The All Night Workers :: Why Don’t You Smile Now

A blueprint for the nascent VU.

In the early 1960s,  just prior to the formation of the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed worked as a staff writer for the rip-off, cash-in label Pickwick Records. Concerning his time spent with the label, Lou himself was quoted as saying "There were four of us locked into a room and they would say, 'write ten California songs, ten Detroit songs'. These releases would largely head straight to the bargain bins with titles intentionally designed to confuse . . .

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Diane Coffee :: My Friend Fish

Diane Coffee is tormented, liberated, terrified and triumphant. More altered attitude than alternate persona, Coffee is Shaun Fleming’s creation, a life crafted in tight, varied snapshots. Saturated with swagger and fanciful fits, My Friend Fish  whirls both emotionally and musically, steadied only by bravado, where even sadness is boldly pleaded.

An overlooked touchstone in the parade of critically appointed influencers for Fleming and his other group, Foxygen, is that of Beck - the gangly and stretched 21st-Century-bluesman by-way-of slacker-prophet. As such, Fish  shows flashes of  Odelay, Mutations,  Midnite Vultures  and  Sea Change. "All The Young Girls," Fleming's iteration on the Princely tenderness of Midnite Vultures' closer  "Debra," is particularly demonstrative of the sleazy steeze that seeps from both records. Whereas “Hymn” and “Tale of a Dead Dog,” are the bombastic, airy, folksier singles from a record that otherwise features a heavy dose of vibed-out R&B and vibed-out Punk.

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AD Presents :: Monster Rally – Volume II (A Mixtape)

66 minutes and 4 seconds. Monster Rally - Volume II: A new collection of danceable funk, afro-soul, incredibly smooth hip hop, rainy dub, and multi-ethnic garage rock. Our second collaboration with Monster Rally, whose new LP - Return To Paradise - is out this week via Gold Robot Records.

Aquarium Drunkard Presents :: Monster Rally II (A Mixtape)

Monster Rally - Smoke
Earn-Es back
Sylvania East Side Symphony . . .

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Lou Reed :: Between Thought And Expression

When I heard the news of Lou Reed's death yesterday, I didn't immediately reach for a record, but instead picked up my copy of  Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Re-reading Bangs classic Creem interviews with Reed, I was once again struck by their relationship, as it's the same type of relation any music geek ends up eventually having with rock and roll: we worship at the alter of our heroes - the people who make cool and art look so effortless - and eventually we learn that they're a bunch of flawed, pitiable rats just like the rest of us. And it makes us angry. We become flustered and super critical. How could someone who wrote "All Tomorrow's Parties" or "Who Loves the Sun" or "Venus in Furs" be anything less than a benevolent, thoughtful and magnanimous Prometheus? In a bit of Orwellian double-think, we hold those thoughts simultaneously - we revere and revile. Or more accurately, we revere and we realize - realize that these artists we've grown up worshiping are just as human as the rest of us. We do and we don't accept that, and the collision of those truths leaves us wounded.

That's how Bangs felt about Reed. It's how and why he could write in a set of unpublished notes:

"Lou realized early on that all you need to do is touch the other's cheek and just give them some small recognition and then let them be and maybe record it and thereby perhaps justify their tragedy through art. And all art is an act of love towards the whole human race. Aw, Lou, it's the best music ever made, the instrumental intro to 'All Tomorrow's Parties' is like watching dawn break over a bank of buildings through the windows of these elegantly hermetic cages..."

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The B-52’s :: The Downtown Cafe – Sept 2, 1978 / Atlanta, GA

The B-52's 1979 debut album ushered in a practically fully formed sound/band. No one else was doing this...whatever 'this' was. It's also one of my all-time favorite debuts of any band/genre. Captured live in Atlanta in 1978, these clips find the group at their most primal. The set is chopped up (spliced into songs), all of it worth checking out via Youtube. Here's "Rock Lobster" - and be sure to stick around for the five minute mark. Shit . . .

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SIRIUS/XMU :: Aquarium Drunkard Show (Halloween Edition)

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice, every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.

Download: Trick Or Treat Volume 9 -   A Vintage Halloween Mixtape

SIRIUS 316: Count Chocula — Intro ++ Bob McFadden And Dor — The Mummy ++ The Blue Echoes — It’s Witchcraft . . .

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Wooden Wand Interviews William Tyler Interviews Wooden Wand

It was somehow agreed upon during my conversation with William Tyler that he would do the transcribing — the difficult, tedious part — and I would write the intro. This is consistent with William’s character: he is the classic overachiever. Add him to any band — even great ones, like Silver Jews, Lambchop, or Yo La Tengo — and that band’s music is instantly made greater by virtue of his virtuosic guitar playing and heavy spirit. I write as a beneficiary of his talents: William has joined Wooden Wand on a couple of tours, and performs brilliantly on the just-finished Wooden Wand album, due out next year. In person, William is affable, intelligent, quirky, brilliant, and kind; much like his playing, the man himself is a veritable fount of imagination, generosity, and positive energy.

I’m not sure when, or if, dude sleeps: in addition to a constant touring schedule, most recently in support of his magnificent new album Impossible Truth (Merge), he is co-owner, with his sister Elise, of the great Nashville music venue and restaurant The Stone Fox. The music he releases under his own name stands above fashion; indebted to no one scene or sound, it also belies a familiarity with country and rock and roll fundamentals cultivated by years of detailed, deep listening. He loves Suni McGrath and Roseanne Cash, and doesn’t seem to find anything particularly strange about that.

As an instrumentalist and solo performer, he is first among equals.

It was a pleasure to speak with him for Aquarium Drunkard. - JJT

James Jackson Toth: So…you’ve been really busy!

William Tyler: I’ve been real busy. I got home two weeks ago from a three-week tour and before that I had only been home for a week after another three-week tour. I’m having the ‘home for a while letdown’ thing. You know how it is.

JJT: It’s like inertia.

WT: It is like inertia. It’s kind of like, “Wow, real life is complicated! All I used to have to do was drive eight hours to play!”

JJT: Yeah! That’s so easy! (Laughs)

WT: Yeah, no big deal! How bout you?

JJT: Kind of laying low. The Three Lobed LP (Wooden Wand & The World War IV) just came out, and the new Wooden Wand record, which you are prominently featured on, will be out early next year. Have you been recording?

WT: No, I’m trying to write. Now that I am back home I’m trying to finish stuff. I’m not very prolific, but I haven’t had a lot of general discipline about being creative in the last few months, since the touring cycle has started.

JJT: I know it’s something we’ve talked about before, but it’s so funny how uncreative most of the time being on tour can be, unless you’re like the Grateful Dead or maybe Comets on Fire or something, but if you’re playing the same thing more or less every night, with nothing but driving in between, there’s not a lot of time to be creative. Writing is creative, and recording is creative, but after that...

WT: Well, for me, sure, I have been touring most of the time completely by myself. There’s plenty of time to reflect and ruminate--probably too much--driving around, taking trains. I really value that time alone, that calm, but it’s not musical alone time, it’s travel time. When I finally get to play a guitar at the end of the day it’s essentially a fixed set. I’ve been playing the stuff from Impossible Truth and (previous album) Behold the Spirit so much that, at this point, sometimes it feels like I am covering (these songs), that I am almost a cover band. I don’t like the feeling of being comfortable enough with knowing what you are playing, to where you can almost think about other things going on in your life while you’re playing. Your consciousness drifts a bit; you might even say something to yourself like “I wonder what I’m going to eat for dinner tonight?”

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Derek’s Daily 45 II: A Mixtape / Psych, Freakbeat, Garage – 1966-68

We're back with Bay area crate digger, dj and musician, Derek See - the man behind the long-running ode to the 45 RPM record, Derek’s Daily 45.  Psychedelia, garage, freakbeat, acid rock - call it what you will; it's the music of young people in an era of chemical experimentation and social exploration. Most of the tracks presented here were recorded between 1966-68, a few earlier, a few later. All cuts sourced from See's personal collection of 45s.

Download/tracklisting after the jump…

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Catching Up With Overseas :: The AD Interview

This summer, old friends David Bazan (Pedro the Lion, solo), Will Johnson (solo, San South Gabriel, Centro-matic), Bubba and Matt Kadane (Bedhead, The New Year) released a record together. Called Overseas -- the band and the record -- the foursome cannily resists the baggage that comes with the “supergroup” tag. There is no extensive credits list detailing who played what, or who wrote which lyric. That isn’t to say that the ten songs collected, culled from sessions stretching back to 2009, don’t betray their creators’ trademarks: the coiled guitars recall Transaction de Novo; the drums occasionally reach Control-level bombast; and Johnson’s sandblasted voice and Bazan’s throaty croon are distinct and clear. But the parts add to a unique whole.

“This record was built from the ground up,” Johnson says. Though both he and Bazan brought rough songs to the table, the band also created spontaneously in the studio. Even at its heaviest and most terse, it sounds like guys stretching out. For a record created by “slo-core” vets, its pulse is powerfully discernible.

“A lot of it evolved from what we refer to as thin air jams,” Johnson says. “It’s essentially jamming out a song over the course of three or four hours sometimes, until it materializes into something with enough compelling components to keep us engaged, until it turns into something like a complete song.”

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Aquarium Drunkard Presents: No Age – Berlin, Germany / Oct 28

We're in Berlin for six months. First up - AD presents No Age, October 28, at Privatclub. Giving away a few pairs of tickets to AD readers. To enter, leave a comment below with you name and a valid email we can reach you at in address field. Skalitzer Strasse 85-86, Berlin . . .

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Chris Forsyth :: Solar Motel

Say hello to you new favorite guitar anti-hero. Granted, Chris Forsyth has been making music for quite some time now, but if there's any justice in this world, Solar Motel  will bring a legion of fresh followers into the fold. The album is some kind of masterpiece, a four-part suite of ecstatic, spiritual psychedelia that . . .

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Diversions :: Chris Forsyth (Bootleg Mix)

Diversions, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, catches up with our favorite artists as they wax on subjects other than recording and performing.

2013 isn't quite done, but it's safe to say that the most glorious electric guitar record of the year is Chris Forsyth's stupendous Solar Motel. The album calls to mind a dream team of six-string mavericks -- Garcia, Verlaine/Lloyd, Thompson, Quine and plenty more. As one might expect, Forsyth is a connoisseur of guitar anti-heroism, so we asked him to put together a "bootleg mix" of jams that inspired the new record. Forsyth's selections, and words, below...

Tetuzi Akiyama: Short Piece Dedicated to Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Joe Death

I did nine dates in Europe with Tetuzi Akiyama back in the autumn of 2010. We'd met before and played together, even put out a CD (Phantom Limb & Akiyama, Hot Ginger  [Archive, 2006]), always playing electric. On this tour, during which we played solos and sometimes duos, he played acoustic. These gigs left me convinced that he's one of the most incredible and underrated acoustic guitar stylists I've ever heard up close. In London, we did two nights at Cafe Oto and on the second night, we played with other people. I did a first/only time duo with Rick Tomlinson of Voice of the Seven Thunders (which was very pleasing to do and is up on the Free Music Archive) and Tetuzi did a trio in a very reductionist mode with Seymour Wright and Ross Lambert. He then did an encore that nearly made my heart stop. On display was not only his devastating vision of the blues, but his sense of humor - he wore an airline sleeping blindfold and dedicated it to Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Joe Death. Lo and behold, someone taped it and it showed up on YouTube some months later. It has about 1000 hits as I write this and I'm sure I must be responsible for at least half of them.

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Daniel Bachman :: Jesus I’m A Sinner

Is Daniel Bachman the Robert Pollard of the American Primitive set? In terms of pure unstoppable output levels, it's starting to look that way. Since about 2010 he's been releasing music at a furious clip, including singles, cassettes compilation tracks, collaborations, and tour CDRs. Jesus I'm A Sinner is his third full-length album in less than two years, coming hot on the heels of 2012's Oh Be Joyful and Seven Pines. The good news is that the law . . .

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SIRIUS/XMU :: Aquarium Drunkard Show (Noon EST, Channel 35)

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.

SIRIUS 315: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++  Jacques Dutronc - On Nous Cache Tout, On Nous Dit Rien ++ The Accent - Red Sky At Night ++ The Five Americans - Don't Blame Me ++ The Galaxies IV - Don't Lose Your Mind ++ The Hard Times - They Said No ++ The Rationals - Feelin' Lost ++ Beverley - Where . . .

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Tal National : Kaani

Tal National is one of Niamey, Niger's chief party bands, a powerhouse team of musicians who stage nightly marathon shows and summon a rich, cosmopolitan cipher of West African styles. Elaborate melodies blossom into intricate latticeworks of many guitars and eventually settle into a mesmerizing, repetitive groove.   That groove is a maximalist representation full of sonic cues to the traditional styles of many Saharan peoples: the Tuareg, Hausa, Songhai et. al. This big sound is quite literally reflected by the band's bulging talent pool and intense performance ethic. Tal National's international press release tells of a . . .

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