TKO Records Presents: TKO Records Presents: ...
While everyone and their brother, including this paper's editor, has been grumbling about the sorry state of punk, TKO Records have been quietly putting out quality punk that is the complete antithesis of corporate-sponsored, teen-screamo. TKO, whose catalog is a veritable encyclopedia of quality music, has been one of the few purveyors in the last few years who remembers what made punk exciting in the first place. (It was the bands wasn't it?)
Much like hiphop, punk has a very short-term memory. It iconizes certain acts, but the heroes of "now" are quickly recycled. Case in point: Boston Punk. Whenever I bring up the fact that Boston had (has) been a healthy breeding ground for hardcore and punk bands, most folks these days stare at you blank-faced. Back in the day, I tell them, punk was a collection of different scenes?New York, DC, LA, Cleveland (yes Cleveland), Boston?that each had its own style.
Attempting to tackle both of these issues?bringing quality new bands to the fore and reminding people what punk used to be like?TKO has launched its Scene Report series, an attempt to document what's happening in places ranging from Richmond to Sacramento. Kicking off the series is Boston, and true to the city's history, the four acts on this album bring completely different styles to the table.
Suspect Device is part of the street-punk revival scene that has turned out a ton of quality acts in the past decade including the Workin' Stiffs and the Generators. Buzzsaw guitars, choruses with a hook and that indelible sing-along quality makes tracks like "The Life We Lead" immediately likeable to a true punk's ear. Tommy & the Terrors, while still coming from the street-punk school, combine it with a more hard-charging style ala the Misfits on songs like "Bitter Pill." Their tunes are fierce and played with a perfect cocky swagger.
As if to give a nod to the insular Boston hardcore scene, also included on here is the extremely powerful A-Team. Turning in an incredible rendition of Motorhead's "Iron Fist" and a knock-down track called "Quit the Hysterics," the A-Team deconstructs modern hardcore, bringing it all the way back to Discharge. Finishing out the disc is the more dynamic Fast Actin' Fuses who come at it with a Detroit sound. "Queen of Diamonds" features more of a mid-tempo, punk 'n' roll style that gives a nod to the crossover of 70s rock and early punk in later 90s acts.
Keep pissing and moaning about how things aren't like when you were kid. Or, stop being a lazy old bastard and start digging around?like you used to?for quality bands. A good place to start is right here.
?Ken Wohlrob
But today he's perhaps best known for dressing down celebs, picking fights with Eminem or sniffing the behinds of dogs. Love him or hate him, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Smigel's canine alter ego, has become a household name. The rubber Rottweiller from Late Night with Conan O'Brien has more name recognition than his progenitors like Larry "Bud" Melman or Carnac the Magnificent ever did. Triumph is popping up everywhere, from the MTV Video Music Awards to a Muppet Christmas movie. He even almost ended up in court after being sued by Pets.com in 2000.
Now comes Triumph's first CD, Come Poop with Me, a 32-track, double-disc bombardment of poop jokes and skits about humping. Also thrown into the mix are some live riffs, crank calls and p-ditties (my phrase for songs about pooping and peeing). Adam Sandler and Jack Black lend a hand as well. Don't bother to look for the CD at your local Wal-Mart. Not even its first sentence could have snuck past censors ("What a crowd, what a shithole!").
While Smigel's raunchiness lies somewhere between the Jerky Boys and George Carlin, his humor pays more tribute to Don Rickles. In a gravy-thick accent, which Conan likens to a "Ukrainian woman," Smigel targets his insults at a diverse group of B-list celebs, from Benji (who we learn is gay) to Bob Barker to Jerry Springer.
The CD has its moments of brilliance, particularly when Triumph phones a dogpound looking for a poodle?or, later, a Chinese restaurant. But Triumph's barbs lose their bite after about track seven; the songs are forgettable and Triumph's catchphrase ("For me to poop on!") has a shelf-life of less than three bits. Also missing from the CD is the visualness that so much of Smigel's humor depends on: the sight of a gruff, marble-eyed dog-puppet, cigar in mouth, getting in Bon Jovi's face, poking fun at Star Wars geeks or doing a Terrier doggy-style is hysterical, even without Smigel's ventriloquisms.
