Music

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.

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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?

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…

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

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.

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 …

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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.

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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.

Last week was the centenary of George Formby’s birth. You can hear about his life in a sweet bio-documentary byRussell 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.

The one where I pretend that this is Fametracker

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?

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 )

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.

fn1. That was real data, by the way. I abused it but I didn’t make it up.

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.

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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.