Minutemen “History Lesson - Part II (Live)” (from We Jam Econo)

I Netflixed the doc about 80s SST freak-flag/funk-punk stalwarts the Minutemen recently. It was a good watch, if slightly inessential given that the same ground, and more, is covered in a chapter of Michael Azerrad’s book, Our Band Could Be Your Life. (I have some issues with the book, but still highly recommend it.)

On the one hand, I could’ve watched another 45 minutes of Watt tooling around Pedro in his van and spieling. But when the Grim Reaper knocks on my door, I’m going to ask for credit based on the time spent listening to Flea babble.

Some of the performances are revelatory for a kid who never even heard of the band till about a decade after D. Boon’s death. While the sound quality is kinda shite in places–it’s nobody’s fault, these are largely found documents created by enthusiastic amateurs with Camcorders–there are moments wherein the Minutemen seem to be the platonic form of a rock band. Three very disparate elements, each doing sorta his own thing, but in constant communication, always locked-in and moving toward the same goal.

I was going to say that the performances were the heart of We Jam Econo, but really the story of friendship between Mike Watt and D. Boon is always the heart of the band’s story, and this indeed came across in the movie. They fought like brothers, but there’s something special and dareIsay touching about the bond they had, Watt still teary-eyed at times when talking about his old friend. It’s something I hope for with my closest of friends, even though I freeze ‘em out sometimes out of fear or laziness.

The live performance of “History Lesson - Part II” was a brilliant choice for closing the movie. Maybe it has to be watched to be fully got, but both key elements–the Minutemen’s essential band-ness and the Boon-Watt love–are in there. Listen around 2:22 for Boon cracking Watt up.

Without that chemistry–musical and personal–all the DIY in the world wouldn’t have meant anything.

We Jam Econo at Target.

,or Defenestrating Credibility

Sebadoh “Skull (Remix)”
Lou Barlow “Skull (Live at WMBR)”

This, one of my favorite Lou Barlow songs, came up on the old shuffle recently.

It’s on Sebadoh’s 1994 record, Bakesale, but presented here in solo acoustic version via MIT’s radio station, as well as the shorter, possibly superior take that appeared on the Hotel Massachusetts comp.

(I guess I should warn here that I’m one of the last living Sebadoh devotees, and I may dedicate virtual ink now and then to some sort of futile advocacy campaign on the group’s behalf. Lou and Jake were raised around where I was raised, and that hometown pride may be part of the appeal, but it’s mostly the plain-spoken/heartbroken lyrical bent and great melodies I think.

It feels like they’ve been long overshadowed by Pavement, who were sort of their homeboys/indie rock opposite numbers during the 90s, if anyone remembers that far back. Not sure if that’s smugness trumping sincerity or the triumph of the oblique over the straightforward.)

If it’s not embarrassing enough of an admission that I’m a Sebadoh fan, there’s something else around this song that leaves me sorta red-faced.

“Skull” was among the reasons I fell in love with Sebadoh as a freshman stranded on the West Coast, homesick for my familiar Western Mass stomping grounds.

The ebb and flow of the mood, the feeling of silvery chrome to the sonics, the creeping howl of carefully-deployed distortion, those lyrics about “chasing dragons through the snow” and the invitation to “gently take my skull for a ride”… Speaking of false nostalgia, in my sunny new home, I came to associate the song with home, and with some idealized scenario of the very start of falling in love, the promise of snowbound adventure; all the stuff I wasn’t experiencing in L.A.

I was pretty damn naïve at 19 I guess. I heard a rumor that made sense, years later, that “Skull” is about doing speedballs with Evan Dando. Still love the song, but every time I hear it I get that wave of false nostalgia followed by a tinge of embarrassment.

Funny what a song can do to you.

Hotel Massachusetts at Gemm.
Pipeline! Live Boston Rock from WMBR at Newbury Comics.
Bakesale at Newbury Comics.

