Abundant Living Notes: Two upcoming albums I'm excited about, a bit of complaining, and an obituary

I was in Palm Springs a week ago for a local music festival. (I’m not being cute. Shit was 80% security and 20% county fair.) I will be talking more about that near-experience in the June issue of Creem Magazine. Which you should subscribe to, if you have not already. But I mention this, not only as tease/promotion, but also to explain that I arrived in Palm Springs Saturday night, left the festival on Sunday evening, and spent the next 48 hours—when I was not boarding/exiting a plane, or eating an alarming amount of Reese's Pieces—typing. When I met that deadline (at twenty minutes to midnight on Tuesday), I had about four other deadlines I’d forgotten about/neglected in the buildup to my entry into the Gonzo Cosplay Sweepstakes.

My point is; my brain is a threadbare argyle sock. But I realize it’s been a few weeks since the last newsletter and I’m trying to be better about getting this lil’ guy out at least a couple times a month. While switching from Substack to Ghost has been, frankly, calamitous in terms of what had been a pretty steadily rising paid subscription rate, I do appreciate those of you who show up. So here’s a new Abundant Living! Mainly consisting of stray, unrelated thoughts!

(To be clear, I don’t regret the move. While there’s no ethical consumption under blah, blah, and blah, at least writing on Ghost doesn’t make me feel like I’m working on commission for the business card manufacturers from American Psycho.)

Two Upcoming Albums I’m Excited About

Ghösh - Prismassive

The Philly duo Ghösh are one of my favorite new bands. In fact, in terms of actually new (no full length yet) bands, and in terms of pure pleasure principle, Ghösh may be Number One. I consider Grebo, even though—being neither old or intent on killing their music careers before it even begins—the duo aren’t exactly flying any Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine banners. They quite reasonably see themselves working out of nu metal, rap rock, and punk traditions. As I couldn’t care less about those first two (and don’t consider the latter to be an inherent virtue), I maintain that they’re the second coming of Pop Will Eat Itself*. They give me the same kind of unadulterated, brutish but sly, joy.

Newly signed to Ramp Local (and expertly profiled by Maxelle Talena in the last issue of Creem), the duo—of Symphony Spell and Zachary Devereux Fairbrother—just put out the first single for their upcoming EP. I love it. I love them.

Also, I was recently reading Chuck Eddy’s 150 Best Albums of 1994 and was inspired to revisit Gillette’s album from that year. I was delighted to discover that Sandra Navarro Gillette had a number of bangers (I don’t remember what we called “bangers” in 1994… probably “losers” or something as we were incapable of not being excruciating) besides “Short Dick Man.” Hearing the 20 Fingers production on Gillette’s LP—with song after song of KLF/Snap slabs of guitar over industrial-metal big beats, and enough call and response, one gal crew chants, to keep Chain of Strength in business for years—I almost wrote Ghösh to see if they were fans. Then I got the promo for Prismassive. The last song of the EP is Ghösh doing a version of “Dick,” performed in both the duo’s inimitable—all the good stuff of all the last few eras at once—style, and in the style of my favorite Anita Baker song. Goddamn heroes.

(Btw aforementioned Creem author Maxelle Talena has a Patreon that’s only $1 a month! She’s a wonderful writer. So subscribe!)

*How the hell did I not know that Clint Mansell, the lead singer of Pop Will Eat Itself, later became a film composer, who composed the soundtracks to all the Aranofsky movies???

Upper Wilds - Jupiter

The new album by Dan Friel’s space truckin’ stadium-DIY outfit isn’t out till July. But, having friends in middle places, I’ve had the promo for a while. Since the album has recently been announced, with a couple tracks up on Bandcamp, I can be (one of) the first to strongly recommend to the reader that they immediately run to their phone and order Jupiter. I’ve written hagiography about Upper Wilds before. I don’t know if I’d die on the hill of them being “Southern Rock,” but the larger hagiography intent holds up. On Jupiter, Upper Wilds maintain the interstellar distorto-choogle of previous albums (keeping Jeff Ottenbacher’s skill at alternating/combining motorik restraint with cave bear bombast, and Friel’s guitars still sounding like a variety of jet engines taking off from a variety of speedways), but also sharpen the songwriting—in the vocal melodies, the sloping melodicism of the basslines, and the song structures themselves— to a degree that I’m feeling particularly smug about always considering the band to be Classic Rock.

Or, as classic rock is pretty divisive and I’m not trying to bum out any member of America’s hard working publicist class, how about this: Upper Wilds play “alternative rock, but in an alternate universe where Unsane, Husker Du, and Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ were the most popular alternative rock bands on the planet, and were also the same band.”

