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Friday, February 06, 2009 ( 2/06/2009 06:55:00 AM ) Bill S. "THE KIND OF MUSIC THAT DON'T SAVE SOULS" Saw Lux Interior and the Cramps perform in a small Urbana club back in the IRS days. It was, to my ears, the band's peak era and Lux was at his most deranged: slavering and shouting through "She Said," fellating the microphone after sticking it down his too-tight pants, vamping his way through "Goo Goo Muck." Stood three feet from that small club stage, and I couldn't keep my eyes off him -- even with sexy wife guitarist Poison Ivy heating up the stage. The guy was one hell of a rock 'n' roller. I've happily followed the Cramps through their ragged recorded career. They never much changed their willfully primitive sound: a wondrous blend of rockabilly, surf and psychotic reactions. You could call if "psychobilly, " but that doesn't really cover all the elements that (barely) held the band's music together. They were the first band I'd ever heard cover a song from a Russ Meyer movie, while their remakes of "Green Door" and "Route 66" made both standards sound more sinister than you could ever imagine. Band leads Lux and Ivy had a collector's love for musical and cinematic trash, and they clearly enjoyed sharing this appreciation with their fans. First time I heard "TV Set," the crazed ("I cut your head off and put it in my teevee set/I use your eyeballs for dials on my teevee set.") opener to their debut disc, Songs the Lord Taught Us, I knew I was hearing one of Those Bands: a group I would happily follow until they stopped making music even if the rest of the ungrateful world forgot about 'em. The Cramps' music has helped to get me through some tough times in the past, and will probably do so work in the future. Only this week, I read that the 60-year-old Lux (real name: Erick Lee Purkhiser) has passed on. "Life is short and filled with stuff," the Cramps man sang on more than one track. Too damn true. ADDENDUM: Here's a piece of concert footage ("I Was A Teenage Werewolf") that was lensed for the IRS concert film, URGH! A Music War. Would've been around the time I saw 'em. I've raved about the band's concert disc, Smell of Female, and their last full studio disc, 2003's Fiends of Dope Island, in earlier posts. # | Thursday, February 05, 2009 ( 2/05/2009 05:51:00 AM ) Bill S.  "THIS WORLD'S NO PLACE FOR A MIND OR A THOUGHT; NO IT'S NOT!" Gotta admit I'm a sucker for a good elpee fanfare, and the debut disc by Notthingham art-poppers Late of the Pier opens up with the right goods: a stately guitar-based anthem entitled "Hot Tent Blues" that happily bursts into a reggae-inflected piece of woozily over-sung romantic angst entitled "Broken." It's a fractured take on the old one-two punch of Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding," if Sir Elton sang like Booji Boy were squeezing his boy parts.The sounds of Gary Numan's early Tubeway Army also figure strongly on Pier's Fantasy Black Channel (Astralwerks). On "Space and the Woods," for instance, a tromping synth bass line is elevated by a high-flying keyb hook, while both "Whitesnake" and hidden track "No Time" deploy a Theremin for that good ol' retro late nite moodiness. Elsewhere, the lads toy with goofy funk whizzery ("The Bears Are Coming") and the kind of glam beats Supergrass has made its own ("Bathroom Gurgle.") The band's not averse to tossing Zappa-esque tempo shifts and weird jerky nasal retentive synth sounds in between the lines, though they never lose hold of their dance rock sensitivities. I haven't heard such an engaging clash of pop and ugly music sensitivities since the first XTC album. For me, the track where it all kicked in was "Heartbeat." Opening with a set of keyboard triplets that recall "Hot Fun in the Summertime," the song quickly morphs into a herky-jerky series of marshmallow sky lyrics (is singer/songwriter Sam Dust really wailing about "pineapple pieces in brine"?) capped with a high-end synth line soaring over singer Dust's assertion that it's all "just a line." But "Focker" -- which breaks up the singer's poppish entreaties that he just wants to "be your friend" with a throbbing old-fashioned prog rock freak-out -- was the frosting on the pineapple cake. The band loves to play Dust's nerve-scratching guitarwork against keyboardist Jack Paradise's Ultravox-y inclinations, and, by and large, the approach works -- especially when Dust forgoes the strangulated vocal affectations for a more normal range. Authoritative drummer Rouge Dog Consuela (okay, the pseudo-names are overly cutesy) holds it together even through the album's trickier rhythmic moments. On "The Bears Are Coming" these smart guys even manage to make the overused Sound of Breaking Glass sound fresh. Pere Ubu (or is it Green Day?) would be proud. Labels: art-pop # |Wednesday, February 04, 2009 ( 2/04/2009 04:37:00 PM ) Bill S. "I'M THE ANTI-NIXON!" Couldn't keep from getting pulled into watching disgraced ex-gov Rod Blagojevich last night on David Letterman. "What on Earth could this guy tell us that would make anybody change their mind about him?" I wondered. Not much, it turns out: lots of mentions of his innocent young daughters and repeated declarations that the tapes we heard were taken totally out of context. I'd be more inclined to believe the latter if the man didn't flog the former so frequently. ("FORMER GOVERNOR FLOGS CHILDREN!" Sounds like a call for DCFS!) As for Dave, no matter how often he may protest that "You're dealing with a man who is largely ignorant in these matters," we all know differently. And that feigned ignorance didn't keep Dave from getting in a few good zingers. In the end, I suspect Rod's appearance was a wash -- and what was up with his repeatedly calling the audience "listeners" when he first came on? Did he think Letterman was doing talk radio? # | ( 2/04/2009 08:40:00 AM ) Bill S. MID-WEEK MUSIC VID: Got a review of Nottingham art-poppers' debut release, CORRECTION: When I first typed this posting I initially got the name of the album title out of order. Don't feel too bad about this glitch, though, since the promo copy of the disc I received from Astralwerks calls the disc Fantasy Balck Channel on the shelf side of the label . . . # | Monday, February 02, 2009 ( 2/02/2009 10:12:00 PM ) Bill S. THIS WEEK'S OBLIGATORY 24 POST: A sly little tribute in Monday's ep: naming the plant manager of a terrorist targeted Ohio insecticide plant John Brunner. Brunner was the author of a classic sci-fi eco disaster domino novel, The Sheep Look Up. # | |
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