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This band really messed with me. Just screwed with my old noggin'. You see, I normally title these articles by taking a lyric that I am fond of or that I find apt for the piece and throw that up there put in a colon and then the band's name. Well, Dengue Fever just through all the rules out the window, because all of their lyrics are in the Khmer language. So, left to wits I came up with a dumb joke. I'm never listening to FOREIGN music again.

Dengue Fever is an interesting story, though. It goes something like this. Dude goes to Cambodia. Dude loves this Cambodian rock music from the 60s he finds while there. Dude contracts Dengue Fever. Dude returns to Los Angeles. Dude brings his brother some awesome tapes of this music he finds. Both dudes are now mega pumped on it and try to find all music like this they can. They make a band with some other dudes to play covers of some of these songs. The dudes then find a former Cambodian pop star (Chhom Nimol) in Long Beach (more specifically Little Phnom Penh), who is like the Cambodian version of the Jacksons (Michael, Janet, Jackson 5). The dudes talk the Cambodian pop star lady into joining their band. The band, now called Dengue Fever, plays tons of shows and dudes love it. Dengue Fever is named best new band in the LA Weekly. Post 9/11 policies of the racist variety caused Chhom Nimol to be arrested for immigration reasons. She was in jail for 3 weeks and it took a year of legal battles for her to get a legit visa. In the meantime Dengue Fever released their self titled debut album. Dengue Fever is the bands only widely available release. The album's opening track, "Lost in Laos," is so immediately exciting and attention demanding. "Lost in Laos" is probably the album's high moment, but the moment is so high that rest of the album can be not as good as the opener but still be pretty strong. The band sounds energized as it blows through a mix of covers and originals.

Dengue Fever is an odd combo. Bringing together sounds of the distinctly Khmer melodies that amble up and down the register so often it would be impossible to write down with heavy use of organ, rock drums, crazy active horns, guitars, and more Dengue Fever feels so alive. I get so pumped up every time I put it on. There are things about the music that are familiar like the surfy/spy sounding guitar lines, the subtle vibe that this music was once in some lost Quentin Tarantino film, which all sorta makes this sound a little novelty and trite, but it's not. It has sorta this timeless/hard to put your finger on it vibe because it is songs from and inspired by the 60s, but played by musicians who have the influence of the 40 years since the 60s and who are coming together a whole world away from where this music already existed. The music sounds completely authentic and loyal to the original Cambodian source, but yet somehow feels so current/futuristic because of some subtle influences that seep into the music. More and more music will start to have this amazing vibe as other cultures start to have more influence on music that is being created in America. Dengue Fever has me more excited and hopeful to see where music goes in the next years than any other current music, and nothing can make spazz out as much. I believe there is a direct correlation between ability to make this dude mega spazz out and being The Greatest Band of All Time.

Carey Mercer is always one feigned gasp away from hyperventilating. Wheezed and darting like an untied latex balloon, his voice slobberingly arrows toward strained falsetto with the frequency of his chord changes--which is to say, an awful lot. To describe Mercer's vocal affects as caterwauling would be a great disservice to the sheer ridiculousness of his delivery--a voice enough to propel at least three of the most refreshing records I've heard in a very long time.

The first time I heard Frog Eye's "One in Six Children Will Flee in Boats"--the song that leads off the Victoria, B.C. quartet's absolutely flawless sophomore effort The Golden River (which is, in my humblest of opinions, possibly the best record released last year)--I sort of panicked. It was about midday, and with nearly four hours left of my regular work day, I just got up from my desk and left. Walking a couple of miles to the nearest record store, I was denied in the "Misc. F" section, and thus hastily made my way to the next. Two stores later, I finally met my reward. My great reward.

