War on Radio

So, a couple days ago (more like a week and a half, I guess), I ordered a discography by a band called Car Vs. Driver from a label called Stickfigure. I already had the two disc’s worth of stuff on my computer, but it was 256kbps instead of 320 and I wanted to support the band anyway.

So here I go, ordering the two disc set. I wait. The package comes today. I picked it up as Lizzy and I were leaving the house for work. It looked a little big for what I ordered, but maybe the case was just kind of thick, right?

After lots of Wendy’s drama, I drop Lizzy off and start heading home. Being the jerk I am, I find myself listening to an NPR story about something or another. But the station fades out about halfway home, so I’m all, “Oh, hey, I’ll open the package and listen to part of the CD on the way back!”

Here I am, driving 55 down the road, looking for a place to pull off so I can open the box. I find some abandoned school somewhere and swing off the road to open the package. Oh hell yeah! right?

I finally get the box open and the first thing I see — I am not making this up — is “George W. Bush go straight to fucking Hell.”

…what the fuuuuuck?…

Oh, sweet, this is the CD I orde — no, wait, it isn’t! So at this point I’m too confused to even laugh, because it’s like, hey, totally not what I ordered. But then I see the CD I did order, along with another one. So, okay, not the wrong order. Then I realize what had happened: I’d been given something that wasn’t even worth the price of free.

Man, see, here’s the thing. All those George Bush jokes and references from, like, six months ago are really passe now. It’s like no one even knows who he is anymore. Yeah, maybe in 20 years it’ll be amusing again (if it ever even was), but the first thought after my initial confusion was, “Wow, it’s June 2009 and I just got some ‘I hate George Bush’ material in the mail — which means a couple things. A) I’m going to jail. And B) there are a lot more homosexual obsessions with the former president than I might have thought. I mean, he’s okay looking for his age, but not that good looking.”

So to make a snide political comment here: I hope everyone now realizes how passe George Bush references are and how irrelevant it is to even talk about him anymore. Get off him, or get off him — I don’t care — but if you’re going to do the latter, please don’t send me free CDs about it.

But more on all Bush jive later.

After looking at the CD titles in the box, I noticed there were lots of little leaflets and fliers sticking out. “Well hey, what a clever way to promote your music, I guess. I like Car Vs. Driver. I like bands like Deerhoof, who have put some stuff out through Stickfigure. So maybe I’ll get some stuff I like out of this!”

The first thing I saw made me feel like “George W. Bush go fucking straight to Hell” was actually pretty normal. See, what I saw next made me feel like I was being bombarded with fliers by Juggalos and other ne’er do well jackballs.

Fast forward a little to after I got home. I looked “Zodiac Killer Records” up online and found out that they’re just a bunch of punk douches (thank God, the last thing I need is to be getting mail from people who are ok with putting promotional material from Juggalos in their recipient’s packages), probably skinhead fucktards, who put together stuff featuring bands like “The Unabombers” (okay, kind of clever) and “Copstabber” (uhm, what?) and “Sonic Negros,” the last of which I feel like I’ve heard about somewhere before. As Emily and I are perusing their site, we see “Drink.Fight.Fuck. Volume III” on the side of the page. Now if this sounds a little like your favorite porno (Backdoor Housewives Drinking, Fighting, and Fucking Vol. 12), it’s probably because it does sound like your favorite porno.

Rewinding back to my bemusement in the car, I next notice a pretty harmless leaflet and sticker from Koi Records. I went to their website just now, and I guess they look normal enough. They even have a cute little tag line that goes a little like, “our records sell out….but we don’t!”

As I’m sitting in the car looking over all these fliers, I notice one is glued to the Zandosis “I want to anally penetrate George W. Bush in Hell” CD (which I absolutely cannot wait to rip at 320kbps and listen to at loud volume with headphones, btw). “Oh, this should be a laugh riot,” I think to myself. And sure enough, it’s a hybrid ad for a band called Angel Spit and a clothing line / make-up design school. I’m not making that up, you gotta believe me! I felt like I had entered some Dir en Grey nightmare, surrounded by dolled up chicks in nurse get-ups. But maybe that’s because I was looking at just that sort of thing.

How… strangely erotic.

Oh, that’s sooooo keeee-ut! If you’re curious, and why wouldn’t you be, and want to check out their website, you can go to Miss-X.net. It currently asks you to go to Surgeon-X.com. (And if you’re looking for make-up tips, don’t hesitate to check out Destroy X, because you need all the sinister x things you can get!) I hate to say it, but I must: This looks even more fuck-the-mainstream-y than Fuck the Mainstream.

But you know what’s most amazing about this j-whore scenefest? 21 dollar Butoh Kabuki brushes and $18 eyeshadow applicators!

But hey, what’s this? Something on the other side of the Angel Spit flier? No way, there is?!

You advise the parents… because you’re punk.

I think, for this, there is no need for words…

But on to something that actually doesn’t suck as much as I thought it would!

One of the fliers I got was for a band called Stiletto Boys. I thought this would be ridiculously bad, especially after finding out they were signed to Zodiac Killer. But listen for yourself, it’s really not all that ridiculous. I wouldn’t call it fantastic or anything, but when you’re being promoted alongside Copstabber (who I keep wanting to call Cocksucker, but that’s my fault), you start to shine a little, even if you’re some sort of Blink 182 / Paul McCartney fusion band.

That’s where the fun stops and the Swedish glorious song-along lyrics begin. Yes, another leaflet was for Autodafeh’s NEW CD Hunt for Glory, which is probably really great and amazing because they are “clearly influenced by bands like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb,” but since no one gives a fuck about them they probably really aren’t as great as I led you to believe.

Then I see that there’s an old fashion paper note that has 4 vinyls listed on it. The first one actually sounds kind of interesting, musically, “Tons of delay and insane guitar sounds create this huge wall of sound.” Hey, cool, I like walls of sound. So do people who kill C list actors no one cares about (oh man, just think if she’d thought to do Oxyclean ads! Then everyone would care about her!), but I do too.

But it goes down hill from there. “Brutal and beautiful. Stark and chaotic. June Paik offer up four of the most epic, most destructive, most apocalyptic lullabies ever committed to vinyl.”

My favorite, though, is the last one. “Split between two apocalyptic emo-violence bands from England. BOW play dark, Uranus influenced [no really] hardcore with huge melodies. Kaddish plays fast, Italian styled emo-violence.” I’m sure they’re nice guys and all, but did you really have to say “Uranus influenced”? I dunno brah. I dunno.

But I’ve saved the best for last! Zombie Cheney on the back of the Zandosis CD!

Do you wonder what Zandosis sounds like? Do you care? You should. Here’s them playing on a tree — yes, playing on a tree (that we later find out killed someone, and has now been “Zandosified”) — in Atlanta. Ah, noise jazz. Ah, noise jazz.

Moving on, would you care to take a look at the titles of the songs on the CD of which I have so generously been gifted? Of course you would! And here they are. (And don’t be afraid to click the “See all 29 tracks on this disc” link, because it’s so worth it.) Do you notice a theme? How could you! There clearly is none, as any theme that might have existed on this CD veers off course at the FUCKING MENTION OF JOHN FUCKING CAGE.

But better yet, the CD, with its one and a half star average, gets a review by a guy who clearly does not get it and just wants to jerk off about liberals.

“How much hate garbage can there be against President Bush? The liberals are truly organized in their hate/smear campaigns…and they scream the loudest and longest if they think someone has said something bad about them. I can’t believe Amazon would sell a piece of trash like this.”

Yes, a CD that has probably been heard by literally dozens of people is part of the organized hate/smear campaign out to ruin George Bush on — wait, what date did you publish this review? January 11th, 2009? So there’s a president elect lurking out there when you wrote this, and you’re still sucking George Bush’s cock? Man, this Bush guy gets a lot of ass. But I’m so not jealous.

