Review: Ventilator's 'Reseda Spleen'

As a former obsessive bedroom Portastudio recorder myself, I've always had a soft spot for home recordings: Pete Townshend's Scoop compilations, Liz Phair's Girlysound tapes, the first ten years of Guided by Voices. These recordings have an atmosphere that is decidedly unpolished and full of forbidden "you weren't supposed to hear this!" allure. 

I'd never heard of Matt Devine's home-recording project Ventilator, but I was curious because of my fascination with straight-to-High Bias-TDK music. Imagine how hoodwinked I felt when I heard Ventilator's Reseda Spleen! This album sounds as lo-fi as Revolver! That's probably because Devine cheated by not using one of those shitty cassette recorders Phair and GBV and I used. He used a proper Tascam 388 ¼" reel-to-reel tape recorder (purchased from a Mighty Morphine Rangers stuntman for $1,000, no less) and got a proper professional engineer to mix it. Earl Mankey engineered freaking Beach Boys albums! Not good ones, mind you, but still...The Beach Boys! Who just happens to have a Beach Boys engineer hanging around their home? What kind of home recording is that?

Review: 'Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s'

I'd always wanted to read a book like Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s. The nineties alternative scene is one that hardly gets as much attention as the British Invasion of the sixties, the hard rock scene of the seventies, or the new wave of the eighties, but for a lot of gen x'ers, it was just as important. But most contemporary discussions of nineties rock would lead you to think it was a scene of one, and that one was Nirvana. I loved and love Nirvana, but grunge was largely a dead end of samey sounding records by guys who couldn't write a pop melody if their favorite flannel was being held for ransom. 

Vinyl Releases Psychobabble Would Like to See in 2019

Psychobabble's 2019 resolution is to continue championing vinyl. With the current resurgence of whirling wax, there should be much to champion this year, and we can already bank on such enticing releases as reissues of every album by The Zombies and The Cardigans, as well as the likely continuation of annual vinyl reissues from such major leaguers as The Beatles (a 50th Anniversary Edition of Abbey Road) and Stones (ditto Let It Bleed). However, there are some vinyl releases we shouldn't necessarily expect in 2019 but Psychobabble would love to see nonetheless. Here are five varieties of them.

1. The Beatles' U.S. Albums

Box sets devoted to single albums has seemingly replaced the odder Beatles-related reissue projects of recent years, so while I once believed that vinyl reissues of the group's U.S. albums were a sure thing, I now have my doubts. Five years ago we received such a set on CD only, and purists took issue with the presentation since the stereo mixes on those CDs did not match the often reverb-drenched messes on Capitol's original records. With this year marking the 55th anniversary of The Beatles' invasion of the states, it would be a good time to finally put out these albums in their original vinyl states...complete with dodgy echo. 

2. Pink Floyd: The Early Singles

Review: 'Rock and Roll Woman: The 50 Fiercest Female Rockers'

Who would you select if tasked with choosing “The 50 Fiercest Female Rockers”? Once I was through grumbling about that measly number, I wouldn’t select a lot of the ones who make it into Meredith Ochs’s new book Rock and Roll Woman: The 50 Fiercest Female Rockers. To the writer’s credit, she makes a strong case for even the ones who made my eyes roll while perusing the table of contents. Ochs’s colorful prose and infectious love for her subjects nearly brought me to the precipice of reconsidering the artistry of Gwen Stefani or Sheryl Crow.

Review: 3 Liz Phair Albums on Vinyl

Liz Phair’s career arc is among the oddest and most notorious in pop, and UMe’s new vinyl reissues puts the spotlight back on that arc even though her defining album in not among the trio (Exile in Guyville is a Matador property and was recently the centerpiece of a massive 25^th Anniversary box set by that label).

While Whip Smart does not have the reputation of Exile in Guyville, it is very nearly as wonderful, catching Phair still riding the peak on which she started her career. Brad Wood’s production is a bit cleaner than it had been on Exile, but Phair’s songs are still fabulously eccentric, personal, amusing, emotionally gripping, and frank… though all that “potty mouth” business that was such a publicity hook 25 years ago feels neither shocking nor nearly as interesting as the other aspects of Phair’s artistry anymore.

The title track of Whip Smart gets my vote for the best pop song about being a parent ever written, and that theme joins Phair’s usual musings about sex and relationships in full force on Whitechocolatespaceegg. However, few critics had been paying attention to how much Phair was also musically yearning for fame beyond the pages of CMJ (as far back as Exile’s “Help Me Mary” she’d been threatening to weave her disgust into fame), and that obsession flowers on Whitechocolatespaceegg both lyrically (see the admittedly ironic “Shitloads of Money”) and practically (see “Polyester Bride”, Phair’s first number to get airplay off the indie stations). Perhaps not coincidentally, that was also the least interesting track on Whitechocolatespaceegg, which still delivered much unique Phair oddness with slanted tracks such as “Ride”, “Headache”, and “Baby Got Going”. However, my pick for the album’s best track, the beautiful “What Makes You Happy”, shows that Phair could adapt her style for the Top 40 pop stations. Why it wasn’t pulled for a single is beyond me.

Perhaps Liz Phair had other ideas about what makes a hit, because her eponymous fourth album is both dogged about getting one (the hit factory known as the Matrix produced four tracks) and totally unlike any of her previous albums. And that’s the main issue with Liz Phair: it is neither terrible nor embarrassing; it simply sounds like any pop singer could have made it. But we aren’t fans of just any pop singer; we are Liz Phair fans, and her presence is barely a phantom on the album she named after herself. Songs about underwear or scientifically dubious properties of semen are more like the work of a lesser artist aping Phair than that of the real deal. Granted, “Why Can’t I” did the commercial trick better than anything else, nabbing Phair her one and only entry in the Top Forty of Billboard’s Hot 100, but even she seems to realize that her true legacy lies in her first album.

Still, we shouldn’t forget how fab Whip Smart and Whitechocolatespaceegg continue to be, and UMe’s vinyl reissues provide fine reminders of that (ever the odd-woman-out, Liz Phair is not a reissue but a vinyl debut). There is no suggestion either in UMe’s press release or on the album sleeves that any remastering has taken place, and played against the original CDs, they sound identical to me. Considering the infuriating 21^st Century trend to brickwall everything, that is great news.

Review: Vinyl Edition of Veruca Salt's 'Eight Arms to Hold You'

Producer Brad Wood shot Veruca Salt’s American Thighs through an evocative layer of mid-fi indie gauze, and the result was arguably the strongest debut album since Wood’s production of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville the year before. However, gnarly monsters like “All Hail Me”, “Victrola”, and the definitive hit “Seether” suggested that Veruca Salt might be happier to Rock without the indie part (so did the disc’s AC/DC-referencing title).

Psychobabble’s 100 Favorite Songs of the 1990s!

Wow. A list of Psychobabble’s 100 Favorite Songs of the 1990s. That’s so cool. It’s totally not like everyone else in the entire universe hasn’t already listed their 100 favorite songs of the nineties. Like anyone cares. Whatever. Lists are wack, but I don’t know… music is pretty cool. I mean, not when they’re like “Oooh, look at me! I’m a big rock star! My hair is so big and I screw so many groupies!” That is so eighties. But when they…I don’t know… kind of don’t care so much, I guess I’m kinda like, “That’s pretty cool. I don’t care so much either.” It’s like sometimes I think Kurt Cobain is singing about my life, you know? I don’t know what the fuck Bob Pollard is singing about half the time, but Guided by Voices rock so hard because Bob is like a forty-year-old schoolteacher or something, so it’s so ironic that he’s a rock star. And then there’s all the “Women in Rock” (I put that in quotes to show what I really think of the mainstream media’s “labels”) like Liz Phair, Tanya Donelly, Mary Timony, Juliana Hatfield, PJ Harvey, and like, all the others. They are sincerely hella cool. Sincerely! I’m not even being ironic about how totally dope they are. Don’t think I’m not being ironic? Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind. Then here’s your mom’s 100 favorite songs of the nineties.

