love is wild
like the coyote
running fearlessly
in front of my truck
his lope measured
his shoulders straight
undaunted by what is
behind him, unmoved
by what is before
completely at ease
in a mastery of
motion
undriven,
unjustified
well-fed
part of the mysterious
nocturnal business
of nature
raising voice to sing
at the moon
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
In The Works: Unfinished Novels
I currently have an embarrassment of unfinished stories/story ideas in the works, some hundreds of pages into the writing process. Mainly what happens for me is that I stop getting feedback and/or my readership seems to lose interest, and so I lose interest. I feel like there's a chance I could finish at least one of these before the end of the year though, at least a first draft (although sometimes I move to a second or even third draft before even finishing!), just to have some kind of approachable goal with my purely speculative creative work.
The titles are:
"College Boy" -- literary/noir fiction. A depressive, nihilistic heir to a family fortune seeks vengeance against the drug kingpin who stole his innocence.
"Thirst" -- fantasy/horror fiction. A vampire describes the process by which his connection to his own humanity is degraded and yet somehow never fully dissipates, despite his ability to commit unspeakable atrocities.
"Switch" -- literary/noir fiction. A precocious youth in 1970's Portland befriends a wealthy, charismatic classmate whom he suspects of being a sociopath and future dictator.
"Shooting Script (Working Title)" -- fantasy/horror fiction. An up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter becomes embroiled in an epic conflict between Good and Evil, wherein angels enlist his help using the gift of his imagination to discover why God has apparently abandoned them.
In addition to these I have several partially finished science fiction story ideas that didn't make it past the first few chapters. If anyone is interested in seeing samples of these please let me know.
The titles are:
"College Boy" -- literary/noir fiction. A depressive, nihilistic heir to a family fortune seeks vengeance against the drug kingpin who stole his innocence.
"Thirst" -- fantasy/horror fiction. A vampire describes the process by which his connection to his own humanity is degraded and yet somehow never fully dissipates, despite his ability to commit unspeakable atrocities.
"Switch" -- literary/noir fiction. A precocious youth in 1970's Portland befriends a wealthy, charismatic classmate whom he suspects of being a sociopath and future dictator.
"Shooting Script (Working Title)" -- fantasy/horror fiction. An up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter becomes embroiled in an epic conflict between Good and Evil, wherein angels enlist his help using the gift of his imagination to discover why God has apparently abandoned them.
In addition to these I have several partially finished science fiction story ideas that didn't make it past the first few chapters. If anyone is interested in seeing samples of these please let me know.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Album Review: "Isolation Drills" by Guided By Voices
Guided By Voices
http://www.guidedbyvoices.com
Isolation Drills
TVT, 2001
rating: 9.0
reviewer: rather ripped
[NOTE: This article previously appeared at Epinions]
From the super-cool fighter jet collage cover with lyric foldout to the no-BS production wizardry of Rob Schnapf (who knew a "real" producer could actually bottle up the magic that is Bob Pollard and sell it??!) this is a deeply satisfying 100% pure rock and roll record made by and for true believers as is impossible to find nowadays.
Surprisingly, I have seen people aged 21 to 61 at GBV shows, so I guess some of the kids these days still know what rock is. I have a memory of roaring across the Richmond Bridge at 3 AM with an old friend blasting Who's Next and thinking "THIS is the ultimate soundtrack to my life!"
Well, now this is. This record makes me feel 15 again! I want to finish every sentence with an "!" when I write about this record!
Fair Touching
A demonstration of how you can take GBV out of the basement studio but you'll never take the basement studio out of GBV. This is the iron gauntlet slap in the face to all those nay sayers who claimed that a professional production would "ruin" GBV...well, this song was recorded inside a freaking coffee can under Bob's side project Lexo and the Leapers, and here it is pumped up on the multitrack board, and by golly, it rocks like a satchel of gravel. Best line describing the "Farewell Ladies" that seem to occupy many of his songs: "Does it snap or just happen?"
Skills Like This
Not one to lose momentum by the second song, Bob tosses this thunderer out for the neophytes and old friends alike, just as he does the Bud longnecks he chucks like circus knives to the unsuspecting front row. Evoking equal parts AC/DC, Bad Company, the Who, the whole Punk Rock catalogue, and every previous horse-frightening GBV anthem, herein Uncle Bob both invites and warns. Accessible though its guitar-thrustings may be, the Captain nevertheless makes no bones about the addictive and intoxicating experience that awaits. "....do you want me in your head?...who will be the human boot?" Best line is the punchline: "I'll reunite you"
Chasing Heather Crazy
Heavy Rotation! Pure pop, pure GBV, fun for the whole family! Best line: "Staring out from otherworldy windows painted red"...
Frostman
A little lo-fi for the oldtimers! Bob plunking and spelunking for rhyme crimes on his couch! Reminding us all the much-repeated quote, "I can write 25 songs on the crapper, and twenty of them will be good ones." Surprisingly a moment of poignance amidst all the revelry. It's a sad song, like a tear from Falstaff's weary eye. And it's over in a heartbeat. A stolen moment.
Twilight Campfighter
With more delicious wordplay--notice the multilayered resonance between "campfire" and "firefighter" (remember the cowboy of "Hold On Hope" whose campfire flickers on the landscape? Here he is again, the weatherbeaten American rock hero bruised but unbeaten by circumstance), the striking image of a "fire [built] into an open wound", the ironic counterpoise of the rhyme "congratulate" and "late"...Bob sets himself up again as the doubtful rock and roll superhero everyman we all relate to so well. Best line: "On these darker trails/With light revealing holy grails..."
