Viva Peru!
Run down Myspace all you like, because everything bad that can be said about it is absolutely true. Forever and ever though, for me, Myspace will have a special place in my heart, because without it I’d have never discovered one of the silliest, most wonderful, exciting rock and roll things on the planet.
First test for you before I get to that: think of the coolest band name–real or imagined–that there ever could possibly be. Take some time. Bookmark this page. “The Rolling Stones” is a great name. “The Who” is a great name. “The Flashing Lights” is a great name. “The Grifters” is a great name.
Ok. Now I’ll connect the dots of coolest band name ever to Myspace. I suppose because I “friended” (worst…verb…ever…) Murcia’s wonderful Ross (see blog post elswhere here) a few weeks ago, I ended up getting a friend request on Myspace over the weekend from a rock band from Peru. Yes, *that* Peru. When I saw the band name, my breath caught. It was the funniest, hippest, most outrageous band name I’d seen in a long while. I hoped and prayed that the music was able to even remotely live up to the moniker. The band is called (drumroll) “Los Fuckin Sombreros”.
Thanks to the info on their English language myspace page, I read that LFS are pretty big in Peru (and before you scoff at the Incan rock scene, there’s actually a surprisingly rich tradition of great music from that country; check the Nuggets II box and hit up youtube for videos from We All Together, who sound like a latino Emitt Rhodes or Zombies…). They played a series of 2007 “adios” concerts before going on a bit of a hiatus, though. Some North American labels came knocking, and it seems as if their latest (and best?) album Sha La La is going to get proper US release soon, and the band is talking about a US tour.
A very good thing, that, because Los Fuckin Sombreros are more than just a cool name. What I love about these guys is that no one has explained to them that trying to embrace influences like The Creation, Oasis, The Stooges, late-seventies Def Leppard, and AC/DC shouldn’t work. Screw it! It’s rock and roll! Hell yes it works, and looks like it’d be a total damn blast to be a part of! Crazy thing is, I’m listening to their songs on Myspace and totally getting into them, and thinking “I really, really like these guys…I wonder if they have any vids on Youtube.”
Lord do they. In fact, the videos that are posted there have cemented the relationship for me; LFS isn’t just a good band, they’re a GREAT band. Check out this video here, cheese:
Yeah, right? Worth noting here is that Los Fuckin Sombreros have a LOT of female fans. They seem to outnumber the guys…and said female fans are extremely hot. Ever go to a Vines or Hives show? Yeah, sausage-fest. Check the unselfconsciousness of the goings-on there too. NONE of any of that should work, but try telling that to the crowd who is shout/singing along at ear-shattering volume. I go to way too many shows where people just stand there, arms crossed as if they’re in a museum and studying some neo-cubist painting. Hell with that. I watch this video and I want to be in the middle of that shrieking, crazy-ass sweaty crowd going nuts with everyone else (and not because of all the chicks, who are, again, incredibly easy on the eyes). Any band performing at Pitchforkfest (or whatever they call it), CMJ, SxSW, or any other bitchy hipster rock festival should be required to watch Los Fuckin Sombreros get it done. Anyone going to see a band at said ‘fests should watch those videos too; rock and roll nowadays needs more abandoned, drunken, dance-y fun like this.
Or like this:
Or like this: (HEY! When did 25-year-old Peter Buck join LFS???)
Their English-language Myspace page is here.
Crash Into June.
June 10th is looking like a treee-mendous day for new releases. As mentioned elsewhere, The Telepathic Butterflies emerge from 3 years of silence with a new disc, and samples available at their myspace page and on the Rainbow Quartz page sound pretty good.
…and then there’s this, posted last week on Sloan’s official site:
Sloan have completed work on their ninth studio album, “Parallel Play”, which is due to be released on June 10th. In Canada, the album will be available on Sloan’s own murderecords, distributed by Red Ink Music. In the USA, we are once again working with our friends at Yep Roc Records.
The album was recorded this winter at Sloan’s studio space and features 13 new songs.
We will soon have news about our summer and fall tour plans. We’ll also have some brand new audio and video posted before long, so be sure to check regularly for updates.
