1989: Blind Guardian - "Valhalla"
I don’t play video games much, but the release and fanfare over “Skyrim” makes me wonder about the role of escapism in modern society. Really, almost all forms of entertainment exist to satisfy a desire to leave the present state and envision, even just for a few moments, a world teeming with mystery, excitement and intrigue.
Although everyone aspires for different things (mansions, women, dragon-slaying), ultimately they all boil down to one concept: intrigue. We all want to matter, we all want to be interesting. Nobody wants to play a supporting role in a movie about their own life.
Countless pop songs portray a life of riches, a heart-broken confession, or a wild night in the club. After all is said and done, they’re all the same as the power metal epics about fighting an evil sorcerer or restoring peace to some fantasy land. These songs place the listener in a new world, where they have some grand importance placed upon them and their deeds. They do things that other people want to hear about.
Although we can’t all be astounding figures, the right song helps us become those fantastic characters in our own heads. We become the people we read about, the heroes whose deeds line myths and storybooks. We cease to be ourselves, and become the people we always wanted to be.
1967: The Baroques - The Baroques
Enter The Baroques: yet another troupe of minor characters from the world of 60s psychedelia. A Milwaukee Wisconsin band, their garage/psych/blues reputation rested on a few accidents of their career. They were signed to Chess for their sole album in 1967, a blues label that needed a token act that would represent a more rock ‘n’ roll sound. A single of theirs, “Mary Jane,” got pegged as a drug song, and was banned. Nothing concrete was uttered to dispel the rumors at the time, allowing The Baroques to claim their place in the misappropriated archives of hazy psychedelia.
In actual fact The Baroques did exactly what they advertised they would do. They were moody, crabby, and minor in every sense of the word. Their intentions were baroque enough that they used a harpsichord, as if to prove that the contents of the tin were as described. Granted, they checked many of the boxes indicating psychedelia; for example their lyrics named objects in the environment as ‘purple’, or ‘tangerine.’ But only a few of the songs were true freakouts, like “Musical Tribute to the Oscar Meyer Wiener Wagon” – the closest The Baroques got to the loose, baggy, psychedelia of, say, The Red Crayola. “Iowa, A Girl’s Name” was a stab in this direction too.
Though it may seem redundant to narrowly define psychedelia during the gold-rush of experimentation that was the 60s, the reason for making the distinction is that The Baroques’ ambitions deserve credit for being of their time (only just). Growly freak-outs were not toppling off the bandwagon in 1967 as they were by the time ’68 and ’69 had made it obligatory to carry souvenirs of Eastern music and Jazz around as evidence of musical adventuring. The Baroques got their own sound by adding dimensions, rather than extensions, to the simpler structures of early 60s rock. This meant that the token tambourine player in the band was an effete and stylized gloom personified. There were fuzz guitars, there was frontman Jay Berkenhagen’s deep, toneless voice. The jaunty “Rose-Colored Classes” was like the portentous opposite of Nancy Sinatra’s 1967 hit “Sugar Town,” lyrically speaking (“She thinks that everything she does will turn out better in the end… she’s looking at the world through rose-colored glasses”).
In the end, The Baroques were harbingers not only of gloom itself but of gloomy musical movements to come. Those fuzz guitars are redolent of the innovations of lo-fi folk rockers of the 90s, whose stamp was felt in the sound, not necessarily the structure, of their songs. These were folk songs dipped in a tarry bloom, as if weathered by a less bucolic experience – updated from their origin, but not significantly altered. They were to folk as The Baroques were to 60s pop. Sixties bands were called a lot of wacky and unrepresentative things, so how could Chess have known that their first non-R&B act would dourly set out to do exactly what they had said on the tin and produce singular rock ‘n’ roll: neither fish nor fowl, neither foul, nor fair? The reason that The Baroques remain an interesting listen today is that they manage to bypass a dated sound with a good helping of ornery originality; a palpable curmudgeonliness that is difficult not to enjoy for its own sake.
