Monthly Archives: October 2013

She’s Gone is the first offering from Upset, the new band of Ali Koehler, formerly known as the drummer for Best Coast and Vivian Girls. It finds her teaming up with Jennifer Prince of La Sera and intriguingly, ex-Hole drummer Patty Schemel. It’s a solid and occasionally very strong collection of tunes that initially impresses through a vivid conjuring of an intensely ‘90s disposition, but with time spent it offers deeper qualities and the possibility for continued growth.

If contemporary sounds displaying an openly and even proudly ‘90s-ish bent is what one desires to hear these days, then it’s fair to say that one will not struggle for very long in the finding. While the influence of two decade’s time ago isn’t exactly dominating the music of scene of 2013, its presence is certainly felt, and it is frequently being dished out by folks young enough to have their earliest memories reside in the era.

But where many current acts are unashamed to wear these characteristics on their sleeve, Upset take it one step further, actually managing to connect like a genuine product of the ‘90s, to the extent that if my first acquaintance with She’s Gone came while I was casually browsing in a record shop, it’s a cinch that I would’ve pegged it as some approximately twenty year old album that had somehow escaped my hearing.

Or better put, simply wasn’t heard in a context that ensured the songs would become engorged in the memory banks. Yes, unsolicited exposure to She’s Gone could very likely be absorbed as instantly familiar to ears that were of music-buying age and in fierce pursuit of aural satisfaction as the last ten years of the 20th century wound to a close. Where did I hear these songs before?

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The Velvet Underground’s first album is forty-five years young, and the Bay Area label Castle Face has conjured up an in-sequence various artists tribute to the beauty of that All-Time Classic. But The Velvet Underground & Nico by Castle Face and Friends manages to succeed where so many likeminded albums stumble. In tipping their collective cap to past greatness, it kicks aside the limitations of reverence and instead documents the diverse qualities of a vital pocket of rock’s current landscape. In short, it’s a very welcome surprise.

By my calculations, The Velvet Underground is easily one of the most important acts to appear in rock’s first fifteen years. Elvis was the focal point of the original impulse, The Beatles refined its essence and recalibrated its importance, The Stones greatly enhanced the possibilities of borrowed blues and R&B, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience brought an increase in heaviness, expansiveness, and smarts all at once. But the Velvets not only set the standard for rock’s relationship with the avant-garde but also (and by extension) inaugurated a sensibility of cool that had nothing to do and indeed could be at very clear odds with commercial success.

For years a huge part of The Velvet Underground’s allure stemmed directly from the fact that throughout the entirety of their existence they were actually quite unpopular, their New York art hipness being sharply off the course from the far more inclusionary strains of rock that were flowing from the era’s two most fertile locales, the UK and the West Coast of the USA. The VU had the wrong influences, were overly intellectual and chose to celebrate a variety of sex and a type of drugs, S&M and heroin specifically, that flew in the face of the period’s promotion of free love and LSD.

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“When I’m not performing songs with my band The Brooklyn Garden Club, I run a landscape business based in Brooklyn. Get it?”

“But here’s the thing…20 years ago my life was much different. An active alcoholic and intravenous drug user, 20 years ago I was sleeping in a homeless shelter in Berwick, Louisiana. For real. Lucky for me however, the proverbial amazing grace did in fact save the wretch. In an instant everything changed. In short, I had a spiritual awakening at the local Pentecostal Church which resulted in an ability to walk cold turkey away from drugs and alcohol.

Not long after, drawing on childhood work experiences I’d been trying hard to forget, I was gainfully employed as a part time gardener. And something else happened. The Church I mentioned asked me to join the choir and with that began the musical journey I’d never imagined possible. I was 27.

Which brings me to this latest project. A concept album of sorts—each song zeroes in on a specific cultivar. By that I mean a tree, a shrub, or a flower. My plant interactions began at about age 4, so metaphorically speaking it wasn’t much of a stretch.

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“Growing up my parents had a beautiful vinyl record player that was so fascinating to me. How did a needle placed on a revolving black disk emit such an overwhelming sensation of sounds and emotions? It was the beginning of my love for music.”

“I can still hear the sound of The Stones, The Beatles, Eric Clapton and Neil Young playing in my memory from my parents’ turntable. I was always drawn to the female voice though. As a kid, I loved to imitate every single nuance of Patsy Cline and Celine Dion’s voice…I know, not the most original artists known to mankind, but damn can they sing!

The first time I held out a note of Celine Dion’s version of “All By Myself,” it was so long that I nearly passed out from lack of oxygen—haha! I wanted to make my voice as beautiful as theirs no matter what. I was also attracted to the more indie, dark moody artists like The Cranberries, Fionna Apple and Alanis Morissette, which are still to this day my all-time favorite artists who have influenced my eclectic songwriting styles.

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Pop-O-Pies were definitely one of the strangest bands ever to fold, spindle, and mutilate rock’n’roll. The San Francisco band spent their first TWO YEARS in existence playing only one song, a 45-minute or so punk take on the Grateful Dead’s “Truckin’.” Pop-O-Pies resident genius Joe “Pie” Callahan explains why: “It was because band members would come and go. And because ‘Truckin’” was the most popular song I had. And I only had time to teach new members one song. I figured the PAs in clubs were so bad no one would notice. But they did notice.”

And you either loved ‘em or hated ‘em. In 1983 the LA Times named them “absolutely the worst band in California,” a patent absurdity given the likes of Toto, Journey, Jefferson Starship, and other such swill then residing in The Golden State. And the Trouser Press damned the Pop-O-Pie’s 1981 debut, “The White EP,” saying it “ceases to be funny after one or two spins.” (Geesh. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times, and I still find it funny. But then I’m dim.)

Meanwhile both Jerry Garcia and Kurt Cobain loved them, and picky critic Robert Christgau—who dubbed them “New Wave’s first Grateful Dead cover band (Minor Threat don’t count, they’re not new wave)”—gave “The White EP” an A-. Me, I’m in the love tent, because their punk cover of “Truckin’” on “The White EP”—which also includes a “rap” version—is pure genius and funny as hell, as are their takes on the Dead’s “Sugar Magnolia” and The Fab Four’s “I Am the Walrus.”

I’m not quite as enamored with any of the Pop-O-Pies’ originals—although they have their charms—so I guess what I’m really telling you is I’m in love with a cover band that covered exactly three songs. But hey, love is blind, blind as a shit-faced and blindfolded Helen Keller, and just like there are sickos out there with the hots for Anthony and the Johnsons, I happen to be in love with the absolute worst band in California.

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Press Play is our Monday morning recap of the new tracks received last week—provided here to inform your vinyl purchasing power. We post, you click.

Lo Fine – All We Need Is Hell
Raccoon Fighter – Wolf At Your Window
Gentlemen HALL – Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe (Kendrick Cover)
Callow – Philosophy
The Kandinsky Effect – Johnny Utah
Jadea Kelly – Wild West Rain
Torgny – Grønn Extra (Melkeveien Remix)
The Black Watch – I Don’t Feel The Same
Tonight Sky – Flight of the Falling Star
TOTEM – Sophomor(on)ic

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Drop Electric – Waking Up to the Fire

Adrian Krygowski – Roam
Gemini Club – Preacher
AK™ – Space Funk Flow
L​.​E​.​D – Fall Down
BANKS – In Your Eyes (TYR Remix)
The Leg – Chicken Slippers
KNTRLR – CCA
Sidney York – Dick & Jane
Access Royale – Planet Earth
Harness Flux – Privacy Policy

11 more FREE TRACKS after the jump!

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Via Rolling Stone

Greetings from Laurel Canyon!

Our family trip East was a total success. We arrived home last Sunday, drained and happily ready to cuddle into our Canyon beds. The evenings in the Canyon are now much cooler and noticeably darker. It’s as if the world “churned” a bit while we were gone.

Our cat Lu Lu was certainly fresh as a goth band to see us return? And why? The season of the witch! All hallows are among us. Spiders are spinning their webs, witches dust off their brooms while shrinking heads…”Enter if you dare”!

For there are only two types of wild witches on Halloween…

…those who dress up, and those who remain as they are.

Halloween has and will always be my favorite holiday. I’ve always found joy in anything rock ‘n roll that encompasses “the black.” Call it goth, gloom, or witchy—I’m in.

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Warren Zevon was one of rock’s great crazy men. When drinking—and in general pursuing oblivion the way Ahab did a certain white whale—Zevon was notorious for vomiting off interior balconies at staid record company meet-and-greets and much, much, worse. He never went to the Troubadour with a Kotex affixed to his forehead like that idiot John Lennon, but his wife was once awakened by gunshots to discover Zevon had put three bullet holes in his head—on the cover of his Excitable Boy LP. Call it suicide by proxy—and a cry for help—but all Zevon had to say was, “It’s funny, isn’t it?”

Meanwhile Zevon was writing songs like “Mr. Bad Example,” which included the lines, “I like to have a good time/And I don’t care who gets hurt.” In short, he was a latter day Jerry Lee Lewis, only 500 times more literate. While Zevon shared The Killer’s love for guns, at least he never managed to shoot one of his own musicians in the chest with a .357 magnum, as Jerry Lee did at his own 41st birthday party.

I’ve blown chunks at inappropriate moments and fired off guns in the house while drunk too, but I’m no Warren Zevon, who was a bona fide lyrical and songwriting genius. His second and third LPs (1976’s Warren Zevon and 1978’s Excitable Boy) established him as the only lyricist of the era who could hold a candle to Randy Newman, and the sheer insanity of his songs—it’s impossible to imagine anyone else writing about a walking headless mercenary seeking revenge on his killer, or a kid who builds a cage for himself from his girlfriend’s bones—left the competition in the dust.

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