Monthly Archives: December 2015

“I was listening to lots of bubblegum pop—and I wanted to try to write a pop song on my looping pedal about how boys waste my time. I didn’t really know how to create pop sounds without any synthesizers, so I used whatever I had lying around my apartment.”

“I started by banging on a mason jar with a drumstick, and that became the marching-band beat throughout the song. It ended up sounding like a dance-y drumline filtered through Paul Simon circa Graceland, a big mishmash of all of my influences rolled up into one weird part.”
—Cassandra Violet

Los Angeles native Cassandra Violet premieres collage pop single “Take My Time.”

The Echo Park songstress, who cites Chaka Khan, Stevie Nicks, and Prince as influences, has a lot to offer on “Take My Time.” There are some retro, doo-wop undercurrents, flairs of hippie-chic dream folk, and an uninhibited vocal delivery that conjures up the early work of Regina Spektor.

It’s fantastically original music that is both playful and innovative while retaining a strong feminist angle. Cassandra’s upcoming 2016 EP, “Body & Mind,” is to be self-released on January 29 and will be supported by a small West Coast tour.

Cassandra Violet’s “Body & Mind” EP release party is Saturday, January 29 at LA’s The Lost Room.

Cassandra Violet Official | Facebook | Twitter

On which John Cale, the Welsh portion of The Velvet Underground, finally remembers that once upon a time he produced a caterwaul, and sets about reproducing the same. In smaller portions, sure, but that’s only because he’s also busy turning out lovely ditties, just like the kind he offered up on 1973’s Paris 1919. And keeps his sense of humor too, for example on the hilarious “The Man Who Couldn’t Afford to Orgy,” one of the chief charms of which is the way Cale insists upon pronouncing “orgy” with a hard “g.”

1974’s Fear is a great album with a great group of supporting characters, including Brian Eno, Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, guitarist Richard Thompson, and Judy Nylon, the same Judy who is the subject of Eno’s “Back in Judy’s Jungle.” Recorded during a period of epic creativity in which Cale recorded three LPs in a little over a year for Island Records while also producing albums such as Patti Smith’s landmark Horses, Fear is an eclectic document and my favorite of his Island Records recordings.

I’d be tempted to call it a concept album (see title) but it isn’t, and doesn’t even come close. Only opening track “Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend” and the magnificent “Gun” delve into gut-churning territory, and speaking of that opener it’s a sprightly piano-based rocker that really takes off on the choruses, which feature a throbbing bass and Cale singing, “Say fear is a man’s best friend.” But its best part is its close, when an unrecognizable (to me) instrument (distorted bass? distorted guitar? stringed bazooka?) accompanies Cale as he lets rip with some frantic shouting.

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Press Play is our Monday recap of the new and FREE tracks received last week to inform the next trip to your local indie record store.

Carl Creighton – Snow’s Falling Down All Around You
Maria Kelly – Before It Has Begun
The Royal Oui – The One I Love (REM Cover)
Freja – Empire
Emma Louise – Underflow (An-Ten-Nae Remix)
The Secret Storm – Fast Lane
Dengue Fever – Little Drummer Boy
Deep Sea Diver – The First Noel
The Hudson Branch – Sign Of The Soul
Badlands – Caramisou

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
She Makes War – I Am

Gladiola – The Uninvited Guest
Pleasant Grove – Lava
SKATERS – Stay Off My Side
Ben Millburn – Take Me
Mik Current – Ur Fav One
Franco & The Dreadnought – Freedom
Victoria Canal – Unclear
(Z) – For the Mad Ones
Daniel Cherney – Creation
Autograf – Metaphysical (Exmag Remix)

8 more FREE TRACKS on side B!

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“I’m 25, was originally born in Latvia, grew up in the New Jersey / New York area and now live in Nashville. And to be quite honest, vinyl did not play a big role in my childhood. Music definitely did—my dad’s a singer and guitar player and music’s always been a big part of my life. But I didn’t own any vinyl until I moved to Nashville and bought my first record player.”

