The Impasto Soul/White Dub Nexus

The sonic drift is like some sort of Kontiki cross current, blowing pathetic pilgrims in their makeshift barks, half-ass dug-outs, and nut-job rafts of strung-together bottles and styrofoam, hurling wind-battered searchers into the blustery void, to land, half-mad, on shores peopled with distorted man-gods and leering stone giants. Crazy vegetation. When you’re a pioneer, you’ve got to be ready to charge into frightening territory. To face the enemy. And, upon returning, the trail-blazer must be prepared to meet disbelieve and outright hostility when reporting back from new frontiers.

Midway through the week’s journey I found myself at a dark pass. Seeking refuge from the cubicle hum, I dipped into the stacks of one of the record stores near the office. After some initial searching, I had to muster up the backbone to ask the old jazz-bo behind the counter where I might find Cher and Bobby Goldsboro records, having already poked around in the respective general alphabetical sections. He led me over to the oldies section. It was there that I saw the color, making my fool’s-gold discovery of a Tommy James and the Shondells record from 1970 called Travelin,’ basically their last record together. Painting of a rowdy stagecoach ride on the cover. (Funny that Lefty should mention TJ in his previous post.)

A few of these tracks are classic examples of a bogus generic classification that seems to become more real the more absurd the concept becomes. I’m speaking of proto white dub. This is Trenchtown via Ohio. Curtis Mayfield and Superfly via the Beastie Boys and the Egg Man. Howlin Wolf via Beefheart. Sprinkled with a lifted bit of grandeur from “Come Together.” Impasto soul with worrying Native American incantations. Vocals-through-the-Leslie-cabinet abuse. Boneheaded genius. Like Joe Walsh.


“Candy Maker” - Tommy James and the Shondells


“Moses and Me” - Tommy James and the Shondells

This New Old Sound Pleases Me

When the White Stripes first came out, I loved how Jack channeled Tommy James, that Top 40 pop master of yore. It was the raw 60s garage production, but more importantly the peculiar candy-striped pop sensibility. So this CD by The Dutchess & the Duke just hit my desk and I was struck right away by how they channeled another not-often-channeled pop master, Eric Burden. He of The Animals. They've got the same chiming guitar lines, jingle-jangle rhythm and echo-blasted folk-blues yawp. Their hollered Mamas/Papas harmonies sound piped through a time-travel transistor radio. It's delightful stuff. The album, She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke, comes out July 8 on Hardly Art, so I won't blow it for them and start leaking all the songs into the black inter-hole (trust me, it's a song-for-song champ), but here's what you can already get off their myspace page.

Reservoir Park - The Dutchess & the Duke

Saturday Morning Spring Awakening

All morning, over and over, I've let this Fleet Foxes song wash over me like a breezy open-window bliss. Volume up, windows open. Yes! Despite its title (or because of it?), the gorgeous reverb-soaked harmonies of "White Winter Hymnal" are feathering perfectly with this new spring air, the little red and yellow buds popping on branches all down the block in a psychedelic haze, the sun pulling magnolia bouquets out of the air and raining white and pink waxen elf ears all over the walk, all of it finally conquering my seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Ah! Glory! And I must add, Fleet Foxes, the top secret invention of J. Craig Venter's hippie-rock laboratory (as I've previously discussed here), are the best and loveliest thing to hit me in ages. Listen and revel.

White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes

In the Hot Hot Days - Fleet Foxes

She Got Dressed - Fleet Foxes

The Shock of the Old

Now that we can rely on search engines, external hard-drives and entirely digitized texts to access all the information that we used to house in our pathetic little brains, you’ll routinely hear people talk about the importance of synthesis. It’s no longer a matter of remembering shit, it’s now about making connections. But I had one of those iPod-shuffle-enabled epiphanies this afternoon on the way home from work. The kind that suggests that even our synthesis can be digitally aided. I had just finished soaking up Karl Blau’s autistic white dub of “Are You Done,” with its lolly-pop guild vocals, sea-anemone-meets-Congolese-guitar lines, and stretch-taffy ricochet reverb beats. Then, seamlessly, came on “When I Grow Up” from The Beach Boys Today! I guess I’d never listened to this track before. Or at least not with much focus, because I found myself “nearly” devastated. This is a dangerously weird recording, made even more subversive by the Brill Creme lyrics about growing up – will I love my wife, will I dig the stuff I dig now, will my kids think I’m a square? But what are we to make of the Rubiks Cube harpsichord part, the near suffocating layers of vocal harmonies, that anti-groove snare roll and snap? In just about 2 minutes the song thoroughly creeps me out, over and over. It made me think of the Gary Giddens piece on Ornette Coleman from the New Yorker the other week. He quotes someone on the subject of Ornette’s quarter-tone intonation, meaning that he’s playing notes that technically fall outside the zone of Western scales but that he does it in a regular, in-tune, fashion. I’d never heard it put quite like that before. I mean, you can tell that Ornette’s intonation and the crying slips are not exactly by the book, but they always sound right in more important ways.

Not to overstate the connection, but there’s something equally not-right about the harmonies toward the end of the Beach Boys tune. The voices sound like they’re being Hoovered up, or like the tape is being messed-with, sped-up just a bit. It all gets wobbly.

“Are You Done” - Karl Blau


“When I Grow Up” - The Beach Boys

Near Devastation Is Just Total Devastation In Grey-Flannel Slacks (UPDATED!)

Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that you're not alone. I experienced a subtle frisson of fan-boy glee and smug self-congratulation when I read Ben Ratliff in the New York Times calling the Nick Lowe show I saw the other night "nearly devastating." Me, I'd go so far as to strike the "nearly." But I'm sure Times editorial standards require a certain reasonable restraint. Otherwise you're just blogging, right? And the "nearly" qualifier makes it that much more devastating anyway.

I've loved Nick Lowe for a while, but had few to share my enthusiasm with until the other night at the Manhattan Center. I mean, yeah, you guys have listened to me bark about him at TDSP, but I didn't get the sense everybody was rushing to join the chorus. Then again, he doesn't inspire that kind of overt raving. It's a private affair. Secret handshake music. And that was the essence of Nick's program: just a man and his guitar on a dark stage, a singular presence with a rare magnetic command that you associate with very few. How did this dapper Brit so naturally and authentically come to inhabit the blue-note phrasing of George Jones and Johnny Cash and Sam Cooke? You hang on his every note. That he does it in a starched white shirt and flat-fronted grey-flannel slacks only accentuates the curious genius. He's got some of the best lyric phrasing I’ve ever heard. I "nearly" crumpled at "Shelley My Love," a song I discovered the next morning was recorded on his 2004 live album, Untouched Takeaway, a close approximation of what I heard. He played all these:

Shelley My Love (Live) - Nick Lowe

I Live on a Battlefield (Live) - Nick Lowe

What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding? (Live) - Nick Lowe (Yes, he wrote this.)

Cruel to Be Kind (Live) - Nick Lowe

Oh, the picture? Only the moment Nick was joined by Elvis Costello (left) and Robin Hitchcock (right) for a cover of the Beatles' "If I Fell." Um, I "nearly" cried with joy. Strangers had to recognize each other in wide-eyed wonder at this rare and "near" historic moment. In fact, the young gal in front of me agreed to email some pictures she snapped. Blurry, but perfectly captures the energy of the show in a way a clearer picture would not. (Thanks, Sonya.)

PS: I HIGHLY recommend buying Nick Lowe's 2001 album, The Convincer.

Bill Fox, Slight Return?

NEWS FLASH!

Exciting developments for fans of BILL FOX, the reclusive singer-songwriter genius from Cleveland, OH!

First, SCAT RECORDS will reissue his two late '90s solo albums over the next year, both on CD and vinyl. Apparently Fox has decided to peek out from his long-held seclusion. Here is the announcement, as published on the label's website on April 3:

Quick bit of killer news... I spoke with Bill Fox yesterday, and we have agreed to reissue his two mid-90s solo albums, Shelter from the Smoke & Transit Byzantium. If you've been trying to get copies of either of these I know your wallet just sighed with relief. Even better, we'll be issuing both on vinyl (a first) as well as cd. I hope to have at least one of them out by the end of the year.

For those of you in the know, this is a BIG DEVELOPMENT, apparently the result of renewed interest after THE BELIEVER story on Fox last summer. Happy day! (Longtime readers of TDSP know we're big boosters of Bill Fox going way back.)

Second! Some rare and not-supposed-to-have-been-released songs from Fox's late '80s power pop group THE MICE have emerged over on music blog I Rock Cleveland and they're worth checking out.

Lastly, and perhaps most tantalizing: I hear that Fox recently jammed with his brother, legendary drummer of the Mice and THE REVELERS, TOMMY FOX. No word on whether this will metastasize into Bill's reemergence or (imagine!) some kind of new project. Very unlikely, but a boy or girl can dream, right?

Lay You Down - Bill Fox

Every Dog Has His Day

This is true. When I was in fifth grade I took piano lessons. My mom made me and my four siblings all take lessons on an instrument, and the default choice was piano. Later my brothers would sign on for guitar after having given up on piano. My sister would drift to the clarinet. When we had lived in New York they were lucky enough to take lessons from a woman who, I think, was a retired music professor at Bard. We’d moved down to North Carolina, and my mom just found someone in our neighborhood. She wasn’t particularly compelling. In my mind her puckered vacant pleading face has merged with that of my 8th grade geometry teacher. Anyway, I was leaving a lesson -- it was just a few blocks from our house – and there was a kid in the street. He was riding a bike with a big sparkly banana seat and one of those tall bendy pennant flags coming off the back. It was like the scene in The Bad News Bears when the trouble-maker kid, Kelly (?), pulls up on his motorbike and totally upsets the game. Somehow, I got into a conversation with the kid, his name was Matt, and he doubled me up the street to his house. It was unbelievable. Matt had a drumkit – a blue sparkle set (it was the early 80s, sparkles everywhere). He had two small dinky plastic rectangular speakers mounted on the wall, on either side of where his head would be when seated on the drum stool. Matt would crank AC/DC and get behind the kit. Boom-chi-BAT!-chi-Boom-boom-BAT! chi, Boom-chi-BAT!-chi-Boom-boom-BAT!chi Boom-chi-BAT!-chi-Boom-boom-BAT!chi back-a-dagga-book-a-dooga-BISHHHHHH! It was so basic, so simple, yet so awesome. And so fucking loud. And when Matt let me sit behind the set, it turned out that I could pretty much do it too (no big feat really.) This was satisfying, full-body noise-making. It was like throwing rocks at bottles. It just felt good. And so I had to talk my folks into letting me play drums. But first I had to endure the humiliating trial period to demonstrate my seriousness. This entailed buying practice pads and learning rudiments, RLRR LRLL RLRR LRLL, practicing sticking patterns. And my folks weren’t going to just buy me a drum set. In the typical family bricolage fashion, I picked up a discarded cymbal, which basically like an abused pan lid, a snare drum (one of those great Ludwig student snares that I wish I never parted with). Then I got a kick drum and a pedal. I was closing in on it. Soon, I was sitting in my room with the stereo cranked, listening to "Bad Company" by Bad Company, patiently waiting for the BIG ROCK AND ROLL MOMENT when the drums kick in and lock down on the sacred caveman backbeat. Who needed any fucking tomtoms? (A question always worth asking. I was tickled to read in a Phil Spector bio that when we was producing a session he would routinely take the crash cymbals and any other accent-making extras away from the drummer in order to enforce simplicity.)

So Matt was one of those friends that I looked up to. He was a year older than me, and I pretty much tried to base my identity on his. We had BB guns and bows and arrows. We’d shoot squirrels and robins. Matt, like most drummers, proved to be somewhat unstable and sort of a bad influence. I remember him once setting his BB gun barrel over our back yard fence and carefully aiming into our neighbor’s garden. He shot up Mr. Wilson’s tomato crop. We thought it was pretty funny, but I think I might murder a kid who did that to my tomatoes now. Matt and I were pretty much inseparable. Matt used to have this wig, a sort of shoulder-length brunette deal, and he’d put it on and sort of pretend to be a real stoner, this was back when having long hair seemed to mean something to people, and it wasn’t common to see 11-year-olds flying their freak flags, or wearing women’s wigs, I guess. One night my parents were having a big bridge game, with like 6 or eight other couples, they were all set up at tables in the living room, drinking, snacking, concentrating on the game. I came in with Matt, who was wearing the wig, and I insisted on introducing him to all of my parents’ friends as my friend "Dale Bordello."
Matt went to the Catholic school, and so naturally he was interested in Satan. And he was an AC/DC fanatic. He was one of several kids in the neighborhood who earned a reputation for being artists, based solely on his ability to carefully replicate the demonic AC/DC logo freehand. I went to public school, and I was more into Led Zeppelin, Sabbath and Hendrix. That may have been enough of a difference to send us on our separate ways, or maybe it was that two drummers on the same street would naturally be forced to become friends with different circles of guitar-playing friends. But I almost always think of Matt whenever I hear AC/DC and the workmanlike beats of Phil Rudd.

Those beats are the place where music meets carpentry. It’s definitely more like swinging a hammer than it is like playing a piano.
This morning I woke up early, and after getting primed with some coffee, I decided that I was going to "go for it." Seeking the proper musical accompaniment for manic house-cleaning action, I dusted off my copy of the first record by The Darkness. !!!. My god I’d forgotten how righteous those songs are. From there it was logical to unleash the Hold Steady. And then AC/DC, and eventually Urge Overkill. I also realized you can’t deny that rock and roll seems to work on a cellular, metabolic level. You crank it up. The beats kick in, cue some operatic wailing, crunchy guitar heroics. You’re rocking. What more is there?

In light of some particularly mercenary cold-blooded firings that took place at my already decimated place of work this afternoon, this seems like an even more fitting, social Darwinist bit of rock. Also, I just finished reading Peter Carey’s excellent His Illegal Self the other day, so I’m sort of on an "Australians Rule" kick (try and tell me it’s not true!).

"Dog Eat Dog" - AC/DC

Flea Market Music

There's almost nothing to learn on the internet about The Mighty Sparrow's 1978 synth-happy calypso album, Pussy Cat Party. One presumes that means it's either rare or thoroughly disinteresting to the bulk of humanity. But it was only $1 at the flea market (passed over by a flock of dorks raiding the boxes for Genesis and Ted Nugent LPs), so I figured what the hell, the guy's a calypso legend. It was pressed by "Charlie's Records," a likely defunct label located on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, not far from where I used to live in Clinton Hill.

Turns out, there's plenty to love on this record, not least the amazing band, all 19 players individually pictured on the back sleeve (including Carlton Joseph on triangle). The highlight is "Robot," a fantastic calypso get-down sung from the perspective of a music-powered robot built in a hut by a scientist named Albert. The robot narrator tells us he has a laser and a radar and a "small sensitive computer." When his circuit breaker gets hot, we're told, he can "whine better than John Travolta." Makes sense. Reverse Scientology.

Robot - Mighty Sparrow

Then there's "Rip Off," a Soca tune that sounds like the theme song for Ralph Nader's presidential campaign.

Rip Off - Mighty Sparrow

When you reach the last song, however, you understand why this album is obscure: the title track, "Pussy Cat," is completely disgusting and offensive. The song elaborates in excessive detail on gynecological cleanliness under the nearly-nonexistent veil of talking about cats (who are given voice by a "cute" synth fill). Suffice to say, ignorant and misogynistic fear of female anatomy didn't tap the Zeitgeist of American dance floors when this came out. I don't think it went over in Trinidad either. I noticed that in a later interview, Slinger Francisco, a.k.a., The Mighty Sparrow, disowns the album: "We're past that stage. It was an attempt to be funny. Boy, times do change."

Pussy Cat - Mighty Sparrow

You'll notice the "SH" logo on the album cover -- that stands for Sparrow's Hideaway, his club in Diego Martin in Trinidad.

Lefty's Listwood Drift

What I'm drifting to:

1. Every summer, Dewey Dell and I invariably make our way to Central Park to see the legendary Bladie Flowness (above) as he leads the amazing Central Park Dance Skaters Association in a massive roller disco party, complete with gigantic sound system and people with gold teeth and hot pants doing impossible tangos on 16 wheels. Last time Bladie sold us his excellent inspirational CD compilation, which features Bladie philosophizing about our inner "genius" and encouraging us to get some skates and shake our collective booty (all over a thumping beat and backup singers chiming, "Duality! Life Dance!"). If you need to see/hear/feel how transcendently funky this experience can be, check out THIS AMAZING OLD-SCHOOL VIDEO featuring Bladie back in the early 80s when he was known as Vin Zee (he had a hit called "Funky Bebop" on Emergency Records). Well, Bladie's proselytizing worked, cuz we're getting skates this year and getting our groove on. God help us.

You Can Do It - Bladie Flowness

2. When I find myself in times of trouble, John Anderson comes to me like a trusty triple-layer flannel shirt on an Autumn day in 1982. While comforting me in the present, he’s also traveling to the past and comforting me there as well. That’s where it hurts.

You’ve Got the Longest Leaving Act in Town – John Anderson

3. If you've ever wished, as I often have, that Style Council had made a whole lot more fey British soul like they did on My Ever Changing Moods, then you'll be delighted, as I was, to hear The Sharpe Things' supremely fey and soulful "Cruel Thing." This is a great song. (Thanks to Chicago Dave for alerting us to it.)

Cruel Thing - The Sharpe Things

4. If you need proof that Tommy Fox is one of the GREAT rock'n'roll drummers of all time (Tommy who? Tommy Fox), then crank this up to 11.

So Chemical (The Revelers Song) - The Revelers

4. Dizziehead Ed recently turned me on to this mysterious supergroup known as the Psychic Envelopes. This song, in all its wobbly weave of guitaring, has mysteriously grabbed hold of me and won’t let go, especially the spooky/shocking miniaturist guitar solo at minute 2:14 or thereabouts.

Raleigh – Psychic Envelopes

5. Usually I wait till everyone has stopped liking something to start liking it myself, but that’s just silly. So I’m going to just enjoy Yeasayer now and accept that I'm part of the same unwashed blog-o-demographic mob as everyone else. I'm in. This is me. Ecce homo.

2080 - Yeasayer

5. I’m not sure if there’s one single time that I’ve listened to this song and not almost cried or grown severely misty. Is it possible that this is literally one of the best songs ever written? Hat tip to Agent Eliot, who first played this for me.

1952 Vincent Black Lightning - Richard Thompson

6. I’m really hoping Nick Lowe plays this on April 9 at the Grand Ballroom in New York City (please?):

I’m a Mess – Nick Lowe

7. My niece goes to the elite arts-focused LaGuardia High School in Manhattan and is therefore plugged directly into the bloody beating heart of all youth culture. In her impressively condescending teen coolness, she’s constantly telling me that things I say are “cute,” as in, “Heh, that’s cute.” As if I’m the one who’s 18 and she’s 36. Anyway, she recently got in a fight with her dad over whether she could go out late on a Tuesday night and see the supposedly coolest band that all the coolest kids want to hear because they're so cool, called Crystal Castles. She won the fight. Heh, cute.

Good Time – Crystal Castles.

8. I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned Boris, the Japanese drone metal band who are rocking my world. As I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen, I lost 10% of my hearing seeing them live at the Knitting Factory – and it was totally worth it. It’s hard to recall having been rocked that hard. If they come to your town, you simply must. MUST! But with ear plugs maybe.



9. In a just world, this song would be part of every FM Classic Rock rock block in the nation. It rises and crashes just right, all guitar pleasure and pop-emotive triumph. But it was just another song on one of those Frank Black albums and nobody really mentioned it. Shame.

Fields of Marigold – Frank Black

10. English Beat to Vampire Weekend: Heh, cute.

Ackee 1-2-3 - English Beat

Gibr luf og Srpritk “Rock”

     Weni klid ehi Fier lis guckir “rock”, rjk sprot og Huey Lewis & the News.  Tlise ki Diel, elrfi rji Lob. Ee  eibl gi Clover, bule mid mudo ks plat Elvis Costello, mistku ni Huey (riksle Beif ur Rluer).  Ikl sor sel albm Sports , nit sko erig “The Power of Love” snok #1. Elro kri iselt San Francisco?  Stid tok Rint fi eir “hippies”, slor dik nof Grateful ded?  Ne, fi siel fir lasi Huey Lewis, Journy, Starship, Bo Skaggs, eb, eb.  Elossr rukd Bod ri Egir ril “rock”.  Sneh.

     Mid Giel fi bir Krof rsuko “hits”, bmo slki ei Furr bot supo Lewis.  Ifse thl ale synth (ioe ols ril ti ’80s, sneh), mirl ske og MTV tlo fa video isr glor.  Eo rd oth wi video mt Heds n Sind bech?  Wa!  Ast thjdi mesrm Americani dim duli, “Awesome!!!”  Ik d eid Snig n Movo di Back to the Future, sek Mickal J Fox.  Ast Gur, di buerl Fox ste Oscar, set ni.  

     Ar tesid Meks mulse Huey Lewis & the News "Art"?  Ni, fi sid oey Glur "rock".  Sifi ro slir Mss. Frankie Lee, sle sluf Gelg frol og "iTunes", shlo scrk "Nee! Nee!  Trin olf! TRIN OLF!!!"  Eh, wols dhe sek di Heert do Rock n Roll.  Sneh.

     

Heart & Soul--Huey Lewis & the News

The Power of Love--Huey Lewis & the News

Curious Orange

In college I played briefly in a sort of out-prog-no-wave-gag band called Citrus Leviticus. In retrospect, the name may have been better than the music. A few of us had taken jazz classes at the university. There were intentional whole-tone-scale solos, stuttering 7-beat rhythms, there may have been some attempt to base a composition on the Fibonacci Sequence, and I remember one song had the chorus “I’ve got too much meat on my toes,” which was sort of a garbled in-joke about a diagnosis that one of us had received from a local macrobiotic specialist (hairy toes, as I recall, had something to do with a one’s mother having had eaten too much red meat during pregnancy, according to the macro quack.)

I was reminded of the summer of Citrus Leviticus when listening to this re-issue of this 1973 from San Bernadino’s Instant Orange, mostly because of the name. It’s curious music. Sounds like you’re hearing everything through a peanut can. It’s a treble-heavy nightmare, with drums too loud in the mix. Surprising blasts of musique concrete and nonsense. Banjo jamboree breakdowns. Burps. Radio noise. Then weird tinny psych-pop, Byrdsy in places, presaging REM. Stoner avant garde. Langley School Project for grown-ups with substance abuse problems. Shadoks Music are masters of finding this stuff, and Spoils of War and Headstone Circus both come to mind listening to this one.

As with Lefty’s post on genetically engineered musical simulacra, listening to Instant Orange makes me feel like we’ve nearly reached the end of some voracious history-sweeping mad rush to delve into every possible cranny of previously undiscovered recorded music from the past. To probe. I like this music, but it makes me think of those English Literature graduate students who wrote their dissertations on obscure female novelists from the early 18th century, not because the novels were good, but simply because a million other scholars hadn’t written about them already.

“The Visionary” - Instant Orange


“Whole Lot Better” - Instant Orange

My Confession

A few years ago I was a real sourpuss about the Strokes and the Hives and the whole museum-quality renaissance fair-ism happening in "garage rock." It's not that they were awful, I used to say, just not terribly fulfilling. Calorie-free. Empty suits. Deracinated and cynical. "Boutique replicas of the past," I sneered. While it's now clear in the rear-view that the Strokes were in fact an unsustainable confection, I must now confess I've come around to the beauty of precision simulacrum.

It may be that, as with weather in England, I just needed to wait 5 minutes. For the simulacrum storm has caught up to music that I actually wanted simulated. To wit: Fleet Foxes. This Seattle group sounds like equal parts My Morning Jacket, Fleetwood Mac and CSNY, a seamless amalgamation of 70s folk-rock with a vaguely Celtic pinch of Fairport Convention. They're not original by any stretch, yet they're SO DAMNED GOOD at doing what they do, I just can't resist. It's like Craig Venter and NASA got together to solve the problem of making a band that sounds exactly like what Lefty wants to hear.

I'm reminded of Cypher in the Matrix (Joe Pantoliano) who decided he didn't care if he was living in a dream and secretly being used as a biodegradable battery for evil robots. "You know, I know this steak doesn't exist," he says. "I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? [Takes a bite of steak] Ignorance is bliss."

Indeed. This song's combination of sweet, reverb-saturated harmonies and buttery acoustic jangle makes for a melodious bliss that can't and won't be denied. At least not by me. Seriously, listen to this song all the way through and observe just how utterly perfect it is from front to back. It's very hard to care that it lacks the context of, say, 1972. That is, unless you're somehow hung up on authenticity and the evil robots who've stuffed your carcass into a gelatinous goo for making the big reality machine run its nefarious program of doom. To which I must now say: Sucker!

Mykonos - Fleet Foxes

You should download their EP "Sun Giant" from SubPop. Only five bucks!

Arise, Therefore

Where we live, in western Mass., this seems to be the weekend when everyone gets charged with seasonal electricity. JP went to Whole Foods to shop for the Boggle party we’re having tonight (!!!). And evidently everyone else was up and ready, "going for it"– taking care of business, shopping in joyful hope of something. The green fuse has been lit. The rain melted the snow in the yard. We can see all the mud and what might someday be grass. The willow tree shows signs of life at the tips. Birds are showing up, chipmunks on the move. I took a bunch of sickly, dusty plants that need to be repotted and put them out on the front steps, in the chilly mist, hoping that a homeopathic dose of sunlight might prime the cellular pumps. It’s not quite April, but I can feel the impending cruelty of pent-up potential followed by the squandering psychic seed burst.



It makes me long for the days on the farm – chipping away at the last bits of frozen and stinking silage, standing in puddles with the scurrying rodents, finally turning the cows out to pasture, carefully tending to the seedlings in the greenhouse. You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and you’ve just got a song in your head? This morning I had "Fiery Crash," by Andrew Bird stuck in the brain. I don’t know why. And with the song, there has been an accompanying image: a time-lapse film snippet of seeds sprouting, pushing though the surface of the soil, turning their heads toward the sun, arching toward the life source. They sort of shiver and sway. And that image conjures another batch of music.


These tracks from Art of Field Recording, an amazing collection of gospel, blues, country, and other music recorded by Art Rosenbaum, an art professor in Georgia. These three tracks come right in a row on the disc devoted to religious music. This is some of the most moving, compelling spiritual music I’ve heard. The sound of Deacon Tommy Tookes and is congregation singing this lined-out hymn (The Lord Is Risen), from 1978 in Oglethorpe, Georgia makes me think of seeds and heliotropes. Hearing the whole group, together, in motion, ascending, straining, aiming at the divine. It’s tingle-music. It’s pure and beautiful.

Then there’s Ida Craig, a washer woman recorded in 1958 as she worked, singing "Sit Down, Servant" – you can hear her ironing as she sings. It’s unspeakably moving. The singing of Richard and Elula Moss is a little more creaky, a little more spooky, impacted, but beautiful, like knotty roots that have grown together over decades.

"Lord Is Risen" - Deacon Tommy Tookes and his Congregation recorded in 1978
(from Art of Field Recording)

"Sit Down, Servant" - Ida Craig (from Art of Field Recording)

"Idumea" - Richard and Elula Moss (from Art of Field Recording)

"Fiery Crash" - Andrew Bird (from Armchair Apocrypha)

My Jim Post Post

     True story.  A while ago my wife asked me if I had ever heard of the folksinger Jim Post, and I said why no, I haven't, who might he be?  She told me that he was singer/songwriter her parents used to like back in the day (the '70s, to be a bit more specific), and she remembered hearing them play this one record of his, but she couldn't recall what the name of it was.  The next day--the very next day, mind you--she and I went to one of our favorite Salvation Army stores here in town, and as usual I started scouring the record section.  Lo and behold, what should I discover among the musty 'n dusty stacks but the very LP she had mentioned--Colorado Exile, by Jim Post.  She just about fainted when I showed it to her.  Now, I don't mean to get all mystical and shit, but that's just a little weird, right?  Coincidence doesn't seem to do it justice.  Maybe I just need to find a better word for it and I'll be happy.  Actually, this kind of thing happens so regularly now it really doesn't seem that odd.  But it makes for a good anecdote.

     The album cover shows a man (Jim, presumably) with a little knapsack on his back, standing in the middle of  a rock outcropping in some mountains (in Colorado, presumably).  It's a pretty photo, and it wraps around the back of the album so you can open it up for a nice panorama effect.  I was kind of surprised (and happy) that I couldn't find it on the web--the picture above is from the inside, and I had to take a photo of it and post it 'cause I couldn't find that one either.  You gotta love it--he's holding a toad! (which is probably peeing on his hand--that's what they always did to me when I picked them up when I was a kid).  He put out another record later, called I Love My Life (remember, it was the '70s), and that album cover image is easy to find on the interweb--probably because it pictures him in the shower looking all beef-cakey (or trying to, at least).  Pretty laughably awful.  

     So, what about the music?  It ain't bad.  He has a sort of strange, high lonesome-sounding voice that was a little off-putting at first, but it's grown on me.  "Look Over Yonder" has some cool-sounding harmonies and nice strummy banjo.  "Colorado Exile" is one of those "gotta get out of the city & go to the country where everything's better" tunes, and it suffers a bit from the "Mr. Bojangles"/"Piano Man" chord progression, but it's still a decent song.  I like the "live by the river" part, with its yearning quality (I do a lot of yearning).  That makes me wonder--are there any songs in which the singer says that country living sucks & I can't wait to get back to the city?  I hope so.

Look Over Yonder--Jim Post

Colorado Exile--Jim Post 

Antipodes

As those three wise men, sometimes known simply as America, once said: “The ocean is a desert with its life underground.” And maybe Australia is like southern California upside down. Opposites as equals. Sand and sea. The places you go to find yourself, hunt the whale or to be banished. Vast emptiness. Hostile elements. Inhospitable, purifying extremes. Where nothing really stands between the earth and the sky. No sign of man blots the horizon. Bleak ex-hippies in the chronic afterburn of 1972, Scientological magpies, nautical-minded Australians. Follow the melodic thread, braid the rope, hoist the sails. It all comes together. Reminds me of the wonderful book, The Ongoing Moment, by Geoff Dyer, which looks at recurring images in famous pictures – men in hats, benches, empty roads. A structuralist breakdown. (My god, that Beck record sounds amazing on headphones.) The George Byrn track (insert Oh, God joke here) is one step away from fellow Aussies, and my first post, Little River Band.


“Because of You”- Gene Clark

“Guess ‘m Doing Water” - Beck

“Golden Age” - Beck

“Foreign Water” - George Byrne

Three Friday Things to Say to You

1. As I'd resolved in my New Year's resolutions, I saw the extraordinary Petra Haden in concert last night at the Knitting Factory, with SNL comedian Fred Armisen opening with some standup. Guess what? They're dating! After Fred did some hilarious "drummer impressions" (he did a precise Phil Collins, complete with exaggerated bobbing head and exaggerated I'm-an-intense-drummer face), he recalled hearing Petra Haden's a cappella version of "The Who Sells Out" on the radio while driving in LA and was paralyzed with joy and knew right away "she was the girl for me." Petra and The Sellouts (8 gals) were breathtaking on stage, separating instrumental sounds into precise vocal parts and forming an orchestrated choral pop. Their version of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" -- a true marvel -- was much tighter and more precise than the YouTube version now in circulation. Did I mention how everything was 'precise'? Anyway, go see her.

Our Love Was - Petra Haden

2. Our own Frankie Lee had the splendid idea of positioning an LP cover over his face just so for his profile page. Turns out some clever fellows have taken this concept to elaborate extremes and snapped dozens of well-placed "Sleeve Face" photos. They're marvelously done. Highly recommended.

3. Listen to the acoustic version of "Wild Mountain Nation" by Blitzen Trapper in their MySpace page, titled "Nation Live." It's special, especially if you're already hooked by the electric version, wherein they out-Grateful Dead the Grateful Dead. Mr. Poncho & Lefty are hereby giving our seal of approval to the West Coast hippie folk-rock of Fleet Foxes and Mont Smokey. When we saw this video of the Fleet Foxes' preternaturally spot-on version of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," we began to feel these hippies were perhaps created in a petri dish by Craig Venter.



