Tag: Memphis Punk

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Music Record Reviews

Aquarian Blood Digs Deeper With Decoys

Last fall, we reviewed a record that marked an abrupt change of pace for one-time psych-punks Aquarian Blood. A Love That Leads To War was a an acoustic masterpiece of sorts, full of gentle guitar ostinatos and sing-song melodies; yet, like a friend with a thousand-yard stare, the calmness was unnerving. The songs seemed to deal with surviving an unhinged life, not to mention the manipulative opportunists that always show up to unscrew the hinges a little more.

Yet through all the bleakness of the scenarios depicted therein, the voice of a reliable narrator peeked through. The commentary on traumatized lives was a thread with which to find one’s way through the cast of users, losers, and abusers; and it somehow helped the listener feel that yesterday’s trauma was contained. Lessons were learned, and the hard-won wisdom of the songs was the pay off.

This year, the band released a sequel of sorts on Bandcamp, Decoys. The seven song EP is cut from the same cloth as A Love That Leads To War, but there are important differences. Yes, the lilting folk guitar still dominates, matched with blunt lyrics and sing-song melodies as before. But many of the other flourishes that marked the album are absent this time around. Aside from a few tasty synthesizer parts, the already sparse production of War has been pared down even further. Whereas the full-length sparkled with beats, synths, and other overdubs in a deceptively well-crafted production, Decoys is full of space. Sometimes all you hear is the guitar and the voices of partners J.B. and Laurel Horrell.

The result is even bleaker than the previous album. Somehow, the reassuring voice of the narrator who has come to terms with the trauma, or observed it from afar, is not so reassuring anymore. It almost feels like a prequel to War, where relationships and dependencies are hinted at as they first emerge, with a sense of foreboding: Traumas evoked in the LP seem to be germinating in Decoys‘ simplest actions.

“Slipping on the tiles and they’re bleeding on the door/Leave them lying in their places laughing on the floor,” begins the song “Maybe If What,” and you sense that this won’t end well. But the song never reveals an end. “You did the things you said you had to do/Made us all uncomfortable and feel bad,” sings J.B. in “Cuz You Had To,” perfectly evoking that feeling of a time-bomb ticking that some people inspire. But what became of the time bomb? Perhaps it’s revealed in the songs on War.

In a way, the cover of Decoys captures that greater sense of isolation, that lack of resolution: J.B. sits alone in a room, with the picture of a child uncannily perched on the wall. There’s a feeling here of being on the edge of the precipice, just before someone innocently tumbles down onto the jagged rocks below. 

Aquarian Blood Digs Deeper With Decoys

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Music Record Reviews

Twenty From The Teens: Top Albums Of The Decade, 2010-2019

Aquarian Blood

“One thing I’m doing more of during shelter-in-place is listening to great local records that I hadn’t had a chance to catch up on.” So said songwriter Mark Edgar Stuart in a recent interview for our 2020 music issue. It’s something we’re all doing more of, and, given that this year marks not only a new decade, but a new way of living (optimistically speaking), we’re seizing the moment of this special issue to reflect on what’s come before. Here are the Memphis Flyer’s top 20 albums of the past decade.

Granted, such lists will always be subjective, and this one’s no exception. But I can personally attest to the fact that these albums, once played through my stereo, were then played again and again. And they continue to be played, as we look to an uncertain future, doing double takes at the recent past and muttering, “What just happened?”

But I’m not alone in my feeling that each of these is a masterpiece of innovation and expression. This is the cream of a very impressive crop, each album like the tip of an iceberg suggesting greater depths below. Look under the hood of Aquarian Blood’s 2019 release, and you’ll find an entire gritty noise-rock backstory; follow the sounds of The Barbaras and you’ll find yourself picnicking with the Magic Kids; and prepare to be astounded once you hear the individual releases by the artists of the Unapologetic collective who delivered the one-two punch of Stuntarious IV.

Part of this depth can be excavated by following each title’s link, which will take you to the original articles by me, Jesse Davis, J.D. Reager, Andria Lisle, Chris McCoy, Chris Herrington, and Chris Shaw, quoted sporadically below. And of course, part of the depth comes from the list’s breadth. For Memphis not only produced some of the past decade’s finest music, it spanned nearly every genre and generation while doing so, from acoustic punk to surreal hip hop to seasoned works by sorely-missed lifers like Sid Selvidge and John Kilzer. For your listening pleasure, we present music of the ages, in alphabetical order.

The Top 20 Albums of the Decade, 2010-2019
Aquarian Blood – A Love That Leads to War (Goner, 2019)
“Dark observations and wry commentary are surrounded with unassuming acoustic ostinatos, (mostly) subtle keyboard textures, and inventive bass counterpoints.”

Julien Baker – Turn Out the Lights (Matador, 2017)
“Meditations on love, rejection, God, rage, and redemption … piano- and cello-tinged ensemble pieces captured on tape at Ardent.”

The Barbaras

The Barbaras – 2006-2008 (Goner, 2012)
“Able to turn on a dime, unafraid to be goofy, and gifted with a breezy sense of irony that simultaneously celebrates and mocks the Nuggets psychedelia that infuses their sound.”

The Sensational Barnes Brothers – Nobody’s Fault But My Own (Bible & Tire, 2019) 
“All the songs on the new Barnes Brothers record were songs that artists on the Designer Records catalog had done. Basically, they came in, I used my studio musicians, and we made that record.” And Lord, do those studio musicians rock.

Harlan T. Bobo – A History of Violence (Goner, 2018)
“The band [is] now rocking harder, with a more sinister edge … his singing now addressing a world swirling around him more than the romantic entanglements of his earlier work.”

Don Bryant

Don Bryant – Don’t Give Up On Love (Fat Possum, 2017)
A return to form by one of the city’s great songwriters from the golden age of soul, backed unerringly by those specialists in vintage vibes, the Bo-Keys.

The City Champs – The Set-Up (Electraphonic, 2010)
“The instrumental soul-jazz trio absolutely floored me … The Set-Up is one of those records that just keeps getting better with repeated listening, so now I can’t put it down.”

DJ Paul – Power, Pleasure, & Painful Things (Scale-A-Ton, 2019)
“Interspersed with spoken segments in which the artist recalls pivotal moments in his Memphis youth, the tracks make use of a wide-ranging musicality and inventive, turn-on-a-dime production to create what may be Paul’s best work yet.”

Hash Redactor – Drecksound (Goner, 2019)
“The songs come in fast and hard, propelled by booming bass and tight drums. Watson and Lones share an easy comfort playing together … McIntyre sneers the vocals, an antihero decrying humanity’s self-destructive tendencies … The guitars alone are worth the price of admission.”

John Kilzer – Scars (Archer, 2019)
“I wrote on different instruments. I wrote a couple on a mandolin, a couple on ukulele, and several on the piano. I would have never, ever considered doing that earlier in my career. So that kind of creative tension manifests in the songs.”

Lucero – Women & Work (ATO, 2012)
“I think Women & Work is the band’s best album yet … it captures the live sound of a band that has always excelled on stage and how fully they commit to a soulful, opulent Southern rock style.” 

Magic Kids – Memphis (True Panther Sounds, 2010)
“[A] genial, ramshackle deployment of myriad traditional, pre-punk influences. The album’s earnest romances play out against a Memphis presented as a relaxed, sunny playpen.”

Mellotron Variations – Mellotron Variations (Spaceflight, 2019)
“Local players Robby Grant and Jonathan Kirkscey were joined by Pat Sansone (Wilco) and John Medeski (Medeski Martin & Wood), presenting semi-improvised original pieces that showed off the evocative range of multiple Mellotrons being played at once.”

New Memphis Colorways – Old Forest Loop (Owl Jackson Jr., 2018)
“‘This is music I deliberately made for people to take summertime drives to — they can grill to it or swim to it.’ … Old Forest Loop has the citrus punch of an orange sherbet popsicle.”

Jack Oblivian & the Sheiks – Lone Ranger of Love (Mony, 2016)
“Well done, boys. I find it very hard to believe a local artist tops this record in 2016. Might as well flip this sucker over and start again.”

The Oblivians – Desperation (In the Red, 2013)
“The band doesn’t pretend that the past 15 years never happened, and most tracks are sonically closer to the musicians’ individual recording projects but goosed-up Oblivians-style.”

Marco Pavé – Welcome to Grc Lnd (Radio Rahim Music, 2017)
“Pavé is a charismatic frontman, equally at home flowing about the school-to-prison pipeline or barking his shins while getting out of bed…Overall, this is one of the most meticulously constructed, finely paced albums to come out of Memphis in recent memory.”

Sid Selvidge – I Should Be Blue (Archer, 2010)
“I Should Be Blue retains Selvidge’s usual folk setting but with a new musical texture that can stand up to his strikingly beautiful vocals.”

Various Artists – Take Me To the River – Soundtrack (Stax, 2014)
Soul and blues legends pair off with current rappers at Royal Studios. “It’s fun to be a fly on the wall in these recording sessions held in historic spaces, and the camaraderie and respect between the players is evident. The talent, discipline, and instincts on display are amazing.”

Various Artists – Stuntarious IV (Unapologetic, 2019)
“The Stuntarious series explode[s] with sonic and verbal ideas, and Stuntarious IV is no exception. This time around, the album has a cinematic feel … It sets the stage for the wide-ranging palette of sound design elements that percolate throughout the tracks that follow.”

They Also Served: A Baker’s Dozen More From a Decade Packed with Dynamite
Once you get started, it will be hard to stop listening to releases from one of the city’s most extraordinary musical decades. That’s saying a lot, of course, but the depth and breadth of these albums attest to what a simmering hotbed of creativity we have in Memphis. That’s not even mentioning some striking singles from the period (“Uptown Funk,” anyone?).

So for those with ravenous ears, here are 12 more to groove to, from the underappreciated Stereolab-meets-dank-Southern-humidity of Cloudland Canyon to a Memphis-centric offering from the young Young Dolph, before he grew to dominate the airwaves so thoroughly.

Cloudland Canyon – An Arabesque (Medical, 2016)
Dead Soldiers – The Great Emptiness (American Grapefruit Tapes, 2017)
Detective – No. 1 (2019)
Don Lifted – Contour (2018)
John Paul Keith – Memphis Circa 3 AM (Big Legal Mess, 2013)
Jonathan Kirkscey – Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Mondo, 2018)
Amy LaVere – Painting Blue (Nine Mile, 2019)
Memphis Dawls – Rooted in the Bone (Madjack, 2014)
Motel Mirrors – In the Meantime (Last Chance, 2018)
Joe Restivo – Where’s Joe? (Blue Barrel, 2019)
Spaceface – Sun Kids (Jet Pilot, 2017)
Mark Edgar Stuart – Blues for Lou (Madjack, 2013)
Young Dolph – King of Memphis (Paper Route Empire, 2016)

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Music Record Reviews

Play Something Quiet, My Head’s Exploding: Aquarian Blood’s New Masterpiece

When one recovers after any trauma, from a bad trip to having your heart carelessly ripped to shreds, there comes a moment when a quiet recognition of your own survival sets in. You may walk on eggshells, you may have a nervous tic, but the birds are singing, the breeze blows, the clouds roll by. It’s a time when hard truths set in.

Believe it or not, this is the feeling of the new album on Goner Records by local punk ravers Aquarian Blood. In more mundane terms, one might call it the perfect hangover record, but it aims deeper and wider than that, and it delivers. Say you’ve just been dealt a cold hand by a thoughtless lover, or by death itself. You sit on the couch after a hard night of pounding your head against the wall. A friend, trying to help, puts on this record. And from the first quiet guitar notes, you breathe a sigh of relief:  Is this vintage Segovia? Or wait, early Donovan? Then the voices enter, and you know it’s neither. Oh, sweet surcease of sorrow! This is sung by someone who’s been where you are.

Aquarian Blood in thrashier times

Written and sung by the roving rock couple J.B. and Laurel Horrell, this is a daring downshift from the revved up, pounding squall that Aquarian Blood fans have come to love. But their voices carry a common thread with their debut record: a seriousness of purpose that never veers into pretentiousness. A lot of it comes down to their evocative lyrics, which never descend into mere wordplay. They’re coming to terms with the real issues and people in their lives, and it shows. “Jesus lied to everyone, all the things he said. You would still believe him ’til you’re dead,” J.B. sings on the title track, “A Love That Leads to War.” Around him flutter tender notes of resignation.

As with every track here, the dark observations and wry commentary are surrounded with  unassuming acoustic ostinatos, (mostly) subtle keyboard textures, and inventive bass counterpoints. Drums only appear here and there, in sparse touches, as in “No Place I Know,” with hypnotic folk patterns belying lyrics of desperation, all glued together with distant marching rhythms.

Even as the kitchen-sink approach embraces drum machines or a touch of a rocking guitar solo, they’re all in small measure. An anything-goes spirit prevails; the proceedings have the sound of the most quietly atmospheric home demos ever made. And indeed, that’s essentially what these recordings are, having arisen when full-band drummer Bill Curry was temporarily out of commission due to a broken arm, A scaled down version of the band began playing out in February 2018, and this collection was the result.

While the imagery and settings of these songs are too subtle to reduce to simple doom-mongering, there is a dark undercurrent throughout that’s undeniable. Touches of synthesizer or even (apparently) firecrackers never let your ears grow too complacent. But even in the darkest moments, that sense of hard-won epiphanies, in quiet post-recovery moments, is never absent.

“Everything he ever told you was a lie to lead you on..til the day that he was caught,” they sing in “Their Dream.” But, since this is neither Kansas nor Oz, and we’re not Dorothy, awaking from such a nightmare can’t mean it never happened. “It was more than a dream that you could just wish away,” goes the chorus. It’s the sound of grim – yet liberating – realizations. 

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Music Music Blog

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64

This week the Memphis music community was dealt another tragic blow with the death of Bob Holmes on October 16. Holmes, the lead guitarist and songwriter behind one of the city’s foundational punk rock bands, the Modifiers, as well as Angerhead, Sarah & the Eyes, and the Binghamptons, had been in declining health in recent months due to a variety of illnesses, including cancer. He was 64.

Those closest to him (myself included) were not entirely shocked when the news broke, as Holmes was unable to make a scheduled appearance with the band at B-Side for the Antenna Club historical marker dedication event earlier this month. The Modifiers even played the venue when it was known as the Well. Behind the scenes, Antenna founder Steve McGehee told me that one of his primary motivations for putting it on was to give Holmes one last chance to perform and visit with friends, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

“I swear to you, Bob inspired the whole thing,” says McGehee. “That was my main goal, getting him to play again. It’s sad that it couldn’t work out.”

It’s hard for me to put into words just how important Bob Holmes was to the Memphis music scene. Bob (I’m just going to call him “Bob” from here on out), lead singer Milford Thompson, and their rotating cast of Modifiers poured their sweat and souls into every performance, breaking ground and opening doors for every original punk/alternative band in this town that followed along the way. The band’s reputation for both hi-jinks and debauchery was legendary, but Bob was every bit as prolific and accomplished as a songwriter and musician as he was a creator of spectacle. And make no mistake about it, even up to the end, Bob could still play a mean guitar. Here’s the last live version of the Modifiers: Bob, Terrence Bishop, John Bonds and myself  – but mainly Bob  – tearing it up on the now defunct Rocket Science Audio podcast:

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64

Over the course of the band’s roughly 35 year history, the Modifiers line-up ebbed and flowed as they bounced back and forth between Memphis and Los Angeles, and members – including the famous ones like the Doors’ John Densmore, Fear’s Derf Scratch, and Big Star’s Alex Chilton – came and went quickly. But one constant was the understated brilliance of Bob Holmes. And you don’t just have to take my word for it.

“I’ll never forget meeting Bob at the Well,” says David Catching, producer and guitarist for groups like the Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age, earthlings?, and the Modifiers. “He and Alex Chilton were my first guitar heroes I could actually talk to.”

The Modifiers at the Antenna, early 80s: Bob Holmes, second from right.

Catching also posted the following on social media via his studio’s (Rancho de la Luna) twitter account: “I played with the Modifiers from 1979-1989. Bob Holmes Ohm and Milford Thompson showed me some of the greatest times of my life and taught me more about life and living than anyone. I wouldn’t be what, or where I am without them. Love always. RIP”

“Bob, was one coolest cats around,” says Chuck Roast, former Modifiers and Suburban Lawns drummer. “Quiet, strong opinions, very talented guitar player, could shred on punk and the next minute lay down some sweet heavy blues. It was great time playing with him and Milford.”

“Milford was the method actor up front, but Bob was the engine. He was the musical director,” says Ross Johnson, drummer with Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and the Modifiers, among others. “He had a tone like no one else had, I could never figure it out. Like most signature players, like Chilton or Teenie Hodges, the sound came out of his fingers. It didn’t matter what guitar he was playing on, it was the sound of Bob playing. That made him very unique.”

The Modifiers

“He was an unbelievable, out of this world guitar player. Like no other,” says John Bonds, drummer with the River City Tanlines, Subteens and Modifiers. “It was an honor and a privilege, not just to be in the band but to become friends with Bob and be a part of his circle.”

I could quote a dozen more friends and bandmates, and they would all say the same thing: Bob Holmes was and is a wildly underappreciated figure in Memphis music history, and it’s a shame he’s gone.

As for me, I’ll certainly remember Bob as a brilliant musician. As I’ve written before, he was an inspiration and mentor to me as a young guitarist. But my favorite memories of him are of us just hanging out, winding up my dad for kicks, making fun of bad television, or posing ludicrous questions to my cats. (“Are you a cat?”).  He was a good, fiercely loyal friend and I valued the time that we got to spend together.

The music of Bob and Milford and the Modifiers is very important to me, and collecting as much of it as I could consumed much of my last few years in Memphis (my wife and I relocated to Chicago in 2017). There is a vast catalog of unreleased material, and I’m hopeful it will get released sooner than later. It’s long overdue. Until then, here are two things I uploaded (with help, thank you Fred Kelly) to YouTube this afternoon to tide the world over:

1. The rarely seen/heard A-side to the Modifiers only official release, and arguably the band’s most famous song, “Roweena.” The rock stars play on this one.

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64 (2)

2. The world premiere of “Peasant,” a song Bob and I “wrote” and recorded in my living room when I was 14 using my Casio keyboard. I have only played it for two other people before this publishing. It’s pure Bob.
 

In Memoriam: Bob Holmes, Memphis Punk Pioneer, Dies at 64 (3)

RIP, my friend. Your music will live on, I promise.

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Music Music Blog

Neighborhood Texture Jam awakens for early show!

CREDIT: Don Perry

Don Perry

Neighborhood Texture Jam

Who among us can honestly say they’ve never fallen into the Borax factory of someone’s love? Neighborhood Texture Jam, veterans of the 80s and 90s Memphis scene, will address that musical question Saturday at the Railgarten. In a nod to their longtime fans, rejecting the ageism implicit in late night start times, they will play on the early side. The show will be walker- and hearing aid-friendly. Segways are optional.

Gestating around 30 years ago out of  the rich compost of the Antenna Club scene, the group has proved over the decades that this idea has legs, with reunion shows staged every few years.

The band’s emblem, a single high-platform shoe, is enigmatic, partly because it’s just a single shoe (what’s up with that?), partly because their proclivities tend more toward industrial-strength riff rock and punk. If the shoe suggests a hint of glam, it is buried in pile-driving sounds more likely appropriated from President’s Island. Indeed, rhythmic technician Greg Easterly may have pilfered his haz-mat-approved steel barrels from such a place. For every gig, he picks a new location from which to steal his instruments, the smells of the respective 55 gallon drums contributing to the unique character of every show.

Playing the Railgarten brings with it the added benefit of a good sound system, the better to hear singer Joe Lapsley’s lyrics with. The songs, exuding a canny political awareness, might range from the history lesson of “Old South” to the happy-go-lucky “Rush Limbaugh-Evil Blimp.” Expect a rollicking good time punctuated with bizarre theatrical touches.

Neighborhood Texture Jam "Live at Young Avenue Deli, Memphis, TN" from Price Harrison on Vimeo.

Neighborhood Texture Jam awakens for early show!

NTJ – Memphispalooza happens Saturday, Aug. 5, at the Railgarten, 7:30 pm.

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Music Music Features

Pezz: Hardcore Survivors

What is Pezz fighting for? In the liner notes of their new album More Than You Can Give Us, they tell you: “Honor, dignity, justice, fair play, equal treatment, the benefit of the doubt, a leg up.”

Since their first all-ages gig at the Antenna Club on June 19, 1990, Pezz have been the quintessential Memphis hardcore band. In a few short years, they were touring incessantly and packing the New Daisy Theatre with scruffy kids. Last month, they returned to the renovated New Daisy for Memphis Punk Fest. “It sounded awesome. It looks like somebody cares,” says Pezz founding member Ceylon Mooney.

Unlike the English variety, the first wave of American punk was apolitical. Birthed in the Reagan ’80s, hardcore changed that. The music inspired the members of Pezz not only to write political songs, but also to live lives of social consciousness and political activism. Mooney acknowledges the similarities between today and the Reagan era, but from his point of view, Trump is just a symptom of a diseased system. “You have a cartoonish villain, but these institutions of power operate by design, regardless of whose face is in front of them.”

The cover of Pezz’ More Than You Can Give Us pairs images of striking Memphis sanitation workers from 1968 and last year’s I-40 bridge protest. The band started tracking for the album in 2012, says Pezz singer/guitarist Marvin Stockwell. “We’re purists in the sense that we like to record to tape, but ProTools has been a helpful thing. It’s a help and a hindrance. The good news is, you can mess with it forever. The bad news is, you can mess with it forever.”

Originally, the band wanted to use an image of the Ferguson Black Lives Matter protest for the cover, until they were inspired by the bridge shutdown. “I’m glad it didn’t work out with the Ferguson photos,” says Stockwell. “It allowed us to have, as bookends, two Memphis events. The reason we juxtaposed them is because they represent different moments in our city’s history where regular Memphians stood up and said, ‘The status quo will not stand. We’re going to take radical action!'”

Pezz’ music has always been fast and hard, with a melodic streak that endeared them to pop-punk fans. For this album, the band sounds heavier than ever. Mooney stepped out from behind the drums, where he was replaced by Recoil drummer Graham Burks, and returned to the front line with a guitar, joining Stockwell, guitarist Shawn Apple, and bassist Christian Walker. “This is a three-guitar record with a lot going on,” says Stockwell.

The lineup is uncommon for punk; Stockwell says they were inspired more by classic Chicago hardcore band Articles of Faith than Lynyrd Skynyrd. “When we first started to do it, it seemed like it was too much. But your mind spreads out and hears differently. We had been in a two-guitar dynamic for so long.”

Mooney compares the complex new arrangements to a conversation, as on the album closer “Guilty,” where Walker’s bass takes the lead while Mooney fills in a bass line before all four guitars join in unison for the album’s finale. “You can’t have everybody yelling all at the same time.”

But there’s still plenty of yelling on More Than You Can Give Us. On “Welcome to Palestine,” a song Mooney originally recorded in 2006 with his solo project Akasha, the singer delivers a full-throated tirade against “Occupation, subjugation of the land and its oppressed nation.”

“Unfortunately, that one is still relevant,” he says. “Sometimes I think, ‘We’re still talking about this shit?’ It’s like ‘Live Another Day.’ When people we love stop offing themselves, I guess we’ll stop talking about it.”

Pezz will play their record release show on June 30th at Growlers. Stockwell says he hopes the group’s fifth album (or tenth, if you count split LPs and cassette-only releases) inspires in others the same sense of urgency old school hardcore inspired in him. The vinyl insert contains both a list of local organizations working for change and the record’s mission statement, a call for people to “demand … their birthright as members of the human family.”

“I wrote that before Trump won the election, but if you read that with Trump in mind, it’s not hard to make it fit,” says Stockwell. “We are very fortunate in this band to be able to do the things we’ve done and to use our collective voice to demand change and to express ourselves. We realize not everyone has that opportunity.”

Pezz’ More Than You Can Give Us record release show is June 30th at Growlers.

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Music Music Blog

MDC Tonight at Murphy’s

Originally emerging out of the the Austin, TX nascent punk/hardcore scene in 1979 as The Stains, the band that would become MDC completed that city’s trio of major players (The Dicks and The Big Boys being the other two) in the early years of our nation’s hardcore movement. Their first and only release as The Stains was 1979’s “John Wayne Was A Nazi” / “Born To Die” 7”, an introduction to the sort of confrontational M.O. that would coalesce once the band relocated to San Francisco and began operating under the infamous MDC moniker.

MDC’s full-length debut, titled Millions of Dead Cops after the first meaning behind their initialized band name, appeared in 1982 in two versions: A self-released original and a remixed (by Geza X no less) reissue by both the band’s R Radical imprint and the Dead Kennedys’ Alternative Tentacles label.

MDC Tonight at Murphy’s

Widely considered a classic document of early, hyper-politicized American hardcore, the set of now-classic HC blueprint songs provide the best summation of Dave Dictor and MDC’s “political humanist hardcore.” Besides a couple of songs that, unsurprisingly, reprise the album title’s (and for the moment at least, their moniker’s) whack-upside-the-head unsubtlety regarding where the band stood on law enforcement, other targets in their cross-hairs are highlighted by “Corporate Deathburger” (McDonalds), “America is So Straight” (homophobia- Dictor, like The Dicks’ Gary Floyd and Big Boys’ Randy “Biscuit” Turner, was one of the movement’s only openly-gay front-men), “Violent Rednecks” (self-explanatory), “I Hate Work” (ditto), “Church and State” (uh…ditto-ditto) and many other pointed interpretations of mainstream American culture at that moment in history.
         
After some negative blowback from within the punk/hardcore community about the original meaning of the band’s name, MDC was then “Multi-Death Corporation”, “Male Dominated Culture” and the mouthful “Misguided Devout Christians” (plus others) at different points on their long timeline. A slew of stylistically-disparate (though no-less politically/socially/culturally-charged) albums were released over the next decade-and-a-half, such as 1986’s Smoke Signals, 1987’s This Blood’s For You, ‘89’s Metal Devil Cokes, Hey Cop! If I Had A Face Like Yours… in 1991 and Shades of Brown in 1993 (with a tour of Russia that made MDC the first ever American punk band to do so).

After a hiatus during the second half of the ’90s, Dictor reactivated a lineup in 2000 and MDC released Magnus Dominus Corpus album in 2004. The band, in various incarnations led by Dictor, has released an impressive number of split LPs and EPs with other bands, plus several live albums over the last decade. This year marks MDC’s 35th anniversary and something tells me Dave Dictor has some commentary about the near chaotic state of current affairs facing not only our country at this juncture in history but the entire world. 
       
The undoubtedly packed evening at Murphy’s (doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the Facebook event page makes note of a very achievable “90 person capacity”) will kick off at 8:30 p.m. with Negro Terror (a hardcore spinoff of local roots/dub reggae aficionados Chinese Connection Dub Embassy), more Memphis no-B.S. hardcore from Hauteur, our venerable institution of genuine thrash metal Evil Army, and Wartorn. Door price is an un-arguably fair ten dollars. 

MDC Tonight at Murphy’s (2)

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Cover Feature News

NOTS Ready for Prime Time

CREDIT: Brandi Rinks

Some might believe that NOTS appeared out of the Memphis punk ether, that the ghost of Jay Reatard was granted one good deed to bestow upon mankind. The clouds parted, lightning struck the Goner Records sign on Young Avenue, and NOTS was formed.
While that might make for a good opening movie scene (Craig Brewer, let’s talk.), forming a truly original band in Memphis is usually a slow operation, full of ups and downs, starts and stops, and little support except from the core fan base. Which is the story of NOTS, Memphis’ finest post-punk/garage/no-wave export, featuring Natalie Hoffmann on guitar and vocals, Charlotte Watson on drums, Alexandra Eastburn on synth, and Meredith Lones on bass.

At the time Hoffmann moved to Memphis to attend the Memphis College of Art, the True Sons of Thunder, the Barbaras, and Evil Army were the main acts on the dive-bar circuit. The lack of female musicians on that scene in Memphis was more than noticeable. After linking up with Watson, then a Rhodes College student, to form Bake Sale and, later, the earliest incarnation of NOTS, there was a perceptible change in the city’s musical gender-scape.

“Natalie and I were in Bake Sale for about three years. Once we started writing songs, we played a lot of house parties, and we played the old Hi-Tone a couple times,” Watson explains. “When our drummer from Alabama moved, we decided to start writing new material.”

Hoffmann remembers the earliest version of NOTS as becoming a way to change up the microwaved ’60s girl-group vibe that Bake Sale was channeling.

“With Bake Sale, we were really into 1960s music and trying to cover bands like the Shangri-Las, but that kind of got old. Then I realized I couldn’t sing, so we started to try something different. Once I started hollering, it made a natural shift in things,” Hoffmann said.

“When Carly [Greenwell, Bake Sale’s bassist and an original member of NOTS,] moved, that marked a huge change, because she actually understood how to write harmonies. Without having her in the mix, the songs made less sense. It changed with the lineup and started becoming its own more aggressive thing.”

Aggressive is an understatement.

Hoffmann and Watson went from being the most likely girl group out of Memphis to sign with Slumberland to the next punk band in Memphis to carry the torch lit by the likes of Alicja Trout, Alix Brown, and Pistol Whipped. It didn’t take long for Memphis punk guru and Goner Records storefront manager John Hoppe to take notice.

“I don’t remember the first time I saw NOTS, but I remember the first time I was like, wait a minute, there’s something here that’s different than Bake Sale,” Hoppe remembers.

“It was at that old Lucero loft [at 1732 Overton Park] that was hosting shows for a while. That was the early version of NOTS, but still, I was like, ‘This isn’t Bake Sale. There’s a germ that’s different here,’ and it wasn’t like anything that anybody else was doing. You had that dissonant guitar stuff, and it just wasn’t what I was expecting, at all.”

Somewhere around this time, NOTS did what most bands in Memphis do when they have more song ideas than capital: They asked a friend to record them. Enter Alex Gates.

Gates had already cut his teeth in bands like the Boston Chinks, the Barbaras, and the Magic Kids, and being one of the few people in town who knows how to make budget recordings that don’t sound like some Ardent-wannabe product made him the perfect man for the job, even if those early recording sessions were a little, let’s say, eclectic.

“We made a tape with Alex Gates when Carly was still in the band,” Hoffmann said. “Half of it was recorded in a pool house; the other half of it was recorded in my room. It was about a five- or six-song session.”

Watson also remembers the early recording sessions being a little bit wonky.

“I remember recording at [defunct house venue] the Dairy and watching someone play while listening to the music through one headphone because the other one was broken. There was definitely some makeshift shit going on,” Watson said.

With a demo in the can, NOTS quickly became one of the best emerging punk bands in town. The demo did well, and soon it was time to record a single for Goner Records.

Keith Cooper, the easy-going guitarist from East Memphis who’d been jamming for years in bands like Mojo Possum, the Sheiks, and most recently with Jack Oblivian, stepped up. Cooper had been recording songs for his bands at the Burgundy Ballroom (a home studio worthy of its own cover story) and was more than up to the task of wrangling sounds out of a punk band still trying to hit its stride.

Cooper recorded the Dust Red EP that came out on Goner Records in 2013. The band toured, played more shows, went through another lineup change, and was getting ready to record its debut LP. Then a new player entered the game.

Brandi Rinks

Natalie Hoffmann at the Hi-Tone

The X Factor

Memphis artist Alexandra Eastburn is infinitely cooler than you — and most other people you’ll ever meet. Her artwork is one of a kind, she designs her own clothes, and is a general bad-ass about town. She seems made for the stage. Still, Eastburn was surprised when she was asked to join NOTS.

