DIFFERENT MUSIC LISTENED TO IN DIFFERENT WAYS continued

2. WINAMP (MP3 PLAYER)
"I want my mp3's!"
I'm not even gonna tell you where I've been getting my mp3's now that Napster is, in the words of Wayne Coyne, "dead as fuck," because I do NOT want to lose it all again. Neither do you, so mum's the word, okay? File-sharing is a beautiful thing, and you guys in sales, relax, I still buy at least one record every single week, sometimes as many as...three. I'll admit I just ripped every song off of Ravishing Grimness by Darkthrone and then burned them onto a CD-R according to the way they were track-listed on the internet. This was only a few weeks after eyeing a copy of the original at Chicago store Metal Haven. I almost bought it, but passed because it was $15.99 (import price, I believe) for a rather cheap-looking CD. Nothing really grabbed me about the artwork, and hell, I can't buy every record...and so far, in 31 years on this planet I've only cheated and made two CD's by downloading all the songs according to a track listing. But I have gotten lots of songs, and boy it sure is fun to set my Winamp jukebox on "random" and just let stuff play. It's great for parties too. Here, I'll set it on "random" right now and tell ya 'bout what I hear.

Art Ensemble of Chicago "Theme De Yo-Yo"
Fontella "Rescue Me" Bass fronts (one of) the greatest post-60s jazz groups for an actual 9-minute Ameribeat pop song! More "funk" and "soul" than "jazz", but the collapsing and tumbling horn themes that come at the end of every stanza and the solos that come in the middle must be jazz...I mean, they're freakin' infinity music, what else could they be but JAZZ???

Nurse With Wound "Soliloquoy for Lilith"
I tried to download a 42-minute mp3 of this, itself only part of a 3-CD work, but there was no way my paltry 33K connection combined with Napster's on-again off-again servers was gonna let me have all of it. In fact, it crapped out after I only got three minutes. Still, that small bit is substantial enough, and even kinda intense. I'm actually glad I didn't get the whole 42 minutes, let alone all 3 discs, even though this is my favorite NWW thing I've heard so far. I really like the way this grinds along and stays strangely pretty at the same time. (I haven't heard much by NWW and, unlike most 'experimental music' followers, couldn't care less.)

Cows "Cabin Man"
I saw three incredible Cows shows in 1996-1997. Then I saw a fourth, not-so-incredible show in 1999, when they were supporting the album that would prove to be their last, Sorry In Pig Minor. They seemed a little tired, both of their once white-hot schtick and of the physical/mental requirements of Econoline van touring, and weren't really selling the new songs too well. (Sure enough, they broke up soon after.) In fact, I remember them playing "Cabin Man" -- sort of a spoken word foray by lead singer Shannon Selberg -- while I was in the other room, and I didn't even go in and watch. A while later, I heard a friend's copy of Sorry In Pig Minor, and was quite frankly astonished at how good it was. The production by King Buzzo is truly brilliant, and "Cabin Man," the LP opener, is a stunning and emotionally heavy performance.

Royal Trux "Inside Game"
I really like this tossed-off piece of nonsense. You get a bass and drums rhythm going somewhere between like ZZ Top, Fela, and salsa, performed by an animated Pedro Bell drawing, complete with sparse psych-blooz guitar leads. And then Neil "Weirdo" Haggerty just wails out these sassy stoopid lyrics about basketball. "Got the kind of offense/that can really bust your nuts/step back for a jumpshot/nothin' but....rim" while Jennifer Herrema does her ghoulish biker chick from Mars voice. This song was actually used in High Fidelity as music played by the cheesy skate-punkers that hung out in John Cusack's Walt Disney version of an indie record store.

Profanatica "Of Pestilence"
This is what I've been waiting for, the blackest black metal I've heard. AND the most poorly recorded. This track brings lo-fi all the way back around again to where it's a derogatory term. But it's still better than if it had been hi-fi, simply because I do NOT want to hear another hi-fi metal album. Rock already had it's lo-fi revolution, and now it's metal's turn.

