Myanmar rocks

This post first appeared on MOG, February 11, 2008.

[...]

I recently returned from Asia, including two weeks in Myanmar (which I loved, despite the political context), where, as is my habit, I tried to track down some local music. I was invited to a punk show at a shopping mall by some enthusiastic male students from an English class I randomly led for a couple of mornings; but, as it turns out, it was a day or two before Independence Day, and the authorities were not likely to let the show take place. I skipped it. On the other hand, I did attend the most bizarre New Year's Eve party of my short life; imagine: a high-class hotel; reserved, numbered tables; an all-you-can-eat buffet; unlimited drinks; a rowdy crowd (mostly from Singapore and other parts of the Malay Peninsula, not to mention lots of Thai and Chinese, plus some South Asians from the RoI, and a pair of fat tourists, probably Germans); an emcee who can only be described as a pastiche of Chris Tucker's character in "The Fifth Element"; crowd participation (couples tug-of-war, female wrestling, an endless raffle (I won two nights in a luxury hotel in the Shan state, close to the Golden Triangle, that I couldn't use because they expired, well, a couple of weeks ago)); the weirdest dance thing I've ever seen, complete with midget and scrawny, overdriven Asian belly dancer; and a dozen or more live music performances.--All tied together by the theme of this particular New Year's Eve bash: The Gladiator (I shit you not).

The music ran the entire pop gamut, from covers of midwestern bar jukebox classics like Kenny Rodgers to odd, punky, Avril Lavigne (I think) type stuff (with some rapping thrown in, heh). The English-language hits sung in Burmese were by far the most interesting. The setup was two bands, each of which played along with the many individual vocalists and pairs of vocalists, who would all dutifully present their sheet music to the band before turning to the audience, mic in hand. One thing I really enjoyed: no vocalist could sing more than a few bars before audience members would begin streaming to the stage to pin flowers in their hair and to give them helium balloons to hold (picture, if you will, a long-haired rocker guy, with fingerless gloves, studded denim jacket, daintily holding a pink balloon). Some vocalists finished their performance completely weighted down by the outpourings of the audience -- something like putting dollar bills in the g-string of a stripper, only G-rated. The smoke machine was in heavy, heavy use. I couldn't understand the performers' names, but some of them seemed to be famous, at least in Yangon. The situation of a single band playing with multiple vocalists is more or less the norm, from what I can tell.

Myanmar's biggest band (for a decade now), Iron Cross, is a hard rock outfit with several singers. I bought two Iron Cross disks on a shopping trip with a student from the English class I mentioned. They are, to wit, Lay Phyu's "Kha Na Layy Myarr" and Myo Gyi's "Nate Sa Du Wa," and their schizophrenic trajectories, from almost Pantera-like heaviness to Hong Kong film soundtrack sappiness, is apparently completely unsurprising. I've actually really begun to enjoy all of the songs, though, even the cheesiest of them, but the standout is Lay Phyu's amazing "Ma Mayt Pyit Net" (yes, even with the string section).



I also picked up some tapes on the street that I hope to digitize soon, the first of some traditional music (which I don't expect to differ radically from the Burmese folk music available through the totally amazing Sublime Frequencies), the second, "Emperor Oasis," by a singer who looks kind of like a Burmese Sonny Crockett (that promises to be fun: though the jacket is nicely printed, the tape itself is a regular old 60-minute unit you could pick up in a drugstore (or maybe not, anymore)).

My big purchase, though, is hiphop heartthrob Sai Sai's "Happy Sai Sai Birthday" album, a recording of a show Sai Sai played on, yes, his birthday (the closer is the audience singing happy birthday to him). Much of the music sounds vaguely like something you've already heard (scraps of Eminem, what have you), but the Burmese rapping is -- pardon the expression -- totally awesome, particularly the ghetto superstar (re)remix "Chit Thu Tan Ta Tha Chin" feat. Kaung Myat (of "My Name Is Kaung Myat" fame) and Nge Nge. Sai Sai's website is http://www.saisaionline.com.

All of this music was purchased on the recommendation of one student I spent some time with while in Yangon. I asked him to take me record shopping, and it was his help that resulted in me getting to hear the disks before buying them (I mean, in the first place, he took me to the right store). Thankfully my wife was traveling with her laptop, and I was able to return the favor, loading him up with music that is completely unknown in Yangon (Pixies, El-P, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Blonde Redhead, and so on). He wrote me an email a couple of weeks ago to say that he really likes everything I gave him.

old school detritus

This post first appeared on MOG, March 19, 2007.

The Maggot will be having a house guest while I am away next week visiting The Fam, so I’ve tried to clean up my desk area, which is in the living/guest room. Part of the clean up has been to reorganize the piles and piles and piles of tapes in light of my new motivation for continuing with the tape digitization project, mainly MOG. Yes, these MOG posts are affording me some focus on the process. And in the process I came across some (7) low hanging fruit, i.e. had already been captured and just needed to be cleaned up and tagged...

5
Two tracks, one from Coffin Break, the other from Skin Yard, from an old Kiss covers compilation (from vinyl to tape to mp3: the results sound, mmm, iffy).
Two more tracks, one from Coffin Break again, the other from the incomparable Alice Donut (Brooklyn?), from an old Buzzcocks covers compilation (again, from vinyl to tape to mp3).
A side of an old Coffin Break 7”, Freebird/Pop Fanatic.
So that’s five covers of quote-unquote classics from predominantly Seattle bands. In fact – though without the original sleeves I’m only guessing – I’ll bet all of these were recorded by Jack Endino. If the so-called Seattle sound exists then it’s determined exactly by the tireless work of Endino in the 80s and 90s. Anyway. I must have more covers compilations featuring Seattle bands lurking in the towers of tapes. I recall that they were all the rage among the SubPop/related folks.

2
Two tracks from Tad’s 1989 “God’s Balls,” which still fucking rules (and was also recorded by Endino, natch). When you buy the “Salt Lick” CD you get a chunk of “God’s Balls,” but for some reason these two gems, “Hollow Man” and “Nipple Belt,” aren’t there (along with the first couple tracks on the album). “Nipple Belt,” especially, totally rocks me...and not in a nostalgic way. I love this song – long, throaty yells from Tad and a punishing two guitar attack over a simple and fuzzy bass line: “And I need some kerosene / I need some antifreeze / to keep my girls young.” Word.

after images

This post first appeared on MOG, February 10, 2008.

In response to my post about Ben MacMillan, Pleaseeasaur wrote to say, "It's so wild to me how certain albums or bands conjure up specific eras and even specific moments in my memory." I agree. I am always blown away by how microscopically certain bands/albums/songs evoke moments and stretches of time. I can't listen to "Joe's friend's band" (that was how Pleaseeasaur's Superchunk, "Foolish" tape was labeled) without seeing the two of us, driving in his yellow Volvo, on Sportsman Club Road on Bainbridge Island, on a relatively sunny day, with a small cassette deck between our two seats. Where were we going that day? The destination cannot be recalled. The journey unfolds in my mind with radical clarity: we turn off 305 onto Sportsman Club, the car begins to climb a long, gradual hill, the song is "Like a Fool."

RIP, Ben

This post first appeared on MOG, February 9, 2008. Since then various bits have been fixed, the photo added.

Ben McMillan died recently. I am really saddened by this news. My sincere condolences to Ben's fiance, family, and friends—and fans.

My friend and fellow fan Pleaseeasaur wrote me yesterday to point me to a Seattle PI blog with some songs and videos from the two bands Ben sang for: Skin Yard and Gruntruck, both of which I adored when I was growing up.

I still love both of these bands. For me, Skin Yard's music has aged better, maybe. Or perhaps it's simply that Skin Yard was one of the first bands, along with another SY band, Sonic Youth, to obsess me completely—and not only because of the coincidence of shared initials. Of course I have all of the albums and most of the singles recorded by Skin Yard and Gruntruck, and then some. My favorite Skin Yard incarnation is the lineup of Ben, ingenius Jack Endino, drummer Scott McCullum a.k.a. Norman Scott (who also drummed for Gruntruck), and bassist D. House (weirdly, a dozen years ago, I was involved in interviewing Daniel for a job to which he applied). Skin Yard's '88 album Hallowed Ground, which I'm listening to right now, feels classic. Every time I listen to Skin Yard, Hallowed Ground in particular, I get choked up on a wave of memories and flashbacks from my youth in the Pacific Northwest. It's raining, I'm driving through a seemingly endless tunnel of evergreens.

