perfidy

Malian music legend Ali Farka Touré once said of his home, "For some people, Timbuktu is a place at the end of nowhere. But that's not true--I'm from Timbuktu, and I can tell you that it's right in the center of the world." Mr. Touré (I've met him, he's reserved, dignified and courteous, and possessed of a sober gravitas that makes it Mister Touré to you) might have been engaging in a little hyperbole since every thinking person knows that Boston is the Hub of the Universe, but a little hyperbole is more than forgivable in light of the long and rich history of the kingdoms of Mali.

Ali Farka Touré himself is a farmer and local (what... chief? mayor? paterfamilias?), who tends to his village first and his music second. In 1995, he begged off a US tour claiming that he could not leave his home because if he did, he risked losing his land in an armed skirmish. When in 1998, one of his US labels, Hannibal, wanted to record a new record with him Touré insisted the producers bring a mobile recording rig to his compound at Niafunké. The stunning resulting album, aptly titled Niafunké, was recorded whenever farm chores did not press and whenever the mood struck to pick up his guitar.

In 2000, Touré decided to come to the USA for one last tour before devoting all his time to a village irrigation project. I was lucky enough to see his New York date, August 8, 2000, and I can't ever forget it. A big man in person, on stage he looked ten feet tall, wielding his electric guitar like it was a toy and wrenching from it some of the most searing melodies I have ever heard. He was playful, switching between guitar and njerka (a small one-stringed fiddle) and stopping to explain to the New York audience what he was singing about in the eleven languages he writes in. About halfway through the show, he struck on the game of lifting his leg way up in the air and bringing it down onto the stage with a huge *boom*. His band worked the *boom* into the deep percolating groove they had built, and soon Touré was *boom*ing away, each one accented by a chord from his guitar that sounded like trees breaking in the wind. The entire night was unforgettable and absolutely one of a kind. Ali Farka Touré is often compared to John Lee Hooker, whose elemental blues sound seemed to emanate from some half-remembered Mali of the mind, but on that night Ali Farka Touré sounded like Timbuktu.

Before the show, I shared a cab with record producer and Hannibal label owner Joe Boyd, who asked me about African music and what I thought about it. I mentioned Ali Farka Touré, Johnny Clegg, Fela Kuti and a few others before bringing up Angelique Kidjo, who had just released her pop-inflected album Oremi the previous year. Boyd looked at me quizzically and said, "you like that? That speaks to you?" I admitted that it didn't really, it just sounded nice, and he told me that someday, smart kid that I was, I would figure it out, I would get it.

Later that night, I got it.

I bring all this up not because Ali Farka Touré has a new album out but because I was reminded of him and his effect on me today by another group drawing on West African traditions. Called "Fula Flute," after a particular style of flute playing native to the Fulani people of Guinea in which the player sings into the flute as he plays, they have been playing east coast dates over the past couple of years. (The group is composed of a Canadian, a jazz-trained New York bassist, several Malian griots (roughly, hereditary storytellers/bards/historians), and Bailo Bah, the Fuilani flutist.) Working on a smaller scale than the larger than life Ali Farka Touré, Fula Flute showcase a nearly-extinct and deeply enthralling folk tradition that (like so many nearly dead folk traditions), begs for a wider audience. I'm on their mailing list, and was notified today that they have a nifty video out in Quicktime which showcases both the Fula flute style and the rolling percussion typical of West African music. Good, interesting, unusual, and beautiful. They've got it.

[wik] The title of this post has changed. A scratched copy of White Lion's album "Pride" to the first person who can tell me what the new title refers to.

[alsø wik] Also posted to blogcritics.org

From the best-bands-ever department, the UK's Feeder is sort of becoming my favorite brit-guitar rock band. Like maybe ever? Yeah, ever. Until something better comes along. Grant Nicholas first caught my attention on Junkie XL's latest, on a track called "Broken". Great stuff, so I checked out where he came from and bought Comfort in Sound, Feeder's latest. What shines through every Feeder song are beautiful melodies, against a pretty hard (and perfectly sparse) background.

Moving backwards in time, I picked up Polythene, Feeder's brilliant 1997 debut. Why have I not heard of this band? Every track on Polythene works perfectly. Favorites include "Crash" and "Radiation".

Guess I'm stuck in a dream
Surrounded by coloured leaves on the ground,
As I stare at the trees,
I see one fall down on my hand.
As i start to explore,
I can't ignore a man,
He turn his head around,
His face was all worn by the sun.

I'm going out for a while,
So i can get high with my friends,
I will,
I'm going out for a while,
Don't wait up cause i won't be home,
Today.

Drifting down the road,
Losing myself in a dream,
Feel my hands getting cold,
Sat in a boat on a lake...

You know, now that I read them, the lyrics are pretty damn depressing a lot of the time. Trust me on this: You'll never notice while you're listening, 'cause you'll be too busy singing along in the car, like an idiot. Yeah, you.

Feeder's middle two CDs were never released in America, so I hit Amazon to get'em, and got'em for $15 each from prompt, item-as-described auction zealots. Echo Park is the one I'm not quite into yet, but the fans out there assure me I will be, by the reviews. Yesterday came too soon has the same brilliance as Polythene and Comfort...

Crossing bridges over water
A new reflection creeping in
Got your head so full of traffic
The love pollution's setting in

Long ago my feelings on folk music hardened from simple animadversion into open contempt. Consequently, I am inclined to not give a chance to even the best of the classic folkies. Tim Buckley: pussy! Phil Ochs: pinko! If I had a hammer, I'd hammer Peter Paul and Mary all day long! Nick Drake gets a pass because he's English and a genius, but it's a close call since his legions of pathetic hack followers haunt my every step. Because I have such a hard time with folk music and folk musicians in general, it is a real pleasure when I find one who can actually deliver the goods. Richard Buckner, come on down!

Austin native (and Brooklyn resident) Richard Buckner is the owner of a ridiculously burnished voice, the kind of weathered rasp that invites overbaked comparisons to old leather, mellow whiskey and open prairie afternoons. At a whisper, darker tones invite hushed intimacy; when he cuts loose, the weariness in his voice turns to an ache that Springsteen would kill to have the use of for a single day. In the past, he has sometimes had trouble finding songs good enough to go with his voice. Buckner's instincts are not rock instincts, nor are they quite country; he doesn't go in for drama or the big finish. Indeed, even dressed up with steel guitars and uptempo kit drumming, Richard Buckner pretty much writes folk songs in the metaphorical-confessional mode, and I just can't find it in myself to hold it against him. He’s too cool, too rumpled. Too real.

One problem with modern folk music is that it requires a measured subtlety that too often presents as sleepiness, and Buckner isn't completely innocent in this regard. On 2002's Impasse, all the album's songs melted together into a lukewarm puddle of mildly depressing soul-searching. That album was a big letdown in comparison to his debut, Bloomed (that album's "Rainsquall" is one of my favorite happy-sad songs), and his mid-90s offerings Since and Devotion+Doubt which (I confess) reliable sources close to me say are great. On Impasse, the claustrophobic atmosphere may have been in part thanks to Richard's own increasing reliance on playing all his own instruments. With nobody to act as a foil, he seems to withdraw into a hermetic space that might be pleasing to him but doesn't invite listeners in.

On the new Dents and Shells (Merge) Buckner seems to have unclenched quite a bit. Leaving the bulk of the playing to a crack team of hired sidemen, Buckner offers a solid set of ten songs that make the most of his way with a yearning melody and a laid-back vibe. Operating in the same general territory as Townes van Zandt, the Jayhawks (but softer and more messy) and early Steve Earle (without the snarl and the drugs), he seems to have figured out how to write songs that let the listener in. In particular, the shimmery guitar and piano of the opening “A Chance Counsel” and “Her” sit beautifully among the naked melancholy of “Firsts” and “And The Waves Will Always Roll,” making Dents and Shells the first Richard Buckner album to do everything right with his considerable talents. Highly recommended, even (especially?) for non-fans of folk music.

Also posted to blogcritics.org, which you will now go and read.

Eminem's new video/single, Mosh is really, really good. In an election season marked by singularly idiotic statements by artists (I'm talking to you, Bruce Springsteen. "We've been misled?" What the hell is misling?), Eminem has succeeded in making protest music that neither sucks nor panders.

Instead of recycling all the usual Bush Lied/Halliburton crap bit by bit, Eminem distances himself from pat criticisms of the President by putting those words in the mouths of characters and ties up all the criticisms of the President into one mass, putting the focus more on dissatisfaction in general rather than any one charge. A 9/11 reference opens the video, and takes us through vignettes of regular folks dealing with hard facts of life-- overly vigorous police, not making ends meet, and coming home from Iraq to your wife and kids to find you're being shipped right back. For himself, Eminem reserves a more unfocused disgust with the way things are going (yes, getting with some pretty weak "F**k Bush" stuff) and by the end of the video he is leading a grim and angry mob into the street to... go vote.

I can't believe I am writing this. It's a sign of how bad things have gotten. But Eminem-- Slim Shady-- has put together the single best populist critique of the post-9/11 Bush Administration, not that that's saying much. No doubt at least two of my cobloggers will disagree with me about the quality of the critiques of the administration (and hey, Eminem is not exactly the most nuanced guy on the planet... Bush is a "weapon of mass destruction" my ass), but damn. In one shot Eminem succeeds in reducing hyperbole to something that almost resembles argument (or at least a call to arms), and makes voting into a revolutionary, fist-in-the-air act. It's not that idiotic, pandering "Vote or Die" campaign P-Diddy's on. It's not that milkylicking limo-liberal "Vote for Change" thing. It's just "Vote," and for all the cliche and lack of nuance, it just works.

What happens when you run the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" through babelfish into Italian and back again?

(Many thanks to boing boing just for being them)

The gang at Crooked Timber have cooked up a filthy little scheme designed to sap me of my will to live. In a matter of days I will be a slackjawed raster-tanned homunculus unable to rouse myself from my chair for long enough to excrete, eat, or socialize, eventually dooming me to a short and joyless death as I ponder continually upon this question:

For your tireless service on behalf of good, you have been given the power to replace the weak link in any band, past or present.

You need not be bound by practical considerations; you’re free to ignore the fact that (say) Peter Criss was the only one who could properly apply the KISS makeup. For example, you can replace Liz Phair (the singer) while keeping Liz Phair (the songwriter). How do you use this power, and why?

Oooooooh.

1) Replace talentless yet good-natured goofball Kirk Hammett of Metallica with someone who can actually play a lead guitar line. Really, any sixteen-year-old bedroom guitarist would constitute an improvement, but I'm inclined to throw a bone to Marty Friedman. He's a phenomenal guitarist and his unceremonious booting from Megadeth and subsequent hiring by Metallica would close the Great Mustaine Circle for all time.

2) Not that I care at all, but if the Godchauxes had never joined the Grateful Dead and Mama Cass and Keith Manzarek had done so in their place, the world would be a better place. Maybe Cass would have lived, the Dead would have sucked noticeably less, and best of all the Doors would be a stillborn memory instead of a lasting pants-crap embarrassment to the entire idea of rock music.

3) Replace Leonard Cohen's prostate with a golf ball. Perhaps then he will quit with the "hot backup singers doing all the work on my latest shitty album" thing he's been on.

4) Replace Elvis Costello (after 1993) with Elvis Costello (before 1993).

5) Replace Natalie Maines' hair with Laurie Anderson's. Girl needs a haircut!

6) Replace David Byrne's ego with Lou Reed's. The Talking Heads would still have broken up, but maybe Tina and David wouldn't hate each other quite so much.

7) Replace The Strokes with The Hives. Or was that the Vines? The Shins? Fuck it. Replace all of them with the Dolls like everybody knows they should.

8) Replace Franz Ferdinand with Gang of Four.

9) I see I'm veering off into pat ad hominem attacks here, so I'll bring it back home. Replace Robert Plant with Rod Stewart. I mean, GOD. The emperor has no clothes! I cannot believe that generations of rock critics and fans defend his off-key yelping and nasal whines as being influenced by Middle Eastern music. No, gentlemen, he just couldn't find the key. Extra points off for execrable lyrics that beat all the humor and fun out of the blues, leaving just "suck it baby, suck it! Suck! Suck! Ahhhhhhhhaaaaaa, SUCK!"

10) Replace Jimmy Page with Eric Clapton. See 9 above. Let Jimmy play rhythm.

