Hump Day Vinyl: Alice Cooper

This is me back in form following a week that included a 12 hour workday, so I completely understand the significance of my own hump day institution. I would love to add some more local music commentary, maybe even garner an extra reader or two, but this is about the only silly writing habit for which I have the time now. Still, this week is a fun one.

I first heard "Clones (We're All)" on the Smashing Pumpkins box set The Aeroplane Flies High. Its anthemic, boot-stopping gait made the song instantly appealing. I knew it was a cover and its feel had so much in common with the glitter of someone like Slade or T-Rex that I never would have guessed it to be first committed to tape by someone like Alice Cooper. That's right, Alice Cooper had a new wave phase and it was called Flush the Fashion, though this track was written by someone other than Alice. My friend Mr. Perkins did a little research on the songwriter and even dug up two additional covers for me, by Bile and Penal Colony. The one below is the Alice Cooper original. Enjoy.

Alice Cooper - Clones (We're All)

Hump Day Vinyl: Dion

Finally, I'm uploading a hump day vinyl on the appropriate day. This week's edition comes from the same spiral-patterned box of 45s given to me by a friend. Dion was one of my childhood favorites. Before I was buying my own tapes and CDs, I mostly listened to my Mom's copy of "Oldies but Goodies." I distinctly remember a lip-synched performance of "Runaround Sue" in our living room with my mom as audience. The version of Dion on this Jimi Hendrix cover is much more subdued than his early hits: a lackadaisical half flower child, half crooner backed by a flute riff. Surprisingly, Dion's cover feels much more like an acid trip than Hendrix's original. Enjoy, you're work week is 3/5ths over and we only have three more months of summer in Dallas.

Dion - Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix cover)

Man Factory: Prepare to Street Fight!

I made the most wonderful discovery last weekend at the Cavern: Man Factory. The Arlington quintet has composed a six-song rock opera about Street Fighter II. This is an apt addition to the late-Gen-X -and-slightly-after encyclopedia: an ad hoc generation whose most telling artifacts are popularly consumed media. Given that the songs themselves are well-written, with a perfect mix of levity and sincerity, I highly recommend you get yourself a copy, particularly since you can download the six tracks free here.

p.s. Red Monroe capped off their slot with a relaxed, country-fied take on the long forgotten "She Waits on a Tidal Wave" that was...just...perfect.

Wednesday (ish) Vinyl

This is the first attempt at Wednesday vinyl, made on a Thursday. Initially, I wanted this to be a blog about DFW music. In particular, I wanted it to be about my subjective experience of that music. I still do, but I think that category can be expanded beyond just the local gigs I happen to catch. In addition to scouring Deep Ellum, lower Greenville, and Denton for the best local sound bytes, I'm also very often pent up in my too trendy loft, sitting cross-legged in front of my new turntable, digesting bits of my own vinyl collection I still have never heard.

I started buying vinyl in the last five years. The majority of my 12" collection comes from lazy afternoons at Half Price Books and is not very large. I may have 30 full albums in total. But I also came into owning several dozen 45s very quickly. The biggest portion of that cache I got from a friend named Gary who gave them to me in a vintage 45 carrying case. The rest I found in a secondhand shop in Kanab, UT on a trip to the Grand Canyon. It was like the depleted copper-rich veins of Arizona metamorphosed into vinyl deposits to the north. I dug through it like a greedy prospector: Tears for Fears, The Go-Gos, Falco, R.E.M., most of them scratched to hell, but quite a few were salvageable. Whoever dropped all that stuff off was the coolest girl in her high school.

