October/November 2008 issue of PSF is now up!

Greetings,

In the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever http://www.perfectsoundforever.com, you'll find (among other things):


 SHARON CHESLOW
  Punk author & zinester
"... a musician, a photographer, a writer, a philosopher, a documenter, a muckraker, and an all around pioneer on so many levels. Sharon has worked with many talented people over the years. She made history in the first all-female DC punk band, Chalk Circle, and for confronting Maximum Rock 'n Roll Magazine for its sexist ways. Since 1989, she has been publishing her zine, Interrobang?! She also co-published the seminal punk book, Banned in DC. Since that time, she has continued to impress us with her unique artistic projects and collaborations"


 J DILLA
  Great DJ gone too soon
"With glassy eyes peering out from beneath a perpetually low fitted cap, James Yancey confined himself to his home studio, much as Da Vinci confined Mona Lisa within the murky mountain backdrop that frames her figure. Just what was going on behind those eyes, nobody will ever really know. Close friend and Slum Village emcee Elzhi cites Yancey's constant preoccupation with production as the force behind his hushed character."


 THE DODOS
  Arty pop as freak folk
"If you've been living in a vacuum, you may not have heard of The Dodos (singer/songwriter/guitarist Meric Long, drummer Logan Kroeber, Joe Haener on xylophone), a powerhouse folk band out of San Francisco. The blissfully tipsy crowd eagerly anticipated The Dodos performance while the band was setting up on stage. The first vibrations of Kroeber's pounding drum ignited the set that ended much too soon. Long skillfully strummed, plucked, and picked his guitar, bringing life to 'Fools,' followed by 'Ashley, Jodi, Red and Purple'... from the recently released second album Visiter."


 INDIAN COLLECTORS
  Scouring for 78rpm treasures
"India is a sound enthusiast's heaven. On a recent trip to Tamil Nadu and Mumbai in Southern India, I recorded constantly, both maddened by and in love with the barrage of noise. Traffic sounds in Indian cities and towns reach near maddening decibel levels. Everyone drives with their horn... The sense of personal space (both physical and aural) is very different than what we are used to in the West. It is a very crowded country. Parades seem to explode in crowded alleyways with fireworks and drums and horns."


 TOM LUCAS
  R&B piano by a Lit prof
"Tom Lucas carved out his small, vital, piece of music lore in the 1970's with the album Red Letter Day. Recorded in 1975 and released in a very limited run several years later, the record has become a coveted piece of cult ephemera, selling for an ungodly amount on eBay, and finally being reissued in 2004, without Lucas' knowledge or permission. Radioactive's unauthorized re-release might have been an injurious insult to Lucas' art and livelihood; instead it has become the catalyst for a revival of Lucas' career as a vital songwriter and musician."


 ANGEL MALDONADO
  Puerto Rican son of a drum
"A proper measure of a devout musician might be his influence and contribution to the growth and development of his national culture and musical heritage. If the influence of this musician went far beyond his native shores and had an international effect, and his contributions spawned a renaissance which revitalized an entire movement, this is the substance of legend. Such is the case of Puerto Rican master percussionist Angel 'Cachete' Maldonado."


 MIKE & THE RAVENS
  Return of garage/surfs legends
"A prank effectively gutted Mike and the Ravens, the hottest rock n' roll dance band burning up the North Country circuit in '62. No big deal to the judge. The trio scored 48 hours in the hoosegow with a choice - military or school. That or serve out the rest of their 60 day sentence. So school it was, laying the foundation for law careers for Steven Blodgett, Peter Young, and Brian Lyford, all three determined to stay on the right side of the law, ya know, just in case they gotta sweeten the sounds in Vermont's Green Mountains one more time."


 NOT EVEN THE TV
  South African conceptual art
"The band often seems as much an idea, or even an ideal, as a band. How else do you explain the fact that the members still meet on an almost weekly basis, privately in what is termed 'rehearsal' by David Master (their vocalist and their elemental force) to make what is consistently among the most provocative, uncompromising and intriguing rock music in their country with almost no hope that it will be heard very much more widely than within the confines of that rehearsal room?"


