- Wade - STILL in SonicBids & CMJ 2007: Anatomy of a Scam? …Meh. I LOVE this…..as a past user (used by) Sonicpigs, I got really disgusted that I was allowing myself to fall into the...
- tape in New Single: Patrick Wolf’s “Accident and Emergency” anna nicole smith sex tape
- Borch in Noah and the Whale - Peaceful, The World Lays me Down I forgot about the syrup! Rice cakes then… nothing blander than rice cakes, unless, of course, they’re topped w/ meat.
So, Accident and Emergency, the new single by Patrick Wolf, is pretty awesome. That’s as eloquent as I can be right now, because I’m busy listening to this song on repeat. Unfortunately, Myspace only has the first part of the song posted, so you can’t hear the last two thirds of the freakin’ thing. But I illegally downloaded it (leak!), and so should you. Not that I promote illegal downloads. I didn’t even really download the song. I was kidding! (I’m not kidding.)
I remember obsessing over his album, Lycanthropy, back in 2003-2004. “Bloodbeat” was like my favorite song for a million. I can’t wait until this new record, The Magic Position, comes out. February 2007, tentatively. Single available now, dur. Will someone please buy me the 7 inch vinyl with the poster please please please!?
No? Okay. Fine.
I’m pretty lucky. In less than 2 weeks Marky Ramone, drummer for The Ramones (and Richard Hell & The Voidoids), will be the guest DJ at the night I host here in Denver, Lipgloss. I’m pretty amped about this because I’m a Ramones fan and have been for as long as I can remember.
Joiezabel and I have been talking a lot about interviews in the last couple of days and I was going to try to hit Marky up for one… and then I remembered, I’d already done one. Over 10 years ago. I originally wrote it for my “never seen the light of day” zine, Indie Anna. It then ended up on Fallout Magazine, one of the web’s first magazines. I ended up as the editor for that and merged it with Hybrid Magazine - so it may exist in the archives of that fine magazine these days. Or not - maybe this is its home for now.
Anyway, I remember at the end of the interview I told Marky I had to get my shit together and go to a job interview. He wished me luck on it. I don’t remember if I got the job or not. Here we are 10+ years later. Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee have all passed on, CBGB is closed and moving to Las Vegas (!?) and despite claiming to loathe dance music and disco 10 years ago, Marky is going to be the guest DJ at our night at a dance club…
GABBA GABBA… Goodbye.
An interview with Marky Ramone
by Tyler Jacobson, Sometime in 1995
Yes. It’s true. The Ramones have finally called it quits. Let me share with you my favorite Ramones memory: We were waiting for the band to take stage. My friend, Mike, grabbed me by the shoulder and asked “What the hell are two nine-year-old boys doing at a Ramones show?” I shrugged. It was a bit odd. The didn’t seem to really mind that they were surrounded by hundreds of geezers. I couldn’t help but eye them for more clues as to how they’d gotten there. One of the boys turned. He was wearing a shirt that said something like “Orgasmic Dildo Squad” with about 20 naked women on it. It was really weird now. Then, these two little “boys” started sticking their tongues in each others’ mouths and grabbing each others’ asses. Suddenly, it hit me. “Mike,” I said, “Those aren’t little boys…. They’re midget lesbians. How weird!” Now that the Ramones have broken up, I doubt I’ll ever run across those pint-sized lovers again.
In 1974 four guys from New York that wore ripped jeans and leather jackets started playing music that sounded like the Beach Boys on speed. They were loud, hyper and called themselves the Ramones. They all pretty much looked the same; black hair, blue jeans, black jackets. They all shared the same last name. There was Joey Ramone on vocals, Johnny Ramone on guitar, Dee Dee Ramone on Bass and Tommy Ramone on drums.The Ramones started a movement that was dubbed “punk” by the media. The punk audience formed quickly. They also wore black jeans, blue hair and…. Hell, who can afford a jacket when you’ve got drugs to buy? Suburban mothers were shocked. Religious figures cowered. Kids wanted mohawk haircuts.
The Ramones went through some personnel changes: Tommy left the band and was replaced by their new drummer, Marky. Dee Dee was replaced by their new bass player, C.J.. The sound didn’t change despite the changes. The Ramones were still doing what they’d always done: they played Punk Rock.
The Ramones were one of the hardest -working bands. They put out several albums, toured constantly and still found time to make a cameo appearance on “The Simpsons”. 21 years after the Ramones’ start this writer spoke with Marky Ramone on their last headlining US tour in support of their last studio album, appropriately titled “Adios Amigos.”
Over the last 21 years what’s changed?
Well, CJ joined the band and I, of course, joined in ‘78 and then I left in ‘83 and came back in ‘87. So, those are basically the main changes in the line up and we still get along the same way we always have. Y’know, Joey and John don’t really get along too well. I get along with both of them. I was close friends with Dee Dee. So, when he left the band around ‘89, I was in the middle of John and Joey and up until now I’d get along with both of them at a different level. But, in every band after 20 years there’s always something that rubs somebody else the wrong way. But, that’s what makes the Ramones play the way we do. So, I guess we just let it out on our music, our intensity when we play the shows. Read more »
Who better to start out our new 5 Questions Series than Black Bryson’s band Arnold Jackson, which sounds like a 64 count box of post-punk and soul Crayolas melting in the hot sun. They have a cd out and it’s good…listen to a few tunes and then buy it.
 1. When historians listen to your most recent CD 1000 years from now, what will they say?
“Wow, a cd. They must have meant to put Michael Jackson’s thriller in this museum of outdated technology, but chose these guys instead. Let’s get out of here and plug our brains into the wall.”
2. If you could play a show with any band/musician living or dead, who would you pick?
“Teenager-era Frank Black. Archers of Loaf. Modest Mouse. Nirvana. All starring in Zombie-palooza this twenty-eighth of November with yours truly the only one in attendance because all these bands are out of vogue. I think.”
3. What is the strangest band-related dream you have had?
“I was playing Budokan with the Banana Splits as my backing band and the show ended in a fistfight between
Bingo and Fleegle, who cried. The whole time Snorky was backstage doing lines with Sly Stone, and I think one of them died. I woke up in a pool of sweat and my pajamas were sticky.”
4. What do your fans look like?
“They look a lot like my mom, oddly. And my girlfriend. And my friend Russ from high school. And me sometimes. They don’t look like Paris Hilton or anyone you think you want to meet. But they’re better.”
5. What bullshit do you run into at most every show that makes you think “man, this bullshit again?”
“We don’t play shows, but when we did I think it was the absent crowd and the flyering/littering. When I go to other local shows it’s usually the music.”
Bonus question: why won’t you forget to tip your bartender?
“A bartender is a person in your neighborhood. And they’re filthy.”
Take heed and get into the Cat Empire now. Get a spot in line (come on, you waited in line for four days for PS3, and they don’t even have any decent games), and snatch up a copy of their debut US release Two Shoes when it comes out in February. Unlike PS3, you won’t be able to get much for it on ebay, but the Cat Empire doesn’t exist for selfish reasons – their music is too generous for cynicism.
Garnished by the single ‘Sly’, Melbourne, Australia’s The Cat Empire scored international double platinum when Virgin released Two Shoes in 2005 and, has done very well w/ the 2006 follow-up Cities – the Cat Empire Project. But if America isn’t ready to embrace Manu Chau, then the Cat Empire too has to wait for its due. The U.S. got its best taste of TCE to date at the 2006 Bonnaroo music festival, but now has only a 6-song EP to satiate us until Two Step makes its first domestic appearance on Feb. 6, 2007.
But the time is right. The six-piece (and their horn and dance sections) rarely slips into the clichés of the styles from which they borrow, and achieves a greater whole than bands that amalgamate genres simply because they have no other way to set themselves apart from ‘the others’. It’s easy to tire of contrived ‘feel awright now, shake yo’ hips’ steel drum-heavy world music, but there’s nothing wrong w/ a little shaky-shaky when it’s done so genuinely as has The Cat Empire, even if it would be pap in less capable hands.
