Hugs and Kisses #37: Victor Pope

Posted by Everett True at 7:00 PM, April 1, 2008

Tuesday means another episode of Hugs and Kisses, a weekly column from both "the myth and the legend" best known as Mr. Everett True, publisher of Plan B Magazine, a title dedicated to writing about music (and media) with barely a nod towards demographics. Last week, Mr. True informs you that he knows what Deborah Harry looks like. This week, he tells you about the time he and Daniel Johnston's brother got egged. — The SOC short-order cook

This man moans and wails

Download
An entire record by Victor Pope

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Victor Pope

For one day only, I’ve decided to become obsessed by Victor Pope.

I know next to nothing about him, except that he taps into the same sort of deadpan (some might say dour) humour that has fuelled other North of England mavericks such as The Fall, MJ Hibbett And The Validators, I Ludicrous…and a host of equally-known names. He has less hits on his MySpace page than me (which is going some), and he likes to drop names like “Daniel Johnston,” “Syd Barrett,” “Television Personalities” and "Billy Bragg” in the vicinity of his quirky, human music, clearly in the hope that the formers’ cult following will transfer itself to his drum-machine-and-melodica sound. It might yet. He has a scratchily pitiful way of drawing, so that his new album cover features a lost soul surrounded by giants’ legs/tree trunks, and his self-portraits look more like Mr Johnston than Mr Johnston does these days, although I can’t deny this is a tautology. (Did I ever mention the time me and DJ’s brother got ‘egged’ from a passing car, standing outside the premiere of The Devil And Daniel Johnston? Remind me some day.)

The great thing about Victor is that he moans and wails—not in the grand tradition of Satan-obsessed blues wailers Robert Johnson and Leadbelly, more like a nasal porno clown being tormented by a crowd of children wearing wasp costumes…or Nikki Sudden, if you must. He delights in non-sequiturs so meaningless that I can’t be bothered to reproduce any here: and probably thinks that the shaking of a Rolf Harris wobble-board constitutes percussion (he’s right). He likes Moldy Peaches a fraction too much (some might argue, upon hearing Adam Green’s latest solo album that even a little is a fraction too much) and—like everyone growing up in England north of Birmingham’s Bull Ring in the Eighties—has the weirdest smattering of ska to rhythms that really don’t merit it.

All of this I surmise from listening to his wonderfully-titled album egotripper (…a retrospective) and dreaming of Fred Neill dreaming of Harry Nilsson, and thinking fondly back to an evening in Brighton a few years back wherein the aforementioned Hibbett sang with considerable trepidation over too-loud (Wedding Present-style) guitars about his blushing confusion upon being caught up in a Pride march, and the uber-twee, ukulele-taunting antifolksters Bobby McGees took great pride in driving Sir Nicholas of Cave from the tiny pub room in a few strokes of a beard…

When I lived in Seattle—briefly, long enough to taunt the locals about their procession of mediocre, sub-Matador ‘grunge’ bands—I spuriously started a campaign for ‘real rock’ (“rock that rocks”). Well wait up, because the Campaign For Real Music starts afresh and it starts right here, with the perennially (and clearly perpetually) underachieving Victor Pope.

I mean…Dan Treacy as a role model?

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
Wheat Everett True has sorted from the chaff

1. Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps, “Bluejean Bop”(from the Poppy Disc/After Hours album Bluejean Bop). Way before I even liked ‘pop’ music, sweet Gene was my introduction to the ‘real rock’—the rock that rocks. He still shames 99.9% that followed. Um, not that it’s a competition.

2. Hayman, Watkins, Trout & Lee—“Sly And The Family Stone” (forthcoming Fortuna Pop! single).
More songs about tube trains, Bethnal Green, sick days, flat lemonade and unmade beds. Features a Wave Picture and an ex-Hefner.

3. The Dirtbombs, “Indivisible” (from the In The Red album We Have You Surrounded) We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! (This is an equal to even “I’m Through With White Girls.”)

4. Zombie-Zombie, “Before Night Falls” (from the forthcoming Versatitle album A Land For Renegades). The percussion dude from Herman Düne sounding totally anti-anti-folk and pro-Neu! and Kraftwerk. With analogue keyboards.

5. Those Dancing Days, “Hitten” (Wichita single). I’ve just watched the video to this on YouTube five times. [Helpfully cut-and-pasted below.] Damn, I love this band! Someone, please send me some stuff…

Hugs and Kisses #36: David Cronenberg's Wife, The Pack A.D., Navvy

Posted by Everett True at 2:26 PM, March 25, 2008

Tuesday morning afternoon means another episode of Hugs and Kisses, a weekly column from UK-based music writer Mr. Everett True, publisher of Plan B Magazine, a title dedicated to writing about music (and media) with barely a nod towards demographics. Last week, the Converse-footed crit Mr. True told you about a concert in Brighton, UK. This week, he informs you that he knows what Deborah Harry looks like. — The SOC help desk

^^ DCW = David Cronenberg's Wife

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Movin' singles

New music. How can it relate to my current predicament? We’re making a major move shortly: and for the past few months, I’ve been stuck in sorting hell, increasingly manic, increasingly sleepless. Melodies and memories flit past as I transfer one more song to iTunes in preparation for the journey: boogie and funk and Seventies disco splendour (Sunday), former Pere Ubu singer David Thomas’ febrile, surf-flecked, pre-apocalyptic imagination (Saturday), the wistful, intricately intimate, guitar laments of Dirty Three’s Mick Turner (Friday). . . and so on.

In this weird twilight world where every song comes loaded with meaning and memory and, more often that not, regret (that we can’t experience every moment at once), what place do fresher, unclaimed sounds have in my day-to-day existence spent shuttling between the attic and lounge with one more empty box, one more cascade of cruelly corroded and cast-aside comics? I really don’t know.

David Cronenberg's Wife, "My Best Friend’s Going Out With A Girl I Like" (forthcoming Blang single).

I’ve seen the main dude in this sardonic, dark Eighties-style independent band perform solo at antifolk (UK) nights a few times, and I've got to say I prefer his style shorn of friends and a drum kit. After all, what is antifolk if not the music of the bereft? He has a nervousness, an edge that is difficult to recapture in the solidarity and sterility of a studio: stuttering his way through pleasingly uncomfortable songs written from the paedophile’s viewpoint, head turned down and wishing he was a star, wishing he was anywhere but here today. This is fine: precisely the sort of vinyl music that I’m currently torn between keeping or flogging (if only anyone was interested—Noseflutes, I’m looking at you!) but I’ve got to say. Space is tight. Space is real tight. The song’s lyrical content can be extrapolated from the song’s title. Not always a good idea.

The School, "All I Wanna Do" (Elefant seven-inch).

On pink vinyl, and who hasn’t wanted to be in The Ronettes once in their lifetime? And who hasn’t wanted to be Tracey Ullman wanting to be in The Ronettes at least once in their bedroom (‘They Don’t Know’, to be precise)? (This is not a slag: I am keeping my Ullman vinyl—keeping it, I tell you!) It doesn’t hurt that main Schoolgirl is Liz, formerly of Yeah Yeah Yeahs-championed Welsh Sixties-heads The Loves, and that Liz is the sort of girl that everyone locally (and further a-field) has a crush on. Actually, the entire band is crush-worthy (in a bearded Swedish indie-kid way). . . you can totally understand why twee label par excellence Elefant are releasing this. Perhaps I’m only revealing my own roots in C86 when I talk about how much I adore this, but it’s on pink vinyl! Pink vinyl, I tell you!

The Pack A.D., Tintype (forthcoming Mint album).

Hey. You know the other week when I said I never read press releases? Guess what? I lied. I’m a fucking music critic, of course I read press releases. Rip ‘em off, bastardise them, twist their words, don’t bother even looking on-line to double-check their ridiculous stories: yep. I know my own trade, thanks. And respect to Hermana PR for coming up with a one-sheet (for this admittedly kick-ass female duo from British Columbia) that doesn’t mention The White Stripes once. Not once. Leadbelly, yes. Janis Joplin, present and correct. The Sonics, The MC5, Jonathan Richman (eh?). . . all accounted for. The White Stripes. . . not even the faintest sniff. Ah, come down off it! Who the hell d’ya think yr fooling?

Magic Wands, "Black Magic" (forthcoming Ark seven-inch/digital download).

. . . on the other hand, press releases can protest too much. No matter how much this girl-boy duo—recently caught playing at ‘industry hotspot’ (yawn) SxSW—may like Blondie, Blondie they sure ain’t. What they are is a watered-down Dandy Warhols, which bearing in mind Dandy Warhols were a watered-down whatever damn band came before them, is pretty damn aqueous. Oh, and Dexy does not look like a ‘young Debbie Harry.’ I know. I’ve met Debbie Harry.

Subtle, "Exiting Arm" (forthcoming Lex album).

Everything of a certain rhythmic bent that comes from America nowadays sounds like Modest Mouse circa 1998 (the last time I listened to them) or perhaps Animal Collective to me: with different textures and voices and instruments of course, but all variations on a theme. I’d kinda got it into my head that Subtle practised articulate Bay Area hip-hop—woozy, self-immolating indie-boy hip-hop, but hip-hop nonetheless—so this comes as something of a surprise. Maybe I have, what, sound deafness? But—to briefly return to the moving motif—this most certainly ain’t even going to be a contender for a keeper. It’s way too much of a downer.

Navvy, 4 Songs EP (forthcoming Angular seven-inch)

The Long Blondes love Navvy. I love The Long Blondes (especially their new Giorgio Moroder direction). This spunky indie-pop makes my head hurt: not necessarily a bad thing, but it is when I’m surviving on an average of four hours of sleep a night. Can we leave it at that?

The Octopus Project, "Wet Gold" (forthcoming Too Pure seven-inch/digital download).

Tons of bands get compared to Stereolab. Have you noticed? I have a theory about this—it’s because Stereolab were good. The Octopus Project are the sort of band male critics at Pitchfork like. Can we leave it at that?

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
Five songs that are totally great for moving stuff around to. Um. If your name is Everett True.

1) Dr Feelgood, “I’m A Man” (from the 1975 live album Going Back Home). Actually, all of this hoary, bluesy pub rock album is surprisingly great background music: probably cos it’s so mindless (let’s be nice, call it instinctual).

2) Curtis Mayfield, “Pusherman” (from the compilation album Blaxploitation Vol 1). Funk, full stop, is great for zoning out.

3) Sister Sledge, “Lost In Music” (from the compilation album Blame It On The Boogie). My entire next series of Village Voice columns are going to be revisionist tomes, claiming I hated post-punk all along.

4) The Wipers, “Is This Real?” (from the three-CD set Over The Edge). . . . um, except for anything from Portland, of course. . .

5) The A-Lines, “Can’t Explain” (CD-R). Angst, London 2004 girl group style.

Hugs and Kisses #35: North Sea Radio Orchestra

Posted by Everett True at 8:00 AM, March 18, 2008

Tuesday morning means another episode of Hugs and Kisses, a weekly column from UK-based music writer Mr. Everett True, publisher of Plan B Magazine, a title dedicated to writing about music (and media) with barely a nod towards demographics. Last week, Mr. True analyzed record blurbs on the new Pete and the Pirates. This week, the Converse-footed crit tells you about a concert in Brighton, UK. He does not care about SXSW. — The SOC waitstaff

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Neo-classical nightmares and the wonder of contexts

It isn’t rock’n’roll. Although the illustrations that William Blake was working on at the time of his death (for Dante’s Inferno) kicked a certain amount of 18th Century ass (if you prefer your self-righteous dreams plagued by nightmares), I totally grew out of his evangelical poetry around the same time I eschewed chamber music for the more, um, earthly pleasures of Blondie’s second album; and as for his (part) namesake William D Drake (formerly of horrendous prog-folk japesters The Cardiacs)…well, clearly he’s an erudite, witty and charming fellow, especially when faced with a piano and endless hours in which to hone his lyrical and musical witticisms, but. Can we just take that ‘but’ as an, “I find really myself irritated by music that aspires to be way too highbrow and semi-classical” and leave it at that?

So it’s rather odd that last night I took in a band—North Sea Radio Orchestra—that covered works by both the first and second, dipped firmly into the waters of both chamber music and po-faced snobbery, and still enjoyed the experience.

It was the context, entirely. Everything about the show was so wrong, and hence so right. It took place between the entirely un-New York hours of 7 and 9.30pm, in the austere, high-ceilinged surroundings of a Quakers Meeting House, tea and homemade cookies served in the interval, and I spent the majority of the North Sea set engaged in pleasant conversation with a close friend listening to the baroque warbling and increasingly rapturous applause through two closed doors. (This still provided way better sound quality than the “submerged in toilet bowl” hum that my computer’s RealTek settings seem determined to play iTunes upon.)

Indeed, I have long enjoyed experiencing rock concerts from the comfort of a toilet cubicle: many an otherwise dismal grunge night has been salvaged by a swift retirement from the volume. I guess earplugs serve the same purpose, but you can’t piss at the same time. Well, unless you’re being escorted by the Rolling Stones’ personal security through a stadium crowd, but that’s another story. . .

Back to Brighton, and the wonder of context. There wasn’t much about North Sea Radio Orchestra I enjoyed—certainly not the fiddly and needless, “aren’t I clever,” mock medieval guitar time signature changes, certainly not the chorus of beards and hippies backing up the smug woman engaged in rendering William Blake as lifeless as he undoubtedly is, certainly not the bassoon or tenor saxophone or stand-up chimes or string section or. . . look, don’t get me wrong. Taken individually, I’m sure all these folk are great value. It was just: I spent an entire evening in Melbourne with my future wife, hidden in a soundproof room, coughing harshly to string quartets, and I vowed never to be caught at anything similar again. And yet, here I was, Sunday night in Brighton—raining outside (that helped)—and I was really enjoying the experience. Especially if I closed my eyes and let the music move my mood whither the music would (mostly to Melbourne). I couldn’t understand it. Music that is anathema to the bottom of my Converse-wearing feet and yet I was basking in its…well, not glow. The mood was reverential, sombre. If you wanted to be nice, you’d say “elegiac,” but. Look, just leave that but where it stands. (The setting totally helped. I doubt if I’m going to be turning Christian any time soon, but if I ever did…trust me, these good Quaker fellows would be top of my list. Why, you don’t even have to believe in God to attend their meetings.)

Doubtless, much of my good feelings were also caused by seeing the first band up, the ever-vulnerable Crayola Lectern. On Casio, a crazed ex-Cardiac ploughing his way dutifully through a series of minor key changes. On trumpet, a Hamilton Yarn sending unassuming yet shimmering beauty soaring to the balcony, and sometimes speaking in tongues (lips) down his mouthpiece: plaintive, pleasing, poignant. And on piano, Mr Lectern himself, near self-deprecating in his Robert Wyatt fascination and stunningly beautiful with his chord changes, singing painfully funny and sometimes funnily painful strained lines about love and toddlers and mortality.

Crayola Lectern tick the same high musicality boxes as the band that followed, sure: but possess one crucial factor that the North Sea Radio Malarkey just don’t, just don’t get. They have heart.

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
Five songs Everett True has recently transferred to iTunes and is regretting, the sound quality is so malodorous

1. Leonard Nimoy, “Love Of The Common People” (from Highly Illogical
Not a patch of William Shatner’s inspired cover of Pulp’s ‘Common People’…not even one inch.

2. The Nightingales, “The Crunch” (from What A Scream 1980-1986)
The Nightingales are the very definition of a sardonic, literate, blisteringly great live mid-Eighties (and into 2008) British band.

3. Aaron Neville, “Tell It Like It Is” (from Tell It Like It Is)
Oh yeah, baby.

4. My Robot Friend, “Walt Whitman” (from Hot Action!)
Kraftwerk this isn’t. Silicon Teens maybe…

5. Mudhoney, “Here Comes Sickness” (from Here Comes Sickness).
Not a bad record, this one, I guess. Not a bad fucking guitar sound either…

Hugs and Kisses #34: Pete and the Pirates Critical Acclaim

Posted by Everett True at 2:08 PM, March 11, 2008

Pete and the Pirates, "Nuana" (MP3)

Pete and the Pirates

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Nautical Noodlings

Just how accurate are all those quotes record companies love to plaster across the front covers of albums, particularly from new artists? Of course, they’re sound bites, outrageously ripped from the original context, but still. Do they mean anything? It’s a thought that occurred to me—somewhat randomly—while admiring the docile, faceless monsters and hook-limbed creatures that adorn the front of the excellent new Pete And The Pirates album, Little Death.

“There’s life in Brit-guitar pop yet,” The Guardian, 4****
Heh. What occurs to me first is that, um, are the record company really trying to put across that this is a four-out-of-five experience, a second best, good but not vital, this splendiferous melee of churning guitars and brash emotion, this smart reinvention of guitar pop through Television, Flying Nun Records and beyond, this life-affirming, dancing shoes-bedazzling, grand opus? That is so wrong. (Not least: stars? Marks? What is this? A math test, a music critique or a reason to get out of bed in the morning?) Aside from that, well yes, The Guardian are kind of stating the obvious here but they’re perfectly correct to: although the Brit- prefix has me a little surprised. . . as opposed to what? I kinda thought that all guitar pop is based round the American/British models anyway, no disrespect intended. Or is it supposed to throw up a vague inference to Britpop—aarrggh! No no no! This music has way more to do with the dirty, rain-washed streets of Dunedin, NZ than any Cockney knees-up or foul-mouthed Mancunian.

“Perfect pop without the pretence,” NME, 8/10
See above. I’ve always been intrigued as to precisely what the 8 in this equation signifies: is it the reviewer’s pleasure? The sound quality? The competence of the players? The cover art? The number of notes in any given guitar solo? The median, when the rest of the week’s albums are taken into account? But still, this is a surprisingly evocative phrase from the much-derided UK magazine’s lexicon – “perfect pop,” in this case, taken to mean something the NME’s Morley/Penman axis defined/refined circa 1982 around the laconic fringes of Scotland’s Orange Juice, with a sliver of Chic thrown in. Meaningless, of course: but fine, if you don’t stop to consider the connotations, and I kinda like the “without the pretence” disclaimer, like Pete And The Pirates could have even considered being underhand enough to aspire to such an ideal. Being a fan of Orange Juice, Chic and indeed Pete And The Pirates, this is the quote I favour most: I just wish I didn’t have the nagging suspicion the NME has used this exact phrase to describe 1,000 other guitar bands the past year.

“Unique and thrilling,” Q ****
Another example of the dashing erudition one has come to expect from the UK’s leading rock magazine.

“Brashly romantic punk pop,” Time Out 5*****
Let’s take a look at the checklist. Brash: yep. (Pete And The Pirates are both youthful and filled with a quiet self-belief, rely on The Song but know that The Sound is as important.) Romantic: certainly. (Pete And The Pirates are as tender as a tugged-away daemon.) Punk: absolutely. (Sixth song in, ‘Knots’, and the guitars lash and lacerate in a maelstrom of seething emotion.) Pop: well, we’ve discussed this one already. Yep, this pull quote certainly ticks all the right boxes. Only slight downside is: that 5***** looks like a swear word asterixed out.

“A debut album that restores your faith in the desirability of free-spirited punk pop,” The Sunday Times
Yeah, yeah. We’ve had this one already, just without the five-dollar words: although, “restores your faith in the desirability…”? Are we talking property locations or a handful of unassuming young man making stunningly great pop music? Someone needs to point someone else in the direction of the précis. Fair play, though: The Sunday Times, being the hi falutin’ broadsheet that it is, probably pays a lot more for the word than Q (say).

“Stunning,” The Sun.
Succinct. Red tops don’t hold much with casual badinage.

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
More songs Everett True likes

1. The Ting Tings, “That’s My Name” (from the forthcoming album We Started Nothing). As bounced around to by my three-months-shy-of-three-year-old son Isaac: some old school female rapping matched to a 2008 beat…all they need is a bit of Gary Numan in the chorus and they’d have it made.

2. Missy Dee & The Melody Crew, “Missy Missy Dee” (from the compilation album Don’t Stop). Another awesome collection from The Numero Group, this one features a bunch of lavish 12-inchers from the last days of disco (1981-83) on Tap Records, this track features the pioneering rappers Missy Dee…who in ’81 seriously come close to kicking Grandmaster Flash’s ass.

3. El Perro Del Mar, “Glory To The World” (from the forthcoming Memphis Industries album From The Valley To The Stars). I’m a sucker for (children’s instrument) the recorder, when properly used.

4. Kelis, “Milkshake” (from the Virgin album The Hits). Still pretty much my favourite pop moment of whatever damn year it was.

5. The Dirtbombs, “They Have Us Surrounded” (from the In The Red album We Have You Surrounded). Hey, think I can’t recognise a Poison Girls lift when I hear one? This is like the best straight ahead rock record I’ve heard since…um, the last Dirtbombs one. No real surprise there, then.

Hugs and Kisses #33: Be Your Own Pet, El Perro Del Mar, Black Kids

Posted by Everett True at 11:30 AM, March 4, 2008

El Perro Del Mar: Her name is Sarah Assbring.

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Everett reviews some more records

You’ll have to excuse me. Been up all evening doing Plan B accounts. Not much of an occupation, and one guaranteed to cause anxiety, sleepless nights, insatiable cravings for cheesy snacks. . . not too dissimilar to being a parent. Man. Those figures. Wow. Wow. It’s so fun being a publisher, I can’t tell you. So anyway, had this plan at the back of my mind to turn you onto Tasmanian indie, or possibly talk up some favourites of Stephen Pastel that he’d been kind enough to share with me. . .but no. I have mountains of CDs on my desk, and I’m a fraction scared that one of these days my two-and-a-half year old son will take it into his mind to start toppling them all over, so yes, it’s that time of the week again. It’s time for singles reviewed, with all due deference to prematurely jaded rock musician students, without recourse to press releases.

be your own PET, “Super Soaked” + “Food Fight! + “Black Hole” + “The Kelly Affair” (XL)

When I first encountered Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I thought they were a neat idea: I devoted 15 pages of my former magazine Careless Talk Costs Lives to their escapades, got into a slap-fest with their manager, made Karen O out to be a drifting aimless stoner, watched acquaintances being dragged out of Brooklyn bars by their hair, all when they were but an EP old. So yeah, yeah, whatever. It don’t mean that about 20 years after the event I’m gonna release four ‘limited edition’ seven-inch singles that pay tribute to the fact they were once my favourite band. Plus, all these songs sound stupidly sped-up (OK, that might be my age) and strangely analogous to former post-Riot Grrrl space age Scots teamsters Bis without the spangly leggings. I ain’t denying that I’m jealous they have way more hair than me, and that they probably enjoy sex more than me. I’m just saying that I can do without them in my life again, despite the fact I have a real weakness for the sort of art-rock they purvey.

Turner Cody, First Light (forthcoming Boy Scout Recordings album)

Hey, so I lied about the singles part. So sue me. I have a fondness for Mr Cody that is partly driven by his bluesy boogie-woogie and partly because I saw him support (and play bass with) Herman Düne at one of my Three Favourite Shows Of Last Year Official at Brighton’s Old Ship Hotel, which is like all those parts of England you might imagine still exist but have mostly ceased to do so for about five decades now (lights glancing off balustrades, decrepit balconies littered with beer glasses, staircases leading to nowhere). He’s warming, and cheerful, and sounds like he covets his friends, and probably sports a non-threatening beard, and pronounces “Mos-cow” like it’s some sort of bovine feast, and probably gets called “antifolk” by regular folk who have no idea of the torment involved. He’s basically classic old-time classic rock but without the usual connotations or worry. I will be playing this album again. And again. And again.

Crystal Castles, “Courtship Dating” (Last Gang)

I have a feeling this are the duo—“disco anarchists,” right?—who have spent their entire round of recent UK press interviews complaining about the fact they have to do UK press interviews. Dicks. If you don’t fucking want to talk to the music press, don’t talk to it. It’s that simple. This is precisely the sort of music I imagine those sensitive souls over at Vice Magazine to listen to while they’re dry-humping mounds of speed: all slouched-over hoodies and shifty Pink Floyd steals. I would call it vacuous, but the folk over at Vice are oddly touchy about that adjective when used anywhere near their vicinity.

El Perro Del Mar, From The Valley To The Stars (forthcoming Memphis Industries album)

Another album, yep—must be annoying if you’re a literal sort. Sometimes, it feels like there’s an entire strain of female-fronted emotional pop (see also the charming and utterly bewildering Frida Hyvönen) that I like only cos I was too surly to appreciate it at the time (I mean the Seventies—and it wasn’t just that I was too surly, more that I didn’t like modern music whatsoever). See also Jane Siberry, now I think about it. (And I quite often do, seeing as how she’s caught up in one of the most heartbreaking episodes of my life.) I saw Sarah Assbring (the solo artist behind El Perro Del Mar) at one of those ubiquitously smart European festivals a couple of years back, on a friend’s recommendation, and she totally bewitched me. The enchantment grows with every listen of this, her second album. Any parallels I could throw your way would be false as I never caught this music the first time, but. . .well, the two ladies above make fair touch points. And God, this makes me miss an era I hated so much the first time around.

Black Kids, "I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You" (Almost Gold).
Oh, this is just horrible. Someone shoot me if I ever become this generic.

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
More songs Everett True likes

1. Smoosh, “Find A Way” (from the forthcoming Barsuk album Free To Stay). For at least 30 seconds it’s like my favourite teen Seattle duo have turned into my favourite grumpy, bittersweet Portland duo (Quasi). That’s a fine start, by any reckoning.

2. Jack Kerouac/Steve Allen, “Deadbelly” (from the EMI album Poetry For The Beat Generation). I was about to write, I ain’t a fan of his writing…but that’s bullshit. Tell you what, though: set to cagey-smart, interpretative piano and with blues leanings, Kerouac’s voice totally sparkles into life.
3. Zombie Zombie, “Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free” (from the forthcoming Versatile album A Land For Renegades). Live, they channel the spirit of infamous Belgian punk Plastic Bertrand. On record, they make perfect music for driving to Worthing to – Kraftwerk, sped up ever so fractionally.

4. Solar Fire Trio, “Start Up” (from the CD-r Super De Luxe). Delicious, unrestrained sax, sax and drum improv that reminds me of Scandinavians The Thing, but that probably only shows how crap my knowledge of such music is.

5. Those Dancing Days, “Hitten” (Wichita single). I kinda don’t like this. I kinda really do. I kinda think the overwrought female vocal really let this down. I kinda think it’s nothing without.

Hugs and Kisses #32: Singles Reviews!

Posted by Everett True at 9:00 AM, February 27, 2008

Everett True is a Hero to nerdy, middle-class, english teenage boys.

Admirers of Everett True? Nope, young lads from the Wave Pictures

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Everett reviews the singles

I lectured at BIMM (Brighton Institute of Modern Music) last Friday. After the usual questions as to how much of Hole’s third album did Billy Corgan write, and how did I get started in the music ‘business’ (I liked to dance at shows: that was it), a fellow came up to me at the end—vaguely emo-looking, you know he suffers for his art—and said, “So I’m guessing your magazine isn’t full of writers that just copy press releases word for word. That makes a change. Congratulations.” It was a surly back-hander of a compliment, but I knew he meant well…and so by way of appreciation for his appreciation, I decided I’d write some Record Reviews.

TV Personalities, “The Good Anarchist” (Elefant)

I’m nonplussed. The song is a lingering, played straight, bedtime tale about…it’s difficult to tell. The female singer seems to be staring straight at her feet while she’s gently intoning in a wide-eyed, slightly out-of-tune, Naomi-from-Damon-and-Naomi intonation. The guitars are drenched in echo. Everything is disarmingly simple. And none of this is bad or odd, just marginally worrying…because in all the years I’ve been perplexed and overwhelmed and annoyed by Dan Treacy’s maverick and often bitterly honest TV Personalities, I’ve never known them to release a song—much less a single—which doesn’t feature his voice. Maybe he’s trying to promote himself as a songwriter at this late stage. It could work. I’ve just sold two Lee Hazelwood CDs for a combined total of £60 online. (But he’s dead.)

The Wave Pictures, “Just Like A Drummer” (Moshi Moshi)

This may well not be a single. I have no way of knowing, having burnt all my press releases summarily after that last lecture. I know it’s a cracking good song, and that it’s taken from The Wave Pictures’ forthcoming album Instant Coffee Baby, and that it chugs and burrs like Herman Düne, and that there’s a part where the instrumentation drops out and the entire ensemble makes like Jonathan Richman on “Morning Of Our Lives” and…wait, my wife has just asked me to turn the music down. What? This music is naturally quiet: never mind the fact it’s 10pm, we’re wasted with tiredness cos of our toddler son waking us up two nights in a row, and that her friend with a newborn has just called. This is the perfect sound for discussing life’s tiny miracles to. “The sun came in like a pack of orange spaniels through the window…” they lilt. This may not be a single yet. But, at the rate The Wave Pictures are releasing records, can it be far off? Their album is released on my birthday, April 21. (Oh damn. There’s another misleading fact to go up on Wikipedia from one of my mystery admirers.)

Metronomy, “My Heart Rate Rapid (Radio edit)” (Because)

Here’s a confession. I saw the chap behind Metronomy play – with just his laptop for company, and a handful of us clutching coffees and glad we weren’t suffering the rain outside – at one of (Pipettes founder) Monster Bobby’s Totally Bored nights in Brighton’s North Laines a few years back. The music that night was quirkily intelligent, lovable and faintly boring, the way a lot of laptop electronica can be. (I know it sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, but I don’t mean to be. I like Metronomy. I’m just pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation: the idea this smart, danceable music was being created with zero pizzazz in front of a crowd of coffee table-clutching indie-heads.) Since that night I have shamelessly used Metronomy as a comparison point for any other vaguely quirkily intelligent, lovable and faintly boring electronic music I’ve chanced across. It’s my talisman against being caught lacking in knowledge. As to what this particular single sounds like, I could not tell you—beyond being vaguely synthetic, repetitive, chirpy and remotely like a Kraftwerk album playing at somewhere between 45 and 78rpm—as my wife is still on the phone, and what are record reviews next to newborn life?

Chicks On Speed, “Art Rules!” (Chicks On Speed)
Someone once sold this band to me as The Raincoats, only—y’know—updated. And I loved them unreservedly for as long as I was DJing irregularly at that club above The Free Butt where we’d play Gary Glitter-sampling electrocl$sh in between Delta 5 B-sides. But Chicks On Speed have long since proven themselves not to be spiritual heirs to The Raincoats…updated, undone or in any way understood. They’re so not. The Raincoats split, long before they ran out of ideas – or, indeed, chose to lamely critique their money-loving peers (and, by proxy, their own selves) to the strains of Pet Shop Boys covering ‘Go West’. It is so fucking passé to act so fucking passé.

Hey, fuck you! Think you can tell me how to write. Don’t you know that those nerdy middle-class geeks over at the I Love Music/I Love Everything message boards recently voted me Number 17 in ‘100 People Who Are Heroes To Nerdy, Middle-Class, English Teenage Boys.’ I didn’t get there without showing some attitu…oh wait. I get it. It’s an insult.

Bastards.

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
Some other songs Everett True likes

1. Katastrophy Wife, “Heart-On” (Rish single). The song on Kat Bjelland’s new single that isn’t the screamingly awesome Iron Maiden cover still kicks any spotty metal white boy ass you care to name.

2. Stereototal, “Plástico” (forthcoming Elefant single). This band make me feel so ridiculously, riotously happy. It’s like Bis crossed with Francoise Hardy crossed with…ah fuck. You know this band you know how stupid asinine comparisons are. You don’t? Then do so. NOW!

3. Clinic, “Do It!” (forthcoming Domino album)
I have no real idea if this album’s any good. I’d imagine it is, but I’m just admitting I ain’t listened to it yet, understand? I like the fact its title reminds me of my favourite scene from the Owen Wilson/Ben Stiller remake of Starsky And Hutch.

4. Diamanda Galas, “Interlude (Time)” (from the forthcoming Mute album Guilty Guilty Guilty). Diamanda Galas covers Timi Yuro. What? You need more explanation than that?

5. Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings, “100 Days, 100 Nights” (from the Daptone album 100 Days, 100 Nights). She’s coming over to play soon. I’m excited.

Hugs and Kisses #31: Tad the Grunge Personification, the DVD

Posted by Everett True at 1:00 PM, February 19, 2008

It's Tuesday, which means another episode of Hugs and Kisses, a weekly column from UK-based music writer Mr. Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press)—one more fucking book about one of the most overrated bands of the Nineties—and publisher of Plan B Magazine, a title dedicated to writing about music (and media) with barely a nod towards demographics.

As we've told you before, True is famous/infamous for all sorts of stuff. He's the guy who gets "credited" with introducing Kurt to Courtney, possibly "inventing grunge," and, on the eighth day, giving us riot grrrl. Okay, one of those previous statements was a lie. — Yr friendly blog host

Hugs and Kisses


The Continued Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Behemoths of ROCK

Blame Tad.

It was he who invented—well, if not invented, personified—grunge. (Sorry to dwell on this, but it seems that the Pacific Northwest has come back to haunt me in recent years.) Listen to the first track on 1988’s Sub Pop 200—the three-LP compilation that helped define Seattle and its emerging music scene (with its booklet featuring photographer Charles Peterson’s hyper-focused highlights stolen from a sea of chaos, and production mainly courtesy of Jack Endino’s heavy, heavy—and cheap—monster Reciprocal Sound). It’s ‘Sex God Missy’—demented, wailing, thunderous as all hell, the missing link between Killdozer’s tempestuous Midwestern serial killing visions and something far more arcane. Grunge, not viewed through the filter of punk but suburban metal (the only time a band was thus able to transcend its roots…look at the failures, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins et al). It was a song by Tad, the band featuring monstrous Boise, Idaho graduate Tad Doyle and guitarist Kurt Danielson (“the original Seattle Kurt”—everyone) (they were supposed to have met at a Christian pot luck dinner): monstrous in girth and in sound. It absolutely (and we’re talking 1988 here) defined grunge so perfectly no one really bothered afterwards (um, except for the zillions of mostly LA bands and A&R men who chanced by Endino’s studios in the years to follow).

Leap forward four years: Tad’s been thrown off Nirvana’s final US tour, the In Utero tour for bad-mouthing Courtney Love in print, after what—one date? No dates? It would have been quite a deal if it wasn’t for the bad luck that had seemingly plagued Tad since about day one. They got Killdozer producer Butch Vig into the studio to record their second album, the wired, demented and (sometimes) subtly menacing 8-Way Santa (it’s a type of blotter acid), only to see that album’s release threatened upon release with a lawsuit featuring its sleeve’s unwitting stars (a found photo of fellow having a good feel of a lady’s breasts – one of the pair had become a born-again Christian and objected to such off-hand treatment of her assets) and for Nirvana to steal their producer for Nevermind and…whoa. Is it time for corporate sell-outs again? Speaking of which, MTV rejected the video to Best Single Released By A Grunge Band Ever Full Stop, ‘Wood Goblins’, as being “too ugly” (was it the chainsaw? Tad’s girth? The music?) and another single (‘Jack Pepsi’) got aborted after a miscreant at the record company alerted the soft drinks company to possible copyright infringement and Sub Pop got threatened with the prospect of losing millions of dollars in revenue, this at a time when they were still pressing up T-shirts reading, “What part of ‘We have no money’ don’t you understand?”

(Tad sort of had a genius for titles. Their debut 1989 album was called God’s Balls.) (And they sort of had a genius for finding ace producers as well. Their 1990 ‘Salt Lick’ EP was recorded with Steve Albini, way before…wait, Nirvana…helped take the Chicago engineer’s stock to an all-time commercial high.)

Tad (the band) left Sub Pop in the wake of Nirvana’s success, high on the sort of drugs you really wouldn’t want your mum to know about, or indeed take, thus temporarily terminating Tad (the man)’s friendship with Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt that stretched back through the pair’s days working at legendary elevator music plant, Muzak. This didn’t seem like such a bad move—1994’s Inhaler was a critical hit, heavy and articulate, promoted with a poster of Bill Clinton drawing on a joint, exclaiming “It’s heavy shit”—until the band unceremoniously got dropped for release of selfsame poster right in the middle of a massive Soundgarden support. Likewise, East West dropped the band in ’96, right in the middle of another tour. And all the while, the drugs kicked in harder and harder…

I remember meeting Tad Doyle: you don’t forget shit like that. He was the first Seattle musician I interviewed on my fateful first trip to the States in February 1989 (the one that later saw me being credited by Entertainment Weekly as “the man who invented grunge”*: oh cheers, why not credit me with a music that I hate 98 per cent of?)—large, genial, knocking back Mexican beer by the crateful, absolutely willing to live up to a redneck image for the press (the “LOSER” T-shirt that decimated a generation’s aspirations was first sported by Tad on tour: it was his styling of the lumberjack checked shirts that the fashion catwalks later grabbed a hold of) and full of tales of how he and Danielson were in search of that mythical bass frequency—“The one that makes men automatically shit their pants”.

So anyway, I’m reminded of all this by a new Tad DVD documentary, Busted Circuits And Ringing Ears, shot by a couple of Seattle journalists over the past couple of years and—despite a couple of minor errors of judgment—it’s as rollicking and riveting and ridiculous a ride as you’d hope and expect: most everyone (Mudhoney singer Mark Arm, Pavitt, Endino, Krist Novoselic, Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman, Peterson, some dude from Zeke) is at pains to express a) what a thoroughly great chap Tad Doyle is, and b) what a thoroughly fucking amazing kick-ass band Tad were, there are the obligatory bonus videos and grainy footage and…yeah, wallow and believe, suckers. Wallow and believe.

Hugs And Kiss Top 5
What Everett True prefers to hear
1. Katastrophy Wife, “Run To The Hills” (B-side of Rish single “Heart-On”). Um, Iron Maiden as decimated by the former singer of Babes In Toyland, Kat Bjelland…fuck shit, man, rage and distortion don’t come much more raging and distorted than this. I’ve broken people’s careers for less than this.

2. White Hinterland, “Hometown Hooray” (from the Dead Oceans album Phylactery Factory). You say Joanna Newsom. You say Chan Marshall. I say you really need to fucking start listening to some more gorgeously beautiful, dew-fresh, teasingly exquisite female singers and quit with the asinine, unbalanced comparisons already.

3. The Better Beatles, “I’m Down” (from the Hook Or Crook album Mercy Beat). They’re like The Beatles, only better. Which part of that sentence don’t you understand?

4. The Tropics Of Cancer featuring She Rocola, “Get On Your Own” (from the Rim album Under The Covers). It’s the Buzzcocks – Love Bites, right? – given some absolutely crazed but beautiful Kurt Weill-style torch song makeover.

5. Ray Rumours, “Mr. Bear” (from the forthcoming Too Pure split seven-inch single “Ray Rumours sings/Francois sings”). Gentle, sweet.

Hugs and Kisses #30: Crispin Glover Records

Posted by Everett True at 8:00 AM, February 12, 2008

Your regularly scheduled installment of Hugs and Kisses, a weekly Sound of the City column from Everett True and author of Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press), publisher of Plan B Magazine.

Hugs And Kisses

The Continuing Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: punk rock in Norway

Ambition is anti-art…

It is the product of a poverty mentality. Like a blind beggar crawling in his own filth in a house of diamonds. That us not to say we need to relate to ourselves as cooked spaghetti, but rather a taming of the monkey mind that ceaselessly and needlessly chases its own tail. (Postcard with Dog And Sky release, Crispin Glover Records)

It shouldn’t surprise me.

A year or two back, documentary-maker Dom Shaw (Rough Cut And Ready Dubbed) contacted me, asked if I wanted to talk about obscure acoustic punk poet/songwriter Patrik Fitzgerald. (If you’ve heard of him at all, it’s for ‘Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart’, a poignantly sharp, zeitgeist-capturing moment that’s showed up on several UK punk ’77 compilations.) I replied I’d be more than happy to – he was the fellow who first inspired me to get on stage myself, even played keyboards on my debut Creation single—could perform a few spontaneous covers for the camera, if so required (I was). Patrik’s Jacques Brel-influenced songs through at the turn of the Eighties bordered on suicidal, harboured dark anti-ambition thoughts indeed…something that mirrored my own mindset back then. Entirely unassuming for a role model, he was the one who advised, “Don’t ever sleep with your heroes/They will only let you down.” Tobi Vail, former drummer with Bikini Kill, once earned my undying respect for recognising a Fitzgerald steal (“Hello, I’m a reject/Does one arm hang down longer?”) that I’d thrown into the middle of a song our improvised pick-up band was performing. Patrik’s bitterly cynical ‘When I Get Famous’ song seemed particularly prescient when I experienced my own momentary spasm of fame at the start of the Nineties. And so on. . .

Patrik isn’t exactly well-known: so low-key that when he came over to England for a visit three or four years back (from New Zealand, where he’d migrated to work as a schoolteacher) he actually played in a back garden in the street next to mine…and I didn’t know.

So when I was contacted by some kid from Norway asking if I was a Patrik Fitzgerald fan, I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I’m well aware that TV Personalities amassed a sizeable cult following in Germany, and that Japanese music fans go a bundle on obscure UK cutie records from the Eighties, the more obscure and twee the better, but I’d long ago figured my affection for Patrik went as far as me, maybe a few of The Jam fans who didn’t bottle him off when he opened for their heroes in ’79, the British establishment’s favourite dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah, Dom Shaw and a few Buzzcocks. Turns out that Patrik’s relatively big in Norway – even got to play a tour over in Scandinavia in August 2006 with ranting Brighton sort Attila The Stockbroker – and that my correspondent’s record label Crispin Glover has even released a few of his recent songs.

So I thought I could write my new Village Voice column about Crispin Glover, cos it ain’t every day I’m contacted by a bunch of old school punks from Norway who not only are familiar with one of my main source inspirations but even know my own recorded works inside out.

“If You wrote a line or two about any of the 7-inches I sent You'd be the first to do so, no ones bothered about vinyl 7-inches in Norway, maybe in a few years…” they write, excited – so here, for the first time in Crispin Glover’s small but proud history, is a series of capsule reviews their five seven-inch singles…

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
Crispin Glover records

1. PATRIK FITZGERALD and ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER, “Spirit Of Revolution (red vinyl). Split single from two unrequited old school punk poets, recorded live in Norway: one features Brighton’s own Attila’s brash, jokey, pre-Ben Elton political ranting over his trademark mandolin, the other sees Patrik in typically depressed mood. Neither would have seemed out of place when I first caught these men live, in ’81 or thereabouts. But that ain’t a diss.

2. BITCH CASSIDY, “Radiation Blues” (red vinyl). Forget the A-side, it’s the demented Heaven 17-style cover of “Ghost Riders In The Sky” you’ll be wanting to hear this for. Sometimes I just wish I had my old radio show back…

3. THE SCHOOL, “Madchen EP” (double single, red vinyl presumably). It’s like The Boys crossed with The Knack, with gruff vocals and a little pre-Green Day ska-punk thrown in. Is that a good thing? Go ask your mum.

4. DOG AND SKY, “When You Die” (red vinyl presumably). They like Ramones. We like Ramones. They sing in strangulated accents. Why spoil the beginning of a beautiful friendship?

5. THE KULTA BEATS, “If Oz Was Bulldozed” (red vinyl). Um…they like the Go-Betweens (see second song in). So do we. Can we leave it at that?

Hugs and Kisses #29: Noise, Kim Deal, Billy Childish

Posted by Everett True at 8:00 AM, February 5, 2008

Your regularly scheduled installment of Hugs and Kisses, a weekly Sound of the City column from Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press), publisher of Plan B Magazine, and notable cunt.

Hugs And Kisses

The Continuing Outbursts of Everett True

THIS WEEK: Noise annoys

It started with Kim Deal.

I casually mentioned that I’d been listening to the new Breeders album Mountain Battles on a flight to London, and had problems with the sound levels. It was too quiet for me to hear over the plane’s thrum, especially during the sparser numbers. She latched on to this instantly: demanded to know where and how: and was this a bad thing, and if it wasn’t why did I mention it, and didn’t I know that, to counter the volume control automatically placed upon iPods, CD manufacturers have been making CDs louder and louder, emo dense, but not without unwanted side effects – the most obvious of which is a faint clicking sound in the background. I thought I’d been imagining this sound for years, but here was Kim Deal (for Crissakes) telling me it was real, and that she refused to let Mountain Battles be dirtied like this, that it needed proper care and attention, and anyway why the hell did I want to listen to her music on an iPod anyway?

And this reminded me of something Billy Childish told me before Christmas, how technology is now so far ‘advanced’ that people can now talk on “walkie-talkie” phones – mobiles – and, “That’s the worst a phone has probably ever sounded since the phone was invented. And people listen to music on them!”

So Kim wanted to know whether I’d listened to Mountain Battles on CD and I said I hadn’t, that I’d burned it to my computer straight away for easier listening…and this reminded me of a chance conversation I’d had with a friend who owns a Mod clothing shop in Brighton’s North Laines – he also puts on ska gigs for teenagers, and plays bass in a ska band – and he was telling me that his band’s next release is going to be vinyl and digital download only, “Because no one bothers with CDs any more,” and this brought me in a roundabout way to thinking about the incredible job people at high-class reissue labels like Trikont and Light In The Attic and Dust-To-Digital do (and Rhino sometimes do) with their music: package it up so lovingly and carefully that it becomes far less about the actual format then everything else: the CD cases, the liner notes, the stuff you can physically hold in your hands and thus can’t get from the Internet.

I mean, I love writing this column–and man, does it have its advantages (only this week, I received a fan letter from a famous musician: “So glad to see you’re still a cunt”) – but I’d never switch for a magazine. Never.

And then, whoa. I’m sent a couple of awesome CD reissues from a pair of labels well-versed in this sort of thing: one, a two-CD, 50-song distillation of the BBC Radio 2 show Theme Time Radio Hour with your host Bob Dylan (on Ace), the other the two-CD, 48-song “1920s parlor listening experience” Victrola Favorites (on Dust-To-Digital). Musically, it’s hard to fault either compilation: the first is a heady swing through old school (Forties/Fifties) country and blues and jive and jazz, the emphasis on the voice and the message, two versions of ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama’ nestling up wonderfully to one another, Betty Hall Jones’ scorching cautionary tale ‘Buddy, Stay Off The Wine’ trading barbs with Charles Mingus, Dinah Washington, The Clash’s ‘Tommy Fun’ and The Donays. It’s real treasure trove of popular music from near 60 years back, no fucking around.

The second is even wilier and wilder: packaged with a hardback book lovingly assembled round old record sleeves and logos and photos, it features a bewildering array of exotica, religious chanting and barroom bawls from an equally bewildering array of countries – India, USA, bamboo flutes in Korea, Chinese Buddhist monks chanting in Hong Kong circa 1915, Thailand, bamboo xylophones from Japan circa 1910, Zulus, Persia, Zapotec-Teotitlan Indians...We’re talking about field recordings and beyond from the dawn of recorded music, pretty much. And yes, it totally is the shit.

Both are exemplary collections in their own right.

The only problem comes when it comes to the sound: the first is all cleaned up, digitalised (probably for the original broadcasts), everything EQ’d and standardised to ‘perfection.’ The second, you get a sensation of what the original recordings sounded like, more up and down in the mix. I’m not saying the original cracks and scratches are still present. They’re not. Just that I greatly prefer the way the source material has been treated – not ‘improved upon,’ just diligently re-presented. Doubtless, Kim Deal would be able to listen to both and tell in a trice what the difference in the mastering process was: I’m not that smart or instinctual. All I know is what I hear, and what I prefer.

So, anyway…I mentioned all this in the Plan B offices last Friday, and they pointed me in the direction of this.

Don’t you just hate it when some folk are way more erudite and informed then you could ever hope to be?

Hugs And Kisses Top 5
Everett True’s favourite Victrola moments

1. Bismallah Khan and Party, “Shenai Instrumental” (India c. 1949). Haunting, tumultuous: a slow-burner on percussion and reed.

2. He Zemin/Huang Peiying, “Big Idiot Buys A Pig” (Hong Kong c. 1930s). Um, somehow this reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite without the artifice.

3. Goebble Reeves, The Texas Drifter, “The Cowboy’s Dizzy Sweetheart” (USA 1935). Yodelling taken to one extreme.

4. Kachikuri Mimasuya, “Shiokumi Kasatsukashi” (“Collecting Water”) (Japan c 1910). I’m a real sucker for this sort of music: bamboo xylophone delicately and fi