 POPUL VUH
  Blissful Komische music
"Like Robert Fripp, the only stable member in every incarnation of King Crimson, Florian Fricke was the central and guiding figure of Popol Vuh for their entire recording career.  Fricke started to make music when he was 11, and when he was 15, he went to the Frieburg Music College; studying grand piano, composition and conducting, but by 19, he was happy to be free of the constant practice that school demanded.  In the interim, he worked as a film and music reviewer and a maker of short films.  This is where he met director Werner Herzog.  Fricke traveled extensively, with the encountering of other cultures and religions being very important to him, even though Fricke himself didn't claim to prefer any one religion over another."


 QUARTER AFTER
  Part of the neo-psych revolution
"Something has been going on for the past eight years. It is the musical revolution that the Brian Jonestown Massacre front man Anton Newcombe is famous for talking about. In 2000, a Neo-Psychedelic scene with half a dozen bands was birthed in Silverlake, California. The Quarter After was one of those pioneer bands that was turned on from the start and continues today to turn on others."


 CONRAD SCHNITZLER
  70 years of krautrock anarchism
"In the middle of the sixties, Conrad Schnitzler became something like the leading figure of experimental rock-music in West-Berlin. As a founding-member of both Kluster and Tangerine Dream, he was a maverick at breaking the traditions of Rock music. He calls himself an amateur who is basically an artist; someone who produces 'Sounds.'"


 REGINA SPEKTOR
  Soviet folk genius?
"Perhaps Regina's strange vocal style developed from this anxiety about 'crude' songwriting and from her love of sound and language. Regina 'stretches words... into epic solos, then crams long sentences into her mouth and spits them out in a few exuberant bars,' as Josh Tyrangiel described it. She also incorporates sounds, such as hiccups, hisses, pops, and gurgles. 'The hiccup sounds,' she says, 'were like discovering I had a tambourine in my throat.'"


 TIN PALACE
  70's jazz joint remembered
"In 1975, at 315 Bowery, Hilly Kristol was opening up C.B.G.B. to the advance guard of New York rock. But just up the street, Brooklyn native Paul Pines had been running a successful jazz club called The Tin Palace for five years, offering much-needed exposure to American artists ranging from bop vocalist Eddie Jefferson to AACM stalwarts Roscoe Mitchell and Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre. An aspiring writer and poet as well as a jazz fan, Pines traveled to San Francisco to meet the Beats, then returned to New York to take up residence in the East Village."


 VINYL ANACHRONIST
  The vinyl bangwagon arrives
"The headlines are coming fast and furious. Once upon a time, my editor would email these articles to me maybe two or three times a year. These days, it seems as if I get a link sent to me every few days. The difference is that these articles are no longer coming from local newspapers or obscure music magazines, but major players like the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal."


We're always looking for good writers and/or ideas so let us know if you have anything to share.

See you online,
Jason

9:16 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Late Sept issue of PSF on the way

Hi all,

Here's a preview of what's coming in the next issue of PSF:

- J. Dilla
- Regina Spektor
- Popul Vuh
- Conrad Schnitzler
- The Dodos
- A tribute to closed NYC clubs
- Indian record collectors

And... some things that even we don't know about yet.  Stay tuned.

See you online,
Jason

3:52 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

August/Sept 08 edition of Perfect Sound Forever magazine has arrived!

Greetings,

PSF gallops into modern web technology with:

- A new RSS feed you can subscribe to at  http://www.furious.com/perfect/feed.xml

- Facebook fan site:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Perfect-Sound-Forever/15867989884?ref=mf
featuring video clips of Richard Hell, Boredoms, Cluster plus live photos of Henry Cow's non-reunion, dB's actual reunion


And... in the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever http://www.perfectsoundforever.com, you'll find (among other things):


AMON DUUL II
  Komische interview
"As one of the titans of 60's/70's German psychedelic rock (aka Krautrock, aka Komische), most rock fans think they know about Amon Duul II but do they really? We know about the great albums, the line-ups and the discography but how much detail do we really know about that band? As it turns out, very little, which is surprising for a group like this. Their storied history is actually very sparse in details. How could that be?  Part of the problem is that there is isn't much interview material out there to cover all the gaps, until now.


WILLIAM CORBETT-JONES
  Bay Area honors music prof
"Dr. Corbett-Jones is in his 70's and a more vital man would be hard to imagine. His grueling schedule would dwarf most people half his age. Jones loves to travel and his teaching and master classes have taken him all over the globe- he's been to China five times and more recently to Western China, traveled three years in a row in the Autonomous Region and has been guest professor at the Xinjiang College of the Arts and also at Yining University. He also performs and teaches master classes at the Central Conservatory in Bejing. He studied Mandarin in order to communicate with his students in China. "


ERIC DOLPHY
  God bless the child
"Eric came to prominence during a transitional period in jazz. In the evolution of the alto saxophone, his horn bridged the gap between Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman and helped usher be bop into the uncharted realm of the avant-garde or the "New Thing." His unique sense of harmony and jagged melody lines had more in common with the fractured piano of Thelonious Monk than any horn player of his time. His lyrical leaps from one register to the next spanned a broad range of emotion and expression that few musicians then or now have been capable of. Dolphy's vocabulary ranged from a gentle whisper to a full-blown anxiety attack. Like Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, Eric also battled the grim existential atmosphere of cold war era with an irrepressible howl."


DALLAS FRAZIER
  Country-soul interview
"Dallas Frazier walks like a big man who is unaccustomed to his size, as if he stepped into the wrong pair of shoes and forgot to lift his feet out again. He's just come on stage at Nashville's Texas Troubadour Theater, where country singer Connie Smith has introduced him as one of America's finest songwriters. She should know; Smith recorded 68 of Frazier's songs at the peak of her popularity in the 1960's and '70's, including one she's already done tonight—"I Love Charley Brown," the title track of her 1968 RCA LP."


LOWELL GEORGE
  Little Feat legend
"Best remembered as the de facto leader of the classic American rock band, Little Feat, Lowell George's distinctive style of slide guitar and vocalizing helped create a style of music that was a unique blend of second-line funk, gospel, Chicago blues, jazz and country balladry that still stands today as one of the most unique developments in American popular music during the 1970's."


BILL HARRINGTON
  From Prog to Cage & Beyond
"A lot of musicians naturally, when the time came to eke out one's existence away from the primordial nest, gravitated to employment in record shops. Harrington somewhat followed suit but opted for the wholesaler's side, spending a couple of years in the middle morass of the industry, a prime spot for amassing an impressive collection of recordings of electronic and avant-garde musics. This and his schooling, not to mention natural talent, led to starting up as keyboard tech for such groups as the immortal Gentle Giant... So where to go from there? King Crimson? Genesis? Premiata Forneria Marconi? How about Frank Zappa? Interestingly enough, Harrington somehow came to the attention not of Zappa but of one of his keyboard players, Tommy Mars."


TED LEO
  A true punk?
"Look at the evolution of the punk tradition. From the simple, teenaged scope of the Ramones came the viciously satirical politics of the Dead Kennedys; from the brusque social conscience of Minor Threat came the plague of angst and introspection that was Rites of Spring, and so on. The original tradition of punk music has spurred more offshoots and illegitimate children than one can easily count their immediate appendages; look at any '80's post-punk band, '90's post-hardcore band, the Fat Wreck Chords crew, modern day street punkers like The Unseen. Sitting around in the upper rungs of the independent music scene nowadays, we see two of punk's distant relatives flourishing: Washington D.C.'s mod-rock kings Ted Leo & The Pharmacists and Canadian pop-poets The Weakerthans."


