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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
ESSPLODE
Avey Tare & Panda Bear
Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished/Danse Manitee
Fat Cat / Caroline : 2003
[Buy It]
I WON'T HURT YOU
West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Part One
Reissue : Sundaze : 2001
[Buy It]
BIRD IN HAND
Lee "Scratch" Perry/Upsetters
Return of the Super Ape
Reissue : Cleopatra: 2000
[Buy It]
MR. BROWN
Bob Marley
Kaya [Import]
Reissue : Double Pleasure: 2005
[Buy It]
Meet Tony Tost. Tony's one of my poet friends. He's very good, I'm sorry to say. He has the loveliest beard. I think that gives him the edge. Tony's first book, Invisible Bride, won the Walt Whitman prize in 2003. If you like rather strange and searching prose poems, you should buy it right away. Tony used to co-edit a poetry journal called Octopus. He's been laying low from editing for a minute, but is about to return with a new venture called Fascicle. Clearly it's going to own. You can check out Tony's audio blog, which features poets reading their work, here. You can find his poems everywhere, the Internet is just lousy with them and you know how to Google. That's all from me, here's Tony. - Brian Howe
Hello there, my name's Tony Tost and I'm a guest postman today. Brian asked me to contribute a few songs and a little write-up just in case you're wondering what the obscure poets are listening to these days.
So obsession number one is this Animal Collective number called "Essplode" from Danse Manatee. Am I nuts, or does this sound a little like Prince backed by Sun Ra's Arkestra? No critic am I but let me point to the two things which, in unison, make this an endlessly listenable song: that effortlessly catchy (and sexy!) vocal, and the loosey-goosey almost novelty percussion touches.
Another summer staple is a track that's been one of my favorites since I first found it at a glorious garage sale in Ava, Missouri about 10 years ago while I was working at a grocery store there. I still have dreams about this garage sale: the Nazz, Soft Machine, Pearls Before Swine, along with a bunch of Neil Young, Black Sabbath and so on. Probably there was a lot more stuff there that I just didn't recognize at the time (I was 19). My favorite record that I picked up was the debut album by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band: a great mixed bag, with some subpar Zappa imitations (about as low as rock gets for me), but also some shimmering pop. But by far the best song is "I Won't Hurt You" - minimal, haunting, direct as fuck. I've been trying to match the vibe of this song in my writing for years, sweetly sincere but still somehow uncomfortably off as well.
This is the summer I finally "got" reggae and dub. Is it just part of the aging process? I'm just up to my ankles right now in this stuff, but I'm pretty hooked. For individual songs, my two major favorites are Lee Perry's "Bird in Hand" and Bob Marley's "Mr. Brown." The Lee Perry song, as a composition, I think is stunning: the gorgeous, otherworldly vocal that gradually acquires an increasingly compelling instrumentation that then takes over the track and rides it to a fadeout that really does seem to imply a sweet infinity. Marley's track was introduced to me by my buddy Robert Bell, who placed it on one of his famous seasonal mix CDs. I didn't know Marley was ever this lo-fi. What struck me immediately was the similarities between the droning keys on this track and a lot of what's been of interest coming out of the excellent Arkansas underground music scene. Someday there'll be a killer comp put together of all the great Little Rock and Fayetteville bands that almost no one outside that scene has heard of yet. I'll post a handful of them in my next visit.
posted by Brian
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