Dead Weather - I Cut Like a Buffalo

I had to take the movies back after diner and watching Kings tonight. I get in my car and tune my radio to KCRW. "This is the newest track from the Dead Weather." I love when that happens! I was more thrilled as the song started and I realised that it was the song Cut Like a Buffalo, the SECOND single from The Dead Weather's up coming disc Horehound. Unlike the first Zepplin-like single, Hang You From the Heavens, this track finds Jack White and Alison Mosshart teaming up for the lead vocal under a heavy assault of lo-fi distortion reminescent of early demos by Alison's other band and first love, The Kills. But very different from either Jack or Alison's past projects this song also came with very heavy dub/reggae undertones. The stacato guitar part and the tripple echo on the steal drums made it very obvious where the inspiration was coming from yet they executed it with a subtlety that spared me from slapping my head in an, "Oh Brother..." moment of dissapointment.

With the popularity of the roots reggae rebel rivival looming (Popular Scottish band Franz Ferdinand releasing a dub version, titled Blood, of their last album Tonight) I was glad that Jack White took the bull by the horns and gave us a chance to have a popular rivivl that was more than a silly joke. Hopefully others will follow suit and employ the dub influences without overkill and unoriginallity.

It has been revealed in recent intervies that Alison's Kills band mate, Jamie Hince, has also taken quite a shine to old reggae and dub records. Hopefully, if The Kills decide to let that influence shine through in there next record, they will not find themselves in the same position as in 2001 when The Kills could not turn the corner without being compared to Jack White's first claim to fame, The White Stripes. If Jamie can't repair the hard drive of his water logged laptop that contained new Kills material (thrown into it's watery grave by Hince' girlfriend Kate Moss) then we might never know.

Either way all of this could be very exciting if it happens right. If it doesn't though, do not fret. There is a huge wealth of great ORIGINAL Roots Reggae and Dub that you can fill your ear holes with. Get ready to ride the lion to Zion, Board the black star liner, and praise Jah with Lee "Scratch" Perry and his "king of dub" compadre King Tubby. Take some time for The Originator; U-Roy and the bells of ambient style dub from Prince Far I. And you can't stop until you make sure to pick up copies of Big Youth's highly influential Screaming Targets and Culture's record Two Sevens Clash.
-Molly Ultra \V/_

Museful Muses and their Museings

My friends and family think I'm odd when it comes to one thing in particular; my fandom. I often recieve a good amount of flack for being obsessive. That is to say; when I get into something I tend to want to learn everything about that one thing. It becomes very time consuming, which is probably not a good thing when you should be spending at least some of your time learning about what you are going to be tested on in school.

My curiosity for the lives and work of others is a biproduct of me trying to figure myself out. It isn't just escapism. It's kind of the opposite... it's my way of unfiguring life. My current fascination, say, with Mr. Spock from Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek isn't superficial; I see his Vulcan predicament, however fictional it may be, and I sympathise. Now I sound completely daft, I know. (We can talk about the essence of Vulcan and logic v.s. emotion another day)

Maybe I should be less dependent on the reaffirmation that other people's philosophies give me. But, like another pointy eared hero of mine, Joe Strummer, I believe in humanism and true freedom and I am fascinated that we all happen to be alive all at the same time, at once. I am contenet with not living in utopia but I admire the people who try to unfigure the human condition. I aspire to add to that puzzle. I don't know if the destination is called God or not but whatever it's called it is that thing that is bigger than all of us. It's that thing that will tell us all to stop being afraid; Afraid of dying, afraid of not making enough money, afraid of not being attractive enough, afraid of love, afraid of walking around with the front of your face held perpindicular, and not parrallel, with the floor.

I digress:
I hope that I become a better formulator of my own thoughts. But until then I will mispell and ramble in the early hours of the morning after being up all night in hopes that no one really pays very much attention to what I'm saying. I don't want to talk about it when I see you next so don't ask. I'll stop here and be afraid... afraid that I am either not being understood at all or afraid that I am an idiot for wasting time writing about something that is such a universal problem that no one even bothers to write about it.

Perfectionist

I've been realizing a lot of things lately. I've been in a constant state of self reflection for the better part of a year now (when I say "constant" I do mean it) It is very frustrating and very confusing.

I have so many thoughts running through my head about myself, the world and how it works, my place in the world and how my mind works, about how I want to live and how much I want to live. I want to do something intellegent with all of these revelations but I'm, quit honestly, overwhelmed. I feel like all of my inspiration and ideas have the proper right to escape my brain and find someone else who is actually competent and artful or stay with me and die with my body, never to see the light of day.

My anxiety has reached some fever pitches in this time. A couple of people (very close to me) have told me that it's because I am a perfectionist. I may well be but I am the wrong type of perfectionist. I feel as though I am a strange breed of "perfectionist" who is stiffled by the possibility of failure. I stop myself in my tracks when I don't feel like I can do something to the best of my ability. If I can't find the right words for a lyric or the right color for the grass or the right melody for a song I often just don't want to begin.

Even now I feel like, when I am done with this, I will not have even cracked the surface of what I am trying to express. I'm forcing myself into this stream of consciousness and where I end up will probably be somewhere else entirely.

When I know I have to explain something somewhat complicated to someone I begin to stutter. I become flustered. I feel like I need to collect atleast a dozen pieces of proof just to make a statement. I need to make concrete patterns and line them in a tidy row in order to mold my daily philosophies. Deviation from my patterns is unfavorable. This, however, conflicts with my need for objectivity and flexibility of rules and my disdain for authority and people telling me what I have to do. I question everything yet I have these facist run thought processes.

I've done my favorite drawings in class when I am supposed to be taking notes. I've written the best songs when I should have been writting a paper about biology. I'll read all day if I stumble upon something good... but I've been planning to finish Crime and Punishment for a year now and it might not ever happen.

Although people compliment my "talents" I often forget about those and size myself up to everyone around me, especially people on television. I might be totally uninterested in their activities but I still wonder why "I never thought of that." I want to know how other people see this world. Although, I know that everyone is equally confused. I want to make a large mark on this world so that whoever seeks the answers to the same questions can use these disjointed thoughts if for nothing more than a scense of comfort. That is what my heros have done for me and that is my aspiration.

A conclusion to this is pretty much impossible. This is rambling. I was born for it just like Woody Guthrie. I hope no one reads this. This isn't all that I am but It's what's on my mind for the moment. This will end now because I've been distracted by an episode of Star Trek. I'll end on saying that life is difficult and even though I know that life is the journey and not the destination It's hard for me to fight myself all the time.

Posting this is dangerous because this is such a small fraction of the huge story. It may not even be true tomorrow. It may only be true again a week from now. That is what part of this is all about. How the hell are human beings ever supposed to remember these things enough to put them all together? I want my enlightenment.

She upsette my sweet cloud...

She is Liberty; She Comes to Rescue Me; Hope Faith & Vanity

really though, all poetry aside, I just got my first scanner

Review: Black Lips - 200MillionThousand

Black Lips 200MillionThousand is the follow up to, the critically acclaimed, Good Bad Not Evil. Black Lips return with more lo-fi, garage rock, rambunctiousness. The songs of 200MillionThousand hold high reverence for the raw rock n’ roll of the 60’s . The first track Take My Heart brings the Stones to mind and a guitar riff reminiscent of early Pete Townshend. The vocal performance on Trapped in a Basement is one of an old broken down blues man while Short Fuse takes a page from a more unabashed Fleetwood Mack style; the lengthy guitar solo at the end of this song, especially. Black Lips have taken the best bits of the past, the best bits of THEIR past and have ultimately delivered a more mature album than the last.
Highlights include the song Black Baby Jesus of Today which is dedicated to the much anticipated return of a messiah whom the boys in Black Lips imagine to be a mix of ODB, Jack Johnson, and Barack Obama!?
Tour Dates:
April
16 San Diego, CA – Casbah
30 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
May
01 Los Angeles, CA – El Rey
02 Pomona, CA – The Glass House