When It Hits You Feel No Pain

Dead Prez “Hip-Hop (Live in Brooklyn, 9/14/2004)” – There’s a lot of jaw-dropping musical highlights from Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, and I’m sad to say that many of them didn’t end up on the official soundtrack. Hopefully someday we’ll get the double/triple disc deluxe version that ought to exist, but for now, this will do. Without having to compete with showstoppers by Kanye West and the reunited Fugees, the underdogs in the film get to shine, and in the case of Jill Scott and Dead Prez, stand out as revelations in the context of a live show. I can’t remember if it is The Roots backing up Dead Prez on this cut, but whoever it is, they transform “Hip-Hop” into a stomping monster, especially when they come back in after stic.man’s a cappella verse so heavy that it ought to make a thousand rock bands resign in shame.

As for the film, I just can’t imagine that anyone is going to make a movie that I’m going to love as much in this year. It’s almost enough that it features Dave Chappelle and an all-star roster of performers working at the top of their game, but filmmaker Michel Gondry pulls it all together in a way that I think surpasses every other film based around live music that I’ve ever seen aside from Wattstax. Gondry weaves back and forth through the film between private and public performances, in every scene capturing the unique thrill of the situation. Though it can be frustrating when he cuts out of a performance before it’s over, the editing is generally top notch, and pitch perfect in its sense of timing and narrative impact. You don’t even need to know the backstory of The Roots’ “You Got Me” to pick up on the fact that Erykah Badu and Jill Scott’s shared performance of the song is a special occasion, and similarly, you probably could go your whole life without ever having heard of The Fugees and still have been sucked into the anticipation of the moment when Lauryn Hill starts in on her verse of “Nappy Heads.” Gondry and his team put you in the moment so well that it’s almost difficult to imagine that actually being there could be as good as the final product of the film. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Casey Dienel @ Piano’s 3/11/2006
Baby James / new song / Dr. Monroe / new song / The Coffee Beanery / Embroidery / new song / Everything / Tundra / Cut Your Hair / new song / The La La Song

Casey Dienel “Everything” – Somewhere in the time just after I posted “Dr. Monroe” at the end of February and before seeing her play live this past weekend, I read Dienel’s MySpace page, which revealed her to be a very big fan of Pavement. This was surprising for maybe two seconds, and then everything that I liked about her music sort of snapped into focus with that frame of reference. She has the same sort of effortless melodicism, and the lyrics are informed by a similar sense of humor and wordplay. I’d originally pegged it as a Steely Dan sort of thing, but no, it’s Pavement. Of course! Seeing her perform, it was all the more obvious – her stage presence is similarly casual and low key, and she even sort of looks like Stephen Malkmus as a 21 year old girl with a piano. (Please do not read that last sentence as “Malkmus in drag.” She’s a doll.) As you can see above, Dienel actually did play a Pavement cover, and it kinda kills me that I can’t share a recording of it with you right now because it’s definitely the best non-instrumental cover of a Pavement song that I’ve ever heard. In some ways, it’s rather similar to that Mark Ronson cover of “Just” – it makes no attempt to ape Malkmus’ miles and miles of style, and simply aims to emphasize the timeless qualities of the song by putting it in the context of a genre that the original was referencing, however indirectly or sideways.

As for “Everything,” it’s become my favorite song on her record, and I sort of regret not posting it straight away, but it’s really just one of those occasions when a recording sort of snuck up on me over the course of a few weeks. And those weeks were awful, by the way. As my worries piled up and my stress levels increased, this gentle, whimsical little song was there to calm me down and lift my spirits, and now I’m pretty much bonded with it forever. (Click here to buy it from Hush Records.)