We are Music geeks will be going through some changes soon, so as of right now..the blog is shut down.

Share This / 3 Comments / Posted by scott on May 28, 2008
tagged: Uncategorized

Subpop Records is celebrating it’s 20th anniversary with a weekend festival showcasing their current lineup as well as some of their long broken up bands! GREENRIVER was rumored months ago and has since been verified, but that’s nothing compared to whom was just announced!

Ready?

THE VASELINES!

Kurt Cobain described Kelly and Mckee as his “most favorite songwriters in the whole world” and although they have performed Vaselines songs together on stage when they were on a joint tour promoting their own solo records, this is the first time they’ve played the USA and last time they’ve played as The Vaselines since reforming in 1990 for a single gig to open for Nirvana when they played Edinburgh.

Share This / 4 Comments / Posted by carlos on May 8, 2008
tagged: Festivals, Reunions

In as rapidly changing a world as that of the music scene, it’s sometimes hard to filter things properly, remembering everything that should be remembered, giving credit where credit is due. Sometimes it’s just too herculean a task, keeping track of everything that came before us, so we chuck it all and only concentrate on the new and shiny, letting everything old become a rusted pile that’s left forgotten. Elvis and Mozart and the theme to Cheers survive, but only because the pop-culture clovers growing on the heap have happened to let those bits shine through. The rest of it, however important- you have to dig for that stuff.

But it’s worth the dig. Trust me.

Last month Bebe Barron, a pioneer of electronic music, passed away at the age of 82.  Working with her husband Louis, the Barrons translated the groundbreaking cybernetics work of mathematician Norbert Wiener in the late 1940’s into one of, if not the, earliest experiments in using electronic circuits to produce sound. While Louis created the circuits, Bebe recorded and archived the sounds being created- a necessary documentation as, because of the crude nature of these early circuits, the act of using the devices physically destroyed them, making each effect unrepeatable except by recording on magnetic tape.  Keep in mind- this was the early fifties, years before even the most primitive synthesizer existed, and these two were humble music students from the university of Chicago who had received a tape recorder as a wedding present. They had an interest in the burgeoning field of  musique concrete, a soldering iron, and a reel-to-reel; with this humble assortment, they essentially invented an entire genre of music.

While Louis Barron was the engineer of the duo, Bebe was the composer- tasked with delving through hours and hours of tape, she slowly assembled not necessarily “songs” by the traditional sense, but what would come to be known modernly as “soundscapes”,  piece by piece from what she herself described as “dirty noise”. To provide rhythm to her compositions, Bebe invented  the tape loop, years before Les Paul’s multi track recording and other studio production concepts became a reality. Tape had to be physically cut and spliced by hand, individual sounds located and marked, in a laborious process that took months, and resulted in a product so ahead of its time, it was almost assuredly commercially inviable.

This is not to say that the Barrons weren’t successful in their time- in fact, it’s very likely that they held a monopoly on publicly available electronic recording facilities in the United States for a brief period between 1952 and 1953. Using a connection at the 3M company (the same connection that had given them the then absolute rarity of a magnetic tape recorder for their wedding), the two opened the world’s first electronic recording studio. The small Greenwich Village facility catered mostly to fellow avant garde artists, at its pinnacle providing the resources for John Cage’s groundbreaking “Williams Mix” and “Music for Magnetic Tape” (Cage, himself a maverick who held little regard for the average notion of what was and was not “music”, was the first person to convince the young couple to call what they were experimenting with exactly that). This recording work was interspersed with the generation of sound effects for films, which would lead to their most recognizable (and ONLY readily available) work- the soundtrack for the 1956 sci-fi classic “Forbidden Planet”.

Originally slated to just provide sound effects for the film, Louis and Bebe’s work was so impressive, they were hired to provide the entire soundtrack. This was somewhat of a coup, as not only would they be replacing the producers’ first choice, the enigmatic, legendary avant garde composer Harry Partch, but they were also not members of the musician’s union. It was because of the latter fact that the union placed immense legal pressure on the makers of the film, forcing the Barrons’ credit not to be listed as “Electronic Music by”, but instead “Electronic Tonalities by”. Though seemingly innocuous, this change had long lasting effects- because of it, neither the film nor its composers were considered for the academy awards in any category related to soundtrack or effects, despite amazed reviews and accolades by other members of the industry and audiences alike. The “Tonalities” credit also eventually barred the Barrons from entry into the musician’s union when they later attempted to join- the ongoing headache created by the organization prompted Louis and Bebe to never score another film.

The soundtrack to “Forbidden Planet” is, without a doubt, the first wholly electronic score for any film, and a watershed moment for two artistic mediums. Now formally available on CD release, it might not be for everyone, but for fans of classic scifi and music history buffs alike, the music is a strangely reminiscent and lasting echo of the very earliest ancestors to modern electronic composition. That the couple who had waded through so much magnetic tape would finally be snared by the union’s red variety is sadly telling of the commercialized industries of film and music, but Louis and Bebe Barron’s contributions to both fields should nonetheless be acknowledged. Louis passed away in 1989, Bebe on the 20th of April, 2008. Thanks to them both for their work and their art.

“We design and construct electronic circuits which function electronically in a manner remarkably similar to the way that lower life-forms function psychologically…people tell us that the tonalities in Forbidden Planet remind them of what their dreams sound like.” - Bebe Barron, 1925-2008

Share This / 0 Comments / Posted by ian on May 7, 2008
tagged: Geek, Music, RIP, Uncategorized

I originally planned this as a comment, but I think it warrants a post of its own, and I haven’t posted in many moons, so let’s get to it.

It may seem in this day and age of too much information that all Independent music is watered down copies of itself, but I feel that is simply because it takes a lot more work to find the quality bands that get buried in the quagmire. Myspace and the resurgence of DIY recording have made it possible for anyone with a dream and a song to make a record. As a result, a lot of terrible boring bearded teenagers in cardigans are getting attention. However, this also means that truly great and talented bearded teenagers in cardigans have the chance to get some attention as well. The trick is knowing how to weed out the bad stuff. I’m not sure I have any specific tools for how to do this, but it definitely involves giving every little Vampire Weekend that comes along a chance to prove that they are worth the hype.

I understand the frustration and the desire to throw in the towel and declare all Indie music crap, but I haven’t lost hope yet. Independent music encompasses wide variety of styles that don’t just involve scruffy dudes in filthy pants. For example, Joanna Newsom. She is classically trained and she appears to wash her hair on a regular basis. Even if you don’t like her music you can hardly accuse her of jumping on that great hipster bandwagon in the sky. The same goes for countless other musicians, you just have to know how to weed.

I also want to say that judging a band by they type of people who listen to it is an easy way to miss the point. For example, I could be removing my credibility here, but I enjoy some of the more kid-friendly dance bands that are popular now like Crystal Castles. If you go to one of those shows, you will probably see so many spandexed tweenagers coated in glitter that you will want to stab out your own eyes, but this would make it exceedingly difficult to watch the show. Sure kids these days are annoying and they dress weird, but whenever I get sad about it I remind myself about what I was wearing when I was 19 (i’m not telling) and get sad about that instead.

One more thing, Ian. I think that getting angry about someone reading Charles Bukowski is silly. You should be happy those ruffians are reading at all. And who knows, that bearded wonder may grow up to be a Professor of Literature. Or maybe that’s what he will name his band.

Share This / 2 Comments / Posted by nicole on May 7, 2008
tagged: Uncategorized

As much as I hate to buy into the whole “oh, dude, I’ve got that album on VINYL” scenester crap, there are some definite points to be made in favor of the oldschool music format. Besides the fact that a well maintained ’78’s or ’45’s analogue signal has an audio quality that digital squarewaves from a CD can’t even approach (and let’s just not mention the abhorrent quality of ultra-condensed MP3 format) there’s a little matter of size, if you’ll forgive the pun. Records were big, and so they required big packaging- the average sleeve for a full LP was often as big as an entire square foot. This space was a blank canvas that could and often did display some of the most amazing works of 20th century commercial art.

It’s important to remember that the bohemian/warholian/buzzwordian art and music movements of the 20th century were pretty much parallel evolutions, and the album cover is an extremely important tying component of this. Not just the cover but often the liner notes, and even whole booklets of interior art were often painstakingly created to accompany records, creating some immensely cool artifacts from an age now sadly gone by. Harry Nilsson’s “The Point” and Godley and Creme’s “Consequences”, two watershed works in the progression of what we now know as “concept albums” both contained incredible booklets, the former being an illustrated comic that would later be used as the basis for the animated film version, and the latter being a collection of paintings and mixed media presentations that rivals any coffee table book as sheer imaginative fuel. The loose term “art-school rock” finds its origins in this marriage, and is a theme that underlies a whole lot of modern hit bands.

“So what?” I hear you say. “CD releases of old albums keep the same artwork, we didn’t lose anything”. People who think that their 12 cm jewelcase version of a classic album cover can even hope to stand up to the 12 inch counterpart are fooling themselves, the same way watching a theatrically released movie that was intended for a giant screen on an iPhone instead is pure nonsense. What’s even sadder is the fact that modern album covers are restricted immensely by this new format, creating far less initiative for artists to work hand-in-hand with musicians to create what was, in essence, a multimedia presentation- an “experience” instead of just some music. Combine this with the extremely bizarre subculture that’s latched on to the bare aesthetics of hand-written burned CDs from concerts and data disks from LAN parties, and you end up with, essentially, ground so artistically infertile that no good artist in their right mind would plant anything worth seeing there. It’s a depressing state of affairs.

However, so as not to be incessantly negative, I won’t wax poetic about “you durn kids and yer modern muzik, gripe gripe”. Instead, I’d like to show some of my favorite classic album covers, and hope that the examples convey my point in a way whiny words on their own can’t.

1- “Relayer” by Yes. Prog-rock wouldn’t be prog-rock without Yes, and Yes wouldn’t be Yes without their characteristic album covers by the brilliant Roger Dean. Rendered astonishingly in watercolors, Dean’s ongoing motifs of sweeping, physics-defying landscapes are the perfect images to support music which is equally epic and abstract. Including compilations and live albums, Dean produced 21 different covers for Yes, and countless other pieces of promotional art, liner note art, etc and so forth. His work influenced not just an entire generation in the music scene, but also science fiction print art and film designs. His upcoming “Floating Islands”, an experimental feature film, will explore 3-d computer renderings of many of his famous album cover landscapes to a soundtrack of classic Yes pieces, in a non-narrative style a’la Koyaanisqatsi.

2- “Pink Moon” by Nick Drake. Nick Drake’s final album before his untimely death, Pink Moon is a masterwork in simplicity, consisting of one man, his baroquely elegant acoustic guitar work, some scarce minimalist piano, and poetic lyrics that rivaled the likes of Beckett and Proust in terms of emotional weight and scrimshaw symbolism. The album’s cover art, commissioned from as humble but capable a source as Drake’s own brother-in-law Michael Trevithick, embodies this wonderful sense of simple beauty. Echoing the work of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, the absurd yet melancholy image can be read many ways- and it’s this facet that shines brightest in tandem with Drake’s music. Forged from simple elements that pull on little pieces of the patron’s own sensibilities, the album becomes deeply personal for each listener- as does its cover.

3- “Go 2″ by XTC. Not every great album cover has to be a meticulous work of paint on canvas- take the second offering from the (at the time) still rough boys from Swindon: Partridge and Moulding’s ultimately popshattering XTC. Often informally known as the “most famous band you’ve never heard of”, XTC’s barely post-punk dismay for all things banal in the late 70’s and early 80’s is expressed halfway between two solidly British traits- a love for wordplay and a strange mixture of both pride and disdain for the nation’s legendary “stiff upper lip” bureaucratic nature . It’ impossible to imagine a better display for this unique cocktail than the cover to Go 2, a simple white-on-black square of typewriter text that starts as a dictionary definition for the RECORD COVER itself, but evolves quickly into a calm but scathing commentary on the nature of the music industry, a subject that would go on to drive much of their later work.

Now, compare all this to a sharpie-scrawled line of text on a mix-disc some bum handed you on a street corner. Yeah.

Share This / 8 Comments / Posted by ian on April 28, 2008
tagged: Uncategorized

In response to Seattle bands not still being good, I submit this post. I assume Ian was talking about some cliche’ Seattle band like Nirvana or Pearl Jam or something, but the music scene here is amazing. Case in point- I made a zine awhile ago and got all sorts of local bands to donate songs. I also distro’d it out all over the country and this spring a band from here took them on tour and sold them at their merch table, traded them, and gave them away. In any event, the mix consisted of:

Tall Birds
Coconut Coolouts
TacocaT
Charles Leo Gebhardt IV
T.v. Coahran
Das LLamas
Love Machine
Unnatural Helpers
The Girls
Talbot Tagora
The Pharmacy

Which are only a drop in the bucket, but all these bands are great! Seattle has a million other bands that’re getting huge and are great live. I can’t really explain fully….

other great bands to check out: The Trashies, Pleasureboaters, Charming Snakes, The Catheters, Grand Archives, Fleet Foxes, The Lights, The Cops, Black Whales, Triumph Of Lethargy Skinned Alive To Death, Thee Emergency, Iceage Cobra, Red Sea Sharks…. the list goes on.

Really, though, my point is this: ‘Indie’ is not a genre.; Independent music is just whatever it is, as long as not mainstream. There are indie classical, thrash, punk, french pop… I don’t understand how people write off all sorts of music because of it not being mainstream (that is, writing something off because it is ‘indie.’) It is much like saying you don’t like any british music, but there are all sorts of different genres swimming around there and it comes out to blanketing everything.

We all have scenester douchebags in our towns, but because some dude and his girlfriend have to wear tight pants, wear clashing colored clothes, giant sunglasses, and a Joy Division shirt doesn’t mean that Joy Division is bad. Just because some band plays in a basement somewhere doesn’t mean they suck. Kimya Dawson, Beat Happening, a million other bands started playing this way because they had music they wanted to play and were nobodies yet. You can’t form a great band and get to play arenas without paying those dues and playing where ever you can be heard, especially if you’re passionate about making your music. A lot of it plays into location too, I think. There is no doubt Seattle has a better music scene than Des Moines or something… there is just a different community there and different things going on.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Share This / 15 Comments / Posted by carlos on April 26, 2008
tagged: Indie

Absolutely all of it. “No way, these guys have a blind chick on bass and they sing about wallpaper and wool hats” I hear you say. No. They are human refuse, waiting for a kind god to do us all a favor by denying their worthless energy re-admittance to the source. Independent music is all awful.

It might seem rash of me to put down an entire genre. You might think I’m like your racist uncle saying “hip hop is just noise” as he polishes his antique civil war bayonet and salutes the confederate flag. Well, has Uncle Beemus actively tried for several months to find a good example of the music he’s berating? And has he repeatedly and spectacularly failed to find anything but atonal, repetitive pap created with absolutely no inspiration or soul beyond a Pavlovian response to the social tides of retarded 14 year old girls? If so, then maybe he has a point. Maybe the Government IS trying to steal your land… I mean maybe the music IS inherently bad.

This is precisely the case with indie music- I don’t get a chance to write for WeAreMusicGeeks all that often, but it isn’t for lack of trying. I have spent hours and hours trying- DESPERATELY- to find some sort of new artist, new album, new ANYTHING to bring you fine folks. I’ve mucked through myspace pages and I’ve gone to concerts and I’ve even interviewed a local band, but NOTHING, NOTHING WAS ANY GOOD. I can’t bring myself to write review after review of carbon copies of bands with hand-drawn album covers and clothes that they think make them stand apart, but in actuality make them look like every other trust-fundee douchenozzle in a given college town, with faded retro t-shirts and a messenger bag with a 2000 dollar laptop and a Chewbacca Pez-dispenser in it.

What the hell happened, people!? I know the music world is shallow, but it used to be you had to know how to play a guitar or have big breasts or SOMETHING. Why is EVERY SINGLE NEW BAND that’s coming out another identical  “acoustic guitar, shitty drummer, keyboardest that’s nearly inaudible and a singer who sounds like he’s 13″ pile of fail? Not only that, but why is this phenomenon branching over into other, equally awful venues? Why are jam bands, the historical precedent in “every example of this is garbage”, suddenly unabashadly handing out their albums not just to reefer-fried trustafarians at music festivals sponsored by bottled water companies, but to coffee shop patrons and dickweeds at the Virgin Megastore? HAS THE WORLD LOST ALL SENSE OF TASTE!?

There’s a used book store here in Denver that I like to frequent, but the fog of indie that’s wafted in like an unpleasant stench lately is making the whole experience a lot dourer, I have to say. The other day I saw some 19 year old kid with a beard so scraggly and thin you could shave it with a piece of bread, his band-name-bedecked girlfriend who looked she was 12, and their matching floral-pattern iPods walk into the store, buy two copies of Bukowski’s “Bar Fly” and leave. I thought to myself “that’s an excellent book. Why are THOSE piles of waste reading it!?” The answer, I discovered later, was the lead singer of a local band called “Wish on the Curtains, Iris” had mentioned it on his myspace page. I found this out because my friend’s painfully indie girlfriend could only respond to my retelling of the incident at a party with “oh my god, that book is SO hard to read! Tyver is like, such a genius to like it!”  These people need to die in a fire.

In summation- Independent music needs to die a fast, painful death, the kind of death outlaws in the old west dealt out to people they really REALLY hated. If you are a fan of Independent music, shoot yourself. RIGHT NOW. DON’T EVEN FINISH THIS SENTENCE. For the rest of you, just daily remind yourself of the following proven facts, and you’ll avoid transmogrifying into one of these human stains on society-

1- Nobody wants to see the drawings in your comp book.

2- If the band is playing in somebody’s basement for free, they can’t be very good.

3- It has officially been 14 years since the last even remotely talented musician from Seattle died. The entire city is like a black hole from which no worth can escape.

4- Everyone knows the president is awful, nobody cares anymore.

5- If you’re reading a book because some prick with a neckbeard has it on his facebook as a favorite, then you should not be allowed to read at all.

Thank you, and goodnight.

Share This / 6 Comments / Posted by ian on April 25, 2008
tagged: "Emo", Books, Community, Hipsters, Indie

Friday July 25
Vampire Weekend
Les Savy Fav
Girl Talk
USE
The Dodos
Jay Reatard
Akimbo
Pwrfl Power
Past Lives
Black Eyes And Neckties
Champagne Champagne
Plus many more!!!

Saturday July 26
Surprise Guest!!
The Hold Steady
Chromeo
Kimya Dawson
Darker My Love
The Builders & The Butchers
The Hands
Velella Velella
The Physics
Man Plus
Little Party And Bad Business
Plus many more!!!
I’ve done something like 60 posters in the last 11 months, thats like 1-2 every week, and frankly a lot of the supporting bands are ones that usually support other local bands. What I mean to say is this is a bill with A LOT of openers. That I don’t really understand. They must have been hurting for booking. This is a disappointment when you consider that last year’s headliner was Spoon and the year before that brought the triumphant MURDER CITY DEVILS reunion, which I was dead center/front for thankyouverymuch! I am holding out high expectations for that *special surprise guest* who will close out the night. With this lineup it had better be Joey Ramone’s dead corpse arisen.

Share This / 0 Comments / Posted by carlos on April 17, 2008
tagged: Festivals

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Charlie Daniels wrote and performed ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ 1979.

In Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock when you play the final song against Lou(aka the devil) the song you play is of course ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’. The issue is in the song Johnny beats the devil, no questions asked. In the game, it is possible, and probable that you lose to the devil at least once. Kinda doesnt work right?

Well, why didnt Charlie Daniels object about this you ask? Well he cant because he doesnt own the rights to the song any longer. The person that owns the copyright didnt object, and gave the go ahead with it. This has enraged Mr Daniels and he has this to say:

“I want any of you parents out there whose children have this game to know that I did not grant these people my permission to pervert my song and am disgusted with the result. Unfortunately I lost the publishing rights on the song many years ago in a settlement with a former partner and the license to Guitar Hero was granted by the company who now owns the publishing.”

“Actually the game really has a dark side complete with grotesque monsters on stage with the band, strange, eerie lighting effects and all manner of weird things popping up on the stage.”

There you have it boys and girls, let this be a lesson to you. MAKE SURE you have your affairs in order so you dont lose the rights to the only song people know you by. Bummer.

Share This / 3 Comments / Posted by scott on April 10, 2008
tagged: Country, Folk, Geek, Hipsters

This dude just cant keep his shit straight. Apparently he has gone crazy again, doing stupid stuff on stage, walking off in the middle of songs, and just being an asshole. So Velvet Revolver said “Hey doesnt this seem pretty familiar? We should kick him out of the band like we should have done to Axl” and kicked him the eff out of the band.

I love this move by the band. Scott Weiland wasnt the greatest vocalist to begin with, I havent been a fan of his since early STP stuff. Which by the way, he has reunited STP and they are doing shows now. I feel bad for the other dudes in STP, they always let him come crawling back because none of them really have anything else to do.

Now I want to launch a campaign to have them snag Chris Cornell and do some crazy classic rock shit. Cornell and The rest of Velvet Revolver could kick some major ass in the current state of rock music. DO IT.

Share This / 0 Comments / Posted by scott on April 10, 2008
tagged: Rehab, Rock and Roll