- Aaron L. in Replicator US tour Blog - Day 22 - “9 lbs of Awexome in a 10 lb sack.” Man….I just found this. Don’t mean to get all spammy but Songbird on Linux (Ubuntu in my...
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As some of you know, in my non-superstarcastic time, I work as the director of a small rural public library. I came to work this morning and found this in my e-mail inbox, which I share with you in all of its glory. It arrived without a whole lot of explanation, but I think it’s supposed to be the theme song for this year’s statewide summer reading program, the theme of which is “Get a Clue @ Your Library.” It’s also sung by a cartoon gorilla, apparently one with a love of vaguely bluesy piano.
“Get a Clue” — Billy Gorilly
This hardly requires any comments from me. However, despite — or maybe because of — its utter ridiculousness, I actually think I like it; the last ten seconds alone are priceless. I’m not sure it’s going to convince any children to improve their reading habits though…
Today’s Roast: The Pixies
Imagine taking some of the more angular post- punk sounds to come out of the late seventies and early eighties, sanding all the angles off, and then attempting to color the neutered mess with boring, watered down surf/rockabilly guitar lines. There you have the sound of the emerging collegiate alternative nation, hyphen rock with all the hyphens removed, a bland sonic utopia of sensibilities boiled down and homogenized into a big puffy, pasty nothing. Don’t worry, at the very least, there isn’t much in the way of actual hooks to choke on.
I mean, has a band as boring and mediocre as the Pixies ever garnered as much high praise as they did?
First of all, you have one of the most uninspired, unspectacular rhythm sections this side of Foghat. Sure, it’s great not every bass player in the nineties was having a bwank- dikka- bwank- bwank thumb war with a tiny turquoise bass that, for a bass guitar, was conspicuously low of anything resembling low end. However, does this mean we credit Kim Deal and her monotonous, plodding basslines as some form of late century wheel reinvention? Jeez, it’s not like she did anything Micheal Fucking Anthony couldn’t do, including sing backup.
And David Lowry? Remember Homer Simpson’s remark about the COMPETENT drumming of Grand Funk Railroad’s Don Brewer? David Lowry could maybe dream his contribution to pop music warranted as much back handed flattery.
Frank Black? Big fat bald annoyance. Vocally and lyrically he functions as a broad, gaping irrelevance. I think his concept for being a sort of pear shaped Iggy Pop had been touched upon with a good deal more finesses by Dave Thomas (no, not the Wendy’s guy either you chuckling fucknuts). Maybe Black copped a few Dave Thomas moves in some buffet line somewhere, but his execution of them makes him a pretty sorry contender to the post- punk fat frontman throne. Granted, it’s a big, big seat to fill, and Black may have even been missing a good deal of the girth.
I’ll give Joey Santiago some credit. He had a thick, serrated guitar tone and could, every so often, squeeze out a memorable riff here and there. Unfortunately, he had to share this relatively minor talent with the above three. That’s like having to share a can of Van-de-Camps with two scraggly panhandlers and a fat guy, there just isn’t enough there.
Okay, I’ll be even fairer and say the Pixies had some solid moments. Surfer Rosa had the brief, catchy Broken Face and the seductively squalid Vamos. Trompe le Monde had UMass, Planet of Sound and Alec Eiffel. That, unfortunately, is about it. Doolittle and Bossanova…hell, the fucking singles are snoozers. Really, break it down however you want, but the Pixies had no consistently good albums and two consistently dull ones.
Still, post-Pixies careers have fared even worse. There’s Black’s pointless solo career and the Breeders, who were about as useless as a supergroup featuring Micheal Stipe and Flea.
Oh well…some fools swear by ‘em, so fuck it.
Oh, Valentine’s Day, my enemy, my scourge.
It’s not that I hate couples (with the exception of those who think that “get a room” means “sure, go ahead, make out on the second car of the Red Line Inbound at 8:30 in the morning”), or hate any polyamorous variations thereon, or even, ya know, hate love. In fact, it’s partly because I’m so down with love that I hate V-Day to begin with, because, as I see it, it attempts to parcel love out into the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Furthermore, a day that began centuries ago as a saint’s attempt to help the poor but then turned into a full-on Hallmark campaign? It’s like an artist releasing their seminal album on Misra and then ending up signed with Geffen. And THAT, my friends, is SO.NOT.INDIE.
So, on the heels of the fabulous KISS post in which DJ muses about Paul Stanley’s sexual orientation, I thought I’d feed my–and perhaps your–cynicism with a little queerpunk. Here’s one of my favorite songs about love from Pansy Division:
Home alone tonight? That’s okay–at least you don’t have to maneuver a bouquet of overpriced, pesticide-drenched roses through an overcrowded restaurant while Karl Marx turns in his grave at capitalism’s appropriation of human passion. So go ahead, get comfortable. Pull up a chair, grab a homemade cookie or two, and turn up the volume…
Yes, the Grammys ended over 48 hours ago, but why then are people at 
work still visibly upset about the Dixie Chicks? There is a big-ass chip still on their shoulders, and if they were really indifferent to the Grammys like they say, then what’s with the lingering aftereffects?
The setup: Joie has given me only good albums to review lately, and I desperately needed something to insult - I turned to the Grammys. This was good luck, because I have a friend, much more popular than I, who got me on the guest list for the Hard Rock Cafe Grammys party. I should have worn something nicer than the red sweater and jeans that need to be washed, but I didn’t figure the crowd to be jet set.
 Of course, this was downtown Chicago, so I should have known better, but every other Grammy party I ever attended was closer to Mystery Science Theater 3000 than a formal function. Who knew?
Enter I with the following agenda: make beeline for the bar, get to friends’ table, repeat steps one and two ad nauseam, commiserate about the foul state of the mainstream, and abuse the proceedings from a safe distance. Unfortunately, it became a cash bar at 8:30; defiling myself was out of the question.
I did learn the music industry is more than happy to give away free shit, just as long as it’s not the music itself.  At no charge, they fed me food and drink for two hours, and threw in a beer caddy, a T-shirt, and a GQ-thick program to boot, all to mollify my aggressive behavior before it had a chance to emerge. It worked.
Enjoying the free drinks and food was a given, and I took it for granted that no one would be taking these ceremonies seriously. Wrong - most everyone in the room seemed to have a vested interest, if not an investment, in what was happening and who won. Where was the irony? The vitriol? It wasn’t here - it was in the nation’s living rooms and offices of the coming Monday morning.
Was I offended that the Dixie Chicks won eight awards and that all of the SSC’s 88 Darlings of 2006 were snubbed (with the exception of Bob Dylan)? Of course not, because bands of interest to the independent and underground audiences aren’t eligible for this kind of popularity contest. We know this. The Grammys award attention-starved performers, so it’s right that the award for Best Zeitgeist of the Year goes to the endorsers of Lipton Tea! The Grammys are a non-issue to sites like this, but somewhere out there, someone is still angry.
If nothing else, the whole experience revealed that it’s pedantic to get shaken up over the Grammy awards, and also pathetic to carry a grudge for old favorites like REM not getting their due from the industry when they were big and you were part of what was happening. I don’t particularly like the Grammys, but getting worked up just to prove to myself that I’m above this stuff is silly and pedestrian. I don’t protest the Annual Awards For The Auto Insurance Salesman Organization, because it’s not an issue, it does not affect me. Still, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t getting through to me…
I think it was Groucho Marx who said this, or maybe Woody Allen, or Woody Allen quoting Groucho Marx: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member.” Who on the other side of the cultural divide wants bands they admire to be rewarded for touting themselves like perfume or mouthwash?  If the Grammys had ever been relevant, then this could be a problem, but this never had anything to do with your favorite band - it has all to do with making performers likable. It could have been the free drinks and vodka sampler, but I felt better about Mary J. Blige after the party - score 1 for the industry, 0 for the rube chasing after Last Call. The industry may be in flux, but they still know how to get through to you. Look out, kids, for the stranger handing out free tickets to the bar - he may be an industry exec, and there’s no such thing as a free drink.
Ladies and gentlemen of the music blogosphere:
I’ve gone off the deep end with this Pirate Bay nonsense.
How do i know this? I spent this weekend downloading seventeen Alice Cooper albums and twenty-six KISS records.
Twenty-six.
Look, as a struggling noise-rock musician, i understand the value of downloading music; people unlikely to gamble a Hamilton on our latest CD without knowing what we sound like can go online, give it a listen, be blown away, and then put it in their share folder for the rest of the Solarseek world to enjoy. Maybe they’ll buy the physical copy; maybe not. But one more person will be won over. That’s cool with me.
But twenty-six KISS records? Even i understand how overboard this is.
Let me be perfectly clear: I. LOVE. KISS. As a band, they have never pretended to be anything they’re not–they are pure entertainers and capitalists, there for the benefit of their fans, and eager as hell to give their fans what they want. Two albums a year through the 1970s? Sure! Four “solo” albums released concurrently in a “divide and conquor”-style takeover of the American hard rock fan’s wallet? OK! KISS lunchboxes? Fill mine with KISS lollipops, please! KISS Kondoms? Oh, for fuck’s sake, what the hell. I’ll probably get dumped if i try to use them, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
However, i’m not about to sit here and view the band’s recorded output through any type of rose-colored KISS-brand lensTM. The truth is that about 75-80% of KISS’ recorded output is complete shit. Fortunately, for every twenty “Let’s Put the X in Sex”es (how the hell do you pluralize a song title, anyway? I should know this), there’s one “Detroit Rock City” to instantly forgive them all. For every dozen “Forever”s (a power ballad co-written by Michael Fucking Bolton! How much does that rule? Be sure to point that out next time you find yourself in front of a 50-something overweight assembly-line operator in demon makeup who declares “KISS is the hardest rocking band in the land, not like that adult contemporary soft-ass Rod Stewart shit!”, a situation i find myself in with alarming frequency), there’s a “King of the Nighttime World” or “I Love it Loud.”
Still, simply forgiving the crap doesn’t erase its existence, so, in honor of my KISS-Army-like excess in downloading twenty-six goddamn KISS records (no, i’m not about to get over the ridiculousness, and so you shall suffer), it is time to pay tribute to The Lyrical Genius of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Read more »
arcade fire is going on the road for neon bible and i’m gonna be there. you should be too. (this is one of the many reasons i love living in chicago, by the way…3 nights at the chicago theatre? how awesome is that?)
4/26, San Diego, CA (Spreckels Theatre)
4/28, Indio, CA (Empire Polo Field/Coachella)
5/1, Atlanta, GA (Civic Center)
5/2, Asheville, NC (Thomas Wolfe Auditorium)
5/4, Washington, DC (DAR Constitution Hall)
5/5, Philadelphia, PA (Tower Theatre)
5/7, New York, NY (TBA)
5/8, New York, NY (TBA)
5/9, New York, NY (TBA)
5/10, Boston, MA (Orpheum Theatre)
5/12, Montreal, Quebec (Arena Maurice Richard)
5/13, Montreal, Quebec (Arena Maurice Richard)
5/15, Toronto, Ontario (Massey Hall)
5/16, Toronto, Ontario (Massey Hall)
5/18, Chicago, IL (Chicago Theatre)
5/19, Chicago, IL (Chicago Theatre)
5/20, Chicago, IL (Chicago Theatre)
5/27, Portland, OR (Schnitzer Concert Hall)
6/1, Berkeley, CA (Greek Theatre)
6/2, Berkeley, CA (Greek Theatre)
