I love Boston, and I love being from Boston, and although I often proclaim Boston as the best city on the planet periodically I remember that the only notable music ever to come out of my fair city on the bay is terrible hard core and ska with Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Dropkick Murphys being the two noteable examples.
--WF
And This Event
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Arcane Fire
So this isn't a real post, and by that I mean it won't be seven pages of incoherent self indulgence. Two things:
1) My vocabulary has been seriously slumping since I entered college/became allowed to swear more often than not swear, so to combat said loss of perspicacity, I've been doing FreeRice with the hopes that maybe if I do it often enough I'll start actually using the words, because I am no slack-jawed swear-spewing ninny. At least, I hope I'm not.
2) I have another chick to add to my 'chicks only play the bass' rule: Mustard Gas from Fucked Up. Technically they're not an indie band, but neither is Auf Der Maur and I counted them/her so what the hell. I'll expand it to all genres. In which case the Germs have to go up too (Lorna Doom being the bassist).
Tidbit for the day: Prior to the Pretenders, Chrissy Hynde was for a short while in a band then called Masters of the Back Side which upon her leaving became the Damned. Prior to that she was in a band with Mick Jones called My Cunt's Honorable Discharge which upon her leaving became the Clash.
-WaffleFries
I KNOW, RIGHT?
As a reward, here's a song, not yet released and blatantly ripped from youtube that I love love love:
Vampire Weekend - White Sky
While I do worry that things like posting links to songs not yet released does sort of promote weird albumness as happened with VW on their first record (the record's only been out a year, but the songs have been out since like 2005), it's too damn good, and anyway no one reads this, so I'm not too worried.
1) My vocabulary has been seriously slumping since I entered college/became allowed to swear more often than not swear, so to combat said loss of perspicacity, I've been doing FreeRice with the hopes that maybe if I do it often enough I'll start actually using the words, because I am no slack-jawed swear-spewing ninny. At least, I hope I'm not.
2) I have another chick to add to my 'chicks only play the bass' rule: Mustard Gas from Fucked Up. Technically they're not an indie band, but neither is Auf Der Maur and I counted them/her so what the hell. I'll expand it to all genres. In which case the Germs have to go up too (Lorna Doom being the bassist).
Tidbit for the day: Prior to the Pretenders, Chrissy Hynde was for a short while in a band then called Masters of the Back Side which upon her leaving became the Damned. Prior to that she was in a band with Mick Jones called My Cunt's Honorable Discharge which upon her leaving became the Clash.
-WaffleFries
I KNOW, RIGHT?
As a reward, here's a song, not yet released and blatantly ripped from youtube that I love love love:
Vampire Weekend - White Sky
While I do worry that things like posting links to songs not yet released does sort of promote weird albumness as happened with VW on their first record (the record's only been out a year, but the songs have been out since like 2005), it's too damn good, and anyway no one reads this, so I'm not too worried.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
I want a blog, that will blog for no one else
God I even hate the word. Blog. It is word vomit in it's most extreme form. In fact, a girl down the hall was definitely blogging down the porcelain telephone for most of last night after partying a little too heartily. Anyway, here are three things:
1) There seems to be a bizarre phenomenon in the world of indie rock I would like to explore. Some would say that rock n' roll in general is not the most female-friendly species of animal. I am not one to disagree with that statement. That being said, I've noticed an odd trend with female musicians, particularly in indie bands: if you're gonna have a chick in your band, she's going to play the bass, or no instrument at all. Proof:
Smashing Pumpkins (D'arcy Wretzky, pre-crack)
stellastarr* (Amanda Tannen)
Auf Der Maur (but I'm pretty sure she's a witch anyway)
Rainer Maria (She's in the back! can you see her? No you cannot.)
The Raveonettes (Sharin Foo)
Zwan (Paz Lenchantin, formerly of a Perfect Circle)
Exceptions:
Metric (she plays the piano/synth)
Asobi Seksu (she plays the piano/synth)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (she doesn't play anything)
Now, I've tried formulating theories as to why this might be true, and I've only come up with a couple that hold any sort of logical basis in reality.
1) When a band featuring a woman is forming, the male members, assuming she is an inferior musician, give her a pretty easy role while simultaneously trying to not insult her intelligence.
Now this one seems a little too harsh to be real, but my inner raving feminist won't let me put it down.
