Dreams are one of the most fascinating and least understood parts of the brain’s complex machinery. Science tells us that dreams are an essential component of sleep, that they help us generate memories and process all the information that we take in over the course of the day. No one knows for sure what their significance is, although everybody from Freud to Fleetwood Mac has a theory about what dreams mean. But for the most part, we’re all just guessing. All we know is that when we go to sleep we enter into a hazy, psychedelic netherworld where David Lynch seems to be directing and the earthly laws of physics don’t necessarily apply.
Some people have really mundane dreams, full of shopping lists and workday trips to the copy machine. Other people still have bad dreams (or “night terrors” á la Homer Simpson) well into adulthood when most of us have either chased down or come to terms with our personal demons. Stress dreams also seem to be universal, haunting people with incomplete work assignments and unplanned nudity in high school class rooms.
Personally, my dreams are a mixed bag. They almost always feature a bizarre and disconnected narrative that is more like a low-grade acid trip than anything that could possibly happen in real life. They are definitely weird, but I usually don’t get any of the cool stuff - flying, sex with hot science teachers, the ability to shoot lasers from my finger tips, etc. I don’t even dream about midgets, which I guess negates the David Lynch comment from the first paragraph.
There is one pervasive quality to all my dreams though: they are really fucking dreamy. The plots always twist and turn in opiate waves. Earthquakes and aliens come and go like character actors. Through it all I always get the feeling that I’m a spectator watching a very realistic demonstration of the five senses. I feel and understand things as much as I see and hear them. I’ve never had the opportunity to go sleepwalking, but I imagine that’s what it feels like to bare witness to one of my dreams.
If I was to give them each a soundtrack, I would say that more than one of my dreams would synch up to the track “Eddie” by Philadelphia’s Evening Magazine. The keyboards float over the whole song like a blue fog while the drums crash in and out of the picture, dragging a serrated bass line close behind. The singer may be telling a story, but I can’t quite catch what it is. Instead, individual words and ideas come in and out of focus. Through it all there is an acoustic guitar that you don’t really realize is there until you realize it’s been there all along.
A lot of times you hear star athletes and contest winners describing their success as a “dream come true.” The dreams they talk about are day dreams, flights of fancy or glorified wishful thinking. But what if real dreams were to come true? The world would be a strange assortment of monsters, naked high school students, and midgets loaded with abstract symbolism. I don’t know what role David Lynch would play in this hypothetical world, but Evening Magazine would have my vote for house band.
There is no doubt that we live in a global society. A lot of people think that recent technology has bridged the international divide, but really we were mixing cultures long before the internet and cable television. Thanks to a long history of immigration, political strife, and spice merchants gone astray, the human population has been shifting around the globe for hundreds of years. Inevitably this lead to the vibrant cross-pollination of cultures that now manifests itself in the form of Weng Weng, the pint-sized Filipino special agent or Speak, the Hungarian rapper with a heart of gold and a tenuous understanding of the English language.
Just like Speak and Weng Weng, the result of this cultural exchange is often a strange and distorted amalgamation of the original source material. Take, for example, St. Patrick’s Day. Ostensibly this holiday exists as a way to celebrate the culture and heritage of this country’s Irish immigrants. However, St. Patty’s was long ago appropriated by liquor companies and enthusiastic members of the collegiate fraternity system. What started as a day of soda bread and Irish proverbs is now known around the country as the day to get hammered drunk on whiskey and pinch anybody who’s not wearing green clothing. Try explaining this phenomenon to a real live Irish person. They’ll look at you like you just pissed in their Guinness.
This is why translating novels or poetry or even film dialogue is such an art. You can’t just exchange the nouns and verbs for their foreign counterparts; you have to make sure that you get the complete meaning and cultural nuance of the idea behind the words. Oddly enough, one of the people who seems to understand this is the guy who first imported Swedish Fish to the US. We know the candy as a sickly sweet confection that’s a dark rouge color and tastes like a combination of cherries and red Gator-Aid. In Sweden however, the Swedish Fish (btw, over there they just call them “fish”) are black and come in “salted herring” flavor. As a genuine red-blooded, apple pie loving American, let me be the first to say, “Ewww, gross!” Please keep the salty fish flavor as far away from my candy as possible.
I’m not trying to diss Swedish culture. I’m just saying that the Swedes seem to be pretty smart about what they keep to themselves and what they decide to send our way. At the moment, my favorite Swedish export is pop rock band Ram Di Dam - although I can’t say for sure which way the current flows on this one. Either these guys took American rock acts like the Strokes and Interpol and cleaned them up with a little Swedish pop magic, or they are part of the new tradition of Scandinavian rock bands that have mastered the art and style of the American pop song.
In either case, the result of this particular cultural melting pot is delish. The guitars jangle, the drums strut, and somehow the singer ends up sounding like he spent the last 10 years of his life smoking cigarettes on the Lower East Side. Moreover, they’re better than green beer and way less strange than watching the inmates of a foreign prison perform Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on YouTube.
I did not have what most people would consider a normal high school experience. And by “most people” I mean the actors I’ve seen playing high school students in big budget Hollywood films. From what I’ve seen on screen - and, by extension, what I can only assume is an accurate representation of everybody’s experience - most high schools are filled with middle class white kids who have to tackle tough decisions like what college to go to or where to park their convertible. The one exception to this rule is the occasional inner city high school filled with troubled Black/Hispanic/Asian kids who are in desperate need of an obstinate, jive-talking teacher to inspire them to greatness. But I digress.
From what I understand, in high school students separate themselves into groups or cliques, each of which has its own code of conduct. Throughout their high school career, students must navigate a complicated social maze of cool kids, jocks, and awkward sexual experiences. There are big dances, football games, and important parties that one is either invited to or not. There is one girl who is usually considered the hottest of all the girls, although her friends are likely to be almost as attractive. As a result, they wield a disproportionate amount of social power and are admired and/or feared by the other students. Also, if my facts are correct, they should all be named Heather.
Sadly, this does not even remotely describe my time in high school. My school was rough. We had race riots that twice shut the entire school down for a week. The Asian Mafia once started a war with the Samoans that ended with a S.W.A.T. team pulling a bunch of machine guns from a windowless van in the parking lot. Our first and only dance was cut short when somebody fired a gun through the roof of the gym. Our basketball team was so gangster that a rival gang once came to a game, chained the doors shut, shut off all the lights, and then beat everybody with cro-bars and baseball bats. Also, my P.E. teacher was an alcoholic, my locker frequently got set on fire, and I once saw a girl stab a guy in the neck with a pair of oversize scissors.
Needless to say, I kept a pretty low profile. I ate my lunch in the car and spent most of my free time with the jazz band. I took honors classes with more or less the same 30 kids in every class and generally kept to myself. I had a girlfriend and played in a rock band, but I never thought of myself as anything but one of the kids who went to school every day hopping that he wouldn’t get robbed or shot. Forget about parties, or cliques, or hot girls. I was just trying to survive.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that I was one of the cool kids. I recently got back in touch with an old classmate, who now works with my sister. She told my little sister that she didn’t spend much time with me in high school because I was part of the popular crowd. Really? Wow. I did not know that. Guess I misinterpreted that sense of impending dread I used to feel each day as I left for school.
Anyway, it turns out this former classmate is also a wealth of music knowledge, and she turned me onto a local band that I didn’t even know about. They rock the moniker Maus Haus and play what I would describe as freaked out electro post-rock. Pop melodies and monkish chants float around heavy synthesizers and distorted guitars. The rhythms shift from fusion-like jazz funk beats to the type of wild outsider rock that people are now stealing from Captain Beefheart. It’s the kind of music that pulls you in and then immediately spits you out when the song is over.
If you’re keeping track, that’s three more things you can add the list of things I did not know. To summarize: 1) There is an awesome post-rock band from San Francisco called Maus Haus, 2) I was, as it turns out, one of the popular kids high school, and 3) Being popular is not at all like it is in the movies.
One of the more nefarious details of the current US credit meltdown is what’s happening at the top of this big, steaming pile. While thousands of people at the bottom lose their jobs and life savings, and while the government contemplates a record bail-out package, a lot of the top executives who oversaw this disaster are quietly leaving the scene. And guess what? They’re doing so with their pockets filled to overflowing.
It turns out that most of these CEOs have a so-called golden parachute that provides them with exit packages worth millions of dollars - regardless of the terms of their exit. Sure, they might lose their job when their company is sold or goes belly up, but they shouldn’t have any problem landing on their feet. Why? Because after several years of clocking six and seven figure paychecks they get an extra couple of million as their parting gift.
Ha! Here’s your “punishment” for fucking up the US economy Mr. Filthy Rich Executive! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
Look, we all know that life is unfair and some have more than most, but this is just plainly, blatantly, insultingly wrong. You know what happens to me when I am late on a single payment for my credit card? It goes on my permanent record, archived as a poisonous little weapon that can be used against me for at least seven years whenever some financial institution wants to deny me a loan, charge me a higher interest rate, or make it difficult for me to rent an apartment.
Right now I have a huge scar on my credit report because of an unpaid hospital bill. Four years ago I spent three and a half hours in an emergency room waiting for somebody to look at my broken hand. Finally I got sick of waiting and left. Unfortunately, I had given them my name and social security number when I checked in, which later allowed them to bill me $350 for my visit. Yes, that’s right. They charged me $350 to sit, untreated, for three and a half hours in the waiting room before leaving of my own volition.
Needless to say, trying to get this problem straightened has been a nightmare of paperwork and fruitless phone calls to creditors. I’m sure every one of you knows exactly what I’m talking about, because every one of you has spent some portion of your life on the phone or in a bank or online with your credit card company arguing about some rule in the fine print that allows them to pointlessly fuck with your world. It’s par for the course these days. Everybody who works or has some small amount of money understands the delicate and tenuous nature of their credit rating and how easily it can be used to make life difficult.
So here’s what I propose: First, the above mentioned executives should not receive any sort of exit package. I know their contracts may guarantee it and all that, but so what? You broke the American economy. Entire generations are going bankrupt because of your greed. Let’s see you get a team of expensive lawyers to fight this one when you’re paying for it out of your own unemployed pockets.
Secondly, and more importantly, every single top executive who profited from and/or had a hand in the current economic crisis should have his bank account drained and his personal credit score lowered to 150. After that, it won’t matter how much cash they have stuffed in their respective mattresses. Want to start a new business? Too bad, your small business loan has been denied. Want to apply for a credit card? Sorry, we can only offer you a $250 limit with a 34.99% APR. Want to rent a house, or install cable, get a cellphone plan, buy a car or turn on your utilities? Unfortunately your credit score tells us that you are an irresponsible and untrustworthy person.
I think the country would be a very different place if the people who created this mess had to walk a mile in the shoes of the people who trudge through it every day. I think that if huge corporations and monolithic financial institutions remove the piles of money that stand between them and the people they’re profiting from, they’ll see how rotted out the system is. I think it was their own greed that brought on the fall in this case, but it was bound to happen one way or another. As the great financial analyst/record producer Alan Parsons once said, what goes up must come down.
Out at my parents’ house they have satellite TV. As a rule I don’t even sit down in front of their TV unless I have at least three hours to kill. I don’t know if all satellite users have this many channels or if they have some kind of mega-channel package, but the amount of choices available is totally overwhelming. There are something like 200 channels devoted to sports, with coverage of everything from slamball to motorcycle ice racing. Cooking shows take up channels 500 through 650, reality and home improvement shows are in the 800s, and you can usually find any sitcom ever made if you flip through the low channels. And of course there are 20 different versions each of HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz - and that’s not even counting the channels en Español.
With this many choices it’s hard to really enjoy whatever it is you end up watching. Sure that re-run from the original season of Iron Chef is cool, but what if you’re missing something better? It’s almost guaranteed that one of the 1000+ channels is doing a special on the world’s craziest bar fights started by explosions as described by naked co-eds to a soundtrack of rare Motörhead live recordings. And you could probably find it too, if you take the time to browse through all the channels.
Like I said, it’s totally overwhelming. I usually just end up watching the last 15 minutes of a bunch of movies I’ve already seen. Maybe that’s a little ADD, but it’s the only way I can reconcile the thrill of all that variety with the assurance of knowing I’m watching something at least half way decent. My dad, on the other hand, goes one better. He insists that most of the programming itself is worthless and that the true genius is in the commercials. Recently I’ve found myself agreeing with him.
Here’s why: those (relatively) new commercials from the National Milk Processor Board featuring a fictional glam rocker named White Gold. I’m sorry, but that shit is hilarious. Each commercial (not to mention the website, online ads, subway posters, etc.) is filled with so much tongue-in-cheek, self-referencing, semi-arcane rock symbolism that it’s almost like a game of Where’s Waldo for insider music jokes. Songs like “Is It Me Or Do You Love My Hair?” are played against a video back-drop that would make the boys in Spinal Tap proud. The website features tons of pseudo -Led Zeppelin iconography and a video game that allows you to assume the role of a sassy fashion photographer while White Gold and his back up singers strike various “awesome” poses. White Gold himself can be found playing the “infinite guitar solo” on his one gallon axe, which looks like a cross between a Flying V and one of Prince’s weird ass guitars. Needless to say, the guitar is filled with milk.
The first time I saw one of these commercials I realized that the actor playing White Gold had to be in a real band. He was just too good at playing an indulgent rock god. Nobody could step into that role without having spent some serious time in rock n roll fantasy land. Well guess what? I was right. White Gold is played by none other than Joe Hursley, front man for LA trouble punk band The Ringers.
Normally I would say actors and rock bands don’t mix (I’m looking at you Keanu), but in this case we can definitely make an exception. The Ringers play a brash style of punk rock that has the balls of The Stooges, the hooks of The Hives, and all the style of Los Angeles on a Saturday night. Their songs are full of sex, mischief and whiskey soaked growls. The band is all spit and vinegar and they bang out tight little rock songs like they’re getting paid 100 bucks for every party they start. I’ve never seen them live, but I’m willing to bet that the first three rows get wet.
What’s ironic is that The Ringers music is catchy enough that it will probably find its way into some commercial or another. If and when this happens, the result will be a commercial with music by a guy who plays another guy who plays music in another commercial for something totally different than the other commercial. Which is like, more confusing than a TV with 1000 channels.
We’re now staring into the gaping maw of the Christmas shopping season, which means the selling will soon begin in earnest. Already this week we’re seeing fruitcakes at Walgreens, egg nog at the corner store, and a nationwide increase in the consumption of spiral ham.
Speaking of holiday cheer, the Christmas season is one of the few remaining things that can still give the major labels half a boner. As such, we’re also seeing new albums from some blue chip artists being released today. You probably heard about Chinese Democracy (thanks Dr. Pepper!) and you know Kanye’s got another vanity project hitting the shelves. Oh, and in case anybody is gift shopping for their great-aunt Shirley, you’ll be happy to know that Tom Jones and Barry Manilow have new albums out this week as well.
But what should you get for the special people on your list this year? What about your little sister, who loves melancholy electro-pop? What about your jaded hipster friend who thinks he likes Fuck Buttons, but really just wants to dance? What about that cute chick with the Ratatat t-shirt at the coffee shop you’ve been meaning to talk to? What would make the holidays special for them?
The answer is simple: a copy of the new Compass EP from Brooklyn’s Red Wire Black Wire. It comes out today on Tough Customer Records. It is filled with thumping drum sounds pulled from hip hop’s back catalogue, synthesizers stolen from Brian Eno and enough guitars to please any indie rock fan. It is guaranteed to bring satisfaction to any music lover on your Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/Grand High Climax list.
So get your hands on a copy of Red Wire Black Wire’s Compass EP today and then go forth and spread good cheer unto the world.
I really like going to movies by myself, especially in the middle of the day when there’s hardly anybody else in the theater. A lot of people think this is weird, but I don’t really understand why. If you’re sitting in the dark for two hours giving your undivided attention to a giant screen, does it really matter if there’s somebody you know in the seat next to you? I can understand if you’re on a date and looking to do some serious hand-holding, but otherwise being by yourself helps you concentrate. This in turn helps you lose yourself in the story and suspend your disbelief when necessary. The latter is especially important when watching anything from the sci-fi, action or dramatic thriller genres.
Speaking of movie dates, for some people the idea of sitting in a dark theater is inextricably linked to time spent with the opposite sex. Perhaps this is a holdover from the 50s, when not everyone had a car and a movie theater was one of the few places a horny teenager could get some time alone with his date. In some cases I think it’s just sublimated fear of homosexuality.
For example, I have a group of friends - all male - who refuse to sit next to each other in the theater. They insist on sitting at least two seats apart from each other. If we go in a large enough group or to a small enough theater, this means that we can take up a whole row with just a few of us. When I first went to a movie with these guys and I tried to sit next to one of them, I was firmly rebuked. “Dude,” I was told, “don’t sit there. Slide over one.” When I asked why it was revealed to me that sitting next to another guy at a movie is “totally gay.”
I wonder if Elizabeth Sharp ran up against this kind of resistance when she started her one-woman band Ill Ease. Did anybody look at her funny when she insisted on playing all the instruments herself? Did they label her an outcast when they heard her symphony of overdubbed tambourines and hand claps? Perhaps they declared “Jangly lo-fi bedroom pop is group activity! You can’t make songs that are catchy and broken in all the right places by yourself!”
I for one don’t think it’s weird at all. Hey - I listen to music by myself all the time. In fact, I often do so when I’m waiting for a movie to start. And if anyone can ever lower their inhibitions enough to sit next to me, I might just tell them all about this great one woman band I just discovered. That’s not so weird is it?
When you’re a teenager, even the most inconsequential situations can seem like a matter of life or death. I’m told that some teenage girls feel that they can literally die of embarrassment if they are ever seen by one of their peers wearing out of fashion clothes or enjoying themselves in the presence of their parents. Other teens will use the kind of hyperbole that most people reserve for life-changing events to describe what many people see as routine daily occurrences. Lunchtime can be a “complete and total disaster” while an uneventful summer day can be “super boring and lame and stupid.”
When I myself was in the throws of delusional teenage thinking, I turned down a trip to Europe. I had never been out of the country, but I refused an all expenses paid trip to Spain and Italy because it meant spending 10 days with my parents and younger sister in public. I opted instead to stay home watching TV and doing yard work for the neighbors. I also managed to get my hands on some mushrooms and about a dozen cases of beer, which helped me throw one of the craziest house parties ever, but that’s a story for another time.
The point is, as a teenager, you’re capable of thinking and acting based almost exclusively on feelings. Everything is either an absolute certainty or a complete unknown, and in either case you can’t help but follow your heart. Personally, I don’t feel very nostalgic for that time in my life. I’d much rather have the ability to think rationally and drink legally. Still, I sometimes wish I could summon the intense emotion I felt about everything back then.
When I’m in that state of mind, I like to turn to a song like “Beautiful Souls” by Seattle’s The Kindness Kind. Lead singer Alessandra Rose has a voice that sounds like a cross between pillow talk and howling at the moon. The band follows her around with thumping percussion and sharp guitars that make for a song that is haunting and inspiring.
If you are now or ever have been a teenager, I suggest you give it a listen. Just make sure you do it with headphones so you can ignore your parents when they call.
Back when I was a late night DJ on college radio, I paid more attention to profanity. This was because the FCC, in their attempts to be total fucking dicks, focused an inordinate amount of their scrutiny on college stations. Apparently any time a profane word made its way onto the air, the station was slapped with a prohibitively expensive fine. Needless to say, college radio stations aren’t exactly swimming in cash, so these fines really hurt. Fuckers.
As a result, every track on every album in the library had to be screened for words like “fuck,” “shit,” “pussy,” “ass face,” “cock smoker,” and “anus loving goat raper.” If these or any of the many other officially recognized profane expressions appeared anywhere on a track, that track was banned from the air. As you might imagine, this put a shitload of hip hop, metal, and punk rock in the off-limits pile.
As we’ve discussed before here at //Wire, this whole ban on profanity thing makes no sense. It’s the intent behind the use of the word that matters. For example, when The M’s sing “get your shit together” on their latest album, the profanity appears as the result of a stylistic decision. Could they have said “get your act together” or “get your stuff together?” Yes, technically they could have. Should they? No, they should not. Use of this particular colloquialism just sounds cooler than any of the other options. Note to the FCC: It’s a fucking rock song. Sounding cool is the whole motherfucking point.
On the other hand, a “radio friendly” version of an inherently profane and offensive song does not make it any less offensive. The message behind “I’m gonna smack you across the face with my *beep* and then *beep* you in the *beep* and then wipe it on the sheets” is not lost on anyone. Yet between these two songs, The M’s track is the one that would draw the fine. The imaginary hip hop song quoted above would be FCC approved for 8 year olds.
Fortunately, it appears that the rust is starting to show on the FCC. Sooner or later enforcing their profanity guidelines will be be dropped from their priority list. Until then, we have bands like Starfucker that exist to serve a glorious dual purpose. On the one hand, they play dreamy pop rock that conjures images of missed opportunities, teenage love, and sitting on the fire escape early on a summer evening. This particular track does more with a single verse than most bands do with an entire album. Listening to it makes you feel like we all somehow share some of the same memories
On the other hand, their name helps rub the futility of the profanity regulations right in the stupid fucking cunt face of the motherfucking FCC. Fuck yeah Starfucker! That’s fucking awesome.
One of the most rock n roll moments of my life - and there have been many - was when one of my elderly neighbors went ballistic during a band practice in my parents’ garage. This was back in the high school days, when we had more volume than talent. We would practice every weekend in the garage while my folks were out running errands or just generally keeping their distance. They did so with good reason; I’m told that you could hear our smokin’ hot version of “White Light/White Heat” from several blocks away.
Most of the time we tried to keep the garage door closed to limit the noise. But it would get pretty hot in the summer months, and after an hour or so we would roll up the door a few feet to let some air in. It was on one such occasion that we were confronted by the ire of one particularly crotchety old man. He must have come from a few blocks away, because he was in his car. He came screeching into the driveway and part of the way into the garage, the hood of his car just barely fitting under the half open door. He jumped out of his car and launched into one of the most hilarious tirades I or any of my teenage band mates had ever heard.
Fortunately, we were recording our performance on a cheap boom box, and we captured the whole exchange on tape. It’s been a few years since I’ve heard that recording, but I will paraphrase for the sake of this article.
Loud sounds of distorted guitars and amateurish drumming. All of a sudden the singer stops mid-song and says, “Holy shit!” A car door slams and an elderly voice can be heard in the distance.
BAND: “What are you doing in my garage? I’m pretty sure this is trespassing…”
OLD MAN: “You guys have been making this goddamn racket for months! It’s horrible! You have to stop this noise right now!”
BAND: “Um, what?”
OLD MAN: “I can hear you from three blocks away! Shut it off! It’s too loud!”
BAND: “Maybe you’re just, uh, too old…?”
OLD MAN: “Show some respect! Other people live in this neighborhood. Nobody wants to hear this racket!”
BAND: “Fuck you!”
OLD MAN: “What!? I’m calling the police! They’ll shut you down forever!
BAND MEMBER #1: “Good. When they get here we’ll tell them about how you drove your car into our garage door.”
BAND MEMBER #2: “Old people can’t drive.”
BAND MEMBER #3: “What if we play a cover of ‘Moon River?’ Would you like that?”
BAND MEMBER #4: “Will you buy us some beer?”
BAND MEMBER #2: “He’s old.”
It was around that point we broke down laughing and the old guy drove off frustrated and even more upset than when he arrived. We immediately listened to the exchange on playback and decided it would be the perfect interlude for our first album. We congratulated ourselves on our collective ability to stick it to the Man. In our minds we were the coolest 15 year olds on the block.
Eventually we all found our way to different bands with legitimate practice studios. We learned to play our instruments and eventually our sharp edges softened a little bit. Some might argue that our music got better, but we definitely lost some of the raw energy that we had back in the garage days.
In this context, the label “garage rock” starts to make a lot of sense for that genre of music. Bands that play under this banner may have more skill than we did back in the salad days, but they still embody the energy and insolence that we were so proud of. Take the band Thunders from Indianapolis. Their new EP “The Sympathetic Oscillations” sounds like the reverb was pounded into it with a baseball bat. The songs bristle with the spirit of a teenager high on whippets. When singer Ryan Reidy yelps, “There’s a party in my brain and it won’t end” you get the sense that this band has turned (the) garage into a platform for taunting all the party-poopers and angry seniors in their neighborhood.
You can put this theory to the test by setting up some speakers in your garage. Open the door, throw on Thunders and turn the volume up to 10. If anybody comes complaining about the volume, remember the classic rock axiom: If it’s too loud, you’re too old.
