Author: andrea Page 52 of 71

Los Angeles isn’t a city that inspires misty-eyed recollections. There’s nothing soft about the place (unlike, say, San Francisco). While New York City is mythic, larger-than-life, Los Angeles remains earthbound and squat. (Tthe glamorous yet codependently clingy aura of Hollywood remains so much Tinkerbell dust —merely cosmetic.) We don’t remember it for its vistas (the ocean, the sunsets) but for the sprawl, the congestion, the gritty, sleazoid drama of the place. It’s no wonder it’s the town of Noir. It’s perpetually 1956 in La-La Land. It’s always dusk. It’s always smoky.

Exene Cervenka’s a bit of a nomad, having toured the world many times over as a member of X, the Knitters, and Original Sinners (to name but a few). But her collages feel like LA to me. They capture it in all its messy, colorful, kitschy and slightly overheated intensity. Tacky throwaway rick-rack (ticket stubs, hyperbolic ad slogans, bingo cards, religious tracts, cigarette cartons, old postcards), arranged artfully, gives way to moments of the most delicate profundity. Or, as Christine McKenna puts it in her introduction to Exene’s latest monograph, MAGICAL METEORITE SONGWRITING DEVICE, “each piece she’s made is a valentine to a fragile America that’s disappearing before our very eyes.”

There is a real tenderness to these pieces. What would be trash under less careful guidance blossoms under Exene’s benign curation. Disparate, often ugly pieces of unwanted detritus undergo an alchemical transformation, turning lustrous and even profound. Exene’s love of wordplay shines through, and impromptu, wry poems leap unbidden from almost every page.”The girl who forgot the blind’s (sic) weren’t drawn/Pull up then down provided by the management.” “Heartbreak express/Good for one beer.” Or simply: “Why not?”

MAGICAL METEORITE SONGWRITING DEVICE | Hardcover, 50 pages, ISBN 978-0-9763009-2-2, $35. It is available directly from Perceval Press.

***

My friend Leslie passed away in her sleep this past weekend. Since I’d moved away from SF we’d mostly fallen out of touch. In fact, the last time I saw her was at a Knitters show at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Leslie loved music to her core, and she wrote about it with fervor, intellectual rigor, and her omnipresent sense of humor. Here’s a snippet which, although brief, gives you a sense of Leslie’s vibrant voice:

Q. Say the Rock Show Attendee’s Creed.A. I believe in Iggy, Jimi, Chrissie, and Joe Strummer, the Parents Almighty, Creator of heaven on earth; I believe in Malcolm McClaren and Sid Vicious, His only Son. I believe in punk, lo-fi and gangsta, indie, post-punk, indie-pop, rock, singer-songwriter, and insurgent country, conceived by Uncle Tupelo, born of Jeff Tweedy who suffers, as does Lou Barlow. I believe in Squirrelbait and Johnny Cash. I believe in the Motor City. I will respectfully love and fear Tad. I believe in Superchunk and PJ Harvey. I believe in new bands and will never pretend to know music I have never heard, so my mind may stay open and I will sitteth at the right hand of Mission of Burma so I may one day ascend to heaven, where I will be greeted by Sonic Youth, Eazy-E, and Mike Watt. I will not listen to rock critics, but trust my own ears. I believe in DIY, zines, Yo La Tengo, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of Cobain, and rock everlasting. Amen.

Amen. We’ll miss you, Leslie.

***

Perceval Press / Info | X’s MySpace Page (I think it’s official —hard to tell.) | Buy The Knitters + X | X / The Knitters | Leslie Harpold***

The Knitters, “I’ll Go Down Swinging”

X, “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” [1997 Mix]

ARTWORK BY EXENE CERVENKA FROM “MAGICAL METEORITE SONGWRITING DEVICE.”

The Slits
Live at The Syrup Room, Brooklyn
Revenge of the Killer Slits EP [S•A•F Records, 2006]

There are so many reasons to love the Slits. Part of the first wave of punk, they quickly transcended their origins as bratty but exuberant amateurs to create a wildly original body of work. They weren’t afraid to be complex. They embraced the messiness and contradictions inherent in being a woman. One second they’d be critiquing society’s determination to put women into narrow little boxes of expectation (“Who invented the typical girl?/ Who’s bringing out the new improved model? / There’s another marketing ploy —typical girl meets the typical boy”); the next they’d be signing about the sting of getting fucked over again. Personal + political, and back again. But it all felt organic. That’s the Slits in a nutshell: ORGANIC. From their messy first demos to the infamous cover of their debut album Cut (you know, the one with the mud and the loincloths depicting the ladies going back to nature) to their gradual evolution into a more lyrically holistic, dub-inflected group, everything they did felt like it was part of an exuberant continuum.

That’s why I didn’t know what to think when I heard earlier this year that group founders Ari and Tessa were reuniting for some recording and a subsequent tour. (Other founding members Viv Albertine and Palmolive chose to pass.) As much as the thought of FINALLY getting to see them excited me, I was worried that it was happening for the wrong reasons (I couldn’t imagine the answer was “money,” but it did cross my mind) rather than for the right ones (what they had to say after all this time away from the spotlight).

Now that I’ve seen them, though, the answers almost (almost!) don’t matter. In an era when punk is reflexively equated with mopey testosterone-driven bands, the Slits’ celebration of feminine rhythms and power feels like a necessary tonic. (Yes, even now, in an era when women can and do succeed in music, and are (more importantly) succeeding on their own terms.) The Slits —along with their peers like Poly Styrene— helped pave the way for a more natural, unselfconscious sexuality (it’s not for nothing they’re name-checked in Le Tigre’s feminist roll-call-to-arms “Hot Topic”). Their nurturing radicalism —so ahead of its time in 1977— feels very of-the-moment.

So, too, does their signature blending of dub, dancehall, and punk. Back in the day, Don Letts used to play dub plates in punk clubs because punk records didn’t exist yet. At the time, there was no division between dub and punk. And punk hadn’t yet become the music of pseudo-disenfranchised white boys but music of the disenfranchised, period. Over the years, though, as punk slowly stratified into an aggro white boys’ club, dub got voted off the island. It’s always good to have it back.

The one off note of the show came in the form of Ari’s intermittent reminders that “the Slits invented punky reggae!” or “This is a genre the Slits invented!” etc. Ari’s asides were jarringly self-inflicted reminders that the group’s heyday had long since passed. They snapped me directly out of the moment (and, consequently, my enjoyment of the set) and dropped me into a running meta-commentary in my head comparing the Slits of legend with those of the present. Calling attention to the elephant in the room (namely, the group’s storied history) may have been Ari’s way of deflecting the past, of cutting it down to size so it was no longer such a daunting entity. But it served to diminish the show going on right in front of us. Which is too bad, because on a purely immediate level the performance was hugely enjoyable —sloppy, yes, but fun and brash too. When she wasn’t making boasts, Ari was a fantastic presence wearing day-glo threads, mile-high dreads and a thousand-watt smile. She led us gleefully through the chorus of “Shoplifting” (“Do a runner! Do a runner!”); throughout the show she exhorted us to make bird sounds to add percussive, jungly élan to the proceedings. She pulled boys and girls up onstage during “Typical Girls,” sang a surprise duet with erstwhile Flying Lizard and NYU prof Vivien Goldman on “Revolution” and led us through not one but two rollicking versions of “Vindictive.” Anchored by Tessa’s booming basslines, the band found a stylistic happy medium between punky two-chord stompers and spaced-out, airy dub.

I wish I could say the same about Revenge of the Killer Slits, a 3-song EP of new material recorded over the summer by Paul Cook (Sex Pistols) and Marco Pirroni (Adam & The Ants, Rema-Rema, etc.). It never quite finds its footing, struggling for relevance over its brief 11-minute running time. By the time it settles in comfortably, it’s almost over.

Opening song “Slits Tradition” wants desperately to be a theme song of sorts, but it’s thin and repetitive, a pallid Go! Team retread. (For a more definitive Slits theme song, look no further than the celebratory “In the Beginning There Was Rhythm”, originally a split single with the Pop Group, since re-issued by Soul Jazz.) Second song “Number One Enemy,” a re-recorded early demo, sounds as half-baked as “Slits Tradition,” falling prey to a deeply muddled mix. (If you’re curious about the raucously punk side of the Slits, I’d recommend their Peel sessions.)

“Kill Them With Love” is where the EP catches fire, sounding fully in the present (rather than coyly self-conscious) for the first time. It’s rollicking and fun in an unselfconscious way. Even if it doesn’t make much sense, its jungly, expressionistic exuberance is infectious. There are some nice harmonies here (not sure if that’s Paul Cook’s daughter Holly singing along with Ari or someone else) and Ari’s lightning-fast rap about her own brand of social Darwinism is pretty entertaining. It gives me hope that the group’s next release will be less of a throwaway —let’s hope for a more consistent effort that retains their wicked sense of humor.

On the horizon: Blast First Petite’s reissue of Return of the Giant Slits [early 2007].
The Slits [official site] | Ari Up | S•A•F Records | In the Beginning There Was Rhythm [Soul Jazz post-punk/dub comp] | Blast First Petite [reissue]

The Slits, ”Liebe und Romanze (Slow Version)”

The Slits, ”In The Beginning There Was Rhythm”

The Slits, ”Heard It Through the Grapevine” | Live version from the Femme Fatale box set [year unknown]

I still haven’t recovered from an intense weekend of music. I went to Brainwaves, Brainwashed.com’s 10th anniversary festival, and it did not disappoint. Highlights of the weekend were wry Czech trickster Aranos, a Nurse with Wound collaborator who brought charm and sly humor to his violin-driven songs; the lilting, wistful electronica of Charles Atlas (aided for the performance by former Cursive violinist Gretta Cohn); a DJ set by Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound); a series of films by Peter Chistopherson (Coil); and exuberant, puckish sets from the incredibly Residential Irr(App)(Ext.) and wayward prog-psych of Volcano the Bear —the latter, as my friend put it, “like This Heat meets the Kids In the Hall.” That just about sums it up, really.

Steve Stapleton’s incredibly enjoyable DJ set sent me scrambling all over the vast reaches of the internet looking for the tracks he played. If anyone has a tracklist, please share. (You’d have to be the trainspotter to end all trainspotters to get all those songs —I’m clearly still on the kiddie slope when it comes to recognizing incredibly obscure music).

Of course, THAT sent me to the infamous Nurse with Wound List (you know the one —it came tipped in with the first Nurse With Wound album, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella). The unadorned, un-annotated list of 300+ names has subsequently become much sought-after by anyone even vaguely interested in proto-psych, Krautrock, free jazz, improv and outsider music.

Culled from the NWW List we have the delightful discovery of an early Sally Timms track (credited to “Sally Smmit and Her Musicians), the A-side of an imaginary soundtrack known as “Hangahar.” Nowadays we all know Sally as the brassy singer of the Mekons but at the age of 19 she recorded this impressively operatic EP for Pete Shelley’s short-lived Groovy label (which also released his incredibly rare “Sky Yen” album). She was aided and abetted by Shelley and Lindsay Lee, Tony Wilson’s first wife. (For more obscure delights from the list, look no further than WFMU’s Beware of the Blog )

I’d give anything for Side B of this, especially since the 12” is currently going for $218.00 on GEMM! *Sigh*

Brainwashed | The Mekons | Sally Timms

Sally Smmit and Her Musicians, ”Hangahar (Side A)”

ARTWORK BY LEONOR FINI