|
|
|
|
|
|
HOME | ABOUT | BIOS | EMAIL |
|
 |
| |
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
GIMME INDIE ROCK Sebadoh Homestead 7" : 1991 Available on: III (Reissue) Domino : 2006 [Buy It]
A few years ago, I spent a few weeks fact-checking at a magazine called Elle Girl. One thing I remember about those weeks is being asked to check an album review which began, more or less, as follows: "How in the world did an indie band like Dead Boy Confessional manage to end up on two soundtracks, a Doritos ad, and Hot 97, all before they'd released their first album?"
I went to the editor and said, "Well, they managed it because they're signed to Atlantic, and have the full resources of our media-industrial complex behind them." And the editor said, "no, no - indie doesn't mean independent. Indie's an aesthetic, and Dead Boy Confessional are the indiest band around."
That Friday, I asked the undergrads in my Writing About American Music class about it; as I recall, they agreed with the Elle Girl editor, unanimously.
LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER Great Plains Slaves to Rock'n'Roll Self-released (cass.) : 1985 Available on: Length of Growth 1981-1989 Old 3C : 2000 [Out of Print]
LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER Great Plains Live at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh 5.22.85 Old 3C : 2005 [Buy It]
The other night, my friend Franklin and I schlepped out to Maxwell's, in Hoboken, to see two old, reunited indie bands - Great Plains and Big Dipper. Both bands had appeared on Homestead's Wailing Ultimate compilation (which had also served as a lot of people's introduction to Dinosaur Jr., Death of Samantha, Salem 66, Volcano Suns, Squirrel Bait, Naked Raygun, and Big Black). Great Plains was a Columbus band, led by the irrepressible Ron House (who went on to front Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments). Big Dipper, a Boston band which included Bill Goffrier (who'd fronted the great Lawrence, KS band, the Embarrassment), and the former bassist and guitarist from an early incarnation of the Volcano Suns (a band fronted by Mission of Burma's drummer, Peter Prescott). There were many other connections: Before it was an aesthetic, "indie" was something close to an ideology - small, geographically centered, and no more or less incestuous than, say, the N+1 crowd. Big Dipper had recorded an epic song called "Ron Klaus Wrecked His House" -
He had a party He had a band And a thousand loving friends He had his reasons Or so he thought This should be where the story ends:
Ron Klaus Wrecked his house Down on Indiana Street Ron Klaus He wrecked his house Now it's lying at his feet
He threw the doors Out of the windows And the windows out the doors He brought the outside Into the inside And the ceiling to the floor...
- and Franklin, who is also a musician (as well as a music writer, and erstwhile philosophy professor) - whom I'd met when I interviewed him for my fanzine, almost twenty years ago - used to cover Great Plains songs with his old band, Nothing Painted Blue:
LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER Nothing Painted Blue 2 song 7" : 1994 Available on: Emotional Discipline Scat : 1997 [Buy It]
Maxwell's is a tiny club; you're never more than a few feet from the musicians, and that night, everyone in sight seemed to be a musician: One band finished playing, and the folks who'd been standing beside you climbed onstage. (Climbing on stage isn't a big deal at Maxwell's, where the stage is about six inches from the ground.) Yo La Tego's Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley stood towards the back (YLT's history with Maxwell's goes back 25 years or so); their bassist, James McNew, played a short opening set. (YLT, too, has covered Great Plains songs.) Another friend of Franklin's had flown in from Portland for the occasion, and was thinking of flying in again, in July, to see the Feelies. I'm 35, and it's not often that I get to be the youngest guy at the show, but with a few exceptions, I was the youngest guy at the show - which felt, more or less, like the nicest, noisiest, smallest high-school reunion you could ever imagine. Ron House sang "Letter to a Fanzine" - the song included on that old Homestead comp. - which might have served as something of a generational cri de cour, twenty-some years ago, if more than a few thousand people had heard it (if memory serves, the lyrics were cribbed from an actual letter to a fanzine):I I like everything that comes out on 4AD - You like everything that comes out on SST - You like almost everything that comes out on Homestead - I like everything I get in the mail for free! LETTER TO A FANZINE Great Plains Naked at the Buy, Sell, and Trade Homestead : 1986 Available on: Length of Growth 1981-1989 Old 3C : 2000 [Out of Print]
LETTER TO A FANZINE Great Plains Live at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh 5.22.85 Old 3C : 2005 [Buy It]
- and Bill Goffrier sang "Ron Klaus Wrecked His House" with Ron House standing five feet away, in cargo shorts and a pullover:
RON KLAUS WRECKED HIS HOUSE Big Dipper Craps Homestead : 1988 Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology Merge : 2008 [Buy It]
RON KLAUS DEMO'D HIS HOUSE Big Dipper Unreleased Demo (w/drum machine!) c. 1988 Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology Merge : 2008 [Buy It]
Big Dipper broke up in 1991 or so, after releasing a mediocre, major-label album which resulted in a total loss of indie cred whilst failing, utterly, to penetrate the mainstream (a common enough, pre-Nirvana predicament). Great Plains hadn't even tried to break through to the mainstream - once, they'd pressed a single which never went on sale at all. (You had to write Ron House a letter in order to get it; if he liked it, he'd send you a copy for free.) "How many bands can you name that are consistently unafraid of allowing their songwriting reach to exceed their musicianly grasp," Franklin wrote, in his liner notes to a Great Plains compilation which was released eight years ago (and is currently selling for ninety-nine bucks per used copy, on Amazon). "As they put it in 'Before We Stop To Think' - 'We would write our songs slow, then try to speed them up/We would write our songs soft, then try to make them tough.' This is a pretty fair description of four-fifths of the music that's made the last two decades worth living through, and a better introduction to Great Plains' honest ambivalence about themselves (and the whole punk-rock making enterprise) than anything I could say."
This seems right to me, and I don't see the profit in following it up with a thousand words about indie then, indie now, semantic drift, and my own sense of what we may or may not have lost along the way.
YOU'RE NOT PATSY Big Dipper The Waiting Ultimate Homestead : 1987 Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology Merge : 2008 [Buy It]
Instead, I sent a draft of this post to a handful of friends, and asked them to provide their own definitions of "indie," in hopes that it'll encourage further discussion in the comments, or elsewhere. Here are the replies, as of this morning:As in the new millennium catch-all that is the term "indie rock?" I mean, it's a huge field, but when we're talking a specific, sort of defined sound that syncs with that term alone, I think of (often bland) bands like Tapes'n'Tapes, the National, the Arcade Fire, etc. As far as a shared aesthetic, I'd say it's generally straight-ahead guitar music with a few meticulously considered deviations (recently horn orchestrations and Americana influences) that inhabits that sort of middle space between mainstream rock and the experimental underground. In other words, it's pop music for people who define themselves in opposition to pop music."
- Andrew Phillips, music editor/writer
The way I see it there are two kinds of genres - genres that represent living subcultures and genres that are purely marketing constructions (examples of the latter might include 'folktronica', 'IDM', 'electronica',... genres that no musician really claimed while the terms were first being bandied about, more as umbrella terms than as descriptors of unified movements, although then next-gen musicians sometimes claim these terms for their own, these media-created terms that described no living movement at their inception can actually birth a subculture that really *is* aligned around them). So those type of genres have two faces or phases that occur at different moments. Whereas genre-terms I regard as more meaningful-- things like punk, hip-hop, indie, genres that describe living subcultures where the terms are propagated by the musicians and THEN picked up by the media, which have lifestyle accoutrements and organic social dimensions etc..,, these also have two faces or phases, but they unfold simultaneously. So "indie" viably means two things: the fundamental one is music that is recorded outside of the major label system (& this category is very confused now b/c so many "indie" labels are structured so much like major labels and/or have commercial ties with them, and b/c unlike in the late 70s/early 80s when arguably American indie rock was born, there wasn't the massive touring and commercial infrastructure for indie rock that exists now, which made the term less shaky and more meaningful, with bands genuinely just finding their own way around the major label system not settling for this institutionalized subcurrent to it that exists now...plus with the current shakiness of the label system, categorizing a band by their label-affiliation is making much less sense than it used to.) & so the other thing that 'indie' means now is mainstream, record industry bands who emerged from this organic indie scene, who appropriated certain very visible musicological strains of it, and who are "indie" in the same way that a mainstream band can be "punk", we can say they are a punk band and while being mainstream violates every tenet of organic punk-movement culture, people will know what we mean. I guess the bottom line you're asking which of these definitions is the "right" one, and I think they're both right... what can I say, I'm a descriptivist at heart."
- Brian Howe, poet/critic
Indie is short for "independent." There are four major labels: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner. If a label ultimately answers to one of those four companies - if one of those companies has the power to make direct decisions about what the label does, or signs its paychecks--then it has a dependent relationship with that company, and the artists affiliated with it aren't "independent" either. That's a definition, not a value judgement, although it sometimes has value judgements attached to it. And it's a very useful tool for understanding where certain recordings and artists and labels fit into the economic matrix - what resources they have available to them, etc.
"Indie rock" has a generally understood meaning, largely associated with what a bunch of guitar bands on independent labels did in the '80s and '90s. It is, in fact, a subset of rock released on independent labels - an aesthetic that got its name from its economic circumstances. But the reason it got its name that way is that the idea of deliberate financial independence from a few large companies was, and sometimes still is, an important part of the intention and meaning of a lot of "indie rock" artists' work. To claim that a band can be "indie" without being financially independent of the major labels is to pretend that industrial capitalism does not exist.
- Douglas Wolk, author/critic
The way I see it, "indie" is a definable genre, not just a declaration of limits vis-a-vis the market (since, after all, there are tens of thousands of variously rebarbative musical units far less market-friendly than anything that can be labeled "indie"). If punk is descended from the Stooges, indie is descended from the Modern Lovers. Both subgenres come down from '60s garage rock, but indie takes the introspective, romantic, self-conscious, self-doubting road. Indie is usually friendly, catchy, and openhearted enough that it seems as though it should be accessible to all and therefore mass-popular in that old AM-radio way, but in fact it represents a formerly centrist aesthetic that's been pushed out to the fringes by a bunch of large historical forces. Its self-doubt, a crucial element, also tends to limit its appeal, and I'll let you guess what demographic unit feels sufficiently secure to countenance it. When something that sounds indie makes it to the big show, it's usually either because a freak weather pattern broke its way, or else because an indie wrapping coats something slick and shallow. Indie is a lot like the kind of American novelists who are kept in print by the French. Jim Thompson may speak to the soul of the nation, but Americans would generally rather read James Patterson.
- Luc Sante, writer
Wait - I thought the "indie" aesthetic being referred to was actually the "alternative" aesthetic; "alternative" more aptly referring to, say, Nirvana on Geffen, whereas "indie" would have referred to Nirvana on Sub Pop. Or is "alternative" now a sanctioned Billboard category like Country and Western? Anyway, as Tom Frank aptly put it around fifteen years ago in THE BAFFLER, "Alternative to what?"
Indie, anyway, does appear often to be a marketing term (albeit an intrinsically fraudulent one) referring more to a certain flavor of product issued by the majors (whether labels or studios) than to independently produced and released works. As far as the aesthetic it espouses or implicitly promises, it seems generally to be a tepid one, at least by my lights (same with the average "indie" movie).
(I think, incidentally, that the idea may be spreading to publishing as well -- look at Soft Skull's acquisition by Counterpoint. They're really acquiring an attitude, not necessarily just a backlist.)
I have to confess to being somewhat disturbed by your students' unquestioning absorption of the corporate line in this instance, particularly since it's music in which they, especially, have historically had a stake. The carelessness with the language is surely opportunistic for the record companies, but inexcusable in students charged with the task of thinking critically. We're in Orwell territory here; If "indie" doesn't actually mean it, then "organic" doesn't have to either, and we can all easily extrapolate from there.
- Christopher Sorrentino, novelist
My heart wants to side with the indie-economic-model hardliners but my head says that, semantically, that fight is lost: "Indie" has been redrawn by common usage just as "alternative" was before it - the most common musical strains in an oppositional subculture crossed out of that subculture, and the label crossed with them. "Indie" now connotes such a hodgepodge of economic, social and aesthetic associations that it is irrelevant. We can be rueful about that over beers, but that's about all.
So everyone please abandon ship on the word "indie" just as happened with "alternative." The principle of autonomy doesn't have to go with it.
Then again, considering that the four major labels are at the moment losing their hegemonic power like oil tankers spilling crude into the sea, maybe that's not currently the most compelling battle. If your main paycheck is coming from your songs being sold to commercials and TV shows, but you're on a non-major record label, are you still meaningfully economically independent from large entertainment conglomerates? And as critical as we want to be of popular-culture economics, the indie/alternative subcultures have had their share of pathologies and snobberies that might warrant as much a "good riddance" as a sentimental tear.
The bigger question is whether the autonomy of the "indie" movement from mass entertainment was in fact as sociopolitically progressive and artistically liberating (not the same thing) as people attached to it believed in the 80s/90s - the populist question. And even if it was, as the major labels flounder to redefine themselves, what does true independence in the age of digital reproduction look like? What might "selling out" be?
Maybe the expiration date of the word "indie" provides a good, temporarily unlabelled moment to look at things anew.
- Carl Wilson, author/critic
Apologies for being obvious, but Indie used to mean 'not on a major label' - and the DIY attitude that that implied - and that was the only time we all knew precisely what it meant. When the major labels sniffed money, and bought the bands, it couldn't mean precisely that anymore - perhaps the word should have been more strictly applied at this time: "you were Indie yesterday, but since you signed that contract, you're now Modern Rock" - so it came to refer to the type of music which embodied that spirit, or was at least influenced by it, whatever the profile of the label.
"...with the current shakiness of the label system, categorizing a band by their label-affiliation is making much less sense than it used to." Hits the nail on the head, and true for a long time.
And now Indie, or Alternative, is a "branding tool" that annoys. But those who still use the word in conversations (rather than marketing meetings) are generally understood to refer to music made regardless of the mainstream, for the love of doing it, regardless of technical perfection, profit etc.... or any combination of the above. I can't speak for those who use it in marketing meetings, but I assume they refer to that, but also to another meaning, which as with all sales terms is a slippery catch-all concept, comprising everything from "people with goatees and tattoos who are, to our delight, happy to make money" via "The spirit of the Kids and their Nike revolution" and "What's New" to "That music I may or may not like that will make me money".
One is a devil-may-care philosophy, the other its commodification - sorry: I can't think of a less Cultural Studies word right now! (Commoditization may be more up to date in Business School.)
Maybe Alternative Music nowadays is like Alternative Medicine?
