Is That an Air Guitar in Your Pocket, or are You Just Happy to See Me?
When I was a kid, the radio airwaves were just a little bit cooler. Okay, fuck it, radio was a million times cooler. Radio stations still had DJ’s that played records and not some pre-recorded package. DJ’s could take requests and actually play those requests. I lived to take my $1.06 down to the local record store and buy a 45″ record for the week. My first purchase ever was Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Listen to What the Man Said.” Which despite some dippy kissing sound to illustrate “Soldier boy kisses girl (Smack!)” was still a nifty little pop tune. I will never be able to wipe from my memory what the single resembled after having been left in the sun. My precious song now resembled some odd elementary school art project, all bent and ribbed wax that only a parent could love! What mattered is that I couldn’t play the damn thing, and that mattered a LOT to a kid whose sanctuary was his room, radio, Jacques Cousteau encycyclopedias, and nerf hoop. I guess I learned the hard way that these 45″ singles were anything but indestructible, and that I should have learned after my sweet little hamster Tiger sizzled in his habitrail tube, that really, no matter what sandal clad sun worshipper claimed - the fiery orb is noone’s friend and that I would now have to be forever vigilante to protect all that I love from its unforgiving hellfire.
I bought “My Sharona” without having heard the song. It was displayed at our town’s Wherehouse Records (R.I.P.) in a prominent locale designated for Today’s Top Hits! I can’t remember if my piece of wax had the pouty t-shirt tart on its cover as seen above. Didn’t matter. No matter why Crosby, Stills, and Nash got into Rock and Roll (the chicks, Man….), The Knack made no bones, with beats fed on hormonal overdrive; Rock and Roll music was sex. Nevermind that I had barely kissed a girl, let alone pushed the illicit buttons described in Feiger’s horndog rave-up “Good Girls Don’t,” I understood it, I got it, this was heaven, and it meant loud guitars and big drums all wrapped in power pop perfection.
It’s easier if The Knack were indeed the punch-line most people want them to be. Fact is, they were a power pop band on par with The Paul Collins Beat, The Shoes, and The Plimsouls. Perhaps their success relegated them to the trivial one hit wonder status, when perhaps without it, they’d receive the same sort of cult reverance given to the aforementioned bands.
Which brings us to the sad point of this post…The Knack’s lead singer, songwriter and presidential figurehead for horny rock n’ roll the world wide over, Doug Fieger, has passed. The news is a few weeks old at this point with the cause being cancer. Fieger continued to use the The Knack’s name at odd junctures long past the band’s heyday. Many gave the quartet credit only for it’s debut Get the Knack. The band’s coming out party was an immaculate blast of immediate lust and anxious energy. To the discerning listener, every song a hit. “Let Me Out” and “Your Number or Your Name” herald an onslaught of angst and melody similar to the Kink’s eighties output. Mod moves and pop rocks influenced by punk movers on both coasts. “My Sharona” rescued radio from disco beats and a calvalcade of squishy lifeless sounds no one dared called rock. “Frustrated” was the first song off the album I called my favorite - though I couldn’t wrap my head around Fieger crooning some overheated thing about Chicken Delight that sounded like a bad cousin to Tuna Casserole. Step away from the kitchen Doug, and put those busy hands back in your pants.
Years back when Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction set the standard for indie cinema, a promo only interview disc was issued to push the soundtrack. The most compelling track is included below. Tarantino, being his typical endearingly hyper self reflects on how badly he had wanted to use The Knack’s “My Sharona” for the Pawn Shop Basement Sequence. It would be a crime to try and explain any more, Tarantino is the master storyteller here.
So long Doug Fieger, thanks for the great music. I don’t care what anyone says about …But the Little Girls Understand. That’s a damn good record. The thing is, you managed in your short time on this planet to create something that should surely last into the next century. Get the Knack should find just as many dedicated listeners as any Tom Petty record - though with one artist, it’s about the doobies, and the other is just another orgasm addict. God Bless ‘em.
Quentin Tarantino Talks The Knack and Comanche
The Best Way to Spend One’s Summer Fun Money
In yesterday’s post regarding Surrogate and their new album Popular Mechanics, it is one of those albums that as a record store clerk I would call a sure thing. A can’t miss proposition. I guess if one’s calling was Scandanavian Dark Metal they might argue the point, or simply stab me to death and burn down a church in rebuttal.
