Bend Me, Shape Me #10: Polydistortion

(

the

concept

is

fairly

easy

to

understand

)

Ask me about GusGus!

In 1995, shortly before Easter, I moved to California for the first time. This set the stage for the last seismic shift in my development as a music appreciator. At the time, Santa Monica-based radio station KCRW was playing some of the best music I'd ever heard.

In 1997 I discover GusGus, the band that loved design.

In 1998 I discover Mrs. Word Player, the designer who loved music.

You can guess what happened next, as long as your guess involves painstakingly programmed 90-minute mixtapes lobbing in from both sides.

GusGus have a healthy self-image.

The day I first heard "Polyesterday" on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" was a very great day. I almost had to pull the car over.

Thank you Chris Douridas. What an unbelievable track. Of all the "Bend Me, Shape Me" records, I may love this Polydistortion most of all. Well, at least I do right this second anyway.

Polly yesterday,
found another way.
Polyesterday,
synthetic one way or the other.

A biggish (twelve members at one point!), rotating Reykjavik-based collective of film, design, and music types featuring crate-digger break beats, slip-slidin' robobass and a truly odd crossroad of genre influences like disco, gospel, acid-house, hip-hop, dub, and ballad.

"Polyesterday" is, as of this writing, the definitive GusGus song. It bumps to the tightest drum loop I've ever heard. I don't want to know who they're sampling- I prefer to think they found it in a volcano.

This is the album that might pour out if you dropped the previous nine "Bend Me" records in a blender and hit liquefy.

To better understand who I am, it helps to know that I was too embarrassed to introduce myself to President Bongo (pictured) of GusGus on the dancefloor of Avalon.
Maybe it was his halo...

Track 2 acid-room fave "Believe" has its percussion lifted from the album version of Kool and the Gang's "Jungle Boogie." Hear it, and you'll believe too.

Track 10's main room peak hour "close yer eyes and gesticulate!" leftfielder "Purple" is an all-time standout in the failed genre of trance.

Since 1997, I've seen GusGus twice as often as any other musical act. Different lead singers, DJ sets, and indifferent late period albums couldn't stop MWP and I from boogieing to our pink-haired, Icelandic club purists. If anyone ever comes across the GusGus remix of Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot", pay the man and send me the bill.

Dig that gun. Blow your mind.

Inspiring!

This was fun.

Thank you readers. I'll see you in September after a quick month off.

Cheers to those of you who do what you want to do and not only get away with it, but go to sleep feeling good about it every night.

I emulate you.

I salute you.

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Bend Me, Shape Me #9: Subliminal Sandwich

Once the volume control is set, do not readjust.
Do not readjust.

As pivotal to the shaping of my taste for funk as The Sound of Funk Vol. 4 was, so the Volume series of compilations was to my taste for beats-driven electronic music.

Volumes 1 and 2 are touchstones on my way here fo' sho.

Volume One CD + bound mini-magazine came out in 1991 on U.K.-based World's End Ltd. In-the-thick-of-it acts like Consolidated and The Orb were there, as were the well-established New Order and Nitzer Ebb, but the standout track on this outstanding comp was "Love Mad" by Meat Beat Manifesto.

If you leave, take me with you.
I want you, I need you.

"They can design future worlds."

I first heard MBM in SP's room in college. He was never afraid to play risky tracks late night in a co-ed situation (rarer than thou'd think), and I always loved it when he played "Drop" from the 1992 MBM album Satyricon. It would either clear the room, or send it into a state, and either way I was there agitating for more volume.

The same is true on a much larger scale with Subliminal Sandwich from 1996, the definitive intersection of all the best parts of MBM.

Listening to Subliminal Sandwich is like tuning into a pirate radio station for a fictional universe, or at least a fictional music scene- the album is so stylistically diverse and daring it's amazing that only one band is behind it all. This is also a rare example of a double album NOT being too much of a good thing. Dancefloor-oriented Side 1 is definitely the more traditional "album side" in terms of track sequencing, but the looser, spacier, more experimental Side 2 is just as essential as the "now, let's go thataway" counterbalance: deep left-field, aggressive ambient (until you get to track 4 "United Nations E. T. C." which rounds back to an even freakier dance-floor style... this is the song that would be playing at midnight on a Saturday if I had my own club.)

Very weird, very exciting stuff. FORBIDDEN PLANET-style space effects, echo chamber dub sensations and angry but mindful lyrics.

MBM deliver unbelievable interplay between their music and visuals when they play live.

It’s a crime,
it’s so sublime.

For me the definitive track is "She’s Unreal":

Give me love,
so that I can kill.
Love me.
Love me.

The buzzing drums coming back in after the sound-collage interlude is an epic break, and the turntable solo in “What’s Your Name?” is one of the best ever. Hyperbole is warranted here, trust me. A helluvan achievement for an operation propelled for over two decades by one guy, Mr. Jack Dangers.