Meat Beat Manifesto "Radio Babylon (Orb Mix)"
Heard it on an early spring morning drive from one end of Lincoln all the way to the other for a 12-hour work day in a recording studio...a fifteen-minute drive, almost entirely taken up by this thirteen-minute track. Not only was it the kind of thing I was in the mood to hear, some subdued-but-extended funky moody electronic dance fog, but the circumstances of hearing it were so dreamy...an early morning sun-squinting slow drive for blocks and blocks down a flat 'n' straight midwestern avenue from one small city side to the other. The music lives up to that, and you can dance your ass off to it too.

Stone Roses "Fool's Gold"
And speaking of dancing your ass off to subdued-but-extended funky moody electronic fog, this is practically the 90s paradigm. God, I really am a wimp, I like music by Meat Beat Manifesto and the Stone Roses! Well, suffice to say these are the only songs by either group I own or even remember hearing. (Okay, did the Stone Roses sing that "I Wanna Be Adored" song? I kinda remember that.) First heard "Fool's Gold" when I saw the video on 120 Minutes in my dorm-room back when it was released. During my four years as a Nebraska college student I was so starved for art that I watched at least...1200 minutes worth of 120 Minutes, even if a grand total of maybe 20 of those minutes were any good, and "Fool's Gold" was 9:53 of 'em, because it was a stone funky groove standing out like a sore thumb on perenially unfunky MTV. Plus, the drummer had a great hat. And jeez, what else was good, besides T. Moore showin' the Harry Pussy clip? Ned's Atomic Dustbin? Poster Children with their novelty rock "If You See Kay"? Not really.

Half Japanese "Calling All Girls"
Fucking wonderful. MTV would never play this, not even on 120 Minutes, which is why I can never accept MTV as a purveyor of music culture. Not one of Jad's slices of dream-rock, more a dada text piece by older bro David in which he lists a bunch of (iconic) women he loves with NO help at all from GQ magazine and a lot of help from a rumbling noise-Troggs guitar and his brother rumbling away on drums. What LP/CD has all this early stuff compiled? I realize I should already know, but I don't. 1/2 Gentlemen 1/2 Beasts?

Prince Far I "Homeworld Bound"
At the very first when I downloaded it, I dismissed it as being too 80s. Dub just has to have that grimy 60s and 70s feel, right? Otherwise it's just some Bill Laswell trifle, right? Well, I went and bought the album used for 6 or 7 bucks, and I'll be damned if it didn't grow on me like a moustache. Guess what, dub can be made in the 80s. Especially if you aren't Bill Laswell. This music is great.

Sun City Girls "Soft Fragile Eggshell Minds"
One of the strangest subplots in the SCG spectrum was their 'well-produced anti-populist folk song' period, sort of like a more mature version of the Horse Cock Phepner approach, just as creepy but not as openly profane. This very short era was mostly captured on the long-gone Box of Chameleons 3-disc set. Because that release is, of course, out of print, I've only heard mp3's of this stuff, though some of these songs have appeared in more raw and skeletal 'demo' form elsewhere, such as on the Alvarius B double-LP. (Also out of print, but a friend dubbed it onto a Maxell for me.) The lyrics are prime, Al Bishop taking on a more overt cultural-criticism mode, playing the role of Rupert W. Cokepepsi Bush Murdoch: "Why should we change the world today, those soft fragile eggshell minds? / When we can smash 'em at will or let 'em decay, those young fragile eggshell minds? / We'll keep 'em well-fed with our poisonous crumbs, those soft fragile eggshell minds / and they'll keep our heads up our ass to see where our shit comes from, those young fragile eggshell minds / We're gonna make 'em bleed!!! We're gonna make 'em seed..." Scary shit, and one of the more accurate poetic descriptions of the way Americans will take cheap bullshit over poetry forever.

