New Wave for the New Week #17

Image by zioWoody via Flickr

I recently finished my first read-through of Isabelle Corbisier's exhaustive and wonderful Music for Vagabonds: The Tuxedomoon Chronicles, as thorough a history of the ex-San Franciscan European art rock collective as has been written about any band. I say "first read-through" because this is a book that will take several readings to consume and digest properly. The detailed annotations and footnotes alone form almost a second book within the main work, and the very European writing style Ms. Corbisier employs demands close attention from a Yankee reader such as myself.

This is not merely a recitation of names, dates, places and events, however; this is a diary, compiled of band member reminiscences, comments from contemporary spectators, and real time concert and record reviews, woven seamlessly to tell the story of the evolution of Tuxedomoon from its beginnings in post-Haight San Francisco, to its relocation across the pond in the hopes of finding acceptance, through its collapse and eventual reconstruction. For fans of the band it is a must-read; for those unfamiliar with Tuxedomoon, it will be a fascinating doorway to an often misunderstood and sadly under-appreciated group of musicians and performers.

I discovered Tuxedomoon in high school via my fascination with The Residents, and by extension any band that released material on that band's own label, Ralph Records. The two-record set The Best of Ralph is a highly recommended label compilation from that early '80s era; on it you'll find Tuxedomoon's wonderful "What Use?" and somewhat sinister "Incubus (Blue Suit)." As good an introduction to the band as any, as this is Tuxedomoon at perhaps their most accessible.

The NW4NW entry this week is a recently created video for their first single, 1978's "No Tears." Easily one of my favorites from their catalog, the sound here indicates why they were quickly, and perhaps too hastily, lumped in with the Punk/New Wave scene. Plaintive vocals screamed/sung over a skittish melody create an almost other-worldly sound. This however is not meant as an overall illustration of the band's sound or style; no one song from their catalog could be chosen as a "stereotypically Tuxedomoon" song. Over 30+ years they have explored areas of the musical spectrum that many other musicians have assiduously avoided, but they have also fashioned some very likeable, melodic, almost pop music as well. They are a band well worth your time and effort to get to know.

To start with, though, here is this week's New Wave for the New Week, "No Tears" by Tuxedomoon:

Perkasie!

Seldom anymore do I hear a band that blows me away from the get-go. Maybe it's the jadedness that comes from being past 40, beyond the age where everyone in the under-25 hipster crowd believes you should turn in your music-lover's club badge and resign yourself to your old dusty vinyl collection of "old fogey" music. (I actually overheard someone recently refer to the Sex Pistols that way: old fogey music. Why, back in my day, Johnny and Sid were taking us to hell in a handbasket and that's the way we liked it! Consarned kids today...) Today's bands are making music for today's kids, right? Just as my parents never fully understood the Violent Femmes or the Dead Kennedys, I'm not supposed to "get" the current stuff. Right? Only fitting, then, that when I do have the occasion to see a current band live, that my reaction rarely rises above a half-hearted "meh."

On Saturday I celebrated the 4th of July at a shindig here in downtown Lancaster, PA, called Freedom Fest. Hosted by radio station WXPN on the deck and the surrounding grounds of the Marion Court Room Restaurant, Freedom Fest boasted 7 hours of live music from 12 bands on 2 stages, along with several art exhibits, all for $10.

Freedom Fest flyer
I got there about two hours into the festivities, and met up with Ken Mueller, who does promotional work with WXPN, and who gave me the rundown on the bands coming up. I knew that I wasn't likely going to stay the whole night, but from the first Ken recommended I stick around to hear the band Perkasie. "They're easily the best band in Lancaster right now," he promised. They weren't going on until about 8:45, though, so I wasn't sure.

Listened to some decent music from a few regional bands, enjoyed some good food and drink, and made my around the crowd, running into friends here and there and spending a great deal of time just people-watching. At one point, the skies seemed to darken a bit, and since I don't drive and had about a 25-minute walk home ahead of me, I thought maybe it was time to get going.

