|
|
Post by petrolino on Aug 30, 2019 0:56:58 GMT
🍭 Kat Bjelland & Courtney Love : Sugar Baby Dolls 🍭
-- --- ---- ---- --- --
Kat Bjelland
Katherine Lynne Bjelland was born on December 9, 1963 in Salem, Oregon. She was raised in Woodburn where she became a cheerleader and played sports ball. Bjelland learned to play guitar under the tutelage of her crispy uncle David Higginbotham and they performed together in the Neurotics. She then formed her own band, the Venarays.
Bjelland relocated to Portland (home to the Wipers) and became active on the local punk scene. She became friends with guitarist Courtney Love and together they formed the band Sugar Babydoll, an outfit that transmogrified into Pagan Babies after relocating to San Francisco, California (here they enlisted the services of bass player Jennifer Finch of L.A. rock band L7 and session bassist Janis Tanaka). Pagan Babies recorded some demos but disbanded soon after.
In 1986, Bjelland moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota (home to the Replacements) where another vibrant punk scene was in full flight. She formed the band Babes In Toyland with drummer Lori Barbero and guitarists Cindy Russell and Chris Holetz. Russell and Holetz didn't hang around long, allowing bassist Michelle Leon to enter the fold. In 1992, Maureen Herman took over on bass from Leon. The band continued to record and perform live, playing their farewell show in Minneapolis in 2001.
'Hello' - Babes In Toyland
Bjelland's other creative projects include Crunt and Katastophy Wife. Known for her ferocious guitar style and volatile stage presence, Bjelland was institutionalised in the 2000s and diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. This led to press speculation that her vocal style was a reflection of multiple personalities trying to escape (Bjelland performed jittery spoken word passages, howled mantras, occasionally spoke in tongues, utilised double-meaning wordplay built around the melding of similar words and phrases, and regularly unleashed screaming patterns summoned from the depths of hell). In some ways, Bjelland's experience has been similar to that of musical contemporary Kristin Hersh who's been treated for schizophrenic disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic disorder and dissociative disorders, and whose songwriting has also been repainted by sections of the music press due to changes in her medical status and ongoing mental health issues. Having survived a period spent homeless while living in Austin, Texas, Bjelland returned home to Oregon where she enjoyed catching the latest sounds on the underground. Babes In Toyland have also reformed to play some fiery concerts.
"Kat Bjelland is everything you want her to be and nothing that you’d expect. As the lead singer of Babes in Toyland, Bjelland is known to music fans as the howling, relentlessly powerful voice of one of her generation’s most caustic bands. She seems feral and possessed behind a microphone, presenting a bone-chilling caterwaul that is as raw as it is thrilling.
Though onstage she’s all churning bile and lurching aggression, during our interview she is quiet and kind. Her speaking voice is sweetly gentle and gives no hint of her unholy growling. “I tried to sing softly the other day because my throat hurt,” Bjelland says. “But I couldn’t do it. I don’t even know how!”
Inaccurately lumped in with the riot grrrl feminist punk scene of the early 1990s, Babes in Toyland was always a little less political and a little more harsher than the bands that were counted among its contemporaries. While those artists addressed socio-political issues and demanded a revolution, Babes in Toyland was all about threatening violence while banging heads."
- Jaime Lees, Jamieville
An Evening With The Venarays
{ : 00:00 - Interview / 03:44 - Catatonic / 07:44 - Timebomb / 11:00 - I Hate You / 13:49 - Bite Your Tongue / 17:43 - Put To The Test / 21:03 - Go Back To Him : }
-- --- ---- ---- --- --
5 Albums
'Spanking Machine' (1990) - Babes In Toyland
"I don’t know that I would have considered Babes in Toyland a grunge band, but I think a lot of people do. They were clearly influenced by the Birthday Party, which I thought was cool. And Hole were kind of a bastardized version of them. To me, anyway. Babes in Toyland were a much, much better band. They wrote much more interesting songs and were much less interested in, like, “We have to write pop songs that are gonna be big hits.” You never had to worry about that with them. I like Spanking Machine from them best. “He’s My Thing” is on that one, and I like “Vomit Heart.” That’s probably my favorite song of theirs ever.
We played a lot of shows with them back then, and they were always fun. We did a tour with them and White Zombie, and we both got treated like f*cking dogshit on that tour by the powers that be. It was a massively unnecessary situation of pointless rock-star behavior. I don’t know what was going through his [Rob Zombie’s] head, but if making enemies is what you set out to do, well, mission accomplished. I’ve been around people you would consider a rock star, like the guys in Kiss, and they never behaved like that. It just makes you hate lower-level f*ckheads like Rob Zombie even more. If I got treated like that by the f*cking mailman, I’d hate his guts. So it was fun to have Babes in Toyland along."
- Buzz Osborne, 'My Favorite Grunge Albums'
'Swamp Pussy' - Babes In Toyland'
-- --- --
'To Mother' (1991) - Babes In Toyland
"Guitarist and lead singer Kat Bjelland was a heroin addict; drummer Lori Barbero was organized, frugal, and drove the van; bassist Michelle Leon was a nice Jewish girl from a professional family who gave up college for another life, though she never gave up Minnesota nice. When Babes in Toyland took shape in Minneapolis in 1987 they were as sulfurous as any punk band the form, the idea, has ever produced—compared to them the Seattle bands of the time were the Dave Clark Five. You can hear that on their first album, Spanking Machine, which came out in 1990; you can hear it even more on a YouTube video of their April 14, 1988 show at the Cabooze Bar in Minneapolis—eight-and-a-half minutes in, Leon sings the unrecorded “Milk Pond” with a pleased smile on her face, as if she’s gotten away with something. She left the group in 1992, having, you get the feeling, lived a hundred lives as part of it, none of them finished, which may be why there isn’t an obvious sentence in the book. Over a little more than 200 pages, Leon’s short, self-contained chapters, often less than a page, are the opposite of diary entries: considered, honed, until every word has its own reason for being where it is. There are triumphs and misery, but no self-praise, no self-pity."
- Greil Marcus reviews 'Memoirs Of A Babe In Toyland' (published Minnesota Historical Society) by Michelle Leon, Pitchfork
'Eye Rise' - Babes In Toyland
-- --- --
'Fontanelle' (1992) - Babes In Toyland
"Babes in Toyland's most focused and powerful statement, Fontanelle was vaguely associated with grunge upon its release, and tossed in with the Pacific Northwest-centered riot grrrl movement after the fact. In truth, it lies somewhere in between, its raw punkish fury and metallic grind making it the spiritual kin of L7. Fontanelle isn't necessarily explicitly feminist, since the glorious noise of rock & roll is viewed as the ultimate empowerment. And that noise is all over Fontanelle -- it's arguably the harshest, most abrasive recording to come out of any part of the riot grrrl camp. Like L7, Babes in Toyland are more about pure sound than songs, but the similarities end there. Instead of just grinding away on simple power chords, Kat Bjelland's distinctive guitar work is full of intentionally grating dissonance, which is complemented by the jittery rhythm section. Vocally, Bjelland can move from a faux little-girl coo to a bellowing snarl in the space of one line; put together, all of this imbues Fontanelle with a terrifically explosive tension. Fittingly, the closing track features nothing but Bjelland, her guitar, and the sound of breaking glass bottles. Measured by any standard, Fontanelle is a frighteningly primal record, one whose sheer ferocity Babes in Toyland never quite captured this convincingly anywhere else."
- Steve Huey, AllMusic
'Bluebell' - Babes In Toyland
-- --- --
'Painkillers' (1992) - Babes In Toyland
"Babes in Toyland came before riot grrrl and had a huge influence on a lot of us: These strong, kickass women playing fierce music. They take it to this whole other level and show this grotesqueness of womanhood.
“Swamp Pussy” actually helped me learn to drive. You’re expected to start driving at 16, but I didn’t do that because there was no extra car to use. I started practicing more when I was home from college. I would pop in the tape of Babes in Toyland’s first album, Spanking Machine, and listen to the whole thing over and over. “Swamp Pussy” is the first song and it comes in like thunder — it totally gave me the confidence to drive more aggressively. I was like the granny on the road before that.
On Bratmobile’s first tour in the early ’90s, I met Babes in Toyland’s roadie when we passed through Minneapolis. He gave me gave me [frontwoman] Kat [Bjelland]’s address, and I wrote her this 10-page letter telling her all about how important her music was to me. We eventually started a correspondence, and she told me after a while, “I feel like you’re the first person who really gets what I’m trying to do.”
