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Beneath the Radar:
Rock's Greatest Secret Bands (Part One)
It’s time now to begin the second in our series of periodic music geek essays,
structured head-to-head style, here at Giant Nylon Hair Net. (The first was
the Worst Rock Band Ever
survey in January). Let's review the ground rules before we get on to the
good stuff:
1. The object of this competition is to identify the greatest secret band of
all time.
2. By that, we mean bands that weren't one-record wonders (as a general rule,
each band had to have produced at least five records to be a contender), but
who managed to never break the Top 20 in either the album or singles charts
in the United States, or who never managed to achieve gold or platinum record
sales, or who never achieved the sort of cult/critic glow and respect that
transcends record sales. For instance: the Ramones,
the Velvet Underground, King Crimson or Sonic Youth fall into that latter
category. If you know much of anything about contemporary music or have any
interest in it (and if you've read this far, you probably do), then you know
something about their contributions. Why rehash them here? We're looking for
bands that are a little bit more secret than that . . . but not so secret as
to be needlessly, unfindably obscure. It's a
judgment call, sure, but odds are that you won't have all of these bands in your
record collection, but will be able to find at least some of their records if
you want them, without undue hardship or financial strain.
3. Note well the clause about "in the United States." I know that some of these
bands were big in England or other places in their time, but
to the average rock listener in America, they were largely invisible.
4. Note well that this is all about bands: there are no solo performers here.
5. Each band will be pitted head-to-head against another band and the more significant,
greater band will move forward until we have four finalists. In early rounds,
those analyses will be pretty short and sweet. The further forward we go, the
deeper we'll delve in the comparisons. The four finalists will compete in a
round robin competition, each band going against each of the other final
four. The band with the most points at that point will be declared Rock's
Greatest Secret Band.
6. Readers, please note well that I don't hate you if I end up eliminating
your favorite band(s), I don't think you're stupid if you like band(s) that
get eliminated, and I'm not insulting you if you if I insult your favorite
band(s). I'm insulting the band(s) themselves. There's a difference. You are
a fan. You are not the band, and not responsible for upholding their honor.
(If you are, however, a member of band discussed here, please disregard this
bullet . . . I am talking about you). I welcome e-mail feedback of all
varieties, except this format: "Dude . . . [your favorite band(s) name
here] rocks . . . and you suck!" Bottom line: if you don't like what I'm
saying, then why are you reading my blog?
7. Yes, of course this is all subjective. All music criticism is subjective.
If there was an objective standard for judging music, then we wouldn't need
music critics, and we wouldn't need record labels, and we wouldn't need press
flacks: corporations would just put out a very small number of records that
met the objective standard for "good music" and everyone would buy
and listen to the same small number of things. It's
subjectivity, both in terms of artists' aspirations and talents and critical
and commercial response to them, that makes music exciting. You can't have a
happy train wreck or an inspired mistake in a world ruled by objectivity.
8. Yes, of course this is just my opinion. (Well, not really, I have been
getting input from readers, and have been taking their points into
consideration). But, ultimately, it's me that's making the call. But, then,
ultimately this is my blog, innit? Why would I fill my blog with somebody
else's opinion? If you want to know what Kurt Loder or Dave Marsh or Greil
Marcus think about these bands, go read their blogs.
9. How were the groups selected, you ask? I came up with a seed list of
contenders who met the basic criteria. I accepted suggestions and feedback
from readers, knocked the whole concept around with several folks, honed the
requirements, tweaked, fiddled and played around to try to get a good,
representative list of bands who were influential, important, or just plain
good . . . but not so much so that they had, de facto, entered into the pop
music vernacular, despite selling no records. The 64 bands are grouped into
to eight groups, loosely chronologically, to ensure that the final four cover
a reasonably wide time continuum. There were some small tweaks made to the
basic qualifying criteria (there may be a group or two here that may have
squeaked one album close to the Top 20, or there may be a group or two here
that only put out four albums and a single, for instance), but in general,
the participants are fairly consistent with the intent of the project, if not
the letter of the law.
10. And, therefore, without any further ado, we present the final competitors
in their groups, and with handy links to help you explore these groups
yourself, if you'd like to do so (and I recommend that) . . .
GROUP ONE
The Good Rats vs. Family
Magma vs. Wigwam
Flamin' Groovies
vs. Faust
Hawkwind vs. Soft
Machine
GROUP TWO
Camel vs. BeBop Deluxe
Brinsley Schwarz vs. The Dictators
Can vs. Gong
The Residents vs. Chrome
GROUP THREE
The Buzzcocks vs. Wire
The Cramps vs. Televisions Personalities
Black Flag vs. The Mekons
The Fall vs. Pere Ubu
GROUP FOUR
The
Birthday Party vs. DOA
Gang of Four
vs. Descendents
The Fleshtones vs. The Minutemen
The dBs vs. Gun Club
GROUP FIVE
The Lyres vs. Dream Syndicate
Shriekback vs. Swans
Guadalcanal Diary vs. The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy
St.
Vitus vs. Voivod
GROUP SIX
Naked
Raygun vs. Die
Kreuzen
Half Man Half Biscuit vs. Killdozer
Throwing Muses vs. Bongwater
Dickies vs. Camper Van Beethoven
GROUP SEVEN
Spacemen
3 vs. Tragic
Mulatto
Big Black vs. Drivin' n' Cryin'
Guided by Voices vs. Clutch
Teenage Fanclub vs. Felt
GROUP EIGHT
16 Horsepower vs. Sweep the Leg Johnny
Luna vs. Sloan
Snog
vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of
Dead vs. Turbonegro
And with even less ado, let's move right on into the list, hey presto. Today
I will run the first round competitions for Groups One to Four. Tomorrow I
will run the first round competitions for Groups Five to Eight. After that,
I'll try to run a whole round each day, time, research and typing skills
permitting.
The Good Rats vs. Family: Boy, a great pairing to start with, with a
pair of blues-based bands with prog-rock tendencies, each fronted by a singer
capable of sterilizing small mammals at 50 paces (Roger Chapman with Family,
Peppi Marchello with the Good Rats). England's Family is best known in America for their alumni: Ric Grech went on
to Blind Faith, John Wetton to King Crimson and Asia, Jim Cregan to Rod Stewart's band,
etc. The Good Rats are best known in America if you live on Long Island, where they are (and have been for
30 odd years) legendary; the current incarnation of the band finds Peppi
playing with his sons. If you like one of these bands, odds are you'd like
the other. For purposes of this competition, we pick the band that had more
impact on a larger island, declaring . . . The greater band: Family.
Magma vs. Wigwam: Weird rockin' prog from Europe's heartland vs. weird
rockin' prog from Finland, both anchored by superb, under-appreciated bass
players (Pekka Pohjola for Wigwam, Jannick Top for Magma). While we probably
should dock Magma points for creating their own sci-fi language and wrapping
it around a pretty cheesy '70s space rock construct, we also to reward them
for being capable of pulverizing any number of metal bands when it comes down
to sheer rock punch and power: their Mekanik
Destruktiw Kommandoh is one of the most savage blends of Wagneresque
opera, Coltrane flavored jazz and roaring rock intensity ever recorded, even
if it is sung in Kobaian. The greater band: Magma.
Flamin' Groovies vs. Faust: The Flamin' Groovies put the garage in the
garage rock. Faust put the art in the art rock. Would you rather rock in a
garage or a museum? Me too. The greater band: Flamin' Groovies.
Hawkwind vs. Soft Machine: Soft Machine was formidable, adventurous
and influential in their early days, with Daevid
Allen, Hugh Hopper, Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt passing through their ranks.
By their fifth album, though, they'd pretty well devolved into a pretty
unexceptional fusionoid jazzbo
combo, with bunches of other Canterbury-type folks passing through their
ranks. Hawkwind, too, was all about devolving, since I'd wager that close to
100 people have played onstage with them over the years in various morphing
and ad hoc permutations. But where Soft Machine got more complex and
cerebral, Hawkwind have persevered by keeping pretty much true to the
slam-bam blanga that they pioneered,
playing to the gut and hips more than to the head (since the head needed to
be free to explore the cosmos under the influence of whatever that guy behind
the portable loo sold you at the festival at Stonehenge after a three day
rain while you danced naked with your cousin's wife). In short: blanga eats jazz. (And, yes, I am the
guy who wrote the Hawkwind Blanga Guide,
I must note in the spirit of full disclosure). The greater band: Hawkwind.
Camel vs. BeBop Deluxe: Two '70s prog bands that tended to be a bit on
the precious side, while also being blessed with formidable pop skills and
technical chops. We give the edge to BBD for launching Bill Nelson's career .
. . if we were picking "Beneath the Radar" solo artists, he'd be
high on the list, and his band at its best (see Sunburst Finish), merged guitar hero licks, pop songs
and prog better than many have done before or since. Neither Camel, not their
guiding light, Andrew Latimer, ever managed that feat quite as well, although
they got admirably close on occasion. The greater band: BeBop Deluxe.
Brinsley Schwarz vs. The Dictators: Pioneering UK pub rockers with great, smart
songwriting by bassist Nick Lowe vs. pioneering NYC proto-punks with great,
stoopid songwriting by bassist Adny Shernoff. High grade crude, in both
cases, but we give the nod to the Dictators here for standing as the truest
bridge between MC5/Stooges rawk and the Ramones-inspired punk onslaught that followed them, and
for not issuing a twee CSN-flavored debut disc the
way that Brinsley Schwarz did. The greater band: The Dictators.
Can vs. Gong: I say "Can," you think "Krautrock." I say "Gong," you think
"Huh?" Formed by Soft Machine refugee Daevid
Allen, Gong evolved in all sorts of complex and fusion-flavored ways over the
years, sometimes swimming in the Canterbury pool, sometimes not. It's difficult,
on some plane, to assess them as a single entity: are we talking Gong? Pierre
Moerlen's Gong? Mothergong?
Gong Maison? New York Gong? Gongzilla?
By functioning as a long-standing, free-wheeling collective of artists, Gong
almost eliminates itself from consideration as a band. Almost. Can, on the other hand, were a band: Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Leibezeit . . . with a
pair of singers (Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki)
following each other through the early stages of their life cycle. The Mooney
and Suzuki albums (ever wonder where the Mooney Suzuki got their name from,
kiddies?) are by far and away the best ones Can issued, as their later discs
got a bit drifty around the edges, but, still, they were a band, and that counts for something. The
greater band: Can.
The Residents vs. Chrome: Two bands of San Francisco weirdoes making all sorts of amazing
and terrible sounds, for fun and profit. Chrome's second and third records, Alien Soundtracks and Half Machine Lip Moves, are
essential, as the partnership between Damon Edge and Helios Creed reached its
pinnacle, wrapped in a swirl of screaming guitars, tinny percussion, weird
samples, future shock and paranoia. Problem was, afterwards came a period
where Chrome was Edge without Creed, but then Edge died, so Chrome became
Creed without Edge, and none of it was anywhere near as good as those earlier
slices. The Residents, for their part, also excel in creating things
involving screaming guitars (or people), tinny
percussion, weird samples, future shock and paranoia, and they've managed to
do it for over 30 years without anybody knowing who they are. How beneath the
radar can you get? As deep into their career as they (whoever they are) are,
The Residents most recent studio albums have been among their best. It's
pretty clear that they are . . . The Greater Band: The Residents.
The Buzzcocks vs. Wire: Both English bands emerged in the rush of
"We can do that" enthusiasm inspired by the Sex Pistols' (and
other, lesser punks) assaults on musical sensibilities in the UK, circa 1976-77. Both of their debut
albums (Wire's Pink Flag
and The Buzzcocks' Another Music in a
Different Kitchen) took the basic idiot punk idiom and carried it
into far more thoughtful places. But over the years, the Buzzcocks never
strayed too terribly far from the snappy verse/chorus/energy of punk, while
Wire left that behind in pursuit of some of the most challenging music ever
to be issued under the name of "rock." Discounting the one album
issued under the name "Wir," Wire have
also managed to keep their basic line-up intact for nearly 30 years, while
the Buzzcocks have formed, broken up, reformed in a variety of permutations
over the years. That consistency and continuity (even when they don't play
together for years at a time) is part of what makes Wire so exceptional and
extraordinary: these guys know how to play with each other, and the noises
they make together are truly greater than the sum of their respective parts. The
greater band: Wire.
