Lemmy
Night Music: Fugazi, “The Waiting Room”
When I write my words about these songs I’m trying to figure it out.
Fugazi was a punk band that showed up after punk. They embraced the real political values of punk and made music that many loved. With an activist spirit that pissed off some.
I love Fugazi’s motives, they were activist and political, and I admire their music. I am so glad that there is today a big active population today that shares their values.
Let’s get to the fucking song:
Night Music: Of Montreal, “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal”
I had a very brief career as a civilian rock critic for New York magazine.
A couple or few times I was sent a bunch of CDs. I was to write 75 words about each from my personal un-music-critical perspective. They created a grid of my comments along with five other civilian critics (identified as Greenwich Village preschool teacher, or Upper West Side socialist, you get the idea) writing about those discs.
One of the disks was one of Beyonce’s which I think we must have all hated so much they didn’t include it. Another was the album this cut is from, by a band I hadn’t heard of called Of Montreal.
In my review I said that this song was great, but the album sucked. That the guy seemed too obsessed by Norse mythology and his own personal mythology, and it was all terrible, misogynist, pretentious, awful, except for this rather long fantastic song which I still really like even though especially because it is pretentious.
Some time after my “review” ran, New York profiled Of Montreal’s lead guy, Kevin Barnes (accompanied by a photo of Barnes with the notorious Solange Knowles). Turns out he’s a single, not a band, with hired players, and he has a backstory that either means our past is meaningless or that we are prisoners of our destiny. He was also married, with kids, in Georgia, though he’d moved to Norway for a time, if I’m getting this right. An original story, kind of surprising.
I like this overly long song a lot.
Better than Green Day.
And then, if you care, there is this, which is kind of amazing, at least for a few minutes. Singer songwriter version.
Rolling Stone: Top 10 Punk Rock Bands Readers Poll
NYHC
Enough Sorrow.
Been thinking about this song a lot lately. Generic hardcore at its finest.
1) Don’t know why this hasn’t been chosen for Saturday Song Of The Week yet.
2) Me and my buds used to sing this a lot way back when.
3) This goes out especially to Lawr.
Breakfast Blend: Sorrow
The Dum Dum Girls (well, girl Dee Dee) cover
The McCoys.
Good Morning: Falling in Reverse, “The Drug In Me is You”
I found this band about 10 minutes ago. I hear Queen and a ton of glam, and I’m happy to have heard them. I think you will too.
I have no idea where this music fits in the grand scheme, but it resonates in my part of the world. Get me on the mailing list!
Ps. Listened to some more Falling in Reverse today, and I have to say that The Drug In Me is You is a really good song. Maybe their best. A little of this stuff goes a long way for me, but most of it doesn’t connect at all. This song does, despite the silly video.
Night Music: Bad Religion, “Sorrow”
I’ve got a sorrow kick going on, so get into that.
I also have a love for the stupid quixotic hard core love scene that I think Bad Religion represents.
Prizewinning Breakfast Blend: Pete Patton
Pete Patton won the first Lunch Quiz here at Rock Remnants, and so gets to program a Breakfast Blend. He lives in Manhattan’s Lower Eastside and works as a terrorism analyst. He says, “My life was thrown upside down when I first heard the Byrds and I was saved by Quadrophenia my junior year in high school, 16 years after it was released.”
Editors note: “Terrorist Analyst?” Tell me more.
Pete says:
The Poets I found out about on the Nuggets II set. I liked the name and was captured by their outfits. I believe all the original members save one, are now deceased. Here is one of their two big singles from Decca, “That’s The Way It’s Got To Be,” from 1965. Wooden Spoon: Singles Anthology 1964-1967 is available as an import I think:
Jumping ahead a few decades, another Glasgow-based band The Orange Juice. I always thought Edwyn Collins was an overlooked genius of the 80’s alternative scene. James Kirk and Steven Daly left after the first record and Collins kept going on with the help of Zeke Manyika, a drummer from Zimbabwe, to critical acclaim but not commercial success. Collins would be more remembered these days for his hypnotoc hit “A Girl Like You,” from 1995. Collins suffered a stroke and went into a coma and was hospitalized for six months. The road of his recovery can be seen in the documentary, “The Possibilities Are Endless.” There are so many Orange Juice songs to choose from but thought this version of “Rip it Up,” from the Old Grey Whistle Test from their 1982 album of the same name couldn’t be beat:
Teenage Fanclub, a band inspired by The Orange Juice and Aztec Camera but none so much as Big Star and The Byrds. Their 1991 album Bandwagonesque beat out Nirvana in Spin’s album of the year in 1991. Their whole catalog is a must own with the memorizing Gene Clark off their surprisingly maligned “Thirteen” album being a favorite. In my mind these were the guys who made Creation Records what it was long before the Gallagher Brothers came around. This track is “What You Do To Me,” from Bandwagonesque. They made an impression on Alex Chilton as described in his new biography, “A Man Called Destruction.”