long time, no blog. the hives, reactionary garage pop drivel sugar sweet to the ears with leader's ferocious shout-speak, perpetual organ and piano stabs a la john cale's sensible minimalism with the stooges. no less a construct than the studio pop on the radio, especially as scandinavian in origin, but somehow less offensively untrue than those strokes. they'll morph and move where the fine new yorkers are already out of mind.

macy gray's unneeded placement in the spider-man movie prompts suspicion - unsurprisingly on sony, innocuous cross-media pollination closes the world that much more. she appeared to be an amatuer, coked up version of herself prattling about the stage while that guy in the green tights whizzed by. i was much more disallusioned when i found out transformers was a 30 min. long commerical. of course, that didn't happen til college.

people have this strange fondness for 'outsider' music - last year's sleeper 'preston school' and now people babbling about gary wilson, horrible, cheesy lounge-singer eerily reminiscent of dan the automator only this wilson fellow worked it out 15 years ago. reissued to acclaim, the long-lost performer recently was found and is proudly performing at avant-shop other in-store. just because it was buried doesn't mean it was worth digging up. speaking of which, the wfmu record fair slipped right from under me this year - no $10 wasted on sci-fi songs interpreted by disco moog this year. alas.

funny article in the times today about electro. i might respect simon reynolds as a giver of music knowledge to the masses. nice balance of insider knowledge and general description. now luxx's friday night dance party, berwilliamsburg or whatever the fuck its called will suffer the same inundation as the area's bars did when the article about yuppies coming to williamsburg to meet girls uninterested in money or success ran in the times. amazing. brooklyn is still treated like some exotic other. maybe it is.

as i see it, the electro revival is the reaction against emo - soft-spoken confessionals and guitars by slovenly, mid-western hetero shy boys in big glasses. it's less accessable than new wave (even jocks know the words to hungry like the wolf) and celebrates the pan-sexuality often barred by riffage. interesting that it came out of post-punk, era of disgust and psuedo-political anxiety, perfect to our time. electro is the retro-post apocalptic escapism, irresponsible and ultimately devolutionary. in that, devo still remains the perfect band, the only band, and i have nothing else to say except the new eminem video is stoopid.

arrgh. today i downloaded every led zeppelin song worth listening to - it was from hearing 'cosmic dancer' on a mix tape today while riding to work - the combo of bolan's effete strings/acoustic with that weird bit of male arrogance just gave me the connection ...and i'm almost done with hammer of the gods, proving to be a hideous, fawning piece of journalism but a great late night read.

proofing a piece on the folkster dave van ronk, not a very good piece but interesting none the less bc it gives me insight to the 60s folk scene birth, their influences, and the importance of well-documented compilations - like Anthology - that do what no friend or radio station could - be authoritative and inviting to another, bygone world. that's the sort of journalism one should aspire to, not hipster pandering and tunnel visioned scene reports so much as that of enriching the culture, the conversation. arrgh.

section 25, the all girl goth new wave band on factory - after many listens, not that interesting - the monotone all style where joy division used it to connotate something disturbing, broken.

today was rainy, beautifully so, and i finally picked up the linda perhacs album from downtown music to celebrate. that store is so wonderful and cheery that i might become a regular - i always buy more than i mean to and never feel bad about it cause i know the album is going to be good. perhacs' voice is thin, reedy, over pure 70s smooth jazz bass and elegant fingerpicking - folk with a psych fringe and weirdo neo-country tendancies. i prepared the song 'who really cares' to play at a show once but backed out at the last minute cause the vocal part bouces over an octave as the bass line slips around. too hard for me at the time.

perhacs disappeared from the world after this one album. the reissue people can't even find her to give her the royalties.

also bought henry cow, intentional prog rock sounding more like pierre boulez and the worst free jazz mashed together with occasional guitar lines. scary that parts are actually acceptable - the album's called 'unrest' which makes me wonder. the downtown guy told me that cow was english and when they broke up in '77, members came to nyc to jump start american prog. thanks henry cow.

he also told me about this 20 band festival that happened at an art center in 1977 with bands featuring bill laswell and all the brewing nyc downtown underground artists - not no wave or punk or anything of the type - and it occurs to me that even subculture history has a hegemony. and sub-sub culture, etc.

lunch with a friend today, talking about the power of a real performer - 'focused energy' versus the unfocused nervousness of people like cat power. its completely random who has it and who doesn't - and i'm sure it switches depending on the music being played.

never want to think about siouxsie and the banshees again after this dive into the '77 world for q. having read england's dreaming, watched the filth and the fury and dumpster dived thru every '77 or siouxsie site on the web, i feel totally spent on the energy of that time and i still haven't heard a 1/10 of that music. mainly i feel like i never need to listen to the clash again. odd the presentation of class in england vs. the alignment with the avant garde in new york city. very much still the same way, even for pop bands in the UK. jarvis cocker as caste exploder.

am listening to the smashing pumpkins cover of 'never let me down again' and thinking how very much i love billy corgan's voice. kids i went to high school with complained that it was effete (though they would never use such a word) and emo (though the term wasn't invented then) - which it is. more than rites of spring, fugazi or any of those authentic punk guys, i imagine emo kids as closet sp fans, screaming sadness with their hush hush voice.

last night played with mates of state - an amazing, slightly voyeuristic experience to stand behind the drummer and have the keyboardist stare at him the whole time - like she is looking at you - so incredibly in love with each other, so locked into time - and her piano skills are fantastic - vocals yearning in unison - they shouldn't play so long though - the richness of her keys gets a little too much after 20 minutes, the rushing triplets exasperating. i'm sure it will come to me later but right now i can't think of any band doing music like there's.

we also played with this bad emo band 'circle and square' whom are destined to mediocre celebrity cause their lead singer is marginally attractive and is somehow friends with a vj from mtv. worse than being a bad band is being a band with no desire to be anything but famous. if it weren't for the cheesy guitar solos and inane lyrics (uninspired rythmns, blocky bass lines, boring drum patterns and lackluster vocals) i would have actually enjoyed them in a sunny day/slowdive kind of way. i was trying to at least bc, although they we 2nd out of 4 bands, they played the longest set. during the late bit of inter-song banter, the singer asked 'how many emo kids does it take to...' to which my very angry hardcore friend shouted 'at least four' and then called them 'james taylor-esque'. weird to be in a group that's heckling at your own show. poor form?

it's two am. i'm currently researching the creatures in attempt to know something for the five minutes of my siouxsie interview tomorrow -she's calling me! it seems so...normal. i wonder if someone dials the phone for her. in celebration, no, because i have to write about her three best albums, i bought three albums today - juju, kaledioscope, and hyaena - it will be a rare taste test this weekend.

am brainblind from the hood show. opener daniel someone or other, from the chix aesthetics label, sucked the grace of amplified sound from the very room with his neanderthal beats, uninspired melodies, dumb downtempo cliches. he introduced his set saying 'this is a conversation between word and sound.' sssschhuuuucccckkkkkk!

and he played for an hour. he read his lyrics off half-folded paper. he plugged his album at the front and end.

don't know why i thought seeing hood would be life-changing. chances are that when a band defines themselves by bedroom studio antics and lo-fi garish charm, they are going to pull off exactly that live. great. early mogwai washes with umm..phat beats jammed by the guy with cargos on, sideways facing drumkit played four-sticked with brushes and those fuzzy pom-pom sticks. the lead singer looks like my anal irish ex-room mate, i think it's the adam's apple. never trust people who bounce off their monitors. they took requests and mine was to leave before they could be swindled into an encore. haven't heard their new album, which is supposed to raise the cat's fur et al, but if that's the way it's going, i'll save my money for siouxsie.

also listened to st. thomas today - banjos are tricky, it's hard to not sound like the 'fields. lovely in parts.