Towers - "Mutagen"

Does this genre have a name? I've definitely heard bands of this ilk before, mostly in basements across America. There's clearly a distinct sound here, and I've been hearing it for years, but I've yet to come across a name for it.

I often read interviews with bands who complain about being pigeonholed into a particular genre, especially when that genre is new (did any band want to be called "stoner-rock" back in the late-90s?). What these bands fail to understand is that (a) they are not unique, and (b) genre names are simply writer shorthand that help readers understand what they sound like. Yes, there are other bands that sound like you, someone's come up with a name for it, and if someone who likes those bands reads your name in connection with this nebulous genre they might think to check out your music. Go with it.

But this stuff doesn't seem to have a name. If someone asked me to describe Towers, I'd start by saying they're a hardcore band. But they're really an example of this in-between genre. They have hardcore rhythms, structures, instrumentation and volume, but with spacey guitar effects and scream-o (a micro-genre unto itself, doncha know) vocals. And I'm telling you, there are other bands like this endangering the eardrums of kids in basements and VFW halls all across America. So what do we call them?

Full disclosure: I know these guys; my friend B— is one of the guitarists and he gave me a copy of the album, which appears to be self-titled. But I'm not posting this as a favour to him, I'm posting it because it's awesome. In fact, if he had his druthers I'm sure he would have preferred I post a different track (perhaps one of these), but I like the guitar effects in the intro to this one, and it's my fucking blog, so there.

The record, by the way, is way cool. The cover is silk-screened onto the sleeve to an old Smokey Robinson album that they cut open and turned inside out, which, due respect to Smokey, is a killer way to package a record. It's not perfect, mind you; it's on white vinyl. I'm morally opposed to coloured vinyl, as anything other than black is a compromise in sound quality, but I'm still mad jealous. I've never had any of my music on vinyl.

No buying story here as B— gave me the record, but I do have a marginally interesting story about acquiring it. After he gave it to me I was riding my bike home and took a really bad spill. Totally my fault and completely stupid, I was drunk, not wearing a helmet, carrying the record and smoking a cigarette with he same hand, ran into a parked pickup truck. I got away with minor abrasions on both arms and a few ice packs the next day, but I had to replace the front wheel of my bike, which was bent beyond repair (used wheel, $30! Bless you, Mike's Bikes). But more importantly, the record was unharmed. And let's face it, that's what really matters.

Buy it... on vinyl. Vinyl only, as far as I can find. Fuck yeah.

From my deck to you: Towers - "Mutagen"

Not sure what to group with this, but I know B—'s a man who knows and loves the old school (check out his radio show Sunday nights), so I'll fill out the week with a couple slabs of classic SST heaviness.

The Grateful Dead - "Me and My Uncle"

I've always thought it was kind of weird when a band would put out a self-titled record that wasn't their debut, like Blur or Metallica. Surely it's not because they just couldn't think of anything, so I figure it's either (a) "this is the beginning of a new era for the band", or (b) "this is the album that best sums up what this band is all about". In the case of The Grateful Dead, definitely (b), because it's (wait for it...) a fuckin' double-live album.

I threw this track, a modest little outlaw tale, up here today because it used to be one of my favourites on my cassette copy of What a Long Strange Trip It's Been (my initial introduction to the Dead, which left me somewhat nonplussed; their name and skeleton-logo had led me to expect something more akin to, say, Steppenwolf), and because I really don't have that many Dead records, so why not? The Dead didn't write it; John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas (and sire of one-third of Wilson Phillips) did but, according to legend, has no recollection of doing so. He was hanging out at a party, drunk off his ass, strumming a guitar and making shit up while someone was rolling a tape. One day he began receiving royalty cheques for a Judy Collins album. Not a bad work if you can find it.

This page has pretty much everything you'd want to know about the song, including a more detailed telling of its origin and an extensive catalogue of lyrical variations. It says at the top that this is the song the Dead played more than any other in their entire concert history. I can't believe someone bothered counting. Actually, yeah I can.

