June 30th, 2008
Blame it on an ever-lasting romance with the concept of the hover board,* but since childhood, I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of being out of one’s time. Hoverboards or horse shoes were fine by me, just not the present. Hell, during one one parched spell between the fall of 2003 and the spring of 2006, I decided to half-pretend that it was the year 1966. Though this may have had to do with Mike Jones, Paris Hilton and Dubya at the zenith of his “I’ve Earned Political Capital” unctuousness. Sure, I may have gotten strange glances from people who’d never seen paisley on a man, but damn it, it was worth it.**
Below-the-radar of many, Daptone Records has spent the better part of this decade releasing distinctly anachronistic and summarily excellent records. While Sharon Jones and The Budos Band are the popular faces of the Brooklyn-based funk and soul label, this recent collection of their 7″ singles proves its Isaac Hayes-sized stash of talent, with cuts from The Mighty Imperials, Lee Fields and Charles Bradley able to hold their own with nearly anything from this time or any other. I’m sure critics could find a way to nit-pick on some “lacks-innovation” bogus babble, but they’re wrong. This is pretty much perfect music. Pure classic funk and sad soul that sounds excavated from a lost crate last seen in 1972.
When I finally get around to making my Top 10, this will be on it. Directly below the records from Pissed Jeans and Fuck Buttons. Apparently being “with the times” requires you to give your band, the world’s dumbest nickname. Holy Fuck!
*And really what exactly about the prospect of a hover board should one not be enthused about? I mean, it’s a flying skateboard, one that allows you to escape from villainous pursuers named Griff who may or may not be calling you a “bojo.”
**For those wondering what I looked like during that tie-died period, here are some photos.
Download:
MP3: Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings-”Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In”
MP3: Lee Fields & The Sugerman 3-”Stand Up Part II”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 5 Comments »
June 29th, 2008
Summer Jamz ‘08 #5: Stewart Voegtlin & Jayson Greene
http://www.mediafire.com/?dmyjnlwnpup
Each Summer Jam is proudly co-hosted with Screw Rock N’ Roll and What Was it Anyway.
KISS “Love Gun”
RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS, “Love Comes in Spurts”
AC/DC, “Rising Power”
ROLLING STONES, “Stray Cat Blues”
LED ZEP, “Lemon Song”
BUZZCOCKS, “Orgasm Addict”
THE STOOGES, “Shake Appeal”
NIRVANA, “Moist Vagina”
ZZ TOP, “Pearl Necklace”
GHOSTFACE KILLAH, “Wildflower”
FLIPPER, “Sex Bomb”
LIZ PHAIR, “Flower”
SIR LORD BALTIMORE, “Aint Got Hung On You”
PJ HARVEY, “Sheela Na Gig”
SOUNDGARDEN, “Big Dumb Sex”
WEEZER, “Tired Of Sex”
MC5, “I Want You Right Now”
Threaten to follow a question with more of the same.
Q: Chastity?
Q: In the full-tilt swing of summer?
Oh, geezus. Didn’t we all wanna give up the goose when the sweat ceased to dribble and ran? When the cheep swill, greasy food and sticky gropes marked the day-to-day as hounds pissin’ upon hydrants? Shit, I know I did. Shoulda, woulda, coulda kept at bay with lock & key. A big motherfuck to camp, stuck-inside jobs or dreaded “college resume building” interning. It was odd-job-ad-hoc that allowed that ol’ initial momentum, then the arc. And as logically follows: the denouement—all limp, all feverish, all photo flash instant, 1,000 words past.
Never really gave much thought to what was playing on the hi-fi in those swipe-the-ticklers-français from the Rx counter momento mori. Never really cared.
Guesses are mostly good: A mélange of Metal and Anthem Dandied? —Voivod and Slayer. —Roxy Music and Bowie. —Maybe the Velvets. They all “worked.” Sound-tracking the pre-party partying, a mixtape crammed into a mom’s minivan and wailed away while nitrous oxide brought ye knuckle-draggers one less grunt closer to Quest for Fire. Agh! Agh! The admitted—no, really—the brandished Weltanschauung was all cock and cunt and some things “worked” better than others.
The 70s worked mostly for me. A taut opalescent boil of Heh-Vee Psych grime slicked with STP und jissom, inflated with self-worth, self-loathing, an impending eruption just a motherfuckin’ given. Plant & Page, Stanley & Simmons, Kramer & Smith, et cetera, et cetera. Here was majik, real check-the-tophat stuff. No bunnies. No bullshit. But we were mostly worried we’d find gods. —Perhaps the whole fuckin’ pantheon. Dive into that dark headfirst. The most unusual suspects for more of the same summer sportfuckin’. Nothing so different from handjobs-to-blowjobs-to-vaginal-to-anal. (Incidentally, I recall a particularly unsavory memory involving Miracle Whip as lubricant…)
What is it supposed to say? Why were we playing this shit and why must we continue to do so? These are questions best left unanswered. There’s just not enough mystery nowadays anyway.
And so, anywho, best defense is no defense. Play it as it lays. Hence, the boudoir ambient: Kiss wields the pistol of ess-eeee-eks and its inevitable entelechy: Trouser snake as shapeless Platonic Form. A quality never agreed upon, since it seemed to never change—only reoccurring in different gradations of strength and weight. Like the Washington Monument’s obelisk erect. The great phallic wand of megadeth, its palpitating apex revived and died a billion times. Might as well not exist: Plant’s paean to his prick. Like the Sumerian calendar? Like fuckin’ Vico. Like the rouge of Eve that clouds as a spoon of currant jam in a tumbler of tap. Oh, Iggy Stooge: ass-shaker of ill repute, butt-plugged and dolled-up for the stage, vein-tapping into Little Richard and all the other folks’ boogie-woogie pathos he managed to rip off to excellent effect. Then there’s The Top channeling the pre-pubescent white boy blues for boys who never had none of neither. There are not-so-hidden connections. “Pearl Necklace.” Speak it to yourself. Write it out. Say it aloud. It comes with a single breath, flung from the palate as ah bucket of gullshit. Say it again. Sheesh. Like a loogie. Each vowel upon a raft of flan-hued snot… There are nudged winks as plentiful as locker-room underarm farts. Remember: The same river, always the same river. —And yet always different water. Then there’s Flipper, with the most un-Flipper bit ever branded upon quarter-inch tape, nothing less than the throne of Mighty Egypt left warm for the next pair of Pharaoh buns. Smarmy gear-headed come-ons from rock’s community chesta has-beens the Lord Balt and then some oh-so superlative lyrics from Chrissy Cornell. To wit:
JAYSON GREENE: BIG DUMB SEX!!!!! Fucking awesome. The last time I heard “Louder Than Love,” my hair was cut into a bowl shape and I had braces.
STEWART VOEGTLIN: You are insane. That song is so fucking dumb. But so incredibly wonderful. I saw them on the LTL tour, opening for VOIVOD.
JAYSON GREENE: Wait, so why am I insane? We agree on “Big Dumb Sex,” right? That’s it’s awesome?
STEWART VOEGTLIN: Your bowl cut and braces. That’s insane. Yeah we are in ACCORD.
And so The Motor City Five pull it slow(ly) into the station and leave us wonderin’ who ever thunk the Whip wuz dressing for salad greens after all. A sketch, roughshod and rapid. Not so sweeping. Not so “encapsulating.” But what is? And on the fly? Surely not.
11:19 AM me: I didn’t know we had to actually “write” stuff for this. WTF.
11:20 AM I have ZERO time to do this. Should we just submit our e-mails… Hahaha.
Jayson: We could both write 150 words or so?
I could probably scratch it out tonightish
11:22 AM me: Jesus…
OK. Maybe. MAYBE.
11:23 AM Jayson: write three sentences about wanton lust, and I’ll write three or so about the slimy underbelly easy
11:25 AM me: Yeah. Sounds good.It does. Three sentences metastasized as they always do. So. As Heraclitus offered, the gift of what is, is not. Put it all together and drink it deep(ly). I did/do.
[Stewart Voegtlin]
“Three sentences about wanton lust.”
This was Stew’s assignment, and he took it about as far into the gnarled, dirt-clump roots of his humid brain as he could. As a result, we have the above magnificent testament to tantalizing mythical hoodoo: I could spend eleven months in a cabin in the Montana woods, drinking nothing but absinthe and reading the collected works of Bangs, Meltzer, Faulkner, and Hubert Selby, Jr., with only a blotter of acid and multiple bags of irregular pork rinds for sustenance, and not produce a single sentence that radiated that level of grizzled insanity.
So let’s, instead, quote Nick Tosches, on The Killer, Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis, whose shoes were once smudged by the reverent lips of a supplicant John Lennon, who once shot his bass player in the chest with a .357 Magnum, who in 1976 arrived impromptu at the gates of Graceland armed with a .38-caliber Derringer at 3:07 a.m., yelling for Elvis:
“Of all the rock-and-roll creatures, he projected the most hellish persona. He was feared more than the rest, and hated more too. Preachers railed against him, mothers smelled his awful presence in the laundry of their daughters, and young boys coveted his wicked, wicked ways … Believe it: Jerry Lee Lewis is a creature of mythic essence, a Set, a Baptist Dionysus aflame with glorious cowardice and self-killing guilt.”
There ain’t no more to say: this mix finds the queasy, certainly fluid-slicked middle ground between Robert Plant, exulting at length about the juice running down his leg, to the leering, self-punishingly sexless rictus of Richard Hell, mirthlessly mocking you for buying into the brief glow of good will that follows the few minutes immediately after orgasm.[Jayson Greene]
***
More summer:Summer Jamz ‘08 #4: Compiled by Paul Scott and Ian Mathers
For their summer mix, Paul and Ian decided to have a conversation, or maybe an argument, thanks to one inarguable fact: Ian hates summer.
Summer Jamz ‘08 #3: Dear Summer… by Jonathan Bradley
“My mix is for the times everything is still and quiet and perfect … I haven’t included any yacht rock or Eagles tunes, but that’s all I can guarantee.”
Summer Jamz ‘08 #2: State of the Union, Jack by Mike Orme and Nick Southall
“Two former Stylus Magazine compatriots … celebrate the summer by splitting halves of a mix CD, each trying to fill their side with songs the other writer would put on a summer mix.”
Summer Jamz ‘08 #1: Compiled by Alfred Soto and Dan Weiss
“In the context of summer, vastness suggests the abrogation of responsibility: school and relationships, mostly…”
Labels: Summer Jamz ‘08
Posted in Summer Jamz | 4 Comments »
June 28th, 2008
Required listening on this lovely Los Angeles Saturday night is “The Groove,” an absolutely infectious new cut from Danny Swain, the South Carolinian MC/Def Jux signee who still can’t get El-P to release his damn album. No disrespect intended, El Producto, but this kid is a lot better than Hangar 18. Since I’ll be reviewing Danny’s forthcoming And I Love H.E.R. LP in the coming weeks, I’ll employ some brevity. Just trust me and download the song. Your money back if it doesn’t make you groove at least 22 percent more. Act now.
Download:
MP3: Danny!-”The Groove”
Posted in Weekend Song | 1 Comment »
June 27th, 2008
It was surreal enough to get 21st row seats to the BET Awards, complete with a prime view of both the stage and the talent coming to and from their seats. But watching the Reverend Al absolutely murder it in rehearsals in front of just 100 people was downright unforgettable. Needless to say, this post needs 5,000 words, several long walks, three bottles of water, two cups of coffee and enough marijuana to feed a Marin County family of four. But there’s no time for that, so we’ll all just have to make due and sulk. In bullet point form.
- With James Brown in the grave, Al Green is probably the greatest soul singer alive. Watching that man sing is like watching the Pope shuffle potential pedophile priests: smooth, efficient and just a little too easy (like this joke). When everyone broke into a group-sing-along during “Let’s Stay Together,” I got more chills than I have at any point this year. The only possible exception being the time my waitress at an Ethiopian restaurant accidentally spilled beer on my lap.
- Young Jeezy was spotted with what Raekwon might have called an F.C.A. (fly colored Asian.) While her figure certainly seemed proportional to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s anatomical charts for rap guy’s girlfriends, I had always thought that Jeezy liked white girls.
- I kind of miss the beef element that Rap Awards Shows used to have. Not that I want to see anyone get hurt or anything, but watching Yeezy, Weezy, Jeezy and T-Peezy (?) put flowers in each other’s hair made me grow nostalgic for the days when Suge Knight would make fun of Puffy for dancing in videos in shiny suits and Ghost would brag about bringing 200 “untitleds” with swords.
T-Wayne nee T-Pain: Subtly Letting the World Know What Else He And Wayne Did in California
Photo via BET
- If there is love in “this club,” I’m reasonably certain that I don’t want to know about it.
- Does Nelly think that just because he comes out shirtless and buff that somehow it will make people forget that he’s still Nelly in the year 2008?
- I Interviewed Nas’ for about two minutes. He spoke in cliches and is shorter than you’d expect. I got to interview Big Boi for about two minutes as well. We talked briefly about the show and Sir Lucious Leadfoot. He made sure that I knew that Lucious doesn’t have an “s” in it, because he’s not soft. When I gushed stannishly (no T-Wayne) how much I liked “Royal Flush,” he told me it was going to have 15 other tracks equally good. While I doubt that’s going to happen, I do think that Big Boi has it in him to make a truly great solo album. Rule #1, leave the Purple Ribbon Crew other than Killer Mike at home.
- If it is at all possible, I highly advise you to find a clip of DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, Flo Rida and T-Pain’s set. It involved a circus motif, pink unicorns and T-Pain dressed up in a suit with silver sparkles, making him look like a cross between a Happy Hardcore Candy Raver and the Wizard of Oz. There were also dancing video ho’s on stilts and midgets breathing fire. Which means that someone at some point, found the performance medley a bit too lacking and felt that the situation demanded fire-eating midgets. There is an SNL skit in here waiting to be written.
DJ Khaled: The Brian Scalabrine of Hip-Hop
- Is it too much to ask Rick Ross to wear a shirt once in a while. I don’t know if dude has watched one Dove soap commercial too many and somehow arrived at the conclusion that moobs are sexy. You never saw Biggie shirtless. The Fat Boys never conformed to industry pressures to appear topless on camera. Hell, when Heavy D finally “found love” at least the overweight lover had the decency to wait until after the video to take his shirt off.
