fear - the record

I've always found Fear fascinating.

Intimidation, shock value, aggression, confrontation--these are aspects of punk that have been there almost from the very beginning. Once frontmen started catching on to Iggy's shtick, it became commonplace, if not expected, to work as hard as possible to push your audience to the breaking point. Dive off the stage! Fight with your fans! Cut yourself with broken glass! Wear swastikas! It was just what you did when you were the head of a punk band.

Yet within this world of constant edginess and boundary-pushing, Fear manages to stand out as one of more tasteless, crude, even sinister bands to ever come out of punk.

It's not a completely undeserved title, obviously. Lee Ving is a total asshole, and he revels in it, striving to push every button he can get his hands on. He's sexist, racist, and just plain mean. Sometimes his scorn is twisted and elaborate, sometimes it's as simple as saying "I Don't Care About You," as loud and frequent as possible. He doesn't give a fuck, and clearly he has the talent to piss people off.

Fear is possibly the highlight of The Decline of Western Society, a classic snapshot of the L.A. hardcore scene in the early 80s. Ving berates his audience mercilessly, going well beyond the standard taunting and jeering, to the point of being outright mean. And it's simply incredible to watch. He's absolutely fearless, despite the violence spread out among the crowd, and despite the fact that very active threats are being thrown his way throughout. It's a display of uninhibited antagonism so pure that you can't help but be impressed.

At times, it's hard not to read into Fear's music and look for a deeper message. "Let's Have a War" has roughly the same message as Jello Biafra's chilling "Kinky Sex (Makes the World Go Round)" monologue, but while Biafra's satire was crystal-clear, you get the feeling that Ving might actually want to kill off a good deal of society, for various reasons. You almost look for meaning in self-defense, to fend off the notion that you're listening to the truthful words of a sadist.

Nihilism in punk dates back to the very beginnings of the movement, and in many ways is inseparable from the music itself. The difference here is that Fear truly revels in that idea. There's happiness and glee and excitement behind these words. Fuck the world, hate everything, don't give a shit, use whoever you can whenever you can, get yours and move on because who gives a fuck. It equates to a rejection not just of society itself, but everything and everyone in it, on a personal level. There are no higher goals, no personal philosophy, just carnage.

As much as I want to just accept it all from the outset and take Fear for what they are, it's hard not to be affected by The Record. It's an unrelenting piece of art. Taken apart and analyzed, it's easy to shrug off. But as a whole, it's impossible not to be affected. Bands like Brainbombs would take this to the logical extreme, but even in this relatively watered-down form, it's still chilling stuff. Which is the ultimate victory, I suppose.

Even in 1982, after five to six years of punk and punk derivatives expanding on the work of Iggy, Stiv Bators, Richard Hell and co., Fear manages to take it to a different level. The simple answer is that The Record is so riveting because it's true. But that reality is too much for me to accept. I'd much rather believe that Lee Ving is a twisted little genius, and we all just fell for the act. I'm just not sure that I can.

femme fatale - from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks

Back in high school, I got most of my music from my local library. They had a decent sized collection of CDs, almost all of which were new to me, and in the summer of 2006 I filled my Creative Nomad Jukebox with a plethora of free tunes that constantly expanded my taste in music. Superchunk, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mastodon, Marvin Gaye, TV on the Radio--an hilariously diverse selection of artists that opened me up to worlds of music I probably never would have experienced otherwise.

I would walk into the library every week and pick CDs out almost at random, often choosing them simply for their cool name or interesting cover art. A CD called You're a Woman, I'm a Machine fulfilled both of those criteria, and on the ride home one afternoon, I was treated to an absolute mindfuck of a musical experience.

