DoyCave.com

…where Doy occasionally writes.

Category: Now Playing

  • Uninterrupted: “Marquee Moon” by Television

    One of my goals this year is to get off my phone, get more focus and scribble more words.

    Tonight, I was feeling restless (having gone down the Current News Rabbit Hole of Despair), and decided to devote all that anxious focus and energy to my record collection, which I’ve neglected for years.

    I was visiting one of my closest college friends in Augusta last week, and part of our routine is to visit record stores. He, too, is an avid collector, and we’ll inevitably talk about music for hours on end if given the chance.

    Though not a cultural destination on par with Atlanta, Augusta does have a couple of good record stores. Grantski Records is an excellent local record store with a wide variety of new and used records, tapes and CDs. They also host underground rock and metal shows.

    Psychotronic, located just down the street, is one of those dingy, claustrophobic record stores where every nook and cranny is stuffed with music. You can smell the age on some of these albums, but you can tell the owner carefully curates the ones that end up in the main stacks. The rest are in the bargain bin for a dollar or two. These are my favorite kinds of record stores, so we made a point to visit them again when we could spend more time.

    We’d been digging for a while when I asked the owner if he had the new MJ Lenderman album that I wanted to buy for my buddy.

    His answer? “I don’t have the new anything!”

    Perfect reply.

    He did, however, have a couple of pristine, sealed, imported copies of Television’s first two albums, “Marquee Moon” (1977) and “Adventure” (1978).

    Which leads me to this new series in which yours truly listens to an album, front to back, uninterrupted by time or cares or distractions.

    This album was the perfect choice for my nervous energy. Lead singer Tom Verlaine doesn’t sing as much as he wails; high-pitched, jangly guitars intensify the effect. No surprise that they are of the school of CBGB’s, where they and their artistic classmates, Talking Heads, got their start.

    It’s frenetic, jittery, and strange rock and roll music, the kind that scratches the most unreachable itches of the soul. The lead-off song, “See No Evil” perfectly captures all the insanity our country inspires these days.

    “Don’t say unconscious
    No, don’t say doom.
    If you got to say it,
    let me leave this room.
    Cuz what I want
    I want now
    and it’s a whole lot more
    than ‘anyhow’

    I SEE…I SEE NO…I SEE NO EEEVIL!”

    This is a record for the insecure, the ill-at-ease, the weirdos and outcasts. Verlaine is an abstract word painter who often connects ideas tangentially at best. There are few lyrical knots to climb here—mostly impressions and feelings and layers of analog sound. You can dig if you want, find meaning. And whatever you take away is yours. You can have it.

    The best music does that.

    The moods on this record vary from manic and frenzied (“Friction”) to laid back and funny (“Venus”). But through everything, there is Verlaine’s uneasy cool. It’s not depression. This isn’t a precursor to Radiohead. This is exploration. This is abandon…albeit peculiar.

    The cover, a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph that was photocopied to give it a grainy look, makes the band look slightly mad, acne-ridden, possibly drug-addled. It belies what lies within.

    Produced by Verlaine and studio legend Andy Johns (who engineered as well), this record is precise, measured, musical and impressive. Television were lumped in with “punk rock” bands, but they played an elevated punk rock. They were more of the Velvet Underground than the Ramones.

    The more I listen, the more I hear New York — that New York that exists in myth. You hear the influence of Lou Reed and the New York Dolls in this music, and you can hear the future, too. You can hear Interpol. You can hear future echoes of The Strokes.

    I love music that lives in that kind of space. It takes you somewhere other, and that’s the best kind of listening experience.

    Great purchase. And exactly what I needed tonight.

    Worth your time, if you’re so inclined as to listen to a quinquagenarian audiophile.

  • How I Learned to Ditch the Dad Rock and Use Punk-Rock as My Palliative

    They’ve named a genre of music after guys like me. They call it “dad rock.”

    I can’t decide if I should feel insulted. Maybe Fleet Foxes should feel insulted? I don’t know.

    They call it that presumably because it’s tame, easy on the ears, a palliative narcotic for oldsters like me…so’s I don’t get too excited, I guess…blood pressure and all.

    Dad rock assumes I like my music like any parent would like their children to be — peaceable, quiet, obedient, clean and tidy, etc. It doesn’t need me to “get it.” It doesn’t give me eye rolls if I don’t share its point of view. Upon further consideration, it is exactly like my kids if they were heavily medicated.

    I remember being at a very adult, very “dad rock” kind of party a few years ago, when my friends and I discussed our mellowing musical tastes. “I just can’t stand that loud, aggressive stuff anymore,” said I. “If I’m going to bathe in nostalgia, I’m hunting bath bombs like ’80s-era Smiths, R.E.M. and U2. If I want a splash of something more contemporary, give me Real Estate, Wilco, The War on Drugs or Phosphorescent.” This is what I said. In public.

    And don’t get me wrong, I love all those bands. But something has happened.

    Lately I’ve been craving feedback. Scrawling guitars, screaming vocalists that sound like they gargle nails. I want Soundgarden, with their sludgy metal riffs. I want Mudhoney, wth Mark Arm’s screech, screaming “F**k You” to just about anybody. I want caterwauling smart alecks like Pavement to mock the scenesters. I want new bands like METZ to play fast and loud and pound my ears into dust.

    What on earth makes a largely docile quadragenarian like me suddenly crave that kind of noise? It’s something I’ve been thinking about and trying to articulate for months.

    Growing up, pretty much every adult in my vicinity would tell me not to listen to certain kinds of music. “Oh, don’t listen to Prince,” they said. “He’s filthy.” “Don’t listen to Run DMC. They say curse words.” “Don’t listen to KISS! Don’t you know it stands for Knights in Satan’s Service?!” Ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

    The accepted idea seems to be that if you hear the music, it would make you feel a certain way. But that hasn’t been my experience. What I’ve found in myself — and why shouldn’t I assume that everyone thinks the same way? — is that when I feel a certain way, I go looking for the music that gives voice to that.

    Not to gloat or anything, but turns out my theory is backed by science.

    Australian psychologists Leah Sherman, Ph.D., and Genevieve A. Dingle, Ph.D., published a 2015 study entitled “Extreme metal music and anger processing.”

    In the study, Sherman and Dingle tested extreme music listeners ages 18-34. They subjected them to “anger induction,” which consisted of a substantial interview where they were asked to describe an event that led to extreme anger for them.

    Once they were sufficiently and measurably perturbed, they were given their personal playlist, which consisted of bands like Rage Against the Machine, Meshuggah, Slipknot, Metallica and Judas Priest to help them relax.

    “This study found that extreme music fans listen to music when angry to match their anger, and to feel more active and inspired,” read the conclusion. “They also listen to music to regulate sadness and to enhance positive emotions. The results refute the notion that extreme music causes anger but further research is required to replicate these findings in naturalistic social contexts, and to investigate the potential contributions of individual listener variables on this relationship between extreme music listening and anger processing.”

    So, basically what I said, right?

    Which brings me to a quick bit that just might trigger those of you who might be particularly tribal these days.

    I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that America is officially off her meds right now. I mean, it seriously feels like we’re playing “Dial A Disaster,” and every single spoke on the wheel is catastrophic or insane. I feel it. My kids feel it. My coworkers feel it. There’s just an indefinable, overwhelming malaise that just seeps its way into everything lately.

    It’s depressing, but it also makes me angry. I feel like this angst and tension is self-inflicted, and I feel helpless to make it stop. We can’t talk about real issues mainly because we can’t talk about politics…and we’ve literally made everything political. So we all walk around avoiding the subject — any subject — in public, and save all the vitriol and anger for Facebook and Twitter.

    This is the way we live right now. It feels so crazy.

    And so, when I get in the car and want to hear music on Pandora, I don’t listen to the R.E.M. station, or the Tribe Called Quest station, or The Meters station, I go straight to Mudhoney…which serves up delectable doses of Helmet and Nirvana and L7 and Sonic Youth. And my soul feels this wave of delight and relief.

    It wasn’t long ago that we were blaming bands like Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson and Judas Priest for all kinds of villainy. But I’ll bet you the feelings were there before the music was.

    That being said, I honestly look forward to the day that I go hunting for the dad rock again.

    May we return to the Steely Dan days…and soon.

    Photo credit: Natalie Parham at Unsplash

  • Muh Muh Muh My Corona! A Coronavirus Playlist

    I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure how to feel these days.

    I wander between a sort of sardonic, sarcastic acceptance of everything and a steel-faced resolve to be strong for my kids and family. But when I take trips to the grocery store in the dark of 6 a.m., only to find that shelves are empty and some aren’t being restocked, I feel sharp pangs of fear, a slow wash of uncertainty, and then I watch in complete awe as some douchebag in a University of Florida t-shirt (you know who you are) fills his cart with eight bottles of 70% isopropyl alcohol.

    I’m prone to deal with feelings through music, which is why I spent almost two hours over the last couple of days creating a playlist that captures just a little bit of what I’m feeling.

    The songs make me laugh, they make me cringe, and help me feel a little better about being confined to my house for the foreseeable future.

    Hope it makes you feel better, too!

  • An Ode to John Brannon

    The opening band. It’s like musical Russian Roulette.

    You’ve come to see the headliner. This band is just the band in the way of that. Nine times out of 10, you aren’t going to be impressed.

    Last night, I saw Dinosaur Jr. at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta with my son. Opening act was a band called Easy Action. Never heard of ’em.

    Google described them as a “glam metal band from Sweden.” We kind of laughed as we imagined what that would sound like.

    When the band started filtering out onto the stage, I thought they were sound techs. They seemed to be fiddling around. The bassist was older, sleeved in tattoos, long white hair, long white beard that was tied and knotted at the end.

    The guitarist was bald, handlebar mustache, dressed like a mechanic in white t-shirt, pair of Dickies and boots. The drummer was younger, but looked like a guy you would meet at the comic store for a D&D campaign.

    A tall, lean guy saunters on stage. He looks like Nick Cave. He’s in his mid-to-late 50s, hair thinning, the years etched on his face. But his CONFIDENCE!

    He walks on carrying a mic like he’s in charge, staring at the crowd like he’s waiting for US to impress HIM.

    He stops and glares at all of us for what feels like a LONG time. Then he says, “Check it out, man, we’re Easy Action.” As if on cue, the music immediately explodes from the amps.

    Guitarist plays the entire set with his back to us. Bassist is flinging his hair. The riffs are fast, punishing. This isn’t glam metal. This is maximum rock ‘n roll. This is the MC5! This is the Ramones!

    And the singer is still staring at me. He’s leaning forward now.

    He jerks the mic up to his mouth and howls. His voice is blistering, like he’s shredding his vocal chords, but with melody, in tune. Every phrase he jerks the mic into his mouth, lets it fall to his side again, and shakes it like he’s thinking about punching you in the face.

    The crowd was skeptical, but you can hear him winning them over. They shout louder, hands are up now.

    He doesn’t smile. He stares them down. I see him whisper, “Come on, man.” I don’t know who he’s talking to, but I imagine he’s talking to me. I find myself dancing harder.

    I can feel myself smiling now. Pure elation. After another song, I say to the guy next to me, “It’s like Nick Cave and the Jesus Lizard had a baby and made THIS guy.” He doesn’t acknowledge me. It doesn’t matter, though.

    They blaze through a 45-minute set. The crowd bursts with shouts, applause. Singer says, “Thanks, you guys.” He doesn’t smile, but he means it. He walks off, mic in hand.

    Mascis, Barlow, Murph play (LOUD) the hits, deep cuts. Some Sebadoh?
    Now it’s time for the encore.

    Last song: J speaks for the first time all night. “Let’s welcome John Brannon out here.” John Brannon? Lead singer of Easy Action! He saunters out again, still carrying a mic, still staring down the crowd. This is going to be incredible.

    It’s even better than I imagine. Mascis launches into “I Want to Be Your Dog” by The Stooges. Brannon leans forward, glaring. He wants to make sure we know that he means every word. Where Iggy Pop sneers, Brannon screams in your face.

    It’s pandemonium. The kids are jumping, slamming into each other. NOBODY is standing still. Hair is flinging, arms in the air, everything is electric. Brannon just watches it happen, and occasionally nods his head as if he approves, but maybe it’s not good enough just yet.

    Each time Brannon screams, “I…wanna…be your DOG!” it’s like he’s trying to convince me even more. I believe him, and I scream it with him.

    Before I know it, the song is over. The lights come up. The crowd is filing out. I feel elated and exhausted — alive.

    My son and I file out a side exit and walk by the tour bus to the car. We hear conversations fading into crickets, night, shoes on pavement. In an alley behind the building, we see Brannon sitting alone on the bumper of a van, smoking a cigarette, staring at the ground.

    I walk straight to him. Shake his hand. “Man, you were incredible.” I gush. I fumble for my words. He is all smiles and humility. So human. “Wow,” he says, “thank you guys.” We leave him as he was, contemplative. My son and I talk about him long after we leave.

    I think about him this morning, too. I Google him and find I didn’t see Easy Action the Swedish glam metal band. I saw Easy Action, Detroit band led by “punk royalty” John Brannon — lead singer of hardcore punk band Negative Approach, lead singer of garage rock band Laughing Hyenas, artists on the legendary Touch and Go record label out of Chicago.

    He’s been staring down crowds, howling into microphones and starting fights since I was running around in diapers.

    I think back to him sitting on the bumper of the van. I imagine him processing decades of audiences — hardcore fans and disaffected bystanders, and how he’s had to win them all, one by one — all the time wondering if and when rock ‘n roll might become irrelevant.

    He abandoned all else for music when he was young, and I wonder if he reevaluates that decision as an older man. Is it more difficult now? What is it like to make an indelible impression on someone — make them FEEL something! — and then walk back into a normal life?

    Does he ever think about his legacy the way I obsess over mine?

    I follow him on Twitter. His profile simply says, “I didn’t realize I’d become the Francis Scott Key of Hardcore.”

    I get my answer, I think.

    Here’s to you, John Brannon. You seriously and thunderously rock.

  • Diamonds in the Dollar Bin: Steve Walsh, “Schemer Dreamer”

    One of my favorite things about vinyl is the size. A 12-inch vinyl record cover gives an artist 144 square inches to visually represent their music, and they use the space to shock, to offend, to attract, to tantalize, to create mood.

    So when you’re crate-digging and you land upon an artist who appears shirtless, in running shorts and tube socks, dreamily rendered in a montage of hot machismo — there he is with a microphone! There he is sort of air…surfing or something? There is his face, mouth sensuously open, long hair falling into his eyes! There he is with twin guns, pointing them at me while he wears protective earmuffs? — you buy it.

    You don’t even ask questions about it. You just buy it.

    This is how I became the owner of Steve Walsh’s “Schemer Dreamer” album at Guestroom Records in Oklahoma City for the price of two American dollars. It’s a purchase I’ll never regret.

    The Man

    It was only when I started researching this album that I found out that Steve Walsh was not some hyperlust one-hit-wonder that made this over-the-top album and then faded into obscurity. Oh, no. Steve Walsh was the lead singer of Kansas — yes, THAT Kansas — the seminal ’70s prog-rock band.

    He’s the soaring voice you hear on “Carry on, Wayward Son,” “Point of No Return” and the gorgeous “Dust in the Wind.” He’s the hyperactive keyboard player who jumps and kicks and does handstands while his fingers dance lightning-fast arpeggios on the ivories. And, to be fair, there is a certain amount of truth in advertising on his “Schemer Dreamer” record cover — the running shorts and tube socks were basically his uniform during his Kansas years, too.

    He released this album the same year that Kansas released “Audio-Visions.” Unfortunately, both albums flopped and gave Walsh the nudge he needed to try new things. He left Kansas a year later to form a band called Streets, but after a top ten hit on two otherwise disappointing albums, the band called it quits in 1985. In the early ’90s, he re-joined Kansas and toured with them into the ’00s until he finally left the band for good in 2014.

    He didn’t abandon his solo work, though. In 2000, he released the experimental, freakish and kind of horrible “Glossolalia” with an equally awful cover. Surprisingly, the album has a die-hard group of devotees who call it one of the most underrated albums of all time. To each his own, I guess.In 2001, Walsh released “Shadowman,” which was a sort of return to his straight-ahead rock roots, and actually released music as recently as this year — the bluesy, instrumental “Brooklyn Time,” which isn’t a half-bad listen.

    The Music

    So, with a cover celebrating hot, swarthy manhood, what depths of love and loss, insecurity and vulnerability will be explored on the album within?

    Just kidding. It’s pretty much a self-congratulatory dude record. However, where similar records of the time would revere the blue-collar working man, Walsh seems to show disdain. He sets the tone for the record in the title track, in which the “schemer-dreamer” isn’t the guy who works his way to the top. The “schemer” and the “dreamer” are two people who underestimated the awesomeness of Walsh, and now he’s the one who’s laughing.

    Even more bizarre is a third character in the song, an underaged prostitute, who Walsh takes to task for asking him to pay her. “Well, if you hear me out there, screamer girl/ You could’ve had, but that’s all right for you/ Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”

    In “Get Too Far,” Walsh goes after union guys fighting for rights, his “old lady” who wants to leave him, leaders of the nation who send people to war, and inflation. In “You Think You’ve Got It Made,” he goes after the trappings of success. It’s confusing.

    In between the political rants, Walsh belts out a couple of moody ballads: “So Many Nights,” a standard rock ballad that shows off his vocal range and features some weird background vocals; and “Just How It Feels,” a song about the lessons his grandparents taught him.

    The only song approaching the prog influences of Kansas is the last song, “Wait Until Tomorrow,” in which the narrator just can’t wait to get out of the stifling small town where he lives and pursue his dreams.

    The standout track on the record, though, is “Every Step of the Way,” a driving rocker about pursuing your dreams, and the only song approaching a hit when it was released.

    While the lyrics can be downright silly, the music is something else. Walsh recruited the guitar heroics of Kansas bandmates Rich Williams and Kerry Livgren, as well as Dixie Dregs legend Steve Morse, who Walsh would work with on several projects later on. Their contributions keep the album from descending into hilarity, especially with lines like, “Now I don’t got nobody/ Do my washing, do my cooking/ Well, I’m a hard-working man/ I ain’t got time to be good-looking.”

    The Verdict

    “Schemer Dreamer” is an ’80s rock record that sounds like it’s really trying to sound like an ’80s rock record. It’s almost like Walsh had a list of subject matter requisite for an album like this and just kind of strung it all together in each song.

    There are cheesy lines aplenty — some of which made me laugh out loud the first time I heard them — which easily could have made this record a sad joke. However, the great musicians and Walsh’s singular rock voice elevate the record from silly to just plain fun.

    “Schemer Dreamer” won’t be on my frequent rotation list any time soon, but it’s definitely an album I’ll show my guests or bring to listening parties. Few album covers leap off the shelf or dare you to pick them up the way this one does.

  • Now Playing: B Boys

    I have to admit it. I CANNOT stop listening to the B Boys, a punk band from Brooklyn who has put out three incredible albums that will NOT leave me ALONE.

    Their odd, angular sound gets compared to the likes of Gang of Four and Wire for good reason, but I just love their attitude. Their snarky, sarcastic lyrics could easily find their way into a Pavement song, but when they’re shouting them over the staccato of rapid-fire, syncopated guitar and drums, the snark has the weight of gravity.

    The closest they’ll be to Georgia is Orlando, Florida, but I’m debating whether I’ll suck it up and make the trip. They’re really good. You should like them.

  • All Hat. No Cattle. 09-10-14

    It was the first outing for All Hat, No Cattle on 91.9 The Buzz. I wasn’t super confident going in, and had to build most of the show on the fly, but all things considered, I hope it was enjoyable enough for the four avid listeners who tuned in.

    This week’s edition was kind of an electronic, trippy set with little flourishes of shogaze sprinkled over the top.

    For those interested, here is the final playlist from the show, brought to you by the musician-abusing robber barons at Spotify.

    http://open.spotify.com/user/doycave/playlist/5kccdInYtd1pW09PH3Lmr8

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