Stephen Malkmus "Black Book"
Gosh, I'm so embarrassed that I have this. Malkmus is more above-ground than Elton John ever was. But hell, I watched him play 5 shows in a row last spring because I was in the opening band. First couple nights we were scoffing, because it was like Pavement but with the chaos and urgency completely removed. However, a few nights on, as his laid-back breezy smoove-rock inevitably started insinuating through repetition, this song, his set opener for at least 3 of the 5 shows, held up the best. There's some kinda sick guitar overdubs on this, the studio version, that work well. And a flute? Pretty good dirty psych-rock, really.

Sun City Girls "Napoleon and Josephine"
This is one of the tracks that first made me realize the power of Napster. A 12-minute theater-piece track from an out-of-print 7-inch, and here it was on my hard drive in all its glory. Alan Bishop plays an indignant urban loiterer with a proclivity for surrealist second-language conspiracy-theory monologues and a little too much sensitivity towards racial profiling. Charles Gocher plays the racial profiler, a weary, apathetically mean store clerk who happens to own the lot where Bishop loiters. Shopkeeper: "I gotta make a living here." Loiterer: "We all make a living, man!"

Underground Resistance "Acid Fog"
Some hot and apparently underground techno. It sure sounds underground, just basic hard pulses across different frequencies over a disco beat. A chirped and echoed "No" enters a few measures in, a good utilization of 'the pop point.' (Note: "The pop point" is the moment a few measures in where the conditioned listener would expect vocals to enter.) Mix it on a dance-floor with "UFO" by ESG.

Mystikal "Shake It Fast"
Whoever I downloaded this from titled the file "rap dance-Mystikal-Shake It Fast (dirty)." Why they didn't just call it "Shake Ya Ass," the title of the dirty version, is beyond me. Oh well, I only got a minute of it before Napster shut me off. No matter, I tried again and got another complete version, simply titled "Mystikal-Shake Ya Ass," which I'll talk about here. The lyrics get a little vile but his unforgettably clipped sing-song spit-delivery can so easily be heard as pure music that it doesn't matter, even when he starts his rap by announcing "I came here with my dick in my hand!" Great jerky funk track, great falsetto-led chorus. This is the only song my way-too-loud former downstairs neighbors played that I ever liked.

Liquid Liquid "Cavern"
You might think the Talking Heads invented Ameribeat with albums like Remain in Light, but it was only after they heard Liquid Liquid. Sal Principato's vocal stylings mean a lot to me.

Anton Maiden "Hallowed Be Thy Name"
If ya don't know, he's like this 16-year-old from Sweden who sings earnest tuneless karaoke versions of Iron Maiden songs, complete with humorous MIDI-cheese backing. In small doses he overcomes whatever ironic reading the concept begs for and sounds like a true soul singer. (I highly recommend "Powerslave.") But it's still a novelty item, and novelties do tend to wear thin, and I'll admit I've been grumbling when the many 30-second snippets I've got by Anton keep popping up, right when I wanna hear something I can funk too. Did sound great blasting over the P.A. at the Fireside Bowl the other night after the Peaches show...

Ultramagnetic M.C.'s "Funky"
My first taste of the legendary early music by Kool Keith's original crew. In fact, I'm listening to it for the first time ever as I type this, I just downloaded it. Damn, it's wild! Keith just started his rap and he sounds young and lo-fi but otherwise his phrasing is just like it is today, with the weird cadences and lines that don't rhyme. Very strange piano-driven backing track?

Newcleus "Computer Age (Push The Button)"
I waxed nostalgic about these guys in a previous issue. I like this every bit as much as any Kraftwerk song I've heard, and I say that without any irony or anti-anti-anti gamesmanship whatsoever .

Peaches "Fuck The Pain Away"
Damn, Peaches done done it. I've been downloading all these classic electro hip-hop songs because I knew that's where she got it, and those tracks are cool, but then I go back to this song and it sounds better! The electro is more funky, the worm-bass is dirtier, the snare-beat kick-ins are spread out in a more tantalizing way. Of course this opinion is purely subjective and relative; maybe I'm just holding it because I saw her play a really good show just two or three nights ago. Brad Sonder talked about the "suckin' on my titties..." line in his 'hook-of-the-month' column, but how could he miss the way Peaches goes "huh...what....right?" so well?

Stephen Malkmus "Vague Space"
Yikes! Caught again! I don't know, this is really the best current beard rock around. Somewhat ironic because of Malkmus's lack of a beard, but it's the loping guitar and organ fills that put it into "influenced by The Band" territory. Plus his chorus which shamelessly quotes proto-beard Beatles. ("I'd love to turn you on.") I tend to think he could've picked a better classic rock line to quote, and I bet Captain Beefheart would agree, according to his bio (author: Mike Barnes), in which he's quoted as saying "I'll tell you one thing I didn't like -- The Beatles saying they were going to turn you on. I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. No man or woman can turn another person on. The minute you hit the air you're on. The idea of trying to turn someone on, that's the biggest concession stand I've ever heard." Right on, Captain! Me, I might hum this song in bookstore lines at the same time that it doesn't get me terribly excited, and I don't terribly feel I need it.

Stalk-Forrest Group "St. Cecilia"
Doesn't exactly seem like a fully written tune, but a masterpiece of low-key 1969 American dream-rock nonetheless. At first, at low volume, I thought the chugging beat was my mp3 of "Steppin Out" by Joe Jackson, which is a major compliment.

Steven Malkmus "Jennifer and the Ess Dog"
Okay, this is the last relic from my "Malkmus downloading experiment", and actually my least favorite one, though "Vague Space" isn't a whole lot more exciting. This one's just kinda too chirpy, from the title's arch jock-talk/
Scrabble reference to the too-easy/too-happy melody. There really are some good songs on the album (like "Black Book"), but this isn't one of 'em.

Fearless Four "Rockin' It"
Now this is a weird prog hip-hop classic. That's all. I love the "Crazy Eight!
.......Crazy Eight!" part.

Harvey Sid Fisher "Saggitarius"
Sure he's not a great singer, but I really honestly feel that he is a very good songwriter. The Astrology Songs concept is American pop gimmickry at its best. The arrangement here isn't as good as the Cheer-Accident backed version I saw rock Duffy's in Lincoln recently though. It's funny, because I've personally heard what Harvey Sid Fisher thinks of Napster. When he was at a barbecue at my house, Charles Lieurance told him about a guy who used to sell bootleg videos of his public access show at the Berkeley Flea Market. Fisher's acidic reply was "Was his last name by chance Napster??"

Holderlin "Reqium fur einen Wicht"
Is that "Reqiuem for a Witch"? If so, it lives up to the title in a very low-key eerie way. Lovely minor-key folk with trilly violins and insistent guitar arpeggios. Is the whole album this good? If so, some of the best second-tier germanrock.

Mayhem "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas"
Is that "The Mysteries of Satan"? This is my very first dose of Mayhem. More black-ass metal. Not quite as lo-fi as I had hoped, but it still works very well indeed. I like the singer, especially when he changes up his deep growl approach with a campy deadpan croon that sounds even slightly like Morrissey!! Oh yeah, the tightly-wound groove is very entrancing, even as it snakes out into sharp guitar barbs every couple measures.

Procol Harum "Broken Barricades"
Jay Bayles was talking about this song one day, because it was an old rock-days favorite of his circa 1968 or whenever. I wanted to show him how cool Napster was so I downloaded it on the spot and we were listening to it within 20 minutes or so. Only got 1:08 of it before I got cut off though, which is just as well...not a huge keeper for me anyway, and we still got to hear the big fat intro riff that Jay was humming. However, it is a good example of one of the literally thousands of still-'safe' songs classic rock radio could play if they ever decide to take this 'no-repeat' thing seriously and actually make their playlists surprising for (fucking) once.

Gong "Camembert Electrique"
I was looking for some prime hippie-era space-jam Gong, but didn't really know any titles or anything and randomly downloaded two tracks. They weren't what I was expecting, and when I tried to describe 'em to a person who knew a little more about Gong than I, they told me I had gotten what was "probably Eighties period Gong." It sounds a little more timeless than that to me, like it could easily be either 1968 or 1978. I frickin' love this stuff! Weird poppy new-wave-y prog-punk, without a trace of 'jamming' or 'psych improv jamming', which I find refreshing. "And you tried so hard...to get there...and you tried so hard...to get there..." is a great hook, but even better is when a sweet woman's voice comes in on a change, adorably speaking/singing the line "I am not free..." and then goes on from there. Is that Gille?

Don Cherry "Symphony for the Improvisers"
Man, I've listened to this quite a few times on the ole Winamp, but I just really noticed Cherry's rippin' piccolo flute-or-whatever solo, the first solo on here, for the first time. Main theme is hot but maybe un poco derivativo of the ouevre of Ayler and Coltrane's "Meditations" (which were already derivative of each other). Vibe solo??? Is that Sunny Murray on drums? As I write this some other ***** ****** user is downloading this song from me...right on, brother...

Small Blue Torch "[excerpt from some track]"
From my own archives (I do some work for the label that released it on CD-R). Great and still underrated New Zealand noise-drone-etc. Nick Cain doesn't like it so you might not have heard of it. (Get ready for his about-face now that Birchville Cat Motel is on the Corpus Hermeticum roster.)

UNKLE (featuring Takagi Kan)
Not a big UNKLE/Mo Wax/Lavelle fan at all, but I wanted to hear more of this Japanese rapper who was absolutely genius during his one-minute appearance on De La Soul's Buhloone Mindstate album. Of course, Napster cut me off after a minute-eight again, at which point no one, Caucasian, African, or Japanese, had rapped whatsoever, so all I got was the tedious trip-hop lite intro. I'm gonna delete this.

Anton Maiden "The Number of the Beast"
This is the Anton song I play for people who've never heard him. No one can deny the brilliance of the spoken intro ("Woe to earth und sea, for the devil sends hizz beast with wroth..."), the frantic and nearly flawless MIDI guitar solo, and of course the bellowing scream that kicks of the song proper.

Prince Far I "Cry Tuff Dub Encounter"
More brilliance from this genius album. (That's Cry Tuff Dub Encounter 3, to be exact.)

Profanatica "Weeping in Heaven"
Again, this is simply the most satisfying black metal band I've heard. And it's not because of the legends of nudity, bloodletting, and coprophagia during performances. It's not even just how lo-fi it is, though that certainly is an important part of their greatness. I think the single greatest thing about the band is the singer. His hissing growl epitomizes the black metal sound for me. I like it best when I can't tell if the vocalist is screaming or whispering. (See "Winged Victory of Death" by Darkthrone for another example.)

Anton Maiden "Heaven Can Wait"
This was cheesy enough as an Iron Maiden song, with its ridiculous major-key 'jolly' feel. My excerpt here, clocking in at under 30 seconds, is so superfluous that I just end up keeping it in the mix.

Laid Back "White Horse"
Now this is an electro masterpiece, even if it is from Denmark and was played on Iowa Top 40 radio in the 80s. Believe me, this song has its cult. "No no no..."

Profanatica "Final Hour of Christ"
Another brilliant blast of corpse breath. The fact that it embodies pure Satanic evil may scare many of you off, but hey, it's only around 35 seconds long (with another 25 seconds of silence at the end, probably the result of sheer ineptitude on someone's part).

