Artists Who Make My Turntable Spin

Here are some links to artists whose music is always on my turntable or, EGAD!, in my CD player. As I approach the autumnal equinox of life's neverending Sisyphusian battle of the bulge (and hairline), my musical tastes have entered their twilight years (a dumbass way of saying I'm a night owl) and I've found that my youthful mouth-watering excitement over the new Ramones' record has yielded to a veritable mouth-frothing drool over the latest ambient guitar soundscape from the likes of Labradford, Stars of the Lid, Windy & Carl and other cinematic sound sculptists of the "speaker hum" variety. In other words (or, more precisely, in The Rubinoos' words), "rock and roll is dead and [I] don't care!" I prefer quiet nights at the keyboard, rediscovering Nick Drake, early Tangerine Dream and King Crimson (although the "Wetton period" is still my favorite) with Eno providing the ambience and a Low or Red House Painters' record cued up in the wings. As my daughter builds her own personal library of Good Charlotte, Brittany Spears, and assorted boy/girlband records to auction on Ebay in 25 years, I recall that, back in the day, I was torturing my parents with the Monkees, CCR and the ghostly (some might say "ghastly") triumvirate (well, actually, Triumvirat came later!) of Linda, Olivia and Marie. Somehow, "our" bubblegum (Ohio Express, Sweet, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Kazenetz-Katz and The Archies) seemed to hold its flavor a little longer on the bedpost overnight.

So, this next section will lead you down the somewhat obfuscated foliage of what a great wit once described as "the footprints across the shadows on the carpets in the hallways of the memories of [my] mind." This list of links to some of my favorite artists (past and present) will continually grow, so stop by often.

But before you even consider entering into a life of rock and roll, be sure to check out these infamous words of wisdom from producer Steve Albini about what you can expect after you've signed that multi-million dollar contract.

For starters, check out the Terrastock section of the Ptolemaic Terrascope site. Herrmeister Web, Jon Bernhardt (of the theremin-based Lothars) has meticulously tracked down the best sites for nearly every artist who appeared at the festivals. If you're curious as to the artists that turn me on, you'll probably find a link to their site here.

Kees van der Lely's brilliantly detailed site is the most authoritative site on the web for my favorite artist du jour. After you've exhausted yourself over at Nick's own site at Woronzow, pop on over here to get the real nitty gritty. Discographies, photos, a brief bio, additional links, etc.

When you're weary...feeling low...when it's time to scrape the mucus off your brain, may I recommend a visit inside Jon Whitney's wonderful site. Thumbnail sketches and pages devoted to many of my favorite artists and labels.

Two decades after their remarkable debut, the girls are back in town, stronger, smarter, and better than ever! Drop by the site and check up on all the latest news, tour dates, merch info, and so much more from New Jersey's finest export! Watch their videos, listen to some tunes, check out those bitchin' miniskirt uniforms, and join their mailing list. Proving once and for all that Catholic Girls DON'T start much too late. As some wag once sang, "Catholic (school) Girls Rule." Here's the girls paying a recent visit on my "No Soap, Radio" show on WNTI-FM.

The Chameleons - One of my favorite bands of the 80s! Although New Order and The Smiths garnered all the praise, the real "Manchester Sound" began right here. Epic lengthed psychedlia, brooding, melancholic lyrics and that majestic twin guitar assault that at times recalls Television (sans NYC attitude) and early Felt. Oft criticized for sounding too much like The Psychedelic Furs (perhaps the reason for their original downfall), they've reunited (with all four original members), have released several new albums (and a video of a recent live performance in their hometown) and are ready to reclaim their rightful place in the pantheon of rock and roll.

John Cipollina - One of the legendary guitarists from the equally legendary Quicksilver Messenger Service. He practically invented what we now refer to as the "West Coast sound," and this site features audio and video clips, an extensive discography and c.v. of the bands he has performed with, a discussion group, mailing list, and a detailed listing of all known live recordings in his fascinating 25 year career.