The insular Canadian four-piece--who until recently were shrouded in the inadvertent secrecy of Northern Canada--have this year begun to fight for the larger spotlight with their Absolutely Kosher debut The Folded Palm and subsequent touring. Common convention has until recently pinned the band as a less than subtle Frankensteining of David Bowie (in its grandiose glow of pure aural redemption) and Tom Waits (for Mercer's impenetrable affectations and sonic self-mythology)--a description that, though accurate in spirit, is misleadingly marginalizing. With the release of The Folded Palm, however, the band has exploded the subtle, beautiful ephemera of their previous records in favor of short-bursting bombast. Clocking in just under a half hour, the 13 tracks of The Folded Palm find Mercer indulging his persona--attacking the music with affect turned up to 10. It's the closest he's come to capsizing the boat, but as usual, Frog Eyes has pulled off the impossible--transcending horror show gimmickry, and landing their third straight stroke of genius. And oh, yeah--total GBoAT.

You guys know about Boots Pants, right? You know, Boots Pants, or as some people like to call it Disco Punk, but Boots Pants just sounds so much better. It's called Boots Pants because if you repeat those two words it sounds like the drums and cymbals from this brand of rock and roll music. Oh crud, as I listen to Dance Disaster Movement, while writing this I realize they don't use the classic 4-on-the-floor Boots Pants beat but they have much more fractured beats maybe of the break beat variety, does that term mean anything outside of electronic dance music?

Once again, I find myself knowing a paltry amount of information about a Greatest Band of All Time, but let me lay out what I do know. 1. They are from Long Beach, Ca. 2. They are comprised of two men. 3. One man plays drums and the other man plays guitars, keys, and sings. 4. One of the men is named Kevin Disco (wasn't he in Bis....oh that's John Disco or was it Stephen Disco?). 5. They both wear all white, but it always seems to be a beautifully filthy pair of white jeans, and there is something so awesomely nasty about dirty white jeans. 6. They have 1 record out on Dim Mak called We Are From Nowhere. 7. They put on a really radical show. What else does anyone need to know?

Their sound is very angular and attacking. A Dance Disaster Movement song plays itself out like this: it starts with a skittering drum beat, then Kevin Disco rips some weird crusher of a riff on guitar which he then loops, he might do a second guitar loop or not, he runs over to the keys are starts mashing away and tears into with vocals. It really lends itself to some super fun spazz out dancing. In fact, yours truly was even awarded with the dancer of the night award at one of their shows. Some serious freak out stuff. This is not to say that they are altogether predictable (even though a lot of their songs follow this formula) their album has some really interesting songs that sound nothing like that like "Quarkscrews" with its bubbling squeeks and melodic synths it sounds like something from a Plone record. Or their is "The Shots" that sounds like what U2 would sound like if they had any guts and only two dudes.

These dudes have been somehow sorely underhyped even in the last year or two where Boots Pants has ruled, as both shows I have seen them play have been pretty sparsely attended. I think they may be getting some propers as they just got done touring with Peaches, so that's good, but you should totally go see them in your town. You know what makes a Greatest Band of All Time?? Wearing the same filthy white jeans at every show you ever play. SERIOUS.

Sincerest apologies to our latest regular contributor, Miss Marissa Meltzer, for the tardiness of this post. Due to technical difficulties, and my own gross negligence, our sister in arms makes her regular debut in a less than totally awesome form, an I apologize for that. So, without further ado:

I like to tell people that the most punk rock thing I've ever done happened at age sixteen, when I skipped my junior prom to go to a show at Gilman Street. This story isn't a lie--it was the night of my junior prom and I did instead go see bands play--but it wasn't as if I was leaving some tuxedoed date at my doorstep, corsage in hand. But date or no date, what kind of band lures a hot-blooded American girl away from her prom? Antioch Arrow, perhaps the greatest band of all time.

Antioch Arrow were five cute boys (Aaron Montaigne, Mac Mann, Ron Anarchy, Jeff Winterberg, Andy Ward) from San Diego, which was a pretty prolific place for music in the mid-90s. Their albums were released by Gravity Records, who also put out records by Angel Hair, Clikatat Ikatowi, and Heroin. Gravity was the sort of record label that encouraged slavish devotion in some ("some" meaning "me") and utter indifference to many. The band's music has been described as an "overwhelming art explosion of noisy poems sprayed in your face in one minute bursts" and "like someone emptying cans of Mace in your eyes." Both of these descriptions are apt enough, but I will add this: Antioch Arrow sounded the way it felt to be a teenager.

