The ever prolific Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard continues his life project to record and release the most music. Lucky us ’cause the A-side of his new single, “Tonight’s The Rodeo,” is wonderful. Slightly less than two minutes of pure power-pop.
For the complete update on all Pollard’s projects, including a new Guided By Voices album titled Motivational Jumpsuit due in late February 2014, head over to the ever informative Stereogum.
And here’s another cool Pollard track:
As you probably know by know, Replacements guitarist Slim Dunlap suffered a serious stroke in 2012. Since then artists have been recording and releasing an EP and singles for the Songs For Slim campaign to raise money for Slim, who will likely need round-the-clock care for the rest of his life, according to the Songs For Slim website.
For the final single of the campaign, Jeff Tweedy recorded Slim’s “Ballad Of The Opening Band” at Wilco’s Chicago studio; it’s backed with Tennessee rock band Lucero’s version of “From the Git Go.” Cover art is by Replacements’ drummer Chris Mars.
Starting today (Sept. 15) and running through next Sunday (Sept. 22), 250 copies of the single are being auctioned here. For more into go to SongsForSlim.com. A CD of all the songs is being put together. Artists who have contributed recordings to the campaign, in addiction to Tweedy and Lucero, include Replacements’ members Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, Frank Black, Jakob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Deer Tick, Patterson Hood, the Young Fresh Fellows, the Steve Earle and The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn.
Here’s a sample of the song. It’s enough to know you need it!
I saw wonderful art at the San Francisco Art Institute yesterday, and it reminded me that life, or should I say LIFE, the need to be creative in a world that values conformity, goes on. Sometimes I forget that people continue to struggle with finding, oh what is it, a kind of freedom, or maybe a point of view, or, bottom line, some “truth,” as John Lennon put it (“gimmie some truth,” he sang), amidst the lies that parade before us as reality.
Guy Debord called it “the Spectacle,” a kind of religious monolith that consumer societies have made of working your life away in pursuit of the next purchase. The art I saw is raw, violent in it’s opposition to mindless conformity.
All of that and more was colliding inside me as I looked at work made by a group of artists now known as the “Mission school,” since they lived or worked in San Francisco’s Mission District.
The show is called “Energy That Is All Around,” and it’s in the Walter and McBean Galleries. The artists whose work is on exhibit: Chris Johanson, the late Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee, Ruby Neri and Alice McCarthy. Most of it was made between 1992 and 2000.
Kilgallen and McGhee (who were married) I know from the excellent documentary film “Beautiful Losers.” While Kilgallen worked in a kind of Americana style influenced by hand made signs, old trains, carnivals, Appalachian music and the like, McGhee’s down-on-their-luck characters slumped inside wine bottles portray a darker reality.
Chris Johanson offers social commentary in some of his work, mocking the Hallmark cards idea of true love, or simply documenting San Francisco’s outrageous housing prices, and the homeless that can be found throughout the city.
This is a kind of outsider art, though in this case I’m using ‘outsider’ to mean something akin to the Occupy movement. Those of us on the outside of a world that the .01 percenters have erected.
If there is a soundtrack to the art I saw yesterday, it would be the dissonant guitars of Sonic Youth, or the home made sounds of indie rocker Jason Molina’s Songs:Ohia recordings.
I’ve been sitting in on an art history class recently, specifically it’s a history of Modern Art, which, I was surprised to learn, began in the 18th century and ended in 1945. I hope that’s not something everyone else in the world but me has known for years, but like they say, whatever makes you humble…
Another big piece of Art knowledge that got laid on me from the guy teaching the class is the idea that everything has already been done. Nothing is new. All an artist can do is variations on what’s come before. So you don’t have to sweat it to come up with something ‘new.’ You can just get to work writing or painting or conceptualizing or shooting videos or making music, and not worry about being original. I mean did Robert Johnson worry about whether the songs he sang were ‘new’? Muddy Waters? Junior Wells? T-Model Ford? I don’t think so. They just made the best music they could. The force of their personalities gives the music they made a unique quality, even if the words and 12 bar structure are the same old same old.
Recently I read a terrific novel by Paula Fox, “The God of Nightmares,” that was published in 1990, and in the intro I came across this quote:
It is a fact that, very broadly speaking and with some exceptions, there are only two structured models for novels: The status quo is established; someone arrives or something happens to shatter it. Thus Anna Karenina; thus Sula. Or – it’s converse – a character impelled by any number of forces from boredom to a crisis in a distant place, goes forth into the world and discovers complexities undreamed of at home; thus Tom Jones; thus Moby Dick. – Roselyn Brown, writer, poet, auther of Tender Mercies.
As a writer working on a second novel, it’s reassuring to know there are, big picture, only two plots. And every writer you can think of, from Homer to Elena Ferrante, are spinning out variations on those two plots. What a relief.
Sounding like a throwback to the post-punk days of the early ’80s, only with some Heavenly thrown in, Joanna Gruesome call their sound noisepop, which is fine by me.
Listen to the entire album over at Pitchfork.
The group comes from Cardiff, England. The five members are Alanna McArdle on vocals, Owen on guitar, Max on bass, George on guitar and Dave on drums. I haven’t been able to track down the guys’ last names.
Here’s a slow one called “Satan”:
And riot grrrl-style:
And this version of “Candy” from 2012:
Lee Ranaldo and the Dust is the Sonic Youth guitarist/singer/songwriter’s new band. In addition to Lee, the combo includes drummer Steve Shelley, guitarist Alan Licht and bassist Tim Lüntzel. The new album, due Oct. 8, is titled Last Night On Earth and includes nine tracks: “Lecce, Leaving,” “Key-Hole,” “The Rising Tide,” “Last Night On Earth,” “By The Window,” “Late Descent no 2,” “Ambulancer,” and “Blackt Out.” The album is a distinct evolution from Lee’s first post-Sonic Net solo effort, the under-rated Between The Times & The Tides.
In case you haven ‘t yet seen it, here’s the video for “Lecce, Leaving”:
Lee is also a visual artist. This summer he had an exhibit of his “Lost Highway Drawings” at a gallery in Portugal. Here’s one of them:
You can see more here.
Arcade Fire debuted an interactive video for “Reflektor,” a song produced by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy that includes some singing by David Bowie, off the group’s upcoming album of the same name, which is set for an October 29 release. The image above is a screen shot I took while interacting with the video. That’s my iPhone and some of my head, which were incorporated into the video. You really want to check this out:
https://www.justareflektor.com/
There’s also a conventional video directed by Anton Corbijn.
Oh yeah, the song is pretty cool. Trippy dance vibe.
A moment at the beach. Chill.
Tom Waits is on the cover of the new issue of Juxtapoz, and he’s interviewed by acclaimed artist John Baldessari, the guy who used colored dots to obscure the faces of people in his art. Baldessari also once made a video in which he wrote, “I will not make any boring art” over and over. Tom Waits narrates this excellent video about Baldessari. Dig it.
Justin Trosper’s new (relatively speaking) band is Survival Knife. You can listen to “Divine Mob” — click the arrow above. The band also includes Brandt Sandeno formerly of Unwound, as well as Kris Cunningham and Meg Cunningham.
Live audio of the group’s first show, which took place March 29, 2012 at Eagles Hall in Olympia, Washington.
And here’s some video from the same show: