You Scratch My Back, I'll Rate It On A Scale Of 1-10

Dis- The Historically Troubled Third Album



Disband- In Small Rooms



Faraquet- Anthology 1997-98

Haven't blogged in awhile. Negative feedback made me hesitate I suppose. Considered some sort of blog-identity crisis. Georgia heat wears on my sense of humor. But there are mp3s to be posted.

Had a conversation with a bro on LSD about the value of experimental art. You could say we are diametrically opposed based on our loves of very different core 90s alternative rock bands. My favorite is Smashing Pumpkins; his is Radiohead.

I have had "The Radiohead is overrated" discussion even more than I have had the "Animal Collective's decline" discussion. I do not have any direct opposition in either case; I have milquetoast views of Radiohead and I think Merriweather Post Pavillion is a good album. Better than the new Grizzly Bear. Not as good as Feels or Strawberry Jam, and certainly not the album of the year, which is a toss-up between Japandroids and Mastodon (for the record, I think Japandroids' debut album is better than Nouns; Steve disagrees).

Milquetoast might be an incorrect term. Indifference or mild irritation might be more accurate. Radiohead's music is pretty good. For a mainstream band, they have taken to many different styles and haven't really embarrassed themselves in their attempts. But they do get boring. And their paranoid, impressionistic mantras fail to move me. In a broader sense, I think songwriting should be about creating the best possible song with each aspect created for maximum impact, and not inserting techno just to be arty. Maybe electronic music is just the counterpart to Yorke's post-whatever alienation. I do however see that my irritation at Thom Yorke's yelps parallels many people's views on Billy Corgan's whine. Corgan's music more often seems self-indulgent than pretentious, and I can get over it. I'm also willing to accept cockiness from people if they can deliver, and Corgan fulfills that obligation.

But anyway, how hard is it to make experimental music? "My Girls," for instance, is the same damn three notes looped over and over again for an entire song. The vocal melodies are nice, but groundbreaking it ain't. Metal Machine Music was pretty damn experimental, but does it hold any real musical value? The greatest experimental bands always welded their sonic manipulations to genuine rock music to form a greater whole. Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine come to mind. And really, given a wah pedal and a delay pedal, with a decent sampler, you could make some pretty strange music. But does anyone want to listen to it? Not really, unless you've somehow found the No Wave crowd. However, if you can make broken glass scratching metal shimmer like Pet Sounds, then be my guest.

Now about those albums. The Dis- album is ok, probably their best record, Steve Albini produced and all. They sound maybe like the guy from Hum fronting a Dischord band. I have more if anyone wants it. That Disband album is really good. They sound like the Hold Steady-bro singing for Braid. They were kinda Athens based, but they were before my time. The Faraquet anthology is pretty quality. Some of cuts were later on their first album, but everything is pretty solid. I'll fix'em if the downloads don't work.

Sorry this blog was so boring. I'll do better next time. Maybe it's time to start talking about Daisy of Love.

The problem with leisure...

Man, I don't want to get old. I've spent the last week visiting family/family friends, which means most of the people I've been interacting with for the past week are 50+. Consequentially, I've been thinking about getting old. I've decided that probably the worst aspect of aging, aside from that whole deteriorating body thing, is losing connections. When we're young, we're seemingly surrounded by people we know via school, parties, and a generally active lifestyle. However, as far as I can tell, when you get older you have to stop dicking around and getting drunk with friends all the time, you move away from people, you start a career, you get boring. You lose connections, and suddenly all you do for fun is plan dinner dates with another married couple. My grandparents made the point to me that, aside from being young, the best time of your life will be early retirement, which, for them, was apparently just hanging out and fixing up their house (it's these insights that make old people somewhat frightening to me). I don't know what transformation you undergo through your middle ages that makes such a scenario sound thrilling by the end of it, but it sure as shit sounds like a transition I don't want to suffer. I dunno, maybe it all has something to do with the maturation process; maybe at a certain point you get so tired of doing shit that doing nothing becomes inexplicably entertaining. Maybe it's something you just don't understand until get there, but, man, I don't want to get old.

Re-reading this, I just feel like a distraught alcoholic who found out that everyone he knows is planning an intervention.

Anyway, here's some punk music to keep you (and me) feeling young:



The Soft Boys were a short-lived, early post-punk band that released a great album in 1980 called Underwater Moonlight, which Matador reissued in 2001 with an expanded title, added outtakes, and a bonus disc with all sorts of extra shit, and if you don't have it, you should

Underwater Moonlight...And How It Got There (disc 1)
Underwater Moonlight...And How It Got There (disc 2)