UPDATE: As BT reports in the comments section, this show is no longer happening due to immigration/visa hassles. Original post follows after the line break.
__________________
I. Can't. Wait.
This will be the only NYC appearance on this short hop (here and Boston) through the States, but a proper tour is alleged to be taking place this Fall.
The Bug's new album, London Zoo, is on Ninja Tune and seems pre-destined to make my eventual best of '08 list. If you like a lot of what I like, maybe that means something to you.
Looky here for Kode 9's blazin' remix of said album.
Via Mad Decent and The Push Bin.
Please pardon all the nostalgia I've been posting here this week. I know I'm supposed to be the guy who hates that sort of thing, but since I just had a birthday, you might say that the lure of rear-view mirror cultural detritus is seasonably appropriate...
The Sub Pop Records 20th Anniversary show is coming up in a couple weeks at which a bunch of their old flagship bands are reuniting for live sets over the course of two days. Among the now-confirmed participants are Green River, the Vaselines, Eric's Trip, Kinski, Pissed Jeans, and Red Red Meat, as well as two terminal favorites of mine from the label's early 90s roster: Les Thugs and the Fluid. The label's historical relevance is hard to deny for anyone my age, but many of us will also admit that it's not too often that we delve back into their more peripheral releases. (Whether this attitude is deserved or not is up to the individual. In my case, however, I can definitely say that it's been a long time since I stretched out on the futon, cracked open a Genny Cream Ale, and robustly enjoyed the sounds of my Big Chief, Combustible Edison, or Scud Mountain Boys records.)
All of this begs the question of the day: WHICH RANDOM-ASS SUB POP RECORDS BAND DO YOU WISH WAS REUNITING TO PLAY THE FESTIVAL BUT DOES NOT THUSFAR APPEAR TO BE DOING SO?
Confirmed acts here. Full list of all bands ever on Sub Pop here. Go.
I'm not going to the show because it's on the other side of the country and, well... I couldn't even be bothered to stand up and walk downstairs to watch the Saints when they played at WFMU, so that tells you most of what you need to know about me. But if I was going, the two bands I'd be most hot and bothered about are definitely the Fluid and Les Thugs. (The latter of which -- if you don't know -- is French for "The Thugs".) I've rapped at length about the Fluid on this blog in the past, and both bands have earned plenty of airtime on WFMU by my hand. A quick search of YouTube yields these two killer vids for what I consider to be signature songs (of sorts) for both. Enjoy.
Many belated thanks to WFMU Uber-Listener Susan who years ago sent me a totally smokin' VHS comp of Fluid goodies that I badly need to transfer to DVD. No foolin', if you're a fan and were too young to see them, let me assure you that they were far and away the best live band of my generation (that I witnessed, anyway.) Trust me, you're in for a memorable night in the deathbox. Pathetically, I blew my one chance to see Les Thugs in New York (Coney Island High, circa 1994) because it was some jerk's birthday. Figures.
Also.
With the task of assembling a weekly radio show no longer a regular part of my life, my relationship with music has definitely shifted in some unexpected ways. I've been (happily) languishing in
temporary-retirement mode from the WFMU airwaves since last summer, so instead of the constant off-air worries regarding which of a record's tracks could be used in a particular set of songs for the radio, I'm back to listening to albums in their entirety and digesting them as more singular works. Since signing off from my weekly airslot, I've enjoyed being able to listen more carefully through the zillions of sub- and counter- cultural artifacts I've acquired over the last twenty five years of adult life. I suspected there would be a lot of tracks I'd missed the first time around, and my suspicions seem to have been validated by the many great sounds I've blundered into lately. Most of them have been splendid
reminders of why I ever sought reward in the realms of music and art in the first place, so for the purposes of supporting this rather ambitious claim, I'm including several MP3s at the end of this post.
First of all, I should warn everyone reading that I might have the crappiest record collection of any WFMU DJ in recent memory. And by "crappy", what I really mean is "most devoid of things that are very rare or cost me a lot of money." Perhaps shockingly, this is due more to my constant discarding of things I haven't listened to in a while than it is my arguably pedestrian musical tastes. As anyone who lives in a city will tell you, finding affordable apartments with enough room for an ample music collection isn't easy, and won't earn you any sympathy down at the Realtor's office or in the hinterlands of Craigslist. In my case, this ongoing dilemma resulted in the first of several materialist freakouts of my 30s in which I skimmed through thousands of records and applied the following criteria:
If-I-haven't-listened-to-it-or-played-it-on-the-radio-in-two-years-I'm-getting-rid-of-it.
Granted, this practice had been primed much earlier in my life. As a kid, I would routinely save money for new records, bring them home and tape them, and then return to the record store the next day to trade them in for still more new records. This was fairly common practice for people of my generation, and plenty of us still have boxes of rapidly decomposing cassettes in our closets right now to prove it. So before you get all bent out of shape and critical, let me assure you that I've regretted ever falling into this practice since my highly-coveted 7 Seconds / Prong cassette got eaten by the tape deck in my '81 VW Rabbit many years ago. Suffice it to say, malfunctioning equipment isn't the sole culprit in my long road towards a music collection that's almost completely devoid of nuance. Plenty of other good records that I did keep original copies of were lost along the way simply out of lapses in judgment, passing indifference, or during periods of financial duress. (The one and only time I resorted to selling records on eBay was to finance the purchase of a Hugo Boss suit for my wedding, and I would like to publicly thank Johnny Thunders, the 13th Floor Elevators, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the many other diamonds in the rough that I hawked on that particular occasion. I haven't looked back once, and the suit has repeatedly come in handy in ways that I'm pretty sure the first Pop Group LP never would have.)
Link via Her Jazz and Photobucket. Listen to Black Flag's "Annihilate This Week" [Real Audio]
Riding on SEPTA yesterday, an idea for a new Barack Obama campaign song came soaring through my iPod: Motörhead's "Bomber", the chorus of which sounds crazily like "Obama!" (Thanks to Lemmy's unique British snarl.) I was just outside of Philadelphia, and the lyrical absurdity of this notion inspired me to listen to the song three more times before getting off at the Market East station.
Short of singing Saxon's "Denim & Leather" to a bunch of unemployed steel workers, I don't see any way that Hillary could possibly counter that. In fact, she'd be eating dust for eons.
Granted, it also kind of sounds like he's yelling "Adama!", which is another word that I fully endorse the random shouting of. Where are my Edward James Olmos MP3s?
Because I got caught doing what might (very) generously be described as "dancing" in the frozen food aisle when this song came on my iPod last night.
All the more reason for you SXSW attendees to check out the big WFMU showcase this Friday, at which Mr. Stoltz will perform along with a list of luminaries that reads like an exemplary playlist all its own.
More info here.
UPDATE: Through some bizarre (or not) coincidence, the video for this song is a "Featured Pick" on YouTube today. Click here to watch it, and be sure to check out all the hilariously retarded remarks from the YT comment/lurker chowderheads.
Last night I fulfilled one of my top seven life goals... which was to see a crazy rock band play in an abandoned storefront on Madison Avenue. OK, that's not really in the top seven, but seeing San Francisco's mighty Enablers perform an impromptu set sponsored by Neighborhood Public Radio and in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial was definitely one of the best and most unusual live events of recent memory.
Neighborhood Public Radio, or "NPR" as they rather hilariously refer to themselves, is an ongoing broadcast art project with roots in everybody's favorite left coast looney town of San Francisco. 
According to their website, NPR is "an independent, artist-run radio project committed to providing an alternative media platform for artists, activists, musicians, and community members". Since 2005, the folks turning the wheels behind the project have hosted thematic Web and Low Power FM broadcasts in numerous San Francisco art galleries, as well as at Chicago's Version 5 Festival, San Jose's Zero1 Fest, and at numerous points across Europe. NPR also boasts the curious honor of probably being the only entity to ever be featured in the Chicago Reader, Artforum, and Punk Planet. Talk about a trifecta of distinction.
Through some glorious twist of fate, NPR was invited to participate in the Whitney Biennial, which everyone ought to know is among the most widely anticipated and discussed exhibitions of new American art. The Biennial just opened a few days ago, and according to NPR's press release (which you can download here), their plan is to "install a broadcast point inside the Whitney museum, as well as transmit programming from another publicly accessible location in New York." (In this case, at the above referenced storefront at 941 Madison Avenue.) "It will also install remote studios in cities across the U.S., each
sending live community radio programs to the New York hub". (Upon first tuning in yesterday afternoon, I was treated to a hypnotic solo recitation of the lyrics to "Goodbye to Love" which I later learned was originating live from one such "remote studio" in Chicago. I was able to capture part of the stream on my computer, and you can download the MP3 of it here).
Arriving shortly before 8 PM, I quickly said my hellos to my pals the Enablers, and after the most perfunctory soundcheck in history, (Soundman: "Play one loud note". Band: "BLHAAMMKKKTT!" Soundman: "OK, we're ready") the band proceeded to blow the doors off the small space crowded mostly by friends and onlookers who'd spilled over from the museum just a few doors down. If you've not heard the Enablers' music via their two brilliant albums on Neurot Records, I can say that their swarming musical tension definitely invokes a luridly appealing noir sensibility. The cinematic desperation of 4 AM phone calls and anxiously huffed cigarettes is vividly summoned through vocalist Pete Simonelli's disquieting poetry, as this MP3 of Enablers performing the song "And Last Night?" live on my show in 2005 demonstrates. [Download]
If you're looking to see a band at the top of their game this rainy weekend in NYC, do yourself the service of seeing Enablers tonight (Saturday) at the Luna Lounge in Brooklyn, or tomorrow (Sunday) at the Knitting Factory tap room. Be sure to pick up one of the tour-only 12"s they'll be hawking at the shows, which feature beautiful hand-silkscreened sleeves, and wish them well on their upcoming European tour.
The Awakening is a huge, multi-part sculpture that was installed in Washington DC's East Potomac Park by artist J. Seward Johnson in 1980. No doubt, it was one of the most ambitious works featured in that years' International Sculpture Conference Exhibition. Observed from a modest distance, it creates the visual impression of a partially buried giant, struggling to free itself from the Earth. I took this photo (left) of the giant's face during a 1993 roadtrip to our nation's capital and have had it stuck to my refrigerator with a magnet for many of the ensuing years.
You need to see the piece's other components in order to get the proper perspective, but since all of my other pictures taken on that day include me with the dreaded "90s hair", other people's shots on Flickr will have to suffice. And there are a lot to choose from. The Awakening's entry on Wikipedia has more info, including the amusing fact that the sculpture "proved so popular... that 27 years after the event, it still remains, even though the National Park Service admits that the "temporary permit" has long since expired".
Sadly, it seems that the work's long and glorious run at Hains Point is coming to a close: The Park Service recently announced that the immense statue is being relocated to Prince George's County (Maryland), beginning tomorrow, February 20th. No word on whether or not there will be a candlelight vigil this evening, but if you happen to be in DC today, be sure to seize upon your last chance to see this truly arresting work as the artist intended.
From the organizer's website:
On Saturday, April 19, 2008, hundreds of independently owned music stores across the country will celebrate Record Store Day. On this day, all of these stores will simultaneously link and act as one with the purpose of celebrating the culture and unique place that they occupy both in their local communities and nationally.
No real word on what stores are involved yet, and I can't even begin to imagine what said involvement would entail, but I'm glad there's finally something that Henry Rollins, Sam Phillips, that dude from Dream Theater, Patton Oswalt, Del the Funky Homosapien, Charlie Louvin, and G-Love (no word from Special Sauce yet) can agree upon. [Via]
I expect a heated discussion on this, seeing as how anyone who lives in New York City, urban North Jersey, or who is affiliated with WFMU will have an opinion on the topic at hand. For those of you who reside on faraway shores, "PATH" is short for Port Authority Trans-Hudson, and is a highly-trafficked means of rail transport between Manhattan and some of New Jersey's primary population centers. (Newark, Hoboken, and WFMU's home in Jersey City). Basically, it's like a cheaper, slower subway that smells like urine, coffee, and heat all at the same time. There's a lot of negative mythology associated with the PATH system, mostly promulgated by Brooklyn transplants who somehow think their accursed L and F trains are better than the PATH. (I have met others who actually think that the PATH is just that -- an underground dirt path that connects New York with suburban Jersey. Others claim that it is actually a long stagecoach, pulled by a mule who is chasing a carrot tied to a stick and dangled in front of its face. All lies, I tell you.)
The fact is that the PATH is pretty much a way of life for everyone at WFMU from DJs to office staffers to volunteers. I find myself defending it frequently to the misinformed haters who spread ridiculous falsehoods such as "the turnstiles only take dollar bills" (they take your Metrocard, dummy), "it stops running after 11 PM" (it runs all night -- on a schedule, I might add), or "that guy Teddy always hassles me" (he isn't hassling you, he just wants to collect money to supply the local homeless shelter with juice, milk, and bread.) When riding the PATH train, I always recommend that you sit in the frontmost car, as close to the window as possible, and looking straight ahead. Careening through the old tunnels and observing the architecture necessary to bore a passage underneath a river is pretty amazing, and it feels like a demented version of one of those Disneyworld rides where animatronic pirates or dead presidents light the way ahead.
For those of you not fortunate enough to regularly participate in this modern marvel of urban transportation, here is a rough breakdown of all thirteen PATH stations and what you might expect to find at each of them.
Continue reading "Hot Rails to Harrison -- A PATH Train Primer for 2008" »
Top Ten 90s Singles of 2007:
("Listen" links will open streaming MP3s from the Anti-Static archives.)
1. Beak - Airplane [Listen]
Blowing up in the face of the San Francisco pop punk expulsion came Beak, who served up a throbbing cocktail of Flipper-like noise on this Insignificant Records single. (And then again later, on their impossible to find "Autoselfreplicationalism" full-length.) Blarin' sax, wailin' vox, and a would-be Muppet behind the drumkit -- you tell me what's not to love.
2. A Bullet for Fidel - The Last Day of Fall [Listen]
The curiously named A Bullet for Fidel is actually one guy -- Brian DiPlacido -- who recorded a handful of records for the Scat label throughout the 90s. Although I never saw him perform and have no solid memory of buying them, I somehow managed to acquire all of his releases and they only really connected with me quite recently. Some truly threadbare sounds here, but they carry an autumnal starkness that's brilliantly affecting.
3. Sun City Girls - Eye Mohini [Listen]
A nice prelude to the interstellar pop of their "Torch of the Mystics" LP, the "Three Fake Female Orgasms" double single from which this track comes was one my most oft turned-to audio irritants at the dawn of my radio career. (To say nothing of the eyebrow-raising enjoyment afforded by saying the words "Three Fake Female Orgasms" on the radio.)
4. Leslie - Via Dolorosa [Listen]
The absolute pinnacle of Washington DC post-hardcore. These ex-members of Jawbox, Swiz, and Edsel came out of nowhere with this mysterious 45 on Jade Tree Records, and were promptly never
heard from again. The modern noir sensibility of "Via Dolorosa" really makes me hope that George Pelecanos has heard this record.
5. Big Nurse - Hey Hey [Listen]
My days of drunkenly arguing over the best-ever NJ punk single are gone forever, but that probably says more about the sissy company I keep these days than it does the quality of local noise being made. These shore-core darlings forever endeared themselves to me with this pick-axe-through-your-spinal-column number, as brought to you by the appropriately named Heat Blast label.
Continue reading "Mike Lupica's Randomly Ranked Favorites of 2007" »
Happy Birthday to our hero. Edwin Howard Armstrong, father of FM radio, was born 117 years ago today.
In a perfect world, he would have been wealthy, happily married, and more immediately recognized by the average human, but sadly, history didn't shake out that way.
Edwin Howard Armstrong's story is one that I first learned as a media studies undergrad who was captivated by Ken Burns' brilliant "Empire of the Air" radio documentary. "Empire..." tells the story of three radio innovators (Armstrong, Lee De Forest, and David Sarnoff) who saw tremendous potential in the wireless medium, and who nearly forced each other into ruin (and in one case, an early grave) through an endless series of backstabbings and legal squabbles.
I've since watched "Empire..." countless times and can recite lines from it the same way other people summon up zingers from Monty Python or Airplane, but I will always remember that first viewing during my freshman year of school. I was already a serious radio junkie by then and had been doing a weekly show on WPRB for several years. Armstrong's tale seemed to come frontloaded with the same feelings you get when discovering someone else who shares all of your identical passions and interests. How could I have thought I cared about radio before knowing Armstrong? And how the hell could my classmates sleep through the same story that had me sitting bolt upright in my chair, my pulse hammering audibly inside my skull? Sitting in that auditorium was one of the few times in my life that I knew I was in the right place, and I've spent the ensuing years trying to validate that sensation.
Armstrong's story is told elegantly by Burns' documentary, and I wouldn't dream of trying to paraphrase a career of such honor, nuance, and ultimate tragedy here. But it's worth stating that there are only two things in this world that are guaranteed to make me weep like a little schoolgirl, and one of them is the story of Edwin Howard Armstrong. (The other one, as I've recently discovered, is anything having to do with elephants, but never mind about that right now.)
Sadly, I don't have any Armstrong-related audio or video handy, but you can (and should) get "Empire of the Air" on Netflix. There's also more information about him here, here, and here. And one of these days, I'm going to make good on my promise to go visit Armstrong Tower in Alpine, New Jersey. Perhaps it's undue flattery, but I like to think that if Edwin were alive today, he'd still be living in Jersey and would perhaps be an FMU fan.
Here's a shot from Bronwyn C's remote broadcast of Killing Time, as heard and witnessed last Friday at the Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
The evening consisted of various contributors to "The Best of LCD: The Art and Writing of WFMU" (edited by Dave the Spazz) reading their published works in the singularly intimate setting that's unique to indie bookstores. Bonus points are distributed to the Community Bookstore for the addition of a live-in cat, turtle, and iguana -- all of which were curiously described as "strays".
