Archive for April, 2011

My godlike techno powers make Iron Man look like Captain Underpants

Posted: April 16, 2011 in music, Record reviews
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When I started this blog, my goals were to learn a new technology, make tons of money, and meet lots of chicks. (Two of these goals were somewhat theoretical.)

Six months later, I have conquered search engine optimization. I have mastered categories, widgets, themes, and menus. I have memorized my password. And this week I finally figured out a) that there’s such a thing as a tag cloud, and b) how to create one. But as soon as my tag cloud took flight and I saw all of the bands within it, I realized that I listen to fewer than half of them.

I created Run-DMSteve to make fun of people. Have I taken this philosophy too far?

Then the phone rang. It was Accused of Lurking, who said yes you have. Why don’t you write about music you enjoy? That will confuse my fans, I said. Your fans will all fit in my car, Accused of Lurking replied. If someone has a question they can raise their hand. And then he sneered.

Actually, he didn’t say that or sneer, he’s far too well-mannered, but he made his point. I can’t go on trampling dreams and ruining lives. Society calls out for some positive reinforcement and today I am answering that call.

Rejoice, and throw up your rawkfist
Here in Portland, Oregon, we have bands that bring a restless intelligence to their music. The Dandy Warhols. Pink Martini. The Decemberists. Now I’d like to introduce a band that won’t let intelligence anywhere near their music. Lock up your beer coolers, because here comes Red Fang!

Where did they get that name, you ask? I don’t believe it’s a reference to Jack London’s novel White Fang, as I don’t believe the members of Red Fang know how to read. Phyllis Diller’s husband’s name was Fang but I doubt that’s it, either.

All that matters is the music, dude, and right now I adore Red Fang’s “Prehistoric Dog,” which rocks like a piledriver at your dance recital. It reminds me of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. In fact, “Prehistoric Dog” is a close genetic match to Deep Purple’s “Pictures of Home,” except that Deep Purple had an organ and better hair. And in both songs, the singers strive to warn us about animals:

“Pictures of Home”:
My body is shaking
Anticipating
The call of the black-footed crow

“Prehistoric Dog”:
Dogs that howl from outer space
Come to Earth to lay to waste
With fang and claw to shred your face
They will erase the human race
Time to kiss your ass goodbye

“Prehistoric Dog” also bears a strong sonic resemblance to Blondie’s “Call Me,” but there’s no thematic connection between the two. The Red Fang boys aren’t going to roll around in designer sheets unless those sheets are made of bacon.

It’s all seamlessly done and hopelessly addictive, and the video is the funniest thing since the Lord of the Rings blooper reel. I love the magic beer cans and so will you! I’d install some here at the Bureau if they didn’t clash with Special D’s ideas on design.

Before I give you the link, here’s a guide to the video for my more squeamish readers:

0:54     Guy buried in empty beer cans.
2:04     He’s buried again.
2:33     Moderate gross-out.
3:30     Guitar solo.
4:02     Cartoon violence starts here.
5:10     Cute little doggy!

Overall, there’s far less belching than you’d expect and a whole lot of coercive measures applied to the derrière. Female music fans who prefer the Three Tenors to the Three Stooges might want to sit this one out, but IMHO the director deserves a street named after him and the band deserves a beer. Turn it up!

Addendum to my Simple Minds musings
My post on ’80s icon “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is incomplete! I just discovered the lounge jazz version, by The Stella Starlight Trio. I haven’t a clue who these people are, but their relentless, Perry Como-style attack must be heard to be believed. And here’s some good news for those of you who never liked “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” in the first place: Stella has lopped a whole minute off Simple Minds’ best time.

And now it’s off to the garage, where I have a stack of flattened beer cans to weld together. Red Fang might need some positive reinforcement for their next adventure.

Electric kool-aid hippie test

Posted: April 10, 2011 in Miscellaneous, music
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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My hippie friends want to know why I don’t write about their music. The reason I don’t write about hippie music is quite simple really and that reason is that I have so far been unable to explain what it is.

