23 Beats Off

Fugazi
In On the Kill Taker

I tried so hard to count the beats in this one to figure out where, exactly, it was 23 beats off. I figured that maybe it was at the end of the song where the feedback comes and the only "normal" music sound you hear is the snare. That's not it. So, for years, I figured the title came from "lazy band syndrome" where they just rearranged a previous title. Here, it would have been Two Beats Off from Repeater.

Then the interwebs came along. And I ignored it. Then the tubes got bigger, and I got an email address. Soon, the "net" was all encompassing, and even noted technophobic bands who all live in a house without electricity and eat only raw rice had their own websites. So did Fugazi. Every band that had ever sold more than 200 records also had a tribute site. It was here that I found a page where fans could give their interpretations of Fugazi's obtuse lyrics. Here I saw, for the first time, the Holy Grail of interpretations.

Y'see, Ian was talking about Magic Johnson (heh, it's a johnson that's magic) contracting AIDS, ostensibly from putting his peener in an infected roadwhore. Michael Jordan, number 23 himself, kept away from the hoo-ers by beating off in his hotel room while on the road. Get it? Further, it was consensus opinion on the site that this was correct.

The lyrics in question:
a name
i recognize that name
it was at the center of some ticker tape parade the lead story,
a fine example
a name,
a name
a name i recognize that name
it was at the center of some magnifying glass the lead story,
a fine example
a name,
a name
he used to pretend he was fighting some war somewhere
now everything depends on fighting some war
he never thought he'd be an exclamation point
a demonstration of his disease
a punctuation mark
a household name with hiv
still, it's just still sound
Yeah, I see that.


Okay, given the timing, I can buy the whole Magic Johnson (heh) angle, but I don't get the Jordan angle. Sure, 23 is his number, but so what? It also belonged to John Williamson, who's dead now. Why can't it be about him? Hell, JW had even had his number retired by this point. This could go on, but I'll end here with a little bit of posturing. Learn the lyrics, sure, but leave the interpretation alone. 'Cuz when you're wrong, you ruin it for everybody and lend the Colbert air of truthiness to the proceedings.


Bonus fun factoid from Wikipedia: IOTKT was the first Fugazi album to chart on Billboard, at 153.

Cut Up

Ned's Atomic Dustbin
God Fodder

Okay, by now I've noticed my tendency to use the word "revolution" to talk about somewhat mundane musical movements (with a certain amount of bandwagon jumping) that were important to me. So, you know what, Ned's was part of the seminal, early '90s 2-bass players revolution. Which included GvsB and, uh, anyone? (Dianogah is an answer) Fuck it, I still like it, so here goes.

Speaking of mundane, and listening to this track confirms it, Ned's Atomic Dustbin always seemed to have the song topic of "My life, let me show you it". I swear that at least one of their songs was about walking down the street or something. This one seems to be about a lover's tiff and all of the baggage that brings. Real out there, huh?

What's with all of the rhetorical questions today?

So, one bass player filled the traditional role of rhythm and low end, while the other played more melody and high end. This was necessary because the guitar, played by someone named Rat, sounded like a buzzsaw. And not a good buzzsaw, but one that seems to be engineered to keep you from noticing that good ol' Rat wasn't really the most inventive, or even competent, practitioner out there. The drums were still drums, nothing weird there.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Ladd, whom I think was from Charleston. You really did look like the singer from Ned's. It's all in the chin. "But he's so ugly", you said. "Mmmmm", I believe was my answer.

Skulls

The Misfits
Walk Among Us

Who doesn't like The Misfits? Tiny little Glenn Danzig singing about scary stuff while simultaneously influencing legions of tykes to pick up guitars and wear eye makeup. It's really too bad he didn't start wearing the fringed, fingerless gloves until he went solo. Think how badass that would be to see on every scare-core band out there. Well, if there are any left. Has anyone seen Ink & Dagger lately?

