Genres

When it comes to rock ’n’ roll sans boys, sisters were doin’ it for themselves all over the globe as far back as the mid-’60s. Half-baked historians tend to trot out ’70s bands like Fanny or The Runaways as examples of rock’s first self-contained all-female bands, probably because—though hardly stars—they became better known than most of their forebears. But the fact is that when the mid-’60s garage-rock phenomenon was inspiring tons of teenagers to bust out guitars and drums, eschew aural niceties, and start playing guts-and-gravel rock ’n’ roll, there was no shortage of young women revving up for the revolution.

In the U.S., distaff ’60s bands were thick on the ground. Goldie & The Gingerbreads, the launching pad for respected rocker Genya Ravan, were probably the first, getting together in New York City in 1962. But within a couple of years, they were joined by The Pleasure Seekers (including future glam-rock star Suzi Quatro alongside her sisters), The Debutantes, The Luv’d Ones, and hordes of others.

But America wasn’t the only place where this phenomenon was being forged. England had its own female Merseybeat band in The Liverbirds, while Germany had Die Sweeties, and Indonesia boasted Dara Puspita. Quebec gave Canada Les Intrigantes, and Las Mosquitas generated a buzz (sorry) in Argentina, while Sanjalice showed up in Yugoslavia. Some of these bands were cutting covers of the hits of the day, but a lot were writing their own tunes, and even if the bands that made the femme-rock underground of the ’60s never really found their way to fame and fortune, they still made a crucial contribution to the culture. In an era when the women’s movement was just getting underway, the original Riot Grrrls made it clear that guys didn’t have a monopoly on rocking out.

For more ladies of the first generation of rock, read Jim Allens story on pleasekillme.comhere.

Fifty years ago, in a true-life science-fiction story wilder than anything concocted by an Area 51 conspiracy nut, a neon-colored interplanetary vessel lifted off of a top-secret launchpad somewhere in Michigan. Of course, the P-Funk Mothership only existed as an LSD-induced pipe dream back in 1970—it took a few years before audiences got to see George Clinton’s Afrofuturist UFO in all its cosmic glory at halls, stadiums, and arenas around the world. (Visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture can still check out a 1990s-vintage rebuilt version.)

But Clinton’s almighty vision of psychedelically charged funk and soul was already soaring sky-high, judging by the first three long-players—Funkadelic and Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow by Funkadelic; Osmium by its twin enterprise Parliament—to emerge from his ever-more-sprawling P-Funk collective at the beginning of the ’70s. The surreal and exhilarating contents of those albums and the many that followed would ultimately comprise one of the most inspiring and influential bodies of American music ever made.

They’d also prove to be a seemingly limitless resource for several generations of musicians, producers, DJs, and anyone else who ever saw fit to sample the grooves, riffs, beats, and assorted whatnot concocted by Clinton and such pivotal P-Funk collaborators as bassists Bootsy Collins and Cordell “Boogie” Mosson, guitarists Eddie Hazel and Garry Shider, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey, and the Horny Horns. Indeed, P-Funk’s importance in the history and development of hip-hop is incalculable, the Mothership Connection being the force that binds iconic jams by Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, and EPMD to the best of Dr. Dre’s G-funk era to modern-day journeys into parts unknown by Kendrick Lamar. Here’s a set of essential tracks by rocket-powered travelers in the universe that Clinton created.

L.A.-based artist Actually Huizenga is a natural-born provocateur, down to the name she’s given her band, Patriarchy. On their debut album, Asking for It, Huizenga howls over a jarring yet poppy mix of industrial and goth. Her perspective is fully rooted outside any box or system, as she plays with social constructs of faith and morality while successfully messing with our heads—all in good fun, and good music, of course. To complement her own provocative tales, she’s put together a mix just for us, one that’s as sinister as it is stimulating.

Says Actually of the playlist: “Some sweet songs that are also sexy for when you bring someone special home.”

Prince was nothing if not prolific, but turning out material at a breakneck pace didn’t necessarily gel with the marketing agenda of a major label. Prioritizing creativity over commerciality, he began warring with said label over its refusal to release as much material as he wanted. That’s when he began rebelling by adopting his famously unpronounceable symbol, with the world consequently calling him The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. But beginning with 1996’s aptly titled Emancipation, Prince (who eventually reverted to his given name) was freed from his contract. Releasing records through his own NPG imprint—sometimes distributed through other labels—he opened the floodgates and a startling torrent of music flowed through.

Even in his earlier days, Prince had always put out records at a pretty constant pace, but it was only after he entered his indie phase that it really became apparent just how much material he was producing. It wasn’t merely the amount of music that was overwhelming; it was the broad range of styles. He worked in a multiplicity of formats, sometimes on his own and sometimes backed by groups ranging from the rocking 3RDEYEGIRL to the funkier New Power Generation, and occasionally joined by guests including Sheryl Crow, Kate Bush, and Maceo Parker. In these settings, Prince slipped into R&B, rock, hip-hop, funk, jazz, electronics, and more.

The trouble is—and this is where Prince’s former label’s concerns were not entirely unfounded—wading through that much music can be a daunting, even confusing process. A lot of people had trouble keeping up with the emancipated Prince’s output. To this day, it can be a challenge, so here’s a handy guide hitting plenty of the highlights, from the steamy funk of “Black Sweat” to the smooth soul of the Stylistics cover “Betcha By Golly Wow,” the blistering rock of "PLECTRUMELECTRUM," the supple jazz of "Xemplify" and beyond.

An homage from Dowsers founder Sam Chennault: I’ve never written an obituary, and I’m not entirely sure where to begin, but I’ll start with what I know is true: David Berman is dead. Berman was a poet and the leader of the band the Silver Jews and, more recently, Purple Mountains. I’ve spent thousands of hours over the past 25 years listening to his songs and reading his poems. To say that his words and voice were beautiful, poignant, clever, funny, or any of the usual adjectives that I’ve used over the years to describe music feels wholly inadequate. More than anything, they were unflinchingly human and startling honest. They provided a window into a journey and a life that was difficult, and oftentimes incomprehensible and cruel.

Maybe he described it best: “Songs build little rooms in time/ housed within the songs design/ is the ghost the host has left behind/ to greet and sweep the guest inside.”

Berman was born in Virginia, not far from where I lived for a period of my life when I was younger. He was the son of an infamous Republican lobbyist, and he began making music in the early ‘90s. His first songs felt like a lark — the music equally appropriated noise rock and country, and they were ramshackle, disheveled, and sometimes formless. They oftentimes sputtered out without warning. But it was clear that he had a gift for conjuring images of liminal, ancient spaces. An early jewel: “Sin and gravity/ drag me down to sleep/ to dream of trains across the sea.”

‍Over the years, his songs took on more concrete forms. The track “Pretty Eyes” from the 1996 Natural Bridge was a turning point where he first understood the power he wielded. The song is a surrealistic, trickster slice of Americana that tells of  “little forest scenes and high school Halloweens.” In it, Berman declares “one of these days these days will end,” and relays a story of hosing down elephants in his backyard. These elephants are “ashamed of their size,” so he comforts them by telling them that they have “pretty eyes.” It’s a silly image on some levels, but there’s also an underlying tenderness to it, as there is with so much of his work. The last verse begins: “I believe the stars are the headlights of angels/ Driving from heaven to save us/ to save us/ Look in the sky/ Theyre driving from heaven into our eyes.”

Berman was also a deeply troubled person. He spent many years addicted to crack cocaine, and, in 2003, he tried to kill himself in the same hotel room in Tennessee where Al Gore was holed up on election night 2000. He declared he wanted to die where the presidency died. In 2009, he temporarily quit music, saying that his father (the Republican lobbyist) was "a despicable man ... a human molester ... an exploiter...I thought that through songs and poems and drawings I could find and build a refuge away from his world...There needs to be something more.”

He would return from his self-imposed exile in 2019, recording under the moniker Purple Mountains. His work had become progressively darker — his voice grew warbly and broken, and he conceded that he’d been “humbled by the void.” Even more alarmingly, was his line that “the dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind.”

It’s all very bleak, but there was always a hardwon hope. One of my personal favorite songs of his is “The Wild Kindness.” To an extent, the song is about entropy and decay. He relays that “Grass grows in the icebox/ and the year ends in the next room/ It is autumn and my camouflage is dying.” But the song ends with this image: “Four dogs in the distance/ Each stands for a silence/ Bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar/ Im gonna shine out in the wild kindness.../And hold the world to its word.”

He was always fighting, trying to find an escape route from his family’s history, from his own addictions and mental issues, and from a world that was, at turns, absurd and cruel. I identified with this, as did many of the people whom I love and care deeply about. I thought that if Berman could negotiate these dark alleyways, and still produce works of such startling beauty, maybe there was hope for the rest of us. When I met him, I told him as much. I hope that meant something to him.

On August 7th, 2019, we found out that the worst had happened. Berman, in his own words, had been “playing chicken with oblivion,” and, this time, no one flinched. His last video was for a song called “All My Happiness is Gone.” It’s lonely and ecstatic, and begins with Berman and his friends entering a cave. The last verse of the track will always be devastating:

Its not the purple hillsIts not the silver lakesIts not the snowcloud shadowed interstatesIts not the icy bike chain rain of Portland, OregonWhere nothings wrong and no ones askingBut the fear is so strong, it leaves you gaspingNo way to last out here like this for long

My friend texted me to let me know the news at 7:52 EST. Four minutes later, another person, someone who is one of the most important people in my life, also texted me, “I’m having such a hard time. Life is painful.” She’d never heard of Berman or the Silver Jews; life doesn’t always require a specific tragedy or death to be crushing.

I called her partner and found out that she was curled up, crying, mumbling that she wanted to “meet Jesus.” I asked to speak to her, and told her that she should get professional help, that a therapist would help her unpack and understand her past. She replied that her past — consumed with a dead child and lost dreams — was too heavy, and that she had no desire to revisit it. I asked to speak to her partner, and told him to hide the sleeping pills. Sometimes, this is the best advice you can give.

As I mentioned when I first began writing this, I’ve never written an obituary. You tell me, but maybe they should have a happy ending, or at least some nod toward redemption or celebration. I’ll try to provide that here. About a month ago, I lost someone whom I cared deeply about. They didn’t pass away, or disappear into drugs or alcohol; they simply stopped caring about our relationship and exited my life. I consoled myself with the knowledge that there was a new David Berman album, and this album contained more than just new songs from a master. It held 10 new friends, friends who would help carry the weight of mass shootings, dead children, failed relationships, and lonely bars, and they would go on and on and on. They will live forever.

What’s This Playlist All About? The folks at Under the Radar Magazine highlight some of the biggest sleeper tracks in alt and indie rock. On their first go-around, they cover a wide field of songs that seemingly have nothing else in common other than being “precious stones buried in discographies” or ones that are simply “underappreciated for a variety of reasons” --leaving listeners to figure out what those reasons are for themselves.‍

What You Get: This is mostly an exercise in digging up deep cuts from big-name bands like Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Coldplay. But before you get there, they throw in a few offbeat indie and electro artists worth a shout-out, like Brooklyn duo High Places and Spencer Krug’s highly underrated solo project Moonface. Things get a little wilder midway through with the woozy Clap Your Hands Say Yeah nugget “Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the Air Burning?” and PS I Love You’s propulsive noise-rocker “Get Over.” Then it all cools down a bit with the Cure-esque Pablo Honey ballad “Thinking About You” and the slow-burning tearjerker “Friends and Foe” from Irish greats The Frames.

‍Greatest Discovery: Lead track “Digging Holes” comes from a lesser-known band from Madison, WI, called Icarus Himself. The song has several twists and turns, with organ jabs, wieldy guitar licks, and magical quavers of an electronic instrument called the Omnichord. The group sound like The Walkmen one minute, then Beirut the next, as the song concludes in a celebratory squall of brass.

‍Most Questionable Pick: Lady Gaga’s gut-wrenching showstopper “Always Remember Us This Way” from her Oscar-nominated performance in A Star Is Born. It may be up there as one of her greatest performances, but is this Billboard Hot 100 hit really a song that’s been slept on?

Previously known as Sister Crayon, California duo Rituals of Mine make the type of shadowy and sultry music that’s best consumed in the darkest of hours. Indeed, their newest EP, SLEEPER HOLD, carries the weight of tragedy and trauma, as it comes more than three years after lead singer Terra Lopez lost her father to suicide and her best friend to a fatal accident. Still, the songs are not exactly grim or gloomy but rather sharp and bold, exuding the sexy confidence of trip-hop at its finest (think: Tricky, with whom Lopez has collaborated) and electro-R&B at its dreamiest. While the EP is a form of therapy in its own right, Lopez also has a selection of songs she continually goes back to when life becomes unbearable—and she’s shared them with us here.

Says Terra of the playlist: “These are the songs that I’ve clung to over the years (new and old) when I’ve been at my lowest. Before I started taking antidepressants, these tracks were what kept me going, focused, and motivated to get through the day.”

‍Photo credit: Jeffrey LaTour

Progressive metal first emerged in the late ’80s, a whirlwind of ambitious themes, sprawling concepts, aggressive precision, ambitious arrangements, off-kilter time signatures and wild displays of chops. Bands like Queensrÿche and Fates Warning would have varying intensity of the spotlight, but nothing matched the commercial and critical success of Tool, the uncompromising band that released the biggest rock record of 2019, the 86-minute Fear Inoculum.

However, the seeds of lofty, lateral-minded metal churn go back to the ’60s and ’70s. Pioneering prog artists (and Tool influences) King Crimson and Pink Floyd would often venture into the heavy and strange. Lesser-known bands such as Britain’s Atomic Rooster, Germany’s Lucifer’s Friend, and Los Angeles’ Captain Beyond sunk deep into proto-metal moods. Jazz artists like Tony Williams, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and ’70s-era Miles Davis mixed bonkers playing with abrasive rock energy. French “zeuhl” bands like Magma and Belgian “rock in opposition” band Univers Zero played with time signatures in disorienting ways. Here are some bands that paved the way for prog-metal’s lofty ideas.

‍Photo Credit: Travis Shinn

Fifty years ago this summer, Sly and the Family Stone were melting down amid a mess of missed shows, internal frictions, and bad PCP. Yet the funky utopia they briefly represented remains utterly compelling even now.

The band’s mastermind was Sylvester Stewart, a singer and multi-instrumentalist who had first gained fame in San Francisco’s music scene as a DJ and producer under the handle of Sly Stone; this surname would also be used by the two bona fide siblings among his bandmates. Sly and the Family Stone were integrated not only when it came to matters of race and gender but also in terms of Stewart’s remarkably inclusive creative vision, one that would be presented with an exuberance that dissolved any boundaries between rock, funk, soul, pop, and psychedelia.

As per the boastful title of the band’s 1966 debut, they were indeed a whole new thing. And on the heels of their set at Woodstock in August 1969, record buyers were ready to go wherever Stewart wanted to take ’em. Alas, life within the Family fold had already become a far heavier trip than listeners could have known based on their three iconic hits of 1969 and early 1970—“Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Everybody Is a Star,” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”—and the massive success of 1970’s Greatest Hits, the most indispensable album ever to bear the title. Things just got heavier after that, though Stewart managed to prevent his complete personal collapse long enough to make two more masterpieces in 1971’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On and 1973’s Fresh.

As grim and weird as the later chapters of this story have been, the music Sly and the Family Stone made in their imperial phase is somehow as inventive, exhilarating, and downright joyful as ever. One reason it still feels fresh is the abundance of hip-hop, R&B, and dance tracks powered by samples of the originals’ hooks, horns, and harmonies—and, of course, the unbeatable grooves provided by the rhythm section of bassist Larry Graham and drummer Greg Errico. Here’s a set of songs that wouldn’t be half as amazing if not for their sturdy foundations of Stone.

What better soundtrack could you have for celebrating Independence Day than the most unbound kind of music around? Hell, it’s right there in the name: free jazz. These are the sounds of liberation, of minds and spirits set loose from all constraints. We start at the birth of free jazz in the early ’60s, when visionaries like Ornette Coleman were looking beyond the horizon line to determine where jazz could go next. For Coleman and legions of others to follow, the answer was unfettered improvisation, whereby the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic settings could shift on a dime, determined by the flow of the musicians in the moment. Ornette dubbed his 1961 album Free Jazz, giving the genre a natural tag. No longer tied to any kind of conventions, free-jazz players invented musical languages of their own, and although the first bursts of the music may have all been energized by a similar spirit, every musician’s artistic argot was completely their own. The light, darting lines of Don Cherry’s trumpet, the industrial-strength blast of Albert Ayler’s saxophone, and the heady abstractions of Andrew Hill’s piano, for instance, were islands unto themselves, but anybody was welcome to visit.

Free jazz was also the sound of liberation in the sense of African Americans boldly defining their cultural identity, as groups like the Art Ensemble of Chicago did with their Afrocentric, unfailingly idiosyncratic musical statements. But as subsequent generations and cultures took up the free-jazz mantle, the music moved in multitudinous directions, from the postmodern pianistics of Matthew Shipp to the visceral trumpeting of Steph Richards and beyond. There are a couple of Europeans in the mix too, but jazz is one of the ultimate American art forms, and the most untrammeled end of its spectrum makes the ideal musical companion for marking America’s anniversary of independence.