Justice–Civilization (Fucking Champs remix)

Justice–Civilization (Fucking Champs remix)

All we can say is, wow! The Fucking Champs made this song like 100x better! Champs/Justice/Daft Punk album/world tour???

Sonic Youth and Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd: Interstellar Overdrive

Kurt: “Exactly which parts of daydream nation sound like pink floyd? Minutemen are prog rock? I think you are stretching your “everything is prog rock” thesis a bit too far. If you said that husker du sounded like king crimson on zen arcade then yes, but really, come on. Exactly which parts of daydream nation sound like pink floyd? Minutemen are prog rock? I think you are stretching your “everything is prog rock” thesis a bit too far. If you said that husker du sounded like king crimson on zen arcade then yes, but really, come on.”

Trickledown:
Basically, the first two Minutemen albums as prog rock: the complicated bass and the tricky timing that’s way different from punk rock, the bass is like in Yes or Gentle Giant, the guitar is complicated and tricky, so is the drumming, it’s way different from punk or hardcore, and the Minutemen were big fans of Captain Beefheart which falls under the prog rock umbrella in terms of experimentation.

I would say the first two Minutemen albums are as much prog rock as they are punk, not necessarily like keyboard laden prog but tricky time change prog (Yes and Gentle Giant happen to have bits of both). Daydream Nation, the echo and noise breakdowns like in Silver Rocket and Total Trash, are very similar in parts and vibe to a lot of Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, it’s their most indie album, with Syd Barret, I’m not talking about Dark Side of the Moon or anything.

Check out songs like Interstellar Overdrive (the beginning few seconds sounds exactly like a song on Daydream Nation or Goo even!) or Astronomy Domine, they’re quite different from more mainstream Pink Floyd (which I happen to like too). They’re very experimental noise rock, art rock, postpunk even at times, much different from what people consider more “bloated” PInk Floyd (but which has become much more influential on bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor etc in recent years).

Pink Floyd: Astronomy Domine

Here’s another person in a book on rock calling Minutemen prog rock, saying they fused hardcore and prog… Also here: “Borrowing the pagan impetus from hardcore, the harsh quirkiness from the new wave and the cerebral, and the convoluted indulgence from progressive-rock, the Minutemen concocted the miniature hardcore shrapnels of Punch Line (feb 1981 – nov 1981) and What Makes A Man Start Fires (jul/aug 1982 – jan 1983).

The acrobatic primitivism of these albums became even more neurotic and atonal on Double Nickels On The Dime (nov 1983/apr 1984 – jul 1984), one of the most ambitious recordings of the decade, a veritable encyclopedia of musical styles revisited from the point of view of a spastic genius reminiscent of Captain Beefheart and the Pop Group. After Boon’s untimely death in 1985, the survivors hired a new vocalist, renamed themselves fIREHOSE (1), released Ragin’ Full On (oct 1986 – nov 1986) and pursued a more conscious program to refound the song format, except that R.E.M.-like folk-rock took over Minutemen’s unpredictable structures.” http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt49.html

Pink Floyd and Sonic Youth:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/05/sonic-youth-rock-music
“Gary Gersh, who signed us, had some sort of idea that ‘You guys could be the next Pink Floyd,'” Gordon remembers with a smile.”

Here’s a comment on Youtube
“Anybody else think that Sonic Youth ripped early floyd off alot….?” rassault 1 month ago

A whole thread on Piper at the Gates of Dawn on a Sonic Youth fan site http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=16479

Also,
“As D. Boon of the Minutemen famously said, “Punk is whatever we made it to be.” This seemed especially true of the generation of American iconoclasts associated with independent labels such as SST and Discord in the 1980s. Not unlike prog-rock or fusion of the time, these bands experimented with song structure, lyrical content, improvisation, and even crowd control. But unlike their more “respectable” counterparts, the punks sought to disrupt the complacent social order they inherited.”
http://www.bassplayer.com/article/21st-century-upright/April-2010/110637

The Key to Learning Two-Handed Tapping on Guitar

I’d been trying to learn two-handed tapping on guitar due to liking bands like Don Caballero and Maps and Atlases, this great new-to-me band Adebisi Shank, Marnie Stern, Hella, etc, and of course Van Halen etc but could never figure it out. I watched this video http://www.jamplay.com/guitar-lessons/full/basics-of-tapping-111.html and it taught me what I was missing! Basically, I was missing that you can “flick” the string to play a note you’re holding down, and you can flick it at a different fret than the note you’re currently fretting, at a fret that you’ll play later–so say you’re holding down the 3rd fret on the high e string, you can flick the high e with your right hand finger at the 12th fret to play the string, it will play the note of the fret you’re holding down such as the 3rd fret, then you can hammer on the fifth fret with your left hand, then with your right hand you can press down at the 12th fret or whatever for a cool two-hand tap triplet of the 3-5-12 notes. Anyway, I had been missing that “flick” motion to play notes, I had though you were supposed to sound certain notes by just hammering on, but the “flick” while actually holding down the note actually sounds a lot better. I would try to just hammer on say a 3rd fret instead of flicking the string first and it wouldn’t sound good or wouldn’t make any noise at all!

Picture of Ian Williams from:

Japanese Psychadelic, Prog, and Jazz Fusion: Flower Travellin Band and Osamu Kitajima

Flower Travellin’ Band–Hiroshima

Osamu Kitajima – Masterless Samurai

I’ll try to add a Joji Hirota Wheel of Fortune video to Youtube soon…

Metallica Copied/Were Inspired for the Intro of Sanitarium from The Yes Song Roundabout

The intros to Metallica’s Sanitarium and Yes’ Roundabout are so nearly identical you can listen to them both at the same time via YouTubeDoubler.

