Battle Tapes

In my absence from keeping this blog there are SO MANY things that I have forgotten to put here. Take Battle Tapes for instance. In September 2011 my life had gone through a bit of a storm - I'd went through the slow death of Borders Books - a place I'd worked as a supervisor at for 5 years. And brother, it was a slow, painful death. Near to the end I was able to jump ship and begin a new career in the cryogenic field. That was August 2011, so like I said, September that year was a learning curve to say the least (I'd never had any experience in cryo-anything). Around this time my beautiful wife surprised me one Friday with tickets to see Helmet the following evening at, of all places, The Viper Room. Neither one of us like the Viper Room very much and this show was no exception. In fact, it pretty much made us HATE it. The place is soooo cool, if it was only run a little better. Case in point, the show had two bands on the bill and was supposed to start at, if I remember correctly, eight-thirty. Well, the club superimposed a local showcase in front of the Helmet gig and we ended up sitting through (by which of course I mean standing) two very, very bad "So Cal punk bands". Think of how much green day just absolutely sucks while trying oh so hard to convince every one - including me thinks, themselves - how 'punk rock' they are and then multiply that by about two thousand.

Yeah, that bad.

Anyway, by the time Helmet's opener came on neither my wife nor I were in a mood to tolerate even one more shitty band. Good thing Battle Tapes came out and BLEW THE FUCKING DOORS OFF THE CLUB. Really, I mean they were the highlight of the show, not really because they were better than Paige Hamilton and crew, but because when we had to leave only about seven songs into Helmet's set (Helmet! At a club as small as the Viper Room!!) it didn't hurt that bad because Battle Tapes was just that good.

I signed up for their mailing list and a few months later received word that they had released an EP for free on their site. Said EP is still available for free download here and I've posted their widget above so you can even hear it first.

It's sooooo good!!!

Corrections House - Hoax The System

The long-whispered about featuring Sanford Parker of Chicago Black Metal/Industrial band Nachtmystium along with Scott Kelly  of Neurosis, Mike IX Williams of Eyehategod and Bruce Lamont of Yakuza and Bloodiest has finally arrived. Above is their bandcamp, below the first video. Great throwback to the Industrial days of old. 

FIDLAR - Cheap Beer

The guys in FIDLAR bring the old school aesthetic without sounding like they're rehashing anything. Debut album came out today on Mom + Pop Music. What's more, you can buy the album directly from the band in what has to be the best Bundle pack I've seen in a while - either as CD or LP w/ t-shirt or (and this is my favorite) as CD or LP with a custom SKATE DECK! How freakin' cool is that? Mine cracked about a year ago so this might be the way to go if it doesn't sell out right away. I don't skate very often these days, but it's felt weird to not have a deck. I've had one on hand since about...1987.

2013 Sundance Film Festival Shorts: The Apocalypse

I've been routing around looking at a lot of the shorts at Sundance. I REALLY liked this one.

From Sundance

JELLO BIAFRA & the GUANTANAMO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE LIVE @ SO 36

Biafra's new(er) group doesn't get the props or traffic they deserve. This is every bit as awesome as the Kennedy's - further proof who really wrote all those DK songs.

Fuck dockers.

Oh, and yes, that's Andrew Weiss of early Ween and Rollins Band fame, on bass.

Sound City Official Trailer

I respect the hell out of Dave Grohl but his music does next to nothing for me. It's textbook radio rock - not bad, just not for me. Likewise for most of the modern bands touted herein (Queens of the Stone Age and NIN being the exceptions). But I LOVE Neve boards and a lot of recording history happened at this place. I heard an interview with Grohl and Corey Taylor from Slipknot/Stone Sour on Kevin and Bean late last week and although I didn't particularly go in for the track they premiered for their shared music project The Sound City Players (which also features Rick Nielson of Cheap Trick and Krist Novoselic I'll put the song up as well. Props to Grohl for doing all of this, again it's not my cup of tea but it's cool to see someone with so much stature in the mainstream rock community actually do cool, creative and respectful stuff like this. And props to the bands who participated in the doc, from Fleetwood Mac to Slipknot to Cheap Trick and everywhere in between.