MICHAEL PATRICK MCDONALD
  Activist/punk/leader
"I was originally introduced to Michael Patrick MacDonald on MySpace. I stumbled upon his page looking for something or another, and was amazed to find someone the same age as me with almost the same exact taste in music. The list was long enough, deep, and basically ran the gamut from mid-'70's disco/soul to post punk & dub. Right up my alley. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that not only did the guy have good taste in music, but he had written two books - All Souls and Easter Rising."


CHRIS MCGREGOR
  Capetown jazz
" McGregor died of lung cancer in May of 1990, aged 54, living just long enough to see his countryman Nelson Mandela freed from prison. McGregor, a white pianist/flutist/composer and his black band mates had left South Africa more than twenty-five years before, when finding work for a mixed-race band became impossible under apartheid (the legendary London jazz impresario Ronnie Scott says in his introduction of the band on Eclipse at Dawn, "South Africa is a wonderful place... to come from"). "


TRAVIS MORRISON
  Post-Dismembered life
"Morrison would make a great music critic; his musical tastes are his own and he's unapologetic about it. He thinks London Calling is full of hot air, and counters Sasha Frere-Jones with a quick demonstration of his pipes on an Arcade Fire song: "Who says that they don't make black music?" And then he illustrates, right there in the coffeehouse, with a few particularly soulful bars from "Crown of Love." And he's right, of course. He also does a great R. Kelly impression."


NAZZ
  Rundgren's early years
"There's certain artists that evolve over the course of their career, that certain periods of theirs become forgotten--people like Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed or even Neil Young in his radical early 80's incarnation with The Shocking Pinks or whatever. They all change so much that it's easy to love or hate or overlook certain eras of their output. Todd Rundgren is no different in this aspect, in that he easily has albums or periods of his career that one is bound to like more than the others."


TELEVISION PERSONALITIES
  Forget the post-punk shambles
"In the late 1970's, a young man named Dan Treacy, born and raised on the BBC, British New Wave cinema and a society gradually, achingly dropping the cultural values which characterised it for decades at least. Art becoming more modern, politics more blatantly corrupt, populism brings good (e.g. greater access to higher education) and bad (increased Corbusier inspired tower blocks, urban sprawl with a gardener's eye for building). There was also a mood of indifference and cynicism. He recorded a single which took the piss out of the very movement which was held up as the musical expression of this decline, nihilism captured via the Sex Pistols."


TENOR SAW
  Dancehall legend
"Born in 1966 in Kingston, Jamaica, Clive Bright, aka Tenor Saw, came into the music business in the mid-1980s and his first recording was "Roll Call" for the producer George Phang in 1984. The young recording artiste then came under the tutelage of the singer Sugar Minott who ran a sound system and a recording label called Youth Promotion. In 1985, Saw recorded "Lots of Sign," a tune which recycled a line from Bob Marley's "Wake Up and Live Now" ("Life is one big road with lots of signs"), but he really burst upon the dancehall scene with a hit song entitled "Ring the Alarm" which was based on a "riddim," or drum-and bass workout, called "Stalag 17"..."


VINYL ANACHRONIST
  The Chinese are coming!
"I've received quite a few emails over the last few months regarding the influx of audio equipment made in China, and whether or not it's a good investment. I have to admit that the price/performance ratio on some of these products are more than tempting, and I can see why American and European consumers are starting to buy this gear in high quantities. But in this age of deadly pet food and poisoned toothpaste, I can understand why some audiophiles are a bit skittish about taking the Shanghai plunge."


We're always looking for good writers and/or ideas so let us know if you have anything to share.

See you online,
Jason

9:20 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Late July issue of PSF on the way

Yes, we miss you too so we'll be coming back online at month's end with goodies including articles on:

- Amon Duul
- Nazz
- Lowell George
- Travis Morrison
- Tenor Saw
- Ted Leo
- Television Personalities
- Eric Dolphy
- Bo Diddley
- Dallas Frazier

... and more that even we don't know about yet!  Watch this space in a few weeks for more info.