The Cramps vs. Television Personalities: Ooky
spooky American roots rock vs. veddy veddy polite and tidy English pop rock of the post-Syd Barrett persuasion. TVP's
Dan Treacy (is he still missing? does anybody know?
last I'd heard, he'd vanished without a trace some years ago?) wrote sweet,
sad, heartbreaking songs, and the album Closer
to God is one of the most wrenching pop-styled records you'll
ever hear. The Cramps, on the other hand, are all about wrenching horror from
the rock idiom, and when they're on, they raise two chords and a howl to as
fine an art form as it can possibly be. Bonus points to them for having Alex
Chilton, another classic below-the-radar solo guy, produce their first disc.
And for Bad Music for Bad People,
which may well stand as the greatest “Greatest Hits” record ever issued. You
may not have heard it, but you'll recognize its cover, and you'll want to buy
it, although you won't know why. The greater band: The Cramps.
Black Flag vs. The Mekons: Another USA vs. the UK contest. The Mekons, still going
strong after their birth in Iron Hen-era Britain, are hard to pigeonhole:
they've done just about everything from Gang of Four-flavored agitpunk to cryin' in your beer
modern cowboy songs, and do (almost) all of it very well. Black Flag began as
a straight-up hardcore band fronted by Keith Morris, and ended as a straight
up hardcore band fronted by Henry Rollins. In between, several other singers,
bassists and drummers whirled around band leader Greg Ginn's
bizarre take on punk rock, filled with weird freeform guitar skronk and sarcastic views of the human experience, such
as it is. Unlike 99% of their peers, though, Black Flag stretched well beyond
the harder-faster rules of the day: an all instrumental
album? spoken word? jazz?
That was mind-blowing stuff in its day, totally out of keeping with the dogma
and rules that punk and its spawn had laid on the land in the '80s, and the
exceptional Rollins-Ginn-Kira Roessler-Bill
Stevenson Black Flag line-up was the only one of their permutations really
capable of pulling it off. But while they were doing it, man, they made it
cool for punks to be smart, which seems like an obvious thing to say now, but
wasn't in 1985. Black Flag were hugely influential, doing more than any other
band to carry the energy and message (whatever it was) of SoCal
hardcore and post-punk coast to coast; if you've been to a hardcore show
recently, and know how it felt and looked and smelled, then you have
experienced Black Flag's legacy. That wouldn't exist without them. The
Mekons, for all their stylistic dabbling, have never been quite as
influential in any way, making great music for themselves and their audiences
without many other folks wanting to do it their way. While Black Flag
operated largely under the radar, their legacy leads us to choose . . . The
Greater Band: Black Flag.
The Fall vs. Pere Ubu: Yet another contest that stretches its arms
across the pond (although Ubu mainstay David Thomas has made his home in England for some time now). Both bands have
been around since the '70s, both are ongoing concerns, and both are fronted
by singers who are generally viewed to be quite the acquired tastes: The
Fall's Mark E. Smith is a snarler and Ubu's Thomas is a warbler, and neither of them sounds
like anybody else you've heard before. This is a good thing, mind you. Both
bands have had long-term personnel flux, with key members coming and going,
and different albums from different eras in their history sounding quite
different accordingly, although the presence of Smith and Thomas make it
unmistakable as to who you're hearing in each band's case. Their best records
are truly exceptional, and the worst records are still better than most other
people's best. But . . . the Fall tend to fall prey to what I will call the Ani DiFranco Syndrome, where it
seems they believe that just about everything they record merits release, and
they record an awful lot of stuff. Overall, Ubu's
average quality is higher, because they seem to be more judicious about how
often they get together to make records, and what they release when they do.
The Fall could use a little bit of self-editing in that regard. (As could Ani DiFranco). For that one
small difference, we declare . . . The Greater Band: Pere Ubu.
The Birthday Party vs. DOA: In which we visit two of the
Commonwealth's larger lands, pitting Australia's The Birthday Party against Canada's DOA. The Birthday Party are best
known these days for being Nick Cave's pre-Bad Seeds band, which they were,
of course, chronologically, although they were so much more than that
musically: their recorded output may well be some of the most disturbing
music ever recorded, lyrically, musically and conceptually, and the dark
horrific power of their material makes most Goth-flavored outfits sound like
the Trapp Family Singers in comparison. DOA were a bit more straightforward,
for the most part: an early West Coast punk band that continues to chug along
smartly, putting out and playing a rich and rewarding collection of metalloid
music with pointed political lyrics: Joey "Shithead"
Keithley packs more social conscience into half a
verse than the Birthday Party managed in their entire career. Which is
admirable, but far less memorable than The Birthday Party's short and savage
run as the World's Most Horrible (in the good sense of that word) Band. Gotta go with excess in this case. The Greater Band:
The Birthday Party.
Gang of Four vs. The Descendents: Smart Brits who played smart music
with smart lyrics, vs. smart Californians who played dumb music with dumb
lyrics. Gang of Four began to fall apart pretty quickly, and by the time of
their fourth record, Hard,
they were little more than a clever dance band. The Descendents followed a
similar course after front man Milo Auckerman left,
turning into All, a sort of Descendents Lite option
to the father band, playing pretty stock skatercore
for a decade or so before reforming to do pretty much what they'd done
before. Gang of Four's kingpins (Andy Gill and Jon King) resuscitated the
franchise name in the '90s, too, with wan results. As I type, this particular
contest is striking me as the weakest of the first
round so far, with some other worthier bands having been given the heave-ho
while one of these bands will advance. But . . . since a decision is going to
have to be made, I'm going to go with Gang of Four, because their best
material is head and shoulders above the Descendents best material, because
Andy Gill is one of the more impressive guitarists of the post-punk era, and
because the Descendents' hard-working Bill Stevenson has already advanced to
the second round with Black Flag, so I don't feel bad about leaving him in
the foyer in this contest, worthy drummer, songwriter and coffee fiend that
he is. But this is a wan endorsement for Gang of Four . . . even though the
decision rests. The Greater Band: Gang of Four.
The Fleshtones vs. The Minutemen: East Coast vs. West Coast, with the
roots-fortified hard rockin' New Yorkers of the Fleshtones taking on San
Pedro's most beloved trio. While I've seen the Fleshtones deliver some
amazing concerts (and by amazing, I mean amazing:
these guys are the bee's knees when it comes to kicking your ass in the
concert hall), I don't ever really find myself wanting to listen to their
records. The Minutemen, on the other hand, never issued a bad or boring disc,
and they remain as challenging, thought-provoking and technically astonishing
today as they did when they first blew my mind in the '80s. D. Boon's tragic
death cut short the life of one of the most incredibly talented bands to ever
take guitar in hand; if you ever need to get a sense of what a titanic talent
he was, compare the Minutemen to firehose, the
follow-on trio formed by Mike Watt and George Hurley with Ed Crawford filling
in for Boon. Crawford was a capable player and singer, but the magic was
gone, even though those amazing, incredible Minutemen records live on.
Really, there's not much contest here, much as I like the Fleshtones. The
Greater Band: The Minutemen.
The dBs vs. Gun Club: An interesting one, as both of these bands have
rabid, rabid fans . . . and I, personally, never really fully bought into the
fuss. The dBs made quirky, jangly pop rock (I hate
both the words "quirky" and "jangly"
in music criticism, but I use them here, because that's what we said about
the dBs back then before those words became way over-used with the rise and
triumph of REM) of the Carolina-to-Athens Axis variety, while the Gun Club
merged sick blues with punk into a stew of psychobilly
madness. Both bands went through significant personnel changes early on,
leaving the dBs (primarily) in Chris Holsapple's
hands and the Gun Club (primarily) in Jeffrey Lee Pierce's
hands. Pierce died in '97, so his legend has grown, as do the legends of all
rockers who die young. To the best of my knowledge, all of the dBs are still
with us. I tend to think that what the dBs did, REM, Let's Active, Pylon and
other Southern jangly (cringe) rock bands did as
well, or better. I tend to think that what the Gun Club did, the Cramps did
as well, or better. I guess I have to give the nod to the dBs because they
did their thing before those other Southern groups did, while Gun Club
followed (although, to their credit, may not have been inspired by) the
Cramps. But I think this is another weaker competition than some of the
others in this round . . . I own several records by both of these bands
sitting in boxes somewhere, I played them when I got them, and haven't really
had much desire to do so again since then. I never Gun Club live, but I did
see the dBs live and . . . nice enough, but nothing special. Neither of these
groups has lasted with me, while so many of the others here have. But, as
noted, we gotta nod our head in one direction, so
we will nod this way . . . The Greater Band: The dBs.
And, hey nonny, that ends Day One, so let's take a
peak at the next round's contests for Groups One to Four:
GROUP ONE
Family vs. Magma
Flamin' Groovies vs. Hawkwind
GROUP TWO
BeBop Deluxe vs. The Dictators
Can vs. The Residents
GROUP THREE
Wire vs. The Cramps
Black Flag vs. Pere Ubu
GROUP FOUR
The Birthday Party vs. Gang of Four
The Minutemen vs. The dBs
Tomorrow we'll tackle the first round for Groups Five through Eight (see
above), then Wednesday, we'll try to boil the thing down to the final 16
bands. Who will fly highest under the radar? Stay tuned!
Beneath the Radar:
Rock's Greatest Secret Bands (Part Two)
Today we finish the first round competitions for Groups Five through Eight.
Here are today's contenders:
GROUP FIVE
The Lyres vs. Dream Syndicate
Shriekback vs. Swans
Guadalcanal Diary vs. The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy
Saint Vitus vs. Voivod
GROUP SIX
Naked Raygun vs. Die Kreuzen
Half Man Half Biscuit vs. Killdozer
Throwing Muses vs. Bongwater
Dickies vs. Camper Van Beethoven
GROUP SEVEN
Spacemen 3 vs. Tragic Mulatto
Big Black vs. Drivin' n' Cryin'
Guided by Voices vs. Clutch
Teenage Fanclub vs. Felt
GROUP EIGHT
16 Horsepower vs. Sweep the Leg Johnny
Luna vs. Sloan
Snog vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead vs. Turbonegro
No ado at all required before we hop right to it, so . . . let's hop!
The Lyres vs. Dream Syndicate: The Lyres are an amazing Boston-bred
garage band fronted by singing organist Jeff "Monoman"
Connolly; their 1984 album On Fyre stands tall as a real kick in the teeth
in its age, as it was one of the most stripped down, powerful and visceral
rock records to hit the bins during a stretch when most of the competition
was pretty dismal. In short, the Lyres reinvented classic rock for a
post-punk age. Part of what made rock music so dire at that point was the
rise of the Paisley Underground scene, where folks were looking backwards
instead of forwards, not so much reinventing as rehashing the sounds of the
'60s and '70s, caught up in a wave of boomer nostalgia. Dream Syndicate,
while better than most of their peers, stood square at the starting blocks of
the whole Paisley Underground movement, which was, blessedly, short-lived,
with most of the key members of Dream Syndicate moving on to play key roles
in a variety of post-college rock and/or Americana outfits. Nice enough, but . . . The
Greater Band: The Lyres.
Shriekback vs. Swans: Boy, this is a tough one for me personally.
Shriekback is the quintessential sound of dancing in the mid-'80s for me, the
coolest music played in the coolest clubs of the era. Their early material
stands up amazingly well to this day, with Gang of Four-expat
David Allen's extraordinary bass and XTC/League of Gentlemen alumnus Barry
Andrews' weird synths still sounding as fresh,
distinctive and unique as they did the first time I heard them. Swans, on the
other hand, provided the perfect soundtrack for a darker period of my life:
when you hit rock bottom, there's no better music to have on the discman than the trilogy of Greed, Holy Money and Children
of God, plus related period singles. Swans blossomed over the
years after that, becoming rich, deep and orchestral in intention and sound,
while Shriekback's life cycle saw them moving in
the opposite direction, with the last gasp of their first incarnation, Go Bang, standing as a truly
embarrassing record. Of course, Swans mis-stepped
badly once, too, with the Bill Laswell-produced The Burning World, although they
recovered from that to produce some of their greatest records in the early
'90s. I started this paragraph thinking I was gonna
pick Shriekback, and it's hard to not let them move forward just on the
strength of the incredible and timeless "Lined Up" and "My
Spine is the Bassline" and "Sexthinkone" and "Mothloop"
. . . but, for sheer musical focus and audacity and vision and tenure and
impact, I now find that I really can't avoid declaring . . . The Greater
Band: Swans.
Guadalcanal Diary vs. The Jazz Butcher
Conspiracy:
Guadalcanal Diary got lost, to some extent, in REM's ascendancy to the top of
the college rock world; they were always viewed as the second best
guitar-based rock band from the Athens area, somehow. But in their day,
they were probably my favorite live band of all, bar none, and their records
are still punchy and enjoyable in ways that REM's earliest discs aren't to me
anymore. The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, as a band, reached its pinnacle with
the Pat Fish-Max Eider-Owen Jones line-up, with either David J or Felix Ray
on bass. That was an amazing live and studio outfit, but after Fish sacked
the lot of them for a new Conspiracy, things got a little wan. That core trio
reunited a coupla years
back, and as delightful as it was to hear Eider's spectacular cocktail guitar
in the mix again, I think the verdict on this one is pretty clear in the biggest
picture. The Greater Band: Guadalcanal Diary.
Saint Vitus vs. Voivod: Hard as it is to imagine it today, there was a
time when the worst thing a punk/hardcore band could do was to pull a metal
move: metal was not cool in
the early '80s, and people would get viscerally upset when leading American
hardcore bands like, say, Husker Du, put
straight-up metal songs like "Turn On the News" on their records.
St. Vitus played a key role in helping metal ooze back into synch with
hardcore, its bastard red-headed stepchild: for no other reason than because
their self-named first record was issued in 1984 on SST Records, bastion of
all things cool and hardcore and Black Flag-related. If you, like me, were in
the mode of buying everything that came out on your favorite record in those
days, you were likely jolted to hear long-haired dudes playing the types of
dirty biker music that you thought punk was supposed to have done away with.
Then . . . you realized how much you liked it. Canada's Voivod emerged around the same
time with a more technically proficient, science fiction flavored spin on
metal. Their late '80s/early '90s albums may well be the pinnacle of the
smart metal form, but for sheer ugly metal wallop, we've gotta
go with the long-haired biker dudes of Saint Vitus . . . whose front man,
Scott "Wino" Weinrich, just recently
appeared with Dave Grohl's all-star metal project, Probot, and has also guested
with Clutch and continues to front his own band, Spirit Caravan. The
Greater Band: Saint Vitus.
Naked Raygun vs. Die Kreuzen: A pair of Midwestern rockers, with
Chicago's Naked Raygun coming from a more punk tradition and Wisconsin's Die
Kreuzen playing more from the same sort of post-punk metal idiom that Saint
Vitus (see above) offered around the same time. Spawned in the same city as
the highly influential Big Black at around the same time, sharing members on
occasion, Naked Raygun always somehow felt like Big Black's slightly inferior
doppelganger; if you wanted snarly Chicago rock, you'd generally pick up Steve Albini's latest work before you grabbed something by
Naked Raygun. Die Kreuzen were another one of those bands who probably
benefited from being on the right label (Touch and Go) at the right time,
when label loyalty meant something. Their third album, October File, is an
all-time classic, though, far trumping anything that the Rayguns
did, and if for no other reason than that, we declare . . . The Greater
Band: Die Kreuzen.
Half Man Half Biscuit vs. Killdozer: Wisconsin's Killdozer were another great Touch
and Go Records band during that label's glorious heyday, offering a series of
records through the '80s that featured some of the most grinding, crunchy
rock music ever recorded. How did Nirvana producer Butch Vig
develop the colossal sound he deployed on Nirvana's Nevermind? By honing his
studio chops with the far more ferocious and potent Killdozer back in the
days before grunge brought guitars back to the radio. Like Pere Ubu and The
Fall (discussed yesterday), Killdozer was blessed with a singer of undeniable
personality and style: you knew you were listening to Killdozer when you
heard Michael Gerald's subsonic grumble and growl. Like those groups, too,
Killdozer also offered smart lyrics . . . I say without a trace of
exaggeration that Gerald's best works stand toe-to-toe with classic American
pieces by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. This was a man who
knew his countrymen, for better or for worse, and knew how to tell you about
them and their travails. Half Man Half Biscuit were an oddball English group
who wrote about their countrymen in the same sorts of ways that Killdozer
wrote about theirs, using all sorts of proper names and nouns that were
probably meaningful to Brits of the day, but now leave the songs sounding
like some sort of weird cryptic inside code. Which isn't a bad thing,
actually, since it adds to the carnival surrealism of the music. The
Biscuit's crowning achievement, the single "Dickie
Davies Eyes," is one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded, bar none,
hilarious and wise and hummable and weird, all at
the same time. A classic, well worth hunting down. But Killdozer had at least
a dozen classics of equal stature to that one, so we've got to give them the
nod. The Greater Band: Killdozer.
Throwing Muses vs. Bongwater: Boston's Throwing Muses were the first
American band to appear on dreamy English proto-Goth/college-rock label 4AD.
I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing. Their original line-up
featured both Kristen Hersh and Tanya Donnelly,
both reasonably bright lights in the literate modern rock pantheon; after
Donnelly left to join The Breeders and (later) Belly, the Muses became Hersh's vehicle, and the bright points became fewer and
further between. Bongwater was a collaboration between performance
artist/Hollywood B-lister Ann Magnuson and former Shockabilly/Butthole Surfers bassist Kramer, one of the
most influential producers and record magnates of the past quarter century.
It was a partnership that ultimately came close to wrecking both of their
lives (not to mention Kramer's record label, ShimmyDisc),
but when they were on together, man, were they on, and everyone of their records (with the possible
exception of Too Much Sleep,
which is marred by a bad drum synth programming) is
a classic. Arty and clever, but with a mean penchant for pure pop wizardry,
Bongwater takes this contest easily. The Greater Band: Bongwater.
Dickies vs. Camper Van Beethoven: A pair of smart-assed California
bands, with the Dickies staying relatively close to the mainstream of
punk/pop fare, while the Campers roped in all sorts of international,
country, ethnic and folk fare, whipping it into a stew of goodness that
sounded amazingly fresh and unique in its time, before people did such things
as play pastoral country rave-ups of Black Flag's "Wasted," to cite
but one example. The Dickies made great music to play at frat parties and
cookouts, easily trumping the lion's share of their punky
colleagues for smarts, hooks and chops, but the Campers made great, clever music
that doesn't require you to wear your party hat when you play it. The
Greater Band: Camper Van Beethoven.
Spacemen 3 vs. Tragic Mulatto: Britain's Spacemen 3 made challenging
psychedelic rock that (at its best) proved just how evocative drone and trance
could be, but at its worst showed just how dull drone and trance could be . .
. with the line between those extremes being a pretty fine one, at times;
they were good, but their promise really didn't reach its full blossoming
until founder Jason Pierce set off on his own with the superior
Spiritualized. San Francisco's Tragic Mulatto were
sort of like a bizarro semi-distaff version of the Butthole Surfers: double drums anchored a thundering
guitar/bass-freak-out assault, with bonus tuba and sax tossed into the mix
for good measure. What made them most extraordinary, however, were the vocals
of singer Flatula Lee Roth, who out-Grace Slicked
Grace Slick for sheer alto singing power. Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" is one of rock's greatest songs . . . but
its definitive version is not Zep's, it's Tragic Mulatto's. (Don't smirk unless you've heard it
. . . Flatula blows Robert Plant out of the water
when it comes to over-the-top horny malevolence). Tragic Mulatto's lyrics
were violently, virulently dark and nasty, but they hammered their points home in ways that more subtle performers could only
dream of. A classic rock horror show of titanic proportions, Tragic Mulatto
somehow never managed to achieve even the level of demi-fame
that many of their Alternative Tentacles Records stable mates managed. Pity.
They were a mighty force. The Greater Band: Tragic Mulatto.
Big Black vs. Drivin' n' Cryin': Drivin' n' Cryin' were another great
Southern band who got lost in the fog of REM's ascendance to superstardom,
although they were both more rootsy and more rocky
than their college rock conquering colleagues. Their records are good, but
none of them live up to the amazing potency of the band in its prime ripping
the roof off of a Georgia concert hall back in the '80s. Like
Guadalcanal Diary, they were best appreciated live. Was it something in the
water down there, maybe? Big Black was producer/writer Steve Albini's first and greatest band, the vehicle that
launched a thousand other indie bands, most of whom
recorded their debut albums with Albini at the
helm. Hateful, loud, shrill and confrontational, Big Black's music that felt
like the soundtrack for some awful, violent crime scene . . . which fit,
since that was often what Albini chose to sing and
write about. Their marriage of drum synth and
guitar onslaught paved the way for bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails,
although Big Black could have eaten either of those follow-on bands for
breakfast. No doubt who made the most fiery, influential music here. The
Greater Band: Big Black.
Guided by Voices vs. Clutch: Critical heresy alert here! Guided by
Voices are one of the most beloved, indie-underground
bands of the past twenty years, as Robert Pollard's evolving cast of
characters have ground out album after album of the sorts of lo-fi, thoughtful rock virtually guaranteed to make critics
ooze and gush. But despite a vast back catalog, they've never grabbed me and
shaken me in any way that made me want to listen to them again. Clutch, on
the other hand, have: they are a titanic and literate rock band who make
tight, well-produced records and then take their songs on the road to play
free-wheeling, transcendent concerts. Clutch's Neil Fallon is one of the few
modern rock writers who can hold a candle to Killdozer's
Michael Gerald when it comes to dark, cerebral, surreal snapshots of American
life, and he's as charismatic a performer as you're ever likely to see. By
maintaining the same, solid line-up throughout their existence, Clutch's
members have reached that point where their musical interactions are so much
deeper and more profound than anything that the shambolic
Guided by Voices have ever produced, or are ever likely to. No contest. The
Greater Band: Clutch.
Teenage Fanclub vs. Felt: Another critical heresy alert! Scottish
power poppers Teenage Fanclub have long made critics go gaga over their Big
Stat-inspired music, but I've never heard anything by the Fanclub that
touched me half as much as anything Big Star issued. They felt derivative,
not inspired, easy on the ears, sure, but not memorable in the ways that so
many other bands on this list are. Felt were a bit backwards-looking, too,
but with more of Velvet Underground fetish than a Big Star fetish, aided by
the fact that singer-songwriter Lawrence Hayward sounded like Lou Reed with
an English accent. To their credit, though, Felt updated the Velvet chugga-chugga approach with some pretty interesting
post-Television twin guitar work, deploying both elements on songs that found
a nice balance between being too challenging or too accessible. Easy on the
ears, like Teenage Fanclub, but with a bit more going on between the ears to
boot. Since Felt imploded, Hayward has continued to make clever rock
out of stock '70s pieces with Denim and Go Kart Mozart. Worth researching. The
Greater Band: Felt.
16 Horsepower vs. Sweep the Leg Johnny: Two excellent, contemporary
American bands. Denver's 16 Horsepower offers spooky, Southern-inflected
alt-country rock defined by David Eugene Edwards' distinctive nasal twang, living
up to the promise that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds once offered, before they
veered off into an unhealthy obsession with Neil Diamond-y piano balladry on
their last two albums. Chicago's Sweep the Leg Johnny are a truly unique
beast, sort of a post-punk take on the original King Crimson approach to
music, with sax and guitar dancing through a widely divergent collection of
songs, some soft, some hard, some soft and hard. This one's really a toss-up,
but I boil it down to this: 16 Horsepower play within the rules of a
reasonably established genre, and do it extremely
well . . . but Sweep the Leg Johnny seem bound to build and explore their own
unmapped genre, and that gives them the edge here. The Greater Band: Sweep
the Leg Johnny.
Luna vs. Sloan: Luna were a superstar secret band of sorts when they
were founded, with members of the Feelies, Galaxie 500 and the Chills forming the first incarnation,
which made minimalist rock of a Velvet Underground variety. That Velvet
connection was cemented when Sterling Morrison guested
on 1994's Bewitched, easily
their best record. Like many Velvet-inspired, minimalism-inclined
bands, Luna's material tends not to reach out and grab you, although
it almost always rewards repeated listening well. Sloan were arguably Canada's
premier pop-rock band (non-goofy division) of the '90s, but their albums and
the one concert I saw by them have always felt something like listening to or
watching a very good set of impersonators impersonating Canada's premier
pop-rock band (non-goofy division), rather than seeing the real thing.
There's an air of contrivance there that I just can't shake, although I can't
quite put my finger on why it feels that way. But it does, and therefore it's
easy to cite . . . The Greater Band: Luna.
Snog vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: Australia's Snog make astounding
techno/industrial music topped with severe political lyrics delivered in the
most moving basso profundo this side of Swans'
Michael Gira. Their music has a great beat you can
dance to . . . but makes you think, a lot, while you're doing it. When Gorky's Zygotic Mynci first started
getting (mild) press interest on these shores, it was primarily to note that
much of the material on the early records was sung in their native Welsh. But
once you got past the initial novelty of that, the music beneath them was
exquisite: well-written, beautiful, diverse, well-recorded and well-sung.
Over the years, they've dropped a little bit of the baroque careening that
defined those early Welsh released, settling into a dreamier, sometimes
nearly country-tinged take on contemporary rock. They don't kick you in the
head (or the ass) as hard as Snog do, but the loveliness at the heart of all
their songs gives the Gorky's the advantage here. The Greater Band: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
. . . And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead vs. Turbonegro:
Austin's interestingly named Trail of Dead (I ain't
typing the full name again) are the newest band in this competition, and
their recorded body of work to date would indicate that they may well be the
one with the most promise for the future. Their music rocks hard, but with
all sorts of interesting atonal elements wrapped into the sonic mix, not
layered on top of them like afterthoughts, as is the case with many other
"anti-music" musicians. Each of their records has bettered the one
that came before it, as they forge deeper into the strangeness that lies
beyond the familiar surfaces of modern rock. Turbonegro are hellaciously powerful, too, but the Scandinavian sextet
takes a more tongue-in-cheek approach to their music, wrapping huge '70s
style post-glam riffs around lyrics about sex, violence, and sex and
violence, all delivered by a group of beefy performers who look something
like The Village People in denim. The look and the lyrics make Turbonegro
distinctive, but without those elements, their music could be any number of
glam-flavored modern rock bands. Trail of Dead, on the other hand, always sound like Trail of Dead, and no one else. We'll reward
that innovation and future promise by declaring them . . . The Greater
Band: . . . And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
Phew! And, so, now we're down to our Final 32, with the next round's matchups standing thusly:
GROUP ONE
Family vs. Magma
Flamin' Groovies vs. Hawkwind
GROUP TWO
BeBop Deluxe vs. The Dictators
Can vs. The Residents
GROUP THREE
Wire vs. The Cramps
Black Flag vs. Pere Ubu
GROUP FOUR
The Birthday Party vs. Gang of Four
The Minutemen vs. The dBs
GROUP FIVE
The Lyres vs. Swans
Guadalcanal Diary vs. Saint Vitus
GROUP SIX
Die Kreuzen vs. Killdozer
Bongwater vs. Camper Van Beethoven
GROUP SEVEN
Tragic Mulatto vs. Big Black
Clutch vs. Felt
GROUP EIGHT
Sweep the Leg Johnny vs. Luna
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci vs. . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
I had originally planned to do the entire next round in one day (tomorrow)
but I may decide to split that round into two days the same way that I did
for the first round. Doing sixteen of these pairs at one sitting is a little
tiresome . . . but, either way, tomorrow we continue to move closer to Rock's
Greatest Secret Band!
Beneath the Radar:
Rock's Greatest Secret Bands (Part Three)
We're down to 32 of the original 64 contenders . . . with the survivors and
their opponents as follows:
GROUP ONE
Family vs. Magma
Flamin' Groovies vs. Hawkwind
GROUP TWO
BeBop Deluxe vs. The Dictators
Can vs. The Residents
GROUP THREE
Wire vs. The Cramps
Black Flag vs. Pere Ubu
GROUP FOUR
The Birthday Party vs. Gang of Four
The Minutemen vs. The dBs
GROUP FIVE
The Lyres vs. Swans
Guadalcanal Diary vs. Saint Vitus
GROUP SIX
Die Kreuzen vs. Killdozer
Bongwater vs. Camper Van Beethoven
GROUP SEVEN
Tragic Mulatto vs. Big Black
Clutch vs. Felt
GROUP EIGHT
Sweep the Leg Johnny vs. Luna
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci vs. . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
So shall we boil it down to 16? Yes, we shall . . . but over two days: today
I'm just gonna do Groups One through Four, leaving
us with 24 tonight, before we do the other four groups and come up with our
Sweet Sixteen tomorrow.
Let's do it, shall we? Yes, we shall.
Family vs. Magma: As noted in the first round, Family are known better in America for their relatively short-lived
alumni than they are for their core, longstanding members: singer Roger
Chapman, guitarist John "Charlie" Whitney and drummer Rob Townsend.
Thing is, though, that as good as Family's rotating pool of bassists and
keyboardists were, what made 'em so very, very
special were the vocals, guitars and (to a slightly lesser extent) drums.
Whitney and Chapman were also an exceptional songwriting team, offering
clever (yet punter-friendly) lyrics and a weird progressive blues music,
pretty consistently throughout Family's seven year run. Their best album, Bandstand, is one of the great lost
records of the '70s, with the Whitney-Chapman-Townsend core joined by John
Wetton and Poli Palmer, together creating a very
distinctive, very powerful album that'll linger with you long after you hear
it the first time. Magma, too, created extraordinary music, but of a
completely different bent, with strains of opera and free jazz swirling
around the pulverizing, precise percussion of bandleader Christian Vander. As
good and adventurous as their music is, though, the sci-fi concept album
themes that ran through all their best records feels a bit precious and dated
these days, while Family's rowdy odes to drinking and love and drinking some
more make for some pretty timeless stuff . . . played with punch and passion.
The Greater Band: Family.
Flamin' Groovies vs. Hawkwind: The original Flamin' Groovies were a
wild and fiery San Francisco band, debuting right around the time
that the Bay City's music scene was moving in the exact opposite
direction, seeking psychedelic freak-out and freeform improv
instead of short, sharp rockin' ravers. The focus
of aural attention, and the most provocative element
of the group's seminal first three records was wildman
singer Roy Loney. After 1971's Teenage Head, Loney
split for a solo career, leaving the band in the hands of guitarist Cyril
Jordan, who took 'em to England, where they issued
two more fantastic records with Dave Edmunds manning the boards (Shake Some Action and Now!), then began a long, slow slide
into mediocrity, which continues to this day. Hawkwind grew out of the British
blues busking movement before beefing themselves
into a electric and electronic juggernaut, merging the best features of
metronomic Krautrock with the best features of noodly experimental sound manipulation and the best
features of straight four on the floor rock and roll to pioneer the sound now
largely known as "Blanga" in the Hawkosphere.
(Curious side note . . . let me tell you something: I kinda
wish I'd trademarked that word with that definition, since I coined it around
1994 in a thread on the defunct CompuServe Rocknet
forum with Steve Pond,
guitarist of Hawkwind spin-off band Inner City Unit. I wrote the Hawkwind Blanga
Guide in 1995, a bloke named Dave Rice html'ed
it, and Steve put it up on his website, where it remains to this day, people
reading it and assuming that the word "blanga" just sorta happened or has just sorta
been part of the picture since time immemorial. Well . . . it hasn't, but I'm
glad that it's caught on, since that means it was right, somehow). Anyway, Hawkwind have been doing their
Blanga thing for over thirty years, with one of the most knotty family trees
(or, actually, more of a family vine actually) of any rock band of equal
tenure, sometimes producing brilliant studio records, sometimes producing
stinkers, sometimes issuing and reissuing the same material over and over
again, sometimes coming up with new stuff. While their material of the past
decade has certainly been less convincing that the material they issued in
their first two decades, the quality drop off hasn't been quite as
catastrophic as it was for the Flamin' Groovies. Plus, their most fertile and
productive period(s) produced far more fertile and productive records than
the Groovies ever managed, leading us to declare . . . The Greater Band:
Hawkwind.
BeBop Deluxe vs. The Dictators: When I saw this match-up on the list
yesterday, my initial gut reaction was "No contest,
Dictators advance easily." But then I went home last night and
listened to the Dictators' Go Girl
Crazy and BeBop Deluxe's Bop to the Red Noise compilation . .
. and I'm thinking differently today. While I admire the Dictators commitment
to four-on-the-floor rock, particularly during an era when such things were
well out of step with the spirit of the age, and while I appreciate them as a
bridge between the MCS/Stooges Detroit axis and the Ramones/Everyone
Else New York axis, when I remove that historical perspective and just listen
to their material now, it's just sorta . . .
rudimentary, I guess, with a little bit too much winking and nodding in the
background: you can hear the very intelligent guys in this band thinking real
hard about how to not sound real intelligent sometimes. BeBop Deluxe, on the
other hand, leaned pretty danged far in the other direction: they were
playing poppy rock songs, but embellishing them with all sorts of literary
and technical references and techniques that made them sound, perhaps, like
more than they were. The spawn of the Dictators litter the face of the world
today, as you can trace their family tree through punk to grunge to modern
metal to neopunk and back again. BeBop Deluxe?
Other than perhaps the New Romantic movement in the '80s, it's hard to think
what they spawned, except for Bill Nelson's solo career, which has actually
been quite rich and rewarding, if deep beneath the radar. So . . . I'm a bit
tepid on this one, at this point, but I think I'm gonna
lean in the direction of BeBop Deluxe, if for no other reasons than because
(1) the Dictators do enjoy a certain cache in critical circles that makes
their profile higher than their record sales would necessarily indicate,
similar to the Ramones or the Velvet Underground,
but to an obviously lesser degree, and (2) because you really have to stretch
deep into quasi-official, side project and live discs to consider the
Dictators to have met the basic five-album criteria that framed this process
at the start, while BeBop Deluxe managed to produce five solid, self-standing
studio albums, plus a gaggle of singles. Not the strongest endorsement, but .
. . The Greater Band: BeBop Deluxe.
Can vs. The Residents: On some plane, Can were most simply a jam band
. . . albeit a very, very, very good jam band. Their early records and
concerts tended to be heavy on improv and/or
experimental efforts, with those perfect Jaki Leibezeit drum beats making everything tick along like
clockwork, often over extended periods of time: their classic Malcolm
Mooney-fortified "Yoo Doo
Right" is one of the greatest metronomic, two-chord vamps ever recorded.
During their Damo Suzuki phase, they grew
increasingly experimental and atonal, but more interesting for it. Their
latter albums (some with Traffic's Roscoe Gee and Repob
Kwaku Baah along for the
ride) were far better produced and composed affairs, but they lacked some of
the zip of the wild and wooly early records. You can't deny their influence
(on techno, electronica, trance, drone and all
movements that involve those elements), their talent or their willingness to
do things the "wrong" way, although you probably can question the
wisdom of their continuing on after it seemed the inspiration had begun to
run dry. The Residents, whoever they are, have never seemed to run out of
inspiration or ideas: if anything, they're maddening because just when you
start to like something they're doing, they will invariably change it. And
while some of those changes have been clunkers, many of them have been
sublime and inspired, and the quality of their work has remained exceptionally
high throughout their long, weird career; personally, I hold their last full
length studio album, Demons Dance Alone,
to be one of the best three or four records in their endless discography. To
be able to produce a masterpiece like that so deep into a career is quite an
accomplishment, and so both for their back catalog, the promise of things to
come, and their intense dedication to remaining as far below the radar as one
possible can, we recognize . . . The Greater Band: The Residents..
