I'm so unmotivated to maintain this blog, that here's a cover song.

Saw a link on a friend's FB page regarding Joy Division covers. Here are two of my favorites, from an Italian compilation entitled "Something About Joy Division", released in 1990 on Vox Pop Records. Long out of print and hard as hell to find.

Subterranean Dining Room - Atrocity Exhibition
Afterhours - Shadowplay

A good cover to me has to be either (a) a complete bastardization of the original or (b) something where the band covering said makes it their own, taking further musically than originally intended.

Sadly, there are too many bands who do mediocre covers and then showcase them as a great accomplishment when quite often they're undeserving of a b-side.

I'll have to do this again sometime.

At the behest of a friend...

Live Skull: "Fort Belvedere", from the LP Cloud One, 1986 Homestead Records
"Raise The Manifestation", from the live LP Don't Get Any On You, 1987 Homestead Records
"Kream", from the LP Dusted, 1987 Homestead Records
"Step", from the EP, Snuffer, 1988 Caroline Records
"Demon Rail", from the LP Positraction, 1989 Caroline Records

Live Skull were part of the mid 80's noise movement that crawled out of New York's lower east side, musically sandwiched between the brutal thud of the Swans and the avant art-noise of Sonic Youth. They fit well with their contemporaries, combining abrasive and unfriendly lyrics with such confrontational topic matter such as abusive relationships with a dual guitar din interspersed with haunting quieter passages. And their sound had much more of a rock feel to it. Like the middle child of a nuclear family, they kept a low profile and were often overlooked, if not completely disregarded due to the comparisons to the above-mentioned bands. Such was the curse of comparing one great band with two bands who served as pillars of a regionally and aurally specific music scene.

I recall at some point they had played a show with Savage Republic in Iowa City around 1987, right before I had moved there to attend school. The performance was legendary; I was told by several people on different occasions about their appearance, and each of them highly recommended the band to me. I ended up finding their live release, "Don't Get Any On You" the following year at a used record store under dubious circumstances. The record remained on my turntable for the entire summer of 1989 and was played loudly often. It wasn't a difficult listening experience. The band rocked hard, behind a wall of sound, with vocal duties being traded off between guitarist Marc C. and bassist Marnie Greenholz.(Oh, and I always though she was cute too) The music therin was dark and unsettling, of course, but at the same time vaguely comforting in its own artsy - rock out way.

In late summer 1989, I had the fortune to see them perform at the Cubby Bear in Chicago. By then, the lineup had changed; Percussionist James Lo had been replaced. I use the term percussionist, because he was far more than just a drummer. Check out the fills on "Fort Belvedere", a biographical number about an acid trip in the hills of Florence, Italy. Marnie had left the band and vocal duties had been pretty much taken over by one Thalia Zedek. A new bassist had been added to the lineup as well. Upon seeing Ms. Zedek on the stage, I wasn't sure what to expect. She was short, probably 5'1", and had a very edgy air about her. I would have thought that the band's signature guitar barrage would have washed her vocals out, but she was a force unto herself. Even when singing a couple of tunes that Mark C. usually did vocals on, she took ownership of them and reenforced to the audience that she was a very integral part of this group, and not just a fill-in. While I was completely floored by the entire performance, there was definitely a vibe of tension that I couldn't ignore. Something was amiss, but I couldn't put my finger on it; it wasn't just inter-band stress. After the show had ended, my girlfriend and I were outside the bar and overheard a bit of conversation from her and the band: she was looking to cop some smack, and wanted to get out of there fast. Not long after this show, Live Skull broke up for good. Whether or not it was the only reason, I'm sure the evil that heroin is was partially to blame.

Luckily for the music world, Thalia did manage to clean up several years later and formed the band, Come, and more recently has released several solo efforts of her trademark somber blues and folk (for lack of a better word) balladry. . And sure enough there was a very bleak time in my life where Come's first record, "Eleven Eleven" had a profound effect on me. But that's a whole other story.

The entire catalog of Live Skull is currently out of print, but most titles can be found used at reasonable (read: non-collector scum) prices.

Previous post deleted

Apparently, I infringed on someone's copyright by posting one of their songs on my last post. It was promptly deleted by blogger (who have every legal right to do so) and I wish to apologize to the artist directly for the inconvenience of my espousing the merits of your recorded output or your live performances to the potential music buying and concert going public. Checking on the links I provided, it appears that no one downloaded either of the songs so your music won't be listened to by anyone who might be impressed enough to actually purchase your recordings.

Also, I was at Best Buy this afternoon, and noticed that neither of your bands had any recordings available for sale there. You may want to take that up with your record label.

IHYDRS

Another Vanity Post: Some Bands I've Seen Perform Live

The Clash / Sonic Youth (4) / Grateful Dead (14) / Minutemen / Flaming Lips / Butthole Surfers (3) / The Allman Brothers Band (3) / Killdozer (2)/ Black Flag / Naked Raygun (6) / Dead Can Dance / Jerry Garcia Band / Descendents / D.O.A. / Soundgarden / Bob Mould (2)/ Sisters Of Mercy / Public Enemy / Nine Inch Nails / The Cure / New Order / Mudhoney / The Police / Foetus / Samhain / Meat Puppets / Ziggy Marley / Bob Dylan / REM / Live Skull / Neil Young / Rolling Stones / M.D.C. / Redd Kross / Public Enemy / The Replacements / Peter Murphy / Jane's Addiction / Siouxsie & The Banshees / Pink Floyd /

I am content as an afterthought

Paul K & The Weathermen - "Haunt Me Till I'm Gone" & "High In The Air" from The Blue Sun CD, Homestead Records 1992

A person runs into moments in his/her life where he asks himself, "is this what I wanted to be doing with my life right now?" He'll second guess the critical decisions in his life, and analyze his history to pinpoint that one decision he should have made differently in order to steer life into the direction he thought he was going. As time wears on those moments become few and far between, broken up by the tedium and frustration of present obligations. Further down the timeline, he'll stop questioning those life choices, realizing that he hadn't really planned this far ahead.

Paul K & The Weathermen were a odd discovery. I was living in Evanston, studying photography at UIC. Oh, and I drank a lot. In addition to the school and the drink, I worked and was married. It seems now that I had a quite a load to carry. Outside of academics, I'm not sure how successful I was (or have been, for that matter)as a husband. The job led me in the direction I would take professionally. Throughout that era, I managed to spend a lot of time alone. Riding the elevated trains to school and work, wandering around the downtown area, hitting the record stores. In a way, I lived an anonymous existence. I didn't live near friends or have neighbors I spoke with. I was faceless, silent. I had to be social to some degree, but the details are lost by now. I had a limited budget, so I could either buy a 7" single a week, or a used cd every two weeks. Amongst all the Sub Pop / Amphetamine Reptile noise that I was immersing myself in, I was also listening to a lot of college radio, particularly WNUR. I'm sure that's where I heard them first.

There is a line printed on Paul K & The Weathermen's "The Blue Sun" CD that reads, "these songs will never lie". A collection of early cassette recordings, the songs themselves are of individual life experiences - walking out on destructive relationships, living alone with no one to turn to, drug addiction and withdrawal, accepting the blame for personal failures and the final hope that life can still move forward in spite of it all - put together in an almost biographical fashion. And the cohesiveness of the collection as a whole unit makes every song that much stronger. Musically, the band pulls in influences ranging from coffee shop folk, poetic blues and rock balladry. It's not innovative, it's nothing new, but you can feel it on a level that nothing short of a funeral eulogy can register. And that's missing from a lot of records.
As much as I hate to categorize any artist , Paul K has the songwriting talent and strength that allows his records to stand very nicely among the rock/poet time line that includes Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Jim Carrol.

A final note: Pretty much all of Paul K & The Weathermen's discography is available for download from archive.org under the creative commons license. Do the work and find it:

It was bound to happen

Grateful Dead - Mama Tried > Big River, Shoreline Amphitheatre 06/16/90

Today marks the anniversary of my first Grateful Dead concert, July 22, 1990. I had wanted to see them since around 1982 or so, but could never find anyone to go with me to a show. I didn't have the wherewithall just to go it alone. I attended 13 more shows over the next five years before Jerry Garcia's passing, and managed to see both Jerry and Bob solo shows in that time as well.

I got turned on to the Dead in an odd way: When I was 14, I was arrested three times over one summer; after the third time my parents had me under house arrest for nine months. No friends visiting, no television, no leaving the house other than school or the public library. I could listen to music, as I had paid for my stereo myself. It was at the library where I found a copy of Dead Set and checked it out. It wasn't a monumental listening experience in the way that, say, The Wall or Zen Arcade was; but it stuck with me and I often found myself listening to it, often noticing more and more nuances about their music that couldn't be found elsewhere.

Detractors will roll their eyes, or make some uninformed remark about how boring their music was at the mere mention of this band. Most people I've encountered with this mindset haven't even heard their music let alone seen a show, but at the same time there is a grain of truth to this: their records (aside from an exception or two, and officially released live recordings) come off as very uninspired. But their live shows were a whole other experience; that was where their musical strength was displayed, and they toured relentlessly for three decades. Through the eighties and early nineties, their live shows consisted of two sets. The first would be about an hour or so, mostly shorter tunes but would grow a little longer and spacier later in the set. They would play some of their own material, a blues tune or two, maybe a country tune and always a Bob Dylan cover in there. The second set was the showcase: a two-plus hour set of their longer tunes with plenty of jams in between, broken up by a percussion duet / improvised "space" segment mid set and concluding with another handful of their more rocking numbers (Sugar Magnolia comes to mind) and a ballad or two. The sets were always different from night to night, and they often mixed things up by opening their shows with songs usually reserved for the second set. I saw them three nights in a row and never heard the same song twice.

I could go on forever, espousing the varied talents of the band, the benchmark technical advances of their sound crew (best sounding live band ever, even in the most acoustically unfriendly venue) , sharing my own experiences and discussing the sociological phenomenon of their very loyal audience. But the truth is, if you weren't there you may not understand. The tunes attached are "Mama Tried, a Merle Haggard cover paired up with the Johnny Cash classic, "Big River" from their summer 1990 tour. Both were staples of the first set throughout their history, and this performance in particular is amazing. You can't help but think, "Damn, those guys could play."

Interesting fact: the Grateful Dead were the first band ever to perform live with stereophonic sound.

Procrastination Demotivation Frustration

There are so many opportunities that allow me to feel like an abject failure. Some of them are brought upon myself. Others stem from extraneous circumstances. Fact of the matter is, I need to keep my shit together. I need to implement some degree of tunnel vision to keep focused on those things that keep me not necessarily happy, but at least content. Even if it's a half complete project, I should be doing something.It's been four months since the last posting. Summer is midway through at this point.

Skin Crawl is a sound manipulation project from a reclusive and antisocial 40 year old from the Chicago suburbs. In 2004, he started abusing Apple's GarageBand application, creating works by running instrumental loops through filters in a manner that they weren't intended. Equal parts dub, ambient and industrial, the songs are moody but at the same time have that tongue-in-cheek antagonism of someone who's been jaded by the indie elitism that almost destroyed what was regarded as "alternative" music in the early 90's. Think Big Black meets Brian Eno.

Skin Crawl - Rain Chamber
Skin Crawl - Piss Farm