Julian Cope's Head Heritage site includes message boards, merch stalls, a monthly "Address Druidion" from the Arch Drude himself and an opportunity for you to read reviews of some of his favorite "unsung" vinyl from bygone eras. There's even a place for you to rave on about your own forgotten classics and guilty pleasures. Sign up today!

Damon and Naomi - The former rhythm section from Galaxie 500 has carved a niche out for themselves amongst lovers of cerebral, ambient, ethereal pop music. Their frequent collaborations with members of Japanese cult rockers, Ghost have helped bridge the waters between the often disparate styles of eastern and western mellow psychedelia. In their spare time, they also run the wonderfully eclectic book shop, Spare Change, offering access to many esoteric (and occasionally banned) books.

Cooler than an arctic frost, tastier than a fine wine, and hotter than a volcanic eruption, The Donnas just keep getting better with each release. If you miss The Runaways, Girlschool, and other femme fatales, you owe it to yourself to stop smirking and believe. These babes are the real deal.

If you only know Nick through that VW ad which uses his "Pink Moon" to sell their latest yuppiemobile, you've been missing out on the best singer/songwriter I've heard in the last 25 years, which, not coincidentally, is just about when he passed away. This site is more informative than those of most artists who are still alive! Everything (and a whole lot more) is tucked neatly away into this wonderfully arranged site and you can find info on how to subscribe to the Place-To-Be discussion list, another home away from home for yours truly. And for a totally surreal, virtual Drake experience, check out this brilliant piece of imagination courtesy of a Dutch fansite.

Mick Farren and the Deviants have been wreaking havoc for over four decades. Originally a biker drinking club that made Lemmy look like a teetotaller, their anarchic entry into the world of rock and roll paved the way for the punk movement a decade after their 1967 self-financed debut, Ptoof! You should also check out Mick's homepage, featuring his personal analysis of his solo career and many writing projects.

From the clubs of NYC, this is the hottest trio in the competitive world of power pop. Like Cheap Trick meets Oasis, Ben Phillips, Mark Damon and Tommy Vinton will have you dancing in the streets to their infectious, toe-tapping rockers.

My favorite band from the 80s, Felt evovled into Denim and, most recently, Go-Kart Mozart. The guiding force behind these projects is Lawrence Hayward and this site is the most comprehensive on the web for articles, discographies, MP3s, discussion boards, reviews. lyrics, etc. for all his projects.

Hawkwind - They've probably released more albums (legitimate and otherwise) than any other band in R&R (I stopped counting at 100, including myriad offshoots). They've been around in one form or another for over 3 decades and most of the dozens of folks who've passed through their ranks probably still aren't speaking to each other. They invented communal/hippie/space/psych rock, yet had the audacity to kick Lemmy out of the ranks for abusing drugs (he paid them back by forming Motorhead), and they still don't give a damn if their music is passe or well past its sell-by date. Everyone should own (at least) In Search of Space, Doremi Fasol Latido, and Space Ritual, the greatest live album of all time. Their late poet/shaman/lyricist Bob Calvert also has an amazing website, well worth a few hours of your time.

In Gowan Ring - From the land of little Osmonds, comes this nomadic bunch of sprites and pot-headed pixies, led by the enigmatic B'eirth and wielding such modern day contraptions as sackbut, cornetto, cittern, psaltry, zither, timbrel, whistles, bells, gongs and tons of other weird sounding shit too numerous to mention. Start quietly with Simon's "sounds of silence," add in a touch of ISB and C.O.B. (whom they've covered on a tribute disk,) sprinkle lightly with those other bastions of the Middle Ages, Gryphon and top it all off with a dash of Donovan. Epic lengthed drones are nestled comfortably amidst some of the finest acid/psych/wyrdfolk on this (or any other) planet.

Kraftwerk - If I have to explain the importance of Rolf and Florian on contemporary music, you're in the wrong place. Just hop on the autobahn and check out their trippy website, complete with streaming sound clips and some far-out visuals. Just don't forget to come back, now, y'hear?

