17 posts tagged “music”

Hi there.  I'm back, after not posting since April.  My life has been complicated for the last few months, both personally and professionally.  But it's not something I ever wanted to write about; this was never an autobiographical, let-it-all-hang-out type of blog.  One thing that's really helped me in these difficult few months was a steady stream of good, new music.  So for a while,  this will mainly be a music blog.

And why don't we start off with a new random ten?  From the mp3 player:

1.  The Absence of Your Company - Kim Richey - from Chinese Boxes.

2.  Where Will I Be - Emmylou Harris - from Wrecking Ball

3.  Shakey Ground - The Temptations - from The Ultimate Temptations

4.  Golden Earrings - Wes Montgomery - from Impressions: The Verve Jazz Sides

5.  Paris - James McMurtry - from Americana Master Series: The Best of the Sugar Hill Years

6.  Real World - The Bangles - from Children of Nuggets

7.  Frosty - Albert Collins - from Truckin' With Albert Collins

8.  London's Burning - The Clash - from The Clash

9.  Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division - from No Thanks!  (video: Ian Curtis biopic) 

10. Kid Gloves - Voxtrot - from Voxtrot 

1,  Colorado - Stephen Stills

2.  Believe In You - Amy Rigby

3.  Broken Arm - Winterpills (available as a free download at the SXSW website - highly recommended)

4.  Second Brain - Kaki King (different track available at SXSW - wonderful guitarist)

5.  Here Comes the Night - Them featuring Van Morrison

6.  A Fool For You - Ray Charles

7.  Pickney Gal - Desmond Dekker

8.  Exilio (Exile) - Thievery Corporation

9.  O Silencio du Guitarra - Mariza

10.  Without You - Kim RIchey

New Magnetic Wonder

The Apples in Stereo

There's a fine power pop album in here, but you have to dig through some layers of whimsy to get to it.   The Apples have some catchy songs and put them across boldly,but they indulge themselves too much, mostly in between-track nonsense - instrumental fragments, unfinished-sounding songs, synthesizer doodles.  Also, there are production quirks that could be disposed with, particularly on the vocals.  Why would anyone use a vocoder in this era?  I didn't like it with the Electric Light Orchestra, and I don't like it now.  The Apples seem to continously say "Look how eccentric we are!" like that;s an added value.  I'm too old for that crap, and the Apples should be too - they've been making records since the early 1990's.

My friend Kevin emailed me about this album, pointing out another interesting aspect:  "It is interesting, though, that they seem to record their albums with all the record meters tweaked way up too high, as if you’re listening to them on an old stereo system where all or most music came through as if the volume on all equipment was cranked way up.  I used to get that impression when I listened to WLIR (a once-great Long Island radio station) at times, so if you’re a fan of this band and you buy this new album...don’t think that something’s wrong with your player."  His comment reminded me of this wikipedia article on "Loudness Wars" ; the tendency to master or remaster albums at high volume levels, despite the distortion and lack of dynamics that results.

Here's  a link to the reason I began investigating the Apples, Robert Schneider's appearance on the Colbert Report.

  Hi, I'm back.  Trying to get back into the habit of blogging, with some record reviews and a random ten.

West

Lucinda Williams

This is the record I've been hoping Lucinda would put out for some time - melancholy without drowning in self-pity, meticulously crafted but seeming to come straight from the heart, and sung without the exaggerated twang LW has been affecting recently.  Her best since Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and maybe better,  (Speaking of Car Wheels, there's an interesting deluxe edition which came out last year, with a extra live disc of a concert mainly repeating CWOAGR's songs - fine alternate versions that help me listen to these familiar songs with fresh ears.  A good way to buy it if you don't already have it; if you don't have any Lucinda, though, I'd start with the self-titled  one - which, shockingly, looks to be out of print.