I tried to go to every all-ages show Skin Yard played in Seattle during my last two years of high school. Once I stayed for an especially long encore and missed the last Winslow-bound ferry. I slept on a wooden bench at the Colman dock. I was sweaty, it was cold, but I didn't care. Seems there was always a large pit when Skin Yard played, but I felt that it was a safe space, that someone would pick you up if you fell, people were smiling, laughing. I credit Ben's community-minded, almost fatherly, regard for his fans as the reason for these slam dancing utopias. I can't number the nights that my friend Josh and I drove around Kitsap County in his old Audi, listening to Skin Yard and smoking nasty Benson & Hedges menthols.—Or, driving along in an altered state, having to pull over during the song "G.O.D." because I was experiencing something like an epiphany. The song remains one of my favorites: the way Ben's saying "talk" over and over organically fuses into the rhythm of the song's opening moments to become a "tock," a haunting, extra bit of percussion, of time.—Or, driving with Josh to Olympia to see Nirvana, singing along to "Drunk on Kerosene" at the top of my lungs. Ben's long scream in the song "Hallowed Ground" is one of the most spine-tingling rock vox in my music collection. I had the Skin Yard t-shirt with the nasty Giger image on the front and "too much acid / too many people / too little to do" on the back. My mother refused to touch the shirt, so its purchase marked the moment when I began doing my own laundry. I wore the shirt so frequently that, when it was retired to a cedar chest with other scrapbook-like objects, only the printing was holding it together, the cloth having disintegrated.

I think Ben was from Poulsbo, the tiny town where I grew up, but, at least, he hailed from the same side of the sound? maybe Suquamish? I think I wanted to be Ben McMillan. After my first Skin Yard show, I started wearing jeans and black leather belts and shoes like Ben. I grew my hair, had earrings. I formed a band with friends, The Dorx. Whether unconsciously or not, I tried to imitate Ben's vocals. Lots of effects, tight versification, some religious themes. I listened to Gruntruck's album Push on a daily basis during my sophomore year in college. It was the soundtrack for my bout with a certain addiction and of my coming to my senses several months later and recommitting myself to my studies.

One of my birthdays coincided with a Gruntruck show at the OK Hotel (I can't quite triangulate the date, must have been my 18th, spring of '92). The logic of the coincidence was compelling: I took the ferry to Seattle for the occasion. Gruntruck played with savage precision that night. "Move in Silence" was perfectly executed and listening to it now, years later, gives me a shiver. Ben high-fived me when I was being squeezed against the stage by the moshing crowd behind me. He was drenched in perspiration, his long hair matted to his forehead. I was ecstatic. The evening is captured in the black and white photo inside the Push jacket: the top of my head can be seen just below Ben on stage; I am facing the crowd, as though part of the performance, which I was, for, despite the aural brutality of his music, there is beauty: Ben had a way of linking himself to the audience to create a momentary antidote to alienation. He will be missed.

four old friends

This post first appeared on MOG, March 18, 2007.


As I mentioned in my second post, for months I have been digitizing my old cassette tapes, which number in the hundreds. The population is uneven and mostly marked by various periods of poverty: from albums I taped in college before selling the disks for cigarette money to rare and out of print vinyl I taped over the years. Some of these, of course, will not be digitized because, hearing them now, I think they suck. Others are cause for disbelief: how could I have gone for so long without hearing this? Last night's digitizing falls into the latter category:


Jesse Bernstein, "The Sad Bag" (1) an out of print 1990 Trigger Recordings cassette-only release, recorded live at COCA (Seattle), with a cover designed by Madame Talbot. (Does anyone know what the fifth track is titled?) I originally copied this from Ben Blankenship (2) back in the very early 90s; I was just finishing high school. Ah, the stories I could tell about seeing Bernstein read. His "opening" for Jello Biafra at the OK Hotel back in, uh, 90? 91? sticks out in my mind: it was very crowded and hot, and Bernstein repeatedly dowsed the crowd with water from a plastic gallon jug.


Steel Pole Bath Tub, unidentified cd5 (3). I have no idea when this came out (and haven't been able to ID it; offers of help gratefully accepted), and the sound quality is awful. But, hey, I was able to preserve two of my favorite SPBT songs. In college, tens of times, I saw SPBT at the apparently now defunct Satyricon (Portland). They frequently appeared on the bill with Heavy Johnson Trio (whose bassist was a cook at the then recently opened Delta Cafe in SE and whose diminutive guitarrist usually appeared wearing a huge viking helmet, complete with horns), as well as the fucking amazing Gern Blanston, long since broken up -- a huge loss for PDX music. This SPBT is a very special recording for me, as I copied it from a dear friend who passed away a few years ago and who was my constant companion and driver for all those nights at the Satyricon: Julia Harrison, peace be upon her (4).


Both Bernstein and SPBT have significant online afterlives: here and here, respectively.