Outkast "Phobia"
I've got the complete version on mp3 as well. This utterly brilliant song, one of the best 'creepin' rap tracks ever and as intense and funky as anything on Stankonia, appeared on the god-fucking-awful Higher Learning soundtrack, which I kept for years for that reason only. Thank God for Napster, which allowed me to finally throw that disc and its cheap-ass broken jewel case into my driveway to be driven over multiple times.

Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson "Blue Nile"
I can't remember why I got this song, but I really like it. It's like this lite-but-mystical jazz. Very flute-driven. I think that's Alice Coltrane on mystical sheets-of-sound harp.

Shalabi Effect "Apparitions"
Their one-sheet, as quoted in Forced Exposure, said something like "Combining the best of AMM, the Sun City Girls, and The No-Neck Blues Band" (yeah right) so I thought I'd check just for sure. I think this has some Canadian underground connections or something. It's also released on Alien 8, which might be important to some people, but not me. It's okayprettygood, but I can't get excited about it. A guest programmer played it on my radio show, and it was okayprettygood then too, but nothing compels me to want it.

Grotesque "Fall Into Decay"
I was looking for tracks from The Fall's Grotesque album, and got a poorly labelled mp3 of a song called "Fall Into Decay" by a metal band called Grotesque instead. Thinking it was maybe gonna be The Fall when I pressed play the first time, I thought it sounded terrible, but taken on metal terms it's not too bad. Definitely not up (down?) there with Mayhem or Darkthrone or Profanatica, but it makes a good palate cleanser on the jukebox. Good guttural vocals, and nice ride cymbal work by the drummer.

Tappa Zukie "Way Over In Dub"
First heard it while watching The Filth and Fury (Sex Pistols documentary) where it just sounded heavenly, pumping dreamily over the grimy industrial London milieu. Doesn't sound quite as heavy in my not-so-grimy-and-industrial apartment, but it's still great music. I'll admit this'll hold me off from buying The Filth and Fury soundtrack or any Tappa Zukie albums for a while.

Sun City Girls "Asian Women on the Telephone"
A great minute-long miniature, featuring an unknown-to-me American-Asian woman declaiming nicely about her culture while Gocher plays swing music on the trapkit. I think this is also from the Box of Chameleons disc. A blast!

Sun City Girls "Cooking With Satan"
Another well-produced populist folk song from SCG. This one first appeared as an Alvarius B solo number. Includes memorable lines like "White trash riverboat Tom Sawyer / Tried to fool my voodoo lawyer" and "Give me a call, 1-800-FUCKIN-A!" and "Fuckin' maggot you're in the way!"

Okay, I've got a lot more mp3's I'd love to talk about but this page is already something like 157K and I'm sure it took way too long to load and you're all pissed so we'll just forget it. If the readers like this sort of h****shit we'll continue it in the next ish.

I will close with this mp3 note: someone e-mailed Blastitude directly with "an experimental thumb piano music update" and a link where I could go to mp3.com to hear "A new mp3 file for free download/stream from the Thumb Piano Project. Title: Brassy 2. A feedback extravaganza using a brass planter, 10 pieces of spring steel, a pitch shifter and a speaker rigged inside a large tin can. Thumb piano music for whales." Sounded intriguing enough for me to choogle on over to mp3.com (for the first time in a long time) and do it. Before I could download they made me fill out a goddamn e-mail form so they could send me ludicrous spam every five minutes. I reluctantly did so and then got the track. IMMEDIATE REACTION (like I ever publish anything else): Pretty nice and low-key with a refreshing noise/sound intent, rather than the 'world fusion' kinda thing that's always a possibility with the thumb piano. In other words, I think thumb piano noise feedback is a good idea. Ironically, it was the "thumb piano as only sound source" hook that got me intrigued in the first place, but I think I might have been more into the track if the sound source wasn't named. Kinda hard for a band called the Thumb Piano Project, but hey, I, just like an entire .02% of the world population, want the music I hear to be as mysterious as possible.