See I believe in the noble, aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing
and I hope someday I’ll be in a position when I can do even less.

That sentiment, great sample though it is, has very little to do with the incredibly prolific Dangers. This is hard, circuit-driven industrial funk, there for you when yer ready and willing... if this kind of talk turns you on, that is.

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Bend Me, Shape Me #8: Dummy

In the fall of 1994, I returned to UNC for a visit and caught up with my friend MS who was just as into electronic and house music as I was (and probably more). Thanks in part to the wide variety of new music she was bombarded with at her gig late-night deejaying for our college station WXYC, she'd turned me on to a lot of good stuff already.

"Feeling so unholy"

Driving around in her car one night, she said something to the effect of "Have you heard of Portishead?", then when I said I hadn't, "You are gonna love it."

I got goosebumps when I heard the first seconds of "Mysterons", the first track from Portishead's first album Dummy. European-art-film-soundtrack-y guitar layered over chunky old school scratching?

And then those jeep beats?

And then a fucking theramin?

And then, of course, that voice, Beth Gibbons, saying those things.

Inside your pretending
Crimes have been swept aside
Somewhere where they can forget

Did you really want?

So that's how you get a smoky voice

And then the torch song of our generation (am I allowed to say stuff like that?) "Sour Times":

‘Cause nobody loves me,
It's true,
Not like you do.

And it kept going, one amazing track after another that were all indeed directly up my alley. It was one of those records that I immediately had intensely personal feelings about, and yet in a remarkably short time it spread out from the beathead fringe and BOOM everyone I knew loved it too.

One of the last times I can remember feeling optimistic about the state of pop music was following Dummy as it sold millions of copies worldwide, crossing over and over.

Then, like a candle lit at both ends burning brighter, I suddenly couldn't listen to Dummy anymore. In that year or so after I first discovered it, I heard it so many times in so many places that it'd become completely burnt. I never stopped loving it, but I stopped listening to it, and somehow even new material from Portishead hardly resonated with me at all.

1994-95 also saw me fall in love with and get sick of PULP FICTION

The band took 10 years between their uninspired live album Roseland NYC Live and their third album of new material called, um, Third. I was both excited and wary when I read that Third was about to be released, but my gut said that the long hiatus would be good for both the band and my listening ears.

Well, most everything I've read about Third has been positive, and it scores an 85 at metacritic.com (which translates to "Universal Acclaim"), but after three listenings it just doesn't do anything for me. The weird thing is that I felt like somehow it should, that there was something wrong with me, not the record itself. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that no matter what the new record sounded like, it would fall short for me. Intense Dummy overload may have permanently crossed the wires and made enjoyment of Portishead's future output impossible, but with the passing of the years Dummy thankfully sounds immaculate and wonderfully listenable again.

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Bend Me, Shape Me #7: The Sound of Funk 4

Since very few of the cassettes I purchased early on in life are still in my possession, my official career as a music collector began in 1985 when I bought my first three Compact Discs- Yes 90125, U2 The Unforgettable Fire and Van Halen 1984. Since then, an inordinate (to some) amount of my spending money has been utilized to grow that record collection... but there's still never enough.

"Doin' the moonwalk. Talkin' that moon talk"

I would probably buy a lot fewer Compilations if money was no object, but since it is I've found the Compilation (much like the Greatest Hits record, non-score Soundtrack Albums, Insert CDs in music mags like Mixmag and XLR8R, etc) to be a great friend of the music budget. For the price of one record you can often be introduced to a dozen or more new-to-you acts, and quite often a track that strikes a chord can lead you down a path of exploration you may not otherwise have discovered.

By far the best music compilation I've come across is The Sound of Funk 4 on the UK's Rare Groove and Northern Soul reissue label Goldmine Soul Supply. I can't easily find the release date, but I first discovered it in a record store in Brussels.

Royal Crescent Mob at the Cat's Cradle was always a special night

Like many people, I got deepest into exploring new-to-me music during my college years. The (for lack of a better term) white-boy funk of Royal Crescent Mob and Chapel Hill bands Johnny Quest and Sex Police led quickly to golden era funk like The Meters and James Brown.

And thus, the stage was set for that moment in June of 1994 in Brussels, Belgium when I broke off from the pack of dudes I was traveling with to spend some quality time in the local record shop. The selection process details are hazy, but for some reason I decided to spend some Belgian francs taking a chance on The Sound of Funk 4.

To me this is sweet-spot funk, the kind of funk that separates people who shake their ass from people who don't.

Of all the records on this list, The Sound of Funk 4 is the one I evangelize the most. I cannot imagine the house party, backyard barbecue or headphone session that wouldn't be better off with a few of these choice cuts comin' out the speakers.

Where else ya gonna find Bootsy Collins's first solo single "Fun in Your Thang (Part 1)"?

How could music from names like Little Oscar, Burnett Bynam and the Soul Invaders, and Little Joe Cook and the Thrillers be anything other than sublime?

THIS is where you can hear the lip-curling gauntlet-thrower "Funky Funk" by Big Al and the Star Treks!

But we got a thing called the funky funk.
You do what you wanna do!

THIS is where you can hear the all-time greatest theme music for strutting, "Bumping" by Tyrone Chestnut!

When Wee Willie and the Winners implores you to "Get some, before it's all gone", you have no choice but to nod your head in agreement.

One of my three favorite all-time funk songs is "The Funky Buzzard" by Little Oscar.

Funky Buzzard.
Funky Buzzard.
Do your thing.
Funky Buzzard.
Funky Buzzard.
Flap Your Wings.

Wiggle Your Tail Feather

This is the song you want playing in your car when you're on your way somewhere better.

In a final "this is probably only interesting to the blogger himself" note, it just dawned on me that The Sound of Funk 4 has an awesome track from Grady Tate ("Be Black Baby"), the same Grady Tate I singled out for his "opposite end of the musical spectrum" work drumming on the soundtrack to TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME in the last installment of Bend Me.

Weird.

When you do it once,
You wanna do it some more

Mmm hmmm.

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Dog Ears #16: 361

For a while, Dog Ears #16 was going to be H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, but I was unable to even read half of the Lovecraft collection. It seemed like a natural follow-up to Screaming Mimi, as Lovecraft was discovered in pulp horror magazines like Weird Tales and only later gained literary respect.

Ah, to be able to read with 11-year-old eyes again...

I found him painfully gothic, too overblown and repetitive and not creepy enough, although he certainly had his moments of inspired gruesomeness. Maybe his work has been plundered by later-20th century masters of the supernatural like Rod Serling and Stephen King to the point where it seems retroactively trite.

From the Introduction, p.xix

At its best Lovecraft's work becomes a kind of incantation, seducing the mind into a momentary acceptance of the fantastic incidents being related. At its worst it becomes pompous and bombastic.

Too often I sided with the latter, and the book was shelved before I could even finish the titular story Cthulhu. Maybe I need to revisit the 1985 Lovecraft adaptation RE-ANIMATOR, which I remember being disgusting in all the best ways when I saw it in high school.

Title is taken from Roget's Thesaurus's numbered entry for "Killing"

Anyway, when I ditched Cthulhu I had three newly ordered Hard Case Crime paperbacks to choose from so I picked Don Westlake's 361 and dove in. 361 really hit the spot. I can't articulate why, but sometimes there's nothing like the cathartic violence in a bleak tale of revenge to make you feel a touch more alive.

I was lucky enough to meet Don Westlake (who in addition to a celebrated career as a novelist was Oscar nominated for writing THE GRIFTERS) last December at a holiday party in Ancram, NY. I was introduced and asked him a few questions about writing, mostly about the great POINT BLANK (1967) which was based on his book The Hunter (written under the pseudonym Richard Stark). Westlake recounted how the film's star Lee Marvin was in a terrible place personally during the shoot, still apparently affected by the trauma of serving as a sniper in the Marines in WWII and fighting in the Pacific. He also remarked that, as is true with most writers being adapted, he didn't have much to do with the film's production at all. He was very gracious to me and I walked away with the buzz you feel when you meet a legend.

"I bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan, aren't ya?"

Here are some choice excerpts from 361, originally published in 1962 and re-released in 2005 after being out of print for over 40 years.

p37 hang fire phrase
delay or be delayed in taking action or progressing.

p42 "I got the eye from the dresser and went into the head. I washed my face and watched myself put the eye in."
- the protag Ray loses his eye early on and has to get used to a glass eye. I don't know if his wordplay here is deliberate or not, but I got a good chuckle.

p59 "Linda, the little girl, came over and started asking stupid questions. She was like her mother, interesting until she opened her mouth."

p129-30 "To begin with, every man has to have either a home or a purpose. Do you see that? Either a place to be or something to do. Without one or the other, a man goes nuts. Or he loses his manhood, like a hobo. Or he drinks or kills himself or something else. It doesn't matter, it's just that everybody has to have one or the other."

p140-41 "Aren't you gonna help him out of the water?"
"No, I wasn't playing. I don't play."
- I love that people were saying "I don't play" 45 years ago!

p173 "William Cheever's name was fourth of four on the frosted glass panel of the door. It wasn't a law firm, it was one of those set-ups where a number of unsuccessful professional men get together to share the rent and the receptionist and the futility."

p203 "I went into the first bar I came to on Lexington Avenue, but it was lunchtime and full of bland smooth people."


BONUS DOGEARS from The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

p9 cenotaph |ˈsenəˌtaf|
noun
a tomblike monument to someone buried elsewhere, esp. one commemorating people who died in a war.

p16 mésalliance |ˌmāzəˈlīəns; ˌmāˌzalˈyä n s|
noun
a marriage with a person thought to be unsuitable or of a lower social position.

p24 (from the story Celephaïs)
"There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try and remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life."

Bend Me, Shape Me #5: GodWeenSatan

(ween is in big trouble dudes)

I think that thing in the middle is a Boognish

I credit Ween's first studio album GodWeenSatan*, released on Twin/Tone in 1990, for breaking me out of the mindset that I liked certain genres of music and disliked others. Suddenly any genre could be enjoyable (and they tackle heavy metal, punk, funk, psychedelia, weasel, pop, glam, country, prog and indie here, and many many more!) as long as you listened to it through Ween's ears. Oftentimes, you could never listen to certain genres the same way again after you'd heard them interpreted by Ween. Finally, Ween created so many all-new categories (how do you describe "I'm in the Mood to Move" or "Nan"?) that pretty soon classifying music by genre seemed pretty pointless anyway.

"I'm in the mood to move my body like a weasel goddammit.
4-8-16 feet to the left goddammit"

Gene Ween and Dean Ween are, um, Ween

You like music that transports you to another place, far away from the mundane? GodWeenSatan takes you so far outside what you thought music and sanity was that you feel yourself going a touch mad... and liking it.

Ween are virtuosos of loco, blackjacks of the ditty.
Ween makes you laugh.
Ween rocks you out.
Ween is fun.
Ween.

Years ago, someone close to me saw that I was reading Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and proceeded to rip me a new one in the "how dare you read a degenerate book that that!" vein. I was so flabbergasted that anyone who knew me could think that I supported out-of-control misogyny, materialism and murder that I failed to defend myself from their judgment in any cogent way. Later, I realized that all I needed to say was "Hey, it's satire! Get over yourself!"

It's true- you can like this book AND not hate women!

The same holds true for Ween, particularly on GodWeenSatan. This is brilliant satire as can only be created by someone who loves in some way the very thing they are satirizing. Anyone who had had this album described to them, or maybe just listened to one or two songs might think that only a freak could enjoy music like this. Trust me, you have to listen to the whole thing before you can really understand what the apeshit crazy individual parts are all about.

"Don't laugh I love you"

* The official name of this record is GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, but the CD I had/have makes no mention of "The Oneness" anywhere on the cover or the liner notes, so I never include it when I'm talking about the album (which was all the time in 1990-92 and virtually never now).

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Bend Me, Shape Me #4: 3 Feet High and Rising

"Let me introduce myself, I'm Mr. Monkey"

De La Soul's debut record 3 Feet High and Rising was released on Tommy Boy Records 19 years ago.

They cultivated, then rejected their early "hippie" image

Dayum.

This is one of the very few records that I loved immediately (many of my all-time favorites took several listens to warm to), never got sick of, and believe sounds as good today to my 36-year-old ears as it did to my 17-year-old ears when it was released.

Rare is the debut that instantly changes an entire genre, but that is exactly what happened to rap* when Long Island, NY teenagers De La Soul (Kelvin Mercer/"Posdnuos", David Jude Jolicoeur/"Trugoy the Dove" and Vincent Mason/"P.A. Pasemaster Mace", plus producer Paul Huston/"Prince Paul") first hit the record stores. I imagine it's what rock and roll fans felt when Jimi Hendrix released "Are You Experienced" in 1967... things would never be the same (and in a good way!).

*I say "rap" because nobody called it hip-hop back then. Well, at least nobody in North Carolina.

Native Tongue in tha house

Before 3 Feet, I had no idea what sampling was. Their sampling, like in most of my favorite hip-hop records, not only gave you instant listening pleasure but also served double duty as a "heads up" on semi-obscure records containing the funkiest of drum breaks, horn sections, and contextually relevant lyrics.

There's no counting how many records I've dug up because at some point I recognized a De La sample in a song on the radio or wherever, but here are some of my favorite discoveries:

"Rock Creek Park" by The Blackbyrds on "Ghetto Thang"
"Five Feet High and Rising" by Johnny Cash on "The Magic Number"
“I’m Chief Kamanawanalea (We’re the Royal Macadamia Nuts)” on "Say No Go" and "You Showed Me" by The Turtles (from the underrated concept album The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, the usage of which cost De La many dollars)

not to mention

"School House Rock" fave "Three is the Magic Number by Bob Dorough (on "The Magic Number") which was one of the first and most/mos deft/def) instances of applying positive Gen-X childhood memories to elicit a pleasure/purchase response.

These fellow music nerds were made cool(er) when De La used "Peg" in "Eye Know"

For me, one of the great joys in listening to/absorbing so many great hip-hop albums from the late 80s to the mid 90s is the constant process of discovering samples and influences in the music I continue to hear/buy today. When I pick up a top-shelf funk compilation like The Mighty Mellow or The Sound of Funk, I can count on a few "ah HA" moments when I finally match a song with a favorite sample usage.

Guys loved 3 Feet High and Rising. Girls loved 3 Feet. Rap fans, pop fans, dance music fans, soul fans all loved it. The stoned and the straightlaced. Hip-hop heads and hip-hop haters.

"Mmm when a D.A.I.S.Y. grows in your mind."

In the calendar year containing early 1989 thru early 1990, 3 Feet, Paul's Boutique by the Beastie Boys and Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy were all released, and for that moment all other genres of music seemed obsolete by comparison. A full album (i.e. not just a single) has rarely been as much fun to listen to alone, with friends, or with hundreds of fellow dancers as 3 Feet. It has it all- a booty, a funny bone, a mind, a conscience, a soul.

"De la Soul, from the soul"

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Dog Ears #15: The Screaming Mimi

Summertime is time for "beach reading", so I picked a book from my list that I hoped had no redeeming qualities other than sheer entertainment. Fredric Brown's 1949 pulp The Screaming Mimi hit the nail luridly on the head.

Not to be confused with the NYC vintage store"Screaming Mimi's"

Fellow Cincinnatian Brown's book has been adapted for film at least twice, first in 1958's SCREAMING MIMI (starring legendary looker Anita Ekberg as the stripper Yolanda) and then as the uncredited inspiration for Dario Argento's 1970 shocker THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. Particularly for a book almost 60 years old, Mimi's world of smart-ass narrators, hard-drinking beat reporters, sleazy underworld figures and psycho killers feels gritty and authentic (even during its many flights of fancy).

The writing is hard-boiled and often hilarious, and if I were still angling to produce movies I would go off to a motel in the desert, pound out another adaptation of this sucker and get it to Brad and Angelina ASAP. They would be perfect as binging Bill Sweeney and his curvy obsession Yolanda (which reminds me, the tagline for the 1958 MIMI was "Suspense around every curve!", which is pretty damn good methinks).

Starring Anita "La Dolce Vita" Ekberg (aka Anita "Va-va-voom" Ekberg)

If you decide to do that, please thank me in the credits.

p1 (the first lines of the book)
"You can never tell what a drunken Irishman will do. You can make a flying guess; you can make a lot of flying guesses."

"There's murder before the story proper starts, and murder after it ends; the actual story begins with a naked woman and ends with one, which is a good opening and a good ending, but everything between isn't nice. Don't say I didn't warn you."

p6 crease |krēs| verb [ trans. ]
2 (of a bullet) graze (someone or something), causing little damage : a bullet creased his thigh.

p10 "It's the easiest thing in the world, Sweeney. Take rich men. Easiest thing in the world; anybody can get rich. All you got to do is want money so bad it means more to you than anything else. Concentrate on money and you'll get it. If you want other things worse, you don't."

p20 "There are strange things in the world and then there are stranger ones."

There are strange films in the world, and then there are Dario Argento films.

p22 "Sweeney headed for the Blade. There's a nice pun in that, if you don't mind your puns obvious. The Blade. If you saw that pun yourself, forgive me for pointing it out. You got it, yes, but somebody else would have missed it. It takes all kinds of people to read a book."

p30 "'Well,' said Sweeney, and thought it over. He had to get some nourishment into him somehow, a little at a time, until his appetite came back and he could look at a full meal without flinching. 'Beer with an egg in it, I guess.'"

nictitating membrane |ˈniktiˌtāti ng |
noun Zoology
a whitish or translucent membrane that forms an inner eyelid in birds, reptiles, and some mammals. It can be drawn across the eye to protect it from dust and keep it moist. Also called third eyelid .

p32 "Isn't civilization a marvelous thing, Mr. Sweeney? That two men can sit around like this and insult one another, amicably but sincerely, and enjoy the conversation?"

p111 "He... knocked on a heavy door. It opened a few inches and a face looked out, the eyes–and they weren't nice eyes–well above the level of Sweeney's head. Under the eyes was a broken nose, and under the nose was a pair of thick lips that said "Yeah?" and showed broken teeth between them."

complaisant |kəmˈplāsənt|
adjective
willing to please others; obliging; agreeable : when unharnessed, Northern dogs are peaceful and complaisant.

p118 "Unconsciously, one judges others by comparison with oneself; and two people both of whom have eaten onions cannot smell each other's breath."

151 goldbrick informal
noun
a thing that looks valuable, but is in fact worthless.
• (also goldbrick or goldbricker) a con man.
• a lazy person : [as adj. ] hardworking Amos and goldbrick Andy.
verb (usu. goldbrick) [ intrans. ]
invent excuses to avoid a task; shirk : he wasn't goldbricking; he was really sick.
• [ trans. ] swindle (someone).

156 "He strolled over to Clark Street, stopped in at Ireland's and ordered a lobster."
- i don't know what it is about that sentence, but there's something magical and transporting about it for me...

Finally, a bonus Dog Ear that I found at Brown's IMDB page. Brown is credited with writing the shortest horror story of all time:

"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door."

Bend Me, Shape Me #3: Unearthed

the gateway album.

In 1988, Australian band The Church broke onto the US charts in a big way with the moody, ethereal single "Under the Milky Way". I loved loved loved it and after buying the accompanying album Starfish I started digging into the band's back catalog. Not only were they prolific as a band, but there were solo projects available by the lead singer and songwriter Steve Kilbey as well as lead guitarist Marty Willson-Piper.

Cover art color scheme prepares you for something unusual

Oddly enough, I became much bigger fans of the two solo records I bought than any Church album in my collection. I don't listen to Willson-Piper's Art Attack as much now as i did then (which was quite a bit- it's excellent), but the Kilbey record Unearthed became one of my favorite records of all time, and is still in heavy rotation at the Word Player home 20 years later.

Originally released in 1986, Unearthed is a classic example of a "bedroom record": it feels like it was made in a bedroom and it's best listened to in bedroom conditions. When I was a bachelor, I fell asleep almost every night with headphones on or music playing low on the stereo, and this album has taken me into the dream world hundreds of times.

"Otherworldly" is a good place to start, adjective-wise. The album is both stylistically diverse and thematically cohesive. Sometimes it feels like Renaissance psychedelia, then on to proto-electronica, and even dream sequence soundtrack music from a lost science fiction film.

Weaving dissolving patterns
Forming our uncertain terms
Passing into history
Going to the worms
I'll wait for you forever
In my house all white with dust
Falling into lonely hours
Let the engines rust

Heliopolis

Makes me think of The Martian Chronicles...

He has the look of a shaman about him, no?

Kilbey's lyrics are vague, emotional and surreal, and even the instrumental tracks seem to communicate something palpable beyond simple mood. This is music to get lost to for sure.

It's hard sometimes to identify favorite songs on a favorite album, but in terms of "which songs have made it onto the most mixtapes" there are two clear-cut winners.

The first is "Tyrant", a pulsating, droning ode that seems to be saying more than it says (which, I know, isn't saying much).

Undignified, uncivilized, but always worth a thrill
There's never been a world that didn't end
Unquantified, uncategorized, until we pay the bill
Never ever borrow what you lend

The other track's name says it all, in a way. "My Birthday, the Moon Festival". It's simultaneously absurd and beautiful. What more can you ask for?

My birthday, the moon festival
My life in the sea of tears

My holiday, a misadventure
My soul, a short career
Like a lizard the road crawls forward
Into regions unexplored
By their boats the Mayans stirred
Gold and silver soon flow aboard
My birthday, the moon festival
My legs a wisp of ghost
My clothing, cotton under paper
My shoes, a sharpened post
My birthday, the moon festival

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Dog Ears #14: On Writing

I'd planned to take a break from Dog Ear-ing for a while, and had skipped the last book I read (Chip Kidd's The Learners- good, but not great). The next book on my stack was Stephen King's nonfiction On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, a book I'd picked from an assortment of giveaways in the basement of AB and UM over the holidays. When I began I wasn't planning on Dog Ear-ing it either, but there were just too many plums I couldn't resist picking... et voila.

It's always a pleasure when Mr. King leads you down into the cellar

Including On Writing I've now read 22 books written by King, far and away the largest number by any one author. In scanning his chronological bibliography, I also realized that I hadn't read any King since 1997's Wizard and Glass, the fourth installment of the frustratingly ambitious Dark Tower series. I'm not sure why I stopped reading King for so long, but my best guess is that he was just so damn prolific that I stopped trying to keep up and, kind of like a favorite band you veer away from after years of faithful devotion, I realized that I needed a break.

Even though On Writing is nonfiction, it's written in King's instantly recognizable voice, and I realized how much I'd missed it after such a long break. The book's more or less broken up into three sections- King's own personal history and evolution as a writer, his advice on how to manage the art and craft of writing itself, and finally a harrowing chapter on his near-fatal encounter with a

BLOGGER'S NOTE

Above, I stopped writing mid-sentence when Mrs. Word Player walked in the door. We decided to go out and grab some lunch, so I walked away from the computer and this post. What I had been about to write was that King, as a pedestrian, was struck by a car in a horrible accident near his home in the middle of writing On Writing, and didn't finish it for months.

In true, eerie King fashion, we got in the car to drive to lunch today and got in a car accident in an intersection not far from our home. We were both shaken up but uninjured and the other driver (also uninjured) was clearly at fault. As I was driving the rental car home after dropping our car off to get fixed the weird synchronicity struck me, and oddly made me feel a little better about the whole thing. At least no one had to be evacuated by helicopter for emergency surgery...

