Monday

Surf, Poetry and Rock from Seattle

Seattle, well-known for the grunge scene, is also home to some other energetic music. Vagrant Records is an independent label that has been around for several years, and has a large catalog of punk, surf and other music.

I'm not familiar with their studio work, but Invasion of the "Live" Boss Martians is pretty good. They do surfin' music, and do it well. Music to get sand between your toes by. I'm tired of bands that apologize for bad musicianship by claiming "energy" or somesuch. Fine and dandy, but it gets old. The Boss Martians play well; crisp and clean and layered. The problem with a lot of punk/grunge is that it's too fast to dance to. This is dance music that harkens back to the early 60s, recorded in 1997. Most of the songs are instrumentals, but sometimes they do a song with lyrics like Good Golly Miss Molly and sometimes get the audience involved as with Surfin' Bird, though that's less successful. Their best sound is when they're playing pure surf, as with AA Growler or Straight-8, and they do a credible version of Mancini's Banzai Pipeline.

The Boss Martians are a good addition to any collection full of The Ventures and The Beach Boys.

Going back a little further to the late 50's/early 60's beat movement comes Doug Savercool and Weird Poetry. Poetry, whether produced or live in "slams" is not the same thing as standup comedy, though they are related. The spoken word, often with a music bed, has been around since at least Ken Nordine's Word Jazz, with stops along the way for Tom Smith and a growing spoken word movement. Savercool's punk and often bawdy tales might have played in Las Vegas in the 50s of Lord Buckley but would never have made it to tv or records until recently. His subject matter is punk: Anger at girls, right-wing politicians, co-workers and so on. His style is almost rap: Internal rhymes with an angry cadence. Some of the cuts are live and some are produced with music beds. I'm not going to give a blanket recommendation, but if you like your spoken word with an attitude, you will like Savercool.

Here in 2004, Henry Boy's sop to grunge is a fuzz guitar, which distracts. But he's wise enough not to use it a lot. The Big Parade is driving rock that never went away no matter what was "in" at the time. The album seems a progression of craftmanship, as the earlier songs are more grunge and the later songs more pure rock. Still, the clarity of vision is evident. The cleaner sound of Aeroplanes works as well as the tuneful Summertown. Henry Boy infuses repetitious pop music lyrics with odd pop culture references. The album ends with the title cut, the longest cut, The Big Parade, which will leave you wanting more. While none of the songs grabbed me on first listening, I'd rather hear real rock than most of the junk on top-40 stations. So I guess Henry Boy falls into a brand new category of music: iPod Worthy. (Which is abbreviated iPW.)

Erin Hart

Re: Sneakysurf

from Bruce

'Monster-in-Law'

from that Mad Cat, JD

Last Night

'Star Wars'

Dave Chappelle

Thylacine

Popo Bawa

Hero Dog