No Lines, Only (River City) Tanlines

River City Tanlines. (Courtesy of the artist)

After watching six bands play at our own NPR Music showcase at The Parish, I took a short break from the music. Is that okay? I'm only asking because I actually feel guilty. You walk around 6th Street in Austin during SXSW, or along Red River Road, and you realize that at any given moment you are missing out on seeing hundreds of bands. In every crevice of this festival -- and a little more annoyingly, in the middle of a street -- is music and sound and noise and sweat. To be honest, I just wanted to sit down and eat a meal for the first time in three days. But not to worry, I ate my food with the thump of three different kickdrums from neighboring clubs and low-end bass vibrations shaking the table. So, never mind, I heard at least four bands during dinner. Trust me, they were awesome.

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1:10 PM ET | 03-19-2010 | permalink

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Congressman From Tennessee Commemorates Alex Chilton

(thanks, Lance)

Tennessee representative Steve Cohen speaks about his friend, Alex Chilton.

7:00 PM ET | 03-18-2010 | permalink

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Alex Chilton: I'm In Love With That Song

Live at the Rhythm Festival, Clapham, Bedfordshire, Aug. 2008

Alex Chilton is gone. And it hurts. After I read the news about Chilton's passing, I went onto Facebook to check in with friends I can't be with here at SXSW in Austin. Many of them are musicians and artists, and never had I seen an entire news feed filled with variations on the same despair.

Alex Chilton's band Big Star changed lives. They changed lives because when you heard them, it unlocked an entire -- and utterly lovely -- world. Big Star's music filled a void you didn't even know had been there. With Big Star, music felt limitless, freer, but also more whole. How did they do that? By turning ears and hearts into stadiums and packing them until you felt like you were going to explode.

I first heard of Alex Chilton in the Replacements song that bears his name. "Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes around... They say, 'I'm in love with that song.' " Later, Paul Westerberg sings, "I never travel far without a little Big Star." When I used to tour with my band, I would think of that Replacements tune as we traveled from one town to another. Touring is fragmentary and disjointed by nature, and you have to find home in what little there is of it -- in your favorite song, in your favorite band -- and then I'd think of Westerberg's own anchor, Alex Chilton. I knew then that I was part of a continuum; one of longing, of listening, of hoping and of always reaching, both forward to the unknown and back to what I hoped would always be there. And I felt like I'd found my home.

Musicians and fans have always passed around Big Star songs and albums like a secret handshake. When you found out someone hadn't heard #1 Record or Radio City, you were so excited to provide that missing link, to pass on all the glimmer, the jangly guitar, the big chords, the melodies, the American anthems that let you keep your teenage self -- for some of us long since faded -- close, etched upon your skin. And suddenly, you realized that every great band or musician you love also loved Alex Chilton and Big Star; it's certain. More importantly, it's crucial. I remember seeing Elliott Smith cover "Thirteen," and I wanted to climb inside every line of that song, to be both the lover and the beloved, the outlaw, to merely exist in the wondrous realm somewhere between Smith's version and Big Star's.

Really, we all just want to be part of the song -- of the band, and of music itself. There were a lot of us who counted ourselves as belonging to Big Star, to Alex Chilton. And we felt lucky to be included. Every time I hear "Mod Lang," "Don't Lie to Me" or "Ballad of El Goodo," I don't just think, "This is an amazing song." I think, "This is what music should sound like." Always and forever.

3:47 PM ET | 03-18-2010 | permalink

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Heavy Hitters + Never Quitters

At long last, I've seen some live music! I've been at SXSW since Saturday. For the first few days, along with my fellow cast and crew members of Some Days Are Better Than Others, I sat in dark theaters, searched for inspiration and kept quiet. (Best movie I saw: American: The Bill Hicks Story.)

But now -- and with a sense of relief and release -- I can be in the sunshine, and I can be in the noise.

It only took me a few minutes to get pleasantly pummeled by guitars, bass and drums. I walked into Emo's and witnessed Philly-based, conically-bearded metal band Javelina. This band syncs up on guitar a la Judas Priest and lets the vocals be the sludge. It was the perfect way to start the festival for me: An obliteration of all that had come before.

Javelina. (Carrie Brownstein)

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4:48 PM ET | 03-17-2010 | permalink

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HoZac Records: Interview And Music!

Sweet Lord, I love Chicago's HoZac Records. I am a relatively new convert to the label, introduced to it in late 2009 by Matador Records' Gerard Cosloy. But, trust me, it was love at first speaker blow-out. Since then, I find myself talking about HoZac bands all the time -- from Mickey to Myelin Sheaths to Wizzard Sleeve -- forwarding their MySpace pages to friends, dropping the label's name in interviews and mostly (and most joyously) listening to whatever I can get my hands on.

Artwork from the upcoming Woven Bones LP, In and Out and Back Again. (Courtesy of HoZac Records)

When I received a package full of HoZac 7" singles a few weeks ago, I spent two hours hovered over my turntable: setting the needle down, pacing around the room with the artwork in my hands, cuing up the B-sides, hand-clapping, foot-tapping and all-out fidgeting with an urgent sonic twitch. If you're solely a digital collector, this is the part you've been missing out on: There is nothing more satisfying, or more like a trampoline-leap, than a fresh stack of records.

As for HoZac's philosophy and what kind of music the label loves, I'll let the eloquent and insanely knowledgeable label co-owner and co-founder Todd Novak tell you himself. But I've also included six tracks from HoZac bands, all of whom happen to be playing the SXSW Music Festival.

Woven Bones "It Feels Alright"

The following interview took place over email.

Carrie Brownstein: What was the impetus for you starting a record label? When did HoZac start and what were the first records that you put out?

Todd Novak: We had been helping friends of ours who had labels for years while living in Chicago during its big musical re-awakening in the 2001-04 period (Ponys, Tyrades, Hot Machines, Vee Dee and so on). Music was really changing around the 2005-06 point that we really started considering getting behind a label ourselves. It was no longer the norm to mail in a money order from 7-11 for a 7" single from some obscure band you read about; it was PayPal and that instant ability to recoup your funds, combined with our unhinged excitement to keep introducing the world to newly discovered music that we just couldn't get out of our heads. We gathered up a couple newly formed bands, the members of which we'd known for a while in their previous incarnations for our first two releases: Volt from Paris, France, who were formerly in Splash 4, and Spider from Los Angeles, which was the brainchild of Erin Wood from The Spits and his lady Jessie. Both bands had odd similarities, in that one of the tracks on the Spider single was a tribute to Lili of Volt/Splash 4, and both bands essentially were home-recorded handmade miniature masterpieces in our eyes, which in the fall of 2006 was such an exciting concept. We'd always been fans of the "budget rock" mentality, and although neither sounded anything like The Mummies or the Trashwomen, these two bands seemed like a perfect fit for our first two releases.

CB: How many employees does HoZac have?

TN: Two, mainly Brett Cross and myself, with a few ramshackle A&R types that we call our Bored of Directors.

CB: Whereas other record labels have tended to broaden their rosters in terms of sound, style and genre, there is a singular grittiness and an unabashedly unpolished feel to many of your bands, not to mention a teenage sensibility (even if the bands themselves aren't teenagers). Why is it important for a label to specialize, as opposed to taking on a more eclectic, cross-genre philosophy? If not the sonic similarity, what would you say defines a HoZac band, or the artists with whom you're interested in working?

TN: Well, we do thoroughly enjoy the grittiness, and I still find it hard to release anything recorded super-clean-sounding, but if pulled off well, it can be just as jarring, like on the debut Dum Dum Girls album we're set to release next week. It's recorded by Richard Gottehrer (the guy from The Strangeloves who wrote the hit "My Boyfriend's Back" in the mid-'60s and produced Blondie and the Go Go's albums), and it's very clean, yet has our prerequisite scuzz factor boiling underneath the beauty; kind of our Je ne sais quoi when it comes to all of our releases, actually. I think we really enjoy introducing people to bands and sounds they don't think they'd like, in hopes of broadening horizons, I guess. Seeing a hardcore punk fan enjoying an Eric & The Happy Thoughts ripper or finding a twee-pop fan really warming up to the echo-eerieness of Wizzard Sleeve really makes it all worthwhile.

Wizzard Sleeve "Pterodactyl"

CB: How does HoZac fit in with the Chicago music scene? What is your own history within the Chicago music community, and do you think a label can still be an integral part to a city's music environment? If so, how?

TN: We've been holding it down for a while, based on the fact that just like most respectable record labels, we were born out of a print publication. Our magazine Horizontal Action (1997-2005) basically reinvigorated what was once an indie-rock/pop-punk ONLY city, into a welcoming, creative environment that now 10 years later forced rock venues to become 500 times more accepting to other kinds of music than it used to. I was the music editor/coordinator for the entire run, and we booked/hosted countless live shows for out-of-town bands along with picking out the best local support acts, including the five annual sold-out Chicago Blackout Festival shows (2001-06), which brought national/international attention to our city and the hotbed of incredible local bands around during the early-2000s peak. We still keep an eagle eye out for great new local bands, but despite a handful of exceptions, it's at a moderate point compared to the momentum that was churning at the beginning of the 2000s, but we're always optimistic that another era of greatness is right around the corner. But to be specific, we've always been a record label that focuses on a variety of what we consider incredible sounds, so keeping it Chicago-specific was never the intention, as we didn't even release anything by a local act until our fourth release and to date. We still only have about 20 percent of the records we've released done by locals, and that's just fine.

Fresh and Onlys "Door Bell"

CB: Hozac puts put a lot of 7" singles. In some ways, we have returned to the era of the single, though your label seems focused on the physical more than the digital single. What are some of your favorite 7" records in your own collection, and how does your own history of record collecting and fandom inform your label's decisions?

TN: Hmm, so many records I could name here: Iron Virgin, Snuky Tate? And, yes, we still think the 7" single/EP is the best way to get to know a band, and we were really picky about which bands we thought could pull off overwhelming LPs, so that's the main reason the ratio of singles to LPs has been low. It's obvious that the bigger labels are rethinking their game plans as we've seen the biggest indie labels return to producing "limited" 7" records, as it seems fewer and fewer people can even conceptualize an "album" of songs vs. a single song based on the way people in general consume music nowadays. I have about four times as many 7" records as I do LPs, and that's mostly due in part to the fact that a lot of the best bands either don't even make it to the LP stage, or they were so incredibly great and volatile that they were short-lived, and that's usually the perfect criteria for good records in our eyes.

Dum Dum Girls "Blank Girl"

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9:43 AM ET | 03-17-2010 | permalink

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Monitor Mix On Hold Until SXSW

I have to take a short vacation from Monitor Mix in order to finish up some other projects, but I'll return to the blog in full force, live from the SXSW Music Festival, on March 17. Please check back with me then.

Thanks for reading -- talk to you soon!

8:25 AM ET | 02-23-2010 | permalink

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The New Quasi Album Is Immense!

Before I put this blog on a brief hiatus, I want to mention how much I love the new Quasi album, American Gong, which comes out today on Kill Rock Stars. I wrote the one-sheet bio that accompanies press copies of the band's album, and in lieu of a review, I'll share parts of it here with you:

Quasi flings words and notes relentlessly, hurling music across the stage like grenades. It is explosive and electrifying. Sam Coomes devours his instruments, whether it is keyboard or guitar, fusing melody and mayhem. His voice can go from deadpan to caterwauling, from a lovely lilt to a sardonic sting. Janet Weiss is the avalanche (earthquake? tsunami? volcano?) of drummers. Really, just step aside and make a soft landing for your jaw, because it's very likely to drop. Plus, Weiss can sing, which means that Quasi has harmonies; they hint at sweetness, settling into the halcyon moment for a while, before you realize that the words conjure a creeping sense of unease.

Quasi's songs teeter between optimism and despair, fantastical journeys and harsh realism; this is a pop band for people who like their pop throttled. Coomes, Weiss and Joanna Bolme (of Stephen Malkmus + The Jicks; she joined the band on bass in 2006) are consummate players who let go of the reins to let the wildness accumulate -- who space out and make the music disintegrate, blur and tumble before it falls back into the groove. Their playing is proficiently, seamlessly ragged.

Quasi's new album, American Gong, is still ringing in my ears. And by ringing, I mean that it's obliterated and unstuffed the cushiony music that's been singing me to sleep for the past few years. Personally, I'm well rested and ready to move on. American Gong signals that the musical group hug we've been stuck in for a while is over. Gong lurches and veers; it reels, resets, crawls and moans. But the album also professes beauty; it surfaces from the murkiness and soars. In the midst of this awesome sonic storm are expertly crafted compositions and arrangements, gravel and grime-coated rock, psych and pop tunes that never lose their shine.

Listen to "Repulsion," listen to "Little White Horse," listen to "Bye Bye Blackbird." Wait! Listen to the whole thing. "Black Dogs and Bubbles." Yes! Yeah! Yay! Words just seem silly compared to the feeling of wanting to jump around.

"Little White Horse":

"Bye Bye Blackbird":

Let me end by saying that Quasi is a stellar and inventive band. On American Gong, it sounds inspired, happy to be playing, even joyful. I think kids will discover Quasi for the first time on American Gong; longtime fans will wonder where all the time has gone and be thankful that Quasi is still around to provide the unofficial soundtrack to our hopelessly hopeful lives. Rise up!

8:11 AM ET | 02-23-2010 | permalink

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Now Is The Time: Who Or What Inspired You To Play Music?

Until I was in high school, every music concert I attended, from Madonna to George Michael, was a huge event. The performer was on stage -- singing, writhing, running, dancing, flirting -- but the music and the musicians were obscured. Music was sexier than anything I'd ever known; it made me dizzy and restless. I formed a guitar out of anything (a grandparent's cane, a Little League baseball bat) and I'd strum the air. I would fake keyboard moves on a countertop and sing into hairbrushes. But the music I was hearing and the concerts I was witnessing were also mystifying and inaccessible. The music was in the room and in my body, but I had no idea how it had been assembled or how to break it apart. It was the '80s, after all, and much of what I loved was synthed-out pop and Top 40 music, programmed more than it was played.

If I wanted to learn a Madonna song, for example, I'd get the piano sheet music and plunk out a wholesome version of it on the keys. But what fun was it to basically re-virginize "Like a Virgin"? Well, it was hardly any fun at all. Alas, I remained merely a fan, an after-school bedroom lip-syncher and a family-gathering thanks-for-humoring-me entertainer, with no means of claiming the sounds as my own.

What changed, of course, was buying my first guitar and seeing my first punk and rock shows. Beginning in 10th grade, when a few of my friends were old enough to drive, I started making my way out of the suburbs and into Seattle on the weekends. Some of the shows we saw were still at bigger venues, like The Moore or Paramount Theatre: The Church, Ramones, Sonic Youth and The Jesus and Mary Chain. But most of the time, we'd go to smaller venues, like Party Hall or The OK Hotel, and we'd see Northwest-based bands like Treepeople, Kill Sybil, Hammerbox, Engine Kid, Aspirin Feast, Galleon's Lap, Christ on a Crutch and Positive Greed.

Aside from the obvious musical differences, what separated these shows from my early concert-going experiences was being close to the players themselves. I could see how the drums worked with the guitars and bass, I could watch fingers move along the frets and feet stomp down on pedals, I saw the set lists taped to the floor, and sometimes I was close enough to see the amp or pickup settings. I observed the nature of the bands, their interactions, their relationship to one another, as much as I listened. It seems obvious, but it was the first time I realized that music was playable, not just performable; that it had a process and a seed, a beginning, middle and end.

Everyone who plays music needs to have witnessed it; to have a moment that ignites and inspires them, calls them into the world of sound and urges them to make it. And I suppose that witnessing could happen aurally; perhaps it's as easy as hearing a John Lennon riff or a Bob Dylan phrase and knowing intuitively how that all works. Then you form those sounds yourself, with your own hands and your own voice. Or you could see it on a video, in footage of a musician who finally translates and unlocks what you thought was a mystery.

For me, however, I needed to be there: to see guitarists like Kim Warnick and Kurt Bloch of The Fastbacks play chords and leads, to watch them form songs that weren't coming out of thin air or from behind a curtain. I needed to press myself up against small stages, risking crushed toes, bruised sides and the unpredictable undulation of the pit, just so I could get a glimpse of who I wanted to be.

Please share the moment, musician or show you witnessed or heard that made you want to play music. And, if you don't play music, please share what first made you wish you could.

11:13 AM ET | 02-19-2010 | permalink

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Westminster Dog Show Recap

While much of New York City was entrenched in fashion week, I put on the same Norwegian ski sweater I've been wearing all season, pulled up my black boots, threw a scarf around my neck and headed off to the 2010 Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden. (Sure, I would have traded all that for a ticket to the Rodarte show, but that's a whole other story.)

Though the dog show was spread out over two days, I only bought tickets for the second. And compared to any other cold winter morning thus far, wherein staying under the covers is the only defense against a heating system with a cocaine addict's schedule in mind (ready to climb into bed at 4 a.m.? 'Cause that's when it gets cozy!), I jumped out of bed with alacrity on Tuesday and was on the subway by 8:15.

Going into Madison Square Garden for anything other than a rock concert was bizarre. Suddenly, MSG was no different than a convention center in Topeka. There were booths brimming with diamond-encrusted Lhasa Apso-themed leather jackets, paintings of hunting dogs valued at thousands of dollars, West Highland Terrier neckties, doggie-perfume displays and demonstrations of cleaning products taking place on well-worn La-Z-Boys. Never had I been to something in New York City that 1) could have taken place anywhere; and 2) barely featured anyone from New York City. In other words, I felt right at home.

Sure, I wasn't wearing a hat with a brim shaped like a snout, nor was my purse a dog-shaped stuffed animal with a zipper. My pantsuit didn't have a Mastiff's head stitched on the front and I wasn't wearing head-to-toe gold lamé -- but I did know each and every breed and, well, I was there before breakfast.

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12:00 PM ET | 02-18-2010 | permalink

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Kathleen Hanna Interview On GRITtv

10:59 AM ET | 02-18-2010 | permalink

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