From the category archives:
Music
I’ve already gone over my looking at words limit today, so this will be brief. I thought this odd problem was caused by watching a bad TV show in which some of the characters have Southern accents. Nope. In wending my way through the various neuroscience labs and so forth I have learned that they basically don’t know jack about migraines. But in any case migraines are exhausting. So I am strongly inclined to make curious mistakes, wrong words, spoonerisms, aphasia, whatever. (I couldn’t remember the word “tesseract” the other day. My doctor laughed at me when I brought this up as a complaint.) And to regress. But regress to what, when I was 6? I never have had a Southern accent as an adult. I speak overly quickly, but with a normal East Coast accent. Except under the strain of continual pain and electric storms in the brain I…have a Southern accent now? My daughter said “ain’t” the other day? What in the everlovin’ blue-eyed world is that, I ask you. My family is going to give me constant hell from the minute I see them till moment I leave. I’m afraid to go home to DC! I’ll go to S.C. sure, no one will notice.
My Chinese business partner loves it, she thinks Southern accents are the cutest things in the world, and it also means I talk at about…2/3 the speed of my previous rate. Maybe even 1/2. It’s just, really weird. I can feel it; I can actively fight it with concentration. It varies throughout the day, depending on pain and so forth. The funny thing is that I used to be unable to produce a Southern accent on demand. If she asked me to do it, I couldn’t, I would just freeze up somehow, it felt like I was pretending something. Oh well, ain’t is a perfectly fine word.
Answers to Questions No One Asked Me, Part 1 of n+1 where n > or = 0
Belle, what’s go-go music? Many a time I have heard that question not asked by someone moving to the DC area, or not asked by a person who hasn’t heard about go-go and knows I went to high school in DC. I have failed to be asked this question on literally countless occasions. That’s all over now. Go-go is a distinctive sub-genre of music popular only in the DC metro area (including Baltimore). It has always been dance music (as in “Going to a Go-Go”) and has always relied on this one beat. As far as beats go it sounds a distinctly Latin one, but there’s no Latin influence on any of the rest of the music ever. Wikipedia claims that “unique to Go-Go is an instrumentation with 3 standard Congas and 2 “Junior Congas”, 8″ and 9″ wide and about half as tall as the standard Congas, a size rare outside of Go-Go. They were introduced to Rare Essence by Tyrone Williams aka Jungle Boogie in the early days when they couldn’t afford enough full sized Congas, and are ubiquitous ever since.”
Yeah OK, but Chuck Brown, with or without The Soul Searchers, is considered the “Godfather of Go-Go,” did everybody change their kit later? And do all mostly black musical sub-genres have to have someone named “Brown” be the godfather of them? And “it was because they couldn’t afford bigger congas” has urban legend written all over it. Anyway, yeah, a whole bunch of congas and bells and whatnot. The only time a white DC audience ever heard that many drum solos was when Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” concert was in town. (Before Randy Rhoads died in that tragic plane accident at Ozzy’s ranch. Who knows what magic might be flying off the fretboard of his distinctive “Flying V” right now. I’ll tell you all about my deep, deep love of “Tribute” and how I cry when I listen to “Goodbye to Romance” another time.)
Yeah, anyway, why two Rare Essence songs? OK, they’re my fave go-go band. But also I think this shows the evolution of the genre from something like funk to an intriguing version of hip-hop backed with live percussion and horns. It has continued to evolve, and is still popular in the DC metro area despite never making it anywhere else. Well, that’s not quite true, in that the music has been heavily sampled for other hip-hop songs which are then, perforce, go-go.
This is ye olde skuel, “Body Moves.” It’s special because it includes the DC slang word “sice” in the call and response at the end. “Sice” is more or less entirely equivalent to “psych,” (I’m siced for this party!) but can’t be negative (you can’t “sice someone out.”):
Back in the crack epidemic years go-go clubs were the site of lots of crime and shootings, and since the DC City Council is a bunch of morons, they decided to solve this problem by banning certain clubs from playing go-go. Ha ha pretend. NO RLY! One wonders whether, if such a club were to play, say, Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” (not that it would be a good idea, mind you) whether the club would be in violation, since the main loop is a sample from Chuck Brown’s “Busting Loose.” (Notice Chuck saying “give me the bridge now,” in 1978, that’s the oldest song I know that does that.) “It’s go-go!” “But it’s just a sample. It’s as if there are invisible quotes around the go-go that make it safe!” I could imagine the liquor license board debates getting pretty metaphysical. Next up is Rare Essence’s most popular ever song. It even made it to Yo! MTV Raps, as you can see (video way worth watching).
