Archive for the Uncategorized category
Ladyfuzz
by teabog on April 3rd, 2007
Ladyfuzz
“Bouncy Ball” (From the album Kerfuffle)
This would probably have been my guitar rock album of 2006 if I had heard if before the year ended. That’s because it’s pretty much just guitar rock—80s twinged, hints of pop—and it’s really good.
Back to that “80s twinged” business; the temptation is to liken Ladyfuzz to throwback acts like Bloc Party, but that comparison really doesn’t work. They a female singer, for one. And they have talent, for another. And most importantly, they seem to actually value their music over their image, and they do a much better job of sounding like something that’s genuinely from 80s rather than something that’s been overproduced to the point where it has a glossy sheen and smells like magazine paper. Ladyfuzz still go for the pop production, but it doesn’t rob them of their edge. They are still, at their heart, rock musicians.
Kerfuffle’s supposedly gotten a fair amount of air and radioplay in the UK, but I can’t find a review of it on any major UK site. I don’t remember having ever seen them on a major blog, but they must have been otherwise I wouldn’t have ever heard of them. Anyhow, if this album is ever released in the US and if it ever gets any press, it’ll be huge.
The Official website of Ladyfuzz
Myspace
Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys
by teabog on April 1st, 2007
Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys”
“Spanish Dagger” (From the album Turntable Matinee)
If you go on youtube and search the word “commercial” along with any year from the 80s to the present day you’ll find one or two users who have posted 10-20-minute long strings of ads from that time period. Try it out; old commercials are really entertaining, especially if you’ve got people over who you want to leave and you can get the internet on your TV through your Wii.
I was going through commercials from the early nineties the other day, after having worked my way up through the 80s, and I was amazed at the strange design phases the commercials went through, and especially how uniformly ever major advertiser would change the feel of their ad campaigns from year to year. In 1994, that feel was entirely 50s throwback, urban but still Caucasian, with clean cityscapes and non-threatening jazz music.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boy are in the same vein as the commercials of 1994: non-threatening, Causcasianized 50s throwback (nevermind that Sandy appears to be Hispanic, I’m talking about the feel of the music). The color scheme and mode of dress are the same as they were in 1954, but everything’s been cleaned up and watered down for contemporary consumption.
The strange thing is that this watered-down sound comes across so earnest. It doesn’t feel strangled or antiseptic. You could almost believe this is how guitar rock actually sounded back then, if you didn’t know better.
The Official website of Big Sandy
Bent Bolt and the Nuts “Mechanical Man
by teabog on March 25th, 2007
Bent Bold and the Nuts
“Mechanical Man”
I picked this one off the WFMU blog awhile back, but I heard of it long before then. It was reference a whole bunch in 1999, when wacky rock critics were busy making their lists of the top XXX Worst songs of the millennium (which, oddly enough, were all recorded after 1950…). Anyhow, nearly all of those songs were easily downloadable on Napster and included some camp classics like “Pac Man Fever” and “Disco Duck,” both of which made their way into several of mix CDs.
Some of those songs—those that had never been released on a Dr. Demento Compliation–seemed lost to history, released only once on 45 RPM by novelty acts that wound up selling their recording equipment for heroine.
For the life of me, I can’t remember any of those songs. I should have written them down. But I know them when I see them. Inexplicably, Negativland’s (now easily found) “Car Bomb” was one of them. And another one was this little ditty by Bent Bolt and the Nuts.
I love this song, and not for any campy or perverse reasons. I think it’s good. It’s messed up—it completely and totally fucked, actually, but I’ll be damned if it hasn’t aged well.
Marine Stern “Grapefruit”
by teabog on February 25th, 2007
Marnie Stern
“Grapefruit” (From “In Advance of the Broken Arm”)
Now this is just something else. Off the hook. Off the fucking hook.
When I first heard it I said it reminded me of Hella if Hella were good and had a lady singer. Turns out, the drummer from Hella actually recorded the album. All the rest of the instruments are played by one single woman, though, and that woman can thrash.
The technical skill displayed by Stern is mindboggling, but even more impressive is the fact that she is able to write and record concise and interesting songs that don’t get weighed down by their own technicality. That’s what I mean when I said that she’d be what Hella was like if Hella were good—it’s not that Hella can’t play their instruments, it’s just that they take their technical proficiency to such an extreme that the bulk of their musical output is unlistenable (see also Steve Vai and Phish).
The music is pretty hard but well shy of metal. The song structure, like I said before, is amazingly tight, but it really doesn’t fit into any generic archetype that allows for easy comparison. She kinda sounds like the girl from Deerhoof on the this song. Uhh…I got nothing else to say.
Marnie’s myspace, with streaming songs.
Fox “S-s-single Bed”
by teabog on February 5th, 2007
Fox
S-s-single Bed
I downloaded this off of Fluxblog ages ago, and once I got past the fact that it was unapologetically a piece of sleazy 70’s dance music—free from any sign of kitsch or self-awareness—it became my campy anthem of the summer.
The key word is “camp,” not “kitsch.” I’ve read Susan Sontag’s half-coherent essay that tries to differentiate the two terms, and even though I found it very interesting I thought it was way too prolix and muddied the terms more than they needed to be. To little old simplistic me, the difference between the two terms is that “campy” things are good in spite of being campy, while kitschy things are only good within the context of being kitsch. Lime green stretch pants were never good, until they were worn by self-aware people who embraced and appropriated their badness to a new end. Campy things are good things that, for whatever reason, are grouped in with bad things. The films of John Waters and Douglas Sirk, for example, or the music of Girls Aloud or Annie.
Back to this song…this song is one that you probably shouldn’t play in front of new company for fear of getting dirty looks. When you first listen to it, it just feels wrong, like you’re listening to something you should hate. But then you start to realize how goddamn sexy it is, how it’s not the coked-out, superificial disco fantasies of some dumb cunt that you’re listening to, nor is it a run-of-the-mill 70’s psychedelic track. Instead, the blending of the two styles yields something that’s much filthier than you would expect, something that maintains its playfulness in spite of its sexiness. The end result is sounds like a blend of Cyndi Lauper, Goldfrapp, and Blondie, and I like it a whole bunch.
Buy Fox’s debut album at Amazon
Escort “Starlight”
by teabog on January 29th, 2007
Escort
“Starlight”
I don’t remember where I got this, as I downloaded it long before I ever bothered to listen to it. From what I’ve been able to piece together since actually playing the track and realizing that Escort rocks, here’s what I found out:
Escort are a modern day band that play music that your parents will fucking swear came out in the 70s. They are mostly white people and they use entirely live instrumentation, no samples. They have no official album aside from a vinyl EP with a bunch of remixes that you’ll only be interested in if you’re a DJ.
As for the track itself, it’s pure disco, but it’s disco in a good way. Like, disco that’s made to listen to first and dance to second. Disco that’s been written by Quincy Jones. Actually, it sounds an awful lot like a throwaway track recorded during the sessions Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall,” with only Michael’s backup singers on it.
Disco
Sounds like: Early Michael Jackson, only with different singers.