The Freelance Mentalists.

Top Tens and some that maybe shoulda been

2012-01-28T23:28:00.001-06:00

Don Allred's P&J 2011 plus:

1	(various artists), Dirty Water 2: More Birth of Punk Attitude Year Zero	Points: 10
2	Lydia Loveless, Indestructible Machine Bloodshot	Points: 10
3	David Murray Cuban Ensemble, Play Nat King Cole en Espanol Motéma	Points: 10
4	(various artists), Live From the Old Town School Old Town School Recordings	Points: 10
5	Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Telesterion Rodriguez Lopez Productions	Points: 10
6	tUnE-yArDs, w h o k i l l 4AD	Points: 10
7	(various artists), Golden Beirut: New Sounds From Lebanon Out Here	Points: 10
8	(various artists), Note of Hope: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie 429	Points: 10
9	Emperor X, Western Teleport Bar/None	Points: 10
10	Jay-Z and Kanye West, Watch the Throne Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella/Roc Nation	Points: 10
Singles
1	Sonny Rollins (ft Ornette Coleman), "Sonnymoon for Two" Emarcy
2	Buddy Miller (ft. Lee Ann Womack), "Meds" New West
3	John Doe, "Moonbeam" Yep Roc
4	DJ Shadow, "Give Back the Nights" Roc-a-Fella
5	Tom Waits, "Hell Broke Luce" Anti
6	Lady Gaga (ft. Clarence Clemons), "The Edge of Glory" Interscope
7	Wolves in the Throne Room, "Woodland Cathedral" Southern Lord
8	John Doe, "Peggy Sue Got Married" Hear
9	They Might Be Giants, "The Lady and the Tiger" Idlewild
10	Adele, "Rolling in the Deep" Columbia/XL

main comments below, but almost listed Boston Spaceship's Let It Beard: shameless Midwestern Anglophilia from Bob Pollard & crew, frontloaded with a few throat-clearing gob-duds (get 'em out of the way, thanks Bob) and then steadily stirring up a trenchant tempest in ye beardmug, spinning me toward Mott The Hoople's Brain Capers (complement complement complement) Trombone Shorty has been known to imply or me to infer that jazz is just part of his job, and he can handle it, period. But the jazz on For True has more immediately gratifying purple and gold candy skull brainiac head rush than the pop tracks, as nicely flashy and guest starry as those can be (big deal) Another killer EP in the guise of a good album (sure are a lot of those).

Hey why wasn't this on there? (more than a certain number of well-known covers makes me uncertain)

The Jolly Boys, Great Expectation The Jolly Boys are one of the first and last leading bands playing mento, the 50s style sometimes marketed as "Jamaican calypso", and while it does have the sassy, party hearty social commentary of calypso (not always to the liking of politicians, police and thieves), the Jolly Boys' mento rolls the chunky, butt-thumping agility of homely percussion, banjos and guitars (a rougher cousin of the pre-Beatles and their budding generation's early skiffle influences). The social commentary's mostly first person on this album, well-chosen covers provide,explicit and implied narrative, via Albert Minott's eloquent growl. Winehouse's "Rehab" is the centerpiece,further contextualizing (and contextualized by)Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing","You Can't Always Get What You Want", and increasingly less obvious choices, as "Ring of Fire"," Hanging on the Telephone", "Blue Monday", even "Reed's Perfect Day" and Pop's "The Passenger" get swept and bounced along. They don't sound so old, but old enough to know themselves, their hopes, fears and appetites pretty well. Hell, even "Riders in the Storm" seems to fit, I think. Some good originals and Jamaican covers too.

Dirty Water Sandwich: some P&J Comments and then some

2012-01-28T23:25:00.001-06:00

Dirty Water 2: More Birth of Punk Attitude doesn't have the sometimes spectacular transitions of its recent forerunner*, and isn't quite as abrasive, but compiler Kris Needs sets the same pace and perspective right off, veering from Captain Beefheart's lean and loping "Zig Zag Wanderer" to the cooler rifle range poise of The Human Expression's "Love At Psychedelic Velocity." Zig-zagging from familiar to emerging landmarks continues as Death's "Freaking Out" shrugs over over the cliff, with its stop-start momentum spun around some more by Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop", with the spiraling electric guitar of (I think) Charlie Christian (there's no "punk jazz" per se on here, but Diz and the live MC5 dig deep and deliver quickly, gratifying rock-head attention spans and appetites). Yeah,doo-doo-wopping Silhouttes, strutting off to the poorhouse, smirking "Strange as it seems, all my money turned brown") Suicide suggestively crooning about a "Creature Feature", the Velvet Underground's Live in Texas 69 version of "I'm Waiting For My Man", with its sly classic spoken intro and brown narcotic boogiemorphic tendencies bleeding through the VU's better known distinguishing marks--yea, just when all those guys rushing to a peak of cool, we get the one-two punch of Patti Smith's "Piss Factory" and Wayne-to-Jayne County's "Man Enough To Be A Woman" Concise epics,bluntly bum-rushing the enemies of promise, and challenging themselves too. And just in case the Misunderstood's truly flower punk (acid in at least two senses) "Children of the Sun" seems a little too grand, the Unrelated Segments' "Story of my Life" immediately brings us back to itchy grievances, warty warning signs and the still-fresh zits of tombstone testimonials. Sometimes it seems like "right band, wrong track", but even then, context can fortify, as Blondie's (lyrically blurry but sonically tonic enough) late 70s "X-Offender" zigs back to the United States of America's "Hard-Coming Love", where chanteuse Dorothy Moskowitz and the USA's male geeks lure each other though shuddering psychotronic blossoms of (what turns out to be) foreplay, or at least something left gracefully for generations of imagination, in mid-air. Back to street level again, for the Godz' heartfelt, country-busking serenade, "C'mon little girl turn on" (that's the whole lyric, and all that's needed). These thrift store cowboys get washed through the Lower East Side by the alley waves of Holy Modal Rounders' "Indian War Whoop." So it goes, jumping back to the late 70s for the rattling b-movie tumult ("I do this every night") of "Imagination" by the sic and aptly named Rudement. Contextual momentum or not Some of the daring juxtapositions just doesn't fit (Woody Guthrie, Big Star, the Flamin Groovies, --possibly more examples of right artist, wrong track). But squinting as sternly as possible (and okay, Faust and some others are growing on me) these two discs still seem to have at least 97:26 of keepers. (sorry this is so long, but it's an involving album)
I'm totally infatuated with David Murray Cuban Ensemble (important to credit the Ensemble, not only the maesto) Play Nat King Cole En Espanol(some of these songs are Portuguese too, maybe). According to the promo materials, Cole's original versions, replete with stiff phonetic phrasing of fluid melodies, were received with affectionate amusement by his Latin fans (re Airto Moreita on Brazilian response to Getz's bossa nova). But IKC and/or his producers chose songs of amazing potential--there's no sense of Murray imposing his own thing, and/or renovating from the ground up. Stuff, frequently new stuff, happens every second, with zero hyperactivity or claustrophobia. He likes to feature different sections of his Ensemble on diff subsets and recurring approaches--the horns don't ride your ass into the ground, the accordion doesn't perk you into terminal Stsrbucks. A Yoda-like tango singer pops up at just the right moments. Murray's string arrangements alone are worth the price of admission.
Comments on Lydia Loveless and Live From The Old School: please see the Country Comments in previous post, Son of Deed Poll
Golden Beirut takes various routes, but the taut caution times boldness, straight ahead as far as possible and always ready to veer, evokes Wanna Buy A Bridge? at different points in every listen (so far).
Wondering about the sweetly unpretentious undercurrent of words in tuneyard's SXSW set ( spare, intimate, hopefully still archived on NPR) and greedy for more wonder< I dove through the rippling, gritty, snapping stripes of whokill to lyrics, and uh-oh. Something about a woman confronting the male invader of her ghetto courtyard, with a naive indignation and other elements which seem unlikely, in a woman who hasn't gotten killed yet. Kind of the wrong whiff of arty thing, combining badly with the tough textures. But tough cookies, listen to the music, try not to, Garbus and crew have got it (what does she do, construction-wise? George Clinton as Laurie Anderson as George Clinton?)
Comments on Lydia Loveless and Live From The Old School: please see the Country Comments in previous post, Son of Deed Poll

.Can't find my notes on Note of Hope, but they (Ani Di Franco, Lou Reed, Studs Terkel, most others, incl connective bassist Rob Wasserman and Van Dyke Parks, who composed the opening instrumental) find the music in Guthrie's words and def vice versa. This time, the words aren't only unpublished lyrics, also diary entries, maybe letters, jottings on envelopes, whatever may have gone through the melodist's mind while browsing this stuff--maybe next time from his pictchas? (G. drew, in some periods earned more from signpainting etc than music etc)
Not too far from Scrooge McDuck or Shakespeare's royals, Watch The Throne strives, jives, thrives and dives deeper into a vast vat of illusions and realities, in a way I haven't witnessed since Brian Wilson Presents Smile. The ultimate Bubble Boy-to-Man focus of which I'll take any day over The Smile Sessions' endlessly charming, endlessly endless blurfest (yeah, even the double-discs edition, much less the box)

In Ingratitude and fake closing:

I can't find any bad music inspiring/requiring me to write, much less listen. Once upon a time, the Four Seasons, Lou Christie, the Bee Gees faithfully delivered new, horrible harvests of glory--but no more! And, beyond the ever-budding catalogs of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, where are the golden apples with worms and soft spots, so ripe for the plucking of tough love? There are some happy exceptions. Bad metal vocals can be abrasively stimulating, handier than coffee for already multi-tasking drivers, especially those of us with (so far) non-metal bladders. But oops that's all I got to write about those.

*From late 2010 ( for Dec 7--why were DW and DW2 released so very close together?)

Past several recent deadlines, I was all set for a hazy shade of winterlude, but immediately started burning turkey calories with Dirty Water: The Birth of Punk Attitude (Dec 7), 23 cannily programmed known (at least to collectors) milestones and revelatory rarities.Starts with the title track, which doesn't sound that great now, then the Seeds--but instead of "Pushin' Too Hard", it'd "Evil Hoodoo", crackling with full-bodied fuzz, no thin garage bluster, but headed out in mirrorshades Milky Ways and leather ripples you can live in: your home away from home, turns out that's the first theme established, to be developed in all sorts of vivacious variations.

The second theme comes from the next track, the Deviants' "Garbage." It's not as flashy, it's kinda dumptruck Bo Diddley and some spare air interspersed with gobs of reverb, but all shaped by characterization, as are the words. Mostly spoken: "Garbage! Get yours today. (sung) C'mon and feel it (speaker) IIt'll maek you feel good like it thinks you should. C'mon and feel it. It'l make you large, it'll put two cars in your garage. Garbage! c'mon and squeeze it. Garbage! c'mon and stroke it. Garbage! c'mon and suck it. Garbage!" No more instructions, too obvious to bother(this whole thing is also kind of asend up of drug commecials like the Standells "Try It" and of rock operas, reminding the Who they may have been better off with "A Quck One" mini-opera) time to just "Do It!" as Deviants' offspring Pink Fairies instruct, streamlining toward spirit of '76--but instead of Pistols and Dammed, we get Gene Vincent! Well, he did make it into the UK's mid-60s, and even had Billy Zoom in his last American band, but also it's a floating oasis (like I said cannily programmed also includes timing, so we don't get burned out or expect the obvious), and set-up for the Flaming Groovies' "Teenage Head", which gallops along like Vincent's colleague Link Wray, calmly (home away from home) characterizing, in first person, a bit like the Stooges and also going back to high school, so it's okay that he brags about his jailbait girlfriend, even with grown-up proficiency, then calmly transferring, re-branding with a hot pokerface: "I'm you." Like if only! Then T.Rex's girl-happy "Elemental Child", with Bolan's new toy, his electric guitar, making its live and lengthy debut. (home away from home can also remind us a lot of these guys were ex hippies, still jamsters, although re-wired with newer self-tied leashes)

Things get darker but back to Deviants' absurdism with lung-wounded march of the Monks" "I Hate You", then Jook's Slade-inspiring suedehead harmonies ( also harmonizing with Monks' high wild pitch and Deviants mock operatic tendencies, but Gene Vincent's sweetness too)"Oo oo Rudi", prob influenced the Clash's angels-with-dirty-faces moments too, But scarier characterization in Mott The Hoople's "The Moon Upstairs", where a lad damaged by head police "roams free as a bird with broken wings" and "those who laugh let this be your epitaph, and you'll feel every blow" it's punk and metal vengence, but also the frustrated idealism of "rejected neglected" ex-hippies and their family members in home away from home:"not trying to bleed you just trying to feed you, but you're too fookin sloww!" Also, "for those who laugh", Ian Hunter's own mad laugh back in arc of triumph (say like Vincent Price. getting revenge on reviewers in
Theatre of Blood), then immediately to extremely rare Hollywood glamsters Zoltan X's z-movie celestial butt patrol: "Humans are fu-u-un! Ahhh hah hah!" Then Sun Ra's "Rocket Number Nine," MC5's Ra-inspired" Rocket Reducer No.62", live with their brothers and sisters of course, MC5 little sibs the Up's "Sisters Sisters", I thought they were the set's only girls, but they just sing that way out of respect. Disc 2 takes us back to Earth, sort of with David Peel and the Lower East Side's wino park art, Silver Apples, streetwise Tom Sawyer philosophy, a bit like Rounders here, as they ease up on the home-grown electronics; Also the New York Dolls' "Subway Train", Last Poets' "On The Subway", Suicide, Silhouttes, Sensational Alex Harvey Band Rocket From The Tombs, Red Krayola Dictators ("Teengenerate" 's self-mocking goon party sounds like a precursor of "Jackass",etc) it all fits, even the lesser tracks (Can, Saints) and true dud (Peter Hammill), make it back to that home away from home.

"Do You Love Me?", apparently no relation to the one that goes "Do you love me, now that I can dance?", although might be an extremely mutational descendant, rhythmically--it's by the Stooges, when they had James Williamson and Ron Asheton both, with Asheton's groove and Willamson's more impulsive approach to guitar-touching. Sort of a cyclonic, peyote boogaloo conga line, with no stress, and this is what I mean about a home away from home, or one thing it can mean: not only the overall stance, but an extended, hard-charging, skull-rattling, yet reassuringly, invigoratingly steady ride. Don Allred

Deed Poll, Deed Poll, Deed Poll It Again (Boys)

2012-01-25T15:21:00.001-06:00

Nashville Scene Ballot 2011 (lists only, comments in Pt 2)

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2011:

1. This One's For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark
2. Miranda Lambert: Four The Record
3. Sunny Sweeney: Concrete4. Lydia Loveless: Indestructible Machine
5. Wanda Jackson: The Party Ain't Over
6. Middle Brother: Middle Brother
7. John Doe: Keeper
8. The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
9. Blind Boys of Alabama: Take The High Road
10. Pistol Annies: Hell on Heels

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2011:

1. Jackson Browne: "You Know The Night (radio edit)"
2. John Doe: "Peggy Sue Got Married"
3. The Bangles: "I'll Never Be Through With You"
4. Buddy Miller featuring Lee Ann Womack: "Meds"
5. Steve Earle with Allison Moorer: "Heaven Or Hell"
6. Matt King: "Cursing The Ohio"
7. The Band Perry: "If I Die Young"
8. Toby Keith: "Red Solo Cup"
9. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: "Codeine"
10. Little Big Town: "Shut Up Train"

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2011:

1. Johnny Cash: The Sun Years Vols. 1-4
2. Hank Williams: The Legend Begins
3. Live From The Old Town School
4. Mickey Newbury: An American Trilogy
5. Neil Young/International Harvesters: A Treasure

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. Willie Nelson
2. Merle Haggard
3. Jamey Johnson

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. Sunny Sweeney
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Lee Ann Womack

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2011:

1. Emmylou Harris & The Red Dirt Boys (Newport Folk Festival)
2. Jamie Johnson & band (Farm Aid)
3. Willie Nelson & band featuring Lukas Nelson (Farm Aid)
(if allowed a fourth, would be
Miranda Lambert & band with guests Pistol Annies, on Austin City Limits)

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2011:

1. Guy Clark
2. Miranda Lambert and various co-writers
3.

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2011:

1. Middle Brother
2. Pistol Annies
3. Blind Boys of Alabama

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2011:

1. Middle Brother
2. Pistol Annies
3. Alabama Shakes

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2011:

1.Miranda Lambert (and band)
2.Blind Boys of Alabama (and guests, incl Jamey Johnson and Lee Ann Womack)

Son of Deed Poll (insights/alibites)

2012-01-25T15:14:00.001-06:00

COUNTRY BALLOT 2011 COMMENTS:
Early rock critic Nik Cohn once referred in passing to country music's "elaborate sentimentality", which is surely appropriate, but what I value most is the keep-a-goin' obsessiveness, in some cases the morbid vitality, as obsession gives even fatalism a hard time. As I've said before, it also relates to the idea of beat (Paul Goodman said William Faulkner was beat, "in a complicated way" , a Faulkner way, like, "Now they could cross Grandlieu Street, there was traffic in it now; to clash and clang of light and bell trolley and automobile crashed and glared across the intersection, rushing to light curbchanneled spindrift of tortured and draggled serpentine and trodden confetti pending the dawn's whitewings----spent tinseldung of Momus' Nilebarge clatterfalque; ordered and marked by light and bell and carrying the two imitationleather bands and the drill mealsack they could now cross..." Mealsacks, though no hosses in that scene, but dig it) : Ginsberg said it came from beatitude, and also from Hernert Huncke saying, "Man, I'm beat", after digging holes for the pot crop all day. Coulda been picking cotton, working at Auto Zone, doing taxes, figuring out the best place to take her or him, whatever. With a sharp, springy, never showy house band, led by a ditto vocalist always ready for non-pushy duet duty, the Guy Clark tribute mostly accentuates raging or talking back to or riding out or getting the hell out of the way of or otherwise dealing with the dying of the light, to the extent anyone can. All in the commons, and the details of each lot. Clark's people got business to 'tend to. And no matter how mellow things may sometimes get, "son of a bitch's always bored me" is never too far away.
Country can't just be conceptual of course, it's also the sound. Wanda Jackson's frayed, yet unstoppable munchkin splay brings the country out of The Party Ain't Over's bobbing New Orleans horns, its rockabilly, Latin, gospel and o yeah, its country songs too (don't ever take for granted that country always sounds like country). Jack White couldn't have done it if Wanda couldn't, but he did, production-wise and his Barney Fife bravura helps The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams to represent Hank's range, as does Hank's own The Legend Begins (speedy exuberance of very early tracks, and the finally unscrewed-with, appropriately edited Health and Happiness Show broadcasts).
Also soundwise, the penetrating clarity, so pure it courts distortion, sorta between Loretta Lynn and prime Robert Plant soprano of young Lydia Loveless perfectly suits the obsessive and even necessary truth-telling. She's a rebel against social conventions, but she's also 21 now, and what is the deal with late adolescence, and principle vs. fear, with alcohol as the mirror? Her voice keeps it all spinning like a country hurricane, and a safe room too (its own sense of structure, wherever artist and listener are going). Obsession's clarity and tumult Keeps it more country than a show of somehow more fresh-than-vintage folk-rock chops too, ditto Middle Brother.
Speaking of whom (another insert)
Middle Brother's s/t album is what I didn't get, at least so far, from latest Deer Tick, where McCauley seemed too assimilated, what w other songwriters' worthy contributions and a certain evenhanded approach within angsty considerations too, although the Gacy thing does takes it beyondo. But Middle Brother's set is infused with the scratchy star power of first two DT albums (enhanced rather than blurred by sometimes not knowing which of the triad is singing and/or writing lead). Even has the Dawes dude wanting muse to break his heart so he can sing "with blood and guts/but I can't do that, I'll just sing like myself." Not coping a plea, he makes his quieter approach work this time, then gets loud in a forthright, Deer Tick/McCauley-compatible way, without imitation.Third man Vasquez also fits, and like Will Hermes said of Monsters of Folk, sometimes we get group therapy when listening for group harmony (not too much of either in this case). And if soap opry too, it's all over the kind of country folk punk tombstone splattered with there-stands-the lass type testimony which is just a natural attraction for extreme housecleaning measures.
Then there's the way young Alabama Shakes make a bottle tree of their downhome soul chops, messages tucked into said bottles: "One two three, won't you dance with me? By the bulllet holes in my sleeve. I could be your ticket home. (Clark's characters might perk up their ears here, certainly the ones on John Doe's Keeper, where love songs with teeth include "Little Tiger", which might be about one of Doe's daughters, prowling through discreetly observed private sorrows; a laidback motellude of a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, though if that's what they are, she's the only one who does the time, h'mmm--but he's there when she gets off the bus, he's gon' help her do the parole; a fella who may be going back in time, or surely to some place where he and she paid their dues, and she should still be paying them, to keep her place in his sense of things (hey come to think of it, this might be a sequel to the parole song, I just thought of that); "Lucky Penny", duet with Patty Griffin; and the one where he and current squeeze are having fun with whacky neighbors in sweet home Oildale, suburb of Bakersfield. Then there's the transfigured (or at least much more intimate than the original) great lost r&b classic "Moonbeam" (the moon giveth, or bringeth into view, and taketh away).
The Blind Boys of Alabama have taken the gospel trail with a variety of companions, including the adapted chestnuts of Jagger-Richard, Dylan and Waits, not to mention a collaborative album with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. this time it's country, with co-production by Jamey Johnson, who also sounds very much at home singing on several tracks, without pushing the doctrine--it's all more poignant than that, including Lee Ann Womack's turn (also in the way she finds her way through the clutter of Buddy Miller's Majesty of Sliver Strings, for the non-campy "Meds", written by Marc Ribot! Yeah, Miller's men are trying to make more than a high-chopsy noodlefest, and it would be, if they'd written for and/or backed Womack and Griffin alll the way through). Not too long ago, when asked if he still believed in his religious songs, Dylan replied, " I do when I'm singing them." That's what it's all about.
Bonus section--like the drum solo, possibly time for your latest bathroom break:
notebook scribbles re Miiranda's Four The Record--- Starts out like Coe, Mellow mischief, though eventually hey wouldn't this make a good sassy gal video, "Fine Tune" hot n bothered though also a just a bit Steve Milleresque, maybe for P&J Top Ten, the two [?] she wrote w out collabs are deepest? "Safe" seems magical thinking of material girl, but it's all subsumed in lyric and sonic imagery as salvation, comfort lovedrug etc, then "Dear Diamond", which is wrapped around my finger like him, seems like gonna be gloating but she feels guilty, burdened with the secret whose existence she can only confess to the dear diamond,glass-cutting, many-faceted and splendored diary thing, she can't quite unfold the secret--c'mon, roses won't tell, the diamond won't either--so magical images of power also cost, as she says, and she nails names her self in "Nobody's Fool"--but the music's always enjoyable at the very least, consolation prizes worth keeping always):(some are there to easily suggest how she'll do better, nay, slay, with 'em on stage)(also dig the jostling, minor key cabaret punk oompahpoid, begins with her cutting my bangs with rusty scissors, never mind the decorously painted lips bitten, "stoicism" is actually the "soft" way she won't be, won't fold away her sorrow like "My Mama's Broken Heart"--which is not a brash, rash or insensitive comparison, in this gathering of momentum and shadows, the pulsating hurt just starting to surface would be good to have Gogol Bordello cover.Hey presto! More on "Safe"--As with " Eugene" (best track so far on H3's windy baggy Ghost To A Ghost/Guttertown, his track also a bit Gogolesque) providing misery with fast brooding company, rattling the candles like she say she'll rattle in your drink when you're thirsty (that's in "Safe") No kerosene ect here, we jumpcuts and arcing subsets of theme and style provide musical sublimation the tone of it just won't settle for anything less than HELL YEAH (dito Sunny Sweeney, rolling blue but rolling)
Woulda Shoulda Coulda:
For all that, I feel kinda bad about ditching the sweet hoot of Merle's Working In Tennessee for Doe, but Merle seems a little too detached, relatively speaking
Still, if this were a Top Twelve, he'd be in there, with the somewhut random canon of Willie's Remember Me Vol. 1 (might as well be Vol XXVIII)/ Original Rolling Country 2011 comments on Merle:
Working In Tennessee is a lot of fun, mostly barroom/boxcar/daydream sing-alongs, with a natcherly blooming windowbox of the fatalist, affirmative and absurd, especially on "Laugh It Off." Flexes some mellow heart muscle too (some, not a ton, which wouldn't suit him, nor me).
To this, xhuxx a.d. responded:
Favorite song is the homelessness one about Saginaw that shares its name with a much worse Red Hot Chili Peppers hit; "Laugh It Off" second place probably. Solid record, but there's a lot I could quibble about, if I had time to quibble these days.
And I then 'llowed:
Xxhux's aforementioned quibbles with Working In Tennessee might well incl use of sureshot themes, re aforementioned barroom/boxcar/daydream sing-alongs, but his whiff-of-bs-bearing paper airplanes are bullseye or close enough, often enough for lazier me to be impressed--he really is Working it, somewhut. Top Ten? We'll see.
Another close call: Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, track by track pretty strong, but overall maybe a bit too repetitious point/effect/and/or approach-wise, still deserves some context, from my feature:
In 2009, eight years after beginning his debut novel, country singer-songwriter Steve Earle decided he really had to finish the thing. He also felt the need to make a new album. Earle had moved from his longtime Nashville home base to Greenwich Village at the age of 50, while remaining blessed by his improbably durable seventh marriage, this one to chanteuse Allison Moorer, having a baby with her, and still keeping up with world news. Despite such inspirations, Earle was atypically short of original songs. So he came up with "Townes," an often astute tribute to his formidable mentor, the late great Townes Van Zandt.
Earle leads off with Van Zandt's most famous song, "Pancho and Lefty." The doomed, defiant outlaw Pancho's possibly treacherous accomplice Lefty slips across the border, to linger in the cold shadows of Cleveland. "Townes was both characters," Earle declared of the mercurially standard-setting, substance-abusing Van Zandt. Nevertheless, Van Zandt's crucial advice went beyond reading and writing: "He told me to always use clean needles, " Earle said.
In Earle's novel, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive", Doc Ebersole, who once claimed he could treat Hank Williams' alcoholism and spinal bifida with drugs, has fled to San Antonio's backstreets, after Williams' death. The self-medicating Ebersole is often accosted by the novel's eerie, jaunty namesake, Williams' last hit released before he died. A decade later, it's an eternal jukebox favorite of rich men and poor, also sometimes a cue for Williams' ghost, which can be backed into at any minute, as it pleads for another shot. All of the novel's characters, while evoking the songs and struggles of Earle and Van Zandt, morph into visions of "how different people come to experience spirituality," as Earle put it. He defined spirituality as "a one-to-one encounter with God, or whatever word you use."
Earle's new album, also titled "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive," distills his own brand of frankly 12-step-based, self-observant spirituality. We're greeted by some wry celebrations: Earle's still " walkin' on the water, 'cause I never learned to swim." He and wife Moorer sound at home while gliding through the discreetly psychedelic aura of T-Bone Burnett's Americana production, as they sing, "I love you baby, but I just can't tell/This kinda love comes from Heaven or Hell." (Well, that one did make Singles.)
Not quite country enough for this joint, but

Also: Snow Shadows, a recent studio album by Alana Amram. Her voice reminds me of very early Dylan, but without imitating him--also without his very early hilbilly thing--what the hey, girls mature faster than boys, Songs by Vince Martin, whom I only knew from his collaboration with Fred Neil (on an LP I never heard, blanking on the title). He’s no genius, but provides good moody, vivid vehicles for Alana and the lads’ green rocky road flavor of folk-country-pop. I might be prejudiced, because I used to jam with her dad Dave (who wrote “Pull My Daisy” with Kerouac and Ginsberg, also plays classical and jazz french horn, piano, flute etc). He used to lead jams at Birmingham’s nascent civic arts fests in the 70s. But Alana’s def got her own thing--assistance from Van Dyke Parks etc, yeah, and she wears it with flair;

Subjects for further study (( should listen more) On High Atmosphere, Diana Jone's voice has sensuous austerity, a winter tree just flexible enough for a shudder, a curl, a lasso, a noose, a glint passing through sparkle, a tear, possibly even a beer, but don't push it. Miranda Lambert should cover the intriguing "I Told The Man" (careful with your wicked mitts on her sister buddy, Jones is on to you, reallly on)
Reissues (see above for mention of Hank's; had a similar take on Cash's Sun set. He seemed much more at home there than I expected)
Drag City's Mickey Newbury box is a wildly uneven space cowboy extravaganza (in its basically spare, basement galaxy way). But overall, it leaves quite an afterglow (though I got it as a promo; dunno what I would have thought as a customer, or if I knew the original LPs--some darn good [and darn bad] prev. unreleased tracks, I know that much)
Newbury brings the rain, while he ponders, way after midnight. Grim hallways, railways, but incense too. Kind of a dustbowl Donovan, if Donovan had been through Texas cotton fields and the Army, before getting back to the rabbit tobacco. But more of a personal darkness, however filtered through Music Row plot twists. His original version of "American Trilogy" (his combination and setting, for those unfamiliar, of "Dixie", "All My Trials" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic") is even better than Elvis's, in terms of calm gravitas and lucid overview (of experience, vs. what Elvis makes into a grand vision/illusion, although both versions def signify). You can also get a free four-track box sampler here: http://anamericantrilogy.com/splash

Inserted later because I forgot; might look inserted:
Have a wild weekend anytime with Live From The Old Town School, going back and forth across the generations (1956 to the early 00s), via Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. Big Bill Broonzy, Pete Seeger (together and sep, much better than expected either way), Van Ronk, pungent as usual (rec for Beefheart vocal fans), Baez, John Hammond Jr., John Hartford (all three meh, but even they have some good effect in context), primo Dan Hicks & band (Hot Licks, Acoustic Warriors, or maybe in between?), Steve Goodman, Jon Langford, Martin Carthy ("Willie's Lady", awes), Malvina Reynolds, Odetta, Doc Watson (with Merle, I think), Oumou Sangare, John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee, Conjunto Cespedes. Mahalia Jackson ,Andrew Bird, Ramblin Jack, Joaquin Diaz, Hamza El Din, Merle Travis--well, you get the drift. Great sequences and subsets, for the most part, and lots of fun, if a bit near the knuckle, as old school Brits say. Justification for inclusion on this ballot: enough country and blues overall insofar as a ricochet rainbow of mortality gets its licks in for sure, but so does the fried ice cream.. A bunch I'd never heard of as well, not just the folkie pantheon.
Neil Young's A Treasure turns out to be closer to Working In Tenn than I would have thought to expect, in terms of drollery, fecund foraging with Nashville cats (here touring as International Harvesters) and use of familiar elements. Only five prev unreleased titles, but the known ones haven't been redone on disc too often and everything's pretty sparky, except the first one, Amber Jean (and mebbe a couple others are too long). Several def (incl initial snoozes) def get better as they go along, which is not so common these days, much gracias. Fave: "Southern Pacific", where a forcibly retired railroad worker complains as the Harvesters klang and steam, way out on the redeye express. Kinda spooky--are they part of why he was retired? Note to self: This would have to be in Reissues, wouldn't it? Since Himes' Nashville Scene ballots have so far defined those as music rec. five or more years ago, and A Treasure's tracks, though just now released, are from mid-80s shows.
( Yep Roc's has or had a big sale on their 25th Anniversary series of Giant Sand deluxe and remastered reissues.A big sale in the sense you gotta buy all the albums to get a bargain, but still.. From 1985's Valley of Rain to 1994's Purge & Slouch.)

Citizen M's Bon Voyage

2012-01-23T19:30:00.002-06:00

Darn it. Luc Sante had to go and write this splendid thing about Patti Smith (read it now, I'll be here when you get back)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/feb/09/mother-courage-rock/?pagination=false
So I finally got around to tweaking my ancient review of Smith/Shields' The Coral Sea (go listen first). Just added a little bit in the middle (any visual oddities are Blogger's of course)

PATTI SMITH/KEVIN SHIELDS THE CORAL SEA (2008)
From the ambered memory and legacy of the artist-collector Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989), his friend and colleague Patti Smith has drawn "the passenger M," whose name appears thus in her 1996 prose poem The Coral Sea, now a performance piece, nailed in collaboration with elusive My Bloody Valentine guitar hero Kevin Shields. M's abbreviation mark washes away as he (dreams that he) sets sail to find the Southern Cross—or at least glimpses "wet crepe, a beloved port, or a loved one fading, a tiny dot dissolving, in the vast grainy sea." But he's on his own way now (this isn't a Mapplethorpe biography), and even if he's glimpsed death, his sudden "weightless" relief isn't about casting off earthly snares and cares; instead, it's filled with "the earth-rageous scent of his own volition: The air is sweet. . . . "

Smith says "earth-rageous" in the second of two presentations, from 2005 and 2006, which comprise this double-disc set. Like all of her wordplay—as written, sometimes spontaneously spoken, and occasionally sung—it fits. Which is surely nature's way, and after all, M's real-life original claimed that he never wanted his work to be outrageous. Even the photographer's Portfolio X, an eerie slow train of S&M-mad hopefuls, is fueled by the extended draining of pain (and shock, revulsion—all bad blood) from its sculpted wake. With the same intimate conviction, Smith rides and guides the diverging momentum of these two unstoppable shows, one 64 minutes long, the other 55. As M's visions and decisions ("He would dine on desire . . . ") keep zigzagging and spiraling through the last of his refiner's fire and oxygen, the tides of his veins, so Smith and M attune and recalibrate each other via the raised and extended twang bar of Kevin Shields' otherwise-unaccompanied guitar, with its metamorphic pedals. A wicked tableau of a tropical paradise, in which other travelers, all of pleasing aural color, come bearing gifts to the discerning infant phenomenon, eventually jolts into, "He couldn't--he couldn't remember what they were for." One performance also wobbles into a tremulous, superfluous fable for hoarders (okay, c'est moi). But soon enough, Shields' steely flutter brings another reminder: all moments are rungs bumping the voyager though his tilting passageway. Ultimately, Shields' celestial navigation is closer than it sometimes seems to his recurring role as My Bloody Valentine's blowtorch-breathed gator. Though a beast is waiting in and for M, so is something gorgeous. Don Allred

Bird And Flower's Not So Still Life

2011-05-28T10:15:00.001-05:00

By Don Allred
Columbus combo Bird And Flower began as Eve Searls' one-woman band. "I
like the anonymity of a band name", Searls explained. "So it was a
matter of finding one that I didn't completely hate, and I was really
into the Bird and Flower style of Japanese ink painting."
As in her visual inspirations, Searls' sonic shading unifies sweet and
sharp contrasts. High, blue, clear vocal tones, plus rough-and ready
stringed instruments, combine with eerie, catchy keyboards,
seamlessly. In the studio version of "Hot Boots", lively beats just
naturally dance all over a deadbeat lover: "Now I'm all alone, don't
you feel clever/But with my hot boots, honey, I got friends forever."
Personal struggles continue, but we can always tune in "Radio Song",
where a tide of melody could get whole roomfuls of people swaying,
sincerely serenading (and advising) each other, "I wouldn't trust
you/I wouldn't trust anybody.".

Bird And Flower's visions of alone-together sociability evidently got
the speculative Americana group Black Swans' Jerry DeCicca to seek out
Searls, who had so far tucked away a few tracks on MySpace. She found
herself agreeing to open a 2007 Black Swans show, her first concert.
Soon, Searls was playing keyboards for lovelorn post-punks PolyAtomic,
while contributing mercurially compatible songs, vocals and
instrumental versatility to equally wry folk-pop tribe Super Desserts.
The big Super Desserts also made her "feel safe", said the often
uprooted former military dependent Searls.

Once again, DeCicca found Searls ready to be lured from her comfort
zone, with the co-produced, judiciously bewitching 2009 Bird And
Flower debut album, "Here We Cease Our Motion." Bird And Flower's live
vibe still startles as well. In case the target of "Hot Boots" is
having too much fun with its studio groove, BAF's Boston podcast
version springs a challengingly cross-cut strut, courtesty of Tyler
Evans' banjo and Searls' ukulele. Friday's show also includes
vocalist-accordionist Amber Jacks, multi-instrumentalist Bobby Miller,
and versatile string man Erik Kang, just back from touring with Margot
And The Nuclear So-And-Sos, appearing here on lap steel. Searls
promises "at least a couple new songs", adding that she'll be sporting
a vintage omnichord. "You can even strum the keypad like a harp. It's
pretty Tron."

