Hyperbole Time! The (Actual) Best Song of the 90s!

A coupe of weeks ago, the website devoted making people who don't really care that much about music appear as though they do issued one of their periodic "listicles." Its purpose, as with all their other lists, is to build canon and inspire debate. Whether you agree or disagree (or vehemently disagree), the mere discussion of their lists solidifies the authority of the source.

It's not for no reason that they are one of the few major websites without a comments section. It's as though they're saying:

You're welcome to have issue with our opinions but you can't air your grievances in our house. Feel free to quarrel with our choices in another public space of your choosing so it appears as though we are the center of universe. And if you could link us, that would be great too.

This particular list was "The Top Tracks of the 1990s," a topic I thought VH1 already covered definitively. Still, there was some anticipation for who would get top honors. Bets were made. I lobbied for Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments' "Negative Guest List" via Twitter and figured Nirvana were "too Rolling Stone" to get break the top 10. (And I was right!) Ultimately, the #1 slot went to a band which recently reunited and thus could possibly repeat the feat when the best of the 2010s list is made. Possibly with the same song, Michael Bolton-style.

I was tempted to make my own counter list. I eventually decided against this, partly because it would be hypocritical to decry these kinds of lists as dumb, arbitrary and ultimately meaningless and then make one of my own. (Not that this stopped me from contradicting myself throughout this piece anyway.) It's also because I'm told my lists are often viewed by readers as "bunch of bands I've never heard of," which makes the task of checking out any of said artists to appear more daunting than it actually is.

That being said, why not just give my unequivocal endorsement to one band? Surely, there's one group of the 90s that's both so criminally underappreciated and undeniably awesome that they deserve an unshared spotlight. And if that group isn't Silkworm, it would have to be Prisonshake.

Cleveland's Prisonshake had been around since 1987 and put out a slew of singles, EPs and a box set (no kidding) before releasing their first "proper" album, The Roaring Third, in 1993. This mammoth record got enough notice to receive a positive appraisal from Spin and inclusion in the Trouser Press Record Guide. However, Prisonshake's sound was more (early) Alice Cooper than Alice in Chains and failed to connect with anyone beyond a small percentage of the indie audience (which, as a whole, was much smaller now that it is today).

This was a pity because the record was simply a monster. It has all the strut, gnarl, grit and grandeur one could possibly want from a rock album. If the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion were the 1990s embodiment of rock n roll trash, Prisonshake equally celebrated this aesthetic but without the detachment. They played it straight and their convictions and sincerity granted them a greater power.

An you don't have to take my word for it. Here's Dusted's Nate Knabel on Prisonshake:

I think Prisonshake is like the axis around which all conversations about rock music should rotate. Like planet earth spinning far and wide in its revolution around the sun (that's what it does, right?), our conversations about rock music can pretty distant from the source. And it's winter right now. Really, I'd just like to tell every band begining with like Arcade Fire (who are just fine I guess) and extending to like Wilco, MGMT, I don't know, the Delta Sprit (and deifnitely Chromeo) to go get fucked. But it's okay, because Prisonshake remains a fixed inextinguishable source of heat. The Roaring Third is the best record of the 1990s.

The Roaring Third's "hit" was "2 Sisters," released separately as a 45. Was it the best song of the 1990s? Well, it was one of the best songs from one of the best albums of the 90s. And it definitely rocks harder than "Gold Soundz."



Now that your appetite is whetted, you can go purchase The Roaring Third from the Scat Records website for mere $10. It's a bargain at twice the price. Prisonshake have many other records available from Scat as well. If you want a quick sample of the rest of their work, Brushback at On Base On An Overthrow is a big Prisonshake fan and has posted many MP3 from their various releases.

But first and foremost, get yourself a copy of The Roaring Third. Your record collection is not of museum quality without it.

53 Years Ago Today...

...Mark Edward Smith was begat into this existence, making the word a much more colorful and rewarding place/





Despite the evidence in the right hand corner of the above that it has happened, it's worth nothing that I've never seen a Fall video on 120 Minutes on VH1 Classic. Not that I watch 120 Minutes on VH1 Classic all that often. Though "not all that often" is still more often than I'd like to admit.

New Release: Stroke-Songs for Chris Knox

On Tuesday, Merge Records released Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox. The 2-CD tribute album is a benefit for Knox, who suffered a stroke last year. I'm not sure what New Zealand's health care system is like (I'm going to assume it's still better than that of the US), but all proceeds are going to Knox, who could apparently use the money.

