Category: Music

Last night, due to the Simpsons being pre-empted by a showing of Ice Age, I chose to watch myself some VH1. Despite the fact that I was really enjoying the re-run of the top 100 one-hit-one-wonders when along came an ad for their Big In ’04 special.

Now, this particular ad forcused on nominee Green Day. I have no problem with Green Day. I bought Dookie way back when and played it until the cassette wore out. My quibbles are not with them. My quibbles lay within VH1’s copy writing department. In the little ad, Green Day are referred to as “the godfathers of punk-pop.” Um, pardon?

Sure, Green Day broke the gates down for bands like Blink-182, Good Charlotte, and countless others. They were the first punk-pop, pop-punk, whatever, to break into the mainstream. I’m not gonna dispute that fact. Godfathers, though? C’mon, please… if we’re gonna talk “godfathers”, we have two contenders for the title.

Number one would be the Buzzcocks. Arguably, they were the first ones to make really poppy, catchy songs with a punk feel. Listen to “Orgasm Addict” or “I Don’t Mind” to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Our second contender, and a more likely candidate, would be the Descendents. I’ve talked about these prototypical SoCal punkers before. Their style of pop-punk is what every act from Green Day to Simple Plan to New Found Glory to those guys playing in the basement next door owe their sound to. Seriously… “Suburban Home” and “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” sound just as fresh today as they did when they came out.

If any bands are going to be declared godfathers of the pop-punk movement in music, it should be either of these folks. Not a band that has liberally borrowed from both.

My list of the top albums of 2004 will be forthcoming in the next few weeks, but I am trying to get as many people to buy the Crimea‘s newest release, Lottery Winners On Acid. The album is a five-song EP, and while it runs about 11 bucks at the local Best Buy, it will be money well spent.

The EP is this glorious mix of the Flaming Lips and the Kinks, and will make you smile like a retard when you hear the title track. Go, buy the damn thing right now. Or, go take a listen to a few tracks over at Double Dragon Music and hear what I’m talking about. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna go listen to that fucker again. Once a day for two weeks, kids. It’s that good.

While on my home from work this afternoon, I heard two bands within ten minutes of each other that got me to thinking. I am talking of the New Amsterdams and A Perfect Circle. The two bands, despite the fact that they were being played on the same station, couldn’t have been more dissimilar… or could they?

The reason I ask this question is because while the New Amsterdams are a piano pop band, and A Perfect Circle is a gloomy kinda-metal band, they are both side projects. The New Amsterdams are the side project of Matt Pryor from the Get Up Kids and A Perfect Circle is Maynard from Tool‘s. But the fact that they’re both side projects is not the point I’m going for.

See, both side projects are from the frontmen to other bands. This leads to a dilemma- recognizability. The lead singer of a band has a distinctive voice. You hear his or her voice, and you’re immediately going to think that it’s a performance by their “main” band. It takes a special sort of side project to really make the side project seem worthwhile. If the side band’s musical stylings are remarkably similar to the main band’s, there’s going to be the inevitable critical backlash that the side project (Y) sounds sounds like leftovers from the main band (X).

Such is the X vs. Y dilemma that occurs with Pryor and Maynard. To the average music fan (and even to me, who listens to dozens of new cds each month), the differences between Pryor’s X and Y and Maynard’s X and Y are not readily apparent. To me, both bands from both performers sound pretty much the same. It takes some thorough listening to detect what end up being pretty subtle (and minor) differences.

In the case of the New Amsterdams vs. the Get Up Kids, the differences were much more readily apparent on the first New Amsterdams’ record, Never You Mind. That release was primarily Pryor and a guitar, in a very Dashboard Confessional sort of way. After that, the records became nearly indistinguishable from Get Up Kids albums, and the Get Up Kids’ On A Wire was so acoustic, it may as well have been a New Amsterdams record.

With A Perfect Circle and Tool, it’s pretty much clear-cut, at least to me. A Perfect Circle sounds like Tool, but with the chugging guitars replaced by more melodic guitar lines. It essentially sounds like all the slow parts to Tool’s songs. And I’d like to think that the guys in Tool would never have allowed the recently released cover songs atrocity Emotive, in which Maynard and company suck all the life and joy out of songs by artists such as John Lennon, Black Flag, and others. That is neither here nor there, however.

The thing is, side projects can work. Phil Anselmo from Pantera formed Superjoint Ritual, which was also a metal band. However, Superjoint has made a couple albums that sounded nothing like the sludgy, Lynyrd Skynyrd by way of Black Sabbath sound of Pantera. As a matter of fact, Superjoint sounds like the fastest, loudest, evilest speed metal I’ve heard in years. There’s no confusing one for the other. Sadly, that’s one of the few exceptions.

Today, we will be exploring a couple of bands that sound like other bands, but still manage to keep their tunes unique enough to avoid mockery by me.

First off, we have the Ruffians, from New York City. They sound an awful lot like Flogging Molly, who in turn sound an awful lot like the Pogues. Happily, they’re willing to admit that they sound like Flogging Molly and the Pogues. I’d really love to see the Ruffians live, as they seem like they’d be a hell of a lot of fun- the sort of band you’d want to play your birthday party and drink all your beer. There’s a strong possibility they may do the best Pogues cover ever. Never have I heard a man sound so much like Shane McGowan without being age 40+ and an alcoholic.

And, secondly, are the Phenomenauts. Not only do they sound like Man Or Astroman? (only with vocals), they look like them, too. It’s kinda creepy, and somewhat eerie. However, they milk the rockabilly tip of the Man Or Astroman? sound a lot more than the surf side, so they actually come off as a more country type of band. Granted, how a band can be country, and also be from outer space, I’m not certain.

Seriously, though, both bands are worth checking out. Both the Ruffians and Phenomenauts have plenty of sound video samples on their sites (so you can check out each band in the comfort of your computer chair), along with links to buy their cds and assorted other merch.

I posted about Indie 103.1FM in LA a while back, and I think that if you liked that, you might be ready for a really indie radio station. It’s time for you all to delve into the exciting world of… COLLEGE RADIO!

School is about halfway through the fall session all across the country, meaning that college radio stations are finally getting their new recruits broken in.

For those of you out there not fortunate enough to live in a college town, you’re really missing something. There’s just something different about college radio, as opposed to your usual Clear Channel owned piece of crap. College radio will not play the same 40 songs all day, all week. College radio does not bombard you with the new Britney Spears single three times in one hour (an actual occurrence on one Kansas City radio station). There’s no morning drive-time show, featuring loudmouth asses making the same jokes day after day after fucking day.

This is not to say that college radio stations are the be-all, end-all of radio goodness. Lord knows, you give up a bit when you listen to one of them. Those cool-sounding, well-spoken djs that keep you entertained? Yeah… there’s probably one of them amongst the thirty or forty djs working at the station. And they probably work the 2am-4am slot on Wednesday mornings.

The rest of the on-air “talent” is more likely to skew towards the most awkward music geeks on the face of the planet or mind-numbingly dull and uninformed broadcast journalism majors. The former is going to use “um” and “uh” and “er” about four or five times per sentence spoken, bit will have a pithy comment or interesting tidbit about most of the music they play. The latter will be able to speak well, but will know next to nothing about the music they play, even to the point of mispronouncing band names, or out and out fucking up of band names. My personal favorites being the dj that referred to Gorky’s Zygotic Mimcy as Gorky’s Psychotic Monkey, and the guy who pronounced Cibo Matto (“cheebow mah-toe”) as “Seebo Matto.”

Of course, this is the price you pay for getting to hear interesting music. Seriously, is there any other sort of radio station, other than college stations, where you can hear White Zombie, the Mountain Goats, Oingo Boingo, and DJ Shadow in the same twenty minute block? And, hell, at least at the station here in Lawrence (that would be the University of Kansas’ station, KJHK 90.7FM), you get a request filled in about ten minutes.

I’d also be remiss in my commentary were I to exclude the idea of specialty programming. On damn near every college radio station I’ve had the chance to hear, there’s been a wealth of special shows. These programs cover the gamut- everything from hip-hop to electronica to ska to metal to politics to sex.

Tune into KJHK Monday mornings 9am-noon Central standard time for the station’s Breakfast For Beatlovers, with Curtis, perhaps the best dj ever. He’ll play techno, reggae, soul, breakbeats, and hip-hop so smoothly, it’ll blow your mind. Tusday afternoons 2-4pm with Thaddius Maximus will also do much to break down any misconceptions you might have of college radio djs. The guy seems to enjoy himself, and plays good music.

The Pixies, at the start of their reunion tour, way the fuck back in April, were contracting with a company to produce live discs of their shows, that were immediately available following each concert. Evidently, that was only for the first leg of the tour, because when they got to Kansas City, they weren’t doing it, and I haven’t been able to find that show anywhere, despite scouring every BitTorrent site I could lay my beady little eyes on.

But god bless Frank Blank and company, because they’ve finally wised up and made the shows available online. For the low, low price of $11.99, you can download 256 Kbps mp3s of the shows, starting on September 30 of this year. Coincidentally, the Kansas City show was October 1, so I just squeaked in under the gun.

Sure, it’d be nice to to be able to order them, a la Fugazi and their live cd series. Because, really, an mp3 is still an mp3, and if I’m dropping 12 bucks for a download, I’d at least like lossless media format, such as FLAC or something. Then again, I’m a geek.

Want an exclusive band t-shirt that makes people wonder where you got it? Want to help try and cure cancer? Want both at the same time? Go check out Shirts For A Cure, which… well, fuck it, I’ll let their website do the talking:

“The Syrentha J. Savio Endowment (SSE) was established by punk rock photographer Mark Beemer in 2002. SSE provides financial assistance to underprivileged women who cannot afford expensive breast cancer medicine and therapy. Because SSE is active within the punk rock community, the Shirts For A Cure project was launched to give voice to the social concerns of punk bands and their many fans.

When a band donates a shirt design, the design becomes an SSE exclusive. We sell the shirt and use the proceeds to help women fighting breast cancer. All shirts are printed on 100% pre-shrunk cotton. Each shirt costs $12 plus shipping and handling.”

Bands include the Explosion, Strike Anywhere, Avenged Sevenfold, the (International) Noise Conspiracy, Hot Water Music, Good Riddance, Thrice, Thursday, and Taking Back Sunday. Alkaline Trio, as well as Coheed & Cambria have shirts coming too. Check it out, help some ladies, and get a cool shirt in the process.

Since tomorrow is Halloween, and I don’t plan on doing any updating then, I figured I’d be a nice music-giving individual, and hook y’all up with some free mp3s of everyone’s favorite act ’round this time of year. That’s right- the Misfits. And I mean the original Misfits, when Danzig was singing.

Ghoul’s Night Out
Where Eagles Dare
Bullet

And lastly, a live version of Kansas City streetpunk act Tanka Ray doing “Hybrid Moments” live on KJHK‘s Plow the Fields program in October of 2000.

Ska-punkers Big D & the Kids Table have made a video for their cover of the Specials’ “Little Bitch.” The song is off their just-released cd How It Goes, out now on Springman Records.

The video is rather nifty, as it features the band drinking a lot of beer, and it’s one seamless take. Very very nice. You’ll need the Quicktime plug-in to view it.