Hey Radiohead! Here’s a Quid
Radiohead have fired a shot across the bow of the record industry by making their upcoming record, “In Rainbows” available for download for any price that the consumer chooses. “No really, it’s up to you,” the band’s website reassures the fan who is unsure how much to pay for the download. The band’s use of the honor system has produced a cottage industry of articles predicting the End Of The Record Industry As We Know It (EOTRIAWKI) or confessing how much one paid for the download. Apparently, one third of listeners paid nothing for the download. If the RIAA had their way, these people would be sued for $220,000. But, on average, fans have paid about $8 for a download that – like all records – could be had for free. Me, I paid one pound, 45 pence – about three American dollars. It’s more than I’ve ever paid for […]
Every Five Years Or So
Like some strange comet that irregularly circles our solar system, two great bands graced our record stores with the rare appearance of new records. The Mekons are perhaps my favorite band. I’ve written about them extensively here and in other places. An original summer of ’77 punk band – contemporaries of the Gang of Four – our comrades from Leeds released a string of good-on-paper singles and LPs, broke up, reunited to play benefit concerts for the striking miners, kick-started the alternative country scene with a trio of indie-released records, recorded some pretty terrific rock-n-roll anthems, got signed and dropped from more records labels than the Sex Pistols, been the shoulda-been, coulda-been, woulda-been saviors of rock music and then scattered across the globe to get on with their personal lives. With the band spread across both hemispheres, from Hong Kong to London, New York to Chicago and San Francisco, and […]
Ga Ga for the Last Next Big Thing
In 1976, Lester Bangs greeted the Rolling Stones minor album Black and Blue with a sense ironic relief. “They really don’t matter or stand for anything, ” he wrote, “which is certainly lucky for both them and us. I mean, it was a heavy weight to carry for all concerned. This is the first meaningless Stones album, and thank god!” Slightly less witheringly (but only just so), The Onion’s Noel Murray writes of Spoon’s latest long player, “For those who thought Spoon’s one-two punch of Girls Can Tell and Kill The Moonlight marked the group as a contender for the ‘Best American Band Of The ’00s’ label, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga may be a disappointment. It’s not as bad as all that. But it doesn’t sound like the Next Great Statement from a band that has been making instant classics since 1999’s Series of Sneaks. But, now that I […]
What the Hell Happened to James Brown?
David McReynolds laments the now-obvious gap in his record collection, and asks where is a good place to start with James Brown. And, since he also laments the lack of consideration of arts and culture in our little corner of the the movement, and I need an excuse to get my nose out of health care policy textbooks, I’m wrtiting to recommend “JB40.” Ordinarily, I agree with that old “Kids in the Hall” joke that “Greatest hits are for housewives and little girls,” but Brown’s career is so expansive and encompasses so many distinct periods that no regular album could serve as a proper introduction. In fact, I just had this conversation with Alan Amalgamated last Friday, and if I were superstitious I would think that I cursed James Brown to die two days later. I’m a “jinxy motherfucker,” Alan says. To avoid the crap that passes for radio, Alan […]
Cults Bands of the “80’s-90’s”
The other day I was debating who might be the “most influential bands of the 90’s,” which is a more polite way of saying “whose fault are the 00’s (uh-oh’s),” which is awfully unfair to a host of excellent bands. It’s not their fault that popular music fractured into a multitude of sub-genres, or that mass media melted down into niches like blogs and podcasts. It’s certainly not their fault that rock and roll is a highly derivative art form, for they did not choose their followers. Easily, one of the most influential bands of the 90’s was Pavement. Slackers, shoegazers, ironic smartasses – it’s almost as if they bothered to draw up the blueprints for modern indie sensibilities. But they were too busy getting stoned and covering “School House Rock” songs. A lot of misguided critics and fans expected Pavement to do something Important ten years ago. Following a […]
This Is His Testimony: Jon Langford of the Mekons
This is his testimony. In 1991, Jon Langford and his mates from Leeds, the Mekons, had just missed their opportunity as rock-n-roll’s latest last best hope. After almost 15 years of lineup changes, a bunch of classic albums with lousy distribution, countless raucous alcohol-soaked tours and stylistic shifts from punk to country, dance and back, the Mekons were on the verge of saving rock music from big hair and empty heads when fights with A&M Records left their newest record without an outlet in the U.S., just as Nirvana opened up the radio to so-called “alternative rock.” They called that record “The Curse of the Mekons,” but their contract problems and bad luck didn’t piss them off as much as the fall of the Soviet Union and the media’s declaration of the “death of socialism.” “How can something really be dead when it hasn’t even happened,” long-time lefty Langford demands […]
New (To Me) Record Round-Up
“Enemies Like This.” Radio 4. I root for Radio 4 like I root for the Mets. They’re the home team (if you can call Williamsburg anyone’s home) and they deserve to win. I’m not sure that this is the record that will make them stars, however. The propulsive poly-percussion and Gang of Four-style slashing guitars are still there, but after the first four tracks it all starts to lose steam. “Big Star, Small World.” Various. I’m utterly perplexed that power pop never conquered the world. Infectious pop sensibilities, crunchy guitars: something for everyone, no? Instead, it’s a weird little niche for freaks like me. The grand-daddy of all power pop groups, Big Star, were feted with a tribute record from the little pups who worship them. Released in 2006, goodness knows how long these tapes were sitting on the shelf, as half the bands on “Big Star, Small World” (the […]
Catching Up With Old Friends
I’ve discovered how old men are born. We get time demanding jobs, go to professional school, are subsumed by the demands of life. Our backs ache, our paychecks go to pay off the mortgage. We stop going to three concerts a week and buying a couple of new records every Tuesday. When we do buy a new record or go to a concert, it’s to catch up with an old friend, who’s, arguably (and you’d be arguing with us, comrade!) long past their prime. They don’t make rock-n-roll records like they used to. They never did. I’m spending this evening with two old friends. Morrissey’s solo career turns off many. The solo careers of famous lead singer-songwriters (like Lou Reed and Paul Westerberg) are a fascinating part of the overall narrative of their lives. In Morrissey’s case, musically, this means pursuing his unique brand of classical rock which would have […]
Fascist Rock
One of fascism’s most insidious tendencies is to warp history with revisionist interpretations. The National Review’s recent list of the 50 conservative rock songs of all time is a contemptible attempt to claim protest music for the forces of reaction. Freedom is, indeed, slavery and rock is Republican if you believe these pinheads. I see no more than twelve actually conservative rock songs here (and that’s being generous with Sammy Hagar’s weenie complaint about the “nanny state,” “I Can’t Drive 55”). Some of the 50 are non-political songs given a right-wing spin by the magazine, like the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?,” an innocent song about dopey teenagers daydreaming about living together which National Review interprets as a paean to marriage and abstinence. My filthy mind interprets it as a post-coital parting of two teenage lovers who would rather spend the night together than sneak back home. Similarly, where […]
Catching Up With 2005
Although list-averse (or else simply VH1-phobic), I would normally constrict a best records of the year list around now. Poverty and nagging unemployment, alas, put a real crimp in my record shopping for 2005. There are still at least a dozen releases that I must hear before I could properly judge. However, I am catching up. So here are some notes on 2005 releases that are new to me. “Honeycomb” by Frank Black In between victory laps with the Pixies, Black headed to Nashville to record a classicist country record. The experience and competence of the session players, plus Frank Black’s smokey baritone make “Honeycomb” work not just as a country record but as a reminder of just how high the bar should be set for a new Pixies record. The unfamiliar country soundscape allows Black’s lyrics (like “mommy killed a puppy and she thought it was asleep / she […]