FANS 2.0

In some cases, video really does kill the radio star.

My favorite band is old and ugly.

Or at least that’s the case for my favorite member. Harsh, I know. But compared to today’s annoyingly skinny, nubile poster-boys of rock, I could care less… in my minds’ eye, he’s hot, hot, hot. Oh, and also one hell of a guitar player. Call me smitten. Read more...

A Triple-A radio programmin g veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

NUMERO DEUCE: MY FAVORITE MIX TAPE

Let me tell you this story...

Ed Hamell picked up the guitar at age 7 and started writing songs not long after. In his early 20s, Mr. Hamell was the front man and writer for an original band, but local bands were a dime a dozen in the tough, working class neighborho ods in Syracuse, NY. So he launched a one-man act called Hamell on Trial. Six albums (plus a live one) and countless shows later, Hamell himself is one of a kind. Catch him on tour this summer in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

WHITE MEN AND THEIR TOYS

I don't think the super rich are evil, but I fear they are out of touch--and that's dangerous.

Car traffic on the interstate highways has thinned out a bit in recent months, but the number of privately owned Prevost tour buses seems to have remained constant. The Prevost, squared off and boring looking, long ago replaced the more flamboyant looking Silver Eagle as the preeminent mode of band transportation, but most of the Prevosts I see on the highway don't appear to be hauling bands. Bands don't tow cars behind their buses, and most of the buses I see have some sort of SUV in tow. No, these buses, burning $4.50 a gallon diesel by the tanker load, are hauling rich people, and there are a whole bunch of them. One of these guys is a fan of ours who likes to drive his bus up from Lake of the Ozarks Missouri to Kansas City whenever we play at Knuckleheads. Our stock rises when he shows up because he parks his bus in front of the club and everybody thinks it's ours. Once, he came up towing his BMW. Somewhere in the blackness south of Jeff City, the driver noticed an orange glow in the side mirror and pulled over to find that the BMW was on fire. The owner simply unhitched the Beamer and they left it burning by the road.

It's amusing to hear about such extravagance in isolated incidents, but when I see all those buses pulling all those cars, burning all that expensive diesel merely for the amusement of the owners, I can start to go full-on Commie. Why do they get such big toys, and at what cost to the rest of us?

Meanwhile, back in Austin, the downtown skyline changes daily. We return from a six-week run to find that yet another high-rise condo, units all sold before construction commenced, has been completed. Where is all this money coming from? The economy is bad right? The condos are messing with the music scene. Condo buyers don't want to live near music venues, even here in the city that bills itself as “Live Music Capitol of the World,” so the developers are pressuring the city to lower the noise ordinance to 70 decibels at property line, way quieter than your lawyer neighbor's new Harley, and crippling for a music venue across the street from a construction site. Some clubs manage to get grandfathered in. Some don't. Those that do can expect the rules to change.

I was at a party in one of those new condo units once. The place turned out to be a sort of urban retreat for a couple who mostly lived on a high fenced ranch out in the hill country. The condo was one more toy. When you get that rich, is anything essential? I asked the fellow what he did for work. He said he was a cedar chopper. File under “Oh, please.” Cedar choppers were flinty, wiry fellows with gnarled up hands from gripping axes who, in the time of my grandfather, supplied ranchers with cedar fence posts. They rarely chopped cedar off their own land, as they generally had none. Now, in the era of mass produced metal fence posts, cedar chopping is an endeavor reserved for presidents on a photo op and rich guys whose wives want them out of the house for a while. I never did find out where his money came from.

The guy who left his Beamer burning by the road owns a club on Lake of the Ozarks. We played there once. I would never have guessed that there were so many 50-foot yachts in the middle of Missouri. The Mississippi Gulf Coast was once referred to as the Redneck Riviera, but I think that title now should go to Lake of the Ozarks, a vast manmade impoundment on the Missouri and Osage Rivers, which I'm told, has more navigable coastline than California, due to all the feeder creeks and secondary rivers that it backs up. But the yachts, My God they're everywhere. Most are wrapped in white plastic, perched on trailers in the lots in front of the dealerships that line the roads around the lake. Many more are lined up in slips down in the marinas, and quite a few are floating around in the coves, their owners and their friends lounging on the decks, drinks in hand, eyeing one another across the brown water. I asked why no one seemed to be fishing and was told that the fishing wasn't much good around there.

So the main sport seemed to be one-upmanship. The talk was all about who had the biggest boat. Someone pointed across the cove to an amphitheatre where some big touring act had recently played. The amphitheatre faced the lake, and there were slips where, for a fee, one could pull one's 50-foot yacht in and watch the show from one's very own deck chair. Virtually no one came to our show, but the club owner paid us well and provided the right wine back stage, a rare occurrence. He said he was sorry we hadn't gotten there in time to go out on his boat. This guy looked like he could have actually been a cedar chopper. By his wiry build and hillbilly twang, I guessed he had been raised in poverty, busted his way out of it in a big way, and was now proceeding to have himself a time.

I don't think the super rich are inherently evil, but I fear they are out of touch, and there is a danger in their being out of touch. Everyday, I see the physical evidence of extreme wealth sliding into the hands of a few. My fear is that those condo owners and Prevost drivers, despite the fact that they make up a very small percentage of the population, will be calling the shots for all of us—elites always do somehow, even in more or less democratic countries. How do you convince people who can afford to leave their burning cars beside the highway to care whether or not the rest of us can afford health care? Can they be made to understand that the price of the diesel they pump into those buses on their way to Disneyland affects the price of food, catastrophically for some. It's a hard sell, especially here in the States, where we still have enough room to isolate ourselves from people we believe to be different from ourselves. It's easy to pretend that other people's problems won't effect us, as long as they're out of pistol range or over a wall.

Singer-songwriter James McMurtry lives in Austin, Texas. When he’s not touring, you can see him at the Continental Club every Wednesday, ‘round about midnight. His latest album, Just Us Kids, is out now on Lightning Rod Records.

MEAT GROUP

Joe D’Amato’s Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals is more of a sausage fest.

Not that the world couldn’t use another scathing expose on the dangers of nuclear power in third world countries—you just wouldn’t expect it to come under the title Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals (Severin Film, 89 minutes). And certainly not from Joe D’Amato, a director whose previous career highlight involved a woman jacking off a Clydsedale. But this 1978 skin flick gets so sidetracked on social issues and island politics that it forgets to deliver on the title’s promise of death and debauchery. Things start promisingly enough with some foreplay involving the aforementioned tropical fruit and a surprise castration, but our guide through the overly plotted story, Sirpa Lane (infamous for her own animal act in Walerian Borowczyk’s The Beast), is far from masturbatory material. Co-star “Melissa” spends most of the film topless, but her sex scenes are such a timid touch ‘n grope act that the occasional flash of full frontal male nudity is actually a welcome break in the monotony. In the plus column, D’Amato composes some classy shots and the editing is intermittently inspired. That’s still not enough to make Papaya worth watching, but composer Stelvio Cipriani funktastic score makes the whole thing worth listening to, anyway.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

EVERYONE KNOWS IT’S WENDY

Dave Thomas, You Were A God Among Men

When I was in college, my girlfriend (who foolishly became my wife some years later) worked at Wendy’s. At closing time, I’d tap on the drive-through window, and she’d let me in so could gorge myself on all the free leftover burgers, ice cream, and chili I could cram down my gullet. Eat. Puke. Eat again. Jesus, I loved Wendy’s. Still do. That’s why I just about shit up my back when I learned about Joe Wendroth’s book, Letters to Wendy’s (Wave Books, 2000). Here’s the fiendishly clever idea: The book is a series of notes to Wendy’s management, ostensibly written on comment cards, from an unnamed narrator who sings the praises of the fast food chain. He also posits a few suggestions, such as establishing Wendy’s as a place for public executions. It’s sort of like a collection of prose poems, really. Sometimes disgusting, sometimes pornographic, always a thrill, the book can be read in about the same time it takes a typical Wendy’s crew to close down the restaurant for a night—couple of hours, max. My newfound purpose in life is to read this book while at Wendy’s, and film the whole thing for YouTube. Look for it.

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

OLDIE OF THE WEEK: TOMMY PAGE

Teenpop done well? Yeah, actually.

Even as new CDs arrive by mail, I’m always compelled to pull out old ones on a whim. Previously I wrote about Team Dresch and Those Bastard Souls, but this week I’m obsessed with someone a bit less reputable: Tommy Page.

His single “I’ll Be Your Everything” was a number-one hit in 1990, but it sounds like crap today. “A Shoulder to Cry On” has weathered the years much more gracefully, even if it remains a towering monument to the power of schmaltz. A new Jersey-born singer in the mode of New Kids on the Block (with whom he toured and recorded), Page recorded the songs in 1988, when he was 18 years old. And he sings it like an 18-year-old, which is part of the reason why it still holds up.

As teary ballads go, “A Shoulder to Cry On” is actually really good—big, direct, simplistic, yet stylish. By far the best part of the song comes right at the moment when the bridge transitions into the final climactic chorus: famed producer Arif Mardin and son Joe have inserted the sound of a revving motorcycle, implying some neo-mod leanings that may or may not actually exist but at fun to think about in a ‘90s teenpop context.

His voice slightly feminine but infused with effortless empathy, Page is harmlessly handsome and hammy here, playing the wiser, older friend to comfort all the teenage girls the song was written and sung for. The adult cynic in me thinks he’s playing sensitive to get into her pants, but I don’t really think Page has ulterior motives here. There is no subtext in “A Shoulder to Cry On,” only text. Besides, the genius of the song is that it plays into listener fantasies, allowing let’s say a young teenage girl to imagine a handsome older boy drying her tears while pledging his undying devotion. That it inspires a kind of playacting means it’s much more active that most of the teenpop created in the nearly twenty years since.

Watch the video and marvel at the fashions: Page’s turtleneck-and-varsity-jacket ensemble is period-accurate, but it’s overshadowed by the model’s floral-print dress, which manages to split the difference between Laura Ashley modest and Frederick’s of Hollywood revealing. 

Stephen M. Deusner is a freelance music journalist based in Washington, DC. Don't ask him about Norwegian pop or house rabbits, unless you have a few hours.

NOW PLAYING JULY 2008

What's on the air in Outlandos...

More or less the same deal as before: a list of music/music-related whatnot worth mentioning.  Some of it new.  Some of it new-ish.  Some of it just plain new to me.  And then there's the old and the [more...]

A Triple-A radio programmin g veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Chuck Eddy dusts off his old vinyl and scratches his head. We all win.

Greetings, BLURT readers. This column’s theme is fairly simple: Basically, I sort alphabetic ally through my shelves for dusty old 7-inch vinyl indie singles from acts that aren’t household names, and try to figure out why I wound up keeping them in the first place. This is the 4^th installment (first two appeared at Idolator.)

CRACK ♥ WE ARE ROCK – “Hooker Leg”/”Animal Trap” (no label listed, 2002): Inside a lovely if claustrophobic 45 sleeve with forest animals paint-by-numbered all over it (the opossum and red fox, oddly, are much bigger than the mountain lion), music from Midwest escapees to San Francisco that somehow serves as a bridge between the fleeting quasi-genres “electroclash” and “digital hardcore” – which is mainly to say distanced voices rapping, sort of, over synthesizer abrasions and insane studio glitches and buzzing sounds. The intended speed is never stated outright, but at 33 RPM, “Hooker Leg,” at least, suggests a noise-rock version of some early ‘80s Rough Trade girl band, like maybe the Au Pairs, with distortion working against the tune at riskier levels than Jesus and Mary Chain ever dared. Cyborg voices eventually discuss the shaking of souls. “Animal Trap” has balloon-rubbing effects out of Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing, and what sounds like an off-key trumpet toward the end, clearing some space and followed by the side’s only comprehensible words – namely, a woman politely telling us “thank you.” Notation on a fawn’s back on that cover picture: “Live In Africa 2002 BC.” Or maybe that’s the label? (no contact info)

CRIMSON SWEET – Robot Bus Driver (Crimson Sweet EP, 2000): Bizarrely, I still have four different 7-inches by this turn-of-the-‘00s NYC trio on my shelf, which puts them in the running with Cobra Verde, Shonen Knife, and, uh, Clay Harper (whoever he is) [Harper, ex-Coolies, operated and recorded for his own Atlanta-based label, Casino Music, in the ‘90s—Discography Editor] for 45-shelf indie-supremacy. Don’t recall ever loving anything by them, but apparently I liked all of it enough to keep. In my mind, at least, I associate their co-ed art-punk garage sensibility with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Glass Candy, who both emerged a bit later but ultimately got way more attention. This particular four-song translucent-vinyl 45 (first Crimson Sweet music I heard) switches off between relaxed Bangles-jangle and more hoarsely snarling screech. “CTR” mentions schoolyards; “Robot Bus Driver” follows Morse-code guitar with death-metal grumbling; “Bad Riddle” is live-wire hardcore; “I Can Touch You Now” an apparently sincere lust song wherein the wonderfully named Rooster Booster (who also plays guitar) eventually takes her drink and leaves. She’s hard to decipher when she gets full-throat emotional, but that doesn’t always work against her. Her bassist, Konsulate, looks like a young Mick Jagger. (www.myspace.com/crimsonsweet)

CRITERION – “Race Traitor”/”Honky Talk Hits” (Broklyn Beats, 2001): Two more aural experiments from a mad-scientist laboratory in Brooklyn, working overtime to resurrect dub without reggae life support: “Honky Talk Hits” lets an inverted piano mess and minstrel-show vocals that go “yeaaaahhh…..” and dig through sand dunes’ worth of dirt; “Race Traitor” is closer to some of Adrian Sherwood’s more outlandish ‘80s productions, or maybe Keith LeBlanc’s 1983 12-inch “No Sell Out,” credited to Malcolm X. A repeated sample of Dick Gregory growls “We don’t dislike you, we hate your stinking white racist insti-tooo-shuns,” which slogan performs the musical duty of keeping the experiment grounded, so centrifugal force doesn’t yank everything apart. (www.broklynbeats.net)

DAPHNE’S OPERATION – “Short Disaster”/”Curds & Whey” (Mudslide/Bottom Feeder, 1995): Like all three singles above whether intentionally or not, chaos intersperses here with white space; like Crimson Sweet, this Murfreesboro, Tennessee quintet (instrument credits: “pickin’, singin’”; “beatin’”; “more pickin’”; “washtub, hogcallin’”) refreshingly seems torn between being a pop band and a noise band. Somehow, the gravity of their guitars makes up for their vocals’ meek, muffled bent. And though the music offers up no tangible beat to speak of, the B-side, at least, manages hints of propulsion, and structure, and possibly even a song, albeit introvertedly expressed: “Growing up is so weird,” a subdued voice concludes, sneaking into the clatter’s cracks. “Call or write us,” the liner notes on an insert request, “for your next wedding, barmitzvah, hot rod/custom car show, barbecue, open house, Tupperware party, slumber party, funeral, shindig, hootnanny, fiesta, thingamajigger or, of course, board meeting.” I hope that won them a few gigs, at least; I still wish they would have clarified once and for all, though, whether “Curds & Whey” just means cottage cheese. Little Miss Muffet was always too cagey on the issue. (www.myspace.com/daphnesoperationrules)   

THE DEAD C— “Stealth”/”The Factory” (Sub Pop, 2000): Seemingly recorded from deep inside a radiator in Dunedin, New Zealand, “Stealth” recreates Metal Machine Music as part of the Environments series, and its dune-din ebbs and flows with real beauty. Hard to tell if actual instruments are involved; if so, they’re presumably not being used as their builders intended. The music breathes, though. The Dead C are prolific cult heroes in avant-noise circles; Thurston Moore and Byron Coley may well own a zillion releases by the threesome, but for my own purposes, this taste test seems sufficient. “The Factory” feels even more onomatopoeic, way more “industrial” than most music filed under that heading – an assembly line of clanking and revving gears and motors and spindles and power generators, with heat and sparks blasting off of the steel. Or maybe just guitar feedback, who knows. Both sides are instrumental, and as with Crimson Sweet’s disc, the vinyl is a vague sort of grey you can halfway see through. (no contact address; fan page at www.myspace.com/thedeadc)

DEATH OF FASHION – “These Days”/”It’s All Ours” (Canarsie, 2005): I have no memories of these guys at all, though MySpace tells me they come from New York. The A-side is built on a ringing Velvet Underground (via Smiths or somebody, probably) guitar drone – prettiness given forward motion. The singer’s voice is flat and basically devoid of character, typical college rock. But he picks up energy as he goes, stumbling into tunefulness and emotion simply by varying volume and intensity. He sounds cheerful, determined; worries he “might not make it through the day,” but you’re confident he will. On the B-side – shorter but tougher to get through – he just stumbles. Guitar enters out of nowhere at the start, almost like Plastic Bertrand’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi,” but the drummer’s attempt to add more rhythm into the equation comes off clumsy. If you’re gonna kill off fashion, it’s best to replace it with more color than what’s here.

(www.deathoffashion.com)

[Photos, top to bottom: Crimson Sweet, Daphne’s Operation 45 sleeve, Death of Fashion (credit J. Wilson)]

NOT-SO-DEADLY B’s

Would you rather watch Olivia rollerskate in a blouse or Ron Wood in a tight turtleneck? We chose Wood. Why? What's the significance? We... don't... know.

When crap like Xanadu earns itself a two-disc DVD release (the magical, musical edition in case you’re interested) you might be wondering if we’ve hit the saturation point. Are there are actually any titles left that haven’t hit video…and if so, should anyone be allowed to see them? I prefer to see the cup as half-full rather than half-empty. Sure, what’s left is a hodgepodge of martial arts flicks and lazy foreign erotica, but if you dig deep enough into the pile you’ll find a few curiosities left in the bin.

Phase IV (Legend Films, 84 min) is the only feature-film from Saul Bass, the man who designed the most memorable title sequences in cinema history, most notably Hitchcock’s Psycho and North By Northwest. His take on intelligent ants who wage war on a pair of scientists in the New Mexico desert is ripe for ridicule (it even got the MST3K treatment), but also insanely ambitious. With long dialogue-free stretches of macro-photography following these mini-mental giants into their network of tunnels, the ending finds humanity evolving into some human-ant hybrid. It’s Kubrick crossed with the Discovery Channel.

More insect terror awaits in The Deadly Bees (Legend Films, 84 min), directed by another Oscar winner, Freddie Francis, who brings a British sensibility to the “nature run amok” genre. After a musical intro that features Stones guitarist Ron Wood strumming for The Birds (not those Byrds, but a different group who prefer embarrassingly tight turtlenecks), a pop princess is sent out to the country to recuperate from a nervous breakdown, only to find herself caught between feuding beekeepers. Although things could have been resolved over a pint of Guinness, the bees end up stinging the shit out of anyone who’s been marked with the “scent of fear.” Which is actually just Old Spice and warm beer.

Hammer Films specialized in drawing-room horrors and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (Legend Films, 83 min) is a prime example of their chatty brilliance. Anton Diffring stars as a snobby sculptor who needs the extract of human glands to remain forever young. Christopher Lee gets to lose the fangs for a supporting role, helping Scotland Yard piece together a string of disappearances. In usual Hammer fashion, everything is resolved by burning down the joint, but not before we’re treated to some fine acting all around.

Then there’s The Sender (Legend Films, 92 min), a sedated psychological thriller that feels like David Cronenberg on an off-day. Confronted with a suicidal teen with telepathic powers, Dr. Gail Farmer (Kathryn Harrold) tries to sort through his mommy issues before he gets all Carrie on her ass. Other than a startling shock treatment sequence, the movie is too drowsy to inspire much interest. Director Roger Christian went on to helm John Travolta’s big-budget Scientology sermon, Battlefield Earth, so his “beingness” is obviously back on track.

All of the above titles are available exclusively at Best Buy through July.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

SETTIN’ YOUR WORLD ON FIRE

“The Inferno,” in dumb-ass, American English.

If you remember anything from 12^th grade lit, it’s probably Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno,” the most engaging part of the Divine Comedy. Or perhaps the only thing you recall about 12^th grade English is how Nikki Potter’s breasts seemed to grow unfathomably larger as the semester progressed—but maybe that’s just me. Needless to say, if your class touched on Dante’s work (as some of the better high schools do), chances are you read one of the dense, fancy-pants English translations, and you most certainly did not read the original Italian version. But I recently found an adaptation that should be in every high school in the land—and on your shelves, too. Dante’s Inferno by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders (Chronicle Books, 2004) is an adaptation of Dante’s tale in plain old American English, accompanied by Birk’s black-and-white, comic-book-style illustrations depicting hell as, well, any major American city in the New Millennium (although San Francisco and Los Angeles seem to be more prominent). There are the familiar images of Virgil leading Dante past the gluttons, but in Birk’s version, these fatties wallow on a sticky sidewalk with signs for Sizzler, McDonald’s and In-N-Out Burger looming in the background.

The text is equally interesting, primarily for the manner in which Sanders and Birk turn the language and imagery on its head. By way of comparison, here’s a bit from Canto VI, when Dante encounters the three-headed beast Cerberus, as rendered by Charles S. Singleton in his translation by Princeton University Press (line breaks altered to make this easier on your web-weary eyes):

When Cerberus the great worm perceived us, he opened his mouths and showed his fangs; he was aquiver in every limb. And my leader, reaching out his open hands, took up earth, and with full fists threw it into the ravenous gullets. As the dog that barking craves, and then grows quiet when he snaps up his food, straining and struggling only to devour it, such became the foul faces of the demon Cerberus, who so thunders on the souls that they would fain be deaf.

Now, the same scene a la Sanders and Birk (same deal—line breaks eliminated):

When Cerberus saw us coming, he flipped out. He growled with all three of his mouths, and you could see his sharp teeth while his whole body twitched like he had the DTs or something. But Virgil wasn’t even worried, and he grabbed a handful of that stinking mud and he threw it straight into the mongrel’s three greedy mouths. Like the crazed crack addict jonesing for a rock who instantly calms down after he scores and gets his first drag of smoke,  Cerberus’ disgusting barking heads sniffed at the mud and lapped at it so intently that they seemed oblivious to anything else.

See what I mean? Not necessarily better, but certainly different—a good spin on an old favorite. Sure, Birk and Co. have totally stripped Dante’s lush language from the story—and hardcore Dante fans will gnash their teeth, wail, and rend their clothes. But here’s my take: sometimes you’re in the mood for a Coors Light, not Cabernet Sauvignon.  

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

REVOLUTION CALLING

A guide to really understanding the Beatles.

Periodically, I throw out a plug for Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (Chicago Review Press, third edition, 2007). Even if you’re not a dyed-in-the-polyester Beatles fan, the book is still worth an examination. MacDonald breaks down the Beatles’ catalog, delving into the background of each tune and where it fits into the decade that gave us crappy-but-good-TV, guiltless sex and sexless guilt, and a shitload of good music. Plenty of semi-useless trivia (i.e. John Lennon wrote a Bob Dylan parody called “Stuck Inside of Lexicon With the Roget’s Thesaurus Blues Again.” And the line “I am the Eggman” in “I Am the Walrus” was allegedly inspired by a friend of Lennon’s who had a thing for cracking eggs on the bodies of women he boinked. Yeah. Throw those little gems into a quasi-interesting conversation and see what happens.) This book totally changed my understanding of the Fab Four. I can’t count how many times I’ve scrambled for it after hearing a snippet from, say, “Lady Madonna” on the local FM “oldies” station. Which brings up something else for another time: The term “oldies” has got to go. “Super hits of the sixties and seventies!” What a crock of warmed-over wombat semen. Jesus.     

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams.

HAIL HALEY

Haley Bonar returns with Big Star.

There are thousands of artists out there struggling to get your attention, loudly clearing their throats to get you to look their way. It can all be a bit overwhelming, which makes discovering a new (or new-to-you) artist a crucial and even reinvigorating experience.

This week I latched onto Haley Bonar, who’s actually on her third album. Hailing from South Dakota but based in Minnesota, she reminds me of Shawn Colvin circa Fat City, which I mean in the best way possible. Underrated at the time (and overrated since), Colvin had a great voice and even better songs, both of which suggested a hard life rather than an insular existence. Similarly, Bonar sings pretty melodies as vehicles for tough-minded sentiments; she also plays most of the instruments and produced. In that regard, Big Star is exquisitely jaded—a concept album about how much the music business sucks. On “Queen of Everything,” she sounds much older than her years: The industry, she sings, will “tear you from the inside, fuck with your spine, take you to the same place I lost my mind.” Fortunately, she never sounds like she’s whining. Instead, she just shrugs her shoulders, plugs in an amp, and sings a song about hitting the road and getting away from it all. “It’s just me and a map and a cup in my lap,” she sings on stand-out “Highway 16. “Life’s getting a lot better, no doubt about that.” Here’s hoping she lives up to the title very soon.

Stephen M. Deusner is a freelance music journalist based in Washington , DC. Don't ask him about Norwegian pop or house rabbits, unless you have a few hours.

STRAIGHT OUTTA WORMHOLE

Giving you the benefit of our advance listens.

In the near future, these musicians will scurry through wormholes to visit the not-so-distant past. I’m a robot sent from the future to warn you not to miss three and to give the fourth a wide berth.

Loudon Wainwright: Recovery (Yep Roc, August 19)

With Joe Henry producing, Loudon Wainwright reinterprets a baker’s dozen of his old tracks on Recovery, with a new band and many more years behind him. It’s a strange, suspect project: The word “reinterpreting” can be just a fancy word for “covering” or “resting on your laurels” or “living off your back catalog.” But that album title is more than an easy pun, and Recovery is more than simply a glorified greatest hits. Sure, he’s recovering “Motel Blues” and “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry” from Big Star and Johnny Cash, respectively, but mainly this album sounds like self-reckoning. Sung by a man closer to the end of his career and his life than to the beginning, these old songs have new relevance and more complex emotional gradations, which give songs like “School Days” and “Be Careful There’s a Baby in the House” a heftier impact than such a project promises. Age has tempered his anger but thank God not his humor. Just listen to him hit those goofy low notes on “Be Careful There’s a Baby in the House,” which is coincidentally one of his venomous sets of lyrics. And now that children Rufus and Martha are following in their father’s footsteps, “Saw Your Name in the Paper” has more distance and regret than ever, but also more well wishes.

On repeat: “Saw Your Name in the Paper,” “Motel Blues”

Horse Feathers: House with No Home (Kill Rock Stars, September 9)

Portland-based Horse Feathers have no back catalog to recover, so they set their sights even further in the past. The songs on their eerie sophomore album, House with No Home, sound as if they emanate from decades ago, drenched in sepiatone and indebted to Harry Smith. But Horse Feathers aren’t not playing dress-up or bowing to some notion of an old weird America; they sound too subdued, too opaque. In his hoarse voice (no pun intended.... really), Justin Ringle sings softly and keeps his lyrics secondary to the music, which draws its dusty ambience from Peter Broderick’s eddies of violin and the sustained low end courtesy of Heather Broderick’s cello. Recalling Bon Iver’s debut as well as Samamidon’s overly studied All Is Well, and improving tenfold on the band’s debut, House with No Home sounds effortlessly, gracefully out-of-time.

On repeat: “Working Poor”

The Broken West: Now or Heaven (Merge, September 9)

The Broken West follow up their breezy debut album with an equally breezy sophomore record, and while Now or Heaven may lack a song as immediately catchy as “Down in the Valley,” it does sound more adventurous yet more consistent. Consistent isn’t exactly an exciting adjective, nor is mature, yet the West draw from a deeper range of sources and use a greater variety of sounds, thinking outside the SoCal pop. “Perfect Games” is a good Wings; a bit of watery Cure guitar seeps into “Embassy Row”; and “Terror for Two” sounds like the kind of tossed-off grandeur that every blog band has been aiming for. But more than anything else, on Now or Heaven the West sound like a West Coast Wilco--that smart, that off-script.

On repeat: “Auctioneer,” “The Smartest Man Alive”

FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE DUD:

Dr. Dog: Fate (Park the Van, July 22)

Every generation gets the Gomez it deserves.

Stephen M. Deusner is a freelance music journalist based in Washington , DC. Don't ask him about Norwegian pop or house rabbits, unless you have a few hours.

THE STONY LONESOME

Journalist and crazy bastard Ted Conover becomes a screw.

Other than good drugs and bad women (or maybe bad drugs and good women), probably few things have influenced music like prison. That’s right: incarceration. The Man in Black figured that out pretty early on. And if Akon (“Locked Up”) and Nelly (“Fly Away”) are to be believed, it ain’t no picnic, either. I’ve never done hard time, nor would I want to. Look at my picture—I’d be somebody’s bitch in twelve seconds. But I’ve often been curious about the prison guards; guys and gals whose day-to-day grind involves cozying up to the worst scumbags and cheats in the country. (And what do I do? I sit in an air conditioned office and complain bitterly when Subway forgets the jalapeños on my foot-long BMT.) So I looted every used bookstore in the Intermountain West until I found Ted Conover’s New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing (Vintage, 2001). Yes, I realize I could’ve just ordered the goddamn thing from Amazon, but I’m into the thrill of discovery and all that shit. Anyway, Conover, a journalist and a crazy bastard, gets a job as a prison guard at one of the nation’s roughest joints—not just because he’s a writer and needs a view of the inside, but also for the experience itself. He does a masterful job of putting you in his shoes through just about the most unpleasant work environment this side of the septic industry. You’ll love it.

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

LESSONS OF HAR-MEGIDDO

This summer, visit sunny Armageddon—and see what it offers the world.

By David Poe

You may know Armageddon as the name of a Swedish heavy metal band, a Bruce Willis movie, or a euphemism for the apocalypse.

But Armageddon is also a little town between Jerusalem and Galilee, a place I visited two summers ago. Known as Har-Megiddo to the locals, the hill of Armageddon has been a theater for so many violent conflicts over the centuries that its name became a synonym for war. Its blood-soaked history may be why it appears in the Bible as a sort of staging area for the end of the world as we know it.

Think of Armageddon like Waterloo, the town whose namesake developed after Napoleon suffered his final defeat there: he met his waterloo in Waterloo. But unlike Waterloo, Gettysburg, the beaches of Normandy or the death camps of Dachau, Armageddon is essentially a pile of rubble.

This is not to say it's not an interesting historic site. Like rings on a tree stump, its excavation sites expose cross-sections of trash and treasure. Roman, Babylonian and Egyptian empires held sway there, but many other civilizations sent troops into the region for treasure, land, retribution, God. Standing on that lonely hill, I realized how many different cultures fought for it—and that I had never even heard of most of them.

They all lost.

Today, like Armageddon, George W. Bush's name has become a synonym for war. His idea to win the hearts and minds of Middle Easterners by killing them has not worked out.

Bush may have succeeded in persuading moderate America to associate the religion of Islam with terrorism and mainstream Muslims to perceive American troops as Christian crusaders, but wars of choice are not sanctioned in either group's sacred texts. And on the secular side, even Gen. Petraeus testified before Congress that there is no "light at the end of the tunnel" in Iraq.

What Petraeus and the majority of both Americans and Iraqis understand is that there is no violent military solution there. The president may have won Western oil interests a chance to claim the spoils of his mini-Armageddon in Babylon, but Bush is losing his war for peace.

John McCain has promised to continue Bush's war. Barack Obama has vowed to end the war, although some question his plan to do so.

Both presidential contenders would do well to visit Armageddon. They might reflect there on the futility of other battles waged and lost over the millennia by foreign powers in the Middle East.

Because no matter how the Bush administration and its supporters characterize it, the war in Iraq is not a crusade, a magnetic bumper sticker, a debate for the situation room. Nor is it World War II, in which enemies were defined by borders and Allied fighting was a response to a nationalized attack. Like Armageddon, the Bush war is made of a lot of dead people, and it looks like the end of the world.

David Poe is a singer-songwriter and composer. Visit him at www.myspace.com/davidpoe.

WHAT IS PUNK?

Everything and nothing.

1977—I'm in high school. I ride the subway at night instead of giving 100% to my homework. Uh... “Why?” Graffiti. Yes, that was my empowering activity as a young man. I was contributing to the prodigious chaos that decorated the subway walls and doors of the day. Tellingly, we called this 'bombing' the trains This visual assault of color and seemingly meaningless words, was for the average subway rider, a perfect metaphor for the unhinging of society in the late 70's—the urban blight era that will surely have a mythic place in American history, similar to the Wild West.

Where does punk come in? It was being born concurrently. Well, truthfully, to use the child-bearing metaphor, it had already been conceived invisibly somewhere, and had developed anonymously, and had now been thrust into the larger world, with a name and identity. Punk rock was a living idea, something human beings bear into the world from time to time, and other human beings recognize as being ‘of them’.

That's what happened to me, and that idea was first articulated to me through the Sex Pistols. Punk appeared to be a musical extension of what I was seeking through graffiti. There were shared ethics of simple and neutral concepts—my tag was the utterly meaningless Tag-e—of self projection for its own sake—you just want to ‘get up’ and share a common reveling in the human chaos of society.

Graffiti collectively was a jumble, a mess, so as this was the year of Saturday Night Fever, of slick sharp clothing and dance moves, something downtown called me—loudly. Soon, I'd meet two or three punks, and found that punk was a vague ideal, already morphing, but threaded through everything that was downtown and underground.

When downtown, I quickly realized I had to shut up about the Sex Pistols. I also had to shut up about punk. It wasn't ‘til five years or so later—when it was timely to say 'post-punk'—that people from the downtown scene I knew would acknowledge the connection. But in the meantime, there was a scramble downtown to identify oneself with punk-like movements. People who would later develop indie rock, made no-wave. Avant-gardists like John Zorn adulated hardcore. I knew two places I could count on finding punks, Max's Kansas City, and hanging out upstairs at Mudd Club. They seemed to have their dedicated niches.

So I'll tell you what I thought punks in '77 were like. I ran two of my dicier assertions past bona fide punks Legs McNeil and Lydia Lunch and I'll also tell you what they said:

—Punk was working class. There wasn't a high value placed on sophisticated, nuanced lyricism.

—Punk was apolitical. Since Punk saw itself as re-claiming youth culture and rock n' roll from the 60's and the 'Age of Aquarius', punk wasn't very bleeding heart.

Legs McNeil, founder of Punk Magazine author of Please Kill Me—and coiner of the term ‘punk,’ responds: "For the most part, punk in NYC was tired of the Vietnam War and leftist politics that stifled creativity in the early 1970's, but that doesn't mean we were apolitical. And whoever wanted to be political was allowed to be. I mean, you didn't have to ask permission, that's what it was all about."

—Punk was masculine. Men wore leather jackets reminiscent of 50's gangs. The masculinity affected women in that they were either bomb shell types, or fairly butch—and of course an edgy, and socially outgoing personality was essential. The nerdy/ cool girl who was more bookish than brash, was celebrated in later post-punk/ indie rock.

Lydia Lunch, front woman of Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, responds “…Or were butch bombshells—when punk first hit, there was a squadron of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Types—tough-talking bombshells who had graduated out of the glam scene which was all about style, sex and blurring the boundaries of what was accepted. Hot shit chicks who'd just as soon fuck you as fight you, or preferably both, simultaneously. Sex was still a pretty vicious weapon, especially when wielded as both bait and trap, wrapped in leather and tucked between a pair of thunderous thighs, whose greatest joy was squeezing the life out of an unsuspecting punk monkey.” (Yes, indeedy.)

—Punk bands put on a show. They may have eschewed large drum kits, fog machines and big lighting, but The Ramones still did similar rock posturing on stage to big commercial rock acts. Iggy the proto-punk, acted more like Mick Jagger on stage than Thurston Moore.

—Punks valued the will-to-do, over time-perfected know-how.

—Punks felt spontaneity was the best context, therefore the presentation of anything was best left haphazard and imperfect.

So music related to the punk movement, quickly veered away these original tenets. The Clash were punk, but the social consciousness so tiresome to the original punks, was part of their punk energy. The heavy dogmas of kids in the punkish Hardcore scene, were in contradiction to the nihilism of punk. College educated and ironic indie-rockers like Sonic Youth, still did Ramones and Stooges covers. The grunge/Nirvana era essentially proclaimed itself punk in the film The Year Punk Broke ('91). Metal technicians Metallica eventually cut their hair and covered Ramones songs. And recently The Dresden Dolls—with their heavy theatrical makeup and moody tango/ ballad interludes—hyphenated punk into their self proclaimed genre, punk-cabaret.

Why is punk such a grand concept, that so many scramble to define it in their own way, and appropriate it? Hyphenating punk never goes out of style, because punk directly reflected the vacancy of American life without truly escaping it. Because it gave the juvenile delinquent status as an intellectual. But were punks the first to do so? Maybe not. But when punk got its name, straightforward, unembellished (in true punk fashion) and a face or two (or nine or 17) to give it life, it became an archetype for Americans like me.

Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. Visit him at www.myspace.com/theendcredits.

PLAYS WHAT HE THINKS

Hamell on Trial checks in from the road.

I AGE, THEREFORE I ROCK (STILL)

Rock against ageism.

Ageism is what it is. And I'm not talking about teenage-backlash or a twentysomething's glib naïveté.  Most of it comes from within; sabotaged by our own kind. Think about it. It's not that we grown-ups ever lost interest in music. Music (as dictated by industry mafiosi, radio, media, etc.) lost interest in US. [More...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

CRITICAL CONDITION

It's true: the rock critic has gone the way of the buffalo.

As the recorded-music industry withers, so does its unruly stepchild, pop-music criticism. Newspapers are jettisoning reviewers of all kinds, rock magazines are disappearing, and music websites tend to pay (if at all) even less than the defunct magazines.

While the space for pop-culture analysis shrinks, the two-thumbs-up universe expands. Websites like Yelp allow civilians to review pretty much anything, and online merchants encourage their customers to post critiques. Most of these comments are useless, but they're easily available, and usually attached to multi-star or numerical ratings. If you'd prefer a yes-or-no answer over reasoned consideration, the web offers a worldwide break from heavy lifting.

For critics dejectedly watching their self-image fade, the latest crisis is the "instant" album, a phenomenon that includes not just download-only releases but also hard-copy ones like The Raconteurs's Consolers of the Lonely. Never mind all the beginner-band, industry-dropout, and dubiously legal music that's sloshing around the Internet. People can actually walk into a record store—if they can find one—and buy a brand new major-label CD that no one from Rolling Stone has heard yet.

That doesn't mean that writing about music will disappear. But rock criticism as a paying career, never a prudent career option, is looking increasingly iffy. For rock writers, it's a good time to be independently wealthy.

But then it always was. While large metropolitan dailies and a few of the bigger alternative weeklies employ full-time critics, most rock writers are freelancers who support themselves doing something else. (Rock reviewers are no more likely than cult musicians to have health insurance.) The Bush administration's economic shambles makes life harder, but it doesn't change the fundamentals of freelance writing, a field no one enters to get rich.

Enough about money. The larger issue is the role of pop-culture criticism, an impure form that was never welcomed by most of its audience. It may seem that the golden age of rock writing is over, but actually it never happened. Pop-music critics really didn't have much influence, and were appreciated by the biz primarily for their willingness to fall into line. Mavericks could be tolerated if they were amusing, especially since it was clear that no cranky commentator could damage music's major franchises. (Remember when hip critics hated Grand Funk Railroad? It had so little effect on the band that ultimately many of the detractors converted. That also had no effect on the band.)

Rock critics, like film reviewers, are fundamentally at odds with most of their readers, who want just two things: tips on which new cultural products to consume, and validation of their own opinions. A reasoned analysis that challenges their own viewpoint is about as welcome a surprise as a rat's tail in a bottle of supermarket salsa. (Readers aren't always wrong to reject rock criticism, of course. Lots of it is worse than supermarket salsa.)

A timely review of a new pop-culture consumable serves several purposes. It's a news item, informing people that the album, movie, or whatever exists, and what broad category it inhabits. A review is also entertainment, offering such pleasures—depending on the writer—as well-turned phrases, incisive jibes, or crude appeals to accepted opinion. (Heavy-metal "rocks!" Chick flicks "suck!") Lastly, if there's room, a review is a consideration of style, craft, influences, development, integrity, and so on. You know, art.

In today's always-on mediaverse, few readers have the patience for such matters. Free-market efficiency channels cultural opinions, which can be Googled faster than a vending machines can dispense a bottle of Dasani: "A-," "one thumb up," "buy now," "wait for the DVD." And since every click can be tallied, pop-culture businesses know for sure what they always suspected: Most consumers don't care what most critics think.

This reflects new technology, but not such a new attitude. The rapport between music consumers and reviewers has been always shaky. It's no coincidence that the cherished zeniths of rock criticism occurred during periods when, or in places where, the music under discussion was hard to hear.

For English-language rock criticism, the standard was long set by British music weeklies. If callow, absurdly trendy, and often rash in their judgments, New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and Sounds were great fun to read. Their energy had something to do with their weekly schedule, but owed more to the stodginess of the BBC. With precious little rock being played on the radio or TV, the music press had a near-monopoly on manic pop thrills. When satellite TV, commercial radio, and the Internet arrived, Melody Maker and Sounds disappeared, and New Musical Express retrenched. I rarely look at it anymore.

Much the same happened in the U.S., albeit on a near-subterranean level, with glam-rock, garage-rock, and punk. The mainstream U.S. music mags didn't get the Stooges, Ramones or their followers, and neither did "album-oriented" radio, which was already drifting toward a "classic" format. The obstacles to hearing or acquiring this insurgent music were boons to print journalists, notably at alternative weeklies and fanzines. Something was happening here, and you had to read to find out about it.

There's more to read than ever, of course, on myriad blogs and websites. But consumers can skip straight to the MP3s, or take their guidance from specialized search engines. Skipping the informational middleman has never been easier—or at least, not since rock criticism first forced itself into the conversation, demanding to say more about the music than AM DJs or the rate-a-record teens on American Bandstand.

Rock criticism is still demanding its say, however hard it is to deliver commentary that is both timely and informed as an ever-increasing number of CD and digital releases zoom directly to potential fans. Reviewers have to accept that they're often behind the buzz, even as their editors insist that their reviews must run on the official release date—whenever that is. (Internet release? CD release? First gig at which a tour-only disc is available?)

Amid this frenzy, I'm hoping for more care and less haste, more in-depth analysis and fewer premature discharges. But I'm expecting lots of stars, thumbs, and letter grades. At least the writers who specialize in the latter will have a new excuse: The Raconteurs made me do it.

Mark Jenkins currently writes about music and film for the# Washington Post #and NPR.org, among others. He is the co-author of# Dance of Days: Two
Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital (Akashic Books).

CITY BY NUMBERS

City of Men doesn’t measure up to God.

Fernando Meirelles’ City of God was an entirely different sort of gangster movie: tragic, violent and brutal, but with an agonizing loss of childhood innocence. It was every bit as brilliant as Goodfellas but subtitles kept it out of the mainstream. “If I wanted to read at the movies I’d a brought along a copy of Guns ‘n Ammo, goddammit!” Now City of Men (Miramax, 106 minutes) follows, a sequel in spirit that takes us back to the slums of Rio de Janeiro and introduces us to two teenagers about to hit manhood, even though one of them already has a kid. The moral choices are clear cut – work for a living or kill for a living. But director Paulo Morelli lacks Meirelles’ subtlety in fleshing out the gangbanging lifestyle, which is really no different from any American inner-city thug. Dissecting our culture’s epidemic of fatherless criminals is a noble effort—and the movie certainly does it in style. But City of God was a genuine work of art; its sequel is simply a paint-by-numbers forgery with a really nice frame.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

DISCOVERY: NOA BABAYOF

I picture Greg Weeks’ Hexham Head Studio out deep in the woods somewhere, accessible only by playing the right combination of notes on a magical ocarina. Jackrabbits push the knobs and squirrels turn the dials, getting an open, airy sound on some of the freakiest folk around. Of course I kid Hexham Head, but its rise, along with Weeks’ label Language of Stone, seems to reflect the growing trend for going green. The records out of this psych-folk and -rock scene—by Mountain Home, Orion Rigel Domisee, and Weeks’ own Vespers—are earthy and airy, outdoors albums evoking the elements. Weeks’ doesn’t have a roster so much as the beginnings of a movement.

The latest addition to Language of Stone is Noa Babayof, an Israeli singer-songwriter with an eye for beguiling lyrical imagery and the kind of phrasing that the word gossamer was invented to describe. On her debut, From a Window to a Wall (Language of Stone), subdued folk accompaniment and quivering string arrangements add pastoral drama to her songs about love, death, and remembrance, emphasizing but never overpowering her delicate melodies. She hits some of her notes gently flat, which makes her sound a bit like Astrid Gilberto but gives her an otherworldly presence on stand-outs like “Indian Queen” and “At Your Death”. At times she recalls Vashti Bunyan, Sachiko Kanenobu, and other recently rediscovered folk singers, as if emanating from some obscure corner of music history. But like her labelmates, Babayof anchors her music in the here and now, making it sound immediate rather than settling for record-collection escapism.

