You Are So Harshing My Mellow

September 24, 2006... Das Damen (translation: The Ladies), from New York City, put out a handful of records on the SST label during the 1980s. If the band is famous for anything, it is for recording a cover version of “Magical Mystery Tour,” retitled “Song For Michael Jackson to $ell,” and credited to themselves. The Gloved One, who had recently purchased the publishing rights to the Beatles' catalogue, saw to it that Das Damen's record was removed from the racks, settling for once and all debate about the idea of intellectual property rights as a tradeable commodity.

This post, however, is not about that record...

What does one do with a record like Jupiter Eye, on which Das Damen sounds like a precursor to both the grunge and shoegazer crazes that were soon to follow? (The guitars are fuzzed-out, a la Blue Cheer, and the guitarists given to fits of squiggly wanking ... but there are melodies and harmonies, too.) I mean, it's not a bad record by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not a great record, either--aside, perhaps, from the bass-playing, which is solid throughout.

Das Damen - Impasse

There's a pounding verse here, a dreamy chorus there, maybe a jarring bridge in one song or a frenzied coda at the end of another. But they almost never pull it all together in one song. Instead, many of the songs on the album sound like amalgams of ideas, good and bad alike, that don't really fit together.

Then there's this monster, the last song on the album, which is almost perfect.

Das Damen - Girl With the Hair

So what does one do with a record like Jupiter Eye? One holds onto it and drags it from apartment to apartment for twenty years, digging it out occasionally, playing it and thinking, "Hey, I remember this song from '86! Wow, it's good... Hey, wait a minute, what are they doing? Why are they switching gears? Dudes, you are so harshing my mellow."

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There is No Seed for You Today

September 20, 2006... The person otherwise known as Jandek has self-released forty-seven albums since 1978. During this time, he has participated in one-and-a-half interviews. Reluctantly. Before making a surprise appearance at a festival in Glasgow in October 2004, he had never performed live.

Sunday night, I saw Jandek play at a Toronto theatre called Centre of Gravity.

Jandek - Falling Down Deep

Three local musicians (Nilan Perera, Nick Fraser and Rob Clutton) walked onto the dimly-lit stage. Jandek, a tall, gaunt stick of a man, trailed behind, his face partially obscured under a wide-brimmed, black hat. Wordlessly, he sat down at a bank of keyboards and began playing. As best as they could, which was really quite well, his accompanyists played along.

For the next hour and forty-five minutes, Jandek led the foursome through several similar-sounding, fifteen-minute-long songs, alternately sing-speaking and howling abstruse, disjointed lyrics.

At one point, the image that came to mind was "the Beatnik episode" of Happy Days, wherein a character intones "Little birdy / In the pet shop window / There is no seed for you today / Only death," while his fellow Beats snap their fingers in appreciation. Is Jandek a pretentious twit, I wondered? Or, is Jandek making fun of pretentious twits? A theatre full of fanatics, absorbing his every sound in rapt silence, even though his lyrics are not particularly creative and his musical palette is limited?

Not Richie Cunningham

Yet, I persisted in trying to take Jandek at face value.

Identity seemed to be a major lyrical concern. "I don't define myself," he sang/spoke in one song. "I could be anyone / I could be everyone / In this room full of alone." (Or words to that effect.) In many songs, he sang/spoke of conflict between himself and another person, most likely his bad self. I found myself wondering if he was struggling with multiple personality disorder or some other mental illness...

At the end of the gig, I had been well-entertained, but was none the wiser about why Jandek does what he does. Still, I'm glad he does it. I hope he is, too.

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The Little Grey Telephone

September 18, 2006... I remember, in the weeks after we broke up, riding from yard sale to yard sale, looking for things for my new apartment. And one sunny Saturday, finding a perfectly functional Bell telephone, just like the one I took with me when I left.

I thought of her and her new, dollar-store phone and how boxy she always sounded on it. So I picked up the Bell, cleaned it and gave it to her.

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Dispatch from the Rust Belt

September 14, 2006... Went to Touch and Go's 25th Anniversary party in Chicago on the weekend. What follows are not-so-random recollections of the event.

Day One - Yawns... I've enjoyed elements of some songs by !!! over the past couple years and was looking forward to seeing them play. Unfortunately, their Village People-meets-the Clash sound didn't really come across well live. Their vocalist's mid-set tantrum, wherein he purposely destroyed two microphone stands, did nothing to endear them to me, either. Next time I find my bad self in the mood for a groove, I'll go see Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra instead.

!!! - Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)

Day Two - Nostalgia... Uzeda were the first pleasant surprise of the festival for me. A quartet from Catania, Sicily, Uzeda marries the rumbling bass and trebly guitar sounds of Shellac with more driving, less convoluted song structures. Like most of the bands on Day Two, Uzeda is comprised of people who look like some kid's parents. Like many of the bands on Day Two, they rocked like motherfuckers (and a fatherfucker) anyway. So much so, that there were no copies of their CDs left at Reckless Records booth by Day Three.

Uzeda - Steam, Rain & Other Stuff

At least for this show, the Ex was reduced to a foursome, with both Terrie and Andy playing what looked like customized guitars--each with two bass strings and four guitar strings. Despite this, the band was almost as jaw-droppingly good as the last time I saw them, fifteen years ago. Time has been particularly kind to the drummer, Kat, whose playing is stronger nowadays while still distinctive.

The Ex + Tom Cora - State of Shock

Didjits were the highlight of the festival for me, both sonically and visually. Now that I've seen them play live, I think I understand why, legend has it, they started a riot at a 1990 gig in Toronto: some people just have no sense of humour. Rick Sims, the band's vocalist and guitarist, plays the role of anti-hero to the hilt--mugging, strutting and posing, nary missing a beat. So, when a member of the audience taunted him with shouts of "You suck!" he responded by saying "Oh, yeah? well you suck the cum out of my ass." Then, after a long pause, continued, "Except I don't have any cum in my ass."

Didjits - Axhandle

Proxy Negative Approach (featuring only two members of the original Negative Approach) occasioned the most ferocious--indeed the only--slam-dancing of the event. My guess is that some of people in the audience hadn't seen or heard anything quite like it before. One shocked fellow next to me noted: "That song was only thirty-three seconds long!"

Negative Approach - Ready to Fight

The band I'd most been looking forward to, Scratch Acid, was just so-so. The mix was poor and the performance three-quarter-hearted. I think David Yow's thing is better suited to small, cozy clubs, where he can connect with the people in the audience. Please note that I am the "thing" I am referring to is not necessarily his penis...

Chicago

Musically, Proxy Big Black, all twenty minutes of them, was a big yawn. Steve Albini's got intelligence and integrity to spare, though, so the things said between the songs were right on. I particularly appreciated his Bob and Doug Mackenziesque interlude of "coo roo coo-coo, coo roo coo-coo," which I took as a back-handed slap at !!!. Listen to "Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)" again, particularly at the 5:27 mark, to get what I'm driving at...

The last act of the night was Shellac. They were very good. So good, in fact, that I regret having sold my copy of their At Action Park record years ago. Not surprisingly, for a band with two professional recording engineers in its ranks, their sound was crystal clear and distinctive. (How does Albini make his guitar sound so trebly?) Shellac's brutalist prog rock is great. It'd be even greater if they'd tone down the more "arty" (read: boring) aspects of it.

Shellac - Watch Song

Day Three - Rain... I was pleasantly surprised by Enon, whom I'd never heard before. Their set was comprised largely of short, melodic songs played on a ridiculously distorted dime-store guitar, but also included a few danceable numbers, with the bass line in one very similar to the bass line in Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." Enon closed their set off with a cover of Big Boy's "Which Way to Go?" which was true to the original, but more dissonant. I immediately walked over to the Reckless Records booth and bought a copy of their Hocus Pocus CD.

