2003-04 Vital Source Mag – April 2003
Collections of Colonies of Bees
By Brian Barney The latest from Collections of Colonies of Bees is comprised of musical murmurings that crescendo to eclectic swellings with acoustic guitars and analog keys. Each song seems to fade into the next with a fluid motion that mimics a boat drifting down a stream, occasionally bumping flotsam represented by sharply picked harmonics and blips of carefully manipulated notes from the keyboard. Chris Rosenau handles acoustic and lap steel guitars along with keyboards while Jon Mueller adds percussion and miscellaneous noises. This journey toward serenity in track after track of image shaping music sounds like Ravi Shankar spending an afternoon with Pink Floyd, where the occasional pop of a snare drum or rattle of a sundry percussive device shakes the listener out of a pleasant state of rapture. While probably best-suited for ambience, the occasional thud, or electronic swell of pitch causes a deviation from the flow, leaving the listener peering around the corner in anticipation of what might happen next. "fa.ce (a" will be a welcome addition to any new age collection.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Greg Koch
By Brian Barney When Greg Koch was in the third grade, he cut out a cardboard guitar, and while using a sewing machine foot controller as a makeshift wah, proceeded to emulate Jimi Hendrix. Yeah, sure, we all did that, but Koch kept the delirium alive and went on to become one of the best and most original guitarists to ever pick up an axe. His latest release is a collection of songs, not quite songs, and spoken word that mixes music, mayhem and Kocks’ wet/dry sense of humor into a gelatinous substance called Radio Free Gristle. From its’ opening track, “The Mansqwatch Chronicles”, where a Steve Vai-like tone rides over the top of a friendly yet frightening arrangement of chord meets discord, to the last, “Your Blues” (do the math); the disc reads like a hard-boiled crime caper that you can’t put down. Standout cuts like “Chopin’s Redneck Hideaway” and “The Joy of Ax”, show Koch’s amazing approach and a style that simply can’t be categorized; where scales derail, and madness becomes melodic. Interspersed throughout the record are snippets of spoken word that range from the hilarious to the unexplainable (mostly hilarious). Koch is a Frank Zappa type for today with his musical prowess and humorous musings, and, while Radio Free Gristle will probably never reach the mainstream, fans are in for a treat with Greg Koch’s most complete work to date.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
By Haven Langhout What can I say? It’s a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, but more mellow than ever this time around. I’m a big fan of Cave’s earlier work so I didn’t enjoy this album too much on first listen. But the more I listen to it the more I like it. There are still the somber violins and tinkling pianos, but now the love ballads have happy endings to them. There is a theme of hope and redemption throughout. Could it be that the Godfather of Goth has finally gone (*gasp*) happy on us? Well, sort of…but not quite. My favorite track off the album is “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a moody ballad where Cave admonishes his dour listeners to cheer up by singing lyrics like: “We can build our dungeons in the air and sit and cry the blues/We can stomp across the world with nails in our shoes/We can join the troubled chorus who criticize and accuse/ It don’t matter, we’ve got nothing much to lose but this wonderful life.” Kinda hopeful, huh? Another song with a positive feeling is “Bring It On”, where the tempo picks up a bit and Cave sings “Every little tear, bring it on and I’ll make them disappear.” Not too much moping on this album. On previous albums, bittersweet ballads such as “Where the Wild Roses Grow” or “The Ballad of Henry Lee” ended up in one of the lovers meeting such gruesome ends as being knifed or hit in the skull by a rock. (Yeah, it’s funny in a dark way- admit it). But that isn’t the case with the love ballads on the new album. Nick Cave is obviously very in love with his wife- as evidenced by “Rock of Gibraltar.” He pledges his eternal unwavering devotion and love to his wife with lyrics like “The best thing I’ve done is make you the one to walk with me to the altar” and compares their love to the rock of Gibraltar. It sounds like Nick Cave has finally made peace with all his demons on this album. On Nocturama, growing up sounds good.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad
By Paul McLeary The Bush administration’s use of the English language reads like something out of a dystopian political novel. Some of its recent concoctions, like The Department of Homeland Security; Rumsfeld’s “old Europe” bon mot; the Office of Information Awareness (OIA); the USA PATRIOT Act; Weapons of Mass Destruction; the Axis of Evil and the Information Exploitation Office (IEO) are just a few of the more Orwellian terms that seem to inspire a mix of the Weimar Republic and doom itself. There are two new programs – one which has been stalled by Congress, while the other was just recently leaked to an unresponsive press – that seek to give the government broad powers to spy, gather information on and imprison American citizens on ill-defined national security grounds. The first, dubbed the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, is being developed by the OIA, but, for the moment, has been blocked by a bipartisan coalition of skeptical Congressmen and several watchdog groups. The TIA- data mining for a safer America? The TIA program is a Defense Department research project aimed at developing and implementing broad sweeps of commercial data, called “data mining.” Targets include credit card records, Internet logs, medical data, merchant purchases and travel records. The goal is to “mine” this data in search of suspicious patterns that may indicate possible terrorist movement. If the program worked properly, it would be a boon to investigators trying to weed out possible sleeper cells in the United States. Data mining is already an established practice within companies that retain customer data. Large retailers, for example, comb customers purchase history, usually attached to indexes such as credit card numbers, customer names or other “index keys.” The information is used to identify customer habits, and ostensibly, to allow the company to make “more compelling offers” (in marketing speak) to their existing customer base. The problem, however, is that none of the drafters of the program has come forward to explain how to avoid errors in its implementation that may result in people mistakenly being tagged as terrorists, making them subject to false arrest, smear campaigns or government harassment. According to the program, the government wouldn’t have to inform anyone about the investigation, allowing officials to gather information on private citizens with no public oversight or accountability. Developed in February 2002 under the auspices of The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), whose ancestor, ARPA, invented the Internet, the new office has quietly been instilled under the dubious leadership of John Poindexter, who was indicted in 1988 for defrauding the U.S. government and obstructing justice as part of the Iran-Contra scandal. Although the convictions were overturned in 1990 when Congress granted him immunity in exchange for his testimony, the joke was on Congress as the testimony he gave them turned out to be false. Since those good old days, Poindexter has been Vice President of Syntek Technologies, a major government technology contractor. We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Syntek, with Poindexter at its […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
The Blow
By Jeremy Saperstein The Blow is Khaela Maricich. Formerly known as Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano, Maricich has released at least a pair of tremendously idiosyncratic records featuring her strong breathy vocals, and appeared with other artists from the K stable, including Phil Elvrum (The Microphones) and Calvin Johnson (K czar). Sounding like a multi-tracked cross between a child’s nonsense rhymes and the tight harmonies of some sort of weird classical chamber music, Maricich’s songs never fail to make me think, either because of her clever turns of lyrical phrase (“Don’t you think we should kiss while Hüsker Dü is playing?/Do you like Grant Hart’s songs?/Do you like Bob Mould’s songs?/Have you ever sung along to ‘New Day Rising’?”) in “Jet Ski Accidents”, for example, or “Someone said that you’re a piece of paper/a piece of paper just pasted on the sky/I’ve a hunch that you’re a giant ball of rock/a million miles from me and all the people in the town”) in “The Moon Is There, I Am Here” or her clever and sophisticated-seeming (while maintaining a blisteringly charming naivety) compositional skills (the aforementioned “The Moon Is There…” or the contrapuntal harmonies in “The Touch-Me”). Throughout, the sparse instrumentation and smooth pop melodies make Bonus Album a far better bet than the studied twee of other new pop bands. Khaela Maricich is a hardcore original, like Beck or Captain Beefheart or any of a thousand others. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next as I enjoy this release.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Rivers, Railways and a Greener Milwaukee
By Matt Czarnik Milwaukee, a city built on the edge of a Great Lake and fed by the convergence of three major waterways, each supporting its own diverse and extensive natural habitat of flora and fauna, is a land capable of creating and sustaining many forms of life. Follow the ancient formula that gave birth to civilization and you’ll find that where the rivers run and spread streams into the land, people have flourished, formed cultures, developed systems and made their histories along the waterways. But gone are the days when the first settlers forged their existence by maintaining a symbiotic relationship with the earth’s precious resources, and modern humans wince at the lost motto of beauty in simplicity. In remedy, they must work with the concrete world they’ve created. For Milwaukeeans it’s not a secret how the land and waterways have been punished by the industrial age. You need only watch the water flowing through the city during the spring thaw or smell the air in summer when it mixes with the fumes escaping from the rivers and Lake Michigan. But too often, the scars left by commerce are viewed only from a distance by drivers passing over viaducts, not looking long enough to wonder what’s gone wrong and not troubling themselves to learn what’s being done for the future. But when a state’s identity (not to mention economic survival) relies on the health of its natural resources for shaping itself as a vacation destination and sanctuary for wildlife and wildlife-watchers, the idea of the state’s most populous city not guiding the conservation and preservation efforts has motivated some people to act to protect the environment on behalf of the people. Leading the recovery revolution Leading a coup d’etat for the environment is a challenge undertaken by many different, groups, from non-profit entities like the Friend’s for Milwaukee’s Rivers, the River Revitalization Foundation (RRF) and Menomonee Valley Partners, Inc., to city, county and state agencies like the Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) and local neighborhood associations. Two projects currently receiving funding on the local and federal levels, as well as private donations from partnerships and non-profit fundraising, are the proposed Beerline County Trail as an extension of Gordon Park in the historic Riverwest neighborhood and the Hank Aaron State Trail (HAST) which follows the Menomonee River from the city’s west side to Lakeshore State Park. Both will be located along the banks of rivers, the Beerline along the west bank of the Milwaukee and HAST along the Menomonee. Both are in the early stages of multi-year plans to build paved city trails that will link urbanites to recreational amenities throughout the city. Each is unique in design and location, but similar in what they offer to the revival of the water basin. The Beerline County Trail In 1987, former Governor Tommy Thompson created the Milwaukee River Revitalization Council, which, after extensive research, published the Riverway Plan. This document advises the WDNR, and stipulates that certain actions be taken to […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
The Belles
By Jeremy Saperstein I’m pretty sure I’ve sworn off nice pop records a hundred times. Some sort of social consciousness bug invades my system and I swear I’ll never listen to simple lyrics of love again. But I always crack. Omerta is a fine record to crack to. The Belles are, surprisingly, only a duo – Christopher Tolle and Jake Cardwell – from Lawrence, Kansas (the stomping grounds of American pop legends The Embarassment), but the sound is anything but sparse. Filled with power-pop and indie-rock allusions, the record will get a lot of references to other bands whose name start with ‘B’ – Beatles, Big Star, Beach Boys – and that’s not a bad comparison. The opener, “So, I Sing” is a bit of chamber-pop with what sounds like a mellotron and some gorgeously lush backing vocals, while “You Can’t Have It All” rocks with a bit of acid lead guitar seemingly lifted directly from a Buffalo Springfield record.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Remedies for Spring’s Strains and Pains
By Jan Wolfenberg Spring is upon us, and for many, this means a sudden increase in physical activity. It’s common to greet the warm weather and bright sunshine with a generous portion of over-enthusiasm. We are all so eager to shake off the winter cobwebs and get outside! Whether gardening, golfing, or just spring-cleaning, the sudden shift away from winter’s sedentary habits can put some stress on our bodies, which we often notice in the form of aches, pains, bruises, strained muscles and sprained joints. Western medicine offers us analgesic relief in the form of over-the-counter medications like aspirin, acetaminophen and naproxen sodium (brand names omitted), as well as prescription pain relievers. But these acute conditions can usually be helped greatly by a handful of natural options that have fewer side effects and tend to work with the body instead of against it. Give yourself a break First of all, if you are sore from over-doing, it is your body’s way of telling you to give it a break. Muscles that are strained from overuse need a day or two to recover. If there is swelling that accompanies any strain or sprain, cold packs can significantly reduce soreness while alleviating swelling. Pain relievers only mask the symptoms; they don’t cure the condition, which only wants time to heal. With your symptoms masked, you are out of touch with your body’s signals, and this permits you to continue pushing yourself instead of taking the time you need to recover. Trust your body’s wisdom and listen to its signals. Second, drink plenty of fluids and eat healthy foods. Healing tissues need to remain well hydrated, and sufficient fluids also provide a way for toxins to be excreted. Stick to water, pure fruit juices and herbal teas. Soda pop only burdens the immune response and slows healing, while fruit juice cocktails aren’t much better. In fact, white sugar and corn sweeteners (found in most convenience foods) are very hard on the body in general, and especially so during healing. Choose natural foods that are minimally processed, and include lots of fruits and veggies. These foods provide your healing tissues with the building blocks they need to repair themselves. Third, don’t forget to utilize good health care practitioners who perform body work. Chiropractors can help re-align anything that needs it and are often covered by health insurance. Massage therapists can loosen tight muscles, facilitate lymphatic drainage of toxins and encourage tissue healing while providing you with a one-hour vacation from your hectic new spring schedule. Your chiropractor or massage therapist may be able to recommend specific stretches or exercises, both to aid in healing this injury and preventing one in the future. If you’ve never worked with either of these types of professionals, ask your friends for referrals. Word-of-mouth recommendations are often the best way to locate a good practitioner. Natural Remedies Nature also provides some curative herbs and minerals that we can use to help our bodies heal the effects of overuse. Two […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
