Love (Pt. 7)

Rare or Unreleased 43: Guy Blakeslee

When he's not singing about ghosts or social phobia, against war or for civil rights, a recurring theme in Entrance a/k/a Guy Blakeslee's song-
writing is control. As in: not being controlled by your desire, in the form of the object of it. Written by a young man, many of his songs are about trying to ward a lover's possessiveness and neediness (traits equally typical, perhaps, of young girls) off your freedom. After all, love + need = power games. In Blakeslee's universe, freedom springs forth from truth, but is threatened, encroached or stifled at the other end by romance, rendering love anathema to life, but then life a hindrance to happiness. The resulting tension, frustration and confusion between love and independence is the source of some of the best (if most criminally ignored) new songwriting of the '00s, not only despite but also because it's not flashy or trying to be innovative. («Original» often being just another word for «soon-to-be-dated».)

Entrance—once a desperately wailing, loud and utterly liberating one man band—was one of the original exponents of «freak folk» (though he was always less whimsical and more blues oriented than über-freakie-folkie Devendra Banhart). His two last records have ventured into more instrumented, almost funky hard rock à la Led Zeppelin. No artist should stand still, and though Entrance's recent release and first record as a three-piece band is laudable for going off in a different direction, for those of us less inclined towards noodling space jams than down home acoustic laments and hoots'n'hollers, here are some older rarities by a solo Blakeslee, most of them intimate home recordings. None of them deserve to be rare, but rare they are. And here they are:

Entrance: Rare Solo Recordings [.zip]:

1. Pretty Baby

Echoes linger like some kind of aura of electricity whenever Blakeslee’s wails are drawn to the magnetic tape, as he bends the distortion to his will with the varying pitches and intensities of his wolfish howls. Nobody writes an ambivalent love song like Entrance—no frills, just the simplicity of archaic, barely literate blues lyrics trying to hold on to a spirit of independence in the face of Love. He even pulls off sarcasm without being overly bitter or coming across like just another clever, shallow hipster. (He’s caustic because it’s good for her. He's not about to kill with kindness.) Besides, anyone who could pen a line like, «Don’t let Jesus catch you like he has before / Tripping while you’re dancing on the bar room floor,» is a bona fide poet, and you better know it. And not to sound misogynistic, but this really is a liberating anthem for any male who has ever had to contend with clingy demands, draining emotions and cunning manipulation. Anyone who's ever dated a goth chick will know what he means. Son, leave those suicide girls well alone:

Pretty baby, all dressed up in black
Your make-up is on, and your hair's pulled back
But it ain't time no time to go out on the town
So take your black dress off, and let your long hair down…

From the out-of-print, self-released 13 Unreleased Songs 2002-2006 (2008). An upwards spiralling, full band studio version can be found on Prayer of Death (2006)

2. Valium Blues

Raga flamenco blues! Two studio versions of this song exist: the Led Zep-echoing, psychedelic acoustic version on debut album The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken by Storm (2003), and the gypsy space rock band version on Prayer of Death. But this distorted demo version is perhaps the most unmercifully blistering run-through of this desperate but ultimately soothing love-song-by-way-of-insomnia:

I shouldn't waste my freedom on your worries
I must look out, my vision's getting blurry
But I've been lying sleepless
Until the light of the new day
Worried about how you're gonna change
Earlier tonight I was a stranger
In a fatal trance of lonely anger
Now I'm lost in visions and beholding
As the precious minutes keep unfolding
So please don't fear our love is ever-changing
My whole world could use some re-arranging

From 13 Unreleased Songs 2002-2006 (2008)

3. You Must Turn

A piano appeal to any friend who has lost their way, pulled down by gravity and stewing in the acrid juices of their own sloppy, sticky, glue-like negativity.

From the out-of-print, Devendra Banhart-curated various artists compilation The Golden Apples of the Sun (2004)

4. Mary, Don't You Weep/Down on Me

These two traditionals showcase Blakeslee's signature falsetto-vox-and-acoustic-guitar-with-foot-bell-stomp, and sound like they're outtakes from excellent sophomore effort Wandering Stranger (2004). The paranoia of the last part of the medley is classic Entrance.

From 13 Unreleased Songs 2002-2006 (2008)

5. Cocaine Blues

First made available as a free download on Entrance's MySpace page, this tragic and morbidly humourous re-writing of the old traditional tune as a love song could well be another outtake from Wandering Stranger.

From 13 Unreleased Songs 2002-2006 (2008)

6. Right and Wrong

Another demo originally made available on Entrance's MySpace (in 2006 or something), this is a heartbreakingly ambivalent «So long» to either a lover or a dear friend. Why this melodic goodbye—so comforting to those who need a soundtrack to go with the collapse of some relationship—was never released (not even on 13 Unreleased Songs) is a mystery…

7. Woncha Come on Home

Blakeslee never sounded so scared, forlorn and full of lonely longing as on this cover of Joan Armatrading's venting of need and paranoia. Arguably one of Blakeslee's finest performances, it's no coincidence this was one of the first pieces of music to ever be posted onto this blog.