- Wesley Stace/John Wesley Harding, author/musician
The first entry cited in the OED comes from a 1928 edition of the NY Times: "Indies, independent producers of pictures." More to the point however is a 1945 Billboard heading: "Indie diskers new collection ache for publishers royalty." What's relevant is the association of the term with vendors rather than with artists themselves. Additionally, there is the English idiomatic use which refers to scruffy but apolitical music as far back as Happy Mondays and Stone Roses. The term is now used internationally in this manner to class music as a broad commercial category. I think the term is helpful in the U.S. for drawing a line between groups who are oppositional (punk, free jazz) and groups who are totally cool with making it (indie). It's worth mentioning, however, that "indie rap" still seems to describe a fairly cohesive venue for intelligent, countercultural music (J Live, The Coup). But I think the elliptical return of the early citations is relevant: film and music, in a standard bid for commercial synergy, converge somewhere around the end credits of most romanticized youth dramas (Garden State's anointment of The Shins being only the most obvious example). As it stands now, indie means operational freedom from social consciousness; it's about as atomized and self-interested as the Victorian Novel. Actually, we can go slightly further by noting the current coincidence between Jane Austen films (affirming the virtues of marriage and estate ownership) and the commercial fiefdom of indie (affirming the virtues of Urban Outfitters and Apple). Both, I think, offer the consumer a provisional show of "hardship" (or authenticity) before moving on to an easy retirement.
-Blake Schwarzenbach, musician/professor
my "alternative" OED, different than the usual overground edition cites "in-die" as opposed to "out-die" ie to die on the inside generally defined as selling fewer records than everyone believes you should have and/or having driven a seemingly popular or commercially viable style or approach into mercantile disrepute versus "out-die" to die on the outside to sell more records than is seemly or good for the state of your carbon footprint and/or soul in the larger sense of such things hence the paradigmatic in-die band would likely be big star -- taking beatle-esque pop hooks, attractive hair, hetero love motifs and settling into underperforming "cult" inner-death (i.e. no one else really cares) status while paradigmatic "out-die" band is certainly the rolling stones -- who dragged oppressively morbid delta blue fetishivism and drug-death-spiral somehow through four decades and counting of overdog arena-selling "outer-death" (i.e. we're all appalled to have to witness their dollar-soaked decrepitude)
a simple measure of the difference is often the function of a cover song -- out-dying cindy lauper propelling in-dying jules shear number onto the charts vs. in-dying galaxie 500 or yo la tengo burying out-dying kinks or george harrison tunes in the "in-die pantheon"
one of the paradoxical cases is the velvet underground, long understood as the "ur-in-die" band but they were actually out-die -- leveraging john cage dissonance, cellos, homosex motifs and bad singing into some shred of popularity and lasting fame -- yet the innumerable bands adopting them as a model have achieved treasured "in-die" status (i.e. gloriously no one cares)
(meltzer would have taken this and run for fifty pages, whereas I have to get to work)
-Jonathan Lethem, novelist
We're curious as ever to know what you think... In the meanwhile here's one, last song by Big Dipper:
A SONG TO BE BEAUTIFUL Big Dipper Craps Homestead : 1988 Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology Merge : 2008 [Buy It]Labels: alex, indie
posted by Alex
LINK |
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
HELP John Lennon The Complete Home Recordings [Unreleased]
HELP ME Ray Sharpe w/the King Curtis Orchestra feat. Jimi Hendrix Atco : 1966 Available on: Blues & Soul Power Atlantic : 2003 [Buy It]
HELP THE BEAR Ted Taylor Atco : 1966 Available on: Blues & Soul Power Atlantic : 2003 [Buy It]
WATCH THE DOG Sandy Gaye Moonshot : c.1969 [Out of Print]
DO THE HAWG Eddie Kirk Volt : 1963 Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 Atlantic : 1991 [Buy It]
PASS THE HATCHET Roger & The Gypsies Sevem B : 1969 Available on: The Instant & Minit Story Charly : 2005 [Buy It]
SKIN THE CAT Jimmy Merchant Bo-Mar : ? Available on: Shakin' Fit Candy : 1992 [Out of Print/Download it here]
SPILL THE WINE
Live Eric Burdon & War Eric Burdon Declares "War" MGM : 1970 [Buy It]
WRAP IT UP Sam & Dave Stax : 1968 Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 Atlantic : 1991 [Buy It]
PATCH MY HEART The Mad Lads Stax : 1966 Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 Atlantic : 1991 [Buy It]
CLOSE THE DOOR The Holmes Brothers State of Grace Alligator : 2007 [Buy It]
. . . . . . . . . .
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS John & Sean Lennon The Complete Home Recordings [Unreleased]Labels: alex, soul, soul/garage-core
posted by Alex
LINK |
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
XXX YO! INTERNET RAPS XXX
FREAKS OF THE INDUSTRY Digital Underground Sex Packets Tommy Boy : 1990 [Buy It]
We @ Moistworks hold these tracks to be self-evident:
JIGGABLE PIE AMG Bitch Better Have My Money ZYX : 1991 [Buy It]
But seriously, the bitch really better had have my money.
TALK LIKE SEX Kool G Rap & DJ Polo Wanted Dead or Alive Cold Chillin' : 1990 [Buy It]
"I'll leave you like a rape victim." That, from back in the day.
IF YOU BELIEVE IN HAVING SEX 2 Live Crew As Nasty As They Wanna Be Lil' Joe : 1989 [Buy It]
A girl back there who, asked if she *liked* sex said, "Of course/Doesn't everyone?" She was interested in overpopulation. But ask yourselves, people - do *you* people believe in having sex?
MAHOGANY Erik B. & Rakim Let The Rhythm Hit'Em MCA : 1990 [Buy It]
if so: Al Green = Love.
FOOL GET A CLUE Digital Underground Future Rhythm Radikal : 1996 [Buy It]
And now, with a lot less love:
HOUSEWIFE Dr. Dre Chronic 2001 Interscope : 1999 [Buy It]
And a whole lotta lovelessness:
AIN'T NO FUN Snoop Dogg Doggystyle Priority : 1993 [Buy It]I know the pussy's mine So I'ma fuck a couple more times Then I'm through with it There's nothing else to do with it Pass it to my homie, now you get it 'Cause she ain't nothing but a bitch to me And y'all know that bitches ain't shit to me... FREAKY PUMPS Fat Lip The Loneliest Punk The Lab : 2005 [Buy It]
That, from from the original sex rap post.... And if that don't slap the fuzzle from your muzzles, here's a few more xxx internet raps xxx :
SIDE TO SIDE Blackalicious The Craft Anti : 2005 [Buy It]
TALK LIKE SEX PT. II Smut Peddlers Porn Again Priority : 2001 [Buy It]
WORK THAT POLE The Beatnuts The Originators Landspeed : 2002 [Buy It]
The Beatnuts, in general, are genuinely unpleasant: Where's their medal?
FUCK THE PAIN AWAY Peaches The Teaches of Peaches Xl: 2000 [Buy It]
[For [all the bearded] ladies.]
ICE CREAM Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx RCA : 1995 [Buy It]
Someday, the words "I Love you like I love my dick size" will be inscribed on some Staten Island tombstone....
XXX YO! INTERNET RAPS XXXLabels: alex, hip-hop, sex
posted by Alex
LINK |
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
PIMPS (FREESTYLIN' AT THE FORTUNE 500 CLUB) The Coup Genocide & Juice Capitol : 1994 [Out of Print]
FANCY
FANCY Bobbie Genrty Fancy Capitol : 1970 [Buy It]
CLOUD NINE Mongo Santamaria Columbia : 1969 Available on: Greatest Hits Sony : 2000 [Buy It]
LOVE POTION #9 The Coasters The Coasters on Broadway King : 1972 [Out of Print]
NINE BELOW ZERO
NINE BELOW ZERO Sonny Boy Williamson Chess : 1960 Available on: The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson MCA : 1993 [Buy It}
LOOK PON PUSSY Niney The Observer Available on: Trojan X-Rated Box Set Trojan : 2002 [Buy It]
TREAT HER LIKE A PROSTITUTE Slick Rick The Great Adventures of Slick Rick Def Jam : 1988 [Buy It]
GOVERNMENT CENTER Jonathan Richman Living Room Demos 1973-1974 [Unreleased]These can never be true friends: Hope, dice, a prostitute, a monkey.
-Indian proverb Labels: alex
posted by Alex
LINK |
Monday, March 10, 2008
HAMBURGER TO GO The Rolling Stones c. 1969 [Unreleased]
RAW HAMBURGERS Kool & The Gang De-Lite : 1969 [Out of Print]
HAMBURGER Philemon Wahbe [? : ?] Courtesy of WFMU
THE HAMBURGER SONG Bobby Moore & The Rhythm Aces Searching For My Love Checker : 1966 Available on: Go Ahead and Burn: Soul Music from The Shoals to Chicago RPM : 2004 [Buy It]
Anyone with opposable thumbs can tell you that Queens is the UNited State's internets' capital of international cuisine: We've got Chinese shit, Thai shit, Korean shit, Moroccan shit, Egyptian shit, Cuban shit, Columbian shit, Greek, Spanish, and Italian shit, Russian shit, Polish shit, Croatian shit, Mongolian shit, international cuisine from a weird, Asian region where Chinese people rub up against some Indian shit, and an Irish joint that serves the fuck out of some hamburgers. Out here, where the street meat tastes sweeter than whatever filet mignons you've been chewing on, life is still sweet.
LIFE IS STILL SWEET White Hassle Life is Still Sweet Orange : 2000 [Buy It]
Sweet, but also sour, because I can't help the feeling that all these Chinese, Thai, Korean, Moroccan, Egyptian, Cuban, Columbian, Greek, Spanish, and Italian, Russian, Polish, Croatian, Mongolian, Chinese/Indian, and Irish joints are always about to close down. Pastey-ass people flocking to New York's outer boroughs don't like the ethnic flavor. They like hot dogs, milk shakes, holding hands, and taking Town Cars full of that Whole Foods back from Manhattan. I never understood why people from Indiana would move to New York, mate, move out to the outer boroughs, and commence to transform those same outer boroughs into looking exactly like the Indiana shit they just spent the first twenty-five years of their lives escaping. But then, the fat-assed Americans I see in Times Square come here all the way from Utah, Iowa, Alabama, just so they can max their Capital One credit cards out at Applebee's and the Gap. Next time someone crashes airplanes all into your shit and asks "think why we hate you?," kindly direct them to Utah, Iowa, Alabama.
