More Fun Than A Flaming Planet: My End of The World Blog!

SO listen, since the world is going to end, I don't want to go out on the mostly sour note that was my last Blog entry "More Fun Than A Flaming Yule Log." After reading several of my music geek friends' Year End Top Tens, or 20s, or whatever, I realized that there were, indeed, some records I forgot about that I did buy and did enjoy. There were also a couple bands who released singles or teasers for their new albums this year that I loved but, like a dick, did not include in my year end list. So what follows is my Top Ten best musical releases of 2012.

1) Redd Kross- Researching The Blues LP.
How I forgot about this instant power pop classic is beyond me. Guess I'm going senile. "Stay Away From Downtown" is the song of the goddamn year as far as this lonely cowpoke is concerned. The choppy Riffs, the sweet harmonies, the vague and vaguely familiar lyrics....it's like the innocence of early Lennon and McCartney, covered in '77 era punk rock bile and power pop teeny bop energy. The whole album is a stunner, in fact I'm quite sure it's the bands' best since "Third Eye".

2)Graveyard- "Lights Out" LP
I covered this in my "Yule Log" Blog, so I'm not going to re-iterate. I'll just say if you like the blues, classic hard rock, doom, classic metal or stoner rock...get it.

3)Kurt Baker- "Brand New Beat"
Ditto on this one, covered in the last Blog. I will add that it gets kudos for blatantly ripping off the title of a Gene Vincent song. Because if you're going to rip people off (and you are), then make it blatant and make sure they've been dead since 1972.

4)The Crazy Squeeze- s/t LP
First off, I will state that I do not own this record. I am judging it on the bands' past recordings and the samples I've heard of each song. The fact that this band is a supergroup that features members of the Stitches, Richmond Sluts, and the (godlike) Teenage Frames just seals the deal. Whatever this band does, I like it. It sounds like punk rock and roll with a healthy dose of snotty pop on top, a furious gang bang between the Heartbreakers, the Boys, and Teenage Head. I cannot wait til this bastard sees a U.S. vinyl release, for it shall be mine.

5) Wanda Jackson-"Unfinished Business" LP
I have come to the realization that I don't like Justin Townes earle that much. I really tried, but he just seems like the palest of pale Ryan Adams imitators, with none of his Dad's aching wordplay, slurred swagger, and honesty. He tries too hard, and he's too young yet, and he just ain't doin' it right yet, aside from a couple of good tunes. Why am I talking about him? Well, he had the balls to produce a Wanda Jackson record. It's a real good one. The song choices and feel are spot on, and I needn't mention that Wanda's voice is eternal. Her live performances are sometimes shaky these days, but her last few records have been up there with the best of her ancient 1950s/1960s back catalog. I do her an injustice by whining about her choice of producer. Jack White, producer of last year's "The Party Ain't Over Yet" was a better choice because he had recorded Loretta Lynn and is a massive talent himself. Having said that, "Unfinished Business", I think, is the finer record of the two.

6)Ricky Rat-"Songs In C Major Love" LP
I don't understand the title. I just don't get it. But I never understand anything, so I am not super shocked or anything. Does he love the key of C Major? If so, then why doesn't he marry it? Anyway, you have got to hand it to Ricky Rat. Probably the finest Detroit guitar player (and if you are from Michigan, the land that invented the Gibson Guitar, you are of a special breed to begin with) since Wayne Kramer. As you all should know, he was in thee Trash Brats, a band every hip Michigan kid knew and loved for their cross dressing cross pollination of glam, punk, pop metal and snot back in the 1980s and '90s. Thee Brats were a GREAT band. Ricky's first solo record is also great. While I miss Brian O'Blivion's vocals at times, this disc exhibits the same ramshackle pop punk charm that made Thee Brats such an eternally beloved band. Ricky's voice kinda sounds like Dr. Frank from the Mr. T Experience in spots, which ain't bad. There's also a pretty great cover of Flesh For Lulu's "Time And Space"! All in all, this is a good one in the spirit of Keef and Johnny Thunders' solo stuff. A guitar star stepping out in front of a band with better than fair results.

7)Ghost- "Secular Haze" Leaked Track
Pretty sure this will be the title track of Ghosts' next LP, and it's a creepy, swirly, carnival calliope sounding beast of a thing, with super, super heavy bass and the by now familiar creepily sweet vocals. While this is an official "leak",another new track has leaked via a live version of Abba's "Marionette" (I shitteth you not, people)on You Tube which is frigging awesome. Hope it's on the record. Very much looking forward to it's release in 2013!

