Crooked Rain

Ten years since it was first released. Five years, I believe, since I discovered it. Hiding from the first snow in Fresno in a notable number of years in my backroom, between games of Grand Theft Auto 2 on the computer I'd inch up to the heater, the only records that mattered were In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Crooked Rain. I'd listen to one the whole way through, and then the other. As far as Aeroplane went, all we really cared about was the distorted bass and drums, not so much the lyrics yet.

Lyricswise, Conner and I were interested in Pavement. "The second drummer drowned" a lyric from Cut Your Hair piqued his interest in the band, and my future interest in the Fall. The ending lines of Silence Kit became an infamous drum cadence for Conner in his marching band snare days, he would recite the lines from 'hand me the drum... stick!' on as he entered snare-offs (I'm not sure if his fellow/foe drummers ever caught on to the 'screwing myself with my hand' part, because Conner was too busy throwing his sticks all over the place). That's probably as far as Pavement influenced us rhythm-wise (if I ever feel like a bad drummer I just look to Gary West for comfort).

Pavement were the first band I knew that were in dialogue with other bands. The aforementioned second drummer mentions led to internet searches and finally a poorly downloaded copy of The Wonderful and Frightening World Of The Fall which changed my life in a different way. The lines in Range Life about Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins taught me that there was such a thing as a musical hipness hierarchy and we've seen that, with a few glam exceptions, history does not remember those two bands very well.

And that's why CRCR kept returning to my stereo. Stuff like Modest Mouse and Codeine and the Pixies and all those other bands that thought they could exist in a vacuum always felt distant for some reason. Their music didn't broaden my horizons so much as their press kits did. I was more interested in how their brains processed the music that they made rather than the actual music itself. While those bands with their sparse packaging and stylish obliqueness wanted to keep their actual personalities as far away from the public as possible, Pavement layed it all out there. An interview promoting Wowee Zowee had Malkmus admitting that each of the songs were rip-offs of of other bands styles, or important moments in history, or something Brian Eno once said to him, or maybe he was just being ironic.

Malkmus' lyrics aren't a revelation, they are a reminder. Filmore Jive's famous lines 'goodnight to the rock and roll era' aren't as effective taken out of context of the music, which exists in a hipster wasteland. You wake up in a strange house as the song begins and step your way over your fellow bandmates, on your way to the bathroom your senses are bombarded with the cleverness of not bathing, the novelty of ironic posters, the faint sound of this week's favorite record. You look in the mirror, picture of David Bowie taped cleverly to the side, you ask yourself, How did I get here?

Crooked Rain Crooked Rain is the most important Pavement album for me, though Slanted and Enchanted has their best songs and Wowee Zowee has the best Pavement attitude, it was the album that accomplished the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do, rather than be just another album in my alternative collection, it was it's replacement.

Well, Kannberg's got his Preston School of Uninterestingness (can't let go of that name though), Westie still can't drum, Nastanovich has his horses, Ibold's probably up to something, and Malkmus is either trying to reverse his infamous rock and roll era remarks or confirm them with those new classic rock records of his.

So today and this weekend I've got myself to listen to the reissue of the album. It's all here, the original twelve tracks, the excellent B-sides, and some inferior 'alternate versions' on disc two. I don't know if this modern age is the most understanding arena for Malkmus' drawl, (we tend to like the high pitched emotive vocals in the 00's) but it's impossible to listen as if Pavement was just another band. Though the opening songs of disc two cast Pavement as a band of slackers, content to mumble made-up lines over jammy nothingness, we have the final product of this socio-musical wandering, the defining statement of their career.

What Kind of Music Do I Like

Here's this idea, we'll make a list of the kind of things we like and put them into categories. Not categories like 'rock' or 'pop' because I don't like 'rock' and 'pop', to academically appreciate in the way a soul like mine does, requires too much extracurricular activity. Categories like 'organic 70s rock' or 'cathartic techno'. I'm not saying that I like those, but I'm going to make up genres and give you a small list of bands that I like in them.

Example:
Bubblegum Reggae - Scritti Politti, Althea and Donna

JOHN PEEL

I'm listening to Truman's Water right now. This morning I listened to the Undertones Teenage Kicks at a volume that would otherwise have bothered me about bothering my housemates. Never having had listened to his show, I cannot miss that, but I do lament the loss of a personality that had a warm voice and an expansive record collection. He was friends with Mark E. Smith and Captain Beefheart called him every year on his birthday.

I always wanted to be in a band that John Peel liked. He was always the first to like something that everybody else would follow in liking. Years ahead in the rest of the world for reggae, ska, punk, his head sought out where good music was happening and he put it out there. I can't think of a better DJ.

A Night on the Tiles

It's times like this, when I'm listening to things like Disco Inferno and OMD and Ultravox, when I think 'hey, this is -Tyler cutting himself off from the rest of the world- kind of music' and I also think 'this does very little for me being able to play music with other humans'. I have to get my head out of my ears and onto something that matters. I have to start at least talking to other people about music, maybe sneaking my way towards a guitar.

Because seriously, when you find yourself closing in on ANYBODYS complete discography, you need to get out more.

Twelve Inches of Terror

I'm listening to soft things now, like the Junior Boys, Disco Inferno and of course my babies, OMD. That doesn't mean my thoughts are soft. Man, just a few minutes ago I had a songmoment in mind where the song is kind of going doing this repetitious thing and all of a sudden every part but the bass part drops away and its this starting simple bassline but it gets faster and more complicated, still its just one of these one two three anda four kinda things, but then the vocals come in and they are following it and then glacier stabbing guitars come in and of course, duh drums.

Anyway, its thoughts like this that get me through the valleys and deserts of the school year, not being able to create any musical magic, you know. I've got the ukelele and I've got the keyboard (buried under pillows somewhere) but without the constant freedom to play whenever (roommates, you know), its just as bad as having everything I play broadcast over speakers, and you know me, MR. New Material. I'm thinking of just writing a ton of bebop lyrics and putting them away for a rainy day (which by the way is supposed to happen tomorrow, but I mean rainy days of the mind).

I made this mix cd where it was the first six albums and the B-sides collection of OMD and I've been walking around school with it on my head for the last week. I think there have maybe been two skipped songs. The problem with this collection is that the albums I put on there were the remastered copies with all the extra stuff and extended versions of album songs on there. So, listening to the MP3 cd on shuffle, there's like a 50% chance that for any song I want to hear I'll hear the real song, the other half of the time I'm listening to a 12" remix or something.

Now don't get me wrong, the idea of a 12" remix is an intriguing one. Applied to dance music, you think the artist would just take where they were going with the song and go further out and have more percussion breaks and stuff, and that's what they do a lot of the time. But OMD, which is kind of between pop and dance, I listen to as more of a pop band, and pop is about economy. The best albums are the shortest, and the best songs are the ones where everything happens for the first time. You've got to have a chorus, of course, but you have to recontextualize it. And OMD do this really well, structuring songs like this. Anyway, OMD 12"s kind of stretch the songs out thinly, like if you took a 100 pixel .jpeg of the mona lisa and stretched it out to 500 pixels. It ain't going to look so great.

That being said, James Rabbit is going to do twelve inch remixes of everything we do in the future. If that means copying the track and playing it twice in a row, so be it.

SCHOOL IS GOING WELL.

Tyler:
"Its so loud in the printmaking room"
"I can't hear myself think"
"I always feel so disoriented"
"The music was loud in there today also"
"Someone put on some french dance music really loud"
Vanessa:
"That was mine, it was Essential Logic"

A Problem:

I'll get the Pavement CRCR reissue when it comes out, but I don't know if I'll like it. That download on the Matador homepage was pretty bleh. Kind of makes it seem like Pavement just improvised a bunch of tracks and put the better ones on a CD. And the 'lost album' we'll be getting is the lesser ones.

These albums feel like this to me:

David Bowie "Aladdin Sane": Someone is putting a seatbelt on me. We're about to go on a long car trip. The car is not air-conditioned, the road is not smooth. I've just finished a 64 ounce coca-cola. I am not going willingly.

