Tuxedo Junction, Formally Speaking

Let’s Get a Party Started

Andrew W.K. “Party Hard” off I Get Wet (Island, 2001)

Bohannon, “Dance Your Ass Off” off Dance Your Ass Off (Dakar Records, 1976)
Follow the link for a hilariously awful YouTube video



It’s summer! Time to party, right? Bohannon and Andrew W.K. are seriously dedicated to endless partying via relentless jams and positive vibes. Beyond the thematic similarities, these two songs sound rather different. Both songs are powered by driving beats and a limited lyrical palette advocating dancing and partying. Bohannon offers an incredibly funky 4/4 beat (dude lives in the pocket!), dueling guitar and bass lines, and soaring disco strings to create the kind of song that could go on forever and never get old. It’s reminiscent of the sort of epics Fela was creating around the same time. Another contemporary, Kraftwerk, comes to mind. Listen to “Ruckzak” for evidence… there must have been something in the air. Germans, Nigerians, and Americans all making similarly styled extended grooves, albeit with varying messages.

I digress. W.K. clearly advocates for hard partying (see song title) but not necessarily dancing. I don’t think W.K. discourages dancing, of course, but I think it’s telling that his chosen style, pop-metal for lack of a better term, isn’t as conducive to dancing as Bohannanon. Instead of the sexy “Dance Your Ass Off” we are encouraged to “Party Hard” however we choose. While I think both are great songs I cannot imagine “Party Hard” lasting more than its 3 minutes and 25 seconds, as opposed to the previous statement about “Dance Your Ass Off” lasting forever, if only! A scan of the song titles offer further delineation on the difference in respective party visions. Bohannon: Spread the Groove Around, The Groove I Feel, Trying to Be Slick, Party People. To boot, the back of the LP sleeve offers the following W.K.-ean advice, “PLAY THIS RECORD LOUD” followed by the cheeky statement, “P.S. Dance Your Ass Off is not used in the sense of profanity.” Does that mean we are meant to take it literally? Andrew W.K.: It’s Time to Party, Ready to Die, Party Till You Puke, Fun Night, Don’t Stop Living in the Red. The motivational speaker in W.K. is hinted at in these titles.

Lastly, a word on how these artists present themselves visually. Andrew W.K.’s debut solo album famously pictured him with a horrible bloody nose. Is this the fruit of partying hard? Then again, the album is called I Get Wet.



“Dance Your Ass Off”, also the name of the album, features a hazy picture of a woman’s ass, surprise, in profile. Other Bohannon albums often show him on the cover, looking rather debonaire. No bloody noses, natch.  

I Should Have Known Better

Wire, 154 (Harvest Records, 1979)



Gino Soccio, Outline (Celebration/Warner Bros,1979)

A Good, Clean Fight

Sparks, Whomp That Sucker (RCA, 1981)


David Bowie, Let’s Dance (EMI, 1983)

What’s Going Ahn

I can safely say I heard the Replacements’ song “Alex Chilton” before I heard Big Star; nor did I know who Alex Chilton was when I first heard that song. Another admission, the first Big Star “album” I heard was the live 1993 recording from Columbia, Missouri. My Dad bought the cassette having long been a fan (he is the one who first played The Replacements for me) and played it for me in the car after picking me up from school one day. I remember digging “September Gurls” and “The Ballad of el Goodo” (duh) and they played “Slut” by Todd Rundgren (another Dad favorite). That cassette got some heavy workouts in my car throughout high school. I have heard people disparage that live recording but the power of the songs was immediate to my 14 year old self. Shortly thereafter, the CD with #1 Record and Radio City appeared on my Dad’s shelf. Whether or not it had been sitting there all along, like so many later discoveries, I cannot recall (could have been, released in 1992). In many ways, the timing could not have been better. At the time, I loved power pop (still do) - especially the Lemonheads and Teenage Fanclub, and I was familiar with the Posies - so Big Star seemed a natural step. And for many years I thought of them as the blueprint for power-pop. Yet, they are that and so much more. Recently, their southern rock side, for lack of a better term, has struck me. More so than most power-pop, Big Star can be muscular, bluesy, and soulful. Memphis oozes through so many songs; it is no mistake “Don’t Lie To Me” and “When My Baby’s Beside Me” were released by Stax Records, in my opinion.
     
