20 Lbs of Headlights, Stickynote To His Chest

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.