Author: andrea Page 69 of 72

The second volume of Soul Jazz’ “New York Noise” comes out this week, and if anything promises to be even better than the first. I’m intrigued by the inclusion of UT, a band that rose out of the ashes of Robin Crutchfield’s Dark Day [Nina Canal was in Dark Day briefly, but there was really no overlap with the two groups], got picked up by the label that introduced Sonic Youth to the world, Blast First!, and then disappeared in 1989 or thereabouts. UT’s music wasn’t quite as concise and declarative as its name, but it reveled in pitting the primitive with the sensual. The constant tug-of-war became a sonic texture in and of itself, pitting low-end assaults with tape loops, hums, and fierce drumming against coolly sexy vocals.

UT survived the move from NYC to the UK but finally imploded after the release of the Steve Albini-produced Griller. Founding member Jacqui Ham went on to form Dial, which released one album that I know of, infraction [Cede]. It’s a haphazard affair at best, but for moments at a time it owns the room. This track, “Little Eye,” is incredibly heavy with dread, almost unlistenably so. But it’s Ham’s howled, mewling, almost inarticulate vocals that pull the track out of the gutter. The effect is quite haunting —it grows on you, transmuting from sludgy noise to something keening and oddly delicate. The more you listen to it the more compelling it becomes,

I wonder if Jacqui is still making music? If she is, the internet isn’t telling.*

*There’s a new Dial record due for release very shortly [late Summer 2006]…

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Dial, “Little Eye” [right-click-save-as, s’il vous plaît]

The Dial album is available from Forced Exposure.

More info on “New York Noise 2” can be found here. There’s a fantastic UT track posted over at20Jazzfunkgreats if you’re curious.

The Knitters
The Modern Sounds of… the Knitters [Zoë/Rounder]
Live at The Paradise
Boston MA, 2005

There are a few things you should know about the Knitters: they formed in 1982 as a side-project to the members’ primary bands (X and the Blasters) with the intention of playing only benefit shows. They released their first album, Poor Little Critter in the Road, in 1985; this year they finally released the follow-up, The Modern Sounds of the Knitters. The band is made up of three-quarters of X (namely, guitarist/singer John Doe, singer Exene Cervenka, and percussionist DJ Bonebrake), guitarist Dave Alvin (formerly of the Blasters, now solo), and stand-up bassist Jonny Ray Bartel (of Los Angeles group the Red Devils).

Watching The Decline of Western Civilization, Penelope Spheeris’ documentary of the nascent LA punk scene, recently, I was struck by the sheer aggressiveness of the scene that spawned them. And X gave back as good as they got, encapsulating the paranoia and decay of LA life with songs as narratively concise as Raymond Carver short stories.

The Knitters, on the other hand, put a different spin on similar themes. Even if some critics place the band firmly in the long shadow of X’s legend, I don’t think that’s something that concerns them overmuch. If anything, the joyful noise of the Knitters —an energizing mix of traditional ballads, rockabilly and bluegrass classics (they’d fit CBGB’s titular credo more than most bands who’ve actually played there, X included), and re-worked versions of X songs— refuses to trade in nostalgia. They don’t dwell in the past, nor do they peer especially far into the future. They’re firmly, blissfully rooted in the now. [cont’d]

Critter must have seemed decidedly anomalous back in 1985, even with a pedigree of bands who’d always stood out in the rather hegemonic LA musical landscape. Wedding rootsy, traditional influences (be it blues, rockabilly, bluegrass, or country) to the raw, blunt, stubbornly a-historical sound of punk was something new then. In the intervening years such plundering of the past has become practically de rigeur for bands finding their footing, but the Knitters —along with their peers the Gun Club, Alvin’s the Blasters, Los Lobos, Lone Justice, Rank and File, and (of course) X— were pioneers of alt.country, to coin the accepted but rather odious phrase.

OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way: none of this explains what makes the Knitters special. It’s an elusive combination of charisma, chemistry, and wit; what formed as a pick-up band, a casual aside to more pressing projects has slowly but surely come into its own. As Doe notes in the press release for Modern Sounds, “The Knitters, like their music, don’t do anything hasty.” But they docareful. and in the intervening years since their deliciously sloppy debut they’ve certainly struck the perfect balance between spit n’polish and spontaneity.

Live, they bring new meaning to the term “loose knit.” I mean it as high praise when I say that they’re the world’s greatest roadhouse pick-up band, but they kinda are. Somewhat more slapdash than David Johansen’s preservation project the Harry Smiths, any instinct towards building a new canon or dusting off slightly stale classics (Steppenwolf’s hell-raisin’ standard “Born to Be Wild” comes to mind) is out the window when the band get onstage and tear through their set with reckless, marvelously casual abandon, making each song wholly their own. It’s a glorious sight, vibrant and vital. Every time I’ve seen the Knitters they’ve torn the roof off the place with their sheer, restless exuberance —its gale-force is undeniable.

At the Paradise they kicked up their glorious, nervy skiffle for a good hour and a half, their energy never waning for a second.

The element of reclamation is central to the Knitters’ agenda, not that they would be so formal as to call it an “agenda” per se. breathing new life into fond but mostly forgotten songs. Or even some not-so-forgotten ones —as always, they played some beloved X favorites, done as countrified rave-ups. “In This House That I Call Home” gets sped-up, losing some of the mournful, creeping paranoia of the original along the way but gaining a sexy swagger. I was desperately hoping for “The Have-Nots” (possibly my favorite X song) but was contented to get “Burning House of Love” (sung with heartfelt ache by two singers who’ve certainly been there) and “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” (a very prescient song, considering the current state of world affairs). They give us “Poor Little Critter”, of course —it’s the band’s thesis statement, and by now a classic in its own right. Like “The Have-Nots”, it’s about finding oblivion in the bottle and waking up to a new day (whether you like it or not). “Skin Deep Town”, an X song first heard on Live at the Sunset Strip, becomes, in the Knitters’ capable hands, a scathing critique of Hollywood’s legendary self-absorption, couched in a riotous hootenanny. The plaintive sound of Jimmy Driftwood’s haunted folk lament “Long Chain On” (made famous by Odetta) presages the mournful country-tinged sound of X songs like “Burning House of Love.” And then there are songs like Flat and Scruggs’ wry “Give Me Flowers When I’m Living” and the Doe’s own “Try Anymore (Why Don’t We Even)” that harken back to a simpler time, when men were men and women were women and they solved their problems with a whole lotta drinkin’ and arguin’.

Pretty much every song features the patented call-and-response vocals from John and Exene. The interplay between them is, as always, one of the great joys in modern music. There’s such richness to their interaction: sometimes they harmonize perfectly; other times they taunt and tempt. But they’re never anything short of perfectly attuned to one another. They know just how far they can push one another —it’s an intimate, powerful dynamic, and an electrifying one. The love they have for this music is clearly palpable. It’s a deceptively simple thing, this heart-on-sleeve quality they have. But it’s rare enough in these days when every band being so goddamn cooler-than-thou that it’s important. And, even better: they make rollicking, unselfconsciously fun music. That’s worth a hell of a lot.

While there wasn’t a mosh pit at this show (as there was when I saw the band at San Francisco’s far more spacious Great American Music Hall), couples were square-dancing with abandon up on the balcony. Just another sign of how far things have come since they started playing shows back in 1982. “From moshing to square-dancing: the true story of the Knitters.”

It’s a fine tall tale.

Lisa Crystal Carver
AS220
Providence RI

Lisa Crystal Carver is a fearless cultural adventurer, an endlessly optimistic raconteur who’s always followed her own idiosyncratic path —ever since the fateful day she first took the stage at age seventeen as leader of the infamous anarcho-performance troupe Suckdog. From there it was one adventure after another, some more harrowing than others but all grist for Carver’s incisive, easy wit and droll, conversational tone. Her new memoir Drugs Are Nice [Soft Skull, 2005] chronicles her early years, starting with the day her drug-running, grifter father told her he’d killed a man and ending with her working her way back to her own version of normalcy.

The “reading” at AS220 is anything but normal, but that’s hardly a surprise. Lisa’s co-conspirators for the day (her friends Rachel and Erik) are stuck in traffic, so we play Lisa’s version of Truth or Dare until they show. The Doctor is in, and she’s asking questions we may not be all that comfortable answering. Embarrassing, embarrassed confessions have a way of tumbling out when Lisa’s in the room. Even better if the answer is unsettling or awkward or just plain icky —because our foibles, our flaws are what make us human. They can even be beautiful if looked at through the right lens.

In this way, Lisa’s interest is humanist and brilliantly democratic. “See?” she seems to be saying. “We’re all the same under the skin, equal. We’re all freaks in our own special ways.” She doesn’t sit in judgment. Rather, she helps us illuminate all the dark spaces we’re afraid to look at. And shealways shares her own stories first, with the same unflinching candor that she expects in turn. And that’s what makes her so refreshing. She’s like your psychotherapist and agony aunt all rolled into one ebullient package; the Cookie Mueller for our apathetic, post-irony generation. And she doesn’t have time for all that bullshit Gen-X pose. She’s not post-modern or post-anything. She doesn’t subscribe to any philosophy other than her own. In her warts-and-all confessional zine Rollerderby and again inDrugs Are Nice, she seems at home everywhere —even if, sometimes, her fearlessness is feigned and she’s really just making it all up as she goes along. She’s her own muse, wildly optimistic even at the worst of times.

After all the confessions are blurted out, the rest of Lisa’s troupe finally arrives. They end up acting out scenes from Drugs Are Nice. Lisa acts as MC. There’s copious amounts of ketchup blood and bad fake French and death by potato peeler and a date with GG. Erik, who’s playing GG with unerring accuracy, right down to the leather jacket and jockstrap ensemble, won’t sit in the puddle of ketchup leftover on stage from the death-by-peeling incident. “GG wasn’t afraid of any damn ketchup!” someone from the audience yells out. Chagrined, Erik sits in the goddamn ketchup. Rachel plays Lisa. She and GG half-heartedly make out, until he gets annoyed and cuts open her white flapper dress. Afterwards GG goes to heaven and comes back with angel wings and a halo. We all have a moment of silence for poor old GG, before chaos erupts again.

There’s never a dull moment when Lisa’s around.

Afterwards I buy a copy of Drugs Are Nice from Lisa. I tell her how much I miss Rollerderby. “So do I,” she says, a bit wistfully. Suddenly an old friend tackles her in a big hug and, not wanting to interrupt, I turn to leave. Rachel and Erik and Co. are having a smoke out in the chilly Providence air. “You guys get hazard pay for this?” I ask. “Nah,” Rachel says. “In real life I’m a biologist. So, I love getting to act out once in awhile.”

We all have Lisa to thank for that.