Something 4 The End Of The Weekend

Tom Verlaine:  Cover:  "Travelling"  [mp3]

I took a trip to Mad City Music Exchange at around noon today.  As usual, I had a list in my fist, but in particular, I was hoping to score some used Ry Cooder CDs.  To that end, I only came away with one, but such is the life of the collector, such is the thrill and disappointment of the hunt.

What was thrilling today was running across Tom Verlaine's 1984 album, Cover, which would seem to be a fairly difficult album to find here in Madison.  I really like Verlaine, and sometimes even love him, and after acquiring this CD today, I only have one more of his solo albums to find to complete my Verlaine collection, and that's rather exciting.

And after my first listen to this record, I'm rather liking it.  It sounds a little bit dated as far as that 80's production sound goes, but the songs are as strong as one might expect from Verlaine, and I give him credit for utilizing a drum machine, a relatively new piece of gear in 1984.  Aside from a few hired session parts, this is truly a solo effort. 

And I could mention another artist from the 1980s that sounds similar to this, but I'll leave it to you to figure that out...

Hotcha!  Hank

ElektroSidewaysKardiogrammManeuver

Believe it or not, Kraftwerk recently finished a 4 city tour of the United States, and their second show was at the Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee. This is outstanding because the group has only toured the US once since 1981, and that was a decade ago when they played all the major cities you would expect. This year's mini-tour was ostensibly a warm-up for their headlining show at Coachella, and I just think it's tremendously cool that they played Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Denver. Lots of of fellow Germans up this way, you know, though I can't speak for Denver's ethnic make-up. I've been to Denver twice in my life, and all I remember were a ton of very tall and beautiful women.

What's important here, I think, is the simple fact that they played a show in Wisconsin. NOBODY cool ever plays this godforsaken state. This has been a major peeve of mine for at least a decade, and I only half-understand the phenomenon. Sure, the local scenes in every Wisco city suck huge balls, but that shouldn't keep nationally touring acts from stopping within our borders every once in awhile.

More suck - it must be noted that co-founder of the group, Florian Schneider, did not tour. Nobody knows why.

It also sucked that I didn't go to the show. It sold out quickly, and while I would consider it a feather in my musical fanboy cap to have seen at least one Kraftwerk show in my life, I didn't go out of my way to buy overpriced tickets from brokers or scalpers. As it turned out, I got word that scalpers were outside the venue selling tickets at face value, and that sucks hardest of all, in the end.

I found this out because one of my coworkers went to the show with his wife. He's alot like me in age and interests, and he thought the show was outstanding, and that ultimately, because of the kind of show they do, the absence of Florian didn't matter. True enough.

On the other hand, Eric from Mad City Music, also went to the show, which he mentioned when he saw me purchasing a used copy of the group's The Mix album. He said he was bored by about the ten minute mark, but then, Eric is an Indie Rock kinda guy whom I never would have guessed might go to a Kraftwerk show. "I never would have guessed you would have gone to a Kraftwerk show", I said to the scruffy youngish man in his plaid dress shirt and thick-rimmed glasses. Of course, I wear alot of plaid and thick -rimmed glasses as well, so...

This video is from their 2004 world tour, which did not include the US, and certainly not Wisconsin.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 64

So basically, Pitchfork (well, a writer named Marc Masters) gave Fuck Buttons' Street Horrrsing album an 8.6 out of 10, and he wrote about how these two guys from Britain began making harsh noise rock, but quickly started adding lovelier, more melodic elements to their original rough edges, and he mentions a "tribal Boredoms meets Animal Collective mode", and whattya know? I fucking love Boredoms to the tune of approximately $500 worth of imported CDs, vinyl, posters, and an Onani Bomb t-shirt, and Animal Collective are pretty cool too (and Pitchfork-approved) so I clicked on the DOWLOAD IT FROM EMUSIC link, and downloaded it immediately, without listening to any samples, because I've got an eMusic account.

Yeah, every month I get 65 downloads for $15, so it's easy to download a 6 song album like Street Horrrsing cuz the math works out to $1.38 for the entire album, and it always gets me wondering, "Who's making any decent money off of this kind of deal?" The two Brits who are Fuck Buttons can't be getting much cheese outta this, you know? ATP Records ain't getting rich off this kinda deal either. Emusic probably isn't making much from Fuck Buttons specifically, but they've got 3.5 million tracks available for download, and it's a quantity game, like so many cans of Coke and McDonalds' cheeseburgers...

Fuck Buttons: Street Horrrsing: "Bright Tomorrow" [mp3]

But this is how it's done these days, innit?

