Music Library: The Mendoza Line, Menomena, Mercury Rev

Pardon my brevity.  I have a lot of catch-up that I'm hoping to accomplish over the next few weeks.

The Mendoza Line - I Like You When You're Not Around (1999), We're All In This Alone (2000), Lost In Revelry (2002), If They Knew This Was The End (2003), Fortune (2004), Full Of Light And Full Of Fire (2005), and Thirty Year Low/Final Reflections Of The Legendary Malcontent (2007).  Named for the lowest batting average one can have and still remain in the major leagues, the Mendoza Line featured several different songwriters who all shared an affinity for mopey and literate folk-based songwriters who tend to top the best-of lists for rock geeks.  There's a certain sameness in listening to all of their albums at once like this, but it's my kind of sameness, if you follow me, and when you drill down to pay attention to the lyrics and craft in each song, there's moments of startling beauty and power. Great band, much missed around these parts.  I should mention that their pedal steel guru John Troutman is a pal of mine.  Hi, John!

Menomena - Wet And Rusting EP and Friend And Foe (both 2007).  Excellent indie pop band.  They have a follow-up, but somehow I've never made the leap.  Standouts: "Wet and Rusting," "Rotten Hell," and "Evil Bee."  Great videos for the latter two of these.

Mercury Rev - Deserter's Songs (1998) and Snowflake Midnight (2008).  The former is lovely psychedelia.  The latter I like much less.

Music Library: Mel Torme, Melba Montgomery, and... MELVINS

Mel Torme - "Medley: A Tribute To Fred Astaire."  I don't know where I picked up this lone track from the Velvet Fog, but it's a very velvetty, foggy track.

Melba Montgomery - "Before She Changed Your Mind." George Jones's foil from the 60s, singing as lovely as ever.

Melvins:

6 Songs EP (1986), Oven 7" (1989), and With Yo' Heart, Not Yo' Hands (1990). Take a large slice of Flipper, add a healthy pinch of Black Sabbath, and throw in a more pronounced sense of humor, and that is the early Melvins.  Excellent stuff.

Your Blessened/Pronoun Piece Me 7" (1990), Bullhead, and Eggnog EP (both 1991).  Man, I love Bullhead.  If not for all the other albums that could make the same claim, this would be my favorite Melvins album.  The attached song, "Cow," cracks me up.  Two minutes of heavy duty riffage followed by another two and a half of drums that keep threatening to quit, but like a joke that has to keep going on and on until it gets funny again, don't.  Oh yeah, and Boris, another favorite band of mine, took their name from a song on this album.

Lysol and Night Goat/Adolescent Wet Dream 7" (1992).  As Lysol is a registered trademark, this album isn't officially titled Lysol anymore.  But that's what it is.  Although there are covers by both Flipper and Alice Cooper here, this is the point at which Melvins seem to drop down on the doom metal side of their equation, although there's still plenty of the psychedelia and experimentalism that makes Melvins so damn interesting.

Houdini (1993) and Stoner Witch (1994).  More greatness from the 90s.  Some of Melvins albums are hit-or-miss, but I've been lucky.  All the ones I've heard are amazingly great.  I'm really only splitting them out here not because I have anything different to say about them, but because I want to post different songs from each.

The Maggot (1999).  Some might call it perverse that the CD version of this album splits each track into two, even the 2-minute tracks.  Those people would be correct.  Here's a Fleetwood Mac cover, for your pleasure.

(A) Senile Animal (2006) and The Bride Screamed Murder (2010).  Still awesome.  Two drummers.  So awesome.  Wish I was more articulate, but everything else I have to say about the Melvins must be played on a very loud, tuned-down-a full-step-or-two guitar.

Music Library: I (Heart) Mekons!

I've held off on this post, even though half a year has passed since I listened to all of these.  First I found the task daunting.  Then I simply got out of the habit of blogging.  But I'm back, and I want to talk about The Mekons.  The Mekons are very special to me - one of my favorite bands, in fact - and I want to do them justice.  Sadly, it's hard to find justice in this mean old world, so this is what you get.

When I wrote about The Fall (Dog Canyon link for a more complete Fall reading experience), I mentioned that I thought of The Fall and The Mekons as being quite similar.  My pal Chris Estey disagreed, pointing out that they are exactly opposite in many respects.  I think we're both right.  The Fall is built around one person, one ego (Mark E. Smith, natch), and everyone else is completely expendable.  The Mekons are a revolving collective with almost as many members over time as The Fall, but the near-utopian belief in the contributions of all members.  There are a few guiding figures, to be sure: Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford are the longest-serving members and primary songwriters.  Sally Timms has played the chanteuse since the mid-80s.  Rico Bell plays the accordion and provides a fourth harmony voice during the Mekons' many choral-style sing-alongs.  Might as well mention the rest of the more recent stable line-up: Steve Goulding (The Rumour) on the drums, Sarah Corina (Gang Of Four) on bass, Susie Honeyman on violin, and Lu Edmonds (The Damned) adding little to the music but enthusiasm with his oud.  I first saw them on the Me tour in the late 90s.  Not their best album, but man alive, their show was a revelation.

The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen (1979).  The best of the early Mekons singles are on a compilation called Fast Product (which was the name of the label), also featuring singles from the Gang of Four, the Human League, and a few other punk bands from Leeds.  But this album, the first full-length Mekons album, is no slouch.  The songs have a strangely cinematic sense, even though the band could barely string together chords at the time. Langford was the drummer of the band at this point, too.  My favorite track is "Dan Dare," about the comic that gave the band their name.

Devils, Rats, and Piggies: A Special Message From Godzilla (1980).  Oh man, I used to hate this album.  Here the Mekons went in for synth sounds in a big way.  Between the primitivism and the harsh late-70s keyboards, it did nothing for me.  But it's grown on me considerably over time.  And that's about all I have to say about it.

It Falleth Like The Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story (1982).  This is a compilation of singles that is stronger than the first two albums put together.  Some of these tracks were re-recorded elsewhere, but these versions are generally pretty good.  Standouts: "Trouble Down South," Fight The Cuts," "This Sporting Life," and the sublime a capella track "The Building."  Also cool: the title completes the mangled quote from the first album.



The English Dancing Master EP (1983).  Only two of the four tracks, actually.  These are more like the early Mekons than the genre shift that was about to occur.

Fear And Whiskey and Live 9 November 1985 (both 1985).  Then the Mekons decided that the three chords and working-class outlook of country music was very similar to the three chords and working-class outlook of their politically charged punk music.  Being British college kids from a tough town, their version of cowpunk was quite unlike the separately conceived ideas of American artists like the Meat Puppets, more intellectual, less fluid.  But this is utterly vital music, about as important and visionary as punk gets.  The songs are a great leap forward from the early Mekons music, perhaps aided by having Langford move from the drum set to the frontline with his guitar.  The lyrics race through chauvinism, depression, war, darkness and doubt, and land on Leon Payne's "Lost Highway."  Six stars out of five.  I have to throw out some special love to "Flitcraft," for being such a wonderfully obscure reference, being - essentially - based on a story-within-a-story told by a minor character in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. The live bootleg is poorly recorded, but great to hear as a historical document of the Mekons grappling with their new style.

The Edge of the World, Crime And Punishment EP, and Slightly South of the Border EP (all 1986).  More six star out of five material.  With this album and these EPs, the Mekons introduce Sally Timms as co-lead vocalist (her song "Oblivion" can break a man), delve further in country music (Don Gibson's "Sweet Dreams" is another heartbreaker), and through in self-mythologizing ("Ugly Band"), a sea shanty, a Luke The Drifter cover, and a touch of Tejano.  Crime and Punishment is excellent, with the foot stomper "Beaten and Broken," the abortion-rights screed "Chop The Child In Half", and the brilliant track "Hey! Susan," which deserves its own cultural studies text, simultaneously alluding to "Hey Jude" and retelling the story of Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure.  Slightly South of the Border has the coalminer's lament "Coal Hole" and a cover of Gram Parsons' "$1000 Wedding."

Mekons Honky Tonkin' and New York: On The Road (both 1987).  Only slightly less great than the two albums that preceded it, Mekons Honky Tonkin' is more focused on country to the exclusion of the other elements that made Edge of the World so damn much fun.  Not that it isn't fun, but it suffers a little in comparison.  New York is a collection of live tracks and audio collages from their 1987 tour of America.

So Good It Hurts (1988).  Here the Mekons embrace shimmery guitar pop with a touch of Cajun music and calypso.  Coming as it does between the halcyon cowpunk period and the fiery attack of the next period, it's doomed to never be one of my favorite of their albums.  Some of the songs herein are extraordinary, though.  "Ghosts Of American Astronauts" and "(Sometimes I Feel Like) Fletcher Christian" have been part of their live set for a good reason.

Mekons Rock 'N' Roll (1989) and Crap Rap/Keep On Hoppin' 7" (1990).  Everything that the Mekons had ever done or heard contributed to this album.  I'll just say it: this is one of the finest rock albums ever made.  Drenched in feedback, power, and noise - as if rock music were some sort of ancient magic - the Mekons distilled their essence into a major fuck-you to everything that people do to control themselves and each other.  The opening track "Memphis, Egypt" could be a manifesto: "Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late/The battles we fought were long and hard/Just not to be consumed by rock and roll."  The second track, "Club Mekon," is a sex dream driven by ennui: "When I was just 17/sex no longer held a mystery/I saw it as a commodity/To be bought and sold like rock and roll."  Of course, the comparison to rock and roll is about debasement of something vital.  This theme culminates in the utterly amazing "Heaven And Back," which is quite often my very favorite song.  I don't really understand it, but the mystery feels quite profound: the story ties political oppression with personal transcendence.



Even now, watching this video, an audience recording with bad sound, this song hits me on such a powerful level that I write this with a lump in my throat.  This is the first video I've put in this post, but I think I need to go back and add more examples now.  Here's "Memphis, Egypt."  Rock and Roll!  Reminds me of a story: my old band Trouble Down South covered this regularly for a time.  We ended with it one night at Ego's in Austin and the bartender came over afterwards and asked, "Did that song have only one chord?"

Curse of the Mekons/F.U.N. '90 EP (1991).  Rock, country, polemics, anger, fear, frustration, humor: it's all here.  Curse of the Mekons is the lesser sister to Mekons Rock 'N Roll, but only by a hair.  Less than a hair.  Brilliant.  The attached EP includes a lovely cover of The Band's "It Makes No Difference."

I Love Mekons and Millionaire EP (1993). This one is a concept album about love and commerce, but it is also, unfortunately, a pretty weak tea compared to the previous two albums.  Not bad, by any stretch, just a little colder and less fun.  The single "Millionaire" is great, though, as is "I Love Apple."

Retreat From Memphis (1994).  This, I'm sad to say, is a Mekons album that I simply do not like.  Allmusic recommends it as a good gateway into the Mekons, and I think they could not be more wrong.  None of the songs really stand out, and the whole effort feels tired and lackluster.  Maybe I'll come around someday, but in 12 years of giving it a try, nothing has ever clicked.

Mekons United and Untitled 1 and 2 EP (both 1995).  Mekons United is a disc that accompanies a book of Mekons memorabilia.  Both it and this EP are very much oriented towards experimental synthesizer-based music, but neither is very interesting as such.  Mekons United does include the epic track "Orpheus," but the version on this album fails to reach the heights of the live version.  I'm sad to say that YouTube does not have a live version of "Orpheus" available, so I strongly suggest that you, the theoretical reader, attend a Mekons show to experience this song for yourself.  Important lyric to yell along with the band: "LOOSE THE MEKONS, CAME THE CHEER!"

Pussy: King Of The Pirates (with Kathy Acker, 1996).  Few bands choose to create operas about bloodthirsty feminists along with one of the leading experimental novelists of their day.  Which is probably why this album is such a hot mess. Well worth a listen for fans of either the Mekons or Acker, but most likely never a favorite for either.

Me (1998).  Speaking of hot messes, here's where I became a Mekons fan, but in hindsight, the album is only so-so.  It's a concept album about selfishness, basically, and perhaps also masturbation.  Some top notch dance music, too, but there's a lot of repetition, and some of the best tracks are wordless.  Here's the killer opener, "Enter The Lists," a great and hilarious example of how the Mekons can create and destroy a killer riff.

I Have Been To Heaven And Back and Where Were You? Hen's Teeth And Other Lost Fragments Of Popular Culture, Vol. 2 (both released 1999, covering 1978-1999).  These are not so much collections of hits as collections of outtakes.  Both have delightfully chaotic cover images snapped at live shows.  The former is the better of the two, though, with more interesting and fun tracks, while the latter is more of a crutch for completists.  Both, though, have their share of otherwise impossible-to-find tracks.

Journey To The End Of The Night (2000).  This is a concept album about apocalypse, but it's a surprisingly gentle and sweet one.  And funny, always funny with them.  I was going to point out the highlights, but there's not a weak song in the bunch.  My favorite, though, is "Powers and Horrors," which is a drinking song which improbably stands it own against death and oblivion.

OOOH! (Out Of Our Heads) (2002).  Like many rock bands, the Mekons are interested in history and social dialectic above all else.  OOOH! is preoccupied with the advent of the Age of Enlightenment, which, as you may recall, involved not just an explosion of inquiry and knowledge, but also royal beheadings and people in weird religious cults seizing power.  Although this may be a misremembering, it seems that the first time I heard these songs was during the Mekons' 25th Anniversary shows in NYC.  I had recently finished E.P. Thompson's The Making Of The English Working Class, and was inclined to mention it to Jon Langford when I saw him sitting at the bar after the show.  But I had also recently embarrassed myself by talking about a highfalutin' work of history with Mike Watt, and I decided against it.  Heard them on the radio the next day citing that book in particular as an influence on the album.  Of course, the freakin' Mekons are reading works of socialist history!  Stupid me. Here's "The Olde Trip To Jerusalem," the title of which is at least partially a reference to a very long-running pub in London.



Mekons 25th Anniversary Chicago/NYC (September 12-14 and 19-21, 2002).  These are bootlegs of the very shows I just mentioned.  For their 25th anniversary, the Mekons played three nights of shows in Chicago and again in NYC.  Each night focused on one specific major period of Mekons history.  They also sprinkled in some acoustic day shows and readings, and generally had a freakin' blast.  As an audience participant, I can say that it was fun for me, too.  I saw Bob Christgau at the show at the Mercury Lounge, too, but I was a little too intimidated to talk with him.

Punk Rock (2004).  The Mekons had so much fun playing their old songs that they released this album of live and studio re-recordings of classic cuts.  Sounds better than the originals in many cases!  Three of their best singles from back in the 70s are collected only on the compilations from the Fast Product label that I'll have to get to only when I make it to the compilations albums.  I can't find the re-recording on YouTube, so here's the original of "Where Were You?"

Natural (2007).  They reportedly have another album in the can, but their label has folded so they have no way of releasing it right now.  So this is the most recent Mekons album, a Journey To The End Of The Night-like effort that features a lot of acoustic guitars.  Pretty great stuff, even if it has never grabbed me quite like their first tier.



Wow!  I finished this post.  Months in the making and yet still wholly inadequate: my gift to you.

At Dog Canyon: Animal Collective Hates Your Freedom!

In which I mock the cultural commentary at Fox News and wax on about one of my favorite bands.

The Moviegoer: May - August 2010

I started this post two months ago!  But I didn't finish it before I moved cross-country and failed to finish anything.  And I have, unfortunately, been very bad about keeping accurate records of my media consumption over the last few months.  But here's what I have, following from the last installment here.

30. The Informant!: B+
31. Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans: B-
32. The Abyss: D
33. Recount: B+
34. Last Tango In Paris: C+
35. Hellboy II: The Golden Army: B
36. You Don't Know Jack: B+
37. Rosemary's Baby: A+
38. Moon: B+
39. Zombieland: B+
40. Observe and Report: F
41. Becket: B+
42. Knife In The Water: A
43. The Ladykillers (2004): C-
44. The Best Years Of Our Life: B
45. Ghost Town: B-
46. Putney Swope: C
47. The Dead: A
48. The Asphalt Jungle: A
49. Frost/Nixon: B
50. Greaser's Palace: B+
51. They Live By Night: B+
52. Castle In The Sky: A-
53. Humpday: A-
54. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: B
55. The Incredible Hulk: B
56. Funny People: B
57. X Men Origins: Wolverine: D
58. Temple Grandin: B+
59. Orphan: C+
60. John Adams: B+
61. To Kill a Mockingbird: B+
62. Toy Story 3: A
63. MST3K: Secret Agent Super Dragon: B
64. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic: B-
65. Jason and the Argonauts: B+
66. The Lavender Hill Mob: B+
67. Godzilla: King of the Monsters: B+
68. Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior: B
69. A Town Called Panic: A
70. Louis CK: Chewed Up: A-
71. For All Mankind: A-
72. MST3K: The Beatniks: B-
73. Monkey Business: A

Books Read:

1 Dead In Attic by Chris Rose
The Hundred Days by Patrick O'Brien
Across The Great Divide: The Band And America by Barney Hoskyns
Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson
Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Music Library: Meat Purveyors + Medeski, Martin, and Wood

These two are nestled in between the Meat Pups and the Mekons, so this is a short installment.

Meat Purveyors - All Relationships Are Doomed To Fail (2002), "We Kill Evil," and "Hangman."  The Meat Purveyors are an Austin institution of aggressive, punk-influenced bluegrass.  This album and these two live tracks (both recorded at the legendary Yard Dog SXSW free shows) all kick mighty ass.

Medeski, Martin, and Wood - Combustication (1998).  Organ-dominated instrumental music pitched somewhere between the 70s groove jazz and jamband rock.  Not so bad, but not enough to make me seek out more.

Music Library: Meat Puppets: Under the Influence Of

(picture borrowed from Mike Watt's hootpage)

I started this post several weeks ago while vacationing in Panama City Beach, FL, which was surprisingly beautiful.  No angry blackened waterfowl to be seen there, although there were quite a few BP guys lurking about, waiting to take charge at the first sign of trouble.  But for me, spotty web connections and general focus on other things led to never getting past the first paragraph.

Then I moved halfway across the country and anyway, suffice it to say that it's been hard to get back into the habit of writing.

But the Meat Puppets cannot be denied forever.  They were one of the most creative bands of the punk era, with a sound built on Curt Kirkwood's amazingly fluid guitar work.  The man's influence are all over the map, from the Grateful Dead to Neil Young to Doc Watson to Television to the Byrds to ZZ Top to the Stooges to King Crimson.  To name a few.  Curt wasn't much a singer, but his sometimes tuneless voice provided a blueprint for any band that sounds bored by its own brilliance (like, say, Dinosaur Jr). By focusing on Curt, I don't mean to express a diminished enthusiasm for the creativity of the original Meat Pups rhythm section, which was Curt's brother Cris on bass and Derrick Bostrom on drums.  If Curt was fluid, those guys were the bedrock.

So the Meat Pups were together for many years, but they broke up in 1996 when Cris's drug addiction spiraled out of control.  Curt moved to Austin and put together another band, which he later renamed the Meat Puppets for legal reasons.  That band broke up in 2002 and Curt recorded a few one-off albums.  Cris finally got himself clean and rejoined Curt in 2006, and although Derrick Bostrom declined to rejoin the group, they called themselves the Meat Puppets, and they were.  This newest version of the Pups have put out a couple of albums, but I've ever picked them up.

Even though I haven't supported them the way I should, I saw the new Meat Pups play an hour-long afternoon show this past March during SXSW, which was an incredible, beautiful experience.  Five months later, I'm still speechless.  Doug Sahm's son Shandon is their drummer at the moment, and he has a certain lightness that sounds very much like Bostrom.

fIREHOSE has a song called "Under The Influence of Meat Puppets."  That's how I play my guitar, anyway.  Here's the long, strange trip of the original lineup.

Meat Puppets (1982).  Most bands, this would have been career suicide, right out of the gate.  According to Curt, the Pups dropped acid in the studio and it is fair to say that this album sounds like the work of talented people on acid.  Curt's moan is particularly inarticulate.  The guitarwork is clearly there, but rushed and lacking Curt's trademark precision.  The version I have is the reissue, which includes the 21-minute original release, plus their 1981 EP and 13 more cuts, which are mostly the band jamming on covers in the studio.  This doesn't sound like anything else in their catalogue, and qualifies as "for fans only," which may even be a stretch.

Meat Puppets II (1983).  And then this is a perfect album.  More than perfect.  iTunes will only allow you to rate your up to five stars, but this one deserves six.  Or ten.  The first song, "Split Myself In Two," is an echo-laden hardcore-ish retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin story.  Because why not?  Things get significantly more psychedelic after this, but it's the desert-culture sort of psychedelia, full of countrified fast & clean guitar licks and head space that sounds like the sun going down over saguaro.  "Magic Toy Missing," for instance, is basically a laser-fast bluegrass jam with approximately a gazillion million notes in the 20-second lead overdub. "Lost" is the greatest country song never recorded by a country artist (The Minutemen had a lovely funky take on it, though), although its appealing loopiness probably has a lot to do with that.  "Plateau," one of the three songs from this album that Nirvana recorded in their acoustic MTV show, is a folk song that gets good and weird in the last 24 bars with a heavily echoed overdub.  "Aurora Borealis" is another instrumental, this one overwhelmingly trippy and yet spare, sorta the essential take on desert psychedelia.  More echoey head music in "We're Here," then more Zen country in "Climbing," then more goofy hardcore with "New Gods."  "Oh, Me" builds intensity without ever stepping up its laconic pace and then dissipates it almost casually at the end.  "Lake of Fire" is a barnburner quite unlike anything else out there.  "I'm A Mindless Idiot" is an instrumental built on a pleasing guitar lick, and "The Whistling Song" has some sharp lyrics about a metaphor that takes over the song, culminating in a chorus that substitutes truly inspired whistling for words.  The reissue I have tacks on a great nonalbum track, "Teenagers," which starts out with hardcore riffing that turns into a Grateful Dead-ish jam. There's a couple of more unreleased tracks, some alternate takes of the album tracks, and a decent cover of the Rolling Stones' "What To Do."

Up On The Sun (1985).  At this point, there was nothing punk left about the Meat Puppets except for their label and tour partners.  Oh, and their attitude, because here the Meat Pups released what was pretty much the greatest psych-rock album of all time, something that could have been the staple of any classic rock station if not for Curt's ugly-beautiful vocal delivery.  I mean, punk was primarily about freedom, right?  The Pups chose to make this amazing, beautiful, intricate, willfully obscure album, and they put it out on the American punk flagship label SST and played these gorgeous songs for a mid-80s punk audience that had tastes as rigid as - or more rigid than - Wynton Marsalis's on jazz.  So there's hardly any distortion on this album.  Curt leans on the echo and chorus and delay when he wants to get mindblowing.  I don't want to get too hyperbolic, but the title song is one of the greatest achievements of humanity in the rock music age.  The rest is sort of a distillation of the non-hardcore parts of Meat Pups II.  There's more Zen country songs, instrumentals, whistling, psychedelic nonsense, lightning-fast bluegrass meltdowns, and the whole is a bellyful of pure greatness.  The bonus tracks on the reissue are particularly nonessential, but I'm not going to argue with yet another version of "Up On The Sun" in any form.

688 Club, Atlanta, May 14, 1985. Here's a bootleg I've had for quite a few years.  I was talking smack about the mid-80s punk audiences before, but here they sound like they're in hog heaven listening to Pups tear it up on their own songs and smattering of classic rock and blues covers.

Out My Way (1986).  And then the Pups turned into Zed Zed Top.  Actually that didn't happen yet, but they gave audiences a taste on this EP with "She's Hot" and "Good Golly Miss Molly".  Also included was "Mountain Line," one of the cowpunkiest of cowpunk tunes.  The reissue includes a cover of George Jones's "Burn The Honky Tonk Down," and you have to love that.

Mirage (1987).  So the Pups took Curt's love of superclean and superfast repetition here and made what was partially a druggier 80s-style King Crimson album and partially a sorta cold lead-in to their bluesier next phase.  I'm not knocking it, but it's pretty fussy and that squelches the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants feel that you get from the greatest Pups albums.

Huevos (1987). OK, here they turn into ZZ Top.  Heavy distortion, lots of blues, lots of riffage, and proof that the Pups could rock like hell when they wanted to.  Quite the aptly named album.

Monsters (1989).  Somewhere between the wild, fun aggression of Huevos and the fussy perfectionism of Mirage, Monsters has some great songs, but it sounds overplanned.  At least, it sounds overplanned for the Meat Pups, which isn't to say it sounds that planned.  Just less crazy than you'd expect for an album that opens with "Attacked By Monsters."

Forbidden Places (1991). This was their first major-label album, and it's actually pretty great, sort of the flip side of Monsters.  The Pups have settled into a sound that's half-Mirage, half-Huevos again, but here they sound vital as hell.

Too High To Die and Backwater (1994). I think this was their best-selling album, with a push from their popular single "Backwater" and their appearance with Nirvana on the acoustic album.  I sorta wish they'd gone out on this note, because Too High To Die is a pretty fun album, with elements from everywhere they'd gone beforehand and a new version of "Lake of Fire" at the end. The Backwater single has a few other tracks, most notably an acoustic version of "Up On The Sun."  After this was the pretty awful 1995 album No Joke. Then, as I wrote back in the beginning of this post, break-ups, faked-up versions of the band, and now the Kirkwood brothers back together again.  Listening to these albums made me want to hear the newer material, just to see how it shapes up.

At Dog Canyon: Love, Arthur Lee-Style

Thoughts on Love and Arthur Lee.

Last column, which I forgot to post: Laurie Anderson Battles The Pink Robots.

Music Library: Mauricio Kagel, Max Roach, Mayflies USA, MC 900 Ft Jesus, MC5, Mclusky

Mauricio Kagel - Ludwig Van (1969) and Acustica (1971). The avant-garde composer made a good bit more music than I have.  The first of these is the soundtrack to a film Kagel made about Herr Beethoven's music that is fascinatingly as if one of Beethoven's symphonies ran into Brion Gysin's cut-up method of literature.  The latter work is also fascinating, with all sorts of found sounds clashing and clanging their way from din into music.

Max Roach - We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (1960) and Members, Don't Git Weary (1968).  The former is a pretty amazing piece of music co-written by Roach and Oscar Brown Jr. Roach has assembled an amazing band with Abbey Lincoln singing, humming, and scatting vocals.  Lyrically and musically, this work is about the history of African-Americans in this country, culminating in the Civil Rights Movement that was finally starting to edge ahead at the time of its release.  The latter album has Roach playing a pretty joyous version of modal post-bop jazz.

The Mayflies USA - "You and Me" and "Florida to the Radio." A couple of folky power pop tunes by a North Carolinian group.

MC 900 Ft Jesus - Hell With The Lid Off (1990), Welcome To My Dream (1991), and One Step Ahead of the Spider (1994).  These were a gift that I'd shamefully never listened to prior to this.  Allmusic tells me that this is early trip-hop, which sounds as good as any sort of genre label.  It's clearly influenced by electronica and hip-hop as well as noir music (and fiction and movies) and William Burroughs-style mindfuckery (and that's two Burroughs references in the same group of reviews, if you're keeping track).  Since my only prior exposure to them was their ubiquity in used bins during the 90s, I was surprised by how enjoyable they are.

MC5 - Kick Out The Jams (1969), Back In The USA (1970), and High Time (1971).  MC5 were the original loud and grungy Detroit rockers, mentors to The Stooges, forerunners to punk, pretty much ground zero for rock that sounds loud and dumb but is really smarter than you.  Kick Out The Jams is easily the best of the three, but all three are fantastic.

Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas (2002) and The Difference Between Me And You Is That I'm Not On Fire (2004).  Ultra-clever Welsh punk rock band with catchy melodies under the traditional punk start-stop loud-quiet dynamics.  Best track: "Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues."  Now an ex-band, although a couple of these guys have gone on to form the similar Future Of The Left.