Sonic Youth's favourite NZ band: Classic or Dud [A Dead C thread]

Keith’s elaboration is a little confusing. since when does the fans of a band being dorky, or wearing bad clothes stop a band being classic? uncool people like them, so they’re not exclusively cool. OK. but classic? make good records? surely, at least a slightly different question? oh, we do get (1) "how dull the music is"- undiscussed, (2) good drummer - sure, (3) bad at writing songs - beside the point for a band who clearly don’t write songs.

so back to Duane’s version: if lots of people hype them as "geniuses" (do they really? I’ll let that one go…) and they sell records ("expensive works of art"?), if they are lionised, then so what? does that make them to blame? well maybe, if it is their own contrivance. but even then, does it affect their classic/dud status? I mean, if you did believe they were out there making out they were revolutionary or invented punk or something, you might think they were not such "nice guys", but how does this affect classic/dud status? (Led Zeppelin – to pick a more or less random example – were full of themselves, and may well be "overrated" in the larger scheme of things, but how does that stop them being classic?) maybe its’s not that they "sound like" anything, but that, living in NZ or whatever, Duane knows they are various shades of "middle class", and something in this puts him off?

so, anyway, crucially, the music: "unambitious"?

that anyone can make music is not news (may though be something it would be good if people remembered more often) nor is the fact that any sound can be utilised in making music, but somewhere in the wake of musique conrète, Ike Turner’s distorted amp, AMM, Nurse With Wound, whatever, middle class guys in NZ with rock gear acted on these facts and set about making records that sounded cool to them. sure "anybody could have done it". but they did do it, right? (it’s like people who don’t get modernist painting and say "my three year old could have done that!" y’know? they were really interested in doing that. they weren’t trying to con people.) sure, they were middle class enough to be able to do it because they wanted to, as amatuers, and middle class enough to know vaguely about some version of the historical precedent for it, in the (usually even more middle class) European "avant garde", but they did.

besides all that, the Dead C may have seemed to be about those bare principles, way back, and maybe that was in itself unimpressive at the time, but they surely didn’t persist for years and years for money (they made next to none) or to have a laugh at our expense, but because they kept coming up with stuff that interested them. and that goes/went way beyond "any shitty noise" into the kinds of complex interactions and processes that most any long-serving musician is sustained by.

is the result "dull"? if you want polished songs, then probably. it is/has been as abstract as indie rock gets. but, some of the appeal is obvious: lots of their stuff is gloriously confused, dense and chaotic. and it involves lots of choice timbres – rock drums, distorted guitars etc. and somehow, I’d argue, it works for them/they make it work, in a way few people have shown they can.

is it unambitious?

musically? what’s more satisfyingly ambitious? Joel Futterman? Daniel Johnson?

career-wise? we’re back to this again! it may well be the rub: yes and no.

yes, compared to other great underground NZ music, they have allowed their "middle class" privilege to help them get their stuff out there. (but despite George Gossett’s beliefs, eg, this is no crime. they really are nice guys.)

no, compared to, um, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (now that’s ambitious middle class music)? they’ve kept off the coke and nearer the "potting shed".

classic? well, at least very good, and personally important to me - when I was a teenage fan of early Cabaret Voltaire and the Electric Prunes and looking for stuff like that - noise and feedback. even as a middle class New Zealander, I own and like their stuff over tons and tons of indie stuff.

search: at least "Sun Stabbed", "Hell Is Now…", "Helen Said This", "Clyma Est Mort", "Trapdoor…", "Harsh ‘70s…",

destroy: at least "Dead C vs Sebadoh", "The Operation Of The Sonne"

so, for the sake of an argument ,or a fight: CLASSIC.

yeah like i said, & so do lots of other people nobody cares about. hey jon - i wasn't saying "anyone could've done it it" is a bad thing, it's (au contraire) the only interesting idea i can extrapolate from the whole big-fuckin-deal. (i was also being sincere when i said they were nice guys, that was only funny 'cause of this other dumm thread i started.) & i don't even care about the sensitive "class" issue , thinking about that now it means diddley poop 'cause lots of music i like is by "boring" "middle class" people like my own self.

anyway, to focus this: "the only interesting idea i can extrapolate from the whole big-fuckin-deal". OK. well, at this level of generality – "anybody could do it" – there probably are lots of other people doing "it". in that case, what I wanna hear, though, is either what’s wrong with "it", or "it" when it’s lionised?

if your angle that "it" is OK, just not if people get to caring about it, then – as I was asking – how does that follow?

if it is that "it" is not OK, and uninteresting, I’m not hearing descriptions of and reasons for this "it" being the sort of thing that can’t hope to be classic?

at another level of detail, maybe you mean the Dead C’s version of "it" is particularly boring to listen to? again: descriptions and reasons are lacking.

extra jibe for DZ here: if saying the Pistols "can’t play there instruments" is wheezy old poop, then why isn’t the Dead C just make any old shitty noise the same sort of poor repetition of an implausible/simplistic line? there’s gotta be more room to differentiate between all the different flavours of "rock band playing abstract/noisy stuff" or whatever than that! can you expand on "unambitious", maybe?

As someone who's never been to NZ, or seen the DC farting abt live, I think that 'exotic mystery' element alluded to by Duane is deffo one of the big attractions for me. First time I heard the DC's earlier, 'songier' recs like 'Trapdoor Fucking Exit', 'Harsh 70s Reality' or 'DR 503', they sounded like field recordings made in Ed Gein's shed - scary, messy, alien/foreign/otherworldly, horrible.

Adam - as for the rest of your question: The Gate stuff is great but pretty different - The Monolake and The Dew Line are amazing, I'd be surprised if you didn't like them if you're on a Dead C kick. My all time favorite Gate album is the one no one else likes, after they went sorta 'electronic' - The Lavender Head. Spooky.

Corpus stuff is mostly good too, but here is where I'd proceed with caution. Handful of Dust never really moved me, but the Flying Saucer Attack album on CH is surprisingly fucking devastatingly great. But if you're wary of wanky 'art garbage' as you put it, beware most of the catalog. Mostly 'free improv' based and little of the rawk charm of Eusa Kills era Dead C etc.

There are plenty of threads already, was the point. That said, this one in particular wasn't immediately apparent when searching, so I've tweaked the thread title slightly.

As for the thread lock, in my defense, I did try the search function, Ned. It don't fookin' work. And I tried google (ilx + The Dead C) - got bupkus. Given the number of active threads which basically consist of minimal house lists, I don't see what was really so intolerable about my "school me on The Dead C" thread.

That said, this one does seem to cover the bases...

I've been listening to the Vain, Erudite and Stupid comp for a week now. And it's fucking amazing. Some of the most beautiful music I've heard in ages.

This is a serving of rather harsh (70's) crow, 'cuz I've said some unkind things about The Dead C. in the past, based mostly on buying Trapdoor Fucking Exit and the Hell is Now Love single back in the early 90s and absolutely hating them. I saw their music as pointless, arrogant junkie art-garbage of the worst kind. Pissed me off 'cuz since I respected talked 'em up like the second coming of, I dunno ... something really darn good.

But time heals, and I'd heard a few tracks over the last couple years that sounded A-OK, and all those respectable types keep on dropping the name, of course. So, I finally ponied up and bought the budget-friendly comp. And I can't stop listening to it. Funny thing is that it all sounds pretty much EXACTLY as I remember, but my ears have adjusted to the damage somehow, and it now slides smoothly down the canal. Absolutely perfect fucking sounds.

So I can understand the haters. I understand why some find this music unambitious and dull (as, apparently, several intelligent posters did way back in 2001). But there's more here than poses, aesthetics and ideologies. To my mind, this is extraordinarly deep and satisfying music. Now, I'm not saying that The Dead C. write good songs. As far as I can tell, they don't. I mean, the tunes are okay and all, but ace songcraft really isn't the point. It's about music as a container for humans, and the experience of inhabiting that container. And, like all other music appreciations, it either works for you or it doesn't. To me, it seems rich, humane, intelligent and emotionally compelling. Your results may differ.

More than anything, it's reminding me of another "Dead" band: Portland, Oregon's Dead Moon (please hold yr. laughter til the performance is over). Dead Moon acheived greatness by subverting rock 'n' roll as an avatar of youth culture. Instead of trying to play young or stay young in rock, they made the music defiantly OLD. They made it thin, skeletal, rickety and devastated. The kept the romanticism and despair, but they lit it by sepulchral moonlight, and morbidly flaunted the deformations of age and time.

The Dead C. aren't working from the same playbook, but they acheive a similar result. Their music, too, is dusty and shattered, crumbling apart like dry bones rubbed together in hopes of a fire. They use rock, but they aren't desperately, parastically attached to it's corpse in the manner of Dead Moon. Instead, they seem only to vaguely recall it, like dissipating ghosts tuning in and out of the real world.

End result, though, is similarly riveting and passionate. Cold wind and a shiver up the spine. Amazing stuff.

***

Is Harsh 70s Reality readily available in a complete form? Or do I have to pay scumbait prices for old vinyl?

I think it was reissued on CD at some point. That's probably out of print also, but less expensive.

Tom Lax:

I probably listened to cassettes of Harsh 70s Reality 200 or more times in various mixes, guises & sequences, from a basic, primitive template (that was later used for the CD reissue) to the sprawling, barely contained frenzy that became the double LP.

Bruce Russell:

... it's clear that this [T is Never Over Pt I & II] was left off the CD mainly to bolster the worth of the vinyl version. We've blown that now.

It is totally a monster on vinyl, though!

But 3 days later I saw them play a club date and they played for over 2 hours, until the club pulled the plug.

i think they're playing a london club date, but it's after i leave. ;_;

I also had one of the Gate CDs that had the big fish on the cover, but I didn't like it much and I ended up trading it off.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), Today 3:46 PM. (hstencil)

it was gygax!, familytrain, jack cole, hanoi jane and myself.

It's funny. I smoked tons of what you kids call "rope" for decades. Evil drugs helped me love stuff like Sonic Youth, F/i, Butthole Surfers, Melvins, Chrome, Monster Magnet, Green River, Hawkwind, Can, The Stooges and so on. But I never really got into the purer noise and space stuff until (with the help of the Log Cabin Republicans) I got "clean."

Now I don't listen to much else. Go figger.

Was there ever a Dead C album poll? Too tired to read all the myriad Dead C threads for recommendations right now.

Any opinions on the recent(ish) one "Future Artists"? I like the sleeve, wondering if it's worth a buy...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Qc%2Bn5hZ3L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

I've only listened to it once, but I liked it. Def on the abstract meandering side, not so much rocking. "The AMM of Punk Rock" is the coolest song title ever.

I think Future Artists is a great album.

I am the Dead C's #1 fan though, so ymmv.

SECRET EARFF

at first i thought i liked secret earth a lot more too, but then i recently went back to this one and it sounded great - not even as 'abstract' as i'd first thought - but then dead c's #2 fan ymmv etc etc

Aye, I prefer the rocking rather than the abstract side. Might pick it up cheaply secondhand for a try. Will read the various threads hopefully this week when I have some time.

It's a good'un.

Yessir

http://m.tinymixtapes.com/news/the-dead-c-announce-new-album-armed-coruage