Reformat the Planet

For one week only Pitchfork Media is showing the documentary Reformat the Planet about the burgeoning Chiptune scene. Don't know what that is? Here's the trailer.



Check out the entire film here. It's pretty amazing. Remember, it'll only be available for a week, so watch it while you can.

2008 Brings the Rock (So Far)

There's been a lot of really great straight up Rock music already this year, and instead of telling you about it all, here are a bunch of videos, half of which I stole from Pitchfork.Tv. Not all of these were made this year, but they do all feature music that has been released in 2008.


Blood On the Wall


Black Mountain


Torche


Jay Reatard


The Black Keys


My Morning Jacket


Boris

Graffiti for the 21st Century

Check this out.



Cool, huh? Wanna know how to do it? Go here. Wanna know more about modern forms of Graffiti? Check out the Graffiti Research Lab. They made the video you just saw. That specific page is here.

These people are on to something. Get involved.

Chart Watch: Creed

Since I started the week off with a Chart Watch, I thought I'd end it with one. Here now, is one of the most pointless reviews of any album I've ever read in my life. Enjoy!

Title: My Own Prison (1997)
Label: Wind Up
Genre: Alternative

Pro-Social Content: The Band Empathizes with a girl forced to grow up in a dysfunctional family ("Sister") and logns for racial equality and brotherhood among mankind ("One"). The Social commentary "In America" looks askance at abortion, hypocrisy, the worship of money, and promiscuity. Otherwise fatalistic, "My Own Prison" acknowledges Christ's sacrificial death as the pathway to eternal life.

Objectionable Content: Bitter disillusionment is manifested in numerous lyrics confessing misery ("Torn"), anger ("One"), and hopelessness ("Illusion"). "Pity for a Dime" finds lead vocalist Scott Stapp wallowing in self-doubt, confessing a loss of faith. "Ode" expresses self-destructive nihilism. There's also a profane use of God's name on "What's This Life For."

Summary/Advisory: Lots of searching, but positive statements are well overshadowed by an outright rejection of biblical truth. Stapp says, "If it weren't for music, I might have ended up some crazed street preacher." Rock-n-roll is my religion." Not exactly the narrow path. Keep teens out of Prison.

What the fuck? Who on earth looks this deeply into Scott Stapp’s lyrics? I’ll give you one good reason not to listen to Creed and it’s a real simple one: they’re one of the worst fucking bands to have ever come into existence! To be fair, this review might have been well intended, since Creed were immensely popular at the end of the 20^th century, and anyone trying to keep people from listening to Creed is alright with me, regardless of their reasoning. I think my biggest problem with this entry is that he’s giving Stapp way too much credit as a songwriter. Every criticism he has of this album could just as easily be applied to Pearl Jam’s Ten, which is, without a doubt, a vastly superior album in every possible sense (regardless of your feelings toward Pearl Jam, you cannot deny this is true).

Still, I feel this whole review could have been made wholly simpler if he’d just said “Scott Stapp is a fraud and a poor excuse for an Eddie Vedder impersonator, and Creed sound, at best, like the world’s worst Pearl Jam cover band. The only threat they really pose to your teenagers is to their intelligence. If you want to keep your kids out of trouble, don’t let them be the ‘Creed kid’ at school.” It’s simple, effective, and spares us from having to delve into the rather shallow waters of Scott Stapp’s lyrical ineptitude. Also, “Keep teens out of Prison,” may, in fact, be the single lamest closing line in this entire book.

Lost and Found: Neil Young

Today's Lost and Found is a two-for-one, mainly because I couldn't decide which Neil Young album I wanted to talk about. Only Neil Young could have such an effect on me. So with out further ado I give you Time Fades Away and Trans.

Neil Young Time Fades Away
So what do you do if you've just released the critically acclaimed best selling album of 1972? Well, if you're Neil Young you launch a nation wide tour during which you play nothing off that album, opting instead for completely new material. Then you release a live album from that tour, completely baffling both fans and critics. Of course, that's only part of the story.

After Harvest was released in 1972, Young suddenly found himself with more fame and fortune than he knew what to do with. Most people would probably relish such success, but Young merely seemed to shy away from it. Then on November 18, 1972, Danny Whitten, guitarist for the band Crazy Horse, died of an apparent Heroin overdose, not long after having been fired during the preparations of what would become the Time Fades Away tour.

