Lots of thoughts come to my mind about this song. First it sounds like it’s a bunch of other songs shoved into one song but “shoved” sounds bad, right? Let’s say it’s like a collage of other good songs I’ve posted recently and all the mixing resulted in a little something nice for everyone. There’s echoes of Austra (also Canadian), especially in the beats. I particularly like the Felix Da Housecat-ish drop at 2:26, super touch! And it’s awesome to hear women using their full range of voice nowadays. Speaking of her voice, I haven’t heard such a unique sounding one since Joanna Newsom or is it Pebbles? Okay, so that reference totally dated me, whatever. Interestingly, both indigenous Mexican women and Eastern European Gypsies sing with the same kind of voice.
Grimes aka Carla Boucher is on tour with Lykke Li right now so you’ll have a chance to hear her live on May 31 in Los Angeles. Hmmm, you can always hang out in the lobby during Lykke Li’s set. Uh, maybe I’ll check to see if Grimes is doing a solo show. Sorry but there is just something about Lykke Li’s music that is a little too treacly for my tastes. Sure, she makes good pop music and is just the kinda artist that makes KCRW music programmers squirm in their pants but despite trying really hard, I just can’t enjoy her music.
And hey, did anyone notice how this video is sorta a more energetic, clothed version of Austra’s Beat and Pulse? Is it a Canadian thing? All I know, is that thanks to Witch House/Rape Gaze/Grave Wave and it’s all derivatives and spin-offs and denials, there’s some really amazing electronic music being made by women.
Grimes is weird pop influenced by styles such as R&B, Industrial, goth, hip hop and Western medieval organum. She is noted for simple but strong percussion, vocal virtuosity, and addictive melodies.
By the way, I think Grimes is named for the guy everyone hated on The Simpsons.
Carla Boucher is also an artist!
Grimes – Crystal Ball
Human League-like beats, melancholy melody and a harp solo, love it!
Hey you want a free massage? It’s available immediately at your fingertips. All you have to do is turn the bass way up on your speakers and press play on the above clip. Then sit back and wait for your chair to viiii…braaaa…ttte…
Spring is unofficially over in Los Angeles. The hills around Northeast Los Angeles where I live have turned brown, the weeds have gone to seed and the gray clouds that hover over the city for most of the morning have returned. In local parlance this weather effect is called “Gray May” which extends into “June Gloom.” Only in a part of the world where we have the most gorgeous winters could we have such a depressing lead up into summer, the season most other places look forward to. So what this melancholy in mind, I present these two songs, which reflect the morose steady pace of life I’m living these days.
The original version of this song is considered to be NuSoul or NuNorthern Soul and it’s a bit too “The Wave” for me despite the intoxicating guitar sample at the beginning. Mark E hardens it up with a fast house beat and makes it so you probably won’t hear it on the local “jazzy” radio station.
Com Truise – Polyhurt
“Bottom heavy style, slo-mo funk” yeah, that about explains this music. But it’s the sad, melancholy, the future shoulda been great but it isn’t kinda mood (is that called dystopia?) that I really like about this song. And the organ fiddling is pretty nice too. Check out Com Truise’s webpage for more.
New music from Falty DL, echoes of drum n bass with sweet vocals that are barely saccharine but not enough to distract from the military high hats and the heavy, heavy bass.
Junior Boys-More Than Real
“You make me feel more than real…”
In the mid-90s, there was a jazz renaissance lead by youth, the kind of youth that might be now considered hipsters, except hipsters didn’t exist back then. But perhaps it was this youthful interest in bebop jazz along with jazz related culture like the Beats and novels like On the Road that re-introduced ‘hipster’ back into the urban elite lexicon. All I know is that I was young and going to clubs in Hollywood to listen to other young people like myself try and play Miles Davis. But because I considered myself edgier and an anarchist, I didn’t listen to any old jazz, I listened to free jazz.
Ornette Coleman – Ramblin’
One of my favorites was Ornette Coleman, I admit that I am a devoted follower of melody and love it so much more when I am deprived of it. Hence, my love of flirtatious free jazzers like Coleman who only hints at melody and makes me wait, teases me me until the final semi-melodic resolve, oh! I like it straight on too like this Cannonball Adderly song Somethin’ Else, a song of exquisite rhythm – it pulls me in every time. Steady, steady until I’m lost in the beats and then come in all those wailing horns, plucked basses and pounding pianos. How could a girl not like this? Throw in some heroin and that’s excellence right there! Well, I don’t know if Adderly did heroin but it’s rumored Eric Dolphy did and sadly, he died young of heroin or diabetes, no one is quite sure. But before he moved onto the spectral plane he left behind Hat and Beard one of the finest pieces of music to have entered my ears. He’s another teaser, with all that chaos rubbing raw at the edges and then easing back into a cohesive collection of dissonant instrument noises. All the while his saxophone goes wildly on, and on.
