My Life with Blondie

I remember as a kid first hearing "Heart of Glass" on the radio.  I would have been 10 at the time and I had a single speaker mono radio with a tape player my dad brought back from one of his TDY trips to Saudi Arabia and a GE Clock Radio that served me faithfully until it crapped out about 10-12 years later in my college years.

I have fond memories of KIIK 104 out of Davenport, Iowa.  I think I mostly listened to that station and 97X (WXLP) out of Moline.  But the music mix back then was so diverse.  Plus, I think it was still in the young years of FM radio, so that was probably what made it so wonderful.

"Heart of Glass" caught my attention with Deborah Harry's siren-like voice.  It was a rockin' tune with that sweet disco drum and bass combination.  As far as I was concerned, that was the perfect mix when I was 10 years old.  Then "One Way or Another" came out with the raunchy guitar and I was hooked.

I remember seeing Blondie on TV one night.  Whenever I could actually see the band on TV that I heard on the radio, I was fascinated.  My parents would often point out to me when someone was lip-syncing.  That is kind of funny that I judge performers on TV to this day because of my parents pointing this out.  The snobby critics of music that they are (sarcasm).  

We moved to Oklahoma when I was 11.  "Eat to the Beat" came out and I was really into "Dreaming".  I think that was my favorite song at one point.  I had a serious crush on the girl across the street.  She gave me no quarter.  I told her I liked her and she told me she was not interested.  We were 11, though, so looking back, that whole boys liking you thing was maybe kind of new to her.  Plus, I probably wasn't exactly a prize at age 11, just hitting my growth spurt and growing out of the chunky 10-year old that I was.

I knew she liked Blondie, and her birthday was coming up, so I saved up my allowance and went and bought her the "Eat to the Beat" cassette.  Surprisingly, I had it in my head that we were just friends when I did this.  I swear to you that I was not being manipulative when I bought this.  It was probably more like the beginning of me sharing music with people who had similar interests or were curious, something I continue to do in my life.

I remember thinking, "Jeez!  A recorded tape costs more than a record!"  I think it ended up being over $10 and my dad had to spring for the tax because I forgot about that part.

When I gave that tape to Jo, it was like the next day and she wanted to hang out with me.  She was being really kind, no longer stand-offish, and I was kind of confused.  "So I bought you something and now you want to be my girlfriend?  I wasn't good enough for you before?".  This is what I was thinking.  It really kind of turned me off.

After a year in Oklahoma, we moved to Germany and I just got greasier in appearance.  I had no sense of style.  Three years later, we got a trip back to Oklahoma and I spent a week with my best friend, Barry.  I asked him, "Hey, does Jo still live in her house?"  He told me yeah.  So we went around to her house.  I was likely riddled with acne and hadn't showered in a day or two. Hanging out in the 90-degree Oklahoma heat.  Can you imagine how delicious that was? We just show up and I started talking to her.  Her younger sister recognized me right away, but Jo did not.  She shot me a glare and moved away from me.  Her sister told her who I was I and I could see her face get this disgusted look and she said, "Really?"  At that point, I turned to Barry and said, "Come on."

The other big hit I remember was "Rapture".  The Sugar Hill Gang also was on the radio at that time with their "rap" song.  Then I didn't hear anything for years with that style of music.  Could be because none of the kids I hung out with in Germany listened to that style of music, or the fact that we didn't have normal American pop radio in Germany.  Fast forward to 1986 and MTV was blowing up with Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys.

Once I got my CD player, I eventually picked up the "Greatest Hits" through Columbia House.  A band we shared a stage with called Funky Thermos even did a cover of "Call Me", which would probably be one of my favorite songs by Blondie these days.  Likely because "The Thermos" covered it.  The Gear Daddies also had a cover of "The Tide is High" that they released as a B-Side.  It was pretty decent.

I even made a beer named after "Parallel Lines".

In the Dynamite Jet Saloon

On a recent trip to Minneapolis, I met up with an old friend.  Beers were opened, guitars were brought out, and my friend mentioned that he had a Dogs D'Amour album that he had found, which included a few songs from an album we played the bejesus out of in the summer of 1989 (cue Bryan Adams here) called ...In the Dynamite Jet Saloon.

If you couldn't tell by looking at the band's photos to the left, you might think this was some sort of hair metal band in the same vein as Poison, as the cover pretty much looks like "Look What the Cat Dragged In", only these guys aren't as pretty.

Click here and open up this album to listen to it in another browser.

When I got home, I went looking to see if I could actually buy that album, as the album my friend had was missing some of the songs I remembered and liked.  I was met with miserable failure, although it appears that lead singer, Tyla, made an up to date version of the album to celebrate the 25-year anniversary of it, with some different songs.  Unfortunately, Tyla sounds like he continued to smoke and drink over the past 25 years, and so, yeah, not the same, unfortunately.

There are some obvious blues/Rolling Stones elements to this album, but to me, I get more Faces influence out of some of the songs.  Around the same time, another band called the London Quireboys came out, and you can hear some similarities between them and the Dogs, but I think the Dogs are less-polished sounding than that first Quireboys album.  Overall, I'd say this is a 4/5 star album.  Some of the songs are basic hair metal, but others, I think, have stood the test of time well.

"Debauchery" is kind of a typical rock album opener.  I really like a lot of the lyrics on this album, as they are pretty romantic for the genre.  My favorite line from this song, "When the devil comes around to get you, your place is such a mess".  The first 4 songs on side one of the album are all pretty great, though.

The next song is "I Don't Want You to Go":



The third song also has a more polished video:



I guess I don't really know where I'm going with this. Mostly I just wanted to share this album with folks because I was surprised how much I like it still after all these years. I really like "The Last Bandit", "Sometimes", "Billy Two Rivers" and "Wait Until I'm Dead". I never really followed these guys after this. I sort of got into the whole grunge thing and then alternative country. But they probably cross into the same style of music Steve Earle was trying to make at the time. Check out how "Sometimes" shares the same feel as Earle's "Someday".

I dunno. What do you got?

Miles and Miles to Put It Back Together

I turn 41 today. I definitely don't feel 41. I maybe feel more like I did when I was in my mid-20s. Luckily, I don't have aching parts of my body. I still don't wear glasses, or really need to, although I can tell my vision is not as sharp as it used to be. I can't read street signs 4 blocks away anymore, and while I miss that superpower, I have learned to be more patient and read the sign when I get closer.

I was driving home last night listening to a workout playlist when Judas Priest's "Heading Out to the Highway" came on over the car speakers. There are a lot of songs that are great metaphorically, and my favorite ones are probably about living life, and out of those, Bob Dylan's "Mississippi" would probably be my favorite, even though it's more about life and death.

Metal gets a bad rap for being big and dumb. And it is. That is why we like it, I think. The song before "Heading Out" was Saxon's "Denim and Leather", which has the lyrics, Did you read the music paper from the back and to the front, which also reminded me that kids that listened to metal got a bad rap as being big and dumb. But Saxon knew we read, and it wasn't just the music paper.

"Heading Out to the Highway" starts out with the kind of riff that made Judas Priest an influence over the genre. The drums and bass kick in, then Rob Halford sings:

Well I've said it before, and I'll say it again
You get nothin' for nothin', expect it when
You're back seat drivin' and your hands ain't on the wheel
It's easy to go along with the crowd
And find later on that your say ain't allowed
Oh thats the way to find what you've been missin'

This is a good lesson for all you teenagers out there. While it's nice to go out and have fun, you also need to be focused on getting your shit together so that when the time comes, you can make your move instead of wondering what the hell happened.

I can't even remember the class I was taking in college that involved writing a resume. I believe it was in my third year, and as I was trying to fill the thing with information, I sort of freaked out because other than go to classes, work shit jobs, and play in various bands, I didn't have anything that appeared credible to go on the resume. Soon thereafter, I became a resident assistant, and when I had to do an internship, I didn't opt for the easy one at the university, but took 8 months off to go work in a real factory doing real industrial safety work, which is what I do today.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you not to have a good time (yeah, everyone who knows me can tell you that), but just watch for opportunities and think about what you want to do down the road.