- Allison Wolfe, Pitchfork
'Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft' - Babes In Toyland
-- --- --
'Nemesisters' (1995) - Babes In Toyland
"The guitars continue to crunch, the drums continue to pound and Kat Bjelland continues to spit out the vitriol as only she can but nevertheless this album is considered the ugly duckling of the Babes all too brief recording career. Well don't believe the hype for as far as I'm concerned this is a very strong piece of work by the band. I can think of no song on here that I dislike whilst "Drivin'" and "Surd" for me number amongst the band's classics, late but welcome entries into their definitive canon. Perhaps for the naysayers it had become a little old by 1995 but for me the eerily distorted grunge-driven sound that the Babes pedalled will never go out of style and so this album looms large in my listening."
- Kere Saspa, Rate Your Music
Babes In Toyland ~ 'Sweet '69'
-- --- ---- ---- --- --
-- --- ---- ---- --- --
Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Harrison was born on July 9, 1964 in San Francisco, California. Her mother is author and psychotherapist Linda Carroll (née Risi) who was adopted and raised by a prominent Italian Catholic family in California. Her father is Hank Harrison, a publisher and road manager for the Grateful Dead (Love's godfather is the band's bassist Phil Lesh). Her grandmother is novelist Paula Fox and her great-grandmother is screenwriter Elsie Fox.
Love spent her early years in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco until her parents' divorced in 1969. In 1970, Carroll took custody of Love and moved to Marcola, Oregon. Love attended school in Eugene where her disruptive behaviour and failure to integrate led to her being tested for autism. She spent some time in a juvenile correctional facility in Salem and was subsequently placed in foster care.
Love took courses at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where her biological father was now living. She relocated to Liverpool, England and became a runner for the Teardrop Explodes. After a stint dancing in Japan, Love returned to California where she worked alongside Kat Bjelland in the band Sugar Babydoll. She also became vocalist for the band Faith No More but they opted to recruit Chuck Mosley full-time.
'Blood' - Faith No More
Love enrolled in an acting program at the San Francisco Art Institute where she studied under experimental director George Kuchar. Love was subsequently featured in Kuchar's short film 'Club Vatican'. She became a key member of Liverpudlian film director Alex Cox's informal stock company of performers and musicians, which kickstarted her career as a movie actress. An impressed Andy Warhol featured Love in an episode of his interview show 'Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes'. In 1988, Love picked up a guitar and formed her own band, Hole. Based in Los Angeles, Hole consisted of lead guitarist Eric Erlandson, bassist Lisa Roberts and drummer Caroline Rue. Future line-ups have seen significant changes to the rhythm section, with Patty Schemel taking over on drums and the band recording albums with three key bassists in Jill Emery, Kristen Pfaff and Melissa Auf Der Maur. Love's solo album 'America's Sweetheart' (2004) features contributions from Schemel. Hole made a comeback album in 2010. “I grew up listening to Babes in Toyland, Hole, Bikini Kill; I watched 120 minutes. I remember being THAT kid wearing a Sonic Youth tee to middle school.”
- Erika Anderson (EMA), Rolling Stone
'Best Sunday Dress' - Pagan Babies
-- --- ---- ---- --- --
3 Albums
'Pretty On The Inside' (1991) - Hole
"Even before she ascended to celebrity spousehood, Love was the scarred beauty queen of underground-rock society, a fearless confessor and feedback addict whose sinister charisma — part ravaged baby doll, part avenging kamikaze angel — suggested the dazed, enraged, illegitimate daughter of Patti Smith. Hole’s 1991 debut album, the gloriously assaultive Pretty on the Inside, remains a classic of sex-mad self-laceration, hypershred guitars and full-moon bawling, in particular the spectacular goring of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now” (a k a “Clouds”) at the end of the record. You don’t really know the solitary despair at the core of that song until you’ve heard Love’s embittered delivery of the last two lines — “It’s life’s illusions I recall/I really don’t know life at all” — over guitarist Eric Erlandson’s fading squall."
- David Fricke, Rolling Stone
'Dicknail' - Hole
-- --- --
'Live Through This' (1994) - Hole
"Few albums provide such a perfect couple of album art and musical sound as Hole’s 1994 sophomore album Live Through This. The raw, snotty, painfully open sound of Courtney Love and co.’s fearsome alternative punk sounds like what’s actually going on behind the facade of the garish homecoming photo on the album’s sleeve. So much of that comes from the manic smile, bugged eyes, and painted face of the homecoming queen on the cover, whose phoned-in glee seems to hide an ocean of embarrassment, insecurity, guile and rage. That said, the identity of the model behind this iconic cover isn’t known to everyone; in fact, for some time people wondered if the homecoming queen on the sleeve was Courtney herself. But the woman on Live Through This’ cover is in fact model and wellness entrepreneur Leilani Bishop."
- Chris Krovatin, Kerrang!
'I Think That I Would Die' - Hole
-- --- --
'Celebrity Skin' (1998) - Hole
“I used to do drugs, but don’t tell anyone or it will ruin my image.”
- Courtney Love, New Musical Express |
|
|
|
Post by petrolino on Aug 30, 2019 22:02:54 GMT
🍩 Kim Shattuck : Party Crasher 🎂
'My Crazy Afternoon'
Kimberly Dianne Shattuck was born on July 17, 1963 in Orange County, California. She studied photography in college and began creating guitar sounds by mimicing the soundtracks to some of her favourite cartoons, including 'Snagglepuss', 'The Yogi Bear Show', 'The Flinstones' and 'Felix The Cat'. Shattuck began a career as a professional photographer and developed an exacting method built around her desire to one day capture the perfect image. Starting to feel a little burnt out from the stress caused by obsessive image collecting, Shattuck decided to instead pursue a professional career in music. She took up a vacant slot in Paula Pierce's garage rock band the Pandoras, becoming their regular bass player in 1985, a role she'd fill for the next five years. The Pandoras fatally fragmented in 1990 when keyboardist Melanie Vammen left the band. Drummer Sheri Kaplan was next to head for the exit door and Shattuck departed shortly afterwards, causing the band to collapse completely. Guitarist Rita D'Albert went on to showcase Lucha VaVoom, a burlesque wrestling circus co-founded in California by Liz Fairbairn. Shattuck and Vammen formed a new band, the Muffs, in 1991. The original line-up was completed by bass player Ronnie Barnett and drummer Criss Crass (also of Vains). Having recorded their first album, Crass split and his position was temporarily filled by touring drummer Jim Laspesa. The drum stool was then permanently filled by Roy McDonald of Redd Kross. Rhythm guitarist Vammen also left the band (later joining The Leaving Trains), stripping them down to become a dynamic 3-piece unit which has characterised the band's wall of sound ever since.
'Keep Holding Me' - The Muffs
After Kim Deal left the Pixies in 2013, the band hired Kim Shattuck as a touring bassist but she had a bust-up with drummer David Lovering and was released over the phone (to be replaced by multi-instrumentalist Paz Lenchantin). Shattuck has also recorded with White Flag who maintain a large, rotating merry-go-round of musicians, and she's a core member of The Beards alongside cuddlecore queen Lisa Marr (Cub, Buck, The Lisa Marr Experiment) and Sherri Solinger of the Murmurs.
The Muffs have a new album scheduled for release later this year; it sounds like it could make a nice companion piece to the group's odds and sods collection 'Hamburger' (2000). "Southern California icons The Muffs have announced their new album, the first in five years, titled No Holiday. Out on October 18th, the album will feature 18 songs, written between 1991 and 2017. That’s a long time to wait to record something!
Drummer Roy McDonald adds, “I think No Holiday is the most unique album we’ve ever made — 18 songs that run the spectrum from full-blown productions to intimate home recordings. This was a labor of love for us and I think that comes out in the record. We wanted to create something lasting and special. I, for one, couldn’t be happier with the results.”
- Rachael Clifford, Dying Scene
Nardwuar V Kim Shattuck
-- --- ---- ---- --- --
8 Albums
'Thumbelina'
--- ---- ---
'Stop Pretending' (1986) - The Pandoras / 'Rock Hard' (1988) - The Pandoras
"In the early 1980s, the stripped-down, fuzzed-up rawness of the mid-1960s began to re-emerge from L.A.’s underground. At the forefront of this scene was the all-female garage punk group, The Pandoras. Led by Paula Pierce, The Pandoras married their reverence for the garage rock sounds of bands like ? and the Mysterians with their early love of The Ramones and the Mod Rock sounds of The Who and The Kinks. These four talented multi-instrumentalists delivered bad girl sex appeal at a time when other female groups on the scene took a gentler, daintier approach to their image, blazing a trail for future notable female rockers such as Pandoras’ fan Courtney Love. Despite several personnel changes, dueling lineups, and even an awkward hair metal phase, The Pandoras became one of the most influential and successful bands of L.A.’s Garage Rock Revival, playing shows across the country and overseas with The Cramps, Iggy Pop, and Nina Hagen."
- Amanda Sheppard, Please Kill Me
Poorman hosts The Pandoras
-- --- --
'The Muffs' (1993) - The Muffs
"Back in 1993, grunge was taking over the world, with its flannel shirts and in many cases, barely listenable bands; much of the world was crying out for something less dull, something that would sparkle and lighten the mood. Handily, the Muffs came along; then a four-piece including two ex-members of the Pandoras, Kim Shattuck (lead guitar and vocals) and Melanie Vammen (rhythm guitar), plus Ronnie Barnett (bass) and Criss Crass (drums). In Shattuck, the band had a front person whose voice initially sounded quite sweet, but it didn't take long to hear the snottier, almost sarcastic tone that underlined her performance. The other noticeable quality about Shattuck's voice was that out of nowhere, she could produce a howl that was akin to a trapped wolf seeking freedom; quite a thing to behold.
The album itself had a production team which included Rob Cavallo, the man who one year later would be part of Green Day's meteoric rise to fame, fortune and the world of the mainstream, but who at this stage was a much lesser known man than he is today as Chairman of Warner Bros. The production was and remains spot on in terms of a suitably beefy sound that allows the guitars to come across with the right amount of treble, creating a perfect pop-punk output. From the moment that the first chords of "Lucky Guy" rang out, it was obvious that Cavallo and co. had hit the right note with the production job, one that worked extremely well for the band and the pop-punk sound it had.
The Muffs took the sound of the Ramones and added their own twist on it, and the result was a mass of catchy songs, frequently containing acerbic lyrics aimed at a variety of targets. These themes leant themselves to Shattuck's vocals, which were underpinned by a less caustic musical accompaniment meaning that the tunes would stick like glue once heard a couple of times, and you'd find yourselves singing melodic songs with titles such as "Big Mouth" as if they were songs of joy and happiness. It wasn't always a case of musical vitriol, as there are songs that take a more positive view on the world but for me, Shattuck never sounded better than when she was honing in on her prey."
- Rick Cocksedge, Punknews
"If riotous punk lights your fuse, The Muffs should set you off like a rocket—so strap in! All killer, no filler."
- James Cole, 'The Muffs'
"Kim Shattuck spent five years playing bass with the Pandoras before she left and formed a band of her own, and as a result the 1993 debut album from the Muffs is a bit like Shattuck's pop-punk version of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass -- having spent years piling up demos for worthwhile songs that didn't have a home, Shattuck and her bandmates had plenty of winners to choose from, and though the Muffs could more than deliver the goods, it's the consistent quality of the tunes that really made this album click. The punky, downstroked guitars of Shattuck and Melanie Vammen and the crash-and-bash rhythms of bassist Ronnie Barnett and drummer Criss Crass were the perfect vehicle for Shattuck's songs, but it's the irresistible melodic hooks of "Eye to Eye," "Lucky Guy," "From Your Girl," and "Every Single Thing" that elevated The Muffs from good pop-centric punk (or punk-centric pop) to something that truly stood out. Shattuck also proved to be an astute and skillful lyricist, with a strong witty streak and a punk gal's snarky sensibility, but her take on relationships on The Muffs is significantly more articulate and heartfelt than nearly any of her peers -- it's hard to imagine someone delivering two breakup songs that hit their target as well as "Saying Goodbye" and "All for Nothing" while taking such strikingly different approaches, and it takes courage to wrap a song about stalking around a melody and guitar hook as addictive as "Everywhere I Go." The production by Rob Cavallo and David Katznelson is just a bit indulgent -- the album could have played better without the Korla Pandit organ interlude, the goofy wind effects track, or the 31-second Angry Samoans cover -- but they get the sound of this band down beautifully, and given how closely Cavallo would follow this production template on Green Day's Dookie the following year, one wonders if a few of these tunes could have been radio hits if Billie Joe and his pals had gotten there first and greased the wheels for an album of similarly hooky punk tunes. Time has been kind to The Muffs, and more than 20 years after its initial release, it sounds like one of the best and brightest albums to emerge from the '90s pop-punk explosion."
- Mark Deming, AllMusic
'I Don't Like You' / 'Big Mouth' \ 'Saying Goodbye' - The Muffs
-- --- --
'Blonder And Blonder' (1995) - The Muffs
"Regardless of the band’s ultimate level of success, Blonder and Blonder remains a fun, breezy listen 21 years later. Singer/guitarist Kim Shattuck’s songwriting is super focused on melody, and her songs are short and to the point. That songwriting style put the Muffs in a weird no man’s land at the time. They were too poppy and sweet for the punk scene they were associated with, but Shattuck’s nasally voice, love of feedback-laden guitars, and penchant for screaming made them a tougher sell to general audiences. (The only explanation I have for Hole’s commercial success around the same time is that Kurt Cobain’s name counted for a hell of a lot right after he died.)
That dichotomy shows up right away on Blonder and Blonder. “Agony” has catchy verses and a big sing-along chorus, but Shattuck’s singing on the chorus drifts into borderline screaming on certain words. Likewise, the outro of the song finds her doing full-on wordless howls for the final 30 seconds. It’s pretty great, actually."
- Chris Conaton, Pop Matters
"The Muffs are proving to be one of the best live attractions to come out of America this decade. Their peculiar brand of Californian hardcore pop punk trades on solid, catchy bass hooks and demented drumming that verges on the ridiculous. I'm not at all sure why the singer feels the urge to show the audience what colour panties she's wearing, but she really can shred her guitar for such a tiny thing and she screams like a banshee on speed. Nice knickers too."
- Adrian Culverhouse, London Scene
"We titled 'Blonder and Blonder' after something Courtney Love said to me once when she walked by me in a club, because my hair was blonder than she'd seen it and she felt threatened. She said "Blonder and blonder, I see." Ronnie brought it to the table that "Blonder and Blonder" should be an album title."
- Kim Shattuck, Pheonix New Times
'Sad Tomorrow' - The Muffs
-- --- --
'Happy Birthday To Me' (1997) - The Muffs
"The brassy, raspy, poppy punk-rock of The Muffs is so good that the L.A. band has earned a luxury usually only afforded to bands like Ramones: Its formula is so hummably winning that it has the right—and perhaps even the obligation—to record the same album over and over again. The new Happy Birthday To Me barely tweaks the sound of its first two records, yet it sounds just right. Why change your approach when you've got it just right? Kim Shattuck's vocals still ooze unmistakably Joan Jettish attitude, and her band still keeps everything as concise as possible: Lose the obligatory bonus track, and all 15 songs are over and ready to be replayed after a mere 35 minutes. The album's momentum is such that it feels like The Muffs recorded it live in the studio straight through without a break. Is Happy Birthday To Me innovative or earth-shatteringly original? Of course not, but it's an awful lot of deliriously spirited fun. What could be better?"
- Stephen Thompson, The A.V. Club
"The Muffs spent a lot of time on the road after the release of 1995's Blonder and Blonder, and you can hear how that live work paid off on the band's third album, 1997's Happy Birthday to Me. This edition of the Muffs sounds noticeably tighter and tougher here, while still maintaining the sense of snarky fun that's always been at the heart of their music. Kim Shattuck's guitar work is big and bold enough to comfortably carry the hooky melodies, and bassist Ronnie Barnett and drummer Roy McDonald play with enough muscle to get the job done, but with a swing that keeps the tunes light on their feet. Happy Birthday to Me sounds leaner and more elemental than the Muffs' first two albums, in part thanks to the succinct tunes Shattuck brought to these sessions (six of them don't even crack the two-minute mark). But more than any of their studio albums, Happy Birthday to Me captures the buzz of a good live show, with the musicians bounding through the set with a sense of fun and a powerful focus. And like much the Muffs' best work, Happy Birthday to Me is engaging and exciting while dealing with some of the less appealing aspects of life and love; Shattuck displays a heart, soul, and point of view here that's honest and adult, acting as a solid complement to the teen appeal of the melodies. The Muffs produced Happy Birthday to Me themselves (with an engineering assist from Sally Browder and Steve Holroyd), and the results speak to their smarts about knowing what works for them. (And the fact Shattuck cut her vocals at home may have a lot to do with why her singing here has more nuance than on their first two LPs). Happy Birthday to Me failed to live up to sales expectations and proved to be the Muffs last album for a major label, but if there was a poppy punk band that deserved to grab the brass ring in the late '90s, it was this one, and this album captures them in excellent form."
- Mark Deming, AllMusic
'Oh Nina' - The Muffs
-- --- --
'Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow' (1999) - The Muffs
"The Muffs do what they do, which is provide a simple and rocking platform for Kim Shattuck's sparkling melodies and smart lyrics. Meanwhile, I do what I do, which is enjoy the hell out of their work. Their records sound best on sunny spring days. They also sound great when you're royally pissed off at someone. Shattuck writes some of the best angry songs in rock because she never lets her anger consume her. She's always looking up and moving on. She's gonna be okay, you can tell."
