I would like to apologize to my dedicated following for posting a few days late, or one day early (matters which way you look at it), but my schedule has been unrelenting. I will, however, attempt to cheer whomever I can up with the following group of musical comedy geniuses who have made me cry simply from laughing hard on more than one occasion.
New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo is the description the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords gives themselves. Don’t let it fool you. Flight is the best (and most popular) guitar based acappalla rap comedy folk duo that just happens to use bongos, rap and funk in their music. My favorite thing about Flight on the musical side is that they (as their description suggests) are real musicians. Songs aren’t simple four chord songs with a single melody, but they use varied instrumentation, vocal harmonies and expand upon simple musical structures. On the lyrical side, Flight stands out for their comedic style. If Flight was a girl, she’d be the one you’d want to bring home to mama because their humor isn’t crude or vulgar but witty and clever. Just check out their name (Flight of the Conchords).
While Flight takes a mostly clean approach to comedy, most comedians use vulgarity and crudeness as part of their acts and many musical comedians are no different. Enter Stephen Lynch. Lynch would be the kid you’d never want to get near your parents for fear he might curse, tell inappropriate jokes and be an all around %*$&#*$. Lynch’s style isn’t for the easily offended or overtly sensitive. However, if you do enjoy jokes about just about any topic imaginable, Lynch is your man.
Oh it’s totally Six Degrees of Your iPod time! If you haven’t seen this game played on the blog before I will explain it briefly. By now you probably own an iPod or other mp3 music playing device. Well, on said device there should be a shuffle option. The point of this game is to shuffle randomly through six songs. Now can you connect the first and the sixth? Occasionally you get a gift (like I have today), but sometimes it is extremely difficult, and there have been times where I have made connections through several other bands. Now do keep in mind one very important part of the game. You do NOT have to connect the specific songs together. If you do, well, you get serious bonus points. That is sometimes actually impossible. But you can trace the artists to each other in fun ways. Let’s play.
1.) “La Grange” by ZZ Top
The little ol’ band from Texas with the exceptionally long beards (except for dummer Frank Beard ironically) released “La Grange” on their 1973 album Tres Hombres. The song is so recognizable because of guitarist Billy Gibbons‘ epic guitar riff. The riff is an absolute classic. You know a riff is good when it is known to mostly everyone who listens to the genre, and the genre is the wide world of rock. “La Grange,” which is about a brother on the outskirts of La Grange, Texas, is a hard-hitting, southern rock staple, and it is always enjoyable to listen to.
I have written about the 13th Floor Elevators extensively in the past. This Texas-based psychedelic act was one of the first psychedelic bands to come out of the Texas psychedelic scene, and it also was one of the first psychedelic bands in general. The band featured Rory Erickson and electric jug player Tommy Hall. The music was garage psychedelia, a true inspiration to many psychedelic bands who premiered in the ’67, ’68 and so on.
CONNECTION:
Now comes the fun part of the game. Like I said in the introduction, I was given a gift. Well, the answer is not a wide-known fact, but if you are familiar with ZZ Top guitarist’s Billy Gibbons’ first band, then this will not be difficult. Billy Gibbons, a Texas native himself, was originally in a Texas-based psychedelic band that he founded. It was called the Moving Sidewalks. Texas is a large state, but the psychedelic scene in the mid 60s was small enough that the Moving Sidewalks and the 13th Floor Elevators knew each other. The Moving Sidewalks actually opened for the 13th Floor Elevators at the Love Street Emporium, which was a Houston psychedelic music venue. The concert, though, was ended when Rory Erickson was arrested by police!
Get in the action and play the game yourself. Make sure to comment below with your results!
It is fitting that today’s Obscure Classic Rock band shares its namesake with a particular above-ground plant organ that will get a lot of attention over the upcoming weeks in New York. Fall foliage is gorgeous, until the colorful palette of leaves tumble to the ground and leave the trees barren, and the yard full of crunchy, multi-colored nuisances. Unless, of course, you enjoy the monotonous task of raking leaves. If that is so, Fall is your type of season.
Anyway, if you have not guessed, the band that I will be profiling today is The Leaves, a mid-60s garage-rock from California. Last week I profiled the Seeds, another garage-rock act from Los Angeles. From the Seeds to the Leaves to the…what other botany-based 60s band will I come up with.
The Leaves were formed in 1963 by bassist Jim Pons while he was a student at Cal State Northridge in LA. Originally called the Rockwells, the Leaves developed their new name from a response the band heard to the typical 60s greeting “what’s happening.” The response was, “the leaves are happening” and the Leaves stuck.
Pons was joined in the band by John Beck (vocalist), Bill Rinehart (lead guitar, replaced by Bobby Arlin), Tom Ray and Robert Lee Reiner. The Leaves began playing surf/dance rock and played their first show at a school gymnasium with Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, thereby marking another fantastic concert at a school gym performed by awesome 60s musicians. After the Byrds left their residency at Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip, which was a rock n’ roll club in the 60s, The Leaves replaced them and were there discovered by singer/actor Pat Boone who got them a record contract.
And like a bat out of hell, the band released two popular singles in 1965. “Too Many People” which I am including under this paragraph and “Hey Joe,” even though “Hey Joe” wasn’t popular until it was released a third time. I’ll explain
Before I start talking about the song above, I’d like to talk about “Hey Joe” and the rest of the history of the band. Obviously, “Hey Joe” is most recognized as a Jimi Hendrix distored, hard-rock song; one of his guitar saturated pieces that oozes with emotion and pure awesomeness. But I do feel like many do not know that the song was not initially presented in its rock n’ roll form by Hendrix. (The song does have a history which I am not going to discuss in this post – stay tuned for a future history). The first version was The Leaves’ gritty, fuzzy, stripped down, developed version. The Leaves were a young band and “Hey Joe” was their tour de force. The song was initially released in 1965, but it was pulled back by the band because it was unsatisfactory. Then it was released again in 1966 and that recording flopped. It was not until original guitarist Bill Rinehart left and new guitarist Bobby Arlin experimented with a fuzztone, that the song became popular, a #1 hit in LA (#31 on Billboard).
He lived on Long Island and worked for the Jets (that is swell in my book!)
Let’s listen to the songs. “Too Many People” is clearly Beatle-inspired. It is a good example of repetitive garage rock. A constant riff, vocal melody, and a harmonica. Mix this with screaming fans and you have got yourself a mid-60s rock band. “Hey Joe” is just, well, different. The fuzzbox immediately screams a more mature form of garage rock, an improvement to the buzzing sound that became synonymous with garage rock. The song is packed with emotion, solid bass work and an enjoyable guitar. It is the rock original and it is important to recognize it as such.
So I’m sure based on last week’s SNL that many of you have already heard of Foster the People. Now touring with sold out shows across the country, the band is a perfect example of Indie resonating with the masses. Based in Los Angeles, California, Foster the People is composed of the trio Mark Foster, Mark Pontius and Cubbie Fink. With the break through single “Pumped Up Kicks”, the band’s sound is sort of an effortless cool. Not quite hipster but not quite mainstream, Foster the People manages to appeal to a variety of audiences. What I like most about the group is not only their catchy lyrics or calming electronic beats. Rather, despite their alarming popularity, Foster the People has not appeared to sell out. No longer under the radar, the band has risen to the ranks organically with zero pretension.
Heres the band performing my personal favorite, “Houdini” on SNL
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. I heard this quote somewhere a few years ago. I believed it to be true the moment I heard it, but never really did apply it to my life per say. In the past week or so however, I realized that it can apply to almost every aspect of life. Whittled down simply to the idea that the activities you do everyday can be systematically eliminated until only the ones that make you happy and cater to you who you are remain, this quote has immediate sprung relevance. You need to clean out the closet once in a while.
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I don’t listen to much hard rock. I filled out that niche for myself early in my life and adding any more like-bands to my repertoire would be redundant. If anyone remembers my Fall of Troy post, yes that is one of them. But today I want to talk about the other major one, which creates rock music in a much different fashion.
The Mars Volta is a band which has been famed for its beautiful progressive rock. Incorporating influences from krautrock, jazz fusion, Latin American music, and mathrock, their music is melodic, groovy and downright rockin. The band’s lead singer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, has the most unique and talented voice you will hear. The debut 2003 album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, was the band’s best selling album and earned them critical acclaim. I’ll be bringing it to you today.
The song Son et Lumiere creates a short lead into Inertiatic Esp, sort of like the sound of dread at an abandoned train station at night time. The vocals are eerie and distorted, the lyrics nonsensical yet frightening. The short drum build falls into a crash of musical ecstasy, as almost every instrument this band employs can be heard blaring away skillfully. “Now I’m lost” Cedric wails, as the song quickly changes displaying the technical side of the math-rock influence. It switches back and forth, not losing a beat… that is until the verses melt away at about 2 minutes.
This music takes heavy influences from past bands like Pink Floyd in employing a level of pure trippyness. The psychotic guitar lines are from none other than Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, and display a level of musical creativity unparalleled by anyone. The song ends on a very creepy almost theatrical sounding note. But this is only the first song on the album.
Cicatriz ESP is a 12 beast and my favorite song on the album. This song starts with beautiful melody. The lyrics are in my opinion random one liners which are strung together to create maximum confusion upon listeners. “We’ll drag your halo through the mud, ash of Pompeii. Erupting in a statue’s dust, shrouded in veils. Because these handcuffs hurt too much.” The drum line is repetitive yet completely amazing. The song seems to float along like a river of honey, stopping once in a while to pick up the tension and remind you that this is still rock.
3:50 is my favorite part. The song just disassembles into a sort of pure bliss. The guitar and piano just create the grooviest jazz atmosphere I have ever heard. Like psychedelic lounge music it lulls you away from this planet as it then itself falls apart into nothing. This Pink Floyd esque nothingness has the sounds of creatures emulated by guitars and slowly builds back into a downright epic return of the main verse. Truly amazing in my opinion.
Televators is arguably the trippiest and most psychedelic song on this album. The beginning has the sounds of tropical jungle animals but is slowly overrun by this strange miasma and a classical guitar. “Just as he hit the ground, they lowered a tow that stuck in his neck to his gills”. This is the one song on the album where Cedric’s vocals stay relatively relaxed all throughout. The song is slow and chill, like sailing down a river somewhere in the Amazon, yet retains a certain level of creeping dread reminding you of any dangers that can befall you.
De-loused in the Comatorium is a masterpiece in every sense. Every song on this album can stand entirely on its own, yet as a whole it creates a story. The album actually tells a story of a friend of the band. Nicknamed “Cerpin Taxt”, a poet and an artist, he overdosed purposely on drugs and fell into a coma for several years. Upon waking up he committed suicide a few weeks later. The way they tied the tragic story in while maintaining the beauty just speaks of their insurmountable skill.
The Mars Volta has released 4 albums since this first one, each one maintaining the same level of artistic skill as the previous. I will most surely return to them at some point in time. In the meantime be sure to mentally make room for them by removing similar but sub-par bands.
-oko
P.S. Oh and here is the last song on the album Take the veil, Cerpin Taxt. Beware. The part starting right before 4 minutes might put you in a coma.
The Music Court 