This Is Book's Music

The music on You Can’t Fall Off The Floor (self-released) is the kind of rock/pop that should be getting a lot of attention, compared to other artists who are noted for it but aren’t that good. The opening track, “Silence Is The Loudest Answer”, sounds like something very close to U2′s more sensitive moments, but head to “Gone And Done It Now” and one may hear a bit of Nick Lowe, the vocal stylings of Mr. Big’s “To Be With You”, or even a bit of Styx circa Paradise Theater.

Comparisons aside, what makes What Made Milwalkee Famous so irresistible is that hint of familiarity that record labels have loved for years, but it sounds like they’re having fun doing it. Maybe that’s the point: to make music that sells based on music that sold before, and maybe it’s because these guys sound so effortless that we’re… okay, that I’m expected to think all music like this is machine-made goods. Not so. These guys know how to make decent music because they’ve studied the music they’re fans of, but by creating familiar themes, they end up exploring their own talents to discover what they have, and that is sounds that people should be paying attention to. Pop music as it is today comes off like instant flukes, but there’s a level of substance on You Can’t Fall Off The Floor that I rather like, because each song keeps me there to listen to the next, and the next. That cannot be said for the other music passing itself off as popular. Give me this instead.

This week, on March 17th, marks the 35th anniversary of Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ second album, This Year’s Model. The album cover is notable for featuring Costello snapping a photo with his now-well-known pair of glasses. The UK had one version with Costello holding his left hand out, along with the design being off-center and containing color bars on the right side, exactly like someone printing a magazine or album cover, but an inch off from its intended position. The US version doesn’t have the extra “error” and uses an alternate photo from the session, with Costello crouching down towards the camera for the perfect shot. It is the album that featured songs like “Pump It Up” and “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea”. The US version featured the song “Radio, Radio”, which was my first exposure to his music when I saw the video in a special TV section build outside of a record store at Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu.

Singer Justin Timberlake was on last night’s Saturday Night Live not only as the guest, but its musical guests. A very funny show, one of the placards shown in between segments featured Timberlake with a camera and nerdy glasses, thus honoring Costello and (whether it was intentional or not, I’m not sure) the 35th anniversary of This Year’s Model.

It shows that when it comes to pop music, Timberlake’s aim is true as well.

Meaty, beaty, big & noisy as fuck: that’s what this album from Interlard sounds like, and it’s ultragood. If you love your sounds a bit claustrophobic, turned up to 11 but with a sense of groove that makes it too interesting to ignore, check out Meanwhile, five songs where the song lengths are as interesting as the music itself. Shortest song is about 2:45 while the longest song is 13:16. Imagine the last two minutes of Nirvana’s “Endless Nameless” mixed in with some of the deafening jams of Sonic Youth, cut up with the tribal groove of !!! and a sense of distorted freedom that comes from understanding the combination of experimentation and minimalism, and you have what Interlard are about in these five songs. Take on the album closer “Tear Smell”, and it’s a delusional mind fuck sandwiched between two slices of beautiful sounds, as if birth and death are the only times when one will be able to hear sounds grandeur, and life is just a doomed mess. Maybe that’s what it is, or maybe not, but it’s Interlard.

Brooklyn is where Mic Handz calls home, and out of the HQ comes a track called “All I Know”, featuring the assistance of Rock or Heltah Skeltah fame, and here he goes by The Rockness Monstah. As Mic Handz says in the track, you’ll have to “go and get your head together” after listening to this one, a bit of the gritty and griminess.

The work “leak” should not apply to something done officially, so the news about Foot Village “leaking” the final cover for their forthcoming album and its track listing? I will not use that word, so let’s officially begin this in the second paragraph.

Foot Village will be releasing a new album in March called Make Memories (Northern Spy), and as a preview, the band are sharing the track listing:
1. 1600 Dolla Bill
2. This Song Is A Drug Deal
3. AIDS Sucks, Make Money
4. New Jersey
5. Warlock
6. The End Of The World

Not only that, but they’re also a video trailer, a means of a tease.

An album sampler is also being made available, fill in the box below:

The album will be made available for pre-sale beginning on December 21st over at Northern Spy.

I’ve been a fan of Anastacia since she was a runner-up in the short-lived MTV talent show The Cut, enjoyed her first two albums big time and while she achieved a bit of success in Europe, home grown success in America was not as big as it should have been. Nonetheless she pushed on and has continued to record music over the years. Her new project features her doing all covers, specifically of songs fronted by men, thus the title It’s A Man’s World (BMG Rights Management). While this is an official album, this is the equilavent of a “street album” in hip-hop. In this case, this is meant to be something to make fans anticipate an album of all new material due out in 2013, but after listening to this, I wonder if this was even necessary.

On the good side, she has Glen Ballard to produce the entire project, so when it rocks on the musical side, it definitely stays true to the original versions. She has the vocal capabilities to do each song one better, but only does this in maybe half of the tracks, which includes AC/DC’s “Back In Black”, Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, U2′s “One”, and Kings Of Leon’s “Use Somebody”. Her take of Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” is respectable but I wish she really allowed herself to get freaky, as Robert Plant did in the original. When she gets to taking on “Best Of You” by the Foo Fighters, it makes me wish the entire album was as strong as this track. Taking on The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” makes sense, and she pulls it off beautifully.

Some of the other tracks seem like toss-off choices, such as Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love A Bad Name” or Oasis’ “Wonderwall”, but perhaps her objective was to choose songs that are genuine radio hits in order to find herself in rotation in classic rock radio circles. I’d love to see and hear this with Anastacia but I would have selected songs that are more ballsy, and these are mainstream accessible. Then again, even doing something like Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” would’ve been cool, but someone like Nikka Costa would have pulled it off better.

Anastacia now shows a rock side that she may choose to cater to every now and then, and while the obvious response to It’s A Woman’s World would be “it would be nothing without a woman or a girl”, it’s nice that she does give these songs a feminine touch, more daring on some tracks where she keeps to a male perspective, so if you listen to “Ramble On”, she is looking for the queen of her dreams herself.

While I may not take a liking to it in full, European audiences are, as her album has already achieved Top 20 status. If she does a rock project like this, I would love for her to do at least two or three songs that are more daring, along with songs that pop audiences may be familiar with.

This is the day that Headnodic releases a new album called The Iguana, my review of which can be read by clicking here. My words offer praise for an incredible recording, and I say this without being related to the main. My worse are not false, it’s that good and if you’d like to get a hint of that goodness, there’s a video ready for the song “Mandelorian”, featuring Kat Ouano, Tom Ayers, and Max MacVeety in assistance. The video also has a hi-res option so check that out too.

There was a time in recorded music history where if someone showed an interest in something not directly related to music, it was considered the end of their career. You could not do something “other than” music or face the risk of constant questions about your music downfall. That has definitely changed in the last 20 to 30 years. Music and art have always been close companions, and Incubus drummer Jose Pasillas has had a union with his art for years, showing it on a number of their different projects. Now he’s about to share that love of art with an exhibit beginning on November 1st called Abstract + Rhythm Landscapes, which will feature 100 pieces, each one hand numbered and signed by the artist. The exhibit is said to be his combination of rhythm and art, or what the press releases calls “a sonic landscape where rhythm is translated onto canvas through the use of a sophisticated process that converts drumstrokes into color and light.” Pasillas is also into stencils, so you’ll definitely see a mixture of the scholastic with certain graffiti styles along the way, or as Pasillas himself states, “I also like repetition, and stenciling is perfect for repetition.”

To find out more, click the video above.

News about Dave Grohl announcing a time-out for the Foo Fighters went live this morning, leading to immediate reaction, and speculation about the future of Grohl and the band. Reading Grohl’s own statement, it seems that for him and everyone else in the group, the time is right to do this:

Hey everyone…

Dave

The news and letter from Grohl is perhaps leading many to wonder why. For any musician, health is important. I’m not just talking physical health, but mental and creative health. That’s not to say that the Foo Fighters have lost their creative edge or they gave up on pushing themselves, but look at Grohl’s rise in success not only for himself, but for the Foo. Up until he joined Nirvana, it was only punk, hardcore, and alternative kids who knew who this drummer from Scream was. He had moved to Washington, D.C. and became the band’s drummer in his teens, and their fanbase was small but loyal. People loved his contribution to their sound, and they toured like crazy. With the alternative music boom of the late 80′s and early 90′s, Grohl would become a focus, but things went crazy when it was announced he would become a member of a band from “the other Washington” known as Nirvana. Kurt Cobain’s death left a void after incredible success with their second and third albums, but Grohl didn’t stop. He was already making tapes at home of his own material, multi-tracking everything, and that would be the Foo Fighters, where the only Foo on the album was him. While attention towards the Foo was focused on “the former Nirvana drummer”, he proved that he could do a lot more. Most drummers don’t get attention from the background unless they push themselves. He not only stepped up to the microphone, but he played the guitar. He was not afraid to play the fool in his videos, and the live band he had chosen would become the Foo Fighters group proper. Since the mid-1990′s, Grohl has been one of the more in-demand drummers out there, and he has always satisfied his muse by getting involved in many projects, including those of his childhood and adult musical heroes.

The new century also showed a change and shift in the music industry, with some wondering how some popular forms of music were not as popular, while there were artists who seemed to dominate the charts. It got to a point where some critics felt that the Foo Fighters were one of the few mainstream hard rock acts to not only release successful albums, but also go on tours that would also become successes. They weren’t so much role models for those who may have admired them, but they were the lone cubs. The Foo Fighters were still making new and vibrant music, they are not a nostalgia act and yet they were up there with the ranks of Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Celine Dion. That’s not to take away anything from heavy music, because there’s a wealth of great and new music coming out on a regular basis. For a generation, the Foo Fighters were not only one of the few, but sometimes it felt like they were the only ones out there. While that may be good to be the sole group, sometimes creativity, passion, and drive comes from having competition out there, even through the true competitor is yourself.

Fortunately, Grohl has always found other projects to do, but with the word “hiatus” being thrown around for the Foo Fighters, is that just a calmer way to say break-up? If so, do we ask why or do we say “who cares?” That’s not to say that no one cares, but I think the issue of a band’s status comes from those who want more from their favorite bands, which only leads to a debate over fading out of the spotlight at the right moment vs. “we want you to rock forever”. Would it be different if Grohl didn’t make a statement? Perhaps, he could have easily remained quiet and come back in 2014 or 2015 and boom: new album and tour. Again, Grohl has been involved in many projects. Maybe he wants to show his Foo Fighters fan base that he has always been more than Foo, and if you like him for his work with that band, then follow his path wherever he chooses to go. The diehard fans will do that. I loved the Foo Fighters documentary where they all talked about their roots and origins, and how surprised they are to be where they are today. One can argue that perhaps Grohl is comfortable and wants to live a more sane life. He has been performing, recording, writing, and singing for 26 years. Maybe he wants to go fishing, head to Goodwill and by ceramic owls. Go to Wal-Mart at 2am and buy Preparation H. He might want to become a nurse, or become a part of the 2016 Olympic archery team. Or maybe this will be the moment when Grohl will be replaced in his own band by Alanis Morissette and truly freak people out.

Either way, whether it is a time out, a hiatus, a thinly guised break-up, or just his way of saying “my feet are sore”, be thankful for the music Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters have created. Even if you hate them, this only means your hate will/should end for the time being. Focus it on someone else you don’t care about. Grohl probably wouldn’t mind.

I’d welcome the return of Dale Nixon for a few projects, though. Now I’m being greedy.