Late to the Party: Vulcan's "Meet Your Ghost" (1981)

Vulcan's self-released 1981 album Meet Your Ghost is another one of those legendary vanity recordings that has long been sought after by hardcore vinylhounds. What makes this particularly hard-to-find LP so intriguing is how out of time it sounds. Though it is generally considered to be an example of psychedelic rock, this description is inadequate and really only pertains to the "E.X.P."-like "Prelude" which opens the record (as well as its dedication, in the liner notes, to Jimi Hendrix). While its influences clearly draw from 1960s psychedelic rock, it is, at heart, a bar-rock album, the kind of music one could enjoy on a Saturday night, drinking one cheap domestic beer after another, at practically any roadhouse in America. In and of itself, this doesn't strike one as particularly interesting, because there are thousands of capable, hard-working, but mediocre bands that play every night throughout the country. What makes this record so different is its extremely lo-fi production quality.

Well before "lo-fi" was a calculated aesthetic, Vulcan, fronted by Spencer, Iowa musician Lyle Steece, seemingly patched together this album from cassette tapes recorded in cramped garages and local clubs because, presumably, this is all they could afford. As a result, Steece's guitar, the central musical focus of these recordings, is wildly distorted, his power chords and solos rendered almost-inaudibly fuzzy or highly compressed. The combined effect of these rudimentary recording conditions is a sound that at times foreshadows the fuzz-drenched, catchy riffs of late 1980s/early 1990s grunge music as well as the type of heavy metal pioneered by groups like Kyuss and Boris. The chronology of the album's release attests to Lyle Steece's limited budget. Approximately 500 copies were pressed in 1981, many without cover art (according to the liner notes to the 2010 reissue, it was originally titled Hard As Rock [Volume 1]), and credited to "Lyle Steece: of Vulcan." Interestingly, the record has since been bootlegged numerous times on vinyl.

So what's all the fuss about? Well, for many listeners, Meet Your Ghost will hardly pass the smell test. As I have already noted, the sound-quality is amateurish at best, its source-tapes likely normal bias TDK C-90 cassettes. Numerous times throughout the record, the instruments are slightly out of tune, tape cut-outs are clearly audible, bum notes are hit, notes are missed, and the rhythm section falls out of sync with Steece. Steece is at best an average vocalist. All of these things alone might turn off listeners. Despite these rough edges, what makes this record so fun is, along with the (probably unintentional) aforementioned dirty distortion of the guitar throughout the LP, Lyle Steece's guitar workouts. Nearly all of the tracks on the album are anchored by Steece's lead guitar playing, which is sturdy and searing, though far from being virtuosic. His commitment to the material is unquestionable, especially as he plays through some of his backing group's mistakes. At its best, Meet Your Ghost is like much of the mainstream guitar-oriented rock of the time, except Steece's exuberance far outdistances his bloated corporate-rock peers. Several of the tracks are hypnotically groovy, especially the proto-grunge pulse of "Lightning," the horn-throwin' majesty of "Untitled Instrumental" (which opens a rumble that drone-masters like Earth and Sunn O))) hadn't come close to dreaming about yet), or the album's sizzling eight-minute highlight, "One Nighter." This is the kind of rock music you can listen to at a party, talking to friends and barely paying any mind to, or the kind you can bang your head to alone in nothing but your underwear on some un-social weeknight. Meet Your Ghost is like that tape of the band your cousin's in that she recorded on her $20 boombox, but way better. Clearly, there are limitations to the quality of a release like this, but for those willing to give it a try, it makes for a very refreshing listening experience.

Meet Your Ghost has been re-issued by Lysergic Sound Distributors in a limited, numbered edition of 600 on 12" vinyl. This re-issue contains an entire second disc of previously unreleased material. Though none of this material is as strong as nine tracks that make up the original release, it is nearly as entertaining. The boasted psychedelic qualities of Vulcan's music are on far greater display on the bonus tracks, especially on "Nightmare," "Raven," the instrumental track "The Devil's Birthday Party," and (yet another pseudo-"E.X.P."eriment) on "Interlude/Drugs Can Kill" (whose latter half shows the folkier side of Lyle Steece).

