December 2011
Fester's Thirteen Days Of Xmas
On the first day of Xmas Dr. Fester gave to me... Find out what Dr. Fester has in store for you with the top 13 albums of the year, plus the top 100, year-end summary, genre lists, movies, tv, books and more.
It's hard to pigeonhole a year when it's not quite over. For some it belonged to Lady Gaga, at least until Adele stormed the charts with the biggest selling album (5 million in the U.S.) since Usher's Confessions in 2004. For others it was a banner year for underground rap and hip-hop in the form of self-released "mixtapes." Or for polished, commercial R&B, soul and dance pop, or country, or gauzy, arty indie pop, or a group of folky Americana albums that seem to be our era's version of 70s soft rock. Simon Reynolds, author of Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to It's Own Past, showed his favorite albums to be obscure experimental electronic music. His choices don't disprove his thesis, that while there are small, incremental innovations in music, there's been nothing big and striking enough to revolutionize the music world in a couple decades. My response was that it isn't necessarily important. When you back up and view the history of music for the past millennium, cultures didn't flame out because their music failed to become unpredictably unrecognizeable every few years. That was a very unique condition spurred by the fast-moving markets of late-20th century capitalism and a flurry of technological innovations. Some people expected that since we went from learning to fly to traveling to the moon in just a few decades, that by now we should be intergalactic space travelers. I know, it's so disappointing that we're not penned up in floating cans of space colonies. Continue...
Top 100 Albums of 2011 | 2011 Breakdown: Top 13 Genre Lists | Shows | Movies, Television, Books, Comics, Music Coverage
Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace by Aaron Cohen (Continuum's 33-1/3 Series, 2011)
When Continuum started their 33-1/3 series in September 2003, I was excited enough to plan to read all of them. As someone who enjoys reading liner notes, what better than the most complete liner notes for some of the greatest albums ever released? However, some liner notes are better than others, and ones that fail to tell a story can even be too dry for geeks like me. After reading about a dozen titles, I started falling behind. The last I had read was John Darnielle's Master Of Reality. It definitely told a story, a harrowing account of mental illness that barely mentioned the Black Sabbath album. That was number 56 in the series. Aaron Cohen's Amazing Grace is number 84, and by far the best I've read so far.
I can't imagine anyone more perfectly suited to write about Aretha Franklin's colossal Amazing Grace (1972). With an academic background in Latin American Studies and Caribbean ethnomusicology, he has a deep knowledge and passion for jazz, blues, r&b, soul and gospel which is reflected in his writing and work as associate editor of Downbeat magazine. Cohen tracked down nearly all the surviving principle people involved with the album that it reads nearly like an oral history. Unfortunately, Aretha Franklin herself remained elusive, remaining consistent with her pattern in her 55 year career. She rarely grants interviews, and when she does, has very little to say. She was quiet even behind the scenes with her band. Bassist Chuck Rainey said, "I was with Aretha for three years and if I were to count the words I heard her say, other than singing, it couldn't have been more than 200 words." Continue...
Stoner Rock Primer
There's often confusion when a musical sub-genre is made up to describe bands that had already been around for several years. The term "stoner rock" started to become widely used in the late 90s, after Roadrunner Records released the compilation, Burn One Up! Music For Stoners in 1997, featuring originators Kyuss and Sleep, along with ex-Kyuss guitarist Josh Homme's new band, Queens Of The Stone Age. The following spring, MeteorCity released 
Welcome To MeteorCity: Desert Rock, Sludge and Cosmic Doom featuring Fatso Jetson, The Atomic Bitchwax, Demon Cleaner, Goatsnake, Lowrider, Sheavy and Dozer.
Typically there was a lot of whiny reactions to the stoner rock label, from literal minded fans who felt it should apply to anything "trippy" like Pink Floyd and The Grateful Dead, to bands who insist they simply play rock, or heavy rock. They worry that the label limits their audience. If it does, I can't see it being any more offputting than sludge, doom, grindcore or drone. The segment on stoner rock in the 2009 documentary Such Hawks Such Hounds is titled, "An Unfortunate Moniker." Continue...
Retromania: Can Fetishizing the Past Ruin the Future?
As a fan of Simon Reynolds' writing, I was excited enough for his new book, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past (2011) to order a fairly expensive copy from Amazon.co.uk a couple months before its U.S. release date. I thought I would get a jump on writing about it, but it turns out I needed several months to process the tome.
His basic thesis is that music is running out of new ideas and increasingly recycling old ones to the point where it's on the verge of creative bankruptcy and cultural irrelevance. The book is written like a 428 page blog freeform think piece. Things get a little confusing when Reynolds discusses some of his favorite artists such as Boards Of Canada, Ariel Pink, Gonjasufi, Panda Bear, Daniel Lopatin, a.k.a Oneohtrix Point Never, Nico Muhly and his beloved hauntology artists while also using them as examples to support his theory. Nevertheless it's an engaging read, as Reynolds' writing is as sharp as ever, if not totally persuasive. The best parts are when he examines in detail subjects like Billy Childish, Crypt Records, The Cramps and the Shibuya-kei scene in Japan. The enthusiasm and passion displayed by the people involved with various retro scenes is infectious, while also undercutting Reynolds' point. His profoundly depressing point. According to Reynolds, great leaps forward in music that occured in the 60s, the 70s and early 80s with post-punk, and to a lesser extent, rave and electronic music in the 90s, are never going to happen again if we continue to cannibalize the ever more increasingly recent past. Continue...
Ditch the Fisher Price Speakers and Do Your Music Some Justice
How to rehabilitate your lossy life by getting better sound from your digital audio files without breaking the bank.
In his piece, "Sailing By Ear," novelist and music fiend Michael Chabon (his Pulitzer Prize winning 2000 book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, is one of the best American novels of the past 20 years) shared a revelation he experienced after eight years of listening to MP3s through "a pair of small, attractive podules that connected to my iMac." One day he thought to himself, "Dude, what’s with the Fisher Price speakers? " and realized that despite music being one of the most important things in his life, his choices of convenience over quality made his music sound like shit. Continue...
Thee Anglophiliac's Almanac
This is NOT about the royal wedding. As an American I feel it is my duty to loathe and reject monarchy. But the English have at least offered abolitionism, church-ratified divorce, mod fashion, the modern novel, and best of all, British guitar pop. The best known British invasion of UK guitar pop is of course the one with The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Small Faces, and lesser known bands like The Move, The Smoke, The Action, and many more. That's of course been covered exhaustively by truckloads of books and special issues of MOJO, Uncut Classic Rock and other boomer-oriented rags. Then there was the poppier side of punk with The Jam, XTC, Elvis Costello, The Stranglers, Buzzcocks and such, followed by 80s bands Echo & the Bunnymen, The Smiths, The Cure, and of course the "brit pop" bands of the 90s like Suede, Blur, Oasis and Pulp. Relegated to the back seats of UK pop history, the short bus of brit pop, at least in terms of critical impact and sales in the U.S., are the the fifth wavers (sixth if you count Cliff Richard & The Shadows) of the 00s. This would include the tabloid-hogging Libertines and Razorlight, who quickly sold over a million copies of their debut album in the UK but are virtually unknown in the U.S., and fiercely despised by the critics who do know them, Franz Ferdinand, The Futureheads, Maxïmo Park, The Rakes, Bloc Party, The Editors, Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Good Shoes, Pete & the Pirates, Wild Beasts, and many more. This past decade, I've probably listened to these bands more than any other British invasion waves, even including my favorite 70s era. Continue...
80s College Rock
Echo & the Bunnymen kicked off their Crocodiles/Heaven Up Here tour on May 5 in Atlanta, where they play their first two albums in their entirety. Former members Lol Tolhurst and Roger O'Donnell will join The Cure for shows in Sydney to perform their first three albums, Three Imaginary Boys (e.g. Boys Don't Cry), Seventeen Seconds and Faith on May 31 and June 1. Last year I saw Psychedelic Furs perform a selection of their best 80s songs. Nearly all of these shows have been or will sell out. These post-punk bands that became the cream of college rock radio in the mid-eighties are likely playing to bigger crowds now than they were 30 years ago. Continue...
Gunk Punk
In the 80s there was no shortage of bands that referenced 60s Nuggets type bangers and 70s MC5/Stooges/New York Dolls, like The Scientists, The Cramps, DMZ, Hoodoo Gurus, The Lime Spiders, The Godfathers and The Lyres. There wasn't really any genre name for them, because they seemed too disparate in sound and style to be considered a movement. Perhaps it's why it took so long for a handful of bands to get half the attention as some bands associated with grunge did. Or maybe it's just the generally raw and sloppy nature of their recordings that kept them mostly off the college charts. Starting in the late 80s, I heard and enjoyed some records by The Lazy Cowgirls, Didjits, Cosmic Psychos, Dwarves, The Oblivians and New Bomb Turks, but mostly enjoyed their live shows, and considered their recordings no more significant than mementos. But 15-20 years later when they're not around anymore, it's a blast to revisit the music of these trashy, funny, most often drunk bands. What made them an antidote to self-important post-grunge mainstream rockers, mall punk and mook rock also makes them sound kind of timeless today. Continue...
Colour Haze: Kings of Stoner/Psych Rock Mountain
Any fan of Jimi Hendrix is familar with the feeling that they could listen to his fluid guitar solos forever. Or at the very least, an entire album's worth. The beautiful tones he coaxed from his guitar, and the deceptive simplicity that somehow evoked as much depth and intensity as a John Coltrane solo make them seem all too brief. Aside from some of his bluesy jams, Hendrix stuck to relatively concise song structures. While there's no shortage of music influenced by Hendrix, nothing much really satisfied that craving. Not until the power trio Colour Haze emerged from Munich, Germany. Not that they are even remotely a Hendrix tribute band. Like other stoner rock groups that emerged in the 90s, Colour Haze started from the classic fuzzy Black Sabbath template and took some time to find their voice. Continue...
Magnet Magazine: Fast 'n' Bulbous was reviewed in the Nov/Dec 2003 issue of Magnet, the best music magazine in North America (I'm not just saying that cuz they reviewed me, really. I've been a subscriber since issue 3).
The Wire Magazine: Adventures In Modern Music. Fast 'n' Bulbous was reviewed in the February 2001 issue of The Wire, a British magazine that covers "electronica, avant rock, breakbeat, jazz, modern classical, global and sounds from the outer limits."
