Epilogue

The Five Greatest Bands Ever - Epilogue


So it only took a year, but the Five Greatest Bands Ever are now truly immortalised on Chez OnRee.

On sifting through the electronic debris of our collapsed civilisation millenia from now, I'm confident that any alien race will take OnRee's word for as absolute fact. So under the "Life form: Human, Category: Pinnacles of Sonic Achievement" entry in the Galactic Encyclopedia, you'll find just five great bands representing the human race. I take a moment to pat myself on the back.


So its taken so long, and to be honest its a bit relaxed at work so I actually have the time, but i'd like to wrap things up. What was very nice to see, was that even though the Greatest Five have been around for quite some time (none younger than twelve years), that all but one of them where still active. Indeed, alot has happened in the last year. Lets have a look.


The Possums have been the quietest. I did find a MySpace page but not very much happening. They do have some videos(!!) for download though. Too cool, thanks for that guys. It was also interesting to see how many posts there where with calls for them to reform. Nearly as many as the ringone and weight-loss ad's masquerading as real posts. Should call it AdSpace.

My favourite surprise, I must admit, is that The Rentals are in the studio, recording their third album for release later this year. I got hold of one of their new tracks "Walking with a Ghost" and its excellent. Its not classic Rentals, alot cleaner & tighter, but if its a taste of what's to come in the full album then I'm totally stoked, missed them so much & glad they're back!

Weezer are also working on a new album, number six for them, I'm excited but not as much as for the Rentals.

NoFX released an ep and a full album last year. All about taking the piss out of Christianity, it was good but lacked some of the new idea's that made their classic albums. Alot closer to home though, after the recent tours of Fat WreckChords artists like the Mad Caddies and Lagwagon, the talk is all about a NoFX tour to our very own South Africa some time! Whoo Hoo! Happy days!

Beloved Sparklehorse released fourth album "Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain" last year too. Quint got it for me for Christmas and I gave it a solid four OnRee St*rs. In reading reviews for it, I did start to get the impression that the past five years have been pretty hard for Mark though. I know i don't know him at all really, but I feel for him, its frustrating not being able to show him how much his creations, which are a part of him, mean to so many people. Wishing you nothing but happiness Mr Linkous.

And lastly the Pixies are, as I mentioned, making all these ominous bellows of a full blown come back, we'll see. Power to them.


So yeah, most of them still have the passion, its good.I was also interested in some statistics, so lets see:


Ha ha. That was quite a nerdy thing to do.
Anyway, i think the one interesting thing there is that they're all American! I didn't even realise that until now now..

Now I gotta give some kudos to some of the bands who nearly nearly made the nutty lunch bars of Greatest Band their own. These are elite ranks to be in so lets dim the lights.
First up is Ash, who sang 'Oh Yeah' to me on my radio every day in '95 while I worked on my final year assignment. And when I heard them play a cover of Weezer's 'Only in Dreams' in Sydney a few years ago, their indie-pop iconic status was pratley'ed and putty'ed forever.
The Strokes, for being,.. well, The Strokes. Future gods who spread their own sound revolution, like Nirvana ten years before them they came to wipe the slate clean.
The Smashing Pumpkins for being the Alternative cornerstone of the nineties. We look forward to their new album(! ja!) on the seventh day of the seventh month of this 2007th year. Nifty innit?
Biohazard for making testosterone, tattoos and loyalty worthy things. DFL!
Eels (who was just edged out by Sparklehorse), for some of the most beautiful arrangements you'll probably ever hear. Go listen to a track like 'Railroad Man' next to a lake far away from anything. You'll leave feeling alot more human.
Faith No More for jumping around in shorts, telling Anthony Kiedis he's a prat and doing 'rap-metal' along with Anthrax about ten years before Limp Bizkit fucked it all up.
And finally the Foo Fighters for taking the mantle of best rock band with humility and confidence. You have to respect any band that consistently releases best-seller albums but won't release a 'Best Of' to cash in over christmas. They played Reading in 2002 and finished their set with 'February Stars' as fireworks went off overhead. It was as touching as you could get in an english mudbowl.

And thats it!
phew, i don't wanna write another thing about music for a long time..
(Except that the Sons of Atlantis are playing at Roxy's on the 29th May 2007, come have a glass of red)
I don't really regard Chez OnRee as a proper blog, so I wasn't too perturbed by David Bullards recent comments about, briefly, how kak 99% of blogs really are. And since David is one of my favourite columnists (the others being Chris Barron, Nadine Botha & Hogarth), it wouldn't perturb me anyway. He makes me laugh, and any blogger stupid enough to compete with him makes me laugh as well. Nuff said.

Orrait bye.
Stay Wise.
Have Fun.

the Pixies

Nod your head sagely, and stroke your beard.
For this is what you've been waiting for all along isn't it?
Adjust your reading glasses and murmur agreements under your breath as we weave this tale together. Together, i say, since even though it will be me narrating, it will be your memories that give mine credence.
We're finishing off the Five Greatest Bands of All Time with a bang, leaving the best to last some would say.

the Pixies.
Back in '93 I went to university. I was seventeen.I met a guy by the name of Olaf Wagner, a rather straight but nonetheless good guy. He wore Cats alot.As these things happen, we traded some TDK copies of our fave bands. I think I gave him some Metallica albums, he gave me the Breeders. The Breeders. I was in love.
Like one of those lizards on the Galapogos islands I had existed solely on the heavy metal scraps my older brother threw from the plate, or the christian videos they showed sometimes at school with shit like Ozzy Ozbourne eating bats & Iron Maiden doing Number of the Beast. But here was an entirely new beast, and it was time to evolve.

Like those hippies in the sixties, I like to think each person has their own personal summer of love. Its when life conspires in an almost Paul Coelho-esque way to bring enough fantastic things together for you to realise that the world is indeed a beautiful place and that its a wonderful life. (A simile for Girls, Music, Ale & Sun really*)
So there I was, Summer of Love '93/94, literally popping out of my baggies and in love with a woman I could never have. Kim Deal's lips smiled back at me whenever I saw her photocopied face sellotaped to my guitar case. I painted Breeders logo's on my canvas case next to peace signs (yes.,i know..), and even had the nickname Kim for a while. (This was okay since Soundgarden had a bloke on guitars called Kim which made it cool and not gay.)
So before you could say Ed Is Dead, I had hit a motherlode of indie-alternative, a house of Tanya Donelly's and Kristin Hersh's. A world filled with Muffs, Cocteau Twins, Primitives and Sisters of Mercy. Smashing Pumpkins in the kitchen and PJ Harvey's on the roof, shouting at the moon. A family, but with one undisputed head.

The Pixies.

There are many accolades you can give a band, but there's one that transcends all.
Its when a band makes you want to be in a band.
When just lying in your room, listening to a copied tape playing through your kak Aiwa tape deck, sounds better than anything you've ever heard before. Actually, you have heard it, its in the desperation and euphoria you've felt since you where sixteen so the notes and pace and lyrics come like deja vous.
Frank howls and it shouldn't sound good. Joey slips riffs like splintered glass in your skin and it shouldn't feel good. David sounds gaunt and angry, his snare snaps like brittle bones and it shouldn't sound good. Kim repeats those same beginners' bass lines and for the life of you this really shouldn't sound good. And it doesn't. Because after hitting all five Pixies albums in a space of six months, your concept of the word 'music' becomes synonymous with this band. They don't sound good, or bad. They're not making music. They are music.

