Music Review: the EP Double Secret Edition

The difference between an EP (Extended Play) and an LP (Long Play, or what we call an album) is primarily economic, EP's are cheaper. Back when all records were on vinyl, there was also physical difference: the former was generally shorter and smaller than the latter. Now that everything's digital, the difference is more subtle. The fourth Led Zeppelin album, comprising 8 tracks, costs at least $15 on CD, depending on where you shop. The Raveonettes EP, Whip it On, also comprising 8 tracks, cost me $7.99 at Border's. The idea is that albums, being the premier unit of musical product, put a great deal of money into their production, and thus demand a higher return, whereas EP's, generally functioning as musical advertisements for up-and-coming bands, cost less to make and package. As certain people like their music with as little hype as possible, EP's can be the more interesting buy.

As part of my shameful giving-in to RIAA in October (don't worry, I've climbed back on the wagon. Everything else I buy will be independent releases, until the beast backs down. I swear), I bought two EP's from the cusp of the New Rock scene: that of the aforementioned Raveonettes, and the eponymous release by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Herein I shall review them both:


Whip It On by the Raveonettes has an interesting gimmick: all songs are deliberately under three minutes, using three chords, and recorded in B Flat Minor. While the first two restrictions are not that interesting, the last one did catch my fancy. A great many bands, especially punk bands, have ridden the three-chord-three-minute wagon to utter forgettableness. It basically means you don't really wanna bother learning to play, either out of artistic obstinance or sheer laziness. But to specifically record everything in the same key, and as obtuse a key as B Flat Minor, is suggestive of something else: the desire to create a continuous mood, examining a sound from many sides, like the facets of a diamond. I love this disc, but I can only listen to it at certain times, and in certain moods. It is the perfect CD for driving at night, the tunes are all somber yet fast, and cool as pavement in January. On the rare occasions when I find myself on the DC Beltway after dark, this is the bad boy I want with me. It's become a niche CD, which are usually your favorites.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs only has 5 tracks, and cost me two dollars more (you figure it out). But it's the more impressive of the two. The Spin-telligensia have blown this group up to be THE punk band of the new millenium, and for once they've been right about something other than their own hipness. The songs on Yeah Yeah Yeahs are each originally anarchic, well within the punk tradition yet working it's own alchemies of rythmn and texture.

Like the White Stripes, the YYY's are only drums, guitar and vocals, but being a threesome, one person handles each. Nick Zinner on guitar makes good mojo, fusing blues and punk and dead space into a powerful groove. Brian Chase is likewise bangingly minamist (think Scott Asheton's son who went to Julliard). Most critics get excited about Karen O(rzolek), the band's vocalist, and with reason: she's strikingly varied, able to scream in Dionysiac self-immolation, yet also able to chirp poppily along, and only half-ironically. And that's only when she isn't drone-crooning with such an erotic ache that I find myself wanting to...well, never mind.

They're a bold band, and they get your attention, and after 5 tracks, you want more. That's the perfect EP. But word around the campfire is that their album Fever to Tell, disappoints. Other rumours, that Karen O is having a hard time adjusting to the demands of a professional touring pop band, and is even beginning to rethink her status as a role model for girls (good for her. Would that Madonna had such intellectual honesty), might point the way to the Icarus path for this group. But sometimes failure can be more interesting than success, if the failure aimed higher.


That's it.

Music Review - The Strokes: Room on Fire

When I quoted Lester Bangs a few weeks ago and said that no one listens to music, I realized that such a statement was to a degree ludicrous on its face. Of course people listen to music; it's not like it's good for anything else (sans LSD). What I meant was that very few (in elitist exaggerationist language, very few = none) listen to music charitably or unselfishly. This statement borders on ludicrosity (if it's not a word, then I just invented it) as well; I will explain. Most people put a piece of music in their respective audio systems and wait to be moved. The music is judged on one thing; whether it affects you in the way you want to be affected. The musicians themselves are non-entities; one's opinion on them as artists or human beings is based on whether their work pleases.

I'm not going to say that there's anything wrong with this; in one respect it's essential to approach music on a primal level. But in another respect, it's solipsistic. A piece of music touches more lives than just the ears that hear it. Every song has a creator who believes in it as art, and a promoter who believes in it as product. Every song was trying to achieve something intended at the same time to be personal to the artist and relevant to the world at large. Not all music achieves this goal. But unless you consider the goal, you can't judge it as a success or failure.

This goes for all music, even the kind you hate. Michael Bolton has devoted fans. KoRn says things in their music that a lot of kids appreciate. Some people find a great deal of truth in Snoop Dogg's ryhmes, and dig his beats besides. You can dismiss the fans of each as semi-literate sheep who are just to sheltered and intellectually lazy to get into "real" music, but you should keep in mind that they're saying more or less the same thing about you.

With that in mind, we proceed to reviewing the new Strokes album. The Strokes got a lot of attention with their debut, Is This It, two years ago, mostly because people were starving for something that didn't sound like N'Sync or the aforementioned KorN, something that sounded like, you know, rock. Call it the Nirvana Syndrome. Critics praised them as the New Velvet Underground (all bands from New York are VU clones in the minds of the superficial), and hailed Is This It as the biggest things since "Blitzkrieg Bop." The backlash set in just as fast, and before the Christmas season had begun, the Strokes, far from being rock's saviours, had become it's scapegoat: yet another collection of unoriginal wannabes sailing by on hype.

So far, so typical. The album underneath all this hooplah was actually quite a good one, not earth-shattering, but demonstrative of depth, poise, and liveliness. You can listen to it after the initial interest wears off, either deliberately or as background music, and it suits many moods. No, it wasn't revolutionary, but it was what people like me have been wanting to hear.

The second album, Room on Fire, released last month, hasn't met anything like the noise afforded the debut. The fans bought it and liked it, the detractors grumbled and soused and went back to fawning over Modest Mouse (not that there's anything wrong with that). This is typical as well. The problem is that both fans and critics of Room on Fire said basically the same thing about it: that it was essentially the same as Is This It. And that proves that people don't listen to music.

Superficially, yes, the albums are similar, both undeniably by the same band. But careful listeners will not the distinction: if Is This It was the band's homage to the late 70's new wave and punk scene (owing fare more to the Modern Lovers than the Ramones, but never mind), then Room on Fire is the Strokes' 80's album, full of trebly, almost synthesized tones as opposed the previous effort's constant garagey riffage. The songs are cooler, slower, and more comfortable, kept from degenerating into Who-level mod wussiness by Casablanca's vocals, which, in contrast to the rest of the band, are louder and hoarser, the sound of a man whose chill demeanor is starting to come undone.

Moreover, Room on Fire is more of an album than it's predecessor, a more cohesive whole. Several of the songs on Is This It were too thematically close together, which is probably the reason they were called "unoriginal". The new album doesn't have that problem; ideas abound and every song stands more or less distinct. That's an important improvement.

As you might surmise, I'm not going to try and determine which album is "better." Such objectivity is simply not possible. I can say that the Strokes are turning out worthwhile product, and under a good deal of pressure, are still playing with their sound. That's the sign of a band that is going somewhere. I'm definitely interested to see what they come up with next.

Assorted Rants, Or How the Mighty are Fallen

1. The Beatles. And the Boomer nostalgia machine strikes again. Every couple years or so they dust off songs we've bought, listened to, and recorded for 40 years, repackage them, and lay them on the altar of Our Long Lost Pop Innocence. Spare me. The Beatles were a good pop band with an honest dedication to crafting well-made pop songs, ones that shimmer with life even forty years down the road. That's all they were. Nuthin' wrong with that, but let's stop regurging up the same old slosh when there are thousands of bands trying to create something new that won't get heard because we keep wanting the same old slosh, served hot. For pity's sake, Let it Be.


2. JFK. See the first sentence of above. My birthday was yesterday, and every day after my birthday I have to put up with Camelot/Conspiracy fetishistas doing their merry best to make us feel gloomy before Thanksgiving. The man is dead. His son is dead. His presidency wasn't a golden age. The Kennedys aren't coming back to rescue us from our social anomie. They were a rich and pretty family that bought political power and used it to make asses of themselves. Their memory is not tragic. Lyndon Johnson was tragic; a shady backroom dealer with control issues who had no idea how to prosecute a war; a good-hearted man who hated bigotry and racism, who only wanted to lend the poor a helping hand, but left office in hatred and disgrace when he hit the wall of human power. Richard Nixon was tragic; an even shadier dealer who had no idea how to manage an economy; a farsighted-strategist who set in motion the dynamic that would end the Cold War twenty years later, who could not be forgiven by the cool kids because he was so earnestly uncool, and thus went over the edge of paranoia and went home in even bigger disgrace. John Kennedy is just dead. Deal.


3. Michael Jackson. Bleaaahhhhhh. Just Bleaaaaaahhhhhh. Who's to blame for this? What happened to that guy? How did he evolve from being the Golden Boy of Pop, the James Brown of his Generation with Beatles-like fan adoration, to that pasty pedophiliac Skeletor thing? I feel nausea, and not just at his face: at the machine that is now crushing him with all the glee with which they once deified him, and at us, because we buy it. Let him be carted off to prison if he so merits, but then let's shut up about him. If we should feel anything, we should be ashamed of ourselves, for devoting so much of our energy on someone who didn't need it or deserve it. Look at that face of his, if you can, and say to yourself: That is the face of a star.

Tunes

The vast majority of those who write negative customer reviews of New Rock bands on Amazon would do well to simply write "I AM NOT TRENDY" and spare us the left-field diatribes ("If you like this I feel sorry for you. This is such utter crap...etc."). We could then safely ignore them, and they might get a chance to engage in some self-analysis, and then try listening to the music.

Most people don't do this, as Lester Bangs noted long ago. Most people listen to image. They judge bands based on appearance, name (I even do this. I cannot like Blink-182, because their name is dumb. I can't relate to it), and reputation, deciding from these whether they want to make an investment in the music. They'll stick to a genre like the guy who orders the same thing every time he goes to a Chinese restaurant. It's safe.

I've intended this as a intro to review the new Strokes album, but I haven't the time. Parent-Teacher conferences loom.

Music Review: Jet - Get Born

The chief virtue of most Australian bands that make it stateside is their simplicity, their focus on their sound instead of their look. The Saints, Australia's premier late-70's punk band, never dressed punk (here's the cover of their 1977 album, (I'm) Stranded). AC/DC had Angus Young's schoolboy look, but that was only for Angus, and it was intended humorously. Unlike the The Strokes' rich-boy bum ensembles, the Hives' neo-mod uniforms and the White Stripes' peppermint chic, The Vines were the only band of the origonal "new rock" quadrifecta that didn't have a ready-made look (which may be why they've slipped off the radar screens). Australian boys play rock n' roll, unapologetically, and they know it ain't their job to look pretty. That's for the wankers from Pommey-land and pretentious Yanks.

I can't say that in perfect honesty that Jet is an image-free band. I see Beatle boots and flares on their cover, and artwork that seems to want to evoke Revolver besides. That's fine, though. Retro only partially ever becomes cool again, but in our retro-everything culture it never becomes completely out of style again, either. And it doesn't matter, because Jet's got the goods when you pop their CD (which has more Hard Day's Night-ish pychedelia fun painted on it) into your player.
Like myself, most fans will buy this on the strength of "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" which seems to have the balls-out, garage-rock riffage that's so blessed hip these days. They won't be dissapointed, because half the album's in a similar vein: quick and gloriously sludgy rock songs that sound either like the Who or Sonics depending on your desire to claim them for your respective tribe. The other half is suprising, however: smooth, piano-led blues ballads that sound like they could have been scraped off the floor of the Abbey Road or Let it Be studios. One or two such songs are obligatory; to confidently toss on five or six takes guts and a sure sense of one's songwriting skills. That indicates promise in my book.

Comparisons to the Vines are inevitable, because the two bands are so aesthetically similar. It is generally the reviewer's task to run his musical-knowledge decoder ring accross the respective albums ASIN number and tell you which one is "better." I can't do that, not at this stage. The only objective difference between "good" music and "bad" music is the effort of the musicians to craft a sound unique to them. Jet has done so, and it sounds good. So have the Vines. Enjoy whichever you bought first, and call the others wannabes if it pleases you. Or buy 'em both and put them in two seperate stereos on either side of your room and let 'em fight it out. I give this piece of product the thumbs up. The rest is up to you.

Unlimited Supply! EMI!

EMI is going to sell their entire catalog online. Popular demand does have an effect. This could change things.

The Real Music Problem?

Last week in the Post's Outlook section Jeff How of Wired magazine describes a different threat to online music: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which according to Howe undoes the concept of "fair use." It's a compelling article, and makes a smaller argument couched in economic reality:

The major labels own scores of smaller ones, such as Elektra, Epic and Interscope, where much of the music is made, marketed and distributed. The people who work at the smaller labels, people I got to know while covering the music industry, are the ones now losing their jobs in droves, at least in part because of file sharing. They are not fat cats. They don't chomp cigars and relish caviar. They have much more in common with obsessed file sharers and the music lovers than they do with the lawyers and CEOs of the conglomerates they work for.

The terrifying (but unsurprising) thought this yields is that the music fan's online revolt might make it harder for scrappy indie acts to get signed and distributed. That means more Britneys, more 50-Cents. More mindless pop schlock.

All of which doesn't mean I'm ready to break boycott yet. I'm still angry at the labels for stupidly antagonizing music fans instead of investing in a new technology that could have revolutionized their businesses. But it does mean that perhaps we should start talking about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and why it exists, and how we can secure the rights of the creator without destroying the rights of the user.

MTV Offering Online Music?

Could be huge.

St. Miles

Yesterday I left a Thelonious Monk CD on at low volume during one of my classes. I liked the effect so much that Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" was providing a modal counterpoint to all of today's lectures. Tommorrow I may try classical. We'll see if music really does stimulate the kiddies...

Ghetto-Fabulous

Hooray for me! I get to beat Whatever-Dude to the punch on the VMA's. Of course, I can't hope to match earlier efforts such as this and this because I didn't actually watch them. I've reached a point in my life where I no longer need to watch award shows to know what's going to happen. The predictable winners, the predictably unorthodox costumes, the funnyman struggling to keep up the impression that this is all so hip and fresh, I've seen it, and I need see it no more. Still, judging strictly by this Washington Post write-up, there were some interesting conclusions to be garnered from the evening's show.


1. Lesbian chic is so five years ago. And behold, Her Anglophilic Majesty, Madonna, descended from the heavens to accept tribute from two Whores, thus rendering a long-standing pyschological complex in spandex and glitter. Spearguilera (Christina may have actual pipes and a rougher image, but beyond that it's pointless bothering to tell them apart) performed "Like a Virgin," no doubt covered in see-through lace and clangingly obvious irony. And then she kissed them both, with tongue. And...

...yeah. I'm bored even trying to comment. Let's press on.


2. Anyone can be a Rap Star if he can manages to not look completely laughable in leopard skin. Can 50 Cent actually rap? Has anyone heard him? Does he ever perform, even in a video, without Snoop Dogg and a whole "posse" (We're still using this term? I thought it had been appropriated by white people long ago, and therefore anathema to the hip-hop community) with him? Has he said anything that other acts haven't said before?

I thought not.


3. Michael Jackson is the new Vanilla Ice. Jack Black did a Jacko impression last night; Eminem mocked him last week. It's open season, not just among the commonfolk, but among the Olympian stars. How the mighty are fallen.


4. Johnny Cash is almost good enough to win a VMA. He lost to Justin Timberlake. I think that says it all.

RIAA, Part ?‡

Senator Coleman's issues with the record boys have apparently borne fruit, according to this article. The RIAA execs have assure Coleman that they are not targeting "small" downloaders, just the kingpins. Naturally they won't say what the bar is between being a "small" downloader and one who downloads "as substantial amount."

They're either backpedalling, or they never were planning on going after everybody, or they're testing the waters. Either way, I'm not backing off the boycott.

New Reviews

Two of my new reviews just got loaded up at PunkFix, one for Television and one for the MC5. The links will tell you all you need to know.

Happy Monday.

GOPRIAA?

I've mentioned it before, and I don't get it. Why on earth would GOP lawmakers give the Recording Industry Association of America the time of day? They don't fund Republican electoral campaigns; they don't reflect the kind of values that the GOP says it believes in. On the face of it, sure, it looks like a cut-and-dry property-rights situation. But there's piracy and there's piracy, and I have yet to be convinced that file-swapping violates fair-use. So, it's a bit depressing that a former GOP staffer will be taking over as RIAA's chief executive.

But perhaps all is not lost. Senator Norm Coleman (R-Mn) just sent a critical letter to the punters, suggesting that their scattershot litigation might be off the mark. Interesting...

More On Music, Part II

My complete thoughts on the RIAA situation have been posted on Allzah; you can find them here.

More on Music

My BMG order has arrived, and my letter of account closure will go out with my payment (for shipping and handling). In the meantime, spot reviews will be posted here just as soon as I can collect the focus. I'm digging it all, though.

It's official...

My last order from BMG has been shipped. I mean that. Now I can close my membership and be free of all taints of association with RIAA. This may seem melodramatic, but I think that one should order one's life according to the principles one espouses. Any hipster twerp can whine about the music industry's suckage, but those who would have things change cannot persist in being part of the problem. And I plan to communicate to this company, which has served me well in introducing me to some fine music I would not have otherwise stumbled upon, exactly why I am ending our relationship. Maybe they'll take notice, maybe not. But it's good to make things clear.

Behind the Music

I like to keep an eye on RIAA and their lame attempts to shut down file-swapping, but today I actually got mad. One of the creators of Allzah had the following rant on the subject. Apparently the suits are going after individual file-swappers now, since KaZaa has managed to block their attempts to force it out of business. My own dissertation should be up there soon, but for the time being, I'll provide a few new links:



Boycott RIAA

Contact your Senator

Contact Your Senator


I plan on letting both Senators and my congressman know how I feel about these guys and their perversions of the law. They're a scummy organization that's grown fat and twisted, while providing little value to our culture. Their time has come.

Here are the Sonics!

And were they worth the wait?


The CD came with a novel's worth of praise for these scruffy Pacific Northwest wailers, and all the mad crazy noise they made. I was expecting something loony, a banjo-less Monks. In this I was disappointed, at least at first. After the stormy "Cinderella," the next several tracks were soul covers. Good Soul covers, but not that wild, not that punky. I was beginning to feel like the downer was approaching.

And then they played "Jenny, Jenny" and tore the roof off. I was punchin' the air. I was rockin' AND rollin'. It was all right.

Worth the wait? What wait?

The "New" Metallica

Nothing is quite so difficult to digest as hype. A few years ago, Metallica was preaching loud and proud about how'd they'd changed the face of their music and still kept their legions of fans and were still and ever growing. Then they split with Jason Newsted, went to war with Napster, and fiddled around for a few years while James Hetfield battled with the demon liquor. Next on "Behind the Music," the end of an era...

Now they've got a new bassist from Ozzy's band (Ozzy has a band? I thought Ozzy just walked around in a confused daze, mumbling like the village idiot), who looks like one of Saruman's Uruk-Hai from Lord of the Rings, and a new album that's supposed to evoke the rip-roaring, speed-metaling, Motorhead-worshipping Metallica of Yore. And in true form, everything that's happened to the band since the Black Album is now being mocked in the music press. Load and ReLoad, formerly mere annoyances to old-school metalheads, are now shameful sell-outs to Alternative Nation (The "Alternative" scene was well and truly dead by the time Load was released, but never mind). Garage, Inc. is now a lame attempt at re-kindling the magic. And S & M, the band's double-live album recorded with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, is now so embarrasing as to cause legions of fans to weep quietly in the night, clutching their bruised copies of Master of Puppets. Please.

S & M sucks? I didn't get that memo back when it was released in '99. Back then it was a bold musical experiment, that, unlike earlier rock-classical fusion attempts by the likes of Chicago, actually rocked. Nor do I recall the music critics throwing the hunks of dung at the other 90's albums that they pretend to have now that St. Anger is out. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of small minds, but it's a hobgoblin that could make some sense of our cultural narratives. Get that, you faux-intellectual wankers?

Incidentally, I've seen the video to the "St. Anger" and it's not bad. Maybe if Lars stops talking like a corporate drone, I may believe these guys are serious.

The Monks -- Black Monk Time

Because of cd-discounter's treachery, my goal of subsuming myself in mid-sixties garage rock was delayed by a month (I got my refund today, and promptly re-ordered The Sonics from a seller I know to be trustworthy). But my dissatisfaction is minimized, because now it's Big Time, it's Hop Time, it's Monk Time!

Picture this: five army draftees stationed in Germany in 1965, sick of the cutesy melodies of the Beatles and their clones. One guys plays guitar and sings, one guy drums, one guy plays bass. So far, so good. The fourth guy plays an organ. Interesting, but not too interesting. Ray Manzarek did that for the Doors, and several bands in the sixties messed with that. The catch is the fifth guy. He plays banjo, with a microphone stuffed in it. Then they all give themselves tonsures -- the reverse mohawk that's been the symbol of the monastic lifestyle since the Dark Ages -- and wear black gowns with white hangman's nooses.

Exactly.

Some folk call the Monks the first punk band, which is taking it a bit far to me. These guys have the abrasiveness, the repeated riffs, the joy in being nasty, but they're missing the crucial element: speed. Granted, the Velvets didn't play all that fast either. It's a conundrum best left to the individual listener.

This stuff is truly demented. The songs lurch along like broken machinery, tearing themselves apart in their bumping fury. My favorite track would have to be "I Hate You," which highlights the band's sense of humor. It's a simple joke, but I haven't seemed to get tired of it yet. Nor of the Monks. Bring it on, Sonics.

Joy Division -- Closer

This arrived with the Monks CD in Amazon's usual timeliness. When I first spun it, it didn't impress me near as much as Unknown Pleasures had. I blame rising expectations, and the fact that I'd read that the aura of Ian Curtis' suicide supposedly hangs about this album like an albatross (it doesn't). But repeated listens have allowed it to grow on me. I hear JD expanding their palette on this one, working with different rythmns and textures. I would say that it's a shame Curtis killed himself and left us with no more Joy Division, but the rest of the band soldiered on and became New Order, which still records and tours today. So the tragedy is minimized.

Seven Nation Army

I remember a few years ago, when music seemed to irredeemably suck. Between the rap-rock that was short of the good elements of either to the indistinguishable BET acts to the plastic people that teenagers are always willing to buy, there was nothing current that I wanted to listen to. Now I've reached the point where I can hardly contain my excitement for the New Rock. Yes, I know it's trendy, yes, I know it's working grooves that have been worked before. I don't care. I have the new White Stripes album, and it explodes across the eardrums like a ripe orange. Snoogens.

Who I am, Part 2: Gabba Gabba Hey!

Moving on from the cosmological definition of me, we proceed to the aesthetic. As the song might go, Andrew is a punk rocker. At least, he might be. He's a bit suburban, a bit un-nihilistic, a bit old to be a full part of the tribe. That's leaving aside how he manages to fit liking such a deliberately obnoxious, not to say Luciferean, musical genre and the admiration of the serene yet imperious mysteries of the Catholic Church together in the same head.



And to those who demand ideological purity, I'm sure it's something of a problem. Those who can use the phrase "true punk" without irony think religion is bad because it like, restricts your mind and stuff. And if many christians think Rock n' Roll is the devil's music, then punk is probably the hymns sang backwards and upside-down in the Ninth Concentric Circle while Satan is getting a deep-tissue massage from Stalin and Judas. Believe me, I've been through all this.



More to the point, just how relevant is punk today? I rented 24 Hour Party People a few weekends ago, and I was struck by how the advent of a band like the Sex Pistols in Britain could inspire a scene (that of Manchester) which would yield "the beatification of the beat," as the film's narrator puts it. The Beat is most definitely what rules pop music nowadays, be it hip-hop or shiny teen pop or even country (at least, going by Shania Twain, who is less than country in some circles). It's getting so bad for reg'lar rock bands that any stylistic throwback to the Glory Days of Alternative Music will be hailed by the critics as the Dawn of the New Age, whether they actually sell any records or not. In this our multicultural world, can the Aryan strains of grooveless distortion really matter?



Frankly, I could care less. Taste is a very personal thing, and musical taste a growing and evolving personal thing, if it is to have any legs. I call myself a punk, but I could just as well be called a jazzman or a blues-funkster or a yo-boy or a mod or a rocker, if liking any particular genre of music was enough for membership. I go with calling myself a punk because it is the largest category in my collection, and because I deliberately support the underground elements of it as an act of minor threat against the music industry which is a grotesque overflowing septic tank of lame. That attitude plus a fairly apt Sid Vicious impression ought to be sufficient credential.



Besides, the purpose of punk was never really to conquer and destroy rock music as it was to simultaneously ground it in its primal roots and enlarge its possibilities. Punk's aggression was the cool despair of blues driven outward, to the logical extreme, exploding like a hand grenade that never leaves your hand. It's message was simple: anyone can do it, any image can be used, any sound can be embroidered into the vibe. To an intellectual such as myself, this is a fascinating tradition, even when it trespasses against my moral compass. The political and sociological screeds that accompany the more self-important bands are to a large degree empty oppositionality, weren't invented by punk (Country Joe and the Fish, anyone?) and continues today in non-punk forms (Rage Against the Machine, anyone?). They can and should be safely ignored. Revolution? You better free your mind instead.



Besides, the songs are short, so I can indulge my attention span. 'Nuff said.