sábado, 26 de julho de 2008

Meat Puppets


First, let me say this... I've found videos os them since the early eighties.


My favourite album is Meat Puppets II.



Biography
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Out of all of the bands that made SST Records a towering force in the American underground during the mid-'80s, the Meat Puppets lasted the longest, surviving where other bands fell apart. The Meat Puppets never had the dedicated following of Hüsker Dü or the Minutemen — two fellow SST bands who played the same circuit as the Puppets — but they were able to carve out a long career where other hardcore bands could not, because they always drew from conventional hard rock as well as punk. Not only did they play hard, loud, and fast, but they also had elements of the blues-rock of ZZ Top, the ambling folk-rock of the Grateful Dead, and Neil Young's country-rock and hard rock. As they grew older, the band matured musically, developing an accomplished instrumental technique and moving closer to the traditional hard rock that was always underneath their punk. But they never quite abandoned their punk roots, even when they briefly broke into the mainstream in the early '90s.The core of the Meat Puppets was Curt (guitar; born January 10, 1959) and Cris Kirkwood (bass; born October 22, 1960), a pair of brothers born and raised in Phoenix, AZ. As teenagers, the Kirkwoods played in local rock & roll bands, primarily playing mainstream rock and hard rock. After graduating from a Jesuit prep school, the brothers formed the Meat Puppets in 1980 with drummer Derrick Bostrom. Unlike the Kirkwoods' earlier bands, the Meat Puppets were directly inspired by punk rock; they were so committed to keeping the music punk that they refused to rehearse.A little over a year after their formation, the Meat Puppets released their first EP, In a Car, on World Imitation. At this point in their career, the band was at its noisiest, playing furious hardcore with avant-garde leanings. Greg Ginn, the lead guitarist for Black Flag and the head of SST Records, heard the record and offered the Meat Puppets a contract with SST. In 1982, the band released their full-length eponymous debut album on SST, which continued in the experimental vein of their EP.The Meat Puppets didn't develop their own distinctive voice until their second album, Meat Puppets II, which was released in 1984. On Meat Puppets II, the band created a fusion of punk and country that sounded unlike anything else in the American underground. With their second album and constant touring, the Meat Puppets began to cultivate a dedicated cult following across the U.S. that continued to grow throughout the rest of the decade. In 1985, the group released their third album, Up on the Sun, which earned them their first reviews in mainstream music publications. Up on the Sun also demonstrated that the band was beginning to streamline their sound, moving closer to traditional blues-rock, country-rock, and psychedelia. This shift toward conventional hard rock continued throughout the late '80s, as the band gradually sanded away their rougher, punk edges.After releasing an EP called Out My Way in 1986, the Meat Puppets released two critically acclaimed albums — Mirage and Huevos — in 1987. By the release of Mirage, the Meat Puppets had established themselves as college radio stars, as well as popular attractions on the American underground circuit. Monsters, their final album for SST Records, was released in 1989 and its heavy rock attack foreshadowed the approach the band would adopt in the following decade. The straightforward sound of Monsters wasn't greeted favorably by the band's cult following, and the record stiffed on college radio.Following the weak reception of Monsters, the Meat Puppets broke up. In 1991, they re-formed and signed a major-label deal with London Records. Before they recorded their first album for London, SST issued the compilation No Strings Attached in 1990. The following year, Forbidden Places, the group's major-label debut, appeared in the stores. Forbidden Places was neither a commercial nor underground success.For two years after the release of Forbidden Places, the Meat Puppets were relatively quiet, playing a couple of gigs every once in a while. In 1993, they re-emerged as an opening act on Nirvana's In Utero tour. Toward the end of the tour, Nirvana taped an appearance for MTV Unplugged, during which they covered three songs from Meat Puppets II with the Meat Puppets themselves. The exposure on MTV Unplugged helped set the stage for the commercial breakthrough of the band's second major-label album, 1994's Too High to Die. Released around the same time as MTV Unplugged originally aired, Too High to Die didn't gather much attention at first, but after Kurt Cobain's suicide in April, the record and its first single, "Backwater," began to move. This was due to radio's acceptance of "Backwater," but also to MTV's constant airings of Nirvana's MTV Unplugged. By the summer of 1994, "Backwater" was a genuine hit, climbing to number two on the album rock charts and just missing the pop Top 40. None of the other singles from Too High to Die performed quite as well, but the album was a success, becoming the group's first to go gold. The Meat Puppets released No Joke!, their follow-up to Too High to Die, in the fall of 1995. However, this album received mediocre reviews and little airplay, and disappeared from the charts and radio a few months after its release.Following this setback, the Pups effectively went on hiatus. Derrick Bostrom recorded a one-off EP of goofy, saccharine pop covers for the Amarillo label in 1996 under the name Today's Sounds; he subsequently took a job with a multimedia company, also overseeing both the band's website and Rykodisc's 1999 Meat Puppets reissue campaign. Cris Kirkwood, unfortunately, did not fare so well. With the influx of fame and cash, his drug problem had worsened during the No Joke! sessions, and in 1995, he married Michelle Tardif, whose own addictions and run-ins with the law sent things spiraling out of control. Tragedy struck in December 1996, when the Kirkwoods' mother died, and again in August 1998 when Tardif died of a drug overdose. After virtually disappearing for a short time, Cris began to sort out his addictions in rehab programs, and his attendant legal problems in court. Meanwhile, the band's label, London Records, was swallowed up by Universal in a corporate mega-merger.An overloaded Curt Kirkwood had already relocated to Austin, TX, prior to Tardif's death; there he formed a new outfit dubbed the Royal Neanderthal Orchestra with ex-Pariah members Kyle Ellison (guitar) and Shandon Sahm (drums; also the son of Doug Sahm), plus former Bob Mould bassist Andrew DuPlantis. Eventually, this group took over the Meat Puppets name (although neither Bostrom nor Cris Kirkwood was ever officially removed from the lineup). Curt secured a release from his prior contract and signed with Breaking, an Atlantic subsidiary. Golden Lies, the Meat Puppets' first new album in five years, was released in the fall of 2000. Seven years later, after a lengthy struggle with substance abuse, Cris Kirkwood reunited with brother Curt and new drummer Ted Marcus for the Anodyne release Rise to Your Knees.
Now a song that some of you might sound familiar - Lake of Fire




