secret comics

Let's Be Honest

What are the top three words (or phrases) I can recall thinking this week?

  1.  "Retarded"

  2.  "Asshole"

  3.  "Aloo matter"

The past weekend's winner was "smoothie", I think, followed shortly thereafter by "smoothie machine" which is a story more sad than funny (but still funny) that I won't bore you with here.

What about you?  No, really -- I'm asking.  Wait, does that make this a meme?  Oh god, Becky S. has got me all freaked out about memes (which I'll admit I've always been a little suspicious of).  Oh well, if I've committed a meme, then I've committed a meme.  Have mercy.

Rat's Revenge Part One

Hmmm.  Looks like we're descending deeper and deeper into fan-boy hell.  Today I laud... the Methadones!  Um, I'll link them, but the site's been down for a few days now so don't expect much.  For now, anyway.  Anyway, their new record is highly recommended -- "Mess We Made" is one of the high points, I think.  Also good is** the fact that it's an mp3.

So.  Using "Mess We Made" as the obvious point of reference for the record, I'd say (broadly) the Methadones make good by (a) being able to write a g.d. song, (b) being able to play their instruments (which sounds like their playing clarinets and whatnot), and (c) getting excellent production from Mass Giorgini at Sonic Iguana.  Excellent production mainly meaning you can hear the damn bass without it overwhelming the mix, plus the guitars have a nice solid "miniature wall of noise" feel.  Smooth, but not cloyingly overproduced, you know?  I guess my "solid" and "smooth" are sort of the same thing differently stated.  Smooth might be the wrong word altogether.  How about an agglomeration of guitar?  An assemblage?  Not sparse like a lot of crappy punk/indie production I mean, and not overly "rocked up" or contrived.

Which lead me to the fact that I really love the Methadones' obvious musical depth -- a focused approach that takes its cues from punk rock as well as late 70's power pop, 60's garage rock, and on back into Buddy Holly, etc.  Meaning it doesn't sound like every other retarded band trying to tack some punk onto their pop with no real musico-linuguistic (I just made that up) tools to get the job done -- it's not a question of a strictly "broad" musical vocabulary, which produces horrible things like Mike Patton, Ween, jam bands and that crap, but it's also an issue of depth.  Meaning: you have a slight clue what you want to do, and you do it.  Focus being a good word, I guess.

Another note on these wholly made-up musico-linguistic tools -- the nut of it, as far as I understand, is that you rip off as many of the best things as you possibly can without being obvious.  Or getting caught, whatever.  Of course, that's part one of all art -- add that to your necessarily limited technical/presentation abilities (including the aforementioned focus, vision, whatever), and there you go.

Finally, a Methadones promo pic snatched from the Thick Records site... it's "hi-res", so enjoy that:

Anyone else notice that guitarist Mike (far right) looks kinda like Jello Biafra in this snapshot?

**So... I'm killing myself with this passive voice nonsense.  Plus I used back to back anyway's back there... ah fuck it, no one's paying attention anyway.

Katy Lied

For whatever reason, when I think about writing things these days, I keep getting tripped up on my recent "Top Ten" post -- not necessarily in a bad way, I guess, more not so interesting.  Mainly I've been going back and revelling in the brilliance of the albums selected... and this of course punches my "prattle on and on" button.

Like the Minutemen's Double Nickle on the Dimes.  Listening to it this afternoon, I am simply astounded at how a 45-song record can be so close to perfect.  Check out their cover of Steely Dan's "Dr. Wu" to get a sense of what I'm going on about, but remember that a single song can't even begin to really address the album's complete and total brilliance.  Really.

Double Nickles is an almost flawless album -- mind-bogglingly so, when you factor in the breadth, depth, and scope of what they were shooting for.  Fucking audacious is what it was -- 45 songs**, I said, and not more than a handful (one, two, three at the most) anything less than brilliant.  A beautiful, ferocious, vital record.  There's a lot more I could put in here, I guess, but I'm at work and don't have access to all my sources.  Anyway... it was recorded in an insanely short period of time, under the most econo of circumstances:

"We made Double Nickels on the Dime for $1,100," Watt says with a laugh. "We mixed 45 songs in one night, in about 10 hours I think. Econo, man. It's a trip to look back now and see how little thought was put into it at the time, but we played our hearts out."

"No hope?  See, that's what gives me guts!" 

**Two less on the CD, see link above.  If you want the tracks excluded from the CD version, you can go here for all of them.  "Ain't Talking About Love", anyone?  Maybe one of the Top 3 cover versions... ever.  Yep.

Gabba Gabba Hey!

OK, you may have already seen this but it's still kind of amusing: