Believe me, I hate to love Spotify, but I give up, because I do love it. Don't get me wrong, I still hate it too. I can't stand about 52 or so really minor things about their interface, and I'm sure you've heard that they pay their artists .00966947678815 cents per play, which is pretty disheartening. I guess I should just pay for Premium, in hopes that some day more money will trickle back to the artists. It would also be very nice to not have to listen to any of those horrible ads again, like the one where some cheery young Pitchfork Fest type says "If you have Spotify, you'll never have to buy music ever again." (Emphasis mine.) Wow. Of course we know that physical media is dying, but that really crystallizes it: music lives on, but people buying records has been replaced by people buying computer devices (which they'll use to play records for free).
So that's a bummer, but I can't deny that I like listening to music on computer devices almost as much as I like listening to records on my stereo, and here in head-in-the-sand internet la-la land, one thing I'm really enjoying about Spotify is making playlists to go with the music books I'm reading. Here's three of 'em that I think are pretty good, whether you're reading the book or not, though I highly recommend all of these books as well.
This first playlist goes with Electric Eden (Faber & Faber, 2011), Rob Young's expansive history of British folk music, that goes back to early 20th Century Classical, and continues all the way up through stuff like Talk Talk and The Orb, turning me on to several excellent groups I wasn't really aware of before, such as Mr. Fox, the Albion Family Band, Dr. Strangely Strange, and Spirogyra... this could also use some tweaking, and I'm not sure if The Orb really fits on there, but lots of great stuff:
I think this next one turned out great, though it might also undergo a few more changes and additions. It's inspired by Chapter 6 of the rather overwhelming new book Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life (Lysergia, 2012), by the author of the great Acid Archives record guide, Patrick Lundborg. In Psychedelia, Lundborg lays out the entire history of humans using psychedelic drugs, from prehistoric times to the present day, introducing several challenging perspectives in the process. One of them is that 1950s Electronic Music and Exotica were the first (and truest??) psychedelic music. After making this playlist from a bunch of his examples, I feel like I could almost agree with him:
And finally, if I still threw rock'n'roll parties where everybody got wasted and hung out, I would put on this next playlist and boom, I'd be done DJing. It's an audio version of Nick Kent's "Soundtrack to the Seventies," an addendum to his memoir Apathy For The Devil (Da Capo, 2010) , a real page-turner of a rock book that I think I got through in about 3 hours. Not a whole lot of obscuro choices here, but this is a fine staple diet. Your local corporate classic rock station could easily be this good.... or would corporate financial power be steadily fragmented and decentralized by the subtly progressive and mind-expanding sounds on offer here? A topic for discussion at said rock'n'roll party, though I do wish this playlist didn't have like 5 David Bowie songs, or even 1 by Jackson Browne and/or Elvis Costello. As for Blue Valentine by Tom Waits, it was on Kent's list but I simply couldn't bear to include a song from it. I took the liberty of replacing it with "Space Is Deep" by Hawkwind, who surprisingly weren't on Kent's list.
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Monday, March 04, 2013
Keep your eyes on Forced Exposure for official announcements these next couple weeks.
Sunday, March 03, 2013
THE MAKING OF BULL OF THE WOODS
Adapted by Larry Dolman from Eye Mind by Paul Drummond [Process Media, 2007]
INTRO: Last time I went out to a show I was doing the usual standing around talking about music in between bands and blithely announced that Bull of the Woods was my 2nd favorite 13th Floor Elevators album (Easter Everywhere being the fairly undisputed #1 choice). I got some push-back, but stuck to my guns. Now, away from the front lines, I'll admit it's not even true -- can't deny the greatness of Psychedelic Sounds Of..., for historical reasons alone -- but even if Bull is the 3rd best Elevators album, there is no doubt that it's the Elevators album I'm most obsessed with, and it's probably the one I've actually listened to the most. It's an album that feels like it's slipping away from me even as I listen to it, which is partly what keeps me coming back. It also reveals new depths every time. I just listened to it an hour ago and I'll be damned if the rhythm section on "Scarlet and Gold" didn't sound heavier and dubbier than ever, and how about the crashing and echoing waves of Stacy Sutherland's guitars on "Street Song" as he coolly drawls "I saw some windowpane"? (And by the way, the Decal CD from 1991 sounds 100 times heavier than this thing does on Spotify, just sayin'.) So, when I finally got around to reading Eye Mind, Paul Drummond's exhaustive history of the Elevators, I decided to use it to write up a little outline of the making of Bull of the Woods... anything to try to understand this album a little better. I post it here for the hell of it... maybe some fellow obsessives will appreciate it..... (this is a chronological summary in my own words of the particulars of Drummond's text... any text in quotes, besides song titles, is Drummond's, taken directly from the book)...
AFTER the monumental Easter Everywhere is released in October 1967, the physically and psychically fractured band disengages from the intensity of the last two years. Members become scattered around Houston. Roky is not doing well, living a nomadic existence around the city, suffering from performance anxiety and increasingly showing signs of a serious personality disorder. Tommy Hall relinquishes "his totalitarian hold" over the band and tries to build a new non-musical acid community around workshop meetings at his apartment, which effectively promotes guitarist/songwriter Stacy Sutherland to being the band leader. Bassist Danny Galindo leaves the band, and is replaced in January 1968 by Duke Davis. Where Roky and Tommy took the lead in creating Easter Everywhere, it is understood that Sutherland will take the lead in the creation of their next album. Although the band is not necessarily in a good creative space, their label International Artists is pushing them hard for product, especially since they are unable to leave the state of Texas due to various probations, and cannot generate income from touring.
1968
February 7th: The trio of Stacy Sutherland on guitar, Duke Davis on bass, and Danny Thomas on drums start doing sessions for the third 13th Floor Elevators album at Gold Star Studios in Houston. Sutherland is the band leader, creative director, songwriter, guide vocalist, lead vocalist. The song "Wait For My Love" is the first to emerge.
February 21st: The trio has developed enough material to bring Roky and Tommy in. Tommy is developing his concept for the album, dealing with the Electra complex of his then-current relationship with Gay Jones. The working title is Beauty and the Beast. Nothing they work on this day ends up being released.
February 22nd: The previous night's fruitless session ends at 8:30 AM. Roky returns sometime in the early afternoon to find none of the band there. He is convinced to do some solo recording, and lays down a few electric guitar-and-voice takes of his song "May the Circle Remain Unbroken," adding his own Vox organ overdubs. By evening, Roky is joined by Tommy, Stacy and the Duke Davis/Danny Thomas rhythm section. They very quickly lay down "Livin' On," lyrics by Tommy, music by Stacy. Then, they start overdubbing on "May the Circle Remain Unbroken" to frankly legendary effect. This was the only album session for which the entire band was present.
February 29th: Working without Tommy and Roky, the band lays down the music for "Never Another."
March 2nd: Tommy lays down his jug parts.
March 3rd: Roky lays down vocals for "Never Another" and "Livin' On."
March 12th: Stacy and the rhythm section work on the music for "Dr. Doom," lyrics by Tommy.
March 13th: Roky lays down lead vocal and rhythm guitar on "Dr. Doom."
March 20th and 23rd: After these two more sessions, ten tracks are in the can, although six of them don't have finished vocals. "Never Another," "Livin' On," "Dr. Doom," and "May the Circle Remain Unbroken" all do. The band breaks from recording, intending to spend all of April playing shows, doing a club stand in Houston. However, Roky refuses to go onstage, or doesn't show up at all. Not one full show is achieved.
Early April: Impatient for progress, International Artists decides to release a single of "May the Circle Remain Unbroken" b/w Stacy's song "Wait For My Love." This sends Stacy to the studio alone, trying to improve the song with "endless" overdubs. It undergoes a name change to "Someday My Love."
April 20th: In bed trying to sleep, Evelyn Erickson hears her son Roky "screaming" and "talking gibberish" outside. This is considered the first real psychotic episode for Roky. Early in the morning, he is taken to an emergency psychiatrist, the beginning of Roky's fateful involvement with the Texas psychiatric police state. Tommy is still trying to settle on a concept for the album. He begins exploring Gnostic Christianity and writes a mysterious chant called "Jerusalem (Supersonic Highway)" which is performed a few times in a rather desultory fashion.
May & June: As spring passes into summer, International Artists rejects Stacy's "Someday My Love" as the B-side and decides to replace it with a Buddy Holly cover outtake from 1966. Stacy does more work in the studio in May and June, though it is not certain what is produced here except the controversial horn overdubs on "Never Another," "Livin' On," and "Dr. Doom." These were laid down by two trombonists and one trumpeter from the Houston Symphony Orchestra, on Danny Thomas's invitation.
June: International Artists releases "May the Circle Remain Unbroken" b/w "I'm Gonna Love You Too" (the Buddy Holly cover).
July: Still impatient with the way the third album is developing, International Artists begins production on the fake Live album. Duke Davis drifts out of the band and is replaced by the returning Ronnie Leatherman. The band fragments further when, behind Stacy's back, Tommy and Roky attempt to relocate the band to San Francisco with a new rhythm section.
August: In a final run at the 3rd album by the Sutherland/Leatherman/Thomas trio, 7 new songs are recorded. "Down by the River," "Scarlet and the Gold," and "With You" are keepers. "Someday My Love" uses a new set of lyrics by Tommy Hall and becomes "Til Then." Ensemble vocals by all three members are laid down. In the meantime, the fake live album is released.
September 26th: The third album is declared finished and in the can. Stacy gives it the title Bull of the Woods, reflecting the resiliency and determination it took for him to get the project done.
1969
February: "Livin' On" b/w "Scarlet and the Gold" is released as an advance single.
March: Bull of the Woods is released. "[Stacy's cover concept] was to portray the band's Texas heritage by using the silhouette of a longhorn bull to similar effect as the familiar representation of the proud Spanish bull. [Rather clueless International Artists label head Bill] Dillard took the title literally and lifted an image of a bull's head poking through a wooden fence, from a steakhouse menu he swiped." The record barely sells at all but its deep haunting sounds are still "livin' on".....
ADDENDUM:
Friday, February 15, 2013
SONNY & LINDA SHARROCK
I've been listening to that sublime Sonny Sharrock & the Savages radio session from 1974
that's going around, and it's reminding me how much I love all those
classic pictures of Sonny & Linda Sharrock together. I really love the last two, taken by writer/photographer Valerie
Wilmer (apparently on the same day, check the outfits). The first one is from the internet, the second one I scanned from the house copy of her essential free jazz
book As Serious As Your Life, and posted here without permission, admittedly looking kinda rough compared to the first picture, and will take down immediately if asked (contact larrydolman at gmail dot com). The first of the two in the cafe is such a good picture of Linda, but then pictures of Linda do tend to be good:
She's had a long, obscure, interesting, and mostly European career post-Sonny, stuff like this chamber jazz opera whatsis....
She might be the strangest jazz singer I've ever heard, which is saying something, but not too surprising because Paradise is certainly the weirdest jazz album ever recorded:
I choose to live in the glory that is Black Woman. My favorite song is "Peanut."
THIS JUST IN: At sonnysharrock.com there's an extensive transcript of the on-air interview that took place during the aforementioned Sonny & the Savages session on WCKR. A lot of good stuff in there about Linda's truly individual improvisational singing style, like:
Linda Sharrock: I listened to people like the Miracles, and you know, I mean, I've never
listened to any kind of a female jazz singer for any kind of inspiration or anything
like that. And I was influenced by horn players, influenced by Albert, and I think
Pharoah was a strong influence, 'cause I heard him in Philadelphia, and then when
I came to New York I would hear them, you know, and I think he was a big influence
on me. So it was horns, you know.
Sonny Sharrock: …The thing that killed me about her singing
was that she was, if not the first, one of the few jazz singers who improvise, and
I mean, because improvisation is jazz, it's about improvisation, and to bend a few
notes or to take liberties with the words. That's one of the reasons she doesn't
use words: because it hinders your improvisation, you know.
I can believe that she wasn't into any female jazz singers although you have to wonder if they weren't aware of Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln's "Triptych." Here's another cool section:
Sonny Sharrock: ...what the band is doing is some kind of futuristic electronic folk music. And I never
developed the standard techniques for the guitar, and I don't think Linda did for
the voice. We never cared about, you know, developing the standard classical European
Western techniques or whatever, and I developed my own techniques, Linda developed
her own techniques, and I think that's what folk music is about, you know. And jazz:
I have a strong feeling that jazz is a folk music, not to put John Lewis down, you
know, with his chording of the concert hall, that classical thing, but you know,
I feel it's a folk music.
Rich Scheinin: Yeah, sure, I remember Louis Armstrong once was
asked something, what he thought about the folk revival, in the early '60s with
Joan Baez and everybody, and they said, "What do you think of the folk revival?"
and Louis Armstrong said, "I've been playing folk music all my life," you know.
Sonny Sharrock: Right, dig it, yeah. It is, you know. I don't think
it was ever meant to be played technically; I think it's all about feeling, like
all folk music is. It's not technique in folk music; it's the feeling that you get
across, you know. It's a time to put across feelings, you know.
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
THE LOST DOMAIN An Unnatural Act LP (NEGATIVE GUEST LIST) I first encountered this long-running Australian band in the early 2000s when the trusted Rhizome label brought us a CDR of their music called Something Is.... It was just two tracks, the first a whopping 46 minutes, the second almost 30, and I gave it a couple intensive listens, but I confess it left me cold. The musicians had clearly built a confident and personal sound together, but it sounded like stuff I'd heard before . . . long-form instrumental minimalist desert-landscape mood music . . . and it seemed to take a very long time to not go very far. Years went by and I forgot all about them, but then along comes one of the greatest rock zines I've ever encountered, the Negative Guest List from Brisbane, Australia, and I'm reading as many issues as I can get my hands on, $7 import cover price be damned, and what should be published in #18 but an extensive history and discography feature on The Lost Domain. It turns out they're from Brisbane as well, described in fact by NGL writer/publisher Brendon Annesley as "Brisbane's first band," and I think I know exactly what he means by that. I had grown to appreciate and admire Annesley's taste in music, and even though I'm sure there was some hometown pride and bias behind the article, it made me want to give Lost Domain another chance, this time through Brendon's ears, as it were. Right away I pulled that Something Is... CDR back out -- it was still right there where I had last filed it almost 10 years ago -- but to be honest, it still left me almost as cold. The article had maybe thawed things out a few degrees warmer, but it wasn't enough, and I refiled it again.
Ah, but this time I was not going to forget them; just a couple months later, what should arrive on the Blastitude doorstop but a package bearing Lost Domain vinyl, on none other than the Negative Guest List label. Annesley-approved material! It's called An Unnatural Act and wow... I like it better. A lot better. For one thing, they sound like a much different band. Where Something Is.... had that dry-as-dust desert noir thing going on, this starts out like a really messed-up noise band, and then goes into absolutely primo swirling and spinning psycho-blues. Believe me, after the side one closer double shot of "Sweet Haunch Woman" and "Funeral March for Charley Patton," you will be moved too. You'll have no choice. The intensity doesn't let up on side two either, though it does have some more elongated space-out instrumental sections to help the medicine go down. After re-perusing the NGL article, I learn that this sweet skree is an LP reissue of their very first record, which came out in 1990 about a year after they formed, when it was self-released a few times on cassette. It was reissued as a CDR by the Foxglove label in 2006, and now, with fewer tracks, it has come back to life on this LP. To sum this review up, when a band debuts with something this revelatory, it's going to shed light on their entire career and pretty much guarantee them a lifetime pass, which means I'm going to have to re-evaluate Something Is... yet again! Good thing I know right where I shelved it. (NOTE: This and many other new releases from Australia are available stateside from Easter Bilby Distro.)
MESSAGES Message Bag 2LP (DE STIJL) I wanted to write a glowing review of this record as soon as I took it out of the mailer it came in. Packaged in a lovely patterned cloth bag, with the proverbial free psychedelic poster inside, this is an anticipated double LP set by a band that previously released a very strong debut of Eastern-style heavy drone with a steady rock undercurrent (After Before from 2010, also on De Stijl). And yet on first listen to Message Bag I was left unsure . . . nonplussed might be the word . . . for one thing, a lot of the propulsion is gone. On After Before the band was a trio, with Spencer Herbst of Rhyton providing steady percussion, but on Message Bag they're mostly a drummerless duo, with Herbst only appearing on two out of ten tracks. Thus, I found the music on sides A and B unexpectedly sparse and even tentative, with jarringly dry tones from strange instruments like jaw harp, ukelin, harmonium, and on "Humid Prolusion," a defiantly methodical wah-wah tambura that made the track title come dauntingly to life. Then, sides C and D took me right back out of critical mode with the haunting and immersive side-long pieces "Within Whirlpool" and "Ocean Out." Sure, side C features Herbst, but side D does not, and it's just as hypnotic (it does feature the ocean). And wouldn't you know it, now when I go back to A and B, and I have a few times already, that sparse and tentative dialogue sounds like a patient philosophical investigation, with notes allowed to linger like deep questions that make more sense each time they're asked.
ADDENDUM 3/3/2013: Ever since posting this review, I've wanted to say a little more about the elusive nature of this record. I wanted to quote something I thought I'd read about the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, how he intentionally leaves seemingly important things out of his films, so that the audience could fill these in for themselves, and in essence, finish the film. I felt like the pieces on Messages Bag often sounded like an entire third or fourth voice had been left out, which is why I kept coming back to the album, to try to find what wasn't there. I couldn't find a good quotable passage describing this concept, but I think it was in the book Abbas Kiarostami by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum. However, I just finished the great Will Oldham on Bonnie "Prince" Billy book by Alan Licht, and there's something Will says in there that I think applies, so I'll just quote it here: "Perfecting a part is not a priority in the least, because it is generally thought that if a part is implied in a recording, then the listener has the freedom to listen to it a thousand times until it becomes a polished part. Whereas if you're listening to a record that has a polished part repeated over and over, it inhibits the desire to listen to the record again because you know exactly what's gonna come, and it's gonna come exactly the same, in a repetitive way, and have no nuance whatsoever." I can feel this on the Messages Bag album... it's like they've just begun carving a block of stone, and the listener slowly figures out that he or she is carving right along there with 'em.
BED-WETTIN' BAD BOYS Ready For Boredom LP (R.I.P. SOCIETY) The first full-length by this band of young upstarts from Australia -- I really liked their Best Band in Sydney/Worst Band in Sydney 7" from 2010, and Ready For Boredom carries on in that vein, though it also makes me wonder if they're a better singles band than an album band. Their basic sound remains right on, that yearning and cranked-up power-pop crunch, and I've already played this three or four times in a week, waiting to see what kinda hooks emerge... and to be honest not a whole lot have yet, although it is getting better as it goes, and I like the good-time-rock'n'roll-song-about-a-girl-named-after-said-girl that is "Sally," and when the singer(s) shred(s) his/their voice(s) on various songs, that's a hook in and of itself, as it was to very good effect on the aforementioned 7". (NOTE: This and many other new releases from Australia are available stateside from Easter Bilby Distro.)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Dabke: Sounds of the Syrian Houran LP; VARIOUS ARTISTS Indonesian Pop Nostalgia LP; OMAR SOULEYMAN Leh Jani 2LP (SHAM PALACE) Ever since last summer I've been meaning to write about how the Dabke: Sounds of the Syrian Houran compliation LP on Sham Palace came out just in time to be a soundtrack for hot fun in the summertime (Dabke is a driving party-down electrified Syrian dance music, traditionally played at wedding celebrations, introduced to the West by Omar Souleyman's records on the Sublime Frequencies label), but I'm so slow at reviewing records that it's now like 38 degrees out and it's almost December (and now it's already February, it's literally 1 degree out, and I still haven't finished this damn one-paragraph review). But hey, Dabke scorches no matter what the weather. And of course by now Sham Palace has another LP out, another compilation called Indonesian Pop Nostalgia, making three releases altogether which could keep a party going all night long all by themselves. The two comps will get the people moving, Dabke for the hardcore dancing, Nostalgia to keep the beat going and the mood upful (songs by children, women, upbeat romantic balladry, synths, sound effects, instrumentals), and then when everybody's good and sweaty take it home with the "old school street level Syrian Dabke!" title cut off of the very first Sham Palace release, Omar Souleyman's 30-minute burner "Leh Jani."
PETER ZUMMO Zummo With An X LP (OPTIMO) This
record review started as a very topical blog post, but I've learned
that topical doesn't work very well when it's consistently three or four months (or years) late.
Initially, it was a call to readers near and far, from the hardcore maniacs
down to the just barely blastitudinal, to go and donate some money to the
greatest radio station in the world, WFMU.
This was in the weeks following Hurricane Sandy, which hit them out of
the blue for 250 grand; they suffered all kinds of electrical and
equipment damage, but most damagingly of all, they were forced to cancel
their biggest annual fundraiser, the WFMU Record Fair, scheduled to
start the very next day after the storm hit. Proving how wonderful their
listeners are, they were able to raise the lost money rather quickly,
but for a few weeks there it was looking dire. It's hard for me to imagine what it would be
like to lose WFMU; every morning at work, I don't go right to Spotify, I
go to wmfu.org and listen for a few hours. I rarely listen to the station live, preferring to go to the "Recent Archives" page and cherry pick.
There are so many great shows, but to name just four of my favorites: Brian Turner's long-running Tuesday afternoon show for thee staple diet of underground/punk/noise/outward music . . . the Long Rally with Scott McDowell,
really the bag I'm in these days, as outward-reaching as BT's show, but
tempered just right with the folk/roots/jazz/world strains that I'm
starting to crave in my old age . . . the Duane Train, always a masterful smorgasbord of that good ole "transatlantic black consciousness," and don't miss his Prince rarities episode . . . and finally, most pertinent to this record review, John Allen's show.
For many years, surely over a decade, Mr. Allen has done a bad-ass show
that touches on all kinds of great rock and punk musics, new and old,
but all informed by an uncompromised underground loft jazz sensibility,
fearlessly going deep into improvised music as well as avant-garde and academic material.
His show was off the air for at least a couple weeks due to the storm,
but as soon as I saw it had returned on November 7th, I gave the archived show a listen, and lo, it began with one of the most soothing and healing soft
city/night/world jazz pieces I'd ever heard, breathy melodic modal
trombone improvising over chilled tabla rhythms and other intangibles.
Allen often starts his shows with very long unknown
jazz/academic/classical pieces, and this one seemed to run almost 20
minutes. It haunted me so much I went back and played it again two full
times before continuing on with the show. It really seemed like a true healing anthem for the Eastern Seaboard. I saw that it was by Peter
Zummo, a name I didn't think I'd ever heard before. After reconstituting
myself from the puddle on the floor his music had turned me into, I
googled him enough to see that he's a NYC-based trombonist/composer/etc
who had worked with Arthur Russell, and indeed the intangible
component(s) of the piece I had recognized but not identified earlier
were Russell playing cello in the beautiful melodic/ambient/percussive fashion we
can hear so well on World of Echo. Allen back-announced the piece
as "some of my favorite music recorded of all time," and I was honestly
expecting him to say something like that, because I was kinda thinking
the same thing. I saw that the record was originally released in 1985,
but had just been reissued on LP by those very tasteful Optimo fellows.
Whaddayaknow, Reckless had a copy so I snagged it, $21 price tag be
damned. I'd gladly pay a dollar per minute for this music, which is
called "Song IV" and takes up all of Side Two. Side One, on the other hand, you might have to pay me
to listen to from now on. It's a series of dry academic/minimalist miniatures
that are played not as music but as exercises, which is not very
enjoyable. I can appreciate it slightly more the second time around,
because I'm ready for it, and also as a counterpart side to the other
side's beauty, almost more sculptural than it is musical. As such, I'd
almost rather this side was a really nice etching, which would make Zummo With An X the greatest one-sided LP of all time. And hey, it's taken me so long to write this review that the actual annual on-air WFMU pledge drive is now right around the corner, sometime in March I believe, so get those checkbooks ready and give 'em some money!
Sunday, December 09, 2012
NEW ARRIVALS, OLD ARRIVALS, VINYL, MP3s, STREAMS, ETC:
"Sometimes, a song will reveal itself to you. When it does, you know it. And sometimes a song can reveal itself to you in different ways over and over again. I think that's part of why I collect music. Because when a song does reveal itself to you, it is a physical and spiritual joy." Amen, sister and/or brother. Those words are from an Olympia, WA regional music/art/drugs/ethics magazine called Nuts!, issue #4 (pictured), and after first reading those words a couple months ago, I've had at least, I don't know, a hundred more songs reveal themselves to me, after a lifetime-thus-far of, I don't know, hundreds of thousands? Some are brand new discoveries, songs heard for the first time. Others are relatively recent acquaintances, heard for the fifth or tenth time, and sometimes even a childhood classic will reveal itself to me for the 100th time. I don't even have to be listening to a song for it to reveal itself to me, because by now a veritable Spotify-like catalog of thousands of songs can reveal themselves to me, even when I'm not listening to them, and haven't listened to them in years, because they're all stored on a "cloud" somewhere deep in inner space. These are basically the only things that Blastitude is ever about.
TO WIT:
Today (which was August 5, 2012 . . . it takes me way too long to write anything these days -- ed.) the Mess Hall Free Store was open and were making available a stack of beat-up 1970s LPs that were actually occasionally decent. I grabbed two by Roberta Flack, her exquisite 1969 debut First Take and, from 1973, her biggest-selling album Killing Me Softly. A lot of First Take has a nice, hushed, spiritually overtoned atmosphere, and you already know what it sounds like because you've heard "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," thanks to a popular fictional DJ and thousands of popular non-fictional DJs following his lead. The whole album is recorded like that hit single was; simple piano folk/soul tunes given sparse but accomplished jazz arrangements by a guitar/bass/drums combo that includes Ron Carter. There are also tastefully deployed horn and string arrangements that sweeten the tunes up a bit, and belie the title, although the aforementioned big hit is one of the sparser songs on here, almost sounding like a really good early Jefferson Airplane ballad. Dare I even say that Pentangle is also a valid reference point, not to mention prime early-mid Tim Buckley albums like Happy/Sad? On that note, both of these Flack albums have a great Leonard Cohen cover -- a suitably exquisite "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" on First Take, and an album-closing 9-minute prog-folk version of "Suzanne" on Killing Me Softly. I can also see 1970s Roberta Flack, like her contemporaries the Pointer Sisters, as a straight-up kinder and gentler version of the titan Nina Simone. Flack's music is intelligent in its own right, it's just not as fiercely intelligent as Simone's. She also doesn't play piano nearly as incredibly (or fiercely) as Simone, or sing as heroically, but she does play piano in a way that frames her own soft vocals beautifully. If we're talking about the all-time pantheon of creative artists, and you asked me which one I would nominate first, it would be the titan Nina without any hesitation. But as far as putting on an LP while lazing at home on an exquisite summertime Sunday afternoon like this one, I would go for Roberta 9 times out of 10. Okay, 4 out of 5. Aaaaaand now for a TOTAL-SUBJECT-CHANGE CODA: the Free Store also had Meltzer's Whore Just Like The Rest anthology! I grabbed it, ready to rush it home, and then my conscience reminded me, Hey Larry, we've already got a lovingly taken-care-of copy sitting on our shelf at home, which we really should take down and look at more often, so duh, leave this copy here for some other tuned-in soul to take advantage of. Thanks, conscience.
I'm surprised it took me this long to learn about (or actually remember learning about) Robert Crotty. He was a guy from New Haven, Connecticut who played the blues, and was a big influence on Loren Connors and Suzanne Langille when they lived there. Last week (actually July 11th! -- ed.), Connors and Langille visited Columbia University's WKCR-FM and played three hours of the music that had influenced and inspired them throughout their entire lives. They started the show with three tunes by Crotty (including one where Crotty and Connors play together), and I was immediately blown away, especially by the first one, a stone cold lonesome "T.B. Blues." From the internet I learned a little more about Crotty, that he lived in New Haven all his life, and had recently passed away in 2011, at age 57. The "T.B. Blues" recording was made in the 1980s, and it was released on a vinyl LP called Robert Crotty Blues (pictured) in 1989, on Connors and Langille's own St. Joan record label. There's a copy on ebay right now for $480.00 if you want to "buy it now." (Actually it's now $510.00 with some "previously $600" tomfoolery that wasn't there before.) I'm tempted to buy it now, at least whenever "T.B. Blues" is playing. I'm not going to, but I've certainly already spent that much on things that are far less spiritually enriching. I love what Langille says about Crotty after the three songs play: "He had a way of singing as though he was completely invisible. He never threw his persona around. He didn't smear himself over the songs. He just let the songs come right through him." Hopefully you can still listen to the full 3-hour show at this link: http://soundcloud.com/northernspyrecs/loren-connors-suzanne-langille.
New Frank Ocean album is pretty unreal. It took a couple listens, but man is it ever sinking in. Now, almost every single line is coming off as effortlessly literate, engagingly curious, always catchy as hell, sung with constant mellifluous melodies, ridiculous hooks, Mr. Ocean tossing aside satirical aphorisms, observational slices of lives, conversational quotes and mash-ups (is that "Real Love" by Mary J. Blige, or Anita Baker, or both at once, being referenced over the top of a "Bennie & the Jets" bounce??), and it all gets deeper and richer as it goes. For example, tracks 7 ("Super Rich Kids," the bouncy number I just described) and 15 ("Pink Matter") each feature a celebrity guest rap verse, by Earl Sweatshirt and Andre 3000 respectively. Not only are the two cuts staggered equally in the album sequencing, but both rappers use a similar downbeat tone, with a formidable poetic gravity and playful melancholy that masterfully echo Ocean's. And, in between those two cuts, at track ten, is the afro-futurist progged-out psychedelic 10-minute triangle-generation synth-funk of "Pyramids," a long brooding number in which Ocean parallels the story of a present-day hotel sex worker with that of an ancient Egyptian queen, all finally coming to rest on a bed of gorgeous electric guitar soul music by.... John Mayer?? I could go on.
And speaking of Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future, Kelan Phil Cohran has always been a favorite around here, and not just because he played trumpet and more with Sun Ra in the early 1960s, but because he's played his own brilliant celestial jazz music here in Chicago ever since, still doing it at age 85. I've also previously written about how some of his grown-up sons have a band together called Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, and right now I'm writing about how they've all gotten together with their father to record and release an album of new material, a double LP for the Honest Jon's label, self-titled Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. When I first put it on, as with Hypnotic Brass Ensemble's recent recordings on their own, I have to get used to sparkly clean production (it's okay, it sounds good, I'm just more used to grime than sparkle), and I also have to get used to funky heavy bass lines being played not by strings but by a tuba, because playing a tuba is a strangely antiquated art in this electronic era. But really, it only takes a couple minutes before I start to fall in deep, pulled in not even by the unstoppable grooves (check out Side C's "Spin") so much as all of those sweet rich melancholy deep horn solos, wending their way over the low rhythms, chorus after chorus after chorus, trumpets, trombones, that tuba too, beautiful ancient singing improvisations that remind me of the sea-spray horn solos of Jamaican ska, early Miles Davis, militant 70s funk, so many voices, so much history, but still futuristic and celestial. (Kelan Phil's bowed string overtones are always good for that, just as much on this LP's "Ancestral" as they were back in 1960 on Sun Ra's Angels and Demons at Play.)
7-INCH ROUNDUP??
Gonna try to do an extremely overdue 7-inch round-up all of a sudden, right here in the middle of this weblog post. The reason I'm finally doing this is because all of a sudden I have four brand new or new-ish (released in 2012, okay?) 7-inches on my desk, sitting on top of a way-too-big stack that I've been neglecting for years. (No, seriously, since 2008 or so.) Two of the new ones were sent in for review, and the other two I purchased for myself. In the former category, we've got a record by Limbs Bin, co-released by the Familiar Combatants and Tickled Meat labels. Limbs Bin is described
in an accompanying note as a "Western Mass noise dude." I would call it power electronics, in that it's a guy screaming and yelling along with noise and drum machine. I don't consider myself especially qualified to talk about power electronics, because I try not to listen to it very much. It's just too much extremity. I find it hard to listen to vocals and songwriting that are always pushed to the exact same breaking point. That said, this stuff sounds pretty ripping to me. Maybe just because it's been awhile. The vocals are rather samey but the music is somewhat varied. Really wish it said if the speed was 33 or 45 somewhere in the
otherwise rather elaborate package (nice b&w graphics, fold-out
sleeve). Sounds better on 45.
Now I'm listening to another new weird punkoid 7-inch, this time by a group called The Telephone Callers, I think from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I seem to remember these guys putting out a tape that I kinda liked in a brief noisy smudge-blast pop kinda way. That was back in like 2009 and this 7-inch could've been from around then too . . . hard to tell as it's not even on Discogs. It starts out much more loungy than the band I remember, with sparse Ribot-esque skronk guitar going against piano, then they do a brief little rave-up which must be the next song, which goes into an actual extended drum solo, which goes into what sounds like a really broken attempt at a yacht-rock song that I think goes on for almost 5 minutes that are not not proggy. Side B has three more songs and doesn't even seem as focused as Side A, but has another busted-prog centerpiece track, this one more of a dazed ballad that, I have to admit, makes me think of Supreme Dicks at their most bummed-out. Piano figures prominently, but this a far cry from the elegant contemporary piano rock of, say, Blues Control or Colossal Yes. This music sounds ugly and the record looks terrible, but I'm still considering the two long songs on here for the "KBD 2000" comp(s) that I'm currently bootlegging in my head.
Speaking of that KBD 2000 comp, a couple or four years ago a band from Florida called Blast and the Detergents sent me a weird CD that actually stood out somewhat from this crowded 21st Century pack of what literally seems like hundreds of post-post-punk DIY bands. It was rumbly and foggy minor-key blast-furnace punk that sounded like a youthful updating of certain conceptual aspects of Mission of Burma and Pere Ubu. They have two songs on this split 7-inch from 2010, co-released by the Scotch Tapes and No Clear Records labels, and they are as good as anything on the CD, especially the first one, which is called "Minimalism, D'uh." The band on the other side of the record, Ghost Hospital, have also sent in material before, and I always thought it was decent, but wasn't sure how to write about it. Slightly cutesy nerd garage? Well, with the two songs they have on this split, they're like the nerd who at the end of the movie puts on a cool jacket and trades his nerd glasses for cool shades. Tougher riffs, tougher backbeats, more reverb, more laid back, cooler vocals. Most improved award!
Wow, the "21st Century post-post-punk" styles continue as I dig through these 7-inches from the last 2-4 years, the latest example being VNC, who I think are from L.A., or at least Southern California. Their name stands for Vienna Noise Choir, but their song "Harm Guitar" isn't some sort of noise guitar mess, it's a spiky rolling pop new wave anglo aggro number, more of that Burma gospel, if a little scragglier and scruffier. It's a good tune, and I especially like how the song kind of ends halfway through and gets taken over by a solo guitar playing a long outro of shard-like electric-church arpeggios. The other side of this split single is by someone called The Moore Brothers, and, wow, it's something completely different in that it basically sounds like a light attempt to emulate Crosby, Stills & Nash. Absolutely nothing punk about it, not even remotely post-. One of the rare ballads where I can say more irony might've made it better. This record is from 2010, and it's on the Brick Factory label.
Here's a split 7-inch between Infinite Light and Vibracathedral Orchestra, both from Britain, released in 2009 on the Krayon label, also from Britain. Vibracathedral kick a nice nervy bounce with glistening hover-drone and space-blues guitar licks, and after all they are one of the best British underground rock bands of the last 15 years. Excellent singles band, too. Infinite Light side is my fave though, not so much for the first half of loud and invigorated but semi-monochromatic psych guitar ecstaticitude (apparently the lineup is Barry Dean and Mick Flower on guitars with Pete Nolan on drums, not bad), but for the last half, which is a rather glorious duet between the actual musical melodic guitar playing of I think Infinite Light himself, who I think is Barry Dean, and a mysterious uncredited lady singer. Move over Sandy Denny and tell Jacqui McShee the news! (Wow, I'm reading about this section on the Krayon website, and not only does it not reveal the name of the lady singer, it just says the word "falsetto," which makes me think this track is Barry Dean, or another non-female male vocalist, singing along with his guitar playing. Listening to it again . . . and yep, it could be a dude! More like Jacqui McHE, am I right?)
Another sign of how behind I am at reviewing records, I feel like a couple years ago I actually rough-drafted, and maybe even published, a review of the next record, at least once. I know I've listened to it, at least once. It's a split between Tiger Hatchery and Wasteland Jazz Unit, on the Gilgongo label. Both groups consistently rip in respective hardcore free jazz styles, THC coming at it, still, somehow, with post-bop as a starting point, which makes it very exciting . . . I just saw them do this in front of 240 drunken revelers last week [Aug. 7, 2012 . . . incredible free Monday night show at the Empty Bottle with ONO -- ed.] and the crowd was way into it. WJU, on the other hand, come at it with no bop at all, entirely in a post-Borbetomagus scorched-earth style. I've never seen them do it live, but I would like to someday.
NEW ARRIVALS, OLD ARRIVALS, VINYL, MP3s, STREAMS, ETC. (CONT.):
BLOWHOLE Killing Noise LP (ZABRISKIE POINT)
BLOWHOLE Gathering LP (GIARDIA/FUSETRON/CARBURETOR)
SHADOW RING/BLOWHOLE/BUNNY BRAINS/TOWER RECORDINGS Cock Displacement EP 7" (SUPERLUX)
I've been digging through old zines and pulled out Muckraker #5 with its extensive (complete?) Blowhole
discography, as annotated by the band's two principle members, Jeph
Jerman and Patrick Barber. If you happened to be reading a lot of
noise/underground/experimental zines at a certain time in the early/mid
1990s, you'll remember this band being featured or reviewed in every
single one of them, at least once. In fact, how many Blowhole records do
you still have, or did you have at one point? I think I made it up to
four, and I still have three, according to what I just pulled off of the
shelf. Killing Noise always appealed to me because it was billed
as a Jimi Hendrix tribute/covers album, and indeed it is, though very
free with the source material, each side featuring a good 10 to 15
minutes of seemingly anti-Hendrixian table-top noise/ambient solo
guitar, which on side two is extensively backwards masked... ah, backwards
masking... there's the Hendrixian connection (slight return). When the
actual cover versions do come, they are completely messed-up, ragged,
punked-out, and also seem to have absolutely nothing to do with
Hendrix's music, except for the lyrics. Oh yeah, and there's a couple
snippets from interviews with Jimi spliced in too. I actually love this
album. In part because of how much I've always loved Hendrix, but
I've heard plenty of Hendrix tributes and covers that were lame as hell, essentially
cocktail lounge bands playing blues standards, total noise reduction.
This one gets the noise part right! "Wind Cries Mary" particularly shreds. Right next to Killing Noise was Blowhole's Gathering LP, so I pulled that one out too. (Free Metal,
my other Blowhole LP, I remember you being a straight guitar/drums duo free-jazz freakout LP and I'll
pull you out another time.) I'm pretty sure I only listened to Gathering
once after buying it for 4 bucks at Amoeba in San Fran well over a
decade ago. What can I say, I'm a sucker for hand-painted covers, and I
also liked the labels it was on, Giarda being the record label wing of
the same publishing house that did the aforementioned Muckraker
zine, and surely you've met Fusetron by now... both labels originally
from Minneapolis, by the way... I do remember this
being Blowhole at their jazziest, which is still pretty anti-jazz, some
sort of full-band hard-swinging free-blowin' concussion bop. At the time
I bought this, which was like 1999, I was ready to take a breather from current avant-garde jazz after getting deeply into it for the previous 5 years or so. In 2012 it holds
up pretty good and fits nicely into a
since-discovered Mutant Garbage Jazz aesthetic. (Dig around this page for a little more info, or at least a record review written while I was discovering it.) AND, speaking of old zines, I would be absolutely remiss if I didn't mention the Cock Displacement
#1 zine and 7" vinyl EP that are still lurking around from a road
purchase circa 1999, because it was released in 1996 and indeed has a
Blowhole track on it (charmingly billed as The Blowhole), in this case a
very nice subdued and silence-flirting percussion improvisation . . .
in fact each of the four artists seem to turn in particularly nice
improvisations, all of them instrumental, with the exception of the
Bunny Brains, who take up 5/6th's of Side B with one of their Dan Bunny
dirge songs from a post-Flipper universe, followed with a sly
semicelestial coda jam by The Tower Recordings that's really only about a
minute long. The real news is the opening track, a great piece by the
Shadow Ring from their early synth period, when Tim Goss had just joined the band. GHOSTWRITERS Music From No-Man's Land 12" (ZERO RECORDS). Every 5 or 6 years I get blown away by the synthesizer music of Charles Cohen. Last time it was in the mid-2000s, when he seemed to show up on a few improvised music CDs, though the only one I remember for sure is a great duo album with Ed Wilcox that I'm gonna dig out and listen to later tonight. (P.S. I also dug out another good and obscure CD, a 2006 collaboration Cohen did with Yanni Papadopoulos of Stinking Lizaveta under the name Planet Y. You can buy MP3s at Thrill Jockey!) This time around, it's the discovery-via-blogosphere of a two-man early-80s synth-pop-industrial group he was in called the Ghostwriters. Honestly these are just great cold-synth punk instrumentals.
NEIL YOUNG Chrome Dreams (UNRELEASED). Any
opinionated conversation trying to designate the most stoned
recording of all time would have to at least consider "Will To Love" by Neil
Young, with copious bonus points for 1) the central singer-as-fish metaphor and 2) audible
fireplace crackle. The track was slated for a then-announced upcoming Neil
album called Chrome Dreams, but got shelved in favor of the rather muddled American Stars & Bars, which at least did feature the two greatest Chrome Dreams tracks, "Will To Love" and all-time Crazy Horse dirge classic "Like a Hurricane." In fact, I think that, even though Stars & Bars has far fewer great songs on it than the loaded Chrome Dreams,
it somehow works better as an album. The iffy sequencing actually sets up
those two classic songs very well... even the cover art and the title
work better in this regard. That's Neil for you,
the sharp inconsistencies growing strange chemistries....
NEIL YOUNG Americana CD (REPRISE). Speaking of which . . . talk about a sharp inconsistency that is yet still growing strange chemistries . . . Crazy Horse get back together in late 2011 or early 2012, offer a pretty awesome 37-minute instrumental warmup jam on neilyoung.com, and then record a brand new album . . . consisting entirely of old common domain folk songs like "Clementine" and "Oh Susannah" and even an a capella version of "Get A Job"?? A lot of people were grumbling about the concept, and I'll agree that it's a bit of a head-scratcher. Nonetheless, this is an interesting record. The songs don't blow you away, but they draw you in, which makes you sing along and think about things. The band plays it a little strange, completely forgoing their wind-tunnel extendo-dirging style, for shorter electric folk miniatures that they almost seem to play with a coy stutter-step. YouTube evidence of their subsequent and currently ongoing tour reveals only one song from Americana along with plenty of wind-tunnel extendo-dirging, including a 26-minute song called "Walk Like A Giant" that Holy Mountain astutely compared to an American Fushitsusha. These songs are going to be on an imminent new triple LP called Psychedelic Pill, and Americana will probably be completely forgotten. (UPDATE 10/21/12: Just saw Neil Young & Crazy Horse play live at the United Center in Chicago just last week and it was so, so good. I mentioned it on twitter already, but I learned so much from that show. I learned that Crazy Horse build a cave, and Neil is the cave-painter. It can also be heard as actual Big Sky Music, with Molina & Talbot creating the Earth and Tectonics while Young & Sampedro create the Sky and Heavy Weather. Also, they played precisely 0 songs from Americana, and among the new batch of songs Young has written for Crazy Horse are at least three absolute late-period masterpieces, particularly "Ramada Inn," as well as the aforementioned "Walk Like A Giant" and a piano ballad called "Singer Without A Song" that sounded like it could've come right off of After the Gold Rush.) (UPDATE 12/9/2012: Psychedelic Pill has been out for awhile, and I've listened to it about 50 times on Spotify, because I can't bear to spend $85 or whatever on the vinyl. I think it's easily the best Crazy Horse album since Rust Never Sleeps. I even like the classically cornpone Neil numbers "Born In Ontario" and "Twisted Road." And, my favorite song isn't even "Ramada Inn" or "Walk Like A Giant," it's the absolutely sublime and funny 27-minute opener "Driftin' Back.")
GROUPER Violet Replacement (UNRELEASED?).
These MP3s showed up in my iTunes... I guess I downloaded them from
somewhere... sorry, I know that's not cool, but don't worry, because nowadays there's about 5000 fewer share blogs and
Mediafire is emptier than a derelict shopping mall. Either way, Discogs is telling me that this was a 2-track CDR on Grouper's own Yellow
Electric label. 51-minute ambient pieces are rarely what I
choose to throw on the stereo, and as much as I think I would prefer to
listen to Ms. Harris sing, these Violet Replacement pieces are
absolutely
deep and gorgeous. They take the heavy pressure that so distinctly
marked the A I A albums, and, if anything, slightly increase it. (And speaking of Discogs, one of these CDRs has sold for $180 on there so I don't feel bad about downloading it at all.)
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