36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Five: We Are The Fallen by Pennywise

Almost 25 years old and still standing up for the little guy...

It's a hardcore Christmas everyone!

Now keep in mind that outside of the songs on this album, All or Nothing, the only things I knew about this band was that it was named after the evil clown from Stephen King's It, and that its once and future lead singer Jim Lindberg once threatened Adam Carolla with something ominously referred to as 'Poo Poo City' during a taping of Love Lines back in the 90's.  Hell, until I heard All or Nothing, I thought Pennywise was a ska punk band, which is why I decided to sample it.

And on top of that misinterpretation, there's the fact that All or Nothing is something of an anomaly in the band's discography, as it's the only album which featured vocals by Jim Lindberg's 'permanent replacement,' Zoli Telgas--'permanent' apparently meaning only 'a year or two' in Pennywise terms, as Teglas bowed out after injuring his back and was replaced by Lindberg.  So what I experienced in this album is not the 'pure' Pennywise experience.

As for the song--this is certainly a band that wears its influence on its sleeve, in particular the band Bad Religion.  Even though Teglas' vocals have a quality that evoke no less than Dexter Holland of The Offspring (which is a band probably as diametrically opposed to Pennywise as any band can be without being pop or reggaton or something outrageous like that), the vocal phrasing of the lyrics themselves is extremely reminiscent of Greg Graffin's.  Plus drummer Byron McMakin's fills at times evokes the older band as well.  Add in that Pennywise's subject matter, social and moral injustice, is also the main part of Bad Religion's playbook and....well, you've got something really similar.  I can almost close my eyes and picture a young Graffin penning this call to activism amongst the 'warriors of sorrow' back when he was a younger man and not the elder punk statesman he is.

(Of course, to be fair, Pennywise is about to celebrate its 25th Anniversary, so maybe it's time to consider Lindberg and co. elder statesmen in their own right!)

Now I like Bad Religion, which is right up there with The Fall in my mind as one of the more cerebral punk bands ever.  Pennywise is not exactly my cup of tea, partially because they don't have the intellectual element I enjoy in Bad Religion, and partially because listening to them only makes me want you, you know, go listen to Bad Religion.  But since this is not the 'pure' Pennywise experience I would have had listening to their previous albums, maybe I should hold off on writing them off until I hear the band fronted by Lindberg.

2013 will see Pennywise hosting a show at the Hollywood Palladium to commemorate their aforementioned 25th Anniversary.  God bless them for lasting that long in a cultural world that has written off this style of music.

Here's the song.  Come back here in a few days for the wrap up of this year's cycle and news on what's in store for 30Ss, 30Ds for 2013.

Somewhere There Is Music Playing....by Early Spring

Yes, I took this photo my ownself...but that's Early Spring...

I did something I haven't done in years this weekend.

I went to see some live music.

To be more specific, I took a trip three stops down the L line to the wilds of East Williamsburg and Brooklyn Fireproof East's modest performance space to see Early Spring, a band that includes among its number my friend James Dye and his wife Adalena Kavanagh.

Early Spring (you can stream two tracks at their bandcamp page)is a lo-fi band who specializes in painting these very dense aural landscapes, walls of noise that at times sound like early Television played through blown out speakers, other times like a much mellower Jesus and Mary Chain.  Perhaps the most unique thing about them is the tension between the music itself and the vocals of its lead singer, who actually has a throaty, Leonard Cohen quality to him that turns the songs on their ear.  This is chill out music for the perpetually paranoid; easy going, meandering but set within a clashing sonic soundscape.  I'm not saying it's for everyone, but it is certainly compelling.

Early Spring is gigging in and around the New York area, so if you're interested in lo-fi music with a bit of a bite, watch out for them.

(And if you're in a band in the New York City area and would like me to check you out, let me know; I'll plug you right here on this blog!)

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Four: Down By The Water by The Decemberists

The umbrella Colin Meloy holds up doesn't exist...and
that's the best metaphor I can think of for The Decemberists'
music.

Given where we are in the year, this is a pretty appropriate band to be talking about, huh?

And one of the reasons I love The Decemberists is because, in their way, they are carrying on the tradition of one of my heroes, the late Warren Zevon.  Colin Meloy and his crew are storytellers first and foremost, their songs weaving elements of history and folklore to create a mystic soundscape where reality and unreality dance about in dark capers.  Even though the band's feel is more folkie than rockist, the gothic nature of much of their subject matter makes them perfect compliments to Zevon's criminals, junkies and losers.  One could easily see the likes of the Crane Wife co-existing in the same world as The Excitable Boy; The Decemberists' creations just live in the rural areas outside of Zevon City.

Of course, this song (taken from the band's album The King Is Dead) may owe more to Springsteen than to Zevon.  The lyrics seem to hit all the beats of a classic Springsteen 'I feel trapped by this town' song--the restlessness, the looking outward from the small town our POV character presumably dwells, the references to misdeeds. Although I don't recall Bruce ever making references to Leda, the woman who was seduced by Zeus who, in typical Zeus fashion, took the appearance of a swan (yep, Zeus was a kinky lil' god, he was) in Greek mythology.  But then, myths and history are Meloy's thing, and that's what makes the Decemberists so unique.

Given the Leda reference, where Meloy ties that figure to 'pier nineteen,' I wonder if what Meloy is talking about isn't a person's desire to get out of his town, but a nostalgia for a past way of life--namely, Portland's position in the 19th Century as a major port.  Leda's family in certain interpretations of the myth never quite got over her rape by, ummm, a swan, and maybe what Meloy is talking about is the way Pier Nineteen's transformation over the years from being a vital port to a recreational tourist spot--it's apparently, among other things, a skatepark according to reports I uncovered with a little Google-mining--reflects Portland's changing face over the decades.  And maybe what Meloy is yearning for when he sings these lyrics isn't an escape from his town, but an escape into the past where his hometown mattered.

The Decemberists are still out there making their brand of cerebral, intellectual indie rock right now.  And the world is better for it.

Here is a video from a 2011 performance of the song....

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Three: Baby Don't Stay (Demo) by Voice of The Beehive

Don't call them baby..because even if you wanted to, they're
long gone.

And now...yet another Obscure Band That Only Released A Few Albums I Really Liked.

The Voice of The Beehive lasted roughly a decade, founded by sisters Tracy Bryn and Melissa Brooks Belland in 1987.  They never really got the fame I think they deserved, as they drowned in the morass of similar 'led-by-two-women-who-do-harmonies' bands that flooded the music market in the late 80's and early 90's.  They even got stuck with the 'dream pop' label that was affixed to people like The Darling Buds and Lush, even though I think their work owed more to harder 60's era rockers.

And you can kind of hear it on this song, which I first heard as part of a fan-made rarities compilations (that you can still locate at the apparently now abandoned blog GirlBandGeek).  There is a chunkiness to the guitar riffs in this breakup anthem, and a definite Chrissie Hynde-like sneer to the vocal delivery...and yet, there's also a melodic nature to this band that's very flavorful especially given what's surrounding those voices.  It's the sort of thing that made them so damn appealing to me, a sort of bitter-with-the sweet that I adore.

Even though the band did have some success with their single 'I Say Nothing' and their cover of the Partidge Family's 'I Think I Love You,' they never got the proper footing in the tumultuous early 90's music industry...although apparently the band didn't implode due to The Great Signing Massacre that felled so many indie acts of the time.  It seems they simply imploded all by their lonesomes, thank you very much, with all but the Belland sisters surviving for their last album, Sex And Misery in 1996.  After that, save for a few shows where they opened for The Wonderstuff in 2003, Tracy has been teaching and Melissa runs her own company.  Do I think there might've been more music in them?  Yeah...but maybe it's best that the Sisters Belland allowed their venture to expire naturally rather then keeping the corpse alive.  At least now I have a rather nice collection of wonderfully snarky and witty pop songs to enjoy.

And you know, I wish that the little girls of today had the equivalent of a Tracy and Melissa to look up to rather than a Katy Perry or a (Am I A Man Or Am I A) Lady Gaga.  These girls rocked, they were sexy without being objects, and they actually wrote songs that had, you know, actual thoughts expressed in them.

Thus ends the editorializing.  Here's the song....

Signs Of the End Times: Taylor Swift Thinks We're All Stupid

She knows she should smile at you..but she doesn't
want to...

Since the second death of 101.9 WXRP, I've been stuck in the store listening to a variety of pop and dance-oriented pop radio. That's the only choices you have if you're interested in English language music in New York City, unless you like hearing rock music from thirty years ago while a succession of old grey haired white people start pontificating on music history endlessly. The incursion of sports talk radio onto the FM dial here, beginning with WEPN and ending with WFAN has driven modern and alternative rock music off the dials save for weird pockets where, let's say, Mumford and Sons and Goetye show up on 102.7, the adult light contemporary station 'Fresh FM.'

 

It's listening to Fresh FM that made me come to this conclusion...namely that Taylor Swift Thinks We're All Stupid.

No, really.

You see, apparently Ms. Swift decided this year she needed to reposition herself as a pop star. No longer happy with being a country-tinged folkie with some mild pop crossover appeal, she's gone full out in her new album, Red to make herself on the level with Katy Perry, Pink, and all the other pop tarts in the modern firmament. And her first step towards pushing her peers aside was 'We Are Never Getting Back Together.' It's a female empowerment break-up anthem, which is a pretty safe bet for a mission statement when becoming a pop diva--Alanis Morrisette managed to squeeze a several album career out of one song where she equated breaking up with movie theater blow jobs, and some would say that Pink's entire later career is built around her insisting she's through with her ex-husband.

And it's a thoroughly, absolutely wretched misfire of a song.

I feel bad for this guy...and I shouldn't.

There's a number of reasons why, as an artifact out of the context of the times in which Ms. Swift had it released, it fails. Her vocals are awfully artificial, wavering back and forth between a strange mannered sing-songiness and very snotty plainspeak. The melody is just a repetitive drone punctuated by Swift's 'ooooooo'ing--and it frequently stops and starts, most significantly towards the end when everything pauses so a lo-fi Taylor can 'act' her way through a brief soliloquy that ends with her reciting the song title for the nineteenth time. And the lyrics are supposed to be pump-the-air-cause-gals-are-doing-it-for-themselves....but the POV character comes off as nasty and borderline sadistic. By the time the song is over, you have sympathy for that Kennedy boy, or John Mayer, or whoever it is this song is directed at. That's right; this song is so obnoxious it makes me feel sorry for John Mayer, a man I have utter loathing for.

But what may be the worst sin is the way the rise-and-fall repetition ends up earworming us--because it's just drones round and round, and Swift's vocals amplifies its hypnotic quality that it settles in your reptilian brain and kicks your frontal lobe for a couple of hour before the melody finally fades.

Look, I know Taylor Swift isn't the first country folkie who tried to cross over into mainstream pop. But what makes her bid for the Big Time so wrong-headed is how....calculated it is. Say what you want about, let's say, Jewel's 'Intuition,' but at least it was concretely a Jewel song, albeit one that featured her dancing around in a spangly dress (I think it helps when looking back at that moment in Jewel's career that she did it not because she wanted to be a Big Stah, but because she was curious if she could). 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' is soulless, a breakup song written by someone didn't want to get anything off her chest, but wanted to write a breakup song. And in trying to emulate the perfect Dance-Oriented Pop breakup song, Ms. Swift inadvertently strips away the thing that sets her apart from the other pop stars of this age--that delicateness and genuineness that made everyone want to root for her. The Taylor Swift of 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' is fake and false and cynical...and expects you to not care that she didn't put a lot of effort into this song, because all you care about is the beat and how pretty she is.

Which is why Taylor Swift thinks your stupid. And you shouldn't let her continue to do so and turn your back on her.

But you probably won't. Which is why These Are The End Times.

Another Music Dream

I've had another music dream I want to share with you. As before, I invite you to interpret the dream in your way, and ask you to share some of yours.

I wake up lying on a floor in a strange barracks-like room. I am told by someone that this is my dorm room, which seems odd considering my dorm room was a small, monk-like room that was barely large enough to contain me. After trying to get some more sleep, I hear some faint playing of music and head out through the window.

Funny, he doesn't look like a blimp...

I move through the streets of Queens County in the direction of the music. I eventually find my way to what appears to be a basketball court. People are gathered around the basketball court sparsely, but what alarms me is that in the middle of the court, performing with a small band, is Kurt Wallinger, who was in The Waterboys and World Party. Wallinger, however, has apparently ballooned up to extraordinary proportions (in this dream reality, he's easily 350 pounds, if not heavier), and he's breathing heavily as he bounces around like the aspiring Bono he used to be and singing some of his more well-known songs. He's wearing a mumu, and looks a horror. The people are all laughing and mocking Wallinger, and I try to move forward to dissuade him to stop....but then I wake up.

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Two: Murder For The Money by Morphine

Yes, they're dwelling in darkness...and that's totally appropriate.

This week, as we rapidly approach the end of this year's cycle and begin the special Seasonal Round...it's one of my favorite avant garde bands.

I sadly got into Morphine at the end of this band's life. A number of my horror writer friends had recommended this Massachusetts-based group for its dark soundscapes and the quirky lyrics of vocalist Mark Sandman. Based on these recommendations I picked up their latest album, The Night--just days before Sandman collapsed on stage in Italy and died. I was so entranced by the weird mix of film noir crime stories, swinging 50's orchestration and sometimes moody as all Hell gothic sensibilities that I ended up determined to discover their entire ouvre. Luckily, the legendary jazz music store J&M down on Park Place had a rather massive Rykodisc sale that allowed me to pick up the bulk of their albums, and they're still treasured items in my collection.

It's hard to describe Morphine to someone who has never heard them. This was all going on during the time when I was a freelancer. One of my last jobs as a freelancer, and one of my favorite overall due to the rapport I had with my client, was at a financial reporting firm located in the World Trade Center. I was working late one night to help close out some outstanding accounts when my client came over to where I was set up. I had Like Swimming, the album from which this track comes from, on my Discman. He listened for a second and chuckled to himself before saying, "What are you listening to, Tom? It sounds like jazz for serial killers." Another descriptor came several years later from Jennifer, a girl I was engaged to, who dismissed it as 'stripper music for hipsters'...and then proceeded not to talk to me because obviously I liked thinking of strippers.

It's both and it's neither. Take this song. It's certainly in the crime novel sensibilities of Sandman and company, and yet it's not telling a complete story. There's something larger on Sandman's mind, and he's reducing it to its lowest common demoninator. I can't help but think that what's 'murder' in this song is life itself--to the singer, life itself is pain, it's horror, it's...murder every single moment of the day, every inch that you move forward. It's a slow slog that will not let up, and it will always, always hurt. And while Sandman may have avoided the ultimate termination of this perpetual Hell, he's seen enough people felled to know that it's a matter of time for him to fold.

Members of Morphine still perform sporadically as...well, The Members of Morphine. And to the best of my knowledge, all these albums are still out there, floating around, waiting for another poor sap with a passion for darker matters to discover them when he least expects it.

Here's a video....