Late night Hump Day rawk out continues unabated:
(h/t)
music
Afro-Punk (AKA The Story of My Life)
Pretty much sums up my adolescence/early adulthood/current state of existence (I’m so old I remember when being black and playing rock/punk/metal was a radical, disruptive act, etc):
Bonus: Interview w/ James Spooner, director of Afro-Punk: The Movie:
Also, too: Live performances (because AGGRO):
Concert of the Day: Straight Outta CBGB’s
Bad Brains live at CBGB 1982:
Happy Day-After-MBV-Day (Hmm — Must Polish My Shoes…)
Classic My Bloody Valentine to whet your appetite:
Head on over to mybloodyvalentine.org to grab MBV, the LOOOOOOONG-awaited (and oft-delayed) follow-up to 1991’s seminal shoegazer classic, Loveless (assuming you haven’t already been sated, natch).
All the girls at this party are into drama and Ginsberg and lemon lime Bacardi
In lieu of substantive new content (busy busy bastard, etc), here is matttbastard’s top-ten-of-the-moment list, culled from my ever-expanding Bandcamp Discoveries board on Pinterest (yes, Pinterest — shaddap):
1. Hookworms – ‘Form & Function’ (forthcoming limited edition split 7″ w/ Kogumaza on Gringo Records, released 05.28.2012) – Overflowing with naked swagger & ragged analog glory, these droned-out psych rockers from Leeds have reportedly turned on Paisley Underground icon Julian Cope.
2. Japandroids – ”The House That Heaven Built’ (forthcoming limited edition 7″ – Polyvinyl) – New 7″ single from No Fun City’s favourite sons — Springsteen meets Westerberg in this fine, fist-pumping example of totally anthemic catnip for aging Gen-X college rock geeks (*kaff*).
3. New Coke – ‘He Got Stabbed in the Throat’ (from the He Got Stabbed in the Throat 7″ EP, self-released 04/03/12 [distributed by Slovenly]) – Catchy like the clap, only infinitely more pleasant (er, so I hear). RIYL Les Savy Fav & music that generally doesn’t lick the donkey bag.
4. Single Mothers, ‘Hell (Is My Backup Plan)’ (from S/T 7″ EP on Secret Voices/DeathwishINC, (re)released April 2012) – Local buzz band ends up putting out the debut release on Touche Amore’s new vanity label. ‘H(IMBP)’ = the most pitch-perfect encapsulation of London, Ontario lifer ennui since the Demics dropped ‘New York City’ back in the proverbial day.
5. Ava Luna – ‘Stages’ (from debut LP Ice Level on Infinite Best Recordings, released 02.28.2012) – Krautrock finds its soul by setting up shop in Brooklyn.
6. Birds in Row – ‘Die, Testosterone, Die’ (from Collected on Throatruiner/Vitriol, released 04.12.2012 – France has seen a wave of vital, leftfield contemporary hardcore acts; Birds in Row is riding the crest.
7. Lüger – ‘Dracula’s chauffeur wants more’ (from Concrete Light on Giradiscos/Marxophone, released 06/13/2011) – I know next-to nothing re: these kosmik space-rockin’ Spaniards, apart from two key data points: 1. They totally rock. & 2. They totally rock a superfluous umlaut.
And that’s sexy (or sëxy, if you prefer).
8. Nude Beach – ‘Some Kinda Love’ (from II on , released 03/06/2012) – Fantastic new full-length from Brooklyn’s favourite “cheeky bunch of power-pop assassins” (as per Spin). Think Brinsley Schwarz doing an extended set at the Stone Pony with key members of the ‘E’ Street Band sitting in — IOW, damn right yr dad loves it.
9. The Bats Pajamas – ‘Sarai’ (from the Totally EP, self-released 04.13.2012) – These cleverer-than-thou T-Dot garage-rawkers are truly the tree’s knees [sic].
10. The Greys – ‘Bettin’ I Don’t Gamble’ (from the Black EP, self-released 04.20.2012) One mic, live-off-the-basement-floor blues so raw it makes Fort McMurray moonshine taste like Kool-Aid.
Bonus: Titus Andronicus – ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours!’ (from Rebel on the Underground: A Tribute to X-Ray Spex on Permanent Wave Records, released 04.12.2012) – Standout track from the new X-Ray Spex tribute comp (because Poly fucking Styrene).
RIP MCA aka Adam Yauch (and RIP the Beastie Boys)
The Beastie Boys turned curiosity into a form of art. They wanted to know more about what was around them and learn everything they could about what wasn’t. Forget about Kurt Cobain for a second: For kids like me, the Beastie Boys invented the 90s. Technology was changing fast and the world was shrinking rapidly. Between their music and label/magazine Grand Royal, the Beasties showed how to reach out and scoop up all the best parts. New York hip-hop and punk rock, Japanese pop, Jamaican dub– all of it could be gathered and re-assembled into something that reflected who you were. This sort of cultural mixing was nothing new, but the Beastie Boys brought it to the mainstream. They were ambassadors, but their hipness didn’t look down on anybody. It felt inclusive.
Related: Forrest Wickman on Adam Yauch’s legacy as successful NYC indie film mogul; Jen Doll on how, for her generational cohort, the Beasties provided “a form of musical New York PR—at least, a “PR” based in coolness, a new style of music, a new form of flouting the rules, a new kind of joy and energy.”
Flashback: NY Mag’s outstanding oral history of the Beastie Boys.
Update: Sarah Seltzer notes how Yauch and the Beasties addressed, renounced, and tried to make amends for their infamously regressive past:
When I think about the Beasties, I think first about the rebellious, obnoxious kids who first became famous. Then I inevitably remember their ability to move forward way past that phase, with rhymes like this one from MCA in the song “Sure Shot”: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue/ The disrespect to women has got to be through/ To all the mothers and sisters and wives and friends/ I want to offer my love and respect to the end.
They also changed their offensive lyrics in concert and began to chastise regressive content in music — even their own.
[…]
As Ana Carey wrote last year, the Beasties prove that “being a sexist idiot in your youth … doesn’t mean that you can’t grow up and learn something.”
I’m a goddamn princess with my high heels on.
by matttbastard
Phone Joan = matttbastard’s new musical crush object. Think PJ Harvey squatting in Christania with Josh Homme, a small library of Victorian ghost stories and a milk crate of Blue Cheer vinyl.
Or, in lieu of thinking, just rock the fuck out (with your cock out or otherwise).
Obligatory ‘John Mayer is a Dick’ Post
RIP Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson
by matttbastard
The last two childhood icons who died in close proximity to each other were Johnny Cash and John Ritter, nearly 6 years past (yes, it really has been that long since the Man in Black went to meet his beloved wife and his beloved maker–assuming one believes in romantic metaphysics, to say nothing of an afterlife period).
Now, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, the 70s pin-up queen and the King of Pop, are gone, too.
(Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
At the forefront of Fawcett’s artistic legacy (so much more than two-dimensional ubiquity and so-called ‘jiggle TV’) is The Burning Bed, the acclaimed 1984 TV movie starring Fawcett (and directed by Robert Greenwald, now of Brave New Films) that, as Hil rightly notes, “had an enormous effect of bringing the discussion of domestic violence into the mainstream.” Fawcett’s last days were spent living with cancer in a manner that was dignified and quietly understated, even if there were some who violated her privacy with requisite post-Gawker Stalker voyeurism. It is a testament to her character that Fawcett had more than enough strength left to defiantly reject (and, later, reappropriate on her own terms) the public’s asserted right to claim collective ownership of her life (and death), regardless of ‘celebrity’ status.
As for Jackson, he spent the past two decades as the punchline to an overutilized joke that really, really isn’t at all funny (and will likely spend the next few days as posthumous fodder for gossip-mongers using his still-warm body as fertilizer to sprout page views and newsstand sales). So I hope you will all excuse me if I instead choose to look back at Michael Jackson as he was before the tabloids claimed him as their patron saint, before the ugly truth eventually became stranger than even the most gonzo fiction.
Because if you’re my age and this:
doesn’t make you remember what it felt like to wear one glove to school for the first time; to lobby your parents in vocal futility for one of those red leather jackets that were just so fucking cool; to keep trying to perfect the Moonwalk in the vain hope of one day nailing it the way MJ did at Motown 25, well, you fall into that all-too-overpopulated category of hollow fucks with no goddamn soul worth saving.
And if this:
doesn’t make you get the fuck up right now and shake your ass, you’d better check your fucking pulse.
RIP Lux Interior 1948-2009
by matttbastard
Fuck:
“It’s a little bit like asking a junkie how he’s been able to keep on dope all these years,” Interior told The Times some years ago. “It’s just so much fun. You pull in to one town and people scream, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ And you go to a bar and have a great rock ‘n’ roll show and go to the next town and people scream, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.’ It’s hard to walk away from all that.”
Walk on home, boy (in red pumps, of course).
bastard.logic 