Silly Haircut Music

July 27, 2006... Last week, a friend sent me a link to Cats That Look Like Hitler. Naturally, it got me thinking about the brothers Mael.

So, I put on my copy of Sparks' Angst in My Pants and waited for my favourite song.

Sparks - I Predict

My introduction to "I Predict" was a live appearance Sparks made on TV 'round about 1982. I loved the gently satirical lyrics of the song, of course, and the short-haired fucker with the Hitler moustache sitting motionless at his keyboard... Oh, yeah, plus there was this great, loud guitar part.

In case you ain't noticed, though, there ain't no "great, loud guitar part" on the studio version of "I Predict." Nope. Instead, there is synthesizer borborygmi.

And do you know why there's "synthesizer borborygmi" on the record instead of guitar? Because it was 1982--you know, the golden age of silly haircut music--and every buddy was riding the new wave. Even Sparks.

Of course, it all sucked. Every last drop of it...

To be more precise: if I liked it, it was post-punk; if I didn't like it, it was new wave. If it was new wave and I liked it anyway, it was these two songs--both of which, you will notice, feature g-u-i-t-a-r-s.

Tears For Fears - Change

Naked Eyes - Promises, Promises

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Very Nice Strong Arm

July 22, 2006... Quietly, for quite some time now, I've been following my own edicts on file sharing via the blog. I never post more than three songs from any one record and, if at all possible, I try only to post files that, at 128 kbps, are lower than CD quality.

I do this because I have never been completely comfortable with the whole file sharing thing. The way I look at it is, somebody else's blood, sweat and tears went into writing and performing the damn song, and some other fool ponied up the money to release the fucker, if I make the shit available free-of-charge to anyone who wants it, how will the creators and risk takers ever be paid? And if they never get paid, how will they be able to afford to continue to write, perform and release new music? How do I know they won't end up like me, wasting their lives away at computer terminals, fussing over spelling mistakes on the manifest while the ship goes down?

Anyway, what brings this all to mind is today's featured album, Reality Bath, by Nice Strong Arm, a band that I might've been referred to as a "college rock" or "Homestead" band back in the day. The day was 1987, the label was Homestead (hence the genre name), and the record was almost perfect. So good, in fact, that it pains me to stick to my usual three-song-per-album max.

I stumbled across Reality Bath, Nice Strong Arm's first LP, while deejaying at a campus radio station. I'm not sure what it was about the record that made me pick it from the pile and listen to it; probably nothing more than the fact that it was on Homestead Records, then home of Big Black and Naked Raygun and Squirrelbait and other things cool. And less than a minute into the very first song, I was in love.

Nice Strong Arm - Life of the Party

Jangly, like REM, but murky and impenetrable, like fellow Texans, the Butthole Surfers, Nice Strong Arm's "Life of the Party" pulled me down into a dark, dark place, where the rest of the album kept me.

Nice Strong Arm - Minds Lie

Kevin Thompson wrings an odd variety of sounds out of his guitar, from slashing, semi-clean clangor to screaming, high-end arabesques of distortion--like Andy Gill (of Gang of Four) or Seth Jabbour (of Les Savy Fav), but without the restraint... Actually, most of all, his playing reminds me of whoever it was who played guitar on the first No Trend seven inch. Check out this post at Strange Reaction to get hip to my jive.

The drums, played on this album by a boy and a girl whose names I can't recall, are tom-heavy and tribal. Four arms are always stronger than two.

And Jason Asnes, the bassist, adds the Gothic darkness. In his deep, deep voice, one can almost hear hair being dyed black and eyeliner being applied.

Nice Strong Arm - Disenchanted

"Disenchanted" became an anthem of sorts for me later, when I found myself mired in a frustrating, unhealthy relationship. In between bouts of thinking "Maybe everyone's relationships are screwed up," and "I probably couldn't do any better, anyway," I would listen to this song and mope along.

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Communion

July 16, 2006... There is a classic series of Saturday Night Live sketches wherein Tarzan (Kevin Nealon), Tonto (Jon Lovitz) and Frankenstein (Phil Hartman) mumble--or, in the case of Frankenstein, growl--the lyrics to well-known songs in broken English. The Christmas standard "Joy to the World," for example, is rendered thusly: "Joy to world/Lord is come/Earth receive king."

Today's featured recording, Communion, the debut long player by the long-running Dutch band, Funeral Oration, is a bit like one of those aforementioned Saturday Night Live sketches. For one thing, Peter Zirschky, the band's vocalist, insists on writing his lyrics in English, even though it isn't his first language. As a result, there are some odd, awkward snippets of lyric throughout the proceedings--like "Down/Way, way deep in ground/'Cause I can't hide around," from the song "Deep in Ground," for example.

Still, though his grammar may be awkward here and there, Zirschky's are very thoughtful, very personal lyrics about struggle, loss and emptiness. ("Emptyness" is the name of one of the best songs on the album.) In fact, one could make a strong case that Funeral Oration, whose debut LP was recorded in April 1985, was one of the first "emo" bands, with songs about feelings and all that shit.

That aside, the similarities to Tarzan, Tonto and Frankenstein on Communion stretch beyond simple fractured English...

Funeral Oration - Without Name

Peter Zirschky can sing. Bits and pieces of "Without Name" are sung, I'm sure you'll agree. Sometimes his vocals are double tracked so that he can harmonize with his bad self--and when he does it's as sweet as en stroopwafel. But, plainly, Zirschky can also bark. And when he double tracks the barking ... it ends up sounding like a tag-team of Tarzan and Tonto.

Anyway, enough about Peter Zirschky... The real star of Communion is Thomas Nieuwenhuizen, aka "Tos N.," the guitarist. I believe that this is the only Funeral Oration record Mr. N. played on, and the difference between it and the band's many, many other records is like night and day.

Funeral Oration - Dayfall

I'm not sure exactly how Nieuwenhuizen--formerly of Jesus & The Gospelfuckers--got his guitar to sound the way it does on Communion, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't by tuning it. As a rhythm player, he's no great shakes. His parts fade into the background and become part of the dull roar that is the rhythm section. As a lead player, though, he shreds.

You might not think there'd be room in a minute-and-a-half-long song for a guitar solo, but Nieuwenhuizen manages to find room again and again on Communion, and it is a pleasure to listen to every time. His other, more "textural" overdubs are also a treat. On the mournful, midtempo "Motherlode," he adds a track consisting of a single guitar chord ringing out and decaying, then slowly building into a curtain of shimmering feedback. It'd be a great song even without it, but with Nieuwenhuizen's inspired clangor panned from channel to channel, it's a really great song.

Funeral Oration - Communion

I don't need to tell you to go back and listen to the squeal of feedback at the 1:24 mark of "Communion" again. I know you heard it the first time because it's perfect. Ain't no-body can sculpt with feedback like my man. It's a shame I haven't heard anything he's done since. (Has anyone posted any of his later stuff with God, Harlingtox A.D., Beaver or 35007? Does it suck total ass?)

Anyhoo... Funeral Oration continued touring and recording throughout the 1980s and 1990s, slowing down the tempos of their songs and cutting out the guitar pyrotechnics and neanderthal growling. While a few of their records are available through Hopeless Records, Communion is not among them. Tellingly, only four tracks from the record, all of them mid-tempo, made it onto the band's career retrospective double CD.

Myself, I've always wanted to re-record Communion with a rhythm guitar track that doesn't sound like a belt sander, drums that don't sound like shoe boxes and vocals that don't sound like Tarzan and Tonto. The songs certainly warrant being re-recorded. I doubt that I could ever equal the squeals of feedback and solos of Tos N., though.

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Somebody's Watching

July 9, 2006... I've got to admit, not much of anything has been grabbing my attention lately. One thing that has, though, is the Flake Media application called gVisit, which tracks the city of origin of the visitors to your website.

At first, I was skeptical. Then I tested it with Afterbirth of the Cool. I suspected that I had a regular visitors from the Syracuse, Waterloo and Washington DC areas and, lo and behold, gVisit registered visitors from the Syracuse, Waterloo and Washington DC areas. Coincidence? Well, lemme put it this way: I ain't getting a lot of hits no-how, so odds that these are coincidences are long.

To see a demonstration of gVisit, go here. To get a piece of the action, go to the other here.

Thanks to PDB for the head's up on this one.

I'd post an mp3 of Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" here if I actually had one

Of course, it's a little creepy to think that one's movements on the Internet can be tracked. When I accidentally find myself at an adult site, for example, and there are banner ads about single women in Toronto, Ontario ... well, that creeps me right out. I'm just here by mistake. What are you implying?

Fortunately, gVisit is not 100% accurate. The person in Toronto who keeps visiting my site and who, according to gVisit, lives at the corner of Barton and Manning, is me. A good neighbourhood, but I don't live there. Mind you, right about now I kinda wish I did: that way, I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my night listening to crazed Italy supporters honkin' they horns as they cruise up and down the street.

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Rhymin' and uh ... I Forget

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An Odd Sort of Supergroup

July 2, 2006... Welcome to the new-look Afterbirth of the Cool! Okay, so the look hasn't really changed... But the focus has! Hereafter, and until further notice, the primary focus of this here blog will be hardcore punk and post-hardcore/pre-alternative from the 1980s and early 1990s.

That doesn't mean that hardcore and post-hardcore will be the only focus of Afterbirth: I've listened to Frank Zappa and the Mothers' Freak Out too many times this week, and thought too hard about why Lenine is better than Seu Jorge, to paint myself into a corner like that. I will, however, ensure that at least 50% of my content from this point forward fits with the new focus.

If you couldn't care less about what Paul Mahern did with himself after the Zero Boys broke up, if you actually come here to read my rants about insufferable gas bags and urban blight, fear not: I will continue to post on these topics ... on my other blog.

Why the change? Well, I've got all these horrendously obscure records that few people would ever get a chance to hear otherwise. And after months and months of financial, logistical and technological challenges, I can finally do something about it. I hope you enjoy it. Warning: there will be guitars.

*****

Generally, when one refers to a musical "supergroup," one is referring to a group comprised of members of other famous musical groups. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, for example, is a supergroup comprised of former members of the Byrds, the Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies--all of whom had had hit songs.

In 1988, X-Mist Records sprang a very different sort of supergroup on the world. Comprised of current and former members of Angor Wat (?), Pissed Boys (??), L.U.L.L. (okay, I'd heard of that one) and "a number of local bands," Attent!on's true claim to fame was it mix of nationalities. The singer was from Denmark, the guitarist from Norway, the bass player from Poland und die drummer aus der Germany. Despite this, they did not suck total ass.

Attent!on - Small Town Rockstar Blues

Both sides of Attent!on's 12" EP, Hearts of Stone, start off with jazz-punk noodling, a la Saccharine Trust, before settling into more straightforward fare. More straightforward, perhaps, but never completely straightforward: the musicians are just too good for that. The bassist plays runs instead of root notes and the guitarist throws in jazzy, dissonant chords and Middle Eastern trills here and there. That the band is fond of heavy metal is also clear: Black Sabbathesque and Iron Maidenite flourishes abound.

Still, this is a punk record. The lyrics, mostly in English, are about not giving up, not selling out, loving one another and all that shit...

It's a pretty good listen.

Attent!on - Hearts of Stone

Hearts of Stone can still be purchased directly from X-Mist, which is both a label and a distributor nowadays.

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