Pitchfork Feature: Live: The Constantines | A Rebuttal

So, I saw this:
Pitchfork Feature: Live: The Constantines

And ok. Well, i know pitchfork's gotta be too cool for school and all. But mang, I was AT that show, and let me tell you, there was more holy rock that was being ladled out at that show than in one million clap your hands, say what block parties in the part of heaven they call brooklyn.

I'm totally ok with the reviewer knowing the in's and outs of Chad Vangellen. I was up front, never heard of the guy and wanted to see what he brought. He brought some poppy-hoody-wearing-lifestyle-in-the-beater-car music. I was in the front so I couldn't get the full vibe. He had a nice strummy fender jaguar that his sometimes finger picked with great skill...but he didn't blow my hair back or anything.

Then the Cons came out. and Fool, they STARTED with "Young Lions" a song so rock they only need one chord for the majority of the song. And when they hit that first G chord. All the guitars were lifted in tribute to the Holy and Sacred sound of tube amps being overdriven. The Bass hoisted, the keyboardist, turned away from the audience, still playing his chord and lifted his finger skyward, two goregeous guitars were pointed towards the heavens as the feedback took over in a wash of harmonics. And that rock salute stayed up there for enough time for the audience to feel amused, then questioning, then awkward, then they realized that, goddamnit, they were in the Church of the Constantines' now and they'd better spectacles/testicles/dobbin/genuflect/kneel, or ablute themselve if they wanted to follow them into this sacred time. And then the salute came crashing down into the verse;

Oh
Young Lions
This is your kingdom...

And I'm here to tell you. You don't get more trancendent than that. That show went beyond mere mechanical / somatic movements and time. There was a communication of a larger world of experience that wrapped around our beings like the pain and exhiliration of truly being alive.

W00t!

Oh man! Myku! Now I gotta go and grab those records that you're talking about.

I have a question for the larger Effect Return community, You teeming Millions: Where can I find bomb-ass acustic Mexican music?

I'm familar with Juapangos and Huasteca music from Veracruz. But I was in Bajacalifornia Sur. And I know it sounds cheezy but, we were in this joint that had a roaming 4 piece playing for tips. Guitar, Bass, Harp (!), and Quinto (?) - and they were singing ballads, and cancion romanticas, and "Guantanamera" and "Besa Me Mucho" for the drunks who only know those songs. And dammit, if you put a mic on those guys you could sell thousands and thousands of records, but I don't know where to get those records up here.

All I can find is big Mariachi, Ranchera, and that schmaltzy stuff from Mexico City. Where's the Alan Lomax of Mexico? Wait....did Lomax go to Mexico? maybe I should start there.

Also! From the one more community-driven music site department:
music.metafilter.com
What's nice about this is - well, metafilter has been around the block for a while, but also they have this thing where the songs come up in a little flash player so it's really easy to get high quality samples. Not so sure if you can grab a full download for your Ogg player unless you jump through some hoops - but it's an easy way to get rolling and sharing. But, i haven't tried it out - so it might be like pulling Semi trucks with fresh dental work.

Guitar Sounds Revisited

I got all worked up when I read Doc Confusion's post on guitar sounds and wanted to post a comment with a list of my own. Once I started rambling on, however, I figured I might as well just 'blog it' and be done with it.

Here's a few of my faves, just to see what's what:

The Flaming Lips (What's that you say??) - That's right, check out Transmissions from the Satellite Heart for some great bass-heavy distorto-rock madness. "Slow Nerve Action" in particular has a sound that straight-up hits like a Samurai sword in between your earbuds.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This is Knowhere - Need I even say anything? Well, just in case, Everybody knows that "Cinnamon Girl" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" have influenced more rock guitarists than china white, and "Round and Round (It Won't Be Long)" is about as luscious as an acoustic sound recorded in 1969 can be. Personally, I've always dug the rhythm guitar on "Down By the River" too.

Dinosaur Jr., Green Mind - It's crunchy, it's muddy, it's your run of the mill Les Paul/Marshall stack sound with a heavy, fuzzy, bassy distortion. It's the kind of set-up that so many players work with, but few make it sound as punchy and as alive as J. Mascis. His open chord style is different as well, considering most rockers of the Green Mind era would have gone the way of the 'Power-Chord' in expressing their angst.

Hendrix, Electric Ladyland - It's cliché to pull out Hendrix, but I can really get behind some of that sharp, crisp, perfect tone that he was known to lay down. I especially love the fuzzed-out sound mixed with some phaze and those super-heavy gauge strings, which gave the tone an awesome 'pop' and kept it from turning to mud under all that distortion.

Robert Fripp - Well, I guess somebody was bound to say it, right? Maybe it's just me. Anyway, I'm into the 'Frippertronics' in general, but his work on Bowie's Scary Monsters reigns supreme in my opinion. "Fashion" has this sweet plastic distortion that I think is bombs, "Teenage Wildlife" is both laid-back and uplifting in its Prog-Rockiness with Fripp's all-over the place background noodlefesting and rock-anthem slow riffs, and let's just say "Because Your Young" is about to get kicked out of my MP3 player for being a cooler track than I should be allowed to listen to. Fripp is all over Peter Gabriel's early stuff too- same sound, but it doesn't get old to me……..

Mark Ribot - His sound on Tom Wait's Big Time and Elvis Costello's Spike is not for those prone to nightmares. It's sharp, and very very darkly-percussive, like an evil marimba that dreamt it was a guitar and awoke plugged into a '63 Fender Twin. (The Horror, The Horror.)

Television, Marquee Moon - What can I say about this album? Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd got the goods, and they certainly come correct. And, it's not just the fabulous back and forth riffing, but the pristine sounds as well. Every note strangled from every guitar string on this record sounds like it was coddled and cared for like a baby wolf-cub that would one day grow up to eat its loving master. And every track just drips guitar coolness as those fuge-like siamese riffs blossom into a single concrete web, as inseparable as city sidewalks and streets. I can only imagine that if you found yourself lost in NYC, circa 1977, you could just as easily find your way with a copy of "Venus de Milo" in hand as you could with any map bought at a service station.

Ok, I just realized this list could go on for a while……………. I'm gonna go listen to some music.

.m

Sweet "Youth Decay"

I was kicking-it with the MP3 player on shuffle today, driving the suburban and rural landscapes that lay themselves down for our great southern highways and interstates, when I was suddenly, and most unexpectedly, straight-up accosted by the ladies of Sleater-Kinney and their kick-ass song "Youth Decay." Could a rock song be any more bombs than this?

Sometimes, it's so much more about the attitude than anything else, and this track's got enough attitude to blow up even the most heavy-duty set of studio headphones. Its cool and loud in a way that only girls could lay to wax. This trio surely brings it like few others can, and if you don't know, then the fourth track on their 2000 album All Hands on the Bad One, "Youth Decay," will surely make a believer out of you.

As set-ups go, it's a fairly simple arrangement. Vocals and backing vocals, two guitars, drums.

"What about the bass player?" you ask the band.

"F++k 'em, we don't need one" would be the probable response.

…..and they truly don't. Corin Tucker plays a baritone guitar, Carrie Brownstein tunes her guitar one step down, and drummer Janet Weiss (I can just hear Tim Curry telling her to "Wise Up") does an excellent job of forcing the average listener to 'hang on for dear life.'

So much for the bass player, but hello "Youth Decay!"

This song just starts off rocking and doesn't let up until you're dizzy from smashing your head on the punk rock. The quick-revolving guitar riff falls all over itself (in a good way), and the no-frills rhythm guitar that it overlays drives 8th notes with a muddy crunch that gives the drums every oportunity to just keep drilling and overturning until they finally blow-up in the chorus's final reprise, never quite giving you a chance to compose yourself and say "ok, ok…… it's just a song."

Throw in the vocals, and you've got a real classic on yer hands; they grab you from the get and don't let go, beginning with a sing-song type melody that ends up in a Sing Sing style shouting match as they explode into the emphatically disturbing chorus "Am I running out? / Daddy says I've got my mamma's mouth…..."

Holy Christmas, that's rock music.

"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" + Creative Commons = 2 Free Classics + Hundreds of Remixes!

I just heard!!!

If you dig the 1981 David Byrne - Brian Eno release "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" (and if you don't dig it, probably some of your favorite artists do), then you'll be as erect as an exclamation mark to hear that the Byrne - Eno team have re-released the album with 7 new tracks, AND AND AND AND AND (!!!!!) two of those tracks, "A Secret Life" and "Help Me Somebody," have been offered-up online under a Creative Commons license!

AND, for those who haven't heard, it gets betta, kids. The two tracks have been made available in their ORIGINAL 24-TRACK FORM. Byrne and Eno have set up the site bush-of-ghosts.com to allow common peasants such as we to download the original pre-mixed album tracks, mutilate and/or remix them to our heart's content, then UPLOAD the remixes back onto the site where they will be available for the public to vote on, share, laugh at, etc.

That's right. And, we're not JUST talking remixes either, as you are also free to use samplings of the two songs in your own original compositions. Pretty sweet, especially when you consider that the terms of the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license dictate that all derivative works must also be "share-alike".

This much exstacy may require a mea culpa or two……….