[Ed. note: We got a letter today from our long lost Driftwood brother, Tu Madre!. He and Ms. Madre are finally coming home from mystical travels in the Far West and T-Ma! has promised to write a 10,000-word post on the pleasures of early Toto as soon as he gets back East. A sestina, no less. We missed our brother.]
Gentlemen:
I recently caught up on the Driftwood Singers, after a month or so of internet avoidance. Once again, I'm amazed, delighted, chastened even; humbled by the pitchperfect combination of wit, perspicuity, and fanboy bloat. You've created a framework for understanding. Thanks. (I particularly enjoyed the post-carbreak posts and Lefty's midnight rant/summation with the embedded EVH treatment.) Sorry for writing you in tandem like this, but I'm trying to maximize my internet time. I've attached some pictures from my revels & travels. Speaking of which, it seems they now are ended. Ms. Tu Madre! got a job offer in NYC that just wasn't to be rejected, so she's there now subletting until I join her in Jan. I'm negotiating a part-time schedule with my old firm, which will allow me to work on a poetry MFA at [redacted], starting next fall. I'm beginning to record a smudgemetal record.
See you soon, I hope. Keep on Truckin',
Tu Madre!
PS: Here are a couple of tracks. I would send you some indigenous music of the Pacific Northwest (i.e., heavy)))), but I'm saving that for something else. The Japanese track is "Dead or . . ." from "Don't Forget to Boogie!" by Tetuzi Akiyama. The other is Current 93 doing an old Wesley hymn, vocals Shirley Collins. Really it's just Shirley Collins and some sort of squeezebox.
One of life’s lessons is this: never write off Robert Pollard. The booze-fueled rock-and-roll roundhouse kicker (in khakis!) just bubbles forth with bite-size absurdist jams. Circus Devils was one of his many post-GBV sideprojects. It came out this year on Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records. It’s by no means without its flaws. But Pollard’s music is like that bitumen-filled sand up in Alberta: it takes a lot of work to sort the fuel from the rubble, and the process may in fact be toxic, but you need your nutjob rockers, so what are you gonna do? Pollard sits around doing collages, scribbling down bits of surreal wisdom in his pad. Just the titles of some of these tracks are enough to earn the guy a Driftwood Singers life-time achievement award: "Bogus Reactions," "Hot Lettuce" and "French Horn Litigation" – that’s a man who’s hot on the trail of the steaming, stinky truth. To paraphrase a drunk I met in Charleston, S.C. many years ago, after my first out-of-town rock gig - "he plays what I feel."
Lefty and I cranked a few of these tunes in the Drift-o-tron during our concentrated weekend time-space warp tour over the summer. And if "Love-Hate Relationship With the Human Race" doesn’t say it all, or most of what needs saying (aided, to be sure, by ample cowbell), then I can’t see anyone else conquering that challenge in under two minutes.
Two of my recent themes dovetail rather nicely in this one: The singer as statuary (see "Buckeye Funk") and wacky space songs (see "Contact"). Granted, it's over eight minutes of space funk, so you may not have the stamina. It's got some priceless lines, though, and a nice groove.
What was it that made people want to sing about outer space in the Seventies? Was it Skylab? Star Wars? Mork & Mindy? Who knows? David Bowie was the artist most likely to sing about/look like/ be an alien back then, but to me it's more interesting that acts like the Carpenters and Marvin Gaye tackled the subject. This album was supposed to be a kiss-off/alimony payment to Marvin's ex-wife (Berry Gordy's daughter), but I doubt she reaped much from it other than confusion.
Lefty’s rumination about the temporal retardation of the record geek got me thinking. As someone who lives in a radio market where the recent arrival of a "‘90s alternative"-style station got a lot of people, including me, excited, let me say that the past is (almost) always getting better. How else to explain the way that songs by bands like Soundgarden, Cracker, and even Stone Temple Pilots start to somehow sound not as terrible as they once did? It must have something to do with our limited ability to accurately remember pain. The same reason we end up looking back fondly on the miserable camping trip where your feet blistered, you ate half-cooked lentils, you slept in a puddle and didn’t think to include coffee among all the crap you lugged into the wilderness. The fading synapse recall. The reason women who’ve endured the pain of childbirth are willing to go through it again. We forget. Or maybe it’s a can’t-step-into-the-same-river-twice scenario, more Heracletian business.
Our minds invert the values of past, present and future. It’s some kind of rods-and-cones-type adjustment. Turning everything upside down and inside out. Or maybe it’s temporal stereoscopy, with three-point perspective, allowing us to get a sense of what’s happening now only by blurring our vision of the future. We’re told that the present is all we have. All there is is now. And then there’s the whole "the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past" concept. Our minds just ooze and push and catapult themselves backwards and forwards. With the exception of futurists like Sun Ra, Kraftwerk, Moondog, Esquivel, there are few compelling visions of the future. And even those tend to be based in some transfigured and idealized version of the past anyway. Space Age fantasies were often refitted retro fashion with tinfoil hats and tights. Vacuum tubes and fish tank helmets. In the mid-60s, Sun Ra’s interstellar jazz was, in part, the last vestige of 30s and 40s big band music given a sci-fi upgrade. Listen to the forward-thinking music of the Ramones, X, T. Rex and Roxy Music and they were all attitudinal retreads of 50s doo-wop, early rock and roll and Brill Building pop, add some ripped jeans here and face paint there.
In short, I never met a Jeremiad I didn’t like. With the entirety of the past and the infinite possibility of the future to compete against, the present never fares too good by comparison.
When the subject is recorded music, it’s all, by its nature, past, a relic. It’s surprising that all the critical theorist-type characters – the Susan Sontags and Roland Barthes - came up with elaborate concepts about why photographic images have a haunting effect on us – because they’re "traces" of life that basically provide a spark, forcing us to recognize our mortality. Every photograph is a reminder that we don’t last. But doesn’t recorded music do the same thing?
This isn’t the bestest Beefheart, and it’s not even the most mind-bending tune off of Ice Cream For Crow, but it says it all, or at least it did.
And not too badly, either. This is from an old compilation featuring people like Clint Eastwood, Jimmy Dean and Merv Griffin (!) singing the hit songs of the era. Apparently, back when Clint was on tv he was marketed as a singer as well, and he recorded tunes such as the Sons of the Pioneers' "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and other cowboy classics. I actually think he does a pretty good job on this one. It gets elevated to something more than just a curiosity. You can imagine David Lynch using it in one of his creepy movies. It's evocative...of what, I'm not sure. (Oh, right--some mountains somewhere).
I’ve got a thing for the English Renaissance. I’m not exactly sure what my infatuation is all about. William Byrd. Orlando Gibbons. Shakespeare. Maybe slide in a little Samuel Pepys. The Fire of London. I guess if you spend any time as an English major in college, you pretty much have to come down in favor or stand in opposition, which would obviously be silly. Somewhere along the line I got hot for the Tallis Scholars, a sublime singing group. And I scored this Glenn Gould disc of pavans and galliards by Byrd and Gibbons. I like the way the music hints at Bach but also retains some weird medieval quality. A couple years back I ordered a copy of The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, based on a recommendation from Christopher O’Riley, the guy who hosts that show on NPR and has released records of "classical" piano versions of songs by Radiohead and Nick Drake. I can hardly play any of the stuff, with all the crazy ornaments and weird notation. But even stumbling through it is lovely. It definitely gives you the feeling of being an extra in Barry Lyndon. Maybe get a game of whist going. Powder the wig. Later, my friend Martin tipped me off to the sound-painting brilliance of Byrd’s "The Bells," which is included in the Fitzwilliam book. One of my first finds and obsessions was this disc of Elizabethan and Jacobian Ayers, Madrigals and Dances by New York Pro Musica. It included some Street Cries of London by Gibbons, which pretty much flash-fried my brain – choral renditions of vendors and hawkers selling their wares on the street, vegetables, brushes, pots and pans, oysters. The record also had this tune, "Tobacco," by Tobias Hume. It’s basically about how awesome tobacco is. But it contains the clencher of a line, "Love maketh lean the fat man’s tumor, so doth tobacco." As far is reasoning goes, I thought this was unimpeachable. I grew so attached to the line that I made a very limited edition batch of screen-print T-shirts emblazoned with those words for the earth-shattering, and steady-smoking, band Harvey Milk. I just read in yesterday’s NYT about the viola da gamba player Jordi Savall who played in the city the other night, rocking some pieces by Hume, which reminded me of this song.
Last night I wondered: What is the purpose of music nerds? Why do people cling to archival collections of LPs and constantly fuss over the canonization of past episodes of rock and country and jazz and pop? Why have indie bands become like the rest of the yuppie industrial-complex that includes wine and organic food, fragmenting into boutique and rarefied blends refined within an inch of their lives?
After some meditation, I struck on the idea that it must be a collective attempt to slow down, absorb and hold on to our ephemeral pop culture before it evaporates, to solidify it and give it meaning. I think of Harry Smith, the historical revisionary who reminded us that we were old and weird by saving all those 78s from the wax factory. Indeed, the entire Internet often seems to me a swarm of termites chewing over the last 50 years of recorded history, digesting it over and over again. The speed of change being what it is, it's not a difficult impulse to understand. That's the sympathetic view of the Gen-X and Gen-Y will to archive and nerdify anything ever recorded. We're a giant generation of amateur historians recreating the past in a giant indie Renaissance Fair of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Alternately, music nerd-dom can be seen as a human weakness, a wallowing decadence resisting forward motion, even social change. In that view, Kelefa Sanneh is better than you or me because he's a declared post-rockist who listens only to Puerto Rican Reggeton and obscure Southern hip-hop all day. Good for him. But I'm given to sympathy for the music nerd, especially considering I'm guilty as charged on all counts.
Where does the impulse come from? Why has an entire tier of musicological elite sprung up at this hour in our history? Last night I read in The New York Review of Books an essay about economic history and realized how utterly unique our era really is. Consider: The material standard of living of the average English person -- their food, clothing and shelter -- was completely static until 1800. People didn't collect shit, they just tried to find something to eat and if a good song came along, they did a jig and that was it. A flat line ran across the centuries, starting shortly after Jesus died, then suddenly rocketed up from the early 1800s to 2007, dwarfing the old flat line like a skyscraper. It was called industrialism. Although there had been ups and downs before, there was no long-term improvement for anyone until very, very recently. "Nobody would have been talking about 'growth,'" the writer says of past English peoples.
And yet that's all we've talked about our entire lives, isn't it? That's America. That's capitalism and globalism and military power and patriarchal dominance and all that shit your read about in The Nation.
So my supertheory is this: The so-called "monoculture" of mainstream America that lasted from the advent of TV in the 1950s to about the year 2000 was an historic anomaly, a unique moment in world history when approximately 200 million Americans watched the same three TV channels, the same 10 Hollywood movies and listened to same dozen or more radio hits every year. It was 50 years of post-World War II American growth, broadcast through the looking glass of NBC, ABC, CBS, Atlantic Records, Capital Records, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox, MGM and United Artists. Out of that were created all the pop icons and mythologies that form the edifice of our culture, from James Dean to J.F.K. to Elvis to Madonna to Alf to Nirvana. In 1977, a housewife in Peoria and a teenager in Southern California were both very likely to have watched Eight Is Enough or heard Donny & Marie on the radio. They had that much in common, they could share a 10 minute conversation about Dick Van Patten. It was what passed for social cohesion, a sense of collective reflection and identity. Think of All in the Family and the social service it performed for viewers, bringing left and right viewpoints into the same screen. The country was jarred by cultural change and economic growth in the 60s and 70s. So it granted more power to Hollywood and the media to tell the story back to it in films and TV programs and pop songs. Everybody listened.
Things slowly fragmented, of course, first with cable TV, then with right-wing talk radio and finally with the neutron bomb of the Internet. After 9/11, our insulating cover was finally blown off for good and our myths were exposed to the elements, left twisting in the wind. We now cling to the 20th Century's faded mainstream iconography like a blanket, fingering the old coins of the realm nervously. We listen to the old songs over and over again, watch the old TV shows, pour through the driftwood, reinterpret it, reinvent it, subvert it, mythologize it, teach it to our children. The Sopranos is post-9/11 The Godfather; Bionic Woman on NBC is...The Bionic Woman on NBC. As the country cracks at the seams, our housewife in Peoria is watching the shopping channel, our SoCal teen is watching Spike TV. They're bowling alone and they don't listen. Why should they?
As the philosopher Bob Pollard once sang, As we go up, we go down and seek the truth, yeah. Perhaps we peaked and are now calcifying, going Baroque, our Dorian columns turning Corinthian. It's exhausting being a "growth" nation. And maybe what we're seeing today is only the cracked mosaic that we've always been, brought finally to the surface, staring us in the face from every direction, overwhelming us, forcing us into our nerdy silos for any hope of comfort. Perhaps the average music nerd, having soaked in the warm bath of the 20th Century's musical narrative, motivated by idealism and nostalgia and good taste, is simply clinging to the grand illusion that that era created: that America is teleological, headed toward the greatest pop song of all time. But no savior is coming. This is it. You can't build a paradise out of a pyramid of great LPs, a shelter of 20th Century modernism to protect you from 21st Century postmodernism. You can only remix, destroy the old icons or subvert them, turn them into art, into something new. Consider this brilliant piece of sound editing that reimagineers Eddie Van Halen as an idiot savant:
Or you can forget the remix and just live in the past, which is also fun. In the 1960s, England, having worn itself out with Empire, was already doing what we're doing today in our own culture: recycling, clinging to the past, calcifying, starting its transformation into a giant Epcot Center version of itself. And yet, I find myself listening to it and saying: That sounds great. I like that. Turn it up. Play it again. To wit: Gilbert O'Sullivan, 1970.
As a synthesis of these opposing ideas, I offer my own humble remix, a Song of Myself, which is really an all-thumbs-and-two-left-feet editing job to produce a ham-fisted mashup. In it, you'll hear Jamie Lidel (beats), Harry Nilsson (guitar), Joni Mitchel (vocals), Willie Nelson (guitar solo), the Louvin Brothers (vocals), Animal Collective (backing vocals), Rolling Stones ("What say? Sha-noo-bay"), Kaoru Abe (sax solo), Jane's Addiction (bass), Thelonious Monk (piano), Hall & Oats (beats), and the Webb Brothers (vocals).
I thought someone should pay tribute to good ol' Porter Wagoner, who passed away at the age of eighty earlier this week.
I happened to see him a couple of times in person (on the Grand Ole Opry, no less), and even though he had probably sung the songs he sang a million times before, there wasn't anything perfunctory about his performance. You couldn't help but feel as though you were watching a legendary figure do his thing. And the suits he wore--you can't write about him and not mention the Nudie suits. It's the closest those guys ever get to drag, I guess. His album covers were awesome, too. I have a copy of The Bottom of the Bottle, which pictures a nice clean & sober Porter holding a liquor bottle, inside of which is standing the drunken bum version of Porter. (The album features the songs "Wine" and "Wino"--he was probably the first country star to do concept albums). There's another one called You Got-ta Have a License, which shows him dressed as a game warden in a rowboat. (I guess the theme of that one is "Golly, you hafta have a license to do anything nowadays!") There was a lot to admire in the guy, beyond the fact that he helped launch Dolly Parton's career.
"The Cold Hard Facts of Life" is a classic. It was written by Bill Anderson, and it's probably my favorite Porter tune. It's one of the all-time great cheatin' songs. So go ahead--drink a fifth of courage, and walk in.
It’s typical of me and my delusional/pathological look-on-the-bright-side-ism, my self-loathing-fueled blame-the-victim philosophy. Now I’m thanking the guy who smashed my car window for all he’s shown me. After having my car broken into and my CD player (among other things) swiped last week, I’ve been listening to a lot of radio (or, as often, turning off the stereo and driving in silence). Well, this morning I decided to rummage through the trunk and dig out some old cassettes (for real). As a result, I found some dusty mix tapes, and I found myself listening to tunes I hadn’t heard in years, thinking "I’m glad all my shit got stolen." There’s a handful of old gems that I’ll have to foist on you all. I’ll start with this one. I’ve already multi-dipped on the Kinks here, but I can’t get enough of the strange brother-on-brother antagonism/inspiration. "Strangers" is one by Dave Davies. He probably got all the girls, but he certainly wasn’t the better songwriter. I love his vaguely congested singing voice. I’ve even read his autobiography, Kink, which generally just makes you feel like if you were Ray you’d find Dave a little annoying, too. There’re some wonderfully inarticulate bits about spirituality and UFOs. Rock and roll. This song never really goes anywhere, but where it stays is a nice enough place, and I love the impressively simple-minded drumming.
It’s hard to believe – shocking really – that here we are, having been drifting out in the ether, spinning in a foamy digital eddy all our own, lulled by the circularity of it all, for near two years now (check the archives, mate!), and, according to my records, we’ve not once thrown out the questionable sonic lifeline that is the Shaggs. I mean we’ve double- and triple-dipped on Bob Welch, Melanie, the Bee Gees and more, but not even a single transmission on the Wiggin sisters. That’s whack. So, let’s set some shit aright. Very aright. Let’s take out -- oh, I don’t know – say, three birds with one stone. Call the game warden. We’re poaching, big time. With "It’s Halloween," a seriously magical piece of deep-outside outsider art, we’re bowing in humble awe to the unfathomable familial weirdness of the Shaggs. We’re also checking the little box that says "holiday theme post" off our list for the week. And let’s allow this to be the first of many (like three, maybe) festive posts celebrating the dubious milestone of two-years of Driftwood-ism.
Let’s start with just the barest facts. The potential transgressions. This clocks in at 6 minutes. It’s a cover of a Dylan tune. There’s, um, ample semi-dramatic overblown flute, done in a sort of wannabe Rahsaan Roland Kirk style. And, most egregious of all, the conga player throws in an awful lot of these little lick-your-index-finger-and-slide-it-across-the-drumhead-to-produce-a-moaning-whale-song-sound things. You’d think that would add up to a perfect storm of suckiliciousness, but no. Somehow the "flavor profile" goes through some kind of alternate-universe hydrogen-bonding ionizing valence switch – everything that should create lameness actually adds awesomeness. Some singers know how to "ooh" or interject "baby!" or grunt to fill out a line, or add an accent. Melanie is a master of the "da da-da," flicked off as an afterthought, adding a strange French cabaret flourish to her bohemian hippie bleating. What Bonnie Prince Billie and Joanna Newsom know, you, too, should try to take into your heart. Melanie communes with the spirits. The eagle and the albatross are her friends.
To all the dear folks who ponied up hard-earned cash for the new Radiohead album, don't go taking this as a knock. On the contrary! But here's the deal: Thom Yorke sounds exactly like Robin Thicke, the LA-based, Miami-inspired white R&B crooner whose real-life father is sitcom dad Alan Thicke. True! That combo of tasty beats and sensitive white-man falsetto? That's Thicke working his groovy magic -- or is it Yorke?
Thicke: "My greatest desire with this album was to write songs that were completely honest and sing them with the emotion I was feeling when I wrote them, so that whoever listens to my music is brought as close to my experiences and life."
Yorke: "Noam Chomsky is a hero of mine, just because I can’t believe that anyone has a brain that size and can lift his head up."
It just goes to show. Remember how Arcade Fire ripped John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band for their hit single "Keep the Car Running"? These things happen. Don't take it so hard.
So, some ass-bag broke into my car last night. They were kind enough to just break one of those little triangular windows, but then they went ahead and took my nice leather bag, which had, among other things, my cell phone, the 6-CD Complete Miles Davis On The Corner set, the excellent new Vashti Bunyon collection of early demos and singles, the Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival DVD, the new Robert Plant and Allison Krauss disc, something new from the Numero Group that I didn’t even get to crack into, a great disc of West African percussion, my tape recorder, note books, lots of odd scraps, and an excellent collection of wigged-out dub-soul doo-wop from Nathaniel Mayer called (I Want) Love and Affection (Not the House of Corrections). I’d been stewing on it for a while, meditating on the way that in a recording, over-focusing on certain details (the hand percussion in this case) can cause a peculiar kind of distortion, sort of the sonic equivalent of a fish-eye-lens effect. There’s a point of fixation, around which everything else becomes misshapen or out-of-proportion. It was also clear, after having recently watched a documentary on Stax Records highlighting the ways that Memphis soul was much more raw than Motown, their big competition. Mayer, too, was from Detroit, and while you wouldn’t mistake this for southern soul, his music had a strange raw, almost outsider art, quality to it. The disc is well worth tracking down if see it. And if you find some questionable character trying to sell you a used copy in or around Hartford, CT, let me know. They probably have lots of my other shit, too. (The mo-fos took my book-on-tape of Robinson Crusoe and my portable CD player, which had the righteous mix that Lefty had made for me for our aural travels in the Drift-o-tron this summer, too.) Lucky for me, I didn’t have much faith or hope in humanity left, so I don’t feel too terribly let down. I just spent like 20 minutes on my knees, looking for a (should I say it?) Tower of Power record that I was gonna inflict on you all. Songs about crime and depleted oil reserves, from a record called Urban Renewal, sort of tying into Frankie Lee’s recent theme. But no luck. Couldn’t find it. There must be some sort of Gemini smackdown taking place, astrologically, these days, some moon in some planet’s house where it don’t belong. As a fitting reflection of my dual nature, I’m posting some more John Phillips, someone about whom I have very conflicted feelings. These are from the completely mixed-bag collection of his solo outtakes and demos called Jack of Diamonds. Phillips makes me think of a sort of sexual predator version of Jim Croce - creepy right? - and there’s definitely objectionable strains of Don McLean in there, too. The list goes on – bad sax, bad scatting, bad congas, bad sentiments. But sometimes the taste transgressions get you somewhere.
I know, I know--this is a questionable conceit. It all started when I discovered that there was once a band called Compost. They existed for a few seconds in the early '70s, and there's really no reason to learn anything about them or listen to their music. But you could if you really wanted to, I suppose. (The record sleeve says they have an "organic" sound, dig?) I like the song because A, it's called "Country Song" (and it sure ain't country!), and 2, it sorta reminds me of Sesame Street--you can imagine one of those short films of kids running around in a field and then watching a farmer milk a cow or something, with the song playing in the background.
I can't remember ever listening to Garbage until recently, when my slightly better half revealed that she "loved" them. "What th'...?" I asked myself silently. "Oh really? I'll have to give 'em a listen," I said out loud.
After doing so, I came to the conclusion that they had one pretty good song. You can really hear a Chrissie Hynde influence in Shirley Manson's vocal stylings, and you'll notice that she name-checks "Talk of the Town" towards the end, in case you didn't pick up on the obvious. Nothing to write home about, but it's still an enjoyable few minutes of pop-rock. (Now that I think about it, I probably never listened to them because I kept confusing Marilyn Manson with Shirley Manson. Hey, it was the '90s, man).
Of course, I had to include the Trashmen. (Yeah, there's Edgar Winter's White Trash and Trashcan Sinatras and others I'm sure, but you gotta draw the line somewhere). Before Prince, before the Replacements (but after the Andrews Sisters), this is what Minneapolis gave the world, musically speaking. For some reason, it never seemed to bother anyone that this "surf" band's turf was about a thousand miles from the nearest ocean (or that the Rivingtons were eventually credited with composing their biggest hit). It's really more amusing than anything else, I guess. Let's face it, though, "Surfin' Bird" is great, raw fun. The vocal break is just brilliant--profound gibberish. If I was forced to make a top ten list of the greatest rock 'n roll songs of all time, it would probably be number 7.
I've been feeling guilty about something I wrote a while back about Bruce Springsteen. It's not that what I wrote was untrue exactly, but it just wasn't complete. It was based on faulty intelligence. I gave a light backhand to We Shall Overcome, the Seeger covers album. But then I saw the Seeger Sessions tour that same summer and was (ahem) weeping by the end of it. Seriously--devastated. It was essentially an old-school religious revival and anti-war rally rolled up into a big sweaty fuck you to modern times. To wit: Jacob's Latter (Live in Dublin) - Bruce S.
So I saw him at Madison Square Garden last night and it was once again transcendent, the best possible kind of rock'n roll spectacle there is. The New York Times agrees. When you find yourself left in mystified fervor every single time -- that was No. 7 for me -- you either conclude you've got a peculiar need, a special gene, a weakness, or there's something objectively magical happening. I hereby assert the latter, with a sprinkle of the former. For me, he single-handedly redeems the idea of being an American nowadays. Again, I was ready to dismiss the new hit single, "Radio Nowhere," until I heard it live and heard the question in the chorus, posed in shout-along anthem, a plea to our ravaged times, 60,000 fists in the air: "Is there anybody alive out there?" You can imagine the response.
One of Bruce's security detail saw my 70-year-old mother-in-law and her cane-toting 80-year-old boyfriend in the back stands (they're ambitious for their age) and gave them both front row seats. My mother-in-law said "she could have reached out and touched him." At the end, Bruce's people had a wheelchair brought out for her tuckered-out boyfriend and escorted them both out of a private exit to avoid the crowds. They didn't know any of the songs, but they couldn't stop talking about the show this morning. She had that in common with a lot of people, I imagine. Like the dude standing near the mic at Bruce's recent jam with Arcade Fire.
You know the guy's onto something when not even our tawdry, shallow, right-wing, supremely lame and bottom-feeding culture can destroy his essential integrity, as much as it tries. Here's what Bruce said on 60 Minutes last week when CBS's in-house Bush family suck-up Scott Pelley questioned his patriotism: "There's a part of the singer going way back in American history that is, of course, the canary in the coal mine. When it gets dark, you're supposed to be singing. It's dark right now. The American idea is a beautiful idea. It needs to be preserved, served, protected and sung out. Sung out."
He closed with an extended version of this song last night, inspiring jigs in the aisles:
Trying to explain to someone why Ween is great is probably an exercise in futility. It's like trying to tell why a joke works or analyzing why a Zen kōan makes perfect sense. They're geniuses at making songs that give you the precise feeling of hearing a song stoned, that special frisson of laughter and epiphany. Their latest record, La Cucaracha, is a catalog of brilliant cosmic weirdness, from Tijuana Brass trumpet music to mystical psych-rock to a reggae dub song about a "Black Man" and a "Chinaman" fighting over whether some fish is fresh or frozen ("The Fruit Man"). As usual, they're not just politically incorrect, they're politically incoherent, like life itself. They sort of make irrelevant Sacha Frere-Jones' fretful article on why white rock groups don't borrow from black music anymore. They exploit everybody and anybody, shamelessly and without heed. The only way to get to the marrow of great music, they seem to have realized, is to explicitly do it in character and then take it way too far.
Like I said, futile.
Anyway, I just had to shake my head listening to "Learnin to Love," a Dada take on Roger Miller that romps along until it descends into an oddly inevitable Broadway/prog breakdown with brittle White Man harmonies. The lyrics are cutup racetrack slang like something from Basement Tapes-era Bob Dylan. It's amazing, funny and perfect.
This is from a record called Fresh Flavor, on which Jane croons the hits of the day ("Sounds of Silence", "Monday, Monday" &c.). It's so much better than the original, it's not even funny.
Ok, so I don't want to do anything that would deter you from going out and getting the thing yourself, so I'll just drop a little "amuse" for the ear. This is Fred Neil's "Little Bit of Rain." I've been obsessed with Neil ever since I heard his song about dolphins on The Sopranos (at the close of the episode with Christopher nodding out during the church festival). I actually remember reading his obit in the NYT back in 2000 or so. He was the writer of "Everybody's Talkin," made famous by Harry Nilsson on the soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy. It's a ubiquitous song, one of those actually great songs -- like "Fly Like an Eagle" or "Brown-Eyed Girl" - that you can in fact start to hate after having heard it so many times for so long. Anyway, Neil hated us (humanity) back, evidently, but he loved dolphins. Neil has one of those crazy expressive baritones, he's like a super-charged Lee Hazlewood.
Listen, I know that it’s not about some much-maligned nugget of questionable music or an overlooked pop oddity normally found on a moldy piece of vinyl, so, technically, it’s not really a fair and appropriate topic for discussion in this forum, but, at the same time, I also know that, most likely, our dozen or so regular readers, and those who drift here, are - I can just tell - fans of fizzy water, so it’s with that in mind that I recommend reading this great article about some bad-ass characters who are pioneering in the world of DIY seltzer production. You heard right. Make your own fizz. Naturally, if I had my whole situation in proper order I’d be posting "Tiny Bubbles" or some song about seltzer or just general effervescence, or maybe I’d just put up a suitably bubbly Cole Porter tune, but I’m all doped up on cold medicine, so I’m going without. Maybe Lefty can rock some Don Ho for us.
It’s pretty much accepted that there’s some sort of magical vocal alchemy, some deep genetic harmonizing, some filial vocal cord synergy, that occurs when brothers sing together. The Stanley Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, the Delmores, the Louvins, the Kinks, the Proclaimers, the Osmonds, ... Nelson. And I think we can all agree that sisters pack a comparable mojo – the Boswells, the Andrews, Tegan and Sara. But the sibling dynamic proves more mysterious when it’s brothers and sisters. Who knows what kind of chromosomal, yin/yang, Freudian business is at work. Dark struggles work their way out in the music. This came to mind when listening to the newest from the Fiery Furnaces, which is, I guess, genius, but in a thorny, get-out-your-abacus kind of way, that isn’t really, you know, actually enjoyable. And is there anything scarier than the music of brothers-sister group the Free Design? When the over-achieving kids from the choral society and the Montessori school decide that the square world of mom and dad and work and society and conformity is all a big soul-sucking plastic sham, that’s what you get, in fine multi-part harmonies and whipped-cream production, complete with thematic burlap wallhangings decorated with felt cut-out letters spelling out some deep message about togetherness. Or, all you have to do is listen to the Carpenters, like Frankie Lee says. Funny that he posted their extra-terrestrial jamboree, because I’d brought this one back from my most recent trip to the homestead, found among a stack of long neglected CDs in the basement. This is one of those songs that you don’t really want to give away its title, because some of the magic, that sure-fire Carpenters magic, is in realizing what famous song that they’re actually singing, because you surely won’t guess by the quasi-baroque piano intro. So let’s just call it "Track 7."
So much has been written, said, sung, thought, and acted out using Barbie dolls about Karen Carpenter that I'm hesitant to add anything to the blather. I just have to say that she'll always be cool for three reasons: 1) She played the drums. 2) That voice. 3) Actually, I can't think of a third reason, so the first two will have to suffice.
It's a little depressing to get into what eventually happened to Karen, so I'll just relate the fascinating story of how I came to recognize the greatness of the Carpenters (even though I still think Richard may be kin to the Devil). Back in the mid-'90s, someone had the idea to put together a Carpenters tribute album...done by the "alternative" stars of the moment! Whatta concept! There were a few good moments on it--I remember liking the Shonen Knife cover of "Top of the World" and Sonic Youth's take on "Superstar" (though I've never really been a fan o' them). I think Mr. Poncho sent me a mixed tape with a Carpenters song on it at around the same time, so those two things taken together made me more hesitant to dismiss them out of hand, which I had done without really ever listening to them very much. Of course, some of their songs are sickening--there's no other word for it. But even those are fascinating in their own way.
The song that made me want to write this post is "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft". Now, I don't know how deeply Richard and Karen were into the idea of there being aliens tootling around in the heavens, and I really don't care that much. Judging by this song they must've had some sort of fascination with it. It was written by an obscure Canadian band called Klaatu, which had people thinking they were the Beatles reunited when they released their first album with minimal info on it in 1976. (The name Klaatu comes from the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, and oddly enough the character takes on the alias Carpenter at one point). From the disturbingly corny radio dj intro to 160-musician-strong orchestration to the fuzztone guitar to the long fade, it's seven appallingly great minutes of pop music. You should probably only listen to it once a year--on World Contact Day, of course.
As we approach the second anniversary of The Driftwood Singers Present (!), I've started to suspect that this site will ultimately evolve to become a decades-long referendum on the power, glory and lyrical vision of Gordon Lightfoot. At the end of the day, a whole helluva lot may in fact come down to Gordon.
Why is that?
It's hard to articulate exactly, which is why it could take decades. He's the one folk/rock 60s/70s Hippie Enlightenment Era figure the modern hipster class have been unwilling to unearth and grapple with, the one figure none have attempted to reference for some boutique indie amalgam. That's because The Foot can't be co-opted. A folk purist, purely Canadian, vaguely Native American, aloof and prideful yet almost haughty in his humility, vocally monolithic and monotonous at the same time, there's something about Gordon that simply can't be replicated. He's sui generis. Also, his cyclical folk style makes him so lyrically verbose, he's almost a pure creation of vinyl LP's, a man whose image- and metaphor-crammed songs require a 12" inner sleeve for printed lyrics and at least an hour of free listening time (not to mention a lifetime to comprehend), a man who doesn't really emerge properly in the small-world CD-liner-note universe we've come to know, let alone in the digital age. He's Vinyl-American.
This all gelled for me while sitting down and listening to Summertime Dream, his 1976 album on Warner Bros. On the surface, this was very radio-friendly, a big, sleek production with Moog synthesizers and crystaline steel guitars, every knob fussed over by Lenny Waronker. It sounds exquisite. But here's the deal: it's one of the best folk-rock albums ever made. First off, I shouldn't have to sell you on "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Mr. Poncho will gladly set you straight in some future series of posts, as I believe he's got a fan fiction novella based on it sitting in a drawer somewhere. But there's also "I'll Do It Again," a proto-rap-rock number that predates the Aerosmith/Run-DMC collision by more than a decade.
What finally knocked me out is the last song on the record: "Too Many Clues in This Room." The lyrics are almost bizarrely prophetic, cryptic and mystical, so much so that I suspect William Butler Yeats, John Ashbery, Dennis Kucinich, Jesus and every participant of the Burning Man festival from 1997 to present would agree that something truly visionary is happening in this song. That's why I've included the lyrics exactly as they appear in the liner notes of the original vinyl LP, from which this mp3 is recorded. Gordon Lightfoot, we hardly know ye. "Too Many Clues In This Room" by Gordon Lightfoot
The space shuttle ends where the subway begins there's a tear on the face of the moon from dusk until dawn they have searched all day long but there's too many clues in this room At best it is said we've bin [sic] locked deep inside of an old seaman's chest full of charts where maps are contained and what's left of his brains when his crew threw his balls to the sharks
And around the looking glass dancing to a tune Sweeping out the house with a fine tooth comb which history's shown leads to ruin
In a word it is said that at times we must fall but the worst of it all was the lies We died for the cause just like regular outlaws in the dust of an old lawman's eyes In times best forgot there was peace, there was not in her pains mother earth came to bloom Her children were born in the eye of the storm and there's too many clues in this room
The pow'er that is stored in this no-man's land of chance is there Someone who knows what they're doin'? The old soldiers say in their own crusty way We've got too many troops in this room All around the looking glass dancing to a tune Sweeping out the house with a fine tooth comb which history's shown leads to ruin
The space shuttle ends where the subway begins praise the Lord there's a train leavin' soon From dusk until dawn they have searched all day long but there's too many clues in this room
Is there an instrument less "rockin’" than the harpsichord? Maybe the flute or the accordion. That’s partly why I love the Left Banke. They were not only unafraid to dabble with a little harpsichord here and there -- like lots of late ‘60s acts -- but these guys pretty much embraced the instrument, clearly made for powered inbred funny-pants-wearing monarchs, as the essence of their sound. There’s a reason they got labeled "baroque and roll" (big points to whoever coined that one). I love the way they would do this thing of adding absurd chamber orchestra bridges, and then, rather than working their way back to the verse, they’d simply pause, maybe throw in a drum break and then start back over. The Left Banke also had a high degree of intra-band hatred going on, almost Dinosaur Jr. levels, the main songwriter had a huge crush on one of the other guy’s girlfriend, and penned some of their best songs ("Just Walk Away Renee") were basically veiled hints that she should switch boyfriends. "Barterers and Their Wives" is totally renaissance faire material. I mean, you can’t really write a song that uses the word "barterers" without having it conjure the plague. As an added bonus, here’s "Session Man" from the Kinks’ Face to Face. You’ll be interested to know that it’s an ode to pianist Nicky Hopkins, he of those chords on "Sympathy for the Devil" as well as countless other classic Stones tunes, and the session man on this track. I worship the line: "He’s a session man, a chord progress-ian."
I remember seeing this record somewhere, picking it up, looking at the song titles and shaking my head in disbelief (and then buying it soon after). Frank did a version of Something, the great George Harrison song? But then I remembered hearing that it was his favorite Beatles song, so okay, fine. But why, oh why did he feel compelled to do a version of Bein' Green? (Why wonder?) Now don't get me wrong--I am a fan, I really am. But this song just shows once again how horrible the great ones can be. (There's a Bob Dylan outtake my brother-in-law once played for me called "Straight A's in Love" or something. Just awful). And this is on a greatest hits compilation, no less. I'm a Muppet fan as well, but I never really liked Kermit very much. I'm more of a Gonzo kinda guy.
I wanted to include Aretha Franklin's version of My Way because I never knew there was one until recently, and because once you hear it you'll forget all about Frank's version (and Bein' Green too, I hope). It's as though she's saying sorry Frank but this is definitive, no hard feelings. (Of course she would probably never say that). There's a moment towards the end where she sings "the one" and draws it out to such an ecstatic length--three or four syllables--and the note goes sharp with an intensity that gives me chills. (If you listen closely you can also hear some spontaneous hand-clapping, which just adds to the overall transcendence of the moment). It reminds me of Merry Clayton's singing on Gimme Shelter, when her voice breaks on the word "murder".
For a long while I shied away from the music of Middle Earth. Trolls and spells, hairy feet and scepters with purple crystals on top, all that twenty-sided-die one-legged-flute-solo shit, typically sung with tea-stained breath through crumbling teeth.
*Shiver*
Well, Lindesfarne cracked open the gates of Mordor for me a bit and now I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at Donovan's 1970 album Open Road, the birth of the so-called Celtic rock genre. Donovan's backed by a band called Open Road and let me here list the band members in honor of how much these guys fucking rock: John Carr on drums, Mike Thomson on bass and lead guitar, Mike O'Neill on piano. Donovan's wispy way with a folk hook is leavened by a massive folk-prog drum and bass attack that gives Don instant heft -- the Sword of the Stoned. Heh-vee, my frond.
This album didn't go over in its time and the group disbanded. Too bad. As Wikipedia describes it, "Many of the songs on Open Road ponder the negative side of industrialization and the lost peacefulness of a previous time." That's practically a mission statement here at The Driftwood Singers. It's Donovan taking a journey into the black heart of the 20th Century via Hobbitan, a preface to everything from Ronnie James Dio to Genesis to Joanna Newsom and Mastodon. Lyrics, please:
i am the juggler of fortune and fame let me not hear facts figures and logic fain would i hear lore legend and magic feathers of raven slithers of coal armour of silver in the mackrel shoal sun in the west tis ruby blood red travelers a-weary do make their bed
("Roots of Oak")
I'm so enthusiastic about this I'm posting half the album, combining the last three songs together, a thrilling trilogy that starts with the gorgeous proto-indie rock "Season of Farewell."
Talk about getting blindsided by history. Is this really what 1986 sounded like? I think back on that year as being Life’s Rich Pageant and True Stories. I think of Husker Du and U2 – big sounds. Even for Neil Young completists, Landing On Water is often overlooked. It was his next-to-last record on Geffen, the one between the country-ish Old Ways and the wrong-headed Life. Listening to it now, it seems to have split the difference between the rock of Reactor and the retardo-futuristic kraut-disco robotics of Trans. But on Landing On Water the drums are turbo charged, man-made, with Steve Jordan bashing away on trashy toms. (It’s only Neil, Jordan and co-producer Danny Kortchmar, on guitars and synths). I’ve sometimes found Jordan’s playing, admirably stripped down as it is, to still be over-energetic. It’s that same hopped-up vibe that makes this interesting. It was in 1986, in fact, that I spent a weekend at a Zen monastery in Japan, for a school project (I was in high school there at the time.) I remember thinking that maybe, instead of actually writing a paper on Zen and my experience, I might simply turn in a blank page to demonstrate how much I’d learned. It was a bad idea and I’m glad I didn’t do it. I almost succumbed to the same specious logic here, figuring that I needn’t say anything on a post of Neil’s "I Got a Problem." It speaks for itself. It’s music that has a problem. Every time I hear this song, I think of "A Love Supreme," a bonehead version as rendered by Bob the Builder. I interviewed the frontman of French Kicks earlier this year. We started talking about what he’d been listening to, and he said that he’d been particularly into Landing On Water and that he found the production and overall aesthetic to be similar to the French Kicks approach. A lot of people got problems.
You realize that we live in a completely Puritanical, sexually paranoid, post-AIDS-crisis world when you consider that sensitive songwriters once approached the idea of what was basically anonymous sex as a potentially sweet and romantic subject. Strangers in the night. Etc. Take "The French Girl," a song penned by Ian Tyson, of Ian and Sylvia, and issued as a previously unreleased bonus track on the Sundazed edition of Gene Clark’s 1967 solo debut, which he made just after he left the Byrds. Django West awakened me to the glories of Gene Clark in a post a while back about the excellent song "So You Say You Lost Your Baby". Not only is this anonymous sex, but the exchange seems possibly to have been accomplished without actual "verbal" communication. ("She laughed each time I asked her name/... Her friends down at the French café has no English words for me.") Words fail you in the end. I learned, from Googling the lyrics to this song, that Dylan and the Dead evidently rehearsed this tune, but never actually performed it live. I wonder if it might have been the rehearsal that Dylan alludes to in Chronicles, that almost drove him to walk out on the whole thing. But just check the poetry or the lyrics and the way the melody unfurls in unusual ways, climbing, counter-intuitive.
Listen to the little bells, the insistent "la-la-la" backing vocals, the shakers, the declamatory bass line, tambourine at the chorus, the baroque piano, (is there harpsichord back there, too?). It’s like the folk wall of sound (arranged by Curt Boettcher, who went on to work with the Association and the Beach Boys, among others), which is fitting, since members of the wrecking crew were on these sessions.
I think this whole record is pretty amazing. But just to give you a sense, check out the completely Dylan-esque poetry to the lyrics on "Echoes" and "So You Lost Your Baby." There’s a lot of elaborate orchestration on "Echoes," which is like some sort of Jimmy Webb peyote mini blowout (arranged by Leon Russell). Django West already pointed out all the marvels on "So You Lost Your Baby" – moon trolls, and whatnot. But here’s the previously unreleased acoustic demo, as devastating as the full-on production, listen for those patented self-harmonizing vocals; he’s like the ghostly half of the brother duo with himself.
Dayton, Ohio is the hometown of my dad, the Ohio Players, Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices), Kim Deal of Pixies/Breeders fame...and Steve Arrington. Does this make it some kind of music mecca? Not really, especially since my dad can't even carry a tune. I do remember him sitting down at the piano when I was little and playing random chords while shout-singing "Come to Breakfast!" and other hits. It was my introduction to improvisation (of a sort) though neither one of us knew it at the time.
But back to Steve Arrington and his Hall of Fame. I noticed this cd a while ago at the library where I work, and I finally checked it out the other day. I really was just fascinated by the album cover--it looks like a drawing you'd see in some high school yearbook, done by the guy or gal who's considered the best artist in the senior class. And it's so creepy the way there are no eyeballs--I know it's supposed to be a bust, but it's as though it's part marble and part flesh. The other thing I think is so funny is the song title "You Meet My Approval". Talk about damning with faint praise! It's a passably funky tune, and it actually reminds me not of other funk bands but rather Gang of Four. You can imagine them listening to this or stuff like it and then going off and recording "I Love a Man in Uniform". (It's kind of hard to imagine them singing "The girl is hot!", however). Arrington was the singer/drummer for the band Slave before opening his Hall of Fame. Michael Jackson was a big influence: "He's not elaborate in terms of riffs, but he is in terms of nuance." Hmmm... Anyway, at some point in the mid-'80s Arrington saw a sign (both literally & figuratively) on the streets of NYC, became born again, and started his own church--the Amazing Love Full Gospel Church in Kettering, Ohio. It's a classic progression.
Spurred by that fleeting summer feeling, JP and Sister Bernice and I bolted down to NC for a mad-dash, last-ditch surge of desperation in search of sun, familial festivities, slow-cooked meats and yet another excuse to sip on bourbon and water. What we learned, or what we already knew (having lived in the northeast now for near 10 years) and were reminded of, was that people there are simply nicer. Or, at least, they act nicer, which is basically the same thing. Flying in on Friday afternoon and out again on Sunday morning, we had a mini checklist to start x-ing off. First stop Gus Sir Beef, home of the most righteous fried squash anywhere, also the restaurant with perhaps the best Greek-redneck-argot slogan around: "Fresh My Farm." Within minutes of our convergence (sister, three nieces, grandmother, brother-in-law) the waitresses were hanging out around our table, stroking babies’ heads in a way that our Massachusetts neighbors would think a presumptuous, inappropriate, and possibly unhealthy (germs) violation of personal space (not that I don’t dig Yankee aloofness). I switched from Bud to sweet tea, which seemed like some kind of divine one-two beverage change-up/sucker-punch.
I’d been meaning to post Alan Jackson’s "Gone Country," mostly just because it’s a great, funny, funny song. I must have forgotten how caustic it is, really; I almost doubled over laughing listening back to it and realizing that one of the verses is basically a dig at Bruce Hornsby, or Bruce Hornsby types, with that patented Hornsby piano articulation flown in for full effect. It’s brutal. On the one hand, the song ridicules all the wannabe rednecks (you know who you are), and those who think that cranking out a country tune is somehow easier than anything, but at the same time, it’s also sort of understanding, too. Of course they’ve gone country, why wouldn’t they? This, I know, is fraught territory, and JP, Dewey, Lefty and I have hashed it out before. But, in keeping with Lefty’s recent endtimes jeremiad, I’ve decided that swampy, humid, new south living may be the alternate universe to my universe’s ass. I’m just waiting for the right pair of boots.
Other things learned and relearned: slow-cooking meats on the poolside grill while sipping beers, playing with the little ones and occasionally taking a dip is a sacred and preferred form of disassociation. That’s what the Bobby Bare is all about: beer, kids, cooking. Also: the cicadas at night sound like the Tarheel State version of the Balinese monkey chant.
Credit where credit is due: Mr. Poncho has slowly turned the stone from the cave that held what I thought was the lifeless, talentless body of Ryan Adams. I'm no moon-eyed convert mind you, but I see the basic talent and attraction after giving Easy Tiger a few spins. But what finally convinced me was hearing the new Willie Nelson album, Songbird, and how it really pops compared to the avalanche of somewhat lackluster stuff he's kicked out in recent years. Turns out Ryan Adams produced it, hedging beautiful recording fidelity with a raw, garage-y backing band (the Cardinals) and a great song selection that pulls Willie off the typical standards, feathering in a Rick Rubinesque hipster-modernist aesthetic (like Parson's "$1,000 Wedding" and Cohen's "Hallelujah"). To see what I mean, listen to Willie doing the Grateful Dead's "Stella Blue" (Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter), a magnificently aching rendition with a fantastic feedback-wheezing crud-mud guitar that adds minor-key watercolor washes where Willie might typically use more obvious acrylic lines. The guitar solo at minute 3:55 is transcendent. Stella Blue - Willie Nelson
Dadgummit this world is relentless! The news, the wars, the fear, the candidates, the hurricanes, the whole celebutardistic mob beating the holy hell out of anything with Good left in it! All the crap-o-lyptic horrors percolating on the crumputer screen of doom, gouging our eyes out with pop-up ads featuring dancing female aliens wearing lipstick and bikinis...
It's end times, I tell ye!
So as long as it's the End of History (and fuck you very much, Francis Fukuyama, you supposedly-reformed neocon twit), I'm cherry-picking the good shit from the old days and calling it the bedrock for a new society, starting now. (Yes, we've been downthisroad before -- and we'll be back no doubt!) Anyway, I don't care if Osama bin Ladin dyed his beard black last month so he looks like a younger, sexier fanatic, or if Dick Cheney is manipulating the world's oil prices on his Xbox. Me, I've got heaven in a wild flower, infinity in the palm of my hand. I'm getting alternate universe on this universe's ass. I'm tacking into a quiet cove called The Bay of My Way or The Highway and rolling up the jib and dropping anchor.
All of which is to say, "Welcome, friends! Here's some music."
1. In the Bay, most of the talk you'll hear on the beach will sound like Professor Longhair. I quoteth he: "Tipitina! Yu-la mah-la wah-la dah-la, tra la, ti na na..."
2. One night in 1987 I lay in bed before sleep with this song in my headphones for the first time, ears entirely virgin to reggae. Literally, no lyin': I wept the first time I heard 1975's Live!. Oh Jah! Fools filed it forever under "frat boy" after Legend saturated the dorm rooms, but lest we forget, this is perfect music. And pretty much crystalizes the New Bay Way:
3. It came from the campfires of Brothers Wilson and Spector, back in ancient times. The Holy Drum Beat tells us a secret we must keep passing down through the ages. Heart. Beat Beat. Heart. Beat Beat...
5. In the cove, no poem is ever the same twice. Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer are poets who make up verse on the spot, trading lines in front of audiences to create spontaneous works. Here's one riffing on the word "hillbillies."
My sister is no hillbilly anymore. Can you believe they built that fence around the place where all of the hillbillies dance? It seemed wide open but secretly the hillbillies were there. I know a hillbilly and I love a hillbilly, but they're not the same.
6. Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald facing off against Hall & Oats in street combat? All that and more on the comedy film series "Yacht Rock," which is the best comedy film series ever made about the secret history of late 70s/early 80s soft rock. Watch and weep with laughter and joy. As I was telling Mr. Poncho, this stuff pretty much makes obsolete our blog's raison d'etre.
8. When you're rough and salty from a day spearing fish in the ocean, a slight chill on the skin, cocktail in hand, breeze blowing your Hawaiian shirt open to reveal your chest mat, you'll hear this streaming from a warm transistor radio as the pink and purple sunset fades into evening stars... Gulf Shores - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
9. A suggestion: Werner Herzog as Secretary of Beauty, Department of Madness. What say ye, Lord Herzog? This is from a collection of Herzog film music called Requium for a Dying Planet and it's absolutely awe-inspiring music for meditation of the earthly divine. (Hat tip: D. Stone)
10. Over Labor Day weekend, two visionary bald guys with guitars and a drum machine were playing Grateful Dead covers on the lawn in front of their house in Westchester County, New York. Despite the heavy amplification, there was only one person "listening" -- a woman curled up on a lawn chair reading a book. Two guys + amps + trees = love. Before I tromped down a nearby hiking trail, they were playing this:
11. Here's another bald dude playing on a lawn: The Pixies, live at the Newport Folk Festival in '06, totally acoustic, totally awesome. Wave of Mutilation (Newport Surf) - Pixies
12. Secretary of True Feelings, Department of Honesty. Purple Heart for Valor in the specific theater.
14. Finally, the bedrock of any society. Because they're better. Because they're stronger. "Woman, I know you understand the little child inside the man. Please remember my life is in your hands."
I really just wanted to post this song because I’m having one of those revived love-affairs with both my headphones (crappy as they are) and my shuffle function on iTunes, and I happened to stumble on this most beautiful and most somber of Duke Ellington pieces - more flute than any man could bear. But since it’s the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, let’s make it in honor of New Orleans. The rolling, tribal tom-tom reminds me of Animal Collective and Panda Bear, only because that’s what I’ve been listening to and thinking about for the last two weeks. But just stop for a moment and put your head inside this arrangement. The flowing woodwinds, the punctuated muted brass, the climbing, climbing. It’s almost unspeakably beautiful. And, at the same time, if you listen sideways, it could just as easily have been the theme song to some 70s cop show.
