Oh My Golly

Frank Black Francis
Spin Art; 2004

-----

I’ve come to accept the fact that I like demo recordings. I like the raw production qualities that come from a total lack of studio recording. I like to hear the wheels of creation spinning in an early version of a song, or even an early version of a band (I think musicians are a lot more creative when they don’t think anyone is listening). I like hearing snickers behind a take that was too good to redo. I like hearing a phone ring in the background.

That’s the first half of this collection. Disc one is all quickie recordings Frank Black did way back before the very first Pixies recording session. Disc two, the “Treated Disc,” is Frank Black revamping his old Pixies songs, through a mostly electronic and ambient filter. But more about that later.

The liner notes say that disc one is just Frank Black and his guitar, into a walkman, in producer Gary Smith’s apartment. Black’s voice is soaked in reverb, so there must have been a little mixer involved as well. The result is magical. Black is more free here to do whatever he wants to the songs, while staying pretty much in focus with predicting what they’ll sound like after studio work by Smith and Albini later on. He’s brave. He squeals and shrieks and basically gives the performance he’d give on a stage.

In the liner notes, Frank Black talks about how he didn’t want to release just the demos, as they’d seem like a rip-off alone. Actually, I’d have to agree with him. Despite the fact that the audio quality is rich and full and clean (except for tape hiss and a few blips here and there), and despite the fact that the beautiful rawness of the songs maintain listenability, just disc one would have been too thin for a full priced release.

So there’s disc two. Black retouches his own songs with more production and a totally different vision than they had ever seen before. The disc is mostly ambient but not lazy. It’s interesting but not fully engaging. While it’s easy to sing along with Black’s raw melodies in disc one, disc two isn’t nearly as instantly catchy. While the in-the-moment performance of disc one is captivating, the performance on this disc is the polar opposite, it’s ambient and brushed with electronica. There’s something too rehearsed about this version of Subbacultcha, it’s just not natural enough. There are exceptions to this; the Holiday Song remake is a jazzy blend of horns, and Planet of Sound is this fifteen-minute grinding low-key opus sort of thing.

My first impression was that Black wasn’t so much playing his own songs again as he was actually covering them. He’s offering an interpretation of a well known song. Yeah, he’s got more authority to do the songs than other folks – and I’m not suggesting that he was messing with the gospel, as he asserts in the liner notes – and he doesn’t necessarily make the songs better, but ultimately he still gives interesting versions of the songs.

In fact, he isn’t offering a new album here, but another collection of songs, which is really interesting when you consider the contrast between this disc and the first. It’s a sort of dichotomy of performances, from the ultra-raw early demos to the more modern and over-produced. And in that contrast, I see value.

Turn it Back Around

To My Surprise - To My Surprise

Roadrunner; 2003

-----

This is a side project of a drummer of a band that I don’t really “get:” Slipknot. But I had to have an open mind, as it fit into the category of uncategorizable psychedelic, oddball side projects. And that is EXACTLY where Lusk fit in, so I had to give this a try.

The opening of this disc caught be off guard and totally reminded me of Feersum Ennjin; actually the two openings are very similar. Not only that, but some of the vocal harmonies throughout are also reminiscent of Feersum Ennjin and Lusk, and I find that really cool. Okay, so add to that mix the oddball, almost forced but maybe not humor and strangeness of Gibby Haynes and His Problem (but NOT of later Butthole Surfers albums). It's cool, it's trippy, and it's for a limited audience, which is probably To My Surprise's ultimate downfall (especially with the built-in audience of Slipknot fans).

If nothing else, this disc is really brave, but it’s a good kind of brave where some guys let themselves play feel-good, off-kilter, easily-hyphenated music that really doesn’t fit anywhere in the spectrum of what commercial music is at the moment. At times, it’s rehashing psychedelica that’s long gone, at times it’s just total feel-good groove, and at times it’s a bit on the doofy side, which can be okay if you’ve got an open mind about the music you listen to.

I say if you have an open mind for strange music, give this a try. It’s fun, and the disc gets better and better as it goes.

Yeah.....Yeah.

Everclear in Concert

9.02.06 - Last Fling - Naperville, Illinois

-----

Everclear is coming to the area, so yes, I'd like to see them. I mean, I used to have two of their albums. Then I got sick of them and sold them both to a comic book store. Then, years later, I went back and bought So Much for the Afterglow again from some used shop. And yeah, their particular brand of riffy, infectious pop-rock can be sort of entertaining. And after something like fifteen years of doing it for a living, they ought to be good, right?

No way, man. Everclear sucked. Like a trainwreck sucked. It was so bad that I couldn't even bear to leave early. I had to stay till the bitter end, even through the encore.

In all fairness, I was sitting on a hill a distance from the stage, so I was probably missing some of that energy of being close. And the mix was really bad, but maybe I wouldn't have noticed as much if I were inside the "deaf zone" of the speakers. The fact that singer Art Alexakis was way to loud in the mix wasn't helped by the fact that he actually couldn't sing. He sort of bellowed out the lyrics to his songs, mostly in time. It sort of sounded like amatuer hour at karaoke night. You know that guy who's always there and he's really drunk and he thinks he sounds great bellowing out Neal Diamond lyrics, or maybe Meatloaf lyrics, but you can tell he's smoked about ten times the number of cigarettes that he usually smokes, and he keeps looking over at his friends who just egg him on from their table by the telepromter over in the corner? Yeah, that bad.

Then there were some song choices and format issues I didn't agree with. After like three or four songs they went into the obligatory acoustic part of the show. Why have bands felt the need to do this lately? Every band touring in America should read this statement: DOING AN OBLIGATORY ACOUSTIC PART OF THE SHOW IS JUST AS LAME AS HOLDING UP YOUR CELL PHONE INSTEAD OF YOUR ZIPPO DURING A SLOW SONG. And not only did Alexakis do the whole acoustic thing, but he did it poorly. He covered Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. Acousticly. And he didn't know all the words.

Then there was the encore. Remember that this was a live festival show for a town, and it only cost ten bucks to get in, so there were a lot of moms and dads and stuff. So as soon as the band stopped their main set, the crowd got up to leave. I guess there were some people standing and clapping down by the stage, but everybody else got up. Seriously. And they hadn't even played Santa Monica yet, so you just knew they weren't done. So they rushed back out real quick and played Santa Monica, which was fine.

Then they played another song. But before playing it, they pulled a bunch of girls onto the stage. For like ten minutes the band played funk background garbage while Alexakis pointed into the crowd and shouted into the microphone "you and you and that girl in the pink top and you and you and you and her and that girl right there and you and you." Seriously. And he announced that usually he would ask the girls their names, but it didn't matter that night because "they're all Jenny tonight." Then the band, for their last song, their fucking closing song, they played Jenny by Tommy Two Tone. You know. 867-5309. They finished with that. And all these girls, they danced. And they sang when Alexakis pushed the mic in their face. Ugh.

-----

So I hate to write a bitchy rant like this one. I mean, they're a band, and they're out there trying to make it. And they have mastered their particular brand of riffy, infectious pop-rock. I like So Much for the Afterglow. I wanted them to be good, but they weren't. And they're veterans, so I'd expect much, much, much better.