Even though Upper Wilds undoubtedly enjoys my making niche (usually concerning the 1990s) reference-mongering, borderline-nonsensical (but, still, accurate) comparisons, I’ll delete my first extended metaphor (something about Upper Wilds being like if Can was on the Clueless Soundtrack) and limit myself to the above. You’re welcome everybody. Go buy the album.

Currentish Guitar Rock Band I’m Irritated With

Andrew Raposa wrote to me at the beginning of April to alert me of something depressing I hadn’t noticed! Apparently the new theme song for Bill Maher’s hideously dumb tv show is by Green Day. This is very annoying!

I’m not beating myself up too much about missing this. And maybe—for the same reasons I missed the news— I have no right to be irritated, as I stopped paying attention to Green Day after Kerplunk. Look, I’ve met the band once. I liked them as humans. I like some of the ballads. I have heard that Nimrod is solid. But, much as I still love the first two albums, I never really clicked with Dookie. Not because it wasn’t “punk” enough. By the time I was eighteen, I no longer cared about what was “real” punk or not. I was happy to think of Green Day as a fun guitar rock band and leave it at that. It’s more that, when Dookie was compared to all the other guitar rock at the time, Dookie felt slight. And, as far as pop-punk goes, when Dookie was held up next to My Brain Hurts, Strong Reaction, or anything by J Church, the album felt (and feels) even flimsier. And if, now, Green Day is supposed to be some great American Rock Band… the whole project falls apart. Even after 1,000 albums and a Broadway musical, they seem like a decent enough local band that got lucky. There just isn’t enough there there. And, because they obviously disagreed and kept existing, there’s now simply too much Green Day content to grant them the leeway I would to some new wave pop-punk band that had the good taste to have one song on the Angus Soundtrack (or, like, Punk USA) and then disappear.

As for Bill Maher, well, even if I was inclined to overlook his Islamophobia and racism (I’m, you know, not), there would still be the hurdle of him not being funny to get past. It’s a mystery to me how this lazy caricature of an ‘80s stand-up comedian—who seems to project a red brick chuckle hut backdrop from his skull at all times—has a job, let alone a successful career. One part the “more of a comment really” guy who shows up to punish every panel discussion, and one part smug/edgy Andy Borowitz; it’s some sort of reverse miracle that the charmless provocateur’s TV show wasn’t canceled as soon as New No No’s was aired. Really, if “Just Asking Questions” was a music genre like stoner metal, Maher should be relegated to being a proto- trailblazer; a Vanilla Fudge-esque footnote in a subculture of dubious merit. But, despite his subsisting on mandatory clapping more than audience laughter, Maher’s TV show marches on—in the service of Empire and rapacious inanity—like a deathless Bob Hope USO tour, running the entire timespan of Operation Condor, intended to boost the morale of CIA field agents and torturers-in-training.

Apparently the forever boys in Green Day enjoy the show. I’m not going to hazard a guess as to why. Maybe Tré Cool has grown edgier with time. Maybe Billie Joe was pushed over the edge by the attempted cancellation of his son. Maybe the band has never seen the show and thought they were doing the theme for a documentary about Morris Day. Maybe the band just saw a chance to upset some of the same people who gave them a hard time for signing to a major label. If that’s the case, the wimps should have done it while MRR was still in physical print so at least they could be accused of committing war crimes against culture one last time. Maybe they’ve bought into the culture wars hooey or maybe they were always dumb as hell and I just wasn’t paying attention. Maybe they just don’t have any Muslim friends.

Whatever the reason, and regardless of the pointlessness in being disappointed in Green Day in 2023, it’s a bummer. I know it’s dumb to feel one way or another about it, but I am, in fact, somewhat bummed! Not so bummed that I think it needs to be a “thing,” but bummed nonetheless! They really did seem like nice guys. And they probably are. Nice guys are a land of contrasts. Well, “At The Library” is still a pretty sweet song. (In case you’re wondering how the theme song is… it sounds like the theme to Kids In The Hall, written by a BASIC AI program. Like, remember the turtle from computer class? Like that, but surfy.)

