“Come to my house/I got whisky and chairs”

16 Horsepower – “Horse Head” from Hoarse [2001]

Whenever I speak with fellow aficionados of 16 Horsepower, we can all agree on the importance of the crazed, drunken preacher with hellfire in his eyes coming out of frontman David Eugene Edwards, just as we can agree that this band has rekindled the fear of the Lord in our souls. But I never hear about the importance and soul-crushing weight of Pascal Humbert’s low end: on Secret South‘s opener “Clogger,” the whole album starts with a massive, speaker-rattling bowed contrabass. It’s got some physical weight to it, which is a nice counterbalance to Edwards’ hysterical yelping.

This track is particularly ominous, primarily because the low end acts as the song’s pallbearer; jerky guitar interpositions, hair-raising fiddle, and gawky yells into an old ribbon microphone act as the clouds, rain, and crows flying over the funeral procession.

This is one of the scariest songs I’ve ever heard. It’s a drunken man in a torn shirt, hurriedly staggering towards the instigator of a crop fire, pistol in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other.

Put the fear of the Lord in ya

Posted by Phil

So long to the Old Pueblo

Calexico – “Hair Like Spanish Moss” from Tool Box [tour release] (2007)

After three years of desert living, my wife and I are leaving Tucson to begin anew in Washington, DC.

I will miss this place, its landscape, and its people.  Southern Arizona is truly a wonderful part of the world.

My posts may be sporadic at best over the next couple of months so bear with me.  I know I can count on my colleagues to pick up the slack.

Viva Calexico

Posted by Jordy

Worst Song Ever: Part Four

(To be cross-filed under the possibly new Department of the Unforgivable.)

Red House Painters – “Trailways” from Songs for a Blue Guitar [1996]

Red House Painters – “I Feel The Rain Fall” from Songs for a Blue Guitar [1996]

To truly understand the abject horror of “I Feel The Rain Fall,” you should first listen to “Trailways,” the immediately preceding track on Songs For A Blue Guitar.

Let’s be honest. “I Feel The Rain Fall” is not a good song. In fact, I think it’s a terrible song. I think it’s one of the stupidest things Mark Kozelek has ever put on tape. I think it insults my intelligence, what with its campy back-and-forth guitars and little snare drum part, feigning a musical connection with old-time C&W and gospel music. Mark Kozelek, you are a sad bastard who writes great sad-bastard songs like “Trailways.” Please stick to your strengths.

The real problem is that “Trailways” is a highlight in the RHP catalog. A masterpiece of understatement, with elliptical personal lyrics that hint at specifics but never really give you the whole story. With dueling e-bows. A transcendent song, followed by a seventh-grade pastiche of a genre in which the student has never been remotely adept. Why, why, why would you follow up such a brilliant demonstration of loss with such a clunker?

Still, it’s a good record. Buy it, ok?

Posted by Phil

“She’s a victim of her senses”

Neil Young – “I’ve Loved Her So Long” from Neil Young (1969)

Neil Young’s eponymous first album receives and deserves much criticism for being a bit bloated and overwrought.  Young himself has said that he and producer/genius/madman Jack Nitzsche got a bit carried away in the studio.

Nevertheless, there are many shining moments on this album, “I’ve Loved Her so Long” being the most charming among them.  The Bacharachian orchestration and background singers add to the beauty of the song rather than distract from it.  Listen for Merry Clayton who also kicked ass on the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.”

I’m glad NY signed up Crazy Horse and moved in a more rocking direction, but this fascinating album shows a curious solo artist trying to find his voice.

Buy it here

Posted by Jordy

Worst Song Ever: Part Three

The Kinks – “Phenomenal Cat” from The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society [1968]

The Kinks truly deserve the high praise that they have recieved on this blog.  They are a really great band.  And Village Green… is a stellar album.  Except for this song, which is just awful.  Seriously, what is this  “Fum fum diddle-um di” stuff?  Are we in the Merry Old Land of Oz?  No.

The volume in the 33&1/3 series devoted to this album says that “Phenomenal Cat” and “Wicked Annabella” (also appearing on Village Green…) are the Kinks’ attempts at psychedelia, which was the predominant force in British music at the time.  I’m glad Ray Davies and Co. stayed out of the psychedelic movement, because this attempt is really, really bad.  The book also posits that “Phenomenal Cat” could be an attempt at satire.  If this song is an attempt at satire, it fails.  If it is an attempt at making a crappy song, it succeeds admirably.

Seriously, though, you should still buy the album.

Posted by Adam

“Don’t you know about the bird?”

Ramones – “Surfin’ Bird” & “Rockaway Beach” from Rocket To Russia (1977)

Some of us here at SWR adore the Ramones. Some (ahem, Jordy) somehow lost a few of the chromosomes responsible for deriving pleasure from rock ‘n’ roll, and probably don’t even like the beach, where I’ll be spending the next week.

Take a shot of Wittgenstein-ian linguistic analysis and chase it with a paean to the Irish Riviera.

Apply for a scholarship to Rock n Roll High School

Posted by Glenn

Let them try and follow

Dirty Three – Sister Let Them Try and Follow from She Has No Strings, Apollo [2003]

I was on the speech team in High School, okay? People consider me articulate, and I can write in sentences that make sense. But my truest thoughts aren’t words at all. I think best in colored shapes that move together in space. Ribbons, or big giant squares. And they make sense to me, but I can’t really articulate it except by saying “it’s like a blue ribbon arced up, convex to the ground and then its parabola reversed and precisely at that moment, a red ribbon came up to it from the ground and wrapped around it, loosely, and they go on from there.” Which is a nice picture, I suppose, but what sense does it make to anybody else? People ask me what I’m thinking about and instead of giving long descriptions of esoteric colors, I just put on the Dirty Three and say “this it what it sounds like.”

Dirty Three were formed when God himself put weirdo zen guitars, time-signature-transcending drums, and insanity in a violin into an Australian crucible and crushed the living hell out of it, leaving only the best instrumental band on the face of the planet. I’m only slightly exaggerating. This particular song is a prime example of what makes Dirty Three work so well, namely that Mick Turner, Jim White, and Warren Ellis are doing such different things that shouldn’t work together but fit together so very well. Like holding hands with your girlfriend. But maybe she has ten hands.

I wrote out a list of the highlights in this song, but there were too many and they devolved into nothing but swears and “aaaaaaaaaaahh”s. I’ll spare you. But trust me, this song is better the louder you can get it. Listen to the violin scream and the drums fall in and out. I’ve never heard a guitar plunk and glimmer at the same time like this. Treat yourself to early hearing loss. There is not a better way.

You can buy this or other fine Dirty Three recordings here

Posted by Phil

Worst Song Ever: Part Two

Sonic Youth – “Creme Brulee” from Dirty (1992)

And you thought it was impossible to screw up this delectable dessert.

Sonic Youth has recorded their share of terrible songs (indeed, at least one terrible album), but this SY stinker takes the, err, cake. “Creme Brulee” closes out what is a mostly dreck-free album with an pathetic attempt at out-of-tune, drumless boogie-rock. Elsewhere on Drrrrty, Kim’s throaty shouting is matched with equally raunchy super-90s compressed guitars; songs like “Swimsuit Issue” and “Orange Rolls, Angel’s Spit” are pretty damn good, despite Kim’s irritating vocal stylings. (Though, in general, I prefer her breathy singing, featured here.) This is just shit. “Last night I dreamt I kissed Neil Young/If I was a boy guess it would be fun.”

In case you are interested, here are a few of my other contenders for Worst Song Ever post (mp3s not included, lest you lose your faith in recorded sound; instead, links to GOOD songs by these bands).

Ted Leo/Pharmacists – “Bomb.Repeat.Bomb” from Living With The Living
Pavement – “We Are Underused” from Brighten The Corners
Nirvana – “Aero Zeppelin” from Incesticide
Husker Du – “Every Everything” from Flip Your Wig

Buy Sonic Youth

Posted by Glenn

Worst Song Ever: Part One

There are a handful of albums in my music collection of which I am outright embarrassed (Styx Greatest HIts, Symphonic Pink Floyd to name only a couple).  However, there are other albums that I love but that contain infuriatingly bad songs.  This is the kind of music that will form the grist for SWR’s latest series, wherein the authors will share the songs that they’d like to “punch in the face,” to quote our esteemed contributor, Phil J.

The Stooges – “We Will Fall” from The Stooges [1969]

For Part I, I give you one of the most shameful and bloated pieces of crap ever committed to vinyl in earnest: The Stooges’ “We Will Fall.”  Perhaps producer John Cale deserves most of the blame for this pseudo-psychedelic viola drone.  It should have been his call to cut a song so obviously alien to the rest of the album and, indeed, to the Stooges’ entire subsequent catalog.  Iggy Stooge likewise deserves blame for channeling Jim Morrison (who sucked big time) instead of continuing to yelp and yowl about being your dog (which was original and kick-ass).  Finally, Dave Alexander and the Asheton bros. are on the hook for not doing at all what they did best, which was rock harder and rawer than ANY OTHER BAND at that time.

So there.  I defy my colleagues and readers to name and explain a more disgraceful song.

Don’t get me wrong though, buy the Stooges

Posted by Jordy

Rock & Roll is dead and this proves it

The unthinkable has happened.

The New York Times reported this weekend that a Rock and Roll theme park has recently opened in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  The 55-acre park, designed “in about two hours at a Kinko’s in Hollywood, California,” boasts a “Pinball Wizard” arcade, an “Alice’s Restaurant” Restaurant, a Magic Mushroom Garden (featuring “a charming toddler play area made up of soft-sculpture, climbable clusters of mushrooms” according to the Park’s official website) and yes, Led Zeppelin: the Ride.

This is not a joke.  Read the article for yourselves.

The photo at the head of the article, reproduced above, is the entrance to Rock & Roll Heaven-Land, which apparently pays tribute to fallen Rock greats.  The idea that a “Rock & Roll Heaven” exists implies that Rock is dead.  If it was alive before, this theme park has beaten it to death with blunt instruments.

Theme parks have long been the stereotypical Lamest Places on Earth.  Clean, controlled environments where everything is planned and nothing is authentic, (except maybe the price-gouging.  Hard Rock Park charges $50 a pop for admission) and Hard Rock Park sounds like no exception.  I could easily turn this into a missive about the sociology of theme parks, but I will refrain.  I’ll stick to how this is a disgusting misuse of art.

Theme parks are primarily for families.  I’m all for getting young kids interested in Rock music, but I don’t think a sanitized, manufactured simulacrum of the Rock music experience is the way to do it.  I wonder if they have an “Altamont Experience” ride (Caution:  Riders will get stabbed), or if they sell Trout Mask Replicas in the gift shop.  My guess is they do not.  The Times article compares this park to television soundtracks and video games like Guitar Hero, arguing that all are just ways for artists to get their music heard.  A theme park is not the same as a video game or a film soundtrack.  In Guitar Hero, success depends on how well one is able to interact with the music.  True, it is not as good as playing a real guitar, and it may give some the illusion of talent they don’t really have, but still it is better than a theme park.  Television and film soundtracks use music to convey different emotions, making music an indispensible part of these media.   If I had written a song, and someone came to me and said “I represent x TV show, and there’s a scene in an upcoming episode where someone dies, and we would like to put your song in the background during this scene because we think it conveys the right emotion in this death scene” I would take it as a great compliment and would more than likely let them use my song.  But I find it difficult to make the connection between authentic emotion or authentic experience in a theme park.

The justification that this theme park is just another form of exposure for a band begs the question:  do huge bands like Led Zeppelin really need the exposure given to them by a roller coaster?  Does Aerosmith need the exposure given to it by having its own edition of Guitar Hero?  The bands who end up having their own roller coasters are already immensely popular and really do not need the exposure given to them by a Hard Rock Park.  The more obscure artists that could use more exposure will never have their own roller coaster.  A Rock theme park will not bring obscure artists into the fore; it will only give already huge bands even more exposure.  Kids will have plenty of opportunities in their lives to discover Led Zeppelin; they most definitely do not need a roller coaster to do so.  The bands that could use the exposure will get it via word of mouth and mp3 blogs such as this one.  The internet is as much a revolution for music as it is for just about everything else.  Theme parks are a revolution for nothing.

From the article:

“Hard Rock Park is the brainchild of Jon Binkowski, 49, a veteran theme-park executive, and Steven Goodwin, 40, who developed the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, Fla. Neither man is the kind of rock obsessive who trades obscure 45s or reads back issues of Crawdaddy; they seem to appreciate Led Zeppelin for its music just as much for the fact that the band is represented by one lawyer, making for easier negotiations.

Eight years ago, Mr. Binkowski bought a struggling theater here that had once been home to Snoopy on Ice, with the idea of turning the land into a children’s amusement park. When Mr. Goodwin came aboard to find investors, the project grew more ambitious, and a rock ’n’ roll theme was chosen partly for expediency, when Hard Rock International agreed to license its name.”

Great.  So the founders bought some dump in Crap Hole, USA hoping to turn it into a theme park.  They shopped around for a famous name to slap onto it, and Hard Rock International agreed.  So it became a music theme park.  What a great story!

Seriously, read the article.  The whole thing just reeks of profiteering and opportunism.

Only in America, friends.

Check out this awesome Hard Rock Park Blog!

The park map is here, in all its lameness.

Posted by Adam

“His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud…”

Bruce Springsteen – “Lost in the Flood” from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

The Boss’ first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., has been compared to Van Morrison’s seminal Astral Weeks (1968), and with good reason.  Both albums came early in their respective composer’s careers, both contain extraordinarily dense, poetic lyrics dealing with similar themes of alienation and unrequited love, and both pay homage to their composer’s hometowns (Springsteen’s Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Van the Man’s Belfast, Northern Ireland).  Both albums also share the same bass player, but that is little more than a neat-o coincidence.

Born to Run (1975) is widely regarded as the album that “made” Bruce Springsteen.  It is a fine album to be sure, but Greetings is just as good, if not better.  The lyircs (arguably the most important part of the early Springsteen canon…I’m not familiar with his post-70’s stuff) on Born to Run are oftentimes lost in the too-busy arrangements.  This is not the case on Greetings, where the words are far clearer, except of course for the famous deuce/douche chorus on “Blinded by the Light,” but that is an entirely different discussion (not really…it’s “deuce,” for the record).

The “flood” in this song is of the metaphorical variety.  My reading of the song sees it as a suffocating flood of humanity in which one feels trapped.  Each of the song’s three verses is about a different character, experiencing increasing levels of this anomie.  In the violent final verse, “Bronx’s best apostle” reminds me somewhat of Travis Bickle in that he seems to be a crusader for the good, he wants to “wash the scum off the streets” in the same way Bickle did in Taxi Driver three years after this album’s release.  At the risk of veering entirely off topic, Martin Scorsese has said that Taxi Driver is in part based on the aforementioned Astral Weeks.

Or maybe “Bronx’s best apostle” is just another gang-banger.  I dunno.

Either way, the climactic last verse is about the the urban alienation so familiar to us big-city dwellers.  One often feels invisible in the constant presence of so many strangers, and some feel like the only way they can get people to notice them is to go on a shooting rampage.  Fortunately, most of us have the presence of mind to avoid such things.

Buy the Boss

Posted by Adam

“We carried you in our arms”

Bob Dylan and the Band – “Tears of Rage – Take 1,” “Tears of Rage – Take 2” and “Tears of Rage – Take 3” from A Tree with Roots [Basement Tapes sessions, 1967]

The Band – “Tears of Rage” from Greatest Hits comp [2000], orig. on Music from Big Pink [1968]

Happy Independence Day from your patriotic friends at SWR.

Here are a few takes of a Dylan/Band classic from A Tree with Roots.  A cleaner version of the third take later appeared on the official Basement Tapes record released in 1975.  Bob shares a writing credit for this song with the late Richard Manuel who sang “Tears of Rage” when the Band recorded it for 1968’s Music from Big Pink.  Dylan’s efforts, while insightful, never really matched the pained plaintiveness of Manuel’s pinched tenor.

More Tree with Roots at SWR

Buy the Band

Posted by Jordy

“Don’t give it a name”

Califone – “Michigan Girls” from Quicksand/Cradlesnakes [2003]

Pardon my late absence. I’ve been up in MI where the Summers can be, at turns, mightily thundery and thickly humid.

But what of Michigan’s girls? How are they? Are they still stowed safely in the Midwest or are they being pushed and pulled by the other two coasts’ cultures? Sadly, the latter may be truer than before. Nevertheless, they’ll always have a place in my heart. I am married to one after all.

More Califone at SWR

Buy it

Posted by Jordy

“I live sweat, but I dream light years”

The Minutemen – “Boiling” from The Punch Line (1981) and “The Glory of Man” from Double Nickels on the Dime (1984)

It’s been said plenty of times before (including here), but the Minutemen were really, really great. One of the smartest punk bands, the ‘Men were almost completely bullshit-free and had an innate sense of what just plain works in rock music. This is music that is totally human and encourages humanity; its genius improv and deep in the pocket grooves make me want to make art instead sitting on my ass whining about X, Y, and Z. The “three prole dudes jammin’ econo” mythology kept up by Watt is alternately cheesy and embarrassing and totally inspirational. The Minutemen, to paraphrase Kafka, are three axes for the frozen sea within us. I’m going to start tearing up if I write any more; instead, I’ll put the Minutemen on at full blast and rock the hell out.

Buy the Minutemen

Posted by Glenn