- 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.
Okay…I’ll start with the ‘credit where it’s due’ portion of these rants from which I do so enjoy reaping your pleas of “Foul!!!” Sure, at least half of Spiderland is very well crafted; heavy with the kind of sad, somber, creepy nerd atmosphere that makes it perfect for long drives/walks through rural areas on overcast days or makeout sessions with people who consider themselves beautifully outcasted. Nothing wrong with all that I ‘spose, but….
Funny thing about Slint…I was seventeen or so when they were touring in support of Tweez, their first album. I was really excited because I’d been a really big Squirrelbait fan (and, if you haven’t heard Squirrelbait, imagine a less overrated Hüsker Dü with better hooks and fuelled by more adolescent piss and vinegar) and, well, Slint was ex-‘bait (Brian McMahon was Squirrelbait’s second guitarist, Britt Walford had played on their first album). Granted, I wasn’t expecting Squirrelbait. The week leading up to the show, the local community radio station had been playing songs off of Tweez, which sounded nothing like Squirrelbait, which was fine. They were closer, sonically, at the time, to Big Black and Rapeman except…well, a noodly, jammy, unfocused cousin to Albini and Co’s steely bludgeoning.
Maybe I was just young and didn’t know what to make of it, but now I’m older and I do. It still chugs choad. Truth be told, even Slint’s fans realize Tweez pretty much blows. No song on that fucking album gels, ever, really. They don’t even really begin or end, they just kind of start and then trail off. It’s like trying to have a conversation with that acquaintance you have who can never finish a thought and so just giggles to himself and says “sorry” every third word. Sure, there are a couple of decent riffs, some harmonics that sound like the tune in Close Encounters and some fun, busy drum work but, as a whole, it’s pretty much useless. Read more »
And to think a long-running, mall punk irrelevance like Fall Out Boy would put all of your panties in a bunch (and I suspect at least a couple of you like your panties that way), just wait ’til you see this wet pile of high gloss harlotry- that’s right, Dr. Pepper, rock mediocrity and reality TV have finally come together in a meeting that only promises to be more historic than that time one caveman stuck his chocolate bar in another caveman’s jar of peanut butter.
Okay folks…
Normally I’m a big meanie, but today the sun is shining and…well…fuckit…I saw a couple of things on the ol’ YouTube I just wanted to show and tell.
One of them was a Government Issue song being used in James Bond trailer. However, as you can imagine, copyright lawyers jumped all over that shit. So oh well….
Anyways, there’s this item: Terry Reid, the man who could’ve been Plant, tearing through Waterloo Sunset.Â
I won’t say it doesn’t get any better, because maybe it does and maybe it will, but not that often, and sure as shit not by anybody in the current Lollapalooza lineup.Â
Better known for having been a photogenic acid casualty than anything he did musically, save founding the band that would epitomize angsty Brit boredom, Syd Barrett authored some of the most insipid fairy tale Hobbit rock to ever hit a set of ears over the age of six. I mean, with his songs about unicorns and outer space and gnomes named Grimble Gromble, he was literally a psych-era cartoon of an English art school Carnaby Street dandy dropout with too much time on his hands. Even his drug induced breakdown, which had him living at his fucking mom’s for the remainder of his life, was a sixties cliché.
But hey, don’t take my word for it. Here are some examples of Syd Barrett’s songwriting brilliance:
Open your eyes and don’t be blind/ Can’t you see we’re two of a kind/ I’ve got to say it, I hope you don’t mind/ I love you, we’re two of a kind.
- From a song titled, incidentally, “Two of a Kindâ€
He wore a scarlet tunic, A blue green hood/ It looked quite good/ He had a big adventure/ Amidst the grass/ Fresh air at last/ Wining, dining, biding his time/ And then one day - hooray!/ Another way for gnomes to say Ooh my!
I strolled around to her pad/ her light was off and that’s bad/ her sister said that my girl was gone/ “But come inside, boy, and play, play, play me a song!”/ I said “Yeah! Here I go” /She’s kinda cute; don’t you know/ That after a while of seeing her smile/ I knew we could make it, make it in style!?
This is the kind of music you’d play for your kids if you wanted them to grow up retarded. Jesus, even the early, maybe slightly less jaw-droppingly dumb singles “Arnold Layne†and “See Emily Play†make Marc Bolan, at his flightiest and most fey, look like the rightful heir to the link between Ray Davies and Lou Reed.
Oh sure, Barrett’s barbiturate slur-and-strum–over a backing accompaniment that sounds like a bunch of musicians that had never set foot in a studio together and were just kinda hastily overdubbed–gives the proceedings their certain “outsider†charm, I guess. Still, I hope the people who decry the occasional genuine appreciation of Wesley Willis or Daniel Johnston or the Kids from Widney High as voyeuristic and exploitative aren’t the ones sitting there calling Syd Barrett a “genius.†For that matter, if Syd Barrett’s a genius, then Kenny Loggins’ musings over the goings-on at Pooh Corner are nothing short of a masterstroke.
Truth be told, Barrett was maybe self-aware of his emotional instability and milking it for all it was worth. He was probably one of those guys, in everybody’s circle of friends, who isn’t nearly as crazy as he wants them to believe but acts crazy so people will either want to take care of him or think he’s this disturbed genius who takes a brilliant shit every time he forgets to flush. He was clever enough to have manipulated a market out of his “insanity.†I mean, come on, you think he didn’t collect royalties from the curiosity of the gullible? The guy “went nutter†before he had to put in much road work and, at the end of the day, probably never paid a cent in rent his whole pampered limey life.
Oh well, must beat working for a living, so shine the fuck on, you lazy diamond.
Undeniably, they wrote catchy enough material. However, with a league of weak power pop bands as evidence, hooks- even the occasionally great ones- don’t equal great songs and, in Husker Du’s case, they didn’t gel more often than they did.
The better part of the problem was in the execution, and that can be broken down in a couple of talking points:
 A.)  Bob Mould sounded like a coffeehouse open mic troubadour who’d been handed a distortion pedal, a chorus pedal and a reverb pedal that he’d cranked to their breaking point with no thought to tone or sonic clarity. His guitar sound was as muddy and incoherent as his mumbled, nasal vocal style.
 B.)  Grant Hart was one of the weakest, clumsiest drummers playing a circuit that, at the time, with a couple of notable exceptions, wasn’t known for virtuoso percussionists. To give him some credit, he was a stronger singer than Mould. This perhaps makes him punk rock’s own Karen Carpenter, but it doesn’t make his band great.
Eventually, Husker Du set the trend for doing what every indie band on the wane does, which was sign to a major, in this case Warner.
The results? Well, you kinda can judge an album by its cover, and Candy Apple Grey was about as boring as its cover (shit, as its title) suggests. Warehouse fares a bit better, but it was what it was; a career closer for a band that, by that point, had become college rock also-rans.
Husker Du received a lot of credit for supposedly bringing pop sensibility and tunesmithery to a basement all ages scene that was supposedly lacking. However, between the Adolescents and the Zero Boys, the first wave of American hardcore was never exactly hurting for melody to begin with.
What Husker Did (smirk), with their sloppy jangle, was open that subterranean underbubble up to college radio, and to a handful of the more mainstream rock journalists who looked to college radio for opportunities to appear relevant.
At the end of the day, they were maybe a passable enough pop band filtered through amphetamines and an ungainly lead gain. Their enduring contributions to rock include paving the way for a strain of pop punk that would become increasingly glossy and processed, and the rise of Soul Asylum.
None of this is anything to be proud of. Â Â Â
Ya know kids, maybe the big tent just ain’t that big.
It’s good to know the fine folks at Chunklet are setting a few parameters.
They’re still open to suggestions. Have a looksee, I’ve put some of my own up there.
