Campfire Girls “P.F.A.M.G.”

I’d hoped for something a little more ambitious this week, maybe another mix, but had to scale down. And anyway, there’s an old song that’s been on my mind a bit lately.

Campfire Girls were my favorite of the bands from the mid-90s L.A. scene who were signed to majors around the time of/in the wake of Weezer’s success. (N.b., there are no girls in the band. You know how that goes.)
They were the first group that really struck me as distinctly post-grunge: they used some of the tools, the dynamics, distrortion and doominess, that were familiar from Seattle/Northwest rock, but seemed to be going for something distinctly different. Maybe it was a specific Angeleno grittiness, the knowledge that ugly things thrive even in the sun.

Don’t have the space or time to go much deeper into the self-inflected tragedy of this group–if yr interested, maybe the most candid and heartbreaking publicity bio ever can be found at ArtistDirect. Unfortunately, even their 00s comeback seems to have fizzled.

All of which is just scene setting, really, because “P.F.A.M.G.” (”Perry Ferrell Ate My Girlfriend,” and he might’ve for all we know) is one of the band’s occasional acoustic excursions, taken from 1995’s Mood Enhancer E.P. Frontman Christian Stone goes all breathy and nicotine-stained over deliberately-paced, ringing strums. Only a couple elements, but this is a case where the spare can expand to feel atmospheric.

There’s a nod to Nirvana’s “Lithium” here or there, but where Cobain’s song sought to recreate some psychotic state of being, Stone is nailing the down-in-the-mouth gray daze that the departure of a crazy woman can leave you in. Really, it’s close to the Platonic form of down-in-the-mouth, almost bordering black comedy as acknowledged by the teeth-grit irony of the “I’m a real go-getter” business.

So you guessed it, this was near the top of my dorm room repeat-button playlist. A decade-plus later, I still feel it.

Mood Enhacer (out of print) at GEMM or Amazon.

Guns N’ Roses “Welcome To The Jungle” (Demo) buy appetite/mp3s
Nominally, this classic could be about the experience of any newcomer to the big bad evil city. But the White Trash Wins Lotto tale of Hoosier expat Wm. Bailey has turned into such a rock ‘n’ roll archetype that it’s hard to divorce GNR’s first hit from the myth around his bussing it out to Los Angeles and facing the culture shock/toughening-up. (I believe that’s the open of Act I, yeah?)

Anyway, speaking of archetypes, the GNR lineup immortalized on Appetite for Destruction are among the firmament of definitively Los Angeles bands. Even in this early form (provenance unknown), “Welcome” packs all the sleaze and grandeur you could wish for–not unlike the city it takes as its subject.

Art Brut “Moving To L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Blogger faves of yesteryear Art Brut apply their just-this-side-of-joke-rock arch Brit wittiness to skewering the legend of the Golden West–or more accurately, mocking the rebels without a clue who buy into it. You gotta love the surf city call and response on the chorus.

I’ll admit, more or less without shame, that as a child I bought California’s promise. All myths were quickly dispelled upon my actually taking up residence in L.A., but for what it’s worth there’s a different kind of comfort, and surreal charm, to the city.

On the one hand, the living is kinda easy and there’s so much good stuff if yr willing to dig for it and put some miles on the odomoter. On the other, even the bad stuff is kinda like having front-row seats to the apocalypse. But I’ve gotten off-topic already.

(As an aside, there’ll be no tea with the Mozzer, as Morrissey no longer lives in L.A. You woulda thought he could live like a god out here; not sure what happened with that.)

Frank Black “Calistan” buy disc/mp3s
Here the once and future Pixie godhead (and my fellow Chussie/Angeleno transplant) Frank Black practices some speculative fiction, envisioning a future Los Angeles. Not to say nothing ever changes, but Calistan ain’t much different from the L.A. of 1994 or 2007–mondo trash culture, sun and fun on Cigarette Butt Beach, all the sprawl/traffic one could want, that impending apocalypse I referenced earlier.

It’s really fascinating: L.A. as an overlay of mission history, cowboy movie posturing, burnout village. As for those invisible planes cracking the concrete, only recently the seismic experts put out another scare release, and it’s still tough to get real nervous, even though we’re due.

(Rejected choices, now slated for a prospective at-times-painfully-obvious virtual mix dedicated to California: “Losing California” and “California’s Falling Into The Ocean.” Other Frank B. Francis listening in re his multiple L.A.s: “Ole Mullholland” and “Los Angeles” [duh].)

Elliott Smith “L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Although the popsmith was most readily associated with the Northwest gloom of Portland, E.S. overcame his “Angeles” misgivings and settled in L.A. a few years before his tragic death. His take on the city as a resident is complicated, obscure and imagistic.

There’s alienating glamour, personal trauma and some of those cryptic military references that were scattered across 2000’s Figure 8. But the takeaway is the moment of wide-open optimism and the biggest riffy riff in his solo canon. Even for those who feel lost, sometimes the possibility in a sunny day is undeniable.

Baby “Free Los Angeles” buy disc/mp3s
Here’s the obscure pick, which actually sorta inspired this post: bubblegummy glam from Baby–not the Cash Money impresario, but rather the sort of going concern from ex-Shudder to Think frontman Craig Wedren. (I know hip hop picks are woefully absent in this mix, but believe it or not most of my hip hop is on cassette. Sorry Mom, Sorry God.)

Anyway, Baby know the route to my heart: pinch a little from “Just What I Needed” on the verse, pinch a lot from “Pretty In Pink” on the chorus, sing about stuff like kisses with the help of some undeniable backing vox, toss and serve.

I’m at somewhat of a loss to explain what it all has to do with the character of the City of Angels–OK, kisses, seismic references, I’m with you, and stained glass who? But then again, good luck parsing any Wedren libretto. Of course, when it comes to L.A., moments of surrender to glorious and empty-headed hedonism aren’t exactly out of character either.

Bran Van 3000 “Drinking In L.A.” buy disc
This song always makes me think about halcyon days, hosting my Western Mass buddy the Mad Dog something like 10 years ago on a trip to L.A., when I took him directly from the airport to a Koreatown bar. At the time Canadians BV3K were his favorite band, and therefore destined like the ones before them to break up tragically or unceremoniously.

It’s amazing how quickly things feel ancient nowadays. A little more than a year (and 1.7 billion Internet memes) ago the Lonely Island dudes put together the ultraviral “Lazy Sunday” digital short, sorta single-handedly reviving folks’ interest in the eternally flagging Saturday Night Live. In its wake, a bunch of subpar West Coast answer raps were produced, although it’s sort of hard to think of why that was necessary at this remove.

Where am I going with this? It occurred to me later along that “Lazy Sunday” was sort of an East Coast answer rap to “Drinking In L.A.” Our brethren from the Great White North had already nailed the hazy, desultory feeling of being in yr mid-20s and sort of directionless in L.A. Like, I wonder how that script turned out.

The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” buy disc/mp3s
No doubt that brainy Northwest dudes get off on downing Los Angeles. Problem is that a lot of head Decemberist Colin Meloy’s talking points are dead-on, if amplified to grotesquerie.

This place can have its evil moments, cloying and/or soul-deadening. It can feel like the modern-day dystopia, all the fakery, all the brutality, what have you. But while Meloy concludes the whole scene is vomitous, there’s still a hint of grudging affection in the Bacharach-goes-canyon rock arrangement.

Mike Doughty “No Peace Los Angeles” buy disc/mp3s
Doughty, a dyed-in-the-wool New York type who used to front Soul Coughing, finds a different way into wasted L.A. These revolving-door-rehab blues could be renamed “The Ballad Of The Coreys,” and that’s what’s kind of amazing. We go from a caricature to something really fucking human.

Or maybe I’m just getting something in my eye. It’s stark and wonderful–a voice, an acoustic guitar, strings, a few organ flourishes and a little Catholic block to even us out on the sides.

X “Los Angeles” buy disc
Another definitive L.A. band, this time O.G. Angeleno punk flag-bearers X, with a song named for the town–that isn’t especially about the town. Hell, we spend half the song on a flight that’s probably more metaphor than real escape. Los Angeles is here the backdrop for someone’s break from reality. The city got to be too much for her. But the song’s “she” compiles a list of those who’ve wronged her that balloons to include, well, everyone who isn’t her.