“I bought a used drum set for $100 when I was about 13. I used to bang on it after school, but I finally just stopped. I mean, how long can you play drums by yourself before you just get bored?” Eastburn said.

“I didn’t really understand why they wanted me, because they were already so good. I’d go to all their shows, and I DJ-ed some of them. They heard some of the records I played, and I think that’s what propelled them to ask me. I was playing all this weird synth stuff.

“It was so funny because Charlotte and I had already talked about my going on tour with the band and selling my drawings. It sounded like a really great idea, so I had that in the back of my mind while I was out of town for about a month and a half in Joshua Tree.

“I came home, and Natalie called me and was like ‘Charlotte and I were talking, and I was just kind of wondering …’ and I interrupted her and said, ‘Yes, I’ll do it!’ because I thought she was going to ask me to go on tour. She said, ‘Okay, cool. Well, do you want to jam on Sunday?’ I was like, ‘Wait, what are we talking about?'”

So, Eastburn found herself performing as a synth player in a fully-formed band. Naturally, there were some growing pains.

“When I first started playing with them, I was playing a Casio, and it just sounded really goofy. It wasn’t the sound I was trying to contribute. It sounded kind of like a pan flute at times,” Eastburn said.

After acquiring a better synth from her employer, Winston Eggleston, it was time to hit the studio for the debut NOTS album, We Are NOTS, with legendary Memphis producer, Doug Easley.

“Doug was a quiet enigma. He was handed a group of people who were pretty much flailing and trying to get their shit together. The album was recorded mostly live, but his influence was awesome. He was incredibly patient, but he had really good ideas on how to make the songs fit,” Hoffmann said.

That debut album was soon being called one of the best punk records of the year. NOTS started touring as much as possible, eventually catching the eye of Heavenly Records at a South by Southwest showcase. Based in the U.K., Heavenly opened the European tour door for NOTS, which helped create a buzz abroad.

Olivia Zuk

The Train Starts Rollin’

NOTS would spend much of 2014 and 2015 on the road, hitting Europe for the first time, in addition to touring with Goner alumni, Quintron and Miss Pussycat. The band had become a live wrecking ball, and, after releasing the “Virgin Mary” single on Goner, it was time to start thinking about recording their sophomore LP.

The band opted to go back to their old friend, Keith Cooper, to record Cosmetic. Easley had laid the groundwork for the NOTS recording process, and Hoffmann was confident that Cooper could pick up where he left off.

“I record better to tape. That’s how I record everything at home, and that’s something NOTS had always wanted to do. That’s also how Keith records everything,” Hoffmann said. “He [Cooper] can get serious, but he also keeps things conducive to a creative output. You never feel under the gun, even though the album has a deadline.”

After a month in the studio with Cooper, Cosmetic was finished. The band toured Europe once more, playing Fred Perry showcases and getting increasing attention and critical praise. But “real life” was still waiting for them when they returned to Memphis.

Back to Reality

There’s a saying among musicians in Memphis that you can either be a big local band or a touring band that happens to be based here. But whatever adventure you choose to chase, your bills will still be waiting for you after the gig.

While casual music fans might think that institutions such as the Memphis Music Commission can do something for local bands with a national audience, the reality is that there are very few resources for bands in Memphis trying to make a living off their music.

“Hardly anyone in Memphis lives off the music they make,” Hoffmann said. “I have to remind people we work with in New York City that I still work full-time, and there’s just some stuff I don’t have time to get done. Same with the people from Heavenly. Goner knows where we’re coming from.

“People just assume we can tour forever and not make any money. That’s an interesting misconception. People sometimes treat us like we are very two-dimensional. And one more thing — ‘all female’ is not a music genre.

“I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, because historically girls have not been portrayed as electric guitar players. If you look at ads from the 1960s, you’re not going to see women playing the guitar,” Hoffmann said. “So in that aspect, I think it’s cool. But it makes me angry that we won’t get compared to all-male bands, simply because there are no women in them.

“I’m influenced by plenty of women,” Hoffmann continued, “but I draw influence from everything. It’s kind of stressful when you only get compared to other ‘woman bands.’ I’ve had journalists tell me that I’m not a feminist because I didn’t mention all female bands that influence me.”

The Half-Open Door

NOTS has it better than most of their local contemporaries. The band has a booking agent, a publicist, and record labels in America and abroad. National media outlets have called NOTS one of the best punk bands going right now. Their Facebook page boasts nearly 7,000 fans. They call the birthplace of rock-and-roll home. Shouldn’t that count for something? Not really. As bass player Lones puts it, “Music history doesn’t pay the bills.” But it could, and should in NOTS’ case.

“I do think NOTS is a serious band. I think that reflects how Memphis is right now. Memphis can be kind of crummy, and not everything is a joke or funny,” Goner’s Hoppe said. “It’s okay to be serious.”

“There’s less movement in Memphis; things just sit inside themselves and keep referencing themselves,” Watson said. “When a band comes to town here, it’s because someone inside the community makes it happen. Things happen from the inside out in Memphis, and there’s no one helping out from the outside trying to showcase local music.”

So why stay here? Luckily for their local fans, Memphis has Goner Records, the label that’s supported NOTS since they were recording in pool houses with broken headphones.

“We have progressed so much through our chaos, and having a label that’s so close has been a huge advantage for us,” Hoffmann said. “Everything we’ve asked for from Goner they’ve given us. I think having to talk to someone from across the country would honestly impede our work.

