About Sean Doody

Historian. Writer. Critic. Sometimes designer. Born and raised in Albany. Currently residing in Brooklyn, like hundreds of other upstate colonists.

Author Archive | Sean Doody

We’re So Cool: The Professional Critics v. Bikini Kill

By on December 12, 2012 in Music

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Last month, Bikini Kill released the 20th-anniversary edition of their self-titled debut EP on their new eponymous label.

Dischord Records commemorated the occasion on its website; Ian MacKaye produced the record and was an early fan of the band. Coincidentally, in a Nov. 20 interview with The A.V. Club’s Marah Eakin, Kathleen Hanna compared herself to a “female Ian MacKaye, but with fewer morals.” Spin ran an entertaining oral history of the band’s first years. (Best part: Justin Trosper of Unwound’s anecdote about flunking high-school English after bringing Kathleen Hanna to speak to his class.)

All the requisite fanfare for a big-deal reissue, in other words. And as far as rock music goes, Bikini Kill is undoubtedly an important record. It provided inspiration to thousands of listeners; it rightly made a lot of detractors very uncomfortable, particularly in hardcore. Even in the late 1990s, an era hardcore fans remember for political correctness—in both the Old Left and Fox News senses of the term—run amok, columnists admitted or confessed to liking Bikini Kill in such right-on zines as HeartattaCk and Maximumrocknroll. It ushered in new discussions about gender politics, sexism, and sexuality in rock—punk and “alternative” rock especially, which so often believed themselves to be beyond criticism in that regard. It was confrontational. It was direct. In a very real sense, it had not been done before.

Yes, truly a groundbreaking release. What gets overlooked, though, in Bikini Kill’s historical significance, is the music itself. And let’s be real: the music isn’t there yet.

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KAB Interview: Hans Leibold

By on September 29, 2012 in Albany, Events, Interview, Music

Full disclosure: For four years, Hans and I played together in End of a Year. We’ve got history; we’ve got memories. As that band evolved into Self Defense Family, Hans left to explore other interests he’d neglected—among them, DJing. Lately, he’s been shaking up the Fuze Box’s weekend playlists; if you’ve heard 1000 Ohm’s “Love in Motion,” Malcolm and the Bad Girls’ “Shoot Me,” or countless other great obscure tracks as Saturday night becomes Sunday morning (anything that makes you pause to ask, “What is this?”) you can be sure Hans was manning the booth. But he’s also begun hosting a few events of his own.

Billed as “a night of unknown champions,” NO DJ is the latest of these—a chance for people to share their favorite tunes in public without worrying about their skills. It’s a cool concept that debuts next Thursday; hopefully, it’ll prove to be the first of many such get-togethers. On a recent brisk Sunday, Hans and I chatted for an hour about NO DJ, his recent accomplishments, and his wish to use art to encourage a renewed sense of community in Albany.

You’ve been pretty busy over the past couple of months: DJing Eighties Night at the Fuze Box, hosting a couple of movie nights, and so on. Any of these you want to talk about? Am I missing anything?

Sure. Eighties Night is just a fun thing where I can be a human jukebox for a night. I guess I’m a club DJ, if you will, but I don’t do anything flashy or acrobatic. I just fade songs into songs. I think that’s where I’m more of a selector than anything else. I lean on my rather robust knowledge of 1980s music to sort of lay the path for the evening. I don’t have a predetermined set or anything like that; I just play whatever people seem to be enjoying, then I collect money and go to sleep at 5:00 AM.

I’m also slowly getting involved with public access television via Channel Albany. I’m developing a show where couples resolve, or further screw up, their disputes in front of a camera and green screen backdrop of my choosing. Compelling TV, I think. I’ve made more progress on my homage to the Night Walk and Night Drive programs that used to air on Global TV in Toronto back in the eighties. I just walk or drive at night with my VHS camera, documenting whatever happens. Usually nothing.

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Recap: Tragedy at Le Poisson Rouge

By on May 14, 2012 in Music, Shows

Le Poisson Rouge is not a punk club. Not that it avoids heavier music entirely – the West Village venue’s upcoming events calendar features appearances by Rorschach and Converge, among others. But the club hosts a wide range of live performance, from indie shows (another one coming up: the Clean and Times New Viking) to poetry readings to contemporary classical music, and its owners don’t want it trashed and spray-painted into a hardcore dive. So, perhaps, it felt a little odd to see Tragedy last Saturday evening in a concert hall where the bouncers wore white shirts with neckties, or one with a VIP bottle-service section at the back of the room.

But think about it a little more, and it makes perfect sense. Tragedy have done well for themselves by crafting an aura of mystery. The Portland band maintains little to no internet presence while quietly self-releasing their records – four LPs over the past decade, with a smattering of singles to tide fans over. Six years have passed between their latest album Darker Days Ahead and the one before it; a few friends remarked that they had no idea it had even come out until they saw copies on the merch table in the foyer. They garner attention from highbrow metal magazines like Decibel; given their recent interest in the punk middleground, I wouldn’t be shocked to see them covered in Spin. And they also don’t play out very often – every tour announcement stirs up rumors that this one will be their last.

Tragedy appear tonight upstairs at Valentines with Born Low, Neutron Rats, and Maggot Brain. 17 New Scotland Avenue, Albany. 8:00 PM, $10.

Check out the rest of the review beneath the cut!

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Recap: Kraftwerk at MoMA

By on April 13, 2012 in Music, Shows

Tickets for Kraftwerk’s eight-night retrospective sold out almost as soon as they were announced. Why wouldn’t they? Eight nights, eight albums, one a night: a chronological showcase of their entire electronic period. I knew about it, but entertained no dreams of attending. I wasn’t fast enough; besides, I was broke. But a friend won a pair of tickets to last night’s show; when he offered me one, I couldn’t refuse. That would be beyond rude. It would be insane.

We arrived early at the Marron Atrium of the Museum of Modern Art, normally home to travelling exhibits. Each concertgoer received a seven-inch by seven-inch program providing a brief biography of Kraftwerk and explaining their influence. (Suffice it to say that contemporary music owes them a lot.) My companion and I also each got a pair of 3-D glasses in a sleeve specific to that night’s performance: 1977’s Trans-Europe Express. As crowds filtered in, we surveyed the merchandise table, where one could buy limited CD box sets and coffee table books on the group’s history. Around me I heard the clipped sounds of German from both event staff (the residency is sponsored by Volkswagen) and from guests. It felt … comforting. This was the right place to see them.

At precisely 8:30 PM, the lights dimmed as a series of booms emanated from the speakers. Black and white pixilated figures danced on the screen hung before the stage. I slipped the 3-D glasses over my own and shut up. Suddenly, a Vocoder-distorted voice spilt the air: a railroad station departure announcement. The curtain dropped. Kraftwerk launched into “Trans-Europe Express.” The crowd erupted into cheers.

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Review: Magazine, No Thyself

By on April 10, 2012 in Music

Could Magazine have been the biggest band in the world? Not a chance. Next question: did they want to?

When lead singer and founder Howard Devoto quit the band in 1981, he cited low album sales as the reason for his departure. Devoto was twenty-nine then, by which age he should have either succeeded in music or surrendered to the workforce. (In his native Britain, where teenagers regularly started full-time careers, he probably should have given up five or six years earlier.) Magazine did not fail, exactly, but they defined the term “cult band”: beloved by a small clutch of critics, despised by just as many, small but devoted fanbase, ignored by the larger public.

Magazine presented themselves as a connoisseur’s band; also, as pricks. They knew full well that they were smart musicians, a fact they never failed to advertise. They positioned themselves at the avant-garde, relying upon futuristic keyboards and scathing lyrical introspection where pub rock and punk demanded back-to-basics anthems. Across five albums – four studio, one live – and a handful of singles, Magazine exuded the barely-suppressed fury of over-educated twenty-somethings bashing up against the realization that the world is not, in fact, a meritocracy. They longed for mass appreciation, yet reveled in a style that was, for most listeners, nearly impossible to appreciate.

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Review: The Men, Open Your Heart

By on March 19, 2012 in Music

So, wait – everyone’s fine with this?

Brooklyn’s the Men have been attracting some media attention lately. Not internet attention – the real kind; the square kind. The New York Times kind: in a write-up of their March 7 Williamsburg loft show, reporter Ben Ratliff vacillates between lauding the Men and disparaging them, although in the end he opts for the former. To Ratliff, they don’t stand up to close analysis. “You can wonder why the men in the Men don’t want to be better: better singers, better players, better riff writers,” he writes. “Reduce this band to its parts, and all the charm drains out of it.” Elsewhere, he notes that their songs “run beyond their natural length and just keep going” and describes their performance as “slovenly.”

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Review: Cloud Nothings, Attack on Memory

By on March 12, 2012 in Music

This is the sound of growth, of maturation, of evolution. It’s the illustration of the axiom: talent borrows; genius steals. It’s the sound of adolescence becoming adulthood.

A grandiose introduction for a record review, to be sure. But the Cloud Nothings’ second album Attack on Memory (released in January) takes such a quantum leap from its predecessors that a little hyperbole feels in order. Until recently, Cleveland songwriter Dylan Baldi had spent his career borrowing snippets of indie rock history, churning out record after record of generic lo-fi rock. His work ethic was admirable – six singles and two albums in three years, plus a couple of cassette-only split releases and a digital single – but the music itself was forgettable, a fourth-generation tape dub of the moment indie rock became an identifiable sound.

His constant output, coupled with his age – Baldi dropped out of his first year of college to pursue music full-time – made for good press. And a songwriter that prolific no doubt has talent. But except for “I Am Rooftop” – a nod to Guided by Voices’ fascination with tape hiss and space aliens that received heavy airplay on WCDB – nothing stood out to me. What notoriety Cloud Nothings had stemmed from their story rather than their music itself. “A” for effort; ho-hum on everything else. But Attack on Memory changes that. Cloud Nothings finally stand on their own feet; they finally live up to their hype.

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