NEWS
Introverted Reverb
Here's three songs I've listened to constantly for the last year. Plus an old track with a similar feel. What is the genre? Goth Power Pop? Dreary jangle? For music that is bouncy, there's gloom to each of these songs which makes the reverb claustrophobic rather than epic.
Dagons are from L.A., and are a boy/girl guitar/drum duo. While there's an early-Cramps simplicity, the sweet vocals contrast with the dark riffing. Fashion Design are one of the best bands playing around the Triangle. Even with such a pristine, echo filled sound, they can perform a tight set while draining a bourbon bottle between songs. Casual Dots put out my favorite album of 2004, a collection of ten songs which moved effortlessly through folk rock, punk and R&B, all the time sounding like own thing. House of Love appear to still be performing. They appeared in England somewhat after the C-86 moment, and somewhat before the Shoegazer moment. "Shine On" a perfect little song that has a bit of both styles.
Dagons - Heaven Wasn't in the Sky
Fashion Design - Dirty Young Virgin
Casual Dots - Clocks
House of Love- Shine On
posted by bendy @ 6/30/2005 05:00:00 PM [permanent link]
Dirtnap Records might be the best straight-ahead punk label around right now. In the last few years, they've released start-to-finish great albums by The Exploding Hearts, The Epoxies and The Minds. Right now they've got two more great tracks posted.
Dirtnap: Charming Snakes and The Ends
The bands they put out come from some alternate universe where punk and new wave never split, and the Go-Go's chart success lead to Minor Threat breaking bigtime.
Charming Snakes get a big rolling Glen Matlock bassline going, a reminder that the Sex Pistols rarely played that fast, but sure found a way to hit hard. The Ends track has a great Stiv Bators vocal and a pounding Jerry Lee Lewis piano - a lot of Dirtnap bands make keyboards rock as hard as guitars.
Charming Snakes - Ammunition
The Ends - Pucker Up
And speaking of Minor Threat, what is Nike doing here?
posted by bendy @ 6/24/2005 12:48:00 PM [permanent link]
When a bunch of Boston rockers started dressing a 18th-Century fops and playing AC/DC rock, they came close to their stated goal of "the worst idea for a rock band" ever. But the Upper Crust wrote their own music, and there's something inspired in what they made. They probably couldn't have created such great cock-rock riffs if they didn't wear powdered wigs: they weren't writing for themselves, they were writing for the Upper Crust.
Bjeat on the Brajt
The Upper Crust - Let them Eat Rock
So maybe worst idea for a rock band, ever, is GABBA. As a website, it looses points for not putting up whole songs. But the snippets are enough- Ramones and ABBA mashups, played by a band. They find an impressive number of puns and concordances, but the time it takes to poke through the site exhausts all the thought you want to expend on this joke. Mitigating factor: Dread Zeppelin is still touring.(Via DASP)
posted by bendy @ 6/22/2005 11:47:00 AM [permanent link]
I can't believe you namechecked the Upper Crust. Fantastic!
Upper Crust
said Anonymous, at
7/31/2005
I'm currently troubled by the rash of all girl cover bands that dress and mimic their male counterparts. I don't get how just because they are women, they aren't just another cover band. Oh well, it's not keeping me up at night.
simply delightful
Bleed Me!
UC rock harder with better songs then any rock band out there
Glam Now, too
Frog Eyes have been lighting up the hipster review sites the last few years. Singer Carey Mercer has cracking howl that evokes Bowie, but I think the Bowie comparisons is even more valid in the songwriting. It has the epic dynamics of pre-Ziggy Bowie, and brings to mind songs like "Life on Mars," from when he was on the verge of giving in to his avant-theatre instincts.
Bloom look to have been plugging away out of Central Florida for about a decade. But they played the SXSW festival this year, and stuck an mp3 in the massive download that was sent around to promote the festival. It really stood out from the other 490 songs. "Don't Tell a Dead Man..." takes that "Radar Love" boogie and sticks it with a melody worthy of the Sweet. Of all the neo-glitter songs I've posted, this is the one that really evokes a bell-bottomed jumpsuit with exposed chest hair. Yet their myspace site shows a band that is fully buttoned up.
