Slint-Cortez The Killer (Neil Young)

Slint play Neil Young's Cortez The Killer live in Chicago, 1989

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X4alklR5q0

Bookspam, 4/22/11: The Toy Collector, Raw Shark Texts, Gilligan's Wake

Bookspam is one of my new featurettes. Basically, it's going to be a list of interesting books that I've heard about or am in the process of reading. Feel free to throw your two cents in via the comments, if you've actually read any of these. This week's list is "post-modern fiction" flavored. Enjoy.

The Toy Collector by James Gunn (Bloomsbury, 2000)

James Gunn wears many hats: writer, director, ex-husband of Jenna Fisher AKA Pam from The Office. Gunn used to work for Troma Entertainment, so he's got some serious pulp art chops, which are evident in his films Slither and the more recent Super with Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page. His semi autobiographical novel The Toy Collector apparently contains the same mix of humor and the macabre that he showcased in his films; the protagonist (whose name is also James Gunn), is an orderly at a hospital who steals and sells drugs, then uses the money to add to his huge collection of toys. That concept alone sounds interesting, but Gunn's use of post-modern gimmicks straight out of the Delillo and Foster Wallace playbooks, like using his protagonist's toys as alternate narrators and interspersing flashbacks and drugged out interludes throughout the narrative, should add up to something special. This one's in my Amazon queue right now.

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hill (Cannongate, 2007)

This one was suggested to me by a good friend, who said it "was like House of Leaves, but not as boring, and shorter". Sounds good so far. The jacket describes the books as "Melville meets Michael Crichton" and "Pynchon meets Douglas Adams". Ok, I'm a bit more intrigued. From the wiki article I learned that there are allusions to Jaws, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and Toy Story in the book. After that, I was pretty much sold. This one's on my bedside table right now.

Gilligan's Wake by Tom Carson (Picador, 2003)

The title pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this book: it's Gilligan's Island meets James Joyce, although it's more like Dubliners than Finnegan's Wake, if you ask me. The book is split into seven vignettes, each following a different character from Gilligan's Island through their lives after they've escaped the island and returned to 1950s-60s America, where they run into period events like Red Scare paranoia, the Kennedy Assassination, and the Beat Generation. Tom Carson's efforts to create distinctive voices for each of the characters are earnest, but sometimes it feels like he's trying a bit too hard. In my opinion, the best moments in the book come when he's having fun with the absurdity of his concept, rather than the "serious" meditations he makes on the social and moral climate of America. Check out the wiki if you want to learn more. 

Art Show (4/22/11): Devin Powers

Devin Powers is a Brooklyn based artist whose work I recently became aware of through his brother, who I met in a creative writing class at the Harvard Extension School we're both taking. I don't have much in way of art criticism chops, so I won't pretend to understand Devin's work enough to speak on it at length; his drawings and paintings effect the same sort of complex emotional and intellectual response I have to other excellent abstract artists like Pollack and Kandinsky, so that must mean something good. The man himself has this to say about his work:

My work is made up of rudimentary geometric shapes. Sometimes these 

shapes are arranged to look like something already in the world; for example, a 

maze or a sheet of lined paper. More often the arrangement is abstract. Although 

the abstract work does not represent any object in a concrete way, it often has a 

familial resemblance to things other than itself, such as network visualizations, 

generative algorithms, mathematical structures, star constellations, and complex 

systems. There are also strong stylistic connections to Gothic architecture and 

Islamic ornament, Russian Constructivism, Minimalism and Modernist 

abstraction. I do not want my work to be seen as hermetic; these associations are 

intentional and a part of the work. I am interested in creating powerful emotion through form and material. 

Expression is more important than concept in my work. The particular kind and 

degree of emotion changes from work to work but overall I aim to evoke 

something fundamental, omnipresent, interconnected, and overwhelming.

I'll be doing a Q & A with Devin sometime in the near future. In the meantime, check out other examples of his work here, or this interview he did with Brent Hallard at Visual Discrepancies.

!Listen!, 4/22/11: The Crust Brothers-Marquee Mark (Telemoro, 1998)

The Crust Brothers were a one off collaboration between Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and the band Silkworm; they did a series of small club shows in the late 1990s playing nothing but classic rock covers. Most of the songs are from Bob Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes album, but there's some CCR, Skynyrd and Stones thrown in, too. If you can imagine this and this mixed with this, you'll have a pretty good idea what you're in for. This one's been out of print for years now, so pick it up from Mediafire (below). 

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?gjzi2in5m2i

!Listen!, 4/9/11: Uzeda-Different Section Wires (Touch & Go, 1998)

In my interview with Steve Albini, I asked him to name a few bands from outside the US that he thought people should check out, and the Italian band Uzeda was of several that he mentioned. I had heard a little bit of Uzeda, but I was more familiar with Bellini, a sort of Touch & Go superband that Uzeda's guitarist Agostino Tillota and vocalist Giovanna Cacciola were (are?) in that also included Damon Che and Matthew Taylor of Don Caballero. I liked Bellini, so I figured I would also like Uzeda; I was right. Different Section Wires seemed like as good a starting point as any, and I was very impressed with what I heard. 


This album is very diverse and well paced, and there is a sense of space and quality of expansiveness to a lot of the songs that was particularly interesting to me. Other reviews of Uzeda tended to emphasize the similarities of approach and composition that they share with other T&G bands like Don Cab (irregular time signatures, finger tapping) and Slint (minimalist composition, eclecticism), and while I don't think these comparisons aren't apt or warrented, Uzeda are not a sum of other band's parts, and they should be recognized as such. 


There are dynamics and elements of pacing at work in this album that I hadn't seen in very many others that I've listened to; a track like Stomp (linked above), for instance, was defined to me in terms of "space" and contrast. The steady snare beat that opens the track remains a constant backdrop, but the elements that crop up around it, like Tillota's ticking guitar lines or Cacciola's subdued wailing, are few and far between for the first few minutes. When Raffaele Gulisano's bass kicks in around the two minute mark, all of the disparate elements that comprise Uzeda start to coalesce and slowly peak, reaching an apogee in the last minute or so of the song. The track after Stomp, Steel Man, is a bit more straight forward. It's loud from the very beginning, with the drums jumping out a bit more than Stomp, and the song length and structure conforming more to typical punk rock standards. Cacciola's tone reminded me of Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, and Tillota and Gulisano's guitars lock together to create a satisfying slab of noise. The longer, spacier tracks on the album, like Stomp and Milky Way, provide contrast to the other faster tracks and slow down the pace of the album nicely, and serve to build tension that is then released by faster, more aggressive tracks. In all, this album was very satisfying to listen to, and it's obvious that the band was extremely deliberate in their instrumentation and pacing.

Thoughts For Food, 4/9/11: Molecular Gastronomy Series

I've started work on a series of articles about different aspects of molecular gastronomy, which I will be posting them as quickly as I can finish them. Hopefully, there will be two articles; the first will examine cooking methods (sous vide, sphereification, molecular mixology), and the second will profile restaurants and chefs (Grant Achatz @ Alinea, Heston Blumenthal @ The Fat Duck, Ferran Adria @ El Bulli). I'm not really a "foodie" type, but for whatever reason this subject has been a fascination of mine lately, and I've been reading about it non-stop for about a week. I've never written about food or restaurants before, and I hope at least a few people reading this blog will be interested in the subject.

EDIT (4/22): Still working on these! They should be up in a few days. Have patience, grasshoppers. 

!Listen! , 4/4/11: No Joy

No Joy-Ghost Blonde  (2010, Mexican Summer)

In general, I'm not really an enthusiastic fan of the whole "chillwave" aesthetic that's been percolating through the indie rock scene of late, but these guys are a notable exception. No Joy share the themes (beaches, summer, drugs, girls) and sonic influences (90's lo-fi, shoegaze, Weezer, more Weezer, Beach Boys, Dick Dale, more Weezer) of other chillwave bands like Real Estate and Surfer Blood. No Joy are on arguably the premier label for chillwave, Mexican Summer, whose roster also includes Best Coast and Wavves. No Joy distinguish themselves with a more muscular sound, which they achieve by jacking up the low end in their mixes and maintaining an often aggressive sounding juxtaposition of thick and murky rhythm guitar and bass with piercing leads and distorted vocals. It also helps that their drummer beats the shit out of her (his?) kit instead of relying on brushed snares and weird mixed percussion  gimmicks we see from other chillwave percussionists, and is consistently locked in with the bassist. This sound is exemplified on one of the album's singles, Hawaii (posted above), on which the song's catchy hook establishes itself until about 0:14 in, when the drums and bass drop in behind a squalling exclamation point of feedback. The track that preceeds Hawaii, Pacific Pride, is a good example of the other end of No Joy's sonic spectrum; a quick, quiet, drone-y beach ballad that is slower and quieter, but just as enjoyable as the faster Hawaii. In short, this album's composition is diverse in a way that doesn't feel forced, but with consistent sonic themes running through all of the songs, so if you like one song, you'll probably like them all to some extent. In short, Ghost Blonde is worth forty five minutes of your life, get on it.

Interview Yr Idols, 4/4/11: Steve Albini

This is the first of what I hope will be many installments of Interview Yr Idols, which is my uninspired name for the interview segment of the blog. My subject is Steve Albini, a recording engineer, musician, and proponent of the DIY ethic. Steve has been a fixture in the underground music scene since the early 1980s as a musician in the band Big Black, and as a music critic and pundit in 'zines like Matter and Forced Exposure. Since the 1990s, he's been better known for fronting the band Shellac, and for his work as a recording engineer. Steve's worked on albums with bands like The Pixies , Nirvana, Cheap Trick, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and Iggy and the Stooges, just to name a few of his more prominent clients, but he's also worked with hundreds of other equally awesome if somewhat more obscure bands. If you want to learn more about Steve, first, pause and listen to the song that I've posted above....There, wasn't that awesome? Then, I'd suggest you read the comprehensive Wiki article on him, one of the zillion other interviews he's done, or his article "The Problem With Music".

Steve was gracious enough to answer a gigantic list of questions I foisted upon him by e-mail. My questions are in bold, his responses are in plain text.

What are your thoughts on Juggalos?

They are absolutely a joy. Unlike the Tea Party, their world will never overlap mine, and so I never need to take them seriously, I just get to enjoy them from a distance. Their sense of righteous ignorance is magical in the results it produces. Simply magical.

You keep your e-mail address and phone number available to general public and make time for interviews with anyone who ask you. Why?

I think it's odd when normal people isolate themselves from other normal people. If you're royalty or have social problems and don't know how to interact with normal people, then okay, make yourself hard to find. If you're comfortable talking to people and can't get talked into buying magazine subscriptions you have nothing to fear.

Have there been times you regret being  so available, or do you think your experiences with people who have contacted you have been mostly positive?

When the phone rings at 4 am and it's some drunken fool showing his other drunken fool friends that he has my phone number it can be a little weird, but it's harmless even when it's a nuisance. Being available to people has allowed me to meet people who have become great friends and comrades. I'm very glad I haven't been protected from these wonderful people.

Today is the first of April. You, and also a great many of the people you've worked with in the past and present, have a history of practical jokes and a general reputation of having unconventional senses of humor. What are one or two of the pranks you or your friends have committed that amused you particularly?

An audio engineer friend of mine was visiting a rival studio, and he mentioned to the technical engineer that he heard some radio interference in the control room. Before he left for dinner, he hid a transistor radio turned down very low inside one of the big soffit-mounted monitor speakers by sticking it inside the bass port vent hole. The technical engineer spent all evening disconnecting equipment in the studio trying to get the sound to go away, getting more and more frustrated. Hours later, after dinner, my friend shut off the radio when the technical engineer was out of the room, and when he saw him, thanked the staff engineer for solving the problem. Before he left for the night, he moved turned the radio on and moved it to the other speaker, and alerted the technical engineer to the radio interference again. This went on for several days, and he apparently left the radio running when he left the studio at the end of the week.

Today is also the second day of the baseball season. You are a baseball fan, but you have stated that you're not so much a fan of any single team in the MLB as you are a fan of the sport in general. What aspects of the game of baseball do you think endear it to you over other sports? In the context of this season, what teams and players are you most interested in watching? 

I'm locally aligned with the White Sox, and I like the addition of Adam Dunn, but I don't have a particularly good feeling about this year, given the state of the bullpen and nebulous closer spot. It would be beyond optimistic to expect Konerko to have another season like last year, and a number of key players (Pierzynski, Pierre, Vizquel) are showing their age and may be starting to wind down. It'll be interesting seeing Minnesota deal with Morneau and Mauer's potential physical fragility, since they've basically staked the franchise on them. The Phillies rotation should make every game worth watching, but I'm more interested in what happens with the Nationals, who should be growing into a legitimate contender as their younger players and prospects mature, especially if they make a stab at getting Pujols as a free agent as has been hinted. I'm also interested in the rejuvenation of the Orioles with Matt Wieters and a bunch of highly-touted young pitchers in the show all year. Also I love watching Vlad swing the bat.

A little further down the calendar in April is Record Store Day. You're extensively on record (no pun) as feeling that vinyl has been and continues to be a much better format than other physical or digital mediums. Do you think that an event like Record Store Day actively prolongs the longevity of vinyl as a format, or is it just a fiesta for collector scum?

