The Inconsiderate Mixtape

The Godfather of Soul, The King of Pop and The Prince of OMG!

2011-01-18T19:59:00.003-06:00

1980's James Brown? ok
1980's Michael Jackson? pretty awesome
1980's Prince? amazing

All three together? there are no words

Hasil Adkins :: Out To Hunch :: 1986

2011-01-13T16:56:00.010-06:00

Hasil Adkins was a Rockabilly musicians in the latter 50's/early 60's (this 1986 cd is a compilation of singles and other stuff as he never released an official album in his early days). There were a lot of Rockabilly musicians back then. The problem is that most of them sound the same and are completely interchangeable. About the only thing that could set one apart is that elusive "something" that i've referred to in past posts. You know what that "something" is. The thing you can't put your finger on that makes a person magnetic and turns them into a star. So the question is does Mr. Adkins have what it takes to stand out from the pack.

Well, let's just start with an examination of the external. The photos on the front and inside of the CD booklet show us a tough looking young man with popped collars and towering pompadour. There are a lot of photos of him by cool-looking cars or holding records or a hollow-bodied electric guitar. Alright, everything seems in line so far; let's check out the song titles.

"We Got a Date," "You Don't Love Me," "High School Confidential," "Gee But I Love You." Ok, that sounds about right. Then there's "Chicken Walk" and "No More Hot Dogs" which seem a little weird but those kids were kinda crazy in the 50's. But then there's "Hot Dog Baby" so maybe he just has a thing about hot dogs. And the final track is called "I Need Your Head." I'm assuming this isn't like the Misfits singing "I want your skulls." Maybe i have a dirty mind but this could be the most risque song on the Rockabilly circuit. I guess we'll just have to see; let's check out the songs themselves.

For the most part, it sounds like Rockabilly. There's that chugging country rhythm and all that energy. It's kind of sparse sounding and the recording quality is a little rough but that's ok i guess. Also this guy sounds like he might be a little crazy but that just adds the fun of it, right? Whatever this is, it's not exactly Gene Vincent but i guess there can only be one of them. Let's just move onto some lyrics and see how they stack up.

The first song, "She Said" is all about hookin' up with a girl. Ok, sounds about right. Wait, did he just say she looked like "a dying can of commodity meat?" You lost me a little there, Hasil. Alright, let's move on to the second song, "No More Hot Dogs." After some kind of maniacal laughter, the lyrics come in, "I'm gonna put your head on my wall/ just like i said baby, you can't talk no more/ you can't eat no more/ eat no more ho-o-ot dogs." What the hell is going on here?!! Holy crap! This is like the Misfits! That oh-so-innocent sounding "We Got a Date" is also about chopping off some girl's head! And as far as "I Need Your Head," i may not even listen to that one. Who knows, maybe it's just about snuggling or something... nope, i just listened to it, it's definitely about decapitation.

So here's the quick bio on Hasil Adkins. Born in Boone County, West Virginia, he fell in love with the radio and the likes of Hank Williams. He noticed on one of his records that the only name listed was Hank's so he just assumed he was the only one playing. With that information, Adkins taught himself to play guitar with his hands and the drums with his feet. He got hold of a reel-to-reel recorder and started making records. He self-released his records and reportedly always mailed one to the sitting President of the United States. (He received a thank-you letter from the office of Richard Nixon).

In the mid-80's a couple of fine folks discovered his rare 45 of "She Said" and went on a search for the song's writer. They formed Norton Records and released this compilation of early singles. They eventually got him into a proper studio to record some new material, including an album called "Poultry in Motion" on which his single favorite meat was the subject of every song.

Out To Hunch will fall into what has become known as "Outsider Music." It seems odd that it's become a genre but it makes sense. This is music that is just too strange to fit into any kind of conventional mold. The catch is that the makers of the music don't really know that it's strange. Adkins was making these records with the belief that they were capable of being just as successful as those of Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis Presley. And in all their strangeness and, frankly, scariness, it's that purity that's makes them special. Hasil Adkins, didn't have an education, he didn't have guitar lessons, he didn't have a proper studio or even a band to back him up. But he, without a doubt had that "something" that so many others lacked.

Adkins toured through the latter 80's/early 90's and played the occasional show in the new millennium. He passed away in the spring of 2005. Possibly from intentionally being run over by an ATV.

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Not surprisingly, i couldn't find old footage of The Haze but i wanted you to hear it so here it is.

Radio Shows: December 2 & 9

2010-12-15T20:23:00.000-06:00

For the December 2nd show, i did the first hour (hour and a half actually; i snuck in early) and this semester's trainee, Michael, took the second hour so their split up here.

December 2 (w/DJ Susan)
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December 2 (w/Michael)
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December 9th
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Radio Shows: Oct. 28 & November 4

2010-12-11T14:13:00.000-06:00

October 28th
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November 4th
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Radio Shows: November 11 & 18

2010-12-09T20:17:00.004-06:00

November 11

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November 18
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Sit like a lady, Lionel.

2010-12-09T12:52:00.001-06:00

Have you ever noticed how unladylike Lionel Richie is?

Frank Zappa :: Hot Rats :: 1969

2010-12-02T22:00:00.000-06:00

Being a genius doesn't necessarily make you a weirdo and being a weirdo certainly doesn't make you a genius but sometimes the two just seem to go hand in hand. I know "Genius" is a pretty big word and should be used sparingly. I also don't have a clue what the actual definition of genius is. There's probably an IQ number that determines that in the math & science fields but when it comes to art, the word means something different to everyone. As for my own definition, it refers to someone who has created something only they could have created. It means they operate on some other plane than the rest of us; that their minds have different gears that keep them from creating the same art everyone else creates. It is a term that i do in fact use sparingly and it is a term i do not hesitate to apply to Frank Zappa...as well as "Weirdo."

This is a man that undoubtedly operates on a different creative level than the rest of the world and i think that's why a lot of folks, myself included, find it hard at first to appreciate what he does. The other main obstacle is that his ideas and songs aren't always consistent from one album to the next. Just because you love or hate one Zappa album, that doesn't mean you'll feel the same about the next one. This was my original problem. I had heard some songs that i just thought were silly (we'll talk about that word in a moment) and wrote him off. It wasn't until i was told to check out a live album, Roxy and Elsewhere, that my opinion changed. [I must take this moment to thank my friend Mike's friend Stacy for steering me in the right direction. So Mike, pass that on.]

So let's address the silliness of Frank Zappa for just a moment. He definitely has a strange sense of humor. He writes songs about yellow snow, fingerbangin' and talking dogs. But that is just surface stuff. There's two things you'll find if you dig a little deeper. First of all, you'll notice that the grooves underneath are usually very intricate with a lot of unique sounds for rock music. The other thing is that the lyrics are really more of a mirror held up to the world of entertainment. Let's face it, even if you appreciate Fellini, watching a guy get hit in the nuts is still going to entertain you. We can pretend we're high art but we're not.

Now with that said, silliness has pretty much nothing to do with Hot Rats because while the yellow snow songs are what Zappa is mostly known for, he's far too complicated to put in a box. While he has his "pop" albums, he also has his instrumental albums where he fuses rock, jazz and his own special weirdness. This is one of those. What you have here is a mix of tightly arranged material and studio jams (we'll talk about that word in a moment).

Opener "Peaches en Regalia" is a perfect example of what Zappa does like nobody else. This is where "Frank Zappa: Composer" shines through. He creates his own version of the Wall of Sound by sending bass, guitar, mandolin and whatever else he can find down the same melodic path. He has every instrument playing its role to create a very busy yet very concise piece of... well, it's not exactly Rock but i wouldn't call it Jazz. It sounds kind of gypsy-carnivalish but that doesn't really work either. It is right at 3 and 1/2 minutes so maybe it's a pop song. Whatever it is, it's just about perfect.

"Willie the Pimp" features Captain Beefheart in a guest spot on vocals (the only non-instrumental track on the album). His growl tells a story over a great riff which gives way to some soloing opportunities on the last half of the song. The fuzzy guitar shares the spotlight here with the violin work of "Sugarcane" Harris on what builds into a fantastic jam.

"Son of Mr. Green Genes," "Little Umbrellas" and "It Must Be a Camel" all fall into the "arranged" category varying from 3 minute to 9 minute pieces. The latter ventures into the Jazz department and somehow emulates the sound of a skipping CD nearly 15 years before they were invented. And then there is what is my personal highlight of this amazing album, the 17-minute jam "The Gumbo Variations."

Ok, let's address the "jam" issue first. We all know about "Jam Bands" and we've all met a lot of douchebags who listen almost exclusively to them. Depending on the particular brand of jam-band-douchebag, they may also really enjoy either Radiohead, Outkast or Bluegrass music. Now Jam Bands are not inherently crappy. [In full disclosure, i saw Phish live in 1993 and currently own 4 albums by both Phish and Grateful Dead] These bands are usually undeniably talented and sometimes they write good songs. The problem is that when they get to the "jam" part of a song, all thoughts of songcraft go out the window. I really do love the Dead albums i have but the couple of times i've tried to listen to any of their Dick's Picks (licensed bootlegs) albums, i can't get through a single song before i'm bored and/or annoyed. When most bands "jam," it's just an opportunity for the individual musicians to show off what they can do and it often doesn't fit with the overall song. Think about Jazz for a moment. Many Jazz songs are nothing but "jams" but the solos are done with an awareness of the other musicians and how each part fits together and that's where Zappa is as much a Jazz musician as he is a Rock musician. In other words, while Widespread Panic is all about musical masturbation, Zappa is more about musical group sex.

And boy does it get sweaty in "The Gumbo Variations." If you're a fan of classic rock from the late 60's and early 70's, you'll be able to find plenty of examples of songs that come to a point, after all the verses and choruses are said and done, of sheer Rocking Out (of the "cock-out" variety). This song is like that without all that build up. It skips the foreplay that many consider mandatory and gets right to the good stuff. Drums and bass, keep the rhythm while the guitar lays down a stanky groove. From there, Zappa's main collaborator on this album, Ian Underwood, blasts out a saxaphone solo that seems absolutely wild but controlled for the first 7 minutes. Then it's Sugarcane's time. He turns the next 5 minutes into a screeching, soaring Violin attack. The Zappa gets his solo chance for a few minutes, not hogging the spotlight at all but proving why he's a guitar god to the people that know his secret. Then for good measure, you get a drum and then bass solo and then the really orgy begins until that all climax and collapse in a heap.

Too much with the sexual comparison? Maybe, but good music and good sex aren't necessarily that far apart. Or maybe i'm just a weirdo.
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I can't any videos of ANY of the Hot Rats songs but i found a few other cool videos so here you go.

A piece called Approximate, being played, sung & danced. This is a great example of how his brain works a little differently than the rest of us.

Zappa as a young 20-something on the Steve Allen Show, playing a bike.

And finally, Youtube's famous manualist playing "Peaches en Regalia" with fart noises. I think FZ would be proud.

Radio Shows: October 16 & 21

2010-11-19T07:34:00.004-06:00

October 16, 2010

DJ Susan is joined by his wife DJ Gary for a special Saturday show.
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October 21, 2010
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Radio Shows: Sept 30 & Oct 14

2010-11-11T21:03:00.002-06:00

Here are the next two shows for download. I forgot to record the October 7th show which is a shame because it included my exclusive interview with John Bonham.

September 30, 2010
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October 14, 2010
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Yardbirds :: Having a Rave Up :: 1965

2010-11-07T13:57:00.000-06:00

The Yardbirds were part of that whole British Invasion thing back in the 1960's. They had a few songs that were big hits in both the UK and the US. You'd probably know some of these songs if you'd heard them but you most likely had no idea who recorded them. For some reason, they never reached the Rolling Stones/Animals/Kinks level in the consciousness of popular music. However, for those in the know (which in this case i am not claiming to be), Yardbirds may have been the best group of blues-lovin' Brits to ever plug in.

I was not very familiar with these chaps until just a couple of years ago. Like most casual music fans, my knowledge was limited to knowing just enough to be able to answer a common trivia question about their guitarists. Despite not being a household name themselves, they managed to produce three household names from their ranks: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page. When you really think about that, it's kind of mind-blowing. Those three names would be included on anybody's "Top 20 Greatest Guitarists" list (well maybe not mine) and they all got their start in the same band.

Clapton was the first of these three, joining the in late 1963 and exiting in early 1965. After having a breakthrough hit and a gold record with "For Your Love," Clapton left out of protest because (get this) he was a "blues purist." So after ol' Slowhand headed out to join John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, he recommended Page. Page was making some good cash as a session guy so he suggested Beck. Yardbirds said ok. Beck did his thing from '65 to '66 then Page came in, originally on bass, a few months before Beck was fired. He stayed until the end of the group in '68 before forming a new Yardbirds lineup, later changing their name to Led Zeppelin.

Birthing three guitar gods made Yardbirds legendary but y'know what didn't? Their singer. Keith Relf was a good singer...and rice is good food. It's not that he was a bad singer by any means but he was just missing that extra something. Ray Davies had a snide punch to his vocals, Eric Burdon could sing the blues better than any other white boy, and Mick Jagger...is Mick Jagger. Whether it's fair or not, the vocalist is the key factor in a band becoming a hit. While musicians might pick out individual instruments, it's the vocals that stick in the common listener's heads. Without a singer who really stood out, the Yardbirds had their hits, still get played on the oldies station and 99 percent of the people you meet in a year have no idea who they are.

However, what they lacked in a stand-out vocalist was more than covered by their six-strings. There's a reason these guys are legends (though someone will have to explain one of those reasons to me). The Stones had swagger, The Animals had the blues and The Kinks had the hooks but none of them really pushed the boundaries. In The Yardbirds, you find two of the most inventive guitar players of all time (and Eric Clapton). These songs hold up in casual listens so if you're just singing along, you may occasionally miss the guitars but when you really pay attention, you notice some amazing stuff here. Even more importantly, you have to put these recordings into context. This album was released in 1965. That's the same year The Beatles released Help! and Rubber Soul. And just like those two albums, the sounds on this one laid the groundwork for things to come. This is the beginning of psychedelia, distortion and feedback in songs. This was when bands broke out of the sock-hops to make some noise. That perfect combination of familiarity and forward thinking is what makes the Yardbirds important.

Well, that and Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.
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The Youtube video i wanted to post won't allow me to embed so please follow the link and watch this amazing version of "I'm a Man" complete with raucous maracas, the Shindig dancers and an actual guitar god.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrABhokOxTQ

Radio Shows: September 16 & 23

2010-11-05T20:58:00.002-05:00

Alright, let's try this. I've got a handful of shows recorded and i think i've got the technical side of this all worked out so i'm going to start posting them here as podcasts. I'm going to post a couple at a time until i get caught up. So enjoy and i hope you find something you love.

September 16, 2010
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September 23, 2010
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Good News :: Bad News

2010-10-14T13:35:00.007-05:00

The Good

The Inconsiderate Mixtape is back on the air. Though WRVU decided a keep the 25 Community DJ limit in place for another year, i made the cut this time. So if you live in Nashville, you can hear me every Thursday from 10am to Noon at 91.1fm. If you don't live here, you can stream it at wrvu.org. Once i figure out my technical difficulties, i'll also be posting the shows here for download.

The Bad

The same day i had my first show--and i'd like to think the timing is pure coincidence--the company which owns WRVU (it's not actually owned by Vanderbilt) announced that they were considering the sale of the broadcast license. If they do so, it will take WRVU off the air, where it has been a presence for nearly 60 years. This would be a great loss to the school, the city and anyone who loves music. There are a few places to make you feelings known so please visit the VSC's page at www.vandymedia.org/wrvu and go to http://www.savewrvu.com/ to find out more about the whole ordeal and how you can be involved. There is also a savewrvu Facebook page. The board has said they will not make any decisions until after the new year. It will be important not to let the fight fade during that time. So please speak your mind and spread the word to anyone you know in Nashville.

X :: More Fun in the New World :: 1983

2010-10-01T11:13:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted anything in a long long time. There are a few reasons for this. The biggest reason has simply been time restraints. My personal schedule has gotten a little busier which leaves a little less time for writing. However there was one more hurdle. I started this post over a month ago. I started and restarted it about five times. The problem is that i want to find interesting angles from which to approach an album. It's just not much fun to read "This album is good. I like it. It's awesome. Fuck Yeah! ...and stuff." but that's about all i have on this one.

I feel like i have nothing new to add. The basic story on X is that they were a California Punk with a leaning towards 50's & 60's Rock 'n' Roll. They were "discovered" and produced by The Doors' Ray Manzerek. They realeased 4 great albums, 1 good one and some others i haven't heard. They sort of split up a while ago and sort of got back together once or twice. The two singers have made some solo albums. Whatever.

Here's what's important. Their first four albums (More Fun being the 4th) are fun, smart and fierce and sound only like X. It shocks me that more people aren't familiar with them, as i wasn't until only a few years ago. It amazes me that everyone doesn't discover them at the same time they discover The Pixies and Violent Femmes' first album. So if you haven't discovered them, do so now and share it with your neice or nephew. I guess what i'm trying to say is...

This album is good. I like it. It's awesome. Fuck Yeah! ...and stuff.
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Not my favorite songs on the album but it's still cool to see them on Letterman. The second song is a Jerry Lee Lewis song.

There's probably actually a tie for my favorite X album. The other one is Los Angeles.

Tom Waits :: Pick One

2010-07-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

I've been going through my album collection alphabetically, grabbing the first album in each letter group that i think you all need and writing down the reasons. I basically committed to doing only one album by each artist but i knew i would eventually hit a snag. When pressed, i can pick a favorite by most any artist. However, there are a few that have produced such a long string of fantastic albums that i just can't pick just one. Tom Waits is one of them.

So i'll just try to do a quick run through of all my favorites in this 37-year career. Those who are familiar with his work will probably find ways to praise and curse my choices and for those who are not, i hope this gives you a little direction on what is surely a long and twisted path. So put on your pasties and g-string and let's go!

CLOSING TIME :: 1973

Take a look at the cover of Closing Time. That is exactly what this album sounds like. It's the sound of a late night bar filled with all the drifters that have no home and everyone else that just don't want to go home. It's bourbon, cigarettes and a lonely ol' world. His smokey voice, tinkering piano and longing lyrics make him seem like a character written for a movie much more than anyone in real life.

THE HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT :: 1974

Album number 2 is a sort of sequel to the first one. Judging by the cover again, i guess this is what happens when he steps out of the bar after Closing Time.

NIGHTHAWKS AT THE DINER :: 1975

His third album is musically right along the lines of his first two. But this one is special. It was recorded live with a small audience, essentially setting up a night club in the studio. What you get is a little more whimsical Waits. The songs are loose and so is the tongue, sharing stories and jokes between the songs. It's very intimate and entertaining. You get the feeling you're right there, perhaps enjoying a steak.

[Waits put out three more albums in this similar style then released "Heart Attack and Vine" which found him in a seriously transitional state. The piano ballads were still there but there was also a strange and heavy percussion added to his music and the voice had drifted from a rasp into a growl. This was the mark between two very distinct parts of his career. The crooner was almost completely gone and in its place was ... ]

SWORDFISHTROMBONES :: 1983

This was the beginning of Waits Mach II. Here the torch songs are replaced by twisted tales of twisted characters. The piano and strings are replaced by sounds sometimes indescribable. It's the sound of the kind of circus people develop phobias over. It's dark and scary and like nothing you could ever dream up. But he did.

RAIN DOGS :: 1985

This is where the new Waits figures out what he can do. The sounds you find here would be heard on each of his following albums (though not always on the same ones). Here you can find the weird circus of its predecessor but there's also a more tender side. Some of the songs are prettier but they're still just as strange as should be expected. His approach is a little scatterbrained here but every song is of such a high quality, the album is cohesive in its brilliance.

[Throughout the 90's and 00's, Waits sprinkled his discography with various live albums, film soundtracks and music for a play based on a story by William Burroughs. They're all great in their own way but the regular albums he put out in this time has been the most-focused run of his career, as if this is the "real" Tom Waits that had been trapped inside because the world just wans ready for him.]

BONE MACHINE :: 1992

This album may be special to me because it was the first Tom Waits album i heard (thanks to Mtv of all things). But beyond my nostalgia, this is one of his finest and most cohesive albums. The music has been stripped down to boneyard sounds and guitars that sound like they're scoring some lost Western-Sci-Fi-Horror film. It all sounds like a nightmare of the most intriguing sort.

MULE VARIATIONS :: 1999

Here's your trivia for the day: Bone Machine won the grammy for "Best Alternative Music Album;" Mule Variations--his next proper album though 7 years later--won the grammy for "Best Contemporary Folk Album." I don't know what that means exactly but i find it interesting. This album is a little more subdued than it precessor. It's as beautiful and strange as anything he's ever done.

ALICE :: 2002

Alice was released simultaneously with Blood Money so they are really two parts of the same album. Blood Money is essentially the heavy side of Mule Variations and Alice the tender side. The songs here may be tearjerkers but not like you've heard before (the forbidden love of "Fish & Bird" anyone?).

REAL GONE :: 2004

Somehow, Waits managed to strip his sound down even more than before. This is all crash, yell, stomp and growl. The lyrics are somewhat secondary here at times as the vocals become more percussive and are featured almost as just another sound. To be honest, this album isn't as strong as some others but it shows that after more than 30 years and nearly 20 albums, Tom Waits is still moving forward, trying new things and making albums like nobody else.

So there's my Waits in a Nutshell; hope it helps. More than any other artist, Waits has been consistently brilliant and sigularly unique. His weakest album will always be better than most other artists at their best. So to sum it up, what Tom Waits album should you take home? Pick one.
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"Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night" :: 1975

"Tom Traubert's Blues" from Small Change :: 1977

"16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought Six" from Swordfishtrombones and "
"Cemetery Polka" from Rain Dogs :: 1986

"Make It Rain" from Real Gone featuring JSBX minus JS :: 2005

Townes Van Zandt :: Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas :: 1977

2010-07-01T08:40:00.000-05:00

Townes Van Zandt didn't have a very good voice.. It wasn't awful; he could stay in key and didn't make any weird screeching noises or anything. It just sounded like he had never really sang in public before. The way he swooped up to notes is pretty much What Not To Do In Singing 101. He never belted out the kind of note that would bring the house down. It kind of sounds like he's talking with really long syllables actually. But damn, he could write a song.

Every song he wrote is a story, both personal and universal. When he's telling you a third-person tale, like his most well-known song "Pancho & Lefty," you get the feeling it's somehow autobiographical. And when he's singing such a private song as "If I Needed You," that you're pretty sure he wrote for only one person, he's also telling the story of us all. He knew more than anything that a song can bring people together, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. These songs are for every person who has ever felt... anything.

While his studio albums are fantastic, nothing gets to the root of the man and the songs like this double live album, recorded in 1975. It's just Townes, his guitar and several dozen people in a sweaty Houston bar. It's a very intimate setting where the songs speak for themselves. And to hear the silence of several dozen people in a sweaty Houston bar is as beautiful as the songs themselves. You can practically see the tears running down the cheeks of the burliest Texas roughneck that's ever loved his mama. Because whether he was singing in a bar, in a studio, at a festival or alone in the mountains somewhere, you just feel like he's sitting next to you, singing only for you, to help you get through whatever it is your gettin' through.

Townes Van Zandt didn't have a very good voice. His voice is probably like a lot of ours, a little rough and a bit shaky, but since he's singing straight from our hearts, it's the most perfect and beautiful voice that could ever sing these songs.
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What do listen to after you fall in love with this album? Well he recorded 7 albums between 1968 and 1978; take your pick.

Uncle Tupelo :: No Depression :: 1990

2010-06-08T08:15:00.001-05:00

You know how people like to try to blend two types of music? Reach into a bag and pull out two of the following: Rap, Rock, Punk, Jazz, Classical, Country, Bluegrass, WorldBeat, Bavarian Folk Songs, That Weird Throat Singing Thing, Electronica. Put those two things together and i bet you there is a band that has tried to combine them and make something new. Most likely what they actually made was a CD-shaped turd. Most music genres exist independently from other genres because they're just too drastically different to be successfully combined. That's what makes it its own genre. But every once in a while somebody pulls it off. It seems that attempts to blend Rock & Pop with other genres have been the most successful. Miles Davis & John McLaughlin (along with others) changed the world of Jazz by bringing Rock into its fold. A Myriad of bands in the late 60's/early 70's combined Rock with Folk, Country & Bluegrass. David Byrne & Paul Simon blended African and South American beats into Pop Music. Of course when you try to blend Rock with Classical, you get Trans-Siberian Orchestra and when Rock met Rap... well, that Anthrax/Public Enemy version of "Bring the Noise" is kinda cool.

But the greatest Rap-Rock band of all time was Uncle Tupelo. Jeff Tweedy's beat-boxing skills alone set them apart from the rest of the imitators.

Wait, i think i got that wrong. Uncle Tupelo started, under another name, as a Punk band. These were high school kids in the mid-80's who were listening to The Minutemen, Husker Du & The Replacements. When they decided to try their hand at traditional American music, they did it as a punk band. Blending Punk and Country wasn't a brand new idea. It had been tried throughout the 80's, most notably by The Gun Club, Meat Puppets and Jason & The Scorchers. But this was something different. The Gun Club was from L.A. and represented the dark side of Country overwhelmed by the dark side of L.A. Jason & The Scorchers were from Nashville and while they didn't sound like the drivel being pumped out of Music Row, they still sounded too much like Nashville, to the point of sounding a bit like a farce. Meat Puppets did a lot of acid...

Uncle Tupelo did things differently. Those other two bands mixed the genres while remaining 20-somethings living in the late 20th century and took a few cues from popular country music. Uncle Tupelo tried to forget their time and place and go way back to the beginning of American Folk music. They took the album's title from--and covered--a song written by A.P. Carter, first recorded in 1936. When they dug into this old music, they didn't just copy the words and the sounds. They grabbed the essence of the music. These are folk songs; songs of the people. They're songs of those times that were both simpler and harder. Songs about drinkin', workin', lovin', fightin' and other various apostraph-ied verbs. Now we know these songs were written by 20-somethings in the late 20th century and while the lyrics might not be purely autobiographical, the themes are broad and can often apply to anyone at anytime. And that's the sign of a well-written song; the kind they used to write.

This band and this album's influence has reached farther than anyone could have predicted. During the 90's, "Alternative Country" became a legitimate musical genre. It gave rise to new bands like Whisekytown (and of course Uncle Tupelo offshoots Wilco & Son Volt), revived the careers of folks like Steve Earle & Lucinda Williams (who'd been at this for a long time) and helped the young kids discover past artists like Gram Parsons and The Band. It became big enough for a publication dedicated solely to the "Alt-Country" or "Americana" music to become a major seller. The name of that magazine--which would also become another moniker for the genre itself--is "No Depression." It's a fitting choice. It's a magazine that links the music of the past to the music of today. Because the latter could not exist without the former. And that's what Uncle Tupelo understood as much as anyone.
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I really couldn't find a very good video but here's one anyway

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After this one, listen to Still Feel Gone

Talking Heads :: Talking Heads: 77 :: 1977

2010-05-04T22:15:00.000-05:00

Talking Heads released four albums in their first four years of recording and they're all classics in their own way. Their second (slightly overrated) album More Songs about Buildings and Food, Their third (criminally underrated) Fear of Music and their fourth (generally correctly rated) Remain in Light all deserve their own spot on this blog but i've decided to stick with one album per band so i'm going with thier first (often not rated at all) Talking Heads '77.

I am commonly a fan of first albums. They tend to fall into one of two categories. The first category is the album where the band has not quite found their sound but you can hear those hints of promise. These are always interesting listens in an almost historic way. But it's the second category that gets me excited. That's when you get the sound of a raw, hungry youth. It's the sound of a band that doesn't care about the rules or the money or even the art, to an extent. What they care about is putting every bit of their inexperience, anger, fear, confusion and sex into a bucket, mixing it all up and setting it on fire. This is the sound that is made before the corruption of celebrity and all that comes with it, seeps into the cracks. That's when a band often falls into the trap of either trying to recreate their lost innocence or going on some kind of musical soul-search that ends with the discovery of a sitar.

Now i'm happy to say that Talking Heads never really fell into those traps but there is still a quality to this first album that they never quite captured again. They took all those things listed above (anger, fear, confusion, sex) and put them on display and somehow it came out sounding a little bit like a party. This is music to to dance to; to sing along with. It's catchy and quirky and fun. Then you notice that there is a very uneasy voice singing these songs and the words to the songs are just as uneasy. "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town" and "Tentative Decisions" are sort of like sweet songs about love but they're also sort of about the way love can mess with your life and make things even more complicated than they already are. Those feelings can be summed up in one of the lyric "Watch out baby 'cause I'm in love with you and if you don't love me I don't know what I'm gonna do" (from "Who Is It?"). Beyond that we get such fun subjects as the remorseless apathy of "No Compassion" and the strains of "Don't Worry about the Government" which is so positive about the way things are that you can't help but to wonder what's really going on in that "1984"/"Stepford Wives" sort of way. Suddenly you realize that you're dealing with a bunch of weirdos.

Then it gets really weird on the most famous song from this album, tucked away towards the end, "Psycho Killer." What really makes this song disturbing is that upon repeated listens, you notice that this song isn't about just some random "psycho killer," it's about a very specific one... you. It speaks to every one of us who has ever dealt with a co-worker or family member or customer (for those in customer service) that crawled under our skin in a way nobody should be able to. This is the song that plays as we cross that line from fantasizing about strangling the person to actually placing our hands around their neck and squeezing with every bit of strength we can gather, whispering to ourselves "I hate people when they're not polite."

This is a weird youth; this is weird fire; this is weird inexperience, anger, fear, confusion and sex. This is weird... but hey, it's still sounds a little bit like a party.
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and for the nerds, check out Psycho Killer by a 3-piece (!) Talking Heads at CBGB's from 1975 (!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDtFTysmExg

[this looks better at http://www.theinconsideratemixtape.com/]

Raphael Saadiq :: The Way I See It :: 2008

2010-04-21T09:10:00.000-05:00

Oh R&B, where did we go so wrong? There are very few things that touch me the way a lot of 1960's Soul music does. And there are very few things that mean less to me than "Soul" music in the 2000's (keeping up with the Kardashians and variations in different brands of ketchup are two). I don't know how we got here. The term "Soul" used to imply that singers were pouring out from the deepest part of their being. It now apparently has something to do with seeing how many notes and syllables one can fit into each word. Rhythm sections used to lock into a groove so deep, they became as memorable as any lyric or melody in the song. Today the beat and bass are programmed by some guy on a computer (could anything be more soul-less?).

Soul and R&B have gotten so far off track, i don't know where it can possibly go. It's hard to see a real "future" since it has morphed into a form of Pop that i don't think even counts as R&B anymore. I know there are many people who would disagree with me but i have a strong suspicion that--unlike Rock and Punk--R&B actually may be dead.

But there are those who are trying to keep it alive. Do you remember Tony! Toni! Tone!? You may not remember their music but i'm sure you remember their name. Well it turns out that those guys weren't even named Tony, Toni or Tone. One of them was named Raphael. He's been recording and producing with several well-known artists over the years and in 2008, released The Way I See It, a modern tribute to the Motown sound of the 60's. This is real music played by real musicians, with a real singer singing songs he wrote. The band finds those grooves and it's organic with actual guitars and actual drums. The songs are of your classic themes of love and loss and just having a good time. But this is not just a copycat album. This would never pass as some kind of lost Smokey Robinson record. Saadiq takes those classic elements and stirs them in to an energy that just sounds like today. He also brings modern life into his songs. ("The Big Easy" finds our singer searching for his love in the days after Hurricane Katrina; one of those successful marriages of a dark subject wrapped up in a strangely upbeat song.)

There are certainly others doing their part to keep R&B alive. Eryka Badu & Lauryn Hill have certainly been important in this movement (where'd you go Lauryn?) and the music on the Daptone label is as good as any Soul/Funk albums you can find before Carter walked into the White House. So maybe it's not quite dead, but it's bleeding pretty badly. Perhaps getting back to the roots is the key to moving forward for without the past, there can be no future.

Ok, that got a little heavy. What i meant to say was this album's got a great beat and it's easy to dance to. Sorry about that.
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Radiohead :: Kid A :: 2000

2010-04-08T07:31:00.000-05:00

Everybody has heard or read some kind of statement claiming Radiohead to be the "world's greatest band," or more importantly, something along the lines of "the most important band of our time." I have a theory behind Radiohead's initial rise to the top of the Music Critic Mountain.

When they released their first album, Pablo Honey, the single "Creep" became the newest anthem of disaffected youth, taking up a torch that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had first set aflame. But unlike Nevermind, the rest of the album was pretty boring, a second single never really caught on and Radiohead was quickly tossed into a box with Haircut 100 and Wreckx-N-Effect labeled "one-hit wonders." Then Radiohead did something those other bands didn't. They released an amazing sophomore album, The Bends. When the album came out, it got some polite reviews befitting a one-hit wonder's followup album. Then the singles started to slowly catch on and listeners realized that it was possibly the best Rock album of the decade.

Then came OK Computer and every music reviewer that missed the boat with The Bends wanted to be the first one to announce that Radiohead was the future of music and all our lives depended on them. I don't want to take too much praise away from OK Computer. It really is a great album and if it had been total rubbish, the press probably would not have lauded it quite so much. However, it's far from a groundbreaking work of art. But for better or worse, OK Computer was the new greatest album ever and Radiohead became the band nobody was allowed to hate.

With the stature Radiohead had suddenly been raised to, nobody could wait for or imagine what move they would make next. As the release of Kid A approached, most of the songs got leaked in various stages and nobody really knew what to make of them. Many were assumed to be unfinished versions (which may have been the case) because it was just too weird for most people to handle. When the day finally came and folks packed into record stores for midnight listening parties, there seemed to immediately be a division of the love-it and hate-it camps with a lot of people in between just scratching their heads. The ironic thing is that the reason so many people were so confused is because they were being confronted by the very thing they tried to create out of Ok Computer. That is to say, everything they claimed OK Computer to be, Kid A actually was.

This was finally the album the world had been waiting for to wipe clean the face of popular music that had been smeared with the bubblegum turds of Britney Spears, NSYNC and Ricky Martin. The problem is that the music world didn't realize that sometimes it takes something pretty radical for any real change to come about. So the ultimate impact on the most popular of popular music was absolutely nothing. Kid A -- and its counterpart Amnesiac (released 8 months later) -- produced not one song to enter the Billboard charts. Pop and bad post-grunge rock ruled the radio still. But it created an undeniable stirring that would have to be measured in ways other than albums ales and Hot 100 charts.

Here was a band that had built its name on guitars and anthemic choruses. And here was their new album where many of the songs didn't even have choruses, lyrics were often hard to decipher and guitars were taking a back seat to electronics. The leap Radiohead made from Pablo Honey to The Bends was monumental, as was the next step to OK Computer. But it was the jump to Kid A that changed the game. I read an interview with Thom Yorke at the time when he seemed almost ashamed that people gave them credit for creating a new kind of music. I remember his statement that he felt Aphex Twin was moving music forward and that Radiohead was just sort of knocking it side to side. But what Yorke missed is that the new music he had helped create was birthed by taking the kind of music made by the likes of Aphex Twin and making it accessible and real. The inherent problem with electronic music is that it's missing a human quality. Radiohead has taken electronic music and inserted true human emotion; emotions ranging from love to hate to paranoia, depression and hope. And with that i believe they did, in a sense, create a new kind of music.

This is a band that knows you can not stick to a formula and grow in any real way. Sometimes risks pay off and sometimes they fall flat but without the risks, Art becomes stagnant. And when Art is stagnant, it's no longer Art; it's just a product. This is not a lesson that you can learn from U2 or Bon Jovi. Without the big hits and without selling their songs for iPod commercials, Radiohead is as well known as any artist in the world today. They show up on magazine covers, they're nominated for awards and can sell out any venue they play. And every album they release is awaited with more anticipation than any other band out there. Because while fans may expect the new Coldplay album to be good, nobody expects it to break any ground. When Radiohead releases a new album, listeners expect to hear the future. And that is why they might just be "the most important band of our time."
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The Problem With Q

2010-03-22T22:34:00.002-05:00

My plan to move through my CD collection has brought me to the letter Q. Of course there aren't too many Q bands out there. The most obvious music critic pick would be to write about a Queen album. Here's the problem. I'm actually kind of new to Queen. I hadn't really jumped into their music until this last year. While i have several albums and think they're all great in their own way, there isn't that one that just grabs me and makes me want to tell the world about it. So in place of an album review, i've decided to just share a Queen-related story about my friend Jeff Sweeney. He told me this story many years ago so hopefully i remember it correctly. If not, it's still a good story.

Anyone who lived in the state of Kentucky in the late 80's/early 90's, knows the name Richie Farmer. That's when he was a shooting guard for University of Kentucky's basketball team. He and three other players were given the fairly forgettable label "The Unforgettables" during the 1992 season. That was the season in which they lost the NCAA final to Duke by 1 point in overtime in what is widely considered the greatest College Basketball game in history. The only thing possibly more unforgettable than that game was Richie Farmer's insistence on wearing a moustache.

In a state where the blood runs blue, Farmer was a bona fide celebrity and that's why he was at a Waldenbooks store in Greenwood Mall in Bowling Green, KY signing autographs. Directly across the hallway in the mall was a music store called The Record Bar which was managed by my pal Jeff. While the fans were standing in line with their posters and basketballs in hand, Jeff and one of his co-workers decided to take something over to get it signed as well: A Freddie Mercury record.

Apparently, Farmer wasn't very thrilled with their idea of a joke and initially refused to sign it. After some repeated hounding, his publicist convinced him to sign it just to make them go away. So somewhere out there is a Freddie Mercury record with #32's signature on it. As for Richie Farmer, these days he's in his second term as--no shit--Kentucky's Commissioner of Agriculture. His campaign posters actually had a picture of a basketball on it, how's that for subtlety. He's apparently considering a run for Governor. I'm sure he'll win because through all his successes, he has stayed true to one thing, his moustache.

Palace Music :: Viva Last Blues :: 1995

2010-03-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

For those that don't know me, i feel like i should start this post with somewhat of a disclosure just so you know where i'm coming from. The music of Will Oldham (aka Palace Music...i'll explain later) has been a very important part of my life, beyond just being a fan; so much so that my daughter's middle name is in fact Palace. So i apologize if i get a bit long-winded on this one but there's a lot to cover about an artist who is this prolific, confusing and mercurial (a word i learned from a Palace song, by the way).

The first thing that needs to be explained is the name thing. Will Oldham has recorded music under multiple names. Usually when an artist does this, it represents a significant difference in the style of music being created or enables a person to record a side project without impacting the reputation of the music they create under their primary recording name. With Oldham, it just sort of seems like something to do. The name changes have come in a linear fashion, meaning he just drops one name, picks up a new one and keeps moving. All the albums he has created under different names essentially create a single discography by a single artist. (Feel free to skip this next paragraph if your head starts to hurt).

So the name game goes something like this:

His first release, a single for the Drag City label was released under the name "Palace Music." Then his first album, There is No-One What Will Take Care of You, was credited to "Palace Brothers" as was the second album Days in the Wake (which to confuse things more was originally just titled Palace Brothers). Between those two albums, he released the Hope ep stamped with the name "Palace Songs." For the third full album, the one i'll be talking about in this review, he returned to the name "Palace Music." For his next album, Arise Therefore, he officially kept the "Palace Music" name though it didn't appear anywhere on the album and later editions are credited to "Will Oldham." Among those releases, he also put out singles under the simplified name "Palace," recorded AC/DC's "Big Balls" for a 7" compilation under the name "Palace Contribution" and used the moniker "Palace Soundtracks" to record Songs Put Together (for the Broken Giant) (which again to further confuse things was re-released later under "Will Oldham" as Black/Rich Music). At this point, he announced we was retiring the "Palace" name and released one single and one album, Joya, and a CD compilation of singles as "Will Oldham." He then made possibly the most bizarre name change of all. Perhaps attempting to one-up or simply show a kinship to The Artist Formerly (then currently) Known as Prince, he began releasing albums under the name "Bonnie 'Prince' Billy" with the occasional collaboration as "Bonny Billy." You'll be pleased to know that he has stuck with this name for over 10 years now so his last several albums are a little less confusing with the exception of one, called Bonnie 'Prince' Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music on which he gathered together some Nashville session musicians and re-recorded songs from the "Palace" days. What a dick! [Maybe i should have just done this in the first place but here's a wikipedia page with his entire discography that should make things either clearer or muddier.]

Ok, hopefully you just skipped that last paragraph and found your way here. Let's get to the important part: the music, because a rose by any other name and all that crap. Prince Oldham was 22 when the first Palace Brothers album came out but upon first listen you might assume he was 82. The most obvious reason you might make this assumption is the weak, cracking voice that you hear but if you really dig deep into the songs... you'll still think he's 82. This was music of a bygone era. These were the kinds of songs passed down for generations in the deep Appalachian woods. The first song alone, "Idle Hands are the Devil's Playthings" is enough to make you think you're dealing with the Louvin Brothers' grandfather. The instruments too, add to the gothic folk lore of this album as a crudely plucked banjo fills any gaps left by the acoustic guitars, organ and simple drums that lay the base for these songs of faith and sin. Every album Will Oldham has recorded has featured a different collection of musicians. Suprisingly the musicians behind the ancient sounds of this first album included 3/4ths of Louisville-based post-punk masters of volume, Slint. (Trivia fact: Oldham has the cover photo credit for Slint's classic Spiderland)

For the follow-up, the music was stripped down even more. Featuring only two other musicians (Oldham's actual brothers Ned & Paul), most songs feature only one or two acoustic guitars with the occasional bass added. The songs still sound like the first few decades of the 20th century but the lyrics become a bit more cryptic and give you a few clues that this may actually have been recorded in the latter half of the century.

It was at this point that i had really fallen into Oldham's music. My relationship with Palace had actually begun on quite a different foot. I had first seen Palace Brothers (the name Oldham most commonly used for touring purposes at the time) on the side stage of a Lollapalooza festival in 1993 or 94. I saw that they were from my home state so i thought i should check them out. About half way through the second song, i was done. Here was this weird looking guy in mirrored cop sunglasses who sang with a crackling hillbilly voice in front of some guys who sounded suspiciously like a country band which was not alright with teenage me. I don't remember how i came around to giving them a second chance but a friend had a their first CD and it all clicked when i heard it and i grabbed up everything they had at the time. So when Viva Last Blues came out, i rushed to get it as soon as i could. I still remember my first listen through it, in my dorm room.

From the first note, i knew this one was different. It was electric. It wasn't really loud but the snare was loud-er, there were cymbal crashes, the guitars were plugged in, and that first song had a bounce to it. The lyrics remained cryptic and somewhat ancient but these songs didn't sound like the Mountains anymore. The most alarming change seemed to be in the form of a newfound self-assurance, almost arrogance. The vocals still crack but it doesn't sound weak. If anything, it seems confrontational as in "yeah, my voice cracks, what are you going to do about it?" This is matched by lyrics like "Are you jealous of the show we put on?" and "If I could fuck a mountain, Lord, I would fuck a mountain." And in "Tonight's Decision," the singer not only doesn't fear Death but explains how he will "waste him in my own way."

While the first half of the album seemed new to me, it still didn't prepare me for the song in which this meager folk singer who had been building up some steam just finally blew the top off. Not only does "Work Hard/Play Hard" feature actual distortion on the guitar, he's singing out at the top of his lungs. Daggumit, this is a rock song. Then it ends in some kind of abrupt, unsure ending as if the whole thing had happened by accident. The next song, "New Partner" has always been a highlight in the Palace/BPB catalogue. It's a gentle song with beautiful harmonies about a lost love with the repeating refrain of "You were always on my mind" then picks up halfway through to explain that he's finished and now has a new love (of course, in that archaic language once again, "I've got a new partner riding with me").

"Cat's Blues" returns to the loudness heard two songs previous in a rousing piece that always inspired a sort of shouting singalong in me whenever listening to this album in the car. For the final two songs, Oldham turns off the electricity, wanders back to that decrepit cabin buried in the hills and sings the songs you assume were written 100 years ago. Throughout the course of this album, he reminds you that he's a young man with an old soul.

So why exactly did i name my kid after this. Here's the quick answer: This was the music that inspired me to start making music myself. As i became a fan, i noticed that these songs were not difficult in their roots. These are basic 3 and 4 chord songs; they're not weird, there aren't solo breaks. They can basically all be played by a man and a guitar. So that's what i did. I bought a chord chart, looked up tablature on the internet and started playing. This is how i learned to play guitar. The imagery and melodies are what made me try my own hand at writing songs. It essentially changed my life and sent it down a path i'd been looking for for some time. But the name is also a tribute to music as whole and the ability music has to touch someones life and soul. That's where the explanation gets a little existentially drippy so i'll stop.

Oldham has continued filling out an impressive catalog of albums, essentially releasing a new album every year along with multiple collaborations and compilation contributions along the way. The music can sound like mounain folk and stadium rock. They may feature one musician or they my feature twenty. The only thing you can expect is the unexpected. Some of the albums are almost forgettable, most of them are great, and occassionally, one is transcendent enough to make somebody name their kid after it.
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Oldham has released only a few official videos over the years. They're all pretty much this boring and weird. This is the last song on Viva Last Blues

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I'd obviously recommend many of his albums but these are the big ones for me:
There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You

I See a Darkness (title song covered by Johnny Cash on American III)

Master and Everyone

http://www.theinconsideratemixtape.com/

Falling Out of Love

2010-02-12T15:57:00.014-06:00

To preface: I am 100 percent ripping off the idea for this post from the Nashville Cream who starts their article with "To preface: I am 100 percent ripping off the idea for this post from The Onion's AV Club" so it's really a copy of a copy but i like the idea so i'm stealing it. Besides, i'm pretty sure i've had this conversations with some like-minded music-obsessed folk in the past anyway so i'll say it's an original idea of which i was simply reminded. Or i may have just stolen it.