Still, the best stuff comes from that vintage mystery box, because I have no idea what's in it. I pulled this little number out just a few days ago and rocked out in my boxers. The real tragic thing about Elton John is that people my age know him as the paunchy sell-out who gave us the Lion King soundtrack. That's an object lesson for any current pop singer: don't sell your rock n' rollin' soul to Disney. Phil Collins did it to, though the prior existence of his soul is debatable. But anybody under the age of 45 is liable to forget that Elton John was capable of smacking you in the face with stuff like "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting." Elton does all the stuff here that the Arctic Monkeys, et al wish they could do. It's riff, Elton's growl, the hyperactive hi-hatting, everything about it is iconic rock and roll. Use the link below to download the track, strip to your undies, punch a Chelsea fan in the face, and enjoy "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting." The crackle and pop is mine, the rest is Elton's.

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

Another Mulligan for the Despot

The absence was shorter this time around. I'm attempting to teach myself that this is a blog and that sprawling essays need not be the order of every day. Today was supposed to be the day that I began something new. My best intentions were to post a ripped vinyl track to reward all you laborers who successfully scaled the week's hump. Alas, the necessary technical measures have not yet been taken. But look for this early next morning, or perhaps the next week.


And only one addendum for now. It turns out my mother's childhood was not nearly as music-deprived as I supposed. The truth turned out to be much more interesting. First, my mom availed herself of the latest pop hits whenever she could: at the houses of friends or in the back seat of a boyfriend's car. Yes, I was unaware that my mom had such boyfriends. The music wasn't explicitly prohibited by her folks either, though certainly not encouraged. Whatever their stance, my mom found it necessary to listen to the hot 100 through her pillow, the portable radio murmuring beneath it, just loud enough to hear in the dark. Unfortunately, my mom left the radio on one day and went to school. 1960s electronics being what they were, the insides melted from the lack of ventilation beneath the pillow and my mother's late-night music appreciation sessions were canceled thereafter.

A Noise, A Scandal

A brief mea culpa: I have not written a word here in over two months. Despite my readership of one, that contradicts my previous commitment of aggressively covering the DFW music scene. It also undermines the fact that I have absorbed ample amounts of great music in that span, and most of it locally. All that is to explain why today I will be elaborating on a show I saw almost a month ago and why, as I try to ramp up to full speed over the next couple of weeks, this blog will sound more like reminiscing and less like relevant coverage. But now...

Shiny Around the Edges

My mom and I have an on-going argument about accessibility that we revisit at least twice a year. My mom has great taste in music. She grew up musically sheltered and so was only allowed to listen to rigid white-bred gospel or whatever mono-chromatically robed family band happened to visit their church. She was well into adulthood before she discovered the music that she had every right to in her teenage years. And when I was young, she weened me on this music. She was born in '49, so this meant Peter & Gordon, Herb Alpert, Frankie Avalon, Buddy Holly, The Righteous Brothers. It was all "safe" stuff, but it was all good. That said, my mom also enjoys Alan Jackson and really loves her some Toby Keith.

The argument we have starts with my diatribe on pop country, but ends up being a philosophical consideration on the merits of forcing yourself beyond your musical comfort zone. What's so wrong with "I wanna talk about meee-iii-eee" if that's what you enjoy? What is the use of making yourself move beyond what you already know you like? My mom is firmly in the "if it ain't broke" camp. And while that loyalty leads to an appreciation of the timeless - Dion, Marty Robbins, Bobby Darin - I think it also leads to atrophying the ability to discover.

This really is coming back around to Shiny Around the Edges, pictured above. My mom would hate Shiny Around the Edges. That's not a revelation. Most people's mothers would hate Shiny Around the Edges. But my mom would hate them for the same reason I saw a few people screw up their faces at the show they played almost two months ago at Rubber Gloves in Denton.

Shiny Around the Edges aims to subvert everything you know and enjoy about music. Sometims their sound is like an ominous whisper from that Poltergeist kid. The rest of the time, their sound is like a pillow-case full of bricks to the jaw. And not in any kind of cliche', metal-head way. They don't use bombast to shock as much as they use minimalism. They use single floor toms instead of a whole drum set. They shout at one pitch instead of sing a melody. They don't play their guitars at AC/DC volume levels, but with the bare minimum of distortion, abusing them with what looked like screwdrivers. I was standing. All the simplicity makes for an impression that's very personal. It's like being in the same room with the apocalypse.

The people who came to the show with me were not enjoying the ruckus that is Shiny Around the Edges. And I really don't judge or blame them. There's no really good or obvious reason to like Shiny Around the Edges. I'll admit to being similarly perplexed when I saw them weeks before at Sons of Hermann. But this time I felt like I was starting to understand, in my own way at least.

Shiny Around the Edges' music is scandalous. It's affront to things we think we know. And I think it's important to have things upset our sensibilities. It reminded me a little of Jesus, in the way that it illustrates scandal. We want a messiah, but not one who born in straw... Ok, but don't let him be from somewhere as lame as Nazareth... Fine, but let him be a priest or politician, not a carpenter... So be it, but let him lead a glorious revolution, not sit around and talk with prostitutes or lepers... A cross, a violent and bloody, ignominious death? Are you fucking kidding me? This? No matter what you perceive as "this," Shiny Around the Edges seem to shout from stage, "Yes, this."

Scandals are good for your health, for exercising those intellectual muscles you didn't think you had. Shiny Around the Edges gives you a puzzle and dares you to solve it. There will always be a place for head-nodding music, but listeners, and especially DFW listeners, would do well to also make a place for Shiny Around the Edges, a band that's shocking, disturbing, and very likely has something important to say.

Interview: Record Hop

Denton’s Record Hop is one of the most ingenuous bands I have met, a people’s band in the most unobtrusive way. They appeared most in their element when I saw them playing at Space Studio, where there is no stage. Their vehemence and volume seem to hearken back to a day when bands were quite literally at audience level, an architectural declaration meant to convey honesty and candidness. And like most unspoiled bands of tremendous ability, they are as courteous as they are loud. This humility is no doubt influenced by six years of laboring almost strictly in the Denton and DFW area, cultivating their ferocious post-punk sound. Guitarist Scott Porter spent some of that time managing a venue – the now closed Secret Headquarters – and the Denton-based record label TXMF Records. The rest of the band, too, exerted energy in other Denton bands and local musical ventures. It is this body of evidence that attests to Record Hop’s affection for Denton and music for music’s sake.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with the band at a coffee house in Deep Ellum with all four in attendance: Scott Porter (guitar), Tony Wann (drums), Ashley Cromeens (vocals/guitar), and Cory Ward (bass). The Band talked a lot about Denton’s music scene and Porter of his desire to move beyond presiding over it. Record Hop also discussed their ambitious 2008 agenda. Having appeared twice in unofficial SXSW showcases, Record Hop is part of the official 2008 festival itinerary. This appearance coincides very nearly with the projected release of their as-yet untitled second album, produced by alternative rock godfather Steve Albini. All these things point to a favorable year for Record Hop where the band will likely reach ears beyond Texas. In the immediate future, Record Hop will be playing on Feb. 21 with Dallas’ Red Monroe at Lola’s before playing a Friday slot at the Amsterdam Bar in Exposition Park’s, three-day Melodica Festival running Feb. 22 thru 24.

DES: Are you all originally from the DFW area?

Scott: Fort Worth

Cory: I’m from Fort Worth, but I’ve been in Denton since ’95, so I’m pretty much from Denton

Ashley: I’m from Dallas, but I’ve lived in Denton for 10 years.

Tony: I’m from Bedford and Fort Worth

DES: and you (Scott) moved to Denton in…

Scott: in ’99.

Tony: Are we just bypassing all the God-worshipping stuff?

Scott: Oh yeah. Tony and I met fifteen years ago in Christian rock bands in the suburbs of Fort Worth.

Tony: Yeah. Represent.

Scott: This was in the early ‘90s. And then that all stopped.

DES: And when did that all stop?

Scott: Oh, mid ‘90s. We had a momentary lapse of reason. We were just out of high school and shit and, you know, kinda still going by the how you were raised kind of thinkin’.

Tony: That Baptist bullshit.

DES: But at this point, you’ve all been part of Denton for quite a few years.

Scott: Yeah, everybody except [Tony], he still lives here in Dallas. But, yeah, I’ve been there since ’99 and I was the last one to get there out of [Ashley, Cory, and myself].

DES: It struck me that you’re very tied to Denton and its music scene and kind of dedicated to it, having had the venue there and the record label.

Scott: That’s lapsing on my part, just because it’s gotten to the point now, where I’ve been so involved, that it’s too much now. It’s just too much bullshit.

DES: What do you mean by “bullshit?

Scott: Too much bullshit means it’s such a small town that, if you end up getting involved in some way with everybody, then suddenly everybody’s involved with you. Thursday night going down to get a beer with friends turns into talking about: “Yeah, I know, we could…save…Denton!” or some shit. I’m not trying to sound Cynical about it. It’s just that I’m at a point now where I’ve gotten old enough and [Record Hop] is doing well enough and we (Scott and Ashley) are getting married and I’ve got a good job. Now it’s more like, I’m going to focus on just the Scott thing instead of “God, we have to book a giant festival this year. Why? Because there are seventy bands here, so we have to.” It was kick-ass; it was a lot of fun. I made a lot of good friends. I’m just kind of ready for the vacation. We’re still booking shows for everybody and the record label is still doing what it’s doing on its own. And we love the fucking town, but I’m just sort of done with the boosting for a while.

DES: How do you feel about the health of the Denton scene?

Scott: It’s good. Everybody’s real anxious. In any church, school, group of people anywhere, there’s always a little snippiness bubbling somewhere, but for the most part everybody’s so used to everybody being in bands that it becomes regular life. So it’s healthy, the scene’s healthy just because everybody’s trying to play. I mean, there’ll be six shows tonight and they’re all within a couple of blocks of each other.

DES: It seemed to me you have a lot of Fugazi similarities, even apart from the music, having been involved a local venue and record label.

Scott: I wish we could have had all these things ten years ago. I just wish we’d done all this when we were twenty or twenty-one. Like those guys in Douche and at Paper Stain [Records]. They’re real super-motivated and they’re all just over twenty one, so they’re just starting to do basically the young-guy equivalent of what we’re doing and they seem a little more focused and they have a lot more energy. And they’re putting out quality shit. Shiny Around the Edges is associated with it and Douche, Drink to Victory, Notes from Underground… (Responding to his laughing band mates) They’re called Douche, I don’t know what you want me to do about it.

As far as the Fugazi thing, I think that comes from being raised up on that after finding good music in the early ‘90s. There’s definitely an influence, but I’m still coming from the era where the biggest underground band in the world was Nirvana and ended up being the biggest band on the planet. So you still feel like a cool band can go all the way. But as you get older, you think, “Oh, wait. Nobody goes all the way anymore.” But that’s what’s good about the guys at Paper Stain. Being young, they never came up in an era where there’s still that hangover of thinking something huge could happen here. With some of the other drummers we had, there was always that thirty-year-old hangover of, like, “Man, we’ve got to mail this CD to this big fucking record label. I know a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy.” It’s like you’re speaking a different language.

DES: And the internet has changed a lot of that.

Scott: Exactly. You don’t have to be from anywhere anymore. That was the thing about the Denton-centric thing. You can be from the middle of nowhere and still get as big as anybody.

DES: I noticed you guys played well over 200 shows in your five and half years together. Do feel like you’ve been able to develop and polish your live show pretty well?

Ashley: Yeah. It’s taken a while. Things just get easier as you do it.

Scott: When we first started off, we were playing three or four gigs a week. Thursday night in Dallas, Friday night in Denton, and Saturday night on the other side of Denton, just because it’s fun to play. You don’t make any money off of it and you’re lucky to get the free beer. There’s just nothing more fun to do than just be loud.

DES: Do you feel like your live show is your strong suit, having played all these shows and developed your live performance, but having only released one record [Pareidolia]?

Scott: When we made the new record in June, that’s one of the reasons we made the decisions about where we did it and who we did it with. That first album we made is a good record, but it sort of doesn’t sound like us. We are a live band and it’s more of a loud, raw kind of thing. That didn’t translate on the first record, but I think this new one that’s coming out in March pretty much nails the live sound.

Tony: On this new album, we were trying to not create that artificial separation, so everything was tracked live. We were playing live and we just found the person we found that we wanted to record.

DES: In two days, I understand.

Tony: Yes.

Scott: Two solid days of recording and one day of mixing.

DES: That’s break-neck.

Scott: We were ready for it, because we practiced more in the two or three months preceding the recording than we had practiced in the past two years. Seriously. We’d go a month without practicing and knew we could nail the set down just being a decent band. When Tony joined up, that’s why we were able to do it in two days. We knew that shit forwards and backwards.

DES: Are any of the tracks on the new record a first take?

Scott: I think “American Weed” is. I imagine several of them.

DES: No producer probably lets you get away with just one take.

Scott: No, there are a couple where we only did one. And I don’t think any of them are more than three or four [takes]. Sometimes there would be a couple of false starts, but it was pretty clear when you’d get done, you’d just know. I think if we hadn’t taken the time to go upstairs and listen to them after every take, it would have taken us one day.

Tony: You were talking about no producer letting you get away with that. That was one of the things that Steve [Albini] was really good about. He doesn’t sweat the details. If you fuck up a little thing here and there, he’ll point it out, but he doesn’t care if you fix it or not. It was like he could assess how good we were and what we were capable of. He knew if we got a take and we weren’t capable of doing any better than that, he’d pretty clearly say, “That sounds good. Let’s stick with that.”

DES: Speaking of the record, John Congleton [of the Paper Chase] was involved with the post-production stuff, how did that come around?

Tony: We had two days to record and one to mix. As it turned out, that third mix day went too fast and nobody had the right ears at the time. Steve did everything he could and worked as fast as he could and we still ended up with two songs that weren’t mixed. So we knew were going to have to get some mixing done when we got back to Dallas. I pretty quickly called up John and he said he’d love to get in on it. At the same time, J.C. [Justin Collins] decided he wanted a second crack at it. So they concurrently worked on the mixes. Then it was great, because we had two different options.

Scott: Yeah, they approached it differently.

Tony: Which is really good, because that’s what we wanted, to hear the mixes of two people with really good ears, and we can just choose what sound we wanted to lean towards. So then we had to decide and that was a drag, but in the end, I think J.C. [Justin Collins] knew the sound of the band better.

Scott: It was his idea for us to even go to Chicago.

Tony: And we ended up favoring his mixes because they were a little more guitar heavy whereas Congleton has this insanely awesome drum and bass thing going. To me, that’s what sounds so great about his mixes is that the drums sound like cannons. So we ended up using one of John’s mixes on the album and another little piece, the end of another song. So we actually have three mixes of the album: the Albini mix, the Congleton mix, and the JC mix.

DES: Any hope of a triple release?

Scott: Well, one thing we talked about…the Paper Stain guys have a cassette release line, so when we start selling the record, as a little keepsake for the record release shows, we’re going to probably put some of the Albini mixes on cassette tape for the first fifty people or something.

DES: You’ve got SXSW coming up and you’ve played showcases in ’05 and ’06 – didn’t make ’07 – but this time you’re actually playing the festival?

Scott: Yeah, we’re actually in the conference this time. We just found out we’re playing Saturday at a place called Buffalo Billiards. I just want to find out who we’re playing with. I’m pretty sure we’re not playing with Dolly Parton.