Ghost Writers In The Sky

2011-01-11T15:50:00.001-06:00

(Don Allred's 2010 Nashville Scene Country Critics Poll Ballot (plus
opening comments; more follow)
(Listed just in the order they come to mind)
TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2010:

1. Lydia Loveless: The Only Man (Peloton)
2. Nancy McCallion: Take a Picture of Me (Mama Mama)
3. Jamey Johnson: The Guitar Song (Mercury)
4. Chely Wright: Lifted Off The Ground (Vanguard)
5. Minton Sparks: Live at the Stadium Inn (MSM)
6. Marshall Chapman: Big Lonesome (Tallgirl)
7. Jace Everett: Red Revelations (Wrasse)
8. Drive-By Truckers: The Big To-Do (ATO/Red)
9. Los Lobos: Tin Can Trust (Shout Factory)
10. Marty Stuart: Ghost Train (The Studio B Sessions
(Hon Mentions: Justin Earle Townes: Harlem River Blues, Merle
Haggard: I Am What I Am, Willie Nelson: Country Music, John
Mellencamp: No Better Than This, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan: Hawk
[the 7 or 8 tracks (out of 13)I like are all country]) Terry Ohms:
What Do You Mean, What Do I Mean? [see Campbell & Lanegan comment, add
term: "redneck bossa nova"] Moutain Man: Made The Harbor [also partly
cloudy country). Black Prairie: Feast of the Harvest Moon Corinne
Chapman: Dirty Pretty Things [reversing this year's trend: a strong
indie country-rock (but no more so than a lot of country pop]EP that
deserves expansion to album]), Various Artists: Twistable Turnable
Man: A Musical Tribute to the Songs of Shel Silverstein (Sugar
Hill)[despite crappy tracks from Jim James and Black Francis, even
Kristofferson sounds good!) Choice Cuts: several on Deer Tick's The
Black Dirt Sessions)

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2010:

1.Sunny Sweeny: From A Table Away (Republic)
2. Tony Joe White: All (Swamp)
3. Tony Joe White: Tell Me Why (Swamp)
4. Secret Sisters featuring Jack White: Big River (Third Man)
5. Miranda Lambert: Only Prettier (Columbia)
6. Robert Plant with Patty Griffin: Harm's Swift Way (New Rounder)
7. Laura Bell Bundy: Giddy On Up (Mercury)
8.Kenny Chesney: Hemingway's Whiskey (BNA)
9. Pretty Lights: After Midnight/Midnight Rider(Live Cale/Allman Mix)
(Pretty Lights)
10. Keith Urban: Put You In A Song (Capitol)
(Hon Mentions: Olof Arnalds: Close My Eyes, Isobel Campbell with Willy
Mason: No Place To Fall, Corinne Chapman: Dirty Pretty Things,
Drive-By Truckers: Your Woman Is A Living Thing, Reba: Strange, Deer
Tick: Goodbye, Dear Friend)
TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2010:

1.Hamper McBee: The Good Old-Fashioned Way (Drag City)(usually
poignant and always ripe, rolling notes between teeth so easily some
other teeth must have sacrificed themselves to make more room, except
no probs with diction, so how does he do it. Not "revelatory" as
claimed for his discovery by folkies in mid-60s, but this is late-ish
70s. Not many probs with his tasteful deep folk standards and beyond
tasteless anecdotes/testimonials and songs in the same throbbing vein,
that sure seem like they could be even deeper folk standards)
2. Roland White: I Wasn't Born To Rock 'n' Roll (Tompkins
Square)(protesteth too much)
3.Wynn Stewart: Another Day, Another Dollar (Sony) (reissued as mp3 in
07, but much more exposure in 2010, in Volkswagen Jetta commercial )
4.Ray Charles & Johnny Cash: Why Me Lord? (Concord)(yep, another
single, actually virtually swinging the Kristofferson groaner)(prev.
unreleased, but old enough to qualify)
5.Riley: Grandma's Roadhouse (Delmore) (Listening to Grandma's
Roadhouse, so far I'm digging most of the writing and playing. The
picture's faded, and Riley's set free! How often does that happen in a
country song, or any song? Not nearly enough, and he rejoices. But
he's the dominant and gut-busting voice, which will take some getting
used to. He's better on the more rocking tracks--the bonus tracks are
excellent and should have been on the LP, losing the included version
of the title track [that cool, down the steps melody's revealed in the
outtake; no need for the master track's rawkus caucus]. Also could
ditch "Field of Green", which distractingly recalls Crosby Stills &
Nash; ditto "Funky Tar Paper Shack", with its "Lodi" roll. This
version of "Easy People" 's recurring suggestion of "The Weight" is a
little distracting, but main distraction is Riley's vocal squeezebox.
But at least six keepers. Really digging Gary Stewart's rubbery
sustain over tilting groove, in "Gotta Get Away", especially, and many
trax have some truly pungent electric piano [a truly rare thang re
electric pianos of that time]. If only Gary were singing lead more of
the time, while his guitar steers this dorsal groove.)
(Hon. Mention: I almost listed Tim McGraw's Number One Hits, although
I def agree with Chuck Eddy's Rolling Stone review,that reaching
Number One sometimes shears off too many possibilities. I prefer
Elvis's collected Top Tens to his Number Ones, and it may be that if
you get however many volumes of Greatest Hits McG is up to now, you'll
do better than with this, but I do enjoy most of it. The MSN Listening
Booth download may have jumbled the intended order of tracks, judging
by the way they're listed in Chuck's coverage, so I got clobbered by
front-loaded "live Like You Were Dying" [in a real expensive way,
although the dying one's parting words are "I hope one day you can do
this too" yeah bro, um got some gold buried at the ol swimmin
hole,mebbe?]and "Don't Take My Girl" and some other stuff that would
be much more digestible with music that conveyed the urgent neeeed for
such soothing. But we do get just that on many other tracks, where he
gets more into the struggle for balance, perspective, but also
self-justification, as in "Angry All The Time", and just trying to
sing his way through all that shit, all those talking points, on
"Please Remember Me." But I like some of the suave ballads and def the
yee-haw stuff too, where he gives his band and his own light touch
[unusual with the yee-haw, Brad Paisley aside]some tonic.

Hand Down Your Head Tom Doobie ( Main Country 2010 Ballot Comments & Comets)

2011-01-11T15:45:00.001-06:00

Veteran Columbus OH teen Lydia Loveless sometimes includes the
Replacements' intensely frustrated "Answering Machine" and Def
Leppard's dynamically mesmerized "Hysteria" with her punky tonk combos
deliveries, unstoppably tumbling up, down and onto life's thrilling,
killing, chilling and flat moments. Loretta Lynn's points of departure
are extended and twisted through Loveless' compactly epic,
self-written debut, The Only Man, as desperately wired sexual power
struggles zap the void in passing: "Girls suck/They suck and suck and
never get enough," wails one contender, but it's time to ricochet off
another incisive epitaph.
Drive-By Truckers' The Big To-Do is one of their best-played,
best-sung, best-recorded, best-written albums ever. Pretty much in
that order, to the credit of this self-described "lyrics-driven" band.
The music crashes through "clouds that took Daddy up to Heaven" like
angry, daredevil spirits, before discreetly sniffing sleazy, eerie
evidence of real life's solved crimes and lingering mysteries. Young
Shonna Tucker's voice, bass and country/Motown/British Invasion-fueled
original songs unstoppably testify, further sparking the catchy
crackle of unexpectedly fresh perspectives on known zones of strange
weather.
Pretty Lights is DJ/Producer Derek Vincent Smith, frequently traveling
with jazz/hip-hop drummer Adam Deitch. Smith seeded 2010 with metal
chestnut " The Final Countdown", which becomes strenuously affirmative
gospel science, right be fore J.J. Cale's original "After Midnight"
pursues Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider" over spinning borders. Pretty
Lights' poetic distortion is no more paradoxical than the blues, as a
mutating sample on Making Up A Changing Mind spells out, "I know you
been hurt/By somebody else/I can tell by the way/You carry yourself."
Mountain Man are three young women who explore and savor dimensions
and implications of everyday imagery, in mostly a cappella
harmonies.On debut set Made The Harbor, emotions also harmonize, so
whether you hear them singing "You make my bread and my wine" or "You
make my red in my white", it sounds right. Like Emily Dickinson and
the most talented service workers, Mountain Man's true folk tradition
lies in fluidly, boldly editing the stories worth sticking to. They
cut their losses and wins into a shapely path.
Nancy McCallion's Take A Picture of Me wisely includes no Mollys
re-makes, unlike her self-titled collection. It does include several
fellow ex-Mollys, all new material and tensile vitality to brace
conversational (yet deftly compressed) eloquence, Nothing pretentious,
nothing she couldn't look somebody in the eye and say--nor anything
she'd have to look somebody in the eye and say, no overt sales
technique required. If that's not mainstream enough, oh well. Key
phrase, mebbe: "In sorrow, not despair." Some sway-alongs on the way
to refreshing your drink too, like "It's never too late to get
lucky/It's never too early to cry." Accordions, electric picking,
boots disturbing the dust a mite--missing the fiddle though.
Minton Sparks is a poet, maybe playwright, anyway increasingly drawn
to musical expressiveness of the spoken word, esp with former Dylan
touring guitarist John Jorgenson. Familiar elements and you can call
it Southern Gothic, but there's no zoning out in oh-wow morbidity,
although her characters shine in tough spots, hopping like bugs about
to be crushed. But not too soon, and they use their moment in the
light memorably (like Nancy McCallion's gal, who instructs: "Take a
picture of me", or so Sparks' canny observers hear it, as they slip
closer, closer than they intended in some cases, close as required. We
even get some high school girl's basketball team bus folk-bug
hip-hop, on the way home from this week's big game: "I can tell by
your eyes you been kissin' Mr. Wise/Say sardines/An' pork an' beans."
Yeah she's got some hooks, and some call her the Soutthern Laurie
Anderson, although for that you might get closer with Jo Carol
Pierce's Bad Girls Upset By The Truth.Yet Sparks and Pierce both lack
most of Anderson's sentimental tendencies--any (the few) angels
dropping by ate crusted with whatever's most likely up there.
Justin Townes Earle's voice smoothly paves the way for romantic
fatalism and/or squirrelly urges, currently far too restless for even
the joyful choir of suicide resolutions, on the title track of his new
album, Harlem River Blues. Diverting uptempo reveries reverberate
through boxcars, bars, beds and subway tunnel walls, while Earle
continues "punching holes in the dark", until he gets it just right.
On Los Lobos' Tin Can Trust, it seems like the narrator is on the
verge, he's some old tired guy, but made up his mind to do something,
take revenge and/or a commission, various indicators of volatility
keep rolling by or up the block, and little jolts--I know, enough with
the foreplay already, but the tension keeps getting renewed,
reinforced, and the Dead cover fits perfectly, with no crunchy granola
attached (it's all sidewalks and traffic, the whole album, and then
there's the sardonic "happy ending" history short). A cliche to say
it's a soundtrack for movies you can make up, but it really seems to
work that way, rumbling implications--if it were so definite a
storyline, would get too familiar too fast, perhaps. It is badass
urban country, obsessive as a shot glass lens.
When I first heard that familiar mid-tempo chug of Chely Wright's
Lifted Off The Ground, I thought for a moment it was gonna be too
musically straight, with pop-psychology shadows and positivity, but
the first song quickly unfolded into complex clarity, and the music is
luminous, it's all seamless, chugging those detailed lyrics right
along. Not just, "Look, this is how mainstream country could be,
incorporating this stuff we haven't talked about", but, "This is it,
this works now." I would like room for a big ol' righteous yowly slide
guitar solo in "Damn Liar", and maybe some more instrumental
kick-out-the-walls in other songs, and it seems a bit dicey that so
many of the songs are probably that voice in her head. But there's
room for interpretation, especially the last track, so nice and
sensuous and welcoming the instruments to crawl into and around the
bed she's perching on, while she addresses whomever it may concern
(mind that trace of her punchline-as-preview passing by). Liked
Merle's and Willie's latest, and some others I may comment on, but,
since they (like many others) both sport an EP's worth of keepers,
they'll all benefit from the sentiment of those who favor a return to
EPs as country albums.This set needs no such plus-size/-sign
adjustments.
John Mellencamp, No Better Than This (Hon. Mention)not nec expecting
that much,but past the first couple tracks, things got amazing pretty
quickly. Track 3 def conjures with the fiddle, which I just realized
may not be on many other tracks, but by the same token, it really is
the overall vibe, as advertised--plus the songwriting. "A Graceful
Fall", despite its fancy title, is a genuwine honky tonk classic;
could def see it on Merle's next set, with any luck. And "No One Cares
For Me At All" ("If I had to guess/It's cawse I'm spotty at best")
totally gets that side of Hank, and his studies of Jimmie and Woody
have paid off as well. "Love At First Sight" could be the pappy of
Paisley's excellent "Me Neither", albeit with a twist in the last
line; ditto the parting spark of "Easter Eve", to say the least. And
Coug Age catchiness isn't off the map either (reminds me that, just as
we might not know or care about musical differences between 1830s and
18880s, many now living are likewise 1930s & 1980s, or soon enough
will be--and indeed, long as it works)
Having written plays with novelist Lee Smith and a new book also just
about to be published around the time of this album's release,
Marshall Chapman reportedly hadn't planned to get back into making
albums, but was inspired by Tim Krekel, a compatibly idiosyncratic
music biz lifer (he contributed an intricately comfortable version of
"Version City" to The Sandinista! Project, which mad comp coutained
enough country to make a previous Scene ballot). They were set to do a
set of duets, when he was diagnosed with cancer, and died three months
later. Chapman was floored, but the completed Big Lonesome rolls on,
through many sensuous shades of blue The opening title track is a
companionably speculative duet, the only studio duet they completed
apparently (an equally fluid and compact live duet closes the album).
Then, she's left looking "Down To Mexico", staring at the distance
they were gonna travel together, to record in San Miguel. She repeats
a few lines, then it sounds like she's beginning to see the way, the
route still there, the possibilties of what they had planned, and
glimpsed together. So she gets up, starts to move, groove cautiously
at first, but persistently, gathering momentum, in the sultry
nocturnal atmosphere of the track.
And this really sets the tone, way before we get to her Hank cover:
"The silence of a falling star/Lights up the purple sky". Hank
reportedly had doubts about "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", wondered if
he'd gotten carried away with the imagery, but Chapman wisely doesn't
try to follow his formidable vocal delivery, she keeps it more
conversational and late in the set, re-affirming what she trusts we
can feel. And she trusts the music, mostly self-written, but recorded
with Will Kimbrough and others she'd never met before. Despite having
been out of recording for so long, she does that, and the sound is
sensuous release and relief of grief in life, in living. Its aesthetic
isn't prettification (no mention of angels that I've noticed, no
balloons released over the gravesite), it's also discipline, focus,
that kind of release and relief as well.
Plus a number of connections that fall into place, like in the live
duet, she mentions how she and Tim reached a stalemate in songwriting,
took a walk and came back to find a tree lying across their path. They
took this as a good omen, and finished their song. Also a song she
wrote by herself "Falling Through The Trees", which is more about
becoming aware, and that "falling star" of Hank's and the way
"believing in" chaos, entrophy etc also implicity involves things
sometimes falling into a good (though not nec. "better") place, like
this album. That's the beginning of "Riding with Willie", where she
comes up with her own variant of Nelsonic philosophy while observing
(she's usually pretty observant) Willie and Bobbie making music on the
bus, which surely fits with (and precedes) the final duet with Tim
(they were like brother and sister, kindred spirits with long-time
spouses, which also helps the album's balancing act). They Came To
Nashville, Chapman's newly collected profiles of and conversations
with fellow pilgrims, led her to complete "Riding", re: "Bobbie and
Willie play music all night/Songs long forgotten come to light/That's
the way I like it. " Anyway, Big Lonesome's no masterpiece, but it
makes a clear, strong impression that lingers, good to listen to while
thinking about it, and vice versa, unlike a number of albums better
for one or the other.
bonus track: double bill preview:
Icelandic singer/songwriter Olof Arnalds gently nudges folk-shaded
nostalgia toward fresh fascination,via breezes from her native turf of
volcanoes, glaciers, mud, and blown-out banks. She's also at home in
several languages,while covering tropicalia pioneer Caetano Veloso's
" Maria Bethania", a tribute to his equally restless sister, and
slipping through newly beveled levels of Springsteen's "I'm On Fire",
which begins with an easy familiarity, "Hey little girl, is your daddy
home?" She also favors the homely poise of country classics like
George Jones and Tammy Wynette's "We're Not The Jet Set", traveling
with the right feel even when picking it up second hand ("We're the
Prine and DeMent set"). Cheyenne Marie Mize nurtures lines like "I
knew we would see/It was all for the best", in a post-Americana ghost
town of explosive implications. She also grows narrative from
repetition, like Willie Nelson on a good night. That's where the
resemblance ends, fortunately.

Cinderella, Sweeping Up The Strobe

2010-12-08T10:29:00.001-06:00

UWeekly 12-01-2010
4Play
By Don Allred
Freelance Whales/Miniature Tigers
Friday @ The Basement
Indie art-pop kiddies Freelance Whales have been tagged as "twee",
but especially live, there's also something hard-nosed and practical
about the compact, levitating density of this former sidewalk/subway
platform band. Five-part harmonies infiltrate stringed instruments,
glockenspiels, drums and sustained keyboard chords, like the rowdy
ghost breezing through FW's debut album, "Weathervanes." Miniature
Tigers tenaciously swept love's ashes through the Phoenix-to-Hollywood
mirages of 2008's "Tell It To The Volcano", and showtime can bring
sharper focus to the stylish highlights of 2010's "Fortress."
Question Mark and the Mysterians/Professors
Saturday @ The Shrunken Head
"The shadows were all I had/Until you came into my life," garage
pioneer Question Mark drawls in "Got To." Whether or not his seemingly
fickle muse actually ended up crying "96 Tears", she definitely
inspired QMM's 1966 classics. The original combo still cogently mixes
punky, speedy blues with Motown-informed flow. Mysterians peers The
Professors are veterans of Central Ohio's Dantes, Dominions and Mods.
They cover the Stones, Beatles, Animals, even Dylan and the Byrds, in
sonic strobe lights.
Here Come The Mummies
Saturday @ Newport Music Hall
Here Come The Mummies are reputedly full-time members of other bands
plus first-call session players, keeping all contracted identities
literally under wraps. With a line-up averaging nine members, counting
the full horn section, their rich vocal and instrumental harmonies
evoke Senior Prom and pep rally resplendence, plus band bus attitude,
as satire and sheer exuberance get acquainted. Grown-up proficiency
rolls though elements of Ellington, Chicago, yacht rock and
Parliament-Funkadelic. Salty social commentary even celebrates limits
of originality, in expansively pungent perspective.
Buke & Gass
Tuesday @ Kobo
Buke is Arone Dyer, who sings and plays a plugged-in, customized
baritone ukelele, with added pick-ups and strings. She can
simultaneously play an Indian keyboard banjo, via some of her pedals.
Pedals (triggering home-grown electronic sources and kick drums, for
instance) are also employed by Gass, AKA Aron Sanchez, whose electric
bass's range is extended with guitar strings. Buke's youthful voice
and tunes swing confidence and anxiety through the emphatic momentum
of rough-edged, adventurously analytical acid-folk-rock. She's an
"achin' pagan," and a better-equipped Cinderella.

Post Yachts, Not Bills

2010-12-02T17:28:00.001-06:00

Columbus UWeekly 11-24-2010
4Play
By Don Allred
Times New Viking
Wednesday@ Carabar
True to the paisley punk tradition, Columbus-based trio Times New
Viking are art school drop-outs, who learned to play on stage and in
their own basement studio/fortress, at variously tested North Campus
addresses. TNV allow some of their most consistently intelligible
lines to spell out: ""I make the same mistake every day/I walk the
streets and say/'Everything will be all right!' " That's what seems to
rattle soulfully resonant structures persistently glimpsed through
traffic. Ditto, "I get nervous when I'm high."
Hot 17 Showcase
Saturday @ The Rumba Cafe
The Hot 17 is a new annual guide to Columbus' independent musicians,
featuring contributions by area writers and photographers. Tonight's
showcase presents cinematically dynamic art-pop sextet Karate Coyote,
plus garage pilgrims Mors Ontologica's unstoppably personal testimony
regarding the OSU-verse. Also, Low Men bracingly reel in "Forgotten
War" and other exported realities, while singer/songwriter Jason
Quicksall deftly deploys all the melodies, metaphors and rhythmic
strategies required to keep sight of himself as a moving target of
complex clarity.
Charles Walker Band/Stretch Lefty/Mojoflo
Saturday @ Skully's Music Diner
The Charles Walker Band specializes in danceable r&b, funk and blues,
with diva Porsche Carmon electrically conducting us through original
songs, from acerbic social commentary to astutely grooving ballads
.Also, saxophonist/keyboard player Walker leads a tidal surge through
Mississippi wizard Robert Johnson's "Stones In My Passway." Other
covers include James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing" and Hound Dog
Taylor's "Gimme Back My Wig." Columbus' Stretch Lefty and Mojoflo
compatibly add reggae and hip-hop to the brew.
Young The Giant
Monday @ Newport Music Hall
Young The Giant's self-titled debut album begins with the plausibly
self-observant spin of a mental romantic, venturing forth into a
balancing act of expansively taut tunes and quirky lyrics. Hit-wise,
YTG hopefully won't need their slide into post-yacht rock for
economically (and otherwise) inhibited, yet Red Bull-sipping sons of
the beach, antsy enough to fantasy dance. Even as such, they score
some good stuff, with subtly exotic instrumental vigor always
encouraging the singing mastermind to go for real-life gusto,
especially on stage.

Sketches Beneath the Underdog

2010-11-24T17:32:00.001-06:00

Columbus Independent UWeekly 11-17-2010
4Play
By Don Allred
Benise
Wednesday @ the Palace Theatre
Miles Davis's "Sketches of Spain" proved revelatory to young American
ears, conjuring connections made with Eastern music via North African
Moors' conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Nebraska kid Roni Benise
started his own global pop occupation of L.A. streets with performers
who sparked the genesis of his current stage saga, "The Spanish
Guitar." Singer-guitarist Benise travels through multi-media
evocations of Arabian deserts, ancient Indian Buddhist temples,
Havana's oldest streets, Brazil, Paris, Venice and (oh yeah) Spain.
Gorgeously versatile dancers best extend Benise's flamenco-centric
spin.

Bonded By Blood/Overkill/Gama Bomb/Forbidden
Wednesday @ Newport Music Hall
Having taken their name from an early 80s album by punk-influenced
thrash metal inspirations Exodus, BBB do their best to live up to
their chosen mission on "Exiled To Earth." Bobby Blitz's
indestructible wail heralds the no-frills thrills of Exodus peers
Overkill's 2010 "Ironbond." They're accompanied by sardonically
imaginative Irishmen Gama Bomb and even seldom-touring Forbidden,
whose "Omega Wave" queries whether Earth's final crisis isn't
culturally conditioned, self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortunately,
negative energy is still one rockin' resource

La Otracina
Thursday @ Carabar
Psychedelic power trio La Otracina believe in climate change. Drummer
Adam Kriney kicks off "Reality Has Got To Die " with the hearty cry,
"Hail fire!" It's the cue for us all to shed a little more skin, as
cold equations get fried and due processes get served another way of
rounding up usual and unusual suspects. Hungry young metal dinosaurs,
progressive cavemen, tasty classical comets, fluid druids and
jazz-rock schemes cruise boogie-blues convertible dreams through
wide-awake eyes and ears, on a star chart still being tattooed.

Adam Stephens/Felice Brothers
Friday @ The Rumba Cafe
Indie rockers Two Gallants' underdog persistence invigorates TG
co-leader Adam Stephens' solo album, "We Live On Cliffs." It's
elegantly distinctive, until soulfully bereft balladeer Stephens
starts illin' like a re-cycled Dylan. But compatibly with the real
Mr. D., Stephens can be cosmically/comically cranky and confessional ,
as his own muse steals him back for another last dance. The Felice
Brothers' streetwise Americana befits mountaineers who played the
subways in more ways than one. Check their self-titled debut and
"Yonder Is The Clock."

Carry Yourself

2010-11-17T10:05:00.000-06:00

Columbus Independent UWeekly
11-10-2010

4Play
By Don Allred

Brendan Benson/Posies
Wednesday @ Outland
Brendan Benson and the White Stripes' Jack White formed the
Raconteurs with members of Cincinnati's Greenhornes, determined to
shake their shared garage band roots free of stale nostalgia. On
Benson's solo album, "My Old, Familiar Friend", relationships rattle
chains and rainbows of 60s/00s style, as history and mystery go steady
and unsteady. Benson's currently backed by the Posies, whose own set
includes recent songs from "Blood/Candy." Their riverside reveries and
coded constellations take a sly, hungry look at sweet machines all
around us.
Pretty Lights
Thursday @ Bar of Modern Art
Pretty Lights is DJ/producer Derek Vincent Smith, traveling with
jazz/hip-hop drummer Adam Deitch. Smith seeded 2010 with metal
chestnut "Final Countdown", which becomes strenuously life-affirming
gospel science, right before J.J. Cale's "After Midnight" calmly
pursues Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider" over spinning borders. "Making
Up A Changing Mind" 's poetic distortion is no more paradoxical than
the blues, as a mutating sample spells out: "I know you been hurt/By
somebody else/I can tell by the way/You carry yourself."
The Blow with Melissa Dyne
Friday @ The Wexner Center
The Blow is Khaela Maricich, whose storytelling and indie art pop
songs grow through each other on stage, accompanied by environmental
artist Melissa Dyne's funky sound and vision system. It's a tricky
process, but that's the point, especially when electro-beats lure us
though the gleaming surfaces and dilating depths of her current album,
"Paper Television." Some plausibly outrageous scenes could overwhelm,
if The Blow didn't sound so innocently, inescapably observant and
hopeful.And though some too-trusted, overworked conceits don't reach
the beach, she keeps a close watch on "the thin line/Between love and
delusion."
Bottomless Pit
Sunday @ The Treehouse
Sharp lines find their way through the mellow undertow of baritone
guitar and bass, as post-punk veterans Bottomless Pit's lead player
Andy Cohen murmurs: "Backwoods in my blood/Sure as sitting ducks." The
swaggering, jagged "Summerwind" finds him hustling city slickers, and
such skills even discover new ways to deliver sincere messages like
"Kiss Them All For Me", though the meter's always running. Subtle
vocals suggest that BT is potentially a world-class backup band, so
all you budding rock gods better check them out.

Towering Inferno

2010-06-17T12:47:00.001-05:00

4Play
By Don Allred
unpublished, they dropped an issue oops
written for week beginning 6/16/2010
The Fiery Furnaces
Wednesday @ Outland
The Fiery Furnaces' "Rehearsing My Choir" was a soulfully microcosmic
pop collaboration of TFF's central siblings Matthew and Eleanor
Friedberger with their late grandmother, Olga Santoros. "Bitter Tea"
less challengingly served up Eleanor's more sultry tones, suggesting a
ruefully surviving Karen Carpenter. She held her own in "Widow City",
a folk-metal metropolis "drunk on wormwood." The Furnaces' current
"I'm Going Away" has Eleanor channeling the early, innocent fervor of
Smokey Robinson and Michael Jackson, simultaneously foreshadowing
later detours. Matthew's cinematically edited catchiness keeps
credibility crackling, as relationships burn on.

Baaba Maal
Wednesday @ Newport Music Hall
African singer Baaba Maal declares, "The musician's role is to give
advice, to warn people, and to make them aware." News you can use, not
so far from his take on TV: "A stranger…you don't care who he is…he
just seems to come from nowhere and gives you information." So
Brazilian Girls swirl in bittersweet bliss around "Television", the
magical title track of Maal's current set. Maal's an unblinking guide,
who also points out "A big balloon/Beside the moon" while an acoustic
guitar hovers eagerly near by.

JD Samson
Thursday @ Axis
JD Samson projects assurance and vulnerability. As DJ, producer,
keyboard player and singer, Samson's a natural performer, both solo
and with disco-punks Le Tigre and Men, plus dance-pop combo New
England Roses. "Credit Card Babies" critiques and empathizes with
straights and gays wanting kids, while Samson's wistful musing that
"It's not so hard/To make a heart" deftly implies a rhyme with "To
break a heart." She also mixes the kind of flamboyant dance music that
doesn't seem to need mixing, until you hear what she brings to it.

Robert Earl Keen
Tuesday @ Huntington Park
Texas singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen likes to mess with
comfortable materials. Verses keep flexing the context of his most
famous (and bumper sticker-ready) chorus, "The road goes on
forever/And the party never stops." Most of the songs on Keen's "The
Rose Hotel" also provide excellent points of departure for restless
guests. Even the citizen who nostalgically dwells on "Throwing Rocks"
with his country rock honey gets overtaken by events, smoothly
infiltrating and re-calibrating his sentiments and grooves. Vitality
rides with mortality, and a bunch of colorful maps.

Luaka Being and Boppingness

2009-07-12T21:33:00.002-05:00

Don Allred (longer version of prev. published Voice piece)
Is "Ponta De Lanca Africano (Umbabarauma)" really about where slaves
arrived in Brazil? Or did I just expand a mental legend over the
years, trying to explain and contain the unsettling, unsettled poise
and expanse of Jorge Ben's rolling, grinding samba soul classic?
Literally, it's about soccer, but the key line "um ponta de lan a
Africano" doesn't match the title ("Point of the African Lance",
ouch!), and the line's translation---"an African point man" (also "Um
ponta de lan a decidio", " A man whose mind is made up")—is pretty
pointed too. Word to Brazil's 60s junta, and to its polite society,
which has long tended to insist that Brazilians aren't hung up on
race. But it sounds like big Ben's got all of the above and something
else on his mind, that he's listening to, listening for. Sounds like
he's still listening.
The restless example of Ben (who could have played it safe, with
respectably salt-of-the-earth pop star status established early)
further schooled Beleza Tropical, the reputation-making debut release
on Luaka Bop, the New York City label founded by David Byrne in 1988
Beleza… arrived like a ship from post-bossa nova Brazil, mostly filled
with discreetly fabulous and accomplished descendants of the
tale-telling, refugee gamesters in Boccaccio's Decameron. The crew of
Beleza… can mostly be ID'd as members and fellow travelers of the '60s
Tropicalia movement, who had been exiled or isolated because of
cultural activities that the junta found excessively international,
frivolous and otherwise weird. They grew up, in no small measure by
sharpening their wits while whetting their appetites. Intelligent
pleasure heads can learn, don't have to burn just yet. That was
Boccaccio's word to his plague- and power- (incl. pietism) ravaged
age, and maybe Byrne's word to the somewhat similar '80s. But you
could also say that both were savvy children of their ages'
enterprising spirit. Byrne also seems related to Chaucer, a fan of
Boccaccio, when, at its best, Luaka Bop's signature sound pipe-dreams
a cannily recycled/extended Canterbury Tales, bringing the Decameron's
isolated yarn-spinners onto the magical mercantile Yellow Brick Road,
the beginning of the world as we know it.
So, with that non-absolutist, live-and-let-earn sentiment in mind,
it's perfectly imperfectly okay that Ben's massively credible "Ponta…"
point man kicks off Luaka Bop's 15-track celebratory retrospective,
Twenty First Century Twenty First Year, by landing re-fine-tuned ears
on the mega-hyped, funk-lite balcony that Shuggie Otis built. Luaka
Bop meant to demonstrate that resurrection was for Americans too, so
Otis's 1974-recorded Inspiration Information was rescued from
collectors-only obscurity, and the bargain bin, and record show
prices. Anyone could slip on the listening bar's headphones, and dig
how Otis played all the instruments in his nice niche, just so his
shaky little voice could go "Aht Uh Mi Hed," as Twenty First Century's
second track's new third life still tells the tale. He's leaning far
out into purple keyboard clouds of what should be ease, but with a bee
in his bonnet. He's listening to it, wanting something more.
By "more," Shuggie might not have in mind "Fuzzy Freaky", by
David Byrne (who has now departed LB). As placed here by compiler
Justin Carter, it must be especially harrowing for those who thought
Byrne would make Luaka Bop just successful enough to fatally
misrepresent the artists he re-issued, reducing them to warm 'n' fuzzy
li'l furriners--and/or Tee-Headsy, novelty nibbles around the edges of
edginess.(He reportedly named his label for a Sri Lankan tea, Luaka
Black Orange Pekoe; its own label was made to fold into "BOP", like
so. The quaint horror, the quaint horror!) In this proud parody of
Heads-era Byrne's fly-eyed, jittery white guy persona, the guy learns
to dance, in a truly foreign/alien way, and celebrates with a lithe,
blithe self-nibble ("It's my body, and I'll eat it too"). Simmer down
now!
The gently avid grazing sounds of the Byrne thing recall LB's
recent collection of tracks by Brazilian teen prodigy Yonlu, who made
music on his computer, with some acoustic instruments and local
environmental stuff mixed in. He posted his process for several years,
building up quite an online fanbase, before committing suicide, in a
forum. There's an undertone of sadness, eventually foregrounded, in
short but roomy, mostly-instrumental early tracks.Despite this, and
even despite the title, (added by whomever), A Society In Which No
Tear Is Shed, he seemsno more morbid than many an adolescent. Sound's
spare vs. sparse, to some extent, though he can sing like Veloso, and
the last track def. lives up to some listeners' Nick Drake
comparisons, as a tiny craft cruises the top end of twilight,
gracefully. The insular dedication here, of artist and producers,
carefully bring Yonlu's musical mobiles from where he left them, with
no gratuitous portents of presentation. Judging from this, it seems
that Yonlu always did share the overall LB aesthetic, of obsessive
work, times pleasure/relief/release/respite-seeking, with and in the
outer world of sound, as much as could be stood.
Marcio Local spends more time in that outer world, where he's
laying back on a moving fender, while delivering "Samba Sem Nenhum
Problema"("Samba With No Problem") to Twenty First
Century….Ironically, considering its truthful tag, it's arriving from
his excellent but tiresomely-titled new set, Marcio Local Says Don Day
Don Dree Don Don. But that labored label kinda signifies too, insofar
as the Local lad is listening hard to his reverie of how Ben-style
samba soul should be, this very afternoon. Listening 'til he hears his
cue, somewhere in the drum corps, Stax riffing horns, 'shroom clouds
of percussion, guitar, etc Then he yelps an acrobatic riff, from way
back behind the afternoon parade across his mirror shades, as he
darts through the traffic again. He's timing it so he won't get run
over (upstaged) by the very ongoing tradition getting a re-charge in
his own song. And indeed, Local's afterbuzz holds its own even as
Venezuelan boogie knights Los Amigos Invisibles, Cuban jazz salts
Irakere, and vintage African funk's Moussa Doumbia successively
possess the rare-groovological students' graduation procession of
self-expression. (Also new on LB: Los Amigos' Commercial scores big,
after first quarter's foreplay fumbles.)
(An unlisted, and oddly wobbly, off-brand, "Heart of Glass," by
Nouvelle Vague, drops ears off in "Valentin", Susana Baca's tensely
glistening Afro-Peruvian ballad, which is already
attracting/distracting a traveler who's arrived bearing a big stick.
Keep listening, follow the other guest via translated lyrics on the
label site, but don't turn around.)
Twenty First also flashes several mesmerizing songs about tuning
(and perhaps turning) into your car. American Steely-Police heads
Geggy Tah are eternally ecstatic about changing lanes, while merging
with the radio. (It worked! "Whover You Are" was Luaka Bop's biggest,
least-obviously-recognizable-as LB-product, mid-'90s micro-hit!) Jim
White, who was all about driving cabs 'til Luaka Bop called him back
to the grooveways of recordland, also settles deeply into "Static On
The Radio", cruising through the lilting, twanging shadow of all
doubts. He keeps murmuring, "Ah know…", and that trailing off is the
cue for his fare, guest ghost Aimee Mann, to resume
elaborating/decomposing her zombie-chant refrain.
All such slipstream profiles disappear with the rainlight, as
attention (having stepped through Tom Ze's "Defect: Curiosidade", a
speculative windshield patiently hovering over this Tropicalista
Prospero's upriver junkyard island) is face to face with the sunny,
free-style smile of Os Mutantes' Rita Lee, singing "Baby" in 1970, and
at the close of this set. When she exclaims, "We live in the biggest
city, of South America!", every tunneling music geek in the world
sees the light, just as she leads the way out of the shiny, shivery
frame that Luaka Bop can't help trying to save/re-re-issue her in.
"Look here…look what I wrote on my shirt." Yeah babe. Byrne on!

Erasing With The Moon

2009-06-26T23:37:00.001-05:00

From last night: Frank Kogan re the late Michael Jackson:
http://koganbot.livejournal.com/148701
And what he wrote a few years back ("The Man In The Distance")
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0148,kogan,30266,30266,22.html
People of the future: Voice links change, so you may have to search
on their site.

A note on your account

2008-09-16T14:03:00.001-05:00

Renminbi is led by guitarist-vocalist Lisa Liu, and her group is named
for Chinese currency, which makes our maxxed-out world go 'round (so far).
Appropriately, on Renminbi's first full-length
album,"The Phoenix," voices and lyrics are distant distress signals,
carried along by the melodic sweep, swoop, and crash of guitar, drums,
and synthesizer (no bass guitar needed, not with the incisive shadings
of SMV's keyboards). About half the tracks are instrumentals, but they
all bring the sound of your strongest doubts, faintest beliefs, and
vice-versa, into a butt-thumping, well-timed (though obsessive)
post-punk workout. don allred

Marseille Express, Denver spur

2008-08-11T12:23:00.001-05:00

m. le bOB Flaneur writes:

greetings, Fellow Earthlings!

Just two weeks ago I myself surfaced here:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/travel/03surfacing.html

The 6-hour trip from Brussels on the "Train of Great Speed" passes
through the God-Part of Lion and X-in-the-Province (I'm translating
here for your convenience) before it reaches its final destination.

As cities go, Marseille is delightfully BRUTAL: in terms of port-town
grunginess, parts are way beyond Rotterdam and Antwerp, falling
somewhere between Thessaloniki and the west side docks of Manhattan.
Even the women speak French with a kind of tough-guy accent. When I'd
mentioned to various people that I'd be going to Marseille, a couple
of them reacted as though I'd said I was going to vacation in Newark.
Now I know why.

