Shoes - Black Vinyl Shoes (1977)

My friends in Merlin Wall seem to have gotten quite a few ideas from this Shoes album. Which also happens to boast one of the worst covers of all time. This is distant-sounding power pop with the hooks and melodic sensibility that discerning consumers demand from their catchy rock music.

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Huey "Piano" Smith - Having a Good Time (1959)

This chunk of proto-rock/proto-R&B has the same song over and over, but at least it's a good song. It also has the same descending piano lick over and over, but at least it's a good lick.

"Don't You Just Know It" was on these Wolfman Jack compilation tapes my dad gave me as a youth, and I was obsessed with it. I had impeccable taste, even as a child. Somehow that all went wrong around the onset of puberty when I got really into ska.

Anyway, this shit is unbearably catchy, and you can probably make some friends with these call & response choruses.

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Hall & Oates - Voices (1980)

A recent comment on this blog called me a cross between SR Prozak & an effeminate hipster, which is really cool to me. Also, according to people who I know, "hipsters" are really into Hall & Oates these days. If this is true, this is the greatest thing that hipsters have ever done, because Hall & Oates are the epitome of genius.

This is Hall & Oates's best record, and this is their most "rock" record. Some of this kind of sounds like Buzzcocks and I also hear quite a bit of the power pop of the 70s creeping into these songs. Either way, choruses are super catchy, but the verses and pre-choruses of these songs often offer the most interesting twists, regularly catching me off guard with wildly unexpected melodic phrasing. Check out the aggressively successful hit single "Kiss on my List" for a perfect example. That pre-chorus, man. That pre-chorus makes me want to become a better person.

In a cool "connect the dots" moment, one can see how the chords at the beginning of "Hard to be in Love with You" became "Out of Touch" a few years later. You've gotta lotta nerve, Daryl Hall. (got-ta lot-ta)

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Quicksilver Messenger Service - Quicksilver Messenger Service (1968)

Oh god, the pride of man, broken in the dust again.

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Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady

My rock band aka Pagan Youth aka Pagan Diaper is playing a Halloween show as the Buzzcocks, because the fucking Buzzcocks are one of my biggest songwriting influences. I'm doing double-duty with Like Rats is playing as Black Flag, so be on the lookout.

As a young youth*, I remember checking out the Buzzcocks and being sorely disappointed because they weren't that punk, you know? I was into The Broadways & Rancid & NOFX & assorted skacore bands and had started to dig into The Clash & The Ramones. I thought the Buzzcocks were stupid, but I was actually the one who was stupid. Why can't I ever do anything right please help meeeeeee.

Anyway, these are extremely, phenomenally catchy pop songs played with just a little bit of punk edge. What I care about are the little melodic tricks that elevate these hooks to transcendental status. The key change in the hook of "Ever Fallen in Love..." is the most obvious example, as is the major to minor chord change in "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" (total Beach Boys rip on that vocal melody; not just cuz it's falsetto although that makes it more obvious; I know because I also ripped off "Keep an Eye on Summer") as is the sharp five going into the chorus in "I Don't Mind." Another band known to always be doing cool stuff like that is THE BEATLES. So tite.

*link removed*

*First time I've ever seen this video. Weird.

The Verlaines - Juvenilia (1987)

I'm posting this record because I've been obsessed with the long phrase that makes up the verse of the first song. That chord progression relentlessly forces all of my hairs to stand on end. If I can ever write a pop song that has a similar melodic effect, I will just pee in my own pants all day because that is all that there is left to do.

This is a collection of The Verlaines early EPs, and is chock-full of that good, nice, wonderful & catchy white-guy rock. Those Flying Nun white guys were really cranking it out in the 80s. Get obsessively into it.

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The Zombies - The Lost Album (1969)

"I'll Call You Mine" is my favorite Zombies song. "Walking in the Sun" is also up there. It sounds like some bossa nova ass shit with the mournful brass playing somber melodies. So beautiful. "I Could Spend the Day" is quite a bit bluesier & heavier than standard Zombies fare, which actually works out really well in this case. And a bit more grit in Colin Blunstone's breathy voice is a welcome addition, if only to hear what it sounds like.

