Tuesday, April 10, 2007:
I was a teetotaller losing his faith, bitter and angry and self-righteous, and took comfort in my arrogance. Cypress Hill was a fixture in the room that year, even before "Insane in the Brain" hit MTV; I heard their first two CDs constantly and hated them for their stoner vibe and the gangsta theatrics, but still I wondered if it was a deeply ironic word choice or a sly wink and a bit of hiding in plain sight that--among the machismo and claims to murder--they'd drop lines like "I'm a chicken hawk huntin' for a chicken."
Some time back I remembered the group with some fondness, and bought Black Sunday, and found that their sound on the CD was actually fairly interesting. In trying to describe it, I thought it would be like a pitchfork: deep prominent bass, high far-off (far-out) sounding noises, vocals in the middle. And going back a bit further, to high school, to Young MC, I stumbled onto what seemed like a precursor to their sound; a track with all that lethargy and sonic separation yet from someone who, from his lyrics, would clearly not approve of Cypress Hill's lifestyle. I'm not sure if Young MC has changed his attitudes towards drugs since 1989, as mine did, and did again, since 1993; his first CD was the only one I listened to, and I listen to it still: I enjoy the beats and the facility with rhyme (even silly rhyme) ("I'm sloppy like Oscar but neat like Tony Randall"?) and the general party atmosphere of it, which is light and fun as long as it's not taken seriously. In this regard it's like the early Tribe records, which also have some green lyrics, some clumsy seductions and misplaced wallets.
But the more I think of it, the more I notice songs flirting with this Cypress Hill sound, this same sound predated by Young MC's track: decades earlier, in Bill Wither's "Ain't No Sunshine"; and a few years later, in The Coup's "Fat Cats, Bigga Fish," in Louise Attaque's "Du Nord Au Sud"* and, to a lesser extent in Radiohead's The National Anthem (the vocals at the high point, the horns starting in the middle ... but too thick a sound overall, too much overlap and chaos) and in The Cure's remix of "Fascination Street" (the bass needs to be thicker, the middle thinner).
The more I think of it, the more I think I hear it (Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Baaba Maal), leading me to wonder if it's everywhere or if it's anywhere at all. It's possible I'm imagining it: representative samples in a frequency analyzer show some similarity, but not the separation of sound I thought I'd heard:
But quite distinct songs (Tears for Fears' "I Believe," The Beatles' "Helter Skelter") don't show nearly as much difference as I'd expected:
In '93 I'd probably bend over backwards, making any contortions necessary to prevent saying "I don't know" or "I was wrong." I don't know, and I may be wrong. Yet I'm not sure that recognizing that puts me any closer to finding what the similarities are, if they even exist.
Readers, if you care to comment (musicians, music theorists, music historians and/or critics--anyone with a clue really), is there actually any similarity between the Young MC track and the Cypress Hill track? If there is, how would you go about finding more of it?
[Stone Cold Rhymin' @ amazon, @ emusic]
[Genocide & Juice: out of print]
[Black Sunday @ amazon]
[Comme on a Dit]
[Mixed Up]
[Kid A]
* First posted 63 years ago in internet years on my guest post to Said the Gramophone.
stop, hey, what's that sound?
College was a culture shock: going from true poverty to an artificial poverty with secure housing and a clear end, from a small town where I was considered brilliant to a college town where I was surrounded by people who were, from oversight that was vindictive and capricious to authority that were indifferent, all of it coupled with an exhilerating and terrifying freedom. My first roommates were from Boca Raton, the three of us sharing the second-cheapest room on campus, built for four, their friends coming over to drink or smoke, one of them once memorably complaining about being given a car which cost more than my mother's house but wasn't what he wanted.I was a teetotaller losing his faith, bitter and angry and self-righteous, and took comfort in my arrogance. Cypress Hill was a fixture in the room that year, even before "Insane in the Brain" hit MTV; I heard their first two CDs constantly and hated them for their stoner vibe and the gangsta theatrics, but still I wondered if it was a deeply ironic word choice or a sly wink and a bit of hiding in plain sight that--among the machismo and claims to murder--they'd drop lines like "I'm a chicken hawk huntin' for a chicken."
Some time back I remembered the group with some fondness, and bought Black Sunday, and found that their sound on the CD was actually fairly interesting. In trying to describe it, I thought it would be like a pitchfork: deep prominent bass, high far-off (far-out) sounding noises, vocals in the middle. And going back a bit further, to high school, to Young MC, I stumbled onto what seemed like a precursor to their sound; a track with all that lethargy and sonic separation yet from someone who, from his lyrics, would clearly not approve of Cypress Hill's lifestyle. I'm not sure if Young MC has changed his attitudes towards drugs since 1989, as mine did, and did again, since 1993; his first CD was the only one I listened to, and I listen to it still: I enjoy the beats and the facility with rhyme (even silly rhyme) ("I'm sloppy like Oscar but neat like Tony Randall"?) and the general party atmosphere of it, which is light and fun as long as it's not taken seriously. In this regard it's like the early Tribe records, which also have some green lyrics, some clumsy seductions and misplaced wallets.
But the more I think of it, the more I notice songs flirting with this Cypress Hill sound, this same sound predated by Young MC's track: decades earlier, in Bill Wither's "Ain't No Sunshine"; and a few years later, in The Coup's "Fat Cats, Bigga Fish," in Louise Attaque's "Du Nord Au Sud"* and, to a lesser extent in Radiohead's The National Anthem (the vocals at the high point, the horns starting in the middle ... but too thick a sound overall, too much overlap and chaos) and in The Cure's remix of "Fascination Street" (the bass needs to be thicker, the middle thinner).
The more I think of it, the more I think I hear it (Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Baaba Maal), leading me to wonder if it's everywhere or if it's anywhere at all. It's possible I'm imagining it: representative samples in a frequency analyzer show some similarity, but not the separation of sound I thought I'd heard:
But quite distinct songs (Tears for Fears' "I Believe," The Beatles' "Helter Skelter") don't show nearly as much difference as I'd expected:
In '93 I'd probably bend over backwards, making any contortions necessary to prevent saying "I don't know" or "I was wrong." I don't know, and I may be wrong. Yet I'm not sure that recognizing that puts me any closer to finding what the similarities are, if they even exist.
Readers, if you care to comment (musicians, music theorists, music historians and/or critics--anyone with a clue really), is there actually any similarity between the Young MC track and the Cypress Hill track? If there is, how would you go about finding more of it?
[Stone Cold Rhymin' @ amazon, @ emusic]
[Genocide & Juice: out of print]
[Black Sunday @ amazon]
[Comme on a Dit]
[Mixed Up]
[Kid A]
* First posted 63 years ago in internet years on my guest post to Said the Gramophone.
Labels: hip-hop, out of print, personal, rock, world pop
posted by Tuwa @
22:26 | permalink |
7 comments
|
Monday, August 21, 2006:
As a child she saw her uncle kill her father: argument, handgun, collapse. After that her life was marked by bouts of rage, depression, and spontaneous causeless joy snatched away by the slightest morbid thought: cut grass bleeding water in the hot sun, a leaf seesawing to the ground, apple seeds rotting unplanted.
[Simple Things @ amazon.com]
...
A Girl Like Me, an impressive and affecting short documentary about skin color, expectations, identity, and self-perception.
...
Explaining things through simple diagrams on index cards. (via metafilter)
...
A police report about a missing car and a car that seems subtly different. I did this once, with what I'd thought was the company van. It had several bins of computer parts inside, providing a clue that something was not right.
...
Mahnamanah (via boingboing)
Zero 7 -- This World
Zero 7 -- This WorldAs a child she saw her uncle kill her father: argument, handgun, collapse. After that her life was marked by bouts of rage, depression, and spontaneous causeless joy snatched away by the slightest morbid thought: cut grass bleeding water in the hot sun, a leaf seesawing to the ground, apple seeds rotting unplanted.
[Simple Things @ amazon.com]
...
A Girl Like Me, an impressive and affecting short documentary about skin color, expectations, identity, and self-perception.
...
Explaining things through simple diagrams on index cards. (via metafilter)
...
A police report about a missing car and a car that seems subtly different. I did this once, with what I'd thought was the company van. It had several bins of computer parts inside, providing a clue that something was not right.
...
Mahnamanah (via boingboing)
Labels: electronica, personal
posted by Tuwa @
09:43 | permalink |
2 comments
|
Thursday, July 27, 2006:
Tea time in hell. A quick one before break's over.
Being raised in a fundamentalist Christian church isn't something I'd wish on people, but it gives a certain appreciation for gospel music, myth, irony, and horror fiction.
As a kid I was encouraged to read the Bible and as a teen I was discouraged from reading Stephen King ... it's a bit amusing, since Revelation puts King to shame, and Solomon was the preincarnation of Henry Miller, but both of those books barely scratch the surface of a strange, fascinating, contradictory, and ultimately disturbing text (filled with incest, murder, torture, racism, and other national hobbies).
My neighbor and I used to talk fiction sometimes. We both loved pulp but she prefered Dean Koontz; she said King always had "depressing endings." She was a heavy smoker, overweight when I first met her; and then she took it upon herself to get into shape. She quit smoking, started daily walks, began losing weight and was generally looking better and better until she died in the middle of a daily walk of an apparent brain embolism. It's not the kind of ending Dean Koontz would write, sort of untidy and relentlessly realistic.
[Fox Confessor Brings the Flood ]
...
Echolocation among the blind.
...
Stop motion Space Invaders, with people as pixels. (via boingboing)
John Saw the Holy Number
Neko Case -- John Saw That NumberTea time in hell. A quick one before break's over.
Being raised in a fundamentalist Christian church isn't something I'd wish on people, but it gives a certain appreciation for gospel music, myth, irony, and horror fiction.
As a kid I was encouraged to read the Bible and as a teen I was discouraged from reading Stephen King ... it's a bit amusing, since Revelation puts King to shame, and Solomon was the preincarnation of Henry Miller, but both of those books barely scratch the surface of a strange, fascinating, contradictory, and ultimately disturbing text (filled with incest, murder, torture, racism, and other national hobbies).
My neighbor and I used to talk fiction sometimes. We both loved pulp but she prefered Dean Koontz; she said King always had "depressing endings." She was a heavy smoker, overweight when I first met her; and then she took it upon herself to get into shape. She quit smoking, started daily walks, began losing weight and was generally looking better and better until she died in the middle of a daily walk of an apparent brain embolism. It's not the kind of ending Dean Koontz would write, sort of untidy and relentlessly realistic.
[Fox Confessor Brings the Flood ]
...
Echolocation among the blind.
...
Stop motion Space Invaders, with people as pixels. (via boingboing)
Labels: alt country, personal
posted by Tuwa @
00:04 | permalink |
8 comments
|
Wednesday, April 19, 2006:
D'Gary -- E! Nama Inona Ny Anzaranao
Once upon a time I decided I wanted to play guitar, so I bought one and jumped in. I loved Jimi Hendrix but I'd bought an acoustic, thinking maybe I should start simple. Armed with a half-dozen chords and the most rudimentary understanding of rhythm, harmony, and melody, I was ready to bore and annoy myself playing, and I did, until I didn't anymore, which happened when I decided that maybe my time was better spent on other things.
Later I discovered Django Reinhardt; he was equally inspiring and intimidating. I'd put him or Jimi on and lay back in awe, struck by the skill and grace. I didn't understand everything they were doing--I didn't understand a fraction of it--but I didn't doubt that once they put that guitar on they said exactly what they meant to say with it.
Some time back I bought Dama and D'Gary's The Long Way Home beause I'd heard good things about it. I mention this because someone at allmusic thinks D'Gary is one of the world's greatest guitarists. I'd been inclined to say that he is impressive, but the liner notes say that the songs on the CD I'd been most impressed with, "Hiakatra Sa Hidina" and "Mitady Kandra," are both played by Dama.
(The liner notes also say that "Hiakatra Sa Hidina" is about capitalism versus socialism. Based on its mention of unity, I'd imagine it finds in favor of socialism, preferring community interests to a quick buck.)
And then there's D'Gary's album Malagasy Guitar/Music from Madagascar which shows that, yes, he is in fact quite good.
"E! Nama Inona Ny Anzaranao" is, like Tom Waits, also from an alternate universe. But this one is one where Godzilla bleeds to death from a cut foot and Bambi goes back to eating grass.
[allmusic.com review]
[RFI Musique biography]
[Dama and D'Gary -- Long Way Home]
[D'Gary -- Malagasy Guitar/Music from Madagascar]
Dama and D'Gary
Dama and D'Gary -- Hiakatra Sa HidinaD'Gary -- E! Nama Inona Ny Anzaranao
Once upon a time I decided I wanted to play guitar, so I bought one and jumped in. I loved Jimi Hendrix but I'd bought an acoustic, thinking maybe I should start simple. Armed with a half-dozen chords and the most rudimentary understanding of rhythm, harmony, and melody, I was ready to bore and annoy myself playing, and I did, until I didn't anymore, which happened when I decided that maybe my time was better spent on other things.
Later I discovered Django Reinhardt; he was equally inspiring and intimidating. I'd put him or Jimi on and lay back in awe, struck by the skill and grace. I didn't understand everything they were doing--I didn't understand a fraction of it--but I didn't doubt that once they put that guitar on they said exactly what they meant to say with it.
Some time back I bought Dama and D'Gary's The Long Way Home beause I'd heard good things about it. I mention this because someone at allmusic thinks D'Gary is one of the world's greatest guitarists. I'd been inclined to say that he is impressive, but the liner notes say that the songs on the CD I'd been most impressed with, "Hiakatra Sa Hidina" and "Mitady Kandra," are both played by Dama.
(The liner notes also say that "Hiakatra Sa Hidina" is about capitalism versus socialism. Based on its mention of unity, I'd imagine it finds in favor of socialism, preferring community interests to a quick buck.)
And then there's D'Gary's album Malagasy Guitar/Music from Madagascar which shows that, yes, he is in fact quite good.
"E! Nama Inona Ny Anzaranao" is, like Tom Waits, also from an alternate universe. But this one is one where Godzilla bleeds to death from a cut foot and Bambi goes back to eating grass.
[allmusic.com review]
[RFI Musique biography]
[Dama and D'Gary -- Long Way Home]
[D'Gary -- Malagasy Guitar/Music from Madagascar]
posted by Tuwa @
13:25 | permalink |
1 comments
|
Tuesday, February 28, 2006:
The Blasters -- Trouble Bound
The Blasters were a roots-rock band from the 1980s, a band that I'm surprised that the good Reverend hasn't yet posted. (I scooped the Rev? That's unpossible.)
"I'm Shakin'" is a Little Willie John cover, a snappy groovin' blues tune with saxophones. (Thanks, Jon)
"Trouble Bound" is a rockabilly tune with rollicking piano and some spot-on background harmonies.
They're both good examples of the Blasters' work, which seamlessly mixes covers and original tunes with a confident, uncluttered style.
[Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings (1981-1985)]
... My file hosting has gotten a bit wobbly. The UI, for one, has become unworkable in both Firefox and Internet Explorer; uploading and linking to a file is now a three-part process involving swapping browsers twice and usually watching one of them freeze. The bugs are being worked on and, with any luck, they'll be sorted out soon.
"That's not Haggis; that smells like chitlins."
"It's okay, Daddy; just put your hand over your mouth like this."
(image nicked from The House Next Door)
Here's some Haterade for Crash that I found particularly relevant, fun, and amusing.
And here's more, just because this movie has been bugging me ever since I saw it:
Maybe in L.A. bigotry isn't typically out front and center, unsubtle and undeniable--but in the rural monocultural high school I attended in North Florida it was. All the most popular students--the football players and the cheerleaders--were, with very few exceptions, openly homophobic, sexist, racist, and classist. I'll choose a fairly tame incident, the kind that supposedly doesn't happen any more: one year I had the same class as a fairly clever bigot. Nearly every day that year, he would ask me if I had my Green Card. He had an audience and it always got a laugh; the teacher overheard it and ignored it. I don't know why; I didn't feel confident enough to ask. And I also wasn't strong enough or fierce enough to confront the student--he was the kind sure to resort to violence--so I just did my best to let it roll off me. I perfected a blank stare.
I've forgotten the student's name, though I remember his permed mullet and his left earring and the day that he came to school with one eye solid red. I'd been out sick the previous day and then the next day, the day he came to school with a red eye, the student didn't make the crack about the Green Card. Instead, he sat there silently. His eye wasn't slightly bloodshot; it wasn't extremely bloodshot; it was pure red from iris to corner and from lid to lid, the red of ruptured blood vessels. It looked like something from a cheap horror movie except that it was actually horrifying.
"What happened to your eye?" I said, which pissed him off.
"He was out sick yesterday," one of the other students said--quickly--and the student settled back.
"I was in a fight," he said, still angry.
"Oh."
"With two other guys, at a bar."
"Tell him about the others," one of the students said.
"They got hurt too." He was smirking now. It was easy to say, I guess, with no one there to contradict him.
"Oh," I said. I nodded. And then I had to bite my tongue to prevent saying "did they have their Green Cards?"
Now, L.A. is not my home town, and my home town is not L.A. (and is, I'm sure, glad of it). But this L.A. in the film is probably also not the L.A. in California, out in that "reality" that people tend to go on about. The L.A. in the film rings false, and not just because of the constant ridiculous coincidences, but also because most people are not openly bigoted. The bigotry is a contrivance to present some drama and to give Haggis a chance to talk about issues he ostensibly cares about. So the movie makes a lot of noise about its characters' "complexity," but the kinds of things the characters eventually do--the good things, mind, intended to round them out as characters, to offset the bad--include not shooting people, not selling people, and not watching people die. These are not the kinds of things that the Nobel committee tends to award prizes for, though they might be unusual enough to deserve attention in Hollywood.
The biggest failure of the movie--and there are several to choose from--is that the story flirts with cynicism, claims to reject it, and adopts platitudes instead. The example that sticks in my craw most is near the end, where a black man discovers that the cargo hold of the stolen van he is driving is loaded with people. And so this man pulls over, and with all the predictable grandiose musical cues a hack could hope for, he opens the back of the van and sets the people free. Now, that's a bold ethical stand. This movie does not approve of slavery.
Instead, it approves of a laissez faire system which will fold undocumented workers into its sweatshoppy embrace until the DHS takes it upon itself to expel them for doing the shit work that Americans wouldn't do at those wages, daring to dream the American Dream without proper papers. All the character has done is make the minimal choice any decent person would make--refusing to sell people--and he's done it at very little personal cost. Yet this setting people free was, according to the film's narrative, something meant to add to the character's "complexity," some good to offset the bad. So the movie posits that character redemption is just as far away as one refusal to sell slaves.
I bet if we all try, if we stick with it and really try, we can be redeemed and fulfillingly complex by breakfast time.
crash and burn
The Blasters -- I'm Shakin'The Blasters -- Trouble Bound
The Blasters were a roots-rock band from the 1980s, a band that I'm surprised that the good Reverend hasn't yet posted. (I scooped the Rev? That's unpossible.)
"I'm Shakin'" is a Little Willie John cover, a snappy groovin' blues tune with saxophones. (Thanks, Jon)
"Trouble Bound" is a rockabilly tune with rollicking piano and some spot-on background harmonies.
They're both good examples of the Blasters' work, which seamlessly mixes covers and original tunes with a confident, uncluttered style.
[Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings (1981-1985)]
... My file hosting has gotten a bit wobbly. The UI, for one, has become unworkable in both Firefox and Internet Explorer; uploading and linking to a file is now a three-part process involving swapping browsers twice and usually watching one of them freeze. The bugs are being worked on and, with any luck, they'll be sorted out soon.
"That's not Haggis; that smells like chitlins."
"It's okay, Daddy; just put your hand over your mouth like this."
(image nicked from The House Next Door)
Here's some Haterade for Crash that I found particularly relevant, fun, and amusing.
And here's more, just because this movie has been bugging me ever since I saw it:
Maybe in L.A. bigotry isn't typically out front and center, unsubtle and undeniable--but in the rural monocultural high school I attended in North Florida it was. All the most popular students--the football players and the cheerleaders--were, with very few exceptions, openly homophobic, sexist, racist, and classist. I'll choose a fairly tame incident, the kind that supposedly doesn't happen any more: one year I had the same class as a fairly clever bigot. Nearly every day that year, he would ask me if I had my Green Card. He had an audience and it always got a laugh; the teacher overheard it and ignored it. I don't know why; I didn't feel confident enough to ask. And I also wasn't strong enough or fierce enough to confront the student--he was the kind sure to resort to violence--so I just did my best to let it roll off me. I perfected a blank stare.
I've forgotten the student's name, though I remember his permed mullet and his left earring and the day that he came to school with one eye solid red. I'd been out sick the previous day and then the next day, the day he came to school with a red eye, the student didn't make the crack about the Green Card. Instead, he sat there silently. His eye wasn't slightly bloodshot; it wasn't extremely bloodshot; it was pure red from iris to corner and from lid to lid, the red of ruptured blood vessels. It looked like something from a cheap horror movie except that it was actually horrifying.
"What happened to your eye?" I said, which pissed him off.
"He was out sick yesterday," one of the other students said--quickly--and the student settled back.
"I was in a fight," he said, still angry.
"Oh."
"With two other guys, at a bar."
"Tell him about the others," one of the students said.
"They got hurt too." He was smirking now. It was easy to say, I guess, with no one there to contradict him.
"Oh," I said. I nodded. And then I had to bite my tongue to prevent saying "did they have their Green Cards?"
Now, L.A. is not my home town, and my home town is not L.A. (and is, I'm sure, glad of it). But this L.A. in the film is probably also not the L.A. in California, out in that "reality" that people tend to go on about. The L.A. in the film rings false, and not just because of the constant ridiculous coincidences, but also because most people are not openly bigoted. The bigotry is a contrivance to present some drama and to give Haggis a chance to talk about issues he ostensibly cares about. So the movie makes a lot of noise about its characters' "complexity," but the kinds of things the characters eventually do--the good things, mind, intended to round them out as characters, to offset the bad--include not shooting people, not selling people, and not watching people die. These are not the kinds of things that the Nobel committee tends to award prizes for, though they might be unusual enough to deserve attention in Hollywood.
The biggest failure of the movie--and there are several to choose from--is that the story flirts with cynicism, claims to reject it, and adopts platitudes instead. The example that sticks in my craw most is near the end, where a black man discovers that the cargo hold of the stolen van he is driving is loaded with people. And so this man pulls over, and with all the predictable grandiose musical cues a hack could hope for, he opens the back of the van and sets the people free. Now, that's a bold ethical stand. This movie does not approve of slavery.
Instead, it approves of a laissez faire system which will fold undocumented workers into its sweatshoppy embrace until the DHS takes it upon itself to expel them for doing the shit work that Americans wouldn't do at those wages, daring to dream the American Dream without proper papers. All the character has done is make the minimal choice any decent person would make--refusing to sell people--and he's done it at very little personal cost. Yet this setting people free was, according to the film's narrative, something meant to add to the character's "complexity," some good to offset the bad. So the movie posits that character redemption is just as far away as one refusal to sell slaves.
I bet if we all try, if we stick with it and really try, we can be redeemed and fulfillingly complex by breakfast time.
Labels: movies, personal, roots rock
posted by Tuwa @
00:55 | permalink |
10 comments
|
Thursday, January 12, 2006:
Nellie McKay -- Work Song
In lieu of joining the Showgirls fray (Girish has a link roundup) I decided to watch Live Nude Girls Unite!, a documentary about strippers who decide to unionize their workplace. While strippers' work gets a number of different treatments in film, this one is a bit different: it pitches the work as just that--work--with its typical drawbacks as well as some others peculiar to the line of work. Strippers talk about being bored on the job and letting their minds wander, which seems a common enough comment about work, as do many of their others--getting underscheduled, having pay cut for spurious reasons, being fired at whim. There are other complaints more specific to their work: customers sometimes film them covertly through one-way mirrors in the booths; only one worker of color works a shift in the big room; no workers of color work in private booths; workers can not call in sick unless they find a replacement, but the replacement must have skin as light or lighter and their breasts must be as big or bigger.
The labor commission won't help them because of the nature of the work (a luxury the property tax collector probably doesn't have) and when management proves indifferent to the grievances, the strippers decide to unionize. Finding representation and voting in the union proves to be the easy part; the hard part is negotiating a contract.
The documentary is filmed and narrated by one of the workers, who is also the daughter of an activist for prostitutes' rights; the mother doesn't know about her daughter's work. And here is where the film fails a bit: it's not that the filming is clumsy, though it is, or that the audio is poor, though it is, but that the film is a bit self-indulgent. The narrator is a stand-up comedian, but the bits of her routine that she includes just aren't very funny, and don't compete with some of the relayed conversations between customers and strippers. One in particular:
Customer: "Where do you work?"
Stripper: "I'm a stripper."
Customer: [pauses a beat] "What do you do for money?"
The tendency for documentary film makers to insert themselves into the film is understandable, since they're so close to the material, but I think it's a challenge to do it skillfully enough that the director doesn't prove boring, annoying, or superfluous. In this case, the director's story arc adds a bit, but the integration of the two stories is somewhat clumsy, and the director admits on-camera that she's telling her mother about her work in part because she'd likely find out anyway and in part because it would help the film. This admission shifts the viewer's attention away from worker exploitation towards family exploitation: the daughter knows her mother will find the conversation stressful--it's about something she's been hiding from her for years--yet she films it. The conversation is just as uncomfortable as imagined, prompting questions about negative space in film narrative.
While the film is somewhat self-indulgent, it's at least consistently interesting, especially in its depiction of struggle in an industry that's mostly scorned and ignored, and I was happy to see it.
...
Before I left for college there was a bookstore I used to go to in my little hometown: a ramshackle homely little booth in a flea market, with a garage door over the front and the walls nothing more than chicken wire held in place with bits of scrap wood. The owner was a fixture there for as long as I could remember; and I used to walk the four or five miles from my home two or three times a weekend, at first to get away from my family and then because the walk was less boring than staying at home, and then out of a wish for some sort of companionship, even the small bit of conversation I'd have around the purchase. The owner had had arthritis and tinnitus for as long as I could remember, but she was always cheerful and optimistic, quick with a joke or a sweet anecdote. I started out buying comic books from her for a quarter, when I was about eight; that progressed to young adult fiction then to science fiction and then to horror and then to some dabbling in mass-market fiction and "literature." Eventually the owner stopped selling me the books; she'd loan them to me instead, with a promise that I'd bring them back with a brief plot summary and a review; and when I moved to attend college I used to write and call frequently.
Over the years we drifted apart--she stayed at the book store, four days a week, opening before sunrise, closing at sunset, with her husband at her side, both of them living a hardscrabble life, but modest and uncomplaining; and I got wrapped up in what seems like endless school. In late 2004 I found out she had cancer but no insurance, and that as a result she'd gotten behind on her house payments trying to pay her medical bills and had lost her house and moved into a trailer. She and her husband left town for Hurricane Ivan and came back to find their trailer completely destroyed, nothing left standing but the toilet. I couldn't get in touch with her for ages--no one knew where she was staying; my family would give her messages at work and she'd send the message back that she was fine and she looked forward to seeing me.
The next time I saw her she was at work still, and only slightly less cheerful than usual. It was just before Christmas 2004; we talked awhile and I noticed that people would come buy things and pay her, and she would tuck the money in without looking at it. So I looked through her books, which had mostly survived the storm, and picked some out to put on top of the knee-high stack at my house awaiting my attention. She told me the total and I overpayed and she tucked it away without looking at it. I stayed awhile, wanting to say different things and feeling unable, and then feeling I hadn't done enough, and finally taking more money out when she was busy with a customer and hiding it where I knew she'd find it when closing shop at the end of the day.
The next time I was home was in June. It was a miserable trip: full of failed attempts to meet up with family and friends, and characterized any number of frustrated attempts to get schoolwork done: much of my family had cancelled internet service; the rest had flaky broadband that spent more time off than on; draconian librarians and the lack of a car served up more frustration, and the experience was capped off by marital discord at three of the four places I stayed. I felt unwanted and in the way everywhere, but I was low on money and couldn't afford a hotel or a car, and so everything that I could do depended on someone else's schedule. It was a poorly planned trip. Eventually I settled in with my aunt, my infirm grandmother, and my cousins in an already packed house, only to have another cousin, her husband, and their batshit insane pit bull move in when Hurricane Dennis hit. After that there was no power and no potable water, just a stultifying humid heat and short tempers all around, and it was an absolute relief to leave. I didn't get to see my friend at the flea market.
I was home again in December, just before Christmas. I ran into her husband at an auto parts store; he asked me if I'd heard about his wife. I said yes, thinking he'd meant about moving shop: the older flea market was being torn down. I asked him if she'd be at the new place that weekend because I'd like to see her. No, he said, I hadn't heard. She died on December 11, 2005. It was barely the 20th and here he was, this man who'd been married to her for decades, back at work, extended vacations not a poor man's prerogative. We talked about her awhile, about how optimistic and generous she was; and he mentioned that she had been looking forward to seeing me over Christmas. It hurt, not because he meant it to, but because she was my friend and I hadn't done enough for her; and going to San Francisco instead of going to my hometown earlier was just the last of it.
He began to get choked up, talking about her at the register, and his coworker began giving him sidelong glances, and so I asked him about his upcoming trip to visit his son. He seemed relieved about the change in subject; not long after that, my sister had to leave to meet her husband, so we left. But I've been thinking about it since: about how kind she was, about how she used to joke that some day she'd be selling my books and I'd have to autograph her a copy, about how a year and three months can come to seem like a few weeks, opportunities slipping by daily, unattended, unnoticed. It's odd to think about her not being in that little shop, odd to think about the shop not being there at all, and disappointing to know that she died hoping to see me again and that she didn't.
[Maxwell -- MTV Unplugged (what happened to the domestic version? The one without track 8, that was half as expensive? Is this it? Because they have their tracklisting all wrong)]
[Nellie McKay -- Get Away from Me]
This Woman's Work / Work Song
Maxwell -- This Woman's WorkNellie McKay -- Work Song
In lieu of joining the Showgirls fray (Girish has a link roundup) I decided to watch Live Nude Girls Unite!, a documentary about strippers who decide to unionize their workplace. While strippers' work gets a number of different treatments in film, this one is a bit different: it pitches the work as just that--work--with its typical drawbacks as well as some others peculiar to the line of work. Strippers talk about being bored on the job and letting their minds wander, which seems a common enough comment about work, as do many of their others--getting underscheduled, having pay cut for spurious reasons, being fired at whim. There are other complaints more specific to their work: customers sometimes film them covertly through one-way mirrors in the booths; only one worker of color works a shift in the big room; no workers of color work in private booths; workers can not call in sick unless they find a replacement, but the replacement must have skin as light or lighter and their breasts must be as big or bigger.
The labor commission won't help them because of the nature of the work (a luxury the property tax collector probably doesn't have) and when management proves indifferent to the grievances, the strippers decide to unionize. Finding representation and voting in the union proves to be the easy part; the hard part is negotiating a contract.
The documentary is filmed and narrated by one of the workers, who is also the daughter of an activist for prostitutes' rights; the mother doesn't know about her daughter's work. And here is where the film fails a bit: it's not that the filming is clumsy, though it is, or that the audio is poor, though it is, but that the film is a bit self-indulgent. The narrator is a stand-up comedian, but the bits of her routine that she includes just aren't very funny, and don't compete with some of the relayed conversations between customers and strippers. One in particular:
Customer: "Where do you work?"
Stripper: "I'm a stripper."
Customer: [pauses a beat] "What do you do for money?"
The tendency for documentary film makers to insert themselves into the film is understandable, since they're so close to the material, but I think it's a challenge to do it skillfully enough that the director doesn't prove boring, annoying, or superfluous. In this case, the director's story arc adds a bit, but the integration of the two stories is somewhat clumsy, and the director admits on-camera that she's telling her mother about her work in part because she'd likely find out anyway and in part because it would help the film. This admission shifts the viewer's attention away from worker exploitation towards family exploitation: the daughter knows her mother will find the conversation stressful--it's about something she's been hiding from her for years--yet she films it. The conversation is just as uncomfortable as imagined, prompting questions about negative space in film narrative.
While the film is somewhat self-indulgent, it's at least consistently interesting, especially in its depiction of struggle in an industry that's mostly scorned and ignored, and I was happy to see it.
...
Before I left for college there was a bookstore I used to go to in my little hometown: a ramshackle homely little booth in a flea market, with a garage door over the front and the walls nothing more than chicken wire held in place with bits of scrap wood. The owner was a fixture there for as long as I could remember; and I used to walk the four or five miles from my home two or three times a weekend, at first to get away from my family and then because the walk was less boring than staying at home, and then out of a wish for some sort of companionship, even the small bit of conversation I'd have around the purchase. The owner had had arthritis and tinnitus for as long as I could remember, but she was always cheerful and optimistic, quick with a joke or a sweet anecdote. I started out buying comic books from her for a quarter, when I was about eight; that progressed to young adult fiction then to science fiction and then to horror and then to some dabbling in mass-market fiction and "literature." Eventually the owner stopped selling me the books; she'd loan them to me instead, with a promise that I'd bring them back with a brief plot summary and a review; and when I moved to attend college I used to write and call frequently.
Over the years we drifted apart--she stayed at the book store, four days a week, opening before sunrise, closing at sunset, with her husband at her side, both of them living a hardscrabble life, but modest and uncomplaining; and I got wrapped up in what seems like endless school. In late 2004 I found out she had cancer but no insurance, and that as a result she'd gotten behind on her house payments trying to pay her medical bills and had lost her house and moved into a trailer. She and her husband left town for Hurricane Ivan and came back to find their trailer completely destroyed, nothing left standing but the toilet. I couldn't get in touch with her for ages--no one knew where she was staying; my family would give her messages at work and she'd send the message back that she was fine and she looked forward to seeing me.
The next time I saw her she was at work still, and only slightly less cheerful than usual. It was just before Christmas 2004; we talked awhile and I noticed that people would come buy things and pay her, and she would tuck the money in without looking at it. So I looked through her books, which had mostly survived the storm, and picked some out to put on top of the knee-high stack at my house awaiting my attention. She told me the total and I overpayed and she tucked it away without looking at it. I stayed awhile, wanting to say different things and feeling unable, and then feeling I hadn't done enough, and finally taking more money out when she was busy with a customer and hiding it where I knew she'd find it when closing shop at the end of the day.
The next time I was home was in June. It was a miserable trip: full of failed attempts to meet up with family and friends, and characterized any number of frustrated attempts to get schoolwork done: much of my family had cancelled internet service; the rest had flaky broadband that spent more time off than on; draconian librarians and the lack of a car served up more frustration, and the experience was capped off by marital discord at three of the four places I stayed. I felt unwanted and in the way everywhere, but I was low on money and couldn't afford a hotel or a car, and so everything that I could do depended on someone else's schedule. It was a poorly planned trip. Eventually I settled in with my aunt, my infirm grandmother, and my cousins in an already packed house, only to have another cousin, her husband, and their batshit insane pit bull move in when Hurricane Dennis hit. After that there was no power and no potable water, just a stultifying humid heat and short tempers all around, and it was an absolute relief to leave. I didn't get to see my friend at the flea market.
I was home again in December, just before Christmas. I ran into her husband at an auto parts store; he asked me if I'd heard about his wife. I said yes, thinking he'd meant about moving shop: the older flea market was being torn down. I asked him if she'd be at the new place that weekend because I'd like to see her. No, he said, I hadn't heard. She died on December 11, 2005. It was barely the 20th and here he was, this man who'd been married to her for decades, back at work, extended vacations not a poor man's prerogative. We talked about her awhile, about how optimistic and generous she was; and he mentioned that she had been looking forward to seeing me over Christmas. It hurt, not because he meant it to, but because she was my friend and I hadn't done enough for her; and going to San Francisco instead of going to my hometown earlier was just the last of it.
He began to get choked up, talking about her at the register, and his coworker began giving him sidelong glances, and so I asked him about his upcoming trip to visit his son. He seemed relieved about the change in subject; not long after that, my sister had to leave to meet her husband, so we left. But I've been thinking about it since: about how kind she was, about how she used to joke that some day she'd be selling my books and I'd have to autograph her a copy, about how a year and three months can come to seem like a few weeks, opportunities slipping by daily, unattended, unnoticed. It's odd to think about her not being in that little shop, odd to think about the shop not being there at all, and disappointing to know that she died hoping to see me again and that she didn't.
[Maxwell -- MTV Unplugged (what happened to the domestic version? The one without track 8, that was half as expensive? Is this it? Because they have their tracklisting all wrong)]
[Nellie McKay -- Get Away from Me]
posted by Tuwa @
14:50 | permalink |
7 comments
|
Friday, December 16, 2005:
Toots and the Maytals have done some amazing work--"Reggae Got Soul," "Pressure Drop," "Sweet & Dandy" ... and this one, too: immediate, breezy, with a casual groove and good vibes to spare.
[Toots and the Maytals -- Sweet and Lowdown @ amazon.com]
De La Soul -- Buddy (Native Tongue Decision)
This track is from a 33 1/3 with "Ghetto Thang," a vocal version, and a remix, plus "Buddy" and two remixes. The original is of course on 3 Feet High and Rising, a laid-back artsy hip-hop cornerstone; the remix didn't make it onto the re-release (though it is available on a $40 import, if that's your speed). The track features The Jungle Brothers, Q-Tip, Queen Latifah, and Monie Love.
[De La Soul -- The Best of import @ amazon.com]
[3 Feet High and Rising @ amazon.com]
These two are off my happy-making playlist in iTunes. What's on yours?
...
The reviews for that mix CD I sent out have been coming in; the mix has been getting the snot knocked out of it. Its reception, coupled with my trip, has been a wonderfully humbling experience. I still like most of the songs on the disc, with one notable exception; perhaps my taste in music is slipping. I'll start posting the tracks when that last review comes in, assuming the last reviewer doesn't beg off. I imagine it'll be like that bit at the end of Mortal Kombat where the opponent is swaying on his feet and a careful series of taps can rip his spine out for a trophy.
...
Q: What's with the big gap in posting?
A: Funny you should ask. I've been in San Francisco. Dropped altogether too much money on LPs, which should be arriving in a day or two. Found some great things which I'm looking forward to hearing again and posting. Amoeba Records was fifty shades of awesome; Rasputin less so (at least for digging in crates--it was more expensive and had a smaller selection and a snootier staff); Grooves was okay but didn't have anything I was interested in for myself (all the better since I'd already stacked up 34 lbs of LPs for shipping). Grooves did have a nice find, though: a sealed Suspense LP which starred Ida Lupino on the flip side. I expected it to make a nice gift for one of my hosts, who's into old-time radio and a fan of Lupino's work.
Also neat-o-riffic were Dog Eared Books (great store, horrible website), Borderlands Books (all the sci-fi/fantasy you could want ... well, unless you're Neil Gaiman or William Gibson), and Mariachi's Taqería (healthy Mexican with some great veggie burritos). And then hanging out with friends is always cool, as were the Father Ted episodes we watched sometimes.
Not cool was the first day of taking BART by myself--getting lost looking for the station, then getting on the right train in the wrong direction and riding it to the end, then getting off and taking the wrong train in the right direction, then getting off and taking the right train in the right direction but getting off at the wrong stop. The cap on the experience was getting lost again finding my destination. Five hours for a thirty minute trip. The second day traveling was better; and the third went off without a hitch except for a long bit walking where I was behind two women heading towards Market Street. They were keeping up a steady pace and I was too; then one of them started glancing to the side repeatedly. Finally she looked behind her, didn't like what she saw (me), then said something to stop her friend. They both stood to the side to let me pass, which was a bit embarrassing and made me feel guilty even though I hadn't done anything. But down I went, minding my own business, then I saw an open record store and stopped in. It smelled of fresh paint and there were two men on the left with rollers, finishing up the top of the wall. The records were already in the bookcases and uncovered, which is, I think, not how I would have done it while painting. But obviously the store wasn't open so I left, and who was in front of me again but those same two women. "Oh fuck," I thought, then realized I'd said it, then decided I'd follow them to the corner and turn whichever way they didn't. So that was that. It sucks that women can't always walk around feeling secure, even in the daylight, on a busy street, with a friend right there.
54 46 That's My Number, Buddy
Toots and the Maytals -- 54 46 That's My NumberToots and the Maytals have done some amazing work--"Reggae Got Soul," "Pressure Drop," "Sweet & Dandy" ... and this one, too: immediate, breezy, with a casual groove and good vibes to spare.
[Toots and the Maytals -- Sweet and Lowdown @ amazon.com]
De La Soul -- Buddy (Native Tongue Decision)
This track is from a 33 1/3 with "Ghetto Thang," a vocal version, and a remix, plus "Buddy" and two remixes. The original is of course on 3 Feet High and Rising, a laid-back artsy hip-hop cornerstone; the remix didn't make it onto the re-release (though it is available on a $40 import, if that's your speed). The track features The Jungle Brothers, Q-Tip, Queen Latifah, and Monie Love.
[De La Soul -- The Best of import @ amazon.com]
[3 Feet High and Rising @ amazon.com]
These two are off my happy-making playlist in iTunes. What's on yours?
...
The reviews for that mix CD I sent out have been coming in; the mix has been getting the snot knocked out of it. Its reception, coupled with my trip, has been a wonderfully humbling experience. I still like most of the songs on the disc, with one notable exception; perhaps my taste in music is slipping. I'll start posting the tracks when that last review comes in, assuming the last reviewer doesn't beg off. I imagine it'll be like that bit at the end of Mortal Kombat where the opponent is swaying on his feet and a careful series of taps can rip his spine out for a trophy.
...
Q: What's with the big gap in posting?
A: Funny you should ask. I've been in San Francisco. Dropped altogether too much money on LPs, which should be arriving in a day or two. Found some great things which I'm looking forward to hearing again and posting. Amoeba Records was fifty shades of awesome; Rasputin less so (at least for digging in crates--it was more expensive and had a smaller selection and a snootier staff); Grooves was okay but didn't have anything I was interested in for myself (all the better since I'd already stacked up 34 lbs of LPs for shipping). Grooves did have a nice find, though: a sealed Suspense LP which starred Ida Lupino on the flip side. I expected it to make a nice gift for one of my hosts, who's into old-time radio and a fan of Lupino's work.
Also neat-o-riffic were Dog Eared Books (great store, horrible website), Borderlands Books (all the sci-fi/fantasy you could want ... well, unless you're Neil Gaiman or William Gibson), and Mariachi's Taqería (healthy Mexican with some great veggie burritos). And then hanging out with friends is always cool, as were the Father Ted episodes we watched sometimes.
Not cool was the first day of taking BART by myself--getting lost looking for the station, then getting on the right train in the wrong direction and riding it to the end, then getting off and taking the wrong train in the right direction, then getting off and taking the right train in the right direction but getting off at the wrong stop. The cap on the experience was getting lost again finding my destination. Five hours for a thirty minute trip. The second day traveling was better; and the third went off without a hitch except for a long bit walking where I was behind two women heading towards Market Street. They were keeping up a steady pace and I was too; then one of them started glancing to the side repeatedly. Finally she looked behind her, didn't like what she saw (me), then said something to stop her friend. They both stood to the side to let me pass, which was a bit embarrassing and made me feel guilty even though I hadn't done anything. But down I went, minding my own business, then I saw an open record store and stopped in. It smelled of fresh paint and there were two men on the left with rollers, finishing up the top of the wall. The records were already in the bookcases and uncovered, which is, I think, not how I would have done it while painting. But obviously the store wasn't open so I left, and who was in front of me again but those same two women. "Oh fuck," I thought, then realized I'd said it, then decided I'd follow them to the corner and turn whichever way they didn't. So that was that. It sucks that women can't always walk around feeling secure, even in the daylight, on a busy street, with a friend right there.
Labels: hip-hop, personal, reggae
posted by Tuwa @
20:25 | permalink |
5 comments
|
Wednesday, November 02, 2005:
Walter Meego -- Usually
Sometimes you get an email that makes it feel like Christmas. Sometimes that email comes from Walter Meego.
Said email might start off like this: "Hello. Will you listen to this track?" (which, if you're me, prompts the mental response "I don't know. Maybe. Keep going"), and might follow that up with a mention that the song will be released soon and that if I like it I can post it. Direct and to the point. So I go to the URL and download it and give it a listen. It starts off with some fragile percussion, an approaching warbling noise, a rumble of conversation, and what sounds like a young Jimmy Stewart (is that right? I can't place the dialogue)--then up with the distorted guitar, the bouncy drumbeat, the delirious horns. At 1:25, the filtered vocals: a feel of old-school jazz (think 1930s and 40s) melded with electronica and shoved out onto the dancefloor.
Walter Meego is (or "are," depending on your location) a band consisting of Justin Sconza, Colin Yarck, and Jarrett Spiegel. Davis Jones (the band's manager) tells me their press agent describes the song as "about yearning, about brand new love and butterflies in stomachs," which is a better description than I'd had, so I'll thank them and lift it shamelessly. The band has had some press already (coverage on German radio) though I can't work out from their "news" page where they are or are from ("Chicago," says their Myspace page. Also, "We're a three-headed monster of musical mayhem. We're a freakish, axe-slaying, beat-crushing pack of disco ninjas.")
The Walter Meego website has an acoustic version of the track offered (ripe for additional remixes? I think so) as well as other tracks for download. It's a well-designed site and, thankfully, it's too damn sensible to use Flash for everything. No. It is like that email: simple, direct, and clear.
Walter Meego's Myspace page
...
Then, sometimes, you get an email that you don't know what to do with.
I've been informed by someone who works for a PR firm that I am a "reputable influencer"; following through to the link in the sig I see that the firm is looking to start "grassroots marketing," claiming it places products in the "hands of influential tastemakers and trendsetters" and "develops and manages groups of 'Brand Loyalists' that become micro-marketing armies."
All of which gives me roughly the same feeling you might have when eyeing the dinner meat just after watching Leolo or reading Portnoy's Complaint. Which is to say, an instinctual revulsion. I'm not sure I'm a tastemaker, or a "reputable influencer" (or, for that matter, a reputable anything), but this PR firm thinks so, and wants my help, and after pondering it a bit I decided I shouldn't shoot the messenger for the delivery. The DVD they want mentioned looked cool, so I'll mention it. I've often enough been in a situation where I didn't understand all the social conventions, so I shouldn't hold it against anyone else when it happens to them.
I've emailed some other musicbloggers to get their take on it and there are a range of reactions, from the gently amused to the purely pragmatic, but one reaction that I didn't see was an agreement with the PR firms that we are or should be "tastemakers." If anything, I think people like what they like and sometimes just haven't yet been exposed to. I remember the first time I heard Sister Rosetta Tharpe, A Band of Bees, DJ Shadow, The 5.6.7.8's (and, earlier, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Cure....) Some bands take warming up to; others you like immediately. No one made you do it; if anything, it was a pleasure to find something new, something that hadn't been dumped out of a can and heated until it was lukewarm.
Where I am, at least, Clear Channel is the tastemaker--lukewarm canned spinach, day in, day out, then the music industry wants to act surprised when people say something like "damn! but I'm sick of lukewarm canned spinach." For someone who loves music, starting a musicblog is only the natural response to boring redundant monolithic programming. If it's the carrot and the stick, fine, so be it, and if I've got the carrot, that's because Clear Channel chose the stick.
I think we musicbloggers mostly just post what we like, and if others like it too we're always stoked about it, but sometimes there's not any response, which can leave you wondering if anyone gives a damn. Of all the musicbloggers I know, I think John Seroff consistently gets the most comments, and that's because he posts questions each time. Even a huge site like Said the Gramophone will sometimes get only a few comments. That's a microscopic percentage of their visitors, so it's hard to know what anyone thinks--silence could mean any number of things. We all love comments; we sometimes ask for them, or write about them, or pose questions to provoke them, but for the most part they don't happen. Which, coupled with just doing what we love anyway, even if it doesn't get a response, gives rather a different impression from that of a PR firm telling us how important we are.
Which brings me back to the uneasy feeling, the instinctual revulsion, the uncertainty how to respond. I won't speak for all musicbloggers because I'm only one of them, but I'm posting here because I love music. The songs might be ones I've known for decades and ripped from an LP that's out of print; they might be digitized from a movie playing on the VCR; they might be from an email I got early this morning. The source is entirely incidental to the music, and if any certain product goes up amazon's rankings, that's great, but it's not my primary concern. I'm happy to help out musicians who put out music I like, but first and foremost I need to like it. Which is by way of saying, for me at least, flattery is not required. Show me something cool instead.
As for the "marketing armies," if I wanted to be part of someone's "army" I would have, well, joined the Army, and I'm fairly certain that I'd rather be spoken to plainly than to be eyed like a pawn on a chessboard.
...
In [cough, cough] completely unrelated news, The Concert for Bangladesh DVD (the celebrity musician concert held in the early 1970s with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar, Klaus Voorman(!), and Billy Preston) has been re-released. There's the older release with some details in amazon.com's catalog about features and then a new deluxe edition which I would assume has more features than the earlier version, though there's no evidence of it in the item description.
Walter Meego -- Usually. and reputable influencers
Walter Meego -- Usually
Sometimes you get an email that makes it feel like Christmas. Sometimes that email comes from Walter Meego.
Said email might start off like this: "Hello. Will you listen to this track?" (which, if you're me, prompts the mental response "I don't know. Maybe. Keep going"), and might follow that up with a mention that the song will be released soon and that if I like it I can post it. Direct and to the point. So I go to the URL and download it and give it a listen. It starts off with some fragile percussion, an approaching warbling noise, a rumble of conversation, and what sounds like a young Jimmy Stewart (is that right? I can't place the dialogue)--then up with the distorted guitar, the bouncy drumbeat, the delirious horns. At 1:25, the filtered vocals: a feel of old-school jazz (think 1930s and 40s) melded with electronica and shoved out onto the dancefloor.
Walter Meego is (or "are," depending on your location) a band consisting of Justin Sconza, Colin Yarck, and Jarrett Spiegel. Davis Jones (the band's manager) tells me their press agent describes the song as "about yearning, about brand new love and butterflies in stomachs," which is a better description than I'd had, so I'll thank them and lift it shamelessly. The band has had some press already (coverage on German radio) though I can't work out from their "news" page where they are or are from ("Chicago," says their Myspace page. Also, "We're a three-headed monster of musical mayhem. We're a freakish, axe-slaying, beat-crushing pack of disco ninjas.")
The Walter Meego website has an acoustic version of the track offered (ripe for additional remixes? I think so) as well as other tracks for download. It's a well-designed site and, thankfully, it's too damn sensible to use Flash for everything. No. It is like that email: simple, direct, and clear.
Walter Meego's Myspace page
...
Then, sometimes, you get an email that you don't know what to do with.
I've been informed by someone who works for a PR firm that I am a "reputable influencer"; following through to the link in the sig I see that the firm is looking to start "grassroots marketing," claiming it places products in the "hands of influential tastemakers and trendsetters" and "develops and manages groups of 'Brand Loyalists' that become micro-marketing armies."
All of which gives me roughly the same feeling you might have when eyeing the dinner meat just after watching Leolo or reading Portnoy's Complaint. Which is to say, an instinctual revulsion. I'm not sure I'm a tastemaker, or a "reputable influencer" (or, for that matter, a reputable anything), but this PR firm thinks so, and wants my help, and after pondering it a bit I decided I shouldn't shoot the messenger for the delivery. The DVD they want mentioned looked cool, so I'll mention it. I've often enough been in a situation where I didn't understand all the social conventions, so I shouldn't hold it against anyone else when it happens to them.
I've emailed some other musicbloggers to get their take on it and there are a range of reactions, from the gently amused to the purely pragmatic, but one reaction that I didn't see was an agreement with the PR firms that we are or should be "tastemakers." If anything, I think people like what they like and sometimes just haven't yet been exposed to. I remember the first time I heard Sister Rosetta Tharpe, A Band of Bees, DJ Shadow, The 5.6.7.8's (and, earlier, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Cure....) Some bands take warming up to; others you like immediately. No one made you do it; if anything, it was a pleasure to find something new, something that hadn't been dumped out of a can and heated until it was lukewarm.
Where I am, at least, Clear Channel is the tastemaker--lukewarm canned spinach, day in, day out, then the music industry wants to act surprised when people say something like "damn! but I'm sick of lukewarm canned spinach." For someone who loves music, starting a musicblog is only the natural response to boring redundant monolithic programming. If it's the carrot and the stick, fine, so be it, and if I've got the carrot, that's because Clear Channel chose the stick.
I think we musicbloggers mostly just post what we like, and if others like it too we're always stoked about it, but sometimes there's not any response, which can leave you wondering if anyone gives a damn. Of all the musicbloggers I know, I think John Seroff consistently gets the most comments, and that's because he posts questions each time. Even a huge site like Said the Gramophone will sometimes get only a few comments. That's a microscopic percentage of their visitors, so it's hard to know what anyone thinks--silence could mean any number of things. We all love comments; we sometimes ask for them, or write about them, or pose questions to provoke them, but for the most part they don't happen. Which, coupled with just doing what we love anyway, even if it doesn't get a response, gives rather a different impression from that of a PR firm telling us how important we are.
Which brings me back to the uneasy feeling, the instinctual revulsion, the uncertainty how to respond. I won't speak for all musicbloggers because I'm only one of them, but I'm posting here because I love music. The songs might be ones I've known for decades and ripped from an LP that's out of print; they might be digitized from a movie playing on the VCR; they might be from an email I got early this morning. The source is entirely incidental to the music, and if any certain product goes up amazon's rankings, that's great, but it's not my primary concern. I'm happy to help out musicians who put out music I like, but first and foremost I need to like it. Which is by way of saying, for me at least, flattery is not required. Show me something cool instead.
As for the "marketing armies," if I wanted to be part of someone's "army" I would have, well, joined the Army, and I'm fairly certain that I'd rather be spoken to plainly than to be eyed like a pawn on a chessboard.
...
In [cough, cough] completely unrelated news, The Concert for Bangladesh DVD (the celebrity musician concert held in the early 1970s with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar, Klaus Voorman(!), and Billy Preston) has been re-released. There's the older release with some details in amazon.com's catalog about features and then a new deluxe edition which I would assume has more features than the earlier version, though there's no evidence of it in the item description.
Labels: electronica, indie, personal, PR
posted by Tuwa @
11:57 | permalink |
6 comments
|
Monday, September 12, 2005:
Big Bill Broonzy -- This Train
Big Bill Broonzy -- Going Down the Road
Prompted by an AskMe question about feeling sick after running, I dug out my old running shoes--I'd been jogging before coming to town and for one reason or another it quickly tapered off after I settled in here, shortly after buying a new pair. The shoes are eleven years old and barely used; they fit when I bought them, but last night they were a bit tight--too narrow and too short. Maybe they shrank somehow, or maybe my feet weren't done growing at 19.
I loosened the laces a fair bit and did some stretches and off I went: down a Florida hill, something so small it wouldn't earn the name "hill" in most states, and up the next. A third of a mile later I was stopped at the corner to catch my breath. I can ride my bicycle 15 miles to the next town without getting worn out, but I don't have the same skill with jogging. After about an hour of jogging and walking and jogging and, at the end, quite a lot of walking, I was back home. I slept soundly and, for some reason, dreamed of trains.
Johnny Gray is a character I've always identified with: in over his head, meaning well but not very competent, often succeeding in spite of himself. It's a solid comic concept, used in Inspector Clouseau and Inspector Gadget and any number of Terry Pratchett characters. It's a great film, though Gray's on the wrong side (but, what the hell--I love Das Boot too).
Big Bill Broonzy was a folk/blues/country gospel guitarist and singer. "This Train" is a gospel song about salvation--"This train you don't pay no transportation / There's no Jim Crow and no discrimination / This train is bound for glory, this train / This train don't carry white or black / Everybody ride it is treated just alike." It's a great song, and it's easy to take it as uplifting if you don't consider the history it comes from or the ongoing struggle for fairness and equality.
"Goin' Down This Road" is a song about a man who leaves his woman because he's too proud to eat beans and cornbread; he complains also about his two-dollar shoes ("takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet"). It's surprisingly fun and funny considering the content.
These two tracks are from the Smithsonian Folkways compilation, which has some top-notch recordings with good liner notes, but in a font so small the CD should have come with a free magnifying glass. I'm not sure why they printed them on a folded insert unless they were trying to save on paper, but it was a poor decision to squeeze four columns of text in less than six and a half inches of space.
The tracks were recorded in the late 1950s, towards the very end of Broonzy's career; some of them were studio sessions and the others were in concert with Pete Seeger. It's a far cry from his early days share-cropping and laying tracks for railroads, but in spite of his success abroad, he died nearly broke; his friends were setting up a benefit concert for him when he died of cancer in 1958.
Other personal favorites on the disc include "Bill Bailey," "John Henry," and "The Glory of Love."
[Amazon.com]: Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy -- This Train
Big Bill Broonzy -- Going Down the Road
Prompted by an AskMe question about feeling sick after running, I dug out my old running shoes--I'd been jogging before coming to town and for one reason or another it quickly tapered off after I settled in here, shortly after buying a new pair. The shoes are eleven years old and barely used; they fit when I bought them, but last night they were a bit tight--too narrow and too short. Maybe they shrank somehow, or maybe my feet weren't done growing at 19.
I loosened the laces a fair bit and did some stretches and off I went: down a Florida hill, something so small it wouldn't earn the name "hill" in most states, and up the next. A third of a mile later I was stopped at the corner to catch my breath. I can ride my bicycle 15 miles to the next town without getting worn out, but I don't have the same skill with jogging. After about an hour of jogging and walking and jogging and, at the end, quite a lot of walking, I was back home. I slept soundly and, for some reason, dreamed of trains.
Johnny Gray is a character I've always identified with: in over his head, meaning well but not very competent, often succeeding in spite of himself. It's a solid comic concept, used in Inspector Clouseau and Inspector Gadget and any number of Terry Pratchett characters. It's a great film, though Gray's on the wrong side (but, what the hell--I love Das Boot too).
Big Bill Broonzy was a folk/blues/country gospel guitarist and singer. "This Train" is a gospel song about salvation--"This train you don't pay no transportation / There's no Jim Crow and no discrimination / This train is bound for glory, this train / This train don't carry white or black / Everybody ride it is treated just alike." It's a great song, and it's easy to take it as uplifting if you don't consider the history it comes from or the ongoing struggle for fairness and equality.
"Goin' Down This Road" is a song about a man who leaves his woman because he's too proud to eat beans and cornbread; he complains also about his two-dollar shoes ("takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet"). It's surprisingly fun and funny considering the content.
These two tracks are from the Smithsonian Folkways compilation, which has some top-notch recordings with good liner notes, but in a font so small the CD should have come with a free magnifying glass. I'm not sure why they printed them on a folded insert unless they were trying to save on paper, but it was a poor decision to squeeze four columns of text in less than six and a half inches of space.
The tracks were recorded in the late 1950s, towards the very end of Broonzy's career; some of them were studio sessions and the others were in concert with Pete Seeger. It's a far cry from his early days share-cropping and laying tracks for railroads, but in spite of his success abroad, he died nearly broke; his friends were setting up a benefit concert for him when he died of cancer in 1958.
Other personal favorites on the disc include "Bill Bailey," "John Henry," and "The Glory of Love."
[Amazon.com]: Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs
posted by Tuwa @
18:00 | permalink |
0 comments
|
Wednesday, August 10, 2005:
Cannonball Adderley -- The Tune of the Hickory Stick
These two tracks are digitized from an LP which claims that it's Cannonball with John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, and Paul Chambers--but, well, I'm not sure I believe it. I'm inclined to think that some of the tracks are from the 1959 session with Coltrane but that others are from Cannonball's cover of Duke's Jump for Joy LP. The page at Amazon.com for the album, re-released with With Strings, has a sample of "The Tune of the Hickory Stick" which sounds exactly the same. (update: Girish confirms that "The Tune of the Hickory Stick" is from Jump for Joy, with Bill Evans, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton and Jimmy Cobb but not John Coltrane.)
I like "The Tune of the Hickory Stick" in spite of not knowing why it's a tune of a hickory stick. I like the strings, I like Cannonball's work around them, I like the structure, I like the phrasing. (update: boblinn says: "Taught to the tune of a hickory stick" is a variant lyric in the song, "School Days, School Days." The verse goes: "School days, school days,/ Dear old golden rule days./ Readin' and writin' and 'rithmetic,/ Taught to the tune of a hickory stick." This last line refers to being paddled or switched with a hickory twig. Not sure if there's a connection.) (Tuwa says: It's possible, given that Jump for Joy was intended to be an anti-Uncle Tom, anti-Porgy and Bess musical giving a truer reflection of black life in the South. Maybe I can find more about this at the library; I seem to have run my course with Google queries.)
"The Sleeper" is just what it sounds like. At first I was rather unimpressed with it, but it grows on you. Don't take it for what it's not: it's not revolutionary Coltrane or Cannonball; it won't blow the top off your head and douse your brainpan in kerosene. What it is is solid, well-played, promising early work; it's the kind of thing that would get a producer out scouting for talent to come backstage and strike up a conversation. In a Hollywood film that man would be David Axelrod, who'd be a wealthy well-dressed huckster, and Cannonball would be down on his luck, out of money, newly evicted, still burning with his childhood dreams of being a famous musician, but considering going back home to take up his old job. John Coltrane, if he'd been in the concert, would probably get a glance from Axelrod--a shot of him down a hall somewhere talking to someone, or maybe knocking back a shot of whiskey--then a quick dismissal with a comment that he's just "okay"--"but you, kid--you've got fire. You're going places." Which would be true about Adderley and horribly misleading about Coltrane, but Hollywood's hardly known for its historical accuracy.
I love movies, and I love tackling them through various lists of ones someone thinks people "should" see. There's Ebert's list, which tends towards the somber and slightly arty, and Maltin's, which tends towards the slapstick and family-friendly, and Videohound's, which tends towards the thoughtful, and TimeOut's, which probably lives in mortal fear of suggesting anything outside the canon. Then there's IMDb's, which for a certain subset (U.S./U.K., mostly anglophile, middle-class) tends towards pop appeal. Of all the various lists I've collected, I think the IMDb's has been the most consistently entertaining--not the most profound, or artful, or life-changing, not the most informative or historically accurate, but just the most consistently entertaining. They're also overwhelmingly male: of everything on their top 250 list as of the end of July there were 166 directors and co-directors (167 if you count the man whose work was all thrown away on Wizard of Oz) and only two of them were women. Unfortunately, that's a fair reflection of film-making itself.
There are other complaints you could make about the list (an under-representation of most "great" directors--Fellini, Truffaut--or even "great" works--Mitt Liv Som Hund, Au Revoir Les Enfants, An Angel at My Table; the elevation of pop entertainment or soulless technique over vision or brilliance), but the list isn't meant to be definitive. It's not anything other than a running poll of what a self-selecting population of internet-savvy people likes, with whatever implications that leaves.
You could approach that dogmatically, with a scowl and a bit of finger-wagging, but there's not much point to it. For the most part people would laugh at you, or suggest you pull the stick out of your ass (check out this MeFi thread for some on-point and amusing criticisms). Or you could approach that Hollywood/pop-film mindest with a sharp eye and a bit of wit, which is what Terry Pratchett has done in Moving Pictures.
I've been reading through the Discworld series in mostly chronological order (not always reading the next-published book, but always reading the next published book in the given sub-series, e.g. the Witches, or Death, or the Watch). The books have all been solid, but by the time Pratchett wrote Moving Pictures I think he'd loosened up a bit; the writing seemed easier, more relaxed and confident. The characters are well-drawn, the motivations inherent to the personalities, the conflicts arising naturally from conflicting goals. These are just requirements of solid fiction, but Pratchett's also a humorist, and a good one. Very few of the jokes are predictable; some of them are downright brilliant; and they're all on-point. Pratchett makes good work of early film history, moving a couple of films back a bit for inclusion (e.g. Blown Away, a film about a capricious Southern Belle in a Worlde Gonne Madde). On the whole the book is a quick read, and if some of the targets are too big to ignore, they're also worth skewering, and skewered beautifully.
... Most of this film discussion was prompted by seeing House of the Flying Daggers last night, which so far is probably my least favorite Zhang Yimou film. As far as I can tell, he's being infected by Hollywood. Or maybe I'm just more aware of Hollywood's influence than I was when I started watching his films. In any case, it's not a fun thing to witness. <multiple spoiler warning>Fcrpvsvpnyyl: jgs jvgu gur "abg ernyyl qrnq" ovgf? Vg pna jbex nf n cybg cbvag va mbzovr svyzf naq inzcver svyzf, naq vg jbexrq ornhgvshyyl va Qvnobyvdhr naq Oybbq Fvzcyr, ohg sbe gur zbfg cneg V guvax vg'f whfg qnzarq naablvat. V jbhyqa'g zvaq vs vg jrer arire ntnva hfrq ba n znva punenpgre arne gur pyvznk bs n svyz. Vg'f nyzbfg arire qbar jryy.</spoiler>
Next post: less film, more Cannonball--and more in keeping with his namesake.
[Amazon.com]: With Strings/Jump for Joy
[Amazon.com]: Cannonball and Coltrane
Cannonball Adderley, on film
Cannonball Adderley -- The SleeperCannonball Adderley -- The Tune of the Hickory Stick
These two tracks are digitized from an LP which claims that it's Cannonball with John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, and Paul Chambers--but, well, I'm not sure I believe it. I'm inclined to think that some of the tracks are from the 1959 session with Coltrane but that others are from Cannonball's cover of Duke's Jump for Joy LP. The page at Amazon.com for the album, re-released with With Strings, has a sample of "The Tune of the Hickory Stick" which sounds exactly the same. (update: Girish confirms that "The Tune of the Hickory Stick" is from Jump for Joy, with Bill Evans, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton and Jimmy Cobb but not John Coltrane.)
I like "The Tune of the Hickory Stick" in spite of not knowing why it's a tune of a hickory stick. I like the strings, I like Cannonball's work around them, I like the structure, I like the phrasing. (update: boblinn says: "Taught to the tune of a hickory stick" is a variant lyric in the song, "School Days, School Days." The verse goes: "School days, school days,/ Dear old golden rule days./ Readin' and writin' and 'rithmetic,/ Taught to the tune of a hickory stick." This last line refers to being paddled or switched with a hickory twig. Not sure if there's a connection.) (Tuwa says: It's possible, given that Jump for Joy was intended to be an anti-Uncle Tom, anti-Porgy and Bess musical giving a truer reflection of black life in the South. Maybe I can find more about this at the library; I seem to have run my course with Google queries.)
"The Sleeper" is just what it sounds like. At first I was rather unimpressed with it, but it grows on you. Don't take it for what it's not: it's not revolutionary Coltrane or Cannonball; it won't blow the top off your head and douse your brainpan in kerosene. What it is is solid, well-played, promising early work; it's the kind of thing that would get a producer out scouting for talent to come backstage and strike up a conversation. In a Hollywood film that man would be David Axelrod, who'd be a wealthy well-dressed huckster, and Cannonball would be down on his luck, out of money, newly evicted, still burning with his childhood dreams of being a famous musician, but considering going back home to take up his old job. John Coltrane, if he'd been in the concert, would probably get a glance from Axelrod--a shot of him down a hall somewhere talking to someone, or maybe knocking back a shot of whiskey--then a quick dismissal with a comment that he's just "okay"--"but you, kid--you've got fire. You're going places." Which would be true about Adderley and horribly misleading about Coltrane, but Hollywood's hardly known for its historical accuracy.
I love movies, and I love tackling them through various lists of ones someone thinks people "should" see. There's Ebert's list, which tends towards the somber and slightly arty, and Maltin's, which tends towards the slapstick and family-friendly, and Videohound's, which tends towards the thoughtful, and TimeOut's, which probably lives in mortal fear of suggesting anything outside the canon. Then there's IMDb's, which for a certain subset (U.S./U.K., mostly anglophile, middle-class) tends towards pop appeal. Of all the various lists I've collected, I think the IMDb's has been the most consistently entertaining--not the most profound, or artful, or life-changing, not the most informative or historically accurate, but just the most consistently entertaining. They're also overwhelmingly male: of everything on their top 250 list as of the end of July there were 166 directors and co-directors (167 if you count the man whose work was all thrown away on Wizard of Oz) and only two of them were women. Unfortunately, that's a fair reflection of film-making itself.
There are other complaints you could make about the list (an under-representation of most "great" directors--Fellini, Truffaut--or even "great" works--Mitt Liv Som Hund, Au Revoir Les Enfants, An Angel at My Table; the elevation of pop entertainment or soulless technique over vision or brilliance), but the list isn't meant to be definitive. It's not anything other than a running poll of what a self-selecting population of internet-savvy people likes, with whatever implications that leaves.
You could approach that dogmatically, with a scowl and a bit of finger-wagging, but there's not much point to it. For the most part people would laugh at you, or suggest you pull the stick out of your ass (check out this MeFi thread for some on-point and amusing criticisms). Or you could approach that Hollywood/pop-film mindest with a sharp eye and a bit of wit, which is what Terry Pratchett has done in Moving Pictures.
I've been reading through the Discworld series in mostly chronological order (not always reading the next-published book, but always reading the next published book in the given sub-series, e.g. the Witches, or Death, or the Watch). The books have all been solid, but by the time Pratchett wrote Moving Pictures I think he'd loosened up a bit; the writing seemed easier, more relaxed and confident. The characters are well-drawn, the motivations inherent to the personalities, the conflicts arising naturally from conflicting goals. These are just requirements of solid fiction, but Pratchett's also a humorist, and a good one. Very few of the jokes are predictable; some of them are downright brilliant; and they're all on-point. Pratchett makes good work of early film history, moving a couple of films back a bit for inclusion (e.g. Blown Away, a film about a capricious Southern Belle in a Worlde Gonne Madde). On the whole the book is a quick read, and if some of the targets are too big to ignore, they're also worth skewering, and skewered beautifully.
... Most of this film discussion was prompted by seeing House of the Flying Daggers last night, which so far is probably my least favorite Zhang Yimou film. As far as I can tell, he's being infected by Hollywood. Or maybe I'm just more aware of Hollywood's influence than I was when I started watching his films. In any case, it's not a fun thing to witness. <multiple spoiler warning>Fcrpvsvpnyyl: jgs jvgu gur "abg ernyyl qrnq" ovgf? Vg pna jbex nf n cybg cbvag va mbzovr svyzf naq inzcver svyzf, naq vg jbexrq ornhgvshyyl va Qvnobyvdhr naq Oybbq Fvzcyr, ohg sbe gur zbfg cneg V guvax vg'f whfg qnzarq naablvat. V jbhyqa'g zvaq vs vg jrer arire ntnva hfrq ba n znva punenpgre arne gur pyvznk bs n svyz. Vg'f nyzbfg arire qbar jryy.</spoiler>
Next post: less film, more Cannonball--and more in keeping with his namesake.
