Go click on the title. You'll like it. Be nice and browse more of Gunshow Comics.
Do you know why truth is stranger than fiction? Do you? Reality is weird enough, but fiction is a human convenience. Its a book or television show that you soak in for entertainment. If something happens in the story that you find farfetched (think Agatha Christie's detective stories etc. where a miracle happens leading to a sudden 'blue sky' conclusion when everything was baffling right up to that point) the knee-jerk reaction is WTF sort of contrived story is this? Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense - or it doesn't sell well.
Pandora positively mystifies me. I've been working on this radio station for 6 months, and just yesterday it played L7 for the first time. Argh! I couldn't make that up if I wanted to. I've seen referneces to the band for months, but generally don't add groups that I haven't heard. I cannot claim to be perfect either. I have not thumbed-up or seeded the UK Subversives. D'oh! I'm not really trying to seed *every* good band, I have been trying to seed core groups to let Pandora fill in around them. Also I like a little time to agonize about whether to seed them or not. Another realization that I have had is that if I am to allow 'primitive' rock bands, then I should un-thumbs-down T-Rex and the Troggs. Naturally this will lead me to another Hardcore problem - Pandora will start cramming in primitive rock bands, and I'll have to issue an assload of thumbs downs. Not to worry, my guiding star here is the overall mix, so just like Hardcore I'll allow a good sampling without going overboard. Maybe.
New additions; the Partisans, UK Subversives, the Sainte Catherines, Authority Zero, the Lurkers, L7 and the Shocker (former L7 bassist). Also added Venom Lords, a band name that puzzled me 25 years ago. I was into Chicago's Naked Raygun, and Venom Lords used a similar font and colors for their band name on their album covers. So a casual glance might confuse one for the other. With record prices what they were, I wasn't in a hurry to buy records of bands that I've never heard of. Radio ignored these bands, Pandora does not. Now I dig Venom Lords. Does that mean I've come full circle?
Thought my few readers might like this; a search for punk rock on Amazon.com
Monday, January 18, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Evolution
In Nature, Evolution occurs as tiny changes that accumulate over great periods of time. Such changes seldom affect only a single charactersitic of any species. Various traits of many species will be affected, and populations in different geographic locations will be affected differently. Language also evolves, but follows additional patterns, including word borrowing (inter-breeding?) from neighboring languages. This becomes self-evident from only a cursory survey of dialects, accents, slangs, and jargon within a single language.
Music evolves faster than any other cultural hallmark that I am aware of. This happens for a large number of reasons; large differences of musical vision, the free global exchange of ideas (no borders), rampant (and shameless) borrowing, culture clash, culture shock, commercialization....
If I were to forget what I was writing about, I might think I was writing a list of band names. My point is that it is extremely difficult to point out all the inspirations and forebears of Punk Rock, and dutifully honor all of them. Similarly, its impossible to track everything that was influenced by it. Musical genre names become more and more meaningless to me, especially with respect to Punk. I understand what "punk revivalist" is, but I'm still not clear on what "post-punk" is. Even more difficult for me is being open-minded about potential bands to keep as "proto-punk" groups.
If you happened to select Pandora's generic punk station, I can tell you exactly what you're listening to. The Ramones, the Clash, Iggy Pop, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, the Clash, the Damned, the Jam, Rancid, Fugazi, and a little from the Clash. The Jam??? It still mystifies me that anyone thinks that the Jam is a Punk Rock band. I suppose the same could be said of the Buzzcocks. Personally, I have to lump the Clash in the same category. They were a major reason that I started this station from scratch, I just could not control the airplay. "The Clash are Punk!" argues my buddy Jim. I think that London Calling was an important album for Punk Rock. What bugs me is that for every song like "Death or Glory" or "Brand New Cadillac", theres a song like "Lost in the Supermarket" or "Ghetto Defendant" - and Pandora doesn't do much to distinguish one from the other for seeded artists. Very anti-climactic. I'll give 'Brand New Cadillac' a *trial* thumbs up and see what happens.
Thats how I'm treating the Detroit Cobras right now. Its not hard to map their sound as pre-Punk, despite their playing all covers of previously recorded primitive rock and roll hits. I'm actually pretty happy with how they fit in, expect them to be seeded soon. Fake Fictions, Magenta Lane, and Manda and the Marbles are other bands that will probably be seeded in the near future.
I've recently realised that Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid' was released in 1971. Holy Cow! The Stooges' first release was in 1969 (and to be fair, Led Zeppelin issued I and II the same year). It floors my modern perspective to realize that anyone was grindingly heavy like Sabbath that early. I like Black Sabbath, and I can hardly say they had NO impact on Punk, so I'll not give them a thumbs down if Pandora plays them. Pandora has played Black Sabbath and Motorhead on rare occasions, I'm just uncertain how much I want to encourage their appearance on the playlist. I definitely want to see more Motorhead.
I'm still agonizing about hardcore bands. I worry a little that I'm giving short shrift to some important bands. I'm sure there hardcore stations out there, so I'm not consigning anyone to oblivion. At the same time I know that the world of Hardcore Punk is very much greater than just Agnostic Front, the Cro-Mags and GBH. I worry about balance *way* too much, huh?
Added 4 Skins, the Adicts, City Mouse, Clit 45, Crass, Conflict, the Dicks, the Diodes, the Messengers, Television, Virus, and I think I forgot to mention the addition of X-Ray Spex previously. Some of these were thumbed up before and are graduating to being seeded. Clit 45, 4 Skins, Conflict and the Diodes are getting seeded so I can try to get Pandora to play more than one song. Call it probation, but I havent heard enough of their stuff yet to make a sound decision.
I thumbed-down a Pennywise song. I really do like them. They have one hit song thats tantamount to a cover of Bad Religion's ... crap, I forget the song now, but "the anchorman can't stop lying" is a musical and lyrical lift of "and the lamppost can't stop crying"... but I'll chalk that up to flattery. (By the way, Bad Religion FUCKING rules and they get less play than Stiff Little Fingers - something very wrong with that) Uh. Anyway, I like Pennywise but I don't want Pandora leaning so heavily in their direction.
Music evolves faster than any other cultural hallmark that I am aware of. This happens for a large number of reasons; large differences of musical vision, the free global exchange of ideas (no borders), rampant (and shameless) borrowing, culture clash, culture shock, commercialization....
If I were to forget what I was writing about, I might think I was writing a list of band names. My point is that it is extremely difficult to point out all the inspirations and forebears of Punk Rock, and dutifully honor all of them. Similarly, its impossible to track everything that was influenced by it. Musical genre names become more and more meaningless to me, especially with respect to Punk. I understand what "punk revivalist" is, but I'm still not clear on what "post-punk" is. Even more difficult for me is being open-minded about potential bands to keep as "proto-punk" groups.
If you happened to select Pandora's generic punk station, I can tell you exactly what you're listening to. The Ramones, the Clash, Iggy Pop, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, the Clash, the Damned, the Jam, Rancid, Fugazi, and a little from the Clash. The Jam??? It still mystifies me that anyone thinks that the Jam is a Punk Rock band. I suppose the same could be said of the Buzzcocks. Personally, I have to lump the Clash in the same category. They were a major reason that I started this station from scratch, I just could not control the airplay. "The Clash are Punk!" argues my buddy Jim. I think that London Calling was an important album for Punk Rock. What bugs me is that for every song like "Death or Glory" or "Brand New Cadillac", theres a song like "Lost in the Supermarket" or "Ghetto Defendant" - and Pandora doesn't do much to distinguish one from the other for seeded artists. Very anti-climactic. I'll give 'Brand New Cadillac' a *trial* thumbs up and see what happens.
Thats how I'm treating the Detroit Cobras right now. Its not hard to map their sound as pre-Punk, despite their playing all covers of previously recorded primitive rock and roll hits. I'm actually pretty happy with how they fit in, expect them to be seeded soon. Fake Fictions, Magenta Lane, and Manda and the Marbles are other bands that will probably be seeded in the near future.
I've recently realised that Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid' was released in 1971. Holy Cow! The Stooges' first release was in 1969 (and to be fair, Led Zeppelin issued I and II the same year). It floors my modern perspective to realize that anyone was grindingly heavy like Sabbath that early. I like Black Sabbath, and I can hardly say they had NO impact on Punk, so I'll not give them a thumbs down if Pandora plays them. Pandora has played Black Sabbath and Motorhead on rare occasions, I'm just uncertain how much I want to encourage their appearance on the playlist. I definitely want to see more Motorhead.
I'm still agonizing about hardcore bands. I worry a little that I'm giving short shrift to some important bands. I'm sure there hardcore stations out there, so I'm not consigning anyone to oblivion. At the same time I know that the world of Hardcore Punk is very much greater than just Agnostic Front, the Cro-Mags and GBH. I worry about balance *way* too much, huh?
Added 4 Skins, the Adicts, City Mouse, Clit 45, Crass, Conflict, the Dicks, the Diodes, the Messengers, Television, Virus, and I think I forgot to mention the addition of X-Ray Spex previously. Some of these were thumbed up before and are graduating to being seeded. Clit 45, 4 Skins, Conflict and the Diodes are getting seeded so I can try to get Pandora to play more than one song. Call it probation, but I havent heard enough of their stuff yet to make a sound decision.
I thumbed-down a Pennywise song. I really do like them. They have one hit song thats tantamount to a cover of Bad Religion's ... crap, I forget the song now, but "the anchorman can't stop lying" is a musical and lyrical lift of "and the lamppost can't stop crying"... but I'll chalk that up to flattery. (By the way, Bad Religion FUCKING rules and they get less play than Stiff Little Fingers - something very wrong with that) Uh. Anyway, I like Pennywise but I don't want Pandora leaning so heavily in their direction.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Edging my Punk garden
Last time I said that I 'cut out' a number of Proto-Punk bands. What I did was remove them from the list of 'Seeded Artists'. A number of them are still being played occasionally. Most of them, actually. They are being played much less often, which is more in keeping with what I really wanted. Its just difficult to finely tune Pandora in matters like this.
At some point in time I removed Social Distortion. I wasn't happy about pulling them, but they were causing Pandora to pitch me some seriously not-Punk bands. I suggested to Pandora that they add a tool like: Play This Artist, But Do Not Play Others Like This. Even knowing what artist seeds caused Pandora to pick additional artists would be a great help. I'd like to bring Social Distortion back, but not for a while yet. I'm still pruning back some hardcore. Seeding Agnostic Front turned out to be dangerous from a Pandora perspective - the band has a large body of recordings and thus an enlarged influence on Pandora.
Added Be Your Own Pet, Betty Blowtorch, the Gossip, Vice Squad, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Be Your Own Pet and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are actually "on the fence". The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have some really Punk songs - and a number of songs that simply do not belong here. I've opted to actively manage that by thumbing down every song that I disapprove of. Thats more work, but the resultant mix is worth the effort.
Also added Television. I may give them the same harsh treatment as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but Television was one of Punk's cornerstone bands. They belong here more than others.
I mentioned waaaaaaaaaaaay down there that I gave a thumbs up to TOOL. I removed that thumb, leaving them neutral and will give thumbs down if Pandora adds it to the mix. I'm a great fan of TOOL, but they are an oddball from the standpoint of music genres. Keeping them would seriously screw up the mix.
I'm no longer going to list the individual groups that get a thumbs down. There are too many of them, and they often don't seem to be related to anything that I'm playing. The exeption will be to seeded artists that I give thumbs down to, and other bands that are played quite often that need controlling. Listening to such a one right now; Fugazi. Too much airtime. I havent decided which song to harsh on, but it will probably be one of the Minor Threat songs... no, that sends the wrong message. Guess I'll have to pick something from Repeater. I'm concerned about Rancid's airplay as well, but I want to be very careful with them.
At some point in time I removed Social Distortion. I wasn't happy about pulling them, but they were causing Pandora to pitch me some seriously not-Punk bands. I suggested to Pandora that they add a tool like: Play This Artist, But Do Not Play Others Like This. Even knowing what artist seeds caused Pandora to pick additional artists would be a great help. I'd like to bring Social Distortion back, but not for a while yet. I'm still pruning back some hardcore. Seeding Agnostic Front turned out to be dangerous from a Pandora perspective - the band has a large body of recordings and thus an enlarged influence on Pandora.
Added Be Your Own Pet, Betty Blowtorch, the Gossip, Vice Squad, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Be Your Own Pet and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are actually "on the fence". The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have some really Punk songs - and a number of songs that simply do not belong here. I've opted to actively manage that by thumbing down every song that I disapprove of. Thats more work, but the resultant mix is worth the effort.
Also added Television. I may give them the same harsh treatment as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but Television was one of Punk's cornerstone bands. They belong here more than others.
I mentioned waaaaaaaaaaaay down there that I gave a thumbs up to TOOL. I removed that thumb, leaving them neutral and will give thumbs down if Pandora adds it to the mix. I'm a great fan of TOOL, but they are an oddball from the standpoint of music genres. Keeping them would seriously screw up the mix.
I'm no longer going to list the individual groups that get a thumbs down. There are too many of them, and they often don't seem to be related to anything that I'm playing. The exeption will be to seeded artists that I give thumbs down to, and other bands that are played quite often that need controlling. Listening to such a one right now; Fugazi. Too much airtime. I havent decided which song to harsh on, but it will probably be one of the Minor Threat songs... no, that sends the wrong message. Guess I'll have to pick something from Repeater. I'm concerned about Rancid's airplay as well, but I want to be very careful with them.
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