Sunday, January 30, 2011

White Mystery – White Mystery (2010)

Side A
  1. White Widow
  2. Power Glove
  3. Lions Of Tsavo
  4. Overwhelmed
  5. Vorpal
  6. Switch It Off
  7. Farmer
Side B
  1. Take A Walk
  2. Don't Hold My Hand
  3. Halloween
  4. Respect Yourself
  5. Aaron
  6. Ye Olde Stone
  7. Trance

I saw them on 16 January at the Cactus Club in Milwaukee--balls out two person (brother and sister, natch) garage rock.* Drummer Francis White lays down heavy, stomping beats and singer/guitarist Alex White rams her Rickenbacker through a Big Muff pedal. They kick ass both on stage and on record, and I'd never heard of them until a mere two hours before I went to show. I'd found The Onion A.V. Club's recommendation and was glad I did, because White Mystery delivered the goods that night—total energy, total abandon. Alex jumped around and never missed a note and Francis kept the Scott Asheton-style drumbeats coming. After the show, I chatted with Alex and Francis a bit and picked up their self-released LP. Like their show, it's consistently rocking and energetic, perhaps too consistent, since all their songs fall into the mid to mid-uptempo range and have multiple fuzz guitar breaks. Most of the songs sound like they were recorded in one take, perhaps more than one song at a time. The LP definitely sounds live, which plays into my “keep it as live as possible” credo, so that's some added bonus points right there. I take their song “Take A Walk” to heart, since it extols the virtues of walking and going car-free all while riding a hard blooze groove. The song could have summed up my college career.

8/10.

Addendum: some thoughts on two person guitar/drum/vocal bands...

Intensity = The key to a successful two person band. Play so hard people forget the bass isn't there. Overactive drumming helps to fill in some of the aural gaps. Fuzz guitar always helps. Playing notes 'n' chords guitar riffs a la the Black Keys or White Stripes also works. But above all, if a two person band's going to play rock and roll, they need intensity and power.


*Like Mr. Airplane Man with less blues or Magic Potion-era Black Keys with more fuzz. Or the White Stripes' "Black Math" sound stretched out to 45 minutes.

Playlist: January 2011 in review

Playlist: January 2011 in review

First, the new songs and bands:

  • Sleater-Kinney – All Hands On The Bad One. Favorite songs: All Hands on the Bad One, You're No Rock 'N' Roll Fun, Leave You Behind, The Swimmer, Pompeii
  • The Gossip – Live in Liverpool. Favorite songs: Yr Mangled Heart, Don't Make Waves, Eyes Open, Standing in the Way of Control, Fire/Sign
  • Lou Reed – Walk On The Wild Side: The Best Of. Favorite songs: Wild Child, Sweet Jane (live), White Light/White Heat (live), Coney Island Baby,
    • from The Definitive Collection: The Blue Mask, Looking For Love
    • from Transformer: Vicious, Wagon Wheel
  • Elvis Costello – This Year's Model. Favorite songs: Pump It Up, No Action, Lipstick Vogue, The Beat, Radio, Radio
    • from Armed Forces. Favorite songs: Oliver's Army, Green Shirt, Senior Service
  • Plexi-3 – We Know Better 7” Favorite song: Stabbing Fantasies
  • White Mystery – White Mystery. Favorite songs: Power Glove, Switch It Off, Take A Walk
- A damned good month for new music. I knew next to nothing about Sleater-Kinney's music until I picked up All Hands at the library on a whim and stuck it in my car's CD player. It's been in there two weeks running now. I'm liking their occasionally wiry, interlocking guitars and autobiographical lyrics.

- Hardly anyone does live albums anymore, which bothers me because I think Live In Liverpool's an excellent overview of the band's catalog. The show finds them blending the newer, more danceable Standing In The Way Of Control songs with their older garage blooze material. The bonus DVD shows the band rocking full tilt, especially with the tirelessly energetic Beth Ditto jumping around onstage.

- Despite knowing “Walk On The Wild Side” since I could walk and listening to The Velvet Underground for years, I've never played much of Lou Reed's solo stuff. It's one of those strange instances where I know he's there, I know he's good, and I know I'd probably like him, but it never happened until now. It started with a Goodwill purchase of Best Of for $.50, which gave me those two live rendition's of “White Light/White Heat,” “Sweet Jane,” plus some of the songs above. I've always liked the original Velvets version of “White Light,” but I didn't love the song until I heard the live version. Oh boy, were Lou and the band rocking out on that one. The dueling guitars on it knock me out!

