Glitter and Doom is coming to Knoxville and I can't waits...

A fun past time for the GSHA music set - fictional band album art

Here is a way to blow some time that I discovered recently on a variety of blogs, such as this one and this one. It is a way to create a fake album cover for a fake band that you make! Follow these instructions and you will waste a ton of time, giggling, sighing, or wishing that these bands existed. If you dream it, they will come to your house and rock!

Your band name comes from a random Wikipedia article and your album title comes from the last 4 words of the last quote from a random quotation and your album art is the third on this page of random Flickr photos.

Slap it all together and you get something like this:

Martorell - they're a zeitgeisty tour-de-force that combines the post-punk intensity of Joy Division, the dual lyricism of Bernie Taupin and Lou Reed, and the full-on feedback assault of the Jesus and Mary Chain, all nicely piled up together in a sunshine pop and vocal-harmonizing wrapping of the Osmonds. Check them out this spring on tour, if you can. Enjoy!

The first Variegated Brainstem Music collection

Hello, loyal viewers! The Veeb has issued its first soundtrack CD, entitled Make the Madness Stop. It contains a variety of psyche-skewing songs for your musical aggrandizement. Tracks on this first of several collection include:

1. Stereo Phase Test - Man Or Astroman (01:04)
2. Magic People - The Paupers (02:45)
3. At The Mountains Of Madness - HP Lovecraft (04:58)
4. I Put Spell On You - Arthur Brown (03:45)
5. The year of the sun - The Gordian Knot (03:02)
6. my mind - The Misunderstood (02:35)
7. Spiral Galaxy 28948 - Hawkwind (03:47)
8. Through My Eyes - The Creation (03:07)
9. Lysergic Bliss - Of Montreal (04:04)
10. I'm A Nut - (01:02)
11. Bottle Of Wine - Fireballs (02:11)
12. Cup Of Jesus - Joel R. Cooper (02:26)
13. Sardinia - Alabama Sacred Harp Singers (02:14)
14. I live for the sun - The Sunrays (02:28)
15. Laughing Stock - Love (02:32)
16. A Chicken with Its Head Cut Off - The Magnetic Fields (02:42)
17. The Third Eye - The Dovers (02:17)
18. Happy - The Sunshine Company (01:58)
19. Trouble - Lindsey Buckingham (03:49)
20. Me - The Brain Train (02:25)
21. Groovy Summertime - The Love Generation (02:24)
22. White Cat Heat - The Godz (02:12)
23. Something In 4/4 Time - Daryl Hall (04:27)
24. You Keep Hanging up on My Mind - Wendy & Bonnie (02:59)
25. Watch out for Me Ronnie - Yo La Tengo (03:02)
26. Some People Never Know - We All Together (04:21)
plus a secret or too!

Not to toot our horns here at the VCC (Veeb Central Control), but we are pleased at how this CD flows, making everything from dish-washing to the daily commute to encounters with the rhino-hive mind something to look forward to! Drop us a line if you would like a copy. Enjoy!

A crooner for the ages - who will be our pick?

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, as many of you know, is one of our favorites here at the Veeb. The Captain has a 5 octave vocal range and a penchant for screaming, grunting, and growling his way through electrified blues and into your heart, head, and mind. We provide for you (above) a selection from his first LP, Safe As Milk, entitled "Electricity!"

Unlike the Captain and his friends, Scott Walker started as a crooning pop singer with a group called the Walker Brothers, a popular band during the 1960s British Invasion. After going solo, Scott Walker began to sing increasingly darker and disturbing songs about prostitutes, homosexuals, communist dictators, and torture interagators, ultimately producing albums of high-pitched falsetto singing about urban decay and despair over top the sounds of orchestras, industrial noises, and metallic destruction. This video gives an example of the first type of music Scott Walker was involved with:

On a side note, I had a weird dream last night that I thought was interesting: a panther was running around my backyard, scaring black cats that were running away and jumping up in the air - which made me laugh out loud. An Eskimo ran in with a pine tree branch and wounded the panther in the side. I screamed "No, no, Nanook!" As he lay dying, the panther looked up at me and simply asked," Why?" What does this mean?

Historiography might be important to a historian, but that doesn't mean I have to like home decorating shows!

Does historiography really matter to anyone besides us? I mean, c'mon, who on the street is really going to be concerned with how the various schools of American historical thought argued about the issue of reform during the Jacksonian period?

And, while I am ranting, who really cares for this guy with the 5 day beard on Oprah that redecorates houses? Nate - I believe his name is. He's probably a nice enough guy, but I just want to kick his teeth in sometimes, along with every other redecorating ya-hoo on the TV. They make things look more cluttered, less comfortable, and all about filling a room with the latest reproduction crap from Pottery Barn! Is Oprah telling us that conspicuous consumption is a necessary facet of being a self-actualized human being? Isn't that what was being suggested during the Progressive Era with the notion of a "therapeutic ethos" driven by consumer spending? (see what I did there - I brought my rant back to history and historical topics...like you really care, you trading spaces tools!)

Some of my new favorite mu-suck-ial groups - part one

Every one should follow their muse and do the things that make them happy (within reason - zoosadism and pedophilia don't count). I have yet to find my overriding passion, but these folks seem to have found their's, although perhaps in ways that make the rest of us scratch our heads and go "Huh?" or "Do what?"

This first is Leslie and the Lys, the brainchild of Leslie Hall, a gold lame beehive-hairdoed lady from Iowa who envisions herself as a rap / hip-hop genius (who's to say she isn't?). Here she presents what is probably the only (that I'm aware of) musical pop tribute to the Ron Howard movie Willow:

Watching this makes me repeatedly wonder: why didn't we do stuff like this in the TA office?

My eye twitch is driving me CRAZY!

Since a few days before my group three examination, my left eye has been twitching about every twenty minutes. It is making me insane, even more than I normally am. I have looked online about cures, but there are none, save for going the Six Million Dollar Man route, and having the offending eye replaced. It would be cool to be able to have telescopic vision, but I don't have that kind of bread with which to purchase such a replacement part. It probably means that I have a week to live. If that is the case, I'm going to get some cheese cake, a New Yorker Deli (in Roanoke, Virginia) submarine sandwich, a Bahia cigar, a bottle of scotch, and an XBOX 360 with which to play Halo 3. I'll let you know what happens...

Some of my most favoritist music that makes me happy

Yes, I know that this music isn't easy listening and, you may say, conventional. I also know it isn't good work music (despite the fact that I would listen to this stuff mowing lawns in my neighborhood for money when I was young). However, every now and then, I go back to King Crimson for some Veeb-ish excitement when needed, as well as fulfilling my need for hearing extrememly enviable musicianship from a freaky band. These videos are from the eighties version of the group, which is actually more concise and in your face than the earlier and bloated prog-rock path King Crimson took in the 1970s (as if you really cared). Be forewarned: THIS IS NOT your mama's Sunshine Pop! This is sunshine pop that has been knocked in the head with a bronze owl statue, run over and sucked up by a vacuum truck, spit out into a chemical factory sluice, and then tickled with a thistle bush during a 75 car pileup in a china doll outlet!

Enjoy!

Comateens - annoyingly cool!

I remember seeing these people on an old, old, old Nickelodeon show called Livewire. I thought this was punk rock when I saw them (this from the man who orginally thought that the Grateful Dead was a heavy metal band - go figure). And, I suppose, it is - depending on your perspective. After all, remember D. Boon's adage about punk rock being whatever you make it! Why I put this up, I don't know. Who knows how we think here at the Veeb? It's like watching television with an incessant channel-flipper, I suppose. And, I suppose, that I've supposed a lot in this blog entry. But, hell, I don't care as I passed my Group 3 exam. So, I suppose I need to start studying for the next one!

Pere as in pear, Ubu as in ubu...Pere Ubu!

I have long enjoyed Pere Ubu but have rarely seen anything of them live. Here is a version of their song "Final Solution" by Peter Murphy, better known for his role in Bauhaus.

Here's a Swedish band, Bob Hund, with a Swedish language cover version:

Finally, here are some of the Ubus in their later band The Dead Boys singing another Pere Ubu compositiion, Sonic Reducer:

Enjoy!

Saw the Arcade Fire and discovered an equally good band in the process!

We went to see Arcade Fire in Asheville. They had a really interesting and kinda psychedelic stage show, with weird lighting and television effects. They were very high engery, exchanging instruments nearly every song! And, they seemed to be very full of themselves. Their sound people had them turned up too loud, which pissed off the main singer/leader of the band. Likewise, they only played "the hits," and didn't do anything either new or innovative like they had been described as doing at other concerts.

Indeed, the opening band, The National, actually gave a much better performance. Their music just grabbed ahold of your soul from the get-go and didn't let up until they finished their set, each song possessing a multitude of flavors and layers that washed over you like an ocean wave, only to suddenly cease right as it seemed that a tidal wave was about to descend on you. Or something like that. The big lesson here, especially relevant to the GSHA band, was: DON'T TAKE YOURSELF SO SERIOUSLY THAT YOU CAN'T EFFECTIVELY SCREAM AND WAIL AND DRUNKENLY DANCE ALL OVER THE STAGE WHILE YOUR BACKING BAND LAYS THE VOODOO DOWN!

New Favorite Band...of the immediate moment

Boredoms is a group of noise freaks from Nippon who make crazy static fueled music that sounds like a cross between Ozric Tentacles, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and a radio tuned to country-western music thrown into your bath tub while you are wacked out on cold medicine. They have been around for a while but, for some reason, never made Casey Kasem's countdown. So, I missed them during the first go-round. However, now that I have started listening to them, it makes me want to make Japanoise music for myself, albeit from a white Southern American perspective.

While you are awaiting my feedback drenched magnum opus, here's a clip of Boredoms for you to watch.