Phew, some heavy words there.
Hope you're nodding your head though.
If your name is Olaf, or Ashton, or Jayson, then you sure are.
So do you want to go through stuff like albums, and songs, and history and stuff? We'll see if there's time later, there's so much (great) reading material on the net for these guys that I think I'd be flossing a dead horse.
A nice tale is this one though: That when Frank Black and Joey Santiago first put out an ad for a bassist wanted, they got only one response. Kim Deal. She arrived at the audition quite enthusiastic despite the fact that she didn't even have a bass guitar. Her sister, Kelly, had one back home so Frank lent her fifty bucks to travel across states to get it. Nice one Frank.
Then, very briefly, they got signed to 4AD records, released 5 albums, toured the world and broke up with the same lineup. All this happened between 1987 and 1992. It still warms me at night that one of my truly favourite acts of all time started playing when I was only twelve..

I left home when I was eighteen and worked in a pizza shop for cash. I could make forty pizza's a night and it remains the most rewarding job i've ever had. I rented a freezing outside room with no hot water near varsity, and wouldn't own a car until four years later. After class (or more likely drinking in the kaf) me and my mates would come back to mine, climb the ladder up to my corrugated iron roof, and park off. Park off with a quart, watching the sun invent new colours on the Aukland Park clouds, and listen to the Pixies. Its their melodies that play in my head when i remember those times.
Its impossible to pick out Pixies' songs, for whatever reason. I would always get so frustrated trying to make a mix tape, trying to decide between Pixies tracks. I've read quite a few articles and sites that try and trace some kind of change in style and sound as their careers progressed, but I think thats a bit of a stretch. You could stick each Pixies song on a name-tag, pin them to a wall and blindfold yourself. Whichever thirteen tracks you hit with your darts would sit perfectly together on an album. I think. Yes, synths crept into later albums but never overpowered or led in any way. Their songs are just neigh impossible to fault.

I also liked the way they came across. Remembering here that my previous role models wore cowboy boots, tights and make-up, identifying with a bunch of working class guys in sneakers was more relief than anything else! It was an honesty they brought to everything, and if you've ever seen a Pixies concert you'll know that Iraqi statues move more than Frank & Co.
I've only seen them on dvd, but i like to think that there's a time and place for performers like the Pixies. Where the spins and leaps and knee skids a-la-Fall-Out-Boy, are replaced by this god-like presence. These four sage's who dole out healing for the soul.

I did manage to see Frank play an accoustic set in london, he was terriffic and did a couple of Pixies tracks, but (sorry for pointing out the obvious), something was missing.
I was then in london a year later, drowning my sorrows with Bruno at the fact that the Breeders tickets had sold out weeks ago. I would be missing Kim playing live. What happened then still makes me smile. We walked back through town, and purely by coincidence walked past the London Astoria where they where playing that night. It turns out I had the most mortified look on my face, since a young girl came up to me and gave me a spare ticket she had for half the price. I thanked this saint and the Breeders absolutely rocked!
I was also in Chicago back in 2001, where through yet another series of strange events I ended up with the Breeders at Steve Albini's studios. I was skating just before so I had a chance to get the adrenaline out of me, which was good since, well.. fuck i was gonna hang out with Kim Deal man!! Kim was humble, funny, charismatic and kind. She bent over backwards to make me feel at home, she made coffee, we played cards and i smoked her cigarettes. I think many people fear that meeting someone they truly admire won't be all that. But this was. I left with the same love i had entered with.
Steve Albini rightly told me my demo cd was shit, but at least offered to introduce me to some latino girls i could marry and get a green card. Cool cat that one.

So where does this leave us?
Rumours of new albums, reunion tours, live dvd's, compilation albums. The Pixies machinary creaks and we all hope it has a Jackie Chan ending, since how many bands do you know to come out of semi-retirement blazing like they used to?
As for me, well I'm okay. I figure it may not hurt to come back after all these years, and in any case they've done enough to get anything they want as far as I'm concerned.
The Pixies are a personal band, if you've read this far then I don't doubt you have a place for them in your past as well. I just hope I've done them my own little justice.

The Pixies. They are, and will always remain, one of the greatest bands ever.