It is a testament to how not gentrified parts of DC are that I still don’t know where the hell Montana or Minnesota Avenues is. They’re getting the shout-outs, I assume they’re in S.E., but damn, that’s a lot of not knowing shit about your hometown. Go-go’s just weird in that none of its practitioners have ever hit the big time, even though it’s more or less next to New York. Even little old Savannah, GA has had more success in this regard (Outkast). I was originally going to defend disco from its detractors in the Don Cornelius thread who complained there was only one beat and the bass could never stray, and that was bad, by showing a) the bass can walk all over the damn place, and b) no harm in having generic constraints. Do you hate Loleatta Holloway and the SalSoul Orchestra, I intended to ask? Do you hate dancing (N.B. there is a go-go break in that song, “212 North 12th St.”)? Do you hate life itself? Then I got distracted. Squirrel! What? John insisted on the title. Brought to you by Stuff White People Like.
DISTURBING UPDATE: People born on the day Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” was at #1 are old enough to comment on youtube now. I mean, I know stray dogs comment on youtube, but still. Possibly more disturbing: I have a sweet-tooth weakness for this song.
NOT PARTICULARLY DISTURBING AT ALL UPDATE: If you find the openly proffered go-go unpalatable, then listen to the more funk-like Chuck Brown track linked above. You will probably like it more. If you like funk, which you probably do, because it’s funk, and all.
I’m teaching Plato – again! But I like it that way! Also, I don’t see why Belle should be the only one posting YouTube videos. So here’s a really really nice Magnetic Fields song, allowing me to combine my interest in Platonic themes with my interest in linking to YouTube.
Don Cornelius, who had a voice so mellow and soulful you’d come away from an interview with him and Isaac Hayes thinking “that Cornelius guy sounded pretty chilled out,” killed himself yesterday at 75. (Is that sad? I guess it depends why he did it. A long life, well-lived, and then you end it on your own terms–that doesn’t seem like a failure or a tragedy necessarily, though I would extend my condolences to his family.) In any case, he was the originator and host of one of the coolest TV shows of all time: Soul Train. When I was a kid, and wore an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time, there were pretty much no good shows on TV. But as a teen I could watch Moonlighting! Yeah, um. OK, there was Voltron, and The “A” Team etc., don’t hassle me. Anyway, Soul Train had incredible music, incredible dancing, and truly, the pinnacle-of-outrageawsome clothes. That foot-wide bow tie? For real? I found the whole thing mesmerizing but hadn’t thought much about it in a long time until I read the obituaries and saw that iconic Soul Train chugging along the hills. This following video shows you some great dancing and reinforces the point Amanda Marcotte made recently, that Saturday Night Fever was based on made-up nonsense and mostly people danced to disco like they danced to house music or rap or whatever: idiosyncratic moves and general rocking the beat. Now, maybe we would put this particular song in the Rare Groove box instead of the Disco box, but that’s just evidence of the extent to which they blended together, and, in the form of samples, formed the smooth undercurrent of (especially) west-coast hip-hop. All those slinky keyboards and horns? You heard it on the Soul Train before you heard it in The Chronic.
The Soul Train Youtube channel is generally amazing, and I am so buying a boxset now. The sound quality on this one isn’t as good, but a)it’s Marvin Gaye singing Distant Lover b) the look on the woman’s face at 2.02 when he comes down to sing into the crowd is truly beautiful. I know what you’re saying. “Belle Waring, I am a busy person and even though I am skiving off work I do not have 5 minutes to spare listening to one of the greatest singers of all time singing a beautiful sad song.” Well OK, Ms./Mr. Thing, you can listen to it open in another tab while you read a blog post write your journal article. Or you could watch Marvin Gaye in a knitted hat, charming the pants off of every person so inclined as to have their pants charmed off by a dude, and frankly, probably no small number who didn’t think they were in the “a dude can charm my pants off” crowd. Wishing you peace, love, and soul.
I’ve been fixing the footnotes to a new translation of Rousseau’s Considerations on the Government of Poland (fn1) and whilst doing so happened upon a really fascinating bit of Danish history. Rousseau has a cryptic remark:
bq. You have seen Denmark, you see England, and you will soon see Sweden. Profit by these examples to learn once and for all that, however many precautions you may amass, heredity in the throne and liberty in the nation will forever be incompatible things.
What would they have seen in Denmark?
