Random Top 10 Redux

[bowiglou]

just got the new STiff Little Fingers..upon first listen, damn good..and got a best of Warren Zevon.......he definitely had a quirky way of penning a song....plus a wonderful Uncut issue of all the Nme/MM articles on Glam rock..the usual suspects: bowie, t-rex/bolan, roxy music, slade, Rod Stewart/Faces, etc...........................a very fun read.......was going to get Razorlight (or at least check it out) but it wasn't in the store.....and read some positive review of the new Libertines.......otherwise, I think from hereon in, unless you all can say something "new" will be listenable for a minimum of 20 years, I'm going to ONLY buy Oldies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[samplestiltskin]

Jesus - I'd still love to know whatever happened to the idea of MY Muse mix.

The Melvins. They're playing at the Gothic theatre in Denver sometime, I remember seeing the name on the marquee. I have no idea what they sound like though. Why do I associate them with Nirvana? Are they something I should see?

[Dr. Drum]

Mary said:

Drum, to get back to Nick Cave for a minute (shockingly!) - ya know, I'm gonna defend ol' St. Nick for a minute against these charges of skirting self-parody on both ends of the spectrum - both the romantic crooning and the over-the-top diabolic stuffing-women-into-ovens stuff. Hasn't Nick Cave's entire career been one long exercise in crazy over-the-top melodrama? I think a lot of people who love Nick Cave love him not in spite of this, but because of this. I don't know why a song about stuffing women into ovens is any more self-parodic than a song about a mutant, murderous travelling carny show. For one thing, it's totally unfair to interpret these songs as if they're just pure darkness and not black humor. All of Nick Cave's bands had deliriously profane senses of humor, which were almost always neglected or missed by critics - personally, I look forward to a song about stuffing women into ovens (I never thought I'd write that sentence!!) as another opportunity for Nick to be hilarious in his wonderfully warped and misanthropic way.

And the same goes for the romantic Nick as well - when Nick is romantic, he is always capital-R Romantic. Personally, I just don't think Nick sounded very good crooning on Nocturama and I thought most of the songs were rather anemic - not enough memorable melodies. The difference between The Ship Song and She Passed By My Window isn't that one tumbles over the edge of parody and the other doesn't - it's that one has a gorgeous, timeless melody, and the other is just boring.

OK, there's my requisite defense of St. Nick... I'm outta here

NP: Nick Cave - Tender Prey (song: The Mercy Seat)

Cheers,
M

Mary, as exemplars of a successful Nick Cave record and a largely failed one, I don’t think the difference between "The Ship Song" and and "She Passed By My Window" is that the latter is just boring. It bores us because it lacks in any way the gravitas of the earlier song. It doesn't have a timeless melody but beyond that, there’s not the sense of discovery and perhaps not the kind of conviction that was there in the earlier piece. Artists don’t continually have to be 'breaking new ground' but there’s just not the kind of energy on Nocturama that there was on The Good Son or The Boatman’s Call or even parts of No More Shall We Part. Less questioning going on, more set pieces. You start to wonder whether, perhaps due to writer’s block or whatever, there’s a bit of self-mimicry creeping in.

I’d largely agree with your comments on Cave and the Bad Seeds' twisted sense of humour and the idea of looking at his career as an exercise in over-the-top melodrama but I guess that’s the thing – the minute it starts to feel like an exercise, you’re dead in the water. To me songs like "Baby, I’m On Fire" on the last one had a bit of that feeling, so again you’re potentially getting into (self-) parodic territory. Obviously not the case with stuff like Tupelo or The Carny (or even one-offs like his cover of "Tower of Song" or "(I’ll Love You) Till the End of the World" for that matter.)

A lot of artists say the same three or four things for their whole careers when you break it right down but you’ve got to continually find new ways to do it. The way Nocturama was recorded was obviously meant to do that on Cave and the Seeds’ end but to me it just felt like they ended up falling back on the tried and true to the point where it got a little stale overall. Way too early to say anything about about the new one, of course – it’ll stand or fall on it’s own merits. I’m just being apprehensive after a couple albums that I really wanted to like but on the whole, didn’t.

[Ryosuke]

Rileydog said:

Top 10 Canadian bands you may have heard of, but are clearly better than anything in your country, and perhaps worthwhile applying for employment and a work visa in the Great White North.

10. The Constantines
9. The Joel Plaskett Emergency
8. Metric
7. Hot Hot Heat
6. Godspeed You! Black Emperor
5. The Stills
4. Do Make Say Think
3. Buck 65
2. The Weakerthans
1. Broken Social Scene

Are they better than the bands (plus one singer) on this list?!

10. Spank Happy.
9. Quruli
8. Spitz
7. Gymnopedie
6. downy
5. Eastern Youth
4. Soul Flower Union
3. Supercar
2. Great 3
1. Mayumi Kojima

luke - I'd also add Luna on to that American list.

[Dwazee]

well, at this point i could do a muse mix for you lot

pearl jam are fucking great live, id totally agree. rem's great live too (altho i know they werent part of that list). really, the only bands i was disappointed wtih live were the yeah yeah yeahs and the rhcp. oh, and the white stripes rule live too...

[achn2b]

completely aprpos of nothing, but i saw Dazed and Confused tonight on the Oxygen channel, again, and just have to rave on how much i love this movie. perhaps because i was of high school age during the period that this movie takes place in, and because it so perfectly captures the time period.

we didn't paddle freshmen with wooden paddles we made in woodshop, but i went to many a party with the same vibe as shown in this movie.

[stratman19]

Dazed and Confused was a great movie. I own it on DVD, and I also was in high school during the same time period. Another reason I liked Almost Famous so much.

[Mary]

Dazed and Confused was pure cinematic genius. I would be suspicious of anyone who didn't love that movie.

Onto Doc Drum's post about Nick... yeah, I think maybe we're just getting bogged down in semantics here cause I think we generally agree about Nocturama. (Though, still to this day, I really do love And No More Shall We Part - maybe even more than The Boatman's Call!) Maybe I'm just a mindless Nick Cave ass-licker (oh how I wish! well, actually, I guess I don't really wish that. ass-licking doesn't really appeal to me...), but all the same, I kinda doubt what's going on is a loss of inspiration or passon for the music he is creating - I tend to take him at his word when he says (over and over again) that he'd stop writing music the minute he thought he was getting stale or tired. I think this is actuallly evidenced by the fact that he waited 4 years after The Boatman's Call to release NMSWP - a period during which he acknowledges he was suffering serious writer's block. So I just don't think of him as someone who escapes writer's block by simply mimicking his past gestures. I still think of Nocturama as a misfire because of shoddy songwriting, and nothing more weighty than that. But that it's a misfire - we both agree.

I think I mostly just wanted to defend the idea of a song about famous chefs throwing women into ovens Actually I'm curious Drum, since I've been on such a Birthday Party jag lately - do you own/listen to Birthday Party stuff at all? Given you're kind of a Boatman's Call man, I'd be curious how the Birthday Party sits with you, in particular if you think they were just too over-the-top and self-parodic.

NP: Neurosis & Jarboe (song: Taker) -- ftr, I canNOT stop listening to this record. It is utterly cinematic, there's no other word for it. These huge sweeping soundscapes, the militant, tribal drumming, and Jarboe's amazing versatile voice. She does this whispered-chanting thing that is utterly creepy. I can imagine this music as the soundtrack to expressionist horror film or something. And incidentally, this came out in 2004 - so I'm not opposed to buying new music when it's this creative and entrancing!!!

Cheers,
M

[PC]

Dazed and Confused is one of my favorite movies of all time. A pure classic.

[Proud]

i would see it but i figured it was about a bunch of idiots who smoke pot so i decided i don't want to.

i don't want to see any modern comedy movies after van wilder. euughhh...

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

That wasn't the real CWA back there. What have those Frenchies and other dastardly Europeans done to him?

[riley]

Beyond helping him discover he's gay?

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

We told him that years ago. He didn't need a year of poncy strolls down la rue de bollocks, gitane in hand and winking at passing Parisian youths on their little scooters to tell him that.

[tuneschick]

Dazed and Confused is sheer brilliance. That's been one of my favourite movies since the first time I saw it (OK, I really can't believe that was 11 years ago!

I've owned it for years, but still always get really excited when it's on TV.

"Wipe that face off your head, bitch!"

[maarts]

Ryo, I've been thoroughly enjoying the discs you send me- thanks very much for letting me listen to some of your favourite artists! I have made some discs for you and they're on their way!

Personally I love the Supercar-album the best. I have been listening to a lot of low-key poppy kind of stuff and Futurama just blew open my ears. I love the almost cheesy kind of keyboard-sequencing in amongst the NIN-like riffing and the high-octane tracks wouldn't be misplaced on the Fast & The Furious-soundtrack.

The Great 3 reminds me very much of some Italian bands in the eighties who also had a habit to have two voices sing the melodyline in the same fashion (a falsetto on top of the lower vocal). I like the fuzzed out tracks like Red Wind America the best, bit like Guided By Voices. Are they a bit ironic in their lyrics- naming a lovely sounding song Bats On Fire makes me suspect so.
Certainly an album that likes to wrongfoot you- from the manic boppy pop of Crystal Cage to the spun out fuzzidelica of Echo to the Morricone-like The Elm- good use of brass and muted trumpets too to give that nightclub-feel. I'll play this one quite a lot in the near future- it's one of those albums that you like instantly but after a few listens will open up more. At least that's what it's doing right now, playing it on my heapdphones tonight.

I must admit that I love Mayumi Kojima's voice but I never was big on bigband-style music, so the first tracks start out like that (nice standing-bass sound though, makes it sound more rock 'n roll in bits) but fortunately, further on she embraces bits of klezmer (the 4th track) and the cha-cha-cha-like 7th-track (the tracks are in Japanese)...the final track, with banjo (mandoline?) is very sweet indeed.

And ha- Happy End with Haruomi Hosono. Nice folkrock from the seventies. They would have fitted nicely in the Canterbury-scene with a band like Caravan, having the same twangy sound as the electric CSN&Y and influenced a bit by The Doors. I certainly expected a bit more electronic sounding album because of Hosono's YMO-past but I read up a bit on the band and I understand that this was pre-Yellow times. Good to see the kazoo make a welcome return as a great solo-instrument on Track 6!
It sounded a lot like the boys enjoyed a good bong before making this album- nicely tripped out stuff. I liked track 10 and the first one the best.

Definitely a good selection, mate. Hope my selection will please you too.


Riley, I realise that I owe you too! I'm so sorry mate! I'll mix up something for you too in the near future!