The guidebooks and newspapers and travel websites call it "France's
most cosmopolitan city". The adjective is a code-word, however: Paris
is obviously the most cosmopolitan. What Marseille is, is the most
racially integrated. On the one hand, some tell me that the North
Africans there are mostly Algerians (unlike Brussels, where most of
the North Africans are Moroccan Berbers which, strictly speaking, even
makes them non-Arabs). On the other hand, I've also heard and surmised
that in Marseille they seem to have come from all over -- Algeria,
Morocco, Tunisia, also Egypt, and also some Lebanese (who no doubt
feel some affinity, since the place was supposedly first settled by
the Phoenicians 2600 years ago) -- basically, everywhere around the
Mediterranean where the French had some kind of colonial presence.

But mention must be made of the Greeks in all this, since they were
the ones responsible for the expansion from a trading post to an
actual port and the actual planning of the city: this accounts for
the presence of Greek surnames among families in Marseille to this
day, some traceable back to the original settlers, and it also
accounts for my feeling uncanny similarities between some of the
dodgier hillside neighborhoods in Marseille and the working-class
residential quarters up the hill from the port in Thessaloniki.

Since the Arabs began arriving not long after World War II, even
before Algerian independence, most of those now in Marseille are
totally assimilated -- which in France also means impeccably groomed
and dressed. It's somewhat startling, like the Arab version of being
in a Texas town where half the population looks like Alberto Gonzalez
and Jennifer Lopez.

Also, rather fewer Africans in Marseille than I expected. In Brussels
they're mostly Congolese, whereas I got a sense that in Marseille most
come from Senegal.

By the morning of Day 2, I already caught on to the HUGE number of
mixed-race couples: Arabs with Europeans, Europeans with Blacks, Arabs
with Blacks. It got to a point where I would see an ethnically mixed
couple with a stroller approaching and I'd try to guess what their kid
would look like. Ergo, the ethnic mix that Marseille is currently
undergoing must be like that of New Orleans and the Caribbean two
centuries ago.

The food is a chapter unto itself. It lived up to one's expectations
of being in France, but you do have to seek out the right stuff. I
spent a huge part of Sunday afternoon and part of Sunday evening
wandering (and lounging) around the Cours Julien neighborhood
highlighted in the NYTimes article, and damn if I could find a place
that was open on a Sunday, not closed for vacation, with a cook on the
premises.

I had bouilliabaise twice. The first encounter was in a tourist-trap
restaurant where what they served up bore as much resemblance to the
real thing as a platinum-wigged transvestite hooker does to Marilyn
Monroe. The second time I dropped by a place patronized by locals one
generation older than me. The bleached-blonde MILF Arab waitress
cheerfully read the description of the joint in my copy of the Lonely
Planet, yelled out the gist of it to the cook in back, who approved,
and then in order to recommend other places for bouilliabaise she
quickly marked at least 8 other addresses in the gastronomical section
of my guidebook. And if what they treated me to was merely their
everyday run-of-the-mill offering, I'd love to return some evening
with three other people and order up a big batch with at least 7
varieties of fish and shellfish.

HUGE percentage of assimilated-Arab staff in Marseille restaurants of
all classes. It's funny to walk into a place, inquire as to the plat
du jour, and have a flawlessly clad, steamy-sexy Arab woman make
unfaltering eye contact with you and enumerate the specials of the day
and their most notable ingredients in perfectly enunciated French and
a tone of steely utter seriousness. When it comes to food in France,
there's no room for kidding around.

As tourists in other places, the French have acquired a pretty bad
rep. I recently saw an article reporting the results of a French-run
poll for some travel publication, and they were the most consistently
disliked by other countries when they're tourists there. HOWEVER: in
the course of a couple days, I figured out why:

After my experiences in Central and Eastern Europe, and the sullen,
indolent indifference usually demonstrated by Belgian service
personnel, in Marseille I was amazed. The sudden shift in diet
(morning espresso instead of tea, very few dairy products, etc)
necessitated some unscheduled trips to the loo, and on several
occasions people let me use their WC even when it was clear that I
wasn't going to be a paying customer. (Of course, using a public
toilet in France is an adventure in itself, but never mind.) I walked
into a pharmacy because I needed to check a phone number & address,
and the woman behind the counter retrieved their phone directory from
the back with no complaint -- whereas in other countries, the staff
would huffily claim that they don't have one and send you on your way.

And therefore, when they go abroad, the French probably (quite
reasonably) expect service personnel to be equally accommodating and
efficient.

If you're ever there, pray that it's not a summer day when the fog
accumulated overnight just hangs over the city: worse than mere
mugginess, it's essentially a fetid, airborne mix of mildew and algae.
Every city in Europe has its characteristic odor that's at its worst
in the summer; Marseille's is like a tropical shower stall or hammam
that hasn't been cleaned for three weeks. But when it does clear, the
sea air is most salubrious. You can get a sense of all the balmy
gemutlichkeit by having a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Marseille

And in conclusion, some literary notes:

I wish to set the record straight: recently, when I identified various
influences on my GASTRONOMICAL HAIKU and cited GEORGES BATAILLE, I did
*not* have in mind the early 20th-century
surrealist-socialist-pervert, but rather the well-known contemporary
traiteur in Marseille who is mentioned on these webpages, par exemple:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE1DA133AF933A15756C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3

http://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/em/casebouffepas/index.php?id=28960

On my next trip to Marseille, I will be going with the stated purpose
of researching a potential remix-remake-remodel of this story:
http://www.wbenjamin.org/story.html

Finally, if any French Symbolist poet were to ever try to claim that
Marseille is a great place to die, the guy wouldn't have a leg to
stand on. ;)

Mark Sinker respondez:
I *love* Marseille -- it's the most exciting city I've ever been in
(admittedly I was travelling with the most exciting woman I know, back when
she wasn't safely coupled up with a er er very sweet young fellow boo bah).
You can feel the crackle of 2500 years of negotiating the multi-cultural
shove and pushback, and the physical geography reflect it: it's a big bowl
of a place, the twoerblocks marching off up the semi-distant mountains, with
knobs of volcanic rock punching up through the plain, every single on built
on for centuries, AND the whole lot riddled beneath with a crumbling
rats-maze of catacombs. Vick tried to by a house there -- the first someone
said to her, "This is house is TAKEN" very meaninfully (meaning gangsters
were kindly letting her know she should look elsewhere); the first the town
surveyor said "Well, it's a lovely house, but it could fall thorugh the
crust of this rise into the underground Roman ruins AT ANY MINUTE, so I
can't approve the pruchase)
. Frank Kogan adds (in response to M. Le F.'s PS:
I thought of you when I looked at the NYTimes site this morning and saw
this:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/travel/10Hours.html )

"Be grateful that about the only species not represented in the form of
taxidermy on the walls (or the menu) of Buckhorn Exchange, billed as Denver's
oldest restaurant, is the donkey (1000 Osage Street; 303-534-9505;
www.buckhornexchange.com). Here, steak can be ordered by the pound, about
$45 per."

My friend Mara works there! (But I've never been to the place, my weekly
food budget itself being about $45.)

As the article itself demonstrates, tourist offerings in the city are pretty
slim. Most tourists who come through here are on their way to the Rockies.
Good zoo and good botanical gardens, however. And the baseball stadium is
thought of highly, though I've never been in it.

Also, of the four cities I've lived in (Rome, New York, and San Francisco
being the other three), Denver is by far the least integrated.

I read a NY Times article six months or so ago about ethnic relations in
Marseille, the thesis of the article being that civic leaders there make
ethnic understanding and peace a high priority, and have been by and large
successful.

Harvey Milk's ancient and new school

2008-06-15T16:49:00.001-05:00

Athens GA's "Dirge Lords" Harvey Milk's new Life...The Best Game In
Town is indeed movin' slow as Uncle Joe at the station. And too much
so. At times. It seems. But. Then. There. Is. This:

The infernal night wind of "Skull Sock And Rope Shoes" bumps hanging
gardens against the ziggaraut, as if demanding entrance to the sealed
heart of mercy; and the desert is so dry it comes walking like a man
into the city of storms, seeking a drop this golem can actually feel;
though chiromancers rain lightning, still he sways! Til falls through
the white light of Milk--and is reborn as "Motown," tip-toeing,
stomping wine from the decline of the mighty Mississip'--no lie, this
is Southern Rock 2008 A.D., the great Southern migration to and from
Motor Murder City and thus(bobbing up in the wake of "We Destroy The
Family") kinda sweet: "So I'm almost growwwn, and I mus' sleep
aloooone"--cast from thee bosom of thy family? Hold fast bwah, it's
only forever! don allred

Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Boys? (Briefly Noted)

2008-04-04T23:59:00.005-05:00

I'm more than pleasantly surprised by most of A Tribute To Blind
Alfred Reed. I'd heard a few of his own tracks, like on Harry Smith's
Smithsonian Anthology Of American Folk Music, and mainly remembered
them as quaintly charming, in a preachy way. But the A-List Nashville
cats (several of whom have played on Dylan's Nashville sets, as far
back as Blonde On Blonde) and Public Radio/folkie-circuit mainstays
start right out kidding the moralism, honestly commenting (rather than
pretending to share his strictures), and really they're honoring the
songs with that response, and also by bringing out , rather than
injecting, the catchier, blues-rag-para-vaudville implications. Reed
knew he had to compete with Jimmy Rodgers, after all, balancing
between different audience factions' concerns with authenticity and
pop (Ry Cooder's liner notes provide some background, and although
Cooder himself doesn't play on this, Nat Reese's guitar grind, slip
and grind on "Black And Blue Blues" reminds me of what young Ry
brought to Captain Beefheart's blues, as the surreal, thump 'n' shift
of the words' impact also preceeds Beefheart). Some artists do play
the piety dead serious; most effective is Larry Groce's electric "You
Must Unload," which what Slow Train Comin'-era Dylan was going for
(this is more succinct: dropping that load is what you got a trapdoor
for). Connie Smith and Marty Stuart keep the mountains and the tears
rippling along too, Kathy Mattea does things with pills and sugar, and
the Carpenter Ants bear it way—doesn't always work, but even the
lesser stuff moves on eventually, as all things must (Oh yeah, and
"The Telephone Girl" is an ancestor of Internet angels, and Ann
Magnuson overdubs herself into a Lily Tomlinesque, deadpan-twangin'
missionary chorus line on "Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls"—and like I
said, Blind Alfred folded in whatever earthly entertainment value
would get him and his message in the door—like some of my ancestors
were a girl gospel quartet/acrobatics team, in that same time and
space) (On Proper American, fittingly enough.)
Another wayfaring homeboy, Ed Sanders, has recently 'llowed Collectors
Choice Music to recycle Sanders' Truckstop and Beer Cans On The Moon.
The first, from 1970, is usually described as hippie parodies of
country folk, but Sanders was from Oklahoma before the Lower East
Side, and it's more the banana-peel ass-speck of all human existence
that he celebrates and commiserates with here. "Jimmy Joe, The
Hippybilly Boy" won't leave them hills of OK cuz he loves 'em, he's
the peacenik side of Ed (goes back to save one drowning soul too many,
gets his groovy long hair wrapped around the rear-view mirror) while
the illin' Johnny Pissoff of "The Illiad" is a bloody-minded Ed that
mighta been if he'd stayed in the sticks, isolated and righteous.
Really it's about 1969/1970, the napalm and other smog that blurs
roles, and leaves several horny wraiths waltzing through the crash
pads and round the mountain, with "Banshee," "Breadtray Mountain,"
"Homesick Blues" and "They're Cutting My Coffin At The Sawmill"
particulary worthy of the Holy Modal Rounders, others more like
Working Man's Dead, though Deadpan Ed should have gone for more takes on some
of the vocals (according to Richie Unterberger, who provides extensive
notes, including quotes from unfavorable reviews, in the booklets of
both CDs, Sanders' Truck Stop employs drummer/sometime pianist John
Ware and bassist John Ware, both from Linda Ronstadt's band, when
she'd left the Stone Ponys but was still promoting that hit version of
Michael Nesmith's "Different Drum," and these same guys soon joined
Nesmith's First National Band; plus, David Bromberg, Patrick Sky, Jay
Unger, "and, on steel guitar and banjo, Bill Keith, who'd been in
Bill Monroe's group and Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band, " but a pretty
lean, flexible sound). Beer Cans On The Moon came out in 1972, and is more
topical at times, but resists datedness with all sorts of little
twists in the vocals, words, tunes, and arrangements (music is more
varied, and includes a guy from Woody Herman's band, as well as Jake
Jacobs, who had played on some Fugs tracks; his own band, Jake & The
Family Jewels, released The Big Moose Calls His Baby Sweet Lorraine,
with a sweet, croony cover of "When Will I Believed" which I was
floating through 'til Cannonball Ronstadt's version blasted me towards
taking refuge with Patti Smith and Television's early work. Just as
well, it was time to wake up and move on, I guess? ).Meanwhile, back
on Beer Cans, the split between idealism and satire is more apparent
now, also its entanglement, esp. when Ed wishes everyone a "Six-pack
of Sunshine" while beating his head against a wall (but also spouting
some lovely lines), and sitting "in a geodesic honky-tonk"on the title
track, right about the time the whole universe is turning into the poor side o' town.
"Yodeling Robot" 's electric autoharp bounces like particles, while
trad. country's keep-a-goin' formalism is honored by said robot,
hopelessly but stoically in love with Dolly Parton, 'cos "I-yern eyes,
can-not cry." "Henry Kissinger" sounds like the Irish
alderman/slumlord on that album I reviewed in Voice last year,
McNally's Row Of Flats. "Albion Craigs" is a funky
almost-gospel-reggae setting for William Blake. It's all Ed, for sure
(Not Pavoratti, not Dylan, and not the Fugs, but the kinda good when
it's good that you can't get anywhere else, given the quantity and quality of country-punkoid Ed herein--
unless it's on for
instance the countrier tracks on the Fugs' The Belle Of Avenue A,
which I haven't heard). Don Allred

The Record to Beat in '08

2008-03-10T00:26:00.002-05:00

Cat Power's Jukebox. I used to find her tiresome, but she's not
overplaying the waif card here, even though this probably her most
romantic album, her most truly atmospheric, because in order to have
an atmosphere, you gotta have gravity, from the right substance in the
spin. Every time the music starts, her voice first reaches me as a dry
ice smoke ring 'round the moon, over the shining spine of historee
(great and good old and newer songs coming together, and coming up in
just a minute) with a vivid poise that keeps her from sounding too
earnest: it's just the right, sensuous sound (especially as it moves
through her musical companions' reverb, echo and grooves) for her
cosmic quest, for romantic and spiritual fulfillment. ( Janis Joplin
answered, when asked what Today's Youth are looking for: "Sincerity,
and a good time." Hey hay hey.) The confidence as well as
sensitivity—so of course "New York New York," with just a simple
adjustment of its seatbelt, should have this tensile lope and sway,
backbeating right past Radio City rinky-tink, with ingenue still in
tow/charge. She's totally at home with the Dirty Dozen Blues Band,
especially drummer Jim White, of the Dirty Three and recent,
noteworthy collabs with Nina Natashia; Judah Bauer of the Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion(! But he does not play no fratblooze here) is also
aboard (with Eric Papparozzi on bass and Greg Foreman's keyboards),
but this little combo is less like a blues band is usually expected to
be, more like rockers who have learned much from the Hi Rhythm
Section, in terms of taut, spare punctuation and momentum, fitting
Chan Marshall's vibrant reveries perfectly (the one time she holds
back a bit, seemingly getting lost, on "A Woman Left Lonely,"
Foreman's electric piano tremolo gets more emphatic, rallying her,
appropriately for a song about a woman who's coming back from
rejection). The sequence of tracks is very effective: after "New York
New York," Hank Williams' "Ramblin Man" is recast as "Ramblin' Woman,"
and the original's melodramatic, spooked compulsion is tempered by a
certain expansiveness: she knows this kind of journey is where she's
meant to be, not that it doesn't matter who and what she finds. A new
version of her "Metal Heart" follows, with a confrontation, a note to
self and other, that steadfastness , mettle and "metal" is in the
sound, not heavy metal, but the electricity moving through natural
elements, 20th Century engine-uity revving up again in these old
songs, which sound as timely as ever. The sleek, starlit,
meta-metal's also there in Lee Clayton's "Silver Stallion" which
practical-minded Cowgirl Chan leads from mythology or decoration, out
into her own prospects, and "Aretha" is wistfully, unpretentiously
invoked, to re-inspire her lover and herself, also (as repeated
listenings reward), I think of this as prefiguring later songs, as I
relate it to Dylan's line from Tarantuala, "Aretha, crystal jukebox
queen (the album's title from this?), I shall play you as my trump
card." I think of that because I know she'll reach Dylan's own "I
Believe In You," with Bauer accentuating the Stonesy riff with which
Dylan foresaw "Start Me Up," and White's drum leaps develop a hip hop
cast, kicking off the mud of a town through which one proud outcast
searches for another. Marshall's own "Song For Bobby, " reminiscing
about various near-misses with the Master, could easily be gushy, but
she's even too grown-up for that now. She strikingly connects
Dylanesque phrasing to Billie Holiday's, on the latter's "Hush Now
(Don't Explain)," reminding me of D. 's description of his later songs
as "overlapping phrases on an electrical grid," the overlapping of
expression and reticence, austerity and warmth in the shadows. Which
is also where the hope and fear meet in, Jessie May Hemphill's "Lord
Help," just as "We're all reborn, to face the morning sun." Uh, and so
on, with some surprises: I didn't even recognize Joni Mitchell's
passive-aggressive self-pity/guilt-tripping you-dumped-me classic,
"Blue," at first, cos Chan doesn't imitate her at all! Not even in
this age of girly-swirly chamber folk, not at all (and the band's just
bumpin' at the walls of the break-up, you know it'll all work out as
it should or will). This girl is a woman now! (But not too scary with
it.) ------Don Allred

Speculations,Notes on Three Songs of the Year (07)

2008-02-16T23:09:00.001-06:00

SPECULATIONS, NOTES ON THREE SONGS OF THE YEAR (07)

Robert Wyatt's "Cancion de Julieta": built on, travels on an upright
bass riff, which carefully adjusts itself, then tilts forward, like a
rocking horse that almost gets stuck on a surreal extention of a bent
(fifth?) some blues note or I should say blu-u-ues note, groaning a
little, deliberately distended, before the last note, before
therocking horse pilgrim tilts back into place. And Wyatt sings the
same melisma, much higher, like a little old man with a hole in his
head and the air pushing out and in, which is true of course, like a
little old man in a poem or a play, under the radar or trying to be
that way, in his mask (from Comicopera, and Wyatt explains he means
that album's title in the oldest school sense, the other side of
tragedy, but useful, a working piece of uniform), his parody, with the
well-timed well-pulled tear in his blues, giving just enough pause to
the listener (and even a sympathetic listener can stop listening if
the music seems too familiar, like this track never does; I keep
listening to hear what happens next, even though I "basically" or
schematically know, but it's the feeling of the listening experience
that matters here, like it always should). Also, it's not just a mask
etc in the defensive sense, or defensive in the wait for 'em to come
at you sense; the little old rocking horse rider isn't just finding
away to keep his place, he's somehow pushing forward, each repetition
of the basic riff brings some other sounds too, which suggest he's
breaking into something, pushing forward, into wreckage, the hull of a
galleon maybe (kind of an underwater moonlit quality). The bass player
is also using his bow, and overdubbing violins, scrabbling at the
push, in the push. (Wyatt also plays some kind of keyboard,
percussion, pocket trumpet, all in the arc and pull and push of the
sway of the note). "Un mar de sue-eh-eh, no. Un mar de tierra blanca,"
so not just aquatic and doesn't just sound aquatic, but like he's
entering the water, rocking back and forth and farward. Just another
sleepwalker? They can do a lot. Leading where all listeners might be
led toward making their own connections, if they want, to any possible
deeper waters. Either way, the song will keep going (not too earnest,
no time for that). It's just the damndest track, is all, first listen
every listen.
Sort of with the same effect is Ultra Living's version of Ornette
Coleman's "Skies of America." Composed for symphony orchestra, here
it's transcribed in 6/8 for three-part harmonies of guitars, then
saxes; bass and drums come to lead the way, eventually, maybe always.
Nothing like any Prime Time track I've heard, although to play
Ornette's themes you have to use his pitches, so to that extent sounds
like him, but the guitars are fuller, more detailed in texture than
Prime Time, and more single-minded than Blood Ulmer's playing with
Ornette, but they do have some of Blood's rattling, once they stick
it in. The saxes have a hard-won fatalism that gets dirgey at one
point, but keeps building poise without letting go of any blues, or
going bravura on us (well not too much). Not just about paying those
dues and maintaining your gnarly cool though, because the bass and
drums, like the opening guitars, are gouging steps in the side of
something, a ravine, judging by the size and shape of echo.
Engagement, and roughness and enlightment and skills chopping
roughness, finding its own way forward, like Wyatt's song. (This one
is from an Anthology Recordings reissue of Ultra Living's
Transgression, first released in 2000.)
Zigmat's "Turn Out," from their self-titled, self-released debut,
also finds its own way forward, maybe toward the edge or center or far
wall of another ravine. Female vocalist and new wave combo, but they
seem to have learned what Blondie once knew from 70s crossroad of
arena (call it metal emphasis, more than rhetoric) punk, disco and
pre-disco girl drama—not "diva," she sounds plainer than that, not
"girl group," not much overdubbed harmonies, she's alone. She's
blurting out her story, and I find it hard to keep up, but got some
sense of it the first time that keeps me going with her, trying to put
together something that's way too clear to her: starts out muttering
about "couture," a chance to work, "a glimpse, a spark," she sounds
avaricious for, "Another chance to start, another mistake," but at
least another, not just one more of the same. But the work she's got
"cut cut cut cut turn it out, you know I wish I was cured, I wish I
was cured! (Turn on turn on turn out.) You make me feel assured. (Turn
on turn on turn out.)" Sounds like she's reading directions aloud on
the paren parts, in contrast to louder, earnest, desperate phrases.
"Assured," as pronounced here, is an implied play on "asheared," as in
"cut," asssheared," she's a sheep for a pimp who's assuring her and
turning her out like she turns out the couture? Is she whoring for the
clothes? But she also is distressed that his parents and sibs are
alarmed by her, and she speaks at times like he's her meat, or her
salvation, or both, another drug.The accent figures in too (class, and
musical associations, with Miami Freestyle as well as the above, so
enough diva for that, skills-wise) Sort of A Place In The Sun, and
she's Latina cross-projection of poor-boy, disorientingly elevated
Cinderfella Montgomery Clift, and his problematic factory girl? (For
some out-of-his-depth/put-upon preppy pimp who's also running the
family garment business?) She seems way more trouble than that,
because maybe dangerous only to herself, or maybe not. But something's
got to give, like something's got to get. These are songs in flight,
but finding, gathering their own measures of resolution, of
confrontation, while so much music runs in place, bumping against the
padding of pattern mining, in performance and listening: I know you
rider, just get along now. These songs won't settle for that, and
won't let me wave them by either. Their game is "CATCH!"
Don Allred

2008-02-03T00:11:00.001-06:00

DON ALLRED'S NASHVILLE SCENE COUNTRY BALLOT 2007
(with Comments Pt. 1)

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2007
(Just in the order they come to mind)
1. Elana James: Elana James (Snarf)

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0720,tracker_writer,76272,.html

2. Jason Isbell: Sirens of the Ditch (New West)

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0737,tracker_writer,77190,.html

3. Charlie Louvin: Charlie Louvin (Tompkins Square)
4. Amy LaVere: Anchors & Anvils (Archer)
5. Various Artists: Endless Highway: The Music of the Band (429/SLG)
6. Oakley Hall: I'll Follow You (Merge)
7. Bettye LaVette: Scene of the Crime (Anti-) (see comments below)
8. Drakkar Sauna: Jabraham Lincoln (Marriage)

http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=505

9. Protest Hill: The City Echoes Our Hearts (Latest Flame) http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=653

10. Pam Tillis: Rhinestoned (Stellar Cat/Thirty Tigers)

TOP TEN SINGLES OF 2007
1. Johnny Bush and Willie Nelson: "Send Me The Pillow You Dream On" (Icehouse) (comments below)
2. Speck Mountain: "Girl Out West" (Burnt Brown)

http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=984

3. The Mendoza Line: "Tougher Than The Rest" (Glurp)
4. Gary Allan "Watching Airplanes" (MCA Nashville)
5. Bobbie Nelson: "Down Yonder" (Justice) (see comments below)
6. Carrie Underwood: "Flat on the Floor" (Arista)
7. Dwight Yoakam: "(I Don't Care) Just As Long As You Love Me" (New West)
8. Blue Cheer: "Young Lions in Paradise" (Rainman)
9. Life On Earth!: "After A Few Years We Settled Down, Got Kids and
Bought Our First Car" (Subliminal Sounds)

http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=840

10. The Raincoats: "Monk Chant" (Play Loud!) http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0724,allred,76904,22.html

BEST REISSUES:
1. Various Artists: Schultze Gets the Blues: Original Soundtrack
(Normal/Filmkombinat import)
2. Arthur Alexander: Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter (HackTone)(comments below)
3. Ananda Shanka: Ananda Shankar And His Music (Fallout)(comments below)
4. The Staple Singers: The 25th of December (Riverside)(comments below)
5. Various Artists: The Art of Field Recording Volume 1 (Dust-To-Digital)

MALE VOCALISTS:
1. Willie Nelson
2. Arthur Alexander
3. Gary Allan

FEMALE VOCALISTS:
1 Mavis Staples
2. Gretchen Lambert
3. Carrie Underwood

LIVE ACTS:

1. Willie Nelson
2. Michelle Shocked
3. Gretchen Lambert

BEST SONGWRITERS:

1. Jason Isbell

BEST DUO:
1. Drakkar Sauna

BEST GROUP:
1. Oakley Hall
2. The Sadies
3. Charlie Daniels Band

BEST NEW ACTS:
1. Speck Mountain
2. Sunny Sweeney
3. Fire On Fire (comments below)

Comments:
Honorable Mentions: Bobbie Nelson, AudioBiography (Justice); Johnny
Bush, Kashmere Gardens Mud (Icehouse); Charlie Daniels, Deuces (Koch);
Sadies, New Seasons (Yep Roc); Sunny Sweeney, Heartbreaker's Hall of
Fame (Big Machine); Various Artists, The Sandinista! Project
(Megaforce); Various Artists, Silver Monk Time: A Tribute to the Monks
(Play Loud!); Billie Holiday, Rare & Live Recordings: 1934-1959
(ESP-DISK) (comments on most of these follow)
Pisser: Ashley Monroe's Sony debut album, Satisfied, sent back for
fine-tuning, still unreleased, what, two years after the first or
perhaps last sessions? And somebody fumbled with her singles-- but
hopefully she's gotten some money from co-writing Carrie Underwood's
single, "Flat on the Floor," and Kellie Pickler's album track, "I'm
On My Way." Plus, she reports on her Myspace page that she's recently
written with or for Miranda Lambert, and indeed, "I have been writing
almost every day!" So maybe she'll be the next Matraca Berg or
Bobby/Bobbie Braddock, even if she doesn't get a chance to see how far
Satisfied's ghostown stalker-waif /diarist next door/grievous
hitchhiker-angel in the back of "Hank's Cadillac"might get, with an
officially issued ticket. ( Her good, if somewhat [appropriately]
subdued/abashed demo version of "I Can't Get Past You" is featured on
the Myspace page of her publisher, Wrensongs).
New Hope Partlow tracks, credited to the Love Willows, can be heard on
the Love Willows' MySpace page: unmastered excerpts, so far, and maybe
a little too buttery with the New Wave settings, but Hope's moody
pop-country lasso is sailing again (full-length songs from her '05
debut are on her own solo MySpace.) Thanks for Frank Kogan for the
tip.
Fire On Fire are added, with reservations, to this year's kiss-o-death
Best New. As with Oakley Hall, several members have disembarked from
heavier, freakier, rocker bands, and also like Oakley Hall, they have
a real and still sufficiently electric feel for deep hills of
ensemble, reverberant chamber psych-folk ballads. Unlike Oakly Hall,
they even have a sense of humor.A guy advises, "You've just got to
have someone, lay the right and pull the way…even the hangman has
friends. (female voice affirms, "oooo, lalala"-she might be interested
in being a friend). But several tracks on their self-titled EP have
really overloaded lyrics. Still, when Colleen Kinsella sings
lead,especially here and on their YouTube shots (oh man, wish I'd made
that wedding), all is groovy, as the sparks flie upward, and here's
hoping for their debut album, coming this spring, apparently.
A lot of no-show promos from Nashville this year, but it's all right,
I've just gone a little further afield than usual. For instance, The
Sandinista! Project: produced by Jimmy Guterman, covers of the
entire 3-LP set on 2 CDs, by Jon Langford & Sally Timms, Katrina of
Katrina And The Waves, Wreckless Eric, Camper Van Beethoven, Amy
Rigby, Jason Ringenberg & Kristi Rose, Steve Wynn, Willie Nile, Mikey
Dread, Sid Griffith's Coal Porters, Ruby On The Vine (feauturing
Myrna Marcarian of Human Switchboard), and a lot of people I never
heard of, many of whom also do some startlingly good stuff, so it's
not just Indie Big/Heard Of Name Placebo Effect, I don't think
(Although some of the no-name people are a little too reverent to the
wordiness of the texts or slowness of The Clash's own performances,
so it's not just lower case no name placebo effect either.) The
Clash's version of post-punk goes past the bounds of the recent trend,
yet loops through the experiments of Wilco and The Mekons, back
through the studio-as-instrument stuff to the country and punk phases,
back to Englishmen who were kids in the 60s, and their take on
skiffle, ska, various New Orleans (incl urban cajun), and rural parade
beats, and yeah nascent hip-hop, dub; but where The Clash's vocals and
production could blur into an atmosphere too thin and thick at the
same time, and too tenuous, technically(at least on the original vinyl
and cheap speakers), other artists have picked up where they left off,
without surpassing the basic strengths of these songs, which are
mostly rejuvenated here, and fairly often in a countryoid way. Not
just in terms of energy, or different drugs, but the Clashian
combination of stylistic elements, with transitions in and between
tracks, and the way the album loops back to pick up an earlier
approach, and develop it further (true in the original, but this trib
makes it clearer to me), and their characteristic combination of
seriousness and humor, linear development and dubwise ricochet,
kinetic mass and leaves of grass, as honored here in spirit and
appropriate adaptation, makes them sound at least as right and ripe
for the Double 0s as for the 80s. (Maybe not if this album had come
out in the 90s, which seemed like Austin Powers' preferred memory of
the 60s, at least for lucky millions; sucked to be other billions, but
there you go-go.) Example of how one track builds on another: was
thinking I'd like to hear more of that bluesy fiddle bouncing along
under Jon Langford and Sally Timms's "Junco Partner." Which is a much
better track, all the way through, than the perky-on-cue rhythm, I
mean "riddim" mocking Strummer's dry, take-it-or-leave-it emphasis got
to be (too conceptual, after more than a few minutes, it seems; we get
it already). But in a much quicker already, I'm wanting more from
Langford and Timms, cos this new version is so good, that they've
shown me could be even better.(After writing this, I realized that
the point is in the degree of restraint: the sly old partner knows
he'll never get out of his street beat alive). But then the very next
track does bring out the fiddle's blues and fun more, as Jason
Ringenberg and Kristi Rose get a lot more subtle than they usually do,
by winding with the fiddle, through the long lines of "When Ivan Meets
G.I. Joe," way after the pinball machines have been shut down, no
attempt to improveon 80s sound EFX here, just ease us through the
shadows, til we reach the international tough guy stuff , on passing
posters and screens, and start another turn. (This really seems like
the centerpiece of the whole Project, speaking of those time/style
loops, even though it's only Track 4.) Wreckless Eric's "Crooked
Beat" combines modern technology and 25 years of practice for inspired
woodshed electronics (which sound Orwellian in Bee Maidens' "Mensforth
Hill", like what's probing Winston and Julia's love nest, back in
1984, but also turns out to be the old man's story from "Something
About England," just recognizable as it [life and history] disappear
backwards over said hill, sucked in like spaghetti, or like gristle
between teeth, all of which is country enough for me.) The Lothars'
name might come from 60s' group Lothar And The Hand People, in which
Lothar was a theramin, because a whole patrol of are we not theramin
keep patrolling "The Call Up, " which is a bit like Devo's version of
"Workin' In A Coal Mine" and Neil Young's Trans, but eerier (and more
foregone, far-gone rural-industrial) than either. Speaking of
versions, Tim Krekel's "Version City" is the post-alt.country
mainstream-accessible triumph, pop train song with doppler shift
horns, like Mr. Krekel, a regular Kentucky-to-Music Row commuter,
probably is familiar with, and fans of Tim McGraw's rusty-vocodered
"Fly Away" really really should hear it too. Sally Timms & Jon
Langford return with "Version Pardner," which seems like mostly
acoustic dub, until tape Sallys sally back again, and one of her has
one hand waving free ("He-e-ey," even if she's still falling forward
and around with that ol' Partner man again).And that's just one more
upside down moment folded into a bouquet of dub, which is still just
trying to take country's ID crisis on a seismic cruise, oowee baby.
(Meanwhile, over on Silver Monk Time: A Tribute To The Monks, certain
mid-60s, ex-G.I., U.S. Midwest-to-Germania boneyard sparks get lured
and railroad-guitarneck-jerked through "Monk Chant" and 'round the
mountain by the Raincoats, as 5.6.7.8. spins "Cuckoo" into the peak
and on its beak.)
Neither of those albums sustains (or tries for) a country-related feel
(remember, can't get too conceptual) all the way through, that's why
they're Honorable Mentions. (Pt. 2 follows)

2008-02-02T23:13:00.001-06:00

Don Allred's Country 07 Comments Pt. 2
Ditto Billie Holiday's Rare & Live Recordings 1934-1959, clipped from
a thousand tapes, smokey and succinct, expressive and reticent,
brooding and shiny, romantic and austere, waiting for the right
connection, like the shadow of an old car, passing over whatever
condition the country road's in: however far the rest of the car may
or did make it, the shadow's still passing, still waiting. (And I'm
still listening: three discs in, several hours of my life, years of
hers, and she still doesn't sound mannered or wasted.)
But today I'm in the diner, finally getting what I'm always being
served, which is the nasality-as-gentle-astringency (previously
perceived as "an industrial-strength solvent"), the
everywhere-at-once, yet tastefully compressed hardshell hardsell: the
tirelessly, carefully flattened, signature hills of Sugarland. Today,
it's a little closer to home, like tabasco on a spud, which is home on
the range, the range of everyday, homely extremes. Can't remember the
name of the song, which is one of the ways I know I'm in Sugarland,
served up just right, by the shining morning face of Jennifer Nettles,
although that smiling busboy's hat has something to do with it too,
and today I'm glad to see them both.
Jason Isbell sounds to me like the offspring of Warren Zevon and
Eudora Welty, with both folks' appetite for words, beats, detail,
atmosphere, and hooks. But minus Warren's lapses into
"Carmelita"-style tearjerking, and plus a sense of justice for his
characters, of empathy, sympathy, distance (the last needed for
perspective, and for room to move on, to the next item on the docket,
and the menu). And nobody can find all that in his genes, or
anybody's.
Possibly doomed in part by heredity (cursed with tenacity, vitality
or at least endurance, under no matter how much stress), Bettye
LaVette's character on Scene of The Crime uses all the artist's own
post-nuclear cockroach tendencies (re improbable return to record bins
the past few years, and not even posthumously). She is one half of the
old school Thing That Will Not Die, one of those couples, probably
preserved in alcohol, who draw the world into their drama, for all the
world's the dark end of the street, and we are just players, so get
your helmet, for they're in LOVE. Except that she's not too
self-absorbed, or just enough, to be scared, when she sees what she's
about to do in another round of "Jealousy." Yet terror's just part of
another Happy Hour, like that laugh, that cough, that drunken listener
she's accosting, in "Old Talking Soldiers, " an Elton John song she
somewhat asymetrically transforms, typically enough. Ol' Doom making
the rounds, and the other shapes, stirring the pile: that's country;
creativity stirring the stirrer, that's country too (okay, art country
too, but tell it to John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, and get another
bar breath nebula from Bettye, with Spooner Oldham on the pianoforte,
Drive-By Truckers picking up).(Pt. 3 follows)

