Starfucker fits into that nebulous area of pop music full of melodies, sound effects, and danceable distorted rock. They share something with Of Montreal and MGMT that could get them played at the mall…without damaging their guts. Live, I got a look at their setup: guitar, keys, turntables, bass, drum, tangles of effects pedals. I also had a good view of Ryan Blornstad’s butt and Josh Hodges’ cleavage. The latter wore a tight, low-cut dress that loosened before stopping around mid-thigh, drawing the eye to his waist, chest, and clip-on earrings. Bandmate Blornstad, dressed a la ‘80s tennis player, has a motor in the back of his honda that’s rarely idle. From this vantage point, the fuzzy stubble on Starfucker’s music rubbed against my chin in a sloppy kiss. The warm, bubbly guitars were prickly and rough. After a while, I moved through the throng of kiddies to the back of the Smell, and from there could hear harmonized voices rise above the distortion, and see Blornstad’s dance moves bounce above shadows like a fly smacking its head against a strobe light.

Pop music has weaved itself into the fabric of this generation’s DNA.—An era religiously dunked in Michael Jackson holy water. The same seed that bred Justin Timberlake also influenced Nirvana youth. The freedom to dance all crazy and in whatever context is something we’ve worked towards for centuries. As the world ends and begins every day, grunge values and club culture join forces in a new breed of soldier. You can see it in Starfucker’s Blornstad dancing like he’s in a C & C Music Factory music video, and opener Atole—a Portland band that mixes disco with post-slur vocal chanting. Singer Manny with long hair slightly resembles Steve Aoki in looks, shirtless, humping his keyboard between dance breaks and high pitched moans that’ll freak out cats and send Julie Andrews running for the hills to retrieve shattered do-re-mi’s. Atole is totally the opposite of Aoki. Both start with “A” but end in completely different piles of substances at the end of the night. I transported this show from the Smell to the Standard Rooftop, only to illuminate the difference between this and that.

P.S.: As I finished this review, Chris Ziegler IM’d me that MJ died. Now that’s weird because it’s like a ghost of pop music past got trapped in my computer. Ahhh….

—Daiana Feuer

Download: Ty Segall “It #1″

(from Lemons out July 14 on Goner)

Since the Epsilons’ first record, released in early 2006, Ty Segall has proved himself to be one of the most prolific members of the California music community, releasing LPs, 7”s and tapes of his many bands at an alarming rate. As guitarist/vocalist of the Epsilons; member of Traditional Fools; part time drummer for Party Fowl, Fresh and Onlys and Sic Alps, and leader of his own namesake band, which switches between the one-man-band format to its current full band incarnation, Ty Segall has managed to craft a unique sound and create a scene all his own, which has lead him into the arms and hearts of legendary garage rock figures like Eric Oblivian (Goner Records founder, member of Oblivians, Bad Times) and John Dwyer (Castle Face Records founder, member of Coachwhips, Thee Oh Sees, the Hospitals, etc.).

On Ty Segall’s second solo LP Lemons, released on Memphis’ Goner, Segall has toned down the yelps and howls he favored on his first solo record and the preceding Epsilons recordings in favor of an attempt to favor a more universal lo-fi garage rock sound. At times on this record this pays off, such as the beautifully trudgy “In Your Car,” but washed of the distorted vocals and frantic guitars this record feel less like a Ty Segall record than I would like.

This record has a much slower tempo compared to his previous outings, and as most of his long players were pressed to vinyl at 45 rpm and I have a strong feeling that this one will be at 33 1/3. Some songs, like “Johnny” and “Can’t Talk,” feel like a continuation from his early recordings and these to me are the brightest moments on the album. However, there is also “Rusted Dust,” which to me is a little too close to a slow Nirvana, or even Wavves, song for my liking. I don’t mean to criticize this song, but for someone with as unique of a voice as Ty’s I feel it’s a shame when he starts to sound like someone else. But to offset the slower moments, there is also a faithful rendition of Captain Beefheart’s “Dropout Boogie,” which is a cover you could never go wrong with. In all, I enjoy this record and I eagerly await his next, which knowing him will probably be out within a few months.

— Daniel Clodfelter

Download: The Sonics “Strychnine”

(from Here Are The Sonics! available now on Norton)

The Sonics weren’t pioneers so much as cavemen—the first humans to discover tools, fire and the absolute rudiments of chemistry. Their original ‘60s songs still sound wild and feral today, and their debut Here Are The Sonics! devours most of the million punk rock records that timidly followed it. This will be their first Los Angeles-area show ever. This interview by Dan Collins.

When was the last time you guys played the Los Angeles area?
Larry Parypa (guitar/vocals): I don’t think we ever did. We recorded down there a bunch. We went to the Whisky a Go Go and the Turtles and the Doors were there, before they got really popular.
Gerry Roslie (vocals/organ): We saw Ike and Tina Turner! It was extremely happening down there. We were like wide-eyed country boys.
A lot of L.A. bands really emulated the Beatles. But you guys didn’t seem to be Anglophiles.
LP: We loved the Beatles, and we even played some of their songs, but in no way did we try to emulate the Beatles. We were a very minor, dark sounding group for those days.
GR: We’d try to do a pretty song, and it’d just end up getting ‘nice and rough!’
Rob Lind (sax/harmonica/vocals): We loved the Kinks. We actually traveled with them and opened a number of shows for them.
LP: We played the way that we played, which was without a whole lot of technique, and real hard. A live performance—I mean, the room would almost breathe because it was so powerful. Knowing that we weren’t masterful musicians or anything, knowing that we weren’t a vocal group, we were there to pound it out. It was our style. Nobody was doing 1-3-4 progressions, real minor progressions. And they weren’t singing about the topics we sang about. And nobody was screaming!
You both had brothers in the band. Did Larry and Andy ever fight like Ray and Dave Davies did?
GR: When didn’t they? They had some real sessions. We were heading down around the Portland area, and Larry had a brand new Buick, and had his radio on real loud, and me and Andy were in the back seat. Andy was like, ‘Turn that volume down back here at least!’ And finally Andy had enough getting Larry to do it, and he was drinking a bottle of grape pop, and he poured it down Larry’s speakers while the car was going down the freeway, and the speakers go ‘bloooblublublublublublublu!’ And he pulled over, and I think they were just about ready to go to blows right there on the side of the freeway. Andy was always on Larry’s case for playing too loud.
Why did you decide to scream about things like drinking strychnine? It seems like that would kill you.
GR: Well, I’m kind of crazy by nature. I do crazy things and think of crazy things. But I’m not dangerous—heh heh. Honest, judge!
RL: The PA systems were normally pretty bad. Sometimes we just had metal horns. And so Gerry started screaming so he could hear himself.
GR: It’s a wonder I’ve got a voice left! I screamed myself silly. I was inspired by the voices of Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis of course. I liked their energy, but I don’t remember anybody doing witchy stuff. It’s just a crazy, psychotic thing. After we got going, there did start to be crazy, witchy things, like Ozzy. Everything was kind of like, ‘love and marriage, la la la la la,’ and I went ‘Nah! That’s not dirty enough! That’s not the way I feel!’
A lot of your songs seem to be about revenge—particularly upon some girl! Was there a particular relationship in your life where you’re like ‘I’m going to get even with her and write a song about it?’
GR: Do you have a couple hours, my friend? Who hasn’t been screwed over—guys or girls?
Do you secretly hope to yourself that some day, that girl is going to walk into a record store and see a Sonics poster and think to herself, ‘I blew it!’?
GR: Oh, yeah, I do hope that happens! That would be sweet!
You guys are often cited as the original punk band. Did you feel a kinship with bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols?
RL: The Clash, I thought they were hard-rocking gods. The Sex Pistols, I didn’t like a whole lot of the stuff they did, but I liked their attitude, and every once in a while I’d hear one of their songs and go ‘Whoa, that’s good. Way to go, guys!’
LP: After the late ‘60s, I didn’t listen to music much. If I did, it was probably more country.
RL: Yeah, more the Seattle guys—that’s really where garage rock started with us, and it was like Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees, and Alice and Chains—it was kind of like those guys were our sons! We were real proud of them.
Let’s talk about the earlier Northwest scene. It seems like the first breakout bands were instrumental combos like the Ventures and the Frantics.
RL: The Frantics and the Ventures and Paul Revere kind of predated us. I think one of the first rock songs I ever heard was ‘Walk, Don’t Run,’ and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
LP: God, the Frantics were just a fantastic group! Even today, they really stand up. The first interest I ever had in guitar was Duane Eddy—actually it was ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray, but then Duane Eddy had a song out that was all instrumental, and just really got me stimulated to want to play guitar. Not long after that, the Ventures came out with their stuff, and I tried to learn every song on the Ventures album. Another band that was more regional was the Wailers. They came out with instrumentals that had much harder rhythms than what the Ventures were doing, but then they got Rockin’ Roberts, and Gail Harris, and they would do vocals.
