Missed Obituaries

Twice in recent weeks I've stumbled upon news of deaths in the music world well after the fact.

I only learned of Ian Copeland's death from the credits for Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out. Ian, one of Stewart's brothers, was the band's manager and booking agent. He served in a similar capacity to a bunch of other bands that helped define 1980s. He died last May. I'm still amused by the names of the outfits of the Copeland brothers, a response to their father's serving in the CIA. Ian's agency was FBI. Miles' record label was IRS. Stewart is in the Police. I was preoccupied with caring for a newborn at the time of Ian's death, but it didn't make much news beyond the music world.

Chalk it up to geography that I missed the news that Aldo Jones died of leukemia in 2001 at age 41. Jones was a member of the Ben Vaughn Combo and worked with many other Philly musicians in the late 80s and early 90s when I was seeing a lot of local Philly acts. On one of my first dates with an old boyfriend, grabbing a bite at Silk City at the end of the night, Aldo walked in. That both of us considered this a celebrity sighting sums up the foundation of that relationship. News of his passing didn't make it to Chicago, and I'm no longer connected to that scene for someone to have tipped me off.

It wasn't until I discovered allmusic and starting looking up my favorite bands that I learned that lots of my favorite music is considered part of the same genre and that it has a name: post-punk. I just thought of it as music I like.

I recently came upon an 80s post-punk archetype: Josef K. The first time I heard the band on the radio, I was confused. They sounded familiar without sounding familiar, in that I knew I'd never actually heard them before although their sound resembled lots that I'd heard before. There were glints of the angularity of the Fall, Gang of Four and early Echo & the Bunnymen, the jangly pop of the Woodentops and the revved-up jangly pop of early Wedding Present. That they had previously escaped my attention, apart from recognizing their name from the 1991 edition of the Trouser Press record guide, is not surprising considering that they only issued one proper album, The Only Fun in Town, before breaking up, and that album never had a U.S. release. Their new compilation, Entomology, rounds up 22 album tracks and singles for a worthy introduction to American ears.

I had merely planned to review Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out when much bigger news about the band broke: Holy crap! They're getting back together. The band announced that they will play at the Grammy Awards on February 11, and a full tour is rumored.

Now back to that movie review. Drummer Stewart Copeland bought a Super 8 movie camera early in his career with the band and managed to document them in their time together, from their early struggles to massive fame. Through wise editing of the 50 or so hours of footage on the road, in the studio, on the stage and pressed up against the fans, he gives a clear view of what it was like living through it all. His narration is insightful, making their eventual break-up a natural conclusion without placing blame. That said, Sting sometimes comes across as an obnoxious alpha male even when they're getting along just fine, and the film reaffirmed my belief that Copeland is not only one of the best drummers of all time, he's also one of the coolest.

One of the most annoying current cliches in journalism is making reference to AARP to say that someone is old. For once, talking about aging and making reference to AARP isn't a cliche. In today's Chicago Tribune, Barbara Brotman catches up with former Buzzcocks bass player Steve Garvey to discuss the cultural meaning of the band's "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" being used in AARP ad campaign. The interview also goes beyond the usual "where are they now" piece since they delve into what aging has been like for Garvey, now a carpenter with a kid in college.

In recent years, Iggy Pop's backing bands have been a lot like the Chicago Cubs. The long-standing complaint about the Cubs is that the owners won't bother investing money in the team itself because they know that Wrigley Field is the real draw for the fans, not how well the team plays. Likewise, Iggy's backing band is usually merely adequate because no one comes to an Iggy show for anything but the man himself, so he has no incentive to hire spectacular musicians.

That is changing. After a handful of tracks together on Iggy's last album, 2003's Skull Ring, and a handful of shows, Iggy and the surviving Stooges are reuniting for a full album and tour. The Weirdness, due out March 20, was recorded by Steve Albini and features ex-Minuteman Mike Watt taking over for the deceased Dave Alexander on bass. They plan to tour, including a stop at the South by Southwest Music Festival in March.

Movie Review: loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies

I'm a sucker for a well-done documentary about a band I like, and loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies fills the bill. It displays the greatness of the music that I already loved. It tells me more about the personalities than I knew previously. Kim Deal is the most gracious with the fans, perhaps because, as a female musician, she's still an anomaly and therefore a role model to teenage girls. Dave Lovering is sad, in several meanings of the word, his career as a magician looking disturbingly similar to Gob Bluth's on Arrested Development. Joey Santiago is the most well-adjusted of the bunch, a committed family man who is torn about touring keeping him away from his growing brood at home. Kim's twin sister Kelley, brought along by Kim for moral support, is a fun, blunt addition, not merely a hanger-on.