Enon - The Power of Yawning

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Death and Rebirth

September 6, 2006... A lot of barbs have been thrown in Steve Irwin's direction this week--particularly in the blogosphere. Irwin, the Australian television personality also known as "The Crocodile Hunter," was killed on Monday after being attacked by a stingray. Some of his more vitriolic detractors have suggested that animals the world over are breathing easier in the knowledge that Irwin's in-your-face take on Jacques Cousteau has come to an end. I am not among them.

I remember fondly my introduction to The Crocodile Hunter. One day, flipping from channel to channel in an attempt to find a reason to justify paying for cable, I stumbled across the following scene: an enthusiastic, young man is perched in a tree addressing the audience enthusiastically about the rare, reclusive creature he has just encountered; every few seconds, while the young man enthuses, the rare, reclusive creature above him in the tree lashes out with a paw and whacks him upside his haid; the young man enthuses on, undeterred. Crikey!

Irwin kept me entertained for hours and will be missed.

Speaking of entertainment... Here's hoping that the aging greybeards playing at Touch and Go Records' 25th Anniversary Party keep me entertained this weekend. I am particularly looking forward to the reunions of Scratch Acid and this band, the Didjits, whose legendary set in Toronto in 1990 touched off a riot of enraged "feminists." Bring on the menace, real or imagined.

Didjits - Stingray

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Mortgage Payments, Hypertension and Release

September 4, 2006... Last night, for the first time since about 1993 or 1994, I went to a hardcore gig. The last time I saw that much black clothing in one place, my ex was helping me move out of her house. And the last time I saw that many teenagers in one place, it was at a hardcore gig.

The first band up, though, was 100% adult. In fact, some of the guys in the band had, like, receding hairlines, crowsfeet and teenagers of their own in the audience. And check it: the guitarist used a talkbox on a couple of songs. You know, like Peter Frampton used on "Show Me the Way," and "Do You Feel Like We Do?" That shit is so wicked! Anyway, Brave Belt or Brown Star or whatever they were called, were pretty good. Generally fast and tight, they opened their set with a cover of Pailhead's simmering, mid-tempo classic, "I Will Refuse."

Since it has already been posted at Medication: A Buddyhead MP3 Blog, I'm not gonna post "I Will Refuse." Instead, I'ma post a song that reminds me of it. I can pretty much guarantee you ain't heard this one...

Sheik Tosado - Assum Preto

Sheik Tosado are/were a band from the city of Recife, in northeastern Brazil. The track "Assum Preto" is taken from a compilation called Baião de Viramundo: Tribute to Luiz Gonzaga. As I'm sure you'll agree, it's got that whole tension-release dynamic, too. For a few bars, a guitar quietly hums underneath a frenetic beat of caixa, alfaia and pandeiro--then, without warning, it's all Gibson SGs and Marshall stacks. Then it's quiet again.

As for who Luiz Gonzaga was and why there is a CD tribute to him, I'ma leave that shit for another day...

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The Man With a Voice Like a Yellow Toenail

September 4, 2006... Speaking of UB40, here's another of their strong, early tracks. Pay particular attention to the vocal melody in the verses, there will be test later.

UB40 - Burden of Shame

Good lyrics. But you've heard that melody somewhere before, haven't you? You can't quite put your finger on it, but somehow you know it had something to do with your parents. Was it a Neil Diamond song? No! It's even more dire than that...

Van Morrison - Moondance

Yes, Van Morrison, the man with a voice like a yellow toenail, is another of UB40's influences.

Damn, I hate Van Morrison. "Moondance" isn't so bad, I guess, but every time I hear I hear him sing "Brown-Eyed Girl," I want to throttle someone. Doesn't matter that the "brown-eyed girl" he's referring to is his lover's anus.

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