Skate rock (Think Sublime’s genetic material crossed with that of Minor Threat) is a lot like milt. Some people get a mouthful of the creamy white stuff and think, “So this is fish sperm. Not bad!” Other people take a bite, move it around with their tongues, and then say to themselves, “Oh god, I just put fish balls in my mouth.” They panic. They look for a trash can, a napkin, maybe some condiments to amend the taste. They crunch up crackers and squirt cocktail sauce directly into their gaping, fishy maws.  When that doesn’t work, they spit what’s left into their hands and shove it in their pockets.

Read More “White Trash Renegades: The Supervillains, Authority Zero, Pennywise, and Pepper at the 9:30 Club” »

Dischord announced that it has more back-in-stock and remastered LPs. Records include Fugazi’s Red Medicine (a must own), Embrace’s self-titled LP, Scream’s Still Screaming album and the Faith/Void split. Some of these have been reissued on colored vinyl!

This past weekend, we learned that former Washington City Paper music critic Rickey Wright had died. I put together a tribute of sorts made from Wright’s blog posts and WCP pieces, tributes from friends and colleagues and family.

On Saturday afternoon, I had the fortune of talking with Nicole Arthur. Arthur served as Washington City Paper’s Arts Editor in 1994 and 1995. It was around that time that Wright began reviewing records for us. This was a time when people wanted to be rock critics, when there was space for such writing, when there was competition to review the big records. And Wright reviewed his share of the big records.

But Arthur was more than just an editor to Wright. She was a friend. The two had struck up a friendship in the ’80s. Of course, it started over music.

On Sunday, Arthur e-mailed me some of her many memories of Wright:

“I met Rickey in Richmond, Va., in 1987. I had written a record review for VCU’s student newspaper, which I’m pretty sure was the first thing I ever wrote for publication, and he wrote me a fan letter. He had already graduated at that point, and he was working at Peaches Records & Tapes. We met soon thereafter and were fast friends; I think it was our shared reverence for Love’s “Forever Changes” that sealed the deal. But back to that fan letter — turns out it was completely in character. Rickey had an amazing generosity of spirit; he constantly encouraged other writers and he was a tireless cheerleader for his friends. If you happened to fall into both categories, you were very lucky indeed.

Unlike most critics, Rickey was not a music snob. He would gladly discuss Nick Drake for hours (and it would be hours — he *loved* to talk), but he would just as gladly discuss Def Leppard. He never wrote anything off because it was “uncool.” I once complained about my daughter listening to the Wiggles, and he leapt to their defense: “They’re a classic four-piece pop combo!” This is not to say that he was not discriminating, he was. He once wrote a John Mayer review so brutal, the story goes, that Mayer cited it in interviews as an example of his being eviscerated by the press.

Rickey was a master of the soon-to-be-lost art of making mix tapes; he had a great instinct for implausible-seeming combinations that somehow complemented one another. I’m looking at the list of artists on one of the tapes he made me — the Raspberries, Professor Longhair, Love and Rockets, Roger Miller, Prince, Roseanne Cash. And it’s amazing; I’ve been listening to it for 20 years.”

Former Washington City Paper music critic Rickey Wright is dead.  Wright passed away at 4:31 p.m. on February 19 in Seattle after suffering from a series of small strokes. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Wright was probably one of the most prolific talents the Washington City Paper has ever had perhaps on par with Jenkins, and the great, beloved Joel S. I never met Wright but I was around when he was around in the mid-to-late ’90s. I marveled at the fact that he could write on just about any band or genre and not appear to sweat it. (Most of us sweat it).

Wright’s prose was effortless and to the point. He didn’t mess around with silly metaphors. Nor did he make you feel stupid (he never loaded his pieces with arcane references to deep cuts, alternate Replacements b-sides, etc.). He just wrote and wrote.

“He was a save-your-ass kind of writer,” recalls former Washington City Paper Arts Editor Glenn Dixon. “If someone didn’t come through, and there were constantly people who didn’t come through, Rickey would do the job. He’d write it well. He’d get it in on time—always. He was never without ideas and he could cover any kind of music. I can’t tell you how rare that is. I’m really sorry.”

Wright penned pieces on everything from Travolta to Ben Lee to all of pop music in 1997 to Metallica and Soundgarden to R.E.M. to Charles Mingus to Johnny Cash to Led Zep to Curtis Mayfield and Millie Jackson to Luna and Teenage Fanclub to Wesley Willis to British ska to all of ’90s rock to G. Love to Boston to the Shangri-Las to the Replacements. Wright’s final posting on his Facebook page was a list of his 12 favorite Beatles covers; he included two remakes of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

Idolator had this to say about Wright’s passing:

“Wright was an editor for Amazon for some time (that job brought him to Seattle), and his work appeared in publications like USA Today, the Village Voice, Blender, Harp, and the Seattle Weekly. He also won the 1999 Rhino Music Aptitude Test, a fact that seems somewhat trivial at first glance, but if you’ve actually seen the test or some of the people who have failed it miserably, you realize what a testament to his musical knowledge that accolade really is.”

Ned Raggett wrote up a nice obit. Fred Mills has a tribute to Wright in Blurt. Matos has a deeply personal post on Wright as well. Here’s a portion of what Matos had to say:

“Rickey passed away this afternoon at 4:31. Last week he’d had a stroke–apparently more than one, all small, over a period of time–and went to the hospital for treatment. He had surgery and underwent another stroke on the table; he spent most of his final week in a coma. Our friend Rachel and I visited him yesterday. It was not as awful as I’d feared it might be: he still looked like himself, which was encouraging even if everyone knew he wasn’t going to make it. It’s hard not to second-guess how much of this I should be saying, mainly because Rickey was the kind of person who deserves whatever honor you can give him, especially in passing. I’ve seldom known a kinder person, or a better listener, or anyone more enthusiastic about music or film or whatever–and even better, his enthusiasm was catching. When I’m excited about something I yell without meaning to, or just become obnoxious about it. Rickey never did that. He didn’t have to.”

If you’d like to read more of Wright in his own words, you can check out his blog.

Wright’s last blog post had been a hopeful one. It is dated Feb. 4. It was about Obama. He titled it “I love my president.” This is what he had to say He uses the post to print a quote from Obama:

“In the past few days, I’ve heard criticisms that this [stimulus] plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place . . . I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.”

There is an obit from his former employer the Virginian-Pilot:

“‘He had quite a following when he was here and was influential in the local music scene,’ said former Pilot writer Earl Swift. ‘I’ve never known anyone with a more encyclopedic knowledge of music.’”

There is still lots more from his friends and fellow critics. Here’s a really personal recollection of Wright (I’m just quoting a small portion; you should really read the entire entry):

“Rickey used to literally rock and roll. He never stopped moving. Either his leg was always tapping or he’d rock back and forth in his chair like a baby trying to comfort himself. He had a repertoire of postures. Always leaning forward with his hand on his thigh, fingers pointed in and elbow pointed out. He used his hands when he talked, flipping his palms upward in a gesture of offering.

Rickey always looked cool. He was a rock critic and looked the part. He always had a good haircut. He always wore the cool black ankle boots with the pointed toes. He knew how to wear a suit. He walked on his toes a bit which sort of accentuated his little belly. He always had just the right rock ‘n’ roll button on his bag or his jacket.

Rickey loved his cats, Chet and Kettle. When Chet was sick, he went through tremendous lengths and expense to try to keep him alive. When Kettle ran away, he consulted a pet psychic to find her, and found her. He used to talk about what a good soul Chet had and how you could see it in the little cat’s big eyes….

Rickey and I only ever talked about two things: music and love. Our last conversation was about the latter. It occurred around the beginning of January….”

Read More “Rickey Wright R.I.P.” »

Next week, two things long thought impossible will occur: the country will prepare for the swearing in of its first black president and the original members of the go-go fusion band Lissen will reunite. The band plays together as one big happy group on Sunday at Mirrors.

The woes of Lissen (also known as L!ssen) have been covered extensively by both City Paper and the go-go bible TMOTT, but here’s a brief history of the conflict: In 2004, band members Scooby, Tuffy and O (also known as Frank Marshall, Andre Jackson and Jasen Holland, respectively) split from the group to start a new band and attempted to trademark the name Lissen. Group member Michael Thompson (who claimed he came up with the name back when he, Marshall, Jackson, and Holland were in high school), filed with the federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to oppose the effort.

During the battle, Thompson led a go-go outfit called L!ssen in HD, and Scooby, Tuffy, and O performed as Lissen Da Grew^p. It was all one big, confusing mess, grammatically and otherwise: the loyalties, and dollars, of Lissen fans were split.

Read More “L!ssen Reunites!” »

Old Man, Take a look at my list, mine’s a lot like yours is.

My list does indeed employ genre quotas and, yes, heavy metal does have an actionable case against me this year.

Statistical Breakdown
•6 downloaded albums, 4 physical versions
•7 Americans, 3 Internationals
•1 artist my Mom had heard of, although, to be fair, I didn’t ask about Fucked Up
•4 that I actually got paid to write about
•1 archival release on my list (my self-imposed limit, otherwise it’d be moldy oldie overload)

1. Love Is Overtaking Me, Arthur Russell (Audika)
• While I was familiar with his minimalist cello pieces and artsy disco tracks, this release revealed a completely different dimension to Russell’s body of work. These laid-back, countrified singer songwriter songs- imagine an avant garde Dan Fogelberg- show that Russell never completely left his Oskaloosa, IA hometown.

2. The Bake Sale, Cool Kids (Chocolate Industries)
• Hyped to hell, this EP was just asking for a premature backlash. However, I thought the easygoing, homemade sound (somewhere between the sparseness of Clipse and the juvenile hi-jinx of the Pharcyde) was too likeable to dismiss.

Read More “Justified and Ancient: David Dunlap Jr.’s Top Ten” »

Dischord announces: “Due to the renewed interest in vinyl LPs Dischord Records is remastering and re-cutting much of our vinyl catalog here in the United States. We will begin by re-pressing current titles, and later re-issuing others…” The vinyl will come with the now routine MP3 download coupon.

The bad news: a very, very small price increase. “This move will coincide with a small but long overdue price increase (from $10 to $11 on Dischord 12″ LPs and from $8 to $9 for 12″ EPs) that will begin with newly pressed titles and extend to all titles in January 2009,” the label reports. Still pretty damn reasonable. Can you think of cheaper prices?

Read More “Dischord Announces Vinyl Reissues” »

Hey, what a nice package!

Oh! I apologize, that wasn’t a come-on. I was just examining this Hey Girl comic book/7″. Carefully assembled by illustrator/songwriter Erin McCarley (ex-Problems), Hey Girl takes a multimedia approach–including drawings, songs, and elegantly silk-screened cover art–to addressing male-douchebaggery in its myriad insidious guises.

“Oh Jesus, really? I don’t want to have your baby,” sings McCarley on weary piano ballad “The End”, expressing an exhaustion/disdain that will not be unfamiliar to any young lady who has spent a week night sitting around at The Black Cat’s Red Room opting out of lascivious and undesired advances. Andy Gale (The Shirks, Haram) not only contributes drums, but also shows off his impressive acting chops by giving voice to said creeps and cads.

You can order Hey Girl online here or here, but copies will also be on sale at Crooked Beat Records and Black Cat’s upcoming “Rock n’ Shop” event.

That’s right. Check them out at the top of the page, sharing the limelight with quirky jazzbos The Bad Plus.

I’ll admit, the arts section of the New York Times isn’t the first place I turn when looking for the vanguard of loud and filthy rock music. For chrissake, they wouldn’t even print Pissed Jeans‘ name.
But New York Times critic Ben Ratliff had some genuinely kind words about The Points new album.

“Their record has poor sound quality, bad graphics and crooked typesetting, and it’s nearly perfect,” says Ratliff.

The Points are, of course, no strangers to adulation from the press–having been covered in The Washington Post, The Onion, and this very publication you are reading now.

Every musical clique/community/scene has to has to have its middle period. You know, that time when young musicians break up their bands and undergo a laborious process of deep self-examination and artistic reinvention. This usually involves “getting into jazz.”

Well, former Black Eyes members Daniel Martin-McCormick and Jacob Long are throwing that shit right out the window. In Mi Ami they get straight back to what they’ve always done best–that is to say, deep, deep rhythm. The San Francisco based trio, which also includes Damon Palermo, will have a new single,Echononecho, and an album, Watersports, arriving January 27th and February 17 respectively on Quarterstick records (a partner label of Touch and Go).

Echononecho
1. Echononecho
2. Version

Watersports
1. Echononecho
2. The Man In Your House
3. New Guitar
4. Pressure
5. Freed From Sin
6. White Wife
7. Peacetalks/Downer