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Wednesday, February 27, 2008
KOALA SLEEP ON
Leon Fallon
Outback Aussie
Caspian Productions : 2007
[Buy it]
KOALA LA LA
The Wiggles
Wiggly Safari
Koch Records : 2003
[Buy it]
RETURN OF THE PANTHER (ft. Mustafa Akbar)
Thunderball
Cinescope
Eighteenth Street Lounge Music : 2006
[Buy it]
PANTHERS (Tony Galvin Remix - Instrumental)
Tony Galvin
from Panthers 12"
ft. Last Poets, Common, Dead Prez
TEG : 2004
[Buy it]
PANTHERS (Crosswind Remix by Zamali)
ft. Last Poets, Common, Dead Prez
Bootleg
Zamali
Found recently online by Tony over at Moistworks' Seattle Bureau:
. . . . . . . . . . . .
This essay was written by an 8th grader in Pittsburgh in the spring of 2004. The assignment was to pick an enangered species, and explain why it's important to save it. The typos and formatting are preserved from the original.
Richard XXXXXXXX Draft 2
I shouldn't do shit. I don't care about them they all could die and it won't affect my life. I know a lot about them but I don't need to think about them. They're just a waste of time koalas are stupid they don't help me with shit so why should I help them. If they all die there will be more room for the panthers and all the other hard animals. Koalas are weak a pit will get rid of their whole fucking family. That's why I don't like koalas.
Koalas have sharp claws but they are weak. They all small and fat and they be climing trees. I hope a storm just come while theyjust chilling up in the tree thinking they is hard and they're will all just fall off. They just break they neck and shit. When they fall they claws are going to fall off and they going to be crying like some little bitches.
Koalas aren't hard they some little bitches. They start climbing up the tree soon as they see a deer from like 50feet away. They stupid as hell they should put their brain in their pouch and put the kid in they ten they're be able to think better. They try to be in the fucking kangaroo family. They weak as hell, talking bout they got a pouch a kangaroo so they their cousins and shit. Kangaroo's have some big ass legs and whot do a koala got? Some little ass legs, they tails is little and weak as fuck kangaroo's got a big ass long tail that can kill a fucking koala.
If a koala goes in the water it won't be able to breathe with its little short ass. It'd fucking drown soon aas it take one step into the water. While they at the river trying to get something to drink a bear could just come to him and snatch its ass up. It doesn't know protection because they don't have
protection. What they little ass going to do? It can't scratch him. The bear will beat his fucking ass.
The important think about koalas is that just don't care about tem and let them die by all the other animals in Australia. They're not important just let nature do what it do and kill them. Koalas do not have a place in this world there's not enough room for all the bitches in this world. So let all the koalas that's in the zoos and shit. Let them go and put them back with their family. If you let them all go they won't nothing except for that's what they was put in this world for.
Now you know why koalas aren't important. They have nothing to do except for sitting around in the trees. It's like they just was like they was sent have to die. Koalas don't do nothing to help anybody. Thre would be just one more relative of the kangaroo that will be six feet under. Now you know why koalas are not important because there are dumb.Labels: James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Monday, November 12, 2007
GET YOUR MOTHER OFF THE CRACK
Audio Two
I Don't Care (The Album)
Atlantic : 1990
[Buy It]
GIMME NO CRACK
Shinehead
Unity
Elektra : 1988
[Buy It]
BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE (RAP)
Roger
Unlimited!
Reprise : 1987
[Buy It]
CRACK ROCK
The Dogs
The Dogs
J.R. Records : 1991
[Buy It]
CRACKHEAD
Kenn Kweder
Kwederology, Vol. 1
2002
[Buy It]
CRACK
Big Black
Hammer Party
Touch & Go Records : 1986
[Buy It]
BASEHEAD
Corey Harris
Greens from the Garden
Alligator Records : 1999
[Buy It]
CRACK PIPES
Sage Francis
Personal Journals
Anticon : 2002
[Buy It]
CRACKSPOT
Ghostface Killah
Fishscale
Def Jam : 2006
[Buy It]
RAP GAME / CRACK GAME
Jay-Z
In My Lifetime, Vol. 1
Roc-a-Fella : 1997
[Buy It]
I AM CRACK
Juelz Santana
What the Game's Been Missing!
Def Jam : 2005
[Buy It]
SMOKE
Dimmer
I Believe You Are A Star
Flying Nun : 2001
[Buy It]
If you are of the certain age and the certain whiteness that I am, then you can't think of the 80s without thinking of crack. Crack was huge in the 80s. Juat like that, Styx was no longer the country's favorite white rock. It was pretty impressive - for this little upstart drug to become, in a few short years, a modern American plague. I like to imagine those first Shuttle astronauts looking down from space and seeing our nation's crack pipes ablaze, like a thousand points of light. Crack had a very candid resume: it was cheap, available, and promised instant returns. Even so, the boom it enjoyed was amazing. In a blink, the crack habit became an emblem for all habits, its mechanism the mechanism for all addictions. There was no wiggle room with crack, no recreational crack smoking, no loud, bohemian couple at your dinner party offering the crack pipe around, no lifestyle that included crack smoking except the crack smoker's lifestyle. The crack boom brought a parallel boom in new, sinister compound nouns: crackheads, crackmoms, and crackbabys - a whole new citizenry overnight.
Crack devastated America's black urban communities. But for white America, crack was a great phantom. For the white community, crack's grip was mostly on the imagination, but that didn't make it any less potent or twitchy. The way a white person thought about crack said much about the way they thought about race, and money and the city. It was something of a prism to be looked through, or maybe a more accurate, if equally lazy, metaphor would be a kaleidoscope, whose optics caught each tiny personal flaw and projected them into a uniquely, fantastically colorful spectacle of predjudice.
Crack became one of our great racial bogeymen. The history of race in America is stocked with racial bogeymen, but in the 80s, conditions seemed uniquely moist for the seeds of rapid fear.
The national tone was conservative and cocky. For the typical Reaganite, black America may as well have been a foreign country. The Establishment had never done or seen crack, or had any friends or friends-of-friends who had done or seen crack, or ever shown any previous interest in the welfare of America's inner cities. Yet the Establishment was obsessed with crack.
Politicians, economists, urban planners, the people in charge, were all exactly unqualified to handle the crisis. But they all took a furiously inexpert shot, like the crack epidemic was a Rubik's cube they had been handed for the fist time. I'm pretty sure at some point someone declared war on crack. Scientists gave crack to animals and announced importantly that the animals chose the crack over food. (I'm not sure what the benefit of these studies was --as we all know, one of the great evolutionary bonuses of being human is the ability to choose drugs AND food.)
Meantime, news from the crack front was being delivered to us by a new, accelerating media. A faster, noisier, sleazier, more voyeuristic, more entertaining media. A small-picture media obsessed with trend-spotting and tabloid magazine shows hosted by loud Australian men. This media loved crack. Do you remember, at the end of the 80s, when crack's ability to shock was on the wane, how the media didn't want to let it go? I remember a desperate spate of stories about new, more deadly drugs that were about to sweep into the suburbs and turn your Honor Roll daughter into a cheap hooker. Rolling Stone ran a big cover story on a drug called "Ice" that was supposedly going to make crack look like Flintstone's chewables. Ice was cheaper, more addictive, more deadly. I think some gangs in Hawaii were making it. Of course it was the Hawaiian gangs. That's an old Rolling Stone trick, because they know nobody fact checks the Hawaiian stuff.
The changing media reflected a change in media consumers. The audiences were younger. For white suburban kids, there was suddenly a new familiarity with black style and black music. White teens were dressing black, talking black, listening to black radio, admiring black athletes. They were even venturing into the city on weekends, where they mingled with black kids on the racial frontiers, swapping cultural chips, like the early stages of a game of Othello. Ahh, Othello, the 80s chess! But it was mingling, not mixing. We walked the same blocks, but passed each other on opposites sides of the street. For white kids, this new intimacy brought into relief very real divisions in a way we had never quite considered. Joseph Conrad, in a famous book he wrote about a crackhead called Mister Kurtz, described a phenomenon whereby the "glow brings out a haze." For kids like me growing up in DC, this bright new fog created a queasy kind of segregation anxiety. We laughed at our parents for being so ignorant, for getting it wrong when it came to all things black, but at the same time, we didn't know specifically in what ways they were getting it wrong. We couldn't debunk their myths with any evidence based on actual experience, we just did so on faith. The everyday invisibility of black people in our lives was embarrassing to us, and so we over-compensated, nurturing our own counter-fantasies about what real black people were all about, and we did foolish things like go to Kid 'n Play concerts.
I guess I don't really have anything in the way of a conclusion. What got me thinking about our old friend crack, was a link someone sent me a few days ago. It's a nasty link, nasty in so many ways, absolutely unsafe for work, and in fact, best left unclicked.
Here it is.
Instead of clicking that link, why not hop on the comments board, anonymously if you like, and give us some good personal crack stories. I know you got em. If I'm sure about one thing, it's that moistwork readers love to hit the pipe.
SOME CRACK LINKS:
CRACK IS WHACK
VINTAGE RACIST CRACK P.S.A.
VINTAGE CRACK P.S.A.
VINTAGE CRONKITE CRACK P.S.A.
PEE WEE HERMAN CRACK P.S.A.
CRACKHEADS GONE WILD
CRACK SMOKERS IN HELLS KITCHEN
THE IRON SHIEK SMOKES CRACK
I GOT COCAINE RUNNING AROUND MY BRAIN
THE MYTH OF THE CRACK BABYLabels: drugs, hip-hop, James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
69
Father
Sex is Law
Mca : 1993
[Buy it]
KNOCKIN' BOOTS (12")
Candyman
Ain't No Shame In My Game
Epic : 1990
Out of Print
[Buy it]
GETTING IT ON
Dennis Coffey
Big City Funk -- Original Old School Breaks & Heavy Guitar Soul
Vampi Soul : 2006
[Buy it]
GET IT ON
The Delta Rhythm Section
Old School Classics
Vinylizor Productions LTD
Atmosphere : 2002
A foreplay fourplay
69:
Remember the New Jack Swing movement? It was a fumbling, forgettable time when rap got into bed with the flyweight sound of R&B, and it was possibly the last time rappers danced in public. Maybe you even remember Father MC, who modestly changed his name to just "Father" for 1993's Sex is Law. He was popular with the white boys and the girls with daddy issues. "69" is New Jack at its punchy best: vigorous, cheesy, unsubtle, with more energy than finesse. Slick music for un-slick people, seduction music for personal trainers.
Knockin Boots:
Perhaps the worst rap song to ever crack top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. This song was a crossover hit in the sense of crossing over from white boys to their younger, whiter brothers. It features some of hip hop's most embarrassing boasts: swilling Asti Spumante, taking a groupie called "Norma" back to a Holiday Inn, making her pay for the room.
Getting It On:
Deep, scorching funk from a 70s funk guitar hero who had the last name of 'Coffey', played with Parliament, Edwin Starr, Freda Payne, and Wilson Pickett, released an album with this cover, and who was still, somehow, a white boy.
Get It On:
A nice example of a little genre we at moistworks like to call "Elephunk" - inappropriate music for elevators, from the mysterious acid jazz collective Vinylizor Productions.Labels: funk, hip-hop, James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
AFRICA (Previously Unreleased)SWIFTNESS (Previously Unreleased)STYLE WARSLakim Shabazz The Ol' School Flava Of Lakim Shabazz:
Rare & Unreleased Old School Hip Hop '89-'90Tuff City : 2007 [Buy LP]SOMETHING MELLOW BUY HYPEPriority One Total ChaosTuff City : 1989 [Buy LP]Tuff City Records recently reissued a bunch of lost classics from its vault, including cult favorites from Priority One and Lakim Shabazz. Both rappers had close affiliations with DJ Mark the 45 King and The Flavor Unit, a group that included Queen Latifah, Apache and Chill Rob G. Shabazz was also a "Five Percenter," a member of the Five Percent Nation aka The Nation of Gods and Earths, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam popular with many edutainers of the time. The group was founded in Harlem by a Korean War veteran and martial arts expert named Clarence 13X. Clarence 13X attended Nation of Islam Temple Number Seven, where Brother Malcolm was minister, in the early '60s. I've always thought of the NOI as a sort of poor man's Scientology. It's a crude comparison, but at their heart, both involve the same kind of wacky bargain: we'll clean you up, give you focus, give you self-determination, as long as you just quietly believe the thing about the aliens - the aliens floating either in your blood, or above your head in a UFO called the "Motherplane," depending on your faith. It's a pretty decent trade, especially if you are an ex-con or strung out hooker. But I guess the Motherplane wasn't wacky enough for Clarence 13X. He had some fundamental disagreements with the NOI - like with that thing where he reckoned he was God while they didn't - and he was excommunicated. Rappers began embracing the group's teachings decades later. They were obviously drawn to the movement's black power energy, its Mecca-centric histories, and of course the opportunity to use the word "Supreme" a lot and wear cheap homemade pharaohwear. So it's somewhat amazing when I'm checking wikipedia, to find that the Five Percenters actually received support from New York's Republican City Hall: The Five Percenters established a headquarters in the Harlem section of Manhattan. The Allah School in Mecca, previously known as Allah's Street Academy, was founded in 1966 through the Urban League with the help of the Republican mayor of New York, John Lindsay. The agreement reached between Clarence and the Urban League was a payment of one dollar a day... The first programs instituted in the school contained 10 to 30 kids, certified teachers, and three street workers. Graduates of the street academy would transfer to an academy of transition and then on to college preparatory school. Clarence disagreed with the program originally instituted at the Urban League, and so the curriculum was later turned over to him to manage, while the daily programs switched to math, English, and self defense.Another fun factoid: The rap expression "G" comes originally from Five Percenters, short for "God." Most people think it came from "Gangsta." I, sadly, thought it came from the broadway slang of Damon Runyon. As far as Five Percent rappers go, Lakim Shabazz is pretty thoughtful. I'm not sure why the track "Africa" was never released. It's easily one of his best, with a beat that chugs and rattles like an old subway train. Shabazz doesn't rhyme on top of it, so much as inside and through it, like a kid hustling between the moving cars. Labels: 5% rap, James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, September 27, 2007
GODMOMA HERE
BE ALL YOU CAN BE
Godmoma
Here
Elektra : 1981
Out of Print
SEX SHOOTER (DEMO)
SEX SHOOTER (EXTENDED DANCE MIX)
 Video
French TV Performance
Apollonia 6
Apollonia 6
Warner Bros : 1984
Out of Print
The girl group Godmoma was a sexed-up side project from that funk muppet Bootsy Collins. The girls: former P-Funk vocalists Cynthia "Sugar Baby" Girty, Arnenita "T Baby" Walker, and Carolyn "Baby Kay" Myles. Bootsy beamed them up to the Mothership, along with Sly Stone, and Horny Horns Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, and cut an album of dirty disco that sweats like a FEMA trailer.
The experiment only lasted the one record, but Bootsy may have ushered in one of the decades great pop trends. Didn't it seem like back in the 80s, every dude and his cousin had a girl group? Not the in a Berry Gordy supergroup kind of way. And not yet the calculated marketing creations of the video generation. No these were strictly vanity projects. The girl group as the ultimate accessory: stage candy, funk whores, the girl group as soft porn harem.
Prince had a vanity project. There were 6 girls in it. Prince called it Vanity 6. But Vanity left the band, so Prince reformed it as Apollonia 6. I would have killed to have been on the Staten Island Ferry the day of that casting call. There's a Herzog documentary in there somewhere. All that hairspray and the anxious savagery of chased dreams and the lingerie from the Red Door Store in Paramus with the tags still on it.
'Sex Shooter' is one of Prince's premier pieces of brilliantly ludicrous porn funk. (When you consider that no music critic worth his vintage Tretorns would dare discuss Prince without those four words: porn. funk. brilliant. ludicrous. - then you know I speak high praise.)
There are certain similarities between Bootsy and Prince's side projects. They both were at their peaks, both brought in all-star support, both embrace their signature sounds, and both parade some serious, vaingloriously confused sexuality.
Take a lick, gimme a hit, get on the stick
and suck upon this
and
I need you to pull my trigger babe
I need you to get me off
I'm your bomb getting ready to explode
I need you to get me off
Be your slave do anything I'm told
Im a sex shooter....
Blow me away,
C'mon kiss the gun
It's a real Pandora's Box. Normally, when it comes to early '80s girl groups and party funk, I try so very hard not to pull the trigger on concerns of sexual identity politics. Those debates of stripper pole feminism: empowerment v objectification, emancipation v subjugation, the balances of power on the fetish exchange. This music just is what it is. It's post-narrative, it's post-innuendo, it's some serious species level action. When it comes to Pandora, Bootsy and Prince really aren't worried about what's coming out of her box so much as what they're gonna' put in it. I like to leave all that figurative groping to the gender studies undergrads at Sarah Lawrence. They can hash it out in their tutorial. Maybe in that new class they have:
The Nasty Dialectic: Transgression, Aggression, Sexuality and the mOthership.
But listening to Apollonia now 20 years on, please forgive me if I clear my throat. Prince really is a freak. Sure Bootsy and the ladies get into some gender role play, but it's all in fun. You know he's just trying to bring some dialogue to the dance floor. But in the Thealogy of pop funk, Prince is flying solo. He's sorting out some serious hyper-gender-erotica business, and he's using Apollonia 6 as psycho-sexual proxies in his little vagina monologue.
Maybe Prince just loves sex so much, that he wants access to all possible POVs available. Maybe he's a raving sexual narcissist, not just satisfied to sex-up women, he wants to enter the female form to embody it so he can experience what it's like to be a woman sexing him up. Or maybe these are just the shadow puppets of his erotic theater, and Prince in the role of of sex puppeteer, Gepetto as pimp. The Apollonia 6 certainly seem like puppets. Really, you can tell their hearts are not in it. When they command "Soon as I get undressed y'all clap your hands OK?" they just sound tired and blue collar. The orgasms are obviously faked, the gyrations the tired hulas of a Tijuana burlesque. They are nice girls; all they really wanted was to work at the Macy's cosmetics counter but Prince went and turned 'em out. And look at poor Sheena Easton: a sweet Scottish kid, with a stable career in Adult Contemporary music ahead of her. She studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She sang duets with Kenny Rogers. She hooks up with Prince, and now she's inviting American inside her 'Sugar Walls' and has Tipper Gore and the Parents' Music Resource Council naming her one of music's "Filthy Fifteen." Prince takes these young ones, coaches them up, gives them a new language, a genital lingua franca.
It must be exhausting to be Prince. Me, if I lived in the Purple Rain universe, I'd skip the whole girl band thing altogether. It's just so deviant and sexually confusing. I'd go for something normal, something conservative. Maybe settle down with a fashionable manservant named Jerome who would be full of self-esteem and would dance around in front of me with a giant mirror.Labels: funk, James, pop, sex
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, September 06, 2007
BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD
Video
Peter Murphy w/ Trent Reznor and TV On The Radio
Live on DC-101 FM
6/13/2006
CUTS YOU UP
Video
Peter Murphy
Deep
Beggars UK : 1990
THINGS TO REMEMBER
Peter Murphy w/ Mercan Dede
Dust
Metropolis Records : 2002
A brief holdover from our week of conversions:
Bauhaus' Peter Murphy grew up Irish-Catholic, became a goth godhead, and then converted to Islamic Sufism in the early 90s. I know next to nothing of Bauhaus, Goths or Irish-Caths, but I know enough of Peter Murphy to know that Sufism makes a great fit - being Islam's most mystic and pretentious order.Labels: James, rock
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, July 13, 2007
SLOGAN INSTRUMENTAL
HOUSE PARTY FABERGE
PRESENTATIONS MONDAINES EVELYNE
LA CHANSON DE SLOGAN
EVELYNE & DIALOGUES
Serge Gainsbourg
Slogan Soundtrack
1969
Unreleased
DID YOU FEEL IT TOO?
HOLD YR TERROR CLOSE
The Go! Team
Are You Ready For More (Australian Tour EP)
Memphis Industries : 2005
[Buy it]
PHANTOM BROADCAST
The Go! Team
Help: A Day In the Life
Independiente UK : 2005
[Buy it]
LADYFLASH
The Go! Team
Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Memphis Industries : 2004
[Buy it]
I was just listening to these unreleased soundtrack bites from the 1969 film Slogan, on the set of which Serge first met his sex-kitten protege and paramour-to-be Jane Birkin. They are smoother than The Island Of Al Jarreau. For whatever reason these songs really remind me of The Go! Team, the great UK band with their Pro Tools and their Pro Keds. Once you get past Go! Team's nostalgia for Seasame Street pattycakin', you find an even stronger nostalgia for Gainsbourg's languid french funk.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Monday, July 02, 2007
WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME
Pharoahe Monch
Desire
Universal : 2007
[Buy it]
Pharaohe Monch has a new record. Critics love Pharaohe, maybe because he isn't terrible, and not being terrible counts for alot in rap these days. Moistwork's own hard rimer Brian Howe liked the new record - check out his write-up at fearofawhiteplanet.com.
I won't bother re-covering Brian's tracks. Brian drops crit in ways I am not able or willing. Like Brian, I admire Monch's "durable, booming vernacular" and "showy clusters of tongue-twisting homophones." And like Brian, I'm into the ambitious song Trilogy, which sounds a little like if Outkast travelled back through time to make a neo-soul concept musical about Marvin Gaye. But I gotta disagree big time when it comes to Monch's cover of PE's Welcome To The Terrordome. Brian calls it a "dud" but I can't stop listening to the damn thing. I'll agree that covering Public Enemy is pretty much a pointless exercise. (The only act to take a swing at a PE song and make contact was Tricky, who hit it right out of the park on Black Steel.) And vocally, Monch invokes Jay-Z much more than he does Chuck D - whom he stalks more effectively on the song What It Is. The new Terrordome even employs the kind of sampling that makes Jay-Z so consistently disappointing: horn crescendos looped with a barefaced repeat that wears out any and all original bombast. But for whatever reason, next time I'm driving through the Valley of the Jeep Beats, I'll be bumping this update over the PE original, which was always one of my least favorite tracks on my most favorite albums.Labels: James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, June 15, 2007
YOU'RE ONLY LEAVING HURT
Video
SCRAPBOOK
Dimmer
There My Dear
Warner Music New Zealand : 2006
[Buy it]
BBC WORLD
SUN OF GOD
David Kilgour
The Far Now
Merge : 2007
[Buy it]
I don't listen to too much Weepy White Guy music these days. For one - like playing wiffleball or using coupons at McDonalds - it just doesn't seem like something a man should be doing in his 30s. But also, surprisingly, my tolerance to it has become more sensitive with age. When immersed in emo-angsty poignancy of certain tones and frequency, my brain becomes like some simple-celled organism suspended in a biological medium that scientists are running an electric current through: helplessly without control, just a big twitching, embarrassing reflex. (Which reminds me, as I type it, of a mom, a mom of a certain size, a size that pantyhose copywriters might describe as "Queen-Plus," who I saw pushing a cart through the aisle of a low-income mega-mart the other week. She was a really big woman and she had a really big cart, like Ikea-furniture-cart big, and it was entirely filled with soda and nothing but soda, of all hue and literage. I wasn't judging her. If anything I felt a little envy. After all, isn't sugar water the one great redeeming perk of poverty? I felt like a 98 pound donkey, there with my flip-flops and bourgeois protein.)
So I don't listen to much WWG, but when I do, I'm fiercely loyal about it. I was quite sweet on the NZ rock band Straitjacket Fits in the early 90s, and ever since have kept tabs on its former frontman, Shayne Carter. Sometime in the very late 90s, Carter had Sony deliver some sort of studio recording pod to his New Zealand farm, like a plastic Pro Tools yurt, and he shut himself away, alone, for months, and immersed himself monastically in its circuits. As a musical experiment, it was akin to that movie Altered States, except with more purpose and less full-frontal nudity. He emerged with a brand new sound, something that achieved some kind of vivid electro-stupor. That sound became I Believe You Are A Star, the debut album by Carter's band Dimmer. It holds some pretty godlike activities. Especially "Under The Light" [download] and "Smoke" [download]. These songs move like the blood of a man who is 10 years into his career as an MTA night-shift train operator, and 15 years into his heroin addiction.
Dimmer's follow up record, You've Got To Hear The Music, was still had an electronic measure, but with more of a pop feel. It won awards and was okay, in the way Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" won awards and was okay. For their latest, There My Dear, Carter goes way way back to the old Fits formula. Guitar driven, melancholy but muscular. Though the standout is a downbeat one: "You're Only Leaving Hurt." If early Dimmer sounds, as Carter once very coolly described it, like "Sly Stone dying on the mic," then this song might sound like "Elvis drinking alone at the pub." The way Carter gets all up in your brain often reminds me of my WWG idol, Matt Johnson, especially so on an agro-angst track like "Scrapbook." This album was recorded mostly live in the community hall of the Grey Lynn Bowling Club. Only in New Zealand kids, only in New Zealand.
Carter's fellow Kiwi, David Kilgour, also has a new album in release. Kilgour, who led famed NZ rock band The Clean oh so many years ago, seems to have a much sunnier outlook these days than his countrymate. Maybe it comes from not isolating himself in techno pods. You could argue that just living in New Zealand is an isolating act in itself, but I reckon the isolation of open spaces is a different kind of isolation. A kind that empties you out, and makes it really difficult for you to continue stashing your introversions like soda in a cart.Labels: indie, James, NZ
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
GRIP DA MIC TIGHT
Original Flavor
Prod. by Clark Kent
Atlantic : 1992
[Out of Print]
ALL SHE WANTED
Knucklehedz
Prod. by EPMD
Eastwest : 1993
[Out of Print]
SHOOTIN' THE GIFT (REMIX)
Craig G
Prod. by Marley Marl
Atlantic : 1989
Original version available on The Kingpin
Out of Print
[Buy it]
Old school magic from a trio of super producers.
I think I plucked these off a bootleg called Still Got The Props Vol. 2 I found hiding out in one of the interweb's fresher corners.Labels: hip-hop, James
posted by James
LINK |
Monday, May 07, 2007
CHUCK BABY
Chuck Brown ft. KK
LOVE THEME FROM "THE GODFATHER"
Chuck Brown
We're About the Business
Raw Venture : 2007
[Buy it]
BUSTIN' LOOSE
Video
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
Bustin' Loose
Valley Vue Records : 1979
[Buy it]
WE NEED SOME MONEY
Video
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
T.T.E.D. : 1984
available on The Best of Chuck Brown
[Buy it]
WOODY WOODPECKER
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
Any Other Way To Go?
Verve : 1988
[Buy it]
DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?
Chuck Brown ft. Little Benny, Rare Essence, DC Scorpio
Live at The Capital Center
Video
CAT IN THE HAT
Little Benny & The Rockers
Live on "It's About Time"
Video
Chuck Brown may be the "Godfather of GoGo", but the title comes somewhat by default. Not to say he doesn't deserve it. He invented the word, and popularized its syncopated backbeat when he first experimented with latin jazz rhythms in the late '60s. But the GoGo sky is as starless as a humid PG County night in August. Chuck Brown isn't just the face of GoGo, he's GoGo's only face.
There are a couple clear reasons for this. First, GoGo is party music, street music. It isn't a music of songwriters, or frontmen, or even MCs. It has never translated well to the studio. GoGo's best studio recording may still be one of its first: when a very young Rick Rubin signed the even younger Junkyard Band to Def Jam and released the stunning Sardines/The Word 12". GoGo has remained a stubbornly local sound*. Its greatest shot at a Jeffersonian advance, and by 'Jeffersonian' I refer of course to the Norman Lear sitcom, came in the late '80s, when the band Experience Unlimited (EU) was featured prominently in Spike Lee's 'School Daze' and collaborated with Salt N' Pepa on Shake Your Thang (It's Your Thing) and the brilliant My Mike Sounds Nice.
Second: GoGo, at its heart, is just a beat, a beat knocked out on congas or paint buckets. Despite many efforts, this sound just isn't proprietary, it's more of an open-spource code.
Where Chuck Brown has been most successful, is in respecting the GoGo animal. (Did I really just write that?) He hasn't tried to own it or tame it. Instead he presides over it in the James Brown mold; as a showman, a bandleader, as, they might say in Vegas,"a professional's professional." He has hemmed a medley of styles to it's beats; funk, jazz, blues, and given it a diversity that is the trademark of his 40 year career.
Bustin' Loose, Woody Woodpecker and We Need Some Money are the classic cuts. I just saw this astonishing video for Bustin' Loose last week: Chuck appears to have borrowed Rick James' BeDazzler and set it to full-auto.
A couple months ago Brown released a new CD, and at age 72, hasn't lost that swing. Especially on the contemporary single Chuck Baby, which features his daughter 'KK' doing her best Missy Elliott impression.
*Not always local. When I was in college in Australia my neighbor, a friendly, hard-drinking single woman of around 40, had, to my amazement, a Best of Chuck Brown CD in her collection.
. . . . .
Also...
It's been quite a year for our friends the Wizznutzz. They were the only Washington Wizards sports blog this year to:
-Coin the nickname-of-record for an NBA superstar
-Appear on TV, radio, and in a number of national papers, including the NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post and Newsday.
-Accidentally turn up on Finland's National High School exam
-Equate double-consciousness in the NBA with the cover of ABBA Arrival
-Claim August Strindberg (1849 - 1912) as an intern
-Open a popular online fashion boutique named after a torture chamber from a Sam Lipsyte novel
It is in that fashion boutique that they are offering a dope new t-shirt that threatens to one day become as ubiquitous among local hipsters as the CBGB tee. Get it while it's hot.Labels: funk, GoGo, James
posted by James
LINK |
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
POPPIN' THEM THANGS
G-Unit
Beg For Mercy
Interscope : 2003
[Buy it]
THE PRIDE
Chuck D
Autobiography of Mistachuck
Polygram : 1996
[Buy it]
I AM I BE
De La Soul
Buhloone Mindstate
Rhino : 1993
[Buy it]
FLY GIRL
Queen Latifah
Nature of a Sista
Tommy Boy : 1991
[Buy it]
I was shuffling some rap tunes on the iPod yesterday and Chuck D's 'The Pride,' from his under-rated 1996 solo album, came up. It contains one of my favorite rap lyrics ever:
The Panther Party, before 'La-Di-Da-Di'
Put pride inside, plus taught karate Immediately afterward, G-Unit's 'Poppin' Them Thangs' - with its irresistible Dr. Dre beat - kicked in. It contains some of my favorite, laugh-out-loud-bad, rap lyrics ever:
Read the paper, look at the news
We on the front page
Yeah we in the Bahamas with AK's on the stage
The ice and the Jacob watch make a broke nigga take somethin'
So I gotta keep the four fifth with no safety button
G-Unit gettin' money
I know some artists is starvin'
But play the game like they rich to me this shit funny
I know you see me comin'
Cuz on the front of the Maybach
It say payback
for those who hated on me They are not bad in the clunker kind of way that, say, Queen Latifah's sloppy lines from 'Fly Girl' are:
But I'm not the type of girl that you think I am
I don't jump into the arms of every man
(But I'm paid) I don't need your money
(I love you) you must be mad
Easy lover is something that I ain't
Besides, I don't know you from a can of paint Or Mase's 'Can't Nobody Hold Me Down':
You name it, I could claim it
Young, black, and famous, with money hanging out the anus Rather, their cocksure and aggressive swag just seems so over the top that I am dumb struck by the supreme silliness of it all.
It made me think, if rap is a lyrical game, where are all the great lyricists? Or even the good ones? I'm hardly an authority on this, so happily correct me. And there are a handful a solid writers in the recent mainstream. Kanye West, Mos Def, The Roots and Eminem are the first that come to mind. But those guys are already AARP by rap standards.
But where are the Chuck D's, the Rakims?
Who writes a verse as fluid as De La Soul's 'I Am I Be'?
Product of a North Carolina cat
who scratched the back of a pretty woman named Hattie
Who departed life just a little too soon
and didn't see me grab the Plug Tune fame
As we go a little somethin' like this
look ma, no protection
Now I got a daughter named Ayana Monay
And I can play the cowboy to rustle in the dough
so the scenery is healthy where her eyes lay
I am an early bird but the feathers are black
so the apples that I catch are usually all worms and
I bring the element H with the 2
so ya owe me what's coming when I'm raining on your new parade I'll tell you who doesn't: Three 6 Mafia. Or Lil Flip. Or anyone called 'Young' or 'Lil' anything.
Some of the choice lines from Lil Flip's agonizing new tribute to the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, via his MySpace page:
So we pray for each one of y'all who lost a child
And for that brave man who escaped the Holocaust
....
Then later on they lettin' classmates talk about him
But his screenplays should have let you know he had a problem
....
Even with my album out, i can take the time to grieve
Cuz if i had a tragedy i hope you'd so the same for me So hop on the comments board and tell us:
The best and worst rap lyrics of all time.
Any all you young kids, if you're serious about becoming an MC, please do your self a favor and pick up your Flocabulary course now!
A reminder: if you find yourself in the loins of NYC this evening, pick up your tuxedo and head to the KGB Bar at 7pm for a moistworks reading. Details here.Labels: James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Monday, April 16, 2007
MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Eric Burdon & War
MGM 7" : 1970
Available on: The Best of Eric Burdon & War
Avenue : 1996
[Buy It]
MINNESOTA THINS
Mike Manieri
Available on: Rare Funk vol. 4 (Soundtrack Edition)
[Out of Print]
FLO
Isaac "Redd" Holt Unlimited
Isaac, Isaac, Isaac
Paula : 1974
[Buy It]
MAN FROM CAROLINA
The G.G. All Stars
Trojan : 1970
Available on: Tighten Up: Trojan Reggae Classics 1968-74
Trojan US : 2002
[Buy It]Labels: funk, James, reggae, soul
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, April 06, 2007
LET IT ALL HANG OUT (Pete Rock Remix)
Video
A.D.O.R.
Atlantic : 1992
FAKIN' JAX
Video
I.N.I.
Prod. by Pete Rock
Elektra : 1995
available on
Lost & Found: Hip Hop Underground Soul Classics
[Buy it]
SLOW DOWN (Pete Rock Newromix)
Brand Nubian
Elektra : 1991
available on
The Very Best Of Brand Nubian
[Buy it]
SEARCHING (Remix)
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
1995
available on
Rare Tracks, Remixes [IMPORT]
[Buy it]
I have had something of an obsession with the life and times of Patrick Swayze ever since I built a short story around the following, spectacular, true quote:
"I smile to one side. I got my father's smile. I've been workin' not to smile like that. I'm always exercising the other side of my face when I'm drivin' my car, so I don't get too lopsided. That's the only level of narcissism I allow myself."
-Patrick Swayze
You know who else is obsessed with Swayze? Rappers. His name has been popping up in Hip-Hop tunes for years. Don't get me wrong, Red Dawn is a powerful piece of work, and I can see its appeal if you are a young black inner-city revolutionary. But I've always assumed this Swayze phenomenon was just lazy lyricism: I mean you can only rhyme so many things with 'crazy' before PatSway's name gonna come up.
As it turns out, the tradition has its roots in rhyming slang of the cockney variety: "Swayze" in its Hip-Hop use, means to bail, to 'disappear' like a 'Ghost' and was popularized by EPMD in the early 90s:
But now I'm Swayze, ghost,
The rap host
Who rip shows,
From coast to coast
Get on down
It's going down
-EPMD: 'It's Going Down'
That's why I bust back, it don't phase me
When he drop, take his glock, and I'm Swayze
Celebrate my escape, sold the glock, bought some weight
Laid back, I got some money to make, motherfucker
-2Pac:'Runnin' (Dying To Live)'
This doesn't mean there haven't been many, many, not so clever examples of Patrick's full and proper name being deployed as a cheap rhyme:
Take a track from Jay-Z
And flip back like crazy
Claimin you God
But look more like Patrick Swayze
-L.G.: 'Wise Da Weight Is Over'
That's a diss, I'm strivin not Drivin, Miss Daisy
and Patrick Swayze don't amaze me or faze me
Me look up to these stupid clowns - you're crazy!
-Chubb Rock: 'Organizer'
Wrap it up in the club, ya I'm so crazy
These other rappers actors like Patrick Swayze
I try to tell them but these niggas aint hear me
Mossberg pump, i'm riding shotgun literally
-Young Jeezy: 'And Then What'
Me and Attitude creeped like snakes
Grabbed the tapes and the Louie and break
The whole swap meet went crazy
I'm sockin' more fools than Patrick Swayze
-Sir Mix-A-Lot: 'Swap Meet'
Rock act Train deserves some credit, at least, for moving the Swayze rap in a new, perhaps desperate, direction:
Like a Sunday afternoon
My dad used to tell me I was lazy
I got dance moves like Patrick Swayze
I'm the left over turkey for the world's mayonnaisey
-Train: 'All American Girl'
You would think that all the songs posted today would have Swayze references, but only one does. They are connected, however, in that they are all decent Hip-Hop tunes that employ the downbeat, jazzy remix skills of Pete Rock. The A.D.O.R. and I.N.I. tracks are both underground classics. Especially 'Fakin' Jax' which was part of I.N.I.'s 1995 Pete Rock-produced album that was pulled at the very last second by Elektra, and was finally released a few years ago as part of Lost & Found: Hip Hop Underground Soul ClassicsLabels: James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
FROM LITTLE THINGS BIG THINGS GROW
The Waifs
Cannot Buy My Soul: The Songs Of Kev Carmody
EMI : 2006
[Buy it]
NASTY DAN
Johnny Cash
The Johnny Cash Children's Album
Columbia : 1975
[Buy it]
NASTY DAN
Video
Johnny Cash and Oscar The Grouch
Sesame Street
available on The Stars Come Out on Sesame Street
1979
SALE BONHOMME (NASTY DAN)
Video
Claude Francois
1976
CHARLIE ON THE M.T.A.
Kingston Trio
1959
Kingston Trio Greatest Hits
[Buy it]
The MW Brooklyn bureau just returned from the fatal shores of Australia, where I participated in the Running of the Bogans, and spent a great deal of time with a riotously articulate 2 year old, my Upper West Side nephew Alfred. When Alfred was born, I made my sister a mix-CD of baby music. The Jolie Holland/Be Good Tanyas song "The Littlest Birds" was a popular lullaby in the early days, and he could only sleep on car trips if Paul Kelly's "From Little Things Big Things Grow" was playing on endless repeat. The song is about an aborigine called Vincent Lingiari and his decades-long land rights struggle. For his first Christmas, I gave Alf this historic photo of Vincent to hang above his crib (next to the one of Muhammad Ali that already hung - such is young life in the Oceanic-American diaspora). My sister said she and her husband listened to "From Little Tings" so many times, that they would quiz each other on the song's more trivial points:
"So, what was Vincent's wage?"
"Well, the 'Vestey man' said 'I'll double your wages, Eighteen quid a week you'll have in your hand,' which means his regular wage must have been 9 quid , paid weekly."
"From Little Things" was co-written by Indigenous Australian songwriter Kev Carmody. A Carmody tribute album, produced by Kelly, was just released. You can buy it here. It includes this cover of "Little Things" by The Waifs that, despite the over baked accents, still gives me chills.
I recently gave Alfred The Johnny Cash Children's Album, and we spent much of the last few weeks hooning around The Great Ocean Road listening to his new favorite song, "Nasty Dan." It is a sublime thing - and even more so when sung to Oscar The Grouch. A couple years before recording this album, Cash had become much more PG-13: losing drugs and finding God. After perhaps the 100th listen, Alfred asks the carpool: "What's a wife?" but pronounces 'wife' as 'whaahf' in his best Johnny Cash drawl. Alfred then begins to develop a cunning Nasty Dan alter ego:
Q: "Alfred! Why did you smash the remote control?"
A: "That's something Nasty Dan would do."
Claude Francois's french pop cover "Sale Bonhomme" is frightening and amazing. Claude perished shortly after while replacing a light bulb while in the bath tub.
My earliest personal musical memories only go back as far as age 8 or 9 or so. At my funky little progressive school in the Maryland suburbs, we had a music teacher called Thayer Baine. At age 10 I expect it's common for a young man to fall for an older women. (I did fancy one girl my age, Lauren Thorpe, but that ended the day I got a look at her smokin' mom.) But the crush I had on Thayer was supreme. She was a gloriously earthy hippie-chick with flared corduroys and long, straight hair. Like a young, extra wholesome Joni Mitchell. She would take the class into the gully - a crude wooded amphitheatre behind the school - and teach us folkie protest songs on her acoustic guitar. We did Kumbaya, Blowin' In The Wind. And we did this song called "Charlie On The M.T.A." It was a song written in the '40s or '50 to protest transit fare hikes in Boston, but for a 10 year-old it was a disturbing and insane song about a man being trapped on the subway for the rest of his life.
Let me tell you the story
Of a man named Charlie
On a tragic and fateful day
He put ten cents in his pocket,
Kissed his wife and family
Went to ride on the MTA
Charlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him,
"One more nickel."
Charlie could not get off that train.
Chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.
What do you mean, he never returned?!
I thought about Charlie's fate for years after. Why didn't someone just give him the nickel? Why didn't he just run for it? Did his wife bring back-issues of Life magazine to show him the ways in which time was marching on without him? I feel a bit better about it all now. This comprehensive history of the song reassures me that sometime in the 1980s Charlie would have qualified for the 5 cent senior citizen discount, and walked free, like a ghost, back into the world.
Thayer left the school a couple of years later and was replaced by Lenna. Lenna was everything Thayer was not. A divorcee, with a garish red perm and long lacquered nails. She looked like a poorly maintained Bette Midler, and taught us songs from tacky Broadway shows. Lenna made extra cash as the bus driver, and made us stop at her place one day after school. She lived in an small apartment. I had never been in an apartment before. It was way too adult for me. The wet towels and half-eaten toast and ashtrays made me feel deeply queasy and alone.
I googled Thayer Baine today and it appears she is still singing, now with the Washington Chorus. And if this is in fact her, second from the left, then she is still getting it done.
(As is Lauren Thorpe, if this is in fact her.)Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, February 23, 2007
IF THE PAPES COME
A Tribe Called Quest
Mi Vida Loca (Soundtrack)
Mercury : 1994
GLAMOUR AND GLITZ
A Tribe Called Quest
The Show (Soundtrack)
Def Jam : 1995
[Buy it]
PEACE, PROSPERITY AND PAPER
A Tribe Called Quest
High School High (Soundtrack)
Atlantic : 1996
SAME OL THING
A Tribe Called Quest
The Jam EP
Jive : 1997
THE REMEDY
Q-Tip ft. Common
KC The Funkaholic Presents Bassline Laidback Sound Sensation
Rhythm Distribution : 1998
Growing up in DC I was exposed to a lot of rap's early sounds. Grandmaster Flash, Whodini, Doug E Fresh were sibling staples. When I was shipped off to college in Australia, I was suddenly on my own in terms of nurturing my hip-hop tastes. My peers listened to big rock sounds from the UK and US, or preferred the local indie bands to my "jungle music." Occasionally alternative radio would play some gangsta rap just to prove they had the stones. (JJJ national radio got flak once from the suits for playing "Fuck Tha Police" uncut, and in protest, programmed NWA's "Express Yourself" on a loop for 12 straight hours.) I snatched up anything I could afford from the local record store. I recall buying 3 Feet High And Rising based entirely on the album art. It was very hit and miss: Booyah Tribe, Sex Packets, MC Brains (that was a miss.) Anything and everything Public Enemy.
I spent my first 2 years at University studying towards a degree in genetics, but began to get existential chills when I looked around at my lab partners: social cripples, the lot. I started taking humanities courses, beginning with an Intro to Feminist Studies. I pulled consecutive all-nighters completing my first essay, on Simone De Beauvoir. I got through it by playing It Takes a Nation of Millions... over and over and over again. With Millett, Gilligan, Dworkin on the prowl, it felt good to have the S1Ws in the room, watching my back. But it was also the first time I had harnessed music purely for energy. The Bomb Squad powered me like a combustion engine. On the downside: I would commit the frequent freshman sin of incorporating rap lyrics into my essays. I think I may have worked a Tribe Called Quest verse into a paper on Pan-Syrianism.