- Jason Hernandez, Rate Your Music
"I don’t like new country stuff – I think that stuff is really bad – but I like some old country stuff. But I think I only got into that recently, since I was in a band. I kind of approach music as a songwriter: I look at different styles of music to see what’s there, what it’s made of. I think you have to keep looking and keep changing a little, just to keep yourself interested. I hate when I hear bands imitate themselves. I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz lately. I can’t play it, but there are certain jazz chords I like that I throw in sometimes. But I use them in a pop way, not in a pretentious jazz way to show off.
Totally. I can’t dissect jazz because I don’t understand it. I’m impressed because I don’t get it. But I like it. In rock music, I think I’ve heard and played most of the little tricks and I’m sick to death of it. But when I hear a really good song, I go nuts. I get really emotional and it’s embarrassing. I get a chill up and down my spine and get all teary-eyed. I don’t want to be around anyone when I’m enjoying something. I’d rather hate something than show all kinds of dumb emotion."
- Kim Shattuck, Lollipop
'Don't Pick On Me' - The Muffs
-- --- --
'Really Really Happy' (2004) - The Muffs
"It’s been half a decade since Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow and Kim Shattuck seems to have matured a bit (though I’d say it’s even odds that you’ll still get a flash of panties or two at a gig). And she’s given herself a bit of space in these tunes. So while she still has her growl and strained moments, those leaps into her screaming thing are minimized. As best as she can she coaxes out the melodies with a caress – augmented by wafting backing vocals through the magic of multi-tracking and the occasional participation of her sister Kristen. There is a multitude of melodies spread around these seventeen tracks (only three break the three-minute mark and only one of those by more than a handful of seconds), and yes, the melodies will be familiar to those of you with any of the previous platters. With most numbers paced at a mid-tempo her guitar playing shows a malleability and skill that previously might have been obscured under the buzzsaw. Some of this might be a consequence of how this album was recorded: It says here that the drums were done in a studio with everything else down in Kim’s kitchen, which implies a piecemeal process."
- David M. Snyder, Pop Diggers
"It's certainly good to know that Kim Shattuck and her partners in pop-punk, the Muffs, are still at it 11 years after dropping their first long-player (particularly since the sainted and not dissimilar Fastbacks have called it a career), and 2004's Really Really Happy shows that she's held on to the virtues that made her (and her band) lots of fun in the first place. Shattuck still has a great ear for guitar hooks, can play 'em with an admirable sense of chunky economy, and writes lyrics that blend an overgrown teenager's sense of snooty goofiness (or goofy snottiness) without shortchanging the relationship stuff that's usually the province of us grown-ups. Fine and dandy so far, but the album's drawbacks can seemingly be summed up in the following notes in the disc's booklet: "Drums recorded at Swinghouse Studios. Everything else recorded in Kim's kitchen." This would tend to suggest that most of Really Really Happy was recorded under "don't bother the neighbors" circumstances, and unfortunately it sounds like it -- most of these tracks just don't rock as hard or punch as deep as they need to, and they lack the propulsive live-sounding feel of the group's best records. Good songs, solid band, fun listening, but between you and me, Kim, if you're gonna cut the next Muffs album at home, maybe you should look into soundproofing the basement so you, bassist Ronnie Barnett, and drummer Roy McDonald can all crank it out at once. Trust me, if you do, I think we'll all be thanking ourselves afterward."
- Mark Deming, AllMusic
'Really Really Happy' - The Muffs
-- --- --
'Whoop Dee Doo' (2014) - The Muffs
"Southern California pop-punk trio The Muffs—featuring singer/guitarist Kim Shattuck, drummer Roy McDonald and bassist Ronnie Barnett—were a staple during my teen years, after I fell in love with their crunchy, feedback-filled anthem “Funny Face” on the 1995 Angus soundtrack. Shattuck’s unmistakable voice was wonderfully rough around the edges and more passionate than perfect, making it so fun to sing along to, and the band’s ability to craft a catchy melody remains untouched to this day (though many new-school pop punkers like Tacocat and Upset do come close).
The Muffs were one of the few successful female-fronted pop-punk bands when the genre felt like a sea of men. They had a song on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, their cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” was featured on the Clueless soundtrack, and you could play along to their song “Outer Space” on Rock Band. They seemed to be popping up everywhere. Then, without any kind of announcement or fanfare, The Muffs quietly went away after releasing the album Really Really Happy in 2004.
“We didn’t break up; we just took an extremely long break,” Shattuck says a few weeks before the band releases Whoop Dee Doo, its first album in 10 years. “It’s like any family situation—you don’t see each other for a while, but when you see each other it’s like ‘Oh, hey!’ So no, there was no breaking up. Although, I wasn’t feeling like being in a band for a few of those years.”
A few years after Really Really Happy came out, Shattuck was burnt out on music and started to pursue a career in photography. “I did that a long time ago, when I was super young, and I wanted to get back into that, so I took some refresher courses and started doing it in earnest,” she says. “It was fun. I just don’t like to do photography for money.”
Then last year she also briefly played with the Pixies, following Kim Deal’s departure. Despite being fired, Shattuck says it was a positive experience. “It was a blast! I had so much fun. I’m really glad I got to do it because it was really fun learning somebody else’s songs and not being the front-person. It was cool to just rock out and not have to worry about being in the spotlight.”
- Megan Selling, Paste
"Kim Shattuck takes a quick breath at the beginning of the Muffs' first new album in 10 years, then picks up exactly where she and the band left off--snarling, very tunefully, about a boy, verse-chorus-verse, ooh-ooh-ooh, WAAAAUUUGH. That's also exactly where the Muffs began. There is scarcely a more consistent band in all of American pop-punk; singer-guitarist Shattuck and bassist Ronnie Barnett have been Muffs since 1991, and drummer Roy McDonald is the new kid, having joined in 1994. Nothing on Whoop Dee Doo would have been out of place on any of their five earlier records.
And that's saying a lot, actually: they haven't slowed down or softened their attack, or lost their way with tune-construction. Even Shattuck's voice remains barely touched by time. The scratchy sleepless-night tone she used to reserve for her bloodthirsty end-of-verse howls has crept into most of the rest of her singing, although it's not unwelcome. (As for her habit of inserting little glottal stops into syllables that go on for more than one note—"yoo, oo, ou"—that's more of an acquired taste.)
The Muffs apparently never really broke up, although they spent a while out of the public eye; their biggest recent exposure came when Shattuck was Kim Deal's stand-in for the Pixies for six months last year. That role didn't last, but it was an inspired choice on the Pixies' part: the Muffs' instrumental sound had, and still has, more in common with the Pixies than with most of their grunge-era contemporaries. Their songwriting, on the other hand, is very different (they're writing much better songs than the Pixies are these days, too), and it's very heavily inspired by '60s rock 'n' roll."
- Douglas Wolk, Pitchfork
'Weird Boy Next Door' - Kim Shattuck |
|
|
|
Post by petrolino on Aug 31, 2019 23:59:58 GMT
🍷 Carla Bozulich ("Hello kitty.") 🍮
'I'm Gonna Stop Killing Today'
Carla Ragin Bozulich was born on December 24, 1965 in New York City, New York but grew up in San Pedro, California (she's friendly with the Minutemen). She developed herself as a performance artist during her high school years while learning to play guitars and keyboards, launching her musical career in Lawndale through the formation of her first band The Neon Vains. Working under the stage name Carla Noelle, Bozulich contributed vocals and percussion to Gary Kail & Zurich 16's album 'Creative Nihilism' (1984), her first of numerous recorded collaborations with experimental musicians and artists.
Bozulich next entered into the funk group Invisible Chains, leading to what might be the first album release of her career. A gifted painter who sometimes paints houses to make money, Bozulich provided artwork for some of the band's promotional tools and limited releases. Invisible Chains disappeared into the ether and Bozulich's precise movements across the rest of the decade are shrouded in mystery as she became a murky figure submerged deep inside the underground.
'Hands On The Wheel' - Carla Bozulich & Willie Nelson
At the end of the 1980s, Bozulich began gigging on keyboards in the industrial outfit Ethyl Meatplow whose dance platforms enabled her to explore her penchant for creative baby doll burlesque. The band also served as a launchpad for notorious rapper Wee-Wee. Joined by Biff Barefoot Sanders III on drums, they tore up the nightclub circuit and entered into some major tours before disbanding in 1993. In 1994, Bozulich was finally able to assert creative control with the formation of her own recording band, the Geraldine Fibbers. The line-up consisted of guitarist Daniel Keenan, bassist William Tutton, banjo player Kevin Fitzgerald, viola player Jessy Greene, violinist Leyna Malika and multi-instrumentalist Nels Cline. Poor record sales forced the dissolution of the Fibbers and Bozulich got caught up in some strange contract wranglings. This led her to form a new unit with Cline in 1998 named Scarnella. Known primarily for their epic live improvisations, Scarnella have recorded two albums to date, released 12 years apart. It's difficult to address the next 20 years in Bozulich's musical career as she's worked with countless artists on the fringe while maintaining a close working relationship with Cline who also splinters off into various artistic directions. Her established recording outfit Evangelina have released records steadily but they are a touring collective, with musicians coming and going, constants being bassist Tara Barnes, violinist Jessica Moss, programmer Dominic Cramp, Cline and Bozulich, with contributions from Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Bozulich's also composed music for film and theatre.
"It seems that the origins of even formal composition are improvisation. Shostakovich first had to dream the notes, the chords, the instrumentation, the theme. Development of parts involves still more improvisation - though the theme is hopefully firming up. What is improvisation but translating the dream of a sound? And it can never happen that way again but it can become a roadmap to something more permanent. It’s a thing of beauty for a work to be improvised in the popular sense, to be born and die before your very ears. Every song starts somewhere in magic land, right down to the Ramones, “Dudes, how does this sound?”
- Carla Bozulich, Fifteen Questions
'California Tuffy' - Geraldine Fibbers
-- --- ---- ---- --- --
7 Albums
'The Blue Room' - Evangelista
--- ---- ---
'Invisible Chains' (1986) - Invisible Chains
"I love anything that counterbalances my heavy-handed nature. I think that might be what drew me originally to old-style country music. And I'd differentiate and emphasise 'old-style'. I was getting some noodles yesterday and they were playing 'new country'. And these guys are singing slick, heavily produced country tracks with Autotune and stuff. It was like a weird R&B version of country lyrics. His lady still threw him out of the house and he still had too much Jack Daniels but it was this weird Autotuned version."
- Carla Bozulich, The Quietus
'Ten Thousand Songs For Horny Dancers' - Invisible Chains
-- --- --
'Happy Days, Sweetheart' (1993) - Ethyl Meatplow
"John Napier (Wee Wee) was the most dynamic performer I've ever known. Sick, scary and loving. The cat that knew the best books and records and shortwave channels. He would pull things out of nowhere. I shiver to think what I would have missed and maybe someday I'll make a list! That was John. Same with tons of stuff. He just found things. He cared not for being cool. He treated people the way he thought was right and mostly that meant very gently and with great interest. Sometimes he was an ass. Sometimes he'd sit down for hours with someone and teach something excellent. I'm not gonna pretty him up. I wouldn't want him to do it to me. The things about him that were fascinating and kind can't all be listed but he was also a volatile guy and a bit dangerous at times. We all were. And we all found and loved eachother and were a real (f*cked up) family and our extended family was and is very large."
- Carla Bozulich remembers her friend John Napier, Pitchfork
'Car' - Ethyl Meatplow
-- --- --
'The Geraldine Fibbers (1994) – The Geraldine Fibbers
"The music of the Geraldine Fibbers, which evolved from L.A.'s post-punk scene, seemed tailor-made for Bozulich's bluesy evocations of the southern California rock 'n' roll evolution: witchy women were transforming into tuff gnarlin' grrls. What were the boys of summer to do now but watch, confused and transfixed?
Musically, the Fibbers marriage between rock 'n' roll, country and punk (with wonderfully constructed guitar and fiddle consummations) worked perfectly amid the darkly confessional lyrics. Bozulich's husky voice seemed to catch in my own throat like a forgotten gender-memory. Okay, I was hooked.
Unlike the band X (formed in '77), Bozulich didn't just flirt with the country rock sound-- she took it back to the trailer park and really got to know it. With William Tutton on stand up bass, Jessy Greene (and later Leyna Malika) on electric violin, Kevin Fitzgerald on drums, and Daniel Keenan on guitar, the Fibbers rocked and rolled-- without missing that millennium beat between punk, jazz, funk and country.
Back when Bozulich was the yin to John Napier's yang in the funky, sometimes clunky, band Ethyl Meatplow (Happy Days, Sweetheart, which was produced by Barry Adamson, an original member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as former bassist for the bleak pre-drone band Magazine), her talent was not yet in full blossom.
It wasn't until the break with Meatplow that Bozulich hit her stride. In '95, not only did she sing two tracks on Mike Watt's fun 'n' funky Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (including my personal Watt favorite, "Sidemouse Advice"), but Carla Bozulich's hard work had finally gotten her a contract with Virgin Records. Fronting one of the truly seminal bands to come out of L.A. (okay, along with the Doors), the Geraldine Fibbers released Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home (1995). Even Spin Magazine rose and took note, voting them one of the best new bands of the year.
The X country-western LA influence was most clearly eluded to in Which Part of Get Thee Gone Don't You Understand? While it wasn't an official follow-up, but rather a compilation of outtakes and live tracks, its inclusion of such underrated classics as the brilliant little ditty "She's A Dog," only illuminated Bozulich's talent as a singer/songwriter."
- Meg Wise, Perfect Sound Forever
"I went to music school every Saturday as a kid, and I remember seeing all these older girls, tragic-looking in their wine-colored velour dresses (it was the ’90s), and wondering if the hickies on their necks were from boys or playing the violin. Carla Bozulich could have been one of these girls, listening to Diamanda Galas and Daisy Chainsaw on her Walkman between cello and piano lessons."
- Gerry Mak, Lost At E Minor
'Blue Cross' - Geraldine Fibbers, Chris Ballew & Beck Hansen
-- --- --
'Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home' (1995) - The Geraldine Fibbers
"Last month, one of Record Store Day's more unexpected exclusives was a 1995 rock album released on vinyl for the very first time, the California band The Geraldine Fibbers' debut Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home. On May 5, that limited edition reissue was made more widely available by Jealous Butcher Records, with an added bonus: the fourth side of the double LP contained four bonus tracks, including "Thank You For Giving Me Life," the first new Geraldine Fibbers song in two decades.
For the time being, the reissue of Lost Somewhere seems to be limited to vinyl; the album hasn't been in print in years, and it has never been available on iTunes or streaming services. Its absence is curious because the band's other album, Butch, released two years later by the same label, Virgin Records, has remained available for purchase and streaming all the while. But Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home deserves to be heard. A collection of cathartic noise rock anthems that combine winsome country melodies with roaring guitars, it is, in all sincerity, my favorite rock album of the 90s.
Riding a wave of rave reviews in Spin and other publications , Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home was a critical hit at the time, voted the 26th best album of the year in the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll. It finished ahead of blockbusters like Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and enduring indie rock touchstones like Alien Lanes by Guided By Voices. 1995 represented perhaps the peak of mainstream visibility for bands like Sonic Youth and Pavement. Geraldine Fibbers songs like "Dragon Lady" present similarly squealing guitars and abstract wordplay—but with an unlikely country twang as well as a gripping vulnerability, romance, and sincerity that those contemporaries often shied away from. There's nothing tentative or half-hearted about the album's 12 tracks, each of which explode with color and emotion, tragedy and mysticism. It's easy to imagine a band like this conquering the world, but instead, the world kept spinning and more or less forgot about The Geraldine Fibbers."
- Al Shipley, VICE
"Carla Bozulich, who I love, she's a semi-brutarian. But she's like an angelic brutarian. I love Carla. She's one of my favorite people and musicians, voices. There are not many of us."
- Lydia Lunch, Noisey
'Dragon Lady' - Geraldine Fibbers
-- --- --
'Butch' (1997) - The Geraldine Fibbers
"Somewhere there must be a funky old roadhouse where the Geraldine Fibbers are the band seven days a week, 365 days a year. Even if it exists only in the Fibbers' imaginations and those of their most ardent fans, it's a tiny place off the highway where you can't help but have a great time, dance till you're sweaty, then pass out cold under the table. At some point in the evening, you'll probably have a sobbing fit in the bathroom and a revelation about who you're loving 'cause that's the kind of raw, abandoned energy the Fibbers spit out in spades. They draw on intensity from any and every source: hurt, joy, rage, loneliness, nostalgia, lust, loss, ecstasy -- and whatever else I've left out.
It's hard to draw a straight line between where the L.A. foursome's punk roots end and their country obsession begins. (Or should that be the other way around -- punk obsession and country roots? That's also hard to tell.) On their new, nearly perfect "Butch," both camps are equally represented."
- Natasha Stovall, Salon
"When Wilco needed a new guitarist for touring in support of its new album, A Ghost Is Born, leader Jeff Tweedy was the perfect gentleman. He called Carla Bozulich and asked for her permission to invite her longtime musical partner, Nels Cline, to join the band.
"He knew it would be kind of a drag for her, and it has been, because we're a team," explained Cline, who comes to the Bay Area in the new Wilco lineup for two sold-out shows, Sunday, Nov. 14 at Oakland's Paramount Theatre and Monday, Nov. 15 at the Fillmore, in San Francisco. "But Carla knew that this was something I probably should do," he continued during a phone conversation last week from the Wilco rehearsal loft in Chicago. "She had seen me turn down things in the past that she thought would be interesting to a normal person."
Since 1996, when he joined the Geraldine Fibbers, the "abnormal" incendiary guitarist has worked continuously with the scorching singer in projects ranging from their abstract Scarnella duo to Bozulich's recent stunning remake of Willie Nelson's classic Red Headed Stranger album.
But Cline and Bozulich haven't been totally inseparable: the guitarist has expanded his long-established credentials as an avant-garde improviser, performing and recording with his twin brother, percussionist Alex Cline, violinist Jeff Gauthier, bassist Steuart Liebig and others associated with the L.A.-based Cryptogramophone label; multireed virtuoso Vinny Golia; bassist Devin Sarno; guitarists Rod Poole and Jim McAuley (in an acoustic improv trio); and various ensembles with Bay Area drummer Scott Amendola. He's also the gonzo guitarist for former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt, as well as Jane's Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins's band, Banyan. And he's gone from the noisy extreme of jamming with Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore to recording guitar parts for such pop singer-songwriters as Noe Venable, A.J. Roach, Mia Doi Todd and Rickie Lee Jones.
Early this year, Cline found himself driving down the I-5, that long stretch of Central Valley asphalt he has traveled so many times between gigs in the San Francisco Bay Area and his home in Los Angeles. He had just polished off a round of Northern California gigs with Amendola's band, saxophonist Jessica Lurie's ensemble, the avant-electronic group Crater and his own Nels Cline Singers. "It was about two in the morning, and I was marveling at how busy I'd been," he recounted. "I had actually made my rent and a few hundred dollars. But I was thinking, 'I don't know how much longer I can do this -- this is really going to wear me out.' And that's when Carla called me on the cell and said, 'Jeff Tweedy's been calling, and he's going to ask you play with Wilco.' I didn't really have to think about it very long."
Tweedy had been familiar with Cline's inventive and versatile pyrotechnics at least since 1996, when the Geraldine Fibbers opened for Golden Smog, an on-and-off busman's-holiday project for members of the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Run Westy Run, the Replacements and Wilco. Bozulich kept up the acquaintance, and her band opened for Wilco last year. Tweedy also turned out to watch Cline play with his dynamic (all-instrumental) Singers trio."
- Derek Richardson, SF Gate
'Toybox' - Geraldine Fibbers
-- --- --
'Scarnella' (1998) - Scarnella
"In the age-old tradition of commercial interests strangling the life out of art, the Geraldine Fibbers' former label, Virgin, asked singer Carla Bozulich to dump her band and record a solo album because they weren't moving enough units, even though the Fibbers' second album, Butch, was praised by practically every critic. The Fibbers temporarily (perhaps permanently) disbanded after that awful experience, and Bozulich and boyfriend/guitarist Nels Cline began performing as Scarnella, which leans more toward the improvisational feedback clamor that Cline is known for. There are a few clunkers on their self-titled record, notably "A Millennium Fever Ballad," but the improv stuff is mostly captivating, and on "The Most Useless Thing" and "Dandelions," Bozulich's deep, fulminating voice and passionate lyrics are perfectly complimented by Cline's myriad of guitar sounds. Even though it does not lack for engaging twists and turns, this record is quite a departure from the Fibbers' avant-country sound, and not all of the Fibbers' fans will dig it."
- Adam Bregman, AllMusic
'Underdog' - Scarnella
-- --- --
'Phonometak Series 8' (2010) - Scarnella & Fluorescent Pigs
"At the end of Carla Bozulich’s online biography is a warning and an invitation: “She bites. Please feel free to touch her.” It makes her sound like a volatile cat, an impression borne out when you listen to her voice. In restrained mood it’s sleek and plush as midnight fur – but at the slightest provocation it becomes a yowling, scratching, gnashing thing, ripping into entrails and spitting blood. Watching her perform live, there’s no doubt that the voice controls the woman, rather than vice versa: her body contorts around it, as though it’s pummelling her from the inside. No wonder Bozulich discusses her voice with a certain resignation in interviews: “I would consider myself actually a writer, not just of lyrics,” she told a Canadian magazine in 2014. “I’m not a great musician. I think I’m a pretty fucking good lyricist. And I have the voice I have.”
It was a piece of her writing, as much as her music, that made me a devoted fan of Bozulich. In the mid-1990s, she published a short text in a fanzine, with the title Involuntary Movements of the Extremities: I Was Touched by Gustav Mahler, in which a woman looks back on a period in her life, around the age of 20, when she was financing her addiction to heroin and cocaine through increasingly risky prostitution. She recalls a sentimental hero trying to save her by booking her into rehab and giving her the collected symphonies of Mahler, which “caused my nerves to unhinge even further and reminded me of everything that was, and had ever been, wrong with the world”. Although the boy didn’t last, Mahler did, the “beauty and horror” of his music echoing her hard-won love of life. The heightened mood, the unvarnished tone, the compression of the writing dazzled me: the story was framed as fiction, but I – impressionable, and knowing that Bozulich had, in her late-teens and early 20s, almost died through drug abuse – read it as eye-opening fact.
Two decades on, and the qualities of that story remain characteristic features of Bozulich’s songwriting: fearless, visceral, bleak yet shot with hope; seemingly autobiographical yet slippery and ambiguous. Her lyrics have the ravaged intensity of deeply excavated personal truth, yet as often as not, the perspective she sings from is male, not female – and, as a fan of folk and country music, she has a way with the murder ballad that would have earned her multiple life sentences if any of it were real."
- Maddy Costa, The Guardian
'What I Did Today' - Scarnella & Fluorescent Pigs
|
|
|
|
Post by petrolino on Oct 3, 2019 17:21:29 GMT
¬ Remembering Kim Shattuck (1963 - 2019) 🎸
'We are very sorry to announce the passing of our bandmate and dear friend Kim Shattuck. Besides being a brilliant songwriter, rocking guitarist and singer/screamer extraordinaire, Kim was a true force of nature. While battling ALS, Kim produced our last album, overseeing every part of the record from tracking to artwork. She was our best friend and playing her songs was an honor. Goodbye Kimba. We love you more than we could ever say.'
- The Muffs
"Kim made an impression on everyone she met! As a friend said, I’ve never known anyone who said and did what she wanted as much as her. There’s so many stories, but I always think of the time with just the three of us in the van. Kim was asleep which meant me and Roy could play stuff she, to put it politely, wasn’t exactly fond of. This time we chose UFO’s “Strangers In The Night.” She awoke, heard about five seconds of it and said, dead serious: “Don’t play this even while I’m asleep! It’s going to sneak into my subconscious and affect my songwriting!!” [Laughter.] Needless to say her next batch of songs had no mentions of “Memphis” or “loose fucking!”
- Ronnie Barnett remembers Kim Shattuck, Rock 'N' Roll Globe
Kim Shattuck performs 'Just A Game' at WFMU (29 January, 2011)
'Heartbroken about Kim. One of the all time greats. How could anyone be such a brilliant pop songwriter, singer, screamer, and such a total punk-rock badass, and be so insanely cute at the same time? No one funnier or cooler. We love you, Kim.'
- Veruca Salt
'Beyond speechless right now with this news. Kim, thank you for being our big sister in the scene, for always supporting our art, for singing on our records and playing shows together. Total heartbreak with this news 💔😥 Everyone, play your Muffs records tonight.'
- The Dollyrots
'RIP Kim Shattuck of the Muffs.'
- Tacocat
'Kim Shattuck ♥️ So thankful I was introduced to the Muffs as a teen. Kim’s talent, confidence and style meant everything to me.'
- 🦞 𝒫𝑒𝒶𝒸𝒽 𝒦𝑒𝓁𝓁𝒾 𝒫𝑜𝓅
🦞
'We are devastated about Kim's passing. She was a genuine musician, writer and performer who committed her life for the cause. She brought all of her life force to her endeavors and we are fortunate for her sharing some of that life force with us.'
- Pixies
'From Your Girl' - The Muffs
I discovered the Pandoras' music when I was at school, through the purchase of a beat-up, second-hand cassette of 'Rock Hard'. It did exactly what it said on the tin. The Pandoras were a proper, hardcore rock outfit whose high living came at a price. They left behind some great records.
The Muffs came along when I was 15, maybe 16 years old. From this point on, I knew I was hooked for life, and I've been listening to Kim Shattuck's songs ever since; have never stopped and will never stop, for at least as long as I can operate a working turntable. Kim penned lyrics about hateful emotions, states of confusion and crazed episodes of all-out rage. Her lyrics were pensive yet agitated, her phrasing sedated yet volatile. On stage she was a mass of musical energy and a paragon of passion as she sang on through her despair.
