March 2011
23 posts
Left Of Center
Suzanne Vega Feat. Joe Jackson
Suzanne Vega ft. Joe Jackson - “Left of Center” (1986)
I found the Pretty In Pink OST on my tumblrgirlfriend’s ipod last night, and oh man this song: Whispers! “If u want me u can find me left of center wondering about u”! It slots right in next to “Shellshock” by New Order and “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” on the playlist.
“Really ‘Thrills’ is supposed to feel somewhere between ‘Warm Leatherette’ and ‘Get Ur Freak On’,” Murphy said. “I wrote it right when ‘Get Ur Freak On’ came out and I was obsessed with that song. I loved all the Indian drum breaks. And the part from ‘Thrills’ that’s actually now played by go-go bells totally came from listening to Timbaland and me being like, ‘Oh! I bet if I went over to Timbaland’s house and we were working on a track and I played him ‘Warm Leatherette’ he’d be like, ‘Oh! I remember that track, that track is dope!’”
—Pitchfork: Articles: You Were There: The Complete LCD Soundsystem
“The audience is our anchor. They hold us here when the sirens and demons try to distract us. We hold on by our fingernails, unable to confess our terror, lest the mere movement of our jaw dislodge us and our sanity, slipping us effortlessly out into the abyss to the howling glee of the banshees. This sense of terror is very real. The puzzle is how it drives us towards that which we know wishes to consume us, committing us to purgatory. The edge of loss is within us, cutting its shape. The outline is blurred by the tumultuos mass. In solitude, it is clear. The white line around the lost body. Staying inside is so hard. Being outside is surrender. The audience is temporary camouflage.”
—Genesis P-Orridge, writing about Ian Curtis. (via ericmortensen)
I Don't Wanna Be No Personal Pizza
Personal and the Pizzas
Personal and the Pizzas - “I Don’t Wanna Be No Personal Pizza” (2010)
I heard this was the best band at SXSW. I heard this was the best-looking band at SXSW.
Play
Controversy
Prince
Play
Absolute →
pitchfork.com
Today is SCRITTI POLITTI day on my Tumblr, as I reviewed the just-released best of compilation, Absolute, for Pitchfork (link above). The sequencing on Absolute may or may not make sense - after a few listens I decided it basically did - but really the only flaw in this collection of excellent pop music is that it misses a few key tracks out. So today I’ll be posting YouTube links of the Scritti Politti singles which didn’t make it onto the hits package - some unjustly ignored, some wisely filtered out…
God Bows To Math
Minutemen
Minutemen - God Bows To Math (1984)
This popped up on shuffle and for a second I thought it was Modest Mouse (and for a split second Captain Beefheart); it sounds like what that group has wanted to do on at least two albums—plus, a weirdly existential title! Not trying to slag Modest Mouse—I do think they are a little too self-serious to call themselves fucking corndogs—but I guess I had a meaningful accidental music observation. Anyway, now I’m mentally debating who the masters of the short lapidary punk rock song are: Wire or Minutemen?
“Richard Meyers and Tom Miller were two misfit kids who attended the same boarding school in Delaware; both had a fondness for beat poetry, rock & roll, and annoying the school’s staff, and one day they decided to run away and hit the road in search of adventure. While hitchhiking through Alabama en route to Florida, they started a fire in an open field that attracted the attention of the police; Miller told the cops they were trying to stay warm, while Meyers said he just liked to watch things burn. Miller’s parents sent him back to school, while Meyers ended up in New York City. Years later, Meyers would reinvent himself as Richard Hell. Miller would change his name to Tom Verlaine, and they formed a band called the Neon Boys, which would eventually evolve into Television. Hell didn’t last long enough into Television’s career to record with the group, but in a small way he did make his presence felt on the song “Venus,” which briefly touches on Richard and Tom’s reckless past, as Verlaine sings “Richard said, ‘Hey, man, let’s dress up like cops/Think of what we could do!’/But something/Something/Said, ‘You better not.’” It’s perhaps the song’s most lucid moment; as a lyricist, Verlaine is often an impressionist, striving for mood over literal meaning, but this brief burst of conscience (and the remarkable image that lends the song the title, where he declares “I fell right into the arms/Of Venus De Milo”) serves as an relevant counterpoint to the stylish nihilism that Richard Hell made his stock in trade in his own band, Richard Hell and the Voidoids.”
—“Venus” song review (Mark Deming) | AllMusic
“In the liner notes to the set, Grosskopf writes of how maintaining the Minimoog in the apartment was a nightmare, and that the pitch would go flat or sharp depending on warm and cold it was in the space. He eventually figured out that if he placed a 60-watt light bulb near the synth, he could regulate the temperature enough to keep the instrument sounding good. This image— of new breakthroughs in sound-making technology having difficulty being used because of the of their surroundings— is a nice snapshot of where music technology was in the days of analog electronics. These were the sounds of the future, but they still existed in the physical world, where things like air temperature mattered. Sounds hadn’t yet been broken down into 1s and 0s, where they could be endlessly manipulated without degradation. So Grosskopf’s future music was confronting the same problems that had vexed instrumentalists for centuries— how to keep the damn things in tune.”
—Pitchfork: Album Reviews: Harald Grosskopf: Synthesist
Read a Book
Pylon
Pylon - Read A Book (1980)
Pylon singing about books makes my two hearts beat as one.
I think I know what you mean.