2) Billy Corgan hatez the ladiez.
This one I'm willing to get behind if only because I think Billy Corgan is one of the most self-obsessed egomaniacs still producing music. And he wields enough psychic power that he could totally be the cause of all these other bands fucking shit up (why else would he stay bald, if not to amplify his psychic powers?)
3) Ladiez have tiny baby fingers and guitars are just too complicated for such tiny little finge
rs to play properly.
2) Despite some of the more recent news about who's-the-bigger-ass-level-beef between Win Butler and Wayne Coyne, I still like both bands (Arcade Fire and Flaming Lips for the uninitiated), probably with a slightly higher level of affection going toward Arcade Fire. And despite that being the one Maurice Sendak book I didn't memorize as a child (which I kind of feel like is like eating pie crust your entire life without having ever eaten the filling) Where the Wild Things Are still looks pretty effing beautiful.
3) We watched Twilight last night, and we all knew it was going to be terrible, and it was, but I was the only one who actually spoke up about it, spending long periods of the movie criticizing the acting, the dialogue, even the basic tenants of the film (the weird sort of daddy-loves-daughter vibe the whole movie emits, for example*). People hated me. I am not ok with this but the movie was SO BAD AND THEY DIDN'T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND WHY.
Finally, the MP3 of the week. In perhaps the most awesome case of cultural syncretism/cyclical referencing, The Very Best (aka Malawi's own Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) sample none other than Vampire Weekend's Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa on a song aptly titled Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa. Vampire Weekend reference African guitar music, an African rapper references Vampire Weekend. Amazing.
So here it is, enjoy.
The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
-WF
Suck it, Koenig
*He's literally a century older than her, she dances on his feet at prom like daughters do with their fathers when they're little, she in no way can defend herself and turns to him to do so, he carries her ass around the whole time.
1) There seems to be a bizarre phenomenon in the world of indie rock I would like to explore. Some would say that rock n' roll in general is not the most female-friendly species of animal. I am not one to disagree with that statement. That being said, I've noticed an odd trend with female musicians, particularly in indie bands: if you're gonna have a chick in your band, she's going to play the bass, or no instrument at all. Proof:
Smashing Pumpkins (D'arcy Wretzky, pre-crack)
stellastarr* (Amanda Tannen)
Auf Der Maur (but I'm pretty sure she's a witch anyway)
Rainer Maria (She's in the back! can you see her? No you cannot.)
The Raveonettes (Sharin Foo)
Zwan (Paz Lenchantin, formerly of a Perfect Circle)
Exceptions:
Metric (she plays the piano/synth)
Asobi Seksu (she plays the piano/synth)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (she doesn't play anything)
Now, I've tried formulating theories as to why this might be true, and I've only come up with a couple that hold any sort of logical basis in reality.
1) When a band featuring a woman is forming, the male members, assuming she is an inferior musician, give her a pretty easy role while simultaneously trying to not insult her intelligence.
Now this one seems a little too harsh to be real, but my inner raving feminist won't let me put it down.
2) Billy Corgan hatez the ladiez.
This one I'm willing to get behind if only because I think Billy Corgan is one of the most self-obsessed egomaniacs still producing music. And he wields enough psychic power that he could totally be the cause of all these other bands fucking shit up (why else would he stay bald, if not to amplify his psychic powers?)
3) Ladiez have tiny baby fingers and guitars are just too complicated for such tiny little finge
rs to play properly. This one I just thought up because I have tiny baby fingers, but guitars reall
y aren't that complicated and most ladiez don't have tiny baby fingers. Besides, James Dean Bradfield, arguably one of my favorite guitarists of all times has infamously stubby fingers and he doesn't let it get him down. And then there's Tommy Iommi who lost parts of two of his fingers in an industrial sheet metal-cutting accident type dealie. His fingers were literally stubs, and he's still considered one of the best guitarists of heavy metal. So this theory is about as sound as Converse in a rain storm.
y aren't that complicated and most ladiez don't have tiny baby fingers. Besides, James Dean Bradfield, arguably one of my favorite guitarists of all times has infamously stubby fingers and he doesn't let it get him down. And then there's Tommy Iommi who lost parts of two of his fingers in an industrial sheet metal-cutting accident type dealie. His fingers were literally stubs, and he's still considered one of the best guitarists of heavy metal. So this theory is about as sound as Converse in a rain storm.2) Despite some of the more recent news about who's-the-bigger-ass-level-beef between Win Butler and Wayne Coyne, I still like both bands (Arcade Fire and Flaming Lips for the uninitiated), probably with a slightly higher level of affection going toward Arcade Fire. And despite that being the one Maurice Sendak book I didn't memorize as a child (which I kind of feel like is like eating pie crust your entire life without having ever eaten the filling) Where the Wild Things Are still looks pretty effing beautiful.
3) We watched Twilight last night, and we all knew it was going to be terrible, and it was, but I was the only one who actually spoke up about it, spending long periods of the movie criticizing the acting, the dialogue, even the basic tenants of the film (the weird sort of daddy-loves-daughter vibe the whole movie emits, for example*). People hated me. I am not ok with this but the movie was SO BAD AND THEY DIDN'T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND WHY.
Finally, the MP3 of the week. In perhaps the most awesome case of cultural syncretism/cyclical referencing, The Very Best (aka Malawi's own Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) sample none other than Vampire Weekend's Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa on a song aptly titled Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa. Vampire Weekend reference African guitar music, an African rapper references Vampire Weekend. Amazing.
So here it is, enjoy.
The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
-WF
Suck it, Koenig
*He's literally a century older than her, she dances on his feet at prom like daughters do with their fathers when they're little, she in no way can defend herself and turns to him to do so, he carries her ass around the whole time.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Not a girl, not yet a vegan
Fuck it. I was going to wait and post this later, but that's not happening so let's not fool ourselves. Three things:
1) stellastarr* are like lucky charms. When they're great, they're the best things in the world, but when all of the marshmallows are gone, all that's left is a pile of cheerios unsuitable even for rabbits (more on this later). Two examples of the former, happier, marshmallow-ridden days are included, for your auditory pleasure.
First is Jenny, a relatively bland song with two hidden gems that make it glorious. Jenny firstly features an amazing 'woah-oh-o-o-o-oh' thing. It's inexplicably the best noise I've ever heard the backup singer to any band ever make. The other thing is where the song ends, given where it begins. What starts as something most average rock bands can and have created dissolves into this hysterical (in no small part due to lead singer Shawn Christenen's already shrill voice) psychotic rant listing off words in rapid fire succession. When the words finally space enough to be understandable, it's already the end of the song, and the last line leaves a strange burn mark as the guitars come tumbling down: Jenny I bet you'd make your mom so proud / I need my cell!
The other, My CoCo, has much less to it. Whereas with Jenny I picture a disturbed high school-era ex returning from the dead carrying the guitar you pawned at twenty three and brutally murdering the chino-wearing ass you have become by bludgeoning you with said guitar, My CoCo is simply a dance number. It's a confession of love, it's a confession of wanting sex in the simplest way, and it makes your hips move independently of the rest of you. It's alright. The bassline does its job, your ass does its.
2) This makes me so excited I'm not sure how to handle it. I hope Bruce Campbell gets a decent role in it somewhere. Also the pictures confirm my thesis of Sam Raimi being the most adorable (if certainly not most attractive) director of all time.
3) I have a beef with vegans, perhaps pun intended. It's not that I'm against not eating meat. If anything I'm actually for it, if only because meat is easy to do wrong but vegetables aren't, and if meat here is cooked badly it'll end in sitting on a toilet launching a rocket out of your ass for three days but if vegetables are cooked badly it just doesn't taste good. Being vegan in my experience seems like a douchebag's way of acting like your older sibling: suffering so you don't have to suffer, playing the thankless martyr.
'No...it's ok, I'm vegan so I can't have ice cream or cake for dessert. I'll just eat something later it's fine.'
What really gets me is the meat-substitute market. Veggie burgers: socially acceptable. Vegan haggis: literally not possible (except it is?). There's vegan caviar too. These are just stupid. Veggie burgers replace a vital component of the human diet: crap from a grill that tastes like smoke. Vegan haggis replaces a foodstuff with an already Ado Annie-level of unnecessary with essentially solidified vegetable soup (note the ingredients and tell me that's not soup). Stupid stupid stupid.