2010 has been a hard year for Memphis music. Alex Chilton and Jay Reatard, Memphis past and present, are gone. Jay Reatard is another guy whose first impression is deceiving. What started as bracing punk morphed into something more akin to Kiwi pop, or something less abrasive than the moniker Reatard implies. While the second incarnation of Big Star never reached the heights of the original lineup, the current band experienced a longer, and likely more stable, run for the last 15 years. Regardless, an endless succession of unfortunate reunions, erratic solo records - nothing - can tarnish those songs that my dad played for me all those years ago.

Disco Not Not Disco

I have been thinking about disco a lot lately. I have my reasons… not that I need any. Which is precisely my point. Disco, to many, is a dirty word. Until recently, I did not think about disco much more than occasional good time music, my closest association is probably the dress-up disco dances held at my high school in the mid-1990s. Regardless, I currently find myself fascinated by disco. Plenty of disco bears more than a passing resemblance to Krautrock and minimal composition, two musical styles I have long loved. Then, I came across the following quote from minimal composer Phillip Glass, “When I first heard Donna Summer, I just laughed. I said, ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing!’ How could you miss it?”

Let’s put this statement to the test. See the videos below. 

33 1/3 vs. 45 RPM

33 1/3 RPM: Yo La Tengo, “And the Glitter is Gone” off Popular Songs (Matador, 2009)
45 RPM: Oneida, “Folk Wisdom” off Rated O (Jagjaguwar, 2009)

I want to start a little thing I’ll call 33 1/3 vs. 45 rpm, where I’ll compare bands I think are doing similar things at different speeds. First up, two stalwarts, who may have more in common than we think.

33 1/3: Yo La Tengo has been at it for 20 years or so at this point. For some time they have ended most albums with an extended jam (10 min+) that lets them spread and freak-out – especially Mr. Ira Kaplan’s feedback orgies. I find these closing tracks a beautiful contrast to the more contained noisy blasts, pastoral instrumentals, and fuzzy hooks found in abundance on Yo La Tengo records. Their most recent album, Popular Songs, closes with “And the Glitter is Gone,” a slow-burning (maybe medium burning) number that features wonderful slowed-down afro-beatesque drumming from Georgia Hubley. The rhythm section (Hubley and James McNew) establishes the perfect mid-tempo lock groove for Kaplan’s guitar to screech and squeal over. This song, and album, exceeds all my expectations. To be honest, I was beginning to think Yo La Tengo would continue to churn out solid, same-y records a la And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, which I previously thought to be the beginning of a subtle downward trend after the titanic I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. Wrong, it seems.

45: My love of Oneida is no secret to my friends and the 3 people who read this blog, which, if I made a Venn diagram of my friends and blog readers the center part of the diagram, where the two spheres overlap, would be account for everyone. So, I guess there no point in Venn diagramming that one! Anyway, Oneida, too, likes to end their albums with extended freak-outs. Theirs are of the faster, Krautrock variety, more or less. Go down the line you will find a rollicking, long track at the end of almost all of their albums, from “Double Lock Your Mind” to “Hakuna Matata” and all the way up to “Folk Wisdom” the last track on their epic triple LP Rated O. Oneida has been around for ten years, half as long as YLT, but “Folk Wisdom” clocks in at just over twenty minutes… YLT’s ago, if I am not mistaken. This track burns fast from the second it starts and barely lets up, much like the side-long closer to Each One Teach One. I just listened to the song this evening and it flew by like I was listening to Waterloo Sunset for the millionth time. Coincidentally, in my iTunes the Nice/Splittin’ Peaches ep is followed by a Nigeria 70 compilations – Brownout in Lagos!

Songs About Down Under

Once I read an interview with Steve Albini where he expressed his love of AC/DC and desire to work on one of their albums. Granted, he said that out of a presumption that it would never happen. Albini’s affection for AC/DC reminded me of my experience at the Rhys Chatham/Jonathan Kane/Tony Conrad show (see previous post), where they played ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres between sets. AC/DC, especially Bon Scott days, simply rocks in an elemental way. Exhibit A, has AC/DC’s drummer ever played a fill? For me, Albini bands, particularly Shellac, rock in a similar way. Boiled down to the essentials. Plus, Albini and AC/DC have written many a song about fucking!