Pictured here are Bronwyn and WFMU's own Kenny G
(who as Spazz astutely pointed out midway through the broadcast, looked as if he'd just "mugged a couch".)
You can listen to the show right now [Streaming Real Audio] | [Streaming MP3] and hear readings from "The Kenny G letters" -- heartfelt notes that Kenny receives from smooth-jazz lovers who think they've tracked down his curly-haired namesake -- as well as spoken wordage from Spazz, Sluggo, Ellery Eskelin, and more.
Immediately following the reading, great quantities of beer were produced, and strangely enough, no one remembers how we all got back to New Jersey. The Community Bookstore is located at 143 7th Ave. in Park Slope, Brooklyn. That happens to be within spitting distance of this place and also this place, both of which come highly recommended from myself, Scott Williams, and most other people who love any combination of drinking alcohol and witnessing live music.
I was just up on WFMU's roof. Don't ask what I was doing up there, just check out this cellphone-snapped picture of the toxic Jersey City sunset.
OK, so I messed with the contrast. A little.
Related listening:
Sigh - A Sunset Song [MP3]
though if you're from around here, you'd probably thinking more along the lines of
Lynyrd Skynyrd - That Smell [Real Audio]
If there was any doubt or confusion in your head that the end of the year is approaching, the oft-maligned "best of..." lists are starting to sprout like daisies all over the internet. God knows that much of the WFMU staff will be hitting you with their own versions soon enough. Consider yourselves warned.
Two rather ambitious lists were recently brought to my attention: Detroit's Metro Times alt-weekly offered up the "100 Greatest Detroit Songs Ever" and Blender.com compiled the more worrisome "100 Greatest Indie-Rock Albums Ever".
I'm always suspicious of these kinds of lists because I can't help imagining that numbers 5 through 100 are assigned completely at random, and then the top picks get argued over just before presstime. In the interest of fairness, it should be stated that I'm not from Detroit and I'm only peripherally interested in most of what gets called "indie rock". But I'm compelled to add that I was more inspired by the Metro Times' irreverence, shameless genre-hopping, and up-front admission that there was no science to their methodology. That's the kind of "best of..." list that I can get behind! The indie rock list mostly reinforced my fervent wish that people my age would knock it off with the ceaseless Pixies worship. Although they didn't take Blender's top position, the general vibe of their countdown is one I associate with people who regard the Pixies as my generation's Led Zeppelin. ("Pixies revisionists", a friend recently called them.) Lots of great bands, but when all grouped together as a "canon", not as much fun to think about. And really, if I thought it would make the slightest bit of difference, I would climb up to the roof right now with a megaphone and yell the following: [MP3]
Thanksgiving is by far my least favorite holiday. The weather is always crappy, the subways and trains necessary for me to get to my family are packed to the gills with horrible people, and the food is wildly overrated. (Liz Berg and I agree: We'd take authentic Mexican with homemade mole sauce over turkey and stuffing in a heartbeat). Yep, there's nothing quite like honoring the first "settlers" of our great nation like waking up at the crack of dawn to put yourself through all of the above horrors, and then have to do it again on the way home that night, only now you're semi-drunk, full of food you didn't want to eat in the first place, and still mulling over the stupid argument you had with your father about the Iraq war. Oh yeah, and if you're like me, you have to get up for work the next morning. This New Yorker cover by Chris Ware (left) sums up the malaise pretty efficiently, I think.
Call me a crank (everyone else does), but I know I'm not alone when I say that Thanksgiving celebrations need a radical re-thinking. The holiday's problems can be approached from many directions -- the boring food, the travel headaches, the dubious history of the pilgrims, the fact that zillions of Americans use it as an excuse to pay lip-service to "the less fortunate" (but don't actually do anything to assist them), and dare we all forget that it gives the green light for every crappy radio station to start dropping Christmas music into rotation. Sorry Thanksgiving lovers, but there's really no argument to be had here; I've already carried out an extended internal dialog with myself and figured this all out while you were daydreaming about giblet gravy. What we need now is for someone more adept than I to put it all into real perspective. Someone with a knack for a gripping narrative. Someone with vocal timbre so arresting so as to freeze you in your tracks. And most important of all, someone for whom atmospheric trip-hop background music isn't so much a hobby as it is a lifestyle. Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Joe Frank and an excerpt from his incredible Thanksgiving treatise entitled "Pilgrim".
Streaming MP3 [Listen]
Streaming Real Audio [Listen]
More on Joe Frank here.
