I was watching “Empire Records” one day when it occurred to me that the movie is just one long obscure popculture reference. I suppose when I was young I just thought that the posters in the background were for made up bands, or something like that. It’s possible though that I knew it was all real, but obscure=imaginary to a ten-year old.
So I started looking in the background at posters to see if I recognized anything. I didn’t recognize a whole lot. But I caught this pretty obvious one staring me in the face midway through the movie:
Ethan Embry wearing a T-shirt that says “Chainsaw Kittens”. It sounded vaguely familiar, so I Wikipedia’d it:
“The Chainsaw Kittens were a part of the American alternative rock scene…For various reasons, primary among them a pronounced lack of major label support, the Kittens saw little commercial success. However, they have since gained recognition in such sources as Allmusic and the Trouser Press as one of the best groups of their era.”
Fair enough. I was able to track down a couple of their albums. I got Flipped Out In Singapore:
I got Pop Heiress:
I got High In High School:
Straight forward alterna-rock drums, jangly guitars, sort of weird singer. It all works; not just as an artifact of 90s independent rock, but also for it’s own purposes as a kick ass band.
Check out this shit!
Pop Heiress Dies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8kwPdsZ1Cg
Connie, I’ve Found The Door - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsdBXHp5WrU
High In High School - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzGX3EBg954
Though their penmanship far outweighs their musical creativity at this point, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have a new song, so that’s good. Stream it at Spin.com, though I wouldn’t bother reading the article.
This article makes me feel like a loser for knowing it exists.
I always thought that Of Montreal made music for broads, but I never really thought Of Montreal knew that they made music for broads.
The worst part of it, even worse than writing an article about Pitchfork writing an article about Of Montreal, even worse than The Of Montreal Guy starting a words war with group-think behemoth Pitchfork Media, and even worse than actually showing the guy’s dong in the article, is the fact that I read all the way to the bottom. How could I not see this coming?
Preface 1: As audiences, it’s always about who we give the credit to. We understand that most things in life, especially modern western art, are collaborative processes. Nevertheless, we generally need a “brains” or a leader, to whom we give the praise reverence. I don’t know whether this is an American thing, or a more expansive human phenomenon.
Preface 2: We don’t treat out musicians like we treat our filmmakers. In film, the director is the brains, or spokesperson. When a movie is good, it’s the director’s movie. The screenwriter, though he often had the great idea in the first place, is just the writer. The producer, though it’s often his creative vision, is just the moneyman. The actors, though they actually are the screen representation of the movie (and admittedly get a certain degree of credit themselves in the acting world), are just the director’s puppets. For all intents and purposes, it is always the director’s movie.
We don’t view music in this way, at least not anymore. In 2010, the performer is also the writer – we call him the musician. The record company, which would be the “moneyman”, isn’t really a factor anymore, for reasons irrelevant to this analogy. Most importantly though, a producer/engineer is given nowhere near the same degree of credit for a finished recording as a director is given for a finished film. Simply put, no album is a producer’s album.*
This is pretty unfortunate, considering that the success of almost every indie band since the year 2000 has rested on the texture, authenticity, and overall feel of their sound recordings. However, it is this unsophisticated observer’s honest opinion that much of that “feel” can be credited to Dave Fridmann.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because you read it on the back of your Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots CD jewel case back in 2002. Fridmann co-produced that album with the Flaming Lips, as he has every one of their albums since Priest Driven Ambulance (with the exception of Satellite Heart).
I checked Millionyoung out at Circle Bar, somewhat on a whim. I was pointed to this South Florida act a couple of weeks ago, so I downloaded an EP. It was straight up Electronic, with a nice ambience, which, let’s be honest, is pretty easy to do these days. Because of this, nothing really jumped out at me about the EP. But like I said, it was pretty good, and they were playing right by my house, so I figured why not check them out?
For the opening act, we were treated to some pretty morose Witch House/Killyourself Wave provided by a DJ who appeared to enjoy it much more than we did. Though no one should be surprised that a small-but-growing number of tone-deaf losers are trying to make this a viable genre of music, part of me is still astounded that this noise is getting ink.
