Author Archives: Michael H. Little

Everybody’s favorite German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (nobody can understand the rest of ‘em) once wrote, “The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” If so, Wasted Shirt, the new collaboration between Ty Segall and Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale, has integrity coming out the wazoo.

Listening to Wasted Shirt’s 2020 release Fungus II brings to mind the scene in Apocalypse Now where Colonel Kurtz says, “Are my methods unsound?” To which Capt. Willard replies, “I don’t see any method at all, sir.” Like Kurtz, the only method Wasted Shirt adheres to is chaos. (But let us tread carefully here; chaos can be a method too.)

The music of Wasted Shirt alienates most human beings, probably because we’ve been genetically programmed and behaviorally conditioned to prefer predictability and pattern over an inchoate din expressly designed to induce Edvard Munch Scream Face. Listening to Wasted Shirt requires that one completely rewire one’s mental circuitry to the extent that the only music one can stand listening to is Wasted Shirt.

I’m not quite there yet myself–I still enjoy listening to Black Oak Arkansas and the occasional smash hit by the Doobie Brothers. But I tried listening John and Yoko’s Double Fantasy the other night and it made me puke. though come to think of it Double Fantasy has always sent me running for the toilet.

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Edgar Allen Poe must be rolling over in his crypt, wondering what imp of the perverse led Alan Parsons to purloin his tales of the macabre and use them to produce one of the most inadvertently hilarious albums of our time.

On The Alan Parsons Project’s 1976 debut, Parsons (who cut his bones as producer of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) uses every means at his disposal to create a studio masterpiece. I’m talking Orson Welles, Arthur Brown, Terry Sylvester of Hollies’ fame, dozens of musicians, string sections, horn fanfare, choirs and more choirs, electronic music, some synthed-up vocals–you get everything except Roger Waters singing with his head in a toilet. And what do we have when he’s done? Gothic prog-rock schlock. Which isn’t altogether a bad thing; Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a real hoot. Pity Parsons doesn’t get his own joke.

Some of the music on Tales of Mystery and Imagination is imaginative–at times it borders on excellent. But the album’s undone by Parsons’ failure to understand you can’t capture the shadowy essence of Poe’s work by means of cutting edge studio technology. Poe tapped into our unconscious fears and plumbed our darkest places; Parsons’ bright and shiny production job does just the opposite. Studio spaces invoke dystopian nightmares of technology run amok; Poe’s work is as dark and primitive as the final resting place of Fortunato in the “The Cast of Amontillado.” You can’t synthesize grave dirt.

To the extent that Tales of Mystery and Imagination’s pretentious grandiosity inspires more mirth than dread, Parsons’ failure is our gain; his would-be studio benchmark for future generations is a real life equivalent to Spinal Tap’s Jack the Ripper musical Saucy Jack. If you’re like me, you’ll be too busy laughing at the LP’s sheer absurdity to notice the quality of some of its music.

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There are 75 million Kenny G albums out there. This figure may not frighten you, but it has epidemiologists worried sick. According to public health officials we’re in the midst of a full-blown Kenny G pandemic, and the scary thing is he’s gone airborne.

You can contract Kenny G at your dentist’s office, a karaoke bar, or the frozen foods aisle at your local supermarket. In certain counties in Kansas people have taken to wearing earphones. You may think they’re being overly cautious, but you won’t be laughing when you find yourself grooving to the smooth jazz sounds of 1986’s Duotones.

Duotones marked the beginning of Kenny G. Patient Zero is believed to have been a high school jazz band saxophonist with a compromised musical immune system who happened upon Duotones’s opening track, “Songbird.” Said high-schooler then played the song for other band members, who in turn played it for classmates and parents. And by then it was too late. Kenny G spread faster than Enya.

Few expected the Kenneth Bruce Gorelick who began his career as a sideman with Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra would one day become a worldwide scourge, infecting millions of innocents whose only desire was to ease their daily stress or set the mood for love. It’s true what they say–easy listening destroys lives.

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Now that Eddie Vedder has decided he wants to be David Byrne and Pearl Jam the Talking Heads, the only question remaining is: When are they gonna break out the big white suit?

Literally every human being I’ve spoken with likes Pearl Jam’s new (wave) single “Dance of the Clairvoyants,” and not a single one of them gives a good once in a lifetime that if you sent a sample of its DNA to Ancestry.com it would come back 100 percent Talking Heads and 0 percent flannel shirt.

