Great Mimes of Rock: Ultravox's 'Passing Strangers'

by DJ El Toro

Tuesday, March 31:
“I didn’t get to digest as much music as I’d have liked yesterday. (Plus I have a wad of Britney Spears’ “If U Seek Amy” rotting in my colon, refusing to pass — just the chorus, repeating ad nauseam, making its tenacity known with such aggression that I find myself wishing Britney and her producers bodily harm.) E_ sent me a new compilation on Honest Jon’s, Open Strings: 1920’s Middle Eastern Records/New Responses. The latter disc of the 2-CD set includes performances by Six Organs of Admittance and Sir Richard Bishop, “in the style of” the archival material on CD1. Why Middle Eastern music? I’m just forever trying to fertilize* my ears and brain with new sounds, to keep my neurons firing, and hopefully inspired some unusual connections.”

* “Funny word choice, because so much of what makes it into my ear holes if I don’t strive for variety in my musical diet is ‘fertilizer,’ i.e. over-processed shit.”

Wednesday, April 1
“I’ve been listening to the new G-Spots collection of library music from Trunk Records pretty much non-stop for the last 2 days. I’m fascinated by the idea of original music composed to complement a variety of potential scenarios, rather than communicate clear-cut sentiments or emotions. These pieces have no agenda. They’re so much easier to appreciate on a purely sonic level — this is weird, this is pleasing — rather than making judgment calls about how successful it is at tapping into my feelings. And it fires my imagination. There is one piece for drum machine and vibrato-heavy guitar (”Moon Nightclub”) that I swear sounds like a Durutti Column demo.

Thursday, April 2
“I am grateful to John Wesley Harding for so many thing in life, but right now I’m especially thankful because a bit from one of his new songs, “A Very Sorry Saint,” has wedged itself on to the receptor where Britney had been gyrating non-stop for days, and driven the little tart out! Bye! I’m not especially thrilled to have the couplet ‘This isn’t even blood/It’s strawberry jam’ circling around in there over and over, but it is a far better tenant than the previous occupant, to be sure.”

Friday, April 3
“Yesterday, during my workout, [my trainer] remarked that he’d been listening to ‘The Morning Show’ on KEXP on the way to work, and heard three or four songs he didn’t recognize and really enjoyed. That got him thinking about the library of music the KEXP deejays have at their disposal, and how expansive our knowledge has to be to draw on that resource effectively. He then expressed a vague wish to have that kind of extensive knowledge at his disposal.

Yet [my trainer] was a football quarterback, and is about to start coaching again soon. And in that role, he has to memorize thousands (I think it’s thousands — I’m the furthest possible thing from an expert on football) of plays, specific to whatever team he’s on. And then he has to take into account a million variables as he executes any single play in real time, during a game. His goal is to combine that knowledge with the ability to make judgments and react quickly, so as to rack up the maximum number of touchdowns and field goals, for an overall winning score. Just like a KEXP DJ is trying to connect individual songs into compelling sets, which ultimately adds up to — hopefully — a satisfying show.

Definitely the first time I’ve ever been able to draw a parallel between my work/art, and football. Damn you, Jonah Lehrer!”

Saturday, April 4
“I just don’t dig Tuvan throat singing as much as I’d like to. I was listening to the Dust-to-Digital Melodii Tuva anthology — which might be too robust for first thing on a Saturday morning — and… well… it kind of annoyed me. There’s a congested quality to throat singing that I find off-putting. (Because of my allergies? My Western classical vocal training?) I don’t think I want to listen to this again, not like I do the D2D Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics disc.

Yet part of my brain, the pack rat part, envisions some weird scenario where I’ll need a CD of Tuvan throat singing RIGHT NOW! I admire that part of my brain for its imagination. But it has zero idea how cluttered this damn house gets.”

Sunday, April 5
“I had an idea yesterday for a story on ‘Great Mimes of Rock.’ That would’ve been a swell April Fool’s pitch — even though the idea is sincere. I could look at the influence of Lindsay Kemp on David Bowie and Kate Bush, and all the new wave/New Romantic mimes: Shock, Tik & Tok, that guy who performed with Howard Jones (Jed Hoile). There were mimes in the videos for Landscape’s “Einstein A Go Go” and Ultravox’s “Passing Strangers.” Shields and Yarnell did a lot of stiff and deliberate robotic movements, which is very Kraftwerk. And, of course, the requisite joke about the very real Marcel Marceau album — which is basically just the John Cage piece 4′33″.”

Monday, April 6
“I just had a scathingly brilliant idea: I want to start an intensively heavy band, a la Torche or Mastodon, and call it… Koala.”

DJ El Toro is the host of the overnight show In Between Sleep & Reason, Wednesday mornings from 1 AM to 6 AM on KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle and kexp.org. His column, Weird At My School, appears every Monday on the KEXP Blog.

The week before last, I polished off Bill Drummond’s excellent and hilarious memoir 45. Drummond managed the Teardrop Explodes and Echo & The Bunnymen, was one-half of the KLF, and found subsequent infamy as a art provocateur, author, etc. His rabid discourse on music in myriad forms inspired me to make a pact: I will write at least 3 pages about popular music in my journal, every day. Miraculously, I’ve stuck with it thus far. Here are a few excerpts from my rants and observations of the past week.

Tuesday, March 24:
“Updated my iPod, purging pop I don’t care about (goodbye Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Chris Brown), and trying to offset all the retro crap and web finds with some contemporary full-lengths that speak to me: Grizzly Bear, Bricolage, Bat For Lashes, Lovers, Black Moth Super Rainbow. I used to worry about having on clean underwear when I left the house, lest I should be struck down by a SUV and be found by the paramedics wearing two-day old boxers — now I fret that they’ll find my iPod next to my unconscious body and I’ll be revealed as hopelessly out of touch with 85% of modern music.”

Wednesday, March 25:
“Here I am, on the sofa, with John Cale’s Fear playing at moderate volume, while simultaneously reading a book. Freakin’ John Cale has killed live animals on stage, and I’m treating his music as ‘non-rivalrous’ media, like elevator music or an instrumental pops LP from Value Village? I picture John Cale storming into the living room, ripping that book out of my hands, cranking up the volume — even as he rails about the absence of decent speakers — and commanding me to submit to Each. Damn. Song. In the correct track order. And then going back and doing it all over again.”

Thursday, March 26:
“For a moment I was thinking what an outrage it is that No Doubt’s new single — i.e. the song they are hoping will take on any kind of life in the public sphere — is a cover of Adam & The Ants ‘Stand And Deliver.’ Stop raiding pop’s closet! Then I realized that the entire hit-making period of Adam’s career (eleventh hour comeback “Wonderful” excepted) was stitched together from the more attention-getting elements of other people’s music: Burundi beats (African music, Bo Diddley); Gary Glitter and glam rock; Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. What did Adam bring to the table? Some great cheekbones and a nice torso to hang it all off of, and the fortunate timing of early MTV — without which he might’ve been wiped out after ‘Goody Two Shoes,’ if indeed he’d gotten that far at all.”

Friday, March 27:
“Listening to Long Lost Tapes 1970 by Peter Walker. Don’t really know anything about Walker, although I seem to recall his name either being invoked by, or connected to, Thurston Moore. But Moore is one of us mouth-breathing fan boy types: He likes an awful lot of cool stuff. This CD is very Arthur magazine. Guitar ragas, featuring percussion — both drums and bells — and flutes, etc. I romanticize this as more pure music, not beholden to tight clichés of pop. This CD actually makes me think of a more bucolic Velvet Underground, without vocals. What am I seeking when I delve into this or Six Organs of Admittance or Sir Richard Bishop? I’m hoping to get swept up in the sounds, the timbres, and the ever-circling patterns. I know each piece has a beginning/middle/end, but because they’re not dictated — at least not in a fashion I can easily detect — by conventional rules of harmony, this music feels open and free, which are sensations I crave in my life.”

Saturday, March 28:
“They were listening to KMTT ‘The Mountain’ when I showed up to do my volunteer work yesterday. Selections we heard as we packed meals for clients included: New Order, Madness’ “Our House,” the Rolling Stones, and U2. Twice. ‘Stuck In A Moment’ earlier in the morning, then ‘Desire’ as lunchtime neared. A lot more things that passed through me, eliciting a mildly pleasurable reaction but not really registering. Cowboy Junkies’ version of ‘Sweet Jane’ came on, which A_ decried. I pointed out to him that in the context of the noisy late ’80s, it seemed revolutionary for a song to be so quiet. I did not observe that Lou Reed probably made a boatload of money off it, and I’m happy for him. What else did we hear? ‘Did they play INXS?’ They always play INXS,’ says A_. And he was right: They had.”

Sunday, March 29:
“Still groggy from last night’s birthday party — and the ice cream and bad music videos I ingested when I got home. The Killers’ ‘Spaceman’ clip is atrocious. Very Burning Man. Brandon Flowers’ costume looked suspiciously like the roller derby get-up Toyah Wilcox wears on the sleeve of Love Is The Law, ca. 1983.”

Monday, March 30:
“The universe seems to be doing its damnedest to convince me I’m not as beholden to ’80s pop as I sometimes believe, by regurgitating songs I simply can not stand into the atmosphere. Saturday, Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’ came back to haunt me at the gym, in the form of a crappy dance version. Who wants to listen to that? And twice over the weekend, QFC greeted me with Jessica Simpson struggling through ‘Take My Breath Away,’ the hit that reminded me I was right to hate Berlin in the first place.”

DJ El Toro is the host of the overnight show In Between Sleep & Reason, Wednesday mornings from 1 AM to 6 AM on KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle and kexp.org. His column, Weird At My School, appears every Monday on the KEXP Blog.

Animal Collective’s new album cover deserves to be viewed larger than life. Just roll your eyes across this bad boy and feel the underwater movement the band tried to emulate in the recording of today’s release, Merriweather Post Pavilion (apparently, it was the lagoon at the outdoor venue in Maryland that inspired the concept). Freaky… and beautiful. And that’s exactly what’s available to you this week as the new release deluge begins. The Freaky? New albums from John Frusciante plus Six Organs of Admittance, Psychic Ills, and Frog Eyes frontman Carey Mercer’s project, Blackout Beach — all good if it’s freak folk, ambient drone, or other weird music you’re after (and who’s not?). The Beautiful? Try the latest from Antony & the Johnsons, A.C. Newman (of New Pornographers fame), Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, and Robert Pollard. Largehearted Boy’s list contains one great album after another. Other worthwhile releases come from Matt & Kim, The 1900’s, New Model Army, Cut Off Your Hands, local acts Blue Giant and J. Tillman, and Roger O’Donnell, a keyboardist who’s played with the Psychedelic Furs, Thompson Twins, and The Cure. There’s plenty to be had on this most hopeful of hopeful days, so get out there and help boost our economy!

The 1900s - Age of Metals (MP3)
from Medium High EP on Parasol Records

Kyle Andrews - Sushi (MP3)
from Real Blasty on Badman Recording Co.

Animal Collective - My Girls (MP3)
from Merriweather Post Pavilion on Domino Records.

Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird - Fitz and The Dizzyspells (MP3)
from Noble Beast on Fat Possum

Antony and the Johnsons - Another World
from The Crying Light on Secretly Canadian

Atmosphere - trailer for the Sad Clown Bad Dub 4 DVD
included with God Loves Ugly (reissue) on Rhymesayers

Blackout Beach - Astoria, Menthol Lite, Hilltop, Wave of Evil, 1982 (MP3)
from Skin of Evil on Soft Abuse

Blue Giant - Target Heart (MP3)
from Target Heart EP on Amore!Phonics

Bon Iver - Blood Bank (MP3)
from Blood Bank EP on Jagjaguwar

Coconut Records - Any Fun
from Davy on Young Baby Records

Cut Off Your Hands - Turn Cold (MP3)
from You & I on Frenchkiss

Fiction Family - When She’s Near (MP3)
from Fiction Family on ATO Records

Ladyfinger - Little Things (MP3)
from Dusk on Saddle Creek

Matt & Kim - (MP3)
from Grand on Fader Label

Modern Skirts - Soft Pedals (MP3)
from the self-released All Of Us In Our Night

A.C. Newman - Submarines Of Stockholm (MP3)
from Get Guilty on Matador

Roger O’Donnell - Tiny Pieces of You (feat. Erin Lang) (MP3)
from Songs From The Silver Box on Great Society/World’s Fair

Or the Whale - Call and Response (MP3)
from Light Poles and Pines on Seany Records

Robert Pollard - Imaginary Queen Anne (MP3)
from The Crawling Distance on Guided By Voices Inc.

Psychic Ills - Fingernail Tea (MP3)
from Mirror Eye on The Social Registry

Saeta - When Will You Find Love (MP3)
from Else Another Light Might Go Out on Tarnished Records

Six Organs of Admittance - Resurrection (MP3)
from RTZ on Drag City

J. Tillman - Steel on Steel (MP3)
from Vacilando Territory Blues on Western Vinyl

Titus Andronicus - Titus Andronicus (MP3)
from Airing of Grievances on XL Recordings

Zero Boys - Civilization Is Calling (MP3)
from Vicious Circle on Secretly Canadian

Zero Boys - Livin in the 80s (MP3)
from History of on Secretly Canadian