My problem here is that I really want you to love Antioch Arrow the way I do. I want you to get beyond the dyed black hair and white belts (to their credit, though, that was a pretty hot look in 1994). It's difficult to listen to Antioch Arrow for the first time as a wizened resident of the 21st century. So, let's pretend we are endlessly bored teenage girls from suburban California. One day were sorting through the mail and a friend from LA has made us a mix tape and on it is the song "Conspiring the Go-Go". It's awesome. Were in.

"Conspiring the Go-Go" is so good I cannot even recall anything else on the mix tape. The song, with the repeated screaming of "I'm sorry but I can't sit still" (at least, I think that's what they're saying) sounds like the music version of ADHD and sort of feels like being hit in the stomach repeatedly with a dodgeball, but in a good way. Their first two albums, The Lady is a Cat and In Love with Jetts, are short but unstoppable, each song clocking in at around 50 seconds and featuring more erratic drumming and more spastic singing. "Angels Lawn" is a memorable song for many reasons, only one of which being the word "virginity" dragged out to seven syllables. Whats not to like?

And then their third (and last) album, Gems of Masochism, dropped. I bought it, but immediately knew something was amiss. The cover featured the band members looking vaguely goth. The song titles ("Gotta Love the Lights", "Introducing Elizabeth") seemed all wrong. And listening to it confirmed all my suspicions: the music was dark, slow, piano-driven, and claustrophobic. There were songs about mascara. I may have cried.

It's ironic because their first two albums do sound a bit dated and--dare I say--emo, though my devotion doesn't waver. And Gems of Masochism, so reviled by me and my friends, was actually re-released to universally complimentary reviews earlier this year. For me, they'll always be the band that made me ditch my prom and then broke my heart a year later. Sounds like the Greatest Band of All Time. MARISSA MELTZER.

San Diego, Oh, San Diego, you of such a vibrant scene in the early 90s with your Three Mile Pilots and your Drive Like Jehus and your Crash Worships and your Heavy Vegetables and your Gogogo Airhearts. You of your powerful rock'n'roll. Oh, San Diego, with your fluf and your Rocket From The Crypt and your varied alternative goodness. Oh, San Diego, you with your Jewel and Pinback and Black Heart Procession and Blink 182 that later escaped from your warm and sandy clutches. Rock the Casbah, right?? One band that escaped the warm, sandy clutches of San Diego was Truman's Water, but they didn't escape to fame and recognition, they escaped to Portland, OR and to obscurity.

When I first saw Truman's Water at the infamous Jabberjaw in LA in 1994 it was maybe the first time I realized that I could like or that I did like music that would clearly not be enjoyed by the masses. They were wild. The music didn't seem to make much sense, the instruments didn't really seem to be in tune, the tempo changed wildly, the members jumped higher than I thought possible. They were inspired by very early Pavement, but that's not really right, maybe more like a Polvo or a God Is My Co-Pilot, but only parts of those bands. Truman's Water become somewhat of an indie darlin in 93 and 94 when John Peel started pumping them over in the UK and Sonic Youth started saying how awesome they were. The indie spotlight faded and they were snatched up by a major label. They put out maybe a dozen albums between 92 and 98 with the majority of them being somewhat hard to find (cassette only or tiny labels). They hit their pinnacle on their 93 album Spasm Smash XXXOXOX Ox and Ass. After Spasm Smash they leaned more towards instrumental improvisation. They band lost it's singer Glen Galloway in 94/95 (he has later returned periodically for albums and tours) when he became a christian and formed the idiosyncratic christian lo-fi band, Soul-Junk. Soul-Junk has been putting out records since then and has slowly become probably the only lo-fi christian hip hop group ever. Truman's Water moved as a band shortly after Glen left the band to Portland. They have slowed down but still put out albums and it seems like they tour Europe (where all good instrumental improv spazz bands thrive) once a year. Truman's Water will always be remembered for always being an unrelenting and never comprising band and for their impressive diffuculty and obscurity they deserves the title The Greatest Band Of All Time.

In 1979, a New York-based saxophonist named James Sigfried released two records on the Ze record label under two different personas--disposing of his surname and supplanting it once with "Chance," and again with "White." One of these records would go on to be touted through much of the punk/noise underground of the 'oughts (see: erase errata, ex models, numbers, die monitor bats, ad infinitum), with the other seemingly better left forgotten.

A seminal figure in the original "No Wave" scene (which fused punk with avant-and free- jazz, and noise), James Chance was a founding member of two of New York's premiere art bands of the late '70s: Lydia Lunch's Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the Contortions. It was with the latter band that Chance released Buy, a record that (along with the No New York compilation) came to define the short-lived movement. Mixing disco-based rhythms with the discordance of free jazz and the aggression and confrontational presence of punk, the album would go on to be a hugely influential, and (along with Public Image Limited's Metal Box record) can be blamed for a great many of the "dance punk" bands currently flooding the underground. Especially the ones with saxophonists.

The same year that Buy was released however, Chance (and most of his Contortions) reconvened to record under a different pretense altogether: the Contortions were to become a soul band. Changing his name to James White (in reference to the other soul James), the band became James White and the Blacks, a sort of soul "parody" that meshed funk, free-jazz and soul posturing all within the envelope of crystal-clean disco production. Off White is a clever, frustrating, and hilarious listen--a post-modern experiment whose commitment feels a lot more earnest than their cover of Irving Berlin's "(Tropical) Heatwave" might suggest.

Though the Contortions' legacy has never really disappeared over the years, the recent No Wave resurgence has spawned a new-found interest in the rest of the Chance/White discography, as witnessed in the recent Tiger Style retrospective Irresistible Impulse, which thankfully repackages the bulk of his post-Contortions work (including two James White solo albums I am still totally unfamiliar with). Though the Contortions' output is arguably the best of Chance/White's career, the James White and the Blacks record is in itself not without a great deal of merit.

Besides, any No Wave band with enough foresight to cover Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" THE YEAR THAT IT WAS RELEASED has got to be the Greatest Band Of All Time.

Like you got punched. Like an injection, not of drugs, well, not the hard stuff, but maybe like an injection of taurine and ritalin. More correctly, not like you got punched or injected, but me, like I got punched and injected. Well, this is silly, why don't I just say what I'm trying to say....Panther makes me feel weird and totally different. Panther is best experienced at a Panther live concert, because the feeling of the Panther fills the crowd and makes everyone start jumping and jamming and yelling. Panther sometimes sounds like really bad R & B mixed with fax machine beats and sometimes sounds like German films being played backwards and sometimes it sounds like an Eazy-E CD. Seriously, I saw one Panther show that was Panther just dancing with an Eazy-E CD. It was a great show. The Panther does singing and yelping but the Panther does even more dancing and posing than singing and yelping. Moving like a man possessed by small appliances the Panther moves so well and so crunk. Truly more performance art than band, Panther is some seriously amazing movement and sound.

Panther is the work of one man, Charlie Salas Humaras. Salas is like a total crazy dude. He is the front of the dance rock craze band, The Planet The, and also has other projects like the free jazzy sorta thing, Hong Kong. He is really enchanthing, I mean, he was voted "most fuckable dude" in the Portland Mercury in 2003. This may seem irrelevant but Panther is much more than just the music.
Panther seems to be this amazing and insane slice of this human being. The thing that grabs and pulls the audience is that the part of the dude that Panther reaches is such a joyful and powerful part of a dude. This makes a Panther performance an intensely cathartic experience for the audience. Seriously, I have seen Panther play probably 15 times and every show has had the feeling of joyful release. At first, when seeing Panther there is the feeling of confusion, but soon it becomes acceptance and extreme enjoyment and then sweet surrender and release.

Panther is supposed to have a CD coming out on some label run by the dude in Gold Chains, but finding info about this proved difficult. The moral of the story is lookout for Panther soon., because an act that acts as group therapy session through wild dance destroyed music and group slam hugs can only be called The Greatest Band Of All Time.