Godzuki Trail of the Lonesome Pine. Why isn't Dion making records any more? O is he? We saw him open for Mark Robinson long ago, maybe 1999, my date fell in love with him. He was looking pretty smart. He was the one who kept the Godzukis in line apparently, the one who made them dress sharp and worked on their dance choreography and cheer routines though limited as it may have been. they were shrunk down to size mainly due to the constraints of playing places like Zoots. Pollen USA. A lot of the songs on the first album have lyrics about insects. Right? I don't feel like digging through and finding the lyric sheet but I seem to recall a lot of the songs were entomological in nature. They were all science students. I think. There was a detroit band called Four Fabulous Scientists, I saw them live once, they may have played a show with Godzuki, who knows, I think it was Four Fabulous Scientists, Comet (some dreadful Texas band with really large amplifiers and blood as thick as mercury) and some other band. it may have been the Apples in Stereo. Was it Godzuki, I can't really remember or imagine that Godzuki was the headline act when I saw them. Were they ever? I don't remember. They wore red ties, red stars on their pressed shirts with starched collars. They swapped instruments rather a lot, it always turned interesting when Erika would sit down to sing, like Jesus or Obama. This was the exploratory record, the one where they dipped their collective toe into the green seas of many different musical styles so song number one is a bit of Stereolab on milk tainted with valium. Now, already, we are to song two and it's a bit more shouty, more aggressive, similar texture to the first one, they sounded like they were recording underwater. The ending electronic flurry presages the second album. Third song now, Sunday Man, a bit indiepop this, the slow motion Northeastern brand. Erika Hoffman was doing a lot of singing around this time on His Name is Alive records and Godzuki and she was probably dead exhausted. Mostly her voice and a riff, then another riff, some percussion fills in gaps until the big finish comes. Is this the better Godzuki album? I don't know, it starts off a bit slow but it gets really interesting, the other one is more monochromatic, it's synthpop for breakfast, lunch and dinner. While at Zoots once I met a girl who said her ideal mate was Alex Lifeson and her heart was peripatetic while they were in hibernation but all the same she was breathless and excited because she had just found a used cassette copy of2112. She spent the entire evening taking photographs of the Push Kings and telling everyone within earshot about Alex's best qualities. It was fantastic actually. I was a bit of a Rush fiend when I was a kid. People my age were required to own a copy of Moving Pictures on cassette, it probably had to come from the Columbia tape club where you ordered 18 cassettes for a penny and then always forgot to check the box to tell them not to send the selection of the month which was usually Giuffria or Chris Rea and so you had to make sure not to be tempted to open such nonsense and mail it back. These cassettes were of dismal quality, sounded like third generation copies someone had made on their audiovox amplifier and there was the very real threat of your cassette player eating your copy of Fastway's first album. Fourth song now, some angular Sonic Youth-y rock, sorta, Warren Defever had a big influence on the band at this time. So it was eclectic. It was in keeping with the Time Stereo ethic. Time Stereo recently held a press conference to elucidate their platform supporting the rights of wolfmen. It's clever happenings. I wonder if the electric bear and the electric giraffe attended in support of the cause? My friend desires a move to Detroit to witness the Time Stereo spectacle in person, she's likeable enough that they would probably invite her into the fold while the closest I came was as part of an anonymous group heckling Kurt Ralske when he played Detroit in his Led Zep phase. Gleason Rocket is a bit squealie and supercharged(Detroit bands require more automotive metaphors than this surely), her voice isn't as deadpan or sweet, it's roughened slightly to reflect the tension of the times. It was 1996, a dark age when The Rules held the spot currently occupied by Eat, Pray, Love, when Angela Chase was being ignored by everyone, Dunblane, Mad Cow, jacque Chirac blowing up the South Pacific. But the Cardigans were on the radio every ten minutes! Orange, Red, Bright Blue, a lovely little pop song, along the lines of Sunday Man, the instrument swapping might have led to the diversity on display. I saw them later, they opened for the Magnetic Fields, in a bowling alley, I was wearing a shirt with a "K" taped to the front so my friend could recognize me from across the room. The Magnetic Fields played about 40 songs. It was magnificent. Oh wait, was it the Magnetic Fields or was it Seely? Seely was the band that killed Too Pure, their Adventure Babies. Some will claim that Too Pure has been reborn somewhat recently but have you actually listened to that Future of the Left record? So horrible. She has a muadlin tone here, resigned, but it is in keeping with the character of the moments cataloged and it is very nice. Now an instrumental interlude, music boxes and backwards tapes of voices and other epehemera. Ready to burst into the storming??? Old Number 7, slinky bass, drums, then some power chords to propel us somewhere sublime, sorta, her voice is distorto queen of the distortion and the whole thing is a bit messy, glamourously so. it's a relentless bit of noisenikerry and one of the boys starts to sing. Is it Crispy? Was his name Crispy? He did a solo side project later. It was called Teach Me Tiger, it was alright, I always longed for a Dion solo record. Has he done one? He used to play the electric giraffe or bear or something and would sometimes find his way to Noise Camp as well. This is a skronky bit of tension. It doesn't really frighten or drill into your soul, it's still kinda mannered and rather polite, things might have been different if they had majored in gender studies instead of Biology. Hmmm...over. Poinsettia, another brilliant power pop song, with her distant spacey vocals, I think this may be the one concerning insects and arachnids. They were suburban kids, from Macomb county; this was my old hood. There are three main counties in the Dtroit area; Wayne(the craphole), Oakland(the rich folks hole) and Macomb(wasp-land). It was tracts and tracts of strip malls and faceless subdivisions, one near me was delineated from the rest because all of the streets were named after popular brands of smokes. Viceroy St, Marlboro Ct, Pall Mall Dr. Charming. I lived on Weber St. it is still there, as of 2005, but my elementary school has been torn down. It was old even when I attended. My friend once tried to break into the library and steal the collected series of Great Brain books and the one copy of Super Fudge but his co-conspirator fell through the roof and it turned into a huge scandal and the next week when school was back in session the blood was still on the ceiling tiles, quite improbably. My friend turned into a city commisoner later in his life, he's probably kissing higher class babies now with canadians. Next song is Tractor Driver a breezy synth led number that I love dearly. Loads of guitars, dryness, her uncaring voice, just terrific. And short. After this one we get into the experimental side of the band and it's an interesting view of the band but this must have been the song to serve as the template for the second album with its short, peppy synthpop numbers. This came out on March records. I wonder if Skippy paid. Apparently he didn't pay anyone. Third hand rumours. Don't sue me. You have more copies of that 800 Cherries cd left on your shelf than I have readers Mr. Skip. Tractor Driver is over and now to Auto-Haze which is old school skronky rock, a bit Further mixed with the Go-Gos with a bit of the B-52s slinking in as well. I loved to hear this one live because it moves to a pointed skewered beat and then usually they blew up into something bigger. Detroit in the 90s was booming. Everyone on earth was buying an F-150 or a Chevy Truck because Bob Seger told them to. It was fat city. Oakland County was the second richest county in America. Of course, things are slightly different now. Everyone is leaving. It should serve as a fertile ground for music but it seems so far not so much. The discontent and malaise mean that it could be similar to Manchester in the late 70s but the White Stripes are hardly Joy Division are they? 12x now, this is Go-Gos-ish at the beginning then it turns into an awesome maelstrom of noise and prettiness about halfway through. It reappeared on a split single with Outrageous Cherry some time later. Even Matthew Smith was having it large during the 90s, it was that gluttonous. Matthew Smith is like the Mundy of Detroit. I always thought that "Cloud Mine" song was pretty cool but other than that man Outrageous Chery were lame. Static-y guitars, machine gun drums, intercepted radio transmissions, it's a bit Joy Division really, wrong decade, maybe an Atrocity Exhibition for the kids. Over. Piano, bass, monotonic vocals, Do the Sputnik, more of the spindly guitar, the repetitive bass. I think the second album was definitely better, but at the time I defended this album over the rocketship cd, passionately. I was a homer. I think the Rocketship album is miles better these days but then I don't live in the Detroit area any longer. Dustin Reske could make a record with Dion. It might be fantastic or he might spend all of his money on a new bong. A bit of the Cure and Siouxsie in this. Time Stereo's record store Record Collector is or was a dreadful store. The only thing I ever picked up there was the cassettes for Esp.Summer and Pail Saint. Last song now, Canary a little more cirsumspect and ambient, they had a short drummer, they had a small drum kit, her voice is hollowed out a bit on here. It's like a cruise on belle isle, you look to the south and see Windsor, a ghost town until they opened a casino, well except for the weekends when all of the American kids were over in Canada getting drunk on ice beer and then the urban legends about them sticking thir heads out the windows and yelling 'the Windsor ballet rules!' and them then getting decapitated by the pillars that lined the entry of the tunnel under the Detroit river. Denver's legends remain out of my reach. I never made it to the Windsor ballet and I've never been to a strip club here. I should broaden my horizons. Have you watched the Anthony Burgess video above, god what a crazy look, I have been wearing hideous ties a lot but that hair! It's madness!!! Godzuki, we miss you!