But it really doesn’t matter now

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Sounds like a naked Fugazi.

For whatever reason, I totally neglected the Evens first two records. Mistake. I’ve been playing both records, as well as the two new songs on repeat for the last two days. The duo has a new record on the way for later this year. Can’t wait.

A new the Evens record is on its way in 2012 as well. Can’t wait.

Also. I think I need to get myself a baritone guitar. Tigs, guess who invented ‘em:

Danelectro was the first to introduce the Baritone guitar in the late 50′s
and it quickly caught on as a signature sound for spaghetti western soundtracks.

 

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Ice Age versus Heavy Times

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In 2011, two punk albums with similar philosophies, created on different contintents, came out. The first was lauded as one of the greatest best punk albums of modern post-post-punk times and all-around praised for breathing life into a genre (only assholes think) thought to be dead. That album was also included on many best of year-end lists, sometimes as one of the very few albums you could describe as LOUD with a straight face. The second album was released on a reputable American garage/punk label and got some reviews, mostly favorable, and that’s it. The first is Ice Age’s New Brigade. The second is Heavy Times’ Jacker. The first is shit. The second is beautiful.

The similarities on these two records is a little eerie. I’m probably making too much out of it, but fuck it, I’m bored, worked way too long today and my bottle of whiskey is still pretty heavy. Besides, I feel like picking on a bunch of Danish 19 year-olds who probably want nothing more than to write and play punk songs that will get them laid. Nothing wrong with that.


Ice Age Heavy Times
New Brigade Jacker
What’s Your Rupture? HoZac
12 songs 12 songs
24 minutes 22 and a half minutes
Copenhagen Chicago
skuzzy skuzzy
hi-fi lo-fi
OK with electronic music in punk OK with electionic music in punk
hooks hooks
joy divison cover band? stoner punk?
would not would
teenagers or early 20s no fucking idea
“Total Drech” “Erase the Sun”
“I am white ruin” “Cemetery at the hospital!”

While you can make comparisons to other bands with Heavy Times, it ain’t regurgitated bile. Heavy Times songs sound like they come from that same primal killer instinct section of the brain that birthed “Search and Destroy,” “Sailin On,” “Bob Dylan Wrote Propoganda Songs” or “Last Days of Man on Earth.” Ice Age sounds like they listened to Closer, Unknown Pleasures, Pink Flag and Entertainment! tossed it all in a blender and started bottling it as their own. Maybe I’m out of touch, but I’d probably listen to it and you could tell me its from England in 1979 and I’d fucking believe you. If I got Heavy Times, I’d at least know that Jay Reatard lived.

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Mission of Burma obliterated MHOW

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Mission of Burma at Music Hall of Williamsburg
January 19, 2012

It’s time to stop calling Mission of Burma an influential band, as Bowery Presents offered up before the show via Twitter: “If you don’t already know why Mission of Burma is such an influential band, find out tonight at @MusicHallofWB.”

Of course they are influential, but did you suffer ear trauma and go deaf right before May 2004? Burma tipped their musical output scales towards NEW compared to OLD in 2009! Sure, since 1983 it’s been impossible to double clutch a D or an E on your Fender without feeling a little bit like a piece of shit ripoff. And every serious, fuckaround and professional loud guitar player has been in some band and played a Burma cover (mine played “That’s How I Escape My Certain Fate” amazingly terrible), but these geezers are still making better music than 100 percent of the jerkshits they influenced. Burma is a band of the present and future. They proved that once again at Music Hall of Williamsburg last night.

About eight or nine songs in, I turned to my cousin and my girlfriend, (the usual Burma crew: we’ve probably seen Burma together eight or nine times) and I said, “They haven’t played any OLD OLD songs yet … Fuck influential!” (You see I was already pissed and had a lot of that introduction on the walls of my brain. (I say OLD OLD because ONoffON‘s from 2004.))

Mixed into that were NEW NEW songs that haven’t come out yet and I imagine are on the new record that Burma recently finished recording and I expect to come out some time after the ground thaws. They played six brand spanking new songs by my count (Once NYCtaper releases the show, I’ll be able to do the math), and each made me smile. I’m serious about that. I smiled. Sure it was nice at the end to hear the OLD OLD songs like “Photograph” and “Academy,” but I go to see what crazy guitar shit Roger Miller is coming up with now. I go to see what weird song structures they are able to pull off. I go to see what pretty chorus Clint Conley will belt out.

I could tell the band has been playing the new songs a hellofalotlately because they sounded spot on, even tigether than their older, NEW OLD or OLD OLD, stuff.

A few of the new songs were a lot louder and more chaotic than anything on The Sound The Speed The Light. Drummer Peter Prescott had a lyric sheet in front of him and roared behind the kit for two of the new songs, which makes me think the new album may be more like The Obliterati, which was heavy on Presscott singing songs. But I won’t even really think about it until it comes out because every Burma album is its own.

A special treat was “Max Ernst,” which, immediately before Roger Miller said they had not played in 2006, my cousin turned to me and said, “Haven’t heard this in a while.”

Music Hall was half-capacity, maybe because nobody likes to continue seeing “influential” or, dare I use a word from the ShortWaveRockin graveyard of rockwrite terms, “Seminal” bands running through the hits from 30 years ago. If they were aware these four dudes (I didn’t forget you, Bob) were currently creating the best punk music on the planet, maybe it’d have been sold out with a line running down the cold, cold street.

To see photos of last night’s show, check out Impose magazine. Photo above is a shot of last night’s poster Roger Miller sold off the stage afterwards.

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Minutemen/Saccharine Trust 7-inch from 2011

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Minutemen/Saccharine Trust split 7-inch
2011 Water Under the Bridge Records (San Pedro, CA)

I thought I had the Minutemen cornered. I’ve got all their records, singles, lots of cruddy bootlegs, the We Jam Econo DVD. I know the Meltzer Minutemen scribblings. I know the Charles Plymell We Jam Econo masterful wonderpiece. I follow Mike Watt shit to this day, even though it’s hard to catch up. I just ordered Spielgusher and his album with Stave Mackay is on its way. But I have nothing cornered. I should know better! Cornering the Minutemen!? Figuring out the Minutemen!? How goddamn foolish of me. I missed three songs: “9:30 may 2,” “clocks” and “prelude,” the first recorded for the New Alliance Records Compilation Cracks in the Sidewalk comp from 1980, the second from the New Alliance Records Compilation Chunks comp from 1981 and the third, a bet-your-fucking-fine-ass Tyrannosaurus Rex (before they had bass and a boa and called umselves T.Rex) cover from the New Underground Records Life is Beautiful So Why Not Eat Health Foods? comp from 1983, released in a brand spankin new 2011 Raymond Pettibon blessed purple and white 7-incher. Wow. Swallow that.

So I missed the first Minutemen release since 1987 (I’m counting Ballot Result cus it has the best version of one of the best Minutemen songs of all time on it: “Little Man With a Gun In His Hand”).

And I bet I missed a hell of a lot more. And I bet even more lost songs are out there sitting out there on dusty shelves collecting no dust (because its the goddamn MinuteMEN).

The 7-inch is masterful and short and over before you know it. You can listen to the Minutemen side four times by the time you’ve read to this part of this bullshit post. Only the first track has lyrics, the other two are instrumentals, the second, as said earlier, was written by Marc Bolan and its the first track off 1970s’ A Beard of Stars.

“9:30 may 2″ has good, there’s no other kind, Watt lyrics:  (listen here)

merv griffin said
“that in the heart of italy
the people there are probably
the least religious in the world”
then sophia loren said
“I don’t know about that”
“what does america mean to you?”
“america means everything to me”

In 2005, a guy named Derek reached out on a thread at ilxor to figure out the lyrics. He ended up e-mailing Watt and Watt wrote back the lyrics and said this below it:

I hope this helps. it’s actually what I heard on that date when
watching the merv griffin show. I can’t believe I was watching that but even
more amazed at the stupid shit coming out of merv’s mouth.

on bass, watt

I’ve listened to the 7-inch about 15 times now, and I can’t for the death of me think of what the second song is all about or sounds like. Ah, here she comes. Chaotic instrumental with the patented Minutemen start stops, bass solo, guitar chimes in. Not sure if it was recorded before or after The Punch Line, but its one of the earliest in the Minutemen cannon and a really great song that makes you want to wave your arms around like a madman conductor.

The last song, “Prelude,” is a beautiful cover of this song, Minutemenized. CCR can be punk rock. Tyrannosaurus Rex can be punk rock, too. The Saccharine Trust side has three songs from earlys 80s comps as well. Watt plays acoustic guitar on the madness spoken word slugfest “A Christmas Cry.”

So bow to your trees
and give thanks,
for you have not yet felt
the wrath of God.

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2011, an Addendum

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I’m not one to argue with Adam’s picks, partly because even if I disagree with him at the moment, in time I will eventually come around to see that he was correct, and partly because he can be angry fucker and scary to boot, so EVERYTHING HE SAID IS CORRECT, in particular about the Mike Watt pick, and an added thanks goes out to Mr Watt himself for the SWR nod. That being said there are a couple of other awards that I would like to add to our 2011 picks of best whatevers.

2011′s 2010 Album of the Year:
Lobi Traore – Bwati Kono

Still fresh as the first time I heard it. If you haven’t listened to it, you have to now. Post-humously released, the greatest guitar player of the past who knows how long’s swan song, if I could understand what he was saying I bet I would be putting the lyrics as my away messages. And yes, I still use away messages.

Honorable Mention:
Titus Andronicus – The Monitor

Country Album of the Year:
Merle Haggard – Working in Tennessee

So good I bought it twice. Merle has been doing this longer than most of us will do fucking anything in our lives, and that’s saying something. He probably should have been dead 15 times over at this point, but he keeps going and keeps creating the best albums of his carrer. 74 years old and he hasn’t missed a step once. Well maybe a couple of times inbetween there were stumbling points but it has never been enough to quit outright. From the anti-Nashville song to the anti-Rebel song to the pro-Nashville burning song and everything in between this album is a metaphor of why you should never stop doing what you love. And Willie’s on it. Too bad his latest didn’t hit like this.

Honorable Mention:
Willie Nelson – Remember Me, Vol 1

Old Bastard Album of the Year:
Paul Simon – So Beautiful or So What

The main difference between this and SMiLE is that I knew SMiLE would be great, and I didn’t expect to like this new Paul Simon album at all. I didn’t at first, it took a few listened to really fall into it. Infinity shrouded in melancholia, what’s not to love?

Honorable Mention:
The Beach Boys – SMiLE

Non-English Language Album of the Year:
Cornershop & The Double ‘O’ Groove of…featuring Bubbley Kaur

There isn’t much more I could say about this album. When I listen to an album and forget that I can’t understand a thing that is being said and enjoy it just as though I was fluent, and feel as though I have some deeper understanding of what is going on just by the force, music, and vocal distinction that is present…I forget what I was going to say. It’s fucking righteous. That is all.

Honorable Mention:
Generation Bass Presents: Transnational Dubstep

Hip Hop Album of the Year:
Das Racist – Relax

It took some time but this album grew on me. My inital listenings had me praising the first half of the album and throwing out the rest. Now I can’t stop listening the final 3 new tracks (Rainbow in the Dark was originally on Shut Up, Dude) warts and all. In fact the screw ups (are they even screwing up or was it intentional), the missteps, pop culture references, and the quotes from their previous two mixtapes make this easily the most endeering, interesting, intelligent, and just a fucking intense album of the year.

Honorable Mention:
Jay-Z / Kanye West – Watch the Throne

Please Shut the Fuck Up Album of the Year (Award to the album that people won’t stop talking about):
Bon Iver – S/T

PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THIS ALBUM

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fIREHOSE is rEUNITING!

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Sure At the Drive-In would be fun to see if I were going to Coachella. I’m not. But the reunited Pulp, the reunited Madness, the reunited Black Sabbath (who were maybe possible supposed to play it but are not, unfortunately for a real bad reason: Iommi has cancer) don’t do much for me.

This does something for me. fIREHOSE!

The news ain’t getting much play out there. Why? I have no idea. George Hurley, Mike Watt and ed fROMOHIO are getting back together for Coachella. We’ve also heard about two possible shows on the Left Coast, so hopefully this means more shows. And hopefully that means an East Coast show. I wonder where fIREHOSE would play in the greater New York area. I’d love to see them at Maxwell’s or Mercury Lounge, but I think they could play Bowery or Music Hall, right?

However it works out, fIREHOSE playing some shows together can only mean good things in store for Two Thousand Twelve.

 

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Keep Barrel Rollin, Rollin…: Star Fox 64 3D Review (3DS)

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Star Fox 64 3DI have a deep dark secret. Multiple in fact that keep awake at night, haunted by the ghosts of dead…well never mind, the point is I never played Star Fox on the SNES nor did I ever play Star Fox 64. In fact the only Star Fox game I had previously played was Adventures on the GameCube, which means that this recent re-release and upgrading of Star Fox 64 is the first time I have stepped into the cockpit with Fox McCloud.
Star Fox
            Originally released on the Nintendo 64, Star Fox 64 (or Lylat Wars in Europe) served as both a reboot of the series and a remake of the original game, with plenty of new features including some straight from the never released Star Fox 2 for SNES. As Fox McCloud it is up to you and your group of mercenaries to save the Lylat System for the devious, fiendish and down right evil Andross.

Star Fox Asteroid

Q-Games, best known for their PixelJunk series, has done an incredible job making this 14 year old game look fresh. They didn’t just slap a new coat of paint on the game; they have taken great care into rebuilding the textures and animations flying this game straight into the new millennium of video games. The original voice actors were even rehired to re-record their dialogue. Now that’s devotion.

Star Fox Boss

The game flows beautifully for the hour or so it will take you to complete your first run of the story. It looks, feels and plays like it was a brand new IP. You can choose to control Fox using either the circle pad or the 3DS’ gyroscope, both of which work incredibly (and surprisingly) well. However if you’re going to use the gyroscope controls I recommend turning 3D off because it is a difficult task to keep everything in focus while tilting and turning the system. This is a shame because the 3D is truly breathtaking. The depth and dimension that it adds to the game play is phenomenal, similar to the deep endless blue sky of Pilotwings Resort.

Multiplayer Star Fox

The multiplayer is Download Play, so only one of your friends needs to have the cart for up to four of you to play the game, but it’s over far too soon. Also limiting the multiplayer to local play only is a bummer and a missed opportunity to blast this game off into ‘must buy’ territory.
More Star Fox
While the game is only an hour in length there are multiple branching paths that can only be opened by completing specific tasks in the game. The first three times I played through the game I ended up in different parts every time which only makes me want to replay it more. You may not even fight the true final boss on your first trip through, that’s the kind of game this is. It almost demands multiple play throughs since you can see all of the planets you can visit on the solar system map immediately upon starting the game and are only left to wonder what they could be like and how to access them.
Star Fox Montage
However, the game is only an hour in length with no discount in price to reflect this. It’s a steep barrier to entry that seems to be catered to the nostalgic crowd who has disposable income and archaic to newer generations. A few new planets could have been added, or even just stretched out the campaign with the planets already present. While the updates and additions are great, some of them, such as the original voice actors, seem too much like they’re trying to capture lighting in a bottle for the third time. This might be a running theme amongst Nintendo games, but rarely is it this transparent.
Star Fox Crew
Star Fox 64 3D is a good game, any fan of the original will feel comfortable and happy with this port and the updates they made to it. The price point, lack of online multiplayer, and shortsighted game redesign due to nostalgia keep this from being a great game and even a system seller.
Grade: B-

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3 Quick Writing Bursts About the Last Few Weeks

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I call these writing bursts because I don’t think they can really be classified as anything other than that. They can barely be classified as writing, but hey it’s my website.

Just the Beginning:
All the people I thought I left behind
Are now light years in front of me
If maturation is a chimera
I’ve wasted so much time, hiding cowardly in the weeds
An old spark reignited in the rain
Unknowingly shows me all the strength that I need
I strap on my gear and face the monster head on
Start by killing this plague that’s been lingering over me

Inside the Garden:
I came by to visit you the other day
You were asleep, I woke you up, you couldn’t remember my name
Neil Diamond dancing in the background
You said you liked his sound
Lunch was good, you couldn’t eat another bite
And your dead mother and sisters visited you last night
I asked you what you thought of Neil’s suit
There was a familiar stench of misery and medicinal root
You said his suit and sound were a travesty
And that they hadn’t fed you in days
Your eyes closed abruptly as your fell back asleep
I kissed your head, I’ll be back later this week

Pollution: 
Coarse hairline
Cigarette swigging down
Underneath the tall trees
Where play is out of bounds
Deep anxiety turns to rage, then to disappointment
Misunderstanding leads me back to anxiety
If I could break out of they cycle
I’d do it today
Fall back into it merrily
If you said it was okay
It doesn’t matter who crosses the line first
When everyone else quit the race

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