Indie Rock is Just Bad Punk

(photo by Joel Treadway/cringe.com)

First, you're going to have to agree with me that the following is one of the greatest songs ever written.

Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments - My Mysterious Death (Turn it Up)(mp3)(buy)

Else you can't be my friend no more.

Columbus, Ohio's Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments was a lo-fi punk band in the ‘90s, when "lo-fi punk band" meant you recorded great songs cheap.  Now "lo-fi punk band" means you deliberately obfuscate mediocre crap no one would care about were they actually able to hear it.

Anyway.  TJSA!  On the back of the nasal bark of Ron House (late of Great Plains, "the most amazing band you've never heard") and the quality riffage of guitarist Bob Petric the band built a small catalog of bizarre, insistent gems.  They contrived, they cared:  They would sing hilarious and grotesque fictions, they would sing songs of personal outrage, they would attack everything like everything depended on it.  "My Mysterious Death" is sung by the song itself, you create its life every time you press play.  It's been spanked it, it cries, it doesn't have a chance to do anything but huh-wha? before its mayfly life fades out.  It wants to be heard, turn it up!

I don't want to talk about this band too much because I love them so hard.

Selected lyrics:  "You're the center of attention for the first time since high school detention."  "My name is on the negative guest list, even when I pay I can't get in."  "Let me whisper in your mouth the wrong words, baby, the answer's on your tongue."  They're so good that you're often able to overlook their affinity for puns.  (They have a record called You Lookin' for Treble?  They have lyrics like "listen to my diatribe, I'm dying to try ya."  I mean how low how low how low hello can you go?)

I have been known to keep 1995's Bait and Switch on repeat so long neighbors call the cops.  That smell is me, people, leave me alone, go about your business.  But they were, alas, another band I thought I was doomed to never see.  I first heard them a couple years after their last record, No Old Guy Lo-Fi Cry, was released on Bob Pollard's Rockathon label in 2000.  House released an acclaimed solo album in 2002, and since then, squat.  (Mp3s and mail-ordered CDs are available here.)

BUT!  Apparently the band has been playing some home town shows recently.  A web magazine I've never read of, Agit Reader, has brought the reformed TJSA to Brooklyn as part of its one-year anniversary.  This Saturday they'll be appearing with Columbus, Ohio's Times New Viking - a band that might not share the craft of their forefathers, but with song titles like "Imagine Dead John Lennon" at least shares a caustic sense of humor.  That's at the Bell House, tickets are here.

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Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments - When the Entertainment Ends (mp3)(buy)

That show's not part of the Northside Festival, currently running amok in North Brooklyn.  Created by The L Magazine, I expect that the festival will be just as involving and packed with quality content as The L Magazine.  Just kidding!  I hope it's good!  Though I won't be going to any of it.  It's chock full of bands I don't have time to pretend I know about right now. Maybe I'll pretend I know about them sometime later.

(There are actually several bands of whom I've said positive things here, Shilpa Ray, Screaming Females, Ponytail, Tamar-kali, Endless Boogie, etc.  O'Death is playing an afternoon show at M-HOW that is unfortunately at the same time as a for-free not-part-of-the-festival-either performance by Howard Tate.  HOWARD MOTHERSWEARWORDING TATE.  I posted a plea for the JellyNYC people to bring him to a Pool Party some time back; I missed him in December at Joe's Pub, will not miss the BBQ.  Like the man says, get it while you can.  Howard Tate!)

Several local bloggers who have showcases - maybe those be just as involving and etc. as blogs just kidding - and you can go to their sites where they'll encourage you to check those out:  Battering Room, Bold as Love, BrooklynVegan (Indie, Metal), Ear Farm, Gothamist, Jinners, Music Slut, Music Snobbery, Pop Tarts Suck Toasted.

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I did not go to any of The Mummies shows.  I probably should have gone to one of The Mummies shows.  What's lower than lo-fi?  Undead?

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I missed Fela when it ran off-Broadway with Antibalas and actors and stuff.  I'm sort of allergic to theater.  I'll get another chance to miss it when it comes to Broadway.

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The latest Craig Ferguson puppets clip was again silenced by YouTube because of the music.  (This time it was Jason Mraz, who might have been offended that Ferguson misspelled his name.)

Anyway, the dude who's been upping these to YouTube has basically said Fuck It and started his own blog.  You can see last night's song-and-dance there - it's charming! (bonus peek: behind the scenes) - and should probably just go there from now on for these.  Of course he's on Blogger, so that'll probably get raised, too.  I've got no patience for the dipshit corporate copyright whack-a-mole.  (They do stream shows at the CBS website but do so three or four days after they've aired when no one cares anymore.)

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Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments - The Internet is Bad Pot (mp3)(buy)

This dumb blue page had its five-year anniversary last month - first is paper, second is paper, fifth is spunk... just kidding, it's all paper, for irony's sake - and I didn't note it then because it wasn't noteworthy.  More important is that today's the second anniversary of when I started telling people I was going to shut the fucker down.  Lucky for no one I'm the world's longest Slinky Dog of intention and effect.  We'll get there, I promise, salut!

Not to get contemplative and shit - plenty of time for that when we heave the thing off a cliff - but something struck me weird about statistics the other day.

This page (whatever it is) isn't what it once was (whatever that was)(*); there's good and bad about that - Jesus, remember back when I could be funny?  I miss that - but one of the things that made me most happy was the realization that I don't want anyone to read this.  It was less a matter of wising up and realizing that no one should be reading this - and no one should be, some of you have been here more than once, I can only say that I'm very disappointed in you - than realizing what I liked and didn't about other things I've read.

I mean, it's kind that people bother.  There's so many other places to send your eyeballs!  So many webazines and aggregatorers and blogs and tumblr blogs and, my God, the tweets.  Or, if you like well-researched, well-written, thoughtful things from knowledgeable people who have interesting things to say, someplace that isn't one of those things.

At its best this site has been a dirty secret you shouldn't ever tell anyone about shhhhhhh.

So it feels like it's been years since I've done any Look at Me! stuff, and though I've never been good at keeping track of page views and uniques and whatnot (**), the feeling that they're drifting toward zero gives me an immense amount of personal satisfaction.  When I go in and see how many Google Reader subscribers this thing has and the number has slipped I think Job Well Done.  Statistically speaking those things are just likely to go up, what with more people spending more time online.  It takes a great deal of effort to swim against probability like that and I'm the goddamned pink salmon of fucking Internet righteousness.

I'm happier when things are down.

But:  I recently set up a Twitter account.  I am not advertising that fact, I have no intention of ever using it.  I was mostly grabbing the URL so someone else couldn't, I decked it out in pretty pink posies, I stole a profound thought as a placeholder.

And suddenly there were people following me.  A couple were people I know or Internet-know, and that's cool.  Most were bands to whom I'm never going to listen and PR companies with whom I'll never bother.  All existence is now about self-promotion, life is pretty much the sound of someone's dick in your ear, I get that.  It's why I avoid stuff like Twitter and Facebook in the first place.

But then that small number of followers WENT DOWN.  And I found that MOST DEPRESSING.  And I'm struggling to figure out why I find that depressing.

Maybe because they got the joke?

(*)  Though it will always be ugly and blue, God bless.

(**) I do have a fascination with how people wind up here, though.  Whether it's Google searches or links.  When this page wound up on The New Yorker's blogroll, I was confused and flattered.  When it was added to Teen Vogue I was fucking ecstatic.  I mean, Teen Vogue!  It's every girl's goddamned dream.

tags: selfimmolation  craig ferguson  tjsa  

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