At around the 23rd hour, fatigue can make you wander into a field.
At 4PM CST, WPRB’s musicologist extraordinaire Jon Solomon will take the mike again…and not let go until a full 25 hours of holiday tunes and stories hit the air right along with a certain Mr. Kringle. It takes industrial-strength merriment and a music library of astonishing depth to pull this marathon off each season — but this year it takes even more. It’s the 25th anniversary of the usually 24-hour Marathon, and that means Jon is devoting an extra 25th hour to the twin foundations of the holiday season: sleep deprivation and nervous exhaustion. Do not miss.
Just in case anybody was laboring under the mistaken belief that rap music invented or was first to lionize the blatant, direct repackaging of musical material, enjoy the following screenshot from my digital music collection in its Duane Eddy section.
The million-selling twang guitarist’s 1962 record “Twistin’ With Duane Eddy”, itself an echo of the 1960 Chubby Checker hit, inspired Duane and his handlers to produce many more market-squeezing twist-themed also-ran tracks, not even all of which are in this collection. Nonetheless, the long string of lame twists-on-the-twist titles is impressive.
Also funny: whoever assembled the running order must have had a sense of humor, as the theme is brought, at track 11, to an abrupt end, Wil E. Coyote style.
Shipping now from Akashic Books: The Jesus Lizard “Book”, a biography of Chicago’s greatest postpunk band, suitable for coffee tables everywhere. Included is a section I wrote on the band’s early days at a show at the original Behind The Lookingglass space on South Michigan Avenue. Also included are contributions from Greg Dunlap, Doug McCombs, Steve Albini, Andy Gill, Mike Watt, Bob Nastanovich, Alexander Hacke, Steve Gullick, Rebecca Gates, Hank Williams III, Sasha Frere-Jones, and the incomparable Bernie Bahrmasel.
Sold Out Opening Night at Redmoon’s 2013 Winter Pageant. Photo: Al Zayed
Last night was opening night for Redmoon Theater’s 2013 Winter Pageant. I wrote the original music for this indescribable show and my surf-noir band San Andreas Fault performs on stage as the proceedings unfold. Dozens of dancers, improbable and massive machinery, mind-roasting visual spectacle, mythmaking and birds. Oh man. The birds.
Hats off to my brothers in the Fault, without whose power and commitment none of this music happens. Thymme Jones, John Cwiok and original gangsta Pete Muschong: thank you.
What is it about siblings in rock bands? There’s something musically cool and unified that I’ve never been able to put my finger on about the work of people who undertake rock music having come from the same parents. Is it an upbringing steeped in a common record collection and listening habits? Is it physiological? Do the tendons and muscles and structures of the limbs or bodies of siblings allow for highly similar attacks/approaches on instruments or for highly similar / complementary mechanical understandings of rhythm?
I don’t know. But ever since DEVO, I’ve noticed this. Scott and Ron Asheton in the Stooges, too, plus the Youngs in AC/DC. Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson. The Butler brothers in the Psychedelic Furs. The effect even shows up in not-that-great bands such as those Italian dudes whose names I forget from Stone Temple Pilots.
There’s an unmistakeable unity to the sound, almost as if one consciousness was driving two bodies. All the more remarkable in an era when we’re lucky if any single body gets an entire consciousness to itself.
So now, from the metro St. Louis area comes the pretty greatRadkey, three brothers clustered around a flavor of rock that recalls in this reporter the eternal shout-alongs of The Misfits and Naked Raygun. Brought to my attention when guitarist and bandmate in San Andreas FaultPete Machine passed it along after his bandmate, Scott Lucas (Local H, Married Men) encountered Radkey on the road during a recent Local H tour. They’ve got that one-voice-many-limbed thing going on.
There are two bands that I’ve started and can’t seem to stop. And things are getting loud.
SIRS
First, there’s SIRS: a Chicago-style noise-rock trio with traces of aggro pop that launched in 2008 with the release of the 7″ single Billy The Kidney on Unicut Records. In 2010, we released the 12″ Boo Hoo EP and performed around Chicago wherever and whenever possible.
In SIRS, I provide words and guitar, both noisy and absurd reflections on the late capitalist era. The team is rounded out by gentlemen/scholars Tony Jones (bass) and Shut Up Andy Kosinski (drums). There is a Chicago underground tradition of extra-large punk rattle plus high and low verse, a presentation established in the early Reagan era by giants such as The Effigies and Big Black, a shaft that SIRS still burrows. Which isn’t too surprising since the first Chicago band I started in high school – the Defoliants – was right behind those outfits.
SIRS is next week releasing our third record, High Minors, a 12″ longplayer that features guest appearances by John Haggerty (Naked Raygun, Pegboy) and Thymme Jones (Cheer-Accident, Dead Rider).
I started the Fault in 1999 by building a small digital studio called Trailing Edge in a steel plant on Grand Avenue. The idea then was to work out my obsessions with surf, cowboy chords, classical composition and instrumental musics of the 1960s into a modern band. The result was a couple of CD singles, TV show and game soundtracks, and the 2003 LP Encantada, plus appearances onstage with guitar instrumental heroes Dick Dale and the late Link Wray. The Fault wound down in 2005, but was revived in 2012 when I came back together to work with Fault guitarist Pete Machine, going through an eight year backlog of my composition.
Word of this reached the legendary Redmoon Theater and the San Andreas Fault was asked to write the score for the 2013 Winter Pageant, running Dec. 13-22 2013 (10 shows only, two weekends only). I wrote about 12 pieces for this complete freakout of a show, set in Redmoon’s new 50,000 sq. ft. performance space — and we’re performing it live. Who’s we? Rob Warmowski (guitar) Pete Muschong (guitar) John Cwiok (bass) and Thymme Jones (drums).
The Fault is back online for scoring projects, and is now working with New York director Rebecca Rojer on a 2014 film that will draw on Chicago images that focus on the pernicious role that billionaire philanthropists and their foundations play in the “education reform” debate.
Of course pants were removed. Do you even have to ask? Shame on you for doubting.
In related news, I’m told that I am a contributing author to the forthcoming in 2012 Akashic Books title Book aka The Jesus Lizard “coffee table” book.
Boardwalk Empire's Michael K. Williams shares home improvement tips
I watch HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. This show’s major strengths are its art direction and set design, which really are a joy. Its music direction, faithful to its Jazz Age period runs a close second, and might even have placed first, if not for one inexplicable decision.
In a stark and ugly contrast to the rest of the show’s attention to production standards, Boardwalk Empire‘s title theme music is a disaster. For some reason, a chunk of sheer hackwork in the form of throwaway bar-band blues-rock culled from the catalog of the resolutely inessential Brian Jonestown Massacre was chosen to usher viewers into each week’s episode.
This isn’t about anachronism. I’m not saying that a rock song could never work in this role. I’m saying the chosen rock song relates to the show only in one sense: Each time I hear it, I lament that Atlantic City, endowed today with van-loads of creatively vacant, Stones-tribute bar bands who suck far less than San Francisco’s Brian Jonestown Massacre, couldn’t contribute to its namesake “death and titty” cable drama when the time came to slap a shitty rock song in the theme hole.
One habit I inherited from my father is to give lyrics to annoying tunes. In that tradition, I offer to all Boardwalk fans a means to put a happier spin on this most bullshit of title themes. Take these lyrics to Boardwalk Empire in the shared hope that a saddened nation can, as one, polish away this small spot of musical tarnish from our Sunday nights.
Lyrics To The Boardwalk Empire Theme
Boy, this theme sucks Lemme tell ya God, this theme sucks Like a hoover Stupid blues riff What the fuck, man? Sounds like Oasis Fuck you (repeat 1x)
And it’s cloudy In the 1920s And Buscemi Looks especially worn Hey, it’s water What are those, bottles? Fly away, seagull Shitty solo ahoy!
Baaaaaw woooo-awooooo oooo-ooo-ooooo
(Singers give tempo ruboto impression of awful guitar solo)
(rest)
Please just start the show And end this theme Just start the show Already please
In a turkey(monkey) coma this Thanksgiving? Snap out of it with these 1995 clips of DEVO’s Gerald V. Casale as he tells the story of five pilgrims from Akron, OH who sailed to Los Angeles in a Plymouth only to collide with a rock called the music industry.
Marvel at tales of Booji Boy, he who is old as the mountains but as yet unborn! Learn of the earliest days of Art DEVO, of the Poot Man and his dairy intake, of janitor supply stores, McDonald’s restaurant managers and other stanchions of Akronian society!
It’s a wiggly world full of strange pursuits and unkeyed chroma. Light up a stogie (really?) with Gerry and reflect on a job well done.
RW370 