"We weren't successful, but nothing can beat the feeling when a 15-year-old tells you: "Hey, I listened to Gang of Four, they are brilliant!" Man, that's just awesome!"-Henry Rollins quoted in German Music Magazine "Spex" on the reaction to his failed reissue label, Infinite Zero.

Is Henry Rollins responsible for the glut of derivative retro revival bands that have dominated the underground and mainstream music industries for the last few years? I originally thought he was only responsible for the parade of pseudo intellectual tattooed bullies that have dominated a lot of hardcore since 1984, but he might also be a key figure to blame for everything from Gang of Four sound-a-likes Bloc Party to the oxymoronic phenomenon of No Wave records digitally recorded on Pro-Tools. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of things about Rollins, but I don't usually associate him with the current decade's trends.

This whole theory came to me while I was recently glaring at the disorganized state of my own CD collection. I noticed on at least every couple of rows, there was a ubiquitous blue band on the spine of certain jewel cases, signifying the disc as something to really take note of: An Infinite Zero reissue.

Infinite Zero was the noble pursuit by two well known music industry personalities, Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins, in the mid 1990's. I'll leave Rubin out of this, since his influence on modern music is much more obvious and annoying than Rollins'. Some have suggested that the label was a tax shelter or vanity project for the two principals, but I would take issue with either of those claims. Rollins actually gave up any kind of significant compensation for the project and instead opted for free copies of the reissues in lieu of payment, claiming that any other form of compensation would have forced the label to choose a mere ten releases for reissue instead of the twenty five that saw the light of day.

Of course, none of this kind of selflessness would have mattered if it weren't for the diversity and quality of the releases: Gang of Four. Alan Vega of Suicide. Tom Verlaine of Television. Monks. Trouble Funk. James Chance. In 1995, these names certainly didn't mean as much to as many people as they do today. To the label's credit, I believe the notoriety and infleunce of these visionaries is actually more widespread as a direct result of the reissuing of these records on Infinite Zero. Forexample, I recently found a music sampler for the American Eagle clothing store that was meant for in-store play, and it had a Contortions song on it. It's hard to believe that we live in a time where some of the most deliberately confrontational music ever made is pushed on the masses by a preppy outfitter like American Eagle, a place that is pretty lame by even mall standards. Although this particular example came about in part because of some dubious connection between American Eagle and the online Wal-Mart for hipsters, Insound, it was Infinite Zero that initially blew the dust off of that old "Buy Contortions" record a decade ago, assuring that it could be purcahsed at retailers that were just as unlikely to sell no wave as American Eagle was to play it.

I remember seeing the cover of "Buy Contortions" staring back at me in the crammed bins of Circuit City almost exactly ten years ago. All Infinite Zero releases had a weird white border around a shrunken version of the original album jacket, and the Contortions record features a picture of a girl wearing sunglasses and a shredded bikini. I remember thinking that the picture wasn't really sexual at all, but was instead kind of scary and off putting. The word "BUY" is written in this big imposing font right next to her head, and suggests an obvious visual satire on advertising and consumerism. After hearing that record, I realized that anything with that uppercase "Z" layered over an Infinity sign was going to be nothing like the stuff I heard on the radio in 1996. And even though most of these recordings were already decades old by the mid Nineties, they were actually years ahead of their time.

There is no exact method to prove just how much impact releasing this music has possibly had on the burgeoning throwback bands of the early 21st Century, but if you consider the styles that some of these artists helped establish, it starts to make a lot of sense historically. Garage Rock wasn't exactly hip in 1997, and Monks records were just a dorky record collector's dream. But then Infinite Zero released the legendary punk blueprint that was also one of the great musical anomalies of the sixties, and several years later, Monks are a commonplace name to drop during what is now the cooling stages of a full on Garage Rock revival. Gang Of Four are somehow their own genre, spawning so many copycat bands that you really can't even count them today. But I'm sure that just before the re-release of their debut album "Entertainment" in 1995, you could probably only find their album rotting on vinyl in an un-alphabetized stack at the back of Bill's. People were too busy listening to space-rock, rap-rock and Weezer to really care. I've watched a lot of these people and their music age rather ungracefully and get completely blind-sided by a group of No Wave savvy eighteen year olds on several extremely mismatched bills all around the country. I think that's a completely healthy step in musical evolution that could be traced back to being able to find an album by someone like Alan Vega at Best Buy. I think these reissues might explain the mysterious gap between a band like Hum being labeled the "hot new sound" not so long ago, and a band like A.I.D.S. Wolf receiving that same label today.