-WaffleFries
And Burger
stellastarr* - Jenny
stellastarr* - My CoCo
1) stellastarr* are like lucky charms. When they're great, they're the best things in the world, but when all of the marshmallows are gone, all that's left is a pile of cheerios unsuitable even for rabbits (more on this later). Two examples of the former, happier, marshmallow-ridden days are included, for your auditory pleasure.First is Jenny, a relatively bland song with two hidden gems that make it glorious. Jenny firstly features an amazing 'woah-oh-o-o-o-oh' thing. It's inexplicably the best noise I've ever heard the backup singer to any band ever make. The other thing is where the song ends, given where it begins. What starts as something most average rock bands can and have created dissolves into this hysterical (in no small part due to lead singer Shawn Christenen's already shrill voice) psychotic rant listing off words in rapid fire succession. When the words finally space enough to be understandable, it's already the end of the song, and the last line leaves a strange burn mark as the guitars come tumbling down: Jenny I bet you'd make your mom so proud / I need my cell!
The other, My CoCo, has much less to it. Whereas with Jenny I picture a disturbed high school-era ex returning from the dead carrying the guitar you pawned at twenty three and brutally murdering the chino-wearing ass you have become by bludgeoning you with said guitar, My CoCo is simply a dance number. It's a confession of love, it's a confession of wanting sex in the simplest way, and it makes your hips move independently of the rest of you. It's alright. The bassline does its job, your ass does its.
2) This makes me so excited I'm not sure how to handle it. I hope Bruce Campbell gets a decent role in it somewhere. Also the pictures confirm my thesis of Sam Raimi being the most adorable (if certainly not most attractive) director of all time.
3) I have a beef with vegans, perhaps pun intended. It's not that I'm against not eating meat. If anything I'm actually for it, if only because meat is easy to do wrong but vegetables aren't, and if meat here is cooked badly it'll end in sitting on a toilet launching a rocket out of your ass for three days but if vegetables are cooked badly it just doesn't taste good. Being vegan in my experience seems like a douchebag's way of acting like your older sibling: suffering so you don't have to suffer, playing the thankless martyr.
'No...it's ok, I'm vegan so I can't have ice cream or cake for dessert. I'll just eat something later it's fine.'
What really gets me is the meat-substitute market. Veggie burgers: socially acceptable. Vegan haggis: literally not possible (except it is?). There's vegan caviar too. These are just stupid. Veggie burgers replace a vital component of the human diet: crap from a grill that tastes like smoke. Vegan haggis replaces a foodstuff with an already Ado Annie-level of unnecessary with essentially solidified vegetable soup (note the ingredients and tell me that's not soup). Stupid stupid stupid.
-WaffleFries
And Burger
stellastarr* - Jenny
stellastarr* - My CoCo
Day One: the Hatred Begins or, an Introduction of Sorts
First things first:
I hate bloggers. I hate blogs and I hate bloggers, and were it not for the music I would probably never get near the internet again. That being said
I guess you're pretty good looking...for a blog.
Second things second:
I hate hipsters. I hate hipster clothing, I hate hipster people, I hate hipster dances at concerts that push me out of the way with their noncommittal arms but hyperactively overenthusiastic shoulders and knees. That being said, every damn thing I like some hipster has already gotten their little Urban Outfitters-clad paws all over. Nothing I can do about it but accept that as long as there is air in my body I will be a self-loathing hipster who dresses a helluva lot better.
I wasn't ever going to do this. This blog thing. After seventh grade I vowed to never start another blog type thing because Myspace is for paedophiles and Livejournal is for weirdies of the Avril Levigne designation that I don't ever want to think about again. I vowed to never step in another Hot Topic and dammit all of I'm not going to keep that one promise true*.
So here's what happened:
I'm with music the way normal people are with love interests; super duper passionate the first couple of months, waining tapering half hearted enthusiasm in the following months and or years, followed by only a vague acknowledgement after a while. The difference is a) mine makes me mentally more stable and b) mine can go in reverse. I can forget about a record and reacquaint myself with it years later and rekindle our passion and it'll be good--genuinely good, not make-up-sex-because-you-feel-guilty-good--for another year or so.
So I'm in round two of my relationship with Vampire Weekend...we're past the humping all the time stage and are at the point where I hum it on the quad, I think about it while I'm painting and I listen to it when I can but it's not new anymore, just very comfortable and pleasing to the mind and body. I'm cheating on VW a little bit with my newest reacquaintance Bon Iver (how many times did I say bonne eye-ver before a hipster corrected me? seven.) and stellastarr* but at the end of the day I come home to that loveable Upper West Side Soweto.
Anyway, I find Ezra Koenig's blog from his days at Columbia through a ridiculous series of events. It's eye opening: funny, well written, insightful. It's me, if I cared more, put in effort or tried. I decide that very moment (well, after having read virtually all of his back entries) that I too will write a funny, insightful blog of some capacity, for some other weirdie to uncover three years from now when I'm doing fuck knows what fuck knows where. So here goes.
I will post music that I love. I will suggest movies that have made me. I will bitch. I will rant. I will bleach my hair (some day).
Soon this:
Old songs that deserve a second chance at love
Movies that will change a life
Why hipsters are destroying America
The blogotheque phenomena and why it's alright
The chick-as-bassist phenomena and how it's always true and rarely good
-WaffleFries
The End
Ida Maria - Oh My God
*I wanted to point out that I was never actually an Avril Levigne mall goth. I was a punk rocker of the thrift store-LA circa 1977-Darby Crash sort of punk rocker, but Hot Topic had cheap band shirts and who was I to judge when sometimes I accidentally wore all black. Fuck them. My combat boots were actual combat boots, and my plaid was plaiddier than all of their plaids combined.
I hate bloggers. I hate blogs and I hate bloggers, and were it not for the music I would probably never get near the internet again. That being said
I guess you're pretty good looking...for a blog.
Second things second:
I hate hipsters. I hate hipster clothing, I hate hipster people, I hate hipster dances at concerts that push me out of the way with their noncommittal arms but hyperactively overenthusiastic shoulders and knees. That being said, every damn thing I like some hipster has already gotten their little Urban Outfitters-clad paws all over. Nothing I can do about it but accept that as long as there is air in my body I will be a self-loathing hipster who dresses a helluva lot better.
I wasn't ever going to do this. This blog thing. After seventh grade I vowed to never start another blog type thing because Myspace is for paedophiles and Livejournal is for weirdies of the Avril Levigne designation that I don't ever want to think about again. I vowed to never step in another Hot Topic and dammit all of I'm not going to keep that one promise true*.
So here's what happened:
I'm with music the way normal people are with love interests; super duper passionate the first couple of months, waining tapering half hearted enthusiasm in the following months and or years, followed by only a vague acknowledgement after a while. The difference is a) mine makes me mentally more stable and b) mine can go in reverse. I can forget about a record and reacquaint myself with it years later and rekindle our passion and it'll be good--genuinely good, not make-up-sex-because-you-feel-guilty-good--for another year or so.
So I'm in round two of my relationship with Vampire Weekend...we're past the humping all the time stage and are at the point where I hum it on the quad, I think about it while I'm painting and I listen to it when I can but it's not new anymore, just very comfortable and pleasing to the mind and body. I'm cheating on VW a little bit with my newest reacquaintance Bon Iver (how many times did I say bonne eye-ver before a hipster corrected me? seven.) and stellastarr* but at the end of the day I come home to that loveable Upper West Side Soweto.
Anyway, I find Ezra Koenig's blog from his days at Columbia through a ridiculous series of events. It's eye opening: funny, well written, insightful. It's me, if I cared more, put in effort or tried. I decide that very moment (well, after having read virtually all of his back entries) that I too will write a funny, insightful blog of some capacity, for some other weirdie to uncover three years from now when I'm doing fuck knows what fuck knows where. So here goes.
I will post music that I love. I will suggest movies that have made me. I will bitch. I will rant. I will bleach my hair (some day).
Soon this:
Old songs that deserve a second chance at love
Movies that will change a life
Why hipsters are destroying America
The blogotheque phenomena and why it's alright
The chick-as-bassist phenomena and how it's always true and rarely good
-WaffleFries
The End
Ida Maria - Oh My God
*I wanted to point out that I was never actually an Avril Levigne mall goth. I was a punk rocker of the thrift store-LA circa 1977-Darby Crash sort of punk rocker, but Hot Topic had cheap band shirts and who was I to judge when sometimes I accidentally wore all black. Fuck them. My combat boots were actual combat boots, and my plaid was plaiddier than all of their plaids combined.
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