Target recently brought together Questlove, Black Thought and Charli XCX for a cover of Deee-Lite’s classic, “Groove Is in the Heart.” Only a minute of this version is currently available online as part of a Target commercial, but fortunately we all have access to the full recording of the much better original (no disrespect to The Roots or Charli XCX, the former of which will certainly make an appearance here at some point).

Deee-Lite combined a couple of guys from Ukraine and Japan, together with some misfits from Kansas and Ohio, and produced one of the best examples of early ’90s pop-centric dance music, the aptly titled World Clique.

They would go on to release two more studio albums, but never quite recaptured the success of their debut. Towa Tei continues to release solo material, while Lady Miss Kier and the other members DJ regularly on the club circuit.

I don’t know how you could listen to this song and not get into a better mood, and as a bonus, it features both Q-Tip on vocals and Bootsy Collins on bass. The weekend starts now.

(The hardest part about writing this post? Choosing the images of course, I mean come on, just look at them.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzoEK545j64

One band I discovered when I was heavy into early-/mid-ninties shoegaze + noise pop was Medicine, a band embedded deep in those genres who I’d assumed at the time to be another relatively obscure British group I’d been lucky enough to stumble upon.

Turns out, Medicine was the Los Angeles-based brainchild of LA-native Brad Laner and boasts being the first American band to be signed to seminal shoegaze label and UK stronghold, Creation Records.

Though some of the band’s later work edged toward the melodramatic, I liked a lot of it—even the song they grew to be know for, from the soundtrack to The Crow. But their early work, as is often the case, was some of their best. Layered, droning soundscapes built originally from Laner’s solo bedroom studio experiments, the band’s first two albums present a noisily beautiful cadence, punctuated by Beth Thompson’s voice and held in place as much by its guitars as it is by it’s rhythm section.

In fact, a 2010 Pitchfork review of Laner’s solo work called Medicine “about as close as the U.S. got to answering My Bloody Valentine with its mix of surging noise and soft vocals.”

Though the band’s reunited to perform and record a couple new albums in the past few years, their early work remains my favorite. Chief among it—”The Pink”, a noisy, poppy track from their second album, The Buried Life, that starts off with a beehive-frenzy of sound and features Thompson’s characteristically lulling vocals over a fuzzy blanket of din. I love the almost-unchanging rhythm and how oddly…groovy that bass line is. And that single bend at the end of the guitar line bonds LA glam with UK noise in a perfectly unlikely marriage.

The year was 1999, and I was at a college party in Portland, where my friend Kat went to Lewis and Clarke. Kat had gotten me into the band Cracker the year before, and I was glad because now I had a point in common with her friend Dan, whom I had a small, secret crush on. Instead of intimating this longing, I professed my emphatic love for “Trials and Tribulations,” a song from Cracker’s Gentleman’s Blues.

“Who do you like better, Cracker or Camper Van?” Dan asked. We were standing out on a deck drinking keg beer and looking out over suburban southeast Portland, an expanse swampy and dark for all the trees.

“Camper Van?” I said stupidly, clutching my red plastic cup and hoping that Dan didn’t notice that I was three inches taller than he.

“Camper Van Beethoven? David Lowery’s band before Cracker? You’ve got to check them out— I have to say I think I like them better than Cracker.”

In retrospect, this conversation is so perfectly 90s and so perfectly college. I’m pretty sure we were both wearing wifebeaters, ripped jeans, and flannel shirts. It was that time of life when everything seems a revelation. I drove back to Olympia in my 82’ Toyota Celica hatchback and immediately purchased the first Camper Van Beethoven album I found, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart. I was smitten before I even popped the CD into my crappy boom box. Best album title ever, I thought. And is that a Masonic symbol on the cover? I was not disappointed. The first track is “The Eye of Fatima pt. 1,” a short song with a driving tempo and no chorus.

He’s got the Eye of Fatima on the wall of his room.
Two bottles of tequila, three cats and a broom.
He’s got an 18-year-old angel
and she’s all dressed in black.
He’s got 15 nickels of cocaine tied up in a sack.
And this here’s a government experiment
and we’re driving like Hell.
To get some cowboys some acid and to stay in motels.
We’re going to eat up some wide open spaces
Like it was a cruise on the Nile.
Take the hands off the clock,
we’re going to be here a while.

And I am the Eye of Fatima
on the wall of the motel room.
And cowboys on acid are like Egyptian cartoons.
And no one ever conquered Wyoming
from the left or from the right.
But you can stay in motel rooms and stay up all night.

On a warm fall evening, my roommate and I sat on the back bumper of my car, in the yard, and listened to the song on repeat while drinking cheap beer in the light of the streetlamp. This was amazing. Tequila? Drugs? Cats? Witches? Ancient Egypt? Staying up all night? Nonsensical lyrics? We were so in! It was like David Lowery had mapped our brains.

I would go on to nerdily collect every Camper Van Beethoven record, even going so far as to hunt down a Monks of Doom LP. (Because if you are going to be into the cooler, earlier precursor to a popular band, you better know a thing or two about their side projects.) But I found myself annoyed many years later when I attended a Cracker and Camper Van reunion show at the Crocodile in Seattle.

Camper Van fans were standing around looking like they weren’t having any fun while stiffly assuring everyone in earshot that they were, of course, there to see Camper Van Beethoven, not Cracker. In my memory they are all curly-haired white dudes in their 30s, wearing hipster glasses and plaid shirts buttoned up to the neck. They muttered when Cracker took the stage. This is exactly what drives me crazy about music nerds— the idea that obscure is good and popular is bad.

Cracker and Camper Van are both good bands. Camper Van Beethoven is weirder, snarled with violin. They wrote some great songs but, like most experimental bands, also put out a few songs that are unlistenable. Cracker is more accessible, has an appealing country twinge, and, like most successful rock bands, wrote some pop songs. Camper Van lyrics are occasionally obtuse, like they were written by people on acid, while Cracker lyrics are odd and funny but still deal, for the most part, with the vagaries of real life. To be honest, today both bands sound dated, if in a charming way that makes you want to put them out when you’re sitting around with old friends on the cusp of drunkenness.  To me they perfectly capture my nostalgia for an era when I thought that being strange made me somehow different.

Ah, my first K Records-related post.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, K Records was an independent label started in Olympia, Washington in the early 80s by Calvin Johnson, known for being in 10,000 bands and, more importantly, for being Clavin Johnson.

Down the road, in the 90s—when this writer took a shine to the label—they began to rival east coast-based Simple Machines in their championing of indie pop bands of the time. And, though many, many bands I loved and love to this day from K Records were longtime label mainstays, the band of which I write today—Modest Mouse—was not at all.

Some would say such a unique, energetic band so early on were destined for bigger things than K Records; others might just say they used the label as a convenient spring board into more desirable venues for a different brand of music. Either way, Modest Mouse wasn’t ever much of a ‘K band’.

That said, Modest Mouse is a sterling example—in my opinion—of one of those bands whose early material stands the test of time so very much better than their later, more contemporary and popular material. I don’t want to be that guy who’s perpetually harping on and on about how ‘Yeah, they’re okay now, but their first album, man, their first album—that’s when they were really good.’

But, yeah, outside of a catchy single or two once they started gaining traction on the new alternative radio stations, this band was SO much better in the early days, before their proper full-length. Reason being—their energy.

Soda fountain crowd
button up, shut em’ up
gettin’ fed up now

So much is rightfully said of frontman, Isaac Brock’s unique, barking vocal style and his rhythmically staccato guitar, but both of those were just outlets to a young, dangerous energy that was so contagious to the band’s early listeners. Later on, it started to feel like Brock + co. were sadly attempting to recreate that energy by overcompensating with overly harsh vocals and music, becoming some weird high school quarterback turned car salesman parody of themselves.

Hearing the first few tracks of the coming new album from the band—Strangers to Ourselves, out in March—that sad parody couldn’t be any more apparent today.

Not to be a Negative Nelly or anything. Primary point being—this band served as an amazing outlet to unique, youthful creativity when it first started out. I can hear it in their early B-sides, their first, awesome full-length, This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, and in one of their earliest recordings I know of—and one of my favorites—”Duke’s Up”, off of K Records’ Project: Echo, their 1996 CD comp of their International Pop Underground series of 7″ 45 rpm records.

Listen and enjoy this oddly familiar, oddly foreign sound…and try not to dwell on lost youth.

Do you remember where you were when you first heard of your favorite author?

I do, because it was “Hey Jack Kerouac” by the 10,000 Maniacs that introduced me to him, even though I didn’t realize at the time who he was, and what he would come to mean to me.

I found In My Tribe on vinyl in a bargain box at the local pawn shop where I was the only customer who ever rummaged through their ever increasing corner of “junk” records. I think I paid 99 cents, with no tax because the guy behind the counter couldn’t be bothered to figure out the math.

The whole album is full of the signature 10,000 Maniacs brand of well crafted pop songs. Offensive to no one, but not boring, and strangely compelling.

More than just compelling though, “Hey Jack Kerouac” was a mystery to me… who was Jack Kerouac? Who is Billy? Who is “Allen baby” and why is he sad the boys grew up and their beauty faded? Which boys? Why were they howling at night? Why did Jack leave without saying good bye?

Hey Jack, now for the tricky part. When you were the brightest star, who were the shadows?

The internet was in its infancy then, and as much the computer geek as I was, I couldn’t just Google these queries, and it didn’t occur to me to mine the local library. So it wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I finally learned the answers to all the above, leading immediately to an insatiable campaign to devour every piece of writing by Jack, Billy, and Allen. Yes, I too thought of them by first name now because my vicarious insistence on digesting every aspect of their lives, made me feel as if I knew them personally— I had been there with them through it all, side-by-side on all their adventures.

I became cliché and read On The Road for the third or fourth time while sitting on a train from somewhere to somewhere in Europe. I made my pilgrimage to City Lights. I read about William Burroughs and his drug addled hallucinations in Mexico, I read how Ginsberg saw the best minds of his generation succumb to madness, hysterical and naked. I read it all.

In time, my reading list expanded and I discovered new writers through and outside of college, but the Beats will always represent that part of my life when you leave home and charge the world with a ferocious appetite for all that is new and different and maybe a little bit dangerous.

Yes, I moved on from the Beats, but the last time I drove up the California coast… yep, I still dug up my well worn copy of Big Sur, just as I imagine I will yet again someday.

“This has got to be a joke!” is what I thought when I first heard Biz Markie’s lisped awkward rhymes and the off-key wailing of the chorus on KIIS FM’s top 8 at 8 countdown.

While completely butchering Freddie Scott’s original “(You) Got What I Need,” the Biz managed to stuff the same melody into the brains of every kid in my junior high school. It wasn’t long until we were screaming the parody “Oh baby you! You got a disease! But you say it’s just a rash!” on the school bus rides.

Besides the catchy melody, the obvious literal lyrics were a huge convenience for someone like me who couldn’t be bothered with the task of deciphering lyrics.

And the video?  It couldn’t be any more literal.  Watching the Biz in his ridiculous Mozart wig slamming on the piano keys while making zero effort to hide his inability to play made me love this song even more.

Perfect example of song that is so bad, that it’s good.

Let me start by saying that my partner—both in life + work—100% hates the name of this band. To be fair, Milky Wimpshake is a terrible name. I personally have this weird, visceral aversion to any mention of food in most non-food nomenclature. As soon as the idea of food or eating enters the gestalt of, say, music, in the form of band names like Archers of Loaf or G Love & Special Sauce or—yes—Milky Wimpshake, I usually immediately sign off.

I wanna beat you fair and square in chess
I wanna watch you get undressed
I wanna phone you at 5 am
I wanna waste some time with you again

But Milky Wimpshake, despite their name, stand as a superb example of mid-90s Brit-twee-punk, a genre that never truly took off in the mainstream, which was fine by most of its practitioners. The band originated in Newcastle Upon Tyne and was supported by its core members, singer + multi-instrumentalist Pete Dale and bassist Christine Rowe, with a rotating line-up of drummers through the years (one of whom legally changed her name to Ms. Joey Ramone).

Wimpshake was a lighthearted gem amongst the otherwise oft-overly-serious 90s indie punk scene in Britain, championed by the indispensable DIY punk + riot grrrl label Slampt, who put out many singles + 7″s by the band and released their debut full-length, the cutely titled Bus Route to Your Heart.

This is the lead track to that album and serves well to demonstrate Wimpshake’s jangley, lose, high-energy style and adorably youthful and irreverent lyrics. Though I was tempted to instead post the lead track from side two—”Noam Chomsky versus the Ramones”—during which Pete sincerely sings:

I wanna read about media distortion
of US foreign policy
but I also need dumb stuff
like Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee

Pete’s actually built a really deep site largely devoted to the history of the band, including a bank of song lyrics and live + studio MP3s or pretty much everything. Get your mid-90s-Brit-twee-punk on, man.

When I was a kid, my dad made me watch a black and white Bengali movie about a singing swami. Whether it was fact or fiction I don’t know. All I remember is the very last scene, where the singing swami with arms stretched into the air, churned slowly to his death, swallowed by the violent sea.

I bought Perfect Prescription around spring of 2000. I had just started snorting drugs. I was living in Philly again, in an apartment that reeked of gas, above a convict who loved to dance naked to the worst breed of techno music. How did I know this? Don’t ask.

I could say something like I was trying to finish school before moving back to New York but that would be a load of shit.

I never went to class. I was 20 years old, awkward, extremely shy, with a penchant for doing drugs, writing, and listening to music. I had a high curiosity for sex but the men were never that easy, so I stuck to drugs and music instead. I wanted to play and join a band, yet I didn’t know how to put things together and being female and a harmonium player in the authoritarian male world of hardcore and rock ‘n roll— well forget it. So I stuck to drugs and listening to music instead and I did lots and lots of it.

I discovered Spacemen 3 after discovering Spiritualized on a Volkswagen Beetle commercial. Yep, that commercial really worked and like a proper fiend, I collected all the albums I could get my hands on. I instantly connected with that sound. Perfect Prescription feels like your soul trying to break free of your flesh with its primal droning, wailing, rinse repeat, and of course, the “Come Down Easy.” It feels like home, like Indian music, the singing swami, and the calm surrendering into a dark violent world.