Invader

Who Knew? Good Music on Myspace

As anyone who uses Myspace can tell you, entering pretty much anything into the "Interests: Music" section of your profile will subject you to a steady barrage of friend requests from bands (that use the site's search capabilities to seek out, as potential "friends," users who profess an interest in ostensibly similar bands).   Not surprisingly, nearly all of these bands are absolutely terrible.  But, every once in a while, one will come along that will make you believe that MySpace has a function other than giving you an excuse to take pictures of yourself, and keeping you posted as to how your friends scored on the "what Kitchen Appliance are you?"  survey.  And, what a pleasant change of pace it is, too, to have good music come find you, instead of vice versa.

So, here are the most intriguing bands I've "befriended" in the past six months or so:

Placebot:  It boggles my mind that this guy isn't already famous.  But, then again, when you're making the type of music he does - Kompakt-esque ambient pop - and you're based out of Baton Rouge, Louisana...  I mean, honestly, I've often wondered how you attract the attention of a label, when you're this type of act, given that you can't really go on tour, and what you're doing isn't exactly next-big-thing-ish.  Perhaps I'll learn one day, once this guy is signed to Warp.

                                                                                             

Mike Tamburo:  It's sort of hard to pin this guy down, other than to say he clearly appreciates all that   drones.  The live recording he has on his profile is reminiscent of the Appalachian-tinged ragas of Pelt / Jack Rose.  But the other, (presumably) studio recordings are much more relaxed, and expansive, and wouldn't be out of place on the Kranky label.

I Have Eaten The City: I know that to anyone under, say, forty, "jazz" is a four-letter word - and particularly in reference to contemporary jazz, which is generally associated with elevators and dentist's offices.  But, in fact, the genre isn't completely given over to Kenny G and his ilk.  For instance, take I Have Eaten The City, who like their contemporaries the Necks, seem to have noticed that on any number of classic jazz records, there are a few seconds at the very beginning - in which you briefly hear the band tuning, running through scales, and generally making a wonderfully cacophonous mess (presumably tacked on to replicate the live experience of a band performing) - that are in fact the best part of the entire album.  And who have managed to take that fleeting, terrifically chaotic moment, and stretch it into entire songs.

zelienople: Just when I thought Chicago's music scene had died along with post-rock, up pops zelienople (who have actually been around for several years, on several respected below-the-radar labels, including 267 Lattajjaa and PseudoArcana).  The songs on their profile include two doses of  ambient, melancholy drone ("You Got Shot Down" and "Ship That Goes Down"... "down" being the optimal word in both these titles), and a song ("Softkiller") that - and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible - resembles a chilled-out Kasabian.

The Eavesdroppers:  I get the sense these guys haven't been around for very long, but I like the direction in which they're headed, which is reminiscent of the No-Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice, and the rest of "New Weird America."

Back in Black

Back in black, I hit the sack
I been too long, I'm glad to be back
Yes I'm, let loose from the noose
That's kept me hanging about
I keep looking at the sky cause it's gettin' me high
Forget the hearse cause I'll never die
I got nine lives, cat's eyes
Using every one of them and runnin' wild

'Cause I'm back
Yes, I'm back, well I'm back
Yes, I'm back
Well, I'm back back
Well, I'm back in black
Yes, I'm back in black

AC/DC - Back in Black

Yes, the site is back, and in black, as it were.   I'm back from the dead, after 14 months.  I'd love to say that I was off writing a book, or curing some disease, or teaching children how to read in some primitive corner of the world, like Equatorial Africa, or Bangladesh, or the Florida Panhandle.  But, really, I was just bored with the notion of blogging.  However, eventually, I found myself yelling at the television, or the radio, or the newspaper, or the internet, or passing cars, or the sky, or vending machines, or... well, you get the idea... just a little too often, and decided I needed to get this site up and running again, if only to keep the seething ball of rage inside me from growing to the point where it's able to begin subsuming entire organ systems.

As for the nature of the site... I'll probably still write about politics, but there'll be much more of an emphasis on music, including, hopefully, some MP3s.  I have too short an attention span to write exclusively about one topic, so I'm hoping that diversifying the range of subjects encompassed by this blog will keep me from posting once every three weeks, as was the case in the months before my hiatus.

So, welcome back, to my few faithful readers, and welcome aboard to any new suckers visitors.   I promise I won't let you down again... as much.

P.S.  "Back in Black" has to be one of the weirdest songs in the history of rock, lyrically speaking, seeing as it's Brian Johnson essentially claiming that he's a reincarnated Bon Scott (for those of you unfamiliar with AC/DC, Johnson replaced Scott, the group's longtime singer, after he drank himself to death in early 1980 (not really that bad a time to off yourself, in retrospect, seeing that as in doing so, you would avoid experiencing the cultural abyss that was the 80s) ).  Not that I'm knocking this move - rock is all about bold statements, and there's nothing quite so ballsy as claiming that you are not merely the replacement - but in fact the resurrection - of the guy whose job you took.  But, could you imagine, say, if Nirvana, after Kurt Cobain killed himself, went out and found someone who resembled, in voice and in appearance, their former singer (like that one kid from Silverchair, or that other kid from the Vines - funny how the two biggest bands to come out of Australia in the past ten years were both Monkees-esque Nirvana knock-offs) and continued on, while claiming their new frontman was the rebirth of their former one?  It's not a totally apt analogy, since Scott wasn't the band's main songwriter, but, still.

But, don't get me wrong.  I'm not knocking AC/DC.  In fact, I'd say they're one of the only still-active "classic" rock bands that I would actually go see in concert.  Normally, I try to avoid seeing acts far past their prime, for the same reason I don't believe in open-casket funerals: I'd like my final glimpse of someone, or some band, to be of them still full of life.  (And, sorry, I don't care how much the critics say that Mick and Keith have still got it, I'd prefer if my memory of the Rolling Stones performing live is at Altamont in 1970, or Madison Square Garden in 1971 (albeit on video, in Gimme Shelter, and Get Your Ya-Yas Out, respectively - I was around four when they released their last worthwhile record), not at Key Arena in 2005.  I refuse to allow my memory of the swaggering, debauched, Glimmer Twins of the early 70s to be replaced by the ambling, dessicated Geritol Twins of the early 2000s).  But AC/DC have this odd, timeless quality about them, having been, in essence, writing the same song over and over since their mid-seventies inception.  Barring differences in fidelity (and the aforementioned change of singer), it's hard to differentiate a song off of Stiff Upper Lip (their most recent release) from one off of TNT (one of their first).  You'd think that perhaps they'd have worked in drum-machines and synths in the 80s, or given the whole "alternative" thing a go in the 90s, but no.  And who can really blame them, given such a signature sound.  Consider that plenty of bands rip off the Beatles, or the Stones, without a complaint from fans or reviewers, but if a band dares to imitate Angus Young's unmistakable syncopated guitar leads, they're written off instantly as an AC/DC knockoff (ahem, Jet, ahem).   They've got a de facto patent on their songwriting, so why should they give it up?

P.P.S.  If you were wondering, the above are AC/DC Back in Black lounge pants (because nothing says laying on your couch eating Cheetos and watching Must-See Thursday quite like "You Shook Me All Night Long," say) available at WebUndies.com