Erasing With The Moon

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

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

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Harvey Milk's ancient and new school

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)

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 (actually Missouri: thanx to commentor below) 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 (MO, if they have hills) 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 Wade and bassist John London, 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

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)

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 extension 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
the rocking 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, the masque-mask, a working piece of uniform, his wrinkling  parody of/and pathos, with the well-timed, well-pulled tear (rhymes with beer and dancing bear) 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 a way to keep his place, he's somehow pushing forward, each repetition of the basic riff brings some other sounds too, which suggest he'sbreaking 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  

*more of my comments re other RW music on ILM thread Robert Wyatt: Classic of Dud? https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=618