2008-02-02T22:28:00.001-06:00

Don Allred's Country 07 Comments Pt. 3
Arthur Alexander's Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter features his
'60s Muscle Shoals/Memphis studio-rat compadres like Dan Penn, Donnie
Fritts, Reggie Young, and later A-list Nashville Cats like Gary
Nicholson. It's an aptly expanded reissue of his '93 comeback/farewell
album (he died soon after). According to the new notes included,
nobody had any idea how sick he was, certainly no evidence of it here,
unless you count the sometimes almost mystical way he contains pain
(not just of romance, turns out), but that's never far from the chill
of his lucidity, meeting the neon shadows of his rolling country blues
latin rock r&b vitality, that thing that
(Sam Cooke and Doc Pomus and Leiber & Stoller and early Charlie Pride
and Stoney Edwards and )Arthur passed along to some who covered his
songs, like Elvis, and the early Beatles, early Stones (Arthur's very
live versions of "Anna" and "You Better Move On,"recorded by the
Beatles and Stones, respectively, are among the bonus tracks) The Sir
Douglas Quintet, mid-60s Dylan, Johnny Rivers,also in shared some of
this sensibility(and even Neil Diamond: turns out Arthur's cover of
Neil's "Solitary Man" fits perfectly with his own songs, especially
the poise of the verses times the micro outburst of the bridge)but the
unself conscious ethnic inclusiveness of this meld ( of musical
connections already there for the making, of course) seems the more
startling when I read that the beaches in L.A., for inst, weren't
integrated til '63, even aside from the South (or South Boston, where
there were riots vs integration in the mid 70s) For whatever reason,
though younger artists have tried, this musical crossover sensibilty
was most convincing back then (seems like Bill Withers, Garland
Jeffrys, Bob Marley were the youngest to really represent and play it
forward). Arthur's idiosyncratic yet effortless way of stretching some
syllables to make them fit the groove, then suddenly almost stopping,
he's so intently flattening another word, but it fits too: that's like
Willie Nelson and Dylan too, but especially '50s/'60s Nelson's gothy
tonk conversations, with the reasonable way a guy in a bar might
suddenly introduce startling information and then leave you to fill in
the gaps, as he sways on towards the swinging doors (who was that
masked man?) The sway's just a bit toward menace, as he, "just a
brother from Arkansas," politely informs "Mr. John" that the brother's
fallen comrade didn't die with a grudge against the man who forbade
him to put a ring on the finger of "his baby" (The speaker is
persistant about wanting to see said "baby," referred to as his
friend's baby and Mr. John's baby, before he moves on)(I guess he's
leaving, but his tone makes me wonder where he's going and where he's
been, were he and his friend in some warfare that was sanctioned, and
if so by whom). Also, speaking of rings, he nobly declares that "Anna"
must go to the one she now loves, just as soon as she gives him back
the ring. (And he knows if she really wants to go, she's already gone.
He's sad, but he knows. So: she should listen and feel bad, then the
rock, please, and then adios).
Even more from Rejected Pitches:
Michelle Shocked's ToHeavenURide is a live set from Telluride, and
she didn't know it was being recorded, so maybe that's why it seems so
un-self-consciously stageworthy, so glidingly tensile (like the
Staples with the Hi Rhythm Section, but it's just Michelle and church
friends from L.A.). So enjoying the open air, without spacing on the
altitude. She and the other singers are a call-and-response community
that draws the audience in, to add more call and response, though not
to hadda-be-there extent; just occasional deft commentary and comments
and wisecracks, but noever sermons or tirades, or over-extended music
(Michelle knows she's no virtuoso, doesn't push her luck. Material's
not too familiar: Sister Rosetta Thorpe's "Strange Things Happening"
investigates everyday mysteries, applying twang as a ready instrument
and test, which fits with a re-worked "The Weight," as easefully,
miraculously non-anthemy as most Endless Highway: The Music of the
Band, but here there are also re-castings of "Wade In The Water," and
"Uncloudy Day," speaking of Staples Singers. Good tension and release,
in boom-boom and humor and other stuff, and might be a true sequel to
The Texas Campfire Tapes ; maybe all her albums should be live,
instead of the complicated studio projects.
12/07: Caroline Kennedy's new Christmas book includes a response
from JFK, to a letter from a little girl (hopefully also included in
Caroline's collection). She's worried about Santa getting nuked over
the DEW Line, apparently. JFK: "I just spoke to Santa, he's fine!
(Quoted by Barry Goldwater, during Cuban Missile Crisis: "So you want
this fucking job.") Ho-Ho-Ho, 1962 was a fine time to be a child, to
be anything! Like the hovering tremolo of Roebuck Staples' guitar,
of his, Mavis's, Yvonne's, and Pervis's blues gospel harmonies, with
spare usage of Maceo Woods' organ and Al Duncan's drums, on the Staple
Singers' re-issued The 25th Day of December. A moment of respite,
surveying what they're in the midst of : foreboding, knowing and some
joy; the pleasures of warmth in winter, and the clarity of its light,
even under solid cloud, where you'll also so behold the slowest,
spookiest, most savored-by-Mavis "Go Tell It On The Mountain" ever.
Get it while you can, though good to know they'd be around for quite a
while ( and Mavis had a Ry Cooder-produced set in '07; haven't heard
it, stupidly enough, but reliable sources say "Yay!") Their music
would take some creative and hit-making turns, too, but right now,
this is right, in a solstice way. Several p.domain songs I hadn't
heard, arr. by Roebuck Staples, who also carefully adjusts "Silent
Night" and "O Little Town Of Bethlehem," Thomas Dorsey's "The Savior
Is Mine," and R.Staples/W. Washburn's "There Was A Star." (Pt. 6
follows)

2008-02-02T21:54:00.001-06:00

Don Allred's Country 07 Comments Pt. 4
Go way into town, but only to where the streetlights haven't been shot out yet,
and in the nimbi of yon streetlights, amidst the mists, behold Miz Pam
Tillis, with her big, dark green eyes, her long, dark brown hair, her
small, calm, brave face (cute not zombie, yet almost totally
re-constructed after a wild child car crash at 16, as she'll tell
you).On Rhinestoned, her A-list Nashville Cats provide the perfect
settings for lush, overcast, ruefully lucid musings, not too
chairbound, either: "Life has Sure Changed Us Around" is a chance (?)
encounter with John Anderson on the sidewalk, musical traffic going
about its business (oh baby), as they get het up and cautiously check
each other out, while referring to days and nights when they were much
younger, much less responsible (or with much fewer responsibilities).
Followed immediately by "Someone Somewhere Tonight," as she suddenly
sits up, all too awake, and sees very far in the dark (whoever she's
talking to is probably sleeping like a baby on the next pillow, and
not like it's a ballad of bravura pathos to wake his ass up, she knows
better than to believe in such). But it's my idea of what a pop
country hit album should sound like, one idea anyway, aothough
ultimately she's maybe too much the victim; should turn the tables
and/or have more ambiguity, ambivalence at times (though there is one
where she's mentally explaining to a guy that she's always been the
one left behind, and now she doesn't seem that thrilled to find out
he's apparently not leaving; doesn't fit her expectations/plans). And
there are a lot of good variations on familiar themes, like a waitress
telling 'bout how she learned not to trust her car or her heart to a
certain someone, certain kind of anyone. Another good
should-be-more-popular pop country (with soap opry, somewhut proggy,
[but only like the early solo albums of Scott Walker, if he'd stayed
in the States] cowboy) album is that by Protest Hill, but don't get me
started, just check the link in Top Ten above, to review and
song-stream, please!
Past the possibilties of that "Band In The Window" Pam's intrigued by,
and those "Matches" behind the mirror Protest Hill's looking for
(well, in something that opens uplike a rusty little medicine cabinet,
the kind with old snapshots curled up behind the bottles with the
faded-to-invisible prescription labels), the cowboy-slash-farmer finds
a nice hallway, where Bobbie Nelson's AudioBiography rolls solo piano
every evening, with guest appearences by Willie's vocal and guitar,
with Jody Payne, second guitar on the first and last tracks. She does
a standard ballad ("Crazy," "Stardust," etc) then a boogie-woogie (or
related), but for the most part, it's the ballads that really get me
("Stardust"!), because of the way her momentum and lyricism reinforce
and build on each other. So she doesn't really need the up-tempo
stuff, but it's good too (keep the customers moving right through
Silver Ceety), and "Down Yonder" is certainly as much of a trip as I'd
always hoped, after reading Tosches and vainly searching for a
playable record of it by Jerry Lee's earthly inspiration, Del Wood
(hey Mr. T., I'd even settle for that "Psychedelic Mockingbird" of
hers you seem to warn us of).
Johnny Bush's Kashmere Gardens Mud: A Tribute To Houston's Country
Soul is just like it's billed: the poignantly straightforward title
track, memoir of a house that was bleak enough even before Mama left
Daddy (and the kids? He doesn't say—a kid who thought it was his fault
for the split?) is followed by several honky tonkers who gain by
"Kashmere Garden Mud" 's implied contextualization (can see that it's
the son or jilted husband, or maybe the runaway wife or her intended,
further down the line, who might be tossing down another, while
tossing off, "So I'll sail my ship alone, and if it goes wrong, I'll
blame it all on you.") But there's a tendency to old-school
enunciation and evenness of tone and cadence, to a formalism, which
can overtake the earned stoicism and poise. Despite and in part
because of his careful baritone (and the fact it is a baritone, so
gravitas sometimes seems like gravity, with no rainbows in any useful
place). Especially when applied to a museum jukebox full of chesnuts.
So yeah, A Tribute to Houston's Country Soul (including big band
blues, which he rides very correctly, tall in the saddle). And Willie
Nelson steals the show on "Send Me The Pillow," but Johnny's somehow a
little more evenly matched with the pre-Willie-quirky Floyd Tillman on
"They Took The Stars Out Of Heaven," and both tracks are def keepers.
Even more somehow 'bout it, Johnny and Willie's verson of "Pancho And
Lefty" gets me much more focussed on that song than the Willie's
previous hit take. Willie times Merle times Townes times Pancho times
Willie times Federales times Cleveland = too much charisma in one
track for plain ol' me. But Johnny's journeyman equivalent of this
"transparent prose" some speak of thins the atmospherics just enough
to clear my ears. And certainly the musicians (like Buddy Emmons on
steel guitar) do their bit: dig that jaunty stagger-step on "I'll Sail
My Ship Alone." And actually, the song-choices aren't all familiar,
but they're all apt: "I Want A Drink Of That Water" ("that He turned
into wine") syncretizes the Saturday night and Sunday morning themes
(not that the latter isn't usually closer to gentle regret than
outright repentance). Welcome in, it's one heck of a museum to sail,
at least (and Mr. Bush makes sure you won't have to sail it alone).
(Pt. 5, the last part, follows)

2008-02-02T21:07:00.001-06:00

Don Allred's Country 07 Comments pt. 5
At my aunt's memorial service, the program included an
African-American-sounding hymn (ca. late 18th, mid-19th Century
transcription? Or later, probably, transcription-wise), "Come Away To
The Skies": "Come away to the skies, my beloved arise, and rejoice in
the day thou was born." Piano, vocals, slight trills, suggesting
wings. "Wast"? Never heard that, or any of this song before; amazing
(and graceful). She was once referrfed to as "the Dolly Parton of
classical and Baptist music." Meant as a compliment, and rightfully
so. Recalled the pastor, who also has a bluegrass band," She played
forte. A member complained, and she asked what she should do. Ah told
her, 'Play louder.' "
The Charlie Daniels Band's Deuces is Charlie's duets album, with his
stalwarts serving here as first-class bar band, hoisting a set of
covers and re-hashed personal chesnuts. No Z Z Top numbers, much less
guest shots, alas (see CDB's Tailgate Party for the former, and other
good cover versions)(for a contrast/compare session with Z Z and CDB's POVs, please see my "Sharp Blessed Men" archived at villagevoice.com) But "Jackson," with cool-wailin' Gretchen
Wilson, has a sleek stomp and kick, somewhut a la Z Z. Descending
porch bass notes are greeted by wristwatch-tapping rhythm guitar, in
"Signed Sealed Delivered I'm Yours," with Bonnie Bramlett. Even the
lesser tracks are rattled along by the characteristically, expertly
harnessed speediness, which sometimes gets looser and surfaces as
anxiety in his manifestos. But on this album, "Let It Be Me" (with
Brenda Lee) is more poignant for its briskness, its flexing: the
female duet partners, especially, know how to soothe him (and the old,
familiar songs) just enough, to bring out the brio over the
brittleness. Without undue earnestness getting in the way---like Vince
Gill does on "The Night The Drove Old Dixie Down." (Contrast with the
Allman Brothers Band's version on Endless Highway: they don't allow
themselves to solo much, much less over-emote—Gregg doesn't even
groan! But he's appropriately unhappy.) The Scruggs brothers whine
their way through "Maggie's Farm"; they should please shut up and
pick, like Daddy Earl does. Still, Charlie and Darius Rucker have a
fine time zinging the hapless, right through "Like A Rolling Stone,"
like Perez Hilton and Michael Musto with better material. The joke's
on Charlie in "Evangeline" ("I hear your laughter in the rain"), where
he's ably assisted by the Del McCoury Band (haven't yet determined
whether CDB also plays on the tracks featuring guest instrumental
chunks), and Del himself sounds swell, in homage to Elmer Fudd (a
supporting role, and he's fine with it, as always; suits him better
than solo spotlights). "What'd I Say" is filigreed with the curly
burly slightly furtive sub-Ray intonation of Travis Tritt's trivia;
"Daddy's Old Fiddle" doesn't have enough of Charlie's old fiddle or
Dolly Parton's old schtick (she's expressing interest like a
politician on an off day); "Long Haired Country Boy" is best of the
superfluous, with Brooks & Dunn clapping along and staying out of the
way of the song's long-lidded, don't-tread-on-me undercurrent. Charlie
don't "take a toke" here no more, but the line about the TV preacher
stays, despite his own return to the fold, and it foreshadows the
advent of "God Save Us From Religion," with Charlie's fellow deacon,
Marty Stuart. The title is the sumna of a "barroom philosopher,"
who's mainly building a castle of bottle caps, but Charlie and Marty
are surely with him. Charlie and Montgomery Gentry are all big,
high-strung, hit-the-note guys together on "Drinkin' My Baby Goodbye,"
and finally, we get an actual instrumental, "Jammin' For Stevie," with
Charlie and Brad Paisley trading well-considered, enterprising guitar
stunts, proving that Southern Rock can still be more than a museum.
Nice vapor trails and aftervibes to end the album on a peak; as
Paisley would say, it (and at least 60 %of the CD) is "time well
wasted," to say the least. (I'm under-rating a little, in honor of Charlie's
currently evident allegiance to "Always leave 'em wanting more.")
PS: listening to a song on the radio: haven't quite yet got who's
doing what to whom, but it's a quietly shapely tune, passing through
stoned beauty, way under the saucer, under the formica tabletop, in
the slightly blurred, burred chorus, the soothing monotony, and Paul
Newman's just met Piper Laurie, they're sitting in a booth in a bar in
the gray daylight, and he's watching her talk just a little too
carefully, as she gets wasted (he's trained to watch people, no matter
what). Although she's dedicated to getting her courage up, stoned song
baby's been there done there. ("Morphine" something, by Gillian Welch
and David Rawlings, on a live broadcast; they're always better live,
breathing better, reaching, finding an audience in front of them, and
something else I can't see, can Paul? Does it and how does it matter,
considering what will happen? It makes some kind of difference,
differences, to the audience, while the scene continues, and sometimes
after the show's over)(ebba debba th-th-th-that's all foldkz!)

In the Coming Year!

2007-12-22T13:50:00.001-06:00

Video Games I Want To See in the Coming Year
by John Wójtowicz

Russian sex-traffickers in speedboats with submachine guns off the
coast of Dubai – the classic!

The one where hitherto peaceful fishing vessels open fire on each
other, Iceland and Portugal, for instance.

The role-playing game where the psychopath BDSM overlord makes you do
data entry in a poorly lit cubicle in a windowless room for 13 hours
with breaks only for bathroom and the vending machines for 52 weeks
straight with no vacation.

Inventing & marketing utterly superfluous flavors & products with
names like "Choco Rico" and "Odorific" and "Licorice Guarana Pheromone
Deluxe".

Railroading an election by juggling the votes by rigging the voting
machines by blaming it all on tiny little pieces of paper.

You run a virtual factory on a video screen that produces make-believe
objects just like the real ones they used to make here and they now do
for real in China in filthy factories right this minute round the
clock.

Live online webcam dating where you're required to appear entirely
naked, in your natural hair color, showing your passport, driver's
license or photo ID, credit and employment history, proof of health
insurance, blood test results, SAT scores, MBTI, MMPI, astrological
chart, and Enneagram.

The game where you get to change history by altering the President's
brain chemistry based on the dosage of the various antidepressants,
synthetic opiates, methamphetamines, and commercially available
alcohol you permit him to consume.

Business simulation model where you take your own real-life
professional peer group and alter the parameters of the Tall Proud
Successful Alpha Male and the Fairytale Career-Girl Princess. Watch
the Male fail to perform when you happily hide his Viagra! See the
Princess tweak when she can't go purge in the ladies' room after the
big business dinner!

The game that eliminates all the combat games. The game that
eliminates all combat. The game that levels per-capital income across
the globe as investment bankers dive out of windows.

– j.w., winter solstice 2007

Turn The Page And other Delights (Part 1)

2007-09-09T12:42:00.001-05:00

By Don Allred
"Everything I do is just a little wrong,
Everyday for me is the same,
Everyone I know is getting' in my face,
And I only got myself to blame."
That's Bob Seger, just before declaring (with a little swagger) that
he's about to "Wreck This Heart," the first track on Face The Promise,
his first album of all-new material since 1995's It's A Mystery.. As
on that album, Seger's pissed. But this new set is not divided into
confrontational social commentary versus near-greeting-card verses
about the joys of family life. No, Face The Promise is a richer mix,
emotionally and sonically. At 61, Seger knows there's enough blame to
go around, and for what. But he also knows how far knowing that will
get you, so "Wreck This Heart," for instance, is less about
self-recrimination than it is a pretext to cut loose, via guitars,
bass and drums. (Bits of keyboard on some tracks, but the air is
finally free of antiseptic, Roy Bittanesque billows and pillows.
Mainly and appropriately, since much of mainstream pop country now
taps 70s hard rock, you get A-List Nashville Cats. J.T. Corenflos,
whoo-hoo!) Und also the historically inevitable duet with Kid Rock:
"Real Mean Bottle," written by Vince Gill, about Merle Haggard,
ummkay? It's real good, honkies tonky honkin' down the highway. Yet
there's no macho nostalgia either. That's right: Bob Seger, of all
people, is not doing nostalgia anymore.
Well, not as much, anyway. But it's basically a familiar approach,
and he can't help invoking comparisons, mostly favorable. Although,
Face The Promise does have a few tamer examples of his patented
medium-speed numbers, not quite ballads: "Seger mediums," he calls
them. As he once admitted, "They were a challenge to write, now
they've become formulaic."
But Seger's always been ready to teach us, on his recordings and in
his overall career, about the trickiness of adapting, the need to
remain unsettled. His earliest known songs bear this out, as collected
on The Singles 1966-1967, a deleleted, but still findable, Capitol
Records release. Seger's first single, "East Side Story," is about the
inevitable rise and fall of a novice thief, who brags about his
ability to deal with soft, rich folks. The song stomps along in the
face of doom, punkily enough. Attitude is less predictably employed in
his second single, "Ballad Of The Yellow Berets." In effect, its
gleeful delivery is as much a takeoff on Sgt. Barry Sadler's solemnly
monotonous original, "Ballad Of The Green Berets," as it is on the
"yellow" mid-60s Vietnam War protestors. But then the third single,
"Persecution Smith, " shows up, and Seger's music seems to take a
great leap forward, forcibly enough.
"Persecution Smith" speeds along, like Bob Dylan's contemporaneous
"Subterranean Homesick Blues." The antique folk-rock style is still
startling: the song, like its protagonist, jangles along, in a stiff,
rusty, but tireless way. Smith is a compulsively radical reactionary,
the embodiment of entropy, but human enough to torture himself and
everybody else he can reach. The crudeness of the song makes young
Seger's vision more unsettling, more believable: "Persecution Smith"
is just plain old, and getting older all the time. "He's here, he's
there, he's everywhere" seems more true than corny, in this case,
because Smith infiltrates everything, like dust.
This kind of dust forms the question mark in the title of the fourth
single, "2 + 2=?" In "East Side Story, " the fallen bad boy's
girlfriend cried, because he died like she knew he would. In this
song, the girl cries because her boy dies in a war, and "she just
doesn't understand." How could she not understand? What is there to
not understand? Doesn't she know there's a war on? What kind of girl
is this, what kind of country, what kind of war, if she doesn't know?
In 1971, Seger released an album, Mongrel, about the adventures of a
long-haired misfit, determined to strut his stuff in the gray teeth of
conformity. "You can call me Lucifer, if you think you should, but I
know I'm good!" Yet such cockiness has to deal with killjoys, the
ones who are "Leanin' On My Dream," in which the narrator finally
joins the protestors, when he gets his own draft notice. "Lord, you
shoulda heard me scream!" He doesn't claim to be any better than the
"Yellow Berets, " and he's no less stubborn than the vicious
reactionaries in "Looking Back": "Too many people lookin' back!"
Although "Looking Back" was recorded along with the tracks that
appeared on Mongrel, it first appeared as a stray single. Its LP debut
was on Seger's 1976 concert album, Live Bullet, the commercial
breakthrough of which really was a case of too many people looking
back. That's where he became a merchant of rock nostalgia, and
something of an addict, which may well have affected his ability to
check the quality of the goods, though his masterpiece, Night Moves,
appeared the same year, and it addressed the craving for nostalgia,
tracing the dusty, creeping awareness of age. From getting a kick out
of remembering "workin' on our night moves," to waking up and
thinking, "Ain't it funny how the night moves," which needs no
question mark, because it's a feeling the singer already knows too
well. And what happens when you guard your hard-won too well, so there
just isn't so much "left to lose."
The follow-up, Stranger In Town, was pursued through fun "Hollywood
Nights," by the perfect urn of "Still The Same," eyes wide open as he
slides gently downhill through the cliches, through "Feel Like A
Number," where, as Robert Christgau says, "The banal critique of
quantification is renewed by Seger's measured intensity." (Just as
"Turn The Page," is about watching and otherwise participating in
mechanical reproduction of self, with an appropriately spooked,
subdued vocal, typically run over by big mouth James Hetfield, who
sneered at Seger, who provided him with a radio hit cover, probably a
bigger hit than any Het' up originals.)Yeah, "measured intensity,"
the better side of Eliot's "I have measured out my life in coffee
spoons," and this affinity is one of the reasons he got lured so far
into the production cycle. (That, and the downwardly mobile middle
class [he and his mother and older brother were abandoned by his
work-drink cycling, multi-instrumentalist/bandleader/Ford Motor
company medic/medial school dropout father] equivalent of what Rodney
Crowell diagnosed as his own "sharecrop mentality.") Not that people
from quite different backgrounds don't get squeezed as well, and don't
get dragged along through a lot of other stuff that's leaning on their
own dreams. Negotiate, work within the system, pick your battles, then
dig in your heels, even if you get stiff enough that you get dragged
some more, even when there's a good detour. Count it out, here we go.
Later, he would imagine being young and proud and "Making
Thunderbirds" ("in '55", when he was 10).
Yeah, so, as you probably know too well, he (and possibly you, and
certainly I) indulged his mix of autumnal (yet sometimes sufficiently
rocking) insight and mere mush for many a year, many a multi-platinum
record.

Turn The Page And O.D.(Pt. 2)

2007-09-09T12:26:00.001-05:00

TURN THE PAGE AND O.D. (PT. 2)
It's A Mystery only went gold, but Seger kept trying to make another
album of (even sharper) social commentary, because he became a father
at forty-seven, and while that was his self-stated reason for
"retiring," to take care of his kids, he's got a lot to sort out and
sing about, to his family, to himself, to whoever listens. He's got a
new song about war: "No More" is the title, and the point. He sounds,
not necessarily older than on most of Face The Promise (where the
raspy wailing top end of his range is gone, or obscured by clouds),
but he's especially weary on this track. He's doggedly dog-tired of
having to sing about war; he remembers previous occasions all too
well. And that's a good cure for nostalgia: a strong memory. PS: in
the middle of this our life's journey toward Face The Promise
[1997-2006], came 2003's Greatest Hits 2. Key might well be track 4,
"Beautiful Loser." Little Brother Underdog stops worrying long enough
to kid and look quizzically at his His Way of getting in even or
especially the hard or anyway long way. And does indeed scoop up some
beautiful losers, lost from the spotlight: prime but mere album
tracks, not hot singles; hot but not overplayed singles; soundtrack
contributions; covers/derivations; and stuff that would have been good
on Face, but he'd ditched that and started over, knew he already had
tons of stuff to chose from. It all sounds great, in this context.
Even track 1, "Understanding," from the Teachers soundtrack, though
boring, is thematically apt, and leaves no bad (or other) aftertaste,
as the continuity quickly kicks on. The Night Moves blues karma guy,
who went back to "Mainstreet," as carved into the great shining
mausoleum of Greatest Hits Une, is now sweating "Fire Down Below, "
and needs to be reassured by the enlightened butt respectors of "Watch
Her Strut." (GH1 released in 1994, opened to the no-fault collision
insurance of "Roll Me Away," but the only exit was via Rick Vito's
great, groaning slide solo, which finally discharged or at least
dislodged the younger-self-as-ancestor worship of "Like A Rock." Even
"Night Moves" didn't sound as good in this context, where the midnight
insights seemingly led to ever stiffer rituals.)
Meanwhile, back on GH2, inspired derivations x departures incl.
"Sunspot [Sahmspot] Baby," big sad eyes, drawls, draws for the bit o
honey who's ripped off Underdawg. Savors the crime scene details of
Broocian but dab hand "Manhattan," just showing the younger geezer how
to write and sing one. Ditto the Waits-written but minimally mannered
"New Coat Of Paint." Wailing in the tick-tock machine of Rodney
Crowell's "Blame It On The Moon." (Hey, an actual hit on GH2; getting
technical again, are we!) Self-writ duet with Martina McBride,
"Chances Are," gloriously. (This is how it's done, Kenny Rogers.) On
"Satisfied," he confides he needs some truth, some dignity, some
beauty, "But meanwhile, I need a place to hide." On "Tomorrow," he
can't tell you what happens when/if "neutrinos have mass," or about
anything else up ahead, but suggests the utilization of "the sports
section, the weather channel, a good battery." Did all that, and now
there's a new album after all! And almost as good as this, or close
enough, if you've got both, and other good stuff.

March 10, 2007

2007-03-10T08:35:00.000-06:00

walking through the square
past all the brunch restaurants
to get my hair cut

TUSK!

2007-02-22T23:33:00.001-06:00

Atlanta-based Mastodon, polymathic rawkissers of rippling thud, and formerly the hardest-touring, biggest-selling band on indie metal's highly esteemed Relapse Records, made their major label debut in September '06, with the Warner Brothers release of Blood Mountain. Ensuing online discussion topics, pro and con, will be dealt with in the following manner:

1. "Mastodon Are Mainstream Metal Wannabees." Wrong, they already were mainstream, and no wannabees. At least, to a non-specialist hard rock fan, it seems like all the bands on the "edge" (on Relapse, especially) are the default mainstream of metal. These are the acts who sustain interest and success, via die-hard fans, as CD sales and big-ticket tours continue to die. (Are you going to see Van Halen with your uncle? Again?) If you count only who's on the top of the charts, notice that Iron Maiden made the Top Ten this fall, and Slayer made the Top Five. Maiden's purple mulch, Slayer's rainshark riffage, and both bands' unabashed bashing, are obvious (early) inspirations to Mastodon and their colleagues. Which leads to...

2. "Mastodon are Metallica '86." See 1. No Hollyweird Hair Metalneck overground to rise above, from their San Francisco clubfringe exile. And no Eurometal mail-order-only darkness to enlighten the starved masses with, not when downloads are spilling out of every home, school, and library screen. Also,Mastodon are very old, unlike Metallica in '86.

Yes, and if we must talk about "the edge," Mastodon, in their mid-thirties, are now touring more than ever, away from their wives and kids more than ever, and were recently reported as saying they still hadn't seen any big paychecks. Despite adapting to the pressure, Mastodon refuse, so far, to rehash their influences, nor do they take any other conventionally mainstream approach. They don't write about girlfriends and parents or children or parents or drugs or The Road, unless these are red bulls and striding behemoths on 2002's Remission; tales of Moby Dick, Captain Ahab, Thor, and lava lovers on 2004's Leviathan; not to mention birchmen, sleeping giants, crystal skulls, Cysquatch (child of Sasquatch and the Cyclops), and mortal soil, on 2006's Blood Mountain. They also don't have a dominant-to-domineering lead singer (speaking of Metallica). They all four sing "lead," exchanging imagery like they do instrumental vignettes, getting better with each album, and, on Blood Mountain, guest vocals (and lyrics) of Neurosis' Scott Kelly fit in seamlessly, as do the distinctive intonations of Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme and The Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala.

3. "Mastodon's got the Ironic Metal Hipsters flocking in, stinking up the joint." Not like True Heads of Metal can't be hipsters, in the sardonically askance sense, and the ones who try to take metal "tropes" utterly seriously, and/or begrudge all outsiders any degree of askance (or study, or credulousness, for that matter), well. Irony, and whatever else you want to call the degree of distance necessary to get perspective (so that you don't confuse it with sarcasm or piety either), not only can co-exist with seemingly unmediated response, it can be a part of that response. The ultravividness of true starpower passes right through caricature (for light years, is the idea, and crying all the way to the bank, etc.) See Bob Dylan, Madonna, Axl Rose, Britney Spears, and many other politicial figures.

4."Mastodon's also got all the other indie rock people flocking in, trending away from acid folk." Maybe, but Mastodon are true indie rock people, commitment-wise. Also, Mastodon's lyrics are ultravividly multi-faceted: meant to be open to different interpetations, despite committment and other consistencies, like critters--all of that as any acid folk could hope to be. And acid folk is another side of prog, and Mastodon are into prog. When drummer Bram Dailor sings about a "labyrinth" in Blood Mountain's "Circle Sasquatch," he sounds like he's calling through the labyrinthine curvature of a vibrantly metallic mask, which is appropriate to all of Mastodon's words and music. (Not that they, especially with Dailor, can't swing like a wrecking ball.) Prog can be about rigor, not rigidity, getting in shape to go exploring, not just getting in shape. Nor do they settle for man vs. nature triumphalism, or man vs. nature rise & fall, even. It's man in nature, and vice versa, but especially striking is the former, like on Leviathan, when submission to Ahab is calculated, even with the beatdowns, there's a sense of direction, and even Ahab's trying to calculate how far he can get, into the blowhole of creation. Later that same voyage, it seems that getting thrown into a volcano can also be a crewman's opportunity (an ultimate entry-level gig). No matter how far they get, the albums always end with contemplation of something elsewhere. With instrumentals: Remission 's "Elephant Man," Leviathan's "Joseph Merrick" (AKA the real-life, thoughtful Elephant Man), and, best of all, Blood Mountain's "Pendulous Skin," which would be a good description of the Elephant Man. Or it could be the guy from the previous song, "Siberian Divide," so cold, hallucinatory, and plain hungry that he tried to eat himself. He could now be "Pendulous," being both gnawed and thawed. But he's here, and sounds happy: one of the Mastodons is singing along, down among the instruments, "Now that I've begun…"
Don Allred

Kisses Sweeter Than Pine

2007-01-26T22:36:00.001-06:00

The NashvilleScene.com field survey is upon us once more.
COUNTRY BALLOT 2006
Don Allred
Top Ten Country Albums Of 2006:
1. Jessi Colter: Out Of The Ashes (Shout! Factory)
2. Chatham County Line: Speed Of The Whippoorwill (Yep Roc)
3. Chris Smither: Leave The Light On (Signature Sounds)
4. Lone Official: Tuckassee Take (Honest Jons)
5. Various Artists: Kid Pan Alley: Nashville (Compass)
6. Cyndi Boste: Foothill Dandy (SoundVault)
7. CFH: Rebel Meets Rebel (Big Vin)
8. Willie Nelson: You Don't Know Me: The Songs Of Cindy Walker (Lost Highway)
9. Willie Nelson: Songbird (Lost Highway)
10. Oakley Hall: Gypsum Strings (Brah)

Top Ten Country Singles Of 2006:
1. Big & Rich: "8th Of November"
2. Anne McCue: "Coming To You"
3. Brain Surgeons NYC: "1864"
4. Rosanne Cash: "House On The Lake"
5. Ashley Monroe: "Satisfied"
6. Lari White: "Stinky Socks"
7. Dixie Chicks: "Not Ready To Make Nice"
8. Toby Keith: "A Little Too Late"
9. New Heathens: "Kansas Romeo"
10. Brain Surgeons NYC: "Lonestar"

Top Five Country Reissues Of 2006:
1. John Lee Hooker: Hooker (Shout! Factory)
2. Steve Goodman: Live At The Earl Of Old Town (Oh Boy)
3. Various Artists: Heartworn Highways (Shout! Factory)
4. Black Sage: Jack's Corner (Carpet Cat)
5. Various Artists: Classic Country: Sweet Country Ballads (Time Life)

Country Music's Three Best Male Vocalists Of 2006:
1. Willie Nelson

Country Music's Three Best Female Vocalists Of 2006:
1. Jessi Colter
2. Emmylou Harris
3. Dolly Parton

Country Music's Three Best Live Acts Of 2006:
1. Willie Nelson
2. Dolly Parton
3. Solas

Country Country Music's Three Best Songwriters Of 2006:
1. Chris Smither
2. Jessi Colter
3. Willie Nelson

Country Music's Three Best Duos, Trios, Or Groups Of 2006:
1. Solas
2. Shooter Jennings & The 357s
3. Cowboys From Hell

Country Music's Three Best Instrumentalists Of 2006:
1. Winifred Horan, fiddle (Solas)
2. Jon Graboff, steel guitar (Ryan Adams & The Cardinals)
3. Willie Nelson, guitar

Country Music's Three Best New Acts Of 2006:
1. Ashley Monroe
2. Sunny Sweeney
3. Carrie Underwood

Country Music's Three Best Overall Acts Of 2006:
1. Jessi Colter
2. Willie Nelson
3. Lone Official

Comments: Jessi Colter, whose early songs are credited to Margaret
Eddy, from when she was married to Chuck's Uncle Duane, emerged for
me, a little bit in the lemon-scented penumbra of her first and
biggest Jessi hit, "I'm Not Lisa," and much moreso on the expanded
reissue of Wanted: The Outlaws, but was and is still a reserved
journeyman. An artist of poise and potential, a masterful student. Out
Of The Ashes is a startling breakthrough, yet she seems shadowy, not
furtive or coy, just driving her low, rumbling keyboard over high,
rocky desert roads. Just like a woman, or some of 'em, no matter how
much she tells you, there's a fair, if implied, warning, that there's
a lot more where that came from, and a lot of it may stay Over There.
For instance,there's a brief, vividly allusive, yet elusive critique
of a certain outlaw, but in passing, as he's passing. She seems wise
to have waited this long after Waylon's death to record again, to have
gained perspective, but she doesn't dwell on it, except insofar as her
home seems in motion: "His Eye Is On The Sparrow" and "Rainy Day
Women" aren't the best performances, but they both move along at their
and her own chosen speed, and they're both equally emblematic of her
sensibility (And His eye surely must have noticed how they stone ya,
counted by every one of Shooter's drumbeats on the collaboration
originally commissioned by M-M-Mel Gibson for the companion album to
The Passion Of The Christ, and must also have noticed that this
sweatlodge session abjures the exploitational aspects of the stone-Ya
in The Passion, or the similar sequence in On The Waterfront, while
being scarier than either, just because of such unblinking austerity).
Sorry to do this, but running out of time: for more on Jessi and
Shooter , see "Honey Don't Put The OO Back in Umlaut! Shooter Jennings
Makes Retro His Own Thing," archived at
http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com (Blogger's not big on exact
links, but an Advanced Google will do it quickly)
Chatham County Line's Speed Of The Whippoorwill is non-nasal metagrass
(if I move as quickly as they do, mebbe can survive retaliation for
such a phrase). Migratory, sometimes fugitive Southerners, chasing the
right job, running from the wrong one, or sometimes both, like the
miner who gets into show biz by steering the coat tails of his
prodigious (or at least well-disciplined) kids, but finally his fear
of their failure, and his own return to the mines, is too great, and
he takes their money and runs, pursued by CCL, with just the right,
well-aimed mixture of coldness and compassion, of justice. (Also
please see my feature on them, "Both Sides Of The Line," archived at
http://www.charlotte.creativeloafing.com)(And what I wrote about Kid
Pan Alley: Nashville, and Lari White's "Stinky Socks," which you can
also hear, at http://www.paperthinwalls.com )
Chris Smither, Leave The Light On: Smither, whose "Love Me Like A Man"
and "I Feel The Same" were right at home on two of Bonnie Raitt's (and
the '70s') best albums, Give It Up and Takin' My Time, reminds me that
Allen Ginsberg said "Beat" came from "Man, I'm beat," and from
"beatitude" also, and Smither's got his own sense of hard won grace.
Not that he talks about it that way, but he lives it in his music,
often enough. Def the folkier blues, though obsessive in a country
way; can well imagine him on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal with
Fred Neil nigh on forty year ago(though his own route was basically
from New Orleans to Cambridge), but no time for mellow crinkles, he's
even more like Nick Nolte in North Dallas Forty, the old pro athlete
who's gotta get up every morning and pretty literally put himself back
together again. He does know how to do this, and the music is fluid,
pickin' like those critters and other objects swimming in the
floodwaters of O Brother, Where Art Thou? But the voice and the words
are unsettled, always sorting themselves out (as are the pickers, but
the other elements are always catching up)(although he's got good
company, swimming around down, there, like the backup voices of
Olabelle, at times: a serendipitous simulation of field recording
magic, overall.)(Although the waltz version of "Visions Of Johanna" is
hideous filigree.) "Father's Day" is one of the most lucidly scary
songs ever: he's enough of a father and of a son and an artist for
that. Also, "Johanna" aside, got covers that suit him well, from Peter
Case and Mississippi Fred McDowell. (Voice now is like Tom Waits' was
on Closing Time; well, kind of between that and Nolte's!)(If he can
remind me of Waits, without turning me off, he's really got some stage
presence).
Someone else who overcomes objections, in this case even when I don't
want him to, is Willie Nelson. Sounds like he may be reading the
words to half the songs on Songbird for the first time, even the ones
he wrote himself. But it works well enough,
considering the way his voice and his guitar cue the steel guitarist,
and the rest of The Cardinals, and even when he leadeth them to squash
"$1000 Wedding," he puts the nightmarish lyrics across like he's
umpiring a public atrocity, which he is, of course. "Stella Blue"
could be unbearably poignant when sung by its composer, Jerry Garcia;
Willie uses just enough time release of tiny pain pills to lure me in.
And he nails "Hallelujah," even better than L.Cohen, who sounds even
flatter than Willie, who really knows how to rhyme the title with
"What's it to ya?" Several other A tracks, but yes, basically it's a
rehash of material he's done before, and even his approach to"Amazing
Grace," tilting it into the tune of "House Of The Rising Son," has
already been done by The Blind Boys Of Alabama, though the arrangement
must be different, 'cos it's credited to Ryan Adams. But Songbird's
got the overall momentum that You Don't Know Me doesn't, quite. No way
is his version of the latter's title track not left in the dust by Ray
Charles, while the Songbird tracks that beg comparison also pass their
tests. Also: who cares? This stuff works! As a guilty pleasure,
anyway.
And yeah, much more of a guilty pleasure than is Rebel Meets Rebel,
which is presided over by David Allan Coe, as to the country metal
manor born, and the Panterans have also found their true home, in
whatever bar or barn or skidmarks may adorn Cat Scratch Highway (the
country metal Brigadoon I want to swallow Montgomery Gentry's "Slow
Ride In The Fast Lane," helping to slim MG's new set to its better
half, and prove its title, Some People Change).
Lone Official is a one trick pony, but one that keeps finding new ways
to go from a suspended lope to rippling explosions: as country as
their race hoss muses.
Oakley Hall, bearing the same name as the Western novelist admired by
Thomas Pynchon, and the same name as the novelist's visionary
playwright son, who seems to be steadily, amazingly recovering from fearsome
brain injury, over the course of thirty years, is now also a solid band of
pioneers, forcing themselves to plunge ever deeper into the poison
glow of the wilderness, flagellant poetry in motion, at least when
their guitars are in full cry. But they aren't always. They know how
to ease up sometimes. Which gives them more energy to get themselves
in even deeper, to "House Carpenter," where "those hills are murder."
My New Year's resolution is to find something interestingly bad to
write about (no, not interestingly bad to write, I got that covered).
Let's start early with Wayne Hancock's '06 release, Tulsa. His persona
here, even more than usual, is that of somebody who's made himself
come out of the wilderness (might be a descendant of Oakley Hall's
cousin, not quite a direct line). He's come to town, looking for some
fun. Not all fun, not big fun, and nothing too weird or wildernessy,
just the normal stuff that normal farmers and cowhands and townies
take for granted. His voice is marked by thirst and maybe strain, but
also it's naturally kinda high and thin; he's comfortable with that,
and used to turning over every rock bottom of depression to get where
he has to, or, in this case, wants to go, to see those bright lights
tonight. And he's arrived somewhere, but these lights are dimmer than
Hancock's willpower. This may well not be his band's fault. Judging by
No Depression's description of a session, for a track on an earlier,
equally frustrating (and perhaps frustrated) album. WH lambasted the
players, because the song is "starting to sound like Elvis, and I hate
Elvis!" So maybe the desert's in him too deep to shake, but still he
proves he has star power, by letting it trickle through the dust.
Oh yeah, the singles:
Brain Surgeons NYC sometimes do the urban country boogie, like they
worked extended temp in the Dallas Schoolbook Suppository, lookin' at
the world through a computer screen, like the rest of us, and, if Ross
The Boss's leads didn't seem quite so trite quite so often, and if Al
Bouchard gave up the mic more often to Deborah Frost, then Denial Of
Death might well have made my Rock Top Ten. But even so, on
"Lonestar," you get that Metal Brenda Lee is comin' on strong, and
Lemmy Lee too, pert' near (still meaning her, def not Al). But Al's the
Yankee boy proudly reporting for duty in "1864," and no less country
for that.
Big & Rich's "8th Of November" marches to a certain point in the
wilderness, then goes round and round and round, a lost patrol hanging
onto that fiddle like a helicopter. Will the last person out of Saigon
turn out the light at the end of the tunnel? (Sorry, that's just
something I saw written in the Men's Room at Maxwell AFB, a long time
ago.)
But far from such a mossy cliché, is The New Heathens' "Kansas Romeo."
The New Heathens are very influenced by The Drive-By Truckers,
especially the way Patterson Hood's dry little cigarette voice
sometimes squeezes as many words as possible into a bar line, then
keeps on giving. But if I were assembling my own personal Deluxe
Edition of Southern Rock Opera, I'd slip "Kansas Romeo" in with the
best tracks from actual Truckers albums. Drawing on journalistic
sources, it carefully details the story of a kid from a low-income
family, pegged as borderline, in ethnic "mix" and I.Q., who ended up
in a prairie group home, fell in love, but "stopped as soon as he was
asked." Nevertheless, he's last seen in a prison cell, praying for
forgiveness. As the situation is described here, it seems likely that
he would have been charged with statutory rape, at most, if he hadn't
loved "another Romeo, instead of a Juliet." How many times has this
happened? Only once, in any song I've ever heard or heard of. It's not
much shelter, but I hope the guy in the song hears it someday,
sounding like one thing more than his own lonely voice.
Oops, the Reissues:
Certainly in terms of obsessiveness with the finer things in life ,and
with some other things as well, and of the resourcefulness, which is
part of the obsessiveness, John Lee Hooker is country, don't you
think? Maybe not twisted enough, judging by Hooker, the box set, but
close enough. Hooker prowls through all the one-man band sides he
recorded under various names; that's just one of its missions. And the
one-man-band consists of various effects of voice, guitar, and foot,
no cymbals or other fancy hookups required. Of all heavy friends on
the final disc (each of whom finds his own foothold, and his own
release), Robert Cray is the one who emulates and builds on the
inflections of Hooker's voice (and those other elements).Cray's
probably noticed that, by this point in the saga, The Hook's stutter,
for instance, has been demonstrated as a way to pick up women. (What
the heck, it sounds sounds as plausible as any other approach.)
Steve Goodman's Live At The Earl Of Old Town features Jethro Burns on
mandolin, appropriately enough, considering Goodman's twists on Homer
and Jethro's own smoothly skewed sensibility. Oh, everything's real
tuneful and chirpy, with covers of "Red, Red Robin," "Rockin' Robin,"
and "I'll Fly Away." But we also get the exultation of towing
"service" pirates of insatiable greed (based on a true Chicago
enterprise, a company named Lincoln, of course, set those pirates
free!). And ugly, funny, scary ditties by Shel Silverstein, and
Steve's own account of an H&Jesque innocent , checking out that there
NYC meat market, and even his also self-writ "City Of New Orleans"
sounds stained here, and overall, Goodman, who worked his way through
college penning jingles and singing at the folkie-legendary Earl,
while beginning to deal with the condition that tracked his 15-year
career, earns (and tips our way) the self-awarded halo of Cool Hand
Leuk, one more time. (Although I haven't heard SG's other live sets,
and Xgau told he gives this one an Honorable Mention, but he loves the
live disc of Goodman's No Big Surprise anthology, and if that really
is so much better than this, well so much the better indeed.)

In Memoriam

2007-01-15T11:52:00.001-06:00

Is anyone else out there mourning the passing of Michael Brecker?

His presence is going to haunt us for a long time to come, and in
unexpected, forgotten places. I apologize to you other trainspotters
for not listing some of them, but at the moment I just don't have the
time to go through the *NINE* screens' worth of albums with
Brecker-as-sideman appearances that are listed on allmusic.com.

There was a time when, hearing a guest sax solo on a pop record, I
would say to myself, "hmm, Mike Brecker again -- I guess David Sanborn
was already booked that day," -- AND VICE VERSA.

Brecker was truly the best Great White Hope on tenor that our race
has ever come up with. And he belongs to the long line of musicians
who were hired by George Clinton AFTER they had already played with
James Brown (who, you'll note, beat Brecker to the finish by less than
three weeks).

In fact, my own all-time favorite Brecker guest spot is on
Parliament's "P.Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)", which opens
"Mothership Connection": after George Clinton has presented his
manifesto, the horns step in and put things in perspective with
cooler-than-school solos. And while of course that's Fred Wesley on
trombone, it's Brecker and not Maceo testifying on tenor.

But that's just the paying-the-rent half of his life. Besides being
the era's most ubiquitous studio-session tenor saxophone player, he
was also the most influential JAZZ saxophone player of the past couple
of decades.

The cynic in me revelled in all the ironies when I saw him live in
Warsaw in June 1995, playing to a packed house of several thousand at
the Sala Kongresowa. For one thing, the opening act was Bob Berg's
quartet; and hearing Berg vis-a-vis Brecker, I was reminded of Lester
Young's comment on Paul Quinichette: "I don't know if I should play
like myself or like Lady Q, because Lady Q is playing so much like
me." But if they had booked any one of a dozen other young
saxophonists to open, I would have reacted the same way.

And then more irony: Brecker's appearing with headliner McCoy Tyner
meant that John Coltrane's former pianist had brought along the tenor
player whom jazz DJ Peter Michaelson once described as
"Coltrane-squared". I had long thought that Brecker's jazz style
could be summed up by saying that he had mastered "Giant Steps"-era
Coltrane but didn't bother with anything chronologically beyond that,
except that he learned how to do it twice as fast.

This was a slack oversimplification: he made his home within that
framework, but played with one order of magnitude greater complexity.
While I still love his playing on Pat Metheny's "80/81", it's
Dick-and-Jane material compared with later, when Brecker would
condense three to five times as many musical ideas in the same space.
It was mind-boggling, and invited the worst tendencies of jazz
listening/spectating (and jazz playing): can he do circular
breathing, check, good command of altissimo register, check,
flutter-tonguing, check, can he jump three and a half octaves and come
back down in the space of three notes, check. (No wonder he titled
one of his solo albums, "Don't Try This at Home.") But if, instead of
my thinking that it was all presented in an arbitrary and haphazard
way, the phrase "cut-up method" had occurred to me, things would have
clicked and I would have become a hopeless fanatic.

May his memory be blessed.

P.S. If you want to be an obsessive completist about it, start here
and page through:
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&searchlink=MICHAELBRECKER&sql=11:gm2zefbkhgf5~T4

John Wojtowicz

J-Pop Tree

2007-01-11T14:55:00.001-06:00

Idolator Jackin' Pop 2006 Ballot (with links added to my reviews of
some entries, plus original ballot's brief comments retained at end)
Albums:
1. Robert Cray Band: Live From Across The Pond (Nozzle)
(See comments on his work with John Lee Hooker in the 01.2007
archive, Country Ballot 2006, and comments on this album are
on this ballot, in last section)
2. Jessi Colter: Out Of The Ashes (Shout Factory)
For her & Shooter, see 04.2006 archive on top right margin here
(also, see comments on the Country 2006 ballot)
3. Leanne Kingwell: Show Ya What (Krill)
See "Jeepster"( just below the belatedly added, out of
reverse-chronological-sequence
"Barred Bards") ,on the front page of my Voice stash,
http://MyVil.blogspot.com/
4. Fiery Furnaces: Bitter Tea (Fat Possum)
http://www.uweekly.com/story.php?iidart=4113
5. Tolcha: Gestalt (Meta Polyp)
http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=26
6. Sepultura: Dante XXI (SPV)
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=104535
7. Particle: Transformations Live For The People (Shout Factory)
http://www.uweekly.com/story.php?iidart=3434
8. Voivod: Katorze (The End/EMI)
9. Cyndi Boste: Foothill Dandy (SoundVault)
10. Bobby Previte: Coalition Of The Willing (ropeadope)
(scroll a little further down this page, or chack 12.2006 archive, for
blog mix of uweekly article)
Singles:
1. Scream Club: "Pardon Me" (Wired)
2. Lavender Diamond: "You Broke My Heart" (ldr)
3. Terry Manning featuring the Hi Rhythm Section:
"I Can't Stand The Rain" (Sunbeam)
4. Anne McCue: "Coming To You" (Messenger)
http://www.paperthinwalls.com/feature/mixtape2006/?review_id=13
5. Hildegarde Knef: "Holiday Time" (Marina)
6. Chris Smither: "Father's Day" (Signature Sounds)*
7. New Heathens: "Kansas Romeo" (New Heathens)*
8. ESG: "I'd Do It For You" (Soul Jazz)**
9. Brain Surgeons NYC: "Plague Of Lies" (Cellsum)*
10. Red Lotus: "Firecracker" (Red Lotus Music)
*see Country 2006 ballot & comments, in 01.2007 archive
**see Dancestand Internationale (2006!), just before or after this here thing
Reissues:
1. John Lee Hooker: Hooker (Shout Factory)*
2. Lizzy Mercier Descloux (Ze)
See 9.2006 archive, Liquor For The Soul, and also **
3. China Shop: 21 Puffs On The Cassette
source:
(http://www.anthologyrecordings.com)
review:
See http://www.paperthinwalls.com/singlefile/item?id=226
4. Traffic Sound: Yellow Sea Years 68-71 (anthologyrecordings)
5. Eyeless in Gaza: Plague Of Years (Sub Rosa)
Artist:
1. Cary Baker, http://www.conqueroo.com / http://www.conjuroo.com
publicist, exec.producer
2. Scott Woods, http://rockcriticsdailyblogspot.com,
http://rockcritics.com
, writer, editor
3. http://paperthinwalls.com

editors, publishers & staff
Comments:
Vs. Death (incl. avoiding & otherwise messing with consequences) the
theme as usual, but if that sounds too rockist, be assured that my
album of the year, Robert Cray Band's Live From Across The Pond, has
plenty pretties to lure us into RC's obsessions. "Whether the right or
the wrong, at least the mystery's gone." But his guitar always thinks
otherwise, sniffing at numbers in a phone booth, extending a tour of
duty in Iraq, even trying to follow somebody down the hall. Now that
Dylan's finished his old-timey-rewired trilogy, maybe he'll check
this, and be reminded of just how deep a modern blues album can go.

DANCESTAND INTERNATIONALE (2006!)

2007-01-03T16:54:00.001-06:00

By Don Allred
The underground dance hype of 2006 was Girl Talk's Night Ripper. It's a collection of early 00s-type mash-ups. Yes, nasty rap boys, chirpy r&b girls, Dadpop piano, Dadrock guitar, Dadpoprock women: they can all fit each other, we get it already. There aren't enough beyond-functional junctures sharp enough to seem as witty as the nudge-nudge wants to, although being instructed to "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies," next to directions for the Tootsie Roll, is the whole thing in a nicety nutshell. But nothing is revealed, not like back in the day, when Freelance Hairdresser blowed-out Eminem's inner ragtime minstrel from the (''n-n-nobody listens to techno!") techno gallery, real good. And The Best Bootlegs...Ever was a comp; has there ever been an album of good mash-ups from one DJ, or one team? Well, speaking also of moments of insight, there's Steinski's No Fear, and just for fun, try a set from Soulwax AKA 2 Many DJs. But not many others, and not from Greg Gillis, not this time, anyway (haven't heard his first). Still, for those who wanna bootleg the bootlegger or get otherwise bizzy, note that the first five or six tracks Night Ripper tracks might well get you out on the floor; the rest may let us see if you can dance in your sleep.
Speaking of hype, 2004's critically-acclaimed Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats gave birth to an '06 sequel, More Favela Booty Beats, which is better. More gives it up for Mama Brazil's mutable musical heritage, putting the (relatively) more relaxed, tuneful tracks in front this time, with (fewer) Portuguese-rapping, 2 Live Crew fans bringing up the rear. (Where they do provide itchy excitement.)
In terms of projecting individual personality, though, most of the Brazilians are left in the dust raised by crate-digging visions of 80s rap, Miami bass, and dancehall, back there with the UK's cheeky (but jittery and uncertain)"freestyle" urchin, Lady Sovereign. Her US debut, Public Warning, doesn't provide many tracks that are both new and good, though it does conveniently collect most of her earlier, better (basically comedy) workouts. The Def Jam press sheet plays down the grime connection, since Dizzee didn't break here; rather, she is presented in historical perspective, an archetypical figure that arises from the classic UK rebel stance musics, like Poly Styrene! Well, they don't go that far, but squint your ears more toward Lulu in To Sir With Love, and Tracey Ullman, or that's more what she might should aim for. (In other words, start looking beyond the music.) But, since most of her best stuff has been out a while (new handlers gambling that something new from here is gonna break right past alll that internets stuff), on singles and/or the Vertically Challenged EP, this also seems like Gretchen Wilson's second album (syndrome). But, y'know, "Big up to Oliver Twist," and still love the way she mocks the (cool!) rockist guitars of "Blah Blah," by shrugging off, "rrrr-rrrr, rrrr-rrrr-rrrr-rrrr," at the end of lines. Elsewhere, she goofs in more ways than one, by imitating Missy's more forced-sounding sounds, especially since the latter almost steals the (superfluous) remix of "Love Me Or Hate Me," by appearing at her own most relaxed, ironically, but also briefly enough, so it works out ok. But what did happen back there on Chalkhill, Sov? Something not this cute, so she does jitter past it, but had to mention it. (Perhaps if only cos: you must do that in this form, but: Jay-Z's people are watching, so: can't get too real in a way that might be too UK and/or female). Let it be then, 'til when/if you're ready. But not reddy, not like the girl who overdoes the tanner (in malnourishment and London fog?) and leaves an organge ring on the toliet seat, in "Tango"!
But overall in '06, such blinky-to-sparky graftings of popped "I" and booty-boogie-wookie are upstaged by the distinctive rap-bass-dancehall-salsa profiles of Lagos Stori Plenti: Urban Sounds From Nigeria. Here's the same range of mood and activity as on the compilation Futurism Ain't Shit To Me 2, but with no need for that American/European hip-hop party's sci-fi satire of backpackas, round-the-way gangstaz, etc. Not even when robots who "need, a, can, of beer, so, I, can, freee-stylle," vainly seek convincing "Fake Idees," so get into beefs with uncool humans, "jealous of my infinite lifestyle"? No, not with the everyday surrealism of Lagos at hand. For instance, Modenine's "419 State Of Mind" is an epic description of what can happen if you open one of those inbox-infamous "Nigerian letters." (It sounds pretty exciting! H'mmm)
One European who could cope with the tricky temptations of North and South America, and even Africa, was the late great Frenchwoman, Lizzy Mercier Descloux. Ze Records' 2006 LDM anthology, Best Off, still spins an eye-widening world of jazzy, pop-art-punk-disco-globe music.(See also "Liquor For The Soul," in the 9.2006 archive link on your right margin.)
In the late summer of '06, The Pet Shop Boys' Fundamental and Canadian DJ-turned-vocalist Tiga's Sexor sleeplessly cruised ancient, shadowy connections between glam, prog, and disco, in discreetly powerful new machines. "Each of you looked up, but no one said a word, I felt I should apologize for what I hadn't heard." So make your excuses and leave, plunge yourself into work, and then into "Luna Park," "where it can never get too dark," and real-seeming orchestras preside like trees, somewhere overhead. The Boys seem to have learned from Dusty, or anyway producer Trevor Horn has (as far as instrumentally emulating her own voice's timing and vibe, rather than the erratic arrangements of her non-Pet Shop settings.)(No, not Dusty In Memphis, more the Brit stuff.) Ballads are cosmic enough to not harm the momentum. Tiga has a little trouble with liftoff, but soon learns to use his vocal limitations ominously, though not too too-too, as Tom Verlaine would put it. This def. pertains to what Allmusic.com reviewer Jason MacNeil hears as Tiga's Pink Floydian vibe on one track, and that's the or a key to several others, including the Jeremy Irons-bringing-out-the best-of Roger-Waters finale. (Most of his best are collaborations with the Soulwax brothers.) "Pleasure From The Bass" is as headlong and hooded as any of it.
Blowoff (Husker Du/Sugar frontman Bob Mould, times DJ Richard Morel), on their amorously armored, self-titled debut, and Zombie Nation (John Starlight), on Black Toys, brought those shadows into stripe the strobe light. Blowoff summons Bob as Leatherman, dancing like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein surely would have, if only he'd reached the beach. Black Toys could be called electro, or per-se dubstep, dubstep fortified with near-subliminal guitar shreds, Falstaffian space bass, and beats in big dirty silver boots, stomping and climbing up stadium steps.
Also in 2006, two valiant, disco/house-based mixologists, Germany's Sven Vath and Italy's DJ Naughty, produced albums that encompassed the most tensile bends in old and new trends. On Vath's swanky-but-stanky 2-CD set, The Sound Of The Sixth Season, tracks like Extrawelt's "Zu Fuss" ripple through cycles of anticipation and payoff. But this kind of interaction also has to deal with the sheer length of the album, and the way any mix can eventually get predictable. (Okay, Disc 2 does seem to unwind, to some extent, from such obligations; it's just hard not to be think about the harpsichord massage/asssembly line dichotomy, once you've thought of it, while riding the rising traffic of Disc 1, most likely. Or reading about it here, before you've had a chance to listen. So, sorry to've mentioned it, actually; condense this [mix, not feature, please] a little, or just don't listen to it all at once, or try not to, and it's awesome.)
DJ Naughty's A Naughty Night In Berlin is even more varied than Vath's vast valleys and peaks of tweaks, and can leave you gasping and grasping for more, despite its (single-disc) intensity. A clue to this balancing act is in the name of the DJ and his album: they get naughty indeed, but never too nasty. (Euros are better at the former.). 2006 was his diva, and she can teach 2007 how to sing as well.
(http://www.forcedexposure.com/ is probably the best source of most of the best albums mentioned here.) (Ditto for instance ESG's Keep On Moving, with the hurt-so-good discipline of its pioneering, still trenchant bass & drum grooves, seldom-seen guitar, sweet incisions of vocals, incl. when ["I'm his"] "Ex" warns her successor of the pain that stains, deeper and deeper, it seems, but really it's the same, the same; but most of this is happy around that, and "purely physical, baay,by": Keep On Moving, either way.)(Also, Forced Ex should still have Panama! Latin, Calypso and Funk on the Isthmus 1965-75. lots of familiar and new and nascent styles and notions sorting themselves out, mash-ups not waiting for a DJ. Fave: The Exciters' "New Bag," which sounds like somebody's been listening to mid-60s James Brown, Miles Davis, and Velvet Underground's bread-x-butter, a-go-go rhythm guitarist, which one is he?)

Costa-Gravas, Costa Livin'

2006-12-17T21:03:00.000-06:00

Sorry 'bout the potted intro, but (a shorter version of) this was for the
Collegetown paper; gotta clue in the newbies, hopefully no one else is turned off
by that, or anything else here:

COSTA-GRAVAS, COSTA LIVIN'
by Don Allred

In the early 1980s, Miles Davis came back from hiatus, but his music,
though engagingly quirky and rough-edged, no longer seemed innovative. And
post-Miles jazz-rock had hardened into fusion. Fusion was notorious for flashy
but ponderous displays of technique, like bad progressive rock. This resulted in
a throwback to 50s-style hard bop, the so-called Young Lions (or "jazz in
suits") movement, led by Wynton Marsalis.
But not all young jazz musicians were fusion heads or conservatives.
Drummer/composer Bobby Previte was well-schooled at The University Of Buffalo in
the 70s, where the music faculty included progressives like Lukas Foss,
trance poet Morton Feldman, and the anti-authoritarian authority on conceptualist
strategies, John Cage. Even earlier, Bobby P. was a underage soul/rock bar
band veteran, and both kinds of training served him well when he moved to New
York City in 1979, where he quickly became a leader in what was sometimes called
Downtown Jazz. Previte and his cohorts were as technically accomplished as
Marsalis and the fusion virtuosi, but they were also experimental, intent on
taking up where Miles had left off.
Previte's latest release, Coalition Of The Willing, is startlingly
fresh, despite familiar names, production elements, and political implications.
Trumpeter Steve Bernstein was the musical director of New York's post-punk
"fake jazz" rowdies, The Lounge Lizards, and is a key member of the calmly
audacious Sex Mob. Like Previte and others on Coalition, Bernstein doesn't let his
energy get in the way of thought or feeling: check his album Diaspora Soul,
which taps the improvisational and emotional resources of klezmer music. Stanton
Moore, who plays drum duets with Previte on several Coalition tracks, is also
a member of Galactic, a typically "fonky" New Orleans jam band, which
nevertheless rose to the occasion, when they got a chance to back Algerian exile
Rachid Taha, on his blisteringly defiant Made In Medina. (Songlines magazine
reviewer Nigel Williamson rightly considered this album to succeed, where Unledded,
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's album with North African musicians, failed.).
Multi-instrumentalist Skerik limits himself to subtle saxophone on Coalition,
but his more varied work with the sardonically moody Critters Buggin, especially
on their 1998 album Bumpa, might be a key precedent to Coalition. Toward the
end of Bumpa, there's a sense of looming enclosure, but it's an enclosure
that's made to resonate with deep, bending, metallic tones.
On Coalition, this kind of rebellious sound (with flickering treble
added, so it also evokes John McLauglin's eerie 1970 peak, Devotion) takes on a
political context. Not only does Coalition's title refer to the Iraq War, but
several tracks (like "The Ministry Of Truth") reference George Orwell's 1984.
(As a Vietnam War era album might have, of course.)
But Coalition doesn't rely on righteously retro rhetoric, or any other
kind of default setting. Stu Cutler adds occasional harmonica, minus blues
cliches. Charlie Hunter abstains from his Blue Note albums' eight-string guitar,
and from the effects box that makes him sound like a (so-so) organist. (Why
bother, when an actual organist, the judiciously theatrical Jamie Saft, who just
released an album of instrumental Dylan covers, is always lurking nearby, and
with his own guitar as well.) Here, Hunter plays incisive six-string
Telecaster, and a twelve-string guitar that sounds nothing like The Byrds: it chimes
like an evil, elegant parody of Big Ben. (Appropriately for Orwell's dystopian
England.) Previte's lean, hungry beats and bright tonal colors (keyed by
electronic touch pads) find their way through dark shifting backdrops and corridors.
Coalition's a thriller, tracked by really good, inescapable security cameras.

Caption For A Missing Photograph

2006-10-06T14:52:00.000-05:00

Regarding ze topigoraphy ov Belgian Waffle Ironies, M. B0b Le Fl@neur sign@lz:
When I showed the attached photo to my flatmate Zuzana, she exclaimed "I know
that spot! That's where my friend got stabbed!"

The picture was taken at the point where the corporate alleyway of Boulevard
du Roi Albert II stops dead, three blocks east of the canal and one block west
of the Gare du Nord (and therefore two blocks away from the red light
district of Rue d'Aerschot and three away from one of Schaerbeek's heavily Turkish
neighborhoods).

The photograph doesn't do justice to the building at the right, the "Hotel
Husa President", which is nearly a block long. Architecturally, it might as
well be called the "Husak" -- it could have been a gift from any Warsaw Pact
nation and served as any provincial Party headquarters or workers' holiday housing.

The photograph was used as both front and back covers to a 2006 calendar
touting redevelopment in Brussels' Rue du Progrès area. Since then, a children's
playground has been put up there.

Liquor For The Soul

2006-09-17T11:26:00.000-05:00

Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Best Off (ZE)

In 1979, NYC's ultrahip ZE Records issued Press Color, the debut album of
Parisienne expat painter et punkette Lizzy Mercier Descloux. It was pretty good
punky funky no (-ish) wave. But the most striking thing about the early songs
invited to ZE's new Lizzy fair, Best Off, is the way their parsing parsley
and bodyhair telegraphy grow through the French, South American, Caribbean and
African elements of LDM's Eiffel of a peak. (For instance, Best Off offers a
juicy slice of 1984's critically and commercially successful Gazelles, which ZE
has also reissued, retitled Zulu Rock, with several bonus tracks.) Wherever
she goes, Descloux sounds far too at home to be satisfied, but there's a
nervous delight in her flight, though it's never unsteady. She often suggests the
artist as discreetly caffeinated spectator, responding to the multiplying
dimensions in her pulsating frames. Descloux (who moved to the West Indies in the
90s, and kept painting, right up until her 2004 death from cancer) even molds
bullets from samples of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker's narcotic blue satori,
which remains undisturbed, of course. Opposites attract, eternally.(ZE site still
"under construction" last time I checked, so for instance see
http://www.forcedexposure.com) Don Allred

small world, smaller country

2006-07-19T17:24:00.000-05:00

Und now, L///ve, fr0m ze capital ov EUROPA, Monsieur BOb Le Fl@neur reportage:

This morning, in an attempt to find out how to get a work permit and/or
gainful employment, I was sent on a minor scavenger hunt through various
government offices ("a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour"). My final stop was with a
bureaucrat who happened to mention that her husband is American and a
musician.

I asked, and it turns out that the guy is Paul Zahl, drummer for The
Flamin' Groovies and TUXEDOMOON.

Tuxedomoon must have attained the status of local heroes here, because on
quite a few occasions by now I've gone into bars or restaurants and heard their
stuff being played. These places include my favorite lunch joint for street
people (for one euro you can get a usually filling plat du jour; quality is
touch-and-go but hey, that's also true of establishments where a meal costs 15
times as much) as well as my favorite bar, the Walvis
see:

http://www.CafeWalvis.be/
and

http://www.ebru.be/Cafes/CafWalvis.html/

The goof for me is that, back in Berkeley when I was buying up all the
Tuxedomoon I could find (including going to Peter Principle's NYC apartment to buy
solo CDs off him), little did I suspect that I too would decamp from the Bay
Area and eventually end up in Brussels.

btw I didn't ask the woman about Tuxedomoon's recent reunion-cum-tour
because I'll cover that topic on my next visit.

I suppose next I'll encounter a Moroccan confectionary salesman who turns out to be
an ex of Natacha Atlas ;-

__________________________________________________

I'm Telling You This For Your Own Good

2006-06-03T13:36:00.000-05:00

A Mr. Le F. writes:
"The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe
in it. Further, the Lowest Ring in Hell is reserved for them that believe in
it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't."

--The Gospel According to Fred, 3:1,
from the Principia Discordia

(if you never got around to getting a copy or printing it off the Net, go
here:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/principia/body.html , where you will stumble on
other wisdom such as the following:

"Did you know that there is a million bucks hidden in the house next
door?"
"But there is no house next door."
"No? Then let's go build one!"
-MARX
"There are trivial truths & there are great truths. The opposite of a
trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true."
-Neils Bohr
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.

The LAW OF NEGATIVE REVERSAL states that if something does not happen then
the exact opposite will happen, only in exactly the opposite manner from that
in which it did not happen.

(Honey Don't) Put The OO Back In Umlaut!

2006-05-12T19:01:00.000-05:00

Shooter Jennings Makes Retro His Own Thing (tweaked a tad, 6/01) (and 6/05) (AND 7/01: The prefect ending?!)
By Don Allred
Waylon Albright Jennings, born in 1979, was spared a heavy "Jr." being
forever hung around his neck. (Unlike Randall Hank Williams Jr., whose Papa Hiram was proud to choose his own handle once again.) Lil J's famous father slipped in a new middle name along
with his own first name: Albright, was and is as in Richie, the veteran road
warrior and drummer, of the elder Waylon's band. Fittingly, because wee
"Shooter," as Daddy soon nicknamed him, hailed from a crib on his parents' tourbus.
His Mom, Jessi Colter, was a co-star ,with Big Waylon, Willie Nelson, and Tompall Glaser , on an epochal
compilation, Wanted: The Outlaws. Which, in the mid-70s, turned out to be country's
surprisingly sucessful answer to marketshare-biting rivals over on the rising
Southern Rock bandwagon. Which, by '79, had pretty much run out of gas, like Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane. Or so it seemed at the time, to us fashionable types. But country is always movin' kinda slow next to rock, thank
goodness, so the migratory Jennings family was still layin' down the outlaw law,
next to baby dawg.
When in L.A., still-young Shooter finally laid Stargunn, his own
conceptually-D.O.A. (to the surviving "trendsetting major" labels of rock) dreamboat ("Lynyrd Skynyrd mutating out of Guns N Roses":[and/or vice versa]: sure, keed, su-r-re) to rest, and headed back to Nashville, and sold Universal South his already
completed debut country album, and titled it Put The O Back In Country, it was
commonly assumed the O was for Outlaw. Why not? He was entitled, if anybody
was.
Although in at least one pre-release review, Shooter did say that was what
it stood for, he has, many times, since denied it: "The Outlaw Movement was a
movement in time…if you call yourself an outlaw now, your fly's unzipped."
He's got plenty of other Os, after all: two in Shooter alone, so he can spare one
for donation.
As for the O-lessness of "Country", well, um, market research has indeed
shown that most country consumers are female, and Shooter explains that he
wants to make music for "young people," not for "adult women," not
predominately, but y'all come too, y'hear? Just don't expect thangs in country to be all
chick flick, not no more! On the other hand, his ladyfriend Drea Di Matteo,
late of The Sopranos, and Joey, is an exceedingly well-preserved thirtysomething
adult woman, and he credits her with prevailing on him to use Put The O Back
In Country as album title, and theme song (written to the [credited] tune of
Neil Young's "Are You Ready For The Country"). Shooter's re-tuning of this
ancient toon bounces beats like basketballs, so the performance of the song seems
even goofier (and much more likable) than its point, about the risky need to
rock the country, as if "rebel" rock isn't a lucrative and established
practice in country today. No need to sweat it, podner.
But (just to prove me wrong) the starmaking machinery was a bit slow to
crank up, and Put The O, finished in January of '04, wasn't released 'til March of
'05. Meanwhile, Shooter had an encounter with another adult woman: his
mother, Jessi.
Although he has described recording rock experiments with his father (an
album, with new backing tracks by Shooter and his current band, the 357s, will
reportedly be released this fall), I haven't seen any mention of his musical
relationship with his mother. Not, that is, until after his father's death in
2002. In 2004, Shooter and Jessi co-wrote and recorded a song.
"Please Carry Me Home" is about sweating yourself dry of temptation's power,
cold turkey, and step by bare step. (Shooter's drums count out the cost,
slowly, mercilessly). It's a disturbing song, because it implies the risk of losing
desire along with temptation. Not a good idea, because, Smokey Robinson put
it, "If you can want, you can care," and then (maybe), as long lost Southern
Rockers Hydra put it, you can "care enough to survive."
But Shooter and Jessi know this, and hearing is believing: although "Please
Carry" is the only track he appears on, it's a fittingly dramatic climax to
Jessi's new Out Of The Ashes (Shout! Factory), her first album, except for a
couple of kiddie-song sets, in over 20 years. Out Of the Ashes may well be the
best country album of 2006, and the rumble and flow of Jessi's gospel-schooled,
piano-driven twists and turns may well have provided some of the juice for
Shooter's new Electric Rodeo, which he began building while Put The O was still
unreleased.
. The first album has a lot of good songs, but Shooter struggles with pacing
and sequencing. How do you follow "4th Of July"? It's sort of early 70s
Springsteen times early 80s Mellencamp (Chuck Eddy points out the latter), and both of
them drive-by the Eagles' "Take It Easy," and ultimately all this (and more!) adds up to "4th" 's delivery of Put The O's most
compelling/non-who-cares? evidence for SJ's need to git back. For instance, when
he (in a shredded Mellensteen voice) demonstrates how "We sang
'Stranglehold' 'til the stereo couldn't take no more of that rock 'n' roll." Not
only does he sound like he's in a stranglehold, but that song is, as Chuck also
points out, by Ted Nugent. And I found it on the Dazed And Confused
soundtrack. Which, as Robert Christgau points out, is a 70s hard rock utopia, except,
to me, the Tedster's lyrics sound like ludicrously overachieving macho
triumphalism. (He should have flash fwdd to Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now" to
see how to do that rat). And indeed, maybe that's what Shooter really,
ultimately didn't have the stomach for, rock 'n' roll-wise. He's got his complaints,
but who doesn't. Plus, getting back to the c*y, ( already, on some Put, tracks, and much more on ER)he's let his voice relax and
deepen a lot, plus he's (basically) not about geetar gymnastics, and Nuge is
way ahead anyway. But, veering through "4th Of July," Shooter's snagging bits of rock utopia in his hair and beard, taking them back to Nashville, feeding
and threading all his other tracks with 'em, and, though Put The O's wiring can
look frayed, his piano (like Jessi's ,on her own album) does aid and abet the flow, though not as much it will on Electric Rodeo. He said in Harp magazine that his best songs were all written
on one (piano, not a Harp). And Put The O 's "The Letter" is a swell but never
swollen piano ballad, with humility and grace and scruffy frustration, and
sort of a Leon Russell times Elton approach, and the basically similar unlisted
track is good too. (Impulsive vocals at times, closer to Steven Tyler than Van
Morrison [S.T. chatter and yowl on some other tracks too], but with some
awesomely 80s movie lyrics, like "as you skate across the dance floor"!) But it
seems redundant after "The Letter." And , after the git back "4th Of July,"
"Sweet Savannah" and "Southern Comfort" seem a bit redundant too. Especially the
former, but, although "Southern Comfort" starts with him whining enjoyably about
having to live in Hollyweird with that ol "SY yen tol oh gee," over equally
petulant slide guitar and rhythm section, it eventually just creeps to a
sluggish stop. And then of course the backup singers explode, and all but one fall
away, and she does what she can and stops when signaled. On the other hand,
"Daddy's Farm" creeps along 'til it gnarls just right. The lyrics are a bad ol'
boy screenplay; not bad, but fairly generic. Yet he's expressing himself by
experimenting with his own blend of the snakier aspects of yon Zep/Bad Co/early
Aerosmith/Skynyrd approach. (Not to get too pianistic, but Billy Powell always
was Lynyrd's secret weapon: those crucial accents under the final phase of
guitar extravaganza put "Freebird" over the top.)
So, how to you get to Electric Rodeo? Practice practice practice, but,
beyond that, whether witnessing Jessi's accrual of accents into grooves into songs
into implied narrative into an album put him over the top, or what, he's
really tapped into a sharper sense of (and appetite for) pacing and transition, within and between tracks.
Speaking of secret weapons, I was just thinking that ER's "Bad Magick" 's
guitars (for he does indeed have them) weren't slamming me quite like they
thought they were. Only to be curled into the undertow of keyboards, echoing through
Davy Jones' Locker and the cosmic indigestion around kickdrums. Listen on
headphones.
But first,
The preachy jive of Put The O's and Electric Rodeo's title tracks suddenly
seem lived, in a song that sounds as gentle as the first album's "Lonesome
Blues," 'til the pale chorus slips in: "When your heroes turn out to be assholes,
and the light that you're chasing in the tunnel is a train. The singer's in
key, the guitar's in tune, and the song is still slipping away." So he shrugs,
means to refuel with some "Hair Of The Dog," but it doesn't rock him (or me)
enough, so he chases that with "Little White Lines." Suddenly, he's bursting out
with his Daddy's baritone and his Daddy's trademark "wun too, wun too" bass
beats, now almost discofied, which is certainly drug- and decade- (and both of
which are Daddy-) appropriate, while blaspheming against the kind of supposed
cultural separatism that "Outlaw" signified for some. Which sardonic (and
actually Waylonic) humor is both lightened and darkened by the George Clinton (and
Tony Joe White)-worthy swamptoon of "Alligator Chomp (the Ballad Of Dr.
Martin Luther Frog Jr.), As Told By Tony Joe White." Aw, you can figure out from
the title how that ends, can't you. But the devil, like everything else, is
still in a Shooterful of details. (Later: Okay okay, there's this one track that most everybody else felt compelled to mention, even though Shooter took it off the released version of ER, after many reviewers had already filed copy. Perhaps he finally gave into the irony of a clone-perfect cover of a song about the anxiety of influence and genetics; that would be Bocephus's "Living Proof." [Yeah, I know it's got Waylon's instrumental theme tagged onto the ending, but Hank Jr. could've done it that way, what with Waylon being an avuncular influence of sorts...] Or perhaps Shooter decided it was too far from or too close to his own POV. In any case, he made the last minute substitution of "It Ain't Easy," a polite tribute to Waylon I. Which just goes to show that references will will only take you so far; either that, or back to the drawing board, just like Daddy done ("Albright," alright).

Brie Larson Answers Our Questions

2006-04-20T15:40:00.000-05:00

Teenpop singer and movie actress Brie Larson
(http://www.myspace.com/brielarsonmusic) answers questions from her fans
(the name of her album is "Out of P.E.," which will put one of her answers
here into perspective):

Q: 1. why are you so spectacular? 2. can you buy a private jet and save me
from florida? I think the elderly people are coming to get me.

A: 1.) i took classes from lindsay lohan. but they involved drugs and
drinking, so I failed. 2.) if I had a hammer, i'd hammer in the morning, i'd
hammer in the eve'nin, all over this land.

Q: Are you excited about turning 17 this year?

A: i'm more excited about not turning 16.

Q: Where do you get the inspiration to be a song-writer and by being an
artist (design)?

A: i dont get inspiration. I dont really know why I write about certain
things, or why I dont write about certain things. I dont really "write"
about anything. its all pish posh.

Q: So first of all i would like to ask. will you come to my house and disco
with me and my brother in the nude? Secondly. being serious and all. WHEN.
and i mean it. are you my dear, going to come to england.

A: I was in England yesterday! didnt you know? I was dressed as ringo star
and I yelled things like "NAY NAY NAY"

Q: will you sing happy birthday to me on friday? i'll be 19.

A: happy birthday Mr. president.

Q: Okay. i've got three questions. 1. do you have any pets? If so, what are
there and what are their names? 2. Have you ever watched Veronica Mars? If
not, you should. 3. Have you ever traveled overseas? if so, whats your fave
place you've been and why? p.s. Do you love it?

A: (uno) yes. simon's dawgs. and unicorn. (something) i lost my remote
(tres) i was riding on the mayflower, when I thought I spotted some land.

Q: brie!!!!!!!! will you come and chill with captain nicnic in hard rock
cafe london and bathe in baked beans? you know you wanna

A: YES YES YES.

Q: what is your fav. sport and why??

A: is that a trick question?

Q: have you ever wondered what your life would be like without the music,
the movies, and the fans?

A: yes. and then I remember that I would live the same life.

Q: 1. What is the best Bob Dylan CD? 2. Have you seen Transamerica? 3. Do
you think Reese Witherspoon should have got best actress?

A: 1.) my favorite is Highway 61 revisted. but they are all amazing. 2.)
nope. 3.) i thought she did win? am i going out of my mind? I saw walk the
line the day it came out, at midnight. LOVE IT.

Q: yes, she did win...my question is do you think she deserved it or should
someone else have got it. =]

Q: what is ur biggest wish??? :)

A: to be a character at disneyland. mostly Ariel.

Q: if you could live in any decade which decade would you choose?

A: SIMPLE. the 60s. no doubt.

Q: Do you remember going to a school called Pioneer Middle in South Florida
to talk about you're movie Hoot (April 3rd)?

A: PIONEER MIDDLE SCHOOL GIVES A HOOT. i hope cookies and cream/salt and
pepper have been feed lots of cheetos and crickets.

Q: Where'd you get your networking skills?

A: from many years of working in the netting industry.

Q: Do you want to go see the musical Wicked with me.

A: can I be in the musical?

Q: What event from your life would make the best cartoon scene? Pirates:
cool or overrated?

A: once I chased a road runner. i tried to drop an anvil on her head. but it
fell on me instead. i think that would work great as a cartoon. the best
part was that I was dressed as a coyote! how random right?! right. pirates
are overreated. I AM THE WARRIOR.

Q: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? Why is
the sky blue?

A: those are highly controversial question. mostly ones I cannot answer. but
I will say this. "is it safe to say C'mon C'mon? was it right to leave?
c'mon c'mon. will I ever learn? c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon"

Q: do you like mooses? that is a weird word. mooses.

A: i once owned a bear that wore a dragon costume, named moose. so. to
answer your question. i hope mooses suck.

Q: How long does it take you to come up with all the banter you churn out? I
mean seriously, it has to be the most random irrelevant stuff I've ever
read. I guess though that is the mystery that is Brie Larson....

A: i bought the Do-it-yourself DVD.

Q: should my mum let me get my lip pierced?

A: YES. and it should be in the shape of the letter B.

Q: Do You Like Panic! at the disco? and do you think billie joe armstrong is
attractive?

A: i would say no, but only because when I hear their music or just their
name...I get this sudden urge to break my left arm and stick a fork in my
eye? billie joe armstrong is in green day. your answer is right there.

Q: What does celestial mean?

A: read a book. maybe its in there.

Postcard From Brussels

2006-03-28T12:56:00.000-06:00

artbrussels2006

The eastern side of the ring of boulevards that encircle the Brussels center
is less of a matter of uphill vs. downhill than that of one long, genial tilt.
This applies analogously to the city's contemporary art scene where, rather
than ideology, Uptown and Downtown are considered more a question of rent,
altitude, and how much one feels the need to be close to the ever-glittering,
perennially posh Avenue Louise area. “It's all the same scene,” says Sébastien
Janssen, of Galerie Rodolphe Janssen. “It takes 10 minutes to get downtown by
car if you know the way.”

Thus, while one may see the work of Jan van Imschoot, to be shown at
Baronian-Francey's gallery during artbrussels2006, as being rooted in Flemish and
Spanish painting traditions and exhibiting a decidedly Uptown flavour, Mathias
Schaufler's delightfully fabular oils, downtown at dépendance, may be approached
in the same spirit.
artbrussels2006, whose 32,000 visitors will converge on the Brussels Expo
center for four days beginning April 20, is intended to fill a crying need in a
city where the museum establishment gives short shrift to contemporary art.
Moreover, in the same way that Brussels positions itself as the smallest and most
affordable European capital, the art fair's organizers hope to stimulate
canny Belgian collectors with an appealing price range of 1,000 to 100,000 euro.

According to Albert Baronian, one of two Brussels gallerists on the fair's
nine-member International Selection Committee, “If the world of art fairs is
football, divided into Division One and Division Two, then Brussels is the best
of Division Two.” Fair Exhibition Director Karen Renders concurs but adds,
“That's true if we assume that there are only four teams in Division One!” As
artbrussels' Unique Selling Proposition, both of them cite the fair's spirit of
familiarity, openness to new talent, and just the right proportion of Belgian
artists on view (roughly 25% of the total). And since the process of presenting
anywhere between 5 and 15 artists in a single 25-square-meter exhibition
booth may result in more of a mix-and-match feel than of unity and cohesion, when
seeking out exciting new developments one must give equal time to the various
exhibitors' galleries.

For example: Xavier Hufgens, former member of the fair's Selection Committee
and cited as a bellwether by many of his colleagues, will be showing the
disquieting photo(sur)realistic paintings of Cris Brodahl, a Belgian, while the
Taché-Lévy Gallery promises to provoke with the beguiling work of Sandrine
Pelletier. And on the one hand, in her exhibition booth equally high-profile
Catherine Bastide will feature Janaina Tschäpe's dreamlike photographic explorations
of the human body within its contexts, alongside Catherine Sullivan's
theatre-derived photos and Belgian Monique van Genderen's spare, elegant Klee-like
drawings. On the other hand, in her gallery Bastide will host the obsessively
fecund Josh Smith and his gleefully trashy oil-and-collage paintings, presumably
to include several more visual remixes of his name.

Galerie Meert Rihoux, which most recently presented the latest and greatest
of John Baldessari's recent oeuvre (monocolour tinted movie stills accompanied
by lists of applicable adjectives), has scheduled the intriguing juxtaposition
of two sets of photographs: Thomas Struth's vast urban structures and spaces
with Louise Lawler's wry constructions, in which the settings of familiar
objects and images comment on underlying strategies and contexts.

Those who have already made the move uptown claim that as of around 1999,
that became the new growth trend. However, those who remain down below in the
St.Catherine district, which extends west from the church of that name to the
canal, point out that hardly a week goes by without a new night shop, call shop,
restaurant, or art gallery springing up somewhere around Rue Antoine Dansaert.
Any responsible tour of art in the neighborhood would also have to include
Crown Gallery; Erna Hécey; the Contemporary Center for Non-Objective Art (with
their au courant audio installation series); the Galerie les filles du
calvaire, located in the venerable Kanal 20 complex; and Jan Mot, who has recently
devoted much attention to Spanish expat and current Brussels resident Dora Garcia
and her installations and performances.

The Alice Gallery, who recently celebrated their first anniversary, add a
particularly Belgian approach to the downtown scene. For one thing, in a nation
of two peoples and a city of two languages, they see no reason why Brussels
shouldn't have two galleries of the same name – and cheerfully create confusion
with far more established Alice Day. In the case of the young upstarts, the
name isn't even that of a person, but an acronym for “Artists Living In Constant
Elevation” (presumably their mission statement). Moreover, in an instance of
the same good-natured self-defeatism by which the Galerie Rodolphe Janssen
recently opened a view-only 'vitrine' space downtown and called it “Sorry We're
Closed”, Alice have largely escaped the notice of their older competitors by
locating their exhibition space behind their store, which offers not only a hip
selection of books, but T-shirts and street wear. The visitor is thus faced
with an interesting paradox: in order to reach the underground, activist,
would-be non-commercial art, one must politely wend one's way through the
in-your-face retail space.

Regarding exposure, at the fair Alice are poised to make up for lost time:
they'll be spotlighting Belgian rap singer and graffiti artist Pablo Sozyone
Gonzalez, with the entire outside of their booth to be taken up with one single
gritty red-and-black cartoon drawing, while the inside will feature not just
Sozyone, but the work of his like-minded posse and hiphop crew, the Overlords.
Meanwhile, back at the gallery, Alice have invited long-awaited Dave Kinsey,
who starting April 7 will fill the staid brick underground space with his
installations, assemblages, and angst-ridden cartoon visages. Showing Gonzalez and
Kinsey at the same time is quite felicitous: taken together, the two come off
as long-lost progeny of Gary Panter, with his bugged-out Jimbo character. And
stylistically, the work of the two is most appropriate for an art fair in
Belgium, with its long tradition of and respect accorded to comic strip art.

- John W (16.02.2006)

The Scorceress's Apprentice

2006-03-14T16:58:00.000-06:00

THE SORCERESS'S APPRENTICE
by Don Allred
One August night in '72, young Rodney Crowell arrived in Nashville, with
$15.00 to his name, eagerly obeying Jim Duff, the mentor who had bid him leave his
native Port Houston 's canal bar, rodeo dancehall, and Holiday Inn music
scene, to come sign with Columbia Records, thence to tour with Kenny Rogers and
the First Edition. Although Duff had already sold off the publishing rights to
Rodney's demo tape, and vamoosed back to Texas, things turned out okay. Rodney stole
his demo back from the publisher's office, and started playing for tips at a
local dive, Bishop's Pub. Which was also frequented by other resourceful young
songwriters, including Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.
This fecund scene is pungently preserved in the 1976 documentary, Heartworn
Highways. A remarkable "companion album" (with more music than made it onto
the screen) will be released on March 15: it includes "Bluebird Wine," which
Rodney says is the first of his songs that Guy ever approved. (The late great
Townes was a harder sell, it seems.) Guy has denied wanting to be a taskmaster
or teacher of Rodney's; he's said he learned from Rodney. But Rodney seems
always to have felt the urge to both learn from and prove himself to some magical
figure. "Bluebird Wine" euphorically celebrates being discovered by a woman
who provides wine and creative inspiration.
Soon after writing "Blueberry Wine," he met Emmylou Harris, who had been
discovered and mentored by the late mad genius, Gram Parsons. In Rodney, still
known to few in Nashville, she found her own private Gram, her secret stash of
soulful, song-filled, ceaseless striving.
Eventually, Rodney pushed himself out of what he's called "the Great School
of Emmylou," and spent several frustrating years as a solo artist (he did have
hits, but usually when other people covered his songs: the stash wasn't secret
any more.) In the early 80s, he found himself schooling (and being schooled
by) Johnny Cash's young daughter, Rosanne. He helped her have hits, and he
even, finally, had five number one hits off his own album, Diamonds And Dust. This
strange winning streak proved to be a fluke, although he tried to come up
with a hitmaking formula (like he and Rosanne were developing in her product).
They both became sick of the whole hitmaking grind. They drove themselves and
each other to push beyond safe songwriting, and eventually they had to do that,
trying to make sense of their marriage's shipwreck.
In 2001, Rodney made an album with his own money, rather than feel compelled
to try and please a major label "benefactor" one more time. He cannily shopped
it to a well-heeled, intelligent indie label, Sugar Hill. This album's title
was his old nickname, The Houston Kid, but it was really a mix of his own
early close calls, with some of the lives he saw to the end: in his neighborhood,
and his own likely (and immediate) future, if music hadn't provided some kind
of stability. The Houston Kid was highly acclaimed and deservedly so. It was
masterful, with no sense of anxiously overselling good material, as he'd tended
to do previously. In 2003, he released Fate's Right Hand, in which he tries to
provide solace and sense to troubled friends, while struggling with the
paranoid compulsions of "The Man In Me." (Def. not Dylan's "la, la, la,
la"-inclusive song of the same name, and R.C.'s own Man feels closer to Hyde than one
inclined to "hide to keep from being seen," like Mr. D.'s
supposedly/redundantly is.)
2005's The Outsider is more overtly political, to put it mildly, but
certainly redeems the cliché aspect of "the personal is political." Viewpoints shift, and fall away, but the people in these
songs are connected , whether they want to be or not. The first track, "Say
You Love Me," is a raw-eyed ("up all night and the night before," and the
beat's still up), alternate-futures-riffing prequel to several songs to come.
Already, he's getting in bar brawls with bigots. Whereas in "Don't Get Me Started,"
he's already started, but keeps barely pulling back from the brink of his soapbox.
And the slightly creepy china doll imagery of that "Glasgow Girl" (to come) gets graphic here.
"Say you love me!" he barks, leading right into the "Give it to me" of "The
Obscenity Prayer," and keeping its greedy yuppie from seeming too 2-D,
even if his partay platform's not as enlightened as Rodney's (or yours or
mine, of course). "The Outsider" has many a quirky, riddle-me-this lyrical phrase,
which could be irritating, if they weren't seen and raised 'round ever
corner by the music, in a Princely way. "Beautiful Despair" is another peak: he
raises a glass, up a lattice scale, to his sense of sub-Dylanness, his minor yet faithful
muse. But , despite the consolations and vitamins of philosophy (Epictetus, and even or especially an Epicurean poptaste),there's plenty outcroppings and undertoads of not-so-beautiful lowercase
despair, frustration, headbutting, buttbutting limitations (his and everybody's),
overshadowed by the Situation. This really comes through in (after repeated
listenings to the whole album) in the chorus of "Ignorance Is The Enemy,"
despite the gratingly recited verses, which are more like Public Service
Announcements. The chorus is more like a sooty "Rose In Spanish Harlem," crossed with
Gram Parsons' "In My Time Of Darkness," although Rodney's not seconding GP's
call for vision and speed; he's got all he can handle.
Rodney's mellifluous Everlys to Beatles twang is as reliable as ever, which
helps make the Visitor to his reworking of "Shelter From The Storm" even more
startling (in the context of the album), than it is amidst the middleaged haze
of Triple A radio. "Shelter"'s words have always seemed to flirt, if not
dally, with grandiose self-pity, but suddenly here's Dylan's fantasy sorceress in
the eerie flesh: none other than Emmylou Harris, now trading verses with
Rodney. He sounds a bit spooked, understandably (she keeps changing keys on him,
yet they can still harmonize!) You can tell he couldn't stop singing if he
tried, and he doesn't. (P.S.: I'm told that the reissued version of the Heartworn
Highways DVD includes a song not on the CD: it's actually "Rachel," although
the mistitle, "A Young Girl's Hungry Eyes," is certainly appropriate, cos
although Rachel is "the woman behind her man," while Rodney is but "a child behind
the wire," when she gets him behind closed doors, it's like it says on the DVD.
You can also hear this on Gary Stewart's Out Of Hand/Your Place Or Mine
twofer CD, along with some other good early-Crowell covers: Gary adds a little
forced gasp to the end of each line of this un', but he's ably supported by Rodney
and yes Emmylou, and "Rachel" is hungry still.)

Umkay?

2006-02-28T18:29:00.000-06:00

Aight, so one last list, done for a newspaper which didn't print it( or
anybody else's): this is written in my version of newspaperese, which some may
prefer to my usual blogifactions (which also means this is a lot shorter than
recent). Please support these worthy albums! Don Allred

One Last (05) List!

2006-02-28T18:23:00.000-06:00

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2005

1. BOB DYLAN: The Bootleg Series, Volume 7: No Direction Home (The
Soundtrack) (Columbia/Legacy)
Twenty-eight tracks, all but two previously unissued. From 1959's unaffected
warmth to 1966's brittle vibrancy, his vocals are as prodigiously agile as
his songwriting; meanwhile, the playing moves from living room to garage to the
highway to the stage, bringing his punky, psychedelic proclivities further
into the spotlight, and over the moon, but never far from the blues (or rap).
2. JAMES CARTER, CYRUS CHESNUT, ALI JACKSON, REGINALD VEAL:
Gold Sounds (Brown Brothers )
Saxologist James Carter, and his fellow mellow mad scientists of jazz,
alchemize light from the guardedly festive tunes of alternative rock icons Pavement
(sans sometimes cryptic, sidewalk graffiti lyrics).
3. JASON MORAN: Same Mothers (Blue Note)
Unlike many young jazz pianists, Jason Moran is less influenced by the
emphatic lyricism of McCoy Tyner than by the mercurial speculations of Andrew Hill,
who also co-composed some of the tracks on this album. Here, hellhound-chasin'
Jason introduces his agile (and hip-hop savvy) trio to the acoustic and
electric blues guitars of Marvin Sewell (previously and more sedately employed by
Cassandra Wilson).
4. DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER: J'ai Deux Amours (Sovereign Artists)
Jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater's Deux Amours are her birthplace, America,
and her "healing place," France. Despite recent disputes over Iraq, she tempts
both loves to get back together, over a sumptuous repast of French songs
(mostly untranslated, but you'll read her lips).
5. SHELLY FAIRCHILD: Ride (Sony)
Country newcomer Shelly Fairchild shows us her hope chest, which is full of
soul, but some folks don't think she's enough of a lady. Mercy!
6. THE HOLD STEADY: Separation Sunday (Frenchkiss)
Blame NAFTA, CAFTA, bad schools, and/or Classic Rock radio, but here's a
concept album, maybe even a rock opera, about young lives lived in retro. Of
course, all kids tend to think their problems are new, but on Separation Sunday
they get to squawk about the same old dramas (and get me trotting after the pack-a-day narrator), in brilliantly grubby musical
cartoons, drawn from the ink of The Who, early Bruce Springsteen, primetime
Replacements, Lifter Puller(?), and others.

7. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Sony) Next to Shelly's, country debut of the year. Anyone who looks like that can't be getting *all* her well-utilized songwriting scenarios from her private detective parents' files, Ah feel sure.
8. SLUNT: Get A Load Of This (Repossession)
Certain punks once ranted about the "female rule" of Thatcherized Britain.
Wonder if they've since gotten a load of Slunt, who (like Sleater-Kinney) state
the "female rule" of the best recent punk: Mother knows best, and Abby
Gennett's got a lot of cunning stunts to prove it, and here she lets favorite son Pat
Harrington play state of the art guitar, on a long (enough) leash.
9. PATRICIA VONNE: Guitars And Castanets (Bandalera)
Despite the title, the flamenco bits are interludes between songs often best
described as firecrackers tossed into a Southwestern quarry from a runaway
orecart. Appropriately, Patricia is the lil sister of Robert Rodriguez, director
of El Mariachi and Desperado.
10.SANSO EXTRO: Sentimentalist (Type)
I'm tempted to say that "Sanso-Extro (AKA Melissa Agate) is the Madame Curie
of laptop electronica." But Madame only discovered radium, while
Xantro-Extro's eerie microscopic sounds behave more like some kind of musical lifeforms,
fed by all kinds of instruments, acoustic as well as electronic.

20 Lbs of Headlights, Stickynote To His Chest

2006-02-02T21:26:00.000-06:00

Don Allred's Pazz & Jop 2005 Ballot & Comments
Albums:
1. Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series, Volume 7: No Direction Home (The
Soundtrack) (Columbia/Legacy)
2. Insect Trust: Hoboken Saturday Night (Collector's Choice)
3. Jason Moran: Same Mother (Blue Note)
4. James Carter, Cyrus Chesnut, Ali Jackson, Reginald Veal:
Gold Sounds (Brown Brothers)
5. Benny Lackner Trio: Not The Same (Nagel Heyer)
6. Dee Dee Bridgewater: J'ai Deux Amours (Sovereign Artists)
7. Shelly Fairchild: Ride (Sony)
8. Slunt: Get A Load Of This (Repossession)
9. Wide Right: Sleeping On The Couch (Widerightmusic)
10. Sanso-Xtro: Sentimentalist (Type)
Singles:
1. Aaron Neville: "Louisiana 1927"(live version) (no label)
2.Victoria: "Mister Let Me Go" (Shadoks)
3. Dorothy: "Softness" (Crippled Dick Hot Wax)
4. Mary J. Blige with U2: "One"(live version )(no label)
5. Cobra Verde: "I Feel Love"
6. Cobra Verde: "So Long Marianne"
7. Billy Joe Shaver with Big & Rich: "Live Forever"(Compadre)
8. Emmanuel Jal/Abdul: "Gua"(Riverboat)
9. Blind Arvella Gray: "Arvella's Work Song"(Conjuroo)
10. Fiery Furnaces: "Rehearsing My Choir" (Rough Trade)
COMMENTS:
NO DIRECTION HOME (THE SOUNDTRACK) suggests that Bob Dylan was always
electric. The '59 track, "When I Got Troubles," includes a stop/start passage in the
overall groove; already he's slipping a little rockabilly into his bluesy
folkiness, a little cumulative mashup. (He already had what Frank Kogan called
"the mind of a DJ", re LOVE AND THEFT). It's not a static groove, there's a sense
of momentum, of a vehicle sweeping up things it finds along the road, things
blowin' in the wind and rattling around the margins. "Rambler, Gambler"
further highlights degrees of force and delicacy, detail and pattern: waves and
cycles of elements rising and falling in the mix. This can be fluid, and mild or
powerful (depending on the size of the wave, the surge of the urge). It can be,
by the time of the next (only the third!) track, "Dink's Song," notes gouged
from passing, and often painful, insights, impulses. Here, and in "I Was Young
When I Left Home," is emotional roller derby, as the narrator sometimes has
to deal with isolation, fear, guilt (he's way out/in here; lost, fleeing,
drifting, stuck inside a mobile), contradictions that send him crashing into his
limitations, and boucing, pulled back into his cycles, in his lot full of his
stuff. (Ditto what happens to Wide Right's Leah Archibald, in her hot little
apartment, with that damn couch she can't get somebody onto and somebody else off
of; ditto the Fiery Furnaces' Grandma Olga, on the train of thought and manic
munday transit, spinning yarns of seemingly stranded strands, sics, tics, non
seqs, whirlwinds that sort into detail and pattern, stories within stories,
memories in their clashy mesh and meshy clash. Like No Direction's Dylan and The
Hold Steady's ramblin' urban hicks, runaway pilgrimettes, she's purposefully
wandering, off to visit her family plot, its storied, dented inner surface she
can't help but fill in with memory's riffing ritual. This process is served).
"Masters Of War" shines a harsh, steady light, a backdrop as he calls into the
shadows. "Hard Rain's" lighting gets even more theatrical, with the voice
getting spiky already, jabbing and wired, seaching the shadows and portents of his
profuse imagery, but posing too. "When The Ship Comes In" 's imagery is
buggin', its wires raise rocks to stand proud, and everything in it is juiced with
poison visions of vengeful victory. "Mr. Tambourine Man" indicates
self-awareness of the previously over amped ampitheatre of his mynd. His lot, full of his
stuff, while "meantime life outside goes on all around you."But where would we
or he be, if, to some degree, he hadn't bought "Advertising signs they con
you into thinking YOU'RE the One"? (And also he's got me thinking if Insect Trust
created their uniquely, perculiarly satisfying HOBOKEN SATURDAY NIGHT, while
destroying themselves as a group: busy being born *and* busy dying, rather than
the choices Mr. D. decrees we must make. But then he's got me mixing in "though
neither is to be what they claim," from NDH's Disc 2's vibrantly brittle
"Desolation Row," speaking of insight gouging notes and ticks and moments). "It's
Alright, Ma," source of previously mentioned decrees, isn't on here, but NO
DIRECTION's narrative groove leads me through it, through insights and
bouncebacks, flux and clues, glimpsed by "Chimes Of Freedom flashing," as the jingle
jangle morning becomes more and more electric, and Baby Blue's reindeer armies
roll down all roads to Mr. Jones' rolling stoned mirror, and vice versa. Disc 2
starts with the immaculately rowdy "Maggie's Farm" (hard to imagine why some,
not all, at Newport found it so immaculately frightful).Almost too hip,
"Desolation Row"(with guitars and hardassed attitude carving graffiti chronicles in
the near hopelessly sere surface of the costly, protectively low Row) and some
others don't quite have words and/or vocal nuance (yet) to match their music.
And by "music," I mean to include the sheer crackling resonance of Dylan's
stalwart to stoic voice, but "Visions of Johanna," in particular, lacks the
master take's intimacy and shading: it seems too brash, yet Dyl's force pokes
holes in his cool mask (he knows he needs 'em), letting more light, closer
listening into the music's fever sheen. "Inside the museum, infinity goes up on
trial," and he seems ready to judge, strutting with his unmellow fellows, brushing
sparks from the exhibits, still under construction in his scrawled halls.
Manchester '66's "Ballad Of A Thin Man" (only the last two tracks have
previously been issued; legitimately, anyway)is as triumphantly derisive as the studio
master take, but also already becoming as self-mocking as Before The Flood's
'74 comeback tour performance is wrenchingly, wretchingly purgative. Here, he's
persecutor and lost victim, O'Brien ("he was obviously quite mad") and
Winston Smith, both occupants of Orwell's Room 101, and what a workout band the
101ers are. "Like A Rolling Stone" celebrates its Titantic infinity, electocuties
parading an anthem no scarier than anyone born to sing it, and who isn't?
"How does it feeeluhhl," comin' round the swaying, plugged in mountain again.

So: 2005.

2006-01-11T00:20:00.000-06:00

supposed to be in bed right now but I can't sleep
supposed to have something profound to say about 2005 but I don't
it's like high school graduation, I was class president and was supposed to make some big welcoming funny speech but I punted and said "I just wanna sit with my class and graduate with all these wonderful people"
anyway I'm bad at wrapups and larger statements, I think 2005 was a fine year for music and all the trends have been written about so much that they're not interesting anymore anyway, plus I hated just about all of them, whatever they were
if any of my comments were any good you'll see them in the Voice

also, I didn't save my yearend P & J list, nor my comments
I know I had Superaquello's Bien Gorgeous at #2, probably also should have had their La Emergencia but only had one spot for that great band from Puerto Rico
Shakira's second album was #4, I think, and probably the Kahil El'Zabar at #3, that was a last-second change I'm really happy about
Mannie Fresh at #5, maybe, or maybe that was Missy Elliott, these were the two most anarchic hip-hop records of the year, I'm all about the unpredictable beats and lines now, too many straight lines will ruin yr day
also top ten: Brooke Valentine, Natalia y la Forquetina, Marty Stuart's gospel record, Curumin too.

runners-up this year were many, here they are: Cuizinier, the other Shakira, the other Superaquello, Stevie Wonder, A.R. Rahman's score for Bose, the Forgotten Hero, Tony Touch, Cuong Vu, Heloisa Fernandes, Ezequiel Pena, a bunch more, sorry, I'm exhausted.
also would have included Bersuit Vergabarat's Testosterona and Vladimir Vaclavek's Ingwe if I'd heard them in time, but sadly no

for real though my favorite album of the year was P.Funk All-Stars' How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent?. nothing else that happened this year was huger than George Clinton busting out with one of the ten best records he ever made, and you KNOW I'm serious about that comment because I'm serious about my P.Funk. all them old dudes cold nailed it, everything from spacey doo-wop to...y'know what, I'll do this in another post, need more time and more of a brain

good night you wonderful people, all four of you or whatever

Country Ballot 2005

2006-01-04T22:43:00.000-06:00

COUNTRY MUSIC CRITICS POLL BALLOT 2005
Don Allred
TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2005
1. Shelly Fairchild Ride (Sony)*
2. Freakwater: Thinking Of You (Thrill Jockey)**
3.. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Sony)
4. Codetalkers Featuring Col. Bruce Hampton:
Deluxe Edition (Pesky Pole)
5. The Waifs: A Brief History (Compass)
6. Gary Allan: Tough All Over (MCA)
7. James McMurtry: Childish Things (Compadre)
8. Jon Nicholson: A Lil Sump'm Sump'm (Warner Bros.) *
9. Nickel Creek: Why Must The Fire Die?(Sugar Hill)**
10. Big & Rich: Comin' To Your City (Warner Bros.)
TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2005
1. Dixie Chicks with Robert Randolph: "I Hope"
(Sony/Monument/Open Wide)
2. Alan Jackson: "Talkin' Song Repair Blues" (Arista)
3. Miranda Lambert: "Kerosene" (Sony)
4. Billy Joe Shaver with Big & Rich: "Live Forever" (Compadre)
5. Cowboy Troy: "I Played Chicken With The Train" (Warner Bros.) **
6. Jo Dee Messina: "Delicious Surprise (I Believe It)" (Curb)
7. George Jones and Dolly Parton: "The Bluesman"
8. Brad Paisley: "Alcohol"(Arista)
9. Audioslave: "Doesn't Remind Me"(Interscope)
10. Hot Apple Pie: "Easy Does It" (MCA) **
TOP FIVE (actually just three)COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2005
1. David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues (Shout Factory/Hacktone)
2. Blind Arvella Gray: The Singing Drifter (Conjuroo) *
3. Big Kenny: Live A Little (Hollywood) *
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2005:
1. George Jones
2. Gary Allan
3. David Allan Coe
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2005
1. Dolly Parton
2. Shelly Fairchild
3. Miranda Lambert

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2005

1. Dolly Parton
2. Campbell Brothers with Mavis Staples
3. Alvin Youngblood Hart

COUNRTY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2005

1. Cathy Irwin (Freakwater)
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Waifs

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2005:
1. Freakwater
2. Codetalkers feat. Col. Bruce Hampton
3. Dixie Chicks
COUNRTY MUSIC'S THREE BEST INSTRUMENTALISTS OF 2005
1. Robert Randolph
2. Steve Nathan
3. Stuart Duncan
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2005
1. Shelly Fairchild
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Hope Partlow (great crossover potential so far; hope Nashville notes she needs a new label)
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2005:
1. Dolly Parton
2. Shelly Fairchild
3. Gary Allan

Hon Mentions: Marty Stuart, Deana Carter, Dierks Bentley, Beth Nielsen
Chapman, Hot Apple Pie, Patricia Vonne, many others.

* see reviews of these , archived at http://MyVil.blogspot.com/

**discussed in some of my previous (relatively recent, for Mentalizm) posts on this site: See "Howdy, Ma'am" for Hot Apple Pie; "Louisville Lip" for Freakwater; "Gone With The Vroom" for Cowboy Troy," etc. David Allan Coe and the Codetalkers will get their own piece soon, but meanwhile see Codetalkers as one of the bonus tracks in these Comments:

Country comments so far (a few more tweaks recently):
I like the way Audioslave likes some stuff because it "Doesn't re, mind me,
of any, thing": we should let all associative piles, like autumn leaves, be gone
(rather than get real gone) some time. Although it does remind me of John
Contemporary Country Mellentemplate showing Pat Green and many others how to do it
y'all. Otherwise, blues rock guitar has become Bluespolitan Country, allowing me
to waltz right through the triumphant pile of ironies from which Brad Paisley
makes "Alcohol." Triumphantly, because this substance goes James Brown's "King
Heroin" one better: listing the good as well as bad thangs it will do to you.
Or that's the way I hear it, in my ol' white blues bliss. Of course, irony
will only get you so far, so I also like to raise that Paisley placebo one
better, by slipping through Hot Apple Pie's "Hillbillies." "Hey!
Hillbill-ies!" As in "Hey! Bo Diddley!" Has its own associative placebo, which locates my
recessive 'billy gene, so I can go whoopin' round the mountain with Bugs
Bunny and Dolly Parton. Beats the generic drugs, where I stop listening soon's I
recognize the pattern. "Country music station plays soft, but there's really
nothing to turn off." He didn't mean it like that; it's just my 'ssociation.

More shades of bluescountrypolitan: Frank Kogan has compared Keith Urban to Lindsay Buckingham, but I think Lindsay's a lot more obsesso. Keith has his concerns, but his presentation is more basic: the reassuring whitebread balancing a wailin' axe,though not enough of it, on most of the Keith tracks I've heard.(Which might be mainstream smoothie John Mayer's thought too, thus his own recently beefed up whitebread.). Keith's playing, when I can hear it, does suit me better than Harry Connick Jr.'s, Peter Cincotti's, or John Pizzarelli's (although John can be good when picking with dad Bucky), but not so well as Chet Baker's. (Baker sounded even better after dealer's goons tried to ruin his embouchure, literally bust his chops, but succeeded only in putting, or accentuating, a gentle simpleton's lisp in his croon. Dues paid.) Meanwhile, back in Nashville, another dead Chet's fingers might be getting itchy about now, to chicken-pick along with the jazzbluespolitan which has recently started popping like corn, if not quite Hot Buttered Soul, from my local "Smooth Jazz and Mellow Vocals" station. (What's going on?) Also, I guess Hot Apple Pie, and even the discreetly grooveriding Billy Currington, are on the streetier side of bluescountrypolitan., these days--and nights. (See previous post, "Howdy, Ma'am.")