It’s not as if people are denying the Head’s influence; a Rolling Stone magazine scribe recently conceded the song’s “obvious debt to the Talking Heads,” but only after calling it Pearl Jam’s “funkiest song in forever.” To which I can only respond there’s a considerable difference between an obvious debt to and wholesale appropriation of, just as there’s a considerable difference between admiring a man’s hat and stealing it.

The analogy that comes to mind is Greta Van Fleet. Fans point to them as the saviors of Classic Rock, when all they’re really doing is cannibalizing your Led Zeppelin favorites and reassembling them, Frankenstein style, into what we’re asked to believe are original songs. They’re a very good Led Zeppelin tribute band hiding behind a woman–or to put it more accurately, a woman’s name.

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I once had a German gentleman–my ex-father in law to be exact–tell me in all seriousness that Germany would have won WWII if it’d had time to perfect its vengeance weapons. Something tells me he was talking about Rammstein.

Lots of people listen to these Tanzmetal schnitzel eaters because they Sprechen Sie Deutsche (how cool is that?), others because they sound like a mechanized armored division invading Poland. And then there are those who like ‘em because frontman Till Lindemann’s got a voice as viscous as panzer oil and likes to set himself on fire. All of ‘em are of the opinion that Rammstein are the best thing to come out of Germany since nudism, and I say jawhoh to that.

On first listen Rammstein can be mistaken for a King Tiger tank crushing everything in its path–your immediate instinct is to dive into the nearest foxhole and pray. On repeated listening the melodies and dance beats reveal themselves, and you realize Rammstein’s idea of heavy is nothing compared to that of their Central European neighbors Laibach. They’re Laibach Lite and let’s be glad for it. Who needs the extra calories?

Still, heavy is as heavy does, and for all your talk about Rammstein’s being the founders of the NDH movement 2001’s Mutter is far more metal than dance. Aside from the V2 fast “Zwitter” and near power ballad “Nebel.” Rammstein prefers to employ brute force. Your friendly neighborhood WWII fanatic will gladly inform you–if you can’t run fast enough–that a King Tiger tank weighs in at 70 metric tons. On Mutter at least, Rammstein is that King Tiger tank. Forget about doing the blitzkrieg bop–Mutter will have you banging your nut like ein gutes Metalkopf.

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Low Cut Connie wants you to know they’re not Elton John. They’re on their knees pleading, up in your face screaming “Who are you going to believe–us or your own ears?” But you know what? I don’t give a flying feather boa. I like Elton John. No, nix that–I adore Elton John. I adore his voice, I adore his Glam Apocalypse fashion sense, and I most definitely adore the five grand pianos he’s been know to lug around on tour and probably plays with one hand at the same time. There’s nothing Captain Fantastic–who’s breaking hearts (mine included) on his Farewell Tour as I write this–can’t do.

So who cares if Low Cut Connie’s songs are second-hand pastiches of Elton’s songs, right down to the one about herpes, a subject His Wonderfulness got to first on “Social Disease”? Nobody! And who cares if on certain songs songwriter/vocalist/pianist Adam Weiner sounds eerily like the King of Chub himself? Certainly not me, or Sir Elton for that matter-he’s stated for the record Low Cut Connie’s one of his favorite bands.

On 2017’s Dirty Pictures (Part 1), Philadelphia’s best ever EJ tribute band go about making a record the same way their role model does–by slapping a disparate buncha songs on it, whether they make for a coherent whole or not (see Goodbye Yellow Brick Road).

You get some ballads (“Forever,” a transparent rip of Elton’s “Roy Rogers,” and “Montreal”), a razor-blade guitar rocker a la “The Bitch Is Back” (“Love Life”), a pair of piano rockers (“Revolution Rock n Roll” and “Dirty Water”), a first-generation rock ‘n’ roll pastiche along the lines of “Crocodile Rock” (“Death and Destruction”), and a cool Rolling Stones’ knock-off (“Angela,” on which the band doubles down on its love for “Crocodile Rock” by tossing in its trademark la la la la la).

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When the ancient Greeks coined the word bathos, I’m pretty sure they had Rod McKuen in mind. America’s most popular–and worst–poet of the 1960s, McKuen produced books of poetry the way Virginia opossums make babies, each and every one of them catering to the tastes of a reading public deeply suspicious of the filthy beatnik likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

But on 1959’s Beatsville Mckuen does a remarkable thing–he goes from schmaltz to shtick. While he serves up plenty of his trademark mawk along the way, McKuen–who’s obviously using Kerouac’s spontaneous bop prosody as a model-comes on like Maynard G. Krebs on a Benzedrine inhaler high, and I’ll be damned if his tongue-in-cheek observations on subterranean pads and co-existence bagel shops aren’t hilarious.

McKuen’s point varies–sometimes he’s your standard real gone Daddy-O who considers business suits and underarm deodorants a total drag; at others he’s the wistful black beret wannabe who moans, “I try to be a good beatnik but it’s hard/I don’t dig turtle neck sweaters/I can’t grow a beard/And I catch cold in sandals.”

Backed by some tastefully tasteless musical accompaniment–including a metronome and some really hep finger snaps–McKuen had me at “Every time I got torn up on sneaky Pete or high on Thunderbird wine/I wind up hitching rides to Sausalito.”

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Dear Satan,

I’ve always considered you a cool guy. Lord of the Flies, Leader of the Loyal Opposition, natty dresser, boogie man of little kids and grown Puritans alike–even your horns are badass.

So why, if you don’t mind my asking, did you appoint Ozzy Osbourne your ambassador to our world of sin? I would have thought you’d do better than a drug-addled, ant-snorting, famous-for-biting-the-heads-off-small-animals shlub in tragically ill-fitting leather pants. Had you come to me for advice, dear Lucifer, I’d have recommended someone more appropriate–Jimmy Page say, or Maroon 5.

Of course it’s possible Ozzy swiped your title without your permission. Plenty of people have done so over the years, Mick Jagger included, and maybe you figured if you’re gonna cut milksop Mick a break you might as well give poor witless Ozzy a pass too.

Or–and I’m working on this assumption–you’ve let Oz get away with it because Black Sabbath is quite arguably the first and heaviest heavy metal band to ever ooze its way out of the Underworld. What’s more, they scare the shit out of lotsa people, most of ‘em parents, music critics and hippies. You must love putting the frighteners on hippies–all that peace and love shit’s enough to make you puke hellfire.

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Frank Zappa and I have a complicated relationship. During my formative years spent smoking pot with pig farmers I was besotted by the fellow. I thought he was smart, and figured that listening to him made me smart too.

But we agreed to a temporary separation around the time of the 1979 release of Sheik Yerbouti, and split for good after that same year’s Joe’s Garage Act I. I could no longer ignore the derisive sneer of perceived intellectual and moral superiority audible in every one of his songs. That and it finally occurred to me that the mildly scatological humor I found so clever was just as clever to 12-year-olds.

There are other bands I liked then but no longer listen to now. But Zappa is the only artist I have ever wished to airbrush, Soviet-style, from my musical past. Liking him as much as I did then actually embarrasses me. And that’s a step too far, I think. There is no denying that Zappa expanded the limitations of rock’n’roll. So I have made a few tentative steps towards a rapprochement over the past several years. Why, I even went so far as to borrow my brother’s copy of 1969’s Hot Rats—an LP I must have listened to a thousand times when I was stoned—then actually played the damn thing.

And? Well, upon first listen, I was inclined to agree with Robert Christgau, whose review of Hot Rats went, “Doo-doo to you, Frank–when I want movie music I’ll listen to ‘Wonderwall.’” This was a rejoinder to Mr. Zappa’s description of his second solo LP following the breakup of the Mothers of Invention as “a movie for your ears.”

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Darkthrone vocalist Nocturno Culto sounds like Sonic Youth in dire need of a tonsillectomy. Which is fine by me, seeing as how Kim Gordon can’t sing her way out of a Chinese restaurant takeout carton and Thurston Moore’s cooler-than-thou vocals make me want to call the nearest hipster removal service. No, I’ll take Culto’s cartoonish Cookie Monster gutterals any day. He’s that enraged guy in the 12-items-or-less checkout line going full roid rage at the asshole ahead of him trying to sneak by with 13.

But what, I’ll bet you’re wondering, does Norge’s Darkthrone have to do with the East Village’s most renowned (and long defunct) art shlock band in the first place? Just this. Darkthrone’s that most unexpected of things–a Norwegian art rock death metal band.

On 1994’s Transilvanian Hunger, the duo of Culto (who sings) and Frenriz (who plays everything else) say to hell with melody in favor of a relentless metal drone. Subtle modulations in tone are the order of the day, all of the songs sound pretty much the same, and what you’re left with is a monotone wall of sound that will either bliss you out like a month in an orgone accumulator or leave you trying to squeeze your way through the dog door to get away from it. As a founding member of The Metal Machine Music Fan Club, I fall squarely into the former category.

Are there differences between the songs on Transilvanian Hunger and those on Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex? Yes, and here’s the surprise–like it or not all you NYC art rock elitists, Darkthrone’s the more avant-garde noise rock band by far. Fuck the East Village; seems Norway’s long polar nights are enough to turn your average Ansgar with a guitar into the next Glenn Branca.

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Gwar has a serious attitude problem. These interplanetary Huns arrived on our sorry excuse for a planet to kill or subjugate everyone on it because, well, we’re inferior beings and they hate us for it. But here’s what puzzles me. How is it these mutant metal barbarians first stepped foot on the shithole we call home in 1984 and we’re still alive? Is it possible they’ve developed an affection for our loathsome species?

More likely we’re only around for their amusement, and they take special delight in spitting the tender sensibilities of America’s puritanical classes on the broadsword of their disdain. Your typical fundamentalist tends to go full howler monkey over Gwar’s outre lyrics, which revolve around violence, sex, and violence, bodily functions and violence, oh, and before I forget, the rank hypocrisy of your Moral Majority types who love to condemn them for their words while doing much worse in real life.

There are some who would have it that Gwar’s a fraud, and its crew of vulgarians actually hail from earthly Richmond Virginia. Gwar would no doubt deem this a blasphemy punishable by torture and death, but it makes a certain sense–Northern Virginia has long been a melting pot for your hardcore punk and thrash metal types, and this crossbreeding has led to some real musical mutations over the years. But the stage dominators in Gwar–whose grotesque rubber outfits make ‘em look like cartoon predators from the movie of the same name–actually fit the part. Compared to Gwar, the guys in Kiss look like the briefcase-carrying corporate greedheads they really are. With Gwar, to see ‘em is to flee ‘em.

Gwar has released 14 schlock-rock classics since 1988, but my pal and Gwar fanatic Eric Berthoud swears by 1990’s Scumdogs of the Universe, and who am I to argue with an expert? With the late Oderus Urungus (earth name Dave Brockie) handling lead bellows and Flattus Maximus, Balsac the Jaws of Death, Beefcake the Mighty, and Jizmak Da Gusha crushing bones behind him, Scumdogs of the Universe is both comedy record and brutal demonstration of world domination expressly created to put we paltry humans in our place.

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I finished this review only to discover–much to my chagrin-that I wrote one 3 years ago. Just more proof, as any were needed, that I have the memory of a house fly. In any event, this new review is 150 times better than the old one. Besides, all self-respecting music critics should return to this hair metal masterpiece every couple of years. It’s that great.

Judging by the Punky Meadows look-alike on the cover of their 1986 debut and the twin sister of Gene Simmons on their second, these Mechanicsburg chest waxers couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be Angel or Kiss, so they went ahead and bested both of ‘em. Glam metal idols in the days before Kurt Cobain placed former hairdresser Rikki Rockett’s skyscraper ‘do on the endangered species list, Poison packed enough hair to stuff a mattress into their metal and by so doing lubed the loins of a million girls itching to steal their makeup.

Had Poison been nothing more than a pretty pooch they’d have gone the way of Cats in Boots, and poor C.C. DeVille would have had to scuttle back to Three Mile Island with his poison blue Flying V guitar beneath his legs. But Poison had the skills to pay their thousand dollar spandex bills, and come Open Up and Say… Ahh! only Guns ‘N’ Roses had more powder in their pistol.

Counterintuitive as it sounds, there was an innocence to Poison’s twist on L.A. sleaze; unlike those moody social Darwinists Guns ‘N’ Roses (welcome to the jungle!), Poison believed in the power of positive partying. No appetite for destruction for these hair teasers; like Def Leppard, all they wanted was for you to pour some sugar on ‘em and lick it off.

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Sounding less like a bird of prey than a castrati with a gerbil up his ass, Geddy Lee is trying to tell us something. Xanadu, subdivisions, the spirit of radio, how we’re all trees in the forest and if you happen to be a stunted one you’re shit out of luck—your guess is as good as mine. The late Neil Peart, may he rest in peace, wrote ‘em, and your average 13-year-old with a unicorn glitter notebook would have rubbed his nose on the playground gravel.

Behind Geddy, prog-metal bric a brac: 2012’s ping-ponging title track (Rush isn’t a band, it’s a kid with attention deficit disorder) boasts seven parts including a grand finale, and is less a suite than a Frankenstein monster of ill-fitting parts. As for the band’s concept albums, Geddy himself has been quoted as saying, “Even I can’t make sense of them.”

Either you love Rush or you loathe ‘em, and I loathed ‘em up until the day I realized they were a comedy act. Now I love ‘em. Geddy cracks me up every time he opens his beak. “Closer to the Heart” is my all-time favorite song.

But there was an old Rush before the new Rush, and the old Rush can only be heard on the band’s 1974’s eponymous debut. With the soon-to-be-booted John Rutsey on skins, and nary a tedious 19-minute musico-philosophical discourse on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead in sight, everybody’s favorite Molson belchers made like Led Zeppelin on Beaver Tails, and while your critic types derided Rush as a turd hamburger, I like it cuz I’ll take good old-fashioned hard rock over mutant mullet metal any day.

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Psychedelics! Hallucinogenics! LSD! Mushrooms! Peyote! STP! I couldn’t wait to take them after reading Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but I had trepidations. I was afraid they’d transport me to some far-off psychic realm and deposit me there for good, and I’d end up like Syd Barrett with Quaaludes melting in my hair, talking to my long-dead great-grandfather, the one who was dragged to death by horses. So I asked a more experienced buddy, a macrodoser who once dropped acid every day for a month, how long the trip would last. And he replied insouciantly, “Oh, anywhere from six hours to the rest of your life.” I wasn’t what you’d call reassured.

I only tripped a few times, because as it turns out I’m Woody Allen neurotic and far too fragile a psychic specimen to be messing about with my delicate brain circuitry, but had I been the Captain Trips type who knows, maybe I’d have heard Leaf Hound’s great Growers of Mushroom. Alas, I gave up hallucinogenics on the fateful night I dropped acid, then spent the next six hours down on my hands and knees looking for it.

But it’s never too late to rejoin the counterculture, which I have done by burning my draft card (okay, so it was a pay stub from work, but it’s the symbolism that matters) and checking out all the semi-obscure psychedelic bands from that time I can find. And the band I like best, by many many micrograms, is Leaf Hound. The British band only released one LP, but it’s a work of true genius. It has everything you could possibly want in an album—great vocals, great guitar, great songs, even great cowbell. I love this album and want everyone to know about it, because it’s like Owsley-quality blotter acid for your ears and guaranteed to cause you to turn on, tune in, and turn it up.

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Forget about AC/DC, The Birthday Party, The Go-Betweens, Dead Can Dance, Crime & the City Solution, Lubricated Goat, Men at Work– the Little River Band even. The Chats are the best band to ever kangaroo hop its way out of Oz, and you’ve probably never heard of them.

Rank hyperbole? For sure, especially considering The Chats have only released two EPs. But the amiable trio are winning fans and amusing people with their endearing–and self-deprecating–songs about food, darts, being sick, and other seemingly mundane aspects of day-to-day existence. They’re Australia’s answer to The Adolescents, and probably the first punk rock band to write a song about the injustice of being interrupted during a cigarette break.

The Chats owe much of the attention being paid them to their hilarious YouTube videos for songs like “Smoko,” “Pub Feed,” “Identify Theft,” and “The Clap.” Lead singer Eamon Sandwith’s combination bowl cut/mullet–he’s claiming mullet prejudice has led to his being barred from a Queensland bar–is chuckle-worthy all by its own.

Some of the fun on 2017’s “Get This in Ya” is figuring out what these dingo rustlers are talking about. “Smoko” is slang for smoke break, “nambored” pissed off. “Punt” is a mug of beer. “Fangin’ a feed” is a vivid metaphor for wolfing your food. “Golden Oak” is a brand of goon, or cheap white wine to the rest of us. “Crook” is shorthand for pretty shitty. “Maccas” is Aussi speak for McDonalds. As for “chucked down,” your guess is as good as mine.

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