Stephen M. Deusner is a freelance music journalist based in Washington , DC. Don't ask him about Norwegian pop or house rabbits, unless you have a few hours.

R.I.P. ARTIE TRAUM

NEW & NOTEWORTHY

Barbeau, Beatlemania and Brother don’t preach.

Vampyres of Hollywood: A Novel, by Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott (Thomas Dunne Books, released July 8)

Alright, vampire books make me want to shove my face into a wood chipper. I mean, come on, can you think of a concept that has been more overhyped and overplayed than a damn blood sucker story? My thinking is this—there are three reasons to pen a vampire story nowadays: 1) you’re an Anne Rice geek and you scribble out fan fiction just because Lestat makes your genitals tingle and you don’t care if your work is ever published; 2) you’re committing career suicide; 3) your name is Adrienne Barbeau. Perhaps—just perhaps—if you’re a chesty queen of horror and sci-fi flicks, you can get away with a story about vampires. In Hollywood. Literal vampires, mind you—not the celeb leeches we’ve all come to know and loathe. Hell, she was married to John Carpenter, so she’s gotta know something about writing dark fantasy, right? Yeah.    

Life With My Sister Madonna, by Christopher Ciccone and Wendy Leigh (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, released July 15)

It was bound to happen: Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie’s little brother has finally penned the book we all expected. He apparently rats out his sister, exposing every dope-fueled tryst and all-too-public lezzie make-out session. Do we really give a shit about this stuff anymore? Apparently someone out there does, or books like this wouldn’t see the light of day. I won’t be reading it, but if someone would kindly e-mail or fax the naughty bits involving Madonna locking lips with Gwyneth Paltrow, I might be persuaded to read it. Alone. (God, what I wouldn’t give for explicit photos ….)

Beatlemania Forever: The Beatles Encyclopedia, by W. Fraser Sandercombe (Collector’s Guide Publishing, released August 1)

Another Beatles book you say? Damn straight. Beatles books are like prostitutes—sometimes kinda nice to look at, but rarely worth the cover price. That’s why your local used book store is packed to the rafters with the things. But this one has the potential to be a pretty decent one, if only because of its comprehensive coverage of the Fab Four. And those peripherally connected to the band, too. Time will tell.

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

EXTREME TAKEOVER

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not After You

I have a soft spot for extremists—political, cultural, and otherwise. Some of the best music has come from the fringes of society, as have the most interesting characters and social movements. Notice that I did not say the most palatable characters and social movements. Certainly some of the people and ideas coming from the far, far, right and the way out, wacked-out left are about as pleasant as a night of sodomy and post-coital snuggles with the grizzly.

But that’s I love about Jon Ronson’s Them: Adventures With Extremists (Simon & Schuster, 2002). Ronson introduces you to a rogue’s gallery of kooks, crackpots and major-league pricks, and you don’t have to leave the comfort of your double-wide. I mean, do you really feel like spending a few hours of your Saturday hanging out with a Klansman? Didn’t think so. That’s why Ronson has done it for you. The book feels like a particularly gritty and realistic episode of “The X-Files,” sans Scully and her persistent, sultry sneer.

Sometimes you may have trouble believing half of what Ronson says and does. But don’t worry about it too much. When was the last time you told a story and hewed to the truth down to every insignificant detail? If you make a habit of doing that shit, please don’t invite me to your house for a few cold ones. You’re a boring ass.

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

ALT-ROCK MARATHONERS

Your weekly leg up on upcoming new releases: Juliana Hatfield, The New Year, Mercury Rev..

Three long-running alt- acts return from years in the wilderness, either reinvigorated or simply to reclaim lost ground. I can’t hear them outside of the context of their larger careers, but if there are any newcomers out there, let me know how these sound completely new, will ya?

Juliana Hatfield: How to Walk Away (Ye Olde Records, August 19)

A few weeks ago I picked up Hatfield’s 1994 break-out album Become What You Are in the dollar bin of the sketchy used CD store down the street. Listening to songs like “My Sister” and “Mabel” I was a bit surprised by how immature it sounded: the clumsy rhythms of her lines, the easy sentiments, the barely invested singing, the simplistic arrangements. It sounded like high school poetry in the worst way, which made it strangely compelling, as if she had bypassed all the usual music-biz checkpoints and plunked these songs right on my desk. Fifteen years later—by very stark contrast—How to Walk Away is studiously adult, which is not quite as surprising as the mere fact that she has stuck around for so long. Launching her own label and taking the reins of her career, Hatfield has been going AOR gracefully over the past few years, which suits her better than early 90s alternative ever did. Producer Andy Chase of Ivy streamlines these songs with a careful, uncluttered sound, as Hatfield voices spectacularly grown-up disappointments about love, life, and music.

On repeat: “This Lonely Love”

The New Year: The New Year (Touch and Go, September 9)

Four years doesn’t feel like a long time, but in the indie-rock world, it can be an eternity. Think of all the bands that have come and gone since 2004, when the New Year released their second album, The End Is Near. Many bands might seem old hat with that sort of interval, but the Kadane brothers have been refining their signature sound—slow-moving indie-rock with delicate vocals, mordant observations, and shimmery guitars—for nearly two decades now. It has yet to sound dated. The New Year, their third album, begins with a slow, slow fade-in to Folios, then transitions into “The Company I Can Get,” another epic in miniature: “I need all the company I can get / even that redneck in the red Corvette,” sings Matt Kadane as the guitar lends his self-deprecation a certain splendor. Therein lies the contradiction that keeps the New Year compelling after so many years: As down on himself as Kadane always sounds, the band (with Steve Albini again producing) always lift him up… a least a little bit.

On repeat: “The Door Opens”

Mercury Rev: Snowflake Midnight (Yep Roc, September 30)

Continuing the band’s migration away from noisy to ethereal—which is neither as egregious as detractors declare nor as righteous as the agonistes claim—Snowflake Midnight (Mercury Rev’s seventh album and first in three years) alights in the same Casio forest that swallowed Grandaddy a few years ago. Synth bleeps and programmed motorik beats replace the baroque orchestrations of The Secret Migration and All Is Dream, but the band keep the music simultaneously dense yet airy, occasionally reaching for majestic (“Senses on Fire”) but often settling for something just shy. John Donahue’s lyrics remain determinedly soft-focus and sentimental, and his fascination with beautiful butterflies and vulnerable snowflakes often sound inspired by a schoolgirl’s notebook cover circa 1982. Snowflake Midnight sounds a little dippy at times, but Mercury Rev sounds genuinely reinvigorated, emerging from their cocoon once again as the American Sigur Ros.

On repeat: “Senses on Fire”

Stephen M. Deusner is a freelance music journalist based in Washington , DC. Don't ask him about Norwegian pop or house rabbits, unless you have a few hours.

PARANOIA THEY DESTROY YA

But it makes for enjoyable reading.

Last time I wrote a bit about Jon Ronson’s Them, which to a certain extent deals with conspiracy theorists and others of that ilk. If you’re itching to dive into the political and cultural underworld, I’d recommend finding a copy of Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen’s The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time (Citadel, 2000). It’s a virtual catalog of nutso thinking and baseless panic. Or maybe not. Could be some basis of truth to the notion that “Somebody Out There” is “Behind It All.” I doubt it, but maybe I’m just part of the system, and don’t even realize it.  The thing with conspiracies and their attendant theorists, however, is that the entire idea usually hangs on a tattered framework of circumstantial evidence and illogical leaps from Point A to Point B, not to mention enough wishful thinking to fill a hangar at Area 51. But it makes for enjoyable reading. 

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams. 

PUTZ N’ RUINS

Casing The Bank Job and The Ruins.

Jason Statham is a putz. One or two bad films you can chalk up to a bad agent, bad script or bad karma. But when you knowingly take a role in an Uwe Boll film (In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale) you’ve essentially announced to the world, “I don’t give a shit!” Lucky for Statham that The Bank Job (Lionsgate, 110 min) came along, giving him another chance to polish his head and sharpen his British slang in a manner more becoming of the star of Snatch. Based on the true story of a gang of amateur thieves duped into retrieving compromising photos of a British royal from a safe deposit box, director Roger Donaldson spits out characters like Guy Ritchie (minus the quirky names) and sprinkles in enough of the ‘ol ultraviolence to keep the kids entertained. But deep down he’s a “substance over style” sort of guy, so it’s no surprise the film’s focus is on how the plan comes together (and subsequently falls apart) rather than on the Hong Kong tomfoolery of Statham’s Transporter saga. It’s only one rung up the ladder, but here’s hoping the British Bruce Willis can keep the momentum going. Extras on Blu-ray include a commentary, deleted scenes and facts on the real robbery which went down pretty close to how it was portrayed in the film.

Then there’s Scott Smith, whose first novel, A Simple Plan, was a solid piece of neo-noir literature, receiving almost universal acclaim. His long-awaited follow-up, The Ruins, took more than a decade to write and jumped immediately to the best-seller list.

Did I mention it was about a man-eating plant that sucks the life juices out of some teenagers in the jungle?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But should it really take anyone 12 years to write a Stephen King knock-off that King himself could have vomited out in an afternoon? The Ruins read like a bloated screenplay. So it’s no surprise that the author himself turned it into one for first-time director Carter Smith, casting relatively unknown actors (with great abs and tits) in what is essentially a survival story with monster-movie tendencies. The performances are strong and the set-up is suitably ominous. But once the foursome gets stuck atop their pyramid prison, the story becomes a grim, humorless endurance-test, mixing trendy torture-porn and intermittently unconvincing computer effects. When your bad guy is a multi-tentacled vegetable, dude, you gotta crack a smile now and then. Blu-ray includes three separate Making Ofs, a commentary and deleted scenes all in HD.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.

A Column on the Rescued and Reissued

This column (with apologies to Dr. Seuss for the subtitle, below), the first of a two-part dip into the strange end of the pool, starting with some homegrown weirdness, and going abroad for some exotic amalgams next installment.

From There to Here, and Here to There, Funny Things Are Everywhere

Australian musician and score composer David Thrussell seems dedicated, via his Omni Recording Corporation label, to rummaging around in some of the odder corners of Nashville country music. Besides the more obvious — a Porter Wagoner collection entitled The Rubber Room — the label has put out comps on Jimmy Driftwood, Henson Cargill, and The Stonemans. And with Nashville Sputnik - The Deep South/Outer Space Productions Of Jack Blanchard And Misty Morgan 1956-2004, it’s on its third--yes, third--issue on the oddball pair Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan. Think Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, throw in a dash of Roger Miller, and add healthy amount of the totally whacked on some of their creations and the totally lame on others, and you get an idea of what Jack and Misty were all about.

The first two Omni comps collected the pair’s recordings during their late ‘60s-mid ‘70s heyday (if a heyday is what they actually enjoyed). This one is batting cleanup, as the “productions” in the subtitle indicates. It collects pre-Nashville work, including early recordings by Blanchard as a member of the Dawn Breakers and the Rockin’ Impalas and by Morgan under various curious pseudonyms (“Jacqueline Hyde and the Moonfolk,” “Maryanne Mail”), as well as sundry oddities (among them, a disco version of their hit, “Somewhere in Virginia in the Rain,” the strangely unreleased “Dance of the Living Dead Chickens,” and “A Weird Little Christmas,” a yuletide narration that lives up to its name). There are also several tracks that Blanchard produced on a string of minor and mostly-forgotten artists that range from the goofy (“I’m Hung Up on You,” by Rusty Diamond, the Country Nut) to fine country soul (Donel Austin’s “Don’t It Look Like Georgia”). Like the Jack and Misty stuff, those tracks are of varying interest, but some of them are well worth recovery, which might be this comp’s greatest service.

Chet Flippo’s liner notes to the Water Records reissue of Shel Silverstein’s 1968 release, Boy Named Sue and His Other Country Songs, begin by pointing in the same direction as the title of the Jack and Misty comp: “Shel Silverstein landed in Nashville like an alien from outer space.” No doubt, especially consider the general tenor of things in Music City at the time. The multi-talented multi-tasker didn’t take long to make his mark there with his songs, though, most famously thanks to Cash with “Boy Named Sue.”

But Shel wanted to sing ‘em as well as write ‘em, even though he was far from being the world’s greatest singer — not that he was trying to be, with his talking, howling, screaming, wailing manner of doing so. That just adds to the effect here, whether he’s engaging in a hilarious celebration of wickedness (“Dirty Ol’ Me), ruminating on, and wondering at, getting old (“Time”), wallowing in classic denial (“Pathetic Way of Getting Over Me”), singing a truckin’ song, complete with telecaster twang, about not being able to drive a truck (“Somebody Stole My Rig”), singing a gunfighter song with a twist (“Comin’ After Jimmy”) or telling the tale of that boy named Sue.

One of the most enduring results of Silverstein’s Nashville tenure turned out to be his long-running collaboration with Bobby Bare, which began with Bare’s understated 1972 epic, Sings Lullabies, Legends, and Lies (recently given the arche deluxe reissue treatment by Legacy, for those keeping score at home). The collaboration continued in 1974 with Singin’ in the Kitchen, credited to “Bobby Bare and the family,” also just reissued by Omni. It’s kind of a children’s album, with treatments of such Silverstein classics as “The Giving Tree” and “The Unicorn,” and kind of more than that, “Lovin’ You Anyway” and others not exactly being kids’ fare. But it really is a family album, with contributions from wife Jeannie and all of the Bare kids, including future alt-country rocker Bobby Bare Jr., whose toothy grin is front and center in the cover shot. Omni, as usual, adds a bunch of bonus stuff, notably most (but sadly, not all) of Bare’s 1967 RCA gospel album, This I Believe.

Back before Muhammad Ali became Muhammad Ali, when he was just beginning to set the standard for styling, profiling, and trash talking for all who came after him, six months before he shocked the world in February, 1964 by winning the heavyweight boxing title from Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay decided or agreed to make I Am the Greatest!, a hilarious comedic oratorical performance crossed up with a boxing match, complete with ring introduction, a bell starting each track, and an after-bout interview with the victor. And quick as one of Clay’s left hooks, it was gone, Columbia yanking it from the shelves in response to Clay’s announcement of his membership in the Nation of Islam and his accompanying name change.

The record predicts Liston’s demise, of course, and relentlessly mocks and insults him — for four-and-a half straight minutes worth on one track, “Will the Real Sonny Liston Please Fall Down.” But the main subject, naturally, is Clay, and his seemingly endless variety of raps and outsized boasts on his greatness, beauty, and abilities, with, every once in a while, some sly, self-aware self-deprecation. He recites poetry, does set pieces, trades off with his own Greek chorus, riffs off Shakespeare--“Much Ado About Cassius” finds him in Olde England, slaying a dragon and winning the king’s “heavy weight crown” —  and extends his predictive powers from merely predicting the round in which he would win his fights to the future, finding that he will become president,