In a lot of ways America is becoming more and more like a third world country. For a nation that is supposed to be a leader in technology, democracy, and free-market efficiency, we still handle certain vital institutions with the bumbling ineptitude of a night manager at Kinko’s. Take, for example, airport security. I know this old trope has been talked to death, but still. After getting to the airport two hours early, after taking off your shoes, your belt, your watch, after chugging any water you happen to have on you and showing your ID to twelve different senior citizens (many of whom look as though they were formerly employed as greeters at Wal-Mart), and after having some fat guy wave a wand over your crotch - do you really feel any safer? Do you really think some apathetic high school drop-out making minimum wage working the X-Ray machine is going to outsmart a terrorist? I mean, come on. The frickin’ CIA can’t even keep up with these guys.
And yet we accept the inanity of this process as par for the course. Like we don’t really expect our government or our country to do better. Corrupt politicians, crumbling infrastructure, failing industry - these are all the stereotypical hallmarks of a third world republic, and they’ve become part of the normal discourse on the United States. WTF?
For the most part it seems like our government just likes chasing its tail. They’ve hypnotized themselves into a sense of accomplishment by repeatedly treating the symptoms of our critical shortcomings instead of solving the problems that cause them. Think, for example, of how many times in recent years you’ve heard about foreign musicians being denied visas to play in this country. And we’re not talking about, like, the Al-Qaeda 12 Man String Band or anything. In most cases it’s just some scruffy indie rockers from Canada or England. This is what happened to Ontario band Young Rival. The last time they tried to cross the border to play a sold out show with Tokyo Police Club at the Bowery Ballroom they were denied entry.
Really? Really? Look at these guys. They wouldn’t squash a grape in a fruit fight. Do they not teach common sense to those government agents guarding the border? Has our country become the kind of place that doesn’t tolerate dreamy guitar rock? What are we supposed to listen to on late night drives through the desert? Who will provide the soundtrack to boozy summer make-out sessions? If Young Rival continues to be denied entry to this country then our nation will definitely suffer in these areas. Is that really the kind of place where we want to raise our children?
Watch out America. Canada is looking better and better each day.
Sometimes you want a well-rounded homemade meal. You know - with a salad and fresh rolls and everything. Other times you might want a nice, healthy smoothie. If you can afford it, you might even go in for the occasional night out at some fancy French restaurant. Eating right is good for body and mind, and it also aids in proper digestion. Everybody knows this is the right way to live. That’s why mom forced all that broccoli on you as a kid.
But you know what? Every now and then you just need a mothafuckin candy bar. And now is one of those times, my trembling little sucrose junkies. Behold the sugary pop goodness of The Submarines. So good, but don’t listen to too much in one sitting. Your teeth might fall out.
One of the things that sucks about living in New York City is grocery shopping. Not only is it expensive, but chances are you don’t have a car, so whatever you can afford to buy has to be lugged in a cab, on the subway or up the street to your apartment. That right there is reason enough to get take-out every night of the week.
Another reason is that shopping for groceries is generally not fun in New York City. The aisles are too small, everybody is on a cell phone, absent-mindedly groping the produce, and the shopping music is loud and annoying. In some stores they just play commercials at rock concert volume, hoping to entice you to buy some processed food treat that you might otherwise have passed up.
The one exception to this rule is St. Mark’s Market in the East Village. That place embodies everything cool you’ve ever heard about New York. How is it cool, you ask? Let me count the ways. First, it’s open 24 hours. If you think that may seem like a given for any store in Manhattan, try going to the Met after 9pm. Second, even though it’s pretty small, you can get almost anything there. They have a fresh sushi bar, a sandwich counter, and all kinds of weird candy and drinks imported from Asia.
But the best thing about this market is the music. According to the guy at check-out, they all take turns bumping their iPods over the house system. On past visits I’ve heard everything from Talking Heads and Public Enemy to John Coltrane and Tuvan throat singers. It is bad ass. People actually take their headphones off when they come into the store and sometimes you’ll catch hot girls singing to themselves over in the canned goods aisle.
One of the things I like hearing best in the store is a long instrumental jam. I’ll walk in sometimes in the middle of the night during some epic Can track, and I’ll spend the next 15 minutes just looking at the labels of esoteric snack foods while I nod my head. Before I know it, I’m playing a drum solo on the cans of dried wasabi peas.
It is because of this that I’m giving St. Mark’s Market a shout out. I don’t know if anybody from the store ever checks out this site, but if they do, I’ve got a recommendation for them. Listen up employees: you should play some music from the Philadelphia band Public Record. They play a unique blend of music that, in their words, ranges “from early-disco to shoegaze; Afro-beat to Scottish Postcard pop; and northern soul to Factory Records funk.” Their compelling instrumental jams bounce from trance-like summertime rhythms to sweaty, third world funk with an easy grace.
It’s the perfect soundtrack for ordering a hot reuben or squeezing some melons with that girl you just met in aisle two.
We know how much you love the small, tightly cropped band photos that appear on this site. Heck, we like them too. It makes it much easier to stand back and play that “I am squashing your head” game from Kids In The Hall. But maybe you’re wondering what these bands really look like. Or maybe you just want to check if they’re wearing pants. Whatever your motive, you’re in luck. We now have a Flickr account where you can see more of bands you’ve never heard of. Chiggedy check it out:
I’m surprised it took this long. We’ve been running this blog/music discovery site for a while now, and yet it was only recently that someone brought a glaring omission to our attention: We have never given a geography quiz. Well shit. My bad. Let me get right to that.
This quiz will be formatted with the answers following immediately after the questions, so be sure to cover up the bottom of your computer screen. No reading ahead. If caught, cheaters will have to stand naked in front of the class and compose a freestyle rap about the porno baby from ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’ OK then. Ready? You may begin.
Q: What country has more lakes than all of the rest of the world combined? A: Canada.
Q: Where are the Glorioso Islands located? A: Off the coast of South Africa, near Madagascar.
Q: 11 of the 20 largest cities in Russia, including Moscow, are situated on what river? A: The Volga River.
Q: What is the capital of Papua New Guniea? A: Port Moresby
Bonus Question: Give the names of three totally obscure places in the world (country, state, or city) and name their most important export or domestic product.
Sample Answer: 1. Burkina Faso, a landlocked nation in West Africa. It is the 27th poorest nation in the world, with agriculture representing 32% of its gross domestic product and occupying 80% of the working population. 2. Tenerife, a Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean. Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands. Tourism is the most prominent industry in the Canaries, and it is one of the major tourist destinations in the World. 3. Faroe Islands, a group of islands located between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. Its nearest neighbors are Iceland, Norway, and Scotland. Their most important export is an indie rock group called Boys In A Band.
Boys In A Band describe their sound as Dylan on methamphetamines, but I think they’re just being cheeky. There are definitely some Dylan-esque touches in there, but mostly their sound leans more toward a larger genre trend - young bands from Northern Europe who were raised on American rock n roll. It’s hard to say exactly what cultural filters are at play here, but a lot of these bands are getting the mix just right. Artists like The Flaming Sideburns, The Hives, and now Boys In A Band, seem to have taken some of the best parts of the rock n roll tradition, cooked them in some kind of Nordic incubator, and then unleashed them on the rest of the world. Who knew?
Well, apparently, Boys In A Band knew. With their jangling, celebratory sound they are carving a place for themselves in what is quickly becoming a new tradition of frozen rock music. In doing so they have put the Faroe Islands on the map. Extra credit to anybody else who can find the Faroe Islands on a map.
I came to music at a very early age. I got my first Michael Jackson album when I was 5 years old, and my first guitar a few years later. Between elementary school and highschool graduation I played, at one time or another, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, drums, and piano. Which is not to say I’m some sort of prodigy. On the contrary, I lacked the attention span necessary to really master any of those instruments. I mostly just wanted to play drums in a rock band. Clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone were forced on me by the crotchety, old, and disgruntled music teachers from the Oakland Public School District (translation: no way were they about to set a fourth-grader loose behind a drumset.)
Sometime around the sixth grade, my friends and I started having “jams” at my house after school. We had recently found a working tape recorder in the back of the garage, and my friend Nate had been given an electric guitar with five working strings. I had a pair of drumsticks and some heavy-duty cardboard boxes that made a drum-like sound. A couple of my friends thought they could sing. As the weeks wore on, we moved from open-ended noise jams to fully composed songs, complete with lyrics about fire, cars, and the girls in our class who had started to go through puberty. Naturally we decided that our incipient musical genius needed to be committed to tape.
After my friends went home, I would spend hours listening to those tapes on my boombox. I was totally impressed that we had had managed to make a noise which kind of sounded like music which sounded a little bit like a song which, I thought, meant we were destined for rock stardom. I was all, “Screw you middle school! We’re going on tour!” I played the tapes for anybody who would listen (read: my little sister and our babysitter). The babysitter was kind enough not say anything disparaging. Of course, she was getting paid. My sister, on the other hand, was brutally honest. “That sounds like Nate playing a broken guitar, you hitting some cardboard boxes, and a lot of screaming about explosions. Wait, did somebody just say ‘boobies?’ I’m telling Mom!”
I was reminded of those tapes when I first heard Significant Figures. Apparently the band was born of a similar experience - a Realistic two-track recorder found in a basement somewhere in New Jersey. According to the band’s promo material “its motors could not maintain a consistent speed throughout the length of any of the early epic rock anthems” and the first recordings from the group were scrapped. Since that time, the boys in the band have upgraded their technology and learned how to use it. Despite the fact that the band’s various members are spread across the eastern seaboard, they still manage to record at a prolific rate. With the help of a couple laptops, some vintage microphones, and the power of the internet, Significant Figures have built a large catalogue of lo-fi pop songs.
Imagine The Pixies and Paul Simon recording two minute pop songs in a basement apartment in a rainy little town outside of a big city. Imagine that they woodshed for a couple days, individually writing a bunch of new songs. Then they get together on Thursday night and record all of them. Then they go watch a movie, hang out with their girlfriends, and come back the next week and do it again. If you can actually imagine what that sounds like, then you’ve got a very impressive imagination. Sadly, that’s probably not at all how it happens. But that’s what I hear. Of course, I used to play the cardboard box in an after school jam band. Hey, do you wanna hear the tape?
Can’t say that we really know much about this band. There’s all of one article about them on the whole internet. Their MySpace page describes their sound as the saddest dance party. They mixed their EP at the studio where Interpol and The National hang their hats. While there, it is reported that they made “the bass more bangy and the treble more shiny and the delay more repeaty.” They come from or are still at Wesleyan University, so they’re probably pretty young. Lastly, they just played the always awesome Pull-Out Method party out at Midway - which we hear is now called Rehab.
Bam! Now you know everything we do.
So let’s just report on the material in front of us, shall we? Red Wire Black Wire play music that might be described by some as emo electro. I wouldn’t describe it that way because, personally, I think emo gargles my balls. However, I really like this. It is the sound of haunting pop, funkafized by drum machines and buttery analogue keyboards. Lyrically, singer Doug Walters walks a path between beat poetry and junkie crime novels. On “Compass,” the title track from the EP, he sings “took your body back to my hometown/went to my childhood house and I burned it down/picked a couple cinders off the ground/mixed them with brandy and drank it down.” Look out Frank Miller. This guy is dark.
We’re officially declaring this the new hotness. The group is already doing remixes for DNTEL, so you know it won’t be long before they’re spinning Red Wire Black Wire at the Viper Room. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say they might even appear on the soundtrack to the next movie about slacker goth vampire ninjas (aka The Crow 3). Listen up and get down.
Don’t you think it’s time that indie rock got its own radio station? Classic rock, oldies, top 40, etc. each get their own radio stations. As you flip through the dial, you know which of these stations you’ve landed on because each of these genres has a distinct sound, one that can be identified exclusive of song or artist. Likewise, as we’re fond of saying here at TC headquarters, indie rock at this point is as much a description of style as it is a declaration of sovereignty. While it may be broadly defined, in most cases you know it when you hear it (like pornography - yay!).
While out listening to music the other night, I was again reminded of the idea of indie rock as a simple genre description. The band (whom I’ve already forgotten) was just ok . You know the type - good enough not to offend, bad enough not to impress. I wasn’t that disappointed though, because they were just a band I was checking out based purely on speculation, which I do several times a week. I had dragged some friends along and, over drinks afterwards, they asked me what I thought. “Meh,” I shrugged, “it was just some indie rock.”
In this case I was using the generic indie rock label as an indictment, but it can also be an endorsement. It’s kind of like jazz. I sometimes like to put on a jazz station and let it dictate the soundtrack of, say, a late night drive or the first few hours of daylight before the coffee kicks in. Of course, I have my favorite songs and musicians, but it mostly serves as a pleasant sound, like waves crashing on a beach.
This is why we need an indie rock radio station - so we can have a simple FM depot for the specific songs as well as the general sound. If this station ever comes into existence, one the bands sure to go into heavy rotation is Ghosty from Lawrence, KS. In the two-and-a-half years they’ve been together, Ghosty has certainly recorded some stand-out tracks. Mostly though, they make a nice sound. Their new album Answers is the kind of record you could listen to three times in a row without it bothering you. And it’s a good thing too, because if indie rock radio turns out to be anything like the other stations, there will be a lot of repetition.
Despite the universally acknowledged differences between city dwellers and country folk, there is a movement brewing that might just help to bridge that gap. It is a movement that seems to be coming in from two different sides toward a mutually recognized center. Whether that meeting proves to be harmonious or cacophonous remains to be seen. In order to make any kind of educated guess though, we need to take a closer look at both factions.
On the one side we have rural youth becoming increasingly fascinated with urban culture. This has actually been going on for a while, and we mostly have MTV to thank for it. Countless rap videos and witless reality shows have brought images of black and brown people streaming into the living rooms of kids who would otherwise have lived a lily white existence. Now whether or not you think Lil’ Jon or Flavor Of Love are suitable ambassadors of African-American culture is an argument for another day. The fact remains that millions of goofy little cracker children are being entertained by and, as a result looking up to, people of color. In a country where some still fly the confederate flag and others can’t fathom electing a black president, this is a huge step forward. It would appear that a little bit of urban culture is doing more for backwoods race relations than any amount of schooling ever could.
On the other side we have all these hipster kids in Brooklyn. It’s hard to say what their motive is, but for whatever reason many of them are getting into country and bluegrass music. Is it an attempt to colonize a scene that hasn’t yet been blown open by a hipster bomb? Or is it just that flannel clothing is often the cheapest, most abundant stuff at the thrift store? Dunno. Maybe we should ask O’Death or Langhorne Slim.
Better yet, let’s ask Salt & Samovar. They’ve crafted a swampy indie country sound that is perhaps better than any other. This can largely be attributed to the equal parts hipster sensibility and low country twang they put into their music. It’s country, but not too country. It’s hip, but not so hip that it hurts. Their record “Old Joy, New Joy” would be equally at home on the back porch in the Ozarks or a rooftop in DUMBO.
Sooner or later this whole thing will come full circle, sides will meet and the melting pot stew will finally be ready to serve. Until then, let’s think of funny names for this newish musical movement. How about Cosmo Country? Or Brooklyn Bluegrass? Blogger Blues? Yeah…I got nothin.
I’m pretty squeamish. There are a lot of things that wouldn’t even rate a second look by most people, and yet those same things totally gross me out. Most of these things are pretty benign, it’s true. Certain activities that can barely be avoided in day-to-day life give me the shivers. As a result, I get accused of being a little OCD about all this gross-out business. I am often told that I should be able to watch someone brush their teeth without gagging. Sharing a bowl of cereal does not create the milky cauldron of saliva and backwash that I imagine. Rather it is a perfectly acceptable practice for brothers and sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends, or room mates. Not only that, but I should be able to watch doctors perform a pig valve transplant on a morbidly obese man on the Horrifically Graphic Surgery Channel…without having to cover my eyes and ears while humming the theme from The Daily Show.
My critics would also probably say that I should be able look at this photo of Seattle band The Hands without going, “Ewwwww! That’s nasty!” But I can’t. I mean, what is that he’s spitting into the other guy’s mouth? Mountain Dew? Urine? Sunny D? And not only is the one guy letting his band mate blow mouth-warmed, yellow-ish liquid at his face, but it also looks like just as much of it is going up his nose as is in his mouth. Ga-ross. Gross gross gross. That’s even more gross than the dude from The Black Lips spitting a loogie into the air and then gulping it back down mid-song - and that’s pretty fuckin gross.
Fortunately this is music we’re talking about. Until some mad scientist and/or Microsoft invents some kind of futuristic 3-D imaging brain implant software, music will remain an aural medium. So I can listen to The Hands with my eyes closed and focus only on what I hear. And what do I hear? A punkish blend of 70s riffage and indie rock song craft, plus a singer who sounds exactly like Mick Jagger. It is totally bad ass. And with my eyes closed I imagine that they’re playing in a hermetically sealed studio behind a thick pane of glass coated with anti-bacterial spray - which doesn’t bother me at all.