The idea is that we've all had artists in our past that we loved dearly, then one day you realize the love is gone and it's hard to tell what you ever saw/heard in them first place. This is a tribute to those artists. There are a couple of ways to see this and many of the writers on the Cream's blog seem to address music they were into in Middle School. But i excuse Middle School musical judgements. Everybody listened to bad music when they were 14. For me it was Kiss and Motley Crue (who i can still enjoy in a mostly nostalgic way) along with dozens of other crappy pop-metal bands like L.A. Guns and what i considered my little unknown gem, Bang Tango. Everybody in every generation makes that mistake whether it was The Moody Blues, Thompson Twins, New Kids, Rage Against the Machine, Creed or the emo bands of today that will be laughed about in future coffee shop conversations. That's just part of eventually finding the music that you truly relate to as you get older. For my post, i'd rather focus on artists that i loved after i should've know better.

So here they are, I loved you all deeply but time has sent us on our separate ways. You are always a part of me, you made me who i am today. I hope you found someone else who can love you the way i once did. Tell your mom i said hello and if you ever find that tape of The Usual Suspects i let you borrow, i'd like to have it back.

Tori Amos: This is probably the biggest one for me. I saw the video for "Silent All These Years" and on my very next trip to the mall, i bought Little Earthquakes. I was only 15 then but Tori stayed with me well into my twenties. I saw her live twice, i owned singles and bootlegs and i can distinctly remember a conversation i had with my (not yet at the time) wife about how truly unique and original her music was. Over time, i think i got bored by the fact that all her new albums sounded like old ones. She also became a victim of my attempt to have a better outlook on life and a lot of the angry music that used to touch me casually fell to the side. Then about two years ago, i finally heard Kate Bush who's name i had read a million times in Tori articles but never got around to listening to. That pretty much blew the doors off that "unique and original" statement. Bush could've sued, they sound so close at times. However, for some reason, i don't think Kate Bush would've spoken to me then the way she does now so maybe, by ripping her off, Tori somehow prepared me for Kate.

Belle & Sebastian: These guys aren't notable for how heavy i was into them but for how quickly i turned on them for no apparent reason. I had heard their name a lot and took a chance on them when i found a cheap copy of Boy With the Arab Strap. I was immediately smitten and soon picked up If You're Feeling Sinister and some singles. I was into them for a couple of years and then all of the sudden whenever i heard the sound of B&S, i instantly wanted to turn it off. I can't explain it, all i know is that now they bug me.

Ani Difranco: This was another pretty big one. I saw Ani live several times, bought and even recorded and traded my own bootlegs. Similar as Tori Amos, her albums started to bore me and i didn't need the anger (though to be fair, her songs also are filled with a lot of love). However, she didn't bore me with stagnation, she tried some new directions with her music but i never really seemed to like her new directions. Another big difference is that i think Ani really did find a unique voice (both in her singing and her guitar playing). I find it interesting that i was into these two female singers so much because for some reason, very few female artists since seem to excite me. My wife tells people that i'm a feminist. She doesn't mean it as a joke. At the risk of self-praising, i guess i really do see women as being completely equal with men without really even giving it much thought. I was probably on that path anyway but i honestly think that having such a strong, loud and proud female figure playing her guitar at me during some formative years, built that quality.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: This was a big High School band for me though they journeyed into College with me as well. One problem with RHCP is that i think they really just stopped making good music. Californication was good but the last few have been all down hill. This has happened with a few other artists for me. I was a big fan of Ryan Adams, and R.E.M. was easily the most important band in my life for a time but their albums became sub-par. However, with Adams and R.E.M., i still love their early albums and listen to them regularly. As for RHCP, when i stopped liking their new albums, i seemed to stop liking their old ones too. The music is still interesting and John Frusciante is still one of the greatest guitarists going today but i'm never really in the mood to hear these guys.

Elliott Smith: When i fell for Elliott Smith, i fell hard. I hung on every word he said, i analyzed every guitar melody. Then i quit. I still think he was the real thing with a natural talent for songwriting but those words just don't seem to speak to me anymore.

They Might Be Giants: I can still sing every word on Flood and probably even Lincoln though i'm not sure the last time i listened to either one. As an unpopular kid, these guys were my champions. To be a TMBG fan sort of put you in a secret club. When you met a fellow fan, you were instant friends. As they got a little bigger, they became the cool version of not being cool. Then they just moved on to not being cool at all. These guys are still a one-of-a-kind band and now that i have a kid and they're making kids albums that don't suck, i still appreciate them on some level. But for some reason, i don't need them the way i used to.

Ween: Similar to TMBG, this was one of those bands that only the losers liked so when you met another fan, a kinship was born. In fact, i met one of my closest high school friends when she came into class singing "Touch My Tooter Smoocher" and i recognized it. (It may have actually been the other way around). Their sheer weirdness made sure that only the weirdos would ever care. I had seen them live several times and suddenly the next show i went to was filled with dirty neo-hippies and Ween had become a jam band. Now maybe the hippies are stil the weirdos but suddenly they were out of that "my own private band" category. So what happened with me? It's not just that the hippies stole my band and it's not that i stopped being a weirdo but i think i just don't need the weirdo i.d. that Ween once gave me.

So life moves on. Loves come and loves go. And who knows, maybe someday i'll be on a cruise with Sonic Youth and bump into Ani Difranco or Ween and sparks will fly again.

Oblivians :: Popular Favorites :: 1996

2010-02-10T10:33:00.001-06:00

From the moment 60's Garage Rock bands stopped, 60's Garage Rock Revivalist bands started. It's pretty easy to see why. It was music that represented a rebellious youth, which is almost the definition of Rock 'n' Roll. The songs were simple; pick 3 chords (4 if you're really advanced) and follow them. Try G, C then E and when the chorus comes around, change it to C, E then G. Seriously, pick up that guitar that's in the corner of your bedroom right now, do an internet search for a chord chart, learn those three chords, pick them out of a hat at random, count in 4/4 time and soon you'll have a Garage Rock song. And that's what's so appealing about it. Anyone can do it and with the simplicity of the songs, it frees you up to get a little wild on stage without having to think too hard. The Troggs only did one thing in their life; they recorded "Wild Thing" and everyone has known it and been able to sing along with that song since they were 4 (you'll need to know A, D & E to play that one). Rush has always been recognized as three men who are masters of their instruments but you just can't dance to "The Temples of Syrinx." You can sit in your room and learn to play every single note of 2112 and you won't be one inch closer to what Rock 'n' Roll is really about.

While the attraction of this music is its simplicity, that doesn't mean it's easy. You can't just play the chords and hum a tune and sound good. Since the music doesn't do much, there is something else that separates the good from the bad from the great. The problem is you can't find that something else by doing an internet search. The magic ingredient is some kind of mixture of soul, sweat, grit, fire, violence and raw power.

The same is true with Punk music which, after the overblown Stadium Rock of the 70's, revived the Garage spirit to become the new music of a rebellious youth. Punk Rock isn't technically complicated. It's as simple as Garage Rock except you don't even have to hit the right notes all the time. However, there is that something else that makes a Punk band Punk.

The Oblivians understood the link between these two kinds of music and understood what they meant in the 90's. They took their influences from bands like The Sonics in the 60's, The Stooges in the 70's and The Cramps in the 80's and carried the torch into the next decade. They pushed their two guitars (because who really needs a bass) to their breaking points, they turned the amps up to 11 and 1/2 (because it's 1/2 more than 11) and shouted like a band being drug down to Hell. At the end of the barrage of loud, gritty, sloppy rock that is Popular Favorites, i'm as out of breath as they are.

They found that Something Else and they beat the shit out of it.
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Need more sweat? Try Soul Food

Graham Nash :: Wild Tales :: 1973

2010-02-03T10:31:00.000-06:00

As a unit, Crosby Stills Nash & Young (aka CSNY, also available in CSN, CN, SY & CSY:Miami variations) have never really thrilled me. Sure they have some great songs here and there but when i'm looking for 4-part harmony, i usually reach for my barbershop CD's (yes i own some...if you only knew...). Their sound is always a little overbearing for me; just too much going on. However, cut at the necks of this 4-headed hydra and they'll squirt out some tunes. I guess what i'm trying to say (without the word "squirt") is that while i'm not a fan of the whole, i find great joy in the music of the parts. Neil Young's music doesn't really need much discussion, we all pretty much know he's amazing. While i don't know much about David Crosby's other solo stuff, his first solo outing If I Could Only Remember My Name is a beautiful testament to 1971. Stephen Stills' output is a little uneven but he put out a few good solo albums and one double album masterpiece with Manassas. Then there's Graham Nash.

Nash seems to be overlooked by the general public compared to his counterparts. Probably because he #1)isn't Y, #2)never had a big hit like S's "Love the One You're With," and #3)didn't follow the path of C by spending time in jail, guest-starring on Roseanne and fathering Melissa Etheridge's babies. Nash has always been the one in the shadows, usually just singing harmony, never really grabbing the spotlight. But as for me, if i'm forced (and we'll pretend i am) to musically rank these four guys, N is a solid #2 behind the everpresent Y.

Through this blog i've discovered a strange trend i tend to follow. That is that i can recognize an artist's album as being their best yet another of their albums takes the title of my favorite. In this case, Nash's best is his first, Songs For Beginners which seems to somewhat mirror George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in the way that the quietest member of a quartet burst forth with a brilliant debut. Sonically, there are even some similarities between those two albums. They're earthy yet cinematic, acoustic based with the electricity to make them rock albums, and the songwriting is weighty yet hummable.

My favorite in Nash's case is obviously Wild Tales. On this one, he tones it down just a little. This is American music made from a British point of view. The music takes on a slightly more Country tone, mostly thanks to a prevelant steel guitar added to the guitar/harmonica base. It also takes on a much darker tone than its predecessor. The songwriting, when not overtly political, is laid naked. It seems to be a startlingly personal album. It's simple and humble which are the exact qualities that assure one never gets the spotlight.
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Songs For Beginners

http://theinconsideratemixtape.blogspot.com/

The Magic Numbers :: The Magic Numbers :: 2005

2010-01-26T23:15:00.001-06:00

Every two or three months, a new band explodes on the scene and every music critic swears they're the real deal; the hottest, trend-setting, saviors of music. For most of these bands, the public fascination only lasts until the next band comes along to save music. Of course with personal opinion being everything in these instances, many of the bands deserve the attention they get and many do not. The disservice in this 15-minute attention span cycle is that a lot of the bands that do deserve it get lumped in with all that bands that don't and they get blurred together as a "critic's darlings" version of a one-hit-wonder.

Some recent darling examples are Phoenix, Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend. These are too recent to know if they'll having any lasting popularity but the not so distant pass is filled with names like this who are to never again enjoy a magazine write-up more than two columns long. I'm sure you remember Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. How about The Sleepy Jackson? And what about The Magic Numbers? Not so many years ago, they were on everybody's lips...for about 2 months.

Personally, i feel CYHSY deserved the attention and they've maintained a certain presence since their breakthrough. Sleepy Jackson was never really deserving of the hype in the first place which may explain why many of you probably don't even remember them. Then there's The Magic Numbers. Here's a band that popped up out of nowhere and warranted the praise but then vanished faster than they had materialized.

If you listened to the press at the time, you would just assume they sounded like a certain group from the 60's. Apparently if you put two men, two women, a weight problem and some harmonies on the same stage, you're The Mamas & The Papas. I never quite got the comparison. The Magic Numbers' songs are complicated in their composition, the music is at times atmospheric and the lyrics often dark. I will allow one comparison. Despite their Scottish, Irish & Potuguese bloodlines and their Carribean, New York & English addresses, these two sets of siblings sound a little bit like California. The previously mentioned dark and atmospheric moments aside, most of this album is comprised of bright and sunny pop songs. And i think that's where their real magic is; the ability to take a cheery sounding, toe-tapping singalong and interject it with a complicated dive into the darker sides of love, creating 5 and 6 minute mini-opuses. It's a cross-country drive to California with the top down, just to get your heart broken.

Unfortunately, their follow up Those the Brokes, while still worth a listen, doesn't sparkle quite like their debut. Perhaps that justifies The Magic Numbers being limited to only 15 minutes of fame. But with this singular album, they deserve more. I hope that as time goes on, this album is rediscovered and its life expanded. I'd like to think i have succeeded in some way at extending it to at least 16 minutes.
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Here's a video from the Glastonbury Festival in 2007 which might lead you to believe they were the biggest band since Bono and those other guys

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Second album Those the Brokes

theinconsideratemixtape.blogspot.com

Lambchop :: Nixon :: 2000

2010-01-19T22:00:00.002-06:00

As an 18 year-old in the mid-90's who owned multiple pairs of Chuck Taylors, had been to a Lollapalooza festival and bought a Dead Milkmen t-shirt at a show for less than a hundred people, i was pretty sure i knew what "alternative" music was. There was the music that everyone else listened to and then there was my music. My music was the kind you were never going to hear on the radio and was infinitely cooler than your music. But i was about to discover that what i was listening to wasn't even the tip of the iceberg. I was actually just floating on a sheet of ice about three miles from it. The day i crashed into the iceberg was around my 4th week after moving from my small town to the small city of Nashville, TN.

Some poorly designed xeroxed fliers started circulating around my college campus for a band called Brown Towel at a place called Lucy's Record Shop. With nothing to do on a weekend night and a general understanding of how to read a map, i made my way downtown to a small record store with a stage in the back room. A new world opened its doors to me that night; it was the night i realized that the music you created could exist outside any of the "normal" musical confines i had known to that point. (I'll actually probably write another blog post specifically about this show in future; it really was that important to me).

This is where i first encountered Lambchop. The first question i had was "how many people are in this band?" They just kept coming until there were about a dozen people on the stage. The second question was "why is the singer sitting behind an big band style podium with a Laverne- sweater type "L" on the front?" The third question i'm pretty sure was "Is that guy playing wrenches?"

The most striking thing to me was how quiet they were. How could a band with so many people on stage, playing electric guitars, horns and the contents of a tool box keep the volume so low? The music created such a strangely warm (and warmly strange) atmosphere as the bed for these half spoken/half sung lyrics that seemed weirdly sincere (and sincerely weird). It was definitely like nothing i had heard at that point in my life. Fifteen years later, i can still say the same thing.

So which album to write about here? At this point, Lambchop has released 10 proper albums, along with a couple of ep's, a few singles and two odds & ends compilations. The weird thing is that all their albums are good and i would actually recommend each one. Five of their first six, i would highly recommend. But i like to keep these reviews to one album so i've chosen #5, Nixon, and here's why.

Lambchop is a band that has managed to grow and evolve over the years, which is so important in the music world but doesn't happen as much as it should. Their musical changes could be attributed to the ever changing membership of the band. Or it could be attributed to the vision of just one man, Lambchop's writer, singer and spiritual leader, Kurt Wagner. It's probably a combination of both.

On their debut, I Hope You're Sitting Down, Lambchop lays the concrete on which they will build their entire career. The songs are simple, with few chord changes and slow beats and hints of Music Row creeping through the cracks. But the flourishes added by the horns, steel guitar, organ, vibes and of course, wrenches create a both eerie and comforting cloud. The lyrics are like some strange beat poetry. The imagery is strong but it's hard to know just what it all means. The voice is low and soft, like someone reading out loud to themselves. The second album, How I Quit Smoking, continues with a similar formula but it's a bit more polished, features a(n increasingly important) beautiful string section and at times, they find the volume knobs, the drummer drinks some coffee and they practically "rock." For numero 3, Thriller, they get darker and even louder. Number 4, What Another Man Spills channels the spirit of Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield about as well as a bunch of low key white folk from Nashville can. Number 5 is the pinnacle of the Lambchop sound. Every album before led them create Nixon.

Here you'll find, that weird gothic country air ("The Distance from Her to There"), the light and funky dance tunes ("Grumpus"), the Curtis Mayfield falsetto ("You Masculine You "), the 70's AM fare ("What Else Could It Be?"), the dark eerie mood pieces ("The Petrified Florist") and even a "hit" ("Up With People" not only had a video but was remixed by Grammy nominees Zero 7). This is easily the most over-the-top, slickly produced album in their catalog which some may see as a negative. The Lambchop sound has always been subtle and understated. On this one, they blow the doors off. The horns, the strings, the back up singers; the production notes probably look a lot like the production notes of a Celine Dion album. While i certainly appreciate the aesthetics of their other albums, these songs are big and the arrangements are elaborate; they really deserves this kind of ridiculous grandeur.

For album 6, they put a piano up front and brought the volume back down to a whisper. Each album since has created its own mood with great results but never as great as what they created back in 2000. Also, i forgot to mention; somewhere along the way from album #1 to album #5, they dropped the wrench player and picked up a guy who played guitar with a butter knife.

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How I Quit Smoking is my other favorite

Update?

2010-01-17T21:44:00.003-06:00

Here's the good news: I'm going to start posting three times a day. Here's the bad news: that's a total lie. I had that broken computer thing so that held me up. Right now i have my computer running but all the files that were on it are stored on someone else's computer until i know all my problems are fixed. So my year-end and decade-end posts will come as soon as i can get my lists back. Hopefully i'll get back to grind and post with some regularity soon but in the mean time, enjoy this photo of my ongoing back tattoo. I think "Jackyl" hurt the most.

Vic Chesnutt R.I.P.

2010-01-02T18:04:00.004-06:00

I sadly just recently learned of the death of Vic Chesnutt, who died on Christmas Day. I was fortunate enough to accidentally end up at one of his shows at Lucy's Record Shop in Nashville around 1997 and had a chance to see him live a few more times over the next few years. Chesnutt's ability to combine his strange sense of humor with such genuine emotional sentiments is a gift that few can truly claim. He was a songwriter like no other; music has lost a truly unique voice.

The New York Times obituary gives a nice overview of his life for those not familiar with his life and work.

While his last few albums have not impressed me the way i would hope, his recent album At the Cut (one of two released in 2009) was one of my favorite releases of the year. My immediate favorite song on the album was "Flirted With You All My Life" which holds an eerie new meaning in light of his death.

King Kong :: Me Hungry :: 1995

2009-12-29T08:13:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to come up with a new genre name to describe the music of King Kong. I think i've got it: Retard-Funk

Sold yet? Ok, then i'll elaborate a bit. While generally politically incorrect about things, i don't generally use that particular non-p.c. term but sometimes a certain word just captures the essence of a sound. So there it is. King Kong is funky, there's no doubt about it. But it's not quite funk. James Brown might not have been able to get down to this but you sure can. The grooves dig into you while you bounce your head up and down, side to side and sometimes your booty starts moving around a bit. But something's just not quite right. Could it be the slightly primate-ish man-child at the center of it all?

Ethan Buckler...

...no not him...

...not him either...

...yeah, that's him.

Anyway, Ethan Buckler actually made his start playing bass in the Louisville band, Slint. King Kong's fun and silliness make them the antithesis of his former band's heavy seriousness. King Kong is just here to party. The music is bouncy, the lyrics are ridiculous and it's all equally confusing and awe-inspiring. Never moreso than on their masterpiece opus Me Hungry.

With all the money i make off of Cactus...the play, i then plan to produce the Broadway musical Me Hungry. It should be simple enough. The entire story is laid out in full on this album. It's a sad and beautiful tale of love and loss and life; it's the tale of perile and survival; of endings and new beginnings; and the triumph of the human spirit. It's the story of a man and his yak.

Song 1 "Animal": We meet our central characters, a berry-eating caveman and his yak
Song 2 "To Love a Yak": We delve deeper into the love between caveman and yak
Song 3 "Danger": Perile comes in the form of a tiger; while hiding in a tree, he meets a cavewoman; tiger is killed; they fall in love
Song 4 "Teardrop": Yak gets jealous, yak cries
Song 5 "Beastie Bear": Caveman protects berries from bear
Song 6 "Ten Long Years": (instrumental representing passing of time, this will mainly be used for a set change)
Song 7 "White Stuff": Snow falls; Ice Age begins; berry bushes freeze and die
Song 8 "Me Hungry": Caveman and cavewoman eat yak
Song 9 "The Crow": A song about how time and life move forward
lights fade

Ok, now are you sold?

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Funny Farm is excellent, there's just no man/yak love story.

http://theinconsideratemixtape.blogspot.com/

Millie Jackson :: Caught Up :: 1974

2009-12-22T14:45:00.000-06:00

Occasionally there is a song that you can’t truly explain in words. No matter how much i say, no matter how incredible i tell you it is, the truth is you just don’t know unless you hear the song yourself. In the case of “(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don’t Want to be Right” as it appears on Millie Jackson’s Caught Up, the main reason I can’t really explain it to you is simple. No matter how much i try and no matter how much i may wish to the contrary, nothing can change the fact that i am not a sassy black woman.

I have to give some credit here to a pretty great show on WRVU called The Gummy Soul Show. They play Soul music from every decade but they seem to focus a lot on the 70’s. I heard them play this song around 6:30 one night and by 7:15, this CD was on its way to my house via Amazon. I also recently played this on my own radio show, telling the above story, and was thrilled to get a phone call from a listener who said he was going to order it as soon as he got home. Yes, it’s that good. So now, with the above disclaimer, i will attempt to explain in words why this is so mind blowing from the point of view of an anything-but-sassy white dude.

I don’t want to discount the rest of this album. It’s all great and i’ll get into the rest of the songs in a bit but i can’t help but to jump into the high point of this album, the opener “I Don’t Want to be Right.” This is the song of a woman who has found herself in love with a married man. She knows she probably shouldn’t but she can’t help herself. Her friends tell her there’s no future with him but she asks “Am I wrong for trying to hang on to the best thing I’ve ever had?” And determined to hang on to him, she borrows a sentiment from Otis Redding “I’ve been loving you a little bit too long, I can’t give up on your lovin’ now.”

Now while this is some pretty great classic Soul, it’s not until the 4-minute mark, when Millie gives you an “Mmm” on the downbeat, that it’s really on. At that point we enter into what is listed on the back of the album as “The Rap.” For the next 6 minutes, she just lays it out for the listener, explaining all the ups and downs and dating a married man. And she gives all the reasons why she prefers it that way, the best thing being that “when you go to laundromat, you don’t gotta wash nobody’s funky drawers but your own.” From the end of the rap we move right back into the song, ultimately creating 11 minutes of the most oh-no-she-di’nt sassy-black-woman Soul to ever be put on wax.

As i said, this song is the highlight of the album. However, it’s all relative and to tell the truth, it’s when this song is over that this album gets interesting. Y’see, we’re dealing with a concept album here. Without a break in the music, we hear a short conversation in which our mistress reveals to her man’s wife that he’s been cheating on her. While in the previous song, she gave all the reasons she wanted to keep her situation just the way it is, the listener gets the feeling that maybe she actually wants a little more. We find out we’re right when she kicks into “All I Want is a Fighting Chance,” challenging his wife to just try and hang on to her man. After that comes “I’m Tired of Hiding” where she explains to him that “you gotta make up your mind, it’s either me or your wife.”

The power of storytelling can be pretty amazing. I think most everyone agrees that cheating isn’t really a respectable trait but through the course of side A, the listener gets pretty attached to the “other woman” and sort of forgets that she is in fact the other woman. You really want her to get her man, despite the fact that he belongs to someone else. Then you flip the album over and side B belongs to the scorned wife.

The title “It’s All Over but the Shouting” pretty much says it all but is still followed up with “…and the shouting’s gonna be done by me.” On the next track, she calms down and considers taking him back but has her pride to think of. “So Easy Going, So Hard Coming Back” is how she explains that he’ll have to earn his way back in. “I’m Through Trying to Prove My Love to You” follows, in which she takes some responsibility for the failure of their marriage but ultimately sees that it’s simply time to end it once and for all, which leads us into the closing song. “Summer (The First Time)” was originally a hit for Bobby Goldsboro a few years earlier but the lyrics have been changed a bit here. At first this song seems out of place. The confrontation present on the rest of the album gives way to sweetness, as she recounts the first day of their relationship when everything was perfect. But then Millie brings it all full circle with recognizing that while there were good times there was also obviously the bad times and the albums fades out on a repeating chorus of “Now is the time to say goodbye. Goodbye”

In addition to the amazing Ms. Jackson herself, the music here could not be more perfect. This is the Muscle Shoals sound at its best. In addition to the fabulously subtle rhythm section, the arrangements for the strings and horns hit in that way that only 70’s soul and vocal albums can. They swell, hover, punctuate, lay low, disappear completely; whatever brings the right emotion to the song. The buried things, like an out of key tinkering decline on a piano when addressing the “bad times” on the closing song, match the words to pull you into the stories of this album. Concept albums have a habit of being overblown, unfocused or just generally lame. Caught Up is the opposite of every one of those adjectives.

This album is probably my favorite discovery i’ve made in the last year. It reminds me that no matter what i’ve heard before, there’s still something out there that’s like nothing i’ve heard before. And for a moment, if i close my eyes and dream a little dream, i get to know what it’s like to be a sassy black woman.
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"I Don't Want to be Right" starts about 4 minutes into this video. It doesn't have the incredible rap in the middle but you get the idea.

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Still Caught Up continues the story started here. I don't want to ruin anything but there are Zombie Pirates involved.

http://theinconsideratemixtape.blogspot.com/

Some computers work; mine doesn't.

2009-12-21T13:18:00.003-06:00

I am very very sorry for the delay in posting lately. My Commodore PET finally stopped working on me so i haven't been able to get online. I hope to be back soon. There's a new Commodore that has come out. They call it the "64" and if i take some of my Christmas gifts back, i think i'll be able to afford it. Please check back and hopefully i'll have something new for you.

In the meantime, Happy Holidays and stuff from The Inconsiderate Mixtape.

And so it goes...and so it goes...and so it goes...

2009-12-12T16:01:00.005-06:00

It's official: The Inconsiderate Mixtape will not be returning to WRVU for a while. It's a long story but essentially comes down to a limit of the number of non-student/non-alumni DJs involved in the station.

So my final show will be this Monday (Dec. 14) at 10pm. I'll be doing a year-end roundup of my favorite releases of 2009. Thanks for everyone who has listened in the past.

As for the future, the blog will continue and i'm working on a way to continue creating podcasts to be downloaded here. Hopefully, the policy at WRVU will change and i'll be able to get back on the air but there's a good chance that won't be until next August.

Peace out and stuff.

Radio Show: November 16, 2009

2009-12-10T22:24:00.001-06:00

I have a few random shows sitting around. Here's one of them.

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Playlist

Imperial Teen :: Seasick :: 1996

2009-12-02T13:53:00.001-06:00

There's a scene in the movie (and maybe the book but that's too much work) High Fidelity in which Jack Black's character discovers that one of the record store's patrons doesn't own Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde. With a look of shock and concern, he quietly makes the customer buy it with a promise not to reveal the dirty secret of a Blonde On Blonde-less record collection. We've all had those conversations where somebody says "I can't believe you haven't heard _____!" Any self-acknowledged music geek who hangs out with other music geeks has undoubtedly been on both sides of that statement. There are certain albums that we feel everybody should know and love. Imperial Teen's Seasick is not one of them.

I don't expect this album to become a classic. I don't expect a century of teenagers finding this in their parents... um, digital library? and feeling like their life will never be the same. This is in no way a history changer or what some may call "essential." Maybe you don't need this album but i do.

You would never guess there is a connection but Imperial Teen started as a side project for Faith No More keyboardist, Roddy Bottum. He picks up guitar here and handles about half of the vocals. This is far from FNM's loud, weird, dark, funk-infested metal. There is no faux-rapping, primal screaming or bass slapping. Instead there are hummable tunes, sweet harmonies and boy-girl counter melodies. You know, Pop.

Imperial Teen may not be breaking new ground here but they've written the kinds of songs that you sing along with in the car and stay stuck in your head for the next three days. And like sand in the sugar bowl, they take a very bouncy, poppy foundation and cover it up with a snide grit, dirty guitars and dark lyrics. The counter melodies can both welcome you into a warm situation and disorient you at the same time. The light vocals can ease into a shout before you know it. They can take a playful title like "Tippy Tap" and inject it with lyrics like "Hands up/lay down/don't cry/stick a needle in your eye." Arguably the poppiest song and the lead single on this album, "You're One," actually deals, somewhat angrily, with the suicide of Bottum's friend Kurt Cobain. The dark/light contrast is a tradition that's gone on for a long time but not everyone can do it well. Imperial Teen just tap into their paradoxes in a way that most bands miss.

I came of musical age during the Alternative boom of the 1990's. So much of the stuff that came out then has since been exposed as garbage and even the good stuff is generally dismissed among the cool kids these days. Because of this, i sometimes feel like i have to defend the 90's Alternative bands that i still love. But the fact is, the good stuff holds up. It wasn't all just fodder for the major labels. When music is made honestly and out of a pure love for making it and sharing ideas, it's worthwhile and will generally remain timeless in its own way. And maybe that makes it a classic. Seasick might not be a Surfer Rosa, Nevermind or Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain but it's just as honest and representative as any of them, of a pretty special time in popular music.

So what i'm saying is maybe you don't need this album... or maybe you do.
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What Is Not To Love is a little more expiremental and maybe more "mature." Different than Seasick? Yes. Better? Maybe.

Radio Shows: November 24 & 25

2009-11-25T18:13:00.005-06:00

The Vandy students are gone for the week which means the schedule has been open for substitutions. So on the 24th, my pal William and i took over the airwaves for 3 hours and on the 25th i took it for 2 more hours. So here are two long and awesome shows for you to enjoy on your drive home for eating/arguing/footballing/arm wrestling; whatever it is you guys do for the holiday. Of course, if your drive is longer than 5 hours, click the Podcast tag on the right to pull up all my past shows.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 24th
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Playlist

November 25th
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Playlist

Merle Haggard :: Mama Tried :: 1968

2009-11-22T17:13:00.000-06:00

We all know what's wrong with Country music these days. The biggest problem is simple: it isn't Country music. The only difference between most popular Country music today and most Pop music is the subtle addition of a banjo, pedal steel or fiddle buried in the mix simply to say "hey, this is country." Without that instrumental label, you might be fooled by the electronic beats and distorted guitars. Country today is not recognizable by the standards that existed 40 years ago. Everybody knows this and there's not really any point in going into that. It's just the basis for the following statement. A statement so obvious, it's going to sound dumb.

What i love about this country album from 1968 is that it sounds like a country album from 1968.

Again, that may seem like a meaningless statement on the surface. But it's not. At this point, albums like this are artifacts. It's a dinosaur bone or a clay pot buried under layers of earth. It doesn't represent anything living and breathing today. We can only use science and our imaginations to connect it to what we now see and hear around us. There is a certain amount of awe and fascination that accompanies listening to this music. Walking the stage of the Ryman is like walking the grounds of Shiloh. You've heard the stories, you can picture what happened there but you will never experience it and you will never know what it was really like. Time moves on and somebody writes its history.

Nearly ten years ago, i had the opportunity to work part-time at a popular Country radio station in southern Kentucky, WBVR, The Beaver. I'll admit i wasn't extremely thrilled with the format of the station which relied heavily on the likes of Shania and Garth (Garth Garth, not Chris Garth) who were at their peaks at the time. But i wanted to get my foot in the door of a radio station so i took the job. I wasn't going to be speaking on the air, i was actually running a show over satellite and my only real job was to plug in the local commercials at the proper time. What was a surprise to me was that i wasn't going to be listening to Shania and Garth. The show i was running was called "Country Gold Saturday Night" and played hits of Country past. While i still had to endure some bad 80's country and multiple Alabama songs in one 6-hour night, the majority of the show's playlist came from the three decades prior to that one. At the time, i still wasn't thrilled about old Country music but it was unmistakably better than hearing that damn song about the little girl behind the couch who watched her parents kill each other with the big reveal that Jesus was right there beside her the whole time (if you don't remember that horrible bit of country sap, consider yourself lucky). But i did my job, i plugged in my commercials and over time, to my surprise, i fell in love with many of the songs i heard each week.

You know how whenever you hear those first three notes of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," you get kind of excited because you love that song. That's how i feel at the beginning of "Mama Tried" and it's all because of Country Gold Saturday Night. They played that song at least every two weeks and every time i hear that sliding guitar intro, it brings a smile to my face. (To be fair to Marvin, babies don't get made when "Mama Tried" comes on so it's not exactly the same thing.)

It's that steel guitar part that starts this album. As was common back then, all the singles are at the beginning of the album. The triple-single kickoff of "Mama Tried," "Green Green Grass of Home" and "Little Ole Wine Drinker Me" is pretty hard to beat. Those first two songs deal with a favorite theme of classic Country music: Prison. Sometimes these are just stories and sometimes this is true-life stuff. For Haggard, it's a little of both. After spending time in and out (mostly by running away) of juvenile detention centers, he was caught in a burglary and sent to San Quentin. Your random trivia fact for the day is that Merle Haggard was in the audience when Johnny Cash recorded his legendary At San Quentin album. It was these Cash performances that supposedly inspired Haggard to straighten up and concentrate on his music career that he had started before his incarceration.

When Haggard sings "I turned 21 in prison" in a song he wrote, that's actually autobiographical which leads you to believe he also means it when he sings "No-one could steer me right but Mama tried." "Green Green Grass of Home" may not be the singer's own story but i'll bet it's the story of the people he met behind bars. It's the story of a man dreaming of home while he waits for the priest to walk him to his execution. This song will break your heart the way country music is supposed to.

The rest of the album is what the industry most likely considered filler but the majority of it stands strong on its own. The Dolly Parton-penned "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)" and Mel Tillis's "I Could Have Gone Right" are classic Nashville and "Run'em Off" is the kind of fun song you'd expect from Buck Owens. But the other standout songs here are the ones written by Haggard, most notably the sweet love song "The Sunny Side of Life" and the you-better-not-be-cheatin' song "I'll Always Know."

In listening to this album a little more closely this last week, i've noticed a subtlety that i've never really heard before. On "Mama Tried" and "I'll Always Know," there seems to be a secret weapon that makes them sound a little different from the rest of the alum or any other Country song of the time. While this album sounds like the classics that had come before, the acoustic guitar on just these two songs sounds very modern, like what you would have heard from the folk scene of Bob Dylan and Fred Neil. Maybe that's what makes it sound like 1968. Of course maybe that's a mirror to what has happened now. When other popular music starts creeping in to a traditional form, it's going to change it. Music really should evolve or else it becomes stagnant. Bob Dylan's acoustic guitar might just be the equivalent of Britney Spears' drum track. The difference hear is the subtlety of Haggard's guitar while those modern drum tracks are as subtle as a fart on the wooden pew at the Ryman during an Emmylou Harris song. When the old sound outweighs the new, that's tradition being updated; when the new sound overpowers the old, that the identity of the tradition being killed. So while stations like The Beaver fill their days with the likes of Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban, i just hope they still find time on a Saturday night for that sliding guitar intro that brings a smile to my face.

Chris Gaines :: Greatest Hits :: 1999

2009-11-10T07:36:00.001-06:00

I know it's odd to pick a Greatest Hits album for a review but the truth is, this is the one to own. All of Chris's other albums are a little uneven. While i could highly recommend Fornicopia to anyone that needed a little more, for the casual or new Chris Gaines fan, this is where it's at.

For such a long, complicated life, i'll just reference the liner notes of this cd:

Christian Gene Gaines was born August 10, 1967 in Brisbane, Australia. His family moved to the Los Angeles area when he was five years old. As an only child, Chris was expected by many to carry the torch in the Olympic waters. His father had been a coach for Long Beach State, and both the U.S. and Australian Olympic swim teams. Chris' mother is a former swimmer for the Australian Olympic team, and a Commonwealth Games medalist. The young Gaines, however, defied expectations of an athletic future and developed a life-long passion for music, a passion so great Chris decided to quit school his senior year at Morning Side High School to pursue his music professionally. He did complete his G.E.D. in 1987.

Chris joined his best friend Tommy Levitz along with Marc Obed in the band, CRUSH. The band signed with Capitol Records in 1985 and released their self-titled debut album in 1986. The second single, "My Love Tells Me So," was a smash and one of the year's most successful songs. But the band's success was short-lived when lead singer Tommy Levitz died in a plane crash later that year.

For the next two years, Joe Smith of Capitol Records and Chris discussed the possibility of a Chris Gaines solo career, and in 1989, Chris debuted his solo album Straight Jacket. Both the public and the music industry responded favorably; the album spent an extraordinary 224 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The album, which featured the hits "Maybe," "White Flag," and Digging For Gold," is still Chris' biggest-selling album to date.

Tragedy struck again when Chris' father died in the fall of 1990 after his long battle with cancer. Almost a year to the day later, Chris released his second solo album, Fornucopia. Even though it was a very dark and angry album, it debuted at #1 and spent a combined 18 weeks on top of the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart. The album included the soulful remake of the 1972 Ramsey Sellers classic, "It Don't Matter To The Sun," and the instant classic, "Main Street."

In the winter of 1992, Chris was involved in a violent single-car crash that nearly ended his life. Chris spent six weeks in the hospital and over two years undergoing extensive plastic surgery on his face, shoulder and hands. Although he would not allow himself to be seen or photographed, Chris released his third solo album, Apostle, in the winter of 1994. Without any artist promotion, the album still managed to spend a combined 8 weeks atop the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart, and featured the singles "Way Of The Girl" and "Unsigned Letter."

Finally, in the winter of 1996, Chris re-emerged into public view for the first time with Triangle. Chris was dubbed "The New Prince" by the media because of his new look and the fact that his music showed a move towards R&B - a distinct change in musical style from his past. "Driftin' Away," "That's The Way I Remember It," and "Snow In July" are the featured hits on the album.

Now, on the eve of the millennium, Chris has assembled his greatest hits, as well as two new songs, "Lost In You" and "Right Now." Chris' Greatest Hits is the perfect bridge between his upcoming solo album, The Lamb (which the critics are already predicting will be the "definitive album of the new millennium") and the albums that have defined our times over the last decade.

Ok, i just wanted you guys to read that load of what-the-huh? As most of you know, Chris Gaines does not actually exist (except in my heart). Chris Gaines is none other than Mr. Thunder Rolls himself, Garth Brooks. Y'see, Garth's not content with just playing the role he's given and being a Country music star. He's a true artist, a rebel, a maverick, a... bad decision maker. Garth decided he wanted make a pop album and decided to do it in the guise of Chris Gaines. I'll give him some credit, he really did take a chance against what i'm sure his business associates told him. But those other guys were right this time, Chris Gaines tanked.

It wasn't for a complete lack of trying. For about a month Garth and Chris were the talk of the town. The only true Chris sighting that i know about was on Saturday Night Live. Garth hosted and Chris was the musical guest. There was no secret that the two were the same and they even poked fun of it on the show. The problem here is that nobody really knew what to do with this whole game of pretend. Here are my thoughts; prepare for more analysis over Chris Gaines than you ever wanted to read or ever even knew existed:

The main reason the Chris Gaines scheme failed isn't just because it was probably a bad idea from the beginning but because it was done totally half-assed. There are a couple of possible ways this could have been handled differently. Option #1 is that Garth could have tried to keep his Clark Kent identity a secret. This record was released on Capitol Records. Capitol could have promoted him as a new artist, put all the backing you need to get on MTVH1 and Clear Channel radio. They could have pushed for late night talk show performances and interviews. He could have played smaller venues and record store performances. Once Chris made a name for himself, they could have pulled back the curtain and it might have actually been kind of cool. Option #2 is Garth could have just said "I'd like to make a pop album." He could have released it under his own name and promoted it just like his country albums. It's not as much fun but it could have expanded the world's view of him as just a country artist. However, had he gone with either of these instead of the lukewarm middle path, there is still one hurdle to get past. In order for option #1 to have worked, the songs would have needed to be a little bit better. In order for option #2 to have worked... the songs would have needed to be a little bit better.

Here's the thing with the music on this album. It's not all that horrible. I bet my mom would find some stuff on here that she likes. She listens to Michael Bolton and Bonnie Raitt and this crap could fly just well as that crap. However, in option #1, this music is way too adult-contemporary. They want Chris to be some kind of tortured artist but the lead off single, "Lost In You," really just sounds like Sade. In option #2, while Garth could have appealed to my mom (she did after all ask for his autograph on the back of a deposit slip in a department store once though she's never owned any of his albums), with the exception of the Sade song and one or two others, this stuff is the most boring, we-need-a-song-in-the-background-of-a-restaurant-scene-in-a-soap-opera music that's ever been written. It's not worthy of being one of the long blond pubic hairs that comprised Michael Bolton's former flowing mullet. So while it's not all that horrible, it mostly is.

But let's examine the path that was taken, Option #3 if you will. This was the whole plan: In the Life of Chris Gaines (the official title of this Garth Brooks album) is considered "the pre-soundtrack to the movie The Lamb." This movie was going to be the story of Chris Gaines, basically what you read above stretched out to 90 minutes starring Garth in the lead role. At the same time, Chris would release his new album by the same name. As we know, that part never happened. According to a Garth fansite that exists in the graveyard of never updated but never deleted webpages, it was in pre-production in February 2001 and was to be released in late 2001 or early 2002. Obviously the failure of step 1 meant there was no point in continuing with steps 2 & 3. Thus The Lamb was sacrificed for the sake of saving Garth's career.

Beyond the fact that the music was not very good in general, there is another glaring problem with the songs here and it would have been even more noticeable had the movie been made. The songs on this CD are supposed to represent the entire career of the artist formerly known as Garth. Chris had released 5 albums in his career and this CD, being a greatest hits, collected 2-3 songs from each of these albums. So why do the songs recorded in 1986 sound so much like the ones he recorded in 1999? Of course we know why; because in reality they were all recorded at the same time. But when you're trying to create a work of fiction, you have to pay attention to the details. The music of 1986 does not sound like the music of 1999. The music a person makes when they are 19 is not the same music they make when they're 32. Recording the "old" songs with a current sound is sort of the equivalent of Moses wearing a Members Only jacket when he parted the Red Sea because that's what Charlton Heston wore on the set that day. This lack of attention to detail is indicative of the half-baked nature of this whole project.

The purpose of this blog is to inform you about, and recommend to you, albums which i think you should listen to. Let me be perfectly clear. You should not own this album. If you see it in the $1 bin at your local used CD store and you're curious enough, go ahead but i do not recommend or endorse this album. So why is it on my own shelf and why would i spend so much time writing about it? Frankly, because i'm fascinated by it in every way. I'm fascinated that this happened in the first place but i think what really draws me in is the way it's been--not just forgotten--swept under the rug. In true 1984 fashion, the powers that be have tried to make Chris Gaines disappear as if he never existed. Of course, with the intenet being what it is, nothing can disappear completely. However i have tried to find t-shirts, posters, in-store promo displays, etc.; all i can find on eBay are a million copies of this CD. I haven't been able to find even a sentence from the screenplay for The Lamb. If it was in fact in "pre-production" then i would assume they would have a script but if they did, it's in "The New Prince's" vault and will never make an exit. While this may just be evident that nobody cares enough to put this stuff online, i have one bit of solid proof that backs up my "Chris never existed" conspiracy theory.

I mentioned the SNL episode earlier. I did not get to see it when it originally aired. A few years later, i saw a rerun on a cable channel of SNL with Garth Brooks hosting. I was pretty excited because i was finally going to see the elusive Chris Gaines in action. There was only one problem. When it came time for the musical guest, all of the sudden Robert Duvall is standing there. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Garth Brooks." ???!!?!!!??! That's right, a Garth Books performance from another episode had been substituted for syndication. Chris Gaines never existed. It was at this moment my true obsession began.

I've only heard one other reference to Chris in pop culture since. In the movie I [heart] Huckabees there is a character who likes to recount his brush with celebrities. When he mentions his encounter with Garth Brooks, another character asks "Chris Garth or Garth Garth?" I may have been the only one in the theater to laugh out loud at that but it was because i knew then that i was not the only one fighting the fight. I have had a few plans that i'm unfortunately too lazy to follow through with, though this being the 10th anniversary of the album's release, it's the best time. The master plan is to learn to play all the songs and, since i live in Music City USA, begin performing around town as Chris Gaines and see how long it takes to receive a cease and desist order. [Originally i thought i'd play the part of Chris but i'm really a better bass player and i happen to know a dark haired gentlemen who can sing and play guitar and grow a decent soul patch so Newton, if you're reading this, what do you think?]

The easier plan is to make flyers and plaster them all over Music Row. The flyer is simple. Chris's name, a brooding image of his mysterious face and the message:

"We Will Never Forget"

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If you'd like to have look at all of Chris Gaines' past album covers (and believe me, you do), you can find them on the aforementioned fansite here. And now a feast for you eyes and ears. While i described the music on the CD as "not all that horrible," i'd like to introduce you to the exception. This one, an honest to God single by the way, is ALL horrible.

And for his Sade song, here's some dude singing it in his living room. Youtube is weird.

Radio Show: October 19, 2009

2009-10-27T21:09:00.003-05:00

I'm back to being a week behind on posting my shows for download but i'll try to catch up. On this particular show, i reveal my deep dark secret: I have a trainee. Enjoy.

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Playlist

Paint My Album

2009-10-21T16:48:00.003-05:00

If you go to PaintMyAlbum.net, you'll find a couple of guys collecting album covers created using Microsoft Paint. Here's my contribution:

Here's the original:

Faces :: Ooh La La :: 1973

2009-10-15T12:35:00.002-05:00

"Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely."

-- Greil Marcus, from The Rolling Stone History of Rock 'n Roll

There's this dirty little secret that is revealed to every real music fan at some point in his or her life. It's actually a pretty well-known secret but it still comes as a surprise to most every person when they first discover it. It's like when you first see "Arrested Development." You've heard people mention that it's good but suddenly you realize how amazing it is but your parents still don't know about it so it's like you've become a member of a really large secret club. That pretty much goes for the deliciousness of mini-corndogs too. So, if you're not already a member, i'm going to give you admission to this special club through the knowledge of the following run-on sentence.

There was a time, many years ago, pre-Cell Phones but post-Dinosaurs, pre-Cosby show but post-Civil War, pre-New Wave but post-British Invasion; a time all but forgotten by modern men, forever to be sanctioned to historical accounts, record-store conversations and music blogs; a time before the decline of the Western Civilization, believe it or not... there was a time that Rod Stewart did not blow goat balls."

