dum dum dum dum dumb dumb

erm, one of the least effective criticisms of any rock act is that they're too stupid. a lot, if not all, good rock and roll is stupid. or at least has elements of stupidness. And it doesn't have to be knowingly stupid (prog) or even knowingly not smart (electric eels) or even just plain stupid (most rock). stupidity is ingrained in rock given that at it's most effective it's just riffs and rhythm and maybe a hook. the music of the rolling stones is stupid, the ramones is stupid, the beatles, elvis, chuck berry, modern lovers, hawkwind, and prog heads are actually stupider than most (given their self-deception) and ultimately just make stupid music too, or bad music.

whatever, i'm getting distracted, because the two significantly stupid rock records i've purchased recently are the recent 3xcd live led zeppelin collection 'how the west was won' and the afterbirth 7" "who's in there?" with the classic song "mr. louis". stupid in two different ways and not of equal merit in rock terms.

Easy one first: Afterbirth are idiots, the music is sub-moronic, the lyrics are offensive, and generally the whole affair has the feel of really stupid guys with really backward ideas trying to make the most offensive record possible. I showed someone the lyrics and then tried to explain the appeal being "You know, the lyrics are borderline misogynistic/homophobic but...," the reply being "Borderline?" Yeah, so this isn't something that you play for your parents or a future soulmate on a first-date. That is unless you really want to test'em, separate the wheat from the chafe, etc. There is some debate about the sincerity of the whole affair but at least it can be said with certainty that Afterbirth intended to be offensive. Oh well, it does have the single greatest guitar solo ever written. How far is this really from say the Electric Eels, or even early Half Jap or saaaaay everyone's favority GG Allin.

On another point of stupidly offensive music (for cool kids but you know, not most people) is stuff like Led Zeppelin (or Grand Funk Railroad or Iron Butterfly or Jimi Hendrix (for different reasons) or Cream). Blatantly LCD music for the masses, or actually not lowest common denominator, because wouldn't that be MOR pop of some kind. Led Zepp is nothing if not extreme in it's stance, maxed out on stereotypical dude rock. But low and behold, if it rocks it rocks 'cuz for me it's all about the riffs. and if you like your riffs in your hardcore and faux-pseudo revival rock, most recent Load release, etc, how can you not honestly, with a straight-face, like the biggest riff monster of all time? They didn't invent the riff, or even the heavy riff, but they did a lot with it. And Bonham plays some heavy funky beats.

This is me calling out all you folks who swear by Black Sabbath and choose to dismiss Led Zeppelin. It's just inconsistent.

grateful dead and raga raga raga shankar

Recent Acquisitions: the Genius of Ravi Shankar and 80 min. live Dead mix cd from co-worker.

In other words: Head Muuuuuusic.

among lots of hip folks, at least since punk and on, getting into sincere 60's hippy music is tre-uncool. liking grateful dead era 67-75 was tantamount to liking phish (or for most of punk-time to being a deadhead still) which is downright anti-punk. or digging non-western fusion world music (aka not fela or baile funk or tropicalia) is to be on the same side of the fence as middle age liberal whole-foods yuppies. no thank you.

but these days that seems to been thrown out the door. or at least some what. as there are hipster coalition approved hippy bands to get into and ones not too. psychadelic acid folk = okay. i don't know if the grateful dead have made it yet. i thought i saw it coming around the amount a couple of years ago, but not having my ear to the ground any more, i think i was off the mark. and i don't know if it will happen, unlike incredible string band or christopher cross, gd is a monolith to penetrate that a lot of (un-hip) people are laying bricks on still. and there's a wide variety in their output, they never really rocked and they made a fair amount of bad music that hardcore deadies even acknowledge as no good. (apparently songs by the female vox in the disco-dead era are taken off of bootleg concert recordings because people don't like them that much.) so i don't think it'll ever reach hipster critical mass as that would require, you know, talking to uncool folks to find out what the good jams are as well as acknowledging that deadheads might actually have decent taste in music despite other questionable lifestyle/outlook-on-the-world choices. AND don't tell me yr going to be a better dead fan than a dead-head cuz that's just rude.

so the live dead mix by my co-worker dead-head is totally worthwhile. it's safe to say i might listen to it multiple times. it doesn't jump out at me as something i need to chase down a lot of (see comments above) but it is perfectly enjoyable and a lot to hear. (same could be said for fleetwood mac (for different reasons) and, as the original premise of my heading would indicate, ravi shankar (but i'm to lazy to write anymore)).

symphonic rawk

Is it possible to have a Glenn Branca today? In the early-80's there was still fluidity between the edges-of-pop scene & the academic avant-garde. Branca, who was in a couple of different no wave bands started making guitar compositions that pushed into the academic "new music" scene. on recordings it loses some of it envelope pushing because it ends up sounding like reich or glass, you know repetitive minimalism from the late-sixties/early-seventies. Live i think it had much more purpose because it was LOUD. the whole point being the overtones and all and the shear volume of it. I mean, you don't get 100 guitar players together bashing away to make minimalist music but only to make something big. LOUD in an outside way that is typically only possible in a small venue inside way.