See ya online,
J

1:41 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

PSF on Facebook- photos and videos

You can also find Perfect Sound Forever on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Perfect-Sound-Forever/15867989884?ref=s

Please go there and become a fan!  We have lots of photos (M.I.A., Feelies, dB's, Cluster) and a growing video collection (Elvis tribute, Boredoms)

4:45 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

PSF- RSS feeds

By popular demand, Perfect Sound Forever has finally set up an RSS feed.  You can find it right here:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/feed.xml

Cheers,
Jason

7:59 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Support Jim DeRogatis

Chicago Sun-Times writer Jim DeRogatis is being used as a scapegoat in the R. Kelly trial.  Please read this posting about the situation and support JD.

11:27 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

June/July 08 edition of PSF now online

Greetings,

So here it is... our issue edited by Robert Christgau.  Now truly proving himself a dean, he's culled the finest papers from his Princeton classes, gathering up the next generation of great music scribes.

So, in the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever http://www.perfectsoundforever.com, you'll find (among other things):

THE SAVOY MUSIC CENTER
 Saturday in Eunice LA
"Marc Savoy is standing behind the counter of his music center. On weekdays, the Music Center is a Music Store, but Saturday is jam day--all acoustic, all Cajun, all the time. Marc is Andre the Giant older and sleepier, with a walrus mustache echoed by thick eyebrows and a receding hairline that went into mourning the day Dylan went electric."


SACRED STEEL
 Hawaiian Guitar Gets Saved
"Despite Arhoolie's 1997 release of 'Sacred Steel: Traditional Sacred African-American Steel Guitar Music in Florida' and the recent rise to name recognition of Robert Randolph, most people still associate the term 'Sacred Steel' with images of Arthurian knights rather than the gospel jam sessions driven by lap-steel guitar that gave meaning to the term."


KEITH GREEN
 Christian Rock's Great Refuser
"Upon his receiving an honor for being the youngest member ever to join ASCAP, luminaries such as Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jack Benny invited him to play on various nationally broadcast programs. He was even approached by Colonel Parker, who told the Greens, 'If I wasn't tied up full-time with Elvis, I'd take Keith on.'"


THE BURLESQUE REVIVAL
 Crotch Level, Ten to a Table
"Burlesque is back, and with a vengeance—more sardonic, sexy, and self-righteous than ever before. Old fashioned Burly-Q, the stuff of pin-ups and lace-clad women, is revamped and institutionalized with annual Tease-O-Rama conventions, Miss Exotic World pageants, and a recently opened Burlesque Hall of Fame in Vegas."


JANET JACKSON
 Not Just a Soft-Spoken Sexpot
"Maybe it's the warmed-over beats that new beau Jermaine Dupri provided, maybe it's her increasingly nondescript, whispery tone, or maybe she, Jam, and Lewis have just become a stale team. Somewhere along the way, she started believing the soft-spoken sweetheart was all she had to offer, but when Janet Jackson has something to say, she can make some inspired music."

THE HILLS
 Britney's New Baby: Teen TV
"... if The Hills doesn't fit into any of these televisual traditions, has it started a new one? Most people will tell you MTV stopped playing music videos about the time Lauren Conrad was born, and they're probably right. But they won't admit that MTV has recently started playing them again. If The Hills continues a legacy, it's the one left by those pop music videos that once drew the same kind of crowd that now watches The Hills outside the Total Request Live studio where once they'd maybe catch a glimpse of Joey Fatone's back."


EMO REVISTED
 Thursday Fan Grows Up and Out
"As we move between the stages of youth, the way we connect to sadness in song changes. So the emo that spouted what we thought were universal profundities ('the needle is a vector, an intersection we all must cross') seems meaningless a few years later. I don't have a scientific explanation of how this happens, nor the means to poll a large pool of teenagers. But maybe I can tease a plausible answer from my stacks of melancholy albums begging to be cried to and my peers whose tastes graduated from high school."


BEAT HAPPENING
 Calvin Johnson Admits His Fears
"Despite naysayer claims of affected/ineffective neoprimitivism, there is something so literal about Beat Happening's minimalism. Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Brett Lunsford really couldn't play their instruments or sing--so they worked around it. They didn't bother practicing either--practice is no use when you suck that badly. Instead Beat Happening relied on instinct, creativity, and collaboration. The result? Pop music with all pretensions evaporated, boiled down to its core..."


TIMBALAND
 How Master Beats Happen
"Since his arrival as a producer in 1995, Timbaland has had an overwhelming influence on the hip hop industry. Other than Dr. Dre's clean and clear West Coast G-Funk revolution, no single producer has had more power over hip hop and pop in general for longer than Mosley. Garrett Kamps called him 'his generation's Phil Spector.'  In an age when most producers were digging through their vinyl collections and created sample collages, Timbo was writing music, producing instead of simply making beats."


KILLSWITCH ENGAGE
 Metalheads in Synch
" Take a listen to some Killswitch songs and you'll notice that most of them lack a crucial hallmark of nearly all progressive/heavy/hardcore metal music today: technical virtuosity—solos that say, 'I bet you can't play this.' This absence, however, by no means diminishes the quality of their music—in fact, it plays a crucial role in their success and likability."


OUTKAST
 Andre and Big Boi in the ATL
"Before the Bush progeny shook their Polaroids or their un-Stankonian begetter bombed Baghdad; in a world without 'Hey Ya!' before Dre prematurely discovered the year 3000 and Big Boi slowed his flow down to a whisper; in a different millennium when not everyone + Ken Burns knew about crunk, a three-part history of OutKast and their first trio of albums..."


JOE BUDDEN
 Depressed Genius, Unabridged
"Given his f*ck-the-world attitude, I don't blame Joe for demanding to know if we're 'in that mood yet?', his tag line throughout the Mood Muzik series. He struggles mightily with ambiguities in his personal life and career, frequently rapping 'I'm stuck somewhere between the real and the fakeness.' Joe's gloomy mannerisms and intense storytelling refuse you the luxury of sitting back and enjoying."


SUBLIME
 Just a Dad, Playing His Songs
"The biggest problem with Sublime--besides the alchoholism drug abuse and night-shivers of marijuana dependence--is that they're all so goddamn ugly looking. Bud's short and fat and hairy and his pointy nose makes him look like a homicidal clown. Eric's taller and even fatter and always wears a wife-beater. Brad is the only one whose skin doesn't fold. But it almost does. His cheeks and chest are hairless so he looks like a huge infant."


KHALED
 Arab Pop in a Post-9/11 World
"Shaherzad is just like Khaled's music, a melting pot that invites people to look past language and cultural barriers and simply get down. For me, born and raised a traditional Jew with anti-Arab prejudices to boot, the fact that I count a Maghrebi Arabic singer among my all time favorites is all the more reason to explore what makes Khaled so special.  Khaled's music reflects a tradition whose modern era begins with the end of World War II, fifteen years before Khaled's birth."


We're always looking for good writers and/or ideas so let us know if you have anything to share.

See you online,
Jason

10:37 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Late May issue of PSF on the way

Greetings,

Our next issue of Perfect Sound Forever is being prepped for all of you nice readers out there.  We're really excited about our upcoming issue edited by Robert Christgau and featuring some great up-and-coming music scribes.  The article list includes pieces on:

- Beat Happening
- The Hills
- Current burlesque
- metal band Killswitchengage
- Cajun music
- Christian artist Keith Green
- Janet Jackson
- Rai music/Khaled
- Sublime
- Timbaland

... and other goodies that we can't reveal now...

See you online,
Jason

7:20 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Early April Fools- Coley and Carducci

In an unintentional early April Fools joke, we posted here yesterday that Byron Coley and Joe Carducci would be editing future issues of PSF to rebut Robert Christgau’s issue of PSF.  The second half is true- Christgau is indeed editing the June edition of PSF.  But Mr. Coley and Carducci are not editing PSF though we’d be honored to work with them as such!  Our apologies to anyone who didn’t get the joke, which we obviously didn’t make clear enough.

10:23 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment