Vinyl Vednesday 8/31/2011

[Vinyl Vednesday is a weekly feature about three favorite vinyl finds. It’s not meant to be a dick-measuring contest, but it usually turns out that way. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Rick James’ Street Songs (1981) on black, Ida Maria’s “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” seven-inch (2008) on clear red, and Mean Jeans’ “Tears in My Beers” seven-inch (2010) on black.

Place of Purchase: eBay for James ‘n’ Maria. Mean Jeans was a promo from the Trouble in Mind label for review.

Thoughts: Music journalist Michelangelo Matos is pretty much my spirit guide when it comes to R&B. In addition to penning a most excellent book about Prince’s Sign O’ the Times, he also wrote an illuminating essay on music from 1981 that introduced me to Rick James. Obviously, James was already in my consciousness, first for “Super Freak,” then for his appearance on Chappelle’s Show. But it was Matos who turned me on to “Give It to Me Baby,” a song so undeniably funky and sexy and funny and awesome that I had to buy the record it appeared on. I used to think James was a bitter beauty queen for hating hip-hop so much. Then I heard Street Songs and realized he really just hated it because rappers couldn’t touch what his songwriting. While I wouldn’t put him on the same level as Prince or Michael Jackson, Street Songs is still essential listening for people who like sexxxy musics. Blasting this record makes me feel so good.

Unlike Rick James, whom I instantly fell in love with upon hearing “Give It to Me Baby,” my courtship with Ida Maria took a few months. She honestly first came into my view when “Oh My God” was used in the trailer for It’s Kind of a Funny Story. I found the song to be addictive, adrenaline-pumping fun, but my fiancée Michelle swore that Maria’s debut album was terrible. But I couldn’t get “Oh My God” out of my head, and soon I picked up the single on eBay. I decided that I would buy a second single and, should it be as good, I’d commit to the record. “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” is just as catchy and, like James, super fun/sexy jam. The B-sides are mighty fine.

Said it before, said it again: Mean Jeans made a great mini-concept album about dranking back the year 2010. “Tears in My Beers” is a zesty Ramones tribute of a tune, while “Cool 2 Drive” is more somber. That’s relatively speaking, of course. Still, of all the Ramones rip-offs over the years, Mean Jeans are my favorite. They just have a raw yet hooky pop-punk delivery that never gets old for me.

Brett Callwood - 'The Stooges: Head On, a Journey Through the Michigan Underground'

The problem with penning a band biography is that sometimes the band’s story isn’t over yet, therefore robbing writers of a true ending. Such was the case for Brett Callwood’s The Stooges: A Journey Through the Michigan Underground. Originally released in the U.K. in 2008, the book covered the seminal proto-punk group the Stooges up through their new millennium reunion and their comeback record The Weirdness. That’s a solid end point, but while Callwood prepped the book for an American release, big news shook the band: Founding guitarist Ron Asheton died at the age of 60. Hence, Callwood’s U.S. adaptation has been rewritten, as well as retitled The Stooges: Head On, a Journey Through the Michigan Underground. While this second edition comes from good intentions, the actual read is, while informative, at times plodding and uneventful.

Considering the book comes in at just 151 pages, boosted by a discography listing and a poem about the band by Glenn Danzig to close it out (I’ll say this one more time: The book ends with Glenn Danzig’s poetry. Mother!), “plodding” shouldn’t occur. Yet, Head On suffers from a quote-heavy writing style, often laying out a series of interviews without really capturing the Stooges’ essence. The group’s original run was brief, but the way the book jumps from the group’s beginnings to Fun House (the best Stooges album, by the way) seems like a flash. It’s not too heavy on flavor when it comes to storytelling, but it’s not exactly fact-heavy either. This is supposed to a book about a band renowned for its crazy, dangerous live energy, but that hardly comes across.

At the same time, though, Callwood’s goal for Head On was to give the Asheton brothers their due, and in that he succeeds. Ron and Scott get equal billing with legendary frontman Iggy Pop. In fact, Callwood’s writing led me to explore Ron Asheton’s post-Stooges output, and I gotta say, more people should listen to Destroy All Monsters. A more goth-tinged, but still very punk, version of the Stooges, Destroy All Monsters are quite good. Callwood’s section on the group is also one of the stronger passages. In fact, while the Stooges come and go, the chapters covering the years between Raw Power and The Weirdness are the best, whether its dealing with other musical pursuits or B-movies (Although I could have used more love for Pop’s The Idiot. That record rules).

