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Tackling the existential issues that plaque the modern man, struggling with industrialization, capturing the madness of it all in three minutes.
Download Neil Young - The Bottom Line (1974)
He’s produced music longer than anyone else I listen to on a regular basis. My grandparents and my parents could probably listen to at least one of his songs and enjoy it. While, that’s probably not the perfect formula to judge music, it at least says something about his appeal to all and longevity as a musician. This is Young at The Bottom Line in 1974. Half of these songs can be heard as studio versions on the On The Beach album. I’m usually not a fan of live albums but the rawness here is notable. There’s also some banter and storytelling that you usually don’t get when an artist is completely conscious he/she being carefully recorded live. If you do nothing else, listen to “Ambulance Blues”, as it will be well worth it.
Tracklist
1. Pushed it over the Edge (Neil calls it “Citizen Kane Junior Blues”)
2. Long May You Run
3. Greensleeves
4. Ambulance Blues
5. Helpless
6. Revolution Blues
7. On the Beach
8. Roll Another Number for the Road
9. Motion Pictures
10. Pardon My Heart
11. Dance, Dance, Dance
This album has never been officially released but Young has been releasing other albums from his personal archives over the past few years. You can purchase those here.
Thanks Bummer Vacation for the download.
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As a record collector, I don’t really sit and wait for new releases, or even re-issues of long standing classics. The biggest thrill, aside from finding a coveted obscure classic (apologies to anyone who was around for the Ruben and the Jets debacle), is finding something that “looks interesting”. Usually it’s in some type of discount bin, and you’re taking a chance on it, and most of the time there’s a very good reason its in the discount bin.
However a couple of months ago I was at Permanent Records in Greenpoint Brooklyn when I came across Bill Fox’s Bird of the World b/w I May Never Know single. I was immediately taken with the cover, which had the classic Scat Records side panel I had come to know from early GbV and Cobra Verde Records. I took a chance and spent the $3 they were asking. Now the “looks interesting” factor, like I mentioned before, can go horribly wrong…but it can also open a lot of wonderful doors. While listening to the record that night I did my research on Mr. Fox, and apparently he fronted an amazing Ohio power pop band in the 80’s called the Mice, which I listened to and am a little smitten with. The ability to take a chance on a record, and it showing you a whole scene you were never aware of is what record geeks live for. Hell labels like the Numero Group have made a living at it. It makes the hours of digging through piles of Billy Ocean 25 cent singles worth it.
The single’s first track, Bird of the World, is a 60’s tinged pop-folk tune that gives you slightly GbV harmonies minus the weirdo factor. This is a straight up pop song, full of tambourines and distortion free electric guitars. The lyrics contain the typical teenage fall in love from afar kind of cliche that’s always so wonderful with the right song. The longing, the desire are so safe in the context of a guilt free, melodic, 3-minute gem.
I May Never Know continues the uber-catchy bliss, this time with just doubled up vocals and acoustic guitar. The perfect thing about this song is its insertion of minor chords in just the right places. It makes the pop take a somber twist for brief moment of reflection. Its a hard task to fulfill, but Mr. Fox does it like second nature.
After listening to this I start wanting to dig more into what came out of Ohio in the 80’s and early 90’s. God bless bargain bins…
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Hey guys. We want to wish everyone a merry Christmas, (C)Hanukkah, Kwanza, New Years, etc, etc.
The Workbench will be observing the Holiday’s, which basically means Dustin and I are gonna drink a lot of beer and probably end up trying to make out with each other.
January 5th we’ll be back and stronger than ever. Try not to miss us too much!
Compiling a top ten list seems a little self-important but maybe you’ll see something you glossed over. The stuff I listened to a lot this year. Who cares, “it’s just like my opinion man.”
01 : The Nerves “One Way Ticket”
02 : The Fallen Leaves “It’s Too Late Now”
03 : Big Dipper “Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology”
04 : The Grouch “Show You The World”
05 : Imaginary Icons “S/T”
06 : Atmosphere “When Life Gives You Lemons, Paint That Shit Gold”
07 : The Notwist “The Devil, You + Me”
08 : Blue Ash “No More No Less”
09 : Vivian Girls “S/T”
10 : Times New Viking “Rip It Off”
So for our second installment of Casual Friday’s we’re going to do what every music geek likes to do around this time of year. We’re going to list off what we consider to be the best albums of the year. As you can tell or not, Dustin and I have very different taste’s so we’re not going to sit here and come up with a combined top 10. Things would get ugly and he and I would say things we both regret.
So here goes mine:
10 Xiu Xiu “Women as Lovers”
Needless to say if I were a girl I’d be like all the rest of them. I’d like the tortured artist types who will only divulge their deepest darkest secrets through song. Frail voices, a little self loathing and plenty of uncalled for outbursts…it would be a turn on man. The truth is I am not a woman, but I still find Jamie Stewart’s music incredibly wonderful and intense. What other man could pull off a duet with Michael Gira of a Queen song?
09 Au “Verbs”
I know I know I am thanked on the liner notes of this record…well if you didn’t know, now you do. But all bromance aside Luke Wyland and company put out an amazingly inspiring album. It’s like a class on how to achieve Nirvana (the state, not the band) all done in less than an hour. 9 songs about friendship and happiness, even if he doesn’t sing about it, you feel it. It’s inspiring. I dare you to try to walk on a brisk spring night listening to “Are Animals” and not get inspired to do something great, want to scream from a mountaintop and tell everyone in the world that love is real and you can feel it.
08 Parenthetical Girls “Entanglements”
They have come a long long way since the first time I saw Mr. Pennington wearing a dress at an art gallery in Echo Park. But they have only gotten better. They stray from their tiny disturbing songs to lush, orchestrated baroque pop. I heard someone said they thought it sounded like a musical of some sort…and it kind of does. But look deep, all the lyrical complexity is now backed up by the northwest’s finest psuedo symphonies. If you are looking for something to alter your perception of what an “indie” band could be, listen to this record.
07 Samamidon “All is Well”
How the hell do you re-invent really old songs to sound fresh and progressive? I have no idea. Luckily Samamidon manages to take songs so old our grandparents would find them lame and breath this amazing new life into them, Making them comforting yet icy. I would never every call this a covers record, that’s selling it way short. Possibly one of the greatest shows I saw this year was him performing with Nico Muhly and a mini orchestra. Magic, magic stuff.
06 Times New Viking: “Rip it Off”
First impression on this record is that it was way too loud, yet by the third song I was turning it up. Makes me want to wear ripped jeans and a t-shirt and jump around a sweaty basement when its cold outside. I saw them play the Whitney museum and they somehow made the place a little trashier in the best way possible.
05 Mount Eerie & Julie Dorion: Lost Wisdom
Possibly the best winter album in years. I realized this walking to the L train at 7am in the morning and hearing “You Swan, Go On” Such a happy song sounds all and warm and toasty when you are freezing your ass off. It’s like Hot Cocoa that pays homage to Bjork.
04 Cut/Copy “In Ghost Colours”
Ok so I listen to a ton off really brainy, stupid dance music. But an album full of electro pop ditties really got me more than anything dance wise this year. So much so I felt like if I were ever to DJ at a really cool club I’d play “Hearts on Fire” between Ricardo Villalobos and Farben tracks just to show that I also like to have fun. I don’t take it that seriously. I feel like this album was something both my sister and I could agree on and bond over
03 M83 “Saturdays=youth”
Picture Ralph Macchio skateboarding down a hill in Southern California. He’s young, wearing stonewashed jeans, and maybe, just maybe a bandana around his neck. Now add music to it. That’s why this album is awesome.
02 The Notwist “The Devil, You + Me”
Ok, so german dudes who use Nintendo Wii controllers in their music can usually only go one way: nerd city. However, Notwist break all the rules and put out one of the most introspective electro-pop records in years. Their music is never too brainy, but never too simple, they pseudo shoegaze when appropriate, and write pretty amazing lyrics in a language that isn’t even their own.
01 Flying Lotus “Los Angeles”
So the year I decide to leave L.A. finally something truly truly amazing comes out of the city. I mean, there’s a lot of great music coming out of the city of angels, but not like this. I guess its a hip hop record? no wait, it’s an electronic record? I don’t know what to call it, but its beautiful textured, a little funky, a little sad, a little happy. I feel like this record is the musical equivalent of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”, if we try and narrow it down and classify it we will only fail the purpose of the art.
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This seven inch was released as a promotional item for the 1995 record ‘Psychic Hearts‘. I could go on and on and on about that record and it definitely belongs in my Top Ten Records Of All Time list, but this post is only related to that album by proxy, and I’m pretty sure that you can easily find a copy of that one if you want to.
I found this little gem hiding in a pile of otherwise totally uninteresting 7″s out at a tiny little record store in St Johns at the far north end of Portland. This same trip to this record store yielded up a Deftones promotional 7″ for ‘7 Words’ as well, which people have offered me all kinds of crazy things to trade for including first-born children. Oh, those wacky Deftones fans…Anyway, this little record has the album track Cindy (Rotten Tanx), a super fucking tough bad-ass of a song that grinds like a night driving in the city, high on youth energy and a joint you snuck past your parents. Doesn’t make sense? Listen and maybe it will. The lyrics have something to do with a guy who is rapturing in the idea of wrapping himself up in all the things that are amazing about females, but get a little lost in all the revved up guitar slithering.
The B-Side is the otherwise unreleased track ‘Teenage Buddhist Daydream’, a gentle, lo-fi, songlette which is interrupted in several spots by seemingly random clips of audio, probably dubbed off a TV. Considering the heft of ‘Psychic Hearts’ it makes sense that it wasn’t included on the record. It isn’t a total throw away though, and if you like the album you’ll probably want to hear this.
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What if Syd Barret created punk music? I don’t know if this would have made him less likely or more likely to take copious amounts of LSD and go insane. One could debate cocaine to be the LSD of the 1980s. So, he could have potentially spent a lot more time keeping people up all night and enthusiastically explaining his plans rather than filming himself in flower fields before being permanently isolating from the world. Perhaps, the 60s and 70s attitudes towards drugs lead him astray and the 80s would have treated him better. I often wonder what would have happened if he kept it together and played all the way through. Either way the Urinals remind me of his genius.
An atypical psychedelic sound, the Urinals had just as much in common with 13th Floor Elevators as they did their contemporaries. Their debut 7″ contains four solid gems. They’ve spent their time in between playing under band names Chairs Of Perception, 100 flowers, and Trotsky Icepick. Trotsky Icepick do a great cover of Television’s “Venus Di Milo.” Their sound is more polished and a departure from The Urinals’ stripped down melodies. Warning Label Records recently released an anthology of the Urinals’ music and you can purchase it for a fraction of what you will ever pay for this record.
The Urinals’ anthology Negative Capability was recently released on Warning Label Records and can be found here.
