1996. Methodrone. The first LP from the Brian Jonestown Massacre was the inspiration for Mike G and I to finally start a band after months of talking about it. You see, I had gotten in his car with some friends not really knowing Mike, and lo and behold, playing in his car stereo was Lilys’ Eccsame the Photon Band, which was my favorite album at the time. Mike and I quickly became good friends, yet the band talk continued until Mike brought over the Methodrone CD. Mike drafted in Chris on bass (I’d have to play the basslines before each song so Chris could remember) and Tom on drums (He was a skater kid so every song gradually got faster and faster while we played). We advertised for a lady singer and the auditions consisted of Mike and I playing BJM songs while getting the wannabes to sing to them. After several hilarious auditions, we had the good fortune of meeting Jessica Foxylady and convinced her to join us. Our first song: BJM’s “Wisdom.”
Anton Newcombe has put out seemingly dozens of albums in dozens of styles with seemingly hundreds of band members, is the subject of the film Dig, and has been called every name in the book and visited every city in the country. All of those albums are available for free download from the BJM website as zipped ogg files.
Also of note is the Brian Jonestown Massacre Fans’ Cover Project, a fantastic site which has collected an ever-growing number of songs. My two faves are below.
When CoCo B’s dropped their new tracks into our mailbox I experienced a spell of flashbacks: me and Matt from The Bronx hauling out to Anaheim every Sunday night, Alberto’s burritos in hand, along with crates full of CDs from Orange County bands. This was back in 2002, before Indie 103.1 was around, and a small staff of music-heads were running a great alternative station with a stupid name: Cool 94.3. Matt and I produced and hosted a (four hour!) local show called Go Loco and CoCo B’s track “Big Okie Dokie” was practically our theme song. I haven’t heard anything from them until now.
Last year, on March 8th, Ted Leo was playing in Ann Arbor, at a show I really wanted to see. There was something more important to do, however, and instead of catching Ted live, I saw my son enter life, a little early but more than ready. Not long before the delivery, my wife asked to hear her favorite TL song, “Me and Mia,” and the lyrics were just right: “Do you believe in something beautiful? Then get out and be it.” Maybe this is a good message for today, too, considering Blacksburg. It seems to me that the families of the victims, the students, those in grief and mourning need all of us to be more beautiful, to be better. I haven’t heard the new Ted Leo/RX album Living with the Living yet, but I’m hoping its filled with the powerful songwriting found on “Me and Mia” or “Ghosts” or “Biomusicology” — honest, straightforward and necessary examples of compassion, anger, hope, righteousness. 
Hey Lover is the latest boy/girl duo to be covered here on 3hive. So while Hey Lover proves the genre is still going strong, with plenty of opportunity in the single guitar and drums space, this Portland band is also the most likely to destroy their kit with their frantic punk-pop pounding. And that’s a good thing.
I haven’t listened to this album much because I CANNOT STOP listening to track number four, “Lightbulb.” Seriously, it’s a problem. You know how some songs reel you in when you first hear them and you develop a temporary addiction to them? I fall for all the hooks: the layers of guitars thicken, leading up to the vocals, then drop out only to build up again until they pull all out all the stops at the chorus…”Can’t you see it sucks the life out of me…” I wish I could figure out the next line! It’s a good thing Alisa’s out of town with the girls, because she’d have pulled out her hair by now. She doesn’t have much patience for my obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to my latest pet sounds. This song also makes me wanna pull out some Ocean Blue (anyone remember them?) and revisit that band. There’s a lot more meat to the Mezzanine Owls though. Sometimes I don’t repeat “Lightbulb” soon enough the beginning of track five, “Graceless,” leaks into my head. The play between the fuzzy guitars and the tambourine recalls The Jesus and Mary Chain. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to snap out of my funk here, but the rest of the album sounds promising.
Now I understand NYC is all cleaned up these days. I personally have walked in Central Park more than once over the past few years without getting mugged, despite the best efforts of television dramas like “Law & Order” to keep me paranoid of being mugged upon setting foot within any of the boroughs. So perhaps it was destiny that three friends from Norman, Oklahoma, with a band named the Muggabears would move to NYC. The band’s website describes them as a “structurally-mutilated brand of noise-pop featuring blissful interplay, sonic experimentation and song destruction,” going on to refer to influences from early 90’s indie rock like Pavement and Sonic Youth. I’ll add Superchunk, Some Velvet Sidewalk, and even Polvo while we’re listing early 90’s indie rock influences. “The Goth Tarts” is from their new EP Night Choreography out on April 24th, and the other two are from their 2006 EP Teenage Cop. Wasn’t there a Law & Order franchise called Law & Order Teenage Cops?
Given the season, it’s appropriate that “Simple Plan,” one of my favorite songs of late, could be described as triumphant. Don’t get me wrong, ain’t nothing preachy about Hooray for Earth. Though you could say they’re on a bit of a mission. They appear determined to make every one of their songs sound freakin’ epic. They start with the big-guitars-meet-big-synths sound—then proceed to send it skyward and never look back. “Simple Plan” is a classic example. For the first 20 seconds it rumbles through low-gear grunge, then bursts into a glorious, spiraling new wave anthem that would make Icicle Works blush. “So Happy” picks up the pace, like 
Like most people, I imagine, I go through serious phases where all I want to do is immerse myself in the Midwest. Living in Michigan and rarely traveling outside my area code makes this quite easy. And so, the landscape (flat), the language (flat), the food (fat), the culture (forlorn) all feel like home to me. Hayward Williams is from Milwaukee, hence he’s a Midwesterner, so it’s kind of like we’re related. That’s why these tracks below, from his albums Trenchfoot and Another Sailor’s Dream sound so right, to me at least. “Redwoods” is my jam for the day, even if we don’t have a tree a third of one’s height here.
The name might lead you to believe you’ve discovered a bedroom-dwelling nocturne with a sampler and a laptop, but in fact it’s an apt choice for Robert Harrison’s (Cotton Mather) lilting latest project. Harrison is a friend of the gee-tar, which makes sense for an album recorded outside of Austin. But he’s also a purveyor of all the little things that make for twinkling psychedelic pop. Floating through these catchy songs about SubUrbia and jumping from Harrison’s Lennon-esque tongue are touches of bouyant pop maestros past and present: the Beatles, Flaming Lips, Beach Boys, Mercury Rev, Wilco, and Austin’s own 13th Floor Elevators. Not that you need such name-dropping to ride Future Clouds and Radar’s wave, but you may as well know ahead of time that you’re in for an aural vacation as well as a trip.
“For Money or Love,” the second song on The Like Young’s Last Secrets really says it all about the Like Young: for the love of their music, for the love of the band, for the love of each other (they’re married), Amanda and Joe made sacrifices to do what they loved, despite the struggles with money. Last Secrets explains it all, and perhaps, fittingly, was their last album before they retired the band back in August. Many more songs of their duo-punk-rock from earlier releases can be downloaded from their site.