Like the band it chronicles, Head On is a direct, quick shot. Callwood doesn’t dive into flowery hyperbole and never oversells the group. While it would have been nice to see a wider interview pool or more facts about the band’s early days, Head On is still a concise, cohesive read. If you’re a fan, the middle chapters about lesser known pursuits will hook you. If you want to explore punk rock beyond the Ramones and the Sex Pistols (and you really should, poser), Head On makes the case for the Stooges’ relevance, then and now.

Vinyl Vednesday 8/24/2011

[Vinyl Vednesday is a weekly feature about three favorite vinyl finds. It’s not meant to be a dick-measuring contest, but it usually turns out that way. As always, e-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: New York Dolls’ Too Much Too Soon (1974) on black, Zombie Zombie’s Plays John Carpenter (2010) on black, and the To Benefit Petra Haden seven-inch compilation (2003) on grey.

Place of Purchase: NYD came from my recent trip to Shore Things in Ocean City, N.J. Zombie Zombie was snatched up unheard from Repo Records in Philadelphia specifically because it involved John Carpenter. The Haden comp came from defunt shop Spaceboy Music in Philadelphia (I’d say R.I.P., but the clerks there were always wieners).

Thoughts: I’ve been trying to find New York Dolls’ Too Much Too Soon on compact disc for years, but I finally caved and bought it on vinyl. I decided to go with Shore Things for this particular item because one summer prior, a clerk there harassed the bedickens out of me about buying it, much to my consternation. I’m glad I finally bough it though. It’s such a fun, funny glam rock/proto-punk collection, a bridge between Ziggy-era David Bowie and later ’70s acts like Kiss and The Ramones. It’s deliciously raw despite all of its ’50s doo-wop inclinations. Best revelation of all: I finally understand that Voodoo Glow Skulls song “Stranded in the Jungle,” for Punk-O-Rama 5, was actually a Too Much Too Soon cover.

John Carpenter had a string of brilliant genre flicks in the ’70s and ’80s, and he’s something of a DIY icon to me, if only because he was able to create so much of his movies on his own, from scripting to directing to scoring. French DJ duo Zombie Zombie acknowledge just how important Carpenter’s synth scores were by covering some of his biggest “hits.” Yeah, the A-side’s take on the Escape From L.A. theme is weird, if only because no one wants to talk about Escape From L.A., but the B-side packs two of Carpenter’s best compositions. First off is his most well known piece, the Halloween theme, a simple piano piece that I think might be impossible to ruin. It’s just so haunting and intimidating. Closing out the EP, though, is the theme from The Thing. That movie relies more on tones to create atmosphere, and Zombie Zombie pack it with all the dread they can muster.

To Benefit Petra Haden is one of the first records I ever bought. I’ve gone through phases as a record collection. I’m just now coming out of a compulsory need to double up on all of my favorite bands, like Jawbreaker and Discount. When I first got a record player, all I wanted to do was pick up rare, vinyl-only stuff from my favorite bands, which was probably a better idea than rebuying every album I liked. As a benefit comp, Petra Haden seems like a bad idea – it’s a limited edition seven-inch, created after the original Rilo Kiley live album recorded to benefit Haden was ruined, meant to help pay for Haden’s medical bills after she was in a hit-and-run. This comp is worth way more now than it was in 2003. But if you were all about the power-pop like I was at the time, you were obsessed with this double-seven-inch. You get Weezer playing a Pinkerton cut back when they never played those songs, a new Ben Kweller tune, and one of Phantom Planet’s better tunes from their self-titled record. Also, AM Radio shows up. While I’m not the Weerez/BK obsessive I once was, I still treasure this set.

regarding Science Club's status

Two things:

1. My band Science Club played a terrifically sloppy show in the woods on Saturday. This guy Frank hosted it, and the dude lives in front of a haunted hayride. No joke. Tons of bugs, but it was a good time. We opted to play mostly new material, because we never do, and it's really time we started showing off our ever so dense catalog. We hardly ever play most of our songs, which is why they were so sloppy but ya'll fuckers should feel honored anyway.