100. “Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” by Guided by Voices

So we get started the way every party must get started…with a chant of “GBV! GBV! GBV!” Then Bob Pollard is all like, “Rock and Roll!” Then he’s like “This song does not rock,” which is so cool, because sincerely admitting that you rock is so lame! But the real irony is that “Over the Neptune” really does rock! It rocks like Cheap Trick (and not lame Cheap Trick, like “The Flame”). Then “Over the Neptune” morphs into “Mesh Gear Fox” like that cop in T2 morphs into water or whatever, and guess what…it stops rocking but it remains awesome as Guided by Voices get all psychedelic. It sounds like your dad’s best records… and Uncle Bob is like your dad’s only cool friend.

99. “I Wanted to Tell You” by Matthew Sweet

Ten Genuinely Great Classic TV Themes

A TV theme has a job to do and that is to set the tone for the show that follows. Unfortunately, most twentieth-century TV shows were pretty goofy and got the catchy/crappy themes they deserved. Hey, I can remember all the words to the “Brady Bunch” theme song as well as the next asshole, but it isn’t exactly my idea of good music.

On occasion shows ended up with legitimately good themes, either because they were extraordinary pieces of television that deserved complimentary music or…err… by accident, I guess. I’m not talking about programs that cheated by using pre-composed music or classic pop songs as themes, otherwise the following list would be loaded with classics such as “Paint It Black” (“Tour of Duty”), “Reflections (“China Beach”), “Bad Reputation” (“Freaks and Geeks”), “Rock Around the Clock” (“Happy Days”), “Five O’ Clock World” (“The Drew Carey Show”), “Having an Average Weekend” (“The Kids in the Hall”), “And Your Bird Can Sing” (“The Beatles” Cartoon), “Falling” (“Twin Peaks”), and “For Pete’s Sake” (a way better song than the cutesy “Monkees Theme”). Instead I selected ten songs specifically created for specific programs that I wouldn’t feel ashamed to blast with the TV turned off.

1. “Twilight Zone Theme” by Bernard Herrmann

The discordant tune that instantly conjures memories of gremlins, murder dolls, and pig doctors is Marius Constant’s “Etrange No. 3”, a piece of music recorded for CBS’s library of stock cues but not necessarily “The Twilight Zone”. Eugene Feldman edited it with Constant’s “Milieu No. 2” to serve as the series’ theme in the second season, probably because the music that opened the show’s first one simply isn’t very catchy. It is, however, an eerie scene setter composed by perhaps the greatest composer of cinematic thriller scores, Bernard Herrmann. If Constant’s “Etrange No. 3”/“Milieu No. 2” delivers the skin-crawling shocks of “Eye of the Beholder” then Herrmann’s theme is more in line with the haunting subtlety of “Mirror Image”…

2. “Route 66 Theme” by Nelson Riddle

Review: '33 1/3: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville'

When the term “women in rock” became an inescapable buzz phrase around 1993, the women to which that label applied—Polly Jean Harvey, Kim Deal, Tanya Donelly, and Juliana Hatfield, to name a few—often reacted to questions about it with irritation, bugged that lazy journalists were reducing their considerable musical achievements to gender matters. Their irritation was completely legitimate, yet the Rock scene was becoming more gender-balanced than it ever had been before, and to ignore that would have been to pass on a pretty noteworthy story. It was a frustrating inevitability for the talented musicians who had to field the same tired questions about their gender over and over and over again.

50 Years/50 Reasons The Rolling Stones are the Most!

According to Karnbach and Bernson’s It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards first went to see Brian Jones and Ian Stewart rehearse with their new blues band on May 25, 1962. Kismet. For the next fifty years, The Rolling Stones would remain the definitive Rock & Roll band, leaving a trail of milestones in their wake. Here are 50 that prove The Stones are and have always been the most.

