Philip Schaeffer: Fund Chief Revels in 'Far Better Climate for U.S. Distressed Debt Investors'No he fucking isn't. Philip Schaeffer is a mad bastard from back home with a penchant for hitting the skins, hitting the herb, rotaries (the cars not the old mans' clubs), sultana sandwiches, Asian poontang, our lord and saviour Jesus H. Christ (on an inflatable bike or otherwise), breaking people's computers, not turning up on time, and twiddling around with little knobs. Two things are self-evident: (a) Google is gay, and (b) Phil Schaeffer (pop. Lucky Phil, circa 1990-93; Captain Stupidity, c. 1994-present) is eleven-tenths of a fucking legend. For putting up with us calling him Captain Stupidity for fourteen years, if nothing else.
By Conrad de Aenlie
Philip Schaeffer is a specialist in investing in securities, assets of companies on or over the brink of insolvency. He ran portfolios of such investments through the 1990s for Robert Fleming Holdings, now part of J.P. Morgan Chase Corp. Now he manages Scott's Cove Fund Ltd., which targets American distressed securities, mostly bonds, for Optima Fund Management LP.
Anyway, the Captain had a saying, steeped in personal experience, which still rings true to this day. Actually, he had two. One was 'Never go out with a violent drug dealer's underage girlfriend' (don't ask) and the other, delivered one memorable evening in the heady rock-and-roll confines of the Yamba Bowling Club auditorium, was 'Cowbells are where it's at.' A sentiment on which southern California's nastiest all-girl rock group the Donnas would undoubtedly agree, and not just because like Phil's band they featured a feisty five-nine blonde drummer who everyone wanted to snog. (Except in the Captain's case 'everyone' chiefly meant 'elderly Japanese male tourists mistaking Surfers' Cavill Mall for a walk-in rentboy dealership'. Again, don't ask.) One listen to their breakthrough 2002 album Spend The Night will confirm - indeed, ten seconds of track one will do - that these are women who understand that the best, and indeed only, condiment which truly improves the flavour of the Big Rock Power Chord is the flagrant employment of cowbell, and lots of it.
The Donnas Bitchin'
Which brings us to the Donnas' latest offering, the unashamed '80s throwback Bitchin'. And a slightly different comparison. No, not to Spend The Night, which - to be honest - it would lose. No, instead, to another shamelessly retro (and cringingly hyphenated) recording, Airbourne's Runnin' Wild, reviewed last time we were in this neck of the woods.
It's apparently the done thing for peeps in comfy long-term relationships to start playing amateur match-maker between their unattached acquaintances. Usually with appalling results. Regardless, I propose a match-up: the girls from the Donnas and the boys from Airbourne would be great together. Airbourne's material is almost entirely about banging the arse off dirty, skanky, nasty women of low moral fibre and extensive immoral experience. The Donnas, for their part, are dirty, skanky, nasty women of low moral fibre and extensive immoral experience. As previously observed in these pages, they're not the sort of girls you take home to Mother, unless Mother is Jenna Jameson. The Donnas plus Airbourne: a plan with no drawbacks. Christ knows why they're touring with Kisschasy instead.
The only drawback, as you've probably guessed, is that this album doesn't stack up particularly well against some of their previous work. The girls bookended Spend The Night with an attempt at a big-label populist genre-crosser called Gold Medal, which did a'ight, but not well enough for them to stay with aforesaid big label. Bitchin', released through their own label, was allegedly the all-rock, all-the-time big party album they always wanted to make. And it's an album that, promoted well, would be fantastically successful and would sell multitudes of copies... if that calendar on the wall read 1988 rather than 2008. Generous ladlefuls of Eighties cheese have been gooped all over this, from the early-Metallica flourishes of the album-opening title track to the echoey guitar intro of Save Me, which sounds like it fell off the back of a truck carrying the session tapes of Van Halen II. The rest oozes with Joan Jett, Whitesnake, Crue and the other hirsuite heroes of Sunset Strip poodle metal; a heady melange of hairspray, synthesizers and powdered performance enhancers.
Which is fine, if you're into that sort of thing. And which brings us back to Airbourne. Again, big hair, big chords, big rock riffs old enough to vote, so why does Runnin' Wild come off so brilliantly and Bitchin' not so much? Aside from Airbourne picking a better genre to lay tribute to, i.e. seventies Aussie pub rock rather than eighties Seppo hair-metal - there are two main differences. One, it's a better record. The worst song on Runnin' Wild (probably Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women) is still better than the best song on Bitchin' (probably What Do I Have To Do or Smoke You Out - actually it's difficult not to view the whole album as a themic continuum with fourteen different choruses). And two, we know they can do better. The better half of Gold Medal for one, or the entirety of Spend The Night for another. Better songs, less production. If in doubt, go see them live, without the production. Play your cards right and you may even get to take one of them home. Actually, play your cards appallingly badly and you're probably still in with a shot as long as you're still standing at the end of the gig.
Spin it: if you remember the '80s, are looking for a soundtrack to a skateboarding film set in 1985, or find the idea of hot sweaty drunk chicks in rock bands attractive in some way (i.e. if you are breathing)
Bin it: if you don't like your intelligence insulted
Final word: The guitarist is the hot one, people. Not the drummer. Three and a half cans of Schwarzkopf Extra Hold out of five.
The Black Keys Attack and Release
Welcome back to this week's episode of Danger Mouse Fucks Up Your Favourite Band's Latest Album. Last episode we saw how our fearless hero's irrelevant masterbatory twiddlings contributed absolutely no added value whatsoever to the Hives' Black and White Album, provoking many to suggest that the flavour-of-the-month freelance producer might be best served fucking off back to Gnarls Barkley with his idiot offsider. (Penfold, I think his name is.)
But no, DM's been brought in to fuck up the sound of earthy blues-rock duo The Black Keys. And fuck it up he does. There are probably a few interesting riffs on this album, but they're submerged under so many layers of utterly superfluous electronic wank that they're utterly unrecognisable. I wanted to like this album. I really did. But rather than that, it drove me back to the CD cabinet to exhume the Keys' previous album Magic Potion, which was slagged off in these pages some time ago. And by comparison, it's not a bad outing. It's half-listenable, there's a couple of really cool riffs on there (and riffs, let's face it, is all a band with one guitarist and one drummer is going to be good for.) It's no Thickfreakness or Rubber Factory, but it's half-listenable. Attack and Release is not even that.
Spin it: if you're a gormless trendite indie scenester fucktard desperate to be seen to be listening to anything and everything this talentless arseclown producer futilely wanks all over
Bin it: because it's shit
Final word: all that said, go see them live, they are indeed epic. Danger Mouse can't fuck that up for them as well. As regards this though, just get the only decent track I Got Mine off iTunes. In fact, this album is one of the best advertisements for iTunes going around. Two reproachful 'Penfold...'s out of five.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Baby 81
BRMC were popular for fifteen minutes five years ago, in the wake of bands like the Strokes making '70s New York style rock popular again. You may remember their track Whatever Happened To My Rock And Roll, because it was ace. You may not remember the album it came from, or the one that followed, because they were dull. Their sound is best described as the New York Dolls playing in a a swamp. Muddy doesn't even begin to describe the sound quality of their show at the last ever Livid, which sounded like they were playing under the swamp through a snorkel. All their songs sound the same, which is their best and worst quality. It hasn't frightened off that great music critic of our time, Bruce Willis, who listed BRMC among his three favourite bands of the moment, along with the Strokes and... Architecture in Helsinki. Probably makes sense if your wife has fucked off with an idiot MTV host young enough to be your offspring.
So what does Baby 81 sound like? Well, it sounds... not too bad, actually. Track one, Took Out A Loan, is both a harbinger of the sound to which the rest of the album will resolutely adhere, and one of the better tracks (if in fact you can figure out where one track ends and another begins.) The driving bassline, the howling guitars, the laid-back drawl of lead singer Can't Be Fucked Looking His Name Up - it's not new, but it's them, it works, it stands up to repeated use (see also 666 Conducer, Weapon of Choice, Lien on Your Dreams) and if there's a few misfired bullets in their arsenal - the overblown nine-minute American X, the pissweak Beatles tribute Windows - it's still an album which provides genuine value for money. Presuming you, like me, bought the album for $12.99 from the bargain bin at the Warehouse.
Spin it: if you always wanted to hear what music sounds like to people with industrial deafness
Bin it: if you have industrial deafness
Final word: Buy this album or Bruce Willis will throw you down a lift shaft. Three Yippie-ki-ays out of five, motherfucker.
The RacounteursConsolers of the Lonely
Let's face it. Side projects - often better characterised as vanity projects - are usually shit. Take the Gurge for instance. For every successful spinoff like The Stalkers (kick-arse garage punk side project of Ben and Peter) there's shit like Happyland (twee ballsack effluent side project of Quan, along with Janet from Spiderbait who he was boofing at the time). So it's not looking good for The Racounteurs (or The Saboteurs as Robbie 'Cluster' Buck of Triple J tediously insists on calling them), being as they are comprised of one Jack White III of the White Stripes on guit/vox and Three Other Blokes of various extraction on other instrumentation.
Oddly enough though, The Racounteurs have one big advantage: they're not the White Stripes. The Stripes' reputation as the band who reinvented rock in the early years of this decade - and it's not a long bow to draw to argue they precipitated the whole 'new rock' revival which went on to unearth the Strokes/Hives/Vines/Black Keys/Jet etc etc etc - they're effectively pigeonholed by their inability to be pigeonholed. A White Stripes record by definition has to be avant-garde, has to be freeform, has to be raw and disconnected and discombobulated and all over the place like a mad woman's
Well, he calls his mate Brendan Benson and they write an album like Consolers of the Lonely. Which is tops.
Spin it: Heaps of good tracks here. Consoler Of The Lonely, Salute Your Solution, Hold Up, Top Yourself, Five On The Five, Attention, Rich Kid Blues, These Stones Will Shout... and even the more ponderous numbers are listenable.
Bin it: because (a) you object to Top Yourself on principle because the title sounds like an instructional seminar from Philip Nitschke, or (b) you're sick to fucking death of Jack White III (Beyond Thunderdome) and think the only decent thing he ever did was backing vocals on Danger! High Voltage! by Electric Six.
Final word: Honest, JW3 did the girl part. Fact. Four aliquots of twee ballsack effluent (what a mental image that is folks) out of five.
Next time: we throw in the towel and just listen to shit on iTunes first.
The Doctor is OUT.
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