segunda-feira, 14 de julho de 2008

Consolers of the Lonely




Anybody who has followed Jack White's online screeds and offstage brawls knows that the White Stripes' mastermind can tend to get a little, well, defensive when he's challenged (and sometimes even when he's not), but this trait hasn't always surfaced on record — at least not in the way he and his merry band of Raconteurs do on their second album, Consolers of the Lonely. At the very least, this bubbling blend of bizarro blues, rustic progressive rock, fractured pop, and bludgeoning guitars is a finger in the eye to anyone who dared call the band a mere power pop trifle, proof that the Raconteurs are a rock & roll band, but it's not just the sound of the record that's defiant. There's the very nature of the album's release: how it was announced to the world a week before its release when it then appeared in all formats in all retail outfits simultaneously; there's the obstinately olde-fashioned look of the art work, how the group is decked out like minstrels at a turn-of-the century carnival, or at least out of Dylan's Masked and Anonymous. Most of all, there's the overriding sense that the Raconteurs are turning into an outlet for every passing fancy that Jack has but will not allow himself to indulge within the confines of the tightly controlled White Stripes, whether it's melodramatic Western operas like "The Switch and the Spur" (whose concluding bridge states "any poor souls who trespass against us...will be suffer the bite or be stung dead on sight", functioning as a virtual manifesto for the band), or the slick studio trickery that makes this the biggest White-related production yet. And it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the show of Jack White III (as he now insists on billing himself, playing right into his ongoing Third Man fetish), as that despite the even split in songwriting and producing credits between Jack and Brendan Benson, and even how they trade off lead vocals, that only White could have pushed the Raconteurs to get as stubbornly, stiffly weird as they do here. Of course, that impression is not tempered by how Brendan mimics Jack's manic blues babble, particularly on the spitfire "Salute Your Solution" — White does follow Benson's gentle, rounded phrasing on the elongated melodies, but that's a subtle distinction overpowered by the force of Jack's concepts. And this is indeed "concepts" in plural: how cult hero Terry Reid is used as a touchstone for the band's progressive blues-rock via a blazing cover of "Rich Kid Blues," or how there's an evocation of the old weird America in all the album's rambling centerpieces, or how half of the record fights against pop brevity, while all of it is a deathblow against the idea that the Raconteurs are power pop sissies. Sometimes, the group hits against that notion with a bluesy bluster, especially on the opening pair of tunes which tread a bit too closely toward Jack conventions, sometimes their attempts to stretch out are either ill-defined ("Attention," "You Don't Understand Me") or collapse under their own weight ("Many Shades of Black"), but the moments that do work — and there are many — make for the best music the Raconteurs have yet made. The album truly kicks into gear with the tipsy country stomp of "Old Enough" and after that, there's a series of remarkable moments: that absurd Morricone dust-up "The Switch and the Spur"; "Hold Up," which rages like '70s Stones at their sleaziest; the rampaging "Five on the Five"; that splendid Reid cover that finds its heir on the steadily building "These Stones Will Shout," and finally, the closing backwoods ballad on "Carolina Drama." These songs illustrate all the ways that Jack White's stubborn stylization pays off — they're quite deliberate in their conflation of the traditional and modern, yet they never sound over-thought, they kick and crackle as pure kinetic music. Broken Boy Soldiers lacked tunes like these, tunes with considerable weight, and these songs turn Consolers of the Lonely into a lop-sided, bottom-loaded album that's better and richer than their debut.



Tracks
1 Consoler of the Lonely Benson, White 3:25
2 Salute Your Solution Benson, White 2:59
3 You Don't Understand Me Benson, White 4:53
4 Old Enough Benson, White 3:57
5 The Switch and the Spur Benson, White 4:25
6 Hold Up Benson, White 3:26
7 Top Yourself Benson, White 4:25
8 Many Shades of Black Benson, White 4:24
9 Five on the Five Benson, White 3:33
10 Attention Benson, White 3:40
11 Pull This Blanket Off Benson, White 1:59
12 Rich Kid Blues Reid 4:34
13 These Stones Will Shout Benson, White 3:54
14 Carolina Drama Benson, White 5:55


mojorising

The Raconteurs-Consolers of the lonely on later live jools

É por estas razões que a música é a melhor coisa do mundo!
Nesta música ouço Led Zeppelin, Queen e Beatles. Fantástico!. Aconselho mesmo...



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mojo

Poem to Ian




We listened to the open sound your voice projected on the radio dial
Lie with me I said and lying's what she always did and always will.
All these thoughts keep leading back to him.

And no signs from Cinema.
No city skyline.
No paper scraps and no unfolding at five o' clock
Your voice skips as it always did and always will
All these thoughts keep leading back to him

a figure 8
with no hope

It's the light from your sunless room
Scattered in pieces all around you.
Recession of these thoughtless forms
Reciting every line as a way of life and a way of death in time

We heard Ian Curtis kill himself again in your bed.

In these 24 hours we stretched into a room filled with "Heart and Soul."
This is the way.
Step inside and march in the procession of empty hearts.
Love has torn us apart. (isolation)
It's a part of me a part of you in time we're falling apart together.

THURSDAY
mojorising

An American Prayer/ Hour for Magic/ Freedom Exists/ a Feast of Friends

Do you know the warm progress
Under the stars?

Do you know we exist?

Have you forgotten the keys
To the kingdom

Have you been borne yet
& are you alive?

Let’s reinvent the gods,
All the myths of the ages

Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests

[have you forgotten the lessons
Of the ancient war]

We need great golden copulations

The fathers are cackling in trees
Of the forest

Our mother is dead in the sea

Do you know we are being led to
Slaughters by placid admirals

& that fat slow generals are getting
Obscene on young blood

Do you know we are ruled by t.v.

The moon is dry blood beast

Guerrilla bands are rolling numbers
In the next block of green vine

Amassing for warfare on innocent
Herdsman who are just dying

O great creator of being

Grant us one more hour to
Perform our art
& perfect our lives

The moths & atheists are doubly divine
& dying

We live, we die
& death not ends it

Journey we more into
The nightmare
Cling to life
Our passion’d flower

Cling to cunts & cocks
Of despair

We got our final vision
By clap

Columbus groin got
Filled with green death

(I touched her thigh & death smiled)

We have assembled inside this ancient
& insane theatre

To propagate our lust for life
Flee the swarming wisdom
Of the streets

The barns are stormed

The windows kept

& only one of all the rest

To dance & save us

With the divine mockery
Of words

Music inflames temperament

(when the true king’s murderers
Are allowed to roam free
A 1000 magicians arise in the land)

Where are the feasts

We are promised

Where is the wine
The new wine
(dying on the vine)
Resident mockery
Give us an hour for magic
We of the purple glove
We of the starling flight
& velvet hour
We of arabic pleasures’s breed
We of sundome & the night

Give us a creed

To believe

A night of lust

Give us trust in

The night

Give of color

Hundred hues

A rich mandala

For me & for you

& for your silky

Pillowed house

A head, wisdom

& a bed

Troubled decree

Resident mockery

Has claimed thee

We used to believe

In the good old days

We still receive

In little ways

The things of kindness

& unsporting brow

Forget & allow

Did you know freedom exists
In school books

Did you know madmen are
Running our prisons
Within a jail, within a gaol
Within a white free protestant
Maelstrom

We’re perched headlong
On the edge of boredom

We’re reaching for death
On the end of a candle

We’re trying for something
That’s already found us

Wow, I’m sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain
South

Cruel bindings

The sevants have the power

Dog-men & their mean women
Pulling poor blankets over
Our sailors

I’m sick of dour faces
Starong at me from the t.v.

Tower, I want roses in
My garden bower; dig?

Royal babies, rubies
Must now replace aborted

Strangers in the mud

These mutants, blood-meal
For the plant that’s plowed
They are waiting to take us into
The severed garden

Do you know how pale & wanton thrillful
Comes death on a stranger hour
Unannounced, unplanned for

Like a scaring over-friendly guest you’ve
Brought to bed

Death makes angels of us all
& gives us wings
Where we had shoulders
Smooth as raven’s claws

No more money, no more fancy dress
This other kingdom seems by far the best
Until it’s other jaw reveals incest
& loose obedience to a vegetable law

I will not go
Prefer a feast of friends
To the giant family


Jim Morrison ( An American Prayer )

sábado, 5 de julho de 2008

Prince em Legos

O meu irmão, como ainda não tem bebés, vai usando o seu tempo livre para fazer umas criações em legos bastante interessantes. Como a temática desta vez foi musical penso que este é o espaço certo para o mostrar.

Estávamos no remoto ano de 1984 e o Prince andava de mota...




Eis agora o artista "versão Lego"

Para quando o Art Design da banda The Doors?

sexta-feira, 4 de julho de 2008

quinta-feira, 3 de julho de 2008

3 Julho 1971 - Saudade Jim!


E porque hoje faz 37 anos que o jim morreu, só na língua portuguesa, a única onde existe uma palavra que se chama saudade, me consigo expressar. O poeta, como gostaria de ficar conhecido, ainda hoje vê o seu nome associado a outros nomes como Amy Winehouse. Pena que tais associações não sejam para salientar o génio que ambos possuem, mas e infelizmente, por causa da vida boémia que levam.

Deixo aqui um poema que ele escreveu e está incluido no album "Waiting For The Sun"


"Celebration Of The Lizard"

Lions in the street and roamingDogs in heat, rabid, foamingA beast caged in the heart of a cityThe body of his motherRotting in the summer groundHe fled the townHe went down South and crossed the borderLeft chaos and disorderBack there over his shoulderOne morning he awoke in a green hotelWith a strange creature groaning beside himSweat oozed from its shining skinis everybody in?is everybody in?is everybody in?the ceremony is about to beginWake up!You can't remember where it wasHad this dream stopped?The snake was pale goldGlazed and shrunkenWe were afraid to touch itThe sheets were hot dead prisonsAnd she was beside meOld, she's no, youngHer dark red hairthe white soft skinNow, run to the mirror in the bathroomLook!shes coming in hereI can't live thru each slow century of her movingI let my cheek slide downThe cool smooth tileFeel the good cold stinging bloodThe smooth hissing snakes of rain . . .Once I had, a little gameI liked to crawl, back in my brainI think you know, the game I meanI mean the game, called 'go insane'you should try, this little gameJust close your eyes, forget your nameForget the world, forget the peopleAnd we'll erect, a different steepleThis little game, is fun to doJust close your eyes, no way to loseAnd I'm right there, I'm going tooRelease control, we're breaking thruWay back deep into the brainBack where there's never any painAnd the rain falls gently on the townAnd over the heads of all of usAnd in the labyrinth of streamsBeneath, the quiet unearthly presence ofgentle hill dwellers, in the gentle hills aroundReptiles aboundingFossils, caves, cool air heightsEach house repeats a moldWindows rolledBeast car locked in against morningAll now sleepingRugs silent, mirrors vacantDust Lying under the beds of lawful couplesWound in sheetsAnd daughters, smugWith semen eyes in their nipplesWaitThere's been a slaughter here(Don't stop to speak or look aroundYour gloves and fan are on the groundWe're getting out of townWe're going on the runAnd you're the one I want to come)Not to touch the earthNot to see the sunNothing left to do, butRun, run, runLet's runlets runHouse upon the hillMoon is lying stillShadows of the treesWitnessing the wild breezeC'mon baby run with meLet's runRun with meRun with meRun with meLet's runThe mansion is warm, at the top of the hillRich are the rooms and the comforts thereRed are the arms of luxuriant chairsAnd you won't know a thing till you get insideDead president's corpse in the driver's carThe engine runs on glue and tarC'mon along, we're not going very farTo the East to meet the Czarrun with merun with merun with melet's runSome outlaws lived by the side of the lakeThe minister's daughter's in love with the snakeWho lives in a well by the side of the roadWake up, girl! We're almost homeWe should see the gates by mornin'We should be inside by evening,sun sun sunburn burn burnburn, burn, burn,i will get yousoon,soon, sooni am the lizard kingi can do anythingWe came downThe rivers and highwaysWe came down fromForests and fallsWe came down fromCarson and SpringfieldWe came down fromPhoenix enthralledAnd I can tell youThe names of the KingdomI can tell youThe things that you knowListening for a fistful of silenceClimbing valleys into the shadefor seven years, i dweltin the loose palace of exileplaying strange games with the girls of the islandnow, i have come againto the land of the fair, and the strong, and the wisebrothers and sisters of the pale forestchildren of nightwho among you will run with the hunt?now night arives with her purple legionRetire now to your tents and to your dreamsTomorrow we enter the town of my birthI want to be ready'


Uma pequena parte: