February 25, 2005

Moore Brothers

Posted by Belle Waring

Because I love them so much, I want to throw the Moore Brothers a little CT whuffie. They are so awesome. Now they’ve gone in a more folk direction, but my favorite album is the rocking Thumb of the Maid album, a one-off from 1998. (I’ve talked to them about it, and for some reason they think of this as a partial failure, when it’s actually their best album. Go figure.) Thom Moore’s Spitting Songs is also amazing, and a few of the best songs are reprised on 2004’s Now Is The Time For Love. I’m trying to think how to describe their style, and it’s difficult. I once read a review that compared them unfavorably to Guided By Voices, and I was like, WTF does Guided By Voices have to do with anything? They have that family member harmony going on, the one that makes the Carter Family send chills up your spine. Funny lyrics: “took her to the beach/she thinks it’s Berkeley Bowl.” Also, the song “Hey Twelve”, which I assume is a joke about Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen”, and is one of the great songs of all time. My friend Daniel had the (I think brilliant) suggestion that they should take over from Phish on the continuous concert circuit, but they don’t actually sound anything like Phish. Anyway, despite my faults as a rock critic, you just have to take my word for it that they are great. You can listen to lotsa streaming mp3’s on their site. Go send them some love. (Also, did I ever tell you that you should love the High Llamas? That seems relevant somehow.)

February 05, 2005

Discovering Steve Earle

Posted by Chris

I’ve not been posting much lately because I’ve been teaching new material, starting a new semester and also been assessing another department as an external panel member. Busy busy busy. Still, life goes on in the insterstices. One of the things I look forward to in my weekly schedule is driving my youngest son to his piano lesson because this co-incides with Bob Harris Country on BBC Radio 2. I’d long have said that the one genre of music I just couldn’t listen to is country. But Bob Harris has always been one of my favourite DJs and I’ve just been sucked in by what is one of the best music programmes on the BBC, to the point where I’ve bought 5 Steve Earle cds in the last month. No doubt everyone else has been listening to Earle for years, but for me he’s a new discovery, a songwriter who managed to summon up a whole world in a few minutes. I confess to listening to the unbelievably poignant “Billy Austin” from his live Just an American Boy several times in a row.

January 21, 2005

Friday Fun Thread

Posted by Ted

You’ve been hired as the program director at a new satellite radio station. You’ll be playing songs that should have been huge hits, but weren’t. You’re looking for songs from any period that you liked the first time you heard them, songs that are immediately catchy and pleasurable, songs that would please your coworkers rather than the clerk at the local independent record store. The artists could be obscure or famous, but the songs should not be in regular rotation on terrestrial radio stations.

There are a lot of buried “Hey Ya!”s, “Tainted Love”s, “Gin and Juice”s, and “You Shook Me All Night Long”s out there. Help your station find them. Bonus points if you can help us understand why you like your obscure song by connecting it to a more popular song that shares its appeal.

I’ve invited some of my favorite mp3 bloggers to play along, and I’ll update this post with their responses as they come in.

Oliver Wang from Soul Sides wrote:

This isn’t uber-obscure but I was thinking recently that William DeVaughn’s “Be Thankful For What You’ve Got” is one of the most perfectly crafted soul songs I know - it has such an amazing, melancholy quality to it - it’s like a dose of instant nostalgia, a soundtrack for some endless summer filled with sunshine and the wafting smell of BBQ and where everything moves in slow motion just so you can capture the beauty of small moments.

It’s been covered enough times - everyone from Arthur Lee’s Love to Massive Attack - that people have heard it in some form or another so it’s not aiming for brownie points just because of rarity. But it’s one of those soul songs that isn’t in typical rotation on oldies stations.

Keith at Teaching the Indie Kids to Dance Again says he’s got a post forthcoming.

Some of my choices:

“I Can’t Wait” by Hepcat —> “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash
“Othello” by the Dance Hall Crashers —> “Just a Girl” by No Doubt
“10 Hours” by the Tantra Monsters —> “Date Rape” by Sublime
“Mama’s Always On Stage” by Arrested Development —> “Me, Myself and I” by De La Soul
“Run” by Ghostface Killa —> “Lyrics of Fury” by Eric B. and Rakim
“Big Bird” by Eddie Floyd —> “Out of Sight” by James Brown
“Michael” by Franz Ferdinand —> “Been Caught Stealing” by Jane’s Addiction
“Rebellion (Lies)” by the Arcade Fire —> “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen
“Poses” by Rufus Wainwright —> “Your Song” by Elton John

UPDATE: Jay Caruso is running a not-too-dissimilar thread, featuring actual mp3s (for now).

January 19, 2005

Goethe Institute on Wagner

Posted by Chris

The Goethe Institute has a really nice animated site on Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. It is aimed at children, but it should appeal to anyone with an interest in the Ring. (English and German). There’s also much more on the Institute’s various web-projects on this page .

January 17, 2005

Sound + Vision

Posted by Ted

In the 1970s, David Bowie released a series of albums that changed the sound, look and subject matter of rock music forever. His 1977 album Low, produced in collaboration with composer Brian Eno, was recently named the best album of the 1970s by Pitchfork. Elvis Costello recently called it one of the greatest albums ever in Vanity Fair. In terms of critical acclaim and popular success, I could compare him to Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen, maybe REM.

In 1983, David Bowie starred in the vampire movie The Hunger. In 1986, he starred in the Jim Henson movie Labyrinth as Jared the Goblin King.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but I know music fans. I was too young to be tuned into indie rock debates at the time, so I’m curious to ask if anyone remembers. How did Bowie fans react to these roles?

January 04, 2005

Roaring Jelly

Posted by Harry

About 43 minutes into the end-of-year Mike Harding show, he plays Roaring Jelly’s ‘Valerie Wilkins’. Great, but not their best — BedBug, Babylon, and Christmas In Australia are all superior. I saw them once, and taped their last ever session (with Stuart Hall of all people) off Radio 2 sometime in the 80’s and STUPIDLY taped an episode of My Music over it several years later. My mother sold both my Roaring Jelly records which I never managed to put on tape, and anyway I now have no way to play vinyl. How does one lobby to get a CD of their work brought out?

December 20, 2004

Renata Tebaldi

Posted by Chris

Sad to see that Renata Tebaldi, Callas’s great rival, has died. There are obituaries in the Telegraph , Times , Guardian , and New York Times , the NYT also links to a slideshow and some audio content. Listening to her singing (and Callas’s for that matter) has an instantly soothing effect on me, it seems as if all the world has become still. A marvellous singer.

UPDATE: Anna in Cairo, in comments below, mentions this post by Arthur Silber at The Light of Reason.

November 30, 2004

Furtwängler fifty years on

Posted by Chris

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Wilhelm Furtwängler and the BBC are remembering with a special programme devoted to his conducting on Radio 3 this evening. It starts at 19.30 UK time, so adjust for other time zones.

November 21, 2004

Top 5 artists I'll never buy again

Posted by Maria

This may simply be a sign that I’m past 30 and culturally marooned, but most of my favourite bands haven’t done anything good since 1994.

Which is not to say popular music in general has been rubbish since then - it hasn’t - just that if I was completely honest about it, I’d rather some acts stopped putting out records that I feel compelled to buy out nostalgia, consistency, and a slight feeling of guilt that I’ve moved on and they clearly haven’t.

I’m tired of going into record shops and coming out with mediocre albums of artists who were once truly or almost great. So, reluctantly, I’ve recently compiled my list of bands/artists whose work I will now stop buying just because they were good ten years ago.

This list mostly consists of:

Anything by anyone who was once in the Pixies or Throwing Muses and, by inference, the Breeders

Frank Back is out. Teenager of the Year was released in 1994 (hard to believe, I know) and it’s been downhill since then. Indulgence doesn’t even begin to describe his subsequent music. Then again, I never really liked FB - too abrasive and not appreciative enough of Kim Deal - so that’s an easy one.

Kim Deal.
This is tough, because I still think she’s a goddess, and she’s the only rock star I ever really wanted to be (apart from the bass player in the Violent Femmes, but that’s another day’s blogging). The essentials have never changed - I saw the Pixies play in Paris this summer and was driven demented by the video camera person who clearly thought she was some sort of aged backing singer, until she lashed into an awe-inspiring Gigantic that even put manners on the Chilli Peppers’ callow and insolent crowd.

But let’s face it. Kim Deal hasn’t done anything interesting or good since 1994. And the Breeders’ Title TK (2002) sounded like it still might as well still be 1994, except without the benefit of Tanya Donelly’s pop hits. And the Amps, while a laudable rehabilitation project for Kelly Deal, were just dull, even live.

I’m glad Kim Deal’s still around and making buckets of money from re-forming the Pixies. And Last Splash will always have a spot in my Alltime Top 10. But I’m not buying any more pointless and tuneless re-treads of stuff I listened to when I was 22.

Tanya Donelly. This is harder than it should be as she was easily the cheesiest out of the two sister acts that ruled early 90s alternative music. Some people think the Throwing Muses’ finest moment was University, recorded in 1995 after Tanya Donelly had left the band to form Belly. But I think the Real Ramona was the beginning of the end. Kristin Hersh’s whining went down a lot better with a dose of TD’s trademark sugar.

I loved Belly, even if they were a slightly guilty pleasure on account of being so darn poppy. Those girls were the disco queens of alternative music. They had a sound big enough to rock a stadium and moves that made Mick Jagger look restrained. I saw them playing in Slane in 1996, and they were the only band I’ve ever seen that made people laugh out loud and punch the air at the same time.

But TD’s solo work since then seems fragmented, haphazard and slight. It’s music I think I only enjoy for the traces and past associations it throws up. Have you ever watched a film or listened to music with someone else and experienced it through their eyes and ears? When I listened to TD’s 2002 beautysleep with my sister Nelly I was, frankly, embarrassed.

And then there’s Kristin Hersh. Whose first solo outing in 1994, Hips and Makers, was drop dead gorgeous. But who spent so much of the 90s whining and dirging away till all sympathy and enjoyment was gone. I got her 2001 Sunny Border Blue recently, and was just so annoyed at myself to have shelled out the price of a decent meal on yet more repetitive and charmless complaint.

But if Tanya Donelly is the Throwing Muse I’ve probably already given too many chances to, Kristin Hersh may be the one who deserves another. After all, Sky Motel wasn’t bad and Fifty Foot Wave does sound intriguing.

On the whole, though, whatever this crowd had going in the Pixies, Breeders and Throwing Muses, it really seems to have been more than the sum of its parts. We all know well that most artists released to solo work from the compromises and restrictions of being in a band tend to get soppy and tendentious. (Though I do think Stephen Malkmus of Pavement is going from strength to strength. Thoughts?) But it is a little sad to think the brightest lights of 90s alternative are strumming their respective ways to mediocrity.

Actually in my new spirit of ruthlessness I’ll probably avoid buying anything released by 4AD that’s not a re-release of something from the label’s prime in, oh, 1994. Does anyone know the story of that label’s sorry decline?

But you can see this isn’t a proper Top 5. It only has four names so far. It’s really too dreary and guilt-inducing to be dismissing the bands of my twenties. And the other obvious candidates who are still milking their former greatness and my wallet - REM, The Cure, Beastie Boys - probably don’t require much explanation. And, though I can hardly believe I’m saying this in public, I never really liked Sonic Youth anyway.

November 16, 2004

Kasey Chambers in the U.S.

Posted by Eszter

I should’ve posted about this earlier, but it’s not too late for those in New York, Milwaukee, Chicago and St.Paul/Minneapolis. The Australian singer Kasey Chambers is touring the U.S. I’ve seen her in concert twice already and it’s an experience not to be missed.

There is nothing obvious about my interest in her music. Less than two years ago a friend of mine asked whether I’d go with her to a concert. I asked her what type of music and when she mentioned “country” in her response (that included references to some other genres as well) I just said “no thanks”. My friend persisted and lent me the CD Captain. I liked it enough to ask for more and then listened to Barricades and Brickwalls. I was sold.

We saw Kasey in Philly in 2003, but she was coming down with the flu so she couldn’t sing all the songs she’d planned. Right after she stopped her tour. As unfortunate as this may seem, we were lucky because this meant that she resumed her tour a few months later in New York. So I got to see her again. And had my dissertation defense not conflicted with another one of her concerts, I would’ve gone to see her one more time.

Luckily, she’s visiting Chicagoland this time around. I’ve even managed to convince five friends to come with me (it actually didn’t take that much convincing). I just bought her Wayward Angels CD so I’m ready for all the new songs as well. Apparently she’s quite a big hit in Australia (others here are better positioned to address that), but her popularity in the U.S. still seems limited. Oh well, that just means better seats for those of us who’re in the know.:)

You'll never get to heaven with an AK-47

Posted by Daniel

With kids being questioned by the Secret Service over Bob Dylan songs, probably better enjoy this one while’ it’s still legal. It’s a version of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” by Oui 3, the only good British hip-hop band ever1, a track that I’ve been looking for for about five years and finally found on the Splendid website. “A Break From the Old Routine” is actually their best track, but I haven’t found that.

Footnote:
1That is, unless someone on the Lazyweb can point me in the direction of a copy of “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” by Definition of Sound

November 14, 2004

Siegfried

Posted by Chris

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening watching the third part of Phyllida Lloyd’s new production of the Ring for ENO. (See also my reactions to The Rhinegold and The Valkyrie ). Siegfried has to be my least favourite of the Ring operas, but that didn’t stop me from having a thoroughly good time. The reason it’s my least favourite is that this part of the Ring is a very unsatisfactory piece of work. For one thing, the eponymous “hero” (sung by Richard Berkeley-Steele) is an unattractive oaf, and for another, the villain of the first two acts is an anti-semitic caricature. Finally, the music undergoes a massive shift in quality and tone between Act 2 and Act 3, as a result of Wagner having developed a new musical language during the twelve years he put the work aside. But, but …

I have to say I think this production worked, despite being pasted by the critics as “reductive”. In Act 1 (set in a composite kitchen/teenager’s bedroom) Mime was played (by the excellent John Graham-Hall) as a put-upon single parent having to endure the snarkiness of an idiot adolescent and — as someone who finds himself in that position from time to time — I have to say I sympathised. Admittedly, I don’t try to get my offspring to kill dragons so I can steal the gold (whilst plotting to poison them thereafter), but, if they were as obnoxious as Siegfried, I just might. Act 2 moved from the kitchen-diner to a sort of waiting-room outside Fafner’s lair (with forest-wallpaper being the concession to traditionalism). The confrontation between the Wanderer (Robert Hayward) and Alberich (IMHO one of Wagner’s more sympathetic characters, sung here by the Alexi Sayle-like Andrew Shore) was well handled, and the wood-bird — played by a punky girl on a scooter (Sarah Tynan) — was quite brilliant. Quite why Fafner was in his bath when killed by Siegfried wasn’t explained, but baths featured prominently in Lloyd’s Rhinegold so I guess there was some symbolism I failed to latch onto.

Finally, we got to Act 3 where the Norns were watching TV in an old-people’s home. Boy discovered girl surrounded by ring of fire and off they went … All of which is rather mysterious since Brunnhilde (played by Kathleen Broderick but ideally by a singing Uma Thurman) would surely never fancy a macho lump like Siegfried (In my head I now hear Joe Jackson singing Is she really going out with him? rather than the appropriate leitmotive.)

And the music? The music was great and was well-played. Some of the reviewers thought the Robert Hayward’s Wanderer was underpowered, but he seemed OK to me. The best of the music is at the end when there’s much less going on dramatically. The wonderful textures and interweaving harmonies of Act 3 are great to listen to on CD at home whereas the first two acts can seem a bit tedious in an armchair but aren’t at all in a theatre. I’ve still got Siegfried’s hunting call and the woodbird’s song going through my head together with the gushing strings …. on to the Twilight of the Gods.

October 26, 2004

John Peel is dead

Posted by Chris

John Peel is dead at only 65. I can’t believe it. He’s been a part of my life since I was a teenager and used to listen to his late-night show. He’s been responsible for introducing so much music to a British audience (he did much for punk and reggae), he’s been consistently funny in his distinctive dry way, and, of course, he was just about the world’s no. 1 Liverpool fan. Terrible news. More from the BBC .

October 25, 2004

Edward Said remembered

Posted by Chris

In the Guardian, Daniel Barenboim remembers Edward Said .

October 22, 2004

Friday fun thread

Posted by Ted

For your tireless service on behalf of good, you have been given the power to replace the weak link in any band, past or present.

You need not be bound by practical considerations; you’re free to ignore the fact that (say) Peter Criss was the only one who could properly apply the KISS makeup. For example, you can replace Liz Phair (the singer) while keeping Liz Phair (the songwriter). How do you use this power, and why?

My answers under the fold.

Rolling Stones: Replace Mick Jagger with Otis Redding. I’ve never been a big Stones fan, largely because of Mick Jagger’s vocal style. I guess you love it or hate it.

From my perspective, virtually every Stones song would be improved by replacing his vocals with Otis Redding. Otis Redding was just dripping with passion, up and down the register. He could do howling rock better than Mick Jagger, he can do quiet better, he’s just a better singer. Plus, it might have kicked off a pattern of high-profile collaborations between soul and rock musicians.

The Minutemen: Replace D. Boon (singer) with Mike Patton, the singer from Faith No More. The Minutemen were a terrific post-punk group, but their funky stop-start style was undermined by their irredemably square lead vocals. Mike Patton is much more flexible and talented a rock singer. They could have been huge.

The White Stripes: Replace Meg White (drummer) with Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer). Meg White is a very simple drummer. I had a drummer friend point out why- she doesn’t seem to to able to separate her left arm pattern from her right arm pattern very well. Hence the long string of BOOM THWACK BOOM THWACK eighth notes on many of the White Stripes songs. It often works in context. But in a band with such minimalist sound, I’m disappointed that the drummer isn’t adding more.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, like the White Stripes, have one great guitar player, one vocalist, and one drummer. But Brian Chase fills out their songs in a way Meg White doesn’t approximate. Maybe I’d hate the result in real life, but I’d love to hear him try the same thing with a few White Stripes songs.

The Dave Matthews Band: Replace LeRoi Moore (saxophone) with any other professional saxophone player. So mediocre. Every music major at my college could play rings around the guy. Life’s not fair, I know.

Madvillian: Replace MF Doom (MC) with Rakim. This is a bit unfair, since virtually any hip-hop group could be improved by replacing the MC with Rakim, but I’ve noticed it especially with Madvillian. MF Doom has a deep voice and a non gimmicky style that occasionally fades into monotony. To my ears, he sounds a lot like Rakim without the drama.

October 17, 2004

Thank you Jack White for the fiber-optic Jesus that you gave me

Posted by John Holbo

I’d just like to point out that the best album of 2002, The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, is fully audible on the band’s homepage. (Click ‘music’, then ‘album audio player’.) This is particularly notable in light of the recent inclusion of a bonus track, “Thank You Jack White”. I would also like to mention that the artwork for the album is lovely, and the videos are all worth watching. And all good Christians, I trust, trust that 2005 will be the year “Christmas On Mars” finally enoys some sort of cinematic release, so we can stop just watching the trailer.

October 02, 2004

Although it's connected to all music, it's not like any music at all

Posted by John Holbo

An old Buffalo Daughter album, “New Rock”, has recently conquered my iPod. Quirkier-than-thou Japanese post-rock something or other. Shonen Knife able to play their instruments meets Sonic Youth, produced by Brian Eno. For the youth of today. You think it’s pastiche, then listen again and it’s not. I must get their new album, “Pshychic”. Says Cornelius: “What I feel from Buffalo Daughter’s music is; although it’s connected to all music, it’s not like any music at all. It’s white that is almost transparent. A very graceful sound. I wish I can make music like that.”

If that reminds you of the scene in which Bill Murray is being told how to drink his whiskey, if you liked Lost in Translation - I certainly did - you will want to watch the video for “Cyclic” on the band’s site; also, the streaming audio for “303 Live” is good.

You can download a free track and listen to a couple more here. Long live The Emperor Norton.

September 22, 2004

Cat Stevens banned from the US

Posted by Chris

Yusuf Islam — the former singer once known as Cat Stevens — has been banned from the United States . And not just banned, they actually diverted the plane 600 miles to Maine to remove him from it. He’s made some equivocal statements in the past, but more recently has been forthright in his condemnation of terrorism . Perhaps there’s something we don’t know, but, on the surface, this looks like a bad mistake. Ordinary Muslims will be bound to see this as hostility to their religion as such rather than just to extremists and terrorists.

September 16, 2004

Johnny Ramone, RIP

Posted by Ted

Johnny Ramone died in his sleep last night. Ben Weasel, one of my favorite punk rockers, has a tribute to the late, great pioneer.

Johnny Ramone was never recognized as a revolutionary guitarist. Chuck Berry gave us rock and roll guitar playing. Hendrix showed us what the instrument was capable of in the hands of somebody with the ambition, vision and tenacity to bend it to his will. But what Johnny Ramone contributed to rock and roll guitar playing was just as important – maybe even more important – because he took the instrument away from the rock gods and handed it back to the rest of us. Johnny turned the guitar back into a brutal, primal, stunningly effective tool. He proved that you didn’t need to be a virtuoso to be a great guitarist. He reminded the world that rock and roll was supposed to be fun.

September 09, 2004

Favorite first line - music version

Posted by Eszter

Matt Weiner over at Opiniatrety puts a musical spin on the question of favorite opening hooks by exploring “the greatest first lines of record albums”. Songs usually either grab me in their entirety or they don’t speak to me much at all so although there are lines I really like, they are rarely first lines. I guess by the time you realize whether you like the first line of a song you are half way through the entire piece so perhaps the effect of that first segment is not as important as it may be for a book. In any case, there seem to be lots of music aficionados around here so I thought you might enjoy heading over to Matt’s blog and discussing favorite first lines of songs. There are also a couple of people who comment about first lines of movies in response to the book post. Oh, the possibilities…:)

July 19, 2004

Respect for the Dead

Posted by Chris

Norm’s rock stars poll closed the other day, and, like others , I’m inclined to protest a little about the results. [1] The source of my dissatisfaction is that the incomparable Grateful Dead not only miss the top 25 but aren’t even among the further 30 also-rans. Meanwhile, talentless losers like REM (someone had to say it) capture 11th place. Young people today….

1 I fear I may have misread the rubric, since the results include bands and I voted inter alia for Keith Richards, Joe Strummer and Jerry Garcia. I assume that Norm just folded those in as votes for the Stones, the Clash and the Dead.

July 16, 2004

Welcome to Slate. Here's your sneer.

Posted by Ted

In my previous life, I was a member of an active mailing list for fans of ska music. (In tribute, I’ve just created a ska name generator.) Every few months, members would talk about the music that they listened to, outside of ska. It quickly degenerated into a uniquely annoying form of indie one-upsmanship. Popular, marginal, and largely unknown bands were dismissed with contempt (“You’re still listening to Big Black?”). The discussion quickly disappeared down the indie rabbit hole, as members professed their love for vinyl-only releases from obscure foreign noise bands.

My friend Mark managed to shut them up. He wrote a long email about how everyone else was a sellout, and how he had gotten into the most obscure music ever. He would go to the local maternity ward with a stethoscope and listen to a particular fetus’s heartbeat.

Skagroup may be gone (or it might not), but the spirit lives on at the home of sloppy, reflexive contrarianism: Slate.

Wilco is one of the most critically successful groups of the last few years, so it should go without saying that they’re a bunch of sell-out phonies. Now, some people aren’t crazy about Wilco, and I wouldn’t argue with them about a question of taste. What really bugs me is this passage by Stephen Metcalf:

To a listener accustomed to Hootie and the Blowfish, Wilco sounds like the Minutemen—daring, allusive, funky, weird, and yet so right. To a listener accustomed to the Minutemen, Wilco sounds like Hootie and the Blowfish: classic rock for frat boys.

All those other critics who have praised Wilco? They’ve been cuddling their copies of Cracked Rear View since 1994. Stephen Metcalf isn’t a sheep like them. He’s a pure, delicate flower, raised on post-punk and spring water. He can see through the illusions that Wilco has cast. Wilco is not post-punk, people! Don’t try to enjoy them on any other level!

Ugh.

July 11, 2004

Wilco or Cat Power

Posted by John Holbo

Wilco or Cat Power. Huh?

I’m happy to provide links to enable Kevin Drum to arrive at an informed decision as to which of these truly fine music offerings is preferable . Wilco has a new album out, “A ghost is born”. I don’t own it yet, but the six tracks you can listen to for free are fantastic. Zoë says “Hell is Chrome” ‘sounds like it’s about a vewy young angel.’ Newborn ghost, indeed! She thought it was too sad, but danced round and round to the piano on “Hummingbird”. I’m listening to “Muzzle of Bees” right now. Beautiful stuff.

Cat Power has a very infectious - in a good way - new album, “You Are Free”. Go to the site and hear the hypnotically simple strains of “I Don’t Blame You”. Then click through to ‘media’ and watch the video for “He War”. It’s a great pop tune with lyrics that make no sense and a nice low-budget story video without a story, set in California. I like those so long as they can’t afford clowns. Just people walking and trees and water, mostly. Like looking at someone’s photo album and wondering what’s going on in all the pictures without really caring. For all I know it’s in heavy rotation on MTV and VH1 and you’re all sick to death of it. If so, I apologize. I’m in Singapore and am not made aware of such things when they happen.

There are two other videos from older albums, but one wouldn’t load and I can’t recommend the other.

Well, which is it going to be, Kevin?

July 09, 2004

Rock and roll all night

Posted by Ted

The local alt-weekly, the Houston Press, has a good piece about the woes of the summer’s major concert tours. They do a good job of laying out all the fees in going to see (say) Kid Rock, concluding:

So let’s say you plan to take a date to go see the Kid. That’s $56 for two tickets, plus $42.15 in fees, of which Ticketmaster takes $18.15 and the Woodlands folks $24. Ring-ring, that’s $98.15, please, all before your first expensive beer or soggy nacho…
What other industry delivers so little for so much? Imagine if restaurants started operating like this. A parking lot attendant demands ten bucks for the right to stash your ride about a half-mile from the door. The maître d’ searches all your bags, confiscates a bottle of water, demands one bribe to seat you, and then another to “process” the bribe he just accepted, and then tells you to go sit on a patch of grass outside. If you want chairs, that’ll be extra. The kitchen bills you for the use of their facilities, and you have to pay your bill up front. Then the waiter brings your order to another table — you can look at it, but don’t get too close! Only those who have paid much, much more than you for far better tables are allowed to really dig in. If you are unlucky enough to be seated outside and it starts to rain, the owner comes over and charges you ten bucks per person to come inside. And then everybody gets thrown out on their ear at 11 sharp, whether they’re done with their meal or not. Is it any wonder that people would much rather go out to eat, or go to a ball game or a strip club — anything other than a concert? As one poster put it recently on velvetrope.com , “If I go to a restaurant and spend $200, I get treated like royalty. If I go to a concert and do the same, I get treated like cattle.”

At this point, I’d like to point out how going to small rock clubs is a much better experience than large arena shows. I’d like to, but my heart really isn’t in it.

If restaurants worked like rock clubs, you wouldn’t end up paying the restaurant for parking. The average restaurant would have about a dozen parking spaces, so you’d find your own parking a few blocks away (depending on your city). The restaurant would have seats for maybe one in ten people. The price of your dinner would be quite reasonable and include multiple courses. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t have the option of skipping the appetizers. Quality would vary wildly. Each course would take about forty-five minutes to clear, so you would be lucky to start your entree by 11:30, or to get home by 1:00. The restaurant would occasionally be outstanding, but it would be awfully hard to get up for work the next morning.

I can’t stay up until 1:00 on a regular basis anymore. At thirty, I often feel like I’m in the oldest 5% of fans at the rock shows I manage to attend. I know that my old-man-smell might scare the kids, but come on. It would be nice if clubs remembered that people like me were eager to give them our money.

July 02, 2004

Beethoven sonatas online

Posted by Chris

The BBC has made Artur Pizzaro’s complete Beethoven sonatas available online, together with interview, critical notes etc. Fantastic!

June 09, 2004

Cat Stevens

Posted by Harry

In his typically up-to-date fashion, Steve Harley devoted last night’s Sounds of the Seventies to Cat Stevens. He doesn’t say whether he’s a CT reader, but now I am starting to have suspicions. Go there and listen.

June 08, 2004

But I ween this war fire is hot, fierce and poisonous; therefore have I on me shield and byrnie

Posted by John Holbo

Perhaps you are unaware - but then you should be made aware - that, in addition to releasing one of the best albums of last year, Quebec, Ween has one of the best band websites on the net. Two of them, actually. Lots of free music and videos and goodies. Not to mention 24-hour a day ween radio. Setlists. Links to weird fansites. At some point even my interest starts to wane.

But before that happens to you …

… make sure to watch two videos: “The Mollusk” and “Roses Are Free”. “The Mollusk” in particular is a strangely beautiful tune, a little lyrical outpost on the far-flung fine line between clever and stupid. And the video has appropriately mood-setting lego waves crashing against the lego beach.

And the Pizza Hut commercial jingle that was not to be: “Where’d the Cheese Go?” [work safe and non-work safe lyrical versions]

And here is a quite amusing and edifying Ween interview from a few months back.

It contains this sage meditation on the decline of Western culture:

Well since like the early ’90s, Nirvana kind of changed everything, you know? They were a great band. I remember hearing Pearl Jam for the first time and thinking, “man these guys are fucking like Nirvana rip-offs, the guy sings like Kurt Cobain.” And then you hear like Stone Temple Pilots and it sounds like he’s ripping off the guy from Pearl Jam. And now looking back, those bands really aren’t that bad [both laugh]. At the time, I was being like a player hater, you know? Like, “fuck this shit,” you know? And now, you hear the Stone Temple Pilots shit and it sounds great. It’s like… fuck man, you had no idea how much worse it was gonna get, but it’s perpetuated itself with bands like Bush that were ripping off fuckin’ Stone Temple Pilots. There’s like twelve generations later of bands ripping off bands that have ripped off shit that wasn’t very good to begin with, you know? And it’s really kind of a drag [both laugh]. It’s really a drag. All you have to do is put on rock radio and hear one measure before you know you want to turn it off.

As a wise man once said: The Stone Temple Pilots are elegant bachelors.

Some interesting reflections about the economics of the industry and what a major label contract gets you, and doesn’t get you:

Yeah, you can make a good profit selling 30,000 records on your own label. But if your record got to 100,000 people on the last one, that’s a reality of the two. Is it worth the extra $100,000 a year that you made?

Somewhat non-standard use of the term ‘reality’. But you see the man’s point.

And it’s funny that they are so into Los Lobos and that the only other band whose members they consider close friends is Kyuss, who sort of grew into Queens of the Stone Age. Which reminds me: the original drummer for Kyuss, Brant Bjork, is pretty cool. On his quite fine new album, “Brant Bjork and the Operators” he’s got a sort of Soundgarden meets the Meat Puppets with a touch of New Wave prog rock and cheesy, slack old timey Californian faith in the power of rock sound; but there is so much more, and less, to it than that. Go here and download two free tracks that have been in heavy rotation on my iPod for some time: “My Ghettoblaster” and “Low Desert Punk”. Possibly you won’t be sorry.

June 06, 2004

Down in Cork he'd be known as a Langer

Posted by Kieran

The best-selling song in Ireland at the moment is a strike for local terms of abuse over international ones. A group from Cork — Ireland’s second-largest city, its real capital, and my home town — is dominating the charts with “The Langer,” outselling such international cursers as Eamon and Frankee. “Langer” is a Cork term meaning — well, it can mean a lot of things, but this clip from the song gives you the primary meaning. The song itself isn’t destined to be a classic of contemporary folk music, but seeing as recent political events have caused me to use the word myself a few times to uncomprehending Americans, I can now point them towards this. The song is also notable for being the first with a full verse as Gaeilge to reach number one in Ireland. Appropriately the verse is about langers who think only they can speak Irish. Full lyrics are below the fold, courtesy of The Cork Diaries.

The Langer

Have you seen the old man
The drunken ould lout
Roaring and bawling and spilling his stout?
And in everyone’s business
You’ll first see his snout
Down in Cork he’d be known as a langer

Chorus:
A langer (Response: A langer)
In Cork he’d be known as a langer

And our hero Roy Keane
Footballer supreme
The finest this country and Man U’s ever seen.
And we’d have won the World Cup
But Mick McCarthy fouled up.
Roy was dead right to call him a langer!

Chorus:
A langer (A langer)
Roy was dead right to call him a langer!

And Johnny and Mick
Have a Honda Civic
With spotlamps and spiders
And loud rock music
Ah, but don’t they look nice
With the big furry dice?
Would they ever stop acting the langer?

Chorus:
The langer (the langer)
Would they ever stop acting the langer?

Féach an phleice amach romhainn,
ag bladairt trína thóin
Níl gaelinn ag éine,
dár leis, ach é féin
Tá aige fomhraíocht sár-bhinn,
‘s gramadach fíor chrinn,
I gCorcaigh, gan dabht, sé an langer!1

Curfa:
An langer! An langer!
I gCorcaigh, gan dabht, sé an langer!

From Mitchelstown to Cape Clear
You’ll be welcome down here
For there’s plenty of scenery, music, and beer
But avoid the rugby weekend in Kinsale
For every year with out fail
The town gets infested with langers

Chorus:
With langers (with langers)
The whole town’s infested with langers

[This verse done in a posh Montenotte accent]
In two thousand and five
Culture will thrive
All along the green banks of the Lee (Shouted: Oh, good man, George!)
But no matter what
If you arrive on a yacht
We’ll tolerate absolutely nobody acting the langer
(Shouted: Certainly not in Crosshaven!)

Chorus:
Langer (Langer)
There’ll be nobody acting the langer

George Bush and his boys
Ah, did make your blood boil.
Will they give the Iraqi people back their soil?
Ah, and all of us know
All he wants is their oil.
Oh Lord, he’s a ferocious langer!

Chorus:
A langer (A langer)
Oh Lord, he’s a ferocious langer!

So three cheers for Roy Keane
He’s back wearing the green.
Ah, what more could you ask him to do?
So forget all the press
And the whole bloody mess
They’re only a big shower o’ langers.

Chorus:
Langers (Langers)
They’re only a big shower of langers.

So there was me song
I didn’t keep ye too long
For now ye all know one word of Cork slang
And while there’s meat on me bones
I hope I’ll never be known
As a typical home-grown Cork langer

1 Look at the messer in front of us,/ talking through his ass, / Nobody can speak irish,/ in his opnion, but himself, / He’s got perfect pronounciation,/ and perfectly accurate grammar, / In Cork, without a doubt, he’s a langer.

May 31, 2004

George Formby

Posted by Harry

Last week was the centenary of George Formby’s birth. You can hear about his life in a sweet bio-documentary by Russell Davies (probably only for the next couple of days) called (misleadingly) George on George. The best bit concerns Beryl Formby (George’s wife and manager) who, when the South Afrcan Prime Minister phoned her to complain about George’s enthusiam about playing to mixed audiences and apparent colour blindness, shouted “Why don’t you just piss off you horrible little man”, and slammed the phone down. If only more had been like them.

May 27, 2004

The one where I pretend that this is Fametracker

Posted by Ted

The liberal media loves to show us bad album covers. And, sure, there are some bad album covers out there. But what about all of the good album covers that are ignored? That’s what we’re here for.

If I had to point to the best album cover from the last few years, I’d point to Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in da Corner.

Here’s my case:

  • It captures the sound and mood of the album. Dizzee Rascal’s persona is living in a dangerous inner-city housing estate, but he’s neither a thug nor a wish-fulfilling mack daddy. Instead, he’s a confused, paranoid bystander, rapping about keeping his head down while thinking about how the world got this way, over a backdrop of synthesized beats.
On the cover, he’s sitting in artificial-looking room, scowling and giving himself little devil horns with his fingers. It captures the mood of the album beautifully.
  • It’s simple. The eye can take it in in a moment, and it works just fine on a little CD cover.
  • It’s an original image, not a parody, homage, or genre cliche. (As far as I know.)
  • It’s witty without being jokey.
  • It’s like, the question is how much more yellow could it be? And the answer is none. None more yellow.

The comments are open- what do you think is the best album cover from the past few years, and why?

May 25, 2004

Well-tempered clavier

Posted by Chris

Tim Smith’s and David Korevaar’s page on Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is one of the best things I’ve seen on the web in a long time. Click on the links and you get music, analysis, history and fantastic graphics. (via Michael Brooke )

May 18, 2004

Quick Eurovision Followup

Posted by Kieran

Nottingham today, and I eventually found wireless access in the lobby of a rather better hotel than the one I’m staying in. Just time to note that, in the light of last weekend’s Eurovision song contest, my network analysis of voting is now both confirmed and redundant.1 The introduction of the Eastern European bloc of countries has had striking structural and cultural effects. Structurally, political voting for neighbors is now blatantly obvious love fest and openly commented on by the returning officers for each country. When Russia its douze points the Russian announcer said highest marks went “to our great friends, Ukraine.” “We used to be so close,” Terry Wogan commented on the BBC. Culturally, the “Euro Heritage” type song also seems to be eclipsed and the contest has returned to its roots as a festival of tat and pap, thanks mainly to the fashion and musical tastes of the breakaway republics and former Yugoslavian countries. From sub-Britney to proto-Xena to quasi-Miami Vice, there’s clearly no sleaze like Balkan sleaze.

1 That was real data, by the way. I abused it but I didn’t make it up.

May 16, 2004

ENO's The Valkyrie

Posted by Chris

I saw the second installment (and therefore, confusingly “The first day … “) of Phyllida Lloyd’s Ring for ENO: The Valkyrie , last night. Some of it was rubbish, but other parts were truly splendid, and, as it became more and more splendid as the evening progressed, I was able to leave feeling quite satisfied.

First for the rubbish, then. Almost every unwarranted accretion to the text detracted massively from the performance. I don’t mean the fact that it is a modern-dress performance (that’s fine by me) but a rather a whole list of things happening which shouldn’t and people being in places where they are not meant to be. The production starts with a pre-recorded scream of terror and with Wotan and Brunnhilde hanging about in Sieglinde’s cottage. To have this framing the performance rather than the rhythmic tramp-tramp of the opening bars as Siegmund arrives was close to unforgivable. Siegmund and Sieglinde were pretty underpowered throught the first Act, also, which was nothing like as moving or as shocking as it should have been. Other rubbish included a reappearance at the end of Act Two of the camera-crew that Lloyd had previously foisted on us in The Rhinegold , and the ridiculous innovation of a throng of mortal suitors surrounding Brunnhilde just before the deterring ring of fire is put in place in Act Three.

With all that, you are probably wondering what could be splendid. Wotan and Brunnhilde, to begin with. Robert Hayward and Katherine Broderick both gave really authoritative performances and what made the production succeed despite everything was the long separation sequence in Act Three where they successfully conveyed the pain of separation between stern father and willful favourite daughter. This was fantastic: great acting, singing and music and real emotional charge around a deeply human moment — everything that Wagner should be. Other worthwhile parts included the beginning of Act Two and, most notably the confrontation between Wotan and Fricka (Susan Parry). We are back with the Sopranos here, as Carmela, queen of her kitchen, succeeds in making Tony comply with her will. A familiar soap situation, then, but one that worked.

Not everything on the production side was a disaster. In particular the device of having some of the action projected on a giant banner was a good way of coping with the simultaneity of different layers of the drama. So, for example, Brunnhilde addressing Siegmund and explaining his fate to him was partly handled this way.

Siegfried next …..

April 29, 2004

Soon

Posted by Henry

Something I’ve been meaning to mention for a while and never quite getting around to … Pitchfork Media report that My Bloody Valentine, very possibly the Best Band in the World, Ever, are releasing a bunch of stuff next year, including some of the material that never made it onto the Glider EP. Cause for celebration, if not quite as much cause as a genuinely new album would be. Pitchfork also has a nice piece on the demise of Black Eyes, which featured my cousin, Hugh McElroy, as co-vocalist in its heyday.

April 28, 2004

Why Is American Radio So Bad?

Posted by Harry

I never knew much about Doris Day, except that her singing still makes me go weak at the knees, and some of the films are great (I started watching after reading a surprising laudatory essay by the excellent Judith Williamson in the 80’s), and, like Rosemary Clooney, she comes from my favourite American city. But that has all changed, because Radio 2 is running an 80th birthday tribute called The Life of Doris Day. All that you would want to know about her (the first 5 minutes are a bit annoying). But I defy you to find tributes like this on US radio stations. Why?

UPDATE: I should have warned you that the BBC website is very slow and unreliable the past day or two, so you may have to be patient trying to listen to the show.

April 21, 2004

The Year of the Cat

Posted by Harry

A local DJ played ‘The Year of the Cat’ a few weeks ago and said that it was about ‘some British comedian called Tony Hancock’ (yeah, like, the greatest single-handed comedian of the 20th Century, but I’ll let that pass). So, I listened to the song over and over again. And then again. I know the story of Hancock’s life better than anyone my age should, and though the song does sound a little sad, I simply can’t get the reference. (Is ‘a country where they turned back time’ Australia? If so why?) Google doesn’t help much: I got this German site, and an error message. Now I hear Steve Harley’s show and he (who ought to know) associates the song with Yussuf Islam which makes much more sense. Does anyone know the story about this?

April 19, 2004

Notes from a small iPod

Posted by Ted
  • Listening to “Appetite for Destruction”. I wasn’t much of a metalhead, but it’s still a terrific album. It’s noteworthy that in a genre known for showboating drummers and extended drum solos, their drummer is the very opposite of a showboat. (A “tugboat”, maybe?)
  • Rakim, of Eric B. and Rakim, has been occasionally named the best MC of all time. His surly baritone voice hasn’t really been successfully imitated, and his near-total lyrical focus on his own rap skills has been imitated far too much. But he did one thing that’s ripe for a good rip-off. Most rap songs have 16 bars for verses between choruses. Rakim would often keep going, well past where the ear expected a break. It gave his songs a sense of urgency that others would be wise to replicate, instead of handing off to Ashanti.
  • The Temptations’ Ultimate Collection is one of the best albums in my collection, or anyone else’s. For ten or fifteen years there, those guys could do doo-wop, soul, and funk as well as anyone. If there’s a heaven for songs, “Can’t Get Next to You” will be there.
  • Listen to “Violent Femmes” from beginning to end. It sounds as though the drummer plays absolutely nothing but a snare drum on the whole album, with the exception of a lone cymbal crash at the end of the first verse of “Add It Up” and the xylophone in “Gone, Daddy, Gone”. This may be common knowledge, but I didn’t realize it until I started paying attention.
  • You know who’s an amazing drummer, if you like showboats? Jimmy Chamberlin from the Smashing Pumpkins. There were rumors that Billy Corrigan played all the guitar and bass parts on the SP albums, but no one doubted who was on the drums. Listen to “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”; he makes the transition from low-key jazzy drumming to punishing heavy-metal pounding, and it’s just beautiful. The song wouldn’t work without it.
  • If you’re a Pixies fan who can’t afford $500 tickets to see their reunion tour, you can buy a limited edition CD of each of their concerts. They’re going fast. Invite a lot of friends over, smash together in the middle of the room, spill beer on each other, and play it really really loud.
  • “Poses”, by Rufus Wainwright, is one of the most gorgeous songs that I’ve heard in a long time. Through some weird chain of coincidences, I never heard the song “Danny Boy” until I was an adult. When I did, I was instantly struck, and it’s become one of my favorite songs. “Poses” has much of the same thrill. Wainwright’s voice sounds like a cello that can talk, and the orchestration makes it sound like it came from an especially lovely time capsule. Highly recommended.

April 08, 2004

Free Music

Posted by Brian

I’m sure all the Cool Kids have heard this already, but I only just found out about Skeewiff’s remix of the Soggy Bottom Boys’ Man of Constant Sorrow. That’s a 7.3MB download, but it’s well worth it. It is, at the very least, the best freely available song I’ve heard in a long time. And electronic remixes of bluegrass songs seems like such an obvious idea, I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before. (Or, perhaps more to the point, I’m surprised it hasn’t been brought to my attention before.)

April 06, 2004

Dylan poll results

Posted by Chris

Norm has published the results of his Dylan songs poll . A very good list it is too. I’m struck by the fact that the majority of the top 21 come from just three (consecutive) albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde. There’s also only one post-1976 song on the list. This is as it should be IMHO.

March 14, 2004

Moria, I'm lost in a mine named Moria

Posted by Kieran

News today that a musical version of The Lord of the Rings is in the works. Suggest songs and plot-points here. Potential titles include: ‘I’m gonna wash that orc right out of my hair’ (Legolas), ‘You’re the One Ring that I want’ (Sauron in Act I, then Gollum in Act II, and Frodo, Gollum and Sauron in Act III), ‘People will say we’re in love’ (Frodo/Sam duet, Act II, theme echoed by Gimli and Legolas during Battle of Pelennor Fields), ‘City with the Tree on Top’ (Gandalf’s arrival at Minas Tirith), ‘How do I solve this problem, my dear Grima?’ (Theoden introduction), and Gollum’s Act III showstopper, ‘Memorieses’.

Update: I’m way behind. John Holbo has had the libretto up for ages — including not only “Moria” but also “These are a few of my favorite Rings.”

March 10, 2004

Corporate rock still sucks

Posted by Ted
Nihon Break Kogyo Co’s company song smashed into the Oricon, one of (Japan’s) most influential music charts, on Dec 29. It is the first time that a “shaka,” or corporate anthem, has made the charts, according to Oricon Inc, a major Tokyo music information provider…

Unlike the stiff, propaganda-like nature of regular Japanese corporate anthems, the up-tempo rock tune, written and performed by a Nihon Break Kogyo demolition worker, sounds like themes from old Japanese animated films featuring superheroes.

But the humorous lyrics reflect the pure corporate anthem spirit of promoting the company — “We will destroy houses! We will destroy bridges! We will destroy buildings! To the east, to the west — Run, Run, Nihon Break Kogyo!”

I believe that I am the first person in history to point out that Japanese culture can appear somewhat baffling.

March 08, 2004

On Being Put Off Wagner Forever

Posted by Kieran

Chris’s post about the ENO production of Rheingold reminded me of why I don’t know anything about Wagner’s music. When I was a graduate student, I invested a substantial chunk of my income in a pair of season tickets to the Met, with half-decent seating. You got a set program of opera over the course of the year. We had a great time. Then came the Wagner week. I forget which opera it was. Die Walküre I think — anyway, the one where the guy stumbles into the forest hut, falls in love with the girl, and upon discovering she’s his sister sings, delightedly, “Such wonderful news! Our children will therefore be of the purest blood!” or words to that effect.

As soon as we got to our seats we knew something was wrong.

We’d gotten to know some of the faces in the surrounding rows, but that night the crowd was different from usual. Everyone was dressed up very severely. The guy sitting next to me looked like a young Nietzsche. The guy sitting next to him looked like Nietzsche when he had tertiary syphilis. (I think he was the first one’s father.) Three elderly women all in seemingly identical black outfits sat in front of us. I’d been warned to expect this sort of thing with Wagner, so I wasn’t too put out. But just before the overture began, a heavyset man sat down behind us. He had some sort of respiratory disease. It required him to inhale in huge, wet gulps. He would then make a low groaning noise, pause momentarily, and exhale in a sequence of rapid belches of descending pitch and increasing duration. He did this without fail throughout the entire first act, without regard for the vicious shushes he got from me, never mind the much more intimitating glares of Nietzsche pere et fils, and he showed every appearance of continuing until the final curtain fell, or he died.

We fled at the first interval. And that was it for me and Wagner. That gurgling, gasping, eructating sound appears in my inner ear whenever I hear a scrap of leitmotif, faint but inescapable, like a tubercular Glenn Gould being drowned in the bath.

Though he may have won all the battles / We had all the good songs

Posted by Kieran

Juan Non-Volokh opens an interesting line of inquiry: which political ideology has the best music? I’m torn on this. Juan leads with his chin, describing Rush as “arguably the most prominent libertarian band of all time.” Arguably? Who else is in the running here? Clint Eastwood singing “I Talk to the Trees” in Paint Your Wagon? Was Ayn Rand, like L. Ron Hubbard, a great composer on the side? The irresistible image is of a phalanx of airborne Libertarians screaming up the Potomac in surplus Hueys fitted with tactical nuclear weapons sourced on Ebay, while Rush’s ‘Freewill’ blares from speakers bolted to one of the choppers.

But the question seems a bit underspecified. For instance, conservatives in general might claim the whole tradition of western classical music for themselves, while quietly ignoring the fact that, throughout history, your common or garden conservative can reliably be found bemoaning the appalling quality of serious music since the year n — 75, for all values of n. Those on the left, meanwhile, will have to work hard to distance themselves from the output of the troops of the Folk Song Army. Perhaps we should be asking which are the best explicitly political songs. A related question is which country has the best National Anthem. France edges it, I think, over South Africa (too long) and the United States (too hard to sing). God Save the Queen is clearly the worst, a judgment made compelling both by the anthem’s non-existent musical merits and the fact that English fans would rather sing a spiritual written about an exhausted, enslaved people longing for the sweet release of death.

March 07, 2004

Rhinegold

Posted by Chris

I’m back from seeing the ENO production of The Rhinegold (sung in English). I should say, before uttering a word of criticism, that I enjoyed myself and wouldn’t disrecommend the experience at all. But, that said, this was a pretty weird staging. The opening scene takes place in a pole-dancing club, with dodgy businessman Alberich being teased by dancers in turquoise pvc mini-dresses. Alberich is sung by an Alexi Sayle lookalike (Andrew Shore) who does an excellent job of portraying the sexually-frustrated dwarf. The scene opens, though, with Alberich being encouraged to enter the club by property-developer Wotan and his PR-man and Mr Fixit, Loge. This addition, needless to say, has no textual warrant and, if taken seriously, would amount to a major distortion of the plot.

Scene two takes place in Wotan’s apartment and opens with Wotan in the bath. The dynamic between Wotan and Fricka may not have been modelled on Tony and Carmela Soprano (or JR and Sue Ellen), but it is hard to think that such comparisons weren’t somewhere in producer Phyllida Lloyd’s mind. The giants are played as construction engineers who brandish their plastic-bound copies of the contract as they demand payment for their work on Valhalla. Donner wears trainers and wields a baseball bat, Loge prefers subtler methods: you get the picture. One of the problems of staging such a modernized production is that it interferes with the suspension of disbelief. If everyone is dressed up in fantasy costumes then it is easier to take seriously the idea of Freia as an object of lust even if she is somewhat hefty. But if everything else looks like Dallas or the Sopranos then a Freia who doesn’t fit with the conventions of those dramas is incongruous.

As every Wagnerian knows, the descent into Nibelheim is accompanied by the repeated sound of hammers which evoke images of a Victorian mill (cf GB Shaw). In this production we have some kind of biotech lab in the basement of Wotan’s apartment block. The hordes of orange-suited slaves subject to Alberich’s arbitrary rule couldn’t help but remind me of Primo Levi’s account of Auschwitz which I’d just finished reading: an unhelpful association and a troubling one in the light Wagner’s extreme anti-semitism (I plan to post on Levi when I have some time). Arbitrary power, labour and cruelty were what made the connection for me, but possibly Phyllida Lloyd was trying to suggest an association with Guantanamo by orange-boiler-suiting the slaves. If that was in her mind, it was a stupid and opportunistic move. Despite the distracting associations, the quasi-Marxian theme of the workers in thrall to a power that they themselves work continuously to recreate, a power hostile to all genuinely human relationships came through. This was, anyway, a scene that worked dramatically. That can’t really be said of the final one.

Back in the Maison Soprano, Wotan and Loge have Alberich in their power and secure his gold and, finally the ring, by hacking off his finger. Unsurprisingly, Alberich, dripping blood and then smearing it on the walls, utters his curse (though surely he should be grateful not to be floating in the Hudson?) The giants return, demanding payment, but Wotan holds out for the ring. Having been warned by Erda (who stood in the middle of the auditorium being videoed by Loge with the image projected back onto the set!) he gives in, the giants fall out etc etc etc. The final innovation is that the gods now hold a self-promoting, self-justifying press conference, no doubt “categorically refuting all allegations” before heading over the rainbow bridge whist Loge hangs back, surreptitiously slipping a cassette tape to one of the press corps. At least this tells us that there is trouble ahead.

Musically, it was OK (no better) and the singing was so-so (Alberich was good). Loge impressed as an actor more than a singer and Wotan didn’t really have sufficient presence. But though this was generally an enjoyable evening and the production did succeed in making Wagner’s theme of the lust for power and its consequences plain, it did so in such a far too obvious and heavy-handed way. Subtle this was not. But it is a difficult opera to ruin and it is hard to beat the anticipation of the opening, the dramatic effect of the renunciation motif, the general beauty of the music. Like I said, I wouldn’t disrecommend and I’m keen to see how this production develops with The Valkyrie in May.

March 04, 2004

Wagner and evolutionary psychology

Posted by Chris

I’m off to see Das Rheingold on Saturday (or, rather, since the production is by English National Opera , The Rhinegold ). The anticipation of this set me off googling for a hilarious passage from a Jerry Fodor review of Steven Pinker. I’d have liked to have found the whole thing, but the money quote is there in this review of a Fodor’s In Critical Condition :

The literature of psychological Darwinism is full of what appear to be fallacies of rationalization: arguments where the evidence offered that an interest in Y is the motive for a creature’s behavior is primarily that an interest in Y would rationalize the behavior if it were the creature’s motive. Pinker’s book provides so many examples that one hardly knows where to start.… [H]ere’s Pinker on why we like fiction: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?” Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance. (p. 212)

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter C.P. Shaw. The whole Fodor article, which I’d failed to find using Google is available on the LRB website .

March 02, 2004

Greatest Dylan songs

Posted by Chris

Head over to Normblog for another of Norm’s polls , this time on Bob Dylan’s best songs. You have up to five, but no more than five votes. My own entry?

Visions of Johanna
Stuck inside of Mobile
Desolation Row
It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Gates of Eden

All from just three (consecutive) albums. In my view, despite a brief return to form with Blood on the Tracks , Dylan’s subsequent output has been pretty mediocre and doesn’t compare to those wonderful albums just after he discovered the ‘lectricity whose ghost howls in the bones of her face. But I know others disagree (strongly).

Counting in Swaledale

Posted by Harry

The late great Jake Thackray has a song, Old Molly Metcalf, in which he describes a local quirky way of counting sheep in Swaledale (Yorkshire). The shepherds apparently count(ed) as follows:

Yan, Chan, Tether, Mether, Pip, Azar, Sazar, Akka, Cotta, Dik
Yanadik, Channadik, Thetheradik, Metheradik, Bumfit, Yanabum, Chanabum, Thetherabum, Metherabum, Jiggit.

I first heard the song long ago, and at that time still remembered a colloquial counting system from my Welsh childhood, but I have now completely forgotten it (it wasn’t Welsh — it wasn’t one of those parts of Wales). There must be others. Does anyone know what I’m thinking of? And can anyone give the origins of the Yan, Chan, Tether, Mether, Pip system? (Google gives me one hit — the page with the lyrics of Old Molly Metcalf).

February 23, 2004

Kleztravaganza

Posted by Eszter

I went to a great klezmer concert yesterday in Princeton. It started off with the Princeton University student klezmer group: the Klezmocrats. They are a talented young group. The main attraction was the Klez Dispensers. They, too, started out as a Princeton student group some years ago but by now work independently. It’s been wonderful to watch them grow over the years. They’re amazing. But don’t take my word for it (admittedly somewhat biased given my friendships with about half of them:), according to Pete Sokolow they are “the finest young group playing classic American Klezmer style today”. I recommend their new CD, the New Jersey Freylekhs. (I realize blogging about this before the concert would have been more helpful than doing so after.. I’ll try to be better about that next time.)

Economics of Mozart and Happiness

Posted by Kieran

Tyler Cowen writes

Read Michael’s recent treatment of The Economics of Mozart. The bottom line? Mozart was a successful commercial entrepreneur. His economic problems stemmed from a war with Turkey, not the failures of the marketplace.

He should definitely have known better than to start a war with Turkey. That whole abduction from the seraglio business was a complete farce. Meanwhile — sorry, I’m not even going to pretend to link these comments — Matt Yglesias makes the following observation about Greg Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox:

The real progress paradox isn’t “why doesn’t all our stuff make us happy” but rather, given that all our stuff pretty clearly doesn’t make us happy, how do we come to have all this stuff.

Which seems about right. An unwillingness to distinguish these two questions — or rather, the decision, for technical purposes, to treat them as if they were the same question — is a hallmark of modern economics. Robert E. Lane has a book that argues this point. Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer have a solid rejoinder from the economist’s point of view, arguing that money can indeed go a long way towards making you happy — but not as far, surprisingly, as democratic institutions and local political autonomy can.

February 15, 2004

Obsession

Posted by Kieran

Tyler Cowen lists his nominations for “best all-time songs about obsession.” My vote goes to Nina Simone’s version of I Put a Spell on You. Especially the last verse.

February 09, 2004

Bonoboland

Posted by Henry

Eugene Volokh opines that The Bonobos would be a good name for an intellectual art-rock band. Already been done. Simon Green, one of the better artists on Ninja Tune, has been recording as Bonobo for several years. If you like the weird electronic music hits experimental jazz thang, he’s very much worth checking out. He’s also playing DJ sets in a number of North American cities this spring, together with the incomparable Amon Tobin, whose Supermodified, Permutations and Bricolage albums are about the best and strangest drum’n’bass/experimental that I’ve heard in the last five years.

Yesterday Rules

Posted by Ted

Below is my review for Yesterday Rules, the new album by blogger and MTX frontman Doctor Frank. It’s really very good. (The album, not the review.)

When I was getting into punk rock, my pusher described the Mr. T Experience as part of the “holy trinity” of Ramones-influenced pop punk. (The other two bands, if I remember correctly, were the Queers and Screeching Weasel.) Their albums were a lot of fun, combining punk energy, catchy melodies, and vocal harmonies in infectious, irresistable packages.

Yesterday Rules isn’t a straight punk album, which is good news to some and bad news to others. It deserves to win them some new fans who wouldn’t be caught in a mosh pit. A better comparison would be back-in-the-day Elvis Costello. It’s not that it sounds like an Elvis Costello album; Costello sometimes seemed to take a left turn every few bars, whereas MTX is simpler and more direct. You can’t take the Ramones out of the boy.

What I mean is that the things that are good about Elvis Costello are also good about Yesterday Rules: they’ve got incredibly catchy songs, witty, insightful lyrics, and a lot of sonic diversity.

I’m not really sure why MTX hasn’t enjoyed more success. Doctor Frank is a gifted songwriter; he can construct a catchy song like a’ringin’ a bell. If I wanted to explain the concept of a musical pop hook to someone, I could do worse than put on an MTX album. The tunes on the album are instantly memorable, and the variety of styles is a blast. Between straightforward rawk on “Elizabeth or fight” to Austin Powers calypso on “Boyfriend Box” to crying-in-your-beer on “Jill”, punk fans will have plenty to enjoy, and non-punk fans will be able to listen to the whole thing without getting exhausted.

He really shines as a lyricist. The Elvis Costello comparison is especially apt here, as both write acidly clever, ironic lyrics. Both frequently focus on troubled relationships, without exactly wearing their hearts on their sleeve. I don’t think that the lyrics offer a window into the actual emotions of Dr. Frank in the manner of, say, Tori Amos. Just two samples:

from “Institutionalized Misogyny”, Yesterday Rules

now science tells us I’m hard-wired to, I’m required to
do it with you
‘cause I’m a man, and you’re a woman
and that’s what those kind of people do

I stole that line from Woody Allen
isn’t it amusing?
I wish I could make you understand
what Woody Allen meant

“Now that You Are Gone” from …And The Women Who Love Them

There was something in the way you said
never to call me again
and now I know I should have read
between the lines back then

And there were secrets that you almost kept
that were quite sufficient to show
but it finally hit me when
you left my name off your suicide note

They aren’t the first band to offset acid lyrics with up-tempo, jangly music, but they do it well.

The weakest part of the package is Dr. Frank’s voice. It’s neither smooth and sweet, nor interestingly scarred, but somewhere in between. I might compare him to Liz Phair, or Stephen Malkmus from Pavement. It works, don’t get me wrong, especially on the traditional fast-and-loud songs. But the highlights of this album are two gorgeous softer songs, “London” and “Big Strange Beautiful Hammer”. I could imagine either one of them breaking through and becoming a hit. Unfortunately, I don’t think that it’ll happen until they’re covered by someone else.

In short, it’s a terrific album. There aren’t too many things that you can do with $9 that will bring you more joy than buying Yesterday Rules.

February 05, 2004

What's better than cool?

Posted by Ted

The second-funniest thing I’ll see today, after the Guardian article from Brian’s post below, is TMFTML’s secret memo about the dirty director’s cut of “Hey Ya!”

However, it contains swear words, so please keep it away from Michael Powell.

School of Rock

Posted by Brian

And now for something completely different, The Guardian on what six to eight year olds think of classic rock. Here are some sample responses, but the whole thing is very amusing.

Smells Like Teen Spirit
It’s making me think about doing bad things like putting snowballs down my sister’s back.

Anarchy in the U.K.

He sounds like the baddie in Scooby Doo at the end.

January 23, 2004

Noise and nonsense

Posted by Chris

The “Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy” is organizing a conference with the nonsense title of NOISETHEORYNOISE#1 although NONSENSETHEORYNONSENSE might be more appropriate. The “theme” of the conference is described thus:

Noise is an unprecedented harbinger of aesthetic radicality: no-one yet knows what it is or what it means. This non-significance is its strength rather than its weakness. Noise is ‘non-music’ not because it negates music but because it affirms a previously unimaginable continuum of sonic intensities in which music becomes incorporated as a mere material.