I've been on a deep and serious Neil Young kick recently. My wife and I are Modified Neil Completists, which implies that we seek out everything we can by him that is not Silver and Gold or Are You Passionate?, two titles that, hard as we try, we cannot accept as Neillerific. Even the oft-maligned Trans, which featured Young using programmed drums, vocoders, and synthesizers (in 1982!!!) has been rehabilitated by the news that he made the album at the same time he was learning to use computers to communicate with his severely handicapped sons. Besides, now that Beck's been around for ten years or so, crossing country with robotics no longer seems weird and wrong.

I mean, we are completists. Aside from all the studio stuff, we have more than a dozen bootlegs of live and unreleased material including a four-disc live set spanning Young's entire career from Buffalo Springfield to 1994. So it came as a bit of a shock to my wife to find that I'd never listened to Decade, Young's three-disc summation of his first ten years in the spotlight. That deficiency remedied, I am now stuck on listening to Young's great lost classic "Winterlong" on auto-repeat. It may be the greatest rock song ever written.

But forget all that. I'm just rambling like a phanatique. What I really want to point out is that Neil Young is a goddamned prophet. Have you listened to "Rockin' in the Free World" (off 1989's Freedom recently? You really should. The lyrics, especially the first stanza, mean a hell of a lot more now than they did in 1989. I mean.... damn.

There's colors on the street
Red, white and blue
People shufflin' their feet
People sleepin' in their shoes
But there's a warnin' sign
on the road ahead
There's a lot of people sayin'
we'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan,
but I am to them
So I try to forget it,
any way I can.

Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world.

I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away,
and she's gone to get a hit
She hates her life,
and what she's done to it
There's one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world.

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world.

Autumn comes as a real downer to where I live. The rest of New England is blessed with dying leaves in fiery colors, gorgeous sunsets, and crisp weather that promises warm hearths and snacks from Martha Stewart’s wet dreams. Not so for me. Where I live on the coast in Salem, Massachusetts, the weather turns cold and then it rains. The leaves go from green to dead in a matter of days only to get turned into stinking muck by the feet of thousands of mouth-breathing tourists come to town to gawk at “witches.” The grass on the common turns brown and the town hunkers down for another busy Halloween season and a long, cold winter.

Oddly, I like it this way. If I want scenic panoramas and hearthwarmed idylls, I just need to drive an hour north. At home in Salem, the gross weather and the ersatz festival mood suit my listening habits. I tend to key my music to the seasons. Spring is funktime, summer tends to mean power-pop and loud rock, and in the autumn I pull out my downer records—Tom Waits, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds, Neil Young’s heartsick ‘70s work, the Black Heart Procession, and German operas about men and women doomed to horrible fates they cannot escape. It’s not that I court depression. That’s a louche pursuit for tortured teenagers in black eyeliner who carve their initials in painful places. But autumn in New England seems the right time for high weirdness straight out of some fetid basement in Peyton Place.

David Thomas, formerly of high punk priests Pere Ubu and punk prototypes Rocket from the Tombs, has been making music of surpassing high weirdness for thirty years now, and age treats him well. These days he records as David Thomas and Two Pale Boys, the two pale boys in question being Andy Diagram (trumpets & electronics) and Keith Moliné (guitars, violin & electronics). The stripped-down instrumentation that these three not-boys bring to their third release, 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man’s Chest (in stores October 19), allows Thomas’ chameleonic voice and bizarre lyrics to shine through a bed of heavily processed trumpet and guitar, sometimes softened by the lilting wheeze of Thomas’ melodeon.

The hardest thing about writing about music is avoiding X-meets-X clichés. I could finish this review right now if I just hooked Tom Waits’ “Swordfishtrombones” up to early Nick Cave and ran them both through the horrorshow country of Johnny Dowd’s “Temporary Shelter.” But that depends on your knowing who those people are, and most of you just thought to yourselves, “Johnny Dowd… who the heck…?” Even if that were not the lazy man’s escape, such associations do the album, Mr. Thomas, and his Two Pale Boys a major disservice.

The music on 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man’s Chest defies fair description, featuring layers of sound, lurching rhythms, and Thomas’ own elliptical lyrics. The opening track, “New Orleans Fuzz,” clumps along heavily under a lurching beat while disconnected impressions float by: “There are monsters in the rain,” “The river’s in the air, there’s nothing else to breathe,” “Live free or die, live free or die.” Even without drums of any kind, the following track, “Numbers Man” manages to swing like a lost Ventures recording, albeit a lost Ventures recording bent on murdering your family. And so the tension builds, until smack in the middle of all the ugliness sits “Brunswick Parking Lot,” one of the most luminously beautiful songs I have heard in a long while. With just his melodeon as accompaniment, Thomas croons (in his own broken way) a long and heartfelt apology to a girl named Deborah. The second half of the album is more atmospheric and leans more heavily on Andy Diagram’s tape loops and trumpet. “Nebraska Alcohol Abuse” barely moves, covering Thomas’ downcast murmur in gentle noises like falling snow, making the subtle groove of “Golden Surf” seem positively energetic by comparison. A few lyrical hints point to some of the songs being linked into a story, but if that is true I have yet to figure out the plot.

By the time the album winds down with the seven-minute long minimalist tour de force “Prepare for the End,” all the building unpleasantness of the previous forty minutes dissolves into a pale sunrise tinged with, if not exactly hope, than at least resignation that things might be okay. David Thomas and Two Pale Boys have created a beautiful album of downcast music that finds solace in desolation and redemption after despair.

Recommended for fans of: Tom Waits, Pere Ubu, Johnny Dowd, Nick Cave, Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, Black Heart Procession, that depressing high-school crap we all loved back in the 80s.

Dave Thomas and Two Pale Boys record for Smog Veil Records.

See them on tour in (fittingly) October:

Thu 10/14/04 San Diego, CA- Casbah
Fri 10/15/04 Los Angeles, CA- Spaceland
Sat 10/16/04 San Francisco, CA- Bottom of the Hill
Mon 10/18/04 Portland, OR- Lola's- Crystal Ballroom
Tue 10/19/04 Seattle, WA- Tractor Tavern
Fri 10/22/04 Minneapolis, MN- 7th Street Entry
Sat 10/23/04 Chicago, IL- Empty Bottle
Sun 10/24/04 Pittsburgh, PA- Brew House: Space 101
Mon 10/25/04 Cleveland, OH- Beachland Ballroom
Wed 10/27/04 Cambridge, MA- Middle East Upstairs (*I am so there*)
Thu 10/28/04 New York, NY- Knitting Factory
Fri 10/29/04 Baltimore, MD- Talking Head
Sat 10/30/04 Chapel Hill, NC- Local 506
Sun 10/31/04 Atlanta, GA- The Earl

Also posted to blogcritics.org.

Punk legend Johnny Ramone has died of prostate cancer. Johnny was the third of the original Ramones to die in recent years - Joey Ramone died in 2001, also of cancer; and Dee Dee Ramone died in 2002 of an overdose.

Mrs. Buckethead's excellent band, Dead Men's Hollow, has just posted a bunch of new live MP3s on their site. If you like bluegrass and old school country, take a listen here. Or even if you don't.

My parents make their own sauerkraut. Every year they grow a special patch of cabbage, and each fall about a hundred pounds of that hearty Ohio goodness gets loaded into a crock my grandparents brought over from Germany, salted, and weighted with boards. For a few weeks the basement is a difficult place to be without goggles and a rebreather, but once put in jars for long term storage, the final result is breathtaking. My parents’ sauerkraut is a monument to the incomprehensible miracle of friendly bacteria; sweet, pungent, salty, and subtle in equal measure and as different from the metallic harshness of the canned or bagged supermarket versions as the finest homebrew ale is from 40 ounces of Lazer Malt Liquor (Kestrel, for our UK friends). It might not be for everybody, but many a nonbeliever has come away from the table with a new understanding for what good kraut really is.

Jazz-funk is kind of like that.
Jazz purists scorn the genre for being too one-dimensional, for being crassly devoted to the simple pleasures of one key and an endless groove, and there is certainly something to that. More sins have been committed with a Fender Rhodes piano and a drum machine than were ever dreamed of by medieval catalogers of the myriad varieties of human perfidy. But to dismiss jazz-funk as more noodling over a repetitive beat is to deny the undeniable allure of solid grooves and burning solos. Yes, when it’s bad it’s bad like sauerkraut from a can. But when it’s good-- when the band is on and taking you higher-- it can make a believer out of the squarest soul.

However, there is a catch. Have you ever eaten too much sauerkraut?

Soulive are a soul-jazz-funk-fusion trio who for nearly ten years have been building a reputation for themselves on the strength of their muscular, grooving live shows (their albums have been pretty good too). Composed of Eric Krasnow (guitar) and brothers Neil (organ) and Alan Evans (drums), the New England group have split their time between jazzhead and deadhead audiences, balancing much like Medeski Martin & Wood between pure jazz excursions and dirty groovefests. But where MM&W never fully embraced their inner hippie and have been turning out increasingly cerebral music, Soulive seem determined to go where only Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley have gone before in making a career out of chasing the Great White Groove.

This one-groove strategy is both their greatest weapon and greatest weakness. To enjoy their live shows, you have to be totally on board for 75 minutes of uptempo funk blowing or you’re just not going to get it. On any given night Soulive can either blow your mind or bore you to tears. Even so, their sometimes outstanding live shows are a better setting than their solid but somewhat insubstantial studio recordings to get what they mean by “So Live.” The only question is, how much is enough?

The band recently teamed with Pirate Entertainment and DiscLive to produce a series of live insta-albums recorded over three nights at Tribeca Rock Club in New York. Each show was recorded live and made available for download immediately, and preorders were cut, packaged and shipped in one week. For a band like Soulive whose entire reason for being is to play transcendent live shows, this seems, on paper at least, to be a brilliant move. I recently obtained the double-disc sets of the first and third nights (July 29 and July 31), and in general they confirm what I already know: sauerkraut is delicious until it’s time to be ill.

Soulive owe a great debt to the giants of what is now called “soul jazz.” Their sound invokes Jimmy Smith, Grant Green, Herbie Hancock and John Scofield, as well as funk icons like the Family Stone, Maceo Parker, and the JBs. Krasnow in particular is a sometimes brilliant player, weaving driving single-note lines that recall Green and Sco in and around the deep rhythms held down by the brothers Evans. Over the course of ten years their sound hasn’t changed very much, mainly involving subtle variations on a groove that recalls early-JBs James Brown smoothed with a little Wes Montgomery.

The July 29 show stars with a steaming version of “El Ron” featuring a slippery solo from Krasnow but derails quickly into a sub- Maceo fatback version of “Hurry Up… And Wait” that recalls the tepid album version from 2001’s Doin’ Somethin’. However, the rest of disc one is solid, featuring the band doing what they do best—burning between 120 and 140 BPM. Each track burns intensely, taking the tightly-packed crowd higher, and disc 2 continues the ride with six tight, long grooves. Unfortunately, the energy ebbs about ten minutes before the finale, “Do It Again” ends, leaving the show to peter out rather than end with a bang.

Since this is a single live show beginning to end, it comes complete with high points, stage patter, and watch-checking moments. In general, Live in NYC July 29 2004 is good but too uneven to recommend for the casual fan. The band are still chasing the groove, but sometimes it just won’t be found.

Live…. July 31st is a different story. On this third night of the band’s stand at Tribeca, the grooves are tighter, the sound is more consistent, the solos are generally more fluid, and what some tracks lack in meltdown-grade groove explosions is made up in general quality and interest, including an encore rundown of Herbie Hancock’s chestnut “Chameleon.” The original recording of this song is so iconic and powerful that most bands struggle to find a way to play it without merely rehashing and paying tribute to the power of the HeadHunters. Soulive succeed in making the song theirs, in their sound, without losing the furious swing and grit everyone remembers.

Although I don’t have night two, Live… July 30th, it looks interesting too, featuring covers of “Jesus Children of America “and “Crosstown Traffic” along with band standards “One in Seven” and “Uncle Junior.”

One strange aspect of the live-to-legit-bootleg recording process is revealed in the pothead laxity brought to the setlists and liner notes. PirateBootlegs’ website claims that the second disc from July 31st starts with a cover of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Lenny,” but in reality is something I don’t quite recognize as “Solid” from Doin’ Something. ("Lenny" actually appears on disc one, in a version that at points approaches the pathos and beauty of the original-- not an easy thing to do.) This kind of error, combined with the lack of liner notes in the albums (at least in the stickered full-art promo I received) is a real disappointment, especially for a band whose Phishlike following trade live shows and legendary setlists. I expect more for a full $20. I remain old-school enough to expect the full treatment, even though all signs point toward the assumption that these albums will be IPodified by most interested parties.

