The Flaming Lips Are Covering Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon On New Year’s Eve in Oklahoma City…Guests Expected to Appear at the Show: The Flaming Lips’ Families, and NBA Star Kevin Durant, Possibly the Only Current Residents of Oklahoma City [Pitchfork]
Stream First Track From Ted Leo’s Upcoming LP The Brutalist Bricks, “Even Heroes Have to Die,” Which Features a 15-Second “Oh-Oh” Breakdown; Bricks Due Out March 9, Just in Time to Influence All Kinds of Spring Teenage Love/Angst [Brooklyn Vegan]
Stream a Bunch of Tracks From Dubbed-Out San Francisco Electroheads oOoOO Which Are Equal in Overall Hotness, and Kind of Sounds the Way the Now Defunct Misshapes Parties Looked [Gorilla vs. Bear]
Watch (Washed Up?) Jam Band Phish Cover (Washed Up?) Indie Band TV on the Radio’s “Golden Age;” Feel Confused, then Slightly Outraged, then Wonder How Anyone Could Feel Anything But Indifferent Curiosity Towards This [Spin]
Stream New RJD2 Track, “Games You Can Win,” Which, Sadly, Sucks as Much as Anything RJ Has Done Over the Last Couple Years – Oversaturated, Boring Electropop; The Colossus is Released January 19, and Hopefully Will Be Better Than This Pile [Pitchfork]
Stream New Spoon Single, “Written in Reverse,” Which is Officially Released Tomorrow. The Song Is Super Bluesy, Frustatingly Faux British, and Actually Pretty Good (I Have Never Said this of a Spoon Song; Transference Released January 19 [NPR]
Watch Libertines/Babyshambles Frontman Pete Doherty Accidentally Sing the Nazi-era German National Anthem, Which, As I Don’t Speak German, Is Not Nearly as Funny as It Should Be [NME]
Blur Frontman Damon Albarn Announces New Gorillaz Album Plastic Beach, Which Will Feature Contributions From Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed (?), Mos Def (!) and, Most Excitedly, Bobby Womack; Elsewhere, If You Want to Feel At All Sexy Today, Click that Bobby Womack Link [Spin]
compiled by Max Sebela
Belle and Sebastian Tease at New Album On Their Website; Everything About this Tease is Completely Twee, From a Cute Little Pun, to a Cute Little Hat on Cute Little Stuart Murdoch’s Cute Little Head [Tiny Mix Tapes]
Stream Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” Oldham Playing I See a Darkness Highlight “Death to Everyone” Live; Oldham’s Live Album, Funtown Comedown, Released December 15, But Instead of Purchasing It, You Should Probably Just Re-Realize Just How Great I See a Darkness Is, Play it Several Times, Grow Depressed, and then Listen to Phoenix to Get Over It [Pitchfork]
Okkervil River Spin-off/Grandiose Folk Band Shearwater Announce Sixth Album, The Golden Archipelago, Released February 15 [Matablog]
Yeasayer Pioneer Technically Advanced Way of Making a NSFW Music Video, By Allowing You, the User, to Interact With Tripped Out Naked People; It’s Web 2.0, People…I Refuse to Be Impressed Until the Web Itself Conjures Up the Kind of Nudity I’d Like to Interact With While Listening to “Ambling Alp” (Hint, Internet: It’s Shania Twain) [Stereogum]
Jelly’s Pool Parties (Those Free Concerts at the Williamsburg Waterfront) Are in Trouble – But Where Else Will Jay, Solange, and Beyonce Go During Those Hot Summer Months? Where Else Can You See Music in Williamsburg?! Someone Think of the Children! (But Seriously, These Things are a Blast…Show Your Support and Email Senator Charles Schumer) [Brooklyn Vegan]
Watch Pleasantly Surreal Video for Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourgs’ “Heaven Can Wait,” Which Features Boxing, a Deformed Pygmy Gorilla, a Half-Shaved Beard, Astronaut Pancakes, and a Man Bathing in Fruity Pebbles (Perhaps Most Surprisingly, Proves Gainsbourg to Have Quite the Tennis Backhand; Good Form, Charlotte!) [Gorilla vs. Bear]
Lou Reed, Mo Tucker, Doug Yule, and David Fricke to Lead Discussion at New York Public Library on the History of The Velvet Underground on December 8, and Tickets Are Already Sold Out. This is All Well and Good, But Where’s John Cale? I’m Waiting For That Man (C’mon! Gimme a laugh; I’m Desperate Here) [NME]
Remember Those Poor Members of Jay Reatard’s Band Who Left Due to Jay’s Tyrannically Obnoxious Personality? They Joined Equally Tyrannical and Obnoxious Wavves. Elsewhere, I Believe I Have Proof of an Innate Human Desire for Masochism. [Pitchfork]
compiled by Max Sebela
19 Year Old Canadian Singer-Songwriter Taylor Mitchell Mauled by Coyotes at a National Park in Nova Scotia [Brooklyn Vegan]
Watch Video For New No Age, “Losing Feeling;” Contains a Surprising Amount of Motion For Being Shot From the Perspective of An Inanimate Mouse Toy (But Seriously Guys, Mouse Toys Don’t Move) [Gorilla vs. Bear]
As If Social Networking Hasn’t Begun to Simulate Enough of Your Former Life, Facebook Takes Away Foo Fighters (Foo Fighters Are Playing A Gig on Facebook…They Haven’t Been Absorbed Into Mark Zuckerberg’s Web Infrastructure) [NME]
Google Launches “Music Discovery Service” – Service Incapable of Providing Any Music Other Than Lady Gaga and Pet Sounds [Google]
Happy Birthday, Darling, We Got You Exactly What You Wanted: A Cartoonish Cake Recreation of Lil Wayne’s Skull…Yes, Honey, It Is Purple Drank Flavored. Yep, Daughter of Mine, It Scares Me Too [Idolator]
Stream New Four Tet Single, “Love Cry” – Is This a Return to Relevance From Kieran Hebden?! (No…No It Probably Isn’t) [Pitchfork]
Stream Rock Plaza Central (Which Rivals the Worst Band Name I’ve Ever Seen) Covering Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde Classic “I Want You” – One of the Better Dylan Covers I’ve Heard [Prefix]
Goth-Brits The xx Cancel a Bunch of Dates on Their Tour; Say They are “Exhausted” After CMJ (City of Dreams, Make It Here, Make It Anywhere, You Got The Heart, You’ll Get Your Name In Lights, Other Vaudevillian Expressions) [Pitchfork]
Peter Gabriel Covers Radiohead, Magnetic Fields, Bon Iver, and Lou Reed on New Album, Scratch My Back; Released Spring 2010 – It Remains to be Seen Whether Peter Gabriel Will Be the First to Experience “The Vampire Weekend Effect” [NME]
compiled by Max Sebela
October 3, 2009
#4: 1987
THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome again to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 1987, revolutions, how much glam metal sucked, and the importance of The Joshua Tree, Licensed to Ill, and Madonna in light of an indie-slumber. For earlier installments, go here.
Revolution stems from dissatisfaction: early American settlers would most likely never have separated from the British, if not for the taxes and arbitrary trade restrictions imposed after the threat of French invasion. The counterculture movement of the 1960s could have just been a handful of bummed-out stoners noodle dancing in an open field, if not for Vietnam (though we might have been spared the jam bands — and Vietnam — if this were the case). If the 70s weren’t watered down by prog rock and disco, four unrelated guys from Queens might not have declared themselves brothers, and coined a term that had been on the tongue of the collective American underground for a solid decade (The Ramones, “punk”).
But I digress. This week, I’m thinking about 1987. I have almost nothing to say about the year without doing some research. After doing that research, I now understand why I have no frame of reference for ‘87: it was all about pop metal. The theatrical, androgynous “glam” sound, popularized by T. Rex, Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, and The New York Dolls in the early 70s had mutated over the subsequent decade. Having been stripped of it’s shock value (Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies still rings particularly ghoulish to these ears), MTV-era heavy metal seemed a constant struggle between fashion-crazed prancing and Bacchanalian debauchery.
Seriously: has anyone else seen that Bret Michaels sound bite from the height of Poison’s career, where the camera zooms in on Michaels and he says, “Poison is LA fashion, and LA fashion is Poison”? That someone on the pop metal circuit (specifically, Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil, who inspired Aerosmith’s “(Dude) Looks Like a Lady”) managed to make Steven Tyler – who has looked like an old tranny since 1972 – look butch says something about gender bending in 80s rock. It was a Bizarro World kind of gender bending, though. Whereas 70s glam stars made androgyny sexy, 80s glam stars looked like old cokeheads; these guys from the 80s who are still active today look exactly the same. It’s interesting that punk and glam were both appropriated by MTV in the 80s, with the no-rules ethos of punk chewed up and spit out as New Wave, and the dangerous, seedy content of 70s glam (again, thinking specifically of Cooper here, but also Lou Reed’s gay dance party Transformer) was homogenized and respun as “LA Fashion.” Plenty of undeniably great (at least in terms of sales) pop metal records were released in 1987: Guns N Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, Def Leppard’s Jim Steinman-produced Hysteria, and Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls, to name just a few. And while these records are all the epitome of a teenage boy’s fantasy lifestyle, I feel like the ultimate lesson behind late 80s pop metal is: “You can fantasize, but you can never be this.”
More on #4: 1987
M. Ward Covers Chuck Berry [The Tripwire]
Jarvis Sets Up Camp Cocker [Idolator]
Kanye West and Jared Leto Really Are Working Together [Pitchfork]
Tour Bus Gone, But The Dears Persevere [Brooklyn Vegan]
The Blender Theater at Gramercy Goes on the Market [Idolator]
More Swine Flu Cancellations [Pitchfork]
Coldplay CDs FREE for Concert Attendees [The Tripwire]
Lou Reed Performs “Romeo Had Juliet” Live at WNYC [WNYC]
compiled by Elana Jacobs
