Zero Gravity

Reminds me a hell of a lot of the Chemical Brothers' "The Sunshine Underground" but far slower tempo:

Stress Mantra

When life feels like it's moving 1000 MPH:

I Feel Like Kurt Cobain When He Discovered the Knack

"Hey, everyone! You have to check out L7!" "Uh, we know. They're in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Rock Band 2, and they were pretty big besides that."

 

Two Songs That Make Me Want To See Lawless

Well, two versions of one song.

Never mind the fact that Nick Cave wrote the screenplay; the Bootleggers' cover of the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" alone, sung by Mark Lanegan, no less, makes me want to see Lawless. Oh, and then there's Ralph Stanley's sparsely countrified version. Listen to both below:

Gettin' Groovy at the Waldorf Tonight(?)

With Lumerians and one of my new favourite Vancouver bands, the anarchic, turbine-of-noise Student Teacher.

I Like You, Cat Power, But I Don't $42.50 Like You

Cat Power plays the Vogue Theatre on Nov. 2 in support of her upcoming new album Sun, due Sept. 4 via Matador Records. Listen to album-cut "Cherokee" below:

Two-Star Tabernacle - "Garbage Picker"

This song goes out to whoever's been going through my recyclables at night: At least return my bin. By one of Jack White's bands between the White Stripes' formation and TWS' first album:

KMVP - "Nobody's Down with Sexist Movies"

Why do all the girls in The Warriors
Have to entice the boys upstairs
Have to entice the boys upstairs
Before, before, before, before they pull the knife?
If I was a girl in The Warriors
I would have cut them in the streets
I would have cut them in the street
And watched and watched and watched
And watched the bastards bleed

And of course, you don't even notice
Because you grew up watching The Warriors
And this thing is so deep inside of us
That it takes some very bizarre form

Why are all the girls in Thrasher
Either virginal or sluts?
And they all hate each others guts
And watch and watch and watch
And watch the boys have fun
If I was a girl in Thrasher
I'd start a radical girl-gang
And we'd stop feathering our bangs
And skate and skate and skate
And build a wicked half-pipe

And of course, you don't even notice
But it's poisoning your brains
You deny what's totally obvious
Then rewind and watch that shit again

And who says Ally Sheedy
Needed a makeover
To get herself a lover?
Who needs those anyway?
When I was Ally Sheedy
And I got myself a boyfriend
Well, all the time I spent with him
Was time I threw away

And of course, you don't even notice
But I see it everywhere
And my heart curls up and grows cold
As the snowflakes that fell from her hair

Mountains

“… mountains proclaim a message that is easy to understand when you have seen their steep walls and layers upon layers of rock, twisted, cracked, filled with gaping wounds. ‘We have suffered most brutally,’ they announce, ‘and we are suffering still.’ But they say it proudly, sternly, and with clenched teeth, like ancient, indomitable warriors.”

 - Hermann Hesse, Peter Camenzind

Smash Patriarchy

"I Made About Five Million Dollars Last Year

and I'm not giving a red cent to that elitist, little fuck Calvin Johnson. No way! I've collaborated with one of my idols, William Burroughs and I couldn't feel cooler. I moved away to L.A. for a year and came back to find that three of my friends have become full blown heroine addicts. I've learned to hate riot grrrl, a movement in which I was a witness to its very initial inception because I fucked the girl who put out the first grrrl-style fanzine and now she is exploiting the fact that she fucked me. Not in a huge way, but enough to feel exploited. But that's okay because I chose to let corporate white men exploit me a few years ago and I love it. It feels good. And I'm not gonna donate a single fucking dollar to the indie fascist regime. They can starve. Let them eat vinyl. Every crumb for himself. I'll be able to sell my untalented, very ungenius ass for years based on my cult status."

 - Kurt Cobain, from an unsent letter to ex-girlfriend and Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail

Not that I dislike Calvin Johnson or Riot Grrrl (the complete opposite, actually), but this Kurt Cobain quote is so striking. I've never heard anyone disparage either with so much vitriol, especially not someone as high-profile and respected as Kurt Cobain.

Is Courtney Love the Real Life Edna Krabapple?

Nirvana All Day, Every Day

For all of August so far, thanks to this book. A little light summer reading:

Azealia Banks - "Van Vogue" (Video)

Not my favourite AB song, but this is one glossy video. Look at that money. It's a far cry from the last time I saw a video of hers. Soundtracking fashion shows will bring this kind of budget (and wardrobe, apparently).

Edit: Just saw her previous video for "Liquorice," by the same director. My point stands: AB's ballin' now.

Nirvana - "Turnaround" (Devo Cover)

After hearing Nirvana's awesome cover of Devo's awesome song "Turnaround," I reeaally want to hear Nine Inch Nails take a go at it. From Nirvana's 1992 Australian and Japanese tour-only Hormoaning EP (DGC/Geffen Records):

The Best Compilation Album I've Heard in a While

Various Artists - Strange Passion: Explorations in Irish Post-Punk DIY and Electronic Music 1980-83

Since I can only name two musical acts from Ireland off the top of my head (Imelda May and U2, and I only like the former), and I've never associated Ireland with any musical scene or movement beyond Irish folk music, this compilation is great and totally eye-opening. Plus, it's post-punk and electronic music. All the better! Here's a brief interview by Fact Magazine with the compilation's curator Darren McCreesh in which he touches on Ireland's underground music history and shares a few tracks, some of which appear on Strange Passion.

Wanda Jackson Vs. Chelsea Wolfe

I want to see doom-folk songstress Chelsea Wolfe quite a bit, buuut I should probably see the Wanda Jackson, who'll be playing on the same night as Wolfe (on September 12), before Jackson dies. This might be my last chance to see the Queen of Rockabilly.

The Stooges - "Down the Street"

I just want to smoke and drink on the deck all day and listen to the Stooges:

FULL STREAM: Nü Sensae - Sundowning LP

Click here to listen to Vancouver punk trio Nü Sensae's just-released Sundowning LP (Suicide Squeeze Records, 2012) via AOL Spinner. Also, nice to see them getting coverage from SPIN Magazine (which briefly profile's the band in its "5 Best New Artists for August '12"), Spotify, Fader and AllMusic.com, my favourite site for album reviews and musician-info. World, if you're not ready for Nü Sensae, get ready.

Nirvana - "Negative Creep"

I finally understand why so many people consider Bleach Nirvana's best album:

"To Me, Making a [Mix-]Tape Is Like Writing a Letter

- there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, ... A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention ... and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, ... and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs, and ... oh, there are loads of rules."

 - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (Victoria Gollancz Ltd., 1995)

Reincarnated

I haven't been a Snoop Dogg fan since seventh grade, but I really want to see this documentary. I'd even see it AT THE THEATRE (I hate going to the theatre):

The Second Best Five Bucks I've Ever Spent

August 3, 2012
Antisocial Skateshop
Vancouver, British Columbia

The best being my leather jacket.

Last night was Nü Sensae's record-release show at the Antisocial Skateshop celebrating their new LP Sundowning (Suicide Squeeze, 2012). Also featured on the bill were Nü Sensae's good friends White Lung who themselves recently released a new album titled Sorry (Deranged Records, 2012) which you can listen to in full here. 

Despite "strict" time-constraints (the bands stressed on their Facebook event page that the set times were rigid due to the 11 P.M. curfew), White Lung took their time taking the stage, or floor, rather. Had they known they were in store for the bass amp's power cutting off two or three times at the beginning of their set (the first time within seconds of their first song), perhaps they would have been more punctual. Even by the second power-failure, the treat of free booze (while quantities lasted) seemed to have been inadequate in quenching the growing audience's thirst for high-velocity punk rawk, especially after White Lung teased the audience by having appeared to have launched into their first ripper ... as a soundcheck.

Although lead-singer Mish Way's mic could have been louder, the band sounded great. They tore straight ahead through their thirty-ish-minute set with everyone in the band sounding bold and clear on their way to the finish line: Kenneth Williams' jagged guitars punctured through the destructive maelstrom of sound while Grady MacIntosh fired relentless volleys of thuddily palpable bass notes, and Anne-Marie Vassiliou tamed the chaos into some kind of order as best as she could with her merciless, thunderous, mechanically precise drumming.

Having been my first "real" punk show where all of the focus was on Nü Sensae and White Lung (rather than on them merely as openers or parts of a festival line-up), I was slightly disenchanted by the crowd's docility during White Lung. I'd expected the crowd to have been pretty crazy, given that most of the people there, I assumed, were going to have been the bands' equally rowdy punk friends and the "real" punks who go to these sorts of shows as a religion. Admittedly, I was a part of the "problem," as I didn't move much during White Lung either, as much as I liked them.

The mood totally changed when Nü Sensae came on, however. I and pretty much everyone else who was into it got into it. Before I knew it, without even having been really conscious of the fact, I'd somehow found myself standing right in front of singer/bassist Andrea Lukic. I stood so close to her, I could have sang into her mic without leaning in, and believe me, the temptation was almost overpowering. More than a few times, I and the people around me nearly knocked over her mic-stand. I, or more likely one of the guys next to me, actually unplugged her peddle by kicking it, an accident unrelated to a handful of us slipping on beer and falling onto the floor; yeah, there were more than a few cans of beer flying and spraying around last night; I caught a few on the shoulder and chest but remained unscathed thanks to the moderate protection afforded me by the carapace that was my jacket.

Nü Sensae get better every time I see them. Even more than at the Khatsahlano Music + Arts Festival did their songs sound more developed and progressive, with the inclusion of some extended jams, instead of just like relentless deluges of sound. Unfortunately, unlike last time at Khats, Andrea's vocals did not soar above the rest of the band and carpet-bomb us with shrill cries, feral growls or Serengeti-an roars. I guess the complaint is somewhat moot, though: when one stood as close to Andrea as I did, I guess her mic volume didn't matter that much.

Though I escaped the show without any cuts, bruises or scrapes this time, I hadn't moshed that hard since Les Savy Fav or maybe Andrew W.K., although I'm reluctant to count Andrew W.K., because that was more like fighting for my life rather than having a good time. That said, it was a total mistake to have worn my aforementioned leather jacket, as I sweltered, stuck, dripped and soaked with sweat (and a little booze) like never before; who'd have thought, on a hot summer night, crammed amongst a hundred or so living bodies in a relatively tiny skateshop? I probably would have had more ease escaping a straight-jacket than taking off my leather jacket.

And that was the night I vowed to never miss either Nü Sensae or White Lung again - unless they're supporting some crappy, over-priced bands.

Also, I'm starting to recognize too many people at shows ...

Crazy For Krautrock

I have a lot of research to do.

I've Now Heard the Voice of God