In hindsight, Death From Above 1979 is a pretty good band, though one that hasn't aged particularly well in my eyes. Their sound isn't particularly unique, and the bass/drums combination loses its novelty fairly quickly. But for a 16-year old kid who was just learning to play bass guitar and hadn't even begin to explore the depths of punk, it was a total revelation, an atomic blast of energy and attitude and noise that completely changed the way I viewed my instrument, and was simply unlike anything I had ever heard before. I'll never understand why or how that CD ended up in the Queen Anne's County Free Library, but I'm eternally grateful that it got there.

Compared to Femme Fatale, however, Death From Above is about as brutal as Superchunk.

If you took DFA, doubled the tempo, replaced the bass with a wall of screaming guitars, and drenched it in hardcore, you'd get something approximating Femme Fatale.

It's too noisy to be punk, too slow to be grindcore, and too harsh to be anything in-between. Jesse F. Keeler (one half of DFA) insists on only releasing EPs, all littered with dialogue, ambiance, and interludes, giving it an unexpected prog/experimental edge to boot. It's insanely aggressive, yet well-defined, even restrained at times. It's hand-crafted chaos that often leaves you wanting more, but sacrifices the freedom normally found in experimental music for the creation of an actual product--not a snapshot of a general sound, which most noise-rock bands tend to churn out, but a series of finished, complete records.

If that all sounds bizarre, it's because it is.

The band has a total recorded output of just over 30 minutes, and with their last release put out in 2004, it doesn't look like there's anything else coming out from this Keeler side-project anytime soon. Which may be for the best. While taking on one EP at a time can be disappointing, throwing them all on in a row--Fire Baptism; As You Sow, As You Shall Reap; From The Abundance of Heart The Mouth Speaks--is quite an experience. It doesn't get my blood pumping like Arab on Radar, Lightning Bolt, or Melt-Banana, but it's also not as harsh or blunt. And it's also nice to be able to take in a discography in one sitting, instead of being buried in a mountain of LPs, EPs, splits, singles, and random comp appearances.

As far as noise-rock goes, consider this easy-listening. Which is something even the most seasoned noise junkies can enjoy every now and then. For anyone looking for an edge to their punk without getting their asses handed to them right away, this is the place to start.

spokane - the proud graduates

The application of "-core" genres is admittedly a fickle, silly, and largely baseless practice, used almost entirely to lump together bands that probably shouldn't be lumped together, all to make said bands a little easier to describe. This is true, and I will not and cannot try to fight it.

What gets lost in conversations about this kind of arbitrary genre creation, however, is the fact that on occasion, these made-up genres actually kinda work.

To be fair, the vast majority of these "-core" genres are total crap. Metalcore, slowcore, rapcore, skacore, emocore, deathcore, noisecore, post-core--all real genres people have created to describe various types of music, all of which are completely ridiculous. Most of them are too generic to work (deathcore), some don't even describe the music accurately (slowcore), and some are just fucking insane (post-core).

Then there are the few that actually work. Hardcore stands out first and foremost, since it was the one that started them all, though few people would argue that hardcore wasn't a legitimate genre when it was coined. Grindcore has become a commonly accepted genre, largely because the criteria for the music is so simple--loud, fast, short.

Then there's a genre I'm quite fond of, though I very well might be alone on this one: sadcore.

I can almost hear the Internet groans from the two or three people who might read this, but I don't care. When I see that word, I can instantly come up with bands that fit the same style and sound: Ida, Bedhead, Rex, Red House Painters, Codeine, American Music Club, and now Spokane.

All of these bands share enough common attributes to lump them together: depressing lyrical content; understated musical tones; simple, guitar-based songs; the use of silence and atmosphere; and finally, the 90s.

I'm aware that fans of "skacore" would probably attempt to make the same argument, but goddammit, I think I'm right here. I wholeheartedly agree that the name "sadcore" is stupid, but a lot of genre names were stupid at the outset. Punk, jazz, hip-hop, and even rock'n'roll were ignorant, dumb terms that somehow came to stand for various types of music, so I reserve the right to use an ignorant, dumb term of my own.

Now that that's out of the way, The Proud Graduates is an album by the SADCORE band Spokane. And it's pretty good.