I don't think I even bought this record; I think my old roommate forgot it when she moved. Your loss, K—. It's here if you still want it.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: The Grateful Dead - "Me and My Uncle"

The Grateful Dead - "China Cat Sunflower"

Ah, memories of the van. I play in a band with two members (myself as one) who dig the Dead without being, y'know, fanatical or nothing, and one who despises every note they ever played. Indie rocker through and through. You know the type. A valid opinion, by the way; as much as I enjoy them in moderation, I'll be the first to admit that anyone who can't see how anybody could possibly find the Dead annoying just isn't listening hard enough.

Anyway, we have a shitty K-Mart boombox in the van (to complement the broken AM-only radio) we take on tour. And a cardboard box of truck-stop cassettes. Most of the time we just listened to ZZ Top and Van Halen, but whenever G— crawled into the back to tape a nap (often), J— and I would bust out Europe '72, or at least tape 1 of the two-tape set, which is the only one we have. We'd play it quietly and groove on down the freeway until G— inevitably awoke and growled some variation of "turn this hippie shit off." Our favourite cut was always "China Cat". It's the guitar riff. Definitely the guitar riff.

Aoxomoxoa was the Dead's third album, and the last of their real psychedelic phase. It's not quite as trippy as Anthem but there're some pretty spacey moments. "China Cat" is hardly the most far-out cut, but I can't resist posting it. The album opens with "St. Stephen" and closes with "Cosmic Charlie", both of which would remain staples of the live set. But in between there are some long-forgotten psych-outs that are well worth revisiting. As with Anthem, recommended if you think the Dead are kind of okay, but find the folky shit really annoying.

The price tag looks like Generation (where the downstairs was, for a few years, my vote for best kept secret in New York's admittedly slim used record marketplace, especially after Revolver (no link!) changed ownership and jacked up their prices), and it's a cool $3.99. You'll probably be hard pressed to find it for less than twice that nowadays.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: The Grateful Dead - "China Cat Sunflower"

The Grateful Dead - "That's It for the Other One"

Conventional wisdom amongst Deadheads holds that the band didn't really become THE DEAD as we know and (um,) love them until their fourth album. On 1970's Workingman's Dead (the one with "Uncle John's Band" on it) they toned down the excessive psych-out ramblings of their earlier records and re-embraced American folk music. And jammed.

Which makes their first three studio albums must-hears for anyone who grudgingly respects the Dead but instinctively hates their music. Trust me.

The self-titled first record is, indeed, amateurish twaddle, the sound of a band who were clearly not yet ready for the studio. But the second, Anthem of the Sun, is a terrific find for anyone who digs the more far-out regions of American psychedelic rock in the sixties. The songwriting and arrangements are ambitious, the recording delightfully weird.

This cut is the album's opening track, and it ostensibly consists of three parts, but you're one up on me if you can figure out where the dividing lines are drawn. Perhaps the titles will help:

1. Cryptical Envelopement


2. Quadlibet for Tenderfeet


3. The Faster We Go the Rounder We Get

Or... perhaps not.

Incidentally, this track is followed on the album (and you can hear the opening notes in the fade-out of this mp3) by "New Potato Caboose", inexplicably (and somewhat facetiously) cited as one of the worst songs of all time in this terrifically entertaining article. I mean, it's not great, but Lord knows there are plenty of worse Dead tunes to be had.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: The Grateful Dead - "That's It for the Other One"

Weekend video(s): Thomas Dolby

Usually I try to post cool performance clips I've found, but for some reason this video crossed my mind the other day and I had to seek it out and watch it. Truth is, the only reason I'm posting this is so I can email the link to my brother and he'll laugh his ass off.

I hadn't listened to any of Dolby's music in many years, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it holds up fairly well. It's definitely a product of the eighties, but whereas much of the pop music from that era sounds dated due to the technology employed, Dolby's canned beats and synthesised "horns" sound sharp and bright, rather than the thin, tinny sounds that tend to bog down the music of his contemporaries.

As for the song itself it's... well it's clearly written by a producer. The arrangement is completely overstuffed. The lyrics are filled with clever puns and metaphors, but it's all just a bit too clever. Albums written by producers are kind of like movies directed by cinematographers: even the good ones are more surface than substance, more sounds than songs, more shots than script. Still, this one's fun and elaborately decorated, and bears up to a few repeat listens.

