Archive for 2002

I Don't Wanna Come Back Down From This Cloud!

It's really amazing how much most of the new Folk Implosion album sounds like Bush's Sixteen Stone, to the point that as a listener, I kept expecting for Lou Barlow to start belting out Bush choruses. Honestly, a song like "Fuse" would actually be a lot better if he did start singing the "Come Down" chorus in the middle, it would at least break up the tedium a bit. I wonder if their label is planning on 'working' any of this record for Clearchannel radio, I can definitely imagine the sort of people who dig Tool and System Of A Down getting into songs like "Brand Of Skin" and "Creature Of Salt". I can't say that I'm really into this record - it's as good as this sort of thing gets, I suppose; but it is still pretty dull, second-rate 95-vintage post-grunge.

If The Sky Don't Have Eyes, Tell Me, Why Does It Cry?

I'll put some more information about these tracks up a little later on, in the meantime enjoy these new mp3s. I'll be keeping this batch up til around Friday of this week.

Common (featuring Jill Scott) - "I Am Music" This is taken from Common's excellent new album Electric Circus. It was very hard to narrow down which song to put up here to just one song - I came very close to picking his collaboration with Laetita Sadier "New Wave", or the successful attempts at fusing psychedelic rock with hip hop on "Aquarius" or "Electric Wire Hustle Flower". I ended up choosing "I Am Music", which rather remarkably integrates Big Band jazz, sci-fi whirrrrrrs, and Common's rapping; and is probably the catchiest and most accessable number on the LP.

I'm really happy to hear an album like Electric Circus, because normally when hip hop artists make efforts to incorporate rock and roll elements into their music, it seems that even in the best results, rock music is reduced to being little more than loud metal guitars and aggressive drumming. A particularly egregious example would be N.E.R.D.'s "Rock Star", which is a song that seems to place ironic quotations around every nu-metal guitar crunch and hollered lyric. Now, I don't have a big problem with irony, and "Rock Star" in particular is a pretty clever piss-take on white corporate rap-metal, but it still seems sort of unfortunate that so many artists seem to think that big dumb metal is the only kind of rock music that mixes well with hip hop MCs.

Electric Circus is a very brave album - many of the songs sound completely unlike any other hip hop that's gone before it - most certainly there's nothing else in the world quite like "New Wave". I only wish that song went so far as to make the music over the verses sound as much like Stereolab as on the Laetitia-sung chorus, but that's a small complaint considering how gorgeous the layers of keyboards are throughout the song. Electric Circus is a great achievement, but I hope that this is just the beginning, and that more MCs follow Common's lead and begin to raid indie rock, prog, psych, punk, and krautrock for all they are worth in the future. Because after all, why not?

Wendy Rene - "Bar-B-Q" It may not be barbeque weather in most of the world right now, least of all in New York, where we're still dealing with all of that Christmas day snow; but it's always a good time to hear this peppy Stax-Volt gem. Ribs and corn-on-the-cob are optional, of course.

Barbara Acklin - "Just Ain't No Love" I've been listening to this song all the time lately, on repeat for up to 30 minutes at a time. This is pretty much a flawless late 60s r+b tune, about as great as pop music gets as far as I'm concerned.

Soft Cell - "Tainted Dub" As mentioned a few months back, here is the fairly rare dub mix of Soft Cell's big hit cover of "Tainted Love" and "Where Did Our Love Go?". Good stuff.

Here To Eternity

I've been thinking a lot about what Joe Strummer's death means to me since my last post. I haven't been a Clash fan for very long, the band has been mostly a very recent revelation for myself. This time last year, I didn't give the band much thought at all, honestly. So, in a very selfish way, Strummer's music was mostly very new to me, and I'm upset that I'll never get to see him perform. Another far more personal thing that's been bothering me about his death is that he was only a couple years younger than either of my parents, so it also speaks to my growing fear about either of them suddenly passing away in a way similar to Joe Strummer. I wonder if Strummer and his family even knew that he was ill, because these sort of sudden surprise heart attacks are not uncommon, and its certainly not without precedent in my own family.

I also wonder what my reaction would be like if a musician for whom I have an even greater affection died - like, say, a member of Sonic Youth or Stephen Malkmus or Bob Pollard. If I'm crushed and moping around after the deaths of Joe Strummer and Mary Hansen, what kind of state could I be in if it were someone whose work I'm far more emotionally involved in?

Anyway, Jody Beth Rosen has written something far more articulate about this than anything I can manage lately, so check that out if you've got a few minutes.

Oh - I'd like to know exactly what this person means by "Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that Punk's First Wave is fading away...and not burning out." How exactly should have Joe Strummer and Joey Ramone died, may I ask? (Barring the obvious answer 'not so fucking young!') How should they have "burned out"? I'd hate to think that Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain are better models of how to die.

R.I.P. Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer died yesterday of a heart attack at age 50. This is very depressing, he was a great songwriter, a very intelligent man, and still very young. In tribute to his passing, I've put up an mp3 of a live recording of The Clash performing "(White Man In) Hammersmith Palais" in New York City in 1981, so that any visitors who don't understand the significance of this loss can hear the man perform one of his best tunes at his peak.

I've Got Something That's RED HOT

Thanks to the generosity of Phantroll from Waking Ear, I will now be offering a new set of MP3s every few days for your enjoyment. I'm going to keep this first set up til just before New Year's, because I know the traffic on this site will be down, and I want to give as many folks a chance to get these songs before I put more up. Once the holiday season is over, I'll probably be changing the songs every three days or so.

In this first batch of songs, we have "Slowly" by Tricky, which I think is one of the man's best songs, but is inexplicably only found on the soundtrack to the dreary Sandra Bullock/Ben Affleck film Forces Of Nature. This is one of my great frustrations with Tricky - I don't think the guy has a good sense of what his best work is. This song is an outtake from the Angels With Dirty Faces LP, which was mostly a murky, tuneless affair; and though I can see how this song could not have fit in with what he intended that album to be, I can't help but wonder why he'd leave a song so sublime on the cutting room floor. As it stands, "Slowly" is one of the sexiest songs he ever produced with Martina Topley-Bird, and will surely appeal to anyone who is a fan of the Maxinquaye and Pre-Millenium Tension albums.

"Something We Got" by The Minx is an out-of-print funky soul number from the mid-60s, which unfortunately hasn't been released on cd yet, but is available here for you due to my own craftiness and initiative. It's just an irresistable song; with an excellent bassline, funky keyboard solos, background party shouts, and a memorable vocal hook. This song is way too good to be obscure. Pass it around.

Another song which is too good to be obscure, but thankfully has been reissued in recent years, is Smiley Lewis' "That Certain Door". Lewis was an amazing r&b vocalist, and this is a fine example of the man's vocal gifts.

Finally, I've got a performance of "Jo Jo's Jacket" by The Jicks in Malmö, Sweden on February 10th, 2001. Stephen Malkmus was in good spirits for this whole show, but I think "Jo Jo's" is the highlight of the set, with him explaining the origins of the song's title in the introduction, and a silly approximation of the Yul Brynner sample at the beginning of the song. It's a very enthusiastic reading of one of the most joyous songs that Malkmus has ever written; and heck, it also includes a couple lines in the middle about Christmas, making it the closest thing he's ever come to a Christmas tune.

So Merry Christmas, everyone. If you want to, feel free to email me about the songs (or any downloading problems) by emailing the address on the sidebar to the left.

Singing The Blues

If anyone out there can help me find a place where I can find Mary McCreary's 1974 album Jezebel on cd or mp3 (old vinyl records are useless to me, unfortunately), I would greatly appreciate it if you contacted me.

To Signal Kin

Though I am bored to death with the glut of year-end lists clogging up the majority of the music blogs that I read at the moment, I would like to point out that there are a few that I think are very smart and well written in spite of my rather extreme distaste for the very concept of such lists. Kyle Whelliston of the Intersection blog has put together a list of records that I'm mostly disinterested in, but his writing is consistently on-point and enthusiastic, and he's kind enough to supply an MP3 from each album on his list. My favorite bit is his write-up for Sonic Youth's Murray Street which offers a 9/11-centric take on the record that I think may be a bit of a stretch, but is still rather convincing. Meanwhile, Fred Sollinger over at Vain, Selfish, and Lazy has a list of pop songs which I mostly quite like a lot, with commentary that verges stylistically on being the kind of Village Voice critspeak that I tend to loathe, but somehow manages never to be anywhere near as dumb or as obnoxious as the average Voice review. The highlight for me thus far has been Fred's review of the Fischerspooner remix of Kylie Minogue's "Come Into My World".

