For you emo kids, there’s a book out there. It’s called Nothing Feels Good (taken from the title of a Promise Ring album) by Andy Greenwald, a senior contributing writer at Spin.
The book is pretty much a history of the emo movement and most of the bands involved. It explains the whole development of the genre way better than I thought was possible. It does portrays artists like Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional in a positive light, however. So, for those of you who find emo to be played by “spindly young men… playing recycled Byrds songs, mopers and whiners who couldn’t make eye contact with the audience if their lives depended on it” may want to steer clear. Anyhow… I think the point I was going for here is that the book’s an interesting read, written as it is at the height of a musical movement. Even as much as I detest emo, I found it well-written and damn informative.
The quote, by the way, comes from Joe Queenan‘s Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon. While it was originally directed at grunge rock, I think it applies here. Both are catch-all terms for a series of bands that wouldn’t otherwise be related, and they both seem to be musical movements that have caught on with the exact groups they once tried to avoid (i.e., jocks who listen to Dashboard or Nirvana).
He came from Boston
by Jester on January 7, 2005 @ 3:20 pm
This is so fucking sweet. The frontman for one of my most favorite bands and my favorite radio station have joined forces.
Southern California’s most talked about radio station, Indie 103.1, announced this week that Dicky Barrett will host the morning drive at the station. The Mighty Morning Show, debuts January 31th from 7-10am. Barrett is best known as the lead singer of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and most recently was the announcer on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The Boston native has this to say about his new radio show: “I’m not gonna fuck with the format. Obviously it’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be a morning version of everything that Indie is already. Plus I have no idea what I’m doing!”
“Dicky Barrett is a HUGE talent,” states Michael Steele, Indie 103’s program director. “He’s done just about everything in entertainment, from singing to writing to acting, to managing to producing. This guy has a life of experiences that I can’t to hear about on the air. Indie is all about telling it like it is, and playing music that nobody else will touch. Dicky suits us perfectly! I don’t know what the show format is going to be exactly. It’s up to him. I’ve been a fan of the Bosstones since the early 90’s. There aren’t a lot of guys who are as compelling on stage as Dicky is. You can’t take your eyes off him. That’s why I can’t wait to have him behind the mic every morning at Indie 1031. You won’t be able to take your ears off him, I promise.”
Once again, the amount of rewriting I had to do on this from the original press release was fucking insane. While I love finding out about this shit before most folks, it’s a serious pain in the ass to remove all the unnecessary punctuation, capitalization, and grammatical errors. But it’s a labor of love, so I cope.
Now I wanna see a statue
by Jester on January 6, 2005 @ 3:54 pm
LOS ANGELES – A statue in memory of legendary punk guitarist Johnny Ramone will be unveiled by his wife, Linda Ramone in a public ceremony on January 14 at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. The monument will be located not far from where bandmate Dee Dee Ramone is buried. During the ceremony, which will take place from 3 – 5 p.m. there will be speeches by some of Johnny’s closest friends, thus keeping with the spirit of Johnny’s own words written in the stone:
“If a man can judge success by how many great friends he has, then I have been very successful.”
The bronze statue, created by artist Wayne Toth, will capture Johnny in his most memorable image – playing his Mosrite guitar. Johnny Ramone, co-founder and guitarist of seminal 70’s punk rock band The Ramones, died on Sept. 15, 2004 at his home in Los Angeles.
Johnny Ramone co-founded The Ramones in 1974 along with fellow bandmates Joey Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone and Tommy Ramone; the only surviving member of the original band. The band, which gained critical acclaim and a huge following in New York’s underground music scene at the time performing at clubs such as CBGB’s, is widely credited for bringing the “punk rock” genre to the forefront. The Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
CD Review: KIll Your Idols – “From Companionship to Competition”
by Jester on @ 7:58 am
Lots of hardcore coming across my desk here at the MoFo. I suppose I should be happy I’m getting the heavy shit I complain about never receiving, rather than the pop-punk with screams they call hardcore nowadays.
Yeah… well… Kill Your Idols’ new release isn’t really all that spectacular, either. It’s the other side of the coin from the samey-sounding screamo acts. Of course, it has a great Pist cover (“Still Pist”). Plus, the last track, “Looking Back,” grabbed me by the ears and finally made me pay some real attention to From Companionship to Competition. “Still Pist” is pretty true to the original, and “Looking Back” has the sort of hardcore hook I haven’t experienced since Kid Dynamite broke up.
Those two songs, however, were the last two tracks. The preceeding thirteen weren’t enough to drag my attention away from whatever I was doing the times I listened to the disc. And that’s a damn shame, too. Seriously- when I listen to cds for review, I play them at work, while I’m making dinner, while I’m reading, in my headphones… I give every album a nice, well-rounded test.
With Kill Your Idols, they couldn’t grab me until the very end. Unfortunately, by that point, it was too little, too late.
CD Review: 7 Seconds – “Take It Back, Take It On, Take It Over”
by Jester on @ 7:39 am
Ah, 7 Seconds. You know- they’ve been around for 25 years. Yep… 25 years. That’s the same age as me. They started at roughly the same time as I did. No lie. And you want to know another little bit of information about me and 7 Seconds?
Every album since The Crew has bored me to death.
This one is no exception. It’s not that the album sucks, it’s just that Kevin Seconds and Steve Youth seem to have a formula that worked so well for them back in ’84 that they just can’t seem to let it go. Which is a shame, because their live album, Scream Real Loud is a fantastic piece of work that shows that even though a punk band’s been together for 20 years plus, they can still rock out with the youngest of them.
However, just because you can rock like you did when you were 20 doesn’t necessarily mean you have to follow the same exact song structure you did when you were 20. If the band could branch out a little… just a little, they’d have something would would maintain my attention past the duration of the disc.
Take It Back, Take It On, Take It Over isn’t a bad album, it just isn’t anything 7 Seconds hasn’t done over and over again. They do it well, it just doesn’t grab me the same way it did the first time.
There is a house in New Orleans
by Jester on January 4, 2005 @ 4:12 pm
Back from my work-imposed abstinence from writing here. The holidays are over, my new computer is networked, and we’re gonna start off with…
150 Covers of “House of the Rising Son”.
Why the hell not? It’ll keep you monkeys occupied while I figure out what I’m gonna do for the next few weeks. I know I promised an mp3 a day, Monday through Friday starting the beginning of the year, but I didn’t get this machine set up online until this afternoon, so you all will just have to wait until I get this backlog of cd reviews (don’t worry, it’s only three) banged out.
Look for the official start of the mp3 blog next Monday. I’m trying to figure out a schedule… like, punk rock Mondays, country/folk/bluegrass Tuesdays, etc. Comment and let me know if you geniuses have any suggestions.
Dirty south and New York junkies
by Jester on December 14, 2004 @ 7:15 pm
When I die, please play the Jim Carroll song, “People Who Died.” But only the version by the Drive By Truckers. That shit will get some drunken motherfuckers breaking up the funeral home, that’s for certain.
Peachtree schnapps and an evening in front of the computer while my fiancee’s at the movies, folks… and that was the best I could do. Enjoy the song.
What’s ahead
by Jester on December 7, 2004 @ 1:09 pm
So, I have a plan for the upcoming year. Beginning January 1, 2005, there will be a small change here. While the music page here at the MoFo will continue to carry all the inane banter you have come to love, loath, despise, and tolerate for the free music linkage, it’s gonna have a little something extra.
Allow me to rephrase- a lot extra.
Basically, starting that day, the music page will be updated daily, Monday through Friday. Each post will have [insert drumroll here] an mp3. That’s right, kiddies, we’re gonna have ourselves an mp3 blog, thanks to to the new hosting deal I got for my website (CHEAP PLUG) from GoDaddy (CHEAP PLUG v.2.0). This means if you like the music I write about, you will be happy. If you hate the music I post about, you will hate me even more, because there will be free music daily, and you won’t want to download a single bit of it.
Of course, if there are any bands you feel deserve attention, e-mail me at skajester [at] yahoo dot com. I’ll see what I can do.
Lollipop Lust Kill reforming
by Jester on @ 12:58 pm
Goth/industrial/metal band Lollipop Lust Kill broke up earlier this year, but the remaining members announced earlier this week thatnew songs are being worked on and rough versions are due out by the end of the year.
Frontman Evvy posted the following regarding the details:
Here’s the deal… Pill and I have been writing, and we plan on releasing a new LLK album. We are starting the whole LLK concept over from scratch.. Just the two of us writing what we want, without any other opinions clouding our artistic vision.
And so far things are working out very well. We will be producing/recording the album ourselves (as we did with ‘She Was Told’), so it will definately be raw… But it will be new LLK.
Ignore the High Fidelity reference
by Jester on December 3, 2004 @ 7:23 pm
So, it’s the time of year when every music writer in the country and abroad begins writing about their top albums of the past year. They also attempt to seem like they don’t really care about the list, or that the list was written without having heard a couple albums to which they were really looking forward.
I am no better.
Um, but I’m gonna be nice and not actually put the list here. If you’re so inclined, you can go over to Static Magazine‘s online page and read my top five albums of the year, as well as the top five records you should be ashamed to have bought. If you want to read it, you can. If not, you’re not going to be annoyed by seeing it here.
However, I do have to say that Neko Case‘s latest record, The Tigers Have Spoken is absolutely fantastic, and had I heard it before I wrote that list, it would have easily made the fucker. Goddamn… really, go buy it. Right now. Seriously, you’ll thank me. Go listen to a few songs over at the ANTI- site and see if I’m lying. You can look at sexy pictures of the lovely Ms. Case while you’re there, too.