Too scared to join the military Too dumb to be a cop Citizen I.C.E.
This is an old song of theirs, formerly called “Citizen C.I.A”, and lyrically reworked to reflect current events. The rest of the lyrics are in-video.
I have to admit, I should probably listen to more Dropkick Murphys than I do, and that will probably change in the coming weeks. Every time I encounter news about the band, I see them in an increasingly positive light. I don’t have to like every song a band writes to know them to be stand-up folks that deserve my support.
J.G. Thirlwell, also known as Clint Ruin, Frank Want, and Foetus (multiple variants of the name), among other pseudonyms is an Aussie musician that has been putting out albums of an experimental nature since the early 80s.
It’s been a spell since I added a song to the series of posts that was originally intended to look backwards to look forwards for music discovery.
I was disappointed with the discovery process, which either sent me to bands I already knew full well or directed me to bands that sounded nothing at all like my “seed” music.
Rose Chronicles, copyright status unknown
After yesterday’s post quoting an opinion piece writer who has essentially declared that we have settled for the enshittification of our culture via the monetization of everything artistic thanks to the internet, I was left thinking about the last time I really enjoyed most of the music I was discovering. I can safely say that started to wane at some point near the end of the 90s.
While not aways the case, I do like myself a good cover song now and again, just to see how a band reinterprets a song and tries to own it. I’ve never seen much point in a band that tries to make something sound exactly like the original — I mean, what’s the point? And there are a few songs and bands that just don’t translate well into a new sound (Doors, Zeppelin, post-Barrett Pink Floyd). But, on the balance, it is fun to see how a band tries to reimagine a song and make it their own.
I’ve not made it any secret that I am a Sisters of Mercy fan (for the first two albums and early singles, anyway). And I’ve grown to really like the neo-gothic Heartworms after Chris Nelson introduced me to them at the beginning of summer. So, when I saw that JoJo and band performed a Sisters song in-studio, I definitely had to check it out.
Back in the 90s, I had completely fallen in love with Ani DiFranco based on a single album, Out of Range. If I were to be completely honest, I actually fell in love with her over a single song, The Diner, and I did so while I was sipping over-roasted coffee in some bohemian-styled converted warehouse with the brick walls and exposed support timbers in the Lowertown neighborhood of downtown Saint Paul. I fell hard for her before the song was even over.
Ani DiFranco; Image source: Rolling Stone
My conversation partner had gone off to take a piss, as you are prone to needing to while drinking far too many over-roasted cups of black coffee over an afternoon spent doing largely nothing in a very bohemian manner, chain-smoking cigarettes in a very artistic way in the artist quarter of a revived downtown area.
I’ve slowed down a bit on my listening to music, trying to find something that fits this nebulous definition I have of “different like the 80s post-punk era, but newer” music. Of course, while I am watching videos of nerdy girls building out their rooms on YouTube, the site is more than happy to continue providing me with music ideas to listen to, including Falco’s “Rock Me, Amadeus” (has there been anyone more absurd and apparently oblivious to their absurdity than Falco? Perhaps Boy George? Right Said Fred?).
Of course, there is only so much Viking-inspired music I can listen to, and Falco is not really someone I want to listen to on a regular basis — nor is that terribly “new”. So, I end up watching my videogame hype videos and largely ignore the offerings on deck.
That is, until the algorithm reminded me of a song that Chris Nelson introduced me to a couple of years back by a chap named Ren. Watching and listening to the song again (and this is a case where the song is best as a multimedia experience), I am still really, really impressed with this song. It does a lot of things that I wish I could do as a musician, but lack the talent to be able to do — both in the guitar playing and the presentation. The song itself is reminiscent of a manic Arlo Guthrie singing about a restaurant owned by Alice. Except not done for laughs and glitched on the part where they are jumping up and down yelling, “Kill! Kill!”
Interestingly enough, the YouTube algorithm brought me back full circle on a music listening binge and decided that I probably had enough of that fancy and schmancy post-punk modern stuff in English and decided to point me back at something more along the lines of modern non-English folk with real instruments and minimal production on the overall sound.
Trigger warning:Song contains Northern European folk sounds that feel old enough to be tribal in essence. May contain ethnic instruments and little to no electronic music to sooth the transition.
Upon listening, I figured, who am I to argue with such a suggestion? Which brings me to Sonleikr’s Ulvetime. If you look at the song title with crossed eyes and think really hard to the Old Norse language course you started but never finished, you can pick out a translation: ulve (Danish) from ulfr (Old Norse) which obviously means “wolf”. And time (Danish) is equally obvious as “hour”.
After a missed Saturday post for this series because… well… while I heard music I liked with the focus I had, I haven’t heard anything that really grabbed me. Yesterday’s post with the Mission as a focus was an attempt to try to get back on track with the nominal excuse that I was inspired in ways by their music and (largely) deeper cuts.
As I feared, the synthwave/darkwave/coldwave/postpunk exploration did quickly become very “samey” as I listened. There were decent bands, but few that I didn’t already know that really captured my attention. And there were even fewer that didn’t employ English as their language of choice. So, I decided to course correct and go into this labyrinth based more on whim than on algorithmic curation.
one of many iterations of The Eden House (copyright owner unknown)(more…)
The Mission circa 1986, found on internet (unknown copyright)
Yesterday, I made a veiled reference to two songs on my mind at the time that I wrote Between Shadow. And while they do not exactly fit in with the criteria that I’ve set out for myself in this series (non-English, strike; new to me, strike, darkwave/coldwave/synthwave, strike), I thought that I might as well include them for readers so that the reference isn’t lost on them.
