More Fun Than A Flaming Yule Log; My End Of Year Blog

I'm going to be 42 years old in two days. That makes me older than almost everyone who reads this Blog. How do I know? Google stats, bitches. They see you when you're sleeping, they know when you're awake, they know when you've been looking at my blog and touching yourself so stop that. Uh, for goodness sake.

So I was going to write my usual "Ten best records of the year" shit sandwich, but I care not for such ass-clownery at this point. I couldn't find ten new records I liked, really, so I decided to just prattle on about stuff that I did like this year.

Now, forgive me, because it's been a rough year and I could possibly be a bit grumpy. My Mom died this year, I embarked on yet another life changing move to yet another new city (Chicago, land of subway crappers and drive by shootings, not sure if I like that yet), I got a new job that I absolutely hate, have had no time to write or record any new music at all...eh, whatever. You've probably had it rough, too. Nobody's had it rougher than Justin Bieber, who has grown people plotting to kidnap and rape and kill him, all on account of the fact that his music is the equivalent of warm, stuck together gummy bears.

"So what DID you like this year, Chuck Matthews?" I hear you saying out there in the night like a bunch of rude grasshoppers rubbing their hairless leg-stalks together.

As the great Gene Vincent once sang, "Weeellllllllllll....."

NATIONAL TREASURE #1: The GREAT EL VEZ. You may have noticed the photo at the head of this blog post of one very pretty girl, one El Rey De Rock And Roll, and one very drunk guy in a stripey shirt. That's my wife Faith, El Vez "The Mexican Elvis", and me, your humble procrastinating genius. This was taken the other night in Chicago after yet another life affirming X-Mas extravaganza performance by El Vez, his band the Memphis Mariachis and his lovely backup singers, The El Vettes. This man has improved my outlook on life every single time I've seen him play (this was maybe the fifth or sixth time, can't remember). How does he do it? He uses a complex gumbo of political satire, Mexican pride, a mental library of every great song, move, joke, look and sound in rock'n'roll, and of course, the legendary coat tails of Elvis Presley. It's not Xmas until this guy pulls his bag of spangled jumpsuits into town. His show has not changed much in several years (he could probably benefit from including some more recent references musically), but it is the most fun holiday rock and roll show ever. One that doesn't skimp on the jokes, the theatre, or the actual rock and roll.

NATIONAL TREASURE #2: THE GREAT JD McPHERSON. I've been championing this cat since I first heard his record a few years back. Those of you who actually read and pay attention to my rantings here (and Google stats tells me that there's several thousand of you drooling internet weirdos) know that his disc "Signs And Signifiers" was my fave record of the year 2011. His combo of Little Richard/Larry Williams style vocals, jumpin' blues and rockabilly and "aw, shucks ma'am" nice guy-ness has been blowing people away all over the country while he and his band tour their many asses off playing every dive in the nation six times a year. This has all worked out very well for him, as he is now getting rave reviews from national big wigs like Rolling Stone Magazine, and appearing on every talk show in TV land (Leno, Conan, Letterman). JD and his amazing Chicago based band (who don't have a name, and probably should...) are an inspiration. His record, "Signs And Signifiers" is a couple years old now, but it never gets old for me.

GRAVEYARD: "Lights Out"
Everybody knows I'm a big fan of everything from the golden age (you'd call it "retro"), but most of you may not know that for me that includes not only the 50s and 60s, but the 70s as well. Graveyard are a Swedish rock and roll band that combines the best of obscure 1970s occult rock with howlin' blues riffs, a very bleak lyrical outlook and a singer that can shriek and howl like a wide eyed, straining, male Janis Joplin. alot of people say he sounds like Soundgarden's Chris Cornell but I don't give a crap about that. "Lights Out" is their new record and it's amazing. It rocks, it rolls, it's a bit of a downer, but in a great way. It's kind of like listening to Black Sabbath in Jimmy Page's recently renovated 1,000 year old castle in the bleakest of Swedish winter time forests while high on the pot drugs. You like that, don't you?

COCK GREASE POMADE:

I first saw advertising for this stuff on the walls of a bathroom in Austin, Texas at the Continental Club while I was taking a hurried pee-break in the middle of an awesome honky tonk set from Junior Brown. There were stickers that said "Cock Grease" on the walls and mirrors, and being the modest sort of old fashioned fella that I am, my cheeks sort of reddened in slight embarrassment. Then I laughed, then I peed. Then I went on with my life. Later I realized that Cock Grease was indeed a brand of pomade, and having spotted some in Chicago's "BROKEN CHERRY" shop, I bought a tin of it. My verdict? It's the stiffest pomade I've ever tried, in fact a little too stiff if you use the amount you'd normally use of another brand. If firm hold is your thing, look no further. And also, it smells AMAZING. Like honey and sugar cookies and candle wax. Mmmmm. Screw putting it in my hair, I'm going to put it on toast and eat it.

DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR:

"Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements"
This is a long awaited fan made doc about one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time. Minneapolis power pop/rock/punk/alternative band the Replacements have influenced pretty much everyone who picked up a guitar since their reign as indie rock kings in the late 80s and very early 90s. This documentary features 1)No Replacements music 2) No Replacements live footage and 3)No interviews with actual band members. Despite that, it does have a lot of famous faces and many hilarious and awe inspiring stories. After watching it, you'll want to listen to their music, though, or better yet, just play one of their records while the DVD is playing. Essential.

DIG THE BRAND NEW BREED: Kurt Baker's new record "Brand New Beat" on Jolly Ronnie Records is a modern day revisionist history of power pop that favors the populist (Rick Springfield, Butch Walker, The Knack) as well as the cult (Big Star, Paul Collins, The Jags) sides of the genre. A new classic and you heard that here first.

That's my year end wrap up. I can't think of anything else right now that I actually liked this year. There are a few things I could mention like LAURIES PLANET OF SOUND RECORD STORE in Lincoln Square, Chicago. They're my new fave record store in my new fave neighborhood in Chi-town.

Let's kiss this year goodbye as it shimmies it's rotten stinking way out the door, and hope the next year is better, shall we? Toodles, kids.

Can You See The Real Me?: Mod and the Mod Revival(s). ('Mod For Dummies').

Mod. An abbreviation. Does it mean modern? It used to, but now it means retro. What is it? It's a youth culture revolving around clothes and music that originated in the late 1950s in London, England and other pockets in Britain, never really dying out while enjoying small semi-mainstream revivals every few years.

What was Mod fashion? Over the years it has evolved into many things. Many people erroneously refer to the dandy-ism of the mid-late 60s as "mod" because that's when the word first became known in America. Some think of the Beatles of the early-mid 60s as mod, but really they were far too mainstream, despite sharing a general image and musical sphere with mod.

Mod Fashion was Three button tonic suits with five inch side vents on the jacket for night time, Ben Sherman button down check shirt or Fred Perry polo in the daytime, topped off by a Barracuda Harrington jacket or collarless monkey jacket to keep out the cold in style.

Turned up Levis 501 jeans or Sta-Prest trousers. Brogues or tassle loafers on the feet, or if you could get them, American sneakers or baseball boots. Those were the staples, among other items, of real mod fashion. These items were purchased feverishly as both fetish item and practical streetwear.

Besides the above mentioned, fashions came and went rapidly, sometimes weekly, and you would not want to be seen out sporting last week or last months' look. US military issue parka coats were worn over the suits so as to preserve their fresh clean-ness. You didn't tolerate dirty or wrinkled suits. Many younger mods drove Italian scooters such as the Vespa or Lambretta.

What is mod music? Initially, mods didn't play music, they just danced to it. The first, elite late 1950s London mods listened to Jazz music and watched Italian films, smoking French cigarettes and talking about matters of great political and spiritual import at London coffee bars. The first explosion of mod wasn't until the early 1960s however, and by this time it had evolved into a more visceral cult of sharply dressed, amphetamine crazed youngsters that obsessed over American soul records and Jamaican "blue beat" or ska music, an early form of US soul influenced reggae.

<--Soul Music.
There were no white "mod bands" until the Who and the Small Faces. The Who had their mod image forced upon them by their mod managers, but through the genius song writing of Pete Townshend and the violent, dandy thuggishness of Roger Daltrey, the band would come to represent for millions of people the world over what "mod" is. A certain semi depressed, grey Englishness brought forth loudly with guitars, cool clothes and the sharpest and smartest of pop songwriting hooks. The Small Faces were pretty much the same animal, but their sound had a much more US soul influenced slant, with the otherworldy Otis Redding style vocals of the amazing Steve Marriot in the forefront. Other bands like The Creation and the Action followed the Who and Faces into the mod hall of fame.

<--The WHO.
Mod made international headlines when fights with the "Rockers" ( a similar Brit-youth cult who worshiped 1950s rock and roll and rockabilly music and rode motorcycles) became publicized. Perhaps because of escalating violence between the two groups, changing fashions, etc, mod slowly went underground toward the mid-late 1960s.

Two things brought mod back to the British mainstream in a huge way in the late 1970s. One was a band from Woking called the Jam, who had cruised into the public eye on the tail end of punk rock's first wave. Punk Rock was all about recycling and combining. The Jam combined punk's up to date fury with the sharp suits and jangly pop guitars of the mod-era Who.

The JAM.-->
The second item that re-invigorated mod was a movie called "Quadrophenia", written by the Who's Pete Townshend, and soundtracked by the band's brilliant album of the same name. The album and film were companion concept pieces about a young mod coming of age in London in the mid 1960s. It is an unassailable, brilliant film. Like "Rebel Without A Cause " in the 1950s, this film summed up it's generation perfectly.


After the popularity of the movie exploded across Britian, new mods sprang up in any tiny town or major burg all over the UK. Even in America, the style was taken up by ex-Punks and New Wavers. All of these new mods saw none other than the Jam as their heroes, their spokesmen, their Who. An overwhelming list of Mod Revival bands such as the Purple Hearts, The Jolt, The Circles, Long Tall Shorty, Secret Affair, the Merton Parkas, The Chords, and hundreds more formed and released mod influenced singles and albums that capitalized on punk energy and the glimmering three chord jangle pop of the Who and Small Faces, filtered through the revisionist sound of the Jam.They wore Fred Perry and Ben Sherman, turned up their Levis, restored old scooters and danced to soul and ska, just like the old days brought up to date. This revival lasted into the 1980s, and died down quite a bit when the Jam broke up in December 1982.

<-- The Purple Hearts.
It wasn't until the early 1990s when Mod reared it's perfectly cropped head again, this time in the guise of Brit Pop. Bands like Oasis and Blur paid tribute to their mod influences and re-ignited an interest in the style. Paul Weller, the brilliant song writer/singer behind the Jam, enjoyed a huge resurgence in his career at this point as well. Mod was a buzzword again. Oasis' singer Liam Gallagher opened a clothing boutique/brand range called "Pretty Green" (after the Jam song of the same name) which sells very high end parkas, polos and other mod fetish items.

Liam Gallagher, Pretty Green Clothing.-->
Mod continues to this day. In 2012, a British cyclist named Bradley Wiggins won the Tour De France. Bradley was a self avowed Mod, and the British press were once more excited about that little three letter word. So excited were the Brits that their decades old fashion invention was being talked about again, that they staged a "mod rally" at the 2012 Olympic games in London, complete with a parade of "mods" on scooters and pre-recorded music by the Who and the Jam as well as a live performance by Blur.

Mod will probably never die. Like the word "pop" itself, it no longer means what it used to. The concepts and images of Mod have become so entwined in popular culture that I'm sure they will never be fully extricated or reclaimed for the dedicated, small cult following that made these things what they are.

Here's an older, wiser (?) Paul Weller, playing two anthems of the first Mod revival, "Start!" and "Eton Rifles".

Heavy Doom Coming Down: My Secret Love Of Doom Metal

I love a ton of different styles of music. If it has loud guitars, I like it. In fact I think that if I had to sum up what I like, I'd say "guitar music". Everything, and I do mean everything that I like has the electric guitar as it's core element. To look at me, though, you'd probably think I was a rockabilly, or a punk, or one of those greaser hot rod dudes. Most of that sort of fits. I do love classic country, rockabilly, psychobilly and all forms of punk rock, power pop, etc. Occasionally I'll shave my head and people will think I'm into Oi, Soul and Ska. I like those things alright. Another passion of mine is probably my earliest one: classic Heavy Metal. When I was 16 or 17, in the late 1980s, I had nipple length hair and listened to a ton of thrash metal, power metal, pop metal, glam metal, you name it.

When I cut all my hair off and "went punk" in my very early 20s, I started denying my heavy metal heritage. Certainly by the time that the vomit stinking tide of "Nu-Metal" (an abomination, for those of you lucky enough to have escaped the knowledge: A cross between rap, metal and funk. It was awful) took over the world of heavy music, I had entirely lost interest. I was off discovering rockabilly, hardcore, country, post-punk, and all the other delicious morsels of guitar music I could get my red and sweaty ham-fingers on.

In the mid 2000s, though, as Nu Metal's sickening testosterone fart-grunts faded into the distance, I started getting curious about what was going on in Metal again. There were some really young kids at my job who wore Iron Maiden shirts and talked about how great King Diamond was, and I wondered how these young bucks knew about such glorious forgotten gold-nuggets from my rock'n'roll past. Turns out, metal was getting big again. With good reason. These youngsters turned me onto new (not "Nu") metal bands such as Municipal Waste, Mastodon, High On Fire, 3 Inches Of Blood, Toxic Holocaust, etc. younger bands that remembered the ancient ways of good ol' forged in fire heavy metal. Thankfully, my good pal Damian started getting re-obsessed with the genre right around that same time, and began buying truckloads of new and old metal CDs and sharing them with me. Metal was back, and i was back into it, and could not for the life of me think of why I'd ever left the fold. Damian and I went to a buttload of metal gigs and got to see some serious greatness.

In the last five years, the scene has only gotten better. Especially the Scandinavian chapter who have produced such perfectly thrilling and chilling bands as Ghost, Graveyard, In Solitude, etc etc. The metal sub genres are endless. Your traditional Thrash, Crossover (which is hardcore punk + metal), Death Metal, Grindcore, Black Metal, Stoner Metal, Power Metal, plus your innovative Death N' Roll, Black 'N'Roll, Blackened Thrash, Blackened Death Metal, etc etc I could go on and on.

For me, metal is great when it's simple, raw, brutal and ugly. Early Bathory and Celtic Frost are good examples. I also like it when it's slow, heavy, atmospheric and spooky. Which brings me to a fairly new-ish obsession of mine. Doom Metal.

Doom metal starts with the Blues. Howlin' Wolf Epics like "Killing Floor" and "Goin' Down Slow" have the heavy rhythms, desperate, fatalistic lyrics and wailing guitars that would inspire English kids like Led Zeppelin and the Yardbirds to pick up guitars and start livin' the hard life. The blues was also obsessed with the Devil, and warnings of the evils of sin were as common as celebrations of the joys of same, sometimes by the same artist in the same song. Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the frantic guitar genius that possessed him before he was murdered in 1938.

One of Howlin' Wolfs' heaviest riffs was "Smokestack Lightnin'". Does this sound like doom metal to you? Not yet. but if you bear with me it'll all start to make sense in a minute. Witness the blues.



When four British kids from the tough industrial wastelands of Birmingham , England finally heard the blues in the mid-1960s, they wanted to play it too. When they did it, it sounded like this. And Doom Metal was born.



Black Sabbath were, without a doubt, the first heavy metal band. Which makes doom metal the first heavy metal. The Sabs single handedly invented metal by playing the blues harder and louder than anyone had before, and adding black magic, hippy anti-war sentiments, a cloud of pot smoke and horror movies to the mix. Metal soon innovated itself away from some of these precepts. It got faster, harder, uglier and ditched most of the hippy sentiments entirely, embracing the hard, cruel urban decay of hardcore punk. Doom Metal, however, evolved from fans of Black Sabbath that didn't want change or innovation. They wanted to embrace the doom and darkness and the death of the hippy ideal. Just as Sabbath ended the 1960s with their storm clouds of heavy doom, these bands helped to end their respective decades with batwings, heavy chunks of riff destruction and reefer smoke. The next great doom band was Pentagram.



These guys were so doom, they couldn't even make a full length record for the first ten years of their existence. Frontman Bobby Liebling was so doom, he couldn't stop doing drugs and trying to end himself long enough to put down a whole lot of music in the band's original 1970s incarnation. Fortunately for him though, and for us, what he did put down ( a couple of fly by night singles and rehearsal tapes that were collected and traded by the doom elite before they ever saw wide release)was so good that it became legendary, and led to the first of the bands' many comebacks, in the 1980s. This time they did release an album, the absolutely legendary "Relentless". This thing is the modern doom touchstone. It is depressed, drug addled death-blues of the highest (lowest) order. This time, a harder, 1980s style metal sheen was present in the guitars, and the Ozzy like vocals. The atmosphere of claustrophobic doom and anxiety was palpable in the sounds and the depressed hippy lyrics.



After Pentagram, another band of throwbacks in bellbottoms came shuffling along, scowling and howling into the wind. Witness the mighty SAINT VITUS.



They were so doom, they signed to a hardcore punk label (SST, home of Black Flag) and toured with mostly punk bands, whose audiences mostly hated them. They were so doom, they liked being hated. Punks despised hippies, and Vitus, like Sabbath and Pentagram before them, LOOKED like hippies, despite being more like punks in reality than most punks were, if you're pickin' up what I'm puttin' down. So the very clique-ish hardcore kids of the 1980s were horrified and angered by Saint Vitus' slow, dirgey, doomy songs and satan-hippy image. For awhile. Before too long, punk and metal crossover was pretty common, and you could be a punk with long hair or a metalhead with short hair. But that's a whole other blog. After Vitus taught the punks about Iommi, lots of bands started popping up all over who took the leaden, ominous, Frankenstein stomping tempos of Sabbath and brought them forth into the modern age. Trouble from Chicago were one, as were Candlemass and Cathedral from Sweden and the UK, respectively. Witchfinder General, also from the UK, were part of the "New Wave Of British Heavy Metal" in the early 80s. They took a Sabbath obsession to punky places and replaced the fatalistic doom message with day-glo comic book schlock-horror. As a result, they were pretty damn great. The 1980s and early 1990s were full of great examples of mid period doom. Also being born (again) in this period was stoner metal. Stoner metal is basically doom metal WITHOUT the horror, death and gloom themes. I like some of it, but it's not as interesting to me without the macabre, spookhouse, death-hippy acid flashback element. One "stoner" band who has delved more and more into the murky blood-waters of pure doom is England's ELECTRIC WIZARD. They are perhaps the greatest doom band the world currently has to offer.



Japan's CHURCH OF MISERY are one of my newest favorites in the heavy death-hippy genre. They have HUGE rollicking riffs, a great 60's LSD murder-hippy image, and all their lyrics are about serial killers. Pretty much genius. They remind me of Japanese Misfits worshippers Balzac in that they take all the best elements of their genre and distill them into a perfect product. probably the best solid example of a doom band going right now.



Also amazing are San Fran's ORCHID. They are so Black Sabbath sounding, that I imagine their newest record is a better Black Sabbath record than the original Sabbath are capable of making these days. Witness the pretty much perfect late 1960s stoned and satanic vibe they've got going in their new vid:



I would be remiss if I did not mention ex-Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo's band DOWN. Possibly the biggest ever doom band after Sabbath themselves, these guys took Doom to a whole new, punky, thrashy, scarily aggressive level. Their first album "Nola" is a classic of the "southern doom" chapter of the genre.



One thing that almost all doom bands have in common, and I really can't find many that don't share this element (besides Pentagram, who favored Les Pauls and Down, who can afford to use different guitars for every song), is the Gibson SG. The SG is THE guitar of doom, having first been adopted by Sabbath guitar god Tony Iommi in the late 1960s.

Here's Saint Vitus Dave Chandler with his SG.

Here's Electric Wizard's Liz Buckingham with hers.

If you want to be Doom Metal, you pretty much need to have a Gibson SG.You also need to see a couple of movies. Below are just two examples.


And lest we forget the one that started it all:"Starring the personable Mark Damon, and lush and lovely women. Even though one of them is from the netherworld!"


Well sir, I'm running out of time here, but I hope I have hipped you to the gloomy thundercloud stomp of doom metal. It's a fun and funky rock'nroll sub genre that more than puts the black in your sabbath.