Let’s talk about the weather. The weather is one of those things that holds universal fascination for almost everyone above the age of ten. Put two strangers in a room and even if they have absolutely nothing else in common, they will be able to discuss the weather for at least a couple of minutes - more if the weather has been especially hot, cold, wet, windy or dry. For whatever reason, the weather is endlessly interesting to everybody (especially old people).
Personally, I can’t even leave the house in the morning without first checking the weather. I go online and get the current temperature, the projected temperature throughout the day and any other accompanying forecasts for rain or sun. When I lived in New York, I would watch NY1 every day, faithfully waiting for their surprisingly accurate “weather on the 1s” report. I used to cross my fingers and hope for snow, lightening or any other extreme condition. I relished the snow in the winter time and the apocalyptic thunder storms that would assault the city throughout the hot, sticky East Coast summers.
The thrill I got from this kind of weather no doubt came from the fact that I grew up in a part of California where the temperature rarely moves outside the comfortable range of 50 to 75 degrees. The most exciting things we have weather-wise are heavy morning fog and the occasional high wind. Which is why I feel it is worth noting that the weather around here has been kind of strange lately. The fog hasn’t really gone away for weeks, and the temperature has been simultaneously cold and muggy.
As a result of this strange weather, it’s been hard to get into the spirit of summer. I don’t really feel like jumping out of bed, putting on my short shorts and racing to the beach. Instead, I want to put an extra shot of whiskey in my coffee and stay home with my books and records.
It was in this state of mind that I first came across the Primary Colors EP from brand new Brooklyn band Cavalier Rose. These kids only just got together this year, but they have a sound that is bluesy and roughed up like an old work horse. The group’s showpiece is undoubtedly singer Heather Christian, a southern belle whose voice sways violently from girlish charm to woman scorned. The guitars match her outbursts with shivers of distortion while a ghostly piano floats underneath her whispered siren calls. The overall sound is heavy and dark, with just a touch of frustration and insouciance.
Not to go and break the fourth wall or anything, but I would like to take a moment to talk about the business of writing a music blog. Most of the writers working in this field rely heavily on the PR people whose job it is to engage said writers - or bloggers, to use a term from 2007. The PR people send out press kits full of tour updates, album release info and mp3s. The blogger then sorts through all of these press releases (or has their intern do it), separating the wheat from the chaff. Then, if the writer deems the material worthy, he or she writes about it on their blog/website/facebook page.
We work a little differently here at Tough Customer, only because we focus on smaller, lesser known bands. Needless to say, we are not on the radar of Kanye’s publicist - which is to say that we have to do a lot of our own legwork to find the bands we cover. But our inbox is still inundated with material from managers and PR people trying to get their band heard. A lot of times the bands themselves write to us, hoping we’ll hype their new record or video. Which is cool. We like that. The more options we have to choose from, the better choices we can make.
This is the basic framework for the meritocracy that the world wide web is supposed to represent. If everybody and their dog records an album and posts it online, then naturally the best stuff will get the most attention. That’s the theory anyway, although in practice you’ll still read way more articles about Radiohead than say, The Significant Figures or Thunders. But whatever. It’s one big, happy party and everybody’s invited. All you have to do is play some cool jamz and keep it real.
These rules are pretty easy to follow, and yet so many people can’t help but break them. Mostly they screw up on the cool jamz part. Seriously, the crap to decent music ratio of the submissions we get is hovering around 50:1 right now. There are a lot of people out there trying to be rock stars who really should be accountants instead. We’ve actually talked about rebuilding this site to include a new section covering all the bad Russian metal bands, wimpy singer/songwriters, and über mediocre indie rock bands who have tried to convince us that their new album is the game changer we’ve all been waiting for. Everybody wants to live the dream, I guess.
Fewer in number, but more egregious in their crimes are those that fail to keep it real. These are the fakers that present their music under false pretenses or convince some poor high school student (aka “member of the street team”) to do it for them. This usually comes in the form of some highly polished promo material that makes it look like the band has toured with Cold Play or written the soundtrack for Transformers 2. Either that, or one of their “fans” writes us a heartfelt letter about their new favorite band that we just have to hear.
Enter Brooklyn’s Courtesy Tier. They’re a pretty cool rock duo that plays guitar rock in the vein of The Black Keys or The White Stripes. Their sound is a little more psychedelic than either of those bands, but they didn’t put much effort into their promo material, so I’m not going to waste too much energy on their review.
