Copperhead Road - Steve Earle

[link] I've always liked this 1988 song.  It fit in with the cultural rediscovery/restoration of Vietnam veterans that took place in the 80s (e.g. the Rambo movies, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, etc.), which I think is still under-analyzed by media historians.

Throwing Back the Apple - Pale Saints

[link] From 1992. One of the first and still one of the best whatever you're counting in Shoegaze (bands, albums, songs). Very poppy and accessible as well.  If it weren't for songs like this, SG would not have gotten off the ground.

New Music

Theme for Family Pics January-June 2013.

Sunshine Smile - Adorable

[link] This one comes across as indy-pop ish in the verse and the SG really kicks in in the chorus.  The lyrics are sing-songy, moreso than a lot of SG.  The edginess of the vocal and guitar tracks really work well.  Good 'gaze.

band possibilities

I've tapped into a set of potential new musicians for a band.  More on this soon.  But these folks are in my department (except for 1) and a few are highly interested.  One is Steve the drummer from Megachild. So we may have something started again before too long...

Speed Racer - Devo

[link] Here's the genius of Devo.  Throw away song, right? Wrong.  Extremely biting, abstract social commentary in the lyrics, ahead of its time. Throw away music? Wrong.  The rhythm track is stripped down superb, like so much of their stuff. The song title refers to the anime that was one of the first to make its way to the US.  Considered light weight, but idonic.  And presaging an entire genre that now represents an entire world of virtuoso and very serious popular culture. All in 1982. Really important stuff.

Crank - Catherine Wheel

[link] One of the first non-Lush, non-My Bloody Valentine SG songs I heard.  Loved it immediately. Simple but amazing bass line.  The vocal melody is one of those lines that probably wrote itself. The hook is an itch that feels so good to scratch.  The hook is the scratch too.

The name of my SG band

If I ever do a solo shoegaze band, like Kurt Ralske did with Ultra Vivid Scene (which some consider broadly in the genre), I'll name it Id Zinnia.

Desire Lines - Lush

[link] When it comes to the low tempo end of SG, Lush were no slouches. No one did SG vocals better than theirs.  Helps to have two breathy female vocalists, Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson.

Catch the Breeze - Slowdive

[link] Classic ethereal SG.  This has all the ingredients and it's great to see a live version. This song doesn't quite have the richness of the better Lush songs but it's a nice miasma.

Blue Thunder - Galaxie 500

[link] Under some broad definitions, Galaxie 500 gets counted as a SG band or at least within its precursors.  There's a country tinge, which was also really popular in college/indy rock radio in the late 80s and 90s.  The grinding guitar sound here, when wide open, flows into a SG type sound and atmosphere. This music has a lot of room in it.

Working on My Tan - Tim Curry

[link] I may have blogged about this before but it doesn't matter.  This is a bit of a summer anthem for me even though I don't tan and I avoid the sun.  There is a long narrative content to this.  My favorite WXDU DJ, Jeff Gold, often closed his Saturday morning show with this song, especially in the summer. He had a great show every week and listening to him really brightened up my otherwise lonely existence in the early 90s.  That was the pre-internet era, so the playlists and everything are probably lost to history. I hope Jeff has been successful in his pursuits since then. He was really successful as a DJ.  I am an eternal fan.

You Tear The World In Two - Pale Saints

[link] Definitely on the indy pop side of shoegaze. There's also that flavor of 60s folk rock harmony. And a little bit of proggy time signature variation. All in an atmospheric little noise package.

Horror Head - Curve

[link] Curve adds a bit of an electronic edge and really features the breathy female vocal (Toni Halliday) on top of it all. The synth-bass shifting really drives this song. One of those sounds that emphasizes the aesthetic of turning everything up, especially the low end, and riding the compression waves out.

Lorelei - Cocteau Twins

[link] From 1984.  Probably the first CT sing I heard, although I wouldn't have heard it until about 1989. A major precursor and inspiration of shoegaze. The instrumental tracks and vocal combine to produce the "ethereal" sound that their label 4AD became known for.  This music also overlaps with the sweeter ends of world music type stuff like Enya. The nonsensical lyrics are a signature of CT and in their way presaged the sublime noise aesthetic of shoegaze.

doing simulations again

I spent some time working on a new simulation on my parenting evolution stuff that I mentioned a few months ago. It's going well so far (doing it in BASIC; fewer initial bugs than expected and I have a significant piece of code done). The final formulation for getting started occurred to me on a fitness walk around the SBU loop this morning.

Whirlpool - Chapterhouse

[link] From 1991, still early on in the shoegaze era.  Tempo is upbeat.  The overall sound is smooth-noisy and streamlined at the same time.  The vocals have a really soft tone; there is a bit of that effect where they are used as another instrumental line (a la the Cocteau Twins). The central break kind of strips is apart a bit and then of course reassembles it. A really great feeling sound is achieved in this song.

New Town Velocity - Johnny Marr

Brand new song from Johnny Marr.  It's a really nice song.  Can definitely hear his latter work with Electronic in it.  The video has him walking through all kinds of European Modernist and some Brutalist architecture, which is really cool.  This kind of architecture, because of its abstractness and rectangularity and rectilinearity, makes for great visuals.

Kaleidoscope - Ride

[link] On the far more upbeat sound is this one by Ride. There are more clear harkenings to the 60s inspirations of SG in the vocal harmonies.  The sound here seems almost not to be pure SG.  The broader sound associted with "Indy Pop" in the 80s and 90s would seem to encompass this type of sound.  But the guitar lines are SG.  The tone of the vocal is still the downishness of SG as well.

Alison - Slowdive

From 1993.  This album (Souvlaki) is rated the 2nd greatest slowdive album in that list I posted previously. The bottom end here is slow and thick with the SG atmosphere.  The vocal line is depressoid, with a male lead (Neil Halstead) but at least some of the vocal is female (Rachel Goswell). This kind of vocal combination is fairly common and SG (e.g. My Bloody Valentine and the Pale Saints, to name just a couple other examples). The vocals definitely feed into the "ethereal" atmosphere. I really liked listening to this sound on college radio in the 90s.

Cinnamon - Airiel

[link] These guys are a Chicago shoegaze band that did a lot of stuff in the early oughts. One of many bands FB shoegaze group alerted me to.  Airiel definitely gets the sound and mood right.  Like the other bands, there will be songs I like more or less depending on the chord progression.  It's fun going through new-to-me material.

Shoegaze on Facebook

The Shoegaze group on Facebook is really active and is a many times daily source of new and old Shoegaze songs and info. For example, here is a page on the top 100 shoegaze albums of all time.  Great for exploring and revisiting favorites in this amazing genre...

Don't Watch Me Bleed - Til Tuesday

[link] This has become one of my very favorite of their songs. Their first album, even without Voices Carry, is just trenchant.  Some of the best rockish pop ever made.

All You Zombies - Hooters

[link] 1985 was a real mishmash for pop and rock in the US. This was one of the songs on the rock side that I liked (although it did get old after a lot of overplay). These guys were a Philly band that made it big with this hit and performed at Liveaid and then I guess sort of burned out, in terms of limelight, after that.  But interesting things like that were happening all over mainstream music in the mid 80s.

You Know the Rest - Til Tuesday

[link] Really good live version of one of my favorites from them. Pretty close rendition to the studio version, which is hard to do.

Desire (Come and Get it) - Gene Loves Jezebel

[link] There is a lot of greatness in this 1985 song.  The blazing guitar.  Jay Aston's goth-tinged vocals.  The danceability and rockability in one package. There's even cowbell.

TiK ToK - Ke$ha

[link] Every once in a while something good comes out of current pop.  Of course it's the chord progression here, but the video is funny and the whole thing is really fun.  So I like it.

Late in the Day

[link] This was one of the core Megachild songs.  Adam's vocal was the main defining character with the chord progression coming out of one of our early jams.  The good key for me on the uke is not a good vocal key for me in either the higher or lower  octave but I sang it in the higher octave. I could never find the original lyrics so I made up new lyrics, some of which reflected some of the words I could discern from the original.  Hopefully it captures the tone and atmosphere of the original version.

PR Australia

Just discovered that seasons 3 and 4 of Project Runway Australia are now on youtube.  Cool.

President Gas - Psychedelic Furs

[link] On one of my favorite albums of all time, 1982's Forever Now.  Still very appropriate lyrics for today. The furs had a very edgy but at the same time melodic method for narrating the post-punk darkness.

Docklands - Stevie Nicks

[link] From her 1994 album Street Angel.  Co-written with Trevor Horn. Interesting.  B-part is a bit generic.  I hadn't heard much from this album before. Her voice is great with just about anything behind it though.

The Message - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

[link] Summer of 1984, I went to a Critical Issues conference at St. Lawrence University with high school students from both the US and Canada.  One of the guys was from Montreal and played this incessantly.  One of the first rap songs and still pretty relevant.

Subdivisions - Rush

[link] Some great Canadian rock for Canada Day.  This one was a bit of an anthem for guys of my generation and background.  Rush was absolutely huge in Rochester and my friends in college were way way way into them.  I was just into them, by comparison.  Great instrumentalists and some pretty damn good songs.  And the stuff has aged well, I have to say...