And further elaborations include:

Where a ‘new aestheticism’ might present itself as a resistance to pragmatic instrumentality, postmodern academicism continues to adopt theory as ballast: works are mere pretexts for ostentatious displays of theoretical chic. But in what way could noise change the conditions of theoretical possibility, not to say intelligibility or even sensibility?

In what way indeed? Explanations on a postcard please …. (or in comments).

January 16, 2004

4' 3"

Posted by Chris

Chris Brooke reports that BBC Radio 3 are to broadcast a performance of John Cage’s 4’ 33” this evening. At the time of the Mike Batt copyright row I recounted on my old blog that I had attended a school performance of 4’ 33”. We all sat completely silent. No-one coughed, no-one shuffled. At the end of the 4 minutes and 33 seconds the pianist turned and berated us for giving such a poor rendition of the Cage’s work. He explained that “the point” of the work is to attend to the sounds produced by a restless and impatient audience and that, by sitting so quietly, we had sabotaged the “performance”. What he didn’t know was that a week earlier, rowdy behaviour by boys during a lecture from an explorer recently returned from the Hindu Kush had been savagely punished by the headmaster — several boys were caned — as a result, none of us had dared to make a sound for fear of further beatings.

December 18, 2003

Sing a bleep bleep

Posted by Eszter

The seven dirty words are still a no-no on US radio (unless they’re not sexual in nature, it turns out), but what about other suggestive lyrics? It doesn’t seem clear when things do and do not get censored. Take, for example, the song Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind. I haven’t heard that one on the radio, but a friend tells me that it is not bleeped out despite the line “she comes round and she goes down on me”. Recall, however, Alanis Morissette’s song You Oughta Know from a few years ago when a portion of the line “Would she go down on you in a theatre” did get bleeped out.

Is it a sign of the times that such lyrics no longer get censored or as a friend of mine hypothesizes, are women allowed to be less sexual in such lyrics? Are women singing about sexual actions more likely to get bleeped out than men? It’s just a hypothesis. We haven’t done a systematic analysis to answer the question. But it is certainly interesting to observe who and what gets censored.

For some interesting reading on all this, check out this document from the Federal Communications Commision. It has some amusing examples of indecency. Note, for example, the comment about the song Sit On My Face:
The song was found to be actionably indecent despite English accent and “ambient noise” because the lyrics were sufficiently understandable.
It looks like those of you thinking your English accent might get you off the hook better think again!

[Thanks to my friend Shawna for bringing some of the above to my attention and for pointers to relevant sites.]

December 14, 2003

Parsifal

Posted by Chris

Out to see the Welsh National Opera’s magnificent performance of Parsifal last night in Bristol. It was brilliantly conducted by Anthony Negus who brought out the shimmering beauty of the music. There were — as there always are — problems with the production, which both accentuated the specifically Christian aspects of the libretto and included absurdities such as Kundry towering over Parsifal in an enormous red dress (about 10 feet high!) in Act 2. But that shouldn’t diminish what was a very powerful experience both musically and dramatically — I’d single out, despite the red dress — the sexual tension of Act 2 as especially well done. As for individual performances: Sara Fulgoni as Kundry and Alfred Reiter as Gurnemanz both shone. (Spotted in the audience: Bryan Magee.)

I’m going to avoid much comment on the religious, symbolic and generally ideological content of the work here (partly because I want to post a longer essay on Wagner on CT soonish). Plainly the contrast between a life of religious devotion and one of sexual indulgence is at the centre of this work as it is of Tannhauser (for example). But whether there is, in the end, coherence there I’m far from sure. Plotwise it isn’t promising and, on the way home I played a little game with myself devising an update:

Act 1. A band of jihadis are in their mountain training-camp. An apostate turned brothel-keeper has stolen a holy relic from them but each jihadi who is sent to retrieve it is easily seduced by one of the brothel-keeper’s prostitutes and abandons the true religion.

Act 2: One jihadi, more insensitive than the rest, gets the relic back after ignoring the leading prostitute’s charms and killing the apostate.

Act 3. With the relic restored, the training camp gets back to normal.

A travesty, I know - and lacking Wagner’s wonderful music which in this opera consists of layer upon layer of interweaving sound - different from any of his others.

Recommended recordings. I have three: the most modern recording in my collection sounds on the face of things pretty unpromising - Armin Jordan, with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic (!) - but is probably the one I listen to most. The sound is good, the tempi about right and Robert Lloyd is a terrific Gurnemanz; I also have Knappertsbusch 1951 on Naxos (a real bargain!) and Knappertsbusch 1962 on Phillips. The performance is better in 1951 though the mono sound is pretty dry. I’d recommend all of them though I don’t think I’d want the early Knappertsbusch as a first or only version: for that I’d prefer a modern recording. Of others, I’ve listened to both Barenboim and parts of James Levine’s second attempt, but I wasn’t tempted to splash out on either.

December 12, 2003

Hans Hotter

Posted by Chris

The Guardian has an obituary for Hans Hotter , the great Wagnerian singer, who has expired at the age of 94. A sad day for all of us happily infected with the Wagner virus. The obit has the following nice anecdote:

When he made a first visit to London after peace had been declared, he saw a headline in the Evening Standard proclaiming “Hotter In London”, and it took him a few minutes to realise that the newspaper was referring to the weather, not to him.

December 07, 2003

Birthday boogie

Posted by Eszter

For some of us, ‘tis not only the season to get annoyed by some Christmas music. I’m wrapping up my 20s and planning a big 30th bday bash this coming weekend. I would like to play some fun/funny birthday songs and am looking for suggestions. I know there are some, I just can’t think of them.

Here’s the only one that comes to mind. I doubt many have heard about the “Birthday Song” by Spookie Daly Pride:

Today’s my birthday and the cake is on fire
[repeat]

I always ask for money
But I always get a sweater
Resigned to the fact
That it ain’t ever getting better
Clip on ties all the trousers
All the ugly pairs of socks
You might as well just give me
A bag of fu*king rocks

[..]

Just send the money forget the card
Forget the presents forget the card
Just send the money just send the money…

I don’t know if it works well without the music, it certainly works well with it.. not that it necessarily expresses my personal sentiments.:)

Berlioz day

Posted by Chris

BBC Radio 3 is devoting the entire day to a celebration of Hector Berlioz on his bicentenary. Some great music and much commentary on the life of a man who Ken Russell described (about an hour ago) as the most cinematic of composers.

November 17, 2003

Lucky choice

Posted by Chris

Brian’s post has set me off reminiscing about the first album I ever bought - and one of the best. In Loughborough, the nondescript market town where I lived, Boots the Chemists was just about the only place you could buy records back in 1972. And most albums were just beyond my means (or certainly required deferring gratification through saving for longer than I could bear). But one day there appeared on the racks some samplers from Atlantic at 99p each. The one I settled on, though I’d never heard any of the artists, had a bright yellow cover with a dragster and was called It All Started Here . My urge to possess overcame the irrationality of buying something I knew nothing about and so this 13-year-old came back home with the following tracks:

Aretha Franklin - Spanish Harlem

Brooke Benton - Shoes

The Persuaders - Thin Line Between Love and Hate

DeDe Warwicke - Suspicious Minds

Otis Redding - Give Away None Of My Love

King Curtis - Changes: Part 2

Clarence Carter - Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love

Wilson Pickett - Don’t Knock My Love part 1

Little Sister - Somebody’s Watching You

Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway - You’ve Got A Friend

The Beginning of the End - Funky Nassau

The Drifters - Up On the Roof

Sam & Dave - Don’t Pull Your Love

King Floyd - Groove Me

The best 99p I ever spent, though the record is badly worn after 31 years of listening. I’ve got various CDs with some of the content, but some tracks, such as Brooke Benton’s Shoes don’t seem to be available anywhere. A victory for the uninformed consumer.

Greatest Rock Albums

Posted by Brian

Matt Yglesias links to an appallingly boring list of the top 10 albums of all time, courtesy of (who else) Rolling Stone. Because I so love lists, and because I like flame wars, I decided to commemorate the occasion by pulling out my top 10 list, tinkering with it, and posting it.

These are in chronological order, because so many of the rankings would be completely arbitrary.

  • Blonde on Blonde (Bob Dylan)
  • Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles)
  • Before Hollywood (The Go-Betweens)
  • Post (Paul Kelly)
  • The Queen is Dead (The Smiths)
  • Stone Roses (Stone Roses)
  • Parklife (Blur)
  • Hi Fi Way (You Am I)
  • If You’re Feeling Sinister (Belle and Sebastian)
  • Is This It (The Strokes)

As you see, it’s only slightly less conventional than Rolling Stone, so I really shouldn’t be throwing bricks their way. I used to be embarrassed about the presence of Parklife on the list, but now I think it’s cutely perverse. The appropriate version of Is This It is of course the UK release, rather than the watered down US release.

November 05, 2003

Bert Jansch Interview

Posted by Harry

Bert Jansch is the interviewee on this week’s My Life on CD. I’m a big fan of Jansch, and this interview is fantastic because he is vitually monosyllabic — poor Tracey Macloed works for every word she gets out of him. Reminds me of the great Wogan interview with James Bolam in which Bolam sat in complete silence, apparently dumbstruck by the situation (and Wogan, masterfully, filled in all the gaps).

October 29, 2003

Opera on a budget

Posted by Chris

I went to see The Opera Project’s production of Cosi Fan Tutte last night at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory . I wasn’t sure quite what to expect, since my previous experience of the venue had been for the excellent Shakespeare productions there, rather than for anything musical. The theatre is very small and the audience entirely surrounds the “stage”. Anyway, it worked marvellously. Musically, of course, it wasn’t going to be on a par with Covent Garden or the Met since only a very small orchestra could possibly fit in the space. But dramatically it was tremendous with the players in very immediate contact with the audience. The singing was pretty good, but Richard Studer’s very colloquial English translation of the libretto — “You’re winding me up!” etc — and the unfussiness of the production made for a very engaging evening.

Cosi probably isn’t my favourite of the Mozart operas. But it tells us something about the greatness of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s artistry that they produced something that can succeed in performance in so many different ways and in different productions. Given the right orchestra you could just close your eyes and enjoy the richness of the music, a lavish production from a great opera company can work as a spectacle, and a small-scale budget performance can work as an Oscar Wilde-style comedy.

Given that diversity of possibilities with just one work (and, of course, they aren’t mutually exclusive possibilities) it puzzles me when people say that don’t like opera. (And add to the variations on one work, the different musical styles available!) I can spend an evening amused and engaged by a performance like the one I saw at the Tobacco Factory, or I can put on a CD of Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi and have the whole world magically become calm and still.