I’m sitting here with a guitar, idly picking away and musing to myself about why I own the instrument to begin with.

I remember back in 2006, just a little while after I had moved to Denver to go to school, I was standing in line in one of the three hundred Starbucks on the 16th Street Mall. It was still a hot Indian Summer at that point and I remember being kind of anxious to get my frappuccino and get on my merry way. Suddenly something registers in my consciousness–”You’re supposed to have the answer, you’re supposed to have living proof.” I know that voice. I even know that song, after a second, but it’s the voice that registers with me first. It’s a smooth, confident Chan Marshall. Cat Power is playing in Starbucks.

I’m not a hater, far be it for me to begrudge someone I admire such success. But it was a surreal moment, like an out of body experience almost.

Flash back a little over seven years to the summer of 1999, when fourteen (almost fifteen) year old me is in the height of my Sonic Youth phase. Pretty much every fourth word that came out of my mouth was either “Thurston,” “Kim,” “Lee,” or “Steve” (with a “Bob” and “Richard” thrown in there now and again). My copies of Washing Machine and Daydream Nation were all but worn out–the center pieces of the CD tray broken, the booklets scuffed up, etc.

This was also back when CDNow still existed and I was quite happy to spend my allowance on it, collecting whatever related merchandise would feed my obsession. The 100% CD-Single? Hell yes. The Touch Me I’m Sick/Halloween split 12″ with Mudhoney? Fuckin’ A.

Then I find that drummer Steve lent his sticks to this odd looking album called What Would the Community Think. So I check up on it. Looks interesting, as does its follow up–Moon Pix. What better do I have to spend my money on at 14? So I order them both. As luck would have it, something happened–I don’t even remember now–they had to backorder WWtCT or something. The point is, a week or so later, Moon Pix shows up in its little mailer all by its lonesome.

I’ve become somewhat jaded now–it’s nothing to download and listen to an album while browsing around messageboards or whatever. This is the cost of the digital age, maybe, or maybe I’m just getting older, but at the time, listening to a new CD was an event, a ritual. There was ceremony to be observed. So I put it off til the wee hours of the morning. Because it was summer, I was allowed to stay up as late as I damn well pleased, so once my mother had retired to her bedroom, I sat myself down in the living room with a bottle of cream soda, a pack of Red Vines and my discman.

I’m not really sure what happened after that. The cliche would be to say I saw God. I’m not sure about that. I like to think of it more as seeing myself. I’m pretty sure by the time “Back of Your Head” came on I was crying. I know I was by “Colors and the Kids.”

There’s a point in that song (2:58, specifically) where it reaches this climactic moment: “I could stay here, become someone different / I could stay here, become someone better…”

I had had revelatory experiences with music before this. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, for example, was a creation just for me, my music, not somebody else’s. Little Earthquakes was the voice of a mentor, both a cautionary tale and adventure story, something I could become. But this… this was something I actually was, something I could embody right then and there with no separation. The simplicity of the music wasn’t lost on me–that the entire 6:38 song is built over two piano chords. I could play it. I could express something that beautiful. It brought this lofty idea of beautiful music to my level, or maybe me up to that level. I felt a kinship with this woman and this music because it made me feel, for the first time, like something I could do and not just observe.

That record stayed on repeat the entire night. Our backyard at the time faced the woods and I remember once the light started to rise in the distance, I went through the kitchen to the door to the porch. A huge doe was practically standing on my back porch. She let me open the door, headphones and all, and come within a few inches of her nose before she ran off. I still feel like that was some kind of sign, of what I’m not sure, but it moved me.

The next Christmas I got my first guitar (a black Epiphone that’s still a sexy machine, although I need to resolder a few things to get her working properly). I spent hours learning “Cross Bones Style” and “You May Know Him.” And more to the point, I started figuring out my own little tunes. Maybe they were a little imitative, but I was inspired.

Flash back to that coffee line in Denver. I went home and put The Greatest on. It’s a wonderful record, full of this lovely sway–look at “The Moon” for example. But it’s also very polished, accomplished… as strong as that makes it and as glad as I am that she’s branching out, those qualities keep it from having the “I am You” impact Moon Pix had on me that night, the qualities that made me pick up a guitar in the first place. But maybe for someone else, it’ll be the right thing–just what they need to hear. Maybe they’ll even hear it in Starbucks, who knows?

They say everyone who’s bought a copy of the first Velvet Underground record has, at some point, started a band. I was never that much of a joiner–for me, songwriting was something that happened in my bedroom with a tiny Peavey amp and a black and white composition notebook. But the method isn’t the point. That any music can have that power–to inspire, to plant the seed of possibility in the mind of some kid in a bedroom or a garage somewhere–it’s magical, mystical, maybe a little bit insane. Art is a self-perpetuating thing, like anything alive, it breathes and eats and procreates.

I get to participate in that, and I owe that participation to 11 songs by a southern belle by way of NYC.

As sort of a feature that I may or may not do as a continuing series, I thought I’d come along and mention five records I’m enjoying as recent additions to my iTunes library.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)
I’m not quite prepared to call this “the best record of the year” or whatever (seriously people, it’s January for chrissakes), but presupposing one likes Animal Collective to begin with, it wouldn’t be a stretch to call it their best record yet, or at least on par with the awesomeness that is Feels.

The Lightning Seeds - Cloudcuckooland (1989)
The late ’80s and early ’90s saw a wave of awesome British indiepop records, making it easy to overlook a lot of good stuff, as I had this one until recently. It’s classicist, for sure, but surefooted and engaging, especially the single/opening track “All I Want.”

French Quarter - French Quarter (2007)
Nicked this one after I heard it playing at a friend’s house. It’s a short album–ten low-fi, quiet/laid back tracks over the course of half an hour. Vocal harmonies and gentle guitars wind around each other in a neat stew that alternates between being chilled out and achingly pretty.

Foot Ox - It’s Like Our Little Machine (2008)
If there’s such a thing as freak-folk pop, this is probably it. Teague Cullen’s nasal howl drifts around in a backdrop of DIY instrumentation that’s surprisingly (given the unprocessed sound) layered and well arranged. The songs are full of energy, flying along at breakneck pace (most of the tracks are under two minutes). It has kind of an E6 vibe about it, on par with some of the best early work of that collective.

Ensemble Mzetamze - Traditional Songs of Georgian Women, Volume I (1996)
This is pretty much exactly what it says it is–39 a capella pieces of Georgian (the country, not the state) trad music. I’m slowly extending my feelers into world music and if you’re interested in that, this is a great place to start; the vocal harmonies and haunting melodies are absolutely flooring.

… while remaining unsigned!

The NME says they were once signed to Alan McGee’s label Poptones, but are now free agents. And apparently, as free agents, they have managed to outsell a pretty large group of relatively well-known artists, like MGMT and Kings of Leon. I think this is really cool.

It sort of reminds me of an argument I got into a couple days ago about whether modern technology is good for music — or is it the case that we should all go back to living in 1972?

And I think this, along with bands like Have a Nice Life and Dykehouse, is a great example of modern technology and the internet doing great, great things for music.

So here we are. I am here. You are here. We are here. And I owe you an apology. I’ve sort of neglected this site for a while, readers. Which is sad and is something I’m sad about. There aren’t really any good excuses (school, work, randomthingthateveryonehas), but please find it in your hearts to forgive me in spite of that.

That being said, I actually have nothing else to say.

Hey, here’s something: How many of you have heard 808s and Heartbreak by Kanye West? Please share your opinion.

Hey, here’s another thing: I’m going to see Girl Talk LIVE tomorrow night. Excited, yes? yes. Get pictures, will post, fer sure.

I would really like to make this post not completely bland, but it isn’t really shaping up that way. Apologies. My next, Girl Talk show-laced entry will be better. Pinky-swear.