been a while - all kinds of excitement here at Hampshire with the end of the semester and all. my interesting thoughts part of my brain is vacationing, I think. I’ve come across some excellent aural entertainment, however, which should be checked out. Two bands which can be pegged with the ‘post-hardcore’ label and which I saw at Hampshire last week and a thought-provoking country-rocking album:
Read Yellow : A bunch of UMass Amherst kids I’ve vaguely known for a couple years. Their new album Radios Burn Faster is, um, really good. 2XGuitar, 1XBass, 1XDrums, screamy, hard-driving, blah blah blah. They may be a candidate for a band that I would never write about in the music magazine I dream about starting - really good, but not much of interest to say about them. Except that sometimes on the album they sing when they should scream. They’re coming to the Bay Area in early August - Friday 8/6 @ Bottom of the Hill. Bring earplugs.
The Faux : 1XDrums, 1XSynth, 1XBass, 1XGuitar (sometimes). Dark, ‘industrial’, screamy rock with synth (as previously mentioned). I just read a review that referred to them as ‘post-goth’ - I honestly can’t speak to that, but there it is. No Wave? Sure, why not! They’ve got good beats and you can dance to them, if head-nodding, heel-tapping, and rythmic swaying/shaking leading up to much more exuberant head-nodding, heel-tapping and rhythmic swaying/shaking is your idea of dancing. (Answer: True).
Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose: Jack-White-produced awesomeness which compells me to look into writing about sexism in country music - are we listening to Lynn or White? (how) Do men work to authenticate/validate women singers? How do we imagine the relationship between Lynn and White? Perhaps most interestingly, how are these issues manifested in the cross-genre audience for this work - that is, why do I, the short-in-the-back-long-in-the-front-haired, spike-belt-wearing indie kid accept this as an interesting, enjoyable piece of country music when I am so quick to dismiss other country music? Throw in the relative popularity of Johnny Cash’s covers albums - What country music do we accept and what do we dismiss?
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I get graduated in a week, then off to NYC to make my fortune. Couch-sleeping until the end of the month and then onto a glorious room of my own, in which I can set my entire stereo system for the full, quadraphonic experience that has been conspicuously absent from my life for the past 3+ months.
All I can say about that album is that I REALLY want to drink some Sloe Gin Fizz by the pitcher now! We should revive this nice old beverage…doesn’t even have to be in Oregon!
Posted by: fifi at August 18, 2004 12:59 PMI struggled for a while (one, maybe one and a half minutes) about qualifying my statements with a “this doesn’t apply to me ‘cause I actually like country music, unlike the uncultured snobs I happen to look/dress like,” but I felt that would be denying any connection to the questions/issues/problematics I’m raising. So, full disclosure: I like country music. Even the shit they play on the radio - Tracy Bird’s Drinking Bone is an amazing song.
R.O.C.K in the U.S.A.!
drew
Posted by: drew at May 16, 2004 05:09 PMI mean, you’re not that reluctant to go for country music. You like Gram Parsons, you like a bunch of the Alt-Country types. And when it comes to Johnny Cash, I think his covers just reawakened interest in a colossal talent. I haven’t heard Loretta Lynn, I’m looking forward to it, but it seems like country nowadays is a pretty de-fanged genre, which would explain to me why you haven’t liked it much. The hipsters getting into Loretta Lynn didn’t go for LeeAnn Rimes when she first broke, after all.
Posted by: Tom at May 16, 2004 04:56 PM