forrest

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

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Here's a rare gem for all you Felt fanatics out there: the Andy Kershaw Sessions from 1986. It features only four songs: When the Dawn Starts Creeping In, Sapphire Mansions, Rain of the Crystal Spires, and All the People I Like Are Those That Are Dead. The only thing that really stands out about this session is the inclusion of the ever-so-elusive song When the Dawn Starts Creeping In. The recording of When the Dawn Starts Creeping In included in this session is probably the only recording you'll be able to find of it on the internet, which really makes this specific session somewhat special to hardcore Felt fans such as myself. Enjoy!

Download Link (yes – my original upload is still up! I guess this was so obscure that it went under the radar of the music police.)

#Music #Felt

The Whole of the Moon (The Waterboys, 1985)
In My Life (The Beatles, 1965)
It's My Life (Talk Talk, 1984)
Waters of March (Antonio Carlos Jobim, performed by Art Garfunkel, 1975)

Velocity Girl (Primal Scream, 1986)
Pendulum (Guided By Voices, 1990)
Take It Away (Paul McCartney, 1982)
Nothing to Be Done (The Pastels, 1989)
Spanish House (Felt, 1984)
Isn't She Lovely (Stevie Wonder, 1976)
Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder, 1976)
Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing (Stevie Wonder, 1973)
Gotta Broken Heart Again (Prince, 1980)
About a Girl (Nirvana, 1989)
Four Out of Five (Arctic Monkeys, 2018)
Comin' Through (The Pastels, 1987)
Peg (Steely Dan, 1977)
Boy Problems (Carly Rae Jepsen, 2016)
Generation Sex (The Divine Comedy, 1998)
Excitable Boy (Warren Zevon, 1979)
Gold Star for Robot Boy (Guided By Voices, 1994)
The Loneliest Time (Carly Rae Jepsen, 2022)
Since Yesterday (Strawberry Switchblade, 1985)
Game of Pricks (Guided By Voices, 1995)
Freaking Out the Neighborhood (Mac DeMarco, 2012)
Borderline (Madonna, 1983)
Superball (Helium, 1995)
Solitude Standing (Suzanne Vega, 1987)
Surfin' U.S.A. (The Beach Boys, 1963)
Sunday Morning (The Velvet Underground, 1966)
And Your Bird Can Sing (The Beatles, 1966)
Teenage FBI (Guided By Voices, 1999)
I Am a Scientist (Guided By Voices, 1994)
Marlene On the Wall (Suzanne Vega, 1985)
Sister I'm a Poet (Morrissey, 1988)
This is the Day (The The, 1983)
Wuthering Heights (Kate Bush, 1978)
Thy Mission (The Garden, 2019)
Thorn (My Bloody Valentine, 1990)
Off Your Face (My Bloody Valentine, 1990)
Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad? (Prince, 1979)
I Saw Her Standing There (The Beatles, 1963)
Help! (The Beatles, 1965)
Party Fears Two (The Associates, 1982)
Michelle (The Beatles, 1965)
The Official Ironman Rally Song (Guided By Voices, 1996)
Can't Be Sure (The Sundays, 1990)
Here's Where the Story Ends (The Sundays, 1990)
Everlong (Foo Fighters, 1997)
Goodbye (The Sundays, 1992)
Rhymes Like Dimes (MF DOOM, 1999)
Young Americans (David Bowie, 1975)
Rapp Snitch Knishes (MF DOOM, 2004)
This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us (Sparks, 1974)
Here In Heaven (Sparks, 1974)
Hasta Manana, Monsieur (Sparks, 1974)
(When I Kiss You) I Hear Charlie Parker Playing (Sparks, 1994)
The Number One Song in Heaven (Sparks, 1979)
Balloon Man (Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, 1988)
The Cabbage (Teenage Fanclub, 1993)
Coming Up (Paul McCartney, 1980)
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man (Prince, 1987)
Picture Book (The Kinks, 1968)
I Want the One I Can't Have (The Smiths, 1985)
Rio (Duran Duran, 1982)
My Boo (Ghost Town DJs, 1996)
Eighteen and Dreaming (Peter Ivers, 1976)
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (Arctic Monkeys, 2018)
William, It Was Really Nothing (The Smiths, 1984)
Doctor Worm (They Might Be Giants, 1998)
You've Got Everything Now (The Smiths, 1984)
18 Carat Love Affair (The Associates, 1982)
This Charming Man (The Smiths, 1984)
Rubber Ring (The Smiths, 1985)
One Point Perspective (Arctic Monkeys, 2018)
A Swallow On My Neck (Morrissey, 1994)
Girl Afraid (The Smiths, 1984)
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others (The Smiths, 1986)
Long Long Journey (Bill Wurtz, 2018)
My Ever Changing Moods (The Style Council, 1984)
Moonage Daydream (David Bowie, 1972)
Drive-In Saturday (David Bowie, 1973)
That's Entertainment (The Jam, 1981)
Radio Free Europe (R.E.M., 1983)
Interesting Drug (Morrissey, 1989)
Babies (Pulp, 1993)
I Am The Resurrection (The Stone Roses, 1989)
White Flag (Guided By Voices, 2012)
I Would Die 4 U (Prince, 1984)
Desire Lines (Deerhunter, 2010)
Cruel to be Kind (Nick Lowe, 1978)
She Loves You No Less (My Bloody Valentine, 1989)
Never Say Goodbye (My Bloody Valentine, 1989)
Let's Go Crazy (Prince, 1984)
Bye Bye Bad Man (The Stone Roses, 1989)
She Bangs the Drum (The Stone Roses, 1989)
Gold (Spandau Ballet, 1983)
Don't Stop Now (Guided By Voices, 1996)
Chocolate Boy (Guided By Voices, 2012)
Little Red Corvette (Prince, 1982)
Delirious (Prince, 1982)
Queen Bitch (David Bowie, 1971)
Oh! You Pretty Things (David Bowie, 1971)
Changes (David Bowie, 1971)
Life on Mars? (David Bowie, 1971)
Twee (Tullycraft, 2002)
Ivy Ivy Ivy (Primal Scream, 1989)
Come Together (Primal Scream, 1990)
Dream Kitchen (Frazier Chorus, 1989)
Divine Thing (The Soup Dragons, 1992)
At Your Funeral (Saves The Day, 2001)
Run For Your Life (The Beatles, 1965)
Goodbye, Our Pastels Badges (Flipper's Guitar, 1989)
Haircut 100 (Flipper's Guitar, 1990)
My Golden Years (The Lemon Twigs, 2024)
In My Head (The Lemon Twigs, 2023)
So. Central Rain (R.E.M., 1984)
Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed, 1972)
Sprawl II (Arcade Fire, 2010)
Ready to Start (Arcade Fire, 2010)
Drag Days (Guided By Voices, 1996)
After Hours (Swing Out Sister, 1986)
Breakout (Swing Out Sister, 1986)
We Don't Care (Kanye West, 2004)
You On My Mind (Swing Out Sister, 1989)
Do You Have to Break My Heart? (The Darling Buds, 1990)
Sweetness and Light (Lush, 1990)
Wood Beez (Scritti Politti, 1985)
Toxic (Britney Spears, 2003)
Perfect Way (Scritti Politti, 1985)
Absolute (Scritti Politti, 1985)
Ready for the Floor (Hot Chip, 2009)
Bittersweet Poetry (Kanye West, 2007)
Material Girl (Madonna, 1984)
Madonna of the Wasps (Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, 1989)
Agoraphobia (Deerhunter, 2008)
Walk Out to Winter (Aztec Camera, 1983)
All I Need is Everything (Aztec Camera, 1984)
John the Birdman (David Sylvian & Robert Fripp, 1993)
Hairdresser on Fire (Morrissey, 1988)
Things I Will Keep (Guided By Voices, 1999)
Surgical Focus (Guided By Voices, 1999)
Slow Emotion Replay (The The, 1993)
Taxman (The Beatles, 1966)
Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles, 1966)
Sloop John B (The Beach Boys, 1966)
Helena (My Chemical Romance, 2004)
What About Me (The Cribs, 2004)
Girl Anachronism (The Dresden Dolls, 2003)
You Gotta Be (Des'ree, 1995)
Ma Baker (Boney M., 1977)
So It Goes (Nick Lowe, 1978)
I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Nick Lowe, 1978)
Controversy (Prince, 1981)
Prune, You Talk Funny (Gus Dapperton, 2017)
3AM (Thundercat, 2017)
Beautiful Girls (Sean Kingston, 2007)
Rock 'n' Roll (The Sounds, 2003)
Do It All Night (Prince, 1980)
Them Changes (Thundercat, 2017)
I'm Not Okay (My Chemical Romance, 2004)
Hazey Jane II (Nick Drake, 1970)
A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy Pt. 17-24 (Momus, 1988)
Cramps (Slow Pulp, 2023)
Falling Apart (Slow Pulp, 2020)
You Didn't Love Me Then (The Hit Parade, 1988)
Emasculate Me (The Cribs, 2009)
Shimmer (Fuel, 1998)
A Day in the Life (The Beatles, 1967)
Dear Boy (Paul McCartney, 1971)
Made You Look (Meghan Trainor, 2022)
Teddy Picker (Arctic Monkeys, 2007)
Neon (John Mayer, 1999)
No Such Thing (John Mayer, 2001)
Sing Your Life (Morrissey, 1991)
A Certain Romance (Arctic Monkeys, 2006)
Submarine (L'Impératrice, 2021)
Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys, 1966)
Little Dark Age (MGMT, 2018)
Wild Blue (John Mayer, 2021)
When You Die (MGMT, 2018)
Don't Know Why (Norah Jones, 2002)
Unspirited (Guided By Voices, 2001)
Girls Like Mystery (The Cribs, 2007)
When You Sleep (My Bloody Valentine, 1991)
Jaded Youth (The Cribs, 2012)
Diamonds and Pearls (Prince, 1991)
Vapour Trail (Ride, 1990)
Falling and Laughing (Orange Juice, 1980)
Dying Day (Orange Juice, 1982)
Not Too Soon (Throwing Muses, 1991)
I See You (Juliana Hatfield, 1992)
Just Like Heaven (The Cure, 1987)
Lovesong (The Cure, 1989)
It's Yer Money, I'm After Baby (The Wonder Stuff, 1988)
Popscene (Blur, 1992)
Sick of Myself (Matthew Sweet, 1995)
Polyester Bride (Liz Phair, 1991)
Crazy Town (Velocity Girl, 1993)
Sugarcube (Yo La Tengo, 1997)
Buddy Holly (Weezer, 1994)
Train in Vain (The Clash, 1979)
Trigger Cut/Wounded-Kite At :17 (Pavement, 1992)
Ready to Go (Republica, 1996)
Two of Hearts (Stacey Q, 1986)
I Love Perth (Pavement, 1995)
Stereo (Pavement, 1997)
Wouldn't It Be Nice (The Beach Boys, 1966)
Phantasies (Stephen Malkmus, 2001)
Jo Jo's Jacket (Stephen Malkmus, 2001)
Do You Want to Know a Secret? (The Beatles, 1963)
In Bloom (Nirvana, 1991)
Paperback Writer (The Beatles, 1966)
The Hairstyle of the Devil (Momus, 1989)
Lifestyles of the Rich And Famous (Revisted) (Momus, 1995)
All I Want (Toad The Wet Sprocket, 1991)
Who Says (John Mayer, 2009)
Band on the Run (Paul McCartney, 1973)
Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell, 1970)
Big Me (Foo Fighters, 1995)
Sunlight in a Jar (The Lucksmiths, 2005)
Jar of Cardinals (Guided By Voices, 1993)
Echos Myron (Guided By Voice, 1994)
Told You So (Depeche Mode, 1983)
Everything Counts (Depeche Mode, 1983)
12:51 (The Strokes, 2003)
Reptilia (The Strokes, 2003)
I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus (Beabadoobee, 2019)
Cabin Essence (The Beach Boys, 1966)
Rhythm Section Want Ad (They Might Be Giants, 1986)
Ana Ng (They Might Be Giants, 1988)
Surf's Up (The Beach Boys, 1966)
Soma (The Strokes, 2001)
Automatic Stop (The Strokes, 2003)
Barely Legal (The Strokes, 2001)
People Are People (Depeche Mode, 1984)
Coffee and TV (Blur, 1999)
Subspace Biographies (Robert Pollard, 1998)
World in My Eyes (Depeche Mode, 1990)
God Only Knows (The Beach Boys, 1966)
You Can't Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want) (Joe Jackson, 1984)
Down But Not Yet Out (Felt, 1986)
Ballad of the Band (Felt, 1990)
Dismantled King is Off the Throne (Felt, 1984)
Enjoy the Silence (Depeche Mode, 1990)
Policy of Truth (Depeche Mode, 1990)
Shine (Collective Soul, 1993)
Supalonely (Benee, 2020)
Sister (Prince, 1980)
Ping Pong (Stereolab, 1994)
Barbara Ann (The Beach Boys, 1965)
Together Again (Janet Jackson, 1997)
Stick Figures In Love (Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, 2011)
Ginger (Lilys, 1993)
Day of the Monkey (Lilys, 1994)
Will My Lord Be Gardening (Lilys, 2002)
The Generator (Lilys, 1999)
A Nanny in Manhattan (Lilys, 1996)
Don't Let's Start (They Might Be Giants, 1987)
Wake Up Boo! (The Boo Radleys, 1995)
Make Believe (Kero Kero Bonito, 2018)
Lazarus (The Boo Radleys, 1993)
Cohesive Scoops (Guided By Voices, 2019)
Head On (The Jesus and Mary Chain, 1989)
My Little Underground (The Jesus and Mary Chain, 1985)
Confessions Part 1 (Usher, 2004)
Confessions Part 2 (Usher, 2004)
All My Life (K-Ci & Jojo, 1998)
An Orgy of Critics (Say Anything, 2004)
Always Be My Baby (Mariah Carey, 1995)
The Headmaster Ritual (The Smiths, 1985)
Barbarism Begins at Home (The Smiths, 1985)
New You (My Bloody Valentine, 2013)
Mixed Bizness (Beck, 1999)
How Soon Is Now? (The Smiths, 1985)
Evergreen (Brian Jonestown Massacre, 1995)
Maps (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 2003)
Wrapped Around Your Finger (The Police, 1983)
I Love Kangaroos (Guided By Voices, 2018)

Solar Sister (The Posies, 1993)
Death of the Party (Keene Brothers, 2006)
Don't Stand So Close To Me (The Police, 1980)
Driven To Tears (The Police, 1980)
Walking On The Moon (The Police, 1979)
Seven Days (Sting, 1993)
If I Ever Lose My Faith In You (Sting, 1993)
This Is Why (Paramore, 2023)
Shadows In The Rain (Sting, 1985)
Shape of My Heart (Sting, 1993)
Mayor of Simpleton (XTC, 1989)
Senses Working Overtime (XTC, 1982)
The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead (XTC, 1992)
When Love Breaks Down (Prefab Sprout, 1985)
Moving the River (Prefab Sprout, 1985)
Hey Manhattan! (Prefab Sprout, 1988)
The Best of Jill Hives (Guided By Voices, 2003)
The Best Jewel Thief In The World (Prefab Sprout, 2013)
I Never Play Basketball Now (Prefab Sprout, 1984)
The New Pollution (Beck, 1996)
Conspiracy of Owls (Robert Pollard, 2004)
Only a Shadow (Cleaners From Venus, 1982)
The Jangling Man (Cleaners From Venus, 1990)
Christmas in Suburbia (Cleaners From Venus, 1990)
What Do All the People Know? (The Monroes, 1982)
Once Bitten Twice Shy (Great White, 1989)
Trampoline (Kero Kero Bonito, 2016)
Only Acting (Kero Kero Bonito, 2018)
Chick Habit (April Match, 1994)
Rearrange (Miles Kane, 2011)
Holiday (Jason Falkner, 1999)
Korega Watashino Ikiru Michi (PUFFY, 1996)
1901 (Phoenix, 2009)
Lisztomania (Phoenix, 2009)
Too Young (Phoenix, 1999)
Never Tell (Black Marble, 2019)
Self Guided Tours (Black Marble, 2016)
Nichiyoubi No Musume (PUFFY, 1999)
Cellphone's Dead (Beck, 2006)
Here I Go (Syd Barrett, 1970)
Avalon (Roxy Music, 1982)
Water Fountain (tUnE-yArDs, 2014)
Young Folks (Peter Bjorn and John, 2006)
Tonight, Tonight (The Smashing Pumpkins, 1995)
Alright (Supergrass, 1995)
Told You So (Paramore, 2017)
Hard Times (Paramore, 2017)
Venus Fly (Grimes, 2015)
Nancy Boy (Placebo, 1997)
The Bitter End (Placebo, 2003)
It's Working (MGMT, 2010)
Beautiful Ones (Suede, 1996)
Lovefool (The Cardigans, 1996)
Better Off Alone (Alice Deejay, 1999)
The Legend of Chavo Guerrero (The Mountain Goats, 2015)
Turn! Turn! Turn! (The Byrds, 1965)
Eight Miles High (The Byrds, 1966)
Time of the Season (The Zombies, 1968)
Girl (Beck, 2005)
Le Freak (CHIC, 1978)
I Want Your Love (CHIC, 1978)
Good Times (CHIC, 1979)
Hey Sandy (POLARIS, 1999)
Duvet (Boa, 1998)
I Write Sins Not Tragedies (Panic! At The Disco, 2005)
A New England (Billy Brag, Kirsty MacColl, 1985)
Sexuality (Billy Brag, 1991)
The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel, 1964)
Scarborough Fair/Canticle (Simon & Garfunkel, 1966)
Scatman (Scatman John, 1995)
St. Judy's Comet (Paul Simon, 1973)
I Keep Forgettin' (Michael McDonald, 1982)
What a Fool Believes (The Doobie Brothers, 1978)
Open Your Eyes (The Doobie Brothers, 1978)
I.G.Y. (Donald Fagen, 1982)
1979 (The Smashing Pumpkins, 1995)
Tree Among Shrubs (Men I Trust, 2021)
Paper Bag (Fiona Apple, 1999)
Green Flower Street (Donald Fagen, 1982)
New Frontier (Donald Fagen, 1982)
Hey Nineteen (Steely Dan, 1980)
Are 'Friends' Electric? (Tubeway Army, 1979)
All Night Long (All Night) (Lionel Richie, 1983)
Fragments of Time (Daft Punk, 2013)
Digital Love (Daft Punk, 2013)
Out of Touch (Daryl Hall & John Oates, 1984)
Swingin' Party (The Replacements, 1985)
While You See A Chance (Steve Winwood, 1980)
Inside Out (Eve 6, 1998)
Hey Jealousy (Gin Blossoms, 1992)
Name (Goo Goo Dolls, 1998)
Slide (Goo Goo Dolls, 1998)
Virtual Insanity (Jamiroquai, 1996)
Possum Kingdom (The Toadies, 1994)
Your Wildest Dreams (The Moody Blues, 1986)
Flagpole Sitta (Harvey Danger, 1997)
april's-bloom (Julie, 2021)
I Hate My Generation (Sloan, 1994)
People of the Sky (Sloan, 1994)
I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar (Jonathan Richman, 1992)
Roadrunner (The Modern Lovers, 1976)
Cars (Gary Numan, 1979)
I Die You Die (Gary Numan, 1980)
Government Center (The Modern Lovers, 1976)
Driving Around (Radio Storm) (Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, 1993)
Where It's At (Beck, 1996)
Think I'm In Love (Beck, 2006)
Show Me Love (Robyn, 1993)
Lost in the Supermarket (The Clash, 1979)
Hey Mickey (Toni Basil, 1981)
Koka Kola (The Clash, 1979)
Shameika (Fiona Apple, 2020)
Whisper to a Scream (Icicle Works, 1984)
Crush (Jennifer Page, 1998)
I Really Like You (Carly Rae Jepsen, 2015)

Time = $$$ (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, 2015)

Queen of Eyes (The Soft Boys, 1980)

Starstruck (The Kinks, 1968)

Ride on Shooting Star (The Pillows, 2000)

Thank You, My Twilight (The Pillows, 2002)

1 / 2 (Makoto Kawamoto, 1997)

Hohoemi no Bakudan / Smile Bomb (Matsuko Mawatari/Sarah White, 1992)

Wasted Feelings (Foxy Shazam, 2012)

Will You Come and Fetch Me (of Montreal, 2004)

Lysergic Bliss (of Montreal, 2004)

I Want the World to Stop (Belle and Sebastian, 2010)

Funny Little Frog (Belle & Sebastian, 2005)

Seeing Other People (Belle & Sebastian, 1996)

If You Find Yourself Caught in Love (Belle & Sebastian, 2003)

Young Adult Friction (The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, 2009)

Eurydice (The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, 2014)

Fresh Tattoo (The Mountain Goats, 2023)

And I Don't (So Now I Do) (Robert Pollard, 1999)

It's All I Can Do (The Cars, 1987)

Sorry for Laughing (Josef K, 1981)

Bohemian Like You (The Dandy Warhols, 2000)

Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth (The Dandy Warhols, 1997)

Holy Touch (Foxy Shazam, 2012)

The Beautiful Ones (Suede, 1996)

Moving (Suede, 1993)

A.M. 180 (Grandaddy, 1997)

Basketcase (Green Day, 1994)

Brain Stew/Jaded (Green Day, 1995)

Adam's Song (Blink-182, 1999)

Make Out Club (Unrest, 1993)

Cath Carroll (Unrest, 1993)

White Freckles (Ariel Pink, 2014)

Lipstick (Ariel Pink, 2014)

There She Goes (The La's, 1988)

Trampolene (Julian Cope, 1987)

The Greatness and Perfection of Love (Julian Cope, 1984)

Bill Drummond Said (Julian Cope, 1984)

Yoga (The Pastels, 1995)

Love Come Round (The Blue Aeroplanes, 1990)

And Stones (The Blue Aeroplanes, 1990)

Want It All Back (Yoko Kanno, 1998)

Cosmic Dare (Pretty with a Pistol) (Yoko Kanno, 2004)

Ask DNA (Yoko Kanno, 2001)

Bittersweet Bundle of Misery (Graham Coxon, 2004)

City Girl (Kevin Shields, 2003)

Percolator (Charly Bliss, 2017)

Glitter (Charly Bliss, 2017)

Capacity (Charly Bliss, 2019)

Nice to Know You (Incubus, 2001)

Where the Light Gets In (Primal Scream, 2016)

Ship to Wreck (Florence + The Machine, 2015)

Ur Heart Stops (fantasy of a broken heart, 2024)

Lucky Charm (The Apples in Stereo, 1995)

Shoot the Singer (Pavement, 2002)

Film's Camera (Lilys, 2002)

Wide Open Road (The Triffids, 1986)

Cattle and Cane (The Go-Betweens, 1983)

On My Block (The Go-Betweens, 1983)

There Are Ghosts (Karate, 1998)

The Same Stars (Karate, 1998)

Fell in Love with a Girl (The White Stripes, 2001)

If You Can See Me (David Bowie, 2013)

Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk (Pink Floyd, 1967)

Lucifer Sam (Pink Floyd, 1967)

Ship of Fools (World Party, 1986)

Way Down Now (World Party, 1990)

Pale Spectre (The Wake, 1985)

Mandinka (Sinéad O'Connor, 1987)

Letter From the Editor – OCGM#1

Dear Loyal and Very Imaginary Readers,

This is Forrest, typing to you straight from Retro Arcadia. I am also known as: The Editor, The Boy, The Idiot, or online as buru5; the latter of which derived from the color, but with butchered spelling resembling poor Japanese-English pronunciation and the number 5 tacked-on at random; an ancient and very-insensitive-inside-joke that is now worn like a scarlet letter of bygone days when ridiculing how people talk was peak humor, or: being seventeen-years-old.