Rod started his musical career in 1962 with a group called Steampacket. Other than a pretty hideous name, the only other notable fact about Steampacket is that it included as its members, Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll and Long John Baldry, who all went on to have successful careers on their own. In 1966, Stewart signed on as the singer of the Jeff Beck Group. I just recently (finally) picked up Jeff Beck Group's Truth and Beck-Ola after a friend made the statement that, at their best, they rivaled Led Zeppelin. Having never heard anything mentioned as "rivaling Led Zeppelin," i had to know. While the Zep still operates way above Beck's group as a whole, i completely see the argument. Beck's guitar is on fire and Rod rips out some vocals that would make Robert Plant pee in his way-too-tight bell bottom jeans. In 1969, Stewart and bassist Ronnie Wood, switching to guitar, left Beck to join a new lineup of the Small Faces who changed their name to simply Faces.

As the new Faces began recording, Stewart simultaneously began his solo career. Over the next few years, Faces released several fine albums, leading up to Ooh La La, their final album together. Where the Small Faces fit the British Invasion mold and the Jeff Beck Group went to louder and heavier lands, Faces went for a good-ol' rootsy, blues based rock 'n' roll. It was a path most notably cut by The Rolling Stones, and unlike Zeppelin, i have heard it said many times that, at their best, Faces rival and probably even surpass The Stones. I agree.

Many songs on this album are piano/guitar driven barroom boogie like "Silicone Grown" and "Borstal Boys." Others get a little bluesier and give the organ some time to shine like the instrumental "Fly in the Ointment." For all the rocking, one of the standouts for me has to be "Glad and Sorry" which is a much more laid back track and features group vocals on the entire song. The final track is the title track. It's also one of Faces best-known songs and ironically sung by Ronnie Wood. You know the song, it's the one with the chorus "I wish... that... I knew what I know now... when I was younger." Perhaps it's a fitting epitaph for a band that, in one more year, would no longer be.

Stewart gets a lot of notice for Faces success perhaps because he was the frontman or perhaps because it's so amazing that something so awesome came from someone so lame. But the truth is that Faces was a group. Stewart, Wood and bassist/sometimes vocalist Ronnie Lane were fairly equal parts in the songwriting department and the way they all played together was so loose and free that it created a certain magic that was missing on Stewart's solo albums of the time. After Faces, Wood joined The Rolling Stones, Lane began a solo career, drummer Kenney Jones covered for the late Keith Moon with The Who and keyboardist Ian McLagan became a bit of a session man playing over the years with The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and a million others.

As for Stewart, we all know what happened. After his first four, mostly excellent, solo albums, he began his long descent into suck. He recorded some disco, he married supermodels, he danced all over Mtv, he recorded standards albums, he pops up on American Idol, all presumably in search of the perfect set of goat balls. Rod Stewart is dead. There's no hope that he'll someday come back to us and rock a face or two. He's gone but it's up to our secret society, of which you are now a member, to make sure he is not forgotten.

This is a pretty long version of "Borstal Boys" due to an extended guitar and drum break buy, my Ford, it's good.

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A lot of people will tell you that "A Nod is as Good as a Wink..." is Faces' best album. They might be right.

Radio Show October 12, 2009

2009-10-14T08:04:00.003-05:00

Julian and Kristin from The Young Republic joined me in the studio this week to play a few songs from their new album, Balletesque. They'll be celebrating its release with three shows at Edgehill Studio Cafe in Nashville, October 15, 16 & 17. You can find more info and hear songs and look at pictures and post witty comments and stalk and invite them to join your mafia on the Young Republic MySpace page.

Here's the radio show. They play four songs in studio, plus we play one from the new CD. We also play a song by a guy that's kind of like Sondre Lerche but not as good.
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Playlist

Radio Show: October 5, 2009

2009-10-07T15:17:00.000-05:00

Download Show
And here's the playlist

Radio Show: September 28, 2009

2009-10-02T12:11:00.001-05:00

More electronic than it was supposed to be. How does that happen?

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And here's the playlist

Steve Earle :: El Corazon :: 1997

2009-09-27T09:08:00.001-05:00

There was a period of time between 1998 and 2002 that i listened to a lot of Americana/Alt-Country music. I'm not "blaming" my friends but i was somehow influenced by my peers more than any other time in my life, concerning the music i listened to. Johnny & June were the figureheads. Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams were the King and Queen. Ryan Adams was the unruly Prince. Alejandro Escovedo was some related Duke. Emmylou Harris was an angel sent to remind us of the spirit of Gram Parsons, who conquered Country for the Rock kids and thus birthed the State of Americana.

Of course a lot of this influence was a great thing. Through them, i found a greater appreciation for Neil Young and The Rolling Stones. I discovered Faces and Moby Grape. I was forced to hear Wilco so many times, i actually started to like them. If it was no more than four chords, channeled Cash, Stones or Dylan and mixed well with beer, that's what was being played at the parties i went to. It's what people talked about. Those were the concerts everyone went to. And i was right there with them.

But after a while, all the newer bands started sounding alike to me. Son Volt, Drive-By Truckers, Jayhawks, Lucero, Bottle Rockets. All these bands that i appreciated on their own just became a big ball of unoriginality. We all know the classic Country themes. They were presented in the titles of a Johnny Cash box set and a series of Merle Haggard compilations. Together, you get the list "Love, God, Murder, Cheatin', Drinkin', Hurtin', Prison." Yep, that about covers it. The problem is that it's hard to come up with a new way to approach a song about Drinkin'. All of these themes have been touched on so many times for literally over a hundred years now. For me, the music became just as derivative and repetitive. If you exceed that 4-chord limit or started singing about wizards and shit, it's not longer Americana. It's a small box and most of the inhabitants have not found a way to sneak out and still keep one foot in.

It all became very boring for me. Soon, a lot of these artists that i had loved (and many that i still do love) just sort of fell to the side. I still don't listen much to Americana music. There was even a big Americana festival here this past weekend and i didn't even look to see who was playing. I think i just got burned out. There's a lot of music out there to listen to and this stuff doesn't scream for my attention the way it used to.

One of the reasons i enjoy writing this blog is that it makes me re-examine albums i've heard a million times. I know/think something is good but so often i've never really thought about why it's so good. I've listened to El Corazon about 10 times in the last week so i would know what to write about but more importantly because i have a new appreciation for Steve Earle that i never had before, even when i listened to him on a regular basis. Suddenly, he's screaming out for my attention again. What sets Earle apart from so many in the Americana/Alt-Country crowd became very evident to me last night while listening to a Lucero album. While so many artists, particularly younger artists, take their cues from the likes of Gram Parsons, Uncle Tupelo and Whiskeytown, Earle takes his from Woody Guthrie and more importantly, America.

His writing shows that "Americana" must actually represent the history of this country and its music. He understands from Guthrie the importance of telling a story. Sometimes it's for fun, sometimes it's to share an emotion and sometimes it's to kill fascists. And with the past in mind, Earle creates something very modern. El Corazon's opening song "Christmastime in Washington" relates the mood in the country in 1996 the way Guthrie related the mood of the country in 1940. He doesn't try to pretend he was in the Dustbowls, he just writes about where we are now. His call to Guthrie, Jesus & Martin Luther King to come help us out comes from the repressed reality that he and every listener are now the ones that have to set the world straight. I think this is one of the greatest bits of songwriting from the 20th century. I don't say that lightly. This is one for the history books.

For song #2, Earle does what every Americana artist does at one time or another. He pulls out the big gun, Emmylou Harris on harmony. With her help, he tells the story of a black boy who heads down to Taneytown, where his mother told him not to go. And he soon learns why vowing "I ain't goin' back there anymore." It's a dark rocker that sends chills down your spine. On "I Still Carry You Around," he solicits the help of the Del McCoury Band (which he would do further on their joint album The Mountain) in a legitimate nod to Bluegrass. "Somewhere Out There" and "Poison Lovers" cover the "Love" and "Hurtin'" themes in songs where you hear the harmonies even when they're not there. He closes it out with "Ft. Worth Blues," a sincere tribute to the travelling life and the love for home.

Steve Earle is a songwriter that will be remembered and re-discovered forever. He doesn't fake it, he lives it. He knows what songs are for.

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These are dang fine albums too.

Transcendental Blues
and
I Feel Alright

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For the Nashville crowd, i'd like to propose an idea. Let's try to get The Traveling Wilburys to reunite. In place of the late Roy Orbison and George Harrison, i nominate Steve Earle and local perennial rock god Dave Cloud to take their place. With the new lineup, we'll create a Monkees type tv show where they live together. Dave Cloud will constantly sing "Lay Lady Lay" whenever Bob Dylan's in the room and wackiness ensues when he pees on Tom Petty's couch.

Radio Shows: September 2 & 21

2009-09-23T13:36:00.003-05:00

I found another show i hadn't posted from September 2nd. So here's that one and this week's show.

September 2
Download Show
And here's the playlist

September 21
Download Show
And here's the playlist

The Damned :: Damned Damned Damned :: 1977

2009-09-21T09:39:00.003-05:00

A guitarist whose influence starts with 1950's Rock 'n' Roll, a drummer whose chosen last name is a skin infection, a bass player who sounds like the world's lamest superhero and occasionally sports feather boas & berets and a vampiric singer who wears all black and paints his face white. This mostly sounds like a creation one would make on the Rock Band video game. But at a time before Punk Rock had become stylized and homogenized and originality still counted for something, Brian James, Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible and Dave Vanian formed The Damned.

The Damned are very well known in the Punk world but considering they were pioneers along side The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Ramones, they've never quite reached the household-name status that the other three have. Their biggest claim to fame is that they released the first UK Punk single, "New Rose," and the first UK Punk album, Damned Damned Damned, and were the first UK Punk band to tour in America.

While this is great for the history books, i think The Damned have something much greater to be proud of. Unlike their counterparts, they created an album that seems truly timeless. I mean that as no disrespect to The Clash, Pistols or Ramones. Let me see if i can explain this. If a band released Nevermind the Bollocks... today, we'd say it sounds like 1977. We've all heard bands that rip off those others and they're just not that interesting, they just sound like rip-offs. But when was the last time you thought, "oh great, another Damned rip-off"? This album sounds as fresh today as it ever could have.

They presented a batch of songs that were aggressive enough to blow away pop music but still informed by the Rock 'n' Roll that everyone knew so there was still something recognizable in there. And to top it off, these guys actually knew how to play their instruments as opposed to some of their counterparts. James' guitar rips through like an angry Chuck Berry. Scabies' drumming has earned him comparisons to The Who's Keith Moon, which basically means he never stops hitting things, he never hits them softly and he generally hits more than what's really acceptable in a two and half minute song. Vanian's vocals have more melody than a lot of punk songs both past and present; it's stuff you can actually sing, not just scream, along with.

This album was basically a representation of their live set and recorded as such. Stiff Records house producer Nick Lowe essentially hit record and let the band run through the songs with very few overdubs or 2nd takes. As such, you can feel the energy running through these songs of a band just doing the only thing they know to do. There are so many highlights on this album. "Neat Neat Neat" and "New Rose" have already established themselves as classics in the Punk Rock canon. The creepy air of "Born to Kill" and "Feel the Pain," the one minute blitz of "Stab Your Back" and the whiplash 1-2 punch of "Fish" and "See Her Tonite" all make this one of the greatest and somewhat overlooked Punk albums ever to assault your ears.

After this album, The Damned have a bit of a strange story. For their second album, they brought in a second guitarist, making them a 5-piece. During the recording, Scabies quit the band and future Culture Club drummer Jon Moss filled in. Nine months after their debut, they released Music for Pleasure which was recorded by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason (?!huh?) and apparently sucks. They were dropped from Stiff Records and officially broke up. Two years later they reformed with Scabies back on drums, Captain Sensible switching from bass to guitar and a rotating cast of bass players. Despite James' unique guitar sound and the fact that he had written every original song but one on their first album, his presence really wasn't missed much. The Damned third album, Machine Gun Etiquette, picks up where Damned Damned Damned left off. It does add a certain layer of musical maturity from an only slightly older and wiser band and who knew Captain Sensible could be such an incredible guitarist? Vanian continued to perform and record over the years with Scabies and/or Capt. S joining him from time to time, even releasing an album of new material as recently at 2008.

I was going to close with a thought about how we should make sure The Damned end up on the Mt. Rushmore of Punk. I then noticed the similarity of the cover of Damned Damned Damned to the four stone faces carved out of that South Dakota hill and realized the world would be a better place if George Washington was licking cream pie off Thomas Jefferson's head.

---------------------

I thought i'd find some good video of early Damned but it was tough. Here's some lip-synching and overdubbed girls shouting like they're watching The Beatles.

----------------------------

Go find this!

Radio Shows August 19 & 26

2009-09-16T15:34:00.006-05:00

Here are the next two shows. Unfortunately, i have screwed up trying to record my last two shows so i'm essentially caught up as far as posting Podcasts. I'm going to try a lot harder to stay on top of them in the future and have them up by Tuesday nights each week.

I appreciate everyone who does download these to check out what i'm playing. Feel free to leave comments if any particular song catches your ear, moves you to tears, makes you dance or fills a certain void left in your soul because your parents never told you they loved you or something.

August 19
I cut off the first two songs but it's a 2-hour show so you get your money's worth
Download Show
And here's the playlist

August 26
Download Show
And here's the playlist

New Show Time

2009-09-10T10:58:00.000-05:00

Alright, the new fall schedule for WRVU has been posted. The Inconsiderate Mixtape will be moving to Monday nights at 10:00. I hope you get a chance to find me there at 91.1 fm. Of course, i'll keep posting my shows as podcasts on the blog whenever laziness doesn't get in the way.

Radio Shows August 5 & 12

2009-09-09T12:27:00.003-05:00

I'm way behind on posting my podcasts so i'm going to continue doing two at a time for a little while. I don't remember anything about these two shows but i bet they rule.

August 5
Download Show
And here's the playlist

August 12
Download Show
And here's the playlist

Cactus :: Cactus :: 1970

2009-09-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

I've been working on a one-act play about the origins of Cactus. Here's a rough draft:

Scene 1

Drummer Carmine Appice and Bassist Tim Bogert of 60's hard rock band Vanilla Fudge are center stage, sitting on horses.

Carmen Appice: Y'know, Vanilla Fudge is pretty cool and all but I was thinking about starting a kickass band.

Tim Bogert: Hey, I was thinking about starting a kickass band too, maybe we should start one together.

Carmen: That's a great idea. You know what would be even more kickass? If we got Jeff Beck to play guitar.

Tim: Yeah, and if Rod Stewart sang, that would be pretty kickass too.

Scene 2

Tim and Carmen center stage, now sitting on chairs. Jeff Beck is sitting stage left and Rod Stewart is sitting stage right. Each character is talking on a telephone.

Carmen: Hey Jeff, Tim and I are starting a kickass band, wanna join?

Jeff Beck: Sure, that sounds kickass.

Tim: Hey Rod, Carmen and I are starting a kickass band and we need a singer, what do you say?

Rod Stewart: Kickass!

Scene 3

Same setting as scene 2

Jeff: Hey Carmen, bad news. I had a motorcycle accident. I can't be in your kickass band

Rod: Hey Tim, Ron Wood asked me to be in the new Small Faces lineup and I really do enjoy being in bands with people whose hair is kind of like mine so I can't be in your kickass band. Sorry.

Carmen & Tim: AAAAAAAAARGH!

(spotlights on Jeff & Rod fade out)

Tim: Now what?

Carmen: Well, Mitch Ryder disbanded the Detroit Wheels and I heard guitarist Jim McCarty is free and I've always kind of liked Rusty Day, the singer for The Amboy Dukes. I bet he's tired of being in a band with Ted Nugent.

Tim: Yeah, what a douche, they should call the band The Amboy Dicks

Carmen: No doubt, wanna ask them?

Tim: Sure. By the way, what are we going to call our kickass band?

Carmen: Cactus!

Tim: That's a pretty lame name. I think it should be something sexier, like Phallus.

Carmen: Oh man, I really liked the name Cactus. What if our album cover has a cactus on it that looks vaguely like a dick and balls.

Tim: Alright, Cactus it is!

Carmen & Tim: KICKASS!!!!

The End

And so Cactus was born, and it was kickass. While there will always be a certain "what could have been" question concerning Beck & Stewart, it should never undermine the power of the music on this album. It starts by absolutely peeling the paint off the walls of any other band that chose to call themselves "hard rock" at the time. About a year before this album, Blue Cheer recorded a blistering version of Mose Allison's "Parchman Farm" that elevated hard rock at the time to new level of speed and volume. In what is really kind of a jerk move, Cactus started their album with the same song played even faster and even louder. This is a forgotten little gem of late 60's/early 70's hard rock. This song has been recorded by dozens of rock and blues artists over the years but i've yet to hear one as impressive as this. For the rest of the album, they bring in an acoutic love song, a little boogie and some slow blues that really gives McCarty time to show off a little. But mainly, it's just kickass Rock 'n' Roll. The musicianship is top-notch, the feeling is genuine and loose and the bass solo is just icing on the cake. Of course, there's a drum solo too; it is after all, 1970.

This is absolutely an overlooked classic and essential to anyone that's into bands like Blue Cheer, Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin. I feel like i should be able to just wrap this whole album up in one word. I just can't think of the right word. I'll let you know if i do.

---------------------

I couldn't find any old live footage so here's Parchman Farm with some pictures (including some photos of some guys record collections so you'll know how awesome he is)

----------------------

Wow! This Cactus band is Kickass! What should i buy next?Well, this is really the only essential thing they did but their second album, One Way...Or Another isn't bad and the rhythm section did finally hook up with Beck for a one-off album under the inventive moniker "Beck, Bogert & Appice"

*originally posted at theinconsideratemixtape.blogspot.com

A Change Gonna Come

2009-09-04T16:49:00.002-05:00

I'm making a change to my alphabet rule, as suggested by one of my millions of loyal readers. Instead of going straight through the alphabet once and catching every great album along the way, i've decide to write about one album from each letter then start over again. So my next post will be from the C's, then one from the D's, etc. (huh huh, i said "deez") When i get to Z, i'll head back to A (or B since i did all my A's) and go through it again with different albums.

Also, i'm sorry my posts haven't come a regularly as i'd like. Busy-ness and all, y'know how it is. I'm also about a month behind on my podcasts but i'll try to be better. I'm going to start listening to "Eye of the Tiger" every morning, that should motivate me.

Devendra Banhart :: Rejoicing in the Hands/Niño Rojo :: 2004

2009-08-31T10:02:00.001-05:00

I'm putting these two albums together because they are basically companion pieces and could have been released as a double album. Think of them as Guns 'N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I & II or Sandra Bullock's Speed & Speed 2. Banhart and Michael Gira (of the Swans, who owns Young God Records and released these albums) apparently recorded 57 songs in their recording sessions and chose 32 to include on the two albums. So they both obviously have a similar sound and feel.

These are the second offering from Banhart. His first album (full title: "Oh Me, Oh My... The Way the Day Goes by the Sun is Setting Dogs are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit) came out in 2002 to great reviews but not much recognition beyond the pages of secondary, left of the dial magazines. The fact is that nothing on this album would be audibly suitable for any kind of mass exposure. The majority of it was recorded on a cheap 4-track home recorder. The sound of tape hiss is heard throughout, sometimes almost as loud as the actual music. At times you can even hear background noise such as cars driving by. It's almost hard to listen to it. However, if you do listen and pay attention, you'll be rewarded with something like you've never quite heard before. Through the static, you hear beautiful intricate folk guitar, similar in style to Nick Drake. And the voice that cuts through is that of a shaky ghost, awkward and trembling. In its quieter moments, the voice is very comforting, in its louder moments, it's trying to rock out like T. Rex. In some cases, the songs are just barely songs. They more-so seem to just be thoughts. Just a little melody here and an idea there. Half of them don't even reach the 2 minute mark. It's not a Rock album, it's not a Folk album. It's hardly even an album but it's beautiful and fun and welcoming and frightening. Actually i'm not really sure what it is.

Apparently the music press didn't really know what it was either. Around this time, they tried to create a new genre to explain what was going on. They called it "Freak Folk." This term was used to label Banhart along with other 60's Folk-influenced artists such as Wooden Wand, CocoRosie and not-really-Folk-but-we-don't-know-what-it-is artists like Joanna Newsome. What's kind of surprising about this new dumb moniker is that it actually sort of fits.

Generally, when the term "Folk" was used, it describes Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Gordon Lightfoot and the rest. However, there was a more elusive folk scene in the 60's, led by The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention. They were rooted in the same traditions of passing down stories through song as had happened in America and other countries for centuries but fed them through a drug-influenced filter of the times. It was far from Rock 'n' Roll but it was a little too psychedelic to be Folk.

So, perhaps it's this torch that the Freak Folks are carrying on. Banhart doesn't take his cue from centuries-old folk music but from those acts in the sixties. From this base, he forms a world with nonsensical lyrics and intricate melodic guitar lines accented by spare strings or horns. The songs here are more complete than on his debut and the sound quality is infinitely more listenable but they're no less unique or intoxicating. They're easy to get lost in. It's weird world he's created and these albums are your private tour.

I don't have too many "I got to see them before you did" stories but i have one for Banhart. I really didn't know much about him when he played at an art gallery in Louisville called "Aslyn's Howl." I believe it had been snowing and he had trouble getting there. Everyone was getting a little impatient and wondering if we should just go home when he arrived over an hour late. But the moment he started, i was glad we stayed. He and a another person sat on the floor cross-legged with their acoustic guitars and a single microphone suspended about 2 feet above him. This required the whole crowd to remain absolutely silent during the songs. This voice that seemed a little unreal and even a little unnerving just barely filled the small room at times. I felt like i was spying on someone who was just trying to offer some kind of musical prayer in silence. It was absolutely a magical night and is on my imaginary list of my favorite musical experiences. We offered our apartment for him and his travelling companions to stay for the night but he opted for some people that didn't have to get up and go to work in the morning. That's alright though, i didn't want my couch smelling like Freak Folk and body odor anyway.

----------------------
You have to get past the hiss but this first one, Oh Me, Oh My... is pretty amazing too.

Band of Horses :: Everything All The Time :: 2006

2009-08-19T13:50:00.000-05:00

A few years ago there began a strange lineage in the indie rock world. A torch was fired up and passed down through a line of bearded dudes.

It began with My Morning Jacket, moved to Band of Horses, who then passed it to Fleet Foxes who handed it off to Bon Iver. It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite passages from The Bible, 1 Chronicles 6:12-13

"And Ahitub begat Zadok, and Zadok begat Shallum, and Shallum begat Hilkiah."

Of course while it may have taken a hundred years of begatting to get from Ahitub to Hilkiah, it only took about nine from MMJ to BI. There are several common threads that string these bands together, other than the beards. They all play songs that are rooted in southern music, both the acoustic folk and electric rock types. They all primarily sing in the upper registers. They're all fans of the reverb knob. And they all were the biggest hyped band on the scene at one point. However, while they all sound similar in a way, they also each occupy a unique corner of their box that keeps them from getting confused and mixed in with the other three.

