Giving You the Roy G. Bivness

It's colour nite here at the Rainbow Lounge. Thanks for stopping by. Now if you'd please step aside, there's a battle to be fought.

Hot Chip - Colours
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Magical Colors
Mogwai - Golden Porsche

The White Stripes - Red Death at 6:14
Cornershop - Camp Orange (excerpt)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth

The Shins - Pink Bullets
Thursten Moore - Silver>Blue
Superchunk - Pink Clouds

The Monkees - Nine Times Blue
Big Bill Broonzy - Black, Brown and White
Tom Waits - Green Grass
Putnam Smith - Not Why I'm Not Blue

Pavement - Black Out
Pinback - Non Photo-Blue
Yo La Tengo - Black Flowers
Modest Mouse - Baby Blue Sedan

The Ocean Blue - Cerulean
Crooked Fingers - Black Black Ocean
Ween - Buckingham Green
Ram Jam - Black Betty

Mountain Goats - Pink and Blue
Led Zeppelin - Black Mountain Side
Spoon - Black Like Me
Pearl Jam - Black, Red, Yellow

Ken Nordine - Olive

Warren Smith - Red Cadillac and Black Moustache
Wire - Pink Flag
Animal Collective - The Purple Bottle

Wilco - Pot Kettle Black

Searching for Julie Delpy

I recently fell in love with La Blogotheque's Take-Away Shows. It's a repository for videos of musicians traveling through Paris making their music on the streets, in the subways and at tables of coffehouses throughout the city. Liars are featured in one episode using the inside of an elevator to assist a song. Vampire Weekend plays one of their hits in an empty courtyard using garbage cans as drums. The most recent post highlights current obsession Animal Collective taking a shopping cart for a walk and singing into cups to create the trancelike and deeply affecting wonder that is "Taste."

Please check out the site. It's fascinating to see these songs in such different contexts, augmented by traffic sounds or half sung by bemused Parisian onlookers. The kids are taking it to the streets.

And since I mentioned them, check out this video that I can't get enough of lately.

This confirms what many have long thought - Vampire Weekend are the new Monkees.

Mothra Wants to Party All the Time, Party All The Time

Rock Wisdom for Tonight " I looked at my watch, I looked at my wrist, I punched myself in the face with my fist." Bob Dylan, Million Dollar Bash


Andrew WK - Party Hard

Fishbone - Party at Ground Zero
Captain Beefheart - Party of Special Things to Do

Les Savy Fav - Who Rocks the Party
Beck - Mixed Business
Etta James and Sugar Pie Desanto - In the Basement
Sam Cooke - Having a Party

Blink 182 - The Party Song
Holiday - Your Very Last Party
Ted Leo - The High Party

Prince - Let's Go Crazy
Elvis Costello & the Attractions- The Beat
Iggy Pop - Rock and Roll Party

El Perro del Mar - Party
Yo La Tengo - Beach Party Tonight
The Replacements - Swingin' Party
Ween - Your Party

Bob Dylan and The Band - Million Dollar Bash
The Flight of the Conchords - The Humans Are Dead (by request)
Eddie Murphy - My Girl Wants to Party All the Time


Beastie Boys - Fight for Your Right
Public Enemy - Party for Your Right to Fight
'Weird Al' Yankovic - Polka Party!

Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
Ratatat - Seventeen Years
The English Beat - End of the Party

The Greatest Song Ever Written

I wanted to close out Prog week with a short celebration of the greatest song ever written. There are a lot of songs that have probably earned that title over the years but today I narrow my focus on one shining single that towers over all others like a giant space turtle towers over other monsters. My choice for greatest song ever written is Rush's masterwork "Subdivisions."

It begins with a pulsing synth chord, possibly played by robots for an ampitheater full of robots. The sound is insistent, cold and clinical and perfectly sets the stage for the work as a whole. If you are not familiar with this song, let me explain a little. The song appears on Rush's 1982 album Signals and to me it perfectly encapsulates the early 80s world of mall culture, the birth of video games and suburban sprawl. I was 5 when this song came out and it immediately transports me back to that time of scuzzy guys with scuzzy moustaches parading around in worn blue jeans and no shirts through the hazy post-70s fall out of the early Reagan administration. By this point, Neal Peart had moved away from the sci-fi poetry of Rush's earlier albums and was writing more direct lyrics concerning the damage humans do to nature and to each other. The title refers to both suburban subdivisions as well as those that separate students in high school. I know, it's almost overwhelmingly deep but give them the benefit of the doubt. "Subdivisions" seems to be an autobiographical tale about a boy growing increasingly uncomfortable in the world he finds himself, looking desperately for a way out and finding no quick fix. He can only wish for a relatively painless end to the monotony and boredom of the conservative suburban life that surrounds him. As an escape from this living death, Neal turned to fantasy and a pretty massive obsession with drumming. Our protagonist in the song, who most every Rush fan will relate to in one way or another, finds no home in the various cliques in school or in the ticky tacky sameness of the suburban prison he finds himself in. Apparently, there is no D&D club at this high school. So the search for connection continues into the city but the busyness and empty distractions there provide no real solace or solutions. For me, this kind of adolescent uneasiness and unhappiness has never been articulated (musically and lyrically) as absolutely perfectly as in this song. The authoritarian voice bloodlessly repeating "Subdivisions," the gently hostile singing of Geddy Lee as he spits out the lines "In the basement bars/ In the backs of cars/ Be cool or be cast out" and the emotionless keyboard lines all work together to create an incredibly brilliant exploration of the horrors of modern life and the sometimes fruitless search for relief.

To me, rock and roll is not (solely) about greasers and leather jackets or stoners and shirts with fringe or satan and his minions; it is about finding another voice out there in the wilderness who shares your ideas and ideals and makes you feel a little less alone. I didn't discover this song until well after high school and by that time, I had already found my musical saviours to get me through the absurdity of my teenage years. Rush encapsulate that feeling of reaching out for just one person to share your journey with so even though I'm no longer 15 I can still relate to that common experience of bristling at your surroundings and hoping for escape.

If you made it this far, you might as well check out the video. Even if you find nothing here to latch onto and you wonder how such a terrible song could mean so much to me, at least you can enjoy Geddy Lee's odd, odd face and some great footage of vintage arcade action.

Roger Dean, Eat Your Heart Out

How serendipitous to visit the Onion AV Club today and see this feature list. I've only heard 2 of these 18 albums but instead of inspiring ridicule, this list just made me curious to hear the other 16. See how bad my sickness is? My favorite line - "what's with progressive-rock albums and their obsession with vanishing points?"

In Defense of Flute Solos

It's Prog Week here at Battle for the Earth, so let's keep celebrating. Now let me start by saying I'm not an overly knowledgeable prog rock fan but for the most part, what I've heard I've liked. I don't even know how I came about exploring the world of jazz-rock cliches and face paint and flutes, flutes and more flutes but I do know I like it. My father always had eclectic tastes and his equal love of Dan Fogelberg and Vixen I'm sure played a part in my musical tastes. We didn't grow up listening to the Stones or the Beatles in my house but we also weren't one of those no rock, only classical houses, we just listened to random bands ranging anywhere from Bread to Men at Work to Ratt to the Alan Parson Project. In fact, my father bought Licensed to Ill when it came out and helped introduce my brother and me to snotty New York rap rock. Somehow, all these disparate sounds created in me a love for overblown rock n roll, especially if it involves allegorical lyrics involving mythology or science fiction, cartoonish amounts of guitar noodling, several odd time signatures battling it out for dominance in the same song or concept albums. Oh lord, how I love the concept album.

Prog rock musicians are nothing if not committed. Some obviously lose the plot and sail off into the sunset following the shadow of something that was borderline embarrassing to begin with and in the process lose most of their audience and leave critics standing on the sidelines, chuckling about how very silly it all is but I've got to praise them for their determined single mindedness and refusal to edit that 14 1/2 minute Arp solo. Maybe it's something about the hermetically sealed world they live in that appeals to me as I seem to enjoy getting lost in the fantasy of it all. I didn't hear Led Zeppelin until I was in middle school but something about the Tolkien influenced lyrics and epic gestures really touched something deep in my core that I didn't even know was there to be unearthed. It's the same feeling I had when I finally read the Lord of the Rings trilogy at the age of 23. This fairy tale world full of created languages and fantastical creatures was the exact journey I wanted to be on and just imagining a sliver of the story today brings me joy. It's the same way with prog rock - the battles and imagery and endless musical detours captivate me, sometimes against my will.

King Crimson have a song titled, "Cadence and Cascade" on their magnificent album In the Wake of Poseidon. I played it once on our show and Mothra just looked at me, a puzzled look on his face. "Who is this monster sitting before me," he wondered, "and how can he possibly enjoy this sissy music." It is all hushed vocals singing about a man named Jade who is in the shade or something and there are flutes and I really had no idea how silly it all was until I saw Mothra's reaction to it and realised that I'm cursed to adore this junk for life. Just the mention of the band Rush is enough to bring a gleam to my eye and give me that nervous sick feeling in my stomach I love them so much. It's a love I am unable to share with those close to me. It's not that I haven't tried - lord how I've tried - but I jut can't convince anyone about the mind crushing awesomeness of it all. The battle rages on.

Haiku You

Tonight's show is probably the most esoteric and bohemian of the history of the show. What follows are haiku poems constructed of song titles with the artists listed respectively in parentheses.

Step Into the Light
We Call Them Pirates Out Here
I See a Darkness

(Archers of Loaf, Mark Mothersbaugh, Bonnie "Prince" Billy)

In This Home on Ice
You Don't Know (How Young You Are)
Till the Bitter End

(Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The 13th Floor Elevators, Magnetic Fields)

I'll Be Your Mirror
Stepping Into Tomorrow
In the Street, Today

(Lou Reed, Madlib, The Jam)

Houses in Motion
Beneath the Festering Moon
After the Ordeal

(Talking Heads, Guided by Voices, Genesis)

Before and Again
Pints of Guinness Makes You Strong
Drink To Me, Babe, Then

(Akron/Family, Against Me!, A.C. Newman)

Walking in the Rain
Overcome by Happiness
It's Been Worth the Wait

(The Ronettes, Pernice Brothers, Nate Ruth)

Lonesome Warrior
I Am the Light of This World
The Humans Are Dead

(Eric Bachman, Papa M, Flight of the Conchords)

O Valencia!
I Want the One I Can't Have
Six Different Ways

(The Decemberists, The Smiths, The Cure)

I Don't Wanna Die
In the Mouth of a Desert
Fuck This...I'm Leaving

(Unicorns, Pavement, American Analog Set)