ShortWaveRockin

Part I: THE OMEN
People hand me scraps of paper. Sometimes napkins. I’d say about 1/4 of the slobs that walk into the library for information, which is about 1/4 of the total visiting population, don’t say anything at first, they hand me their crumpled little piece of paper and wait.
On Friday I got one from a senile old man wearing what senile old men wear, grey sweaters with zippers. It said “TINNITUS.” All Caps.
“Is this an author’s last name?”
He laughs. “No, no, no… it’s a disease, an illness. One in four people have it on the whole planet. Most don’t know it.”
I find the American Tinnitus Association site (www.ata.org). I print him some info including the FAQs. The first says there is absolutely no cure for this awful disease. The second says what it is:
Tinnitus is the medical term for the perception of sound in one or both ears or in the head when no external sound is present. It is often referred to as “ringing in the ears,” although some people hear hissing, roaring, whistling, chirping or clicking.
“Oh yeah. I’ve got this,” I say.
“See? I told you.”
I didn’t know there was a word for it, but now I know. When it’s really quiet, I hear a very gentle buzz like the sound of a far off highway or humidifier. I get him a book on hearing disorders and say “Have a nice day.” He doesn’t hear me and stumbles away into his world of hissing and echoes, a world I’m destined to be part of one day. It is my destiny for I’m already halfway there. If I leave the city and the sound of my lovely Major Deegan, I get headaches so bad I can’t sleep.
That little slip of paper was an omen, the bad kind.

PART II: THE POST-OMEN BEGINNING
Because today, after a few days of swelling, my head is ready to explode. It’s been getting tighter and tighter and I can’t get it loose. I’ve got the Tinnitus real bad. Roky Erickson bad. It started on Friday night at the Whitney Museum. Orphan and Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon and Yellow Tears all with their own version of noise. Orphan killed. The bands were set up in the gutted coffee shop in the same large room as the Museum gift shop. When Orphan started playing, the looks of horror in the bookshop were priceless. One was from some asshole in a Black Flag T-shirt. He should be shot because he failed to understand Orphan is Chuck Dukowski bass leads and good steady drums with some black metal screaming over the top.

Kim Gordon rubbed her guitar against the walls and pillars of the museum and her legs and her amp. She was very sensual with her noise. At one point during the fifteen minute set, she sat spread eagle behind her amp and pulled the guitar back and forth like a dildo. Thurston was to her left on his knees bending an acoustic guitar and I think fiddling with knobs. His guitar had a shiv in it so it buzzed more the usual buzz. Yellow Tears were on last and they are a “noise” band. I put it in quotes because it’s the genre. I won’t try to write about them because I wouldn’t know what to write. I have no background in that music, but the people there sure got horny for it. Some of them were frothing at the mouth and pumping their fists in the air like a sweaty Italian with tribal tattoos at a Nine Inch Nails show.

PART III: THE SECOND ACT BRIDGE
Then. Drinking. Work. All I hear is beeping and I walk around like a crazy person trying to find the beep. Drinking. Drinking. Very little sleep. Queens to interview a metal band. This is maybe when the problem got worse. I was interviewing the band in their living room and they wanted to play a few songs to finish up practice.
As we went downstairs.
“You want ear plugs?”
“Nah. I’m alright.”
“We all wear earplugs.”
“Really? Is it that loud?”
“Yea”
One of them comes downstairs after all of us and just before they started playing says to the others, “Did you give him earplugs?”
“I’ll be alright. I’ll put my hat on.”
“Yea, put your hat on.”
Fuck, they were loud. Motorhead loud. I didn’t really notice the echo swarm in my head until I got home after Wrestlemania in Brooklyn. And now I can’t get my head to shut up. At work I still hear a beeping sound. In my living room I hear cell phones ringing and everyone looks at me like an idiot when I say, “You’re phones ringing, dude.” There’s no phone ringing.
It’s gotten so bad I can’t tell what’s real or what’s fake. This morning I heard showtunes coming from next door and a pounding coming from above. I think the upstairs neighbors got a treadmill. I hope it was a treadmill or this Tinnitus is worse than I thought.
Sometimes it’s the sound of the Theremin from “Good Vibrations” for an hour or so.

PART IV: THE POINT IS ROKY
During this time, I’ve found some solace in the new Roky Erickson album True Love Cast Out All Evil. Roky Erickson heard so many voices and noises in his head he used to have all his radios and televisions turned on to drown them out. I’m not there yet, but we’ll see. I’ve been very excited about this album and now that’s it’s here I can say it is very great. My favorite thing is it’s construction from beginning to end. Most of these songs are re-recorded versions of old demos and songs Roky has had lying around for years, but it works as an album. It’s his first one of those in about 14 years, so instead of ignoring the fact that he was absolutely insane and out of his fucking mind during his mainstream recording dark age, the album acknowledges it. It might even relish it.

