Fun With Aging Rock Stars

Well, this is just hilarious: http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/more_names/blog/2009/08/dude_looks_like_a_little_old_l.html

I Remember Iggy Screaming at Me...

My memories of summer always begin with music. There's something about the warm months that creates a distinct and memorable period of time that's unlike any other part of the year. Maybe it's the fact that it's book-ended by long months of academic pressures (I'm only 21). Or maybe it's something to do with the green and the heat. But more distinctly than at any other time of the year, in summer, there's a vivid connection between the sounds I'm listening to and the people and places populating my life. My memories have a soundtrack. And the associations I make between the places where I play my favorite music has a grander effect; they define my entire memory of summer. I'm glad I live a place with such contrasting weather.

It's hard for me to separate the Charlotte Ferry on Lake Champlain where I worked for three months in 2008 from the psychedelic apocalypse of Comets on Fire's Field Recordings from the Sun or the space freak-out of Acid Mothers Temple's IAO Chant from the Cosmic Inferno. It helped that I weathered a couple lighting storms with my iPod plugged into my brain, my socks soaked, guitar feedback blazing in my ears. 

In 2007 I had a long drive from my home in Vergennes to Burlington to visit a lady friend. The ride gave me sufficient time to have Elton John's Madman Across the Water and The Stooges Fun House implanted in my head. Now every time I stop at the main intersection in Shelburne I hear Iggy screaming at me. As I sit and write this I'm listening to David Gilmour's screams on the Live at Pompeii version of 'Saucerful of Secrets.' And my morning drives through downtown Burlington are always filled with the carefree sound of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's debut or Asobi Seksu's Hush.

Music-induced nostalgia outdoes any other memory association ten-fold. Music is pervasive. I still spin Fun House and Field Records to the point exhaustion, and they'll continue to be a soundtrack. It's possible to have such a personal and profound relationship to music  — it's a constant vehicle for memory.

Solid State, what are some of your favorite or most vivid summer music memories?

Indie Brittannia: The Stirring Debut of Orphans & Vandals

I Am Alive And You Are Dead is the debut effort from the London based Orphans And Vandals — an album that is already being wildly lauded by UK music media as an early candidate for record of the year. Even in an age where trailblazing independent label releases are eagerly pursued and oft-heralded, it is still rare and well worthy of notice that a debut could be elevated to such acclaim mere weeks after its release.

The record stands out instantly, and not just for the explicit sexuality of its lyrics or their prosaic, narrative-like delivery; nor for the fact that the band is comprised of three remarkably talented multi-instrumentalist women with a gay man at the helm.

The sound of Orphans and Vandals is a gritty, urban-hued street carnival fare unheard in some time — and certainly an aesthetic first for the seemingly all-inclusive, ever more cliche banner of "indie-rock." The true orphan on the record might be guitar, which gives away to robust string themes, musical saws, glockenspiels, rowdy harmonicas and toy pianos.

Lead singer Al Joshua's elaborate tomes on lost youth, alleyways, night buses and sexual misadventure are delivered with the dizzying ferocity of an insane, junkie tour guide. When Joshua subdues his mania long enough to catch a melodious chorus, he does so with an engaging rustic charm — like a lovable old drunk just remembering the words. Joshua is a worthy predecessor of other UK minstrels, emerging like a civilized, modern day Shane MacGowan or an indie rock Jarvis Cocker.

With plenty of time yet to debate the year's best releases, its true that this intrepid debut has the early makings of a record that might soon be shortlisted with other imported classics from the Atlantic's eastern shores.

The Birth of American Hay

In the years since the brutal kidnap and murder of American rock radio, we critics of music have remained perched, phoned heads titled at our computers, digitally fledgling for the next nice sound.

As a review writer and fan of review writing, the exploration of music criticism sites remains a pastime of mine, when I'm not searching Burlington's Craigslist to spruce up my home, that is.

Obviously, there are just too many music review sites to list. (Some Solid State readers might be pleased to know my work has been rejected by quite a few of them.) However, a recent review at CMJ — the esteemed College Music Journal - caught my attention.

The band, Other Lives, is critiqued as having "interwoven an avant-garde edge into their indie-rock on their self-titled debut, a record that is sonically diverse though often quietly contained."

Nevermind that any CCTA bus, the Burlington lakefront and Church Street's bicycle drunks are all sonically diverse, though often quietly contained. Or that the music of Other Lives is actually very good.

Days after reading this review I've yet to determine what's "indie" about Other Lives. And I seriously think I've busted CMJ asleep at the wheel. Is it the expert production? The crisp instrumentation? The highly discernible, somber lyricism? The delicately infused piano?

One of my favorite bands of all time is Archers of Loaf, oft heralded as one of the godfathers of indie rock. They screeched noise guitars over throaty screams about cheese and dripping faucets back in 1993. That was indie rock — the kind of rock few, if any, were making at that time. Compared to the Archers, Other Lives are the Eagles.

Consider CMJ bagged for slapping their generic "indie_rock_review.doc" on Other Lives, out of either pure laziness or simple lack of invention.

I hereby designate the music of Other Lives — and like bands so often plopped into indie rock's distended league — as American Hay. Or American Hay Rock. Or maybe just plain Hay Rock.

It's catchy — like "hey!" And like hay itself, there's tons of it around and needles like Other Lives are increasingly hard to find in it.