communication breakdown (temporary)

Fu-Schnickens - Breakdown



The thing I love about this track is the idea that The Schnicks would get together in the studio to talk about the track they're going to record. Two of the band say, okay, I'm going to rap about or this or that. The third guy goes, "well, that sounds pretty cool, but I know what this track really needs.... some Warner Bros. Loony Tunes impressions and sound effects!!"

The other two hang their heads in despair... "not again..."

The bit at 1.21 when he launches into the most demented bit of rapping is fantastic. Prior to this it's fairly generic low-riding West-Coast hip hop. Which it reverts to for the third verse. And the Loony Tunes fella usually goes second on Fu-Schnickens tracks - imagine being the guy who has to follow him?

Buy - Fu-Schnickens Nervous Breakdown
Visit - Fu-Schnickens (Wikipedia)

---

Anyway, the title of this post refers to the fact that I'm moving house at the end of this week, which means I'm going to be without a home broadband connection. Which means unless something miraculous happens, and one of the other Dominoids does a post, things are going to be fairly quiet 'round these parts. I'll leave all the recent tracks up for a while and will try to do something when I get the chance but there you go.

Play nicely.

pencil queen rainbow

This alphabetical trek through my CD collection has thrown up some really interesting stuff for me, things where I'd forgotten how much I loved them - hope you're enjoying them too.

Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville was one of my favourite albums during my last year at university and is one of the few instances where I've had a real-life High Fidelity moment - where you're idly browsing in a record shop (Record Collector in Sheffield, fact fans) and ask the assistant what's playing then buy it on the spot. If I remember rightly the guy who served me moaned that it was the only copy they had... This was a phenomenon that would return to haunt me when I worked in the jazz department of my local Virgin Megastore - Coltrane's Giant Steps and Wynton Marsalis' Joe Cool's Blues were the popular choices, if memory serves.

Anyhoo, Liz Phair - I like to think my reaction to this album was more sophisticated than the thrill of a feisty American woman with a dirty mouth but I can't be sure... I do know that I really dug the sloppy lo-fi recording, her gnarly guitar playing plus her can't-be-arsed vocal style.

Liz Phair - Divorce Song



This track has one of the most affecting lyrics on the album and gets away from any accusations of stomping on the potty-mouth pedal for a cheap thrill.

Liz Phair - Stratford-On-Guy



On reflection this album is still well worth checking out if you can - a big sprawling and ambitious double-album. The second album Whip-Smart has a couple of decent tracks but gets a bit "auto-pilot". Later albums have resorted to collaborations with pop tyrants The Matrix and more explicit shock tactics, resulting in some comically stinking reviews.

Visit - Liz Phair
Buy - Exile in Guyville

Hand me the crowbar...

A Tribe Called Quest - Buggin' Out
(file under 'Q')



From their magnificent Low End Theory album, this is officially stevedomino's FAVOURITE HIP HOP TRACK EVER. This is just perfect - a smokin' beat, cool bass line, fantastic rhymes, the works. Awesome stuff and effortlessly cool, this is everything that I want hip hop to be.

I remember dancing to this in a club in Nottingham BACK IN THE DAY with our friend the Singing Detective - whaddup, homez?

Visit - A Tribe Called Quest
Buy - The Low End Theory

Rodan - The Everyday World Of Bodies



Second-string, Louisville-based, post-Spiderland math-rockers in 12 minute track shocker.

This is an album that I bought after hearing a track of theirs on a compilation tape from good friend the Archdeacon of Pop - think it was from a Simple Machines 7"? Anyway, the album was a bit of a disappointment but this tracks still rocks a fat-one. Fantastic chunky guitars and some great drumming - golly, they seem awfully cross about something... Great pay-off moment at 8.00.

You know how people who read books with small print can suffer problems with their eyesight? Do you think that people who came of musical age in the late-80s/early-90s and listened to a diet of mumblecore bands like Bitch Magnet, Slint and Rodan will develop hearing problems later on in life? Think about it.

Visit - Rodan
Buy - Rusty (limited availability)
Or you could try eBay

upstairs before the night's too old...

Rod Stewart - Tonight's The Night video

You know the weirdest thing about this strange STRANGE video? The fact you don't see the face of the "lucky lady" at all. Maybe it's being brought up on a diet of The Kenny Everett Television Show, but I keep expecting "her" to turn 'round to reveal a bearded engineer with a cheesy grin, giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

So many wrong things, not least the fact that Rod can't play the guitar. There's a look in Rod's eyes that says his target is one of many (as he/she undoubtedly was!), to be used up like so much cheap hotel toilet paper as our hero rampages around the world ruining women and the Tom Waits songbook alike. Chilling.

None of which helps to explain why this tartan-wearing be-mulletted sex-pest sings on at least 4 of my absolute favourite songs of all time...

Faces - Pool Hall Richard
 

This track is my choice for the latest edition of the mighty Contrast Podcast on the theme of "Every Tom, Dick or Harry". In my intro I make reference to my problem with Rod but none of that can take away from how great a band Faces were. Just listen to this track; after the guitar intro, there's a really sloppy Kenny Jones drum fill - "ba-doom, ba-doom, bap!" - and there's a pause - all of a nanosecond! - before the band fall-in behind like an almighty rock workhorse and crack on with a relentless piece of barroom boogie. It's a tiny little pause but it makes me catch my breath every time!

I can only imagine how powerful they would have sounded live at the time, with Rod as the leader of the gang with THE ULTIMATE Rock voice, like he's been gargling paint thinner.

Visit - Faces
Buy - Good Boys...When They're Asleep: the Best of the Faces

you can't meet the duke, are you crazy??!

As I mentioned last time, Colourbox (brothers Martyn and Steve Young) were one half of the equation that resulted in M|A|R|R|S and Pump Up The Volume. Prior to that they were the pop-jokers in the 4AD Vaughan-Oliver-designed pack, releasing cut-and-paste tracks with big beats alongside sweet reggae-tinged pop. Here are a few of my favourite tracks of theirs, which have been in heavy rotation since my alphabetically-themed post popped them into my head the other day.

Colourbox - Baby I Love You So (12")



Lovely big slab of dub with the gorgeous vocals of Lorita Grahame floating over the top as the boys monkey about with a big box of tricks - check the massive echo dropped in at various points throughout the track.

In a way, they were the perfect band for me during my tape-compilation-making days in the late 80s. Like me, they were obsessed with bad dialogue from obscure films - John Carpenter's Escape From New York (and the mighty Snake Plisskin!) above ...

Colourbox - Hot Doggie



... and Herschell Gordon Lewis' Two Thousand Maniacs! here. This was from 1987s Lonely Is An Eyesore compilation, a decent-ish compilation marred by the worst sleeve notes this side of Zang Tumb Tuum.

With the 80s liberally dripping down the walls, this is another side of the Colourbox sound - big slabs of guitar, huge beatboxes and gleefuly pilfered sounds from a land before anti-sampling legislation. And before samplers - the Young brothers used quarter-inch tape and delay units to build up these tracks.

Colourbox - The Moon Is Blue



The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme gets all the props, but this is my absolute favourite Colourbox song, a camp and wonky big-band torch song to scream from the rooftops. To paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, "How much more 80's could it be?... And the answer is, 'none'... 'none more 80s'".

I remember that Tom Hibbert named this track Single Of The Fortnight in Smash Hits back in the day! Why would I remember that when I can never find my keys? Whatever, this song is bloody great, and did precisely nothing when it was released.

Apparently, years of public indifference coupled with the legal problems they had immediately following Pump Up The Volume's success are the reasons Colourbox never recorded again. Boo.

Visit - Colourbox at 4AD
Buy - Colourbox (1986) - features 'The Moon Is Blue'
Buy - The Best of Colourbox - features the other two tracks

monkey necklace owl

Back to 4AD AGAIN for the B-Side of 1987's Number 1 smasheroo Pump Up The Volume. As any fool knows this was the collaboration between AR Kane, Colourbox and CJ Macintosh which really brought sampling into the charts. I'd love to say that I got this single at the time but let's face it, I was a real indie snob. I only bought the 12" after hearing this track, the double A side.

M|A|R|R|S - Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)



Apparently (according to youknowwho) this wasn't a happy collaboration, with AR Kane and Colourbox working in seperate studios on the two tracks; Pump Up The Volume being mostly the work of The Box, with minimal input from the Kaners.

As far as Anitina went, AR Kane brought the elephantine-feedback and sheets of guitar noise (plus blissed-out vocals and ickle-baby-acid-head lyrics), while Colourbox supplied the monumental beats and heavy dub effects which really make the track - the best bit is from 4.37 when it all goes underwater before the gallop to the finish line. Still sounds great.

Back in the day, Simon Reynolds would have called this oceanic dub-rock.

Hmmm, Colourbox... methinks I feel a non-alphabetical post coming on...

Visit - M|A|R|R|S (Wikipedia)
Buy - Pump Up The Volume CD (import)

Nina Nastasia - Ugly Face



Oxes - Kaz Hayashi '01



These go together because they were amongst the last artists that I really got turned onto by John Peel. And both of them involved me staring open-mouthed at the radio as I heard something that I really wasn't expecting, which is an experience that I will never have again. Think about it - the media continue to move more and more towards narrowcasting, with genre programs increasingly ghettoised in their own little compartments. The opportunities for exposure to something unexpected are increasingly rare.

Ugly Face was in a late-night Festive 50 show and just gobsmacked me, it's so spine-chilling. I know I've (kind-of) featured Nina Nastasia on here before, but she really is a great artist. And it's so cool to hear Steve Albini's recording style applied to this sort of music, which it suits so well. Plus you don't hear enough bowed saw these days.

Oxes I heard on a live session from Maida Vale which entailed me sitting in the car outside my house, grinning like a tit and not being able to go in until the session finished. I guess they could come across as slightly academic math-rockers but I think they're genuinely hilarious.

I have a theory that they were all massive metal geeks as kids and are trying to get to the motherlode of Great Riffs (as it were), knocking out the keystones of rock lore ad infinitum until they achieve some kind of cosmic high. Whilst pulling rock poses, jumping off things and gurning.

Just listen - it's like Stars on 45 for metal riffs. For example, I reckon there are definite echoes of Iron Maiden in this track, especially the rumpty-tumpty-Run-To-The-Hills section at 0.37

Visit - Nina Nastasia
Buy - The Blackened Air

Visit - Oxes
Visit - Oxes (MySpace)
Buy - Oxxxes

jacket kite ladder

Apologies for the extended period of radio silence. I should explain that when I started on this alphabetical kick, I set myself some limitations - notably, that I would only post tracks by artists whose name began with the letter in question, that I'd choose only one artist per letter and that I wouldn't feature anyone who'd already appeared on Domino Rally. As such, I've been having a nightmare picking tracks for this post, and the results are possibly more random than usual.

Hank Mizell - Jungle Rock
(oh give me a break, when you've already featured Billy Joel where else do you go?)



This is, quite simply, one of the strangest songs ever, with a pretty weird story to boot. Recorded in 1956, the song wasn't a hit until 1976 when it got to #3 in the UK - leading to what must have been the odd spectacle of Mizell aged 53 miming along to his younger self on Top Of The Pops.

I first heard it on some Rock n Roll cassette compilations that my granddad had - I think he lent them to my dad. These were kind of the early 80s versions of those Time Life compilations that you see advertised on daytime TV between infomercials for Abdominizers, Thigh Masters and suchlike.

It always sounded creepy and unfinished, half-written and hollow sounding. The bass line is all over the place (is it even playing the same track as everyone else during the intro?) and the guitar moves into this strange minor-key thing for the chorus. Plus Hank keeps hammering away at those same two (and a bit) notes for the entire length of the song. Totally relentless nonsense - love it!

Visit - Hank Mizell at Wikipedia
Buy - Jungle Rock (import)

Kitchen of Distinction - The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule



Surely one of the worst band names in history. But from 1989 to 1991 I loved this strange little band. Looking back, they were the shoegaze band for grown-ups - rather than writing lyrics where meaning was "up to the listener to provide their own interpretation (mumble, mumble)", KOD tracks were about stuff. But they still had that whole oceanic walls of sound thing going on - seriously, how many delay pedals do you need to get that guitar sound?

And having said that, I've got no idea what this track is about. I guess it's just about that fantastic, huge swell of noise that comes after "everything went...!". And to ask for any more meaning than that from a pop song is a bit silly, really.

This was the first track I heard by them and over the course of the next two years and many purchases I learnt that it was easily their best track. But the bit at 2.17 still makes the hairs on my neck stand on end EVERY TIME which is more than I can say for many records I bought at the time by their hipper contemporaries (see Moose, Lush, Slowdive, et al).

According to Wikipedia their sound influenced bands like Mansun, The Verve and Interpol.... err....thanks?!?

Visit - Kitchens of Distinction at Wikipedia
Buy - Love Is Hell

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross - Twisted



Awesome skwee-bo scat singing here. Lambert, Hendricks & Ross specialised in writing new arrangements and lyrics for jazz tunes and here is Annie Ross' amazingly liquid vocal to Wardell Gray's melody. I've never heard the original but Ross' lyrics fit the feel of the track so snugly, I can't imagine how it could sound any better than this. The lyrical flow on show here is simply astonishing and I love Lambert and Hendricks' semi-sung interjections throughout (especially at 1.30).

It swings hard, it sounds supercool and it's funny, too (their version of Art Blakey's "Moanin'" is cool, too).

FUN FACT - Annie Ross played the jazz singer (and Lori Singer's mum) in Robert Altman's fantastic Short Cuts, one of stevedomino's top 10 films of all time!

Visit - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
Buy - The Hottest New Group in Jazz

grapes house ink

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart



This one was a Christmas present from Oxbow a few years back. Before that, as far as I was concerned Gorky's were just that Welsh band who did that annoying 'Patio' song. But How I Long to Feel That Summer In My Heart is still an album that I dig out pretty regularly. On first listen it can seem a bit slight but repeated listens make it stick with you, as bits of The Beatles and High Llamas drift by. It's good simple music, which is really hard to do well without sounding lazy or pat.

And it really does make me feel that summer in my heart. This track in particular sounds like late August evenings playing with your mates on the park, the sun streaming across the sky just before you have to go home.

The soundtrack to a Welsh "Wonder Years", if you will.

Buy - How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart
Visit - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

His Name Is Alive - The Dirt Eaters



His Name Is Alive - Man On The Silver Mountain (Rainbow cover)



Nutty name, nutty guys. Back to 4AD for this one, a band I was pretty much obsessed with in the face of much shoulder-shrugging from my peers. Looking back they're the archetypal, precious, 23 Envelope/V23 project, with more than a whiff of This Mortal Coil about them. But I loved the air of mystery, the pick'n'mix song-styles and (let's face it) the pretensions so much that I persevered beyond their patchy and sublimely gothic first 4AD release, Livonia, through the fantastic 23-track "mental illness" album, Home Is In Your Head, up to their 3rd album, 1993's Mouth By Mouth, before I said 'enough'.

These two tracks are from The Dirt Eaters EP, my favourite of their releases. "The Dirt Eaters" made an appearance on Mouth By Mouth but in a rocked-out version; this is sparser and much better for it (according to ubiquipedia, the sample is Jack Nicholson from Ironweed. Not knowing the film, I always heard it as Ronald Reagan....). The Rainbow cover was the unlisted first track - I've always liked it 'cos it sounded like a HNIA piss-take (a hushed, folksy take on a stadium rawk belter? the very idea...), and hinted at a self-deprecating sense of humour hidden behind the Vaughan Oliver artwork.

His Name Is Alive are still going and still doing interesting stuff, going from gothic folk to Beach Boys pastiches to psychedelic R'n'B and back again. Check their website and particularly the tracklisting for the 10 CD wooden "Cloud Box" set. Hmmm, challenging!

Buy - The Dirt Eaters EP is only available on this import of Home Is In Your Head, or
Buy - Always Stay Sweet, a 21-song best-ofVisit - His Name Is Alive

The Ink Spots - If I Didn't Care



The Ink Spots - Whispering Grass (Don't Tell The Trees)



The Ink Spots - I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire



From the corner marked "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"...

The Ink Spots are a band who had loads of hits with EXACTLY THE SAME SONG. Check it out:

Rambling ascending guitar intro...
Plaintive tenor lead vocal...
Talky bit...
Refrain...
End.

I could have picked any three of their songs and would most likely have hit on the same structure in each. Listening to a whole album by them is weird, like being stuck in a lift where the muzak is looping indefinitely, or some weirdly soothing Groundhog Day.

I love these songs. And the balls on them to keep doing the same thing over and over!

Buy - The Ink Spots - The Ultimate Collection
Visit - The Ink Spots (Wikipedia)
Visit - The Ink Spots