See also: Pitchfork's review of the Fleet Foxes' new EP.

This Is His Life

One of the loudest and most savage rock-and-roll shows I saw in the 1990s was Firewater, which laid sinister rock riffs over various Old and Third World dance beats (klezmer, ska, etc.). This was at Brownies, a cavernous beer-and-smoke-stained club that used to reside on 1st Avenue in the East Village (anyone remember it?). I distinctly recall a Japanese keyboard player in a silver Star Trek shirt whose playing blew my mind. And the lead singer had a very bad attitude. Anyway, the album was called Get Off The Cross (We Need The Wood For The Fire) (1995) and it was a surprisingly fierce and rocking album, with all the snarl and intensity of an American Pogues. It was in direct contrast to most of the fey, self-pitying indie fare of the time.

Now I read that Tod A., the guy with the bad attitude, went on a long hiatus after the US invaded Iraq, disillusioned with life in New York and with America in general. He traveled India and the Middle East with some lightweight recording equipment and "captured performances with a vast array of musicians across India and Pakistan -- and eventually Turkey and Israel," according to his website. "Bhangra and sufi percussion would form the basis for the songs he wrote along the way."

Apparently his trip was interrupted by his getting drugged, beaten and robbed along the Afghan border. This mini-documentary has him explaining what he did and how he did it and it's totally fascinating and inspiring.



A niggling question for Tod: Did he pay these guys or credit them in the liners notes? Whatever. His new album "The Golden Hour" seems worth checking out. Here's a track from it.

This Is My Life - Firewater

Folk Vibe For Miles

Lately I’ve started to cherish an alternate vision of the café folk troubadour scene from the 60s. Instead of the precision-tooled harmonies, fresh-scrubbed faces, matching shirts, proper enunciation and generally annoying pearly wholesomeness of groups like the Kingston Trio, it’s one of misanthropic boozers, wannabe jazzbos, and croak-voiced trouble-makers who weren’t toeing any party line handed down from Broadside, Pete Seeger, Moe Asch or anybody else. The Mighty Wind crowd is too easy of a target, so there’s no reason to take cheap shots. But listening to these tracks conjures some alternate cast of crusty characters, straight out of a T.C. Boyle book. Both of these songs remind me a little of Karen Dalton, who was associated with the two singers. Fred Neil wrote “Everybody’s Talkin” as a throw-away tune and then proceeded to live off the royalties, preferring mostly to hang in Florida with his beloved dolphins than to commune with the folk. I’ll admit it, I first heard “The Dolphins” on The Sopranos, and it practically made me cry. And Tim Hardin – who wrote “Reason to Believe,” “If I Was a Carpenter,” “Misty Roses” and “Black Sheep Boy” – seemed to have an impressive reserve of menace that he could pipe into the most unlikely places. How many folk records have vibes (Gary Burton, btw)?

“The Dolphins” - Fred Neil


“Never Too Far” - Tim Hardin

MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS '08

I've been drifting through a fog, groping for shapes in the mists, feeling the borders, collecting fragments. I don't know what any of it means. The past is all around me; so is the future. I hear a trumpet. I follow...

1. Dizziehead Ed dropped this rare/weird Cat Stevens disco cut called "Was a Dog a Doughnut" on me the other day, the original LP cover of which fit his continual hunt for the Ourosboros. But this is a remixed version by some genius in Paris who goes by the crypto-mashup moniker Pilooski Edits. Rightly, he bills the results as "Psychedelic / Acousmatic / Tape music / Folk." Do listen to some samples on his/her myspace page, it's really wonderful stuff, especially the song called "Gemini." That's my daughter's sign. Also Mr. Poncho's and Frankie Lee's.

Was Dog a Doughnut - Cat Stevens (Pilooski Edit)

2. My 20-year high school reunion is next year, 2009. For me, those faraway days bring to mind the uplifting SoCal punk anthems of 7 Seconds, who yelped and proclaimed through the crap stereo system in my two-tone navy/baby-blue 1980 Ford Fairmont, which had a beautiful 6'7" Ken Bradshaw surfboard strapped to the roof and a well-worn Steve Olsen skateboard in the trunk. It also makes me think of the hallowed Krayons, the only hardcore punk band able and willing to keep South Texas honest during the Reagan years.

Walk Together, Rock Together- 7 Seconds

Wise Up Korea - The Krayons

3. After a recent visit to Marin County in golden California, while driving through the Tuscan-like landscapes of Napa and Sonoma, getting tippled on the grape and wincing into the sun-dappled hills, I came to realize what's really important in life. And it ain't poetry.

It's Money - Gordon Gano (with Martha Wainwright)

4. It's the 10-year anniversary of Neutral Milk Hotel's seminal "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." (Ten years since 1998? REALLY?!) Listening to it again got me really choked up, feeling very emotional and mortal. While visiting my hometown years ago, the shared love of this record while driving around late at night made me and my sister grow closer. If we could rock together, we could walk together.

Holland, 1945 - NMH

5. I recently realized that I love jazz that sounds vaguely like TV theme songs from the late 70s. "Bob Newhart" and "Barney Miller" and "Hill Street Blues." I suppose that's because it was the first "jazz" or "fusion" I ever heard while living in the country-and-western hinterlands. That and maybe some jazz muzak on PBS in between afternoon children's programs when they just had a static picture of koala bear and the words "Stand by..." The recent album by bassist Ben Allison, "Little Things Run the World," feels like it gets at these acute and peculiar generational audio memories. Maybe it's the smooth Burt Bacharach horn lines, how those were later copied by Hollywood TV theme-song writers, which Ben's trumpet player seems to be quoting in some subtle way. I don't know, but it's a really splendid album and you should BUY IT.

Little Things Run the World - Ben Allison

Bob Newhart Theme Song

Barney Miller Theme Song

Hill Street Blues Theme Song

6. For these same reasons -- the Burt Bacharach crypto-cultural gestalt -- I've always loved the album "Hawaii" by the High Llamas. There are these exquisitely placid expanses of symphonic exotica that I like to call "white dub." And it's very beautiful.

The Hot Revivalist - The High Llamas

7. Speaking of TV, I wish Will Oldham and Tortoise would cover this song, because the melody is PERFECTION.

Benson Theme Song

(Note to Frankie Lee: I know you were raised by no-TV-having communists, so FYI, that's TV's "Benson" pictured above, as played by Robert Guillaume.)

8. When I moved to New York in 1995, I lived right down the block from Second Coming Records on Sullivan Street. I hung out there and got totally schooled by the indie-rock-supremacist clerk, who adopted me as his overenthusiastic jug-eared rube hard case. The first album he made me buy was by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, who were the darlings of that particular nano-moment. Later everybody started hating on them and now no one cares or remembers them, so blotted out of history are they by the White Stripes. But this song came up in the iPod the other day and it kind of rocked my world. Totally captured the gritty Superfly romanticism I was experiencing at the time, those first grainy moments imbibing the 70s-nostalgic New York kool of Kim's Underground. Let the revisionism begin ...

Bellbottoms - Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

9. If you haven't heard of Brian Dewan, you really should explore his very strange and wonderful mind. As it happens, he drew the interior artwork of "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel. He's an eccentric artist, instrument-maker and performer who collects the oddest and most arcane found songs anywhere. He digs up homemade sheet music from estate sales and old barns. This one is a cautionary tale about smoking.

Tobacco's but an Indian Weed - Brian Dewan

10. I've noticed that the album reissue industry and Pitchfork have been following closely on our heels lately. First the johnny-come-lately praise for disco-era Bee Gees. And now the love heaped on Michael Jackson's Thriller and Nick Lowe's Jesus of Cool. You read it HERE and HERE and HERE first. Remember? Yes. We're reaching a critical cultural circularity that's about to finally give, past and future collapsing into one another, like ...



... THE OUROSBOROS!

The fog lifts. End scene: VOTE FOR BARRY.

It's Better to Fade Away

     The other day I was sort of listlessly riffling through one segment of the ol' vinyl collection, and I came across the Neil Young album Time Fades Away.  I had forgetten that I owned it, or wasn't sure if I still had it, or something.  I'm glad I still do.  Upon listening to it for the first time in many a moon I realized that it’s one of his best.  No, I’m serious, it really is.  I know, you have your Harvest adherents and your hipper-than-thou Tonight’s the Night proselytizers, and, I dunno, there are a bunch more that could be considered, and perhaps Time Fades Away is really just for Neil freaks,  but I think it’s probably the one that cemented his “ragged but right” image in the rock 'n roll pantheon, and it’s brilliant, that’s all.  One thing I’ve always loved about Neil is the fact that his singing and his guitar playing are both so expressive.  You listen to his cracked, croaky voice and are moved; then he starts playing a solo and you’re moved all over again, but in a slightly different way.  This record came out on the heels of Harvest, and it’s often referred to as one of the “Ditch” albums (the others being On the Beach and Tonight's the Night) , a reference to his quote about how he was in the middle of the road and got bored so he headed for the ditch (where things were more interesting, I guess).  I’m not sure about interesting, but the passing of friend and Crazy Horse guitar player Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry certainly were devastating things to try to deal with.  And then of course there were the usual r 'n r issues of drugs, alcohol, Crosby, Stills & Nash (C & N appear on the album) and the other prickly characters involved in his life and career.  TFA is made up of new songs that were all recorded live when Neil decided to go out on the road with the band he called the Stray Gators.  Apparently it was one chaotic and difficult tour, and you can hear it in the songs.  For a number of reasons (sound quality being one) it’s never been put out on cd.  The record includes a cool poster-sized sheet of  hand-written (presumably by Neil) lyrics and credits.

     I’m including four of the eight songs on the record.  I like Jack Nitzche’s nifty little piano riff on the title track, and the way Neil pronounces “February” in “Journey Thru the Past” (and the fact that it’s “thru” and not “through”).  He really sounds unhinged, in a good way, during “Yonder Stands the Sinner” (another great title, by the way).  The between-song banter (“This'll be kinda experimental”) tickles me. One couplet from “Don’t Be Denied” has been going around in my noggin all day, for some reason: 

But I’m a pauper in a naked disguise

A millionaire through a businessman’s eyes

 It's baffling to me that he chose not to include any of these songs on the three-disc collection Decade.  But I guess that's just Neil being Neil.

     The other two acoustic songs are from Four Way Street, the live album he did with CS&N.  They’re just great versions,  I almost prefer them to the originals.  And again, Neil’s commentary on “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” is funny and endearing.

Time Fades Away

Journey Thru the Past

Yonder Stands the Sinner

Don't Be Denied

Cowgirl in the Sand

Don't Let It Bring You Down