Kim Shattuck became a unique identity on the L.A. punk scene through her work with two influential bands. As a lyricist, a musician and a songwriter, she was liquid dynamite. She managed to hold on to an uncompromising artistic vision at all costs, like Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto before her, while spitting out addictive hooks at will. She was a demon guitarist, a volcanic bassist and one of rock 'n' roll's ultimate screamers - no doubt.
Kim was an inspiration to many of us who formed bands back then. She was also one of the sweetest, funniest people in music. I feel desperately sad today, like a piece of my life's gone missing, but tomorrow's another day. Today, my heart goes out to Kim's family and friends, to all the fans, and to all the bands she was a part of. Tomorrow, I hope to be playing Kim's music, like I always do, and remembering life's for living.
'I won't hesitate,
And I will t-empt fate,
Now congratulate me, it is true ...
And it's true,
And it's true, yeah, I'm confused ...
Yeah, I'm confused ...
Yeah, I'm confused ...'
The Muffs _ 'I'm Confused'
"Today we say goodnight to our sister Kim Shattuck, but not goodbye. Never goodbye. Although she was battling ALS for the past two years, she never stopped creating until the very end, and who knows… she probably still is.
Our love is forever together.'
- Palmyra Delran
"Having a really hard time with this. Goodbye Kim Shattuck. I loved your spirit, your songs, your bands, your voice."
- Kathy Valentine
"Heartbroken to hear that Kim Shattuck is gone. 💔"
- Tanya Donelly
“My heart is forever broken.”
- Melanie Vammen
"This is very sad news. Kim’s music has always meant a ton to me. For Your Girl is one of my favorite songs of all time. Thanks for giving us so much incredible music."
- Marty Friedman
"Kim Shattuck was the person I knew was cooler than I could ever be. Her riffs and melodies and style and substance. I'm so sad she is no longer with us. Listen to The Muffs. Listen to The Pandoras."
- Molly Neuman
"Kim Shattuck, one of my all time greatest inspirations in music and in real life. I cannot believe that she’s gone. Love to her family and bandmates on this unthinkably sad day. Godspeed Kim, long live @themuffs. She was an incredible person with the best kind of rock n’ roll life story. I fell under her spell when I saw her swinging from the rafters and shredding her guitar and vocal chords downstairs at the Middle East in Central Square in ‘94. I’ve never seen a band so explosive."
- Kay Hanley
"So sad to hear the news about Kim. She was always so cool and tough. All my interactions with her were great. She was one of my favorite song writers. When we recorded 'Dookie' we listened to the first Muffs record constantly. We will hear that rock n roll scream from heaven."
- Billie Joe Armstrong
"Kim Shattuck RIP. She was so good, always will be."
- A.C. Newman
'K 💔'
- Neko Case
"RIP Kim Shattuck. I went to a Muffs show at Tower records in Woodland Hills when I was a wee thing. I got to meet her at the Toys r Us next door. I was over the moon. I still am. So sad..."
- Brian Aubert
"RIP Kim Shattuck. A very big inspiration to me. Such style / huge tunes. Very sad to learn this news."
- Katie Crutchfield
"RIP Kim Shattuck 😭"
- Katy Goodman
"Incredibly SAD to hear about #KimShattuck 's passing. A label + tour mate, friend and punk bad ass talent in every way! Cheers to you Kim, you will be very very missed. 💔"
- Karina Denike
“In 2014, my band Sex Stains had the honor of playing on the same lineup as the Muffs at Burger-a-Go-Go. Not that it’s a competition, but when Kim Shattuck came out on stage, she put on the most impressive performance of the night, hands-down. She rocked the hardest, had the best stage presence, looked the best doing it, and made it look easy. I stood there watching with my mouth open in awe. It made me so happy to see this woman close-ish to my age, refusing to be put out to pasture and absolutely ruling it on stage, in music, and in life.”
- Allison Wolfe
Thanks so much, Kim - I hope you're at peace now.
Always in my head, my hips and my heart.
'The Best Time Around'
Kim Shattuck ~ Rest in Eternal Peace 💔
|
|
|
|
Post by petrolino on Mar 1, 2020 2:00:35 GMT
🍺 Farewell to The Muffs : Final Album & Tribute Concert 🍻
Now that I've had time to absorb the impact of the Muffs' final album, I feel better placed to share some thoughts. Basically, it's exactly as should be. It returns the band to their roots in terms of its demo-quality production and feels like a work of some resolution. I think the band needed to get back to basics as they dealt with the most difficult situation any band could have to deal with. It's probably the final work of the Muffs, so for that reason alone, I appreciate it, though perhaps there's more music locked in the vaults that's still to be unearthed.
'No Holiday' (2019) - The Muffs
'Rain' > The Muffs & The Bangles accompanied by the Wild Honey Orchestra
Derrick Anderson with Debbi Peterson, Vicki Peterson & Kim Shattuck < 'When I Was Your Man'
"Kim Shattuck started the Muffs in the early ’90s as a reaction to the self-serious West Coast alternative music scene blowing up around her. “I was getting really bummed,” she remembered years later. “Stuff like the Red Hot Chili Peppers were happening and I was like, ‘I fucking hate them so much, I have to write the anti-Red Hot Chili Peppers songs.’” So she did, burying shards of Beatles and Kinks melodies in sneering three-chord punk ditties. Once she started, she never stopped.
The Muffs signed to Warner Bros. for their first three records, but despite Shattuck’s sticky melodies and instantly recognizable sing-scream, success on the level of California contemporaries Green Day and the Offspring eluded them. Their biggest mainstream moment remains their disaffected cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America”— it plays during the opening credits of Clueless. (Shattuck hated that, too. “The lyrics are not good. Like, they talk about East California. What is that?” she told TIME in 2015.) Shattuck seemed to know her band wasn’t cut out for the big time, and was unfazed: “[Our label has] this job to break our band,” she told Rolling Stone in 1995. “And I totally feel sorry for them because it’s not going to happen.”
Instead, the Muffs attained a cult status that grew steadily over the years. By the time Shattuck briefly joined the reunited Pixies — and was subsequently kicked out, possibly for being too extroverted — there was hardly a punk songwriter alive who hadn’t been touched by her throat-shredding screams, lively melodies, and bratty, tender songwriting.
So when, two weeks before the release of their seventh album No Holiday, Shattuck’s husband of 16 years shared that Shattuck had died of ALS, the world briefly stopped. Shattuck had never publicly talked about her diagnosis, so her passing came as a devastating shock. An outpouring of grief came from her contemporaries and those she’d inspired. The forthcoming record suddenly took on new meaning: This would be the final time we’d ever get to hear Shattuck’s wail.
The songs on No Holiday were written throughout Shattuck’s career, from 1991 to 2017, so it feels like a best-of record, or a retrospective. “We wanted to create something lasting and special,” drummer Roy McDonald said of No Holiday. If a young person hadn’t heard of the Muffs, it would be a safe bet to hand them this record and say “start here.”
Shattuck’s voice feels raspier and more raw on some of the album’s 18 tracks, a little less energetic, but the musical chemistry between her, McDonald, and bassist Ronnie Barnett remains untouched by time. At the end of “Lucky Charm,” her voice twinges upward with distinctive snideness: “You should be in the mooo-vieesss, yeeeeah.” It’s good to have her back.
On a few songs, it feels as if the full band has been retrofitted onto Shattuck’s acoustic demos. That mix-and-match sound is an interesting but confusing choice: Some of those songs, like “Happier Just Being With You” and “Too Awake,” would have sounded just fine with just Shattuck’s voice and acoustic guitar. The full band makes it harder to hear her, which is—now more than ever—what listeners want most.
The most unexpected moment on No Holiday comes in its final track, “Sky.” In contrast to nearly 30 years of sneering, eye-rolling, screeching, and fighting back, on “Sky” Shattuck offers earnest lullaby over just an acoustic guitar and a church organ. “I am laying on the nice cool grass and now I’m thinking/Wondering if the birds can fly straight up and there’s no ceiling,” she sings, tenderly. “I know I can’t touch the sky/I know I’ll wonder why.”
“Sky” is a tragically perfect way to close out what is now the Muffs’ final record. Shattuck will be remembered for many things: her outsized-but-undersung contribution to the punk lexicon, her lyrics that were mean and sarcastic and sensitive and sweet, all at once. But “Sky” is a poignant reminder that she was an unforgettable songwriter and a buoyant spirit."
- Danya Evans, Pitchfork
'You Talk And You Talk' - The Muffs
An ALS benefit concert is planned for 15 March 2020, to be held at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Henry Rollins commissioned a poster for the gig, which can be seen below.
'This past fall, Kim Shattuck of The Muffs (and The Pandoras, The Coolies, The Beards, briefly the Pixies, and more) sadly passed away at age 56 after a two-year battle with ALS, just two weeks before The Muffs’ final album came out. Now, some of Kim’s former bandmates and a bunch of her peers are coming together to play the Goldenvoice-presented ‘Celebrate The Life of Kim Shattuck: Create A World Without ALS’ concert at Los Angeles’ El Rey Theatre on March 15.
The lineup includes Redd Kross, Veruca Salt, that dog., Vicki Peterson (The Bangles), Kathy Valentine (The Go-Go’s), Rob Zabrecky (Possum Dixon), Kay Hanley (Letters to Cleo), Honeychain (who are fronted by current Pandoras member Hillary Burton and whose 2017 debut album was produced by Kim), sets from Kim’s bands The Pandoras and The Coolies, and her Muffs bandmates Ronnie Barnett and Roy Mcdonald (who are also hosting).
Tickets go on presale today (1/23) at 10 AM local time, and the public on-sale starts Friday (1/24) at 10 AM. All proceeds will be donated to ALS Association Golden West Chapter in Kim’s memory.
The Coolies (Kim plus Melanie Vammen [The Muffs, Pandoras] and Palmyra Delran [The Friggs, Pink Slip Daddy]) released the Uh Oh! It’s... The Coolies EP last year, and The Pandoras (with Kim back in the band) released their first album since the ’90s, Hey! It’s The Pandoras, in 2018 on Burger Records. Stream those, along with the latest Muffs album.'
- Andrew Sacher, Brooklyn Vegan
'Funny Face ...' - Kim Shattuck with Nina Gordon & Louise Post
Kim Shattuck ~ In Loving Memory 💛
|
|
|
|
Post by petrolino on Feb 25, 2022 22:55:03 GMT
🪵 Grungewave 🦫
The death of Mark Lanegan this week, aged 57, reminded me of how much the grunge movement meant to rock kids when I was a teenager. Lanegan joins fallen vocalists Andrew Wood (24), Kurt Cobain (27), Shannon Hoon (28), Layne Staley (34), Scott Weiland (48), Chris Cornell (52) and Tina Bell (55) for that great gig in the sky. That's some heavenly chorus.
'Grunge (sometimes referred to as the Seattle sound) is an alternative rock genre and subculture that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American Pacific Northwest state of Washington, particularly in Seattle and nearby towns. Grunge fuses elements of punk rock and heavy metal, but without punk's structure and speed. The genre featured the distorted electric guitar sound used in both genres, although some bands performed with more emphasis on one or the other. Like these genres, grunge typically uses electric guitar, bass guitar, drums and vocals. Grunge also incorporates influences from indie rock bands such as Sonic Youth. Lyrics are typically angst-filled and introspective, often addressing themes such as social alienation, self-doubt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, social and emotional isolation, psychological trauma and a desire for freedom.'
- Wikipedia
'Heretic' - Soundgarden
'Heaviness Of The Load' - The Melvins
'Smilin' And Dyin'' - Green River
'Dead Love' - Mudhoney
'Come Bite The Apple' - Mother Love Bone
'Days' - Screaming Trees
'Deathwish' - L7
'To Mother' ~ Babes In Toyland
I'm no expert on what constitutes a "grunge" anthem, nor was I ever. I think the scene was probably what mattered most to those involved, as well as the success it created for associated independent music labels, notably Sub Pop. Groups active in California like Faith No More, Blind Melon and Stone Temple Pilots sometimes occupied the same studio spaces as bands operating out of Washington. Somehow, the emerging rock scene in Chicago, Illinois became closely connected to the inter-connected scenes of the west coast, which is perhaps why you see albums by bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Veruca Salt feature in lists of the greatest grunge albums of all time. When Eddie Vedder returned to Seattle for a concert this week, in which he began by paying tribute to Lanegan, I was reminded that Vedder is actually from Illinois, and he first started out in the music industry while living in California.
“When we started, as a duo, we were weird. Picture it: You have to remember that in 1993 people are moving to Seattle from Phoenix to become rock stars and are buying flannel, and every show is a wall of Marshall stacks and really loud and heavy, and lots of hair, and Doc Martens, and all that … Then the two of us get on stage, $30 guitars plugged into the same amp; Chris (Ballew) is bald with boots spray-painted gold; I’m in saddle shoes with a grosgrain belt and a Brooks Brothers shirt; and we launch into a fuzzed-out, drummer-less version of the Stooges’ ‘TV Eye.’ We were weird … Jason (Finn), however, WAS the scene. He was ‘The Pope of Pike Street’ at the time. A beloved bartender at Seattle hipster ground zero tavern, The Comet. His joining the band was the end of a long-running inside joke. He’d seen one of my and Chris’s previous bands, loved it, and then for years, we let him ‘beg’ to be in our next band, the irony being that he was already a big rock star in Love Battery and we were just a couple of dorks.
“The scene never liked us. Individual people liked us — [Soundgarden guitarist] Kim Thayil came to early shows and provided lots of encouragement. But we got no love from The Rocket or The Stranger, Seattle’s music and lifestyle alt-weekly newspapers. All of Jason’s friends told him he should quit our dumb band and stick with Love Battery, who were just finishing tracking their major-label debut when the Presidents started.”
- Dave Dederer, SPIN
'We Die Young' > Alice In Chains [Rhythm]
'We Die Young' < Alice In Chains [Layers]
“I loved grunge. I loved everything about it. In fact, I was making music like that in Boston when the grunge thing exploded. Then I heard Nevermind and was like, ‘Oh, well, nevermind … I don’t need to make the record I’m trying to make, because this is IT.’ I just listened to that instead of making one myself [Laughs]. Nirvana is in the Presidents though, for sure. And Kim (Thayil) heard it too – and he loved it. He was our ambassador to the grunge world [Laughs.] which helped validate us amongst the fans. When we started in on recording ‘Naked and Famous,’ I had been hanging out with Kim at the time – we were buddies – and I mentioned that I was looking for a spacey, noodle-y solo for the tune, and he was like, ‘I’ll do it!’ And he did. It sounds like if spaghetti could do an air raid.
I think what I was trying to harness was that poppy history of Seattle and the roots of what became grunge, such as the Stooges and MC5, AND harness Nirvana and Soundgarden, and mix it all together. We were trying to blend super fun party rock with heaviness. We weren’t trying to make joke songs; we were trying to make surreal songs.”
- Chris Ballew, SPIN
'Agony' <> The Muffs [Rhythm]
Then there's the producers who became known for their work on the "grunge" sound. A lot of bands in Washington worked with Jack Endino of Skin Yard inside the recording studio. Producers like Steve Albini, Rick Parashar, Butch Vig and Andy Wallace were instrumental in developing the "grunge" sound which became more refined once the scene blew up globally.
'The early grunge movement revolved around Seattle's independent record label Sub Pop and the region's underground music scene. The owners of Sub Pop marketed the style shrewdly, encouraging the media to describe it as "grunge"; the style became known as a hybrid of punk and metal. By the early 1990s, its popularity had spread, with grunge bands appearing in California, then emerging in other parts of the United States and in Australia, building strong followings and signing major record deals. Grunge was commercially successful in the early-to-mid-1990s due to releases such as Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten, Soundgarden's Superunknown, Alice in Chains' Dirt, and Stone Temple Pilots' Core. The success of these bands boosted the popularity of alternative rock and made grunge the most popular form of rock music at the time.'
- Wikipedia
'Babydoll' - Hole
'Bury Me' - Smashing Pumpkins
'Dayglo' - Love Battery
'I Need You' - The Muffs
'Paper Scratcher' - Blind Melon
'Rats' - Pearl Jam
'Still Remains' - Stone Temple Pilots
'25' _ Veruca Salt
No, I wouldn't claim to know what is or isn't grunge, or what qualifies a certain band or artist as being grunge, but whatever it is, I like it ... God rest their souls.
|
|
|
|
Post by petrolino on Feb 3, 2023 23:36:53 GMT
🍦 Kat Bjelland : Facetime! 🍮
-
Babes In Toyland ~ Recorded Live In Concert [The Academy, New York City, New York - June 17, 1992] { : Tracklist : 0:00 Bluebell / 2:16 Won't Tell / 4:55 Blood / 7:37 Jungle Train / 10:26 Right Now | 13:14 Lori telling a joke to the audience | 13:29 Magick Flute / 16:40 Ripe / 20:23 Swamp Pussy / 23:00 Sometimes (Early version of Angel Hair) / 26:46 Pearl | 28:55 "Hi we are Babes In Toyland and we have gibberish for sale" | 28:58 Mother : }
|
|