2. When I wrote "new material" above, I meant "songs not on our upcoming EP Failure Ballads. The art is nearly done. The liner notes are on the tips of our writing utensils. We took a power lunch last week to hammer out the deets. Nate and I wore suits. Nick, ever the rank amateur, showed up late in a business casual outfit. UNBELIEVABLE. We argued loudly in front of children. We drank deep. We wrote checks and we tasted the bolder life.

Anyhoozle, the EP is coming out this fall.

Braid - 'Closer to Closed'

The last few years have seen a creative resurgence from ’90s emo icons. Sunny Day Real Estate got back together, while luminaries like Blake Schwarzenbach and Davey von Bohlen continued to release high quality music with new groups forgetters and Maritime, respectively. Sure, there’s a touch of nostalgia involved, but some of these artists are still creating new works and fans are being rewarded.

But they can’t all be winners, and such is the case with Braid’s pseudo-comeback EP Closer to Closed. Then again, Braid never really went away much as it morphed into a new band, Hey Mercedes. Now, I loves me Braid something fierce. Frame & Canvas is one of my favorite albums. Hey Mercedes, however, does not occupy any space in my music collection. Rather, HM exists to remind me that Braid ultimately went through a name change that preserved its legacy and dumped a whole lot of mediocre emo tunes on a lesser brand.

While Closer to Closed still nails Braid’s style (constant tempo changes; bouncing similar sounding words off each other, per the album title), it’s big drop in quality, even if it does rope in all the original players and producer J. Robbins (ex-Jawbox/Burning Airlines/Government Issue). Braid circa 2011 is spit-shined mall emo-pop. It’s way too clean and way too much like a lot of the Hot Topic-loving band’s that ripped off Braid over the last decade.

Of course, when I think emo, I think youth, and there’s a part of me that wonders if I’m just outside of Braid’s demographic now, that nostalgia has cut me off from those formative years. But then I remember Schwarzenbach and von Bohlen, and how far they’ve come since Jawbreaker and The Promise Ring, it becomes clear: Closer to Closed is a clunker.

regarding Science Club's new show.

	Frank's Garage 5160 Butler Pike Plymouth Meeting, PA
-BYO(cans). -Starts at 8, ends whenever it ends. -$5 a head to compensate Frank for letting us use his space. The Next Big Thing Science Club Knight Kaptain

SWTHRT - 'Compact Disc'

Fresh from the ashes of my beloved Museum Mouth comes SWTHRT, band of a thousand pronunciations. Perhaps it means “Sweaty Hurts,” which I think is a sex thing. Maybe it’s an initialism for “South West Tammy Has Ripe Tomatoes,” which I think might also be a sex thing.

Or maybe it’s “Sweatshirt” and they just left out the second “s” to keep their logo even-lettered, but that seems too obvious.

Having done the whole punk rock by way of Lemuria with Museum Mouth, guitarist/vocalist/drummer/bassist Karl Kuehn has now moved on to post-punk with SWTHRT’s Compact Disc, aided by keyboardist Becca High. Some of Museum Mouth’s elements carry over, like the grainy, dry production style, but generally speaking, this is a whole new sound for Kuehn. Here, he cultivates some serious Joy Division/Cure circa Faith/Seventeen Seconds worship.

“Good Omens” opens the record with a sparse bassline a la “A Forest” before High brings in a bright keyboard line. The result is akin to a more lo-fi Pains of Being Pure at Heart, although with less adenoidal vocals. At only 26 minutes in length, Compact Disc doesn’t have much room for expanding beyond the formula “Good Omens” sets, although there are glimmers of shoegaze in tunes like “Maggie Valley.”

The problem with Compact Disc is that it draws from a style that’s pretty popular right now. Yeah, that means it should appeal to a wider fanbase than maybe Museum Mouth ever achieved, but it also means that there are more bands playing this kind of music. SWTHRT is good, but they don’t surpass their obvious inspirations. Throw in a frustrating band name, and you get something that, while solid, is also a little forgettable.