Spokane falls somewhere between Red House Painters and Ida at their most jangly, but they rarely climb up to the lofty tiers of either group. Rick Alverson's vocals fit the style, but he simply does not have the power of Mark Kozelek, Daniel Littleton, or Elizabeth Mitchell. The songwriting is just fine, and the instrumentation is lush and wonderful throughout, and you can't go wrong with this album...but you can definitely go better.

Sadcore isn't the most diverse genre in the world. Almost always, the difference comes down to the personalities of the frontmen/women, since their very souls tend to be projected onto the music itself. Which makes it easy to like bands like this, but hard to love them. There always tends to be another band that does the same thing but better, and in Spokane's case, there are plenty of them.

korn - korn

I was never a KoRn kid. When it came to angsty high school rebellion, I was more into writing Rage Against the Machine lyrics on desks than locking myself in my room and playing "scary" music. (My brother totally was though, and I will never let him live down his plastic-pants-from-Hot-Topic phase.) I always found it silly and overdone, in the same way I saw Marilyn Manson or any other Columbine-era shock-rock artist.

In hindsight, Korn was one of the few bands from the "nü-metal" genre that had any real substance, along with Deftones and probably no one else. Their core sound weakened over time, degrading into laughable songs like "Ya'll Want a Single," making it very easy to forget that Korn was a remarkably unique act when they first broke through, all the way back in 1994(!). The metallic slap-bass, growl-rapping, and tuned-down guitars they became known for quickly descended into self-parody and was picked up by numerous copycat acts, but taken for what it is, their trademark sound packs a tight, manic punch that still stands up to this day.

Jonathan Davis' aggressive lyrics brought them widespread attention from parent groups and politicians alike, and it's easy to forget that that controversy existed for a very good reason: Davis' psychotic delivery is thoroughly engrossing, and downright terrifying if you let yourself get sucked in deep enough. It's easy to dismiss as adolescent, the sound of an outcast lashing out at the ignorant world around him, but it's impossible to deny that the emotion underneath it all is real and true.

Fuck you! I'm fed up with you. I'm not as good as you?

Fuck no, I'm better than you.

Could those sentiments be processed better? Yes. But does he get his message across? Absolutely.

This is not subtle music, to be sure--the same general message is bashed across your skull nonstop for an hour--and it's easy to see why a confused, alienated 14-year old would use it as a weapon against his parents and society in general. But as a work of art, the manifestation of a world of horrible energy and restrained aggression boiled down to twelve songs, it is simply astounding.

This is not to say the album is flawless. The album is ripe with regrettable choices (the use of nursery rhymes in "Shoots and Ladders" is more cheesy than unsettling, for example), but they are far outweighed by the ones that work. The band is buoyed throughout by Davis, who is at his best when he lets his raw emotion pour through. And nowhere is this raw quality more evident than in "Daddy."

The unfortunate truth is that this song is about the real-life childhood molestation of Davis (not by his father, but by a female family-friend), and that the autobiographical nature of the song is what brings it to life. The track is nothing short of pure, unbridled pain. By the end of the song, you can almost hear the demons of his past leaving his body. The lullaby in the background are unnecessary, and even work to dilute the power of Davis' vocals (if you can call them that), which chill you right to your core.

As his words give way to agonizing screams, uncontrollable sobbing, and bellowing cries toward figures unknown, it becomes truly unsettling, truly uncomfortable to listen to. It's one thing to be moved by art. It's quite another to want to physically turn away from it. In my mind, "Daddy" stands up as one of the most frightening songs in rock history, up there with "Frankie Teardrop" and "Hamburger Lady," and is the perfect musical and emotional anchor to the album as whole.