Childish Things: James McMurtry's bent, scorched, barb-wire guitar, especially on "We Can't Make It Any More," isn't charred, done, reduced, like a truly crispy critter. It pulls the shrinking, reductively raging range of the lyrics (which don't include the *mixture* of America, the good and bad stuff tangled up) through the fire. And then their pulled-forward rage pushes the rest of the music past (or much further into) the expected display of countryoid boogiestentialism. (With a Reedy harmonic wrinkle or two.) I associate this grim lil pill's process with the way the bad, reduced/reductive American stuff can work with the good, for the better. Not that this happens very often, so when it does , it's Top Ten! (Especially for those of missing our Drive-By Truckers fix this year.)
The Waifs' A Brief History: bass, rubbing all up under the shivery: "You see
mee, all of the toiyiiime."(Of Oz they are.) So time to demand: "And I say, hey.
Hey! Throw me a line!" Waify, but not wispy.And despite the title (one of the
few sung by the good male guitarist, rather than the two good female
guitarists),not a reissue, but a live overview, a good intro for Americans. "A Brief History" is a hip hop generation band memoir, an updated "Creeque Alley."
(Remember that, Mama and Papa? "John and Mitchy, were getting' kinda itchy, to leave
folk music behind.")This is itchy enough to get around Australia and Memphis,
but also relaxed, enough flexible, slippery, juicy, husky, a little hoarse,
that tight Aussie jaw in there too, like old country music (without either's
expected nasality, though). The album's not brief, but the songs are succinct,
the picking too, over that aforementioned bass, and some drums, some harmonica,
like on the bluesy stomp of their (not Ozzy's) "Crazy Train." And some more
harp when they remind "Papa" that Granpa cried, but now he's "bone," so better
come see her 'fore you're bone too. Two girls, women really: not so very waify
in the feckless girly sense, though they like sounding young and oh wow,
despite the (good) Ani-ish newsflash of "Haircut". They got trouble too, on "The
River," but being a country girl in the city is not a calamity, nor is being a
waitress, but look out, city guys. Yet they must remain travellers, aye, and
might be found under a "Willow Tree, " expecting your return, despite the big
fight. As well they might, if I were you, ooh ooh. Does this (and the summons
to Papa) make them Princessy? "My head was heavy and my clothes was tore, I
never felt like a princess before" that "Sunflower Man" dropped his big sunflower
in the busking cup, and brought them into the sunshine of yon "Spotlight."
"I'll come home when I die," they promise, but also confess to a "Shiny Apple,"
"I feel so helpless standing here, watching you decay." It's alright Babes,
you "just need a little company."(I'll stop it now, cept to say Disc 2 is more
serious, with further outbreaks of busky hip hop.)Takes the Deana slot, cause
better dynamics overall, and more variety, while being waify enough,
oowee.(Also as folkie related as can please those who like the Beatley/Everlysish aspect
of Deana's better songs.) (She good, don't get me wrong, but her waifiness can be worked a little too consistently, like a morning-associated mist that clings to you all day long.)

As for La Womack's hallowed There's More Where That
Came From, there isn't that much more, beyond the title track, which I wrote
about LAST YEAR; oh Music Row, movin' kinda slow, and slower. Yes, I have
heard that most men live lives of quiet desperation, and I guess it's rubbed off
on women, but here the desperation get so faux retro (no sick strings, sure no
Outlaw daring not too have those; no daring, period), so carefully refined and
sealed over, it's hard to hear it as "anything but mined," as Professor
Chesney might almost put it.(Yet some of the songs are underexploited, so maybe
smart cookie will bite them right someday, after a decent interval, once this
album has become the kind of Classic nobody takes off the shelf
anymore.(Shouldn't take much longer.)

The Codetalkers: Bobby Lee Roberts' desperate characters aren't quiet, but they are carefully composed, and his dark humor is deadpan. And his bluegrass-related cadence, even or especially on rocktop electric guitar, flows so steady, he could lack impact, possibly. He could be taken for granted, and so could the rhythm section, despite their intensity, because they all fit together so well. But Col. Bruce's fuzzy sustain keeps nosing around, grazing in the steely ripples and tiny bubbles, and he rolls out Skip James' "I'm So Glad," like a cannonball coming downstairs, and his own patented holey yarns splatter the windshield, and he and Bobby get some sustained guitar searchlights, or anyway flashlights, to track "your Saturn 'round the bend."

PS: Gary Allan can even redeem Vertical Horizon's "Best I Ever Had": "It's not so b-a-a-ad," he's just being so brave that he's gotten a little green around the gills.. Multitracked Garys waft over the waves behind solitary Gary; he's his own Greek chorus, whoopee. (Sounds great, Gary, if that's any consolation. Of course it is, that's how we're keeping him going, thorugh yet another bright, bright, bright morning of recuperation.) Good (favorable, well-written) Edd S.Hurt review of Gary's album Tough All Over, in the Village Voice.

Howdy, Ma'am

2005-12-19T12:31:00.000-06:00

Howdy, Ma'am:
The Midnight Plowboy And Your Favorite Dessert, Reporting For Duty
By Don Allred

Two fresh new country albums, Hot Apple Pie's *Hot Apple Pie and Billy
Currington's Doin' Somethin' Right, each serve up one song in which
"hillbillies" are called for, and and one reserved for "rednecks." Fair's fair, but
actually, I like to think the hillbillies have won. Or at least are catching up.
'Bout time. To paraphrase Waylon Jennings (while using proper tongue-in-chic
dialect): "Don't yew thank this redneck thang has done got out 'o hand?" True,
the equation of "redneck" with "red white and blue" has about ridden its
sincere-to-opportunistic ('scuse me: patriotic-to-free-enterprise!) bandwagon into a
rut, along with the war and the economy. But the Ironic Appreciation of
Rednecks isn't faring that much better.
Of course, irony brings a nice tang to the New Earthiness of recent
country, which is a healthy counter-trend to the anxieties of life during wartime
(And now floodtime, and so on.). So, as current CMT video star Jason Aldean
brings the sight of "the neighbor's butt crack, as he's nailin' up the
shin-gles," to the New Earthy party in his "Hicktown," sure, I'll salute it. But the
music reminds me of driving a pickup truck over railroad ties and bad roads,
just for the heck and the habit of it, even on your day off. Which can be fun,
like the song, yet even before the price of gas went up so far, it was kinda
dumb, and obstinately so. ("Ah gotta do this for the Big Boss Man, so Ah'll do
it for me too!")
And that, whether the defensiveness involved is self-mocking or
self-righteous and/or surrogate-seeking and/or mostly commercial, is what representations
of redneckism come down to, most of the time: that 'necks are dumb and
obstinate.
Hillbillies are more likely to be crazy and sexy than dumb and obstinate.
These essential traits were "established" around the beginning of the 20th
Century, by what were later discovered to be bogus, pseudo-scientific presentations
of the bloodlines of two families, given the stage names of Jukes and
Kallikaks. Conclusion: you might look perfectly normal, but if you have a recessive
'billy gene in there somewhere, one of these days, you're just gonna jump out
the window and go whoopin' 'round the mountain with Bugs Bunny and Dolly Parton.
Which is just the appeal of Hot Apple Pie's shimmying "Hillbillies" and
Billy Currington's curly "I Wanna Be A Hillbilly." Yes, friends, in these
troubled times, what better way to send all your hopes and fears, especially about
yourself, especially if you're Southern, right on up the crick, than to jump
outta your rode-hard "Hicktown" pickup, kick off your shoes, and dance with and
to and on Billy and the Pie. Sing it, Pie! "Lay me down-n-n, in a bed of
gold, " they harmonize, full-throatedly. So they're not *too hillbilly, they don't
sing through their noses much, though they can pick the bluegrass, while
jumping into the chorus: "Hey! Hill-bill-ies!" Not unlike "Hey! Bo Didd-ley!" Fact
is, bluegrass and blues licks are catnip to Brady Seals and his merry men,
just as Bill Monroe was equally inspired by the fiddle tunes of his Uncle Pen
and the blues guitar of his neighbor Arnold Shultz, to go travelling, musically
and geographically, with his Bluegrass Boys.
The Pie is a true band, rarely adding any session players at all, and they
always leave their music plenty of room to breathe in and travel through,
stylistically and emotionally. "Easy Does It" is a guy telling a girl to control
herself. Which is quite a switch, but not wimpy: its chorus is like that of
the robustly suave Commodores' hit "Easy," with the added attraction of " I'm a
real-l-l, re-luc-tant, Romeo," a line which, though playing hard to get, is
*musically pretty close to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On"! These resourceful
hillbillies also know how to adapt to the musical surprises of others. Willie
Nelson duets with Pie leader Brady Seals on "Slowin' Down The Fall," but
Willie seems to have a really bad cold, so Brady figures out how to match Willie's
timing, while working around the hoarseness, rather than trying for smooth
harmony, as he would with his own bandmates. Oh yeah, about their aforementioned
take on "redneck": "Redneck Revolution" isn't as yee-haw as you might think
from the title: it rocks steady (and reminds me of Bad Company's "Rock
Steady"), while its confidence grows, and gets more expansive: "We don't give a damn
what religion or race, we don't hate." So it's not really "redneck,"
stereotypically, but "Redneck Revolution" sounds like it might be the name of a pretty
good nightclub.
Billy Currington's "I Wish I Was A Hillbilly" ("prayin' fer rain!") flies
like the Pie's "Hillbillies," and he's as lanky and sexy as 'billies are
expected to be: limber enough to adapt to life's and love's craziness, with just a
touch of his own strange tushmagick. He knows, when a lady with "Hollywood" on
her license plates drives up and sees him "sellin' turnips on a flatbed
truck, crunchin' on a pork rind," she must be thinking, "This is where rednecks
come from." Don't say! But, even though he obediently gives her directions, the
lovely traveler still turns right around and comes back to him. He's grateful
for this, but doesn't sound very surprised. Nor should he be. As long as he
keeps his reassuring faith in womanly wisdom moving to a smooth, new-cut groove,
his modest crop of memorable melodies should make for a real nice diet of
midnight snacks. Going down even easier than Pie.

The complexities of name-calling

2005-12-03T07:45:00.000-06:00

Not heard Finnissy's latest disc but i found the throwaway comment re: "new complexity" a bit interesting. When I started reading abt classical, new complexity was the first time I came across that sort scene building that is taken for granted over in the pop-world (check yer rock music weeklies). Scene names are designed to provoke exclusivity, signal a break with what has gone before, are quite exciting to the new reader (but not to the older reader nor to the artist a few years down the line), but lead to reactionary responses (in this case complexity being an incredibly loaded term) thus doing a triffic job in promoting but obv aren't that good as a descritpion as to what goes on (how can such scene names be? Wasn't it a laugh when Stanley Crouch uttered his 'free from what?' comment re: free jazz? And in this case Finnissy I don't feel has actually "moved on" from the term bcz really it doesn't exist, if you see what i mean)...and it felt right enough, catching the UK premier of Dillon's 'traumwerk III' for piano and violin that started with a slow, mournful-sounding tune, which is not what you'd expect after the violinist spends a minute laying out the glued music sheets across the support! And micro-melodies are what seemed to come in and out, throughout the however many sections the work seemed to contain. It was long, and at times quite frustrating, but in the best way possible.

Anyway, enough ramblin', more mentalism 4 Xmas!

Louisville Lip

2005-11-30T15:47:00.000-06:00

Louisville Lip
By Don Allred

Part One:
Once upon a time, in the land o' Goshen, a nice, woodsy suburb of Louisville,
Kentucky, there were two teenaged girls, Janet Bean and Cathy Irwin. And back
then, at the dawn of the 80s, they were involved in an ongoing series of punk
bands, like Dick Brains, Butt In Front, Bunny Butthole, and Catbutt/Dogbutt.
But one night, they dressed and painted themselves up and went way downtown in
Louisville, to the Beat Club, between a bunch of strip joints and hooker
bars, to sing a few of the oldest, twangiest country songs they knew.
They didn't particularly mean to make a habit of this, but somehow, as
the Tammy Wynette fashion sense and the bands got lost, Irwin and Bean found
themselves still singing together, under the name of Freakwater, which supposedly
is a hillbilly synonym for moonshine. At first covering other people's songs,
and then very gradually writing more and more of their own, Freakwater
specialized in older-than-old-school country, also known as "folk" music: chronicles
of love and other disasters. Full of images, swirling around and riding on
plain ol' tunes. (Well, the tunes are often kinda pretty, but they don't wear
much makeup.)
The contrast of words and music extend into and from Freakwater's
self-taught harmonies, guitar styles, and lifestyles. Irwin's the flat-picking, smoky
alto, who lives mostly in Louisville, painting canvas, houses, and other rude
objects; Bean's the strumming, translucent soprano, who moved to Chicago,
worked in law offices, and now studies genetics. Freakwater is unison, as well
as harmony, and unison is next to what some rule "out of tune," but also
subject to co-ordination. And stress. That has to be factored in too, if you want
what you've built to last.You gotta have stress, like you gotta have friends. On
1999's End Time, and 2005's Thinking Of You, they fit many session musicians
into a remarkably intimate, homebrewed sound. Reportedly thinking of John
Cale's Paris 1919, Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers (which took some cues from Dusty
Springfield's Dusty In Memphis, according to Ron Jovanovic's Big Star band
history) and Elvis' "sessions in Memphis and Vegas" (like "Kentucky Rain,"
maybe?), they quietly shift small, distinctive combinations of instruments in and
out of the foreground. (Currently, in the fall of '05, the touring band is:
Irwin, on banjo as well as guitar and vocals; Bean, guitar and vocals; their
longtime bass player, David Gay; with Joe Adamik on drums, bass clarinet, and
keyboards.) But I notice, adjusting the EQ, how easy it is to mess up the mix, so
that the instruments suddenly crowd the voices. And sometimes the images can
crowd the themes, as in one of their many struggles-with-religion-and-guilt
songs, End Time's "Cloak Of Frogs", which is as sensationally Southern Gothic as
you might suspect from its title.
And Janet Bean's 2003 solo album, Dragging Wonder Lake, is frustrating,
despite its inclusion of many (not all) good-to-great songs. (Just for one
example: a subset, comprised of a prequel and sequels, Bean's own equals, to Neil
Young's "Soldier." Overall effect, on paper, anyway: Flannery O'Connor
featuring Emily Dickinson, slicing and dicing Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield",
via John Cale's chamber of country-jazz-rock-blues-usage afterlife, Vintage
Violence.) And fine players. ('Tis said that Levon Helm was the only drummer that
could make you cry; haven't heard that track, but even if I had, I'd say: Dan
Leali, take a bow! But don't stop drumming.) But a number of tracks (it
varies; I'm still listening) tend to lose momentum, because Janet stretches her
voice too high and thin. And bids Kelly Hogan do the same! Kelly, who for
instance succinctly belted the role of doomed Lynyrdette Cassie Gaines on Drive-By
Truckers' Southern Rock Opera! And, dammit, despite the fact that Janet's done
her own share of belting, amidst the howling winds and northern lights of her
other band, the ruggedly neo-psychedelic Eleventh Dream Day, which, in songs
like "Frozen Mile," can seem at least as at home in Jack London's Alaska as in
Jefferson Airplane's and Neil-times-Crazy Horse's Northern California, or in
EDD's own Windy City, for that. Nor need she (or Kelly) necessarily belt, to
put a song across. In Freakwater, Janet sometimes sings a part which is usually
associated with harmony, but it's over and slightly behind Cathy's alto, so in
effect, Cathy's "harmony" becomes a counter-melody. (Which is also what
Ornette Coleman's saxophone, violin and trumpet seem to do, so maybe that's what he
means by "harmolodic," although the last time I checked, he still hadn't
offered a definitive-type definition.)(When they do this, they're still doing
their old-timey-associated tunes, so, in that sense, closer to Albert Ayler than
Ornette; Janet adopts a somewhat Ayleresque use of vibrato on some of Wonder
Lake, but (especially since she's not playing off Irwin, or Hogan, really) it
tends to come out more like Neil Young [if that such comparisons aren't too
contradicted by her stoicism vs. Ayler's and Young's tendencies to pathos]. Though
Young has said he's frustrated by his warble, and she may be singing what
he's going for, his voice is a little deeper, has a little more presence than
hers does on Wonder Lake.)
But these are experiments worth taking on, and usually, Freakwater's art
and hearts can cut a deal.And I do mean "cut." They like to sing about small,
shiny instruments, useful tools. "Needle in a haystack, burn the damn thing
down. And there you'll find the needle, lyin' right there, on the ground." Of
course it may get lost again, "lost but not forgotten!" Yes, so they can write
more anthems to the noble tool, and also mebbe keep hold of it long enough to
"write love letters in your skin," although that's just a passing fancy. (But
then, so are you.)
They do have issues with money, men, and other forms and uses of power.
In "Cheap Watch," when they hear last call, there's a mention of something
that isn't on the menu, a ball and chain. Sounds like they want one, or a new
grip on the one they've got, since they've got it, and as long as you're up; and
finally it occurs to dense male me, that Janis Joplin, who doesn't sound like
Freakwater otherwise, does sounds like she wanted that too, and for the same
reasons: to swing with, or to swing from, either way like a weapon, and/or
something in orbit, going around, coming around, and really getting out there, at
times, to swing. (Still the caveman's drawing, but maybe not too far off.)
So, as far as balls and chains go, a girl can dream about being a "Queen
Bee": "She's pretty and she's lucky but it's dark in there. She got a
honeycomb but she got no hair. The boys are waxin' her legs and doin' her nails,
knittin' her sweaters, with their pointy little tails. One little bee, the only
square in the hive, tried to get smart while he was alive. She aimed her hexagon
right between his eyes, and said, 'The Queen of the Bees, beats the Lord of
the Flies.' I'm gonna be the Queen Bee! And in the beautiful world I see, way
up in the hollow tree, perfect idolatry, little bees on their knees, saying,
"Baby you're the Queen Bee." (tiny fuzztones buzz) I won't grubbin' around down
here like I was, because, I'm gonna do like the Queen Bee does!"
End Of Part One, Part Two Continues Below:

Louisville Lip Pfart 2

2005-11-30T15:22:00.000-06:00

Louisville Lip Pft. 2

by Don Allred
Oh yeah, speaking of "Cheap Watch, " that's where Freakwater might be
thinking of your pocket: "Wound up, tighter than a cheap watch, wind it up, and
watch how the time flies. Little white teeth, wound around what sounds like
more cheap lies, li'l black clouds, suck us up to the sky." Those little black
clouds, like Woody Guthrie's "Little Black Train," which they also sing, will
show up, but on their own schedule, like needles and everything else. And not
necessarily in a good way. On Cut yourself A Switch, Irwin's 2002 solo album,
there's a song called "Cry Your Little Eyes Out," in which a grieving mother
feels the "blue sky, like a slap across my face." The Southern sun beats down,
the roses by her gate grow too tall, sporting their "crown of thorns." She
prays for "the dark clouds to roll in, but the Devil is a fairweather friend."
"Louisville Lip" is the true story of how young Cassius Clay threw
his Olympic medals off Louisville's Second Street Bridge, into the Ohio River,
after one racial insult too many. Voices point out "a big man crying from where
the bee stung" (crying from the wound itself!). So they take the line toward
compassion, via gut irony, though basically, of course, they're taking on what
they might've heard older people say. ("Loserville," a local name for
Louisville, is another anthem of sorts, a raised glass of mixed feelings, as a toast
to anyone's hometown should be.) An oblique stroke at redemption of misused
words, wasted breath, slighted youth, but ultimately, they seem to identify with
Clay's frustration, the feeling of being trapped in Southern history, of "My
History,"(an End Time song), anybody's.
As for the comforts of art history, on the new Thinking Of You, "Cathy
Ann" is about Woody Guthrie's daughter. It pictures her life on Coney Island's
Mermaid Avenue, rising and falling like painted waves, "born by the sea, born
for the fire, that was borne by the spark, that was blown by, a wire." Then
there's that chorus, knocking hard once more: "If your father didn't love you,
there's just no good in men." The verses don't describe or suggest in any way
that he didn't love her, or is at fault for her death. (Unless you count the
frames that slide forward a little, to where he's not only "shaking like a leaf,"
but also "shaking like a flame," and even then he's being "bitten by the
wind, that stole down from his brain.") There's been speculation that Cathy Ann
Irwin is willfully, cryptically projecting onto her subject. Maybe, but there's
another artist involved: Woody. (A few years ago, a whole book of songs and
pictures for and of his daughter was published.) "Your father always drew you,
in a sky of blue." She's trapped too, trapped in that same damn blue sky that
lashed the grieving mother in "Cry Your Little Eyes Out", trapped in dead old
Woody's songs, and/or their historical context, trapped in Freakwater's song.
Tough shit. You work with what you've got. Also on Cut Yourself A Switch,
Irwin sings about a Christmas Day long ago, on which she and her brother sang
with their family about baby Jesus. Then the two of them wandered off, where
"the snow would not cover the ground," it being in the South and all, and they
built a "Dirty Little Snowman." And he kept trying to fall apart, despite
their best efforts, but his "dirty mouth smiled," and also "three worlds
collided, on the day of his creation, his head and his heart set on the arc of his
foundation." Three worlds, colliding, set, and ready to fall apart, just as
everybody's basic elements are. In the path of the three wise men, who either did
or didn't or might've come looking for the baby Jesus, who the dirty little
melting snowman either is or isn't or might be a stand-in, though not a shoo-in,
for. (It sounds like a carol that's determined not to be a hymn, although it
almost could be.)(Oh,is this paragraph another spoiler? Listen, they've got
like nine albums, counting the two solos. And not counting Janet's songs
performed with Eleventh Dream Day, whose new one comes out in the spring of '06.)
Freakwater's new Thinking Of You is a little more overtly electrified
than previous albums. Cut to the part where the old gray tunewagon cuts through
the thicket of images, and the yellow flower shines down, watching tall
growths, maybe even taller than the roses that lorded over the "Cry Your Little Eyes
Out" mother's gate. They stretch their long necks up and gape, greedy for
more light, more life, ever more.
But all that greed could make you too fat, so once again, Irwin and Bean
call out their marching orders, to all thangs great and small: "Hi Ho Silver,
high on pills, use your hands, and tell me how I feel. Higher power, higher
hands up mine, tell me why your God is so divine." It's a challenge, but an
invitation too, like all their songs, so come along if you can.

Why I Went and Bought a Slipknot Album

2005-11-12T10:49:00.000-06:00

Okay, I don't feel good about myself sometimes. But I was there with $10.54 in my pocket, and it was two discs for $9.99 at Target, and I figured this would be a good enough way to get an entire handle on their work without actually buying any studio albums...

Okay, but we have to go back farther than that. Why, exactly, did I have $10.54 in my pocket at Target? Because this is what I do when I feel low, freaked-out, sad, angry, whatever: I buy music. And my stomach has been killing me lately and I'm stressed out majorly (although my life's pretty good overall, still sometimes I get that angst thing happening), don't have my act together, etc.

And okay, I'm curious about metal. I have a pretty good working knowledge of "classic" metal, based on once being a white teenager growing up in a rural-suburban town, and also based on Chuck Eddy's book. But starting in the 1980s I saw it as poser music, pop wearing the masque of the black death, I was all about authenticity then. Boo me. So I turned poppy and worldy and rappy and all those other things I turned, and missed out on a lot of it.

People I respect take metal very seriously. I actually bought some Swedish band's record last year (year before?) because Scott S. was raving about it so much, dug it, but then sold it, and I still have Francis the Mute around here somewhere, and it freaks me out at times.

Okay, so the Mars Volta and Slipknot aren't REALLY metal, yeah I know, blah blah blah. Go complain somewhere else. I don't really love hearing death metal talk about how it love cookie ahm ahm ahm num num num. I should but I don't. I like the crunch of guitars and the screams of pain okay though. Nothing wrong with crunch and pain.

So I'm there at Target looking for something cheap. If I'd had a few dollars more I'd have bought something else. But two discs for ten bucks is a great deal, and it's 2005 so I figured if I love it I can review it for someone or put it on my year-end list or something. This is how my mind works sometimes. I could have also bought the orthodox reggae guy's live disc or some pop-punk stuff, but I didn't know which one was best, plus they're all Green Day anyway, which means they're all the Violent Femmes without the god/gay stuff anyway. And I have lots of Femmes already, as I live in Wisconsin.

So I grabbed up the Slipknot and played it on the way to work, and liked it just fine. There's a lot of yelling that I can't decipher; better that way, I decided after looking up their lyrics, even though they're not the worst I've ever read, it's just that if you look up lyrics on the inter nets then you should not be listening to Slipknot. They have a lot of percussion and some tasty guitar and the doom is laid on pretty thick, and I like the facts that there are nine of them and that most of their anger centers around the fact that they come from Des Moines, Iowa. Also, now that they have names and not just numbers, it's cool that there are guys "named" 133 and Clown but that the big hyperaggressive drill sergeant lead guy, who was made this way probably by lots of gym teachers acting like drill sergeants, is now called "Corey."

Also, some people complain that this album is produced badly, but they're high because it shouldn't be too clean. Also, some people want all the songs to be about getting plugged by Satan, but I don't; I'll settle for minor transgressives like slitting someone's throat and carnalizing the wound, which is on one song, and isn't good but at least his therapy didn't cost him anything. Not something to play when the kids are around, but whatevers. And, am I digging the beautiful moments, like when they turn slightly prog with high harmonies and acoustic guitars before the crunch comes back in on "The Nameless"? Sure, why not? That's awesome.

Some would say I should have completed my early Chicago collection by getting Chicago VI with that ten bucks, or getting more 1970s Joni Mitchell, or the King of Rock reissue. I would probably agree with those people, usually. But does this Slipknot album sound pretty great as I drive home from work banging my head to "People = Shit" and "The Heretic Anthem" ?

Oh hell yes.

Ten Quick Shots to the Dome: November 1.

2005-11-01T20:28:00.000-06:00

1. On the new George Clinton Presents the P.Funk All-Stars album entitled How Late Do You Have 2BB4UR Late? (bought it for $16 bucks, we had an email coupon for Borders, jaja suckaz), there is a nine-minute version of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" featuring Bobby Womack. The song ends up as a medley of 1950s songs; at one point George sings "Let's go to the motherfuckin' hop." This is the greatest moment of music for me this year, or ever.

2. My son's favorite musical artist is the Four Tops. He is seven years old.

3. I have not heard most of the records everyone's talking about on ILM as their favorite of the year. I'm a little afraid to hear the Hold Steady because I'm afraid I'd like them. Otherwise: ugh. Indie white-guy stuff that I haven't been interested in since I renounced Blur. OMG SO CORNY!

4. I will have at least two Brazilian records in my top ten this year (Curumin, Badi Assad), maybe four (Heloisa Fernandes, Cabruera). I will have at least two Mexican records in my top ten this year (Natalia LaFourcade, Kobol), maybe four (Banda el Recodo, Ezequiel Pena).

5. Trying to read Frank Kogan's new book, but keep putting down my advance copy because I WAS FRANK KOGAN, except I was born about eight years later and three time zones westerlier. But it's all there: the relationship to music, the poetry of young revolutionaryism, the funky despair that leads to brilliant insight (well, Frank really IS kinda brilliant as a kid, I was just our town's functional equivalent). It's painful but it's awesome like an opossum and my teeth, I don't floss 'em.

6. Sorry, spaced out there for a second, the Bucks just came back to beat the Sixers in OT in the first game of the year. AW HELLS YEAH. On the other hand, it looks like Nene has already messed up his knee. My fantasy hoops team, the Parisian Nightsuits, is already screwed. (I hope you know where that name comes from.)

7. I voted for L.L. Cool J's Radio as my #1 album of the 1980s in that ILM poll, and Prince's "When Doves Cry" as my #1 song. I'll post more of my list if anyone cares.

8. Nice capsule review of Stevie's A Time 2 Love in the Village Voice. That last track is huge, with all the different percussionists going off all over it.

9. I spent last night doing laundry and dishes while listening to the entirety of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814. How has everyone forgotten how dope this thing was? And who was it that said that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were the world's greatest band that year? (And if anyone knows where a fellow can find that butt bongo video, hook me up.)

10. I miss cruising. When the hell else am I going to listen to Foreigner?

We'll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning

2005-10-30T18:08:00.000-06:00

WE'LL SWEEP OUT THE ASHES IN THE MORNING
Li'l Pilgrims Progress Through The Prograss, And The Earth's Sweet Volcanic Cone

By Don Allred

Nickel Creek's self-titled Sugar Hill debut in 2000 was a keening,
blue-green-grass world of Kentucky-to-Southern-Cali, transplanted suburban Calvinist karma. Prodigies next to prodigals: "My greatest fear will be that you will crash and burn, and I won't feel your fire, I'm hung up on that wire."
Their wires include those on the mandolin, banjo and bouzouki of Chris Thile, then 19 (he's the tallest, and most excitable-sounding); the fiddle of Sara Watkins, at 18; the guitar of her brother Sean, then 23; and the little-but-wiry
vocals of all, who have performed and recorded together for donkey's years. 1993's Little Cowpoke, their first album,features the traditional(and Hollywood)
Western stylings of Chris, age 12; Sara, 11; and Sean, 15. (Be sure to
request "I'm an Old Cowhand," when they come to town.) 13-year-old Chris' first
solo album, 1994's Leading Off, stayed relatively close to tradition, but he got
more adventurous, on 1997's Stealing Second. 2000's *Nickel Creek went gold,
which is unusual for bluegrass, but so is its music. Not so much the classical
or jazz elements: those are fairly typical of progressive bluegrass. Yet
already, the Nickels had a strikingly lived-in point of view: songs like "A
Lighthouse's Tale" were early glimpses of the world's beauty and wreckage, between
the sea and the mountains, home and the freeway. They also sounded like they
were ready to hit the road, Jack.
There was one potential problem area, traveling with them.
"Look at my girlfriend, isn't she pretty?" Chris asked shakily,
clutching his mandolin and staring down into its "face" for CMT's cameras, in late
2001. "I don't WANNA boyfriend!" Sarah laughed, while stamping her foot, and
sounding like she meant this answer to a nosey reporter, in the same mini-doc.
(Shawn, the oldest, had no comment on the subject, that I recall.) Nickel Creek
were determined to focus all their energies on the music! Its nervous edge
was soothed and smoothed out, just a bit, by producer/mist-mama/burbgrass star
Allison Krauss, who brought some of her own discreetly renowned sound to the
Nickels' latent noise. The blend was distinctive, which may well be why, by '02,
*Nickel Creek ended up in Billboard's Top Twenty.
Later in 2002, on *This Side, they covered Pavement's "Spit On A
Stranger": "You're a bittah, stran-g-a-a-h, I could thpit on a stran-gah, " lisped
Chris, in a lofty, bratty way, a parody of self-righteousness. Perhaps it's a
self-parody, or some kind of allusion to his earlier,
Bible-study-to-Tolkien-shelf-to-practice-room perspective? Also striking was his own "Brand New
Sidewalk": "You might not have meant to, but it's done now, you can't take it out.
Is that what this is about? It's done now, you can't take it back. You cry
about what fortune leant you without a plan of attack." They were adapting to the
adult world, gathering and giving out some clues and cues, to certain
ch-ch-changes, but meanwhile, *This Side became hard to listen to. Its subtle
experiments needed some shine, not just polish, and certainly no more of *Nickel Creek's mood stabilizers. Speculative song-shapes' soliloquies and hairline
fractures tended to settle slow-w-w-ly into the dust of dissolving tempi. Maybe
muted drama and delayed impact are all Allison knows how to do. Maybe that's all
they wanted from her. Maybe she and the Nickels brought out each others'
insecurities, when faced with the need for change. Maybe they all should have
consulted Dr. Joyce Brothers. (Maybe contact with *This Side's underside drove
Citizen K. to "Whiskey Lullaby" ? Seriously. Also, the New Morbidity stage/trend
of country's ongoing Life During Wartime was about to waft her Applachoid,
post-dead-baby-ballad way, and maybe the Nickels had already met the New Unease.)
In 2005, their new *Why Should The Fire Die? sports more versatile (but not showy) producers, Eric Valentine and Tony Berg. Also, Nickel Creek
guitarist Sean Watkins, whose solo projects have included jazz musicians, sometimes
brings a Bill Frisell-ian, disappearing crackle to the glamorous darkness.
The Nickels are on the dime now: they sound like they're all dressed in
black, while easing back into the kind of places they once could enter and
leave only via the stage door, when underage. "When in Rome" doesn't fiddle
around. Except in the musical sense, as Sara's sweet, snake-charmer strings chime
around Chris's calls: " Hey, those books you gave us look good on the shelves at
home, and they'll burn warm in the fireplace teacher (no commas in the singing or on the lyrics page!) when in Rome. Grab a blanket,sister, we'll make smoke signals, bring in some new blood, it feels like we're alone." There's also a doctor who comes to town but stays at home, dead men (in the video, sooty WWI soldiers look at the camera, while Chris lies on his back, eyes closed, playing his mandolin and twitching like a cockroach), and a guy with a cold. But that's all in the family, when you do like the Romans do. I think this song has
to do with implied ironic references to touring musicians as cruising tourists, and to Churchly admonitions to "be in the world, not of it." Gang Of Four's "At Home He's A Tourist" also comes to mind.
But there are also plenty of seemingly more direct-to-midnight
confessions, and some boasting, about what bad li'l pilgrims they are. "I helped her
live, and made her want to die!" That's Chris, of course, but each Nickel
contributes to the songwriting, and they take turns singing lead. Sara's got a couple
about seeming the wimpy little sister to potential boyfriends, but one of 'em
goes off and gets married and then can't get Sara out of his mind! The only
consistently disappointing track (especially after her own writing) is Sara's
wispy version of Dylan's "Tomorrow Is A Long Time." (But it's a wispy song,
except when Elvis did it.) Brief instrumentals provide refreshment, while adding
momentum. And the Nickels stomp so hard, so often, that I didn't realize, 'til
reading the credits, after listening to the whole album, that only one track
features drums. And "Doubting Thomas" is a confession so mature it's
inspiring, especially since it leads to the breakthrough of the title song, in which
love and doubt aren't just risked, and lived with, but embraced. If you can grow
up to that point, then indeed, why should (and how could) the fire die?

Okay This Really Pisses Me Off to No End

2005-10-20T00:06:00.000-05:00

To all the lazy-ass music writers who mischaracterize Stevie Wonder's career as being split between his "funk" period of the 1970s and his "pop" period of the 1980s and 1990s: STOP IT YOU ARE LYING, OR STUPID. Stevie always had sappy ballad stuff, even on the dynamic duo of Innervisions and Talking Book. Yes he did, listen to them sometime. Hell, he even had a couple on my all-time favorite Stevie record, Music of My Mind. (Okay, it's not my favorite, Songs in the Key of Life is my favorite, but MoMM is a "better" album.) And Stevie busted out with a couple of really hard heavy funk songs in the last 20 years, but no one noticed except I guess me.

Here's the thing with Stevie: he's a soft-hearted guy, and he doesn't care about hiding it, and it doesn't matter. As he says on the new record, A Time to Love, he CHOOSES to be positive because he knows the world is full of shit and he knows he can restore some happiness to it. Okay that's a paraphrase but still. He's always been a Manicheist, the light and the dark, hitting us with the chamber-synth formalism while narrating the harsh conditions of "Village Ghetto Land," setting romantic lyrics to the saddest music ever and vice versa, I could go on but I won't because I'm hoping to get paid for reviewing this new album, because it's really damned good and I want people to know about it, plus I want my $10.54 investment to actually pay off for once.

All I'm saying is, saying that STEVIE FRICKIN' WONDER was once just a funk merchant who sold out to do lite R & B is a damned lie. Sure, he fell off after (AFTER NOT BEFORE, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants is a beautiful record) Hotter Than July, but not the way it's being portrayed. Stevie's heart never changed. Y'all just stopped listening. For shame.

