In my life, I can’t remember a time when so many great musicians died within such a short span. These are quite tragic times. Chuck Brown, the indomitable funk guitarist, died last Wednesday of heart failure. I will miss him and I am glad to still have his music as part of my life.

Articles: Official Website, New York Times

I first learned about Donna Summer when someone told me about her career-killing controversial single Love To Love You Baby. I’d say that’s still my favorite thing about her, and I’m saddened to hear that such an engaging singer has passed. I’m not going to lie, I’m not a huge fan, but I will say that her individualistic approach to the genre of disco always endeared her to me. She will be missed.

Articles: CBS, Chicago Sun-Times, Today, Rolling Stone

If you tend to ignore press orgies, you might have missed that one of the members of Against Me! has come out as a transsexual woman, and if you did miss it, kudos to you for being able to ignore superficial press, because judging from the coverage it received, this was the most exciting thing that has ever happened in the history of anything. Funny, I seem to recall that Against Me! played a bunch of really awesome music with an unflinching anarchist motif that the press complacently ignored for years while making sure to report every detail of the lives of shitty top 40s acts. What does a solid band need to do to get a mention in Rolling Stone after Eminem’s trip to the dentist? Be trans, apparently. In fact, most media outlets have a special room in their office where they all go to finger themselves with excitement whenever anyone who’s even remotely famous comes out as trans. And why wouldn’t they? Most people’s concept of gender hasn’t progressed any further since National Geographic specials on whatever lightly clothed culture opened our minds to the (strictly binary) world of genital distinction. Maybe a few of us have had our minds opened to a more fluid concept of gender thanks to ‘shemale’ porn on the Internet, but I doubt it. So when ‘a boy wants to be a girl,’ that’s the mindfuck of the century.

So the media exploits actual gender variance to feed the curiosity of a public convinced of a limited gender variance. It’s a win-win situation for everybody, except for, y’know, actual transgender people who are getting discriminated against/ostracized//murdered/etc. because the media would rather with present transgender like a zoo animal than setting the record straight. Media that aims to uphold our old fashioned view of gender helps to ruin people’s lives every single day. And headlines like Against Me! rocker Tom Gabel says he’s Transgender (emphasis mine) are only giving intolerance toward trans people more ammo.

One aspect of all this that I do have positive feelings about, is that trans people may take inspiration from having a smart, outspoken, musically badass trans person in the public eye. With any luck, the girl from Against Me! (I’m still not going to bother looking up her name.) will give hope to a altogether too often hopeless demographic who, seeing the media buzz,  say to themselves ‘If she can do it, so can i!’

However, one can be pretty assured that every cis person is going to assume every trans person has now become Against Me!’s biggest fan ever. I expect there’s conversations about this subject going on everywhere that look disturbingly similar to the following conversation on The Office:

Kelly: So how much do you love Lance Bass now?
Oscar: I don’t know who he is.
Kelly: You don’t know who Lance Bass is? He’s only one of the five greatest singers ever…and gay.
Oscar: I’ve never heard of him.
Kelly: Oscar, you really should learn more about your culture.

We could all stand to learn more about our culture, couldn’t we?

When I was 12, I wanted to become a bass player because I wanted to start a band and I didn’t know any bass players. I adopted the style and attitude I thought bass players were supposed to have, and I practiced on my bass once or twice before going back to reading Star Wars books and not having any friends.

Soon afterward, my favorite bass player became Duck Dunn. Admittedly, it was due to his work with The Blues Brothers and nothing else. To this day, I still think The Blues Brothers exhibits everything a band should entail, and Dunn’s calm, collected style of playing, and his ever present pipe, were just too cool for school.

Like all the musicians associated with The Blues Brothers, Dunn’s accomplishments and accreditations were utterly impressive. The number of crucial contributions he made to the world of music are too numerous to count.

I spent my youth wanting to be Duck Dunn, and today, I morn the loss of a great hero of bass guitar. May the message of his music live forever, and inspire new legions of hopeful musicians.

Sorrowfully, Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, of the Beastie Boys passed away earlier today. I can’t imagine what the state of music, drinking 40s, or flipping off cops would be without his noble contributions. He will be missed.

There are some things that rule balls. The World/Inferno Friendship Society is one of those things.

A few months ago the former drummer for Smeat invited me out to watch his friend’s band F.O.A. (If they have a website I can’t find it.). They were playing with The Adicts, who I was sort of curious to see. I hadn’t listened to them in many years. The World/Inferno Friendship Society, a band I’d never heard of who had a weird name, was also on the bill. They by far put on the best show of any band that night (Sorry Adicts and F.O.A. For the record, I enjoyed F.O.A.s set, but I left The Addicts’ set after the second time the singer requested to see boobs of the showgoers). W/IFS played a wild, rollicking sort of punk fusion that was thoroughly entertaining both as music and as a spectacle.

The band’s music comes from a large, apparently fluid ensemble. It takes an obvious que from psudeo-political art punk musical movements, but also has a solid traditional formula. Perhaps imagine if Chumbawamba did their best Scott Joplin impression, with a hint of klezmer thrown in for good measure.

One can’t ignore the sophisticated, almost pedantic tone of the band. The Q&A section of the band’s website is clearly written by someone who gets a kick out of the finer things in life. Still, read a bit, and it becomes (to me at least) obvious that any pride the band has in its odd formality is well deserved. It reminds me of when someone told me to read Evasion. I had to put it down because I couldn’t get around the inflated ego of the author. Someone told me ‘Well, I think he deserves any arrogance he has.’ To me, The World/Inferno Friendship Society is much more deserving of their much more reasonable ego.

Lastly, I made sure to include a picture of the female saxophone player who I saw play, because at the show I attended, she has a circle A shaved into the side of her head, and it was the most wicked awesome thing ever.

Check it out: Official Website, Myspace, Facebook, Last.fm

Just for shits and giggles I decided to Google No Condom? Whatever! earlier today. I’d heard about them almost ten years ago after I found out on Friendster they were playing a few dates with one of my favorite bands of all time, Sex With Girls. I think the shows fell through, but I was sort of intrigued by the band. Electroclash was quickly becoming a huge thing and all.

I kind of forgot about the band until now. They put out one EP that’s apparently still available, and the picture above seems to be the only photograph of the band. I don’t know anything about them. Apparently they’re from Los Angeles.

Their music, however, is well worth a listen. It’s at time quintessential electroclash, while in other places it unique sort of indie politeness that’s really fucking catchy. A good analogy might be Fran Drescher it’s lovably annoying and while it never becomes the only thing you’d want to listen to, it deserves a listen for sure.

Check it out: iSound, Last.fm

First of all, for those of us researching bands on the Internet, please don’t name your band a word as commonplace as ‘Zeus.’ It’s a fine name and all, but boy howdy do I not feel like sifting through a bajillion websites about the Greek pantheon. Actually, it was pretty easy to find out about Zeus, but imagine if they were a more obscure band.

If you’re like me, you’d never heard of this fairly recognized Canadian band before seeing their wicked video for their new single. That’s how I roll, for sure. Regardless, the video is awesome and the album is absolutely worth a listen. There’s nothing especially modern about this music. Every note sounds like it would fit perfectly on The Best of The ’70s, or maybe even at Woodstock. What’s especially stunning about this, is that not only does it have a sound that remembers times past, but it has the same good melody and jive understanding that makes older (I refuse to say classic) music still fun to listen to today. I can’t give names of any bands that Zeus sounds like, exactly, but still, there’s something totally timeless to it that reminds me of the likes of Joe Cocker and Allman Brothers. And if nobody’s listening to this in 10 years, hey, I listened to it about 10 times today, so that’s just as good, right?