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Archive for the ‘The Clash’ Category

Douglas Coupland–Polaroids from the Dead (1996)

Posted in Big Dirty Band, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Dead Kennedys, Die Mannequin, Douglas Coupland, Essays, Fables, Flash Fiction, Grateful Dead, Greed, James Rosenquist, Nostalgia, Photo Essays, Rheostatics, Rush, Short Story, The Clash, The Future, The Inbreds, The Tea Party, Threats, Travel, Video Games on February 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: BIG DIRTY BAND-“I Fought the Law” (2006).

I just found out about this “supergroup” which was created for the Trailer Park Boys Movie.    The group consists of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson from Rush, drummer Jeff Burrows from The Tea Party and three people I don’t know: the singer from Three Days Grace, the singer/guitarist from Thornley and on lead vocals Care Failure from Die Mannequin.

I have to say that I’m not that excited by this cover.  The song has been covered so many times (some very good: The Clash, some very clever: The Dead Kennedys, and some terrible: many others).  And frankly there’s not much that you can do with this song.  It’s simple in structure with potential for shouting (which everyone likes), but little else.

For Rush fans, you can’t tell that Geddy or Alex are even on it.  So really it’s just a kind of metal-ish version of this old song.

Oh well, they can’t all be zingers.  You can hear it here.

[READ: February 1, 2011] Polaroids from the Dead

After reading Shampoo Planet, I wanted to see if I remembered any of Coupland’s books.  So I read this one.  It’s entirely possible that when I bought this book I was disappointed that it was not a new novel and never read it.  Because I don’t remember a thing about this book.  (This is seriously calling into question my 90’s Coupland-love!).

But I’m glad I read it now.  It’s an interesting time-capsule of the mid-90s.  It’s funny to see how the mid 90s were a time of questioning authority, of trying to unmask fame and corporate mega-ness.  At the time it seemed so rebellious, like everything was changing, that facades were crumbling.  Now, after the 2000s, that attitude seems so quaint.   Reading these essays really makes me long for that time when people were willing to stand up for what they believed in and write books or music about it (sire nothing changed, but the soundtrack was good).

So, this collection is actually not all non-fiction.  Part One is the titular “Postcards from the Dead.”  It comprises ten vignettes about people at a Grateful Dead concert in California in 1991.  As Coupland points out in the intro to the book, this was right around their Shades of Grey album album In the Dark, and huge hit “Touch of Grey”, when they had inexplicable MTV success and it brought in a new generation of future Deadheads.  He also points out that this is before Jerry Garcia died (which is actually helpful at this removed distance).

These stories are what Coupland does best: character studies and brief exposes about people’s lives.  The stories introduce ten very different people, and he is able to create a very complex web of people in the parking lot of the show (we don’t see the concert at all).  As with most Coupland of this era, the characters fret about reality.  But what’s new is that he focuses on older characters more (in the first two novels adults were sort of peripheral, although as we saw in Shampoo, the mother did have millennial crises as well).  But in some of these stories the focus is on older people (Coupland was 30 in 1991, gasp!).  And the older folks fret about aging and status, just like the young kids do. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–The Savage Detectives (1998) [translated 2007]

Posted in Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Cigarettes, Daniel Zalewski, Natasha Wimmer, Poets, Prostitution, Roberto Bolaño, Sex, The Clash, The New York Review of Books, Tijuana No!, Translation, Travel, Virginity (Loss of) on December 23, 2010| 4 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: TIJUANA NO!-Transgresores de la Ley (1994).

In the mid 90s, when I was living in Boston, I discovered MTV Latino, and the Rock en Español resurgence.  Since I’m always interested in new music, I bought a few CDs by these Spanish-singing bands.  For most of my life I’ve thought about the rabid Japanese audiences who loved bands that sand in English.  Did they understand the lyrics?  And did it matter?  Well, here was a test for me.

Tijuana No! was the first band I bought and I really liked it (and still do).

The disc opens with a rollicking ska rocker “Goples Bajos” which features a wonderful horn filled breakdown and ends with a blistering guitar solo.  The title track, “Transgresores de la Ley” opens with a military beat and a military sounding flute before taking off with a heavy verse and, more impressively, a punk/shouty chorus.

My favorite song is “Tu y Yo,” it’s funky all over the place and has a super heavy midsection.  And “Borregos Kamikazes” has a wonderful juxtaposition of speedy, almost loco lyrics in the verses with some great group vocals in the chorus.

The first surprise (for me) comes with “La Esquina del Mundo” because suddenly there’s a female vocalist on lead.  She sounds great (her voice has a cool echo on it) and although she doesn’t quite convey the heaviness of the rest of the track, it’s an interesting juxtaposition.

The second surprise is that the track “Conscience Call” is mostly in English (I got so used to not understanding the lyrics that I was quite surprised to hear words I understood).

The final surprise comes with the penultimate track: an excellent cover of The Clash’s “Spanish Bombs.” Again sung by the female vocalist, her voice works wonderfully with the track.  The chorus, sung in Spanish, is really perfect.

So, in answer to the question, do you need to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music?, I’d say no.  Although it is nice once in a while.

[READ: November 20, 2010] The Savage Detectives

This was the Bolaño novel that I had initially wanted to read because the reviews were so glowing (amusingly enough it turns out to be virtually the last book of his that I read).  And now that I have read almost all of his books, it’s obvious how this book fits into his larger scheme of writing (I wonder what I would have thought if I hadn’t read the other books, too.  In fact, I wonder if I would have liked 2666 more at the time if I had read this one first.  As it is, I think I enjoyed this more having read 2666 first).

[DIGRESSION: When I was reading 2666 I found a fantastic review of 2666/The Savage Detectives by Daniel Zalewski, which reviews 2666 and The Savage Detectives in context of Bolaño’s life].

In a previous post I noted how Bolaño doesn’t really write conventional novels.  And this one is no exception.  Part I is the diary of Juan Garcia Madero, a 17-year-old aspiring poet.  It covers from November to December 31, 1975 .

Garcia Madero talks about his introduction to the visceral realists, a group of Mexican poets whose legacy is more or less unknown to us now (in the book–in reality there was no such group).  The two main visceral realists are Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, and we will follow or look for these two for the rest of the book.

As with other Bolaño books, there is a massive obsession with sex.  At first Garcia Madero is a virgin and thinks about sex a lot.  Then he finally has sex with first one woman and then many women.  And he writes about them in his diary and spares no details.  (Many entries reveal him having sex with one of his girlfriends 5 or 6 times a night).  And there are of course whores and other deviant sexual individuals (including a guy who carries a large knife by which he measures his penis–we never see this, it’s all hearsay, but it’s in there).

And during this time, he is writing poetry as well–a fully welcomed member of the visceral realists.   (more…)

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Fredy Perlman–[Week 2] Letters of Insurgents (1976)

Posted in Anarchy, Big Books, Communists, Corporate skewering, Death, Dystopia, Epistolary Novel, Fredy Perlman, Green Day, Insurgent Summer, Military, Politicians, The Clash, Unreliable narrator, Violence, Western on June 18, 2010| 5 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: GREEN DAY-21st Century Breakdown (2009).

Like most people who like Green Day, I’ve been a fan since Dookie.  They were incredibly poppy (although they wrote great punk riffs) and they sang about weird, kind of subversive things.  And they got huge really fast.  Of course since then they have become one of the most commercially successful bands in America (including having their song picked for the ending scene of the Seinfeld montage–jeez).

And yet….

And yet, American Idiot, their previous album was one of  the most anti-establishment records of the last twenty years. (True it’s not hard to be Anti-Bush if you’re a punk band, but wow.)  And yet, it was a concept album and even a rock opera of sorts.  And it still sold millions.

And now American Idiot has been made into a freaking Broadway Musical.  And yet, how many Broadway shows (or top twenty albums for that matter) have lyrics like “The insurgency will rise when the blood’s been sacrificed.  Don’t be blinded by the lies in your eyes”

And so Green Day confounds me.  And yet, if I were younger and cared more about “keeping it real” I think they’d confuse me even more because although musically they have sold out (if you want to call it that), lyrically Billie Joe is still pretty true to his punk roots.  And, of course, even the punkest bands seem to go commercial eventually (Combat Rock anyone?)

Of all the Green Day CD’s I think I like this least.  And yet I really applaud them for writing an album that so easily translates to Broadway (not an easy feat in itself) (this disc would make better Broadway than American Idiot).  I think I dislike this disc not because it’s so unpunk, but because I think musically it’s really obvious (and although I like musicals, I prefer classic musicals to contemporary ones).  And yet, most of Green Day’s music is pretty obvious.  I guess I prefer my obvious music to have a harder egde.

And yet Act III is full of some really great aggressive punk songs: “Horseshoes and Handgrenades” is just fantastic.  And in Act II, “Peacemaker has a great construction, all spaghetti Western and whatnot.  And in the first act, the title song has multiple parts that all work well together.  It’s a pretty sophisticated song.  And who can fault Billie Joe for expanding his songwriting skills?  Like the Tin Pan Alleyesque opening of “¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl).”

In interviews, Billie Joe comes across as a maturing artist who is influenced by more diverse styles of music.  I always wonder what the other two guys think.  Should your name still be Tre Cool if you’re no longer writing songs about getting high and masturbating?

And yet…and yet…ad astra.

[READ: Week of June 18, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Second Letters]

There’s been a lot of discussion over at Insurgent Summer (and here) about the first week’s reading.  Very exciting!  And with so much revealed and so many accusations flying this week, no doubt more will continue.

Many people have been wondering exactly what Yarostan could have meant in first letter when he said he barely remembered Sophia.  When he replies in this letter, he claims that “I now remember you as if I had been with you only yesterday” (29).  There are two ways to take this: first, as a positive; however, it can also be read as the way I take it: Oh, RIGHT, you’re THAT person, still.  And this is pretty well confirmed by the second paragraph: “I admit that I once shared the illusion your letter celebrates” (29). (more…)

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