For Whom The Drells Toll

2005-10-12T20:24:00.000-05:00

For Whom The Drells Toll
A Child's Introduction To A Garden of Wishes And Dishes Upon Big Star
By Don Allred
(The child of reading something in this book, then listening to these CDs
again, wandering to and on and from this computer: not a straight-up review
overall, but a lot of notes, observations, opinions)

Big Star: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection Of The
Kings Of Power Pop
by Ron Jovanovic (A Cappella Books/Chicago Review Press, 333 pages, $15.95)

In Space
Big Star (Ryko)

"The tune itself was an up-tempo rocker, which gave the album an
abrasive start, but the song soon twisted to show its melodic qualities and then took
off to somewhere else completely." That's Rob Jovanovic reporting (he's not a
critic), and however accurately he does or doesn't diagnose "Feel," he's
close to nailing "Feel" 's parents, the misfit Anglophiliac Memphians who named
themselves Big Star, after a chain-chain-chain of grocery stores. In Big Star:
The Short Life, Painful Death And Unexpected Resurrestion Of The Kings Of Pop,
R.J. indicates that they knew their name would rise again, possibly to hang
around their necks like their pointy trademark neon sculpture, which already
looks like a real quick chalk mark around a body.
So what the heck, they named their first album #1 Record. It was more
or less "released" in 1972. On Stax, like their second album, neither of
which was exactly the Stax-ish (Bell Records-labelled) soul-pop of Big Star
frontman Alex Chilton's former group, the Box Tops. (AKA the Funky Monkees, cos
live, in my hearing, they sounded like what they mostly were, a teenbleat cover
band, spazzilizing in hits of the session rat-only Box Tops. Even main
double-shifter Chilton was pro forma-ing his own gravelly,
bluejean-jacketed-soulpunk studio pipes; his preferred range was higher, for better and worse.) #1
Record mainly existed as promotional copies, but (thus?) got great reviews. As did
# 1's even better follow-ups, '74's Radio City and '75's Third/Sister Lovers,
the latter of which couldn't find a legit release until '78, and both of
which pushed Big Star's music and luck further and further. Yet even early on,
their also-funny-named "power pop" was melodic and rough, polished and sweaty,
melodic and twisted. They all continued to radiate in the ears of critsters,
fansters, and musos.
They set the bar too high for most of what gets called power pop.
(Unsurprisingly, considering that generic pee-pee usually boils down to the kind
of creeps who fixate on a [particularly drippy] transitional phase, which then
becomes arrested development at best. Accordingly, their own fansters luv to
whine about "Why isn't there more of their good stuff?" One-hit wonders are
all over the map, get over it. But that would be a contradiction in terms.)
In an afterglow that became an afterlife, they continued to fall, into
truer, bluer Big Stars, making more and more underground/grassroots sense: some
even called them "the Beatles upside down." (As Edd Hurt points out, this notion might have gotten folk-processed from Robert Christgau's 70s Consumer Guide notes on Big Star: "The harmonies sound like the lead sheets are upside down and backwards." But later in the 70s, I heard it from a couple of people, who didn't know each each other, or at least I hope not, considering other things they said. I've always pictured Big Star sprouting from an upside down Used bin in the sky, waiting for the next breeze to take their lusty dust for a cruise.)
Upside down in an operational sense as well, because they had found fresh
possibilities in their native Memphis, and themselves, via the perspective of the
Beatles, yes, but also (as Jovanovic points out) of the Kinks, the Zombies,
even the Beach Boys and Led Zeppelin. (Way before Big Star's local studio
consultant Terry Manning engineered Led Zep III, which also has certain
beyond-folk-rock, modes 'n' nodes in common with Big Star, Zepreneurs launched
another para-Star: even though it was an important introductory single and/or
Featured Track, moving from groovy late night FM to nervy Top 40 Morning Drive,
compulsating "Whole Lotta Love" just couldn't be satisfied with any direction
homerun but that of a purposefully self-Led ((Zik Zak Wohnderah)), as equally
possessed Capt. Beefheart would put it. He and Zep had great live acts, and
he even had tour support like they had more of, but Big Star had little act,
tour, or support, in their original setup.)
Meanwhile, back in dream-(and otherwise-)infested Memphis, Big Star
tunneled through a meta-boilism of mutant-soul-stewpotheaded, Amerophile
records, the black vinyl hobo pyramids of kicks-starved, UK art school dropouts, and
found a space to see things from, not just fall into (although that could also
be cool.)
Jovanovic makes it pungently clear that Big Star were late-adolescents,
precariously balanced, but often (almost) equally determined to swing all
moods and rock all bottoms. Yet another Beatley aspect was that they had their own
mix of George Martin, in the person of Ardent Studios co-founder John Fry,
who had had his own mix of Big Star, in the persons of his own teen gang of
brainac techno-autodidacts (One of whom later founded Federal Express.) He passed
the fever along to Big Star, teaching them how to engineer sound, teaching
them from the waves up. So they in turn could become mad monks of the studio,
locked away in the anti-roots cellar, and all of 'em could take it as far as they
could go. (So Big Star's nuclear cluster wasn't just Alex Chilton Lennon and
Chris Bell McCartney lording it over the other two, it was more of a sweaty,
somewhat richochet-prone group head.)
The music can not only sway and jump like a gland funk railroad,
sometimes it flickers, even while chuffing in place, which is enough to keep it from
sounding very much, to me, like somewhat comparable (element-wise) joyrides
of, say, Buffalo Springfield, who they namecheck in R.J.'s book. (Maybe like
some solo stuff Neil Young would do, but not yet.) Even between croons and nice
beats, it can switch and twitch enough to cough up an anti-groove (groove), a
reaction against what's usually expected and required of Suthun boys, and what
we expect and require and show and peddle of ourselves, typically enough, in
and for some quarters.
Thinking here of Radio City, especially, where "Life is White" 's
post-blues blues claims the dumb post- part for toasties, offered as toothpicks of
white noise that (I guess this part is a harmonica) can seem white as bare
wood appearing in the bandsaw of the Home Improvement daddy, flashing back to his
pre-TV incarnation as bachelor cokefiend jailbird: he demonstrates how to
smoothly peel the bark, as chips, pine needles, blood and white powder fly in
every direction, their shadows crossing over his L.L. Bean plaid shirt, and
spots appear on his khaki Dockers, and his studio light life whites on out, into
the black, or at least the next track, which has its own life to do.) And
each album has its own set of curves. To "Break on thoo!" as the Doors would say,
but Freedom Rock can become more stylized than evah, which might be why Edd
Hurt refers to Radio City as "mannerist."
Not to get too (much more) owlish about it: fairly often, even on the
early tracks, they turn gawky self-consciousness into speedy self-awareness, so
the music seems to comment on itself, but dynamically. "Don't lie to me!" they
squawk, over a heavy beat, which, in this context, sounds (deliberately, I
think!) like a child-man stamping his big foot. Although they could also button
their collars, to face down the gorgeous perfidy of "September Gurls," which
became a hit only when covered by the Bangles, many years later. Many more
years later, their futility-anthem, "In The Street," covered by Cheap Trick, was
adopted as theme song for That 70s Show, and re-named "That 70s Song." (Big
Star's own original rendition of "September Gurls" ended up on That 70s'
semi-soundtrack, possibly because the producers were such fans, and also didn't want
to pay more for the Bangles' version.)
Pt. 2 is below:

Big Star Ptart II

2005-10-12T19:50:00.000-05:00

Big Star (cont. from above)
Not that things stayed so cute. For instance, it turns out that, for "O
Dana," Big Star's upside down semi-"Lennon" figure, Alex Chilton, built up a
stash of lines actually spoken by his (apparently) unwitting girl friend, Diane
Wall. Lines like, "I'm afraid this is my last life." Reading this, I remember
#1 Record's "The India Song," which was written by Big Star bassist Andy
Hummel, not A.C., but includes, "Get to know her after our trip, her life a part of mine." The song still sounds dreamy, though now I see it lay its cards
on the navel. R.J. also shows how witting people toss stuff into the strange
brew. Eventually, Alex encouraged another girlfriend, Lesa Aldridge, to
perform on several tracks, then erased most of what she'd done, "at a certain point
in his creative process," according to Jovanovich. But she can be heard
sometimes, not quite sealed away, on Third/Sister Lovers (also the repository of "O
Dana"), which still sounds like a house of secrets, even while Jovanovic's
impassively deep focus persuades me that it's (apparently) based on the slowly
dying relationship of Alex and Lesa.
Ron J., T/SL producer Jim Dickinson, and Big Star's Jody Stephens all
hear it as happenings in scuzzy Midtown, around which the river city fluxes and
grinds, loads and unloads. Tore down and tarted up, it's a Southern thing,
everywhere and nowhere. Big tin and today's potatoes. It's the mid-70s I
remember: walking around, outside and inside; pacing, even when doing errands, and
partying again. "Til the end of the day!" Alex, now the center of a nebulous Big
Star, raises a glass, covering the Kinks, his faves, 'til habits seem more
nocturnal than ever, rocking through sleepless stillness, like the old lady in
her chair, in Samuel Beckett's play. Stillness keeps me listening, forgetting to
be depressed.
"Morning comes and sleeping's done, birds sing outside. If demons come while
you're under, I'll be a blue moon in the sky." Either way really, which is
nice (don't come any closer). Jovanovic thinks this is a real nice song, and so
it is, in its way. Voice like a mirror sometimes, brightly so: does R.J. ,
does Chilton, really buy the A.C. quote re "Thank You Friends" being so sincere.
Maybe it is, but sincerely what? Look over here, please.
A couple of gutty, blutty, sometimes almost Hendrixan live sets, with
Alex's guitar perpedicular to that lilting, tilting voice (too confident by
'alf, in some later solo, low-dimensional/-campy gigs), and now leading a new
bassist, John Lightman, and original drummer-singer-songwriter Jody Stephens: on
Ryko's Big Star Live, and the rehearsal tapes-half of Norton's Nobody Can
Dance. (When they finally get out to the stage, sound goes awobble, maybe for them
too: R.J. says earlier lineups had a knack for that.) Then, after a couple of
decades of going solo, Chilton suddenly agreed to a Big Star "reunion"
performance, again with Jody Stephens, and new recruits Jon Auer and Ken
Stringfellow, guitarist and bassist, respectively, of the Posies. On Zoo's Columbia,
Live At Missouri University 4/25/93, there no bad dogs, even on songs from
Third/Sister Lovers, but also missing is its (and previous albums') consistent
commitment to expressive detail. About (a scattered) 50-60% of the set kinda works
anyway, but the other half's just high-generic, early-70s-associated Classic
Rock, suitable for sweatin' to the oldies "The Ballad of El Goodo" was once
poignantly self-assertive, and even (gasp!) personally responsible. ("You can
just say no, " Chilton advised Nancy Reagan in '72.) On Columbia, it's more
like Mott The Hoople's wet-hanky-waving "Ballad Of Mott." Stringfellow's bass
lumbers all over the place. Big Star lite 'n' heavvy too.
And now! A mere twelve years later, Chilton's Columbia crew bring us a
studio album of all-new tracks, In Space, where lightweight-to-high-generic
qualities seem deliberate, and sometimes witty, like they're saying, "Hello,
fellow collectors! We're influenced by Big Star!" Pleasantly hooky, tap-along,
sing-along, ho-hum-along ballads currently reside in the McCartneyesque portion of
our programme. But my fave raves are more like chillin' Chilton's better solo
joints. The veddy classical "Aria Largo" gets tortured by the twang of an
electric guitar, one (faithful!) note at a time. (I checked it vs.
pre-transcribed, chamber orig.)"Love Revolution" sounds like a longhaired Carolina beach
band covering Archie Bell and the Drells' "Tighten Up," which is surely a signal
to the shade of Big Star's tightly-wired,increasingly cracked,
upside-down-semi "McCartney," Chris Bell, who did want a Love Revolution, in the name of
Jesus!. Seeking to drive (incompetent) money changers and other bugs and swine
from the temple, and the program! For, as previously mentioned, Chris and the
other original Stars were trained in engineering by Big Star studio
mentor/founder John Fry, but Chris was the one who obsessively tinkered for years on the
same set of solo tracks, as he would have on some Big Star tracks, if he
hadn't wrung himself out of the group. (And do the tighten up, ma blue-eyed boy,
like when young A.C. was but the frustrated clapper 'ttached to Bell Records'
own Box Tops.)
This alluvial- plain-as-thee-Memphis-on-yr.-phizz bell of allusion is
closely observed by the guy behind the shades and the finally-getting-creepy,
fake British accent, who's "Hung Up With Summer." When the sun goes down, "Do
You Wanna Make It" conjures a big fat drunk chick, doing the bump with/to those
elegant Kinks. Yes, baby's got bass, and there's a Big Star tattooed on it.
Once again, Big Star shine where the sun don't shine. ('Cause after all, they're
stars of the underground!)(Update: ever the gentleman, Mr. Chilton insisted
on keeping a blind date with a lady called Katrina, down in New Orleans. He
almost became a star under the underground, but ended up settling for the
Astrodome. (Poor bastard. I don't really know what I'd do.) Now recuperating in "a
place he refuses to name," behind a wall of rumors, his usual home away from
home, at least. Hopefully not too far for A.C. and his Nola to make up, without
breaking up; there's been too much of that already.)(Updownsidedate:Get back,
Rita's rival!)(Poppermostpostdate:Wherever he is, somebody tell him Big
Star's tourette has been rescheduled for December. That's '05, Alex. I think.) For
a more concentrated hit of Big Star, book and band, see Edd Hurt's trenchant
investigation:
http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Arts/Music/2005/09/01/Mod_Lang/index.shtml

Fried Ice Cream IS a Reality

2005-10-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

1. Listening to "Lunchmeataphobia" off One Nation Under a Groove on my iPod while doing late-night grocery shopping: why, exactly, is George Clinton so upset about the existence of fried ice cream? Think about all the nasty stuff he'd sung about before now: peeing on and being peed on; a woman so funky that her very odor makes the air complain; selling one's soul to the devil; the ritual murder of gold-laying geese...and he's worried about fried ice cream? (Actually, "the fear of being eaten by a sandwich" kind of sums up all of P.Funk past and present. Not sure how though. A koan for me today.)

2. Dammit, but Maroon 5 rocks harder than you ever thought they could on the new live album. That's just unfair.

3. This year I believe I will have exactly almost no English language albums on my album list. It will be just about all Mexico, Brazil, India, and maybe some Africa. Oh and country, which somehow doesn't count, and hip-hop maybe. And jazz. Super Furry Animals I liked too, and Jaguar Wright. Oh snap that's 58 records already.

4. Finally hearing the latest reissue of "Odessey and Oracle". Wow.

5. My son asked me a few weeks ago if I was the best music critic in the world. I said I was twelfth or thirteenth. Tonight, he says "Dad, maybe you're only like the ninety-eighth best critic." He's a nice kid, but damn. Screw that, I'm 13th by my count.

Then There Is (Butt Moe Is Less)

2005-09-21T15:30:00.000-05:00

Well now, Mom, Dad, some of you kiddies too, y'all know how a Stone
Mountain-high billboard promoting the Allman Brothers Band's upcoming Hooterville
show should read: "RETURN of the vanguard '70s Southern Rock, polyrhythmic,
solar-systemic, all-tyme blues-tattooed-jazz-jam stars, eating peaches, 'shrooms
and doom for breakfast and lunch too! Death-dogged dawgs, still
death-defying, yet sometimes own-breath-they-frying Kings Of the Road for 35 years!"
But ne'mind, Clementine: rat now, in Indian Summer '05, I yam floating
through an '03 visitation of "Mountain Jam," which peacefully and peachfully
loops me back through pre-Legendary days in Tuscaloosa, where I sat on a
dusty-carpeted, hardwood floor with some of these guys, friends of a friend. We
pointed at and jabbered about information found on the back of album covers. They
were really into Mongo Santamaria, who made what was still called Afro-Cuban
music. He employed (as players, and sometimes also as arrangers and composers)
up-and-coming progressos like Chick Corea. (Results tended to be more fun than,
say, listening past Herbie Mann's flutings, with an ear stretching toward
Larry Coryell and/or Sonny Sharrock, buzzing down in the mix, but I think we did
some of that too.) John Coltrane had covered Mongo's "Afro Blue," which led
ABBabies from one kind of jazz to another. (Or vice versa. Really was a while
back.)
In late 1970 or early '71, they came back to play, in the auditorium of
Morgan Hall, home of the University of Alabama's English Department. It was a
setting in gray, quaint contrast to the lurid musical Godzillathon onstage. In
early 1972, when, for various reasons (like Vietnam), the world seemed as gray
and mottled as the pavement that had just claimed Duane, the surviving ABB
returned to Tuscaloosa, unveiling the elegiac "Les Brers In A Minor," which was
as bold and eloquent as any other moment spent with (all) such spirits.
1973: Once again in T-town, when the Crimson Tide was at its peak (and the
war was going from mainly ground to primarily air, and backroom), the
Brother hoodz seemed most appropriately viewed through the white line fever-visions
of "Ramblin' Man." Of a late night appearance at Charlotte's mad '74
(Watergate Summer) Speedway mudfest, The International Carolina Jam, I wrote,
" Their sound's the air and everything in it." And, "I look straight up.
The night sky winks." (Like sorry, but it's true.)
Meanwhile, back in '03, the "Jam" is still revolving/ evolving, and,
while listening to the disc of it in '05, I taste traces of jazzy goodies from
the crispy late 60s/early 70s cusp: Mongo's version of "Watermelon Man," Wes
Montgomery's "Bumpin' On Sunset," perhaps War's "Low Rider," surely the sleight
return of Jimi's "Third Stone From The Sun," near the end, but not before
Gregg's Hammond B-3 almost gives it up for "Boogaloo Down Broadway," by The
Fantastic Johnny C!
Gregg also plays the piano part on "Layla" like he's marching punks into
Reform School assembly, but it works, and the guitars re-ignite right on cue.
As in recent decades, he sings like Gran'paw 'Metheus in chains, but must have
been taking his Geritol, because he puts across every word, and even the
tribal "Ahh-ahh, ahh-aah-aah, ahh-ahh, aah-aah" 's on "Black Hearted Woman."
Nevertheless, Warren Haynes' singing is a welcome change, especially on
his deep blue "Patchwork Quilt," where "tears of sorrow, tears of rage" are, I
think, for the late great Allen Woody, the bassist who, along with guitarist
Haynes, is given deserved credit for reviving the Allman Brothers Band. (Even if
they did eventually have to make their Gov't Mule side-project a full-time
job, but that worked out for the best.) Now Warren's back (replacing ditched
Dickey), with the ever-budding prodigy, Derek Trucks. (Who, on this '03 set,
shapes the fluidity of his main themes with a scraping punctuation.) This is a
team that Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics, and ABB nut from the
get-go, even prefers to Duane and Dickey! I think that, in this context(in '03, anyway, when playing *together* in ABB was still new to them),
obliged to perform much (though certainly not all) the same material that D.& D.
defined, Warren and Derek don't project as much of their own musical
personality as the Dawgfathers did. (Though the Dereks Trucks Band and Gov't Mule
are something else again.)
But the ABB's cliches are theirs, while Moe's three-disc live set, Warts
And All, Volume 4 is a vigorously excruciating demonstration of every generic
jam band cliché, evah. Hoedowns, a touch of reggae, almost-Bo-Diddley beats;
nerdy, sub-Dylan-y complaints; sub-Robert Hunter philosophizin'; sub-"Dark Star"
guitar detours, no-o-o! Still, I do like "Happy Hour Heros," about wryly
rolling your eyes, and getting through a tiresome performance.(PS: 1) This is one of those Instant Live sets, sold Instantly at gig they've just documented, then, if there ever was any excessive crowd noise, as I've occasionally read about other sets, it's been tweaked from this nice-priced Charlotte 03 joint, at least, before it reappeared on ABB-authorized hittinthenote.com; 2)the only time on here when Allman cliches become a problem: when a reflexive slide YEEHHAAWS in midst of "Good Morning Little School Girl" 's sneaky grooves; 3) the proto-ABBabies were also into some country, as would later become more apparent when "Ramblin' Man" actually got played on 70s country radio, the first such crossover I can recall. But even early "Statesboro Blues" suggests early country. (Never heard the original, which might also, perhaps something like MS. Sheiks' delta-blues-to-honky-tonk crossover experiments?)I'm thinking of the vaudeville-ish country on some sides Jimmie Rodgers and Emmett Miller cut with accompaniment by say, Louis Armstrong, and the Dorsey Brothers, I think. Also come to think of it, Dickey did "Blue Yodel #3," wasn't it, with New Orleans horns, on Tribute To Jimmie Rodgers. (And epic glide "Kissimee Kid," with Vassar Clements, The King Of Hillbilly Jazz, it says here [RIP, again], on Dickey scuse me *Richard Betts'* great solo debut, Highway Call.) While in ABB,of course he would often raise a big dipper of blue slide-emulating-country-steel-emulating-Hawaii(hawaya)(Haveya seen that TV commercial, in which "Melissa" winds and calls all round the winding look the actress gives the actor when he finally shows--talk about your country.)

Gone With The Vroom

2005-09-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

Gone With The Vroom: A Personal NASCAR Mixtape
by Don Allred
Dear Scarlett, this is Charlotte. Hello, Darlin'. You know you can't win. We
shall have the NASCAR Hall Of Fame, and Atlanta will, well, not burn again. How I do recall the Charlotte Pop
Festival of '74, at yon Speedway, and once again, I am moved to consider what Mr.
Chuck Berry means by "motorvation." (Join with me, girl, and soothe, nay, lose!
your sore loser wounds in the sheer adrenaline of musical celebration.)
1. Lynyrd Skynyrd: "Call Me The Breeze." Once again, the immortal DUKES OF
HAZARD movie soundtrack brings the true tale of young boys sailing through Eden,
long before pesky "environmental" rules grew the Snake!
2. Montgomery Gentry: "Gone." How their draw-wuh-uhl doth weave, even while
landing on the one! Like the "Devil's Third," or "Fifth", or whutever: banned
in the Middle Ages, for being flat and yet not. And they keep going, in
call-and-response, like a good work or gospel song should "Gaw-un, (Gaw-un), Gaww-un?
(Gaw-un)," until the straightaway: she's truly " Gaw-un lak a '59 Cadillac,"
which leads us to
3. Dwight Yoakam: "Long White Cadillac." Dwight sounds so shallow and
desolate, you know he really is that doomed 'billy star, hunkered down under his long
white hat, in the bottomless upholstery back there. In the Blasters'original,
Phil Alvin sounds a mite too soulful and healthy, compared to the glammed-out hokum of
Yoakam, keening and careening by.
4. Bruce Springsteen: "Cadillac Ranch." Isn't this like the Elephants'
Graveyard? But "even Burt Reynolds in that black Trans-Am" is coming back now, as
Boss Hog in The Dukes Of Hazzard, so Eternity
can't be too long. It might be a little short.
5. ZZ Top: "Sharp Dressed Man." Sure, there are a number of Top car songs.
This isn't specifically a car song, lyrics-wise. But what SOUNDS the coolest,
what will not be denied? You know what.
6. Brooks & Dunn: "Red Dirt Road." One of their best. No bells and whistles,
no self-congratulation. No turning back, either. "That summer I turned a
corner in my soul," and the dust hasn't settled yet.
7. Chuck Berry/Duane Allman: "No Money Down." Just in case B& D's guy starts
sounding TOO humble, here we have a fearless believer in gasoline-related
lifeforms, who refuses to unpatriotically lower his expectations. You want to
trade him a Cadillac for his Ford, you say? He'll see and raise you: "And I want
a full Murphy bed/In my back seat/I want short-wave radio/I want TV and a
phone/You know I gotta talk to my Baby/When I'm ridin' alone." Have you ever
heard of such a thing? And even in early-Sixties dollars, "A ten-dollar
deductible/Twenty-dollar notes/Thirty thousand liability" really is "all she wrote." The
song is so cranked up, as written, that Duane Allman, who never added a solo
to his version, didn't even need to. (It's on THE DUANE ALLMAN ANTHOLOGY,
VOLUME ONE.)
8.. Johnny Cash: "The General Lee"/Doug Kershaw And The Hazzard County Boys:
"Ballad of General Lee". If I knew how, I'd take these two tracks from the
re-issued soundtrack of the original DUKES series, and re-mix a "mash-up" (in
the musical, not automotive sense). Johnny moos contendedly in his trailer,
attached in more ways than one to the famous Cadillac-with-its-own name. Doug
Kershaw's Cajun fiddle is a scruffy, gleaming cowbird, forever landing/taking
off. (Oops, you missed the difference; watch it now!)
9. Cowboy Troy: "I Play Chicken With The Train": Kids, don't try this at
home. But using your imagination can be great. He thinks he's a rapper, and so, on
this track, "Big and black, clicketty clack," he chat-chat-chatters away. He
gets to be the chicken AND the train. What a lucky clucker! end#

Summer Samba

2005-07-30T19:45:00.000-05:00

"There was this huge poster of a kid squeezing his bloody zit into a drink! We realized it was a new slushy called the 'Bloody Zit!' We had to try it! What's twisted is that you can sprinkle 'Oily Blackheads' and 'Scabs' into the drink! They're like sour candy! Mmmm but at the same time it's kind of gross!"--Skye Sweetnam, from her blog
(spotted by Frank Kogan)

July 27, 2005

2005-07-27T16:33:00.000-05:00

the smell of cow shit
wafting over the highway
as I'm driving home

My best friend's cousin is a country singer. Before she went to Nashville and had a couple of minor hits, we used to go see her perform at the county fair, which was held in our hometown. There was country music all over that fair, but it was ultimately a rock and roll thing, because our town had more dirtbags and burnouts and hot dirty girls in baseball shirts than we did real cowboys or cowgirls.

(Many of these awesome gentlemen wanted to beat me up, and some of them tried to catch me without witnesses. I would have skipped the fair, but my family was all into baseball and the fundraising concession was a dunk tank, so sometimes I would have to go work there, taking money and getting into the tank, etc. This meant that I'd often have to negotiate the minefield of getting from one end, where the dunk tank was, to the arcade, without getting my tiny ass kicked. This only changed when my big tough cousin moved up from Mississippi, and changed back when he graduated a year later.)

She had a lovely voice, and still does -- she's a big light of the western-music circuit now, and doing some very good work in that mode. But I was a Clash kid in an Aerosmith town, and so had little appreciation for lovely country voices. Shame. But that's the life, kids.

Maybe it was the fair and the FFA booths there and the hot dirty girls who played softball all summer and had boyfriends with knives and psychosis problems, or maybe it's just when you have to take long drives down rural roads to go see girlfriends...but I guess it's like this. I was at a party at this girl's place (her dad was an assistant principal at the high school, so hands off, which was the opposite of her attitude) and I accidentally cornered her in the barn and she didn't run away, and we looked at each other in the fading light, surrounded by probably literally tons of cow shit. Nothing much happened, but it's a great erotic memory for me.

Man, I need therapy. But I doubt I'm the only one who thinks cow shit is kind of sexy. And THAT, my friends, is what country music is all about.

twilight, as we kiss,
someone plays a mean fiddle
on the radio

July 25, 2005

2005-07-25T10:09:00.000-05:00

weeding the garden
kids get bored and run around
then, soon, so do I

July 24, 2005

2005-07-25T10:08:00.000-05:00

there's a kind of hush
all over the world and it's
called humidity

July 23, 2005

2005-07-25T10:07:00.000-05:00

walking this morning
saw a funky little ghost
talked to her a while

Way Across 110th Street

2005-07-16T12:43:00.000-05:00

Special Guest Mentalist---John Wojtowicz(our man in Vienna):
I recently discovered a Nigerian-owned restaurant about a half mile down the street from me, called FEED.

On my first visit there, various patrons glowered at me and the waiter treated me with caution. It's quite likely they thought I was a narc. Among Austrians, Africans have the reputation of being all drug-dealers. In a recent major drug-bust campaign, well over a hundred bars and cafes in Vienna that dealt in cannabis (and generally run by the Yugo mafia and young Turks) were closed down. This in turn meant that the Africans now do proportionally even more of the dealing here (adding cannabis to the white stuff that was already their market niche), esp. since their business is all on the street and therefore wasn't affected by the crackdown. And they don't need a crackdown, they get hassled enough by the cops as it is.

So the waiter was polite but on his guard, until I asked him what music was playing. He came back and said that it was a mix CD with things from Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal. Since the track in question had that giddyap-giddyap rhythm guitar thing going and also sounded a bit like Youssou N'Dour, I announced to him that it must be from Senegal.

Well I was right, and that broke the ice for the rest of the meal. btw I've found that this is typical when I talk to Africans: they often withold a certain amount of information until you've shown them that you know what you're talking about, and then all is cool.

As I write this, I'm covering the phones & office for an out-of-town colleague who translates a lot of documents for African immigrants. Just about an hour ago, a Nigerian guy dropped off a document and I asked him about other African restaurants in town. He was less than forthcoming until I mentioned one specific neighborhood where I'd been recently--in the 2nd District, not more than a stone's throw from the Ferris wheel that figures in Orson Welles' "The Third Man"--where there's not only an African restaurant and a bar, but a beauty parlor and a late-hours grocery store and probably other joints that escaped my notice. And if you go there on a warm summer evening, Africans are going to & from all of the above and generally just hangin' out. If the Austrians (utter, putrid racists, cela va sans dire) didn't already consider the 2nd District to be a pit, they'd be shitting in their pants at the sight. Anyway, the Nigerian guy told me to give him a call some Saturday night, and he'd take me round to one of the restaurants there.

btw in view of the fact that the 2nd District also has a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood not so far away, when I'm there I start feeling like I'm in Crown Heights or something.

Until a half-hour ago, I was under the impression that among the Africans, the Nigerians are at the top of the heap. Well, with their country being a member of OPEC and high-profile for other reasons, yes, the Nigerians see it that way, but unfortunately, the other Africans do not. Coincidentally, a (Polish!) woman just came by with documents that her husband needs translated: he's from Burkina Faso, and she tells me that the people there and in other countries (Ivory, Mali, etc.) don't particularly like the Nigerians, who have a reputation for crooked business dealings. The joke in Burkina Faso is that if you buy a car in Nigeria, it'll break down even before you get to the border, even if you had a mechanic check it beforehand! Similarly, the Africans in Austria are bugged because they see the Nigerian drug-dealers are creating a bad reputation for the rest of them--esp, since the Austrians are incapable of making distinctions between different African countries and/or peoples.

So back to FEED: The first time I ordered beef with black-eyed peas and fried plantain. On my second visit I had fish with chopped spinach & okra and a mound of manioc and here's the revelation: substitute a heap o' rice for the manioc and change the spices a wee bit, and this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff that my GF from Oakland used to make for herself all the time. For the first time since I left the West Coast, I was nostalgic for my ex's cooking!

When I'm talking with the Africans about their food, I always point out the similarities between that and Southern and Caribbean cooking--esp. since they're almost never aware of this and they seem to appreciate hearing it.

But regardless of how relaxed things get when I talk to the guys who run FEED, I still haven't been seated in the big room, which is an all-Black domain. In fact, in each visit, until I've struck up a conversation with the people there, when I walk by I can_just_feel_Major Attitude being projected outward from the big room. In any case I won't be living in that neighborhood much longer, and will probably soon investigate the joints in the 2nd District.

greetings, bon appetit, etc.,
john
((also see John's previous Presenting "The Uncanny"(Andy's Robot Mix), in the 08/2004 archive))

2005-06-25T00:05:00.000-05:00

"My best friend the bass player had to move away in our Senior Year, right before Christmas. His dad got transferred. In this case because of the war, indirectly. But the next fall, I already had enough of that so-called University, I took off during Homecoming. We got drunk and woke up walking around downtown Sunday. Like the song, except it was empty, which was an improvement on where I'd just come from. But mainly I kept thinking, this is where JFK bought it. Down here in Houston."
He was muttering, but I'd heard him right. What a punchline. Then
"Haaa you're serious! It was *Dallas* where he was shot! And you wanna transfer to Harvard!!"
He winced, but it seemed habitual, and whatever he'd been staring at was gone, or the stare was, anyway.

2005-06-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

Upon Listening To Funeral Nation's After The Battle

1

Blood red hordes
congregating
on the shores of
Lake Michigan
searching
craving
for a trio
to deliver them
from piety
and dad

2

Sign Of Baphomet
and other titles
just as
dear
passing thru the hands
of shift
workers
from magical
lands
they pause
to inspect
before
boxing
brave soldiers
all
Rough Trade
Echo
New Rose
Plastic Head
Cargo
Modern Invasion
Rock City
Semaphore
Contempo
Krone Music
House Of Kicks
Bona
Fucker Rec.
Spinefarm
sending always
sending
the devil
to open hearts

2005-04-03T22:17:00.000-05:00

The rain is too hard. The rain is too soft. The rain is too cold. The rain is too darn hot. The rain is too close. The rain is too country. The rain is ridin' the rails. The rain is pushing the envelope. The rain is signed sealed delivered to your door.The rain's candy, and it's got blue eyes, and I can't stand it no more. Not since I saw you walkin' in it. Oh. I can stand a little. A little more. It seems. I wish I couldn't stand that. I'll just stand here and wear away. And ware away (I'm a ho like you). And 'ware away (a three-alarmist you knew that). Cos it's raining in my heart. So steady it's a prop. So steady I just wish it would rain. And wash my rain away. I know we need it.

2005-03-26T19:27:00.000-06:00

Does this thing even work anymore?

2005-02-27T16:14:00.000-06:00

Richard Barrett and the 'modernists':

Can't believe I missed this concert but viewing that review over morning coffee, I do not understand this new work as a reconfiguration of the orchestra along a 'marxist' line - instead I see those string shapes coming from his background as an improvisor (something that the reviewer does not seen to care for - it isn't mentioned in his first para, unlike his work in electronics), and that music's insistence on non-hierarchical movement; but to even quote Stalin with respect to this work, one of the few from that corner of the musical landscape that even tries to say anything with respect to the war (doesn't sound like it goes beyond the title but still it seems to wash over the work in a way in which its politics cannot be merely brushed aside) as well as his characterization of Barrett as hard modernist living a fantasy in a postmodernist time just leaves a vile taste.

But its all here: 'amplified harps', 'microtonal', theatre in those 'bones...if its anything as good as his classic 'opening of the mouth' disc then this record will be REWARDED with a pazz and jop top 10, whatever the year a record of this happens to be released in.

2005-02-26T17:00:00.000-06:00

classical music and the nerdy people ( jason gross handing out the awards):

i The debate as to what to do with classical er, rages on, with articles just like this, written with JUST this kind of tone and EVERY single year. Always grudging in its acceptance of pop cult seen here in an inevitable, back door dissing of it but with no talk as to why it seems to work (its complexities), and absolutely no mention of hip-hop or dance. Additionally, this guy is gonna pretend that Varese (never mind Stockhausen) ever existed or that classical indies that provide an outlet for this unacknowledged music already do the work, while at the same time criticising pop crossover without examining his proposed 'sophisticated fusion' alternative, or what that means when being critical of any attempts at same.

ii the rise of atonality in the early 1900s must've felt as if the world had turned upside down - the negative reaction leading to a period of time where readjustment had to be taken by its listeners, but it wasn't only that: the revival of improvisation (through jazz), coupled with newer instruments that could harness microtones, as well as the rise of newer technologies that could play timbral dance plus the rise of cage-ian orthodoxy - the bogeyman - from now on we could listen to anything (even 'silence') and it was music; no wonder many didn't bother, some went backwards to a time when it was all about pitch relationships and not forward, where the orchestra was being effectively dismantled - less grandiose symphonies - toward the smaller sized ensemble, with the string quartet's survival. The privileging of the acoustic over the electric and the electronic - newer ways to play - isn't good enough. The beatles as classical composers sounds ok as another angle , interesting but ultimately inaccurate, as both were hand-in-hand with each other, 'tis also why 'school of rock' can't be taken entirely seriously as a characterization of classical but it serves the need of its mainstream wing.

iii oh wait, I should talk about records here - Michael von Biel's disc on edition RZ is a case in point: compositions from the early 60s, recorded for radio and not released till last year, and no wonder: there's an electronic-only track, cpl of quartets (but with the emphasis on effect), one quintet but its the last track that I return to. Its an odd comp for small-sized tuba ensemble with electric guitar, tapes and an amplified barbecue grill: there's an odd air to the recording (made in ’68) - its forward looking: smashing the ensemble, no obv hierarchy, and the use of amplification as the bogeyman; but also backward: the tuba plays tonal through-and-through, with some quotation (?!). Its not about good or bad, and I'll change my mind from listen-to-listen, from second-to-second. Broadcast round psychedelia’s dawn it fits the time, and then doesn't. Its a last hurrah before classical’s indiefication. But yeah, buy it for that one - prob rocks harder than rock, might rock harder than school (depends whether you had a teacher or friends you'll remember) but it def rocks harder than 'school of rock' (anything with Jack Black in it can't be v gd d00d!).

2005-02-25T16:56:00.000-06:00

Nominees For Best Single On Billboard's Hot 50 Singles Five Years Ago That I Can't Remember Ever Hearing:

Lonestar, "Amazed"
(a country band hit no. 1?!)
Joe, "I Wanna Know"
(Mario Winans doesn't)
Aaliyah, "I Don't Wanna"
(neither does Aaliyah)
Toby Keith, "How Do You Like Me Now?!"
(not much!!)
Donell Jones, "U Know What's Up"
(I don't even know who U R)

winner: Lonestar. Unless there's some fuck-up with the web-page and this didn't really hit number one, I have to assume this is one bananas ballad.

Nominees For Best Single On Billboard's Hot 50 Singles Ten Years Ago That I Can't Remember Ever Hearing:

K-Ci Hailey, "If You Think You're Lonely Now"
(ooh, sounds bitter!)
Subway feat. 702, "This Lil' Game We Play"
(yeah, no more games!)
20 Fingers feat. Gillette, "Short Dick Man"
(swear to god, never heard it)
Jon Secada, "Mental Picture"
(I bet this is some dirty hokum)
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony feat. Eazy-E "Foe the Love Of $"
(Eazy! $! Foe real!)

Winner: In a startling upset, Gillette's infamous anthem loses to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony cuz I keep meaning to buy Eazy-Duz-It but I never see it anywhere.

Nominees For Best Single On Billboard's Hot 50 Singles Fifteen Years Ago That I Can't Remember Ever Hearing:

Chicago, "What Kind Of Man I Would Be?"
(if I know my a.c. history, somebody not named Peter Cetera)
Whitesnake, "The Deeper The Love"
(the mind boggles)
Expose, "Tell Me Why"
(all the goofy older music lovers I know go ape for Expose. I only know "Point Of No Return" and I don't really get it)
Joan Jett, "Dirty Deeds"
(AC/DC cover?!?!?!)
The Brat Pack, "You're The Only Woman"
(I know this can't be Emilio et al, but I remain curious)

Winner: Joan Jett. Even if it's not AC/DC it's about dirty deeds and it's by Joan Jett. How come I know more pop hits from 1990 than 2000? I really had to stretch for five interesting unheards. Was I listening to the radio that much as a kid, or is that I've had more time to catch things after the fact? Probably both.