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You Must Know How Wrong You Are, Right?
Or, Why Does Courtney Love Hate Me?
by Haley Aurora (Haleyaurora@hotmail.com)

"Greatest hits albums are for housewives and little girls."-The Kids in the Hall

Nirvana’s Nirvana: A bitchfest
 I am very upset about this particular greatest hits compilation.  The Beatles #1s seemed gross, but only vaguely, and Elvis was always a marketing machine to me.  Maybe it’s because Nirvana is mine.  I was 15 when Nevermind came out and it was ours.  Completely.  We changed from girls who talked about REM and Depeche Mode to girls who discussed Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, our favorite Pixies’ record, and what videos were on 120 Minutes that week.  I have admitted in the past that my acceptance of Nirvana-mania was not total-I kind of rejected it at the time.  But that was mostly because of the mania part and the fact that ALL my peers were sporting that same Dinosaur, Jr. shirt (which also seemed to be Krist Novoselic’s uniform throughout that period).  And wasn’t that kind of what Nirvana was all about-rejecting the popular/mass/corporate.  I am justifying my ignorance, I know.
 Nirvana, for certain twenty- and thirty-somethings, is real and, dare I say it, sacred.  Kurt’s death is probably one of the few things I don’t ridicule.  Making fun of Jesus and god and the bible is fine and usually hilarious, but make fun of Cobain or make light of him and you’ve raised my ire.  Nirvana and the other bands that came to the fore at that time are what made us the indie appreciating-, alternative comedy loving-, rapidly aging- hipsters we now are.  We are impressed that David Cross’ new record comes out on Sub Pop; we love My Morning Jacket; we comb record stores for Mark Lanegan solo cds; we endlessly discuss how fucking awesome Missy Elliott’s “Work It” is.  Two musical movements shaped our appreciation of all art: hip-hop and grunge/hard rock with punk influences/new wave of the 1990s.  It’s ours and they are using it to sell us shit everyday.  This time I am taking it personally.
 I am not quibbling with the fact that there is a demand for more Nirvana music.  I would love to hear unreleased or out-of-print songs and perhaps have them collected with a bit of a book in a large package-say, a boxed set.  What a novel idea.  Or even Nevermind remixed to exclude all those infernal bleeps and beats that were demanded by the record company to make the record “cleaner.”  Hmmm . . . original drum tracks.  Delicious.  That is worth $15 to a geek like me. (How could they mess with Dave Grohl’s drumming?  Anyone who has heard the Songs for the Deaf or has listened to Bleach back-to-back with From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkaw realizes the difference a phenomenal drummer can make in an already amazing band.  Grohl’s live drumming is almost perfect.  But I digress.)
 But what does the record company provide for my consumption: Nirvana.  The tracklist is as follows:
1. You know you’re right
2. About a Girl
3. Been a Son
4. Silver
5. Smells like teen spirit
6. Come as you are
7. Lithium
8. In Bloom
9. Heart-Shaped Box
10. Penny Royal Tea
11. Rape me
12. Dumb
13. All Apologies
14. The Man who sold the world
I have all these songs in their original environments: Bleach, Nevermind, Insesticide, In Utero, and Unplugged in New York.  What do I need it on one cd for?  I am only getting ONE NEW SONG!  I am appalled.  Jimi Hendrix has released more new material since 1994 and I believe he has been dead quite a bit longer.
 The motivation for this record seems to be to entice new fans.  I am cool with the young’uns getting hip to Nirvana.  My problem is that they already are-no Greatest Hits necessary.  My teenage acquaintances know Nirvana and have their records.  If a person likes Staind (Pronounced: Stain D-when you can’t spell I won’t say) or Dashboard Confessional, they will probably pick up Nirvana anyway. Most of these bands cite Nirvana’s influence and, like when Cobain gave big ups to the Pixies and we all ran out and bough their back catalogue and began a love affair with the Breeders and Frank Black, their fans buy Nirvana records.
These new bands just bite Nirvana’s angst and/or Kurt Cobain’s vocal style and remove all meaning and actual emotion-“You know you’re right” minus actual pain and experience + a white boy victim mentality + abusing your significant other = Puddle of Mudd’s “She Hates Me.”  Once teens begin listening to Nirvana they drop Backstreet Boys and Limp Bizkit and POD.  I can only hope they won’t pick up the Vines-Bleach is a much better investment.
I have not bought this record and I have not listened to it in its entirety.  There is no need to do so.  “You know you’re right” is on the radio and MTV all the time.  It is the only new music on the cd and therefore I will just review it.  “You know you’re right” is a great song.  The hollow quiet of the intro sets the stage for an all growed up Nirvana.  Wise and bitter lyrics and the classic quiet-loud are the hallmarks of a Nirvana song and appear here in a more mature form.  This is what Nirvana was becoming.  However, the song is so full of unfulfilled promise that it makes me very sad.  All I can think of is what the next record would have sounded like.  This song gets a score of 9 out of 10, with 1 point off because it is not “Milk It,” my personal gold standard for Nirvana songs.  The rest of the record is not worth reviewing and I refuse to do so.  Just listen to your other Nirvana records and dance around you house to “Turnaround” and place your $15 in an interest bearing account and remove it when the box set arrives in 2003 or so.

 

You Sad Fucking Bastard.
Beck, Sea Change.
by M. Stobaugh (Stobaugh1978@hotmail.com)

There’s something about breaking up records in particular that connects people.  If they are done right, they can make you lose that jaded, self-conscious prick side of yourself and think seriously about your life.  They make you want to sing along alone in the car, to show solidarity, to give sympathy, empathy, and friendship.  The songs bring out the corniness that you’d denounce any other day of the week.  It’s sappy, but I guess that’s when you get sappy.  Breaking up is when you become a sap.  It’s that mixture of pathetic, remorseful reminiscence, bitterness, and exposure that makes you a sap.  Everything is memories and feelings.  You feel like a pile of crap and at the same time like an exposed nerve.  Everything hurts and it‘s hard to do anything.
Beck’s new album captures a little bit of that feeling.  Each song finds a new way to make you remember a time when someone you cared about left you all alone.  Beck gets sentimental on songs (it’s hard to call them tracks) like “Lost Cause,” about giving up on a relationship.  Beck sounds like your bitter friend who just had his girlfriend break up with him when he sings lines like “leave you here wearing your wounds/ waving your guns at somebody new.”  Proclaiming that he’s “tired of fighting for lost cause,” he’s run out of reasons to keep it together.  It’s almost as sad as “Guess I’m Doing Fine.”
On “Paper Tiger,” Beck uses the imagery of the origami animal being ripped up to express the distorted rawness of the painful endeavor.  Things are different now.  But “Paper Tiger” is about as veiled as the album gets in talking about things.  The Beck of Odelay, with songs about cowboys, donkeys, and a bad haircut is out to lunch on this album.  There’s none of Midnite Vultures’ computers having sex or players who want to get with a girl’s sister in addition to that girl herself.  He is debased and forced to use (almost) plain english.
Beck has always had one of my favorite voices in contemporary music, along with Tom Waits and Kurt Cobain (yes, it‘s geeky).  On this album, his voice sounds more like a real “singer” than he has on past recordings.  No raps, less computer modified vocals, no shouting (ala “MutherFukker” or “Devils Haircut“).  His voice is lonelier than Hank Williams and it’s nothing like the James Brown style, shout outs and silliness of old.
All in all, Sea Change is a surprisingly moving album from an artist who is always two or three miles from sincere.  It’s sad songs and simple, but haunting instrumentation make for an album that stands out as one of Beck’s best, next to 1994’s One Foot In the Grave and 1996’s Odelay.  Yet still, I can’t help but hope for an album that’s not quite such a downer for the next one.  Right now, Beck is one sad fucker.

To Be A Rock And Not To Roll or Fuck Yr Idols.
(Rock Snobbery vs. Progress)
by M. Stobaugh (Stobaugh1978@hotmail.com)

 Everyone is always looking for the next savior of rock n roll.  Whenever something comes out that isn’t complete shit we want to call it the best things since rock actually meant something.  Your Strokes, your White Stripes, your Ryan Adams, your Radioheads, your El-P, your Queens of the Stone Age, your whoever you call your new best and brightest, your this years Sigur Ros.  Why is Jack White such hot shit?  He’s not.  But people buy into gimicky bullshit like matching outfits, or a story about how a guy married his sister, or guys who look like dirty models, or copies songs they play on classic rock radio, or albums that sound “mysterious” because you can’t tell what instrument is making what sound.  How is this any different from Led Zeppelin or Yes or Elton John or the slew of artists who’ve come since?
 What’s wrong with rock n roll and why isn’t there a quick fix?  I think that this question answers itself.  What’s wrong with rock n roll is that there isn’t a quick fix.  Artists come up so fucking quick that they haven’t taken the time or put in the effort to develop their art.  The other problem is that once a band has hit the backlash starts and everything that they do is compared to whatever they did first, no matter how unrelated the two are.  Self indulgence or lack of self indulgence or lack of self awareness or too much self awareness.  The question shouldn’t even be what’s wrong with rock n roll, but what’s right about it.  That’d be a shorter fucking list.
 Of course, it’s an old trap to say that nothings good ever and nobody’s gonna change that.  Then you end up in rock is dead, Pussy Galore, anti-music, noise for the sake of noise, suicide solution, your band sucks, pessimism.  There’s no binary here.  Rock is both art and totally bullshit at the same time.  It’s not so much that everything is bad as it is that mostly it could be better.
 The problem is predictability.  All of us being raised in an environment obsessed with mass media culture, we know everything that’s going to happen.  The chord progression will end the song on the one or it‘ll go “against” the grain to end on a four.  The bluesman will “bring it back home.”  The pseudo-punk is pissed off for whatever petty reason and that’s not gonna change.  The metal guy wants to play loud and fuck your girlfriend.  The rapper has to say what he’s not before he can say what he is.  Like Jaques Attoli says, it needs to be unpredictable and it can’t make sense.

 We need a new story whose ending we can neither predict, nor completely comprehend.  We need new punks, new hillbillys, new rappers, or none of that.  We need a new rock n roll that knows the past, but doesn‘t replicate it as much as it builds on it.  Don’t abandon what’s gone on before, but add to it rather than replicating it.  And it’s not just mixing crappy rock with crappy electronic music or having a metal guy try to rap or using keyboards and samplers (but maybe misusing them...?).  Stop rocking the old way and make a new one.  At least the baby boomers fucking tried.  I feel like my generation is full of Foghat fans.  How many times can you relive history you already know?  We need to get excited in a new way.

 

Wayne Coyne, Give It a Rest Already.
Beck and the Flaming Lips
Orpheum Theater, Minneapolis, MN 10/17/02
by M. Stobaugh

        Standing in front of you is Wayne Coyne, leader of the Flaming Lips.  Through the smoke that fills the air, you see he is wearing an off white suit with bright, beaming lights strapped to his body and his forehead covered in fake blood.  Coyne is throwing fake snow everywhere and singing a song about a woman named Yoshimi who fights robots for the government.  He is flanked on his left and right by the rest of the band, who happen to be dressed in animal costumes, on drums, bass, keyboards, and guitar.  On either side of the band are several other people in animal costumes shining bright flashlights into the crowd.  Just behind the four lined up disco balls that shine bits of light everywhere is a screen with images from Terry Gilliam’s 1981 feature film Time Bandits edited together with footage of a marching band.  Just then you feel the giant beach ball bounce off your head.
    It all seems very bizarre.  The Flaming Lips kicked off their tour with Beck tonight in Minneapolis with astounding results.  The Lips are acting as both opener and Beck’s back-up band on this tour and they fill the very difficult slot quite well.  The band tore through their opening set with the digital help of both already recorded sounds from their latest album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and the huge video screen that is in complete synch with their musical performance.  The set seemed very short and consisted of a few songs from their newest album like “Do You Realize?,” “Fight Test,” and the title track, as well as “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” from 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and “She Don’t Use Jelly” the alterna-rock hit of 1993’s Transmissions from the Satellite Heart.  Coyne was the perfect showman, constantly encouraging applause from the audience, even mid song.  He seemed to really get off on the encouraging clapping that he could easily coerce from the audience.  A smile constantly plastered across his face, the singer beamed with exuberance and his high energy kept him in the same happy-go-lucky, “everything is beautiful” state for the duration of the show.
    From the stage Coyne explained twice how things would work.  First, the Lips play their set, then a short break, then beck begins alone, until the band joins him after a few songs.  Coyne stayed on-stage or just to the side throughout most of the break.  He was either staring into the crowd, adjusting equipment or just wandering around.
Beck swaggered out on to the stage in a black suit with bright red shoes and socks, not quite bringing with him the mellow heartbreak of his new album, Sea Change.  He started off with “Cold Brains” and played some songs that he had played on his recent solo acoustic tour including a cover of Hank William’s “Lonesome Whistle” and the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning,” the latter done only briefly and on the vocoder hooked up to his keyboard.  Feeling that he need to get into things more, he threw down the harmonica driven stomp along “One Foot In The Grave” that was an essential part of his shows from the Odelay days.  On his new album and since his last tour Becks voice seems to have a richer tone to it.  A little bit thicker sounding voice adds to both the new songs and the old ones.  Requests were taken, but Beck really has a gift for changing an older song for the live show.  “Asshole” was made to sound more country-blues than on the recorded versions.  Wayne Coyne could be seen throughout the solo section of the show, shining his big flashlights from behind.
    Once the Flaming Lips joined him on-stage, Beck seemed to take a couple of songs to get used to playing with the new band behind him.  The band accompanied him on guitar, bass, drums, and several keyboards.  When Wayne Coyne wasn’t playing an instrument, which was fairly often, he was running his big flashlights or making motions urging the crowd for applause.   Beck and the Lips played songs from the new album like “Golden Age,” “Round The Bend,” and the possible live debut of “Paper Tiger,” as well as old favorites from Odelay, Mutations, Midnight Vultures, and Mellow Gold.  The Flaming Lips did a solid job as back-up band, but they did not live up to all the talk of recreating the songs.  Rather they played them very much as they are on the albums.  At the end of the show, Coyne did not leave the stage whenever the rest of the band did, he just urged more applause which brought encore after encore.

    The Flaming Lips put on a hell of a show.  Almost enough to outshine the headliner.  Their amazing capacity for creating an exciting visual aspect to the stage show is almost like George Clinton.  The fun nonsense of it all balances out the songs of woe from Beck and also forces him to go back to the old carefree days of strange lyrics, upbeat jams, and the much lauded robot dance.

Damn The Torpedoes!!
Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
by Haley Aurora (Haleyaurora@hotmail.com)

I’ve been waiting for months.  Not for graduation, not for a job, not for anything objectively important.  I’ve been waiting for the new Wilco record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to arrive.  Sure, I know people who have the record.  In fact, Wilco already finished a U.S. tour for YHF and is headed for Europe.  Between widespread bootlegging of the record and the concerts most fans already know all songs on the record.  But why am I still waiting?

To shorten a long and aggravating story: Wilco just got caught putting out a really cool, but not “commercial,” record at a time when their record company was merging and dropping artists that don’t sell in the millions, regardless of corporate history/values.  Shortly after being dropped by their record company, Wilco bought the masters of the record and they signed with Nonesuch.  The record is due on April 23.

 Regardless, of its tortured road to release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an amazing record.  It combines the sonic-brilliance of Devo and sound effects records with lead singer/guitarist Jeff Tweedy’s pop sensibilities and lyrics that evoke the major themes in popular music (love, America, love, doubts about love, music, etc.).

Wilco haven’t replaced the guitar with the computer, but they certainly have augmented their sound with computer-generated noises and distortion.  Really, the record is a product of the natural growth of the band.  Their sound has evolved from the country rock of AM, to the slightly more adventurous but still alt-country sounds of Being There, to the diverse if slightly melancholy and sometimes shocking lyrics and music of Summer Teeth.  If you listened to these records in order the whole of YHF would make sense.  YHF is their Revolver, or perhaps Rubber Soul.

 With such lyrics echoing such seemingly at-odds sentiments as “I am trying to break your heart,” from the song of the same title, and “Don’t cry/ you can rely on me honey/ you can come by any time you want/ I’ll be around/ You were right about the stars/ each one is setting sun” (“Radio Cure”), YHF has lyrics as diverse and complicated as it’s music.  A drum machine is even used for an odd, slightly hip-hop vibe in “Heavy Metal Drummer,” a song that tells of summers spent playing Kiss songs and falling in love, among other pursuits.  And everything from horns to cello and violin to keyboards to theramin to random distorted noise is scattered throughout the record.

 How can a person dislike a record that contains Morse-code style guitar and  “All I can see if black and white and white and pink with blades of blue that lay between the words I think on a page I was meaning to sent to you/ I couldn’t tell if it’d bring my heart the way I wanted when I started writing this letter to you/ If I could you know I would just hold your hand and you’d understand I’m the man that loves you,” in the same song?  You cannot and I dare you to try.  Plus the record contains the best Cure song Robert Smith never wrote in “Pot Kettle Black.”  Beat that, Britney.

In honor of women’s Olympic ice-skating, on a scale of Tonya Harding to Peggy Fleming, I give this record a Dorothy Hamill.

For more on Wilco see their official site at www.wilcoweb.com and their new record company at www.nonesuch.com.  For more on the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s tortured path to a stereo near you, check out www.wilcofilm.com and look for “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” directed by Sam Jones, in a theatre/video store in the future.
 
 

The Horror of the Jon Spencer Blue Explosion
and Their Horror of a New Album
A Horror of an unfinished review.
M. Stobaugh

The new album from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion stinks.  And yes, that's exactly what I mean.  Plastic Fang is produced by some guy whose past work was with Steely Dan, Billy Joel, and B.B. King and it smacks of late 70's pop record.  The less than slick, but more than lo-fi sound garbles together an aesthetic reminiscent of that era.  It doesn't have the absolute skanky, raw stank of their 1996 album, Now I Got Worry, but it definately has more odor than 1998's alt hip-hop inspired Acme (with very few exceptions).  The Blues Explosion have made a record like a high school dirtball who smokes on the corner and falls asleep in class.  It's got the smell of greatness, but it's still lacking something necessary.
    What Plastic Fang is lacking is the very thing that made Now I Got Worry such a powerful album.  It's a bit rediculous to even talk about the work of this band without bringing up their most brilliant record.  Now I Got Worry provides the ferocity and power of the Stooges, the bluesy, rock n' roll of the Stones, and the funky rhythms of Public Enemy's Bomb Squad as well as all of James Brown's funky drummers (via greatest living rock drummer, Russell Simins).  The production gave off an air of "it's our fucking album we'll make it how we want"- attitude, a sentiment that is missing from so many albums today.  It may be the most punk rock move a band can make.  Now I Got Worry opens with a fierce scream where the volume knob is turned up and down violently.  Tracks like "Wail" and "Chicken Dog"reflect the grooves and lyrical swagger of the record while "Can't Stop" and "R.L. Got Soul" seep with vocal crudity, raw, screaming guitars, and rhythm & blues beats.  Worry stalk the same noisy experimental ground as the Velvet Underground's White Light, White Heat and Sonic Youth's Sister, as well as the same dissappointing sales figures.  And ever since this record Spencer and the Blues Explosion have been trying to makes records that musically apologize for the assault on our senses that was Now I Got Worry.
    Just as Acme was part of their making nice nice with the fans, so is Plastic Fang part of that apology.  But where Acme sounded like music to purchase designer blue jeans and thirty dollar T-shirts to, Plastic Fang tries a little bit harder to be both an interesting record and a record that wil make the band some scratch.  In addition to actually sounding a bit more interesting, the new album adds some new lyrical subjects, namely monsters.  Cheezy movie, comic book style monsters are a reocurring theme through out Plastic Fang.  The single "She Said" contains allusions to thick black hair growing out the back of the narrators head and in the last chorus the word werewolf is added to the end of the refrain of "she said...".

Mike Watt Interview Page!
Click here to check it out!
 

The Strokes: Is This It
 Review by Blake Iverson  (bisco911@hotmail.com)

         Novelty is sometimes overrated.  While everyone loves to buy new (to you, at
 least) clothes, it's never long before you leave the new gear in the closet,
 favoring instead the beat-up t-shirt you've been wearing since eleventh grade.
 The Strokes are a lot like that shirt.  You know all these songs, or at least
 the riffs, so it's a comfortable listen.  Is This It is a like a thirty-six
 minute distillation of your record collection, assuming that your record
 collection is well-stocked with Velvets, Stooges, Dolls, and Fall albums.
         The album opens with the title track, a slice of new-wave pop built around a
 simple guitar melody and a bouncy bass line.  Let's hear it for truth in
 advertising, as these are the same elements that continue throughout. What jumps
 out beyond the hooks is the production style. All the instruments and vocals
 exist on the same aural plane, ala Phil Spector's wall of sound.  This is,
 perhaps, as much responsible for the familiar feeling one gets when listening to
 the record as the song writing or the performances.
         If the only thing Is This It had going for it was its production, then one
 could shelve it and listen to End of the Century or the Nuggets box set for the
 fiftieth time instead of leaving it in the car stereo for an entire summer.
 Fortunately, there is more to the Strokes than that.  The naïve machismo of
 their lyrics recalls a young Iggy Pop (or an old Iggy Pop for that matter,
 though the Strokes easily best anything The Ig has spewed out since New Values).
         Songs like "The Modern Age" and "Barely Legal" hardwire themselves into your
 brain in a positive way that is all too rare in a time when the Swedish seem to
 have a corner on the pop hook market.  "Last Night" has "teen movie montage
 music" written all over it, and that is not a dis (at least until the song is in
 a teen movie, or worse yet, a trailer for a teen movie, then I'll bitch as loud
 as anyone).
         It's a shame that the recent terror attacks will leave cd buyers without the
 one of the most entertaining tracks on the album, "New York City Cops."  As dumb
 punk rawk goes, "NYCC" is head and shoulders above anything associated with a
 certain tour sponsored by a shoe company.  Look for the import or the first
 pressing of the vinyl. You won't regret it.
         Sure, Is This It is a tad narrow in the range of subject matter department.
 Though sexual frustration and social alienation never seem to go out of style…
 Sure, at thirty-six minutes the album still has padding like the lame "Trying
 Your Luck." The bottom line is that The Strokes might be the best new band of
 2001.  They've made a very good rock record and a great debut album.  Here's to
 hoping that this is the first in a long series of musical statements from the
 Strokes and not merely the answer to the question, is this it?
 
 

The Strokes and the Moldy Peaches
7th Street Entry 10-06-01
by M. Stobaugh

    With songs that sound like a cross between childrens songs, tv show themes, and the stupid dirty mind of a fourteen year old, the Moldy Peaches can easily annoy.  They come out on stage looking like members of two or three different bands who have been thrust together like an Odd Couple sitcot (where they're all the dirty one).  Like the worlds shittiest supergroup.  The drummer and the acoustic guitarist both have dreads and look like guys who go see jam bands and are too into world music.  The lead guitarist looks like an MC5 recreationist and the bass player wore a halloween spiderman outfit with an 80's rock headband.
    The band has two singers.  The male singer looks like he's approximately twelve years old and he sings like a whiney wasp boy-child.  The woman who actually has a voice I enjoy, wears a huge poofy blond and green afro wig and an american flag cape.  They sing most songs together either in unison or with one doing harmony on certain words or call and response.  With songs about "weird hamburgers" and a call to arms for those in the audience who want to "go shit in condoms," the band can easily agitate the members of the audience.  But becasue of that the Moldy Peaches may also be the heirs to the throne of bands like the Butthole Surfers and Ween.  They're acting stupid and shouting offensive things in a funny, annoying, catchy fashion.  They rhyme "chicken" with "stick my dick in."  They amuse.  The Moldy Peaches don't want to get past the bullshit.  They want to revel in it.  They were the perfect opener for the Strokes.
    A rock fan who has read some of the press on the Strokes goes to their sold out show with apprehension.  The English love them and they're being called the new big thing.  They've been lavished with more hype than anyone I've ever seen who doesn't even have their first album out in the U.S. yet (ED- Is This It? was released October 9).  They're gonna save rock n' roll and bring back New York as the prominent music producer of the world.  They're gonna wash away boy bands and aggro rap metal and bring us into the promised land.  Julien Casablancas is our Moses and he will show us the way through the desert of shit.
    But that's all hype bullshit.  The Strokes play music like the Velvets and Television, but they're not breaking any new ground here.  They are poppy and a tight band with rock n' roll songs and a tradition kind of lead singer.  They're trying to resusitate the old Lou Reed (the one who made all those good records) and bring it to an audience who yearns for the nostalgia of the NYC punk scene in 1975.
    After their roadies and tour manager set up their expensive, brand new gear, The Strokes take the stage like they're still so wet behind the ears that they have stage fright.  This band could have formed two weeks ago for all the air of rock n roll confidence they give off.  Julien Casablancas stares glassily out into the audience as he sings.  The rest of the band stares at their instruments as they run through their debut CD in order (plus one new song).  Their album clocks in at thrity-six and a half minutes, so their set was probably forty with the new song and the snappy patter (consisting entirely of  "you guys are way cooler than the last crowd,"  said after the second song).  It's hard to tell if you should feel bad for them or hate them when audience members shout "My daddy bought me a band!" (Casablancas as in Casablancas Modeling School) or "Sweet Jane!" when you can also see the way the ladies get weak in the knees for their hipster druggie good looks.  The Strokes will probably either become very popular or the backlash will kill them.  Either way the first record is pretty good.

Hey Courtney!  I thought the goal of Buddhism was to achieve Nirvana,
not break it up. - Madonna to Courtney Love in a Saturday Night Live Sketch

         I have been looking forward to a Nirvana box set forever.  All signs and published reports pointed to fall 2001 as the release date and I knew I could save enough money from my summer job to get it.  All eyes were on fall for the fruition of the promise that was years of Nirvana bootlegs and Hole covers of unreleased songs penned by Kurt Cobain.  Then I log onto sonicnet.com and see that Courtney Love has gotten a preliminary injunction against the release of “You Know You’re Right” as a track on the forthcoming box set.  This stops the whole shebang.  The final masters were due to Universal (owners of what was Geffen) on June 30 to get the box set out in September and the injunction was handed down on June 29.
         Before I get into serious bitching and whining I have a few disclosures to make.  I loathe Courtney Love as much as you can loathe someone you have never met.  I have started fights over her “feminist role-model” status in Women’s Studies classes in college.  I have ranted and raved over her hypocritical statements about freedom of the press.  I have wondered what in the hell Edward Norton and Jim Carrey were doing with her.
         I also must admit I think Dave Grohl is a rock god second only to Freddie Mercury of Queen or Rob Halford (see my earlier work right here on Wobbly Rail).  And I think that Krist Novoselic is totally awesome.  I happen to think both Dave and Krist rule.  Please see Michael Azerrad’s Come as You Are, the foofighters.com website, and Krist’s JAMPAC, WTO protests, and other political work to find out how these men are human but also have dignity and a serious punk rock spirit that permeates even the Foo Fighter’s poppiest songs.
        I had always thought that the Nirvana legacy and Kurt Cobain’s songs were safely entrusted to the triumvirate-unholy trinity of Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Courtney Love, as a trustee for Kurt’s daughter.  I figured as long as Dave and Krist were involved there would be no cheesy TV movie (or big screen for that matter), no release of “Free as a Bird”-type unfinished crap a la the three surviving Beatles, no shitty tell-alls that would embarrass us all.  Dave and Krist have never used Nirvana and Kurt’s death the way they could have.  They didn’t write books or go on a prime-time news magazine program.  They did not make records or tour as Nirvana with Chris Cornell singing lead.  To the best of their ability, they didn’t use Nirvana to further their careers.  Both Dave and Krist could have sold a lot more records if they had played up their membership in Nirvana and dished on Kurt.  In fact, the first time I had heard Dave speak of Nirvana in relation to the Foo Fighters was at the end of the “There is Nothing Left to Lose” enhanced CD (it is also on the enhanced “Generator” single).  Dave is sitting with a bottle of Crown Royal sporting sunglasses and slurs: “Don’t tell me how to make a rock record.  I was in Nirvana. . .  We changed the course of rock n’ roll.”  And every time I see it I laugh because it is so unlike Dave to even mention Nirvana much less use it to pull rank, so to speak, on someone.  Krist and Dave have remained virtually silent about Cobain while Courtney blabs to all.  But Dave and Krist have something that most rock star/ stacked actors are missing: INTEGRITY. And that is why I was so comfortable with them having a large say in what goes on with Nirvana business.
        In the lawsuit in which the injunction was granted Love is claiming that she has exclusive rights to all unpublished songs of Kurt Cobain and that the band had not gotten her permission to use “You Know You’re Right” on the box set.  Even though the song was recorded by the band in January 1994 and had been performed live as early as late 1993, which, to me, would make it a Nirvana song, not just a Kurt Cobain song.
Grohl and Novoselic claim that Love is tying up the release of the box set as leverage in her ongoing contract dispute with Universal (her record label).  Love was on Geffen (as part of Hole), but Geffen became a part of the huge conglomerate that is Universal and now has been folded into Interscope.  Love sued Universal to try to get out of her contract claiming that she did not sign with Universal or Interscope, and in fact originally turned down Interscope to release “Live Through This”.  She signed with Geffen and because that label no longer exists she should be released from the contract.  She had a somewhat valid point with this suit.  Artists are both getting screwed by record companies and are signed to illegally long contracts (under California law) by record companies.  But there were rumblings that she was just pissed off that she did not get the grand royalty rates and advances that Beck and other artists got when they renegotiated their contracts.  (Don’t mention to Love that Beck is both artistically sound and sells a heap more records than Hole.)  During this suit Love also claimed to practically be the president of Universal/ Geffen/Interscope because she controlled the whole Nirvana catalogue.  This struck me as strange at the time, considering Kurt, Dave, and Krist wrote many of the songs.  All the counts of her suit were dismissed and I believe Hole still owes Universal a record.
        In the current case Love’s legitimate motives are a mystery.  She is not saying the song is bad (her band has even performed it) or that it is not a Nirvana song.  She is only saying that it cannot be on the box set because she owns it and the surviving members of the band did not ask her.  The band’s legacy and the music have been controlled by Nirvana, LLC, since 1997.  Nirvana, LLC, is run by Krist, Dave, and Courtney and requires that important decisions be made by unanimous vote.  Love claims that she and the others differ fundamentally on how to manage the “musical and artistic legacy of Kurt Cobain”.  She claims her vision of how to manage this legacy includes releases from the Nirvana catalogue and a film of Cobain’s life (which I am sure he would have loved) which have been stopped by the partnership.  Love is asking the court to dissolve Nirvana, LLC, because she was “significantly impaired” when she signed the partnership agreement and she was under the impression that Dave and Krist could buy her out if she did not enter into this agreement.  So she is “impaired” (People vs. Larry Flynt was in 1996 and she was supposedly clean by then what “impaired” her) and has a shitty lawyer who misrepresents the benefits and the burdens of the contract so she is suing Dave and Krist?  She needs to file a malpractice suit against the lawyer she had in 1997 if he/she told her that shit rather than sue Dave and Krist.
        She also downplays the creative input of both Grohl and Novoselic in Nirvana.  She identifies Dave as the sixth drummer and makes Krist look like a hired hand.  All I know is that it was Kurt, Dave, and Krist who made a little record called “Nevermind” and according to all published accounts Dave was the first drummer (other than Dale Crover) that Kurt and Krist were happy with.  In fact I read something about how even if John Bonham came back to life, Kurt and Krist would still want Dave as the drummer of Nirvana.  Also their most artistically significant record, “In Utero”, was even more of a group affair and Krist and Dave shared in much more of the songwriting.  This band would not have been this band without the talents of Messrs. Novoselic and Grohl.  They were the perfect combination with Cobain’s singular brand of songcraft.
        Basically Courtney is trying to gain sole control over all that is Nirvana.  And in doing so she is trashing both Kurt Cobain’s memory (and ethics) and the very real contributions Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic have made to the band.  In fact Dave and Krist are still protecting Nirvana.  (Have you seen commercials for Lipton featuring “Pennyroyal Tea” or for American Airlines featuring “I’m on a Plane”?  That’s probably because of Krist and Dave’s involvement in decisions regarding the use of Nirvana’s music.)   I have no problem with Love having a 1/3 share in Nirvana, but only in trust for Kurt’s daughter.  To paraphrase Novoselic, Courtney Love was never in Nirvana and she should not have sole control over Nirvana.
         Love, Novoselic, and Grohl have agreed not to discuss this in the press and hope to work out some sort of deal to allow the release of the song in question.  However, what was meant as a celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the release of “Nevermind” is tarnished by Love’s careerist bullshit.  She is only alienating fans with this action.  She is not protecting the legacy of the band or the legacy of Kurt Cobain, she is using this all to leverage her own material gain.

See www.nirvanaclub.com for a full account of Love’s legal action and fans’ reaction to Courtney having sole control over Nirvana as well as a clip of “You Know You’re Right”.

        When I turned 24 I suddenly had this urgent need to rock.  Not to rock-out or to rawk, but, plainly put, to just rock.  My CD collection is suddenly swelling with Sonic Youth, AC/DC, Rage Against the Machine, Foo Fighters, and (in preparation for the “Jack Johnson” record) Mos Def.  I have become a teenage boy, except circa 1993 for I do not enjoy the Nu-Metal or the Korn/Limp Bizkit-style rock-rap hybrid.  I am listening to Nirvana (In Utero is the best album ever), Sleater-Kinney, even the dreaded Pearl Jam.  In junior high/high school I was a casual Nirvana listener and I hated the Pearl Jam.  I think I was just rebelling or being stupid.  Everyone else liked this stuff so I would listen to Milli Vanilli just to be an ass.  And an ass I was.  It took many years for me to mend my ways.
            Not that I was cured overnight.  It was in college that I started getting back on track.  First Live (shut up, that second record ruled), then the serious growth of my Elvis Costello collection, then purchasing the Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique, then realizing that the world of rock did not begin and end with REM’s Automatic for the People, and finally beginning a fascination with the music of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the exquisite drumming of Russell Simins in particular.  Sure I was a rock moron.  I listened to Depeche Mode like everyone else in junior high but I am proof that eventually you can develop some taste.  Or at least become a teenage boy circa 1993.
        The indie record store has become my new hangout.  I go there to check out the new releases on Tuesday afternoons just like the other geeks.  I look for used Heart records (“Dreamboat Annie” or any of their stuff from the seventies) and peruse the selection of Public Enemy currently available.  I am always embarrassed by my purchases.  Somehow they are always something like Veruca Salt and Outkast.  The Veruca Salt they (apparently the record store employees) expect me to purchase, I am a chick for godsake and “Seether” is a great song (though VS’s only good one).  The Outkast, the Public Enemy, the AC/DC, even the At the Drive-In, those I get funny looks about.  IN fact the clerks tend to look at me like I am crazy.  Or maybe they think I am buying these for a man.
        Everyone expects me to purchase sensitive chick music-the musical equivalent of “Steel Magnolias.”  But guess what?  I hate Sally Field and Jewel.  I am proud to say I have never owned a Jewel CD, but I do have the Natalie Merchant CDs to prove that I went to college in the 1990s.  Want to see my copy of The Bell Jar?
        So to all the ladies and gentlemen out there who listen to crap take these simple steps to redemption.
        Number 1, stop listening to crap and listen to Ani De Franco, Bruce Springsteen (Nebraska and Ghost of Tom Joad may be too much at first so start with Darkness on the Edge of Town), and other people who write their own music and actually play instruments.
        Number 2; open your mind to the rock.  Start with something easy like Foo Fighter’s There is Nothing Left to Loose and work your way up to The Clash’s first album and any record by Bad Brains.
        Number 3, remember, bands that really rock do not make their music for frat boys so don’t be afraid to mercilessly make fun of said frat boys with backward caps as they sing along to Pearl Jam’s “Betterman” (not that I have ever done that in Alpine Valley, Wisconsin).
        Number 4, and this relates to number 3, listen to the lyrics as well as the killer riffs.  The dearly departed Rage Against the Machine is not all Tom Morello’s brilliant guitar work, but also amazing basslines, hard beats, and Zack de la Rocha’s wonderfully explanatory lyrics.  De la Rocha’s lyrics are a shorthand lesson in the politics of the left that you can still sing along to in rush hour traffic.  (On a totally geek note, I am reading a book about the history of the Chiapas region of Mexico and I realized that I know the different indigenous groups from “The Wind Below” on Evil Empire, which is really just sad.)
        Number 5; Prince is rock.  Buy every record Prince ever made and realize that he is a genius and no one will ever be as cool, talented, and/or totally horny as him.
        Number 6; hip-hop is rock.  No other form of popular music takes chances like hip-hop, and I don’t mean the P. Diddy variety.  I am referring to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Outkast, Hi-Tek, Jill Scott, Zack de la Rocha (I am counting the days until his solo record comes out), the Roots, and Wu Tang.  These artists make records that challenge us and totally rock.  Listen to them all now.
    I could give you much more advice but that is a start.  Seriously, begin now and you can totally rock by the holidays.  I guarantee it.  (You need to talk to Matt to go indie.  That is not my department.)

       So I am sitting here half-watching Say Anything (and blaming John Cusack/ Lloyd Dobbler for ruining me for all other men) and half-reading the postboard on foofighters.com when I realize that people on the internet are so 14 years old.  These people don’t remember the original Gerry Rafferty version of Baker Street.  This is a song that if you are over 20 years old you know it and hate it, though you may not know it by name.  (The Foo Fighters do an excellent rehabilitative cover.)  All they talk about is Dave Grohl’s ass (Post a picture of Dave’s ass in undies!) and hair length (OMIGOD!  Did you see the pic from the Weezer show in DC?  Dave cut his hair!).  And of course the fetishists who want pics of Dave’s feet are probably the most mature.  Another favorite topic is how hot Taylor Hawkins (Drums) is.  If I see one more post asking people to put up one of several pics of Taylor’s pants falling down I will be tempted to post serious hate mail.  Don’t get me wrong, Dave and Taylor are attractive men, but that is not why I read the postboard.
       Of course this begs the question of why exactly do I read the postboard.  Well, truthfully there is a lot of great info on there.  Taylor’s rumored solo project which is reportedly very prog rock, Probot, Foo Fighters appearances (Live and TV), all this is first on the postboard.  And it’s usually quite good and accurate information.  Plus the actual Foofighters.com site is way cool with excellent graphics and an exhaustive list of, pics of, and set lists from all the live gigs ever.  It also has links for Foo fan-run sites, news, articles, pics (they have the ones that hang on the wall of the staircase in the Everlong video), and other cool stuff.  All props and respect to the guys who run the site.
       However I get frustrated with that postboard.  I want to know about guitars in the “Equipment” section and they are posting pics of themselves with their Gibson Explorers (Dave’s choice of guitar).  Someone posts a question wanting to know if Lisa Grohl, Dave’s sister, was in any bands (she played bass on a soundtrack Dave did) and no one seems to know anything.  However another person posts a poll on whether or not one of the Foos and his girlfriend should stay together and you’d get hundreds of responses.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I am queen of the internet deciding precisely what should and should not be posted by fans, but I am just searching for a bit of discourse on the music of a band that totally rocks.  I know all the geeky shit about the Foos just like all the other geeks that post, but I am just not keen on seeing weird stalker photos of the Foos and their girlfriends taken by fans.  (Holy Jebus!  Just ask them, don’t use that telephoto lens!  Acquire some social skills!).
        I’ve contemplated checking out another fansite.  Rage Against the Machine would be my choice, except I hear that the people on that postboard can’t spell or conjugate verbs.  And, most damning, there are discussions on the size of Zack’s  . . . um  . . . Zapatista.  When I read that in Rolling Stone online I decided to stick with Dave’s ass.

        Lester Bangs wrote an article about the Clash in the late 70's where he followed them on tour for a couple of weeks.  The theme of it was how unlike other bands the Clash was.  They didn't preach stupid "save the dolphins"-style politics of rock stars, they preached the politics of the people
trying to get by in the U.K.  And They didn't just preach, they practiced.  They treated their
fans better, let them stay in their hotel without having to have sex with them.  Bangs paints a
picture of the Clash as a band who actually cared about their fans as a community of people not
just suckers who buy their music and image.  Then near the end of the article, Bangs witnesses a
fight where one of the guys from the Clash gets into a brawl with a fan and then kicks the fan
out of their hotel room.  Then Bangs realizes that these guys aren't the completely utopian band
that he imagined them to be, but he does think that they are the first step in getting a band
who are as respectful and as self-conscious as what he was looking for.
        I think that the band he was looking for was the Minutemen.  When you think of early to mid- 80's California punk, the bands that sums up that time and place is not the Minutemen.  They were a different kind of band.  They were smart, they were very political, and they were good musicians even when being a good musician wasn't very cool.   Liberal politics, artistic aesthetic, and witty lyrics lead one to think that this was a band for a post-modern age.  They were contemporaties of David Lee Roth era Van Halen whose grandois extravaganza of vanity and self indulgence was legendary, but these were guys who spent too much time in their garage being unpretentious and wearing too much flannel.
        They came out of the punk scene, but had a huge jazz influence in their music.  D. Boons guitar
pyrotechnics were incredible.  The staccato chords sound a little bit raggae and upon hearing
them you immediately know where Sublime bit their whole style from.  Boon's voice was a fierce
howl that could at times let loose a quiet almost spoken lament of a hometown dude who loved
music like a fish loves water.  D. was the rare kind of musician who idolized Credence and
the Stooges equally, not trying to fit in with anyones definition of cool or punk rock.  He was always more honest and truthful in a song than any of his contemporaries were.  The idea that there could be a Minutemen and a D. Boon in the world really ruins many other things for a music fan.
        The Minutemen couldn't have been such a tight band with out the amazing all-time wish list
rhythm section of George Hurley and Mike Watt.  George Hurley and his style of drumming were
perfect for the band he was in.  He swung the rhythms just right and hit just hard enough to
rock, but no so hard that he sounded like John Bohnam or the Circle Jerks.  He kept things tight
on every track until he retired.
        It's hard to explain how incredible Mike Watt and his music are.  His lyrics were insightful and
his basslines were original and funky.   Watt still tours with his band, the Pair of Pliers,
backing him and right now he's backing up J. Mascis in J.'s new band, The Fog.  He still makes
great music and keeps the spirit of the Minutemen alive with his shows and albums, including the
punk rock opera he wrote about them, Contemplating the Engine Room.  If you go to a Mike Watt
show today and you don't hear him dedicate at least one song to D. Boon and say, at least once,
"much respect to all of you," then you're at a show by the Hockey player Mike Watt.
        Respect and music.  Those were the lessons of the Minutemen.  Lester Bangs was very impressed  with the way the Clash treated their fans, but he should have seen the Minutemen.  The Clash let  fans sleep on their hotel room, but the Minutemen would sleep on your floor and they would thank you  for being so nice as to share it with them.  They were the kind of band Eddie Vedder wishes he could be in.  The Minutemen were unparalleled greats and they are missed in todays music world.

    Swing a dead cat around any college campus and you’re liable to hit one.  Cool kids who can go
on for hours about the relative merits of bands and albums you’ve never seen for sale at Sam
Goody.  Though it seems like it would take years to become one of the enlightened, all it really
takes is some cash, a little dedication and a strict adherence to the following easy steps.

1)  Deny all knowledge of any "Emo" scene.
2) Sell your CD player.  Replace it with garage sale turntable.
3) Purchase Dickies brand "Messenger Bag"  (Available at Urban Outfitters for $34.99).  Carry it
everywhere.
4) Spend enough time and money that you become on a first name basis with every staff member at
Extreme Noise Records (MPLS).
5) Regardless of necessity, wear black-framed, coke-bottle glasses at all hours of the day and
night.
6) Refuse to attend any concert that doesn’t occur in someone’s basement.
7) Dye hair black.  Repeat.
8) Find black hooded sweatshirt.  Mail order patches and fan-pins. Decorate.
9) Allow yourself to be seen listening to nothing other than Sam Cooke records.  Confound your
friends by making detailed comments about all the other records that you own, but never appear
to listen to.
10) Turn up your nose and scoff any time a mainstream music magazine (i.e. Rolling Stone, Spin)
refers to a band like The Promise Ring or Jets to Brazil as Emo.
11) Without learning to play instruments first, start band.  Record 7" in two hours.  Spend the
next two weeks designing sleeve using twigs, magic marker, and black and white photo of a
gravestone.
12) Break up band two days before 7" is released.

        One of the odder sights that I've seen at concerts happened last night.  A band made up of only two guys with acoustic guitars, who have no album of any kind that's been released, who have never played Minneapolis or ever been on  a national tour before, had a sold out show fillled with crazed fans shouting their names and screaming out requests for their songs.  What Tenacious D does have is tons of hype.  Not unjustly so, but they've been written up in Rolling Stone, Spin, CMJ, and every other magazine that touches on the subject of rock n' roll.  Of course, people know lead vocalist Jack Black from movies like High Fidelity, the Cable Guy, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Enemy of the State, and his guest spots on TV shows like Mr. Show and the X-Files.  And Kyle Gass can be recognized from his cameo as the guy who reads the book in the Cable Guy and the three episodes of the Tenacious D HBO series.  Right now they're recording an album with production duo the Dust Brothers (Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique, Beck: Odelay, Fight Club Soundtrack) and playing this show and one next month in L.A. to prove to the people that just because they've been signed to Epic records doesn't mean that they're no longer the greatest band in the world.
        One man walked out on to the stage to announce the D's comming.  As soon as he said "The next band asked me to read this,"  the crowd went crazy.  Anticipation was high.  It was a crowd who only knew the TV show and some tracks off Napster if that, but they knew what they were about to see would be great.  The man read a funny line about how the D had been a lot of places and seen a lot of faces and they had kicked those faces asses.  Now the audience was told they should prepare to have their faces asses kicked.  The show opened with a fierce cover of the theme song from Land of the Lost and continued into a funky cover of the theme from Fat Albert.  Then they rode full on into their originals.  Songs about sex, weed, rock n'roll, and how kick ass they are.  The songs from the TV show got huge cheers and big laughs, but the newer songs found the D more energetic and witty.  The first new song I noticed was called "River of Brown" and it seemed to be about different colored(brown, yellow, white) bodily fluids in rivers that streamed down.  The song got a good audience response, but it was when Jack started singing Dio songs that things got really funny.  Their tribute to Dio was about how they would put him in a home, but make sure it was comfortable for him, as they steal his secrets to rocking.  Another song that was new to me was dedicated to the ladies, but sung to the guys.  It may have been titled "Fuck Her Gently."  Jack explained it by saying "You can't fuck her hard every time..."  It included lines like "I'm gonna ball you discreetly."  The song drew huge laughs and applause from the crowd.  When the band played the song "City Hall,"  it was introduced as the Tenacious D opera that they had been working on and the audience was told now to feel ripped off because the opera "came free with the price of admission."  The song chronicles the D's revolution to overthrow city hall and subsequent rise to power as they "rule as two kings" in the new regime.  Then after installing traveling tubes to replace cars and legalizing marijuana Jack and Kyle double cross each other by poisoning wine and the opera ends with the lines "people beside me are askin me to blow up city hall, people beside me are askin me to smoke up city hall."  There were also some choice visits from a cheap looking Spiderman that Jack made fun of and then kicked his ass, and an even cheaper Sasquatch, who was really just a guy with a hairy chest and no shirt.
        As soon as they left the stage, the crowd immediately began chanting "D!" over an over again.  While the band returned for an encore of  songs from Queens Flash Gordon and the Beatles medley from the end of Abby Road (but no Her Majesty),   I was thinking about the crowd.  I have seen other bands play here with some very devoted fans, but those bands had albums released and previous tours back them up and giving them those fans.  The D are truly great, but they have no
product out.  These people are fanatics for a band that has no commercial product to sell.  Tenacious D are going to have to be very careful with these fans who think that the D is their own special thing that no one knows about.  When their album is released they going to move from cult favorite into entering the popular culture full force on a major record label.  It's going to be a shock for their fans to take.  Hopefully they will do it with as much style and grace as they do everything else.  I just hope that there will be more touring from the greatest band in the world and that next time I see them, they rent a proper Sasquatch costume.