Lingering Musings (Pains of Being Pure At Heart~ "LollaGagger") + Life + Frustrations

I was just bouncing around the internet, seeking any enlightening tid-bits on the Pains of Being Pure At Heart that might aid in my likely-inevitable scrawl about their latest album, Belong, when I (re-)came-upon this link, from the Guardian (UK):

Is There a Link Between Indie-Music and Gnosticism?

~A bit old by internet-standards, I know, (how dare I?) but, still a valuable read if you'd missed it... -"Gnosticism would work with arguments that elitist knowledge of arcane bands confer "cultural capital."" --And, read about this "shoegaze revivalist" group's ^connection to Puritanism... hmmm...

Compliments of Mikel O.D. (of Most People Are DJs), a video of Pains - as a prompt for their show, August 3rd, at the Crofoot~ with: Legendary Creatures, Computer Perfection, Gardens and Villa, Craft Spells, Noman, K.I.D.S., Golden, Lauren Deming, Water Cops and Passalacqua...

~

Now, I promise this will be my last bit of mild marveling over Keith Richards' autobiography (Life). It's just that it proved to be a lot more insightful than I'd anticipated. I was never a Stones' man. I loved my own subjective selections, from "Paint It Black," to "Mother's Little Helper," "19th Nervous Breakdown" to "2000 Man" (<-thank you Bottle Rocket), even to "the Singer, Not The Song..." ...I was always into their songs, but never truly their albums or their big hits, even.

Now, through Richards' words, I'm learning. ..

But I'm also applying it to my own perspective of the general experience of a-life-through-music.

"They weren't reacting to the music," he wrote of their first big crowds of 1,000+ through their first UK tour in 1963... "The audiences didn't know any different because they couldn't hear us." (We've heard that argument before, justifying the Beatles' eventual end-of-touring. But Richards reaches a notable eloquency, for me, when he says): "What they were reacting to was being in this enclosed space with us, this illusion... ...the music might be the trigger, but the bullet--nobody knows what that is-- Usually it was harmless, for them, though not always for us."

Earlier, when Richards recalls the group making their first record, the gravity of it, "Shit, we're makin a record!" he admits that there "was also a sense of doom. 'Oh my god! - If the single makes it, then we've got two years and that's it! Then what are we gonna do? Because nobody lasted! Your shelf life in those days, and a lot even now, was basically two-and-a-half years. And, apart from Elvis, nobody had proved that wrong..." (That's 1963).

Is it not surreal to imagine such insecure thoughts from someone whose has been seen as, for so long, an ostensible Music God? (er, or...devil?)

It's sobering to realize that that nervous perception of having such a small window of opportunity, such a short shelf life in the "music biz" ...is already 50 years old! Reading Richards recounting of how the Stones were initially marketed in a similar fashion (matching suits) as the Beatles, reminds me of the machine that churned behind the music, -the Marketers that helped create the beastly tide of screaming, privileged teenagers, comparatively more flush with disposable income with which to flutter upon record stores and concert tickets, for the bands with the sensational posters.

But the Internet has erased shelves... or at least redefined "shelf life." There's no marketing machine behind a band, and quite often there's no Label for which to jump through hoops. The next generation of laptop-bolstered DIY-musicians can Phoenixify themselves every other year, if they please, regardless of how many of their current bands fall apart. You're not trying to sell a single, you're just making the music because... because.

Just start another band, another solo-project - and put the songs up on the internet and someone will hear them. There's no one-single or one-band to push anymore, for a musician on the make... Because the hope, now, is that the utter chaos of fleeting, inane blogs can breed devastating democracy.

But that may only be small solice.

Strange Days...
A blogger can say - 'hey, check out this MP3 from ___-- they sound like ___ meets ___ with a dash of ___. They're cutting edge because they take ___ and mix it with ___ and inflect it with ___.' The hope...is that you choose, now, whether to believe the mad ramblings of one solitary blogger. That blogger might actually have found the next big thing - or he might be full of hot air.

Alright... too much coffee.
More later, listeners...
~

In the meantime:
the Frustrations (see below) are playing a show, July 18,- at the Lager House to kick-off a tour.
They'll be joined by the Wiccans who have a new LP, Skullduggery and Kommie Kilpatrick (who have a new cassette).

Spotify and other jittery thoughts... (and music)

What are you listening to, right now?
Everything.

Ease of access! Ease of access! We won't know what to do with ourselves... My mind is already huffing from having spent the day doing laps, uncertain about what to pay attention-to-next...

Welcome to Computer World, everyone. Netflix has offered a streaming-only service. Google+ wants you to have a duplicated Facebook experience (only better?), not to mention that "the most popular web site on earth" also wants you to upload all your personal music into its cavernous digital innards so that you can listen on your iPhone...

Now, we have the alluring beast known as Spotify. It just recently "landed" on our shores from Europe and it's quickly buddied up with Facebook. This is already a supplanting of the service that was initially coaxing you to listen to music off your computer(-device), (i.e. Pandora).

The Swedish music service start-up seems to be covering all its bases as it lurches its revolutionizing utilities upon our shores, having secured a contract with Virgin so you can get to your spotify through your cable television and telephone lines --should you so need--

Having all this music so readily available through legit services like Spotify and big labels like Virgin, could, potentially, cut down on music piracy.

Surf's up...

Superchunk - Learned to Surf from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Hangin ten on the future wave.

(Oh, and that's right - Superchunk put up a new video^ on the internet. An old favorite of mine (the band that is, -this is still quite a new song^). Seeing them jump around with such energy and sound so vigorous is inspiring. I'd highly recommend this memoir ~ Our Noise: the Story of Merge Records)


So anyway... What am I listening to?

This Nashville band that's putting out songs like the world's about to end...
Useless Eaters just put out "Zulu" on Detroit's own GOLD tapes...

Useless Eaters - Telepathic by Gold Tapes

~

Whilst cruising Mr. Lzr's blog (where you can shimmy over to a review of the new Human Eye album), he also reminded me of a band that recently scrolled past ye ol' Satellite radio that hooked my ear...
Shannon and the Clams~

~
Meanwhile - Toro Y Moi (the recently band-ified/formerly-solo-project of Chazwick Bundick) - will be coming to town (Majestic) in mid September. But, until then, you can listen to new song (albeit a cover) "Saturday Love" (via the all powerful Pitchfork). The Freakin Out EP comes out a week before their Detroit show... remain plugged in...

Icons of Summer (Cold Cave...EMA...King Tuff)

Summer is reaching it's steamy, sinewy pique this month... Jonathan Richman once sang about "staying up later, when everything's outside." Varying energies are percolating 'round these parts from different disciples:

-> be they touring bands from mythologized art meccas bringing the stylized wilds and symphonic strange (i.e. cerebral catacomb dwelling doom-popsters Cold Cave are coming through on July 15th--tomorrow--supporting their 2nd LP Cherish the Light Years -from Matador)

- > or be they from the hauntingly alluring noise-pop expositions of "California"-based EMA, who are gracing the Loving Touch next Sunday with a surprise show (at least for as long as "surprised"-feelings last on the internet)

-> or be they the heartening news that the guitar weilding ruler of Brattleboro, Vermont, King Tuff, has chosen the factory-looming alleys and gutters of our own humble, cluttered mix bag of a back yard.

Cold Cave has quite the intriguing back story that one should take the time to mine, via the Quietus online music magazine. (Hard core punk and confrontational no-wave evolves into disarmingly poppy fare unafraid to utilize the exuberance of cheery brass). 7/15 @ the Magic Stick (Detroit)

EMA started bending ears earlier this year with a provacative presentation of sparse to cacophonous explorations of teased, torrential guitar sweeps - unafraid to let the darkness swirl for upwards to 6 minutes, if need be, on her debut LP Past Life Martyred Saints. 7/24 @ Loving Touch (Ferndale)

EMA - California (Official Video) from Souterrain Transmissions on Vimeo.

King Tuff??

Wax Ocean

Swinging jazz music from a full orchestra resonated throughout the library Monday evening.

I'd already been wrung pretty well by yet another characteristically malnourished morning of a lunchless, coffee-slurped skitter up nine mile under raindrops without an umbrella.

The usual rigmarole of a workday and the steady parade of the public understandably leaves anyone, especially the mildly sleep-deprived, a bit worn at the end of days like these...

But, walking into the library's community room and hearing this music, thrumming from a full orchestra, it put the warm and fuzzy all about me and it, -as the late Gil Scott Heron said of of Billie Holiday or Coltrane-, washed my troubles away.

The Bridge Project, an ensemble of trained musicians dedicated to interpreting the works of Michigan jazz composers, churned out the smooth, shuffling grooves, bolstered by the saxophones; a charming sound, the kinda stuff that makes you feel like swiveling.

It reminded me of the allure, the guttural communication, of live music...and being right up in there, next to it. It's easy to forget, sometimes, when you're hoofing around a gleaming, hip little enclave like Ferndale, where it seems, lately, we have live performing musicians coming out of our ears.

I could have camped out at 9 mile and Woodward last weekend and seen eight or so bands in less than three days - and that's with Club Bart being closed. Dutch Pink are making a go of it, now, at Howe's Bayou, with their Sunday stints of day-drinkin' blues and refined/raspy rock n roll.

One should keep their ears and eyes on them - they're working on a new LP. The band has recently been ameliorated with two of the mitten state's most effective 'secret weapon' players - Joel McCune on guitar and Scottie Stone on drums. Should be interesting.

~

Other musical musings:
Sound and Fury, a gnarly minimalist trio with deceptive capabilities to pummel-and-shread, have a new tape of live recordings out (captured from a handful of Detroit venues).

Equally mutated metal urchins as they are noise-embellished surf stompers - Their new cassette Songs to Make ___ To (Algae Tapes) - unfortunately lasted only 20 seconds in my tape player...

"Hi, we're Sound and Fury" singer/guitarist Keith somewhat breathlessly greets an ethereal crowd through my headphones before he slides into a fierce assault upon his own guitar... And then the audio gets all watery, and then it sounds like the Chipmunks are being steamrolled in a greasy garage and I realize...the magnetic tape is coming un-spooled

...which I'm hoping was more the cause of the tape player I chose...

These things happen - welcome (back) to the risks of the Tape Revival - what's old is new...

Red China was a somewhat storied, somewhat sludgy, somewhat sardonic trio that were heavily invested in meandering, noisy aesthetics. Deconstructing traditional song systems, they were a daunting, if not tangy, pill to swallow.

In fact, I've seen them clear some rooms a few times.

Half the time, though, and often in their last few performances (having been reactivated last winter as a quartet), they could coax you in with steady growling riffs and tight rhythems under an eerie sort of croon, nothing any obscuro-digging indie-rocker couldn't get down on...

And now--after three years or so of on-and-off auditory assemblage, their long-rumored LP Wax Ocean is ready for a proper release. July 15 - at "Sparklewood" (Northend Studios on Grand Blvd, Detroit) - with Crappy Future, Scare Bear and Jeecy & the Jungle.

Tree of Life (...that any given thing could reveal...)

"...that any given thing on the face of the earth could reveal the history of all things. One could open a book to any page, or look at a person's hand; one could turn a card, or watch the flight of birds. . . . whatever the thing observed, one could find a connection with his experience of the moment. Actually, it wasn't that those things, in themselves, revealed anything at all; it was just that people, looking at what was occurring around them, could find a means of penetration to the Soul of the World." (Alchemist, p.106)

I admit feeling subconscious quoting a book that's so heavy on God as a guide or mysitcal helper of some kind --in connection to a film I see as being so heavy on questioning (if not, repudiating or even defying) God. Ah well...
~

The Tree of Life affected me, -as I'm sure it affected anyone who saw it (or at least sat through it). For me, likely similar to at least half of you and (opposed to the other half of you), it hit me in a very good way.

Or, maybe I should say, a positively disturbing way. Not Lynch disturbing, not Japanese horror disturbing. More like disturbing (or redistributing) grains of contemplative sand or rustling up the buzzy bees of my brain.

It was, for me, an achingly private or personal experience. I don't even feel I should be recommending it because I like it for my own, hyper-subjective, reasons. I'm not sure if I even connected, (in a traditional filmgoer's sense) with the characters on the screen so much as I connected with the collective experience of human kind.

Right, it's just that kind of a heady movie. This was, originally, going to be a movie about the universe, not about a mid-20th century family in middle-class/middle-America's sleepy suburbs.

I enjoyed how episodic it felt. The jittery cutz, swinging pans and patient tracking shots. It was detached in such a way where you felt you, yourself, were having an out-of-body experience, where the laws of physics melded into the chaos of dreams.

The scope of this film, with its staggering montage on the history of the universe, and the birth of the Earth, made me feel nauteously small, fleeting... in a good way, or at least a way that makes one appreciate the air one breaths when one leaves a theatre in the middle of a summer's day.

I'm quite glad I saw it in a dark theatre, front to back, settling in for it's duration like it was a plane flight with a locked door and a pressurized cabin.

The only downside is, like any flight, there's a whiny baby on it that kicks your seat.

I know Brad Pitt's in it, I know Sean Penn is in it, and I know that the studio wants to lure you into this film by deceptive trailers that paint a very Academy-Award-friendly illusion of a coming-of-age-period-piece of Americana pie...

But, I really don't think much of the mainstream can appreciate this film, (pardon my zealousness)...at least not in the way I did...

In an invigoratingly haunting way, I felt as though I drifted, perceptively, from the film screening live in front from me, and started letting my mind muse over my own life, my own experience, my own view of things and my own memories...

And yet, to still be able to see myself in the rough-housing/naive boys on the screen, startlingly spliced with shots of primordial ooze and supernovas.

It's just wrenching in a way, because I feel how much we've grown away from old fashioned theatre conduct. People chatted as the Big Bang exploded in front of us, or they hmphed out confused noises when they saw a dinosaur...When the screen faded to the credits during my first screening of this film, a baby-boomer-sounding male half-groans in relief and says: "...finally."


Thanks Facebook, I really miss society's inner monologue!

That said - I thought this was a beautiful, and yes, challenging film. In fact, that it even had the courtesy to challenge me, is what I appreciated most.

Or maybe it was what I saw inside of it... The history of me, the history of you, the history of all thought, of all life... Even in the images of the family, the car they drove, or the grass on their lawn. I saw so many things...

Which is what made my current reading of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist that much more stimulating, particularly the passage that opened this post^

I'd like to talk more about it... What'd you think?

More insights from LIFE

...still wrapping up LIFE

It's been one of my very few audio-book experiences and I have to say, this one of any seems fitting - considering Johnny Depp is your narrator.

This insightful chunk is concerning Robert Johnson's brilliant burst of work having given a platform for seminal blues musicians to work upon...

"What I found out about the Blues and music, tracing things back was that nothing came from itself. As great as it is, this is not one stroke of genius..."

This is in the midst of Chapter 3, detailing Mr. Richards' "monastic" dedication through the barely-eked-out days of 1962, studying blues musicians, namely the records of Muddy Waters, as well as the guitar idiosyncrasies of Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed, whereupon he stumbles across a painfully obvious truism that still, somehow, always bares repeating:

"This cat was listening to somebody and it's his variation on the theme. And so you suddenly realize that everybody's connected here. This is not just that he's fantastic and the rest are crap. They're all interconnected. And the further you went back into music and time, and with the Blues, you go back to the '20's, because you're basically going through recorded music. You think: 'Thank God for recording.'

It's the best thing that's happened to us since writing..."

I even woke up this morning, bleary at 5 am and a bit hot n' bothered from having lost our electricity, with Depp's voice softly bellowing through my mind, with the characteristic inflections of Richards. It made me wanna write just as Richards wrote...to write, maybe, just as Depp read...

That's the trip of influence. It's devastatingly pervasive. You see someone else freaking out during their song, on the stage, and it puts a bit of the beast in you, to bring it onto your stage, into your song - you wanna feel that too.

I started dancing because I saw you dancing, that kinda thing...

It reminds me of my interview with Dutch Pink, a few years back, when singer/pianist Dustin Leslie started to follow the zigged and zagged yarns of influence from one decade, one style, one school of musical thought, back and back through time... Throwing his arms up in submission, he presumed everything to be merely a rip off of The Epic of Gilgamesh...

And why not?

Remember how much flack these guys got, when they first arrived? How they were revivalists, or just cribbing other bands' styles? (Look how the Stones started, strictly as a covers band!)

And now, ten years on, bushy tailed bloggers actually tag something as having a "Strokes-y" type sound without blinking a digital eye.

Ah well...
Here's their latest:

~

In a bloggishly un-related side-note, (or at least just out of recognition that this is one artist/album particularly haunting my headphones, as of late), Cass McCombs is hitting the road to prop his well-received gloom folk odyssey Wit's End.

No Michigan date, but still some Great-Lakes-friendly dates, if you're up for a road trip:
07-24 Indianapolis, IN - White Rabbit Cabaret
07-25 Chicago, IL - Schuba's *
07-26 Chicago, IL - Hideout*
07-27 Minneapolis, MN - 7th St Entry

ONE last thing - ... tonight (7/12) at the Loving Touch in Ferndale, is the first of Dave Lawsons' Detroit producer/engineer series via his (and Richie Wohlfiel)'s Tuesdays in the Forest parties.

Still here?

"Rhythm and Blues was the gate..."

Currently reading:














"Totally pointless categorization of something that is the same shit -- it just depends on how much you lay the backbeat down or how flash you play it."

...from - LIFE - Keith Richards...


...Being of the afflicted-classification-quibbling tribe of music-journalists, desperate or deluded or determined as we all are, that line really struck a chord with me.

This has been, as they say, a richly rewarding read, so far... The quote above is snipped from its context, concerning the earliest incarnations of Mick and Keith's musical endeavors, and having to "soften" up terms for "purists..." It was rhythm & blues, ...not quite rock n roll.

More later...

“For many years I slept, on average, twice a week. This means that I have been conscious for at least three lifetimes.”
-Keith Richards

Driftin

Still killing time until I get my laptop back... And, yes, feeling self-conscious about my dependency.

In the meantime:

A band I've been watching for a handful of years now, notably for their blend of Americana to shoegaze - The War On Drugs have a new video (below), an awkward-sounding song title, "Baby Missles," from an equally awkward-sounding album title, "Slave Ambient," (out in mid August on Secretly Canadian). They'll come to Ann Arbor's Blind Pig on 8/25, by the by...

The War on Drugs "Baby Missiles" from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.

~

Also...what were you listening to, 10 years ago? A particularly formative album for me was this schizophrenic blender spew of triphop, turntablism and avant-garde ambient pop that came from Australia - The Avalanches Since I Left You -
This song kinda sums their 2001 LP's surrealist kaleidoscope tendencies - snotty, savvy, charming, off-putting, -it took you through the ringer.

You can read about their eventual re-issuing of said-album from Tiny Mix Tapes.

Or the Retro

Two quick things--
Fucking Awesome Fest-- 8/10 --throughout the Majestic Complex

Información

and...
While you're here - Magnet Magazine is reveling in the recent opening of the 120 Minutes vaults. This was the reservoir from which bright eyed alterna-hipster/proto-Indie-rockers of the early 00's drank in their culture via the fading format of the Music Video. Thus we have the current aristocrats often propped and proselytized by Pitchfork-ian outlets, be they TV On The Radio, Beck, or the Flaming Lips. 120 Minutes, proper, started in 1986! - featuring acts like They Might Be Giants, Dead Milkmen, or Sonic Youth...or featuring special guest hosts like Robert Smith, Joey Ramone or Robyn Hitchcock.

Here's the vault link - dig into your formative years -
And, hopefully unlike me, you wont' come out realizing how there's a disconcerting amount of your old classics that wound up being coopted for car commercials... (see below, a trio snipped from Feb. 23 2003's episode).

~

Do you realize ? - The Flaming Lips by leiloute

The Spell That I've Been Under

I'm having a day off today... and yet, still writing.

This, even, with a dead laptop. I've hijacked mom's computer for this brief musing, though I'll use this to assure you my entries will come, as the Voidoids once said of love, -in spurts.

I dug out a mix I'd made about a month ago to spur myself into a summer mood. Track 18 came on and it took me 25-seconds or so to remember what it was--delighted, eventually, was I, to realize it was a Detroit band: Computer Perfection.



Computer Perfection - All I Know and All I Really Need to Know by DC/Milo

While I drove around seeking fresh fruit and iced-coffee, the song drew it's smooth dreamy grooves throughout my grey-bland ovoid Chevy, inciting a strange and tranquil energy in me. Somehow, albeit likely aided by the delicate pouring of a summer sunrise, made the setting of my sublime cruise, (downtown Royal Oak), seem agreeable.

Simple sequenced beats set a steady shimmy, a bass merely shuffles along with you as synthesizers occasionally gurgle and trill between a reverberant coo like a relaxed, meditative heartbeat. The guitar, lightly fuzzed, cycles through three descending notes under the intertwining male/female vocals that swirl like a lullaby.

Can you forgive the spell that I've been under? (...that I'm under?)
~

My morning drive continues... Track 19 is "Summer Moon" by the Raveonettes, from their latest, Raven in the Grave and, if I can pat myself on the back in terms of track list arrangement, it's the perfect chaser to Computer Perfection's entry. It sustains the dreamy/haunting rounding waltz, similarly fuzzed and similarly mesmeric, and achieving a nostalgic 60's pop flavor beautifully twisted by flares of surrealist space rock.

Plus, it gets me misty when it sings about "this perfect thing is dying..."

I haven't meant to be maudlin - but I'm not about to let myself go cold in this age of the Internet. I'm not about to not let my feelings out, especially when they get roused by the splendor of a song, or a piece of music.

I'm enveloped, almost in a vice, of incorrigible wonder... to where music goes, where music writing goes, in an age of complete connection, persistent plugged-in-ness.

'Tis time I evolve, I presume. Even the Pope is using an iPad these days. But it seems as though we need to be in a state of preparedness not to adapt to the current thing, (doesn't Twitter seem quaint now?), but whatever the next mode, manner, medium of telecommunoCraziness might be... Jesus, I've just merely forgotten the mild transcendence you can find in going on extended drives-- -with music. I just wanna preserve that...
~

Already in a state of dangerous pondering, Track 20 comes on: The Fleet Foxes' "Helplessness Blues"

I'm not any died in the wool fan of this band. I wasn't on the bus when their first album came out and I suppose I always peered at them with a bit of trepidation. But this song may have sluiced the kool-aid down my throat.

Even so, the rest of the album hasn't really sufficiently stirred me yet, at least not to the extent of this song



Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues by subpop
-the title track of the much ballyhooed 2nd LP from the Seattle Americana art rockers.

It just felt good to remember the evocative power of music. To feel like you're drifting away on a melody, or to have that "own personal soundtrack" feeling transmogrify the live scenery around you as you travel, as you sit, as you think, as you breath... as you groove.

Anyway-- with a broken laptop that leaves me potentially updating only sporadically, this is a fine enough sign off for now...

"...after some thinking I'd say I'd rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.... but I don't, I don't, know what that will be...
I'll get back to you some day.... soon, you will see...."
~

Other things catching my eye:
One of my favorite online music magazines (if that counts for anything), The Quietus, ranks it's 50 favorite albums of 2011, so far. You can find out about Death Grips - Alexander Tucker and hopefully visit and revisit PJ Harvey's Let England Shake (their # 1 choice). ---Though I definitely wouldn't put some of their choices (Wild Beasts? Cold Cave?) necessarily as high...not to get bloggy on you.

While you're here, how about some kind of digital fist pump for this quote:
"The great truth facing the U.S. is not that we lack solutions to our problems but that our political system seems unable to do anything..."

**Coming from author Fareed Zakaria's Time column - "It's all Greek to U.S."

**Pitchfork, meanwhile, posted a column regarding how the internet can stunt listener growth... ...interesting: Learn as a Listener, via The Out Door
~
~~

KING CLAUDIUS: And can you, by no drift of circumstance get from him why he puts on this confusion, grating so harshly all his days of quiet, with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ: He does confess he feels himself distracted; but from what cause he will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN: Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, but, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, when we would bring him on to some confession of his true state.

~

"I wish thoughts would come in music"
-Beachwood Sparks

A single note, hanging there, unwavering

In the time elapsed since my last viewing of this film, what is it now--five years?, I've written hundreds of album reviews.

And that part of me, the romantic listener, the deluded dreamer, was startlingly galvanized from this brief monologue.

Goosebumps.

Wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, make sure you give yourself a sonic sojourn; stop and lose yourself in a piece of music.