- It’s beyond me why someone as beautiful as Rihanna continues to rock the Grace Jones look. Hey, I get it, we all like “My Jamaican Guy” but there was a reason why Grace Jones looked like that: cocaine. Lots of it.
- A particularly surprising and awesome part of the show came when Alicia Keys’ snoozer of a set morphed into a girl band tribute from the 90s featuring SWV, En Vogue and TLC. Jade must be pissed. Sadly, Steve Sanders wasn’t on the nominating committee.
LA Times-Green Day at the Shrine
MP3: Al Green-”Let’s Stay Together”
MP3: Al Green-”Love and Happiness”
MP3: Grace Jones-”My Jamaican Guy”
Posted in LA Times | 9 Comments »
June 26th, 2008
Were I not going to be suffering under the deliriously hot Van Nuys sun playing baseball all Saturday, chances are I’d be at the Where the Action Was Rock Tour hosted by the very fine rock writer, Kim Cooper. Yeah, I get nerdy like that. What’s it to you? The moral of this ramble is simple (for once): free ticket to anyone who can tell me what 33 1/3 book that Kim Cooper wrote? Leave the answer in the comments section. More information about the tour is below.
Where the Action Was is Esotouric’s Hollywood and West Hollywood rock and roll history tour, co-hosted by pop music historians Kim Cooper and Gene Sculatti, and departing from Amoeba Music. Every passenger goes home with an Amoeba swag bag (including stickers, buttons, music, special promo items and more).
In the mid-1960s, the Sunset Strip and Hollywood were ground zero for musical teen youth culture, with scores of great clubs, music shops, recording studios, boutiques, hipster hangouts, radio stations, record stores, and film and TV studios. On the Esotouric bus, you’ll travel back in time to map the musical history of Hollywood and West Hollywood, from Beatlemania and folk rock, glitter rock through punk. Along the way you’ll follow the career highs and lows of a selection of fascinating LA artists: Bobby Fuller (was it murder or suicide?), Phil Spector, Arthur Lee & Love and the Byrds.
From the teen riots over the closing of Pandora’s Box (inspiration for the Buffalo Springfield hit “For What It’s Worth”) to the late night Canter’s Deli scene, from adolescent groupies holding court at Rodney’s English Disco to the wild dances invented at Ciro’s, and so much between, Where The Action Was is a high-energy voyage to a time when music was thrilling, immediate and deeply rooted to the city of LA.
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
June 26th, 2008
Summer Jamz ‘08 #4 Jonathan Bradley
Summer Jamz ‘08 #3: Dear Summer…
http://www.mediafire.com/?ey1wsfnylgy
Dear Summer,
I know you’re missing me. We don’t always go together like Nike Airs and crisp tees, but when the temperature is just right, the sun’s going down, and I’ve got a cold one in my hand, we don’t look too bad together. I don’t have any up-tempo party tracks for you, summer, no pounding beats or sweat-drenched rock ‘n’ roll. My mix is for the times everything is still and quiet and perfect. The times when the sunshine is warm rather than baking, and the biggest decision I have to make is whether to start reading the newspaper from the front or the back page. I haven’t included any yacht rock or Eagles tunes in this mix, but that’s all I can guarantee. From the depths of the cold southern hemisphere, I hope you’re showing the same love to my friends.
–Jonathan
Not this Summer
Each Summer Jam is proudly co-hosted with The Passion of the Weiss and What Was it Anyway.
01. The Promise Ring – Wake Up April
Promise Ring frontman Davey Von Bohlen must be synonymous with summer in my mind. After all, I put his band’s perfect season closer “Jersey Shore” on my 2006 Summer Jamz tape, and once again Mr Von Bohlen has found himself on one of my mixes. “Wake Up April,” from the unreasonably maligned 2002 album Wood/Water, is dedicated to the beginning of summer; its gentle pace sounds like the welcome warmth of the first days of the season, when the sunshine is still a pleasant novelty. Von Bohlen lays out his instructions for enjoying such a time in the opening verse, and you should heed his advice as a guide to properly enjoying the rest of this mix: “You’ll be sipping your morning coffee in the afternoon.” His languid strumming smears across the track like dappled sunlight, its gentle pace befitting an indulgent afternoon filled with nothing more pressing than coffee consumption.
02. Fleetwood Mac – Gypsy
In Fleetwood Mac-land, it’s always summer, but they wouldn’t know, because the band is cocooned from any harsh realities that might intrude on its crystalline perfection. “Gypsy” exists in a temperature-controlled bubble in a sweltering Los Angeles, Stevie Nicks’ unearthly vocal gliding over hermetically-sealed, surgically sterile instrumentation. The arrangement is so precise that it seems to encase the singer; Nicks sings like she’s completely alone, never imagining anyone could be listening in on her self-examination.
03. Donna Lewis – I Love You Always Forever
Where Nicks’ bubble is cool and private, “I Love You Always Forever” is a moment shared between two people: Donna Lewis, and you, the listener. Apart from a few house-reminiscent piano chords that enter toward the end, the entire song, including Lewis’ dreamy coo, is a soft-focus throb. The disparate musical elements coalesce into a pillowy bed of sound, deliciously warm, Lewis and you under the covers.
04.Wilco – Either Way
“Either Way” is a glimpse at what an engaging record the disappointing Sky Blue Sky could have been. Jeff Tweedy is entirely passive in this song, singing, “Maybe the sun will shine today, maybe it won’t” and later, “Maybe you still love me, maybe you don’t,” seeming to suggest he has no more power to affect the latter than he does the former. His paean to surrender is an inviting one, and Tweedy has never sounded more middle-aged than here, where he finds happiness in a cloudless day and the acceptance of his powerlessness. As if to accentuate its flabby aging, the band colors the latter half of the track with an entirely purposeless guitar solo, an ostentatious piece of trilling that flutters over the song like sail boats on a lake. It would be disgraceful, save for the fact that it seems right that the aging Tweedy would enjoy nothing more than a summer picnic on the shore of Lake Michigan, the wind ruffling his hair like the notes of Nels Cline’s guitar.
05. Mariah Carey – Always Be My Baby
But if “Either Way” had you thinking too much about your pension, Mariah Carey’s “Always Be Your Baby” will have you feeling like a twelve year old again. She sings this buoyant expression of puppy love with such joy that it is easy to forget it is a break up song; the guy who Carey says will always be her baby has just left her. Few actual love songs are this jubilant. It’s not hard to share her optimism, though; the vaguely Motown beat and playful piano chords are as carefree as Carey herself.
06. Cut Copy – Feel the Love
Finding the common interest in psychedelia shared by rock and dance music, Cut Copy’s “Feel the Love” mixes shimmering acoustic guitar and shimmering synth lines so expertly that it becomes irrelevant which is which. Music festivals throughout 2008, if they’re any good, will sound like this.
07. Debbie Harry – French Kissin’ in the U.S.A.
The strident way Harry sings the title makes it sounds like a political slogan, but the graceful synths and Springsteen-esque saxophone confirm she’s concerned only with having a good time. Mixing French and English, pop and pleasure, the only excuse for not enjoying this tune is if you’re filling your summer days with actual French kissing in the U.S.A. Paris is calling indeed.