Eric Dolphy – Hat and Beard
And for fun, The Art Ensemble of Chicago:
The Art Ensemble of Chicago – Theme De Yoyo
“Your voice is like a long fuck that’s music to your brain…”
Poly Styrene (Marianne Elliot Said), singer and songwriter for the 70s punk band X-Ray Spex passed away yesterday from breast cancer. I don’t often feel emotional about the deaths of celebrities and musicians but X-Ray Spex and Poly Styrene were such a looming musical presence in my teenage years that I can’t help but feeling the loss of this amazing musician.
I spent a good chunk of my early teenage years hunting down the music of X-Ray Spex. It’s not like nowadays where I find the most obscure songs, things I’ve been looking for for years, ready to download in a matter of minutes. In the 80s/90s being a music lover required much more patience.
I went to Fairfax High School on Melrose in Hollywood. All around my high school were record shops with owners who loved to price their rare vinyl in the double digits. Bleeker Bob’s was the worst, their prices were ridiculously high. But they were the only shop where I’d ever seen my vinyl holy grail, Germ-Free Adolescents by X-Ray Spex. After school, I’d wander over to the shop and gaze at the album hanging on the wall. It cost something like $50, an outrageous price, I thought. While standing at the counter admiring the album artwork, I’d often ask some stupid question to the guy behind the counter about the record and he would give me that “Buzz off kid, you’re bothering me” look. He knew I hadn’t the money.
In the tenth grade I saw an odd boy on the bus to school wearing an X-Ray Spex t-shirt. I made friends with him and immediately developed a crush on the guy even though I knew he wasn’t into girls and even after he told me, he found the t-shirt in a pile of clothes at the second hand shop where he worked. “Will you give me your shirt? Pleeeeease?” I’d ask him all the time but he always answered with a firm ‘no’. Despite hanging out with a crew of Hollywood punks, he was the only person I knew that actually liked the band beside myself. I was a punk generation too late.
The funny thing is, I only really knew the song “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” It was the X-Ray Spex performance in the documentary The Punk Rock MovieDOA where I remember first hearing the song. That’s when I first saw Poly Styrene and I was captivated by her style, by the crazy energy of the music and by her…color. She wasn’t White and if you are/were are a punk rock kid of color you understand the significance.
Oh Bondage Up Yours from the movie DOA
As my high school years went by, I got caught up in the hardcore scene and my pining for the elusive Germ Free Adolescents album waned as I filled up my ears with the screams and grunts of suburban, angsty White guys from Orange County and Oxnard.
Inside blurb from the Guillotine EP
For years, the Germ-Free Adolescents album hung on the Bleeker Bob’s wall. Even after high school, I’d continue to make my pilgrimage. By then, I refused to give Bleeker Bob’s any of my money and I wasn’t the only one not willing to pay their exorbitant prices because it hung on the wall, untouched for years. Then one day I came across an EP called Guillotine (Virgin Records, 1979), and lo and behold, there was “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” The elusive song I’d been waiting five years to hear! I bought the record, rushed home and felt tingles of joy and excitement as I heard Poly’s famous line “Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard. But I think…Oh bondage up yours! 1,2,3,4!” I wore the grooves down on this little EP.
For many years, the only way to find their music affordably was through bootlegs
Yup, $18!
Soon after, I got a job at a popular Los Angeles record store and I was able to find all sorts of bootlegs of the album, mostly weird live recordings from England, some released on CD. I also splurged on a few on the 7 inch singles. It was the first time I’d heard many of the songs and I was pleased to find the lyrics resonated with my newly adopted Situationist-influenced politics.
When you look in the mirror
Do you see yourself
Do you see yourself
On the TV screen
Do you see yourself in the magazine
When you see yourself
Does it make you scream
About a year later, Germ Free Adolescents was finally re-issued on CD. I played it over and over at the record store I worked at, despite the passive-aggressive protests of my Beatles-loving co-workers. “Saxophone in punk? Hmmm…” One of the indie dudes said disapprovingly. “Up yours, pretentious asshole!” I thought to myself.
Around this time, I popped into Bleeker Bob’s and the album was still there on the wall but now that the CD had been re-issued, they had finally lowered the price. I laughed a secret, evil laugh to myself – greedy bastards! The people who loved X-Ray Spex were not the nerdy, I need-the-first-pressing-vinyl kinda folks but people who loved the music for it’s passion, for it’s politics and for the raw, earnest vocals of Poly Styrene’s energetic voice.
It was a mission, a journey and a struggle to finally get to hear the music of my favorite group but once I did, it was completely satisfying musical experience. There have been many drunken nights my friends and I could be heard singing as loudly as possible X-Ray Spex tunes at the top of our voices, the lyrics still timely and humorous. Maybe tonight I will do the same, in honor of the beautiful Poly Styrene, RIP.
The Savages -The World Ain’t Round It’s Square
The Savages, sixties garage punk from Bermuda of all places. Raw, melodic and thoroughly awesome!
Baby
Take a look around
All the people do is bring us down
They stare at us like we don’t belong
They think they’re right but they’re really wrong.
Baby, The World Ain’t Round, It’s Square.