I’m hearing my grandparents’ Frankie Yankovic records mashed-up with some forgotten mariachi band playing an Irish jig, and that’s just the verse of Cities‘ ‘Waltz’. Believe me when I say that I mean that in the best of all possible ways, and stop me before I spend too much time lauding keyboardist Ollie McGill for expert use of the Hammond B-3 and other vintage boards en route to some otherworldly-funk that sounds like it could have been made anywhere on earth, but only in Australia. Forget listing each of the styles that Melbourne’s cultural ambassadors are capable of mastering and conjoining – that would take more space and redundancy than I’m allotted. The hip-hop/reggage/funk/soul/jazz/country/cajun band (for starters) should be listened to, not read, so check out their four-song EP available for download.Â
There is a dubious, though not completely unwarranted, stigma attached to ‘world music’ that Cat Empire avoids. Much of what is made under that moniker amounts to talentless reggae made by Europeans, or a lame Caribbean-synth swill t
hat borrows enough from other styles just enough to make it somehow qualify as ‘international’. No, this band will overcome pedestrian categorization, and just as there are too many styles to list and members to name, it’s best to leave the rest unsaid. They don’t stick with one style long enough (which, incidentally, IS their style) to repeat themselves, and they are owed the same courtesy.
Cat Empire’s double-platinum self-titled hinted at what the band would score with Two Shoes in 2005, and Cities in 2006; if this upward trajectory continues, then The Cat Empire will do more than become ‘popular’ in the U.S. – there’s potential for a Former-British Colony Invasion if there are other Aussies of like mind. Two Shoes is the right album to get the U.S.-debut treatment (dynamic and emotional), which will be released on the Velour label. That’s not to say that Cities won’t make just as big an impression when it hits stateside shelves, whenever that happens – one thing at a time, and it will all fall into place.
Joiezabel told me I’d better post this here, and there was a threatening edge to her voice that suggested consequences if I didn’t…
The one-and-only-super-fantabulous Tom Waits is making the late night television rounds this week. Tonight (11/27) he’ll be on Late Night with David Letterman on CBS, and tomorrow he hits The Daily Show with John Stewart on Comedy Central. Can’t wait to see him and Stewart try to out-funny each other.
The problem with being Isobel Campbell is that everything you do will forever be compared to Belle & Sebastian, that being your old band and all. However, on Swansong for You, her second album as The Gentle Waves (which is just Isobel, band-type-name not withstanding), she doesn’t back away from the comparison at all; indeed, she seems to deliberately invite it. The sound of the album is precisely the sort of dreamy faux-’60s pop that she was known for in B&S, and no fewer than five members of B&S wander through the record at various points.
So, using the obvious point of comparison, Swansong for You is quite a bit better and more consistent than B&S’s low points (Tigermilk, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant), but it’s nowhere near as transcendent as If You’re Feeling Sinister, or Dear Catastrophe Waitress, or the one it desperately wants to be, The Boy With The Arab Strap. Indeed, the best moments on Swansong could easily have been swapped with her contributions to Arab Strap without damaging the latter record. The difference is that, on Arab Strap, Stuart Murdoch was doing the heavy lifting with the songwriting, and so Isobel’s songs weren’t asked to be the centerpiece of the CD. Here, with all of the attention on her songs, the album seems strangely centerless, ten appetizers looking for a main course.
The simple fact is, at least based on the evidence here, Isobel doesn’t have much range as a songwriter — she likes mid-tempo things with cute chamber-pop arrangements, which describes a good three quarters of the album. Part of the issue is that her whisper-thin voice isn’t comfortable outside of that setting. The few occasions she tries to stretch can be generously described as unsuccessful: the rushed spoken-word verses of “Partner in Crime” sound forced, and her attempt at rock on “Sisterwoman” is remarkably unconvincing (though it’s actually quite a good song, except for the vocal). The other part is that her lyrics range from the blandly pretty to the frighteningly banal. “For I was young too / with trouble like you / it hurts when you throw love away,” she intones on “Loretta Young,” and it’s enough to make you want to beg Murdoch, who’s playing bass on the cut, to push her away from the microphone and sing something that might have some actual meaning.
All this might perhaps give the impression that Swansong is a bad album. It isn’t — aside from maybe “Partner in Crime,” it doesn’t have any bad tracks, it’s well-played and produced, and it does what it sets out to do fairly well. And at the heart of the matter, I think that might be the issue — it’s a perfectly pleasant record, but it doesn’t have much ambition. Sure, B&S came up with some truly awful moments, plenty of them much worse than anything on Swansong, but you usually got the impression that they were trying to do something interesting, to move forward, to stretch and grow and say something, even if only to themselves. Swansong, on the other hand, is a complacent album: it does what Isobel has long since proven that she knows how to do, and it does it well, but that’s all it does.
Release date: Nov. 7, 2000
Label: Jeepster
Rating: 6/10