“There was a major label that was asking about working with us, but it just didn’t feel right,” Hoffmann said. “It all comes down to content with me, and I want to be on a label that’s putting out music I like. If there was a major label putting out awesome bands, I might consider it, but they wouldn’t be right down the street.”

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Music Music Features

You’re Nothing: The Story of Iceage

Iceage has been active and gradually making waves across the pond since 2008, but the Danish quartet really started to make an impression on the American underground with the January 2011 stateside release of their impressive full-length debut, New Brigade. Though certainly not the first band to do so, Iceage found a rock-solid sweet spot where hardcore, post-punk, American noise-rock, and good sturdy punk intersect.

This, combined with the band’s young age and good looks, was exactly the perfect storm to cross the band over from their origins in the D.I.Y. basement-show subculture to the embrace of a much wider audience. For once, this was a situation where the hype-to-quality ratio was balanced by a strong album and explosive live show. At a time when bands like Parquet Courts were being referred to as “hardcore” (fine band, but not hardcore) by music media outlets, Iceage was a refreshing and much-needed shot in the arm.

On the strength of New Brigade and a lot of touring, Iceage came to the attention of Matador Records, which released the excellent You’re Nothing in early 2013. The independent powerhouse already had out-of-the-box but similarly top-shelf punk/hardcore enigmas Fucked Up and Ceremony in its roster, so it wasn’t that jarring a move and made sense for all parties involved.

You’re Nothing, like New Brigade, didn’t seem to meet a set of ears it couldn’t win over, but this time there were a lot more people listening. Pitchfork granted the album its exalted badge of “Best New Music” and the album’s overall Meta-critic score turned out to be 86 percent, which is extremely high.

Singer Elias Bender Ronnenfelt’s vocal delivery is one attribute that helped see a large-scale audience cottoning to a rather aggressive and discordant musical backbone. Rather than yelled, screamed, dramatically yelped, growled, convulsed, or vomited, as would be a small sampling of more popular singing trends with more visceral music, his vocals (on the first two albums) are spat out in a lower-register spoken/sung Mark E. Smith (The Fall) cadence. Considering that You’re Nothing didn’t dial down the intelligent power and punch of the debut but did show an improvement in songwriting, Iceage proved influential in opening doors for musically disparate but like-minded bands like The Men, Pop. 1280, and Metz.

Later in 2013, lending to the band’s current and totally understood distaste for interviews, the music press and the underlying blogs that feed it, did what it sadly does best and found an idiotic “controversy” to latch onto regarding Iceage. Misinterpreting the band’s appreciation of black metal entity Burzum, a misunderstanding of the hoods worn in some videos, and Ronnenfelt’s words in zines when he was 17 all led to Iceage having to waste time explaining that they were in fact not fascists or racists.

The adage that all publicity is good publicity is not always accurate, but it didn’t slow down the momentum of the band, who released album number three, Plowing Into the Fields of Love (great title, btw), in October of last year. A distinct homage to Nick Cave (à la Bad Seeds) as well as knowing or unconscious nods to other mid-’80s dark post-punk bands like Crime & the City Solution, early Psychedelic Furs, mid-period work by The Fall, and even early stuff by The Pogues can be heard on Plowing. But Iceage put their own spin on opening up the breathing room on several songs where acoustic guitar, piano, trumpets, mandolin, and viola can fit into the deranged bluesy or traditional folk songwriting structures.

Iceage may be headlining Tuesday night’s show at the Hi-Tone, but the underlying support (in both the big and small rooms) bears mentioning.

On tour with Iceage is Australia’s Low Life (not to be confused with the U.K. goth-y/post-punk band Lowlife from the ’80s), whose own fantastically thudding take on darkwave/post-punk recalls countrymen Feedtime, if that band were less a caveman noise-rock outfit and more a darkwave/post-punk group.

Low Life’s first full-length, Dogging (released last year in the U.S.) has found a lot of love with the stateside garage-punk underground and comes highly recommended for fans of the aforementioned, as well as the art-stomp of the A-Frames or Intelligence.

Low Life will be occupying the line-up slot immediately before Iceage and right after the first local appearance of our own Ex-Cult (who couldn’t fit better on this bill), following a three-week tour that took our hometown hopefuls from one side of the country to the other.

In the Hi-Tone’s small room, and scheduled to avoid rubbing against the action in the big room, the bill will also be opened by another bright light out of Memphis: the unclassifiable hardcore outliers Gimp Teeth. Headlining the small room is Austin’s Institute, another band that does its own (very enjoyable) thing with the template known as hardcore, and if the band has its Salt 12″ EP available for sale (released last October), its earlier 7″ or the Demo 12″ for that matter, this writer strongly encourages their acquisition.

Music Editor’s Note: In the print version of this story, the article is credited to Chris Shaw, and not Andrew Earles. We regret the error. 

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Music Music Blog

The Achtungs Live at the Buccaneer

The Achtungs play the Buccaneer tomorrow night, the only Memphis show on the band’s east coast tour. Hailing from Finland, The Achtungs play bruising punk rock in the vein of The Weirdos, Crime and even Memphis’ own The Reatards. Simply put, this is one of the best punk bands to come through Memphis in quite some time. The Nervous Ticks and Gimp Teeth round out the bill. The show starts at 9, don’t sleep on this one.  

The Achtungs Live at the Buccaneer

The Achtungs Live at the Buccaneer (3)

The Achtungs Live at the Buccaneer (2)