Hey dads, would you let your sons bring home girls like this?

Whether it be luck or talent that got these lovely Canadian rockers signed to Madonna's label is besides the point at this stage of their career. With gorgeous harmonies that cross The Bangles with the Spice Girls, LILLIX are on a par with Tuuli for top Canuck band of the year. Although former "Non Blonde," Linda Perry is guiding them through the production studio, it's the blonde Evin sisters, 17-year old guitarist, Tasha-Ray and 19-year old keyboardist

Lacey-Leethat are prooving blondes still do have more fun. With their combined ages barely topping 75, these young 'uns are poised on the brink of many good times to come.

Malc's career has straddled five decades since his work as lead guitarist with the criminally underrated Help Yourself, followed by a brief stint with Welsh rock gods, Man. In 2001, he released his first solo album, Aliens. A second solo effort, Lost and Found (recorded in the late '70s with engineer Ian Gomm, ex-Brinsley Schwarz) was recently released by Hux Records. Finally, a much anticipated 5th Helps LP is also due to see the light of day. In the meantime, drop by Malc's site for some archival treasures, including press releases, posters, photos, etc., as well as the latest news from the Morley/Help Yourself camps.

The ultimate metal band, the progenitors of punk, the loudest, fastest, meanest bunch of drunken badasses you'd (n)ever want to meet alone in a dark alley, Lemmy Kilmister and Co. have been frying brain cells and causing bleeding from orifices for over a quarter of a century. If you like you Rock 'n' Roll like your women - fast and loose - this is the band for you!

These guys are the epitome of Johnny Rotten's oft-quoted tenet "Rock and roll is supposed to be fun. You remember fun, don't you?" They're also the living embodiment of Eddie & The Hot Rods' clarion call- to-arms: "Don't take no shit from no one, just keep on having fun." Their "Intellectual Property Issues" discussions should be required reading for anyone interested in incorporating "sampling" into their music. Anarchic and irreverent, they combine the Bonzo's (non)sensibilities with Jello Biafra's political platform. Think of them as Monty Python's DK Doo Dah Band!

Kees van der Lely also maintains a marvelous site dedicated to the work of Tom Rapp and Pearls Before Swine.

With half the band [Joey (April 15, 2001) and Dee Dee (June 6, 2002)] passing within 14 months of each other, the value of all those Ramones LPs gathering dust in your basement has skyrocketed. Granted, I don't pull them out and listen to them all that much these days, but having revisited them recently in preparing my tribute to Joey, they still sound as fresh as a slap in the face and a gob in the eye. A quarter of a century has not dimished their excitement one iota. Hey, Ho, Let's Go! Gabba Gabba we accept you - One of Us!

Timothy Renner (left) has been extending the boundaries of traditional acoustic folk/ psych music for the better part of a decade. As founding member of Mourning Cloak, Stone Breath, and The Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree, Tim has incorporated echoes of Incredible String Band, Clive's Own Band (C.O.B.), traditional murder ballads, Gothic Appalachian music, and creepy-crawly ghost stories into a new subgenre, for which he coined the term "wyrdfolk." He also runs the Dark Holler and Hand/Eye Systems indie labels and mail order catalog, has appeared at many of the Terrastock music festivals, designs T-shirts (for his own projects, the Terrastock festivals, and Tom Rapp, among others) and CD and magazine covers, and writes the monthly "Wyrdfolk" column for FAQT magazine. And you thought Leonardo Da Vinci was busy!?

These "sweet-dish" delights from the frozen Arctic (Umeå, to be exact) have been kicking ass since 1997. Sand and snow meet and greet with the resulting steamy sounds soothing savage beasts from the Sahara to Sweden. Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska til Sahara Hotnights!

t.A.T.u.

The hype machines are working overtime on eighteen year old Yulia Olegovna Volkova (left) and her nineteen year old partner, Elena Sergeevna Katina: Russian teenage lesbians involved in underage sex and banned around the world for swapping spit. Personally, I think it's all a pretty elaborate hoax to move product, which, by the way, is quite catchy - imagine a cross between ABBA and the Spice Girls.

These Toronto-based hotties crank out some of the most infectious confections ever to hit the lower 48. Check out their marvelous site to get acquainted with the girls, who are regular contributors to the bulletin board discussions.

Sadly, greedy corporate pigs who are more interested in making a quick buck than appreciating the free publicity and all the work that went into assembling this site have forced it to be removed, no doubt in response to the sampler CD-Rs designed to publicise their artists' work. I'll keep this here for a while in memory of all the great information formerly available at this site and with sincere hopes that it will return soon with a more "acceptable" format.

Fans of all things "wyrd," should check out the Lord of Misrule (aka Mark Coyle)'s marvelous compendium of the mysteries surrounding the "wyrdfolk" movement. Lists of relevant wyrdfolk artists, honest and compelling album reviews and links to several online discussion groups.

The recent spate of generally excellent ambient guitar and electronic artists has opened my ears to an entirely new generation of post-Eno sonic space explorations heretofore usually reserved for soundtrack composers like Badalamenti, Lai, Morricone, Theodorakis, et. al. Having earned my B.F.A. degree in Cinema Studies from New York University, I've always appreciated the atmospherics these masters brought to the "listening" (as opposed to "visual") experience of film. That the following artists have been able to extrapolate this approach to music into the "rock" aesthetic is one of my great listening discoveries in the last half decade or so. [See my article on Snorecore for a look at some of the artists who've appropriated this style in a more traditional guitar/bass/drums setting.]

Unlike the aforementioned duos, the music of Aarktica is the work of one man, Jon De Rosa. Although he's been making music under various guises since he was 13 (e.g., Fade, Still, Dead Leaves Rising, Pale Horse and Rider), his compositions as Aarktica were the result of a freak occurrence that caused permanent loss of the majority of his hearing in his right ear. He told me, "I found all these pain killers and decided I was just gonna be reclusive and all. That's when I decided to work on Aarktica and it was a really good, cathartic way of coping with what had happened. I worked at it all night, every night, trying to capture tones that recreated sounds the way I heard them. The whole idea of the [first] album was to recreate the way "normal" sound sounded to me now that I had this hearing loss." I guess you could call it, the sound of one ear hearing. Of course it all sounds incredible with headphones.

Cerberus Shoal - From Maine, these prolific astral navigators have actually scored soundtracks to several short films. In a musical aboutface rivalling (the British group) Japan's conversion from glam to New Age-y prog, CS began life as a punk band in late '95 and gradually molded their approach to music by applying their newfound technique of cinematic soundsculpture to subsequent highly original, emotional, ambient releases. Look for my interview with the band in an upcoming issue of Ptolemaic Terrascope.

Relative newcomers to the ambient scene, this Connecticut quartet have slowly developed into one of the most respected and critically acclaimed artists in the world of silent music.

Stars of The Lid - The ultimate Snorecore band. The Austin, Texas duo of Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie have created an incredible body of work that closely approximates speaker hum - it's the 21st Century answer to chill out music. Perfect for relaxation, insomnia, or romantic encounters, it gives new meaning to the term "background music" - it's so quiet, you'll think you left the stereo on long after the record stopped playing.

Their press release says: "Neo-psychedelia, contemporary classical, ambient, minimalist, maximalist, drug enhancer, drug substitute. Stars of The Lid are all these things. Stars Of The Lid are none of these things. Stars Of The Lid are not about outer space, they are about inner space."

You should also check out their side projects, Windsor for The Derby and Aix Em Klemm (Adam) and The Pilot Ships (Brian).

Windy & Carl - Proprietors of Stormy Records, Mrs. and Mr. Hultgren have been soothing savage breasts with their multi-layered soundscapes for over a decade.

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