The album is sure to receive some degree of attention, being that it contains cuts from the recently-departed Jay Reatard and the always-reclusive Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, his first official release since God-knows-when. Also contributing are many of Knox's New Zealand contemporaries (The Chills, The Bats, The Verlaines, David and Hamish Kilgour of the Clean) and more than handful of current indie rock superstars (AC Newman, Yo La Tengo, the Mountain Goats among others), all of which gives credence to Knox's influence over the past three decades.

Hopefully, this will not only ameliorate Knox's recovery but also garner him some additional fans. Knox's discography with the Tall Dwarfs, Toy Love and as a solo artist is extremely impressive, hitting a sweet (but not sugary) spot between perfect pop melodies and lo-fi noisy weirdness more consistently than just about anyone since. In particular, the Tall Dwarfs' Hello Cruel World (which collects their first four EPs) has long been a favorite in my household and is perhaps the best entry point for the world of Chris Knox.

Below are a pair of videos for songs both available on Hello Cruel World. Also, be sure to check out Merge's Stroke page for clips of each song from the tribute album. Full versions are, of course, available for purchase.

Avant Garde Is For The Birds

Quite literally, actually...



French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot simultaneously creates something more rockin' than most of her countrymen who were actually attempting rock, and reminds me that I never should have bothered to pay money to go to the Cooler at any point during my youth.

Is It Just Me Or Can This Winter Not End Soon Enough?

This past month has been a rough one for the good guys. Between Conan losing The Tonight Show, the death of Jay Reatard, the tragedy in Haiti, the state of Massachusetts electing a right wing piece of beefcake to the Senate and our country's further devolution into corporate feudalism, this decade is shaping up to be even worse than the last one, which, by all reasonable standards, was pretty shitty. And, of course, there's the cold. Oh, the cold.

Perhaps we should all take some travel advice from the Young Canadians, who probably know from cold. Even if you can't afford a vacation to a warmer climate right now, this little slice of mildy profane pop-punk just might cure your seasonal affected depression.

Future Shock Revisited

Or best new music vs best music of all time, Part II

December... when everyone around me seems to be participating in the same end-of-year activity while I procrastinate the inevitable. But enough about Xmas shopping.

Many music writers and publications are now releasing their Best of the Year and Best of the Decade lists. I suppose sharing mine is somewhat obligatory. I already did a preliminary best of the aughts earlier this year, which I am loathe to revise and rank despite the fact it might be the only list of its kind to not include Wilco, Radiohead or the Arcade Fire. I will, however, add a new category to spotlight a handful of albums I missed the first time around:

Oldie Indies Have Fundie
Yo La Tengo And Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Silkworm Italian Platinum
Guided By Voices Earthquake Glue

I could probably also include a defense of the all-but-forgotten Hot Hot Heat's Make Up the Breakdown, which may have edged out the Strokes' debut for the best album of the last-night's-fucking-party, new-wave-of-the-new-wave, cocaine-and-tight-pants aesthetic so prevalent in the early 00s.

As for the music of 09, this sort of wound up the year of records I liked but didn't love. The album I (and more than a few others) were most anticipating this year was Tyvek's debut full-length. The general consensus was that its somewhat scattershot and sprawling nature was a letdown after the focused brilliance of their initial singles. I can't necessarily disagree. It's "merely" one of the best records of the year instead of the life-affirming event for which some were hoping.

The very mild disappointment didn't end there. Meth Teeth debut full-length didn't match the excellence of last year's Bus Rides EP, despite duplicating a couple of its songs. Likewise, Thomas Function, Vivian Girls and Thee Oh Sees all put out decent records that weren't as good as 2008's respective efforts. The Thermals follow up to The Body, The Blood, The Machine didn't have the impact of that record. (Though, post-Bush's America, could we expect it to?) The Box Elders debut was fine but just a little on the pedestrian side for my taste. I suppose I was expecting something a bit more "out there" after hearing the band talked up such a degree.

Nevertheless, I liked all of the above well enough and recommend that you hear them. I'll still take them over the lo-fi-approximated-for-emo-kids of Japanadroids, that obnoxious Das Racist song or whatever the hell Pitchfork winds up choosing as its record of the year.

There were some records that didn't let me down though.

Bucking the above trend, the Nothing People's second album is arguably stronger than last year's debut. The new Reigning Sound was well worth the wait. I dug the Girls album in spite of the hype. The Mayyors 12" lived up to the hype. Ditto for Kurt Vile's Matador debut. Times New Viking returned to form. Jay Reatard finally delivered a proper (and worthy) follow up to Blood Visions. The Fresh and Onlys' Woodist album impressed. Grass Widow mixed angularity and melodicism in way that never fails to charm me. Pissed Jeans dropped another impressive chunk of ugliness on the world. The new (and final?) Marked Men album delivered exactly what you'd expect, which isn't a bad thing at all. Daniel Francis Doyle and Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves both released albums that totally flew under the radar but are well worth your attention.