[Amazon.com]: With Strings/Jump for Joy
[Amazon.com]: Cannonball and Coltrane
Labels: culture, jazz, movies, personal
posted by Tuwa @
13:39 | permalink |
0 comments
|
Friday, May 27, 2005:
When I was young I used to watch the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends cartoons on TV. One of them, the one with Swarm, always creeped me out, though I'd insist on watching it anyway. Swarm was, as anyone could guess, a swarm of killer bees with psychic powers. It was semi-intelligent, persistent, and, contrary to all known laws of physics and biology, could talk. What it said mostly was "Swarm," (or, more properly, "SWAAAAAAARRRM"), and this was what creeped me out. It could also control people and was, perhaps in retaliation for its brethren's years of making honey for human consumption, bent on world domination.
This Band of Bees is a bit different. I don't think they have any plans towards world-domination, though they could probably get farther on it than Swarm did. The Band of Bees are a group from the Isle of Wight who blend psychedelic rock with bits of blues and dub and Latin rhythms. This track is a buttery sweet bit of R&B off Sunshine HIt Me, loose and funky, with a heavy mid-70s vibe to it. But damn is it smooth. Prince, Andre 3000, and Sly and the Family Stone would all be proud to call this one theirs.
Their cover of Os Mutante's "A Minha Menina" takes the original (which was plenty good already) and kicks it up a notch (Said the Gramophone covered it last year); "No Trophy" is a great bit of dub; "This Town" sounds like a lazy Sunday afternoon with a squelching/bopping organ, brushed drums, an acoustic guitar, and an easy melody. And then, after a bit of a wild ride, the album closes on some mellow tracks. Nice. The album as a whole is innovative and solid.
[Sunshine Hit Me @ Amazon.com]
Band of Bees are getting along okay, but Swarm today would probably have a tough time of it. There's a mite attacking honey bees in the U.S.; it's killed about half the domestic beehives in the last year. I'm expecting a lot of food crops to go up in price, and soon.
we have a groove and we're not afraid to use it
A Band of Bees -- AngrymanWhen I was young I used to watch the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends cartoons on TV. One of them, the one with Swarm, always creeped me out, though I'd insist on watching it anyway. Swarm was, as anyone could guess, a swarm of killer bees with psychic powers. It was semi-intelligent, persistent, and, contrary to all known laws of physics and biology, could talk. What it said mostly was "Swarm," (or, more properly, "SWAAAAAAARRRM"), and this was what creeped me out. It could also control people and was, perhaps in retaliation for its brethren's years of making honey for human consumption, bent on world domination.
This Band of Bees is a bit different. I don't think they have any plans towards world-domination, though they could probably get farther on it than Swarm did. The Band of Bees are a group from the Isle of Wight who blend psychedelic rock with bits of blues and dub and Latin rhythms. This track is a buttery sweet bit of R&B off Sunshine HIt Me, loose and funky, with a heavy mid-70s vibe to it. But damn is it smooth. Prince, Andre 3000, and Sly and the Family Stone would all be proud to call this one theirs.
Their cover of Os Mutante's "A Minha Menina" takes the original (which was plenty good already) and kicks it up a notch (Said the Gramophone covered it last year); "No Trophy" is a great bit of dub; "This Town" sounds like a lazy Sunday afternoon with a squelching/bopping organ, brushed drums, an acoustic guitar, and an easy melody. And then, after a bit of a wild ride, the album closes on some mellow tracks. Nice. The album as a whole is innovative and solid.
[Sunshine Hit Me @ Amazon.com]
Band of Bees are getting along okay, but Swarm today would probably have a tough time of it. There's a mite attacking honey bees in the U.S.; it's killed about half the domestic beehives in the last year. I'm expecting a lot of food crops to go up in price, and soon.
Labels: funk, personal, RnB, tv
posted by Tuwa @
13:30 | permalink |
0 comments
|
Sunday, November 28, 2004:
So an agnostic, a lapsed Catholic, a Hindu, and two Christians sit watching Dogville, and the two taking most glee at the end are the Christians. Statistically insignificant, I know, but not an uncommon attitude in the southeastern U.S.: I keep meeting people who seem to think that the Old Testament is absolutely right about homosexuality being a sin and that Jesus is absolutely wrong about acceptance, humility, and turning the other cheek. Right-o. At some point Christ's teachings have been removed from Christianity; it's really quite curious.
I don't know much at all about Merrilee Rush, aside from her "Angel in the Morning" song ("Just call me angel of the morning, angel" etc.) and "What the World Needs Now," but after a bit of poking around online I found that her album has been reissued with this track as a bonus. And a bonus it is: the singer was dumped and, bitter and gleeful, puts it to her ex: "One day you'll find that someone; she'll say her love is true / and when you start to fall for her, she'll pull her rug on you."
This is the flipside to the omnipresent "Angel in the Morning" and for my money it's a much better track. Though I'm not sure if people do always reap what they sow, or should. And "my money" in this case equals 10¢ plus tax, how much I found the 45 for at the library booksale.
Collector's Choice reissue, with bonus tracks
reap what you sow
Merrilee Rush & The Turnabouts -- Reap What You SowSo an agnostic, a lapsed Catholic, a Hindu, and two Christians sit watching Dogville, and the two taking most glee at the end are the Christians. Statistically insignificant, I know, but not an uncommon attitude in the southeastern U.S.: I keep meeting people who seem to think that the Old Testament is absolutely right about homosexuality being a sin and that Jesus is absolutely wrong about acceptance, humility, and turning the other cheek. Right-o. At some point Christ's teachings have been removed from Christianity; it's really quite curious.
I don't know much at all about Merrilee Rush, aside from her "Angel in the Morning" song ("Just call me angel of the morning, angel" etc.) and "What the World Needs Now," but after a bit of poking around online I found that her album has been reissued with this track as a bonus. And a bonus it is: the singer was dumped and, bitter and gleeful, puts it to her ex: "One day you'll find that someone; she'll say her love is true / and when you start to fall for her, she'll pull her rug on you."
This is the flipside to the omnipresent "Angel in the Morning" and for my money it's a much better track. Though I'm not sure if people do always reap what they sow, or should. And "my money" in this case equals 10¢ plus tax, how much I found the 45 for at the library booksale.
Collector's Choice reissue, with bonus tracks
posted by Tuwa @
15:12 | permalink |
0 comments
|
Friday, September 17, 2004:
Joe McCoy -- If You Take Me Back
Big Joe McCoy was born in Jackson Mississippi in 1905. He was a vocalist and a slide guitarist, and played alone under a number of pseudonyms and with his brother Charlie under a number of different band names. Joe McCoy was for a time married to Memphis Minnie; she's a good musician in her own right, a powerful singer and a talented guitarist, and together they recorded the original "When the Levee Breaks."
I first heard Kansas Joe about ten years ago on a mix tape I got from my ex-girlfriend, under the name "Big Joe and His Washboard Band." At the time I just thought the tape was a nice conciliatory gesture; now I wonder if I was paying attention at all: every song on that tape is about heartbreak. The heartbreak here is offset by the jauntiness: the harmonica, the washboard, the swing feel, the brisk pacing. They all help to put on a strong face, stick out a proverbial chin; but the lyrics give the lie to it, making wild claims, pleading and desperate: "If you take me back I'll buy you a diamond ring / and if you don't, my life don't mean a thing."
A recent posting on The Tofu Hut pointed up the confusion about early blues musicians' names. There's a reason for it: many of them used pseudonyms, and sometimes two different musicians would use the same name.
Who's who
Amazon.com
(Or, if your tolerance for country blues is low,you can try More Music From Northern Exposure. The Les Paul/Mary Ford song on it is very good, but after track #3 I suddenly understood Bob Marley's scorn for Johnny Nash.)
"All I want is your love; you can throw my money away"
First, I'd like to thank The Tofu Hut, Said the Gramophone, Orbis Quintus, Fluxblog, Spoilt Victorian Child, and *sixeyes for the kind words. If you're coming here from somewhere else and you haven't yet checked them out, you should; they're all worth your time. Links on the left are all endorsements, and John at The Tofu Hut has an astonishing blogroll that's worth exploring.Joe McCoy -- If You Take Me Back
Big Joe McCoy was born in Jackson Mississippi in 1905. He was a vocalist and a slide guitarist, and played alone under a number of pseudonyms and with his brother Charlie under a number of different band names. Joe McCoy was for a time married to Memphis Minnie; she's a good musician in her own right, a powerful singer and a talented guitarist, and together they recorded the original "When the Levee Breaks."
I first heard Kansas Joe about ten years ago on a mix tape I got from my ex-girlfriend, under the name "Big Joe and His Washboard Band." At the time I just thought the tape was a nice conciliatory gesture; now I wonder if I was paying attention at all: every song on that tape is about heartbreak. The heartbreak here is offset by the jauntiness: the harmonica, the washboard, the swing feel, the brisk pacing. They all help to put on a strong face, stick out a proverbial chin; but the lyrics give the lie to it, making wild claims, pleading and desperate: "If you take me back I'll buy you a diamond ring / and if you don't, my life don't mean a thing."
A recent posting on The Tofu Hut pointed up the confusion about early blues musicians' names. There's a reason for it: many of them used pseudonyms, and sometimes two different musicians would use the same name.
Who's who
Amazon.com
(Or, if your tolerance for country blues is low,you can try More Music From Northern Exposure. The Les Paul/Mary Ford song on it is very good, but after track #3 I suddenly understood Bob Marley's scorn for Johnny Nash.)
Labels: country blues, personal
posted by Tuwa @
01:40 | permalink |
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Friday, September 10, 2004:
So that's my collection: disorganized, erratic, and impulsive, and I'm sure it has a few holes big enough to drive a semi through. About this site: I don't know what I'm doing with it, but it's live now; I've taken off the training wheels; John from the Tofu Hut gave me a friendly push, and I'm ready to roar down the street and crash into the first mailbox.
Hello.
I was looking through my old tape collection the other day and I found one that had Cypress Hill on one side and Monty Python on the other. There was another labeled "Ramones Mania," but I'd recorded over it: a local band (jazz/psychedelic rock) on one side, Afropop on the other.So that's my collection: disorganized, erratic, and impulsive, and I'm sure it has a few holes big enough to drive a semi through. About this site: I don't know what I'm doing with it, but it's live now; I've taken off the training wheels; John from the Tofu Hut gave me a friendly push, and I'm ready to roar down the street and crash into the first mailbox.
Labels: personal
posted by Tuwa @
11:05 | permalink |
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