The good folks at Yep-Roc have the whole freakin’ album streaming right here. Impressions later, but my first take is that there’s more Patrick Pentland on this disc than on Never Hear The End Of It…and more Patrick Pentland is always a good thing.
Oh….and then I note that the long-anticipated new disc by The Modfather is due to drop on June 24th. Too. Much. Great. Music.
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Another Reason The Music Industry Sucks.
It was last September that sort-of Chicago rock band The Living Blue (nee The Blackouts) announced that they’d finished their new record. If you’re really, really looking forward to this disc, that was nearly 7 full months ago. Not that anyone’s counting. Ok, I am counting. And waiting. Impatiently.
My “Best of” list of records from 2005 is utterly screwed up because I didn’t actually discover The Living Blue’s incredible debut disc Fire, Blood, Water until about May of 2006–four months after I’d finished that list. Although the record and band get lumped into the garage-rock genre (and certainly their roots are there), there’s very little “retro” appeal here, despite guitartist Joe Prokop’s Rickenbacker and Brian Jones haircut. “Tell Me Leza” sounds like Franz Ferdinand without the cliches and with more inspiration; “State Of Affairs” and “Murderous Youth” roar along with a fire and verve that you simply don’t get with bands doing the revivalist thing. In fact, let’s us take a little break here and provide evidence to The Living Blue’s (and Fire, Blood, Water‘s) greatness:
(“Tell Me Leza”)
(“Serrated Friend”)
(“State Of Affairs”)
Ok then. If that was your first exposure to The Living Blue, we should probably clarify a few things:
1. Yes, I know; those are killer songs.
2. Yes, I know; guitarist Joe Prokop is the great unknown guitar hero on the planet, and yes, he does shred, and yes it is inexcusable that he isn’t mentioned when people talk about the most gifted rock and roll guitarists in the world.
3. Yes, I know; singer/guitarist Steve Ucherek does indeed sound a little like a teenaged Bono singing as if he was terrified and desperate and angry and strung out on caffeine.
Fire, Blood, Water came out on indie-pop label Minty Fresh, but it seems the band and Minty have parted company. So, despite having a completed followup album called Walk, Talk, Rhythm, Roam ready for release, I gather that the band is still at the point of seeking out someone to release it…which is insane. The tracks I’ve heard at the band’s website and myspace page are absolutely killer. There are nods to their garage-rock roots on tunes like “Numb” and “Without You”, but songs like the amazing title track (which might be in the running for song of the year), “Something You Do”, and the stunning “Venus Fly Trap” are a quantum leap ahead of even the brilliance of their debut, and “Nightwind” would be a massive hit if there was any justice in the world. That the band seems to be having trouble finding a taker for this either means they know how good it is and are asking a dear price for a label lucky enough to put it out, or is further evidence that the music industry is in a deserved death spiral.
Between the band’s website and myspace pages, you can hear 6 or 7 songs from the 12 on the completed record. Hopefully very, very soon you’ll be able to hear the rest. The Living Blue are one of the most exciting rock and roll bands on the planet and are fully deserving of better treatment than this.
The Living Blue myspace page, where you can hear “Nightwind”, “Walk, Talk, Rhythm, Roam”, “Something You Do”, and “Venus Fly Trap”.
Fated To Pretend.
I’ve been listening to a mix I made last week for the past few days. Always wanted to do a mix that suggested springtime and some of the happy nostalgia I have for this time of year. Thing is, most of the songs on it are fairly personal memories; I could hardly explain to you why “Here’s Where The Story Ends” reminds me of unseasonably warm spring afternoons, or why “Blue Thunder” makes me think about sitting on a park bench on a quadrangle. So yeah, I think it’s my mix, and probably best suited for the one person in the world (me, namely) who knows why it all ties together.
But absent anything particularly pithy to observe tonight, I figured I’d at least share a mix that Rob Morton made a week or so ago. It’s called “Fated To Pretend”, and it is a nice collection of fairly recent musics that not only sounds great taken as individual songs, but also flows together masterfully.
Enjoy! (Click me for music, yo.)
