October 2004 Archives
You may not know it yet, but you like the Misfits. No, really. You do. You may disagree--your reasons lofty and plentiful--but honestly, you're just not listening.
I know, I know--you have your doubts. That's reasonable. I used to be just like you. I remember when the familiar visage of the Crimson Ghost had about as much relevance to me as a KISS logo. When I still rolled my eyes at the Misfits patch once present at every single show I attended as a teenager. When I judged the Misfits primarily by their fan base. In short--when I had never really listened to the Misfits.
Formed in 1977 in Lodi, NJ, the Misfits began in earnest as a three piece--Glenn Danzig, Jerry Only, and a drummer known only as "Manny"--with the release of the "Cough/Cool" b/w "She" single. At the time, Danzig played an electric piano in place of guitar. It's a bizarre footnote for one of the world's best-known hardcore bands--but sort of fittingly ridiculous.
The Misfits soon became a proper hardcore band with the addition of a guitarist (and the unfortunate shit-canning of the poor piano)--and as a four piece, they recorded the Bullet ep, a loving... um... tribute to the late John F Kennedy. The band soon recorded there first full length--Static Age--but had no luck securing a label. After two more singles, the band flew out to the UK to tour with their British counterparts, the Damned. They had discussed the possibility of following up the Damned tour with an opening slot for the Clash, but after Danzig got thrown in the brig for a bar skirmish (an experience that inspired the song "London Dungeon"), their then drummer Joey Image split, and the rest of the band flew home.
After two additional 7," the band finally released their first full-length, Walk Among Us, in 1982--with a national tour following. The following year saw the release of their second and final full-length, 1983's Earth A.D.. Danzig bailed just after their final release, a 12" called Die, Die My Darling.
It's difficult to really keep track of the Misfits' recorded legacy, as at the time of their break-up the band's discography was almost entirely out of print--languishing in obscurity for years before being poorly anthologized on a number of incomplete collections--all until the mid-90s release of a career spanning, coffin-shaped box set. Still, the cult of the Misfits grew--with the band selling considerably more T-Shirts than they ever sold records, or so the story goes.
And yet, most friends of mine hate the Misfits. Or say they do. But seriously, if people would only actually listen, I swear they're not all bad.
If you like the girl groups of the 60s, you probably like the Misfits. If you like b-movies, you probably like the Misfits. If you like self-mythology, you probably like the Misfits. If you like the Ramones, you probably like the Misfits. If you like music, you probably like the Misfits. And if you like misogyny, you REALLY like the Misfits.
Which brings us to the only viable complaint that can be lobbed at the Greatest Band of All Time: dude has some serious issues with women. And it's fair not to like them for that. But why hate on the brilliance of the Misfits when you can just project all of that bane upon Danzig? I mean, "Mother"? that shit deserves the hate. Not the Misfits. I mean, they're the Greatest Band of All Time, man.
The two front dudes have beards. The drummer dude doesnt have a beard but his last name is BEARD. For real. They just played at Madison Square Garden at the republican national convention. But really, what band could turn down a gig at the Gardens, huh?
Just to get things started, here are the lyrics to one of my favorite ZZ Top songs "Cheap Sunglasses":
" When you get up in the morning and the light is hurt your head
The first thing you do when you get up out of bed
Is hit that streets a-runnin' and try to beat the masses
And go get yourself some cheap sunglasses
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah
Spied a little thing and I followed her all night
In a funky fine levis and her sweater's kind of tight
She had a west coast strut that was as sweet as molases
But what really knocked me out was her cheap sunglasses
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah
(solo)
Now go out and get yourself some big black frames
With the glass so dark thay won't even know your name
And the choice is up to you cause they come in two classes:
Rhinestone shades or cheap sunglasses
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah"
How many people HAVENT felt like that, huh? Sun glasses are universally cool.
Can you think of any other songs about awesome sunglasses, except for that wack-ass "Sunglasses at Night" bullshit?: the answer is NO!
Only ZZ Top could do it, because they are the greatest band that ever existed or ever will exist. They have taken their truth vision across the galexy in their magical flying lowrider. They have shown the children of the world:
-they tell boys what their mother could never get through theur heads: that women appreciate sharp dressed men: legit
-a little phaser on an old blues riff: legit
-mystic southern wizards whose magic car keys can get any dork laid by feather-haired hotties: legit
-picture of 100,000 fans at your show with the caption "an old fashioned texas BBQ": legit
-the psychedelic-waver-prog sleeper with pitch shifted vocals (predating ween by a good 10 years) about an crazy monster that will drag race you with his 'coon-tuned' 'vet known as "Manic Mechanic": fucking legit
-"slip inside my sleeping bag": legit
-fur covered spinning guitars: fucking legit
-a blues song about a girl who wants you to cum on her neck called "Pearl Necklace": kinda weird
-bringing traditional blues vibrations to the new wave crazed MTV generation: legit
The deeper you get into their lyrics, the weirder it gets:
"I met a shiek from Mozambique
who led me to the Congo.
He dreamed to go to Mexico
and sample a burrito."
