If you've seen one of the many many many history of punk documentaries or read any number of books on the subject, you've undoubtedly come across the story of when Siouxsie and the Banshees appeared with the Sex Pistols on the 'Today' show with host Bill Grundy. At one point during the interview Grundy begins a horrible attempt at flirting with Siouxsie, to which Steve Jones, guitarist for the Sex Pistols, called Grundy several words not approved for daytime television in the UK. Bill Grundy was fired not too long after the show aired but nobody ever talks about that moment, which ruined Grundy's career and impacted the Sex Pistols' future as well, while looking at it through the lens of a feminist perspective. Often the only time you'll hear about Siouxsie is in the context of the Sex Pistols or Bill Grundy's pathetic pick up attempts.
Every story about that day ends in Steve Jones "standing up" for Siouxsie, so to speak, and Grundy getting canned. Siouxsie was, and still is, a strong woman and an awesome singer. Siouxsie may have gained notoriety as a groupie of the Sex Pistols, but she and the Banshees went on to have a career spanning twenty years, surviving the so-called death of the punk movement. Siouxsie's story is interesting, but so are the stories of other female punkers, like Vi Subversa, an anarcho-punk mother of two with a voice more haunting than Marianne Faithful's and more brash than Johnny Rotten's. Vi's lyrics were so powerful and controversial they resulted in her band, the Poison Girls, being attacked by British political parties. Although female punkers like Siouxsie and Vi inevitably get grouped under a small section in some chapter of most punk historical texts, they deserve as much space in the history books as their male counter parts.
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Hong Kong Garden (Mp3)X-Ray Spex - Oh Bondage Up Yours! (Mp3)The Slits - Typical Girls (Mp3)The Au Pairs - You (Mp3)Poison Girls - State Control (Mp3)
"We Fought the Big One," the monthly DJ night celebrating the finest in DIY post-punk, left-field pop, and off-kilter independent music, returns this Friday night (10/3) to Marx Cafe. Last week's 'First Date' John Foster (aka Sad Croc) guest DJ's and is certain to spin many a tune close to the heart of any TVD aficionado. So, see ya there, right?"We Fought the Big One" w/Guest DJ John Foster @ Marx Cafe
3203 Mt. Pleasant St. NW, Washington DC
10pm - 3am NO COVER 21+
I mean, he's got a song called "Nilsson Sings Newman" for chrissakes. Could there be a better fit for a "First Date"?"Thank you Jon and TVD for sharing my music with your readers.
I am first and foremost a fan of good music - melodies, writing, arrangements, and production that don't belong to any particular era or category other than just plain good music. As a music listener, I believe there was a ton of amazing music recorded in the 1970's. Spending a lifetime trying to discover it all would not be enough. I still buy vinyl because I believe it is the only way to have a completely fulfilling listening experience. However, I am not a purist. I will listen to the iPod on long car rides, and I believe there are modern bands still left to discover with influences in the right places.
I absolutely fell in love with Harry Nilsson about 4 years ago. I still don't have all of his albums because each one I get is like a black hole that turns my world upside down, crumples me up, and spits me out into a completely different view of my surroundings. The intensity of my fascination will probably subside. It did with Van Morrison, The Beatles, The Kinks, Neil Young and so on, but the pure thrill of having another superhero in my music collection is enough to make some question my priorities.
"Nilsson sings Newman" is my favorite album. It has affected me more than any piece of art ever has, and I am not sure that I will have the joy of discovering something as influential to my artistic life ever again. I dare not emulate it, but I did write about it in a song of the same name.
I hope to capture in my own writing some of the same moments that I look for in other musicians' work. I aim to have sincerity, and I hope that it finds you. Thanks much for listening. Best, Drew" Drew Smith's Lonely Choir - Nilsson Sings Newman (Mp3)Drew Smith's Lonely Choir - NYC Song (Mp3)Drew Smith's Lonely Choir - Travel My Dark Road (Mp3)
Via Wiki: "Post-punk was a popular musical movement in the mid to late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the early 1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental. Post-punk laid the groundwork for alternative rock by broadening the range of punk and underground music, incorporating elements of Krautrock (particularly the use of synthesizers and extensive repetition), Jamaican dub music (specifically in bass guitar), American funk, studio experimentation, and even punk's traditional polar opposite, disco, into the genre.
It found a firm place in the 1980s indie scene, and led to the development of genres such as gothic rock, industrial music and alternative rock. Post-punk's biggest influence remains in the vast variety of sounds and styles it pioneered, many of which proved very influential in the later alternative rock scene."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that among these handful of songs, a bridge was built from 'punk' to 'post punk'. Not these songs specifically and/or in this particular order, but there's a maturation process here that begins say, with Gen X and traverses that bridge via Wire and The Cure, and gets us to Gang of Four with a late night butt wiggle via Ian Dury. (Am I over-caffeinated this morning?)Generation X - Ready Steady Go (Mp3)Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (Mp3)Wire - Surgeon's Girl (Mp3)The Cure - Boys Don't Cry (Mp3)Gang of Four - Love Like Anthrax (Mp3)
Need a feast for the senses? Well, TVD's got two of them covered for ya. Tomorrow night at Dahlak, check out Sarah Claxton's moody and evocative photography at the opening of her one-woman exhibition, and none other than DJ Neville C. will be spinning mod, soul and garage--and there might be a Brazilian tune or two in there as well, he tells us. See ya there, right?
TVD: taking care of your midweek malaise.
"Good rock 'n' roll... [long pause] I don't know. I guess it's just something that makes you feel alive. It's just like, it's something that's human, and I think that most music today isn't. And it's like anything that I would want to listen to is made my human beings instead of computers and machines. To me, good rock 'n' roll also encompasses other things, like Hank Williams and Charlie Mingus and a lot of things that aren't strictly defined as rock n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is like an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Like anything can be rock 'n' roll."
"I went to see that movie the other night, The Last Waltz, and you sit through something like that in 1982 and you really see why New Wave was necessary. There they are, so smugly thanking that they're brilliant musicians or even jazz musicians just because a guy can play a solo for 10 minutes that's just scales. It's real pompous. The only trouble with New Wave is that nobody followed up on it. Everybody thought that the initial gesture was all they had to make. Richard Hell made that one album and got too lazy to make another one, or the Sex Pistols breaking up. Although it's good they broke up. But very few of them followed through. But it was really an exciting burst there for like a year, year and a half."
"I've never liked live music that much, to tell you the truth. A few people. I like the Ramones. I liked the Clash for a while. Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Stooges back when they were around. But you know, even the Stones I never liked live that much. And now, here in New York, the club scene is just so dead. You look in the Voice every week and there's nothing happening except these bad bands in these unpleasant places. The Palladium is hardly ever open any more. See, it might sound like, "This guy is talking a real depressing line" or something, but I just think that everybody is staying in their houses and listening to their old records and everybody is sort of digging in for the long haul. One would wish that it was otherwise, but that's the way it is. And, see, I mean, to pretend that it isn't is really bad faith to the readership. My responsibility as I see it as a critic is not to help a lot of new bands sell their records. It's to help people who are buying the records to keep from making a purchase that they're going to get home and hate my guts and the band's too because it's a piece of shit. And these critics, most of them, it's much easier to help the bands, because you get more work that way and every magazine wants to print reviews that say, "This is wonderful, this is great, go out and buy it." A lot of magazines won't even print negative reviews. A friend of mine does a record review column in Esquire, and it's like five positive reviews every time. They don't want you to say anything that's bad because they don't get advertising bucks that way. So it becomes like a facet of your groovy modern lifestyle. Well fuck that shit. I don't wanna be used like that just to sell product. I ain't a shill! And if that means you say everything suck, well I don't know. I don't know where I can go really from having as bad an attitude as I do, but it's the only attitude I think that you can have. The only person I know who thinks that anything is happening in music right now is Robert Christgau. I think he's great in a lot of ways, but you know..."-Lester Bangs, last interview with Jim DeRogatisThe Vibrators - Baby Baby (Mp3)Mink Deville - Let Me Dream If I Want To (Amphetamine Blues) (Mp3)The Ramones - Sheena is a Punk Rocker (Mp3)The Dictators - Two Tub Man (Mp3)Johnny Thunders - You Cant Put Your Arms Round A Memory (Mp3)
John Foster may have found fame in the design world but he certainly didn't encounter happiness. Performing his confessional songs under the Sad Crocodile moniker and enlisting some of the area's top talent to help out, he may well be the most honest songwriter in DC. (And it should be noted, an ardent supporter of this very blog.)
Here are the lyrics to "Holy Water Down." What more do you need to know?
she said it's been a long long way
she can barely carry the weight
she said she likes cornbread
she said she likes dangerous men
I just smiled back at her
spent my last joke on her
at least I agree with the part about the cornbread
at least I agree with the part about the cornbread
she said don't put up a fight
just fall into me tonight
I know a place where we can go
I know a place where...
now it's early Sunday morn
and I'm still late for church
not a pair of dress shoes anywhere in sight
not a goddamn tie that I can buy
she just smiles down at me
says she likes my attack
on the TV remote
if it helps God - I don't know
she said don't put up a fight
just fall into me tonight
I know a place where we can go
I know a place where...
now I truly did not know
holy water went so slow
from my mouth to my throat
if it helps God - I don't know
The track "Lawrence Hates Maurice" was written exclusively for The Vinyl District. The first person to correctly answer who the names refer to wins a limited edition silkscreen poster from Mr. Foster.Sad Crocodile - Promised I'd Write Something Nice (Mp3)Sad Crocodile - When The Sun Goes Down (Mp3)Sad Crocodile - Holy Water Down (Mp3)Sad Crocodile - Sad at Me (Mp3)Sad Crocodile - Lawrence Hates Maurice (Mp3)
It’s hard for me to talk about Iggy Pop without sounding like a nauseating fangirl, so please bear with me everyone. With his band the Stooges, Iggy Pop was one of the very first acts in the nascent American punk scene. Often referred to as the “Godfather of Punk,” much of his music sounds closer to straight-up classic rock. His influence on punk is more due to his outrageous and iconic onstage antics than his musical style. He invented the stage dive and crowd surfing, was a notorious heroin addict, and was cutting himself up onstage before Isaac Brock was even born. But Iggy Pop’s compelling persona goes deeper than superficial rock-star swagger. In a classic interview with Peter Gzowski, he defined punk as “music that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it, and give everything they have to it.” It is this fervor and sincerity that continues to make him a box-office draw after all these years. His songs are simple, energetic, and passionate, and when I listen to them I have the feeling that I’m listening to a man who’s lived through all the pain he sings about and has done the best he could with the chances he’s been given. (As a side note, he gets extra points in my book for being perhaps the only punk rocker ever to publish a scholarly article in an academic journal.) While he might not have been the most innovative musician in punk history, he’s certainly one of the most versatile and earnestly authentic. Iggy Pop and the Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog (Mp3)Iggy Pop and the Stooges - Gimme Danger (Mp3)Iggy Pop and the Stooges - Search and Destroy (Mp3)Iggy Pop - Passenger (Mp3)Iggy Pop - Lust for Life (Mp3)
"Nothing ever quite dies, it just comes back in a different form," Lester Bangs once wrote. And while I agree with the point he was making, I'm not sure this is such an absolute rule. To be fair, when we're discussing certain musical genres such as we did last week, what's old is new again and vice versa. Revivalists rule, or so it would seem.
But this week, we're going to draw a line in the sand and blatantly go out on a limb and profess that insofar as the 70's are concerned--and with Punk in general--no amount of revivalism will ever better the initial inspired anarchy. And it should be mentioned that there were two unique forces at work, both Stateside and in the UK. Each fueled the other akin to the creative rivalry that was The Beatles -vs- The Beach Boys. And while we're all aware The Beatles took the crown in that contest (...ahem) can it be said that Iggy and his ilk bested Lydon's lynch mob -- or was it the other way around? Hm.
So, let the debate begin...this week we'll focus entirely on the bands spawned Stateside and next week the UK's under the microscope. Some of these tracks will seem remedial for certain, but as the days progress, we'll have assembled a pretty nifty playlist that's truly: never to be bested. (...Now, ...where did I leave that safety pin...?)Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Blank Generation (Mp3)Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop (Mp3)Pere Ubu - Final Solution (Mp3)Television - Little Johnny Jewel (Mp3)The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner (Mp3)
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
(Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket In California”)
With the unfortunate invention of piped-in Muzak, background music has become a fixture of our daily lives in rather incongruous places. Getting our teeth cleaned in the dentist’s chair and waiting on hold on the telephone are examples that spring to mind. But surely the most annoying use for Muzak is in the supermarket. At all hours of day and night, shoppers gather under harsh fluorescent lights to scrutinize the potential contents of each other’s refrigerators. This dismal chore must be accomplished with the accompaniment of moldy oldies or bubblegum pop music so heinous that it makes the lettuce wilt in shame. There’s something about the supermarket’s neon artificiality and seductive consumerism that makes anyone on the periphery of society feel ill at ease. I was surprised and delighted to discover a mini-genre of what I call “supermarket ballads.” Imagine a hopped-up Iggy Pop or bleary Joe Strummer wandering around the local Save-A-Lot late at night, dazzled by the mirage of affluence and plenitude, lusting after suburban soccer moms and composing anguished yet hilarious masterpieces of alienation and commodification. It’s a safe bet you’ll never hear these songs over the loudspeakers while doing your grocery shopping, so download them now and remember to bring them along on your ipod.The Clash - Lost in the Supermarket (Mp3)Screeching Weasels - Supermarket Fantasy (Mp3)Eugene McDaniels - Supermarket Blues (Mp3)Lemonade Market - Supermarket Woman (Mp3)Iggy Pop - Supermarket (Mp3)
If you've seen one of the many many many history of punk documentaries or read any number of books on the subject, you've undoubtedly come across the story of when Siouxsie and the Banshees appeared with the Sex Pistols on the 'Today' show with host Bill Grundy. At one point during the interview Grundy begins a horrible attempt at flirting with Siouxsie, to which Steve Jones, guitarist for the Sex Pistols, called Grundy several words not approved for daytime television in the UK. Bill Grundy was fired not too long after the show aired but nobody ever talks about that moment, which ruined Grundy's career and impacted the Sex Pistols' future as well, while looking at it through the lens of a feminist perspective. Often the only time you'll hear about Siouxsie is in the context of the Sex Pistols or Bill Grundy's pathetic pick up attempts.
