Heaven 17 “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang”
Over the weekend, I realized that it’s been a few months since I made a mix, so this is a quick set with some dance tunes and some rock tunes. It’s mostly new music, but I threw in a couple oldies that fit my mood. There’s no real adherence to genre because that’s not how I listen to music at home. All of the artist names on the set list below link to where they’ve been previously mentioned on Beatique.
Let There Be Gwar is open at Beyond the Streets in Los Angeles through November 2. (All photos: Liz O.)
I’m not one for nostalgia, but, damn, that longing for what was hit me hard as I walked through Let There Be Gwar at Beyond the Streets on Saturday morning. Inside the La Brea Avenue gallery is a treasure trove of costumes, props and ephemera from the rock band/art collective. A massive anthropomorphic toilet and plunger stands near the front entrance. Decapitated heads line a wall, a recipe for DIY bloodbags beside them. On the TV screens are flashbacks to Gwar’s time on the 1990s talk show circuit. Joan Rivers! Jerry Springer! Wally George!
I’ve long been a fan of Modeselektor, but when I think about the German DJ/production duo, the one release that always pops into my head is their 2009 installment for Get Physical’s Body Languageseries. Somewhere in the last 20 minutes of the mix, a space techno woosh morphs into Animal Collective’s song “My Girls.” It was completely unexpected and made me fall for a song from a band that I was otherwise ambivalent about. The best DJs do that and Modeselektor are still amongst those I would consider the very best.
“I really don’t want to listen to any of the music that I listened in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I just don’t. I know that music so well, I don’t want to hear it anymore,” says Paul Barker. “It’s like listening to the Beatles. I love the Beatles, but I never listen to the Beatles because it’s part of our consciousness. You just grow up with it.”
Barker’s urge to lean into less familiar musical terrain extends to his own work. Active since the early 1980s, he played in Seattle post-punk band The Blackouts before going on to spend close to 20 years in Ministry. He released his first album as Lead Into Gold in 1990 and the most recent one this year. Knife the Ally is the name of the latest Lead Into Gold full-length, which was released via Artoffact Records in June. “The ally is industrial music,” he says and the album is, in a way, a call to arms, to do something musically different.
So I Married an Axe Murderer is playing this weekend too. Friday night at Vidiots.
If you’re not still recovering from Oasis-mania, there is plenty to get you out of the house and away from your screens this weekend. Thursday’s Desire and Johnny Jewel show at Hollywood Forever is already sold out, but there will be an afterparty at Gold-Diggers. Friday night is packed with concerts, including Anamanaguchi at The Wiltern and Cold Waves XIII at The Mayan. Retrospective exhibition Let There Be Gwar opens at Beyond the Streets on Saturday, while Jaws: The Exhibition debuts at The Academy Museum on Sunday. Plus, Eraserhead screens at Greystone Mansion on Saturday night.
Heading into next week, Swans play three nights at The Lodge Room, one of which is already sold out, and generative Brian Eno documentary, Eno, heads to Philosophical Research Society. There’s more too, so keep reading for the details on what’s happening in Los Angeles between Thursday, September 11 and Wednesday, September 17.
The urgency in “Cowboy in a Ghost Town” is potent. A galloping beat drives the song and the whip-slap sound of the snare comes in as SAADI sings, “You are a cowboy in a ghost town/You leave a dark legacy.” When I first heard the song, from the L.A.-based singer/multi-instrumentalist’s recently released sophomore album, Birds of Paradise, I thought it was about social media. There are references to shadowbans and people living in an “alternate reality.”
“It’s about Gaza, actually,” Boshra AlSaadi says when meet up for a video call. AlSaadi has written a number of songs about Gaza, but “Cowboy in a Ghost Town,” she says, is her most overt. Listening to it again, I’m struck by the poignancy of it, from the mix of anger and helplessness that’s in AlSaadi’s voice to the protest-like chorus that rises near the song’s end to the clear references to social media. AlSaadi captures not just the horror of watching a genocide unfold on your phone, but the frustration of knowing that you can’t stay silent, even when you’re posting into a void.
“Seeing it unfold on your phone is horrific,” she says. “It’s unprecedented also.”
Cover of International, the final album from Saint Etienne
At a certain point, getting stuck at JFK isn’t so bad. By midnight, the crowds are gone. After 2 a.m., most of the few travelers left are sleeping. I don’t know how they do it. The chairs at the gates are uncomfortable and I can’t bring myself to stretch out on carpet that people have been trampling over all day. So, I pop in my earbuds and finish an assignment that’s due on Monday while bobbing my head along to the Bob Vylan and Kneecap albums on my laptop. Then I remember that Saint Etienne’s latest, and last, album, International, came out on Friday, so I look it up, buy a digital copy, and tune in.
International is a perfect finale for the long-running, British indie pop trio and, really, the ideal music for this very strange night. Saint Etienne have spent the past 35 years making music, and creating an image, that blurs the past, present and future. Their breakthrough single, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” was a cover of a Neil Young song reconfigured with a Burt Bacharach-meets-Stone Roses sensibility. From there, Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell made mod pop and house jams, flirted with Eurodance and experimental electronic music and played with psychedelic and ambient sounds, all the while showing a real reverence for both the most commercial and underground histories of 20th and 21st century music. As International is an intentional final album, it draws from all of the influences that have appeared in Saint Etienne’s music since the dawn of the 1990s.
The spectacular cover of Xalan “I Only Move for Money”/”Solo Me Muevo Por Dinero”
“It’s a gatefold,” the vendor told me as I handed him one of the records I was about to purchase.
I hadn’t thought to pull the 12” single out of the plastic sleeve. It was too hot in the early afternoon on Sunday— over 90 degrees according to my phone— and I was ready to wilt and, maybe, overly concerned about dripping sweat on Italo disco and city pop vinyl in front of me. Before opening the gatefold, though, I could tell you that the cover for Xalan “I Only Move For Money/Solo Me Muevo Por Dinero” was a masterpiece of sleeve art that could put even Lime’s covers to shame. The cover model is an ‘80s hunk of a man with sweat glistening on his muscular arms and a twinkle in his eye, A woman’s hands are wrapped around him. Her pink nails tear through his hairy chest to reveal a rainbow array of wires.
IDK how much I should explain here, but I’m just going to assume that we don’t have the same timeline and don’t hear all the same music in our scrolls. Confidence Man is an Australian dance-pop group with a weirdo KLF sensibility. If you go to my DJ gigs, you’ve probably heard “Angry Girl” many, many times, often with The Rapture “House of Jealous Lovers.” Jade Thirlwall is a British singer who I don’t really know much about outside of the Wikipedia entry I read. Last month, they released a song called “Gossip” that’s fire. It’s very Basement Jaxx-meets-Princess Superstar. I finally got around to playing it last week at Underground and it did pretty well. This week, it did even better.
Most of the new tunes turned up early in the set: Alison Goldfrapp “Find Xanadu,” Pulp “Got to Have Love,” Ora the Molecule “Nobody Cares,” etc. I don’t even know what really constitutes “new” anymore, but we’ll save that rant for another day. Thanks to Larry G. for having me play Underground last night and thanks to everyone who hit the dance floor, especially those of you who stuck it out until the end of “My Girls.” Set list is below.
This just in: I’ll be DJing at Club Underground at Grand Star Jazz Club tonight, August 29, at Grand Star Jazz Club in Chinatown. Tickets are available now on Dice and Eventbrite. Plan to get there early and stay late for new indie, classic new wave, Britpop, darkwave and everything in between.
Check out these previous set lists from Club Underground:
