Issue # 52 August 2003 thewigwambam.com
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Ignoring Objectivity Since 1998 WIG WAM BAM “Albuquerque zine of music & nepotism”
LOCAL SHOWS NM venues, bands from here or there
Datsuns, Star Spangles, Dirty Novels, Jet Black Summer, the Alarm Clocks, Karen, Scab Party, Alan, Random Access memory, the Sweatband, Mindy Set, Devendra Banhart,  Xiu Xiu, Abba
LOCAL Releases NM bands, any label
the Phase Live at the Moonlight Lounge CD-R (2003) the Kleptones  Meet the Beatless CD-R (2003)
DENVER SHOWS
Detroit Cobras w/ Tongue, Hemi Cuda
LOCAL SHOWS
the DATSUNS, STAR SPANGLES, DIRTY NOVELS 6/2/03 Launchpad submitted by Dee Snarl I was stoked to make it in time to catch a smidge of the much-hyped-in-these-pages Dirty Novels. As advertised, they looked and sounded a whole lot like early (but casual!) Stones. I liked what I heard, but I’ll really have to hear more than one song to have anything worthwhile to say (and probably not even then). Step inside the handy-dandy-whatchamacallit-machine, jaunt forward just a few short years (to say ’67), and you have the Star Spangles. They had that Swingin’ London look down! Yeah baby! They were making me HORNY! Oh shit. I’m really, really sorry about that. Anyway, they were a fair bit more amped up than the Stones ever were; more like the early Who – except with a healthy dose of straight-up punk rock going on. And why not? Jump in that hypothetical fuckin’ machine, and fast forward to mid-70s Midwest U.S. of A. The Datsuns skip the usual Hives and Strokes forebears (Nuggets, Velvet Underground), to evoke mulleted masterminds from Bad Company to the Nuge. You like cowbells? Come join the kegger! And as if flat out ROCKIN that hard wasn’t enough to get these guys blackballed by the garage rock cognoscenti, they have to go and get touted by the British press as the next “next Nirvana!” Well, no, but they played tightly and energetically, and made my foot go tappity-tap. And, in their defense, they kept the most annoying features of their genre to a minimum: ridiculously short sing-along, no drum solo, even few guitar solos! Actually, the obvious influence almost goes without saying, geographically speaking (the Datsuns are from New Zealand): Bon Scott-era AC/DC! Oh yeah! (Plus, the guy with that “retro” Keep On Truckin’ or whatever shirt has the full-on Malcolm Young hair.) So, I’m as turned off by the English hit-making machine as anybody, and these guys don’t have the tunes to be the next Nirvana (or probably the next Soundgarden), but they deliver the one thing that matters: they’ll rock your blue-collar ass! Have a coupla shots, ignore the hype, and dance (or whatever it was people did before moshing and headbanging)! Let There Be Rock! –Dee Snarl JET BLACK SUMMER, the DIRTY NOVELS, the ALARM CLOCKS 6/28/03 @ Atomic Cantina One o’ those eight-zillion band extravaganzas, this in honor of Oh, Ranger!’s calling it quits. I came in towards the middle after deciding not to make the journey to the Taos Solar (read: “hippie”) Music fest to see an acoustic reunion set of Hot Tuna-- an offshoot of Jefferson Airplane--whose earliest recordings were faithful-in-spirit old blues covers featuring Jorma Kaukonen on guitar, Jack “Eyebrows” Cassady on bass and the great Willow Scarlett blowing harp. I even had a ticket but at the last minute couldn’t face the long drive and prospect of hanging with piles of unrepentant grey-haired hippies and granola-sniffin’ New-Agers. But I do wish I’d heard the set… Anyway I was consoled by the always fun (if a little rusty this time) Alarm Clocks set. The Novels too never fail to get me shakin’ all over on the dance floor. Jet Black Summer certainly kick ass with volume and ability; not my style but the back room was packed with people happily getting their eardrums blown out. Once again an after-party at the Sweat House kept me up ‘til all-hours. It was sorta quiet at first but at bar-closin’ got inundated with the everyone who hung at the Atomic until the very end. In other words, the place was packed with drunkards. KAREN, SCAB PARTY, ALAN 6/29/03 @ the Walls The Karen tour kickoff kicked hard & loud in best style. I’m finding it hard to say excess good about this band of noise-sters. They’re not hardcore, not metal, not noisecore, not anything you might expect but scarcely-controlled chaos skewed just right. Scab Party made little impression except for being way too poppy for a band with a name like that. It would be like going to see a band named Satan's Filth Whore but who end up playing love song lounge music. Incongruous. Alan What’s-his-name opened up with lots of feedback/FX one-man-and-one-guitar noise. Not a toe-tapper in the bunch, neat stuff to see every once in a while but I think more fun to perform than sit & listen to. He was invited into the Karen set and amped the chaos factor by 8x into duck- and-cover rock; that is, duck your head, watch out for flying instruments and cover your sensitive ears. All hell broke loose which was a fine way to end the night’s festivities and send the Karen kids off to lonely gigs in creepy little towns and hopefully not too many van troubles. the ALARM CLOCKS, RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY, the SWEATBAND 7/1/03 @ Burt’s Fine sets by all bands right across the board. Too bad the most memorable portion (the one that everyone is still talking about) was when Andrea A. Clock leapt up on that silly little wall that surrounds the Tiki stage and just slid right off, taking a fall that looked as damaging to butt & shins as it was to dignity. No blood was drawn and the gal didn’t miss a beat, rock trouper that she is. It was a decent set, building up to the third and final Alarmist set of the week tomorrow night (which I managed to miss, damn it). The sound wasn’t the greatest but came through well here and there. Some nights are better than others I guess. RAM is still new to me and sounding great but I’m nevertheless awaiting some live percussion and/or keyboards rather than the canned stuff. Kentifyr says they’re working on it. I’m patient so I’ll quietly wait & see… The Sweatband continues improvements and just-right-moments abounding. Everyone concerned is working harder all the time which makes me a happy boy. the SWEATBAND, the MINDY SET 7/2/03 @ Golden West I may be in the minority in this thought but a true rock n’ roll band does covers. If you don’t you’re not. End of discussion. Every garage or “nuggets” style band, every band that captured the spirit of original rock and roll did/does. So with the Sweatband’s killer cover of Bowie’s Moonage Daydream (from 1972’s essential Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars) and the Sweet’s Wig Wam Bam of the same year, the Sweatband qualify and deliver as real rock n’ rollers. Best of all though Juliet steps up to the mike for a few lines from the Donnas’ 1998 cover of Wig Wam Bam. That version was my introduction to the song and happens to be what this pompous little rag you’re reading is named after, along with a 1993 story arc of the same name from Love and Rockets, the only comic book worth killing trees for. Speaking of comic book geeks, this was the All-Isaac All-the-Time show with all eight hundred bands he plays in on the same bill. I sadly missed the Alarm Clocks’ opening set picking up a friend from the airport after a marathon 14-hour flight from Oaxaca, Mexico after taking care of his maize business. Isaac held up pretty well considering he was somewhat distracted by leaving for the northwest the next day. I was heavily disappointed in no Cher-like butt-baring costume changes between acts. What a wasted opportunity! Quite tragic it was. The Mindy Set set was fine and fun although I’ve been sorely missing Mike’s guitar lately. He’s due back any day just in time for Isaac’s hiatus. Its like some Major League baseball trade, swapping All-Star players. DEVENDRA BANHART, XIU XIU, the DIRTY NOVELS 7/18/03 @ the Walls A night of surprises. Almost. First--well, not really a surprise but a rock and roll band like the Dirty Novels opening for such a (ahem) off-the Wall(s) show? Cool! Me, I like disparate bands on the same bill for all the different flavors and textures. You wouldn’t want to sit and eat the same food for a three-course meal would you? As usual dancing to the Novels is one of the most fun things I can think of especially with others who feel the same way. Their new songs are coming together and fitting comfortably in the repertoire. The surprise from Xiu Xiu was them being down to one band member rather than three. Well, ok, we knew that was coming so that was no surprise either: a couple months back the band had a ton of old & rare analog equipment stolen but rather than break engagements the guitar player carried on, representing. So instead of a crazyloud wild electro-FX noise band, you could hear the song structures which placed listening to the recordings in a different context. The lyrics were intense, as well as the delivery if in a quieter dynamic. While singing he even threw in approximations of the noise FX. Not like a human beat box but a similar aesthetic of using voice to mimic what had been created electronically. An A+ is awarded right there. On the whole it was sparse and didn’t wholly engage everyone’s attention but stood the test. Devendra Banhart did surprise us all by playing a subdued set, not living up to his psycho-tweak rep. So what; it was fucking brilliant, one of the best solo acoustic acts I’ve ever heard, and kept the crowd rapt. The first impression of seeing him sitting cross-legged on the stage floor a bandana wrapped around his long-haired head, all my Danger! Hippie music! receptors went off but he isn’t and doesn’t. Not his voice per se but Banhart’s vocal phrasing reminds of Marc (T. Rex) Bolan. His soft fingerpick style on a nylon strung classical guitar is extraordinarily like that of the legendary Mississippi John Hurt. In his day (from the 40s through the 1960s), Hurt played the blues like no one else: quietly, gently but no less heartfelt. Banhart did the same. And his lyrics? They’re best illustrated in the joke told by his merch guy: What’s red and invisible? No tomatoes. No, don’t try and figure it out. You won’t. But trust me, that sums up Banhart’s singular lyrical vision. Sadly he wasn’t up to playing more than a short set ; we’d be sitting there still if he had. JET BLACK SUMMER, the MINDY SET 7/18/03 @ Burt’s Not sure how or why I ended up here after the Banhart show except that I’m a shameless wannabe hipster and so followed the crowd. I caught the tail end of the Mindies and the opening of JBS but sorta lost my momentum. The place was freakin’ packed, just as Jet Black always manages to do. That many bodies in the Tiki just alarmed me so I think I wandered off soon after. I mostly remember yelling at people over the volume about some inconsequential shit or another. Except for “New Sincerity” Chuck Jurich who always has some astute and engaging observations about the music going on before our eyes & ears. Maybe if I bug him a little he’ll write some of that shit down for inclusion here. After all, the man’s a schoolteacher and ought to know his way around a sharp pencil. ABBA 7/20/03 @ some park in the Northeast whites--oops--heights Here it was, the first annual (monthly? fortnightly?) Albuquerque Bands Basketball Association three-on-three for the coveted Dirty Novels Memorial Trophy--the only reason I call it that is Pauli Novels bought the statue and slapped their sticker on it before anyone caught him, el tramposo! The ABBA acronym brought up the idea of Juliet cooking up some Abba covers with the Sweatband which I agreed would be tops but Zed put his platform-shoed foot down on that one immediately. Hmmm, maybe if we tell him they’re recently uncovered “lost” Marc Bolan tunes… Anyways basketball don’t seem very rock and roll to me ( I vote for bowling with pitchers of cheap beer and soggy chile-cheese fries, yeah!!) Basketball is more of a hip-hop thing yo so I have my suspicions that it was the three-man Prime Certified who came up with the idea of three-on-three B-ball /B-boy eliminations. Too, there was that trash-talkin’ note penned by Prime C themselves that made the rounds at an after-party recently. It outlined in graph format just which bands would make it through the ranks during rounds of hoops and/or shows. Of course in true hip hop spirit, PC strutted their stuff right at the top o’ the list. Arriving late (I ain’t even play sports let alone wanna sit and watch, dog!), I hear that the Prime crew made a good showing early on. By the time I made it to the park, Sir Loins took what looked like a painful fall. In fact, injuries were the rule this day, not surprising given the scanty hours of sunlight and exercise most rockers rack up. I never saw so many pale band faces in broad daylight before. Pretty scary! Blisters, twisted ankles, sore knees, jammed fingers and wheezing lungs abounded but luckily judicious applications of beer nursed the wounded (sometimes on the court in full competition. I’m looking at you here Mr Dickens…) A consequence of injury and drifting attendees, the three-man line-up’s changed faster than the hierarchy of who’s hip and cool each month. As it turned out, a team best described as Hey, Sweat-way took the coveted trophy or at least attempted to pry it from Paul’s iron grip, el ladron! Since I wasn’t the last guy picked for teams in school but the guy never picked, I don’t know how to score a touchdown with the puck in each inning of basketball, there’s no way I’ll attempt to describe the court action. Where’s Sausage Hang when ya really need ‘em? Most disappointing though was the lack of rock n’roll cheerleading. The only drill team gal present failed to, umm, shake her pom-poms. DENVER,COLORADO the DETROIT COBRAS w/ TONGUE 8/25/03 w/ HEMI CUDA, the AGENCY 8/26/03 @ the Lion’s Lair, 2022 E Colfax, Denver CO This being their second two-night stint at the Lion’s Lair in a year’s time, there was no way in hell I was gonna miss the Detroit Cobras again so I called up Marvel Girl & Apache Chief, the only other people I know who recognize the genius of the Cobras. I’ve heard a lot of indifference to the band because they’re covers-only but I challenge any of you out there to prove to me you’ve ever before heard more than a song or three of their repertoire. Heck, how many of you have even recognize a few of their sources: Hank Ballard, Gino Washington, Jackie DeShannon, Ronnie Mack, Clyde McPhatter, Mary Wells? You may have heard my dictum before that a true rock n’ roll band (and this was true from its very beginnings) has covers in their repertoire? That must make the Detroit Cobras the most rockin’ band in the world! I already happen to think so anyway but nevermind… If you love to dance, this band is the shit. These songs from the late fifties and earliest sixties (no obvious Stones or Yardbirds covers here) are some of the sexiest songs ever written, not particularly the lyrics but that you must move your hips to appreciate them. The censors of the 1950s weren’t paranoid, they were right: rock and roll IS about fucking. As much as I love the Ramones and what they wrought, face it: Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny & Tommy only reached as far back as the Beach Boys and the Shangri-Las, well after rocknroll became whitey’s territory. The Cobras on the other hand know that rocknroll was black and ghetto (before which it was Delta & gospel). This was what inspired all the white kids and scared the crap out of their parents. In point of fact however many of the Cobras’ song choices are more properly rock n’ roll’s precursor Rhythm & Blues, in its earliest and truest sense (what’s called R & B these days is a travesty and an insult to the memory of to Wilson Pickett, Betty Lavett and Joe Stubbs). The sole exception (but also in exquisite taste) is a cover of the Oblivians’ 1998 Bad Girl (aka Bad Boy), a real crowd-pleaser of a tune. OK, so after the Chief hitting 110 MPH through Mora and Colfax Counties, we cross the border into scary territory (all New Mexicans are petrified to leave our borders) and more SUVs and mountain-climbing boots than you can shake a hiking staff at, that is: Colorado. After dicking around with traffic jams and bum mapquest.com directions, we head first to the Lion’s Lair to score tickets for both nights. The Lion’s Lair is as much as a dive as everyone says. Say fuck yeah! Rocknroll is trashyass dive bars in the seedy part of town, not happening “clubs”. And also like everyone says, the stage is indeed behind the bar. Its cool enough if you wanna sit and get stinkin' drunk while you watch the band. In fact that was our original plan, to arrive early enough to score prime stool space. I was a little concerned because there just isn’t fuckall room to dance but of course I found it impossible to sit still for the best band to dance to on the planet. We missed snagging barstools but found ratty chairs underneath the neon Bud window sign turned inward which lit the place but was awful if you had to sit near it. Wisconsin’s Tongue did little to make me wanna move though. The first tune was maybe a little toe-tappin’ Ramones-ish but they soon became more wank than I can handle, like maybe Hellacopters with no taste. Tongue had their supporters though but ones who thankfully drank out their bonehead enthusiasm before the Cobras were up. The second night’s openers, locals the Agency, cranked it up in good rockin’ punkin’ style, full of energy, fun and goodwill (instead of Tongue’s we-so-badass attitude). I heard echoes of Jello fronting the MC5 with a trashpunk ethos. Next up were another local outfit Hemi Cuda, a girl-fronted band and sort of Denver’s answer to Phoenix, Arizona’s the Peeps. That’s not a compliment by the way. They were lackluster at best. The highlight was the guitar & bass gals harmonizing which--while not strictly technically proficient-- was heads above everything else they did. The dude drummer played too hard for their hot-rod-in-the-garage style. He’d be better used in a Warped Tour band. As soon as the Detroit Cobras began playing--no, as soon as they stepped onto the stage--I just had to stand in the aisle near the only two tables in the joint, ready to gyrate and sweat like mad. How anyone can sit still for the excitement this band generates is beyond me. They were spot-on from start to finish both nights, not a clinker in the bunch. As far as I can tell, the personnel seems to have rotated a couple times since their 1998 debut LP Mink, Rat or Rabbit but powerful rhythm guitarist Maribel Restrepo and killer vocalist Rachel Nagy are the constant and thank christ for that. Rachel’s voice is like Little Eva all grown up, no longer babysitting for Gerry Goffin and Carol King but spending her nights dancing at the juke bars with boys. If that statement doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. It means Nagy is astonishingly good with a powerhouse velvet-drenched-in-Scotch voice. The drummer (sorry man, I’m lost on who’s who in which line-up) added some great harmonies and refrains which were good enough on their own but a singing drummer (with the profound exception of --gag--Phil Collins) is always a thumbs-up. The guitar leads were tasteful and as long as they need to be which is brief but commanding. A solid bass anchored the whole deal right to the floor (the dance floor that is). Nagy’s presence onstage is enjoyable. Besides her easy-going nature, watching her dance is a real treat. No, she’s not flailing all over like the white folk do but rotating her hips while moving her feet within maybe a square foot, in complete control. There’s plenty of honkies who’ve adapted well to playing black music (rock and roll after all is black) but most just miss the boat on dancing. Cool, calm & collect can actually be the most exhilarating way to dance. This can’t be good for Rachel’s voice in the long run but her habit of a cig in one hand and mike in the other with a shot nearby is pure rocknroll. I was astounded when after the show she told me she’d never sung in a band before but was encouraged by friends to just up & do it. What good friends, I’d like to shake their hands! Even more bemusing is the fall tour they’re joining: Cheap Trick (!) and Cake (?!). It’s a good-paying gig that should put them in a good financial position to leisurely lay down some more fine recordings. Speaking of enjoyment, we had an amazing anthropological moment en route home when we stopped in Trinidad (north of the NM border and [no shit] the sex change capitol of the world). The Texaco station/ Subway/Dreyer’s Ice Cream Shop was the local HQ to the town’s high school girlies. The staffing popularity-hierarchy was on full display as evidenced by all kinds of gossip we overheard even while being served. A dozen townie kids came and went at this center of Trinidad teen social life. Watching yet another car pull up with a bunch of boys inside, I was ready to take notes for a book about small town teen behavior when who steps out of the damn van? Albuquerque’s Frank Walls and Mateo “the Hammer”, heading home from Denver after seeing the Mars Volta show last night. At least that’s what they said. I hope they weren’t in Trinidad for the …umm…you know… “procedure”… WAX TRAX Records 6 My hungry travelmates saved me from blowing my allowance on the piles of grooves by limiting our time in this incredibly stocked record shop. As it was, I spent eighty bucks without even getting to the CD section which was an entirely separate room. Still, in under thirty minutes, my new & used vinyl scores included Ladytron, the Kills, Mr Airplane Man, Mensen and the Cuts as well as vintage Stooges, Shirelles and We Five, the latter selections about three bucks apiece. In a way, it was good not to have much time to mull over my stack like I normally do in three-hour record shop visits but just pull ‘em out of the bins and haul ‘em up to the register. Don’t miss this place if you find yourself in the funky end of Denver with lots of time and more money.
LOCAL (and Ex-Local) RELEASES NM bands, any label
the Kleptones the kleptones@hotmailcom; http:// thekleptonesarestealing.songsfrom.us From L.A., Lucifer Vandross has been keeping Wig Wam Bam abreast of the latest developments in Kleptone-land, a distant cousin of copyright-warriors Negativland, especially on this disc. Beatles samples edited into new compositions, the charm of this may be lost on those who don’t know their work. Me, I grew up with John, Paul, George and Ringo, being six years old when they made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show which I anxiously awaited along with everyone else under the age of seventeen. I still know their entire catalogue backwards and forwards because I listened to one of their records nearly every night before bed until about age twelve and so easily recognize each byte of data here. Its obvious the Kleps have spent quite a bit of time with Beatle music themselves because its no jumble but manages to link similar lyrics, melodies and the same. I-hate-my-life-and-yours angst.
the Phase Live at the Moonlight Lounge CD-R (2003) This is the only recording to (so far) surface of the punky-poppy-glam-y Phase who gigged around here a couple years back. There does exist a grainy video tape of their first show at the Evil House, New Year’s Eve 2000 but it seems to have disappeared into the seamy underbelly of that mean urban center of depravity, Aztec NM. All my old favorites are here, few of which I ever actually knew the names. Now I know. A limited edition pressing from an audience “bootleg” re-compressed and cleaned up a bit, its rough soundwise but will be the one that gets sampled on VH1 Behind the Music when ex-Phase members go on to become bloated has-been rock stars twenty years from now. Thanks, Ice!
Wig Wam Bam (by Captain America PO BX 4865 Albq NM 87196 captainamerica1941@hotmail.com) flies off the presses almost directly into wastebaskets monthly and may (or not) be found at AstroZombies, Free Radicals, the Launchpad, Burt’s Tiki Lounge, mecca Records & Books, Natural Sound, the Atomic Cantina, Damaged Goods Records, Newsland and carefully collected and cataloged at UNM’s Fine Arts Library.
Wig Wam Bam is written by Captain America  | po box 4865 | albuquerque, nm 87196