1996: Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Couture
Hailing from the mythical land of Dayton, Ohio, Brainiac were produced by Kim Deal, Steve Albini, and Eli Janney (of Girls Against Boys) and opened for Beck, The Jesus Lizard, and The Breeders, among others. From 1992 to 1997, they spit vitriol into the vast ocean of post-grunge bile, creating a discography that stands eternally poised at the nexus of the 90s, both temporally and aesthetically. There was a lot of space to explore in the void between Nirvana and the new millennium, and Brainiac's body of work suggests a lateral detour that has yet to be pursued to its end. Hissing Prigs in Static Couture (a.k.a. H1551ng Pr1g5 in Stat1c Coutur3) was their final LP and penultimate release due to the unexpected death of lead singer Tim Taylor.
However embroiled the band may have been in their particular cultural climate, they never shared their generational aversion to unabashed flamboyance. After a blurry warm-up track, "Pu55yfoot1n'" cuts loose like a cartoon boogie band riffing on The Sonics' classic nugget "The Witch." Taylor's strutting, flippant falsetto doesn't belong to any frontman lineage known to this writer; Roger Rabbit's half-brained mania is the unlikely analogue that comes to mind. Other voices that possess Taylor on "Pu55yfootin" and throughout Hissing Prigs include a vaguely German guttural, a top-shelf grunge groan, and a rapey Reznor whisper. Irreverent, snide, insane? Yes to all. And before you can fish your monocle out of your martini -- incoming -- "Vincent Come on Down" swoops in like a misfiring altbot, the guitar, bass, drums, and moog in disciplined discord. The production is thoroughly post-grunge, but structurally and performance-wise, the song outdoes neo-garage bands like The Hives at their own game before they even thought they had invented it. Taylor's voices talk over, under, and around each other like a sonic CAT scan of a late 20th century schizoid man. And Hissing Prigs keeps this violent pace for 13 tracks and 35 minutes, slowing only for a few short experimental tracks that act as atmospheric stabilizers.
Album closer "1 Am a Crack3d Machine" is heavy enough for the stadium, a tune that starts low and only accelerates lower, forcing the willing listener face down into the muck to taste pure, absolving shit. By the time Taylor delivers the couplet "Muhowwwwowwohoh!/ The first time I forced myself to be real!" as if he were Kurt eyeing his collection of shotguns, the listener knows that the band is unequivocally a well-oiled, structurally sound rawk machine. Just what it is they are crack3d over about remains conspicuously unclear. It's to their credit that they subscribe to the Albini method of production -- guitar up, vox down -- because, when intelligible, the lyrics are largely inane. Here's the military chant that occurs two-thirds of the way through "V1ncent Com3 on Down": "Two four six eight/ Tell me who I'm supposed to hate/ Get with the two step/ Tell me it's a two-step process." Indeed, what are these post-collegiate midwesterners directing their anger at exactly? The Digital Age? Jocks? The System? The answer Hissing Prigs gives is that they're smart alecks, indiscriminately rebelling against whatever they want to, and doing it with intense rock ‘n’ roll precision. Score one for Brainiac. Still, a dialogue from the Simpsons Homerpalooza episode surfaces in my mind: "Are you being ironic?" "I don't even know anymore."
"K1ss Me U Jacked Up J3rk" is a litmus test for listeners who haven't a stomach for the sillier side of alternative. It finds Taylor exploring the inherent humor of the Spanish language, pronouncing "chihuahua-huahua-huahua" like Sancho Panza at Taco Bell. It's bothersome not because it's offensive, but because it's insipidness is so at odds with the musical messages being sent out. It's hard as a listener to give a record the proper love it needs when its makers feel that rock is but a joke. Yet, the band's talents are such that after a labyrinthine series of choruses and sub-choruses, you know the song is about more than a Zorro-themed porno, even if they say otherwise.
