Categories
Meditations

Ottawa: Highlights from an Underrated Punk Scene

We often see clusters of great bands coming from the same city around the same time. London, for example, in the late 70s gave way to some of the greatest bands we’ve ever seen: The Clash, Cock Sparrer, the Sex Pistols, and really too many others to name and do justice. California had two punk rock renaissances, one in the mid 1980s with Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Agent Orange (see ‘american hardcore’ for the details). The other occurred in the mid 1990s with Rancid, Face to Face, and the Swingin’ Utters (see the documentary ‘one nine nine four’ for the story). Lately Gainesville, Florida (the Fest, Against Me!, No Idea Records) and New Jersey (the Gaslight Anthem, the Disconnects) have been getting a lot of attention.

I think that we notice these bands in clusters because for a band to succeed and be heard a local network of venues, promoters, bands, labels, and fans are needed as a support network. You need people to show up, different places to play, and labels to release your records. Trying to make it on your own, without these things would be a an uphill battle.

Categories
Lists

Top 10 Kinks Songs

The Kinks are a band with an interesting story. They were part of the british invasion, having a few hits in the beginning, songs like “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night”. Later in their career they made more experimental and complex albums, which didn’t do as well commercially and are under-appreciated to this day. They’re a band that had many ups and downs and had to work hard for what they got. We’re not experts, and we probably missed some awesome songs. Our list stays away from some of their super-hits, instead we try to shine the light on some stuff a casual listener may not know.

Categories
Rant

The Roulette Wheel of Music Journalism

I have heard many complaints recently about Spin’s Top 100 greatest guitarists of all time. I know that I was personally disappointed with Spin’s best of 2011 list. Music journalism is like a roulette wheel, where professional music listeners gamble on trends, often hedging their bets with a few surface level picks on an assortment of flavor of the moment bands.

If you were scour the pages of Spin, NME, or Rolling Stone would you find anything new of value? Perhaps, but more often than not these publication’s choices for best new music are quite puzzling. The problem is there are too many people these magazines need to please, too many different kind of rock and roll fans to service. So you end up with a kind of musical journalism for everyone, where no one in particular wins. Much like an election, these magazines produce the same mediocre results, year after year, for structural reasons that they cannot be expected to overcome.

Categories
Reviews

Hidden Gems Vol. 725: Love is a Battlefield

Scrolling through my massive MP3 collection, I happened across a long lost pop-punk extended play I should tell you about. Hi-Standard is a Japanese band who were on Fat in the 90s. They sing mostly in mispronounced english, playing music stylistically similar to NOFX.

Categories
Rant

The Future of Formats

There was a time when music cost money. Kids would have to save up their pennies to hear what’s new. Looking back, it is really quite incredible what has happened. It is as if the flood gates of abundance have opened and we will never again be expected to pay for sound.

The old world paid economy of music is what lead to the creation of the music formats we have inherited today. Music creation is very much hit and miss, you write one good song for every ten shitty ones. Traditionally, the good one would go on to be a hit that would sell records. The good songs were sold seperately as singles, while the others were reserved to fill out the live show. This format remained dominate for decades. The clever business minds of the music world needed to optimize the hit/miss rate and thus the album was born. You would package a few good songs along with a few of your throwaways into a single unit, an album. This was possible because music was a paid commodity, people would tolerate filler tracks because buying 12 singles was expensive.

Categories
Rant

Is Today’s Music Becoming Just Another Distraction?

I was watching Billy Corgan talk about how cool he is; also about how social media is affecting the music world:

Categories
Reviews

Hidden Gems Vol. 382: The Revolts

The Re-Volts are a band not too many talk about, though they have key members from One Man Army, Dead to Me, and the Swingin’ Utters. Spike from the Swingin’ Utters and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes sings on all the songs. They have only one release, a six song, self-titled EP. It’s hard to find, I got mine at a show. You can get it from Pirate Press Records.

Categories
Lists

Top 5 Video Game Soundtracks

We grew up with games, and we have gotten to see the music in them progress (or regress) over time. There are too many to choose from, but here are our favorites:

Categories
Rant

Beautiful Losers: Striving Towards Failure

I was watching Brian Fallon’s interview where he said something I found quite strikingly true and well put:

“A lot of people that come from a punk rock scene or anything like that, you’re always told that you can’t succeed; you’re not allowed to. It’s wrong to win, you can’t win. You’re suppose to be the beautiful losers; like the Replacements or one of those bands.”

Categories
Rant

The Problem with Pitchfork

The Problem with Pitchfork

Something about Pitchfork has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I’ve never understood exactly what. The most obvious answer would be that most of the bands it covers suck; as if engineered for obscurity. They often dismissively review ground breaking albums, otherwise totally omitting them. Many of modern music’s most annoying tendencies can be directly correlated to pitchfork’s influence (excessive reverb, nostalgia, awkward fusions on genres).