The Sermon On Exposition Blvd. [Fold-out Digipak with 14 page booklet]

Rickie Lee Jones

Rickie Lee Jones' new album is very experimental   and sometimes difficult. Read the story behind it here - briefly, the vocals are mostly improvised, taking off from the words of Jesus, though you usually couldn't tell.  Forget about ABAB verse forms, or choruses - Rickie's stream of consciousness melodies and lyrics take some getting used to, but is worth the effort.  The music behind it is more rock than she usually does, kind of resembling the more folk-rockish moments of the Velvet Underground.   

All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

Explosions in the Sky

Explosions in the Sky are an instrumental guitar band, best known for their work on the soundtrack to Friday Night Lights.  That's probably their most accessible work, because the tracks are short - on their own albums, tracks can go on for 12 minutes or more, and need that space to develop.  The intensity rises and falls, crescendos crash and then quieter moments take over.  It's all very hypnotic and enjoyable; recommended for listeners who like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, but also like rock'n'roll.

And this week's random ten:

1. The Good's Gone - The Who 

2. Drivin' Wheel - Junior Parker

3. Do You Realize?? -The Flaming Lips (video link)

4. Locked Out - Crowded House (video link)

5. Hard Times - Ray Charles

6. Sing Me A Song - Willie Nile

7. Love & Affection - Joan Armatrading

8. Paris Train - Beth Orton

9. Persuasion - Richard & Teddy Thompson

10. Be Here Now - Mason Jennings 

Recently, in a comment, map asked my opinion of the lyrics of the Flaming Lips song "A Spoonful Weighs A Ton," from the album The Soft Bulletin.  These lyrics, in fact:

And though they were sad

They rescued everyone
They lifted up the sun
A spoonful weighs a ton
Giving more than they had
The process had begun
A million came from one
The limits now were none
Being drunk on their plan, they lifted up the sun

Yelling as hard as they can
The doubters all were stunned
Heard louder than a gun
The sound they made was love.

map thought this might be a song about the explosion of the first atomic bomb.  It seems a reasonable interpretation at first, except that it seems an oddly positive portrayal of the event.  I mean, the sound they made was love?  They rescued everyone?  Then I noticed that the image of lifting up the sun appeared in another song on the album, "Waiting For A Superman."  Once I saw that, I began seeing connections between other songs, and realized that "Spoonful" could only be interpreted in the context of the entire album.

The Soft Bulletin is a concept album, whose concept is vague and shady, but definitely has to deal with science and scientists, the origin of the universe, and the search for humanity's place in it.  On the opening track, "Race For The Prize," "Two scientists were racing for the good of all mankind...locked in heated battle for the cure that is their prize."  On the next track, "A Spoonful Weighs a Ton," the scientists seem to have finished their work - "They rescued everyone, they lifted up the sun, a spoonful weighs a ton."  A spoonful of what weighs a ton? It suggests to me the creation of a black hole - a collapsed sun -perhaps a small one which, as I understand it, would exist only for a few seconds, but would exert a massive gravitational pull.  On track 3, "The Spark That Bled (The Softest Bullet Ever Shot)," things start going wrong with the scientists' work, as a witness (one of the scientists?) is injured - "I accidentally touched my head and noticed I had been bleeding... What was it, I thought, that struck me... the softest bullet ever shot."  Some kind of particle has entered the narrator's head and started an ecstatic reaction - "I stood up and said Yeah!!!...And it seemed to cause a chain reaction, it had momentum, it was gaining traction."

"The Spiderbite Song" strikes me as a weird love song that they had lying around and wanted  to put on the album somewhere.  But love is not outside the album's concerns, as we shall see.  "Buggin'" depicts love as a particles in the air, buzzing around like bugs, tantalizing humans.  Are these the same particles that were released by the scientists' experiments?  Then we get to track 6, whose subtitle is the clearest statement of the Lips' intentions we are likely to get - "What is The Light? (An untested hypothesis suggesting that the chemical (in our brains) by which we are able to experience the sensation of being in love is the same chemical that caused the "Big Bang" that was the birth of the accelerating universe)." The union of the cosmic and the intimate, physics and psychology.  After the instrumental "The Observer," we are "Waiting for a Superman" to save us by lifting up the sun; "Suddenly Everything Has Changed" as the enlightenment of the previous tracks becomes widespread; "The Gash (Battle hymn of the wounded mathematician)" depicts a wounded humanity that has not been yet been saved by the scientists; "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate" has lyrics that are largely just the title phrase repeated; it may depict the moment of mass enlightenment in which humanity is saved.  After that, another instrumental, reprises of "Race for the Prize" and "Waiting For A Superman," and we're out. 

In the world of science, there are two areas where there are still vast mysteries waiting to be solved - the cosmic scale, and the scale of the tiniest particles.  It may be that the solving one may lead to the solution of the other - after all, scientists believe that the entire universe once existed as a tiny point that massively expanded.  The Soft Bulletin is an album that suggests that these mysteries may also help unravel the mystery of the human mind, which somehow duplicates, in a small scale, the structure of the larger universe.  Solving the mysteries of the cosmos, then, could "save" humanity, by showing us who we are. 

After the Rain

Irma Thomas

LOS ANGELES, February 12, 2007 - On the morning after the Grammy Awards, the music industry is still excitedly abuzz with the biggest story to  emerge - Irma Thomas' first Grammy in her 49-year career, for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

Ms. Thomas, known as "The Soul Queen of New Orleans," won the award for her album After the Rain, released last year on Rounder Records.  The album, a mixture of blues, R&B and Americana, was recorded with a crack unit of New Orleans musicians, playing mostly acoustically.  It was recorded three months after Hurricane Katrina hit, and although the songs were chosen long beforehand, the knowledge that Ms. Thomas lost her house, her nightclub and most of her possessions in that disaster lends an even more poignant air to songs like "In the Middle of it All," "I Count the Tears," and of course "Shelter in the Rain."  Ms. Thomas, who will turn 66 this Saturday, gives a sturdy, heartfelt performance throughout, showing little sign of age.

In related news, Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, apologized today for numerous crimes against good music which occurred during Sunday's telecast, including giving the James Brown tribute number to Christina Aguilera; allowing Mary J. Blige to wreck Lorraine Ellison's "Stay With Me"; forcing Ornette Coleman to utter the words "James Blunt"; and making the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the performing act with the most appeal for 14-year-old boys, take the stage after 11:00 PM on a school night.

Other significant Grammys awarded include:

Best Traditional Blues Album - Ike Turner, Risin' with the Blues.

Best Traditional Folk Album - Bruce Springsteen, We Shall Overcome - the Seeger Sessions

Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album -Bob Dylan, Modern Times

Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance - Bob Dylan, "Someday Baby"

Best Rock Instrumental Performance - The Flaming Lips, "The Wizard Turns On"

Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical - The Flaming Lips, At War With The Mystics

Best Contemporary Jazz Album - Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, The Hidden Land

Best Jazz Vocal Album - Nancy Wilson, Turned to Blue

Best Latin Rock, Alternative or Urban Album - Mana, Amar es Combatir

Best Contemporary World Music Album - The Klezmatics, Wonder Wheel

Best Comedy Album - Lewis Black, The Carnegie Hall Performance

Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra) - Olivier Messiaen, Oiseaux Exotiques,  with Angelin Chang, piano

Best Short-Form Music Video - OK Go, "Here It Goes Again".

It's been a while since I did a random ten.  This week, my mp3 player tries to make me look old - 4 songs from the 1960's, one from 1970 (the Johnny Cash song) and a Beatles cover.  I really do have current music on this thing, somewhere.

1. Norwegian Wood - Patricia Barber

2. Going Through The Motions (live) - Aimee Mann

3. Right To Be Wrong - Joss Stone (video link)

4. Under the Milky Way - The Church

5. Get Yourself Another Another Fool - Sam Cooke

6. Child of the Moon - The Rolling Stones

7. Missing (Terry Todd remix) - Everything But The Girl

8. Get Yourself Together - Small Faces (video link)

9. Chain of Fools - Aretha Franklin

10. Flesh and Blood - Johnny Cash

The Cash song is just awesome, with incredible lyrics.  Here's a version of it by Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow and Mary-Chapin Carpenter at a Cash tribute concert:

Flesh and Blood

FLESH AND BLOOD by Johnny Cash

Beside a Singin' Mountain Stream
Where the Willow grew

Where the Silver Leaf of Maple
Sparkled in the Mornin' Dew
I braided Twigs of Willows
Made a String of Buckeye Beads;
But Flesh And Blood need Flesh And Blood
And you're the one I need
Flesh And Blood need Flesh And Blood
And you're the one I need.

I leaned against a Bark of Birch
And I breathed the Honey Dew
I saw a North-bound Flock of Geese
Against a Sky of Baby Blue
Beside the Lily Pads
I carved a Whistle from a Reed;
Mother Nature's quite a Lady
But you're the one I need
Flesh And Blood need Flesh And Blood
And you're the one I need.

A Cardinal sang just for me
And I thanked him for the Song
Then the Sun went slowly down the West
And I had to move along
These were some of the things

On which my Mind and Spirit feed;
But Flesh And Blood need Flesh And Blood
And you're the one I need
Flesh And Blood need Flesh And Blood
And you're the one I need.

So when this Day was ended
I was still not satisfied
For I knew ev'rything I touched
Would wither and would die
And Love is all that will remain
And grow from all these Seed;

Mother Nature's quite a Lady
But you're the one I need
Flesh And Blood need Flesh And Blood
And you're the one I need.

Thanks to the video game Guitar Hero, my son Ryan has become enamored of several classic rock songs, most of all Iron Man by Black Sabbath.  I'm sure most of you can hear that groaning opening chord right now.  It's featured in a Nissan Truck commercial, it's become a staple of high school marching bands, VH1 named it the best metal song of all time.

So, tell me - what's it about?

Yeah, that never occurred to me either.  Sometimes, that's not a question you want to ask; a catchy song can be ruined if you notice, on the hundredth hearing, that the words are stupid.  But when Ryan asked me to get him a copy of the song, I felt compelled to check out the lyrics, to make sure they weren't going to poison his 12-year-old mind.  Turns out it's a mini-science fiction epic:

Iron Man - Black Sabbath

In the early eighties, I lived on Long Island, worked in  New York City, and did what I could to take advantage of the city's music scene.  One of my best friends, John Lee, introduced me to a guy named Eric Schmuckler, who was one of those passionate music lovers that you come across rarely.  While I just liked music a lot - OK, obsessively - Eric was the kind of fan who really made it part of his life, who seemed  to know something about every worthwhile kind of music, and loved to share his knowledge.  After I moved away, I heard from him occasionally in the email circle of my NYC friends - his email address was "recordlovr".

Last week, John Lee emailed me, and said that Eric had died of cancer.  He was actually diagnosed ten years ago, and at that time he was given six months to live.  Cancer didn't know what it was getting into.  Eric fought for a decade, and his love for music, as well as his wife and two children, gave him the strength and energy.  John wrote "his love for music was unstoppable; despite his impending fate, he was on ebay ordering cds, shopping for tickets to Broadway shows, having a ball editing his  own obituary.

This week's random ten is for Eric; but first, here's a song that makes me think of him, by the Ramones, a band with some other tough New Yorkers who died too young:

Ramones - Strength To Endure

1.  California 2005 - Phantom Planet

2.  If It Takes All Night - Roxy Music

3.  Bohemian Like You - The Dandy Warhols

4.  Anastasia - Elliott Murphy

5.  Sweet and Dandy Toots and the Maytals

6.  Love > Building on Fire - Talking Heads

7.  Hand of Fate - The Rolling Stones

8.  Real Love - David Gray

9.  Cowards in a Brave New World - Kim Richey

10. When the Rain Starts Falling - Johnny Copeland