I used to have their album Live at the Castle. Did you ever play at the Castle in Tacoma?
LP: Yeah! In fact, we turned down Jimi Hendrix there, before he was the Jimi Hendix. He came and wanted to sit in, and we told him to get lost! It was a big club—a big dance spot for the Seattle area. You’d maybe get a thousand kids in there. There was a place called the Crescent Ballroom in Tacoma, where the Wailers played a lot. It’s like the first time I ever played there—I was 14 or 15, and probably didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. Lesley Gore came through town and for some reason, my brother [Andy] and I were part of the backup group for her. We did that with the Shangri-Las also, and we just ruined them! We knew we were going to back them up, but we didn’t learn their songs! Their songs had a lot of breaks in them, and we’d play right through them.
RL: The lead singer of the Shangri-Las said something snarky about us. So next time we played with them, we made fun of them. They were doing ‘Leader of the Pack,’ and Gerry was riding his piano like a motorcycle, and I was down on my knees, being like, ‘No, Danny, please please don’t go!’ We just humiliated them. You don’t come to Seattle and trash the Sonics! So they said they’d never play with us again.
We interviewed Mary Weiss last year. Do you want to tell her publicly that you’re sorry?
LP: We’re sorry! We played in Barcelona last year, and she was also on the bill. And she remembered! Oh, yeah!
RL: We smoothed things over. She’s playing with the guy from the Smithereens, Dennis, and we drank a lot of Scotch in the hotel in Barcelona, and we sat and chatted with Mary and her husband. Things are fine now.
How about Paul Revere and the Raiders? Any bad grudges there you want to settle? Like, who played ‘Louie Louie’ better?
RL: Oh, I think we did! I don’t think there’s any question!
Did you get just a little pissed off when the Raiders got to be on TV and in Teen Beat and you guys didn’t?
RL: Not at the time. I used to know Paul Revere, and Paul is the epitome of a businessman. The problem with Northwest rock ‘n’ roll bands—with the exception of the Ventures who broke out and became worldwide—was that us and the Wailers got trapped in the Northwest.
LP: We didn’t even think too much about what we were doing musically or where we were going. We’d hardly ever practice or anything. We would throw our instruments in the van maybe Sunday night after doing some weekend stuff, and wouldn’t pull them out again until we’d play again. We were more interested in whether we could get girls into the motel rooms that night.
It was kind of the cusp of the Summer of Love! Did you guys get to have drug orgies?
LP: We’d have the bathtub full of beer and stuff—to try to ply them with liquor. That really was a key objective. The music was just a vehicle to get us in some parties! You’d hit the road in summers, just playing one-night-stands all over the place. That was an exciting way to spend your teenage life!
The Meters recorded a live album on the Queen Mary—are you guys planning on recording one there too?
RL: No, we’re not doing that. We’re actually planning on going back into the studio in July. All new material. We need to get new stuff out.
LP: We don’t know what’s going to happen because we don’t practice. We go months and don’t touch our instruments. For this show we’re going to get together for an hour and a half at my house before going to L.A. and run through the songs again just so we can make sure we remember them. And sometimes we don’t!
I’ve heard a couple cuts from your previous 1972 reunion, which Norton added as a bonus on the Sonics Boom album. It sounds even more hard than your sixties recordings. How did you guys resist the urge to get all bluesy like Foghat?
RL: We never sat there and scratched our heads and said ‘What could our gimmick be?’ We always played real hard. Larry played guitar as hard as he could. Bob Bennett played drums as hard as he could. Jerry screamed and banged on the piano. I tried to play sax the way Larry played guitar. I tried to play as hard-dirty-nasty as I could. We used to play dances in armories or big roller rinks, where we’d have three-four-five thousand people. And we didn’t want people standing around with their arms folded staring at us. We wanted people to start dancing immediately. What a lot of bands would do is blow two or three songs and get the level right and then get into it. We wanted to get into it as soon as we hit the stage, so we came out blasting from the get-go! And that’s exactly what we do now. We are going to come out blastin’ and attempt to blow the place up.
GR: We don’t tone it down! We don’t try to blow people’s heads off, but… well, yeah, we might try to blow people’s heads off. What the heck?
Ar the end of your career, suddenly a basketball team starts up in your own town and calls itself the ‘Supersonics.’ Did you feel your name had been usurped?
LP: We thought it would be good publicity to sue them, even though we’d lose—just to say, ‘Hey, the Sonics are suing the Sonics!’
GR: It was kind of a shock! But we were out of the business. But now they’re gone, and we’re back!

THE SONICS WITH THE FUZZTONES, THE WOGGLES, THE VOODUO, GIZELLE, THE NEW FIDELITY AND MANY MORE ON SAT., JUNE 6, AT THE INK-N-IRON FESTIVAL AT THE QUEEN MARY, 1126 QUEENS HWY., LONG BEACH. DOORS AT 11 AM / BANDS AT NOON / SONICS AT 10 PM / $35-$70 / 7+. COMPLETE FESTIVAL LINE-UP AND MORE INFO AT INK-N-IRON.COM. THE SONICS’ RECORDS ARE AVAILABLE NOW ON NORTON. VISIT THE SONICS AT MYSPACE.COM/THESONICSBOOM.

—Daniel Clodfelter

Download: The Vaselines “Son Of A Gun”

(from Enter The Vaselines out now on Sub Pop)

While there are certainly some ‘80s bands out there that should call it quits and put their leather pants in a museum, there are also a few making a natural comeback. If it weren’t for Nirvana, perhaps the Vaselines would have never played again, or maybe it would have taken another decade to revive the Scottish twee-pop band from its slumber. But Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee are back with advice on how to grow up. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

What was the reason for the Vaselines’ breakup?
Eugene Kelly (guitar/vocals): Me and Frances McKee were a couple and we split up. We talked about trying to continue the band but it just didn’t seem like it would work. The thing is, the distribution company had gone bankrupt. The record label had no money to release any more records and weren’t in any rush to sign us for another, so it seemed like the band had come to its natural end. I saw Frances a couple months after we split and then we kept bumping into each other. And then Sub Pop were interested in releasing Vaselines records in America so we had to discuss that, and every so often someone would want to use one of our songs so we’d have to talk about it. So it was always a connection through the Vaselines. I’ve always said it’s like the child we never had. The Vaselines child is 21 now and it’s at the age where we can put it back out into the world now.
Did it come as a surprise when you began hearing about your own band in the ‘90s from Kurt Cobain?
The band had split up by the time Nirvana mentioned us in print. Suddenly there were fans in America listening to our records. I remember reading in one of the music papers here—The Melody Maker had a piece about Mudhoney on tour in America. It mentioned that Nirvana were playing Vaselines songs. It was surprising how the rest of the world could have gotten our records. Our records had only been released in England.
What prompted you to start playing together again?
Right about this time last year, Frances phoned me that her sister was working on a charity concert for orphans in Malawi and did we want to do a solo performance and maybe do some Vaselines songs? And I suggested why don’t we try and make it a special night and play an electric set? I’d been playing solo shows for a while and I’d gotten so sick of playing acoustic guitar on my own. I really wanted to get on electric. Then Sub Pop contacted us about playing their 20th anniversary show so by luck we thought we could make that happen as well. After that, we came back from America and thought, ‘Well, let’s see what else we can do.’
Are you writing songs together?
We’ve written five songs already. We’ve been playing two of them in our sets. We’re going to try and record now probably in Glasgow. We just sound like the Vaselines! We came up with the songs pretty quickly, and that’s the way we used to come up with songs years ago. The distinctive sound that Vaselines songs have is in the simple melodies—it’s got to be sort of quite catchy and not very long songs either. A lot of people have said the new ones sound like they could have been on the old records. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Did the Molly referred to in ‘Molly’s Lips’ ever contact you?
I think she died a few years ago actually. She probably didn’t even know the song was about her. She probably never even heard it. She couldn’t Google it back then.
If you had to write a song right now, what would you write about?
Making dinner. Having a bath. I’m writing a song now called ‘I Hate The ‘80s’ We don’t mean old people—we just hate the 1980s. It’s been such an ‘80s revival right now. It’s a revival of the things that were terrible at the time that inspired the Vaselines to form because we wanted to make rock music rather than electric pop and new romantic music. A lot of the ‘80s weren’t that good. People are looking back as if it was a fantastic time but we were there, so we can comment on it.
Of all the decades in your lifetime, were the ‘80s your least favorite?
Most of the ‘90s was pretty shit. I wasn’t doing much in the ‘90s. The ‘80s was great for the Vaselines and for me and Frances. We had just finished school—entering the world as adults and doing what we want. I think musically the ‘80s had a lot of terrible music as well as some great music. But every decade is the result of the people in that time responding to the music two decades before it. So, in the ‘80s I was listening to music from the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it’s the same now. The people in their 20s are into the 80s. Which is why the Vaselines can exist again. There’s an audience for it that wasn’t around in that time that are interested in it.
What advice would you give to a 20-something-year-old artist?
Do what you want. Do your own thing. Some advice is good but listen to yourself—your own ideas. Try not to be put off by people. Keep doing what you’re doing. What we’ve done as Vaselines—people kept telling us we were terrible, but we kept having fun. You’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing. It’s not a competition—you’re on your own. Don’t try to compete with anyone. I think in your twenties you feel inspired by the world around you. Everything seems new. And when you get in your forties, it’s hard to think of good things to write about and aspire to. There’s other things to deal with. You get a bit burnt out at middle age. It’s kind of hard to get really inspired.
What’s good about being in your forties?
Not much. It’s overrated. I think I prefer to be in my twenties. But you’ve got to make the best of it. The good thing about being in your forties is you’ve got a confidence you couldn’t really have when you were younger. You know if what you’re doing is good and if you should continue doing it.
Do you still think there are surprises in your future?
I think it’s all going to be surprises and that’s how it should be. We didn’t even know what we were doing with the band at this time last year. And then suddenly we’re in a large venue in Glasgow and it’s such a shock and quite sweet. I am enjoying the fact that everything is sort of new. We’re going to see what comes up.
Where did the Vaselines name come from?
It was because Frances used a lot of Vaseline on her lips. She was always carrying some around with her. Somebody suggested it and we had struggled with a few different names that didn’t really work. And also it started with the letter ‘V.’ There weren’t too many bands that start with that letter. I can think of the Velvet Underground, the Von Bondies. I can’t think of any more. Some of the other names were really terrible. A lot of them involved strawberries because Frances was obsessed with strawberries. The Vaselines was much better than the Strawberry Somethings.

THE VASELINES’ ENTER THE VASELINES IS OUT NOW ON SUB POP. VISIT THE VASELINES AT SUBPOP.COM/ARTISTS/THE_VASELINES.

Download: of Montreal & MGMT – Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana Cover)

We are DJing at Cha Cha Wednesday night for the next installment of our acclaimed “Something Sh!t” series and we are following up last month’s Heavy Sh!t with the logical next step: Pretty Sh!t. (Let’s also call this an Eagle Rock Music Fest pre-party!) It’s free to everyone to come see us and guests from Gangi and hopefully Sian Alice Group (if they’re in town) DJ the most purtiest lovelies we can pry out of our library. A little sniff above.

Tracklist:

01. Os Mutantes “Panis Et Circenses”
02. Stone Poneys “Different Drum”
03. Sid Selvidge “Miss Eleana”
04. Nirvana “Rainbow Chaser”
05. The Bee Gees “Red Chair, Fade Away”
06. Daughters of Albion “Hey, You, Wait, Stay”
07. JK & Co. “Fly”
08. The Millennium “The Island”
09. Rogerio Duprat “Honey / Summer Rain”
10. Bonnie Dobson “I Got Stung”
11. Soft Boys “Positive Vibrations”
12. Os Mutantes “Panis Et Circenses” (Reprise)