Popular Mechanics works as an entire album from beginning to end. I will say that if Tooth and Nail has their wits about them, “Cynicism” should be the album’s first single with a video to help with promotion. “Cynicism” is the kind of song that will appeal to people of all musical tastes. While it reminds me of the melodies from Pedro the Lion’s “Control”, the song excells as its own creation, just as one may provide reference points to those that have not heard Surrogate, but ultimately, the band’s songs are strong enough to give this band its own individual voice.
Hopefully, I can quit listening to “Cynicism” so that I might enjoy the rest of the album. I don’t know…It’s sort of like finding a bottomless carton of the most delicious ice cream. Only a crazy person would stop eating…
Be sure and buy Surrogate’s Popular Mechanics. Released by Tooth and Nail, it should be available at most retail outlets.
On a side note, my posting this summer has been little and sporadic. I found myself inspired by little except for my toddler’s son’s laughs and excited outbursts whenever our cat Yoshi walks by….that is alot of beauty to have in one’s life, and for that I am very, very thankful. There’s no denying the part of me that wants to get excited by new music…and whether it was a down period, or I just wasn’t responding to it, I don’t know, but I was not loving the music out there this summer.
Lately, I am hearing bands such as Surrogate, The Intelligence, The Dodos and countless other new bands, and new releases, that all of a sudden life is good again! I think September is going to bring some incredible, incredible music with releases by Yo La Tengo, Health, Polvo, and a reissue of The Feelies The Good Earth to name a few…
Mid-Week Power Pop Stop / Feedback Fridays / New Music!?!
It appears that YOUR NEW FAVORITE SONGS are ten to twenty years old . . . Truth be told, I do feel there is much out there forgotten, or never truly celebrated in the manner deserved. Therefore I have been posting bands and songs to the blog that don’t necessarily occupy the space and time we call today. I have been playing around with two themes each week…really, Feedback Fridays is the only theme I have been consistent with. The Mid-Week Power Pop Stop I have only posted once to. Honestly, I see that I will never post new music if I do both of these themes weekly. So, I think the solution is to post one or the other each week. Alternate between the two themes.
The Mid-Week Power Pop Stop is important to me because it was this genre that got me listening beyond the norm and digging beneath the surface. In the late 70’s, early eighties, on Showtime they would show music videos by bands. I happened to catch one by a band called The Shoes. My love of The Shoes led me to the Paul Collins’ Beat. Watching Nick Cage’s early performance in Valley Girl we saw him puke in the alley while Peter Case and his Plimsouls dished “The Oldest Story in the World”. Thanks to Valley Girl I was turned onto The Plimsouls and purchased Everywhere At Once which proved to be an almost perfect album . . . After some time, I realized, I never met a power pop band I didn’t like . . .
Feedback Fridays is so named for a characteristic of guitar playing that I love so and involves the musician using the noise from guitar and amp to color a composition in a way that no chords or notes might handle. Guitar feedback sounded very scary, and as a harbinger that something even scarier was just around the corner. My previous posts of Thin White Rope and The Dream Syndicate were of bands that thrived off of guitar feedback and always found richness in the chaos and the clamor.I can’t say what day posts will be exactly - but I can say there will be from two to three posts each week. If you have been reading the blog in the last month or so, you may have noticed that out of the three writers listed, I am the only one posting. Mark L has a fantastic blog called The Days of Lore that is a must read (He interviewed The Vaselines for Christ’s sake!) and is busy working and loving life in Portland, Oregon. As for Jason C., he is always busy, and though I would love nothing more than for him to post more often, I do understand how busy life can be and want to give him the same sort of understanding he has always cast in my direction. I just want him to join the fun! With the alternating of themes from week to week, I really hope to feature newer music. What? You say the Germs film is on Showtime this weekend?!! Shane West is Darby Crash?!?! We Got the Neutron Bomb indeed!