You can hang in a left or hang in a right
The choice it is yours to do as you might
The road is open wide to place your biddin'
Now, wherever you turn, wherever you go
If you get it wrong, at least you can know
There's miles and miles to put it back together

That second verse has such a positive message. If you fuck it up, don't worry about it, you can always change and find a different way. This is an important message to remember with your relationships with people, as well. It can apply to changing carrers when you're middle age. The key here is that Halford has a healthy attitude about it; he knows if he goes the wrong way, he's still got miles and miles to put it back together, it doesn't have to happen right then and there.

Makin' a curve or takin' the strain
On the decline, or out on the wain
Oh everybody breaks down sooner or later
We'll put it to rights, well square up and mend
Back on your feet to take the next bend
You weather every storm that's comin' at cha

Yeah, you're gonna get old. But try to stay in shape and eat right. Everybody breaks down sooner or later.

So there's my message of wisdom to you on my 41st birthday. No Springsteen "Thunder Road" or mystical Dylan song. Just the leadoff tune from a 28-year old Judas Priest album. If you need me, you'll know where to find me:

So I'm heading out to the highway
I've got nothing to lose at all
Gonna do it my way
Take a chance before I fall

Tea and Bloody Crumpets

Doors for the Emilie Autumn show were supposed to be at seven. They weren't. It was much closer to eight. My compatriots and I stood around in the autumn chill and the spitting rain shivering and talking and poking fun at the goth kids in line. There were quite a few of them (OK, that's an understatment). I was wearing a corset and black pants, and I still looked downright normal. Make of that what you will. There were actually quite a few kids in attendance, which I found highly amusing. There were parents there, standing next to their gothed out kids. I admire those parents their coolness. If I’d tried to get either of my parents to take me to a show at that age—let alone an industrial/goth show—I’d have been laughed at.

The stage was already set up when we were let inside. And the line at the merch table was a mile long. We headed for one of the bars and got drinks, then milled about with everyone else waiting for the show to start. None of us thought to try and get close to the stage at that point, so by the time I wanted to get closer, there was really no way to do so without pissing someone off.

This show? It was worth the wait. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this was more than just a concert. The four Bloody Crumpets (Captain Maggot, Naughty Veronica, Aprella and the Blessed Contessa) made their entrance to “Best Safety Lies in Fear” which is a mostly instrumental track. Emilie made her entrance singing “4 O’clock”. It was a fabulous start to a fabulous show. And let me reiterate to make myself perfectly clear: this was more than just a concert. These women don’t just stand around singing to the crowd (who all sang back for the most part, myself included). They put on a show. The theatricality and the talent of these women is astounding.

Following the intro came “Opheliac,” to resounding cheers. Emilie ended up playing the majority of her album, but that wasn’t all she did. Maggot left the stage shortly into the show and reappeared on the balcony. To the left of the stage hung a big hoop, and Maggot deftly climbed over the balcony and dropped into the hoop, where she twirled and flipped for the duration of the song, finally dropping into the crowd at the end. She is crazy and awesome. During “Shalott” (which is definitely based on the Tennyson, in case you were wondering), Emilie took a break to chat with the crowd. Normally I think something like that would bug me—get on with the song!—but it worked well here.

Emilie and the other three girls took a break during Dominant, an instrumental, and Veronica, who is also a burlesque dancer, did a fan dance. To the vast disappointment of everyone, but especially the douche who would not stop screaming the WHOLE NIGHT (and not in a fun way, but in a drunk and douchey way), she didn’t lose any of her clothes.

Oh, speaking of that guy. We all remarked at one point or another during the night how badly we wanted to do grievous bodily harm to him. I can understand being appreciative of an artist—I did my fair share of screaming too. I can even understand being appreciative of the female forms on stage—Emilie and all the crumpets are extremely beautiful and they perform in elaborate corsetry and not a whole lot else, and they look damn good doing it. But this guy was ridiculous. He was the biggest annoyance of the night. He was practically the only annoyance of the night (the other being that my feet were killing me by about halfway through the show). Seriously, folks, please show your appreciation, but don’t be that drunken asshole that inspires anger in your fellow concert-goers.

I loved the interaction with the crowd that Emilie and the girls all worked for. They did a good job of it. Veronica played the Rat Game, in which she announces that she’s never kissed a girl in Baltimore, then pulled a member of the crowd up on stage and kissed her. It’s really cool that all the girls have their own talents. Maggot does her thing with the hoops, and Veronica has her dance. The Blessed Contessa, as it turns out, does some awesome Cirque de Soleil-style thing with a sheet. I wish I knew what it was called, but it involves twisting herself in a sheet and obvious acrobatic skill.

She’s also a fire-eater. During “Dead is the New Alive”, she performed that feat, and then lit up the fire hoop for Maggots to do her thing with. It was stunning. I was floored by the talent these girls possess, and I loved how involved the show was.

The thing about EA? Her voice? Her awesome (in the original sense of the word) voice? That huge voice comes out of this tiny creature. And it’s deliciously unedited. What you hear on her album is what you get, folks. She’s not one of those studio created artists—she really does sing like that. It’s sweet and scary and powerful and amazing. She really does play the harpsichord as well as the violin.

My favorite part of the night, which which I’d been looking forward to for weeks, was when Emilie got out her violin and played for us. I’m pretty sure words can’t even express how amazing she is with her instrument. Not only that, but it was abundantly clear throughout both of her violin pieces that *this* is what she really loves to do—and I’m pretty sure if asked she would consider the violin an extension of herself instead of a mere instrument. She is, first and foremost, an amazingly talented violinist. I was in awe.

Possibly the only disappointment I felt all night was that she didn’t play my favorite song from Opheliac, “Swallow”. It wasn’t really much of a disappointment however, considering the show I witnessed. They closed the show with a fucking awesome cover of Bohemian Rhapsody. Emilie played the guitar parts on her violin. Did I mention that she shreds on that thing?

Emilie Autumn’s Opheliac Deluxe Edition is due on October 27. Meanwhile, check out her website and show some love.

(Oh, and if you’re interested, the playlist below is as close an approximation of her set list as I could manage, for your listening enjoyment.)

This article is cross-posted on Lizzie's blog (where it appears in a longer and far more fangirly version).

Music News: Re-re-re-remix

Indie darlings Passion Pit and Chairlift met backstage at Bonnaroo this summer, developed a friendship and have since created remixes of each other's songs. Chairlift remixed Passion Pit's "To Kingdom Come" and Passion Pit remixed Chairlift's "Bruises," which you've probably heard in commercials for Apple. Click here for the full Rolling Stone article, which also includes free links to download the remixes.





Kings of Leon are releasing a live concert DVD titled Live at the O2 London, England on November 10th. The footage was filmed on June 30th, 2009 and contains 22 songs from all four of their albums. KOL is also working on an Only By the Night remix album. They will be collaborating with Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, Mark Ronson, Lykki Li and Linkin Park to take the album from rockin' to Funkytown. I'm interested to see how this turns out, because it sounds scary to me.

This news is probably more heartbreaking to Europeans than Americans, but Norwegian pop band a-ha is hanging up their hats and retiring. Formed in 1982 the group found worldwide fame with their hit "Take On Me," also one of my favorite 80's songs. They retire with nine albums to their name, and lead singer Morten Harket still looking hot. Their final concert will be in Oslo on December 4th, which is fittingly my birthday. Who wants to buy me that as my gift?


Bon Iver announced on their website that Justin Vernon will be taking a break from live performances, "...for the foreseeable future." His last performance before this break was in Milwaukee, WI. Click here to stream it. It looks like there won't be any live performances featuring Volcano Choir, his collaboration with Collections of Colonies of Bees, whom he just put out an album with last month. At least not anytime soon. While we await his return, you can listen to his collaboration with St. Vincent titled "Roslyn" for the movie New Moon here.

And here's a sign that this world just might be alright after all. Creed tickets were selling for 75 cents on Ticketmaster's website for their Birmingham, Alabama show last week. I have nothing else to say about this other than, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!


-Felicia

Singing Without Lyrics, or At Least That's What it Sounds Like

I often feel like I don't listen enough to the words. When I take in a song, I absorb its melodies, its textures, and its structure. It's just what my ears/brain naturally do. This is probably the reason I ended up help creating and hosting an instrumental radio show for 4+ years on the local college station in town. At the age of 20 when I had discovered modern instrumental post-rock, ambient, neo-classical, and bedroom electronic music, I didn't understand why any of it wasn't as popular as the trendy indie rock bands of the time, who I also appreciated, but trust me, not because I thought they were all brilliant poets. Some of them were, for sure, and those ones I loved even more, but I was often too busy investing my time in the instrumentation and orchestration of the songs I loved, not the lyrical content thereof. Having grown as a music lover in this particular way, I have recently delved into a certain type of song that I hope satisfies those who enjoy (need?) vocals in their music, but can take a second to appreciate the atmospheres and pure ecstasy of patterned sounds. Here are my ten favorite songs (right now) that feature vocals, but no discernible (to my ears, anyway) lyrics. Enjoy.



First we start with the song that inspired this post, which I listened to today when I suddenly had an urge to hear something a little crazy, a little serene, but something neither calmly instrumental nor aggravatingly poppy. "Goth Star" by Pictureplane was the answer to my strange desire. I don't know anything about this artist, but I happened to grab the track earlier this year and while I merely mildly enjoyed it at first, now I could keep listening to it on repeat for the rest of the night without complaint. The vocals cut in and out like a jittery trance song, but it's all looped too blissfully steadily for it too come off as annoying or forced. Likewise, "Sugarette" by Bibio is a piece that's fragmented in its hip hop beats and bleeps, but also manages to waft breezily through the headphones, never sitting still, but also never inducing a headache. Chipmunk pitch-shifted vocals teeter in the background and pulse forward on the beat intermittently, but what he's saying, no one knows, and the song's all the better because of it.

The gorgeous electronic chaos of tracks like these dips its toes into shoegaze with "Nights in Kiev" by Port-Royal, where cut-up glitch is covered up with a sheen of washed-out antarctic synths. Heavily reverbed whispers lilt in and out throughout, but the stars of the show are the careening plasticine melodies that don't duel so much as frolic. It sounds sad, but the notes soar and climax with such hope and longing that it feels revitalizing to hear. In "Clear Skies Above the Coastline Cathedral" by Manual, another epic dream-pop track, the voices are even more subtle (but somehow covering both lows, mids, and highs of the song), just peeking slightly out over the grand canyon electro beat and contemplative guitar swells. And as those acoustic/electric guitars sprinkle into each other more and more as the song progresses, with every riff becoming more and more magical...wow. It's so exhausting and uplifting to listen to, I feel like I need to pause for a minute before I do anything after the song ends. Good thing it's over eight minutes long, otherwise it would just feel like a tease. On the other end of the shoegaze spectrum is "Ashes Maths" by A Sunny Day in Glasgow, in which the vocals are incredibly overpowering, but so heavily processed and elliptical that you can't tell which end's up or how the hell these loops were even created. It's magnanimous and ominous, but just as gut-wrenchingly beautiful as anything else on the list.

Ululations from the larynx are also quite prevalent on "Leyendecker" by Battles, which starts stepping even further into rock territory, but also remains firmly in the electronic camp as well, with its precise keyboard tinkling and angular drum patterns. I suppose the same pitch-shifting that Bibio used in the aforementioned song is going on here, but it sounds less forest animal and more dungeon gremlin, which makes this track sound creepy (it is), but it's also downright fierce and pristine, making it indelibly delicious. Similarly, "The Devil Bends" by The Dead Sea gets a little mean, but this time moving things more in the gritty and ramshackle direction. The reversed and affected lyrics make almost every word save "devil" unrecognizable, and it completely makes the song in this instance. Most of these tracks get their strength from their layered instrumental complexities, but The Dead Sea instead deliver a prodigiously straightforward guitar and drums track with wispy and wandering vocals sprayed atop to sculpt a soundscape that is uniquely frustrated in two distinct ways. And the combination is what makes it so satisfying.

Things start getting even more minimal and ghostly with "Glory Gongs" by Forest Swords, which sounds to me, by all accounts, like a blues song. Sure the only evidences of this are its wilting guitar licks and quietly aching lumbering percussion, but what else do you need? How about two somber but pleading vocal riffs that sound like they're recorded and played back on warped vinyl through a phonograph, and repeated whenever there's an open space for hurt to be heard. And of course what would hurting be without a little bit of screaming? "Sweet Love For Planet Earth" by Fuck Buttons proves the UK duo to be the masters of melding together dense mosaics of fuzz and brightness, muddy noise and effervescent minutae, throaty scuzz and lullaby ambience. If that sounds effed up beyond comprehension to you, that's because it is. The story and/or mental process behind how they came up with this aesthetic is either terrifying and/or unexplainable, and thus, we shan't hypothesize here. Just listen to believe it. Yells from the belly and the bowels of hell are also used with finesse and aplomb in our final track for the playlist, "Aves" by Gifts From Enola. Like the penultimate, this one takes its sweet time to get to the meat of it all, but it's well worth it. It's a prime example of post-rock done right: just enough pretentiousness to make it ethereally cryptic and epic, but enough accessibly rocking sequences to make it alternate between wondering you with its elegance and gutting you like a fish. And when those bellowing snarls rise up from under the raucousness and the WTF tapping guitar and insane drum rolls come pouring throuhg, it's like you've won an aural lottery, my friends.

And it just keeps getting better if you keep exploring more artists that specialize in this kind of unique song, such as Holy Fuck, WZT Hearts, Julianna Barwick, and Irepress. Surely there's others out there too, and I wanna know about 'em! Share, please!

Terra Infirma

Juliette Lewis: Terra Incognita
[The End Records]

Here's a question for you: if I spent pretty much the entire length of this album pondering just how crazypants Juliette Lewis must be, does that make me crazypants too? Or does it just make me a special kind of masochistic? Of course, if I wasn't already nuts, I'm pretty sure suffering through this aural abomination sent me straight off the edge. God, it was awful. Awful.

AWFUL.

Let me get the good bit out of the way first. It'll be short and sweet. Juliette's backing band? Those guys? They're good. I don't know if she just grabbed a bunch of session guys or actually formed a band, but they can play. The music itself was lovely and crisp, lots of heavy guitars and drums. Nice beats, well played, no problem there. There were numerous instances throughout my extended suffering where I wished that I could just erase her voice entirely, subbing in something not as grating. Or even better, just do without any singer and listen only to the backing track. I can't complain about the musicians that form her band at all.

Now. Juliette herself? Good God, y'all. It got to the point where I really wanted to hammer screwdrivers into my ears just to make the pain stop. I had to stop for listening for a bit to go do something else, and when I came back and a new song started, I exclaimed, “Oh good God there’s more?!” True story.

I very nearly just turned off the CD after track three and wrote this based entirely on the first three tracks. However, I told myself that I was the one who'd gotten me into this mess, so I owed it to... someone... to listen to the whole album. Give it a fair shot, I told myself. It might get better. Maybe it's just this one song.

Well, no. It wasn't just that one song. After about the seventh track, I stopped telling myself that, too.

I hate Juliette Lewis's voice. And I don't really like her music any better. She does this wail-rasp-whine thing that made me angrier with each passing song. And then she switched to this almost singing thing that was less raspy and more breathy, but put me in mind of her trying really hard to sound sweet and kinda lilting. Yet she failed. She failed a lot. Not only that, but the weird sorta-kinda hippieish Southerny thing that she was doing music-wise just didn’t fit with me. It felt like she was trying to be Janice Joplin. And honestly, I’ve never liked her music either. I can see Juliette doing a hippie thing with her music, despite her penchant for spandex when performing. She has that sort of vibe.

I tried; I really did try to give the album a fair shot. I thought about why I hated it so much as I was listening to it. It was hard to fight through my hatred though.

I thought a lot about whether or not this constitutes a vanity project on her part. And normally I’d say yes, of course it does. But for her, I don’t think it is. I think she really takes herself and her music way too seriously, and really feels like she’s making some sort of art. After all, this isn’t her first project. I wish I could just write it off as

I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there who would really enjoy this album. I am not one of them. It didn’t feel new or interesting or at all innovative. Beyond hating her voice, it just wasn’t an entertaining album. Nothing to see here, move along, folks.