Any Dance You Wanna Do There's No One Under You

Screaming Females - Buried in the Nude (mp3)(buy)

These kids (myspace) are still a tiny band, but it'll be a blast watching them should someone flip the switch.  Picked to open for Jack White's new act, featured on the MTV and getting space from Spin (but not on P4k, consistent with that website's wedontlikerockness), let's hope they remain giggly and incredulous and homemade in the face of whatever trajectory on which they find themselves.  Screaming Females recently started negotiating their way into Bowery Presents' rotation (band's back at the Merc for CMJ, will hopefully play a fuckton of festival spots) but cling to all-ages non-venues.

Their homecoming show a couple nights ago took place in "A House" in New Brunswick, NJ:  "Cops are crazy. No address from the internet. Talk to a friend."  Excellent.

I've been struggling to figure out what's missing from Power Move, their latest record, gave it time knowing the last disc, What if Someone is Watching Their T.V.?, had more growers than grabbers.  (T.V.'s "Boyfriend," which goes:  bam-bam-blister-bam, is an anomaly in their catalog.)  Some songs or parts of songs did grow.  Opener "Bell" has a winning pop bounce, deserves its attention.  There's an amusing break and some wail in "Treacher Collins."  Like I've said before, band's naturally melodic, they got riffs.

Those riffs have been fuzzed up and pushed out front; the sound and the arrangements on this record make the music much less interesting.  Before, Screaming Females took punk and post- songs through exciting, unexpected turns and made those work.  Airy-yet-forceful tunes would careen into clipped classic rock asides or outright shredding; it felt less planned or proggy than bursting with ideas, stream-of-consciousness.  I don't want to get all "Nevermind sounds like a Mötley Crüe record" on Power Move, but when the band lives by the riff and they settle into an old bluesy metal shrug, singer/guitarist Marissa Paternoster's runs and swamp scratch become obvious.  The lock-step rhythm section doesn't have anything to add.  There are enough psych-stoner groups diddling around out there proving their unspecialness at various tempos, I don't need another of those, don't drift that direction.

Record's good, listenable, not complaining.  But given the talent and attitude, I'm going to keep hoping for greatness.

"Buried in the Nude" closes out the record and starts off so right.  There's weight to the plucked intro, a burst of unmanaged electricity, a great uneasy mix of Paternoster's opaque lyrics and exaggerated robot squawk.  A lot happens by the half-minute mark, then they surprise you with melody.  The song's got two great lyrical hooks and disturbs by Frankensteining them together.  "What kind of man are they making?!  What kind of fool do you take me for?!" shifts into a lighter, rousing section - "I bet you want it/These are the greatest times/I bet you need it to feed" - that threatens to anthem.  Everything's 100% awesome til the song fails to stomp itself out at the end, closes instead with another run that feels more mandated than inspired.

Etta James & Sugar Pie DeSanto - In the Basement Pt 1 (mp3)(buy)

This past Spring UK label Kent compiled the complete Chess Singles of four-foot-eleven Filipino/African-American belter Sugar Pie DeSanto.  Born Umpeylia Marsema Balinton in Brooklyn, raised in Frisco, she scored some low-level hits and had a rep as a spirited performer.  She toured with James Brown.  According to Mick Patrick's liner notes, a 1964 appearance on the UK TV Show Ready, Steady, Go involved "her rolling around on the floor with her hair in curlers while singing "I Don't Wanna Fuss."  (That is not on YouTube.  That should be on YouTube.  This is from about the same time.)  Sugar's still out there, kickin' it old.

If not a necessary collection, Go Go Power's a winning survey of early-60s R&B styles.  It's unfortunate that the song that could otherwise serve as her mission statement, "Use What You Got," is basically "Alley Cat."  And "Somewhere Down the Line," the first duet she recorded with childhood neighbor/fellow gang member Jamesetta Hawkins (aka Etta James), steps on the heels of "A Change is Gonna Come."  There are answer songs ("Slip-In Mules" comes back on Tommy Tucker's "High Heel Sneakers"), hand-me-downs ("Ask Me"), and double-ups (her self-penned pre-Chess hit "I Want to Know" was barely reworked as "Can't Let You Go") -- but here familiar variety equals proven pleasure, served with sauce.  (In her memoir, James describes DeSanto as a "nutty wildass.")  "Basement" is where it's at, no arguments allowed.

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ATP sure bought a lot of advertising space for its $700 festival by guest listing an entire audience  full of music journos and bloggers, huh?  Hey, you get to play poker with Steve Albini and play "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" with Bradford Cox and maybe everyone got a free Zune, awesome.  Apologies to the ten people who paid to enter!  It's a tree/forest thing!  You need better connections!

Punk rock: Nicht tot, just too damned expensive.  Everyone knows it's the CBGB's t's that sunk Sharper Image.

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Ruff: today I started molding bricks for the new night club that I dream of building
me: bredrin, you're an impresario!
Ruff: we have 200 bricks so far
me: 200 bricks so far!
Ruff: yes and 4000 is where we must reach
me: brick by brick! that's some real industry right there
Ruff: I told the guys helping me that, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step and they where very motivated and laughed too.
me: i'm sure they can see by the studio and soundsystem that you mean business
Ruff: the thing is the building where the club is now is sold and so we need a place to party so I will build one

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There are days I think I could read nothing but band tour diaries.  They are only ten thousand times better than music blogs.

Exhibit A.

The conversation drifts, inevitably to Michael Jackson, and whether or not we should honour the occasion with a cover. Earth Song would obviously be the most fun, but someone else is more than likely going to do it better than us, and also we're loathe to practice. My suggestion is to just sing his contributions to We are the World, with all the gaps in between where other people might take up the verse. It would sound something like this:  ......."the woooooorllldlddd"

...... "yeah we areeeeeeeee..."
 
Exhibit B.

Day 10 - Tulsa OK. We hung out in a park and swang on swangs. We met an extremely old man with two extremely old dogs. The old man had never left Tulsa, and was nice. Me and kayla walked through a rose garden of sorts, but it was stupid. Then we went to the show at The Monolith. We played with a ball called "The Mono-ball" and laughed way more than people in their mid-20s playing with a ball should. There was a cute puppy there and a cool dude named Evan working the door. For some reason he seemed to like us and we became fast friends. Only 4 humans and one dog saw us play that night. We stayed at Evan's and tried to watch the Duck Tales movie.

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" I am probably not the first person to say this, and I hope I am not the last, but the Internet is punching humanity in the stomach, and humanity is just standing there and taking it... Reserve, once a virtue, is now seen as invisibility, which means that it's not seen at all."

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" The only proper response when an amateur attempts to hand you his manuscript, his screenplay, his unpublished novel, his short story, his treatment, his outline, his notes, is to take an axe to his laptop, follow him home, burn down his house, and salt the ground."

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Every time Carey Mulligan has a false moment, Nick Hornby throws an Altoid at her.

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"It's as hard to imagine a Woo film without firearms as it is to contemplate a Fellini movie without fat people."

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More tempting:  "Hi! I was just masturbating!" or "Theatrical distribution is virtually inconceivable?"

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"This modern age ain't all fucking great, you know what I mean? It's not like we live in space bubbles with free hookers everywhere on Planet Titties yet. When you use these weird Hid-me cables, suddenly everything is like you are watching fucking Mothra Hates On Godzilla. It's like you hear the sound and see the picture but it's all messed up, like watching Robin Byrd when you're really high."

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tags: screaming females  sugar pie desanto  

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