The Shins “New Slang (Live Feat. Iron & Wine)”
Iron & Wine/Calexico “He Lays In The Reins”
Townes Van Zandt “Waiting Around To Die”

One more missive begun on the highway strip, this time on the 15 South, heading back to L.A.

I got to thinking a few moments ago about the weeklong trip through the desert the little lady and I were going to take this past summer. It was aborted for one reason or another, but our plan had been to load up her nano with “desert music” to match the atmosphere of the trip. This all came back to me when a Shins song played as we passed some of the high lonesome majestic desolate that fills up most of the current drive.

I feel like the Shins, maybe the biggest Amerindie pop band, have been victims of a mini-backlash tied to the reaction against Zack Braff’s KCRW/wuss rock tastemaker persona. I mean, having someone write you into a script as a band that “will change yr life” is a lot to live up to.

But that’s another matter. The group was formed in Albuquerque, N.M., and one of the things that’s always set them apart for me is the sense of place that’s seeped into their music. I think it’s somewhere between the plaintive harmonies, the understated melodies and the mostly sparse, heavily-separated arrangements. I’ve provided here, from the “Fighting In A Sack” single, a b-side live take on their biggest song. You know, the one about dirty fries that somehow made it to a McDonald’s commercial.) They’re joined here by labelmate Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine.

(It’s coincidence that has Iron & Wine in here twice. Florida is, as best can tell, the opposite of desert. I&W is that state’s greatest export, although there’s not a lot of competition, really.)

Calexico’s border-town approach more clearly articulates a Southwestern style–country heavily flavored with elements of mariachi and Spaghetti Western soundtrack music. There’s that keening, heavily reverbed steel work that stands out from the typical C&W style, but somehow my attention is always drawn to the dry, crisp snap of the drums.

The group’s collab with Iron & Wine, In the Reins, is one of my favorite records of last year, so I’ve also included the title-ish track. Around 1:47 Salvadro Durn comes in with a Spanish-sung part that really couldn’t differ much more from Beam’s bedsit whisper. It’s a neat effect, like driving through a town and having a competing signal break in on the radio station you’re listening to, but somehow the transition is nigh-perfect.

Finally, there’s Texan Townes Van Zandt, both widely heralded by other musicians as one of America’s great songwriters and yet somehow not recognized as such by the wider public. “Pancho And Lefty,” as interpreted by Willie Nelson, was sort of his career apex, but there’s rich material spread from the 60s through the 80s.

Although I’d often heard his take on the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” (closing credits of The Big Lebowski), I didn’t get into his music till earlier this year, when I saw the excellent doc Be Here to Love Me. The movie seems to honestly explore the various sides of his life–post-Beat/proto-hippie wanderer, glue-sniffin’ waste case, musical genius, absentee father, etc., etc. His hard living caught up with him in 1997 at the age of 52. His music strikes me as having a dusty desert atmosphere, and I ordered his best-of in anticipation of the road trip that never happened. “Waiting Around To Die” was his diatribe against domestic life, minor-key, raw and emotionally desolate.

“Fighting In A Sack” at Newbury Comics.
In the Reins at Newbury Comics.
The Best of Townes Van Zandt at Gemm.

Modern Lovers “Dignified And Old”
Sloan “Dignified And Old”

I’m writing this entry from the 15 North fast lane and hoping to actually post it from Vegas. It’s been a pretty busy last couple days, thus the late post. I thought I’d just rattle off a little something about road music.

We’re relying on the little lady’s nano, a Chrismukkah gift from her bro that I helped load up with tunes.

One of the gifts yielded up from this road trip approach was hearing, within an hour, both the original version of “Dignified And Old” by the Modern Lovers and the Sloan cover.

I wish I could remember the exact quote, but there’s something that explains an anomaly like Jonathan Richman. Something about how punks in cities built on a grid, like NYC and L.A., tend to have a very simple us vs. them worldview, while cities with more arcane and circular layouts, like Boston and D.C., breed punkers who can do the rebel thing and be home for dinner with grandma.

