Ken Burns Hates Mexicans

Video of the Day

From the infamous 1981 cult movie classic Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains. Herny Rollins played this tune on his KCRW radio show tonight in honor of  L.A. 70s era Punk Rock pioneer Brendan Mullen, obit here. Black Randy and the Metro Sqaud...

Video of the Day

What to say about the Zeros?: part of the American contingent of mad Punk Rock inventors; band members going on to fold spindle and recreate pop music for decades; and, of course, Brown Like Me.

The Zeros 30th Aniversary Tour Trailer

Video of the Day

Blue Means Go is a new fave band of mine. And not just because they are straight outta San Antonio.

Girl in a Coma fans will recognize singer Carly Garza from back in the day when she used to sing a duet with GIAC impersonating a French/German/or Polish foreign exchange student with appropriate fake accent.

Carly's always had an amazing voice but when the band's drummer recently quit and Garza stepped in to provide the beat AND keep up with the lead vocals, Blue Means Go became something special and way interesting. 

Jim Caroll - R.I.P.

Jim Caroll died. Here's a post I wrote on the very badass rocker last year:

Driving around L.A. listening to Indie 103.1, a local treasure if there ever was one, and stumbled across a fave song I haven't heard to in a long time, Jim Carroll's People Who Died, from his 1980 album Catholic Boy. Carroll was the writer/punk rocker who wrote the Basketball Diaries, an autobiography about growing up in New York in the 60s and 70s as a High School basketball star and heroin addict. It was later made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. As you can guess, I recommend the book and not the film. From a Jim Carroll website:

Lynn Hirschberg, describing a Jim Carroll Band concert in 1980, before the release of Catholic Boy, reported overhearing a Oui photographer remark,"You're watching the Dylan of the 80s, you know. . . . Seeing Jim Carroll now . . . is like witnessing history.

Indeed, Jim Carroll expressed the Bomb-fear anticipation, the optimistic nihilism and glittering darkness of the 1980s that we who were there felt even if we couldn't communicate it ourselves. When JohnLennon was assassinated in front of the Dakota in December 1980, "People Who Died" was one of the most-requested songs on FM radio, just after Lennon's own "Imagine." Steven Spielberg chose "People Who Died" to play during the opening scene of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. "People Who Died" tapped a mainline. It was a hit even before it was released, and, as Newsweek's Barbara Graustark noted, it "propelled [Carroll] from underground status . . . to national attention as a contender for the title of rock's new poet laureate."

I don't know about the "Dylan of the 80s" line, but the rest is pretty accurate. To see the band play it live go here. Enjoy.

Not Just Another Michael Jackson Piece...

Gilbert Garcia, over at the San Antonio Current, writes a great piece about MJ. Read it here. But what's especially wonderful is Garcia's opening anecdote, telling the story where in 1982 the King of Pop contributes backing vocals on a classic Tex Mex Nuevo Onda single...

There’s a little-known Michael Jackson recording that I’ve been flashing back to ever since MJ’s death last Thursday.

It’s a lilting reggae ballad by Austin Tex-Mex cult hero Joe “King” Carrasco called “Don’t Let A Woman (Make a Fool Out of You).” The story goes that Carrasco, then working on his 1982 album, Synapse Gap, spotted Jackson standing in the corridor outside the recording studio, and lured him in to do some backing vocals. Jackson’s harmonies are wonderfully ethereal on this track, with none of the self-importance that we would come to accept from him over the last two decades of his life.

What I love best about the recording, though, is the story behind it. The fact that Jackson, at the same time he was constructing his monumental Thriller album, willingly lent his golden falsetto to a song with little commercial potential, made by an obscure guy that he barely knew, is somehow reassuring. It suggests that while he was never a “regular guy,” Jackson did have a small window of young adulthood when he was approachable, when he wasn’t yet obsessed with his own myth.

Go here to listen to the song. Badass.

Robb Chavez -- El Mero Metal

For the past 12 years Robb's Metal Works was a San Antonio cable access show dedicated to all things musical, loud, and heavy. The show ran as a labor of love. Hosted and produced by Robb Chavez, the show was made for no money and little mainstream acclaim. Ni modo. The fans and the bands and labels loved the show. And whether or not you were a metalhead yourself, it was hard not to stand in awe of Robb's dedication to his show, metal fans across South Texas, and the often maligned genre. The show finally ends this week. Robb's going back to school to get his PhD.

In an article I wrote for the San Antonio Current back in 1999 on San Antonio metal, (you can read the piece here), Robb figured in the part where I talk about the local scene. (Oh, and for those lame Coldplay fans out there wondering what exactly a "Pissing Razors" is, they were a metal band out of El Paso, Texas.)

It's a typical Thursday night at the White Rabbit and standing on a chair this Pissing Razors night is Baylor University graduate Robb Chavez. No musical genre draws such intense fan loyalty as Heavy Metal, and in San Antonio, there is no greater metal fan than Robb Chavez.

For the past two and a half years, Chavez has produced the cable access show Robb's Metal Works (Saturdays, 11:30 am, on Channel 20). Consisting of band interviews, live concert footage, and traditional music videos, Robb's Metal Works is a cross between a local version of MTV's Headbanger's Ball and a very well-connected fanzine.

