New wave protest music

"Ohio"---Devo

Not just another Devo cover: Bassist and founding member of Devo Gerald Casale was friendly with victims of the Kent State shootings and was witness to the crime. From the Wikipedia:

The pivotal moment for the formation of Devo was the Kent State shootings of May 4 1970. Casale knew two of the students who had been killed, and even claimed to see one student, Allison Krause, with exit wounds from the M1 Garand rifle. At this moment, Casale claims he changed the idea of Devolution into a serious concept.

"Devolution" has always been a concept in-between "dark joke" and "really dark joke". Devo is definitely one of those bands that becomes more interesting the more you get into them, which is why they're such an obsession of mine. The Devo conception of devolution has little to do with the fallacious notion that we're sliding backwards on some evolutionary progressive ladder, though that's its ironic origins. It's more a mockery of and at times a celebration of the inanity of Americana. The War on Terra has been a bevy of high devo moments---everything from 9/11 kitsch to Bush wearing a jumpsuit in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner could safely be described as "devo".

Progress is possible

"Ladyflash"---The Go! Team

Random two from the random ten

"When The Going Gets Dark"---Quasi

"Poet's Walk"---Money Mark

Why don't you mind your own business?

"Mind Your Own Business"---The Delta 5

Get a room!

Pulp---"This Is Hardcore (Permanent Darkness remix)"

Rumor has it

That the Yuppie Pricks are back. Here's some tunes:

"Coke Party"---Yuppie Pricks

"Damn, It Feels Good To Be A Yuppie"---Yuppie Pricks (featuring Jello Biafra rapping!)

Random two from the random ten

Dedicated to Miss New Jersey. Ms Polumbo, they're doing you wrong.




"Extractions"---BS 2000

"Thunder Road"---Bonnie Prince & Tortoise (Bruce Springsteen cover)

In honor of today's server outages

Devo---"Going Under"

Being front page on Digg is a mixed blessing.

Friday random two from the random ten

Libertarian bingo cards, Junior Senior, and Southern Culture On The Skids feature in this week's Friday Random Ten.


"Kennedy"---Ratatat

"Happy Warriors"---Jill Cunniff

Synergy

I have a post up tonight at Pandagon about Sarah Vowell's Radio On, so of course I'm going to post the song that inspired her book title. Synergy, yo.

Jonathan Richman--"Roadrunner"

Random two from the random ten

In honor of actually seeing the Queers Sunday, a favorite, though another popped up on the random ten:

"Kicked Out Of The Webelos"---The Queers

And one of the random ten from an album I dig a lot.

"Gotta Go"---Victor Scott

In which I brag on my mash-up mixing houseboy

And his new mash-up of Tupac Shakur's "Changes" and Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees".

You can read about his experiments here.

New Gogol Bordello!

And it rocks, of course. And has clever lyrics denouncing superstition and pleading for more reason. Apparently, they have a new album coming out.

"Supertheory Of Supereverything"---Gogol Bordello

Random two from the random ten

Random panda picture and random songs from the random ten.

"How To Explain"---The Cat Empire

"Parentheses"---The Blow

Supporting the troops is not the same as supporting the war

The myth about protest music is that it's supposed to all be very folky-sounding and played primarily by smelly hippie sorts who are out of touch with both reality and what a smart-sounding tune sounds like.

This stereotype is reactionary crap. There's a lot of good protest songs from all sorts of genres. I was reminded of this fact while bicycling the other day and having this moving song by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas come onto my iPod.

"I Should Be Proud"---Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

I finally watched "The Devil And Daniel Johnston" last night, and I have to say that it deserves all the raves it's getting. It helps that Johnston seems to have recorded everything that happened to him, ever, giving the filmmakers a lot to work with. In a subtle way, the movie was something of an indictment of the way people romanticize artists with mental illness, when mental illness is mostly just a tragic waste. Indicts to a degree---more interestingly, the filmmakers allowed that Johnston's manic depression is personally hellish, but quite probably one of the factors that makes him a genius songwriter. All in all, it's hard to make a movie that's even-handed and still intriguing, and this movie is it. I particularly liked how the filmmakers were able to show Johnston's parents sympathetically without whitewashing the way their fundamentalist religious methods of bringing him up seemed to have escalated his mental problems.

This mural Johnston did is a bona fide city landmark, and the city even stepped in to protect it when the record shop it was on was bought out by a Baja Fresh. I can attest that it's something of an arresting bit of graffiti---whenever I've taken people who don't know about it down to the Drag, they usually remark upon it. It makes people happy.

If you've never heard Johnston's music, I recommend checking it out. Here's a particular favorite of mine:

"Like A Monkey"---Daniel Johnston

Frequent Pandagon commenter Kathy McCarty is interviewed extensively in the movie, and she's done an album of Johnston cover songs, with the idea being that a lot of his stuff is inaccessible because of the obtuse way he performs it and her covers might make it more accessible. Here's her lovely cover of "Walking the Cow".

"Walking the Cow"---Kathy McCarty

Random two from the random ten

Is it wrong that I want these shoes? I'm getting corny in my old age. She seems to have quite the collection of arty shoes. What I like about these is the really extraneous lace around the edges.


Something of a garage rock theme.

"Don't Give Up"---The Noisettes

"Moonshine"---The Marksmen

Pandas bring the funk

Bohannon---"Let's Start To Dance Again"

Irrelevant but cute picture:

Taint-free taintation

Obviously, I like cover songs quite a bit, but here's a version of an original where the cover became more famous:




Gloria Jones---"Tainted Love"

I will admit to liking both this version and the Soft Cell version, but then again, I have a soft spot for soulfree 80s New Wave. The song I got off the peerless box set Beg, Scream and Shout. It's on the first of the two Scream discs, which are my favorite discs. However, the Beg ones have the pull of the Jackson 5 kicking some soulful ass.

Ciccone Youth

One part joke and two parts awesome---in the 80s, Sonic Youth got together with Mike Watt and formed Ciccone Youth, a band that existed strictly to cover Madonna songs. They only did a handful, since such a project has a sort of top limit on how interesting it can be, but the results are surprisingly listenable. Very mix-tape ready. Here's their cover-ish version of "Into the Groove".

"Into the Groovey"---Ciccone Youth