I got into TCQ via the "Native Tongues" fraternity of De La Soul, Jungle Bros, Queen Latifah, Monie Love. I loved their first record, though mostly on the strength of the great old material it looped in long greedy lengths. The Low End Theory, on the other hand, was a brand new sound. This post-gangsta jazz rap was so proudly bare, like a bonsai tree. White people LOVED this record. White college girls loved this record. All you white girls out there who were in college in the early 90s, was this the first hip-hop record you ever bought? Sure you danced to Cheeba Cheeba and Bust a Move like you were Kate Beckinsdale in The Last Days of Disco, but first album? Ladies, let us know your first rap CD in the comments box.Labels: James, rap
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, February 09, 2007
WILD CHILD
LASER SHOW
WHAT'S GONE WRONG
The Untouchables
Wild Child
Stiff Records : 1985
Re-issue Cherry Red UK : 2002
[Buy it]
MySpace
The Untouchables were a Californian Mod/Ska band that passed into my airspace sometime during high school at a time when kids were popping up and down in Fishbone shirts. They are the first band I ever saw live. I was at a UB40 show at the Lisner Auditorium in DC, and the show started and I remember thinking "I didn't know UB40 had so many black people in it" and then after three songs I didn't recognize: "Geez when are they going to play 'Red Red Wine'?" It wasn't during one of my cooler periods. I really don't remember anything else about that night. I'm not sure why, although the Lisner has a way of sucking detail out of the air.
I didn't see a whole lot of live music in High School. I passed up a number of chances to see IRS-period REM. $8 seemed kinda steep. Ditto Prince's Purple Rain and Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense tours.
I did see Go-Go legends Trouble Funk play at Sidwell Friends, a small, private Quaker High School in Northwest Washington. I think Megan was there, though I wouldn't meet her until 2 decades later. And one of the first things we talked about when we did meet, was what the fuck was Trouble Funk always doing at Sidwell Friends High School?
The title track Wild Child was the clear hit off the Untouchables debut LP. When it comes to the 2-Tone species, I really can't think of a more wonderful specimen. The bands popular tide soon flagged, and drew back to the West Coast. I stopped listening to UB40 for good soon after and haven't even considered them for 20 years, though I did make a bet with my girlfriend a couple weeks ago: she claimed Neil Diamond wrote Red Red Wine, I insisted it had roots in an old rocksteady song. She won: the Jewish Elvis dropped that hot pocket almost FORTY years ago.
But I hung on to Wild Child in the form of a dusty gold Maxell cassette, and the song that I always returned to was Laser Show. There is something so perfectly and deftly spare about it. I was happy to discover recently that Wild Child had been re-mastered for CD in 2002 with bonus action (including this extended version of What's Gone Wrong), and recently took up residence in iTunes.
I don't really have anything more to say, so I'll ask you, MW faithful, to answer me one or more of these questions:
1. What was your first concert? Discuss.
2. Name a T-shirt that out-sold the band it advertised more so than the Fishbone T-shirt.
3. The comments below were left on a youtube video. WITHOUT cheating, tell me the name of the artist and song they apply to. (The answer has nothing really to do with anything in this post)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I'M NOT CRYING, THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY EYE!!!!!!!!!!!!
JUst a beautiful piece of musicianship. It's a shame that songs like this aren't big hits anymore..
If there was ever a song where the picture was painted before the artist ever said a word, it was THIS one. The scene, the mood, the picture...everything is set before he sings his first line.
sob sob sob (reminds me of my cousin who died of cancer a year ago)
Gangsta rap is all bad. Anyone who thinks it's cool to glorify criminal activity, prison life and raping girls is nothing but sick!!! This stuff is great! Good wholesome values here.
Man this song takes me back to the essence of my being, freakin amazing.
I actually saw him perform this song in the living room of a friend of mine. Excellent! He's a good guy too.
excellent i really like this song and im only 19
I was conceived to this song..thanks mom!
I remember puking up having the flu listening to this as a kid and it would make me feel better.
This song's so beautiful it makes me want to do smack.
great song, no good music now; rap sucks
i love this song!! i dreamt that i was flying and it was the best dream i ever had coz it felt so real..;'b
Reminds me of my vacation at Lake George, NY....circa 1972...
If you play close attention... this song is actually about espionage... Nothing is what it seems. Scope the lyrics reeeeeeeallll close...
rap is not REAL music. It is borrowed, homogenized, artificial crap that rots the brains of its creator and listener as well. This is an actually song with real instruments, thoughtful lyrics, melody, and emotion. Today's music doesn't just pale in comparison; THERE IS NO COMPARISON!
I just love this song because it reminds me of the best brothers ever, Kenny & Kevin, that night at the karaoke was AMAZING!!
love this song..
really makes fall in love again
and again
again...
and
really makes me feel free...
Classic. Rap should die a painful death!!!
- - - - - - - - - - - -Labels: James, ska
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, January 26, 2007
CRY
Godley & Creme
Episode #34, Definitely Miami, 1986
[Buy it]
TAKE ME HOME
Phil Collins
Episode #23, Prodigal Son, 1985
[Buy it]
INTO THE NIGHT
Ace Frehley
cover of Russ Ballard's In The Night from:
Episode #4 , Calderone's Return: Part 1, 1984
[Buy it]
ANGRY YOUNG MAN
Ted Nugent
Episode #34, Definitely Miami, 1986
[Buy it]
VICE
Grandmaster Melle Mel
Miami Vice: Original TV Soundtrack
MCA : 1985
[Buy it]
I was a fan of Miami Vice from the beginning. Before it was cool. Way before I was cool. Before its glorious superficiality was ruined by the gloriously superficial mainstream. In fact, I was a fan from before the beginning. I recall, early in my sophomore year in High School, running manically into my math class and chalking in huge letters on the board:
MIAMI VICE SEASON PREMIERE, NEXT SUNDAY 8PM!!!!!!!!
I must have caught a TV promo the night before. I can't remember anything specific, but it's a safe bet it featured speedboats, convertibles, palm trees, piles of cocaine, snakeskin boots, Cuban-american guys in fake moustaches. And guns. Lots of guns. None of the other stuff, exotic as it was, caught my fancy. But I loved guns. I hadn't really discovered girls yet, but at that stage in my adolescence, guns triggered the same brand of chaotic physiological elation that sex-ed teachers awkwardly assured me I should be feeling about girls. I was specifically in love with submachine guns. The Uzi, of course, and various Heckler & Kochs. But my favorite was hands down the stumpy MAC-10. There was something utilitarian yet thrillingly impractical about its design.
I wasn't actually in love with guns themselves. It wasn't a fetish. I wasn't a creepy pre-Columbine kid, or one of those hetero-homo types, who fancied the fussy, feminine, razor-ad machismo of Llorenzo Llamas and limited edition replica bomber jackets. What really left me flush was gun play. The mad dance of exit wounds, muzzle flash, spent casings pinging off the warehouse bitumen. No one choreographs this dance in the editor's suite quite like Michael Mann. For Mann, the bullet in flight is an Objet d'Art.
Mann loved the MAC-10 too. With its short barrel and protracted magazine, the MAC-10 could introduce bullets into a scene faster and more inaccurately than any other weapon. And with Mann, the mastery was in the bullets that missed as much the ones that found the mark.
For 2 years, my brother and I, and a younger kid from the neighborhood, played "Vice" on our front porch. The rules were simple. One guy was Crockett. The other two were coke dealers. We had a prop briefcase of cash. Maybe it was a lunchbox. Then we would make the following exchange, using these exact same words every time:
"You got the stuff?"
"You got the money?"
Then there would be a pause, and then someone would panic and pull out a gun and then we would all kill each other.
That was it. TWO years. Sometimes I wore a blazer.
At some point I was in JC Penny or Sears with my mom, and convinced her to buy me a pair of mint blue canvas pants. The pants were pleated with a cuffed hem, a clean crease and a thick braided cord belt. The brand was "PCH", embroidered in an exciting broad sans serif type face, like Bank Gothic, and they were only $10. I felt pretty good in the carpool the next morning, with my PCH pants and a white sweatshirt and some sockless loafers.
My classmates soundly punished me for the getup. Someone got a look of the "PCH" logo and from that point on I was known as "Punk Crockett Homeboy." What was I thinking? These people clearly were not ready for my South Beach Marina Prep styles. I quickly and quietly returned to the dominant school fashions, of, well, New England Marina Prep: double up-turned pastel polo tees, docksiders, pleated Ocean Pacific pants, Vuarnet sunglasses.
My favorite episode of Miami Vice, hands down, was Episode 34, Season 2, "Definitely Miami."
Ted Nugent guest stars as Charlie Basset, a crooked drug dealer who lures clients out to the dunes where he shoots them, steals their cash, and buries them in their sports cars under the sand. In tracking Basset, Crockett, working deep cover as Burnett, begins a stormy relationship with Basset's stunning wife Callie. Callie appears willing to turn over and give Basset up to the cops. But Tubbs doesn't buy it. He warns Sonny that Callie's just playing him, that she will betray him. Sonny just refuses to believe it. He has to find out the hard way.
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
I LOVE YOU
The Motivations
unreleased
SOUL POWER
The Houston Outlaws
available on
SuperFunk: Rare Funk From Deep in the Crates
BGP Records : 2000
Out of print
[BUY IT]
When it comes to the interwebs, I'm a creature of habit. Every monday morning I go through the same e-routine. Check cricket box scores. Watch hilarious dancing Osama flash attachment mom sent me. Reply to my Maury Chaykin Yahoo Group messages. And type 'Rare Funk' into my Oink search engine.
Last week I found goodness: SuperFunk: Rare Funk From Deep in the Crates, a 2000 comp from UK comp-junkies BGP. Amazingly, many of these songs, or at least the versions compiled here, never saw the light of day.
'I Love You,' by a lost band called The Motivations, is the real find for me. Imagine a somewhat pared-down Jackson 5. (And without the 5 guy.) But hey, somewhat pared-down cocaine is crack, so it's all good.
But could someone with a degree is music theory (or animal behavior) explain to me why the Jacksons' sound does what it does, when it does what it does to me? My understanding is minimal. I understand it has something to do with the guitar. Is Tito the key? Or something to do with the harmonies (they say Berry Gordy, Jr. wanted to create a pop-cross between Sly and the Family Stone and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers). Or something to do with the songwriting team with the Huxlean name - 'The Corporation'?
And surely my budding nucleus accumbens couldn't have survivied those saturday morning cartoon visitations unmolested:
"And you know something Tito; we just grewww'd up!!!!"
Please, any insights below.Labels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, December 12, 2006
CLOSE TO TEARS
Actionslacks
produced by J. Robbins
Full Upright Position
Self Starter Foundation : 2002
[Buy it]
Our friends J. Robbins and Janet Morgan recently received devastating news about their young son Callum. He has been diagnosed with Type 1 Spinal Muscular Atrophy. It's an horrendous disease. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, Cal faces a crippling challenge ahead.
J. and Janet are pursuing every available treatment and therapy for their son, and the financial burden is going to be enormous. DeSoto records has set up a page where you can easily make a donation to help J. and Janet with these expenses. Please take a minute to read more about Cal and make a contribution, however small. Even if you don't know J. and Janet, personally or through their music, you would still be offering a small hand up to some people who truly need one right now.
DONATE HERE
Buy Jawbox, Burning Airlines and Channels CDsLabels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
SHOSHOLOZA
Peter Gabriel
12" B-Side w/ I Don't Remember
Charisma : 1980
Out of print
"Shosholoza" is Peter Gabriel's proto-Biko. The simple structure, and scratchy demo production has me imagining Gabriel walking around in his bathrobe, popping a borrowed African cassette on the 4-track, and beginning to sing along, a little too loudly, in the way he always seems to sing along, the way one sings when you don't think anyone's around to hear you. But this great little song may in fact signal the birth of that signature sound: The WOMAD White Man's Wail.
In Zulu, 'Shosholoza' means to 'go forward' or 'make way for the next man.' A very colonizing sentiment. Peter Gabriel has often been accused of musical colonialism. And he's been called a vulture. I always find this thinking quite useless. For me these arguments represent some sort of isolationist crit-snobbery. And I expect that the last thing a black musician in South Africa in the early 80s needed was more isolation.
ME AND MY TEDDY BEAR
Peter Gabriel
7" B-Side w/ DIY
Atlantic : 1978
Out of print
Nothing is cuter than a teddy bear right? Well, more specifically, nothing is cuter than a teddy bear in the hands of a child. In a child's arms, Teddy is an ambassador of innocence. He signifies first friendships, security, imagination, sinlessness. He is centerfold of the greeting card industry, the muse for countless porcelain keepsake master-craftsmen. But take the child out of the picture, and the teddy bear becomes a symbol of something far more compelling, and far less cute.
A toy Teddy sitting unchaperoned in the corner suggests abandonment. If it's a weathered, crudely maintained Teddy, then you have neglect as well. Teddies arranged neatly on a teenager's bed may hint at an unexpexted suicide. Teddy by the side of the road is a drunk driving tragedy. A singed Teddy? Baby played with matches. Teddy smeared with mud, with one arm ripped off, intimates the shadowy perversions of molestation, infanticide or worse.
These bad touch bears are all over our cultural consciousness. Drug cartels stuff bears with heroin. A toy bear in the rubble of war is a booby-trapped land mine. In TV and film the teddy bear is a popular dark motif. From staple horror films, to Lost, to A.I., to (the psycho-sadistic revenge fantasy) Man On Fire. Google "child abuse and teddy bear" and, aside from joining me on a secret FBI list, you will readily find Teddy is the stock-art star of child endangerment sites like this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this.
Even on the much more commonplace level, empty nesters, grandmas and misc. childless types traffic in a robust and melancholy trade of collectible eBay surrogates.
I would even say that in signifying bear terms, Teddy has had less success representing childhood that he has had representing the loss and corruption of childhood. Maybe this shift in meaning is the shift we make into adulthood. Maybe growing up isn't about leaving Teddy behind, but about his return as the stout herald of fear and violence.
Maybe that's a load. I have never personally thought about teddy bears at any time or in any context until the moment of this writing, when I am trying to come up with something to say about this odd song "Me And My Teddy Bear," a song that I find attractive but kind of repelling. I never had a teddy bear as a kid. Just a ragged blanket. My Australian-born mother, perhaps in some sort of protest against American cultural poison, only let us play with wooden blocks and Squatter until we were about 19. She has softened considerably with her grandchildren, spoiling them with stuffed magpies, wombats, and koalas. Although a koala, as any Australian will aggressively correct you, is NOT a bear.
The clever teddy bear art is snatched from Rockabye Baby! Records. Rockabye produces cribbed-out covers of bands like The Cure, Nirvana, Led Zep, Metallica etc... Their CDs were profiled in the New York Times this weekend. It seems like most articles in the Times these days concern the efforts of my generation, like every generation before it, to embarrass itself as it begins to breed. The Rockabye renditions are extremely-easy-listening: substituting melancholy vibes and xylophone where there were formerly screeching guitars, thumping drums, or, in Coldplay's case, melancholy vibes and xylophone. ("Clocks" maybe the only selection to sound manlier than its original.)
The choices are interesting: Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" makes the cut. Nirvana's abortion ode "Pennyroyal Tea" does not. Most creepy may be Pink Floyd's "Mother." It's an instrumental, but Floyd fans will find themselves cooing to baby:Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true.
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you.
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing.
Momma's gonna keep Baby cozy and warm.
Oooo Babe.
Oooo Babe.
Ooo Babe, of course Momma's gonna help build a wall.
The comments section over at Stereogum throws some very funny sticks and stones Rockabye's way.
Hop on our comments board and let us know what creepy toy or creepy song was close to your heart as a tot!
MOTHER
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Pink Floyd
Baby Rock Records
[Buy it]
YELLOW
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Coldplay
Baby Rock Records
[Buy it]
*** If your child is really "All Yellow", it could be the sign of a serious condition. Please contact your pediatrician.Labels: James
posted by James
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Friday, November 10, 2006
COME BACK TO ME
Cheyenne
Cheyenne's Comin
Shadybrook : 1976
Out of Print
PINBALL NUMBER COUNT
Video
Pointer Sisters remixed by DJ Food
Solid Steel presents Sesame Street
Ninja Tune : 2003
Out of print
[Buy it]
MORE BOUNCE TO THE OUNCE
Zapp & Roger
1980
Available on All the Greatest Hits
[Buy it]
SO RUFF, SO TUFF
Roger
The Many Facets of Roger
1981
Out of Print
[Buy it]
I haven't posted anything for a while. You can blame Justin Timberlake for that. No one does does early 80s Prince these days like JT. Or perhaps no one does mid-nineties Beck doing early-80s Prince like JT. JTs indeed bringing sexy back and he's bringing back from places like these:
Cheyenne Fowler was a bright flash-in-the-pan Native American soulstress. I can't tell you anything more than that, though a google search reveals she recorded some vocals for a Lalo Schifrin score.
The Pinball Number Count will make many people of a certain age very happy.
Just about everyone I know remembers this regular animated feature from Seseame Street. The old Sesame Street, back when 50% of your parents tax dollars were diverted to a vast commune of stoned public education animators. That's the Pointer Sisters on vocals, and in this limited edition cut from DJ Food/Strictly Kev, segments from all the various numbers videos are stictched together to create a dazzling full-length jam.
Roger Troutman of Zapp was a funkapotamus who loved the talk-box. He loved it more than Peter Frampton loved it. He even conducted media interviews with his talk-box sometimes. Zapp was made up of many Troutman brothers. One of them, Larry, shot Roger to death a few years ago and then killed himself. I'm not trying to be a smart ass but I think it would have been cool if at the funeral he was eulogized through a talk-box. Bits of these Bootsy Collins produced songs appear in a ton of HipHop songs. So Tuff, So Tuff will ring a Beastie Boys bell, and forms the backbone of 2Pac's California Love (peep the beyond black Thunderdome video.)Labels: James
posted by James
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
I'M STRANDED
Video
The Saints
I'm Stranded
EMI : 1977
[Buy it]
PORNO MOVIES
The Saints
Nothing Is Straight In My House
Cadiz : 2005
[Buy it]
TELEVISION ADDICT
The Victims
1978
available on
Do The Pop: The Australian Garage Rock Sound 1976-1987
TEENAGE DREAMER
The Scientists
The Scientists
HAVE-1 : 1981
available on Pissed On Another Planet
SWAMPLAND
The Scientists
Weird Love
Big Time Records : 1986
available on Blood Red River: 1982-1984
SPAGHETTI WESTERN
Hoodoo Gurus
1989
Out of print
available on Anthology
ALOHA STEVE AND DANNO
Video
Radio Birdman
1978
available on The Essential Radio Birdman (1974-1978)
TEARS ME IN TWO
Video
The Stems
Citadel : 1985
[Buy it]
IGLOO
The Screaming Tribesmen
1983
available on
Do The Pop: The Australian Garage Rock Sound 1976-1987
I was rocking proto-bogan garage anthems all day at work. Then I found some YouTube videos. Then I figured I'd throw it all up on Moistworks with no rhyme or reason and in doing so, realized the frightening and amazing connectedness of it all.
The Saints....
...need no introduction for you early-punk tramspotters. Nor does the compilation-happy "(I'm) Stranded." But have you seen the video? How brilliantly un-punk seems Chris Bailey. Dude looks more like a movie theater usher. And did you buy 2005's superb Nothing Is Straight In My House? It's impossible to believe that nearly 3 decades gone by from a ragged, firm-prostate kicker like "Porno Movies."
The Victims...
...were a short-lived 3 piece punk band from Perth. Victim James Baker went on to become a founding member of...
The Scientists...
...who gained swamp-rock fame in the 80s under the leadership of Australia's godfather of grunge, Kim Salmon. If the surfy thumping of "Swampland" reminds you of...
The Hoodoo Gurus...
...it's because the original Gurus included fellow Scientists James Baker and Rod Radalj as well as Baker's former Victim bandmate Dave Faulkner. The Hoodoo Gurus knocked out masterful pop harmonies in their sleep. But they were a garage surf-rock band at heart. And the OG Oz kings of garage surf-rock were...
Radio Birdman...
I've written about RB and Deniz Tek before. (I think you can still download the smashing track by TV Jones, Tek's pre-Birdman group.) Great video of the kids going Hawaii 5-OMG! Fellow Birdman Rob Younger moonlighted as a producer for a ton of influential Oz bands, including Lime Spiders and Died Pretty and...
The Stems...
Another Perth garage band in love with the New York sound, though dialing the clock back even further in this video. And Died Pretty frontman Ron Peno co-wrote "Igloo" by...
The Screaming Tribesmen...
...that will make you ask yourself, "How great are Husker Du?" and "What the hell did the shoeshine boy say to you?"
Bonus Reel:
Hunters & Collectors Big M Commercial
Video
The Saints J-File
Kim Salmon J-FileLabels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006
THE BOOK I READ
THANK YOU FOR SENDING ME AN ANGEL
I WANT TO LIVE
Talking Heads
CBS Demos
1975
unreleased
PULLED UP
Talking Heads
Live on WXRT Radio
ONXRT Live from the Archives Vol. 2
Oktober : 1999
Out of print
[Buy Used]
WXRT
How many Rhode Island School Of Design Students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Best punch line on the comments board wins the rest of the CBS Demos, recorded 2 years prior to the bands debut on SIRE, and back when the band was a trio.
My own weak stab:
Two, one to screw in the bulb, one to write up the curatorial abstract.
or
None. RISD students don't screw in light bulbs. They install them.Labels: James
posted by James
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Monday, October 02, 2006
GIVE ME YOUR LOVE
1973
MR. FIX-IT MAN
EMI : 1973
TRY IT, YOU'LL LIKE IT
Sisters Love
available on
Give Me Your Love
Soul Jazz : 2006
[Preorder US]
[Buy UK]
If you have heard Sisters Love before, you were probably hearing their lost-classic disco song "Give Me Your Love" which was revived in 1980 by an NYC DJ named Danny Krivit and again in '91 by Queen Latifah on Nature Of A Sistah (which, alarmingly, Megan and I both own on cassette.) For all their talent and early momentum - they toured with the Jackson 5 and show up in the Blaxploitation opus The Mack - the Sisters never really blew up. They never even released an album proper. This Soul Jazz release is a collection of previously rare singles the band kicked out during disco's golden hour.
I don't expect they were really sisters, but if they were, they definitely handed over singing duty to the right sibling. She's got soul in the hole. This music is premium blend: pop, soul, funk, acid jazz. Shaken not stirred. By turns audacious, sly, machosensuous. No need to look that last word up, because I invented it.
"Try It, You'll Like It" has especially grown on me. Despite its sounding like a song that would be playing over the end credits of a Neurotic WASP Sex-Fear Comedy like Must Love Dogs, as the aerial crane shot pulls back from the big, full-cast barbeque.Labels: James
posted by James
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Friday, September 22, 2006
RIEN NE VA PLUS
Funk Factory
Funk Factory
Atco : 1975
Out of print
RIEN NE VA PLUS 12"
various compilations including forthcoming
What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves (1967-1977)
CAR THIEF (DEMO 1)
CAR THIEF (DEMO 2)
Beastie Boys
Paul's Boutique Demos
bootleg
2005
[Buy it]
The delightful funk fusion bagatelle "Rien Ne Va Plus" would make for great ensemble karaoke. Its got it all: harmonies, ear splitting disco operatics, lots of chorus, funked out abracadabra scat, and a polish dude doing french spoken word. But like Brandon Walsh doesn't dance, I don't do karaoke on account of 1) my voice and 2) the popular kids never got what the Doobie Brothers were all about. (Though I used to force my roommates to sing all the separate parts too "The Great Curve" by the Talking Heads. I would do the "Night. Must. Fall. Now." bit.)
I expect the best karaoke song of all time is "Africa" by TOTO, on account of all the openings for ancient allegorical pantomime. I have been searching all my adult life to obtain the giant prop book from the mysterious "Africa" video. The one that says "Africa" on the cover in big gold letters. Not only will I pay generously for it, but I will have it installed as a permanent exhibit in Marfa, Texas, to ensure that its iconic majesty is properly and forever realized.
Beasties sampled "Rien Ne Va Plus" for their not so enlightened "Car Thief". I'm not sure what a rap demo is. Is it just a shittier version?
Very quick Beasties annecdote: In early 90s they were in Australia snowboarding and played a couple shows, and then announced a surprise gig at some nightlcub. There were a bunch of club lads hanging about in party shirts looking nonplussed and just 30 or so of us fans mobbed up at the stage. I was going through a particularly tragic BBoy phase and was wearing an inside-out sweatshirt, oversized fake glasses, and a pacifier around my neck. The outback does that to you. Mid-song Mike D. stops, and points at me, and says: "This song is for my man MC Serch." The small mob all gaped at me, figuring I was someone special, and when the band kicked it up again, I was somewhat set upon and my prized glasses yanked from my head in the frenzy.
AWESOME BEASTIES VIDEO #1
AWESOME BEASTIES VIDEO #2
AWESOME BEASTIES VIDEO #3
A new generation of Australians goes through its own particularly tragic BBoy phase.Labels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
GOING DOWN THE ROAD FEELING BAD
Elizabeth Cotten
Freight Train And Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings : 1958/1992
[Buy it]
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten wrote and played music from a very young age. She penned the classic "Freight Train" at 12. She didn't release an album, however, until she was well into her sixties. As the story goes, she was working in a DC department store, and found a lost, crying child. She returned the girl to her mother, who was Peggy Seeger, brother of Mike Seeger, half-brother of Pete Seeger. Cotten befriended the family and soon began working as their live-in housekeeper. One day Mike discovered her playing one of his guitars and in 1958, Mike recorded her debut record, "Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar," in Libba's bedroom.
My parents bought the house I grew up in from the Seegers in the 70s. A big rambling turn of the century manse near the DC border. I think when we were kids my dad told us that when we moved in, there was a thicket of chest-high marijuana plants out behind the back bush. But that was probably a cagey lie to warn us off a life of drugs and/or folk music.
So there is a good chance my bedroom was Cotten's bedroom and where this song was recorded. If she left any creative sprit or soul behind in that room, it certainly went undiscovered by me. Though in 1983 it was in that room that I transcribed to diary the lyrics to the German version of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom".
I've been noticing, recently, many artistic talents who produced signature work in their olden golden years. According to a doco by that PBS communist Ken Burns, Frank Lloyd Wright designed hundreds of buildings in his 70s and 80s. Then I see a recently reviewed show at DIA:Beacon of works by Agnes Martin. Martin, who passed away recently, was an icon of minimalist expressionism by her late 50s, but produced much of her major work, like Wright, in her 70s and 80s.
And to complete the divine wanker triumvirate, I went to Storm King last weekend and strolled among the massive abstract irons and noted that a great deal of them - like those by Alexander Calder, the mobile guy - we erected by sculptors of the senior variety.
Got me thinking, what is it that unites these late blooming talents, Wright, Martin, Calder, and to a much lesser extent, Wilder (Laura Engels)?
How were they so prolific and vital at a time in life when creating "relevant work" usually requires the ingesting of prunes?
Well for one, their stuff was all high concept. "High concept" art usually makes me reach for my GAT, but for some reason I find it divine when made by geriatrics.
Part of me just likes the idea of old people keeping busy. The art icon as high-brow scrapbooker.
I also think that the aged have a unique potential for the abstract and the minimal. As we take on time, we take on detail. Most of us begin to drown in the stuff: things and people to track, forms to fill, funds to plan, memories to manage. Some elders, though, seem to have escaped this mental bureaucracy as they aged. They let it wash right over them, they get perspective, they simplify. Certain old people have an ability to "stay on message" that is near Zen-like.
(I peg much hope on this theory. I often comment to people that I could never attempt write a novel until I'm at least 70, when all the edgy chatter and impatience and inattention begin to soften, tempered by just the right balance of life experience and cerebral faultiness.)
But I think at heart my affection has more to do with something else their work all displayed: flaws. Wright's buildings leaked and leaned, Martin couldn't keep her lines straight enough, and I don't expect Calder actually "sculpted" his more behemoth designs. He would have left that to the art school monkeys and sycophant junior welders. Conceptual art prides itself on being cold. But when I look down at the gallery plate and it tells me the artist was 82 when she painted those two-dozen facsimile grey squares, I suddenly find a warmth in those forms, something vulnerable and sincere. I could try and pin all this to the sound of Elizabeth Cotten's voice but then you might be wanting details.Labels: James
posted by James
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Thursday, August 24, 2006
RUDY A MESSAGE TO YOU
Dandy Livingstone
Suzanne Beware of the Devil
Trojan : 2002
[Buy it]
RUDIE'S MEDLEY
Peter Tosh & The Soulmates
Trojan Rude Boy Box Set [Disc 3]
Trojan : 2002
[Buy it]
RUDE BOY TRAIN
Video
Desmond Dekker
The Original Rude Boy
Music Club Records : 1997
[Buy it]
RUDIES ARE THE GREATEST
The Pioneers
Trojan Rude Boy Box Set (Disc 2)
Trojan : 2002
A MESSAGE TO YOU RUDY (LIVE)
Video
The Specials
Live at Hurrahs, NYC, 1980
via rbally.net
RUDIES ALL AROUND
Joe White
Trojan Rude Boy Box Set (Disc 2)
RUDE BOY SKA
Bob Marley
Simmer Down at Studio One, Vol 1
Heartbeat : 1994
[Buy it]
DON'T BE A RUDE BOY
Johnny Clarke
Ruffer Version: At King Tubby's 1974-78
Sanctuary : 2002
[Buy it]
RUDE BOY SHUFFLIN'
Video
Israel Vibration
Power of the Trinity
RAS : 2000
[Buy it]
RUDE BOY PLEDGE
Cham aka Babycham
Stage Show Riddim - Promo CD
August 2006
Tnx to Nude Boy C Porter and his deep crates for assistance on these
"I'm not gonna be a punk no more."
"What are you gonna be then, a skinhead?"
"I'm gonna be a rude boy. Like my dad."
-Sid & NancyLabels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
JUST A MAN
The Cruel Sea
Three Legged Dog
Redeye : 1994
[Buy it]
CAN'T SAY NO
Beasts Of Bourbon
The Low Road
Redeye : 1991
Out Of Print
DROPOUT
You Am I (covering Beasts Of Bourbon)
B-side w/ The Mark Of Cain's Degenerate Boy
1996
via youami.net
PLEASE DON'T ASK ME TO SMILE
You Am I
w/ band commentary
from JJJ Radio's 'Hourly Daily' J-File
2004
HEAVY HEART (live)
You Am I w/ Tex Perkins
Live at the Wireless : 2003
This Thursday, NYC's undersized Mercury Lounge plays host to two of Australia's tallest rock talents, Tim Rogers (You Am I) and Tex Perkins (Beasts of Bourbon, Cruel Sea.)
You Am I had the biggest cheer squad, but the zealots always barracked for Perkins. Perkins' band, The Cruel Sea, had solid commercial success in the late 80s and early 90s, playing tight, determined rock, like a post-pop INXS. When I was in Melbourne, half the bands in half the pubs were trying to sound like The Cruel Sea. Unfortunately, the other half were trying to sound like Tex's other project, The Beasts Of Bourbon.
The Beasts weren't terrible by any means. "Dropout" is a corker. They played a rousing, drunken brand of southern rock that occasioned flashy hyphen-rich adjectives like:
"Hillbilly-garage-punk"
"Whiskey-soaked-sludge-twang"
"Surf-skid-abilly"
"Swamp-blues-noiserock"
Might I suggest "American-Gothic Grog-Rock"?
Gothic as in uncivilized. Sticky-carpet pub rock, jugged-up feral blues, over-ripe flannel, unkempt hair, Peter Jackson smokes.
Perkins' displays his musical influences with all the artfulness of a Hard Rock Cafe. Tom Waits, Cash, Cohen, Nick Cave, Hank Williams, The Allman Brothers,, ACDC, ZZ Top, Eddie Vedder. Not the greatest voice, but tons of charisma, enough wit, and a carousing everyman quality that gave birth to a woeful generation of "I can drink, I can brood, my oath I can do that" front men.
Perkins never took himself too seriously. His whole sinner-savant desperado thing always seemed something of a jape to me. But a lot of blokes seem to have underestimated its irony, and mistook his fuck-off confidence for truth or genius. He is apotheosized by certain Australian males, as a lifestyle prophet of sorts, on an almost Jim Morrison level.
Pepsi Sheen isn't Australian, and maybe isn't a bloke either, but this is the breathlessness I'm talking about:THE BEASTS OF BOURBON were scabby-knuckled, Australian blues-punk motherfuckers, I mean, severely haunted, whiskey-twisted, savage, doomed, old hard-asses, ruined, fat, mean guys in filthy t-shirts... NOT yer local tattoo-shop fonzies singin' 'bout "Sin" and "Hell"... TEX PERKINS...is a debauched and tortured, genuine article, outlaw-singer, with a real gift for story tellin' and emotional range, gruffly conveying the whole filthy rainbow of human emotions- from drugsick and paranoid; to lovesick and tender; to grief-stricken and suicidal; to dumb, fanged, and hairy snort snort bluuuurrrggghh woke up in the psych-ward, cos I scared everybody shitless, and I didn't have no cab-fare home...
These ain't no pretty boys pretending to be hard up for some kinda ingenue's attention they've been, thus far, unable to purchase... These unloved Beasts Of Bourbon were US--hard livin', hard lovin', street hustlin' blues scum with an achin' in their chest and the starlight in their eyes, forever cast to ramble in search of that one redemptive love who could banish all these damned demons for a little while, and cleanse their eyes from the atrocities they'd seen. Real Rock'n'roll!!! Those dudes that passed out rockin to Tex, when they got up, they listened to Tim. You Am I are a rock band in the vein of The Who and The Kinks. Loud and sharp, smart and versatile, and not afraid to go soft, as in "Heavy Heart" and my favorite, "Please Don't Ask Me To Smile." Maybe Tex and Tim are like Brad Pitt and the other guy in Fight Club, Jekyll and Hyde, but instead of confronting the emasculating alienation of contemporary man through outbursts of raw violence and anarchy, they just get along and have a couple pints and knock out a few good tunes.
Check out:
Tim Rogers performing Kink's "Victoria"
Tim and Tex performing ACDC's "Dirty Deeds"
Tim and Tex's Official Site
Youami.net for these and many other mp3s and videoLabels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
MEADOWLANDS
Nancy Jacobs And Her Sisters
1955
GOLI KWELA
Kippie Moeketsi & The Marabi Kings
1958
available on:
The History Of Township Music
Wrasse : 2001
TLHAPI KE NOGA
Dolly Rathebe
African Jazz 'n Jive
Gallo : 2000
Out of Print
DE MAKEBA
Jazz Dazzlers
available on:
Mandela: Son Of Africa (Original Soundtrack)
Polygram : 1997
In 1957 my father left Wales for apartheid-era South Africa to join DRUM, Africa's first black magazine. DRUM's writers became famous throughout the 1950s for their racy fiction portraying life at the racial divide in the "Golden City" of Joburg, a city my dad describes as "a world suspended in the popular imagination between prohibition Chicago and Catfish Row." This post is an excerpt from a South African chapter of his really-nearly-finished memoirs, in which I hope to be a proud footnote.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
There had already been a dress rehearsal for removal of Africans to rural bantustans when the South African government obliterated the community of Sophiatown because it was considered a "black spot" among the white inner suburbs of Johannesburg. Sophiatown was the soul of DRUM. Some of the magazine's writers lived there. Many of their fictional characters were found in shebeens like the Back of the Moon or Fatty of the Thirty-Nine Steps, Fatty being the shebeen's "queen" who had problems with the steps. Sof'town, as it was known to its inhabitants, was a substantial place where Africans were allowed to own property - a far cry from the monotonous Bantu townships to the south and west of the city. It was a place of iron-barred Indian corner stores, boxing gyms, discount funeral parlours, ten-cent haircuts at the bus-stop, clean-living kids and others stoned on "dagga" or pot, small-time pickpockets and big-time hoodlums in chrome-laden American convertibles, protest graffiti, poverty and overnight corpses.
And there was the jazz. Sophiatown pulsated with it during the 1950s. It gave the place its vitality and optimism. It lifted flagging spirits and gave a purpose to life. "A mighty mass of black jazz is bursting out through every jazz house," DRUM reported. The music seemed to be non-stop: in dance halls and shebeens, at weddings and wakes, on street corners. No-one could quite explain how it began. Perhaps it had its roots in the kwela of the penny-whistle or the music the Zulus brought to the mine compounds. It was certainly inspired by New Orleans blues, the swing era of Duke Ellington, and trumpeters like Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbeck and Dizzy Gillespie. The talent of Beiderbeck , who was portrayed by Kirk Douglas as "The Man with the Golden Horn" at Sophiatown's Odin cinema or "bioscope", dazzled a young aspiring musician in the audience called Hugh Masekela. He was to become the greatest of South Africa's jazz musicians, his career launched with one of Satchmo's own trumpets, the gift organised by an Anglican priest, Trevor Huddlestone, whose school in Sophiatown gave an education to DRUM's first writers.
It was DRUM that discovered the husky "Queen of Blues", Dolly Rathebe, who sang with the Inkspots and was never absent for long from its pages. The magazine also reported on a different kind of jazz being played by Kippie Moeketsi on the alto saxophone. DRUM's showbiz editor, Todd Matshikiza, wrote the music for the jazz opera, "King Kong", based on the tragic decline of the champion boxer Ezekiel Dhlamini, who trained in a Sophiatown gym. The opera was a collaboration between blacks and whites. I attended one of its first performances, at the auditorium of Witwatersrand university in Joburg. Everyone around me was white because the audiences for all the performances were segregated. Still fresh from the gloom of post-war Britain, my jazz experience limited to American Forces Network broadcasts from Hamburg, I was poleaxed by an experience and a culture beyond my imagination.
Miriam Makeba played the queen of the Back of the Moon. Her dramatic shebeen scene was choreographed with a gang of tsotsis, street-corner hoodlums. Her song Back of the Moon Boys would have brought the house down anywhere else. The liberal-leaning white audience enjoyed the number and were surprised to find that so much verve and talent existed beyond the suburban jacarandas. But they had not been conditioned to show an excess of enthusiasm for black culture. Another song, Sad Times, Bad Times, reminded us that Nelson Mandela and almost the entire black political leadership were on trial in Pretoria having been re-arrested immediately after a judge threw out trumped-up charges of treason.
Sophiatown was to survive in the music of "King Kong" long after the place itself disappeared. The trauma came one day in February 1955 when a contingent of 2,000 police armed with rifles moved into its stunned streets in a convoy of 80 trucks. They were two days ahead of schedule to avoid a planned mass protest. It was the start of the destruction of a community. The removal of families was half complete when I visited the place not long after my arrival in South Africa. The bulldozed landscape reminded me of the war-time blitzkrieg scenes I had left behind in Britain: free-standing chimneys, broken pediments, mounds of rubble, telegraph poles askew, a stricken family sitting on the steps of a gutted dwelling waiting to be taken away. The inhabitants were moved to matchbox-land at a place called Meadowlands where the meadows soon vanished. Sophiatown was to be rebuilt as a white suburb with the name of Triomf.
And the jazz? Much of it died with Sophiatown, although a few bands survived in the townships. Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela and other talented musicians left the country to continue their careers overseas and were banned from returning. Todd Matshikiza left, too, and most of the cast of "King Kong" went into exile when the show's two-year run in London ended. Dolly Rathebe, harassed by police at her concerts for breaking a newly-imposed eight o'clock curfew, quit the blues and started a shebeen in Cape Town to make ends meet. Even there the cops kept at her whenever she tried to sing. Kippie Moeketsi took to drink, and it was only after his death that his contribution to South African modern jazz was fully appreciated. In the dance halls and shebeens of Sophiatown the exuberant jazz beat was replaced by the rumble of bulldozers. The zealots of apartheid had not only stamped out protest after the Sharpeville massacre but succeeded in suppressing life itself. I had heard so much about the Sof'town jazz era from colleagues and had caught the tail-end of it, but now found so little talent left. It was if someone had turned out all the lights.
-posted by & © Alun Morris
. . . . . . . . . .
Buy the Documentary:
Have You Seen Drum Recently? The Black Fifties in South Africa.
Buy the prints of:
DRUM Photographer Jurgen SchadebergLabels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
WHAT SO NEVER THE DANCE
House Guests
1971
available on Funk Drops
The House Guests were Bootsy & Catfish Collins' old band.
IT'S A PROJECT THING
Dream Warriors
Subliminal Simulation
EMI : 1994
[Buy it]
Gently Canadian rap, DJ Premier produced.
90% OF ME IS YOU
Gwen McRae
1975
available on The Best of Gwen McRae
70s bird of soul, sampled by OG scary spice female Gangsta rapper Boss in the masterful song "Deeper."Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Monday, July 31, 2006
MORNING SUN
Al Barr & The Cimarons
DJ Spooky presents 50,000 Volts Of Trojan Records
Trojan : 2006
[Buy it]
SUMMERTIME
B.B. Eaton
Bread : 1973
Available on: Trojan Sunshine Reggae Box Set
Trojan : 2004
[Buy It]
SUMMER BREEZE
Jackie Mittoo
The Keyboard King At Studio One
Universal Sound : 2000
[Buy it]
WHAT A FIRE
Brentford All-Stars
Studio One 12"
Summer is out of control. Heatwaves grip the world. Things are getting crazy. Naked lost boys rampage naked through UK Tescos. Governor Schwarzenegger mobilizes popsicles. The sun crashes into Astoria. The heat makes people do crazy things. It makes crazy people do even crazier things. Mel Gibson hurling anti-semitic slurs at Malibu Sheriffs Deputy and Arch-Jewish Inquisitor James Mee? Standard Gibson family traffic stop. Much more unsettling is Mel using badly dated Lethal Weapon idiom, calling a female officer "Sugar Tits." The classy, clear thinking Mel I know would have, at worst, used the reverential Aramaic expression for "Sweat Breast": KHLiY B'EuOB'aA.
Use this Gibson Guide to create additional phrases, or hop on the comment board and give us one of your own.
"What A Fire" is very a fine Jamaican jape by former Studio One house band the Brentford All-Stars.
"Summer Breeze" is a soulful cover from keyboard legend and Skatalites founder Jackie Mittoo.
"Morning Sun" comes from the stellar new Trojan/DJ Spooky compilation.
The torpid cover of "Summertime" is courtesy of B.B. Eaton, ex-Studio One crooner and former member of The Gaylads. Though I expect these days B.B. doesn't introduce himself to surly young jamaican rude boys as "One of the Gaylads."Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, July 28, 2006
LA VIE EN ROSE
Grace Jones
Island Life
Island :1985
[Buy it]
LA VIE EN ROSE
Marlene Dietrich
Love Songs
Columbia : 2004
[Buy it]
Grace and Marlene have pretty different takes on La Vie En Rose. I would need a second puberty to even approach Marlene's register, and at the 4:35 mark in her smashing disco update, Grace Jones makes a noise I last heard before my cat was spayed. But the icons have much in common:
Both were androgynous divas; both embraced the cabaret culture of their time; both were fetishized by the fashion camps and the camp camps; both made an art out of self-objectification; and the scariest girl you went to college with mentioned them both in an essay on "Baudrillard, Ecstasy, and the Struggle for Subjectivity in the Hyper-Real World".
Did Grace Jones just disappear from the face of the earth or what? And it's a great thing. No Surreal Life, no QVC line, no Parade Magazine interviews about arthritis, hot flushes, erectile dysfunction. Grace is frozen in 1985, a perfect manifestation of her moment. And every Passover, we pause to favor thanks for that moment, that woman: Mannequin, Darling, Brute.
. . . . . . . . .
Grace Jones performs La Vie En Rose like she's a black amazon David Byrne.
Check out the accordion, the jumbo steps!
And here.
An older Marlene performs it here.
Check out the tiny steps!
and Edith Piaf performs the original here.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, July 13, 2006
JAM ON IT (4-TRACK REFERENCE)
JAM-ON'S REVENGE (4-TRACK DEMO)
Newcleus
Unreleased
JAM ON REVENGE (INSTRUMENTAL)
JAM ON REVENGE (ORIGINAL VINYL PRESS) (follow link)
Newcleus
Mayhew Records : 1983
Out of Print
AUTOMAN (24-TRACK ROUGH MIX)(follow link)
COMPUTER AGE (4-TRACK DEMO) (follow link)
Newcleus
CHILLY TRANQUILLY (4-TRACK DEMO) (follow link)
Positive Messenger (Newcleus)
IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU
Cut King
Out of Print
Summer settles upon us, and various members of the moistworks team retire to the sleepy banks of Guymard Lake, north of the Delaware River Gap, west of the fading Victorian sprawl of Walkill, a Dutch word meaning, I think, "Mom's got a crystal meth lab in the basement."
So it seemed an unlikely week for me to make perhaps the greatest musical discovery of my life. But it was, and it is, when I stumbled across the mp3 vault at
JAMONPRODUCTIONS.COM
a site all things Newcleus, maintained, in part, by founding member Cozmo D.
