Monday, August 29, 2011

More Wretched Music! Bitch Magnet!






The rumor that I heard recently is that Jon Fine, the guitarist for the band Bitch Magnet is actually worth some 26 million dollars, having something to do with his wife selling off an ad agency. I meet him once years ago, I did an interview with the band Coptic Light which Kevin Shea played in. I did a magazine interview with them that didn’t get used. Bitch Magnet are about to do a reunion. What Jon Fine needs to do is take his 26 million dollars and shut up. There is no reason for Bitch Magnet to do a reunion that band was crap to begin with. If you have 26 million dollars in the bank why on Earth you would need to publically make a fool of yourself in that way is beyond me.
This is something I’ve never understood- if a band has access to a powerhouse like Kevin Shea, why wouldn’t you turn the amps all the way up to eleven? Ah, but Fine could never do that- not really. That was the flaw with Coptic Light. Electric Turn To Me on the same label at the same time suffered from similar musical flaws- they also had the problem that they felt uncomfortable being described as “goth”, which is a related but separate flaw.
You can hear Fine’s musical failure right here-



Notice how not rocking the band was. It is much the same not rocking as a lot of crappy indie rock type music. The argument probably exists that Bitch Magnet are influential and ahead of their time for doing this kind of music in the late 80’s. I hope that isn’t true for their sake because if that’s true then they are responsible for producing a lot of crap.
Indie rock, what a bad idea that was! Once it started to take control it was like venereal disease and bedbugs, it was impossible to get rid off. After 2001 the press just wouldn’t shut up about it either.
Anyway, bad music comes full circle on some other very bad music I’ve written about lately. David Grubbs was in Bitch Magnet he went on to play in a band called Gastr Del Sol. Jim O’Rourke played with them, he now plays with Rick Moody, whose a washed-up author trying to do bad indie rock for God know what reason.
I do recall Jon Fine as being a very sharp guy in a lot of ways, but he was a weak link in what should have been a good band. Bitch Magnet is painful- with the winey sensitive artist vocals. They’re so bad it’s unreal.
Here, I like this band better. They’re at least bad in a funny way.

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