Obits

Robbe Clark October 13, 1967 - March 11, 2023

Robbe Clark died on March 11th. Besides being an uncle and tennis coach, Clark had once been the singer in a Seattle band called Zipgun. In the ‘90s, Zipgun put out two full length albums and a few 7”s. The band’s first LP, 8-Track Player, came out in 1992, with Baltimore following in 1993. Both were released by eMpTy Records, at the onset of the Pacific Northwest guitar rock wave that would spill over the entire era. That grunge/grunge-adjacent wave lifted up countless bands, both great and mediocre.  Robbe Clark’s band—maybe only “great” to me a few others, but not remotely mediocre—was not one of them. Clark was in a couple other bands after Zipgun. His RC5 outfit was even included on the first Fistful of Rock & Roll compilation, an inclusion which is neat to me (song is good, and the comp also had the Action Swingers and The Bell Rays), was a pretty big deal at the time, and probably now only means something to those who—like me—desperately wanted, between the years 1999 and 2003, to be a badass type with either a flaming 13 tattoo or an STD contracted from a member of Murder City Devils. (tbc I only got the former. The latter detail is pure supposition and only added for verisimilitude.)

While it was reasonably well regarded by zines like Trouser Press, Zipgun’s output doesn’t make any Best of the 1990s lists; not for punk, nor garage, nor grunge. When Robbe Clark died, there were no write ups in the music press. Not even on the sites that ostensibly care about garage or punk. I only heard about it through twitter, after making a half joking/half entirely serious plea to Numero Uno to do a Zipgun reissue. Even after searching, all I could find was a family sourced obit. And I just checked again. Outside of a brief announcement on the band’s Facebook page, nothing.

This bothers me. Because, while I’m not going to make some revisionist argument for Zipgun’s “importance” (fuck importance), I do love Zipgun. In fact, Zipgun’s debut is one of my favorite records of all time. I love 8-Track Player without reservation or hesitation. I love it more than I love Nevermind, almost as much I loved Nevermind when I was 16, and more than I’ll ever love any of the bands (the Ramones, Poison Idea or, like, Supersuckers) that Zipgun probably loved. I think Zipgun was better than nearly all of ‘em. As the kids say; idc idc idc.

I’m not rewriting canon. I’m saying that I ordered 8-Track Player from an eMpTy Records ad, in the back pages of MaximumRnR, when I was the age when every record I ordered—blind, without any way of hearing the music—was a thrilling gamble. When I chose wrong, it could ruin my week. When I chose right (The Mekons, Nick Cave, Leatherface, Zipgun), it could change my life. I say that not to contradict myself and overrate the need for art to be important, but rather to acknowledge that the life of a teenager is a marvelously (and scarily) malleable thing. Sure, I could have gotten lessons in how to operate within the tuffer end of the indie spectrum, or gained some validation in wearing thick, black rimmed glasses, from any number of Pacific Northwest bands. I mean, Gas Huffer or The Monkeywrench both had albums come out in 1992. But I ordered the Zipgun album, so that’s the record that changed me. I was, simply put, over the goddamn moon for the thing. I played it constantly. The songs, as melancholy as they were propulsive, felt like some wild entry into a rock and roll melodrama, but with neither the angst nor oblique cliqueness that I was already seeing—and growing tired of—in other indie music. I told people it was like “Tom Waits playing with the Ramones” (I didn’t know yet that having a gravel-throated singing voice and singing about drinking and getting arrested was a relatively common thing to those familiar with the Poison Idea cinematic universe). The album just seemed hopelessly cool and tough, like Social Distortion with less pomade and without the hokey cowboy stuff. It was a Born To Lose that I could use.

Of course, the age I got into Zipgun explains my love for the band. But only in part. There’s no shortage of music I loved from that time that makes me blush with embarrassment now (sorry, Afghan Whigs). But, even if I quickly transitioned from a need for role models in the gas-station-jacket-and-corduroy-rock industry, my fondness for 8-Track Player never diminished. I still think it sounds cool, like a pop-punk Down By Law (the movie…), and I still think it sounds like nothing else. Even as I’ve, you know, heard all the bands it sounds like. Doesn’t matter. The album inhabits its own peculiar dimension in my psyche. I don’t know if I can recommend it. Possibly, to anyone not hearing for the first time as a teenager in 1992, 8-Track Player—with songs with titles like “Cool In a Cell” and “Chase the Ace”—will sound cliche and corny. I hope not. And I also, again, don’t care. To me, it’s one of the greats.

Robbe Clark sang like he didn’t expect too much from the world. But he also sang like a teenage dream of being a man. With all the gambling and losing inherent to the type. I didn’t know him but I can hope that that’s the way he liked it, baby. I don’t know his views regarding living forever, but that’s a moot point now. I remember his art. I care about it, both as part of my own early path to the same destination and on its own (in my heart) singular merits. I owe the man what little I can provide here I suppose, at least. And, if the reader will forgive a bit more Motörheadian sentimentality, I hope wherever Robbe Clark is now, it’s cool.

Not entirely off topic, here’s a poem by Stephanie Burt about the band Breaking Circus

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56674/in-memory-of-the-rock-band-breaking-circus

Thanks for reading