Well, it appears there are over 10 records above, which seems to be the minimum round number needed for an end of the year list. I don't really feel like itemizing though. Why don't you do it for me and I'll let you know how close you are? I even bolded the band names to make it easy for you.

While you're busy contemplating the 21st century, I'm going to push the clock back about 30 years. I suppose I should really stop being surprised that obscure bands from New Zealand have videos, even if no one in the US saw them at the time. The prior discovery of clips by the Verlaines and This Kind of Punishment yielded no small amount of amazement from me but you'd think they would have prepared me for the clip below. However, this song pre-dates either of those videos (and MTV, for that matter) and it's for song from 3-track single, not a full album. Plus, it's not even the A-side!



With this wealth of videos for Flying Nun bands, how come I never saw any on 120 Minutes when I was growing up and taking notes on the whole "alternative rock" thing. It would have saved me a couple of years, at least. Dave Kendall was holding out on us, the ponce.

A Man and His Books

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Girls Vs Girls

Or best new music vs best music of all time.

Though I've been hearing about San Francisco's Girls for a while now, until recently I never made an effort to listen to the band. Some of this is due to the public drubbing the band took on a thread on the Terminal Boredom message board (an invaluable source for music info and sub-Comedy Central Roast juvenile mockery). More of a factor is that band shares a name with the excellent defunct Boston new wave/post punk band, The Girls, and I felt some kind of weird and perhaps misguided allegiance.

Boston's Girls only released one single during their lifetime, the phenomenal "Jeffery, I Hear You." It was released on Pere Ubu's Hearthan label and it's easy to hear why Ubu felt a kinship. The Girls similarly mixed the electronic experiments of Eno's Roxy Music and the motorik of Krautrock with a more straightforward primal rock thump, at times resembling a more severe version of Ubu's Ohio neighbors Devo. The A-side of the single was collected along with a bunch of the band's demo material on a posthumous release in the mid-80s entitled Reunion. (It wasn't.) This essential document has been out-of-print for years and never released on CD. Fortunately, the good folks at Mutant Sound have made the album available for free MP3 download if you want to experience the glory.

It's a tall order for these new Girls if they want to usurp the title for best band with that moniker. (There have been others as well.) I don't think I would give the band's debut full length, Album (we can only hope they're fans of Flipper and not mid-period Public Image Ltd.), the 9.1 out of 10 it received on Pitchfork. This partially because I round down but also because I don't think record merits quite such a high grade. Girls' band of progressive yet somehow guileless pop is mostly effective and impressive in its breadth, even if it does get a bit cutesy and/or indulgent on occasion. Still, I've probably listened to Album just about as much as any record released this year, which may indicate that it's still growing on me. In any case, it's an undoubtedly promising debut.

(Incidentally, Tom Breihan's Pitchfork review is a prime example of what's wrong with the current state of music criticism. After beginning the piece by detailing the the trials and tribulations of Girls frontman Christopher Owens, Breihan acknowledges that this bit of backstory has next to nothing to do with the band's music, writing "you don't need to know one word of that first paragraph to hear it as what it is." Is that so? Then why the hell did you bother telling us?)

2009 Girls:


1979 Girls (ironically culled from a two year old Matblog post):

Sky Saxon RIP

Sky Saxon, leader of 60s "flower punks" the Seeds and author of one of my favorite songs of all time (see below), passed away this morning. Literally a few moments after I heard the news, CNN reported that Farrah Fawcett also met her demise today, so it's looking unlikely that Sky's passing will get any coverage from any mainstream media outlets. This is unfortunate as surely the composer of the below made a considerable contribution to culture:




Update: Obviously, just a few a hours later, even bigger news broke.

If This Is the Punishment...

...I'll skip the reward.

I was just about ready to post the CD twofer of In The Same Room and 5 By Four from This Kind of Punishment as an Out-of-Print Digital Relic when I found someone had already beaten me to the punch. This goal of mine to never be redundant is probably a quixotic gesture. So I'll post the video already posted on the Doledrums blog and tell you head over there to download the full collection rather than pay $50 to get in on Amazon, though as you can tell from the evidence below, 50 bucks is probably a bargain for shit of this quality.

I Just Saw the New Star Trek Movie...

...and all I got was the flimsiest pretense to post a YouTube clip. No, not that one. This one:



In all seriousness, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek was a lot of fun. (Watchable, even.) It's miles better than any of the Star Wars prequels in terms of... well, pretty much everything.

Speaking of Mr. Abrams, I have some theories on last night's season finale of Lost. Most of them involve nanotechnology and a snowglobe.

Less (nerd) talk, more rock... coming soon.

Hyperbole Time! Ireland's Greatest Rock Band

Yes, their name begins with a "U" but they're not a bunch of pompous jerks:



Happy St. Patty's Day!

How She (Almost Accidentally) Wrote "Elastic Man"

(The face that gives Simon Cowell nightmares.)

From the old news but new to me department (from UK tabloid the Sun, link courtesy of Failed Pilot):

THEY may share the same surname but that’s it for similarities between angelic Britain’s Got Talent teen FARYL SMITH and gnarled FALL frontman MARK E SMITH.

So imagine Universal Records’ surprise when they received the first shipment of Faryl’s debut CD from the pressing plant.

A cock-up in production meant that instead of delicate balladry in the honeyed tones of their recently signed youngster, what actually ended up on discs bearing her artwork and info were the grumblings of Mark and his fellow Manc veterans’ 2008 album Imperial Wax Solvent.

Needless to say, Universal chiefs weren’t best pleased.

My spy tells me: “They had ordered hundreds of copies and they were staggered by what was on it.

“They have had severe words with the pressing plant.”

I suppose there's some kind record collecting nerd fantasy that thousands of tween girls would hear Mark E and the Fall and have their minds blown and suddenly "get it" ala Mona Simpson and Joe Namath's hair. I'll admit it's a pretty silly thought to entertain but it's also one of the pretenses under which I publish this blog.

Hence:

The Unblinking Ear Podcast: Snow Day!

(It was either this or a picture of the guy who did "Informer")

Et tu, Staten Island Chuck? On the very same day that New York City's own weather-predicting groundhog got legal representation to protect his name and likeness (a story which raises such important questions as "Does anyone at the Staten Island Zoo realize that 'Charles G. Hogg' sounds a lot like 'Charles Jihad' and "Don't Quinnipiac pollsters have anything better to do?"), the small mammal had his own incompetence proven. Despite his prediction that we get an early spring, the NYC-area was hit a blizzard which forced the city's public schools to close to due snow for the first time in five years.

Of course, having that day off allows people to perhaps catch up on some chores, take a mid-afternoon nap, spend a good chunk of the day watching Spongebob Squarepants, or making a new podcast. (Ed. Note: I did three of the four.)


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Your Daily Affirmation

Courtesy of Will Shatter and Flipper.

Now that you're in a great mood, why don't you head over WFMU and give them some money? Their fund raising marathon begins on Monday. If you need incentive to pledge other than the noble cause of sponsoring non-corporate radio and some better-than-PBS-level swag, a list of DJ premiums is now up. Besides, donating will be great karma for you. Don't pretend like you don't need it.

Lux Interior 1946-2009

There are bands that are influential and there are bands so seminal they seem to birth entire subcultures by themselves. I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by using the term "psychobilly," and I'll admit that after couple of brilliant records the law of diminishing returns set in, but any artist since who's harnessed the raw power of primal rock n roll and wedded it with punk irreverence owes the Cramps a debt of gratitude. Their singer, Lux Interior, passed away today.

(I'm) Stranded (In the Office)

Since there's no song called "Pixel Shufflin' Blues," I'll just let the Saints classic explain why I haven't been posting as much as I'd like.



There is actual content forthcoming on this blog, including a new podcast, which should be up early next week. In the meantime, why don't you check out Doug Mosurock's best singles of 2008 podcast or give a listen to the incredible session AC Newman recorded for WFMU's Cherry Blossom Clinic?

(Not) An SNL Digital Short

Kind of a weird choice for Andy Samberg and The Lonely Island to follow up "Jizz in my Pants." And is it me or have the budgets for this stuff gone way down? Maybe it's the economy.

Luckily, the good folks at Victim of Time have the scoop.

God Save The Cream(y, Rich, Buttery Taste)

(Video courtesy of Chunklet.)



It's a long way from "There must be meaning/Behind the moaning/Spreading tales/Like coffin nails" but I guess 30 years will mellow a guy out.

Hyperbole Time! The (Actual) Greatest Cover Song Ever

A few weeks back Jason Heller at the Onion AV Club offered his opinion on the Greatest Cover Song Ever. I'll give him points for being idiosyncratic though if we're talking cover songs on the B-side of a Touch & Go seven inch from the 90s, I'll personally take Mule's cover of "To Love Somebody."

However, the greatest cover song ever is actually this:



In the era in which we live, I certainly don't want to fan the flames of racial intolerance. H owever, I will note this may be the only known example of a white English rock band doing a song better than a black American soul singer. Apparently, Richie Unterberger feels much the same way.

Actually, hold that thought. I forgot about "Shack Up."