Lesson #1 for today-Covering The Misfits in a slow, ironic manner is not Step 2 in the 3-step profit cycle. Case in point-Evan Dando's obliteration of this song on the execrable Favorite Spanish Dishes EP. You can't just sing a line like "Demon I am...", you have to growl it out. David Pajo did it as well, but I can't remember which track, so I'll skip it.

Lesson #2-Sometimes it's best to make music when you have no idea what you are doing. According to Michael Azerrad in his book, Our Band Could Be Your Life, the initial musical genesis of The Misfits was the result of reading about this newfangled punk trend and how scary it was, then making up music they thought would fit this. Based on nothing but their imagination of what scary music entailed, The Misfits were born. Okay, so that story is probably apocryphal, as similar stories have been attached to Mercury Rev and Belle & Sebastian, but it's still fun to imagine that happening, right?

Lesson #3-I find that when imagining comic book dork Glenn Danzig growing up in New Jersey, it helps to transpose the image of Silent Bob from the Kevin Smith movies, but shorter. Hope that helps you as well.
Update from the learn something new every day file: Ink & Dagger are long gone and not coming back. Dead lead singers tend to do that

The Way it Ends

Seaweed
Weak

The irony of the "SubPop sound" is that the bands on SubPop never really had a unifying sound. The closest thing that would qualify would be the fact that they did not have huge recording budgets that people were used to from major labels at the time. All independent music sounded the same to those people. Therefore, any SubPop sound was the product of the bands using similar recording studios and engineers rather than all of the bands playing the same type of music.

Seaweed were probably the second unluckiest band of the Seattle Revolution after Mudhoney. The difference, though, is that Mudhoney was the poster child for whatever Grunge was, while Seaweed were just a couple of years too early. Weak was released in 1991. Dookie came along three years later. The template for both albums is essentially the same with the Green Day album being more juvenile. So, in addition to being too early, Seaweed was also too mature for most listeners when the pop punk became popular with the kids.

Being passed over never stopped the band. They did sign to Hollywood Records, but that album went nowhere. As recently as 2002, Merge released Actions and Indications, and how the hell did that happen? Merge, really? It was well received, but the time and chance for Seaweed had gone. Weak remains an awesome 30 or so minutes of speedy pop punk with a slight emo edge that the kids all enjoy. Seriously, go pick it up, you shan't be disappointed.

Don't Bring Me Flowers

Godflesh
Pure

Oops, the metal side of me gets out and gets a chance to play. I'll admit it, unironically, that I get a charge out of some of the heavy stuff. A lot of it has been jettisoned over the years, but half of my Godflesh collection stays intact.

Godflesh was a two person, one machine act in the studio. Live, they'd take along a real life drummer who was good enough to be a machine. When I saw them, it was in a sweaty, cramped club in Columbia, SC. Rockafella's was better known locally for the owner's penchant to spend the club's profit on cocaine than for anything else. Still, over the years, I saw some great bands come through there.

The crowd on the night I saw Godflesh was a weird one. Instead of the local metalheads coming out, it was the burnout section of the indie crowd that made an appearance. It turns out that Streetcleaner had been a relative hit on the local college station a few years prior, and that these were the people left in the area. Christbait Rising and Like Rats got them all hot and bothered, while the better (I think) tunes off of Pure were ignored.

The highlight, for me, of the show was that I spied the setlist only during the last track. I saw that they had no planned encore (after 2 or so hours, why should they?), and told my friend that we should leave since we had a 2 hour drive and work awaiting us. Rockafella's had no backstage, as the stage was at the front of the building. Bigger bands, the ones with the tour buses would park the bus right at the front of the building. When we left, we passed Justin Broadrick coming out of the club and jumping into the bus, a distance of about 10 feet. Unusually for me, I spoke up. "Great show", I said. "Cheers, mate", he replied, with a big, sweaty guy smile. That made my night.

Gah. Remembering this story makes me lament missing the Jesu/Isis tour. I bet that was a kickass show. Oh well. Getting older and having responsibility sucks sometimes. But not as much as you young'uns are thinking right now.

Drum Machine

Too Much Joy
Besides

Not too much to say about his one. This is a one-off joke track, completely unlike their well-crafted, studio-enhanced joke tracks that TMJ put on their records. This song opines about the state of music in the late '80s and all of the processed beats that were being used. Meh, it's not that funny, excepte maybe for the part where, over only an acoustic guitar, Tim Quirk sings "I am an anarchist, I am the antichrist" almost as good as Dave Mustaine ever could have . . . I really have nothing for this track.


Besides was some promo-only thing. Your album link is to Green Eggs and Crack

Let's Call It Love

Sleater-Kinney
The Woods

I'm going to go ahead and call it. The Woods was my favorite album from 2005. All skronk and squeal, it was. Hell, I'm getting goosebumps just sitting here and listening to the first minute of the track. If you ever dismissed S-K as the band equivalent of several yapping dogs (which, at times, they certainly were), take a listen to this album. They found their niche just in time to break up.

This song is the l-o-n-g one on the album, clocking at approximately 11 minutes. You get all of the promised skronk right off the bat, with the guitar feeling more like it was pulled from a jam session at Emissions From the Monolith than from anyone involved in Cadallaca. Pure bliss for a noise-a-phile like me. You'll get the squeal, as well. I don't know that Corin Tucker really has another setting, but it's much more restrained here than on early releases. I mean, I went back and listened to Dig Me Out last year and God, what a difficult album to listen to. It's all screech all the time. But I loved it then like I love this album now.

The real highlight of this track for me kicks in at around the three minute mark. The track bridges from one section of dirge to another. In so doing, we are treated to the parts of S-K that were always its strengths. Janet Weiss' staccato drumming meshes with Carrie Brownstein's stuttering delivery of lines. All of the sudden, a song that felt like an uneasy hug from a distant aunt shakes you awake with the jolt of a triple espresso, but only long enough to make you realize that the gas leak is still going to put you to sleep, and soon.

Finally, I feel I must address something that has bothered me for years. I hated Sleater-Kinney as a live act. Now, I only saw them once, but it was just so bland. The set just never revved up like it should have. It just felt like they were stuck in idle all night long. Even when they closed with Fortunate Son from America's Best Ever Band(tm), CCR, with 50 people on stage, it felt like it was a chore of sorts to them. For someone that had, at that point, internalized their albums, it was a real disappointment to be treated, along with about 400 other people, as if we were something to be endured rather than appreciated.

I'm guessing that's not Janet Weiss in the photo. I remember that cover, but I don't remember who the previous drummer was. I'm sure it's not important anyway.
Extra bonus fun!!: S-K's wikipedia page is locked due to consistent vandalism, most of which seems to stem from someone who thinks they grew up too rich. Go check the history page.

Wild Horses

Rolling Stones
Sticky Fingers

Not sure that I can add any insight on this song whatsoever. I enjoy the debaucherous nature of the early Rolling Stones. This, though, I don't care for much. Sure, I guess it's a well-written and well-performed song with lots of sentiment, but it has been co-opted. This may as well be "Natural Woman" used for selling jeans. There is no edge in this track.

If I recall correctly, there was a slightly more modern cover of this by Mazzy Star. More modern in that it was the 80s. That one was sung by a female. The sentiment in this song is probably a better fit for a female than for Mick Jagger's libidinous self. Just sayin'.

Since I can't really expound on this track, I'm gonna go all Lynne Truss on you. The plural of CD is CDs, not CD's. Likewise if, as above, you have to refer to a decade as a number, please do so without the apostrophe. the 80's did not exist, but the 80s did. Thanks!

Kiss Me, Son of God

They Might Be Giants
Then-The Earlier Years

Another acronym friendly band! If I'm not mistaken, this is from their Dial-A-Song service, as this two disc set was littered with them. That, and the track is listed as [alternate version] from freedb, and no one ever screws that up.

Mmmmmm, the goodness of the accordion. Nothing says "serious band" like accordion. Between that and their voices, it's amazing this ever got out of the bedroom. I'll tell you the reason it did--storytelling. Each track, when the Johns are on their game, is a little, and most importantly, complete story. Oops, the song is over.