In any case, Soulive’s double live offerings prove it is hard to stay interested over the course of two discs of material by a band who are still learning how to deliver the goods every night. If you are looking for an introduction into Soulive’s music, you can do much, much worse than Live… July 31st, but I’d still recommend picking up 2002’s single-disc live album, Soulive or their 1999 studio Turn It Out. Since the band already have a live album under their belt, and since they are not yet prone to stretch out and transform their songs night to night, it’s hard to see why this trio of discs are strictly necessary. Like my parents, Soulive are chasing perfection. But that is how jazz-funk is like sauerkraut: it’s delicious, even amazing, but if you overdo it by too much you’re probably not going to want any more for a long, long time.

More information Soulive's Live in NYC albums here:
Soulive: Live In NYC July 29 2004
Soulive: Live In NYC July 30 2004
Soulive: Live In NYC July 31 2004

This post also appears at blogcritics.org. Check out blogcritics for more media goodness and general funtime bloggery.

It occurs to me that I should clarify some intellectual slippage in my post on the music of the early 1990s. Why is it better, subjectively, that Kurt Cobain draw on the Pixies “Doolittle,” than for, say, Franz Ferdinand to pretend that Gang of Four didn’t do what they do first?

Up front, I will say this: I don’t know. Aside from murky arguments about aesthetic purity, integrity, and honesty, all of which amount to so much handwaving, there is no concrete reason that one should be considered better, more legitimate than the other. At the end of the day, all music is derivative. It has to be. Just as there are maybe a dozen stock plots that drive 99% of all the popular novels and TV shows out there (not to mention all Shakespeare’s plays, etc. etc.), all of which are clichéd and hoary, there’s only so far you can go with twelve notes and four beats to the bar.

In fact, music should be derivative. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be enjoyable. Without ties to prior experience, a piece of music exists in a cultural/historical vacuum, and people don’t like that. By nature and by training, people prefer to experience things that remind them of other things. I’m not enough of a philosopher to posit this as true for the entire range of human experiences, but even when people “try something new,” they enjoy it best when it can be tied in some way to something they already know.

Just look at Mozart. Although arguably the greatest composer of the high-Classical period, he wasn’t doing much that was terribly new. The rules of harmony he clung to were codified by Bach, he took lessons from the brother of Haydn, and his melodies relied on certain stock constructions that, though his own, he reused time and time again. And yet the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.

When music is consciously totally new, it tends to either suck, or gain a cult/academic following that proves the rule that most people like new things. Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, for example, saw twelve-tone serial music as not only the conscious next step in the evolution of Western music, but as a total and revolutionary break with the past. The results are, to the average listener, at best unlistenable and at worst aggressively off-putting. It is not too often these days that you hear serial music on the radio.

This is so because purely serial compositions eschew any connection with the past save one: the acceptance of the twelve tones of the chromatic scale. Later composers, of course, went farther. In college, I was a big fan of a piece by French/Greek composer Iannis Xenakis that sounded like an air duct. But, again, I was a music major and have spent a lot of time seeking out ostensibly “new” sounds. I’m an exception that proves the rule.

The debate, then, is really about the balance between "just novel enough" and "boring." Nirvana: just novel enough. Sum 47: boring. Truth: subjective.

[wik] I’ve written about related matters [url= here, and have been carrying on a conversation in my own head for at least ten years now. I probably need to get out more.

Today's posting reminds me of this solemn creed:

I believe in Iggy, Jimi, Chryssie, and Joe Strummer, the Parents Almighty, Creator of heaven on earth; I believe in Malcolm McClaren and Sid Vicious, His only Son. I believe in punk, lo-fi and gangsta, indie, post-punk, indie-pop, rock, singer-songwriter, and insurgent country, conceived by Uncle Tupelo, born of Jeff Tweedy who suffers, as does Lou Barlow. I believe in Squirrelbait and Johnny Cash. I believe in the Motor City. I will respectfully love and fear Tad. I believe in Superchunk and PJ Harvey. I believe in new bands and will never pretend to know music I have never heard, so my mind may stay open and I will sitteth at the right hand of Mission of Burma so I may one day ascend to heaven, where I will be greeted by Sonic Youth, Eazy-E, and Mike Watt. I will not listen to rock critics, but trust my own ears. I believe in DIY, zines, Yo La Tengo, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of Cobain, and rock everlasting. Amen.

Rock be with you.
And also with you.

Weren't the Nineties grand?
Okay, I can't just leave that to lie there like some bluegill gasping for air in the bottom of a rowboat. The long version of that thought is: "now that early '90's revivalism is in full swing-- Clintonian centrism, the indignant crusades of the post-Moral Majority moral minority, localized genocide, war in Iraq, apres-boom recession blues-- it's interesting (to me at least) to take a look back at the music of the early 1990s and see how it has aged in relation to what we gots today.

Popular music in its time is like a flea market. Even the most discerning buyer is hard pressed to identify the good stuff, the real finds, the million-dollar tea sets, in among all the crapulous junk exuded from a thousand moldy basements. For every Nirvana, there are a dozen Nerf Herders, Candleboxes, Collective Souls, and Four Nontalented Non Blondeses. It's only in retrospect that the really good stuff can shine through.

Case in point: the early to mid 90s. Listening to a whole set of the best of the period all at once, like I get to do whenever WFNX, the local 'alternative' station runs a 90's lunch, makes it seem like rock music hit a high water mark around 1995 and that everything since is a recession. (Hell, for all I know that could be true. I can't think of one band-- even one single-- in the last four years that's as indelible as Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight.") I bring this up because I was recently poleaxed by Hole's "Doll Parts." I haven't heard that song in years, at least not that I can remember, and I can't believe how well it has aged. Back when it came out, Hole was just another part-girl 'grunge' band right along with L7 and Four Non-Blondes. and Courtney Love was the new Yoko Ono. Now "Doll Parts" seems absolutely perfect-- timely, relevant, tough, freaky and disturbing, without a whiff of quaintness-- and underscores the appearance that nobody today is doing it as well. What the hell? Is it possible that rock music managed to go for ten years without noticing that it's run off a cliff?

It seems to me that since about 1996 all the forward momentum in pop music has been on the hip-hop/soul side of things as Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, The Ruff Riders, the Dirty South crew, Eminem, LA Reid, Irv Gotti, and even Clive Davis have moved the state of the art forward by leaps and bounds while rock stays stuck in a rut. Aside from critical darlings (Radiohead and their clones, Coldplay), rock is a revival act now. The White Stripes worship "Electric Mud." Franz Ferdinand worship Gang of Four. Queens of the Stone Age worship Foghat. Creed worship Jesus (and, to a lesser extent, Collective Soul). Even Radiohead bear more of a debt to Bowie, Pink Floyd, and Brian Eno then they like to let on. And, yes, I will grant that Courtney Love took all the cues for "Live Through This" from "Nevermind," which in turn was pretty much the Pixies "Doolittle" all over again, but such first-hand piracy is different from today's nostalgia acts pretending that New Wave never actually happened the first time.

My assignment to you: prove me wrong, children! Prove me wrong! Is it possible that rock's forward progress stopped around the time Rage Against the Machine released "Bomb Track" and Smashing Pumpkins broke up?

Don't ever take anything away from addict in training Arleen Mathers of Memphis, TN. Loyal Ministry reader #00017 EDog sent me the following story, which should stand as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks that music is "just a hobby" with some people.

Cough. Ahem.

Pod Used In Domestic Homicide
Friday, March 5, 2004 Posted: 4:50 PM EST (1450 GMT)

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE (HLN) - A Memphis woman was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she bludgeoned her boyfriend to death with an iPod.

Arleen Mathers, 23, was arrested Thursday morning after she called Memphis Police and said she had killed her boyfriend, according to a Sheriff’s Department report. When deputies arrived at Mathers’ apartment at 528 Poplar Avenue, Mathers led them to the body of her boyfriend, Brad Pulaski, 27.

Brad Pulaski had died of blunt trauma to the head after being repeatedly bludgeoned with an iPod, a popular MP3 player produced by Apple. Police said no motive has been confirmed, although evidence suggested the murder was the result of a domestic dispute after Pulaski erased the contents of Mathers’ iPod.

According to law officers, Mathers was hysterical when police arrived and told them that she killed her boyfriend only after he accused her of illegally downloading music and erased about 2,000 of her MP3s. Mathers complained that it took 3 months to build her music collection.

An autopsy performed Friday afternoon at Methodist Hospital showed that Brad Pulaski had been beat multiple times in the face and chest by a blunt metal object, and died of internal bleeding, said Dr. Felix Klamut, deputy coroner.

According to Apple’s website, the iPod is partially made of a hard metal plate that’s been praised for it’s resistance to regular wear and tear, like drops and coffee spills. “It took him a while to die,” Dr. Klamut said. “She must have stabbed him 40 to 80 times with that iPod. His death was not instantaneous, that’s for sure”

Arleen Mathers was arraigned Friday night by a video hookup from the county jail. Municipal Court Judge Simon Lambert set her bond at $600,000 and scheduled a preliminary hearing for March 9.

I have to wonder.... those IPods are durable little things. D'you think hers still works?

In honor of Arleen Mathers, winner of the August edition of the infrequently awarded Perfidious Prize for Inadvertant or Vertant Asshattery, I have included below the fold a mix of suitable music in her honor.

Cutting Crew: "(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight"
Hall & Oates: "Man Eater"
Queen: "Killer Queen"
Ramones: "Beat On The Brat"
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: "Down By The River"
Prodigy: "Smack My Bitch Up"
Johnny Cash: "Folsom Prison Blues"
Willie Nelson: "Crazy"
Flaming Lips: "Should We Keep The Severed Head Alive?"
Ella Fitzgerald: "Everything I've Got (Belongs To You)"
Elvis Costello: "Psycho"
Chemlab: "Blunt Force Trauma"
Guns 'N' Roses: "I Used To Love Her"
The Gamma Scalpers: "If You Touch My Mp3 Player Again I'll Bash Your Freaking Head In!"

Via Cold Fury, we learn that Alice Cooper is disgusted with liberal musicians campaigning for Kerry. Aiming a broadside at Michael Stipe, John Cougar Melloncamp and Bruce Springsteen, the Coop said:

"To me, that's treason. I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics," says the 56-year-old Cooper, who begins a 15-city Canadian tour on Aug. 20 in Thunder Bay, Ont.

"When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick.

"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal." [emphasis mine]

Truer words were probably never said. Ted Nugent'll probably shoot 'em all, anyway.

What an offensive, stupid, arrogant phrase “world music” is. Over the last ten years or so, as my horizons have broadened, I have become a devotee of many musicians from outside the English speaking world, and— surprise, surprise— they're all very different. Virginia Rodrigues and Vinicius Cantuaria from Brazil, Ali Farka Toure from Mali, Baaba Maal from Senegal, Karsh Kale from New York (via India), and Johnny Clegg from South Africa, to name just a few, all make regular stops in my stereo. In that list of six artists, we have a stunning diversity of styles and influences flung wide across four continents. Only a putz would lump all this together with samba, Dervish music, Balinese gamelan music and Tibetan devotional throat-singing and call the whole “world music.” One imagines a less couth time when the British, sitting comfortably at home at the center of a decaying empire, would have complacently dubbed such alien sounds, “wog music.”

It is better to reserve the term “world music” for those truly adventuresome pairings that defy easy categorization. A gentleman I worked for a few years ago had a vision of a future in which, thanks to broadband internet, a musician could set up a beat on a calabash in Timbuktu and have it embellished in real time by a tablaist in Mumbai and a bassist in Paris, the whole being mixed and chopped by a DJ in London as it was sent out to thousands of listeners around the world. Although sadly for him his grand vision has yet to pan out (that last mile of cable is so expensive!), he’s on to something. We live in a time where previously unimaginable opportunities exist for collaboration and cross-fertilization, and things are finally coming to a point where globe-trotting music seems natural, even obvious. “World” music, then, means music that draws upon the whole world (or at least parts of it)—much better than simply being code for “music from where the brown people live.”

Sometimes late at night I stumble onto performances on local Spanish-language cable stations by no-name musicians who effortlessly step between top 40 pop, Latin, funk, and rap without thinking about the ramifications. It’s usually Friday night, and the party is on no matter what the music is called. Los Angeles-based band Ozomatli are one of these anonymous groups gone gold. Recently nominated for a Latin Grammy for their 2003 EP, Coming Up, Ozomatli are part of a new generation of (formerly) underground collectives who combine Latin American rhythms with hip-hop and whatever else sounds right to them (they even have a full time tabla player in the band). Ozomatli intended their new album, Street Signs to be a bold statement of purpose, a giant step beyond the Los Angeles street party sound they have already perfected, and for the most part they have succeeded grandly.

The group put their lofty ambitions right up at the front—“Believe,” the opening track on Street Signs, augments the band’s Latin rhythms and wah-drenched guitar with the keening sintar of Moroccan Hassan Hakmoun, French-Gypsy violinists Les Yeux Noir, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Oh, there’s also several verses in Spanish and the English-language flow of the band’s MC Jabu. World Music, y’all!

The rest of the album is just as eclectic, bouncing from traditional Latin rhythms (I’m a big fan of Latin American music, but I can’t yet reliably tell a guaguanco from salsa, but you probably can’t either, so it doesn’t matter) to rock, hip-hop, and dancehall, often at the same time like fifty different radios tuned to fifty different stations at once. The press release makes reference to “Chicano funk-rock” and “urban globe-trots,” and for once the hype actually reflects what’s on record. Street Signs deserves to be a street-level hit from Sacramento to Soweto.

Although it took me five or six listens to figure Street Signs out and decide whether I like it, since that time I haven’t gone through a day in two weeks without getting something of theirs lodged in my head. (I also suspect the record makes for outstanding driving music, although my shoddily-manufactured review copy won’t play in my car.) Ozomatli even proved to be the cure for the dreaded Disney virus, in which "It's A Small World" runs around and around in my head until it hurts. Usually only Frank Zappa does the trick, but sometimes old Frank goes down a little rough and it's nice to have a more pleasant and party-friendly alternative for kicking the Mouse 'n' friends to the mental curb.

Lyrically, Ozomatli toe the generic leftist-platitude line, but not so much that it’s irritating or off-putting. If the Spanish-language lyrics are a little trite, and the English-language lyrics a little overdone, it’s not a big deal; not everyone needs to be Elvis Costello and rhyme “lie here mopin’” with “shellac of Chopin.” Ozomatli pride themselves on their commitment to social consciousness and political awareness, and the group at least has the good taste and common sense to make their slogans thoughtful, uplifting, and singable.

Ozomatli are legendary in some circles for their terrific live shows, and that energy is hinted at on album. Sometimes the hinting is all we get, as bright production, up-and-down playing, and heaps of multitracking sterilize a little of the funk growing in the grooves. Nevertheless, Street Signs is an infectious, masterful, thoughtful, deep and eclectic party album from a band who have exceeded their already high expectations.

Look for Ozomatli on tour throughout August accompanied by Plastalina Mosh, Kinky, and Del Castillo as well as organizations like Rock the Vote, Refuse and Resist, Move On, Amnesty International, Not in Our Name and Code Pink.

17-Aug -- Orlando, FL -- House of Blues
18-Aug -- Miami, FL -- La Covacha
20-Aug -- Boston, MA -- Warped Tour 10th Anniversary
22-Aug -- Washington, DC - Nation
23-Aug -- New York, NY -- BB King's
25-Aug -- Detroit, MI -- Majestic Theater
26-Aug -- Chicago, IL -- House of Blues
27-Aug -- Minneapolis, MI -- Quest
29-Aug -- Denver, CO -- Paramount
1-Sept -- Sacramento, CA -- CA State Fair
3-Sept -- Los Angeles, CA -- Universal Amphitheater
4-Sept -- Las Vegas, NV -- House of Blues

This post also appears at Blogcritics. Go show them some love.

Caspar of Blogcritics is spreading a new quiz like the flu, and I got it.

First Record Bought: Led Zeppelin IV
First Concert: Aerosmith w/ The Black Crowes
Favourite Music Movie: Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense
Favourite Music Book: Charles Mingus, "Beneath The Underdog" [wik: I am reminded that The Real Frank Zappa Book is the equal of Mingus' autobiography. I like autobiographies.]
Favourite Songwriter: Tom Waits
Favourite Record Label: Pre-1972, Motown. 1972-1987, (T) Asylum/Elektra, Island. 1987-1996, Rykodisc. 1996-present, Fat Possum.
Favourite Magazine: MOJO
Favourite Bassist: so many… so very many... Bootsy Collins
Favourite Album Cover: Frank Zappa, Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Least Favourite Album Cover: Guns ‘n’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction, original robot rape scene cover.
Favourite Teen Idol: Christina Aguilera
Artist Who Broke Your Heart: Prince
Artist You Will Always Believe In: Tom Waits
Singer Who Makes Your Skin Crawl: Celine Dion
Singer Who Makes You Swoon: George Jones
Favourite Sound: Fender Stratocaster and a stack of Marshalls, knobs on eleven, flapping your pants and shaking your testes.
Album You Will Always Defend: Skid Row, Skid Row
Album You Own That No One Else Does: Reid Paley, Revival
Classic Album You Own but Don't Like: Metallica, The Black Album
Artist You're Supposed to Like but Don't: Sleater-Kinney
Song You Can't Stand by an Artist You Like: Prince, "Delirious"
Band That Should Break Up: U2
Band That Should Re-form: Billy and the Boingers
Guilty Pleasure: I have no guilt about any of my pleasures
Favourite Music DVD: This Is Spinal Tap
Concert You Wish You'd Seen: Frank Zappa w/ John Lennon
Dream Collaboration: Flaming Lips and Neil Diamond

That's right, walking punchline and Dave Chapelle catchphrase (not to mention missing link between disco, funk, and skeezy sex parties) Rick James is dead at 56, and I am proud to be the FIRST of thousands of like-minded bloggers to use such an unoriginal and tired-before-its-time headline to announce the fact.

Breaking from my usual modus operandi, I don't have very much to offer in the way of reverential encomia to a dead rock star. It's all just too sad to jeer at, and his music doesn't exactly lend itself to dewy-eyed reverence. Instead, I will only note two fun facts: Rick James is the only disco star most people can name who knew how to play an instrument, and did you know he's Canadian? So I'm told! His first band, Mynah Birds, also featured a youthful, pre-Buffalo Springfield Neil Young on guitar, it's true!

See, right there I was able to give all you James-mourners a fun fact that's not only entertaining, but far more uplifting than a rote recounting of the pathetic mess his life had become: the cocaine-fueled assaults of women, the prison time, the rehab, the failed comeback, the stroke, the hip replacement surgery (!), and all the other sad details of a man who only wanted to fire up a party and have a toke.

If you don't own "Bustin' Out," Rick's best funk tune and featuring a FAT bassline, do the estate of Rick James a favor and pick it up. May he rest in peace. (um..... bitch!)

[wik] Not that I expected Rick James, of all people, to die of natural causes. I was expecting something more. . . colorful.

Please excuse me; I'm writing this under the gun. In two days I turn thirty, and I need to get this review article cranked out before they come to take all my punk away. It's what happened to all my friends: a white van screeches to a stop in front of your house at 7 AM on the first Sunday after your 30th birthday, and a team of masked men swarm into your house, replacing your favorite cds with copies of Jim Nabors' Greatest Hits and Josh Groban Sings Songs of God, Country, and Neckties. I'm a little unclear as to whether this will happen before or after I'm injected with the microchip that makes me vote Republican, but I guess I can just wait and see on that point.

You see, I was recently blessed with a visitation from the long lost and legendary punk band Rocket From The Tombs. I spent a lot of years reading about this half-apocryphal group in Greil Marcus' punk rock history Lipstick Traces and countless 'zines, wondering if any band making punk music in the days before punk was even a word, much less spirit made flesh, could possibly live up to the breathless hype they've been accorded in the back pages of fanboys-only treatises. Well, guess what: yes it can. Unfortunately, I don't have very much time to spend with the band before I lose them forever, so I will make this as brief as I can [about 1200 words, as it turns out].

Rocket From The Tombs was a short-lived band that came together in Cleveland in 1974 when a local music writer named Dave Thomas took the alias Crocus Behemoth and recruited some friends to make music inspired by The Stooges and the Velvet Underground. The band's classic lineup took shape with the addition of local singer, guitarist and Lou Reed fanatic Peter Laughner, bassist Craig Bell, guitarist Gene O'Connor (better known as Cheetah Chrome) and drummer Johnny Madansky (later "Johnny Blitz"). Just eight months after this lineup came together, Rocket From The Tombs would disintegrate thanks to squabbling over artistic direction, the artier camp championed by Laughner and Thomas taking flight in the legendary Pere Ubu, and the hard-rocking wing comprising O'Connor, Madansky, and sometime Tombs singer Steve "Stiv" Bators later founding CBGB mainstays The Dead Boys. For a band whose entire recorded output amounts to a few one-mic radio tapes and a handful of live shows, Rocket From The Tombs' status as one of the first bands to capture the dirty magic of punk has grown over the years out of all proportion with the number of people who have actually heard their music (funny how that happens). In 2002, Smog Veil Records released a set of rehearsal tapes and live demos in 2002 as The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs, the first time that the bulk of RFTT's output appeared on CD anywhere. Improbably, Rocket From The Tombs would reform in 2003 for a series of live dates, teaming Thomas, Chrome, and original bassist David Bell with Television guitarist Richard Lloyd and Pere Ubu drummer Steve Melman and producing a live album, Rocket Redux.

So how does it all sound, after thirty years of waiting?

On one hand, it sounds just as you would expect. The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs is essentially the sound of some desperate kids in a dying city translating the Rosetta Stone with a Cap'n Crunch Decoder Ring and a copy of Kick Out The Jams, and just like most first drafts of later greatness, it can be hard to see what's valuable underneath the muck (I feel the same way about The Replacements' debut Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash! and The Flaming Lips' first EP as well, among many others). Since most of the tracks were recorded on one mic the quality is muddy, and the playing is at times ludicrously sloppy. On the other hand, however, all the murkiness and fumbling in the world can't obfuscate the fact that Rocket From The Tombs had incredible songs, great energy, and a stunningly original idea of what rock should be. Fueled by equal parts Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and the MC5, the band combined swagger, angst, and plain freaky weirdness into a sound far greater than the sum of its garage-band parts. The songs that don't fall apart into messes spill over into feedback, Crocus Behemoth simply can't sing, and the brilliant, funny lyrics are buried under layers of guitar fuzz and drum fills. The same tension between "make art" and "kick ass" that eventually drove the group apart makes The Day The Earth Met... a brilliantly original artifact of punk before its time.

The bulk of the songs on The Day The Earth Met... appear in finished form on Pere Ubu and Dead Boys albums. Particularly interesting to punk completists are early versions of Pere Ubu's strange and chilling "30 Seconds over Tokyo" and "Final Solution" and The Dead Boys' "Down In Flames," "Sonic Reducer" and "Ain't It Fun" (later massacred cruelly by Guns 'n Roses), but the lesser known songs are where the fascination lies. The RFTT originals "Amphetamine," "Never Gonna Kill Myself Again," and "So Cold" are musically tight, hypnotic, and excellent on a par with the songs later made famous. In particular, Peter Laughner's sardonic lyrics deserve a place in the all-time songwriters' hall of fame. Moreover, though the sound quality is rough, the guitar greatness of Laughner and Cheetah Chrome-- one of the only great lead guitarists of the punk era-- shines through loud and clear. If you are a hardcore punk fan, it is hard to deem this collection as anything but essential.

Fast forward to 2003, when Rocket From The Tombs regroup to answer the unasked question, "what would Sonic Reducer sound like if played by a bunch of fifty-year-olds who haven't seen each other in years?" Bizarrely enough, the answer is a wholly unexpected and completely welcome "fantastic." With Richard Lloyd of Television on board providing guitar support, and with decades of experience behind them, Rocket Redux pulls the haze of tape hiss, methamphetamine shakes, and teenage mania aside to reveal a group of men with more energy than a schoolful of teenagers playing a set of songs which uniformly deserve to be all time classics. Everything works, especially the way that the dual Richard Lloyd-Cheetah Chrome guitar attack and Dave Thomas' strained growling vocals turn decades-old demos into modern-day monsters. The drug hangover of "Ain't It Fun," the adrenaline-fueled punch of "Sonic Reducer RFTT" and the surging "Frustration" alone are worth the price of admission, but every one of the twelve tracks on Rocket Redux proves that Rocket From The Tombs deserve every last word of their legend.

Please excuse me. I need to go enjoy these records while they last, because in less than forty-eight hours, they're coming to give me a minivan, a haircut, and a backache.

Catch Rocket From The Tombs/Dead Boys guitarist Cheetah Chrome on tour with Terri Texas Bomb:
8/6, St. Louis MO, The Creepy Crawl
8/7, Columbus OH, Club 202
8/8, Akron OH, The Lime Spider
8/9, Richmond VA, Nancy Raygun
8/10, Baltimore MD, Side Bar
8/11, Passaic NJ, Connections
8/12, New York NY, The Continental

Also posted to blogcritics.org.