Bad Brains - Bad Brains (1982)

Wish I could dive into the jazz thread, but lately I've felt the need to get my no-bullshit in-your-face rock on. Everything else sounds like they're sort of kidding.

If I'm not mistaken, right now Ian and Deborah's house is getting turned into a museum for Joy Division "fans". Imagine the tour guide: "Here used to be the turntable where he spinned Iggy Pop's The Idiot for the last time. Over here there was the TV in which he watched a German film about a musician who goes to the United States and kills himself. And if you turn around and look to the kitchen, there's the washing line he hung himself from. I hope you have all had a jolly good time!"

I'm all for preserving history, but I'm with Barnie on this one: this is some seriously morbid wretched shit.

In August 2011, this torrent was posted to Dime:


BANNED: "The uploader wishes to honor Peter Hook's request to pull this torrent."


In October 2013, this one showed up:


BANNED: "We have strong evidence to believe that the band, who as a rule are taper- and trader-friendly, do not want this particular show to circulate. It's strong enough that we'll need to ban the torrent while we investigate.

If it turns out to be OK for DIME to track this show, we'll lift the ban from this torrent. Do NOT post another torrent of this show."

Not going to go there ever.

I love this live EP. covers of Wire, Blue Oyster Cult, The Butthole Surfers, and Public Enemy. I love how Mike Watt says "...phisticated"

Ashrae Fax. I can't get enough of this amazing sounding band. Luckily all of their material is on YouTube. America is an absolute hotbed of astonishing musical talent.

Great record! Jim~san wa zuuugooiiii desuuuuyo~

See? See? I knew it. I knew this would happen.

OLD THEORY: In the future, band names will become sub-genres.

The future's here.

Ashrae Fax isn't rock or pop, or neo- or post- anything. They are "cocteau twins." What sort of music do they play? They play cocteau twins. Not covers, mind you. That would be "They play Cocteau Twins."

Pack it up, goodbye, farewell. It was a good run, but it's all over.

But... that's not what he said. He just said they were amazing sounding. I'm confused....


Also, don't you think band names have acted as descriptive verbs for a while now? Like, around the time of High Fidelity maybe... Haven't we been hearing that kind of language for a while?

"Hey, have you heard Interpol?"
"No"
"They're kind of a poppy Joy Division meets Strokes kind of band that everyone will get really excited about for exactly one year, only to be completely forgotten and cast aside like used underwear to make room for the Killers."
"Who are the Killers?"
"Ohhh you'll know soon enough. For now enjoy not having any idea. You will remember these as the good times"


Know what I mean?

This has been a hell of a year for footwork.

Yes, he/she didn't write, "Check out this revolutionary new band." I'm just responding to the not-even-trying of it all. Did you check them out?


Resembling different bands is comparatively groundbreaking. Interpol sounds a bit like Joy Division, but no one confuses the two.

I'm dissing bands who sound like they started as a cover band, then said, "Why not change a chord or two and call it an original?" Maybe I'm also responding to the youtube comments. My bad, I suppose. "They sound like Cocteau Twins. Cool!" When has a lack of imagination ever been cool?

I'm not even saying they're bad. A derivative band might actually end up with better songs than the original. But it's so boring when I hear a band and can tell you exactly what's in their record collection. This happens too often for comfort. Instead of taking inspiration from a period or a movement, I hear a lot of bands that focus on ONE predecessor and run with it. Into a brick wall, as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, I'm totally on board with what you're saying here. Yes, I too am extremely bored by new bands that sound so much like the bands they're trying to emulate that there is no defensible reason for their existence. If a band sounds so much like another band that their defining characteristic is how much they sound like that band, then why would anyone give a flying fuck?

I love Wire, right? Like, I really love them, and believe them to be one of the few bands that have achieved absolute musical perfection from within the walls of punk, which they more or less tore down in the process.

But if a band came around and sounded exactly like Wire at their best, it's not like I'd automatically love them. In fact, I'd probably loathe them for scraping 30 year old shit off Wire's boots and selling it as something NEW. Also, since Wire already did Wire perfectly, who the fuck needs a carbon copy?

So I'm with you on that: I guess I just thought you were talking about bands being used more than actual sub-genres or musical terms to describe a sound.

But I think I may have missed something about your original point, so... Y'know. Sorry about that.

But yeah, I prefer musicians who have roots in multiple genres. One of the things I love most about Sonic Youth is that you NEVER hear anyone saying "this band sounds like Sonic Youth!" Of course this is because SY is more of a collage of moods and sounds, and much less of a mix of genres. Their influences are clear, but not because of a similarity in sound.

I'm rambling. Ramblin' man.

I heard ppl describe Unwound as like SY back in the day.

Hole - Celebrity Skin

I like this, even if it doesn't amount to much more than a slightly angry Bangles album.

This sounds like SY:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6_FaFegnxw

But this was before SY started to make same kind of stuff. I don´t think there has born very much original music after seventies in rock/pop (yes, synth stuff in eighties, but I don´t find that very great). Even Sy owes much to the Velvet/13th Floor Elevators/Stooges/Red Crayola/Wipers. But they have made own very personal mix of the styles made before. And so has made many others.

Hell, I've said that, or something close to it, many times over the years. But when I talk about Unwound being similar to SY, I don't exactly mean that they sound like them, but rather that they achieved a sort of Sonic Youth-esque blend of genres and moods...

Unwound is more immediate than SY, even on their most experimental work. But I think they straddled the space between hardcore and "art-core" (for lack of a more fun word) just as SY did, and that in the end their music is probably more influenced by Sonic Youth's BMR-DDN run than anything else.

Really, they're still an entirely different animal... But the influence is there and they came closer to "Next Sonic Youth" status than anyone else I can think of.

Does this mean you took my advice and listened to some Wipers records?

Ashrae Fax sound original in a contemporary way. There are influences in their sound like 80's UK synthpop but with a dark, gothic twist. On some tracks they sound a bit like Grace Jones, though that's more to do with the brilliant and beautiful singing talents of Renee Mendoza. I love their sweeping change in tempo on most of their songs. Very dramatic. I hope they record new material.