1990-1992: Breadwinner - The Burner
One of the oddest groups ever signed to Merge records in the early 90s, Breadwinner still left an undeniable mark on the world of both indie rock and metal. Surprising, considering the band only existed for a brief two years and their recorded output (compiled almost completely on The Burner) totals under 25 minutes. For fans of what is or what was instrumental math rock, this group may very well be the true genesis of the form.
While their origins seem more mysterious than they actually are (mostly due to the lack of press Breadwinner received), it is known that the group was formed out of Virginia punk mainstays Honor Roll, while the trio of Pen Rollings, Robert Donne, and Chris Farmer had been playing together for a number of years before getting together as Breadwinner. Merge records signed the group and put out a couple of 7” singles before they parted ways in 1992. While the members later moved on to other projects (bassist Donne joined post rock pioneers Labradford) none of them recorded anything that would come close to the energetic jolt of Breadwinner.
Retaining the speed and ferocity (as well as the short song lengths) of their punk roots but throwing in the technical rhythmic complexity of prog rock and precision of speed metal, the band was likely more confounding to crowds than well loved during their brief career. Nevertheless, they forged a musical identity that would be extrapolated on in a hundred different ways in the years to come. Notably touring the surrounding states, it could be inferred that the group was a catalyst for the formation of like minded (but remarkably different) acts such as Don Cabellero and Polvo. The Burner is certainly a memorable blast of schizophrenic prog metal, even if it is over before you know it.
1977: Buzzcocks - Spiral Scratch
Surprise punk-cred test: name a Buzzcocks album that isn’t Singles Going Steady. Chances are nothing else popped into your head. Not too shocking, considering Singles has become the band’s dominant work: its both a great entry point and arguably the strongest release of their 30-year career. Released after only two LPs, Singles collects Buzzcocks’ eight UK singles and their B-sides, most of which were penned by the band’s longtime guitarist and singer Pete Shelley. But if you inspect the back of the album, you’ll find a lone writing credit on the very first single, “Orgasm Addict,” attributed to a mysteriously absent individual: Howard Devoto.
What the back cover won’t tell you is that Devoto was more than a onetime collaborator. He was, in fact, a founding member of Buzzcocks, and the band’s singer for their first year of existence. Devoto’s time fronting Buzzcocks didn’t garner the recognition of the Singles-era lineup, but since he quit the band days after their stellar first release, who knows where the group might have gone. Luckily, the sole relic from his stint with the band, the scorching Spiral Scratch EP, provides a glimpse of their early promise.
Spiral Scratch was recorded in one night at the end of December 1976 and released a month later with cash that band members scraped together from friends and family. What cements Spiral Scratch in the pantheon of punk is its release on the band’s own New Hormones label, one of the first independent labels in the punk world (in contrast to major labels like EMI for The Sex Pistols or Columbia for The Clash). But the real reason the Buzzcocks mattered was because their music fit this method so brilliantly: it was snide, twitchy, raw, and viciously self-aware. From the opening of “Breakdown,” where Deveto frantically confessed his shredded nerves over fractured guitars, to the raucous mess of “Friends of Mine,” which flits between rants about “pissing adrenaline” to some ugly-ass whacked-out guitar solos and back again, Spiral Scratch packed as much twisted snarl as possible into its brief length. Listening to the EP’s centerpiece, “Boredom,” it isn’t too hard to understand Devoto’s sudden departure from the punk scene he already found “hum-drum” and “has-been” to move on to his more experimental band, Magazine. In truth, Devoto crammed as much angst-ridden sneer into four songs as other punks have in their entire careers. And it only took him 10 minutes.
1982-1988: Parade Ground - The Golden Years
There’s nothing better than receiving a record and finding that more research is needed. I like to be pushed, and Dark Entries’ output has been shoving me around like kids used to on Idaho’s finest playgrounds. Hell, I might even start delving into those old Level 242 LPs I got from COUG radio’s downsizing. And that super-old, dance-era Ministry stuff? BACK IN THE FOLD, friendo! Those choice latter Talk Talk LPs? Let’s… let’s just not go there, for now, okay?
Hearing a record like Parade Ground’s The Golden Years — a collection of singles and rarities — for the first time, decades after the music was released, feels like more of a celebration than a traditional listening experience. With proper commercial considerations long passed for the Brussels, Belgium, duo and a limited, vinyl-only pressing propping it up, for me it’s encouraging to know albums like Golden Years are being unearthed like ancient artifacts — hey, a few decades is like a few-thousand music years — first and foremost. So, tip of the cap.
When delving into the audio itself, the mood is lukewarm — as in not as frosty/bleak as many — and almost spiteful. Parade Ground specialized in synth-driven coldwave with an inherently German feel, post-punk through the lens of the usual suspect of the era (Joy Division), albeit with random instances of sparkle that fracture and frustrate the facade of canned beats and synth bloops.
And what’s that I hear? Yep — that’s could’ve been a HIT: “Retired” whips it real guuuud; why didn’t a few stations pick this shit up? It’s got the mega-hypno beat that keeps the flow on the flo’ — replete with double-time hi-hat — addictive synths presets, and a bassline radio programmers used to cream corn in their pants for back in the day. It’s damn luscious, a track that would draw a lot of heat if only more people could HEAR the damn thing. But what I admire most is the flexibility of Parade Ground, as you don’t have to venture far to find antidotes to all-out bangers/mashers like “Retired.”
“Fall Incognito,” for example, follows “Retired” on the tracklist and couldn’t be more astray from the catchiness of the latter. A dominating, foggy wash of synthsterisms cloud the composition as confrontational, combative vocals eject spittle seemingly inches from the listener’s face. And dig these snippets: “You call love what’s only physical/ And the word love is fake… But I guess I’m always gonna fall incognito/ On your battlefield body.” Ouch.
In reality, these are but a few highlights plucked at random. If you want to feel the icy tingle of 1980s-borne, post-pfunk, colder-than-you-wave synth magic, you’ll have to take the plunge by seeking this out. Much like a lot of the presskits of the era (and there’s a great one included with The Golden Years), which were plain, black-and-white, and to-the-point, these simplistic early strains of synth-pop are direct and economical. They ring as true now as they did in their day, if not more so. Why can’t we replace the 80s hacks of today with the true gods of the movement? Until that question is answered, we have albums such as this to fill the void.
1992: The Orb - Blue Room
In the wake of The Flaming Lips’ success in completely fucking with song duration, I can’t help but be reminded of The Orb’s classic ambient techno single “Blue Room.” The story goes that Alex Paterson and Kris Weston extended the song to its famous, epic 39 minutes and 57 seconds after they learned that a song 40 minutes or higher could not be classified as a single on the UK Singles Chart. So at three seconds below the limit, “Blue Room” was released and bizarrely became a top ten hit. But regardless of length, one can’t help but be swept up in this song’s alien groove.
“Blue Room,” in its many forms, has always been a fabulous techno song. Although the edited album version on 1992’s U.F. Orb (less than half the length of this one) stands as nearly perfect, the full-length song is such an achievement because The Orb use length to their advantage. The song gains a tremendous amount of power by being so lengthy alone, giving listeners the option to space out to its druggy beats or sit and admire all of the subtle sonic detail. While it drifts and shifts into different sections, the track overall remains surprisingly focused. With the foundation of a massive pulsing bass line, “Blue Room” manages to take you to another world.
The particular timbres and rhythms Paterson and Weston use on the track are powerful, but never intrusive, fitting for the ambient house style they had developed. In other words, perfect come-down music. The song’s hypnotic rhythms are equally relaxing and engaging, and for the drug-fueled synesthesia crowd, it genuinely sounds blue (which comes primarily from the dark, icy synths that dance in and around samples of rushing water). Perhaps most importantly, “Blue Room” works as a house song that didn’t use the 4/4 beat as a crutch. The classic house beat recurs throughout, but the song goes on many psychedelic tangents as The Orb explore countless textures and rhythms. All of this adds up to a fluid hypnagogic rave that, regardless of its length, always seems to end too soon.