The late, great Devil Dogs were central to the nineties garage punk scene that emanated Sympathy for the Record Industry and Crypt Records and gradually grew to the fad of the early 2000's. They started getting exposure around 1991 as band that sounded like old punk. Not sixties psych-punk, but like the early CBGBs bands. So they were the first sign that the snot of the Dead Boys or Heartbreakers was getting retro enough to need reviving. Or to put it another way, they were among the first punk bands that didn't have anything to do with the hardcore scene, nor the emerging indie rock scene. "Hellraiser" has the fifties-cum-seventies hiccup of the Rocky Horror soundtrack, but ain't slick at all. Like everything they did, it's got a crunchy Les Paul lead and a campy approach to macho swagger.
Frog Eyes - The Oscillator's Hum
Bloom - Don't Tell a Dead Man How to Die
Devil Dogs - Hellraiser
posted by bendy @ 6/20/2005 11:02:00 PM [permanent link]
at the Girls Leading in Art and Music Benefit
posted by bendy @ 6/20/2005 10:31:00 AM [permanent link]
Playing live at Jo and Joe's, Sat. June 18
We were going to wait 'til we had a few more new songs finished before playing out again, but this show is too sweet an opportunity to pass up. It's a fund raiser for a new non-profit from the people who organized last summer's North Carolina Rock n' Roll Camp for Girls. They're making it into a ongoing program, and it's called GLAM: Girls Leading in Arts & Music. Read the whole press release here.
Blackstrap's drummer, Mr. Surly, has a daughter attending this summer's camp. And it's a chance to play with Gerty, premier purveyors of fine New Wave synthpop. Gerty's take on the 80's ends up sounding better than the original 80's stuff, 'cause it isn't diluted with pointless sax solos or Adrian Belew overdubs.
Gerty and Blackstrap
GLAM fundraiser
Jo and Joe's Downtown Durham, NC
Sat. June 18 2005.
Show up early, 'cause the gig should be over before most Saturday night rock shows start. We're trying to make it reasonable for some of the young women attending this summer's camp to see the show.
posted by bendy @ 6/16/2005 11:56:00 AM [permanent link]
c|net on indie music
If news.com.com is talking about independent labels, than it must have relevance in the corporate world. The article talks about the formation of a trade group, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance. Their site is a nice overview of what's going on- a good run down of rights management and challenges.
posted by bendy @ 6/15/2005 09:06:00 AM [permanent link]
Syndicated audio fodder
Del.icio.us, the bookmark sharing site, has started giving users the tools to bookmark audio files. Or rather, if you bookmark an mp3 file in your del.icio.us account, it automatically gets a tag to identify it as such. So when you look at this page full of those tags, you are seeing a constantly updating list of links to listening fodder. Rather than just searching google for audio content, you get one layer of editorial opinion: someone out there thought it was good enough to bookmark.
Unless someone bookmarks their own content. I slipped one of our songs into the stream. I wonder if, as these meme goes around the 'net, if we'll see a jump in downloads of this audio file.
posted by bendy @ 6/14/2005 10:22:00 AM [permanent link]
Public Domain in the UK
Proper Records boxed set series has been an inexpensive way to accumulate a big library of old jazz, country and blues music. At $25 a pop, you get around 100 songs, allowing you to explore an artist or genre deeply. That's 'cause after 50 years, recordings move into the public domain. In the UK . But is it ending? Probably, 'cause you can't expect Sir Paul to give up royalties in a mere seven years, when the Beatles recordings become a half-century old.
Oh well. Glad I was finally able to discover Milton Brown without having to shell out hundereds of dollars for a Bear Family set.
Milton Brown - Chinatown, My Chinatown
posted by bendy @ 6/14/2005 06:04:00 AM [permanent link]
Neo 1983, part one: Mr. Surly's Punk
So, I was working on a playlist of contemporary bands that sound like 1983. I was thinking synthpop. 'Cause 1983 was the year of synthpop. This is for an idea for a playlist contest at Salon. I asked for brainstorms from the band. Mr. Surly replied right away, with a bunch of punk bands that could have come from 1983.
First, The Briefs. Could anything be more 1983 than a punk band that hates Bob Seger?
In 1983, Bob Seger wasn't even selling Chevy pickups trucks yet, but he was already the personification dull adult rock. And then Risky Business comes out, and suddenly he's hip. Not really hip, but suddenly all the girls in your high school love him, because he makes Tom Cruise jingle the jewels in his tighty whities. Suddenly, Bob Seger is sexy. Not only beloved by the cousin you go bowhunting with, but by the girls in the honor classes too.
These days, Bob Seger has become a footnote*, and Tom Cruise is twice as creepy as Bob ever was. But for some reason, The Briefs still have a beef. They want to kill Bob Seger.
The Briefs - Silver Bullet
A few months ago, me and Mr. Surly were cleaning up the practice space. He popped in a disc by the U.S. Bombs and talked about Duane Peters, the singer. He's the sort of skater who can extend that skating life out into middle age. His band has extended that 1983 non-quite-hardcore punk out indefinitely, too. Red Rockers, Channel 3, Rash of Stabbings, there were a bunch of bands in the American scene still doing the sing along thing like Clash and Sham 69 well into the 80s. They petered out, but not Peters.
U. S. Bombs - Shut Down
Daggers capture 1983 hardcore with You're Weak (We're Strong). Not metallic yet (that started in 1985, best I 'member) but still strident and full of dubious pride. Let's go beat up some beer drinkers!
* and if you don't mind viewing an ad first, you can read this really strange appreaciation of Seger on Salon.com
posted by bendy @ 6/10/2005 11:24:00 PM [permanent link]
Glam Rock Now
I never understood why the word "glam" got attached to LA metal in the eighties. For all the teased hair and scarves, it wasn't pushing anyone's buttons, and it certainly didn't seem glamorous in the high-fashion sense.
And while mid-nineties band like Suede and Spacehog got the preening right, their sound was too dense and layered to really evoke what made Glam rock such a kick: the blend of early rock and roll and camp theatrics. The key to T Rex and Bowie were how they blended the drama-queen arrangements of Gene Pitney and Lee Hazelwood with simple rockabilly riffs fuzzed out on Gibsons.
Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre really get the look and attitude down. The sound is punky, but the disco drum machine here puts in the tinsel. And in this song, the singer pushes her Debbie Harry purr into the yelp that defines this kind of rock.
The Snitches are Canadian band who put out the gem below a few years ago. It was on their website for a long time, but now the website has disappeared. This afternoon, it seems to be redirecting to Universal Music. So maybe they got signed. But this blog has posted the song and gives more information on them. This isn't representative of the Snitches sound, which tends towards more pop-punk, but points towards their versatility.
If you sign up for their mailing list on the Atomiks' hard-to-navigate website, they'll let you in to their mp3 archives. But how will you ever know how great they are? They're from Nevada, and from what I can tell they've moved from greaser rock and roll to something much more mixed-up and charming. The singer has a great voice. His strains remind me of the Psychedelic Furs at points, but the simple go-go cage beats keep this raw.
Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre - Love Love Love
The Snitches - Right Before My Eyes
Atomiks - Dance of Fools.
posted by bendy @ 6/09/2005 12:38:00 PM [permanent link]
Gentrifying d. boon
There's a documentary out about the Minutemen. You can see the trailer at theminutemen.com. George Hurley looks about 68 years old. Stay out of the sun, kids!
I found out about this movie by reading the entertainment listings in the New Yorker, rather than by reading a fanzine or website. The New Yorker actually had a column-length preview dedicated to it. D. Boon's done been gentrified. But hey, I'm excited to be getting the New Yorker again, so I shouldn't talk.
There are a lot of artists that I've gotten passionate about, then cooled, but the Minutemen have been a constant. I didn't click with them at first, didn't know what to do with such a thin sound. Like a lot of eighties kids, I picked up the Minutemen expecting something with the same roar as the SST artists I already knew: Black Flag, Husker Du. I knew their songs were short and political, so I figured it would be like In God We Trust, Inc. They were getting a lot of hype in the wake of the breakthrough of Zen Arcade and Let it Be, so I knew it would be more than straight-ahead hardcore punk. But I was confused by the sound at first: where was the buzzsaw guitars? Where were the power chords? The punk I'd heard up to that point was very much descended from classic rock and glam rock: the Who, Bowie, then the Ramones and Clash. Most hardcore took those cues and just kept speeding up and snarling more. The Minutemen came from another stream: Captain Beefheart, Richard Hell, Wire. It wasn't trying to sound tight, it was going for tightly wound. It was brainy, but not overstuffed and high on itself like prog rock. It was a rush of ideas, rather than just rushing tempos.
When I bought Double Nickels on the Dime I copied all the information off the LP labels, since there wasn't a legible song listing on the jacket. I needed to make sense of this tangle. I needed those titles to get a footing. Over the course of 1985, it started appealing to me more and more, as I began to get hip to their slang- mersh, econo, spiel- and the ricocheting styles. I wasn't happy with the Husker Du record that came out that autumn. The Minutemen were beginning to eclipse them in my mind. They put out everything from their early career on a $10 cassette, so it was easy to learn the whole story.
It was in a high school homeroom period in October that a buddy told me he heard they were playing Boston that night. It was a weeknight, but we figured out a way to stay out on short notice, and drove into Kenmore Square. This interview was done after that gig. They encored with Substitute, the Who song, and tied their sound back in to classic rock in a way that amazed me.
The Minutemen softened my head for liberalism, and they softened my ears for jazz. In the nineties, another buddy, a guy who didn't like rock at all, made jazz click completely for me by getting me to listen to the Ellington/Mingus album Money Jungle. It was his favorite of all time, so I turned him on to Double Nickels. And it quickly became a favorite of his. He's getting his PhD, and one thesis idea is to tie together the Minutemen with poet William Carlos Williams, elaborating on the American idea of freedom. Sure enough, you could pull a few lines from "Tract" and hear d. boon's voice bark it out. There could have been a kid at that Boston gig who's editing the entertainment listings in the New Yorker now.
But even in the late 80s, it quickly became clear to a lot of people that the loss of the Minutemen was a loss that was bigger than your typical rock death. I remember asking someone about there "Econojam '87" t-shirt. She said that back home in Colorado, the local scene did a tribute gig to them. Rolling Stone had a rock-writing contest among college students, and one of the winning essays was about the Minutemen. I was a fucking corn dog before I heard the Minutemen. Bongo jams a speciality.
posted by bendy @ 6/04/2005 11:34:00 PM [permanent link]
Hey! I was at the Minutemen show at the Rat also - were you the kid with the white shirt with the "buzz or howl" album cover drawn on the back?
I was at the all-ages, probably wearing a trenchcoat or some such nonsense. Actually, I think I remember being in my Mod target-symbol tshirt from Newbury Comics. I think I was pogoing a bunch by the end.
said bendy, at
11/19/2005
There was an all-ages show, then a 21+ show on that date (10/23/85) - I was at the all-ages show.
-Bruce
Blackstrap is a rockpunk band that was formed in 2002 by several
disgruntled music fans. Some had played in bands for years, some had
never been involved in music. All of us were upset with the
direction the USA was moving. As you can tell, our impact on all that
has been overwhelming.
We broke up in 2004, just before releasing a debut EP. We still feel
bad about messing up 307 Knox Records
like that. We got back together in
2005. We might drive each other crazy again, so no promises.
We're a band that doesn't have many options as far as
money and time and touring and all those other thing that could make a
band be your life. The web is the main way we promote
ourselves. We figured out we should share what meager knowledge we have
obtained.
RESOURCES
or "Promoting Your Music as the Music Industry We Know and Dislike Dies...."
Websites are a lot of work to figure out, and don't work any magic
on their own. Most people who view your website are already going to know you exist.
Just having a website doesn't mean anyone is going to visit. So don't
worry about securing an Internet domain right away. Stick some
music on MySpace,
and then participate in sites that might actually drive interested
listeners to your music. Blackstrap gets more hits from our link
on ncpunkonline.com than from
higher-profile sites where we get lost in the shuffle.
There are advantages to having your own custom built website and
domain name, but it's only as useful to the extent that it gets linked to.
Here are some sites that are important and help to get noticed. They aren't all music sites, specifically. Alot of them require participation. But hey, you wanted to be on stage, right?
JUST HEARD
WEEKLY FAVS
LOOKING AT...
what else?
DISCLAIMER: I try to find MP3 which are linked to official sites for artists I admire. Other MP3's are up for a limited time and are for sampling purposes only. Music posted here is posted to encourage people to buy CDs, not with the intention to profit or to violate copyright. If you are the creator (or copyright owner) of a song, excerpt, essay, graphic or photo posted on this blog, please send email to the address on the CONTACT page if you want to comment on the selection or wish to have it removed.
photos in banner by bunchofpants.