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Apropos of Martin Amis’ imminent arrival on our shores (though I swear he used to live ont he Cape?), I give you a song my old band, Rockets Burst from the Streetlamps wrote: Martin Amis’ Teeth. 

It’s funny. People dont’ remember the brouhaha around Martin Amis’ dentalwork anymore, do they?  Well, here. You can read all about it, in the Observer. From 2000. 

Our musical hommage to Amis’ dental problems is a slight departure from Rockets’ usual style. It’s sorta math rocky. It has SIX SIMULTANEOUS GUITAR SOLOS.

IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND. And yes, that is me singing. 

9 months ago

Helium - XXX (by madpilot24)

Hard to think there was a time in the past where I could stand right up front and see Mary play this like every month or so. I never thought it would end. Love her new stuff and SUPER excited about the new band, but what I wouldn’t do to see one more early Helium show. 

10 months ago
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The Skating Club is the band of Aubrey Anderson, who was one of my old partners and the first CTO of The Barbarian Group, where I work. He currently owns a company called Particle Labs out in SF. But my past with Aubrey goes much much further back.

Aubrey was the producer of the second album by my old band, Rockets Burst from the Streetlamps. He recorded it and engineered it, and produced it as much as our dysfunctional band would let him. He did a phenomenal job, and I still love listening to that album. That was 1999 or so. But I met Aubrey even earlier, in 1991 or so. A band called His Name is Alive was playing their first, to our knowledge anyway, show in New York. It’d be a while before they got around to playing Boston, so down to New York we went, to see His Name is Alive play at Brownie’s (which is now Hi Fi on Avenue A). This very interesting shoegaze-meets-goth band called Difference Engine opened up for them, and I really liked them. I bought a 7” single from them. Me and my girlfriend Beth were staying in New York at a friend’s house in the East Village (not sure exactly where - also, this may have been my first visit to New York? No, I had already been down for a Peter Murphy show at the Limelight ha). Anyway, the next morning we woke up and were leaving the apartment, when I ran into a man in the stairwell coming out of the apartment opposite ours on the landing.

“Hey, you’re the guy from Difference Engine. I saw you guys last night. You were really good.”

“Thanks,” he said, in that shuffling, shy quiet style Aubrey has perfected.

I always find it funny that something like 10 years later, I went into business with that guy.

Anyway, Aubrey had these friends Colin and Brian and they all played in each other’s bands . The other main band was called The Clairvoyants. They probably deserve their own post. I loved those guys. We all hung out all the time. Colin helped Aubrey engineer our album. Colin’s an academic now. We all drank a lot of maker’s. We worked in at least three different studios - one in Allston, one in Cambridgeport and one out in Porter Square. I think we also laid down some drums at Q Division. Yep, we did.

That period of recording that album was overly dramatic, stressful, broke, crazy. And one of the happiest of my life.

This song really captures the Skating Club for me, though they have so many great songs across their albums. The first time I went to Stockholm I left my hotel, put my headphones on, started listening to “Stockholm” and started walking. “Albatross” came on yesterday and I totally loved it. There are so many great songs. But this one’s from the first album, so I think of it most often, and “Denver” also captures the rock, touring life we were all doing and trying to do more of. Meeting bands you opened for. Meeting bands who opened for you. I have a theory who the song is about, but I always imagine it to be Au Revoir Simone, if it were me.

1 year ago
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Adamski - Born to Be Alive

I never really go for the “techno” anymore. There are strains of it that I still listen to - Chemical Brothers, Joey Beltram, Plastikman, Aphex Twin… Maybe Beumont Hannant. And it’s so easy to disparage it, isn’t it? But there was a time that I actually went out to oontz oontz techno clubs. Hell, I even worked at one in Boston, helped organize raves, brought the first rave to Alaska, ha ha. That was funny. I broke into a warehouse, and I made flyers, rented a giant soundsystem from a pro sound place and had like 1,000 people there. This is the most amazing part: the cops came. I came out, and had made a rental invoice on my Mac LC with my inkjet printer. The cops looked at the invoice, and were like “okay, cool.” Hopped in their cars and went away. It still amazes me. First off, it was totally not a building certified for occupancy. Secondly, half the crowd was obviously under 18 and there was no doubt there was some booze and drugs there somewhere (though actually, I didn’t see any). I had no event permit, and this was the era before cell phones so they couldn’t really just call the owner of the warehouse - and I actually had no idea who the owner was. I just made up a company name on my fraudulent warehouse. It boggles my mind that I was no naive as to think it would work, and boggles my mind doubly so that it actually did. 

So, I had a pretty all-consuming musical interest. I understood the pros of electronic music, but generally hated it had no melodies, no lyrics, no chorus and verse structure. So this Adamski track was actually sort of a precursor to what came later - electronica meets celebrity vocals, the “hit song’ on an otherwise fairly housey album. The UK was always better about this - there was a spectrum of dance music from Madchester to the dancey shuffle of My Bloody Valentine and Ride to the sorta electronica-cum-pop stuff to straight up dance. The US didn’t really have that. You couldn’t go to a club and dance to DHS and then the Mondays and then New Order. The nights got really balkanized here, which was really sad. 

So this was one of the reason I liked this dumb little song. I still listen to it sometimes, and I sorta like it’s perkiness. I like Soho’s voice, and if the alternative is Hippiechick, I’ll take this every time.  I’ve been trying to think for a while about what it is I like about this song - which is sorta why I haven’t written about a song in a while. But I guess I just came to terms with the fact that I just like it, no reason at all. 

1 year ago
Billy Ruane’s Business Card, c 1994 (by Rick Webb) I don’t think 1994 was the first time I met Billy. I couldn’t say, exactly, when the first time was, but I remember receiving this card from him at a Helium show in 1994 or so. I remember the moment realizing this was the guy thanked on the back of the Helium album Pirate Prude, with which I was obsessed at this time. You couldn’t miss him. He was at practically every show you went to, in his new wave suit, drunk as a skunk. If you took a photo of James Murphy in a suit from the cover of This is Happening, aged him, wrinkled him a bit and pickled him, you’d have Billy Ruane.   I think it was Leah Callahan of Turkish Delight and Betwixt that finally introduced us. I’d see him several times a week for almost a decade.  In that time, Billy OWNED the Boston rock scene. He was the man who helped turn the Middle East into a rock club - now Boston’s best and longest-standing rock venue.  My favorite memory of Billy came a lot later - in 1999. It was at the first ever 3 night stand of the Magnetic Fields doing the entirety of 69 Love Songs. It was at the Somerville Theater. Both Billy and I bought tickets through the friends of the band presale, and so I ended up sitting next to him at the show.  He was, as always, drunk. I hadn’t seen him in maybe a year at this point. He was still wearing his suit - they were progressively more rumpled as the years went on. He sat next to me and my girlfriend. She was utterly mortified that this drunk old man was sitting next to her.  “That’s Billy Ruane!” I said. I was so excited. Though it sort of shocks me, now, that Billy is dead, you always sort of wondered if he had died when you hadn’t seen him in a while, and so I was excited to see him.  True to Billy’s style, he drunkenly heckled the band through night one’s first set (Absolutely Cuckoo through The Book of Love). He’d shout out drunken slurs that were incomprehensible. He’d do it awkward moments - in the quiet parts of songs, in the pauses. My girlfriend was visibly upset. Actually, most of the audience was. I loved it - it was what Billy had always done.  During the intermission I told my friend Mike, the sound man, that the heckler was Billy. He loved it.  The band came on, and Claudia said, “You know, the heckler’s a bit annoying, but we were just talking back stage about how it reminded us of Billy Ruane. And we’ve just been informed it actually IS Billy Ruane. Billy, are you here?” “It’s me, Claudia.” Billy shoutslurred. Claudia was visibly delighted. She laughed. The band applauded and introduced Billy to everyone. “Ladies and gentlemen, that heckler is Billy Ruane. He gave us our first show, or at least one of them. He is a Boston legend.” He was visibly pleased with this, though it did not stop him from heckling. I’d seen him a lot less in the past few years. The last time I saw him was at the Elevator Drops reunion show. He was as drunk as always (and by this I mean if you’ve ever seen me stumbling drunk, that was his normal state). He was engaged in some argument with Chris Brokaw (GG Allin’s band/Codeine/Come/Pullman/The New Year). He was arguing with him about something. Chris didn’t want to be arguing. I was super excited to see him again. That night was like old boston royalty - the people in the room were the people I was totally a fan of when I first arrived in Boston, and Billy had probably booked, discovered, and heckled all of them at one point or another. “Billy Ruane was the single greatest music catalyst I’ve ever encountered. He transcended the definitions of “fan” and “promoter” to become a kind of living embodiment of the transforming experience of music, and he made a deep impression on everybody who ever met him.” - Steve Albini Rest in peace, Billy. Boston will respect, love, and miss you forever. 

Billy Ruane’s Business Card, c 1994 (by Rick Webb)

I don’t think 1994 was the first time I met Billy. I couldn’t say, exactly, when the first time was, but I remember receiving this card from him at a Helium show in 1994 or so. I remember the moment realizing this was the guy thanked on the back of the Helium album Pirate Prude, with which I was obsessed at this time.

You couldn’t miss him. He was at practically every show you went to, in his new wave suit, drunk as a skunk. If you took a photo of James Murphy in a suit from the cover of This is Happening, aged him, wrinkled him a bit and pickled him, you’d have Billy Ruane.  

I think it was Leah Callahan of Turkish Delight and Betwixt that finally introduced us. I’d see him several times a week for almost a decade. 

In that time, Billy OWNED the Boston rock scene. He was the man who helped turn the Middle East into a rock club - now Boston’s best and longest-standing rock venue. 

My favorite memory of Billy came a lot later - in 1999. It was at the first ever 3 night stand of the Magnetic Fields doing the entirety of 69 Love Songs. It was at the Somerville Theater. Both Billy and I bought tickets through the friends of the band presale, and so I ended up sitting next to him at the show. 

He was, as always, drunk. I hadn’t seen him in maybe a year at this point. He was still wearing his suit - they were progressively more rumpled as the years went on. He sat next to me and my girlfriend. She was utterly mortified that this drunk old man was sitting next to her. 

“That’s Billy Ruane!” I said. I was so excited. Though it sort of shocks me, now, that Billy is dead, you always sort of wondered if he had died when you hadn’t seen him in a while, and so I was excited to see him. 

True to Billy’s style, he drunkenly heckled the band through night one’s first set (Absolutely Cuckoo through The Book of Love). He’d shout out drunken slurs that were incomprehensible. He’d do it awkward moments - in the quiet parts of songs, in the pauses. My girlfriend was visibly upset. Actually, most of the audience was. I loved it - it was what Billy had always done. 

During the intermission I told my friend Mike, the sound man, that the heckler was Billy. He loved it. 

The band came on, and Claudia said, “You know, the heckler’s a bit annoying, but we were just talking back stage about how it reminded us of Billy Ruane. And we’ve just been informed it actually IS Billy Ruane. Billy, are you here?”

“It’s me, Claudia.” Billy shoutslurred.

Claudia was visibly delighted. She laughed. The band applauded and introduced Billy to everyone. “Ladies and gentlemen, that heckler is Billy Ruane. He gave us our first show, or at least one of them. He is a Boston legend.”

He was visibly pleased with this, though it did not stop him from heckling.

I’d seen him a lot less in the past few years. The last time I saw him was at the Elevator Drops reunion show. He was as drunk as always (and by this I mean if you’ve ever seen me stumbling drunk, that was his normal state). He was engaged in some argument with Chris Brokaw (GG Allin’s band/Codeine/Come/Pullman/The New Year). He was arguing with him about something. Chris didn’t want to be arguing. I was super excited to see him again. That night was like old boston royalty - the people in the room were the people I was totally a fan of when I first arrived in Boston, and Billy had probably booked, discovered, and heckled all of them at one point or another.

“Billy Ruane was the single greatest music catalyst I’ve ever encountered. He transcended the definitions of “fan” and “promoter” to become a kind of living embodiment of the transforming experience of music, and he made a deep impression on everybody who ever met him.” - Steve Albini

Rest in peace, Billy. Boston will respect, love, and miss you forever. 

1 year ago
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Butthole Surfers - Booze, Tobacco, Dope, Pussy, Cars

Ha. It’s almost impossible to reconcile why I like the Butthole Surfers. Or, punk, really. I mean, I like punk, I guess. But, in many ways, it irks me. It’s one of those things that was better in concept than in execution, I think. When making Emma watch a Throbbing Gristle show a few years back, and her being utterly appalled at how bad at was, and me looking at it through the yes of a millennial, I sorta realized it was bad. I blurted out “but we didn’t have as much music then!” as a sort of defense. 

And it’s sort of true. When I was 17 I was crawling  every publication, every rumor for new music. We were in Alaska, there were no gigs, there was no internet, the record stores would order something for us, but we had to know what to ask for. We scoured what we could get - Rolling Stone, Spin, and, astonishingly, The Face. A few punks had moved up to Fairbanks after growing up somewhere else, and their insights were golden. 

It was through a few of these uprooted punks that we learned about Oi - The Exploited, GBH, Cockney Rejects - as well as - much more intriguingly, Crass and the Butthole Surfers. 

And, it was for this reason that despite me having some doubts about the aesthetics of punk, and not really comprehending the infinitely-more-intriguing politics of it, that I still harbor a love for some old punk bands. Because there was so little interesting music we could get our hands on up there, we just consumed everything we could. 

I have this theory about bands. There are the albums that came out before you liked the band or learned about the band, there are the albums that came out after, and there is that one release that was the first release that came out that you bought new. So, in this case, with me, that first new release for the Butthole Surfers was the Widowmaker EP. Their last independent release before they were inexplicably signed to Capital (and seriously, how weird was the music industry in 1992 that the Butthole Surfers got signed to a major?). 

Plus, BTDPC is just such a great song. Short, to the point, and wonderful. Encapsulates so much, don’t you think?

So, I guess that’s why this song instead of something else - the obvious one would be Sweat Loaf - doubled by the fact that the ATP Djs inexplicably play it sometimes, so it’d be good for Emma to know it - but when I think of the Butthole Surfers, I always think of this song first. 

1 year ago
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Teenage Fanclub - Guiding Star

Okay - Been on a bit of a local kick of late, but I think it was worth taking a little detour for this gem. Teenage Fanclub are back on the road, playing their first shows in the US in something like 10 years they said (don’t remember the exact number). And… Bandwagonesque! What a great record. Effortless, perfect pop. They had a few albums before this, and my BU buddy, Hugh, tried to get me into them an album earlier, but i wasn’t impressed. But then this baby came out, and… boom. I had heard of Big Star, but hadn’t grown to love them yet, so it wasn’t obvious to me just how blatantly Teenage Fanclub was ripping them off. It’s obvious now, but i don’t care. I love it. 

Their first show in Boston was at Axis, touring with the Afghan Whigs on the Congregation Tour. Oh man, what a night. Also, Teenage Fanclub still had Brendan the dummer at that point - and he was such a hoot - he’d run off stage and go to the bathroom in the middle of the set. His drum kit said “Brendan the Drummer” on it, which was kind of genius. They kicked him out and he went on to join Mogwai until they kicked him out too. Apparently he’s solo now under the moniker “Macrocosmica.” Okay. At the end of the gig, all of the Afghan Whigs and Teenage Fanclub got on stage together - something like 11 of them, 5 guitars, and did a cover of… something. I can’t remember what the cover was, now, but… I remember loving it. I also remember thinking 11 people on stage was SO INSANE. This was before the big bands of indie came along.  

1 year ago
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Cathode - Long PIg

Cathode was a Boston-based Post Rock band before post rock made the big splash it has today. Before Mogwai and Explosions in the SKy and the later, Boston-based Caspian. I first saw Cathode when my old shoe gaze band was playing a show with them @ O’Brien’s Pub in Allston, MA. They blew me away. They were so effortlessly competent and talented and it just sounded so completely amazing. This song is sort of the magnum opus of their self titled, and only album. They were on this boston label called Castle Von Buhler, that was a big inspiration for us when we founded Archenemy - awesome music, awesome design. Eventually I became pretty good friends with Bruce from Cathode, who assisted in engineering our second Rockets album. He works with Aubrey (who also engineered the second Rockets album) out in SF now, having spent a large number of years producing and engineering but, like the rest of us, ultimately going back to computers. 

I envied Cathode - they were the band I wanted to be, but was never really good enough. I also loved that they were instrumental, which was pretty great because we spent so much time on our lyrics. 

On evenings like tonight, I think of that period in my life - the label was humming along, we were cranking out albums, we were playing shows routinely, and actually getting pretty good - and I miss it like hell. The creation of TBG has been something wonderful, but i still miss the creation of Archenemy. I miss my original band of cohorts - aug and annie and craig and sean and jussi and tony and aubrey and bruce and colin and brian (on man I gotta do a Clairvoyants song sometime), and all the bands we’d play with and all the clubs and shows and driving down to NY to play CBGBs or anyone that would let us play, and the tour with Breathless and… oh, if only we had more money. Sigh. 

1 year ago
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Don Lennon - Real Dave Matthews

Emma told me to cheer this up a bit and show that I wasn’t always depressed. This will be tough, because I was often depressed, and actually I had this one queued up before she said that, but I’m bumping it up in the queue, and also I just undertook an exercise to find about 5 cheery songs that are also from my past, so I’m gonna sorta mix it up a bit for a while. Also I’ve queued a good bunch of these so you should see like one a week for a good while now. 

Don Lennon. How to explain Don Lennon. I’ve spent weeks wondering which song best encapsulates Don - do I post something from the “parties and friends” era? One of the punk hommages like “The Mekons are in Town?” Something from his standup comedy era (singing about standup comedy, that is, not performing actual standup). In the end, though, the Dave Matthews era seemed to be the best. It captures the absurdity of Don Lennon, and the smooth musicality. 

Ha. Who knows. I recommend you dig in to Don’s oeuvre. Start with Downtown, then Maniac. Maniac is awesome. There are so many great things on Maniac. So many great songs about parties and friends. 

Don was a weird time in my life. When did the Don era start? I don’t know, exactly. One day I was meeting all these new people - Elin and Anuja first, and then Don, through Sean. Sean started producing Don’t first album. Anuja and Don started dating. Somewhere in there I lost a rubber tree that i really loved. I pressed Maniac at my job at the CD manufacturing place. Don’s shows were always totally hilarious - from the one man band routine up through the full band. I loved it all. I loved “Dance Music” and the fake a capalla techno and resonating filters. 

Don still performs, I think, once in a while. I try and see him when I can, mail order the new CDs when they come out - he’s been on Secretly Canadian for years now, which is kind of awesome. Looking now I see that Don Lennon has a <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lennon”>wikipedia page</a> - that is pretty awesome. And I See that 2010 brought another Don Lennon album. Must buy it. 

1 year ago
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WIllard Grant Conspiracy - The Visitor

This song still works. Get dumped. Lose your job. Sit at home. Do nothing. Have this song come on randomly at around 4 in the afternoon, when all your roommates haven’t gotten home yet from work, and you’re still alone, but you haven’t done anything, and the light is sort of golden coming in your windows. Listen to this song. It’ll kill you. 

I’ve always been fascinated by the thought of people arriving, interacting, and leaving without talking. I had a friend who was gay that used to be able to obtain a certain type of interaction in this milieu by dint of a craigslist placement, but for those of us less adventurous, or more prone to sensitive types, it’s harder to come by. This song also sort of smacks of breakup sex, in a way, doesn’t it? And though I’ve often missed breakup sex opportunities in my life, I still think there’s a lot to say for it. 

The Willard Grant Conspiracy. What a band. Came from our New England area, and at one point or another it seemed as if half of the Boston indie rock scene was in this band - one show I saw included over 20 players. The heart of the band was a large gentleman named Robert Fisher. They got huge in europe, and he moved at one point to Arizona. Though apparently his Wikipedia page says he lives in California now. Though WIkipedia also only lists four former members of the band, so who knows. 

In any case, they were alt country, but sort of that Goth alt country - the alt country and plumbed the most meloncholy of the the older country that all alt country plumbed. What a sentence. Also is that the right spelling of plumb in this case? I don’t even know. Anyway, I always loved the most morose of the alt country. Tarnation was another one. Early Mojave 3 before the Brian Wilson influence became dominant. Big Star, even, in some respects. 

1 year ago