8)JD McPherson-"Twinkle Little Christmas Lights" holiday single
This guy just never quits. His album "Signs And Signifiers" was on everyone's year end lists last year, and he's been all over the place since, playing every dive in every town six times on a never ending tour. He's also appeared on every late night talk show from Leno to Conan to Letterman, and blown away mass audiences each time. this cat is gonna be big. This is his first new music since "Signs", and it's a great little sweetly adorable holiday song. Sort of like a drunken Little Richard having his way with "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree", but better. If you can imagine.

9)Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds- "We No Who UR" Leaked Track
I'm including this mostly because I have super high hopes for the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album "Push The Sky Away". This song itself is weak milk. Kind of reminds me of U2, or some Irish band doing a song for a charity album or something. Lyrics very good, music very bland. Maybe it'll grow on me, but I'm still holding out massive hope for the album!

10)OFF!-"OFF!" LP
Following two years after 2010's "The First Four EPs" collection, this sophomore album finds the punk/alt rock supergroup that is OFF sounding no less pissed off and frantic. 16 songs in just under 16 minutes. Now that is hardcore punk rock. And this is a great album.

Alright, just so you don't call me a grumpy old so and so, that's my year end top ten. Go ahead and cast yer stones that I didn't include whatever 20 something hipster band you're into this week, but I hate the kids. The kids are terrible. It will take amazing things to make me enjoy the kids' music. Even if it's something I should like, like a 10th generation power pop rip off or doom metal band or whatever. I need more than "something I should like". I need something I DO like. Meh. Bah humbug, my blood shit runneth over.

Nick Cave Is A Horny Old Man

There's a scene late in Nick Cave's latest book that interests me a bit. The book is "Death Of Bunny Monroe", and the story follows the exploits of traveling salesman Bunny, who is clearly a sex addict of the highest or lowest order, depending on your particular slant on the subject. Bunny is married with a small boy-child, and his wife kills herself after suffering years of Bunny's infidelity. Bunny takes this as his cue to fuck more sleazy women and drink massive amounts of alcohol while dragging his child along on a drunken, womanizing, traveling sales hellride. The other things I can understand, but the traveling sales? I shiver in revulsion. The book, as you can imagine, is pretty good. The writing style has simplified quite a bit since Nick's earlier book, "And The Ass Saw The Angel" but is no less realized. You feel bad for Buddy, a completely disgusting, pathetic and selfish character, who cannot stifle his lower impulses, even when the guilt and shame is killing him. He is dragged by his penis from sleazy whore to lonely housewife to furtive masturbation and back again, and his feverish inner monologue while this happens is pretty compelling. Not to mention gross.

There is, however, this scene at the end, where Buddy rapes a junky girl while she is nodding out, perhaps overdosed, because she looks exactly like one of his sexual obsessions, one Miss Avril Lavigne. Well, there's no accounting for taste. This scene is sordid and terrible. But it's so very Nick Cave it sort of sums up everything you need to know about the book and maybe the author.

Nick Cave has been exploring themes of degradation, drugs, lust, murder, Biblical doom and squalid darkness since he fronted Boys Next Door in the late 70s and the Birthday Party in the 80s. His solo career has followed the same shame-ridden path, albeit with frequent glimpses of gorgeous redemption in the form of songs like "Straight To You" from the "Henry's Dream" album and similar gospel tinged ballads that followed. That's just my perception, but I feel like Nick has allowed more positivity to creep into his music as he's aged. He's in his mid 50s now, and seems to want, for the most part, to age gracefully in the style of someone like Leonard Cohen or Lou Reed.

His latest project, a band called Grinderman, is an even more interesting chunk of meat. Their first album explored many of Nick's usual themes, and one song from it, like that scene at the end of "Death Of Bunny", sticks out for me. It's called "No Pussy Blues" and it seems to be the tale of an aging stud who, um, can't get any. The music is a grinding, thrusting blues-fuzz wall of noise. The repeated line "she just didn't want to" is both hilarious and telling. And I must quote:

I changed the sheets on my bed
I combed the hairs across my head
I sucked in my gut and still she said
That she just didn't want to
I thought I'd try another tact
I drank a litre of Cognac
I threw her down upon her back
But she just laughed and said she just didn't want to

Perhaps Nick's most frightening lyric ever. The song begins with the lines "My face is finished, my body's gone..." what a drag it is getting old. Now, I'm sure Nick Cave, a married man mind you, and a rock star, could certainly find some willing nubile that "wanted to". The fact that he's willing to write songs like this for the rest of us though, well, that's very nice of him. I haven't really ever had any problem getting female attention, my ego insists I tell you. However as someone who is pushing forty (pushing VERY hard)I can relate to the disintegration of one's face and body. And my back always hurts. Always. And the bunions! Nevermind me though.

Nick had this to say about the song: "As our dreams and desires are hung on the butcher's hook of rampant consumerism, and the mirage and the illusion and the Nike trainers are served up on the trembling quim of an impossibly nubile girl-thing, No Pussy Blues tells it like it is. It is the child standing goggle-eyed at the cake shop window, as the shop-owner, in his plastic sleeves, barricades the door and turns the sign to "CLOSED". It is the howl in the dark of the Everyman."

Anyone who can use "quim" correctly in a sentence is cool beans with this rodeo clown. And that quote could also be used to describe "The Death Of Bunny Monroe" in it's entirety. So it ties together, does it not.? Consumerism, aging, sex, impulse,trembling quims. Now we get it.

Grinderman have a new album out, simply called Grinderman 2,and it is awesome. It's equal parts the Stooges, Howlin' Wolf and the Birthday Party, with some great raucous ugly guitar noise and the expected emotive gospel tinged ballad thrown in for good measure (pretty much every NC album since "The Good Son" has had one of these, and they usually end up being my favorite songs on the album because he doesn't seem to be playing a character in the lyrics. It seems to be the real Nick Cave singing, with the exception of the awesome "Nobody's Baby Now", which is another murder ballad). The lyrical voice is still there, and I for one am glad to hear the revival of Nick's hilarious yelps and howls, guttural sounds interjected into the noise that he hasn't really done much since the Birthday Party. I guess a good blues riff played on a fuzzed out bass guitar can bring out the inner Iggy in anyone.

"Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man" kicks of the record in a very Iggy/Morrison state of mind, with the aforementioned distorted bass snaking through a burnt out hallucination that may or may not be somewhat Biblical in undercurrent.

There's a vagueness to some of the lyrics, maybe an impressionism, that lets the listener throw their own subconscious garbage onto the meaning of the song. Like this snip from "When My Baby Comes":

Thank God we don't get all our hurts at once
That would be a really bad thing
When my baby comes
Thank God we don't get all our olds at one time
(Listen to me talking in my hospital gown!)
When my baby comes
Is there anyone out there wasted their lives?
On booze drugs husbands wives and making money?
When my baby comes

This might have a specific meaning to it's author but unless you're a 54 year old Australian alternative rock star (no, not Rick Springfield) you might have to think about that one for a minute. To me it's about aging, again, and the comfort of loved ones, or the lack of comfort of loved ones and the other things we devote our short lives to. To you, I dunno.

More straight forward, maybe, is "Worm Tamer", one of my faves:

You know they call my girl the worm tamer
She cracks lightning like a vipers' tongue
She leaves me every night and who could blame her
I guess that I've just loved you for too long

You know they call my baby the Mambo Rider
I cry storms of tears til the rising of the dawn
You know I'm only happy when I'm inside her
I guess that I've just loved you far too long

The longing, self deprecation and desperation here, as well as the putting on a pedestal of ones' loved one are intensely obvious. Whether he's talking about a lover or a god or an addiction, it's not so easy to tell. I hope it's all of those things. There's voodoo imagery and a semi-Bo Diddley beat and some irritating electronic noises and I like it quite a bit. Nick mumbles the lyrics like he's got a mouthful of brie cheese.

The record in it's entirety is full of blues references, musically and lyrically, and the electronic bleeps and static wails serve to modernize that timeless feel. It's blues as seen through Iggy and Morrison and Velvet Underground-colored glasses.

Well you have to be glad that people like Nick Cave still exist. That there is more out there than your Lady Ga-Ga and your Brendan Flowers or whatever's out there these days, I confess I don't really know. I've listened to nothing but the Jesus And Mary Chain for years, while poking myself in the balls with dirty forks. What I'm saying is, Nick Cave is cool. And he's old. And so am I. And probably, so are you. So put that in your iPod and listen to it all day.