Oh Hey There

Low Motion Disco - Things Are Gonna Get Easier

An unlikely favorite from this week. “Low Motion Disco” is a fitting band name, since it’s too slow for dancing but you still want to luxuriate in the groove. The song samples The Five Stairsteps’ “Ooh Child”. The disparity between the two is striking. The original tells me “don’t worry, things are gonna get easier!” while this song suggests a better future but leaves the details to my imagination.

Richie Havens - “Going Back to My Roots”

tuneage:

After conducting a little research, what is most surprising about this classic 80s club track is the fact that Richie Havens is better known as a folk musician. In fact, he opened Woodstock

One of the noticeable, and perhaps embarrassing, trends of the late 70s and early 80s was the influx of rock musicians crossing over to the disco realm. The popularity of the genre seemed ubiquitous and neverending, and so it came as no surprise that many musicians attempted to transform at least one of their songs into something that would translate to the dancefloor.

What makes “Going Back to My Roots” (from Havens’ 1980 LP Connections) so fun and classic is the instrumentation and Havens’ voice. That repetitive piano chord that serves as the foundation of the song is fundamental to many contemporary house and post-punk musicians’ aesthetic. Immediately, tracks by LCD Soundsystem and The Juan MacLean, especially, have roots instead of just an overarching idea of “re-appropriation.” And Havens’ voice, surprisingly lush and warm, makes the track powerful and uplifting.

Hot stuff.

Talking Heads - A Clean Break (Let’s Work) (Live)

A stellar performance.

Funkadelic - Hit It and Quit It

mills:

As is my habit, I will briefly drape some quasi-intellectual dross over this post before letting it stand on its own bitchin’ merits (which are ample). “Hit It and Quit It” presumably refers to an amorous liaison of the most superficial sort -though who am I to disparage pleasure, which can be profound- but it also reminds me of how a hero of mine toyed with addiction.

William Vollmann, about whom I’ve posted before, is one of my favorite writers. In addition to the essentially flawless Europe Central, he’s written extensively about life among prostitutes and the poor, and in researching and experiencing their lives he decided to use crack cocaine. He’s asked about it often since, as Mr. Show so memorably demonstrated, people who haven’t used crack can’t believe anyone who has isn’t a crackhead:

Interviewer: I gather you often used drugs with people in the Tenderloin to get a better sense of the life there. Did you ever worry you’d get addicted?

Vollman: I don’t know, not really. I probably used crack over 100 times in my life, but I never found myself craving it. But there’s a really nice coffee shop down the street from my house, and I go there sometimes to get a coffee and a cookie. And sometimes I find myself waking up really wanting that cookie. That never happened with crack.

So take it from National Book Award-winning genius William Vollmann: good cookies are more addictive than crack, which you can pretty much hit and quit at will.

This post has caused me to use the phrase “hit it and quit it” far too frequently in recent conversations.

Vampire Weekend - The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance

Finally gave their debut the fair shot it deserves and found myself hitting the back button on this one like a million times, and not because it segues into “Running With The Devil” in my music library. I kind of love the band now.

The Tough Alliance - Silly Crimes

Here’s a final blast of summer before all the leaves die and the nights get cold and rainy.

The Wipers - When It’s Over

Loving this Wipers song. It’s all I want to hear for the next couple hours. Total guitar epic, high drama from a bunch of punks who weren’t afraid to fucking rock out. This has Rock Band written all over it. NO WAIT I’VE GOT IT: when they do the eventual Guitar Hero: Nirvana, they had better include all those bands that are known for being Kurt’s favorites: Vaselines, Wipers, Young Marble Giants, Meat Puppets, Beat Happening, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, etc. Actually, that sounds kind of awesome.

Young Marble Giants - This Way

I didn’t want to get up after watching tonight’s Curb Your Enthusiasm premiere, so I sat through the debut of Bored To Death, a show about Jason Schwartzman getting dumped for drinking too much white wine and consequently rebounding by becoming a private detective on Craigslist. Instead of real score, they just used four Young Marble Giants song, which makes sense in a hip, tense and quirky way, but I’m annoyed to hear YMG as Brooklyn muzak. But then again, it short-circuits the indie soundtrack breadcrumb trail left by Mark Mothersbaugh by going straight for the postpunk obscuro. It is what it’s become.

The Chills - Pink Frost

thenotes:

The Chills’ 1984 chart breakthrough, “Pink Frost,” gives me bad anxiety. Blankets of it.  Blankets that pile on and muffle the minor-key leering that follows the chirpy opening bars.  The aural suffocation feeds directly into heart-turning lyrical concerns about a girl’s sudden, shocking death (gun to my head, I think it’s an overdose) and the panicked guy who finds her that way. Shattering as it is, I have an apparently bottomless need to hear it, no matter how close to full-fledged breakdown it takes me. Of a piece, I’d argue, with the end of SLC Punk, which is true and devastating and rewatchable in kindred ways.

Classic. I love the indie pop guitar tease at the beginning—it’s just pleasant enough for the band to yank the carpet out from beneath you. Regarding the death in the song, I’ve always read the unreliable narrator as a possible culprit. (Also, the above post = instafollow for thenotes!)