Coachella 2010

LCD Soundsystem and Flame Vortex





Photos by Sam Julius

The Windmills

Photo by Phil Julius

Here we are at Coachella 2010, current center of the musical universe. Indio is ablaze with awesome music and scorching sunlight, and some great acts graced the stages last night. Arriving at the event was troublesome, however. Once on Jefferson, a mainline street into Indio coming off the interstate 5, traffic was so jammed we waited in snail pace traffic for 3 hours. We eventually found another route in and got a parking space. The lines to get a wristband were out of control and security was inefficient and scatterbrained to say the least. We had left at 12pm, and we were inside the grounds at 6:30. Time is scarce, so here is a brief rundown of some cool stuff:

Them Crooked Vultures
Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones are all amazing artists and were definitely a successful recipe for a great live show. The main draw for me was Grohl, as this is what is becoming a rare chance to see him abuse a drum kit. He did not disappoint, with the machine of god fills and kick punching you in the face. Jones was locked in tight, filling out the low end, and Homme brought his blues and garage infested pop sensibilities to the mix (I'm a big fan of Queens of the Stone Age).

LCD Soundsystem
I've seen them before, and it seems they are consistently and awesome live band. I didn't see the whole show, but what I did see was great, them opening with Us v. Them, going into Drunk Girls, and closing with New York, I Love You. A giant disco ball hung above the stage. The energy of coming electronic dance with live instruments is great.

Jay-Z
I saw just a couple songs, including Brush ya shoulders off, a short part of Diamonds are forever, and Forever Young, that 80s song from Napoleon Dynamite which was sung by Beyonce. He had a great band behind him, and a really good visual set up.

Public Image Limited
This was a weird show. PiL is abrasive, atonal music to begin with, with little more and funky vamping bass and drums to hold it together. Johnny Rotten is still a psycho, singing with strange vibrato and snarl. This music seems to run from deep trenches of British disgust and impotency, so its not exactly good vibes music. Most people seemed to be locked in an apathetic stare while watching.

Record Stores and Perdedores

Record stores are a funny thing. Major chains like Tower and Virgin are now gone, toppled by iTunes and illegal downloading, while indie stores stay alive by offering vinyl and weird stuff that the major stores never could. In the Pasadena area there are a couple indie record stores, but one of the most interesting is Poo-Bah, near the Guitar Center on Colorado Blvd. Usually I go to Penny Lane, also on Colorado across the street from Pasadena City College, but they are, in their own indie way, predictable. They have a pretty well stocked selection of vinyl, and lots of CDs, yet its that very abundance that leads browsing to quickly become monotonous. PooBah, on the other hand, has their vinyl mostly divided by first letter, so their aren't artist sections, so you have to look through everything to find something you might want. And when they do have what you want, its usually something you've never seen before on vinyl, and you probably won't again, making it more likely you will purchase it then and there. Even in their CD sections, the albums by artist tend to be weird, off-center selections that you aren't gonna find at Best Buy. In the age where you can buy anything at anytime from iTunes, this seems like the only way to shop for physical recordings of music.

The whole vibe of PooBah lends itself to adventuristic perusing of the shelves. I went in there today to purchase a record for my brother's birthday, not knowing what I wanted, just knowing that if I found something, it would probably be awesome. There's some old, kinda bookish guy behind the cash machine, with the rows of records and CDs at a little above hip level, and an overlook mezzanine as well as a side walkway that is like where a department stores would put up stuff for sale that bypassers could see but instead you can walk into it and it has two CD listening stations and music, tattoo and weed magazines. Sprinkled throughout the store are super-indie like pressed in your basement type records, with WordPerfect typed info inserts and stuff. When I was in there I saw this bizarre couple looking for weird old records, like the woman had a used copy of the Paul Stanley solo KISS record in her hand. I found a new copy of Neil Young's After the Gold Rush, which I definitely had never seen before. The first time I went there I found a new vinyl copy of PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love, and yeah I've never seen that anywhere else. One time there was a guy up on the mezzanine make weird noise with pedals. And it was like noon on a weekday! So if you are in the Pasadena area this is definitely a place worth checking out.