If you think this is a stretch, consider that if all the post-punk reuniting that's happened this decade had happened ten years ago, it wouldn't have been nearly as lucrative. Gang of Four actually did put out records in the Nineties to little or no fanfare. The members of Suicide were almost completely forgotten, but now if they put out a record, it would almost be a crime for all the usual music publications not to review it. I think Infinite Zero went very far in reinserting this music into the average music fan's consciousness. Do a "Set Search Criteria" on Myspace music and see how many bands pop up when you enter the query: Influences-Keyword: Gang of Four. I was surprised to find that the number of pages had almost caught up to all the typical mainstream acts. That's remarkable for a band that's never had a platinum selling record ,and it probably wouldn't have happened if their releases hadn't been made available at a reasonable domestic price. Devo was obviously more well known than Gang of Four, but even their key albums were out of print in the mid 90's. I hear a lot more Devo when I go see bands today than I did ten years ago, and it's strange to consider that it could indirectly be because of Henry Rollins.

In the end, Infinite Zero was considered a failed venture, and Warner Brothers cut Rubin and Rollins off from their pet project. The label even tried to release the first seminal Fall records to no avail. This would have raised their profile even more, and I wish I could count those among my collection. Rollins actually went so far as to release the Trouble Funk reissues for a second time on his own 2.13.61. imprint. Ironically, now that many of the Infinite Zero reissues are themselves out of print, I've seen them start to fetch collector's prices. But I can't be bothered with that right now, because I have the latest Futureheads record ready to listen to. I hear it sounds just like Wire.

1. Lost Generation w/ Wanza (Cavern Upstairs)
Seems that Wanz has slowly but surely started to pick up a nice Tuesday night following for the Lost Generation, and there is good reason for this: the guy plays whatever the fuck he wants, and almost all of it is good. He says that he is going to start the night with some French Pop and bossa nova, followed by some of his own mixes and his typically challenging and exciting set of dance, punk, postpunk, kraut, goth, industrial, house, and just about anything else you can think of. Good times over there, and as a side note: the past few times I've been, theres been a nice little dance party going, which should be good news for all of you who are looking for, um, dance partners.

And thats about all I can think to do tonight, unless you're into fucking Lagwagon or something. And if thats the case, get the hell off my blog!

We're going to be reviewing some new material from local bands in the next few days (mostly track reviews), so if anyone has any new shit on their Myspace page or recorded material that they would like us to listen to, please attach it to an email and send it in MP3 format to weshotjr@yahoo.com , or just comment on here or via email and let us know that you have new Myspace stuff. We've got a bunch of stuff we're already going to review already, but we'll try to do as many as we can.

Thats it.

1. Attractive and Popular | Blonde Girls (8th Continent- Denton)
Due to scheduling issues and other concerns, tonight's show will be the last at the 8th Continent for several months, so if you wanted to get a chance to check the space out any time soon, tonight would be a good night to do it... as in the only night to do it. But even if the place wasn't temporarily closing up shop, this would be a good night to go anyway, as I can't think of many bands that would be more fun to see at the 8th than the two that are playing tonight. In case you haven't heard, Ft. Worth's Blonde Girls are an excellent live band, with hyper start/stop rhythms and machine gun noise guitar assaults that certainly will command the attention of even the snobbiest of WSJR readers. Fans of the ridiculously good Lightning Bolt, Blood Brothers, and our own Eat Avery's Bones will surely dig it. Attractive and Popular's infectious and completely danceable no wave is also well worth the drive to see live, with synths and even a slight prog influence separating them from the vast majority of bands that could be described by using the words "punk" and "dance" in the same sentence. Check out "Sononon" on their myspace page. Should be a great show at a venue that we can only hope will keep going.

2. Fallout Lounge Open Mic Night (with Rhett and Tim from Happy Bullets)
We haven't had a chance to see the new open mic night over at Fallout, but I'd be willing to bet everything I own that its at least better than the old fallout open mics, with completely laughable singer songwriters and joke bands that were about as funny as a Dick Cheney press conference dominating the stage... so we can say that this version will be a bit better than that, at least. I don't know if Rhett and Tim actually have control over who plays there, but they have been looking for good acts to come experiment and have some fun, and considering that those guys seem to have pretty good taste, they might be able to make it a good night. I'm willing to go down and give it a shot.

1. Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
2. Nobody & Mystic Chords of Memory - Tree Colored See
3. Astronautalis - The Mighty Ocean & Nine Dark Theaters
4. Kashmere Stage Band - Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974
5. Vetiver - To Find Me Gone
6. Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
7. CSS - Cansei De Ser Sexy
8. Asobi Seksu - Citrus
9. Umbrellas - Illuminaire
10. Silverspun Pickups - Carnavas
11. Strange Fruit Project - The Healing
12. Philip E Karnats - Pleasesuite
13. The Knife - Silent Shout
14. The Paper Chase - Now You Are One Of Us
15. The Black Angels - Passover
16. Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
17. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
18. Danielson - Ships
19. Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That
20. Caribou - Up In Flames (2CD)

Hey... I've started to go through all the emails I have in my inbox, so if you've sent me something in the past week or so and I haven't responded, you'll hopefully be hearing from me soon.

Also, if you've sent me info about upcoming shows, CD releases, or anything else, please resend that information to me as a reminder. I'll be back with the writing and It Lists tomorrow, and this should be the last dumb housekeeping post for a while.

1. Blonde Girls | Eat Avery's Bones | Attractive and Popular (1919 Hemphill)

This is the only show I could find tonight and that's okay because with this lineup you don't really need to go to any other shows. Blonde Girls play really intense songs that mix prog/fusion complexity with the forcefulness of noise punk. They blow almost every band I've seen them with off the stage and they do it while just kind of shrugging and without a shred of pretentiousness. If you can track down their debut seven inch, "Husky Deluxe", I highly recommend it. I think one side of that seven inch is better than all of the local releases I've heard in 2006, critically acclaimed or otherwise. But that's just me. I've seen Eat Avery's Bones quite a few times now and it's been different every time but always really fun. Attractive and Popular bring their dance rock all the way from Arkansas to Texas so often, you'd think they were from Denton. Go see them at 1919 and witness them live up to their name.

2. DJ Wild in the Streets (Hailey's)

If you just want to hang out and not see bands play this is probably the best place to do it tonight. The DJ with the mouthful of a name gives you an earful tonight at Hailey's. Maybe she'll play "My Little Red Book".

1. Faux Fox | Chief Death Rage | Cry Blood Apache | The Strange Boys (Rubber Gloves)

Faux Fox has been playing 80's sounding, keyboard heavy rock for so long that they actually existed in a time when it wasn't nearly as common to do so. Their music sometimes seems to almost border on parody and they piss a lot of people off, which is always a plus. Faux Fox also has one of the most obnoxious band websites I've ever seen. Chief Death Rage is Shane and A-Train from The Undoing of David Wright playing with a third member in a sludge rock power trio. The one time I saw them was really good and I've been meaning to catch them again. Cry Blood Apache is an Austin trio that play scratchy and disjointed songs that get better with each listen. They have gained some notoriety through guerilla style shows where they just show up and play on the street or someone else's show or even in a museum. I'm sure you're aware of The Strange Boys. I respect the fact that they don't play exclusively with other garage rock styled bands.

2. Record Hop | White Drugs | The Backsliders (Dan's Silverleaf)

Dan's Silverleaf is a probably a good venue to see Record Hop at. The sound is pretty good and that's important since I always seem to catch this band in a worse case scenario as far as sound is concerned. In my opinion, their self released debut, "Pareidolia" is one of the better local albums in the past five years by a DFW band. The newer songs that aren't on that record have impressed me live as well. White Drugs play trashy rock and roll that's kind of like Pussy Galore when they started playing actual songs. According to The Backsliders Myspace page layout they like alcohol and rock music.

3. White Ghost Shivers (Sons Of Hermann Hall)

White Ghost Shivers continue their journey through DFW by appearing at Sons Of Hermann Hall tonight and that's probably the ideal venue for this group. 

4. DJ Panda Flower/DJ Tiger Bee/The Nitrons (Double Wide)

This 60's retro theme event would probably be fun just to hear all the obscure records I don't have the money or time to invest in played really loud and clear instead of suffering through swishy files on an MP3 blog. There is also a band playing but I can't tell if they're a surf group or not just by looking at the flier.

5. Washing Machine | Shelter Belt | Lousy Robot (Darkside Lounge)

Washing Machine has been discussed here before and I when I listened to them again today I noticed they sound kind of like Beck's softer non-rapping albums. Shelter Belt and Lousy Robot are both touring acts that play really poppy indie rock songs.

6. Will Johnson (Bend Studio)

Will Johnson of Centromatic is playing at this venue I've never heard of. I think the place also doubles as a yoga studio or something. Check it Out.

7. Zoo: The Visual Menagerie (The Cavern)

This celebrated and unique event is on tonight at The Cavern.