“alright c’mon let’s dance” – and Music Permission for boys
I’ve been listening to this terrible/wonderful band called All Teeth and Knuckles (or ATAK). It’s a bunch of aimless drunk 20 yr olds in San Francisco making self-obsessed dance music with rhymes on top, that aren’t quite “rhymes” exactly. “Now I don’t need liquid courage but I still like to drink it / Got enough confidence to kill a small group of children / I’ll come up from behind you, push you off your swingset / Don’t let me near your battleship, cuz I’m gonna sink it.” It’s brilliant thoughtless use of a drum machine, a Juno, a Korg (I think), and bad mics. This character named Sick Face Fallon does the vocals, and he is nuts. You have to have a delusional sense of arrogance to put this out. But check it out, he’s kind of hot, if you like dirty alcoholics: the video for “Look So Good.”
“It’s just these girls are in the gym doin push-ups, bra / And then they roll into the clubs wearing push-up bras / There out to be some sort of legal clause / To put a reign on all the L – A – dies without any flaws . . . Uh.”
Their stuff is in my head all the time. Today it was “Fuck Your Jacket,” which is so juvenile and yet charming. Is it because I work with high school kids? Or that I have a sick thing for guys like that? Listen to that song here.
I think constantly about what it means to be a male musician as opposed to a female musician. I just keep thinking about if you’re a guy you inherit, without seeking it out or even thinking about it, this permission to do whatever the fuck you want with your music. I’m not knocking on the guys. I was thinking about this in terms of Animal Collective too. They have this incredible, almost infinite pallette of sounds to choose from, and they seem so carefree about it. I guess I just can’t see any girls really putting out anything like this that’s so technically shitty and sloppy, nor can I see any girls geeking out and making crazy computer music a la Panda Bear or Radiohead. I love that Julie Ruin record because Kathleen Hanna just taught herself how to make a record in her apartment, because she had songs to put out. Maybe I should just get a drum machine and have done with it.
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