Incidentally, the Tobacco Factory is a development by George Ferguson , one of Bristol’s leading architects and the current president of RIBA . He’s a real visionary (and a leading British exponent of new urbanism). The theatre he’s designed there runs at a slight loss, I understand, but it adds value to the whole complex which in turn helps to enliven what was a fairly run-down part of the city.

October 13, 2003

Greatest jazz albums

Posted by Chris

Norman Geras’s greatest jazz albums poll is up. I managed to vote for just one in the top 15, Ellington’s Newport album. There’s rightly a lot of Coltrane in there, but, disappointingly, my own top pick, his Live at the Village Vanguard didn’t make it.

October 12, 2003

Strange Similes

Posted by Brian

The third line of the latest Powderfinger album is:

You’re swollen like a lexicon.

If that’s the best they can come up with it seems to imply not swollen at all.

By the way, the album isn’t particularly good. If you were going to buy it because you’re still hoping they can recapture the quality of their early work, save your dollars and be spared some disappointment.

October 11, 2003

Five great non-jazz albums

Posted by Henry

Tom posted a few days ago on fifteen great jazz albums; I’m ashamed to state that I know next to nothing about jazz - or classical music. My tastes tend to be more lowbrow - rock, pop, some country, and lots of experimental electronic music. In that spirit, I’ll offer a list of five of my favourite quasi-obscure albums. Only quasi-obscure, mind you; you should be able to find all of this stuff in yer local Tower if the spirit moves you.

DJ Marky - Movement: The Brazilian Job

Tyler Cowen blogs a lot about the positive effects of mix-n-match globalization for culture; I reckon that this album proves his point. Drum and bass with a distinct Brazilian tinge. It’s a great mix album, ranging from samba-inflected jungle to UK darkcore (Ed Rush and Optical) and somehow, somehow, making it all gel together. A minor masterpiece.

The Boo Radleys - Giant Steps

Forgotten by all except by fans of early 1990’s British indie, this is one of my top 5 albums of all time. A little like My Bloody Valentine (but far less heavy on the reverb), a little like ‘OK-Computer’ era Radiohead; a lot like the Beatles, if the Beatles had come from another planet. Fuzzy guitars, distortion, understated vocals and savage lyrics. Their other albums range from quite good (Everything’s Alright Forever) to not very good at all (Kingsize).

The Handsome Family - Through the Trees

Murder ballads like you’ve never heard them before. A couple performing country music with a wry twist. Songs about Cologne Cathedral, madness, little sisters dying of snakebite, how “drifting neutrinos fall through the trees.” The whole gamut.

David Holmes - Let’s Get Killed

Belfast DJ wandering the streets of New York, talking to random crazies, recording their conversations with a DAT recorder, and setting them to compelling beats. Especial kudos for “Gritty Shaker,” (which appears in a slightly different version on his soundtrack for Oceans 11) and his majestic reworking of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Don’t Die Just Yet.”

Amon Tobin - Permutation

It’s hard to choose just one Amon Tobin album; but this is the one for me. Jazz hits drum and bass, but not the usual wuffly noodlings of jazz’n’bass. Instead, Permutation is something nasty; sleazy, lithe, iridescent, disturbing. An album that bites - standout tracks are “Sordid,” “Switch,” “Like Regular Chickens,” and “Nova” (which was later used as the background music for that Bebel Gilberto song which was playing all over last year).

October 07, 2003

RIAA Radar

Posted by Brian

If you want to keep buying music without supporting the RIAA (now most famous for suing 12 year olds) it’s worth checking out RIAA Radar, which provides some lists of which albums are not released by members of the RIAA. For a good sample of what’s available, here’s their list of the top 100 non-RIAA albums on Amazon. There’s some good stuff on there, including recent albums by Múm, the New Pornographers (my favourite album of the year to date), Warren Zevon, Super Furry Animals, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Shins, the Waifs and many more.

Thanks to Virulent Memes for the link.

October 04, 2003

Fifteen Great Jazz Albums

Posted by Tom

Norman Geras is running another of his music-related polls, this one on readers’ nominations for their top 15 jazz albums.

The list I sent Norm isn’t ordered, since I refuse to give myself that big a headache; nor can I reasonably say that it what’s on it constitutes ‘the greatest etc.’, since I’ve no doubt the list would almost certainly be rather different if my CD collection were larger. (As a corollary, it’ll be different in sixth months time - like John Holbo, I’m apt to spend a ridiculously hefty proportion of any hike in my income on music.)

So, I offer this list in the spirit that these are fifteen albums that I really, really like, and maybe you would too:

  • John Coltrane, ‘Giant Steps’. Coltrane’s playing on the title track is just a force of nature, and ‘Naima’ is very pretty indeed.
  • Miles Davis, ‘The Best of the Quintet, 1965-8’. Since I can’t have the Plugged Nickel sessions in their entirety within the rules of the poll, this’ll do as representative of that band’s amazing achievements.
  • Wayne Shorter, ‘Juju’. Unbelievable energy and surprise here.
  • McCoy Tyner, ‘The Real McCoy’. Tyner’s way with harmony still knocks me over whenever I listen to him; if only I could work out exactly what he was up to and reproduce something like it myself …
  • Joe Pass, ‘Virtuoso Vol. 4’. Gorgeous, joyful, artful solo guitar.
  • Miles Davis, ‘Kind of Blue’. Comment superflous.
  • Charlie Parker, Savoy Sessions vol 5. (Any decent Parker compilation will do the trick, but since we’re confined to LP’s here, I’ll pick out this out of the feasible set partly because it’s the first bit of Bird I ever bought, partly because I particularly love ‘Parker’s Mood’.)
  • Brecker, Hancock, Hargrove, ‘New Directions in Music’. Smart, edgy, endlessly inventive reinvention of the legacies of Coltrane and Miles. Damn I wish I’d seen that band when they toured.
  • Miles Davis, ‘Decoy’. Miles takes fewer drugs, sacks the conga player, and finally does something really interesting with electric instruments. The presence of Branford Marsalis and John Scofield doesn’t hurt, it has to be said.
  • Ella Fitzgerald, ‘Ella Sings Gershwin’. This being the single CD from the big Verve release of the whole American Songbook, (which I can’t have by the ‘no boxed-set’ rule, damn it). ‘Embraceable You’ is worth the price of admission on its own.
  • Keith Jarrett Trio, ‘Still Live’. Jarrett’s improvised introduction to ‘My Funny Valentine’ is a minor masterpiece.
  • Martin Taylor, ‘In Concert’. Technically jaw-dropping, harmonically fiendish but wonderfully entertaining solo set.
  • John Scofield, ‘Flat Out’. Clever, abstracted acoustic funk with great interplay between Sco and Terri Lyne Carrington on the drums. ‘All The Things You Are’ never sounded like this before. And if ‘Sissy Strut’ doesn’t make you want to dance, well, I dunno… (I speak as someone who is notorious for being close to impossible to persuade to dance.)
  • Wayne Shorter, ‘Live Evil’. Rather like the Hancock/Brecker album in giving us a chance to listen to the very finest players rework the ground-breaking stuff from the ‘sixties, and none the worse for that.
  • Bill Evans and Jim Hall, ‘Undercurrent’. Introverted, thoughtful, humane, unmissable stuff.

    If you’ve a list in mind, do tell Norm about it by emailing him here. Your deadline is midnight Sunday GMT - my bad for not mentioning it earlier.

    Update: Kieran correctly points out in the comments that I probably meant to recommend the work of Miles Davis, rather than that of the all-too-plausible titan of ‘the Treorchy pitster scene’, Miles Davies. I’ve now changed the list to make this clear.

    My apologies to the ghosts of both gentlemen for any crisis of identity this confusion may have provoked.

  • September 15, 2003

    Is piracy killing music?

    Posted by Chris

    The music industry claims the download pirates are killing music. So how bad would things be if the music industry died? John Holbo paints a plausible picture.

    September 10, 2003

    I know that dreams come true...

    Posted by Ted

    because the Pixies are getting back together.

    In April, the legendary Pixies will reunite for the first time in over a decade. The notoriously quarrelsome quartet have buried the hatchet, clearing the way for all four original members to hop onstage together for a world tour, according to a spokesperson for the band.

    If all goes as planned, the triumphant return of one of the most influential rock bands of the late ’80s might also be followed by a new studio album, the source said. The band has not yet gotten together to begin rehearsing for the tour, but, given their ugly breakup in 1993, the announcement is one of the most unlikely and anticipated reunions in the history of indie rock.

    Best band ever. I couldn’t be more delighted.

    (link via TMFTML)

    September 08, 2003

    Ian Macdonald

    Posted by Tom

    It’s sad to read that Ian Macdonald, the music critic, has died.

    Macdonald deserves the description ‘music critic’ rather than the more workaday ‘rock journalist’, in my view, simply on the strength of his extraordinary book Revolution in the Head: The Beatles and The Sixties.

    I’m a second-generation Beatles fan. I’ve known all the Beatles songs for as long as I can remember, since my parents were of the first generation, yea even unto the possession of a Mono edition of ‘Please Please Me’. Still, Macdonald’s book made me listen to some of the records completely differently. He knew about, and cared about, the notes themselves, and differed from almost every other writer about rock in being able to write with confidence about the harmonic machinery that made some of the Fabs’ stuff so, well, fabulous.

    The opinions about the social effects of the ‘sixties that Macdonald expresses in the book aren’t ones I’d necessarily sign up to, but they are honestly, unpretentiously, and intelligently expressed, and are in an entirely different league from the sophomoric stuff from which certain others who have written in this genre have made careers.

    Anyway, here he is on ‘Good Day Sunshine’:


    The summer of 1966 was particularly glorious and McCartney’s ‘Good Day Sunshine’, written one hot afternoon at Lennon’s mansion, was one of several records to capture the atmosphere. Made quickly and easily in two sessions, the song is both blissfully simple and full of the free-spirited musical jesting with which The Beatles amazed classical critics. (It was a particular favourite of Leonard Bernstein.) Stealing up through the deceptive shade of E major, it leaps joyously into the light of the dominant - dropping beats left, right, and centre - before landing, in barrelhouse 4/4 on A major. Lest this become too familiar, the second verse cuts itself short for a rolling piano excursion to D, played with aplomb (and varispeed) by George Marin, before modulating in a telescoping coda of canonic entries from all parts of the the stereo spectrum. Superbly sung by McCartney and exquisitely produced by Martin and his team, Good Day Sunshine displays The Beatles at their effortless best.