July 2019 Archives

Song We Like: Busted Lip by Pie Face Girls

Musicians who are gifted with easy honesty can’t just party forever. This Pie Face Girls album rocks hard while also exposing the roots of various evils, and is performed with the kind of anger that comes from experience. In this way the world gets a little bigger. Featured on our #62 podcast at www.hlycrp.com.

Song We Like: Space Program by Sam Pryze

Songs We Like

Colonizing Mars is well-expressed with a lot of giant, soaring, ironic/unironic vocals and a riff that sounds like beeping machinery. Colonizing space is an obvious metaphor for life: super serious, but also kind of improvised, unwinnable and ridiculous. Featured on our #62 podcast at www.hlycrp.com.

Song We Like: Afterthought by Ings

Songs We Like

A simple, echo-y elegant song about a woman saying fuck you. So many choices go into making a multi-layered song like this. In this case the choices were all made by one extremely talented person, who chose correctly in every instance. Featured on our #62 podcast at www.hlycrp.com.

Song We Like: Spacewalker (Lunar Mix) by Anti-Social Club

Songs We Like

https://anti-socialclub.bandcamp.com/

Anti-Social Club did three remixes of its song Spacewalker in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the lunar landing, and this thumping, ominous version is the first. Lots of cool, apprehensive rhythms featuring beeps and hums and vacuum-tube kinds of sounds will make you feel good about having two feet on the ground. Featured on our #62 podcast at www.hlycrp.com.

Song We Like: Hook Law by The Power

Songs We Like

Two notes, with little flashes of harmony and chorus, and a really satisfying manic end. A good song for people who like to think about what music is and could be. We also recommend the album, which is long and interesting and showcases what happens when three skilled and very different lead musicians form a band. Featured on our #62 podcast at www.hlycrp.com.

Band Management: Blog 27: Joan Jett and Joe Strummer

The Music Economy

How did I get into this? Into managing “Band A” for a year? Into the Holy Crap Records Podcast thing? Here’s the answer: a photo Joan Jett’s and Joe Strummer’s guitar, from an exhibit in NYC. I ask people how they got into music, when they got the hook? Well, I have an older brother who knows everything. He lives in Berlin and has one of those massive collections of vinyl. When I was a teenager he’d read the English music magazines and on my birthday he’d buy me albums which he really wanted to own. I got “London Calling” by The Clash. I got “Floodland” by Sisters of Mercy. I got “Unknown Pleasures” by Joy Division. He told me you could either like New Order or the Pet Shop Boys and you had to choose sides, and I went out and bought “Low-Life” and then “Substance” by New Order. My freshman year in college by roommate owned The Waterboys “Fisherman’s Blues” and The Pixies “Doolittle.” Doolittle was a massive album for me – because it wasn’t something my brother handed to me – it was all mine. I would say that was the moment music really got a hook in me. After college I moved to New York City and went to the final days of CBGBs. CBGBs was cheap entertainment. You could get in for $5 and drink cheap beer and watch 3-4-5 bands a night. Once I saw a young guy with all these older leathery musicians backing him. He had a wrist cast and still played guitar and jumped up on the bass drum – and everything he sang was the absolute truth. I’ve been a writer and I work in video – but, look, I only read music biographies and I only watch music documentaries. I listen to music all the time and talk about it and share new favorite songs. I can’t get enough of it. So this Saturday I went to NYC and to the MET, and there was an exhibit of rock-n-roll instruments. I walked around these darkened rooms, with all these guitars and drums and keyboards. I wasn’t so impressed with Chuck Berry’s guitar or The Beatles instruments – but then I stood in front of Joan Jett and Joes Strummer’s guitars. I was at a holy shrine. Everything seemed to disappear. The guitars glowed. These holy relics…

Band management: Blog 26: Back to Work

The Music Economy

I am managing “Band A” for the year – and therefore I can ask all the questions I want about the current music industry. For the next two weeks I will be in Connecticut on the shore. There’s no genius on the Connecticut shore – so I’m actually going to put in some serious exploration of the music industry. And I’m going to see a bunch of shows in Connecticut and in NYC. So far these are my thoughts: in this post armageddon – living in the rubble of a scorched industry – this is the best time for music. For music + art. Anything goes. There is no industry so you better live and love your scene, support your friends, and create whatever comes into your imagination. This is what I want to do: 1) manage a tour of a dozen of the best Australian garage rock/shit rock/pub rock/punk rock bands (The Chats, The Pretty Littles, Amyl and The Sniffers..) playing across the US, and 2) put out an album of our favorite bands playing Duran Duran covers, 3) put out an album of our favorite bands with songs about their experiences with the overdose/opioid crisis … Just putting it all out there…What I’m doing to be actually useful is I sent out requests to interview executives from Spotify and Bandcamp. That is something. And I’m looking at my Linkedin to see if I know anyone who is an A&R person for a major label, in NYC. I actually know a bunch of people, but they’re all friends of friends. My sister is a writer for comedy shows on CBS and I have another friend who is VP of data at 20th Century Fox, and they’re connected, but I’m nervous about calling in favors for introductions…

Band Management: Blog 25: The Tribute Album

The Music Economy

First, I am managing a band for a year – “Band A” – and I am blogging this exploration of the music industry. This gives me the platform to send “Band A” info everywhere, actively looking for scams and angles that bands can use to reach a larger audience.. And I am also doing the boring stuff too. So last week I sent out 30 press packets to radio stations and publications – the one sheeter, band photo, CD, sticker, and pin. (Photo below.) And if something happens – great – and it nothing happens – you’ll all laugh at my floundering… Also, this week “Band A’s” label, Kafadan Kontak Records, sent an email saying they’re putting together a Tribute Album for “Suicide” (the band). F*ck yeah. Alan Vega and Martin Rev. Punk before punk. Pre-CBGBs weird downtown NYC electronic punk. They were at the Mercer Arts Center first, which had that wall fall down, and then all those bands migrated to CBGBs. Suicide were basically the first NYC band to play with drum machines, loops, synths, and match it with a confrontational style inspired by Iggy… You”ll know them because Bruce Springsteen covered “Dream Baby Dream.” But check out the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FFIFsK1duw. Anyway, KK Records wants us to record “Johnny” by Suicide. Good for KK Records – inviting a bunch of garage bands onto a label and then putting together a compilation album. So in the same week I did the most basic vanilla of all marketing – these guys did something a hundred times more interesting. (Edward Madill – we need to book some studio time in August.)

Album Review: “WEIRD VIBES” by The Power, by Vinnie Minnie

Album Reviews, The Music Economy

Vinnie Minnie:

What if after 1994 rock music got systematically catchier and more fun instead of more counterfeit than mundane? The Power come from that alternate reality and moreover I think that Asheville’s local rock music is the answer to the question. In a world of Shannons and Black Lips, sometimes present day Rock and Roll seems like a trip to the nostalgia store to get your kinky boots and murky reverb. A reach for a time and a sound found in the hidden corners of the last independently owned record store that closed down when you left for college. That’s what’s great here and obvious: love for old records and costumes hastily pulled from the dress up box. Paintings made with brushes with few hairs permanently stuck with paint from the last. At the same time it doesn’t sound like the same regurgitated garage rock meant to sound exactly like the Troggs or early Kinks. The lyrics come from an honest place and that place seems to be the feeling you get when you realize you’re over 30 but you don’t ever plan on growing up but you want to grow up because you’re tired of feeling like a failure in the eyes of your immediate family. That age where you realize what you want, who you want and the proverbial “who you are.” I feel so fortunate to hear this recording of songs by 3 multi-instrumentalists who’s abilities at playing punk blisters and pop dreams are only dwarfed by their ability to create songs that get you pogoing with their catchy hooks and fun melodies. I mean let’s face it here dear readers, THE POWER is the only band that Vinny Minnie, yours very truly, would want to spend his hard earned dubloons on seeing every weekend and I’ve seen and heard it all before my escape from cartoon land. Not since Alvin and The Chipmunks have I heard 3 punks sing together so well. The short songs are punchy and the long songs get along swimmingly. Unfortunately WEIRD VIBES is not just a clever name as THE POWER may never play together again so let’s show our gratitude by listening to their album front to back and maybe singing our favorite selections from it to them when we see them at the grocery store or post office. But what do I know I’m just a cartoon that escaped from television.

Vinny Minnie – Thank you my dear QPOG
2019

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