Illicit Noise

A terrible thing

2006-06-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

Asia Carrera was an actress in adult films. Some of you may know, and like, her work. Many years ago, she started her own web site, writing the HTML code herself, and setting up an on-line store years before that was common. One of the features on her site was a bulletin that she updated every week or so, sharing her experiences in the adult film world and her love of computers and video games. It was a blog long before that neologism took hold.

About 2 1/2 years ago, she met, fell in love with, and married fitness guru Don Lemmon. She retired from the adult film business. They moved to Hawaii, had their first child about a year ago, and moved to Utah. She's 8 months pregnant with their second. She's shared every step along the way, including her joy in finding a man she truly loved and having a daughter with him. As she slipped out of the public eye and into her private life, she updated her bulletin less frequently, so I checked it less frequently - maybe once every couple weeks. By some chance, I happened to check it Sunday morning.

Don was killed Sunday returning from a business trip in Las Vegas, leaving Asia an utterly distraught unemployed, pregnant mother of a toddler. My wife & I met her once, about 4 years ago, for about 3 minutes, so I have no idea whether she is as friendly as she seems on her web site, but this news devastated both of us. Neither of us have had a close experience with sudden tragedy, and this seemed especially unfair - a brutally short end to what had been a happy story.

I'm not sure how we connect with people we've never met. Asia, Ces & Carol from Drink At Work, Alice of Finslippy - the more of their personal lives they share, the more I'm invested in them, and the tighter the admittedly one-sided connection to them. What happens when those lives go awry?

Here's what I want you to do: Go to Asia's site (it may be Not Safe For Work, so take care), read her bulletin, and help. Either buy something, donate (as Sue & I have), or both. She's good people.

Returning

2006-03-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

The weather here is miserable. Hail and rain and a bit of sunshine and more rain. Is there a better song to counter the dismal grayness than Fountains Of Wayne's "Radiation Vibe"? I think not, sirs and ma'ams. "Shine on, shine on, shine on", indeed. Hear that, sun?

I've decided to increase the scope of this blog, since I was getting bored trying to squeeze anything meaningful out of a silly habit like collecting recordings of live music. I've no idea how large that scope now is, or how often I'll post, but, hey, hope you haven't cancelled your RSS feed of me.

The latest Rogue Wave album is very good. So is the only album by Råg I Ryggen (review), great if you like early '70s hard rock, especially - but not exclusively - Uriah Heep.

Also worth hearing are Naked April, part of the Twin Songs empire. Half folk, half 2nd iteration King Crimson. The other bands on the label are of interest if you're a fan of the harder Crimson stuff or California Guitar Trio.

Oh, and the new David Gilmour seems rather dull, like "A Pillow Of Winds" for 50-60 minutes. If you want to hear him at his finest, THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON is still the best bet. Before that, the band was still a little unfocused. After that, too self-indulgent. Did "Dogs" need to be 17 minutes long? I submit that it did not.

A Fitting Tribute

2005-12-27T00:48:00.000-08:00

Last time I wrote, it was about covers of single songs. There are also bands whose sole purpose is to play other bands' music, or another band's music. The former are called cover bands, and play in bars and clubs all over the world. The latter are called tribute bands, and they play clubs and, sometimes, even theaters.

A certain amount of fanatical devotion (and expenditure) is necessary to precisely replicate a concert for a group of people perhaps not yet born, let alone able to attend the original. Matching, and rewarding, that devotion are the people who record these concerts. That's right - you can get a recording of a show by a tribute band that duplicates the original show, of which you can also get a recording.
In fact, some tribute bands study those earlier recordings and mimic every bit of them, and the band members dedicate their careers to "being" the other band as much as possible. For those who couldn't see the original show, it's a stirring experience.

There are other fields to plow in the tribute band world, though, recontextualizing material to provide a fresh look at its roots, or disregarding them entirely in favor of just doing whatever the new band damn well pleases. Blue Floyd are just such a band. They "endeavor to deconstruct the classic compositions of the legendary Pink Floyd, into their primal, elemental form." What does that mean? Well, the band members are late of The Allman Brothers, The Black Crowes, and Phil Lesh and Friends, so it means lots of jamming.

Post-DARK SIDE Pink Floyd were very disciplined when playing live. The timing of films and sound effects saw to that, especially on THE WALL. Blue Floyd take it in the other direction, applying the early Floyd methodology evident on UMMAGUMMA and concert recordings through the early 70s to later-period songs from WISH YOU WERE HERE, ANIMALS, and THE WALL, extending them by adding jammy sections and solos, extending the music more organically than the original band could.

Though it might seem hard to believe, Pink Floyd regularly played blues jams. Blue Floyd find the residue of blues in songs like Have A Cigar and pull it out through endless meditations on the main riff. If you find unstructured playing annoying, this is not for you, and their hit ratio is somewhere around 60%, but it's refreshing to hear classic rock songs as starting points, not waxworks.

The Last Idiot

2005-11-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

Jefito has posted the last installment of my Idiot's Guide to Genesis. One of these days, I'll dig through my Genesis collection and say something trenchant about them. Just you wait.

Copy Right

2005-11-09T23:17:00.000-08:00

When a band plays another band's song, one of two things happens. Either they play is straight, either as an homage (Radiohead's take on Can's "Thief") or an ironic sendup (Faith No More's version of The Commodores' "Easy"); or they tear it apart, either to explore its inner workings and expand on them (John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" or Bill Frisell's "Live To Tell") or because they want to make fun of it (at least 1/3 of the songs on those Pravda K-Tel parodies of the '90s).

Whether it's Judith Owen turning "Smoke On The Water" into a piano ballad or Scott Miller faithfully echoing Nico on "Fairest Of The Seasons" (I bet it's the first time he's had to transpose a vocal line up an octave), it's become almost de rigeur to do cover songs in a live setting, to prove both your chops and your taste, and sometimes your sense of humor. Since most musicians start out in cover bands, returning to your roots makes sense. What bands do with, and to, the songs they already know makes for interesting listening.

Yo La Tengo pay tribute to The Ramones with a letter-perfect (for Yo La Tengo) version of Sheena Is A Punk Rocker from a show in Sweden in 1997. Respectful, although it's much easier to pay respect to a band whom everyone in your world loves.

Camper Van Beethoven take a bigger risk with an extended smashup of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. They play the song straight, and then pull it inside out, sprinkling in samples and whacking things about on laptops and otherwise. It's a much more interesting take, because you've no idea when, if ever, the song will end.

Playing someone else's song gives musicians a chance to figure out what, if anything, they got from the original. Sometimes it's chords and structure, and sometimes it's freedom.

More Guestiness

2005-11-07T22:21:00.000-08:00

Another week, another part of the Idiot's Guide to Genesis. I'm also available in audio form from Delicious Agony, a streaming prog rock station. I do four shows a week, three of them on Tuesdays, all full of the best oooo-eeee-oooo-eeee on offer.

I'll Be Your Guest

2005-11-01T23:56:00.000-08:00

I've got a guest spot for the next 3 Tuesdays at Jefitoblog, with a three-part Idiot's Guide to Genesis. His site's a lot of fun for the musically inclined, especially the Idiot's Guides. I don't like Toto, and at least I can confirm that by reading about their entire discography.

I haven't updated the content here in a while, but that's because I'm really lazy. Plus I'm working a lot. But mainly I'm lazy.

The Road Goes On And On

2005-10-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

There have been many cries from the stage about the hardships of stardom. Riches don't buy happiness; friends are untrue and devious; the press intrudes too deeply; new art is ignored in favor of old classics. Musicians seem particularly easily stung by fame. Entire albums bemoan the trappings of endless luxury and the disaffection caused by constant recognition. There's certainly a grain of truth in the complaint that being famous isolates one from the subject matter that generates the best work. Unless, of course, that work is about the isolation caused by fame.

Standing head and shoulders above in that department is Pink Floyd's THE WALL. Roger Waters spits acid at everyone and everything around him, going on at great length about the misery he's endured as the son of a widow, husband of a shrew, and leader of a stadium-filling band. Is he to blame? Not a bit, even for the band's transformation into fascists in "In The Flesh". No, that's the audience's fault for being such mindless sheep. Where did he get that idea? Canada, of course.

The Olympic Stadium in Montreal on July 6, 1977, to be precise, the last show of the stadium tour ironically called Pink Floyd In The Flesh. Floyd toured rarely, and the crowds had been rowdy at every stop. The setlist, the same every night, was the newly released ANIMALS for the first half, WISH YOU WERE HERE front to back in the second half, and an encore or two from DARK SIDE. The stage set was enormous, featuring a huge screen that showed films and inflatables, most notably a pig with glowing red eyes.

Since the music was a collection of soporific dirges (and I really like ANIMALS) and the band was microscopic for all but the first few rows, the fans entertained themselves with drugs and firecrackers. Roger started feeling the band wasn't connecting on a personal level with the 60,000+ individuals they met every night, and began to get depressed about this lack of communication. During the last show, he exploded, lashing out at the firecracker-setters for not letting him get through Pigs On The Wing Pt. 2. Waters' rage built until, during the coda to Pigs (Three Different Ones), he called an audience member to him, luring the punter closer and then spitting on him. This incident, Waters claimed, spawned THE WALL.

Perhaps the soul is damaged by being away from one's home and family for long periods of time, shuttled from city to city, performing the same music every night for tens of thousands of people. Many musicians have fallen prey to the predations of the road. Maybe the repetition or the disconnection or the loneliness become overwhelming. That might've been the germ of the story, but THE WALL is about so much more than the unforgiving road. It's a diatribe about British emotional repression, an elegy for Syd Barrett, and an anti-war tract, to name three. It's a work of boundless self-pity and vitriol, perfect for teenagers and other alienated parties. Pen up a bitter Englishman in a hotel for six months, and THE WALL is what comes out.

The guy who yelled "Judas" at Bob Dylan's Royal Albert Hall show has made press appearances, but the Roger Waters spit guy? Not shown his face since. After hearing THE WALL, he's probably concluded that fame isn't worth the price.

The Past Is The Future

2005-10-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Sometimes, the tough part is knowing which part of the past to remember. Others, it's knowing when you're in a moment where you should remember the past. It's often much easier to look at the past after it's repeated and say, "Oh yeah - that past!"

All you need to know about the last 10 years of Courtney Love's life can be gleaned from Hole's appearance on MTV Unplugged. She's an open wound one year after her husband destroyed her life. She rambles, swears, and smears her makeup. She's hyperaware of the camera and completely honest at the same time. She is a public spectacle and she knows it. All the public insanity of the last couple years is clear on the runway.

She's also a cookie both smart and tough. While her latest album sounded like her voice had been ravaged by time/drugs/pain, on Unplugged she uses that same raggedness to smash her pain and fury in our faces. Her band slows down Drown Soda to an ominous blues as she plans the annihilation of all who would destroy her. If you're not with her, you're going down.

Not before she does, though. Courtney rightly introduces He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) (written by Carole King, no less) as a scary song, but when she ends it by pleading over and over "Baby, won't you stay", it's clear the well from which her grief, pain, and need are drawn is bottomless. She shreds her voice and heart by the song's end. The line from then to now is not so tough to see.