43 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(04/25/12 7:45pm)
This is my last issue at The Cluster, meaning that my long and rambling column is finally at its end. All three of my readers must be disappointed and heartbroken. And so am I. I’ve spent the last four years working at The Cluster, from its first issue my freshman year right up until this one.
And in my time here I’ve put in a lot of work to make The Cluster the best college newspaper it can be. I’m more proud of it than anything else I’ve ever done. And throughout my time at the paper and my time at this column, I’ve trashed a good number of albums. But I think I’m getting over that. I don’t want to be negative. I don’t want to tear other people down without creating something of my own.
And so, in the spirit of my last column for my favorite paper, I’d like to talk about the single greatest piece of art humanity has ever produced. I’d like to talk about The Beatles’ Abbey Road.
I’m serious. I’ve examined the Mona Lisa. I’ve toured the great buildings of Europe. But I’ve never been more impressed by a work of art than Abbey Road. Released in 1969, it was the last recording The Beatles ever produced (Let It Be would be released the next year, but was recorded several months before Abbey Road), and it stands as the culmination of their artistic statements as a band and as individuals.
When it was recorded in early 1969, The Beatles were barely functioning as a cohesive unit. They had fallen to infighting, and their last recording session for Let It Be ended up with the album being shelved for the better part of two years. Despite their differences as individuals, however, the band came together and recorded what might just be the most impressive rock album of all time.
The album’s first half contains some a couple of the band’s most memorable moments, specifically “Come Together,” “Something,” “Oh! Darling,” and “Octopus’s Garden.” They’re all instantly memorable, building on the pop structure The Beatles had established over their career while at the same time expanding their sonic horizons.
The first side also contains John Lennon’s proto-drone rock composition “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and Paul McCartney’s irreverent and hilarious ditty “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Abbey Road’s first half is an amazing collection of memorable pop singles that stand the test of time.
However, where Abbey Road really shines is its last half. The second side of the album doesn’t bother with creating the four-minute pop singles that the band had grown so used to in their career. Instead, they took a series of half-finished songs and strung them together in into a 16 minute epic.
The resulting medley is a masterpiece of pop craftsmanship, effortlessly blending melody, lyrics, and emotion. It runs the gamut from the slow piano ballad “Golden Slumbers” to the raucous guitar riffing of “Polythene Pam.” The songs flow together perfectly for the entire 16 minute period, but none of them go on too long to get boring. Artistically, it’s perfect.
Finally, the nine song suite comes to a head in “The End.” Throughout those two minutes, John, Paul, George, and Ringo say everything they possibly can about their careers. Each of the four takes their own solo in sequence (with this being the only drum solo Ringo Starr would ever play) before ending the song in the words, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
The song wraps up every philosophical stance the band had taken over the years, even foreshadowing the anti-war activism John Lennon and his wife Yoko would become famous for soon after the record’s release. It’s the perfect place to end a band’s career, summing up everything they had to say in two beautiful minutes.
And in an amazing move, Abbey Road contains one of the first hidden tracks in the history of rock music. 40 seconds after “The End” encapsulates everything The Beatles had to say, the 14-second “Her Majesty.” It interrupts the serenity of the album’s end, but it’s beautiful in its own way. The McCartney-penned snippet expresses the beauty and pain of unrequited love with astounding clarity in less time than it takes to read this paragraph.
More importantly, though, it reminds us that nothing is ever over. Things keep going, despite our best efforts to conclude them. The Beatles kept going, in their own way, after Abbey Road was finished. They released another record, and every member of the band continued playing music for the rest of their lives. They weren’t going anywhere, and neither are we. “Her Majesty” lets us know that. It’s entirely perfect in that way.
Honestly, if humanity had to pick record of our civilization to send an alien species, it would be Abbey Road. There might be records I enjoy more than this one, but I don’t think humankind will ever produce another piece of music as cohesive, beautiful, and captivating as Abbey Road.
Eric Brown out.
(04/11/12 8:12pm)
Alright, I think it’s time for a change of pace. For months I’ve talked about classic and not so classic rock albums, and pretty much ignored any type of music that wasn’t based on loud guitars and pop hooks. So I want to break away from that in my second-to-last instalment of this column. I want to talk about something far more menacing, brutal, and just as groundbreaking as anything Iggy Pop put out. I want to talk about West Coast gangster rap.
Specifically, I want to talk about one man whose multifaceted contributions to the West Coast rap scene singlehandedly redefined the genre and wiped away the clean, radio-friendly images of rappers like of Kid ‘n Play and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and replaced them with brutally realistic insighs into life in impoverished South Central Los Angeles.
Dr. Dre began his career performing in the short-lived electro group The World Class Wreckin’ Cru. While this early music bears little resemblence to his later work, playing with the Compton group allowed him to cut his teeth in the music scene and develop his talents as a rapper and DJ. A few years after the formation of the Cru, Dre met future collaborators Ice Cube and Easy-E.
From this parnership, Dre formed the massively influential gangster rap group NWA. Their seminal debut album Straight Outta Compton was a watershed moment in rap history. Songs like “F*ck Tha Police” and “Gangsta Gangsta” portrayed the grim realities of life as a young black man in Compton. The record is filled with tales of gang violence, drug deals and police brutality. It’s a harsh, uncompromising look at urban violence and crime, but it’s also a catchy, masterfully-produced piece of music.
While the group received plenty of hatred for their depictions of urban life, they maintained that they were simply portraying the harsh realities of the world in which they grew up. And many others came to their defense. Critic Bud Norman wrote of the group’s depiction of gang violence, “They don’t make it sound like much fun... They describe it with the same nonjudgmental resignation that a Kansan might use about a tornado.” Glorification of gang violence or not, Straight Outta Compton still remains one of the greatest rap albums of all times, thanks in large part to Dr. Dre’s production and appearances behind the mic.
But Dr. Dre’s best work by far would be his 1992 debut solo album, The Chronic. After leaving NWA, Dre founded Death Row Records with his then-bodyguard Suge Knight, bringing aboard younger rappers like Snoop Dogg as well. As Death Row’s first official release, The Chronic was a huge step forward not just in Dr. Dre’s evolution as a solo artist, but in the sound of rap music as a whole. After Dre introduced the world to the sound and fury of southern Los Angeles with NWA, hundred of other rappers were attempting to emulate that style. Instead of following in the chart-topping, sample-heavy footsteps of NWA, Dre took a different approach on The Chronic, slowing down the tempo and relying heavily on synthesizers to create his new beats.
The record was a smash hit, and it catapulted Dr. Dre and collaborator Snoop Dogg, into the limelight. Singles “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” and “Let Me Ride” received significant airplay and once again redefined the way rap music was viewed in America. Some people still haven’t caught up to these early ‘90s innovations.
Since the release of his follow-up, 2001, Dre’s focus has largely been on production, working on tracks for artists such as Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Raekwon and Jay-Z.
Classic or catastrophe: classic
(04/11/12 7:30pm)
Two weeks ago, The Cluster published an opinion piece by senior Gene Mitchell, who was at that time a Student Government parliamentarian.
Mitchell, who in the interest of full disclosure is a good friend of mine and regular contributor to the paper, criticized the current crop of SGA candidates, several by name.
Following its publication, president Locke expressed concerns about student reaction to the piece, and Mitchell was ultimately asked to resign from his position last Monday.
Mitchell spoke only out of a genuine love for his school and a desire to see students engage more strongly in their student government.
Yes, he spoke strongly about many students, but only with the hope of encouraging them to do the best they can at their jobs.
The fact that Mitchell was punished for the love of his school is absolutely sickening. I’m appalled at the backlash my friend faced.
Here’s the deal: if you are running for public office, don’t be surprised when people criticize you publicly.
You’ve made a decision to be the public face of your class at Mercer, and it should be obvious that not everyone will agree with you and want to express those opinions.
It is literally your job to listen to those complaints and use them to better Mercer’s campus.
It doesn’t matter if the critiques come from a student, faculty member, or another SGA member.
Getting upset about criticisms is childish, entitled and a testament to the fact that Mitchell was right all along.
A real student leader wouldn’t get offended at criticism. A real leader would listen to those complaints and do something about them.
And I don’t mean trying to silence anyone with a dissenting opinion.
Presumably, many of these SGA members are interested in pursuing a political career in the future.
Do they think they will never be called out by name in that line of work?
Professional politics is comprised of nothing but mudslinging. Mitchell’s criticisms are positively compliments by those standards.
And at the end of the day, pretty much everything Mitchell said was correct.
The junior class and senator-at-large representatives are running unopposed, and none of the candidates have campaigned particularly hard or impressed me in any way.
When it comes down to it, Mitchell was trying to spur the school into action.
I’ve talked to him many times about SGA, and it’s clear that he loves the organization.
He wants nothing but the best for the school, and is in a uniquely qualified position to assist it.
Mitchell is a veteran, and has served his country on the battlefield and as an ambassador.
He maintains good grades and has spent time volunteering with Mercer On Mission. And yet we would rather have students that put no effort into their campaigns on staff?
It makes me glad I’m graduating this May, because I would be fearful of some of the new representatives coming into SGA.
Criticize me as much as you like for what I wrote. I put it out there publicly, and I understand the implications that come with it. But I won’t be resigning as an editor of The Cluster.
Comments, questions or concerns about this opinion can be emailed to iamericbrown@gmail.com.
(04/11/12 7:21pm)
A few days ago, the federal government released the data from the 1940 census. The large-scale data — population amounts and aggregations of — have been available for years, but due to a federal law restricting the release of personally identifying information for 72 years, the specifics of the census were kept confidential until now. When I saw that this information had been made public, I decided to dig into Macon’s past and catch a glimpse of the city as it once was.
One thing that surprised me about the census was how much information the pages gave you. You could see a person’s race, state of birth, level of education, job, family members and even annual salary, and while this is only superficial information, it still gives a picture of the people living there at the time. It is, at the very least, enough to give you a mental picture of the family and their place in the community.
I noticed small changes. Manufacturing jobs were bigger. People seemed able to support families in nice neighborhoods off of blue collar work. There was less hopping between states. People tended to stick to their birthplaces. Families stayed together longer. It wasn’t uncommon to see a 27 year-old woman work full time as a stenographer and still live at home with her family. It must have been a pain for their dating lives, but I’m sure rent was easier. These differences point towards how culture has changed over the past 72 years. American society has become more mobile, modern and technologically driven.
One of the first things I did was look up my current address, just to see what it was like all those years ago. It wasn’t particularly easy, as the system is pretty unwieldy, but I digress. I live in one of those old houses on College that’s been cut up into apartments, and about 13 people live here now. I’d always wondered when this beautiful old home was cut up into slices. Apparently the answer is well after 1940; just two people lived in this large house back then: Robert Barnett (30), and his wife Mildred (27). They rented the house (the whole house!) for 35 dollars a month. For the record, my roommates and I pay about 20 times that for four rooms. Even in 1940 dollars, that seems like it’s quite a bargain. Robert was a high-school dropout and the vice-president of a factory. Mildred didn’t work, but she finished her senior year of school.
I wanted to know more about these two, so I signed up for Ancestry.com, began a free trial, and plugged in the few bits of information I knew about them. Robert was born to factory-worker and South Carolina native William O’Barnett in 1910. He died in 1988, still living in Macon. Really, that’s about all the information I could find on him. I have less on Mildred.
I found other interesting stories as well. I saw a trio of elderly, college-educated sisters that lived across the street from me. A pair of Russian immigrants on Magnolia appear to have co-owned a jewelry store with a nearby native Georgian. One family, that of WF and Susie Johnson, seems to have been full of travelers. They were born in the north, and two of their kids were born in differing states: Washington and Colorado. He was a weather man; she sold dresses.
However, these are the fun stories. The ones that allow you to imagine the nice lives these people must have led. They all had nice (or at least nice-sounding) jobs and lived in comfortable areas of the city. Most importantly, though, they were all white. See, the data revealed a far uglier picture for Macon’s African American citizens (I could only find information on black and white citizens. Native American, Asian, and Hispanic Maconites weren’t living anywhere I read about). For starters, under the race section, African Americans were officially listed as “negro.”
Moving beyond that, the city was shockingly segregated. I know the city is in many ways split up by race now, but it was much more severe in 1940. Neighborhoods were either entirely white or entirely black. I’m not exaggerating. The only records I could find of intermingling between the races was for live-in maids and a young black couple that lived in the “rear house” of an apartment building on College. Sorry, Willie and Addie Ingram.
Jobs were another sharp divider between whites and blacks. There was a large variety of jobs available for whites, with many opportunities for workers of every class. White citizens at the time could be shop owners, journalists, railroad conductors and factory owners. Nothing was off-limits for them. Looking at the black population, however, revealed a far more limited selection of careers. Almost without exception, blacks were cooks, maids, manual laborers (mostly for the WPA) and shoe shiners. There are no black editors, engineers, or architects. These fields are exclusively white. Occasionally, you’ll see a few black teachers, an embalmer, or a musician, but by and large, they are laborers and maids.
It was highly uncommon to see African Americans that moved from their place of birth. Occasionally, you’d see a few African Americans that previously lived in Kentucky, Alabama, or the Carolinas, but it was exceedingly rare to see anything further from Georgia. In fact, I noticed exactly one black man originally from the north in my entire time perusing the records.
All of these facts paint a bleak picture of the social opportunities given to blacks at the time. They were expected to work demeaning jobs, live separated from other parts of society, and never relocate to greener pastures. I know we read about segregation and the treatments of blacks in this era all the time, but it’s one thing to hear about it in the abstract, but quite another to browse over the lives of hundreds of socially and economically oppressed people and see exactly how few opportunities they were given in life. Blacks at the time were second-class citizens in all respects. It’s shocking and sickening, to be frank.
I know this isn’t new knowledge to anyone, but I don’t think that makes it any less relevant or worth exploring. So, if you have the time over the next few days, check out 1940census.archives.gov. See who used to live in your neighborhood. Check out their job titles and family names. Imagine the interesting lives they led. Maybe see if you had family nearby. But while you’re doing it, be sure to note the stark contrast in the lives of Macon’s black and white citizens, and be glad it’s not 1940 anymore.
(03/28/12 8:22pm)
I have bad things to say about a lot of artists. I have bad things to say about most things, really. That’s kind of the point about this column. It’s not enough for me to trash talk a couple of bands behind closed doors to my friends. No, I have to desecrate the fine journalistic tradition of The Cluster in order to tell you that your favorite band sucks. That Nevermind wasn’t that great, in retrospect. That Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea is, at best, poorly-written and overhyped. That the Eagles are the worst band to ever walk the Earth.
Well now I’m going to say something positive. There’s one artist out there about whom I can’t say a single negative word. A man so wild, innovative, and electrifying that close to 40 years later, his records stand as testament to the sheer transformative power of rock music. He is an absolute madman on the stage and a visionary in the studio. I’m talking, of course, about Iggy Pop and his band, The Stooges.
Plenty of people lump Iggy and the Stooges into the category of “proto-punk,” and consider it an honor bestowed on the band. They claim that the band’s primary contribution to the world was to influence coming artists like The Ramones, Crass, and the Dead Kennedys. Those people are wrong. The Stooges’ great contribution to the world is Raw Power, one of the most shocking and intense rock records ever unleashed on the general public.
Hell, Iggy Pop’s stage presence was so powerful, so impressive and earth-shattering that not only did visionary artist David Bowie insist on producing 1973’s Raw Power, he directly modeled much of his Ziggy Stardust character on Iggy. If punk rock had never existed, Iggy and the Stooges would still have gone down in history as some of the most influential rock artists of all time.
Perhaps I should get one thing straight. Iggy Pop, the performer, is not a human being. The Muskegon, Michigan-born Jim Osterberg Jr. might be. I’m sure that man lives pretty much like the rest of us, goes shopping, does the dishes. But the second someone places a microphone into Jim’s hand, he becomes something else entirely, a being of pure, unstoppable energy. He just isn’t recognizable as a member of the human species anymore. I’m serious. Look up some live videos. It doesn’t matter if you’re watching a video from 1973 or 2012. Iggy is absolutely insane, no matter what time period you’re seeing him in. And that manic energy extends to his studio recordings as well.
I remember the first time I heard “Search and Destroy.” I was fifteen, and I could barely process the sounds my stereo was making. The guitars were literally howling, and some deranged man kept shouting into the microphone. I was nearly knocked to the floor from the song’s sheer intensity. I loved it. I needed more.
The rest of Raw Power didn’t let me down. “Penetration” plays out like a bizarre study in sexual power dynamics, presented by the feedback of James Williamson’s guitar amplifier. The mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation created on “Gimmie Danger” is at the same time both unsettling and immediately inviting. The title track takes a fairly standard classic rock chord progression and distorts it beyond all recognition, filtering commercial radio rock through the band’s characteristically unhinged energy. I don’t know if any other record has the intensity, shock value, and, well, raw power of The Stooges’ final release. It might just be a perfect record.
Classic or catastrophe: classic.
(03/14/12 9:34pm)
Republican Party presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich visited Macon on Thursday, March 1 as a part of his Georgia campaign. The former Speaker of the House appeared at the Hephzibah Ministries gym, delivering a 40-minute speech touching on the importance of American energy independence, foreign policy, the economy, and Gingrich’s own position in the Republican primary race.
The rally began with a call to prayer from Republican activist and Bibb County Republican Party vice chair Bill Knowles, after which Mercer senior Matt Hickman led the packed gym in the pledge of allegiance. As Gingrich took the podium, he greeted the audience and began criticizing President Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu. According to Gingrich, Chu’s focus on alternative energies is short cited, saying “I’m willing to explore [alternative energy]. I think there are lots of things we can do as a country in the future, and I’m willing to invest in that. But it is a fact that we know how to drill.”
Apart from his focus on energy independence, Gingrich spoke on national security and American economic interests, citing his belief that Barack Obama has not made the country safer or more economically prosperous during his three years as President. Gingrich also billed himself as a uniquely positioned candidate with years of experience in the political realm. The Georgia native cited his position as Speaker of the House during the Clinton administration and boasted about the nation’s economic security and balanced budget during that time.
Towards the end of his speech, Gingrich began tying his plans for energy independence and national security together. He stated that increased American oil production would lead to more American autonomy and less reliance on Middle Eastern oil suppliers, who he sees as supporters or global terrorism. Gingrich said, “One of my goals is to say to the Saudis, ‘ You are not going to be tolerated paying for terrorism around the world anymore.’”
Several Mercer students and alumni were in attendance of the event, offering various perspectives on Gingrich, his policies, and his place in the ongoing Republican primaries.
“A lot of folks are scared of some his attitude and some of the things he has to say, but his campaign slogan is ‘Rebuilding the America We Love’ and really what that means to me is he’s going to bring back personal responsibility. That’s the America that I love. He’s got a lot of strong words about debt and the deficit — stronger words than any other candidate out there — and as a young voter, somebody who has to work for 30 or 40 more years, the deficit is the biggest issue to me, and I think Newt is the best candidate to face that.” said Alan Franks, Mercer class of 2010.
However, not everyone in attendance was in favor of Gingrich’s policies and performance at the rally. Those in attendance ranged from Republicans skeptical of Gingrich to liberals strongly opposed to Gingrich’s policies.
“I found him infuriating. He is everything that I hate about American bullying tactics. It is astoundingly horrific to me that a person can advocate freedom of religion while defending those who participated in koran burning. Furthermore, since he is so great with numbers, could he enlighten the audience on how many wives he’s had while still supporting ‘traditional marriage?’” said Mercer senior Kyle Shook.
“I’m a Republican, but I’m in favor of Mitt Romney in this race. As opposed to Gingrich, I think Romney has the best chance of winning, and I think he has the best positions. I consider myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and he’s the one who most closely matches up to my position. I think Newt’s tax plan is based more around repealing previous laws, but Mitt Romney has a more positive, proactive plan for the country.” said Alec Chappell, senior political science major.
Five days after delivering his speech, Gingrich won the state of Georgia in the Republican Party primary elections, with just under half of the total voters supporting him. Mitt Romney trailed Gingrich in second place with 25 percent of the total vote.
(03/14/12 8:15pm)
I wasn’t exactly sure what I intended to create when I set out to write this column. Honestly, I think I just wanted to knock a couple of supposedly “classic” albums down a notch and praise some records that I think have gone unnoticed. Over time, it seems to have evolved into an episodic treatise on punk, indie rock and alternative culture. So now I’m going to embrace that and look at one of the best selling alternative rock ablums of all time: Pearl Jam’s debut record Ten.
It’s hard not to think about it now, when punk-influenced bands like Green Day top the charts and Hot Topics can be found in malls nationwide, but there was a time when alternative rock wasn’t a commercial commodity. In fact, there was a time when alternative and indie rock were truly underground affairs.
Pearl Jam was, along with Nirvana, one of the two big bands to come along and change all of that. Their debut album Ten sold slowly at first, but as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” began to take over the airwaves, stores couldn’t keep the record in stock. It ultimately peaked at number two on the Billboard charts, propelling alternative rock and grunge into the forefront of the American consciousness. And while I’ll always be grateful to Eddie Vedder and his crew for that, it doesn’t mean I have to like the band.
Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was notoriously critical of Pearl Jam in their early days, calling them an “old-line commercial rock band in grunge clothing.” While I don’t know if I would go that far in my condemnation of the band — after all, they did pull a number of anti-corporate moves over the years, including boycotting Ticketmaster and refusing to shoot music videos to support albums after Ten — Pearl Jam, in my mind, lacks much of the fire, anger, and punk ethos that their contemporaries like Nirvana had in spades. When it comes down to it, they lack spirit.
Pearl Jam’s indulgent guitar solos, funk-inspired instrumentals, and crooning vocals just seem too evocative of big arena-rock to really fit in with a genre so focused on DIY ethics and opposition to mainstream
From what I understand, most of the songs on Ten were originally written as instrumental jams, with vocalist Eddie Vedder overlaying his vocals on top of the songs a while after they had been written. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad way to write songs, but it seems to have hindered Pear Jam on this record.
Mid-tempo instrumentals on songs like “Even Flow” just don’t seem to fully match Vedder’s vocal style. Rarely does the band attempt to harmonize the vocal melodies with the instrumentals, and because of this, the whole record just comes across as flat and uneven in my mind.
But honestly, here’s my essential problem with Pearl Jam: they aren’t a bad band by any stretch of the imagination, but neither are they a truly great band, and for all the hype and praise behind records like Ten, at the end of the day, you’re just left with a pretty mediocre hard-rock experience.
Sure, some of the guitar solos are impressive, but there are far better instrumentalists out there. And neither does the band deliver the screeching, raw power that other acts of their time could deliver. Ultimately, Pearl Jam’s Ten is stuck somewhere in the middle of punk rock howl and Led Zeppelin virtuosity. I just don’t know if I can handle being in that middle ground for more than four or five minutes at a time.
Classic or catastrophe: catastrophe
(03/14/12 8:00pm)
Quadworks is proud to announce the lineup of Bearstock 2012. This year’s headliners include electro-hop act Far East Movement and pop-rock band Yellowcard. The festival takes place April 14.
Like last year, the free, all-day event will be held at Tattnall Square Park. Bands will alternate playing at two stages throughout the day, with headliners and their direct support taking the main stage at the end of the day. The concert is open to Mercer students and the general public at no cost.
Far East Movement is best known for their 2010 hit “Like a G6,” which exploded onto the airwaves that October. The quartet mixes electronica and hip-hop with catchy pop tunes.The band is also known as the first Asian-American group to earn a top ten hit on the Mainstream Pop charts in the United States.
Los Angeles-based pop-punker Yellowcard gained a large amount of fame for their 2004 hits “Ocean Avenue” and “Way Away,” which were featured heavily on MTV and radio stations nationwide. The band has continued to tour in support of their new, less-radio friendly records and have established themselves as an energetic live band with performances.
Supporting acts include indie-rock outfit Ocean is Theory, Mercer alums theKey, Macon’s own genre-bending Jubee and the Morning After, and pop-rock act POWERS (formerly known as Bottle Up and Explode!). Local promoting agency The Blue Indian is also sponsoring the indie-folk duo The Front Bottoms. (Side note: The Cluster has interviewed most of these bands. Check them out online).
Ocean is Theory has played Bearstock several years in a row, and is known for their pop hooks and atmospheric lead guitars. The Marietta, Georgia band recently signed to Razor & Tie Records and released the three-song Future Fears EP last summer.
The Front Bottoms recently released their self-titled debut record to rave reviews, leading to tours with established artists like Kevin Devine and Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra. The band is currently performing several showcases at this year’s South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
For a complete list of all the bands playing this year’s Bearstock, check out the flyer above.
(02/22/12 9:27pm)
For years, Macon’s artistic legacy has been its music. Otis Redding, The Allman Brothers Band, Little Richard and more all emerged onto the world stage from their humble beginnings in Macon. For the past few years, however, a group of Macon artists have been giving Macon a name as a hub for independent film, as well.
The Macon Film Festival, created in part by Mercer professor Craig Coleman, wrapped up its seventh year this weekend with screenings of 125 films ranging from documentaries to animations to narrative shorts. MAGA, as the festival is known as, ran from February 16 to 19, played host to filmmakers from more than 15 countries and averaged about 500 viewers per day. Ticket sales were up 30% from previous years, making this the Macon Film Festival’s most successful year.
Offering screenings at three downtown venues — The Cox Capital Theatre, the Douglas Theatre and the 567 Center for Renewal — MAGA saw a wide variety of film genres being screened across the weekend, giving out awards and prize money to the best films in each genre.
Contestants entered their films in the categories of animation, experimental, student, documentary, narrative short and narrative feature. Additionally, the festival gave out a “best in show” prize. This year’s winner was the narrative feature A Wake, directed by Penelope Buitenhuis.
A Wake follows the reunion of a formerly successful theatre company at the wake of their murdered director. Reminiscent of other indie dramas such as The Royal Tenenbaums, the Canadian drama unravels years of secrets behind the band of thespians. In an interesting directorial move, all the film’s dialog was improvised rather than scripted.
A Wake also recieved best in show awards from the Southern Appalachian International Film Festival and the Toronto Women’s Eye Film Festival, as well as a best screenplay award from the Rhode Island Film Festival.
Other standout films at the festival included the documentary Grow!. Jointly directed by filmmakers Christine Anthony and Owen Masterton, Grow! explores the rising sustainable farming movement, fueled in large part by young, college-educated farmers that have left their cities in pursuit of an agrarian dream. The documentary was filmed in and around 12 Georgia farms.
The student category saw a wide range of talent and creativity on display, most notably in the category winner Missile Crisis. The short, directed by Jaye Davidson, follows a 13 year-old boy as he attempts to protect his little brother from the looming shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as problems within their own family.
In addition to the screenings, awards and after-parties, MAGA also hosted a wide variety of panels geared towards both aspiring filmmakers and fans. Special guest Joseph Uliano, himself a Dublin native, hosted a panel on his work in music videos. Currently based in Los Angeles, Uliano has produced videos for The Foo Fighters, The Black Keys, Bruno Mars and more.
Other featured filmmakers included Macon native Carrie Preston, whose debut film That’s What She Said was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival this past January. Her film closed out the festival and included a special question and answer session via Skype.
(02/22/12 9:01pm)
A couple issues back, I talked about Hüsker Dü’s 1986 album New Day Rising and, more importantly, its status as a landmark record that went on the influence alternative rock for years to come. And now I’d like to go on to explain to both of my readers exactly what sort of influence SST records and their bands had on the decade to come.
The early 1990s were a truly unique and interesting time in popular music. After the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind, major labels were scrambling to find the “next big thing” in flash, and they began courting smaller, more abrasive and experimental bands that never would have been considered for radio play just a year before.
This had an unintended effect for the major labels. By catering so strongly to smaller bands and labels, it gave independent music a stronger voice than it had ever seen before. Alternative culture had been thrust into the mainstream.
All of a sudden, weird, trippy records like Sonic Youth’s Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star were on the Billboard charts beside pop acts like Boyz II Men. Bizarre songs like The Flaming Lips’ “She Don’t Use Jelly” were suddently considered hit singles in a way that never would have been commercial viable before Nirvana came along.
Not that every alt-rock band at the time was brilliant, but the beauty of the time was seeing underground rock move into a more prominent place in American culture.
Which leads me to Pavement and their phenomenal 1994 release Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The album wasn’t as commercially successful as other alt-rock records of the period (though it did reach the top 20 in the UK), but in my mind, it’s possibly the finest album of the 1990s.
While Pavement’s first full-length Slanted and Enchanted was a very low-fi record, Crooked Rain was a diferent story. It adopted a slightly more polished sound, one that while not quite a fit for mainstream radio, turned down the abrasively low quality production values and fuzzy guitars, replacing them with catchy melodies, reserved rhythms and lazily strummed chords that could come right out of a jam band. The whole album oozes slacker chic.
Take the album’s first single “Cut Your Hair” for example: Beginning with Stephen Malkmus’s falsetto “ooh ooh oohs,” the song bleads into its loose, jam-inspired verse as Malkmus’s lyrics attack the image-conscious music industry. “You can keep your fancy record deals and stylists,” Malkmus seems to say, “We don’t care about any of that.”
Even the song’s guitar solo feels effortlessly perfect, as Scott Kannberg’s guitar shifts quickly around the same five or six notes. It’s a perfectly Generation X moment: brilliant, simplistic and never too thought-out.
The group’s next single, “Gold Soundz” might be one of my favorite songs of all time. The whole song feels like the soundtrack to a perfectly lazy summer day. Malkmus and Kannberg’s guitars intertwine seamlessly, noodling around in alternate tunings, creating the perfect mix of off-the-cuff originality and planned genius.
The rest of the record is full of memorably off-kilter selections, from the slow country rock of “Range Life” to the Dave Brubeck-inspired instrumental “5-4=Unity.”
It may not have been the most popular album of the mid ‘90s, but it encapsulated the era better than any other managed to.
Classic or catastrophe: classic.
(02/08/12 9:52pm)
I know it’s been a while since I tore some classic band to shreds. Lately I’ve been spending a little too much time praising my favorites instead of tearing down the much-beloved, but little-deserved icons of rock. And I had every intention to do that this week. To tell you how, for example, the Rolling Stones were never as great as you thought. It would have been excellent. But sometimes you have to take a diversion. So this week, I won’t exactly be reviewing a classic album. I’ll be talking about filtering music through nostalgia, bands getting back together, and when to leave the past alone.You see, this weekend, I read some news that shook me to my core. I mean it seriously rocked me, but not the good kind, like you want. I’d read news about Queen reuniting for one more half-hearted money-grubbing tour. It didn’t bother me too much. They’ve done it before, and who could be a worse replacement than the former lead singer of Bad Company? So let them do it. Brian May’s got to eat. And then I saw the unthinkable. Out of all the possible replacements for Freddie Mercury, the surviving members of Queen have picked one of the most ridiculous and gimmicky singer possible: American Idol runner up and general hack Adam Lambert.Was there no one else Brian May and company possible could have chosen? Any one at all? Now, the best of all possible options would be to leave the corpse of a great band alone and have the surviving members move on to different projects rather than cling to the memory of a group that broke up tragically over two decades ago due to the death of an irreplacable lead singer. It’s frankly a little embarassing to see these musicians attempting to coast on their past successes while captitalizing on the loss of a great musician. And it’s embarassing to see a singer like Adam Lambert, who became famous for singing other people’s songs, continuing his trend of contributing nothing original to our culture as a nation.I know its a fad right now for popular bands to get back together for reunion tours. Even acts that never came close to topping the charts are making an effort to get back together. Dinosaur Jr., At the Drive-In, Refused, Cap’n Jazz, and more are all taking to the stage after long absenses.But there’s a big difference between these reunions and what the surviving members of Queen have in the works currently. For one, all the band members are still alive. But there’s also another reason, and it comes down to different views of nostalgia. Many of these bands that are reuniting miss their pasts, but I don’t look at, say, the Dinosaur Jr. reunion as a cash-grab based on nostalgia. All the members continued to make music, and once the original lineup was back together, the band put out two full-length records. The Queen reuinion, on the other hand, is just a tour. A tour with someone else in place of Freddie Mercury. There’s not an effort to do anything new. The band comes in, plays the hits, and leaves considerably richer. It’s not about art, or creative fulfilment, or anything like that. These guys just want to relive their glory days and take their fans’ money while doing it.Believe me, I know there’s big money in nostalgia right now. But I don’t think that it should come at the expense of art. And I know this is ironic coming from a column about reevaluating the classics, but there’s a time to leave the past alone. Do something new and exciting, or at least have the decency to fade into the past quietly and gracefully. Not everyone can be a rock star forever.
(02/08/12 9:39pm)
When I say the words “pop-punk,” what comes into your mind? Is it visions of Warped Tour-goers, singing along to overproduced, radio hitmakers like Good Charlotte or Fall Out Boy? Well, it shouldn’t. There are plenty of bands out there that give pop-punk a good name. Bands like Bloomington, Indiana’s Good Luck, whose sophomore effort Without Hestation blew me away. I didn’t hesitate (get it? get it? ehh?) to give this record an A.
See. I’m going to admit something that’s maybe a little embarassing. For as much as I try (and often fail) to come of as a super hip music writer, I have a couple weaknesses. In addition to my love of cheesy mid-90s hip-hop (think Kid N Play and Skee Lo), I also have a really big thing for pop-punk.
You see, pop-punk was my first love, musically speaking. My actual first love was Kimberly, the pink Power Ranger, but that’s not really the point. Some of the first bands I ever began to obsess over fell into this sugary, hook-laden genre: Blink-182, Green Day and even their Christian-themed rip-offs, Relient K. And as much as I write these bands off now (except when I nostalgiaclly put on Take Off Your Pants and Jacket), they were really a gateway to everything I listen to now. I would never have discovered any of the bands I listen to now if it hadn’t been for all that teen angst.
So when I say that Good Luck is a pop-punk band, don’t freak out. What I’m saying is that they know how to write beautiful, hook-laden songs with the energy of the best punk bands. Their instrumentals are always tightly written, moving beyond the standard four power chords that most pop-punk bands keep in their arsenal. In fact, they have a lot more tricks up their sleeves than most other bands playing today.
Good Luck’s guitarist Matt Tobey and bassist Ginger Alford take turns switching off on vocal duties. Plenty of bands with setup have one singer that stands out far above the other, and you always find yourself skipping Singer Number Two’s tracks. Not so with Good Luck. Alford and Tobey both bring their own strengths to the table, and there’s no difference in quality between Alford-led tracks like “Novel Figure” and Tobey’s more guitar-heavy tracks like “All Good People” and “Significant Day.”
I’m always really impressed with Tobey’s guitar playing. He tackles both rhythm and the occasional lead part. His style of playing is swift and fluid without being overly technical. He knows exactly when to provide accompaniment and exactly when to kick his playing up a notch, belting out immediately gripping and catchy riffs.
The only downside to this record is that the songs are so catchy, you’ll have them stuck in your head for a pretty long time. Seriously, I’ve been singing “It Gets Harder” to myself all day. It’s sort of a problem, but one I enjoy.
So, if “pop-punk” isn’t a dirty word to you, you should really check out Without Hesitation. It’s an amazingly well-written record with tons of replay value. Plus, when you buy it on vinyl, it comes on an awesome colored disc. So there’s that, too.
(01/25/12 5:35am)
Critics have called 1991 “the year that punk broke.” Nirvana’s Nevermind rocketed to the top of the charts, exposing America to a new world of underground and alternative rock, allowing bands like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., and more to find a commercial audience. But Nirvana’s blend of punk energy and pop hooks didn’t emerge out of nowhere.
For the better part of two decades, bands across the country had been tweaking and refining the punk rock formula established by The Ramones and the Sex Pistols. And after a while, three chords played through wailing distortion began to get boring, so musicians pushed beyond it, experimenting with different tempos, different recording techniques, even releasing concept albums.
At the forefront of all this experimentation was SST Records, owned by Gregg Ginn of Black Flag. In the 1980s alt-rock scene, SST was king, and it’s difficult to say that one album stands head and shoulders above the rest. They put out countless classics like The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me, and Sonic Youth’s Evol. But I think one album sums up the changing tides of punk rock at the time more than any other: Hüsker Dü’s landmark 1985 release New Day Rising.
Minneapolis’s Hüsker Dü began their career with 1982’s Land Speed Record, a loud, fast, and abrasive live album that stands as a monument to the energy and anarchy of the 1980s hardcore punk scene. But as the band evolved, their output began to shift and mature, resembling Land Speed Record’s frantic energy less and less with every passing release. Ultimately, the band would sign to a major label, Warner Bros. Records, and record two moderately successful albums.
Michael Azerrad’s exploration of the American punk underground Our Band Could Be Your Life explains the change in pace, quoting guitarist and vocalist Bob Mould as saying, “You grow up, you change your perspective…You’re not always eighteen years old, drunk, with a mohawk, driving around screaming about anarchy. You don’t do that all your life.” This new outlook on music and life allowed Mould and bandmates Greg Norton and Grant Hart to push the traditionally accepted boundaries of punk rock by experimenting with more traditionally pop-based song structures.
At the same time, while New Day Rising makes a concentrated effort to move away from the band’s hardcore roots, it isn’t a commercial pop record. Songs like “Books About UFOs” and “Celebrated Summer” are melodic enough, earning significant airplay on college radio at the time, but they’re no less aggressive than the band’s previous work. And later songs on the album, especially the last number “Plans I Make,” are downright discordant in their reckless, high-speed instrumentation. It’s pop music though a twisted, post-punk lens, a term that Mould would later describe as “noise pop,” some strange hybrid too weird for top 40 and too melodic to stay pigeonholed as hardcore punk.
Hüsker Dü was on to something completely new, and while they never found too much commerical success on their own, New Day Rising and its successor album Flip Your Wig pioneered a new type of American alternative rock that would go on to influence countless bands in the coming decades. It’s safe to say that today’s rock wouldn’t be the same without them.
Catastrophe or classic: classic
(01/25/12 5:33am)
Brooklyn eight-piece experiemental rock act Rubblebucket will be in Macon February 9, playing the Cox Theatre with Jubee and the Morning After and Baby Baby. We’re big fans of the band at The Cluster, and so to promote the show, I sat down with Rubblebucket trumpeteer and vocalist Alex Toth. Read it.
Eric Brown: So, for starters, tell me a little bit about the band for people that may not be familiar with you guys.
Alex Toth: Well, we’re from New York City in Brooklyn, but I guess we’re all from different parts of the northeast. We met in Vermont, and then we were all in Boston for a couple of years, and now we’re in Brooklyn. Our sound has gone through transformations during each of those moves, and we keep evolving musically. I don’t know. I guess we have a reputation for a really fun and powerful live show and for writing kind of weird, funky pop songs. We’re an eight-piece band, fronted by Kalmia Turner. There’s horns and percussion and synthesizers. Yeah, it’s a fun time.
EB: So how would you say your sound has evolved over the years?
AT: We started out sounding more like a wide-open, tribal, rhythmic dance-jam. From that very large block of wood, we’ve been trimming things down and making them more dynamic. We’ve been getting more and more into rhythm and melody and lyrics and recording aesthetics. There’s been a phase of combining riff-based rock with Afro-beat, and that was interesting. And our last album Omega La La, which we’ve done a couple tours on, has a sound that is a more experimental mix of pop and dance music. Sort of a dance-punk direction.
Now we’re working on a lot of new music, and another really cool project. We’ve been working on these large, 13- or 14-foot-tall robot puppets. One human can man one puppet, and I’m hoping these make it down to Georgia. The problem is that we’re touring in a van with a trailer, and they might get crushed. We’re hoping to make them transportable.
EB: Who made those for you guys?
AT: This kid Neil [Fridd]. He’s in a band called Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt. They opened for us back in the fall. Are you familiar with Luaka Bop?
EB: I’m not.
AT: Luaka Bop is [former Talking Heads frontman] David Byrne’s record label. So, this band signed to Luaka Bop, and we met him through that. He’s just a really crazy kid, and he makes all sorts of amazing stuff. He supplied us with some other props, too. But yeah, hopefully the robots fit. It depends on the size of the trailer and how high the ceilings at the venue are, too. But Neil made us some other fun stuff too, but I don’t want to give it all away.
EB: Of course not. So it sounds like you put a lot of work into creating a really theatrical live show. What kind of work and thought goes into creating these shows?
AT: We’ve developed so much on stage, musically and performance-wise. We love connecting, and for me, I feel a really deep connection with the audience, knowing that we’re uplifting people, inspiring them, and causing them to rethink certain things. Plus I like getting really sweaty.
Ideally, we blow people’s minds, like everyone’s minds, all the time. We’re reaching for that and putting everything we have into every show. It’s cathartic for us, night after night, to get to do that, and the theatrical element is something I’d like for us to get more into. Right now, there’s interesting visual stuff happening, and I want to make it even bigger. To be more experimental, to mess with the medium of the audience, to mess with that wall between the audience and the band, to make it one continuous thing.
EB: You mentioned more experimental songs, more experimental performances. Do you ever consciously think, We need to make this song weirder or more different, or is it a natural process that grows out of song writing?
AT: It’s a totally natural process of following what sounds interesting, and at the end of the day, we all have to believe in it. I could write a Lady Gaga song. I could study the format of that song and the melodic and rhythmic properties, and I could replicate those same song styles. Artist do that -- they understand what someone else is doing, what makes a song successful. However, it’s hard to do that and then play those songs night after night and actually believe in what you’re doing. For us, we have to believe in what we’re doing. It has to be something mysterious, fresh, something we haven’t heard a million times before. That’s what we naturally do. That’s how we keep it interesting.
EB: There are eight members in your band, right? [Yes.] Is it difficult writing songs, to hold that many elements together at once?
AT: There are a lot of difficult aspects of having eight people in your band [laughs], but we’re very diligent, and we all really believe in what we’re doing. But sometimes, I’ll say, “I love this chorus” or “I love this beat,” and then I’ll think, “Oh shit, I didn’t write the horn part or the percussion part.” And if that happens, then that person’s just going to be standing on the stage. It can be challenging because you don’t want to bring in an instrument just for the sake of including a certain instrument. You want to write those parts because the song wants it to be there. It can be challenging to have that tension across the board. We have to be cautious.
EB: What would you say your major influences are, as far as song-writing goes?
AT: It’s hard to say because I’m not really modeling our sound after any one thing. I’m trying to dodge a specific artist field and to just write songs that I really like. Actually, I’ve recently been listening to a lot of gangster rap from the late 80s. The Dre productions and the Bomb Squad stuff. Old jams. I used to not listen to jazz or funk, but now, I look at the way they mash their music up, and that makes me think more about lyrics, expanding my songwriting vocabulary.
EB: Tell me about the tour you’re going on.
AT: Every tour is a big production, and we haven’t done a full-on stop; this will be the most comprehensive show. We’re playing in the Grassroots Festival — not sure if that’s the right name — in Miami for the first time. There are going to be some really cool bands there, like Tune-Yards. We’re releasing a live album, too. It won’t be out when we come to Macon. But on this tour, we’re really just excited about bringing Omega La La to the southeast.
EB: Are you premiering new songs?
AT: I’m pretty careful about playing too many new songs that haven’t been recorded, but at the same time, I want to work on them, and it helps to play them on stage before recording, which we’ll be doing soon. I’m working on a Blondie-Master Flash mash-up cover right now.
(12/07/11 11:27pm)
A few weeks back, Macon rockers JubBe and the Morning after flew out to Seattle, performing as the opening band on Jimmy Kimmel Live. It’s not every day that Macon musicians get a chance to perform on national television, so naturally, we here at the Cluster were very excited for the band’s success. In celebration. I sat down with the Dwayne “JuBee” Webb to discuss the show, Macon, and music in general.
EB: How was the band selected to perform on Jimmy Kimmel?
It was an honor, because we were chosen personally by the Jimmy Kimmel music team out of 2000 bands who entered the Samsung Summer Krush Opening Act contest.
EB: Tell me a little about playing on the show.
It was amazing. They flew us out to Seattle, took care of us. We opened up for Pitbull but other than that business as usual.
EB: How was the audience reaction at the performance?
It was Pitbull’s audience and of course they had no clue who we we’re, but by the end of every song we played we had folks singing along like they knew the songs already, which I thought was crazy.
EB: After being on national TV, where do you think the band is headed next?
Being on national TV has definitely opened doors that were previously closed. I see us going through a couple more of those doors before it’s all said and done.
EB: What goes in to writing a typical Jubee and the Morning After song? Is there a specific tone you guys are going after?
It starts as an idea, which may come from a conversation or just from something one of us has been through or is going through. As the resident MC, I try to turn those thoughts into songs as best as possible. I love telling stories, and the tone of those stories varies depending on subject matter. I like covering a wide spectrum. There’s so much in this world to talk about, so why not?
EB: Is there a conscious effort on the band’s part to blend genres together, or is that something that happens naturally in the writing process?
It’s most definitely natural and organic due to the different musical background and taste of everybody in the band. Most of us were front men in bands before coming together as Jubee and the Morning After, so we have specific ways we hear music already from those experiences.
EB: Continuing from there, are there any specific influences that you or other members bring to the table?
Between old school hip hop, funk, indie rock and a whole slew of influences, we just try our best to be creative and keep it smooth as possible.
EB: What are your favorite things about the music scene in Macon? Favorite places to play? Bands to play with?
Macon embraces its musicians with love and they truly want you to progress to the next level. People here will always push you accordingly, which is beautiful. I’ve always loved the Hummingbird, The Capitol Theatre and Grant’s Lounge. As far as Warner Robins goes, we’ve recently started playing at Friends on the Hill which I think is a great place. We brought Kid Syc@Brandywine and Baby Baby down for our CD release party to play with us, they are both super cool guys and fun to play along with. Back City Woods was always a great time also.
EB: What have been your favorite experiences playing with the band so far?
I think doing Kimmel is def initely up there, but there are so many amazing experiences to speak of. I actually met my father for the first time at our CD release show. Really, I just love everyone in the band and couldn’t ask for better friends and musicians.
EB: What’s in store for the future of the band? Tours, another record, etc.
In 2012, we’re trying to stay busy as possible. There are projects we’re working on, shows we’re playing. We’re always spreading the good word of JuBee and the Morning After.
(12/07/11 11:25pm)
So, last week I talked about a world-famous band that I think DJs the world over ought to banish from the airwaves. This week, though, I’m going to go in a different direction to tell you all about a band that went unloved and underrated for its entire career, despite being one of the most important groups in the history of rock music. I’m talking, of course, about The Velvet Underground and their first, Andy Warhol-produced LP, The Velvet Underground & Nico.
In April of 1966, the little known band, based out of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and comprised of future stars John Cale and Lou Reed, among others, entered the studio with pop art icon Andy Warhol and European model/singer Nico. What emerged from those sessions would push the boundaries of rock and roll as the band’s debut record, released the next year on Verve Records.
Upon the record’s release, critics found its subject matter too dark and music too experimental. The Velvet Underground & Nico earned a strong underground following, however, and over the years, the record found acclaim in the wake of Lou Reed and John Cale’s successful solo efforts. As art rock legend Brian Eno once wrote, “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”
One of The Velvet Underground & Nico’s most stunning features is its often striking minimalism. Released at the height of 1967’s “summer of love,” the album bore little resemblance to the psychedelic albums that were tearing up the rock charts of the time. Rather than attempting to emulate the sonic landscapes of records like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Are You Experienced?, the band pioneered their own unique sound based in many ways on 1950s beat poetry, featuring droning guitars and understated drums.
“Heroin,” for instance, features no bass guitar, minimal drums, and is based around only two simple guitar cords. And yet, in spite of that, “Heroin” is such a good song that it almost makes me wish I had a dehabilitating junk habit. It’s a stark, powerful piece of art that never seems to wear out its 7 and a half minute runtime.
Similarly, “Venus in Furs” is based largely on Lou Reed’s droning guitar (the famous “Ostrich guitar,” with every string tuned to D) and John Cale’s haunting viola. It manages to create a uniquely trancendental atmosphere with its relatively restrained instrumentation. For all the aesthetic minimalism, the record is also highly experimental at its core, playing with audiences expectations of what a rock album can be. One could make a serious argument that The Velvet Underground created the first art rock album of all time.
Honestly, anyone that claims to be a well-educated music buff needs to hear this record at least once in their life. Despite going largely unnoticed in its day, The Velvet Underground & Nico is a tremendously influential record that paved the way for the art rock scene of the 1970s and 80s and the indie rock of today. It’s a supremely important album that can’t be overlooked by anyone.
And now Lou Reed, one of the architects of this amazing, influential record, has just released a 90 minute collaboration with Metallica that may, perhaps be the worst record of the last ten years. I’m not mad, Lou. I’m just disappointed.
Classic or catastrophe: Classic
(11/17/11 1:18am)
So, I started this column intending to re-examine classic albums, evaluating them in the context of their time and questioning whether or not they hold up now. And for the most part, I’ve done that. But I haven’t been as critical as I’d intended at the start. Ultimately, I concluded that most of the records I’d reviewed did indeed hold up to the tests of time.
And while it’s fun to go back and listen to classic records and write about them, well, giving them all passing grades isn’t exactly killing any idols. So I’m going to be more critical about evaluating rock icons from now on. And I’m setting my sights on a pretty big target. This time, I won’t take it easy. I don’t have a peaceful, easy feeling. I don’t like the Eagles is what I’m getting at.
For starters, the Eagles are the epitome of what I sometimes like to call “dad rock.” Now, dad rock isn’t just whatever music your dad listens to. Mine actually happens to have pretty good taste, but that’s beside the point. Dad rock is unimaginative, overplayed, radio-friendly rock from the 1970s and ‘80s. I’m talking about bands like Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the Steve Miller Band, and Bad Company.
There’s no rebellion, imagination, or emotion of any kind with these groups. The lyrics are all about kicking back, drinking beers, and trying to look up girls’ skirts. The guitar riffs are lazy and repetitive. It’s just…bland. I mean, take one listen to “Take it Easy” and tell me the band has passionate emotions about anything. You can’t do it. Bands like this are the reason punk rock exists. It’s music by robots, for robots.
But there are more reasons to hate the Eagles. There’s a scene in the Coen Brothers’ 1998 detective comedy The Big Lebowski that has always resonated with me. Our hero, the aging stoner Jeffery “The Dude” Lebowski has just been roughed up by a corrupt cop and takes a taxi home to lick his wounds for the night and maybe smoke another j.
But just as he begins to appreciate the solitude of the cab drive home, “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” screeches onto the radio. “Man, come on. I had a rough night, and I hate the f**kin’ Eagles, man,” The Dude mutters. The driver is unsympathetic, to say the least, and pulls over to violently remove The Dude from his vehicle. It’s just another defeat in the case of the missing trophy wife.
Maybe there’s not a point to that story. But I always feel a certain amount of kinship for The Dude in that moment. But it’s not just that. The Eagles are practically omnipresent.
You can hear them on every classic rock radio station, every restaurant speaker system, every sporting event. Hell, “Hotel California” even makes an appearance in the same movie (though, to be fair, it’s a pretty hilarious flamenco cover, not the studio recording). There’s just no escaping them. And if you insist you aren’t a fan, you get a similar treatment to the one The Dude received.
To illustrate my point, I’ve included the typical conversation that occurs every time I distaste for the Eagles.
“You don’t like the Eagles? What’s wrong with you?”
“They’re boring. Their music doesn’t mean anything.”
“What about ‘Hotel California?’”
“It’s too long, and it’s way too overplayed. People just like it because they hear it on the radio so often.”
“Pff. Hipster.”
And then I either stop arguing or get hit in the face.
Classic or catastrophe: 100% Catastrophe
(11/02/11 10:31pm)
Most of the time when people talk about the Sex Pistols, they’re not talking about the band’s music. They’re talking about the heroin, the onstage antics, the interruption of the Queen’s Jubilee celebration. And there’s good reason for that. The band’s music was, in a lot of ways, secondary to their public image. They became famous not so much for pioneering a new form of raw, stripped-down rock and roll, but for swearing on the Bill Grundy show and trashing the A&M Records offices.
The band only found the time to record one record, Nevermind The Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, in the two and a half years they were together, and really, the Sex Pistols’ music was almost an afterthought to their nihilistic, destructive antics. It was part of the gimmick: aggressive, fast, snotty and offensive. Even the title was considered extremely offensive in the UK. But despite producing the record as just another part of their anarchistic image, they managed to create one of the most memorable records of all time. In a way, the Sex Pistols succeeded at making a great record in spite of themselves.
It’s difficult to understand just how revolutionary Nevermind the Bollocks was in the early years of punk. Of course, it wasn’t the first punk record. The Ramones, The Clash, The Damned, and The Vibrators had all put out some worthwile full length records of their own by October 1977, but backed by early singles such as “Anarchy in the UK” and “God Save the Queen,” Nevermind the Bollocks was one of the most anticpated — and dreaded — releases of the era.Despite numerous protests from interest groups that saw the band as little more than degenerates, the album reached number one on the UK charts. Think about that. It’s unheard of for a punk band to reach those levels on the Billboard charts.
But there’s a reason it charted higher than any other punk record of the time (or possibly ever). It’s an astounding album. It’s full of anger, hatred, and rage in all the best ways. “God Save the Queen” still sounds like a Molotoc cocktail thrown through the windows of the music industry. Even thirty four years later, the record retains the filth, fury, and viceral immediacy that cemented it in the canon of rock and roll history.
I’m consistently impressed with the musicianship on the record, as well. “Holiday in the Sun,” “Bodies,” and “Anarchy in the UK” all contain some of the most immediately memorable guitar lines I’ve ever heard. “Bodies” in particular, is a perfect example of what makes the band great. It’s harsh, offensive, and full of fury, but it’s immediately recorgnizable. It manages to be catchy and furious at the same time. Even when Johnny Rotten is stringing along an intensely vulgar series of curses, you can still sing along with every word. At it’s heart, Nevermind the Bollocks is the fastest, most vulgar pop record of all time. And it’s a damned good one.
Honestly though, when I started to prepare this column, it had been a while since I listened to the record, and I was ready to write the Sex Pistols off. I’ve never been as into them as I have The Ramones and The Clash, partly because while I think all the insanity surrounding the band is interesting, it all feels like a gimmick to me. I had thought to myself that if they’d never drunkenly cursed out a BBC radio host, they never would have been as popular as they became. But now, after relistening to the record, I’m not so sure about that.
Like I said earlier, the record is destructive, anarchic, and insane, but it’s more than that. It’s confrontational, challenging, honest, catchy, and, most of all, it’s well written. It’s exactly what punk music should aspire to be. So, gimmick or not, it’s an amazing album.
Classic or catastrophe: a classic in spite of itself.
(10/20/11 1:04am)
There are a lot of different terms you could use to describe Atlanta troubadors The Constellations. Soul ,rock, psycadellic, hip-hop, and plenty of others. But no matter which term you end up going with, it’s not going to fully or accurately describe the seven-piece band. They blend genres together expertly, taking influence from anything and everything.
I sat down with keyboardist Jamie Gordon for a few minutes at DeLuna Fest this past weekend to discuss the band’s upcoming performance, touring, new songs in the works. You know, shop talk.
Gordon is a high-energy guy. It’s apparent not only on stage, where he jumps back and forth across the stage and slams into the keyboard with reckless abandon, but also in casual conversation. He’s excited about absolutely everything: about playing later in the day, about the band’s upcoming record, and especially about Atlanta.
The band’s 2010 debut, Southern Gothic, is defined mostly by the city of Atlanta. The band wrote and recorded the record in the city, and it shows.
And so I ask him about the city: his favorite neighborhoods (“Little Five Points”), hang out spots (“Star Bar”), and things to do around town (“Party”). He tells me those experiences, prowling the town late at night for something exciting to do, always find their way into the group’s work.
And so I wonder, with such a specific location in mind, is there a chance that the band is going to alienate people from other areas?
“No. Every city has their own sleezy dive bars, their own crazy things to get into. We love Atlanta, and we write a lot about our city, but like I said, everyone has those places. It’s universal and specific at the same time,” Gordon tells me.
And it makes sense. After all, it’s not like Atlanta is the only city that loves them. Milwaulkee, for instance, has a surprisingly huge fanbase for the band.
“There’s a radio station up there. They were the first radio station to pick us up. They have a huge audience there. So, we went up there the first time and the program director had us up there. The first show sold out. Up until then, we had never been out of Atlanta. It was unbelievable. So, yeah, Milwaukee is definitely a favorite.”
But it doesn’t seem like any place can top Atlanta for Gordon and the rest of the band. They played Music Midtown this past month, and Gordon describes the experience with as much awe as he can muster.
“It was awesome to be home and perform. Especially at that capacity, that was definitely our biggest show in Atlanta. There’s always a different vide when we’re playing at home in Atlanta. People connect more. That’s where we started. It’s always good to play there and we don’t get to go very often,” Gordon says.
Atlanta is definitely a special place. Hopefully you’ll see them at home sometime soon.
(10/20/11 12:52am)
I’ve been a Weezer fan for years. Probably for about a decade, to be honest. Their self-titled debut record and Pinkerton are some of the most important records in my life. But a few years ago, Weezer released Raditude, the latest in a series of records representing a severe decline in quality for the once great band. At the time, I was so frustrated by this series of records that in the pages of the Cluster, I formally broke up with the band, promising never to listen to any future releases by the band.
But since then, a few things have changed. I was curious about their latest record, Hurley. I saw them live at DeLuna Fest and they completely blew me away. I’ve started to miss the band that I once loved. I’m not hankering to hear The Red Album again, but I think it’s time that I rediscover my favorite record of their records, Pinkerton. I want to find out what made it so special in the first place. In short, I’m getting back with my ex.
And my after listening to it all the way through for the first time in a long time, all I can think is “My god, this is a good record.” Pinkerton was a commercial failure when it was first released, and plenty of fans scorned it for skewing away from the hook-laden power pop of their debut.
And it certainly did abandon most of the cute whimsy of their first record, but I think that’s the record’s strongest point. It’s a dark, somewhat alienating album about self-loathing and the pressures of success, all from a band of dudes best known for singing about sweaters and Mary Tyler Moore. And I love it more than anything.
It starts off with a bang in “Tired of Sex.” The guitars squeal with feedback before the band launches into the increasingly raucous synth-led song. “Buddy Holly” this ain’t. By the end of the first chorus, Rivers Cuomo is screaming straight into the microphone, taking out all his frustrations on the listener. It’s as visceral and immediate as anything Black Flag ever recorded.
The album never lets up the frantic pace as it continues onto “Getchoo.” Blue Album-era Weezer would have played this song straighter, quieter, and with a greater emphasis on poppy hooks. And make no mistake, those hooks are there, but the band spends most of the song covering them up in dirt, grime, and shame. But all the beauty is in that grime, grime that carries over into the album’s other tracks like “Why Bother,” “The Good Life,” and “El Scorcho.”
I’m could talk about “El Scorcho” for the rest of my life, because I sincerely believe it’s one of the best rock songs ever recorded. It’s written so differently from the standard pop song, but is still instantly recognizable and incredibly catchy, the lyrics are immediately relatable to everyone that’s ever had a crush on someone out of their league, and the guitar solo is one of the most expressive that anyone has ever written. In a better world, “El Scorcho” would have been the number one hit of 1996. But we don’t live in that better world. We live in the one where Weezer wrote “Can’t Stop Partying.”
But honestly, it doesn’t matter what Weezer has done lately. None of that affects this record. Pinkerton is never going away, and no one can stop that. As bland and uninspired as their new songs are, we still have this one, completely perfect album.
So they can do whatever they want now. Team up with Kenny G, butcher every Radiohead track in the world, I don’t care. I have Pinkerton, and nothing can change that.
Classic or catastrophe: An absolute classic