Atahualpa Yupanqui:How is it so Beautiful

It’s neither good or bad that a great deal of music coming out of twentieth century South America has hints of politicism about it. That’s just how it goes. Partially, that all comes from other nations attempting to develop and exploit whatever was going on down there. But it also speaks to the subjugation of native peoples and how each individual group wound up dealing with its problems. There’s a great deal of Commie nonsense that went into informing composition in all spheres of music – in the States as well. The reaction of the greater culture, though, seems to have been more positive in terms of appreciating the resultant work – there wasn’t HUAC down there. Murders and disappearances probably organized by the government, but no fixed trials. It’s hard to say which scenario was worse.

Either way, an Argentinean guitarist who eventually took the name Atahualpa Yupanqui, but was born Héctor Roberto Chavero Aramburo, composed and performed guitar works on par, if not surpassing those of Andrés Segovia. Both players worked ceaselessly to portray their own culture. And it’s obviously just preference that defines one being better than the other. But Yupanqui’s somber songs seem to speak more to broad humanity than Segovia’s work.

Each player was internationally appreciated and while Segovia did a great deal for music education, it’s inarguable that Yupanqui’s eventual adaption by the French government (he was asked to compose a piece in celebration of some historical landmark) speaks to the man’s talents.

Coming out of a politically motivated time, it’s curious that Yupanqui’s don’t feature lyrics. And since his affiliation with the Communist party led to problems with Argentina’s government, that’s a double confusion. But instrumental music, when wrought with such beauty doesn’t necessitate vocal accompaniment.

It’d probably be difficult to track down this guy’s recordings in a physical record store somewhere, but a few discs have cropped up on the interewebs. Regardless of Yupanqui’s recorded output being relatively scarce, the range of approaches he takes on the guitar makes him an engaging player. Whether chording Spanish sounding progressions, as on “La Estancia Vieja,” or weaving music to inspire visions of far off places, “Pastoral India,” Yupanqui’s performances really have no peers.

Peter Walker would do well by himself to investigate this guy. And Yupanqui seems to be equal in skill to any American Primitive guitarist, so it’s odd he hasn’t had his revival sprung on the record buying public. We’ll see, though.

 

Beat Happenings in Olympia

It seems like culture has accidentally run amok. There’s not center. There’s no commodity – unless we’re talking about the over priced spate of low run singles and collectible garbage being spewed out by the countless independent labels that are so pervasive now. Of course, a huge part of all this mess comes as a result of mindless drones moving from the hinterlands to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin or wherever else you’re supposed to live in order to impact the larger culture.

Over the last week, I’ve heard New York denigrated – its publishing industry being figured as working through its death rattle. And while that’s probably the biased opinion of a spurned would-be artist turned educator, she still lives in a major city. And that major city is filled with the same crap as NYC. It’s all a tremendous bummer.

What opportunities – unique ones at least – remain to be discovered in these over populated, magnetic centers? Well, if it mattered, perhaps I’d discuss that here. Instead, what’s drastically more interesting is that K Records and Calvin Johnson have been able to work for the last twenty years at spreading around a vision of low rent rock stuffs

At this point in music’s dissemination, any label lasting more than a few years and issuing a record that actually maters is something of a shock. But with Johnson and his cohort camped out in Olympia, Washington – less than an south of Seattle – K Records has been on a local playing field, almost all alone, responsible only for itself and not the desires of hordes of fans.

Certainly, student turnover allows for whatever cultural injections are required to remain vibrant. But more than that, the K Records folks have been able to create culture around themselves. They decide, to a certain extent what occurs in Olympia. It’s wide open without absorbitant rents (that’s relative for West Coast destinations) and too many random hangers on.

Beyond bolstering the locals, K Recs has been able – again because of those aforementioned benefits from being outside of major media market – to define a product. It hasn’t necessarily always focused on people from the town. But Johnson, as prolific as he is, releases enough average work as to have bankrupted other outlets. But in issuing work from lesser known acts, even if those groups count some (pretend) famous folks, has helped all involved perpetuate a collective ideal. And that’s ok.

The Shaggs: Keep it in the Family

If the Carter Family were an inept garage band with its own songs, it would have been the Shaggs. I think.

Either way, the mythical Shaggs, comprised of a trio of sisters from New Hampshire. The story goes, their father was always interested in music, thought it would bring his family together and sprung for music lessons. Whether or not those lessons were of value is still up for debate today.