I think the most frustrating thing about the video is that too much time is spent on the kooky story about the reporter's dream. Whatever. I want to see more of the band. That singer rules.

The first time I ever heard Thomas Dolby was when I saw this video on Top of the Pops as a kid. I liked any videos with a lot of broad visual gags, and this one's over the top. To match the song, in which the entire chorus is sung in a chipmunk voice. Again, very Dolby, very slick and multi-layered production, although this one without the faux-ethnic accents that make the above song such a treat. But you don't watch something like this for the song; it's all about those ridiculous cheap video effects.

Which, come to think of it, may not have been very cheap at the time. For all I know this was the cutting edge of video editing technology.

Jefferson Airplane - "Embryonic Journey"

I do believe that I could make a fairly convincing case for the Jefferson Airplane as the most underrated rock band of their era. Furthermore, I also believe that I could make an equally convincing case for the Jefferson Airplane as the most overrated rock band of their era.

Briefly, then:

• Underrated
  
  They produced the only studio album(s!) of note out of all the bands to emerge from the wildly hyped San Francisco scene in the mid-60s, brought American psychedelic rock to mainstream with arguably the genre's biggest hit ("Somebody to Love") and best album (Surrealistic Pillow), and headlined Woodstock. Yet unlike many other giants of classic rock they remain largely forgotten amongst anyone too young to remember their heyday. They released more than one album arguably better than their most famous, but no one's ever heard them. Despite their once-towering stature, their music has been reduced to a nostalgic curio of a bygone era.


• Overrated
  
  Anyone who's ever read Rolling Stone is well-versed in the insufferable tendency of boomer's the inflate the importance of all pop cultural artifacts of their youth, and Jefferson Airplane may be the most egregious example of this habit. Often held up as "vital", and one of their era's all-time greats, their music has hardly stood the test of time and their influence is barely felt, if at all. While many of their contemporaries continue to find new fans to this day, the Airplane have, apart from two songs, been largely forgotten.

As much as I love the Airplane, I'll be the first to admit their music is woefully dated. Even my favourite moments on their album sound, if I'm not in the right mood, like the goofy noodlings of stoned hippies. The music's drug-soaked ambiance, while doubtlessly radical and dangerous for mainstream pop music at the time, tends to render their revolutionary fury impotent. How many bong-jockeys have you known whom you thought really might just get off that couch one day and overthrow the government?

But I would argue that timelessness is necessarily sacrificed to achieve such utter contemporaneity with the events of their era. The Airplane's music is unmistakeably a product of the sixties, and therefore must age. The Beatles' music is often held up as being emblematic of the spirit of the sixties, but it's really not, because it's so timeless. They and the Stones produced music which sounds just as vital today as when it was first released, but the cost of not being stuck in the past is that their music can never really represent anything outside itself.

The Airplane's music straddles no such divide. It is the sound of the sixties, plain and simple. Hearing it invokes images of bell-bottoms, long-hair, draft card burnings, be-ins, love-ins, protests and all the other images of an era someone my age knows only from photographs. Only music this dated can truly embody its era, just as music that so completely represents an era will inevitably date more quickly. As the era fades into the past, so does the relevance of the Airplane's music. The music can still be enjoyed on its own terms should you bother to seek it out. But unlike, say, Elvis Presley or Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix, in fifty years time, when the baby boomers have for the most part passed away and are no longer controlling the media outlets that still teach us today to pine for the blessed sixties, no one under the age of fifty will have any idea who the Jefferson Airplane were.

Bummer for them. I'll close out the week (and a long week it was) with a track that sounds nothing like the Airplane. I first heard this track on a tape my uncle Paul, an avid music collector, made for me one Christmas, a sort of introductory overview of acoustic guitar-based music. A couple of John Fahey cuts made the strongest impression, but this one slotted in quite nicely with the surrounding tracks. It's from Pillow, an album of nine songs forever destined to be overshadowed by the other two. It's just guitarist Jorma Kaukonek alone, flexing his pickin' chops. Nice one. No idea where I picked up the vinyl, by the way. Got it in college when I got all the other Airplane albums, probably in New York, probably for about two bucks.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: Jefferson Airplane - "Embryonic Journey"

Next week, by popular demand (i.e., a single comment on a previous post): the Grateful Dead.