Not this Paris
08. Rilo Kiley – Silver Lining
Blake Sennett bites George Harrison’s guitar sound and the rest of Rilo Kiley embraces ’70s sheen on the opening track to 2007’s Under the Blacklight; the result is pleasure pursued so mercilessly that it’s amazing the result sounds so easygoing. Jenny Lewis’ airy vocal conjures up summer with the lines “the grass it was a-ticking, and the sun was on the rise,” even while she adds a hint of darkness, admitting that she “never felt so wicked when she willed our love to die.” If that’s the cloud, the silver lining is worth it; as pop goes, this is solid gold.
09. The Sleepy Jackson – Good Dancers
George Harrison finds himself robbed again, this time by Perth act the Sleepy Jackson. Luke Steele pilfers Harrison’s slide guitar, and in an inspired, if obvious, move, floats an unearthly falsetto over the top. When this was released in 2003, Australian critics got cute and called the result West Coast Country, even though there’s only a hint of twang and the West Coast was that of Australia. Still, the description was more than appropriate; Steele’s uh… sleepy melodies suggest California as easily as Western Australia. An ideal accompaniment to a lazy summer Sunday spent anywhere from Fremantle to Fresno.
10. Ben Lee – Begin
Over his past few albums, Ben Lee has embraced an unyieldingly optimistic outlook, and the results have tended toward the nauseating and lobotomized (“Catch My Disease”, “Numb”). Occasionally, however, this unrelentingly cheery approach results in inspired sincerity, as it did with “Begin.” From his 2005 album Awake is the New Sleep, which was released after a three year hiatus, the song sounds like a rebirth, Lee putting himself back together after losing his ultra fashionable record company (Grand Royal closed its doors in 2001), his celebrity girlfriend (he broke up with actress Claire Danes in 2003) and his status as burgeoning indie prodigy (no one was really checking for Lee in ’05, were they?). Having returned home to Sydney he sings about his old residence of New York from the perspective of a visitor: “I’m walking through Central Park/I’m in a foreign country.” The quiet hum of the song and Lee’s softly sung affirmations (“I’m thinking about the city/It’s living proof people need to be together”) are a salve, the warmth of summer tinged by a memory of a winter still recent enough to prompt a shiver.
11. Loudon Wainwright III – Grey in L.A.
“Grey in L.A.”? As a summer song? I knows that Los Angeles has a Mediterranean climate, which means that its grey days usually coincide with its winter months, but Wainwright’s treatment of the city’s unusually wet weather is so welcoming and sunny (He even seems happy that the town “smells like a wet dog”!) that I can’t help but think of it as a summer song. It helps that in my decidedly non-Southern Californian climate, there are plenty of wet summer days, and they are exactly as relaxing and refreshing as this tune sounds.
12. Manitoba – Jacknuggeted
But if Wainwright’s brief sojourn out of the sunshine had you worried, feel free to relax. If a Los Angeleno can be counted on to rejoice in overcast weather, Canadians like Dan Snaith dependably celebrate moments of sunshine. The gorgeous “Jacknuggeted” bursts into life with a dazzling wash of synths and acoustic guitars, while the mantra-like vocal glimmers from odd corners of the track like sunshine breaking through storm clouds.
13. Fleet Foxes – Sun Giant
And if things weren’t sunny enough after the Manitoba track, Seattle’s Fleet Foxes have some folky, hippie bullshit that sounds like it was made of sunshine itself. “What a life I lead when the sun breaks free,” they sing in a cappella harmony, as if they were at one with the natural world. Damn hippies. Good song, though.
Fleet Foxes: Pitchfork gave these guys a 9.0
14. The New Radicals – Someday We’ll Know
The New Radicals, of course, were responsible for that classic ’90s one hit wonder “You Get What You Give.” Less reliant on Clinton-era cultural detritus (Beck, Hanson, Marilyn Manson), and over all a better tune, is the unashamedly soft rock “Someday We’ll Know.” Gregg Alexander spews claptrap questions (“Did the captain of the Titanic cry?”) and somehow manages to make them sound meaningful. It should be the kind of tune that the radio throws on after a parade of current hits, triggering instant nostalgia for summers gone, except radio didn’t play it much when it was released, and certainly does not play it now. Since the song sounds as if it were written for them, it makes all the sense in the world that Hall and Oates covered the tune for their 2003 album Do It for Love. If anyone has a copy of that recording, I would love to hear it.
15. Neil Young – Everybody Knows this is Nowhere
Perhaps not quite as smooth as the preceding tracks with its distorted country rock guitar, “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere” is nonetheless a fitting closer. Not only does Neil Young give the song a fair amount of smoothed-out ’60s sunshine of the sort he was pursuing with Messrs Crosby, Stills and Nash around the same time, he also sounds like he’d like to spend his summer exactly as I would. “I’d like to go back home and take it easy,” he sings. “I gotta get away from this day to day running around.” Neil, when you do, play this tape. In summer there’s nothing like having nothing to do, and where better to do nothing than nowhere?
***
More summer:
Summer Jamz ‘08 #2: State of the Union, Jack by Mike Orme and Nick Southall
“Two former Stylus Magazine compatriots … celebrate the summer by splitting halves of a mix CD, each trying to fill their side with songs the other writer would put on a summer mix.”
Summer Jamz ‘08 #1: Compiled by Alfred Soto and Dan Weiss
“In the context of summer, vastness suggests the abrogation of responsibility: school and relationships, mostly…”
Labels: Summer Jamz ‘08
Posted in Summer Jamz | 2 Comments »
June 25th, 2008
O contraire, this isn’t just any stupid Diplo song, this is a re-working of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation.” No Baile funk. No M.I.A. telling you she’s going to get your money and then re-distribute it to Third World Orphans Who Want to Learn to Dress Good and Do Other Stuff Good Too. Just a lift of Phife Dawg’s, “I like ‘em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican and Haitian” line, the sped-up and slick glide of Ronnie Forster’s “Mystic Brew,” and some fierce, clapping drums. It’s called “Brew Barrymore.” I know. That doesn’t change the fact that it deserves to be on every amateur DJ’s Fourth of July play-list.
MP3: Diplo-”Brew Barrymore”
MP3: A Tribe Called Quest-”Electric Relaxation”
MP3: Ronnie Forster-”Mystic Brew”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 2 Comments »
June 25th, 2008
For our summer mix, Paul Scott (http://theemptypage.wordpress.com) and I decided to have a conversation, or maybe an argument, thanks to one inarguable fact: I hate summer. Paul decided to take a stab at changing my mind, and so we volley competing versions of the hottest summer at each other along with the songs. We also got started a bit late, and after jokingly discussing which one of us would get to including a Los Campesinos! track first, I got the ball rolling by declaring “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” the opener. Events preceded, or degenerated, from there. –Ian Mathers
Download the Mix Here
http://www.mediafire.com/?ubxavz2ny20
01. Los Campesinos! – “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” (4:29)
02. Ola Podrida – “Jordanna” (4:50)
Paul:
Okay, so, the thing is, I’m a little drunk, but we have to get moving on this; in addition that particular Los Campesinos! track (*key lyric: “When the small picture’s the same as the bigger picture, you know that you’re fucked” - which is pretty much the way I feel whenever the heat sets in, sadly), I mostly tend to retreat to slow, draggy, oppressive music this time of year. My bedroom doesn’t have a window and as a result the heat in here is brutal - something like Ola Podrida’s self titled debut suits me best right now because on the one hand it doesn’t require any real heat on my part in loving it, and partly because it sounds like it was recorded in an oppressively hot room. So I would kind of like to lead off with “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” and its desperation (that’s me when we get our first intolerable days every year!), and then go from there. Here’s “Jordanna”, by Ola Podrida – definitely the next track I’d think of putting on the mix. He sounds pretty exhausted, really.
Ian
03. Saint Etienne – “London Belongs to Me” (3:58)
Ian
This Ola fellow, he sounds pretty beat. Is this fear of summer a Canadian thing or just a you thing? Over here in England the summer is a weird, unpredictable thing. May was gorgeous but now halfway through June the sky seems to be permanently grey. It’s funny you say you have a bedroom with no windows. Mine has, let me count them, four. The next song for the mix is a counterpoint to the heavy, heavy sounds of Ola Podrida. Saint Etienne’s “London Belongs to Me” sounds so light that on a couple of occasions it almost floats away. It captures the feeling of getting the tube on a warm summer night and being hit by a blast of cool air rushing its way up from somewhere deep underground. It feels like coming up without touching any kind of chemicals. It feels like someone has opened a window, let the light in, let some cool air in. In its own blissed out way – even as London skies, in their usual way, turn to granite – says “this is gonna be the best summer ever”.
Paul
04. Spacemen 3 – “So Hot (Wash Away All of My Tears)” (2:39)
P,
Fear is the wrong word – that implies some level of the unknown. I know what summer here in Guelph is, and I fucking hate it. It is indeed unpredictable – it was cold enough here last night that I needed a hoodie! – but we can look forward to (and have already experienced one of) these periods of just blastingly intense heat and humidity. I forget if you guys use proper temperatures or what, but with humidity it can hit 45 degrees or more here, outside (to say nothing of my room – that’s around 115 for the Americans, by the way), and given that we’re also used to seeing temperatures dip into the -40s with wind chill in the winter (which works out to around -40, funnily enough), suddenly having that amount of heat trapped between the blue-but-solid sky and the fucking pavement is just ridiculous. It also doesn’t help matters that I am, as John Cunningham once told me, a pale, easily burned motherfucker. Standing in the direct sun for even a minute makes me feel like my skin is being cooked off, it’s ridiculous. I liked that St. Etienne track, but it’s like you say – because it summons up not summer for me but that blast of cool air that means a fan, air conditioning, a cold snap. The other solution, of course, is to go swimming – as Jason Pierce sings in my next pick “I just want a river, just want the ocean.” And it’s called “So Hot (Wash Away All of My Tears),” which is thematically appropriate at least. The slow motion crawl of the track makes me think of summer, Pierce sounds pretty oppressed, and while he may be talking about heartbreak, when they sigh out “so hot….” I can easily turn the song into a lament for a Guelph summer, at least in my head.
I
05. Lindstrom – “Music in My Mind” (4:51)
I,
I think, in a sense, I agree with you. Summer, as an idea, sometimes seems oppressive. The feeling that just because of a metrological shift one should suddenly be happy. I like the Spacemen 3 song, did J Spaceman use that tune again on a Spiritualized album? I certainly know a version of it. Yes, it’s track 4 on Pure Phase, that’s one hell of an album. Opiated, beautifully sad summer jamz from a parallel universe. Enough of this heartbreak! Let’s have some disco. Yet even here, amongst the flashlight and explosions, we can’t quite let go. Lindstrom’s “Music In My Mind” is certainly a lot more lithe and – let’s be honest – sexier than J Spaceman’s blues. But, it’s fueled by the same fever. It’s there, just under the surface, somewhere between the beat and bass. The vocalist, she sounds cool but listen closer: “your eyes kill me”: she seems to be surrendering. There is no cold snap here, no summer breeze: the beat goes on. You can’t argue with caprice of metrology. Here, as oppression and exultation entwine - much as it did for J Spaceman - we see, sometimes, summer makes masochists of us all.
P
06. Scannerfunk – “Cosy Veneer” (6:39)
P,
Well shit, don’t let me convert you or anything… and yeah, I forgot Jason recycled that one, but he did. I think I prefer this version, actually, and it does make a surprisingly good segue into the slinky as hell “Music in My Mind.” Damn, that tracks burns – but in a way that makes me think of summer nights, which I much prefer to summer days. It’s a bit cooler, the sun can’t burn you – but some nights it’s still sticky and close and you just want to jump out of your skin. Or at least I do. But you can’t always manage that, so the night just goes a bit hazy instead, everything slides, indistinct, you wake up the next morning not quite sure where the hours went. That’s the kind of night where I pull out the Scannerfunk record, precisely because of tracks like “Cosy Veneer.” Fuzzy, shifting, low key - it makes a decent afterparty for the Lindstrom track, but it also takes us deeper into the muggy night, away from all that inconvenient solar radiation. You can still feel that heat, though, and it even sounds a bit mournful in places.
I
07. Air France – “Collapsing at Your Doorstep” (4:34)
I,
Through the night and out the other side. I’ve been working night-shifts. The sun starts to rise between four and five: if you’re in a negative frame of mind Radiohead’s “Lucky” sort of captures it. That guitar part mimicking the first oppressive break of the horizon, the histrionic proclamation of “it’s going to be a glorious day”, lacquered with bile: it’s almost apocalyptic in its portent, a summer morning recast as the rapture. But, I’m younger than that now. Yes, the sun is rising, yes it may be oppressively hot later in the day, but for now it’s perfect. It’s not too hot yet, the sky is turning from grey to deep blue and the cynics have yet to get out of bed. “Collapsing at Your Doorstep” by Air France captures this feeling exquisitely. “It’s all like dream” a little looped voice chirps and it is. It’s indistinct yet somehow lucid, there is a certain clarity you just don’t get at any other time of day. Then the main theme swoops in, the curtains are flung open, the horizon breaks: “this place is amazing”. You can say “it’s going to be a glorious day” and mean it. You can go to bed now safe in the knowledge you’ve seen the best part of the day.
P
08. Stina Nordenstam – “Crime” (5:41)
P,
Yeah, Air France captures that poignant clarity of the early morning quite well, I’d say - but I tend to see that time of day because of insomnia, not the night shift (you’re making it harder and harder for me to play the curmudgeon, but I’ll do my best). “Collapsing at Your Doorstep” works perfect for going to sleep that night, but what about when you get woken up an hour later and have to go to work? Strangely, it’s the kind of precisely placed minimalism you find in Stina Nordenstam’s “Crime” that most sums up how my head feels at those times, waiting for the sun to hit (hmm… some Slowdive later, maybe?). Except for the opening “Whatever made me cold, it’s gone now” nothing in “Crime” speaks directly to the summer, but there’s this desire, the obverse of Thom Yorke’s plea for invisibility in “How to Disappear Completely”: “You know it wasn’t really me, you know I wasn’t really there” – please, just forget that you saw me. Let me stay down here, out of the sun. The necessary, for me, postscript to “this place is amazing,” at least when it’s muggy out.
