Rock Geek Chic

The Shallow End

2009-08-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a radio show about the (self-)important music of the 1960s.

The Shallow End, with Mike Nickels and Joanie Cokespoon. Music for thinking people, from when the music mattered.

http://rockgeekchic.com/rockgeekFM.mp3

Two albums: one triumph, one try again

2009-08-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

2007. Urbana. Parasol Records. I was trying to find a new job. Twelve interviews in twelve months, and after each, to calm down, I went to Parasol Records wearing a suit, feeling dirty, and blew money on records. On one such day, itching to spend but finding nothing I knew I needed, I asked Angie to recommend something I had never heard before. Something undanceable, with weird lyrics and unexpected time signature changes. This was probably an unfair request, but she nailed it. She handed me Widow City, by the Fiery Furnaces. She had been in a band or two with Mathew Friedberger. I took the disc home and put it on while painting a wall green, and Cristy and I were blown away in a way we seldom are: new music irresistible and yet unlike anything we'd ever heard, sharp, cool, unique, weird, jarring, bad-ass in a nerdy way, but with an integrity that made its own sense.

In fact, though we have each had such experiences on our own, there is only one other album that paralyzed us both together on first listen...

2003. Urbana. Blue Moon Farms. Rick and I were walking somewhere out past the basil, admiring the sunset, when he mentioned a band he thought I should check out: The Negro Problem. Well, truth be told, the whole idea of a band called The Negro Problem made me uncomfortable. But intrigued. But no Negro Problem albums presented themselves to me over the following months, so I didn't have to take a stand on whether I thought The Negro Problem was an appropriate name for a band.

2009. Iowa City. The record store behind Haunted Books. On a whim, I looked in N, and there, enigmatically, was Welcome Black by The Negro Problem. I guess that I expected some confrontational, racially-charged music, probably rap. A few days later I was driving around Urbana at night, running some pointless errand, and I put the disc on. From the moment two minutes into the album when the singer Stew bursts in, erupting with the unforgettable, unfathomable declaration "Don't want to put you in a pop coma/And then they put you in a popcorn machine!" I got very confused. I just felt weird. I could not stop driving around until the CD was over. And even then I had to back it up a couple of times. (Oh no, he did not really just sing, "Mr. Mellencamp, show me a hip small town free of those serial rednecks and all/With a bookstore where Chomsky's speaking down at the Veteran's Mall." That's too weird. This is like a black Tom Waits performing glam cabaret show tunes from Jupiter with Robert Fripp on guitar. Or... something.) The liner notes did not clear anything up: musicians credited include Ennio Lessaconi, Rollin' Barthes, and someone named Loop plays something called Garoo.

Teachable moment: of course I wondered whether I should savor the wonderful weirdness of this new album — that rare, total What the Fuck? moment — or immediately research and obtain all the other material by the band. I did the latter, should have done the former. Even if Post-Minstrel Syndrome is perhaps the best possible album title for a band called The Negro Problem, I gather that Stew learned to write lyrics a few albums before he learned to focus on setting them to good melodies and arrangements, joining forces with Heidi Rodewald. I heard nothing else that throttled me in two other Negro Problem records and three Stew albums. Until I finally found the most recent Stew album...

2008. Nashville. Grimey's Records. On our way back from the Florida Keys, we stop at this wonderful record store long enough for me to buy every Fiery Furnaces album on vinyl. And an ABC button. The clerk is a fan (of the Fiery Furnaces, not ABC), and he strikes up a conversation with me about their various albums. But he tells me that Widow City is his least favorite. "It's like, I get the point, you can change time signatures." What he doesn't like is what I like.

So you might like the new album by the Fiery Furnaces, but I don't. It's not exquisitely strange. It's almost like a rock album by a band who doesn't quite know how to rock, but who really wants to. They try to pump out simple, repetitive, electric songs in steady quadratic time signatures. It sounds like an awkward attempt to try not to be too weird. The guy at Grimey's probably likes it. I respect it as an addition to their eclectic catalog — it's not an embarrassment, just a disappointment — but I won't buy the vinyl this time. You might like I'm Going Away, the new album by the Fiery Furnaces, because I don't.

Let's compare. The opening lines of Widow City:

"There ain't no more favors to ask;

There ain't no petitions to pass;

It's all in the hands — it's all in the hands —

Of the Philadelphia Grand Jury now.

More crooked sons of bitches you can't ever

have come across."

Okay. They've got my attention. This is a song about something. By contrast, the opening lines of I'm Going Away:

"I'm going away, I'm going away.

I'll be back some old day.

I'll be back some old day.

I'll be back some old day.

I'm going away, I'm going away.

I'll be back some old day.

I'll be back some old day.

I'll be back some old day."

And repeat. And repeat. That's not writing, that's copying and pasting.

Passing Strange, the latest album by Stew of the Negro Problem, is a live performance of his Broadway musical — an autobiographical pop opera (to be released as a performance film by Spike Lee this month). It's not like Welcome Black in that it is definitely more like show tunes, but it has all the weird hooks, charm, and astonishing lyrics of that record and something more: the story of Stew's life. One gets no sense of the man whatsoever from the surreal Welcome Black, but here he lays himself bare. And this time the music is racially charged, but in a personal and non-confrontational way that I can get. For example, there is an amazing moment in this story when he visits Amsterdam and befriends a woman who gives him the keys to her apartment. He is blown away by this simple gesture of trust, which he believes would never happen in America.

From the song "Keys (Marianna)":

"You know those L.A. ladies in their Mercedes:

They lock their doors if you just sneeze.

Now it's like, 'Bitch, please. She gave me her keys.'"

In describing the new ways he is treated in Europe — trusted in Amsterdam, fetishized in Germany — Stew brings a sharp contrast to the stereotypical racial identity that is his burden at home. These songs tell a story, fill your plate with thought, are funny and well-constructed, and surprising. It's not just about racial identity, it's about life, family, love, and there's even a song, with creepy organ playing reminiscent of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, called "Must Have Been High" about someone who wants to climb a tree.

Passing Strange is the crest of the wave of music pouring through my life at this moment.

900 Words for 5 New Albums Released in 2009

2009-08-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

Black Moth Super Rainbow: Eating Us

It would be enough to have a psychedelic name, surreal xerography on the album cover, a cryptic persona with no band photos, and a history of bizarre independent releases including speckled vinyl with scratch-and-sniff album covers. But this music is so sublime it melts in your mind. Analog synthesizers and vocoder-pureed vocals make for one of the most eerie-mellow listening experiences I've been immersed into for in a long time. This band is everything everybody thought the Flaming Lips should have been to me. It's timeless, sickly beautiful like a glistening pupae morphing into a butterfly, and purely obscure.

Hermit Thrushes: Slight Fountain

Captain Beefheart is a cult figure who is the subject of more hyperbole and anecdotes than serious study. Most rock geeks will buy Trout Mask Replica, not listen to it much, and consider themselves in the loop. I call this Trout Mask Replica Syndrome, which is a malaise that affects many challenging bands who are remembered for only one of their albums that is cited to save people the trouble of listening to the catalog.

What my study of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band suggests is that the contributions of Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) to the music that bears his name are easily overestimated. Trout Mask Replica is neither his best record nor his weirdest. It is just the longest. Vliet did not compose the double album in one afternoon—a groundless tidbit of nonsense that is often trotted out as proof of the man’s genius—in truth, he did not compose it at all. He whistled out some musical ideas to the actual musicians in the group—notably, Drumbo (drummer John French)—who than worked out the material into arrangements, which the starving, abused band members rehearsed slavishly while Beefheart rode around in expensive cars and went shopping for hats.

Well, to make a long story shortened, obviously I care about the Magic Band a great deal. I like to hear them play without that fool Captain Beefheart bellowing over the top of their complex arrangements, as in the Trout Mask rehearsals on the Grow Fins box set. So when I say that the new album by a band called the Hermit Thrushes sounds like the Magic Band without Captain Beefheart, I am not making that comparison casually.

Don't get me started on Captain Beefheart.

In fact, maybe it's not such a good thing that these guys sound like the Magic Band after all.

Never mind. Hermit Thrushes are original.

God Help the Girl

If you like the idea of Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch writing a rock operetta for a band comprised of three female vocalists in an effort to replicate the sound of 1950s girl groups, with lush orchestration provided by members of Belle and Sebastian—in other words, if you already have an uncritical affinity for the Belle and Sebastian sound, and are comfortable with that same sound frosted with an additional layer of pink icing, and are ready to lie back, eyes closed, in the bubblegum bubblebath of sweet naivete with enough musical complexity to distract you from your mortgage payments but not so much that you have to furrow your brow in jazz anxiety, then this is for you. But if you are that person, then you already knew that.

Warning: this is not punk rock.

Those Darlins

Wickid country. But not at all what I thought it would be. It's rocking, youthful, and fun, and the voices of Nikki, Jessi, and Kelley Darlin sound less like Dolly Parton than they do the Chipmunks. In other words, country music is a departure point for this band, not a destination. Like the Avett Brothers, they have taken a uniquely and tritely American musical genre and morphed it into something kind of disarming, weird, and spastic—in a word, expressive. Heck, y'all, I don't much cotton to country, or even western, but I dig this disc. There is no doubt that these three ladies could kick the tar out of Catherine, Brittany, and Dina from God Help the Girl. DUI or die!

Paul Kotheimer: Familiar E.P.

The new EP by local musical Swiss army knife Paul Kotheimer takes a turn for the personal away from his recent turn to the political that followed his turn to the fictional. Though enough fragments of his earlier directions are here to satisfy those of us who have followed his development, a development it is. He confesses to stealing a satchel of money from the Bagdad green zone, fails to kill a spider in the shower, and delivers a sad lecture on modernist poet Louis Zukovsky. There is some exciting trumpet playing by David Tcheng, appropriate use of an eighties Juno synthesizer, and—don't you know—precise acoustic guitar and a cover of a Rich Krueger song, without which no Kotheimer production would be complete. At the center of all this is Paul's pitch-perfect pipes exhibiting a crafty control of dynamics, timbre, emotion, and the secret weapon that makes him stand out from his peers: notes. The latest chapter in Paul's canon would also serve as an excellent introduction to newcomers. It's available in a limited-edition CD pressing. And (hint) the EP is just the right length to put on while washing dishes: it ends in time to let the worst pots and pans “soak.”

Mosh Geek F.M.

2009-07-05T04:59:00.000-07:00

On June 29 Rock Geek F.M. hosted an introduction to heavy metal featuring resident expert Jason Greenly. Here's the entire show, blood, pus, and all (uploaded temporarily, as I don't want the heavy metal copyright lawyers leaving a bloody axe impaled in my front door).

http://rockgeekchic.com/rockgeekFM.mp3

LA Paisley Underground / The Great Philosophers

2009-05-26T08:11:00.001-07:00

Our work with Anderson doing a show dedicated to the LA Paisley Underground scene, featuring David Roback, Hope Sandoval, and Kendra Smith, is posted here:

http://rockgeekchic.com/rockgeekFM.mp3

Know of any songs that preach ways to live and think ("You Can't Always Get What You Want," "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free")? We're looking for songs for a radio show called The Great Philosophers. Suggestions are welcome, and pretentious songs are okay if not unavoidable...

New at Smile Politely

2009-04-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

Cristy and I have some new writing at Smile Politely, including a review of Robyn Hitchcock's new album and his recent performance in Chicago, a tribute to a college radio station, and a review of the Smoking Popes show.

PSYCHEDELIC SOUL / 1987 vs. 1996

2009-04-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

A few episodes of Rock Geek FM have come and gone since my last posting here - string sections, Joe Boyd, songs with brass - but I wanted to post the show we did with Rick Halberg on April 28: Psychedelic Soul

http://rockgeekchic.com/rockgeekFM.mp3

This Saturday Cristy and I are having a DUEL. That is right. We are in disagreement over which one of us graduated from high school in a better year for rock. And we're going to rely on the listeners to vote by phone or by email. 1987 vs. 1996. Tune in Saturday morning from 8-9 a.m. CST on 90.1 FM (for those in the radius) or online at

http://weft.org

New Rock From 2008?

2009-02-24T12:51:00.000-08:00

It took the hosts of Rock Geek F.M. two weeks to celebrate Valentine's Day, with songs named after women A-Z.

Flawedcasts of those two shows are temporarily downloadable here:

http://rockgeekchic.com/FM/20090214womenA-M.mp3
http://rockgeekchic.com/FM/20090221womenN-Z.mp3

This Saturday we are going to devote an hour to newly-released music. Last year saw a new album by some band called Radiohead, and this week saw me finally get my pre-ordered LP of Goodnight, Oslo, by Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3. Future Clouds and Radar, a Texas band that sounds British, completed a concept album about Peoria, Illinois, for reasons that remain obscure. And Ben Folds titled his latest after Normal, Illinois, and wrote a song about "Effingham," even if he got the name wrong. Downstate Illinois is the new Tobacco Road, apparently.

Were there any new records last year (or this) that struck your fancy? As music snobs stuck in the 1990s and 1980s, respectively, Cristy and I will rely on your suggestions.

Tune in to Rock Geek F.M. Saturday mornings from 8-9 a.m. CST on http://weft.org. Or at a more reasonable hour in the Nordic countries.

Songs That Refer to Other Bands

2009-02-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

This week we're dedicating our radio show to songs that refer to other bands. We've recorded a short promo to explain our position on this complex and far-reaching topic.

Thanks for listening. I hope Neil Young will remember...

Songs That Name Their Bands

2009-01-26T06:59:00.000-08:00

Cristy and I have had four radio shows so far, and we're hitting our stride.

January 3: Power pop
January 10: Worst guitar solos ever
January 17: Covers
January 24: Songs less than two minutes in length

This Saturday the 31st on Rock Geek F.M. Cristy and I are looking for songs that name their own band--songs whose lyrics include the name of the band that plays them. Unfortunately, we must steer away from rap for this theme, as it is part of the genre for rappers to discuss themselves. When it happens in a rock song, though, it can be a bit jarring.

This show will be webcast Saturday morning from 8-9 a.m. central time on http://weft.org, and on 90.1 FM for those lucky enough to wake up in bitterly cold Champaign County.

Suggestions are welcome. Here’s what we have so far.

* SONGS THAT NAME THEIR OWN BANDS

Monochrome Set
Jocko Homo (Are We Not Men?)
Give it to the Soft Boys
Big Country
Talk Talk
Have a Cigar
Belle & Sebastian/My Wandering Days Are Over
In the Court of the Crimson King
Red Hot Chili Peppers [song off the first album]
Clash City Rockers
Black Sabbath
Chaka Khan
Mommy, What's a Funkadelic? (does it really say the word?)
Killer Queen
They Might be Giants
Wang Chung
Who Are You?
Wonder Boy
Show Biz Kids

Putting the Peons back in Scorpions: Scorpions Cover Band at the High Dive

2009-01-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, The Great Cover Up--where Champaign-Urbana bands take turns performing the songs of more successful bands--isn't always a thrill a minute. Between sets there is more time standing around waiting for something to happen than playing left field in Little League softball. But it is so worth it for those magic moments when a local band manages to sound almost as good as the record they are copying.

This is not one such moment.

