Shot From A Canon

If Paul Schrader can pick the The Big Lebowski for his Film Cannon (in the September/October issue of Film Comment)--choosing it, mind you, before Sunset Boulevard, Gun Crazy and Salvatore Giuliano--I feel I can safely place Strum & Drum by the Sex Clark Five way up high at the top of my Definitive All-Time Greatest Albums Of All Time List (Canon). The angelic vocals of Fool I Was, those tentative White Boy rhythms in Alai, the curious subject matter blending the quest for nervous love (If You See Her With Me (Let Me Know), Girls Of Somalia) with precise descriptions of geo-political conflicts (Sarajevo)...all of it would sit nicely on my Western Canon trophycase (next to The Residents' Third Reich And Roll, Daniel Johnston's Hi. How Are You? and The Fall's This Nation's Saving Grace).

I Tried To Pawn My Family Jewels But I Was Politely Told They Hold No Value

Sometimes you're just standing around, scratching your big hairy balls (or, if you're a woman, your firm perky breasts) and some song which had previously alluded you suddenly grabs hold of your imagination and slams it onto the city sidewalk (I usually readjust my rocks on public streets.) "Take me," it screams, "I am a catchy song you have failed to notice before! Use me to your satisfaction!" Such was my testicle-related epiphany when I finally heard Over and Over by Hot Chip on my iPod last week. This also happened to me last month with You Can Decide by Field Music. I'd heard these tracks before but never actually listened to them, in much the same way you hear Andre Rieu play his fiddle during those endless PBS pledge drives, but you're not really listening to him because you're too busy thinking, "Holy shit, does he really leave the house with that fucking hairdo?"

Back To Your Future

Remember back in January 2006 when I sent some of you my year-end picks Best-Of-2005 CD? And remember how so many of you mocked me and scolded me and bruised my precious feelings for putting the Cansei De Ser Sexy track Acho Um Pouco Bom on there? But now they're the Next Big Thing and you're all listening to their Sub Pop debut and dancing around the house to Off The Hook and Alcohol and Fuck Off Is Not The Only Thing You Have To Show (even though the original Brazil-only version called Fuck Off Rock is so much better)? Well, get ready to emotionally abuse me once again later this year because I predict--thanks to tracks like Wild Moose Party and Siam--I predict the dance-y New Wave B-52's-ness of The Cosmopolitans is going to make them bigger than Jesus, Buddha and L. Ron Hubbard combined. Except that CSS are relatively new and The Cosmopolitans split up 25 years ago. Other than that, my gods can kill your gods.

It Takes One To Know One

George W. Bush and I are a lot alike. For starters, we are both former dum-dum coke-inhaling frat boy alcoholics who only wrangled our way into Yale thanks to our father slipping some green towards the school. Second, we've both been wasting our time and energy: he on Iraq (anyone with half a brain could have told you North Korea is more dangerous than Saddam Hussein), me on latter day ELO (anyone with half a brain could have told you ELO 2 is more dangerous than Out Of The Blue.) I mean, jeez, just listen to Momma... and Born To Die. Don't they make you just...I don't know...want to clear that never-ending brush which seems to creep up on your Texas ranch every vacation time?

The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich and Roll

"Girlfriend came out at just the right historic moment...riding the tidal wave kicked up by Nirvana's Nevermind and helping to fill the void that had been created by the instant obsolescence of the music of the '80's..." - excerpt from liner notes in just-released 2-CD edition of Matthew Sweet's 1991 album Girlfriend