I
09. Christopher Cross – “Sailing” (4:17)
I,
That song is cold. Really cold. There’s a motif at the beginning that reminds me, somewhat, of Christopher Cross’s “Sailing”, albeit with all the blood, all the warmth drained out. So, lets put some colour back in. It’s cool but it’s not cold. It’s a groovy kind of melancholy; this man is, as someone once said, swimming in sadness. He’s alone out on that endless ocean with nothing but his memories and the breeze. Where Stina shuts the curtains across and hides from the heat, Christopher – the not-so-rugged-individualist – slips on a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of loafers and sets sail. Perhaps, instead of curling up and hiding from those rays, the trick is to face them head on, curls those fingers into a fist of pure emotion, pour a margarita and man up. In the smoothest possible way, of course.
NB: Please see the following video for more on the creation of this piece of music.
P
10. Steely Dan – “Time Out of Mind” (4:13)
P,
Using Christopher friggin’ Cross to chide me in terms of ‘manning up’ is a bold move indeed, and if “Sailing” wasn’t so smooth I might even take offense. Of course, as the supplementary material shows, even that song isn’t all sunshine and puppies. It did make me think of Michael McDonald, though, and Michael McDonald and summer make me think of one thing: Steely Dan. Especially Gaucho, their most “summery” album (because it’s their LA album, and I’ve never been there so in my mind it’s always summer down there). McDonald only provided backing vocals on one track there, the heroin ode “Time Out of Mind,” but what backing vocals! Becker and Fagen’s evident relish at making the smoothest possible backing for what are fetid, misanthropic tales of human folly and suffering is kinda funny - at least if you’re still drawing those curtains, like I am. Perfect for air conditioned night clubs where everyone disappears to the bathroom twice an hour.
I
11. Bill Bragg – “Lovers Town Revisited” (1:18)
I,
It’s getting so smooth here, it’s almost decadent. I never suggested “Sailing” was “all sunshine and puppies”, it’s about dealing with the pains of summer not denying them. Now, another coping strategy. We’re still in the club, or perhaps outside, but we’re a hell of a long way from L.A. Billy Bragg’s “Lovers Town Revisited” crackles with a parched, nervous energy. The shards of solo electric guitar sound like the tense heat of a summer Saturday night in some provincial British town centre. This is not the Dan’s world of coke and hipcats, it’s ale and skinheads. And, there in the centre of it all, the young William Bragg. He’s weighing up his chances, just before he makes the great leap. He really is looking for a new England, but the savagery of a Summer night – “boys outside preaching genocide” indeed – is almost enough to make him just forget it, just turn and run away from it all. It’s the antithesis of The Smiths “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others”, yeh it’s the same shitty provincial Britain but Bragg wants, though he knows it is perhaps impossible, to “save the world”. Unlike moz though, he is unwilling to just give up, but at this moment he could just give in. It’s a sublime moment of faith in doubt. These things, Ian, are sent to try us.
P
12. Jason Molina – “Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go” (6:40)
P,
Really? Christopher Cross is sailing into some sort of yacht rock fantasyland, not sure how he’s dealing with the pains of summer! Bragg definitely is, though. Such a sublime depth of effort and pain packed into less than 90 seconds. But if I think of a man and an electric guitar, standing outside of a bar after a fruitless night with a stifling, moist heat in the air, I’m more likely to turn to Jason Molina and his claustrophobic solo album Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go. It was recorded by dint of the man hiding himself away in a small studio for three days, and you can tell; the subtly cataclysmic title track alone makes it feel like it’s at least thirty degrees in the room. It’s actually a little less sparse than the rest of the album, what with the muted drum machine in the background. For about a week here, between the punishing heat and the way rapidly rising gas prices made our broke asses unable to travel anywhere (oh, for a mass transit system like the UK’s!), this summer felt like the end of our comfortable way of life, in a small, overly dramatic way. Which is exactly what this song feels like.
I
13. The Jazz Butcher – “Southern Mark Smith (Big Return)” (4:58)
14. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – “Casino Royale Theme (Main Title)” (2:38)
15. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – “Casino Royale Theme (Vocal)” (2:21)
I,
Maybe C. Cross isn’t really coping, but he’s dealing with it. Perhaps, it’s only denial. The Molina track is making the walls close in just listening to it. Heavy, heavy vibes. The skies over London have gone grey and I’m blaming you. If there’s one thing that typifies the reality of the English summertime it’s afternoons like this, wasted holidays spent indoor looking out as the rain drizzles down. That’s probably why our beaches fill on days the average Australian or Californian would describe as “a bit on the chilly side”. It’s like our national football team (soccer to you guys?); we don’t win very often – sometimes we even fail to qualify – so even the smallest victory becomes a momentous triumph. It’s that same spirit that fuels The Jazz Butcher’s “Southern Mark Smith (Big Return)”, sure he has no truck with the Hollywood ideal of summer (”Oh, look- in California, everyone’s got a swimming pool in their backyard / Well-Me and Max and Davey Jones- we think you ought to get out there and stop it”) but he’s still hoping, still reaching for something. It’s the archetypical eighties indie tune: jangly guitar, proto-shoegaze swirly guitar, organ, bouncy momentum and most of all a lyric that speaks of a desire to connect. It comes from the same place as The Smiths’ “Ask”. Sure, Mozza may have been “spending warm summer days indoors” but he was still “writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl Luxembourg”. In their own wayward ways the OG indie kids were after pretty much the same things as everyone else in the universe: it was just that the thoughtless “fuck you” hedonism of the yuppies and thatcherites was giving contentment a bad name. It’s a song about getting out there, a song that put its faith in the theory that thousands of people have got to be O.K. He’s thwarted by distance, by reality - but he’s putting the words out there, ‘cos well someone might just listen. It may be using 7 inches of plastic, fanzines and the letters page of the NME - no internet in those desperate, desperate times- it doesn’t matter, it’s all communication, just different ways of getting out there. Meeting people can be easy! And hell, if not having to put on three layers makes it easier to get out there, then all the better!
Perhaps I have convinced you summer ain’t so bad, perhaps not. Hell, the amount of sunny days I’ve spent indoors. Doesn’t really bear thinking about y’know. Not that you have to go outside to have fun. I mean wasting Bank Holidays watching Bond films you’ve seen a few hundred times before isn’t the worst way to spend time. And, with that rather ungainly bit of shore-horning out of the way, my final song: Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass performing Burt Bacharach’s “Casino Royale Main Theme”. A piece of music that very possibly drove some hepcat to invent the words “groovy” and “swinging” simply to describe the riotous collision of easy listening kitsch and blockbuster bombast. I’ve included both the instrumental version and the none-more-ridiculous vocal version performed by Mike Redway. After all that heat, angst and indie moping it’s only fitting to end with a track that manages to be at once sublime and not in the least bit serious.
P
P,
James Bond films! Herb Alpert! Herb Alpert doing the theme to a comedy James Bond film! I’ve tried hard to be the negative one here, but I can’t say no to that. Well, your music and the relatively cool weather we’ve had here recently. I give up, it’s not so bad - I’m going to go listen to “Don’t Falter” by Mint Royale (”when you’re with me, it’s always summer”) and pet my cat. We should try this again in the winter… assuming you don’t like the cold. It’d be nice to be rooting for the season next time.
I
PS. Is the rest of the Air France album as good as that track? I’m a little in love.