“I have one of those Crosley record players—it’s kind of like a mini-suitcase. There’s a place right down the street from where I live in East Nashville called The Groove and I went there the day I arrived in town and bought 20 different records from their dollar bin.

Now I have a pretty big record collection for a person who only really started collecting a year ago. Some of my favorites include Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, Dizzy Gillespie’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods and The Beatles’ Abbey Road. My favorite time to play vinyl is waking up kind of late on a Sunday and putting on that Dizzy Gillespie record and just cooking all day… that’s my all-time favorite thing to do.

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I suppose somebody had to do it. I suppose somebody had to go and make an album that isn’t an album, but a great sucking sound that slowly drags you through the filthy, rat-infested back alleys of rock’n’roll straight to the dark and dirty portal to Hell that is “L.A. Blues.” “The derangement of all the senses” was what the 19th Century French poet Arthur Rimbaud was seeking, and all I can say is it’s a pity he never got the chance to hear The Stooges’ “L.A. Blues,” or the album it closes, 1970’s Fun House.

Because Iggy Pop and the Stooges’ best album isn’t just a slow descent into atonal skronk, it’s a road map to Hades. From its opening cut to its close it takes you down, down, down, into an abyss from which there’s no return. “Take it down!” howls Iggy, and he’s talking about everything, the whole damn world; the shrieks that follow demonstrate that once you’ve entered the fun house, everything collapses; the Stooges take you from the street into a maelstrom of sax-based (long live the late Steve MacKay) madness. Iggy’s words are unintelligible; he screeches and howls, and it’s too late to turn back now.

“L.A. Blues” isn’t a song; it’s a free jazz explosion, with enough electrical feedback to power the city it was named after. Jim Morrison loved the city of motel money murder madness, but not even “L.A. Woman” can compete with “L.A. Blues”; somebody once compared Hollywood to a tour of a sewer on a glass-bottomed boat, and on Fun House Iggy (aka James Osterberg) and his compadres (brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums, respectively, and Dave Alexander on bass) are the guys doing the rowing. This is it, right here and now, the sound of the apocalypse scorching you like a blowtorch through your headphones.

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The state of California produced a compelling batch of ‘70s punk treasures, and high in their number is the work of the Avengers. A key component in San Francisco’s initial wave, by 1979 they were done, with the majority of the band’s releases surfacing post-breakup. Avengers first appeared in ’83, subsequently drifting in and out of availability while undergoing assorted CD expansions; the core LP is the group’s essential document and by extension is a mandatory acquisition for punk collectors. On December 4 it gets a fresh vinyl pressing through Superior Viaduct.

The definitive lineup of the Avengers, specifically Jimmy Wilsey on bass (replacing Jonathan Postal), Danny Furious on drums, Greg Ingraham on guitar, and Penelope Houston on vocals, only issued one EP while extant, though they were still quite busy during their relatively brief reign and impressively so given the lack of hospitable venues for the new music.

The payoff for the Avengers’ tenacity was a warm-up slot at The Sex Pistols’ last show, sandwiched between the Nuns and the headlining spectacle, the event taking place at San Fran’s Winterland Ballroom in January of ’78. Reportedly besting the Pistols (the recorded evidence bears this out), the opportunity seemed to cultivate disillusionment in the band, especially in Furious, though it was Ingraham who quit a year later, his spot filled by Brad Kent (of D.O.A., Pointed Sticks, Subhumans etc). The Avengers dissolved in June of ’79, a few months prior to the arrival of their sophomore 12-inch.

Avengers, or The Pink Album as it’s sometimes referred, corrals both EPs with added material of the same vintage to succinctly detail their enduring worthiness. Opening with the debut for Dangerhouse, the LP immediately makes the strongest possible case for the four-piece as one of the finest US punk acts of the pre-HC era.

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