Music Zen!

I was looking for June of ’44 videos to put up here so that I could write an entry about them, but, alas, there was nothing that really leaped out at me of theirs on Youtube.

In the related videos section, though, came a Shellac video. I haven’t listened to Shellac in a long time, but just the other day, I had Squirrel Song stuck in my head (“This isn’t some kind of metaphor! God damn! This is real!”).

Anyway, here’s a video of Shellac doing My Black Ass. At the very beginning, there is a heckler who provokes a your mom joke out of Mr. Albini. How cool, right?

I love Youtube comments, this is a fact! One of my favorite categories of Youtube commenter is (aside from the guy who goes to every video he can find and says, “What the fuck? That’s so gay! FAGS!!!”) the kind that comment on noise rock videos. Take this one, for example, “This is not music. It’s talentless noise. It’s people like U who buy rap CDs HAHA.” The “this is not music” crowd seems to find its way to these videos, I don’t know how, and completely miss the entire point of the music. Inevitably, it’s some jock rock Metallica fan, though, so I guess the joke’s sort of on them, in its own subtle way. I think a pretty good rule of thumb for life is, in addition to “Don’t talk to strangers,” is “Never trust anyone who says rap isn’t music.”

And between these two is about 17 minutes of really high quality concert recordings (especially for a noise rock-y sort of sound!):

Part 2:

Anyway, for those who don’t know who he is, Steve Albini is definitely up there as one of the great DIY music producers. He was/is in Shellac, Big Black, and Rapeman. You can see a fairly complete list (I say “fairly complete” because Wikipedia says it is incomplete and Wikipedia is always right) of his efforts here. For those of you Pixies fans, he worked on Surfer Rosa. He’s also done stuff for Jesus Lizard, the Breeders, Helmet, PJ Harvey (ick!), Nirvana, Melt-Banana, Screaching Weasel (there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time), Veruca Salt, Braniac (whoa, didn’t know he did that), Pansy Division, Bedhead (!!!), Low, Jawbreaker, mclusky (<3), and… wait, why am I typing out this list if it’s basically what’s in that link? Anyway! Shellac is a band worth listening to and Steve Albini is a really awesome dude. He’s also living proof that you can come from Missoula, Montana and still do something with your life. I’ve, uh, been to Missoula, and there’s not of “doing things with your life” going on around there.