lo-fi is my-fi

when my dtr requested "pinball wizard" at the wreck room invitational jam last week, i prolly wouldn't have remembered how to play it (notwithstanding the fact that i've known how to since i was a teen-snot and actually usedta sing it to her 'n' her sisters when they was babies -- only kinda audience i'd attempt vocalismo in front of) if i hadn't found a copy of tommy on vinyl at half price coupla weeks ago. funny that what originally turned me off the 'riginal "_rock opera_" (yeah, right) on rekkid was how flat it sounded -- almost like a demo except for some of the li'l psych fillips on "amazing journey/sparks," which just reinforced the connection with the who sell out -- a virtue at my house). in light of the last 20 yrs of studio-glossy spew we've had to listen to (mutt lange and ted templeman have _loads_ to answer for, imo), that _plainness_ now sounds like a plus to these feedback-scorched ears.

being an obscurantist weirdo, i tend to prefer rough to smooth, sonically speaking, and i prefer the demo / rehearsal / audience-recorded live incarnations of lotsa stuff i dig to the studio-slick versions. i'm not the only one, either -- was discussing this with katboy earlier and himsay, "live and demo material really lets you hear what a band _is_." maybe i got this way from teething on albs like five live yardbirds (which was professionally recorded but sounded like a bootleg even by shabby early-'70s standards) and velvet underground live at max's kansas city (which was recorded on an audience member's cassette player and sounded like it, down to the recordist's tablemates scoring drugs on-mic), or trading crappy audience tapes of captain beefheart's magic band (which made me aware, through hearing his toons played note-for-note by musos other 'n those who played on the rekkids, that there was actually order in what i took at first for total anarchy) that were the fuckin' _holy grail_ to my set of teenage musos. in fact, know cats from australia 'n' scandinavia who learned the entahr repertoire of obscuro late-'70s detroit outfit sonic's rendezvous band (who only released a solitary single, and a _one-sided_ single, at that, during their existence) from illicitly-recorded live tapes.

there are loads of bands that i never really "got" until i heard the recordings that preceded their signature work. take noo yawk punkeroos television, for example, who i'm listening to as i type this. on their pristine studio artifacts, the clarity of recording 'n' presentation just emphasized the thinness of the gtrs and the weediness of the voxxx, which are still present on the earlier recordings, but augmented with a live energy 'n' spark that just didn't transfer to the studio. or the new york dolls, whose march '73 demos (available in quasi-legit form as hard night's day) serve them better, imo, than either of their studio albs, where producers (todd rundgren and shadow morton) imposed their visions on the dolls' basic rawk blare. one of my fave listens of late has been the shape of things, a fan-recorded tape of the very last show doomed cleveland journo/muso peter laughner ever played with pere ubu, a band he helped found but was ousted from before they made their debut album. i've heard tons of recordings of the toons, both by ubu and by rocket from the tombs, the band that preceded 'em, and i have to say that laughner's contributions to these 'uns give 'em a supernova brilliance that others lack. and the audience chatter is high-fuckin'-larious.

my sweetie says this fetish exists because i'm more interested in _process_ than _product_. same reason i enjoy going to see shows of local bands i like over a period of time as they grow up in public, to paraphrase lou reed, with their pants down.