Author: andrea Page 53 of 71

I should have known. It was a crime of hubris, posting twice in one week.Thinking I had a whole, say, five days leeway? And look at me, slinking back here with a half-assed post twelve (TWELVE!) days later.

For shame!

To compensate (?!) I give you two songs that BARK. (Or growl, in the case of Pere Ubu.)

Multi-headed all-singing, all-girl percussion hydra Pulsallama evidently did more cat-fighting than composing during their brief heyday. But brilliant one-off “The Devil Lives In My Husband’s Body” more than lives up to its improbable title, a suburban soap opera imploding faster than an AM Homes novel hopped up on Benzedrine and nitrous. Who else but Ann Magnuson could pull those vocals off with the appropriate elan, frisson, and sang-froid, I ask you? More barking! More cowbell! MORE FRENZY!

And now for something completely different. Goodbye NYC, goodbye dayglo kitsch. Hello Cleveland!

Pere Ubu never fails to amaze me. I haven’t investigated the new album “Why I Hate Women” fully yet (I’m planning on buying it at next week’s Knitting Factory show), but if “Two Women, One Bar” is any indication, it’s going to be a fine addition to their already massive body of work.

“Misery Goats” is not from the new album, but from 1980’s Art of Walking.

Equal parts goofy and sinister, this song walks a fine lyrical line —from the profane to the profound to the ridiculous and back again. Like their namesake, Ubu resist reductiveness. Their greatest asset is their seemingly inexhaustible sense of playfulness. I can’t think of another band that colors outside the lines with such gleefulness and, ultimately, such improbable grace. This song —which would sound weirdly hokey if summarized— makes me smile every time I hear it.

Pulsallama, ”The Devil Lives In My Husband’s Body”

Pere Ubu, “Misery Goats”

Pere Ubu Tour Dates | UbuProjex Home | Ubu Store | NYNoise Vol. 2, where you can find another Pulsallama track. | The closest the web gets to a Pulsallama home page. Hosted by former band member Jean Caffeine. But wait! There’s this one too! With MP3s even! It’s hosted by former band member Stacy Elkin. | Ann Magnuson Ann has a new album, Pretty Songs and Ugly Stories, due any day now.

APOLOGIES TO KEITH HARING.

Named after the Essential Logic song, Music Is A Better Noise, a new exhibit currently on view at PS1 in Queens, “brings together musicians who make art and artists who make music.” The first section focuses on the fertile mid-1970s to early 1980s period (see also: NYU’s recent Downtown Show), and includes contributions from Barbara Ess, whose pinhole camera photographs have graced the cover ofBlind Spot and who has played in the Static, Y Pants, and Ultra Vulva, Alan Vega (Suicide) and legendarily eccentric hip-hop iconoclast Rammellzee. The second section rounds up drawings, installations, and video art from the current scene, including contributions from Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Rossum, Jutta Koether, Christian Marclay, Kim Gordon, Devendra Banhart, and Thurston Moore (among others). It’s on view until January 8, 2007.

Ess’ group Y Pants have been (relatively) unsung during the new wave of No Wave. The only No Wavers to dare incorporate ukelele and toy piano into their instrumental repetoire (talk about a unique take on the power trio), Ess, Gail Vachon and Virginia Persol created some of the most charming, shambolic, and slyly feminist songs of the era (think of them as New York’s answer to the Raincoats). Their cover of Lesley Gore’s’ “That’s the Way Boys Are” is a chilling, canny masterpiece in upending a song’s text and subtext (not to mention wryly subverting the usual rock clichés about puppydog love); “Favorite Sweater”, by contrast, is one of the few No Wave songs guaranteed to make you grin from ear to ear. Hopefully the Periodic Document reissue of the band’s complete discography is still readily available.

Rammellzee’s been busy in the years since he was featured in the groundbreaking hip-hop doc Style Wars. In addition to being an early originator of some serious wild style, he’s also an MC, painter, writer and all-around Renaissance man. “Beat Bop” is a strange and beautiful trip —social realism mixed with intense flights of fancy. Surreal, harrowing but ultimately uplifting. You can find it on theDowntown 81 soundtrack. You can also find his work on the Death Comet Crew reissue that came out last year. It’s well worth tracking down. [DCC was co-founded by Ike Yard’s Stuart Argabright, who also compiled the new volume of New York Noise.]

I’m off to NYC to see the Slits! Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

PS1 :: Music Is A Better Noise | Ramm:ell:zee | Death Comet Crew, This Is Rip Hop | Martin Rev/Suicide | Y Pants | I Am Not This Body: Photographs by Barbara Ess

Rammellzee vs. K Rob, “Beat Bop”

Y Pants, “Love’s A Disease”

Suicide, “Ghost Rider”

PHOTO CREDIT: “yes/no” BY BARBARA ESS

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Halloween than by invoking the great spirits of the Top Hatted Eyeball-Headed Countenances themselves, the Residents. My life has never been the same since their “Intermission” EP walloped me upside the head and followed me home one day. The cover absolutely terrified me (the cleverly contrived headless old woman enveloped by that looming overstuffed chair, the screaming baby, the repeated rictus grins with their obscenely protruding nails) and the music fit it to a T —it was like fingernails raking repeatedly across a chalkboard.

I was hooked. Sometimes against my will, but let’s face it: the pull of the Residents is unmistakably strong. (MoMA must think so, too, as they just honored the Freakish Anomalies with a 30-year career video retrospective of their own. Pas mal, eh?)

The band was my gateway drug to musical oddity of all stripes. And they’re still going strong, 30+ years after their wayward inception in small-town Louisiana. (Shreveport? Slidell? The answers are shrouded in mystery —or is that swamp gas? Hard to say.) The band member’s secret identities have been carefully guarded since the beginning by mysterious management entity the Cryptic Corporation, and if rumors (or Matt Groening) are to be believed, their past ranks have included Frank Zappa and JD Salinger. (Oh, what the hell —let’s throw Pynchon in there for good measure.)

Hats off to you, O Residential Ones. Long may you reign.

PS: The trick-or-treaters didn’t seem to like Duck Stab too much. Lightweights. Maybe next year I’ll try blaring Diskomo instead.

PPS:
Your life is leaning downhill
Sloping off the outer edge.
Your undetermined oyster beds
Were found to be a hedge.
You cause the kids of Elmer Fudd
To fee the farmer whose
Cadaver’s filled with onion rings
And feet are filled with glue.

The Residents on Myspace | Official Site

GRAPHIC BY DANIEL SILK from MEDIUM CONDENSED [Howski Studios, 1985]

The Residents, “Death In Barstow” (from Fingerprince AKA Tourniquet of Roses, 1976)