From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #344 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, September 19 2007 Volume 16 : Number 344 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser [2fs ] Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back [Rex ] Re: tl;dr: i and i eat dub for breakfast [Sebastian Hagedorn ] Re: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser [djini@voic] Re: tl;dr: i and i eat dub for breakfast [Rex ] Breaking news [kevin ] Re: My name is [kevin ] Re: My name is [kevin ] Re: Breaking news [Capuchin ] Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back [kevin ] Re: Breaking news [Tom Clark ] St. Vincent ["Bachman, Michael" ] Re: St. Vincent [2fs ] AZt last, the book that everyone's been waiting for... [grutness@slingsho] Re: tl;dr: i and i eat dub for breakfast [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] Re: St. Vincent [Dolph Chaney ] Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back [Rex ] tl;dr: no cure today, only disease [Rex ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:26:26 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser On 9/18/07, lep wrote: > > Stacked Crooked says: > > fascinating recent piece at > > , in which the > > author asks how, given that they can only survive by killing other > people > > (namely plants), animals can justify their existence. i wasn't > satisfied > > with his answer, but the question seemed to me fairly profound. Haven't had the chance to read the article, but going from your phrase, I'd say: animals can't justify their existence, but primarily because "justifying one's existence" is a concept utterly unavailable to them. It requires the sort of abstracting, non-timebound memory that, so far as we can tell, animals lack. I might even argue it requires speech - or, following certain sociolinguists, perhaps even writing - to think in those abstract terms. It seems a very odd question - like medieval practices of putting a horse that had killed its owner on trial. It seems to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of being. IN other ways too: there's no such thing as life without death. Plants kill things too, after all. The difference is, only humans *think about* killing things and kill things *optionally*. Oh wait: I misread what you wrote. The author is wrong: Eric Burdon's former backing band did not kill the former singer of Led Zeppelin. That's just a rumor - like the idea that Mr. Green Jeans on Captain Kangaroo is Frank Zappa's father. Or that Studebacher Hoch can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:20:27 -0700 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: Re: Dog-gone Punishment! this is the greatest paragraph in the history of the internet. i only hope that the part about eating the other dog's shit before it hit the ground is the god's-honest truth. kathryn calder. she's ace newman's niece. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:35:19 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back On 9/18/07, 2fs wrote: > I blame Jesus and Mary Chain for the whole candy/drugs metaphor. Or the > whole candy/sex metaphor. But it took Marcy Playground to ruin it forever, Well done and thank you, Marcy Playground. You can laugh all the way to the bank for having sold more copies of your one awful album than JM&C has moved of their entire catalog. But you secretly know you suck and everyone thinks your song is by Nirvana. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:39:00 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: Dog-gone Punishment! On 9/18/07, Stacked Crooked wrote: > his own shit. [...] It had to be done. It was for the greater good I say!> > > this is the greatest paragraph in the history of the internet. i only hope > that the part about eating the other dog's shit before it hit the ground is > the god's-honest truth. It is. I saw it. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:41:02 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: tl;dr: i and i eat dub for breakfast - --On 18. September 2007 17:24:19 -0700 Rex wrote: > The Gun Club, "Fire of Love". I've always been a little skeptical about > this band, whose reputation sometimes seems to be built on > live-fast-die-young mythology as much as music I think that's an exaggeration. > (something that always > seems more troublesome in LA bands, stylized roots forms, and > non-instrumentalist frontpersons, all of which are more apt than most to > indicate that your band is a personality-based artifice). Are you saying that Jeffrey Lee Pierce didn't play an instrument? If so I did not know that. > This is > pretty good, though, landing maybe flight of stairs short of The Cramps, > who have the sense not to take themselves too seriously, and, of course, > well shy of X, although you have to give any band credit for even trying > to play on the same field. I don't know either of the bands you compare them to (by name, but not by music). I'll write more below, but a funny coincidence is that I got "Fire of Love" a few weeks ago, but hadn't yet listened to it. I just did on my way to work (bicycle and iPod) and got up to track 6. My first associations were White Stripes with better songwriting and early Eleventh Dream Day, the latter mostly sonically. > There's a skeletal quality to some of the > songs that leaves the beat hard to pin down until halfway through that > tends to work better on me that the flat-out stompers do. I think that > what's meant to radiate off of this record is a certain kind of > authenticity, which I can grasp, although the recording is a bit thin to > really exude menace it comes across much better when Pierce is singing > about contemporary, claustrophobic urban squalor than relying on stock > spooky-blues imagery (and he seems to know it). I don't usually pay any attention to lyrics when I listen to records for the first few times. Many friends of mine *never* do. So that doesn't really affect my judgment. > He was not that > compelling of a vocalist on any level, I disagree. Of course he "can't sing" in any classical meaning of the word, but his singing touches me in a way I can't describe or explain. That goes for something ... > and there's no reason to pretend > that he was, but a handful of these songs are touched by some kind of > greatness (basically the ones you've heard of, "Ghost on the Highway", > "Sex Beat", etc.) and maybe that's enough in itself. I'm glad to have > heard this for historical interest, but it seems too trapped in its time. > Maybe it's just that bad-boy image faux-roots bands with this basic sound > are a lot more common these days or something it's a "you had to be > there" thing, and it sort of depends on the flavor of your personal rock > and roll fantasy whether not you want to have been there. And again, I > wish I'd been at one of those Pop Group shows As I said, I just got "Fire of Love". But I've had "Mother Juno" ever since it came out. That one is a lot more controlled than "Fire of Love" and it has one of my all-time favorite songs on it: "Lupita Screams". I just can't get enough of that. The whole record means a lot to me, even though I've never seen them live. You obviously know many more bands than I do, but I don't agree with your assessment at all. I don't get the "trapped in its time" thing, for example. To me the music sounds fresh as morning dew ;-) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:15:04 +0100 From: craigie* Subject: A&M rights? On 18/09/2007, 2fs wrote: > > I sometimes think such rights ought to expire after a given period of time > if they're not used: if a label owns rights to a catalog but does not > publish the music, those rights revert to the artist. It'd be nice if > artists had enough clout to make that a standard feature of their > contracts...but they probably don't. I seem to recall that Prince had this added to his contract with Warners, with rights reverting to him over a period of time... as did Bob Dylan. Elvis Costello may have done something similar, although his early recordings may only have been licensed through majors, and therefore not owned by them. It's a rarity though, but should be standard. Groups generally used to eschew rights in favour of actually being on a label. Thank Artemis that the digital revolution is killing big record companies at last. Or Robyn can do what the Wrens were doing with their two Grass/Wind-Up > releases before they were finally reissued last year: selling home-burned > CD-Rs of them. Or maybe they were selling artwork and giving away the > CD-Rs > to avoid legal whosits. Or maybe they just said, screw it, and sold them > anyway. The Chameleons (UK - if you're Stateside) also did something similar. They privately pressed CDs of their OOP material and sold it directly to Record Shops, quite rightly believing that company reps wouldn't spot it there. They didn't. craigie* - -- first things first, but not necessarily in that order... - -- first things first, but not necessarily in that order... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:49:20 -0400 (EDT) From: djini@voicenet.com Subject: Re: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser That is my favorite subject heading in quite some time. So today had that, a glancing reference to Dan Savage's short but powerful list of squick-triggers, James making an ass joke, and a bumper sticker reading JESUS HAD TWO DADDIES (non-feg, but still noteworthy). Thanks for helping to balance out my extraordinarily G-rated environment! Jeanne ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:23:42 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: tl;dr: i and i eat dub for breakfast On 9/19/07, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote: > --On 18. September 2007 17:24:19 -0700 Rex > wrote: > wish I'd been at one of those Pop Group shows > > As I said, I just got "Fire of Love". But I've had "Mother Juno" ever since > it came out. That one is a lot more controlled than "Fire of Love" and it > has one of my all-time favorite songs on it: "Lupita Screams". I just can't > get enough of that. The whole record means a lot to me, even though I've > never seen them live. I'm obviously going to have to reevaluate this whole thing. I liked "Fire of Love", but I think my lingering skepticism about the whole cult of personality colored my view. It's dissipating- that's one of the reasons I toss these reviews out, to get different perspectives on what I'm hearing, and I really appreciate it. "Mother Juno" is on deck for today. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:27:51 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Breaking news http://uk.news.yahoo.com/wenn/20070918/ten-jolie-visited-disneyland-after-takin-c60bd6d_1.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:53:23 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: My name is >a bumper sticker reading JESUS HAD TWO DADDIES (non-feg, but still >noteworthy). Two daddies, and a mom. Talk about yer family values. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:04:09 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: My name is >It seems a very odd question - like medieval practices of putting a horse >that had killed its owner on trial. It seems to fundamentally misunderstand >the nature of being. Which gave rise to the wonderful scene early on in Mary Gentle's brilliant novel Rats And Gargoyles in which a pig is tried and hung, for reasons I don't remember at the moment. >Or that Studebacher Hoch can write the Lord's Prayer on the >head of a pin. But he is really outtasite. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:20:28 -0400 (CDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Breaking news On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, kevin wrote: > http://uk.news.yahoo.com/wenn/20070918/ten-jolie-visited-disneyland-after-takin-c60bd6d_1.html Disneyland is in Annaheim, California, not Orlando, Florida. And, err, do they think she's unique in that particular experience? God, I hate the "news". J. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:59:32 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back >But it took Marcy Playground to ruin it forever, Well done and thank >you, Marcy Playground. You can laugh all the way to the bank for >having sold more copies of your one awful album than JM&C has moved of >their entire catalog. But you secretly know you suck and everyone >thinks your song is by Nirvana. So I should be glad that I've never to my conscious knowledge heard these guys? np: Love's "Andmoreagain" obsessively, over and over. (Anyone familiar with the rumor that Bryan Maclean used to date Liza Minelli?) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:28:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: My name is On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, kevin wrote: > >It seems a very odd question - like medieval practices of putting a > horse >that had killed its owner on trial. It seems to fundamentally > misunderstand >the nature of being. > > Which gave rise to the wonderful scene early on in Mary Gentle's > brilliant novel Rats And Gargoyles in which a pig is tried and hung, > for reasons I don't remember at the moment. There's also a movie, not *great* but good enough, inspired by these old practices: The Advocate, starring Colin Firth and Ian Holm. http://imdb.com/title/tt0107146/ - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:34:09 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: Breaking news On Sep 19, 2007, at 8:27 AM, kevin wrote: > http://uk.news.yahoo.com/wenn/20070918/ten-jolie-visited-disneyland- > after-takin-c60bd6d_1.html "Jolie visited Disneyland after taking LSD" Isn't that what you're supposed to do? - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:47:06 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: St. Vincent Has anyone picked up the debut album by St. Vincent, "Marry Me"? I got it a few days ago and it should make my top 10 for 2007. St. Vincent is just Annie Clark. I saw her opening for Midlake earlier in the year and was impressed. Michael B. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:07:43 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: St. Vincent On 9/19/07, Bachman, Michael wrote: > > Has anyone picked up the debut album by St. Vincent, "Marry Me"? I got > it a few days ago and it should make my top 10 for 2007. Yes - I like it quite a bit. (If anyone wants to know what it sounds like, I featured a few tracks on my blog a couple weeks back: link in URL). - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:20:11 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: AZt last, the book that everyone's been waiting for... It'll make a wonderful Christmas present. James ("whoa...headfuck!") - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:23:48 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: tl;dr: i and i eat dub for breakfast Rex a dit: >The Triffids, "Black Swan". I really don't know about the "rap" on Track 3 [...] > Where to next with this >band? As mentioned before, either the countrified atmosphere of "In the pines" or the lush orchestrations of "Calenture" James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:38:00 -0500 From: Dolph Chaney Subject: Re: St. Vincent Me too -- love it quite a bit. - -- Dolph At 04:07 PM 9/19/2007, 2fs wrote: >On 9/19/07, Bachman, Michael wrote: > > > > Has anyone picked up the debut album by St. Vincent, "Marry Me"? I got > > it a few days ago and it should make my top 10 for 2007. > > > >Yes - I like it quite a bit. (If anyone wants to know what it sounds like, I >featured a few tracks on my blog a couple weeks back: link in URL). > > >-- > >...Jeff Norman > >The Architectural Dance Society >http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:12:27 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back On 9/19/07, kevin wrote: > np: Love's "Andmoreagain" obsessively, over and over. (Anyone familiar > with the rumor that Bryan Maclean used to date Liza Minelli?) Although I do love that song, the only rumor I can recall about Minelli is far more disturbing, involving the ingestion of cocaine via an orifice other than the two you'd think of first. Sorry, kids. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:18:21 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: Breaking news On 9/19/07, Tom Clark wrote: > > On Sep 19, 2007, at 8:27 AM, kevin wrote: > > > http://uk.news.yahoo.com/wenn/20070918/ten-jolie-visited-disneyland- > > after-takin-c60bd6d_1.html > > "Jolie visited Disneyland after taking LSD" > > Isn't that what you're supposed to do? I remember being accosted at Disneyland by a bunch of clearly tripping people, dressed up as if to advertise what they were up to (hint: tiedye and Grateful Dead paraphernalia were involved), and this one NeoHippy Chick staring into my eyes... NHC: Duuuuude... are you FRYING? Me: Erm, no. NHC: (big grin) BECAUSE *WE* ARE! (laughs hysterically) Me: Really? In related news, I noticed at the park this weekend that people still play hackeysack. Christopher Gross, please explain! - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:24:59 -0700 From: Rex Subject: tl;dr: no cure today, only disease Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Upsetters, "Return of the Super Ape". From 1978. two years later than the original "Super Ape" and supposedly a good deal more messed-up. The recording is a good deal muddier, and I don't think that's all the dub aesthetic sounds like some goofy mastering to me. But there are a lot of freaky things going on behind the vocals, treated percussion and whistles and things, and the vocals themselves are a lot more rough-hewn than on the earlier album. I can also tell I'm gonna have to at least hit a wiki article or something on Rasta, which I probably once knew about, but what I probably once knew was also probably wrong. Yes, this gets more and more warped as it progresses instruments are played back at speeds that seem to change as the track progresses, most notably some really scary sounding ultra-low piano rumblings, and the last couple of tracks are the freakiest of all. These recordings are still not as spacious as I would've expected maybe that comes later still, or in the hands of other artists (I still haven't found a satisfactory starting point with King Tubby, so any help there would be most appreciated), but we've definitely gotten to a much stranger place than where the original "Super Ape" dropped us off. The adventure continues Gun Club, "Mother Juno". Having been convinced by the reaction to my "Fire of Love" review that I was probably bringing too much baggage to my viewpoint on this band, I'm back on the horse (no pun intended) right away. "Mother Juno" seems a much more powerful and muscular album than "Fire" I'm not sure if tightness is the point with this band, but it's definitely here. The ramshackle, lumbering off-the-cuff feel of "Fire" is part of what makes it compelling, but here the songs feel more complete and less thrown together around some central (often very good) idea, and it also makes me think a lot less about The Cramps, which allows me to take it a little more seriously on its own terms. The long, spooky ballad (which seems to be named) "Yellow Eyes" is very effective and controlled, the music evocative without feeling obliged to feel out of control; Pierce's lyrics are broadcast directly (and are quite good), and his voice sounds a lot better (to me). I'm a little perplexed by the subsequent song, which, incongruously, seems to have been borrowed from the Cocteau Twins, but after that it's quickly back to dysfunctional big-town band and romance drama. Perhaps I'm supposed to like this less than the more visceral, authentic "Fire", but in reality it gives me a little more confidence to go back and listen to the earlier album feeling that something more than ego and romanticism of darkness is stewing with this band. (Addendum: I've just discovered that this album is more than 6 years later than the debut, and was produced by Robin Guthrie, facts which demystify some of my ruminations above. Also, it appears that Jeffrey Lee Pierce did play slide guitar on at least the earliest Gun Club recordings, so I stand corrected; most photos I've seen of him onstage show him doing his wildman thing with a mic in hand, so that was an unthinking assumption on my part for which I apologize.) Delta 5, "Singles and Sessions 1979-81". Another feminist post-punk group from Leeds aligned with Gang of Four and Mekons, Delta 5, with their two-bass lineup, are now of course best remembered as laying the groundwork for Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Okay, just kidding (although Ned's was pretty cool for completely different reasons). They'd have to be compared to The Au Pairs in theory, but are actually quite a good deal different in practice. This collection was issued by Kill Rock Stars in the current century, along with the Essential Logic comp and the Liliput anthologyKRS apparently really wanted to get the roots of odd female postpunk back to their core audience (either that or give Greil Marcus a chance to write a shitload of new liner notes, of which he availed himself). It should have coincidentally converged with the postpunk resurgence at the same time, but I don't know if anyone really caught onto it (I picked up all of this stuff used and quite likely out of print), but the effort was appreciated by me. Delta 5 is pretty interesting in its its lineup, where form mirrors content three vocalists, two (or more) bassists, liberal blend of genders. The music that comes forth, and this is supposedly their entire scant content, is edgy and danceable, but less tightly wound than either Go4 or The Au Pairs, and none of the vocalists (who often sing in unison) has the power, range, or control of The Au Pair's Leslie woods, but the unison, and the tendency to sing the same choruses with all the rhythms offset by a beat the second time around is a subtle trick I've only ever heard on Slits recordssomething in the air, I suppose. The songs are deceptively simple what seems like a direct slogan can often turn out to be as much of a character piece, or even a self-criticism, or both and more at the same time. Or maybe I'm just parroting those liner notes by Marcus. In any case, this is another solid and immediate collection from some kind of golden age for experimentation with pop minimalism and radical content, and it's too bad this is all there is. The three live tracks at the end are truly great. Rank & File, "The Slash Years". I think that this is essentially a twofer, the first half of which is the "Sundown" album I reviewed yesterday (?), so I get to hear that whole album again, followed by another one. That's okay; I can wrap my head around the repeated stuff again and reassess, and then see how things developed later on. Actually, the running order seems to be tweaked, so I'm not sure how it's sequenced. It remains fun listening. I can't decide at this point whether I like or dislike the absence of traditional country instruments (a pedal steel and a fiddle or so show up towards the end, actually) it definitely bespeaks a pre-No Depression world where reverence for root forms was not so academic and earnest, and there was still fun to be had exploring and updating the stuff. Those Long Ryders records manage to do a little of both at the same time, but that doesn't take anything away from Rank & File. After a few listens, a lot of these tunes stick with me in the way that, well, real old country songs do, so that seems like a mission accomplished for these guys. The closing cover of "White Lightning", while a slightly different reading from The Fall's, is very nice. The National, "The National". A couple of years ago, someone gave me a copy of "Alligator" by The National, about whom I then know nothing; it crept up on me became one of my favorite records of recent years. I still don't really know that much about the band, other than that I've listened to that and their subsequent album a lot, and they take me to entirely new places. The lyrics are the best kind of abstract, personal but wide open imagery (the kind of stream-of-consciousness that's a bit arty but elastic enough to encompass phrases like "We'll run like we're awesome, totally genius") the music employs subtly interlocking guitars towards a sound that has strong echoes of American Music Club and The Tindersticks, but with an identity all its own. This is presumably their debut album (and there's another one between this and "Alligator"), and it's a pleasant (melancholy) surprise to find that most of the best elements were in place from the very start. The songs are slightly less unique in form, a little more like standard issue (but good) indie rock ballads; the singer's voice will get deeper and his patchwork lyrics more evocative still, but plenty of arrestingly original lines surface here, with a specialization in making the everyday concerns of people who wouldn't normally be in pop songs, office drones and such, but rendering them as individuals rather than stereotypes. Maybe the "unstupid anthem" trend has an "unstupid ballad" corollary; if so, The National and DCFC are probably the leading exponents (the form itself, or at least this species of it, was practically invented by Neil Finn, as far as I can tell). Some might find this band a lugubrious downer, but for me, they delivered exactly the right record at the right time in my life, and have turned out to have the goods to provide more beyond that. Bush Tetras, "Boom in the Night: Original Studio Recordings 1980-1983". A collection of the entire recorded output of a largely female trailblazing art-funk band yes, that sounds familiar to me, too. Except that Bush Tetras were a New York band of a slightly later vintage, and while they are mining that uptight-danceable vein exemplified by the UK bands I keep reviewing here (not to mention their hometown contemporaries), they're also adding sheets of noise and amplifier abuse here an update of that "New York subway sound" is replacing the scratchy attacks of those English bands, the funk is getting looser, and we're turning the corner into No Wave (or, you know, pigfuck or whatever) it's actually not too great a leap from here to Sonic Youth's surprisingly danceable debut EP. Plus, Kim Gordon seems to have borrowed the Tetra's "I don't wanna" from "Too Many Creeps" and mashed it together with LL Cool J's "I don't think so" for "Kool Thing", so there's that. The very last recordings feature blurs of noise guitar which point sideways to the early Banshees and even the first, piercing Cocteau Twins records, and forward to Live Skull among others. I have no idea what the name of this band means, other than that a neon tetra is a popular freshwater aquarium fish, and that "bush" during this period could have signified only a loathsome vice-president, not a whole dynasty of loathsome actual presidents or a loathsome faux-grunge band from the UK it was mostly, mercifully, shrubbery at the time. Again, it's too bad there's nothing more from this band, other than a reunion album (about which I'm now curious) given the trajectory it's following, it's surprisingly more lighthearted than its UK antecedents. The Windbreakers, "Terminal". I've gotten totally lost in the chronology of The Windbreakers' releases, but this is one of them. It's probably dangerous to ingest this much power-pop at one time it all starts to blur after a while. On the other hand, sometimes standout tracks become all that more obvious, like the shimmering third track here, which may be called "You Won't See Me" in spite of not being a Beatles cover, and the throbbing psyche explosion that follows it, which may be called "She Just Wants to Close Her (Unintelligble)" well, it's obviously not actually called that, but it's good stuff. This particular album is drenched in electric twelve-strings, with seemingly a lot of care taken with getting them to sound a little bit different on every song, which is not the kind of thing I'm apt to complain about. One of the vocalists has a more pronounced McGuinn/Chilton thing going on here, both in terms of timbre and phrasing (I'm sure it would translate as a Tom Petty imitation to a lot of people). And hold on a second is this another cover of a Television song, one from that once-underrated second album? Why, yes, it's "Glory"! They get some big points for that shit, and a few more for thoughtfully adding a little fiddle break. The Windbreakers are still basically peddling a classy rendition of textbook power-pop, and will be eternally bedeviled by that odious name, but this stacks up as a good album after all, far and away my favorite of their records so far. PS, I checked my Dead Milkmen compilation... no Ottoman song. What LP am I looking for? ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #344 ********************************