Just to prove to everyone that I don’t hate every Christmas song in existence. Links for handy download, too (where I had ’em), in case you wanna make yourself a hot holiday mix. And if you wanna DL the whole batch in one fell swoop, click here.
Last week, whilst traveling home from work, my iPod conspired to play a song by Life Detecting Coffins, “The Whores of Tel Aviv”. It’s a tune about religious hypocrisy (a subject that’s been on my mind lately, though I’m not quite sure why) that still blows my mind every time I hear it. I am not a fan of metal, and LDC were not a metal band by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a song that makes me think that I might like metal.
Then I hear some actual metal and realize, nope, still hate this stuff. Not so much the music as all the other dumb stuff that goes along with it (album covers of demons and dragons, for one thing). Not to mention the dumb people who tend to like it. Sorry, dumb people.
I got so excited about hearing this song out of nowhere that I fired off, like, 12 tweets about how awesome it was, and how it blew everything else ever recorded out of the water. That prompted several response tweets along the lines of, “fine, I believe you that they rock, just shut up about it!” and “if you love this song so much, why don’t you marry it?” That would be impossible, of course, because I’m already married, and because it’s illegal to marry a song (especially in Maine).
I wrote about LDC a while back, and I don’t have much to add to that appreciation. I’d like to repeat that, even though I knew all the guys in the band well, they are definitely a group I’d have loved regardless of whether I knew them or not. However, in my first LDC post I didn’t include any representative examples, for reasons that escape me. I’d like to correct that error now.
Their (sadly) sole album, Catatonic Begat Napoleonic, has as its core a brutal 1-2 punch of “Whores” and “Wolf Boys,” which melt into each other perfectly, even though they are two very different songs. I have a particularly strong memory of going over the Pulaski Bridge at sunset as an instrumental demo of this song played through my car stereo (courtesy of a member of the band), and feeling absolutely destroyed by its beauty.
This is a wonderful demonstration of how a good album was put together back in the pre-iPod days, way back yonder, six years ago. I’ve assembled them here, as they were meant to be heard, for your listening pleasure.
And for good measure, here’s another excellent LDC tune, “MIsery Smells Like Hairspray,” a title I loved so much I appropriated it for the title of an as-yet unpublished short story that continues to languish on my hard drive. The guitar solo kills me; some of the best shredding Greg Ginn never did.
If’n you want to download the tunes for your own personal enjoyment:
Like any red-blooded American, I dig Creedence. I have for a long time, although I wouldn’t say I’m a fan per se, because I own only two CCR albums. I mean, I know all the hits, I think Creedence is pretty great and all, but I have great respect for the word fan. (Kinda like I have great respect for the word friend–’tis not to be thrown around willy-nilly.)
When I’m a fan of something, I get all the albums or books. And all the limited edition stuff. And lie in wait outside their practice space so I can grab a lock of their hair. Since I was never compelled to do this for Creedence, I didn’t consider myself a Fan with a capital-F.
But I recently heard a deep album track by CCR that rocks so damn hard, I just might have rocked me into full-fledged fanhood. It’s called “Ramble Tamble”, it opens Cosmo’s Factory, and holy goddamn, is it good.
Your second tune comes from Nation of Ulysses, who I would definitely declare myself a fan of, even though I was too young to get hip to them the first time ’round. (Their first 7-inches dropped around the time I was deep into Weird Al.)
It would take a medium-sized novel to capture all the mythology and legend surrounding the band (much of it self-propagated). Suffice to say, they were revolutionary in every sense of the word. Although nowadays it may be hard to piece that out, since so many of their innovations were co-opted by later, lesser bands (not to mention marketing). The liner notes to Plays Pretty for Baby are a genius piece of agitprop. Or satire. Or satirical agitprop.
But today I turn to their first album, 13-Point Program to Destroy America, and the tune “You’re My Miss Washington D.C.” This song was played on last night’s edition of The Best Show on WFMU. This not only reminded me how awesome it was, but allowed The Baby to dance heartily to its strains. Her moves weren’t much different than Ian Svenonius’s in this video.
With that said, here’s some liberation for your room.
Last week, whilst traveling home from work, my iPod conspired to play a song by Life Detecting Coffins, “The Whores of Tel Aviv”. It’s a tune about religious hypocrisy (a subject that’s been on my mind lately, though I’m not quite sure why) that still blows my mind every time I hear it. I am not a fan of metal, and LDC were not a metal band by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a song that makes me think that I might like metal.
