12 March, 2004 - 2:45 PM:
Syntax Error now technically has a website.
Meanwhile, the Detainees are almost finished recordings for our CD, and a button is in production as we speak.
22 January, 2004 - 9:30 AM:
A recently recorded cover tune has been tossed on the heap.
7 January, 2004 - 3:00 PM:
One resolution for 2004 - update freakbeat.com more times than I did in 2003. Perhaps my right-column link pals will join me in this pursuit.
Let's get things started with the logical "Best of 2003" post. I didn't buy nearly as many records in '03 as I have in past years, and I still haven't gotten around to picking up some that look promising (e.g., The Fall, The Shins, Basement Jaxx). But here follow the six records I like best of those few that I did acquire.
- A-Frames - 2 : A slightly diversified version of their first record. How can something so monotone and clumsily pounding be so damn catchy?
- Outkast - The Love Below/Speakerboxxx : Andre3000's record is what we all wish Prince was still doing, so it gets all the attention. And "Hey Ya" is the greatest party anthem of this century. You can't not get excited when you hear it, even six months later. But don't overlook Big Boi's record, which is not only more consistent, but full of dance hits of its own.
- Junior Senior - D-D-Don't Don't Stop The Beat : In the midst of war and the most depressing presidency of my life, "Hey Ya" would've been comfort enough. This entire album's worth of pure dance-pop joy is almost too much to bear.
- The Rapture - Echoes : I program out a quarter of the tracks on this thing because they're too wretched to bear. But the others are exciting enough to keep me coming back. When they're on, this Gang of 2004 lives up to and surpasses their hype.
- Erase Errata - At Crystal Palace : Only a careful listener could differentiate this from their first record, but it's subtly better. Riot Grrrl meets Beefheart may sound out-of-date to you, but it's exactly the kinda thing I love.
- The New Pornographers - Electric Version : It's not as immediately thrilling as the first one, but it grew on me. Melodies, melodies, melodies - the power is in the pop.
Meanwhile, both of my bands are cruising along. The Detainees seem to get tighter with every show and people are actually responding enthusiastically to Syntax Error's assault on the senses! Now, if we can just get those recordings done.
9 June, 2003 - 3:50 PM:
Another song has been tossed on the heap.
20 April, 2003 - 3:00 PM:
Tonight, I'll see my pal for the last time before he leaves for a year. His spirits and mine are higher, since he'll be doing something positive in Iraq -
teaching people how to remove landmines.
Meanwhile, looking at these guys in the mirror makes me happy.
4 March, 2003 - 10:05 AM:
My good friend in the National Guard just got called up. At least he won't be going overseas - yet.
I've been staunchly opposed to this potential (inevitable?) war all along, but now I have an additional
personal interest.
The press is a bit confused about how to present public opinion data. Note that neither title emphasizes that 2/3 of the people polled don't want to go to war. I don't personally know a single person, including my conservative Republican parents, that supports this war. Why isn't there greater public outcry here in the US? Canadians don't seem to have a problem expressing their true feelings about it.
26 January, 2003 - 12:15 PM:
The new logo is up. I designed it all by myself.
Today I am grateful for Google caching, which provides a quick and dirty archive for idiots who might overwrite their own site's archives by mistake.
I need to burn some CDs for friends today, but I hope to get some more old crap on the songheap soon. In the meantime, you can check out the completely information-free sites for The Detainees and The Tremors over at stlpunk.com.
7 January, 2003 - 10:40 AM:
OK, here's why I haven't updated this site for months - I'm now contributing to
both artschoolpunk.com and
geeklife.com. The former is all about music and the latter is your
typical "stuff we found in the news and/or on the Web" site. That leaves little
content for this site, except for personal info and projects.
I hope to add the following in the next month:
- a new logo
- news about the Tremors CD, which is almost finished
- news about my other band, The Detainees
- some songs for the heap that I found while doing some archiving
Until I get that stuff together, please enjoy my Top 10 Favorite Records of 2002 (in alphabetical order):
- Comet Gain - Realistes
- Epoxies - s/t
- Erase Errata - Other Animals
- Ladytron - Light & Magic
- Nineteen - Tearing Me Apart
- Numbers - Numbers Life
- The Rapture - Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks *
- Spits - s/t †
- Wire - Read & Burn 02
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs - s/t
† This is their second self-titled record, the one with the wheelchair on the cover.
12 November, 2002 - 1:30 PM:
I look away for a moment and suddenly a month's gone by without an update. In
October, we visited some friends in NYC. While there, I checked out the
Guggenheim's
Moving Pictures exhibit.
The highlights for me were two photographers I'd never heard of before. Elger Esser's "Ameland Pier X" looks almost like a minimalist version of a Franz Kline painting. Once you get close to it, you realize the black strokes are actually treelines on the horizon. Beautiful.
Jörg Sasse is even better. He takes amateur photographers' snapshots and messes with their composition and depth perception clues on his computer. The results are disorienting because the subjects are still obvious to the viewer, but something about them is somehow wrong.
Back home in St. Louis, we've finished cleaning out a basement and now both of my bands will get back on a regular practice schedule, I hope. We might even finish the Tremors CD this year.
23 September, 2002 - 4:55 PM:
Post-punk fans will enjoy all the video clips at
The Bunker. It's like a big competition for most spastic and/or
pretentious stage presence. Speaking of which, the guy playing Ian Curtis in
24 Hour Party People had the moves down.
10 September, 2002 - 10:45 AM:
Ben Smith directed me to this fairly comprehensive
80s hardcore punk reference. Lots of good stuff to keep you busy until
my next update.
Also, The Gentleman Callers are now online.
6 August, 2002 - 4:55 PM:
The Theban Mapping Project is
one of the best websites I've ever seen. Interesting topic, exhaustive
information, cool interface. One smart aspect of the site that a lot of people
might not notice is that you can access all of the information without using
the Flash atlas, if you want. But the Flash interface is worth your time. They
didn't use it just for show - it really adds valuable functionality (like the
3D tomb tour and the mini-documentary clips).
28 July, 2002 - 7:25 PM:
Worried about that caterpillar you spotted in your garden? Or just interested in looking at high quality illustrations of caterpillars?
Then go here. Excellent use of an intuitive domain name, I might add.
11 July, 2002 - 1:55 PM:
Ben Smith (bottom row, second from right) pointed me to this fascinating article on black punks.
I was stunned to find mention on page 3 of Pure Hell.
Many years ago, when I lived near Philadelphia, a friend of mine was looking to buy a new guitar. I went with him to several local music shops. At one place, I started playing "Search and Destroy." It's a good way to tell how a guitar neck feels for power chords and it provides a nice contrast to the Metallica-besotted youthful noodling throughout the store. Anyway, this shabby old leather-and-studs-wearing mohawked black guy approached us and started rambling excitedly about the Stooges. He told me he used to be in a band called Pure Hell and I nodded along. He and his shabby old punk girlfriend were ejected from the store not long after, and my (pre-Web) research at the time could turn up no references to this band whatsoever. So, I'm happy to see that he wasn't full of shit, but sad to see that he might be the guy that died recently.
25 June, 2002 - 2:30 PM:
Somehow, both William Higham and I forgot "Back Of My Hand" by The Jags. Sure, it's an Elvis Costello rip-off, but
what power pop song doesn't imitate somebody?
25 June, 2002 - 10:50 AM:
After spending some time with that power pop list and discussing it with Mark Early, I've come up with some notable omissions.
Please feel free to submit any other shoulda-beens to me.
7. "Red Lights" by Marbles
Pull out your copy of the Roir tape/CD, The Great New York Singles - the one that you never listened to beyond "Piss Factory,"
"Little Johnny Jewel," and "Blank Generation." Sure, the rest is pretty dire stuff, but right smack in the middle is this pure power pop
gem. Four-part call-and-response vocals on the chorus! Mop tops and skinny ties in 1976! I don't think they ever pulled together a full album, so
they remain unjustly forgotten.
6. "Goin' Through Your Purse" by Material Issue
Buried on the obscure Freak City soundtrack, this song is yet another example of Jim Ellison's complete obession with the very idea of girls.
The melody careens all over the place, while the roaring Rickenbackers balance the "aah-aah-aah"s behind the choruses.
5. "Left In The Dark" by Vertebrats
The Vertebrats represent the jangly end of the early 80s garage revival. Quasi-apocalyptic lyrics end up being about a jealous, spurned suitor.
I love how the verse, pre-chorus, chorus, and final refrain are all different and all catchy - the song is a long string of vocal hooks, occasionally broken up by
a guitar hook.
4. "It's Cold Outside" by The Choir
Before most of these guys went on to power pop fame and fortune as The Raspberries, they wrote their best song. Even Stiv Bators's cover version is beautiful.
3. "I Wanna Destroy You" by The Soft Boys
Underwater Moonlight is a perfect pop record and this lead-off track has one of the most glorious singalong choruses ever. "The Queen Of Eyes" is perhaps more
conventionally power pop, but I give this one the nod because of Morris Windsor's background vocals.
2. "Another Girl, Another Planet" by The Only Ones
This has become a standard cover, as well it should. From the swooshy drum effect on the intro to the "Oh, no!" right before the guitar solo, this is one finely crafted song.
And no one can whine quite as yearningly as Pete Perrett.
1. "I Am The Cosmos" by Chris Bell
Alex Chilton wasn't the only genius in Big Star. He was just better at converting his mental instability into art than Chris Bell. But Chris eked out a few recordings, this single chief among them.
Overwrought as it is, this may be the most heartbreaking pop song ever.
20 June, 2002 - 4:05 PM:
Heaven is right! You really should own all of these songs.
6 June, 2002 - 3:00 PM:
R.I.P. Dee Dee
You could spend a few hours checking out StrangeScience.net and it would be time well-spent. The most immediately appealing section is the Goof Gallery, with plenty of drawings of Jenny Hanivers and bat/dinosaur hybrids.
If that's not enough for you, here's a handy monster reference guide.
21 May, 2002 - 8:57 AM:
This morning, I heard the sad news that Stephen Jay Gould has died of cancer.
He was more than just a great thinker; he was a thoroughly engaging writer. This poignant essay he wrote about being diagnosed with cancer
will probably get bombarded with hits today, so go read it as soon as you can. Then stop by the library later on and check out his many essay collections.
20 May, 2002 - 4:16 PM:
It's been three weeks since we moved into the new house, and we still have no DSL service. We also have a load of other headaches,
but they're slowly getting worked out.
I don't use this pseudo-blog section to rant, but I'd like to briefly talk about eccentrics.
Yesterday, we ran into two of them. The first was at the diner - a mid-40s, bearded, bookish type who sipped hot tea with equal parts cream and water plus several spoonfuls of sugar. When he wasn't repeating his exacting meal preparation instructions to the cook (including uncut toast which he insisted on buttering himself), he read aloud a newspaper article about how working in a diner is one of the most dangerous jobs for a teenager. Neither the cook nor his teenage daughter seemed interested. At one point he took it upon himself to change the channel on the TV - to Beastmaster.
Later, we stopped by a local antique mall, because they were having an outdoor sale and we're suburban types now. I recognized one of the sellers as the original drummer for St. Louis's most infamous punk band. He immediately pegged us as some sort of punks and told us every detail of every show his new band was going to play through the end of the year. Then he told me about all of the shows he tried to book but couldn't get. It was a stream of monologue with no pauses whatsoever that I could use to break away.
So here's the point: As annoying as the second guy may have been, his company was preferable in every way to that of the first guy. Because the first guy was willfully, persistently annoying and knew it. Eccentricity can't be forced.
In other news, The Wicker Man was a huge disappointment, but Spider-Man was even better than expected.
22 April, 2002 - 1:20 PM:
This makes me feel ill.
Sure, the comparison to the Afghan buddhas
is absurd, perhaps blasphemous. But just because this demolition isn't that bad doesn't mean it isn't still pretty bad.
Maija and I visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis-Brown house with my family last Christmas. Although it's in a bit of disrepair, I can't imagine anyone allowing it to be demolished. It's too important. Unfortunately, the philistines outnumber the aesthetes.
There's a bit about Richard Neutra on the Web, so why not check it out now, before someone blows up all of his work.
21 April, 2002 - 12:50 PM:
Since Eric linked a site about ancient inventions, I'll
post about the Getty Museum's Devices of Wonder exhibit. The exhibit ended on February 3, 2002,
but the site lets you play with some of the devices. This is an excellent use of Flash and Java. It's too bad the video clips are only available in FakeMedia,
because you really should watch the automaton Antonio Diavolo's trapeze performance.
17 April, 2002 - 10:10 AM:
I need to get down to a bookstore but quick, baby.
How did this one get by me, too?
16 April, 2002 - 1:30 PM:
On Sunday night, I watched Them! - a great and timely movie.
14 April, 2002 - 7:56 PM:
It's been three busy weeks since the last update. During that time:
- I had $700 worth of repairs done to my car.
- I finished work on two websites, which go live at midnight tonight (speakmoto.com and moremoto.com).
- I packed and moved all of my boxes of basement storage - the kind of stuff that you move from place to place all your life but never even look at unless you're moving it.
- I bought my first watch in more than a decade.
- I finally fixed my Centipede.
- I finished Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable. I highly recommend parts of it, particularly the chapters on eyes and flight. Not only are the individual creatures that he describes fascinating, but his theories on the development of the vast array of eyes in our world are compelling in their logic and simplicity. However, his condescending tone throughout the book is irksome, as are his continual references to his own primitive, vaguely evolution-mimicking computer program. The book came out in 1996, yet his program seems inferior to Tamagotchi, let alone the contemporary state of game AI development.
- We went on a road trip to see Holly Golightly and the Greenhornes in Columbia. Holly looks like she's been living hard, but her voice was to die for.
We complete our move in two weeks. I desperately hope that the DSL transition goes smoothly and quickly.
25 March, 2002 - 8:40 PM:
We signed a lease last week. The new place is about the same as our current apartment, except it's a house and it's
in a neighborhood where we probably won't ever get mugged.
This weekend we watched Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red. To be honest, I really find Kieslowski's films boring. Red was better than Blue, and the one Decalogue episode I saw was somewhat interesting. However, they all seem like exactly the kind of movie that people mean when they talk about "pretentious art films."
That said, I also watched Le Samouraï recently and really enjoyed it. So I guess I don't know from pretentious.
By the way, I've thrown another song on the heap.
18 March, 2002 - 6:40 PM:
You'd think I would have
learned my lesson. But no, I've added a new
egotistical section, ripe for ridicule. Enjoy!
18 March, 2002 - 2:18 PM:
My weekend, in brief:
Thursday night, while walking home from dinner at Pho Grand, Maija and I were mugged. This was our third robbery of 2002. It was different from the others because we got hurt (not too badly) and it happened at 8PM.
Friday we took off work and resolved to move.
By Sunday, we had found a very nice prospect with almost everything we wanted. Maija made a pair of pants and was thrilled with how well they turned out. I finished a demo and made some headway on two others. Not only does life move on, it accelerates.
13 March, 2002 - 9:55 AM:
Our HomePortal arrived yesterday, so we finally have a real home network.
We got it so we could both be online at the same time and because dial-up was driving us crazy. However, I'm also looking forward to
the first Anderson vs. Varner Age of Empires battle.
12 March, 2002 - 11:10 AM:
At the top of my list of coveted rare items is anything at all by Firestarter.
Firestarter comprises most of the former members of Teengenerate.
What little I've read about them indicates that they went in more of a pop direction.
So, they're probably the greatest band in the world. If anyone can get me some of their music or show me how to get it, I'll love you forever.
12 March, 2002 - 10:25 AM:
Once again, coworker Sarah introduces me to a meme.
As far as I can tell, Hi Ho is the name of Panasonic's ISP in Japan. However, the Hi Ho Flash
commercials appear to be random adventures of three helmeted blob children.
They're all here and they're all great.
Incidentally, I just got DSL service last night, and it's more wonderful than I ever imagined.
11 March, 2002 - 2:49 PM:
What a crazy weekend. First, someone threw a cinderblock through the window of my car and stole my jacket
and change tray. They ripped out the change tray rather than emptying it, but they left the Carmex and No-Doz that was in it.
Here's a wonderful example of the American love of convenience: two guys came out to my company's garage and replaced the window while I worked! This "mobile service" was no extra charge! This really made me less pissed off about the whole deal.
More bad news was to come. Dave Bug told me on Sunday that the hard drive that holds all of Geeklife (web server and database server) died. Worse yet, he doesn't think they have a backup of the content. I can't believe they have no backups at all of a site that's had new content daily for more than three years. Rest assured, dear reader, that everything that can be found within the bowels of freakbeat.com exists on more than one computer.
9 March, 2002 - 12:00 PM:
The debut Tremors show went remarkably well.
It felt good to be on stage again after almost a year off. I expected maybe a
dozen people to turn out, but about four times that many did. The Gentleman
Callers sounded really great and they seemed pretty excited about the turnout,
as well.
Josh took some photos, which might possibly be used on our trading cards. Incidentally, I see that I'm featured on the Red Squares 2001 shows page. I consider that an honor.
In other news, Keef is mad at me for giving him a bath today. Here's a (geeklife-branded) desktop wallpaper of him trying to lick himself dry (1600x1200 or 1024x768).
5 March, 2002 - 9:17 AM:
Take a few minutes to watch this.
Ashcroft is the law, and we are crime. Thanks to Sarah for sending me this.
5 March, 2002 - 8:50 AM:
Derek linked this very interesting article on using SVG and XSLT
to create rich data diagrams. Warning: You'll have to install an Adobe SVG viewer plug-in to view the diagram being discussed.
Since the author specifically mentions the books of Edward Tufte, one of which I just finished reading, I have to point out that his diagram commits many of the errors that Tufte talks about:
- The grid is too dark, producing white, vibrating dots at every intersection. Instead of block outlines with rounded corners, he could have made the blocks shaded light grey.
- The colored circles around the sites clutter the diagram and make locations less precise. Why not just color in the symbols?
- The pop-up descriptions (the point of the article) are transparent, making the text very difficult to read.
The main point of the article, of course, is to discuss the technology involved, which the author does well. But why would he explicitly refer to design guidelines that he's ignored or misunderstood?
4 March, 2002 - 1:21 PM:
The Yahoo Groups servers have been down all morning. How many people are members of lists they host? Millions?
That must be a nightmare to manage. Yahoo should set up an automatic customer service reply saying, "Quit complaining. It's free. We could shut it down forever if we wanted."
2 March, 2002 - 12:02 PM:
This is my first update made on the new computer. The Visual Studio .NET editor looks very little like InterDev.
When you type an HTML tag, it automatically inserts the close tag, except if a valid close tag is already present. Nice.
XP Pro seems quite a bit different from 2000 at first, but so far those differences seem to be mostly cosmetic. I don't find it as annoying as others have, now that I switched from the hideous default color theme to "Silver." No difficulties installing anything yet.
I'm very happy to see that freakbeat.com looks almost exactly the same in IE6 as in IE5!
1 March, 2002 - 4:15 PM:
My new
computer (for home) just arrived here (at work). Although I have two
fine computers in front of me, I can barely control my desire to rip open the
package right now.
23 February, 2002 - 12:05 PM:
In case anybody's wondering, I'm not related to
Kelley or Don. Do all
Varners love Jesus and Flash? NO! Some love
Peanuts and Java!
There are tons of other wacky Varner sites out there, but my favorite is definitely Dan's Paleo-Life Art Page. Maybe he'll give me a namesake discount if I commission a land whale painting.
23 February, 2002 - 11:11 AM:
I slightly modified the site design. The content area is wider and the text is
now left-justified. Please let me know if
you prefer the old version. I also started developing an archive.
19 February, 2002 - 5:45 PM:
So, I was looking for Magnetic Fields sites and I came across
this, which made me go here,
which eventually led me here. The
last one is a bit like freakbeat.com's own "Signs of Gravois" section.
18 February, 2002 - 4:08 PM:
Eric wants me to write more about rock'n'roll.
Later in
that post, he mentions his first ISP, INCH. So, just for him (but you
can download it, too), here's INCH, Mark E.
Smith's incredible collaboration
with DOSE. I have no idea why they made it available as an MPEG instead of an
MP3, but I'm sure your computer will still play it.
15 February, 2002 - 12:08 PM:
My wonderful girlfriend Maija got me some great Valentine's gifts - boxer
shorts with whales on them and
the Warhol Diaries. She knows what I like!
13 February, 2002 - 11:30 AM:
I added some links to freakbeat music for the few
people who might idly type in my domain name while looking for that stuff.
Meeksville is the coolest one I found.
11 February, 2002 - 4:55 PM:
The two CDs recorded by the Brand New Broken Homes are
now available as MP3s here.
11 February, 2002 - 12:05 PM:
I finally got around to buying a
CD burner. So fast! So easy to use! BNBH CDs
will be shipping soon. Please submit requests here.
3 February, 2002 - 6:47 PM:
Welcome to Jon Varner's new personal website.
This main page will probably turn into a blog eventually.
Maija and I just finished "Phase 1" of the Signs of Gravois section. The Tremors page and the "about" page are also done, and the fake dub archives and BNBH page are up.
Here's my current priority list:
- a page of links for people who happen upon the site while looking for info on actual freakbeat music
- the fruit crate labels section
- the guitars
- an archiving system for the blog section.
Please look around, then let me know what you think.