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  Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy

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Entry 258: 1/7/2011: Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 25 and Video Review

50 Is Not The New Anything. 50 Is F--king 50.

Oldpunks 2011 Annual Report

Oldpunks.com, a division of oldpunksglobalcorp ©, is a non-profitable company founded in 1997 for the purpose of either proving something or to accomplish some other thing. We forget. Something to do with the punk rock and the new wave before the latter went south maybe. What it did do was waste perfectly good zeros and ones better suited for cat poetry or animated gifs of idiots falling down, and that tradition carries on today. In 2011 few people visited and fewer still stayed for longer than it took to realize there no free bisexual dwarf porn to be had. Only a few people bothered writing to tell me I sucked ruled should send them something for free. All according to plan. That plan - we lose a dollar on every sale but we make it up on volume. Thank you.

 What's today? Saturday? And the year? 2012!? It's next year already? Am I still in Cleveland? Oh, hell. I woke up in the morgue this afternoon when they started to slice me open for an autopsy. Again. Living the punk rock death march lifestyle like I do leads to these misunderstandings when I drink myself into suspended animation. I've made medical examiners crap themselves in six states, three provinces and one temporary dictatorship. I wear a medical alert punk pin on my leather jacket that reads "May Just Appear Dead", but do they? No. My natural body odor has been described as "decomposing". That's good, right? I admit I haven't aged well, but check out my friend Clony. Lookin' good Clony! See ya' at the next crustyfest.

Here's Pappy Punk's Geriatric Dance Frenzy Vol. 25
(download zip file at Rapidshare)

The Clean - "Beatnik"
The Sound - "Hothouse"
The Nails - "88 Lines About 44 Women"
The Suspects - "Catfish"
MDC - "John Wayne Was A Nazi"
Cletus - "Beer"
The Mighty Giordinis - "Rock N Roll Therapy"
Chuzpe - "Chinese Chive"
Julian Cope - "World Shut Your Mouth"
Teenage Frames - "We Hate It When We're Disrespected"
Tights - "Bad Hearts"
Tones On Tail - "Go!"
Copycat Massacre - "If Eye Was A Pirate"

Bad Manners– Don’t Knock The Bald Heads (dvd review): You could say I was disappointed by this live set – and you’d be correct! It looked like they were playing the Copacabana Room on a discount cruise ship making port of call for a Jimmy Buffet concert in the Bahamas. I mean that literally. Half the band’s wearing Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts! 2004’s Don’t Knock The Bald Heads will make you nostalgic for a time that may not have existed in a place you’ve probably never been. I was hoping for Dance Craze and instead got a local polka revival with ska instead of oompa. They open with Glenn Miller’s 1939 Big Band hit “In The Mood” and lucky #13 is a 1967 charter for Frankie Valli. And what, no “Lorraine” or “Inner London Violence”? The first scans of the audience, a sparse bunch, focused on some old squares who looked like they wandered in expecting a limbo dance contest. Oi….

The show is a slight diversion and neither here nor there. The thirty minute interview with Douglas Trendle (Buster Bloodvessel) is worth it as he’s a pleasant, soft-spoken, friendly man lacking negativity or an agenda. He once started a run for mayor of London based on a standard Labour Party platform but with extras like free tampons for all women and creating a series of one-way roads to help traffic flow. The thirty McDonalds hamburgers in one day wager is another good story.

For-like-ever I thought Buster also went by the name Fatty Lipbuster, but it seems I made that one up.

Here’s the set list: 1. In The Mood 2. Echo 4 + 2 3. This Is Ska 4. My Girl Lollipop 5. Fatty Fatty 6. Black Night 7. Feel Like Jumping 8. Walking In The Sunshine 9. Skaville U.K. 10. King Ska-Fa 11. Pipeline 12. Red River Ska 13. Too Good To Be True (Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You) 14. Just A Feeling 15. You Fat Bastard 16. Skinhead Girl 17. El Pussycat 18. Ne-Ne Na-Na Na-Na Nu-Nu 19. Don’t You Be Angry 20. Woolly Bully 21. Special Brew 22. Don’t Knock The Baldheads 23. England Football Medley: - Tom Hark - March Of The Mods - The Great Escape - Come On Eileen 24. Lip Up Fatty 25. Can Can.

Entry 257: 12/31/2011: Article & CD Reviews

Hipsters - Worthy Of Both Avoidance And Study

If only my hoodie were a time hoodie I'd go back to the early 90s and take better notes on my first experience with hipsters. I've luckily not encountered them again up close until recently. I don't know where they come from, what they want, or if they can be taken seriously beyond their pulsating self-absorption. I once flattered myself that I could follow the different lines of alt.popular and underground cultures to their Bohemian sources and have it all make sense to me, even if was senseless to me. Hipsters are a strange cult and I can only make guesses.

What's brought this on was my initial attempt to review the recordings of Electrelane, a UK indie band I like well enough to listen to and review their cds. They remind me of a few bands I know but the internet has them as a part of the wider hipster universe, something I know little beyond what I read skim through and laugh out loud at in public. The Wikipedia article seems authoritative but it doesn't bottom-line it for me in a way I know it wasn't written by hardcore hipsters glorifying themselves. The Urban Dictionary sports over 300 stabs at defining it, so Vague City here we come.

As I see it hipsters are obnoxious, spoiled poseurs. Poseurs know, fear or are sadly oblivious to the fact they're not who they want to be, and they usually wind up being made fun of but are the relatively harmless folk who keep scenes afloat with their money and participation. Hipsters harbor no fears, only ego and id. Hipsters come from Generation Y, where everybody wins a trophy and life is lived in a protective bubble with attention-sapping technology and its attendant sensory and information overload. I'm sure everything they touch they soon destroy. Hipsters both reject and embrace everything around them, and since you can't have it both ways it fails early and often. The greatest lie hipsters tell themselves is that they cannot be fooled, a larf since with a few variations they all look alike, which means they take their cues from the same mindsets and can then be lead by their nose rings if the pied pipers of commerce and ideas know their tunes.

I notice hipsters don't look like they commit exercise of any kind, giving them an asexual body type made ironic by the growth of prodigious lumberjack facial hair and the wearing of trucker hats. Then there's emo hipsters, who are mainly just effeminate. I've never spoken to a hipster or have heard hipsters interact. It must be awesome what they say, each phrase measured, quotable, and worthy of at least a tweet.

The first time I encountered hipsters was in Arlington, VA in the early 90s, at a store called Go! Records, whose only internet memory is a Youtube video for Unrest performing there. For all I know it was owned by Unrest and was primarily stocked with TeenBeat Records (more here). I walked in thinking it was a punk store but young hipsters glided around in expensive alt.clothing while tuneless, precious indie-pop wafted out of speakers. The few record racks were filled with this new kind of music. How did something like this happen under my nose, thought I in my time hoodie? Who are these people and why do I get a strong trust-fund/ Mayflower lineage/ private school/ good grades vibe from them? In Falls Church there was the Art Monk Construction/Lumberjack Distribution store, a room in a warehouse really, which carried lines of late-first wave emo bands with apparently no affiliation with the dominant DC scene. That I understood, and some of their things I actually liked. No hipsters there. They seemed genuinely independent.

Electrelane - Rock It To The Moon, The Power Out, Axes, No Shouts No Calls (cd reviews):

Electrelane: "Le Song" (download now)
Electrelane: "On Parade" (download now)
Electrelane: "Gone Darker" (download now)
Electrelane: "The Greater Times" (download now)

I don't claim to be an expert on anything, and that's backed by what everyone yells at me on an annoyingly constant basis. I thought I could write something fairly straightforward about the UK's Electrelane but my initial research is throwing crap at me I both don't know and generally don't care about. This description of Post-Rock kept my attention for eight seconds (cowboy up!) but I did benefit from learning what Motorik is.

I put Electrelane in the indie post-punk category with a broad appeal to fans of The Arcade Fire and the harder dream pop you'll hear in bands like For Against. Their only fault for me is periodic delving into the overindulgence of self-indulgence, which means they're wasting my time by noodling around for some kind of art's sake that translates into the meaningless, the slow, or the too long. As you all know (just kidding myself) I only listen to music when lifting or running. I know a band's over-self-indulgent when they go off on a tangent for so long I drift off and forget there's music coming out of my headphones. Dare I call this pretentiousness on the part of Electrelane? I don't find it precious or cute, which would lead to a yes, and post-rock and I generally live equal yet separate lives, so I'll just vote no on the Electrelane songs that get lost in their own reflections. Thinning the herd I'm left with a nice collection of well-arranged and orchestrated music.

The band formed in 1998 but didn't release their debut until 2001. Rock It To The Moon is almost completely instrumental except for some mumbled words in "Spartakiade", occasional harmonizing, and an easter egg of a vocal ditty hidden at the end of the last track. Is this self-indulgent? A little if not a lot. The template is generally a combination of ambient and loud/fast sections, arranged differently in each song. Some keep my interest long enough to not want to edit them down sans noodling while others don't. "Film Music", "Le Song", and "Spartakiade" are the best tracks, the last one inspired by Sleater-Kinney. "Long Dark" borrows the "Peter Gunn Theme" and the Velvet Underground can also be heard as a direct inspiration.

2004's The Power Out found the band signed to a larger label, Beggar's Banquet. Only four of the eleven tracks are instrumental, and three are relegated to the end. The record has a live-in-the-studio feel, making it more poppy and immediate. Post-punk is the main theme and it's a generally fine listen all the way through with the exception of "The Valleys" with its retro cheesy 60's lounge act feel, which sounds like from another session rejected for good reason. "Gone Under Sea", "On Parade" and the instrumental "Only One Thing Is Needed" stand out.

The next year's release Axes takes a step back to Rock It To The Moon with a predominance of instrumentals and the occasional dip into self-indulgence that kills whatever it is it's planted in. "Eight Steps", "Business Or Otherwise" and "I Keep Losing Heart" suffer thusly. "The Partisan" wins from the get-go with no ambient intro and hard-driving punk energy. The instrumental "Gone Darker" is an impressive piece of art rock based in the approaching sounds of a train. Half this record is a keeper.

2007's No Shouts No Calls is heavily influenced by a success template laid out by The Arcade Fire, and it follows it brilliantly. Electrelane don't necessarily jump the bandwagon - they most likely saw how they can do what they did before The Arcade Fire were even formed in a way that proves they can write impressive, melodic music while not selling out. There's no weak track and they sound larger than a four-piece while also retaining the immediacy of a standard rock band. "The Greater Times" for the win and "To The East" reminds me that if you like this record you'll also go for Pony Up!, whose "The Truth About Cats And Dogs (Is That They Die)" should have won a Nobel Prize.

Yup, there's a band called Electrelane and they have some records out. Whatever it is they do they do well, even if I'm not into it. I'm going to create a personal greatest hits mix from them and consider them the greatest band to come out of Brighton since Dr. Smutglove.

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