Boomboxes and Dictionaries

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Mar 28

Time to get away

LCD Soundsystem’s final run of shows kicks off in New York this week, culminating with the band throwing its own dance-punk version of The Last Waltz at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.

To celebrate the band’s farewell, Pitchfork has a feature called You Were There, which reviews every song in LCD’s catalog, including singles and b-sides. It’s an amazingly thorough overview of the band’s recorded output, and a refreshing piece of music journalism at that. Pitchfork reviews are a little difficult to parse out at times, but it’s great to see someone publish a long-form piece that closely examines everything in an artist’s catalog.

LCD might be the first quintessential “internet band,” one that managed to climb into the cannon and gain worship with absolutely no radio or MTV exposure and scant recognition from any sort of mainstream source (you could argue Arcade Fire, but those dudes got love from Bowie and just won a Grammy). There are book-length reviews of the songs by classic artists like The Beatles and Bob Dylan, but rarely does a current artist warrant such praise.

Granted, LCD’s run is just under a decade in length, but it was a gradual climb that saw them go from NYC secrets to arena-selling heroes, with tunes from a 30-something singer who chronicled love, loneliness, loss, lust, uncertainty and elation in the early 2000s in a way unlike any other.

The hipster dance track “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” seemed like a lark until mastermind James Murphy released his sophomore album, Sound of Silver. Second albums aren’t supposed to make a leap like that, from snarky hipster night out jams to doe-eyed introspective Bowie space dance. We got midway through that album, heard the jittery opening notes of “All My Friends” for the first time, and suddenly realized we had something on our hands.

I never got to see LCD live, but I’ll spin those records ‘til I die. Nearly one quarter of my correspondence with a friend in South Korea references “All My Friends.” There are nights where I make a pot of coffee and just stay up listening to that track, and it puts my mind at ease. Third album This Is Happening is a post Y2K classic as well, combining the lonely night reflections with neck-breaking bass and snappy hip shakers. P4k’s feature reminds us the debut self-titled album is worth revisiting if you haven’t heard it in a while. The b-sides and other stray tracks, mostly available as a bonus disc with debut or on iTunes, are worth sniffing out as well.

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video TV performances Husker Du

Feb 28

Husker Du, meet Joan Rivers

More proof that late night talk shows in the 1980s were just bizarre. Here you have Husker Du performing “Could You Be the One?” and “She’s a Woman (And Now He is a Man),” two cuts off their final studio album, Warehouse: Songs and Stories in front of some Warehouse-inspired set pieces on TV, circa 1987.

Then Joan Rivers, she of the plastic surgery and plastic laugh, interviews the band. It’s fairly clear Joan has no idea who these Husker dudes are, as she bungles the song title, then moves on to a “who’s the crazy one?” line of questioning. But she also asks about their evolution from “radical” to alternative rock and signing with Warner Brothers! I can’t imagine Jay Leno interviewing Arcade Fire, much less asking Win Butler if the band plays to stay on Merge. Strange indeed.

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Feb 25

As for the past — hey, if you have not heard it yet, then it’s new, right?

The always-entertaining Henry Rollins in LA Weekly, imploring fans to uncover and experiment with new sounds, artists and genres.

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Beatles George Harrison

Feb 15

The best Beatles single that never was

George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton hunker down in the studio to record a meditative, uplifting song written by Harrison in India. With that all-star lineup, who earns the right to grab the mic?

You guessed Jackie Lomax, right? Didn’t think so. Yet that wrecking crew of a band backs the British singer/songwriter on the track, “Sour Milk Sea,” released as a single on Apple Records in 1968.

The Beatles (and Jackie Lomax) - “Sour Milk Sea”

Harrison had intended “Sour Milk Sea” for The Beatles, recording an acoustic demo in May 1968 with McCartney and Starr at his home in Esher, UK. The widely bootlegged demo (included in the link above) features the trio banging the backs of guitars for percussion. Even in this unrefined version, it wouldn’t sound out of place on George’s solo debut All Things Must Pass.

The lyrics are drawn from themes Harrison would return to again and again in the later days of the Beatles and his solo work, namely illumination and the need to right one’s self through spirituality. The song was heavily influenced by The Beatles’ time in India, and the title comes from the ancient spiritual text Vishvasara Tantra, an examination of the self in relation to the material world.

The studio version of “Sour Milk Sea” with Lomax rocks a lot like “Old Brown Shoe,” a Harrison song that showed up as the B-side to John Lennon’s “Ballad of John and Yoko” one year later. There’s some piano boogie, rolling guitar fills (courtesy of Clapton) and a very distinctive Ringo beat. It sounds like a great Beatles song, only with the wrong singer.

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Daniel Johnston love video

Feb 14

True love will find you in the end

In honor of Valentine’s Day, here’s Daniel Johnston doing “True Love Will Find You in the End.” The song’s simplicity belies the real pain Johnston is singing about. One for all the hopeless romantics out there.

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Feb 14

Arcade what?

Arcade Fire won Album of the Year, but that doesn’t make Rosie a fan.

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yuck video sonic youth

Feb 09

Terrible indie band names are a dime a dozen, especially with younger acts (see: Surfer Blood, Japandroids, Girls, Wavves, Best Coast). London-based Yuck might take the cake in the category, but look past the name and you’ll be rewarded with an exciting young band leaning heavily on the ’90s sounds of “classic indie” bands with equally terrible names, like Pavement and Yo La Tengo.

After you check out the video above for “Holing Out,” listen to the bright and noisy “Operation,” which at times sounds a lot like Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth (a great band name, BTW).

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Feb 08

Aliens killed Paul. Then gave John pink shoes. Ringo survived and turned the experience into Goodnight Vienna. (image from the highly-entertaining Deface Value)

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Henry Rollings Pandora radio KCRW

Feb 08

Rollins and Pandora: The DJ vs. the machines

Rolling Stone has a news piece on Pandora this week that portrays the streaming service as a little start up that fought the big labels, gained millions of fans, and emerged as a potential revenue generating music biz savior. (The article does not appear to be online).

Pandora employs a team of 25 people to listen to music and categorize it with the tags that power the service’s recommendation engine. Proponents say that Pandora’s listening team and genome engine are better than a sleazy pony-tailed guy in an office picking a small list of Clear Channel-approved songs. RS calls this the human element in a world full of technology.

Except it’s not. Real people listened to all the music, but a computer still picks what the listener hears next, based on what they like or dislike. It’s the illusion of a human element; Pandora might very well be the first step in a Terminator/Matrix-like robot take-over.

The days of the extremely knowledgeable, quirky, music-breathing DJ are waning. But fans looking to discover new sounds hand-picked by a record-nerd (as opposed to a machine deciding what fits together) need look no further than Henry Rollins.

Douglas Wolk on Elvis Costello

Douglas Wolk is one of the best pop critics writing today, blessed with the ability to write about music with a witty and educational tone that comes across as knowledgeable without crossing into pretentiousness. He’s one of my personal favorites, and I bought the Apple Records comp Come and Get It based solely on his glowing Pitchfork review.

Yesterday Wolk revealed on via his Twitter that he reviewed the entire Elvis Costello discography for eMusic, and it’s music writing at his finest. Here’s Wolk on Costello’s debut.

My Aim Is True is one of the all-time great debut albums: a statement of purpose from a very smart, very articulate, festeringly angry songwriter who’s inhaled the history of rock ‘n’ roll and country music, and is spitting it all back out laced with hydrochloric acid.

That one sentence sums up the album and Costello’s attitude better than anyone else has. Amazingly, Wolk gets through the entire review without referencing the “black coffee and the Clash’s first album” story, a cliche I’m prone to whenever I talk to someone about My Aim Is True. Check out the whole thing if you have the time.