From 13 Unreleased Songs 2002-2006 (2008)

It's Just Not Natural

To those familiar with this blog, it should come as no surprise that yours truly prefers to spend his evenings home alone, drinking either
camomile tea or, when I'm feeling especially inspired, a glass of red wine, listening to old folk records (on the original vinyl) to the sickly sweet fragrances of incense and orange peels, as I read old poetry out loud (practising my French) and contemplate our role in the universe and, occasionally, suicide. Like tonight, when I plan to listen again and again to my favourite song by Leonard Cohen, the profound and exquisite «Master Song», while meditating. Transcendentally.

Leonard Cohen: «Master Song» (live at the BBC) [mp3]

But not Toilet Guppies' on-again/off-again music consultant, so-called «DJ» Sheik Yerdixxx! Of indeterminate gender, Yerdixxx likes to spend nights sniffing meth off of old strippers' crusty, pierced and no doubt
inflamed nipples, veritably foaming at the mangina—all to the booming sound of nu-R&B tracks that were hits circa three years ago. («Careless Whisper» or «Nikita» when that Brazilian woman's working.) On the few occasions s/he's allowed to DJ in public, Yerdixxx either plays silly avant-garde music (which s/he probably doesn't even get) or abrasive nu-disco remixes of tawdry rock'n'roll tracks. (When s/he isn't happy, that is, and you risk being subjected to an incoherent mix of garage-psych, hard funk and perhaps even sweet soul slipped in with all the electro nonsense.)

And now, would you believe, some art school upstarts have asked to borrow the sheik for a three-hour set(!) at some vernissage tonight (disco at the art gallery?! What would the Old Masters say?), with Yerdixxx working for a pink wig, apparently. That it'll be a «partay» I've no doubt—but will it be art? The title of the exhibition is Natural It's Not, and I'm sure it won't be…

Saturday 9 January 2010 at
Galleri Godteri
Tøyengata 31
0578 Oslo
Doors open 18:00, close 03:00.

Go see and hear for yourself. I'm staying at home, ever since Yerdixxx asked me to upload this track, to be featured in tonight's DJ set—Beck, Devendra Banhart, MGMT & some guy from Wolfmother sullying my beloved Leonard Cohen masterpiece, funking it all up, in the style of that «old school» I sometimes hear about:

Beck's Record Club: «Master Song» [mp3]

P.S. At the exhibition you'll get to see Karoline Hjorth's photos and sound recordings of various Norwegian nanas, such as the late Mia Berner, known to Norwegians as the no-nonsense writer who, ever since her husband died in 1983, wore only red—until her own death just before Christmas. Rage in peace…

Rare or Unreleased 29: Charles C. Leary

We can probably thank Devendra Banhart for the '00s resurgence in DIY home recordings, both in folk and indie rock. At one time the domain of eccentric artists, then the trendy, by now lo-fi home recordings have become an easy resort, with anyone not deemed good enough by serious record companies simply spewing out his or her mediocrity, in the belief that the intimacy associated with home recordings automatically translates into sincerity and talent. It doesn't.

There are advantages to unpretentious home recordings, though: Overlooked talent is less likely to be hampered by a lack of investors ready to provide studio time, and rawness often contains the energy lost in reconstructive studio recordings… Besides, hi-fi enthusiasts have it all wrong, much like perverts who rub their privates on glossy magazine paper, rather than at the sight of the mind-tickling, pornographic images on it. Home recordings full of warbling tape hiss and distortion aren't aural infidelity, just a different approach to sound (and a welcome break from the deceptively realistic philosophy of hi-fi-philes). Which is why Devendra Banhart sounded so fresh when he came out with rough debut album Oh Me Oh My… The Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit in 2002.

Well, one of the reasons. Not one to sit home alone and pine, forlorn and clueless, for some unreciprocated love—or harp on about childhood memories irrelevant to anyone but the songwriter, or childlike flights of fancy involving hobbits, animals with names and trees with souls—Banhart's spontaneous, silly and wholly unrestricted lyrics (by turns infantile, creepy and poignant, as if he saw no distinction between the three) and delivery free from self-consciousness and contrivance set him apart from all the other New-Weird-Americana-Freak-Folk-Family scenesters indulging in their moss-hugging whimsy. What makes Banhart so compelling isn't that he opposes yoga-animist crystal worship—he doesn't—but that he combines this with more unsettling, unrestrained elements that percolate there just at the surface of his awareness. Like the original hippies (forgotten by today's retro, unwashed ecologists clinging to identity packs limited to ideas of light, love and organic vegetarian food, and all but alien to occultism and orgies), an element of freewheeling black psychosis is involved in many of Banhart's original home recordings. Thankfully, our man was (by his own accounts) doing a lot of speed at the time, which would counter any insipidly pacifying effects of joint smoking…

When Young God Records released Oh Me Oh My…, the CD was a compilation out of a huge batch of songs recorded by Banhart onto four-track, answering machines, &c., chosen at random. An EP of more of these recordings—«The Black Babies»—soon appeared. Since then, every once in a while a previously unissued song from this period appears on some compilation or other (like The Fold Compilation, The Enlightened Family, and Yeti 3). The first single from Banhart's second studio album, «Little Yellow Spider», also contained old home recordings.

One forgotten album, however, is The Charles C. Leary, named after the song—in turn named after Banhart's grandfather's ship (or so Banhart says). Whatever the etymology, the CD was released by French label Hinah in 2002, but quickly discontinued (due to licensing issues vis-à-vis Young God Records, I'd imagine). The Charles C. Leary contained many of the songs on Oh Me Oh My…, as well as songs that would later appear on The Fold Compilation and Yeti 3.

As Toilet Guppies isn't one of those blogs that pompously pretends to share files in a valiant battle against big corporations, when really the reason to use artists' product is to draw people to the self-indulgent blog (at the same time denying those very same artists their due income), I've included only those songs off The Charles C. Leary that aren't commercially available elsewhere. The other songs are readily for sale, and well worth the price.

Some of The Charles C. Leary [.zip]

1. Bish-bash Falls
2. Soothe My Soul, Mend My Mind
3. Ay Mama—Ay Mama
«Ay Mama» was later reworked—complete with the unbeatable combo of trombone and organ—and appears on Niño rojo.
4. The Fish Are Scratched Up Flies
5. Artsandcrafts (live at 40th Street West)
6. The Animal Map
7. Ride Away Like Roy Orbison
This song was re-recorded in the studio and released under the title «There's Always Something Happening» on the Natalie Portman-curated, iTunes-exclusive charity comp Big Change—Songs for FINCA, benefitting micro-financing schemes for women's businesses in the Third World.
8. Noah
Another song that later emerged in a studio-recorded band version, on Niño rojo.
9. Aperpareplane (early recording)
10. I Played Organ while Colter Played Guitar
11. Joe Cain

Unwind, unhinge and enjoy!

Mp3 Killed the Vinyl DJ 3: Devendra Banhart

Devendra Banhart Vinyl Exclusives [.zip]:

1. Untitled poem 2
2. At the Hop (live)
3. Little Monkey/Step in the Name of Love (live)
4. The Good Red Road (live)
5. Untitled poem 1

1 & 5—recited by Michael Gira—are from the limited edition vinyl-only double set of Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress and Niño rojo.

2 is the B-side of an out-of-print vinyl-only single for «At the Hop».

3 & 4 are from an out-of-print vinyl-only album split between Jana Hunter and Devendra Banhart. (The rest of Banhart's side—radio session takes of «In Golden Empress Hands», «At the Hop» and «We All Know»—can be retrieved here.)

Vetiver—Live in Oslo Tonight!

Vetiver: «Down at El Rio» (The Mighty Louche mix) [mp3]

@ John Dee, Torggata 16, 0181 Oslo. Doors open 22:00.

[Download disabled.]

Rare or Unreleased 24: Devendra Banhart

In 2004, your trusty Toilet Guppies correspondent had the good fortune of living in the world metropolis second possibly only to New York City, London. In those days, Devendra Banhart was the hardest working bearded lady in showbiz and would stop by practically every other month to play intimate gigs at intimate venues (Bush Hall, Water Rats, the ICA), sometimes accompanied by Andy Cabic of Vetiver.

Banhart would perch on top of a table, assuming the lotus position, and mesmerise everyone with the vision that is the fleshy, elastic hole peering out through his beard, now e-nun-ci-a-ting, now squeezing words and melody out through clenched and baring teeth, variously exhausting the oral cavity's different acoustic possibilities with his trembling tenor. His almost absent-minded sense of melody and the ease with which his fingers would pick the strings of his guitar and slide confidently up and down its neck made his performance seem so effortless. He was a natural. Not since listening to Skip Spence's Oar for the first time had I heard something so other. Yes, I know, everyone's unique, but there are degrees of difference, and Banhart was so different that you knew that you could never, under any circumstances and in a thousand years, come up with what he just did. And you didn't know of anyone else who could, either. So that left him…

I used to leave those gigs regretting I hadn't documented them. The companion albums he was promoting—Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress and Niño rojo—make up nothing short of a masterpiece, but to see and hear them unfold before your very eyes and ears is something else completely. And now, of course, Banhart tours big venues with his space reggae backing band, and his output, although still great, has moved on from that alien quality that grabbed everybody's attention in the first place and on to something equally beautiful, but less other, more subtle.

So I was delighted when I first found this, a documentation of what Banhart sounded like live and solo back then. I love it when an artist performs his songs differently than on his albums, and it's all here: Banhart's added, warbling «whoah-whoah-whoah»'ing on «The Body Breaks»; his suggestion that we now «have a glass of wine / Now let's have another... have another... have another... have another... have another glass of wine» (six glasses!) on «Will Is My Friend»; and his half a minute(!) of stuttering «V-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-[deep breath]-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-viva Las Vegas!» on the song that first endeared me to that most beautiful man known to Man («Poughkeepsie»). There's even an aching non-album gem, «In Golden Empress Hands», which the singer has referred to as «the first song after Rejoicing in the Hands and the last song before Niño rojo».

Without further ado, here he is, performing live on French radio station France Inter for one of their White Sessions, on 16 September 2004. Enjoy!

Devendra Banhart: France Inter White Session [.zip]

1. Wake Up, Little Sparrow
2. At the Hop
3. Little Yellow Spider
4. We All Know
5. Will Is My Friend
6. A Ribbon
7. An Island
8. It's a Sight to Behold
9. The Body Breaks
10. In Golden Empress Hands
11. Poughkeepsie

Net Nuggets 11: Love Would Be Much Better

Devendra Banhart: Live on Morning Becomes Eclectic [zip]

The sun's demanding. The grass smells of sausages, the bushes of condoms. Bodies dreaming of perfection lay marinated in sun block, hoping to wake up gorgeous. The streets are abuzz with people. Laughter in the distance. Still, «love, it would be much better…»

These live-in-studio recordings were aired on US radio station KCRW on 5 May 2004, as Devendra Banhart was promoting the remarkable Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress. The five last songs are backed by the Winter Flowers, Devendra Banhart joining them on one of their songs («Hey Ho»):

1. This Is the Way
2. The Body Breaks
3. Todos los dolores (lla se van)
4. Autumn's Child
5. This Beard Is for Siobhan (a.k.a. The Daughter of a Man Was Mammalian and Oh so Well Brested)
6. It's a Sight to Behold
7. Will Is My Friend
8. Hey Ho
9. Michigan State

Rare or Unreleased 8: Rodrigo Amarante

Rodrigo Amarante: «Diamond Eyes» [mp3]

Staying with the Brazilian theme on this here blog, here's a great track for lazy Sunday listening on one of those Spring days, with the bright yet cold light spreading across the pale blue sky and penetrating the chill air, confusing your body as to whether it's warm or cold…

Not that I know what the hell that's got to do with anything. (The bullshit I'm capable of!) Anyway, Devendra Banhart's sumptuous Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon featured a gorgeously melancholy duet («Rosa») with one Rodrigo Amarante. Then, on a Banhart-curated compilation CD that came with a 2007-issue of UK music magazine «Uncut» (titled Love Above All), Amarante got the spotlight all to himself with this tender and understated song, true to what seems (probably romantically, stereotypically and unfairly of me) to be a Brazilian appreciation of subtlety, free of the adolescently indulgent lyrics or overly emotive delivery so typical of a lot of American and European popular music.

Anyway, this home recording is terribly sweet. In a good way.

Larkin Grimm: Parplar

Dear Larkin,

Your latest album has been on some seriously heavy rotation lately (in more ways than one), but I already posted one song off Parplar, so this time I’ll only spread the words:

It’s funny how a privileged son so freely inflicts pain
How those who’ve known no suffering are carrying the stains
Of bitter, nihilistic hate, indifference and disdain
Long ago, I trusted you, I never will again
I’ve turned my little head against the wicked world you’re in

So there you are, I hope that you are suffering and lost
I hope you feel the hopelessness and you can’t bear the cost
Of being an ungrateful shit who never had a cause
Who never starved and never hid, ain’t never felt the frost
Of cold winds blowing on your face and you don’t have a coat
Of love that offers no escape and tightens around your throat

Your friends have all forgot your name, your lovers all denied
That you were ever part of them when they gave up and died
I hope you’re feeling powerless inside their grinding jaws
I hope you’re feeling helpless and I hope you feel their claws
I hope the wind has marked your face and you don’t have a hope
You’re drifting free above the ground gently stretching out your rope

Yes! Punish me! Rain your righteousness down upon me… wipe my conscience clean…

It’s often said that music is a healer. It’s not. But when you’ve been scraping the bottom with your teeth for a couple of years, the crushing weight of the idea of love straddling your back as your heart, a limp and impotently flaccid muscle, refuses to give as much as a flutter, a strong and confident woman singing and clapping the defiantly joyous refrain, «You’ll never get to Heaven when you die!» lifts you up, just for a moment. But a moment is all you need.



Not even after years of collecting transsexual tart cards did I question my heterosexuality like the first time I was in a room to witness Devendra Banhart
play—that most beautiful creature on Earth, his alien and inaccessible flow of mystic creativity hidden beneath that angelic face and inviting beard (just made for foetal nesting)… For the first time, I appreciated all the women dreaming of laying bare and laying down before the stars.

Then I heard you, Larkin, and I was unable to resist your calm intrusion. Just look at that photo at the top—across those vengeful Medusa locks and into those eyes, «psychotic» only because there’s no bottom as you fall into their dark wells, and people who fear a lack of boundaries take such endlessness to be psychotic.

But you and I know it’s divine. «Don't you pluck me out of your dear eye where I am curling up to die…» Who are you, Larkin, with your petty, devouring rage indiscernible from your magnanimous, enveloping love?

And I wonder, did I hang out with the same whores who you befriended, down in Bangkok? Did they protect you from violence? Did they turn on you and attack? Did they show you their secret places? Did they shed tears as they mumbled about being nothing?

Larkin, did you ever have to wait for some stranger to finally bring reality home to you—to feel at last the embrace of having the brutal truth, delivered so tenderly:

Who told you you’re going to be alright?
Who said that thing to you,
«You’re going to be all right?»
Well, they were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong
In my mind you are already gone

Could it really be? A woman to finally see through me?

And so I take all my hurts and dysfunctions, the lifelong rage and incurable loneliness, and I place them in the warm and clammy, filthy feral fist that is your paw, for you to crush, pitilessly and irreversibly—or do as you like. Then I’ll giddy-up and ride that cyclone all alone while you break my bones, ride it through the crack while you ride my back, ride it with love while you boil my blood… We’re all going to die anyway, so I’ll let you kill me nice, the music that your words take the shape of gently stretching out my rope.

And if anyone ever asks me why I've written this creepy review—because they've yet to appreciate what makes you stand apart, and miles above, all these other «creative people» dabbling in song—I'll just point out to them that none other could ever rhyme «Little Mother Mary riding on your unicorn» with «it's getting kind of hairy wishing that you'd never been born». Every strike of the hammer dulcimer is like the golden light that hammered truth into my head, showing me—in the sounds of strings and bells, desire and revenge that lures me into your universe—reality at last, only to find it's all a fantasy.

O mama, be my host!

Larkin Grimm, I love you like no other.



Which is why I’m strongly urging anyone who’s read this far to go and purchase your masterpiece, Parplar, right this minute.

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 4

OK, let's stop messing about with this 2007 business and get this blog started right. I've saved some of the best for last:

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 4 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]


1. Mark Lanegan: «Man in the Long Black Coat»

There are no mistakes in life, some people say
It is true, sometimes you can see it that way
But people don’t live or die, people just float
She went with the man in the long, black coat

Mark Lanegan’s vocals could lend authority to just about any subject, so lived does his voice sound. Add to that the words of Bob Dylan, and you can’t possibly go wrong: «Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force / Somebody is out there, beating on a dead horse.»
From I'm Not There

2. The Angels Of Light: «Sometimes I Dream I'm Hurting You»
A quick glance at the title and you know what you’re in for. Nothing half-arsed with Michael Gira. This song showcases both why he soars miles above practically all other artists toying with words and music, and why he will never break through commercially. His unique perspective takes you from the gently picked melody to the desperate prayer for deliverance that propels both song and listener until it explodes in trance-like abandonment to music and self-obliteration: «COMEANDTAKEMECOMEANDTAKEMECOMEANDTAKEMECOME
ANDTAKEME!»
From We Are Him

3. Radiohead: «Weird Fishes/Arpeggi»
Not to denigrate their more experimental stuff, but with this song Radiohead finally seem to manage a balance between beauty and originality, their individuality something that just manifests itself now (rather than being forced) in a perfect slice of pop rock. «Hit the bottom and escape»…
From In Rainbows

4. Einstürzende Neubauten: «Die Wellen»

What should I do with you, waves, you who can never decide
whether you’re the first or the last?
You think you can define the coast with your constant wish-wash,
grind it down with your coming and going.
And yet no one knows how long the coastline really is,
where land stops, where land begins, and you’re forever changing
the line, length, lay, with the moon and unpredictable.

Consistent alone is your inconsistency.

Ultimately victorious since, as so often evoked, this wears away
the stones, grinds the sand down as fine as needed for
hourglasses and egg-timers, as required for calibrating time,
for telling the difference between hard and soft.

Victorious also because, never tiring, you win the contest who of us
will be the first to fall asleep, or you, being the ocean still,
because you never sleep.

Although colourless yourself, you seem blue
when the sky is gently mirrored on your surface, the ideal course
for being strolled upon by the carpenter’s son, the most changeable element.

And inversely, when you are wild and loud and your breakers thunder,
I listen between the peaks of your rollers, and from the highest waves,
from breaking spume, a thousand voices break away, mine,
yesterday’s ones that I didn’t know, that otherwise just whisper,
and all the others too, and in their midst the Nazarene.
Over and over again those stupendous five final words:
Why have you left me?

I hold my own, shout at each single wave:
Are you staying?
Are you staying?
Are you staying, or what?

From Alles Wieder Offen

5. Spoon: «The Ghost of You Lingers»
To call this a «song» is stretching it a bit, but that’s no reason to dismiss it as just a piece of indulgent studio experimentation. Sometimes a combination of lyrics and sounds come along at en eerily apt time to, well, haunt you. This may not be a song, but it's the inside of an idea, a sentiment, a hope.
From Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

6. LCD Soundsystem: «All My Friends»
In passing from youth into adulthood, whether you're cultivating hope for the future or indulging in a nostalgia for the past, in LCD
Soundsystem's «All My Friends» at least you've put resentment behind you. Encouraged by nostalgia to love them and permitted by hope to let go of them, the bitterness towards some of the people you used to know is replaced by a warmth towards all the people you now feel blessed and lucky to once have known, regardless of what subsequently transpired. When James Murphy repeats his mantra «Where are your friends tonight?», it’s a question out of curiosity and gratitude, not an accusation arising from disappointment and bitterness. But then, in seven-and-a-half minutes it's over…
From Sound of Silver

7. Animal Collective: «Safer»
A showcase for Avey Tare’s sense of urgency and flight of fantasy, dig the way this piece morphs from fear into love, like a story going from
the empty present back into a golden past…
From «Peacebone» single

8. The Soulsavers: «Kingdoms of Rain»
OK, so it may sound like some American motivational speaker’s mantra, but the title of the album this song’s culled from says everything: it's not how far you fall, it's the way you land. The voice that makes your knees go wobbly and your eardrums quiver with masochistic enjoyment here is that of Mark Lanegan, who the Soulsavers happen to be covering on this very same track, adding soft textures and careful details to the sparse original arrangement (the key point beginning at the 2:14 mark).
From It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land

9. PJ Harvey: «Grow Grow Grow»
Arguably PJ Harvey’s most accomplished (or at least original) album, I could never listen to White Chalk. Not because it isn’t good, but because it’s too good. Unbearably, almost impossibly bleak, Harvey would’ve had to stare into some serious abyss making this one. But like Mark in «Peep Show» says, «I'm looking into the abyss… I don't like the look of the abyss!»
From White Chalk

10. Devendra Banhart: «I Remember»
I think the most beautiful things happen to be ugly things; most people find beauty in the mediocre. But then Devendra Banhart comes along and proves to us all that beauty is simply the beautiful. Trust Banhart to craft a melody to perfectly convey a tristesse that doesn’t wallow. This song’s atmosphere is a lesson; there is such a thing as blues without self-pity! A pure sadness, within which the sweetness that sprouted into bitterness remains intact. You realise that loss is never total, which works against the bitterness…
From Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

11. Flight Of The Conchords: «I'm Not Crying»
«I’m Not Crying» is exactly what you need when you are, in fact, crying. Only, of course you’re not.
From «The Distant Future» EP


12. Marissa Nadler: «Bird on Your Grave»
Nadler may come across a little precious, but she doesn’t pussyfoot around. Unlike most contemporary folk females, she eschews faux-childlike naïvety; and unlike so many young performers, she actually manages to convincingly convey the sorrow contained within her songs. (As opposed to composing songs that pretend to be world-weary and -wise—like a Bob Dylan composing «Blowin' in the Wind» and «The Times They Are a-Changin'» at 22-23, straining to make his voice sound like that of a hardened 60 year-old labourer, making up politically correct words that sound good but which are only based on ideas lifted out of a couple of books.) Greg Weeks’ disharmonic guitar keeps Nadler’s perfect singing from infecting the song with too much prettiness. With lyrics such as these, the music can't be too agreeable.
From Songs III: Bird on the Water

13. Elvis Perkins: «While You Were Sleeping»
Lullaby or funeral march? The Dylan-derivative lyrics are overly poetic and, it seems to me, either meaningless or dense beyond interpretation. Yet obscured beneath the kind of lofty imagery that Leonard Cohen was the last writer in the history of literature to get away with, you'll find some tender essence well worth indulging in. Besides, who can resist the Tex-Mex charms? «Uh-oh…»
From Ash Wednesday

14. Fire On Fire: «Hangman»
«You got to have a friend!» Ain't that the truth… And some days, this
song is it.
From «Fire on Fire» EP

15. José González: «Down the Line»
Quite literally nothing wrong with this track. González comes in and says what it is he wants to say, then quits—all with beautiful melody, infectious rhythm and a coda like a lifebuoy.
From In Our Nature

What a Lovely Way to Burn

Taking a time out from my best-of-2008 extravaganza to remember Lux Interior (21.10.46-04.02.09), a man-thing scholars debate whether came from the crypt, a UFO, a trailer or just straight out of the gutter—a deviant freak-hero who truly earnt his status as icon. Now that Lux has had his last kind of kick, my thoughts go to Poison Ivy Rorschach, his partner-in-crimes, nameless and shameless, for an eye-popping near-four decades—such an unlikely romance of the Ages, mired as the two were in filth. (But a cute, comic book filth, too, in-between the bona fide craziness.) It truly is one for the books: After Lux'n'Ivy, who can still say you can't be an indulgent libertine and a hopeless romantic at the same time? A decadent, hedonist reprobate in the throes of love?

I only got to see The Cramps once, in London in 2006. As I'd suspected, they weren't as subversive as I'd imagined they once were when I was listening to my fav tracks off of Gravest Hits, Songs the Lord Taught Us, Psychedelic Jungle and Off the Bone. But at a time when Nick Cave was being «stately» (in an attempt at growing old with dignity) and Iggy Pop was like a walking advert for organic health shakes, Lux Interior was still prancing around on stage, doing undignified things for a man at any age, sporting a too-tight leotard-type get-up he was definitely too old and out of shape to be seen in (even in front of the mirror in the privacy of his own home, much less in front of the exquisite and sexy Poison Ivy).

Which was precisely one of the things that made it great. Lux was just being Lux, and how could he be a parody of his former self when he'd always cultivated the tasteless? Sure, their performance might not have been as vital as they used to be in their heyday (like when they performed live at a mental hospital in 1978), but you could argue—The Cramps' obsession with youth culture notwithstanding—that Lux was being even more Crampy in his later, refreshingly undignified years.

And maybe some of the infamous edge had, not so much worn off, but been softened on purpose by Lux as he stood up there that night, after years of health-and-safety defying antics. That's understandable. (Would anything else have even been possible?) But how many people aged 59 stagger about on a stage with a bottle of red wine lodged in their mouth, drinking with no hands and sucking suggestively at the bottle, dribbling the Bacchanlian's favourite blood-like elixir like an exhibitionist splosher degenerate, the natural centre of attention in any crowd?

The answer, of course, is only one 59-year-old.

I originally wrote a lot more, but let's not get maudlin. Here's a little compilation I made with Lux and Ivy in mind. Their extremely knowledgable taste in bizarre, basic and ballsy music is well documented (check out the three volumes of Songs the Cramps Taught Us and eleven(!) volumes of Lux and Ivy's Favorites). So instead of all the usual fare, I've compiled a few songs I know they liked and many songs (or cover versions) I imagine they might like. I'm no rockabilly enthusiast, so I'm making up for that by including loads of their beloved garage-psych and a little exotica and novelty music. It's a guide to The Cramps—their background and their context; their influences and their influence—without actually including any of their music. (This doesn't seem like an appropriate time to distribute their output for free.)

Whatever the contents, the comp was made with this in mind: Lux Interior never stopped a-rockin' and a-rollin'!

Gonna take a week off
Gonna go to Hell
Send ya a postcard
Hey, I'm doin' swell!
Wish you were here
Aloha from Hell

I'll be dancin' thru the flames
Like a devil in disguise
You can hear me sing
But not by satellite
You can hear me sing
Aloha from Hell

I'll be glad to get away
Up here everything's so swell
You know some like it hot
And down there it's hot as Hell
Don't forget to write
Aloha from Hell

IVY EYES [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

1. Vincent Price: «Music, When Soft Voices Die»
The eeriest voice ever, loved by ’50s revivalists and goths alike, recites a fittingly haunting poem by Percy Bysse Shelley.




2. Eartha Kitt: «Two Lovers»
Conceived by rape and born on a plantation, raunchy and sharp-minded autodidact Eartha Kitt passed away on Christmas Day. Kitt had been an eloquent and elegant champion of sexy freedom and tolerance in the risqué tradition of Mae West since the 1950s, The Cramps’ favourite decade. And she was the first Catwoman on TV, so I’m imagining they admired her. This song showcases the exotica leanings any fan of kitsch ’50s culture delights in (including The Cramps of course). RIP.

3. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: «Little Demon»
The godfather of hysterical screams in popular music, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins sowed so many illegitimate seeds there’s an international association for those who can prove they’re his offspring. Lux Interior would focus more on honing the frantic delivery that made Screamin’ Jay Hawkins a timeless novelty artist, rather than on heroic evolutionary feats. This song's got a great lyric, about the «cat» who «took the fruit out of the frutti».

4. John Zacherle: «Dinner with Drac»
Zacherle was a schlock-horror TV host in the 1950s and ’60s. I imagine the coupling of vintage bad TV, horror and early rock’n’roll would be irresistible to The Cramps. «Igor! The scalpels go on the left, with the pitchforks!»

5. Mae West & Somebody's Chyldren: «Shakin' All Over»
In 1966, the 74-year-old sexpot film legend rounded up a few garage-dwelling teenagers and corrupted them into
recording lusty, garage rock versions of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, etc. «Shakin' All Over»—as played by the more subtle Johnny Kidd & The Pirates—is often cited as an influence on The Cramps. I prefer this wilder version by far; just picture West's saggy flesh, shakin' all over… Was there ever a sexier septuagenerian? Also, I like how golden oldies such as this one master the art of ingenious subtlety; in 1966 they'd sing, «Quivers down my backbone / I got the shakes down my knee bone / Tremors in my thigh bone…»—whereas nowadays, they'd just rap «Face down, ass up / That's the way we like to fuck!»

6. John & Jackie: «Little Girl»
Early rock’n’roll and tongue-in-cheek (not that cheek!) sex-ooze in perfect harmony, this one puts me in the mood.

7. The Frantics: «The Whip»
I know Interior and Rorschach liked The Frantics. This is my favourite of theirs. It brings to mind that time in Gold Coast's Warner Bros. theme park, where a lithe woman—squeezed into Catwoman's tight, black, full body leather suit—strode down the street, cracking a huge whip. As the Pulp Fiction «gimp»-like music of this track perfectly illustrates, I contemplated leaving everything and everyone behind and becoming her slave-thing, but was ushered away by my girlfriend…

8. Mohammed Rafi: «Nain Milakar Chain Churana»
Like everyone who hears it, Lux and Ivy loved Mohammed Rafi’s «Jaan Pehechan Ho». This one’s not bad, either.

9. Nervous Norvus & Kenny Burt’s Cavemen: «Stoneage Woo»
Nervous Norvus a.k.a. Jimmy Drake was one of rock’s weirder phenomena. He made novelty records, seemingly in all seriousness, in an idiosyncratic style no one’s possessed, before or since. Drake never scored a hit with his genre-defying style, but he kept trying, oblivious to the limitations of novelty music. The Cramps, like Mark E. Smith, were big fans of his song «Transfusion», but this one's just as representative of Drake’s nervous energy.

10. Billy Jo Spears: «Get Behind Me Satan and Push»
The Cramps are rockabilly connoisseurs, but apart from the occasional song, I could never get with that style of music. It always just makes me laugh. (Which might be the intention.) Like this song. But I love the attitude of «sassy lassie» Ms. Spears.

11. Ken Nordine: «Crimson»
Lux and Ivy professed a liking for Ken Nordine—a kind of Kafka, had the troubled bureaucrat made up stories for 5-year-olds. I'm sure Lux'n'Ivy would approve of this track, where, not very typically, Nordine's pleasing radio ad voice (the inspiration behind today’s ridiculous movie trailer narration) is set to surf accompaniment. This short track is one among many where Nordine explores the character of various colours. And crimson, as the man says, is sick—«sick and red!»

12. The Human Expression: «Love at Psychedelic Velocity»
The kind of naïve, dating and transparently calculating marketing strategy behind naming a track something so ridiculous as «Love at Psychedelic Velocity» is the kind of thing The Cramps, like so many kitsch revivalists, found irresistible. The track’s got great energy, though, and the type of sonic approach that would inspire The Cramps. Great fun—and the attitude!

13. Los Saicos: «Demolición»
The Cramps were professed fans of ’60s fuzzbucket proto-punk rockers The Sonics, and The Saicos have been labelled «The Sonics of Peru». Legend would have it that the Peruvian psychos never heard any of the American garage-psych records, but rather innocently tried—in their unskilled and technologically wanting manner—to make music inspired by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Animals et al. And they ended up with this crazed surf music. The vocals are inciteful, urging you to take to the streets and overturn cars and throw bricks through shop windows. «TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA YA-YA-YA-YA!»

14. The Leathercoated Minds: «Psychotic Reaction»
When I saw them live in 2006, The Cramps played this song in a rendition faithful to Count Five’s original one-hit garage wonder. But The Leathercoated Minds’ singer’s decrepit scatting is in full keeping with The Cramps aesthetic.

15. The Missing Links: «Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut»
Surely, The Cramps would approve of this obscure Australian garage album track: Attitude, bursts of noise & feedback—all to a melody and lyrics by their darling Bo Diddley.

16. The Third Bardo: «Lose Your Mind»
In a transparent and pathetic attempt at breaking big, this song is a replica of The Third Bardo’s previous (moderate) hit, «I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time»—a song The Cramps liked to cover. The song's sentiment is a good idea, though, and with a fuzz guitar like that...

17. ? & the Mysterians: «96 Tears»
Largely forgotten today, this is one of rock history’s most important hits, its raw simplicity inspiring a whole generation of non-musicians to play anyway—and Lux interior to whimper, on 1979’s «Human
Fly»: «I am a human fly / And I don’t know why / I got ninety-six tears and ninety-six eyes!»






18. Suicide: «Radiation»
According to Suicide singer Alan Vega, ’60s garage rock sensation «96 Tears» forms the basis of this song, just as it inspired The Cramps' own «Human Fly». Although they sound different, the two bands shared an affinity for early rock'n'roll, screams and yelps, the gutter, and punk (which they helped kickstart in New York back in the '70s when they'd play CBGB's and the like).

19. The Birthday Party: «Release the Bats»
At this point—1982—The Birthday Party was probably the closest-sounding band to The Cramps. The tongue-in-cheek, rockabilly-meets-goth stylings and gutter lunacy were something they definitely had in common, not to mention the hysterical vocals and ejaculations of white guitar noise. While Lux Interior attempted to sound like Charlie Feathers, and Alan Vega as Gene Vincent, Nick Cave here gives it the Elvis treatment.

20. Thee Headcoatees: «Strychnine»
The Sonics' original was an old Cramps favourite. Here's a version by Billy Childish's grotty version of Spice Girls, his unskilled protégés Thee Headcoatees, which would launch Holly Golightly's career.

21. The Fall: «I'm a Mummy»
Bob McFadden & Dor's bandwagon Beatnik novelty song, «The Mummy», was yet another Cramps favourite. But it’s still a bizarre choice for a cover version, if you ask me. But then Mark E. Smith does resemble the living dead—a Working Class Ho-Tep.


22. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: «Dang»
Jon Spencer moved to New York to start an art rock band in the vein of Swans, but ended up playing stuff like this obviously Cramps-influenced rockabilly punker, replete with Theremin, the staple of any '50s schlock sci-fi B-movie. Pure Cramps.

23. The Stooges: «You Better Run (version 2)»
The Stooges were a huge influence on The Cramps, what with the poor man's decadence of their street hedonism and their deranged sense of theatrics (publicly cutting yourself with glass, dressing up in fetish clothing, covering yourself in peanut butter). I used to put this song on a lot, and my girlfriend at the time—a bigger fan of Iggy Pop than I—would roll her eyes every time, not quite ready to embrace his ad lib about rape. But that’s a good thing; offensiveness is a hallmark of relevance, and I'm glad to see Iggy's still got it after all these years.
(Only about a month before Lux Interior passed away, and at around the same age, influential Stooges guitarist and, er, Nazi fetishist Ron Asheton died of a heart attack. RIP.)

24. Black Lips: «Buried Alive»
The inappropriate title aside, this track's perfectly in sync with The Cramps, what with the Tales of the Crypt-like lyrics coupled with wild and jangly raga rock that's as psychedelic as it is garage.

25. Grinderman: «Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)»
Eschewing his high-fallutin' goth poetry and exchanging his piano for the Farfisa organ (which has been the staple of garage rock ever since
? & the Mysterians came out with «96 Tears»), Nick Cave reconnected with his libido and created an album full of scuzzbucket sexual frustration, with former Cramps sticksman Jim Sclavunos beating the skins. Cave's buzzing on this track sounds like a nod to Cramps classic «Human Fly».

26. Megapuss: «A Gun on His Hip and a Rose on His Chest»
The Cramps loved rock’n’roll pioneer Bo Diddley. Here, Devendra Banhart and Greg Rogove take the quintessential Diddley beat (and melody of «The Story of Bo Diddley») and set it to offbeat lyrics—a combination which in another age would've cast this in the category «novelty music». I mean, «Fuck the taxes / In their IRSes / … Fuck the pastors / Touching our baby boys' asses»(!)