This is music I would never voluntarily listen to. Only worse. It’s so bad it’s not even so bad it’s good. I can see tablature flashing behind the guitarist’s half-lidded eyes as he picks his way through a page torn from a back issue of Guitar Hair magazine. These guys make me long for the sweet release deafness will bring, or for the coolly and relatively refreshing beauty of a real Scorpions record mastered by producers with equipment to cover up wrong notes. To think that thirteen years ago I bussed tables with that guitarist--and look how far we’ve fallen. He’s playing that shit and I’m in the audience, listening to it. This building is constructed of bricks that have more talent, brains, and style than this God-awful sewage we paid seven bones to have inflicted on us. I just threw up in my mouth. I just threw up in the singer’s mouth. Except he’s not the singer because he's not singing. He's a one-note wonder. I wish someone in the front row would reach up and yank his sack so he could hit those high notes and truly rock us like a hurricane instead of like a leaky urinal. I just went deaf. Two of the five members have half-assed attempts at costumes: a wig and a fake mustache. Nothing in this production rises to the level of three-quarter-ass. They aren’t even funny. It’s thanks to video games like Guitar Hero that a generation of aspiring musicians think that all they have to do to produce accurate renditions of rock classics is to manipulate their joysticks. These are five guys with amplifiers who sound like five guys with amplifiers and a garbage truck with a shot muffler. Rage Against the Music Teacher. Nobody will get closer than fifteen feet to the stage and nobody’s smiling: it’s like the stunned, horrified crowd is watching a rabid dog give birth to an alien. I’m not saying the band is bad, I’m just saying I’d rather have a migraine in August at noon in an unventilated greenhouse filled with skunk carcasses than be here. Nothing needs to be that loud except the Space Shuttle taking off. I frankly don’t know how these guys passed the audition. Perhaps the fact that the lead vocalist is the organizer of the concert has something to do with it. But let’s be fair: the Great Cover Up isn’t really about the audience. It’s about raising money for charity to help the hearing-impaired and drug-addled, and, I hope, buy these kids a xylophone so they can learn some notes. Plus it gives local bands a chance to rehearse in front of a paying audience, and will help cure me of my love for music.

I’m just kidding, it was AWESOME!

Oh No!

2009-01-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

William: Oh no, Cristy. Matt and Kim are cuter than us.

Look at those darling Brooklyn youth, sweet and innocent. He with the big glasses and Ernie shirt, pimped out in earnest nerd chic. Her looking not a day older than 18, with de rigueur tattoo, punk streak in her hair, and cute flashdance-lacerated t-shirt. These adorable babyfaced pop-rockers belong on every Diablo Cody movie soundtrack, with their mannered naïveté and effortless appearance of putting no effort into their appearance.

So how come they sound more like the Clash than the Moldy Peaches? They look like they should be an "I'm Sticking With You" cover band. But their free download “Daylight” is slamming. I can’t even criticize the fine points of the lyrics because I can’t understand a word. I like it.

I'm not jealous or anything.

Cristy: Did you notice that Green Label Sound is run by Mountain Dew? They may be cuter and younger, but they're still corporate. We blow them out of the water.

W: Dew? Ew. No wonder they had to have their photo shoot on their bicycles, with helmets, somewhere in Brooklyn. They're a Mountain Dew ad for hipsters. If we were a band, no way would we be signed. By Green Label. I’m pretty sure.

Announcing: Rock Geek Radio!

2008-12-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

William and Cristy have just gotten a show: Rock Geek FM. Saturday mornings from 8-9 Central Time (GMT-6). Streaming online at weft.org. Or listen with static at 90.1 FM for those lucky enough to be in the radius.

Tune in Saturday, January 3rd to listen to us kick off the new year with our debut broadcast, as, in the true community radio style, we push the wrong buttons, get flustered, and say "um," while Cristy helps William answer the question, "What is Power Pop?"

Sesame goes Street

2008-12-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

Bert manages to express how he feels about being a puppet in this candid video...

What would your emo band name be?

2008-12-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

My brilliant buddy Genna sent me the following link, where you can find out your emo band name. Hers is Sunnyday Helicopter Heart. Mine is Physical Underlying Satellite. Now I'm gonna go home, put on some skinny jeans, and wail about how misunderstood I am.

http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/786/

The Best Rock Drummer Of All Time...

2008-11-25T13:15:00.000-08:00

...is still Animal, from the Muppets.

The wise and powerful Rock Geeks have spoken.

Yes: NO!

2008-11-20T09:19:00.000-08:00

Recently named Metamucil's spokesband. Here we see the group on the video shoot for "Owner of a Congestive Heart."

Game OVER, dudes!

2008-11-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

So I guess Queen has re-formed, with Paul Rodgers (formerly of Free, Bad Company, and testosterone spank-fest The Firm) at the helm. I want to know who in the hell masterminded THIS geriatric disaster of seismic proportions. Seriously. Get the cane.

My hero, Shonna Tucker!

2008-11-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

This kick-ass bassist and occasional vocalist for the Drive By Truckers is an inspiration to all girls who wanna rock! Pure, unadulterated, no-bullshit ROCK.

Speculative Rock Trivia Question

2008-11-05T09:21:00.001-08:00

If Mick Jagger rode across the blazing desert on a fine Arab charger, wearing a suit of shining armor, coming to your emotional rescue, would that suit of armor stink worse than that album?

To wit: "A sweet sweet booty but stone stone cold!" Ew.

40 Ounces to Nicotine Freedom

2008-11-03T09:56:00.000-08:00

So my friend and co-worker, Pete, quit smoking over the weekend and frankly, I'm worried. Over the past 16 months, I've come to learn that whenever he's stressed out and cranky, he blasts Sublime. I suspect that it's now on permanent repeat, judging from how many times I've heard "Santeria" this morning.

It's going to be a long week.

Why I Buy Records

2008-11-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

Last night, after shopping at North Street Records in Normal, we had dinner with Marty and Danielle. Cristy explained to them that she was a “cheapskate” when it came to buying music. Which left hanging in the air the implication that became my confession: “I tend more to be, in Freudian terms, a bit anal-expulsive.”

I lived in Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop’s house for a year. They’ve got some books and CDs and records. When I asked Keith the naive, studently question what his theory was on book collecting, he shrugged. He said: “I don’t have a theory. It’s just that, where ever I stand, piles of books seem to grow around me.”

I subscribe to apocalypse thinking. I believe that I may end up being the last person alive, who inherits the responsibility for curating human coolness (or at least English-language coolness): rock and roll’s steward who must ensure that when the cats rise to claim the planet, they will learn guitar.

When the aliens land, and say TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER, I’ll be standing in my living room, with a foot of white beard, holding up a copy of Hopscotch, raving: “You got to read this book, man! ... Here: listen to the Kinks!”

WE HAVE COME TO TAKE ALL OF YOUR PLANET’S WATER.

“Water? Wow. I don’t even know that band, man.”

Of Montreal's Sex Sells

2008-10-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

So when did Of Montreal morph into oversexed, funk pervs? In the late 1990s, they were a quaint little indie band who hung out with the pasty, horn-rimmed Wilson worshippers of the Elephant 6 collective. Powered by mastermind Kevin Barnes, Of Montreal's earnestness and whimsical lyrics provided precious respite from the whiny screamo and brawny frat rock (read: Limp Bizkit) of the era. Now Barnes—apparently hopped up on Viagra, oysters, and electronica—is drawing comparisons to David Bowie and Prince. Did I miss something over the past decade?

It's obvious when analyzing Of Montreal's approach to the love song:

From 1997's Cherry Peel: "I could make you spaghetti with tomato sauce/With just a touch of oregano/And a parsley stem"

From 2008's Skeletal Lamping: "Maybe I'll blow you/Whatever kind of kisses you want/Because you've got so much in common/With my big cock creator"

The kicker is that Of Montreal are now a total "It" band, beloved in college towns and topping the "staff picks" in record stores. I guess Barnes is doing someone—er, something—right.

Violens

2008-10-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

Never name your band "Violens." If, in the weird science of naming bands, any misspelling counts as clever, then I guess I'm impressed. But when the DJ back-announced the band who recorded the song that had us spellbound, "Violens" was not among the first thirty spellings I would have guessed. And there is a band called "Violence." If there was never a band called "Violets," I'd say name your band that right now, it's a fantastic name. Except that when the DJ back-announces you, it won't do you any good. People will be looking for a band called "Violins," another fine name, unless your band has violinists, in which case it would not count as clever.

Violens has no album out yet, as best I can tell. But the song we heard is fantastic and can be downloaded for free.

Attention Facebook Users

2008-10-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

Cristy and I have just created a quiz called "Are You a Rock Geek?" on Facebook. I'm not sure whether it's possible to link to it, but the determined should be able to find it by searching. Please let us know how you do.

No fair using wikipedia, geek.