The first album in what is known as the Ditch Trilogy, Time Fades Away finds an artist who's not only trying to make sense of his new found celebrity status, but is also coming to terms with the death of a close friend. Young was apparently drunk for most of the tour, much to the frustration of his fellow band mates. As is the general theme of the Lost and Found segment of this blog, the album, which features guest appearances from both David Crosby and Graham Nash, was a total flop. As far as anyone can tell, that was OK with Young, who seemed to be looking for a fast exit from the spotlight. Unfortunately, the travesty does not end there. Possibly due to the use of poor techniques and unreliable equipment during the mastering process Time Fades Away has never been released on CD. Apparently there's a good chance it never will be, since there's almost no way of ever recovering the original master recordings, which were already quite muddy to begin with. This is quite unfortunate since the record contains the only recorded versions of some of Young's more intimate songs including, "Yonder Stands the Sinner," "Love in Mind," "Don't Be Denied," and "Journey Through the Past." As of now the only way to Hear Time Fades Away is to get your hands on a the vinyl, which is certainly hard to find.


Neil Young Trans
Often considered by critics to be one of Young's worst albums, Trans is not the misstep it's cracked up to be. Released in December of 1982, Trans was the first of five albums Young released on Geffen records, none of which were successful for either Young or Geffen. Actually, in 1984, Geffen sued Young for failing to release a commercially accessible album as per his contract. Regardless of Young's intentions behind the five Geffen albums, there certainly seems to be little to link them, except that they're all generally uncharacteristic albums for Young.

Trans is certainly no exception. Running his vocals through a Vocoder and opting to replace his defining guitar sound for synthesizers and a drum machine, Young was clearly stepping out of his comfort zone, but it actually pays off more than you'd think. The opening track, "Little Thing Called Love," as the only straight forward rocker on the album (and the only track to not feature synthesizers or the Vocoder) is actually one of the lesser tracks on the album. Aside from a completely digital reworking of Young's "Mr. Soul" (originally a hit for Buffalo Springfield), songs like "Computer Age," "Sample and Hold," and "Transformer Man" are all very stronge efforts, and sound absolutely nothing like anything Young has done before or since. If anything, these songs have more in common with Kraftwerk and Joy Division than anything else. "Transformer Man," incidentally, has had a life of its own as it is the only track to have survived Trans. The song made an appearance during Young's MTV Unplugged appearance and has also been covered by Sonic Youth.

The Truth is that Trans was such a drastic change from the rest of Young's repertoire that when it was first released no one knew what to make of it. In retrospect it feels more like an artist taking chances and testing his limits in uncharted territories. The results are somewhat varied, but overall successful, and Trans definitely deserves a second chance to redeem its place in rock history.

Lost and Found: The Fugs

The Fugs The Fugs
No single album better encompasses the feel of the '60s than The Fugs. Not a pretty one, but an honest one. Part political protest, part hippie drug culture, part scum bag dirty humor, this album offers what is probably one of the most honest pictures of what it was like to live in a post-Kennedy, pre-Nixon America. Initially touted as the single most offensive rock album, The Fugs' second album is a dirty, raucous, aggressive in-your-face album that's intentionally difficult. Why was the album so controversial? Well, when you consider that the album was released in 1966, song titles like "Skin Flowers" and "Kill for Peace" should be a good indication. Need more proof? Here's a video of a Fugs performance from the film Chappaqua, released the same year.

When the Fugs aren't protesting the war they're trying to make the listener laugh uncomfortably, or at least amuse themselves. It's really hard to take a song titled "Dirty Old Man" seriously, which is of course the point. Oh yeah, and then there's that 11 minute closing track, "Virgin Forest." Again, keep in mind that in 1966 you were hard pressed to get a Rock n' Roll audience to listen to any song longer than three minutes. Especially one that's full of strange noises and the sounds of several members of the band simultaneously chanting "gobble gobble" (referred to on the back of the record as the "Gobble Chorus"), well any sober audience, anyway. If The Fugs sounds like artistic brilliance to you, that's because it is. If it doesn't, that's understandable, but you should probably get out more.

Lost and Found: The Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers Roots
Originally released in 1968, Roots was initially a commercial flop for the Everly Brothers. Containing none of their hits and only one original piece, the album failed to widen the Everly's audience as it was intended. Time however, has been good to Roots as it is now generally considered to be one the best early examples of the Country Rock genre. A loose concept album, Roots expounds upon the idea behind 1958s Songs Our Daddy Taught Us and finds the Everly's once again covering songs by the artists who influenced them like Merle Haggard and Jimmie Rodgers. It also finds them covering songs by more contemporary artists such as Randy Newman's "Illinois" and Glen Campbell's "Less of Me." Taking it a step further, the album is also interspersed with old clips of Don and Phil as young boys conversing with their parents on their father Ike's radio program, pulled from the family's own home recordings.

The production here is understated and simple, often featuring the brothers on acoustic guitars with little accompaniment. There's a very relaxed feel to the record even on the fully arranged pieces such as their take on Jimmie Rodger's "T for Texas" (complete with a wah-wah intro and a fuzzed out guitar duel). There are no true highlights to this album and thats on purpose. The Everly's conceived Roots as an album piece and it is certainly meant to be taken that way. Every song on this record is equally strong in performance and importance to the overall picture. A more beautiful and personal record you will not find in the Everly's catalog. You'll also be hard pressed to find an album this good in the whole of the Country Rock genre.

Lost and Found : The Outsiders

The story of the forgotten album is nothing new. For whatever reason many great albums were not initially received with the acclaim they deserved, either critical or commercial. Pet Sounds for example was more or less a commercial flop, but has become legendary as one of the most auspicious and brilliant undertakings in the history of Rock n' Roll. Nick Drake's entire catalog didn't see commercial success until "Pink Moon" was used in a Volkswagen commercial. Some albums were initially successful when first released, but for whatever reason lacked the staying power necessary to last in the ever changing face of popular music. And then there are those records which simply were never recognized critically and simply stalled in record sales. Throughout the week I'll be writing about a few select albums that have lived a life time of obscurity. Today I give you: the Outsiders.


The Outsiders Happening 'Live!'
Allmusic.com said of the Outsiders, "If any two-hit, dance-oriented band from the '60s ever deserved a crack at being voted in [the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame], the Outsiders do," and that couldn't be more true. The Cleveland, Ohio quintet only released three official studio albums and had a hit with the song "Time Won't Let Me," which peaked at number five on Billboard's Top 100.

Released on Capitol Records in August of 1967, Happening 'Live!' is cleverly misleading as it is not a live album in the conventional sense (hence the quotation marks around the word "live"). For a long time it was not uncommon for record labels to release live albums that were actually just compilations of studio recordings with audience noise mixed in. With Happening 'Live!" the Outsiders took it a step further by removing any and all over dubs from the tracks, stripping them of any horns, strings, or generally anything that couldn't have been played by the five members of the band live on stage. To further the illusion, lead singer Sonny Geraci introduces all of the songs and the band as though they actually were performing in front of a hoard of screaming girls.

All of that would really just seem like little more than gimmicks were it not for the quality of material on the record. Aside from the band's two hits and a few songs from their three studio albums, Happening also includes a handful of previously unreleased material such as a fairly straight forward cover of the Beatles' "Michelle." However, the real stand out tracks here are a fantastic cover of the Temptation's "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," the stripped-to-its-roots version of "Time Won't Let Me," another original called "Girl in Love," which has a poor man's Brian Wilson feel to it, and a kind of garage-band-meets-lounge-act cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria." At the end of it all Happening 'Live!' turns out to be one of the friendlier and more easily accessible concept albums of the 1960s. On a funny note, if you look closely at the album cover, the Outsiders appear to have two bass players. I have yet to find any explanation for this, whatsoever.

Chart Watch: Radiohead

Title: OK Computer (1997)
Label: Capitol
Genre: Alternative/ Industrial
Pro-Social Content: An isolated line on "Paranoid Android" states, "God loves his children."

Objectionable Content: "Exit Music (For a Film)" finds lead singer Thom Yorke waking a girl in the middle of the night to rebel against her parents and run off with him ("We hope your rules and wisdom choke you"). Anarchy and what sounds like a man's last words prior to committing suicide inhabit "No Surprises."

Summary/Advisory: According to the band's press materials, "OK Computer is a meandering, mournful, miserable celebration of loss and the unknown which aches relentlessly." Well put. The entire disc seems like the soundtrack for a despairing hallucination—dark and bleak. Even positive thoughts on "Lucky" and "Fitter Happier" seem sarcastic the way they're moaned. Don't let youngsters log onto OK Computer.

Yes, back by popular demand, it's Chart Watch. It's really hard to know where to begin with this one. Never mind that our authors clearly missed the point of one of the most important albums of the '90s, they can't even catch an obvious reference to Shakespeare. Yes, "Exit Music (For a Film)" does, in fact, tell the story of a boy and girl who decide their young love is bigger than the will of their forbidding, feuding families. Sound familiar? That's because it's not unlike the basic plot of one Romeo & Juliet, which also just so happens to be the "film" to which the song title refers. So if Thom Yorke, in his song, is encouraging the youth of today to rebel against their parents and run away, then I guess Shakespeare is further encouraging them to commit suicide. Following that logic, did you guys know that the Brothers Grimm's telling of "Little Red Cap" (more popularly known as "Little Red Riding Hood") is riddled with seriously perverse sexual overtones? Or that even the Bible itself is full of premarital sex, adultery, sodomy, incest, and murder? Nothing is safe! Parents don't ever let your children read or listen to anything ever! Keep them locked in the basement until their 31st birthday if you must!

Also, this entry contains one of my favorite closing lines ever.