"Give Me Your Tired, Poor, And Huddled Masses / You Know They're Yearning To Be FREE!"

Right now, U2log is offering an mp3 of Bono performing a brand new U2 song, "An American Prayer" with a cd player of the backing music and a tone deaf choir as accompaniment. It's a thoroughly mediocre and bland song, and the lyrics are full of obnoxious "Gee whiz! Ain't America great!" cliches. It's absolutely ridiculous, honestly. It sounds like a blatant grab for post 9-11 jingo dollars, I can't think of this as anything other than a purely cynical move on their part. To think that they went from Zooropa to this in ten years just breaks my heart. I really hope that this song ends up on the cutting room floor, and not on the next album.

Recommended Songs Without Explanations

I would put up mp3s if I could, folks...

The Waitresses "Christmas Wrapping"
James Brown "Santa Claus Goes Straight To The Ghetto"
Erma Franklin "I Get The Sweetest Feeling"
Daniel Johnston "I Saw Her Standing There"
Nas "One Love (Large Professor remix)"
Latyrx "Off With Their Heads"
MF Doom "The M.I.C."
Kool G Rap "Money In The Bank"
Notorious B.I.G. "Unbelievable"
Eddie Fisher "Two By Two"
Billy Butler "The Right"
Judy Freeman "Hold On"

This Ain't Yr Archetypal Street Sound

I've finally come around to liking The Streets' Original Pirate Material over the weekend. I remember that when I first heard it over the summer, I had thought it was some kind of annoying joke, but perhaps that was because I didn't listen to it as an album. Maybe it just took me some time to get over how unique it was, I know I'm not alone in this being an acquired taste. I still feel that the sung bits are very lame - is that Mike Skinner singing, or someone else? Whoever it is, they really ought to stop.

I think the thing that made it easier to swallow was that I've been listening to Nas' Illmatic a lot lately, and when I listened to Original Pirate Material late Saturday night I noticed that the tone of those two records were actually quite similar. I don't think Original Pirate Material is anywhere near as great as Illmatic, but it's definitely a very good album, and I feel embarassed for not noticing it sooner. In a lot of ways, it's like the record I've been wanting Tricky to make ever since Pre-Millenial Tension; and since it seems unlikely Tricky will embrace hip hop and r+b again, this will have to do.

News From Noisewhere

I can't verify if this is the real deal, but this is the Pig Lib tracklisting that has been passed along to me.

01. Water And A Seat
02. Ramp Of Death
03. (Do Not Feed The) Oysters
04. Vanessa From Queens
05. Sheets
06. Animal Midnight
07. Dark Wave
08. News From Noisewhere
09. Ladies To Men
10. One Percent Of One
11. Tambourine Wife

I'm guessing that based on the fact that "Us" is 'track 11' on the mp3 download from Matador, that "Us" = "Tambourine Wife".

(Note - I've been told that there are in fact 12 tracks on the album...)

That's When He Should've Reached For His Revolver?

Moby Attacked!

Do Eminem and Russ have alibis?

Seriously, that's one way to prove that yr hard, eh? Jumping a skinny Christian vegan pacifist with a few of your buddies after he signs some autographs. The mace seems a little over the top, don't ya think?

Poor guy.

That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate!

Thanks to the nice people on the Pavement mailing list, I've been able to correct/fill in the blanks on my Jicks Warsaw setlist. It's still not complete, so if anyone can email me the corrections, that would be extremely rad.

Special thanks to "Hunter" in particular, who was the first to get the corrections to me, but also delivered the unfortunate news that "Memory Pulls" will most likely not be on Pig Lib, which kinda broke my heart.