Brian Wilson "SMiLE": I'm at a friends house and everybody is getting drunk but me. Because I am of sound mind, I can choose anything I want to listen to on the stereo. I choose a bootleg of the unfinished Smile album. I put it on and sit down. The couch is comfortable but the voices don't sound right.

Keith Hudson "Pick a Dub": I have to go to class in twenty minutes but I'm so sleepy and CNN is on and something's happening. I'll just put my head down for a second.

Roy Wood "Boulders": I'm at a party looking at the prettiest girl I've ever seen and she says something really obscure that nobody understands and I think I might. Then the people I'm with say the party's lame and make me leave with them.

XTC "Drums and Wires": There's this guy and he is really good at music and stuff and so you decide to hang out with him for a while just to get a feel of the kind of things he does when he's not doing music. So you start off hanging out in his living room and he plays guitar along with the television commercials and plays really well and you think 'wow'. Then you go to Wendy's and he sings along to the songs on the radio but harmonizes really nicely and you think 'wow'. Then you go to his night gig playing bass for a country band and you think 'hmm, eh...'. Then you go sleep on his couch and he listens to "Giant Steps." The next day goes the same, same commercials, same harmonizing, same Coltrane. You leave on the fourth day while he's sleeping and walk over to 7-11 and find yourself sitting on the sidewalk drinking a slurpee and singing one of the hooks to "Making Plans for Nigel"

Paul McCartney "Ram": You sell all of your things and move to a farm with your recent wife. The cow gets sick and you are too afraid to call a cow doctor.

The Associates "Sulk": You are sleeping soundly in your new bed. Something breaks in a pipe a floor above and it scares you awake.

Blood Brothers - Crimes

I'm not into hardcore. Its one of these genres like, ugh, electroclash, where the style is more treasured than the substance and its not particularly a style that I'm okay with. When you go to their concert, you're probably going to end up talking about how they looked versus how they sounded. This makes for an absolutely adorable genre, because its just like a parade where kindergardeners are walking around in costumes for their parents and the parents take video and say how nice they look but can't remember for the life of them the little keyboard ditty that Mrs. Haines was playing in the background of the procession. The Blood Brothers, as much as they are lumped in with the hardcore crowd are certainly not hardcore-sounding on this album, which is a good thing. The vocals are; the ironic guy that sings with an 'aren't these lyrics dumb?' delivery which gets old, and the really high pitched guy that doesn't. Their voices go so well together that until I was told otherwise, I thought they were the same person who just had a bunch of cool overdub ideas.

I listened to their last album, "Burn Piano Island, Burn" and it was quite unexciting and unlistenable for me. I made the mistake of making that my walking-around album one day, and became stranded 20 minutes away from home with the option of listening to either something I didn't fancy or nothing. I chose nothing. But this album is different. I couldn't play it around Conner because the drumming isn't good or really punk at all, the riffs aren't strong, nothing really gels in a way that we've heard before. I couldn't play it around Vanessa because everything is so stylized, its like having an art show where everything is lit with strobe lights and powerful green filters, you have to listen beyond the production and the flash. And forgive at least one, if not both, of the singers.

So the drumming isn't great and nothing's virtuoso (except maybe the castrato singing), why do I like it? It's nuanced. So let's say you happened to be in the backseat of a minivan that contains thirteen people, though it only has room for six. You aren't aware of the driver's proficiency, and there's hills and busses and rain. Its death, right? A rollover and a bunch of screaming, well-dressed bodies to dig yourself out of. But no, that would only happen if we were listening to hardcore. This is nuanced. The highlight, for example, of "Teen Heat" is when the song repeats its main riff with a delightful 'we've worked on this' pause. Dun dun deen deen dun dun ... deen deen. The moment in "Crimes" when the lead singer switches and it becomes the squealy guy, its a thing of well-calculated beauty. The guitars in opener "Feed Me to the Forest" know just when to do that power pop slideout and leave the wonderful verse to the distorted bass, but when they do it it comes off less like Weezer sitting around the studio quoting Cheap Trick (which the nineties gave us plenty of) and more like Lee "Scratch" Perry pulling something out of somewhere brilliant.

It sounds good on computer speakers. So what you do is you listen up in your room during those off-times, and you get really good at the album and where everything does those little switches and little moments, so when you are out with cool people and something dangerous is happening you can just shut up and hold on. B+.

Frog Eyes The Folded Palm

Manic. Its manic. Some of the manicness approaches greatness. Its through this though that we find the band failing, for each of the opener's great moments, there's another part where the band is just playing some standard New York jive. For every brilliant organ note in the first few seconds of the last song, there's another part where the band just jams along. Half of the album is great ideas and the other half is them treading water. When you think about it, most of these ideas are the same, sing crazy, play semi-crazy. The band wants us to look at them like we're watching a silent movie of a man haranguing the camera and listen to them like they're providing the unspoken music of the picture in our heads. It works really well when it works, but when they are doing the slow, let's-hope-they'll-think-slower=more-menacing songs we leave the room for those five minutes because, look Frog Eyes, we notice. The faster songs are better. And this is your best album. But if you are going to do the slower songs, give us something. "Ship Destroyer" might be the best song they ever do. Mainly because it reminds me of the Strokes. Actually a lot of this album's good parts are cribbing from the playbooks of Interpol, Walkmen, the Strokes, etc. But if Julian Casablancas was just the guy that got kicked off the bus for handing out too many pamphlets. Take one, take another, lights out lights out lights out. B -

Thanks for listening.

Dub is the music of hiccups.

I'm so used to being the dude that walks past fast with headphones on and nothing you've ever heard of. It always turns out that whenever I stop to talk to people its always the most embarassing part of an otherwise cool cd that they hear, like the weird pre-desert storm of "Oh Effendi" from 10cc's Sheet Music, or the bubblegum reggae of "Asylums in Jerusalem" from Scritti Politti's Songs to Remember. It seems like the answer to my current predicament is more music and more isolation and more obscurity, but my head always ends up hurting from the headphones. Its always too loud in some ways and too quiet in other ways.

I wanted to hear Kitchens of Distinction for weeks and when I finally get a hold of it, its just as 'eh, I'll listen to it later' as it was when I dropped it the last time.

I think I'm going to be a guitarist for a while. I apologize to all I hurt by making this decision. It is going to be hard to play guitar without resorting to cliches, but if I play it right, people won't even notice its there. They will just be holding their heads in total ecstacy wondering what's going on and why they just walked in on a miracle. Its important to note that nobody will see me play guitar for a while. Its also important to know that I don't actually own a guitar (aside from old five-stringy in Fresno, who I don't plan on importing.) I'll spend an hour a day just thinking about playing guitar, I guarantee you it'll be something.

How the music on the train to Sacramento worked out:

I listened to the Beatles Hard Days Night album on the bus and it sounded pretty good. A few songs I was surprised by. I was also surprised by how crummy the acoustic guitars sounded sometimes.

I listened to about 2/3rds of AR Kane's "I", it always sounds better than it is. Like the pokey bongos andcetera they sound good but don't always sound good to me. The singing is half and half also. I really like this album and sometimes really don't care about it. Especially when I'm listening to it.

I listened to the Associates Sulk album. Its one of these albums that has a big impact on me but I don't know when I'll ever listen to it. Like everything the Fall did. There was a time and a place for those albums and they were the best albums at the time and the best band in the world at the time, but I don't know if I'll ever need them again. Same with the Associates. I keep on thinking "This would be great if I was riding on a bus and crying" but I wasn't crying. Some little kid with huge deer eyes was though.

I listened to "You can't hide your love forever" by orange juice. Its a really angering album because I listen to it and I think 'man this song is great' and this song is great and this song is pretty good and this song is DIVINITY and this song is okay and this song is actually kind of boring and this song OH THIS SONG!!! YES!!!!! and this song.. eh.

My headphones always end up hurting my ears because they press my ears on my glasses and it hurts them and my headaches start after a while so it almost feels better to not listen to music than it does to listen to music.

On the car ride back I listened to the following things (they were all albums on a MP3 CD I made called "Modern Sadness"):

Destroyer, "Your Blues": I forgot to add the song "Notorious Lightening" which I think is my favorite album opener of the year to the CD so I skipped through every other song.

Arcade Fire, "Funeral": I thought this would be a good album and I always think the singing is kind of like the Associates but then I remember, no this is just whiny indie singing and the music is SO BORING.

Blood Brothers, "Crimes": This album sounds a lot better when its not on headphones. I didn't hear the song that I really liked on it, or maybe I did and just didn't like it when I heard it on headphones.

Junior Boys, "Last Exit": I'd like to like this band but everytime they come on I get bored and forget to like them.

Annie, "Anniemal": I just listened to "Me plus one" which I really like, but less on headphones.

The Strokes, "Live at Alexandra Palace": I really really liked this and how ferocious and big it sounds. But I had to stop during song number three to help my mom with the map.

Ignored, not listened to: Franz Ferdinand, The Futureheads, Interpol, The Walkmen, Panda Bear, Rogue Wave.

Now THATS what I call music!:

Here's what I'm talking about:

The Band: 10cc
The Album: Sheet Music

Personnel

1 The Wall Street Shuffle

Eric Lead Vocal, Electric Piano, Grand Piano, Lead Guitar, Melotron, Organ
Lol Electric Guitar, Backup Vocals
Kevin Drums, Percussion
Graham Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Percussion

2 The Worst Band In The World

Lol Lead Vocal, Electric Guitar, Grand Piano, Electric Piano, Percussion
Eric Lead Guitar
Graham Bass Guitar, Backup Vocals, Percussion
Kevin Drums, Percussion, Backup Vocals

3 Hotel

Kevin Lead Vocal, Congas, Timbali, Rhythm Skulls, Backup Vocals
Graham Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Percussion, Backup Vocals
Lol Acoustic Guitar, First Lead Guitar, Melotron, Synthesizer, Backup Vocals
Eric Electric Guitar, Second Lead Guitar, Backup Vocals

4 Old Wild Men

Eric First Lead Vocal, Lead Guitar, Slide Guitar
Kevin Second Lead Vocal, Backup vocal, Percussion
Graham Backup Vocals, Tambourine, Autoharp
Lol Gizmo, Synthesizer, Electric Guitar, Backup Vocal

5 Clockwork Creep Lol

Lead Vocal, Grand Piano, Electric Piano, Backup Vocals, Whistle
Kevin Vocal, Drums, Percussion, Backup Vocals
Eric Vocal, Backup Vocals
Graham Bass, Electric Guitar, Bazooki, Backup Vocals

6 Silly Love

Lol Lead Vocal, Electric Guitar, Backup Vocals
Eric Vocal, Lead Guitar, Electric Guitar, Grand Piano, Backup Vocals
Kevin Vocal, Drums
Graham Bass, Backup vocals

7 Somewhere In Hollywood

Kevin Lead Vocal, Drums, Backup Vocals, Tap Dancing, Percussion
Lol Vocal, Grand Piano, Electric Piano, Lead Guitar,
Backup Vocals, Synthesizer
Eric Slide Guitar, Phase Guitar, Backup Vocals
Graham Bass, Tubular Bells

8 Baron Samedi

Eric Lead Vocal, Lead Guitar, Electric Piano, Gizmo, Marimba
Kevin Vocal, Congas, Bongos, Drums, Backup Vocals
Graham Bass, Percussion, Electric Guitar
Lol Lead Guitar, Grand Piano, Melotron, Backup Vocals

9 The Sacro-Iliac

Graham Lead Vocals, Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Backup Vocals, Percussion
Kevin Harmony Vocal, Drums, Percussion, Backup Vocals
Eric Electric Guitar
Lol Vocal, Electric Guitar, Backup Vocal

10 Oh Effendi

Kevin Lead Vocal, Drums, Backup Vocals, Sleigh Bells, Acoustic Guitar,
Tambourine
Eric Vocal, Lead Guitar, Backup Vocals
Graham Bass, Backup Vocals. Tambourine
Lol Electric Guitar, Backup Vocals, Maracas

(borrowed without permission from Sheet Music)

Everyone does everything and if you've ever heard the album, you know that everybody does everything well. That's what I want my band to be.

One of the problems with 10cc, though, (besides the occasional terrible lyric), is the lack of distinct voice, since everybody does lead vocals at one point or another (this is kind of a good thing though, because if their voices were distinct it would be kind of distracting from song to song).

For distinct voices I'm hearing Edwyn Collins (Orange Juice) David Gedge (The Wedding Present) and Green Gartside (Scritti Politti). I'm listening to, I mean. Also the Wedding Present does some interesting covers, but they mostly fall flat, like "Felicity" (originally by Orange juice) and "Go Wild in the country" (by Bow Wow Wow). Anyway, give em all a listen. Except the Wedding Present cover songs.

I'm listening to now prevalently:

10cc
Scritti Politti
Felt
Orange Juice
The Wedding Present

I'm avoiding:

Bucks Fizz
Annie
Bowie
ABC
Brian Eno
Annette Peacock
and some more

Space Curry

distraction may lead and they follow springfield spring steen your evel hearing me Zaire Zaire Zaire heare what all we hear but are we hearing sporadic disgust distinctions whatever you theater crying crying parental guidance we nailed attention attention would license appear to be board hear we'd like to be cautioned to warn you abberab me abberab me lifer we care even we stare abortion a warning off the lam what do we care heart shape sheep shearing up back on the ground Hit around HIT abbadegabbababa bear what do we care all on the license the track we've warned you Haley aces a slight hiss a slight fix allolley gabba de gabba de gabba gabba gabba key your bottents holding right there as fastening your fattening shortening bit by bit by bit by mo my mo-my-mo me madey in love with all casinos every bit every last one drip daring when its heavenly what do me do about that and staring staring cough and regale us worried you'll fix us and not lest us fight Astaire I stop to let you think it or someone let me sing it its fastened hey look me carefully condescent E. S. E. R. Baby we like you listening de gabba de gabba once in a while detention hey there oh there shock me Saul and listen that or that or maybe he's stable share share share share share psychokafeenamekoshak psychomaneefakishation mykomanwumification Mike Kovak cold cate cole coal cash shoshoash vole cakation voveesh su su suh suh suh not let us wince its incidence its incidence vykervalik nesharshun

Ryan Carey

No more prog and coke before bed.

100 Bands

So I had this great idea last night, a festival with 100 bands playing. 100 bands you say? Yes, a hundred bands. 99 + 1.

The idea is that we will have six or seven core people and by mixing and matching and instrument switching and costume changes we will have a hundred bands between us.

Example: Ted (bass), Jake (keyboards, vocals) and Matt (snare drum) are the Tuffoons (band number 36), Ted moves to keyboards, Jake moves to a fuller drum set, Matt leaves and Beth enters with a guitar and a giant sombrero, they become the Cobb Salad Mine Disaster (band number 37), they play for a minute, Beth takes off her sombrero and puts on a tuxedo jacket, switches to just vocals (with Jake and Ted still playing keyboards and drums) and they become Partisan Squalor (band number 38).

Basically we will have five or six practices, working out twenty or more band concepts each practice, maybe writing a few songs and then we'll work out the choreography and then we'll do the flyers, no. Flyers first, choreography and then songs. Anyway, we haven't decided yet if it will be a one day or a two day event, and I only have three people (at least in my mind) committed so far. I'll keep you updated.

Awesome band: http://www.militantchildrenshour.com/

Before we settled on "artillery" as the album, it was first going to be "Love Drums" (which will be album number thirty), but I knew it wasn't going the right way.

Back when I thought it was love drums, sitting on my computer there (ten feet below and twenty to the side of where I am now), I made a little list of things that I wanted to do/rip off and here are some of them. Marked with an asterix are the things we did. Also some are kind of obscure, but that's fine.

And This Day, funny reggae fake five*
Crosseyed and Painless, bass, bun dun... bun dun dun
I'm the eccentric millionaire and Conner is the musician or the other way around.
T-shirt with list of villains on it.
tempo muerto
the band pretends to be a tape speeding up
Speed Dogs = "animals" & "Radio Helena" the DOWN DOWN DOWN beats*
Bolivia
hugh capet
...surf
(Acoustic Version) that is not particularly acoustic

Anagrams for "Artillery":

I'll Tar Rye
Larry Tile
Tire Rally
Liar Tyler