rocks my socks

Frances Farmer: The Nirvana song that fell through the cracks

For some reason over the years, Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Here we have one of those songs that no one ever talks about. It sits around being under-appreciated, despite all the hard work it does at being one of Nirvana’s true great masterpieces. For some reason, it’s constantly overshadowed by its bigger brothers. Come on! It is nearly last place (tied with Radio Friendly Unit Shifter) on the Last.fm In Utero chart.

But no longer! Listen now and behold its glory!

[audio:061022FrancesFarmer.mp3]

second coming of pearl jam

pearl jam 2006

pearl jam on itunes

so all the pearl jam i’ve been listening to lately is leading to a kind of renaissance for the group as far as i’m concerned.

my fandom was huge in high school, basically through the release of no code. i was involved with some tape trading over the internet and regularly participated on an early mailing list dedicated to the band (which i had to telnet to tallahassee freenet in order to receive). i was a member of the ten club for a couple years and soaked up as much information about the band as i could get my hands on, keeping track of such minutia as who the current drummer was. i even managed to go to a concert once.

but as time went on, life found ways of distracting me. i kept up with the band less and less. no code didn’t capture my attention for very long and didn’t get much play. and while i’ve come to consider yield to be their best album (well-written, expertly executed and compellingly packaged), at the time of its release, i was well into diversifying my musical interests and there was much competition for my considerations.

after that, it was sheer momentum. i picked up a couple of the official bootlegs but barely listened to them. binaural and riot act barely made a blip on my radar, each receiving only cursory listens.

in retrospect, that’s most unfortunate. how i could have gone all these years without fully appreciating ‘god’s dice,’ i’m sure is a musical tragedy on my part. but if there’s one thing the tunequest is teaching me, it’s that this personal "second age of pearl jam" (defined as everything since 2000) is awesome.

my renewed interest inspired me to pick up the band’s latest, their eponymous albumpearl jam. i added it to my iTunes library last night, and "surprisingly," my ipod *randomly* chose to play it this afternoon, which i think settles the notion that it has its own favorites. (quick aside: my previous ipod committed suicide rather than play one more song by jet and all these years later, i don’t begrudge it one bit.)

anyway, this thing rocks! no gimmicks. no fluff. just straight-ahead sound. ‘world wide suicide’ earned a 5-star rating by the end of the first minute. and once more, here’s yet another record that i can’t wait to hear again. after the tunequest has finished.

Mudhoney – My Brother the Cow: mmm mmmm angst

my brother the cow

Mudhoney’s My Brother the Cow, I think, is a fitting bookend to the “grunge” era. And though I didn’t get into Mudhoney until the waning days of the movement, in retrospect it seems as though it was the most quintessentially grunge of all the big bands to come out of Seattle during that time. Nirvana was more pop friendly; Pearl Jam leaned toward hard rock; Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were imbued with a metal sensibility; but Mudhoney was the band the best encapsilated the grunge ethos.

My Brother the Cow was released at a time when the music world was leaving grunge behind. It was spring of 1995 and Cobain had been dead for a year. Post-grunge acts such as Better Than Ezra and Live were bringing a kinder, gentle form of rock to the masses.

But Mudhoney continued doing its own thing and produced this great album. I remember waiting especially eagerly for this record to come out.

In January of that year, I obtained a recording of "self pollution radio," a sprawling 4 hour radio show hosted by Eddie Vedder and friends. They had gotten together to spin some records and engage in intelligent conversation.

Those tapes three ninety minute maxells became my musical divining rod for nearly 2 years. The first song played was Sonic Youth’s Teenage Riot and I was instantly transformed from casually interested in the band to hardcore fan. As the set progressed, I was introduced to forms of music both new and strange.

I heard songs months, and in some cases, years before they were officially released, including some Dave Grohl demo songs that would eventually be released as Foo Fighters.

The best part of the tapes, however, were the live sessions. Besides all the vinyl spinning, Eddie and company had arranged for a bunch of their friends to play a handful of songs in a make-shift studio.

  • Pearl Jam itself put in 2 sets with mostly material from Vitalogy.
  • Soundgarden put in a set, delivering Kyle Petty, Son of Richard and No Attention, both of which sound better on this performance than the studio versions released 2 years later.
  • Mad Season was there too and their performance inspired me buy their album when it was released a couple months later.

Which brings me back to Mudhoney, whose performance really kinda blew me away. I hadn’t given the band much attention beyond their song on the seminal Singles soundtrack. but by the time the strutting bass line of What Moves the Heart had finished, I knew that I had to add this band to my collection.

I picked up Piece of Cake shortly thereafter and waited a couple months for My Brother the Cow. When I finally received it, I deemed it awesome and it quickly made its way into my frequent rotation. The music was great, but the thing that made it characteristically Mudhoney was the prankish sense of humor. My favorite part of the record was waiting for the last song to drain away to nothing, then come roaring back as the album started to play itself backward.

But just as this record seems to be the last defiant gasp of grunge, it was also Mudhoney’s last hurrah for me. I listened to them vigorously for a couple years, but by the time the group’s next album, Tomorrow Hit Today, was released in 1998 I had largely forgotten about them. But listening to My Brother the Cow again reminds me why I liked them so much in the first place.

sonic youth doth mine ears please

a thousand leaves

After dancing with the mainstream on dirty and (to a lesser extent) washing machine, sonic youth delivered more musically-complex album with a thousand leaves, which contains two of the great songs in the group’s repetoire: ‘sunday’ and ‘hits of sunshine’ (one of their most quintessential jams).

in my mind, this album marks the mellowing of the band, but it’s a mellowing that comes from the confidence that they know what they’re doing. yep, they still love their noise, but listening to ‘wild flower soul’ and ‘hits of sunshine,’ i really start to see the transition towards "radical adults."

after being together for nearly 20 years, a thousand leaves begins a golden era of sonic noise.

let it come down on me

Spiritualized

every time i run across spiritualized, i enjoy it that much more. and the funny thing is, i’ve never really sat down and given the group the attention it deserves. like passing acquaintances from a bar scene, i’ve only bumped into the band’s music a handful of times, despite having it in my library for nigh on five years now.

it’s a real shame too, because i should have been a better friend to the group. i got let it come down and ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space in quick succession during the great music dump of 2001, an event that i’m still dealing with in terms of listenage. it was a year of seismic change in my musical listening patterns and spiritualized got lost in all the, well, noise (that’s a pun, if you aren’t familiar with the band’s music.)

but that goes back to one of the reasons why i am undergoing this tunequest: to unearth my lost musical treasures.

oh, this music will pin you to your chair there’s so much sound.