Not much to say about this one. It's just a quick mix of summery, poppy jams that sound perfect in November, with lots of "ba ba ba"s, "shang a lang"s, "baby baby baby"s, and "yeah yeah yeah"s by a whole bunch of bands that no one's ever heard of, and a few that you have. As you dig into the winter, just remember that there's still sunshine hiding everywhere. Or something. Hope y'all dig it! Be on the lookout for Random Old Records Podcast #26 in a couple weeks, and don't forget you can still hear the last episode over at http://rorpodcast.mevio.com along with every other episode I've posted in the past two years. By my estimation, that's damn near enough to carry you through till Christmas! Also, I'll be posting my top 10 LPs of 2010 list here in the near future, and believe me, there's some JAMS on there. As always, thanks for reading and listening!
I Declared War On Spain: November 2010
1. Caravan - "If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You"
2. The Association - "Here In Here"
3. The Left Banke - "Walk Away Renee"
4. The Gas Company - "If You Know What I Mean"
5. Spanky & Our Gang - "Making Every Minute Count"
6. Jacobson & Tansley - "Dream With Me"
7. The Millennium - "Sing To Me"
8. The Yellow Balloon - "Good Feelin' Time"
9. PF Sloan - "Halloween Mary"
10. Hudson - "Everybody Sing"
11. T. Rex - "Baby Strange"
12. The Tartan Horde - "Bay City Rollers We Love You"
OK, so I was looking over a bunch of older blog posts recently, and I came across a revelation while negotiating through the tangled mess of over-capitalization and casual profanity. That would be, "Jesus fuck, I sure do talk about the weather a LOT!" Like, a whole lot, almost maddeningly so. We're talking Vincent Van Patten in Rock N' Roll High School levels here. Did you hear? It's raining cats and dogs in Idaho! Music is still the one thing that plays with my emotions more than anything else, but somewhere along the way, it has gotten intertwined with the change of seasons to the point where the combination can become pretty fucking powerful. I never really put much stock into the thought of "music for a rainy day" or whatever when I was younger, but yesterday I looked out the window under the fog of a stupendous hangover, saw the suffocating blanket of clouds rolling in, heard the noon-time bells of the church across the street ringing in my skull like cannon-shots, and immediately wanted to crawl back into bed and listen to Leonard Cohen records all day. What the FUCK?! For one thing, I don't even like Leonard Cohen and his craggy voice and overly pleased with himself story songs. I don't own any Leonard Cohen records, either. Spanky & Our Gang's sun-kissed cover of "Suzanne" is usually more my speed, but at that moment I wanted to hear lived-in, croaking death rattle of the original.
Fall is supposed to be awesome, right?! I mean, mild-to-moderate hoodie temperatures, bonfires, caramel apples, dressing up like a dirtbag on Halloween. All that stuff is fantastic! Hell, I adopt my hoodie as a second skin at the first sign of sub-60 degree temperatures. But there are a lot of things about fall that just seem plain EVIL. For one thing, I'm totally not cool with the idea of it getting pitch dark outside once 5:30 rolls around. I love my Vitamin D, and getting it suddenly shocked out of my system makes me wanna sit around under a blanket and watch Twilight Zone reruns all night or something. There are always too many shows and too much excitement going on in the old Queen City for that to happen of course, but the thought is in the back of my head constantly at the moment. Right before I wrote this, I totally just had a moderate existential crisis over whether going to bed at 8 PM was a solid, responsible plan, or the first sign that I should run out and apply for my Golden Buckeye card first thing in the morning. Y'know, to avoid all the crowds!
There's just something in the air in the months of September through November, I guess. That cold wind and the dancing, cracking tree limbs it brings signal dread and darkness, and I'm not talking about the neon green witches and bright orange carved pumpkins of Halloween. Now that I think about it, roughly 80% of my relationships have taken a shit during that three month span. Not the casual flings or awkward dates that didn't go so well, but the SERIOUS BIZ that goes from wide-eyed lovey-dovey BS and highest highs to the reality of me and a girl coming to a bunch of painful, uncomfortable truths in a drafty room, wringing hands tightly, and learning all those lessons that are supposed to make you a better person in the long run. Saying a whole bunch of awful things that you don't even believe, trying to save something that isn't worth saving, because you can't imagine facing up to what comes next. Roughly 50% of my closest relatives died within a week during the fall a few years ago, too. That's just reality, and probably just some sort of cosmic coincidence. Seasons and barometric pressure and whatever other bullshit didn't really matter to me when I was a kid. I was too busy living! But as the years go by and life keeps piling on top of itself, you really do have to wonder what the fuck is going on.
Anyway, there are too many records to listen to, too many movies to watch, and too many books to read. ALWAYS! I paid the princely sum of $19.99 plus tax for this new LP by The Black Angels, entitled Phosphene Dream. Keep in mind that I'm a cheapskate of the highest order, and have been downloading music for free on the internet for damn near a decade now, back when vinyl was still a fringe market and even the fanciest new records only cost like twelve bucks or so. It figures that I'm starting to pay for music with a vengeance now that I'm a world-famous blogger (HAHA) that could probably get it all for free if I only applied myself. Guilty? Maybe. Even though my only previous encounter with the Black Angels was their rather dull 2006 debut Passover, I was suckered in by the fancy gatefold with the download card, 16 page booklet, 180 gram virgin vinyl pressing, and rapturous recommendations from people with great taste that I trust. As I dropped the needle for the first time, I ticked off all the things I could buy with 20 dollars plus tax: two weeks’ worth of groceries, four packs of cigarettes, a bag full of used paperbacks, nine tubes of toothpaste, a decent night out at the bar, etc.
I wasn't really looking for music that summed up the way fall snuck up behind me with a sucker punch, but somehow it found me. I guess it's just another one of those cosmic coincidences that it starts off with a song called "Bad Vibrations." These dudes have done too many of the good drugs, and know what happens on the other side. Can you tell a wish from a spell? A hug from a lie? They both make you feel so gone. It's all a bunch of stabby drums, echoing vocals, funeral parlour organs, and one guitar player gently trying to wake up the other one up from a grinding, half-lidded stupor. Then, there's an awkward jump-cut straight out of a movie, and the band is rocking in full flight. It's just a temporary illusion though, like a white-heat amphetamine blast that only keeps you awake long enough for the drive home.
Phosphene Dream isn't really an album of songs, but one of moments and moods. There certainly isn't anything new here, just a bunch of stuff churned into a nasty, paranoid, creepy, darkly psychedelic summer hangover that tells you what's what and what it really thinks of you. Spindly, minimal droning graveyard grooves morph into full-on freak-outs just when you stop paying attention. The feedback cuts like chopper blades then disappear into a cloud of napalm smoke. It's supposed to be a concept album I guess, what with the little notations like "...mankind's rebirth" under the song titles in that fancy, expensive booklet, but I'll be damned if it makes any sense. Maybe it's about this kid who goes off to war, trips his balls off in a Vietnamese poppy field, and gets blown away by "The Sniper" at the end. Who knows? All I know is that "Sunday Afternoon" rips off the electric jug sound of the 13th Floor Elevators perfectly and talks about crystal visions and shit, and it fades into a song where some poor saps are sitting ducks on the "River Of Blood," underneath a background of amplifier damage that's more feral and claustrophobic than I've heard in a good long while. It sounds like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed slap-fighting underneath a pigpile of ghetto rioters in 1968, as tear gas cannons and rubber bullets fly over their "forefathers of punk rock" heads. It's really a shocker, OK?! There really must be something in the water down in Austin, Texas. The Strange Boys channeled southern soul and British invasion rock n' roll perfectly back in February, and now the Black Angels are aping the dying days of the 1960s in a way that fucks with my soul. He takes his pills that make him kill, praise the Bible.
If it really is a concept album, either I'm too thick-headed or the story is too incoherent for it to make any sense. You don't need story-songs or a detailed libretto to pick up the downright eerie vibe of "True Believers" and know that some evil shit is blowing in the wind. It just sounds like ear candy when you're driving home and BIG DECISIONS and other bullshit ideas are creeping their way around the tree branches. It seems kinda movie-scene perfect when you make that sharp curve under the overpass and those waves of voices crowded into "Yellow Elevator #2" creep their way into your ears with those torrid visions of heads piled outside your door. Shit is CREEPY! That well water in Austin is full of the same stuff that split Roky Erickson's mind apart back in the 60s, but it's not a bunch of sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. These ten songs are heavy, but not like Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden or whatever. It's more like the heavy reality of real life, when you're driving down 75 in cosmic overdrive on a moonlit drive under empty skies, and suddenly everything is just like "Entrance Song." Cutting through like a knife, feeling like a half-ass desperado that was smart enough to avoid the flashing lights by taking the long way home, but so helpless and inept that you already forgot the purpose of your mission in the first place. It wasn't to heroically stare at the ice melting at the bottom of a glass, was it?! Those yellow lines in the pavement start doubling up on themselves and dissolving into your brain, sending it off to dark places full of phosphene dreams and smiling devils clad in scarves from American Apparel. Who knows which birds will be left to sing, and sing, and sing for me?
You'd like to think you can see right through them, and sometimes you can. There's so much darkness in Phosphene Dream, but where is the light?! It can't just be all hurt feelings and Vietnam War flashbacks, can it? Luckily, the Black Angels are well aware of the classic album structure, and they slot "Telephone" right near the end. A classic garage rock stomper that could have come right off the Nuggets box set, it seems a bit twee and insignificant when pitted against the epic bad-vibe psychedelia of the other nine tracks, but good lord, is it fun! It seems like a solid shot of happy juice sticking out like a sore thumb, realizing that there's so much joy to be had amidst all the napalm, horror, and chopper blades. Even in the age of the Vietnam war, riots, and feedback, sunshine and light still dominated the charts. Not everyone was waving a white flag and crawling back into bed with their Leonard Cohen records back in the day. It wasn't so long ago that everyone was sipping cocktails on decks and beaches everywhere, blissfully ignorant and happy. It's some real light at the end of the tunnel shit for the grown-up Mad Men office crowd, I reckon.
So yeah, the whole point I think I’m coming around to is that this record isn't really worth the 20 bucks I paid for it, and there aren't any classics on it, but it's exactly what I want to hear in November 2010. Thanks to global warming or whatever you wanna call it, seventy degree weather is still a real, live thing around the Midwest, and I ain't complaining. Phosphene Dream is loud and deep, and it really makes you think. I can't really expect much more from a record these days. It's no Space Ritual or Going Blank Again, sure, but it's grabbed ahold of my soul like no other album has in months. Even though I can't figure out what the hell it's trying to tell me, it sounds damn near perfect and REAL, and hides a bunch of revelations behind its candy-colored sleeve. It captures your mind and has its way with it for like 37 minutes, so why not pick it up and get lost? You'll thank me the next time you wake up on Saturday morning with a head full of cloudy thoughts and regret.
So yeah, the latest episode of Random Old Records Podcast is out NOW, and it also just so happens to both be episode #25 and the second anniversary of the first time I hunched over my computer slaving over iTunes, YouTube, SoundForge, and Acid 6.0 in order to find killer, obscure jams and sloppily edited movie and television samples for your listening pleasure. Sure, if you're looking at the calendar, you would say "wait a minute, November 2008 to November 2010 is 24 months," but I got a little excited in the beginning, so here we are two years later with a 25th episode that is chock-full of all the things I've been doing since the beginning. Is that really a bad thing?! I've only repeated one song in the past two years, and I would apologize, but it was a Rip-Offs track that should be heard a million times, so I ain't sorry for anything. HA!
Anyway, this episode of Random Old Records starts off with a set of TOUGH tracks from the latest and greatest Nuggets box set from Rhino, which gathers the cream of the L.A. rock n' roll scene of the mid 60s. I spotlighted a few tracks from the psychedelic pop side of the box back in episode #18, but this set includes some some the sloppy, fierce garage rock lurking in its nether regions. Like what, you think a band called Limey & The Yanks wouldn't put out something quality?! What about Ken & The 4th Dimension? Don't let me ramble on like a smug record-collecting jerkface, just listen to this track by The Knack (no, not that one you're thinking about):
Elsewhere, you'll hear tracks from Personal & The Pizzas and the Wrong Words from the KILLER new batch of Trouble In Mind singles, and new jams by Nobunny, the Dirtbombs, the Sugar Stems, Betty & The Werewolves, and Demon's Claws. Oh, and since this is the kinda fancy anniversary you'd wanna put a ring on, I finish things up with a set of songs that rank right up there with my favorites of all time. We're talkin' the Hollies, Moby Grape, the Millennium, Spanky & Our Gang, and Gandalf. Hope ya dig it, and thank you very much for listening in at any point in the last two years! To be honest, I seriously thought about packin' it in after 25, but there's so much music to share that I can't give up now! Tune in next month for a collection of the best songs of 2010. It really has been a great year for rock n' roll!
This is the home of Random Old Records blog and podcast. It covers rock n' roll music from Cincinnati to the beyond. Old or new, silly or sublime, it's all here. Poke around and download a podcast. Thanks for lookin'!
Thoughts, questions, tips, rants, or raves? Contact me! randomoldrecords at gmail dot com.
