The Not So Great Korn-holoio
I shouldn’t be giving this band ANY press on this blog solely on the grounds of their being totally and completely lacking in musical talent and intelligence… but I couldn’t let this pass without comment:
During an interview to promote his band Korn’s attempt to ride the dubstep trend – as well as repeat a tactic where they use the outside talents of more musically inclined “collaborators” [read: the "collaborators" do most of the actual writing and playing while the no-talents in the band still get the dominant credit, because without outside help, all of their music sounds like badly written ripoffs of side two of Black Flag's My War album being played on completely out-of-tune instruments by incompentent "musicians" that make The Shaggs look like King Crimson] – slacker trash poster child Jonathan Davis proceeded to [falsely, of course] accuse President Obama of being “an illuminati puppet”. How someone can be a puppet of an organization that doesn’t really exist beyond being a keyword for conspiracy theory lunatics is beyond me, but consider the source, folks.
I won’t even bother quoting his nonsensical ramblings that are only a degree or so removed from the Teabagger nonsense about President Obama being everything from an illegal alien to a Marxist to a Nazi – you’ll have to read the Billboard interview for that.
Rather than waste server space on a picture of a shitty band, we'll use this highly appropriate political cartoon that sums up this post quite well.
Hilariously, several years ago, he “wrote” a song called “Politics” about how because “It’s just about how I don’t like to talk about politics…Korn has never been a real political band.” Well, with idiotic statements like the ones he made today, they never will be – except maybe to the Teabagger crowd. Not like anyone would ever confuse Davis with someone like Jello Biafra (in either the musical or political fields) in the first goddamn place.
ALBUM OF THE DAY: Black Flag and The Minutemen “Minuteflag”
BLACK FLAG & THE MINUTEMEN
Minuteflag
(SST Records)
Available on 12″ EP, but now out of print
Shopping link: eBay
For our first Album of the Day here at TGML, we present a rare, out-of-print more-than-curiosity from Black Flag and the Minutemen.
While Black Flag was finishing up their 1985 masterpiece Loose Nut, they invited the Minutemen over to Total Access for a little jam session. The end result was these four tracks, which were edited, mixed, and then deliberately shelved after the two bands made an odd tontine: The recordings would not be released until at least one of the bands had disbanded.
Unfortunately, the wait was short. D. Boon would die in a van crash right before the Minutemen’s final studio album 3-Way Tie for Last came out in stores in December of 1985, and Black Flag would break up eight months later.
It’s unlikely, for whatever reason, that the album will be reissued by SST. Downloadable versions seem to abound, but being a more legit outfit we’ll settle for sharing a stream:
This stream will be removed at midnight on May 4th, 2011, pursuant to this website’s policy as stated here.
Apparently, sometime late in 2011, SST Records elected to reissue Minuteflag strictly as a digital download. iTunes, AmazonMP3, and eMusic all have it for download, while a stream is available at Spotify. Dig it.
This Week’s Sign That The Political Landscape Is Starting To Resemble Berlin, 1930…
Pitchfork is reporting that the members of punk supergroup OFF!, led by Black Flag/Circle Jerks vocal legend Keith Morris, are facing theft charges in Arizona for allegedly stealing used vegetable oil.
That is not a made-up story, sadly enough.
Details are a bit scarce, but the band had a good reason for having the oil in the first place: Their tour van runs on biodiesel fuel. It makes me wonder if Willie Nelson and Neil Young, both of whom have used biodiesel tour buses for years, are liable to face similar charges if they ever need to refuel in Arizona – Wonderful, tolerant Arizona, where they love anti-immigrant rhetoric and gun-toting-Democrat-shooting lunatics… A couple of redneck cops there probably saw the band getting the oil from the restaurant (who was probably very anxious to get rid of it), added the looks of the band members (including the dreadlocked, 55-year-old Morris) and figured they had a bust on their hands.
The band is set for a hearing on April 6th, in the middle of their current US tour. Here’s hoping the case gets thrown out of court.
Good News!!
Former Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler has recovered her custom-made blue Garz bass, which had been stolen from her home last week!
More details as we get them, but that big smile on Kira’s face says it all.
ETA, 1.17.11 11:18 AM: On her Facebook page, Kira just posted the following tale on how she got her bass back:
In December of 2004 I first put my hands on my custom electric blue bass. 3/4 scale … modeled after my Rickenbacker, only with a Tele-style head. For five years it played and sounded wonderful … just the perfect bass for me.
On January 6, 2011 my home was burglarized, and among the things taken, was the bass ….
I spread the news far and wide … got A LOT of support from friends and family, and at work from the head of my department, who got the Universal Studios security folks involved as they had contacts at LAPD.
On January 16 … I received a call from the head of my department … he gave me the name and number of an LAPD officer who had my bass.
When I arrived at the station to pick the bass up, I learned that this guy had tried to sell it at Guitar Center. They had already photocopied his driver’s license but he split because things seemed off … They contacted the police … now I have my bass!
Congratulations to Kira, and thanks to everyone who helped in any small way, even if it was just tweeting or reposting the original link (especially the good folks at Alternative Tentacles Records!), and especially to BoingBoing.net, who linked to TGML in their own post on the theft.
URGENT! Ex-Black Flag Bassist Kira Roessler’s Custom Bass Stolen!
Former Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler announced the theft of her custom-made bass guitar on her Facebook page, along with some other items, from her Studio City, CA home this morning.
The bass is a three-quarter-scale instrument custom-made by California-based luthier Mark Garza with a Rickenbacker-style body and Telecaster-style headstock with the name “Garz” on it; according to Kira there is also a small nick in the headstock. It is the only model of its kind in existence; it has been Roessler’s main instrument for the past several years as part of the two-bass duo Dos with Minutemen/Stooges bassist Mike Watt, both at their occasional live gigs and in recording sessions for the forthcoming fourth Dos album.
Anyone with any information on Ms. Roessler’s bass should e-mail findkirasbass@thegroovemusiclife.com - we will forward any and all information to Ms. Roessler.
EDIT TO ADD, 1.7.11 11:40 AM: Kira has told us that she is awaiting an LAPD case number “which might be useful if someone spots it but doesn’t want to do more than make a call”. Soon as she gets it and passes it on, we’ll update the post with that information.
EDIT TO ADD, 1.8.11 7:44 PM: Kira has gotten her case number from the LAPD; It is 111504304 – this is the number one should use as reference if anyone finds Kira’s bass in a pawnshop, online [eBay/Craigslist et. al.], etc. Kira has also asked everyone concerned that may discover her stolen instrument: “Please be judicious … I don’t want them to stop responding.”
A Humble Beginning…
Every record label has had its unusual beginnings. Had one label in particular not started out in another area, it’s likely that a lot of things we take for granted simply would not exist. Case in point, the advertisement below:
An impromptu bit of Googling revealed the above scan: a print ad in a ham radio magazine called Check-Off for a company called SST Electronics.
If that logo and their PO Box address look familiar, you’re absolutely right – that same logo and address would get a lot more exposure on a long list of punk, alternative, and indie rock releases that are now considered classics.
In brief, Greg Ginn had already been running a pretty good business selling ham radio equipment of his own design (if I remember correctly, he may even have a patent or two under his belt for some of that stuff). Around the time this ad was being seen by ham radio enthusiasts all over the country, Black Flag had already recorded the session from which their first EP Nervous Breakdown – and a few years later, the first half of Side A of Everything Went Black – would be derived. They were waiting on Bomp! Records to release it, but when delays proved too long, Ginn decided to put his business skills, some of the profits he had made from his ham radio products, and the PO Box he already had to good – soon to be better – use, found a pressing plant in the phone book, and, with a first pressing of about 300 to 500 copies (stories vary), SST Records was born.
Both SST Records and SST Electronics would exist side by side for a few years – according to Michael Azzerad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life, the Minutemen all even had jobs assembling some of SST Electronics’ products – but by 1982 SST would strictly be a record company, leaving ham radio enthusiasts in the dust but giving music fans a reason to live and then some.
For even having a small business of his own to help fund what would become one of the most influential labels in contemporary American music, music fans should be grateful. Had Greg Ginn not taken that first step, none of us would have ever heard of Black Flag, The Minutemen, The Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Saccharine Trust, Bad Brains, fIREHOSE, Sonic Youth, or Dinosaur Jr., countless bands of today that we take for granted would never have been influenced by artists like the aforementioned in the positive manner they were, and blogs like this one might not even exist.
Definitely something to think about.
Ah, My Listening Habits (An Ongoing Series of Musical Self-Analysis)
I’ve had a Last.fm account since around the late summer of 2004, around which time I had a nice Apple PowerBook, no iPod to speak of then (although I did have iTunes and was burning mix CD’s like a motherfucker), and come to think of it, last.fm was known under another name back then. Anyway, thanks to last.fm’s scrobbling technology I’ve found it quite interesting to see how it charts my listening habits day to day and week to week as far as my iPod and laptop go. Obviously, it does nothing when I’m slapping a record onto the turntable or slipping a CD into the player of my car, but since the iPod still seems to be the primary device I derive much of my melodic and rhythmic intake from, we’ll go with that.
Using my last.fm page’s static weekly charts as a guide, I’m going to self-analyze my listening habits and try to put a paragraph to them. Because goodness knows, I’m the only one who can explain why Mission of Burma comes up on my iPod one moment and John Coltrane comes up the next. (I’m sure the guy who has been running Gallery of Sound in West Hazleton since it first opened in 1987 sometimes tells the guys who work under him about the one time in 1992 when I walked up to the counter with a New Kids on the Block remix CD in one hand and the Bitches With Problems CD in )the other…
Just as a general foundation, here’s what my overall last.fm Top10 chart looks like:
1) Morning Musume
2) The Stooges
3) Nine Inch Nails
4) Minutemen
5) Black Flag
6) W
7) Puffy AmiYumi
9) Frank Sinatra
10) Hank Williams III
Now, here’s what my listening habits looked like, from #10 on down, as they looked for the week ending Sunday, August 30, with my somewhat pithy/pitiful explanations following each one: (Last.fm usually finalizes these charts at Midnight Greenwich Mean Time on Sundays) Continue reading