Smigel is funny, without a doubt. But a hand puppet that pokes fun at celebs and says "poop" a lot is a well with only so much water. Smigel's latest gig may be up, unless his dog can learn some new tricks.
?Lionel Beehner
In the world of film music, Hans Zimmer isn't as immediately recognizable a name as some of his contemporaries?John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, maybe even James Horner?but he probably should be. Since the early 80s, he's won Oscars and Grammys and scored some of Hollywood's biggest (if not always finest) films. He's done Pirates of the Caribbean, Pearl Harbor, Rain Man, Mission Impossible 2, The Rock, lots of Disney cartoons and most of Ridley Scott's films dating back to Black Rain.
He may not have written any themes that've wormed their way into the culture (with the possible exception of The Lion King), but his music served its purpose. It augmented the action on the screen, set the mood, made the occasional comment, without overpowering the story.
Zimmer's 100th film score is for Tom Cruise's latest attempt to make a prestige picture. From what I've been able to determine, in The Last Samurai Cruise plays a disillusioned military officer who, following the end of the Civil War, sails to Japan where he's been asked to train the Japanese army in modern warfare techniques. Once there, he decides that he's Toshiro Mifune, and at the film's climax, he leads an army of samurai into an epic battle with Godzilla.
In composing music for the film, Zimmer has subtly blended a full (if digitized) Western orchestra with Japanese instruments and tonalities. While that sort of thing has certainly been done before, I've rarely heard it pulled off so well?especially for a film, and especially when the whole damn thing is pieced together on a computer.
The insistent, heavy percussion, delicate woodwinds and sweeping strings are extremely visual, conveying both the arid landscape and the pounding of hooves. As the score progresses, the momentum and the volume gradually increase, until at the end, that climactic battle with Godzilla, the music roars. There is an epic grandeur to it that, at times, may be a little overblown, but never fails to be effective.
It's one of those rare soundtracks which, after having heard it, I feel as if I've already seen the film (which saves me 10 bucks)?and best of all, there are no annoying pop songs to muck everything up.
?Jim Knipfel
That's not the case this time. The new album, the title of which refers to the house in the Hamptons where the studio was located, sounds much more cohesive than last year's EP. As Lou Dog noted during a recent phone interview, "we were trying to incorporate some different moods and deep emotions, so we picked some songs that would go well together."
The album opens with "Ripped and Stripped," a strong, dark track that speaks of "cold beers and the drugs" and of a "foggy light through the shade." According to Dog, "The song is pretty autobiographical, but I'd rather keep the meaning to myself."
Other strong tracks are "Farewells Forgotten (The End)," which is enhanced by the clever use of bongos during the chorus, and "Vertical Sea," one of the few soft moments on the CD that has a drowsy, depressive feeling echoing the sad lyrics: "If I fall from grace/not your disgrace/can't you see?"
That one is "about a relationship that didn't go well."
With its long, rambling lyrics and repetitive melody, I couldn't really appreciate "The House of Flesh on Fire." It just couldn't keep my interest going for a long time, and halfway through the song, I'd already lost the point and was forced to check the lyric sheet to try and grasp an idea of what the whole thing was about. The problem with "She's Trying to Hide" would be the arrangement, which obscures Lou Dog's voice with its excessive heaviness that seems out of place in an album that is otherwise very melodic. My favorite moments were "The Touch," a straight, mostly acoustic blues piece with a very clear sexual tone, and "Bender of Fiction," another acoustic track that closes the album.
That last song, which features mostly acoustic guitar and percussion, was not originally meant for this release, according to the musician: "The album was basically done, but there was a song I was unhappy with, so I wrote [that] song and recorded it at home."
Lou Dog will be performing at Acme on Sat., Dec. 13.
?Ernest Barteldes