There is also a cool hokey "live" track with weird applause after each vocal part. Reminds me of Type O Negative's Origin of the Feces.

Fuck, I think "I'll Call You Mine" might actually be my favorite song. So what you should do is listen to these songs and feel extreme envy for The Zombies' song-writing brilliance and also the tone of Colin Blunstone's voice. Then, you can feel a bit better about yourself because some of these tracks are really weak.

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Note: It is my duty to recommend these videos on insulin resistance and metabolism. As someone who thinks about nutrition a lot, these have been impossibly valuable to me. So far I've watched twice to try to absorb everything, and I'll probably give another go 'round soon.

Marshall Crenshaw - Marshall Crenshaw (1982)

Yeahhhhh it's that catchy white guy rock. Anyone who has liked any of the same catchy white guy rock as me in the past (The Pointed Sticks, Buddy Holly) is gonna want to like this as well. And I've got to give credit to Erik B for getting me into this record many moons ago.

I bet that Someday, Someway sparks a flame of recognition. Hey look this song has even been performed live in concert.

The chorus is certainly the focus of these song structures, but the interesting thing is how smooth all of the transitions are. There are very few breaks or rests or abrupt shifts or anything like that. Even though the chord progression is always changing from part to part, these shifts are barely noticeable. There are also pretty active arpeggios going on all of the time that whites such as The Smiths have also used to great effect over the years. But Marshall Crenshaw, unlike Morrissey, is no bitch. You won't catch him crying about some bullshit. Just kidding, you probably will.

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Coloured Balls - Ball Power (1973)

My friend Steve recently posted a link to the NME top 100 records of the decade list, and Fenriz recently uh "dropped" the second installment of his "Trapped Under Ice" mixtape series. These internet events have caused me to post this Coloured Balls record. See, the NME list was chock-full of rock bands like The Libertines or whatever that don't particularly rock. Now, the popularity of these bands would make sense to me if they were really catchy or something, but they're not melodic or anything either. So they're in this weird no-man's land where they have the worst of both worlds (not rocking, not having catchy melodies). Get the fuck out of here with that.

Anyway, I was listening to Fenriz's mixtape while I was pondering this, and he included Human Being of off this record, and dang does that track rock. But yeah, these are some Australian guys really playing some progged out weirdo proto-metal boogie. Now, I've expressed frustration at pentatonic scale-knowers in the past, but that is no stab at the pentatonic scale itself. When something rox or is heavy, the pentatonic scale is just as good as any other. These songs exist in a nice sweet spot between upbeat boogie and meandering prog. Actually, in the extended solo section of Something New, they make use of one of my favorite pentatonic sounds: playing pentatonic but harmonizing with thirds. See also: Supernaut intro riff & Down all the time. And also the intro to Human Being uses another one of my favorite tricks. The emphasis is on the "and," but the guitar riff starts on its own so the time signature flips in your brain when the drums come in. See also: Fight Fire With Fire. Great I love rock music woo!

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Icecross - Icecross (1973)

This album is a total blogger wet dream. Whoa, underappreciated, anti-religious, fuzzed out psych rock From Iceland! Download and archive away!

But honestly, this record has a pretty great proto-metal vibe, as well as riffs, and, fortunately, the one song about being a sad guy is followed up with a song making fun of Christianity, which somehow still exists 36 years later despite the best efforts of Icecross.

Weird almost fusionesque riffing starts off 1999. Flirting with several different modes leading into a choppy, undulating verse. Also note the drummer's exuberant over-playing: crashing like crazy and making more than ample use of his toms. Works out quite well for the herky-jerky vibe of the song, if you ask me. Similarly, Scared makes excellent use of a plodding riff made up of fourths, which gives a nicely pseudo-dissonant sound to lead into another segment with very strange rhythmic emphasis.

Fans of Flower Travellin Band, Black Sabbath and/or Mountain, point your internet here:

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Beach Boys Collection

So, I mostly thought that it was impossible to offend me, but, the other day, I realized that I am offended by several of the songs on the pre-Today Beach Boys albums. I had a craving for Custom Machine, but I decided, in truly non-Western fashion, to take in all of Little Deuce Coupe and delay my own gratification. Several times, my mouth dropped slightly open, and my neck cocked suddenly: I was offended.

So, what I did was take all of the best songs from those albums and put them in one spot, because, believe you me, the songs here are fucking transcendental.

Structuring is similar to that described in my recent Buddy Holly post, in that extended chord progressions are used to build up to a specific point ("Surfin' USA!") while contemporary verse/chorus arrangements are largely absent. These songs are also super-fucking short, which rules, because I don't always want to hear the half-time chorus/vocal histrionics at the end of a song (sometimes I do want to hear this).

Pick out some voice-leading harmonies! Shut Down and Catch a Wave both have some keen-ass contrary motion, which makes me wonder if the Boys were thinking in terms of chord inversions or some weird-ass sibling mind-meld counterpoint shit, being very neglectuful of equal temperament, etc. Either way, what we end up with is a viscous musical texture pulling at the edges of reality, with the shockingly banal lyrics and more apparent-in-hindsight melancholy only adding to the surreality of the experience. The contrast between the basic rock pentatonic scale framework and the lushness of the vocal melodies (see also: The Beatles, Motown) is sometimes more appealing to me than the more cohesive blending of instruments and vocals found on Pet Sounds and later works.

Also, check out the lyrics to Be True to your School. Whoa!

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PS: Can any more knowledgable bloggers explain why the hard returns in my posts keep getting all fucked up? I can't make sense of this!

Buddy Holly - The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)

Yesterday, my parents took me to see The Million Dollar Quartet for my birthday, which was cool because dudes got to yang around and pretend they were cool rockstars for a few hours. I can relate to this, since I played in a Slayer cover band. Anyway, this whole experience reminded me of a time that my parents took me to the same theater to see a play about Buddy Holly. It turned out that this play was actually performance art because it was just some dude dressed as Jackie Kennedy with lipstick smeared all over his face repeatedly throwing a model airplane into the ground. My dad was quite cross with the whole experience.

What I'm trying to say is that going to a play with my parents reminded me of Buddy Holly. Avid readers & fans may recall my post about Skip James, in which I discussed compositions based upon the twelve bar blues. Many of Holly's compositions follow in this tradition, even if they may vary from the exact chords of a standard twelve bar. Consider Oh Boy. The point of this song is the hugely catchy "All of my love, all of my kissin, you don't know what you've been missin!" which then continues through the twelve bar form. This phrase is offset with a view different bridges. These are techniques that make me excited to write songs. In conclusion, fuck blogs, write songs instead.

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Jacula - Tardo Pede in Magiam Versus (1972)

There are a lot of ghosts whispering right now. Many ghosts tell me their tales, ghosts of gorillas, ghosts of Cicciolina, ghosts of Bach and his son Carl Phillipp Emanuel. These ghosts are singing me a song, and one is singing Jacula Valzer in my right ear while the other is singing Long Black Magic Night in my left.

Much creepier than movies about ghosts taking over the internet, much creepier than blog posts about ghosts.

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Erkin Koray - 2 (1976)

If you like the harmonic minor scale and its modes as well as what I think is harmonic major (although I haven't gotten my guitar out to check), this is the album for you. Erkin Koray made several really great rock recordings,but this is definitely his most "Turkish" album. His fuzzed out guitar is certainly present, although it's often buried beneath Turkish instruments carrying the melody forward.

For today's musical discussion, let's think about cultural relativism. These harmonic minor modes are just as common to people living in Turkey as the major and minor scales are to us, so I'm not thinking that if a Turkish person hears that sharp seventh they go all Putumayo and are like "Oh how fun! How exotic!" However, some of these melodies sound fucking menacing to my ears. Like the first, uh, movement of Komsu Kizi for example. Are these intervals registering as menacing to people east of the Mediterranean, or is it my Western upbringing and exposure to things like terror alert levels that's all "Sharp seventh! Level orange! How much shampoo is three ounces?"

Or maybe it's because I've been listening to metal for a good chunk of my goddamn life, and that genre certainly uses the half step, whole step, half step agenda to a purposefully dark and aggressive effect. Have you guys read any of those books about music and your brain or maybe just some wikipedia articles? What's the score?

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PS: A post or to ago I complained about not knowing about current music and feeling incapable of putting together a reasonable year end list.However, my friend Steve runs a real robber baron* of a techno etc. blog at http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/, and they put together a list, with samples of the best singles of the year. This is where interesting things are happening in music, unfortunately it's not my area of expertise. It is Steve's. Go listen, especially to the DJ Bone track posted here. Fuck this rules.

*I mean this in the best way, of course.

Jacks - Vacant World (1968)

Jacks go ahead and just lay waste to their own songs on this record. If you listen to the first few seconds of any of these tracks, you might be fooled into thinking that this is a normal, laid-back bluesy psych record or that you are listening to something softly melodic. However, Jacks take the approach of putting together ostensibly normal songs, then damaging them as much as possible through frantic yelling, bizarre instrumentation, and, of course, fuzzed out brain-coating walls of noise. The tempo and somber vocals of the song Vacant World make what could have been an otherwise peaceful, ethereal journey through guys doing drugs into an ominous, foreboding experience that places the weight of the cosmos squarely on your chest. If you like Les Rallizes Denudes, you know what to do:

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The Gordons - The Gordons (1981)

This right here is a really great iteration of post-punk from the great country of New Zealand and the really great record label Flying Nun. Angular, but not spastic, and really heavy. Super noisy in a really thick, aggressive way, not just washed out all gaze-style. Song structures are drawn out so that each motif can be properly damaged through improvised noise and dissonance.

Unlike pre-60's jazz in which dissonance is used in passing to lead into other chords, these riffs are diatonic and then dive into tritones and weird extended chords created by the ringing out of open strings. Groups like Husker Du used the open strings of the guitar to create nice little 9th and 13th chords, but here they are used in a much more mind-fucking, abrasive manner.

The triumph of this record is Coalminer's Song. You kind of feel that opening riff in your teeth. Just giving your teeth that good ol' in-out. Fuck I'm so pumped and I'm not even listening to it.

For fans of Sonic Youth, Joy Division, and jumping into an abandoned mine on Mars.

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The Pointed Sticks - Part of the Noise

Here is a nice collection of stripped-down pop songs with guitars. Now, you might be thinking "Huh, I have listened to a lot of boring, insincere white people playing this type of music." I am sorry that had to happen to you, but that is not what The Pointed Sticks are about. They are about using the same chord progression for both the verse and the chorus of their songs. Any time you can effectively do that, you are winning.

I listened to What Do You Want me to Do? like 100 times in a row yesterday. I accidentally put the song on loop while I was doing my important things, and I was like, "Man dog, I've been listening to really good music this whole time!" There is a really great internal dialogue between the two phrases that make up the verse on this song. Also, listen to Man of the Crowd to try to understand what I'm talking about.

Stuff like this makes me think of how fun it was to be a teenager and like scanning the classroom for THO. Then I remember teen angst, late onset puberty, and existential crises, and I feel good about my current life.

If you like Screeching Weasel and/or The Replacements, get this. This is what it sounds like to like music:

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Note: I couldn't find a linkable copy of the actual album artwork, so you get this weird cover to The Pointed Sticks' LP Perfect Youth, which is contained within the walls of Part of the Noise.

Moby Grape - Moby Grape (1967)

What the fuck going on here, I'm doing this.

We're starting this off with a record that I really enjoy recommending, because people always love it.

Moby Grape's self-titled debut from 1967 is a fucking shining example of melody and songcraft. The hooks on this thing are so perfect - Grape mastered the quick build-up into a nice rhythmic vocal break. Take notes on Come in the Morning and Hey Grandma. Also, consider the call and response arrangements of Omaha and Fall On You. I love songs that are written like this. Super catchy next level hooks, but song structures with much more flow and subtlety than the arena rock "man this chorus has got to be huge" agenda that's become the standard for pop music today.

There's also a steady flow of busy but tasteful lead guitar riffing. But hey, unlike many other records by white dudes from this time period, this is not a manual on how to be really boring at playing the blues. This is a manual on how to turn my brain into a pleasure factory.

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