I'm not big on promotion of any kind. I'm content for things to find their natural audience organically, so on that level I don't care for advertising or things like it. I am gratified that vinyl seems to be set to outlast all other physical formats for music though. It's the only truly permanent medium, and there is a lot of amazing music out there that is unlikely to ever make it to iTunes.

On my first visit to Chicago, I had the great fortune of being introduced to Kuma's Corner, which until recently I had no idea was right up the street from Electrical Audio. Do you go there often, and if so, which of their burgers do you prefer? I've only had the Plaguebringer, myself.

We get food from there every week. The Yob (smoked Gouda, grilled peppers, onions and bacon) is my regular, but I have had maybe a dozen different hamburgers there.

The next time I visit Chicago, I plan to take better advantage of the restaurant scene. Are there any places you'd suggest offhand, especially on a small budget? 

In this neighborhood, definitely Hot Doug's and Urban Belly. You should probably get a Maxwell Street polish sausage or pork chop sandwich from Jim's Original and an Italian Beef from a reputable joint (get a local to recommend his favorite). If you're up for a challenge, go to Riccobene's and get a full order sandwich. If you can finish it, I'll buy.

In a similar vein, I read that you recently dined at Garth Achatz's Alinea in Lincoln Park, which I've read is absolutely fantastic. Were there any courses or elements of presentation in your meal that you particularly enjoyed or thought were interesting?

It would take a long time to articulate my feelings about that meal, but it was nothing if not impressive. The flavors were not the most memorable parts of the meal, obviously, but food is more than taste.

The article I read about Alinea and Achatz mentioned that he suffered from mouth cancer, and that at one point he lost his sense of taste (and almost had his tongue cut out). There's something blackly poetic about a chef losing his tongue, and maybe it's a tangential connection, but that story immediately made me think of the prevalence and special implications of hearing loss among musicians. Do you think you could cope with the loss of your hearing? Do you take any special precautions to protect your hearing beyond the use of ear-plugs?

I protect my hearing when I'm not in a musical environment, but at a show or in the studio I don't. I want to be immersed in those settings. I'm getting older, so there will inevitably be some hearing loss, but the people I admire most as engineers (Geoff Emerick, George Massenburg, Al Schmitt) all maintained their acuity as they aged. I'm convinced hearing is only partly physiological, and by maintaining alertness about what I'm hearing I can retain my acuity as well. So far at least it's been fine.

You ran a card game station at ATP, and play poker quite a bit. I enjoy playing poker, but I'm pretty terrible at it. Are there any resources you'd suggest for me that could improve my play?

The best way to improve your poker game is to get involved with or develop a peer group of other players and discuss situations with them. The online resources and forums (2+2, Cardrunners, Leggo, Deuces Cracked) are all helpful, and the books published by 2+2 on each of the specialty games are outstanding, but you never learn as much by yourself as you do by talking about specific situations and hands with other poker players. Texas Holdem is the game of choice in most home games and casinos, but other disciplines and mixed games are becoming increasingly popular, so there is an opportunity that hasn't existed in a while to get ahead of your competition at a new discipline. If you're ahead of your friends in learning Triple Draw or Pot-Limit Omaha, then you can make a living in those specific games. You don't need to be a better poker player than everybody else, you just need to be better at one game.

You were on Animal Planet with Todd and Bob to talk about Uffizi, the excellent Italian greyhound. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from your interviews I've gotten the impression that you're more of a cat person. Not in the sense that you'll be found dead of toxoplasmosis in a garbage filled house, but that you just dig cats. Am I right? Do you have any funny cat stories?

Todd's relationship with Uffizi is unique. He loves that dog and that dog adores him and wants to do things with him. I've never had a relationship like that with a dog. Dogs are more inclined to be companions and helpers, cats just want to live their own lives, and I admire cats for their independence and crafty nature. I feel like I've learned things from my interactions with cats.

I was talking with someone recently about the differences between EPs and LPs, and I realized that I really couldn't think of too many artists who have put out EPs recently. I've always kind of thought of an EP as being analogous to a short story, with the artist being able to achieve a kind of focus and consistency they couldn't necessarily get out of an LP. What do you think are the stylistic advantages of the EP format, and why do you think less people put them out these days?

My old bands Big Black and Rapeman both put out EPs, and I like the format. It's a nice, digestible hunk of a band's aesthetic, without belaboring the point. In the current record economy, making an EP is a losing proposition, since manufacturing costs are the same as an LP but sale price is necessarily lower. I wouldn't rule it out, but the money is a pretty big obstacle.

You and Bob (Weston) both use Travis Bean guitars in Shellac, and you participated in a documentary about them. When did you find out about Travis Bean guitars, and what about them is special in relation to other guitars you've played?

They have a distinctive, strident sound and I've basically accommodated my playing style to the guitar, so I don't think I could play anything else now. I particularly like the way the neck can be bent without going out of tune, almost like a subtle whammy bar, and the way the toggle switch comes into play as an effect.

I recently discovered the band Brainiac, and I'm really enjoying what I've heard of them so far. Were you involved in the production of the albums they put out on T&G?

I worked on one Braniac session, but I think their best stuff was done with Jim O'Rourke a couple years later.

I read somewhere that you and Bob (Weston) offered advice to James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem, DFA Records) when he was setting up a recording studio in the mid 90s. What kind of advice did you give him?  Do you guys keep in touch?

Bob and James are pretty good friends. I just helped him out with some power and noise problems for his old studio.

You and Corey Rusk have both said that you bonded over a shared interest in fireworks. Do you still blow things up regularly, or is that a phase that has run its course?

We had a big'n last year on the Fourth of July, and every couple of years I set my brother's kids up with a "care package," just to make sure there's a little danger in their lives.

Cover songs are a longstanding tradition in punk rock, and you yourself have played quite a few covers of bands you admired, like Wire and Cheap Trick. How does it make you feel to see bands covering your songs, like Japandroids covering Racer X, or the band My Disco naming itself after a Big Black song?

Any time somebody pays attention to your creative output it's a little flattering, but if you take things like that to heart you end up being full of your own dump, so I try not to dwell on it. Also, it's hard not to find fault with somebody else doing your thing, no matter how well, so I try not to take any of it personally.

Do you still own the TR-606 that you used in Big Black? If so, have you used it for anything since?

No, I traded it for a guitar amp.

In an interview you had with Mark Prindle, he mentions an anecdote you have about the moment in which you realized that you didn't have to care about what other people think. Can you provide some context as to what led you to this insight? What do you think you've gained or lost from adopting that mindset?

I was about 14 years old, and it had been on my mind that other people might think less of me for one reason or another, the way I looked or acted or talked or whatever, and it dawned on me that none of that, what other people thought of me, would materially affect me any more that what their favorite colors were, as long as I didn't care about it. So I decided not to care, and haven't cared what other people thought about me since.

Your outspoken views on the music industry's business ethics are articulated in your famous essay The Problem With Music and in countless other examples. Did you formulate these beliefs based on your own intellectual examination of the music industry, or were there events in your life or events recounted to you by other people that led you to formulate your opinions?

I got to see a lot of damage done by agents of the mainstream showbusiness industry, and I drew my own conclusions about their motives. I also decided that we in the underground, didn't need our own versions of those agents or power structures. No managers, no booking agents, no lawyers, no contracts, none of it. I haven't used any of that fol-de-rol since. What we needed to do (and I believe we have done) is make those people and those ways of conducting business irrelevant, not to create little dollhouse versions of regular showbusiness offices and hierarchies. I have no respect for the "punk rock lawyer" or "punk rock publicist," because they are ultimately lawyers and publicists, and their role is a corrosive one that should be eradicated, not indulged.

You've produced a lot of bands that come to you from outside the US, like Monotonix or Uzeda. Are there any bands you've worked with or listened to recently that listeners in the US might not have heard that you think are worth checking out?

Cool bands from Italy: Three Second Kiss, Uzeda, Cash, Zu, Alix
Cool bands from Japan: Zeni Geva, Space Streakings, Omoide Hatoba, Ruins, Mono
Cool bands from all over: the Ex, My Disco, Arabrot, Allroh, Honey for Petzi, Chevreuil... there are a bazillion cool bands. Seriously, just go to the record store and ask around.

Pilot Program

Well, after several years of procrastination, here is my "blog". I've been meaning to set one up for a couple of years now, but I wanted to focus on a few subjects rather than create a typical "write about whatever pops into my head" blog, and it wasn't until recently that I was able to narrow down a list of my interests down to something that feels manageable and focused. Those areas of interest are: music, film, "the arts", literature, gastronomy, sports and bioethics. That still sounds pretty scattershot, actually, but whatever. Most of the content will be either reviews or commentary by me on one of these subjects, but I'm hoping to conduct a lot of interviews with people whose interests and experiences are relevant to my subject matter, and also provide obligatory links to articles that I think are interesting when I'm too lazy to put something to the page myself. Enjoy.