Monthly Archives: June 2016

Lord, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.

Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration. Or the one kiss on a certain set of stairs never to be forgotten. Bells ringing, lives altering.

It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus, offered without comment, TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged.

We live in complicated times. This was brought home to me years ago, when I TWICE found myself on board flights from Frankfurt to Berlin with the band Sweet. They were flying peon class just like me, and looked haggard, hungover, and very thick in the middle. But what complicated matters was this: while I knew they were Sweet (I chatted up the drummer, who was sitting morosely beside me) I had no idea whether they were Steve Priest’s Sweet, Andy Scott’s Sweet, or Brian Connolly’s Sweet.

That’s right. During those years there were three different bands calling themselves the Sweet out there, keeping themselves alive primarily by playing glam oldies shows in Finland, Denmark, Norway, etc., with the likes of Suzi Quatro. Now you might think three Sweets is four too many, and I would be inclined to agree with you, that is if I hadn’t just spent days listening to the band’s 1974 classic, Desolation Boulevard. Opened my eyes, it did. Sweet is primarily known for two songs, at least in the United States, but Desolation Boulevard has a slew of tasty tracks, even if some of them sound like uncanny copies of other bands’ sounds.

Recorded before Sweet exploded into multiple Sweets, Desolation Boulevard included original members lead vocalist Brian Connolly, bassist Steve Priest, guitarist Andy Scott, and drummer Mick Tucker. Formed in 1968, they quickly teamed up with the pop songwriting machine that was Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, with whom they produced bubblegum hits with titles like “Funny Funny,” “Co-Co,” “Wig-Wam Bam,” and the horrifying, “Little Willy.”

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“Do I still prefer digital audio? Yes. And, no. Any medium is flawed. A recording doesn’t, and can never, survive leaving the studio control room in which it was prepared. Have I come to a separate peace with vinyl? Yes. But the real negotiation is with failure. It’s all pointless—like hand gluing a thousand sleeves. But, that’s the deal. Love it or leave it,” Pere Ubu’s David Thomas told us earlier this month.

With the above in mind, Pere Ubu launches what’s being called The Coed Jail! Tour tonight (6/16) in Toronto which takes the band to 16 stops across the US into July. In tandem with The Coed Jail! Tour is the Coed Jail! Tour CD (digital, natch) and we have 3 copies of the limited edition tour CD to send to 3 of you.

“The Coed Jail! Tour CD contains a selection of tracks taken from the 2 Pere Ubu box sets released by Fire Records: Elitism For The People 1975 – 1978 (Dub Housing, The Modern Dance, The Hearpen Singles) and Architecture Of Language 1979 – 1982 (New Picnic Time, The Art Of Walking and Song Of The Bailing Man).”

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Starting in the mid-‘70s Pere Ubu conjured up a few of rock history’s truly gripping moments amid an unusually high standard of quality; the immediate results were critical acclaim and modest sales figures, with cult status developing later. Similar scenarios have broken or severely damaged other outfits, but for their first seven years they simply created at a steady clip. Architecture of Language 1979-1982 is Fire Records’ second Ubu volume; including four LPs, it begins with ’79’s brilliant New Picnic Time, continues through the subsequent pair of albums to the band’s ’80s hiatus and is capped with a worthy compilation disc. It’s out March 18.

Cleveland’s Pere Ubu began an unpredictable existence with a riveting spurt of independently released singles. Now revered, they garnered enough initial attention to secure a booking at Max’s Kansas City and to get signed to Mercury’s punk subsidiary Blank. The result is an enduring classic, though The Modern Dance’s lackluster retail fortunes caused Mercury to promptly spurn them; the terrific Dub Housing emerged via new label Chrysalis.

This is all documented on Fire’s prior Elitism for the People 1975-1978; it tidily corrals Ubu’s Hearthan 45s, the aforementioned studio efforts and a live show from Max’s circa 1977 into one of the finest box sets of 2015. Newcomers slain by Elitism will be wondering if Architecture harnesses the same level of excellence; the short answer is no, though the chronology does start almost as strongly.

Apparently Pere Ubu’s commercial standing was so bleak circa 1979 that New Picnic Time was issued by Chrysalis only in Europe, with copies trickling in domestically as imports. To the group’s credit they responded to the consumer indifference by seemingly altering their cooperating procedures not at all; in fact its opener, which somewhere along the way ditched its original name “Have Shoes Will Walk” and shaved the parenthesis off current title “The Fabulous Sequel,” melds David Thomas’ fringe-ranting to off-kilter post-punk.

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Based in Cleveland amid the peak bleakness of mid-1970’s USA, Pere Ubu has forged a path unlike any other in rock’s history, and through lineup changes, hiatuses, refocused ambitions, and a refusal to assume the predictable, empty role of rock elders, David Thomas and his many collaborators stand as one of recorded music’s unlikeliest wonders. Those suspecting this claim as hyperbole should please investigate Fire Records’ new 4LP set Elitism for the People 1975-1978. It gathers Ubu’s earliest output, an achievement still capable of dropping jaws 40 years after the band’s formation.

Before even spinning a Pere Ubu platter on a turntable I’d read and was excited by the term avant-garage, and while the tag did prove useful, as time wore on it ultimately became shorthand for “oddball punk.” Ubu’s sole constant member David Thomas has since downplayed it as a joke-bone tossed into the salivating maws of the journalistic brigade, but it’s interesting how the title of this collection revisits the meaningfulness of the phrase.

Circa the mid-‘70s rock was still partially a populist undertaking, and garage bands continued to exist in closest proximity to the masses, sometimes playing right on the floor at audience level; these are the ashes from whence Pere Ubu sprang, with guitarist Peter Laughner and singer Thomas forming the group after exiting the storied (and subsequently rekindled) proto-punk unit Rocket from the Tombs.

Their ex-mates went on to the Dead Boys, and selections from the Tombs’ repertoire (notably sprinkled with Stones, Stooges, and Velvets covers) carried over to both outfits; as evidenced by this box’s The Hearpen Singles (1975-1977) Pere Ubu was immediately the darker of the two; “30 Seconds over Tokyo,” their first a-side (the label then called Hearthan) took the first-person viewpoint of a bomber pilot in dealing with the ugly reality that ended World War II.

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Lord, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.

Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.

It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus, offered without comment, TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged.

One-off musical collaborations can run the gamut from essential (Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, Have Moicy!) to skippable (Lulu, the Flaming Lips and whomever), but the majority are simply adequate records of primary interest to fans of the parties involved. Professional Sunflow, a live document from New Age pioneer Laraaji and contempo sonic experimentalists Sun Araw manages to be more than that; amongst other things it’s the first release on the label W.25TH, and it’s out on 2LP June 17.

It’s kinda unusual for an enterprise devoted to reissues to grow a sub-label appendage dedicated to uncovering new material, but that’s exactly what Superior Viaduct has done with W.25TH. Professional Sunflow gets the discography off to a strong start, mainly by following the same strategy as their parent entity and allowing good taste and curiosity to lead them to refreshing stylistic terrain.

Said landscape isn’t exactly uncharted waters, however; upon reading of W.25TH’s inaugural release, a pair of albums on the RVNG Intl. label quickly sprang to mind, namely 2011’s FRKWYS Vol. 8 featuring Laraaji and Blues Control and the next year’s Icon Give Thank by Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras, and The Congos.

RVNG’s FRKWYS series captures sessions pairing younger artists with simpatico veteran inspirations, and something roughly comparable is going on with Professional Sunflow. Laraaji is the vet; he has a whole fucking shit-ton of wax under his belt, and it suffices to say that I haven’t heard it all and neither have you.

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Lord, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.

Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.

It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus, offered without comment, TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged, as are IMYs.

I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for smart-ass rockers since the first Dictators album. Fortunately my doctor tells me that soft spot doesn’t pose a danger to my ticker, any more than the very real heart attack I suffered a couple of years ago due to, I kid you not, eating a single slice of American cheese. (It’s a long story.) As for power pop jesters Too Much Joy, I’m sure they’d see the humor in a cheese-induced heart attack, which is why—in addition to their hook-filled melodies—I like them so much. They love a good laugh as much as I do.

Formed in Scarsdale, New York in the early eighties, the quintet won comparisons to They Might Be Giants thanks to their erudite and witty lyrics; but their power pop props make me think of Redd Kross, who also fuse big hooks with clever and off-kilter lyrics. Indeed, it’s a sign of shared interests that Redd Kross wrote a power pop classic called “Dracula’s Daughter,” while Too Much Joy penned one of their own entitled “Pride of Frankenstein.” “Pride” is on Too Much Joy’s third album, 1991’s Cereal Killers, which I love to death thanks to several immortal tunes, including the catchy “Long Haired Guys From England,” the hilarious “Theme Song,” and the crushingly captivating “Nothing on My Mind,” an anthem that I rank right up there with such power pop classics as “Surrender,” “Overnight Sensation,” and the aforementioned “Dracula’s Daughter.”

The best tunes on Cereal Killers include “Susquehanna Hat Company,” a punchy number about a girl who’s a “mental hurricane.” “All you do is say her name,” goes the chorus, “Everybody goes insane,” while the verse goes, “Spun herself round and round/Drilled herself into the ground/Twenty kids fell in that hole/I was twenty-one out of control.” Meanwhile, “Good Kill” boasts a great melody and too many great lines to mention, so I’ll just toss off the second stanza, “Some people think Rod McKuen is a poet/Some folks think there’s evil folks and good/Some people vote to electrocute the bad ones/They stand outside the prison and cheer when the lights go dim.” Which I don’t think they think is a joke, God bless ‘em. And on top of that none other than KRS-ONE makes a cameo, to lend his own voice against what I consider a barbaric exercise in state sanctioned murder.

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“My first experience with records was rather schizophrenic. The music I first remember hearing that actually stayed with me was the Sound of Music soundtrack and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. You couldn’t get two more diametrically opposed albums if you tried.”

“I remember sneaking into my older brother’s room while he was out and playing Dark Side of the Moon (he had his own record player) and gazing in wonder at the mysterious cover art and the pyramid poster on the wall. The music had the same effect on me: mysterious, strange, compelling.

And yet an other day my mother could put the Sound of Music or The Best of Abba or Glen Campbell on the turntable and I’d be equally as enthralled and transported to another place.

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