Wire vs. The Cramps: The Cramps are an explosive
band who have done an amazing job of digging up and preserving some of
rock n' roll's greatest lost songs, while crafting an exceptional collection
of new material that fits perfectly and seamlessly with that older material.
Wire, on the other hand, are an explosive band who
have done an amazing job mapping and pioneering the directions in which can,
and should, move forward. And we've clearly gotta
pick the visionaries over the archivists here. The Greater Band: Wire.
Black Flag vs. Pere Ubu: Because American hardcore can be such a
reductive, simplistic music form, it's easy to pigeonhole Black Flag
(arguably the Grandpappies of American Hardcore) as
a reductive, simplistic band. But, as noted yesterday, they weren't. Even
though dozens of lyricists/songwriters ply the spoken word circuit these
days, it was a radical departure when Henry Rollins first did it in the '80s.
Or, as another example, listen to 1985's The
Process of Weeding Out to hear what it sounds like when you graft
12-tone music theory atop a punk rock engine. It's scary and bracing and
experimental and pioneering in the best senses of those words. Which, of
course, is a good description of Pere Ubu as well: few bands have pushed the
boundaries of rock music as far as they have, usually managing to stay just
this side of breaking it, with the end result being some odd, odd songs that
rock and swing like nobody's business. Like the Residents, Pere Ubu continues
to make great music deep into their career, while Black Flag (and its many
members) seem to be somewhat past their musical peaks at this point; they're
still good at what they do, but they don't seem to be blazing any new musical
paths. I love Black Flag to death, and they're right up there on the list of
"Rock Bands That Changed My Life," but in good conscience, it's
hard to pass up Pere Ubu. Plus, it makes me feel less bad about passing on
the Dictators, since Ubu and their precursor band, Rocket From the Tombs, and
their other Cleveland colleagues also filled a similar key evolutionary space
between Detroit and New York as the Dictators did. Sorta. The Greater Band: Pere Ubu.
The Birthday Party vs. Gang of Four: Not much of a contest here, since
Gang of Four squeaked in yesterday with a decided lack of enthusiasm, while
The Birthday Party reach this level with raging, screaming, flying colors.
Had Gang of Four's initial line-up (Andy Gill, Jon King, David Allen, Hugo
Burnham) managed to slug it out for a few more albums, they mighta woulda coulda shoulda been stronger
contenders, but the chemistry seemed to abate a bit as the rhythm section
evolved (although, to her credit, I adore Sara Lee as a player . . . I just
liked her better with League of Gentlemen than I did with Gang of Four). The
Birthday Party managed to maintain their exceptionally high standards
throughout their short, violent life. Roland S. Howard's guitar work still
sounds unlike anybody who's played the instrument before or since, while the
Calvert-Pew-Harvey (or, later, just Pew-Harvey) rhythm section rumbled like
something out a nightmare, the details of which were invariably described in
Nick Cave's roaring vocals. Ugly music, and beautiful because of it. The
Greater Band: The Birthday Party.
The Minutemen vs. the dBs: Hmmm . . . another no contest. The dBs were
nice enough, sure, but the Minutemen were transcendent, taking the jazz-punk
elements that Black Flag dabbled with, and running as hard and far as they
could with them. Double Nickels on the
Dime may well be the greatest album of the '80s, and you've never
heard so much going on in such short songs are these . . . each and every one
them fascinating. Did I mention "no contest" yet? The Greater
Band: The Minutemen.
So! For Groups One to Four, we have the following Group championships to look
forward to in two days:
GROUP ONE: Family vs. Hawkwind
GROUP TWO: BeBop Deluxe vs. The Residents
GROUP THREE: Wire vs. Pere Ubu
GROUP FOUR: The Birthday Party vs. The Minutemen
Tomorrow, we will come up with the finalists for Groups Five Through Eight.
Thanks to all those who have sent feedback and input so far . . . I'm taking
it into consideration, and its good to hear what these matchups
bring to your minds, since sometimes those thoughts are very different from
my own.
Beneath the Radar:
Rock's Greatest Secret Bands (Part Four)
Okay, I lied. I found some free time, and am gonna
try to finish the second round today, rather than tomorrow, so we can pick
the elite eight on Thursday, final four on Friday, and name the champ on
Saturday, which is the day that I'll need to start writing daily poems again
if I'm not gonna get behind schedule. A writing
geek's work is never done . . .
Here's the pairings for the second half of the second round:
GROUP FIVE
The Lyres vs. Swans
Guadalcanal Diary vs. Saint Vitus
GROUP SIX
Die Kreuzen vs. Killdozer
Bongwater vs. Camper Van Beethoven
GROUP SEVEN
Tragic Mulatto vs. Big Black
Clutch vs. Felt
GROUP EIGHT
Sweep the Leg Johnny vs. Luna
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci vs. . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
And here's the results . . .
The Lyres vs. Swans: On some plane, the Lyres sound is really the
quintessential sound of rock and roll, with organ. Jeff Connolly has got one
of those perfect rock voices, and (like the Cramps) he resuscitates lost
classics and mixes them with originals cut from the same sorts of cloth,
creating a nice and crunchy and sweaty whole that's appealing and engaging,
bound to make your toes tap and your hips swivel in just the ways that rootsy retro rock is supposed to. Swans, on the other
hand, on average may well be one of the least toe-tapping bands in the world,
particularly on their earliest albums, filled with 2/4, two-chord sludge
fests of the most debasing and deadening variety, all capped with Michael Gira's mournful moan. The thing about Swans, though, is
that once you acclimatized yourself to those early discs, and came to
understand, if not appreciate, what they were all about, they changed the
rules on you, just a little bit at a time, so that (with the exception of The Burning World), each record and
tour felt kinda like the one before it, only a
little bit better, a little bit richer, and a little bit fuller. The base
brutality remained, but it was better dressed, and the nearly orchestral
dirges on their later albums are somehow transcendent and beautiful, while
not losing the disturbing edges that defined the early works. The Lyres power
is power of the moment: you hear their music, and it makes you move. Swans
power was lasting power: you hear their music, and it haunts you for a week
afterwards. I like things that last. The greater band: Swans.
Guadalcanal Diary vs. Saint Vitus: This competition is kinda similar to the one we just finished, with sludge
going head-to-head against crowd pleasing rock. Perhaps two of the most
underappreciated bands of the '80s, Guadalcanal Diary and Saint Vitus sounded
better live and made better records than most of their peers, but somehow
never quite managed to get the breaks they needed to penetrate the greater
public consciousness in any meaningful way. Guadalcanal Diary offered zippy
power pop, Saint Vitus countered with grinding post-Black Sabbath doom metal,
made slightly more diverse over the course of their career as they went through
three different lead singers. Unlike Swans, though, Saint Vitus never really rose out of the sludge much. Guadalcanal Diary, in their
original run, got better through three records before closing with the
erratic backwards step Flip Flop.
So as I think about, it occurs to me that both of these solid bands never
really managed to live up to their potential, which makes me pretty sure that
whoever advances here is gonna get stomped in the
next round by somebody who did. Given that, I'm gonna
pick the accessible rock over the sludge this time, since I went the opposite
way in picking Swans in the prior contest. Enjoy the victory, promising rock
band, since it's likely to be your last. The Greater Band: Guadalcanal Diary.
Die Kreuzen vs. Killdozer: It's the battle of Wisconsin here, with Madison's Killdozer slugging it out against Milwaukee's Die Kreuzen. And when I say
slugging, I mean slugging:
both of these bands are exceptionally ferocious musically, which makes me
wonder what they're putting in the water (or snow)(or
cheese) up there. Were there any justice in this world, the
Nirvana-spearheaded grunge revolution would have happened in Wisconsin in the '80s, with Killdozer and Die
Kreuzen playing the parts that Nirvana and Soundgarden
and (to a lesser extent) Pearl Jam played post-1991. They were both that
good, and they were doing flannel-powered rock long before it was cool (or
lucrative) to do so. As it happened, though, Die Kreuzen fizzled out right
around 1991, just when the record-buying world might have finally been ready
to embrace them. Killdozer's original line-up burnt
down around the same time, although they did soldier on to release two more
fine albums with new guitarist Paul Zagoras in the
mid-'90s. When you go back and listen to Die Kreuzen now, though, it's hard
to not hear Nirvana; they pre-dated Seattle's most famous band, but plowed
similar turf. When you go back and listen to Killdozer now, however, they
still sound like nobody but Killdozer, which is (all things considered) a
greater way to sound than what Die Kreuzen (or Nirvana) offered. The
Greater Band: Killdozer.
Bongwater vs. Camper Van Beethoven: Two very clever bands, one based
in New York, one based in California, both reflecting their homelands'
characters in their music: Bongwater was urban and arty and oblique with
roots in strange jazz rock improv and performance
art, Camper Van Beethoven was rural and rootsy and
friendly-sounding and shaggy in an amiable sunny college town sorta way. Bongwater flamed out dramatically after their
finest and final studio album, the wryly titled The Big Sell Out, while the Campers soldiered on for
probably a bit longer than they needed to, before fracturing into Cracker and
The Monks of Doom, neither of whom were anywhere near as engaging as their
parent band. The Monks, for the record, were the better of the post-Camper
groups, although they toiled in obscurity while David Lowery's
Cracker managed a reasonably successful crossover into the pop mainstream.
The lure of their original band has proven strong, though, and Camper Van
Beethoven's key members have regrouped over the past few years to play some
shows and issue some music (including a long rumored, but kinda
pointless, cut by cut cover of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk) . . . and, come to think of it, the too-cute
college smugness that permeates that album casts something of a pall over
their recorded oeuvre. Bongwater quit while they were (creatively) on top,
and then commenced to suing the hell out of each other. If that ain't rock and roll, what is? The Greater Band:
Bongwater.
Tragic Mulatto vs. Big Black: I do adore Tragic Mulatto (perhaps the
most obscure band of the original 64 I picked, with the possible exception of
Wigwam), and consider them to be the best of the Alternative Tentacles bands
not named after a dead president and his dead brother. But Big Black? Sheesh . . . it's hard to pick against them, since they
influenced legions of bands who followed (both stylistically and in a
hands-on fashion, as Big Black singer-songwriter-guitarist Steve Albini went on to produce . . . well, pretty much
everybody, come to think of it), and made great, bilious records while they
were together. Anytime you hear a hyper-amped
guitar/bass team riffing atop a drum synthesizer, you can thank (or curse) Big
Black for blazing that trail when synths were
viewed as evil and wicked tools of the big haired new wave set. If sent to a
desert island with only a dozen songs, I'm pretty sure that Big Black's
"Kerosene" would have to be one of them. You haven't heard
guitar-fueled rage and aggression done properly until you've heard that
track, and its lyrics will haunt you long after the ringing in your ears dies
down. The Greater Band: Big Black.
Clutch vs. Felt: This one kinda feels like a
musical variant of "Bambi Meets Godzilla." In one corner, the
deliciously, deliriously crunchy Clutch, arguably the hardest playing on the
contemporary concert circuit. In the other corner, we have Britain's Felt, who were sort of a more
sensitive, soulful successor to such cerebral types as the Velvet Underground
and Television. (Which is not, mind you, to imply that Clutch is not
cerebral: they are, and that makes some of the stuff that falls out of singer
Neil Fallon's mouth hair-raisingly delicious, in a surreal and shocking sort
of way). Felt were never really much of a band, as much as they were the
vision of leader Lawrence Hayward; their debut recording, Index, was created by Lawrence in his bedroom on a cassette
recorder, and he pretty much maintained that degree of control throughout
Felt's run, although guitarist Maurice Deebank
played an important role on their best recordings. Clutch was seemingly born
full grown; their debut EP is every bit as stomptastic
as their latest elpee, Blast Tyrant. We have to reward that consistency and
that power. The Greater Band: Clutch.
Sweep the Leg Johnny vs. Luna: An interesting pairing, with Luna's
post-Velvet Underground jones going up against
Sweep the Leg Johnny's post-King Crimson sax-and-guitar workouts, sprinkled
with a little Mission of Burma abrasion. Luna are certainly the more
established of the pair, with roots going back into '80s college rock, high
profile guests and (more recently) the production team responsible for
helping Flaming Lips make the leap to pop stardom. Sweep the Leg Johnny have,
uh, none of those things. Luna are a lovely band, but there's something more urgent about Sweep the Leg Johnny
that makes me want to lean their way: they're not continuing to hone and
refine an existing family tree of rock, they're more trying to pull the tree
out of the ground and make book cases out of it. That carries the day for me,
although I wish that Luna had gone up against (say) Guadalcanal Diary or
Saint Vitus in this round, so I coulda felt good
about passing them on to the next round. Oh well . . . I have a feeling
they're poised, at last, for some major crossover success in the future,
while the Johnny's will toil in relative obscurity for the rest of their
careers, recognized only by music geeks like me. So, hey, I might as well
recognize 'em good: The Greater Band: Sweep the
Leg Johnny.
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci vs. . . . And You Will Know
Us by the Trail of Dead: Can we get some longer band names, here, please?
Yeesh! Austin's Trail of Dead are
noisy and raw, kinda like Sweep the Leg Johnny,
minus the saxophone and math fetish. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci are
lovely and pastoral, with occasional forays into weird psychedelic and other
forms of musical surrealism. Gorky's have been through their share of
personnel transitions, but they remain solid through change, their albums
continuing to grow and expand their ranges and their songwriting skills.
Trail of Dead have grown, too, albeit over a much
shorter period of time. So, just to be perverse, since I picked a younger,
harsher band in the prior contest, I'll go with a (slightly) older, less
harsh band in this round. Although, honestly, age and harshness aside,
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci have got both a better back catalog and brighter
prospects than Trail of Dead have. So I'm not just being perverse . . . I'm just using perverse logic
to explain something that I feel in my gut, and that something is this . . . The
Greater Band: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
And, phew, that takes us down to the Sweet Sixteen, as follows, repeating the
other half of this round, just so you've got the whole list on the plate in
front of you:
GROUP ONE: Family vs. Hawkwind
GROUP TWO: BeBop Deluxe vs. The Residents
GROUP THREE: Wire vs. Pere Ubu
GROUP FOUR: The Birthday Party vs. The Minutemen
GROUP FIVE: Swans vs. Guadalcanal Diary
GROUP SIX: Killdozer vs. Bongwater
GROUP SEVEN: Big Black vs. Clutch
GROUP EIGHT: Sweep the Leg Johnny vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
Tomorrow, we take it down to eight, one step closer to identifying Rock's
Greatest Secret Band. Yee haw!
Beneath the Radar:
Rock's Greatest Secret Bands (Part Five)
Sorry to those who usually check the blog in the morning . . . we had some
technical problems today, but all's back and swinging again at this point.
Today we go from Sweet Sixteen to Elite Eight. The contenders, please . . .
GROUP ONE: Family vs. Hawkwind
GROUP TWO: BeBop Deluxe vs. The Residents
GROUP THREE: Wire vs. Pere Ubu
GROUP FOUR: The Birthday Party vs. The Minutemen
GROUP FIVE: Swans vs. Guadalcanal Diary
GROUP SIX: Killdozer vs. Bongwater
GROUP SEVEN: Big Black vs. Clutch
GROUP EIGHT: Sweep the Leg Johnny vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
And, so, to the competition . . .
Family vs. Hawkwind: Family issued eight "official" albums
between 1968 and 1973, with half-a-dozen different lineups. Hawkwind has
issued something like 50 "official" albums between 1970 and the
present (along with literally hundreds and hundreds of quasi-official,
bootleg, alternate label and/or compilation discs), with almost every one of
them featuring a different band lineup; only singer-guitarist Dave Brock has
survived from the beginning. Both bands, while virtually unknown in the
States (Hawkwind has a little bit more visibility here, by dint of their
longevity and because Motorhead's Lemmy was a member of the group's quintessential lineup),
were popular live draws in Britain and Europe in their respective heydays; I
don't know it for a fact, but I'd wager a nickel that they had to have shared
a stage at some muddy English festival or another in the early '70s. Hawkwind
generally felt (and feels) like an enthusiastic collection of musical
amateurs, making the most of fairly rudimentary material, none of which is
built around technical flash. Family was a band of players: John "Charlie"
Whitney, for instance, at the top of his game was good a guitarist as you're gonna hear this side of Robert Fripp
or Steve Howe, and he deployed his chops on much simpler music than either of
them did, although Family's music was still a good deal more complex than Hawkwind's was (or is). As formidable and, dare I say,
venerable as Hawkwind are, as a longtime fan and collector, I can't help but
feel like they've been milking their fans for quite some time; I just saw a
blurb noting that their new studio album leads off with the single
"Spirit of the Age," which is a great song, although it originally
appeared back in 1977 and has graced countless other Hawkwind records since
then. Do we really need a new studio version? No . . . but are we gonna pay for it anyway? Probably. When Family ran out of
new ideas and/or steam, they moved on, departing with the very solid It's Only A Movie, the last track of
which was the aptly titled "Check Out." If you gotta
go, that's the way to do it. The Greater Band: Family.
BeBop Deluxe vs. The Residents: Not much of a contest here. BeBop
Deluxe squeaked by the first two rounds, defeating the low impact Camel and
the one-dimensional Dictators. The Residents, though, are neither low impact
nor one-dimensional: BeBop Deluxe's interesting
spins on elegant post-glam pop rock look just as limited in scope when
compared to the Residents' panoply of successes as the Dictators' hard
rockin' punk looked in comparison to BeBop Deluxe. I could explain in more
depth the diversity and impact of the Residents' contributions to modern
music, but I'm gonna save that for the next round,
when they're likely to go against someone slightly more formidable than BeBop
Deluxe, who are worthy, but not that
worthy. The Greater Band: The Residents.
Wire vs. Pere Ubu: This, on the other hand, is a tough, tough contest,
and I'm gonna not like leaving either of these
bands on the cutting room floor . . . but it's hard to work out a tie in a
head-to-head tournament, so tough decisions must be made. Wire issued three
incredible studio albums in the '70s, morphing in most rapid fashion from an
arty punk band to a punky art band. Then they broke
up. In the late '80s, they regrouped to issue five more albums, this time
exploring a form of metronomic, monotonic repetition they dubbed "dugga;" while most of those records were quite good,
the whiff of over-computerization began to permeate their music, and they
broke up again. At the turn of the new century, they regrouped to issue a
pair of EPs and an absolute jaw-dropping album, Send, that rocked harder than
anything they'd done since 1977's Pink
Flag, while retaining all the odd rhythmic and sound texturing
techniques they'd developed during the '80s. Pere Ubu only had one
significant hiatus to Wire's two: from 1982-1988. Before the hiatus, five
albums, ranging from the awesome The
Modern Dance to the not-that-great Song of the Bailing Man. After the hiatus,
seven more excellent albums that carried the trademark Ubu sounds into realms
of sweet pop (Cloudland), dirty traveling blues (St. Arkansas), and clattering
art-rock (The Tenement Year).
Their last album, the aforementioned St.
Arkansas, is a gem; perhaps not quite the coup that Wire's Send was, but damned close. Both
bands are, at heart, great rhythmic rock bands . . . but both bands toy with
the form in a variety of dramatic and innovative ways, using the studio
and/or electronic effects and/or odd instruments and/or vocals to add spice to
everything they do. Which leaves me sitting here staring at
the computer (for about ten minutes now), trying to figure out which way to
go on this one. I guess . . . I'm gonna have
to lean the Ubu way: they didn't have the punk revolution to inspire them and
prove that "amateurs" could be great musicians, as Wire did, but
instead created their own idiom in the cultural wasteland of early '70s
Cleveland. They're still together, still making great music, but they've
managed to spend more time working together than Wire (with their pair of
long hiatuses) has been able to do, without diminishing the average quality
of their work. So with sadness in my heart, we bid Wire adieu and name . . . The
Greater Band: Pere Ubu.
The Birthday Party vs. The Minutemen: Yeesh
. . . and this one doesn't get any easier. Both of
these bands had short, extraordinary careers, the Minutemen's ending in
physical tragedy (D. Boon's death in a van accident), The Birthday Party's
ending in an implosion of psychological bile and venom and bitterness (with
Nick Cave and Mick Harvey continuing to work together in the Bad Seeds,
Rowland S. Howard joining Crime and the City Solution and, later, These
Immortal Souls, before becoming hip guest guitarist for artsy folks like
Lydia Lunch, and Tracy Pew vanishing from the musical picture, dying soon
thereafter from complications of epilepsy). The Minutemen, despite all of
their weird musical inspirations, odd time signatures and political leanings,
were very much a band of the people; they may have been playing for
themselves first, but they loved their audiences and their audiences loved
them. (While I don't normally have any sort of emotional reaction when famous
people that I didn't know die, I did feel a palpable grief when I heard of
Boon's death). The Birthday Party, on the other hand, were
about assault: I never saw them live, but I have seen two video documentaries
of their performances, and they utterly bludgeoned their audiences into
submission before the show was done (literally, in one case, as Cave boots a
punter in the head) . . . nobody went home feeling uplifted those nights. The
Birthday Party's studio works have an undeniable and hard-to-describe potency
to them (it's probably the faint whiff of menace that their live shows involved
wafting through the stereo speakers), but they're hard to listen to for very
long (which is probably why they shifted to issuing EPs only toward the end
of their career). The Minutemen, on the other hand, retain a crucial balance
between challenging and engaging the listener, pulling you into their music
in ways that the Birthday Party's shock tactics wouldn't allow. The Birthday
Party were a mighty, mighty, visionary and powerful
band, but for the purposes of this competition, we declare . . . The
Greater Band: The Minutemen.
Swans vs. Guadalcanal Diary: This, on the other hand, is a pretty easy one: Swans long and
varied career easily trumps Guadalcanal Diary's short and sweet one. Guad Di knocked out Saint Vitus
and the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, but against the juggernaut of the Lower East Side's most potent sludgemasters-cum-symphonists,
their forward progress grinds to a sudden and jarring stop. Like the
Residents above, I'll save the additional details of Swans' case until the
next round, when the decision isn't as clear cut as this one is. So as much
as loved seeing Guadalcanal Diary in concert, I've got to tip the hat to . .
. The Greater Band: Swans.
Killdozer vs. Bongwater: The Midwest takes on Manhattan, as Michael
Gerald's stomping behemoth of a corn fed rock band goes toe to toe with
Kramer and Ann Magnuson's urban urbane little performance art ensemble that
rocked. Magnuson's lyrics were dramatically different from Gerald's (and her
speak-singing vocal style was also about as far removed from Gerald's Cookie
Monster with a Cold shredding as is humanly possible), although both of them
offered sharp and insightful takes on the human experience, often taking on
the roles of different characters in their first person songs. Both bands
featured superb production: by Kramer in Bongwater's
case and by Butch Vig in Killdozer's.
Both bands had a penchant for super covers of not-so-obvious songs. Bongwater's classic reinterpretations included (among
others) Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Part II," the Beatles'
"Rain," Roky Erickson's "You Don't
Love Me Yet," Slapp Happy's
"The Drum," Dudley Moore's "Bedazzled," and Fred Neil's
"Everybody's Talkin'." Killdozer, for
their part, put out an entire album of crunchy classic rock covers called For Ladies Only (named after the
Steppenwolf tune), and also did such deliciously perverse numbers as Janet
Jackson's "Nasty" and Jessi Colter's "I'm Not Lisa," both of which were
delivered in the same first person voices their originators intended, but
sung in Gerald's best guttural monster voice. Killdozer probably edges
Bongwater out when you run for the distance, though, just for balancing their
excellent live work with an ongoing series of excellent, long tours; while
there was a live four-piece version of Bongwater, they weren't the road
warriors that they're Wisconsin contemporaries were. The Greater Band:
Killdozer.
Big Black vs. Clutch: Another tough one. Accessible, intelligent
post-industrial music begins with Big Black, and nobody else has ever gotten
guitars to sound on record the way that they sounded on the classic Big Black
discs. Clutch, for their part, sound like a lot of other people . . . only a helluva lot better: they're not really pioneering
anything, they're mastering it. Live, Clutch are
clearly the superior band. In the studio, though, I give Big Black the edge:
they produced less material than West Virginia's finest, but it was of a higher
overall quality throughout their creative life together. Big Black also had
great design sense: their parody of Kraftwerk's Man
Machine cover is a classic, their Big Black logo remains a very popular
t-shirt icon among folks who wanna show you how
much they know about good music (wonder how many Big Black t-shirt wearing
folks have never heard the band? I'm guessing more than a few), their
original "Headache" EP had the most appalling cover photo I've ever
seen (autopsy photos of a shotgun-to-the-head suicide victim), and the cover
to Songs About Fucking has
probably offended more unsuspecting record store shoppers than any other.
Musically, Big Black were clearly more influential than Clutch, although
Clutch are clearly reaching a lot more people than Big Black are these days,
based on the many crowded, enthusiastic shows that I've attended over the
past five years or so. In fact, with the lead single from Blast Tyrant getting good spins on
modern rock radio, and with a solid body of major label releases behind them,
Clutch are probably right on the cusp of not really being a "hidden
band" at all. And, for the purposes of this competition, I'm gonna let that be the determining factor, same way I did
yesterday for Luna. I have more fun going to Clutch concerts, but for this
competition, I decree . . . The Greater Band: Big Black.
Sweep the Leg Johnny vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: The lowest profile competition of
this round, by far. But not the lowest quality: both of these bands are
admirable, both of them issue fine music. Chicago's Sweep the Leg Johnny are
the more challenging of the pair, offering longer, more complex song
structures than the Welsh Gorky's, although the Gorky's often offer far more
complex arrangements to their music (particularly on their early albums) than
the instrumentally straightforward Johnny's offer. And, as far as the
sticking-in-your-head department goes, the Gorky's win hands down, since they
are truly gifted in melody making, leaving their songs to rattle around in
your head, popping up when you least expect them to, sometimes weeks after
you've heard them. Sweep the Leg Johnny may someday grow to be as
accomplished and diverse as Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, but they're not
there yet. The Greater Band: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
And, voila, we're down to the Elite Eight. We can begin to combine the groups
at this point, and look forward to picking the Final Four tomorrow, using the
following competitions:
GROUPS ONE/TWO: Family vs. The Residents
GROUPS THREE/FOUR: Pere Ubu vs. The Minutemen
GROUPS FIVE/SIX: Swans vs. Killdozer
GROUPS SEVEN/EIGHT: Big Black vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
Stay tuned!!
Beneath the Radar:
Rock's Greatest Secret Bands (Part Six)
Today's the day that we go from the Elite Eight to the Final Four. Tomorrow,
we will do a round robin of the survivors (each one going against every
other) to determine Rock's Greatest Secret Band. Today's competitions are:
GROUPS ONE/TWO: Family vs. The Residents
GROUPS THREE/FOUR: Pere Ubu vs. The Minutemen
GROUPS FIVE/SIX: Swans vs. Killdozer
GROUPS SEVEN/EIGHT: Big Black vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
And here's the play-by-play analysis . . .
Family vs. The Residents: Family's had some tough competition in the
earlier rounds (The Good Rats, Magma, Hawkwind), so I've written a good bit
about them already, but here's the summary: they were a superb blues based
band with progressive rock streaks to their work, they were graced with a
strong, distinctive singer in Roger Chapman, they were instrumentally solid
(particularly in the case of guitarist John "Charlie" Whitney),
they were a big festival draw in England, their better known alumni included
Ric Grech (Blind Faith), John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia) and Jim Cregan (Rod
Stewart's band). Solid! The Residents, on the other hand, kinda
outclassed their competition in the first three rounds, going up against
BeBop Deluxe, Can (although, actually, that was kind of a tough one) and
Chrome, so I haven't really made their case particularly deeply. So . . .
their first album, Meet the Residents,
came out in 1974, although there are recordings that have been issued since
then that go back to the late '60s. Their second album, Third Reich and Roll, was an amazing
deconstruction of a bunch of "Nuggets" era fifties and sixties
pop/rock songs, and it came with what's been recognized as one of the first
true music videos; the Residents discovered video while most folks were still
playing with film, and their aborted movie, Vileness Fats, from that era shows that they were
pushing the envelope with the technology, even then. After a few more
challenging records, 1978's moderately accessible Duck Stab/Buster and Glen was a mild pre-college-rock
type success, paving the way for 1979's Eskimo,
which purported to be an ethnomusicological study
of Inuit music and culture (and was often reported as such) although it was,
in actually, entirely a fabrication. More famously, that album marked the
debut of Residents' trademark eyeballs-in-tuxedos costumes (prior to that
point, they had used a variety of costumes to hide themselves). 1980's The Commercial Album was a jolly
deconstruction of advertising ethics, featuring 40 one-minute songs, each of
which were then played during ad time purchased on radio. The '80s saw the
ambitious Mole Trilogy, the
American Composers series,
and the evolving works that grew into Cube-E
and The King and I (which
explained American music in three easy steps: Cowboy songs, Gospel and Elvis
. . . who was then destroyed by the Beatles). In the '90s, the Residents
moved into CD-ROM technology, pretty much before anyone else did, with the
award-winning Freak Show, Gingerbread
Man and Bad Day on the
Midway releases. Their last two major studio releases have looked
at curious stories from the Bible (Wormwood)
and the karmic impacts of September 11th (Demons
Dance Alone). And . . . they've done all that without ever
identifying themselves or removing their stage masks. How much more secret
can you get? The Greater Band: The Residents.
Pere Ubu vs. The Minutemen: The Minutemen's flame burned quickly and
bright: between 1980 and 1985, the band issued five EPs and five albums on SST
Records, all of them keepers, while also maintaining an intense tour
schedule, nationwide. The fun came to a terrible stop at the end of '85 when
singer-guitarist D. Boon died in an auto accident. The group's first
posthumous record was Ballot Result,
a sprawling three disc live set featuring tracks picked by fans, who had
mailed in postcards that were included in the Three Way Tie (For Last) release. There was probably no
more fitting way to send the Minutemen off than with a fan salute like that.
Pere Ubu grew out of the creatively fertile early '70s Cleveland music
community (which no one noticed at the time, although later books like
Clinton Heylin's From
the Velvets to the Voidoids shone a
flashlight under that particular musical rock, long after its denizens had
escaped or eaten each other), merging aggressive, propulsive rock with more
freeform improvisational/confrontational fare of the Captain Beefheart/Frank Zappa school. They suffered their band
tragedy early on their career: founding guitarist Peter Laughner
died young in 1977 from lifestyle complications (thereby cementing his legend
in true rock hero-making fashion), although he had already been ousted from
the band by the time of his death. Another early Ubu member, Tim Wright, went
to New York City to play with the "no wave" band, DNA, which also
featured stalwart New York artizens Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori;
that group was captured on the much discussed and critiqued (but rarely heard
or played) No New York
compilation, produced by Brian Eno. Ubu's membership has evolved over the years, including
such amazing players as Mayo Thompson (Red Krayola),
Chris Cutler (Henry Cow, Art Bears), Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart, Frank Black, The
Residents), Anton Fier (Feelies,
Golden Palominos), Tony Maimone (They Might Be
Giants), Jim Jones (every other legendary Cleveland band) and Tom Herman (Tripod Jimmy),
among others. The sole musical constant throughout their life cycle has been
David Thomas (once known as Crocus Behemoth), although producer Ken Hamann and designer John Thompson have also played
longstanding and important roles in Pere Ubu's
sound and look. Ubu were pioneers in the indie
single market: their two landmark releases, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" and "Final Solution"
were issued on Thomas' Hearthan label, long before
such practices moved into battery of standard underground routines and
rituals. They also pioneered the use of synthesizers in non-traditional
modes, as Allen Ravenstine, Dave Taylor and Robert
Wheeler have used their electronics not to mimic strings or horns or organs,
but to create strange washes of machine sounds, adding an element of
dissociation and industry to the musical soundscape.
I note from the Ubu Projex page that Pere Ubu will
be playing in New York this summer with a line-up including Thomas, Maimone, Wheeler, Cutler and '90s/'00s bassist/guitarist
Michele Temple, an interesting and intriguing mix of players from a variety
of Ubu eras. Their history, and the continuing promise of interesting
projects like the one in July, leads me to offer them strong endorsement as .
. . The Greater Band: Pere Ubu.
Swans vs. Killdozer: Swans' 1983 debut album, Filth, is one of the most caustic and
numbing records ever pressed to vinyl, with a pair of drummers (Jonathan Kane
and Roli Mossiman), a
pair of bassists (Harry Crosby and Michael Gira)
and a lone guitarist (Norman Westberg) hammering
home relentless, grinding rhythms in synch with Gira's
relentless, grinding vocals. By 1987's Children
of God, the group had expanded its creative palette to include
female vocals and keyboards (courtesy Gira's
longtime life and musical partner, Jarboe) and to
mix up the sound dynamic a bit, letting softer (though no less scary) music
creep onto the records, thereby making the thunderblasts
sound all that much more powerful when they struck. After a misguided step
into pop accessibility with 1989's The
Burning World and related singles, Swans reconfigured around the Gira-Jarboe core with floating rhythm sections, and
guitars being provided by either Westberg or
Clinton Steele; the sound got richer, deeper and more varied, and the lyrical
concerns began to take on elements of hope, faith or transcendence, even
though grim, repetitious mortality remained at the heart of their world view.
1995's The Great Annihilator
was a benchmark of sorts, the place where all the earlier elements finally
all clicked, with Gira and Jarboe
working with both Westberg and Steele, and with the
group's best rhythm section (Ted Parsons and Algis Kizys) also being supplemented with former Ministry-man
Bill Rieflin. It stands as a titanic document of
creativity and energy. Their final major studio release, Soundtracks for the Blind, was a bit
more of a hodge podge,
with new and reinvented material from a variety of line-ups filling two full
compact discs with nearly symphonic soundscapes and
textures, still retaining the inherent power and majesty of their best work.
The evolution from Filth to
Soundtracks was one of the
most provocative and rewarding in the history of rock music, and it was a
thrill, as a listener, to go along with them on the ride. And at this point I
pause and say "hmmmmm," . . . . because when I started typing, I was thinking that I was
going to pick Killdozer to take this competition. They offered powerful rock
and roll, thoughtful lyrics, fun covers and great production over their
decade-long run, and I love their records and sound dearly, and consider it
to be the template from which grunge emerged to conquer America (producer
Butch Vig providing the important
Wisconsin-to-Seattle link), but for sheer, long-standing accomplishment and
provocation, I really can't come up with a logical way to not acknowledge . .
. The Greater Band: Swans.
Big Black vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: Big Black were
Killdozer's label mates on Touch and Go Records
throughout their creative run. Like The Birthday Party, their violent,
virulent music was often best appreciated in small doses, which may have
contributed to the fact that the only released two full length records between
1983 and 1987, supplemented and complemented by seven singles and EPs
(including covers of Wire's "Heartbeat" and Kraftwerk's
"The Model"). Lyrically, Big Black may well be the most disturbing
band of their (or any other) era: they didn't glamorize or take
cartoon-overkill looks at their topics of concern (off the top of my head and
without looking at their discography, I can think of Big Black lyrics about
cattle butchering, child molestation, gangland killings, immolation, mental
illness and post-combat shock syndrome), but just laid the facts on the
table, gave 'em a cold, calculating stare, and let
you make of them what you would. It was terrible, yet compelling. You didn't
want to look or listen, but you couldn't stop once you started, as the buzzing,
screaming guitars and hyper-amped drum synthesizers
reduced your frontal lobe to mush. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, on the other hand,
almost couldn't be more different in their sound, approach and lyrical
content, making this a hard contest to judge, since it has such an
apples-to-oranges flavor to it. As a counter to Big Black's violence and
abrasion, the Gorky's offer pop music painted with swirling psychedelic,
progressive and folk streaks, some sung in English, some in their native
Welsh. Their arrangements are lush and creative, and some of their more
ornate work can stand shoulder-to-shoulder beside the work of such revered
geniuses as Brian Wilson or the Beatles. Formed around 1990, when its members
were barely teenagers, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci were already
seasoned and sure when they released their early Welsh records, Tatay, Patio and Bwyd Time in 1994 and 1995. American
perked up its ears, a little, and the U.S. Polygram
compilation release Introducing Gorky's
Zygotic Mynci got some critical nods and attention State-side,
but it was passing and ephemeral, and after the gorgeous Barafundle and haunting Gorky 5, Sony/Polygram lost interest
in the band, leaving them to sign with important demi-indie
Beggars Banquet. It was a better fit for them, and their first album with the
new label, Spanish Dance Troupe,
is one of their best, shifting their focus to a more pastoral, folk-based
fare, probably spurred by the departure of founding guitarist John Lawrence,
who had offered the lion's share of the freak-out touches to their earlier
music. Continuing in that vein, the Gorky's have issued a series of lovely,
beautifully crafted records, most recently 2003's Sleep/Holiday, an intimate, atmospheric record that's as
comfortable and cozy as your favorite slippers (and I don't mean that as an
insult . . . it ain't easy to make music that feels
this good). The band currently features founders Euros Childs (vocals-keys),
Megan Childs (violin) and Richard James (bass), supplemented with relative
newcomers Peter Richardson (drums) and Rhodri Puw
(guitar), and their consistently excellent recordings, continuing growth and
bright prospects lead me to think that I'm gonna
pick the sweet over the sour here, which I suppose has to be viewed as an
upset, given the long shadow that Big Black has thrown over contemporary
music in the '90s and '00s. As much as I'd like Touch & Go Records to
have a representative in the final four, I think I'm gonna
have to let Big Black join Killdozer on the bench, and declare . . . The
Greater Band: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
And there we have it, the Final Four for tomorrow's Round Robin Championship.
To recap, our survivors are:
The Residents
Pere Ubu
Swans
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
An interesting, good mix, covering a broad and deep spectrum of music, with
three of the four finalists still ongoing concerns, although the youngest of
them is a 15 year old band at this point. That's good, I think, a better
balance than I managed to achieve in the final four of the "The Worst
Rock Band Ever" competition.
The rules for tomorrow . . .
There will be six "mini-contests" with each band going up against
the other (yes, there are only six pairs, since "Swans vs. Ubu" is
the same thing as "Ubu vs. Swans"). The winner of each pair will
get two points, the loser no points. Ties are allowed in the round robin, in
which case each band gets one point. The band with the most points at the end
of the round robin will be declared "Rock's Greatest Secret Band"
with a Giant Nylon Hair Net seal of approval and authenticity. Then I'll get
back to writing poetry.
Beneath the Radar:
Rock's Greatest Secret Bands (Part Seven, and Out . . . )
So today's the day: we started with 64 Secret Bands (actually, a good deal
more than 64, if you track the evolution of the starting list through its
various reader-participation permutations), today we have four left, and by
the time I finish typing today, we will have the final one: Rock's Greatest
Secret Band.
Our finalists are (linked to their official home pages, if you'd like to
either learn more about them or acquire some of their music, both of which
are worthy pursuits):
The
Residents
Pere Ubu
Swans
Gorky's Zygotic
Mynci
Some overview points . . .
All but Swans are still making music together. The Residents have been doing
so since the early '70s, Ubu since the mid-'70s. Swans were an ongoing concern
for 13 years in the '80s and '90s. Gorky's have been making music together
since around 1990. Geographically, the cover a broad swatch: the Residents
are based in San Francisco, but hail originally from Louisiana. Pere Ubu are quintessentially a Cleveland band, with later connections in the U.K. as well. Swans were bred in New York's Lower East Side, and later relocated to Georgia. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci hail from Wales. The Residents are the most prolific
of the lot, record-wise, the Gorky's the least prolific (although
that's more a function of their relative youth, compared to the others, than
it is a function of infrequent visits to the studio).
All four bands make extraordinary music, and I'd be comfortable with anyone
of them being named Rock's Greatest Secret Band. (And I should note here that
if you're reading this conclusion without having read the opening, it's
important to go back and check the ground rules before writing to carp,
please and thanks).
But the object of this little exercise was to pick one band, and that's what
we're gonna do today. The rules for today (cut and
pasted from yesterday): there will be six "mini-contests" with each
band going up against the other (yes, there are only six pairs, since
"Swans vs. Ubu" is the same thing as "Ubu vs. Swans").
The winner of each pair will get two points, the loser no points. Ties are
allowed in the round robin, in which case each band gets one point. The band
with the most points at the end of the round robin will be declared
"Rock's Greatest Secret Band" with a Giant Nylon Hair Net seal of
approval and authenticity.
The blurbs will be shorter today: I've covered each band pretty extensively
over the past week, so I'm not going to recover the same ground again. I
encourage you to visit their websites for more information, regardless of who
emerges on top today.
Ready? Me too! Here we go . . .
The Residents vs. Pere Ubu: Two of America's most influential and
distinctive avant-rockers, with Ubu leaning a bit
more toward the rock end of the spectrum and the Residents leaning a bit more
to the avant side. Both bands feature vocalists who
are immediately recognizable, and may take a little bit of getting used to if
you've never heard them before: Ubu's David Thomas
speak-sings in a lilting tenor warble, The Singing Resident (whose name has
never been officially disclosed) sing-speaks in a baritone with a thick Louisiana accent. Both were electronic
pioneers, both pioneered independent record releases, both have long and
distinguished careers, and are making great music deep into their careers. We
call this one . . . at tie. One point for Pere Ubu. One point for the
Residents.
The Residents vs. Swans: Where the Residents are ethereal, Swans were
visceral. Where the Residents are cerebral, Swans were even more visceral.
Where the Residents are mysterious, Swans lived out their musical lives in
the public domain. Where the Residents were less a band, on some plane, than
a performance art collective that made amazing music with incredible stage
and screen visuals, Swans were very much a live beast, despite regular and
recurring personnel changes. The Residents deconstructed early rock and roll
to make it fit their own vision. The Swans earliest recordings came from a
place that hadn't been documented before, and didn't really have any
precursors of note, besides the short-lived (but over-hyped) No Wave New York
bands. All of the No Wavers flamed out quickly, because they played from a
creative pigeon-hole that all but guaranteed limited futures for their
deliberately off-putting music. For Swans to have grown from that limited
(yet powerful and provocative) foundation into a band that could make
haunting, potent and (sometimes) even sweet music gives them the edge here by
a nose. Two points for Swans. No points for the Residents.
The Residents vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: The Gorky's are a talented
and very, very promising and unique contemporary pop band, but their relative
youth and limited number of releases (compared to the very prolific Residents) makes it
hard for them to compete here. The one thing that could have pushed them over
the top was the richness, complexity and distinctiveness of their musical
arrangements, but of the four finalists, the Residents are the only one that
can easily match and top them in that department. Age and secrecy trumps
youth and openness here, I guess. Two points for The Residents. No points
for Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
Pere Ubu vs. Swans: A tough one . . . two great live bands who also
make great records. Two bands whose members are (or were) very much in the
public domain, foibles and failings right alongside triumphs and successes,
unlike the Residents, who kept their personas hidden to put the focus
squarely on their music . . . which makes things harder for them, on one
plane (obviously), but easier on another, since no one's interviewing,
misquoting or misrepresenting them as human beings, the way that Ubu and
Swans have been interviewed, misquoted or misrepresented over the years
(sometimes by me, even). I'm gonna lean the New
York way here, I think, just because the intensity of Swans' music (live and
in the studio) would have devoured most bands far quicker than the 13 years
that it took Swans to run its course. There's more breathing room in Ubu's music and creative ethos, which is probably the
reason why we can still enjoy them today, while Swans eventually
self-immolated. I don't normally buy into the standard rock idiom that you
have suffer and (ideally) die for your art, but I think the creative intensity
of Swans work resonates more deeply because it does come from such a
gut-wrenching place, without some of the whimsy that leavens and lightens Ubu's load. This is probably the hardest choice I've made
in this entire week-long critique, and it's gut driven
as much as it's head driven. But, having said that . . . Two points for
Swans. No points for Pere Ubu.
Pere Ubu vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: Another case where a venerable (and
ongoing) canon is overwhelmingly larger, deeper and greater than what any younger
band, even one as accomplished as Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, could hope to
achieve at this stage of their career. I'm glad to have a relative newcomer
like the Gorky's in the final four, I believe in them and their music, but
when it comes to Rock's Greatest Secret Band, it's hard not to pick a group
that has flown beneath the radar for nearly 30 years without ever signing a
major label deal than it is to pick a fifteen-year old group who managed to
get a few records out with Sony and Polygram's
marketing clout behind them. Two points for Pere Ubu. No points for Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
Swans vs. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: This one's a wee bit more
apples-to-apples for the Gorky's . . . they've been around 15 years
or so, Swans lasted only 13. But in the same ways that the Residents began by
reinventing classic rock in their own mold, Gorky's began by reinventing classic psychedelia and prog in theirs. It's easier to find
influences and connections for the Gorky's than it is for Swans, who seemed
to emerge full grown from the head of some dark musical god, screaming. Gorky's evolved from a
progressive/psychedelic rock band to a pastoral pop band. There are a lot of
other bands hoeing those same rows, though few of them do it as effectively
as the Gorky's do. Swans evolved from an ugly musical cancer to a
beautiful musical cancer, and I can't think of a single other band who
managed that progression, or who could ever be confused with them. Two
points for Swans. No points for Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
And that's that . . . with the Round Robin tally as follows:
The
Residents: Three points.
Pere Ubu:
Three points.
Swans:
Six points.
Gorky's Zygotic
Mynci: No points.
Which means, with a sigh of relief and accomplishment, that
Giant Nylon Hair Net hereby declares and decrees . . . .
SWANS
ARE ROCK'S GREATEST SECRET BAND!
Which, honestly, surprises me as much as it probably
surprises you. When I looked at the original list of 64 without doing
the head-to-head stuff, the bands that I probably would have picked, without
doing the head-to-head analysis would have been Wire, Can, The Birthday Party
and/or Killdozer. As I go back and review the prior rounds, there were two
examples (Swans vs. Shriekback and Swans vs. Killdozer) where my opening gut
reaction was to pick against Swans, but after laying out the case, I went
their way instead.
It may sound weird to say that I don't know where this thing is going stage
to stage, but I really don't . . . my modus operandi is to write very, very
quickly, stating the case, then see if the case matches my original gut
inclination. When it doesn't, the written case trumps the gut. But when all's
said and done, and I sit back and look at the
complete (and very long) product . . . I feel that I made good cases and that
the final results are satisfying on both a gut and a brain basis. I can
logically justify picking Swans . . . and I can feel in my gut that Swans are
a good choice.
Getting to that point makes a week's worth of frenzied typing worth it for
me.
I hope it's been worth your time to go along on the exercise with me.
Sometime in the next couple of days, I will flip this thing around so it
reads from beginning to end, not end to beginning, and post it to its own
page, like the Worst Bands competition. At that point, I will also spell and
grammar check the whole thing: the one downside of writing as quickly as I do
and then immediately posting projects like these is that they do get filled
with fractured English and numerous mis-spellings.
Hopefully it was legible enough to follow . . . the archival version of this
will be better in that regard.
Thanks again to all those who wrote to offer ideas, insights and critiques. I
was open-minded to all of them, and they helped hone the original list into a
better document, and gave me some interesting data points and impressions
throughout the week's writing.
If there's any interest, I might do another one of these in three months or
so. If you have suggestions for what other musical competition we might host
here, shoot 'em my way and I'll see what strikes my
fancy.
And on that note . . . back to the poetry project.
Tomorrow.
Today, I rest.
Or, uh, not . . . I think today I actually work in the garden.
But at least that doesn't involve typing.Musical Dissections by J. Eric Smith:
The
Worst Rock Band Ever
Or . . . Rock’s Greatest Secret Band
Or . . . Best
of the Blockbusters
Or . . . Slaughtering the Sacred Cows
Or . . . March of the Mellotrons
Or . . . Flexible
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