for people who can't read

Sunday, April 8, 2007

1 things other people have said Posted by ... Scotland

Stepfords Live | The Stepfords
No Label | 1998

Review by Jen Jewel Brown

Website

Sounds like … the best little barroom in hell.

The sexy outlaw music of The Stepfords, a tamale-hot unsigned New York/Sydney band who scored the recent national Tony Joe White tour supports, is currently only available through MySpace. That’s something to raise a glass to, while it lasts.

Online phenomenon MySpace is a shark cage against the jaws of the few remaining multinational record companies, those amorphous mega-monsters prowling the economic rationalist deep as they consume each other mindlessly, year after year.

At least at http://www.myspace.com/thestepfords there are friends, free samples of three indie releases and the ability to contact the band direct to mail order this LP Stepfords Live, first album Gas, Food & You or the new four-track EP View From the Floor (2007) via the band’s own label Sway Records.

The Stepfords are the wicked, wicked ways of New York singer Monica McMahon, backed by Sydney-siders Jim Bowman (ex-Ed Kuepper) and Jon Schofield (ex Paul Kelly & the Messengers) on guitars, Clyde Bramley (Hoodoo Gurus) on bass and Iain Shedden (ex Saints) on drums. With this line-up you get a nice touch of garage dirtying up a set of very classy band-written originals.

With the moody “I Can See Hell from Here”, the kick-arse “Cocktail Dress” plus “Black Tears”, “Devil’s Lullaby” and seven other melodic yet gritty tracks, Stepfords Live was recorded at Sydney’s legendary Hopetoun Hotel in 1997, swiftly becoming a collector’s item. The band took a long break while other projects called and the iconic McMahon headed back to New York. The Stepfords’ first appearance on MySpace in June 2006, combined with some rare but dynamic gigs, brought a resurgence of attention. Schofield heads to the Lower East Side shortly to do some songwriting with McMahon. Watch out for a new album down the track.

8 out of 10

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

1 things other people have said Posted by ... Scotland

Welcome to for people who can't read, a(nother) blog about music.

Feel free to snoop around and make yourself at home. We don't have much here just yet, but hopefully that'll change soon enough - we've got some couches arriving next week and the fridge is fully stocked with Sueño, so make sure you bring round the Bombay Sapphire yeah Jono? Oh, and get on the blower to Miss Jelly Hands, Jesstron V, and The Sebarillo Kid to see if they can bring the coconuts. Sound.

Our title is ~~stolen from~~ inspired by the ludicrous Frank Zappa, a man who named his four children Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, and Diva Thin Muffin:

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

This quotation is so right it's practically wrong - yet again, the man was lightyears ahead of the pack, although it's also possible he just passed too close to the Sun. Either way, we dig his words.

So here's how it works. Our plucky contributors will be writing on a regular basis for Farrago, the University of Melbourne's student paper. They'll be doing their best to disprove old Frank and take their readers on a cosmic interstellar reviewing odyssey™ to galaxies as yet uninvented by bored astrologers.

Sadly, their musical appreciation can be but one voice among the billions, which is why we created this blog. If you loved | liked | were indifferent to | despised (delete as appropriate) the reviews printed in Farrago, this space is for you to register your own feelings about the music under scrutiny. And while you might be tempted to launch an attack on the reviewers themselves, remember, writers are humans too.

for people who can't read (fpwcr) will also serve as a soup kitchen for undernourished and homeless reviews. If the print budget for Farrago doesn't stretch to the 72-page pull-out supplement we are fantasising about (OK, so maybe it's just me that's fantasising about that), there's a good chance some contributions will end up here. Of course, in time these forgotten works will be regarded as classics in themselves, and will be collected in a four-volume, hippopotamus-hide, limited edition release for all the futurehipsters to devour greedily. But for now, you can comment on those here too.

Dig in people. I'll leave you with a couple of pearls from our posthumous patron, Frank Vincent Zappa:

My theory is that music is good, it's the only religion that delivers the goods. And anybody who wants to hear any kind of music is entitled to hear that music because it's good for you – it makes you feel good. If you like it, go for it. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean anything – it's a matter of personal taste.

And of course my own personal maxim: