Miss Piggy Lunchbox

This aptly named, posthumous album is a collection of disparate old material. Some of it was previously unreleased, while some had been releaed in a different format. There are some old B-sides, some covers, and some live material, including a set of Peel sessions. There’s also a wide disparity in the quality of the material. Jawbox didn’t really make much of an effort to make these odds-and-ends cohere, so I don’t really feel like doing it with this review, either. So I’m giving it the greatest hits treatment. I have to disclaim, though, that I have no liner notes for this one and information about it on the Internet is scarce.

The first five tracks are from their Peel Sessions. They’re raw and energetic, like most Peel Sessions are. I kept everything except “Chinese Fork Tie” and “Cooling Card,” as these versions were inferior to those on Jawbox and For My Own Special Sweetheart, respectively.

The first of the songs is “Static,” which is also the name of a very different song much later. I think this came about because Jawbox and Tar split a 7-inch with different songs called “Static.” I think the second “Static” on this disc is Jawbox’s cover of Tar’s song on that record. The Jawbox version is far superior, and would have been a keeper if not for the languid bridge starting at about 3:20. One of Jawbox’s strengths is knowing how to keep their songs short and sweet, and it’s a shame this tune has to fall victim to them failing on that usually solid front.

The next six tracks are a couple of previously unreleased ones and one-offs that appeared on various compilation discs over time. Both of the unreleased ones, “Apollo Amateur” and the very jerky “Under Glass,” get kept, which is heartening because I think the band realized they were good enough that they needed to be released, but just couldn’t fit them into prior releases. I like it when bands seem to know what their good songs are. “The Big Shave” is the best song on here, and “Bullet Park” gets mixed, even though a different version stays that way from Grippe. The sound is better on the earlier release, as this sounds like some kind of live or demo version, but I like the accelerated tempo and raw energy here.

The next four tracks are all live versions. All of them were previously at least keepers, which is more evidence that the band knew what their best songs were, but none of these versions are any better than the originals. All of the songs are taken a bit faster, which is nice, but the sound just doesn’t match the sonic craftwork of the studio versions.

The last seven tracks are all covers, and this is where the album falters the most. When Jawbox covers a track they put a severe spin on it, and I think you need to know the original in order for the cover to resonate at all. They cover “Cornflakte Girl” at the end of Jawbox, and I dig it, but I would hate it if I didn’t also love Tori Amos’ version. Here they do Cole Porter (“I’ve Got You Under My Skin”), Big Boy, R.E.M. (“Low”), Minutemen, The Cure (“Meathook”), Buzzcocks, and, I think, Tar. I’m not familiar with any of these except the original, and that is severely slowed down. Most of these are boring. “Low” is probably the worst song on the entire disc.

But I can’t penalize them too bad for this. I appreciate the effort in making, I assume, the songs their own, and it seems unfair to criticize them for making references I don’t get. It’s like, you know how Big Momma’s House 2 doesn’t make any sense if you haven’t seen Big Momma’s House, but Big Momma’s House 2 is still totally awesome? Well maybe that’s the case here. Even if it’s not, though, one of the covers got mixed and two more got kept. And the first 12 tracks really are awesome…even better than Big Momma’s House 1 or 2. So there, I’ve talked myself into an easy 3.5.

Rating:

Mixers: “The Big Shave,” “Bullet Park,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”
Keepers: “Static” (the first one), “Tongues,” “68,” “Apollo Amateur,” “Under Glass,” “Low Strung,” “Dreamless,” ““Sound On Sound,” “Airwaves Dream”
Filed Between: Jawbox and Jayhawks (Hollywood Town Hall)

I might have chased a couple women around
All it ever got me was down
Then there were those that made me feel good
But never as good as I’m feeling right now
Baby you’re the only one
That’s ever known how
To make me wanna live like I wanna live now

- Tom Petty, “The Waiting”

Is there anybody in the history of humankind that has better known how to celebrate life’s good times than Tom Petty? (Hint: No.)

Besides “The Waiting,” which is the best song ever, the other big takeaway from Hard Promises, the band’s fourth album, is that Stevie Nicks should have been in The Heartbreakers because when these two get together…well, you’ll recall they also did “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” together. Here they do “Insider” which is a crazy good song that’s just a little too good in a slow, reflective, unconventional way to be on a mix.

Or what if Tom Petty had been in Fleetwood Mac? It probably would have been awesome, because Tom Petty implies awesome, but I don’t know enough about Fleetwood Mac to flesh out this paragraph, which started so prominsingly, any more.

This is a great album, and probably one of the more underappreciated ones in the band’s oeuvre. I have to think that this album’s flown under the radar for a couple of reasons: popular music was in a very different place in 1981 than it was in 1979 (when Damn The Torpedoes dominated) and the absence of any really huge hits. “The Waiting” is probably the biggest such hit. After that, you might recognize “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me),” possibly “Insider,” and probably nothing more.

After that you get “A Thing About You,” a jubilant rocker, and a couple more that have “Insider”-itis: songs that are really good but unconventional enough that they throw you when the so-good-at-being-conventional Petty does them. “You Can Change Your Mind” is just like “Insider,” where you love it but you’re not sure if you should. The verses are awesome, you know that, but when he whines out the title, is it awesome or lame? “Letting You Go,” which might be about Seattle circa 2008 (“It’s raining on your summer home”), is a blend of Petty’s jingly, Orbison-y pop stuff and his jangly rock anthems that is a bit like a piña colada. The recipe sounds great, but when you taste it, you’re just not quite sure…no, you love it, but wait…something…hmmm.

“The Criminal Kind” is the only clunker, and that’s not even that bad. So you’ve got about 33% awesome, 33% is-this-awesome?, 33% really good, and 1% didn’t need. Add in excellent sound (Petty’s always got great, effortless sounding sound), divide evenly into two sides, put the best songs at the beginning and end of each side, and you’ve got a solidly four-lunchbox album.

Rating:

Mixers: “The Waiting,” “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me),” “Letting You Go,” “A Thing About You”
Non-keepers: “The Criminal Kind”
Filed Between: Damn The Torpedoes and Full Moon Fever

Here’s the deal with Now I Got Worry: just…stop. Please. It’s too much, and I can barely force myself through this any more. It begins with a acerbic howl by Spencer and then it’s 16 songs of more-explosion-than-blues riffs delivered through a punk filter of loud, distorted, loud, loud guitars played loudly at the same intense tempo for 45 loud minutes.

Apparently Jon Spencer does this raw sexuality, animal magnetism, Elvis impersonation shtick that is completely sultry-except-it’s-not. Because I don’t think that it would be all that erotic to have sex with a savage beast, but maybe Spencer’s into bestiality. In fact, if an artist’s music is an expression of his or her sexuality, then I think it would be best to keep your sex far away from Spencer, because if he pounds your pussy or asshole with the same insistent intensity devoid of nuance with which he pounds your earholes on this album, it will be far from an enjoyable experience. Like the album, I have to imagine it’s all about Spencer himself, and far from the partnership you want it to be.

The motto for this album should be “Keeper at best,” because that’s the note I’ve left for myself on over half of these tracks. I’m hesitant to write off songs initially, but it’s quite clear that very little here would work well on a mix due to the sheer sonic brutality of almost every track. This is, quite simply, a very hard listen, whose proper listening context I’m having trouble finding.

My opinion of most of these songs vacillates from listen to listen, and a lot of that has to do with tolerance for intensity and my programming. This album, to its credit, is in exactly the right order, at least for the first 75% or so. The order they appear in on the album is the only order they could possibly be enjoyable in, as every permutation shuffle has found over the past week has been unlistenable. As a result, I frequently like these songs more or less than I did the last time based on what came before them. Additionally, I like almost all of these significantly more in isolation than I do in the context of the rest of the album, even the correctly-ordered context. It’s fun to rock out this obnoxiously for three to five minutes…but not so much for 20, much less 45.

And that’s why the number of songs that gets kept doesn’t really match the number of lunchboxes. Most of these songs are enjoyable and interesting as one-offs, but the album as a whole is, while interesting, an aesthetic failure because it operates in only one gear. Some of my favorite tracks are the sound experiments of “Fuck Shit Up” and “Sticky” where the band briefly steps back from the edge, or “Can’t Stop,” where the piano does a great job of leading the rest of the band through the harmonic progression. But just when things start to get enjoyable with a little bit of a rockin’ groove that feels comfortable, Spencer goes and screws things up by letting out some primal scream coming from a dark alley that only makes you pick up your pace.

A little bit of subtlety can go a long way, but JSBX’s approach to picking up ladies must be walking into the bar screaming with his dick hanging out. As I can attest, this is a memorable, but not effective, approach. So while I’ll always remember that pounding I took, and while I’ll appreciate the fact that my life’s more interesting because of that memory, this isn’t an experience I want to re-visit.

Rating:

Mixers: “2Kindsa Love,” “Rocketship”
Non-keepers: “Identify,” “Wail,” “Love All Of Me,” “Chicken Dog,” “Eyeballin’,” “R.L. Got Soul”
Filed Between: Freedy Johnston (This Perfect World) and Scott Joplin (Piano Works 1899-1904 (perf. Dick Hyman (no really)))

It’s been 15 and 16 days now since Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary festival, and it just wouldn’t be MPL if I didn’t leave my public waiting for at least that long. I could explain why it took me this long to write it, but it’s basically a combination of OCD and me being scared to summarize such an amazing event with anything less than perfectness, which is maybe just another manifestation of my OCD.

I’ve got no more excuses today, though. Actually, I have a ton, including that there’s a job that pays me to do work and they want me to do a lot of it, and also that I am back in class now in the 10-weeks-condensed-to-4.5 format. Today, though, I post. Bwa ha ha.

I did actually think about how MPL should cover this monumental, once-in-a-lifetime event beforehand, and I decided to Twitter it. Of course, I didn’t tell any of you that, I don’t have the Twitter widget on this blog, and none of you follow me on Twitter. So that was brilliant, and all my Twitters went out to My Baby, her sister, and some unknown follower. So, we are now announcing that MPL is on Twitter. You can follow us, and see all of our SP20 updates (and by now our Capitol Hill Block Party updates as well), here. I suppose I’ll get that widget working here someday, right after I upgrade from this lousy design. Anyway, point is, I’m just going to work off of my Twitter notes here, so if you want the condensed version, just hit the Twitter page.

Anyway…I knew I couldn’t handle two full days of music festival, even one like this, so I skipped bands that were leading off that I wasn’t familiar with. I got there mid-way through Eric’s Trip on Saturday, and they were great. I always dug them, and spun that one disc of theirs quite a bit on my college radio station, but never owned anything by them. This has, as is so often the case in my collection, turned out to be a glaring omission.

Yeah, that’s Eric’s Trip, and yeah, my camera sucks.  What really sucks, though, is this site design and how it shrinks up even medium-sized pics.  So click on the pictures if you want to see them actual size.

Speaking of glaring omissions, I don’t have nearly enough Seaweed in my collection. I only have Weak, and so when they played next, and only played two songs off of that album (“Squint” and “Baggage”), I felt a bit left out. I was amazed at how much energy the crowd had in the mid-afternoon heat for these guys. I can’t imagine what their shows must have been like 13 years ago.

Seaweed was the last “must see” band I had for a while, so I got my feel for the grounds while The Helio Sequence played in the background. Marymoor is a beautiful park…this was easily the most beautifully-surrounded concert I’ve ever attended. I’ve said it before and it is continually reaffirmed as true: there is no more beautiful city in the continguous 48 when it’s nice. If only it were nice more than 50 or so days per year. Marymoor was excellently run, too, with tons of volunteers on hand to help you make sense of the recycling bins and to guide you out of the crowded parking lot at the end of the night. And get this…at one point on Sunday I noticed the men’s stall (there were tons of porta potties, but some plumbing bathroom options, too) was plugged up and overflowing, and in a few hours it was cleaned up. Wow.

Anyway, I should have paid more attention to The Helio Sequence, because even from a distance they became my New Favorite Band. It was a short-lived reign because Pissed Jeans, with their first few minutes, took the crown for themselves. They sounded exactly like you think a band named Pissed Jeans would. After about half of their 40-minute set I started to tire of them, but with a little more exposure I’m sure I’d start to appreciate them even more.

Fleet Foxes were next and…c’mon guys, can we stop buzzing this band? They are entirely mediocre. Yes, they have some fresh ideas and a bit of a new sound, but they have not put it together yet, and they are completely awful live. In their 40-minutes, I bet they played for 25 of them, and tuned and moronically talked their way through the rest. At one point they spent nearly five full minutes tuning their instruments only to start the next song horribly out of tune. I stand by my tepid review.

Low, from Duluth, Minnesota, was up next, and I still feel bad for them. Low is this super low-key sleepy band that is absolutely beautiful on disc. To put them on a large stage in between The Fluid and Mudhoney was absolutely cruel.

I have been to dozens of rock shows in my life, probably approaching triple digits. I almost never wear a t-shirt of a band to a concert, either one that is playing that show or another one. It just seems so ridiculous, like so often you’re trying to tell people how cool you are for listening to some band. But as I was headed out the door on Saturday, I just grabbed a shirt quickly, and it happened to be a Tomahawk shirt. I hesitated, but I was running late, so I just went with it. I got three compliments on it on Saturday, which felt really weird. I had no idea there were so many Tomahawk fans out there. But, oh yeah…so you also don’t want to be That Guy, who’s wearing the shirt of the band that is playing, right? Well, there are always dozens of That Guys around, but I decided officially that the That Guys at SP20 were the several people I saw wearing Nirvana shirts. Like, who is this Nirvana band? Other contenders were the two peeps wearing Mother Love Bone shirts on Sunday, but Green River was playing that day (duh), for the first time in, like, 20 years, so I give them a free pass…it was kind of a special occasion. My fave shirt for the day summed up the whole shirts-at-concerts experience: “I Listen To Bands That Don’t Even Exist Yet.” Perfect.

Mudhoney followed Low, and somehow got scheduled to be on That Stage, the smaller of the two stages (as opposed to the larger This Stage). Looking over the schedule and seeing who they had to get in the rest of the night, it kind of made sense that they would be fourth-from-last, just based on popularity, but still, Mudhoney, arguably the second-most important band ever on Sub Pop, on the smaller stage at SP20? That’s not right. They killed it anyway, easily the best performer of the day, with a setlist mostly from their two new Sub Pop releases: The Lucky Ones and a re-release of Superfuzz Bigmuff. Veterans that they were, there was maybe a sentence or two of banter, they knew you couldn’t spend anytime in a 40-minute set babbling about seeing Garrison Keillor (*cough* Fleet Foxes *cough*) at the same park when you were a kid, especially if you wanted to get through the extensive catalog Mudhoney has.

So from the uber-confident, rockin’-it-hard show of Mudhoney to The Vaselines over on This Stage, as dusk fell and the stage lights came on. Okay, here’s the deal, bandwagon: if Kurt Cobain had never said he liked The Vaselines and you had still somehow managed to hear them, you wouldn’t think they were The Second Coming. But you’re sheep so you do. They’re an adequate band, to be sure, and I understand why you treated the experience as if you were watching a Nirvana reunion show, but it wasn’t all that good. They were clearly uncomfortable in front of such a large, rabid crowd, they were a bit out of tune, and, well, once again, I stand by my tepid review.

Iron And Wine was next, and I was really let down by his show. He commanded the huge This Stage at first, even just by himself with his guitar, but he also suffered from the talking/tuning problem that Fleet Foxes had. I think he maybe played five or six songs. And everybody talked over his set. So, hmm, maybe Mudhoney would have been better there?

Flight of the Conchords closed out Saturday night, and they were very good. Like I said, it’s just not funny to hear the same jokes again and again…at least, it isn’t as enjoyable as hearing your fave songs again and again. But they mixed it up a bit, even the recorded songs had some new jokes in them, which was a positive experience. I’m sure I would have liked it more if I didn’t have the album.

It took me about an hour to make it from Marymoor Park to Showbox for that night’s Sub Pop show. That’s actually not that bad, considering that it took a methodical row-by-row search to find my parked-by-daylight car in the nighttime and that Saturday’s show was sold out, largely on the strength of Flight Of The Conchords and The Vaselines. Unfortunately, I missed Tad Doyle’s new band Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth, who I was really looking forward to. And then it took like 75 more minutes for Gutter Twins to come on. It’s crap like that that keeps me from seeing more bands live. They were fine, not great…I don’t really like Greg Dulli’s posturing, and dammit, I was just plain tired. I have less Twitter from this show because I didn’t want to wake people up with text messages about bands they didn’t care about.

Despite my exhaustion at the end of the night Sunday, and getting to bed at about 2:00, I woke up ready to go again on Sunday. Sunday looked like the much weaker lineup, in that there were very few bands I’d even heard of, much less had heard. I probably wouldn’t have even gone if it hadn’t been for Green River playing that night. But friend and most frequent MPL-commenter Beckers came with, even bring sunscreen and food, so that kept things fun.

I think I like Grand Archives, but given the recent Jawbox reviews, we know how confident I can be about thinking I like a given band. So we got there after Grand Archives, in time for most of Blitzen Trapper’s set, playing in the same time slot that Eric’s Trip had the day before. They were good, and I’m intrigued, but it was a bit of a mixed bag and I’m withholding my final judgment on them.

We had wanted to get there in time for Kinski because Beckers said they were good, and we have a High compatibility on iLike, so there you go. Kinski was like Motorhead (stand still with guitars and rock hard) combined with Kyuss (spacey stoner riffs). So, yeah, they were completely awesome.

Foals were next and intriguing. I liked their set, but I’m not completely sold on them. They had some real problems with their equipment, which clearly affected their performance, so I can’t really hold it against the band. They’re definitely worth checking out more.

Les Thugs, one of the least-buzzed of all the bands that should have been buzzed, was on next, over on That Stage. They easily took the crown away from Kinski for best performance of the day, and wouldn’t relinquish it until Green River. Les Thugs is always mentioned as the Sub Pop band people are most surprised didn’t explode huge, and now I know why. Garage punk from France…you wouldn’t think it would be completely awesome, but you would be wrong. I love those guys so much.

No Age was next, and WTF? Why the hell are these guys on This Stage while Kinski and Les Thugs are on That Stage? It’s completely inexplicable. The cool discussion about No Age on the blogs now is whether or not you get them. If you want to be cool, you say you get them, or that you didn’t get them at first but now you get them. I didn’t get them, and I still don’t, but I may in the future. I’m not going to write off a band on a 40-minute set, especially when they had to follow the awesomeness that was Les Thugs, but what we heard was enough to make us go grab a drink and reflect on what wasn’t happening at our 15-year reunion that wasn’t taking place that very day.

After that it was Red Red Meat and Comets On Fire, who entirely blend into a sea of forgotten-ness. Part of it was that they probably just weren’t that memorable, though I remember kind of liking both of them, but the bigger reason was that we were starting to zero in on Green River’s set, and the emotional management I’d been rigorously implementing all weekend because I couldn’t afford to say completely jiggered up for an entire weekend was starting to bust at the seams. All I could think about was how awesome Green River was going to be and how the Four Horsemen must be just over the horizon, because God hates me. By the time Beachwood Sparks came on, I was done. Sux to be them, I guess, but I just couldn’t stand to watch any band at that point that wasn’t Green River, so we went for another drink.

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

“Down by the river,” the first line off their first song (“Come On Down”) off their first album (Come On Down, on Homestead, not Sub Pop), Mark Arm shouted to start Green River’s set, and I couldn’t help jumping up and down, bringing my knees up to my chest in the process.

I rarely get close in concerts anymore because I’m old, but for now it was 1988 again and I bounced forward into the crowd. Of course the first several layers of people were all well spaced out so it wasy easy to get ahead of them. Then, of course, the mid-rangers, who are kind of close to each other by most people’s definitions, but have also left plenty of space in front of them for a rock concert. So they grumble a bit, for some dumb reason, but once you push between them there’s plenty of room for you, and soon enough you’re a few rows past them, and what was the point of them grumbling because now it’s like you’re not even there? As I got closer, people were really weird about it, though, holding out their elbows, as if I couldn’t move forward to the clearly stand-in-able area in front of them. I don’t know why you would go to a Green River reunion concert in 2008 and be a dick, but people did. Passive-aggressive behind me and way-too-passive in front of me, I had Seattle’s bipolar disorder, which is also kind of Minnesota’s bipolar disorder, surrounding me. I was perfectly content just to be smushed up there with a few densely-layered rows of people in front of me, but now I have incontrovertible proof that Seattleites are just way too nice. Without even trying, beyond putting my feet into the gaps that opened all too readily, I ended up front and center. That’s right, I had one of the two or three most primo spots to view this show from, at most a person or two off center and right up against the front railing, with only occasional mild pressure from behind. When drummer Alex Shumway went crowd-surfing at the end, I was one of the people who helped him over the railing. It was surreal.  (Those heads in front of me are press in the press pit.)

Arm, Stone Gossard, and Steve Turner:

Bruce Fairweather, Jeff Ament, Alex Shumway, and Arm:

Shumway about to rush the crowd, Arm, Ament on drums, and Gossard:

And of course watching Green River was completely surreal, too. Gossard and Ament would walk towards each other and play off each other, and you’re thinking, “You guys are in Pearl Jam together,” and here they were, after that crazy journey to their self-defined top, back in Green River. To emphasize the surreality of the situation, the backstage/offstage portion of the stage, which was in clear view of the audience, had maybe 30 people there watching the band. Whereas most bands prior to this point in the weekend had two or three people, it seemed like everybody who had the chance was there to watch Green River. And they all stood there with huge smiles of joyful amazement on their faces, mirror images of what I know I looked like. I was home. I had found my community. Honestly, I must have spent just as much time watching those folks watch the show than I did watching the show right in front of me. It was the best way to validate that the show was really happening, that I really was watching Green River play again, to watch those people figuratively pinching themselves just as I was doing.

And it was good, too. I’m not even going to bother describing the show because I wasn’t even taking mental notes because I wanted to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience (except it wasn’t, I guess, because they did this secret show…). Suffice it to say that it was better than I expected…and I had great expectations. The band was tight, played a fantastic set with very little banter (Arm introduced the band by saying each member was from the band he was in prior to Green River (Ducky Boys, Mr. Epp, etc.), and really seemed to enjoy themselves. After months of psyching myself up, the band came through on the promise that my imagination made to myself on their behalf.

At the end of the show, after Shumway’s crowd-surfing, the band dragged some boxes out on stage and threw out t-shirts. Due to my prime spot (maybe it wasn’t that great after all, huh?), the shirts all went over my head. I was tempted to move back a bit, but then I was sure somebody would drop some right where I had been standing. I did manage to get a hand on one of them, but so did about a dozen other folks. Four of those hands didn’t give up for several minutes, and after a while the two contenders decided to settle the matter with a best-of-three rock-paper-scissors contest.

They somehow trusted somebody, who had been trying to break up the combatants earlier, to be their referee, judge, and temporary shirt holder. I guess it would have been hard for him to get away with the shirt in that crowd, but still…. Anyway, Right Guy won the first round and Left Guy won the second, bringing us a make-or-break rock-paper-scissors match. The moment was thrilling…both the judge and I asked for time so that we could capture the situation on film. Below, you see Left Guy’s paper covering Right Guy’s rock.

When I asked the woman who was holding one of the shirts if I could take a picture, she looked offended as I started to ask the question, as if I was asking for the shirt. When I finished talking she looked relieved, laughed, and then asked her boyfriend (this is an unconfirmed romantic relationship, I’m just assuming) if it was okay. Unsurprinsgly, it was, and I was gracious in my appreciation.

Twenty minutes later Wolf Parade came on. I don’t know why the hell any band was scheduled to play after Green River. If I had to guess, and while I didn’t have to, I did, I would say it was because Sub Pop wanted to emphasize that they had a good current roster and were focusing on the present and future. Whatever. I was not in a mood to listen to anybody else at that point, nor was Beckers, so we left.

So that’s the end of what I’ve got, but there was a bunch of other stuff around the blogosphere to commemorate the event.

First, apparently there was a Sub Pop flag perched atop the Space Needle, and they painted the Needle itself to look like a 45 from above. Sweet.  The top pic is by Dan Delong of the Seattle PI.

Here are reviews and pics from Three Imaginary Girls, a KEXP review, KEXP pics, two Saturday and two Sunday reviews on Line Out, and Saturday and Sunday pics from Line Out

As if to really snub the SP20 recap that’s being drafted (that thing is a total bitch, man), I’m going to postpone it until Monday at the earliest in favor of a preview of this weekend’s Capitol Hill Block Party. This is everything you’ll need to know about how MPL will be rocking it on Friday and Friday only, because Saturday there is a competing Melvins show at Showbox and you know where I’ll be, if I’m anywhere. And, c’mon, I can always write the SP20 recap. This really is the last chance I’ll get to be timely as far as previewing the Capitol Hill Block Party.

So here’s the schedule, and you can see that there is a lot of overlap on the four stages. So I took it upon myself to do the grueling task of listening to all of these bands’ Myspace pages, or at least the ones I wasn’t familiar with (so Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend didn’t need a new listen, for example). And then I was going to do this total OCD spreadsheet where I broke up the day into 15-minute increments and indicated who was playing where. But then The Stranger went and did that bit for me.

But I don’t think they put it online, so just go pick up this week’s issue of The Stranger, and then what follows is all you need to know about who you should be watching when. I’ve compared all the bands that are playing head-to-head. Well, not all of them, because the law of transitivity applies and you can figure out that if Common Market > Abe Vigoda and Abe Vigoda > The Pharmacy, then Common Market > The Pharmacy. I mean, duh.

Black Whales > Talbot Tagora
Black Eyes And Neckties > Black Whales
Common Market > Black Eyes And Neckties
Common Market > The Pharmacy
Head Like A Kite > Abe Vigoda
Common Market > Abe Vigoda
Abe Vigoda > The Pharmacy
U.S.E. > Head Like A Kite
U.S.E. > Truckasaurus
Truckasauraus > Menomena
Past Lives > Mika Miko
Menomena > Past Lives
Airborne Toxic Event > Mika Miko
Airborne Toxic Event > PWRFL Power
Thee Emergency > Airborne Toxic Event
Girl Talk > everybody
Champagne Champagne > The Dodos
The Dodos > Say Hi
Say Hi > Les Savy Fav (but LSF’s stage show is notoriously awesome)
Pleasureboaters > Les Savy Fav
Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head > Pleasureboaters
Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head > Jay Reatard
Vampire Weekend > Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
Jay Reatard > The Heavy Hearts

Descriptions of all the bands are here, but I don’t know why you’d bother given the cheat sheet I just gave you above.

Okay, so here’s the other thing. Last year I ventured into Neumo’s to see fellow Arts High School alumni Har Mar Superstar, and it blew. Not HMS, but Neumo’s. The line to get in to that stage, as I imagine this year’s new King Cobra stage will also be, was really long and it was hot and annoying in there. You couldn’t just come and go easily, and it was very non-fun. So, honestly, the band inside has to be way better than the band outside to make it worth your while. So with that, which explains the quotes below, in mind….

“Must”-sees (4.5 – 5 lunchboxes):Head Like A Kite (Neumo’s 5:15 – 6:30)
U.S.E. (Main 5:30 – 6:30)
Airborne Toxic Event (King Cobra 7:15 – 8:30)
Thee Emergency (Neumo’s 7:45 – 9:00)
Girl Talk (Main 7:45 – 9:15)
Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head (Vera 10:15-??)
Vampire Weekend (Main 10:45 – 12:00)

“Should”-sees (3.5-4 lunchboxes):
Black Eyes And Neckties (Neumo’s 4:00 – 5:15)
Common Market (Main 4:30 – 5:30)
Truckasauraus (King Cobra 6:00 – 7:15)
Champagne Champagne (King Cobra 8:30 – 9:45)

Honestly, just given that great main stage lineup (three must-sees), I’ll probably just sit and watch that all day, heading over to Vera (also outside, yay) for the idiotically-named NPSH. I’m ticked I won’t get to see Common Market, but I’ll be in class.

Rock out with your Lunchbox out.

(I swear I’m working on the SP20 recap.  Really.  It’s just taking forever.)

What are you doing reading this when you could be listening to Girl Talk?

Ho.  Lee.  S**t.

Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” gets a lot of crap in critical circles, and sure, the chorus has that cheesy Billy Joel thing and it’s hard to ignore that after several listens, and the verses necessarily date themselves, but here’s the thing…it’s not a bad song by any means, and if you could write a song as good as ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire” that recapped all of the important events in the environment, politics, and entertainment from the first 40 years of your life, you totally would.

It’s been a long time coming, but now that I’ve added Nude With Boots, released only two weeks ago, a mere nanosecond in MPL time, my Melvins collection is as updated as it’s been since before we entered our “poor period” and signed over our firstborn to My Baby’s business school. Of their studio albums, I’m basically just missing the ones with Jello Biafra (so maybe I won’t buy anything they do). In fact, I had a signed copy of this disc a day before it was even available in stores, which left me feeling kind of super-complete.

A quick diversion, though, because this is critical. All albums listened to primarily on sunny days are going to get the shaft around here. You see, when it’s sunny, I sit upstairs by the windows to increase my happiness, and listen on my iPod. When it’s not, I work downstairs in my office, in front of my stereo. Lots of music sounds like crap on my iPod, partially because it doesn’t allow a custom EQ setting. Dear Apple, screw you.

So The Black Keys got rewritten at the last minute, and Jawbox sounded a ton better right before it got posted, but since I’d already re-written one review last week I couldn’t bring myself to do another. Anyway, I’m writing this now because Nude With Boots was mostly listened to on a cloudy morning, but sounds much worse now on a sunny afternoon.

That may just mean Melvins sound better on cloudy days, and that makes sense for a band born in the dreary darkness of Aberdeen, WA. For the last few years, though, they have been sounding more and more like a band from their current home in sunny California. They’ve been playing less slow, sludgy, gloom and instead concentrating on more upbeat, straight, but no less heavy, metal with riffs that most listeners can easily grasp on to.

That trend continues with Nude With Boots, another very accessible album, at least relative to most Melvins material. There’s still sludge (“Dog Island,” “It Tastes Better Than The Truth”) and noisy sound-fests (“Flush,” “It Tastes Better Than The Truth”). For the most part, though, everything sounds a little brighter and more orthodox. For one track they even do a cover of the 13th century Latin hymn “Dies Irae” (“Dies Iraea”), though of course that hardly sounds familiar or comfortable to 21st century ears.

Instead, for their current release, Melvins seem content to screw with your mind with tricky rhythms. You won’t notice it at first, but on closer listen, “Suicide In Progress,” which might be the best song on here, will reveal some very confusing beats. I think part of it might be in 17. And on “The Smiling Cobra,” which gives “Suicide In Progress” a run for the Nude With Boots best song crown, I even have trouble finding beat one in parts, and it might not even be there…they may have discarded the idea of measures altogether, something that they tended to do early in their career as well.

This is a very good, immensely enjoyable album from start to finish, though there’s nothing here that’s quite as arresting as the best songs from A Senile Animal. Additionally, it might just be a bit too straight in parts. “The Stupid Creep” is awfully close to plain vanilla 1990 tough-guy, no-passion metal, as is the pre-vocal part of “Nude With Boots.” There’s some cognitive dissonance that goes along with saying Melvins are too accessible, and, given their track record I can’t believe that label will stick.

Melvins has been around for 24 years now. The world has hardly noticed, but those who have been paying attention stand in awe at one of the most storied careers in musical history. King Buzzo seems to me to be crazy incisive about just about everything, including his musical legacy:

“There are lots of makeshift wonders, seven in the world/Five of them will not be noticed and three will not be heard,” he sings on “Suicide In Progress.” While you’re working out that math, Melvins is touring the world, creating unseen, unheard wonders.

Rating:

Mixers: “The Kicking Machine,” “Suicide In Progress,” “The Smiling Cobra,” “Nude With Boots,” “The Savage Hippy”
Non-keepers: “Flush,” “The Stupid Creep”
Filed Between: The Making Love Demos and Melvins+Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)

Coffee makes this album worse. I felt like I wanted a bit of an energy boost heading into Friday night, so got me some Starbucks before giving this album my focused listen, and I enjoyed it far less than I had been before the caffeine infusion. But now I know definitively that this is a sleepy, nighttime album.

Amnesiac was recorded at the same time as Kid A, but wasn’t released until the following year. There isn’t a song on here that wouldn’t sound out of place on Kid A, or vice-versa, and the albums sound similar: they are both extensions of the cold, spacey feel of OK Computer and both travel further from the guitar-based rock of the band’s early days. They both push boundaries and have their share of “sonic experiments,” as opposed to songs.

The main differentiation is that this album is more of what Kid A was. It goes further afield from traditional rock song structure, instrumentation, melodies, and rhythms. “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” wouldn’t sound at all out of place on an Ipecac record. This album also doesn’t cohere as well as Kid A did. In other words, it’s not necessarily a 45-minute work in and of itself, and I don’t find the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Part of that is because I just don’t need all of these songs. Sure most of the album is being kept, and nothing clunks really heavily, but I don’t think I’m that much better off for having heard “Pulk/Pull Revovling Doors,” “Hunting Bears” (another exercise in sound composition), “or Life In A Glasshouse” (which features a New Orleans dirge-y horn part).

With this record, which is definitely not a starting point for Radiohead, the band just might be right on the verge of pushing things too far. “Knives Out” is one of the best songs here (just a tad too repetitive to be mixed), and it also probably the single Amnesiac song that would have fit best on The Bends or OK Computer. According to singer Thom Yorke, via Green Plastic, though, the band was really bothered by the fact that it was so “straight.”

We just lost our nerve. It was so straight-ahead. We couldn’t possibly do anything that straight until we’d gone and been completely arse about face with everything else, in order to feel good about doing something straight like that.

The band’s commitment to advancing the state of popular music is to be commended, and will surely be their legacy, but in 2001 it seems they may have been losing their compass for what was legitimately good, which is further evidenced by the fact that this is easily the best cover- and liner-notes-art of all of their albums thus far, and I’ve simply come to the conclusion that they intend it to be awful.

Rating:

Mixers: “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box,” Like Spinning Plates”
Non-keepers: “Hunting Bears,” “Life In A Glasshouse”
Filed Between: Kid A and Ramones (Ramones)