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Entry 126: 7/3/2009: Analog CyberPunk - Further Readings For The Ears XXXIII & XXXIV (Instrumentals) (+ dvd review)

To celebrate commemorate the passing of child-lover (He loves kids!) and plastic surgery disaster Michael Jackson, here's The Residents' cover of Hank William's "Kaw-Liga", arranged to sound like "Billie Jean", the most self-evident chorus ever conceived.

Here's this week's edition of Analog CyberPunk: Further Readings For The Ears XXXIII and XXXIV (Instrumentals XI) (download zip files at Rapidshare)

XXXIII

AD Conspiracy: "Conspiracy"
Autumn: "A Night In June"
Begin Says: "The Begin"
Chrisma: "Black Silk Stocking"
Comateens: "Summer In The City"
Glamour For Evening: "Monsieur Muscle"
Grauzone: "Der Weg Zu Zweit"
Komputer: "Valentina"
Life In General: "That's Life"
Martin Dupont: "Just Because"
Metronomes: "I Like To Waltz"
The Rev: "Tiny, Tinny Radio"
Scientific Americans: "Fascist"
Soft Cell; "Walking Make-Up Counter"
The Vets: "World In Action"

XXXIV

AK47: "Autobiography"
Autumn: "Close Rays Of Light Attack"
B.E.F.: "Rise Of The East"
BC Gilbert & G Lewis: "Hung Up To Dry Whilst Building An Arch"
Chris & Cosey: "Moorby"
Ende Shneafliet: "De Romant"
Ich: "Speicher 8"
Man Ray Band: "I Feel So Bad"
Matthias Schuster: "Umarung"
Michael Heinkel: "Samstag Ist Nur Einmal In Der Woche"
Thomas Leer: "Kings Of Sham"
Vorgruppe: "Miteinander"

Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution is not an authorized history of Kraftwerk, but their music and videos are used freely. Karl Bartos, with the band from 1975 through 1991, provides level-headed and informative commentary. The Kraftwerk book from fellow second-tier member Wolfgang Flur was poorly received.  Historians and scene band members tell their stories, many of which go on and on, and often on and on from there. Is it rude to edit people’s comments in that part of the world?

I’m indifferent to Krautrock, so I won’t get into how Kluster wired a kazoo to a car battery and electrocuted band member Klaus Von Shtoopenhauser, to the delight of 3,000 unsmiling hipsters. I did enjoy how Bowie and Eno came in during the mid-70s, when the German scene was stagnant, and gave post-punk a kick-start with Low and Heroes. I don’t like disco, so I’ll mention in passing that Giorgio Moroder stole from Kraftwerk to create the evil anti-Kraftwerk of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and its hell-spawn. In a slow and laborious transition, Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter moved from flute-flavored experimental jamming to structured rhythms and lyrics. They created asexual dance music and a healthy portion of new wave, only to have it bastardized into sex music so that funkless white people could put their hands in the air and bump their hips while making the “Ooo I’m naughty” face that made the 70s as embarrassing as the 60s. It's suggested Kraftwerk became dormant after 1981’s Computer World because the sounds and technologies they created were taken to the next level by hip-hop and every form of music that requires hallucinogens to tolerate. I used to think they didn’t want to cheapen their signature sound by dumbing it down, and that’s why their 2004 world tour, documented as Minimum-Maximum, rolls olde skool! But, in 1986 they did release Electric Café, which I shut out of my mind because it’s sad – a bear farting sadness sad.

Kraftwerk were long-haired hippies until they traveled to America to tour off the success of a radio edit for the 22:43 song “Autobahn”, their unintended answer to Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells”. They brought the flute. From then on they created strict visual and conceptual themes for each record, seeing themselves first as retrograde German youth from an idealized, imagined past where there was never a Hitler, ending up as robots from the Man Machine who toured with real robots for Computer World. 1975’s Radio-Activity was there first all-electronic album, followed by their best reviewed work, 1977’s Trans-Europe Express, then the almost as good The Man Machine in 1978 and 1981’s Computer World.

Karl Bartos reminisces that the band thought “The Model” would have been a bigger hit if it had a chorus. I imagine the opposite is true, at least in how the song would have aged. Bartos has no problem with UK synth bands who added indigenous Brit-Pop to the Kraftwerk sound, but he mocks Gary Numan, who brazenly swiped the Man-Machine visual motif. Numan’s mannerisms were pure Bowie. Dave Ball of Soft Cell recounts how he and Marc Walnut recorded their demos, collected as The Bedsit Tapes and worth a listen, as their take on punk rock Kraftwerk. France’s Metal Urbain was the real deal in that regard, but for Soft Cell it was pretty close.

I’ve collected a bazillion songs influenced directly and indirectly by Kraftwerk, and you can download them all for free here. Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution runs long but you’ll learn more than you need to know about German electronic music, which is only a bad thing if it displaces vital information like remembering to flush the toilet the first time you take a monster dump at your girlfriend’s parent’s house.

Entry 125: 6/27/2009: Getting The Knack & F*ck The Dwarves (video reviews):

From The Onion: 60-Year-Old Hippie Pitied By 40-Year-Old Punk

SAN FRANCISCO—After spotting Dave Coleman, a 60-year-old with a graying ponytail and a frayed Hot Tuna shirt sitting on a bench in Golden Gate Park, 40-year-old punk rocker Brian Patterson said Tuesday that he felt sorry for the aging hippie. "He's just living in the past when the world has obviously moved on," said the middle-aged Patterson, adjusting the spiked leather collar on his neck. "Guy needs to act his age, 'cause nobody cares about that shit from 20 years ago. God, what a sad, out-of-touch loser." According to nearby sources, both the 60-year-old hippie and the 40-year-old punk were later pitied by a 30-year-old raver sitting barefoot in the grass.

  Smack The Smirk Off Doug Fieger's Mug For A Zip File Of The Knack

The Knack - Getting The Knack (video review): The Knack were a handful-of-hits wonder starting with 1979’s “My Sharona”, an infectious ditty that made them the biggest thing since sliced Beatles, the band they were compared to most as their record label beat that angle into a coma. The creepiness of their pedophilic lyrics, the assaholic smarminess of singer Doug Fieger, the Beatles comparisons and the inevitable backlash against overnight success made them yesterday’s news within a year, after two albums and endless touring. They put out more records, broke up, reformed, recorded again, broke up, reformed, repeat, but only the little girls cared.

2004’s Getting The Knack is a lively 85 minutes of Behind The Music-style dawdling on the band that single-handedly revived American power pop in the late 70s. Operating on the same Los Angeles Sunset Strip as The Wierdos, The Germs, and Glam Metal, The Knack, professional musicians all, tore it up without thrashing out. Believe it or not, Fieger was blown away by The Sex Pistols, and saw similarities in how he and Johnny Rotten dressed and worked the stage. On a relative scale, maybe so. Doug even says “The Knack couldn’t have happened if not for the Sex Pistols.” Really. Huh.

“My Sharona” gets top billing right away, and Sharona Alperin herself appears throughout. Doug admits most of his early songs were about Sharona, a notable exception being “Tara”, about Skafish’s roadie. Any day I can mention Jim Skafish is a gift. Alperin now sells high-end real estate to entertainers in L.A., and guess what song you hear when you visit her web site? How can something be so right and so wrong? Sharona was a Knackette, a group of underage girls from Fairfax High School who allegedly weren’t groupies. I have no proof otherwise, but, yeah. Defining creepy and uncomfortable in the new wave era, Sharona and Fieger were not romantically involved in any way at the time, but they were both in relationships, making Fieger feel sticky and everyone else icky. They started a relationship down the road that lasted for three years.

Ageless Cherie Currie of The Runaways appears throughout and provides sparse narration. Others include Weird Al, Bob Mothersbaugh, Steve Jones (ashamed to admit he loved The Knack while a Sex Pistol), Rick Springfield, all members of The Knack, rock critics, label execs and their studio producer. Doug Fieger initially comes off as contrite and introspective, but he says things that become BS once considered. He says his record label only spent $50,000 promoting the first album. What does that even mean? Fieger claims he started drinking and snorting coke because of low self-esteem, but by all accounts he was a motivated megalomaniac pricktard. His brain, larynx and mouth conspire to create vibrations received by the human eardrums as "Is it hot in here or is just my career?" Eventually he turned to heroin, over the line in the sand between recreational drug use and junkie city. The rest of the band are open, honest and seemingly normal.

The Knack were initially rejected by every major record label, but the Monday after Bruce Springsteen hopped on stage for a few songs they had fourteen offers. Get The Knack sold six million copies and set all kinds of records. As part of the backlash was the “Knuke The Knack” campaign, the brainchild of swap-meet entrepreneur Hugh Brown, who appears to laugh good-naturedly about his shirts, stickers and buttons, bought and worn by The Knack themselves. Doug blames their manager for keeping them on the road and not having them appear at The Grammys or on SNL, which was definitely not a plus. The backlash against The Knack was swift, brutal, and at the time it didn’t bother me one bit. I liked “My Sharona” on the level of it being a catchy power pop song, but they lacked the endearing eccentric sincerity of most other new wave bands. Their pedophile anthems also annoyed me. It’s mentioned their songs were “lust songs, not love songs”, and that they also wrote songs reflecting the horny mindset of fourteen year olds. That adds up to creepy. It doesn’t get any stupider than “Baby Talks Dirty”. Can you watch the video and not wince, Chester? Fieger looks like a cross between Chevy Chase and Eric Idle, and bassist Prescott Niles is fun to watch because he’s dressed and coifed like a capo in the gay mafia. No offense!

Getting The Knack by default plays out like an episode of Behind The Music, but it’s more subtle and doesn't hyperventilate in anticipation of commercial breaks. It’s honest, real and does both the band and history justice. I’ll watch this again, but not any time soon.

The Dwarves – F*ck You Up And Get Live (DVD review): This affordable DVD from 2005 demystified The Dwarves for me in a bad way. I expected only apocalyptic mayhem from the band that gave us one of history’s fastest, tightest and meanest records ever and was known to bleed their way through fifteen minutes sets stopped short by locals with pitchforks and torches. Here we find The Dwarves as mere mortals working through their 39 minute set at NY’s Continental, the default CBGBs. Sure, HeWhoCannotBeNamed wears a thong and a Mexican wresting mask, but according to his MySpace page he’s a cultured family man, and singer Blag Dahlia (real name Paul Cafaro), is a novelist, poet, producer – he even recorded a bluegrass album. I expected a bunch of GG Allins but got another night at The Continental, where the beers are cheap, the women cheaper, and a fog of B.O. disables cell phones.

I liked the songs I recognized and felt the others had little character beyond starting and starting with a few stop/starts in-between, but at that speed and sloppiness they’d all be a blur if I didn’t know them beforehand. A lot of hardcore is like that. The studio is where you define your song, and the road is where you remember what you can as you go along.

Four cameras were used and for style they alternate between saturated color and B&W. Blag’s vocals are perfectly recorded. The crowd knew all the songs and screamed the lyrics whenever Blag shoved the mic their way. My rating for F*ck You And Get Live is two naked women and a little person covered in animal blood. I liked The Dwarves more when I only knew their legend as myth.  

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