Also, here are the two separate videos on YouTube:

Metallica: Sanitarium

Yes: Roundabout

Now you know where Metallica got some of their great chops inspiration from, 70s prog rock like Yes and the Metallicavishnu Orchstra!

Mahavishnu Orchestra: Birds of Fire

Also see: Metallica Copied/Influenced By Christian Death’s song “First Communion” for “Battery” on Master of Puppets; Neurosis–Souls at Zero

Computer Recording with Rat and Metal Zone Pedals, Guitar: No Amp Simulator Needed

So I have a Rat pedal and a Metal Zone pedal for guitar. When I have recorded into my laptop computer in the past, neither pedal alone sounded too good. Especially the Metal Zone–it sounds too tinny and not warm going right into my M-Audio Transit USB audio interface. However, yesterday I tried something new. I plugged my Metal Zone pedal into my Rat pedal, then into the M-Audio Transit USB. Oddly enough, even with the Rat pedal turned off, my guitar through the Metal Zone pedal sounded way better, with more bass, fuller, and warmer. Does anyone know why on earth this would happen? My guitar sounds way better through the Metal Zone going through the Rat pedal than just going through the Metal Zone, even when the Rat is turned off, why is this??? I had been thinking about getting amp and room ambiance simulating programs to make my guitar sound more natural and warm, but maybe I don’t need to if putting the signal through a turned-off Rat pedal does the trick for me! I think the Rat was powered by an AC plug, not a battery, don’t know if that would make any difference–but maybe it wasn’t even plugged in. I’ll test this later…

Robert Fripp and David Bowie: Blackout, Heroes

David Bowie–Blackout

Must have been a great time for music fans in the 70s and 80s when you could depend on Robert Fripp to show up playing guitar on not only King Crimson but Brian Eno and David Bowie albums. I think he should do the same now, hiring himself out to play those 70s Robert Fripp solos (that Slash sometimes kind of mimicked on Appetite) for bands like Daft Punk etc. And yes, Robert Fripp, you should start soloing like this again, and playing on other people’s pop records.

Tarika Blue–Jimi–Awesome 70s Jazz Fusion/Prog; Deodato–Speak Low

Tarika Blue–Jimi

Awesome! This great jazz fusion band is from New York, the guitarist is Japanese, Ryo Kawasaki–what solos! Apparently the Tarika Blue song ““Dreamflower”, which has been sampled by Erykah Badu for a neo-soul, R&B hit (Grammy nominated), was also sampled by a drum ‘n’ bass group in the UK, the Underwolves,” according to the record label Downtown Sound.

Here’s some more awesome 70s jazz/jazz fusion:

Deodato-Speak Low
Deodato produced like all of the great 70s Kool and the Gang records as far as I know…

Prince–While My Guitar Gently Weeps (RnR Hall Of Fame); Crimson and Clover on Ellen 4/23/09

Prince with Tom Petty, check out Prince’s awesome solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps in this George Harrison tribute.

Prince on Ellen–Crimson and Clover

Can and Red Krayola/Red Crayola

Ah, the wonderful world of psychadelia and krautrock! These people did in the 1960s and 1970s what so many postpunk and new wave bands tried to do in the 1980s and indie bands tried to do in the 1990s and 2000s. Those musicians could all have gotten PhDs and cured cancer and brought world peace if they only knew the music they were trying to make had already been made 20, 30, 40 years earlier for them!

Can–One More Night
Awesome drums, harmonics, etc. Can’t beat trippy jazz dance drums with experimental guitar and bass and electronics and English-speaking native Japanese lead singer living in Germany. Can ends up sounding like trippy German Japanese experimental hippies channeling James Brown via Pink Floyd a lot of the time, the drums sometimes end up sounding like some Manchester songs from the 1990s but much better. There’s some Can song that’s quite like the Stone Roses’ Fools Gold.

Can–Halleluwah
I’ll bet Grateful Dead and Phish fans would really like Can. American Beauty is one of the best albums ever made BTW.

Can–Moonshake
Sounds like 1995 and 1981. Pretty sure Joy Division listened to a lot of Can–what’s that one Joy Division song that sounds like this?

Can–Paperhouse
God, this song is so beautiful!!! WTF??? Indie rockers gave up the term “post rock” after they discovered that Can and Brian Eno basically did all that stuff in the 60s/70s.

Can-Vitamin C
Yup, here it is: Pink Floyd meets James Brown. Hey you, you’re losing your vitamin C!!!!

Red Crayola-Hurricane Fighter Plane
What??? It’s new wave postpunk in 1967. That’s BEFORE Captain Beefheart’s Troutmask Replica!!! The same year as Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Ah, there aren’t really many YouTube videos of the Red Krayola/Red Crayola songs I’m looking for. You can preview them/download them on Amazon:

Red Crayola-Jewels of the Madonna
This really sounds like fucking PAVEMENT! Steve Malkmus!!! Jeez!!! It’s crazy that this was from the 1960s. What?????
Red Crayola-Green of My Pants
Red Crayola-Leejol
Red Crayola-Dairymaid’s Lament
Red Crayola-Sherlock Holmes
Red Crayola-Listen to This

Red Crayola-
Former Reflections Enduring Doubt
This is just a noisy freakout.