But enough about me; welcome aboard the Pequod, or: the first issue of On Computer Games Monthly. The name “Pequod” feels appropriate here as this magazine has been an obsession of mine since at least sixty moons ago, much to the detriment of my wife and children who have allowed me to build an office-shed in the backyard to contain the clickity-clacking of my absurdly-loud-and-very-mechanical keyboard. But here I am, getting off track again.

Within the wistful pages of On Computer Games Monthly, you will find articles covering computer games released during a specific month and year of the standard Gregorian calendar; be warned, however, as you may find the occasional article that breaks the rules. Outside of my own writing, every issue of On Computer Games Monthly features guest writers of kindred spirit sourced from open corners of the internet; and, in this way, On Computer Games Monthly is a collaborative writing effort; a digital collective of people who take computer games way too seriously.

A core tenet of On Computer Games is that gaming, like most things in this heinous world, is a subjective experience, and even the most poorly 'reviewed' games can produce intense feelings of joy and nostalgia and make you think real hard about serious-real-life-stuff. Likewise, a critically acclaimed “masterpiece” can make you scream in rage and walk into oncoming traffic on purpose. At On Computer Games, we strive to capture this subjective quality of gaming, and as such, you won’t find traditional reviews here – this is not Game Informer – instead, you will find stories about wanting to kill your friends, tanuki lore, karate belt tests, nuclear bombs, religious dogma, and the fishing pond behind grandma’s old house.

The ethos of this publication is straightforward. I have always been of the belief that mixing money with art is a sure-fire way to dilute the artwork; once money is exchanged, the art suffers and, inevitably, money becomes more important than the art itself. As such, On Computer Games will never beg, paywall, or accept money from anyone ever. Neverever. We are self-funded forevermore; some may think this is a noble pursuit, others may think it’s a proactive deflection of the fact that my writing is not good enough to warrant making money to begin with – and, as with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

If any of this resonates with you and you would like to contribute to a future issue of this publication or advertise one of your own passion projects within these pages, please reach out to me directly on Mastodon @buru5@mstdn.games or through email at f0rrest@protonmail.com.

But without further ado: computer games, or something.

#computergames #autobiographical

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The butterfly is a symbol of change – of transformation; from caterpillar, to cocoon, and finally to butterfly.

Metamorphosis, it can mean whatever you want it to mean; a new job at K-Mart, shaving your head, getting a tattoo without mom’s consent, breaking up with your “true love” that you only met three weeks ago, being grounded “for life” because dad found a bag of pot hidden underneath your dresser, or: things a high school kid in 1995 would be doing between episodes of The X-Files and listening to noisy alternative rock on a portable Magnavox Discman that takes eight double-A batteries and comes complete with DBB – Dynamic Bass Boost – and digital servo processing and incessant skipping at even the slightest movement. That kid may be listening to No Doubt’s “Tragic Kingdom” or The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” or even Beck’s “Mellow Gold,” but they would be missing out if they weren’t listening to Helium’s new record: “The Dirt of Luck.”

For Washington D.C. local Mary Timony, metamorphosis meant channeling the leftover angst and “fuck you” energy from her own transformative teenage years into walls of sound. Timony received classical training at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and had already established herself in the underground noise rock scene with her previous band Autoclave, known for their technical guitar noodling rather than cohesive song structures. Timony would go on to channel this technical noodling into noisy pop rock after moving to Boston and joining the band Helium as their lead singer and guitarist. The journey to cult status began with the release of the EP “Pirate Prude” in 1994, followed by the critically acclaimed LP “The Dirt of Luck” in 1995.

If Autoclave was the cocoon, then Helium was the butterfly that emerged from that cocoon. And this butterfly wore all black, Doc Martens, and a serious chip on her shoulder.

Many of the songs on “The Dirt of Luck” are coming-of-age stories for the modern girl in suburban America, filled with angst, lost loves, obsessions, and anger toward archaic gender roles and the expectations they thrust upon women; these songs are brimming with lyrical flourishes fit for horror films and monster movies. Mary Timony and Helium would have fit perfectly alongside The Breeders or Shy on stage at The Bronze – the nightclub in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – except Timony’s lyrics possess a poetic verve that outshines her ’90s peers. It would be easy to say that Mary Timony sounds like another ’90s female singer, but these comparisons are often vacuous and the prominence of these comparisons in rock journalism is suspicious, especially when the same type of comparison is rarely done for male rock singers. In the ’90s, and sometimes even now, women in rock bands are seen as a novelty with only a few different archetypes used to describe them. “On Pop Music,” however, prefers to hold itself to a higher standard by describing what singers actually sound like, to varying degrees of success: and Mary Timony sounds like Mary Timony – nothing more, nothing less. Timony’s singing is like a sardonic pout whispered in the dark corner of a dive bar occupied solely by vampires; a rage bubbles underneath her airy vocals, and she expresses this anger through walls of harsh guitar noise – and the song “Superball” perfectly showcases this.

Video: Helium – Superball

“Superball” is the metamorphosis – it opens with a dirty vortex of sound, a ritualistic drum beat accompanied by a screwdriver being dragged across guitar strings but suddenly the cocoon bursts with a build-up of Sonic the Hedgehog synths, and the butterfly emerges in a discordant flurry of guitar tones that drift somewhere between aimless chugging and revving a chainsaw while wearing a pink bunny suit. It’s brutal and cute and unexpected and demands your attention. Mary sings in pout and petulance: “I’m small, like a superball. Throw me at the wall. I’m fragile, like an eggshell. I’m mad as hell.” And you feel it. We are small and fragile, and although this heinous world throws us at the wall, we are resilient like a superball, and we bounce back mad as hell. Verily, we are a bundle of contradictions, and this resonates within us, bounces around inside our brains, and compels humming for weeks. And this all happens within two minutes and thirty-five seconds on a song that sounds like it was recorded in fellow Matador Records alumni Robert Pollard’s basement – in the best possible way.

“Whenever Helium took a break from working on the record down in Philly, we played Sonic the Hedgehog. We got super into the video game music on Sonic the Hedgehog (and Road Rash, too, I think). It has this really thin and extreme kind of quality that’s cool, so we were making the record, we found ourselves thinking, Okay, how do we get it to sound more like that? We also literally tried to get the record to mimic the actual sound quality of the four-track recordings, which is pretty crappy—just flat- and trebly-sounding.” -Mary Timony. 2017. Talkhouse Interview.

“Superball” is an example of a perfect pop song: catchy, concise, considered. It builds up and pays off. It combines Helium’s best and worst aspects – unexpected hooks and excessive guitar noodling – into an angsty anthem that resonates with even the most stoic of souls, epitomizing Helium’s unique style of musically juxtaposing the yin and yang of ugly-beauty. And the entire album follows suit. “Pat’s Trick” and “Trixie’s Star” ease the listener into these contradictions slowly before jumping headfirst into full-blown metamorphosis with “Baby’s Going Underground,” which caterpillars with feedback like that of an air-raid siren then cocoons into a wall of noise before butterflying into gentle xylophone-tinged ear candy; “Silver Angel” playfully mixes abrasive chugging with ringing synths before putting on the brakes with a sludgy chorus that sounds like it was fed through an old radio. And “Medusa” opens with repetitive chanting that flows into a fluttering chorus that sticks with you for weeks.

Just as Helium has lulled you into yinyang complacency, they shift gears with “Comet #9”; a haunting piano-only number that could serve as the build-up to a jump scare in a monster flick and signals the final leg of the album. From this point, there is a lull in the noise until the depressive slide-guitar ballad of “Honeycomb” kicks in, describing an obsessive girlfriend with a foul mouth that’s “sweeter than a honeycomb” but “slower than a valium,” and one can’t help but wonder if the song is autobiographical in nature as Mary Timony sings with a sullen irony that could only come from personal experience. The song compositionally mirrors valium with its downtempo groove and simple melody plucked lazily over a thick layer of heavy distortion.

To craft an album full of Superballs would be a monumental feat, and while “The Dirt of Luck” comes close – it doesn’t quite reach that level of consistent brilliance. Songs such as “Medusa,” “Honeycomb,” and, of course, “Superball” are untouchable pop rock classics but the inclusion of more subdued, meandering tracks such as “All the X’s Have Wings” and “Oh, The Wind and the Rain” and “Flowers of the Apocalypse” on the second half of the album hurt the pacing and make Helium’s first full-length album a heavily front-loaded experience.

The butterfly is a symbol of change – of transformation; from caterpillar to cocoon and finally to butterfly. Helium’s music captures this metamorphosis within 44 minutes and 23 seconds on one of the most idiosyncratic albums of the ‘90s – even if it’s a bit dirty sometimes.

#Music #Helium

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Some songs drift ephemeral like fireflies in dark-summer-skies before street lamps buzz and blend bioluminescence into brightness; others never fade, and when the stars are perfectly aligned and sound waves vibrate the eardrums just right: they last forever, crystallizing within the subconscious subjectives of day-to-day-life; these songs take on the properties of all five senses: the dim orange lighting accompanying the musky smell of a garage-turned-office; weak plush of a thin-hospital-blanket; or the taste of cheap Maruchan you had for dinner the last three nights. Without realizing it, these songs have crept their way into the deepest recesses of your psyche, composing the soundtrack of your life.

Mom always said it was Jackson 5’s ‘I Want You Back,’ playing in the living room in black and white on “The Ed Sullivan Show” when she was sixteen, waiting for her high school sweetheart to buzz the bell before their first date. The same song started serendipitously after sucking-down milkshakes at the diner, minutes before the first kiss near the Pontiac that facilitated the drive home; the die cast, the psychic etching ensured. Fifty-three years later and that diner’s derelict but the music is still as clear as 1969.

Musical Imprintation can’t be forced – it just happens – and the less you think about it, the more likely it is to happen; the music is part of you now, whether you like it or not.

Most recently, for me: it was Black Marble’s ‘Self Guided Tours’ off their 2016 album “It’s Immaterial”; a song twinkling with starry guitar bits over delicately oscillating synthesizers; all innocuous until sub-machine-gun-snares of the drum-machine-persuasion burst into the mix accompanied by a second stuttering guitar line resembling neuroscientists’ attempt at capturing the very same snapping-synapse-sensation of ‘creating psychic-song-etchings’ in a test tube; this is all complimented by a simple bass line with just enough bounce and groove to be catchy; the vocals, low disembodied incantations attempting to summon specters of 80s-past – “you’re the owner of a lonely heart” – float somewhere in the ether alongside quivering synths coloring the choruses. The lyrical content could be about anything, but for me it’s about driving to the Hot Dog Shack to get my wife and I something to eat less than 12-hours after the birth of my son, Arthur.

Video: Black Marble – Self Guided Tours

Merely 48-hours earlier, April 25th, 2023: I was sitting in my dimly lit garage-turned-office with a leaky-water-heater writing an essay on the classic tactical role-playing game “Tactics Ogre” for my virgin computer-games-website ‘oncomputer.games,’ listening to – among other things – “It’s Immaterial” by Black Marble. I was on week-one of six-week-paternity-leave from one of those cartoony-soul-crushing-sales-jobs; the paternity-leave started a week early because my wife was way-overdue and missed two due-dates already; Arthur clearly didn’t want to come out. The next day we had an appointment at the hospital to get my wife induced, or more accurately: our lives changed forever.

And that’s what we did. It was a nice hospital room in the maternity-wing with bright-white-lights that I immediately adjusted to the dimmest possible setting, big windows overlooking a courtyard with flowing curtains that I promptly drew to keep the light out, a wall-mounted and very-ancient-CRT receiving high-definition cable through a coaxial that I immediately tuned to whatever channel played the bass line from Seinfeld (the TV setup, as you can imagine, was true-low-def; the mismatched input-output-combo created terrible picture quality with fuzzy-lines-forever and malformed-aspect-ratios consisting of very-large-black-bars-baked-in). There was also a small blue couch with hard cushions and thin blankets that I slept on a few times before realizing that it folded out into a full-sized-bed.

Without delving into the biologicals-of-birthing (something I will likely never write about), the induction was a success; a beautiful screaming baby boy with a full head of red hair was born on April 27th, 2023 – my wife insists the hair gave her heartburn and after we cleaned him off, we promptly styled that heartburn-hair into a fauxhawk and gave him lots of kisses on the head. My wife held him close, skin-to-skin, and he was ours forevermore. That night, he slept by our side in a transparent bassinet; we woke every few hours to a nurse checking on us and piercing-newborn-cries quickly solved by warm bottles of formula.

We didn’t have a care in the world; working was irrelevant and mortgage payments were immaterial; nothing mattered except what was right there in that spacious hospital room.

We had to stay at the hospital for a few days, primarily so the doctors could test Arthur’s bilirubin-levels (or something) and make sure my wife was fit enough to go home. Naturally, a day after my son’s birth, both my wife and I wanted something-other-than-hospital-food so I decided to take a drive to the local Hot Dog Shack and pick something up; I ordered two large fries and a plain hotdog and she ordered some-sort-of-sausage-thing; so, I packed my things – wallet and keys – and left the hospital for the first time in two days; the double-doors opened for me with infrared sensors (or: Jedi Mind Tricks); the harsh sunlight burned my retinas and the moderate coastal heat felt like a sauna after the cold of the hospital, but I was hungry so I hopped into my Toyota and pressed the modern ignition button; the car revved up and the bluetooth connected my phone to the stereo system and the last song I was listening to in the garage-turned-office started playing.

It was ‘Self Guided Tours.’

I drove through the busy midday roads to that Hot Dog Shack with a back-and-forth bob to the smile on my face, singing loudly and privately along with the music. Happy. And that’s how it happened.

The psychic etching complete; and now, whenever I hear ‘Self Guided Tours’ or – literally – anything from “It’s Immaterial,” I am psychically transported back to that snapshot of late April, 2023. If I had known this etching would occur maybe I would have picked something with relevant lyrical content – something cliched like Will Smith’s version of ‘Just the Two of Us’ – but it just happened.

Before I knew it, Black Marble was part of the soundtrack to my life.

*view from the afternoon; April 28th, 2023.

Black Marble, in its current iteration, is just one guy: Chris Stewart, a once resident Brooklyn New Yorker and bygone fixture of the Brooklyn ‘darkwave’ scene where he – and former bandmate Ty Kube – made a name for themselves as ‘that band that sounds like Joy Division’ by playing at local New York clubs before releasing their first record, “A Different Arrangement,” on October 9, 2012. While it’s easy to point at the Joy Division influences, Black Marble sounds far more like early New Order with some “A Broken Frame”-era Depeche Mode thrown in for good measure. Stewart primarily dons a bass guitar in live shows, playing ultra-repetitive but memorable Peter Hook-styled bass lines, while Kube contributes synthesizers, laying down electronic drum loops and cascades of neon-hued bleeps-and-bloops, with a touch of shimmer and gloom. Stewart and Kube went their separate ways when Stewart left New York for Los Angeles, but – being Stewart’s baby – Black Marble never truly dissolved.

I sort of took the man-of-leisure approach to the city, and after living there for so long, you get to a point where you’re just like, “Well, I’ve been to every party, I’ve been offered crack cocaine by Natasha Lyonne like six times already, or whatever,” and you sort of reach an end … obviously, I’m not with my old bandmate [Ty Kube] anymore and people are like, “What’s up, dude? Is there a rift?” And I always made all of Black Marble’s music, so I was always going to find a friend wherever I was to help. If Ty felt like moving to Los Angeles just to be in my stupid band, he could, but he’s got more shit going on, hopefully, than that. I was just sick of New York, and there isn’t really a better answer than that. -Chris Stewart, 10/18/2026. CLRVYNT Interview.

Chris Stewart had written all the music for “It’s Immaterial” before his move to Los Angeles, and it was written with big-moves-in-mind. This results in an album that – while superficially dark on the surface – flickers effervescently with optimism’s flame; this dichotomy is on full display from the start of the record, with ‘Interdiction’ or: something not dissimilar to a Merzbow track that I would turn off immediately: noise, horror-ambiance, frivolity – a sine scream, electronic oscillations, robots powering-up-and-down-again, futuristic occultations, and more sine screams. ‘Interdiction’ is a ‘mood,’ as someone like Anthony Fantano might say; a horror-driven mood like hungry ghosts escaping from the machine. Black Marble wants you to think this is the ‘essence’ of the record, but that is very much not the case and serves only as an unpleasant waste of time – the opposite of what follows immediately afterwards.

‘Interdiction’ flows into ‘Iron Lung,’ which takes the Peter Hook bass lines and puts them on an Evo Firewire surfboard riding a gnarly wave while Stewart sings in baritone-echo-tones over sparsely-sparkling-synths; it’s obvious ‘single’ material, that one song on every album begging to be overplayed to the point of nausea, and will be. ‘It’s Conditional’ follows, setting the tone with the sound of a marble dropping on hard floor as a reminder that: ‘yes, you are listening to a band with the word ‘marble’ in their name’; and while this all seems very tacky on first read, ‘It’s Conditional’ is one of the most unique stand-out tracks on the album, with all the similar bassy-synths wrapped in moody pop packaging just in time for Halloween.

Video: Black Marble – It's Conditional

And that’s the crux of ‘It’s Immaterial’: not a cemetery at night like the first filler track tricks you into believing, but a moody pop record with hints of beautiful optimism sprinkled throughout that hits all the right nostalgic notes, getting the synapses spinning like a hard drive writing memories in real-time. From the poignant lament of ‘Missing Sibling,’ with its simple reflective chord progression driven by fuzzy bass tones, to the sea-saw synths of ‘Frisk,’ the rubber bands and minigun firing blips-and-bloops of ‘Golden Heart,’ and the starry-skied-and-hopeful electronics of the closing track ‘Collene.’ It’s all very popful; and if you replaced Chris Stewart’s ghostly baritone with Madonna’s mezzo-soprano, you’d have a Billboard Top 100 in no time.

The girl on the supremely iconic “It’s Immaterial” album cover is Halle Saxon Gaines of the Los Angeles-based band Automatic. She stands in front of upper-class suburban coastal homes with a cold, scornful glare into the camera, gesturing in Thelema, dressed in a white collar and black blazer. She is looking down on you, but it’s all a facade; just like your neighborhood crush in high school who, over summer break ‘04, discovered The Cure, dyed her hair black-black, and went full goth: underneath the dark Covergirl eyeliner, black Revlon Colorsilk, and all the doom and gloom, that bubbly girl you used to trade Pokémon cards with and explore homes under-construction with and ding-dong-ditch with is still there, about to burst out at the seams.

#music #BlackMarble #Autobiographical

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Charles Manson: “I’m still ten-years-old in your world. In your world, I’m still a kid. I’m not gonna grow up. I’m not gonna go to college.”

Tom Snyder: “How old are you in your world?”

Charles Manson: “Uh … forever since breakfast.”

After the release of 1986’s “Life’s Rich Pageant,” R.E.M. quickly recorded a seven-song EP titled “Forever Since Breakfast,” which flew under the radar without much radio play. Michael Stipe, the band’s frontman and singer, was smoking two packs a day throughout the recording sessions, which resulted in a phlegmy-hoarseness to the vocals that ended up sounding more like a Really Good Michael Stipe Impersonator than Michael Stipe himself; Peter Buck’s guitar playing, apart from the hyper-melodious Byrds-like arpeggios in ‘She Wants to Know,’ could best be described as ‘phoning it in’ but still good enough to complement the vocal-driven hooks (one might say the hooks themselves are guided-by-voices instead of traditional instrumentation); Mike Mills’ bass playing is just lost somewhere in the poor mixing, and Bill Berry’s drumming is unsurprisingly on-point, as usual, pulsing and keeping the beat as one does when banging something with a stick.

The title of the record, “Forever Since Breakfast,” comes from a 1981 interview between Tom Snyder, host of “The Tomorrow Show,” and Charles Manson; the latter of whom was locked up in California Medical Facility – male-only state prison – for seven counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit even more murders; and after three parole petitions were rejected: locked up, pretty much forever (since breakfast); a phrase that Charles Manson himself used in response to Snyder’s aggressive questioning of “How old are you in your world?” to Manson’s obvious psychobabble.

Video: Tom Snyder interviews Charles Manson.

Tom Snyder’s interview style, best described as going-to-the-principal’s-office-when-you’re-twelve (when you didn’t even throw the first punch), often elicited the most virulent responses from his guests, and his guest, in this case – being a total caligula-type – was the perfect ratings-booster (22.2 million viewers!). The ratings needed boosting so badly that “The Tomorrow Show” executive producer, Roger Ailes, paid $10,000 in ‘consultation fees’ to ‘free-lance journalist’ Nuel Emmon (actually just Manson’s prison buddy), who ‘made it happen’; all parties agreed that Emmon was pivotal to securing the interview with the Sorceror of Helter Skelter, thereby solidifying Mr. Snyder and his entire network as certified death-dealers.

Roger Ailes later became CEO of Fox News and was ‘totally not forced to resign’ after multiple sexual assault allegations against him; perhaps paying off friends-of-murderers to secure television interviews is a decent indicator of moral values – something for Fox News to consider next time during the interview process, provided they have moral values themselves (which they don’t).

The irony here is that while paying off a murderer’s friend to secure an interview with said murderer is probably real-bad, we wouldn’t have Guided By Voices’ “Forever Since Breakfast” if the interview had never taken place. Where would Guided By Voices be today without Charles Manson’s neuromythic rantings?

Probably the same place they are today (39-albums-in, as of 2023) just with a different title for their first record, now that I think about it.

*”Forever Since Breakfast” album insert, featuring a young Robert Pollard’s scribblings

Well, I suppose the jig is up; this article is not about an R.E.M. record, but – you guessed it – a Guided By Voices record. Robert Pollard, the 29-year-old ex-school-teacher from Dayton, Ohio and main character of Guided By Voices, was clearly obsessed with R.E.M. during the making of this record, imitating Michael Stipe’s inflection down to a tee and telling guitarist Paul Comstock to ‘sound as much like Peter Buck as possible or you’re fired’ and he was fired by the writing of the next album for – probably – ‘sounding too much like Peter Buck.’ Because, Guided By Voices won’t sound anything like this again for another decade; this being: cohesive, formulaic jangle-pop-rock with plainly-decipherable lyrics and semi-decent production that sounds a lot like R.E.M. And that’s a good thing, or a bad thing, or something – depends on who you ask.

And while there’s no ‘So. Central Rain’ or ‘Radio Free Europe’ here, “Forever Since Breakfast” is still a really good, consistent R.E.M. record, with songs that come very close to the splendor of early R.E.M. If you don’t believe me, just listen to ‘The Other Place,’ a track that sounds like it was inappropriately shelved during the recording of “Murmur”; complete with Stipe-mimicry, vaguely political lyrics – “change has got to come, and I’ll be the first to admit it” – melodious Buck-like arpeggios, and a chorus that kicks you in the head – “don’t you understand anything?!”

Video: Guided By Voices – The Other Place

Guided By Voices already has ‘rockathon’ on the mind because if there’s one thing “Forever Since Breakfast” does better than its inspiration, it’s rock ‘n’ roll. From the beginning, ‘Land of Danger’ bursts into your headspace with a blur of babbling weirdness that shifts suddenly into a chorus of shouts perfect for cross-generational-jumping-up-and-down (that means: music even your flower-power-parents can rock out to). ‘Sometimes I Cry,’ another rockathon, continues to showcase Robert Pollard’s knack for writing immediately accessible hooks right-out-the-gate, cramming so much melody into three minutes that it’s somehow impossible to appreciate on the first listen. Along with ‘Let’s Ride,’ ‘She Wants To Know,’ and ‘The Other Place’ (the latter being my most-repeated), we already have an album that is far more consistent than the next five Guided By Voices albums combined.

And why is that? On “Forever Since Breakfast,” Robert Pollard showcases his superb songwriting ability, with a knack for composing radio-friendly hits; crafting an excellent pop-rock record full of hooks and intricate melodies, a ‘proof of concept,’ but immediately drops this approach with the release of his next full album, “Devil Between My Toes.” Moving into a friend’s 8-track DYI-studio and creating far less accessible music with very dodgy production where the rock-pop only shines through between fuzz-and-drunk, dubbed affectionately by fans as ‘lo-fi.’ Almost like Robert Pollard wanted to prove himself, “look what I can do.” And then, once he did it, moved on to his true passion: Whatever The Fuck He Wanted.

“Oh yeah, we’ve always wanted to go into a big studio. Our first record, Forever Since Breakfast, was [made] in a big studio. We’ve always had no success whatsoever in a big studio. The four-track stuff we started doing in the late eighties or early Nineties sounded to me much better than the big studio stuff. We had more control of it and we did things more spontaneously. We’d go into a big studio and work with these unsympathetic engineers and it just didn’t work.” – Robert Pollard, Mo Ryan Interview. 1996

As always, the truth is simpler than the myth, or is it the other-way-round? “Forever Since Breakfast” wasn’t successful, and Dayton, Ohio’s Guided By Voices consistently faced derision in their local scene as an R.E.M. imposter band with little-to-no fanfare; the album didn’t sell well, putting Robert Pollard’s expectations in check, but he also didn’t have full control of his ambition. The big studio, rented by the hour, didn’t care about his vision or understand his work, and consequently, he couldn’t accomplish everything he wanted. Robert Pollard invested the effort-of-kings, crafting seven catchy pop-rock songs, yet wasn’t appreciated and grew jaded of the big studio experience, leading him to Stop Worrying and Just Do Whatever the Fuck He Wanted instead.

“Forever Since Breakfast” is an impressive 23-minute rockathon that might be a little too R.E.M.-inspired in some places, but it’s worth listening to if you’re interested in the history of the band or just pop music in general. “Forever Since Breakfast” is the ultimate ‘proof of concept’ album for a band in its formative years. Guided By Voices won’t sound this cohesive, focused, and rich until their 1994 hit “Bee Thousand,” with only bits and pieces of this shining through on their next six albums.

“Forever Since Breakfast” is the best R.E.M. record that’s not an R.E.M. record. And that’s fine.

#Music #GuidedByVoices

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Shakedown 2005. I’m real young. I’m a recluse. I’m a wreck. My parents split five years earlier; Mom remarried and moved to a Posh Island Community in Coastal Georgia; Dad remarried but stayed in Atlanta, my hometown. I was given the great honor of choosing which parent’s heart to rip out of their chest and, naturally, I picked Dad because Mom let me do whatever I wanted with no supervision. Years prior, in September 2001, Cowboy Bebop aired on Adult Swim’s programming block, three years after its Japanese airing on TV Tokyo; I watched the whole series in the dim light of way-past-bedtime with one hand on the TV-remote in case the parents wanted to check on me. Two years later, in October 2003, Final Fantasy XI, a massive multiplayer online game, was released on PC and I was on the bleeding edge, consuming it all in real-time; ‘island time,’ as the very-elderly-beach-bum-elite of the Posh Island Community would call it.

Blessed with a rich step-dad, a Dell Dimension 4550, and nowhere to go but down; I had all the bells and whistles a 2000s-kid could possibly want: computer games, big TVs, every modern game console, friends in fantasy worlds, an office to lose myself in, and two girlfriends who didn’t know about each other.

I also had three LiveJournal accounts, two of which were for my roleplaying-character-profiles. None of them exist anymore (I checked). I enjoyed writing; it’s the only artistic thing I’m remotely good at. So, of course, I spent a lot of time in Yahoo! Messenger chatrooms typing up ‘paragraph-style-roleplaying’ with random strangers online.

I was on Adderall (Amphetamines, pretty much ‘speed for children’) from the young age of ten, being diagnosed with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; the medication helped with the writing process. To help get me in the zone, I would listen to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, specifically – “No Disc,” the third soundtrack released in 1998 by Yoko Kanno’s band SEATBELTS, which was initially created specifically to compose the music for Cowboy Bebop. I enjoyed the song ‘Elm.’ A track consisting of only gentle guitar ringing and a vocal melody of simple, melodious ‘la la la’s’ performed by Pierre Bensusan, French-Algerian acoustic guitarist. This song, best described as both deeply somber and beautifully transcendent, put me in a zen-like state of non-stop writing (and still does, evidenced by this article) and, of course, I would write garbage like:

Edge walks into the tavern with a mean look on his face. He swipes his long blue and red hair out of his eyes before casting a glance over to the bar. The tavern’s lantern light glints off the huge sword on his back. Edge surveyed the room for a moment before he walked to the bar and sat near the pretty girl at the far end. He signals to the bartender, who approaches quickly out of pure fear due to Edge’s coolly intimidating presence. Edge smirks at the girl then at the bartender, “one glass of milk, and another for the lady, on me.” Edge pauses, “actually, make that strawberry milk for the lady.”

Naturally, most of these role-playing sessions would lead to private messaging and in-character textual-love-making between myself and the random stranger, who was most likely much older than I assumed; but I never asked their age, I didn’t care: we were playing characters; It was artistic; It was cool; It was cyber-sexing in abstraction. And to the best of my – rather poor – memory: this was how I learned about the nuances of sex.

Video: SEATBELTS – Elm

SEATBELTS, as Yoko Kanno’s band, is actually a collective of musicians. Yoko Kanno herself functions largely as a writer, producer, and conductor on most tracks, playing only piano and keyboard melodies on records that encompass far more than pianos and keyboards. Occasionally, she sings under the credited pseudonym of ‘Gabriela Robin.’ The collective’s name is derived from the ‘seatbelts the band members have to wear during their hardcore jam sessions.’ Their music transcends consistent labeling; jazz, world music, top-10-pops, metal, rock, lounge, and bluegrass; sometimes within the course of a single song. Often, it feels like a completely different band from track to track, and at times it might as well be due to the sheer number of musicians involved with creating the music. Yoko Kanno’s SEATBELTS are the very definition of eclectic.

*Yoko Kanno, her face very close to a piano.

Anyway, the girlfriends.

The two girlfriends. One was an artist named after a Bob Dylan song; she lived in my old hometown of Atlanta. We liked all the same stuff. She was sad when I moved; and I was too. The other was a girl named after a flower who lived in the Posh Island Community; she was more akin to a venus flytrap than a rose, and I was the fly. I would travel back and forth from Mom and Dad’s house every other month, visiting my Dad for a weekend or so before returning to Mom’s to live – what I felt was – My Real Life. It was multiversal; a quick one-hour plane ride to the other dimension. When I visited Dad, I would focus every ounce of my being on being around the Artist. We would go to a gigantic store called Media Play – which sold anime, manga, DVDs, games, CDs, everything – and just walk around shyly holding hands, barely talking to each other, like young teenagers do. Sometimes, if her parents were present, we would go to her house and watch TV in her roomy basement; usually anime, often Cowboy Bebop. We were inseparable and I was stupid.

Flower Girl was just there, on the Island. She was interested in me, largely because we both liked those terrible early-2000s hardcore bands – Underoath or Alexisonfire or Whatever – and when I would get bored of playing Final Fantasy XI, I would occasionally venture out to see her. My Mom gave me far too much freedom. I would go to her family’s apartment, alone, with no adults around except her incapacitated great aunt who had a gaping hole in her throat; “yes mom, an adult is here with us.” The house smelled of quintessence – cigarette smoke quintessence – which I didn’t recognize until many years later after I started smoking myself. I barely liked the Flower Girl, but with freedom, access to a bed, and utter boredom came fun. A lot of fun. And, of course, Teenagers Having Fun is Very Complicated, especially when you’re Seeing Other People.

I didn’t like the Flower Girl; she was just there. I was using her and hiding it from the person I really liked. I knew what I was doing was wrong; I was lying and I was stupid. So, I broke it off with the Flower Girl, and things got really weird, really fast.

Flower Girl was obsessed and upset. She called me on my Nokia cell phone late one night while I was partying in Final Fantasy XI; I was ‘puller,’ which meant I had to claim the monster and pull it back to camp for the party to kill; Cowboy Bebop was playing on Adult Swim in the background, the episode where the guy with the afro – Hakim – tries to kidnap Ein, the corgi data-dog, while ‘Want It All Back,’ an infectious pop song with bright horns and a ripping guitar melody plays loudly during the exciting mid-episode chase scene.

Video: Cowboy Bebop EP2 “Stray Dog Strut,” scene in which Spike chases Hakim while “Want It All Back” plays.

Then it happens.

Mid-pull, the Flower Girl tells me that she’s pregnant. She says that I should come to her house ‘right now so we can talk about this.’ I stop what I’m doing; the monster never makes it back to camp and attacks my character to death while I stare mindlessly at absolutely nothing.

I turn off the computer manually with the button.

I am fourteen years old.

There was a gaping pit in my belly and a million questions running through my head. What would my parents think? How am I going to take care of this kid? Will I have enough time to keep writing and playing computer games? Is my life ruined? Should I end it all? All I could think about was myself. The Nokia started beeping softly; someone was trying to come through on the other line. It was the Artist; the other girlfriend; we talked every night before bed. I didn’t know what to do. My mind was fried. The Flower Girl kept repeating ‘hello?’ while I was staring at a blank monitor in catatonia.

Quickly and out of pure selfishness, I bluff and tell Flower Girl, ‘I don’t believe you,’ and then hang up on her. Then I turn off my cell phone and lay down on the floor with my face in the carpet. I can hear Cowboy Bebop’s ending theme playing in the background, ‘The Real Folk Blues.’

I deserved this.

I eventually fell asleep and woke up the next day in something resembling a sober hangover. I turned my phone on and text messages started flowing in from both the Flower Girl and the Artist. I ignored them and turned my phone off again. I returned to my office, retrieved my Cowboy Bebop DVD box set, and began watching the series from the beginning while I logged into Yahoo! Messenger and started roleplaying as some new character or other, escaping into virtual insanity.

Cowboy Bebop became my mood and my life. I lived as a complete recluse, hiding from the world; constantly in a state of paranoia, believing that any call or SMS would bring terrible, life-shattering news. I feared that someone, particularly the Flower Girl’s parents, would contact mine about the pregnancy. I tiptoed around the house like a shadow in the corner of an eye, avoiding everyone and everything. I abused Adderall and rarely ate, passing out briefly one time as I swapped out a Cowboy Bebop DVD when Mom was in the room, she was concerned but I talked my way out of it – “I just didn’t eat much today, Mom, I’m fine.”

I convinced myself that if I simply ignored the problem, it would go away. If I wasn’t present to witness it, like a tree falling in the forest, it wouldn’t happen; the Flower Girl’s parents wouldn’t contact my family, and no one would show up at my house with any parental announcements whatsoever. My only comfort was speed, writing, computer games, and SEATBELTS; often all happening at once. It was Teenage Quantum Physics and Vices On Repeat.

*the cast of Cowboy Bebop

In another time, the defining moment of someone’s childhood might have been parents dying in a war, working in a coal mine, or facing some other cosmic horror; mine was pathetic and modern, ‘I got a girl pregnant.’

Or so I thought.

Months of ignoring the problem, attending school as if nothing was wrong – luckily, the Flower Girl went to a different school – and going through all the motions of being a privileged fourteen-year-old kid; eventually, I turned my phone back on and went through all the missed messages. That’s when I saw it, the final message from the Flower Girl.

“I’m sorry, I made it all up. I’m not pregnant.”

I stared at the little Nokia pixels that made up the letters for what must have been thirty-minutes. Speechless. Textless. All the mental anguish, the paranoia, the sneaking around – it was all pointless? She was never pregnant? She made it all up? A great weight had been lifted, but I was never truly the same. During this period of my life, I became reclusive, cynical, gaunt after having lost thirty pounds, and simply wrote and listened to music all day and night on child-approved-speed. And it was all because I turned my phone off and ignored the problem?

I deserved this.

About a week after the initial catatonia, I had been communicating with the Artist through AOL Instant Messenger weekly. I told her my phone was broken, and she believed it. However, after I resumed using my phone and learned ‘the truth,’ I confessed to her about what had happened. She was shattered but said, ‘I forgive you, and we’ll work through it; just promise me I’m the only one now.’ And I promised. I learned my lesson the hard way. It was over now.

Video: SEATBELTS – Cats on Mars

Months later, while listening to ‘Cats on Mars,’ a keyboard-driven piece of bubblegum pop sung in Japanese by ‘Gabriela Robin,’ I received a random message on AOL Instant Messenger from an unrecognizable username. The instant-message was simply a link to an image hosted on Imageshack (a popular image hosting site during the early 2000s, similar to Imgur now). I clicked the link, and it was a picture of a baby with the caption ‘lol.’

The fear, the pit, the paranoia; it all returned in an instant with one instant-message. My mind, fucked. Incensed, I called the Flower Girl, and she plainly told me that she had actually been pregnant but had ‘given the kid up for adoption,’ then scolded me for ignoring her for so long. I asked her why she had told me that she made up the pregnancy, and she said ‘it was easier that way.’ Finally I asked her, ‘then who sent the picture?’ and she said ‘oh, my friend, she got drunk and sent it, I told her not to.’

This wasn’t the truth either. Months later, she told me – again – that she was never pregnant, apologizing and telling me that ‘both my friend and I were drinking and thought it would be funny to send you a random baby picture we found online.’ She made everything up because ‘I wanted to get back at you for leaving me.’

Mindfucked and totally mental; I didn’t know what to believe. My teenage years, from fourteen to sixteen, were filled with this anxious dread, this paranoia of not knowing. Was she ever pregnant? If so, did she actually give the baby up for adoption? Did she really make it up, or did she say that to make me feel better? Was it all really a big prank to get back at me?

She got back at me, alright.

Much later, in my twenties, I spoke with Flower Girl again, and she strongly insisted that she made up the whole thing because she was angry that I dumped her. She claimed that the instances where it circled back, the ‘here’s a picture of your baby, lol,’ were just her ‘being cruel’ with her friends while on a bender – but was this just another lie?

For so long, I felt like Spike Spiegel falling from the church’s stained glass window after his serendipitous battle with Vicious – “You should see yourself. Do you have any idea what you look like right at this moment?” And instead of looking like a ravenous beast, I looked like a scared, lost child. The gorgeous ‘Green Bird,’ a piano driven hymn that sounds like cherubs taunting from on high, plays as I fall endlessly, wishing the ground would hurry up and catch up with me.

Video: Scene from Cowboy Bebop in which Spike and Vicious duel; the song “Green Bird” by SEATBELTS plays as Spike falls out of a stained-glass window.

I looked it up. I checked the family trees. I checked the local birth records. There’s nothing there. It never happened.

I laugh about it now but, at the time, it was terrible.

But it wasn’t all terrible. Surely, I would not be the same person I am now without the Flower Girl and the SEATBELTS. Yoko Kanno was there for me; comforting me in a darkness of my own making; my guide and my only friend. The eclecticism of the music found throughout Cowboy Bebop, a show that, without the SEATBELTS, would have been far worse than it lucked-out to be, eventually inspired me to explore jazz and other genres of music I never would have considered otherwise.

As of writing this, I am 30-something-years-old, married to the love of my life, and have two children. I’m doing well. But I will never forget the time when Yoko Kanno and her SEATBELTS were my everything.

#music #autobiographical #anime #SEATBELTS

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When seraphs sell out they do so on such high notes that their fanatics can’t help but cover their ears from the sheer splendor of it all. Enochian utterances, once the source of many an exploded head – only rarely translated through the scribbling of independent (and very hardy) prophets – are now replaced with Plain English Gospel on High Directly to the Masses. The very hardy prophets are now out of work, and the dedicated faithful, prideful of their sacred occult enjoyments, are now resentful that their cupids come to wider audiences – “are we not the chosen few, the special ones?” Thou hast cast them down into destruction. These newcomers – “those that pretend to believe” – are not worthy; ephemerals and fad-chasers, blasphemers and worth-nothings.

“I liked Cocteau Twins before it was cool.”

The pretension revealed: one might assume that spreading the joy is of utmost importance, yet these situations strip away the persona, revealing the pure vanity underneath – the vanity of fandom. This is the story of Cocteau Twins’ seventh studio album, 1993’s “Four-Calendar Café”; a stripped-back record that sounds more like The Sundays than Cocteau Twins; an album where the seraphical Elizabeth Fraser’s previously unintelligible babblings are replaced with plain English and guitar wizard Robin Guthrie has layered only two guitar tracks on each song, as opposed to a whopping six hundred. The result is pure pop brilliance that cleaved a rift down the middle of the Cocteau Twins fanbase. Adding fuel to the fire, the Twins jumped ship from their old label, 4AD, to a major record label; Capitol Records in the US and Mercury Records in the UK – a move that ardent fans saw as akin to sleeping with the enemy.

“Four-Calendar Cafés” is named after an autobiographical book by William Least Heat-Moon, “Blue Highways,” in which the author – having recently divorced and lost his job – traveled America on old beaten highways, ranking cafés by the number of calendars hanging on their walls. This, of course, assumes that Cocteau Twins’ seventh album is only four calendars worth of quality, which, depending on your perspective of time and/or ranking systems, is either middling or maximum quality.

(Many critics, including the late, great Roger Ebert, use a star system where “four stars” represent the maximum; this is arbitrary. Summing up the quality of a work via numerical values (stars or gross profits or otherwise) is insufficient and devalues the effort and essence of the work in question; this is why I largely consider ‘music/film/book/(art) critique’ silly and try to stay within the subjective lines of ‘well, I liked it and maybe you will to!’ or the opposite, and will never provide a score for any artistic work ever; of course, after this dual consciousness completes, I will immediately contradict myself, as one often does.)

“Four-Calendar Café” is easily four calendars’ worth of quality. The Twins have crafted a stripped-back, subdued record that still swirls in both effervescent and lugubrious dreamstuff, rivaling the mood-mapping of all their previous work and then some. This becomes quickly apparent from the first half of the album, where ‘Know Who You Are At Every Age’ sets the mood with a lazy late afternoon drum fill that morphs into even lazier bongo beats, backed by the silken strumming of a virginal guitar and a second guitar deflowered only by the languid echoing onomatopoeia of waves slowly swashing sandcastles on the beach in chilly Autumn. Years prior, this song would have been overwrought with guitar overdubbing and vociferous effects-laden tones in an attempt to force the mood out of the instruments, but here, Robin Guthrie manages to capture the ambiance without the exaggeration.

Video: Cocteau Twins – Know Who You Are At Every Age

“I’ve consciously been stripping things back. In the past, I’ve always wanted one more overdub, one more melody, because I’m terrible for thinking that my music isn’t good enough. So if I put in a few more frilly overdubs, then it’ll be alright. These ones are more substantial. The ideas are more focused.” –Robin Guthrie on “Four-Calendar Café,” Cocteau Twins Fansite

This practice of ‘stripping things back’ is evident throughout the entire record, showcasing a laser focus in sharp contrast to the chaotic album art by Walter Wick of “I Spy” fame. Songs like ‘Oil of Angels’ feature only keyboards, calming backbeats, and melodious guitar plucking that serves simply to highlight Elizabeth Fraser’s angelic choruses; her soprano remains as indescribable as ever, even when the lyrics are in English, often trailing off into the chirruping of exotic birds, creating a relaxing trance of a song that could only be crafted by the occult alchemy of Cocteau Twins.