Below is a YouTube clip of "Untitled Instrumental":


Copies can be purchased at the online store Forced Exposure.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Mike Reno and Ann Wilson's "Almost Paradise"

Ever since the first moments when humans were able to realize that life on Earth can sometimes be a severe pain in the ass, they have tried to imagine PARADISE. For the Fourteenth Century Italian poet Dante Alighieri, "paradiso" was the ten spheres of Heaven. Similarly, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) concerns the fall of man from Paradise, the Biblical Garden of Eden, because of that big-time jerk and perpetual muse to heavy metal musicians everywhere: Satan. Milton writes, "To all delight of human sense exposed, / In narrow room, Nature's whole wealth, yea more, / A Heaven on Earth: For blissful Paradise / Of God the garden was, by him in the east / Of Eden planted." Sounds much better than this window-less office where I write this on the company's dime. Still, in the historical moments following the invention of the light bulb--and, henceforth, all great ideas--many musicians have tried to describe paradise for us in song. Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses, in their song "Paradise City," describes it is a place "Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty." This could be nice. But what if one is allergic to grass and doesn't particularly fancy pretty girls? Then it would be a nightmare. For Meat Loaf, on his epic cut "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," paradise is bangin' in the car when you're seventeen, preferably as a longtime baseball color-commentator provides innuendo-laden play-by-play. Because of abstinence-only education, though, this is no longer a possibility for seventeen year-olds. Since paradise is inestimable, we can only approximate it. It took two great titans of song, Mike Reno of Loverboy and Ann Wilson of Heart, to bring us to this simple but profound realization. Thanks to their song "Almost Paradise," we now have a firmer understanding of this thing poets and philosophers have been trying to describe to us for centuries.

For nearly three decades, the mysteries of Mike Reno and Ann Wilson's "Almost Paradise" have puzzled literary critics. It was long thought that paradise in the song referred to being an oppressed white teenager in a small town who overcomes a variety of obstacles in order to dance and listen to rock music with impunity. But years of scrutiny have revealed that it is about a man and a woman, presumably, who love each other something fierce and can "see forever" when they look into each others' eyes. Now that they "hold the future in their hands," they realize the love they share is not paradise, but "almost paradise." This realization, though, brings with it another, more profound one: that we can only reach paradise when we die. How stupid is that? Reno notes, "in your arms salvation's not so far away." Then, Wilson, now recognizing Reno as her magic man, chimes in, "it's getting closer, closer every day." Reno and Wilson's voices fuse into a sweaty bandana of sweetness. Even if they concede the point that paradise on Earth is unattainable, they persevere knowing their compatible and complementary love for each other is good enough, and that when they die, they can dance all they want [pending they: a) were decent enough human beings to be granted some sort of beneficent afterlife; or, b) invest in the rather expensive technology that will enable their crusty, feeble, old, decaying, dead bodies to dance forever]. Either way, by proving that our mortal selves can only arrive at a place called "Almost Paradise," what they really manage to do is create a living paradise ... FOR OUR EARS!

Here's the video for this unparalleled piece of brutally brilliant music:

Book Review: 33 1/3 #64 Illmatic

As most of you know by now, one of my biggest consistent critiques of Continuum's 33 1/3 series rests in many of the books' piecemeal approach to their subject matter. Instead of providing a focused, unified analysis of an album through a particular lens, many books in the series work like buckshot. These books work from a mess of scattered ideas in the form of half-formed mini-analyses, histories, and interviews. Thankfully, these weaker books are the exceptions rather than the rule, and with Matthew Gasteier's book on Nas's Illmatic, we get another fine example of the rule. Rather than trying to tell his readers a little bit about everything related to Illmatic, Gasteier focuses his effort on a searching analysis of hip hop's various narratives.

In a series of chapters named after the album's various tensions ("Youth/Experience," "Death/Survival," "Fantasy/Reality," "Tradition/Revolution" etc...), Gasteier expertly blends historical accounts of New York hip hop and details of Nas's life and rise to hip hop fame in service of his literary reading of Illmatic as a sort of hip hop coming of age story, or in Gasteier's own words, "a portrait of the artist as a young black man" (29). Gasteier's reading of Illmatic relies heavily on the idea of narrative. In particular, the author focuses on identifying ways that Nas buys into that coming-of-age narrative while at the same time subverting the dominant narrative of 90's urban culture: "Hip hop, because of its obsession with the 'before' picture of its stars, depends almost entirely on the origin story" (30). Gasteier's discussion of origin stories in hip hop sheds light on the way the hip hop narrative works, and why so many people find it so appealing--the narrative is about authenticity and escape to a better life. Gasteier's discussion of inner-city violence--he points out that, in the late 90's "15-year-old black males in Washington D.C. had a staggering 1 in 12 chance of being murdered by the time they were 45" (36)--furthers his treatment of this theme through the assertion that "While there is certainly a great deal of violent and masculine posturing in hip hop, it is balanced with a deep reverence for the dead, the constant presence of those who have passed, and a strong if commercially muted commitment to ending the cycle of violence" (36). Although Gasteier's reading of Illmatic and hip hop in general sometimes feels like the thoughts of an outsider looking in, his characterization of the many tensions running through the album and genre help provide the art form with an often times overlooked gravity. Maybe that gravity is overlooked because it's taken for granted, or because we're desensitized to it, or because of sheer ignorance.

Following through on the promise of the context he provides, Gasteier ultimately makes some extremely optimistic claims about hip hop's ability to transform socio-economic realities through its decades of consciousness-raising:

Once [the contradiction that we are individuals with dreams, stifled by social, historical, and political bindings] is recognized, it does not seem so hard to understand where Nas's persona comes from, and how easily it can shift and bend at will. Nor does it seem unlikely to imagine that all of those kids who do understand that contradiction, no matter where they come from and how easily they personally can achieve the American dream, would have a perspective on their country that is far different from their parents'. This is the true revolution of hip hop, the one that has yet to play itself out. (80)

While I appreciate Gasteier's optimism, I find this assertion a bit difficult to completely buy into, especially considering, as Gasteier also points out, that much of mainstream hip hop has shifted away from realism to escapism. To these ends, Gasteier's Illmatic almost functions as the naively optimistic companion to Nas's Illmatic in that they both pull at the threads of hard-lived lives in a celebration of survival, only Nas comes off sounding world-weary and a bit desperate, while Gasteier sounds starry-eyed and hopeful. There's nothing wrong with hope or optimism, but Gasteier's reading, here, almost seems to undercut Illmatic's intensity and realism. That is to say, while Gasteier's analysis is expert, the conclusion ultimately draws from it feels a little too pat, too easy--the feel-good answer to Nas's (and hip hop's) perplexing questions.

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Focus's "Hocus Pocus"

You are reading this right now because the Danish progressive rock group Focus made you. Don't believe me? Well, listen to their monstrous 1971 hit "Hocus Pocus" again and you'll find yourself right back here, reading this.

Popular music has long been interested in supernatural forms of magic. Influential acts like Olivia Newton-John, The Cars, Pilot, and America all have songs devoted to the topic. Similarly, Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" (i.e. "hoodoo" you love) and The Steve Miller Band's "Abracadabra" have, like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, tried to "Put a Spell on You" with some of their songs. But no group before or since has maximized the ratio of magic to kick-ass rock as much as Focus does on their epic cut "Hocus Pocus." And this doesn't even come close to qualifying the song's importance. It is also one of the few instrumental hits of the pop-rock era. Its existence unquestionably brought about the mainstream popularity of other instrumentals like Harold Faltermeyer's "Axel F." and Perry Botkin, Jr.'s "Nadia's Theme (The Young and the Restless)." Of more importance, though, is the undisputed fact that Focus reclaimed the art of "yodeling" from the Americans. American acts, such as Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Sly and the Family Stone, had co-opted the yodel from Europe for their own financially self-serving purposes. Focus corrects this wrong by including yodeling on their incantatory hit*.

