Author: Jason

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THE SPARKS BROTHERS (2021)

The Sparks Brothers

2021, Director: Edgar Wright

When I first heard Sparks, they felt like one of those brilliant secrets of the used vinyl bins that you run into from time to time. For a few years, that was the only place I ever encountered them (never saw them in the CD racks at all). In the 90s, most old records were treated like the unwanted mess left over from yesterday’s party. Prices were low even on a lot of classic stuff and on a good day, I could get my hands on some real jewels for shockingly little money.

You bought records based on cool cover art a lot of the time and I’m pretty sure that’s why I went for Kimono My House one day. 

I paid my $3.99 for it, took it home (well, to my dorm), slipped on the headphones, laid the needle down on the record and then when “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” started to pound, explode, and do melodic somersaults in my ears, it was one of those “holy shit” moments. It’s not just a great song; it’s a song that can feel like it’s changing you, like it’s sending you in a strange new direction somehow. 

That song turned up loud and coming at you from left field is still my personal pick for the best way to discover Sparks. 

The second best way? In 2021, Edgar Wright’s documentary feels good to me. It’s a lively, energizing film that I’d happily recommend to someone who’s new to the curious of path of Ron and Russell Mael. 

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Ed McBain’s COP HATER

Ed McBain
Cop Hater
1956, Signet

The heat wave that takes over the city here is a primitive metaphor for the pressure that the 87th Precinct feels, from the press, from the public and from themselves, to crack the case of a shooter who’s popping off plainclothes police detectives brazenly in the streets.

That’s not a putdown.

This is a primitive book and it doesn’t ask for you to think of it as anything but that. Its meat is the investigation procedural, an almost journalistic account of how fingerprints are read and how two strands of hair and a blood pattern on a sidewalk can reveal ten facts about an escaped perpetrator. Its characters are mere side items. Guys with guns and women with secrets.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #74: UNIVERSAL TRUTHS AND CYCLES (the single)

Guided by Voices
“Universal Truths and Cycles” b/w “Beg for a Wheelbarrow”
2002, The Fading Captain Series

This is the fourth and final* 7″ teaser single released before the Universal Truths and Cycles album would hit the racks of your local Camelot Music in the summer of 2002 and it’s got the best B-side of the batch.

(*There were some European CD singles with repeated A-sides and that offered even more non-album tracks, but those can wait for a compilation EP that’s coming up soon.)

The flip here is called “Beg for a Wheelbarrow” and it’s a sinister beast meant for a band who can summon real thunder. It builds tension in an insistent post-punk march and then releases it in a haunting acapella section. Pollard’s words are about being broke, in debt and under the boot heel.

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Frank Black-O-Rama! #9: BLACK SESSIONS – LIVE IN PARIS

Frank Black
The Black Sessions – Live in Paris plus The Kitchen Tapes
1995, Anoise Annoys

If you were in the US and you wanted to keep up with Frank Black in the 90s, you had to buy a bunch of import CDs from Europe. In addition to the singles (most American labels didn’t bother with those at the time unless the band was a major cash cow), there was The John Peel Session EP from the UK in 1995. The next year, there was the Euro edition of The Cult of Ray, which included a second CD with four bonus tracks. Later still in 1998, was the first Frank Black and the Catholics album, which came out on the Belgian label Play It Again Sam several months before it came out anywhere else.

Eh, I didn’t mind. I thought that was cool, even if it cost me a few extra bucks.

Plus, it helped that most of this stuff was easy to get at the time. Not only were record stores more plentiful, but even some of the mega-chains were on a mission to stock every CD that they possibly could to fill their miles of rack space devoted to loss leaders and that’s how I was able to go to the blindingly corporate Best Buy in the shitty suburb of Mesquite, TX in 1996 and scoop up this UK live album.

Sometimes I miss the mid-90s. Then I remember how bad my hair was and am glad that we all moved on.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #73: EVERYWHERE WITH HELICOPTER

Guided by Voices
“Everywhere With Helicopter” b/w “Action Speaks Volumes”
2002, The Fading Captain Series

Rock is the word and the word is rock for this third 7″ on the ramp up to GBV’s indie rock homecoming album, Universal Truths and Cycles.

“Everywhere With Helicopter” is as commercial a single as Guided by Voices ever put out. Your average radio call-in contestant for Foo Fighters tickets in 2002 could easily get into its Nirvana-like kick. Meanwhile, Pollard’s melody ascends, descends, spins and attacks like an expertly flown Air Force jet maneuver. Every verse is a rocket that takes out a target.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #72: CHEYENNE

Guided by Voices
“Cheyenne” b/w “Visit This Place”
2002, The Fading Captain Series

“Cheyenne” is a song that only Robert Pollard would write. In the world of 2002, at least. That’s why it’s my favorite of the four Universal Truths and Cycles 7″ singles.

That said, it’s not any kind of left turn.

It’s made up of familiar pieces. It works on classic pop song machinery perfected long before Guided by Voices existed. “Cheyenne” is a product of the 1960s and of wearing out needles spinning piles of records by The Beatles and The Bee Gees (60s-era albums such as Idea and Odessa) and The Who over years and years.

It’s not the parts of “Cheyenne” that are so unique; no, it’s the way that they’re handled.

It’s like an artist’s line. You see an illustration and you instantly know who drew it. Only one person makes curves and crosshatches like that.

“Cheyenne” is about the mix of total pop with a curious dash of Pollard’s art-rock influences.

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Thoughts on Short Stories: Charles Beaumont’s “Black Country” (1955)

“Black Country” is one of those stories that I pull out when I just want to enjoy words at their most direct. The clean, crisp stuff that grabs you right away. Relentless movement can clear a lot of garbage out of your head.

Also, pretty much every time I read it, I buy some jazz CDs afterward. 

“Black Country” is a jazz story and Charles Beaumont is all hopped up on it. His prose darts this way and that. There’s ferocious energy to it, a luminous joy even, as it deals with difficult people.

Our narrator is a drummer in a jazz combo, which is perfect. His words are blunt, but always musical. He sees everything. He’s always there, keeping time, driving the rhythm. The people in this story never have heart-to-heart conversations–at least not in words. They communicate with music and, thanks to this guy, we don’t miss a thing.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #71: BACK TO THE LAKE

Guided by Voices
“Back to the Lake” b/w “Dig Through My Window”
2002, The Fading Captain Series

The least controversial music news of 2002 was that Guided by Voices were back on Matador Records.

Everyone who cared was happy about it. Everyone knew that it was better this way. The prospect of a more free and spontaneous approach from the band was a welcome thing. The world needed a Guided by Voices who were under no pressure to achieve heavy radio rotation next to Puddle of Mudd.

The hits didn’t happen, but they got through the TVT era without becoming sellout jerks, which counts as a victory to me. Dignity was intact. Inspiration was running at a high. The band seemed to hardly take a breath between labels as they got to work on what I consider one of the very best albums to carry the Guided by Voices name, Universal Truths and Cycles.

But we can’t talk about that yet.

First we have to get into the whopping FOUR 7″ singles of preview tracks, released on The Fading Captain Series, because, hey, maybe the best way to hype an album is to make a big show of confidence like that rather than… whatever the hell TVT did.

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Philip Jose Farmer’s TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO

Philip Jose Farmer
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
1971, G.P. Putnam’s Sons/ Berkley Medallion

I love Philip Jose Farmer’s imaginative, often daring, outright scandalous short stories (see “My Sister’s Brother” and “Riders of the Purple Wage”), but I’ve never gotten around to reading his popular Riverworld series of novels.

The name put me off, I think. I hate the river. There are creatures in it. I’m sick of the river. Do I want to go to a riverworld? No, I don’t.

Also, does Riverworld have anything to do with Riverdance? I hope not.

But as the pile of unread books around me expands so perhaps will my tastes, so I decided to check out Riverworld finally and this first book in the series turned out to be a perfect read for my current state of mind as a middle-aged man who worries about death all day.

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Frank Black-O-Rama! #8: THE JOHN PEEL SESSION

Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub
The John Peel Session
1995, Strange Fruit

It’s a 1960s rock ‘n’ roll dance party! This fast and loud 4-song EP bridges the gap between screamin’ Frank Black and screamin’ Freddy Cannon. It burns up the dragstrip. It rips into old school sounds that Black tastefully hinted at in past moments such as his “Duke of Earl” cover for the 1993 Hello Recording Club EP and his own starry ballad “Sir Rockaby” from Teenager of the Year. It’s rough and wired with no synthesizers or UFOs anywhere.

The time was May 1994. Teenager of the Year was brand new. Black was in Europe doing promotional stuff. Like the Pixies several times before, he got invited to record a set for John Peel at the BBC, which is always cool, BUT… he didn’t have a band. He would soon have a band for the upcoming tour, but at the moment, no hay banda.

So he asked Scottish guitar pop heroes Teenage Fanclub to back him up. They said yes and everyone got together to bang out four exclusive tracks fueled by classic influences. It was a performance worth savoring enough that Peel’s own label Strange Fruit put it out on disc the following year.

The first thing you notice about it: NO Teenager of the Year songs. Not even any of the B-sides. What you get instead are two covers and two Black originals that hadn’t yet appeared anywhere else.

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