Too many words devoted to Robert Smith.

Been listening to Pandora Radio at work. I never really got into Pandora Radio before: you say you like the Misfits, you're stuck listening to the post-Danzig schlock that Jerry Only put together; you say you like Bob Dylan, eventually you're listening to way too much Mason Jennings; you say you like Eric B. and Rakim and suddenly every third song is from The 18th Letter album, which could technically be quite good, but are you prepared to make that assessment when all you want is to be passively entertained while typing a memo? But anyway, it's there on the Internet, it works for the temporary-ness of a job where I'm not going to load CDs onto my computer.

The other day it came up with "Mint Car" from the Cure's 1996 album Wild Mood Swings. I imagine this is the record that most once-fans associate with the end of their career, but there was a time when you couldn't escape "Mint Car," a short eight weeks after which radio play petered out, the song disappearing altogether after a year or so, never to be a part of the culture again. I really liked this song, I even remember where I was the last time I heard it: Coelee's old house, in the little space between the living room and kitchen, must've been about 1998. I've thought about the song off and on since then, and I have to say hearing it after all this time made me really happy.

So happy, in fact, that on my way out of town to Phoenix, I swung by Amoeba and picked up the album for five bucks. Trudged west to Hollywood in rush hour traffic, trudged back east through the hour-and-a-half of idling that you must do to get out of the LA area in the early evening. It felt triumphant, the sort of inconvenient and not-worth-it detour that still reminds me that I am an adult, I can waste two hours if I want to thank you very much.

I'm embarrassed by how much I like the somewhat maligned "Mint Car." I don't understand what a mid-period Cure fan can find missing in this track. It's a great example of the manically happy Cure songs ("The sun is up! I'm so happy I could scream!") where you think Robert Smith should feel guilty about writing songs that remind people how they never ever feel this way. It's got the rest too: the guitar sounds bright, the music during the chorus picks itself right up, his voice disappears into a wheeze when he hit the vowels mid-word. He makes the kind of sounds those Sesame Street nose-honker muppets made. It's close-to-perfect if you like this version of Robert Smith, and if you can accommodate the occasional lyric about vanilla smiles and strawberry kisses.

The video is something else too. An old-West high stakes poker game, and Robert Smith wearing a sheet underneath Magic Johnson's getup from the Michael Jackson "Remember the Time" video.

As for the rest of the album, well, it's a lesser version of Wish. There's the longwinded and dirge-y opening track. There's half of a lyric in "Round & Round & Round" that seems taken directly from "Doing the Unstuck," and "Mint Car" itself ends in a rush during the last two seconds of the song, this being lifted straight out of "Friday I'm in Love." There are a bunch of songs with one-word titles. He even does that from-the-throat "I'm absolutely mad" thing where he sounds like a bootleg Louis Armstrong and/or a bootleg Moz.

There are also more singles. "The 13th" falls a little flat and sounds too deliberately Latin. I think that was the follow-up to "Mint Car," and I like it too despite its flaws. "Strange Attraction" was yet another single, but I don't remember this one as well. It's growing on me, but it sounds like a mid-tempo Paula Abdul song. Something in the drums does it. "Gone!" was a single too, but the best thing about that song is that it has an exclamation point in the title.

This post sounds really album review-ish, and I don't like that. I think I just have a lot to say about the Cure, and when is there ever occasion to talk about the Cure in 2009? Sorry Lauren.

This blog is turning into an apologies-to-Lauren blog. Because Lauren is a the faithful reader.

So, for your trouble, here are photos of Robert Smith looking like a fat and confused Alice Cooper. The last one is priceless - he looks more like a Bob than a Robert. I think he's starting to disintegrate. Get it?

How are you? Fine thank you. See you later.

So I saw Le Tigre perform once and oddly, this is exactly how it felt at the time.



A few thoughts:

1. Does she really say "More crackers please?" "Linoleum floor?"

2. My sister Lisa liked Jem. I remember those earrings. The bad guys (girls) were called the Misfits if I recall. Is it a problem that my favorite Misfits songs are the misogynist ones? How appropriate is it that those were the ones that sounded extra-Phil Spector-y?

3. I love the parasol at 1:29 and 1:52.

4. That song from this album, "Les and Ray." I love that song.

5. Also, if I knew how to play any musical instruments, I would play them like these ladies.

6. If you play the video in two separate tabs, and start them 1/2 second apart, the drums sound all death metal.

7. Altogether this is the best thing I have seen in recent memory. This is like the best thing since Election Night.

Via Feministing.

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In which a rock band makes fun of Bakersfield.

Just got back from the LA Propagandhi show, which surprised me because it was actually a better show than the Pomona show. Usually big-city rock crowds are all self-aware scowling, but people seemed really excited to be at this show. I internalized the first wave of Propagandhi records without really sharing my enthusiasm with anybody, so it was cool to be around a bunch of people who were listening to the same things I was in 1996.

Highlight of the evening: "So, this isn't as daring to say here as it was in 1993 in Bakersfield, California, but we're a gay-positive band." I still love it when people talk bad about Bakersfield. I don't care if Danny is from there, it still makes me laugh.

Lowlight of the evening: the inevitable segue from Bakersfield-bashing into Proposition 8 - somehow it never occurred to me that people from other countries know about this and are thinking about it, and it made me more ashamed to be from post-Prop 8 California. The whole thing seemed like such a flip of the coin, I'm hopeful it will be overturned next year. Cross your fingers, I guess.

Other highlights: "Back to the Motor League," "Dear Coach's Corner," "Rio de San Atlanta, Manitoba," "A Speculative Fiction," and a rad version of "Fuck the Border" sung by a member of the opening band, the unfortunately named Bridge and Tunnel. (Despite the name, they are also pretty good. They play Hot Water Music-era hardcore-ish stuff, and the lead guitar player is cool because she plays like Eddie Van Halen.)

As a teenager this band was so intimidating, a mountain of radical politics I would never live up to. But what struck me seeing them Friday and tonight was that they are really just hicks with no pretensions. There's dignity to what they do because they do it as well as you'll ever seen it done, but they don't seem to think very much of themselves. They obviously love it - Todd Kowalksi in particular is a giddy, fist-pumping teenager up there - and you can tell they grew up doing it together. It left me feeling sort of sad that I've never really found something that I love doing like that.

Check them out when they come back in four years. They are still getting better after more than fifteen years, almost unheard of among the 90's punk bands that are still around.

Related: despite being from Bakersfield, Danny is also pro-gay. He sent out the following video today, which makes fun of Prop 8 and Pat Robertson, and looks oddly like a fake rap video if you watch it without the sound on.



One-half of this duo played at the same show as Jessica's new band, Old Lumps, yesterday. That show was also great, and I like Jessica's new band even though the name makes me uncomfortable, and this duck-video lady is obviously also talented and funny.

Three-rock show weekend gets a thumbs up.

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Where are these green shoots they are talking about?

Check out this on the continuing depressing state of the world: Paul Krugman gives some other famous schmoe what-for, Bill Bradley sounds like he should take Geithner's job up from under him, and George Soros shows up because if you're that rich apparently you are de facto. A good read, but where are the ladies on the panel? Not sure if you've noticed, but Obama's been talking a lot about how he wants to encourage men to go into professions like nursing . . . from the looks of it we could maybe use some women in the profession of explaining why and how the world is falling apart too.

Really, Bill Bradley is quite impressive here.

Anyway, off to Pomona right now to see Propagandhi. I'm not even going to bother going into how excited I am because I've been wanting to see this show since I was thirteen years old. And I love going to Pomona, it scares me, and I haven't been there in several years. Big night all around. Again, I know it isn't fashionable to say this, but it's hard to think of a better punk band around these days.


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If you're cast on thin ice you may as well dance.

If any of the four people who still read this have any interest, I wanted to say that the new Propagandhi record, "Supporting Caste," completely destroys, as expected.

No one out there on the Internet will tell you, so I thought I'd mention it. Punk music too earnest to be even noted by the Pitchfork crowd, music made my metalheads who were metalheads long before it was ironically cool to wear a token Venom t-shirt around Williamsburg/Humboldt Park/Echo Park/(insert your favorite "urban frontier" here).

It's an extension of their last two records for sure, and at times it sounds like straight-up crossover thrash. Also, even though Todd Kowalski joined the band more than ten years ago, this is only their third record since then, so his contributions to the band are still becoming clear. Not totally sure, but I think his songs are the compassionate ones about refugees and immigrants and junkies and middle-school outcasts, and you sort of get the sense that this band would have ended years ago without his enthusiasm.

Also, they've added a second guitar. Second guitar!!!

And finally, they're playing Pomona and Los Angeles in late-May. Who's coming with me? I've been wanting to see this band for literally 14 years, and I don't think they've come anywhere near me, geographically, during that time.

The last thing I will say to this album's credit: my cats spend a lot of time with loud music of different types, and nothing really phases them at all. But when the big huge riffs come in on this record, it totally startles Rakim, who is sitting in the window next to me right now.

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Stakes Is Weird

Went to Fresno this past weekend to visit the family. Sold a million CD's I never listen to anymore, and armed with a princely sum in store credit, I went on an Elton John binge. I also bought the Dead Kennedys Frankenchrist album because I have not heard "MTV Get Off the Air" since I was a fifteen year-old of much smaller physical frame and much larger optical frames. Frankenchrist is still really good and the intro to "Soup Is Good Food" still sounds weird and great. And as every last person in this country loses his/her job and finds no safety net, the words are disappointingly relevant again. It's officially the '80's, but worse. We're dying again folks.

But on to more important things. Brother-in-law Matt stumbled across something strange at the used record store: an LFO record. You know, "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch." The Lyte Funky Ones. Those guys.

Or rather, these guys:


They had another album, post-Abercrombie & Fitch. Three high-profile cameos. Sit down for this. The following all actually did verses on an LFO album.

De La Soul

Kelis, "the loud screaming chick with the hair."

And the ever-scary M.O.P. Huh? (This means they went into the studio with LFO right around they went into the studio with Pharaohe Monche for Internal Affairs. Simon says think about it.)


The weirdness crown obviously goes to the MOP appearance, but these are all sufficiently horrifying to ruin your day one by one. I remember this period of time well, from about 1997 to 2002, where everything in the entire world went insane. Does it surprise anyone that a country that could produce such an unsettling musical collaboration would be sending innocent men to Syria to be tortured indefinitely within a year?

P.S. I just put tags on this post, and it earns six: photos, hilarious, politics, celebrities, hippy, music. This is probably two or three more tags than any other post I've done, and I think only a musical-collaborative-nightmare of this scale could cast such a wide net.

P.P.S. I just reread this post and I think only Eric will be even remotely interested, and he's probably not aware that I'm still updating this here weblog. Apologies, but it's already done.

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Only welcome for our drink and smoke.

Related to the last post.

Turns out that Neil Young plays harmonica on Joni Mitchell's Hejira, "Furry Sings the Blues." I find this strange. Why try to coax a perpetually messy and unpleasant circa-1976 Neil Young out of his puddle of vomit and down the hill from Topanga, just to play his shakey-at-best harmonica? Seems like it'd be easier to just learn the harmonica part yourself.

The lesson here is that 1960's and 1970's LA scene rock acts were essentially rappers: "Hey, let's find an excuse to get all our friends in the studio to phone-in some completely unnecessary cameos. Then we'll get high."

Tangent: Brother-in-law Matt and I went to the Hollywood Cemetary in Memphis last summer to find Furry Lewis' grave. We walked around in the mid-southern hot-ick for over an hour looking for the tombstone, while a man with a hole in his throat did general weed-whacking. He had no idea where Furry Lewis' grave was, but assured us that his brother would know. His brother was off fixing a punctured tractor-tire, but "should be back soon," which in the South means, "eventually, or not at all, or we'll see, or let's have a beer." The man sounded like he was speaking a foreign language, but he was in fact speaking English.

We gave up and got back in the car and turned on the air-conditioner. Worried that the unpaved and rocky cemetary roads would puncture my tires, we drove slow. For reasons I don't actually remember, we soon rolled to a stop . . . right in front of the final resting place of "Walter 'Furry' Lewis: Blues Man."



I think the story is that Furry Lewis hated Joni Mitchell's song and maybe even sued her. To be memorialized in song is to be treated like a dead man, of course, but presumably Furry's beef was less that and more the fact that "Furry Sings the Blues" is an incredibly boring Joni Mitchell song. Not being about California and all.

Here are some other gravestones from the Hollywood Cemetary. Cemetaries down there remind you that in some ways, the American South remains a developing nation even today.



And the prize for most depressing tombstone ever:



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