Released in 1969, Philosophy of the World is the Shaggs figuring out life – and their collective instruments. If you’ve heard Jandek before, this is the sixties pop version, perhaps. Well, actually, comparisons can’t amply describe what’s going on here. I mean, how difficult would it be to describe the groove found on “Sweet Thing.” It’s only really there for about thirty seconds even as the section that swing emerges from began before and ended after. It’s a confusion. But out of that, a unique world view, an insular one concocted by this family emerges.

In its scope, the Shaggs aren’t too distant from the Ramones or any early punk group pummeling some simple progression. With three girls crooning, though, the music takes on a weird flavor. It’s not good. So, why’s it made it through countless reissues? No idea.

But the collector geek, historian and rubber necker in all of us wants to understand what was going on. The girls weren’t retarded, just dilettantes. At the same time, though, the fact that the band was able to sound so detached from then current rock tropes is just short of staggering.

Again, that might be chalked up to the general ineptitude displayed by all involved, but even in its lyrical content, there’s something completely different going on when contrasting this clutch of tracks with SF bands, the avant sounds lopping out of New Yawk and everything else. Devo was formed not too long after this band recorded Philosophy. That’s a drastic comparison, but the Shaggs needed to craft its own outlook on the world, because it had no peers. How cloistered were Wiggins family up there in New Hampshire?

Whatever the answer to that is, the results easily count as a shambolic and dreamy look at growing up as a young women in a place out of time – that doesn’t mean the Shaggs were ahead or behind the times, just left to their own devices and startlingly creative. Not for everyone, but worth a run through.

Alternative TV's Mark Perry is a Snide Dude

It’s definitely a blurry, backwards glance, but the seventies seem like a time when the DIY thing was still vital and unique at the same time. Today, everyone has their own record label, some venue in an abandoned whatever, a community garden and a bicycle co-op. That’s overstated, but forty years ago all of that was kinda revolutionary. The downside, though, was that it was kind a revolutionary and looked at as some weird subversive animal. It wasn’t, obviously. And without all those folks who took it upon themselves to better their neighborhoods, culture that defines itself as diametrically opposed to mainstream nonsense would be drastically different, if it existed at all.

In the mid seventies, a crop of fanzines sprung up all over the States and in Great Britain. It’s debatable which outlets actually pushed the culture forward and maintain its cache even today – and there are a few. But Mark Perry was one of the guys who started Sniffin’ Glue England. Out of that, Perry found himself hooked up with a burgeoning scene that would define the visual appearance of punk.

With everyone starting a band at the time, Perry eventually figured that if he was able to get a print publication off the ground, playing music couldn’t be too much harder. He was right. And while his first group, Alternative TV, only released two proper albums, its first easily ranks as one of the most creative releases of the scene. Everything from punk, rock, dub and spoken word finds itself stirred together with a healthful dose of social and scene commentary functioning as lyrical accompaniment.

The Image Has Cracked, as opposed to its follow up Vibing Up the Senile Man, is pretty much wall to wall hits. “Action Time Vision” hasn’t aged at all since it was released. The simplistic composition, which sported one of the few truly great harmonies in Brit punk’s first wave, should have been difficult to surpass, but Perry was able to throw together an album of work all its equal.

“Love Lies Limp,” another album single, sports a faux reggae thing. It’s not the most adept appropriation of the music, the Clash were a stronger band. But the sparseness of the song’s guitar makes Perry lamenting meaningless fucking all the more poignant.

The whole album can’t be properly distilled in words. It’s a dense collage of music and philosophy. And that’s why it’s so surprising that the disc isn’t better thought of today.

Ovipositor: Tired Sounds Abound in the City by the Bay

Oakland, California isn’t a place renowned for its physical beauty. People of that opinion, though, probably haven’t gone for a visit. The hills of neighboring San Francisco have always been more enticing to outsiders, which is understandable. But Oakland sports more than pretty much anyone would be able to guess at.

In the city, there’re probably some weird mutant creatures running around. The place is pretty dirty – it’s the Cleveland of the West Coast. But there are probably at least a few animals kicking around which utilize an ovipositor, some set of organs used in procreation. Obtuse, might be a way to describe the opening to this write up, but we’re getting there.

Ovipositor, though, is a band as well. And it’s from Oakland. One might guess that at least one person involved in the group has some animal fixation. If not, it’d be difficult to figure out where that name came from.

Either way, though, I hadn’t run into the band prior to seeing its Oakland Minor the other day, which is odd since I’d lived over there for a while. In contrast to its brethren in Mushroom, this group, which also claims a kraut influence (but who doesn’t now?), there’s not a jazzy angle to the music. Instead, it’s kind of an updated Half Japanese with tougher sounding instrumentation and purposefully discordant progressions as opposed to the hapless song writing of Jad Fair.

That may have been the first time that comparison’s been made, but “14th Floor,” after you get over trying to tie it German rock stuffs, is all almost in tune singing and sloppy guitar. So, yeah, the Fairs aren’t to far off from wherever the disc sits in American music. The next track, though, amps up a Midwester hard rock thing.

Even before realizing that Ovipositor is working to cover Pere Ubu’s “Navvy,” the song’s introduction sounds like the Stooges a bit. Too bad the rest of the song’s pretty bland. And for whatever reason, the band decides to yell part of the chorus in a surprisingly shotty Brit accent. At least it wasn’t a Sex Pistols cover.

Beyond the shock picked up from those accents, the fact that Ovipositor managed a deal with some foreign label, a German one at that, is confusing. Aren’t there average bands over-seas? There have to be. But if there aren’t, this band’ll probably be able to tour over there on the strength (?) of this disc.

Cass McCombs: Sings and Writes Songs that You May Have Heard Before

Hearing folks like Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan spit out couplets as well composed as they are well performed has informed that last fifty years worth of musicians and writers. Getting to the middle of any matter was somehow reduced to a pair of lines, sometimes flowery in nature, but sometimes simple and cinematic. Looking out a back to onto a vast sprawl of emptiness hasn’t ever sounded good unless sung by one of these two folks.

So, over the last half century, the fact that people (imitators or not) have approximated the sound of each one of these folks isn’t a tremendous surprise. And certainly, a good portion of the time, recreating either Cooke or Dylan’s sound wasn’t on purpose. These two men have simply changed American music.

A lot of that, though, can be heard in the calmest record Cass McCombs has issued. On Catacombs, the singer, songwriter and guitarist goes in on a clutch of tunes uniform in delivery, but swelled to breaking with tossed off musical asides.

From the album’s outset, “Dreams Come True Girl,” drips with Dylan penned words and a Beatles delivery while still being able to reference Cooke in its vocal phrasing. At five minutes, the supposed piece of musical flattery might be a bit too much. Cooke didn’t push past the pop song market in length, while Dylan disregarded it. So, the folkster might be a better point of reference, but McCombs’ voice can seemingly summon just about anyone from the backlog of popular music in this country and elsewhere.

A brief misstep crops up on “You Saved My Life.” It’s just for this one song, but that weird eighties thing that occasional grips fashion and shitty bands seems to have taken over keyboard duties. It’s difficult to say how the song would sit without that supplemental piece of music included, but with it in there, it’s safe to say that there’s not too much to keep listeners riveted.

That, though, is the overarching issue with the disc. Catacombs isn’t lacking in any specific arena of song craft. Each effort is well devised and performed, there’s just not too much variety. The mood created over the course of the disc’s eleven tracks is well defined. It could be argued that ambience, in many cases usurps creative impulses. And it could be figured that Catacombs has been well received predicated on just that. Hopefully, though, McCombs can wrangle a different angle in the future.

Hüsker Dü - The Minneapolis Sound (Video)

"We make music, I know that," says Bob Mould. And that's an awesome quote. Surely, it was weird for the band to hear obtuse descriptions of its music. Too bad the same tact is still taken by writers. I'm guilty. Either way, this video is a bit of a scene report, but focuses just on

Throbbing Gristle and the Ever-Changing Genesis P-Orridge

Art as music or music as art always presents some sort of problem. Either the art critics don’t get the music or the music critics don’t get the art of it all. Or both. Even beyond that, when attempting to work up something completely new – and actually arriving at something that appears to be so – there’s nowhere for this new thing to fit.

Throbbing Gristle came about during the punk era – pre and post. But lumping them in with the Sex Pistols is obviously not proper. Bands like Wire and the Fall, though, aren’t any more appropriate. At least everyone realized that what Throbbing Gristle and Genesis P-Orridge were doing counted as unique. So unique, that here and there, the band gets referred to as the first industrial band. Of course, other groups – namely Pere Ubu – have been graced with such a title. In a face off, though, a tie would have to goto this group of weirdo Brits.

The group’s third album is generally seen as its creative peak. Fans obviously have their own opinions. But it’s difficult to refute the impact 20 Jazz Funk Greats has had. If nothing else, the album’s sense of humor, while still dispensing what might be perceived as art, is a slippery step stone on the way to new wave.

Despite the title, though, 20 Jazz Funk Greats has more to do with electronic music than it does with earthen soul music from the States. Certainly, portions of songs like “Tanith” and its persistent bass figure sport some semblance of groove. It’s just not of the American south, though. Does it count as industrial?

It might. But the use of tape loops far predates 20 Jazz Funk Greats’ 1979 release date. Still, though use of space, those loops and whatever other disquieting sounds might have been tossed in count as something out of step with then current trends in underground music.

Obviously, P-Orridge and his/her cohort didn’t intend to make rock music, but more than a few times on this disc some nascent electronic pop music crops up. “Convincing People” is one. And even if the robotic pulse which opens “Hot On The Heels Of Love” doesn’t initially sound as if pop related sensibility is behind it all, by the time the keyboards kick in, the track could easily have been shoehorned into radio ready musics. But that was the time period from which so much music sprung. Hear the radio today? It’s not so adventurous. Throbbing Gristle is.

Plastic Idols: Punk, Not Steers or Queers

In recently mentioning Indiana’s Dow Jones and the Industrials while describing the odd Midwestern aesthetic combining hard rock, nascent punk stuff and weirdo synth experiments, it seemed as if it sprung from that area specifically. And it may have. But that’s just another one of those proclamations like “So and so were the first punk band.” With that in mind, a band kicking around Houston towards the end of the seventies didn’t sound too detached from whatever was going on in the breadbasket.

Plastic Idols have a succinct and unquestionably punky name. Is there a better combination of adjective and noun to exude the first wave of punk’s disdain for popular culture and thought (political and otherwise). As obvious as the band’s name is, the source material plundered to come up with the tracks comprising Singles, Demos & Live and originally recorded four decades back winds up being a bit more obscure.

There’s that overt seventies’ punk thing happening. But the hard rock penchant that this ensemble had was run through with a cheese ball pop conception of radio stardom. There was even a bit of mod styled power pop inserted every once in a while. The group’s best thought of second single, which includes “Einstein Experience,” is almost a garage album gussied up with synthesizer. Again, none of this is revelatory, just an weird confluence of sounds – but what else should we expect from Texans?

Probably what kept these guys from making a name for themselves – like Dow Jones, but not MX-80 Sound – was an inability to tour. That’s not properly documented, but a safe guess given the time period from which this springs. Plastic Idols had a bit of everything for the Dr. Demento crowd. Ok, it was mostly synthesizer explorations, but still it was a distinct departure from the Ramones.

“I'm Already Dead” stands apart from the rest of this clutch of twenty songs. It counts as one of the more straightforward songs on the disc. But what makes the difference is the band’s dismissal of the synth, even if it’s just for two minutes and fifty seconds.

Drawing back on the most difficult part of its sound doesn’t mean Plastic Idols were on occasion attempting to land on a hit – that was pretty unlikely. But just exhibits the band’s ties to straighter musics seeing as the Ubus, MX-80 or whoever else wouldn’t have been able to record something like this and have it hold together. Good, but not essential.

MX-80 Sound: A Midwestern Politico-Punk Sermon

The Midwest and its expansive, if not cloistered, music scene during the seventies offered up an satisfying mélange of bizarre acts. And with so much out-music getting worked up at the time, it shouldn’t be surprising that after the first wave of whatever preceded punk, there were a new handful of bands mining just about the same territory.

Indiana hasn’t provided the world with too much – the 80/90 corridor’s pretty nice. But musically, the acts coming out of that state have been, for the most part, below the radar affairs. Maybe that’s a bonus. The Gizmos were passable, but not great. And while Dow Jones and the Industrials are considerable better than its renown would lead one to believe, MX-80 Sound did just about everything those other groups did (in its own way), but was able to make it to the West Coast in order to cut some albums for the Residents.

Being affiliated with Ralph Records didn’t ensure MX-80 Sound fame or even appreciation. Of course, being on a coast and supported by a well thought of, if not low profile independent label didn’t hurt. But it was the album MX-80 cut prior to leaving its home state is probably the most engaging. Well, it has two drummers at least.

With equal portions punk and skewed synth-pop, MX-80 went in on a clutch of songs for 1977’s Hard Attack which can’t be thought to rival Dub Housing or whatever other then contemporary album one might pick. But when these Indiana natives turned in its most simplistic, if not shifting, tracks there was a grand ennui equal to anyone in New York or Ohio.

Usually, the band’s lauded for its cultural critiques, but the manner in which they’re related – and even sometimes how they’re stated – really doesn’t do much to deliver the message. “Man on the Move” is a rhythmically engaging track, but with a chorus that goes “Look out for the road block/the road block of sound” can’t be turned into some sort of anthem. And in an odd way, it just winds up sounding like Pavement before there was Pavement.

“PCBs” is a bit better in its delivery. But that just might be as a result of its chorus being simplified. Of course, singing like a your in the Mothers of Invention rarely fails. There’s not a pervasive Zappa sound here, but that’s just another one of the weird, tossed off influences to be found over the course of Hard Attack.

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