Not that this is of any consequence, but then neither is this blog, but I came to TMBG by way of MTV and the video for Istanbul (Not Constantinople). Therefore, Flood was the first album I was ever acquainted with. Which, in cosmic coincidence, is the poster on the bedroom wall of one of my guilty TV pleasures at the time-Clarissa Explains It All. Why I am not married to the former Clarissa Darling right now I cannot figure out. It was meant to be!

Back into pseudo-reality, I owned this two disc set almost since it came out, but I never really cared for it too much. Before, when I owned the two albums individually, I would listen to Lincoln regularly. Since, not so much. I think that the Dial-A-Songs were too much to wade through every time you popped a disc in. Let that be a lesson to all of you re-releasers who stock new versions with bonus tracks out the wazoo out there--I'll buy your new version, but dammit I won't listen to it very much. That'll show you, won't it? Whoops, gotta go, some alternate Pavement take just popped up from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.

Dog On Wheels

Belle & Sebastian
Dog On Wheels EP

Ah, Belle & Sebastian. The twee-est of the twee. This track is a little more somber than the rest of the tracks at the time, which is around the release of If You're Feeling Sinister. This track stands out for the awe inspiring use of trumpet as lead melody instrument. Otherwise, it's a fairly simple track emphasizing soft drumming and lightly strummed guitars. Go figure-lightly strummed guitars from B&S.

In the end, there is not much to this track. The lyrical content is non-existent, pretty much seems like pining for a childhood toy. I guess it could be an homage to Citizen Kane, but I doubt it. Although B&S is a band that has had no compunction about releasing multiple singles, this is one of those songs which was rightly left off any album. In the end, give me your upbeat and fun tracks, like Legal Man. This is just a waste of so many talented people. Besides, there's no Isobel, and that's just criminal for this era of B&S.

It Would Be Cooler If You Did

Quicksand
Manic Compression

Haven't heard this album in over a decade I think. This album always seemed to be a poor copy of their initial release, Slip. The first thing I notice on this track is the way to high mix on the bass guit. The fact that the bass is doing nothing other than playing eighth notes doesn't help.

Ooh, two and a half minutes in, there's a change! Now we are so proto-emo, it's crazy. I had forgotten a lot about this song, but as soon as it came up on the MM, listed at 6 1/2 minutes, I knew I was in for a heart-felt treat. Or, at least as heart felt as you can get when Island is trying to get you to sell albums. Walter Schreifels (sp?) must have been reevaluating his post-Gorilla Biscuits/ post-hardcore days after recording this track.

Bonus! The song actually ends at 5 minutes, then we go into a radio unfriendly feedback session. Ooh, that sounds like a racecar! "Are we rolling?" You're damn right we are! Maybe this is where World's Fastest Car got its genesis. Given how bad Rival Schools was, it's probably good that band never released anything. Unless it was the same band, just renamed. Then I would feel like an idiot.

Well, the track's over now, and I hope not to hear it again for a very long time.

Cherries/S.R.P.

Brendan Benson
One Mississippi

God, I love this album. For those keeping score at home, this is from the Virgin Release, not the Star Time International re-release. Yeah, I know I'm getting indier-than-thou on you (is that possible on a major label release?), but I will toot my own horn. I knew how good he was before you did, before Jack White took him on, before Saturn used his music in a commercial. Actually, Bert did, and he filled me in, but that's beside the point. For a time, whenever I saw this in a used bin (usually for less than a dollar), I would buy it and give it to someone, hoping he or (more likely) she would catch on. No one ever really did. Virgin dropped Brendan, and it was 6 years before he would release commercial ready songs again.

When I worked in a record store, we played this album into the ground. If it had been vinyl, the promo copy would have been smooth. Of course, it never translated into sales, but we tried. Actually, we just took the numerous promotional copies home for ourselves, as our manager forbade playing it anymore, but dammit, I enjoyed it.

Cherries here is the closing track. After a couple minutes of silence, the real finisher pops up. Genuine hidden track people! Now annoying for taking up extra space on my hard drive, but how were they to know a decade ago that CDs would never last? Cherries starts off softly picking a R.E.M. guitar lick. Well, it does. Something off of Murmur, If I remember correctly. Anyway, the comparison is shed rather quickly and the song dives into what had already become routine subject matter for Mr. Benson--the odd girl with whom he is in love. My favorite couplet describe bringing her home to meet mom and dad, but being wary because she may either smile or spit on them. You stay classy, Detroit ladies.

S.R.P. refers to Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, the hidden track that all musicians loved to surprise you with at the end. As with most hidden tracks at the time, this song is a departure from the rest of the album. But, unlike, say, Endless Nameless, where the track is an infuriating mess of noise and half-thought out ideas, SRP is a bluegrass romp that namechecks my home state. Now, I've never even seen a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, but I'm sure it's delicious. SRP is, I believe, sung by Benson's muse of the time, one Miss Emma J. It's a fine closer, but come on, do I need a further minute of silence after the track as well? Boooooooo.

I guess today's lesson is that hidden, album ending tracks are a bane of existence for someone who just wants to dump his CDs in the computer and can't be bothered figuring out how to edit down the tracks. That, and I knew BB was awesome before you did, and I can sleep better because of it.

Re-Enact the Crime

Unwound
The Future of What

At least they didn't misspell their own name on the spine of this disc.
After a few days off for bizness and general laziness, I'm back with more fun.

Unwound always had, to me at least, a reputation of being a difficult band. Perhaps this stemmed from them being oddly miscast from the start. The story goes like this: Sonic Youth comes along, does their thing; Fugazi comes next, are misinterpreted as "new Sonic Youth" before music critics get a clue; Unwound shows up on scene, are first called "new Sonic Youth", then, as they release more albums, are called perfect mashup of Fugazi and Sonic Youth; Sonic Youth comparisons go away when Blonde Redhead start releasing discs. Being miscast from the start, the band, which apparently was never really into the whole idea of being accessible, became notoriously prickly. My closest thing to an anecdote I can offer is this- Hit It Or Quit It, one of the great 'zines of the Indie Revolution (such as it was), wanted to interview the band. Unwound agreed to answer questions by fax, and did so exclusively with non-sequitors and crude (but not rude) drawings. Poor Jessica Hopper could not get a straight answer. This is as accessible as they got. As much as any band ever, Unwound just wanted their music to speak for itself.

All of which begs the question-- why? Sure, they eventually grew into releasing great albums (Leaves Turn... and Repetition come to mind), but early releases were hit and miss. This track qualifies as a miss. Hell, most of The Future of What is so bland, it could be unassuming background music at the punk rock Gap. It could be my fault as a listener, of course. This was never an album that got much play. But, in my defense, when you collect music, it's hard to give something initially bland a second try. You could interpret this project as a series of second chances. As such, this song has failed.

Crawl Away

Lambchop
Thriller

The slow song on Thriller, my favorite Lambchop release. To me, this would better fit on Hank, but I digress. Lambchop has two speeds I really like. Slow and elegiac, like this track. Full of swells, backup vocals and clear attenuation of all of the instruments on the track. Then there is the style used on Your Fucking Sunny Day-another track on this album. Upbeat and messy to the point of falling apart. Also, plenty of cursing, especially in such an offhand manner, i.e. not just used to shock puritans, makes the teen in me giggle.

Lambchop is the band I'd most like to see live at this point of my life. Unfortunately, they are probably the least likely to tour. Having 10-14 members in rotation tends to do that. I've always liked the idea of a stage full of people, cramped for space, trying to play their music. I can't imagine the setup Lambchop uses. Even if it is not true within the group, Kurt Wagner definitely seems like the group's official leader. I envision him in the center of the stage, possibly sitting down, with a white stage light centered on his seat while the rest of his bandmates toil in darkness. At least, that's how I'd do it if I were him.

Has there ever been a more successful band names after a hand puppet? Probably, but that's research I'm not willing to undertake. The better question is-has there ever been a better band that plays country music while having double-digit membership not all based in the same city named after a hand puppet? I'm going to go ahead and say no.