The band never again reached the creative heights of their debut. Maybe the songwriting was never as good. Maybe the production on other albums polished them up too well. Maybe their energy simply peaked at the outset. For whatever reason, Korn's debut was as good as they ever got, and arguably created a "nü-metal" landmark that no other band could touch, far outlasting the ill-begotten genre and all the worthless bullshit it spawned.

the mountain goats - live: 1998/02/06 - cow haus, tallahassee fl

Here's an easy way to spot the difference between a Mountain Goats fan and someone who listens to the Mountain Goats:

Ask them what their favorite Mountain Goats album is.

If said person merely listens to the Mountain Goats, they will name a studio album. Most likely Tallahassee, All Hail West Texas, or the Sunset Tree. If they're trying to get cocky, they might even namedrop Sweden or Get Lonely.

If said person is a true Mountain Goats fan, he/she will either:

a. Hesitate, then ask you to define what exactly you mean by "studio album," or

b. Name their favorite Mountain Goats live recording.

Every good Mountain Goats fan knows that the albums/tapes/compilations are just the blueprints for live recordings. Even the best recorded Mountain Goats songs become infinitely better onstage, bar-none, without question. (Aside from songs that have never been played live, of course. Which, really, given the incredible amount of songs John has written over the years, are not that great in number.) John will write a song and put it down on tape, but it never really comes alive until he's pouring through it in front of an audience, tearing through every last note, dragging the emotion out of every last syllable, at times even seeming to create new emotions he discovered in the songs after he himself wrote them.

A good example of this is Sweden, which is a really an okay Mountain Goats tape, all things considered. It doesn't stand up to the later, greater stuff, but it definitely beats the hell out of some of his older monstrosities. Yet when those same subdued songs are played live, there is a life breathed into them that is nothing short of magical. They almost sound like covers, two versions of the same song, linked together by words and structure, yet vastly different in every other sense.

This exact phenomenon happens throughout my personal favorite MG show: 1998/02/06 at the Cow Haus in Tallahassee.

There are some shows where the fire burning inside John is so white-hot and pure, it damn-near sears your ears just listening to it. Forget broken strings--from 1995-2000(ish), it wasn't a good show if John's guitar wasn't covered in blood. John tends to look back at these shows unfavorably, openly mocking his past tendency to play songs as fast and loud as possible to gratuitous effect, one that is impossible to revel in, despite the knowledge of its disingenuous. If you don't get chills hearing John belt out lines like "You can arm me to the teeth / You can't make me go to war" at top-volume, you just aren't human.

Aside from the manic energy that pervades all recordings from that time, this show is exemplary for a few other reasons. For starters, the setlist is fantastic. "Tulsa Imperative," "West County Dreams," "Waving At You," "Snow Crush Killing Song," "Family Happiness," "Minnesota"--all of which are incredible choices, some arguably sounding at their absolute best in this recording. Clocking in at an hour and twenty minutes, it's also a fairly long show, burning through 24 songs in the process. Just when you think he's starting to fade, he comes roaring right back with even more energy than before. At one point he tells the crowd that he could keep going for three hours, and it's not hard to imagine him doing it, if he thought they would've stuck with him.

The sound quality is imperfect, but for a 13-year old recording, it's pretty excellent. There are slight rough patches to nitpick at, but if the sound is your biggest worry, then you really shouldn't be listening to shows like this in the first place. The balance is great throughout, if a bit low, so you should definitely jack the volume up using your media player of choice. One of the more common problems with these live recordings is poor audio during John's between-song banterings, and thankfully, every word that leaves his mouth that night rings through loud and clear. And as far as Mountain Goats banter goes, this is pretty good. No classic drunk-John lines, no interplay with Peter or anyone else, but plenty of audience dialogue and some choice song descriptions.

All-in-all, it's a tremendous experience, one that any Mountain Goats fan should partake in without hesitation, and one that would certainly open the eyes of "fans" who think the best Mountain Goats recording is a studio album. (Lol.)

Link: http://www.archive.org/details/mountaingoats1998-02-06.flac16

(In case you were wondering, John has no problem with people sharing live shows online. Archive.org even has an email from him, giving his direct blessing.)