Residual Echoes: June 2010

I've long my life(12 years?) been interested in Bob Mould's musical endeavors. In high school I waited every month for the Pasadena CityCollege swap meet. It's where I learned how to find records and deal with the petty and pusillanimous purveyors of prefab rotundants of vinyl. One dreary April Sunday morn in the late 1990s, I woke at 6 to head north east. It was a good catch that day: "Kill 'Em All", "Pretties For You", "Crazy World of...", "Funketelechy", "Hot Rats", "Flyboys" & more importantly(to this post) "The Blasting Concept". Oh, how the Pettibon illustration made me cringe. The visual sentiments that Mr. P conjured up 20 years prior, still today manage to rest gently in my worldview. I barter for the Alice Cooper, Zappa and SST comp and talk the dude down to $15. (A fucking steal if you ask me, for a Blue-Label Bizarre 'Hot Rats' and any copy of 'Pretties'). This was a transitional period in my musical development(i guess they all are), I was reacquainting myself with Frank Zappa and more forms of black music, via Funkadelic & Ice Cube, and still unearthing certain punk bands that managed to peak my interest. I was moving beyond(not above!) the Chicago-style hardcore fair of the day which many friends were devotees of; Charles Bronson, K
ung Fu Rick, Los Crudos and their West coast(druggy) contemporaries; Dystopia, Phobia, Locust...

Driving home on the 2 freeway, L.A. has the ability to look not tawdry. The hills envelope the just-winding-enough road and offer the driver a peek of Downtown's skyscrapers from time to time. If the lighting is right one can feel a million miles away, slowly approaching

the end of the frontier, beholding Babylon in all of its horrifying and mystifying sense of denouement. It may have looked this way to me on this day through a probable haze of pot perfume stuck to the inside of my eyelids and permeating the windshield and leather interior of my 1986 navy blue Volvo 240 wagon, "Jodie"[r.i.p.], named so from the red and white JFA sticker plastered on the back bumper.

http://www.urbanity.es/foro/infraestructuras-inter

Inside my teenage bedroom, I had created my sad-sack-sanctuary. Bong behind the bed, record player sitting underneath the Zappa & Coltrane posters, stained grey carpeting. I wandered into the cathedral of my making, aloof from responsibility and any sort of emotional reality with living creatures. Most of my relating was done with these discs and the material contained on them. I listened to 'Hot Rats' first, i already owned the CD reissue, and was surprised at how fuzzy the vinyl sounded compared. Aha! Dust on the needle. Cleaned it, mouthed the guitar runs of 'Willie the Pimp' again and tossed it aside. I then proceeded to stuff my glo- in-th-dark bong's bowl with at least $15 worth of grass. I dropped the needle onto 'Paranoid Chant'. (To be honest I had

n't really enjoyed 'The Punch Line' the first time I heard the Minutemen and had even kept the cassette to remind myself never to by something I hadn't been assured was great[that record is in fact great but I was a stupid teenager].) Now this, my 2nd exposure to the Minutemen greeted my ears much more favorably, even with the intro bass and drum riff skipping. These Minutemen were faster leaner and without the plodding chunk of the 'Punch Line' which threw me off guard at first. I was definitely weirded out by Jack Brewer's madman ramblings over Baiza's spidery non-chords on Saccharine Trust's 'A Human Certainty'; one of the most uncompromising and alienating songs on the record, if not for the sheer fact that it's lyrics weren't directly about alienation/paranoia/frustration/etc. but painted an environment of desperation and hopelessness. And I can say here that I'd never heard anyone play the guitar that way before. "What about the Meat Puppets?" I'll cover them some other time.

I then smoked the grass and started side 2 to shake off Brewer's vibes. I knew all of the Flag stuff already so skipped straight to Overkill. This was the hardcore I was used to. A natural precursor to the really fast stuff from the Midwest of the 90s. Their track evoked a punk rock Twisted Sister picture the way I remember it. The Stains sounded a lot like the b

and I was in at age 14. Without the raging solos of course, and basically like a crappy Chavo-era Flag(the least best era). The song is called 'Get Revenge'. Wurm's tune completely escapes my memory now, and I have no idea if I've ever heard anything else by them. I'm sure it was 'heavy', since the 1st side of the record were weirdo bands, and side 2 was the hard shit.

This record was harsh. This record was unkind. The crackling and fluttering of the audio equivalent to specks of dust in my eyes really kept me going from song to song. Then for some reason the final track on this record had this crazy guitar riff that was MELODIC. To quote Brett Haskins of The Clash: 'Wait, Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?' An ape I became. This song freaked me out way more than anything else on this record. The guy's voice was so threadbare, and the music seemed more recalcitrant than the heavy groups in that it was actually a little bit catchy. All of this thrashing blanketed in the white hot sheet of static noise that you get at the end of an LP(you know what i'm talking about, where the grooves are closer together). So this was Husker Du huh? This is weird. The chorus on the guitar mixed with the yelling was so good to hear. I liked it very much. wait.....

That's right, I meant to talk about Bob Mould Soundcheck. This track originally was released on a cassette compilation as part of Tellus Audio Magazine series started in 1983 by Joseph Nechtvatal, Claudia Gould, & Carol Parkinson. Since I know very little concerning the 80s NY art camps, i'll suggest you check for more info about these cats here: http://www.harvestworks.org. Mould's track is from cassette #10. I only recently heard about this from my pal Bill Gray, who mentioned it in drunk passing a few weeks ago. I looked it up and am sharing it with ya'll.

This cut is everything I knew Bob Mould was capable of doing but to the casual listener of Husker Du/Sugar/Solo work, this would seem like an extremely unfitting audio document of such a wonderfully tuneful songsmith. However if you've ever heard 'Reoccurring Dreams', 'Plans I Make', 'Statues', or 'Wit & Wisdom' you'd be hard pressed to find finer examples of his pound rock fretboard abuse.

But with 'Soundcheck' he seems to be completely disconnected from himself and is in essence 'just dickin' around'. It's the release of the few inhibitions he may have had while performing live that he's able to let go the cosmic cumshot built up under his closeted tough guy veneer. I don't know what it was like being a closeted gay man in the 1980s involved in a prominent band that was involved in a very hetero-centric performance platform; in the tolerant U.S. nonetheless. This as an example of crisp and unadulterated expression that shoots for the moon. I was always hoping to hear this man lay down some serious Eddie Van Heino shreddage...

linker

http://www.sendspace.com/file/jb2guu

Residual Echoes

Friday, June 25, 2010

VERMALIFORNIA '10 U.S. TOUR w/ Happy Birthday

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Bob Mould Soundcheck

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