Total running time: 59:53
Posted in Summer Jamz | 2 Comments »
June 24th, 2008
Summer Jamz ‘08 #2: State of the Union, Jack
http://www.mediafire.com/?nvzzexqvjdn
Two former Stylus Magazine compatriots, Exeter UK’s Nick Southall (also of The Guardian and Paper Thin Walls) and Oakland’s Mike Orme (also of Pitchfork Media), celebrate the summer by splitting halves of a mix CD, each trying to fill their side with songs the other writer would put on a summer mix. In the process, they hope to reconcile musical tastes separated by the sides of a record, not to mention the Atlantic Ocean. While they’re at it, they might get around to revisiting the whole the 49th parallel issue and whether “chuffed” is a positive or a negative.
Each Summer Jam is proudly co-hosted with Screw Rock N’ Roll and What Was it Anyway.
Side One: Mike orme’s summer dance bum-out!!!
(As chosen by mister nick Southall, esquire)
01. Guillemots – she’s evil
02. The field – a paw in my face
03. Four tet – ribbons
04. Von südenfed – the rhinohead
05. Vitalic – la rock 01
06. Studio / kylie – 2 hearts
07. Lcd soundsystem – Hippie priest bum-out
08. Young gods – strangel
09. Akufen – jeep sex
Why the hell did I suggest picking tracks in the manner of each other? I’ve never really spoken to Mister Orme and he’s a) not been around the Stylus ragtag band for all that long, and b) tastefully eclectic enough not to be able to be pigeonholed into easy mimicry. Potentially hoist by my own potato, I decide to go with a theme; many of Mister Orme’s favourites from the last two years show a fondness for supremely stylish, textured dance music with an alternative bent… and so the SUMMER DANCE BUM-OUT is born…
Things start out kind of weird with an odd number drawn from the semi-rare Guillemots “Of The Night EP”, wherein the finest purveyors of indie-jazz-pop suddenly go all LCD Soundsystem on us and get freaky with the fuzz-bass and 4/4 beats – it’s something to do with the guitarist, I think. I doubt Mike has this track, but I expect he’d like it.
Then we take a turn for the familiar with The Field’s exquisite “A Paw In My Face”, one of Mister Orme’s favourite tracks from last year, and one of mine too; it’s doubly apposite at the moment, because my kitten is mental. And I’m getting another soon. WHY?!
Now for a foray into the uber-new, with the second track off Kieron Hebdon’s latest EP, “Ringer”, which sees him largely ditching the folktronica tag of his previous work and going all 90s techno on us, sort of. What Mike’s digging right now I’m not sure, but this should certainly be involved somewhere.
Mark E Smith and Mouse On Mars, in their guise as Von Südenfed, step up next, with the exquisite Motown-gone-big-beat dancepop of “The Rhinohead”; I’ve not seen Mike mention this collaboration anywhere, but it surely MUST be up his street?
Next to my favourite house / dance / wtf tune of a few years ago, and Vitalic’s exquisite “La Rock 01”; released before Mike was on-staff here, I can’t imagine he’d be anything less than into this.
Likewise this Kylie remix by Studio from Yearbook 2; I know Mike was chuffed with Yearbook 1 last year, and Studio continue to wow with their Balearic postpunk disco. Or something.
Next the title track for this side of our collaborative mixtape, which I picked up on the CD release of 45:33. Minimal by Murphy’s standards, this is nonetheless classy, just like Mike’s dapper pink slacks on his Facebook profile picture.
And finally we get the insane “Strangel” by Young Gods. Does Mike like deranged Scandinavian sampledelic dance-metal? Fuck knows, but that’s an awesome riff and beat…
[MO note: In true music nerd fashion, Nick added a track to the end of his mix after he sent me his side and his write-up. The ninth track on “Mike Orme’s summer dance bum-out!!!” is “Jeep Sex” by Akufen, a Montreal based microhouse-ish artist who is known as Marc Leclair by day. This lovely track utilizes a number of punchy samples to drive the beat, with strings, an R&B crooner, pianos, and funk guitar each from separate samples, seemingly contributing one note apiece to the groove’s melody. I always love this kind of sampling wherein the cuts between samples provide as much percussion as the beat itself. Nice work, Sick Mouthy!]
Side Two: Nick Southall’s June Evenings
(As chosen by Mike “Freedom Fries” Orme)
10. Battles – Race In
11. Patrick Wolf – Accident & Emergency
12. The Chap - Surgery
13. Air France – June Evenings
14. Fennesz Feat. David Sylvian - Transit
15. Brian Eno – Another Green World
16. My Bloody Valentine – You Made Me Realise
17. M83 – Dark Moves of Love
18. Phoenix – Definitive Breaks
I’ve always respected Nick Southall’s writing and his uniquely acerbic take on music and listening. In his Stylus articles, Nick always attempted to elucidate the struggle between the intangible pleasures of pop music and the corporeal concerns of actually listening to it. Nick is an audiophile and his Stylus Magazine writings, including the Da Capo-honored Imperfect Sound Forever, chronicle his quest to save the world one pure audio signal at a time.
Anyone familiar with my tastes, which sometimes run into the overdriven worlds of noisy, electronic fuzz, might think that Nick and I wouldn’t get along musically; however, Nick’s collection of favored records intersects with mine at some significant vectors. I’ve attempted to explicate those cross-references by mixing together a couple nice tracks Nick might select to accompany him on one of these serene June evenings.
We begin with “Race In” by New York math rock group Battles. I’ve always thought of this group (and this opener to their album Mirrored in particular) as a mutated synthesis of Discipline-era King Crimson and the choral German 60s pop chronicled on the In-Kraut series. Nick called Mirrored his tenth-favorite “postrock” album of all time in a Stylus Top Ten which explored the meaning of that nebulous genre, and I wholeheartedly agree that their progressive, meandering pixie jazz inhabits the post-rock style just as thoroughly as their more tranquil counterparts.If Nick suspected from the Battles selection that I’d be trotting out his obvious favorites, he’d be right!
Next is “Accident & Emergency” by Patrick Wolf, one of Nick’s favourite artists. (Note: I love that this Microsoft Word document, in which I am appending my humble liner notes to Nick’s descriptions, automagically added the “u” to my boorish American “favorite”) I’m always a sucker for cut-up vocals and wonky, sequencer-driven synthesizer counterpoints, but to be honest I didn’t really get into Patrick Wolf until last year’s The Magic Position, on which this cut appears.
I like to think that the London-based pop group the Chap has a bit in common with Wolf’s flamboyant and subversive personality, and soI’m veering away from Nick’s canon with “Surgery” from the Chap’s recent release Mega Breakfast. The track is a sedate anthem, recalling Skylarking-era XTC, but as with all Chap recordings, there’s a curious DIY aesthetic to their electronic production, like they got their drum machine at a liquor store for ten quid. I’m sure Nick would enjoy the Chap’s heavy-handed but marvellously fun lesson in popposition.Nick might be unfamiliar with the next cut, “June Evenings,” as well, but seeing as how we share a love for Swedish group Studio and the recent Balearic rock movement, I’m sure he would quickly glom onto this track off Air France’s recent EP No Way Down.