The treasures unearthed here cannot be underestimated. It's like if you found a tomb that held the 10 Commandments, Noah's Ark, and the mummified remains of a previously unrecorded ancestor, and the mummy was shaped just like this. Or for you Dylan fans, if you found a box of never-before-heard bootlegs and at the bottom of the box was a DVD and you put it on and it's a Dylan sex tape, and on the tape he's having sex with you.
I'm sure I speak for us all when I say that "Jam On Revenge" is the greatest song in existence.
And from a standpoint of urban music pre-history, Newcleus (and its electro rap brothers) sit at a vital, if tragic, split in the evolutionary tree. Newcleus was like the great Homo Ergaster: at the top of the food chain, at the cutting edge of the species. Everything was great, they had the big brains and new skills and the latest tools, including a Tascam Portastudio and the Sequential Circuits Pro One. But they were simply too special for this world, too blessed for a single species, and nature intervened, splitting them in two - techno and dance music going one way, rap the other, while the once great electroman retreated to a cold, futureless shadow to live out its days.
The Jam On It 4-Track reference tape is the actual original master that was tailored down to become the studio release we all know and love. Without the Wikki-Wikki vocals, and with extended synth parts, this version is almost mournful. The gang sound like they just came back from burying someone.
The last couple minutes send shivers down my spine. With that picked-guitar riff. It truly belongs on the soundtrack to a really special episode of Miami Vice. Crockett haunted by the death of his informant, or when they finally took down Calderone.
The "Jam-On's Revenge" demo is neonatal Newcleus. Compared to the album release, this is practically DJ Screw-slow. From the Jam On Productions site: When Cozmo was shopping the Newcleus project (then called Positive Messenger), all of the material had a New Wave, Jazz, or Electro feel to it. However, since he had room at the end of 1 side of the tape, he threw on this song which he had only done as a joke. Little did he know that it was this funny little novelty song that would set off his professional career as an artist.
Originally named "Jam-On's Revenge" and done as a Western spoof with a John Wayne imitation lead (even before Rappin' Duke's "Da Hah, Da Hah"), Cozmo would play it to much laughs at parties he spinned at. Producer Joe Webb however, told Cozmo to drop the Duke imitation because "John Wayne is an American hero", so Cozmo flipped it into an outer space theme instead... Newcleus has been from outer space ever since.
The "Electro Rock Ballad" Automan tells the poignant, all too familiar, story of the star-crossed affair between a woman and a robot man. Please listen to the lyrics. It's OK if you want to cry. A robot would trade all the circuits in the world just to cry, just one time. Sociologists may one day point to the cautionary woman-falls-for-robot-man tale as the 1980s' sole contribution to our society.
The met one day in a summer storm
The melodrama had begun
Her senses told her that it was wrong
But the damage had been done
She was a young lady of 23
A woman in the prime of life
He was a child of technology
I'm a metal maaa-aaan
I'm made of wries, wires, wires
There aint no way I could ever love you
He wasn't programmed to understand
But the most intriguing lyric is:
Though technically he was a man
Love wasn't in his capacity
What is this supposed to mean, "Though technically he was a man"?
Does it mean he had a penis?
When I get to this part of the song, I can imagine Cozmo D. has just finished bedding a groupie, and as soon as he's done he gets up to go, and she says "Baby you going? Why don't you stay and just hold me tonight?" and Cozmo D. puts on his robot voice "I am not programmed to feel. What is 'holding'? It does not compute." And then robo-walks out the door. It's the oldest trick in the book.
The old school gem "It's All About You" was the B-side to the groups first single "Why It Gotta Happen To Me." Says Cozmo D.: It contains a shameful sample of Sly & The Family Stone's "Sing A Simple Song" that we never cleared or paid for. Clearing was kind of a foreign concept back then. Sorry Sly!
Newcleus Video Treasures:
The original Jam On It video HERE
Is there anything more adorable than a half-dozen small black breakdancing Ace Frehleys?
The Main Ingreedyantz Crew break to Jam On It HERE
And more breaking HERELabels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
We are, for the day, Moistwords, as veteran cruciverbalist Manny Nosowsky favors us with our very own crossword puzzle.
Traditionalists can download a printable copy of the puzzle:
Music By The Book (.PDF)
Or you can solve the puzzle online:
Music By The Book Interactive Puzzle
First person to solve it (without looking at the the answers), let us know in the comments below, and we will send you an assortment of prized oleos.
. . . . . . . . . .
Manny Nosowsky is a retired physician whose crossword puzzles appear regularly in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He lives in San Francisco.Labels: James, writer's week
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
CAVERN
Liquid, Liquid
Optimo EP
99 : 1981
Available on Liquid, Liquid
IF YOU FEEL THE FUNK
La Toya Jackson
La Toya Jackson
Polydor : 1980
[Buy it]
THE INCREDIBLE HUMP
Sound On Sound Productions
12"
Salsoul : 1980
Available on Funky Collector V.1
Most people who hear 'Cavern' think of Grandmaster Flash's 'White Lines.'
Many probably think of Big Audio Dynamite's first single 'The Bottom Line.'
A smaller, sadder group (guilty!) think LL Cool J's 'Something Like A Phenomenon.'
The original song is by a New York band called Liquid, Liquid, that was part of a brief post-punk minimalist disco movement cunningly called "No Wave."
The group's bass player, Richard McGuire, also created the amazing video, a fabulous piece of animation, that I am sure will be enjoyed by Moistwork's Shadow Minister for Bogan Affairs (Lesser Oceania), Al MacInnes.
Also Fabulous, in a very different way, is the homoaerobic video for 'White Lines', directed by a very young Spike Lee, and starring an even younger Laurence Fishburne.
And finally, the video to the Duran Duran coverof 'White Lines', for which they brought on board GMF and Melly Mel in a 'Walk This Way'-esque revival.
Spike Lee didn't direct the Stop The Madness anti-drug video, but it appears they used the same talent agency, "Colorful Homies! Casting." It's a video you've got to see, with: David Hasselhoff, Kim Fields, Casey Kasem, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Boogaloo Shrimp, and Nancy Reagan (reading "Stop The Madness" off a lyrics sheet). It's a sort of urban We Are The World, with Tim Reid in the Geldof role. Anti-drug ads like this, and they are all like this, try to illustrate the personal evils of addiction, but end up illustrating the cultural evils that a drug user in 1985 was likely trying to escape.
La Toya Jackson shows up in the Stop The Madness video. It's a few years after she released her bland but enjoyable disco flop 'If You Feel The Funk'. Here is a video for the song created for/by the fansite Church Of La Toya.
Here are some pictures of a very young La Toya, before she walked into the plastic surgeon's office and demanded "I'll have the Asian Marmoset Supreme please."
And here's a nice one with brother Michael, before she challenged him to a nose-off.
The same year La Toya was shaking her rump to the funk, Sound On Sound Productions were doing the hump.
There is certainly nothing "incredible" about the rapping in this song, but the band makes up for it with sprawling enthusiasm and a big, oft-sampled bassline.
I couldn't find a video for this song. But if there is one, it couldn't be better than THIS.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, June 15, 2006
DOLPHINS
Fred Neil
Fred Neil
1967
[Buy it]
DOLPHINS
The The
Shades Of Blue EP
Out Of Print
1991
available on Solitude
[Buy it]
"I've been searching for the dolphins in the sea
and sometimes I wonder: do you ever, think of me?"
Jessica Alba recently revealed to MTV that as child, she was molested by a dolphin while filming the remake of 'Flipper'.
"I sort of request female dolphins after that because those are horny little bastards," said Alba.
Turns out this porpi-sapien fetish is more common than you might think.
There is Britain's 'Georges' whose "...well-documented sexual aggression poses a real threat to the thousands of swimmers who will be descending on Weymouth over the summer."
And Ohio's 'Frederico' who is always looking for friendship or "or something more."
And Norway's 'Flipper', a genial fellow by most accounts, until he starts behaving like Gerard Depardieu at Cannes: "Usually he just swam around quietly, but every now and then he went into a sexual frenzy and tried to rape an air matrass [sic]."
But it seems dolphins are star-fuckers at heart, displaying particular carnal affection for celebrity bait.
A dolphin, perhaps channelling the increasingly frustrated ghost of Patrick Swayze, "Went after Demi (Moore) in a big way" while she enjoyed a post-Duran Duran swim with Ashton at Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden & Dolphin Habitat in Las Vegas.
And when Timothy Leary invited Susan Sarandon to the marine lab (I'm not making this up) she was almost killed by Rosie, a jealous dolphin cow, who didn't like the way the actress was touching her boyfriend Joe.
What are we to make of all this inter-species hanky-panky?
These manatee-idol matinees?
Well for one:
Dolphins are cleary smart. Jessica, Demi, Susan... you're not hearing Wilfred Brimley cry 'rape'.
And should we really be suprised? Experts suggest this sexual aggression is a product of frustration and confinement and confusion. But the problem may really begin with our own perceptions. We see a friendly, benign mammal, a social creature that likes to perform for us, that is easily trained, a smooth splendid fish of almost ape-like intelligence.
And that's just Jessica Alba!!!!!!
As for Fred Neil: one of our most influential singer/songwriters, though I couldn't tell you any of his songs besides 'Dolphins'. Former Brill Building guy, unmistakeable shades of Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. And a pioneer when it came to the forbidden passions of the deep. When Neil yearned for the dolphins in the sea, he wasn't just being cryptic. This was no poetic longing.
From an obituary in The Independent:
Although A noted singer and songwriter, Fred Neil devoted himself to the Dolphin Project, an organisation dedicated to stopping the capture, trafficking and exploitation of dolphins world-wide. He hated dolphins "being put on public display for casual amusement", a comment which he could have applied to his own life. He had an indifference to success and rarely did anything to promote his records or encourage a higher profile.
I guess Neil's search for the dolphin was really just a search for himself.
'Dolphins' has been covered dozens of times, notably by Tim Buckley and Billy Bragg. But I discovered the song through my hero Matt Johnson. Like Neil, Johnson has an approach that brings to mind Roy Orbison, only way, way, twitchier. There's also some Hank Williams in there, as well as an angstiness that is as breathy and right-in-your-ear as Marilyn Monroe. But while Johnny and Roy and Hank took life's lumps with a stoic, almost romantic, humility, Matt always seems to be going down with a hell of a fight. Matt's really not the kind of dolphin you want to find yourself alone with at night, in a dark pool, sardine on your breath, shorts on the deck.Labels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, June 06, 2006
BABY, DON'T DO IT
The Five Royals
Smash : 1964
Out of Print
[Buy It]
TEARS OF JOY
Vicki Anderson
King: 1967
Out of Print
THINK
James Brown
Think
Polydor : 1973
[Out of Print]
BABY, DON'T DO IT
Lyn Collins
People : 1975
available on:
Mama Feelgood: The Best of Lyn Collins [Import]
[Buy It]
Part I of III
James Brown has repeatedly covered a few artists' songs in his career--the overlap between his repertoire and Frank Sinatra's is probably the largest and most regrettable, and he devoted half an album and a much later single to Little Willie John's hits. But one act he's clearly got a sentimental attachment to is the "5" Royales, who had only a middling commercial presence but a repertoire and style that lasted much longer than they did on the charts.
JB had a huge hit in 1960 with "Think," which had been a not-quite-as-big record for the Royales a couple of years earlier. Brown cranked up the tempo, mangled the lyrics a little (he's never subsequently unmangled them), and generally marked the song as his territory for good. In response, Pauling and company took a stab at Brown's "Please, Please, Please," not as successfully.
On Live at the Apollo, recorded in late 1962, Brown sped "Think" up again. (When King released the Apollo version as a promotional single in '64, they slowed that recording down to the 1960 single speed, bizarrely enough.) In 1967, on the verge of his funk breakthrough with "Cold Sweat," Brown and Vicki Anderson recorded a duet version of "Think" for a single, this time with a fancier beat and horn chart; he reproduced that arrangement for his duet later that year with Marva Whitney, released in 1968 on Live at the Apollo, Vol. II.
Then, in 1973, as he eased into his relationship with session cats arranged by Dave Matthews, JB cut yet another "Think," this time a slicked-up, wah-wah-funk version. It hit #15 on the R&B charts. For his follow-up, he released--yes--another version of "Think," this time with the same backing track but a very different vocal, beginning with some shout-outs to "Soul Train" and Don Cornelius. (It charted too, though it only went to #37.) The second '73 take has never been released on CD, to my knowledge; it's got a different catalogue number than the previous version, but they share the same B-side: a hilariously WTF version of the Beatles' "Something."
By 1964, the "5" Royales' commercial stock had sunk badly. As he occasionally did with other old favorites of his who weren't filling so many seats any more, Brown produced a couple of records for them (on which they were credited as the Five Royals). "Baby, Don't Do It" is a peculiar new arrangement of one of their earliest hits, originally released in 1953 on Apollo Records--that unresolved horn flourish at the end on the '64 version is just weird.
Vicki Anderson recorded a few JB-produced "5" Royales covers besides "Think," including "Baby, Don't You Know" and "The Feeling Is Real." I'm told that "Tears of Joy" grazed the lower regions of one chart or another, though damned if I can identify which; it was the other side of an odd, jerky funk workout called "If You Don't Give Me What I Want (I Got to Get It Some Other Place)," recorded at the same session as "Cold Sweat."
There's something strangely desperate about the final year or two of releases on the JB production imprint People Records--you can feel the revue's terror at the approach of disco in their attempts to jump on the trends they'd once led and their superstitious adherence to things that had once propitiated hits. Why does the first minute or so of Lyn Collins' version of "Baby, Don't Do It" end in an explosion sound, then start over from the beginning, complete with intro rap? Perhaps because that had worked the year before for "Rock Me Again and Again and Again and Again and Again and Again (6 Times)."
Still: what a great record!
-Douglas WolkLabels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING (12" Mix)
Sugar Minott
original edit : 1979
available on Studio One Disco Mix [Import]
[Buy it]
DANCING MOOD (12" Mix)
Delroy Wilson
1966 (original edit)
Studio One 12"
MY CONVERSATION (12" Mix)
Cornell Campbell
1967/8 (Uniques original)
For my dollar the happiest music on earth came from Jamaica in the late 60s and early 70s. I don't even really know what its called; I think at its fastest it was the tail end of Ska and at its most melodious it was called Rocksteady. To me, it is incredibly optimistic stuff. A lively blend of 50s doo-wop, American jazz and dancefloor R&B. The sound is underproduced and rustic, which makes it feel local and participatory and accessible. I imagine reggae changed as Jamaican culture moved into the urban areas, first with rude boys and roots reggae, with its protest themes and narcotic, almost torpid, escapist energy, through dub to toasting, with its emphasis on DJs and MCs, onto whatever that angrily bombastic thing they have now: Ragga? Dancehall? The current stuff is all like afro-crunk to me: repetitive, intimidating, homophobic. If rocksteady was a wide-eyed kid staying up past his bedtime, watching the grownups laugh and dancing the night away, this new music is like his surly older brother, who lives out of a garage and hustles and gets high and takes a swing at his dad. Maybe I would even say this older brother is 'the bad seed of Colonlialism' if I would dare to write such a thing.
Anyway, today's songs are not really the super-happy music I'm talking about. They are too slow, and melancholy, and absolutely spellbinding.
Love and Understanding:
When I listen to this song I go into this personal sublime head-space. I get a very specific and lucid mental picture. Always the same, embarrassingly stoner-like. I imagine this clearing in a jungle paradise. Everybody has their own idea of paradise, but jungle clearings are always a popular choice. The Jehovah's Witnesses, on those Watchtower pamphlets, usually depict a jungle-fringe pastoral oasis, populated by multi-racial farmers with big white teeth, working the harvest, while kids commune with nature and a german shepherd usually runs around and, as in the case reproduced above, there might be bears. Humans and bears living together in harmony!? How is such a thing possible? Is that natural? That would never work. It would if you had Bear Geishas. Thats what the Bear Geishas are for. The Bear Geisha knows exactly what the bear needs, how to comfort him, how to fulfill his needs. Who takes care of the Bear Geishas? No one, thats the beauty, because it is a Bear Geishas greatest joy on earth to serve. That's how the circle is complete, that's the miracle of God.
Anyway, the place I'm in for this song isn't quite like this, its more lush, and there has just been a big thunderstorm and the sky is cooling off and thunder is still in the distance and there is a serene, waking vibe in the air. It's not at all the the vibe on the other side of the island. Then these small pensive creatures begin to slowly emerge from the cover of foliage, like this guy and this guy and this guy (yes I know Moomintrolls are from Sweden but maybe this was before the continental drift happened.) And this kind of sleepy over-weight rabbit creature steps out into the clearing and starts laying down a beat with his hind-leg, like a West Indian Thumper and then all the creatures start to dance about in this shy way, and a soft steam rises off the wet canopy, and then the smallest, most pensive creature of them all steps out... he is the guitar solo bit, you'll know when you hear it.. and he does this adorable shy and gentle and totally unselfconscious dance, like a hippy-chick dance, (except shy and gentle and totally unselfconscious.) And as the song goes on he gets more confident and eventually he starts to dance more and more like Gene Gene the Dancing Machine from the Gong Show
Dancing Mood:
Though Delroy Wilson will spend the next 8 minutes trying to convince you otherwise, this song will not put you in a dancing mood, unless maybe you are on couple of old seniors at a Kingston retirement home, and when you dance, you are like the trumpet in this song, graceful and frail and haunting.
When I listen to most old ska and rocksteady though, I get in a very particular dancing mood and it involves another mental picture.
About a dozen years ago I spend the most amazing 3 weeks in South Africa and Lesotho with my dad. The trip was profound in ways that I won't attempt to illuminate in the space of this humble blog, but there were three standout experiences.
First I met Thabo Mbeki. And when I say 'met' I mean to say I was sitting at a table with Thabo Mbeki, my Dad, and two other guys, for an hour in an empty hotel bar, and Mr Mbeki was smoking a pipe and asking me my impressions of his country. He seemed genuinely curious, as if my insights may hold the secret to some post-apartheid strategy. This I'm sure was just incredible graciousness on his part. Or maybe he hoped my insights might hold the secret to what's really up with this AIDs scam. Given my fashion plate at the time, I reckon that would have been a fair suspicion.
Second, I was walking by myself through a touristy street fair in Cape Town. There were knock-off carvings for sale and dance troupes in traditional Zulu garb and a table of Scientologists with e-Meters - your typical African street fair stuff. Then a bit further along there were a few people standing off to the side around a patch of dirt, and in the middle was an old street musician, a guy of about 70 with just a couple teeth and a beat up guitar with just a couple strings, and he was banging out this jangly rocksteady riff, just the same few chords, and there was a skinny African boy, maybe 8 years old, with no shirt, no shoes, scratching out this brisk rooster dance, clapping his hands and grinning and kicking up the dust. It was such a perfect manifestation of the music, and it pierced by sunburnt brain with Kurtzian focus. The scene spoke so perfectly to me, the dance so consummate, that I knew at that instant that this kid was my inner child. It was what my dad would have called a "Proustian moment" but Proust, like me, was a spastic on the dance floor, and if my inner child is in fact an African boy named Tunji, my outer adult is a 6'4" white man called James who generously consigns most of his dancing to his head.
Finally, in Lesotho's one real hotel, the modest Maseru Sun, they had a porn theatre in the lobby. A fully functional movie theater, projectionist and all, that showed nothing but porn, '70s, anglo porn - the bad kind. Weird thing is that they had satellite movies in the rooms, so they didn't need the porn theatre, they must have just thought it was a classy move. Well I was impressed. I also couldn't imagine anything more alien and anachronistic than being a porn projectionist in Lesotho. If you consider this is a country where 80% of the men work in South African mines, with the remainder comprised of shifting-patch farmers and mid-level bureaucrats, then 'Porn Projectionist, Maseru Sun' has got to be one of the hipper gigs in town.
My Conversation:
No head-places for this song. But the just dig those vocals: exquisite and mad wistful yo. If that piano sounds familiar, its because its been used in every reggae song ever written.
also...
MW flattered to receive an "Editor's Award For Online Excellence" from the folks over at The Morning News. Thanks guys. If we had awards we'd give you one, and I guess we'd have to call them 'Moisties'.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
NIGEL BLOWS A TUNE (EXCERPT)
Caravan
In The Land Of Pink And Grey
Polygram : 1971
[Buy it]
I DON'T DIG NO PHONEY
Moody Scott
Seventy Seven records : 1968?
available on Bustin Out Of The Ghetto
GOTTA TAKE YOUR LOVE
Game
12"
Maximus Records : 1982
[Buy Vinyl]
The Brooklyn Bureau is a little overblogged and musicked out these days. Hopefully spring rains will bring new energy, fresh music, an Atlantic Starr reunion.
In the meantime, 3 songs that have nothing in common:
Caravan was a late 60s/early 70s UK prog rock band (shiver). This track is pruned from a 22 minute medley and at a minute forty, contains, I expect, the band's complete and entire experimentations with funk.
Like Holden Caulfield, Moody Scott don't like phonies, but does Moody tackle this crisis of authenticity by sitting around bitching in dated sarcastic slang?
Hell no, Moody drops funk on the fake.
Best line: "Why's it gotta be white?!"
When it comes to disco, Italy is the soldier who doesn't know the war is over.
"You turn me on just like a shower - yeah
From head to toe, I want to sprinkle you"
I think R. Kelly's mom used to play this 8-track at carpool.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, May 05, 2006
MACHINE GUN FUNK (DJ PREMIER REMIX)
The Notorious BIG
Unreleased?
available on Best of Biggie Blends
1994?
SEE MORE
Kool Rock Brothers
1988
Out of Print
Two quick cuts for boomin' in your jeep this weekend.
Premier's beloved remix of 'Machine Gun Funk' reminds me of Friday night, WPGC radio, in old school DC.
According to the Surgeon General and the modern penny dreadfuls, we are a country of fat people and we hate ourselves for it. Fat people get no love. Except in the rap world. In rap physics, MASS=RESPECT. For Biggie Smalls, large was largesse, a gift, a signature sound who's heavy rhymes owed a dual debt to swagger and an obstruction of the soft pallet.
Kool Rock Brothers have a lower-carb energy. I think this track appears on a few old electro comps falsely credited to RP Cola.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, April 06, 2006
CALLIN' OUT (Lyrics ReBorn REMIX)
Irah Wajchman (IronE)
via JJJ
CALLIN' OUT (REMIX ft. E-40 and Casual)
Lyrics Born
Same !@#$ Different Day
[Buy it]
Oz radio Triple J recently ran a Lyrics Born Remix competition. Lyrics Born (ex Asia Born) is an emcee I think people might like a little too much. There were some decent remixes (free to download), especially the lively "IronE" one, which gets much better after the "di-di-di-di" electric house violin sounds. Paired here with the official remix, ft veteran speedy rapper E-40 (new album out very recently) is also pretty solid. You may remember the original "Callin' Out" from the Diet Coke ad, with Adrien Brody.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, March 23, 2006
SMOKIN CHEEBA CHEEBA
Harlem Underground Band
Erotic Moods
1976
avail on The Best of Pulp Fusion
[Buy it]
INVASION
The Reavers
Terra Firma
Green Streets Ent : 2005
[Buy it]
SLOWLY
Amon Tobin
Supermodified
Ninja : 2001
[Buy it]Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, March 17, 2006
BRING IT ON HOME
Willie Dixon
The Chess Box
[Buy it]
BRING IT ON HOME (Single Version)
Sonny Boy Williamson
1963
Essential Sonny Boy Williamson
[Buy it]
SHAKE EM ON DOWN
Bukka White
1937
Shake 'Em on Down
[Buy it]
WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS
Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1
1928
[Buy it]
JESUS MAKE UP MY DYING BED
Blind Willie Johnson
1927
The Complete Blind Willie Johnson
[Buy it]
IN MY TIME OF DYIN'
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (1962)
[Buy it]
IN MY TIME OF DYIN'
The Be Good Tanyas
Chinatown (2003)
[Buy it]
TRAVELLING RIVERSIDE BLUES
Robert Johnson
1937
The Best of Robert Johnson: Traveling Riverside Blues
[Buy it]
I CAN'T QUIT YOU
Otis Rush
1956
Essential Collection: The Classic Cobra Recordings 1956-1958
[Buy it]
THE ARTFUL DODGERS
Led Zeppelin Behind the Music - Day 3 of 3 [part 1] [part 2]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Today we will close with a group of old blues songs that were covered, some famously, most dramatically, by Led Zeppelin. As far as I know the band is quite open about these covers, but this doesn't mean the original artists always received credit where it counted.
Bring It On Home:
Originally written and recorded by Willie Dixon, whose songbook fueled much of the British blues explosion. The Stones made a hit from "Little Red Rooster." Zeppelin covered "You Shook Me" and "I Can't Quit You Baby" (Led Zeppelin I) and "Bring It On Home" (Led Zeppelin II) and Cream had "Spoonful".
Robert Plant intentionally tried to reproduce the vocal technique Sonny Boy Williamson used in his cover for Zep's musclebound version, singing through a harmonica microphone and amplifier for effect.
Shake Em Down:
"Hats Off To (Roy) Harper" (Led Zep III) is an uncredited version of the old Bukka White song. "Custard Pie" (Physical Graffiti) also contains lyrical similarities.
When The Levee Breaks:
Zeppelin went to school on this one, they locked it in and ripped the knob off, as they might say on classic rock radio. John Bonham's thunderous drumbeat has been sampled a number of times. Zeppelin had the balls to take legal action against the Beastie Boys over it. To record it, they had Bonham move his drum kit into a stairwell.
Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed and In My Time Of Dyin':
This death bed petition first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in the 1920s (way back, before boomboxes even). Covered beautifully by Dylan at age 20. And then by Zeppelin on Physical Graffiti, which borrows a riff from the Dylan version. Dylan didn't give himself any songwriting credit, but I think Zeppelin did, with no nod to Blind Willie.
Travelling Riverside Blues:
Zeppelin covered this song live in an early BBC recording that appears on the BBC Sessions album. It's a pretty original interpretation. I dont think Johnson's peeps saw any royalties. As previously mentioned, the "Squeeze my lemon" lyrics from "The Lemon Song" are lifted from this tune.
I Can't Quit You:
Another Willie Dixon tune, here covered by Mississippi bluesman Otis Rush. Dixon sued Zeppelin over their uncredited cover of his song on Led Zeppelin I.
Misc Zeppelin Trivia:
Jimmy Page played rhythm guitar on the Kink's songs "You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All Of The Night"
Page also plays on the theme song to "The Wonder Years" (maybe when his agent pitched him he just heard the word "Savage" and bit)
and
the soundtrack to the film "Death Wish II"
and
Joe Cocker's cover of "With A Little Help From My Friends."
In 1970, Zeppelin played a show in Copenhagen. The band billed themselves as The Nobs because aristocrat Eva von Zeppelin threatened legal action. She is claimed to have remarked: "They may be world famous, but a couple of shrieking monkeys are not going to use a priveleged family name without permission".Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, March 16, 2006
DAZED AND CONFUSED
Jake Holmes
Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes (1967)
[Buy it]
TAURUS
Spirit
Spirit (1968)
[Buy it]
THE WAGGONER'S LAD
Bert Jansch and John Renbourn
After the Dance (1966)
[Buy it]
SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR
Bert Jansch
Toy Balloon (2001)
[Buy it]
WHITE SUMMER
The Yardbirds
Little Games Sessions & More (1967)
[Buy it]
NOBODY'S FAULT BUT MINE
John Renbourn
Another Monday (1966)
[Buy it]
DANCE OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE PALACE OF KING PHILLIP XIV OF SPAIN
John Fahey
The Best of John Fahey 1959-1977
1963?
[Buy it]
THE ARTFUL DODGERS
Led Zeppelin Behind the Music - Day 2 of 3... [part 1] [part 3]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I've been gently accused of being a rockist after yesterday's post. Let me make myself clear: Led Zeppelin are genius and Led Zeppelin f**kin RAWK!! They rock more than Robert Johnson. I own more albums by Whodini (1) then I do Mission of Burma. My feeling on Sonic Youth: it doesn't swell and I don't ride it. "The Crunge" VS. the complete recordings of Bob Dylan? Please. Its Zeppelin, and its no Sophie's choice.
I certainly don't mean to soapbox about freshness and forgery. We all know rock came from blues. And while personally I find Zeppelin's influence on our culture to be generally grotesque, at least the few remaining hair metal clubs are tucked away like strip clubs under freeway off-ramps, pasty circus sideshows that cater as much to ironic hipsters as they do the faithful. But the blues has something far worse to answer for: mainstream white blues-rock. The worst music on earth. When I think of blues-rock I think:
$60 tickets to BB Kings, tucked-in flannel, microbrews, eddie bauer chain wallets, alphabetized blues LPs, cholesterol medicine, vanity plates on minivans, pricey signature edition Legends of Blues guitar replicas, mother-of-pearl jacknives, polished boots, cream straw fedoras in hatboxes, family dental plans, groomed beards, framed memorabilia, dry-cleaned Levis, neon bar signs in carpeted rec rooms.
I think of the sound of thoroughly deconditioned blues, no moans and only the tidiest wails. Middle-aged suburban guys going through the motions, playing unremarkable blues standards with fastidious polish. There are millions of these guys. Possibly billions. Maybe it's because blues is such an easy form to play decently. But I think it's probably more to do the incredible cultural power of affiliation. The sense that one can share in something authentic through formalist participation. It drives all advertising. It's what prompts a weekend bike geek to put on one of those silky logo shirts. It's why newlyweds pose for wedding pictures in front of rented antique cars. It's why your dad has an iPod. But the higher the commitment to protocol, the further from the blues blues-rock gets. No one ever suffered post traumatic stress from a Civil War re-enactment. This music is no more a tribute to the blues than running on a treadmill is a tribute to running from a lion. Although, I reckon there is a species of despair particular to memorabilia collectors. It's a twitchy despair.
Anyway, obviously I'm no rockist, I'm elitist.
On with the songs. Tomorrow I'll post a bunch of blues originals, many of which, as well as some other songs I've posted, can be found on a number of Zeppelin-themed compilations that have been released over the years.
Here are 5 of them.
For today, mostly songs from 60s folk and psych-rock groups that Jimmy Page rolled with, and that he kissed before he told.
Dazed And Confused:
Quite disturbing. Even the instruments sound the same. This could easily be a Led Zep studio outtake, but its actually folk singer Jake Holmes. Holmes opened for Page's Yardbirds during a tour in 1967, and Page re-tooled the song into "I'm Confused" before switching the name back for the Zeppelin release. I don't think Holmes has album credit or ever received royalties. Holmes is a very interesting guy.
How many musicians can claim to have been in a comedy team with Joan Rivers, written a concept album for Frank Sinatra, had one of their songs stolen by Led Zeppelin and hung out with Nelson Mandela? Only one: Jake Holmes.
Read about him here. Besides this song, Holmes' lasting legacy might be his soda jingle: "Be A Pepper".
Taurus:
I posted this song last year on the site. here's what I had to say:
Led Zeppelin used to open for Spirit in the early days ('68, basically), and Jimmy Page has admitted in years since that he did indeed bite the "Stairway to Heaven" riff from (Randy) California. I have no idea why Spirit hasn't bit back, and licensed "Taurus" like madmen, pawning it off as "Stairway to Heaven" for untold millions.
The chord progression in "Stairway To Heaven" is also v. similar to a song by the Chocolate Watch Band, "And She's Lonely." Jimmy Page's Yardbirds played with the Chocolate Watch Band...
The Waggoner's Lad:
When Jimmy Page was putting together Led Zeppelin, word is he originally envisioned something folky, along the lines of Pentangle, a well known hippie group at the time. Think the Partridge Family with burlap underpants. Pentangle included guitarists John Renbourne and Bert Jansch, who both had great influence on Page. The acoustic instrumental "Bron-Yr-Aur" from Zep's Physical Graffiti is one of my favorite things in the world. Jansch and Renbourne's "The Waggoner's Lad" shares its jangly, up-tempo, overstuffed goodness. But extra props for Page for doing with 2 hands what took those blokes 4.
She Moves Through The Fair
and
White Summer:
"She Moves Through the Fair" is an old Irish folk song. As performed by Jansch, it's a beautiful thing. One of The Yardbird's most Zeppeliny tunes is "White Summer". It's Page's great take on "She Moves Through the Fair" and features Indian tablas and in my ears it contains the acoustic seeds of Zeppelin's "Over The Hills And Far Away" from Houses Of The Holy. While "White Summer" has nothing to apologize for, some people think Page does, as he credited the song solely to himself. These people have websites like this one, dedicated to plagiarism by The Yardbirds.
Nobody's Fault But Mine:
Blind Willie Johnson wrote this old blues song, which Zeppelin covered. I don't believe he was credited. In keeping with today's theme, I've posted Pentangle member John Renbourne's version.
Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Phillip XIV Of Spain:
I found this song on the MOJO Roots of Led Zeppelin compilation. I don't believe it is the basis for anything in particular, just shares the "American Primitivism" of Page's early sound. I used to work at the DC City Paper with a great writer called Eddie Dean. An American primitive in his own right. Here is Eddie's obit for John Fahey.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
YOU NEED LOVE
Muddy Waters (written by Willie Dixon) : 1962
Muddy Waters: The Chess Box [BOX SET]
[Buy it]
YOU NEED LOVIN
The Small Faces : 1966
Small Faces
[Buy it]
BABE I'M GONNA LEAVE YOU
Joan Baez (written by Anne L. Bredon) : 1962
Joan Baez in Concert, Pt. 1
[Buy it]
BLACKWATER SIDE
Bert Jansch : 1966
The Best of Bert Jansch
[Buy it]
BALI HA'I
50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett
written by Rodgers & Hammerstein (1949)
Return to Paradise
[Buy it]
KILLING FLOOR
Howlin' Wolf : 1966
His Best
[Buy it]
THE ARTFUL DODGERS
Led Zeppelin Behind the Music - Day 1 of 3 [part 2] [part 3]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For the rest of the week, I'll be posting songs that helped define the Led Zeppelin sound. It might make a great mix tape, though there is a song by Joan Baez and Joan Baez is the mix-tape equivalent of an aneurysm. It's no secret that Led Zep borrowed heavily from old blues guys, (and by borrow I mean cover without credit.) This never bothered me so much, because Zeppelin brought so many new energies to the blues; tubthumping drums, crackling riffs, hell-for-leather vocals, and those dynamic tempo warps that gear down and gum up like old tapes. They also brought Hobbits and ginger pubic hair, which I don't forgive them for. (They are definitely a band best heard unseen, and I was very fortunate to first discover them without the benefit of live shows or concert footage and the pants and the anglo-perms and the clammy sweat unique to British arena rock and terminal cancer patients. If Robert Plant was a wild dog, the pack would set-upon and kill him instantly.)
Another reason it never bothered me is because, after all, they were stealing from bluesmen. And what bluesman worth his whiskey sits around in Belair, thumbing through brochures for the new S-Class, pocketing fat royalties, going crazy in the pampering spaces of time they afford?
What struck me though, in gathering this collection of songs, was how much they cribbed from their close peers at the time, fellow folkies and other popular white rock acts who were themselves in the business of re-interpreting the blues.
Take the Led Zeppelin Song 'Whole Lotta Love'. The lyrics and basic arrangement are a clear lift from 'You Need Love', popularized by Muddy Waters in 1962 but written earlier by Willie Dixon. Dixon brought a lawsuit against the band in '85, which was settled (in Dixon's favor) out of court. But the similarities to The Small Faces version, recorded about 3 years before the debut of Led Zeppelin II, are far more striking. Especially Robert Plant's vocals, which are a flagrant simulation of Steve Marriott's, right down to the signature "Wooommaaan..."
Similarly, 'Black Mountain Side' (from Led Zeppelin I), was based on an arrangement written by Anne Briggs (itself based on a riff by Stan Ellison), but Jimmy Page plays it, almost note for note (in - the geeks I believe say - "D-modal tuning"), as it was recorded by Bert Jansch a couple of years earlier. Page couldn't even be bothered fully changing the songs name. Jansch goes uncredited on the album, but never sued. Folkie's Code.
Jansch talks about it in the 1970 interview.
'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You' was originally a folk song attributed by most people to Anne Bredon. Zeppelin admits they were inspired by Joan Baez's version. The original album credit read: "traditional, arranged by Jimmy Page" until it was changed to "Bredon/Page/Plant" in 1990.
From the Led Zeppelin In-Frequently Murmered Trivia List:
On all the box set releases, and re- releases since 1990, a credit has been added for Anne Bredon, an obscure folk musician who wrote and recorded the original song in
the 1950s. Back in the 1980s her son was intrigued to hear his mother playing what he and the rest of the world thought was a Led Zeppelin song. After asking her why she was doing this, a quick trip to a solicitor saw her name added and her contribution recognised.
As For 'Bali Ha'I', the Rodgers and Hammerstein tune from South Pacific, some adventurous people reckon Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" borrows its lead melody. Its a bit of a lark, but I reckon its there. Certainly no lawsuits from R & H on this one. Perhaps they feared Page and Plant would unleash the Viking Kittens!
Finally, Zeppelin's "Lemon Song" borrows from a bunch of blues sources. The most obvious, is Howlin' Wolf's 'Killing Floor'. Wolf sued the band and settled. Moistworks East Coburg Bureau Chief Al MacInnes writes:
Jimi Hendrix's Killing Floor is one of the finest things in the world. There's this great live version, but I don't know which concert. I did find this one though on iTunes, recorded live at BBC's Radio 1 just after he'd arrived in London and the Experience had got together. I love the way way his guitar's just going off nuts by itself, and contrast that with the self-consciousness of his singing (like after the first 'I should have followed, yeah', his 'oh', after he must have thought that was the 'yeah' of a shandy-boy) happening exactly at the same time. That's great isn't it, the fact that your brain can be split like that.
The "Squeeze my lemon, til the juice runs down my leg" lyric is actually taken from Robert Johnson's 'Travelling Riverside Blues'. God forbid I should ever be put in this position, but if it came down to it, I'd prefer to squeeze Robert's johnson that Plants lemon.
Zeppelin miscellany:
The infamous shark tale...
Rolling Stone's original 1969 review for Led Zeppelin II.
Which includes gems like:
"Whole Lotta Love," which opens the album, has to be the heaviest thing I've run across (or, more accurately, that's run across me) since "Parchmant Farm" on Vincebus Eruptum. Like I listened to the break (Jimmy wrenching some simply indescribable sounds out of his axe while your stereo goes ape-shit) on some heavy Vietnamese weed and very nearly had my mind blown.
And Lester Bangs reviewing Led Zep III.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, March 10, 2006
FINLAND
Monty Python
Monty Python Sings
[Buy it]
Couldn't let that post go by without posting this brilliant Monty Python song. For those who are lukewarm to Pythons, its not too manic this one. Just odd, and sweetly patronising, like, I presume, all songs about Finland.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
PLAN OF THE MAN
The M's
Future Women (2006)
[Buy it]
via iRiver
IT'S JUST CRUEL
The National trust
Kings & Queens
Thrill Jockey; 2006
[Buy it]
via iRiver
QUE SERA
Wax Tailor
Que Sera / Where's My Heart At EP
[Buy it]
via iRiver
We mp3 bloggers are many things. We are new-world mixtapers, overestimating tastemakers, emotionally delicate pirates. We are diarists, lobbyists and soundtrackers, statcounters, and most of all trainspotters.
In some cases, take moistworks for instance, we may be owners of an old arthritic dog that we just can bring ourselves to put down. But there is one thing that we certainly are not: making money.
My friend Tim, on the other hand, bootlegs above the board. He has gone legit, taking his love for music and making a career of it. He is a co-founder of Brandracket, a company that "creates mutually beneficial releationships between independent record labels and brands." Translation: they work with companies like iRiver, Olympus and Quiksilver to create free music and video download areas on their web sites, or preload tracks into MP3 players at the manufacturing stage. In the end, Brandracket's clients get more eyes on their pages, artists get their songs in more ears, and Tim gets money in his pocket. While he works from home. Bastard.
I won't hold it against him though, because Tim has fantastic taste in music, (if its possible to pay that compliment without sounding like a complete penis.) To give you a quick idea of how seriously he takes his music: I met Tim in college many years ago in Melbourne, Australia. Most of the American exchange students on campus were frat boys who picked The Lucky Country on the basis of its reputation for drink, January summers and relaxed attendance requirements. Tim on the other hand, picked Melbourne for the bands. (Actually he picked Christchurch but Berkeley didn't offer a New Zealand exchange.)
I would be playing frisbee on a typical bright dry afternoon, when I'd pick up the sound of The The's "Jealous of Youth", wafting down from the tips of eucalyptus, where I could just spy Tim perched in his top-floor dorm window, getting in my head, mocking my frolic, like a kookaburra, or Arthur Schopenhauer's cockatoo.
Head over to the iRiver site and download your freebies. Last month featured critical darlings like The M's (a Chicago band that plays Kinks-style Brit pop), NYC's quite excellent The Hold Steady and Rogue Wave, the lush "OC"-sensitive band who always remind me of something from New Zealand. Moistworks' foreign correspondent Mike McGonigal seems to think so too; in his Amazon review of Descended Like Vultures Mike writes
At times it reaches the highest acclaim any pleasantly detuned indie-rock can achieve: comparisons to New Zealand indie-rockers from the 1980s. Of course, those bands are fairly obscure these days and this Bay Area bunch may never have heard the Great Unwashed or Tall Dwarfs before.
Among this months offerings:
the indie pop-funk of The National Trust. (I can just imagine the singer of this band crate-digging in some hipster record store in Chicago a couple years ago and calling his buddy so excited he can barely speak: "Dude, I just totally found our new sound on this fucking amazing LP! Its by this obscure 80s band, they're called 'Shalamar'!"
Also recommended, new French lo-fi from Wax Tailor, Manchester's Elbow, Sydney's Youth Group and the backbeat 'Kingston' from Ayatollah.
More good pickings at Olympus.
Also...
How happy is everyone about the furry lobster?
Nice one science.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, February 23, 2006
MIND 2 MOTION
Roots Manuva
Awfully Deep (2005)
[Buy it]
JOIN THE DOTS
Roots Manuva
Run Come Save Me (2001)
[Buy it]
HA HA
Ty
Upwards (2004)
[Buy it]
SOAP BAR
Goldie Lookin Chain
Straight Outta Newport (2005)
[Buy it]
BUG POWDER DUST (K& D Session)
Bomb The Bass / Kruder & Dorfmeister
The K & D Sessions (1998)
[Buy it]
BUDDY X (Falcon & Fabian Remix)
Neneh Cherry ft. Notorious BIG (1992)
[Buy it]
via Suburbs..
I CAN DO THIS (Uptown Remix)
Monie Love (1988)
Out of Print
available on Hed Kandi Back to Love 03
RISE LIKE THE SUN
Definition of Sound
Love and Life: Journey w/ The Chameleons (1991)
[Buy it]
BLACK STEEL
Tricky
Maninquaye (1995)
[Buy it]
BUFFALO GALS
Malcolm McLaren
Duck Rock (1982)
[Buy it]
WHERE IS IT
D.S.P. ft. Eve.On
In The Red (2002)
[Buy it]
I spent the first 3 or 4 years of my life being raised in a 17th-century thatched cottage in the countryside outside of London. I have virtually no memories and the ones I think I have usually turn out to be the dodgy inventions of my brain based upon old photos and home movies. The kid in the photos I can hardly recognize as myself: stocky and freckled, with long blond hair and lace up leather shoes, thoughtfully painting at an easel. Theres this one stunning old film from my childhood. My dad shot it on silent, grainy 8-mm, and it shows my mother in a long skirt, sitting in a bed of wildflowers and meadow grass, with her young children running and laughing carefree around her and she is radiating this extraordinary maternal beauty. Its pretty much one of those clips they have in Michael Mann movies, where the hero is looking at a home movie of his angelic good wife before she was brutally (and conveniently) murdered by a Miami drug dealer and he knows those innocent days are forever behind him, because now he has stopped crying and is polishing his uzi and preparing to settle that one final, gloriously homoerotic score.
But then we moved to the US and the dream was over. Painting was replaced with video games. In England we ran around naked and free but our new suburban neighbors threatened to call the cops. We learned what we needed to learn from Threes Comany re-runs. My mom still gets emotional about it. Sometimes when we go to visit we run around naked to try and cheer her up but its just not the same.
I've been back to the UK a few times since, and have always wanted to love the place, but it just doesn't happen. There are many things British that I find deeply comforting me but none that excite me. I listen to the BBC World Service religiously. No matter how atrocious the news, there is something deeply reassuring about having a Brit deliver it. (The way Owen Bennett-Jones has the polite nerve to begin a question to the head of the Ugandan militia with the words "But surely...", and Judy Swallow could charm the Killing Fields). I love the English "thrillers", like the To Play The King trilogy, and the John Le Carre ones with Alec Guinness that are so slow that characters actually smoke pipes in real time.
But these are all old people. I guess the child in me is warmed by how thoroughly sensible British adults are. They are creatures of habit. In America the boomers are embarrassing. They locate their chakras, wear DKNY Arctic Camouflage Capris, conquer erectile dysfunction.
But the UK young have never done anything for me. That whole European thing is so "euro". Bad at food, bad at sport, bad at fashion, bad on the dance floor, and then there are the tattooed families who book a ferry ticket to Calais so they can load up their cars with duty free beer and smokes. And until very recently, British music has badly failed to take advantage of its immigrant populations (or generate much of a homegrown urban sound of any sort during the last 20 years).
Of course, and as usual, I have no idea what I am talking about. And so here are a bunch of Hip-Hop songs from the British sles. There is no strategy behind the selections. Just songs I like that you may not have heard or may have forgotten about.
Song notes:
Roots Manuva:
Something of a veteran of UK hip-hop.
'Join The Dots' reminds me of an MF Doom production, Saturday morning March of the Robots kind of thing.
'Mind 2 Motion' I like for 3 reasons:
-Its got swagger
-It rhymes 'Fair Dinkum' with 'Pink One'
-And in its chorus the dude who is saying "Swing it for me, swing it for me" sounds exactly like James Mason
Ty:
Label mate of Roots Manuva.
'Ha Ha' will grow on you in a big way. The jock-jam organ, tapa-tapa-tapa drums, clever lyricism and the genius crescendo harmonies in the chorus. Most of Ty's other stuff tends to the R&B side.
Goldie Lookin Chain (GLC):
Smart-arse wiggers who are in fact Welsh. This song was the first song I ever downloaded from an mp3 blog.
Soap bar is slang for really nasty cheap hash.
DSP:
An underground UK soundsystem. I found through a blog I can't recall.
Tricky:
'Black Steel' is a cover of perhaps my fav Public Enemy song (certainly their most fierce one). Its an incredible cover, def. its own song. The beats groan like they were canned in a boiler room or a torture chamber, the electro-surf guitar, the smooth but fuckedificare vocals.
Definition of Sound:
I posted this greatness ages ago in the early days of MW.
also...
A big moist thanks to all who participated in Writer's Weeks, and to Astoria Bureau Chief Alex who put the while thing together. It was a huge success and alot of fun for us. The contributions were all thoughful and lively and beautifully punctuated. We hope to run weeks like these on something of a regular basis, as long as there continue to be noble writers out there who find it in their hearts to give a little something back. Though to be fair the Gift Bags we gave them were pretty awesome. (I see a few of you already have your pink RAZRs up on eBay. Thats cool, cause Motorola donated them for "viral marketing".)
And continued props to Chip at Suburbs... and Peter at Worldly Disorientation for providing some of the more hard-to-find music.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, February 02, 2006
CARS
Kirb and Chris
Niggaz and White Girlz
Rapitalism : 2006
[Buy it]
Bay Area rap music isn't afraid to push the levels upward when it comes to artistic content. My favorite new music from the 'Yay' is a concept album from KIRBY DOMINANT and CHRIS SINISTER titled 'Niggaz and White Girlz'.
Don't let the title put you off. This shit is some of the best Hip-Hop I have listened to in a long time. When was the last time that you listened to an entire album just because it was good? Dr.DRE's 'Chronic 2001' comes to my mind. Maybe even KANYE WEST's second album might get the straight play through if I could stand to listen to his flow for more than 2 minutes.
For a lot of reasons this album tapped into something raw that I was missing from the current crop of crap artists. For starters the lyrics aren't bogged down ith the fraudulent narcotic trafficker schtick. Secondly, the music was as familiar to me as an old pair of Capezios and Sweet-Orr jeans. If you are younger than thirty (or Black?!?) you won't recognize a single sample on their album.
That isn't exactly true either, but if you grew up in the eighties without any white friends then you missed out on some innovative and creative music. KIRB and CHRIS freak their entire album with new wave pop music samples. The loop from GARY NUMAN's 'Cars' is sick to death and when you listen to these dudes rhyme over the track you may just realize what the missing link is.
There is a vast treasure trove of untapped samples that exists in the land known as 'white music' which 1980's new wave occupies along with punk rock and several other genres. Current producers are either ignorant or scared of repurposing this music, but there is a tremendous amount of soul contained in the grooves of THOMAS DOLBY, the CLASH, INXS, KRAFTWERK, GARY NUMAN, NINE INCH NAILS, the POLICE, et.al.
It was a grand plot of the devil to name people Black and white since no human can actually be either extreme tone. Humans in their ultimate folly and lazy stupidity have accepted this division because they want to believe that there will be some privilege that it engenders. Possibly a V.I.P. pass to the champagne room. Some heaven on Earth. Whatever. I am not going to pretend that the KIRB and CHRIS album will bring you closer to GOD, but it is a damn good album to keep in the car while driving.
Or while sitting in your parents' basement, sipping on Crystal Light from your favorite cup with the crazy straw, blogging our azz off like theres no tomorrow.
--
You can't handle the truth
-by William H. Sunday (the 'H' stands for holler)Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, January 27, 2006
DI DOO DAH
Jane Birkin
Di Doo Dah
[Buy it]
TEENIE WEENIE BOPPIE
France Gall
1968
1967
[Buy it]
DOMMAGE
Graeme Allwright / Claude Nougaro
Graeme Allwright
Mercury : 1966
MON COEUR D'ATTACHE
Enrico Macias
1966
available on Chanter
FRANCIS FORTESCUE
Richard Robbins
Soundtrack: A Soldier`s Daughter Never Cries
1998
[Buy it]
Back when I worked in the production dept. at the Washington City Paper, each month the music critics would bring a big plastic tub of unwanted promo CDs up to the reception desk and someone would open-page the offices and we would all run over and desperately scour through it like orphans at a Kinshasa landfill. This was before the days of the digital revolution and 100 gig hard drives and a free CD was a big deal. Almost all of the stuff was unremarkable indiepop or unlistenable neo-soul. The few keepers I found always ended up being weirdly eclectic independent film soundtracks. The CD for some Debbie Harry mob film called Six Ways to Sunday featured Yiddish jazz, Schooly D's song "Mister Big Dick", Blondie remixes, and original compositions by this kid Teddy Shapiro who I think I went to High School with. But my hands down favorite was the soundtrack for A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries. It was a lesser known Merchant/Ivory film loosely based on the family of writer James Jones (From Here to Eternity, A Thin Red Line.) Kris Kristofferson plays the Jones character, a somewhat famous author, a gravelly drinker but loving patriarch of a family of bohemian expats (incl. Leelee Sobieski and Barbara Hershey, back when she was old) living in late 60s Paris. In the second half of the film, the family moves home to early 70s USA where "beautifully observed" poignancy ensues.
The soundtrack reflects this split in space and place. The first half is heavy on french pop, especially the bubblegum sound popularized by "Ye Ye Girls", while the latter tracks are mostly lively 70s guitar rock. Making the soundtrack even more schizoid are a dozen or so moody pseudo-classical interludes by composer Richard Robbins.
My girlfriend used to listen to this CD everyday while she did yoga for like a year. Her whole routine became synchronized to the track list. It got so I'd be in the other room and would hear a song and know exactly what position she was in. When Tito Puente came on, I knew she was Saluting The Moon. Deep Purple's "Fireball" signalled Rocking Of The Cradle. (I found this particulary impressive. Id like to see Gwenyth Paltrow do yoga to Deep Purple.) By the time David Bowie's "Fame" kicked in, I knew she was winding up and would be shortly in front of the TV, Accessing The Hollywood before I joined her in The Receiving Of The Shiraz.
Jane Birkin's "Di Doo Dah" was a big 60s hit. Birkin was famously married for many years to Serge Gainsbourg. I presume Serge wrote this song. Jane's still getting it done. And she still has a thing for scrawny European musicians: she performs on French TV next month with Franz Ferdinand.
France Gall was another big pop tart of the time. She also hung around with Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote this song and many others for her. I wonder if Jane and France had a jealous friendship? Maybe she was like Nicole Richie to Birkin's Paris Hilton. If so, does that mean that France's famous singer dad Robert Gall was his generations Lionel Richie? If he was a French singer in the 50s, odds are pretty good that he at least shared Lionel's relish for wearing yellow cardigans tied about his shoulders.
Graeme Allwright was born in New Zealand but after losing patience with all those "So, how's Graeme doing today?!?" jokes, moved to France where he became a popular singer/songwriter. If anyone speaks French good, could they tell us what the lyrics to this song are? I'm not sure what it is I don't trust about this google translation:
Richard was a boy who was covered with chips
To get rid some it had found an easy way
It put a sock on the head and in water was inserted
The chips are assembled in the sock but Richard drowned.
Too bad.
So true Graeme. So true.
Enrico Macias is an Algerian Jew who has made a remarkable and workmanlike career as a French/Italian singer.
According to this slightly annoying website, Kofi Anna recently named Macias "Roving Ambassador for Peace and the Defence of Children." How great is that title! I have this image in my head of a kid playing with matches and Enrico jumping out from the bushes to confiscate them. A young girl slips off the monkey bars and her mother looks on in horror but out of nowhere comes Enrico and catches her and softly places her on her feet and turns to her and in a kind but firm tone says:
Per rischio giocano con il puill della vita, dato che quello non siamo mai abbastanza vecchi*
Then he walks her to the grateful mom and says:
"She is good girl. I tell her she must have repsect of gravity. She knows now. Do not punish the bambina, she will be fine. I was just thankful to be nearby when this happens. I must go now. Ciao."
* "To chance whimsy and play with life's pull? For that we are never old enough." Labels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, January 24, 2006
KING OF THE BEATS
Mantronix
available on Mantronix: Best of 1985-99
[Buy it]
FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY
Disco Dub Band
1975
Available on compilation:Jazz Funk Session
POP POPCORN CHILDREN
Eldridge Holmes
Atco : 1969
Out of Print
Sorry folks too busy to type. For now some more sweet funky filler. If you feel like reading, there's an intense article about the roof dogs of Gowanus in the New York Press that I read while waiting for nachos at a local Chi-Mex takeout that we call "Fuzzy Taco".Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, January 19, 2006
HIPPY-SKIPPY MOON STOMP
Moon People
Single
Roulette : 1969?
Out of Print
WHY DID YOU DO IT
Stretch
Elastique
1975
[Buy it]
FIGHT THE POWER (Powersaxx Mix)
Public Enemy feat. Branford Marsalis
Brothers Gonna Work It Out Maxi CD Summer Slammer
Def Jam/Columbia : 1990
Out of Print
THE KUNG FU
The Lords of Percussion (Mort Garson)
Single w/ Geisha Girl
Old Town : 1974
Out of Print
TRAMP
Lowell Fulson
1967
available on The Tramp Years
[Buy it]Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Friday, January 13, 2006
78 SOLDIER DEAD
A LOOK INTO YOU
RADICAL STUDENTS IN SATIN BOOTS
VIRTOUS GIRL (sic)
STUPID ART
39 Clocks
I am totally in awe of the born-out-of-time German synth-punk duo 39 Clocks, a deliriously and studiedly cool early '80s duo with a broken drum machine (it seemed to have maybe two settings, total) who anticipated the Spacemen Three's obsession with the Velvets and Suicide but in a fabulously wrong, perhaps intentionally fucked-up, ESL-poetry, bad haircut and pleather pants, more than mildly Gothy and very very 'Sprockets' kinda way that seemed both ahead of and woefully behind the times but has never ceased to sound perfect to these ears.
Thirty Nine Clocks used the English language wonderfully; just peep some of their song titles: Twisted & Shouts/ New Crime Appeal/ Shake The Hippie/ 78 Soldier Dead/ Test The Beat/ Psycho Beat/ 39 Explosion Heats/ A look Into You/ Heat Of Violence/ Dom (Electricity Elects The Rain)/ Psychotic Louie Louie/ Past Tense Hope &/ Instant Fears On 42nd Street/ Virtous Girl/ Three Floors Down/ Rainy Night Insanities/ A Touch Of Rot.
I adore them and have since my ex roommate, Uncle Wiggly member and WFMU DJ Bill Berger turned me on to them ca. 1989. I know next to nothing about them, and all I own are two albums and a comp. These songs are from that compilation disc, released in 1993, called The Original Psycho Beat, which collects tunes from their four LPs. It's out of print but should be not too difficult to find.
-Mike McGonigalLabels: James
posted by James
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Thursday, January 12, 2006
SHAKE IT ALRIGHT OH NO
and
GO JU JU GO
E.U.
Go Ju Ju Go (Cassette)
1987
Out of Print
[Buy used]
JUST BUGGIN
Whistle
Injection Disco Dance Label : 1986
Out of Print
[Buy it on compilation]
5 MINUTES OF FUNK
Whodini
Escape
Jive : 1984
Out of Print
MY MIKE SOUNDS NICE
Salt n' Pepa
Hot Cool & Vicious
London : 1986
[Buy it]
SO at a High School reunion a few years back I drank too much red wine and agreed to take over the class' alumni notes updates. I went to a small private school in DC. My classmates got good jobs, houses, reproduced. So I quickly realized that the updates weren't going to be the saucy Penny Dreadfuls I had hoped. So now I pretty much make stuff up. I enlisted fellow classmate JJ and we got to work. We invented delinquent offspring. We married my friend Tim M. off to Lark Voorhies.
We launched careers, as in this 2004 update:
I reported here last year that Matt P. was busy penning an authorized biography of neo-soul artist Chico DeBarge. Matt emailed me recently with a typically eloquent update. The book, "The Devil Wears Fubu", was published by Scribner in March, and is already in its third printing. It appears to be a critical hit as well. The New Yorker called it "nuanced, pliant" while Dave Eggers gushed: "Everytime Matt P. writes a sentence, an angel laces up his hoodie." Despite the book's success, Matt writes that at first, Chico was upset:
"Sure, initially he wasn't thrilled with it. I had warned him upfront that this wouldn't be a puff piece, that I was in pursuit of something honest. Still, I wasn't surprised by his reaction. I mean here is a guy who has spent his entire life in the company of sycophants, hangers-on who propped him up, inflated his ego. Is it any wonder then, that Chico cut his fashions from the cloth of self-deception? But then show me a man that doesn't. All of our lives are really just ideas; ideas about who we want to be, how we like to think others see us. Selfdom is an optimistic enterprise, it's the front seat of the rollercoaster; but vanity is a funhouse mirror. The thing that did surprise me about this project, though, was how much it taught me about myself. You go in thinking you can maintain a critical distance, but you can only observe something for so long before you begin to see something of yourself reflected in it. Darwin unlocked evolution's mysteries by studying finches. I unlocked mine last summer in a panel van with a man named Chico."
Occasionally the alumni office would politely omit certain submissions, including:
Max R. is a photographer at the Holocaust Museum, which sounded really great until he let slip that the museum is in his basement.
and
On weekends, Charlie takes his 2 year-old son Harrison to Tenley Mini Mart to buy cigarettes. Charlie still smokes Camel Lights, but he gets Harrison Capri Menthol 120s, which have a slimmer shape and are easier for a young child to hold in his growing lips. Plus the minty flavor encourages brushing.
Anyway, notes are due again in a week or so, and I'm giving the readers of moistworks the chance to pen some updates for me. Make something up about someone in my class and I'll get you published. Or tell me a story about a real kid from your class going places or going off the rails, and I'll swap the name out and get it published. It can be just a few words, a chance encounter, or a continuing narrative that I could weave through multiple installments. It's like you would be sponsoring an African child; a white, wealthy, African manchild who will never awkwardly show up at your apartment one day. Or just get on the comments board and tell us about a weird kid you went to school with.
As for the music here: songs you might have found in my old walkman, or cold-boomin' from Page B.'s Jetta.
The EU tracks are from what I think was a cassette-only release. I ripped them myself from the old tape so pardon the wobbly quality.
A Go Go primer
For the greatest alumni note scripture of all time, scoop up Sam Lipsyte's Home Land at once.
Completely unrelated but very amusing
Extra credit if you can identify the 6 yearbook photos above.
And finally, bear with us the next week or so as we experience some hosting and bandwidth issues. If a song doesnt seem to download, or the site seems down, try again a bit later.Labels: James
posted by James
LINK |
Thursday, December 29, 2005
As the New Year bears upon us like the pliant buttocks of Father Time himself, the Scorekeepers are making their Best-Ofs and checking them twice.
A few of the lists, in no particular order:
Pitchfork : Mike McGonigal : Sasha Frere Jones : Triple J : BBC : FILTER (including celeb lists by the likes of Shock G and Gilles Peterson) : Pop Journalism : No Frontin : Shake Your Fist : Onion : NPR : Stereogum : Gilde : Rolling Stone : Harmonium : Chattanooga Pulse : Stylus : Pop Matters : Fat Planet's Top Aussie Bands : Sean Daly
So many weepy white guys, so little time!
I liked alot of what other people liked only probably not as much as they did:
Damian Marley, Kanye, Wolf Parade, Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Gorillaz, Danger Doom, Strokes, Futurehounds, Three 6 Mafia, Amerie, LCD Soundsystem, Seu Gorge, New Pornographers, Soft, Sigur Ros...
The blog Neiles Life has his top 20 indie/pop/rock songs you can download here including a worthy Teenage Fanbclub single.
We at moistworks also featured many great 2005 releases, including:
Spoon, Doe, & Malkmus
Rogue Wave
Edan
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
Acid House Kings
Ohmega Watts
Antony and the Johnsons
Coco Rosie
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (who our very own Brian Howe put on the map. I've seen the official Tastemaker License Pitchfork issued Brian: it's oversized like a novelty or a prop but it's very real and powerful beyond words)
and
someone who isn't making enough of these lists:
Martha Wainwright, whose song "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" is crushing and triumphant and -- unlike the post I took great joy in writing for it -- doesn't contain a single false note.
Noz at Cocaine Blunts... has posted his top rap singles for the year. Its a thorough effort but the results seem to suggest that whoever stole the soul didn't return it in 2005. I think Antoine de Saint-Exupery best characterized the current state of rap when he posed: "Are we making chewing gum for men or men for chewing gum?" Though to be fair, he posed the question backstage at the VMAs, when he was still out-of-sorts for receiving no nominations and because a member of The Game's entourage had just cussed his ass out for wearing a cape.
So I guess moistworks owes you a list, and they are songs you wont be seeing anywhere else:
The Top 25 Songs of 1978
We try not to be too didactic here, but I think this list is basically definitive. That said, not too much thought went into this. In fact every minute spent was maybe 59 seconds too long.
This list isn't particulary reverent to Music Hall-of-Famers; notable omissions include Springsteen, Queen, Kinks, Dire Straits, Roxy Music, Jackson Browne, Black Sabbath, Dylan, The Clash, Clapton. Theres no Billy Joel songs from The Stranger. Though I love what Billy Joel is doing with his life: crashing Renaults in the sand, embarrasing himself at polo matches. Hitting rock bottom just takes forever in the Hamptons. And not a crumb from Fleetwood Mac's Rumors. But that record has reached a point of such classic rock ubiquity now, that I can't hardly imagine it actually coming into existence for a first time. It's like trying to admire one's own lungs.
Nor have I tried to imagine I was a blogger back in 1978 (i might have run a Blue Oyster Cult blog) and draft a playlist that would have been prophetic and hiply contrarian for the times: no Kraftwerk, Stranglers, Television, Big Star, Buzzcocks, DEVO or The Jam.
No, I don't make lists very often, but when I do, Im all heart - I make them on nothing but pure instinct. Thats why most of my grocery lists just have the word 'BACON' repeated in capital block letters from top to bottom Shining-style.
THE LIST:
25.
Earth, Wind & Fire: September
The Jacksons: Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)
Chic: Le Freak
Disco produced some of our greatest songs. It probably produced all of our worst ones too.
24.
Culture: Two Sevens Clash
23.
The Police: So Lonely
Download: So Lonely (Live in Melbourne, Australia 1981)
22.
Elvis Costello: Radio Radio
21.
Talking Heads:
The Good Thing & Psycho Killer
20.
Althea & Donna: Uptown Top Ranking
2nd best song ever about a Khaki suit. I'd like to think that the first is yet to be written.
19.
10cc: Dreadlock Holiday
Maybe a bit high but I really don't like cricket. I love it.
Download
18.
The Ramones: I Wanna Be Sedated
You know what, I'm listening to this song now and you know it's actually kinda tepid. Its off the list.
17.
The Mighty Ryeders: Evil Vibrations
16.
The Cars: Moving In Stereo/Let The Good Times Roll
My swim coach Kerry was tan and bear chested and had a sandy moustache and a white smile and took all the kids out to eat after the meets in his Jetta and played The Cars in his tape deck. He was so cool. He also played Billy Squire's 'The Stroke' at practice. He told us it was about swimming.
15.
Blondie: Heart Of Glass
14.
Plastic Bertrand: Ca Plane Pour Moi
Download
13.
The Cure: Killing An Arab
12.
Kate Bush: Wuthering Heights
If you are a slightly pasty hi-school chick back in 78 and you wear kinda frock skirt things and are only happy in art class because with collage you can arrange the universe in a way you cant in your real life and you are chaste, but only by circumstance, because you yearn so much but those boys in your school are so immature and grubby not like the complex men of Emily Bronte and you put this song on for the 1st time and your mind literally explodes.
11.
X-Ray Spex: Germ Free Adolescents
I like to imagine a teenage Howie Mandell listening to this song obsessively.
Chicks with "effervescently discordant" voices like Poly Styrene's went into hibernation shortly after 1978. Perhaps sensing the 80s wasnt safe for them, they just buried deep in the ground. But now they are back and man they are everywhere. Its a plague. Like those 17 year cicadas. The Brood X cicadas.
Download
10.
Brothers Johnson: Get The Funk Out My Face
Download
9.
Odyssey: Native New Yorker(12")
A bittersweet broadway ode to a bittersweet time in American music:
disco was dying, and the video game song parody was yet to be born.
8.
Parliament: Flashlight
7.
Rod Stewart: Da Ya Think I`m Sexy
Rolling Stones: Miss You
These are the same song. You know its true. Don't be mad, Rod Stewart fans.
Two greats flirting with disco. Only one would end up marrying her.
6.
Bee Gees: Staying Alive
5.
Taste of Honey: Boogie Oogie Oogie
Of all the dancefloor greats, this one has the longest legs.
4.
ELO: Mr. Blue Sky
This song cured my BiPolar disorder.
3.
Bob Marley: Time Will Tell
People dissed the Kaya record for being too soft: not political like roots-Marley or soulful like Wailers-Marley. But 'Time Will Tell' (and 'Running Away' for that matter) showcases singer-songwriter Marley at his unplugged finest.
2.
Lou Reed: Street Hassle
I got into Lou Reed when most people did, in College. I had bought the Rolling Stone Album Guide, 1987 edition and saw that this band 'The Velvet Underground' came highly rated. I had great loyalty to that Album Guide. I didn't even listen to 'White Light/White Heat' for two years because I was wary that its 3 Star-ness might taint my love for the other 4-Star Velvet's albums. I got into Lou at the same time as my friend Lumpy. We even went on the radio to talk about Lou. Like at 1am midweek, Mornington Public Radio in Melbourne, which had a broadcast signal of about 2 pubs, which was a good thing since our friends started crank-calling the station and I was drunk and Lumpy froze up and the host started talking about the "angst ridden tones of Gordon Gano."
Lumpy used to accuse me of being spoiled and not respecting peoples property. I dont think this was at all accurate: i used to empty the house vacuum cleaner to find coins to buy 'Horizon' cigarettes, the cheapest smokes available, boxed 50-at-a-time in a big blue carton with clouds on it that made them look like a package of tampons. But maybe Lumpy thought that I was spoiled because Lumpy only owned basically 4 possessions. He had a couple posters from the Australian tourism board advertising rainforests that he had laminated. He had a toaster. Actually he only had the toaster for like 2 months. One day I turned it on and threw my keys in the slot and blew it up just 'cause. And Lumpy had a guitar which he cared about more than anything else in the world. It wasn't a particularly good guitar or of any sentimental value but it was his guitar and he was a guitarist and he loved the thing. So one day a bunch of us were stoned and Lumpy and some other friends are trying to convince me that Dion, who they knew from his guest vocal on Lou Reed's "Dirty Boulevard" was a black guy.
"His name is Dimucci you fucking Bogans" but they didnt believe me so I ran into my room and got Exhibit A: a copy of Rolling STone magazine that had an illustration of Dion and I jumped up on the bed and held it up high, and I stumbled back, off the bed and put my foot right through the neck of Lumpy's guitar and it cracked like a bone and he burst into tears and ran from the room. I felt terrible. I couldnt afford to replace the thing. But then our friend Tim told me he knew this guy. SO we drove to the outer suburbs to this place that looked like Astoria, Queens but with a relentless blue sky, and he took me to this ancient man who lived with his ancient wife. The wife spent all day gardening. Well it wasnt really gradening, since she had the garden paved over and all the plants placed in pots. Maybe she did this so she wouldnt twist an ankle on a root, or maybe she liked the neatness or control, and wasnt so much a gardner as a commander of natures forces, spending her days setting the shrubs into formations, mobilizing the lupins. The old man spent all his time in a cluttered old workshop out back. He had devoted his working life to handcrafting instruments, mostly classical ones, and was apparently something of a legend at it, having worked on violins and cellos for the country's top orchestras. He was retired and a bit arthritic now but had little else to do, and was thrilled to take Lumpys crippled guitar off our hands. A few days later we returned and he had completely rebuilt the neck, laminated it and all. It was actually better then new. You don't need to pay me he said, but Tim made me give him $50.
SO the point is Im NOT spoiled ,and while in a way I dont respect property, I also DO respect property, or at least I pay other people to.
The other point of this story is that if you want to make an 11-minute, 3 Act song about a girl dying of a heroin overdose, and you want to record it live, with cellos and talking instead of singing, then you dont want a team of professional songwriters and ProTools and Kelly Clarkson. You want Lou Reed, thats it, he's the list.
Download: Street Hassle
1.
Peter Gabriel: Mother of Violence
Village Voice's 4th worst voice had 1978's best song. This song is the reason I could never be in the army. I'd be playing this in the barracks all day eating takeout from that Burger King they built for the troops, and eventually the Sarg. would order a order the 'Code Red' on me like in A Few Good Men.
Download: Mother of ViolenceLabels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Moistworks Brooklyn bureau enjoying the new Ricky Gervais podcast that debuted yesterday on The Guardian site. Faithful readers: please get on the comments board and recommend some entertaining podcasts. I have been avoiding podcasts generally on the assumption that they are all unbearably awful. Though I do enjoy Dr Karl's weekly science call-in show from JJJ.
Check back soon for the days musicLabels: James
posted by James
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Friday, December 02, 2005
GET OFF THE STREETS Y'ALL
Eric and The Vikings
7"
Soulhawk : 197?
MELLOW FUNK
Floyd Morris
197?
available on
Mighty Mellow 3: Some Other Kind Of Funk
Partners In Crime (Italy): 2000
MOON MISSION
Joseph Henry and The Soul Command
7"
Soul Fire : 197?
available on
Grazing in the Trash : The Soul Fire Funk 45 Collection Vol 2
A trio of OG funk instrumentals for the weekend.
I know nothing about any of these acts except that Eric and the Vikings were a Motown trio from the early 70s. They are still touring and releasing music as "The Vikings."
Their website is called "vikingsforever.com".
For a dead site, it's an ambitious name.
I fancy how the piano roll in "Mellow Funk" sounds just like the paino roll of "Get Off The Streets" but played at a slower rpm.Labels: James
posted by James
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Wednesday, November 30, 2005
GUNS OF BRIXTON
TOO DRUNK TO FUCK
TEENAGE KICKS
Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague
Peacefrog : 2004
[Buy it]
"The idea was to forget the initial punk or new wave background of each song, keep simple fundamental chords, work with young singers who never heard the original versions, and make the quality of original songwriting happen in a completely different way (bossa nova, jazz style and sixties pop)."
The fact that there exist talented singers young enough to be unaware of new wave and punk classics like "Love will Tear Us Apart" and "The Guns of Brixton" is simultaneously depressing and wonderful. That's probably what it took to produce an album so refreshingly lacking in reverence to the original versions. I never imagined I'd be tapping my foot to a bossa nova version of The Cure's "A Forest" but I'm told that these are the unexpected joys of moving into one's thirties.
Nouvelle Vague is made up of French musician-producer types Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux. The vocalists - though they sound as though they could all be the same woman - are actually several. All have gorgeous voices and none betray the knowing irony you expect from covers of such classics. What you get are true gems like the playful, saucy, deliriously fun version of "Too Drunk to Fuck" and sexy-sinister rendition of Killing Joke's "Psyche."
I'd like to think that, given a group of talented musicians, the original versions of these songs were so good that they'd be well nigh unfuckupable. Of course that's never the case, and while not all the songs on this album reach the dizzying heights of their Dead Kennedy's cover, it's still surprising to hear just how well these songs travel into jazz and pop genres without becoming the type of disposable novelties you find on a Dr Demento compendium. They also seem to stand up to a lot of repeated listening, which is doubly remarkable since cover songs (much less an album of them) are such difficult things to do well. Too dissimilar and they lack all the innocent and nostalgic pleasures we associate with their originals; too similar and we wonder what's the point?
The songs are well chosen and true to the intentions of Collin and Libaux who completely re-imagine the original versions. I certainly can't remember ever hearing a cover of "The Guns of Brixton" sung in the lighter-than-air, even adorable, style you find here. Who knows, though, perhaps this is what it would sound like if in some alternate universe Joe Strummer were a shy songwriter with a talent for mixing excellent martinis and smooth smooth jazz.
If you lucky enough to live in NYC, you can see them play Joe's pub in December.
by Tony EliasLabels: James
posted by James
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Wednesday, November 23, 2005
THAT SOUND (Quantic Soul Orchestra Mix)
Ohmega Watts
That Sound / The Treatment 12"
Ubiquity : 2005
LET MY PEOPLE GO
Darondo
197?
available on
The Shape Of Things To Come
[Buy it]
GROOVIN' ON SUNSHINE
OUTRO/DREAM ON
Ohmega Watts
The Find
Ubiquity : 2005
[Buy it]
Those of you lucky enough to have visited Soul Sides last week would have downloaded the sublime soul tearjerker "Didn't I" from the obscure Bay Area singer Dorando.
If you missed it, its available on Gilles Peterson's Digs America: Brownswood U.S.A.
I wasn't having much success googling Dorando. This may have had something to do with the fact that his name is actually "Darondo", and a typo switched the A and O on the original "Didn't I" 45.
It appears Ubiquity is set to release a Darondo disc in the coming months. In the meantime, I found another song of his on a new compilation Ubiquity has put together for download only: The Shape Of Things To Come. Preview and download the ones you like at iTunes, or better yet, eMusic. It seems Ubiquity's plan is to release these e-mixtapes quarterly.
"Let My People Go" doesn't have that great weightlessness about it that "Didn't I" does, but its a fine song nevertheless, one practically drowning in its own bass.
The Shape of Things... compilation is incredibly ecclectic, but solid from front to back. There's something new, something old, something borrowed. On the borrowed tip, Nino Moschella has a nice neo Prince/Stevie Wonder thing going on. It's more successful than Shawn Lee's "La Ballade De Mela" which sounds EXACTLY like Pink Floyd covering Lionel Richie's "Hello."
Other standouts include Breakestra's "Family Rap" and "How Do You Really Feel (Cut Chemsit Atkins Edit)" and Radio City's blustery instrumental "Prophets."
But the track that leapt into my brain and doesn't seem to be in an hurry to leave, is Quantic's superperky remix of Ohmega Watts' "That Sound". It recalls for me KMD or The Pharcyde. Days when rap shucked and jived and wasn't afraid to have some fun.
Ohmega Watts is a Portland, Oregon rapper by way of Brooklyn. His 2005 release "The Find" proves him to be a conversant and versatile talent. He shows a preference for using real instrumentation where possible, and favors jazz-funk arrangements, as evidenced on the Pete Rockesque "Outro/Dream On."Labels: James
posted by James
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Wednesday, November 09, 2005
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL/
THE TIMES, THEY ARE A CHANGIN'
Spirit
Spirit of '76
BGO : 1975
[Buy it]
EMBRYONIC JOURNEY
Jefferson Airplane
Surrealistic Pillow
1967
[Buy it]
BLUE PRELUDE
Jorma Kaukonen and Tom Hobson
Quah
1974
[Buy it]
3 sweet songs. Rack em.Labels: James
posted by James
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Tuesday, November 01, 2005
COUNT IT OUT
Erik Satie vs. Dave Brubeck et al
Mixed by Alex C
KEEP HANGING ON
Supremes vs. Stereophonics
Mixed by fuTuRo
CHERRY BLOSSOM SK8ER
AIR vs Avril Lavigne
Mixed by Prosac
CHERRY BLOSSOMED DEMON
AIR vs Macy Gray
Mixed by Rolo
CHERRY BLOSSOM GIRL (COVER)
Hope Sandoval
Cherry Blossom Girl [CD-SINGLE]
Astralwerks : 2004
[Buy it]
The art of the mashup always brings to my mind that old adage about the hundred monkeys in a room with a hundred typewriters, except with these monkeys you'd better toss in a hundred copies of Kellis' "Milkshake" accapella.
I recently dipped back into the generously stocked waters of Get Your Bootleg On and landed these downbeat gems.
"Count It Out" is the first jazz bootleg I can recall hearing. The choice of source material isn't the most original, but looped and echoed about, the resulting instrumental holds together beautifully, in this jazz-tard's ears anyway.
"Keep Tomorrow Hanging" somehow warps Diana Ross over The Stereophonic's "Maybe Tomorrow" and gives fresh legs to two overplayed hits.
"Cherry Blossom Sk8er" combines Avril Lavigne's disgraceful teeny-tale "Sk8er Girl" and the bulletproof AIR song "Cherry Blossom Girl." This is guilty pleasure territory. Avril's misunderstood pipes are no match for Macy Gray though. I think I posted "Cherry Blossomed Demon" sometime last year.
And while I'm on the AIR tip, a sublime cover by Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval that owes a great 6-string debt to Led Zeppelin's "Going to California."Labels: James
posted by James
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Thursday, October 27, 2005
ENAMORADOS (This Old Song of Love)
Grupo Miguelito
Grupo Miguelito EP
2005
MUSTARD
Latin Playboys
Dose
Atlantic : 1999
[Buy it]
LEMON 'N' ICE
Latin Playboys
Dose
Atlantic : 1999
[Buy it]
Today's featured song, 'Enamorados', was co-written by my friend Jaime. We met through Namesake International, an internet social service that connects you with people from around the world that share your name, or its foreign equivalent. It's been one of their more successful matches. 'Seumas' had problems respecting personal space, and 'Yaqub': an irritating Azerbaijani habit of cutting salami with a dagger.
Jaime, on the other hand, is a large-hearted bohemio who lives among the hipster midges of Williamsburg, but calls Las Cruces home. He's a high-ranking official at the Associated Press Cultural Ministry, and a gifted home-studio rat.
'Enamorados' is a folk song at heart, but given the top-shelf studio treatment, has been transformed into some sort of rich, contemporary latin ambrosia.
The song is performed by New York's Grupo Miguelito, Miguelito being co-writer and longing tenor Miguel LaMorte. The band is an ensemble outfit, and this number includes a string arrangement by Brazilian composer Ze Luis, whose worked with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Bebel Gilberto.
It will suprise none of you that I know absolutely zero about Latin music.
So I consult the group's myspace site which describes their sound as "somewhere between the bolero/flamenco stylings of mid 1970's Jose Feliciano and the modern energy of artists like Manu Chau and Juanes."
I'll have to trust them on this. I thought Jose Feliciano pitched for the Mets.
As for why I threw up a couple songs by the Latin Playboys (Los Lobos' sweet lo-fi side project); well, given my disgraceful ignorance of the genre, it was either that or that Cypress Hill song.
Oh what the hell:
LATIN LINGO
Cypress Hill
Cypress Hill
1991
[Buy it]
'Enamorados(this old song of love)' is featured on a free compilation cd titled Open Your Mind To The Music vol.1 available at various record stores and clubs in and around the Los Angeles area. Check Poison Tree Records here or here for more info and a listing of all the artists.
grupomiguelito.comLabels: James
posted by James
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Monday, October 17, 2005
FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY
Elliot Fisher
197? : Out of Print
available on Brotherhood
[Buy it]
WE NEED SOME MONEY
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
We Need Some Money
TTED : 1984 : Out of Print
available on The Best of Chuck Brown
MONEY TALKS
The Bar-Kays
STAX : 1978
Money Talks
[Buy it]
BABY, YOU'RE A PURE MAN (BRAT Mix)
The Beatles v. All Saints
mixed by BRAT Productions
[more BRAT mashups]
Today's post, a brief rebuttal to Alex's friday testimonial. This time a celebration of money. Straight cash, homie. A tribute to the dollar bill, the American seed.
A dollar bill is a cheap cigar, an opening bid, your next beer, a Doobie Brother's mp3. A dollar bill is a daily double, a hundred pulls on the Morgan Fairchild slot machine, the small greyhound in race 12 with the nervous eyes.
A dollar bill is a morning coffee, the day's news, the red line to Shady Grove.
A dollar bill is a way of saying "job well done" to a naked lady on a pole.Labels: James
posted by James
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Friday, October 07, 2005
WHEN I TAKE MY VACATION IN HEAVEN
Mt. Eagle Quartet
ANANAIS
Chosen Gospel Singers
HIS LOVE
Lonnie Farris
I WANT TO BE LIKE JESUS IN MY HEART
Sam Collins
I CAN SEE SO MUCH
Rev. Cleophus Robinson
DON'T LEAVE ME
The Tigers
Alex said he wanted me to post some gospel music, so here you have it-a mini-mix of tunes that span the 1920s to the near-present. There's no theme connecting them or anything; they were just at the top of my most-played list in iTunes.
The Mount Eagle Quartet? I only know of two songs by them, recorded for the excellent Gotham label and collected on Gotham Gospel 2. This song is upbeat and excellent and I don't know what else to say about it except I'd love to hear more if any exists by this golden age quartet.
The Chosen Gospel Singers are pretty obscure, despite having had Lou Rawls in their ranks (you can hear him pretty clearly here) and having gigged about a bit in the L.A. area in the early 1950s. FYI, the gist of the tale of Ananais and his wife in the New Testament is not to lie to God and not to get too greedy. Don't make it look like you're doing one thing when you say you're doing another, or you will be struck down dead. Someone please read from Acts 5:1 - 11 at the next Bush cabinet meeting.
The Rev. Lonnie Farris is one of the principal patriarchs of the NPR-sanctioned "sacred steel" franchise. This tune is taken from the brilliant Document collection Slide Guitar Gospel (1944-1964). Clearly influenced by Hawaiian lap steel music (this is lap steel not slide but who cares), this stuff is so gentle and beautiful and in its own world, I just can't get enough.
Cryin' Sam Collins is one of the first known blues artists; and, like many early blues singers, he also sang a bit of gospel. I'm always on the lookout for a Yazoo LP from the '70s called Cryin' Sam Collins and his Git Fiddle: Jailhouse Blues. I adore this pretty little tune, which I knew first and foremost in Blind Lemon Jefferson's earlier recording of it.
Rev. Cleophus Robinson's music from the late '60s is some of the raddest jazzy, soulful gospel from that era. The super budget-priced CD I Shall Know Him is a great introduction to this stuff.
The Tigers are a trombone shout gospel band I hope to see real soon; I just have to get myself down to the congregation of The House of Prayer for All People in North Carolina. This song is taken from their 1991 debut Shout & Testify, though it had been recorded a decade earlier.
Mike McGonigalLabels: James
posted by James
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Monday, October 03, 2005
MAIN THEME
Lalo Schifrin
Dirty Harry Soundtrack
Aleph Records : 1971
[Buy it]
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY COMPUTER
Kolar Goi
Kolar Goi
Beatservice Norway : 2004
[Buy it]
L'ESTASI DELL 'ORO (Ecstasy of Gold)
from The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
Ennio Morricone / Bandini
Remixes Vol. 2
Compost Records : 2004
[Buy it]
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
Hugo Montenegro and His Orchestra
1967
available on All-Time Greatest Movie Themes & Schemes
RCA : 1999
[Buy it]
EXECUTIVE PARTY
Andre Previn & The London Symphony Orchestra
Rollerball Soundtrack
United Artists : 1975
[Buy it]
Todays post is just an excuse to post this artwork, the cover of Lalo Schifrin's 1977 Towering Toccata. The image is cleary meant to say "look at how enormously colossal and towering is the talent Lalo Schifrin" but thanks to 70s graphic design competencies, its ends up saying something more like "does any of you persons down there have an asprin for me? Lalo was having many ales last night."
Schifrin has scored over 400 films. Most famously, Mission Impossible, and most uncomfortably, 2003's Bringing Down The House. (I have this dark suspicion that when Eugene Levy is in the very last stages of advanced Alzheimer's, the last four words he will remember before the light goes out for good will be: "You're straight trippin' Boo!")
I can't speak to the bulk of his work, but this "Dirty Harry" theme is a cunning little masterpiece. It's definitely got all those staple 70s action film elements: the Chase Bass, the Strings of Intrigue... but that little downbeat guitar and organ thingy that bookends the song? Good god theres genius in that. Its amazing how comfortably it sits at the table with modern electronica, especially the "Arctic Jazztronika" of Kolar Goi. Arctic Jazztronika? My Papa loves the stuff.
Kolar Goi's song is of course an update on another famous Eastwood film score, by another famous film scorer: Ennio Morricone's The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. Morricone's operatic "L´Estasi Dell´Oro (Ecstasy of Gold)", from the same soundtrack, gets a cool trip-hop treatmnent here by Bandini, as part of a recent remix project by Compost Records that spawned 5 discs over two volumes.
The second version I've posted is a 1968 cover by Hugo Montenegro, "one of the great chameleons of space-age pop" according to this space-age pop website.
His 1968 recording of Ennio Morricone's theme...featuring whistling by Muzzy Marcellino's, sold over a million copies and hit #2 on the Top Ten chart as a single. Montenegro's version also features an electric violin (played by Elliott Fisher), a piccolo trumpet (played by Manny Klein), an electronic harmonica, an ocarina, a vocal group, and Montenegro himself grunting nonsense Italian-sounding syllables.
And no film boy post would be complete without Andre Previn, who squandered away some serious chops being Johnny ShoTunes. His Rollerball stuff is a fantastic psyched-out break from form.Labels: James
posted by James
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Sunday, September 25, 2005
JUNGLE STRUT
Gene Ammons
Brother Jug!
Prestige : 1970
available on Greatest Hits!
CALIFORNIA STRUT
Walter Murhpy & the Big Apple Band
1976
available on The Best Of Walter Murphy: A Fifth Of Beethoven
SUPER STRUT
Deodato
1972
The Roots Of Acid Jazz Vol. 2
Out of Print
THE DARKTOWN STRUTTERS BALL
Django Reinhardt
available on Djangology
--------------
Dowlnload problems? Try Song 1 : Song 2 : Song 3 : Song 4Labels: James
posted by James
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Saturday, September 24, 2005
STRUTTER
The Donnas
Detroit Rock City Soundtrack
1999
[Watch Video]
[Buy it]
SUNNY DAY STRUT
Hot Tuna
Burgers
1972
[Buy it]
UNDERTAKER STRUT
Ed Harcourt
From Every Sphere
Astralwerks : 2003
[Buy it]
We are experimenting today with a server-workaround method to boost our bandwidth. Computers behind firewalls (people at work, paranoid types) may have problems downloading. If you do have problerms, you can download directly here:
Song 1 : Song 2 : Song 3Labels: James
posted by James
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Friday, September 23, 2005
FAT CITY STRUT
Mandrill
Just Outside of Town
1973
[Buy LP]
AFRO STRUT
The Nite-Liters
Instrumental Directions
RCA : 1972
[Buy LP]
also available on Golden Classics
via Soul Sides
THE HARLEM BUCK DANCE STRUT
Les McCann
Layers
[Buy it]
SOULFUL STRUT
Sound Dimension
Studio One Soul
[Buy it]
SOULFUL STRUT
The New Mastersounds
CHICKEN STRUT
The Meters
Funkify Your Life: The Meters Anthology
[Buy it]
"I can live without it all / love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear."
--Erica Jong
Today and tomorrow, and sunday: songs you won't find on Erica Jong's iTunes celebrity playlist, songs to walk the walk by.Labels: James
posted by James
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