The scenes where Black Francis (sorry, I just can't quite think of him as Charles Thompson or Frank Black) gets interviewed, resurrected my range of emotions about my days of doing them. On one hand, I recalled why I enjoyed interviewing him several times, especially when he offered his suggestion that if the band were to start recording again, they should really start from scratch with a new name like Vomit Squad. On the other hand, the footage of his phone interviews showed him just as disengaged as I suspected some of my telephone interview subjects were. During the first phoner, he's fiddling with an eyeglass case while talking. During the second, he's lying on his hotel bed in just his underwear, which caused a collective shudder by the audience at the Music Box.

The concert footage proved insightful, too. It reconfirmed my belief that, as wonderfully original as the Pixies' music is, the band was always short on charismatic stage presence, which may have limited their popularity as much as an inherent weirdness to their sound. But it also showcased guitarist Joey as an underrated talent. As singers and songwriters Black Francis and Kim always garnered more attention, but Joey's unique riffs are a large part of their distinctive sound.

Concert Recommendation: "The Last Show on Earth" A Halloween Rock n Roll Circus!" featuring Sickidz, October 28, The Khyber

All good things must come to an end. Philly band Sickidz (who I'd written about previously) had reunited, but now they're calling it quits again with a Halloween-themed blowout at the Khyber. Among the special guests are Palmyra Delran and Barb Dwyer, who were members of Pink Slip Daddy with frontman Mick Cancer after the Sickidz's initial demise. Mick performs with the kind of charismatic abandon that suggests that the only limit to their fame was that they only toured regionally. This should be quite the party.

Sickidz play with special guests Palmyra Delran, Barb Dwyer and Joe Ankenbrand plus Jukebox Zeroes, King of Siam The Warm Jets at the Khyber, 56 S. Second St., Philadelphia, 215.238.5888 on Saturday, October 28 at 9:00 p.m.

I just learned about Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Two related observations struck me: the writers were trying to out-obscure the readers and each other with their picks, and, not surprisingly, almost none of it was written by women. Yes, folks, it's a High Fidelity movement. Male music geeks are just as competitive as their jock counterparts but on a different playing field.

I mentioned this to a colleague, who tipped me off to the news that High Fidelity, Nick Hornby's beloved novel about obsessive list-compilers who wield their obscure music knowledge as a weapon against the less informed at a record shop, has been made into a musical. And just to get my competitive geekiness out of the way, I'll point out that the NPR story got one of its facts wrong. They called the musical the third incarnation of the novel, the second being the film starring John Cusack. They were unaware of the play The Vinyl Shop that was produced by a small theater company in Chicago prior to the film. The actor who played Barry in stage production was one of the Championship Vinyl customers. (I take particular music geek pride in all things related to the book since I was an extra in the movie.)

Requiem for a Record Store in Three Movements

Tower Records didn't survive bankruptcy. On Friday, their assets were auctioned off. The stores are having liquidation sales.

The Music Fan

As I started to really get into music in my late teens, the record store at the mall just wasn't cutting it. My tastes were turning too obscure for what could be sold in storefront between suburban department stores. Back before you could buy anything on Amazon, Tower Records was record-buying mecca. They had everything cool. They had everything old. They were open until midnight, so I could pick up the new Nine Inch Nails on my way to Dobbs or after a show at the TLA further down South Street in Philly. Going there could be an event unto itself, a date spent browsing for new CDs.

What made Tower different from other chain stores wasn't just their depth of inventory but the depth of knowledge by their staff. Not only did they know and care about music, they looked like they knew and cared about music, unlike the tools at the mall stores who had to wear ties and red vests and looked like they could just as easily been selling smoked cheese logs or personalized golf towels. Members of many bands passed through their ranks of employment. When I suggested to an editor of Pulse, their in-house magazine, that they do a story of former employees who went on to greater fame as musicians, she said there were far too many, although I think Perry Farrell's name was mentioned.

Tower indirectly launched my writing career. While scouting for reading matter for a long plane ride, I hit their magazine section and stumbled upon B-Side. Unlike Rolling Stone, which I was finding increasingly exasperating, it covered nothing but music. It covered the music I was listening to such as Echo and the Bunnymen rather than Huey Lewis and the News. I was shocked to read the masthead and discover it was published locally. The record store at the mall had no interest in 'zines or local publications. B-Side was my first writing outlet.