(I’d pick up a thread–that L.A.’s too much for some folks’ constitution in part because they can’t handle the ongoing clash of cultures–but I can’t really knit it into anything.)

This song’s connection to L.A. is really more as a sonic snapshot of a company town bleeding from its seams something dark, jittery, ugly-beautiful and absolutely freeing.

Randy Newman “I Love L.A.” buy disc/mp3s
Speaking of L.A. as company town, and speaking of arch, ladies and gentlemen I give you Randy Newman and another of his ostensibly misunderstood masterworks.

G-d bless the guy who gets to have it both ways, so take yr pick: sarcastic needle busting the sun-and-fun balloon with sharp tongue in cheek or saleable commodity when the tourism folks or the local ball team needs a jingle. Hell, L.A. has a distinguished tradition of supplying major artists with enough hack work to keep their drink tab paid.

The sound of Toto backing him up on this? That bloat? I think the joke’s on Toto.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers “Free Fallin’ ” buy disc/mp3s
And we’ve come right back around to desultory. Tom Petty collaborated with ELO genius and fine-ass-Jewfro-haver Jeff Lynne, and the Valley of the City/City of the Valley/Camelot(?) got itself an unofficial national anthem.

Now, the little lady is a self-identified Valley girl, so I’ve been spending a lot more time on that side of the hill, and it turns out that it’s not as bad as teen movies starring Nic Copolla would have you believe. However, that smoggy sunset “Free Fallin’ ” feeling–you can’t escape it.

A new semester dawns, and I have double the workload, so unfortunately for this little blog, I have to devote my daily writing time to schoolwork/thesis prep. From now till May, this blog will be updated approximately weekly instead of weekdaily.

Please continue to check in. I should will be posting a mix tonight Wednesday night.

Cheers,
=W=

The Auteurs “Unsolved Child Murder”

Wrapping up Stuck in the 90s Week (with an Interruption for a Slightly Surreal Waking Dream) at PCR, I wanted to share a magnificently crafted oddity from the Auteurs.

I originally checked out 1996’s After Murder Park on the recommendation of someone on a message board. The set-up sounded fascinating enough: the sound of a dour, dyspeptic dandy of British pop (don’t call it Britpop!) as recorded in that one studio where those four guys crossed the street that one time and it was an awesome album cover, with the supervision of Maestro Steve Albini, noisenik, misanthrope and razor-sounds recordist par excellence.

The record’s great but I think, outside of a smallish cult, unfairly neglected. Then again, it takes a certain quixotic, or maybe self-sabotaging, streak to make a major-label record that tackles unpleasant subjects like plane crashes, abusive lovers, terrorism and, yes, the kidnapping and murder of a child as told from the POV of both the family and the criminals. It’s really more of the perfect recipe for a cult record. I guess that’s just Auteurs auteur(?) Luke Haines doing his thing.

So we can nod to Motown and the entire tradition of happy-sounding songs about operatically tragic emotions and appreciate the acoustic bounce of “Unsolved Child Murder.” The song chronicles the uncertainty and pressure faced by the family of a kidnapped kid, as reflected through the eyes of a sibling who understands maybe a little more than the parents suspect.

Somehow, amid the subtle string flourishes and french horn fills, an upbeat musical treatment injects enough air into the proceedings to flesh out their torture and make it bearable. They’re not sure whether to grieve, they’re a public spectacle, they’re ready to leave town to escape it all, they’re lapsing into illogic and superstition. Most poignantly, the bridge catches the surviving kid pondering the unfinished statement, “If I die before my parents die.”

In some ways it actually harkens back, in spirit, to the explorations of the ugly side you’d find on an old record by Big Black, Albini’s first prominent band. Of course BB’s proto-industrial postpunk matched the nasty of the narrative (stuff like, you know, taking inspiration from the true story of kids setting someone on fire) with harsh sonics.

There’s even more of a perverse thrill, a slight recoil of unease and a glint of sad sympathy to a melodic, almost stately pop song that turns over the rocks of the damaged human soul to see what lurks underneath.

After Murder Park at Newbury Comics.

It’s not really about music per se, but what the hell: I get my Ebert on, blurbing perhaps too densely about Brick and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for a Flak rental recommendations feature.

I like the noir life. I like to boogie.