- Fans of garage rock will definitely like White Mystery. I caught them at The Cactus Club recently and they put on a good show. Raw, fuzzed out guitar, pounding drums, and howled vocals. Also, they wrote a song about the Vorpal sword from the “Jabberwocky” poem. Too cool.
The old classics:

  • D.O.A. - Take A Chance
  • The Byrds – Positively 4th St., Eight Miles High
  • Screeching Weasel – Hey Suburbia, Dingbat
  • Tacocat – Muffin Top, Bike Party
  • Drive-By Truckers – Guitar Man Upstairs, Zip City, Puttin' People On The Moon (live)
Play these songs in any order.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Mix Tapes/Dispatches 2011 #3

Tonight I decided to take it easy and make this mix tape for my buddy Andy. Him and I have been trading tapes back and forth since July of last year, when I put together a mix of songs in heavy rotation and suggested he put together some of his favorite metal songs for me, too. We've been exchanging tapes at a fairly regular clip since then. I like it because despite our affection for classic rock, we stand resolutely divided between punk and metal. I'm the punk guy and he's the metal guy. And as much as I like metal, the genre will never supplant my love of punk rock. The same goes for Andy. His love of metal will never take a backseat to punk.* He respects my punk leanings, but doesn't care for the genre. And after seven years of friendship, his feelings aren't likely to change.

On the last couple of tapes, we've been digging deeper into our collections and have been trying to surprise each other other by taping stuff we don't always talk about—Andy and his 80s pop ballads and me and my old folk and blues, for example. This tape's both an appendix to an earlier tape and a move back into more familiar territory. I'm still including the metallic clanging of Chrome and the mainstream pop of Nelly Furtado, but otherwise, this is all stuff Andy knows I like. I included “All Along the Watchtower” because he said he hadn't heard it; “Positively 4th St.” came in because he doesn't care for Dylan but he seems to like Dylan covered by other people. Similarly, I included “Meetings With Remarkable Men” because the lyrics mention Kip Winger, of whom Andy's a big fan. I thought he'd like the reference to him. Most of the other tracks came either from recent purchases or because I've been playing them frequently in the past couple weeks.

90 minute tape
Side A
  1. The Byrds – Positively 4th St. (Dylan cover from Untitled)
  2. Johnny Thunders – Pipeline (So Alone, Chantays surf cover)
  3. The Super Stocks – Midnight Run
  4. The Undertones – Teenage Kicks (S/T)
  5. Sex Pistols – My Way (The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle, Frank Sinatra cover)
  6. Harvey Danger – Meetings With Remarkable Men (King James Version)
  7. Richard and Linda Thompson – Wall of Death (Shoot Out The Lights)
  8. Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band – U.M.C. ('Live' Bullet)
  9. Lou Reed – White Light/White Heat (Live, from Rock And Roll Animal)
  10. Urge Overkill – Stull, Pt. 1 (Stull EP)
  11. Curtis Mayfield - Superfly
  12. Chrome – All Data Lost
  13. Johnny Thunders – London Boys

Side B
  1. Bob Dylan – All Along The Watchtower (John Wesley Harding)
  2. Rocket From The Tombs – Never Gonna Kill Myself Again (Rocket Redux)
  3. Nelly Furtado – Maneater (Loose)
  4. Lou Reed – The Blue Mask (The Definitive Collection)
    5. - Coney Island Baby (see #4)
    6. - Wagon Wheel (Tranformer)
  1. Girlschool – Emergency (Live)
      1. Hit & Run
  1. The Undertones – Here Comes The Summer (S/T)
  2. The Hollies – Bus Stop (Greatest Hits)
  3. Richard Thompson – Shoot Out The Lights (Shoot Out The Lights)
  4. Elvis Costello – Green Shirt (Armed Forces)
  5. CH3 – Wet Spots (Fear of Life)
  6. Meat Puppets – Split Myself In Two (Meat Puppets II)
Notes:
- I love the irony in members of the Sex Pistols playing on Thunders' eloquent put-down of the London punk scene.
- Among my favorite musical discoveries of 2010: Richard Thompson and Urge Overkill. I've been playing stuff from both groups non-stop for months now.
- Somehow I like the Nelly Furtado track. Usually I don't like much mainstream pop, but Nick Hornby had sang her praises in Songbook, so when I came across Loose at the library I decided to give it a try.  I'd heard "Promiscuous" about ever 23 minutes during my sophomore year of college and despite the constant airplay, I do enjoy that tune, too.

* Oddly enough, he's been instrumental in getting me into metal. I daresay I wouldn't care for Judas Priest, Van Halen, or Iron Maiden nearly as much if we hadn't met. I owe everything I know and love about metal to him, Motorhead, and Ian Christe's book The Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Postscript to #1

"There will always be this bizarre consensus that sporadically interesting, consciously under-produced music is inherently transcendent, mainly because almost no one appreciates it. And that defines the concept of elitism."

  - Chuck Klosterman in the epilogue in Fargo Rock City.

I added this as a post-script to the post below because I used to think about my little-heard music as being better than other people's. I haven't felt that way in a long time, but I always think about Klosterman's quote and how even though he and I disagree vehemently about punk rock's musical worth, we'd agree on this point. No one band is better than any other band on the basis on record sales. Sales don't equal quality, nor does lack of sales equal quality either. I love The Who as much as I love the Dead Kennedys, but the Kennedys don't mean any more to me because "Too Drunk to Fuck" never beat the sales of "My Generation."