Tracklist:
1. MGMT – Time to Pretend
2. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down – Bag of Hammers
3. The Mabuses – Seasider
4. Army Navy – Saints
5. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Modern Mystery
6. Arthur & Yu – Lion’s Mouth
7. Hayden – In Field & Town
8. Tyler Ramsey – A Long Dream
9. Fleet Foxes – English House
10. The Breeders – Night of Joy
11. British Sea Power – Open the Door
12. Bon Iver – For Emma
13. Ai Phoenix – Mountains and Castles
14. Nada Surf – Here Goes Something
15. Okkervil River – Unless It’s Kicks
16. Guillemots – Trains to Brazil
17. Sarabeth Tucek – Here’s Something For You
On The Horizon
Stuff I’m listening to and digging and may or may not write about in the next few days/weeks:
1. The first For Against record with original guitarist Harry Dingman III since 1989.
2. The new Telepathic Butterflies disc (I’d worried they’d broken up, but new disc out soon!)
3. The Foxboro Hot Tubs (I’ve become a Green Day fanboi, and an unapologetic one.)
4. The Constantines
5. etc. (not a band.)
I’m also simultaneously attempting to read:
1. the first-ever collection of Michael Chabon essays (“Maps & Legends”, published by McSweeney’s with a pretty kick-ass cover/coverlet),
2. Jonathan Barnes’ The Somnambulist
3. Lauren Goff’s The Monsters Of Templeton
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I’m A Whore. And Happy About It.
The sharp-eyed few will notice I’ve added another link to the sidebar here; thanks to Steve posting about a show Finn’s Motel will be playing at Euclid Records, I discovered that the crew there does their own blog thing…and it is a very cool blog and worth your time to read.
And now that I’m thinking of my days at Euclid Records, I suppose I’ll relate about how important my time working there was to me, and how it shaped the happy directions my life has taken since. This is pretty dull, who-gives-a-rat’s-ass sort of stuff, but it happens to be the sort of stuff I wish someone would’ve told me when I was 18, instead of waiting until I was 31 to figure out on my own.
My story with Euclid actually begins as a customer. My freshman year of college, I was home for the summer and still consumed in a collapsing relationship with a high school girlfriend. That doomed partnership corralled all my time, but I’d still find time to make it down to Vintage Vinyl on the Loop occasionally, which also meant heading a few doors down to Streetside Records on Delmar as well. I can’t even remember what the heck it was I was looking for, but I couldn’t find it at either VV or Streetside, so the helpful guy at Vinny Vinny (Steve Pick hisself, I think it was) suggested I check out Euclid Records, and gave my country hick St. Charles self easy to follow directions (“Right on Skinker, east on Forest Park Parkway, left on Euclid, just past Laclede on the right.”) The store was at it’s original location on Euclid (by the time I worked there, it had moved diagonally across the street to Laclede, but stayed “Euclid Records”), and I’m not sure who was working that day. Maybe Tom? It wasn’t Steve, I know that. I remember I futzed around the store awhile, and ended up buying a cassette copy of “D Is For Dumptruck” because I’d heard the song “Back Where I Belong” on KCOU before I’d left Mizzou for the summer, and that tune sorta summed up what I was feeling about the relationship I was in. An auspicious beginning, because Dumptruck just ruled, and I always credited that ruled-ness with Euclid Records subconsciously.
Once I moved back home from school permanently, I ended up doing more and more music buying at Euclid Records. It was a haul getting out there from St. Charles (or U-City, when that was home), but usually worth it; I still remember some of my “Holy shit, I can’t believe they have THIS” scores: the Choo Choo Train comp Briar High, a couple of Flatmates 12″ singles, the Merry Go Round lp on vinyl (a stiff $19.99 price that was totally worth it).
I was also getting burned out waiting tables for a living, trying to get a freelance writing career started (yeah, that didn’t take at all.) I’d always heard from folks that the happiest people in the world were those who got to work for a living doing things they loved; problem was, I knew I was absolutely freakishly talented at the restaurant biz…but I didn’t really like it very much. What Dick Allen was to baseball, I was to restaurants. I figured I’d try some other things, to see if I could find that magical job I loved to make a career of, and what better thing for a music geek like myself to do but work in a record store? I never even thought about applying at Vintage Vinyl; no offense to those who have and continue to work there, because some of my best friends put in some serious time there…but VV was Wrigley Field to Euclid Records’ Busch Stadium. VV had a bunch of folks who were passionate about music and totally into it, but they also had a bunch of folks who were working there because it was a hip place to work. Euclid Records wasn’t quite as hip to work at, but it was where the music geeks and true believers congregated. It was the place for me.
I got the gig at Euclid, and I enjoyed working there. I dug the music we got to play, I loved the vibe of the Central West End, and it was a cool come-on to chicks, too–“Hey baby, I work in a record store…” Okay, a certain kind of chick. More than that, I enjoyed the folks I worked with–Joe, Steve, Patrick, Tom, Guy, Darren, Ben…couldn’t ask for a smarter, wittier, more charming group of folks to spend time with. We had regular customers who’d bring us coffee and bagels for breakfast, and who’d show up with beer on Christmas Eve and holidays, at which point Euclid Records sort of turned into Old Fezziwig’s. Good times. (I still remember one afternoon Ben and I talking about pre-World War I Ottoman Empire history and getting baffled looks from the customers in the store.)
But not good times. If someone described a dream job to me back in 1995, it is entirely likely they’d say “You get to listen to cool music all day long, talk music with smart music geeks all day long, and be constantly laughing” I’d say “Where do I get in line for that?” The reality of the job ended up being this, though: it was a job. Meaning, on days that I worked, it was six hours spent doing something for pay that I wouldn’t do for free. See, as great as Euclid Records was, what it helped me to discover about myself was that “work” was “work” to me, no matter what I was doing. Going to work behind the counter at Euclid Records was no different than going to wait tables at Bristol. Both those things were work, and it wasn’t long before I realized that I didn’t really prefer working at Euclid any more or less than I preferred waiting tables.
It wasn’t Euclid. That place was and continues to be, great. It was me. It took me years to figure it out, but eventually the light switch went on in my head: no matter what I’d end up doing for a living, it was going to feel like work. Period. In my head, I realized that even if I got a job that involved sitting on a couch drinking beer and watching Cardinal baseball, eventually that would become a chore, something that I’d rather not do. In my mind (and maybe this is universal, I dunno), I realized that “work” means “lack of freedom” for however many hours you’re working in a given day.
Thus armed with the self-awareness that, at least for me, one job was pretty much the same thing as any other job, I decided to give the restaurant thing my full attention and go into management. Maybe I sold myself out. Maybe I’m a whore for giving up something that I loved for something that paid better. I’ll grant both those premises. What I also know though, is that I’m pretty good at my job, and at some point during the last 10 years I’ve been doing it, the satisfaction of that has given me as much fulfillment on the job as anything I’ve ever done. And the pay thing? That helps me buy more tunes and do the stuff I want to do. So there’s that.
I just wished someone would’ve told me that work is work no matter what you’re doing when I was 18. Could’ve saved me a lot of navel-gazing in my twenties.
Oh. Happy Record Store Day, Euclid Joe!
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Just to get clear on terminology…
…a band was recently recommended to me using the phrase “sort of freak folk, sort of classic rock, with some world music thrown in.”
That sounds like the most dreadful, non-rock horribleness ever released, frankly. Those are not points to sell me, or anyone who loves music, on a band. Those descriptors suggest music that would make me want to beat the performers of same with my shoe.
I see on another blog that an adoring listener of this same band has described them thusly: “Reference points as broad as The Go Team and Phish”. That doesn’t just sound bad. That sounds positively toxic. The only way this band could further fail the Ben Troxel Rock Test is if they performed in costumes. There’s a picture of this Band I Will Not Name at the blog describing them as a cross between two terrible non-rock bands, and slap my ass and call me Ginger, but there they are in costumes. Yikes.
If it is any consolation, I did manage to make it through about 18 seconds of two different songs before I gave up. Never say I didn’t try.
(File under Curmudgeonly Posts Made Before Second Cup Of Coffee)
Popnarcotic 