smog "i am star wars" (from the album julius caesar") an upbeat smog song. features a tape loop built from the rolling stones "start me up" and "honkey tonk women". i believe this was illegal in 1993 and callahan was counting on being under the stones radar.
dub narcotic "fuck shit up" (7" single). in my opinion, dub narcotic never lived up to the promise of this single. later covered by jon spencer blues explosion.
sammy "rudy" (from the album "debut album"). criticized as pavement wannabes, early blonde redhead (themselves criticized as sonic youth wannabes early on) and cat power labelmates on smells like records, sammy of course did not enjoy the same success. that quick jump to the majors can hurt i guess.
strange coincidence: i just realized that all three of the above songs were on a mix tape that a friend and college music mentor put on a mix tape she made for me the summer after my freshman year.
buckingham nicks "don't let me down again" (from the self titled album). best song on the pre-fleetwood mac lindsey backingham, stevie nicks album.
the breeders "freed pig" (from the "head to toe" ep). written by lou barlow/sebadoh. the best thing about this cover is that it was produced by j mascis, the target of the songs attack. apparently he heard the breeders playing it in the studio and being unaware of it's subject or authorship, insisted they record it. also, the original appeared on sebadoh's album "III". drummer (when not performing his own songs) eric gaffney refused to play on the recording as he felt the energy of the songs was too negative. this story was confirmed by lou in the liner notes for the album's reissue.
and we might as well let bowie repay the compliment with his take on a blood brothers favorite:
david bowie "a little bit me, a little bit you" (i got it off the bootleg "chameleon chronicles vol. 2"). actually it's a cover of the monkees, though written by neil diamond. i'm guessing this is pretty early bowie, before he'd made a name for himself. funny enough that he had to change his name from david jones to bowie because of the already established davey jones in the monkees.
the crust bothers "tuesday's gone" (from the album "marquee mark") stephen malkmus (pavement) and his buddies in silkworm gathered for a one off show as the crust brothers. the highlight was this lynyrd skynyrd cover. i wanted to post a track with malkmus on the lead but his vocals that night weren't his strongest. he chimes in pretty loud on the chorus here however.
so i finally had my bonding moment with th' faith healers this morning on the way in to work after they came up on shuffle. i'd picked up their only two albums a while back after getting into the band quickspace (formed by faith healers vocalist/guitartist tom cullinan) but they never clicked with me till now. rather than try and sum their sound p myself i'll just copy/paste from allmusic.com's overview:
"A hard to classify guitar rock band with none of the fashionable influences of the early '90s -- although their Krautrock fixation would go on to become a badge of hipness in the latter half of the decade -- Th' Faith Healers didn't fit in the U.K. indie scene of their time, but their records hold up much better than those of many of their contemporaries."
i'd say that the krautrock influence was more evident in quickspace but it's still there in th' faith healers for sure. cullinan, and i'm guessing he was the dominant influence in both bands, really masters repetition as a way of building tension, rather than boredom. anyways...
th' faith healers "see-saw" (from the album "imaginary friend")
th' faith healers "it's easy being you" (from the album "lido") you've got to listen through to the point where the noisy guitar kicks in and battles the vocals for volume dominance. i always appreciate it when a band allows the guitars to fight with the vocals, especially when they hit the distortion. it always sounds "fake" to me when the guitars are both distorted but low in the mix.
just realized in writing this up that quickspace's last album "the death of quickspace" (2000) was apparently their last album and the death of quickspace. i guess they meant it and it took me a long time to figure it out.
quickspace "they shoot horse do they?" (from "the death of quickspace") another title whose meaning i missed. stepf pointed out that it's "horse" singular, as in heroin, not "horses" plural as i'd been reading it, like the movie title (was it a book first? and don't roll your eyes at me if you're a big reader or something). this is one of their longer, building songs, where you can really hear that krautrock influence mentioned above.