1. Start Me Up
“Hot Stuff” notwithstanding, Stones albums could always be counted on to get off to a rousing start. Track one always packed a little extra kick: “Route 66” on their debut, “She Said Yeah” on Out of Our Heads, “Sympathy for the Devil” on Beggars Banquet, “Gimme Shelter” on Let It Bleed, “Rocks Off” on Exile on Main Street, “Start Me Up” on Tattoo You. Sometimes The Stones lured you in with beguiling mood music, as they did with “Mother’s Little Helper” on Aftermath, “Yesterday’s Papers” on Between the Buttons, and “Sing This All Together” on Their Satanic Majesties Request. No matter what, as soon as the needle drops on side one, there’s no mistake you're listening to the world’s greatest Rock & Roll band.

2. Imagination
Sometimes The Stones’ exploits overshadow their music. Mick and Keith are rarely spoken of in the same breath as fellow lyricists Dylan or Lennon and McCartney, but could they be Rock’s greatest wordsmiths? They were not as poetic as Dylan. They were not as empathetic as The Beatles. Yet Mick and Keith were far more personal, varied, and imaginative than many listeners realize. Songs such as “Before They Make Me Run” and “Wild Horses” are vulnerable contemplations of real situations. “Citadel”, “Torn and Frayed”, and “When the Whip Comes Down” establish incredibly detailed scenarios of fantasy and reality. “Sympathy for the Devil” may be Rock & Roll’s finest—and most frightening— character study, while “Monkey Man” might be its most hilarious self-parody.

3. Copy Me
One of the things that made Mick Jagger such a stellar frontman was his ability to mimic the greatest frontmen before and of his time. He spent the first few Stones records working hard to capture Chuck Berry’s audible smirk, Jimmy Reed’s slur, Marvin Gaye’s sweet roll, and Otis Redding’s transcendent shout. By the mid-‘60s he was an expert impersonator who had Ray Davies’s wryness (“Cool, Calm, & Collected”), The Beatles’ Liverpudlian harmonies (“Yesterday’s Papers”), and Dylan’s whine (“She Smiled Sweetly”) down pat.

4. The Bass Player He Looks Nervous…and the Drummer, He’s So Shattered…
Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman were never a flash rhythm section like Moon and Entwistle, or rhythmic melodists like Starr and McCartney. They just locked into grooves like no other white rhythm section, smearing slicks of drums and bass Keith could slide all over with his greasy licks. So what if Charlie played a little behind the beat? So what if Bill didn’t have the interest in distinguishing his lines from the mix, making it necessary for Keith to tear the bass from Bill’s hands and do the job himself from time to time? There’s still an undeniable magic to their boogie: Charlie wacking away like a slightly slack metronome; Bill tossing off walking runs with ease, occasionally dive-bombing down neck like Bo Diddley. On stage, the guys looked like they could not have been less interested in what they were doing. The exquisite rumble they made proved otherwise.

5. …and the Guitar Players Look Damaged
While Bill and Charlie were perfecting their rhythms at the back of the stage, Keith Richards and Brian Jones were out front revolutionizing guitar dynamics. The lead and rhythm player had always been distinct entities in Rock & Roll. Keith and Brian started changing that through a technique Keith christened “weaving,” instinctively trading rhythm and lead roles within a song. While Mick Taylor’s virtuosity meant that the roles became less integrated during his tenure, The Stones’ acquisition of Ronnie Wood in 1976 resulted in the most perfect weaving Keith would ever achieve with a guitar partner.

6. Slipped My Tongue
It’s been slapped on T-shirts, jackets, and air fresheners (though it’s hard to believe anything associated with The Stones would actually make the air smell better). Over-commercialized for sure, The Rolling Stones’ tongue is still a perfectly lascivious, unbelievably iconic logo for the world’s dirtiest band of pirates. It has certainly gotten more mileage than if it had “slowly (turned) into a cock,” as Keith Richards once suggested it might.

7. I Got the Blues