What I will tell you is that I received an email from one of their “fans” telling me about this new band that was burning up stages around New York. There were a few other exhortations to check out their music and third person declarations of fandom, including the bold proclamation “I really think they are…taking this two person thing to a whole new kind of level.” The email included a link to their websites and came from the email address of one Omer Leibovitz.
Of course, I clicked the link and checked out the music. It was pretty good, so I flipped over to the bio for more info. Guess who plays guitar and sings lead vocals in this awesome band? None other than Mr. Leibovitz. Come on now Omer. Did you think I wouldn’t look? Did you think I would be tricked into believing you already have legions of devoted fans? Did you think about this at all?
Really I don’t know why this bothers me so much. I guess it’s because the assumption here seems to be that I’m an idiot, and that approaching me with some half-baked con about one of your admirers is the best way to trick me into writing about your music. And what do you know - it worked. Here’s your name in print. With any luck, this will help you score some real life fans (with better grammar) who will send emails to other less discerning blogs and tell them of your prowess. If not, I suggest you get a new email address and some dark glasses before you head back out into the blogosphere.
Anyone who has ever watched even a few minutes of stand-up comedy knows that guys are different than girls. If I have learned anything from the shallow insights of the countless cut-rate comics I have seen on TV over the years, it is this: girls like talking about their feelings, romantic dinners by candle light and shopping for shoes. Guys like sex, football, and fart jokes. There are variations on this theme of course, but that basically sums it up.
By extension, we also know that guys and girls like different kinds of movies. Hollywood producers certainly know this, and their market research has shown them that this universal truth can also be a guiding principle for film making. Males in the coveted 18-34 age bracket need to see explosions, kung-fu and boobs in their movies if they are going to throw the full weight of their demographic behind a film on opening weekend. Girls, on the other hand, need something that falls into either the romantic comedy or sappy melodrama categories to get them into theaters.
Needless to say, this presents a problem when guys and girls go to see a movie together - a pretty common occurrence, not to mention a classic American dating ritual. Sure, every once in a while you get a movie that everyone can agree on, but how many times can you go see Slumdog Millionaire? With most movies skewing toward one sex or the other, a compromise inevitably happens at the box office; either a couple sees the movie he wants (Crank 2) or the movie she wants (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) or a movie that nobody really wants to see (Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail).
Since this is one of the greatest problems plaguing the world today, I decided to put my worn out, over-caffeinated brain to work on a solution. The result is a simple formula that can be applied to all date movies. If enough directors decide to incorporate it into their film making we might just eliminate the need for the romantic comedy genre all together.
The format basically works like a double bill compressed into one conventional length movie. One half of the movie would be for the guys, the other half for the girls. For an example of how this would work, I’ll apply the formula to the movie Felon starring Stephen Dorf and Val Kilmer. In the movie, Stephen Dorf plays a husband and father who is wrongfully sent to prison. He gets strong-armed into covering for the Aryan Brotherhood and ends up in the most hardcore part of the prison, where he shares a cell with a serial killer (Val Kilmer) by night and fights gangbangers in the yard by day.
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s prison + gangs + lots of fighting = guy movie. In order to turn that into one of our new unisex date movies, you would do two things. First, compress all of the fighting, prison gangs and weird Val Kilmer scenes into a trimmed down 45 minute section of the movie. This part is for all the dudes in the audience. Once they get their fill of blood and tattoos, you move onto the second half of the movie which is - you guessed it - for the ladies.
In this half of the movie, we find Stephen Dorf home from prison and working to put his life back in order. He is thrilled to spend time with his son and he finally buys his wife that dress she’s always wanted. He still carries the psychological scars of his time in prison, which initially makes him cold and distant. But eventually, he and his wife work through it, slowly rebuilding their life and their love together. They come through this ordeal exhausted, but happy to find that their relationship is even stronger for the effort. And then maybe Stephen Dorf gets in one last fist fight with a rude neighbor or whatever, just so everybody has something to cheer for right at the end.
In truth, I don’t usually go in for this sort of populism, but every now and then it works. Besides the afore mentioned unisex date movie, ice cream parlors and Jane’s Addiction, a good example of the something-for-everyone approach is Canadian band Beast. The duo has only been together for about a year, but they’ve locked in on a sound that works like a musical survey of the last 20 years. With touches of trip hop, hip hop, punk-funk and guitar rock, Beast plays what singer Betty Bonifassi calls “trip rock.” Bonifassi sing-raps her lyrical indictments of satan and other evil spirits over a booming drumscape that swells with gospel choirs and vicious synthesizers.
The end result may not represent a finely honed singular vision, but you can play it any party, club or biker BBQ and not piss anyone off. It stands to reason that both guys and girls will like the band as well. Pending any new advances in the date movie industry, you might just be better off taking your date to a Beast concert instead.
Some times a small thing can really brighten your day. Like when you’re on your way to work and a train pulls into the station just as you come down the stairs. You don’t have to wait at all and you get a seat next to somebody who isn’t wearing too much cologne or talking loudly into a Bluetooth device. Or when you put on a pair of pants that you haven’t worn for a week or so and you find a five dollar bill in the pocket. When this happens, it’s kind of like an anonymous stranger is buying you a cup of coffee and a donut.
Of course, waking up in a pile of naked supermodels would be better. Heck, that would probably brighten your whole week. But occasionally you have to thank god for the small favors. It is in that spirit that I would like to offer up a little prayer of thanks for Community Gun from upstate New York. This scrappy band will shamble their way onto your stereo and win you over with an unexpected dash of style. I had already written them off when I saw the publicity photo of them playing next to their van in what looks like the parking lot of a local junior high. But I listened to a few tracks anyway and was surprised to find a band that sounds like a looser version of The Wallflowers, with a singer who sounds like Tom Waits before he started smoking.
Well, that was a nice surprise. Just like the five dollar bill I didn’t even know was there. Nice work guys. Now just let me know when you’ve got those supermodels ready for me.
I’m a mixtape junkie. I’ve got a problem, I acknowledge it, but I don’t see myself quitting any time soon. Talk to me about music for a minute or more, and before you know it I’ll be forcing a CD-R on you, chock full of esoteric songs that perfectly match your taste in music - or at least what I imagine your tastes to be. I’ll be all, “You know how we were talking the other day about the Black Keys? You said you kind of liked that one song with the guitars. Well, I made a mix for you. It’s all songs that feature heavily distorted blues guitar riffs played with a slightly tongue-in-cheek garage rock sensibility. Let me know what you think.”
It’s hard to say whether this behavior is more dorky or annoying. Probably both. Like I said, I have a problem.
One of the things I really like to do is make mixtapes for hyper specific occasions. Anybody can make a compilation of 80s dance hits. In fact, that theme is so far-reaching that they sell those compilations on late night TV. I like to aim a little closer to the bull’s eye. Recent projects for me have included such mixes as Drinking All Night In A Cheap Motel Room Outside Of Reno, Tropical Disease: Songs For The Central American Jungle and The Eagle Has Landed - which refers to an inside joke between my friends and I that I won’t elaborate on, for fear of legal repercussions.
One of the mixtape themes I struggle with though is BBQ music. There are just so many different ways you can go with that. I live in Oakland, and if we’re grilling in the park it’s pretty much got to be West Coast hip hop. I’m not trying to get shot for encouraging the ballers down at Mosswood Courts to listen to something other than Mac Dre. Here in San Francisco, most bar-b-quers (SP?) like to keep it old school - either soul, punk or rap, depending on whose backyard you’re in. Back in New York, rooftop BBQ decorum dictates that you try to please everybody, so you don’t really make a mix as much as you just load up your iPod and hit ’shuffle.’ Either that or you get an indie rock band from Brooklyn to drag their shit up the stairs and play a set over by the water tower.
In general BBQ music is a pretty amorphous category. You can go with something gritty and urban, or you can just as easily go with something twangy and rustic. Classic rock works too, particularly after every one’s been there long enough to drink a few beers. It’s with this in mind that I plan to add Pearlene to my next BBQ playlist. They started out back in Kentucky as an acoustic Delta Blues band, but quickly added sweat and electricity to their sound. What emerges on their latest album For Western Violence and Brief Sensuality is a smoky mix of stoner rock and hipster Americana. Granted, this kind of music would sound good in a lot places, but I’m willing to bet it satisfies my BBQ (mixtape) craving in particular.
We had, like, five different circuitous intros for this post. However, our editors determined that all of them would have been offensive to somebody somewhere. Apparently Germans, homosexuals, river trolls, priests, and deranged surgeons all have one thing in common: no sense of humor. Oh well. Your loss.
Instead, we’ll just give it to you straight (sorry homos!). Trost is the surname of one Annika Line from Berlin, Germany. It is also the name of her new musical project. She used to be in a band called Cobra Killer. Thurston Moore thought Cobra Killer was the bomb. Truth be told, they weren’t as good as Trost’s new solo project, which combines electronic production, older R&B, and a creepy Tom Waits/Kurt Weill kind of vibe into a strange, distinctly Teutonic funk. It’s the kind of music ghosts probably listen to when they throw a cocktail party. Deranged surgeons might like it too, but what do we know, right?
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