The early-to-mid-90s explosion in underground rock culture gave birth to countless forgettable acts, whose dull malaise was as often summed up by grainy black and white cover art of things that were inordinately hairy. Not this one. Everything about Brainiac is provocative -- from Taylor, to their synthetic blips and screeches, to their inventive spelling and bizarro imagination. However, the broadly facetious tone resounding throughout Hissing Prigs never fully congeals with its spirit of 95 sound. Their final release, the Electro-Shock for President EP, resolves this tension by abandoning guitars entirely for electronic instrumentation. Hissing Prigs, however, is the more endearing release, precisely because it is less consistent and frankly because it rocks. It would come as no great shock if the bands forming today with that gen-x guitar sound start finding something endearing and instructive in this strange, singular band.
1. 1nd1an Poker (Part 3)
2. Pu55yfoot1n'
3. V1nc3nt Come on Down
4. Th1s L1ttle P1ggy
5. Strun6
6. Hot 53at Can't 5it Down
7. Th3 Vul6ar Trad3
8. B33k33per's Maxim
9. K1ss Me, U Jacked Up J3rk
10. 70 K9 Man
11. 1nd1an Pok3r (Part 2)
12. Nothing 3v3r changes
13. 1 am a Cracked Machin3
1982: Talking Heads - The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads
This isn’t what I thought would happen. I thought I would listen to this 27-year-old live album and compare different eras of Talking Heads: the 1977-1979 version (disc one), the 1980-1981 version (disc two), and, based on their later material, what the band eventually became. To their credit, Talking Heads sound equally energetic, smart, and dedicated on both discs. (Knowing that this is the band that later made “And She Was” also makes for a compelling listen.)
The Name Of This Band originally came out with 13 fewer tracks than this 2004 reissue, and in the interim fans grew increasingly concerned that the album would never be released on CD. The reissue was met with enthusiasm, and rightly so: not only was it a long time coming, it’s a very good document of a band excited about what their discoveries. Stop Making Sense rightly gets recognized as a great Talking Heads live record, but this collection is just as mesmerizing.
Disc one includes performances by the band in its original four-piece lineup, while the second includes more musicians (including King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew) and a couple of backup singers. While each disc has its own feel, the songs are equally amazing from show to show (and year to year). The band's knack for arrangement is more evident in a live setting than on their albums, and it’s easy to see how their approach -- separate, seemingly dissimilar parts adding up to an airtight whole -- made such an impression on bands like Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend.
Despite Talking Heads’ ample musicianship, highlights here have more to do with the band’s incredible songwriting. “Don’t Worry About The Government” retains its sly absurdity, “Psycho Killer” its fervency, “Take Me To The River” its vague menace, “Heaven” its heartbreaking bluntness. It’s interesting to hear “Once In a Lifetime,” a swirl of abstraction in its album version, as the straight-up rock song it inherently is. The band stomps through these tracks as if slowing down would kill them; you can picture David Byrne, as always, twitching and jerking as if in the midst of a seizure.
While it seems ridiculous to say so, The Name Of This Band... is sometimes too much of a good thing: the album’s 33 tracks are a lot to take in at once, and sheer quantity sometimes works against the songs that should stand out more. But this is a minor complaint, especially if you take this great collection one disc (that is, era) at a time. It's a startling portrait of a band that, to cop a phrase from one of their songs, stayed hungry.
Disc 1 (1977-1979):
1. New Feeling
2. A Clean Break (Let’s Work)
3. Don’t Worry About The Government
4. Pulled Up
5. Psycho Killer
6. Who Is It?
7. The Book I Read
8. The Big Country
9. I’m Not In Love
10. The Girls Want To Be With The Girls
11. Electricity (Drugs)
12. Found A Job
13. Mind
14. Artists Only
15. Stay Hungry
16. Air
17. Love – Building On Fire
18. Memories (Can’t Wait)
19. Heaven
Disc 2 (1980-1981):
1. Psycho Killer
2. Warning Sign
3. Stay Hungry
4. Cities
5. I Zimbra
6. Drugs (Electricity)
7. Once In a Lifetime
8. Animals
9. Houses In Motion
10. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
11. Crosseyed and Painless
12. Life During Wartime
13. Take Me To The River
14. The Great Curve
1966: Timothy Leary - Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
The times, they have a-changed. When this spoken word recording was released in 1966, it was seen as a collection of radical concepts that pushed culture in amazing, dynamic, and even scary new directions. It came at a time when people held a deep belief in unavoidable and necessary change, arguably running deeper than Obamania with its many slogans and t-shirts. In the years leading up to the great acid wave, a fantastic rift existed between the conservative, loyal, noble Greatest Generation and the consciousness-expanding, peace-loving Me Generation.
Tension between adults (middle-age plus) and youth came to a head. Everyone tripped over the gap between those who barely survived the Great Depression and World War II, and those who were collectively sparked to life after the assassination of President JFK, who would peak at Woodstock, vigorously protest Vietnam, usher in lasting women and civil rights movements, and fizzle out in a blaze of coke and disco after Watergate. Throughout the 60s, a new cultural footing was being established, a changing of the guard, as the youth walked away from the seemingly archaic ideals of their parents, refusing to fight their wars and follow their rules any longer. It was one of the most exciting periods in recorded history, with Western culture reaching maturity alongside the concept of a real global village.
A lot has happened since then. While Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out may have been relevant to many people in its era, it now plays like a time capsule, capturing the precise moment the acid wave began to crest, before an entire generation crumbled from pain killers and yuppiedome. The lifestyle Leary tried to will into existence -- and rub in the faces of the aged -- polarized the freewheeling movement in an unfortunate "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" way. At once, he was a rallying cry for a vibrant youth culture being stifled by business-as-usual and a catalyst for the anti-drug movement (and the many draconian laws that passed because of it). Now that we've had 40-plus years to let the dust settle and gather our bearings, it's still hard to say if the world would be better off if Leary had never turned on.
I certainly find it odd that a record preaching the virtues of an open mind contains constant and blatant ageism throughout. In the intro, "A Message to Young People," Timothy says "If you are over the age of 40, I'm not sure that you should listen to this record." He then follows it up with a few weak reasons why no one over 40 can be trusted (they have guns and jails for people who make them mad) and why all young people are groovy.
Yet, being young is not an alternative to being old. Everyone begins young and ends up old, and that in itself has very little to do with who we are as people day to day. As Robert Solomon said, "We should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are."
People who are assholes at 40 were likely assholes at 15, just as cool people over 40 were probably cool all of their lives. Hell, Leary himself was 46 when Turn On saw the light of day in 1966. Surely, he must have thought he was hip enough to listen to it, yet he made it seem like no middle-aged opinion had any relevance or worth (except his own, obviously). Dr. Tim shot himself in the foot with that business.
It's a real bummer to hear someone blatantly fan the flames of prejudice while allegedly standing for peace and understanding. Like Tom Cruise hysterically preaching The Church of Scientology as the only religion that can help people, Leary claimed that he alone could tap into your "potentialities" and those of your parents (but not your grandparents because "grandmother is dead, and [he] can't turn her on"). In effect, he increased the divide between two classes of people who were already having a tough time seeing eye to eye. Of course, it's doubtful he would have recognized or admitted his own open bigotry.
Dr. Timothy Leary knew he was an amazingly brilliant man, that he was the only one who had it all figured out. On "My Problem," he announces a long-term goal to be "the holiest and wisest man of [his] generation," reasoning that there's about a one-in-ten chance of achieving the goal.
Compounding matters, Leary dictates Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out in an incredibly dull, hushed tone, as if the world may crumble under the full power of his voice and ideas. Strikingly similar to all of George W. Bush's speeches, Leary's pacing is dragged out in an attempt to squeeze every iota of importance from every syllable of every word, no matter how trivial or overinflated. In doing so, he comes off like an arrogant ass-hat with little solid information.
It's easy to imagine him as a public figure, though. He rambled on about drugs and rebellion against authority figures at a time when those themes were front-page stories, so he was an instant hit with evolving beatniks and the emerging Haight-Ashbury and college crowds. He was also a hypocritical egomaniac, so he turned off most everyone outside of his demographic. I know firsthand that acid can do amazing things, but even I don't want to do it after hearing this record.
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out is a testament to the ego of a confused doctor who bought into his own bullshit far more than it is a document of the (arguable) benefits of the psychedelic experience. How relevant did Leary think this record would be 40 years later? Likely, he didn't care. He spoke to hear himself talk and to puff up his name, not to create lasting change. For all his efforts, he is remembered as a fallen prophet and a pop culture catchphrase, and little else.
1. Message To Young People
2. Castalia Foundation
3. There's a Red Chimney
4. An Ancient Trade Union
5. Not An Idle Fantasy
6. The Taking of LSD
7. Sensory Paradise
8. Why Is It?
9. Early in the Life of Every Mammal
10. My Problem
11. Elevation of Human Consciousness
12. The Oldest Law
13. Psychochemical Revolution
14. Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
15. Within The Temple of Your Body
16. Our Present Adult Culture
17. The Aspect of Marijuana
18. Training and Sensitivity Required
19. Lesson Number One
20. Every Baby That Is Born
21. Every Time
22. One Final Word.
1984: R.E.M. - Reckoning
Yeah, I know: either you (1) love R.E.M. and think Reckoning is awesome; (2) hate R.E.M. and no stupid review is going to convince you otherwise; or (3) feel ambivalent about R.E.M. and probably won’t finish reading this review. Regardless, hasn’t enough been written about Murmur, Reckoning, and the whole lot? Isn’t it time to give underrated gems like New Adventures In Hi-Fi some love?
Answers: yes, and oh hell yes. But Reckoning was just reissued, and its new incarnation is something of a revelation. The reputation of R.E.M.’s second record is that, compared to their debut Murmur, you can hear what Stipe is saying. Things only get clearer on this remastered set, and not just in the vocal arena. When Peter Buck’s ringing guitar on “Harborcoat” kicks off the album, it’s as if someone opened the door to the next room where he and his bandmates had been playing all these years.
Reckoning came out only a year after Murmur, part of a creativity burst that would provide R.E.M. with six records in as many years. The band explains this feverish pace in the reissue’s liner notes, with drummer Bill Berry claiming he had no qualms about recording a follow-up so soon. “I knew when we walked in on the first day that the songs were better than the ones on the first album, so I wasn’t worried at all,” says Berry.
Indeed, the songs on Reckoning are mesmerizing. Although Murmur is often seen as the quintessential R.E.M. album, the band grew into its signature sound -- Byrdsian guitars, anthemic melodies, loud-quiet-loud dynamics -- on this album. Some of the disc’s best tracks became career highlights, from the pining “So. Central Rain” (with its chorus consisting entirely of a repeated “I’m sorry”) to the neo-country “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville”, a onetime throwaway written by guitarist Mike Mills, slowed down and rebuilt to perfection. Lesser-known songs are just as stunning, including ballads “Camera” (a tribute to their friend Carol Levy, a photographer who was killed in a car accident) and “Letter Never Sent.”
Stipe’s lyrics are typically vague and abstract (“To give away everything is never good, at any time,” he says in the liner notes), and the effect is the creation of a universe in the listener’s mind. Reckoning ends with “Little America,” a snapshot of a young band finding its footing on tour. Its refrain of “Jefferson, I think we’re lost,” though a reference to their manager Jefferson Holt, rings like a faltering manifest destiny, a critique of false Americana. Yet its lyrics are still hazy enough to bear many repeated listens, yielding new interpretations each time.
This reissue comes with a bonus disc containing a live R.E.M. performance from July 1984. It’s not the smoothest listen -- Stipe’s voice strays off-key more than a few times, at crucial moments -- but it provides a remarkable portrait. The band is clearly reveling in their newfound popularity, but not vainly; they sound excited to play for an audience who knows their songs by heart. Conversely, it’s interesting to hear R.E.M. plow into future hits like “Driver 8” without audience recognition.
Although Reckoning is more energetic than its predecessor, it's also more patient and reasoned, as if R.E.M. knew exactly how good they were and were happy taking their sweet time to show you. The live set reinforces this idea, showing a band that, while cool and abstract, always cared about what it was doing and who it was sharing it with.
Reckoning:
1. Harborcoat
2. 7 Chinese Bros.
3. So. Central Rain
4. Pretty Persuasion
5. Time After Time (Annelise)
6. Second Guessing
7. Letter Never Sent
8. Camera
9. (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville
10. Little America
Bonus disc:
1. Femme Fatale
2. Radio Free Europe
3. Gardening At Night
4. 9-9
5. Windout
6. Letter Never Sent
7. Sitting Still
8. Driver 8
9. So. Central Rain
10. 7 Chinese Bros
11. Harborcoat
12. Hyena
13. Pretty Persuasion
14. Little America
15. Second Guessing
16. (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville
2001: Rebecca Gates - Ruby Series
Rebecca Gates is the only constant on the three albums by The Spinanes -- 1993’s Manos, 1996’s Strand, and 1998’s Arches and Aisles. The group began -- and often stayed -- a duo, with Gates on vocals and guitar, and Scott Plouf on drums. By Arches and Aisles, Plouf had left to join Built to Spill and was replaced by members of the Sea and Cake and Tortoise. Later live version of The Spinanes would also include Ted Leo, while Strand features resonant backing vocals from a like-minded contemporary of Gates’s named Elliott Smith. All of which illustrates the mode and level at which Rebecca Gates makes music. 2001's Ruby Series expands her palette; it’s a beautiful, textured work, beguiling and frustrating in what it foreshadows.
Ruby Series is Gates’s only solo work, though the presence of high-profile Chicago-based musicians (including John McEntire and Brian Deck) links it closely to Arches and Aisles. Despite the atmospherics and sense of musical precision on display, there is a sharp distinction between this work and Gates’s previous songwriting with The Spinanes. While most everything by The Spinanes was firmly guitar-based, Ruby Series is a far more electronic work (even ambient at times), oriented around drifting keyboards and placing Gates’s voice in a more tonal, dolorous register.
This style reaches its apex on “I Received a Levitation,” which takes Gates’s yearning delivery of several lines and loops them atop slowly burgeoning keyboards, creating an effect both haunting and wistful. “The Seldom Scene” emerges with cocktail-lounge restraint and applies desire and critique in equal measure, with Noel Kuppersmith’s bass playing off the vocals and Mikael Jorgensen’s vibraphone. “Lure and Cast” brings the tempo up, with Gates crooning on the topic of desires. Over programmed beats she lyrically inverts the concept of the “sucker punch,” while the vibraphone tips its hat to a timeless cosmopolitanism.
With seven songs spread over half an hour, Ruby Series makes for a rich, saturated EP. At times, however, the atmospherics and the musicians’ tendency to circle around specific moments subverts some of Gates’s memorable tendencies as a songwriter. The give-and-take between steady keyboard pulses and minimal drumming on “Doos” is memorable, but the vocals feel submerged, climaxing with a wordless keening rather than a well-delivered line or cutting turn of phrase. The production, by Gates and Brian Deck, often seems like groundwork -- investigations of a number of distinct but related sonic directions in which the music might go. There’s a sense of exploration here, with all of the pros and cons that implies, though the announcement of a Ruby Series album due later this year does seem appropriate: there are still corners of these songs worth illuminating.
Since the release of Ruby Series, Gates has played sporadically, including a 2006 residency at the Knitting Factory that found her joined by Stephen Malkmus, Ida, and Fred Armisen; she also made an appearance on The Decemberists’ Hazards of Love. The bulk of her time appears to be dedicated towards art, including acting as one of the curators of the sound-art exhibition The Marfa Sessions. Her web presence suggests that new songs and a revived live band are in the works. All told, that’s a fine thing: Gates’ take on pop music is very much her own, and it’s an assured, justified one. Hers is a voice equally at home reporting on the world and living in it, a balance that few are able to achieve, much less navigate so deftly.
1 The Seldom Scene
2 Lure and Cast
3 Move Gates
4 In a Star Orbit
5 Doos
6 The Colonel's Circle
7 I Received a Levitation
1979: Various Artists: Posh Boy - Beach Blvd.
Because of the folks working tirelessly from the inside -- the promoters, DIY venue owners, and others who spent every waking moment spreading the gospel of this loud, bizarre, shitstained music -- early American punk reached the unlikeliest of ears. Orange County's Robbie Fields, known in certain circles as the Posh Boy, was one such chronicler, and it's in no small part because of him that the world came to know the darker, dirtier side of sunny southern California.
Beach Blvd., a stellar compilation first released on the Posh Boy label in 1979, features the music of three disparate groups: the sunny, melodic, totally SoCal swagger of The Simpletones; the laborious, spooky ghost-fuzz of Rik L Rik; and the ADD-riddled pop-punk of The Crowd, an outfit equal parts Dead Kennedys and The Cramps. None sounded quite like the other, yet all three groups now seem insistently entrenched in a particular milieu. This is, of course, because they were. In the late 1970s and early 80s, the southern California punk scene was among the richest and most vibrant the world over, and it shows on Beach Blvd.
The major-key harmonies of The Simpletones embody the West Coast's split from the New York and UK scenes. Surf-influenced, lyrically upbeat (if quite sardonic), and often humorous, their brand of snotty garage rock, with titles like "I Have a Date" and "Tiger Beat Twist," is the perfect soundtrack for the skeevy beach bum who peers at girls over rainbow-tinted shades, knocking over sandcastles and swigging schnapps. The Simpletones most melodious tune (and perhaps the album's default theme song), the doo-woppy "California," delivers as concise a mission statement as any: "They say the chicks are really nice/ And the cars, they go so fast/ And the beach is just the most/ And the surf is really wild/ I wish that I could stay here all my life." On the surface, it reads like a schlocky, gee-golly, Mike Love sort of deal, but the song's apparent buoyancy is belied by its eerie, ironic undertone. Besides, the next track is "I Like Drugs," with the chorus "I like drugs/ They get me high." One guesses the sentiment is somewhat less satirical.
Next up is Rik L Rik, a pioneering L.A. scuzz-rocker whose work here falls somewhere between The Misfits and T.S.O.L. His is a wonderfully hazy, slurred brand of rock 'n' roll -- the flippantly dismal soundtrack to smoking dope in some unkempt necropolis. Born Richard Elerick, he spent time in various Huntington Beach bands including F-Word and Negative Trend, but is credited here under his own assumed name. The handful of his songs included on Beach Blvd., though less approachable, are damn good jams nonetheless; sloppy, fuzzed-out, and maybe a little angry, they contrast with the sunny beach punk of The Simpletones but are no less gratifying. "Atomic Lawn," in particular, is a gem, the lyrics apocalyptic and the chorus melody among the best of its type.
Finally, with full force and guitars wailing comes The Crowd. The most musically intricate of the bunch, they are also the most enjoyable, at least superficially: their tunes are filled with the manic, flailing intensity displayed by all the best early punk bands. I've always harbored a strange sort of ambivalence toward The Dead Kennedys; their impeccable panache notwithstanding, Jello's maniacal squeal paired with his annoyingly self-righteous lyrical tendencies often registered on the cornier end of the affected-vocals spectrum. The Crowd's Jim Decker does the whole shaky voice thing too, but never sounds like he's auditioning for the stage production of The Wizard of Oz; his is a far more palatable, believable timbre.
Beach Blvd. is a first-rate relic of a certain time and place, and, above all, an attitude which has all but disappeared since; music labeled "punk" today bears little resemblance to the tetchy, firebrand sort of tuneage chronicled here. How peculiar it must feel to those who helped usher in this exciting new era to hear it discussed in 2009 as old times and artifacts -- back-in-the-days and remember-whens. Such a young-folk thing, y'see, isn't supposed to get old. Perhaps music like this wasn't meant to last after all -- it is ephemeral by nature, more concerned with punch than posterity. At the very least, Beach Blvd. can help those of us who weren't there begin to appreciate what once was.
1. The Simpletones - Kirsty Q
2. The Simpletones - I Have A Date
3. The Simpletones - Tiger Beat Twist
4. The Simpletones - Don't Bother Me
5. The Simpletones - California
6. The Simpletones - I Like Drugs
7. The Simpletones - Dead Meat (Killer Smog)
8. The Simpletones - TV Love
9. The Simpletones - Rock 'n' Roll Star
10. The Simpletones - Disco Ape
11. The Simpletones - Nasty Nazi
12. Rik L Rik - Black And Red
13. Rik L Rik - Meat House
14. Rik L Rik - I Got Power
15. Rik L Rik - Mercenaries
16. Rik L Rik - Atomic Lawn
17. The Crowd - Modern Machine
18. The Crowd - New Crew
19. The Crowd - Suzy Is A Surf Rocker
20. The Crowd - Living In Madrid
