Hardcore for Nerds

Grant Hart - Hot Wax

grant hart

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Grant Hart: “You’re The Reflection of The Moon On the Water”

Grant Hart is playing here in December, and it’s going to be awesome!

That’s THE Grant Hart people..you know, from Husker Du? Yes, you know the one…too much awesome….If you’re in town..you should come along with me…yes, yes, you should…

from his new album Hot Wax (on eMusic here).

it’s like he’s going backwards in time from Good News for Modern Man (or Nova Mob and The Last Days of Pompeii) with the heavy 60s influence, but according to The Big Takeover “it would be a mistake to call this record retro – it simply sounds like Hart is using classic tools for modern art”, so that’s all right then. Or rather, this is what I’d like Doors songs to sound like. Grant Hart himself says:

‘You’re the Reflection of the Moon on the Water’ is one of the most organic rock and roll songs that I have ever written. It’s style owes a lot to my devotion for Patti Smith. It was inspired by a comment made by a monk during the selection process to find the next Panchen Lhama, who said of one candidate, ‘He is the reflection of the moon on the water but he is not the moon’.”

The album features members of Godspeed You Black Emperor/A Silver Mt. Zion and was released on October 6th (yeah, I hadn’t heard about it yet either.)

grant hart husker du

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Analogue Episode 1

Kronos Quartet & Wu Man interview
Interlude: Music vid for ‘Finds you’ by Patrick Kelleher*
[08:39] So Cow interview and performance of ‘Bat Toes’

(*”a genuinely top shelf video … which will cause you a seizure if you have photo-sensitive epilepsy and a nightmare if you don’t” says Those Geese Were Stupefied, and he’s about right)

so cow irish indie

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» GEORGE ORWELL WAS A SOCIALIST.

axinomancy:

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”

— George Orwell, 1946

repost if you’re sick of right-wing blowhards acting like he was on their side.

or, you know, just go read The Road To Wigan Pier.

orwell books politics

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clintisiceman:

hardcorefornerds:

Indian Summer - ‘Orchard’ from Discography (2002)

this is the first song of theirs that I heard (and along with Moss Icon, ‘Guatemala’, the first classically emo songs) on a internet page of mp3s

…

I think we found out about emo from the same page. We share the same first Moss Icon and Indian Summer songs.

Now I barely remember what “Guatemala” sounds like, but I can sing pretty much any other Moss Icon song by heart. I find that a little strange. But this Indian Summer song is still burned into my mind.

I didn’t want to spend too long on the details, but here’s the original page that I found again recently (it had been down for a while).

emo

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I am really glad I got most of the urge to be pedantic about the term "emo" out of my sytem when I was 18.

raptoravatar:

There’s a line between “endearing nerdy” and “Postpunk D.A.R.E. Officer.”

Huge swaths of youtube are on the wrong side of this line.

emo

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Indian Summer - ‘Orchard’ from Discography (2002)

this is the first song of theirs that I heard (and along with Moss Icon, ‘Guatemala’, the first classically emo songs) on a internet page of mp3s, and the choice is sort of double-edged. on the one hand, it’s one of their most stirring songs, although not necessarily the most, while on the other the echo-y effect on the guitar that comes through on the recording is slightly anomalous for their work, though it has its own charm too. in fact, it’s the poor quality of the recording - the vinyl pops, the wobbling chimes of guitar - that make this song hit the spot so well. faute de mieux.

and perhaps the people that got to see them live, or have some original 7” which sounds slightly different, would strongly disagree. for my part, I don’t want to seem an intergenerational Luddite celebrating the inherited technological problems of the past decade, but it wouldn’t be the same without that archival roughness.

indian summer emo 90s

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fleetfootedfox:

tristn:

“The final world-shattering salvo of the Loudness War”: Here’s the waveform of the first minute of Sleigh Bells “Crown on the Ground”.

Ohmygod. It’s clipping-as-distortion-effect.

but clipping (or, at least, serious deterioration of sound quality) is already an effect of distortion, when you listen to enough low-quality vinyl rips of 90s emo bands turning from pin-dropping to full-on, crashing crescendos.

this is beyond lo-fi; it’s fail-fi. deliberately sabotaging every second of your music might be an interesting artistic statement - it might even sound exciting, for some - but I can’t help feeling it lacks the energy and integrity that comes from ‘honest’ music. not that there wasn’t some dishonesty in ripping off Slint and then screaming on top of it, but there was feeling.

(here’s agrammar on the topic of production and this Sleigh Bells song)

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liner page from Bad Religion - The Process of Belief

Hardcore for Nerds: Blog Action Day 2007 (‘Kyoto Now!’ + Hot Water Music, ‘Jet Set Ready’)

“it’s a matter of prescience but not the science fiction kind it’s all about ignorance, and greed, and miracles for the blind the media parading, disjointed politics founded on petro-chemical plunder and we’re its hostages
if you stand to reason you’re in the game the rules may be elusive but our pieces are the same and you know if one goes down we all go down as well the balance is precarious as anyone can tell this world’s going to hell

Don’t allow this mythologic hopeful monster to exact it’s price Kyoto now! We can’t do nothing and think someone else will make it right

You might not think it matters now but what if you are wrong you might not think there’s any wisdom in a fucked up punk rock song but the way it is cannot persist for long, a brutal sun is rising on our sick horizon it’s in the way we live our lives exactly like the double edge of a cold familiar knife and supremacy weighs heavy on the day it’s never really what you own but what you threw away and how much did you pay? in your dreams you saw a steady state a bounty for eternity

- silent screams –

but now the wisdom that sustains us is in full retreat

Don’t allow this mythologic hopeful monster isn’t worth the risk Kyoto now! We can’t have vision for the future if it can’t be fixed

Alien

We need a fresh and new religion to run our lives

Hand in hand

The arid torpor of our lives will be our demise”

(‘Kyoto Now!’)

bad religion environmentalism 00s

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Bad Religion - ‘Kyoto Now!’ from The Process of Belief (Epitaph Records, 2002)

unfortunately, it won’t take much to change it to ‘Copenhagen’ now, despite the intervening period having produced even more conclusive scientific evidence, a dramatic collapse in the success of the worldwide capitalist model… and a Democrat in the White House again. Not that EU has exactly covered itself in glory on the issue so far, but I’m dreading to see what happens not if but when Obama has to turn from healthcare (the immediate, programmatic welfare of most Americans) to climate change (the long-term, paradigmatic survival of the entire world).

seriously, if there’s any grand scheme in the evolution of 00s music, it’s that there is still just as much wisdom in a ‘fucked up punk rock song’ as there ever was.

bad religion environmentalism 00s

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