Indie Rockers Finding Second Wind

IT seems, sometimes, that every awful band from the past is back together again for a lame-ass shed tour. And it's also started to seem, at least since the heavenly Go-Betweens reunion of about a decade ago, that some of the groups reuniting were not only good, they were better -- or close to it -- the second time around.


How can both of these things be true at the same time? It took me 2,000 words to figure it out.

For a story that just went up on Salon, I look at the awfulness alongside four bands that never had time to go bad -- Spain, the Feelies, Mission of Burma and the dBs -- and are now back in force.

And I try to make sense of the whole never-say-die phenomenon. Why did bands used to break up when the time was right, but then began staying together for years, or getting back together, over and over again?

Lovers of Spain, the LA "slowcore" band of '90s fame, should be aware of their August 28 show at the Bootleg Theater.

Wondering: Who are your favorite -- and least favorite -- reunited bands?

Spain mach 2, Photo Steven Dewall

Billy Bragg and Mavis Staples at UCLA

FRIDAY night at Royce Hall saw an unlikely double bill, with British folk-punk hero Billy Bragg playing a full set mixing politics and pop before soul goddess Mavis Staples, who channels the spirit of the black church and the civil rights movement.

This incongruous pairing ended up being a blast, though the two may have more in common politically than musically. (Both artists have also, of, course, worked with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.)

It's easy to love Billy Bragg's early music -- those rough songs from the '80s belted out with a thick British accent and an electric guitar. For a while in the early '90s it seemed like Bragg was going to ride the alt-rock boom into something like fame: He had a small hit with the jaunty "Sexuality," co-written with Johnny Marr.  But the music that's come since the early '90s with some exceptions like the Woody Guthrie records with Wilco, has seemed less urgent.

So it was a thrill to see Bragg set up solo on the Royce stage with just a stack of amps and Telecaster. His set leaned heavily on political songs, including a cover of Woody Guthrie's "I Don't Have a Home in This World Anymore," and some new numbers that sounded good. His political rants in between songs were about as engaging and persuasive in their common sense and compassion. The recent U.S. elections clearly inspired him.

And his love songs -- "Greetings to the New Brunette," "Milkman of Human Kindness," "A New England" -- still sound great. I'd forgotten how great Bragg could be live. My wife lamented that she could not vote for this British citizen for president.

The highs of Mavis Staples -- best know as part of the Staples Singers -- were high indeed even if she was less consistent than Bragg. Alongside gospel -- "Creep Along, Moses" -- and soul numbers, with stirring vocal harmonies, she sang CCR's "Wrote a Song For Everyone" and The Band's "The Weight."

At times in the set Staples seemed to get lost, and she's some of her voice's middle range sounded worn. But Staples gave off so much decency and positive energy it was hard to mind, and her band was spectacular.

A fuller review HERE by Steven Mirkin in the Orange Co Register.

"Repo Man" and Punk LA

NOT long ago the LA Times put together a Sunday package on the best films about Los Angeles. I was lucky enough to draw "Repo Man," a movie I watched so many times, with two different posses of high school friends, that the film's dialogue became a kind of subcultural code.

The film is being screened tonight at New York's Lincoln Center, in an honor we would not have expected as we shouted lines back to the TV screen while drinking pilfered beer back in the '80s.

And of course I was pleased to see "Repo Man" screened at the Guadalajara International Book Fair a few weeks ago as a canonical LA film -- alongside more obvious choices like "Chinatown" and "LA Confidential." (The latter was the number one movie in the Times piece, by the way.)

Returning to the film as a nearly 40-year-old adult, I was struck by both how well the film had stood up and by the sense of lost promise of its director and stars. (Alex Cox, who now lives in Oregon, like a lot of people who burn out on LA, released a memoir in 2008.) Much of the soundtrack -- Circle Jerks, Plugz, Black Flag doing "TV Party" -- still sounds excellent to my ears. This movie captured something -- culturally, and in terms of the talent assembled -- that didn't last long. But it's now a rich and complex part of LA history.

Here is my little note on the film.

Los Angeles has symbolized the end of civilization in a long list of films but rarely as memorably as in this sci-fi-inflected portrait of punk-era dead-enders. Using dirty, dingy locations in East L.A. and downtown, and under freeway overpasses, the film tells the story of Otto (Emilio Estevez), a self-proclaimed "white suburban punk" who repossesses cars after his career shelving generic foodstuffs -- labeled FOOD, BEER and DRINK -- doesn't pan out. Not only does this premise offer us a deadpan-comic tour of the seamy underside of L.A.'s car culture, it allows director-writer Alex Cox to fold in a story about alien invaders, the CIA and the invention of the neutron bomb (all with a nifty nod to the '50s noir classic "Kiss Me Deadly.") This is the City of Angels in the wealthy '80s, but it's far from glitzy: L.A. is filled with guns and almost no vegetation, a huge swath of the population seems to be unemployed, racial tension is high, buildings and lots are abandoned, and every convenience store we visit is in the process of being knocked over. Instead of responsible adults we have homeless savants, televangelists and blissed-out ex-hippies. Years later, the film -- a kind of hinge between "Taxi Driver" and "Pulp Fiction" -- shows an L.A. that doesn't seem that far from where we're heading.

Bookend: Cox, who grew up near Liverpool and now lives in Oregon, worked briefly as an L.A.repo man. He's got a memoir coming in September called "X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker.

And here -- harder to read than I'd like -- is the entire LA Times feature on the city's defining movies. Now, if you'll excuse me, "Let's go do some crimes."

"Passion is No Ordinary Word"

I'M kind of giddy to note that this week marks the birthday of British "Angry Young Man" Graham Parker. Parker broke about the same time as Elvis Costello, bringing with him righteous anger, a voice that resembled Van Morrison and perhaps American R&B, and a musical traditionalism grounded in The Band and other US models.

Though he never hit as hard as Elvis or even Joe Jackson -- those glasses probably didn't help --Parker has been a minor idol of mine since my high school days scrawling out his lyrics out in an attempt to teach myself literary imagery.

This song, from his 1979 "Squeezing Out Sparks" LP, gives the best sense of why we love the guy. Word-drunk, bitter, and catchy, he just destroys this song, "Protection." These "Local Girls" fare similarly, dispatched by what may be the worst dressed band in history! And this is a live "Passion is No Ordinary Word."

Shrewd listeners will note a backbone of Jamaican music in his style -- the one kind of music punks could admit to liking -- and here plays Bob Marley on Conan. Could not find a video for my favorite reggae tune of his, "Crazy Baldhead."

Finally, a stripped-down "You Can't Take Love For Granted." Ouch!

I spoke to Parker a few years back, around the time of his No Depression inspired "Your Country" LP. (In which Parker told me, by the way, that he had heard Gram Parsons.) I'll post it as soon as the LATimes archive is back. In any case, Happy Birthday to an underrated musician!

The Clean vs. New Zealand Pop

A HIPSTER friend, back in the 80s, turned me on to the new zealand sound -- the clean, the chills, the verlaines -- bands that made what was coming out of the US a the time sound pedestrian indeed. this stuff was pastoral, punk, lo-fi, hooky, and weirdly random all at once. i hadnt heard guitars tuned that way since the third velvet underground record.

the clean is back with a new record, "mister pop," on merge: it sounds nothing like their heyday, but takes them to a new and fascinating place. it's probably my favorite release since their original output from the late 70s/early 80s. (the first song, "loog," with its dreamlike drone and female vocals, is especially enchanting.) here is a video, "in the dreamlife you need a rubber soul," from the new LP.

a few years ago i spoke to the clean's robert scott, who is also in the bats -- here is my piece, which tries to give an overview of the whole scene on the flying nun label.

Photo credit: Merge Records

Death of a Cramp

Well folks, normally i would not offer two posts on punk rock in the same week, much less the same day, but these aren't normal times.

Today, Lux Interior, lead singer for the band The Cramps, died (fine LAT story here). ohio native erick purkhiser became part of the CBGB punk scene and moved to california. (when i bought a house four years ago i realized i lived one street over from him and cramps guitarist poison ivy -- on the edge, natch, of one of LA's biggest cemeteries) ... the cramps combined punk, camp, rockabilly, surf guitar, sex, horror movie shtick and bizarre popcult references -- it was screamin' jay hawkins meets the ventures with punk-rock force. here they are with "tear it up."

lux reportedly died of "a preexisting heart condition" at the age of either 60 or 62.

they cramps were among the first bands i discovered as a teenager moving on from my obsession with the beatles and dylan into a harder-edged and more contemporary sound... tho the world of the cramps was never my world. i remember the excellent liner notes to either "gravest hits" or "songs the lord taught us," which described the band's germinating in "the cold blue rays of 50s television," or something. they captured the weird irony i came to love about the LA scene.

lux, RIP, we hardly knew ya!!

Photo credit Flickr user 17