Wha???
My old college buddy Dan, now doing time as an anthropologist in ethiopia getting ass-worms and getting drunk, has always wanted to start a ZZ Top cover band called Chocolate Cherry. I've always wanted to be in this band, but he will NEVER let me. i dont think he wants anyone who actually plays music to be in the band, just him and our other buddy Sean drunk at a party banging senslessly on instruments while slurringthe lyrics to "Tush" into an overdriven microphone as if it were a long lost Jandek classic. but seeing as Dan and Sean are both stuck in grad school for the rest of their dwindling youth, like a couple of sissy boys, the chances of this actually happening are about as slim as having ZZ Top throw them the magic keys to their magic wizard flying lowrider.
ZZ Top are OG beard-core. They made a guitar out of a piece of Muddy Water's shack and called it muddywood and took the guitar on tour to raise money for a delta blues museum: deeper.
This is what their own website has to say: "Since its formation in 1969, ZZ TOP has been recognized as....the most iconic American band of all time". I would propose an addition: ZZ Top are and forever shall be the Greatest Band of All Time.
The vast myth of Van Dyke Parks is a difficult one to summarize. Historically speaking, Parks has been a child actor, classical composer, record producer, famed lyricist, pop musician, arranger, film scorer, and--very briefly--an adult actor. Despite his sweeping accomplishments, Parks is largely acknowledged in the annuls of pop history for one of his failed works, the Beach Boys' unfinished masterpiece, Smile. With Brian Wilson's "finished" version of Smile released last month, a good deal of attention has been cast upon Van Dyke Parks' relationship with Wilson and the eventual reworking of the project--and though an important part of the Parks mythos, Smile is only really the beginning.
In 1966, after a few years working nebulously in L.A.'s music industry (his first paying job was arranging "The Bear Necessities" for Disney's the Jungle Book, and work with Harper's Bizzare) Van Dyke Parks was introduced to Brian Wilson who--impressed with little more than Parks' wit and intelligence--decided he would make an apt lyricist for the album Dennis Wilson claimed would make Pet Sounds "stink." The pair only properly "finished" one complete production at that time--the epic "heroes & villains"--along with a number of other fragments in various stages of completion. The story of Smile has been incredibly well-documented (check out this short history, for example)--but shorthand, the usual Beach Boys subjects (read: Mike Love and Al Jardine) began to voice their dissent, attacking the project's lyrics, and so Van Dyke Parks bailed.
Two years later, Warner Brothers took an unbelievably ridiculous gamble, producing the then-most expensive record of all time (over 48 thousand dollars) for a largely unknown artist whom they banked would be on par with the Beatles' recent Sgt. Pepper's success. Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle was an unprecedented success. Artistically. Some months after the record was released, Warner Brothers began running ads suggesting that they "lost $35,509 on the album of the year"--encouraging people to send in their copies of Song Cycle to Warner Brothers in return for a second copy--"one to educate a friend with."
Song Cycle is an amazing web of Americana--a densely integrated vision of hundreds of years of the nation's song craft. With nearly 40 years of retrospect, the relationship between Parks and Wilson makes a good deal of sense: Parks an Americana obsessive, Wilson the voice of what would become the new Americana. Not too many hooks, of course, but as one of the most intellectually challenging pop records of all time, Song Cycle runs scholastic laps around anything the Beach Boys ever touched--which, admittedly, wouldn't take a rocket scientist.
After Song Cycle, Van Dyke spent five-years time working on other people's records (sessions with the Byrds and Judy Collins, and producing Randy Newman's first album) before recording his sophomore record, the considerably more accessible Discover America. Another stroll through 19th and 20th century Americana--this time through the, um... music of Trinidad of the 1940s--Discover might be more sonically accessible, but no less far reaching. With tomes to Jack Palance, Bing Crosby, Franklin Roosevelt the Mills Brothers, and J. Edgar Hoover, the record is both manic and manically focused--a cross-cultural weave of collegiate wit and brilliant arrangement.
Another four years brought Clang of the Yankee Reaper, a disappointing collection of songs largely not written by Parks, and gill-stuffed with sickly sonics. In the twenty-eight years since, Van Dyke Parks has released five additional records (including Orange Crate Art with Brian Wilson), none really measuring up to the first couple. His day job has also proved quite fruitful however, playing, producing, and arranging for countless musicians (Harry Nilsson, U2, Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple) and composing for film and television (Popeye, Brave Little Toaster, Bastard Out of Carolina). And, of course, that whole Smile thing.
For a lifetime of relative obscurity, Van Dyke Parks spent his twenties making what should have been the most important records of the 60s and 70s--shelved or otherwise. Instead, Van Dyke "I had a cameo on Twin Peaks" Parks will have to settle for his place as the Greatest Band of All Time.
There apparantly is some sort of DJ handbook or coda that is supposed to be followed when one is trying to do his or her thing. You know the sort of thing that make someone a real DJs DJ, like proficient technical skill. super flow, these types of things. One of the 10 commandments i believe is to never play 2 songs by the same band/act/group in the same set. I am not a DJs DJ. I figured this out when I literally couldn't stop myself from playing The Soft Pink Truth at least twice a night. The Soft Pink Truth is undeniable.
The Soft Pink Truth is Drew Daniel, who is more famously one half of Matmos, whose deeply conceptual "found sound" style electronic music has garnered mucho critical praise and they also made a lot of music and stuff for that Bjork lady. So, the legend goes like this, Matthew Herbert (a crazy electronic man who records under names like Wishmountain, Doctor Rockit, Herbert, and Radio Boy) dared (DARED!) Drew Daniel to try to make some "house music" in the using the same intricite manner in which Matmos is created. Drew Daniel was indeed very much up to the task. He put out two 12" under The Soft Pink Truth name in late 2001 and 2002 on Herbert's Soundslike records. The two 12" plus 3 more tracks then became The Soft Pink Truth's full length debut called "Do You Party?" which came out in early 2003.
"Do You Party?" played a really sick joke on me because it really took so many things that I didn't like about the specific kind of music that it is and did them in such an amazing way. I love the concept of music designed specifically to make people dance, but so much of that type of music, especially of the electronic variety, is very bland with nothing distinctive and incredibly cold. "Do You Party?" is just packed with personality and fun and all the things that house music isn't most of the time. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily call it house music, more like neo-electro. What? Why would I call it neo? Also, I have historically hated vocal samples but The Soft Pink Truth just completely flips the switch and shows all the others how vocal samples should be used. Really the heart of this sort of music has to be the beats, though, and The Soft Pink beats are thick. Somehow the beats skitter and slam at the same time. They have the exciting feeling of chopped up beats but they propel you to move as much as a 4/4 disco track. "Gush Gush Gush," I know you are saying, but I'm serious, "Do You Party?" is such a special dance record.
How does one follow up such an amazing debut album? Well, if you are Drew Daniel, you totally do something unexpected and you make an album of all anarchist punk anthem covers. That's right, The Soft Pink Truth's news album, "Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?", is full of Crass, Rudimentary Peni, Swell Maps, and Minor Threat covers. It doesn't disappoint either, it's strong and still full of the right amount of humor but just that perfect amount of vitriolic politics (to be released appropriately next Tues, aka Nov. 2, aka Election Day) that we need right now. The album is a little more angular and maybe a little less funk vibes, but it is totally another dancefloor burner.
So, I'm breaking the DJ 10 Commandments again, because I have the new The Soft Pink Truth again. How could I not break the rules, though? Drew Daniel makes my favorite dance music that is being made in his spare time! When someone makes music this music as a side project it automatically makes them The Greatest Band of All Time.
It appears that, at the tender age of twenty-seven, I am getting old. My neighbor, who is a recent college graduate, (so that makes him--what?--no more than 4, 5 years younger than me) seems to believe there's an age gap in our music taste. I lent him my iPod today, while he was braving the flooded and delayed subway system, and he returned it with the following comment: "I wonder, exactly how much Geto Boys does one need on an iPod?"
I mean, really. Making fun of the Geto Boys when the three Jane's Addiction albums on there prove so ripe for ridicule? I didn't know what to say. At my last count, I have 15 songs on there from Horrorcore's ambassador--it's not like I sleep under an autographed photo of Bushwick Bill or anything. Whatever.
But that made me start thinking about the Geto Boys. They're hated by all the right people: Bob Dole cited the Geto Boy's self-titled debut as reason for stockholders to divest from Time Warner and Tipper Gore loathed them as well. Sure, maybe they did have lyrics about necrophilia (which made their label, Geffen, drop them when they refused to change them), but they also rapped about using condoms.
And this is where I begin to lose steam. Zac, I feel your pain from the Ol' Dirty Bastard entry. It's hard for me to write about rap. It's not for lack of interest, I'm just much more adep--or at least comfortable--singing the praises of the pasty, angsty denizens of Glasgow, Arlington, wherever. But while Scarface, Bushwick Bill, and Willie D. could not be described as pasty, they are angst-filled residents of a somewhat overlooked metropolis, Houston.
I never really went that deep with the whole goth thing, I think one of the reasons why I like the Geto Boys (and Gravegiddaz, et al.) so much is that they are the gothest of rap groups. Songs about satan worshipping, Halloween, and slasher movie villains really speak to the frustrated adolescent within, you know? I totally wish everyone rapped about Halloween! The sample of creepy serial killer doll, Chuckie, from their song of the same title, is something that has made even my mother (who, it should be noted, has an unhealthy fixation on the movie Child's Play and its protagonist) laugh out loud. An added bonus: extra layers of '90s nostalgia. Then there's the brilliant, laconic "My Mind Playin' Tricks On Me" whose slow delivery you could almost say paved the way for another one of Houston's break out stars, DJ Screw.
And even though the Geto Boys are no longer, and horrorcore fell off the national radar in about 1994, I leave you with these words from Willie D.: "Even though the membership changes, there will always be Geto Boys." And to my neighbor, I say: Greatest Band of All Time, dude, Greatest Band of All Time.
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