Nostalgia is such a wonderful thing. Through the backward-gazing lens of nostalgia even the most hum-drum times radiate waves of rosy and golden warmth. The pang of regret and loss is always nearby, but remembering times past is a constant source of joy for me. Sometimes I hear a tune or smell a scent and I can barely breathe for the fear of seeing or hearing something in the now that might derail that express ride working back toward something that used to be.

Now, the Temptations’ “You’re My Everything” is an incredible pop gem — I really don’t need to polish it any further; it has a gleam all its own. But still, I must say that when the playful plucking of strings strides into that string section and then into the five Tempts all together…wow. I really do get chills up my spine sometimes. In a rich history of excellent songs, “You’re My Everything” stands out as not just among the Temptations’ greatest recordings but Motown’s as well. It’s three-plus minutes of shameless affection and revelry. Not a cloud in its sky. I mean, it must be what love sounds like, right?

And if I had just heard the song now and then in passing, it would still be as great, especially that David Ruffin bridge and he and Eddie Kendricks trading off right after. But what really gets me about it is that when those notes start at the beginning, something in the slide carousel of my memory CLICKS and the same images come back without fail.

I had an unremarkable but largely effortless job as an enumerator with the US Census Bureau a couple of years ago. I traveled to and fro, updating maps and verifying existing data. Pretty dry stuff but still interesting because I got to know my community better. What made the experience really something was that I could, as I drove about from town to town, listen to music and soak up the springtime. Even when you’re doing data-driven drudgery, if you’re outside in the springtime — fresh air, big, poofy clouds, all that — who cares, right? No one breathing down your neck, and you can take your time as you please.

And the music I listened to was, you may have guessed, the Temptations. One day I decided — and I don’t recall why or what prompted the question — that I really liked the Tempts but hadn’t given them a real go yet. So I did. I loaded up my iPod with their greatest hits and left it all on repeat while I puttered about out and about day after day. It all soaked in, and it really took. I even dug David Ruffin so much I scooped up his solo work, and the same damn thing happened all over again. It was the best!

So now, having that fine alchemy of springtime and the Tempts seep into my memory track while it was good and ready to record, that’s the scene that replays each time “You’re My Everything” starts. Every single time without fail. My heart rate picks up, I move around a little in what would charitably be called a dance, and, when no one’s around, I contribute to the harmony when the Tempts chip in theirs.

I try not to listen to the song too often for fear that its magic might wear off. It hasn’t yet, and I hope it doesn’t. I don’t want to forget any of it. In my life the scenery and the characters change too frequently (and often quite without notice). All that’s really constant is what I can keep in memory and prompt at will with a well-timed song. This will account for my preoccupation with pop music.

I’m absolutely delighted to think that someone somewhere, with whatever cobbled-together methods they’ve devised and whatever bits and pieces of whimsy and tinsel they picked up off the floor, did this. The best reason for creating something is always “Because why not?”

I’m eagerly awaiting the follow-up — “Hey, Take Some of This Cake Home (I’ll Never Eat All of It).”

And the b-side? A cover of Jay & the Americans’ “Come a Little Bit Closer.” Of course.

The Bryan & Katie No Love Band “Throw Me a Party”

While one man dreams of building a mighty skyscraper, another just starts building the fucking thing already. The Demon Beat are just building the fucking thing already.

The thing to remember about the Demon Beat is that, given the challenges they face — relying on self-production, being based in a small community, and working within a three-piece setup — their dogged pursuit of unalloyed, combustive rock music shows no sign of flagging anytime soon. Their angle of attack changes with the seasons, but the core feel of the band’s music remains fixed. If something works, great. If not, ditch it. The Demon Beat is going somewhere and will beg, borrow or steal the riffs and beats it needs to get there.

Bullshit Walks, a co-release of the band’s Big Bullet Records and Charleston, WV-based Caustic Eye Records is the follow-up to 2010′s prog-esque Carl Perkins tribute 1956. It brings the band back to more familiar territory, switching out 1956‘s expansive “movements” for the tightly arranged songs of earlier Demon Beat releases.

Things are different, though, this time. Previous albums — HEAVYNASTY (2007), Shit, We’re 23 (2009) and The Demon Beat (2008 EP) — had a leaner, clearer balance and were at times intense but measured. Bullshit Walks, with exceptions, has a more muddled production. Gone are the crisp snap of drums and stomach-grumble of bass in favor of a more aggressive mix with everything, at times, all at once. It’s a wall of sound that does great at conveying a mood, but the message gets shouted down now and then.