Sister I Need Wine
Both gorgeous and sad, herein is stated Bob's bacchanalian philosophy in a nutshell, in which he invites his Muse to help him "Drink the truth/Shed not one tear"...yet its minor-chord, muted threnody implies perhaps a mild desperation, as if we can feel the supressed pain lurking beneath where the "backed-up river spreads"...a song for the first sip where "How's My Drinking?" dregs somewhere at the bottom of the magnum...
Want One?
Perhaps in this song above all others is Bob's nod to past British Invasions most clearly noted in a swaggering Humble Pie-esque guitar-sneer and invitations to partake in "A nursery whip/for men who skip...", calling to mind footage of Keith Moon in "The Kids Are Allright" being whipped by a dominatrix during an interview...psychedelic, groovy, and sick, worthy of Zep's "Physical Graffitti", here they show us how GBV manages to be both "Alternative" AND "Classic Rock".
The Enemy
A heart-stirring sample of "Broadcaster House" from GBV's seminal release "Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer", featuring some of Bob's least lucid beery howling, followed by an ominous 4/4 guitar fanfare reminiscent of Wire's "154"...GBV's greatest nod, as always, is to themselves. Best line: "A childproof survival kit/Just for a glimpse/Of the everlasting big kick"
Unspirited
In which Bob disses the competition, the critics, the nay-sayers, and perhaps a few discarded fairweather friends with a wry flair that would make your average hip hop DJ doff his Kangol. Best line: "When you lose it all, you'll think of me/When you take the fall, you'll drink to me/I'm the one who did it painlessly/I'm the one who does it..."
Glad Girls
LAUNCH FRISBEES! AVAST YE LANDLUBBERS! BOB'S AWAY!!!!!
What we used to call "A real corker". In some ways reminiscent of "You Shook Me All Night Long", although the lyrics are far more transportive. Best line: "There will be no coronation/There will be no flowers flowing/In the light that passes through me..." Bless us, Uncle Bob!
Run Wild
Even after the previous salvo the band's guns are not yet spent. In a brooding heavy-rock stomp exploding into an anthemic major-chord chorus, somewhat reminiscent of very early Utopia, Bob paints a brief, disquieting
portrait--eerily prophetic--of our wartime landscape: "Think of a no parking zone/where armored cars keep the street/and every heart seeks inspiration", which is followed by his audibly inebriated rallying cry, "Leave your things in the streets/And run wild". He could be ranting against globalist consumerism--"your things" being our cell phones, SUVs, snowboards, etc.--but with Bob it's always hard to say. There's even a note of desperation in the guitar solo, a climbing wail almost like an air raid siren. The "Run wild" part, though, speaks for its Bacchanalian self. In the studio as well as live, this one always seems to be timed to coincide with Bob's
lowest level of coherence. But the passion is still there.
Pivotal Film
This one really gets me. It's GBV's "If 6 Was 9", only instead of "White collar conservatives" Bob torpedoes "scenesters" who, "grotesque and arrogant/perfect for the experts", "showing cloaks of rubber" like ridiculous superheroes (or cinematic Batmen), who from their "critical rooms" end up "exit[ing] into thin air". The comparison to the J. Hendrix Experience here is not a loose one--witness the swaggering, almost military, yet still laid-back-intoxicated roll of the drums against a guitar snarl that sneers. He appears to be repeating the old
refrain: It's only rock and roll, puncturing the self-importance of the elite-purist indie-pundits and poseurs who have frequently stood on the sidelines vainly stroking their goatees wondering about Bob's deep significance, or lack thereof. Again, a lugubrious dismissal any gangsta rapper would be proud of--that is if, in his elocution, English Teacher Bob isn't talking straight over their heads.
How's My Drinking?
As short and sweet as any classic GBV tidbit, though lush with piano and chiming guitars, Bob's proud alcoholism enshrined in a golden nutshell. Probably the most defiant, yet poignant, song next to "Frostman". I remember at the GBV concert at the Showbox earlier this year my wife, who was seeing GBV for the first time,
turning to me and saying, "Enjoy him while you can. I don't think he's going to be around much longer." But that's good advice for us all, if you think about it.
The Brides Have Hit Glass
Most artists would have stopped there...but here comes another one of what endless writers have dubbed "pop gems", in which Bob gets so self-referential he name checks the song he's singing! Yet, at the same time, this swinging tune, somewhat reminiscent of Merseybeat or other early Brit Invasion, manages to be one of
his most thoughtful. "To be on top of your own world/With no guardrails to cling to/You fall so very fast" isn't just self-referential, it's reflective. It's hard to write Bob off as a monument to dysfunctional-ism with statements like that.
Fine To See You
Amazingly, this could also be a fine last song on the album for 99% of the album-makers out there--you can easily visualize row upon row of teary-eyed fans waving lighters at this old-fashioned, almost corny farewell to an imaginary concert audience. And yet, they still keep going!--much like they do live and in person.
Privately
Bob always has to have the last word. The guitars surge one last time like the turning wing of their departing rock star jet plane, and the violins wave goodbye. The lyrics seem to imply an admonition to long time fans who, as long time fans always do, might have tried to press Bob in their yearbooks and not want him to
rise from obscurity and become famous the way it always seems to happen...the Clash, REM, your favorite band here...he says, "In the midst of this effort/Courageous tongues are bitter/Don't blast them/Bring posters and
broadcast/Not a public display/But a new secret". In other words, the obscure and intimate quality of a great band like GBV need not be lost, but can actually be shared by everyone. For someone as cynical as Bob this is a strangely idealistic, almost naive sentiment, but his obvious belief in it is what may help GBV succeed in remaining, even in the face of being loved by all mankind and on sale at K-Mart, the coolest obscure indie rock band in the world.
There are my humble opinions--of course, your own experience of this album will be its own inner universe, untouchable and unreadable as the closing words, which might even be addressed to you: "Cigarette lifter/The frozen violins/Solid movement//Privately". A fitting last word for an album by anyone's favorite band.
1. Fair Touching
2. Skills Like This
3. Chasing Heather Crazy
4. Frostman
5. Twilight Campfighter
6. Sister I Need Wine
7. Want One?
8. The Enemy
9. Unspirited
10. Glad Girls
11. Run Wild
12. Pivotal Film
13. How's My Drinking?
14. The Brides Have Hit Glass
15. Fine to See You
16. Privately
http://www.guidedbyvoices.com
Isolation DrillsTVT, 2001
rating: 9.0
reviewer: rather ripped
[NOTE: This article previously appeared at Epinions]
From the super-cool fighter jet collage cover with lyric foldout to the no-BS production wizardry of Rob Schnapf (who knew a "real" producer could actually bottle up the magic that is Bob Pollard and sell it??!) this is a deeply satisfying 100% pure rock and roll record made by and for true believers as is impossible to find nowadays.
Surprisingly, I have seen people aged 21 to 61 at GBV shows, so I guess some of the kids these days still know what rock is. I have a memory of roaring across the Richmond Bridge at 3 AM with an old friend blasting Who's Next and thinking "THIS is the ultimate soundtrack to my life!"
Well, now this is. This record makes me feel 15 again! I want to finish every sentence with an "!" when I write about this record!
Fair Touching
A demonstration of how you can take GBV out of the basement studio but you'll never take the basement studio out of GBV. This is the iron gauntlet slap in the face to all those nay sayers who claimed that a professional production would "ruin" GBV...well, this song was recorded inside a freaking coffee can under Bob's side project Lexo and the Leapers, and here it is pumped up on the multitrack board, and by golly, it rocks like a satchel of gravel. Best line describing the "Farewell Ladies" that seem to occupy many of his songs: "Does it snap or just happen?"
Skills Like This
Not one to lose momentum by the second song, Bob tosses this thunderer out for the neophytes and old friends alike, just as he does the Bud longnecks he chucks like circus knives to the unsuspecting front row. Evoking equal parts AC/DC, Bad Company, the Who, the whole Punk Rock catalogue, and every previous horse-frightening GBV anthem, herein Uncle Bob both invites and warns. Accessible though its guitar-thrustings may be, the Captain nevertheless makes no bones about the addictive and intoxicating experience that awaits. "....do you want me in your head?...who will be the human boot?" Best line is the punchline: "I'll reunite you"
Chasing Heather Crazy
Heavy Rotation! Pure pop, pure GBV, fun for the whole family! Best line: "Staring out from otherworldy windows painted red"...
Frostman
A little lo-fi for the oldtimers! Bob plunking and spelunking for rhyme crimes on his couch! Reminding us all the much-repeated quote, "I can write 25 songs on the crapper, and twenty of them will be good ones." Surprisingly a moment of poignance amidst all the revelry. It's a sad song, like a tear from Falstaff's weary eye. And it's over in a heartbeat. A stolen moment.
Twilight Campfighter
With more delicious wordplay--notice the multilayered resonance between "campfire" and "firefighter" (remember the cowboy of "Hold On Hope" whose campfire flickers on the landscape? Here he is again, the weatherbeaten American rock hero bruised but unbeaten by circumstance), the striking image of a "fire [built] into an open wound", the ironic counterpoise of the rhyme "congratulate" and "late"...Bob sets himself up again as the doubtful rock and roll superhero everyman we all relate to so well. Best line: "On these darker trails/With light revealing holy grails..."
Sister I Need Wine
Both gorgeous and sad, herein is stated Bob's bacchanalian philosophy in a nutshell, in which he invites his Muse to help him "Drink the truth/Shed not one tear"...yet its minor-chord, muted threnody implies perhaps a mild desperation, as if we can feel the supressed pain lurking beneath where the "backed-up river spreads"...a song for the first sip where "How's My Drinking?" dregs somewhere at the bottom of the magnum...
Want One?
Perhaps in this song above all others is Bob's nod to past British Invasions most clearly noted in a swaggering Humble Pie-esque guitar-sneer and invitations to partake in "A nursery whip/for men who skip...", calling to mind footage of Keith Moon in "The Kids Are Allright" being whipped by a dominatrix during an interview...psychedelic, groovy, and sick, worthy of Zep's "Physical Graffitti", here they show us how GBV manages to be both "Alternative" AND "Classic Rock".
The Enemy
A heart-stirring sample of "Broadcaster House" from GBV's seminal release "Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer", featuring some of Bob's least lucid beery howling, followed by an ominous 4/4 guitar fanfare reminiscent of Wire's "154"...GBV's greatest nod, as always, is to themselves. Best line: "A childproof survival kit/Just for a glimpse/Of the everlasting big kick"
Unspirited
In which Bob disses the competition, the critics, the nay-sayers, and perhaps a few discarded fairweather friends with a wry flair that would make your average hip hop DJ doff his Kangol. Best line: "When you lose it all, you'll think of me/When you take the fall, you'll drink to me/I'm the one who did it painlessly/I'm the one who does it..."
Glad Girls
LAUNCH FRISBEES! AVAST YE LANDLUBBERS! BOB'S AWAY!!!!!
What we used to call "A real corker". In some ways reminiscent of "You Shook Me All Night Long", although the lyrics are far more transportive. Best line: "There will be no coronation/There will be no flowers flowing/In the light that passes through me..." Bless us, Uncle Bob!
Run Wild
Even after the previous salvo the band's guns are not yet spent. In a brooding heavy-rock stomp exploding into an anthemic major-chord chorus, somewhat reminiscent of very early Utopia, Bob paints a brief, disquieting
portrait--eerily prophetic--of our wartime landscape: "Think of a no parking zone/where armored cars keep the street/and every heart seeks inspiration", which is followed by his audibly inebriated rallying cry, "Leave your things in the streets/And run wild". He could be ranting against globalist consumerism--"your things" being our cell phones, SUVs, snowboards, etc.--but with Bob it's always hard to say. There's even a note of desperation in the guitar solo, a climbing wail almost like an air raid siren. The "Run wild" part, though, speaks for its Bacchanalian self. In the studio as well as live, this one always seems to be timed to coincide with Bob's
lowest level of coherence. But the passion is still there.
Pivotal Film
This one really gets me. It's GBV's "If 6 Was 9", only instead of "White collar conservatives" Bob torpedoes "scenesters" who, "grotesque and arrogant/perfect for the experts", "showing cloaks of rubber" like ridiculous superheroes (or cinematic Batmen), who from their "critical rooms" end up "exit[ing] into thin air". The comparison to the J. Hendrix Experience here is not a loose one--witness the swaggering, almost military, yet still laid-back-intoxicated roll of the drums against a guitar snarl that sneers. He appears to be repeating the old
refrain: It's only rock and roll, puncturing the self-importance of the elite-purist indie-pundits and poseurs who have frequently stood on the sidelines vainly stroking their goatees wondering about Bob's deep significance, or lack thereof. Again, a lugubrious dismissal any gangsta rapper would be proud of--that is if, in his elocution, English Teacher Bob isn't talking straight over their heads.
How's My Drinking?
As short and sweet as any classic GBV tidbit, though lush with piano and chiming guitars, Bob's proud alcoholism enshrined in a golden nutshell. Probably the most defiant, yet poignant, song next to "Frostman". I remember at the GBV concert at the Showbox earlier this year my wife, who was seeing GBV for the first time,
turning to me and saying, "Enjoy him while you can. I don't think he's going to be around much longer." But that's good advice for us all, if you think about it.
The Brides Have Hit Glass
Most artists would have stopped there...but here comes another one of what endless writers have dubbed "pop gems", in which Bob gets so self-referential he name checks the song he's singing! Yet, at the same time, this swinging tune, somewhat reminiscent of Merseybeat or other early Brit Invasion, manages to be one of
his most thoughtful. "To be on top of your own world/With no guardrails to cling to/You fall so very fast" isn't just self-referential, it's reflective. It's hard to write Bob off as a monument to dysfunctional-ism with statements like that.
Fine To See You
Amazingly, this could also be a fine last song on the album for 99% of the album-makers out there--you can easily visualize row upon row of teary-eyed fans waving lighters at this old-fashioned, almost corny farewell to an imaginary concert audience. And yet, they still keep going!--much like they do live and in person.
Privately
Bob always has to have the last word. The guitars surge one last time like the turning wing of their departing rock star jet plane, and the violins wave goodbye. The lyrics seem to imply an admonition to long time fans who, as long time fans always do, might have tried to press Bob in their yearbooks and not want him to
rise from obscurity and become famous the way it always seems to happen...the Clash, REM, your favorite band here...he says, "In the midst of this effort/Courageous tongues are bitter/Don't blast them/Bring posters and
broadcast/Not a public display/But a new secret". In other words, the obscure and intimate quality of a great band like GBV need not be lost, but can actually be shared by everyone. For someone as cynical as Bob this is a strangely idealistic, almost naive sentiment, but his obvious belief in it is what may help GBV succeed in remaining, even in the face of being loved by all mankind and on sale at K-Mart, the coolest obscure indie rock band in the world.
There are my humble opinions--of course, your own experience of this album will be its own inner universe, untouchable and unreadable as the closing words, which might even be addressed to you: "Cigarette lifter/The frozen violins/Solid movement//Privately". A fitting last word for an album by anyone's favorite band.
1. Fair Touching
2. Skills Like This
3. Chasing Heather Crazy
4. Frostman
5. Twilight Campfighter
6. Sister I Need Wine
7. Want One?
8. The Enemy
9. Unspirited
10. Glad Girls
11. Run Wild
12. Pivotal Film
13. How's My Drinking?
14. The Brides Have Hit Glass
15. Fine to See You
16. Privately
Album Review: "Kid A" by Radiohead
Radiohead: Way Deep-A** Down Coal Miners of Classic Rock
Dec 12 '00 (Updated Apr 19 '01)
[NOTE: This review originally appeared at Epinions]
Author's Product Rating
Product Rating: 4.0
Pros
A Disturbing, Unsettling High Art Piece, Drenched In Irony
Cons
Won't Bring Up Your Mood Much I'm Afraid
The Bottom Line
The sound of HAL from 2001 slowly dying...and that's a good thing.
Full Review
Well, kids, you may be sick to the very rising of your gorge with the rantings of ol' Grandpa Rather_Ripped by now...about how he remembers when records were made on big plastic frisbees and played with a needle...how cars used to run on gasoline...how computers used to be made of wood...
But I'll skip all that and get to the album in question, KID A. If you're looking for a straight-ahead album review, you may want to move along to the next one. But if, like me, you like to dig a little deeper under the surface looking for slimy little subtexts, stick around. First, let's look at it in context with the whole Radiohead ouvre as a post-gen-X revisitation of classic rock.
If you listen to the first four Radiohead albums end to end, besides having extremely red eyes and a throbbing headache, you realize that it is a compendium of angst-ridden introverted stoner/glam rock deeply influenced by such bands our forefathers listened to as Pink Floyd, Van der Graaf Generator, Be Bop Deluxe, Roxy Music circa Brian Eno, etc. etc. This may seem frightening to you young revos out there (or just confusing to you kids who are too young to even know who I'm talking about)--weren't those the evil dinosaurs that "cool" bands people "like us" listen to were "supposed to destroy"?
Yes. And that's the delicious, twisted delight of KID A.
Johnny Rotten never could have put on an "I HATE PINK FLOYD" t-shirt if he hadn't at least once had a bad experience LISTENING to Pink Floyd. And I'm sure there are many of us out there who have, even those of us who have had good ones as well. KID A is quite literally a tone poem so closely resembling "Welcome To The Machine"-era Floyd it's scary. What they are demonstrating is that the natural progression of the bogus 70's nostalgia of a consumerism-overdriven youth culture too young to actually remember what an evil, despicable decade it was, is straight down a sodden pill hole into hell.
Many of us who wonder, "How the hell do we bring back the awakeness and aliveness of the punk era in the midst of this numb electronica-infested cultural torpor?" may do well to examine the profoundly ironic soundscape of this record. KID A is like the inoculation against a disease with the dead cells of that same disease. By showing the kids out there that, well, no, you see, the 70's style wasn't really about fun and hedonistic glamor, it was about suicide and decadence, KID A kickstarts a new level of pop-musical awareness. "I'm not here" says the answering machine-like voice of Thom Yorke, which flows easily into "this isn't happening"--insinuating that the technology we love so dearly has caused us to completely dissociate.
It also underscores an important point of divergence for Yorke and Co. from the original music they so ruthlessly plunder. While Floyd ranted on and on in a used-up and deadened 60's fashion about a faceless machine steamrolling over our lives..."It's, like, the system, maaan...", Our Lads step up to the plate like modern men do and take full responsibility in their songs. It's not about some ephemeral "them", it's we that have sterilized ourselves into the robot-like voices that occupy their songs. We're like 21st Century robocops staggering around wondering who we are and how we got here.
I hope that on the next album Yorkey and the boys jolly well pull the plug. These boys are capable of a full-tilt hard rock made-of-wood-and-stone (not plastic) album that would put Pearl Jam to shame. But maybe they have to go even deeper into the sickness to save us from ourselves...................
Recommended
Yes
Dec 12 '00 (Updated Apr 19 '01)
[NOTE: This review originally appeared at Epinions]
Author's Product Rating
Product Rating: 4.0
Pros
A Disturbing, Unsettling High Art Piece, Drenched In Irony
Cons
Won't Bring Up Your Mood Much I'm Afraid
The Bottom Line
The sound of HAL from 2001 slowly dying...and that's a good thing.
Full Review
Well, kids, you may be sick to the very rising of your gorge with the rantings of ol' Grandpa Rather_Ripped by now...about how he remembers when records were made on big plastic frisbees and played with a needle...how cars used to run on gasoline...how computers used to be made of wood...
But I'll skip all that and get to the album in question, KID A. If you're looking for a straight-ahead album review, you may want to move along to the next one. But if, like me, you like to dig a little deeper under the surface looking for slimy little subtexts, stick around. First, let's look at it in context with the whole Radiohead ouvre as a post-gen-X revisitation of classic rock.
If you listen to the first four Radiohead albums end to end, besides having extremely red eyes and a throbbing headache, you realize that it is a compendium of angst-ridden introverted stoner/glam rock deeply influenced by such bands our forefathers listened to as Pink Floyd, Van der Graaf Generator, Be Bop Deluxe, Roxy Music circa Brian Eno, etc. etc. This may seem frightening to you young revos out there (or just confusing to you kids who are too young to even know who I'm talking about)--weren't those the evil dinosaurs that "cool" bands people "like us" listen to were "supposed to destroy"?
Yes. And that's the delicious, twisted delight of KID A.
Johnny Rotten never could have put on an "I HATE PINK FLOYD" t-shirt if he hadn't at least once had a bad experience LISTENING to Pink Floyd. And I'm sure there are many of us out there who have, even those of us who have had good ones as well. KID A is quite literally a tone poem so closely resembling "Welcome To The Machine"-era Floyd it's scary. What they are demonstrating is that the natural progression of the bogus 70's nostalgia of a consumerism-overdriven youth culture too young to actually remember what an evil, despicable decade it was, is straight down a sodden pill hole into hell.
Many of us who wonder, "How the hell do we bring back the awakeness and aliveness of the punk era in the midst of this numb electronica-infested cultural torpor?" may do well to examine the profoundly ironic soundscape of this record. KID A is like the inoculation against a disease with the dead cells of that same disease. By showing the kids out there that, well, no, you see, the 70's style wasn't really about fun and hedonistic glamor, it was about suicide and decadence, KID A kickstarts a new level of pop-musical awareness. "I'm not here" says the answering machine-like voice of Thom Yorke, which flows easily into "this isn't happening"--insinuating that the technology we love so dearly has caused us to completely dissociate.
It also underscores an important point of divergence for Yorke and Co. from the original music they so ruthlessly plunder. While Floyd ranted on and on in a used-up and deadened 60's fashion about a faceless machine steamrolling over our lives..."It's, like, the system, maaan...", Our Lads step up to the plate like modern men do and take full responsibility in their songs. It's not about some ephemeral "them", it's we that have sterilized ourselves into the robot-like voices that occupy their songs. We're like 21st Century robocops staggering around wondering who we are and how we got here.
I hope that on the next album Yorkey and the boys jolly well pull the plug. These boys are capable of a full-tilt hard rock made-of-wood-and-stone (not plastic) album that would put Pearl Jam to shame. But maybe they have to go even deeper into the sickness to save us from ourselves...................
Recommended
Yes
Album Review: "Still" by Joy Division
ian curtis' tombstone
Apr 25 '05 (Updated May 11 '05)
[NOTE: This article originally appeared at Epinions]
Author's Product Rating
Product Rating: 5.0
Pros
The closest thing to a last will and testament of Manchester's Finest.
Cons
buy it in vinyl - live version of "24 hours" is missing from the CD.
The Bottom Line
If you do not already own a record player, buy one to listen to this on vinyl.
Full Review
as requested, i have reposted the original piece i wrote about the CD version of this album in "General Reviews-Music". my apologies to all for going off topic.
i bought the 2 record set of "STILL" on vinyl when it first came out in 1981. by that time ian curtis was already dead by his own hand. so, perhaps appropriately, my first exposure to the artist's work was posthumous.
i can remember the chilly, uncomfortable feeling i had when the dead soul himself spoke from the speakers over the sonorous, funereal feedback and tribal drums: "...Time for one last ride before the end of it all." i thought punk rock and avant garde music had prepared me for challenging sounds, but hell - was pop music supposed to sound this frightening, this depressing? of course as we have seen, horror and suspense movie soundtracks every year since then have borrowed heavily from the postmodern angularity that reached its apotheosis with the nine singles and twelve live tracks on this 2-disk vinyl headstone.
some of martin hannet's most brilliant production atmospherics are apparent here - one gets the feeling that the songs were recorded on a floating ice berg in the middle of the antarctic, under a sky the color of lead, by people who were or were soon going to be frozen to death. "ice age" has guitar-driven brutality reminiscent of their earliest work, yet the drums sound less like the stereotypical testosterone pummeling of ordinary punk and more like the shudders of a machine breaking down. bernard sumner's guitar solo literally sounds like a bandsaw hitting a piece of metal - you can almost see the sparks flying. it actually hurts. as for the words, "Seen the real atrocities, buried in the sand/Stockpiled safety for a few - we stand holding hands" could have been written today.
on "the sound of music" the bass is heavy, thick, and plodding, far more so than that of larry tolhursts' on the equally seminal "pornography" by the cure, which under steve lillywhite's production sounds stagey by comparison. "pornography" is a technicolor horror film; "STILL" is in black and white, like a haunting bergman melodrama. the drums ring dead and flat as gunshots inside of a garbage dumpster, and the soloing again has a sustained harshness to it truly unheard of in previous music. curtis sings "love - life - don't you feel higher?", repeating the last word over and over again first as a rebuke, then as an outpouring of sheer agony.
i can't really explain why, but "glass" was the one that actually scared the s**t out of me the most. it evoked a black-painted discoteque with flashing white strobe lights populated by flesh eating zombies being electrocuted. this may or may not have been an accurate portrait of manchester in the late 70's. again, i couldn't imagine that music this sincerely horrific could be anybody's party music. of course after that first hearing i was infected and had to hear it "again and again", like an addict who's long since inured to the high, and only in it for the fix.
the next four tracks sustain the feeling in varying textures, but "dead souls" is the climax - riveting, dramatic, astonishing in its power, comparable to the stones' "gimme shelter" or hendrix's "voodoo chile (slight return)" in its devastating portrait of the disintegration of a human soul. the band is jamming here with a rock and roll synchronousness that is achingly tragic in demonstrating the potential lost from curtis' death, but it is as fitting a final statement as any. the recurring theme of curtis' lyrics, fully supported by the band's musical expression - that of the unquiet ghosts of man's historical inhumanity coming back to afflict ensuing generations, that anyone with any sensitivity at all must feel horror at what we are capable of - is brought to a head here. the song rises and then falls with dynamics equal to anything else in the history of rock music. as curtis cries out "they keep calling me!" you can almost hear him joining them, becoming one with the voices. it's hard to imagine any other end to his story, listening to this music.
the live tracks are impactful enough, if only shadows of the studio versions. personally "24 hours", which does not appear on later re-releases [such as the CD], strikes me as the exception. one gets a brief glimpse from the recording something of the tension, terror and drama that fuels the idea of the song that could not truly come to full fruition without an audience present. it would probably make good background music to a Survival Research Labs performance of robot warriors tearing each other apart. when it ends, the cheer of the audience sounds exhausted, the kind of exhaustion one feels coming out of a good horror matinee.
it's tragic that the catharsis one might experience listening to this album was not within ian curtis' reach; that after making a statement like "dead souls" he could not move on to tell other stories of his inner landscape, which was clearly vast. we will have to satisfy ourselves with the imagining of it.
Recommended
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Listening
Apr 25 '05 (Updated May 11 '05)
[NOTE: This article originally appeared at Epinions]
Author's Product Rating
Product Rating: 5.0
Pros
The closest thing to a last will and testament of Manchester's Finest.
Cons
buy it in vinyl - live version of "24 hours" is missing from the CD.
The Bottom Line
If you do not already own a record player, buy one to listen to this on vinyl.
Full Review
as requested, i have reposted the original piece i wrote about the CD version of this album in "General Reviews-Music". my apologies to all for going off topic.
i bought the 2 record set of "STILL" on vinyl when it first came out in 1981. by that time ian curtis was already dead by his own hand. so, perhaps appropriately, my first exposure to the artist's work was posthumous.
i can remember the chilly, uncomfortable feeling i had when the dead soul himself spoke from the speakers over the sonorous, funereal feedback and tribal drums: "...Time for one last ride before the end of it all." i thought punk rock and avant garde music had prepared me for challenging sounds, but hell - was pop music supposed to sound this frightening, this depressing? of course as we have seen, horror and suspense movie soundtracks every year since then have borrowed heavily from the postmodern angularity that reached its apotheosis with the nine singles and twelve live tracks on this 2-disk vinyl headstone.
some of martin hannet's most brilliant production atmospherics are apparent here - one gets the feeling that the songs were recorded on a floating ice berg in the middle of the antarctic, under a sky the color of lead, by people who were or were soon going to be frozen to death. "ice age" has guitar-driven brutality reminiscent of their earliest work, yet the drums sound less like the stereotypical testosterone pummeling of ordinary punk and more like the shudders of a machine breaking down. bernard sumner's guitar solo literally sounds like a bandsaw hitting a piece of metal - you can almost see the sparks flying. it actually hurts. as for the words, "Seen the real atrocities, buried in the sand/Stockpiled safety for a few - we stand holding hands" could have been written today.
on "the sound of music" the bass is heavy, thick, and plodding, far more so than that of larry tolhursts' on the equally seminal "pornography" by the cure, which under steve lillywhite's production sounds stagey by comparison. "pornography" is a technicolor horror film; "STILL" is in black and white, like a haunting bergman melodrama. the drums ring dead and flat as gunshots inside of a garbage dumpster, and the soloing again has a sustained harshness to it truly unheard of in previous music. curtis sings "love - life - don't you feel higher?", repeating the last word over and over again first as a rebuke, then as an outpouring of sheer agony.
i can't really explain why, but "glass" was the one that actually scared the s**t out of me the most. it evoked a black-painted discoteque with flashing white strobe lights populated by flesh eating zombies being electrocuted. this may or may not have been an accurate portrait of manchester in the late 70's. again, i couldn't imagine that music this sincerely horrific could be anybody's party music. of course after that first hearing i was infected and had to hear it "again and again", like an addict who's long since inured to the high, and only in it for the fix.
the next four tracks sustain the feeling in varying textures, but "dead souls" is the climax - riveting, dramatic, astonishing in its power, comparable to the stones' "gimme shelter" or hendrix's "voodoo chile (slight return)" in its devastating portrait of the disintegration of a human soul. the band is jamming here with a rock and roll synchronousness that is achingly tragic in demonstrating the potential lost from curtis' death, but it is as fitting a final statement as any. the recurring theme of curtis' lyrics, fully supported by the band's musical expression - that of the unquiet ghosts of man's historical inhumanity coming back to afflict ensuing generations, that anyone with any sensitivity at all must feel horror at what we are capable of - is brought to a head here. the song rises and then falls with dynamics equal to anything else in the history of rock music. as curtis cries out "they keep calling me!" you can almost hear him joining them, becoming one with the voices. it's hard to imagine any other end to his story, listening to this music.
the live tracks are impactful enough, if only shadows of the studio versions. personally "24 hours", which does not appear on later re-releases [such as the CD], strikes me as the exception. one gets a brief glimpse from the recording something of the tension, terror and drama that fuels the idea of the song that could not truly come to full fruition without an audience present. it would probably make good background music to a Survival Research Labs performance of robot warriors tearing each other apart. when it ends, the cheer of the audience sounds exhausted, the kind of exhaustion one feels coming out of a good horror matinee.
it's tragic that the catharsis one might experience listening to this album was not within ian curtis' reach; that after making a statement like "dead souls" he could not move on to tell other stories of his inner landscape, which was clearly vast. we will have to satisfy ourselves with the imagining of it.
Recommended
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Listening
Album Review: "Boston" by Boston [Debut]
NOTE: This article originally appeared in Tiny Mixtapes Gone to Heaven self-titled CBS/EPIC, 1976 rating: 7.2 reviewer: rather ripped Listening to Boston's eponymous first album makes my mind rocket through a million pathways, a million different selves. Like other period pieces like The Beatles' Abbey Road or U2's Boy, it has the power to instantly propel me back to a once jealously guarded inner world rich with its own atmosphere, like a Lost World of the Self. One of the reasons I find this particular album, even in my most cynical moments, to be as awe-inspiring and uplifting as it is ridiculous, pompous and overblown, is that it is a completely blank slate. There's nothing thematically in it, either tonally or lyrically, that is patently disagreeable. Its universality, like an unmarked piece of paper, makes it a palimpsest for any listening ear, a screen on which the individual might project their deepest dreams and wishes if they chose. Or nothing at all. It's about freedom and its tensor opposite, the desire to be loved. It's about what Van Morrison called the inarticulate speech of the heart. And, in songs rich with perhaps unintentional irony that span an emotional spectrum from ecstasy ["Smokin'", Side 2, Track 2] to suicide ["Hitch a Ride", Side 2, Track 3], at the heart it's about getting stoned, getting laid, driving around in muscle cars and playing in a rock and roll band. It's about the American Dream circa 1976, or the global capitalist dream of now. It seems unlikely at best to imagine anyone in our present day and age to expect rock and roll music to elicit love ["Rock and Roll Band", side 2, track 1], much less going to a rock and roll concert expecting to find it. People no longer go to concerts to listen to church organs and be transported to some orgone plateau, or to have their mind expanded. Rather, they go to have their deepest prejudices confirmed. Perhaps this has always been the case, and anecdotal evidence to the contrary are representative of nothing more than nostalgia-saturated remnants of a bygone era that never was. Perhaps, to quote one veteran 30-something musician, "The past is just a retro version of the same old bullshit." But the way we felt was real. The feelings may have been adolescent, even pubescent, but they were genuine. It's easy to fake a memory of a chain of events, particularly to support a cherished ideal of a past self, but it's harder to fake an emotion. Somehow, inscrutably, this album manages to evoke those feelings. We laugh at the middle-aged golf club members on an episode of HBO's The Sopranos, getting down to "More Than A Feeling" [Side 1, Track 1], but we wince because we have done exactly the same thing, perhaps even turning it up on the car radio and rolling down the windows at red lights to let the world know. It's a felt-memory that transports us faultlessly back to our youth and as such brooks no shame or social remorse. The problems begin when I check in with others who share a history with this music, who report no feelings at all--that is if we're even on speaking terms. In fact, most of them are just the kind of idiots I always hated and avoided in school and after. Maybe it's because at the time I was too young to get high, just old enough to really dig and get inside the songs themselves; meanwhile, these other people were too stoned and/or stupid to feel ANYTHING deeply, other than (perhaps) an erection. The splendidly blank slate reflects nothing to a blank person. Conversely, many people whose opinion I respect claim in open discourse to have never liked this album, although I know for a fact that this is not the case in several specific instances. Either they no longer allow it to move them as they once did, or they refuse to admit that it still can. It instead lies consigned to the dubious honor of the much-touted "guilty pleasure", as if these songs were tantamount to such inexplicable Vaudevillian "entertainments" as Kiss, the Osmonds or the Village People. These same hypocrites are perfectly willing to admit to feelings of nostalgia for the music of Tom Petty, or even AC/DC--they merely deny feeling a connection to this particular album because it is decidedly within the "feel-good" oeuvre, and as such holds no truck with the bohemian pseudo-intelligentsia hipoisie. Pop music's deeply personal experiential qualities are self-evident to the point of cliché. It is the ultimate you-had-to-be-there generational experience, that is if you count generations like I do--not in blocks of 30 years, as in a pro-creational generation, but rather in blocks of 4 years, like high school, the average baccalaureate track, or a standard military tour of duty--the only measurement of time that matters to the young, at the time they formulate the part of their identity that responds to music. Therefore, for example, I perceive the Jam, the Clash, Elvis Costello, U2, Wire, and Black Uhuru to be the music of my generation; while Boston, Thin Lizzy, Bad Company and AC/DC are the music of the generation before me, and the Smiths, Depeche Mode, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Oingo Boingo are of the generation after. And as we moved on to college, my generation embraced REM, the Meat Puppets, Husker Du, the Replacements, and the Soft Boys, while the generation behind us were struggling with Huey Lewis, latter-day Starship and Journey, and the generation ahead of us made do (quite admirably) with Prince, the Pixies and Sonic Youth. Eventually I found that my generation settled down with local bands no one had ever heard of, usually comprised of friends of theirs, that recorded one or two independent albums and then broke up; the generation behind mine settled down and enjoyed Robert Cray; and the one ahead seemed barely to distinguish between only slightly varying permutations of the next big thing. Perhaps one's perceptions of generations in front or behind become blurred with increasing age. It's only 4 years difference, but it's enough to make me think I'm cooler. Even if our record collections overlap as much as 75%. It could be what one might call the Older Brother bias. Boston was one of the cassettes that was blasted in my big brother's Ford Capri while we rocketed down the back roads of our grandparents' Southwestern Washington cow town, along with Steve Miller, Blue Oyster Cult, and Detective (featuring present day television actor Michael Des Barres, one of the bands that was signed to Led Zeppelin's ill-fated and well-named Swan Song vanity label). It was the soundtrack of a short period of naiveté and brutality in the aesthetic history of rock music and of America that is well catalogued in the inexplicable prolificacy of "Classic Rock" stations around the country, and is consistently denied, repudiated, pissed upon, and then slavishly crawled back to by succeeding generations of musicians. Johnny Rotten himself rebounded from driving the stake through Classic Rock's rotten heart with the Sex Pistols, to exhuming it shamelessly in such recordings as "Rise" with PIL and "The Animal" with Golden Palominos. It is a music that perhaps deserves derision as much as it deserves careful study. Boston's first album is perhaps the pinnacle of that era's exposition, with its melodic borrowings from Mozart, its soaring 50's doo-wop-inspired harmonies, and its brazen lyrical dedication to 70's mellowness: "I understand about indecision/But I don't care about gettin' behind/People livin' in competition/All I want is to have my peace of mind" ("Peace of Mind", Side 1, Track 2). Whether we rage against the machinery of such music or allow ourselves to be guided by its voice, we are both ways in its debt. 1. More Than a Feeling 2. Peace of Mind 3. Foreplay/Long Time 4. Rock and Roll Band 5. Smokin' 6. Hitch a Ride 7. Something About You 8. Let Me Take You Home Tonight |
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