[click to continue…]
I just read two books back to back to good effect: Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy
I was listening to NPR’s All Song’s Considered, because whenever life seems jittery, the dulcet tones of Bob Boilen make it alright. They played a track by Motopony which quite earwormed me into buying the album. Turns out it contains several excellent tracks, in my humble opinion, and a few duds. Belle, my Facebook wife (that’s sort of like a cross between a common-law wife and Tron, as I understand the legalities), likes them, too. So she checked them out on Facebook and, apparently, they need a ride from L.A. to San Diego. Hope that works out for them. I’ll link to two tracks I particularly liked. First, “Seer”. That’s the one they played on NPR. I can’t quite peg it. Like … Jethro Tull, “Cross-Eyed Mary” meets … something that’s … pleasantly cheesy/grungy/Queens Of The Stone Age in a non-Jethro Tullish way, and no flute? But in a good way. Definitely no flute. You tell me what it sounds like. I also really like “June”. Because my favorite album is Fleetwood Mac, Tusk, and “June” – especially the ‘Hold on’ chorus bit – has a very Lindsey Buckingham Tusk era thing going on. I like the moog-as-bass on a lot of the tracks. Is it moog? Some other vintage electric organ sound? (Oh hey: here’s a live version of “Seer”. And a live version of “June”.)
I got the new Bon Iver album and it, too, has got some solid tracks but also some that make me fear that, in 5 years, Bon Iver is going to sound like Bruce Hornsby and the Range. I hope I’m wrong about that.
I’ve never really been into anything post Desire, but went through a period of intense Dylan fandom in my late teens. That’s faded, but he’s still special and I’ll never understand the haters. Personal favourites: Visions of Johanna and Absolutely Sweet Marie.
The new Fleet Foxes album, Helplessness Blues
Somehow there’s this review meme that Fleet Foxes is coolly uncool. Pitchfork: “Their bright folk-rock sound wasn’t exactly “cool,” but that was sort of the point– it’s familiar in the most pleasing way, lacking conceit or affectation. Their expression of their love for music (and making music) was refreshing three years ago, and that sort of thing never gets old.” Stereogum: “Helplessness Blues is a deeply uncool album. If you played it for your dad he’d either say, “Finally,” or he’d laugh and put on some Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, maybe even America if you stuck around. Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes’ singer and songwriter knows how unhip this music is.”
That doesn’t seem right to me at all. Fleet Foxes sounds to me like growing up on Radiohead transmogrified into a kind of flat, plainsong-y folk choral style. Radiohead is vocally flat/affectless and instrumentally droney and tick-tock yet also emotionally soaring; so is a lot of folk music. So you can map Radiohead-y forms and stylings onto folk-y or country-ish patterns and get something that sounds quite contemporary. If you don’t play it for laughs (seriously, click that link) you can play it for sheer beauty, which gets you Fleet Foxes, sounding quite contemporary. If you held a gun to Vampire Weekend’s head and told them to play folk music, they might sound like some of the brighter, warmer Fleet Foxes tracks. Like “Sim Sala Bim”. Which, come to think of it, sort of reminds me of the Beatles, “Two of Us”. And could be construed as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young-ish.
If you wanted to compare Fleet Foxes to something 70’s, I guess the smooth and flat but strong and soaring vocal style of Roberta Flack would seem less inapt, comparison-wise, than Simon and Garfunkel or America. But I don’t think Fleet Foxes sounds much like Roberta Flack. The Pitchfork review also compares them to the Zombies, which I could buy. I love the Zombies.
UPDATE: OK, I take it back. All that “Apples in the summer” stuff in “The Shrine/An Argument” sounds like Crosby, Still, Nash and Young.
Perhaps it’s worth pointing out that it took me, like, 1.5 minutes to find approximately 1.5 gigs of free downloads of SXSW related mp3s. Hardly scratched the surface, I have. Lots of new bands, great stuff, live stuff, lots of mediocre stuff. Amazon has free samplers (here and here
Tell me of your SXSW-related musical discoveries, for better or worse. But especially for better.
For very personal reasons, depressing as it is, I cannot hear this one without smiling:
Since that Flaming Lips deal seems to have expired; since concerns have been expressed in comments, to the effect that the very category of Metaphysical McGuffin may constitute deplorably Platonic confusion about the very nature of art, I’ll offer some free music that settles all that. How about Of Montreal’s cover of “Color Me In”? (From this page.)
Something new and nothing to do
I’m just the idea
I must be real cause somehow I feel
That I’m just the idea
The original Broadcast version is here.
Is that clear?
Man, I haven’t heard this