Love Will Get You Like a Case of Anthrax
Unbelievable! Those were my thoughts times ten thousand the first time I found Gang of Four’s Entertainment!. Being that I had been exposed to the band first via Hard their ‘dance’ album from the eighties, I had never truly experienced what made the Gang of Four devastatingly effective when combining jagged, razor sharp guitar lines with pummeling rhythms. And I am not so sure how I found this album exactly, but I am certain I heard the track “Anthrax” somewhere else first. I want to say it was Urgh: A Music War but taking the time to compare internet facts and confirmation is not finding its appeal. “Anthrax” for some reason feels the way Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” reads - suffocating, claustrophobic, and going down, down, down the bad rabbit’s dark hole. The song begins with a mess of noise and a clarion call to arms by way of Andy Gill’s two note repeated guitar line forced aside by Hugo Burnham’s battering kit and Dave Allen’s sinisterly primitive bass line crawling out of the Prehistoric Tar Pits. All of this is fine, and Jon King’s deadpan chant atop the calamity and chaos reigns supreme - but it’s the guitar feedback that fries and splits this one like rotting meat singing to the sun. Sophia Coppola can have the anthemic “Natural’s Not In It”, and the capitalist complaint of “I Found That Essence Rare” never gets old, but it’s “Anthrax” that took Gang of Four’s Entertainment! to the dark scary places punk rock has always promised to explore.
How I Captured That Coyote Records Sound and Lived to Tell: An Interview with Real Estate’s Martin Courtney
If you have ever wished a band take Yo La Tengo’s take of “Living in the Country” and mold an entire sound that basks in the same calming afterglow as The Feelie’s The Good Earth - then let it be said, you have got to hear the band Real Estate. And then, the refreshing thing about New Jersey’s Real Estate, is that nothing they do needs anyone convincing anyone of anything - but the patience to sit down, slow down, and let the sound soak in. The aforementioned bands are only influences in the same way that Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry influenced the Rolling Stones. Real Estate is on their own path, and it looks to be something very special to follow. Guitarist/Songwriter Martin Courtney shared with Your New Favorite Song why fame is a cottage cheese filled football helmet, sly Phish references, and most importantly finding our blog new favorite bands and songs to give a listen.
How was SXSW for Real Estate? Any new bands you caught that you are excited about?
Thinking back on Austin now, all I can remember is hot sun, lots of people, and live music everywhere we went. We played eight shows there, which is not a record by any means (Vivian Girls played like 18 I think), but we were really psyched because we booked pretty much all of the shows ourselves. We were excited about alot of the bands that we saw and got to play with at SXSW. One of our favorites was Girls, a sick pop band from San Francisco. Woods are also awesome.
Real Estate is a New Jersey band correct? Ties to Titus? Or is that just something I read…What is happening musically in NJ and how has it informed the band?
Matt (guitar), Bleeker (bass), and I all grew up together in Ridgewood, NJ. Etienne is from Massachusetts, but has started saying that he is from Jersey to make things easier. So yeah, we are a New Jersey band. The kids in Titus Andronicus are mostly from Glen Rock, which borders Ridgewood and is kind of like a sister town. I played in a band with Patrick and Andrew from Titus for a few years in high school at first called Seizing Elian and then Library of Congress. I think everyone playing together and learning to write songs at the same time has informed not just Real Estate, but all of our friends who are still making really good music. Here are a few bands or people (in addition to Titus Andronicus) that are from our immediate high school peer group and are still making music:
Julian Lynch, Liam the Younger, Vivian Girls, Liquor Store, Ducktails, Frat Dad, Andrew Cedermark, VCR (Vice City Rockers, defunct for a while but there are rumours of a reunion). That’s off the top of my head, there are totally more, you can find them through our myspace.
Who plays what - former bands?
Matt Mondanile plays guitar and writes some of the songs, (Alex) Bleeker plays bass, Etienne Pierre Duguay plays drums and I play guitar and sing and write most of the songs. We have all been in a bunch of bands before, here are some. Matt currently has another project called Ducktails and used to play in an amazing pseudo punk band called Paperface. Bleeker’s got a folk/country project called Dinosaur BBQ and he used to play in a cover band with me called Marc. Etienne’s deep house/early nineties beach movie soundtrack project is called Etienne’s New Rules and he used to play in a band called La Mi Vida Violenta.
The single is on Underwater People - Is a full length on the way - and how long must the public wait? Or impatient rock and roll nerds? I am not implying nerds love your band…
The full length CD/LP is going to come out early this summer (maybe late spring) on Woodsist. We are also doing a 12″ EP for Mexican Summer that should be coming out a little bit after the LP.
Listening to the songs….the feel is such that the songs are almost unfolding for the band at the same time that they do for the listener….How are songs composed, arranged in Real Estate - is it as organic as it sounds? (i.e. jamming in practice?)
There is definitely alot of jamming that goes on in practice and live. Most of our songs were written as pop songs with built in jams at some point in the song. The jams used to be alot looser, but as we have been playing more and more, they have kind of developed into more structured song sections. That took a long time, though, and happened quite by accident.
Are there bands out there at this moment - that you feel a kinship with aesthetically - why or why not?
We all really like Kurt Vile, who is from Philly. I don’t know how similar we are to him aesthetically, his music is definitely amazing. We are also labelmates with him twice (Woodsist is putting out his first record on vinyl and Mexican Summer just put out an excellent 12″ by him). Other current bands that we love: Woods are really good and super nice guys, as are the Beets from Jackson Heights, Queens (and who also may be the one band we have played the most shows with). We are probably most similar to our friend Julian Lynch, who also grew up in Ridgewood, but now goes to grad school in Madison, Wisconsin. That’s not just a shout out, more people need to hear his music because it is insanely good.
Why the name Real Estate? The worst (glibbest) tag line writers have used to describe the band (and selling homes)?
Real Estate is just a name and nothing more. That is why we chose it. We thought it sounded cool and didn’t really evoke too much on its own. We have started to realize that it actually works kind of well with our band because we sort of play up a suburban vibe and the suburbs are full of nice houses that make you think of real estate advertisements or something. Also, I have a real estate license and work in a real estate office and Etienne rents out apartments for a living. That’s just a coincidence though!
What do the band members do when not impressing the world with rock and roll genius?
Matt does his thing in Ducktails, jamming in his parents’ basement in Ridgewood and playing shows occasionally. Etienne lives in Bushwick and puts ads up on craigslist and fields phone calls for his landlord’s apartments. I work and record demos and live in Jersey City. Bleeker is on tour with Phish.
For Real Estate, what is more important - a guarantee or a limitless bar tab?
The most important thing is the football helmet full of cottage cheese. If we get that, then we know we’re in business.
Besides the aforementioned Feelies and Yo La Tengo - what is in the Real Estate Top Ten Albums you cannot live without?
Paul McCartney - Ram & Band on the Run
Neil Young - On the Beach
John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band
Sensations’ Fix - S/T
Ariel Pink - all of it
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
Kinks - Arthur
Weezer - Blue Album
In 2009, Real Estate will….
Release a few records and tour Indonesia.
The best thing about being in a band is….
The cottage cheese football helmet(s).
The worst thing about being in a band is….
All of the hours in the private jet.
How do you know when an audience feels for your music, what you intended?
When the glowsticks start flying and the arena fills up with smoke, we know we’re doing our job well.
Real Estate - Suburban Beverage
Expect to catch Real Estate touring from Coast to Coast the Summer of 2009
Redding, Ca Circa Early 90’s
Redding, CA’s Case For Radio formed as a group of high school friends with probably nothing better to do than to make some noise. Having grown up in Redding, California myself, I can vouch for the dull expansive vortex that is that town. Case For Radio was alive as long as the kids were still in high school and then morphed into a power trio similar to Velvet Crush/Nada Surf power pop with a shoegaze nuance. Kelly Bauman whom now lives in Portland, Oregon and recently put out an excellent album for Jealous Butcher sang on 99% of the songs, all of them examples of gorgeous indie rock, but it is this one penned and sung by Scott Zander that always slays me. “Anvil Hand” concerns itself with the age old literary theme of self-pleasure, and yet has a pervasive tone of melancholy. The guitar solo is one of those perfect ‘anti-solos’ that color rather than take over the instrumental break (think VU’s “I’m Set Free”). I remember commenting on how perfect the solo break was, only to have one of the guys tell me that was where they fucked up. Perfect Sound Forever? Yes.
Loving The Dead
What’s this I hear?!? The band of my dreams is breaking up?!? Is there no greater injustice in this world than finding out a band only to discover that they have just broken up? Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Portland, Oregon’s The Hunches…Too fast, too fine, perhaps too fun for this world…What hooked me was their 2009 long player Exit Dreams from Garage Rock Record Kings In The Red.
What can I say - the band comes off as a reckless blend of Kim Salmon’s Scientists and Iggy’s Stooges filtered through a recording process that sounds not unlike a mic shoved into a rusty Maxwell House Coffee can full of loose gravel. Part of the sheer joy The Hunches have to offer is a clear disrespect for the rules of rock - and at times, one could argue their music is all its musicians playing four different songs at the same time - inevitably through a cloud of hiss, a melody emerges.
“Not Invented” is the dark sister to the Stones’ “I Got The Blues”. This slow burner works counter to some of the more chaotic numbers (”Your Sick Blooms”, “Pinwheel Spins”) - but the most perfect revelation is that everything this band does works beautifully.
Surf City - New Zealand’s Furious Strum and Gun
Surf City takes their name from a Jesus and Mary Chain Single, and not some dreamy addiction to Jan & Dean and The Beach Boys all drowning in the orgiastic California Sixties Surf. Surf City’s self-titled debut EP is a can’t miss proposition. Five songs of frantic guitar and hurried rhythms melding the hyper pop of fellow countrymen The 3D’s with the timeless melodicism of The Clean. This is to say this band is not merely skulking in the shadows of its forefathers but rather Surf City functions as a peer to the very best of New Zealand’s rock and roll exports. “Headin’ Inside” is an adrenalin OD, a pop rock rush and perfected 2:28 second blast of righteous wind. The second offering here, “Dickshakers Union” is a more dynamic affair with instruments coming and going amidst excitable shouts and chants.
If blogs are the new record store (in terms of turning people onto new music) - this is definitely one of those bands that will be exposed by many writers on the web as a significant find. It’s impossible to ever forget the exhilaration any listener feels when hearing a band as legitimately astounding as Surf City for the very first time. Think Pavement, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and The Verlaines - and more importantly, get this EP now.
Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste Ladies and Gentleman…
It’s Richman’s song, and it’s a classic. The first time I heard it however, was on vinyl and by the band Galaxie 500. I had no idea it belonged to the mad genius behind “She’s Cracked”, “Roadrunner”, and “Pablo Picasso” and this just barely stubs a toe against the vast wonderful catalog that is Jonathan Richman’s.
“Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste” is rock music’s greatest expression of the carpe dium credo. It’s not just a call to arms, but a call to the heart that life is but a series of moments receding from the shore so we better recognize what beauty they hold and celebrate them in any shape and form. It’s the plea from an insistent suitor to his soft target. Better now than not too late.
I could give you memories to rival Berlin in the 30’s….I don’t really understand your dating bar ways…
Richman’s version here is acapella and most likely from a performance at Harvard in the early seventies. It is taken from an out of print live recording called Precise Modern Lovers Order which includes tracks from shows at Berkeley, Harvard, and Boston. Richman pushes his voice beyond where it wants to go, which only adds to this song’s many charms as well as its awkward sincerity. Perhaps this is the moment Beat Happening took and ran with for their entire celebrated career.
Galaxie 500’s take on Richman’s song adds instruments and a melancholic tone to echo Richman’s poetry. The result is what became my favorite song…
…though hearing the naked honesty behind Richman’s voice sans instruments, perhaps his version is my favorite song…can I have two favorite songs here?
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste
Galaxie 500 - Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste
Maybe Next Year, Maybe Never
The Academy Awards are my Super Bowl. That said, I was very disappointed that Mickey Rourke did not win Best Actor for his role in The Wrestler. However, Sean Penn’s acceptance speech for his Oscar scored some powerful political points with his pointing to the shame those that voted for Proposition 8 should own. Milk writer Lance Dustin Black also noted that true equal rights in our nation will indeed exist. Head over to You Tube to watch Mickey Rourke’s ultra-hilarious acceptance speech for his award given on February 21st by Film Independent’s Spirit Awards. I would love to know who ‘Gap-Tooth’ is - bringing to mind a recent episode of The Office. I would imagine one could also find Robyn Hitchcock’s performance from the Spirit Awards where he played “Up To Our Nex” from nominated film Rachel Getting Married. Perhaps it’s no Bride Wars….”Up To Our Nex” is one of Hitchcock’s best songs since “Madonna Queen of the Wasps” and the album Fegmania. Mickey deserved better. Just spend some time with Diner and Angel Heart.
Robyn Hitchcock - Up To Our Nex