Air France also hail from Studio’s hometown of Gothenburg and also indulge in the beach-loving synthesis of disco beats, Krautrock’s motorik rhythms, and Manuel Göttsching’s funky techno guitar.As this evening mix progresses, the pace slows down considerably with “Transit” off prepared guitar technician Fennesz’s 2004 album Venice. This reflective cut features David Sylvian’s baritone and lyrics concerning the memory of European travels as a vehicle for explaining a sense of loss. This collaboration came on the heels of Sylvian’s 2003 starkly-composed solo album Blemish, recorded as his marriage was coming to an end, and put a coda to that brooding, experimental period in his career.
Nick and I may agree most heartily on the radiance of Brian Eno’s last two solo albums, Another Green World and Before and After Science, before the commonly accepted beginning of his “ambient” period. Next up is the title track from the former, a short, repeated guitar and organ figure that fades in and out in the space of little over ninety seconds. It’s one of my favourite transitions in the whole of popular music.
The pace picks up a bit with “You Made Me Realise” by My Bloody Valentine, an unexpected beloved of Southall. One of the group’s relatively early recordings, the track appears on their first Creation Records EP. This recorded version fails to capture the band’s crushing live performances of the song, in which MBV often extends the chaotic “bridge” (consisting of one pounded, noisy chord) for fifteen or twenty minutes before returning to the closing chorus.I may be accused of heavy-handedness by transitioning from My Bloody Valentine directly into M83, so I beg the forgiveness of both Nick and the readers.
“Dark Moves of Love” is a penultimate track (off their new album Saturdays=Youth), a sequencing position I hold dear to my heart. Although M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzales has nudged his project in an airy and nostalgic (though no less salient) direction, this track is classic Dead Cities M83. It’s basically a three-minute chorus of guitars and female vocals that repeats an abstract and insistent message of reconciliation across great times and distances, building to a climax marked by a simple five-second drum fill. Then, it all fades down into an oceanic synthesizer hum, which I’ve transitioned into…
“Definitive Breaks” by Parisian quartet Phoenix closes their 2000 debut United, an album whose blue-eyed synthpop has been praised by both Nick and myself. My relationship with the group began during a period living in Japan, during which time I would frequent a Kyoto club called “Metro” located in a subway station just off the Kamogawa river. The DJ at the Tuesday 80s night played United’s second track “Too Young” one fateful evening and that was it. Ill-advised Zima hangover be damned, I rushed to the Tower the next morning, picked up United, and never let go. I thought I was keying in on something elemental, something special. And then Sofia Friggin’ Coppola had to go and use the song to give Bob and Charlotte the same revelatory clubgoing context in Lost in Translation a year later.
More summer:
Summer Jamz ‘08 #1: Compiled by Alfred Soto and Dan Weiss
Posted in Summer Jamz | 2 Comments »
June 24th, 2008
(photos by Timothy Norris)
Sometimes, I think music critics hate jam bands for the jokes. After all, on that endless litany of items capable of inspiring comedic rancor, nothing is easier to mock than hippies, save for maybe George Bush, nu-Metal and/or Coldplay. It doesn’t exactly help matters either when the moment that you park in the lot next door to the Orpheum, you’re treated to the spectacle of a group of the heady set inhaling enough nitrous oxide to keep the dentists of Southern California in stock for the next six months.
Hey, It’s Renowned Thespian, Matthew McConaughey
Inside, things don’t improve much, at least not initially. See, few bands on earth get more people dancing than Widespread Panic. It’s sort of weird. Of course, this would be totally fine were it not for the inescapable reality that hippies are the worst dancers on earth—bar none. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Soul Train candidate myself, but watching a couple thousand ecstatic, flailing, gumby-limbed members of the white dreadlock set had me half-believing in my chances of joining the Rocksteady Crew. With a step back and a look of bemused detachment, you’re liable to think that you’re trapped in that Chappelle’s Show skit where John Mayer plays the guitar to the delight of a rhythmless horde of twisting white people. But hippies don’t do the twist. They sort of gyrate with this bizarre, off-kilter lurch lost somewhere between the mating dance of a Chinese Heavenly Crane and Elaine Benes’ spastic “dry heave set to music” from Seinfeld. Unfortunately, the heaving isn’t always dry, at least judging from the guy in the front of me who vomited out three hunks of weed brownie onto the floor during the second set of Friday night’s Widespread Panic show.
Jimmy Herring, Legendary Guitarist, Organic Juice Kingpin
So yeah, I get it, nothing’s less cool than admitting to liking jam bands, especially the in the year 2008 when there aren’t many “jam” bands left, And out of the wreckage, Panic remain standing, the stalwarts, 22 years in the game, still one of the biggest draws in music. Of course, you never hear about them unless it’s in conjunction with jokes about hippies, which brings me back to my first point that critics hate jam bands. There are a variety of reasons for this, some legit (self-indulgence, usually shitty lyrics, drum solos) and others that stem from a general critical loathing of goofy sincerity, patchouli, and drugs.
There Are 14 Things Wrong With This Picture, Name Them
Of course, the drugs definitely help. I’m sure it’s possible to enjoy a jam band show sober but I wouldn’t recommend it. In the lobby, a group of benevolent seeming souls sat under a banner that read: The Gateway, Clean and Sober Widespread Panic Fans. More power to them I guess, but that’s not an idea I can safely endorse. There’s too much time to think. I’m pretty sure that during one of Jimmy Herring’s guitar solos Friday night, I could’ve read Ulysses. But in the proper frame of mind, I really like Widespread Panic and I’m totally okay with admitting that. Maybe I’m not about to go about and buy any of their nine studio albums or seven official live albums, but if you’re trying hard enough, it’s damned impossible not to enjoy a Panic show. After all, happiness is a rare commodity in Los Angeles, and even the most dedicated cynics ought to like something about any band capable of eliciting that much joy from their audience.
Stuff White People Like
Musically, you won’t find a much tighter working unit. In a way, they remind me of the jam band equivalent of modern day Wilco: slick, professional and filled with a surfeit of dazzling stoner guitar solos. Except instead of the more avant-garde leaning Nels Cline, Panic wrangled their own ax-legend in Jimmy Herring, formerly of the late-period Allman Brothers and The Dead. You have to be pretty great to make a living filling in for three different seminal dead guitarists and Herring doesn’t disappoint. He’s not showy or flashy, just good, the world’s oldest seeming 46-year old with his white ponytail, Levi’s and tucked-in flannel shirt making him look more akin to an organic juice magnate than guitar legend. But in full volume, the guy sounds like what kids think they’re doing when they rock out at Guitar Hero.
I Can’t Feel My Face
Despite looking eerily like debauched 19th Century President Franklin Pierce, lead Panic singer/guitarist John Bell makes for a solid front-man with a flexible range that sounds at times a whole lot like Jerry Garcia and at others, particularly on fan favorite, “Whiskey and Ribs,” he descends capably into believably bluesy lament. Sonically, the band doesn’t re-invent the wheel and may lack the experimental sheen to make them critically respectable, but they know to rock and sometimes on a Friday night, that’s really all that you want. Their shows have a collegial geniality to them that you practically never find in indie rock, there’s no arch irony, no pretension, just bluesy Southern Comfort rock n’ roll. Plus, with the music industry in perpetual chaos, there’s something to be said about a group that can get the same people to see them three consecutive nights. So what if the shows are a little funny, it’s more important that they’re fun.
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