It’s coming, Townspeople! This weekend the first mix CDs will go in the mail! The media is on notice! The world will be watching! We’ll all be listening!
April 19, 2007 – The popular rock music discussion blog, Rock Town Hall, will be launching its new web-based reality series, Hear Factor, on Monday, April 30.
Rock Town Hall ups the risk, danger and excitement of Fear Factor, with a death-defying music-based version. Hardcore music fans, many spending 30 or more years forming tastes and opinions, will be FORCED to endure three days of listening to only a mix CD of tunes they have expressed a disdain for. (The mixes will be compiled by fans of that particular music.) Contestants will be required to daily diary their harrowing experiences.
“The only support they will have are from Lifelines provided by fellow Townspersons (members of the blog) who will be allowed to provide reference points, influences and comparisons to music that might make it easier for the contestant,” said blog founder, Mr. Moderator.
“We have gone to great length to ensure that our contest is safe. Rigorous physical, hearing and psychological testing have been performed. Release of Liability forms have also been collected”, said a representative known only as The Back Office.
Tonight Townsman Saturnismine checks in with his long-promised piece on the future of psychedelic music. Turn off your mind, relax, and read along. I think you’ll dig what he has to say!
Let’s quibble over definitions. We find psychedelia’s genesis in mid-60s pop with The Beatles leading the way. The meandering syrup of “I’m Only Sleeping” and “Rain” ripened into psyche on “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Strawberry Fields”, “Lucy in the Sky”, and “I Am the Walrus”. We speak of a music that is by turns mimetic of altered states of consciousness or nostalgic of an idealized childhood. Maybe it’s a sort of a sonic equivalent of Lewis Carrol’s words or Dali’s images. Other themes may include space travel or “aeroplane” imagery. Psyche was a music at the interstices of developments in recording, the coming of age of a generation, and other arch practitioners: Piper-era Floyd.
But is this all? I hope I’m being too limiting.
Is this all there is?
Sure, other bands came and went, especially in the ’80s: Plasticland, The 3 O’Clock, Rain Parade. The Dukes of Stratosphere were so much fun that XTC imported some of their side project’s flavor for their most commercially successful albums, Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons, complete with Yellow Submarine-inspired cover art. None of them, however, really did much to expand the vocabulary of the field.
Since then, more bands have tried on psyche for size, too. No need for a list. You know their names. But maybe you haven’t heard of Silver Sunshine.
If not, listen to this song, which is pretty representative of their eponymous debut album.
Psyche done well, wouldn’t you say? However, upon hearing such an efficient compendium of “by the numbers” psyche clichés, I wondered to myself:
Do I ever again need to hear a new song with lyrics about someone’s uncle or “auntie” (or granny)…riding a bicycle…to the park…or in the sky…with “lots of colors”…on a Sunday…where we can play…or paint…a song sung in an exaggerated British accent that’s either pinched to sound like John Lennon on “I’m Only Sleeping” or distorted to sound John on the second half of “Tomorrow Never Knows”…and which ends with an explosion? I don’t know. But….
As I complained in our recent “biggest disappointment” thread: psyche suggested so many creative possibilities, but its practitioners gave us so little. Seemingly overnight, the most successful devices of the genre ossified into empty convention. But why? And what happened to all those possibilities? What does the future hold for psyche? Continue reading »
In rock’s nascent days, lurking not too far in the shadows behind the leather jacket, the DA, the hot rod, and the hot chick, was the motorcycle. Like the leather jacket, the cycle’s iconic power can be traced back to Marlon Brando’s role in The Wild Bunch.
Hot rods remained the vehicle of choice through the years when Chuck Berry was motovatin’, while soul and British Invasion artists of the first half of the ’60s did most of their commuting by foot and train. In the second half of the ’60s, however, thanks to Roger Corman‘s exploitation flicks and hippie-era interest in exploring the wide-open spaces of the United States, the motorcycle came to light as the vehicle of choice for rock ‘n rollers.
The opening images of one of the two most influential movies of my lifetime was accompanied by rock’s finest motorcycle song ever!
For reasons still unclear to me to this day, my parents and the parents of friends of mine from down the block took us all to see a drive-in double feature of Hell’s Angels on Wheels with Easy Rider. I must have been 5 or 6 years old. This was in the days when your could shove 8 people into a station wagon, with kids fighting for the highly valued seats that flipped up and faced looking out the back window. I still recall a bad biker dude in a WWI German helmet and a guy getting shot right between the eyes – shattering his rectangular Granny glasses – to end Hell’s Angels on Wheels. Yes! Then came Easy Rider, with choppers, kick-ass sideburns and facial hair, the leather football helmet, and “Born to Be Wild”. Yes! From that night forward I developed a crystal clear lifetime goal that, to be honest, exists in some form to this day: I wanted to be a hippie.*
*As part of this plan, I wanted to ride a chopper. Over the next couple of years I saved money to buy a mini-bike. My Mom was totally against it, but I kept saving. I was a week away from trying to get my Dad to make the case that I should be allowed to get one when a motocycle-riding neighbor from around the corner flipped his bike and died instantly. Just as fast I decided to cap my hippie accoutrements at big sideburns, a Fu Manchu, and a fringed suede jacket. Continue reading »
WARNING, ONLY HIT PLAY IF YOU LIKE: The Velvet Underground, Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra, Margo Guryan, Karen Dalton, Harry Nilsson, The Everly Brothers, Joe Meek, The Hollies, Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin, Them, Bobbi Gentry, Leslie Gore, Velvet Underground, Skip Spence, Silver Apples, United States of America, Donovan, Leonard Cohen, The Soft Machine, Vashti Bunyan, Marianne Faithful, The Vaselines, The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Zombies, Nico, Tonight’s the Night, Don’t Look Back, All Things Must Pass — if not, we feel sorry for you.
Now, I know we’re all supposed to feel sorry for Mr. Mod’s goat having been got, but what about mine?
Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra? Proto-Thrifty Music turd!
Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin?Merde!
Bobbi Gentry? Yeah, I like big, lacquered hair too.
I could go on, but how much longer do we have to live with having these third-rate, dollar-bin oddities pushed down our throats as serious influences by the Indie Rock Community? It’s like saying you books or movies are influenced by ’50s pulp fiction and kung fu movies. What’s it lead to? Tarrantino! We’ve fostered musical Tarrantinos long enough. Can’t these guys grow up and get into jazz or classical music already? It’s getting so I miss the days when every Tom, Dick, and Harry finally got around to discovering The Kinks’ golden age.
I’ll check out this album and report back. I encourage you to do the same, whether you fit this profile or not.
Easy to digest, one-dimensional micro-movies, designed to efficiently astonish and amaze the Internet generation. See them here first, before your friends send them to you:
