The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com {the b-side Thursday, Octoher 26, 2006 - 5B New wings: Comsat Angels reissued for another generation By LLOYD H. CARGO Chrome, Television, The Move and ing into the dark march of "Miss- Comsat Angels. Maybe Gang of pier hooks of Waiting For a Miracle, Daily MusicEditor The Yardbirds, their acknowledged ing in Action." From the very first Four's politics were blunt enough, but gone is that sense of urgency. influences, are never transparently chord the mood is set - this is not Joy Division's gloom direct enough, Fiction isn't the masterpiece either What? You've never heard of the salient. going to be an optimistic affair. But and the Comsat's paranoia was just of the first two were, but it's by no Comsat Angels? And you love Joy After finding their sound, the despite the darker subject material, all too real. means a slouch of an album, either. Division? Oh my. Don't worry - it's band released the Red Planet EP the album is not without its poppier Either way, the band wasn't dis- Unfortunately, it was the last of going to be OK. In the immortal on their own, which subsequently couragedbylacklustersales.Instead, their albums for Polydor, who sub- words of Michael Jackson, "you are caught the attention of legendary it forged ahead with the magnificent sequently dropped them. not alone." British DJ John Peel. An extremely No one's ever follow-up Sleep No More, blowing The band soldiered on, tinkering The Comsat Angels was formed influential figure, Peel was able to any thoughts of a sophomore slump with their sound in an attempt to in Sheffield, England in 1978, and get The Comsat Angels signed to heard of the outofthewater. Gonewerethemore sell more records. They were never took its name from a J.G. Ballard a three-album deal at major label tentative moments of Waiting For a able to even come close, and even short story. The four lads, lead gui- Polydor, then home to bands like Comsat Angels. Miracle, as well as some of its overt more sadly, they were never able to tarist and vocalist Stephen Fellows, The Jam and Siouxsie & The Ban- pop aesthetic. This was even more capture any of the magic they had keyboardist Andy Peake, bass- shees. But theyreback. naked, direct emotional sound. on those firstbthree albums. ist Kevin Bacon (no, not him) and The first album, Waiting For a The first track, "Eye Dance," Long unavailable until RPM first ' drummer Mik Glaisher and their Miracle, would both be Comsat belies the sound of the album some- reissued them in 1995, Renascent bleak post-punk stylings can prob- Angels's most astounding and their moments. "Independence Day" fea- what, promising faster, more lay- has done a great job finally present- ably be traced back to a single gig commercial downfall. impossible tures some heavy tom-toms and the ered noise. Instead, Sleep No More is ing the albums the way they deserve opening for Pere Ubu in Newcastle. to throw a label on, the band was band's signature guitar harmonics, characterized by a more dirge-like to be packaged. The UK reissue The band was blown off the stage virtually ignored by the press and perfectly complementing the song's pace. Everything is slower, serving label has added bonus tracks to each by Pere Ubu's intensity and focus. consequently consumers as well. urgent hook. Also of note is the bass only to make the drums more omi- of the Polydor albums, as well as Fellows recalls in the liner notes to This wasn't punk, and it wasn't new line to "Baby." While I'm not accus- nous. And oh, those drums. Record- Time Considered as a Helix ofSemi- WaitingFor a Miracle, "That gig was wave, either. It was edgy, tense. ing the King of Pop of stealing (he ed in an elevator shaft, with mics Precious Stones, their compilation of a nightmare - it wasn't just a bad But most of all, it sounded para- probably never even heard of Com- positioned on six different floors, BBC live sessions. Available online show - we realized that what we noid. And it had every right to be. sat), it does sound a whole lot like the percussion sounds like impend- at renascent.co.uk, these reissues were doing was fundamentally bad In 1980, the United Kingdom was the bass line from "Billie Jean." ing doom. are pricey, but worth every penny. - needlessly complex, pedestrian in the throes of Thatcherism and Perhaps the best amalgamation The album's subject matter is It's not often that great bands and annoying at the same time ... We Northern English industrial towns of the band's complex aesthetic can more overtly political, with "Dark continue to fly under the radar 20 jammed for ages and tried to get rid like Sheffield were huddled under a be found on "Real Story." A simple Parade" about the hostage situation years after the fact. It's not hyper- of any obvious influences just to see palpable umbrella of fear. The Sovi- double snare pattern, with Hank at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and bolic to say that no band had abetter what we ended up with." et invasion of Afghanistan led to a Marvin-esque lead guitar - the "Goats of the West" throwing snide run from 1980 to 1982 or to rank the What they came up with was nuclear scare and the Conservative song is a study in less-is-more. It's barbs amid swirling guitars and Comsat Angels near the top of the brooding on par with Joy Divi- government went so far as to ban amazing that their sound, as influ- synthesizers. post-punk movement's most impor- sion, only less overblown and dra- Irish Republicans from the radio or ential as it's been, never gave way to After the gloom of Sleep No More tant bands. It's not debatable that matic. Their sound is harder to pin TV, forcing any public statements commercial success, or even acco- the band wisely decided to lighten they're criminally underrated and down - think more melodic, sparse to be read by actors. Not to mention lades now. For a while, every review up a bit on their third album in three virtually ignored by most. Wire, but realize there isn't anyone Reagan was about toube elected ... of Bloc Party or Interpol mentioned years, Fiction - attempting to be It's not your fault. You didn't that really sounds like the Com- The album opens with what their debts to Joy Division or Gang darker would've been nearly impos- know. But now you do. So no excus- Cort-sy of aums om sat Angels. Public Image Limited, soundslikeanairraidsquealclimax- of Four, with nary a nod to The sible. Present are some of the pop- es. OK? The Comsat Angels. Monday night football now just like Tuesday night The truth of your love: iTunes and play count By MICHAEL PASSMAN Daily Arts Writer I have a problem. I watch NFL football. A lot of NFL football. Pretty much all NFL football. We're talking replays of last week's games on NFL Network, NFL Films season in review compilations from the '80s - I even tolerate Michael Irvin and Chris "I'm with leather" Berman and watch endless analysis on ESPN. This is serious shit, people. So when ABC relinquished the rights of "Monday Night Football" to its.Disney cousin, ESPN, after a 36-year run, I was a little upset. Not because I like Al Michaels or because I can't stand Joe Theismann, but because being Monday Night Football. Now on cable, now on every night of the week. on national television made "Monday Night Football" more than a game - it was an event. And as much as ESPN would like you to think it's the same old "Monday Night," it isn't and never will be. This past winter, while ESPN was trying to convince everyone that Howard Cosell was wearing a yellow ESPN blazer during the '70s, NBC picked up the "Sunday Night Football" franchise from ESPN, snatched John Madden from ABC and traded the rights of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Disney for Al Michaels. (Seri- ously. The guy got traded for an animated rab- bit.) And all of a sudden, "Sunday Night" turned into the new "Monday Night," but not really. With Michaels and Madden's move to NBC and "Monday Night's" move to cable, the "Sun- day Night" game became the NFL's premier showcase. Michaels and Madden are big-game football and their departure from "Monday Night" is the crux of a changing of the guard in primetime football. Even though Madden is starting to lose it - he's beginning to sound like his commentary track from "Madden '96," and there might be some weird "Weekend at Bernie's" thing going on - but he's certainly serviceable. Michaels, on the other hand, has been the voice of practi- cally every major sporting event of the past 25 years and is as solid as ever. Upon losing its all-star crew in the booth, ESPN had some difficulty trying to replace two of the industry's best. The respectable Mike Tirico was brought in to do the play-by-play, and so far he's done a respectable job. But Mike Tirico's games don't have the aura of a Howard Cosell game - the kind of aura that used to be "Monday Night Football." For the color commentary, ESPN brought Joe Theismann over from the old "Sunday Night Football" team. The move has been their biggest mistake. Put it this way: Theismann's greatest "Monday Night Football" moment happened when Lawrence Taylor mangled his leg in Giants Stadium. He's obvious, arrogant, illogical and has no redeeming qualities what- soever. The third member of the new crew is Tony Kornheiser. In an effort to capitalize on ESPN's late-afternoon flagship "PTI," Korn- heiser comes in as the comic relief that harkens back to the Dennis Miller days, but in more of an everyman role. He talks about his fantasy team (which is getting a tad old), questions Theismann's nonsensical observations and is occasionally funny, but still doesn't seem to feel entirely comfortable. ESPN has him beat- ing the worthless humanistic storylines of personal struggle to death, making him sound like another useless sideline reporter and com- pletely wasting his unique persona. To be fair, ESPN did a commendable job with its coverage of the New Orleans Saints' return to the Superdome. They treated the setting respectfully without turning it into a typical Chris Connelly "SportsCenter" puff- piece. There was no sugarcoating, they didn't pretend that New Orleans was as good as new and showed the impact that sports can have on a city. In a weird bid to add something to the Mon- day night broadcast, or just make up for the lack of chemistry between their normal broad- cast crew, ESPN has been bringing guests into the booth during the first half of each game. Charles Barkley, Spike Lee and others have frequented the booth in a gimmick that will hopefully come to an end soon. If I want to hear Barkley praise Tim Duncan and gloat about the size of his flashy Vegas bankroll, I'll watch "Inside the NBA," not "Monday Night Football." The one true benefit tocome out of the NFL's network shuffle is the advent of flexible sched- uling. From weeks 10-15 and 17 of the regular season, NBC will have the option of selecting the best matchup of the week and broadcast- ing it on Sunday night. While CBS and FOX Football commentator Al Michaels. have the ability to protect a few games of their choice, primetime football will finally have meaningful matchups during the final weeks of the season, something that couldn't always be said before. The x-factor here is the NFL Network and its increasing presence. Owned bythe NFL, the NFL Network is football junkie heaven. (The journalistic issues surrounding a media outlet owned by the league it's covering are troubling, but that's another story - you wouldn't watch FOX News if the Bush administrationwere run- ning it, would you? Bad example.) And starting on Thanksgiving Day, the NFL Network will be broadcasting either Thursday or Saturday night games live each week. The pompous Bry- ant Gumbel will call the games - even after his snarky bashing of the NFL earlier this summer on HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" - and Chris Collinsworth will provide the color commentary. Certainly NFL games on Thursday and Sat- urday night football sound great, but all this does is take away from the singularity that once made "Monday Night Football" the event it was. It worked because it was the only game of the day that closed out the week. "Sunday Night Football" was always secondary because it was just one of many games on a crowded Sunday, only later. And this is why "Sunday Night Football" will never be what "Monday Night Football" was, regardless of what Dick Enberg tells you. "Monday Night Football" was a celebration of the game on its own unique stage. Now, it's just another over-hyped venue for people to rant about T.O. By FOREST CASEY Daily Arts Writer There's a line in William Shat- ner's soul-wrenching, earth-shat- tering EP Has Been in which Shatner's proteg6 Henry Rollins shouts, "Everybody knows every- thing about all of us!" When Shat- ner responds, he drops a bomb on his typical smooth grumble of a voice, elevating it three or four sto- ries: "That's too much ... KNOWL- EDGE!" And we rally tothis cry whenthe government wants to catalogue all of our library checkouts, when our spouses secretly check the history of our Internet browsers. There are some things more damning than pornography, namely written proof that we chose to read a book by Tom Clancy. Thanks to the benevolent dic- tatorship that we all enjoy under Apple's iTunes music program, our computers are possessed with two invisible accountants adding together that same kind of embar- rassment. Play and Skip Count are the names of these auditors, and they gather knowledge. If you're using a version of iTunes released since the dawn of the iPod, go into the "View" menu and select "View Options." Look to see that the 'Play Count' and 'Skip Count' boxes are checked off and begin to display your music library like never before. One new column in iTunes will let you know how many times the song has been played to completion; the other shows how many times you thought, "Skip it." No longer do your claims of obsession over aband have tobleed over into hyperbolae. No, you did not listen to "I'm Bossy" a million times - your play count only reads 22. You will see the large gaps in your library left open for explora- tion of music never before played. Conversely, you will see the music you really should think about deleting. And this is great - at first. Giv- ing up your civil liberties is always great, at first. Then you start to see the wastefulness of hosting 11,358 songs, the majority of which have Your iTunes knows you like Dashboard. Now, so do we. never been played. You now know the distinction between saying, "Yeah, I've heard of Pavement, I have them on my iPod," with "I have played their albums several times, and I can prove it in a court of law." Even worse, the Count siblings run in the background; there's no way to shut them off permanently. So, the next time you are having, say, a salsa dance party, and are playing the music from your com- puter, know that your guests are only two clicks away from know- ing that you listen to Sade more than Bjfrk, that you have skipped that avant-garde feedback-y song on A Ghost Is Born 15 times. Your taste in music, for better or for worse (and it's likely the latter), is exposed to the world. This is the cold side of technol- ogy, when it sharpens opinions and taste into irrefutable num- bers. Just how much do you like the things you claim to like? Well, I can tell you exactly. And that's just too much knowledge. - Check out Casey's blog at michigandaily.com/thecircuit.