The first, “Devotional Number One” is a recording Roky’s mom made when he was in Rusk State Maximum Security Prison For The Criminally Insane after being arrested for weed in 1969. There are few better lyrics in the history of rock in this song: “Jesus is not a hallucinogenic mushroom.” I love the choice to have this as the first song. When the short “Ain’t Blues Too Sad” comes in with all it’s professional sounding glory, it’s a good feeling. It’s a triumph for the mad underdog.

Next is the single “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” and it’s a seemingly overproduced poppy+sappy =pappy song but there is a very weird whine behind the entire mix. It sounds like a finger on a wine glass. To me, it means Roky is not completely together as much as the press release or record label would have you believe. Instead of letting his insanity interfere with making music, he’s incorporating the two. Going back to “Good Vibrations,” it’s a pop song with an unsettling whine lurching in the shadows.

Usually, there is no shortage of odd sounds in Roky songs because they are all recorded in weird places. Since the majority of Roky Erickson’s music I listen to (Never Say Goodbye and Gremlins Have Pictures) is recorded as a demo, outside, in a hospital or a living room, I’ve gotten used to the style. So some of the songs on this album are shocking in how well they are produced. I guess I’m not used to Roky’s voice so clear and with so many instruments and layers. I’m not a snob, though, as much as I’d like to think so. A good song is a good song. “Be And Bring Me Home” is good with all the production. Even one of my absolute favorites “John Lawman” is good. For the first twenty seconds, the faraway guitar sounds identical (might be the same one) from the version I know from Gremlins with Pictures, until the new song plows over the top. Roky’s voice gets some effects, but it doesn’t sound overly cheesy like it probably should. This is again due to the fact that a good song is a good song. And a song with the only lyrics being repeated are: “I kill people all day long/ I sing my song/ ‘cus I’m John Lawman” is a classic song. Mark it down in rock canon classic. The song ends with a bunch of studio noises. Maybe they found a way to hook up a microphone to record the inside of Roky’s head. Thank you 21st Century.

So the album continues and another classic Roky song is redone, “Birds’d Crash.” The guys in Okkervil River are pretty good with it, they don’t miss the big hook and I appreciate it. I equate this song to the Elevators’ best “Splash 1.” It ends with some fuzz and birds chirping and a crappy recorded demo of Roky in his house with all the weird background noises. Instead of telling the world, HERE HE IS, ROKY ERICKSON, THE MAN WHO WROTE “YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME” in all his PRODUCED STUDIO GLORY BACK AFTER 14 YEARS, the album ends with a scratchy demo called “God is Everywhere.” It’s a prayer. It’s hopeful. Some studio strings are laid over the top at the end, but it doesn’t kill the buzz for me. Roky is crazy and he’s back. He’s taking his meds and he’s on the road and he’s not hearing as many voices as usual.

This song paired with the opener lead me to believe Roky Erickson writes the most pure or righteous religious songs I know. I think it’s because when he’s singing about God or the Devil, he’s singing about them like they are sitting there in the room with him instead of up in the clouds or in some abstract place. And it’s because he has sat in his living room with the devil and god and a vampire and Abe Lincoln. He’s good friends with all of them.

So at the end of my fIREHOSE Project, Part III, I said I would write a review of Flyin’ the Flannel in haiku. It was a joke because this fIREHOSE thing has taken on a new life of it’s own and at the time it seemed like the only logical next step after harrassing an old woman who may or may not have lived in the same house as Edward Crawford in Pittsburgh. Logical, maybe, but stupid as hell. Because of this little comment, I didn’t want to make anyone think I’m a liar, even if I am one. So I fuckin did it. I wrote some haiku (is the plural of haiku, haiku? Like how we all know the plural of bison is bison?). It was hard as hell and the work I do for money may have sacrificed while I occupied my time on this, but oh well. Without any further beating of the bush or other things, here are six haikus, though one doesn’t have the right syllables, but if Mike Watt has taught me anything it’s fuck what those others do, do what you do ‘cus you think it’s right. So here’s what I think of fIREHOSE’s 1991 Columbia debut album Flyin’ the Flannel.

________________

Just cus more listen
don’t mean it’s sold out in soul
or unamazing

_________________________

“Towin’ the Line” is
Minutemen on low rpm
yet still under 3

________________

O’er the town O’austin
a boy named Daniel
is walking his cow

__________________________

Slow down slow down slow
on the turns, hug ‘em sweetly
but kill the straightways

________________

Mike Watt was born with
a flannel shirt and blue genes.
What’s a Seattle?

_________________________

Sometimes songs live up
to their saintly song titles,
“Epoxy, for Example”

_________________

And if you recognize that green/red flannel above, yes, it is my actual scanned flannel that Jesus is wearing up there. The damn thing ripped up the side and I’m real pissed ‘cus we’ve been through a lot together. At least 7 or 8 years, damn.

-ADAM

“Why would I want to write for SPIN? I can’t even write out the band name Fucked Up let alone write that Fucked Up’s last record fucking sucked ass.”

-Me (Today)

So the fine people over at Starcleaner Records sent me a bunch of their back catalog to check out and possibly write about. So far, I haven’t gotten past the first one by San Francisco’s all girl, all power, all trio Songs for Moms.

Songs for Moms – The Worse It Gets the Better (2007 Starcleaner)

As far as I know, I’m not a mom. I am a little addicted to this record though, even if the songs aren’t for me. They should be for me, though. I have a thing for a chicks with guitars, chicks with basses and chicks that play drums. And also chicks who can curse and not get offended at being called a chick. Alright, so I’m an asshole. I also value more than anything on this planet people who speak their mind regardless of what genitalia they were decided to have at the great coin flip in utero. So after listening to The Worse It Gets the Better, the 1st LP from Songs for Moms about a hundred and fifty times, one thing is definitely clear: these chicks can curse AND say what’s on their mind. Both are a lost art in this rockroll game, but they fucking do it.

To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, the first track is titled “1906″ and it’s a punkoustica waltz. It might be clean electric guitar, but my ears aren’t good enough to tell the difference. The two singers Molly and Alanna sing “Why are we so afraid to die when so many of us are not living?” They each sing the line while the other intertwines around it. It’s not exactly harmonizing and it’s not exactly group vocals because the inflections are different. OK maybe it’s harmonizing. Regardless, it’s to the point. If Dylan proved you can have a catchy song without a single rhyme, Songs for Moms prove you don’t need metaphors either. You can say what you mean, direct. Imagine that!

Now anyone who read the first paragraph might think, alright, why is it so important this band curses? Lots of bands curse. That’s actually not the case, though. Think about it. I think Nu Metal severely hurt the whole idea of cursing in music with guitars because your average jerkoff “indie” rock band does not swear. So when I first heard Molly or Alanna, I’m not sure which is which when singing, singing the opening to “My Skin is a Graveyard” very sweetly: “We were all just fucking crazy singing our cares away” and the song launches into this Corona/Pensacola,Florida/Anthem for the Manic, I thought it was the greatest. I don’t get goosebumps that much, but I was goosebumpin’. I didn’t get to the next song for a while cus I had it on repeat but when I did, I realized the next song was even better. This time they didn’t bother with the little intro, just straight into a killer 1:43 angry punk song with a song title to rival the ages, “”Don’t Live With Your Lover or Love with Your Liver.”

The same way the best California bands from the early 80s broke apart the binding chains of hardcore (Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Saccharine Trust), Songs for Moms is doing to the very common, very bland sound of indie rock pop. You’re not gonna hear this on a goddamn iPod commercial like the Thermals or bound for the TV Vivian Girls, but that’s only because it’s too honest. Though it would get a lot of moms to shit their pants if a song like “The Places We Love” played on a commercial during an episode of Lost: “We are so fuckin old. When did you start pretending you didn’t know? We are so old.” And it won’t be the “fuckin” that gets them to shit their pants, it’ll be the realization that they are fucking old and that they should be doing something more with their life. But who fucking knows? Maybe the band is right: the worse it gets, the better. For these songs, that ain’t the case. Side A kills. Side B starts to run together a little with “Coney Island” and the “Rain Song,”  but the all acoustic untitled last song brings the album into a higher tax bracket altogether. It reminds me of the anti-beautiful ending to Fugazi’s The Argument where the music ends on a relatively positive tone and if you aren’t paying really close attention, you’ll miss the depression. But if you think about it in context to a band and to this group of songs, it ain’t sad anymore. You realize the singers are just as far gone as you are and what they dislike or fail to understand in this world IS what gives them meaning.

My picks: “Don’t Live With Your Lover or Love with Your Liver,” “My Skin is a Graveyard,” “Expendable,” “Untitled Last Song.”

More Reviews to Come. Check out the Expendable MP3 above.

-ADAM

A common thing for assholes to say is “Oh man, listen again. It’s has to GROW on you.” These are the same jerks that tell you that a band like Animal Collective will somehow become interesting if you listen to them enough times, slowly taking over your chief motor functions like some weird unidentified fungus from the jungles of Brazil. I think this is mostly bullshit, though sometimes I’m an asshole too and an album will creep up on me and grab me by the balls or the brain (depending on the album, sometimes an arm or leg) after first saying it was crap. But it is mostly bullshit. If you listen to ANYTHING enough times and dedicate enough of your life to doing it OVER and OVER, you will end up liking it because it’s familiar to you and hell, human beings want to know they are not dicking around doing something completely unimportant and meaningless so they have to justify their importance by validating the object in question with a “Good” stamp.

Now, on to Mission of Burma’s The Sound the Speed the Light. Off the bat. Horrible album title. Sounds like something only a scumbag like Bono could come up with, not my favorite band walking the planet. I never hold titles against anyone, so on to the music. TSTSTL (acronymized would have been a better album title) is not only a great Burma record it’s a great record. The difference being they can still out-punk the post-punk fucks and out-punk themselves by doing something different than in the past.

Here’s my transitional sentence. At first I thought there wasn’t anything that special going on with this. All the BURMA elements are there. It sounds like the type of album Mission of Burma would make instead of one they actually did make. This fits into something I like to call the Motorhead Complex. The Motorhead Complex is not a bad thing! Back off, you assholes! I love Motorhead. The Motorhead Complex is this: every 2 or so years Motorhead puts out an album and it’s a Motorhead album. It’s going to sound like Motorhead. It’s going to have the same type of song content, sound and length. The art will look similar to the previous 10 albums. (”Whorehouse Blues” defies the Motorhead Complex, but nothing’s perfect so shut up). If one Motorhead album is better than another, it is slight. Purists will tell you some are greatly better than others, but that’s only because these albums set the Complex into motion. If the others had come first, they would be the ones people view as the CLASSICS or BETTER Motorhead albums. I labeled The Sound the Speed the Light as definite Motorhead Complex after the first few listens. This wasn’t a wrong thing to do, but on the surface the songs do drift together.

There is a reason I went back. There always is. Other than the fact that I do owe it to Burma to give anything they produce many chances, the reason is live. I saw them play a majority of these songs live and “1,2,3 Partyy!” might have been the best song of the night and their best machine-gun riff song post-reunion. (NYCTAPER has the show here.) I’ve seen Burma more than one time touring every single one of their post-hiatus albums. I am continually surprised by the way the new songs fit together with the old.  Its nearly seamless. At Bowery last month, Peter Prescott thanked the audience last time for sitting through the new stuff, but he didn’t have to do that. Burma fans are believers.

Four paragraphs and hardly nothing about what I figured out. There’s a lot hidden in the cracks of this album that other albums don’t have. The broken down merry-go-round of “Possession” with the guitar shred echoes. The cat in heat playing a harmonica at the end of “So Fuck It.” I assume that’s Bob Weston’s cat. Clint Conley’s brother as a member of the band for saying only 1, 2, 3. The lyrics as awkwardly hilarious as anything in the past. “One/Don’t look at anyone/Two/Drink only when drunken to/Three/Plan out your drinks then go out and drink your plan.” To me, that’s Beefheart humor. Hardly anyone can pull that off. Burma can. “Good Cheer” is a drinking song. Listen for the background vocals, absolutely genius.

There’s way too much bass and way too much drums on a lot of songs, but I love it. “Feed” makes my ears hurt. Listening to it at work with headphones on, headphones being something I hardly ever do, let the little things creep out, let the bass and really weird drums sink in. Clint singing “Wake up, baby/fix us tea/ toss these blankets/come pillage me” is something hardly any bands can get away with. It’s Burma unabashed, unabashed about being sweet even though it is a request to be pillaged.

“Come undone” has the best 15 second epic solo of all time and I think it’s the drum roll behind the guitar that does it for me.

Listening to it enough times now, TSTSTL has graduated like the other new Burma albums into the Burma canon. There’s almost no new distinction anymore for me, but definitely still new attempts at breaking the mold. It’s got more heart than the last two, but still enough kick to drink and jump around to.

“I never forgave Alan Marshall after that, or Cab Calloway, either, for saying the shit that he said in that article. Those things cost us all pain and suffering. A lot of people he talked about never recovered from what he said, because he was very popular back then and everybody listened to what he said.”

-Miles Davis on Cab Calloway

Man! What a quote! Not really, though. It’s not that important, but it does fit this occasion. And this occasion is all that matters. I’m reading Miles by Miles Davis. My big post on it is soon to come, and let me tell you, that shit is a motherfucker. Miles hated Cab Calloway because he thought he was an Uncle Tom- smiling and bending over for the white folks- the same thing he thought about Louis Armstrong and to some small extent, his friend Dizzy.

Miles from the grave is turning me onto all sorts of new, to me, shit.  One thing I found while I was checking out people he talks about (to get their side, too maybe) was this dictionary. Cab Calloway calls it the Hepster’s Dictionary and it’s fucking interesting. Miles explains a lot of these words in the book, too, but some are weird as hell. For a white motherfucker like myself, I should probably stay away, but I can’t help it.

So don’t be an icky, this is solid murder for those fuckos who like gut-bucket sounds. Alright, fucko is my word, but I’m bringing it all together. I’m bringing it all together and stomping on graves in the process. Or dancing. Maybe a little bit of both, the times have changed.

-ADAM