Focus's mesmerizing song begins with a seven-chord riff that will literally tear your pants right off your grandpappy's ass. Why he would be wearing your skinny jeans is an issue for you work to out with your therapist. The first two instrumental breaks--and several that follow--feature keyboardist Thijs van Leer's immortal yodeling, communicating a powerful spell that has led you to this very place. Making the song even more magical is that it attempts, within seven minutes, to incorporate as many aspects of traditional European-derived folk forms into its futuristic progressive rock frame as possible, including solos on accordion, mock pan flute, scat singing, whistling, and, of course, vicious guitar leads (by the song's writer, Jan Akkerman) and yodeling. Not only was this song a profoundly important hit that was internationally famous, it magically leads more people to read my writing!

*-Never mind the fact yodeling originated in the Swiss Alps, which are some more than half a day's drive from the Netherlands.

Below is an audio clip of the song. Keep reading ...

Songs that Changed the Landscape of Human Thought and Understanding: Van Halen's "Right Now"

In her 1986 treatise "The Greatest Love of All," philosopher Whitney Houston argues, "I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way." This child-first, future-centric ideology ruled our world for half a decade, and the results were disastrous, because otherwise intelligent people thought they heard her sing, "I believe the children are our present." As a result, every new day was a birthday for the children. National and personal debt soon ballooned. All of our streets were littered with discarded R.O.B.s, gilded rattles, and flattened Pogo Balls. Traffic was THE WORST because kids on their damned Big Wheels were clogging up all the freeways with their insufficiently slow (albeit environmentally friendly) form of transportation. Thankfully, the adults reclaimed their fault-proof logic (example: "Why can't I play with Timmy?" asks unnamed child. "Because I said so," replies fully-grown adult parent, expertly!). And the inspiration came from a most unlikely source: Van Halen's 1991 triumph "Right Now."

For a small sliver of the 1970s and all of the 1980s, no band's music was the soundtrack to every kegger you went to more than Van Halen's. They screamed PARTY. Anchored by the greatest single guitar player in the history of human beings playing guitar in Sir Eddie Van Halen, the group knocked out hit after hit, including "Running with the Devil," "Panama," "Jump," and "Poundcake." Lingering behind this facade of inartful debauchery, the casual spreading of sexually transmitted diseases, 50-yard marker-sized lines of cocaine, and warehouses of zebra-print clothing was our salvation from this Ritalin-happy generation of Whitney Houston future-kids. Apparently, Eddie Van Halen composed the music for his most important anthem during the David Lee Roth years. But it wasn't until deep into his tenure with the Cabo Wabo man himself, Sammy Hagar, that this gorgeous melody would be served by such insight into the human condition.

"Right Now" is great because it least represents Van Halen's usual musical strengths. The track is not frivolous: it is absolutely serious and heart-felt; Eddie Van Halen's tapping and whammy-bar drives are pushed far into the background, substituted by a Bruce Hornsby and the Range-style piano figure geared toward latte-drinking progressives; and Sammy Hagar isn't actually singing about his boner for a change. Instead, Hagar's lyric is a direct subversion of Whitney Houston's philosophy. "Right now is everything," he yelps, passionately, during the chorus, adding, "It's your tomorrow." By actually paying attention to the present, Hagar tells us, we can "catch that magic moment and do it right." Translation: We don't need to wait for no stinking kids to do it for us when we are old, covered with uncomfortable bed-sores, and being totally ignored by them in our smelly and understaffed retirement homes. No truer words have ever been spoken. We were so brainwashed during the reign of the Whitney Houston's enlightenment that we couldn't see the signs in front of us. For example, in the 1989 Peter Weir film Dead Poet's Society, the "children are our future" mindset was subtly subverted when John Keating, played by the venerable Robin Williams, pleads, "CARPE DIEM." But we were too busy tearing up our books to notice. Sammy Hagar's lyric is empowering and immediate, emphasizing that we "turn this thing around" and "do it right." "Why wait another day?" he asks us. Exactly. Thanks to Sammy Hagar and the rest of Van Halen, children no longer ruled, and we were able to become self-centered again, leaving our destructive and extremely expensive legacy to them to repair. Neenerneenerneener.

Site Update and Coming Soon -- The Fiddleback.

We've slowed down around here, lately. Part of that is due to the reality of school starting back up in the fall. The other, cooler part has to do with a couple of us--Joshua Cross, and I--taking a gig as co-music editors of brand new online arts journal The Fiddleback.

The first issue isn't quite up and running, yet, but it will be soon. In the mean time, We'll keep posting fun stuff here, but some of our reviews will be shifted over to The Fiddleback.

Also--The Fiddleback is shaping up to be pretty great. The journal's founder, Jeff Simpson, has assembled a crack team of fiction, poetry, art, non-fiction, and music editors to bring together exceptional content. Once the first issue goes live, come enjoy our take on the arts and maybe even submit your own work.

Book Review: 33 1/3 #72 Pavement - Wowee Zowee

Bryan Charles' author blurb on the back of his book about Pavement's Wowee Zowee is short and direct: "Bryan Charles is the author of the novel Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way." That's all the ethos we get going into this book. We don't see any affiliation with Pitchfork, or The Village Voice, no ties to the actual music business. All that the blurb tells us is that Bryan Charles is a novelist, a writer. As such, fans of hardcore music journalism might be a bit hesitant in approaching Charles' take on Wowee Zowee. Let's hope they aren't, though, because Wowee Zowee is a fun, compelling read, and is easily one of the best books in Continuum's 33 1/3 series. This is a bold claim to make, I know. What, with a writer penning the book instead of a rock critic, not to mention the fact that this is the seventy-second entry in the series, usually a sign that the good albums and ideas are all-dried up. Rather, Bryan Charles' Wowee Zowee is a perfect example of why the 33 1/3 series is so successful and has had such long legs--with every volume there is the chance at greatness. Not every volume is great, and a few are downright boring, but Charles' sharp writing, self-referential framework, and measured earnestness make his book one of the series' biggest successes, and a great piece of rock journalism.

On the surface, Charles' Wowee Zowee might sound like any other 33 1/3 book; the volume combines personal fandom, band interviews, analysis, and a brief track-by-track walk-through in its attempt to get at some sense of truth or understanding about the album. What sets the volume apart from its peers, though, is Charles' engaging prose, and his ability to wind the book's disparate parts into compelling narrative threads. What are these narrative threads? First, we get the author's story, how he came to Pavement, how he, more reluctantly, came to Wowee Zowee, and then how the album unfolded throughout his life. Not always gripping subject matter, but in the hands of a sharp writer with an unique eye for detail and a fiction writer's narrative chops, the memoir elements of the book pop. Second, we get a research narrative, of sorts, complete with a thesis that Charles sets out to either prove or disprove: "Underdog rock record greeted with head-wags and confusion stands the test of time to become fan favorite and indie rock classic" (22). With this thesis in mind, the author digs up old reviews and articles, then sets out to interview band members, label heads, and studio technicians. Rather than delving into straight rock journalism, however, a funny thing starts to happen--Charles' Pavement fandom, the importance of the record to the man, begins to bleed into the research narrative. We read as he stalls on his project due to nerves, chuckle at his frustrations dealing with Matador Records' curmudgeonly Gerard Cosloy, and feel awkward for him when he trips up Stephen Malkmus with a question about lyrics.

Charles' volume on Wowee Zowee is so successful because he strikes the perfect balance between fan enthusiasm and rock journalist curiosity. Nothing is too giddy, or too factual--both of these narrative threads bleed together as one man's attempt to get at the heart of an album he loves. Even the song-by-song, a pet peeve of mine in many 33 1/3 volumes, is handled admirably. The section closes the book, not with section headings and dry explication, but with a stream of conscious rant that ties each song to moments and ideas from the author's life--moments and ideas that tie back to early moments from the book, heightening the ethos that the jacket blurb only hints at. The book is at turns touching and funny (try to read the side-by-side comparison of Billy Corgan and Stephen Malkmus without losing it), and encompasses the best qualities of 33 1/3's finest moments.