The bloody battle begun just months earlier was finally coming to an end. Trapped in their reinforced bunker nestled deep underground, a handful of big-haired pop stars (including Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper and A-Ha) paced their cramped quarters, cyanide tablets at the ready lest they should fall into the hands of Colonel Cobain and his ragtag army of flannel-flying punk liberationists. The sonic bombardments continued apace from above, creating an instant obsolescence of all 80's music. Vince Neal, croutched in a dark room below, was preparing to die from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, agonizing over the distress and betrayal of seeing Decade of Decadance, the Motley Crue quickie greatest-hits collection released earlier that year, failing to reach the dramatic heights in sales of Nevermind. Meanwhile, reinforcements from Seattle marched on: Mudhoney continued their destructive carnage southward (towards Los Angeles), single-handedly overtaking the Coconut Teaszer, while the more unconventional advance attacks of The Butthole Surfers drew in from the southeast. As the Mighty Pop Empire lay in ruins, a severed hand fitted into a single white glove--torn, somewhat hidden by fallen debris and charred almost beyond recognition--was the last remaining symbol of a once formidable influence over a generation. As Emperor Mellencamp signed the Treaty of Surrender, Matthew Sweet and his band took advantage of this unique surge of freedom--a tidal wave, if you will--to perform Divine Intervention, followed by the original demo of Winona, to mark the slow passing of wartime into a newfound spirit of peace, prosperity and neo-primitive Maori tattoo markings going mainstream on biceps across the land.

Make With The Nice Nice

Besides pining for amorous adventures, The Spinto Band must spend a lot of time watching TV. Not in a who-gives-a-shit-about-the-outside-world, wasted pop-culture malaise, but more in a romantic sense, as if the fictional characters on The O.C. are going to jump out of the idiot box and deliver these guys from their empty, loveless lives. Several songs on Nice And Nicely Done (such as Late) casually mention hurrying home to catch a favorite boob tube program, and while the obvious musical references for this band might begin with mid-90's indie rawk (Sonic Youth, Pavement, etc), the more overt influence might just be TV Land. You can buy all things Spinto at Amazon.

The Shock Of The New (Wave)

Back in mid-June, music blog kingpin Fluxblog surprised me by posting a track from the 80's New Wave act Squeeze. The jolt wasn't because the posting was unusual for the website's tastes (in fact, Fluxblog tends to post a wider variety of music genres than any other blog). No, the shock was that anybody even cared about Squeeze anymore at all--their music is hopelessly out of vogue, at least at the present moment. They're a guilty pleasure band for me, and it was lovely to see a much-visited blogger give them a mention. It was fate, then, that helped me find a new import copy of their masterpiece East Side Story, remastered with 2 bonus tracks (The Axe Has Now Fallen and Looking For A Love) at a Virgin Megastore in Glasgow. Because I didn't even know it existed, I never saw it listed in such mainstream music spots as Amazon (which has the song order inexplicably mixed up), and HMV (not to mention, of course, Virgin Megastore). I simply must spend more time web surfing. To these ears, it was smart for the band (and Nick Lowe, who produced the second track listed here) to leave these tunes off the finished album--they're much weaker than the rest of the album. Still, it's nice to hear these songs for the first time and remember why I used to listen to Squeeze in the first place.

Tubular Moonlight

The dense lo-fi sounds of San Francisco's Kelley Stoltz have a playful homemade quality which runs the gamut from pop to rock to folk to blues, starting over at pop again. You would think this diversified output would lead to a widespread audience hungry for all the musical styles he taps into but that hasn't yet been the case. However, I predict fame (and, perhaps, fortune) will finally rear its puffy little head when his newest CD comes out on Sub Pop in January 2006. Until then, here is Tubes In The Moonlight, a track from Antique Glow, which came out in 2003 and is available for purchase at Inertia (where it comes with a completely different cover, oddly enough). You can also now purchase his song-for-song remake of Crocodiles, the classic album by Echo & The Bunnymen, which can be found at Darla.

The Balls Of A Cupid

Johnny Nash (of I Can See Clearly Now fame) is nowhere near the equal of Sam Cooke. This is a given. Yet somehow, Nash's version of Cupid has the same soulful passion to it that almost mirrors Cooke's rendition while giving it a new twist of its own. Perhaps it's not as smooth an approach as the original, but the groove is a bit more forceful. Considering Cooke's enormous stature as a singer, you have to give Nash credit for having the balls to even give it a try. This track is taken from the Johnny Nash: The Reggae Collection and Amazon has it in abundance.