My experience as a consumer is typical in explaining their demise. I don't have extensive time to browse record stores anymore. Amazon and Tower's own web site have taken away the thrill of the chase, so my only limitation is whether I'm willing to shell out for import prices, not whether I can merely locate an obscure album. I can download songs for instant gratification. No one has bought records at record stores in ages, but no one ever called them CD stores.

The Employee

Until I worked at RollingStone.com, being a sales clerk at Tower in London was my coolest job. Yes, the pay was meager but I was surrounded by music and by people who cared about music. We sneered at those picking up Samantha Fox's record (now mercifully forgotten by most). We lauded the parents visiting from America who could actually name bands their kids liked when asking records that couldn't be found back home. David Bowie shopped there. The place was constructed with a DJ booth, although the position was cut by my second summer on staff. My mother suggested that I should try to transfer to accounting so that I could make more money, but then I would have just been a bean counter in an anonymous office when I wanted to be swimming in rock and roll.

When I returned to Wharton after my first summer at Tower, my classmates were bragging about their summer internships, working 60-hour weeks on Wall Street. I kept quiet, but thought to myself that I probably learned more as part of the working class in a foreign city, supporting myself on 100 quid a week (slang for "pounds" being one of the facts I picked up).

The Librarian

While I no longer have time to spend hours browsing record stores for fun, it is now part of my job, doing collection development for a public library. Tower was our favorite place to do so. I still had the thrill of the chase but more importantly the benefit of serendipitous finds. For my boss shopping for jazz and classical, the staff's in-depth knowledge was an invaluable source of recommendations. There was also the entertaining distraction of things worth a laugh even if we wouldn't buy it for the library.

Unfortunately, Tower's inability to provide sufficiently-detailed invoicing proved the death knell for our library's financial relations with them. I miss the field trips to the store because it meant heading into Lincoln Park instead of the suburbs. I miss being mistaken for Tower staff, even when carrying a baby, because I was marking a list and hauling around dozens of CDs. I miss finding out about the new Cinerama album because they were playing it in the store, even if it was followed by the horrible new Janet Jackson album. I'm saddened that a large chain employing lots of people who are there because they care about music can't survive.

The timing of the auction was particularly depressing because I headed to a conference of music librarians on Friday preparing to give a talk on collection development, and recommending Tower for their selection, staff knowledge and useful web site was part of speech. The information was already outdated by the end of the day.

I can't help but notice how much "Nausea," off Beck's new album The Information, sounds like "Going South" by the Wolfgang Press. Considering how low the Wolfgang Press's profile is, I'll be amazed if any review comments on this. Hell, I'll be amazed if anyone besides me recognizes this.

I had intended to tout the Futureheads show at the Metro on October, but the band has canceled their October tour dates because guitarist Barry Hyde has tendonitis in his wrist.

Concert Recommendation: Little Steven's Rolling Rock and Roll Show, Durty Nellie's, September 13

Little Steven's Underground Garage is sponsoring a national tour. Need I say more than the line-up? (Also known as I don't have time to write more.) The Zombies, The Mooney Suzuki, The Woggles, Gore Gore Girls plus local act Catfish Haven. It all adds up to reason to head to the 'burbs on a weeknight.

Little Steven's Rolling Rock and Roll Show, Durty Nellies, 180 N. Smith Street, Palatine, (847)358-9150 at 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 13.

Concert Recommendation: Mudhoney and the Cynics, Double Door, Friday, September 1

Double bills don't come much more promising than this one. Two bands of rip-snorting rock and roll who put on amazing shows, in a venue just the right size to see all the dripping sweat. Come worship at the altar of the electric guitar is all its fuzzed-up glory. Marvel at charismatic frontmen. Then cry for me because I can't go.

Mudhoney and the Cynics play the Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, 773.489.3160, at 9:00 p.m., Friday, September 1.

Concert Review: The Church and Rob Dickinson, Park West, August 18

Unlike the Church's October, 1998 show, this one lacked the power to change my life, but it was a fine entertainment. Most notably, the band was cheerfully relaxed and informal. Where Steve Kilbey is usually taciturn, this time he was positively loquacious. The members frequently switched instruments, resulting in jokes about Marty Willson-Piper's tendency to break drum sticks. They messed around with arrangements, adding flamenco, English folk and jazz flourishes to familiar favorites to refresh them. Kilbey gave a shout-out to the recently departed Grant McLennan when the band played "Providence," by Kilbey and McLennan's side project Jack Frost.

Rob Dickinson, former lead singer for the Catherine Wheel, has a solo album and is, only slightly facetiously, recasting himself as a sensitive singer songwriter. Armed with only an acoustic guitar, he struggled mightly with his desire to recreate the thunderous wall of sound his old outfit generated.

Back in high school, I had a few rules about the car stereo: No Ozzy Osbourne. No AC/DC. If they came on the radio, I'd change the station no matter how my passengers felt. I sucked it up and willingly went to an AC/DC concert years later as a favor to a friend; she wanted to photograph them for the magazine we both worked for, so I agreed to review the show, but that still didn't violate the car rule.

Now I've got a toddler son who is both crazy about trains and will request that I sing even the shortest snippet of a song again and again. When he was enthusing about a train when we were driving recently, I sang the one-line chorus of Ozzy's "Crazy Train," which I had to fake in parts, "We're going (mumble mumble) rails of the crazy train." He demanded, "Again," over and over. I obliged a few times since he is irresistibly charming. Then I tried switching to "I've Been Working on the Railroad," but he responded, "Crazy Train," and continued to request it. So I broke down and borrowed an Ozzy CD from the library so I could play him the whole song, which I've already done twice, much to his delight.

I've decided to use "Crazy Train" as the starting point for a mix CD for him, "Train Tracks." I'll fill it with lots of songs about trains, especially ones that are not obviously appropriate for a toddler, like "5:15" by the Who and Love & Rockets' "Kundalini Express." I'm just following the High Fidelity definition of true selfless love: when you make a mix of songs the other person will like instead of what you think they should like, although I'll still skip "Casey Jones" by the Grateful Dead.

It's a sad but oft-repeated tale in music business: an artist releases an album. Their label folds and all corporate support for marketing and promoting it evaporate. Such was the fate of World Party's impossibly wonderful Egyptology. I reviewed an advance copy and eventually stopped writing for the publication where I freelanced because the meddling editor challenged my perfect rating for it. But around the time that it was hitting the store shelves in 1997, the Enclave, the label behind the US release, was killed off by parent Chrysalis. The album was ignored and is now out of print. The good news in the UK was that Robbie Williams held the album in the same high esteem that I did, and his cover of "She's the One" was a big hit there, but Williams has never found an audience in the US.

Dumbing Up, the follow-up to Egyptology, is finally coming out in the US, a mere six years after its UK release. World Party mastermind Karl Wallinger is releasing it on his own label Seaview. More details about the project, the band's recent history and upcoming US tour dates are at http://www.worldparty.net.

Just how cool is my baby? The one-month-old was fussy last night, and the only thing that finally calmed him down was Fun House by the Stooges.

Here's one mystery solved. The current exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center, "Nick Cave: Soundsuits," has nothing to do with the diminutive Australian singer who frequently dons a suit for his concerts. Same name, different person entirely.

Just how cool is the Librarian of Congress? Cool enough to name Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation to the National Recording Registry, one of 50 recordings each year that are deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Other worthy musical recordings were also added, but none as hip and unexpected as this. Or to put it another way, I suspect the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will be much more reluctant to acknowledge Sonic Youth's cultural, historic and aesthetic significance within the narrower realm of rock music after they become eligible for induction in 2008.

The full press release is at:
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06-083.html

My friend GirlDetective, also the mother of two young children (My new son was born March 27.) recently blogged "I Resemble That Remark," linking to an article from New York about recent trends among Gen-X parents:

When did it become normal for your average 35-year-old New Yorker to (a) walk around with an iPod plugged into his ears at all times, listening to the latest from Bloc Party . . . (f) decide that Sufjan Stevens is the perfect music to play for her 2-year-old, because, let’s face it, 2-year-olds have lousy taste in music, and we will not listen to the Wiggles in this house;

Not to get defensive, but I'm 40, not 35, and have Bloc Party on my iPod. As for the Sufjan Stevens observation, it's not my fault if neither my 22-month-old nor I liked the Sharon, Lois and Bram CD from the library but we both enjoyed the Clean Anthology. Here I was thinking that I'm probably the only mom my age with young kids who actually has an opinion on Deerhoof (They're wretched; their artiness exacerbates their basic musical incompetence.) when it turns out I'm just part of a larger demographic shift.

That said, I don't fit the full stereotype. I may be into music and into sharing my favorite music with my kids (It was so convenient to stop at Target and get NIN's With Teeth the day of release since I needed babyproofing supplies, too.) And I may be style-conscious, but I don't live in jeans or spend the kind of money they're talking about on clothes.

On the flip side, it is possible to find fun kids' music that isn't insipid. We've had to balance it with Ben Vaughn, P-Funk, Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane, but Wiggleworms Love You has been a huge hit with my toddler.