“Demo Tapes” by the Previous Engagements – Review

Feel not ashamed if you don’t know what the Previous Engagements are — in fact they come from my old home town of Hollister, CA. A combo inspired by the Strokes and the less good tail end of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ career, they are comprised of singer/guitarist Nick Burchard, bassist Liam Miller, and drummer Jon Chase. They play things pretty conventionally, without the noise, dissonance, or most of the idiosyncracies that distinguish most bands I like. So why are they up here?

Because, seventy-odd percent of the time, they ROCK!

Really! Their demo CD-R (since they’re all in college now, I expect it will probably be their only recording, unless they pull a Chicago XX like the Low-Maintenance Perennials) contains ten tracks, all recorded “in Nick’s living room” according to the liner notes; they hiss, fuzz, clip and dither, but never does the recording really sound like that lo-fi crap that previous generations of bands would have had to record to big brothers’ boomboxes. The recording is better than expected for a garage band — no stereo tricks for these one-mic genii, but the instruments do not blend together into a formless, fluctuating caramel gloop, which is just one of the things the Engagements have going for them. Nick Burchard performs pretty well as a punk singer.

I sat through most of one of their concerts. They played seventeen songs before I had to leave, most of which seemed to be originals; there was an indistinguishable Strokes cover, and maybe something else, but they appeared to be a pretty prolific bunch. (They definitely came up with more than the ten songs here.) Nick’s guitar had a single distortion pedal that I saw onstage, and he would turn it on and off, which generally indicated whether the song would be good or boring; it also sets the tone of most of the album, now that I think about it. His guitar solos cleaved uncomfortably close to my own, probably owing to the fact that we took lessons from the same teacher at Mr. O’s music academy. I sat directly in front of his squealing amp for most of the show, so I came away a little deaf. Earlier in the show, we (a friend and I) had borrowed Jonny to play drums for our performance of “Chameleon,” and he did pretty damned well for a guy who had never heard the song before. His shining moment(s), however, came with the Engagements and the songs he knew how to play. Listen to the drum intros for songs like “Fire” and “Kneecaps,” and you’ll see what I mean. The guy is a badass alt-rock drummer.

I interviewed bassist Liam once about going to college in Santa Barbara; it’s now on my list of schools to apply to, so I can’t really say anything bad about his performance. Luckily, I don’t have to — he was apparently the primary author of “Kneecaps'” driving bassline, which rules, and he plays a lot better elsewhere than most guys who learned bass while playing in the band. That’s some Flea shit right there.

Nick’s amp and the sheer length notwithstanding, I enjoyed the show a great deal, and was inspired by the fact that a decent garage band can emerge from Hollister. If I can only replicate those kinds of results with my own current band… but never mind. I’m pretty sure I heard most or all of the songs on 23 Hours during the show; I remember my two favorites, “Kneecaps” and “Another Day,” and hoping that they were included on the CD’s available outside. I remember discovering, disappointed, that the songs were burned to a CD-R. I remember calling Nick’s mom and asking for the files on a thumb drive, and ripping them to my computer. (I listen to the Engagements on my iPod pretty much exclusively.)

The songs lean more towards the punk than pop, for the most part. Heck of a relief. “Another Day,” “Fire” and “Kneecaps,” as mentioned before, are among the best of the bunch, and make for great listening. “Another Day” in particular sticks strongly in my head, even when I haven’t listened to it in awhile. It reminds me just the slightest of simplified Fugazi: punk drive, but with closer to five or six chord changes and a chorus that consists of a badass singalong shout: “Gonna  have to wait for another day, gonna have to wait for another day. GONNA HAVE TO WAIT FOR ANOTHER DAY, GONNA HAVE TO WAIT FOR ANOTHER DAY!” (If you look the band up on YouTube, be disappointed, and realize that the Previous Engagements with two-hundred-odd views is NOT the half-great Hollister group. It is a shitty unappealing pop-punk-nu-metal band that probably lives in Texas or some hellhole.)

Anyway, to overpraise these great songs is to reduce the importance of the good ones — there are plenty of those too. In fact, the first half is almost spotless in its punk-based charm. Very few mid-tempo songs prevail, and the songs themselves stick profusely in my head. “Warm Winter” reminds me of the Skin Yard rarity “Out of the Attic.” Only “Not For You” really kind of stinks. Nick yelps “oh baaaaby, can’t you seeeeee?” I remember hearing this one at the show and being about as bored by it; I think he introduced it as “the one my girlfriend likes,” which is never a good sign.

The second half is almost as good. “Years In the Shade” is a kind of walking ballad, but its barely upbeat chord progression keeps it going doing the chorus; “Years In the Shade” is based on a series of picked blues-rock notes that I’m pleasantly surprised to say that I’ve never heard in anyone else’s songs. Good to hear a little originality. However, most of part two is only slightly less languid than the aforementioned “Not For You,” and it exemplifies “side 2 syndrome” (as one cognizant Alice in Chains reviewer observed of the group’s album Facelift). I really don’t like “Justified” that much — it moves with the urgency of a sedated DMV clerk — but the progression from verse to chorus rings well in my ears, so I give it a pass.”Final Goodbyes” closes things out on an average note, somewhat like the album itself: a combination of strong energy and questionable but ultimately rewarding melodrama. It’s in swingless, fast-waltz 3/4. (Oh I almost forgot track 9)

“Fire” is probably my personal favorite song from the entire record. I’ve figured out the guitar part, and plan to get m’band on playing it live sometime. I remember walking home from the SAT Subject Test when a neuron misfired somewhere and the song abruptly entered my head. I stopped immediately and began to notice the beautiful stretch of the land near the high school, the ranches that spanned the whole valley up to the horizon. The grass in those fields was unusually green, the cows content and the air crisp, the sky blue and cloudless. I took in the view gratefully, aware that I had no obligations for the rest of the day. “Fire” echoed through my mind as I turned around and walked back to the town, in the direction of home.

“Locust Abortion Technician” by the Butthole Surfers – Review

(What have the Butthole Surfers done with my good taste? I listen to Locust Abortion Technician over and over again, like a masochist who volunteers to play rodeo clown. I used to like fun, tuneful bits like “Sweat Loaf” — always been a great thing to blast at my neighbors, and “Human Cannonball” has been hummed once or twice whilst the author attended some kind of Boy Scout Camp. [No place is more incongruous with the Butthole Aesthetic than an island at sea, that much I know]. Even the “Kuntz” experiment is tolerable. Essentially, back then I was pleased to have [cult]ivated such progressive taste as Weather Report and Nick Cave’s solo work — the dumb, weird bits of the album being “regressive,” according to my disbelieving sensibility. How could something as ugly as these fragmentary, non-composed “songs” entertain anyone? Then, one day a few weeks later, a sinister phenomenon materialized between my senseless neurons, the immediate effect of which was that certain things got “stuck in my head” — things like Paul Leary’s solos in “Weber” and “The O-Men,” lodged between amygdala and cerebellum, resting on those skronky, wavery little bits involving high notes. (Oh hell) Meanwhile, a downward trend began in my estimation of formerly beloved, more conventional tracks like the aforementioned “Sweat Loaf” or “Human Cannonball,” as their relative normality began to grate slightly when juxtaposed with such tendrilous equilibrial wondermassive cornelian complex terrificatory compositions as the also-aforementioned “Weber” and “The O-Men,” which I had previously prized only for its parody of the noted Seattle punks the U-Men. I transpose’ut that surf the Hole Tour Butters took thru Seattle, on which they probably discovered said U-Men, was also the stop at which Kim Thayil first saw them, and became the fan who would play so learily (and, it must be said, ranaldovesque) on Soundgarden’s nottingbad first album. Currently, even more grotesque bits (i.b. “Pittsburgh to Lebanon,” the ultra-slow “Graveyard”) course through my surprising skull jelly like the fumes of mustard gas, and I am transmogrificated like the stinking sheep that I am into a mindless devotee of the Butthole Surfers [I bring them offerings! Not blood, really — often the B.S. [short for Benevolent Superbeings] settle for tofu with a dash of garlic salt.] I cannot stop listening, and in listening cannot stop adoring — caught in a cycle — victim — can’t even write like a normal person — who typed this crap on my blog pag)