To give you some idea of what I’m up against in this investigation, consider the following. Does hippie music include folksingers like John Prine and Bob Dylan? Does it include pop-country hybrids like The Byrds and Bob Dylan? Does it include wild-haired rockers like Mountain and Bob Dylan? Does it include people who were just passing through hippiedom, like The Beatles and Bob Dylan? Does it include psychedelic mind-trippers like The Electric Prunes and – no, I can’t make that one work.

Where do you file Quicksilver Messenger Service, except under Crud?

In Search of the Lost Chord
What then is this entry in the continuing annals of Run-DMSteve about? It’s certainly not about to make me a lot of money. What I intend to do is take you step-by-step through the rigorous scientific process by which I discovered that the long-sought definition of hippie music has once again dodged up a side street.

The first thing to do in any successful project is to sweep everything you don’t want to deal with under the rug. So I began by declaring that hippie music is music produced by bands that existed in the 1960s. This yielded a sold historic footing and liberated me from having to think about Phish or Blues Traveler.

To further winnow the field, I decided that hippie bands had to have staying power. If they’d played together for at least a decade or two, they were in. If their principal members had died in the early innings, they were out.

(If we posit the existence of a rock ’n’ roll heaven, I’m sure they enjoy musical performances by an adverbial intensifier of a band. But until we can download an alternate-universe app, we’ll never know what Janis, Jimi, Jim, and their peers might have accomplished. Though I can easily picture Jimi playing Wilson Pickett in The Commitments.)

I eliminated The Allman Brothers because Greg married Cher. Black Sabbath I eliminated just for being.

Finally, I considered the fans. A hippie band should come equipped with its own cult. Did our candidates have fans who routinely spent the summer following them around? Did these fans leave their jobs, if they had jobs, to go to 12 concerts in six cities in two weeks in one chartreuse microbus? Were they following their heroes around in 1970, 1990, and maybe even 2010?

There were only two bands I could think of that met these requirements: The Grateful Dead and The Moody Blues.

This is not my idea of a good time, but at least they’re better than Procul Harum.

Blues for Allah
To keep things simple, let’s refer to both bands in the past tense, even though 60% of the Moodies are still on the road and threatening to visit your hometown.

I confess that during an early adolescent period, when I was pretending to read Herman Hesse, The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed was the most profound musical document I knew. And at a later adolescent period, when I wore my hair down to my belt, The Dead’s American Beauty spoke of my yearning to get back to the land. An odd yearning, given that I’d grown up in suburbia.

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of The Dead or The Moody Blues, except to switch stations when the local Classic Rock outlet wheels them out of the morgue. But once I had them under the electron microscope, I discovered some unexpected relationships:

Fig. 1: Sugar magnolia vs. white satin

  1. The Moody Blues experimented with classical music.
  2. The Grateful Dead experimented with disco.
  3. The Grateful Dead rode a train.
  4. The Moody Blues rode a see-saw.
  5. The Grateful Dead had trouble capturing their concert performance in the studio.
  6. The Moody Blues had trouble capturing their studio performance in concert.
  7. Band members left The Moody Blues by resigning.
  8. Band members left The Grateful Dead by dying.
  9. The Grateful Dead were fronted by a charismatic man.
  10. The Moody Blues were five guys with feathered hair.
  11. The Grateful Dead released Aoxomoxoa in 1969. The Moody Blues have nothing to match this, but Pink Floyd does: Ummagumma, released the same year. Which makes me wonder if The Dead and Floyd were actually the same gang of idiots.

Bummer. The only thing this list demonstrates is the astounding diversity of the hippie biomass. I’ll keep working on this problem, even though the budget compromise that has kept the government open has shut off my funding. Someday, I vow, the world will know what exactly hippie music is. Until then, tenere a autotrasporto (keep on truckin’)!