"C'mon, dude, you gotta stick around for Perkasie," Mueller implored when I stopped by the WXPN table on my way towards the exit. "It isn't going to rain."

Ken isn't exactly always on the same musical track as I, but he knows his stuff. When I recently wrote about Nick Cave, he suggested I check out Wovenhand, and what a perfect recommendation that turned out to be. I asked for an idea of what Perkasie was going to sound like, and surprisingly, I seemed to have stumped him with that question. "Well, they're different..." he started, searching for a way to describe them. "They've got a washboard and a mandolin..." He trailed off again.

Well, now my interest was piqued, so rain or no, I was sticking around. Boy am I glad I did!

As noted on their MySpace page, Perkasie's sound has been described as "bubblegum baroque pop," and "more Puff The Magic Dragon meets Lynyrd Skynyrd meets O Brother Where Art Thou than Woody Guthrie meets Left Banke meets The 1910 Fruitgum Company." That should give you a rough idea of why Mueller was having such a hard time describing them. In my mind, I hear them as Squirrel Nut Zippers meets Poi Dog Pondering in a dusty saloon. Elements of diverse musical styles clash, crash and emulsify in the Perkasie blender, creating a musical version of one of those slushy bar-on-the-beach drinks which leave you far more buzzed than you ever expected they could. With each new song, another ingredient was added to the mix: here's some rollickin' rag-timey piano; here's some fairly traditional-sounding folk; let's add a little bit of swing to the mix; wait, that's almost a march; holy cow is that a tango?; I think I detect some bluegrass in here...and your head is spinning and you feel great. Bartender, pour me another!

Perkasie onstage at Freedom Fest
Onstage, the band is as entertaining to watch as they are to hear. Kate Foust is center stage for good reason - she is the focal point of attention. She demands it whether you want to pay attention to her or not. From the first note to the last, she is whirling around the stage, displaying seemingly boundless energy. There's a solitary drum next to her that she randomly pounds on, more as a way to release that energy than as an integral part of the song. Now she's over by the keyboard player, bashing away some random chords while he's trying to play. Now she's draped over the guitarist. Even the fellow playing washboard can't escape, and all the while she's winking at the audience as if including us in her mischievousness.

But Perkasie is by no means just the Kate Foust show. Keyboardist Alex Walsh shares lead vocal duties almost 50/50, grinning from behind his keyboard as if he's having the time of his life, and playing off Foust's careening with classic takes. Were they not musicians, they could have been a modern vaudeville act. The rest of the band chimes in regularly too, providing vocal harmonies and reaction shots to Kate's and Alex's antics.

Bottom line, this is a band that has fun. Whereas other bands throughout the day had to ask for audience participation ("C'mon people, clap your hands, you can dance, this is a party.."), Perkasie's enthusiasm just enveloped the crowd organically. THEY were having the party; we didn't want to miss out on the fun!

Perkasie has one CD out, self-titled. I wish I could tell you were to buy it. Plenty of places online where you can download it digitally: iTunes, Amazon, etc. But (and here's the old fogey in me, I guess), I want the actual CD. Really, I would love to have a vinyl LP, but I don't think they pressed any. Sadly, the band does not have their own website, nor any Facebook or Twitter pages that I could find. Their only online presence is on MySpace, but they have no links there to purchase the CD. (Hey guys - if you're reading this - get yourselves set up on Facebook and Twitter, and set up some CD purchase links - you're missing a huge market here!) I'm told you can purchase the CD from the band at their shows; I must have missed that opportunity on Saturday.

If you haven't heard Perkasie yet, here's a clip from YouTube that gives you a sense of the sound (or at least, one of the sounds) of the band. More can be heard on their MySpace page. But seriously, you must - MUST - see them live to get the full experience. I promise you'll leave with the best head-spinning, toe-tapping buzz you've ever had!

New Wave for the New Week #16

The line between some of New Wave's goofier records and the "Novelty Song" genre was sometimes a very thin one. Think of The Flying Lizards' covers of "Money," "Summertime Blues," et al., or The Vapors "Turning Japanese," or even The B-52s' "Rock Lobster". The fact that self-parody, a sense of humor, and a sense of fun were integral to the scene caused that line to be very blurry indeed.

Mix in a bit of British Monty Python-esque humor, and you wound up with bands like Yeah Yeah Noh, Stump, and this week's entry, A Tribe of Toffs.

A Tribe of Toffs gave the world one great single, "John Kettley (Is a Weatherman)," and disappeared forever. In fact, very little can be found online about the band save for this brief Wikipedia entry. But what a wonderful novelty they left behind.

The instantly-hummable song states plain fact about Mr. Kettley, who indeed is a weatherman (and so is Michael Fish). The video is no great shakes, but Kettley was good enough to make a cameo in the clip for his uncomissioned theme song.

Not much more to tell you. Enjoy this week's New Wave for the New Week, "John Kettley (Is a Weatherman)" by A Tribe of Toffs, prepare to witness Mr. Motch Bondouch and his amazing cheese and pickle solo, and ponder whether it's worth anyone writing a song about Al Roker...

Yesterday Kept Getting Sadder

Sky Saxon
via last.fm

When I wrote my post about Farrah Fawcett's passing yesterday, I had no idea what was yet to come.

I had determined this time around I wasn't going to trot out the old line about celebrity deaths happening in threes. We lost Ed McMahon on Tuesday, and now Farrah, but I would resist the urge to say it. And then I turned on the TV.

Understand that I have never been a fan of Michael Jackson's music or antics. Not my thing at all. Back in high school, during the height of Thriller's popularity and at the height of my Punk Rock snarkiness, I wrote the lyrics for a song called "Michael Jackson, You Suck." Couldn't stand him.

But I sure didn't expect that he would be number three.

I also didn't expect the media circus surrounding his demise. I understand that, despite my dislike for him, millions adored Michael Jackson, or at least his music. I get that he is considered a pop icon. But hour after hour of coverage during which basically nothing of substance was reported? Constant video of...nothing really? He passed, and that is sad, but come on! I almost expected to see Chevy Chase show up to say, "Our top story tonight: Michael Jackson is still dead!"

Most of all, however, I did not expect there would be a number four.

Less well-known to the mainstream, but an important musical figure nonetheless, Sky Saxon also passed away yesterday. Saxon formed The Seeds in 1965 with Daryl Hooper, Jan Savage, Jeremy Levine and Rick Andridge. They had a minor regional hit with their first single, "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," but achieved national notoriety with 1966's "Pushin' Too Hard," which reached #36 on the US charts and has since been covered by roughly a gazillion other bands.

The Seeds were the ultimate '60s garage band; listen to their records today and you can spot every sonic stereotype of that era and style. That's because these were the guys who practically drew up the blueprints for that sound. The band continued through some minor shuffling of the lineup and a slight name change to Sky Saxon & the Seeds before calling it quits in the early '70s.

When that signature sound came back into vogue in the '80s through bands like The Chesterfield Kings, The Fuzztones and The Cynics, Sky Saxon was back on the radar screen. After some solo stuff and collaborations with other bands, Saxon formed a new version of The Seeds and had been performing and recording intermittently ever since.

So, sadly, it turns out that these things don't always happen in threes. This week, it was four, with three in one day. May all four rest in peace.

Listen to The Seeds:

On the Passing of My First Celebrity Crush

Like many other males of my generation, I had The Poster. That's all you had to call it, too: The Poster. The one where she's wearing the red bathing suit - an iconic '70s image if ever there was one. Among my circle of friends at age 10 in 1977, all of us getting ready to become teenagers, none of us fully understanding what was about to happen with our hormones despite those woefully worn movies our teachers showed us in school about "becoming a man," the measure of whether or not you were leaving behind childish things and preparing to enter manhood was whether or not you had The Poster. 

She really was stunningly beautiful; a "California" (by way of Corpus Christi, Texas) blonde with sparkling eyes, a gleaming smile, an athletic body and the hairstyle that would come to bear her name. (In fact, at the height of her popularity, she sold her own line of shampoo!) 

She was the personification of what, at the time, was referred to as "jiggle TV," even though she only starred in only one TV show for only one season. She struggled to be recognized as an actress rather than a sex symbol; her jaw-droppingly intense turns as a battered wife and as a would-be rape victim who victimizes her attacker earned her critical acclaim and awards, but still when people spoke of her, it all went back to jiggle-TV and The Poster. 

Her refusal to accept that typecasting saw her tackle many difficult roles in film and on stage, but she virtually disappeared from TV for many years; when she came back, it was in a rambling, semi-coherent appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman" that left many scratching their heads. Her life took her full-circle back to TV at the end, having recently shared the details of her battles with cancer in a documentary special on NBC. 

Farrah Fawcett lost that two-year battle with cancer today. She was 62.

New Wave for the New Week #15

There has always been a kinship between New Wave and good old-fashioned '60s Surf Music. Bands like Agent Orange, The Raybeats, and The Surf Punks made (and, in some cases, are still making) music that would make The Ventures and Dick Dale proud. In fact, those and many like-minded bands often chose to cover the original classics from such revered surf artists in addition to pounding out their own updated take on the style.

One would expect such bands to have formed on California beaches, and in many cases that was so. There was one glaring exception, and they may have been the best - if least heralded - of the bunch.

The Insect Surfers were formed in 1979 in - of all places - Washington, DC. Their influences were quickly made clear by early covers of The Nazz's surfy 1968 hit "Open My Eyes" and Wire's dour 1979 post-punk single "Ex-Lion Tamer". The band chugged along for a few years, releasing a handful of really fantastic records before their wave crashed to shore in the early '80s.

The band reformed in 1986 and has been playing and recording ever since, with a sound hewing a bit more closely to the traditional Surf Music style Check out their MySpace page here to hear some of the more recent material and, if you like what you hear, support the band by picking up a CD or two.

For our purposes here, however, we look back fondly on the original incarnation of the band. Their vinyl debut was a 1980 single, "Into the Action," and is our New Wave for the New Week entry this time around. Granted, the sound is somewhat dated (not as much as the fashions and the neon though!), but it still sounds great to these ears. You can see and hear the enthusiastic amateurism here, and if you compare to the clips on their MySpace page, you'll appreciate how far they've come in 30 years while never really ever leaving their own little rift in time.

Here's the clip - enjoy!

Happy Father's Day!

To my own Dad, and to all the Dads who are reading this blog, I wish you all a very Happy Father's Day!

"The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get." -- Tim Russert

"My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it." -- Clarence Budington Kelland

"My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it." -- Abraham Lincoln

"A father is a man who expects his children to be as good as he meant to be." -- Carol Coats

"When I was a kid, I said to my father one afternoon, 'Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?' He answered, 'If the zoo wants you, let them come and get you.'" -- Jerry Lewis

And the "You've Made A Poor Choice" Award Goes To...

Kimberley Vlaminck wins the "You've Made A Poor Choice" Award for...well...just look:



According to the article on the UK's Daily Mail website, Vlaminck told the Romanian tattoo artist in both French and English that she wanted three small stars tattooed near her left eye. She then claims to have fallen asleep during the tattooing process, and when she awoke, she found that the tattoo artist had confused "three" with "fifty-six" and "near my left eye" with "all over the side of my face."

Ahem.

SHE SLEPT WHILE SOMEONE TATTOOED HER FACE?!? How is that even possible? Come on, if someone is using a tattoo needle on the side of my head, I'm not dozing off. Are you?

Of course, the assertion that there was no real issue until she got home and her father and boyfriend simultaneously hit the roof tends to lead one to believe that perhaps she's reaching for a cover story for what is surely one of the poorest choices possible.

But let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she's on the level with her story. It's still the winner of the poor choice award on several counts:

1. Wanting to a get a tattoo is fine. Tattoos have become pretty much accepted and somewhat celebrated by mainstream culture. Wanting to get a tattoo, no matter how small, ON YOUR FACE is simply a poor choice. Who has a tattoo on their face? Mike Tyson. Charles Manson. People in mug shots. These are the role models you're choosing? POOR CHOICE.

2. If it takes trying to explain what you want in more than one language, you've probably made a poor choice of tattoo artists to patronize. Clearly this tattoo artist understood the "stars" concept. How difficult is it to get across the concept of "three"? If it requires speaking another language, you've made a POOR CHOICE.

3. Deciding that it was a good time to take a nap while the tattoo artist does his work after it has taken two languages to try describe the tattoo you want on your face? POOR CHOICE.

Congratulations, Kimberly. You win this one hands-down!

New Wave for the New Week #14

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

If you had asked me 25 years ago to speculate on who would become the elder statesmen of Punk/New Wave/Post Punk/Alternative/Whatever-you-wanna-call-this Music, Nick Cave's name would not have been anywhere near the top of my list. His band at the time, The Birthday Party, while one of my favorites, was certainly an acquired taste, often spewing out discordant shrieking mutant swamp-blues like Captain Beefheart in a foul mood. Nick himself seemed unlikely to survive the next 25 years. His infamous heroin habit left him a gaunt, almost spectral figure to behold; pictures of him in full-blown junkie nod were common.

But here we are in 2009, and Nick Cave has been clean for ten years and has been making music non-stop for thirty-plus. After The Birthday Party dissolved, he formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and created sinister pseudo-countrified dirges that were a bit easier on the ears; his solo work has seen him team up with fellow Aussie Kylie Minogue in a "this doesn't seem right but somehow it works" ballad "Where the Wild Roses Grow," which will haunt you to your core; his side-project combo Grinderman harkens back to some of the terror of The Birthday Party's finest moments filtered through Bad Seeds era eerie calm. He is a novelist, an actor, a painter. He has indeed become one of the most important figures to emerge out of that Post Punk scene.

But, oh, where it all started!

Nick and some of his school chums formed his first band, The Boys Next Door, in the early '70s; as the Punk and New Wave scene began to infiltrate his native Australia in the form of bands like The Saints and Radio Birdman, so The Boys Next Door's music began to evolve to mesh with that sound. The Boys Next Door would eventually release one incredible album, Door Door, and an EP, Hee Haw, both in 1979. That same year, they would have a decent Australian hit with a murky ballad, "Shivers," which was among the first things Nick Cave recorded that sounded like what most people think of when they think of Nick Cave.

Indeed, The Boys Next Door would essentially morph into The Birthday Party; Hee Haw would be re-released as a Birthday Party record with all references to the previous band name expunged.

Our clip this week is a real gem: a very young Nick Cave in front of The Boys Next Door in 1978, performing the almost bubblegum-sounding "The Nightwatchman." This gooey piece of New Wave goodness captures an nearly exuberant Nick Cave pre-Birthday Party muck, pre-Bad Seeds sinisterness, and obviously pre-heroin. Enjoy and be amazed:

New Wave for the New Week #13

Image via Wikipedia

Unfortunately, I didn't get to Baltimore for the X show Saturday night. I'll probably kick myself for not finding a way to get there, but sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

I figure the least I can do is pick an X video for this week's New Wave for the New Week entry, and I managed to find one I've never seen before! Their third album, Under the Big Black Sun (1982), was also their first on a major label. The main single from the album, "The Hungry Wolf," was played in light-to-mid rotation during the early days of MTV. But there was a second video shot from the album, for one of my favorites from their catalog of songs, "Motel Room in My Bed."

Forgive the rough quality here, but this is a rare one. The video is no great shakes - just a pretty straight lip-sync performance - but it does capture X at their best: John Doe and Exene Cervenka creating their at once beautiful and off-kilter harmony, guitarist Billy Zoom in full grin-and-pompadour stance, and DJ Bonebrake driving the whole band into a frenzy behind the drumset.

So, in honor of X's current tour and as a toast to Exene's health, enjoy this week's entry:

X - Motel Room In My Bed