I digress... but is do people make this move anymore? From underground pop to insider 'new music' circles? Glass and Reich both played rock venues/shows in the sixties. Branca moved over, John Cale was an avant-garde composition person, etc. etc. But now I don't see this fluid shift happening. For one, the underground is now so big, it's not a small group of people pushing the envelope for a small bunch of fans, but it's a high stakes game. Arcade Fire, or even worse Radiohead, aren't going to be even listened to, w/ good reason, by 'new music' folks if they tried to push-it. that type of stuff would be steve howe solo records-ish, not really progressive in anyway (that's not a dig at prog, but a statement'o'fact.) secondly, new music is bigger too. Bang on a can etc are more entrenched and get props & mainstream classicism coverage. Koch records and all. Bigger for both breeds more factionalism twixt the two. the harsher you define your lines the more you're going to be heard. harsh lines = harder borders to cross.

but you say: whattabout dj spooky? i say SHUT UP! he talks but he can't walk. he sees but he can't breathe.

but you say: mike patton <3 john zorn; john zorn <3 mike patton. i say getting warmer, but really? really?

but you say: FORCEFIELD. i say, you have a point i will concede and that says something.
that's the real branca crossover we're left with today. on the real edge of both real art and real music and real experience. POINT!

mika miko errrrrrr........ i mean i blurt a swell map(s)

sometimes bands are all the rage and sometimes all the rage is a band. mika miko are from LA, all girls ~20 yrs old (some of them hotttt), make a racket that reminds people of both early punk and early post-punk and which all equals that they are the bee-knee's to some folk. for a band w/ only a 7" to their credit (though on a reputable la hipster label, ppm (don't know the who's label, but he's hip)) have moved up to the big leagues of kill rock stars to make there shot as the next sleater-kinney or whatever. or the next erase errata. though i see them cleaning up a little and writing some tunes and being bigger and bigger and bigger, taking there street-cred, good back-story and good looks into the big time indie world. maybe they'll save music as the next generations NIRVANA. so i expect greil marcus to be all over this (former champ of kleenex &&& sleater-kinney - don't know where he stands on erase erratta, but i'm sure he loved'em, he's in sf/berkeley and all.)

but probably not. i don't think i'll buy the album but i did buy the 7" and it's fine. okay. not overly memorable because they have the sound but not the tunes. and they're not, in the end, that post-punk, more just a racket, but i want more memorable songs, something that'll jump out and stick. there's a chance that 'oh i get it' moment with MM will still come but for now IT'S NOT THERE.

not that it's surprising, but an example of jumping out at ya moment is demonstrated by the other two records i bought at the same time as the MM 7". the swell maps 'jane from occupied europe' lp and blurt's s/t lp. the swell maps i already owned the repress and had decided it to be my fave SM moment w/ that last two tracks being the real this-is-better-than-Blamm! moment. my good friend dan has always ridden Blurt as a Good band so I was happy to find their decided upon Best record. all killer, no filler. sax, drums, guitar and rhythms. more like Can than SM (who always said they wanted to sound like Can but kinda failed from lac'o'skills). dan says fela + james chance, I say maybe, but it's good. makes me want to buy a sax more than buy more blurt records.

birth control and gina x performance

it wouldn't be the worst thing i've ever done, but i feel like this starting to become like James Burke's Connections. If you've never seen it (it's BBC show) or read it (for a while he was writing something for Scientific American) it involves him drawing a thread of connections between historical thinkers and events and persons, starting with one to seemingly take a random course of connections only to lead back to the first person in the end. Connecting different, superficially disparate musicians and thinkers it was i've done in a couple of posts so far. Downtown no-wave to hip-hop to mancunian electro etc. And so I do it again.

This time is a little different because I haven't actually heard the performer I'm starting with, Gina X Performance. Apparently she recorded, or properly they, a classic of early synth-dancey-electro which electroclash types still dig. The tracks No-GDM and Nice Mover fit in nicely with the first Soft Cell or DAF or other Mute folks. Obscure-ish dancefloor smashs. The intersting part is that the producer Zeus B. Held/music guy behind the act started out as the keyboardist of non-canonized kraut-rock/boogie-rock band Birth Control, though he joined the band right as they went down hill and was not on their high point album/song HooDoo Man/Gamma Ray, which I recently tracked down. Apparently Gamma Ray can still be found as a obscure dance-floor filler today.

And the whole story reminds me of the Ike Yard, DCC guy who also recorded the seminal NYC electro hit 'the Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight'. Similar story, similar result, similar people still digging it today. Who knew?