Mixtape Monday #2: Baroque & British

Okay, so its Tuesday, but I've been busy so here's this week's mixtape. This is the Baroque and British tape, which is like lush British stuff, basically stuff that I see has a connection or is influenced by Scott Walker. And he's not even British!

Baroque and British Mixtape
1. It's Raining Today- Scott Walker
2. The Universal- Blur
3. Dissolved Girl- Massive Attack
4. Lose My Breath- My Bloody Valentine
5. Stay With Me- Spiritualized
6. Quicksand- David Bowie
7. Radian- Air
8. Fake Plastic Trees- Radiohead
9. Paper Tiger- Beck

So obviously these are not all British groups, both Walker and Beck being American, MBV being Irish and Air being French. Fake plastic trees is kind of a shoo in for something like this, but I guess I didn't have a choice. Radian is a great lesser know Air song, kind of a Mike Mills-esque center piece for 10,000 hz Legend. These songs have a great kind of thematic blend. Enjoy!

Concert Review: Brains of an Alien

I just got back from a recording gig in Tujunga, a strange methed-out corner of California 20 minutes outside Los Angeles. Me and my cohort arrived at the bombed-out town, a Barstow-esque setting of old muscle cars and rotting storefronts. The venue the concert was to happen at didn't even have a sign, instead the empty metal shell of a an neon billboard. Most of the shops on the street looked like they housed medical marijuana clinics, but without the class one would have on, say, Santa Monica Blvd. Inside was a black-and-white tiled waiting room with blue couches and a cheesy wooden sign that read "FAMILY". The actual venue was a large square room with ugly brown carpet, bass traps nailed to the back wall (which means they don't work) and the main stage flanked by two wide screen TVs. As we entered, the obvious I-run-this-thing-and-I'm-a-jerk type guy walks up: "Hi, who are we?" We tell him that we're there to record Brains of an Alien, and then he goes back to talking with these rock n' roll types who look about as authentic as a piece of tattoo parlor flash. "Yeah, we didn't play places like the Whiskey or the Roxy 'cause they didn't want the punk and hardcore bands back in the day" he muses. Immediately following the rockers departure, he turns to the sound guy and says, "Man, I am full of shit. I sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I don't know shit. I don't know the hell's going on. Do I sound indignant?" "No man, you sound fine". I couldn't believe this, it was something out of a Judd Apatow movie.

We started setting up the mic stands, and chatted a bit with the sound guy: "Yeah, Pastor Bob got the idea that we should have this place for shows, you know, to keeps kids off the street and smoking pot and stuff... Not that that's a bad thing." Oh, ok. To be fair, this guy really did help us out. When the jerk guy would tell us to get out of the way for one reason or another, the sound guy would lead us back in and watch our back. People started milling around outside, and the tweaker vibe was soundly established. Like, the Jesus-freak-meth-head-trailer-trash vibe. One guy was wearing a shirt that was like the Reese's Cups logo, but with "Jesus Cups" or something. One guy was wearing a homemade "Be Kind Rewind" T-shirt like the movie! (Super awesome or lame, I can't decide). So half our stuff is set up, and I'm really hunger. We saw a deli across the turn, so I run over there. Turns out its a Persian Kabob place, and as I'm looking at the menu a guy walks in and starts yelling at the guy behind the counter in Persian, and they're both yelling at each other for 10 seconds, and then the first guy walks out and the guy behind the counter mutters in English, "Fucking (mutter mutter)" then turns to me and says: "I bought $300 worth of spices, I do not need any more spice!" but in a pleasant and enthusiastic manner, and of course I had to agree with him. Seriously, a situation requiring more than $300 worth of spice in an unimaginable one. So I order two cheeseburgers, and as he's making them he painstakingly list for me the ingredients that will be included on the burgers, because he says: "That the way I make them so I need to know if that's what you will like". Once I assure him the listed ingredients will be fine, he asks if I want spice on them, because "that is what I like so I need to know that you will like it!" This guy had to be one of the most enthusiastic people I've ever met, super invested in the food he was preparing for me. He gave me back a full $8 in change even though its was supposed to be $7.95, while saying how much he cares.

Now nourished by the best prepared cheeseburgers in the world, we finally set up all our gear. We were running a Pro Tools rig off of a laptop and an MBox, making a stereo recording with two condenser mics setup at the back of the room. Now for the music. Brains of an Alien was a sort of punk/metal band, with a lot of screaming and not a lot of melody. The first two songs were scream fests, but some songs came off like sloppy Ramones covers, and they covered a Megadeth song. It was a standard 4-piece of drums/guitar/guitar/bass, with the drummer and guitar holding down vocal/screaming duty. Pretty much all the songs consisted of minor-third metaly stuff or poppy 3-chord punk progressions with fast Metallica riffs thrown in. When the drummer said: "This song is about Tujunga and all the tweaker that live here" it cemented any previous notions I had been nursing about the place. The Persian guy from the kabob place even show up and handed someone what looked like a piece of bread, spoke enthusiastically to them, and then left. We successful laid the entire set to disk, the only snafu being someone kicking one of the condenser mic stands during the first song.

The song about Tujunga was like "Welcome to the Jungle" with a location change and basterdized with a Nightmare before Christmas song and the warm, acidy desert vibe of Queens of the Stone Age replaced with the bad-coming-down-off-meth vibe of Tujunga. The "special guest" of the night was a piece of cantaloupe the band had turned into an alien brain, which got its own mic. They also had a banner with their name done up to look like the title of Back to the Future. It seemed like a good time was had by all. Tujunga wants you to pay a visit!

Guitars for Weirdos

I spotted this today in a music catalogue and it just killed me. This is an awesome looking instrument! With the sleek white finish and two yin and yang-esque dots, this is a seriously badass guitar. Then I saw it was Buckethead's signature Les Paul. Now, I don't have anything against Buckethead, but he is this kind of weird fringe artist that only super-guitar-nerds are into. I know he played on Chinese Democracy, and that Axl Rose had to take him to Disneyland and build a chicken coop in the studio for Bucket to lay down his tracks, but other than that I don't know anything about him (although just that info tickles me to no end). But objectively this guitar does look awesome, and Buckethead should be pleased. For him, it is fitting.

Album synopsis: Ash's Free All Angels

So I think every once in a while I'm gonna pick an album apart, and not even albums that are my favorite but one's that just sort of intrigue me for some reason or another. Ash is an Irish band, I think, and in the early 00's came out with power-pop LP Free All Angels. I got into this album while heavily into Weezer and other such bands, so when the sped up "Today"-ish guitar riff of "Burn Baby Burn" started playing on MTV when I was in 8th grade, I was instantly hooked. And while that is straight forward Ramones style chord ramming, the rest of the album proved weirder and interesting.

I can't say I've ever seen more of an obviously Frankensteined album, with huge chunks torn from other bands and songs, only to be reassmbled into what on paper looks like a hit record in America. The "Tired of Sex" bass slamming on "Cherry Bomb", the Beach Boys "wooos" mixed with the Black Francis/Kim Deal vocal blend on "Pacific Palisades". The band keeps things extra commercial with medium tempo ballads sprinkled throughout. And yet there are fascinating anomolies, like the hip-hop/big-band stomp of "Candy". This is not an appealing sound for an 8th grade Weezer fan. That and "There's a Star" provide strange breaks from the otherwise chaste power riffs and ballady pop. Where those influences came from I can't really guess, but what was the 8th grade me's loss is the present me's gain. The bizarro content only adds to the intrigue, letting the listener in on the fact that while this is definitely an American sounding album, its was not made by Americans.

I just can't see Ash's contemporaries, bands like Weezer, Third Eye Blind and Blink-182 putting such strange musical stuff on their albums, but Free All Angels is definitely a more adventurous album because of it. I once saw a picture of Ash while touring behind this album, and as openers they were playing to empty stadiums. Tim Wheeler said the wanted the audience to be "dancing like crack smokin' hippies", but it didn't appear to be so. The closer, "World Domination", serves as the thesis and purpose for the rest of album. Why they didn't achieve it is anybody's guess.

Mixtape Mondays #1: Nirvana

Fantasy situation: You wanna get the 14 year old in your life into Nirvana, but really wanna steer past the whole Teen Spirit/Nevermind overplayed zone. Well, there's a mixtape for that! From now on, every Monday I'm gonna post a mixtape, either just from a specific band or a mix that has some sort of theme. I'll also put some comments on some of the songs from the mix. So here's #1:

Nirvana Mix
1.Drain You
2.Aneurysm
3.Pennyroyal Tea
4.School
5.Here She Comes Now (Velvet Underground cover)
6.Scentless Apprentice
7.Love Buzz (Shocking Blue cover)
8.Sliver
9.About a Girl
10.Heart Shaped Box

I know I said trying to avoid Nevermind, but Drain You makes a good opener without being the most overplayed song from the record. Poppy substitutes come in the form of Sliver and About a Girl. Here She Comes Now, a VU song, is from the With the Lights Out box set, and is catchy and could lead the listener down a whole 'nother path. School, Aneurysm, and Love Buzz keep things extra heavy. Pennyroyal Tea and Heart Shaped Box are both haunted songs that really showcase the loud/soft aesthetic and are two of the best written Nirvana songs. At 10 songs the listener get a wide breadth of material, yet the thing's the length of a short album. Enjoy!

LA Bass- A Tribute to Carol Kaye

It was definitely a shock to me that the most recorded bass player of all time was a woman, and that she had played on over 10,000 records, but most of all that I had never heard of her. Being a huge fan of the Beach Boys, and like many of their fans, particularly of Pet Sounds, the fact that she helped craft the record as part of the Wrecking Crew, the legendary group of 60's LA session musicians piqued my curiosity into her story. She cut her chops playing jazz in the 50's, eventually moving into rock n' roll because of its commercial viability. As a session player she played on hits like "You've Lost That Lovin' Felling" (Righteous Brothers), "Light My Fire" (the Doors), and Zappa's Freak Out! album, yet has never gained proper recognition because of the square nature of sessions players compared to their drugged out rock star counterparts. Brian Wilson has had his break down during the SMiLE project linked to his drug use, among other things, showing an example of how destructive such activity was during the 60's, and how session players were a huge part of creating the polished, complete sound that rounded out there classic productions.

The electric bass was a new invention in the early 60's, and Kaye trailblazed the technique of the instrument. Ironically, I feel the bass is perceived and personified as a masculine instrument (or at least an overblown phallic symbol). The fact that a woman defined the instruments place in rock history provides a unique perspective on female empowerment in modern music, as opposed to a PJ Harvey/Kim Gordon riot grrrl sort of empowerment (and long before). As the sole female member of the Wrecking Crew, Kaye was at a place and time where no other women were, on the cutting edge of studio musician technique.

I recently saw Brian Wilson perform at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and I have to say it wasn't kind of soul-crushing to see one's of my heroes have such an obvious disinterest and lack of focus in what he was doing. At times Wilson would just look at the floor while the hired help around him propped him up (Just musically, but at times it almost appear they would have to physically). Brian Wilson is one of the all time great pop musician, but it was obvious that the ravagings of time hadn't been kind to him, and I'm pretty sure drug use played a part in his decline. Carol Kaye has commented: "It's a sad thing to see that decades later, people's drug use [was] influenced by musicians whose records they idolized, that the real musicians playing on them were totally straight". Thankfully those sessions players were there to flesh out such fantastic visions, and you can't have any groove without the bass. Keepin' it sick!

I Got the Blues

The reinterpretation of blues songs has a long and storied history in rock n' roll. A recent point of fascination for me has been how the blues are sung, and two good people to compare are Robert Johnson and Mick Jagger. As the Rolling Stones covered many of Johnson's songs, their covers make up a solid body of blues work ripe for comparison. Now Mick Jagger has one of the most famous voices in rock n' roll, but its when he's tackling the blue that things can get really unholy, like on "Love in Vain", for example. His seems to leech upward, holding notes that flux in and out of tune, yet are undeniable powerful in their attack. Johnson, on the other hand, keeps things low, not going for the high-all-out-screech of Jagger, instead focusing on the soft and subtle eerieness of the song, and occasionally going for ghostly falsetto. The two interpretations make for drastically different rewards, and are both definitely worth your time.

A song you can compare over three artists is "Stop Breakin' Down", which has been played by Johnson, the Stones and the White Stripes. The Stripes are all reverb and hysteria, with Jack White's proto-Plant voice whooping over the jagged guitar jutting up from below. The Stones keep things shufflin' with the honky tonk piano and mercurial guitars so in line with the rest of Exile on Main Street. Johnson keeps with the quiet power of the tune, focusing the desolatory power of the blues. With the White Stripes pushing a storied American musical form into punk territory, one shouldn't fail to show a little respect for the blues. Keep it sickly and sweet!

For Damon Albarn, its all a blur

With the new Gorillaz album coming out and with their impending Coachella headlining, it seems like a good time to reflect on Damon Albarn's musical contributions with his two successful acts, Blur and Gorillaz. I was recently relating to a friend how I though that Blur is an awesome band, possibly in a league with other seminal British acts like Radiohead, and even share similar themes of 21st century alienation and paranoia, yet were simple too obviously British and therefore not cool enough to break big in America. This implies that Americans have a fairly strict sense of what is cool, and that to embrace such an English aesthetic like Blur is to fall outside the boundaries of that cool.

Radiohead, on the other hand, don't seem to come lyrically from any geographical point; Thom Yorke is singing purely from his own disenchanted psyche, his own personal wonderland. Yet this leads to an inhumanness to the music, whereas Blur is all Essex flesh and blood, and therefore vulnerable to the scrutiny of American cool. Their masterpiece, Parklife, is a concept album ABOUT being English, among other things, and haunts the same emotionally desolate territory as OK Computer and Dark Side of the Moon, but because of the specificity of where the music comes from, carries a fun exoticness with it, as if your musical journey is both emotional AND physical.

If this was ever a problem for Damon Albarn, he has definitely rectified it with Gorillaz, for better or worse. With this group it appears Albarn has reverse engineered American cool, or at least built a sturdy copycat, made up of spare hip-hop beats, smoggy ambient drones and the occasional folky guitar strum. Like a miniature British invasion, Gorillaz is once again selling us our own music, and obviously having more success than any successful American rock band right now. Gone are the British doldrums of Albarn's parklife, replaced with fiery narratives of America's impending doom. But in Blur it was obviously Albarn was really LIVING those doldrums, whereas now he's simply the wizard behind the curtain, a ghost in the machine, safe from the turmoil he's mapping out. And of course we eat it up, our most narcissistic impulses being stroked, for who wants to hear the Great American Novel more than America? While Yorke is suspended in his psyche, his own world, Albarn is suspended in the music machine he's built, made from parts not his own, but if he doesn't do it, who will?

While Blur was personal and local, Gorillaz is international (or American, but in this setting America's devastation is the world's) and has our hero acting more as a central nervous system than human, simply holding it all together. If you can't live up to a standard of cool, you can always reinvent yourself, but its hard to keep it all in focus. Keep it sickly!