Listening to Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come

[Fuzz]

Haven't done that in a while. Highly recommended.

[psychopomp]

1. Never heard of 'em

[Fuzz]

3. Worth a listen

especially their song "New Noise".

Oh and "Tannhäuser-Derivè"!

Made one album and broke up. So punk. :)

[vi5]

4. Actually they made 2 albums.....

..And a third if you count what I believe is a recently released collection of odds and ends.

[Fuzz]

6. Really? D'oh

I heard they broke up and some of the members formed International Noise Conspiracy.

Since I married, I've kind of lost the part of my brain that used to keep track of things like this.

[vi5]

8. I know what you mean....sadly I still keep up with it all...

..despite being married AND a father.

You can only imagine how geeky I was with this stuff when I was a single guy in my 20's with nothing but disposable income to spend on records and shows.

[tigereye]

10. that makes me feel a little better

parenthood ate my altmusic/punk chick music brain as well. :) I only recently have the energy to pay attention again and dust off the drums.

[Fuzz]

13. At least I still have the hearing loss to remind me!

hehe

[vi5]

2. Great record, despite the Born Against rip offs.....

TSOPTC is a phenomenal, forward looking record. Great stuff. Other than the basic riff stealing from Born Against, they remind me of what Born Against would have been like without the staunch DIY ethic and with a big budget.

[RandomKoolzip]

5. Interesting band, though they stole Nation of Ulysses's "shtick"

You know, young sexy intellectual revolutionaries issuing manifestoes and referencing outdated black forms. The music was okay, though. NOU's music was pure shit.

[vi5]

7. NOU pure shit?

I didn't particularly dig on a lot of their stuff but I didn't think it was that bad. It was at least interesting at the time. Now way too many bands try to pull of the same thing and fail even worse than NOU did.

[RandomKoolzip]

9. Yeah. I thought they sucked as a band.

All of Ian Svenonius's projects fail musically because the guy simply can't write a melody. Conceptually, sure, he's cool, but judged soley on the MUSIC, Nation of Ulysses was tuneless drivel. This is the same trap Kathleen Hnna falls into: people get caught up in the "persona" and the "issues" and the intellectual drive behind the "concept" of the band and forsake the actual CRAFTING OF MUSIC, which ought to be the most important aspect of a musician's career. At least Refused could make music that didn't sound like amateurs banging things restlessly. There's tunes there, with recognizable melodies and musicianly interplay.

Hanna and Svenonius struck me as thinkers first and musicians third or fourth. I got the sense that Refused were better versed at their instruments and more in touch with their muse than NOU.


And what, those Georgetown kids couldn't afford a guitar tuner?

[tigereye]

11. but RKZ, not being able to tune your guitars is half the fun!

;) My bands eventually got some, but otherwise everyone would have missed all those great endless guitar tunings on stage and people saying " this song is about" and blathering on until everyone had left!

What say you about Sleater-Kinney? I listened to some and was underwhelmed. Am I missing something? Still think Scrawl was the one of the best all female bands ever. Seem to remember you posting a list of some cool all female outfits I had missed. I'll have to look for that. :)

[RandomKoolzip]

12. I Looooove Sleater-Kinney.

I think they're fantastic, although I believe their best work is behind them now. As musicians, the sound they create as a whole is unique and i.d.able within ten seconds. And Corin is a heartbreakingly good vocalist. Their lyrics are too vague and "metaphorical", though.

Scrawl was good, although the vocals were a bit bland and the drumming sloppy.

[tigereye]

15. dunno thought the orginal drummer was pretty good

but being a mostly self-taught female drummer now taking lessons finally, I have slightly different standards.

I loved Scrawl's singer's ( Marcy!) voice and the bass player as well. Great band live with a lot of attitude. Saw them multiple times.

[RandomKoolzip]

17. You play drums?

That's awesome. My wife wants to learn to play drums, but we live in a crowded Chicago apartment building and you can hear everything in the next apartment over. I'd love to teach her.

Having been in a riot grrrl band as a drummer, I know how much fun it is for women to pick up instruments in such a male-dominated form. The women in the band I was in all had this look of awe when we would lock in and hit a groove...it was as if they'd discovered a new room in the house they'd lived in all their lives. It was cool.

[tigereye]

19. no one else in the bands I was in wanted to play them!

I have piano and voice training and really wanted to play guitar, but so did everyone else. After hearing the Go Gos and Gina Schock, I thought, "I can try that!" I think of playing the drums as being like dancing. I did okay without lessons, I was kind of a "weird drummer" but managed to get better over all the years I played them and did okay on the three albums my second band made. The bass player in my old band tends to find female drummers as a rule, which is very cool.

Now that I am taking lessons, I have learned all the things I didn't know, like keeping time with the hi-hat and letting your hand " go to sleep," so to speak. And counting right. I never thought of myself as a pioneer, but I guess I was in a way. Now lots of females play drums, compared to the early 80s when I started. I think it is very cool! I used to deliberately look for bands with female drummers and have seen some jazz bands with female drummers as well.

Drumming is fun. Have your wife do the practice pad thing, maybe, or she could take lessons somewhere. My teacher teaches with two drum sets and it is a lot of fun. Drumming kept me sane for many years and it is a great release.

tigereye

blast why do all you cool music folk live in the Midwest? all my cronies are too busy to form bands. Parenthood and such.

[vi5]

14. Now Kathleen Hanna is where you lose me on this....

I can take or leave Svenonious and all his projects. But I loved Bikini Kill. I thought they were a phenomenal punk band. Yes, the whole riot grrl thing got out of hand. But the New Radio/Rebel Girl 7" is one of the best punk singles ever in my opinion.

Of course I'm bound to disagree musically with someone who has Robert Pollard as their posting picture (j/k).

[RandomKoolzip]

16. Well, even Hanna herself claimed that the band was a vehicle

for her politics. But judged strictly as music, there were scads of bands around that time who sounded virtually identical: no new approaches to arrangement or timbre, no distictiveness, etc. Bikini Kill, to my ears, never did anything to jump out of that pool. Hanna had a decent Poly Styrene-esque voice that was okay in short bursts. The band was sloppy and undisciplined as musicians.

There were great bands of that ilk, like Excuse 17. But I still can't get over the feeling I got when I first ran into Bikini Kill and guessed correctly that Hanna viewed her band as an advertisement for her interviews. If you're not in it for the MUSIC, you're in it for the wrong reason.

[vi5]

18. "Sloppy and undisciplined as musicians..."

Um....That's what made most punk bands so great. Punk should always be no more than 50% about the music and the rest either about attitude, ideology, shtick, fun, lyrics, whatever. If it is anything more than 50% about music, it might as well just be prog-rock.

[RandomKoolzip]

20. Hmmm. that's where you and I part ways.

It doesn't matter what genre you play in, if you're not going to be proficient on your instrument, you ought to be into "installation art" or something. Music communicates best to the listener when the people making the musics are attuned to the possibilities and the nuances that their instuments provide them and are playing together as a unit, not as the extension of some art concept. If the point of Punk is to be aggressive, have an attitude, and piss off a lot of people, then a musician who can wrench the most in-your-face sounds out his/her instrument should be in demand. I point to Greg Ginn of Black Flag here, a guy who practiced five hours a day, rehearsed his band seven days a week, eight hours a day, until his band was capable of beheading an audience with their precision and drive. The world doesn't need another garage amateur with big ideas and no skill. The world needs more Corin Tuckers and Carrie Brownsteins, who are capable of developing their own musical language, getting their hands dirty practicing, and being able to kick ass so much better than those bands who think their politics or their "attitude" will do all the work for them.

I've always been suspicious of the "DIY" aspect that critics always claimed was the "heart" of Punk. I mean, how low should your musical standards go before it all dissolves into gobbledygook? The Sex Pistols could play together as a unit and developed their own approach to timbre and arrangement, specifically showcasing the interaction between a heavily overdriven rythym guitar and charging, eighth-note-riding drums. Anyone who says that they couldn't play is willfully ignoring the power of the music itself, and the ability that went into creating that power.

[vi5]

21. I agree to a point.....

And don't get me wrong. I also enjoy listening to extremely proficient musicians practice and create their art. But I am also a fan of pure, balls out, correct notes be damned, graceless rock and roll. I still believe that one note played poorly and out of place, but with primal conviction and attitude can have just as much impact as a collection of perfectly timed and perfectly played symphonies.

And for the record Greg Ginn is my absolute musical hero. But let's face it, a large part of the reason why Black Flag was the killing machine that it was, and remain popular to this day had nothing to do with the music. Was the music great? Yes but so was the logo. So was the mythology that rose up around them. So was the touring, the work ethic, the pettibone art. All that stuff had just as much to do with Black Flag and Greg Ginn as the music did.