Sitting here contemplating the future of rock as I contemplate the new ZWAN, freshly downloaded from Kazaa, live at the Glass House 11-16-01. This makes me think of how life would have been for me as a teenager into punk rock. Christ the garbage magazines you had to wade through to get info on new bands. It was all worth it, the zines and mom n’ pop record stores with oddball characters, but you could never hear the music first! So hit or miss. Of course that made the album purchase more exciting…for example, I love mogreUSA’s story about buying a “Broken Homes” record thinking it was UK punkers “Broken Bones”, and he got some Madness pop crap. And now they got this internet and damn if it isn’t easier to fill up a hard drive with music than listen to all of it. I was notorius for my napster sessions last year, which yeilded gigs of mp3, a lot of which I still haven’t listened to…kind of a sick addiction if not monitored properly.

Well I’ve been wanting to check out Zwan ever since I heard about its unlikely inception. Matt Sweeney and David Pajo? How did Corgan convince those guys to do this, or rather, let him sing? For those not in the know, yes that’s Billy Corgan’s new band, with ex-Chavez and Slint (currently Papa M). Skeptical as I was, the songs are good. Except for Corgan’s voice what we have here might not be what one would imagine but certainly makes sense. Imagine a downtempo almost relaxed pace Chavez (tempered by Papa M’s slow space meditations) with a dose or two of Pumpkin Big Guitar and the Grandmaster Cueball himself squealin out the high notes. But as you listen you can clearly hear the spirit of Chavez genius in the songs, sometimes its more hidden and obscured by Corgan, but other times, it works damn well.

Looking forward to more.

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