You can make an empire from an android, or you can lunk around archaic instruments - one trick shells; distortion ceilings; primal feedback; familiar fills; the ancient cracked voice. It’s R&B; it doesn’t die. It’s a snakeskin full of ants or good firm tradition of patriotic catharsis? Either way, ‘cause
thankfully, a few left out there, like Nots, still produce gear rock, making sculptures out of drum shells and half stacks, unforcedly. While everyone else fiddles with their mods their phones and headphone jacks, in hoods up heads down cowering post 9/11 post new age passivity, to a room full of bored bobbing heads, young spirits still parade the flag of American musical soul, though, sometimes, the heat may no longer be in the feet* and the rock may no longer be pure. It has been influenced by the headspace of noise, as is the case with “Virgin Mary,” a pure subject matter, but never mind. The song begins with a no nonsense Mick & McVie rhythm section and ends overrun with erratic sonic turbulence, a glazing layer of spray noise corruption, a decadent psych synth solo, a high water guitar crouched behind unsynchronized delay. An apple to represent an apple. A painted apple. At this point in history, it’d be hard not be self-conscious in a genre rooted in vulnerability. Nots fish out its force using a double white line of self-awareness and concussion.
“Even soul music has no soul. I was talking to James Brown backstage at a club in Tempe, Arizona in the mid-80s. It was a short, very informal discussion, and the subject of ‘soul’ music came up. One of the few things I remember him saying was: ‘it’s all in the feet, the heat is in the feet.’ That seemed to sum it all up for him. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a great respect for James Brown, but to me that just smells bad.”
-Richard Bishop; interview by Tom Bugbee for Perfect Sound Forever, May 1999
• Nots: https://www.facebook.com/memphisnots
• Goner Records: http://goner-records.com
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