a conscious effort to be different while knowing that we all grow up and turn into our parents eventually. Life's confusing enough as it is, you know.

So, anyway, Adam had a band called Low Millions and now he's got a new solo album coming out in October called Like A Man. He's tried so hard to grow out of his father's enormous shadow and this is, apparently, his "coming of age" album. At 38. Better late than never. Well, judge for yourselves. To me it still sounds like early Leonard, but I'll wait for the album, see what else he's got there.

Adam Cohen - What Other Guy

GRINDERMAN & UNKLE

2011-08-25T12:54:00.001+03:00

I desperately needed a reason to post this picture and it miraculously came in the form of an UNKLE remix to a Grinderman track: Worm Tamer. It's a perfectly gorgeous reason, just listen to it:

Grinderman & UNKLE - Hyper Worm Tamer

Plus this one, even better I think:

Grinderman - Worm Tamer (A Place to Bury Strangers Remix)

AMBROSIA PARSLEY

2011-08-24T11:16:00.002+03:00

Shivaree - Thundercats

So, I stand corrected. Franco tells me Ambrosia Parsley, the title of a Ween track on "Caesar Demos", also happens to be the name of the lead singer from Shivaree, the band! Coincidence? I think not! The thick plottens, my friends. She has a husband. Guess what his name is: David! As in "David, I wanna get naked". But don't let me bore you with conspiracies, here's Mickey setting the record straight:

"Just for the record, Ambrosia is a real person, she is married to Ween's long time manager Dave Ayers. When they met we had to record a song for her because her name is so damn funky." (Mickey Melchiondo)

So it's all champagne and lobster.

Here's a song for you, Franco, she totally rocks here.

BAD AS ME

2011-08-23T18:06:00.002+03:00

New Tom Waits album - Bad As Me - due Oct 25.
First single, the title track "Bad As Me". Sounds delicious, just like frozen rats down your throat with a bit of rusty throttle aftertaste.

Tom Waits - Bad As Me

And here's Tom pissed off about the whole thing.

the Q&A thing

2011-08-21T12:43:00.005+03:00

I'll just steal this Q&A from Cherry because it feels like a good way to spend a Sunday morning. I'll try hard not to answer each and every question with 'Ween'.

1. Name a band or an artist you can’t believe you liked when you were younger

Not an easy one. I know most people who know me better would expect the answer to be Michael Jackson, but no, that's not it. I'll come back to that later. No, I guess I can't believe I liked Red Hot Chili Peppers. Although, in all fairness, Blood Sugar Sex Magik was a good album, first cd I ever bought. But, you know, that 'K' at the end is exactly the reason I can't stand them now: too flashy, trying so hard to stand out, concentrating too much on being 'wacky' and less and less on being a good rock band. They look like the Muppets to me now. They sound like the Muppets, too.
And HOW could I ever forget: Placebo! My God, what was I thinking?? Bleargh!

2. Name a band or an artist you hated when you were younger and you now love.

I wouldn't go as far as hate, but I did get bored out of my mind listening to the Beatles and Adriano Celentano, my parents were playing them all the time. I have come to appreciate both. It's weird how memories morph and change shape incubating inside your mind over the years, turning from worms to butterflies. Especially with Celentano, I mean how does he fit in near Ween, the Residents, Mike Patton, Nick Cave, NIN and the rest of them? I don't know, but he does. I know it may not look like it, but he was actually cool back in the day, he was kind of like, I don't know, the Steve McQueen of italian music. Boy, am I getting old...Steve McQueen, what the fuck?

Oh oh oh: I used to really roll my eyes when I heard Queens Of The Stone Age, but nowI just roll with it, they're fucking great. White Stripes and Jack in general, too.

Adriano Celentano - Do Dap

3. Name a band or a singer who stood the test of time (you liked from the first time you listened to it/him/her).

I'm sorry, but this has got to be Ween. I've known them for 16-17 years now, never got bored and probably never will. I'll make an effort not to start yet another endless monologue about how great they are and how grateful I am for their existence, how much they've helped me and how much they give me with each and almost every song and all that. You know the drill by now.
Other people/bands that need be mentioned at this point:
- Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
- Leonard Cohen (I just llllove to think that "In My Secret Life" defines me completely, but in all honesty, I think any song by Celine Dion could describe some of my moods just as well, so...)
- The Pixies
- Tom Waits (I can't listen to him too often, but when I do, I do it for long stretches of time and it doesn't feel wrong at all)

Ween - Buenas Tardes Amigo (live Toronto)

4. Name a song you can’t resist to dance/tap to

I tap to everything and anything, I love drums. But there are several songs that get me drumming more than others. Two come to mind
:
- Mr Bungle - Ars Moriendi
- Muse - Stockholm Syndrome. I remember one time in a bar, the barman gave me two drum sticks and played this song. My knees were raw meat at the end of it.

Muse - Stockholm Syndrome

As for the dancing. Alright, I'll just close my eyes and say it real quick: Michael Jackson. Yep. There. I said it. I don't really dance to anything else, not with all my heart anyway, but that fucker gets me going every time. I was watching "This Is It" last year and I couldn't help it, I fucking danced to a documentary. Since I was a fan, in my more pubescent years, it's really become a habit that dies hard indeed. And, the thing is, I don't want it to die either. With everything else I find my dancing really boring, but when I hear Billie Jean I get all happy feet....so there.

5. Name an album you like each and every song from.

List, in no particular order:

1. Ween - Chocolate & Cheese
2. Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
3. Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Svperstar
4. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Let Love In
5. Depeche Mode - Violator
6. Radiohead - OK Computer
7. Mr. Bungle - California or Fantomas - Director's Cut

Depeche Mode - Waiting for the Night

6. Name a band or an artist you’re so fed up with you never want to hear about anymore.

Now, here I'm not sure if we're talking about an artist I used to like or one I hated from the beginning.

If it's one I used to like, I guess RHCP would qualify again. Probably REM as well, they bore me to tears now. I'm also quite fed up with people that come up to me and say "You're into rock, right? You must love System of a Down / Linkin Park / Deftones / Limp Bizkit / Metallica / etc then!" Actually, NO! I don't have a car, so I'm not interested in bumper stickers.
Tool gets an honorable mention here, too.

If we're talking about bands I loathed from the beginning, then the list is pretty long, I'm not even gonna go into the whole thing. From, of course, The Killers (and the lot) to Nouvelle Vague and - going a bit deeper now - from the Cure to Swans. Can't stand them. I can manage depression without your eager help, thank you.

7. Name a band or an album that your partner or friends love and you can’t stand.

Well, see above.I can't be bothered to think about stuff I don't like anymore.

8. Your favourite cover.

Hard. The first one that comes to mind is Mondo Cane - Storia D'Amore (Celentano). But let's dig a little deeper.
1. Sonic Youth - Superstar (Carpenters)
2. The Dillinger Escape Plan - Come To Daddy (Aphex Twin)
3. Fantomas - Charade (Mancini)
4. The Mars Volta - Memories (Soft Machine)
5. Siouxie & the Banshees - Trust In Me (from Jungle Book, whoever wrote that one)
...and more....
p.s. New entry in this category: this cover.

Mondo Cane - Storia D'amore

Siouxie & the Banshees - Trust In Me

9. Your favourite song or band right now.

Sorry:
Ween - A Tear for Eddie

Ween - A Tear For Eddie

CAESAR

2011-08-20T12:32:00.004+03:00

Shit, you know, I might as well turn this into a Ween blog and call it a day. I can't help it. I tend to rediscover this band over and over, at least once a year, and I've known them for...what? 16 years now? The first song I ever heard from them was "Spinal Meningitis (got me down)" and it was recommended by a friend who'd assured me it would make me "sick and soft at the same time". It did. I listened to the whole album and I was floored. I was into Red Hot Chili Peppers at the time, thought Flea was God and Anthony a man, mind you, so the stretch from that to Ween was going to be, theoretically, not an easy one. But I eased right in, for I was so inclined. Then Pure Guava came next, the same friend gave it to me somewhat reluctantly: he didn't think I was ready for it. Oh, I was so ready. I fucking danced to "Mourning Glory"!

Recently, Mickey gave us this sweet present: "Caesar demos" - the Quebec outtakes. The following song is from this collection. Now let me see, how many gay songs do Ween have?

1. Homo Rainbow

2. Mr. Richard Smoker

3. Slow Down Boy (Let him blow you...........away" LMFAO! My other favorite Gene pause being "could you smell my whole......life")

4. Boys Club (?)

5. If you ask me, "Dancing In The Show Tonight" sounds pretty gay too. Sung by either a 12 yrs old boy or an 88 yrs old grandpa, both of which are not even aware they're so gay, but they so are.

6. And now this, "Ambrosia Parsley", an obvious and friendly stab at Prince, formerly known as an artist.

Now, I'm not sure this one was intended to sound gay, maybe it was supposed to just be sexy, maybe he's still licking a pussy and not sucking a cock, but when you hear Gener whispering "David, I wanna get naked" (that's what he says, right?) and then "Heavy on the cream, soaking down your mountain top", err..well, you kinda sport some doubts.

Just for fun, try this: imagine the dance scene in "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow" while this song is playing. Am I right? Is it fabulous or what? Oh, somebody should definitely do that.

And, dude, hold on a sec: David? Not Dave Dreiwitz! Say it ain't so. I draw a blank trying to imagine Dave having sex. I love that guy and I've been told that impossible is nothing, but I just can't go there. And maybe that's healthy.

Oh, just now I notice the obvious: this is the Billie Jean beat. It actually starts like Billie Jean, but then the bass takes it elsewhere. Now that's another thing that doesn't help the gay vibe much.

I'm sorry, was that in bad taste?

But see, that's just the thing with these guys: you can't get offended. They mean no harm. They have no beef with anyone and fight for no turf, there's nothing to prove. It's all fun. I mean, they've definitely not been coy about things like AIDS, child death, all kinds of sex, race, drugs, misogyny, sick ponies, you name it. They spelled it right out, loud and clear. But you can't get offended because it's never malicious, never crude.

Ween - Ambrosia Parsley

I have also recently fell in love with the live version of Jonny. Much rockier than the original, while the lyrics remain just as weird.
And "A Tear For Eddie" has been on repeat in my head for weeks and weeks now.

Ween - I'll Be Your Jonny On Th' Spot (live Chicago)

A RAY IN THE CAVE

2011-08-18T17:47:00.003+03:00

As it is rarely mentioned on the web, this is a Nick Cave cover, motherfuckers. A good one, I admit, but a cover. Yes? Good.

That being said, I must also say this: I'm getting a little tired of this particular voice that Karin seems to enjoy so damn much. It's all over her album and here it is again. Gene Ween could do 10 more voices with NO technical aid whatsoever, so c'mon, get over it already.

That being said as well, I feel compelled to also state that my cat started vomiting today and hasn't been eating much lately, a fact that really ticks me off precisely because it has nothing to do with this song whatsoever. I mean, where's the justice?

Other than that, the song is fine, keeps the mood of the original, the video is quite..errr..green and, well, all in all, everybody's happy with the result, I think we can all agree.

But if I see one more girlie praising Nouvelle Vague for their beautiful, beautiful song "Bela Lugosi's dead", I'm gonna kick that poodle bimbo straight in her tiny tits, I swear. Cover! Frivolous, silly, empty cover.

Same goes for this song, although this is a much, much better cover. Nevertheless.

HALF JAPANESE

2011-08-04T16:20:00.015+03:00

Half Japanese is yet another legendary band I've never heard of, until recently with a little help from my friends. If I wanna go for the record I'll just have to start pretending I don't know who Ron Mael or Aaron Freeman are, either. I mean, why not go all the way? Pfffff, of course I can't know everything. I may look and act like I do - and I know that's very annoying and I'm doing it on purpose - but don't let that fool you. I have a t-shirt which every cool, brooding music guru must have, it says "I LISTEN TO BANDS THAT DON'T EVEN EXIST YET". Yeah, well, mine was a gift, I'll bet you had to buy yours, you pretentious little smug fuck. Anyway, point is, those are the only bands I listen to nowadays. I hardly try anything new and when I do, I run for cover imemediatly, what with all these I Set My Friends On Fire and The Darkness and...reaggae. God knows, there's tons of shit out there....

Oh, I must mention The Killers, don't I? I try to mention them everytime I need a synonym for Evil Diarrhoea from Hell and Beyond. I hate hipsters. I think everybody hates hipsters now, don't they? I think even hipsters hate hipsters, or is that not IN yet?

But enough about me.

Now. No, of course I haven't had time to absorb this band properly yet, there's quite a lot to digest. But I'm bored stiff at work and I need to do something. So I'll just pretend I've known this band since I was a baby and you'll gasp in awe of my obvious infinite wisdom and knowledge. So here we go.

Half Japanese are so cool. They remind me of a truckload of other bands such as Pixies, Ween, Legendary Pink Dots, Nirvana, Can, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Velvet Underground, Violent Femmes, Captain Beefheart, The Residents and more, all of which I have listeened to, so at least I know that. You know the story: two guys wake up one day, say "Hey, we should start a band". It doesn't matter that neither of them can't play any instrument. It doesn't matter, you see? I really doesn't. They've teamed up with Daniel Johnston at some point and it really doesn't surprise me: he can't play the guitar to save his life, either. And yet, another legend.

Speaking of legends: legend has it that Kurt Cobain blew his brains out all over his Half Japanese t-shirt. Funny, ha ha, yeah, I know Kurt is dead.

Jad Fair, the more persistent and neurotic half of the Half (does that make him a quarter?) says that the only chord he needs is the one that connects the guitar to the amp. I, among and along with other cultural figures of this century such as Moe Tucker, admire that. The balls, the dream! He never tried to learn. The band changed line-ups like I change socks, so on some albums you can hear actual music, and actually good music. I mean, it's rocky, it's jammy, it's funny, it's cocky, it's nervous, it's honest, it's heartfelt, it's ..it's...YEAH! They only write songs about love and alien monsters: that just has to be a niche.

Of course, there's a lot more to listen to and a movie to be seen (tonight!), but so far I am...well, not impressed, but I do feel sort of pleasantly disturbed from my slumber.

Oh, and check this out: if your girlfriend's birthday's coming up, if she has any sort of sense of humor, if she's into weird shit like you and if you have 300$ to spare, then Jad's your man! He will write a song just for you! How cool and warm and sort of desperate is that!? Yay!

Anyway, I don't know which song to choose. I suppose I'll go with "C'mon Baby" because I've listened to it more than once. There are many other good and better songs here, but you'll just have to dig for yourself.

P.S. the picture above is art made by Jad. He's such a renaissance man. I like it. Why can't I think simple thoughts and come up with something like that? Gosh darn, I mean by Jove, FUCK!

Half Japanese - C'mon Baby

Changed my mind, here's another one. Here's the perfect proof these guys have the same weed dealer as Ween. Although it seems that they don't even need to smoke to come up with this stuff...oh boy.

Half Japanese - School of Love

THE BETA BAND

2011-08-01T01:28:00.006+03:00

Can you believe I've seen these guys live once? Can't even remember where I was, most probably London, (or was I in Belgium? Yeah, Belgium) but I do remember that I went to see them just because we happened to be there at the same time and because I'd heard of them, like, three weeks earlier and listened to their Three EPs once or twice. I was so avid for concerts then. Hell, I even saw the Killers too, that's how famished I was. Fucking loser guitarist took my beer from the top of the speaker, took a sip and threw it in the crowd, all rock & roll and shit. I want my 5 quid back, asshole, the show sucked.

Aaaanyway. The Beta Band. Now these guys, on the other hand, were very nice. Maybe too nice. I don't know what the hell happened. I mean the ingredients were there: good music, nice place, good crowd. They really tried. They put on a show. They talked to the public, made jokes! They switched instruments every two songs, for god's sake, the bass player took over the keyboard, the guitarist switched to drums, whatever, I can't remember. They were good. But somehow the magic refused to happen. People clapped politely waiting for the next song, but didn't really get into it throughout the whole show. Steve Mason - vocals - I think that halfway through the show he actually said something like "Right. The show actually starts now", just to loosen them up a bit. It didn't work.To this day I don't know why. Maybe their set was too eclectic and people couldn't really get a handle on the whole thing. Maybe too mellow, nothing hard enough to wake them up from their just-another-gig routine, I don't know. I mean, you go to Portishead, you know what to expect (milk cup, pillow, razor blade); you go see NIN, you know what to expect (ear plugs, crowbar, razor blade). But with this bunch people just got confused, I guess. A shame. Because you know eclecticism is indeed possible. Ween. But Ween overlay their personality and their unique type of bond on every style imaginable and unite them. Beta Band were kinda just jammin'...
Or, yeah, sure, you can be mellow and laid back, no problem. But, dude: Eels. Check out the vocals on that. That guy is bored with a vengeance! And not like Cake, just flat, you know, but really really aiming for the narcoleptic demographic. And I mean that in the best possible way. Go all the way, dude, don't just wander aimlessly all over the map, we're living the remote control age, people switch off in freaking nano-seconds, man. Grab them.

Well, anyway, having just watched "High Fidelity" for the zillionth time (also watched "The Secretary" again. Boy, does that movie rekindle your faith in love and the feasibility of human intimacy or what? Ha. loved it again.) - this following song caught my ear in the movie. Rob puts this song on in his shop and predicts he's gonna sell five copies of their album in, like, the next ten minutes. He's right. The song is catchy, humable, yellable, danceable, everything. Makes you feel good too. I know it worked on me anyway. But you can see how they have no real bark there, you know. It sort of feels like it was meant to be sang in the shower, not exactly on Wembley. I still like it though. I wish I had more days when I felt like this song....

Beta Band - Dry The Rain

Here's the live version, as well, so you know what I'm talking about. Well, I saw them in Belgium, here they were home, in England, people knew the lyrics and everything, so the ending might give the wrong idea.
But on the other hand, who knows, maybe I'm judging them only by the one concert that didn't work in their entire career. On yet a third hand, they're no longer around, so...

The Beta Band - Dry The Rain (live)

THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN

2011-07-29T16:47:00.004+03:00

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Come To Daddy (Aphex Twin Cover)

Yup. You have just experienced my present state of mind.
My personal record of continous audition of this particularly fine piece of music - with NO cigarette break - is currently 26 and counting. So come to daddy, care to make it interesting?

LONELY AVENUE

2011-07-28T12:56:00.003+03:00

Oh yeah, forgot about this.

Ben Folds...well, I never really listen to him, do I? But he's teamed up with Nick Hornby whom I do read. This happened in 2010 I think. They both strike me as laid back, sensitive, witty, intelligent guys. Nothing too deep or too heavy, not the fascinating brooding type these guys. Which is so cool, cause I'm so sick of the 13 years old Ian Curtis slash Amelie-wannabe slash Courtney Love types. I'm guessing you get to an age where all that seems sort of silly and you kinda light up a cigarette, put your feet up and start talking simple, using words everybody knows and then the need to be spectacular sort of fades leaving room for being honest, helpful and humane instead. You probably smile more often then. No, life's no breeze, but it's not constant hurricane either. Chill. It's not all gonna be ok, it's just gonna be life, there's nothing much you can do about it and that's exactly what's beautiful about it.

So anyway, these two guys made this album, "Lonely Avenue". Hornby wrote the lyrics. They sound like Hornby. This man believes that everybody should be able to read books, that books are not supposed to be written by authors for other authors, using complex metaphors and a vocabulary to warp Einstein's mind. No, books are for people, they should use their language because reading is good for you. I admire that.

And so the album sounds like it's been conceived by Ben and Nick. Light, colorful, even fun. It's a nice break from beautiful yet convoluted Mars Volta or, god forbid, Joy Division. This album is simple and insightful.

Oh and I love the lyrics to the song "Password", but the song is kinda cheesy, I feel, and could have been 2 minutes shorter. So I'm putting this one instead:

Ben Folds & Nick Hornby - A Working Day

AWWW

2011-07-23T23:13:00.000+03:00

27, overdose? Really? Go on then, hurry up, you'll miss the happy hour at Club 27.

THE RUTLES

2011-07-23T11:38:00.002+03:00

Since this is probably old news to most, I'll make the introduction brief. The Rutles were a parody band and it's quite easy to guess which band they've dedicated their efforts to. As it sometimes happens with great things, the whole thing started as a joke, a sketch for BBC, but it evolved quickly into something significantly bigger. They made music, films, they toured, the whole nine yards.

Last night I've watched their film "The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash" and, check this out: it was good. Well, Monty Python's Eric Idle was involved neck deep in it, he basically started the whole thing along with Neil Innes, so chances were looking bright from the start. The film charts the Rutlemania by distorting and stretching the Beatlemania to hilarious degrees. I mean, the Beatlemania was funny in itself, the Fab Four were funny lads, but you should definitely check out the Prefab Four, buahaha. Mick Jagger talks about The Rutles and the rivalry between them and the Rolling Stones. I mean, that's just hysterical by itself. Other appearances include Bill Murray, Bianca Jagger, Paul Simon, Michael Palin, Dan Aykroyd, Ron Wood and....one George Harrison. Harrison supported the entire charade from the beginning, isn't that something? John and Yoko adored it (and you should see Yoko - Chastity!!! - in this film), Ringo apparently only liked the happier parts, while Paul did't find it all that amusing until his wife said she liked and he changed his mind. Really, Paul?

Two more things I need to mention.

One: The amount of work put in this film must have been enormous. They have recreated, well...everything. From haircuts, to costumes, to sets, archive footage, the roof top scene, tv shows aaaand even a scene from Yellow Submarine, so that must have meant a fair amount of hours of animation. Like, wow.

Second: Dude, the songs! The songs are amazing. It's Beatles all over again, great stuff. They're not just Weird Al type parodies, but actual great songs in their own rights. And they have videos for them and everything. Again, wow.

Now I'm trying to download their second movie "Can't Buy My Lunch", but it's not looking good. Hahahaha, I just realized, as I was writing the last sentence, that I am listening to a song called "It's looking good".

Well, the story is out there, go dig.

As, probably, Eric Idle puts it at the beginning of "Protest Song", "I've suffered for my music and now it's your turn". Here's "Ouch!"

The Rutles - Ouch!

And the video.

P.S. Watched "Can't Buy Me Lunch" just now. Appearances by David Bowie, Robin Williams, Conan O'Brian, Mike Nichols, Garry Shandling, Billy Connolly, Carrie Fisher, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin and, buaha, Salman Rushdie. Other than that, the film is pretty much the same as the first one.

...

2011-07-22T11:46:00.008+03:00

Excerpt from an imaginary conversation with one real dushbag.

HIM (condescending): Of course, you and your Ween thing...It's a band, you know, Christ...

ME: I am well aware of how it sounds: childish, teenage-ish, puberal. It's not. It's not a little 15 kind of thing with these guys. It's not like you listen to, God knows what, "Enter Sandman" at 18 and feel oh so abused and like you've already seen it all. Or you listen to any goddamn Placebo song and think it's so cool to be jaded, used, bored in such a sexy, sleazy manner. God, I loathe those assholes....

Listen. I listen to a lot of music, okay? a lot. And I'm 35, I'm not prone to drooling over some guy in goth make-up anymore. There's gotta be a lot more behind that make-up, preferably a brain. And definitely a soul. For me, now, after listening to tons and tons of music, there's Ween and then there's everybody else. They've got their own thing and no one else has it, it's unique. For instance, I love Nick Cave with all my heart, right? I respect, admire and love the guy. He's cool, old school way, Humphrey Bogart shit. And yet, dude, Ween gives me so much more. There's humor in there, sometimes subtle and sometimes crass, but it's there and it comes from a whole 'nother level of understanding. There's wisdom, there's poetry, there's beauty, there's childishness, there's sickness, tenderness, everything. And then there's the brilliance to combine all these in the perfectly right amounts.

Ah, fuck it, I can't describe it you, it cannot be described. You either feel it or you don't. This is not the kind of band you just mention casually, you know, like "hey, check these guys out, they're awesome". No. It really gets on my nerves when some asshole peeks into my playlist and says their name out loud for everyone to hear because I feel you have to earn Ween, you know. You gotta dig, gotta rumage a little, gotta listen and actually get them, their feel. I know it's silly, but I can afford it. You, for instance, let's say for the sake of argument, you could listen to all their albums and, sorry, still wouldn't get it. You're not wired for that. And that's not an insult, necessary, it's just a shame, you don't know what you're missing. But, please, don't condescent me. You don't know this, but it's like telling a child who'd just built the Colloseum out of cubes that you're proud of him for making them stand one on top of the other, such a flair for balance, and so colorful, here's a lollypop. Kinda makes you wonder who the silly child is. Yeah, I cry at goddamn movies, I even cried reading a comic book once, shit, but it's cool, it's ok, because there are no rules. Crying doesn't make you less of a man, just like jingling your Hummer keys around does not make you more of a man. Life, people are weird like that, they have whims and shitty jokes and bad days and loveable weaknesses...and Ween get that.

I mean, FUCK, I know this song from 94 and it still fucking tears me apart.

Ween - Baby Bitch

WEEN AGAIN

2011-07-21T11:13:00.001+03:00

There's really not much I can do about it, I always go back to them. The other day I watched "The Social Network" - an otherwise fairly boring film - NOT because Trent did the soundtrack, but because Jesse Eisenberg is a declared Ween fan. He's not much into music, not his thing, but he does own each and every Ween album. I had to see it, you see?

These two puppies are taken from the White Pepper Outtakes, a small compilation I have ignored for far too long. I don't know how I managed to skip over "Belvedine" all this time, I really don't. But here it is now. They seem to have had a baroque period at some point, maybe a week or two, but it left its mark. Did you know that "Ice Castles" was supposed to be called "Baroque Jam"? Haha. I mean 'baroque' and 'jam' put together. Ween...Sweeney Todd's got nothing on these guys.

"Wash Me Down" reminds me of "Sarah", slow and tender and shot full of morphine. I don't know how they chose between this and (probably) "She's Your Baby", they're both amazing.

p.s. Do read the tiny writing on those pictures above. The "future plans" part is both hilarious and true.

Ween - The Belvedine

Ween - Wash Me Down

TRUE

2011-07-16T22:04:00.000+03:00

The Beatles - I'm So Tired

I've listened to this song all day long from 12am and now, at 10pm, I've decided that it's very true.

ELLIOTT SMITH

2011-07-12T13:45:00.001+03:00

This feels like the twin sister from a distant mother of "Across the Universe".

Elliott Smith - Everything Means Nothing To Me

COCONUT MOONSHINE

2011-07-07T08:39:00.000+03:00

Sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds like Tom Waits the Aristocat jammin' on the rooftop. Hell yeah!
Why am I not surprised that, when looking for a picture of him to put up here, I find that he has dates together with Gene Ween, of all people? I mean, ha!

Grayson Capps - Coconut Moonshine

2011-07-02T08:17:00.003+03:00

Eels - Things The Grandchildren Should Know

PEEK A BOO

2011-06-30T11:31:00.004+03:00

And I've really missed this song, don't know why. I remember Beavis and Butthead going absolutely berserk watching it on TV - peeeeeeek - a - boooo!!! a - huh huh huh - a - huhhuh.

But apart from that, it has always amazed me how this song feels like it's walking in crutches, every step feels like some demented St. Vitus choreography which only Timmy could accurately perform (although he was in a wheelchair, but unlike Jimmy - who really is in crutches - Timmy really has the attitude of this song. Ok, maybe a Timmy on crystal meth, but Timmy nonetheless. If you ever watched South Park, that is.) This song feels crippled, fractured, but in a good way, thumbs up and everything. So thumbs up to Siouxie for this one and all the rest of them.

Siouxie and the Banshees - Peek A Boo

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

2011-06-29T16:53:00.004+03:00

The Dark Night of the Soul: an album people die for. Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse died in March 2010. Vic Chessnutt died on Christmas day 2009. They both appear on this album created by Danger Mouse together with Mark Linkous and which contains a little booklet of photos made by, oh gross, David Lynch, whom I tend to admire from a distance.

Funny story: due to a legal dispute with EMI, the album almost didn't make it. Its first version released to the public in 2009 contained only David Lynch's photographs and a blank CD-R. The cover read: "For legal reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will." Eventually the album was released in 2010.

Many guest vocals on it:

Flaming Lips, Black Francis, Iggy Pop, Nina Persson (Cardigans), Mark Linkous, Suzanne Vega, Vic Chessnutt, to name a few.

On second listen I still fail to see the red thread uniting all these songs, but it doesn't matter. It sounds good.

Here's Iggy, still in pain:

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Pain (feat Iggy Pop)

And here's a lazy little self-destructive one with Jason Lytle of Grandaddy. This song feels like one long, very long and very slow, pull of a girl's dirty underwear off a drunk guy's face, just Monday noon after the orgy. Heartbreaking, really.

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Everytime I'm With You (feat Jason Lytle)

P.S. Hey. On second thought and millionth listen, having just danced naked in front of my cat, this song's got a little bit of Zorba the Greek in it, hasn't it? Try it, it works, it's fun, your cat will love you all the same (it doesn't matter who the food comes from.)

MINI MANSIONS

2011-06-16T11:45:00.005+03:00

Yes, these guys sound like the Beatles. But not in a tacky way, I mean it's not Oasis. It's all good, most songs sound like "Because".

Listening to two little albums in a row, they sounded a bit flat and repetitive at first. But God is in the details, so I soon realized what a fine piece of jewelry each song actually is. There's still work to be done, of course, it feels that some of the songs are a bit lost without a map in the musical wilderness, don't know if they're coming or going, but the mess is just adorable. And dig this: bass, piano, drums. That's it. Ok, guitar sometimes, but who's counting.

This little assemble is a side project of QOTSA bassist, Michael Schuman. As you may not remember, QOTSA is a band which I loved to hate at first, then hated to love and then, as your everyday Paulo Coelho saga goes, simply loved. I'm not saying that the Mini Mansions sound anything like QOTSA, it's something else entirely, but a few chords here and there do serve as a reminder.

So I've listened and I've listened, picked a short list of four songs and then I hit a wall. I could not pick just one of them. I like them all. So I'll put them all. Yeah.

Mini Mansions - Majik Marker

Mini Mansions - Vignette #3

Mini Mansions - Monk

And, ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles:
Mini Mansions - Laura

These are the kind of songs that you listen to one time and then annoy your friends humming two bars all day long and then annoy them even further by forgetting who's singing. In a word: catchy. The good catchy kind.

A MOSQUITO MY LIBIDO

2011-05-26T16:06:00.001+03:00

Queens Of The Stone Age - Mosquito Song

...not to mention Dean Ween on guitar.
.
.
.
.

ROME

2011-05-24T10:23:00.001+03:00

Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi - Two Against One (feat Jack White)

Seems to be the year of some unexpected, yet tasty musical cocktails. After Nick Cave pairing with UNKLE, here's another shot for you, a mixture of random ingredients that will not give you headache, thank god.

Gnarls Barkley's Danger Mouse teams up with Italian film composer Daniele Luppi for the project Rome.

Aaaand, they've got guests: Norah Jones and Jack White on vocals.

After listening to it three or four times, I get this feeling that this little album has been somehow "photoshoped". Yeah, check this out: you take one layer, duplicate it, apply Gaussian Blur (say 56%), maybe some Levels then, and then you Overlay it, over the first one. You'll get this soft appearance, this glow all over the image, it's like the dream or flashback sequence in a very romantic and very dramatic flick on Hallmark, Sunday around supper.

Ladies swoon, I'm telling you.

There's this velvety feel all over this album, but maybe's just me. I don't mind it, by the way. It's nice.

It's mostly instrumental (6 out of 15 tracks have vocals). The instrumental parts..I wasn't very impressed. They do sound like a film score, but I fail to see the film. Kind of simple, kind of slurred at times. Fine, all in all, but I've heard better (Mancini? Barry?). And, I am aware that I'm dropping this particular name way too much, but when you've heard what Patton can do with a soundtrack, it's kind of hard to go back to Clayderman, you know. I don't mean they should all be frantic and dyslexic, but a little aim and purpose to it doesn't hurt.

The ones with vocals.

Now, I've really tried to like Norah, to find something special in her. It was really hard and I gave up eventually. She sounds like a jaded Stina Nordenstam. And I can barely stand Stina most of the times. Nothing against them personally, but I do enjoy people with blood in their veins more than the ones without it.

Girls singing in their heads in front of closed windows on a dreamy rainy day aren't really my thing. A statement which, again, says absolutely nothing about them personally, okay? Just ain't my thing, is all.

Norah's songs on this album are three pop songs which stir nothing, disturb no one...they sound like a flowery wallpaper to me.

Jack's songs.

"The World" sounds like a song dragging its feet out of the womb, quite reluctant to get born. The lyrics should be "do I really have to?" No, it's fine, stay there till you get divine.

"The Rose With The Broken Neck", also slow, but more fairytale-like, you can feel the story behind it. But, like all the others, nothing much happens in this song musically. There's no change of rhythm, no surprise, the verses and chorus just repeat till the end and that's it. A perfect lullaby, even for grown-ups.

Now "Two Against One" on the other hand sounds like something. This is Jack's hand. No wonder it's a single. This could have easily been a Raconteurs song, a good second track to heal the hurts of "Steady As She Goes" for instance. Lately I have become more aware of backing vocals in songs and the ones here, minimal as they are, pull it of so nicely. Oooneeee.

So it's a nice little album. It's not life changing, but it's not a miss either. It's a start, I guess. Maybe, out of so many names (well, four), they found it hard to pick just one direction, one vector for the whole thing, one bold arrow, bull's eye baby. They're sprinkling rosy petals more than shooting arrows, but we need flowers too, don't we?

Thanks for the tip, M.

IPECAC

2011-05-20T17:01:00.002+03:00

Kaada - No You Don't

Kaada, quite a prodigy this one. I was first acquainted with him through Patton, of course. The album was Romances and it was wonderful. The live DVD was wonderful too (Thank you again, Pi).

Now, as I am wasting my valuable time at this dead-end job, I thought I'd make it less of a drag by browsing Ipecac videos at random and came across this song/video, taken from his album Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time. Eerie, like most of Kaada's songs. Now, I don't know about you, I find eerie to be refreshing in a world where Shakira still tours and Robbie Williams takes that again. I'm falling more and more in love with retro sounds, the 50s, the 60s, the James Bond chase through the south of France type of thing, the sound of the Marilyn Monroe tease, you know what I'm talking about I hope. Seems to me it was a time when melody was still an aim and composition involved trained musicians with vast experience, knowledge and vision. Not to mention sensibility.

Anyway, Kaada (like Mike) hasn't forgotten that beautiful period in music. It shows in everything he does.

So here's the video, just as eerie as the song.

And here's a bonus. Another video from the Ipecac collection. I'm guessing The Residents are drooling all over this kitschy-catchy piece of work.

MAN OH MAN

2011-05-18T11:52:00.005+03:00

Man Man - The Ballad Of Butter Beans

From what I've listened so far, these guys trot somewhere between Tom Waits and The Tiger Lillies. Some Kaiser Orchestra in there, maybe some Zutons, maybe even some Fantômas. Zappa, Beefheart, it's all there. Cool neighborhood. But this here song's just amazing. I bet Mike Patton would give an arm, a leg and a comics collection for those backing vocals girls, they sound so 60's he'd hyperventilate.

ONLY THE LONELY

2011-05-02T08:51:00.003+03:00

Well, I didn't see this one coming: Nick Cave and UNKLE together. Who'd have thought a Monday morning could start this nicely? The track is taken from UNKLE's new EP, Only The Lonely, out now.

UNKLE ft Nick Cave - Money and Run

GHINZU

2011-04-30T14:18:00.000+03:00

Ghinzu - Cold love

I like the urgent tone. Everything is urgent now.

THE PATTON PATTERN

2011-04-18T12:59:00.001+03:00

Apparently this internet ain't big enough for Mike Patton. It's overflowing. I've just put my hands on 800mp more of his stuff. I knew at least half of it, but some stuff was new to me. These three below come from a huge compilation of FNM b-sides ("Evidence" the spanish version, oooooh), various collaborations, remixes, live covers (from New Kids on the Block, through Mariah Carey, to Bob Dylan), all sorts of stuff. Some good, some bad, some plain weird. From what I've listened so far I picked these three, but there's sooo much more to go through. I'm having mixed feelings towards him now, I think his inner child is still burning ants with a lens somewhere and so some of his songs are either puerile or no songs at all. I guess it's fun to have so many buttons at your disposal. But on the other hand, when he really puts his mind to it, man, the tornado of bats coming out is quite astonishing and all else is forgiven. So here's Mike, yet again.

Umläut - Atlas Face (feat Mike Patton)

Carla Hassett - Julia (The Beatles cover) (feat Mike Patton)

Subtle - Long Vein of the Voice (feat Mike Patton)

p.s. oh yeah, I think there really is such thing as a Patton pattern, a red thread that goes through all his music, no matter what genre (except maybe Mondo Cane...maybe). But it's still a bit vague in my head, I wouldn't find the right words and I don't really have time right now. And I think it would also be a waste of time to talk about it.

BURN BABY BURN

2011-03-28T11:00:00.004+03:00

Friday night I tried to Burn Baby Burn. Product placement even in the title. Twice.
The bands were Hitman's Heel (Alexander Hacke, Danielle De Picciotto and Chris Hughes) and Kid & Khan (Khan and Kid Congo Powers). We waited two hours for them to stop wandering about and get on stage. They finally did and Hitman's Heel were up first.
The sound was quite poor, but I'm not one to attend gigs for the sheer pleasure of listening to the sound engineer. Sure, a quality sound helps the enjoyment, but on the other hand I don't think that any musician composes his music with the bit rate in mind.
That being said, though, I could hardly hear any vocals. And I was practically on stage.
Hacke is no lead singer, to be sure, but all his vocals sounded obnoxiously drunk, which, come to think of it, maybe he was a little. I don't think he was the only one either.
But I remember thinking, Hey, some of these songs probably sound really good on the cd! So I bought the cd. Meh, it's alright, but nothing heart-shredding.

Here's two songs they played that made me buy the cd.

Hitman's Heel - Flowers

Hitman's Heel - Ballad of The Lonely Fish

Collector's item, right?

Next up, Julee Cruise with Khan & Kid. Julee was quite an apparition, I must say. I didn't know what to expect, given that some 20 odd years have passed since I was dropping everything I was doing and ran inside to watch Twin Peaks. God knows what she's done in the mean time. Actually I'd like to ask God: what the hell has she been doing? She reminded me of Ms Dinsmoor. A hallucinating Ms Dinsmoor. She seemed quite alert to invisible friends and foes, her expression changing from one second to the next for no apparent reason. I thought it was an act, her stage persona, but halfway through the concert I wasn't so sure any more. When at some point one of her invisible friends turned out to be St. Vitus, I actually felt a pang of pity. But pity mixed with a weird affection, the kind one feels when watching a puppy with amputated hind legs trying to climb on to the sofa and cuddle. I wanted to hug her and tell her the war was over, we won.
Kid and Khan were funny and entertaining, but by sweet comparison with Julee's antics. The whole thing struck me as a small gig for friends, maybe even rehearsals, where nothing sounds perfect, jokes are aloud and sometimes the more nervous ones try too hard and spoil the joke.
But I cherish these moments, I wouldn't give them for any clockwork performance by U2.

In the end I got my drumstick, hugged Kid Congo (poor thing, what was I thinking?) and went on my way.

Here's Julee with a song she played that night, but the version where she actually sings. I won't post any videos of her, it's too Monday for that kind of image.

Julee Cruise - Into The Night

LET ENGLAND SHAKE

2011-03-22T10:42:00.006+02:00

Another new album - PJ Harvey's Let England Shake.
I've only listened to it a couple of times, but for the most of it I had the feeling this wasn't the Polly I knew. She speaks of the world around her, as opposed to the one inside her described at length on her other nine albums. Political, too.
The album has a small but prestigious list of guests: Mick Harvey (who does vocals as well, on the ending song "The Color Of The Earth"), John Parish and producer Flood. You can't really go wrong. Not that Polly ever did.
A number of influences too. Sometimes her voice reminds me of Kate Bush or Elisabeth Fraser. Sometimes the guitar seems to be played by Joey Santiago. Some middle-eastern stuff thrown in there as well (or is that Elvish?)

It's all jolly good.

Here's one that reminds me of Kate Bush, or Sinead O'Connor, or someone like that. It's got a little battle trumpet lost in there, too, I have no idea what's that got to do with anything, musically speaking, but hey.

PJ Harvey - The Glorious Land

THE LADY KILLER

2011-03-17T13:33:00.005+02:00

Gnarls Barkley's Cee Lo Green has a new album out (thanks to my sister for the tip), it's called The Lady Killer and it sounds as it should: bombastic, vicious, heartbroken and crisp. You know how some songs force you to pay attention to the lyrics, while others you just hum? Well, this man has got pain, clarity, tenderness and sickness perfectly balanced in his lyrics, as far as I'm concerned. They really hit the spot and stick. The songs (with GB and everything) don't sound the same, but they are alike. He's found his guns and he's sticking to them. Maybe he could and should diversify, but if keeps doing what he's doing now, it's just as well with me; this guy can't really go wrong. He can go dry, but not wrong.
Here's the first single - Fuck You (and fuck her too, haha) - above.
Also another song from the album, Love Gun. Bang bang!

Cee Lo Green ft Lauren Bennett - Love Gun

IT'S GONNA BE ALRIGHT, GENE

2011-03-15T22:27:00.009+02:00

All is not brown in Boognish town, apparently. Well, the internet bulged a little vein one night after Ween tried a gig in Vancouver in January. Ween's trademark when it comes to live shows and life in general is that pretty much anything goes, take the wrecking ball and shoot some hoops kind of thing. In Vancouver the wrecking ball broke the hoop apparently. Gene was planting daisies on his own planet all evening, completely out of it. He fucked up most of the lyrics, his voice was a squeaky toy gang-banged by rottweilers, could barely stand up and, all in all, was a total downer and embarrassment for the rest of the band. Consequently, the rest of the band walked off stage and left him there hanging by the strings of his long since out of tune guitar. To his credit, Gene did not give up, he singlehandedly showed everybody how to properly hit rock 'n' roll bottom. He continued playing by himself until the brownness of it reminded everyone of shit.

Now, I admit, I was scared when I read this. I thought, not you too, Gener. No, no, no, nonononono, you're not pushing any daisies on my watch. Or while I'm watching, anyway. These guys helped me a lot. A Lot. I can't imagine me being the way I am (and I'm fine, thank you), without them. This band is pure gold and it would be, not a shame, it would be ILLEGAL to lose them in such pathetic, predictable, pitiful way. A boring "Lead singer chokes on his own vomit" type of headline would be...fucking grey. Not that Ween is about headlines, but you know what I mean. So I was pretty sad about this, but then finally thought that maybe this was a one-off thing , not a binge. He got funny that particular night, maybe some weird Vancouver hybrid pot or something, but otherwise he's fine.

(This is just one example, it takes forever for Gene to start with the lyrics and when he does, he fucks it up. Unfortunately there's a lot more on YouTube.)

And so it was, thank god. Gene was fine in Portland two days later. Phew! He's not fine-fine, he was never fine to begin with, look at the lyrics, look at transformations his body goes through every five years or so - fat-skinny-fat-skinny. Look at his eyes. But I knew this, I was and am ok with this. Hell, Ween would not be Ween without him being this fucked up. I always admired his way of dealing with traumas, through his music. Well, music just wasn't enough that night, I guess. But in Portland they rocked. Check out this little baby, Gene goes all suicidal rock star doing Nirvana's 'Heart Shaped Box'. I would laugh if I weren't still a little worried. Hang in there, Aaron.

SAND

2011-03-09T13:27:00.002+02:00

I tried to watch this movie last night. 'Breakfast on Pluto'. Too feely-hearty for me, must say. I pressed pause before halftime. I couldn't really stand this guy's face, just as I can't stand Jonathan Rhys Meyers' face. Anyway. I did get to hear this song:

Cillian Murphy & Gavin Friday - Sand

...which sounded familiar because:

Einsturzende Neubauten - Sand

...and in fact this one is also a cover:

Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra - Sand

Now why would EN not put this information on the cd cover (I checked)? Oh well. It's a nice song, it has that certain something. I still sort of like EN's version better, it has the edge I'm looking for.

2011-02-28T18:04:00.005+02:00

Here's one for you.

Eels - That's Not Really Funny

THE KING OF LIMBS

2011-02-18T15:47:00.004+02:00

Oh, this dance is fantastic, I'm gonna go and get me a bottle of those pills right now.
New Radiohead album - The King Of Limbs - I'll just go listen to it, back in a sec.

--------------

Alright, I listened to it.

Well, I hope it's the kind of album that grows on you. It begins with "Bloom" after all. "Bloom" reminds me of trains, not flowers. Okay, maybe it's a journey. To where, I don't know. "Morning Mr Magpie" is pretty much the same song a bit more hasty. You listen to 20 seconds of either of these songs and you've got the idea, nothing changes after that. Buttons and switches, chirps and twitches. And Thom's voice hovering above the mess like a paralytic angel who doesn't quite know what side is up.

I don't mean to be mean, but it does sound like this album, much like In Rainbows, is made out of fillers. Songs that used to fill proper albums , like "Treefingers" or even "Backdrifts"; they all sound like "Backdrifts, don't they? Cause they're just toying with buttons now, aren't they? They've proved their point, they've done "Paranoid Android" (music, real music), done "Street Spirit", done "Idioteque" (buttons, but with balls), done "Just", done them all. And now they're done. They can put Thom's voice over anything, boiling soup, it doesn't matter: it's instant Radiohead and so instant success. Just add water. It's funny, but all the bands copying Radiohead that have mushroomed around sound better than Radiohead now.

This album could have easily been done by Thom and Jonny alone. I don't really hear the others, there are no real drums anywhere and what bass there is could have been done by Jonny with one hand behind his back.

So here's "Feral", the entire album (with a few exceptions that sound like "Treefingers" with lyrics)

Radiohead - Feral

ANGER IS A DRUG, BUT TRIPPING IS A GIFT

2011-02-18T10:28:00.012+02:00

Things being unexpectedly lame at work and thus my brain and being having been consistently submerged into solid numb stupor, I'm listening to as much pissed off blokes as I can get my hands on. These following bands are no news to anybody. Or, if they are, you should get angry more often, it's good for you. Anger is a gift.

This first one I picked because it sounds really trippy for RATM, it's almost a blues coming from them. It sounds like Prodigy when they say "I be the anti-myth rhythm rock shocker", too. I've lost these guys along the way, somewhere in '97 I suppose. But I was watching Skins the other day and I've been listening to RATM ever since that pretty ballerina screamed "Killing in the name of!" in that pub. Only in Skins, eh?

Rage Against The Machine - Mic Check

And then there's this one.
Like I must have said before, I didn't give these guys enough credit at first. Especially this song. I mean, really: "Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy and Alcohol...C-c-c-c-cocaine!"? Stoner rock indeed. But ohhh, this song felt awesome on repeat as I was plowing through shit these days. I heard goth mermaids' voices in the back that weren't there before. You listen to this song long enough you really feel like picking up a shovel and making your way through a mob of zombies. Which is what I do on daily basis, it's in my job description AND my doc prescription. This song is brimming with withdrawal syndrome, yet, as the title suggests, it does make you feel kind of awesome. The rhythm is probably vein tapping all the way. It's good. It helped.

Queens Of The Stone Age - Feel Good Hit Of The Summer

SUFJAN STEVENS

2011-02-10T00:13:00.007+02:00

Alright, here's the thing: I'm tired now. Too tired for research and too tired to go through all of this guy's songs and albums. So if I'll speak out of my ass you'll just have to hold a lighter near by in case I make sense, if that makes sense.

I won't lie to you, I stole this guy from a trendy kid who works with me. She made the dumb ass mistake to share her iTunes library and I went shopping. But she only had three albums so I had to procure the other 5 all by myself. There was a little effort, you see.

I listened on shuffle. They say Illinoise is his best album. It is. Most of the songs that caught my attention were from it when I checked. But, this is weird: everything about this guy catches your attention. Everything is almost annoyingly inventive, fluttering, bouncy. Happy, fluorescent compositions mingle with melancholy ones, keyboards bump into banjos, it goes on and on, never a dull moment. And you kinda miss dull eventually. Maybe's just me, I'm tired. But no, this guy is good. He's good with song titles too. On Illinoise there are 22 songs and only 4 of them have regular, short names. Check out a couple of my favorites from the other 18:

"Riffs And Variations On A Single Note For Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, And The King Of Swing, To Name A Few" and

"Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out In Bushnell".

"Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)" from Greetings From Michigan is also one to remember.

As far as titles go, Enjoy Your Rabbit is also a fun read: it takes the Chinese horoscope head on, song by song and sign by sign: year of the rat, year of the horse, year of the snake, the lot of them. From all the animals, only the cat seems to have a little trouble, her song is called "Year of the Asthmatic Cat", but do not fear: the last song on the album is entitled "Year Of Our Lord", so the cat's gets saved or resurrected eventually.

You can't pick just one song from this guy. Like I said, I'm stuck with the feeling that, if you take one album, it's actually one song all the way through it patched up from different brilliant little songs. It's hard to describe. Also his joy is hard to describe. He's marching somewhere, there's probably a war somewhere between the color pink and some nasty dandelions or something, I don't know. But you like it. He's having fun putting sad lyrics on cheerleader music.

Anyway, I picked this song almost at random. I say almost because it did catch my attention one fragment of a crumb more than the others. It must be the contradiction between the subject and the treatment. John Wayne Gacy, as we all know, yes? was a serial killer, the clown killer. I did my research for this song approximately 15 years ago when I read a book about serial killers. It's a paradox. I like a good paradox, I am one.

Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr

Oh oh, I also like "Perpetual Self" from The Avalanche. The way he says "everything is lost" just makes you wanna pick flowers and choke a bunny with them. I'm too tired to upload it, though.
.........................................

30-something hours later:
Alright, here's "Perpetual Self":

Sufjan Stevens - Perpetual Self

I CAN KILL MELODY WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT

2011-02-07T10:09:00.003+02:00

This is me learning "Seven Nation Army". Since the White Stripes are no longer, I thought someone should step up and carry the torch. And then I thought that someone is probably not gonna be me.
There will be no audio post on this one and you should be thankful.

HERE'S WHERE THE STRIPES END

2011-02-03T17:43:00.007+02:00

Meg an Jack broke up, so no more stripes for you. I'm not sad. But still, because they're fuckers and won't tell us why ("It is for a myriad of reasons, but mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way."), so we can, you know, like, cope and shit, I'm gonna let'em play a song here, but not one of theirs. One of Don Van Vliet's, cause he had the decency to die before he did anything stupid.
Jack, on your knees and Meg for mercy.

The White Stripes - Party Of Special Things To Do
(Captain Beefheart cover)

LA CUCARACHA

2011-01-30T10:17:00.043+02:00

I'm gonna do something I've never done here: take a closer look at an entire album, song by song. I'm not going to pretend this is a professional review, none of the thoughts here on this blog have anything to do with professionalism. You don't listen to music through a stethoscope.

The album is La Cucaracha, by, yes yes yes, Ween. Why? Because I had thought it was a bad album (by Ween standards) when in fact it is a great one. The chasm between the two concepts is vast enough to make me feel quite silly indeed.

Two keep this short - pfff! - I'm gonna plunge right into it.

1. Fiesta

This song kicks off the album right into the deepest brownness. It's so idiotically enthusiastic with those trumpets buzzing like drunken flies around the purest Spaniard turd, you can't help going "Ole!" every time it finishes (it's on repeat, cause it's kinda short.) I love it that at some point it has a very electronic DJ-ish sort of drone for about a split second that always makes me fantasize about what would Trent Reznor be like if he were ever in a good mood. It's not my favorite song on the album - to say nothing of the entire Ween discography - but it is the kind of song Ween would choose for an appetizer, to set the mood of the album, only to change it 2 minutes later...

2. Blue balloon

...with "Blue Balloon". This little song is nothing less than charming. When I listen to it, the phrase "a stroll in the park" comes to mind. But it's Ween, so it's more like a "a stroll in the pork" (which incidentally is an album by Pig, but he's a meanie, he wouldn't even know how to spell "park".) The great thing about Ween is that they have a knack for taking the dreariest and most banal themes and turn them into pure gold. This one sounds like a casual, uncomplicated song. A devil-may-care tune, the dandy song. But the little details glow in the dark like those weird fluorescent algae on the seaside and adorn this childish, playful tune with perfectly choreographed sparks of brilliance. The bass line - so melancholic. Those percussion (?) sounds (I don't even know what that is) - they sound like a fairy bouncing off the walls. And those mewing balloon sounds, albeit fart-sounding too, make the whole thing float right off into the brown dimension

3. Friends

Now, remember kids, you've gotta have a sense of humor to appreciate these boys. And a weird one at that. "Friends" may sound like Technotronic to you - and this is exactly the point where most people recoil with horror and dismiss Ween: a joke band, and a bad one - but think about it: would Technotronic ever come up with a lyric like "scary to think that I could be happy"? No. To be fair, they might have come up with "a friend's a friend who knows what being a friend is", but Ween's tongue bursts through the cheek like an alien on this one, I feel. Ween have been known to tinker and tamper with musical genres like a cat on acid with imaginary mice. This is a funny joke, but you need some of their weed to get it.

4. Object

OMG! No really: OMFG! Forget the mood swings on this album (and all others), but after "Friends" this one hits you in the kidney like a soap in a wet sock. This is one of THE Ween songs. It's Spinal Meningitis, it's Don't Get 2 Close, it's Happy Colored Marbles, it's Mutilated Lips. Sick & sweet. It's brown sugar-coated gangrene, Ween special recipe. Gene delivers, as usual, the ugliest images in his most tender, loving voice. It's like that torture scene in Audition, he's a sadist, but he kills you with a piano string. And he toys with you. Again! Oh, the lyrics on this one! This song is immaculately demented. And the ending: "I'm gonna do something wrong. Nobody's gonna like it. [...] I feel a little better. They found your sweater. You're just an object to me." Murder! Sister Dew! This song is like the creepy, soulless, empty child who's just stabbed his little sister, puts make up on her and uses her for a Barbie doll at his pretend tea party, while the other guests are his stuffed chihuahua and a piece of string. Jesus. I love this song. I'd like to paint like this song.

5. Learnin to love

After "Object", this is brutal. This feels like a leftover from 12 Golden Country Greats. Redneck extravaganza, clap yo' greasy hands and stomp your raggedy boots, it's hee-haw time.

Not a favorite. Musically it's fine, the boys do know their instruments, we know that. The easiness with which they jump from techno to country is, as always, mind blowing. It's just that...spitting tobacco through empty purple gums isn't really my thing. But I will say this: I would love to watch Christopher Walken dance to this, especially that interlude which...I don't know what it reminds me of. Broadway musical? Burlesque show? A cover of "Feeling good" done by Rednex? Banjo hero? I don't know, but it sounds awfully (and I do mean awfully) familiar. You know what? What the hell, throw some Fred Astaire in there too, let's see what happens.

6. With my own bare hands

This must be Mickey's baby, it's too macho for Aaron. It's a moistboy holler. It's the kind of song Tenacious D would listen to and think 'Hey, we can do this, too!" To bad they lack the subtlety and brilliance. This is pure rock stripped of all the glamor, but not necessarily a masterpiece. Not one of my favorites either, but - and I can't stress this enough - with Ween it's different. Since they so bravely, candidly and systematically satirize each and every musical style on this planet, and since it's so hard to tell where the caricature ends and the tribute begins, I am and will always accept everything these guys have to offer and enjoy it for what it is, nothing less and nothing more. Ween, to me, is the very definition of creative freedom and freedom in general. Do whatever the fuck you want to do, enjoy it and chill. If they would ever do a Celine Dion type of song, I would damn well cherish it. They manage to paste a Ween layer on everything they touch and that makes even the lamest song sound, not bearable, but good. And those are the bad Ween songs. The rest are great.

7. The fruit man

Like I said, any genre. This is Ween dreaming in green, yellow and black. It's reggae even Bob Marley would wake up and say "what the fuck was in that spliff, man?"

My background: I loathe reggae. Fact: I love this song. It's like fishing for golden fish in a honey jar. While your ass floats above your head. My god, these guys must smoke good stuff. "King Billy" on the Friends EP must have been a draft for this song. It must have come out of the same joint, anyway. And I'm glad they fished even further, because "King Billy" is a great song (the voice, oh the voice), but this one is holiday all the way. Listen to those sounds hanging to the tune like ornaments in a fucked up Christmas tree. The clicks and clangs and whistles, it's the exact image of the perforated sense of memory you have when you've just smoked your brains out. It's like stubs and splinters of memories are raining from the sky all around you and you can't focus on any of it if your life depended on it. You don't need a joint for this song, the song is the joint.

8. Spirit walker

Now...this one's too weird for words. This song could only be possible if Cher was a mermaid (which, despite what she thinks, she is not) and would bang her head on a coral reef and the blood bubbles surfacing the water would pop and be filled with random, strange lyrics. I'm not even gonna touch this one, this song is not on this album. But in a good way.

9. Shamemaker

If not for the lyrics, this song would be the perfect soundtrack for a Pacman game, if that game ever needed a soundtrack. It's like a three little piggies cartoon, working working working, till the big bad wolf comes and shames them with a blow. It's probably a great karaoke choice, there not much singing involved. I could have done without this one, but I'm not complaining. And what's that voice he's doing? it sounds like something from somewhere.

10. Sweetheart

If my memory wouldn't be so, ahem, selective, I could probably be able to tell what or whom this song sounds like. It sounds like a goldie oldie, doesn't it? The kind of tune our parents used to dance to on that cliff before jumping... If I were to do a video for this song, that's how I would do it. Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn would drive around in a convertible, her scarf would be blowing in the wind, his glasses would be black and his cigarette would be almost out. They would be in love and be looking for a place to picnic. They would kiss like they did in the 60s, miss a curve and fly off a cliff. The lovey-dovey part of the story would last 30 seconds tops, while the flying off a cliff part would last the remaining 2.45 min, in slow motion. With details such as pancakes flying around, lipstick smeared, muted horrified screams, scarf getting caught in a tree branch somehow with her left brutally strangled in that tree while Humphrey continues to fall towards his rocky doom. Then, right before the explosion, we cut to them having a perfect picnic and the same gesture repeats itself like a broken record: she wiping a bit of jam from the corner of his mouth and licking it off her finger like cat. Over and over again. Ad lib to fade. It's in the lyrics, I'm telling you.

11. Lullaby

Finally a genuinely tender one. I think. This doesn't sound like a cruel joke, this could actually be sung by a mum to her sleepy baby. It's beautiful. It's hard to believe that the same guys who wrote "With my own bare hands" wrote this one as well, but there's Ween for you. It reminds me of Radiohead's "I will", it's very gentle. There's a regretful, sorrowful tone to it, but the baby doesn't know that. Actually, I don't think it's about sleeping babies at all. It may be a lullaby for the dying, gently placing them onto the other side of existence, who the hell knows. Look at me all deep. I don't know, man, it's very soothing. It's the warm glass of milk of the album, makes you go all fetal.

12. Woman and man

They recorded, what was it, 500 minutes of this song or something, because their producer and long time friend, Andrew Weiss, insisted that it should be done in one take. But the result is flaming, man, it kicks tons of ass. It's like riding a wild horse. Makes you wanna watch westerns 24 hours straight. If you are so inclined. I'm not. However, I do like this song. It's out there, whipping the winds, throwing fire bolts, summoning weird looking gods and all sorts of other antics like that. Mickey must have slept a week after this one. Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Eric Burdon would be proud. Bold Geronimo stuff. I don't know what those porn-party samples at the end have to do with anything, but a good sample should be used, always.

13. Your party

Oh wow. Another deceiving, seemingly lame song, but in all actuality a pretty great one indeed. Perfect closer. That saxophone reminds me of Scorsese films from the 70s. Okay, maybe a Scorsese film starring Candy Dulfer and no machine guns. There's a very cheesy note to this song, Lily is indeed here, all over the place. But! The last verse pretty much floors me:

Later on when we were under the covers

I closed my eyes, then I drifted to sleep

I dreamt about me maybe throwing a party

And just how great that would be.

I don't know, maybe's just me, but this crude, child-like honesty, this humble admission of entertaining a dream, the smallest dream ever, it's just disarming. Even asleep, in a dream, a place where everything and anything is permitted, he says "maybe." All this in contrast with the opulence of the party they've just returned from, golden plates and everything. This song says so much, just like its brother "If you could save yourself (you'd save us all)". If you've got ears and a trace of soul. I retract the "no machine guns" thing, this song kills.

So there you go. Not as short as you might have hoped.

Of course there are better Ween albums I could have picked. By all accounts that I am aware of, Chocolate & Cheese is their perfect album, their Abbey Road, their Trout Mask Replica, their Dark Side Of The Moon and their, yes, Thriller. I can't be so sure. It's really hard to choose between Chocolate & Cheese and The Mollusk. Thank God I don't have to. You tell me the difference between greatness and excellence. And "The Argus" isn't even on any of those two. I mean it's really hard. But I felt I really didn't do justice to this one, I let it feel like the ugly duckling and that wasn't fair.

You know what? It takes guts to like Ween, I mean really like and really understand. Sometimes it feels like coming out of the closet and admitting you enjoy wearing a bra under your Rammstein T-shirt. Sometimes you can feel quite stupid laughing at a joke no one else seems to get, you start thinking maybe there's something wrong with you. But music and artists should be free, the freest. And, as an artist, if you don't allow yourself the freedom to do anything that goes through your head, no matter how silly it may seem, you're dead. Which goes just as well for the fans. If you don't allow yourself to take pleasure from something as silly, but humorous and good, as "Don't laugh (I love you)" or "Pollo Asado", for instance, then you're nothing but an elitist, stiff, arrogant, frustrated, self-conscious prick who should listen to The Killers (and why not, Porcupine Tree) all day long and never get out. You know who you are.

JIMI

2011-01-24T11:57:00.013+02:00

I'm almost 35 and I feel like I've only just heard the name Jimi Hendrix for the first time. Fact is I have heard it before (you have to be born deaf to avoid that, and even so), but it took me 35 years to listen instead of just hear. I'm guessing I might have some childhood left in me after all. I take comfort in the fact that there are so many people out there who will go through life thinking that Kenny Rogers is the best musician that ever lived. It may have taken me a long time, but at least I'm here now. A late bloomer, the Orlando kind.

I guess I just had to do my fair share of rummaging through piles of REM and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Manson and all that tv stuff, to finally be able to appreciate the real thing, stuff like Captain Beefheart, Jimi, Zappa, Son House, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker...you know who they are. I might even try some David Bowie at some point, the early stuff. I was never much into that whole glam thing. Even when Manson went all Bowie with Mechanical Animals, I didn't follow him there. I just waited for him on the other side of that pink feather boa, when he became the lovable sick gloomy goth I fell in love to begin with, with Holy Wood. Told him "whoa, thought I lost you there for a sec."

But Jimi. Jimi, man. Now, that guy knew that guitar was his cock. And he was one of the very few lucky ones to be able to reach his cock with his mouth, since he was doing those incredible solos with his teeth, man. I don't think I have ever seen such grace and easiness in a guitar player before. Organic shit, I swear, that guitar sprouted out of his flesh on stage. I think Dave Navarro tries to copy his moves, the hands, the caressing, the posture. And he's good, but he's no Jimi. Jimi could play with only one hand and the guitar behind his back and it sounded so great. And it's not just these theatrical gimmicks, he did them because he could, he fooled around cause he could afford it. The Who didn't want to take the stage after him. Hard act to follow.

Ahh, blah and blah and blah, entire forests have been written about Jimi, what am I gonna add?
'Scuse me while I kiss this guy:

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - If 6 Was 9

Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary (live Paris '68)

THE BOOGLARIZER

2011-01-14T11:07:00.015+02:00

Frank & Don

A stubborn-stubborn octopus with whips for hands, earthquakes in his brain and a cymbal-hat designed by the Mad Hatter himself:
Captain Beefheart.

This is a guy who actually imprisoned his band mates in a house for eight months, barely fed them, sometimes beat them up and made them rehearse one album day-in day-out until they dreamt it and then recorded that album in less than five hours, live, under the astonished and mild supervision of Frank Zappa. That album was called Trout Mask Replica, it made musical history and still stands firm on the 58th position in Rolling Stone Magazine's top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Number 1 in that top are The Beatles, the band the Captain sometimes lampooned.
Now, that's gotta count for something, more so considering that Don Van Vliet had no musical training whatsoever. He described the sounds he was looking for to the band members using complicated metaphors with frogs dipped in mud and crashing airplanes instead of just handing them the sheet music. He couldn't write one to save his life.

I gave Trout Mask Replica a try something like seven or eight years ago and hated it. Fucking dilettantes, I thought, not only these guys can't play for shit, but, look, the singer sounds like Tom Waits! Should have been more careful with the chronology there, for in fact Tom Waits sounds like Captain Beefheart and not the other way around. Tom Waits started sounding like Tom Waits after listening to Trout Mask Replica, and "Moonlight on Vermont" in particular.
Don Van Vliet had influenced tons and truckloads of artists, from PJ Harvey to Ween and from Pere Ubu to The Residents. I seem to remember Tom Barman using the lyric "what this world needs is a two dollar room" - from Beefeart's "The Buggy Boogie Woogie" - in a dEUS song somewhere, maybe a live version somewhere, I don't know. Anyway, the octopus's tentacles stretch very far, so its garden must be just as big.

Speaking of big, let's talk huge. I have summoned all my courage and insanity and decided to try and face Zappa's discography as well. Joggled some numbers and came to the conclusion that I should first quit my job, rent a cave or a desert, cut any connections with my family and friends and buy a monstruous amount of supplies that would last me at least three lifetimes. Piece of cake, only 89 albums.
We all know about the friendship and competition between Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Actually, no, we all don't know that, I just said it so I'd sound expertish. Which I am not. I'm more -ish than expert, but I do fake the expert part very well. I am an expert in that.
Frank helped Don a number of times. Bailed him out of jail, produced his album, took him on his Bongo Fury Tour so that Don would earn some honest, legal money and so on and so forth. But it's really hard to fit two elephants in the same matchbox. The friendship went sour and although they did bury the hatchet, they did it right before Frank went after the hatchet himself. Unfortunately. Don followed him 17 years later, this past December.
Oh yeah, but before that he quit music and became a famous painter instead. And he started as a sculptor at the age of 4. Do you follow?
(You know, I played with my mashed potatoes when I was a kid as well, I just didn't know there was a name for it: sculpture.)

I'm not even gonna attempt to describe Captain Beefheart's music. It's got a lot of blues, and it's got rock, and it's got jazz and beyond that you're on your own. I'm gonna try to restrain myself here and not post ten songs at once. I'll put...say three, for now. It's really hard to choose. But there will be more, I'm sure.

Captain Beefheart - When I See Mommy I Feel like a Mummy

Captain Beefheart - Pena

Captain Beefheart - Sun Zoom Spark

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

2011-01-08T12:34:00.007+02:00

Deanna Storey - Little person

It's one of those songs you think, oh god, not another singer-songwriter movie-ending bipolar girlie crap and the next second you find yourself paying attention to the lyrics and hardly squeezing in every other breath. I can't say I understood this movie - Synecdoche, New York, with the ubiquitous Philip Seymour Hoffman - Charlie Kaufman gets surreal and telescopic as usual, but it did make me feel very lonely in the end, so there wasn't much left for the song to do.

CAPTAIN'S DEAD

2011-01-06T11:16:00.004+02:00

Plowing my way through Captain Beefheart who, incidentally, just died this past December, 17th. I'm not listening to him because he's dead, I think it's more like the other way around.
I'll be back in a century or two.
Till then:

Ween - Captain

DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN

2011-01-04T15:54:00.010+02:00

Dillinger Escape Plan - Parasitic Twins

I really tried listening to these guys, time and again, but it didn't really stick. Too hardcore, I do need melody every now and then. And here it is. On their 2010 album Option Paralysis (the title barks for itself) there are two tracks that used actual harmonies in the recipe: this one and "Widower", which is shockingly suave. "Parasitic Twins" (nice titles, eh?) sounds a bit like NIN. And that's no sin. Pam pam. Somebody has to fill those shoes since Trent jumps barefoot on those million little buttons and calls it music. The lyrics also - close enough to Trent's. The pain, the drama, the prom. Almost makes you crave for Maynard on backing vocals, eh? Nah, it doesn't.

TRENT & TORI

2010-12-22T15:13:00.010+02:00

I was talking to a friend last night and she mentioned something about a relationship between Trent and Tori. That, and a bucketful of other things, had never occurred to me. It doesn't really surprise me that it hadn't since I walk around with the aforementioned bucket on my head at all times.

Trent and Tori, I like both. Just like Nick and Polly, they're all nice in a does-it-hurt-when-do-this kind of way. I'm not sure what went on between Trent and Tori, nor do I want to rummage through their shit, but judging by the way they talk about each other in interviews, it seems a sort of warm and witty friendship has been established, if a bit dysfunctional. All the good ingredients and that's all I need to know.

So I'm gonna rummage through their shit in a different manner. Here's two old songs from two old albums. I still think The Downward Spiral is one of the best albums ever made by a human being, despite the fact that I'm not 20 anymore. From Tori I still like Under The Pink the most, but I chose this song from Boys For Pele because of that pretty hate machine lyric, a direct reference to Trent.

Nine Inch Nails - Eraser

Tori Amos - Caught A Lite Sneeze

Now, while we're on the Trent subject, he's been busy this year apparently. He's got yet another band (is this guy competing with Mike Patton? Which would make for a nice collaboration, by the way) - How To Destroy Angels. Ok, the name is very very lame. But hey, destruction never gets old in the Sharon Tate mansion. Does he still live there? I don't know.
Anyway, the band consists of Trent, Atticus Ross and Mariqueen Maandig, Trent's wife. Check her out:

Yes: wow. Now I really can see no reason for this guy to be so pissed off.
And here's a song from their How To Destroy Angels EP. Very Trent2010.

How To Destroy Angels - The Believers

MORE DELIA

2010-12-20T11:06:00.012+02:00

White Noise - Love Without Sound

White Noise was more of the project, not exactly a band. England's Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson, who were making up weird sounds for the BBC radio shows at the time - 1969 - teamed up with David Vorhaus, an american bass player with a scientific mind. Together the came up with a music not yet heard by human ears, but enjoyed by martians regularly. The first British synthesizer, the EMS Synthi VCS3, was the latest whisper on the market, as it wasn't exactly a scream yet. These guys toyed with it and came up with a groundbreaking album entitled "An Electric Storm", which not many people understood, but which eventually changed the face of electronic music and influenced people like Orbital, Chemical Brothers, Aphex Twin, Secret Chiefs 3 and the list goes on and on.
Funny fact about the song above: "Love Without Sound, employed sped-up tape edits of Vorhaus playing the double bass to create violin and cello sounds." (Wiki)
Old school stuff, eh?

Delia was often called the "unsung heroine of (electronic) music". As it is customary, visionaries are rarely appreciated while still alive. It's only polite to praise them when they're dead and cannot blush any more.
Her most famous tune is the Dr Who theme. I have here an entire album of covers and versions of that song (Bill Bailey's version, "Dr Qui", is quite funny, despite the french or because of it). I'll just post her original track. More old school stuff and funny facts about this song: "She created it by recording the individual notes from electronic sources one by one onto magnetic tape, cutting the tape with a razor blade to get individual notes on little pieces of tape and sticking all the pieces of tape back together individually to make up the track and the process took weeks to complete." (source: this chick's blog. I'm just guessing it's a she because of the cat theme. Also, she works at BBC, so she must know something about something.)

Delia Derbyshire - Doctor Who Theme

ENTER THE VOID

2010-12-17T13:36:00.012+02:00

Delia Derbyshire - Air On G String

Listen to this little song. I know you know it, it's Bach. But this version was, ok I'll use the word, haunting in Gaspar Noé's Enter The Void, which I have started watching last night around 23.30, without realizing that it's 2.1/2 hours long. What with the cat and everything, I went to sleep around 3.
The rest of the soundtrack was more or less made by Thomas Banglate of Daft Punk, a band I don't really concur with. I say more or less because some people say he has indeed composed the soundtrack, while others say he's just provided Gaspar with some samples and weird noises, but was unable to do the soundtrack himself as he was busy working on another one, the one for Tron -Legacy.
Anyway.
I fell asleep around 3, but quite satisfied. Irreversible was a good film. No matter how sickening some scenes may have been (we all know which ones), you cannot say the film was shit, you just can't. Enter The Void is better, I feel.
And you know what's weird? Personally I hate and actively avoid movies that use explicit sex or violence (or over-zealous CGI, for that matter) as cheap bait, it's disgusting and retarded 9 out of 10 times. The masturbation in Ken Park and the fellatio in Brown Bunny are two perfect examples, but since this isn't a movie blog, I won't go there. Irreversible and Enter The Void both have those two items - explicit violence and sex -, but somehow it doesn't feel gratuitous at all. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it feels natural, noninvasive (if anything, you're the intruder) and almost tender at times. Granted, it won't feel like that to everybody, so be warned. But for a film dealing with death, afterlife, drugs, sex, abortion, car-crashes and all that, it's very poetic. I don't think I would've watched it, had I read the synopsis beforehand. It feels sick when you read about it, but it's quite a visual and emotional treat when you watch it. The film didn't shock me in itself, what shocked me was that I liked it.

And this version of the song is perfect, just perfect, in the film and in general (just to pretend this was only about the music all along.)

P.S. Worth mentioning: more about Delia Derbyshire here. I have the feeling there will be more of her here.

GONJASUFI

2010-12-15T15:59:00.003+02:00

Gonjasufi - Sheep

If it weren't for those women voices in the back, this song probably wouldn't be much of anything. It kinda drags its feet along the way, not much zeal to speak of, not much melody. But the song begins when those girls open their mouths and give it that 60s european film aroma, full of fancy cars jumping off exotic cliffs and exotic girls jumping on fancy beds and all that reckless jazz. Well, it would also make for a great 60s vacuum cleaner commercial tune. But it does have that retro vibe that gets you all nostalgic and shit even though you weren't even a sperm back then. I'm pretty sure I like it just because this kind of choir is right up Mike Patton's alley, only in his case it wouldn't be girls singing, it would be a gang of ghost rats haunting a pet cemetery or something.

HALF A MOJO

2010-12-14T10:51:00.008+02:00

Asaf Avidan & The Mojos - Through the Gale

Asaf Avidan & The Mojos - Poseidon's Fury Unleashed

Asaf Avidan doesn't waste much time, does he? Three years, three albums.
I now realize I've never trusted much prolific people. Something fishy. Can you be creative at that speed? And he's 30, what's the rush? I'm almost 35 and I haven't done anything, and look at me, I'm fine. Never mind the eye-twitch, I'm fine.
Zappa doesn't grow on trees, you know.
The point being, The Reckoning and Poor Boy/Lucky Man were good albums. This guy practically forced me into listening to Janis Joplin again, that's how good they were. And I despise the bitch.
This new album is...a bit rushed?

Through the Gale is a short album, under half an hour, so time is of the essence after all. I've listened to it on repeat at least 15 times, I think. No song has grabbed me like "Her Lies" or "The Ghost of A Thousand Little Lies" have, I kept realizing that the album had ended and begun again and I couldn't really tell when. But then I really strapped myself into the chair, paid attention and noticed the good bits as well. It's not a bad album. It's like a cookie: tastes good, but you're only delaying eating real food.

"Hoist up the colors" is jumpy and dancy and vibrant. It may as well be Muse. It kicks off the record on a positive note and you prick your ears up and go "yes?"
Then comes "Through the Gale", the first track I put up here. Again, I may be wrong, but the bass and guitar could very well be Muse or Placebo. But in a good way. I like it. His voice sounds so tired, maybe that's why I like it.
And on and on, you've got your haunting ballads and your head-banging rock (Poseidon's Fury Unleashed), you've got it all in a nice little 30 min snack of an album. Yum.
Now, who's hungry?

65DAYSOFSTATIC

2010-12-12T12:42:00.005+02:00

As I am:

washing and fixing toilets,

changing incredibly stubborn light bulbs and neons,

washing walls,

trying to fix leaking pipes,

cutting my hair with a machine that keeps discharging,

forgetting my coffee on the stove (brb),

back: no coffee for me today,

scraping stickers off of every wall with a blunt blade,

washing clothes,

doing dishes,

mopping the floor

watching the washing machine watching me and doing nothing,

and

having one hell of a ball in general,

this is the motherfucking soundtrack:

65DaysOfStatic - Weak4

TIMBER TIMBRE & free stuff

2010-12-08T17:50:00.005+02:00

Timber Timbre - Lay Down in the Tall Grass

Not an excellent album, but a soothing one. Simple, clear, quite to the point. The song "Magic Arrow" was featured in my favorite tv series at the moment, Breaking Bad. I like the series more than the song, so I picked this one instead. It sounds like it's thinking about something.

This one on the other hand, I'm putting it here just to shame it:

FM Belfast - Lotus [Explicit]

I was positive up until now that you couldn't really get much lower than Nouvelle Vague in this sunny, idle and brainless area of music - the kitschy-covery musical thingy corner. I thought "In a Manner of Speaking" by NV was rock bottom. Well, I stand corrected.
________________

On to business.
I am giving cds away for free, cause that's how I do business and that's how come it all works out so fine for me. I have a bag of audio cds, not original, but the covers are made by me about 8 years ago. It was back when I discovered downloads and went all berserk about it. If you like the music on this blog, you'll probably like the cds as well, so I won't give a list.

weebzam@gmail.com if you want them (Bucharest only, I won't ship this shit out anywhere)
Or we can meet for a coffee and you can throw them away for me, I don't have the heart.

LAURIE

2010-11-23T13:13:00.003+02:00

Laurie Anderson - Example 22

Laurie Anderson - Only an Expert

I was listening to Laurie Anderson's Big Science back in the 90s and I remember thinking "what strange music." In my defense, this was back when I thought the Verve were mysterious, esoteric and weird.
I loved "Big Science", didn't really know why, didn't really care. Example #22 was and still is one of my favorites. Haven't listened to much Laurie over the years, I am now ashamed to admit.
As I was watching people walking out during her concert last week I knew exactly how and what they felt: I had felt it to at some point. And that is: she's talking. I, on the other hand, was transfixed. The voice. The stories. The wisdom, irony and charm. Guess I am finally old enough to get what she's doing. She is brilliant.
There's no easy way to pick a favorite Laurie Anderson song, so I didn't even attempt it.
On Big Science there was a song called From The Air, a name that she apparently also used on another, more recent, piece about her dog discovering that things can also come from the air, from above. The song wasn't really about her dog LolaBelle, it was more about 9/11, but I don't feel like getting all deep just now. The thing is I can't find that song. A shame. Only An Expert will have to do.

QOTSA

2010-11-19T10:19:00.003+02:00

Queens Of The Stone Age - First It Giveth

I don't usually trust people with Josh Homme's face, he's the quintessential captain of the football team, the jock par excellence. But songs like this one, like Go With The Flow or The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret made me think otherwise.
No, of course I haven't had enough patience for his Desert Sessions, in spite of the name parade (Dean Ween, PJ Harvey, Mark Lanegan, Twiggy etc).

MV again

2010-11-17T10:40:00.007+02:00

Mars Volta - With Twilight As My Guide

It's not the first time I'm putting this song up here, I know, but I can't help it. Every time it pops up in my play list I have to stop and put it on repeat for an hour or two. For me it's right up there with Street Spirit and Heartattack In A Layby. For some reason my hair stands on ends every time I hear the line "By the longest tusk of corridors numb below the neck", I don't know why. The imagery these guys have...

And today I'm playing this song because it really helped last night. As I was slowly going crazy listening to a couple of birds chirping and chirping about shit that don't matter, I put my headphones on with this song and looked out the window. Everything changed.
Imagine cars speeding by, busy people walking by, happy people strolling by, beggars staring blankly at you and you staring blankly right back at them, through them, stores closing, dogs barking, children squeaking...And then everything drowns into this song and disappears. Everything seems irrelevant, still and comforting. It's like a gondola ride into the afterlife, slowly advancing through the tunnel and looking down at everything you're leaving behind. And it's fine.

ZAPPA

2010-11-16T10:23:00.007+02:00

Frank Zappa - Goblin Girl

By now I should probably get more albums by this guy - God knows he's got thousands - , but I'm stuck on "You are what you is" and I'm actually fine with that. I wanted to put "Beauty knows no pain" too, just for the lyrics that go

Beauty is a bikini wax and waitin' for yer nails to dry
Beauty is a coloured pencil, scribbled all around yer eye
Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die
Beauty is a, beauty is a, beauty is a lie

but then decided that this song is thick and rich enough for its flavor last for hours. Oh, those sounds she makes....

ODDITIES

2010-11-09T16:55:00.007+02:00

I've been meaning to put these two songs here for some time now, but thought Bah! the Residents again, Primus again...
Yes, AGAIN! Because I think they're great.
First, the Residents. When I first listened to this album - Wb-Rmx - and found it so...listenable (for a Residents album) I fantasized about these songs being remixes of non-existent songs. It would have been "so like them" to do that, whatever that means, if anything. And it's almost true. The infamous "Warner Bros Album", as it came to be known although it was never released, sounds almost nothing like this one. First of all "The WB Album" is not really an album, seriously now. It;s like saying Ween's "Crucial Squeegie Lip" is a proper album. It's just not. It's nerdy teens having some fun with a microphone and that's what's funny about it. The WB Album is very similar in that respect: they were just fucking around. But then, almost 30 years later, they come up with this remix album that is just fantastic. They practically took nothing, remixed it (remix what?? there was no music on the original)...ok, added rhythm and harmony to the whole thing and it sounds great. You can actually dance to it! Imagine that.
And this particular song, oh I love it! It's SO annoying! It starts very annoying, with that voice chanting...god knows what over and over again, then somebody (finally) yells "shut up!!!" and the song begins. And after the song starts, it starts again. Buaha. And then, just when you're getting into it, throwing your cigarette out the window of the speeding car and going for it, the song stops and turns into some Buddhist incantation that just kills anything vaguely resembling a mojo. It's so funny. I swear, these guys are such purists: nevermind selling your soul to the record company, these fuckers don't even sell their souls to their listeners. They never let them have what they want. It's just teases, sniffs. They give you a tic-tac when you're screaming for a box of After-Eight's, just so you know they'd be able to cook it they really wanted to.

The Residents - Ohm Is Where The Art Is

Primus and Residents. Nice sandwich, eh? Les Claypool has often been asked if he's not the Residents' vocalist, after all. Which he's not, but there's your link right there.
This song doesn't really sound like Primus, it's kinda Floyd-ish. They're almost serious with this one, they mean it. Better shield your eyes now little babies.
And speaking of meaning, they kept hinting at a (long overdue) new album. Do they mean it? Please?

Primus - Electric Electric

ESKMO

2010-11-08T18:28:00.002+02:00

Oh wow, look at that.
Ish.

THE BLACK KEYS

2010-11-04T17:40:00.004+02:00

The Black Keys - Lies

The Black Keys - I'm not the one

Blues straight from the cow's udder, baby. You'd think you're in the 60's - 70's somewhere, maybe even further back, just a blur in the background. But we're in the 21st century alright, quite the foreground, too.
I don't know, Asaf Avidan, Jack White and these guys... Are we going back in time? Cool.

MADENSUYU (and Ex Drummer)

2010-11-02T17:29:00.010+02:00

Madensuyu - Sugar On

Madensuyu - Oh Frail

Belgium twitched another muscle. Let's see, in the beginning there was dEUS. No, actually before dEUS Belgium squirted a bunch of other bands out, bands like Front 242, Revolting Cocks, K's Choice, Dive and also bands like Technotronic and Vaya Con Dios. These are just some of the belgian bands I have heard of and have listened to. I'm keeping one eye on Wiki as I write this. Did you know Natacha Atlas was also from Belgium? I had no idea. Do you care? Yeah, me too.
Anyway. After all that came dEUS in the 90's. Then Ghinzu in the 00's. And then along came these guys in 2006. Basically, they rock.
I was told about them by a friend who had also recommended the film "Ex Drummer" to me, a film which has both Ghinzu and Madensuyu on the soundtrack. Coincidence? I think not, considering the friend. The film is as sick as a small pony, but quite good in its own genre, which I'm not sure what it is. I was so ready to be disgusted, but then decided against it when I caught myself laughing at a very sick-sick scene. Grab a bucket and some mints and watch it. Kick ass soundtrack too, as I may have mentioned.
So yeah. Belgium, huh...

p.s. Yes, the picture is a scene from Ex Drummer. The guy is dead and still talking about that hot dog on the table which, yes, is his dick. All of it. Don't shy away, it's really quite funny.