Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Arcana Obscura Review (3/8/08)

Playlist and Archive for Saturday (3/8/08)

The prodigal son returns! I've been away for a week now. Still here in New York, but I've been horrified by a gnome (or... Duende), dismayed by a death, and confounded in the search for an elusive letter. But I better start reviewin' some shows!

I played "Wicked Annabella" by The Kinks, so here's some kid drumming along to it.

This band needs no introduction. Arthur Lee and his band Love.

Finally, I played "Woman Tamer" by Brooklyn's own Sir Lord Baltimore. Couldn't find that song anywhere, but here's Steve McQueen racing cars set to "Kingdom Come."

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

David the Gnome 2: The Reckoning

Dear lord, a gnome is terrorizing Argentina. A goddamn gnome! Watch the video, it's... I don't even know.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Plastic Tales Review (3/3/08)

Playlist and Archive for Monday (3/3/08)

Excellent show. We had an Obeah man sing an ode to the demon formerly known as an Assyrian god, Baal. We also had Blueberry Pancake laud the merits of hanging clowns. I'm all for it.
As we often do, we heard the great Q65. Here is a 1980 live performance of the song:

And Beautiful Flyaway from Alice Cooper's oft overlooked first album, Easy Action:

Also, I'm excited about something. Can you guess what it is?
Fine, it's the return of R.O.B. the Robotic Operating Buddy in Smash Bros. Brawl.

Friday, March 7, 2008

An Olive Branch for Jill Sobule

Alright, in response to my last post, I am now an unpolished rock donor for Jill Sobule's new album. Why, you ask? Several reasons.

1. I may have been a bit unfair in my caustic assessment of her career. After she commented, I did some due diligence and checked out some of her post-1995 albums. They're not as Kate Bush or Elliott Smith as I would personally like, but they're fairly interesting and way better than Jewel. Also, she had two hit songs, not one. Anyone who knows me is aware of my love/hate relationship with the 90s, the decade that created the monster that is me.

2. She is a prog rock fan. I cannot risk offending one of the three women who actually like prog rock. When I host Plastic Tales I get a lot of calls, usually requests, sometimes guys who just want to chat about Nursery Cryme. None of them are female. One time I heard a woman's voice on the other line but it actually just turned out to be the girl who hosts the electronica show that comes on after mine. Nuts.

3. I donated $10, I am but a poor and humble graduate student. Does anyone out there have a bunch of money? Donate some to her, with the stipulation that she cover one of my favorite songs. I have one in mind. It has been forgotten by all, yet it still stands on the shoulders of giants long sunken beneath the waves. Soul Song by Saturnalia:

Thursday, March 6, 2008

I Kissed A Girl

Major news sources reported that 1990s one-hit wonder Jill Sobule is begging for money online. You may remember her hit song "I Kissed A Girl," which caused some scandal when it came out in 1995. I literally cannot conceive that in 1995 this song was considered controversial, but my memory is less than adequate.

What happened to Sobule after her hit? I never really followed the careers of these female singer-songwriters after some kind of mid-90s fever dream dropped them all at our doorsteps, threshholds smeared in goat blood to ward off the coming of nu-metal. According to Wikipedia she went on to record a song about an aging lesbian aviatrix succumbing to Alzheimer's. Huh.

Well now we know. Sans record deal, she's begging for money online to make a new CD. Successfully, I might add. To me this is vaguely reminiscent of when L7 tried to drum up publicity in 2000 by offering up the sexual favors of drummer Dee Plakas to one lucky raffle winner.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Don't You Know You'll Stain The Carpet

Two fake memoirs debunked in the past month. Love and Consequences and Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years. In an already difficult to penetrate industry, these people are making it even harder. Troubling.

The interesting thing is that when caught, they always say the same thing.
James Frey said: "People cope with adversity in many different ways, ways that are deeply personal. My mistake, and it is one I deeply regret, is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience."

Misha Defonseca said: "The story of 'Misha' is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving," and at times she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."

One could say that these are valid pontifications regarding the nature of the Self and the construction of identity. If one were inclined to be an asshole. It's actually just a really nice therapeutic way of saying "I told the lie so much, I came to believe it myself." But that’s as much as I feel like saying, and that’s neither here nor there.

In other news, I headed out to the remains of Midnight Records and talked business with a curious gentleman. I also picked up an LP of The Way We Feel by Complex, an excellent album with a poorly designed cover:

Monday, March 3, 2008

Searching For My Mainline

At the Roky Erickson show, the opening act was one of Thurston Moore's ubiquitous and irrelevant side projects.
He did however play one song that caught my interest, a tune about how he wasn't "a young man anymore." True, but it was not until today I realized the song is a recently discovered, previously unheard Velvet Underground song from a 1967 live show entitled "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore." It sounds like it would be great as a studio track, but Lou Reed's unfiltered opiate monotone does it in for me.



Source: Dead Flowers: Anglophiles Anonymous

I Never Had The Bloody Hammer

I went to see Roky Erickson and the Explosives at Webster Hall on Saturday night. It was a pretty excellent show and he played almost the entirety of The Evil One. Like many of these aging musicians who currently tour, his voice has aged but is not changed so drastically to detract from the thrill of hearing a living legend.

The oddest thing is that he yells, "Thank you!" after every single song, grinning like a child at his accomplishments. And his very talented lead guitarist also seems to be his guardian and caretaker. It's actually quite heartwarming. Here he is playing a song that I really enjoy about the Bermuda Triangle. I have this song but I can't remember what album it was on.