Sleighing the East Coast Ticket Sales

So by now, you should have heard of Sleigh Bells.

Embedded YouTube vidya for Sleigh Bell's "Holly"

They've been tearing it up across the blogs, through the circulatory system of Pitchfork, the CMJ and the Williamsburg scene.

If not, welcome to the next genre bending sensation.  A lot of fools try and say, "we're not defined by labels".  I actually enjoy how Sleigh Bells just seem to screw all types of conceived notions and shoves up their notiony bung.

This release reminds a lot of Beck's Mellow Gold in a lot of ways.  When Beck made Mellow Gold, people were trying to figure out all of the rap and hip hop influences out, trying to see where Beck got it all from...trying to make it seem like he's unoriginal.

So what if he was Public Enemy meets Bob Dylan, jilted by the church of Cobain.  Beck just did it!  And the music was his, he owned it.

Much like that, it seems Sleigh Bells is approaching their music similarly.  People are accusing them of ripping off crunk and dirty south beats.  But these releases they've made go beyond just using crunk...crunk's their beat, not the soul.  Like saying Chuck Berry was unoriginal for using the "boogie".

Even their interviews were non-chalant and unpretentious...even if they made ABC NEWS and played at the NPR, CMJ, Pitchfork, IAMSOUND etc... parties at SXSW...  Is this the real deal?  Well, when the uppity and large word using New Yorker gives them a glowing write up, you know it's got to be the cusp of something big...like MGMT big, blowing up with hype.

(You'll never see this kind of ticket price or hand-made flyer art again...*sniffles*)

Well, it's going to be real enough that you're never going to get a concert ticket unless you've gotten it already...

Much like how MGMT sold out the 930 club in minutes of going on pre-sale when they were touring Oracular Spectacular...this is the real deal, hipster shit.  Get it while it's steaming and before it gets remixed to all hell and the follow-up album sounds nothing like this ;)

(I actually like "Congratulations" a good bit...and yes honey bun, I'm enjoying Plastic Beach more and more too).

Though I would really love to hear an Alan Braxe remix of Crown on the Ground...just saying!

Youtube vidya of "Crown on the Ground" by Sleigh Bells

Cars Make the Band!

So no!  The Jeep Wrangler doesn't have satellite radio.  However, it does have probably the most insecure measure of protecting equipment...that is the zipper-canvas top.  As cool as it was taking that trail ready vehicle out on the trails of pinelands New Jersey for work and getting messy and pulling off ticks and getting bit by mosquitos despite copious amounts of DEET.  There is one solace.  That Philadelphia has probably the crown jewel of radio, that being WXPN.  From sleigh bells at 9:30pm, to interviews with Johnny Rotten cause PiL's playing the Belagio (go figure Mr. Pistol!), this station is amazing!

That and they play The Heavy...ALOT!



Now don't get me wrong! This band kicks some real ass. Great blues vocals with a real appreciation for full frontal production (GODDAMMIT PEOPLE ARE OVER-FUCKING USING SPECTRE'S NAME!!! Shame on you all!). But who the hell would know this band if it weren't for the Kia Sorrento commercial (yes, I've driven one of those too for work; they have satellite radio usually. Nice ride though...Kia's have come a long way since I test drove the terrible Rio in 2002).

So that's what I want to talk about. Is the car commercial going to give The Heavy staying power?

Let's review a couple groups I remember from the 90s that had car commercial music...but never really made it big.  In fact, so much so, that I can't find the commercials on youtube, and one Jetta track is mis-attributed to Moby of all people...





All I'm saying, is that if notoriety from car commercial could mean staying power, I suppose the aforementioned bands won't be lost to the sands of time...like it seems that Meat Beat mManifesto and Download have been (though I hear Skinny Puppy is still touring after the post-Oghr albums though Goettel Died after Furnace was made).  Where's Mark Spybey?  I guess he's producing now and beyond the care of band notoriety as are most of these 90s heros of post-no-wave, industrial and anti-pop.

Which reminds me...nobody would have given two shits about Alan Vega, if MIA didn't sample Ghost Rider.  I just heard a track off the Alan Vega solo album played today on WXPN.  That is the one with Al Jorgenson from Ministry...another industrial band no one will give a shit about one day.  Why, oh why did you really play the Vega album today?  Come clean!  Well...it is pretty brilliant stuff...  To WXPN's credit, I admire that they dig into vinyl archives to pull out gems of relevant (not to Hipster Runoff again) music.

• Wipeout Beat by Alan Vega

More Alan Vega music on iLike

So much like Skinny Puppy's "Tin Omen"...does anyone remember Tienanmen Square?  It all seems to fade into history...as music genres rise and fall.  Their importance, and poignant message becomes dulled with time, with other distractions and the coolest, newest buzz.

Don't know if industrial will ever rise again though :(

How you like me now indeed! The "now" being key.  Makes me wonder with my parent's generation...was there some underground music movement in the 70s that never saw the light of day?  Psych-rock and electro-acoustic music are still going though...

Great song though...kudos The Heavy!

4chan infects my music vidyas!

So MIA released her new single for 2010 just recently, and I found out about it from reading Hipster Runoff today.  And wow!  The music video is quite amazing:



M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

The gore is very similar to what I've seen from Japanese and Russian films about war crimes and testing weapons on live subjects, where the gore is front and center.  It's also reminiscent of the attitude of depicting gore on 4chan's /b/.  It's just gratuitous...but what does it really mean?  It means that the internet CANNOT BE SANITIZED like the US media.  People are getting pictures from the police, and from international news sources that show that violence is real, it's disgusting, and it's fucking sociopathic to go around shooting people, chopping them up with swords, and throwing heavy objects at them...which happens all the time in the world...that is thankfully not where I live or work.

So it seems that music artists are trying to reach people, but find that traditional artistic portrayals of edgy issues, isn't enough.  Granted this technique was heralded by such directors and film makers like Gaspar Noe and the like that brought the unsanitized realism of carnag, violence and crime into the lens of the camera without regard for society's perception of taste.

Now, in what was normally reserved for underground metal videos with footage of snuff films and the like has finally made it out into artists that I respect, trying to make statements.

Justice's controversial "Stress" Video by the same director/artist as the MIA vidya, Roman Garvais.

Depicts scenes of violence of Parisian youth, not dissimilar to what happened during the 2005 civil unrest in Paris....perpetuated by youth of "ethnic-descent".

Thus the transgressivism continues...or should continue.  What are these people angry about? Like what does Chuck Palanuik mean when your colon gets sucked out by a pool aerator?

Is this movement now to show that transgression is no longer a bold, novel step forward?  Because of 4chan, ogrish and other no-taste websites desensitizing ourselves and our internet savvy youth, to where we can vicariously see scenes of violence that other peoples of less-fortunate nations are witness to every day...maybe this is what MIA was trying to say:  What if we people, had to face state-sponsored genocide on our soil.  How would that make us feel?  How would that look?  So this is actually kind of a statement for Sri Lanka, with state sponsored genocide of the Tamil......but it may be a bit to nasty to really get the message across?  Maybe it's not enough?!  Note the cover is showing executions of Tamil...

Her statement's pretty legit...and much like the comfort of my suburban dwelling, I am blissfully happy there and footage of murder and rape from afar, even if afar is in US somewhere that's not near me, is disturbing, but it's blissfully far away.  I suppose MIA, is trying to bring the violence and message a little closer to "home," and invade my comfort.  Also, fortunately for me, the only gingers in my family are cats...but I can relate.  It's genocide...but not the genocide people normally see on the news.  Probably the closest we've come the MIA video is something like what happened in the former Yugoslavia (euro-white on euro-white violence).

I'm sure a few sociopaths on the internet actually really like this, in the sense that they enjoy watching violence on others.

Ah well...it's all about the sample anyway.  Cause remember the lyrics of the proto-punk/proto-industrial kids:

"ghostrider motorcycle hero

bebebebebebebe he's a-screamin' the truth

america america is killin' its youth"

Ah, comics, music and world politics!  Suicide was so good!

Blog Envy!

So when I travel, I sometimes get a chance to listen to satellite radio.  So as an avid consumer of that pitchforkmedia, top albums persuasion, and being the terribly over-the-hill at 29, I of course tune into Sirius XMU.  To all its credit, it is a great venue for independent musicians, or as what has become monetized as “indie,” like when I did charts as a college radio DJ (She & Him have several commercials now that bombard me when I’m trying to watch House).  But get this, I’ve listened to more unsigned bands on XMU in a day out in the field for work, than I have in all my time listening to the FM rock stations on the weekends of my youth where they did their local unsigned hours, even more than during my time at WMUC in College Park cause we had label distros…Anyway, part of the programming, that is part of the intro of this post, is a several hour program called “Blog Radio”.  This where some of the major music bloggers on the internet create a nice playlist of music they want to hear, and is often representative music often showcased on their blogs (but not always, and that’s cool!)…and I’m thinking, I’m jealous…and I miss being a DJ on college radio.  And yes, some of the personalities on the blogosphere are quite pretentious, or rather, they seem to extol the fact that they have clout and exclusive information and connections with the bands us indie-music lovers want to get to know.  But then…is the reason we want to know because this music their playing is the latest buzz?  Or is the reason we want to know is because this is the sound we’re craving and the sound we want to hear right now?  Regardless, a term that is thrown around with little consequence because its staying power is so fleeting is that of RELEVANCE, almost getting its meaning diluted as much as the battered term indie (but that word has a long way to go before it becomes as bruised and calloused as “jazz”).  As Heidi Klum says on Project Runway, “One day you’re in and the next, you’re out!”

So, I am jealous!  I don’t, or rather can’t, really blog on the most relevant music - Or so I feel.  I get my music sources from other, more connected people, who actually read their RSS feeds daily/hourly from people who actually have cell-numbers these underground deities of music on their smartphones…

Such is the way and the awesome power of the internet, where you have hundreds of millions of people, all contributing content, all contributing to our research.  Of course you have play your hand close to your chest to make it WORTH anything and so your voice on the internet sounds unique, and your valuable contacts and methods of information gathering aren’t sniped by the many other ambitious people waiting to make their mark on the blogosphere.  If that wasn’t bad enough, music reporting is already rife with pretention and exclusivity.  Fuck if I have Beach Fossils on speed dial, or at least sending me promos and CDMs of their singles for an exclusive remix.

The truth of the matter, or what’s the matter with me is, why blog?   It seems that there are a plethora of other music blogs on the internet that do a fantastic, if not much better written with more relevant content, cutting-edge and up to date with very exclusive information. 

Seems like I may be able to do the same thing with a team of bloggers, with feet on the street, money in their wallets, great contacts in their iphones and an ambitious attitude at being the coolest and hippest folks, in the know and on the internet so you, the reader, clicking on adds to pay for the blogger’s concert tickets, liquor, herbal and chemical bribes can stay up to date as well.  Then again, I’d rather take a daytrotter approach with live acoustic sessions in my amazing studio and fuck all care about what people think.  I guess that’s why they get so many cool people to do sessions there.  

There is a definite an idealization and romance to these star-music-blogs; like a movie scene where you want to be in it, blowing up the gas station, not looking back, getting in a $200,000 car with a supermodel and saying that memorable one liner that everyone will be quoting for years…basically it’s a way to make you want to care about their opinions in music.  And often to their credit, they are well researched and have probably listened to a lot of music, and probably have gone to a conservatory or college music program, or at least had some art appreciation curriculum.  And there’s a lot of them.  Going back to blog radio, a few to highlight in the wide world of music relevance is:

Gorilla Vs. Bear – Great tracks of indie rock, always seems to get the hot promo tracks off his cds before everyone else

Aquarium Drunkard – A little more high-tech than others, and often gets exclusive show presentation…so basically promotes shows and gets gigs for bands they like, which helps build relationships.  I like that business model.

Brooklyn Vegan – Well connected in the Brooklyn scene there in NYC and beyond.  His parties are apparently places where you "must be seen".

Hipster Runoff – I feel a kinship with him.  Often frames things in absurd and banal ways to where it seems just short of magical, cause indie artists are always just short of success and selling out.

The above all have shows on XMU :P

Brightest Young Things – Most amazing magazine out of DC, with great interviews, fashion etc…and an amazing street team.  Highly respected, though they can seem to speak with a very art-star voice that Karen O screamed about in that song she did in the early 00s.  Getting ahead of yourselves right?  But so cool, that any miss-step is easily brushed aside.

But with voices like this and much more already on the internet, I feel…washed out…

Personally, I’ve really gone through a lot of musical genres, specializations and explorations in my music consumption to get where I am today, blogging this blog.  However, I feel like I’m too slow.  Often the cutting edge of scenes is just crap that’s only going to last for a few fad-months: like crunk-kids perpetuated by the likes of Brokencyde and 2-Drunk 2 Drive.  Or to take it back to 99, the electroclash movement in NYC by bands like W.I.T. and Fischerspooner.  Much like the relevance, at the time of their height, they are all abuzz with this is the new-school, or this is the sound we were looking for.  They get a showcase at a dank Austin bar at SXSW, and a side-tent/café spot at Bonnaroo, or a space on a pavilion sidewalk at the Warped Tour and they're off!  So then, it’s what the kids want, and what the coolest underground DJs are playing (looking at you Will Eastman of D.C.), or the reporters on the citypaper are telling us to check out their show and it gets all sold-out in a day and the show is like some romantic-idealized situation that could be capitalized in a high-budget and sleek action film…like when industrial was cool in Blade and the vamps were sexily dancing to “Jukejoint Jezebel”, or when darkwave was cool in the “The Crow” and we were looking at well dressed, badass heroin junkies shooting up to “Golgotha Tenement Blues,” and bigbeat techno was cool in “The Matrix” like Propellerhead’s epic “Spybreak!” shootout scene in the building lobby.  Nowadays, there isn’t a stable goth-dance-night in the DC area (though I hear Europe’s holding on with the alfa-matrix label!).  Though I’m sure some cities are still holding on…

sic transit gloria mundi

(to quote Max from Rushmore)

The glory of the scene you were in…it fades!  It becomes irrelevant. 

But hopefully there will be some legacy left behind with genuine, amazing music…probably also left behind by the masses.

The reality of the situation is that the internet has created this amazing, albeit disparate community of people that can support this huge monolith of “indie” music.  If only we could get our act together…then we’d probably try to make it like a label…best we stay factioned, and continue to put on our airs of pretention.

But in a way, this narcissism is fun!  And I love writing about and listening to music.  So I guess…I am happy to call myself one of the internet’s music bloggers…and raise a glass to anyone else who’ll do it…just don’t expect my help…well much, unless you can get me an exclusive 2-month advance promo copy, or a white-label remix…