Normally, I don’t make a post just for a video but sometimes I see one that is just so sweet I have to share it with y’all. Such is the new video for Buck 65‘s song “The Rebel” off his latest effort Situation. It was done by animator Benjamin Logsdon and you need to make sure you watch it in HD.
Jul 272009
Jul 242009
Ahh Summer. Yards to be mowed, grills to be lit, beaches to be enjoyed, beers to be drank, sports to be watched and, obviously, all of this needs a soundtrack.
Enter the Lucero Message Board Compilation.
Yup. Like a superhero showing up just in time the new compilation was posted this week and I couldn’t think of a better way to close out this week than with a post about it. As always, you can head over to the Lucero message board for some dialog on why each song was submitted and while you’re there you can contribute to next months.
Lucero Message Board Summer Comp can be downloaded here.
Track Listing:
- The Fox Hunt – Better Than This (Lucero Cover)
- Lucero – American Girl (live)
- Deer Tick – Houston, TX
- Cory Branan – Karen’s Song
- Ha Ha Tonka – Close Every Valve to Your Bleeding Heart
- William Elliott Whitmore – Old Devils
- Hoots & Hellmouth – What Good Are Plowshares If We Use Them Like Swords
- The Only Sons – Lay Back Down
- The Evening Rig – Goddamn, I Could Use A Drink
- Jon Snodgrass w/ Cory Branan – Alone and Distanced
- Two Cow Garage – Humble Narrator
- Chad Rex & The Victorstands – Build a Rocket
- Flogging Molly – Salty Dog
- Michael Dean Damron - Angels Fly Up
- Austin Lucas – Kith and Kin
- The Lemonheads – Waitin Around to Die
- Cheap Trick – Sick Man Of Europe
- The Dexateens – Can You Whoop It
- Trampled by Turtles – Empire
- Matthew Dean Herman - Blackbird
- Lyle Lovette – Fat Babies
- Ray LaMontagne – Let it Be Me
- Uncle Tupelo – Moonshiner (live)
- Kingston Trio – We’ll Sing in The Sunshine
- Against Me! – You Look Like I Need Drink
Also, special thanks to Romeo Sid Vicious for putting together a stream of the compilation for those that prefer such a thing you can listen to it here.
Jul 232009
Here we are. The end of the guest post series. We’re gonna close it out with another from Kasey Anderson. Incidentally, the blog My Aimz Is True posted a piece on Kasey’s album of covers, Way Out West, today.
So, as she says, this is Kasey Anderson week in the blogosphere.
I was lucky enough to watch Federation X mature before my very eyes, primarily on stage at the 3B Tavern (which they closed down for good December 31, 2005 with Bob Log III). At their inception, Fed X was a sort of hybrid of everything Northwest: Wipers, Gas Huffer, Mono Men, Karp, Mudhoney and this little-known band, Nirvana. Even in their earliest incarnation, Federation X managed to synthesize those bands without sounding like a retread of every band that sprang forth from a garage in Olympia.
As the band progressed, one thing became abundantly clear: no matter what they sounded like or which influences you might be able to pin down after listening a while, they were a really, really good band. Like unfair good. Living in Bellingham and watching countless bands spring up all over town, then watching Fed X play the 3B was like spending three months following a minor league ballclub and then watching Roy Halladay pitch. It became almost tough to appreciate them because I was so busy being furious that I didn’t get to see them play more often.
But the more I listened to Federation X, the more something started to dawn on me. Buried beneath the relentless sonic assault created by a drum set and two four-string guitars, there were these melodies that owed an undeniable debt to folk music. That’s what separated Fed X from equally loud but not nearly as satisfying bands: they wrote folk songs, they just wrote them differently. That probably shouldn’t have come as such a shock considering the band named their Estrus Recods debut American Folk Horror, but it stopped me in my tracks.
They followed up AFH with the Steve Albini-produced X Patriot, which grooved a bit more than AFH, but retained that same synthesis of those almost appalachian melodies with jagged guitars and a propulsive beat. It was a formula I have yet to see recreated with any success. I suppose in terms of comparison, if you sped up the Melvins, then let them cover Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads record, but told them to lay off of any extended antics.
The band’s 2005 release, Rally Day, was a sort of extension of X Patriot, driving slightly harder and leaning a bit more on melodies that, in their earliest forms, were solo piano tracks. No matter how well they covered the melodies with guitar and vocal harmonies or riffs that faintly echoed Sabbath, the melodies stood out perhaps more than on any of the band’s previous offerings. For somebody who grew up simultaneously on Harry Smith’s Anthology and Daydream Nation, it was a near-perfect combination.
Fed X hasn’t released a full-length album since Rally Day, but whether the band is defunct or on extended hiatus seems up for debate. I, for one, am going to hold out hope that they’ll be back for at least one more record and handful of shows. Until then, I’ve got the records.
Federation X – Southern Comfort (from American Folk Horror)
Federation X – Real American Kids with Real American ID’s (from X Patriot)
Federation X – Rally Day (from Rally Day)
Whew. Well, the alcohol induced shakes from Deep Blues Fest have finally subsided. I got (2) more guest pieces for y’all and I’ll be back posting on Friday. Till then, I have a post from halkaloogie about to awesome bands I’d never even heard of.
halkaloogie here and it’s a pleasure to be allowed to fill in on ninebullets. Seeing that Autopsy IV was asking for help I instantly raked my brain thinking of bands and singers that had not been posted, but a quick use of the blog search button I quickly found that this was not going to be that easy, after 1000+ posts this cat has covered a lot of ground.
I did find a few things that I hope all of you will enjoy
Anyways, a few years ago I was playing an out of town show that ended up being a total disaster we played to a gaggle of 15 year old kids who weren’t there to see us and hated every minute we were on stage, we were stiffed by the venue and ended up with a bar tab bigger than our cut. With a sour taste in our mouths and anger in our fists we headed down the street to find a hole to sulk and lick our wounds, and made our way into this little bar called the Baby Bar which is really a 15×15 foot room with a few chairs and a ton of alcohol. There was maybe 10 people in this place and right in the middle sitting on top of a table with a guitar and a bass drum banging out raw country and blues like there was no tomorrow was Toothless George. He was swilling whiskey cussing stomping and taunting everyone to fight and damn if we didn’t all feel a hell of a lot better.
I ended up trading a few CD’s and t-shirts with him and spent the next months listening to them and hot damn if [the above] picture doesn’t just scream awesome and sum up what Toothless George is all about. He was born in Lithuania of all places and calls Philly home. An old school punk rocker who decided that Hasil Adkins was just as hard core as Danzig.
Toothless George – Don’t Fuck With Me
Toothless George – Train Wreck
Toothless George – Give Me 40 Acres
Toothless George’s Official Site, Toothless George on myspace, Buy Toothless George’s albums
Another great set of musicians that I don’t see have been posted on theses pages are The Cracker Cats, these girls are a great all girl darkgrass 3 piece out of Saskatoon Canada.
I haven’t been able to find that much info on them, but did catch a show in BC Canada a few years ago, and these girls put as much energy into their shows as anybody I’ve seen and very much a girl equivalent of the .357 String Band.
The Cracker Cats – Endlessly
The Cracker Cats – Feed The Fire
The Cracker Cats – Shady Grove
Jul 212009
Hello everyone. Sorry about yesterday’s silence. It was a case of an insane weekend turning into a long night which resulted in comatose AIV yesterday. I’ve got a few more guest posts for y’all this week while I recover from Deep Blues Fest. This one come’s from Kasey Anderson. I first saw it on AltCountryTab.ca and I am very happy that he agreed to repost it on ninebullets. Hope y’all like it.
You’ve seen Blake Miller’s face. Eyes to sun-strained slits, staring off at God Knows What, smoke swirling around him, cigarette dangling like he’d taken classes from James Dean. When Miller’s photo, taken by Luis Sinco, appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times November 9, 2004 – and subsequently appeared in hundreds of publications, along with being singled out by Dan Rather – he became an instant, iconic image of the war in Iraq. Whether he knew it or not, whether he wanted it or not, Miller’s face became a canvas upon which any beholder could paint his or her version of the American Military Man. You want to see quiet resolve and stoicism? It’s there. Looking for a beleaguered soldier whose only remaining coping mechanism is the sort of numbness one can only achieve by constant subjection to death and destruction? It’s there. Any version of America you’re looking for is visible in Miller’s face, you need only project it.
Nearly one year to the date after Sinco’s photo ran, Miller found himself discharged from the military and attempting to re-adjust to civilian life. Jenny Eliscu chronicled Miller’s turbulent re-entry in a piece that ran in the April 3, 2008 issue of Rolling Stone, focusing on his constant battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, estrangement from his wife and involvement with the Highwaymen, the motorcycle group of spotty reputation. I’m not going to summarize Eliscu’s story here, as the link makes it readily available, but suffice it to say it’s not an easy piece to “shake off.” I read the piece when it originally ran and found myself turning Eliscu’s words – and Sinco’s photo – over and over, until I was writing about Miller myself.
At the time, I was working on a record that dealt almost entirely with my own life, the first time I had ever written a record that was entirely autobiographical. “I Was a Photograph,” the song I wrote about Miller, was the last song I wrote for the record, and I considered not including it, not because I felt it didn’t fit but because I didn’t want to cheapen Miller’s story by sandwiching it in between songs about how I was a fuckup and love is hell and everything else I had been writing about. But the more I played the song, the more I felt it belonged. Because Miller was like me, like anyone else, before the war. And that’s the point. We all know war changes people but we assume that, like being a fuckup or dealing with a busted heart and a bunch of burnt bridges, they get over it and/or get through it. Eventually. That’s the American way, right? We persevere. Or they do, so we don’t have to.
Well, not always. Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller is living proof that the casualties of war cannot be measured by a death toll or by the deteriorated physical condition of many of the men and women who return home. The casualties of war are something Blake Miller lives with every single day, in his dreams, in his subconscious, in every waking moment of his life (of which there are plenty, he doesn’t sleep much). The casualties of war were written on James Blake Miller’s face long before he came home. They’re there. You just have to look for them.
