Also in this Issue
- Brother, Can You Spare a Sample? What's wrong with turning tramps into pop music? (Arts Feature)
- Come On, Feel the Noise The music of Lightning Bolt and Erase Errata speaks volumes (Music)
- Psych 101 Tripping with Charalambides and Six Organs of Admittance (Music)
- Kills or be Killed A brooding duo slays the new skinny-tie crowd (Music)
- Rage Within the Machine A whisper in the noise find the humanity in technology (Music)
- More articles from this issue...
More Music Articles
- New Standards: The Bad Plus With Minneapolis's Dave King on Drums, an Irreverent Trio Turns ABBA and Aphex Twin Into All That Jazz (Jun 27, 2002)
- 'Trane Travel Jazz Tributes to Coltrane, Parker, and Hendrix (Jun 26, 2002)
- Venues and Value Getting More Bop for Your Buck with Parliament-Funkadelic and Charles McPherson Quartet at the JVC Jazz Fest (Jun 26, 2002)
- White America A lonelier Eminem explains himself for the benefit of his homies in the suburbs (Jun 26, 2002)
- Only The Shadow Knows A turntable giant spins samples into perfection (Jun 26, 2002)
- Hell Don't Care (Jun 26, 2002)
- Jazz Notes: Omar Sosa Octet A Cuban Musician and His Band Give Their Audience Multicultural Jazz--and Multifarious Gimmickry (Jun 26, 2002)
- Puppet Regime You won't believe what Quintron and Miss Pussycat can do with a marionette (Jun 19, 2002)
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Still Happening
For indie rockers, this qualifies as interpretive dance: Beat Happening
Image: K Records
Crashing Through
K Records
No one liked Beat Happening at first, at least not the Calvin songs. The band, you see, featured two distinct singing voices, each identified by a first name among fans. Calvin sounded nostalgic for a tradition of echoing pop baritones--from Lee Hazelwood to Mister Ed--who expressed masculinity as a kind of lazy power. Heather was a voice of the future, a more ardent Moe Tucker whose unflappable attitude and vibrato-free delivery made her a riot grrriot to a generation. The skip-rope melody of the best song on the first Beat Happening album described something like emerging consciousness: "Close your eyes and live your life/Someone else will pay the price/Open up your eyes and speak your mind/Leave your youth far behind."
Even today Beat Happening demands an absurd level of commitment: Anyone waiting for a concise K-tel best-of will be exasperated to find every last toss-off crammed into Crashing Through, a whopping seven-CD box set. Still, measured against what their toss-offs influenced--from Sebadoh (blah) to the Moldy Peaches (yay)--the music breezes by as memorably as Elvis's Sun sessions. The template is still exciting: Heather Tucker-ing her drums, Calvin shaking the maracas, and Bret, the third voice of sorts, strumming the absolute minimum of notes with the absolute maximum of authority. (He sounds like amplified air guitar.)
If you hear hints of this approach in the White Stripes or Low, the full Beat Happening shows how much the original was all hints to begin with--bones covered with fat on later cover versions (Luna's "Indian Summer"). The band left more than the usual amount of youth behind, but their adulthood wasn't misspent.
About Peter S. Scholtes
From the Archive
- Men In Black (Music - May 29, 2002)
- Far Away, So Close With lusty seniors in Rio and hard-driving cabbies in Lima, filmmaker Heddy Honigmann makes her home in the world (Arts Feature - May 15, 2002)
- Kiss of the Spider-Man Director Sam Raimi finds a superhero to love (Film - May 8, 2002)
- Off Beat (Off Beat - Apr 24, 2002)
- Best Buy The most powerful radio and concert chain hires the most powerful man in local dance music. For Clear Channel and Rich Best, it's business as usual. (Arts Feature - Apr 17, 2002)
- Bob Mould: Modulate (CD Review - Mar 27, 2002)
- Parker Posing Valet keep their musical ambitions in neutral (Music - Mar 20, 2002)
- Babes In Conflict (Music - Mar 20, 2002)
- More articles from the Peter S. Scholtes Archive...