Again, there are exceptions. Album highlights include “Art School Girls,” a break from the band’s rootsy classic rock vibe for something a little more frantic, and “Bang,” a regret-tinged gut-wrencher in the vein of “Can’t You?”. The album’s lead single, “Jump My Bones,” is a bit of high-octane square-shouldered rock & roll. There’s an updated modern-rock feel to the album, and if one is inclined to get up and shake one’s ass, this will do till you can see the band live.

Bullshit Walks is another in a string of incredible Demon Beat releases, and again, for about the thousandth time, I’m left wondering just why the hell these guys haven’t broken through yet. Audiences up and down the East Coast know what I’m talking about. Still, the way they do what they do by themselves is paying off in creative spades. In a region full of top-shelf talent and great music, the Demon Beat rises to the top, no doubt about it.

Bullshit Walks will be available July 5th. Preorder an extremely limited-edition (only 100!) hand-screen-printed vinyl LP and receive free shipping and an instant download of “Jump My Bones” and receive a digital download on the day of release.

Big Bullet Records
Caustic Eye Records

And I don’t mean to be unkind in saying so, but you know the type. The ones who think that someone else can come along and solve all their problems with enough cash or a flashy automobile or admission to the right scenes. “Be careful of them in the dark” because in the dark you can’t see their eyes looking for the next sucker coming down the street. They can’t capture your heart because they haven’t any of their own. Just hands that clutch and hips that curve just so. “They try so hard to break out of their little worlds,” and you’re another rung on that ladder.

Big Bullet Records is kindly sharing with us another free compilation culled from the tracks of its stable of varied and ever-talented acts. Terminal Ballistics, Volume Two, follows up on 2009′s first volume and shows the indie constellation of stars as compelling as ever, with vital new acts shuffling in next to stalwarts whose sounds have helped define the modern music sound in their region.

Middleton, Maryland’s Cait O’Shea cuts through her label-mates’ bluster and frantic effort with the simple and resigned “Past.” Her voice is lulling, and though there’s nothing ho-hum at all about the song, what I take away is how drowsy it makes me and that I like that it does.

Spirit Night‘s “AM (Demo Version)” helps balance the meaty-fisted entries on the comp with layered, thoughtful deliberation. I can’t help but feel I should be undergoing some sort of cinematic character revelation. This is not an unfamiliar quality with Spirit Night, and this song’s addition lends much-needed sincerity to the album’s second half.

The Demon Beat, that band almost synonymous with Big Bullet Records and responsible for constituent pieces of about 85% of the label’s acts, heave in “Young Lust,” a quick and smeary diversion from the band’s promising creative arc (in a good way). It comes across as a nervy land-grab into the kingdom of Jack White’s production style and shows that even in 76 frenzied seconds the Demon Beat are taking something that’s been theirs to claim all along.

I have to say, though, that my favorite track on Terminal Ballistics, Volume Two, is BBR’s least likely song: woodworkings‘s “New Freedom (Pa).” It’s a very restrained but evocative. And what I mean by least likely is that everyone else is addressing the listener with great earnest, trying to provoke or lead them to something. And that’s fine. But “New Freedom (Pa)” sort of…sits down beside you and is just there. I live in a Korean city of nearly 3 million people. I sat in a city park for a while today. Nobody looked like me, nobody wanted to talk to me (or could), and sometimes I couldn’t even tell if I was there. This is what it sounded that, and a song like that is a remarkable achievement and a great credit to the label.

For all the good on the comp, though, there’s also a little bit of not-good. And what I mean to say is that I just don’t know what to make of the alt.country/roots revival style that’s getting so much diligence paid into it. It’s a genre full of some really great stuff, but it’s also got a lot of bad Ryan Adams impressions. And I’m accusing anyone on Terminal Ballistics, Volume Two, of anything — I’ve actually had some very good things to say about a lot of them — but I just don’t know how many times a song can be retreaded and still sound vital.

Terminal Ballistics, Volume Two, showcases the wild spirit and determination of individuals who aren’t so much chasing dreams as simply responding to something banked deep down in the fiber of their being. Their growth from year to year is hard-earned, self-evident and all but inevitable. And that might be overselling the case a bit much, but there are so many bloodless nobodies trapped in routines they despise, I just can’t help but hip-hip-hurray when someone says f**k it and goes for it.

(And again, the compilation is free, which is great because it’s been however many years and I still don’t think I’ve paid for a single BBR release yet. Support local music!)

Big Bullet Records

I grew up in a rural community and live now in a community that is only slightly less so. A major if often unremarked staple of the landscape are the lovely buildings — barns, workshops and diners but mostly houses — that have been surrendered to nature. Birds now dart in and our of the broken upstairs windows, trees have started lazing up along the back walls and the roof itself has given way to unintended skylights.

It’s like the very life of the house has been uncorked and left to pour sadly out the front door. They’re haunted but not in the ghost-and-ghouls sense. Rather, there’s a dispiriting feeling of regret even to a passerby that something dear, a real treasure, has been lost.

Like the misgiving I feel about personal regrets (which is more frequent than I care to admit), I shudder when I see a gutted, weather-worn house and try to piece together what might have happened that would have left a place in such a state of failed potential.

Tom Waits wonder this himself in “House Where Nobody Lives” (from the Grammy Award-winning 1999 album Mule Variations), asking, Did somebody’s heart break, or did someone do somebody wrong?

Waits paints a scene of laughter echoing out of the house and down the street as the chimney hums with cozy warmth. Then the gulf preoccupies him, as it does me. Trash and weeds have choked the front porch and a perfectly nice house has had its lights all put out.

There are some stunning homes tucked between the hills around here, with slate shingles and ornate cupolas and colors of paint that probably made more staid neighbors blush. A quarry foreman or prosperous farmer looked around and declared, “This bounty will last a lifetime, and here’s a house to crown it nicely!” He beamed with pride as he looked around at the piece of land he’d staked out for himself. And then something happened.

Something happened and out went the family, compelled by economy or illness or some other misfortune left unrecorded, but still stood the house, all alone. An architect’s vision and the fruit of his labor – the very root of some family’s tree — was emptied of its life and its warmth. At some point the four walls and roof where somebody lived and slept sheltered from the elements outside was handed back and left to wait till nature dissolved it and erased from memory all it ever meant.

Waits does offer a little common sense, though. The family of the house, whatever house, moved away and surely endured as a family. And I suppose that matters. A house without a family is not a home, afterall. Lives are not fixtures to decorate the house.

And I know that’s true, but I can’t help but feel that a house is suffsed with the affection and the shared memory of chapters of life that are diminished or decommissioned from remembrance altogether when the photographs are taken off the shelves, packed away and moved off somewhere else. But then, I’ve packed up and moved off often enough to have memories scattered near and far, and I know I just won’t get them back. Maybe that’s why seeing an abandoned house pains me.

My dear friend George, himself no stranger to abandoning homes and in turn being abandoned, really loves “House Where Nobody Lives.” And I’m proud to have been the one to share that song with him. It’s been a while, but I always enjoyed listening to it with him because he would invariably stare off at some indefinite point and repeat that line: Did someone’s heart break, or did someone do somebody wrong? I have no idea what he was really hearing or what he was thinking, but I really saw him.

George learned the hard way, and I’m learning myself, that the family may have gone and the surroundings may have shifted and become colder, and the world may not see it, but houses, like people, haven’t lost their warmth and memories. They’ve only lost someone to share them with. They’re family members left behind to go astray, and that makes me so sad.

This is what the future sounded like in the past.

The British band the Tornados released “Telstar” in 1962 to cash in on the space-race zeal between the United States and the Soviet Union. Telstar was actually Telstar 1, a commercial satellite launched by AT&T in July 1962. For 20 minutes a day it could broadcast television images and telephone calls from an elliptical orbit above the earth, a remarkable achievement in its day.

Tornados producer Joe Meek, in a small workspace in North London, whipped up faux-cosmic sounds using keyboards, a clavoline and a little wizardry and painted in three minutes a space-like impression that reflected all the wonder and apprehension swirling around the outer boundaries of human exploration. The song’s buzzing, chortling and humming captures the glory of mankind’s greatest scientific undertaking, and still today ”Telstar” echoes a sense of optimism that has long since been swept away along with the American drive to conquer new frontiers.

When I think of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969, I don’t hear “Telstar.” Though I don’t really hear anything. That image speaks volumes across the vaccum of space. But when I think of the generally hare-brained and coloful dream of rocketing away from Earth and sailing on a sea of stars, I hear “Telstar.” When I think of President Kennedy declaring the United States’ intention to blast off into the unknown above the clouds, I hear “Telstar.” When I imagine intrepid astronauts touching down on rocky green landscapes lightyears from home, I hear “Telstar.”

Joe Meek, incidentally, sank deep into debt and depression despite a well-regarded career as a music producer for skiffle legend Lonnie Donegan, the Honeycombs and others. In 1967 Meek, steeped in misery, used a shotgun to murder his landlady before turning the gun on himself. He was 37.

Much like Telstar’s successors broadcasting greetings from Earth and into the far reaches of the galaxy, Meek’s “Telstar” can still reach us from across the gulf of time.

I put on the Demon Beat’s new 1956, turned it up to maximum volume and watched it melt all the snow around my house.

1956 dwells on the automobile accident that, according to guitarist Adam Meisterhans, waylayed rock pioneer Carl Perkins’s ascent into superstardom and left him a footnote somewhere in Elvis Presley’s biography. Perkins, best known for his “Blue Suede Shoes,” was badly injured in early 1956 and was forced to sit on the sidelines while his Sun Records pal Presley got more mileage out of the song and catapulted into the rock & roll stratosphere beyond Perkins.

As an incurable fan of what-if, I’m drawn in by how the band bemoans the loss of opportunity and wonders how the course of rock & roll would have shifted if things had been different. There’s something sympathetic but also devilish about picking apart the bones of what could have been and pinpointing precisely when someone’s star started to fade.

The album is arranged in five loosely structured movements, recorded in two takes, with guitarist/vocalist Meisterhans, bassist Tucker Riggleman and drummer Jordan Hudkins staging Perkins’s miserable disintegration over the course of 38 minutes. The vocals are a little hard to pick up on, but that somehow accentuates the confusion Perkins must have been feeling as his star power blew away on the breeze.

1956 is the conceptual mass heretofore hinted at around the edges of the Demon Beat’s releases. This is the sound of an awesome band studying the past to build the foundation of something incredible in the future.

The Demon Beat are formally releasing 1956 on New Year’s Eve. Join them at Huntington, W.Va.’s V Club along with the Fox Hunt and Universes.

Big Bullet Records

I spent the entirety of my teenage life in the ’90s. It’s weird to think that back then there were times when someone could actually ask, “Have you heard of Green Day?” and it wouldn’t have been a laughable faux pas — Green Day hadn’t really broken through yet. The same goes for Smashing Pumpkins and Everclear and Oasis and Beck and whoever else had phenomenal breakthrough albums without first licensing their songs for car commercials.

There wasn’t much of an internet then, so news of these bands was spread almost exclusively by word of mouth. Hearing about them or borrowing a friend’s CD (to copy on cassette!) was like expanding your catalog of inside secrets. And the material was reliable. The best stuff rose to the top because there were nobody told us we’d be more in tune with the zeitgeist if we listened to Duncan Sheik instead of Ben Folds Five (though some went ahead and listened to Duncan Sheik anyway and only now am I starting to thaw that cold war).

The Resonators are a band that spreads by word of mouth. They’re an inside secret that’s out in the open. They’re just one of those bands. They describe themselves as “the ’90s with better clothes,” and that’s exactly the conclusion I drew when I first heard their latest release, Black Diamond. (I didn’t have much to say about their clothes, but the ’90s part was evident.)

Black Diamond is full of riffs and melodies that could as easily be found in anything the Spin Doctors, Semisonic or Weezer ever did back in the 20th century. The opening track “Your Resonation” has effortless appeal, as does the updated “Wishful Thinking.” Everything else shines with tighter production and slicker sounds than the band’s eponymous 2009 EP. And it’s good to hear in “Enough’s Never Enough” that they can stop and catch their breath sometimes too.

Black Diamond is for me everything that was awesome about all of that ’90s music exchanged among my friends in high school: guitars to the fore, lyrics with plainspoken relevance, and an unstinting pop-populism that declares without pretext its intention to fully entertain every last one of us. In a mixtape of Weezer, Harvey Danger, Third Eye Blind, et. al., there’s some slack being picked up by the Resonators.

The only thing missing from Black Diamond was a cover of “Lump,” but I guess they’ve go to save something for the live shows, which incidentally is where they really shine.

Why don’t I get to circle the desert in an old VW pickup, furry bull and pagliacci (?) grooving by my side? What life choices unfairly guided me away from that scenario? Life is not fair.

It’s so awesome when someone comes along with a virtual plastic tote full of noises and smooth keyboard riffs and just dumps them in a scattering mess on the kitchen table. Producer/musician Money Mark (aka Mark Ramos-Nishita) did precisely that on 1995′s Mark’s Keyboard Repair and then doubled down on Push the Button three years later. Sometimes it’s best to let certain people do what they do, and with Money Mark it pays off in spades.

“Hand in Your Head” first appeared on Mark’s Keyboard Repair as “Got My Hand in Your Head” in a pretty cool, more laidback shape, but on Push the Button it really flowered, albeit slightly sheared in title. The lyrics are okay, kinda naff, but paired with Mark’s demo-esque production wizardry it shines like a rotary pencil sharpener.

The crowning touch is the video, a 4-minute romp that has the same eye for low-budgeting that Mark winkingly cops in production chops. The first time you see it, you sit transfixed as the pieces unfold and don’t make half as much sense as you’d like. Each time afterward, it’s sheer amusement.

Also, Money Mark collaborated with the Beastie Boys on something. I don’t remember what.

Money Mark “Hand in Your Head”