Rating My CD's: Aging Balding Star

31. Kings of Leon -- Aha Shake Heartbreak


Two years ago, the wife and I spent our anniversary in Philadelphia for a Kings of Leon concert. We kicked around my old stomping grounds, bought  tees, savored the aroma of cannabis wafting from the levels beneath us, and had a grand time. I would call it about the peak of my KoL fandom. Since then, I've progressively lost interest.

It's the sort of thing that happens with bands: you discover them, pour over them, wait with growing expectation for successive releases, and then lose the thrill. They wouldn't be the only band I did this with this decade (Hi, Black Rebel Motorcyle Club), but they may have been my favorite.

And I haven't really wanted to dwell on the why, because the why digs at one of the most annoying cavils that people toss at bands: "They sold out." I hate listening to people whine about their favorite bands selling out as soon as more than 50 people have heard of them. Your favorite groups don't suck because you have to share them with people ostensibly less cool than you are. They suck because any group that a status-obsessed nerd such as you likes is bound to be awful.

Band Professionalism

Other McCain, whom I normally link at The Essayist, has a smart post about what Brian Epstein brought to the Beatles -- Professionalism:

For all the bohemian mythos about performers as artists pouring out the innermost secrets of their souls, it’s really just show business. And professionalism is about respect for one’s audience, providing them with the maximum enjoyment by maintaining the illusion that the performer is somehow set apart from the common run of mankind, so that what is seen on stage is really something special.

There is an exchange -- sometimes more than one -- between artist and audience, and exchanges need to operate according to some of the rules of trade, and also some kind of basic respect. It doesn't really matter the genre; one of the most professional bands of the last thirty-five years was the Ramones. They survived for twenty years without strong album sales because they ruthlessly toured and professionally performed. Johnny Ramone gets a lot of the credit for that: he gave a damn about what the band looked like, how they walked across the stage, how long the set was taking to perform.

Joe Strummer echoes these thoughts (3:59 at the link, unless you want to listen to Dee Dee's comments first)

Record Store Day: Rain Edition.

I stumbled into the Record and Tape Traders in Towson on the second Record Store Day back in 2008, unaware of the event. The clerks filled me in on the details and I excitedley purchased a Dead Weather single. I've been wanting to hit up Soundgarden in Fells Point -- a participating store, which R&TT technically isn't -- ever since. But for the last two years, circumstances have kept me away. I don't remember the details; it's the kind of nonsense that married people have to deal with. My wife would know.

Yesterday, I was determined. I'd primed wifey with the idea that This Was Going To Happen. I'd budgeted the cash. I'd printed my Amazon Wish List. All was ready for me to breath record store air.

Google Could Own the Music Industry

Apparently, quite easily.

I got news for you: they already do. Eventually, they'll get around to putting in the paperwork.

Alternative and Metal Blog

German, but also posts in English.

The Background is black, as it should be.

New Strokes: Another Point of View

ChartAttack likes it just fine, if 4/5 is a "just fine" rating.

The half-buried vocals sound more compressed than usual in places, and Casablancas' vapid, self-loathing lyrics tread familiar ground. But the songs themselves are as catchy as ever, sinking their hooks into you with guilty-pleasure guitar and vocal melodies underscored by the band's signature tight, fat rhythms.

So more or less what Pitchfork said, except they make it sound like a good thing.

As for myself, I listened to it streaming on the Strokes website when it was available, and I was underwhelmed. First the White Stripes break up, and now the Strokes embrace the meh. This decade is not starting well.

Record Store Day Releases: The Spin List

Spin is lame at best, but any info about Record Store Day releases are welcome, especially as I don't find RSD's web site terribly user-friendly. In fact, from a content-design point of view, main-page navigation kind of sucks.

What I might want:

1. 13th Floor Elevators 
2. White Stripes
3. Nirvana
4. The Dangermouse/Jack White/Norah Jones thing
5. Freddy King might be good
6. Mastodon's ZZ Top cover might be tempting
7. Pink Floyd
8. Velvet Underground

Lester Bangs Quote of the Day

At its best New Wave/punk represents a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they'll be creative about it, and do something good besides.

-New Musical Express, 1977

The key phrase in the above would seem to be "At its best." By this definition, punk was only at its best at the beginning, before creativity had given way to creed. 

God, Music Sucked in the 80's...

They even found a way to make Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins sound lame:

Rating My CD's: And the White Knight is Talking Backwards...

30. Jefferson Airplane -- Surrealistic Pillow


I was the oldest, and I've never thought that to be any fun. Every child finds something to lament about their  rank in the birth line; for me it was never having anyone ahead of me to guide me and show me cool stuff. Music and comic books and other trappings of youth culture have depended on older brothers and cousins since time immemorial. In this area, I was on my own.

Two friends were instrumental in helping me to develop my tastes in music and other things. The first was a fellow military brat I spent a lot of time with while living on base in California when I was 14. He hipped me to the Pixies and the Dead Kennedys and fostered an enduring appreciation of Batman comics. But most of what he tried to show me I used to pretend that I knew things I didn't know and was above things I had almost no real contact with.

New Metal (Not Nu-Metal)

I've had my eye on this disc for a while. I got it yesterday at Best Buy when they charged me $10 to recycle an old TV and then gave me a $10 gift card in return.

I've been listening to it on repeat. I know almost nothing about metal, but I like this. I like it a lot.

If Everything That I Hate in Music Was Distilled into a Single Record...

...it would be this:

It's so miserable being a bad art student's shitty crayon drawing

First of all, the band name is just preciousness summa cum laude, an almost deliberately obnoxious display of off-putting, self-congratulatory wordiness, all to express an idea that's been moldering in the ground since William Wordsworth moped around Tintern Abbey. The name is so painfully earnest that it makes me wish to see them star on someone's FailBlog.

The cover art magnifies the effect. I detect a pale (naturally) echo of the pink-and-blue trend in indie album art. I'm at a loss to guess what else I'm supposed to see, save another whispy, ill-defined soul in chains. Why not just paint a sad-eyed unicorn or vampire? It would appeal to the target audience just as well.

And the music? They sound like the Cure. Sometimes they almost want to sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain, but they haven't the courage to go for it. So they sound like the Cure. The End.

In conclusion: there's such a thing as leavening your sensitivity with humor or guts. Try it sometime, dweebs.

Wire Has a New Album.

I've been waking up to Pink Flag in my CD-clock radio for a couple of weeks. It works nicely.

I have Chairs Missing on vinyl. It is sublime.

But for the new album, which Wire supported by adding a layer to Jimmy Fallon's crust of hipsterdom, I'm thinking...Amazon MP3. Why?

1. Wire is almost by-definition digital music.
2. The album cover is kind of ugly.
3. It's cheaper that way.

Ephemera

Chaos happens, and when it does, blogging shuts down. Sorry.

Here's what occurs to me:

1. My stance on Andrew Earle's book has moved from "I'll pretend I might buy this," to "I might actually like to read this."
2. Pandora has made me decide that I like the Cold War Kids. However, I have refused the thumbs-up to the Ting Tings, because I cannot like a band with such a name.
3. Are the Hollywood Undead a sign of the premature emergence of retro rap-metal, or just the Hinder of 2011?