The Letters of Gary Benchley, Rock Star: The Commitments – “We had planned to buy our T-shirts from American Apparel, in order to avoid sweatshop labor, but when we saw the prices, we had to compromise on our principles and buy shirts made by little slave children with tiny fingers.”
Who Owns Culture?
Rock Star and Law Professor Weigh In
It was one of those great New York nights. Flowers bloomed in the cold spring air. We were gathering at the New York Public Library for a discussion called “Who Owns Culture?” Any occasion to go to the massive NYPL and be reminded of an era when books and learning were things considered worth creating a temple for, is fun.
Plus we were going to see Jeff Tweedy. Jeff Tweedy, the hero. He was going to talk about the issue of file sharing, the whole economic Pandora’s Box he and Wilco had blown open by putting Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on the Internet for free. He would be discussing the subject with law professor Lawrence Lessig. It was one of those high-concept match-ups that promised much: A geeky intellectual head-to-head with a 2-pack-a-day Romantic Creator! Sparks will fly!
Tijuana Hercules – Skinned Alive
Glorious Noise Release Party Wrapup
Glorious Noise Presents…
Riviera CD Release with Quasar Wut-Wut and Paper Airplane Pilots
Schubas, Chicago, April 2, 2005
The release party for the second album on Glorious Noise Records was a fantastic success. We’re so happy that so many of the GLONO faithful were able to attend, and it was great to meet a bunch of new people! We truly appreciate everyone who came out to celebrate with us.
It was a really fun night with three awesome performances by the bands. Paper Airplane Pilots kicked things off and made those of us who had money on Michigan State forget about our losses for a while. The Pilots’ brand of power pop is no tired Big Star wanna-be bullshit (although they rocked a great cover of “Back of a Car”), but a unique slow-burn, moody groove. Great stuff, and they definitely won over the crowd.
Quasar Wut-Wut was up next, and they put on one of the most blistering sets of their careers. They completely ruled the stage, and once again made us proud to have them heading up the GLONO roster. Taro Sound is an amazing album, and when you hear those songs live they just go to a whole new level. Several people who had never seen them live before told me afterwards that they were absolutely floored by how great they were. Their mind-altering cover of the Stones’ “Heartbreaker” was a highlight of the set, as was their very special surprise.
The Murdocks – Surrenderender
The Murdocks – Surrenderender (Surprise Truck)
The Murdocks are unmistakably a garage rock band. Punk, blues, grunge, and pop weave their way from time to time into their sound, but at the heart of it, the Murdocks are simply loud, dirty, and catchy. They favor fuzz-drenched guitars, distorted vocals (yes, a la Strokes), simple basslines, and lots of cymbals in the mix.
This Austin trio’s debut LP is not perfect, but promising. Its strongest and most consistent element is lead singer Franklin Morris’ voice, which manages to be expressive and acrobatic while retaining the requisite fierceness of true garage vocals.
Just a few minutes in, opener “The Saddest Star” (mp3) was already slated to appear on The Next Big Mixtape I’m working on. More catchy and refined than the rest, it begs to be heard. Why this song is not on the radio I DO NOT KNOW. “Bloody Murder” is pure punk-garage rock, and seriously folks, rock and roll doesn’t get much more fun than this. Three chords, lots of distortion, subtle melody: it sounds good, it sounds mean, and it just rules. By contrast, “Da Da,” “My Scarlet Purse,” and “Death of a French Whore” (mp3) are too clearly derivative of some of the bands that inform the Murdock’s sound. These selections fail on record and would likely work better in a live setting, where the inner critic is drowned out by booze and body movement.
Surprisingly, the final two songs don’t sound anything like the rest of the record. “Easter Moon” (mp3) is just Morris and his acoustic guitar, while the untitled hidden track – another Morris solo vehicle – patters along to the pained cadence of a sullen keyboard. Together they prove that the Murdocks can do more than just crank it up to 11 and rock. But out of context the songs aren’t worth half as much.
When you get down to the nitty gritty, the Murdocks do often sound too much like their influences and peers. But this is a young band whose second album I would really be interested in hearing. A lot of talent went into this record, and there are likely many more ideas brewing somewhere below the surface that didn’t make it onto Surrenderender. This is a fine effort, and I have the distinct sense that the Murdocks can do much better.
Medication: Buddyhead’s MP3 Blog
Medication: Buddyhead’s MP3 blog includes downloadable tracks by artists from Captain Beefhart and the Allman Brothers to New Order and Wolf Eyes.
The Stella Link – Mystic Jaguar…Attack!!!
The Stella Link – Mystic Jaguar…Attack!!! (Ascetic)
Mystic Jaguar…Attack!!! opens with a dramatic two-part post-rock instrumental called “Apogee.” This inevitably instills certain expectations for the rest of the album. Progressive songwriting, instrumental expertise, mesmerizing rhythms, classical structures, and the absence of the mundane are all promised indirectly. Except by the most skeptical and masochistic among us, the title of the song will not be interpreted literally.
On this, the debut release from Kansas City, MO’s the Stella Link, reality is a compromise between these two reactions. While not all of the remaining eight tracks fail at realizing the potential posed by the introduction, as a whole they don’t do much to refute the notion that the start of the album is indeed its apex.
In “Undetermined” the Stella Link wish they sounded more like Failure. Not that they can be blamed for this. “Winner Takes All” (mp3) is another intense post-hardcore number, with a bolder midwestern stamp. “Ice Machine” (mp3) finally revisits the gorgeous instrumental post-rock of “Apogee.” Despite its tendency to wander, it’s an unquestionable highlight. The droning and pulsing “Fog Machine,” a short track with a spacey, industrial feel and without lyrics, is another strong point. There develops an obvious trend – the Stella Link turn into a different band when they go instrumental, and are evidently far less skilled at building songs around lyrics than they are at crafting soundscapes. They formed in late 2000 as a predominately instrumental group, and it seems that propensity still lingers.
Produced by some big names in Midwest post-hardcore (Matt Talbott of Hum and Paul Malinowski of Shiner), the album is an important artifact for followers of that scene. The band’s four members come from a number of Kansas City-based indie rock groups: Lafayette, Season to Risk, Aerialuxe, Dirt Nap, and the String and Return. Record label Ascetic Records, based in Saint Louis, completes the geographic lockdown. Coupled with the musical inconsistency, this roster fosters the sense that this record is more of a snapshot compilation than a coherent album.
The only song here that encapsulates both unnecessarily distinct approaches is “Starting Line,” which is therefore the best selection on the album. But with this track stacked right below “Apogee,” Mystic Jaguar puts its best face forward to a fault. Good first impressions turn out to be deadly.
2004 National Recording Registry
The Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Board adds 50 recordings to its registry.
Blivit – Unhand the World
Blivit – Unhand the World (Orchard)
The bio for Blivit makes note of the band’s lack of guitars—which, of course, is fine. There are plenty of bands that get by without them. But every song on Unhand the World has what appears to be a guitar in it. In reality, it’s singer/keyboardist Jeremy Dyen setting his machine to a particularly guitarish tone. Why go out of your way to make your keyboards sound like guitars? If you’re ideologically opposed to putting one on your record, that’s fine—but find a different tone for your Casio, for Christ’s sake.
Unhand the World escapes the listener directly after hearing it, a bad omen for this batch of alt.rock bar-band filler. Sounding like a clueless Ted Leo fronting an average college band, Blivit’s sound is vague, unfocused, and more than slightly tired. Sadly, this album is simply unlistenable. It bores within the first 15 seconds. Blivit isn’t a bad band per-se, but Unhand the World simply wallows in its inability to be (or even fake being) energetic and driven.
There’s a lack of solid production ethos on Unhand the World—everything sounds flat, but instead of holding a fuzzy lo-fi charm, the album sounds more like a garage-recording gone wrong. And though the band’s other credits are reputable (opening for Weezer and The Roots, Dyen appears on John Legend’s new Get Lifted), Blivit underlines the damage that can happen when studio musicians get ahead of themselves and try to be rock stars.
Music From The O.C. Mix 4
Music From The O.C. Mix 4 – Soundtrack (Warner Brothers)
With Top 40 radio languishing in irrelevance and MTV all but a new Soap network, where’s a kid to find hip new music? On “The O.C.,” of course.
And The O.C. Mix 4 delivers. Whether you’re a sobby 14 year old girl fresh on her first break-up and looking to Imogen Heap’s “Goodnight and Go” for solace, or a hipster who dreams of the day when ELO’s Jeff Lynne will produce an album for the Shins and then happily stumbles upon AC Newman, we got you covered. Sure, there’s no Ryan Adams, but there is another Oasis-lovin’ Anglophile giving his best with Matt Pond PA’s cover of “Champaign Supernova.”
Whether you’re Chino or Cohen, there’s plenty on this mix to help you bag that Doe Eyed Fawn or Summer. So, put the top down and crank up the Aqueduct, it’s going to be another great season in the sun.
Check out the Glorious Noise interview with OC music supervisor, Alexandra Patsavas. Be sure to catch up on all of the previous Glorious Noise OC coverage.