*Elizabeth Fraser on 9/11/1993 issue of Melody Maker for the release of “Four-Calendar Café”

Tracks like ‘Evangeline’ and ‘Theft, Wandering Around Lost’ stand out as two of Elizabeth Fraser’s most emotional pieces on an already incredibly soulful album that is, essentially, a breakup record at its core. Fraser and Robin Guthrie, once self-described ‘soulmates,’ were in the middle of a breakup, or had already broken up; the minutiae of their private lives are hazy (as they should be), but Fraser, through her vulnerable lyrics, is uncharacteristically transparent about the ‘why’ of their separation. Fraser, intimately linked with Robin for the entirety of Cocteau Twins’ existence (14 years at this point) and mother of his child, sings incredibly potent lines such as “Sorrow – for letting someone else define you know who you are at every age” on ‘Evangeline’ and “Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend?” on ‘Bluebeard,’ two very alien yet poppy singles that charted higher than anything the Twins had released thus far. The tension during the recording of these songs, nay: the entire album – the subject matter of which should have been obvious to Guthrie – must have been palpable; however, this tension never negatively impacted the music. Instead, this tumultuous breakup, the raw emotion of the whole thing, resulted in the most focused and, absolutely, the most human of Cocteau Twins’ otherworldly discography.

Video: Cocteau Twins – Evangeline

From the moment Evangeline’s chorus kicks in, we are consumed and ‘there is no going back.’ We are fully part of it. Quite possibly the Cocteau Twins’ greatest song, alongside ‘Heaven or Las Vegas,’ ‘Cherry-Colored Funk,’ and ‘Lorelei.’ The pure pop of ‘Bluebeard,’ which sounds very similar to their contemporaries The Sundays (who were themselves largely influenced by Cocteau Twins) and ‘Squeeze-Wax’ with its beautifully bouncy guitar riff complementing Fraser’s fluttering vocals and seamless middle eight section that feels like it was Simply Meant To Be, serve to raise the album from languishing in pure lovelost with a reminder that you are, essentially, listening to a pop record – a pop record that may or may not have been recorded on an alien planet or in the otherworldly realm of the religion of your choosing. By the time ‘Pur’ comes along – the final song on the album, an ode to Fraser’s daughter that erupts mid-song into a lush haze reminiscent of Cocteau Twins’ earlier work – you have already replayed every song on the record at least five times, artificially extending the 41-minute runtime to 205.

Upon its 1993 release, “Four-Calendar Café” stood as Cocteau Twins’ most accessible album, boasting two largely successful singles and a performance of ‘Bluebeard’ on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” The Twins had finally achieved commercial success. By this time, however, they had already inadvertently spawned entire subgenres of rock music, including dreampop and shoegaze, and a direct line can be drawn from Cocteau Twins to the success of bands such as Lush, My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive. The point is that Cocteau Twins were simply themselves and nothing more; they didn’t consciously ‘sell out’; they had been progressing in this direction since their previous album, “Heaven or Las Vegas,” and “Four-Calendar Café” was a natural continuation into more stripped-back, accessible pop music. Fans eventually warmed up to this album, but initially railed on it for departing from their noisy goth roots – but who cares? The music is Beyond Good. Fandoms, as a hivemind, often make the mistake of assuming that widespread popularity dilutes the artistry or that ‘accessibility’ equates to a ‘dumbing down’ of the craft; these are mere correlations, not causations, and these assumptions frequently lead to missing out on Some Really Good Stuff.

With that being said, if “Four-Calendar Café” is what happens when seraphs sell out, then count me among the faithful who can only be so lucky as to bask in the ethereal splendor that arises when celestials leave their multidimensional plane to explore the complexities of our three-dimensional mortal sorrows, joys, and everything-elses.

#music #CocteauTwins

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My Bloody Valentine was formed in 1987 after Bilinda Butcher picked up a guitar and started singing ethereal death melodies about sex into a microphone.

Actually, that’s not true; My Bloody Valentine was founded much earlier by friends Kevin Shields and Colm Ó Cíosóig, who met at a karate tournament as teenagers in Dublin, Ireland, circa 1979. Kevin was an exceptional guitarist influenced by the Ramones, Johnny Marr’s melody-making in The Smiths, and the forsaken spider-web noir of Siouxsie’s Banshees, and Colm was a hard-hitting punk drummer of similar tastes; the two got along instantly and later formed My Bloody Valentine along with singer David Conway, the former of whom would later leave the band to pursue a career in writing, leaving Kevin Shields as the sole creative force behind the band’s music.

(All members now insist that they weren’t aware that the name “My Bloody Valentine” was the title of a slasher film from 1981; likely a “we thought of it first” saving-of-face because of how edgy the band name sounds (that’s what I’d do). To this day, whenever I talk to people about My Bloody Valentine, they think I’m referring to some mid-2000s screamo band, so now I just don’t talk about them at all unless I know the person is on my “musical wavelength.” Of course, anyone who knows My Bloody Valentine knows that they claimed the name as their own, and it’s now almost exclusively associated with them, their excellence defining the words themselves.)

My Bloody Valentine went through numerous lineup changes and released a handful of EPs of middling quality before recruiting Bilinda Butcher in 1987. Bilinda wasn’t anything special; well, she was, but not when it came to playing the guitar, of which she would be playing rhythm, and her singing was amateur at best. However, there was a haunting innocence in her tenor that complemented the band’s playful, feedback-ridden doom and gloom. My Bloody Valentine had The Smiths’ melodies but was missing the Aztec human sacrifice of Siouxsie and the Banshees. In short, they were missing a crucial piece of the puzzle, and Bilinda was that missing puzzle piece; she fit perfectly, and with her inclusion: My Bloody Valentine became what we know them as today.

*Ecstasy and Wine insert, left to right: Colm Ó Cíosóig (drums), Bilinda Butcher (guitar/vocals), Debbie Googe (bass), and Kevin Shields (guitar/vocals)

To understand My Bloody Valentine’s early sound, one has to grasp what was happening in the Scottish music scene during the early ‘80s. Well, not really; one just has to listen to the increasingly hard-to-find early recordings of My Bloody Valentine, but context never hurts. There were two very important bands in Scotland during this era. One is well-known: The Jesus and Mary Chain, two brothers (William and Jim Reid) with a drum machine who made feedback-riddled bedroom pop influenced by surf rock, specifically the Beach Boys. The other was the lesser-known but very influential band The Pastels, led by Stephen McRobbie.

The Jesus and Mary Chain released their debut album “Psychocandy” in 1985 and, with that, pioneered a genre later dubbed “noise pop,” which would eventually spin off into the vacuum cleaner sound of “shoegaze.“ Noise pop was just that — very noisy guitar pop full of feedback and distortion, heavily influenced by the Beach Boys, The Byrds, and other guitar pop bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Video: The Jesus and Mary Chain – My Little Underground

The Pastels formed in 1981 and spearheaded the “anorak pop” movement in Glasgow, Scotland a genre named after the brand of jacket, ‘anorak,’ a form of parka often worn by perceived simple ‘low-class’ children and teenagers at the time. This style of music, adjacent to noise pop, can be best described as hook-driven primitive pop music, ‘purposely’ of an untrained poor quality – something a child might produce in their bedroom on play instruments; a willful naivete, escapism with lyrics about young love, playing kickball, and doing chores – or whatever kids did back then. Not so much a movement as a transparent deflection of criticism at the musician’s perceived (and often very real) lack of talent (“we’re not supposed to sound good – we’re anorak pop!”). This genre eventually branched off into “twee,” which is so saccharine that it is indistinguishable from sickening; and while it may seem like I have a disdain for this genre of music, The Pastels are a clear exception as they produced some incredibly catchy music that featured both a male and female vocalist sharing singing duties, often within the same song as a form of “singing back and forth to each other,” as heard on one of the greatest pop songs ever written — ‘Nothing to be Done.’

Video: The Pastels – Nothing to be Done

(I was obsessed with both The Pastels and twee pop for a brief period in 2008, where I actually formed a band called “The Crayons,” influenced by The Pastels. We eventually changed our name to “Golly Gee,” but the band disbanded due to competition for the only girl in the band’s affection between myself and the guitarist, who is one of my only ‘real’ friends to this day. Like The Pastels in the early ’80s, their influence reached out into the 2000s and affected even myself.)

While My Bloody Valentine was based in Ireland, the Scottish influence of both The Pastels and Jesus and Mary Chain sailed over the Irish Sea and can be heard throughout My Bloody Valentine’s early recordings, surfacing with full power in their 1987 EP, “Sunny Sundae Smile,” in which a still malformed version of the band, led by vocalist David Conway, played fuzzy guitars over childlike pop songs that were secretly about necrophilia (‘Paint a Rainbow’) – “Earthen trail of slimy goo; I smear it on your cheeks like rouge” – and incest (‘Sunny Sundae Smile’) – “Close your eyes and let’s pretend we’re little children once again!” (The Crayons covered this song). This cemented My Bloody Valentine’s intention to subvert listeners’ expectations: they sounded grandma-sweet but were actually singing about Doing It With Dead People; their music was simple verse-chorus-verse-chorus jangle pop at its core but it was washed in layers of nasty guitar feedback.

“(we wanted to play) the most beautiful songs with the most extremeness of physicality and sound” – Kevin Shields, The Guardian, 2021

Later in 1987, David Conway left the band to pursue writing, and Bilinda Butcher was recruited. My Bloody Valentine then released their greatest material to that point: two EPs, one titled “Strawberry Wine” and another called “Ecstasy.” Both of these are combined on the 1989 compilation album “Ecstasy and Wine,” which happens to be the topic of this long-winded essay. Kevin Shields now has full reign over the band’s direction, and as a result, there is a mastery of what came before: the wistful twee pop melodies have been perfected and the guitar feedback sounds less forced and more a natural extension of the music.

The album starts with the track ‘Strawberry Wine,’ taking full advantage of Bilinda Butcher’s vocals to add a ghostly choral harmony over the entire song. This use of vocals is reminiscent of how Kevin Shields would layer multiple guitar tracks to create unique walls of sound on future albums, particularly on “Loveless.” Following up from this is the monumental 2-minute pop epic ‘Never Say Goodbye,’ in which Kevin and Bilinda play the role of lovers singing back and forth to each other in alternating verse, similar to The Pastels’ ‘Nothing to be Done,’ only released a year earlier – possibly a case of the influenced influencing the influencers.

Video: My Bloody Valentine – Never Say Goodbye

“Ecstasy and Wine” functions as both its own complete album, full of well-crafted infinitely repeatable pop songs, but also a precursor to everything My Bloody Valentine becomes known for later on. Tracks like ‘(Please) Lose Yourself In Me,’ ‘Can I Touch You,’ and ‘Clair’ with their deep basslines and lazy sludge-like progression hint at many of the songs on their first official LP, 1988’s “Isn’t Anything,” specifically tracks such as ‘Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)’ and ‘Cupid Come,’ all of which are about sex in one form or another (an ongoing theme throughout all their music). Every song is laced with a layer of fuzzy proto-shoegaze noise hovering over shimmering guitar melodies.

The near perfect pop found on “Ecstasy and Wine” is never this crystal clear again with My Bloody Valentine; progressively washed away in noise with each additional release. Tracks such as the Bilinda Butcher-led ‘She Loves You No Less’ (my favorite cut on the album), ‘I Don’t Need You,’ and ‘You’ve Got Nothing’ are some of the most hook-laden guitar pop you’ll find outside of The Smiths’ ‘This Charming Man.’ My Bloody Valentine’s future work on “Loveless” and other EPs, including tracks such as ‘Thorn,’ ‘Honey Power,’ ‘Off Your Face,’ and ‘When You Sleep,’ borrows from these pop elements generously but never quite reaches the same level of joyful bounciness found on “Ecstasy and Wine,” an album that showcases a band on the verge of revolutionizing rock music but also just a really solid four-piece with an excellent grasp of melody.

My Bloody Valentine may have gone on to change rock music forever, but before that, they were making some of the best jangle pop (secretly) about sex that you will ever hear in your life.

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(This entire album is on YouTube; but YouTube is awful and I wouldn’t advocate supporting them. Outside of purchasing the album directly from the band, which you can’t even do anymore, you can find it on Archive.org or simply send me a private message and I’ll send you a zipped copy. Trust me, it’s worth it. My first experience with My Bloody Valentine was Loveless, after hearing Billy Corgan mention it in an interview when I was really young; a timeless classic (actually for real), but hard to get into. To this day, I find myself more in the mood for Ecstasy and Wine over Loveless, and, considering the classic deserted island hypothetical, would likely pick Ecstasy and Wine over Loveless 9 times out of 10.)

#music #MyBloodyValentine

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The now defunct British music newspaper Record Mirror asked Mark Hollis, principal singer-songwriter of the band Talk Talk, in 1982 what his greatest ambition was; Mark’s response was “owning a car.” When asked about his greatest heroes, he said “mum and dad.” His top musical influence was “Burt Bacharach,” and his favorite film was “A Clockwork Orange.” His ideal holiday was “New York,” and his favorite drink was “Gin.”

When asked about his first love, Mark Hollis gave the nickname of his childhood sweetheart: “Flick.” He would go on to marry and have two children with Flick, living with her for the rest of his life.

Reading the 1982 Record Mirror profile of Mark Hollis, one gets the impression that he was an everyman; someone who never intended to be a pop star, someone with the humility (or wisdom) to stay out of the spotlight. He longed for a peaceful life, a slow fade into a pastoral backdrop, with down-to-Earth hopes and dreams; so it’s not surprising that when asked about his ‘ultimate dream,’ Mark Hollis replied, “drinking gin in my Aston Martin DB6 around New York,” or: a criminally good time.

Mark Hollis’ father had a different dream, a failed dream, that of becoming a famous musician; some fathers’ failures are so potent they simply cannot fade into the pastoral backdrop; they must be inherited by the children; the dream must live on for as long as it takes to manifest in the physical plane.

This was reality for young Mark Hollis: his father, an unsuccessful musician, insisted that both Mark and his older brother, Ed, pursue music above all else. Influenced by his father, Mark learned to play both piano and guitar at a young age but never felt confident in his musical ability and despite his father’s dreams, in 1975, Mark chose to pursue Child Psychology at the University of Sussex.

The love of music instilled by his father never faded, and confidence can be a tricky beast; often, an outward appearance of confidence, regardless of the trembling-inside, can be enough to trick others into believing you’re the real deal; this is the case for charlatans and businessmen, which are (more often than not) synonymous; however, this confidence trick is much harder for artists, as perfectionism runs deep in the artistic mind and you can’t fake a beautiful painting or a hit song; fortunately, confidence can come from the most unsuspecting of places, and in Mark Hollis’ case: morons who couldn’t play instruments and sang about anarchy while being signed to a major record label – the Sex Pistols.

The classic motivation of, “if those idiots can do it, then so can I.”

By punk, I am convinced that musical technique is of minor importance. My feeling is that the strength, the zest in music is much more important. In fact the most important. That’s why I felt attracted to punk. –Mark Hollis, Oor Interview, April 1986

Inspired by the Pistols, Mark Hollis formed his own band, The Reaction, and collaborated with his older brother Ed Hollis to write and record a short two-minute song titled ‘Talk Talk Talk Talk.’ A song about the double-speak of officials and the chess-like courtship rituals of Words Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean. In his signature trembling voice, Mark Hollis explodes, “All you do to me is talk, talk!” Embodying the spirit of the everyman who desires only to return to a simpler time; a core tennant of minimalism found throughout all of Mark Hollis’ work.

Mark’s brother and early collaborator, Ed Hollis, was already a manager of a semi-well-known pub-rock band, and had connections within the local London music scene, allowing him to put Mark in contact with Lee Harris, Paul Webb, and Simon Brenner, responsible for drums, bass, and keyboards, respectively. ‘Talk Talk Talk Talk’ underwent a synth-inspired reworking for the post-punk era, losing two ‘talks’ in the process and metamorphosing into ‘Talk Talk.’ After another hook-up from Mark’s brother, a demo was recorded in Island Records studios and eventually the song was sent to EMI, leading to Talk Talk’s signing for a record deal in 1981.

Thus, Talk Talk was born and Father Hollis’ dream was closer to becoming reality.

*Talk Talk 1982; ”The Party’s Over” record insert: Simon Brenner, Lee Harris, Paul Webb, Mark Hollis (respectively)

From the very beginning, Mark Hollis wanted Talk Talk to be something different from his radio-friendly contemporaries, specifically Duran Duran and other ‘New Romantic’ bands of the early ‘80s. But this wish was self-sabotaged by being on the same label as Duran Duran (EMI), having their first record produced by Colin Thurston (the same producer for Duran Duran), a band name of a word repeated, and going on tour as Duran Duran’s opening band in 1982 for exposure; possibly cementing the public’s view of Talk Talk as another Duran Duran, but one look at the band members and, most importantly, one listen to Talk Talk’s music says otherwise.

“Our songs are about tragedy… human tragedy; like the title track, The Party’s Over, that’s about someone who’s past their prime and won’t actually acknowledge the fact. They’re striving for what they used to be and looking ridiculous. It’s just the conflict between trying to attain something more than you are, which is a good thing, and the parody of actually doing it. It’s just an observation. Tragedy’s what I feel most at home with.” – Mark Hollis, Record Mirror, 5/8/1982

Talk Talk in 1982 is Duran Duran without the makeup, hair dye, lust for attention, silly headbands, fraudulent air of nobility, and pretty much everything else that makes Duran, well, Duran; and while “The Party’s Over” may start with a shimmering synth line reminiscent of something from Duran Duran’s 1981 album “Rio,” once Mark Hollis starts singing, it immediately becomes apparent that we’re in for a darker and far less superficial experience.

‘Talk Talk’ starts with a pounding drum fill, basslines that sound like plucking rubberbands stretched between two fingers with as much slack as possible, and two layers of synthesizers: a lead synth resembling the melody of a twisted children’s carousel and a second computer game bounce that Sega likely borrowed for their 1988 Megadrive soundchip, all dominating the mix before Mark Hollis’ distinct vocals take charge. Here, Hollis sounds angrier than he will for the remainder of the album, with his voice trembling and seemingly on the verge of bursting into a fit of rage before calming down a bit in the subsequent track ‘It’s so Serious’ — very much a sister-song of swirling synths and cynical yet vulnerable subject matter.

Some tracks are driven solely by Paul Webb’s rubberband basslines and Lee Harris’ energetic industrial drumming while Mark’s vocals haunt the mix before bursting with synthesizer splendor only during the chorus, as evidenced in the standout ‘Today,’ the album’s strongest single, partially propelled by a chanting of the title and Hollis’ ghostly vocals naturally echoing through the valleys of his own emotional caterwauling. This organically leads into ‘The Party’s Over,’ which drops subtle hints as to the direction of Talk Talk’s later work with its minimal soundscapes driven by simple yet subdued synths and a lazily-captivating bassline that builds to a moody tsunami of a chorus before returning to calmer yet now forever rippling waters.

Video: Talk Talk – Candy

‘Candy’ serves as the thematic and literal finale to both the album and its titular track; a successor song incorporating Father Hollis’ and Burt Bacharach’s influences by layering a minimal-piano-pop nocturne in lockstep with the odd drum timings and that ghostly-wail of a vocal line, something later Talk Talk albums expand upon considerably. On both ‘Candy’ and ‘The Party’s Over,’ easily the album’s strongest tracks, Mark Hollis’ haunting vocals are used to full effect, showcasing his impressively loud range; constantly quavering on the verge of tears, of either sorrow or joy quizzically, echoing upon itself into a spectral wall of sound that effortlessly blends into the surrounding doomed landscapes; this effect draws some similarities to Talk Talk’s distant contemporaries, the Cocteau Twins, where Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals serve less to communicate lyrical content and more as an additional instrument within the arrangement.

While unique and full of promise, Talk Talk’s “The Party’s Over” is a mixed bag: very much a synthpop record with simple song structures, with the first-half’s blatant pop bleeding into the second-half’s moody atmospherics that are just accessible enough not to be entirely off-putting to an audience clearly intended to be Duran Duran fans. Singles such as the self-referential ‘Talk Talk’ became brief dance-club favorites, and the music video played on MTV in its infancy; the latter being a practice Mark Hollis would go on to protest in his iconic music video for ‘It’s My Life,’ rebelliously composed of only stock animal footage and brief shots of the singer with a censorship bar over his mouth. Based on Mark Hollis’ later work, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that “The Party’s Over” was not a natural extension of himself, but rather a product of the time and, more specifically, EMI’s commercial sensibilities, with only sparse pieces of Mark Hollis’ true-self inserted whenever he could get away with it.

In Mark Hollis’ own words, “It’s just the conflict between trying to attain something more than you are, which is a good thing, and the parody of actually doing it.”

“The Party’s Over” is the parody of actually doing it; a time capsule of a band in it’s formative years. An album easily surpassed by their next album, which, in turn, was easily surpassed by the album after that, and again after that, forming a cyclical epic leading to the eventual creation of two genre-defining albums: “Spirit of Eden” and “Laughing Stock,” which led to a wave of imitators that could never quite reach Mark Hollis’ level of genuine, down-to-Earth brilliance – but that’s a story for another four articles.

What matters here is that Father Hollis’ dream had come true: his boy had made it, and the party had just started.

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(Provided my attention span holds (it won’t), this is likely the first in a series of articles about each Talk Talk album with a focus on telling the story of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis. I like Talk Talk a lot, so of course, it’s all biased all the way down. And it will likely be awhile before I write another entry, as it took far more research than my more simple opinion pieces; the bits about Mark Hollis’ father are shaky at best as they’re solely based on information in one article. Conclusion: I’m sure I got something wrong somewhere. The gist of the story, however, is correct, and like all history: the game of telephone facilitates the creation of legends. Special thanks to Snow in Berlin, an excellent Talk Talk fansite that cataloged seemingly every Talk Talk interview ever, from which all the quotes and historical stories are pulled from.)

#music #TalkTalk