Fortunately, the other driver didn't hiss "Thinner!" at me while exchanging insurance information

That said, I'm a touch freaked out.

Anyway, here are some of the best Dog Ears from On Writing.

p37 "Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up."

p163 "... stories are found things, like fossils in the ground. ... Stories aren't souvenir tee-shirts or GameBoys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible."

p249 logrolling: |ˈlôgˌrōli ng; ˈläg-|
noun
1 informal the practice of exchanging favors, esp. in politics by reciprocal voting for each other's proposed legislation. [ORIGIN: from the phrase you roll my log and I'll roll yours.]
2 a sport in which two contestants stand on a floating log and try to knock each other off by spinning it with their feet.

The boy that launched a million nightmares

Well, it seems that after I cut a few DE's that didn't seem as compelling as I thought they were laying in bed, this installment is a little thin. Let's insert the two DE's I couldn't resist making in The Learners to beef the piece up, yes?

p160 "'Lars once said there are two kinds of people in this world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and everyone else.'"

p175. "Miss Preech: 'Your five o'clock is here. The respondent to the shoe ad. A Mr. Harshbarger.'
'Send him up.' Tip rubbed his hands listlessly. 'Oh, I'm just filled with antisappointment.'
'Pardon?'
'Antisappointment. Anticipation colliding head-on with the certainty of its own doom."

I think we've all experienced our fair share of antisappointment, yes?

One final note- tomorrow is the one year anniversary of this blog. Feel free to take the day off from work and celebrate with me. To borrow once more from Stephen King, thank you Faithful Reader.

Bend Me, Shape Me #2: 1999

It's difficult to remember now, in 2008, how far away the year 1999 seemed in 1982 when Prince released his breakthrough album 1999. Believe me, for a 12 year-old thinking about what the world would be like when he was 29, 1999 felt like a million years away (kind of like it does now in the rearview mirror).

"Can U take me 4 a ride?"

Fortunately for me, Prince hadn't yet gained notoriety for his explicit lyrics and I was allowed to own and play 1999 at such a tender age (though after one listen I made very sure never to play it when grown-ups were around). I was turned on to the record by a pivotal radio station in my musical evolution: WBLZ 103.5 in Cincinnati. WBLZ was a dance-oriented urban station that played a lot of the electrified post-disco/pre-hip hop funk (Roger's "In the Mix" and Art of Noise's "Beat Box" were two staples) that was hot in those days, and Prince was the belle of the ball.

I feel like the entire summer of 1983 was devoted to listening to 1999 while playing marathon ping-pong "tournaments" and ColecoVision Zaxxon and Donkey Kong in the basement of my friend CS's house. My insatiable thirst for funk was born and, thanks to Prince's dirty mind, my adolescent curiosity about sex was ramped up, oh, about 11,000%.

Prince could even make chain mail gloves look sexy

Look here Martian, I'm not sayin' this just 2 be nasty
I sincerely wanna fuck the taste outta your mouth
Can U relate?

Actually, Prince, I couldn't relate, but lyrics like this from "Let's Pretend We're Married" sure did get the blood boiling (and, frankly, scared me). That said, the music on 1999 was even more compelling than his lyrics (and that's saying a lot). Released only one month after "A Broken Frame" on October 27, 1982, 1999 took two of that album's primary instruments- synthesizers and drum machines- and used them in polar opposite fashion. Prince took electronic music and made it feel visceral and organic and alive (as opposed to the clinical, glacial sounds of early Depeche Mode). I just discovered today that Prince was heavily influenced by BLADE RUNNER while recording 1999, and the connection makes perfect sense: both masterpieces are obsessed with the blurring of the line between man and machine.

remember how hard it was to fly through those gaps in the wall?

"Automatic" and "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" are my two favorite tracks on the album, and both of them felt like they were exploring alternate universe male/female relationships.

U ask me if I'll kiss u
It's automatic
And if u cry, me cry, boo hoo
That's automatic 2, ooh

As amazing a musician as Prince is, it's still weird that his signature sound (to me, anyway) is the drum machine hand-clap found all over this record, but it also makes sense too. Listening to 1999 then was so exciting and so confusing and so infectious, and the album holds up like a champ today. I'd wager that any deejay who dropped "D.M.S.R." in a club on a sweaty Saturday night would see the dancefloor jump. Not for nostalgic reasons either- it's a timeless booty-shaker for the Prince fan and the uninitiated alike.

**If you're new to the site, the goal of the Bend Me, Shape Me series can be found here.**

Bend Me, Shape Me #1: A Broken Frame

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?
- Rob Gordon, High Fidelity

I want a room that looks like this

So begins the film adaptation of Nick Hornby's seminal (for mix-tape enthusiasts anyway) book High Fidelity. I can't recall if this is an exact quote from the book (I haven't read it in 13 years) but it feels like one. I think it raises an excellent question, and to take it in a slightly different direction, I believe wholeheartedly that the music I listened to in my formative years had an enormous impact on what kind of person I became and what sort of aesthetic I developed.

A couple weekends ago I read an interesting article in the NY Times "Arts & Leisure" section on the reformed band Portishead and the release of Third, their first album in ten years. As I read I couldn't stop thinking how much I loved Portishead's first record Dummy (1994), and indeed how much that record altered my taste in music while it served as a soundtrack to my life for many months. In the spirit of Rob Gordon, I decided to make a list of the ten most influential records in my life, and amended the time span to records that came out during the most malleable and impressionable period in a music lover's life (according to me anyway)– the fifteen years from 11 through 25.

So, with no further ado, I want to kick off the ten part series "Bend Me, Shape Me" with the first record on my chronological list: Depeche Mode's A Broken Frame, released September 27, 1982.

"Where is she going?" I wondered.

I didn't discover A Broken Frame until two years after its release. Depeche Mode didn't really achieve a foothold in the U.S. until 1984 and the release of the single "People are People" from their fourth studio album Some Great Reward. In 1984 I was living in Cincinnati for the second time, and fell under the influence of their "alternative" record station 97X (immortalized by Dustin Hoffman's character in RAIN MAN who kept repeating their tagline "97X... BAM... the future of rock and roll"). Having recently left classic-rock dominated Charlotte, I was taken in by the sounds of new bands like The Smiths, Tears for Fears, The Cure, New Order, and especially Depeche Mode.

I loved "People are People" (my very first 12" remix purchase) and Some Great Reward and saved up enough lawn-mowing money to buy the Mode back catalog on cassette, including their second album A Broken Frame. It's hard to say with any precision now, but it felt like I listened to A Broken Frame every day for a year. The first track "Leave in Silence" is an all-time fave and defines the early Mode sound: dubby, echo chamber synthesizer loops, chunky synth bass, spare drum machine with occasional low-end boom, interspersed with glockenspiel-esque chimes and other metallic percussion, and singing that alternates between gothic chanting, deadpan narration and earnest wailing.

For a teenager faced with all kinds of awakenings, the album's overall tone of alienation and matter-of-fact desperation hit the sweet spot for me. Fortunately, like most Mode records, it's also cut with just enough hope to keep you from slitting your wrists.

By far the weirdest (and, naturally, my favorite) track on the album is "Satellite". It opens with a lilting synth reggae mood that creepily belies the lyrics:

Now hear this my friends
I'll never be the same again
Gonna lock myself in a cold black room
Gonna shadow myself in a veil of gloom

I will function, operate
I will be a satellite of hate

Looking at them now they aren't exactly sophisticated lyrics (though quite sensational for a 20 yr-old songwriter), but they were very affecting at the time. What is a "satellite of hate" I wondered... and do I want to be one too? What could another person do to you that could make you feel this way?

Disillusioned, I was disenchanted
Forgot the love that had been implanted

When I first heard Radiohead's O.K. Computer I thought that A Broken Frame was its spiritual predecessor, both records cold to the touch, obsessed with the disconnection of the modern technological world, and yet filled with a longing for something better that really resonates with me.

Perhaps for some of those reasons, Depeche Mode were always huge in the Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe, and the album's striking cover photograph strongly evokes the shadow of communist Mother Russia. I was only just becoming interested in politics at this time, and though I wasn't sure exactly what they were trying to say in songs like "Monument" (later covered terrifically by Gus Gus for 1997's up-and-down Mode tribute album For the Masses), I was pretty sure they had something to do with communism.

So we picked up our tools and we worked in the morning light
With the last stone placed wasn't it a wonderful sight?
But it fell back down and scattered all around
Anything passes when you need glasses

My monument
it fell down

Work all of my days for this kind of praise
it fell down

The synthesizer work is especially ominous in this one, with plenty of creepy horn sounds and spare electro touches. It's also one of the few tracks on the album where both Dave Gahan and Martin Gore sing... their voices are both so different yet they blend together quite unusually here.

yes, I even loved their haircuts

Even the more bubblegummy songs on the record like "The Meaning of Love" and "A Photograph of You" were fascinating to my young mind. I was used to songs that told me what love was, not ones that asked me what it meant.

The only song off this record that seems to be known by the casual Depeche Mode fan is "See You", which is a sentimental favorite of mine. When you're in Junior High, you suddenly feel like childhood is over yet adulthood hasn't begun and you're simultaneously nostalgic for the past and the future. The lyrics here seemed to match my frame of mind perfectly.

Well I know five years is a long time
And that times change (oh that times change)
But I think that you will find
People are basically the same (basically the same)