broadcast - tender buttons

Broadcast are just one of those bands. You know the ones. The kind of band that could take a shit on an LP and make it sound cool. The kind of band that seemingly can't do wrong even when they put out albums that really aren't that great.

Tender Buttons is just one of those albums by one of those bands.

Haha Sound, Noise Made By People, and even Future Crayon are all head and shoulders above this album, so if you're wondering what all the fuss is about, start literally anywhere but here.

The entire album is sparse musically, but manages to avoid those annoying minimalist tendencies by the sheer power of the fuzzy dissonant keyboards they love oh so much and the dreamy shoegazer vocals of Trish Keenan, which float along effortlessly in the background, giving their sound an eerie touch that puts it somewhere between Stereolab's more tender moments and the vaguely unsettling sonic effects of Black Moth Super Rainbow.

Sounds awesome, doesn't it?

Because it is.

Just not that awesome.

So don't say I didn't warn you.

the remains - the remains

The stereotype of 60s garage rock bands is that they were all made up of a bunch of teenagers who could barely play their instruments, kids who just wanted to make noise and managed to stay in tempo long enough to mash out one or two singles that were the talk of the neighborhood before fading off into obscurity and the occasional post-Nuggets burst of trendiness. And for the vast majority of these bands, that's completely true. Which is why we love them. Who can resist a band like the Rats, who pounded out three shitty chords for five minutes straight, repeated the word "rats" over and over with scattered meaningless lyrics about how they are, in fact, the Rats, and then cut it in half to make up both sides of a single? That's pure rock 'n roll right there.

But then there are the anomalies. Some of those no-talent, one-off teenage outbursts actually had some talent *gasp* and released some damn good records. The Shadows of Knight, the Standells, the Count Five, and so on. Some of those bands are actually really, really good, to the point that they left marks on the music world far greater than mere compilation footnotes. The Seeds, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Monks, hell even Paul Revere & the Raiders fit that category.

And then there's the Remains.

This is a band that should've been huge. These guys had the garage rock attitude down to an art form, but they did it all with a tightness and precision that you just can't find amongst their peers. They were just as ugly as the Stones, if not uglier, and their Boston swagger topped everything those wannabe badass schoolboys had to offer. And they had the songs to boot--nothing anywhere close to the Stones' seminal singles, but you could easily place their only studio album against any of the early Stones albums. Just as the Stones grew into their skin and stopped releasing albums made up almost entirely of Chuck Berry covers, these guys too would've grown into a monstrous rock 'n roll force over time. They just gave up too soon.

And who can blame them, really? The Remains would sell out every show they played in the New England area, with fans lining up halfway through the city to see them in Boston, but they still couldn't get an ounce of recognition outside of their home turf. Not to mention, if I was in a band still covering songs like "Diddy Wah Diddy" and I heard Rubber Soul for the first time, I'd want to give up too. They were a Beatles opening band and didn't seem destined for much else as long as those Liverpool assholes were parading around with their goofy hair and pseudo-reckless drug use and groundbreaking pop songwriting.

The Remains were stuck somewhere between the instant super-stardom of the Beatles and the trashy underground appeal of every other garage band in America. They never recorded their "She Loves You" or "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," but "Don't Look Back" is still miles beyond anything the Rats could've spat out.

So are the Remains really "America's Lost Band"? Sure. Would they really have become America's answer to the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? Probably not. But would I have still loved to hear their sophomore album? You're goddamn right.

hanatarash - live at zabo kyoto, december 16 1984

I feel like the recording I just spent forty minutes of my life listening to may some day prevent me from getting a job.

"Mr. Golinski, it says here that you once scrobbled a forty minute live recording of some vaguely angry Japanese men throwing steel barrels around a room, breaking large pieces of glass, and creating various other means of noise in front of an audience in an apparent attempt to make music. Is this true?"

"Yes, yes it is."

"Get the fuck out of my office."

Beyond that even, I feel like the action of listening to such music may one day be made illegal.

"All rise for the honorable Judge Cowell."

"Is this the fucker who was listening to a recording of one of those goddamn Jap Satanist cults throwing beer bottles at an orphanage while audio of the CNN 9/11 broadcast ran through Marshall stacks pointed at a local Church?"

"Yes, your honor."

"Guilty as fucking charged."

That wouldn't be too harsh of a sentence, really. I imagine the sounds of prison would make just as great a soundtrack as any low-grade Hanatrash bootleg.

Which this isn't, by the way. There's nothing more exhilarating than listening to people just break shit purely for the creation of that immaculate sound shit makes when it breaks. Which is exactly what this is, recorded at remarkable quality, considering the fact that maybe a few hundred people total ever actually saw Hanatarash live, let alone attempted to record what they were seeing.

I love noise. I love the chaos of it all. I love the freedom that comes from hearing normal, sane people grab hold of everyday objects and just destroy everything around them for the sheer penetrating thrill of making noise in the heart of the soulless banal continuity society puts forth for us to revel and slowly die in.

Hanatarash were a pretty infamous band that was known for wild, violent live performances. There is a rumor that you drove a bulldozer through the wall of the club where you were performing. Is that true?

Eye: Yes. It was the dinosaur kind. With the back hoe scooper. Just drove it into the club.

Was the club owner happy with you destroying the walls of his club?

Eye: Hmm. We pretty much destroyed... ruined that club. I was planning on throwing Molotov cocktails but the bulldozer I was driving tipped over and gasoline spilled out. If we threw the Molotov cocktails, we would have set the whole place on fire.

Is that the same show where you had a circular saw strapped on your back and
accidentally cut your leg?

Eye: That was a different show.

Those are the words of a sane person who drove a bulldozer into a club on a whim, and almost cut his leg off with a circular saw strapped to his back on the other show. This is what I love.