Not saying I buy it 100%. I mean, all generalizations are bad, in general. But there’s something attractive about it.

So Jonathan Richman, the frontman for 70s prepunk geek rockers the Modern Lovers, could idolize Lou Reed but channel the art rockismo into his own lovelorn, wonderfully naïve teenage view of the world. He doesn’t buy the rockunroll credo to live fast, die young, etc.—one day he’ll be dignified and old. Pretty damn classic.

The cover by Sloan, Canada’s foremost purveyors of brainy classic pop, is stripped down and faithful. Sorta makes you miss the cool organ line from the Lovers version. It’s taken from their fake live EP, which was packaged, I think, with the 1998 original American pressing of 1996 minor classic One Chord to Another. (Don’t ask.)

Grab a brew and dig it. We’ll see you on the other side of the state line.

[Both the Modern Lovers’ debut album and the 2-CD One Chord to Another are out of print.]

The Zeros “Don’t Push Me Around”
Hall & Oates “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”

The little lady’s beat me to cracking open my copy of Paint It Black by Janet Fitch, the book set in 1980 punk rock Los Angeles. She paused while reading tonight and engaged me in a conversation about L.A. punk and when punk died.

On the latter question I voted “decline to state,” for what it’s worth. On the former issue we sort of kicked it around for an hour or so. I broke out the oral history We Got The Neutron Bomb and put on the old DIY series comp We’re Desperate: The L.A. Scene [1976-79]. (And, to keep things even, my copy of the photo book We’re Desperate.)

At some point I had to go clean the bathroom–I was supposed to do it Sunday, but, you know, what me procrastinate? Anyhow, I’d forgotten just the variety of sounds among the bands represented on We’re Desperate. It was a joy to hear, plus a little ego-swelling for the CD to bear out my point about the hodge-podge, big tent that punk was then (and is? and should be?).

One song that struck me particularly hard as I was scrubbing the tub was the Zeros‘ “Don’t Push Me Around.” It seemed like a perfect, and perfectly basic, encapsulation of the refusal at the heart of punk rock, from “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You” to the pop nihilism of “I belong to the _____ generation” to “I Don’t Wanna Hear It.”

Somehow defiance is an important element in music to me. It’s not the only thing, but it’s a big thing. And there’s a lot positive in the snot-nosed then-kids of the Zeros sneering, “I don’t wanna do nothing.”

It’s a neat little tune: right-on amateurish vocals with a little call-and-response, roaring guitars, rhythm section buried in the mix and bop-along hookiness. It’s all beautiful in its simplicity. (Trivia-time: according to the liner notes the Zeros were considered “the Mexican Ramones” and the first heartthrobs on the Angeleno punk scene.)

By the time I’d gotten to wiping down the toilet, my mind had wandered tangentially to another refusal, Hall & Oates‘ “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do).” Once I actually listened back though, it’s more clearly a refusal of that bizarre “I would do anything for love/but I won’t do that” type.

Lyrical revision line upon line: “I’ll do anything you want me to/I’ll do almost anything that you want me to/but I can’t go for that.” What the hell is this “that” which he can’t go for? Does she expect you to share your Dr. Pepper, Daryl? Or does it go back to the “you used the body/now you want my soul” thing? Watch out for those santeria obeah chicks, my man.

There’s something really cool about the phrase “say no go.” I mean, it makes no sense. Or is it just archaic? And another example of an exception to my avowed distaste for 80s sax solos comes in around 2:41.

Still, I love Hall & Oates. All jokes aside, these guys are seriously underrated as songwriters. There’s layers of uncool stink on you when you bridge blue-eyes soul, yacht rock and slick 80s pop.

And, as it turns out, there’s really no good way to segue from punk rock to Hall & Oates.

The Zeros’ Don’t Push Me Around at Newbury Comics.
We’re Desperate comp at Gemm.
The Very Best of Hall & Oates at Target.