My Morning Jacket brings the Southern Rock side of things out a bit stronger than the others, complete with 5-minute guitar solos. Fleet Foxes shows off more complex arrangements in their song structures and harmonies. Bon Iver generally keeps it acoustic and stays on the quieter, sensitive side of things. What Band of Horses brings to the party is power and scope.

Their songs are very simple in a lot of ways. The majority of the songs are in 4/4 time and are played at a moderate tempo. They don't try any tricks and don't really show off. They just play it straight and strong. When they play it loud, like on "The First Song," "Wicked Gil" or "Great Salt Lake," the songs are pushed through by an unrelenting wall of sound. The best point of reference i have for this quality is in a band that otherwise resembles Band of Horses in no way: Coldplay. Coldplay catches a lot of crap but when the alphabet takes me there, i will be writing a review of A Rush of Blood to the Head. [To prove that i'm not alone, ask my friend Wil.] While Coldplay can be on the wimpy side of things, there are songs like "Politik" and "Clocks" and even "Viva La Vida" from their latest album that just drive through like a tornado. It's so loud and so powerful that there seems to be no way to stop it. All you can do is close your eyes and let it sweep you up. What's so amazing about these Band of Horses songs is that, unlike Coldplay, all that power seems to be coming from what sounds like a four-piece band; two guitars, a bass and drums. There aren't layers of strings and keyboards and studio magic filling out the sound (unless the magic is just too good for me to actually hear it, which is a possibility). It's just loud and simple rock

Of course, there is the other side of the coin. "Part One," "I Like to Go to the Barn..." & "St. Augustine" are all gorgeous, acoustic-based ballads with ghostly harmonies that would probably make me cry if i wasn't such a manly chap. And then there's "Funeral." This is most definitely the standout track on this album. It's the one that has popped up in movies and commercials because the music is so beautiful and engaging. However, you usually only hear the instrumental part because, as you may have guessed from the title, it's not a very happy song. That might be one of the reasons this songs works so well. While it's soaked with a constant fear of disaster, the music sounds so hopefull and empowering that the listener feels ready to conquer whatever life, or death, can throw at them.

Everything All the Time is an open-road album. I see myself driving through the flat, dusty, empty West when i hear this album. It's one to sing along with at the top of your lungs then get silent and introspective when the time comes with nothing but the cool night air and the stars to share it with. Jeremiah 48:28

"...leave the cities, and dwell in the rock..."

The Prophet Jeremiah knew what he was talking about. This is Zadok Rock!

-----------------

Love it! Now what?

Cease to Begin

A Riddle

2009-08-11T21:23:00.006-05:00

Q: What do "The Boys are Back in Town," "Born to Run" and "American Girl" have in common?

A: Best Song Ever!

The Band :: The Band :: 1969

2009-08-05T00:08:00.000-05:00

Here's my original rough draft for this review:

"If you don't love this album then i don't love you.

The end."

However, i suppose i should elaborate a little bit. This is one of my all-time favorite albums. In fact, this was my picture on my Myspace account a few years ago. The problem with writing about this album--a problem i expect to run into on more than just this one occasion--is that so much has been written about it, i don't feel like i have much to add. But who doesn't love to hear themselves type? So here we go.

Most of you probably know the history of The Band but for those who don't, here's a brief summary. Drummer, Levon Helm, joined the backing band of his fellow Arkansan Ronnie Hawkins, all the way back in the late 1950's. One by one, band members were replaced for various reasons until the five gentlemen on the album cover you see above here became The Hawks. At some point, the band (The Hawks) struck out on their own without their charismatic front man and played under several names, including Levon & The Hawks, by themselves for a short time. Then Mr. Bob Dylan picked them to be his backing band on his historic 1966 tour when he blew the doors off the folk world and plugged in (y'know, that whole "Judas" comment thing). [trivia note: Helm left the band for most of this tour and was replaced by Mickey Jones who went on to star in every tv show you've ever watched, usually playing the part of "biker"]. While they only recorded on one official Dylan album, 1974's Planet Waves, their relationship yielded several other legendary live and bootlegged recordings, many of which have now seen sanctioned release. The group became known simply as "The Band" among the folks in the small town of Woodstock, NY where they lived together and recorded in a big pink house. In 1968, they released their first album, Music From Big Pink.

The album and The Band itself had a fairly subversive impact on the music world. Eric Clapton reportedly cites this album as an influence to quit Cream and focus on more roots-based music and a visit from George Harrison had him attempting to steer The Beatles in a similar direction. What caught the attention of the world was the feeling that they had been missing what was right under their collective musical nose. While everyone was trying to create the next Sgt. Pepper and find the future, The Band just turned around a looked back. They picked up the wooden instruments that were collecting dust in the corner, threw a log on the fire and started playing. These weren't the songs of "tangerine trees & marmalade skies," This was down-home, rural, Southern and most of all, American (nevermind that 4/5ths of the band hailed from Canada). But in attempting to create this familiar, traditional sound, The Band didn't come out sounding like The Carter Family or Woody Guthrie. Robbie Robertson's unique electric guitar style and multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson's weird synthesizers gave their music textures that didn't quite fit in with blowing a jug. This was traditional music by a modern band.

Then again, the idea of a "band" with a front man and backing group was even called into question. Each member plays like he's the leader of the band. It's like five solo players playing simultaneously and the parts create a magical whole. There were three lead singers in the group but not in a way that The Beatles had three where they each commanded their own songs. These three seem to just switch around at random. Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel could trade off in mid-song and when all three sang together, it wasn't a tight, rehearsed harmony, it was loose and slightly off, like the guy from the next farm over who just stopped by and joined in the singing.

The irony of this image is that while the music created a feeling of sittin' on the front porch passing verses around, it was all actually very carefully crafted. The classically-trained Hudson gave private lessons to the the other band members and careful attention was given to the way each instrument would sound on the recordings. This was hard work but the product was a myth that the tumultuous society of the late 60's truly needed; a simpler time and simpler things. Music From Big Pink was truly a landmark and history-changing album. Of course people still plugged in and psychedelica was allowed to run its course but there was also a cultural and musical return to traditional acoustic American music that i think can largely be attributed to this album. Maybe Neil Young's After the Goldrush & Harvest and Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead & American Beauty would have happened anyway. But as it is, they came from The Band.

While Big Pink stands as the game-changing album, the reason its name doesn't appear in the title of this blog post is because The Band's self-titled, second album is simply better. Everything that they created on the first album, they perfected on the second. This is one of those albums that gets me excited the moment it starts... "Standing by your window in pain/pistol in your hand" while some lazy horns walk a few steps down and guitar whispers float in. Then we're off "Across the Great Divide." The tempo, the melody, the harmonies, they all just settle you into your seat for a theme-park ride through what they think the Southern past looked like. Then they pick it up for a fun, nonsensical romp through "Rag Mama Rag" with, as Mojo explains, "the drummer playing mandolin, the pianist playing drums, the bassist playing fiddle, the organist playing piano, and co-producer John Simon playing tuba (for the first time in his life!)"

Next up is one of the songs that will always define The Band. Canadian Robertson's fascination with Southern life and lore lead him to step into the worn boots of Virgil Caine, a Confederate Civil War vet who was there the night Richmond fell, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." I may be reading a little too much into this but Robertson's mother was Mohawk and he spent his childhood summers with her family on an Indian reservation. This may have given him an understanding that most of us don't have about how some scars just don't heal, regardless of how much time has passed. He found Virgil and, with the help of Helm's world-weary southern drawl, brought him through 100 years to tell his story. Virgil is just a hard-working man who fought for what seemed right to him. Now he's just trying to get by with what's left after the Union took his brother's life and everything else around him. If this song had been written 100 years ago, it would have been passed down through the generations like hundreds of other folk songs. And who knows, maybe some band in the late 60's would have dusted it off and recorded it.

I don't want to go through every song on this album one by one but it'd be easy to do. "Up On Cripple Creek" with its clavinet through a wah pedal and faux-yodeling coda, Manuel's heartbreaking falsetto on "Whispering Pines" and the rolling rock of "Look Out Cleveland" are all highlights on an album where the non-highlights outshine most anything you put beside them. There's a reason this album and this band has and will stand the test of time. It's because there is no time on this album. It's as if it has always existed and it always will, like it was found in the corner of an attic just waiting to be heard again. Much like the photo on the album cover appears to have been found in the bottom of a box where it had been sitting for a century. Nothing about The Band was 1969. But somehow by finding the past, they created the future.

That was going to be the last line of this review but it sort of sounds like the tag line to a bad action movie so i'll end on this one: If you don't love this album then i don't love you. The end.

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Here's The Band with way too much makeup and strangley permed hair on the Ed Sullivan Show

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You need more so go buy these:

Music From Big Pink &

The Basement Tapes

Radio Shows July 22 & 29, 2009

2009-07-29T23:31:00.004-05:00

I'm late again so here's a two-fer:
July 22
Download Show
And here's the playlist

July 29
(featuring several in-studio interviews and performances with
Those Lavender Whales)
Download Show
And here's the playlist

Badly Drawn Boy :: The Hour of Bewilderbeast :: 2000

2009-07-24T08:31:00.001-05:00

I'm always curious as to how certain albums will be remembered in the future. Outside of those famous bands from the 60's and 70's, there are tons of bands that released really great albums. Some of them are considered one-off classics like Moby Grape or The Zombies' Odessey and Oracle but hundreds more are just lost to time. Sometimes you get lucky and find one in a record bin but othewise, you and that awesome record will just go your separate ways and never know of the love that almost was. I wonder where The Hour of Bewilderbeast will fall. I'm pretty sure Badly Drawn Boy isn't going down as a Doors or Led Zeppelin (his last several albums have been pretty forgettable but of course his career is far from over). However, i hope this album is one that's passed on from one generation to another as a shining gem that should never be lost.

Badly Drawn Boy, aka Damon Gough, kind of came out of nowhere. He had released one ep on his own label and made an appearance on the UNKLE album Psyence Fiction then he released Bewilderbeast and he seemed to be everywhere for a time. Most of this notoriety came from winning the Mercury Music Prize in 2000. The Mercury Prize is an award given out in Britain as an alternative to the Brit Awards which, much like the Grammys, is dominated by general popular suckage. According to the official website, the Mercury Prize "exists solely to champion UK music... the music on the album is the only thing taken into account." Other albums nominated in 2000 included Coldplay's Parachutes and Doves' Lost Souls.

Bewilderbeast is an album that was fully conceived in that stocking-capped (some may say "tobogganed") head of the Boy. Though he had a little help from his friends, he played the majority of the instruments himself and i have the feeling that that's the only way it could've worked. This album could not have been too collaborative. It sounds as if the whole thing came in a dream and as soon as he woke up, he tried to write it all out. The songs and the melodies are usually complete but there were those songs that got lost somewhere between being asleep and being awake. There was probably more to a song but all that could be remembered was a 16-bar bridge. Fine, throw it in there.

The album starts off with "The Shining." I feel like i could write about this one song for several paragraphs, much like when i listen to it, i want to immediately hear it again. It begins with a cello/french horn duet that somehow can pull you out of whatever situation you're in and take you to a peaceful place you didn't even know existed. I know that sounds like some hippie shit but, for me, it's true. After you've been cradled into your most comfortable place, a warm voice and acoustic guitar begin their lullaby. For five minutes, the rest of the world just disappears while the song wraps its big arms around you. This is possibly the best song i've ever felt (which makes sense to me). When the next song begins, it's honestly a bit of a buzzkill; not because it's a bad song but when you start on such a high, there's nowhere to go but down. But don't worry, the fall isn't very far at all.

The remainder of the songs are presented almost as one long suite. The songs drift from one to another with rarely a second in between, often connected by one of those lost song fragments or some seemingly random sound effects. But nothing here really seems random; it's all very carefully planned. This is one of those rare beasts which i've metioned before, The Album (with a capital A). The instrumentation is at times simple and other times complex. A few melodies appear as short reprises. The moods shift effortlessly between joy and melancholy. Everything is in its place.

I have a general philosophy that perfection can not be obtained. But if i choose to put all philosophical debates aside, this might be that rarest of all Albums, the Perfect Album. There, i said it.
========================
There isn't a video for The Shining and the live performances i found on Youtube are ruined by what usually ruins live performances: the audience. But here's a still picture with the song.

Also recommended:

About a Boy Soundtrack

Radio Shows July 8 & 15

2009-07-22T00:22:00.007-05:00

I'm real lazy so i'm a few weeks behind. Here are the last two weeks' shows. Listen to them simultaneously to save time.

July 8
Download Show
And here's the playlist

July 15
Download Show
And here's the playlist

Badfinger :: Straight Up :: 1971

2009-07-20T08:35:00.003-05:00

When i decided to review a Badfinger album, three conversations came to mind. The first was one in which someone made a disparaging comment about The Allman Brothers Band and i stood up for the Bro's at which point my friend Matt asked "Is there any band you won't defend?" The second coversation was among some co-workers discussing their "guilty pleasures." I came to the realization that i don't really have any musical guilty pleasures. If i think something isn't good, i won't listen to it. If it's good enough for me to listen to, i'll defend it and won't feel guilty in the least. The third coversation was with my friend Wil in which we discovered that he generally likes music that's good, but not great (Old 97's, New Order, etc.). So where does Badfinger fall? Is it a band that i should have to defend? Is it a band most other people like as a guilty pleasure? Or are they actually quite good, just not great?

Before we delve into these burning questions, let's take a little journey dow the Badfinger road. There has never been a band in such a seemingly envious position that has had everything go so terribly wrong. It's kind of a long story so here's the really really short version:

They formed as the Iveys, got signed to The Beatles' Apple Records, changed some members and the band name, released some albums, had some big hits, Apple didn't pay them, they left Apple for Warner Bros., Warner dropped them, band members were broke, one member hanged himself, band split up, band reunited, second member hanged himself, band ended.

Any band would have felt on top of the world to be handpicked by The Beatles but this created several problems. Besides the fact that Apple was poorly run and the band's royalties were tied up in other ventures, Badfinger also had a huge shadow to try to escape from. Their first hit "Come and Get It" was written by Paul McCartney and some of their singles were produced by George Harrison. They also played as backing musicians on songs from Harrison's All Things Must Pass and John Lennon's Imagine. They grew to regret having to play their McCartney-penned hit over their own songs and many interviews focused more on their relationship with the Fab Four than what they were doing as a band.

Unfortunately, i'm still not sure they've escaped that shadow. They're still known as the only successful band on The Beatles' label. Some of the production on the albums sound so much like the late Beatles albums that they're accused of being copycats. Even their name came from "Bad Finger Boogie," the working title for "With a Little Help from My Friends" (Glass Onion being another suggestion). But the reality is that this is a band who attempted to cut it's own path and wrote songs that still stand up to some of the best pop songs ever written, even those with the Lennon/McCartney tag. One trait Badfinger did in fact share with their mentors is that they had two extremely talented writers in Pete Ham and Joey Molland with Tom Evans handing in a few songs of his own, a la Harrison and even drummer Mike Gibbins would pull a Ringo, grabbing an occasional songwriting credit. The songs they crafted are full of memorable melodies, driving chords and tons of feeling. The music can simply bounce along or dig deep for emotion.

The story of Straight Up is almost as long as the rest of the band's history. After releasing Magic Christian Music, written for a film and including "Come and Get It", Badfinger put out No Dice which is where they really began to show their own talent. The album included a couple of hits in the form of "No Matter What" and "Without You," the latter being made an international hit in the hands of Harry Nilsson (ironically making the songwriter's biggest hit a song he didn't write). After some extensive touring, it was time to get back in the studio. They recorded a complete album with Geoff Emerick but Apple rejected it and scrapped plans to release a single from the sessions. After months of waiting, George Harrison informed them that he wanted to produce their album. However, after recording only four songs, Harrison bolted to work on the Concert for Bangla Desh and Todd Rundgren was brought in to wrap things up. What came out was a much more polished and mature version of the songs they had first recorded nearly a year earlier. The album was a success and brought about several more radio staples, "Baby Blue" and "Day After Day."

Here's what i think people miss about Badfinger. Part of the reason they stood in the shadow of The Beatles is that they are the closest any band ever got to recreating their sound. There have been a million bands who thought they were the new Beatles but this band actually could've been. If you squint your ears, Straight Up could be the follow-up to Abbey Road and Let It Be. Of course, it's always dangerous to make any kind of serious comparison to the boys from Liverpool. There will only ever be one Beatles because there was magic in there. Maybe it's a different type of magic but a little can be found in Badfinger as well. The other thing that gets missed is their influence on Power Pop. If you're one of those people who seem to think Big Star hung the moon, you need to see was holding the ladder.

So in the end, Badfinger is beyond good. While their later albums fall short of the mark, there was a time when they were great. As far as being a guilty pleasure, this one is nowhere near the guilty mark. I've been listening to this album for a week in my car with the windows down, singing at the top of my lungs. And while there are definitely artists that i will defend in no way, i shall slap you with my glove and challenge you to a duel in the name of Badfinger. Choose your weapon.
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It's pretty hard to find true live footage of Badfinger since most of it comes from 1970's tv performances which were usually lip-synched. The audio on this first one isn't very good but it's from The Kenny Rogers Show so it seemed like a good choice.

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I wanted to put a song by both Pete Ham and Joey Molland but the only good video i could find for Molland's "Sweet Tuesday Morning" won't allow me to embed it so here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXE-u8ILjOU
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Where to go from here?

No Dice and Pete Ham's posthumously released home recordings 7 Park Avenue & Golder's Green

Bad Religion :: No Control :: 1989

2009-07-10T20:05:00.001-05:00

Ever since James Brown was dubbed the "Godfather of Soul," there have been several attempts to attach the "Godfather" title to various other artists. When Pearl Jam started playing "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World," Neil Young suddenly became the Godfather of Grunge (Quick! Name one Grunge band that sounds remotely like Neil Young). According to Wikipedia, where they know everything, Ozzy is the Godfather of Heavy Metal, George Clinton is the Godfather of Funk, Eazy-E is the Godfather of Gangsta Rap and of course Charles E. Peterson is the Godfather of Historic Preservation (I would argue it's Frank J. Biddlegum but that's just me). As for the Godfather of Punk, that title apparently belongs to both Iggy Pop and Pete Townsend, known in the tabloids as Piggy Popsend.

I'd like to add one more to that list. I would like to nominate Bad Religion as the Godfathers of Modern Punk. Of course this raises the question originally raised by Plato: What is Modern Punk? In my personal definition of Punk, i'd say bands like Liars, Lightning Bolt and even TV On The Radio would represent the newest wave but in most record stores, you'll find those bands under the "Indie Rock" banner. The bands you find in the "Punk" section are the ones you find on the Warped Tour, a much more accessible and commercialized version of Punk. So as not to go through a lengthy discussion about the essence of Punk Music, when i look at Bad Religion's legacy, it is the Warped Punk bands i'm referring to.

Of course many of you may not see that as much of a legacy. Many of you may like Punk from the 70's and 80's but not this modern wave. I think that's very fair. I'm not really a fan of many of the newer Punk bands myself but the fact is, it's a viable page in the history of Punk, no matter how commercialized. And it's important to remember that every time a kid in a Rancid t-shirt goes out and buys The Clash's first album, an angel gets its mohawk.

Bad Religion formed in 1980, influenced by standard Punk pioneers like Sex Pistols and Ramones. However, they obviously had an appreciation of more melodic Punk-influenced acts like The Jam and Elvis Costello. After that growing period a band inevitably goes through to find it's identity (including releasing a space-rock album that was almost immediately out-of-print), the Bad Religion sound was formed.

They took the speed of bands like Minor Threat and Bad Brains but added a new level of production and melody to it. The music wasn't dirty and gritty and it didn't sound like it was recorded in a bathroom. The vocals weren't shouted at you. There were honest-to-God notes in there and even multi-part harmonies. But that doesn't mean it was any less abrasive. Bad Religion have always been in your face and in the face of anyone they disagreed with as much as the nastiest of the Punk bunch. Also, these guys aren't gutterpunk dropouts; these are some smart fellers (vocalist Greg Graffin, Ph.D. is a lecturer at UCLA in his spare time). A lot of the lyrics do deal with age-old punk topics such as alienation, futility and being better than everyone else. A vast majority of the lyrics also take on specific political issues such as environmentalism and a much more philosophical view of just what this crazy thing called life means. The title song on No Control begins with the lyric "Culture was the seed of proliferation/but it has gotten melded into an inharmonic whole" and later quotes James Hutton, an 18th century Scotsman considered the (god)father of modern geology. This is a far cry from Sex Pistol's "We like noise/it's our choice/it's what we wanna do."

Furthering the idea of punk rock smarts, guitarist Brett Gurewitz began Epitaph records to release Bad Religion and other punk records. While starting a punk label was nothing new, being successful was. Epitaph is easily the most successful independent label to focus on Punk music (though it has recently broadened its musical spectrum a bit). They have released records by L7, Rancid, Offspring, NOFX, The Hives, Circle Jerks, The Cramps and other well-known groups as well as spawning an offshoot record label, Anti-, which has released records by Tom Waits, Billy Bragg, Merle Haggard, Nick Cave, Neko Case and other not-so-punk artists.

The thing with Bad Religion albums is that if you like one of them, you'll probably like the rest of them. Their greatest fault is that their albums all sort of seem the same. In a career that has spanned over 20 years, they haven't exactly progressed much but i think that this may be because they just don't have an interest in doing so. Graffin has a very unique and identifiable sense of melody. The harmonies are also immediately recognizable and if they want to hold on to their Classic Punk roots then there is not much room for odd time signatures or a string section. So all the albums, by nature, are going to be similar. With that said, some albums rise above the set standard. The differences are in the way that the lyrics, the memorable hooks and the inherent punk sensibilities build up to create a passionate sound. This type of quality kind of dropped off in the late 90's but has reportedly made a comeback in the new millennium (though i have to admit i haven't heard the last few albums). Their heyday, however, was between 1988 and 1993 with the albums Suffer, Against the Grain, Generator, their major-label debut Recipe for Hate and of course No Control.

Because of the aforementioned similarities, it's kind of hard to say just what makes No Control stand out. I personally seem to relate to the lyrics, which are a little more introspective, and nearly every chorus is the kind that gets stuck in your head. But it really comes down to the fact that this one gets its strength from that oh so abstract Feeling. With 15 songs in only 26 minutes, these songs are played like the musicians truly believe that the world just might end tomorrow. There is a musical urgency, not only in speed, that matches the lyrics as if the band had a megaphone and the whole world's ear for only half an hour. They bring everything they have and never slow it down and before you know it, it's all over.

A lot of bands since have attempted to match the musicality and the lyrical brawn of Bad Religion but it just can't be replicated. Perhaps that's one reason why the revival they started - after Punk had already been declared dead - hasn't turned out to match the first few waves of Punk music. Or perhaps it's just our post-Reagan culture where everything is shiny and new and the environment just isn't right. Whatever the reason, don't let it steer you away from this bridge from the old guard to the new. Besides, blaming Bad Religion for Good Charlotte is kind of like blaming Woody Guthrie for James Taylor.

Radio Show July 1, 2009

2009-07-07T22:34:00.004-05:00

Here's last week's show. I apologize for the 10 minute Junior Boys song. I got a request and was feeling generous. Unless you like the Junior Boys, then you're welcome.

Download Show

And here's the playlist

Radio Show June 24, 2009

2009-06-30T08:11:00.003-05:00

Here's the show from last Wednesday. I'm about a week late and i cut off the beginning of the first song but to make up for the wait, this is a special hour and a half version of the show.

Actually, it's not that special, just longer. [That's what she said. -ed.]

Download Show

And here's the playlist

The Bad Plus :: These Are the Vistas :: 2003

2009-06-29T09:14:00.000-05:00

All Music Guide begins their overview of The Bad Plus with the question "Are the Bad Plus a pop and rock influenced jazz trio? Or are they a power trio who like to play jazz?" I'm going to say it's the former but it's a really good question. These guys are definitely playing jazz. You'll find their albums in the jazz section at you're local store. However, there is definitely a pop and rock quality here that might pull in listeners who would normally not venture to that section.

While keeping with a jazz trio foundation of Ethan Iverson on piano, Reid Anderson on bass and David King on drums, they approach their recording from a rock point of view. First of all they chose Tchad Blake to produce the album. Blake, working along with producer Mitchell Froom, has worked on modern classic albums by Crowded House, The Pretenders, Tom Waits, Suzanne Vega, Elvis Costello, Soul Coughing, Cibo Matto and many other jazz-deficient artists. If you're familiar with any of these albums (Vega's 99.9F, Costello's Brutal Youth, Cibo Matto's Viva! La Woman, Soul Coughing's Ruby Vroom), it's actually pretty easy to hear a correlation. This album sounds big. Jazz trios traditionally leave some space between the sounds of the instruments so each part shines simultaneously. While each member of The Bad Plus certainly get their individual dues, they at times mash together the way a rock band might with distorted guitars and layered keyboard parts. The fact that they can create such a sound out of three non-amplified instruments is made even more remarkable by the fact that the melody is completely carried by the piano. With no brass or woodwind instrument to get you humming a tune, the piano takes the lead.

The other evidence that they might actually be a rock band in disguise is their choice of songs to cover here. There are three and none of them are "Round Midnight" or "Love for Sale." They instead choose to take on Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and Aphex Twin's "Flim." While this may seem like a possible cheap attempt to be cool and sneak into the Rock 'n' Roll magazines, i think there's something more to it. Years ago, a friend of mine performed in his recital for his music Master's degree, a jazz treatment of Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again." While, again, this may seem silly or like an attempt for some easy notice, he made sense of it for me. His argument was that reworking pop songs was the next logical step for jazz expression. And it really makes sense. Up until the mid-60's, this was a common practice in jazz. Jazz artists could pick up an Irving Berlin or Gershwin tune and give it a new personality that could appeal to jazz purists and pop music fans alike. At some point, this practice seemed to fall by the side. But now with pop music so much more prevelent in our lives than it has ever been, it's seems like somebody needs to pluck the songs out and breath new life into them. That's exactly what these guys do. They take Nirvana and Blondie and completely deconstruct the original songs and then in their best Frankenstein, stitch it all back together. The rhythm is changed, the melody is shifted to a minor key, the most recognizeable part of the song may only pop up for 5 seconds at a time. They have invented a new song and it's alive!

That, of course, is not meant to take anything away from their originals. Whether it's a ballad like "Everywhere You Turn" or the driving bounce of "1972 Bronze Medalist," there is still a quality here that has Rock in its heart but is undeniably Jazz. Every generation has its own version of music. Rock, Country, R&B, Blues, Jazz; for better or worse, any given song from any given time sounds different then what was being created in its respective genre twenty years earlier. I'm not personally knowledgeable enough in the area of Jazz to say this is the future. But it sure sounds like it to me.

The Death of MJ Mach II

2009-06-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

I suppose i should say a few things about the passing of Michael Jackson. After all, this is a music blog and Jackson is, with no possible argument, one of the biggest names and personalities to ever exist in the realm of pop music. When i heard the news, my reaction was something along the lines of "hm." I'm sorry if i'm the asshole here but, seriously, should any of us care?

Now when i say "us," i mean the general public; the people who never shook his gloved hand, those of us that loved Thriller when we were kids and bought a used copy on cd as adults and only pull it out when we're having a party or cleaning the house. I in no way discount the effect this has on those who knew and loved him. He had three small children and despite what we and the media think of him, to them, he was Daddy. He was a father, a brother, an uncle, a son and a friend. For those who were part of his life, and his theirs, i feel a great and sincere sympathy. But this blog post isn't about them. The story on the nightly news isn't about them. The commemerative special that aired on CBS last night with about 2 hours worth of production time isn't about them. It's about us...and, as always, selling toothpaste.

I will also make an exception for those out there who are still hardcore fans. I don't mean fans of Thriller, i mean "oh-my-god-michael-made-an-appearance-in-some-country-i-never-heard-of" fans. There are still those who think he makes the world go 'round, despite how crazy we all think they are. I have to reveal a secret. I have a crush on a 13 year old girl. There's this girl that comes into my work that, from the first time i saw her, i just thought was the coolest. She wears this hat that's not cool by any other 13 year old's measure and her greatest joy seems to be shopping for music. She even looks through the records! (Perhaps i should clarify "crush." As creepy as i am, i'm not creepy like that. I think of it more as if i was her age, i'd think she was awesome. Or in my newish role as a father, i see it as i hope my kid's that cool when she grows up but her current love for lip gloss gives me doubt.) However, my crush faded drastically when i discovered the reason for the hat. She wears it because it looks like the one Michael Jackson wore. She also wears big pins and carries a keychain, vintage 1983, of MJ. And the first place she goes when she comes into the store is the J section of the CD's to see if there's anything she doesn't already have. I guess i know why she looks through the records too. All of the sudden the "cool" girl just sort of became "weird." She is obviously one of Michael Jackson's many number 1 fans and as weird as that may seem to me, i know that girl cried when she heard about his death. She's going to be sad for the next week or so. Her world just changed and i'm sorry it did.

Now back to the rest of us. I know we love our celebrities. I know we all love to mourn their loss and talk about how the world will never be the same but sometimes that's just not true. Michael Jackson hasn't had any impact on our lives for almost 20 years. His last hit that anyone remembers was "Black or White", with yet another groundbreaking video in which he hung out with McCauley Culkin on some brownstone steps, smashed up a car and touched his junk, and an unknown Trya Banks morphed from a fat asian guy to a pale-skinned red head. That's how long ago that was, Tyra Banks was an extra in a music video. Michael Jackson would be dead two years later.

Whether true or not, we all know the accusations of child molestation and generally odd and inappopriate behavior around minors. We all witnessed his physical transformation from a wide-nosed black kid to a bleached-out alien of sorts. We all saw the erratic behavior of befriending a chimp, wearing surgical masks and showing up in court in his pajamas. And we all made our judgements and those with a public voice in television and print summed it up in the name "Wacko Jacko." He became an easy target for late night tv hosts and water cooler comedians. Most of you reading this have probably passed along an off-color (pun-intended) joke at his expense (my personal favorite, Q: What did the adoption agency say to Michael Jackson? A: No).

I'm sure there are psychoanalysts that have been through this already but i think the "wacko" part has its roots in some pretty obvious places. Michael had a natural talent that could not be ignored as a child. His father rather notoriously pushed his children farther than they wanted to go at the time. Since Michael was the cash cow of the group, i'm sure he got pushed the hardest. He showed some of his erratic behavior even as a child, like refusing an interview unless 2-year-old Janet could be there by his side like a security blanket. The man never had a childhood. When that's your reality along with unlimited time and money resources, it's not surprising that you might try to recapture that lost time of your life. Who wouldn't want a theme park in their back yard? So in my no way expert opinion, that's what he did. He surrounded himself with children. He had sleepovers. He did what kids do. Now we all know that this isn't "proper" behavior because we live in a grounded 9 to 5 world. However, if we didn't have to follow the rules, we would probably throw them aside and create our own fantasy-reality and someone would probably think your fantasy was crazy too. For my two cents, i think there's a perfectly good chance he never did any wrong to the children he invited over. They probably just ate ice cream and stayed up all night telling ghost stories. In the purest form of the word, i think he was innocent.

Now let's address this "King of Pop" nonsense. While in the 1980's, i would say Jackson was the undisptued "King," this moniker did not come around until 1991, when he was about to have his, unknowingly, last hurrah with the album Dangerous. But the biggest problem with this title is that he gave it to himself. It doesn't count if you make it up. I've been trying to get people to call me "Dude Cougar" for a year now but nobody does. Nicknames and titles are supposed to be given, not self-made. I have to give him credit though, it stuck. The name is an obvious nod/comparison to Elvis Presley, "The King of Rock 'n' Roll," a title bestowed on him not by himself. Other, than the fact that Jackson was awkwardly married to the King's daughter for a short time, i really only see one other connection between the two. They both had huge careers to the point that they became the iconic face of popular music at the time, then spent their last years tarnishing the legend they had created. After the news that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital, i heard someone comment that "if he dies, it's going to be like when Elvis died." When i heard this, i immediately thought of a Dan Bern song called "Too Late to Die Young"

"The day that Elvis died was like a mercy killing

America breathed a sigh of relief

We knew all about the drugs and the Vegas shows

And there wasn't much of anything that looked like grief

And I guess he should’ve done like James Dean did

'Stead of putting on weight and sinking down, down, down"

Just like Elvis, there were two Michael Jacksons. There was the sweet-faced pre-teen with the unreal voice who grew into the "King of Pop" and there was "Wacko Jacko." We had already mourned the loss of Michael Jackson. We've been in mourning for 17 years now. Today, if you choose, you have the opportunity to mourn the loss of the other Michael Jackson but his passing does not effect you or me and it certainly doesn't have an effect on the music world.

So today i don't mourn the loss of a celebrity but i am deeply thankful that a God-given talent like this one was allowed to shine while it did.

In My Time of (hypothetical) Dying

2009-06-21T23:17:00.003-05:00

One day last week, circumstances arose that caused me to have to go into work a few hours late. I'm very fortunate that my job is flexible enough to accomodate such circumstances. If i go in late, i can simply stay late and the hours and the work done come out to be the same. So after all the customers had gone home, after all my co-workers had clocked out, after the cleaning crew had mopped all the floors and probably cursed my name under their breath for walking all over their still-wet hard work, i stood alone in this gigantic used media store.

I don't really mind this kind of work setting. I have a tendency to talk a little too much to the other employees, so when they're gone, i get a lot more done. I'm also generally a bit annoyed by a large part of our customers (to which any retail worker can attest) so it's nice to have them out of the way. However, the best thing about it is probably that i get to listen to whatever music i wish over the store speakers and i'm surrounded by thousands of CD's to choose from. I usually take this opportunity to preview albums i'm not familiar with so i can decide if i need to buy them or not.

Now what i don't like about being there by myself late at night is a slight fear of being robbed, injured or killed. I'm not a person who generally worries about things like this. However, there are a few contributing factors that have changed my balance between comfort and fear. The first factor is my family. From the moment i got married, i feared death just a little more. From the moment i had a child, i started to fear death a lot. I don't fear death for my sake. I fear the effect my death would have on them. The other factor is that, though it has been a while since an incident, there have been several armed robberies, at least two of which ended with someone losing their life, within 3 miles of where i work, including one at a pizza place that shares our parking lot. I actually have a lot of faith in our security system at work as i've accidentally set it off and the volume of the siren that goes off is so loud, i can't imagine anyone carrying on with their plan to rob the store. However, criminals often being dumber than reason should allow, there's always that little uneasy feeling in the back of my mind.

On this particular night last week, i had also learned that the mother of a good friend of mine had passed away, with very little warning for those who loved her. Whenever someone dies too soon and unexpectedly, i think we all step back and take a serious look at what death and life and love and family and everything really means to us. So in addition to my usual state of mild worrying, this was where my mind was. The usual fear of death that i can normally brush off suddenly became very heavy.

In my usual practice of checking out "new" cd's, throughout the night i listened to an Isley Brothers album just because the cover was a sepia-toned photo and they were holding acoustic guitars (i'm buying that one), a Jorge Ben album from the 90's (horrible horrible horrible), The Like (i think i had read something good about them, but they're not that good), The Open Mind because it had a ridiculous psychedelic 60's cover (i'm buying that one too) and a collection by The Outsiders (pretty bland 60's pop, i think i'll pass). Then i decided to take a chance on an album i've heard a lot about but have been reluctant to check out: Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. I am a fan of Fleetwood Mac in the early years before Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks came on board. From then on, i basically have no interest in hearing another album. But i've always heard that Tusk was different. It came right after their record shattering Rumours and was feuled by cocaine and broken relationships within the band. All Music Guide calls it "sprawling, incoherent and utterly brilliant." It was a flop when it was released; a lot of times those are the best albums... of course, a lot of times they're not. I try to keep an open mind when it comes to music and by doing so, i have found diamonds in the what i thought were the most unlikely of places. So come on, Buckingham-Nicks, give me your best!

Tusk was playing loudly over the speakers but as i was in the aforementioned state of mind, i really wasn't paying much attention to it. Every once in a while, i'd snap out of it and hear a few notes and generally thought "well this isn't that bad" but then my mind would snap back to more serious things. Then the scariest and most serious thought of all came to me.

As i was sorting through the 1600 Elvis Presley budget line cd's and putting out yet another used copy of the Prince album that was just released two months ago; while i placed a copy of The Presidents of the United States of America on the shelf where i had also put one last week and wondered who keeps buying this crap, it came to me. What if, right now, someone burst through the glass doors and shot me?

There i am lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, a pool of blood growing around me, too weak to pull myself up. I am accepting that this is it; my time has come to pass from this earth. My mind is quickly running through all the great and horrible things that have made up my life and imagining all the great and horrible things that i'm going to miss in the future. I think of my friends and family which makes me sad and brings me joy all at once. Then a terror like no other sets in. I'm lying here slowly bleeding to death. It may be another hour before it's all over... and i'm listening to Fleetwood Mac!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! This can't be the last album i ever hear. I always thought i'd go out to Zeppelin IV or A Love Supreme. Time Out of Mind would be acceptable or if i know when i'm exactly 19 minutes and 35 seconds from death, put on Sonic Youth's "The Diamond Sea." Just don't let it be a Buckingham-Nicks era Fleetwood Mac album, not even the one that's supposed to be good!

It was a chilling thought. I honestly considered stopping the CD and putting on something comforting for my last moments. But i let a cooler head prevail. I put out the rest of the Puddle of Mudd and Pussycat Dolls CD's, finished Tusk and headed home. I still never really got to devote my undivided attention to listening to the album objectively so the jury is still out. Of course that means i'm going to have to listen to it again but next time i'm locking myself in an underground storm cellar and hiring armed guards to stand outside. If a metor lands on me while i'm in the middle of side 4, i'll consider it God's will but i'm going to let him know that i'm pissed.

Bad Brains :: Rock For Light :: 1983

2009-06-18T18:52:00.000-05:00

Here's an example of what a typical Washington D.C. hardcore band looked like in the early 80's.

Here's what Bad Brains looked like.

I know i'm not supposed to be superficial and judge a book by its cover but i think it's pretty obvious, from first look, that these guys just might be a little different than all the white suburban kids who are really angry at their geometry teacher. I don't mean to take anything away from the angry kids, there is definitely a place for their rant 'n' rage, but Bad Brains is just coming from another place, both musically and personally. These guys were a little older and of a different race which obviously created a different outlook than the rest of the members of the early hardcore scene. They also had originally come together as a jazz fusion band so they knew more the four chords.

What probably set them the farthest away from the other hardcore bands was their following of Rastafarianism. The blending of Reggae and Punk music had been around for a while, most notably in the music of The Clash. Bad Brains, however, didn't really blend the two. They let it out as two separate parts of the same band. Musically, you have you're punk songs and then you have your reggae songs. The only real mixing of the two were the lyrics that just didn't seem to fit in the Hardcore world. While most hardcore and punk bands would scoff at the idea of any kind of religious message in their music, Bad Brains let it inform a large part of what they did and they were bad-ass enough that nobody could give them a hard time about it.

When it comes to Bad Brains, it seems like you'll always be pointed to their debut, self-titled, album. It's cover image of lightning striking the Capitol dome is iconic. It catches all the raw power of the band. And guess what else... it's sounds like turd. I'm not any kind of studio-head. I don't think things have to be crisp and clean and layered and perfect to be good. Lo-Fi rock recordings often have a certain personality and strength that eludes some of those who spend tens of thousands of dollars and hours at Abbey Road Studio trying to make themselves sound like they're actually passionate about the music they're playing. And if Bad Brains had only recorded that one album, i'd tell everyone to go buy it tomorrow. But they didn't. A year later, they got together with Ric Ocasek (of The Cars...I know, weird huh?) and recorded another album called Rock For Light. This is by no means a "slick" album. It's still dirty, it's still raw. It still sounds like nothing you've heard before or since. It just sounds a little cleaner, a little louder and a lot better. Plus they actually re-record 6 of the best songs from the first album and i prefer the newer version (with the exception of "Sailin' On" which peels paint on the first album and they didn't include "Pay to Cum" on the second album which is pretty essential).

Rock For Light starts with the 3-hit combo of "Big Take Over," "Attitude," & "Right Brigade," all originally on the first album. After that, they do what only they can do. They go from the 31-second whiplash of "Joshua's Song" to the laid back mid-tempo Reggae of "I and I Survive." Then they slam four more mind-blowing punk rock freakouts at you then let you take a breath while they slow it down again and jam out a little bit. They repeat this formula two more times. It's as if they know if they don't stop after every fourth song, something might explode.

The music here is so fast and immediate that it masks the complexity of the music and the melody of a band that could use their talents in a much more "respectable" genre. But they felt the need to funnel their energy into Punk Rock. In doing so, they lend a gravitas to a music that was and is often dismissed as angry noise played by untalented kids. They also brought a deeper message to the Hardcore world. Despite the abrasiveness of their sound, their message is often that of the love and peace that is the core of Rasta.

This just might be the higher level of Punk Rock.

Radio Show June 17, 2009

2009-06-17T21:52:00.003-05:00

Here's this week's show. Highlights: Eowyn sings Happy Birthday to Bonnie and Jack White rips off Black Sabbath. Enjoy.

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And here's the playlist

Baby Huey :: The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend :: 1971

2009-06-11T16:24:00.003-05:00

When it comes to searching for music, it's always nice to find things like early Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart or maybe to discover that you actually like The Clash's dismissed second album as much as their much-lauded third. These things have been right in front of you the whole time, you just never heard them; it's like noticing that you're best friend's little sister is suddenly really hot. But the greater reward is when you run across something you've never heard of and it blows your mind. Basically, your best friend's smokin-hot cousin comes to town for the weekend and you two hook up down by the lake. Well let me introduce your best friend's smokin-hot cousin. She comes in the form of a 400 lb, dead black man who can shout the socks off any other dead black man you can dig up.

The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend is the only album Baby Huey ever recorded. He would be dead of a drug-fueled heart attack before it was released. That's the kind of album that's just going to get buried in the record racks and forgotten about. Thankfully, somebody decided a few years ago that the world needed a reminder and issued it on CD. Of course, there had already been a few others who made out with your friend's cousin before she got to you. Several songs on this album have been sampled in Hip Hop over the years by Eric B. & Rakim, A Tribe Called Quest, Ice Cube & Ghostface Killah.

Baby Huey had peformed around Chicago for several years before he auditioned for Curtis Mayfield's Curtom label. In addition to releasing the album, Mayfield also produced it and had three of his songs recorded by Baby Huey. What Baby Huey and his band, The Babysitters, were doing here was to combine Soul & Funk music with Rock & Psychedelic music. This wasn't necessarily anything new. Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and George Clinton were doing the same thing but Baby Huey doesn't sound like these three. The secret is in the balance of the Soul and the Rock. Hendrix was obviously coming from the Rock side while Stone and Clinton went in the Funk direction. Baby Huey really hits it right in the middle of it all. It ain't too funky, not too psychedelic and the rock and soul just melt together.

While this has a lot to do with Baby Huey himself, much of the credit belongs to The Babysitters. Here's a band that's tight enough to hold its own against James Brown's best version of the J.B.'s yet is loose enough to really let it swing and jam a little when it needs too. Which is probably why, even though only one man's face is on the cover, the band is given a chance to show its stuff on three instrumental numbers, including a take on The Mamas & The Papas "California Dreamin'."

With this wonderband behind him, Baby Huey is really able to dig deep and let out all he's got. There are a lot of good soul singers but there are certain ones that truly stand out, like Otis Redding and Tina Turner. People who really give the meaning to Soul because they're not singing from their diaphragm, they're singing from somewhere deeper. Add Baby Huey to that list. This is from the gut at its best. And in addition to the singing, there's the screaming. It's like something just needs out and if a high-pitched scream is the only way, then that's what he's got to do.

Every song on here has it's own personality but they all mix into a perfect sequence of an album. "Listen to Me" starts it off with that perfect soul/rock balance. Mayfield's "Mighty Mighty" and "Runnin" take on a much more frenetic energy than the originals. The instrumentals are tight and make your booty shake, whether you want it to or not. But the masterpiece of this album is definitely the nine and a half minute version of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Going to Come." With echo on the vocals, the opening "I was booooooooorrrrrrrn by the river..." just sends chills down the spine. With perfect organ and guitar flourishes, he croons and echo-screams all the way to the bridge where he gives you what Mayfield would call a "rap," where Baby Huey sits you down and has a little talk. I still haven't figured out if he's telling you drugs are good or bad but what i do know is that he feels that Change a-comin' and you can't help but to feel it too.

Had he stuck around a little longer, Baby Huey, aka James Ramey, could've been a part of that change. And then again, maybe he was when Kool Herc started mixing "Listen to Me" on the streets of the Bronx. That's how legends are made.

Radio Show June 10, 2009

2009-06-10T22:56:00.003-05:00

Here's this week's show. You can download it or i found out that if you use an RSS reader then you can play it straight from the blog.

Download Show

And here's the playlist

Radio Show May 27, 2009

2009-06-07T22:33:00.009-05:00

Ok, here's my first attempt to post my radio show as a podcast. I'm pretty sure this works. If you click the link below, you should have the option to save an MP3. It is an hour long so it'll take a few minutes to download. After that, you can listen to it on your computer or import it into iTunes and add it to your iPod. Let me know if you try and it doesn't work, i'm pretty new to this. This is the show from a couple of weeks ago. (It starts in the middle of a song, sorry about that.) Enjoy.

Download Show

For the playlist, you can see it here.

The B-52's :: The B-52's :: 1979

2009-06-03T12:10:00.001-05:00

“So…um…what exactly is this?” I imagine this question was uttered at quite a few of the B-52’s earliest shows. Even in the late seventies, when Punk Rock had knocked down most rock conventions and New Wave was attempting to create something new from the rubble. Even in Athens, GA, where the kids could create a weird little musical world, cut-off from the major interstates that homogenized other college towns. I don’t care who you were or where you went to see some bands play. Whether it was in a pub, or at an abandoned church, or Max's Kansas City, there is no way you would have been prepared for the flamboyant front man, sing-shouting his words, and two beehive-wigged vamps bopping along in tight harmony, taking you on a journey that begins on “Planet Claire” and ends “Downtown.”

The B-52's revel in 1950's camp in both their fashion and their music. The sounds on this album are a swirl of the soundtracks to the classic 50's b-movies of both the Sci-Fi and Beach Party genres. So basically it becomes the soundtrack to "Invasion of the Gidget Snatchers." It's all so much fun! You dance around and bop about but there is also a slight eeriness to it all as if something bad is about to happen. However, it never really does, it's mostly just dancing and bopping.

While The B-52's made a few other great albums (most notably the follow-up Wild Planet), this album has a certain charm brought on by the naivity that comes with being in your twenties and playing an instrument you don't actually know that much about. The energy and the rawness of this bizarre experiment was never quite as strong again.

"Planet Claire" kicks off the Sci-Fi imagery though it also sort of seems like their version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" with its pink air, red trees and headless people. "Dance This Mess Around" brings back the 50's dance crazes with "They do the Shu-ga-loo/Do the Shy Tuna/Do the Camel Walk/Do the Hip-O-Crit." There are also songs about love, phone numbers in bathroom stalls and a cover of Petula Clark. And then of course there is the big hit. While i think it's far from the best song here, "Rock Lobster" really sums up the album as a whole; total nonsense, totally original and totally fun, that last point explaining how this thing ever became a hit.

There has never been another band quite like The B-52's and i promise you there never will be. This July marks the 30th anniversary of the release of The B-52's . There has been plenty of time for this band to establish their influence, be ripped-off and copied but it just hasn't happened. After all this time, whenever i listen to them, i can't help but to think "So...um...what exactly is this?"

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Sorry this post took so long. I started it, then got lazy, then tried again but had misplaced the cd, then i found it and finished it and apparently the auto-save feature didn't work so i lost the last half of it. Then i just didn't care anymore. Then i wrote it. I'll get the next one out a little more quickly. Here's "Planet Claire" performed in 1983. I had know idea they had this big of an audience. Clap along at home.

The Avett Brothers :: Emotionalism :: 2007

2009-05-20T15:25:00.001-05:00

Have you ever found one of those bands that nobody else knew about; it's your own little secret? Nobody knows that you just discovered the best band they've never heard. You don't hear their songs on the radio, you don't read their name in magazines. They seem to only exist on your record shelf. Well, that was the Avett Brothers for me. I ran across a couple of cd's at work one day and, judging a book by its cover, i thought i'd give'em a listen. And it was quite like nothing i'd heard before. I knew they were going to blow up someday and I was so excited the next time they came through town. I'd get to see them with the twenty-five other people in the city that had secretly discovered them. I was shocked when i found out it was sold out even the day before the show. Apparently my great secret was really just the result of me not paying attention. They were already blowing up. Now, these guys are by no means superstars. Their music is not quite conventional enough to bring them great fame but, while it isn't for everybody, it is the kind of music that if it strikes a chord with someone, it's going to strike it loudly.

The best way to explain the sound of the Avett Brothers (consisting of brothers Scott & Seth Avett along with bassist Bob Crawford) is with one of those annoying genre mashing monikers; let's say "folk-punk." Their songs are rooted in american folk music, played on upright bass, acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo and other old time noise makers. But the reason these guys don't sound like Nickel Creek is that they know how to rock, they know how to scream, they know how to fuck shit up. There is an energy to this band that you don't find in a lot of bands that turn their amps to eleven and supposedly rock out. This is supposed to make for an amazing live performance which i attempted to catch again a few weeks ago at a free outdoor concert. However, when there is no stage and the band is playing at the top of a small slope, all you can see is the back of the head in front of you (however, with my height advantage, i was able to see the top of the upright bass). It at least sounded good. Maybe i'll get to see them in 2037 on their reunion tour.

While the energy and the rock they bring certainly sets them apart from other acoustic acts, their real strengths lie elsewhere. The first is in the songwriting. Most of their songs are actually soft, sweet numbers. Most of them are about love, sometimes not so soft and sweet. There is an honesty and tenderness in their words and they have a great sense of imagery that can really draw you in. I'm sure a lot of these songs are about made up situations and made up girls but when you hear the words, you can't help but to imagine that it has all really happened and not even the names were changed to protect the innocent.

The second strength is one from Mother Nature. If we learned anything from the Everlys and the Louvins (other than how to avoid ending up in Hell with the A-Bomb drops), it's that there is something in brothers' voices that blend in a way unlike those who don't share DNA. The Avetts write melodies that are easily harmonized and they do on most every song. Seth brings the pretty, make girls swoon, voice while Scott presents a slightly world-weary rasp and when they're put together, they blend just perfectly. Occasionally throw in Crawford for some three-part harmony, and it just soars.

I knew i wanted to write about an Avett Brothers album but i had a difficult time deciding which one to write about. If i made a list of all my favorite Avett songs, there would be three or four from every album. They also all have a few throwaways on them as most albums do. I don't guess one has ever jumped out as their best. However, after listening to all the albums a lot over the last week or so, Emotionalism really started to stand out. When hearing them all, side by side, i began to notice a growth with this album. There seems to be a period of maturity between the last album and this, in both the lyrics and the album as a whole.

The lyrical aspect of this growth is addressed very obviously in "Shame" ("My life is different now I swear/I know now what it means to care/about somebody other than myself"), in "The Weight of Lies" while contemplating advice given to a young man ("I’m not sure I bought those words/When I was young I knew most everything/But these words have never meant so much to anyone/as they now mean to me"), accepting where one's been in "All My Mistakes" ("I made decisions some right and some wrong/and I let some love go I wish wasn't gone/But I can't go back/and I don't want to/'cause all my mistakes/they brought me to you") and dealing with their new-found success in "Paranoia in B flat Major" ("I keep having this dream/I’m at a party/There’s people throwing drinks and screaming/telling me that I don’t belong").

The musical aspect is a little harder to pin down but there is a cohesiveness to this album that's missing from some of the others. The past albums seemed to be about making good music and having fun, this one seems to be about finding their path as a musical group and exorcising their hearts. While i had always thought that Emotionalism was a horrible title, i now realize that, lyrically and musically, it is the pefect description of the songs heard within.

Art Brut :: Bang Bang Rock & Roll :: 2005

2009-05-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

I vaguely remember a time when Rock & Roll was fun. I think i had a lot to do with the death of fun. It's hard for me to just let loose, sing along, jump up and down and make a fool of myself. I used to be able to do it. I guess i'm just more refined now. Or maybe i'm just more lame. When music sounds like it was made for fun, i tend to shrug it off the same way i do Die Hard movies. Sure, it's fun but where's the art? Where's the message? Where's the thing that's going to make it stand the test of time?

The proper answer to those questions is: Shut up and dance.

Art Brut seems to be here to bring the fun back. They've gone back to singing about what you're supposed to sing about when you're in a rock band. Of the first 8 songs, 3 songs are about Rock & Roll and 4 are about girls. What about the other 1, you ask? It's about Modern Art. The rumor that Art Brut has spread about itself is that they started writing songs within 15 minutes of first playing together. I don't know if that's really true or not but it's fairly believable when the lyrics that begin the album are "Formed a band/We formed a band/Look at us/We formed a band."

Somewhere i read an article about Art Brut that i can't seem to find now to quote. But it talked about the band as an art project. The singer is a visual and performance artist and this may just be his next step. Even the band name Art Brut is taken from the term coined by French artist Jean Debuffet to discribe what we now call "outsider art." I don't know if it's true or not, but even if it is, i'm perfectly fine with that. I would not see this as some sort of imposter band; they make music i like so i'll listen to it.

I do have a suspicion that there's something a little more real than "art project" here. There seems to be a certain sincerity here no matter how close the relationship of the cheek and the tongue. The excitement of his little brother discovering Rock & Roll, the admission that "popular culture no longer applies to me," his journey to the maternity ward to promise the babies that everything's gonna be alright, and his hope for his lost love in "Emily Kane" ("I hope this song finds you fame/I want school kids on busses singing your name").

With that said, it is obvious that the tongue and cheek know each other well in the mouth of Art Brut but it's a very clever humor and just enhances the fun rock aspect. The title "Moving to L.A." sound pretty definite until the chorus explains that he's just "considering a move to L.A." In "Really Bad Weekend" he explains his cheating to his significant other as "We just kissed and that's about it/I fell asleep and had to do without it." And of course the opening track "Formed a Band" in which he professes "We're gonna be the band that writes the song that makes Israel and Palestine get along."

But enough of that already...Shut Up and Dance!

The Inconsiderate Mixtape: The Radio Show

2009-05-14T21:14:00.003-05:00

The WRVU summer schedule begins next week so you can now hear me (aka DJ Susan) spin the stacks of wax and all that crap. I unexpectedly got a really good time slot so if you're in Nashville, you can hear me every Wednesday from 5-6pm on 91.1. If you're not in Nashville, you can go WRVU.org and stream it. Also, each show will be archived for one week in the "show schedule" section, though that won't be operating for the first week or two. I'm also going to try to figure out how to post the shows on this blog so you can download it as a podcast.

Since this is my first semester, i am required to do a "debut" show which means about half of my playlist will be made up of cd's from station rotation. This basically means, it's going to be filled with a little more indie rock than i would have planned but hopefully they'll loosen the reins next semester and i'll be able to play more Neil Diamond than they suspect.

So tune in, turn on, drop out, and bring me some bacon!

Archers Of Loaf :: Vee Vee :: 1995

2009-05-12T22:43:00.000-05:00

I guess i've finally gotten old enough to be nostalgic about the 90's. I think, on some level, everyone misses that time between your mom washing your underwear and having to get a real job. I was so connected with the music i listened to during that time, that it will always be a part of me. However, there is an inherent problem with nostalgia when it comes to being a grade-A music snob like myself. When i consider an album from that era to be some sort of classic, i realize it may just be because it reminds me of how incredibly cool i was before i had a mortgage. And don't get me started on just how cool i was. I mean seriously, it would absolutely blow your mind if you knew how cool i was. I drove a teal Corolla, for God's sake.

However, despite this album being a soundtrack for my cool years, Vee Vee stands the test of time and should indeed be considered a modern classic. I'm not really sure how one defines the sound of Indie Rock. The general idea is that an Indie band is supposed to have it's own sound, independent of what every other band sounds like. And while there are still one-of-a-kind bands out there, there is a common thread that runs through most Indie bands. That thread has changed a bit over the years but in the mid-90's, the thread seemed to consist of strangely tuned guitars playing melodic lines over distorted chords with lyrics that never seemed to make much sense, straddling the line between poetry and nonsense, creating a sound that makes you want to dance and/or kick stuff. The sound was defined by Sonic Youth, Pavement, Sebadoh and of course Archers Of Loaf. Whatever University first offers "An Overview of Alternative Rock and Footwear of the 90's" better have at least one Vee Vee question on the final exam.

Archers Of Loaf were certainly recognized and doted on in the realm of Rock Critics at the time but their legend doesn't seem to have endured. Maybe it's because their last three albums were just average or maybe it's because Indie Rock became overrun with dance songs, sensitive love songs and lots of bleeps & bloops. I don't see them on lists; i don't hear their name in interviews; Hot Topic doesn't sell their T-shirts. It's a dang shame, i tell ya!

Vee Vee starts with an intro that could stand as a song of its own. Two and a half minutes of twisting quirky guitars lead into the opening title phrase "Step into the light..." As you slowly step into said light, slightly comfortable, you're ride is about to get bumpy. "Harnessed in Slums" will one day be heard on a commercial for Time/Life's "Alternative Rock Hits of the 90's." This is one of the greats. It's catchy beyond belief. It should've been the song that launched a million imitators. It should've been the song that made sure Nickelback never happened. But it was just over the line of weirdness that Top 40 was never going to touch it. From there on, it's a rollercoaster ride of...um...strangely tuned guitars playing melodic lines over distorted chords with lyrics that...oh, you know. AOL had a knack for repeating phrases that get stuck in your head, such as the "Throw him in the river/Throw the bastard in the river" from "Greatest of All Time" and "Calling all cops/Calling all cars/Calling all cop cars/calling all cars" from "Death in the Park." It creates that certain sing-a-long quality that makes you feel like you belong to this album and it belongs to you.

We'll never be able to predict how time will judge certain albums but i hope this one is remembered or rediscovered in the future. While i don't ever expect this album to be seen as a Blonde on Blonde or Blood on the Tracks, maybe i can hope for a Planet Waves.

C'mon everyone, step into the light.

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I could've posted the video for Harnessed In Slums but it was kind of lame so i found this really poor quality video of some wrestlers and a meet sexy locals message with the song in the background for some unconnected reason. Enjoy.

In B flat

2009-05-09T14:18:00.001-05:00

Just thought i'd share the coolest thing i've seen in a while. Thanks to the aforementioned Paul for sending this to me.

http://www.inbflat.net/

Arcade Fire :: Funeral :: 2004

2009-05-02T18:52:00.002-05:00

There's this guy i know named Paul. Paul listens to a lot of good music. Paul is the source of me finding a lot of the new bands because i can't seem to keep up with what's happening in the realm of Magnet and Pitchfork. (I'm not quite to Relix stage yet but i feel it's ever approaching presence.) The problem is that sometimes Paul is all like "Hey, you should listen to this album" and then i'm like "why?" and then he's like "'Cause it's really good" then i'm like "ok" and then when i listen to it, i'm like "wait, this isn't really that good" and then i'm like "hey Paul, this isn't really that good" and Paul's all like "meh."

And this is where the journey of Greg and Arcade Fire's Funeral began. Paul, along with the rest of the indie world, were really quite kooky over this band. I heard their name then i read their review, then i saw their records at Ear-x-tacy, then i heard some guy on a corner talking about them. I was really quite sick of them before i even heard them. I was also quite sick of disco beats. I can't even name the bands now because most were of the breed of one-hit indie wonders, but at the time, disco beats accidentally got big. Maybe it was VHS Or Beta (remember i was in Louisville at the time) and The Rapture that were on everyones' tongues. They were supposed to be good but a turd set to a disco beat is still a turd...except it's worse because it's set to a disco beat.

You may be asking yourself "What does a disco beat have to do with Arcade Fire?" That would be a fair question because the answer is "Not very much." However, they do use it. I'm talking about that snare on 2 & 4, high hat on the upbeat beat and there it was at the end of the first song and my eyes rolled. The next few songs went well and then i get to "Crown of Love" which was this really nice, passionate, string-laced waltz. I'm really digging it. It's becoming a high point in the album and then...DISCO BEAT!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!! I may have listened to the rest of the album but i think i was officially done with it then and there. I returned Paul's CD and didn't look back.

Enter Drew Pew. I moved to Nashville in March of 2005 and soon began working at The Great Escape's online store. TGE Online was housed in a small building where one usually worked in close quarters with at least one other person. When i started, that one other person for me was Drew. There was already a Drew there when he got hired so he became known as Drew Two. Then the other employees began to notice he did not have a pleasant odor about him. It wasn't body odor; it was more of a cigarette and deli meat aroma. This led Drew with a real last name from his standing as Drew Two to Drew Pew.

The first thing anyone does when they start work there is shelve cd's so that was my job for about a month. Drew would enter the CD's for sale online, place them on a sorting shelf, then i would alphabetize and file them with the rest of the CD's. We were never more than 25 feet away from each other. Drew essentially had control of the CD player in our part of the building, not because it was his right but because i would have to practically straddle him to reach the CD player which i preferred not to do given his shaved-ham-and-Marlboro condition. He never once offered to put a CD on for me and the one time i got there early enough to put something on before he arrived, it was as if i had built a boat out his soul and shipped it off to sea. He sincerely didn't seem to understand how i could have done such a thing. I love music and i try my best to respect the music other people love so i can be very tolerant in situations like this. My problem with Drew Pew is that he only wanted to play 3 CD's. He was surrounded by CD's; he had literally hundreds at his fingertips each day. Yet, he listened to the Twin Peaks Soundtrack, something else i can't remember now and Arcade Fire's Funeral. I promise you he never played anything else.

I don't know what analogy best fits here. I guess the acquired taste one. I've been told beer is an acquired taste but everyone knows the problem here. If you don't like it, why would you keep drinking it just so you can like it. It was like Drew was pouring PBR down my throat with a funnel every day for a month. After a while, i start thinking "that's not too bad" then on to "sure i'll drink one of yours" to "maybe i'll buy one" to "F it, man! I'm gettin' TOE UP!!!"

I think in my time there, i heard Funeral so many times that it just sank into my consciousness. It became to me like Led Zeppelin and Doors albums that i had digested for 15 years. I became one with the music, the notes, the changes, the disco beats that only occur on two songs. I could recite it like John 3:16 or the theme song to Gilligan's Island. I didn't have to think about it, it was just there. And suddenly, i was ok with that. After Drew was gone and i had time away from Funeral, i realized i needed it and bought a copy. I think i can say now that this is one of the best albums to come out in the last ten years.

There is something magical about this album. You can spot influences, from Talking Heads to The Beatles to Springsteen to various 80's college bands, all over this album but it somehow sounds totally original. It has a certain classic sound yet is totally current. The secret to this album is all the layers, the things you don't notice unless you paying attention: the string flourishes, the added percussion, the jingle bells, the xylophone and tea kettle. Everything is laid exactly where it needs to be to make the songs perfect. This is all in addition to the more overt qualities: driving drum beats, memorable melodies, passionate vocals and lyrics that may not make complete sense but sure sound heavy. With Funeral, Arcade Fire created the album most bands only dream of.
I only worked with Drew for about 5 or 6 weeks but he served a greater purpose than many others that i knew for much greater lengths of time. While i may have forgotten their last names, i will remember his: Pew

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Bonus YouTube clip of two of the Arcade Fire guys in the audience of The Price is Right:

Antony and The Johnsons :: I Am a Bird Now :: 2005

2009-04-27T08:47:00.000-05:00

The photo above, which serves as the cover of I Am a Bird Now was taken by Peter Hujar in 1974 and is entitled "Candy Darling on Her Deathbed." Candy Darling was born James Slattery in 1944 and grew up in Long Island, NY. By 1964, Jimmy had become Candy and soon became a well-known face in Andy Warhol's Factory, appearing in several of his movies as well as performing on stage. She is the namesake for Velvet Underground's "Candy Says" and also appears in Lou Reed's song "Walk On the Wild Side" in the lines "Candy came from out on the island/in the back room, she was everybody's darling." She also appears on the cover of the Smiths' single for "Sheila Take a Bow" and Morrisey titled a song "You Know I Couldn't Last" which is a quote from a letter she wrote to Warhol and his followers from her deathbed. She died of leukemia at age 29.

There is something so constantly beautiful and haunting about this photo. The starkness of the black & white contrast bring out every detail. At first look, all i see is 1940's Hollywood; glamour always on the face of the stars, even when lying in bed. And of course, they're always surrounded by flowers. It takes a moment before i see the light above her head and the tray table at her feet and realize that she is in a hospital. The flowers that seemed only a moment ago to brighten an already glorious day suddenly change their purpose in a delusionary fight to lessen the sting of death.

I don't spend much time analyzing album covers. This one is different. I honestly don't believe, in the history of popular music, that there has ever been a cover that represents the contents held within the way this one does. When i hear any song on this album, the cover photo floats through my mind like a ghost i've gotten used to.

There are two central themes of I Am a Bird Now. The first is Death; the second is gender confusion, which is carried on further through the art on the inside cover. There are a couple of selections from children's letters from a medical journal on hermaphrodism and sex reassignment. One letter reads "Dear Dr., I do not want to be a boy. I want to be a girl" and one from 1966 saying "Father, Mother, I got to be a boy." There is also a picture of a calendar from an abandoned prison with days scratched out and circled. I take the prison metaphor as feeling locked in the wrong body or maybe just locked in this life. So that's the outside of I Am a Bird Now, let's get to the inside.

I don't suppose to know Antony's whole story as far as gender identification but from what i've read, it has been an issue since he was very young. He presents himself fairly androgynously in photos and there is a childhood story of feeling alone in the world until coming face to face with Boy George on the cover of the Culture Club's debut album. The songs on this album seem so personal, i genuinely feel a hesitation to even tell you about them. I feel like i've discovered someone's journal where they have written only the deepest thoughts of their heart and i'm sharing what i've read with my co-workers. But when you can google the lyrics, i suppose Antony will have to forgive me.

It all starts with one of the most stirring songs i will ever hear. It was the first song i ever heard from Antony and if the album ended there, i would have already had my money's worth. The song is called "Hope There's Someone," the title coming from the opening line "Hope there's someone to take care of me when I die." This is a song of someone facing death as strongly as he can but with so much fear. The fear of being alone, the fear of being stuck in "the middle place between light and nowhere." It's a fear that is expressed in a voice like you've never heard; a voice so strong but so frail. I've listened to this song a dozen times in the last two weeks just trying to prepare to write this post. It never weakens and never fails to engulf every sense i have. My heart literally beats faster and i usually let out a sigh of relief when it's over, almost feeling the burden of being that someone as i usher a loved one to the next life.

It's hard to start with such a climax and then expect anything else to hold up but the rest of the album sounds like that "middle place," but seen as a passing journey with a promise that at then end of it, you'll be on the other side of death; the other side of life.

"My Lady Story" is the horrible tale of woman who has gone though so much abuse that has made her feel like anything but a lady looking for her "lostest beauty." "For Today I Am a Boy" seems to address the notes from the children on the inside cover ("Some day I'll grow up to be a beautiful woman/But for today I am a Boy"). "Man is the Baby" is a man facing his mortality and all the wrongs of his life. "You are My Sister" features Antony's long-ago saviour, Boy George, on a duet singing a love letter to a sister who looked after him in those years of darkness and confusion. "What Can I Do?" is a short song featuring Rufus Wainwright on lead vocals, addressing the powerlessness of watching someone die. "Fistfull of Love" sounds like letter of forgiveness and reconciliation to an abusive father who exists now only in a photograph, featuring Lou Reed in a spoken intro. "Spiralling," featuring Devendra Banhart is the singer allowing himself to get angy at the bad hand he feels he's been dealt since birth. "Free at Last" is a poem presented in Morse Code under a reading by Julia Yasuda, a renown transgender mathemetician. The poem is by an anonymous author but was used as spiritual chant among slaves in America ("Going to meet my Jesus in the middle of the air/Thank God I'm free at Last"). The album ends with "Bird Guhl" ("I am a bird girl now/I've been searching for my wings some time/and the Bird Girls go to Heaven/and the Bird Girls can fly"), promising the end of the middle place, being able to fly from this life; from this prison. The issues in my life are much different and Antony Hegarty's, but he makes me long for the day when i can be the bird girl and fly along with him to Heaven.

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This isn't an easy album. I've had a hard time even getting to a place to write about it. It's very sad yet very comforting in the cycle of life we all live. Very few albums move me the way this one does. I'm attaching the video for "Hope There's Someone" below. I can't say the video adds much to the song so before watching the video a recommend giving one listen to the audio only. Dim your lights, make sure you won't be interrupted for four minutes, close your eyes and open everything inside you.