TotD #1: Rarity ≠ Quality, or Stereo vs. Mono

Thought of the Day: Rarity  ≠ Quality

This came out of a phone conversation with my friend Mike earlier today. I'd been telling him about a show I'd attended last night, and as we turned to music in general, we came to address one of the age old elitist record collecting tropes: a record's rarity. Though I'm an avid music buyer, Mike isn't. (He buys movies instead). Every so often we circle back to discussing record collector tropes like a band's indie cred, live vs. studio recordings, CDs vs. MP3s vs. LPs, and the one above: rarity. We both agreed that rare records aren't necessarily good, and that some people out there mistakenly think an out of print LP carries more worth than an in print one.

 I'm guilty of it myself; I've records which are out of print and knowing they're out of print brings me a certain joy. But a record's rarity does not necessarily mean it's any good. Too often I'll hear stuff like, "A fucking classic that's been out of print for years," and wonder if the damned thing's so good, why was it unbuyable? * I'm not one to judge music purely by sales, as a song/album/band's value depends solely on the person hearing it, but I'd figure if an album was that good, someone'd come along and reissue it.

The rarity trope extends far beyond the usual indie circles, too. Think of the mono variants of any 50s or 60s album. Consider this: in Dave Thompson's I Hate New Music, he devotes a chapter to Sgt. Pepper and writes about its revolutionary sound. "But it was John Lennon," he explains, "who probably knew what he was talking about, who said that if you haven't heard Sgt. Pepper in mono, then you haven't really heard it at all." Soon afterward he registers his (and my) frustration that Lennon's words explain why, after allthe mono Sgt. Pepper's been unavailable since 1968. Of course! It's good because it's unavailable. Right. As if it wasn't revolutionary enough in stereo.** Perhaps John was speaking facetiously. I'd like to think so, since a musician of his caliber would have certainly pulled the strings necessary to keep the mono mix in print if it sounded that good. I don't see why he couldn't have.

Or perhaps I should turn to someone who's music I enjoy even more than Lennon or the Beatles: Pete Townshend and The Who. When I came upon Pete's unofficial liner notes to Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy in The Da Capo Guide to Rock and Roll Writing, I read them with interest because I loved the record and because I wanted to hear his thoughts behind the songs. When he gets to the classic "I Can See For Miles," he mentioned how "the version here is not the mono, which is a pity because the mono makes the stereo sound the Carpenters." Again, this bothered me. Even at 16 (or however old I was at the time) I'd been listening to "Miles" for years and thought the song sounded fine. Again, why Townhend and co. would pick the supposedly inferior stereo take puzzled me: why not issue it?

This thought rested in the back of my head until last June, when I stood in Milwaukee's Bull's Eye Records, holding a mono CD of The Who Sell Out.*** Finally the chance came to hear the exalted mono mix. I bantered briefly with Luke, the store owner, about the stereo/mono story. He knew of it as well. He obligingly put the CD on the store stereo and cranked up the volume. As soon as the opening E notes sounded from the bass, I couldn't help but feel let down, anti-climactic. While yes indeed, the bass did sound louder and heavier, the song didn't sound any wilder than it always did. I don't know what I was expecting, but I like to think Townhend knows what he's talking about more than Lennon does, and I'd thought "Miles" would live up to his claim. It didn't. I told Luke as much and he nodded in agreement. Buying the mono The Who Sell Out didn't happen that day because despite my deep love for The Who, I didn't feel the need to own another copy of Sell Out just yet.****

To go back to the mono Sgt. Pepper, I haven't heard it, but I figure it's not going to instantly change my opinion of it. Nor will I take any time to look for it. I see no need to pay an exorbitant amount of money for record I don't play much anyway.

One final thought: Just to give the other side of the stereo/mono debate: listen to "Mother's Little Helper" from the Rolling Stones. The mono mix is on Hot Rocks and the stereo mix is on Aftermath. I prefer the mono--note on the stereo mix how the recurring sitar lick is placed in the right channel with Jagger's vocal. The left channel has all the other instruments. Now turn to the mono mix: the sitar's not off by itself, but smashed in with rest of the track. The song sounds leaner and more powerful. The sitar also sounds like an integral part of the track and not an add on, as it does on the stereo.

Notes:

* I understand that money plays an important role here. As old punk records aren't exactly chart-toppers, no one stands to make a fortune on reissuing The Kids or Code of Honor/Sick Pleasure.

** For the record, even though I respect Sgt. Pepper for its historical and cultural value, I don't care for many of its songs outside of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life." It does feature some bad ass cover art, though.

***Despite having the ability to access this album (and stuff like it) Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, et al, I never did. Not sure why.

****In the course of typing this post, I punched up the song on iTunes and found I had acquired the mono version. As I listened again, I noticed the mono features a slightly treblier, spikier guitar sound. Still, I found the stereo version better because of the separation between the left and right channels. Having the drums off to the side works for the song, as does the stereo pans during the guitar break. It adds to the song's atmosphere of paranoia and revenge.