Swervedriver is the #1 band on the list of all-time greats that not enough people know about. writting this i get all excited and i've been typing out, and then deleting, all kinds of things like, better than the pixies, and better than my bloody valentine, and as much as i mean it , it's a pointless thing to say. But they were seriously an amazing band and it's a shame that as bands like the pixies and my bloody valentine have seen their legacies grow to a level they deserve, a band like Swervedriver, equally deserving has all their albums go out of print, relegated to a two disc best of on import only (saw it used at amoeba).
I'l admit that i had trouble getting into them initially, but i followed a friends advice and gave them another try while in a car at night. we were on a family vacation, on the freeway driving through denver when they finally clicked. i didn't get my drivers license till i was 21, and the #1 car experience i was looking forward to was driving up sunset blvd. starting at pch, at night, blasting their second album, and best, "mezcal head"
while it's not quite the same thing, here's a youtube video to accompany your listening experience (make sure and drop the video volume). i'm going to leave out anything from "mezcal head" (well, aside from an alt version of one of it's songs released as a b-side) cause it's too perfect an album to separate songs out of the whole. if you don't know swervedriver the first two songs you should hear are either "rave down" or "son of a mustang ford". I'm going to go with the more aggressive "...mustang ford" here as it goes better with the video, and follow with "rave down":
if you can't listen loud, or with headphones, the impact may be lost, so you know.
one of the things that made swervedriver so great was that, as amazing as the songs on their albums were, their b-sides were a lot of times just as good or better. they couldn't write throwaways. so, here's a few of my favorite b-sides:
"year of the girl" (b-side on the "duel" single). this is actually my favorite of their songs. i told that to the friend who introduced me, and he thought that was kind of a weird choice, but after playing it for him again and pointing out the layers they build on the outro where they repeat a phrase and then keep adding guitar on top of guitar, he at least saw my point.
cars converge on paris The Kremlin flies forever In the face of expectation Like sunshine seen through rain I see American cars converge On Paris Central Station I came to mock I left to pray
and finally, an alternative version to "mezcal head"'s "last train to satansville", "satansville revisited". in an interview i read they described "...satansville" as being part surf rock, part country song. this version makes the description pretty plain.
"satansville revisited" (b-side on the "last train to satansville" single)
with my new, ridiculously long considering it's only 14 miles, commute, i've had a lot quality time for listening to music. the routine is usually to put the ipod on shuffle until something inspires me. today' s session ended with silkworm's "scruffy". not only did it put me in the mood for silkworm, it put me in the mood for more "scruffy". i listened through it twice, and considered a third. silkworm opens up my brain, digs through all my college and post-college memories, fires up photoshop, and then inserts a beer in my hand where necessary. while i can't say i was ever wild, i was lucky enough to have friends that were, and they were nice enough to let me hang around.
silkworm "scruffy" (from the collection "even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn now and then" not sure what it originally appeared.)
listening to "scruffy" takes me back to this apartment:
that's where i lived the first 4 months out of college. that's the living room. there was a cat named spud living there as well. he peed on everything, including people foolish enough to fall asleep on the couch. he wasn't allowed outside so the urine in the elevator wasn't his fault. that was the fault of my roomates.
there's a silkworm documentary either in the process of being made, or finished but not yet out. anyways, here's the trailer.
also these two songs came up before silkworm ended shuffle:
gorilla biscuits "sitting around at home" (from s/t album)
neil young "i got a problem" (from the album "landing on water" which as i remember was one of the bad ones, check out the used bins for evidence. good songs on bad albums are some of the best songs because they haven't been played to death like the best songs on a great album.
"wanna be" comes from dizzee's latest which apparently will finally get a proper american release this year on def-jux. of course i bought the import last year and will have to pay the price in missing out on the u.s. release's bonus tracks. also, if you think you don't know paul willilams, you may just remember him from his work with the muppets.
last year i added a new song to my all-time list of favorites. after reading an interview with justice where they mentioned gilbert o'sullivan i sought out his album "himself". had a hard time finding it, with the exception of his biggest hit "alone again (naturally)". great song. great lyrics. i played it over and over.
gilbert o'sullivan "alone again (naturally)" (from the album "himself")
when i mentioned it to my friend mark he informed me of it's very important place in music history. remember back when artists could sample freely without worry of payments or lawsuits? notice how there's beatles samples all over the beastie boys "paul's boutique" and yet last year when wu-tang simply interpolated a beatles song it was all over the news as the first legally approved beatles "sample". gilbert o'sullivan was the one who ended it all when he sued biz markie back in 1991 over the following track:
biz markie "alone again" (from the album "i need a haircut")
now depending on which side you stand on the issue of sampling you may think o'sullivan an evil man. nope. brilliant songwritter. i eventually found the whole album, so here's a bunch of tracks (for fans of belle and sebastian):
"houdini said" (you have to listen to this song all the way through as it best moment is the build at the end)
so i got really into the move after i thought i ran out of good electric light orchestra albums to buy (at the time i wasn't aware how great an album "time" is. you know, who expects a 70s group to have made a good album in the 80s?). I started with "message from the country" the last album they made as the move, which i remember reading in the liner notes was recorded simultaneously with the first elo album, in order to finish up their contract as the move. the strange thing about it is that it's roy wood and jeff lynne's peak songwriting as the move, but writing and recording songs at the same time as elo, they were going in such a new direction that they were also at their weakest. here's a wood track from "message...":
the move "it wasn't my idea to dance" (from the album "message from the country"
after the first elo album (known in the u.s. as "no answer" after the an assistant at their u.s. label called the u.k. label to get the name of the album, and after not getting anyone to pick up, jotted down the note "no answer", which was mistaken by their boss to be the album title. seriously, check it out on snopes (click me).) wood parted ways with lynne to pursue his own musical direction, which had apparently grown at odds with lynne's. i haven't explored wood's post-elo career as deeply as i have elo post-wood (stuff's hard to find) but from what i gather there's roy wood solo, roy wood & wizzard, and then plain old wizzard (whose one album i can't seem to find). so, some roy wood (& wizzard) before we jump back into some earlier move tracks. sometimes where an artist was further along in their career is the best frame for presenting where they started out:
roy wood "song of praise" (from the album "boulders")
the first self titled album the move did was pretty standard british invasion fair in my opinion, but still better than most stuff from the period, despite being one of the major british acts that didn't make an impact in america. the one track i find myself going to from that first album is "fire brigade", represented here by the bbc session version (which i favor):
the move "fire brigade" (from "the bbc sessions" collection)
it's at this point that jeff lynne joins the band, though he's still not a the force he ends up being. wood still held the albums biggest single ("brontosaurus")as well the albums strongest and most interesting track ("feel too good" and at 9:36, too long for this post).
the move "brontosaurus" (from the album "looking on")
and then next up came "shazam", what seems to have been their most critical album (really though? "message from the country"'s the one to have). surprisingly not a single jeff lynne penned song on "shazam":
and then finally a song that for some reason has not yet found it's way onto a soundtrack for a wes anderson film. i can only assume it's because he has not heard it, otherwise it would have been in rushmore:
roy wood and wizzard "carlsberg special" (b-side and bonus track on "wizzard brew")
some random covers. they're always fun. i saw some clips on youtube this week of built to spill doing a couple of camper van beethoven songs ("good guys bad guys" and "take the skinheads bowling"). doug needs to put a covers album out. a friend who'd know was telling me that they have somewhere around 65 cover songs in their repertoire. rather than throw more built to spill at you so soon, here's some pre-bts doug doing the smiths' "big mouth strikes again" with treepeople.doug did another smiths cover with the halo benders that i'll probably put up at some point as well.
treepeople "big mouth strikes again" (from the album "something vicious for tomorrow")
one of my favorite covers is susanna hoffs' version of dylan's "i'll keep it with mine". don't know the original dylan song, aside from the 30sec clip i just listened to on allmusic, but i do love nico's version on "chelsea girl". i'm guessing that's who hoffs is paying tribute to here as well. she does a the velvet's "i'll be your mirror", which nico fronted, on the same album so...oh yeah, this isn't a bangles recording. it's from an assembled group of LA musicians from other bands called "rainy day" that put out an album of the same name in '84. they were all part of the 60's revival scene referred to as the paisley underground. don't know anything about it, but someday i'll have to get around to exploring it's bands.
susanna hoffs "i'll keep it with mine" (from the album "rainy day")
another great one i like to share with people is tim ferguson's cover of blondie's "heart of glass". tim's the main man in the local band the cousin lovers, who i heard were playing out live again. i think this recording comes from some recordings tim did with his music publsher to help sell him to labels. as far as i know this was never released. too bad.
i got this next one from a collection of grateful dead live recordings a friend put together to sell people on the dead. you know, cause we all hate the grateful dead. i think "american beauty" makes a better pitch for me, cause no matter how many times i hear how it's all about the live recordings, i prefer their studio work. still, this cover is bizarre enough that i have to include it. mostly cause the dead are joined by the beach boys on this one, but also cause it's a merle haggard song, so it's a pretty special moment.
the grateful dead w/ the beach boys "okie from muskogee" (live)
here's the article he wrote for arthur magazine that the collection was meant to accompany (click me)
and last we got sixteen deluxe's cover of bigstar's "kangaroo". sixteen deluxe is sill one of the best bands i ever saw live. i saw them open for, and desroy luna, spiritualized, and medicine, all bands who put on great shows. their version of "kangaroo" (called "roo") was always one of the highlights. not quite as powerful on album, but still worth the listen if you've got the time. it starts out pretty quiet so hang in there if you don't hear anything at first.
sixteen deluxe "roo" (from the album "backfeedmageticbabe"
I have no sense of who does, and who doesn't know these bands. if you were a modest mouse nut in the late 90s then you were a fan cause jeremiah green was the drummer. or, you were a fan of k records (though up released the first album) and everything they put out. or i don't know. judging by the number of cds i used to come across in the dollar bins i'm guessing most are unaware of what they missed, or are continuing to miss, cause most of these albums are pretty easy to find used.
matthew steinke was was the genius behind all three. and if you think i might be exaggerating with the use of "genius" you can poke around his website matthewsteinke.com and be corrected (make sure click on "archives", real tiny button at the top of the page, and then click on "instruments". the one time i saw him live was with satisfact, and he'd built this light sensitive theramin guitar pedal that made the most amazing, but controllable, noise/feedback. i missed ever seeing octant but apparently the drums were robots (you can see examples of such robots on his site).
here's a track from the first satisfact album ("the unwanted sounds of satisfact") recorded by steve wold, who also recorded the first modest mouse album:
and one from their second album "satisfact", recorded by calvin johnson, who also recorded the second modest mouse album (actually now i'm half doubting this, but i'm at work and the cd is at home so...).
and from their third album "the third meeting at the third counter", which i didn't like, but it did include two really good tracks. I don't know who recorded it.
now on to octant. the band with the robot drummers. and not just on stage, but in studio. though it seems drummers are aplenty so it may have been more worth the effort had he built robots to play bass.
"laquita laquita" (from the album "car alarms and crickets". i was really disappointed when this album came out. it's mostly instrumental. this song is however great).
i should have started with mocket as it seems to have been his most high profile project, but i'm nowhere near as into mocket as i am in his other two bands. i only have their first album so i can't represent the other two with tracks.
i just trolled though 143 songs to put this case together.
crazy how an established band with a particular sound, dabbles in another, and that ends up being their legacy. you may think disco when hearing the bee gees, but after exploring their catalog i think early beatles-era pop and super-sappy ballads. super-sappy in the same sense that spinal tap's amps go to 11.
i'm going to save dragging you through every bad break-up you've survived for later, and first present the country side of the bee gees:
ok, now take some time and reflect back on all the low moments in your life. remember on the beach when you looked down and there was only one set of footprints in the sand? well that was when the bee gees were carrying you. they were there and you didn't even know it:
no examples of their early beatles-era pop, but that's not really their strongest material so...
update: two days after i post this wfmu's "beware of the blog" makes this post (click me) regarding an unreleased bee gees recording that's been attributed to the beatles on bootlegs. they got the track streaming or for download
before i lose all cred by posting a bunch of bee gees songs i figured i'd put up some rare to rare-ish built to spill songs. so...here we go:
not actually built to spill as it's credited to doug martsch, but we all know that still counts as bts. this is from a split 7" with michael john (i'm guessing he's the guy who runs the label/studio, aka michael john serpe) released on home recorded cassette culture. the song is "5 on 3", and if you think it's some sort of sports reference, it's not. it's waaay better.
next up, two "keep it like a secret" outtakes. the first song,"now and then", which didn't make the album for some crazy reason (it's one of my favorite bts songs) ended up as a b-side to the international single for "center of the universe", as well as a bonus on the vinyl version of "live". the second song "forget remember when" was also a bonus on the "live" album (it first appeared as an untitled track on the "...secret" advance cd). why two studio songs ended up as bonus tracks on a live album i do not know, especially considering far superior live tracks they had access to from the '98 cmj show (some songs of which are posted below):
ok, a few from that 11/6/98 cmj show (i was lucky enough to be there). I've seen bts quite a few times, and in my opinion nothing beats them as a 3-piece. doug's playing is so much more muscular when he's covering all the guitar parts himself rather than when he's sharing. even the recording here is better than the somewhat anemic recordings from "live". the board/audience tracks are perfectly balanced, as you'll hear:
"linus and lucy" - released on "sabonis tracks" promo only ep that went along with "live". i remember being at the show and seeing all the looks on peoples faces as they tried to register what this very familiar sounding track was
"nowehere nothin' fuck-up" - released as a b-side to the promo 7" for "center of the universe" (i think. i went through my vinyl to make sure and it wasn't there. WHO HAS MY "CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE 7"!?) and if you didn't know, the songs lyrics are a take on the velvet underground's "oh! sweet nothin" and the title is the fictional hit sung my the main character in phillip k. dick's book "flow my tears the policeman said". i had a big ol grin on my face when i came across that while reading.
last year i got really into donovan. I'd gotten a couple of his early albums a few years back, but with the exception of "colours" and a few others, wasn't all that into them. but i continued to check out his section in the used bins. good thing cause i found "hms donovan" and "barabajagal", two great albums. really i was looking for "a gift from a flower to a garden" cause a friend of a friend, way back when i was in college, recommended i check it out. eventually i found a combined release of "mellow yellow" with "wear your love like heaven". not the deal you'd think it to be. "wear you love like heaven" is only the first half of the "a gift from a flower to a garden" double album. rather than just matching "...heaven" with it's other half "for little ones" they paired it with it's predecessor "...yellow". anyways, i just downloaded the full "...garden". also downloaded what i'd say is my favorite of his albums, "open road". sadly i don't think "open road" is in print. anyways, here you go:
(keep it in mind, none of these songs are on his greatest hits album)
and as a bonus, my morning jacket's cover of "wear your love like heaven". it's off the donovan tribute album "a gift from a garden to a flower" which if you're in a hurry and not paying attention you could end up paying $14 for a used copy, thinking you were buying the donovan album "a gift from a flower to a garden" like i did. this was the only worthwhile track;
and then a great use of donovan's "colours" from the film "rules of attraction". i don't know where the version they use is from, cause it's not the album or single version. curious.
