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Monday, February 13, 2006
BROWNIES
The Fall
Live @ Brownie's : 1998
Courtesy of: WFMU's Beware of The Blog
If I were a disgraced memoirist I could describe this rock-historical moment in anguished detail, but I really don't remember much. Mark E. Smith and band came out and started playing. They sounded pretty good, very Fall-ish, all tighten-up and oratorical snarl. Next thing I know there's some kind of scuffle up there and Mark is kicking the bassist and the bassist is not smirking in the way bassists smirk when a front man kicks him in jest. There is this hateful jagged feeling in the room. The crowd is pressing in. Or maybe pressing out. Then some of the band walks off. Then Mark E. Smith stumbles off into the abyss, or at least an alley behind Brownies. Then it's all over. But it didn't feel real. It was like when this kid at a party in high school blew his finger off with an M-80. He showed me the bloody stump and he was laughing and then I started laughing.
LAW OF RUINS
Six Finger Satellite
Law of Ruins
Sub Pop : 1998
[Buy It]
Before he was dance deity Juan Maclean, John MacLean was the guitarist for Providence's Six Finger Satellite. Besides being one of the best bands of their era, they were also assholes, and friends of mine. John once described his now long-retired drug habit as paying $100 a day to watch "Oprah," but this was his clean-and-sober swan song with his bandmates, produced by James Murphy of later LCD Soundsystem and DFA fame, who might be the only current Grammy nominee in his category able to quote freely from The Recognitions. What does any of this mean? I'm not sure, but one lyric goes, "I have tears in my gears/from working on my back/under you," which puts to mind other weepy robot tropes, from the Silver Jews' "Windex tears flow down the robot's face/he never felt a mother's embrace" ("Send in the Clouds") to Smog's forlorn "robot by the river" ("Ex-Con") to the Sad Robot label, even. Why did the robots suddenly start bawling? Was it nostalgia for a time when the robot was a powerful symbol of human liberation/annihilation? Or was it the lack of progress being made in the AI community? And what does this have to do with 6FS? Simple. As too few of today's discerning fans understand, no Six Finger Satellite, no Lightning Bolt, or something.
SLIP IT TO THE ANDROID
Chrome
Half Machine Lip Moves
Touch & Go : 1982
[BUY IT]
But no Chrome, maybe no 6FS, at least no "mature" 6FS, who always claimed their grungy debut EP was a stunt to get signed to Sub Pop. Point being, maybe the robot is weeping because somebody slipped it to his buddy the android, and then started speaking German over fiddles and synths. I would cry a metallic river.
LONELY BOY
Andrew Gold
Elektra : 1976
What's Wrong With This Picture?
[Buy It]
Finally, I include this song because my babysitter used to torture me with it and because it is a case study of what happens when a robot, passing as human, enjoys a flourishing career as a session man and then lands a solo deal. (This is also somehow related to the fact that my mother wouldn't let me watch "2001: A Space Odyssey" because it was "about drugs," though I'm not certain how.) I admit that under the tutelage of my babysitter I fell under the spell of this song, the pain and yearning of this "boy" born in 1951, which even in the seventies seemed like a long time ago. But I never really listened to the lyrics closely until now, and so missed the unbelievable whininess of Gold's theme. The story of the song is as follows: a two-year-old boy is happy until his little sister is born and then he doesn't get enough attention and so waits until he's seventeen and then leaves home, presumably to polish his LA studio licks. It's a heartbreaker, the kind of song that could only have been written by somebody whose warm, semi-charismatic visage is actually a face plate, which is just to say the robots have been sobbing for much longer than is currently thought, and that Mark E. Smith is one of the last humans, at least of the white variety. Call me a rockist, I'm sure my two-year-old son will someday, but maybe by then he'll have a younger sibling I can favor.
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Sam Lipsyte is the author of Venus Drive, The Subject Steve, and Home Land.Labels: sam lipsyte, writer's week
posted by Alex
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