Song of the Day: Survival Knife - Cut The Quick

Since the blog had its death in early 2013, three years worth of music that I have enjoyed is sorely missing a written appreciation. Right around March 2012, I was feverishly excited to learn that Justin Trosper and Brandt Sandeno (ex-members of Unwound) had begun playing live in a band called Survival Knife. In the hands of fate though, they would not release their 7" single Traces Of Me/Name That Tune until exactly a year later on March 2013. By then of course, the blog was all but buried and I was not able to give an approximation of how much I loved the single, the following Divine Mob/Snakebit 7-inch, their sole album Loose Power, and how I thought their Survivalized EP was a shoddy collection of odds and sods.

But aside from diverging this into becoming an entire breakdown of the band's small discography (I will attempt it some day), I wanted to focus on what I consider is one of their strongest tracks entitled "Cut The Quick". Starting off with the click of a distant harpsichord, the song enters a slow burning 4/4 trudge with a riff progression reminiscent of Challenge for a Civilized Society. But where the late-career Unwound would focus on atmospherics and layers of unique instrumentation, Survival Knife focuses its collaborative songwriting in a more emotional and straightforward fashion.

The song itself has a song structure reminiscent of Polvo if they were slowed down about 50% (see: "City Birds") and were half as long and complex. But instead of dizzying riffs and frequent tempo changes, Survival Knife allows for "Cut The Quick" to build its tension during its introductory verses, release some "false" tension during the first refrain, enter an uplifting second verse, release the "real" tension ("STOP CUTTING YOURSELF DOWN!"), have a louder noise break, enter the guitar solo outro, and end on an acoustic guitar/banjo/harpsichord instrumental piece. Much like sister song "Roman Fever", "Cut The Quick" is more audibly influenced by guitar-based progressive rock and the more adventurous sounds of late-70's rock.

Yet, it is crucial to understand the most radical shift that Survival Knife introduces is that we hear Trosper loud and clear, front and center. While Unwound's lyrics were typically abstract and passionately sung/shouted, an audibly older Justin Trosper now sadly intones: "A letter from an alien/Never to be read/By anyone/Sorry about the things I did/Couldn't find my way/In this world we live." It is a sign of maturation in a way, where he would previously mask his voice by layers of distorted guitar in the early years or by studio effect trickery in the end, listeners are treated to the full blow of musical inertia in his voice. It seems progression is stripping things back to all muscle and sinew.

Sadly. at present it appears that the band is defunct since their website is down, they have not made any updates since exactly last year (June 2015), and pleas asking about the status of the band have been left unanswered. I was lucky enough to catch them live twice, and genuinely hope they return to make enjoyable and relevant rock music. Purchase Loose Power HERE.

Song of the Day: 12 Rods - Telephone Holiday

It is hardly hyperbole that I immediately loved 12 Rods after about 30 seconds of listening to their music. They possessed a very good and rare sense of experimentation and interesting musical arrangement mixed with catchy melodies, strong drumming, and genuine lyrics. Unfortunately, they never got big, were abandoned by their label after their second album, and never really expanded beyond their regional popularity in Minnesota. Still, they remain a very important band to me that evokes excitement and admiration.

This song, “Telephone Holiday”, is the closing number from their final album from 2002 entitled Lost Time. It is funny to think that while the whole musical world over was busy praising post-punk revival and heralding some sort of second coming of NYC bands, this album was receiving no attention for its great songwriting, performances, and blending of rock with other musical approaches.

“Telephone Holiday” itself is by no means their most experimental or complex song in their discography (it sticks to a standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/outro format), but it does seem to mix in all their eras (from the gay? EP to Split Personalities to Separation Anxieties to Lost Time) into a convenient 4:42 package. The guitar and bass interweave in an almost impossible to ignore earworm in the first part of the opening verse, but then the second guitar (at 0:30) reveals the underlying tension of the song to gorgeous effect: “I’m a bad, bad person and I just wanted to play.” By the chorus, the ultimate intention of the narrator to avoid his Other is fully disclosed with swirling (and violent) synths entering, and finally shifting into a chaotic disco rhythm with incredibly melancholy synthesized strings. It is a perfect representation of 12 Rods’ nervous energy manifesting at full potential.

To no surprise, the narrator gets destroyed in the song, as leaving this one night stand now becomes an increasingly fucked up situation (“Little did I know, you were still in high school.”) and as the song gets to the bridge, the dramatics are set to stun. Is it the narrator, or the Other, who is now lamenting, “I’m waiting… for someone to TURN ME ON! Make it SEXY! Make it last LONG!”? It could sound all so sleazy on paper, but instead there is a depressing sense of remorse and desperation in the delivery; the sexual innuendo can double as desire for a meaningful and long lasting relationship. The narrator laments, that while he wishes for this too, that emotional distance and abandonment are just ingrained in nature and cannot be avoided.

Is any of that even what the song is about? Who really knows, but I have always found that 12 Rods mixed sexual tension within relationships in their lyrical content very well (see: "Kaboom”, “I Wish You Were A Girl”, “Accidents Waiting to Happen”), and it is a mature and rare quality in most modern music. If anything, the situation in “Telephone Holiday” is an eternal subject in pop music (see: "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"), but now judgement is entirely ambiguous as it can often be in real life.

A Preface to a Series of Reviews

Hi everyone! I am happy to be back writing under the Chief Tizo banner once again. Over our hiatus I've been so focused on school I seemed to forget how to write casually about the things I love. Hopefully with more practice and reader support I'll find my tone. Shout out to all three of our followers, you are the reason why we do this!

Iceberg Slim chillin

I've had the privilege of being the only black male in a class full of white liberals speaking about race. It always seems like it is the white liberal's responsibility to face underprivileged communities with the heaping loads of their valuable pity and dignified ignorance. Just as quickly as one person may point out the problems with Law Enforcement, another would point to the flagrant gang culture found in rap music. Becoming the black representative in this kind of environment is easily the most stressful part of the semester, but even after this discourse is had the burden of all these people's unrecognized ignorance hurts. The one thing that makes it it worse is when these discussions are spawned by reading black writers that are a part of academia. Writers like James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright are all accepted as great BLACK writers. Writers who speak against Jim Crow, against the dominant white culture that has kept them repressed. Now there is no denying the power of James Baldwin or Richard Wright, but their writings ,as well as the many other names I listed above, have become accepted within an academically constructed black literary canon.

I don't think it would be too radical to say that the majority of black writers published over the years remain unknown. Alice Walker's recent rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston proves there are masterpieces left to be uncovered. While it is so easy for white liberal academics to hold up a Toni Morrison novel as evidence of their diversity, they are ignoring the greater bias within the publishing industry. Academics can't see beyond their Eurocentric culture and values to notice that there is an implicit  favoring of a certain kind of representation.

The great cultural critic, bell hooks points out in her essay "Postmodern Blackness" that academics calling themselves "postmodernist" always attempt to call attention to the experience of difference and otherness. However, postmodern studies are so Eurocentric, they never acknowledge the concrete problems of the black underclass. It not on;y is through the dominant discourse that racial essentialist attitudes are disseminated but also the academic subculture in universities as well.  To bring closer attention to the helpless "Other", and to challenge the dominant white supremacy in American culture, hooks advocates creating new subjective representations of the black living. While there is no doubt that there is an explosion of black talent hitting shelves in the 21^st century, there is still very little understanding of our past. hooks' hope has only partially come true. The problem of color blindness in American culture has created a new impediment for achieving a full acknowledgement of the issues that attack the vulnerable black underclass.

I am not sure if any Pan African Studies department is doing any work to uncover the neglected works by black writers. I am not sure if anyone really cares. Its just that the mold for a black writer was so narrow and still is narrow. The subjective experience of the ghetto is mostly being published by independent publishers as street lit. The black avant garde is still too weird to draw much sales or praise. I am thinking of Charles Wright's zany avant garde satire The Wig. I am thinking of about the gritty and inflated autobiography Pimp by Iceberg Slim.

So,consider this a kind of preface to a series of reviews on neglected novels from the black community. Here is a list of novels I hope to review this summer:

Donald Goines: Dopefiend, Black Gangster, Black Girl Lost, Daddy Cool

Iceberg Slim: Pimp, Trick Baby, The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim

Charles Wright: The Wig, The Messenger

Clarence Cooper Jr. : Weed, The Black Messenger, The Scene, The Farm

Ann Petry: The Streets

Herbert Simmons: Corner Boy

Charles Perry: Portrait of a Young Man Drowning

Chief Tizo Interviews #4: MC Coolarge

Hey folks! We promised new interviews, so here we are with a fresh interview with experimental hip-hop stalwart MC Coolarge. We discuss the lyrical content behind his old/new material, question some of his sonic influences, and get some info about his upcoming untitled LP, which is due in Autumn.

Check it here:

You can find MC Coolarge's current discography HERE.

Song of the Day: On A Friday - To Be A Brilliant Light

Many adore and love Radiohead's catalog for very deserving reasons (seriously, how many bands match the stretch from The Bends to In Rainbows?), but very few people know of their initial embryonic recordings under the name On A Friday from 1985-1992. Dabbling in a wide variety of different sounds across their handful of cassette recordings (see the hilarity of the sped-up ska in "Tell Me Bitch" or the steel drum tinged "Happy Song"), this particular recording comes from their second demo from 1988.

At the time accompanied by three saxophone players,  On A Friday wastes no time crashing "To Be A Brilliant Light" headfirst with full melodrama and force. Slowing down with a reverberated acoustic guitar riff resembling something out of In the Court of the Crimson King, Thom Yorke quietly sings, "I'm getting sort of worried/Like the time of life I've reached /I'm getting pretty old /I should be reaching my peak". As a song obsessed with growing old (see "Bones") and desperate to find success while one is youthful, the nervous energy is apparent throughout and remains one of OAF's strongest songs.

Possibly influenced by Elvis Costello and the Attractions during Punch the Clock (and perhaps even Dexys Midnight Runners), the trio of horns go further to add that extra touch of desperation as Yorke sings "Where to start to build a clock?" They then joyfully enter a call and response to his pleading of "TO BE A BRILLIANT LIGHT, YEAH", and it is nothing short of melodramatic brilliance. A definite must-listen for Radiohead fans, and to listen to Thom Yorke's powerful and youthful vocals.

Song of the Day: Tears for Fears - Advice for the Young at Heart

My listening history with Tears for Fears is one that is rivaled only by The Police, but to be clear, TFF were my first "absolute favorite band of all time". Despite not being as regular of a listen as they used to be, TFF set the gears in motion for my later taste in music: a healthy fascination with gloomy synthpop and quasi-post-punk music with their debut The Hurting, and introduced a seamless fusion of drum and synth programming with live "arena-sized" instrumentation on Songs From the Big Chair.

Among the innovations that TFF brought into their sound with Songs From the Big Chair, they subtly tapped into jazz flourishes (most notably on "The Working Hour" and "I Believe") and organic, almost post-rock sounds ("Listen"). These subtleties were something that TFF would explore further on their following 1989 record, The Seeds of Love.

The record contains multiple elements of jazz, organic textures, and use of "widescreen" ambiance throughout its running time. Whether it be in "Standing in the Corner of the Third World"'s use of heavy dynamic shifts between its sleepy verses to explosive chorus, the bluesy piano and rattling drum patterns on "Badman's Song", or the sophisticated and expensively arranged pop sounds on "Swords and Knives", it was obvious that TFF shifted to a paradoxical raw but cleanly produced sound.

Many consider it to be the poorest of the group's releases under their first phase, before Curt Smith departed, and it is not hard to see why. While TFF definitely shifted their sound into new territory, it is arguable that many moments are overproduced, pretentious, or at worst, boring (the almost two-minute guitar solo on "Swords and Knives", the sheer length of "Third World", the veering on annoying sentimentality of "Famous Last Words", among other things).

I actually love the record though, and when the mood is correct, The Seeds Of Love comes off as an overly ambitious pop record that has an interesting mixture of psychedelia, jazz, and blues within its roots. Not to mention how damned inspiring some of the production is since TFF spent over a million pounds on this record, and it shows, for better or worse (I am of the former).

But even if you think the whole record is a bombastic mess, I find it hard to believe anyone who does not think "Advice for the Young at Heart" is a brilliantly arranged and produced piece of romantic pop. A song that pleads "Soon we will be older/When we gonna make it work?" and "Love is a promise/Love is a souvenir/Once given never forgotten/Never let it disappear", it is a melancholic masterpiece of romantic territory that many do not attempt today.

With its salsa influenced piano chords, ghostly synths that fill empty space, a rising and falling timpani, wailing organ, and the propulsive chorus, it all comes together to create a really beautiful track. By the end, a downtrodden Smith sings a quiet melody with the sole descending piano, and are treated to a final bit of "Advice."

Book Review: The Orange Eats Creeps & Nova Express

It has been a while since I posted. A lot of things have been going on with school opening up ,and all, and me getting a stomach virus. So here is my belated reviews of both The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich and Nova Express by William S. Burroughs.

Starting off with The Orange Eats Creeps, I think that it is best to explain what the overall story of the book is. The book is about a roaming "Slutty Hobo Junkie Vampire" that wanders through America having sex for money in 7-11s and going to a lot of underground punk concerts (which may or may not feature the infamous G.G Allin). The style of the novel is reminiscent of the cut-up method and even Thomas Pynchon's long and beautiful sentences.

The book seems to wander from subject to subject not being able to find a place to stay still in which matches the overall "Hobo" idea of the novel. The main character continues to shift through her memories and sometimes through the influence of drugs, the memories of others.  (She has this ability where she could see the thoughts and the past of someone through touching them.) The character seems to be looking for her sister who she was separated from in a foster home. She continues to have these wandering thoughts of her laying down on the side of the road dead; being murdered by some serial killer that resembles the character Bob from Twin Peaks.

The meat of the novel is surrounded by the theme of immortality. What do you do with immortality? The novel feels like an extended account of some existential crisis where the person's life doesn't end. The main character struggles with this in her sexual experiences with men, taking to the road, thinking back to the past, and going to explosive rock concerts that contain vomit and blood.

For me this book got a bit taxing towards the end. Not because of the experimental prose, but because it is a very repetitive book (which totally makes sense within the context of the novel but still...) that recycles phrases a bit too much. Overall it was a very well thought out novel that has very beautiful and vivid language that I find unique in literature today. It is a very exciting debut from a talented writer that I hope to see more of.

Nova Express by William S. Burroughs is the conclusion to the Nova Trilogy which Burroughs claimed to be the "mythology for the Space Age" and to some respect he is right. The book is filled with this quest to take over the omniscient and omnipotent powers at be that are constantly referred to as being part of a board room filled with people that are part of the Nova Mob.

The "main character" William Lee is an agent that is part of the Nova Police that is supposed to take down the Nova Mob and the wicked boardroom that is controlling the actions and thoughts of people through words and addiction with a special weapon: the cut-up.

The book that preceded Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded, set up what is going to happen this novel greatly. Showing the creation of an uprising coming up against the boardroom and even giving a step by step way of using the cut-up and further explaining the power of a tape recorder (a section that is also recycled for Nova Express) for destroying whole governments.

Burroughs ideas behind the cut-ups are nothing less than genius; Burroughs has found a way to overrule all metanarratives that transfixes the general public in its clutches. In a section concerning the power of tape recorders, Burroughs explains that sound creates an image and that image is therefore a part of language due to association (all of language is relating to image). For example, by using a recording of a political demonstration in say... Japan during the 1960s. Playing it back on three different recorders will insight a political demonstration. The sound of a political demonstration creates an image of a political demonstration, which in turn causes a political demonstration due to the infectious nature of language ( a thing that Burroughs straight out calls a virus).

To me, Nova Express is the weakest of the Nova Trilogy, while The Ticket That Exploded is the best for its amazing cut-ups and ideas. Nova Express to me is just trying to wrap up, but to me not in a completely new way. It feels like it is a reiteration of The Ticket That Exploded with a good handful of good cut-ups, but it was still a fun read.