Wrong (2013)

'

This looks amazing. And come on - William Fichtner is THE shit!!! Directed by Quentin Dupieux, the man who made Rubber (2010).

Decoding Tool's "Holy Gift"

I found this about two months ago. It's been some time since I've listened to Tool. They're a band I love but I have a very specific mindset that I have to be in in order to listen to. Part of this is because they are not a 'passive' listening band. Tool is very engaging with their music, I cannot just put them on in the background. I wrote a massive chunk of my first, unpublished novel to Lateralus and to this day it remains my favorite of their records. This was a time when I was also really falling into Magick and the album fit perfectly - the enigmatic way in which the band conducts itself lends to their mystique, as does a lot of the little 'hidden' things they do in their music and on their website. If you're interested in what I'm talking about go here. That's a link that was hidden on their site back around the time Lateralus dropped. How many famous rock bands spend time talking about/doing this kind of thing? To some it would be an act, the whole Magick thing, or a fashion, but to Tool and their inner circle there has always seemed to be the air of research into our world, and in keeping with this Tool's Holy Gift makes perfect sense.

There is a video here that explains the concept, but the basic gist is that the Fibonacci Sequence is integral to the record Lateralus - it contemplates or draws upon it in several places. Could there then be some hidden meaning/message in re-arranging the track listing of the record in accordance with Fibonacci's numbers?

Swans - The Seer

Okay, so I'm fairly late in the game on this one. I spent a large part of the year (7 months to be exact) holed up and working on a screenplay that may never see the light of day due to artistic disagreements. In that time a lot of music came and went under my radar as I was completely unplugged from any semblence my usual practice of scowering high and low for new stuff. I played MAJOR catch-up during the last two months of the year, the whole time harboring a feeling that one of the albums that "got away" - Swans newest record The Seer yet somehow never managing to transmute that feeling into acquisition. Then, about  a week after I posted my top ten albums of 2012 on Joup a friend of mine gave me a copy of The Seer and I loaded it into my ipod. About a week after that on a day off I put the album on and had trouble ever turning it off.

Frankly, until this record the Swans frightened me a bit. About five years ago I picked up the Cop/Young God - Greed/Holy Money reissue put out by Some Bizzare Records and although I LOVED the music I had a bit of an adverse reaction to the general tone of the record. Now, this in itself is a little out of character for me. I love a lot of dark, sometimes violent music. I'm not a prude and I don't scare easy. However, at the time I bought this record I had just finished reading George Petros' book Art That Kills and it had unnerved me, made me question some of the areas of art that I dabble in. Sometimes things we take at face value have deeper meanings that we don't stop to contemplate. Petros' book - while covering many artists whose work I truly love and consider historically important - also covers some that, well, fell more on the 'leave that the fuck alone' side of things. What's more around this time some strange happenings had resurfaced and to put it very succinctly a friend and I were seriously questioning whether A) a Magick ritual we had crafted in the form of a song for our band The Forest Children had caused a violent crime in our old recording space, or B) we were losing out minds for thinking this might be the case. My initial reaction to the Swans record was a combination of a psychic hangover from Mr. Petros' book, this hazy personal event and, specifically, the lyrics for track #2 on the Swans disc, a song titled Job.

I put the record away for a while.

I am a MASSIVE GodFlesh/Justin K. Broadrick fan and after buying one of the earlier Jesu albums and finding myself smitten with the vocals of Jarboe I made the connection and dug Swans back out. At first I isolated the Jarboe-sung tracks, soaking in the haunting, spectral atmosphere I'd not made it to before. Then I held my breath and gave the entire two discs another spin from beginning to end.

Wow.

The first thing I noticed when I went back to Cop/Young God - Greed/Holy Money was how Michael Gira was so obviously a huge influence on them. Many a band quote Broadrick and GodFlesh as influences but I'd never really delved into what bands influenced them. But the overall tone of the album was just still too dark for me. Actually, dark is not even the tone. While beginning this post a couple of days ago I dug the record out again (much to my wife's chagrin) and listened to the entirety of the first disc. It still takes me to a mental place that I just don't feel comfortable going. But here's the thing - that in and of itself is a feat for an artist. Just because the record causes this reaction in me doesn't mean I don't think it's an important or 'good' record. Au contraire - this makes me think it is something extremely special, to be reserved for special occasions when my inner psychonaut feels the call to places darker than I normally trek.

Anyway, The Seer has trumped much of my list for last year - maybe all of it. It is a magickal, complex and limitlessly rewarding piece of music the likes of which I've not heard assembled in one place before. It is now time then, for me to go back and begin buying all of the Swans records I've missed out on over the years.

Tonight Tonight Tonight! Henry Rollins Radio Show

Before I watch Instrument I'll be listening to Henry Rollins' weekly radio show on NPR station KCRW. You can follow the link below and stream it if you do not live in Los Angeles or any of the sister areas in Southern California that carry this station. Week after week it is the BEST radio show I've come across, not because I'm a huge Rollins' fan (which I've become BECAUSE of the show) but because he plays the most eclectic array of tracks and his absolute Love of music seeps through every moment of the two hours from eight to ten that he's on the air.

KCRW Broadcast 199 - Henry Rollins on KCRW

Fugazi - Instrument

Whoah. Never thought to look for this on the 'tubes. Somehow it has evaded me since it's release in (I think) '99.

Dig in.

New Alice in Chains

I'm posting this without even listening to it as I'm at work and the computer I'm on does not have speakers. After Black Gives Way to Blue though, Jerry Cantrell and crew have (yet again) earned the benefit of the doubt.

Whereas with a lot of folks my age (36) Nirvana was their important new band during high school in the nineties, mine was AIC. Not to say I didn't like Nirvana - I did and still do. To a point. But the first time I heard Dirt - specifically the track Junkhead - it was like Layne, Jerry and the boys were speaking directly to me, summating my experience (minus the heroin) and presenting me with music the likes of which I'd never heard before (and really still haven't since) while doing it. When Cantrell began touring again under the name Alice in Chains I was skeptical but hey - it's not his fault Layne died. I made peace with it. Then when I heard they were releasing an album I was a little taken aback.

But then I heard it.

Several old school bands have released new or 'comeback' albums in the last ten years that somehow seems to pick up EXACTLY where they left off. Bauhaus's Go Away White and now Soundgarden's King Animal spring immediately to mind. But how Cantrell did it w/out one half of the main songwriters is beyond belief.

In an interview I read recently he talked about how with this upcoming album he was in the unique experience of feeling sophomore jitters for the second time in his band's career. I don't know how well album sales and their tours are doing for the guys in Alice but I hope it's keeping them living a good life.

They deserve it for all of the wonderfully innovative rock they've made over the years and I for one will be buying this new album DAY IT COMES OUT just to help show support to a band from the past that STILL has not disappointed me to date.

Upstream Color Trailer #1

Chills.

BRMC's "Specter At The Feast"

Beginnging at the end of December Black Rebel Motorcycle Club began releasing teasers for their forthcoming record "Specter At The Feast"

I am excited.This is the third of six teasers (three more still to come). They're cool, but they won't give you the feeling of how awesome a Rock n Roll band they are. This will:

Justin K. Broadrick exclusive DJ set for Self-Titled

In writing a forthcoming piece on Swans I stumbled across this little gem over on Self-Titled Magazine's page. Click here for write-up/track listing. Super Awesome and thank you kindly to these fine folks at Self-Titled!!!

NEPHICIDE by JOGGER

While I've been off writing for my friend's magazine Joup I realized how much I've neglected my blog when I found that I had not posted anything on it since the video for Liars' No. 1 Against the Rush dropped in June.

June!!!

Anyway, while I work up some content here's my favorite music video EVER (only slightly hyperbolic of a statement there). The video's director, Matthew Robinson, has some great content on vimeo you can link from here.

Down the stairs it came

A still and potential album cover from my band The Forest Children (formerly known as Darkness Brings the Cold).

Liars - No.1 Against The Rush (Official Video)

Say it ain't so WEEN...

I spent much of the week disconnected from the world at large and after a particularly rough Friday, June 1st I succombed to the medicine of sleep at an uncharacteristically early 8 PM and slept the deep, restorative sleep of the over-worked. When I awoke this morning I logged into the virtual world and toured around my usual sites in an attempt to see what I'd missed over the last several days. It was on one of my favorite of those sites – a marvelous blog entitled Heaven is an Incubator – where I came across the news that one of my all-time favorite bands, Ween, had called it quits.

Not a good way to start the day.

It's no surprise really, and although it saddens me deeply I must say that if this is what Aaron Freeman, aka Gene Ween needs to do at this stage in his life, then I am happy he made the decision and support it fully. Still... it's been five years since WEEN's last album proper – La Cucaracha – and I would be lying if I didn't admit that there is a very large part of me that really wanted one last record before this finality which, if I'm being honest, is really not that much of a surprise.

If you're a music lover and you don't know WEEN I implore you ...

read the rest on Joup...

                                                                                          

RIP Adam Yauch

Three days ago the world received the news that one of the founding members of the Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch – better known as MCA – died after a long battle with cancer. I’ll not lie, it’s been years since I really followed the Boys’ music, however it was very important to me in my teens/early twenties and as musicians I will always respect them. Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head will forever be modern masterpieces in my book, even though as I grew older (and so did the boys) I lost the ability to identify with aging men who gesticulate wildly while they throw out rhymes. Well, that’s not really fair to them because the fact is I just kinda lost the ability to identify with most rap, period. Nonetheless, last year about this time I went through a big revival with the BBoys for a few weeks and during that time I gave careful consideration to their 1992 masterpiece Check Your Head and came to the realization that if I was put on the spot to pick the album that I think best encapsulates the “alternative boom” of 90′s popular music it would probably be Check Your Head, an album that transcends their rap/hip-hop roots and really stretches the ideas of musicianship, creative process and good ol’ fashioned FUN (K).




My heart goes out to Mr. Yauch’s family, Adam Horowitz, Michael Diamond and the millions of people he affected with his music, and later his film production company Oscilloscope Laboratories. Below is a re-posting of the article I wrote about Check Your Head‘s place in musical history for Chud.com. I’ve tidied it up and expanded the piece, as MCA’s death has put me back in a state of contemplating his legendary band’s career.

Read the rest on Joup...

Godflesh - Slateman (live)

David Lynch 'Good Day Today' (Official Video)

I'm waaaaaay behind on this but kudos to director Arnold de Parscau and cinematographers Jonathan Bertin, Antoine Bon - not to mention the actors - for the winning video. Very nice

David Lynch - "Crazy Clown Time" (Official Video)

Kevin Smith's SMoviola "Buckaroo Banzai" at the 49th New York Film Festival

Some New Live WEEN

Courtesy of Mr. Brown, setlist below.



Video streaming by Ustream


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SETLIST

denver 12/29/11 first of 3 nights. they set a record for # of songs played. no song repeated on any night. (Mr. Brown adds that, "We just may have the next live disk set, they sound in top form." - yes they do my friend. Yes they do.)

did you see me?

golden eel

stallion 3

my own bare hands

spinal mengits

buckingham gn

captain

zoloft

mollusk

learnin to love

stroker ace

gabrielle

tick

object

roses r free

ice castles

final alarm

the argus

powder blue

richard smokr

pumpin 4 the man

I saw gener cryin in his sleep

put coke on my dick

shamemaker

band onthe run

homo rainbow

tried & true

someday

encore,

freedom76

your party

fluffy

The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing- BRUNEL

Finally... new album March 12th

Ghost LIVE in San Francisco, Feb 1, 2012

I knew I would regret missing this the other night @ The Roxy. Luckily they will be back in April opening for Opeth/Mastodon. My friends Greg and Tori assure me I missed a great show, and as this footage from the night before the LA show demonstrates, I 100% believe them. The only drawback to waking up @ 4:30AM for work everyday is it makes me a wuss when it comes to staying up late.

Oh how times have changed.

Chick publications: Saving us from Ourselves for over 40 years

Many of you will know what Chick publications is, even if you don't know that you do.

Wait, backup.

Many of you will know the work Chick Publications produces even if you do not know Chick publications by name. Have you ever known someone, maybe a high school guidance counselor or janitor, who is a 'born again' and goes about trying to 'save' others by passing out quirky little Jesus-comic strips? If you've seen them then you'll recognize them - they're real small and always have titles like, 'It's not your fault' or 'The Beast' and they're always filled with the idea that the world is going to end any gosh darn moment and since it's possessed by Satan if you don't drop everything* right now you could be attacked by demons or atheists or demon atheists!!! The books themselves look like this:

There was a very quiet school janitor who gave these out in junior high or high school and they've fascinated me since. Part of what fascinates me is that no matter where I go these things always pop up eventually. The other part that fascinates me is while they are earnestly trying to be serious they're really quiet hysterical; hammy to the point that it's incredible to believe anyone takes them seriously. Yet obviously some do just that. Recently someone gave me one at work. 'The Beast',a small black-and-white strip that sports a happy family on the coverwith 666 etched into each of their heads (mom, dad and baby too!!!) and a creepy-looking hand reaching out and apparently baptizing them into the ways of darkness. I hadn't seen one of these for a while and this was a great reminder of just how kookie religion can make some folk. The strip talks about 'Life as it is today' - basically a drunken orgie of fornication and debauchery, citing clipped bible verse after clipped bible verse to tie in technology, slowly spinning the drunken orgie into a war games-like scenario of evil global control, culminatingwith a page that is so ridiculous it requires a visual aid:

Now, I know there is a whoooole mess of good stuff happening in the panel above but I would like to draw your attention to two things in particular. First, as my good friend Ray pointed out the end of world looks kinda cool from the Chick publication camp's point of view, especially if you're a horror movie fan. I mean, I always thought the Apocalypse was going to be some big, abstract menagerie of multi-headed biblical beasts and fires of judgment - apparently that is not the case. Let's see, we've got Bat-winged devils, Baphomet, what looks like it could be Nosferatu. Also there is a zombie (drawn awfully similar to Exorcist-era Linda Blair, no?), a posse of black-robed druid guys and, my favorite, the Wolf man. Do you think the agents of the Apocalypse have to pay licensing fees to use the Wolf Man in their war of Good vs. Evil? I'm betting Universal would be into that. Imagine the royalties.

Second thing I want to talk about from the little jewel above is the caption at the very bottom, beneath the comic frame proper. Let me quote for you now, adding my own emphasis by bolding: 'For factual information on Satanism, read LUCIFER DETHRONED, the true story of ex-vampire William Schnoebelen. By Chick Publications.'

Okay, so, ah, do the words factual and ex-vampire belong in the same sentence if we are not watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer? This led me to do a little google-stalking on ol' Mr. Schnoebelen. Wanna know what I found? Check it out.

http://www.relfe.com/07/Bill_William_Schnoebelen.html

Scroll down and read Mr. Schnoebelen's 'be there done that' list. Satanist, 33 degree Mason, Knight Templar, Thelemite, Vampire (still don't get that one), and Priest for The Church of Latter Day Saints??? Sound like a devotee's list of every other freakin' option out there, besides of course directly attacking the Eastern religions, which I'd bet dollars to donuts they do elsewhere. And that's another thing. If you read down far enough - about to where the article talks about Mormonism - you'll find this little faux pas. Again, I've added my emphasis by bolding:

'Within days, his life fell apart and he lost all his magical power. This crisis led us, ultimately to join the Mormon (LDS) Church…'Ahhh... so Mr. Schnoebelen or his wife are the ones writing this, trying to adopt a third person stance but no doubt brimming with too much self-importance to maintain the distance required for third person, instead falling into self-righteous character and subsequently first person as well.

The whole Chick thing is, I suppose, a cultural phenomenon. However, cultural phenomena are not, by a rule, always good things. Look at skinny jeans. No, seriously, I started out with the intent to debunk (i.e. ridicule) these mini comics that saturate our social atmosphere on underground levels. I lost that thread for a bit above because in researching these things I remembered how much fun they are. However, as I'm sure Count Schnoebelen himself might agree, many times dangerously undermining agencies begin with an ignorant or intolerant message and then work to sugar-coat it in the most seemingly benign or even fun flavors imaginable.Jim Jones anyone???

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* Except I'd imagine, your pants.