I've always been a firm believer in the idea that "information wants to be free", and I've copyright infringed my ass off through the years (mixed tapes, mixed CDs, unlicensed sampling, pirate radio, music blogging), but you better believe, as someone who once had dreams of rock'n'roll fame and riches, I do get a twinge of guilt every time I hit that DOWNLOAD ALL button at eMusic...Three years ago I would have made my weekly visit to B-Side and/or Madcity, and plunked down my $10 or $12 bucks for the actual Fuck Buttons CD, and would have felt alright knowing it probably bought those guys a pint or two, not $1.38 to be divided at least three ways...

(Of course, I still buy 2-3 new CDs a week to this day)

Yeah, fucking buttons, kinda fucking over bands like Fuck Buttons, I reckon...

On the other hand, Marc Masters mentions in his Pitchfork review that the band gave away the album for free on their website a year ago, so who am I to get slightly twisted over this? I may have dreams of fame and money, but I've always been a true believer anyways, making my own music and whatnot cuz I love doing it...I've got gigs worth of tunes nobody's ever heard...I've got plenty of comic strips I'll never upload...The EVERYTHINGATHON! podcast probably has about a dozen regular listeners, but I'll keep on doing the thing every month until it isn't any fun, and then I'll find something else to do...Maybe finish that fucking Warlord Jeff screenplay once and for all...The point is - these Fuck Button guys gave it away, so they're doing it all for right reasons, and yeah, it's pretty cool stuff...It does remind me of latter-day Boredoms, and Animal Collective, and maybe even Kraftwerk, or Can, and M83...I'm not sure if it's truly an 8.6 kinda album, but it's worth more than $1.38...

I guess it all come back to these ongoing lamentations of mine about some vague notion of a "post-album culture"...I download the album on the waaaay cheap (and yeah, I KNOW exactly how big a fucking hypocrite I am for taking advantage of this whole new business model, but I do limit myself to those 65 monthly downloads, really I do), and the album only exists on a computer screen, there's nothing to hold and study and get intimate with, and if I want the album cover art, I gotta google search, and if I'm lucky, I might actually find something 500x500 (but rarely any bigger), which to me is another sign that nobody truly cares about stuff like cover art and liner notes and lyrics, which you gotta piece together through any number of blogs and online interviews and whatnot...

The information IS free, I suppose, but it's a fucking bitch to get a firm grip on...Oh wait, it's all pixels on a screen...I can't get a grip at all...It's just a damn shame for a dinosaur like me, cuz it all feels so cheap and meaningless...Devalued...

I dunno...Maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong...Maybe this new business model, this new distribution scheme, is actually making the music purer...Stripped of everything else that sad aging Seymours like me fetishize about, the music is almost all that's left...And there ain't no Enids either...

Hotcha! Hank

Record Store Day!

This Saturday, April 19th, is RECORD STORE DAY!

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have no fetish for mp3's. That isn't to say I don't understand or appreciate the format, especially for someone like me who posts a new mp3 every weekend on this blog, and does a monthly podcast in the format - obviously mp3's are waaaay more logical than uncompressed wav files.

But I'm a record collector at heart (vinyl, tape, reels, CD, 8-track), and a big component of record collecting, for me anyways, is the obsessive-compulsive desire to acquire, and of course, to enjoy and analyze the artwork, packaging, liner notes, lyrics, etc. For me, part of the coolness of an album is the fact that it is a physical object that can be held, and seen, and smelled, and tasted - fetishized, as it were, and that's simply something that does not, and cannot, happen with a bunch of 1's and 0's. Mp3's are almost magical in this respect - they exist, and yet, they kinda don't. They're ghosts.

iTunes is now the single largest retailer of music in the known universe, and yr local record shop is quickly becoming obsolete, if yr favorite record shop even exists anymore.

Here in Madison, my two favorite stores are B-Side Records, and MadCity Music Exchange. Both are small independents, and both have struggled for the past few years to stay in business, and it sucks that it has turned out this way. You can't hang out at the cash register at iTunes and talk about that week's cool new releases, you know? Oh sure, you might find a forum or a blog to discuss such things, but it's not the same, and you and I both know it.

Anyways, this Saturday is Record Store Day, and I urge each and every one of you to visit yr local participating store, which can be found at the Record Store Day website. Not only will there be sales going on, but lots of free giveaways from cool bands that are only available in-store on this day, and depending upon the store, you might catch a cool local band playing a set or two, and yeah, a chance to hang out at the cash register and talk about Fuck Buttons with that cute cashier with the lawnmower tattoo on her shoulder.

Hotcha! Hank