Serving as Metal Work's host, interviewer, videographer, producer and editor, Chavez will celebrate his 100th episode on May 22nd – no small feat for a guy with no budget and no prior production experience, all the more impressive, when you realize he's never shown a rerun. A contemporary cable version of another passionate hard rock fan, Joe Anthony, Chavez serves a dual function as disseminator of what's up in the international metal scene, as well as a promoter of local band talent.

"I got the idea for the show," Chavez says, "because there was nothing else out there."  Robb's Metal Works is just one part of an underground network of ‘zines, slick mags, word of mouth, and the internet.

These days, in true bad-boy fashion, metal kids surreptitiously log on in the school library computers and download valuable pages of treasured and arcane information from any number of web sites hosted by metal bands, distributors, and metalheads from all over the world. These days, there’s easily accessible news, such as Pissing Razors CD release date, downloadable sound files of upcoming releases, blow-by-blow tour diaries, passionate debate on whether Marilyn Manson is Metal or not; and ad infinitum links to other metal sites around the world. 

Jim Beal at the San Antonio Express-News writes a great piece about Robb here. Robb's official website is here. And I leave you with a clip of an interview Robb conducted with guitarist Nick Hipa of  San Diego metalcore band As I Lay Dying.

Radio Is Dead

While this bit of sad news is actually a week old, it's important nonetheless, if for no other reason than a lament for things gone...

The very badass Los Angeles radio station Indie 103.1 went off the air last Friday. The station's eclectic mix of alt rock, old school punk, listener faves by Morrissey and L.A.'s own hometown band X, the always entertaining blatherings of Steve Jones and his afternoon show Jonesy's Jukebox (where the ex-Sex Pistol once spent a day playing showtunes and another with an insightful two hour interview with Tony Bennett), a station where you could listen to Dave Navarro hitting on girls who called into his late night music show, and, of course, hear the Modern Lover's sublime single Roadrunner played at least once a day...all of this contributed to a true L.A. sound: modern, nostalgic, absurd, unpretentious, vaguely Chicano, knowledgeable, pretty and vacant.

One of the best shows on the station was Joe Escalante's morning show, "The Last of the Famous International Morning Shows," (a very funny title if you're a Morrissey fan). Escalante was a lawyer, record label owner, amateur matador, and bassist for the So Cal punk band the Vandals and member of the best Smith's tribute band in the world, the Sweet and Tender Hooligans (YouTube here and here). Escalante's smart and funny morning show featured great music as well as daily weather reports by David Lynch, sports reports by Deadwood TV actor Timothy Olyphant, and a tone of ironic DJ detachment that never annoyed. (Call me a reverse racist, but irony from the mouths of Brown people somehow doesn't grate on my nerves as it does when I hear it spouted by white hipsters.) Escalante's show abruptly ended last November. Should have read the writing on the wall.

Indie 103 was one of the last unique and independent voices in a corporate-dominated American sound scape. DJs picked the songs they wanted to play, not from a list of over-produced, soulless, Top 40 so-called hits by Britney, Coldplay, Rascal Flatts and their ilk. I mean, who do you know who actually buys a Nickelback CD? And who wants to hear it?

Rolling Stone has the sad story on Indie 103's demise here, and a link to an earlier story calling the station "the best radio station" in the U.S. is here. The station was a favorite of recent settled L.A. resident Prince, who debuted four of his new songs on Indie 103 last December. There is an informative interview with the station's now ex-musical director Mark Sovel here. Recommended.

What's not so well known is that the owners of the hippest, coolest, independent alt radio station in the entire United States was Spanish language broadcasting chain Entravision Communication, owners of many Univision TV stations nationwide. The fact that a parent company making their money broadcasting Spanish language telenovelas subsidizing a radio station that gave valuable air time two hours a day, five times a week to a guy who played guitar for Sid Vicious used to delight me to no end.

Well, the party's over. Latest word is that Indie 103.1 is now going to be known as El Gato 103.1, and will be playing "contemporary Mexican regional music." Corporate radio sucks no matter what language it's speaking.

Song of the Day

I'm hearing this song a lot these days a lot on the always badass Indie 103, 'Electric Feel' by MGMT, one of those tunes that keeps playing over and over in your head even when the radio's turned off. Not that the world needs another white boy hipster band outta Brooklyn but check out the video anyway, here, and I dare you not to bop your head in delight.

I'd post the song myself but embedding for the video has been disabled. Bastards. What I am able show, however, is a clip documenting the making of the music video. Watching the clip I learned that the song is about a woman from the Amazon "who has the power to shock people with electricity that runs through her veins." Hm. Maybe certain pop songs, like the making of sausage, should be a process best performed in secret. Oh well, at least it's a catchy tune and great to dance to.

MGMT is one of those bands who have managed to find career success in this post-radio, everything-downloadable, CD unfriendly music busines environment. An environment where songs reach the masses not via Casey Kasem and Top 40 (Kasem, for those of you under 30 40, homeboy was an old school DJ with a national radio show not to mention the voice of Shaggy on Scoobey Doo), but instead songs gain mass popularity through stretegic placement on teen friendly TV shows like Gossip Girl. According to Wikipedia, MGMT has had their songs played on, among many other shows and films, the premier episode of the new Beverly Hills 90210, Skins, the video games Midnight Club Los Angeles, FIFA'09, and Shaun White Snowboarding...not to mention, of course, the season finale of Gossip Girl.

Cover Song of the Year

The genius of Pink Floyd knows no borders.

Image of the Day

John Lennon, October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980. 'Imagine' here; 'God' here; fascinating documentary clip here; his last interview here.