TAKE A TRIP Utah Smith Checker : 1953 Available on: Slide Guitar Gospel 1944-1964 Document : 1995 [Buy It]
TONY GAVE A PICNIC Ralph Sheckel Iowa : c.1970 Available on Art of Field Recording vol. 1 Dust to Digital : 2007 [Buy It]
I'LL FLY AWAY The Original 5 Blind Boys of Alabama Available on: The Sermon Specialty : 1993 [Buy It]
Still, people in the outer boroughs are holding their own. Last year, Moistfriends The iNTERNETS CELEBRITIES were seen all over the outer boroughs, singing the praises of ghetto big macs and bodega food pyramids. At some point, they began documenting their efforts on film:
BODEGA
GHETTO BIG MAC
Now touring the festival circuit, Bodega was filmed across the street (and a million miles away from) Yankee Stadium. Needless to say, it's a must-see. And, made on a budget of dollar-and-change, Ghetto Big Mac - which tells you how to assemble your own Big Mac, which costs upwards of $3, for a dollar and change - is a film so influential that you can see its influence here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
People, I ask you: is there, out there, a more influential group of internets celebrtities?
SHUT THE FUCK UP, JARED!
Don't answer yet! Because these guys - I don't know who the fuck they are - but these guys are setting the UNited States' internets on fire with documentary shorts like Shut The Fuck Up, Jared! and (the somewhat less successful) Whopper Freakout. Sure, we've seen South Park take aim at Jared-from-Subway, but South Park can't really compete with the many food-related incidents breaking out over the uS internets. Like the homages to "Ghetto Big Mac," posted above, a good number of these incidents involve intrepid whites who've ventured far outside their comfort zone to bring us glimpses of the real nitty-gritty. Our personal favorite? A micro-masterpiece called Goin' to McDonald's in the 'Hood.
THIS WHOLE FUNKY WORLD IS A GHETTO Bobby Patterson It's Just a Matter of Time Paula : 1972 [Buy It]
Yes, white people are poppin' and lockin' all over all over town these days and, over on the internets, brothers and sisters are doin' it for themselves. Gentrification works both ways, you know - or at least, it did, c. 1975 or so. Either way, people, what is there, really, to complain about?
MOVIN' ON UP Ja'Net DuBois & Oren Waters c. 1975 Available on: All-Time Top 100 TV Themes TVT : 2005 [Buy It]
MOVIN' ON UP Robbin Thompson The Vinyl Years Out There : 2003 [Buy It]
MOVIN' ON UP Born Against The Rebel Sound of Shit & Failure Vermiform : 1995 [Buy It]
MOVIN' ON UP M'Lumbo Sacrifices to the Neon Gods Mulatta : 2006 [Buy It]Labels: alex, ghetto tourism
posted by Alex
LINK |
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
STOMP DOWN SOUL (SON OF A SON OF A SLAVE) Larry Darnell Instant : 1968 Available on: The Instant & Minit Story Charly : 2005 [Buy It]
The kick-ass "Stomp Down Soul," by Larry Darnell, is one of the very, very few songs, sung by an African American, which references "the peculiar institution" directly (rap's a different story, which I'm not going into today.) Lately, I've been hitting the history books, trying to figure out why....
Visiting a Georgia plantation in 1839, the British actress Fanny Kemble noted that "many of the masters and overseers… prohibit melancholy tunes or words… and encourage nothing but cheerful music and senseless words, deprecating the effect of sadder strains upon the slaves, whose peculiar musical sensibility might be expected to make them especially excitable by any songs of a plaintive character, and having any reference to their particular hardships." This, she noted, was "a judicious precaution enough."
In this respect at least, West Indian slaves - who were treated more brutally than their American counterparts, and worked to death in a matter of years - had the advantage. "The bread is the flesh of the white man, San Domingo," the slaves on a plantation in Trinidad sang, a quarter-century after the Haitian revolution:The wine is the blood of the white man, San Domingo! We will drink the white man's blood, San Domingo! The bread we eat is the white man's flesh. The wine we drink is the white man's blood Well over a century later, in America, Sam Cooke couched his protest in the form of a biblical allegory:
A CHANGE IS GOING TO COME Sam Cooke Ain't That Good News RCA : 1963 [Buy It]
Compare that song to "Slave Driver," in which Bob Marley described the New World as "only machine for making money," and demanded justice in the here-and-now:
SLAVE DRIVER Bob Marley & The Wailers Live on KSAN : 1973 Available on: Talkin' Blues Island : 1991 [Buy It]
If Cooke was essentially supplicant, Marley predicted a harsh reckoning for defenders of the old order: "Slave driver," he sang, in the present tense and second-person singular. "You're gonna get burned."
But, of course, Bob Marley grew up in Jamaica.
There are lots of covers of "A Change is Gonna Come": Aretha Franklin turned the song into a eulogy for Cooke himself (it's one of the few Aretha covers which doesn't begin to hold a candle to the original). The Supremes, Bettye Swann, The Meditations, and Solomon Burke also covered "A Change is Gonna Come," with varying degrees of success:
A CHANGE IS GONNA COME Solomon Burke c. 1969 Available on: Proud Mary : The Bell Sessions Sundazed : 2000 [Buy It]
Baby Huey turned the song into a long, psychedelic scream:
A CHANGE IS GONNA COME Baby Huey The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend Water : 1971 [Buy It]
And there's even a clip of Bob Dylan—whose "Blowin' in The Wind" inspired Cooke to write "A Change is Going to Come"—covering "A Change is Going to Come." But the only version I know which tops Cooke's own is by Otis Redding. A few years down the line, the song becomes deeper, and more desperate: Redding cuts the lyrics in half, changes the refrain to "a change has gotta to come," and strips the song's codes down to their essence: "You know and I know/You know that I know/And I know that you know/That a change is gonna come," he sings:
CHANGE GONNA COME Otis Redding Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul Stax : 1966 [Buy It]
As I was saying, songs rooted in the spirituals were arguments by analogy (almost without fail, to the Hebrews in old Pharaoh-land). If anything, the poetic charge of songs rooted in old, Africa-American idioms derives, in part, from the requirement to argue by analogy, and the slippage which ensued. And the tendency to argue by analogy never quite disappeared: After all, "A Change is Gonna Come" was a direct descendant of "Go Down, Moses" (which Megan Matthews wrote about in her very first Moistworks post). As it happens, Megan (who was black) thought of her life (and death) in similar terms: "When I get down, I think of myself as Moses, who survived the sojourn in the desert, but never made it to the promised land," she wrote. "That's a very sad thought for me. But a lot of my ancestors had to content themselves with living for the next generations....even if I Iose hope for myself, there is still a point to all this work."
Of course, the argument by analogy cuts both ways: If songs about American slavery pretended to be songs about other things, then songs about other things were often presented as songs about slavery/forced labor/bondage of one sort or another:
CHAIN GANG Sam Cooke Live at The Harlem Square Club, 1963 RCA : 1963 [Buy It]
CHAIN GANG Otis Redding The Soul Album Stax : 1966 [Buy It]
BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG The Pretenders EMI : 1982 Learning to Crawl EMI : 1984 [Buy It]
CHAINS The Cookies Dimension : 1962 Available on: The Complete Cookies Sequel : 1994 [Buy It]
CHAINED Marvin Gaye In The Groove Tamla : 1968 Available on: The Master: 1961-1984 Motown : 1995 [Buy It]
HEY! The Pixies Doolittle 4AD : 1989 [Buy It]
CHAIN OF FOOLS (UNEDITED VERSION) Aretha Franklin Lady Soul Atlantic : 1968 [Buy It]
Oddly, American songs which do reference slavery directly tend to be sung by white folks: The Rolling Stones (who weren't Amercan, but certainly played American music) recorded the outrageously good, absurdly insensitive "Brown Sugar," and included a song called "Slave" on their 1981 album Tattoo You.
SLAVE [INSTRUMENTAL] The Rolling Stones c. 1981 [Unreleased Outtake]
Then there's Alex Chilton's cover of "Lorena, The Slave" which Chilton learned from an old Carter Family tape, and played with the such glee that I was reminded of his producer, Jim Dickinson's, observation that racism—holding the black music you were playing in contempt, and (by extension) playing with a healthy dose of spite and self-loathing—was always an essential component of rockabilly. But, for a minstrel song - which is what "Lorena" is - it has remarkably compassionate moments. SFJ would call me a racist, but see for yourselves:
LORENA, THE SLAVE The Delmore Brothers Available on: Classic Cuts: 1933-1941 JSP : 2004 [Buy It]
NO MORE THE MOON SHINES ON LORENA The Carter Family Available on: The Carter Family: 1927-1934 JSP : 2002 [Buy It]
NO MORE THE MOON SHINES ON LORENA Alex Chilton Like Flies on Sherbert Peabody : 1980 [Buy It]
All of this seems long-ago, but it isn't really. Mauritania, which gained its independence in 1960, still has hundreds of thousands of slaves - it's only an especially extreme example. Also in 1960, Ed Murrow made a documentary called "Harvest of Shame," about migrant workers in Florida - it's not on YouTube, but you can order the documentary itself, here. It contains the following exchange with a black migrant worker (white migrants in the film are about as well off):Q: Elaine, how old are you? A: 29 Q: How many children do you have? A: 14 Q: How old were you when you first started working in the fields? A: 8 Q: You've been working 21 years in the fields? A: That's right. Q: Elaine, do you ever think you'll be able to get out of this kind of work? A: No, sir. For all intents and purposes, Angola - "the farm," or "bloodiest prison in the South" - was (and, in some respects, remains) an old-school plantation; in 1952, thirty-one prisoners cut their own Achilles tendons to protest conditions there....
PICKIN' COTTON ALL DAY LONG Creola & Ceola Smith c. 1959 Available on: Angola Prison Worksongs Arhoolie : 1997 [Buy It]Labels: alex, slavery
posted by Alex
LINK |
Thursday, February 14, 2008
PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE Percy Mayfield Specialty : 1950 Available on: Poet of the Blues Specialty : 1990 [Buy It]
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW The Shirelles Scepter : 1961 Available on: 25 All-Time Greatest Hits Varese : 1999 [Buy It]
LOVE GOES TO BUILDING ON FIRE (DEMO) The Talking Heads CBS : 1975 CBS Demo Recordings [Unreleased]
TEENAGER IN LOVE The Wailers Studio One : 1964 Available on: One Love: The Wailers at Studio One Heartbeat : 1991 [Buy It]
HOW DO YOU SPELL LOVE? Bobby Patterson Paula : 1972 Available on: How Do You Spell Love? (The Paula Recordings 1971-1973) Jewel-Paula : 2002 [Buy It]
L-O-V-E Leon Thomas Blues and The Soulful Truth RCA : 1972 [Buy It]
WHOLE LOTTA LOVE Prince Live at The Alladin in Vegas DVD Hip-0 : 2003
OLD GREGG/LOVE GAMES
LOVE GAMES (LIVE)
LOVE GAMES (LIVE ACOUSTIC) Noel Fielding & Julian Barratt : The Mighty Boosh
CAN'T NOBODY LOVE YOU Solomon Burke Atlantic : 1966 Available on: Home In Your Heart Atlantic : 1992 [Buy It]
TEENAGER IN LOVE Yo La Tengo
LOVE POTION #9 The Coasters King : 1971 Available on: Down Home Varese : 2007 [Buy It]
FUEL FOR LOVE Wrinker's Experience EMI : 1971? [Out of Print]
A PRIVATE DANCE LESSON WITH... The Unfuckwithable James Brown
IT'S GREAT TO BE YOUNG AND IN LOVE (DEMO) Doc Pomus & Mort Schuman c.1959 Available on: Great To Be Young and in Love Whiskey, Women, and... : 1990 [Buy It]
YOUR LOVE IS TRUE (DEMO) Irma Thomas c. 1960 Available on: The Instant & Minit Story Charly : 2005 [Buy It]
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW The Zombies c. 1965 Available on: Live at The BBC Repertoire : 2003 [Buy It]
BABY, IT'S YOU The Beatles c. 1963 Available on: Live at The BBC Capitol : 1994 [Buy It]
TO LOVE SOMEONE (THAT DON'T LOVE YOU) The Kaldirons Twinight : 1970 Available on: Eccentric Soul: Twinight's Lunar Rotation Numero : 2007 [Buy It]
A VALENTINE FROM EVA Brad Neely
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW Slim Smith Unity : 1971 Available on: Keep That Lovelight Shining Trojan : 2004 [Buy It]
L-O-V-E Nat "King" Cole L-O-V-E Capitol : 1964 [Buy It]
HAVE LOVE WILL TRAVEL Richard Berry Flip : 1959 Available on: Have "Louie" Will Travel Ace : 2004 [Buy It]
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW Amy Winehouse Bridget Jones Edge of Reason OST UMVD : 2004 [Buy It]
PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE James Booker c. 1976 King of The New Orleans Keyboard JSP : 2005 [Buy It]
...moistworks wishes you & yours a happy valentine's day.Labels: alex, love
posted by Alex
LINK |
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
ALABAMA BOOGIE John Lee Federal : 1951 Available on: Rural Blues vol. 1 1934-1956 Document : 1995 [Buy It]
ALABAMA MAN Earl Scott Chascamp c. 1960 (?) Available on: Nashville Rockabilly Stomper Time : 2004 [Buy It]
THE STORY OF ALABAMA BOUND Jelly Roll Morton & Alan Lomax c. 1938 Available on: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings Rounder : 2005 [Buy It]
Welcome, folks, to Alabama!
The great state of Alabam' is the 'bammiest state there is. Established in 1973, Alabama was desert until a creek run through, and didn't that desert turn verdant with pasture and slaves? These days, Alabama folk live peacefully and know there never was much to worry about.
ALABAMA The Blue Sky Boys RCA : 1949 Available on: The Blue Sky Boys JSP : 2007 [Buy It]
ALABAMA LULLABY The Delmore Brothers Columbia : 1931 Available on: Classic Cuts: 1933-1941 JSP : 2004 [Buy It]
AUTOMOBILE RIDE THROUGH ALABAMA Red Henderson OKeh : 1928 Available on: The Roots of Rap Yazoo : 1996 [Buy It]
Still, people is people, and Alabama people have stories to tell. Stories about apple trees, space men, bull frogs and the sometimes mistreatment of peoples. Up in Chicago, J.B. Lenoir had some mean things to say about the way white folks treated the black folks down in Alabama, and up in Chicago he wasn't afraid to sing about it -
ALABAMA J. B. Lenoir Alabama Blues L& R : 1965 [Buy It]
and sing about it -
ALABAMA (LIVE) J.B. Lenoir Home Recording (with Willie Dixon) : 1962 Available on: One of These Mornings JSP : 2003 [Buy It]
and sing about it some more -
ALABAMA (LIVE) ('bout 7.5 minutes in)
Like Skip James' "Washington D. C. Hospital Center Blues," the song "Alabama," by J. B. Lenoir, is a last gasp of the old, acoustic country blues. But "Washington D. C. Hospital Center Blues" is a spider-web of a song; "Alabama" is a mighty gasp. Born in Mississippi, Lenoir recorded in and around Chicago for over a decade, but never broke through to a national audience. By 1967, he was working as a dishwasher a the U. of Illinois Champaign campus; he died of heart attack that year, at the age of thirty-eight. The last, unrecorded song he wrote went like this:Something got a hold of me it must be the Lord Something got a hold of me it must be the Lord Something got a hold of me it must be the Lord Something got a hold of me it must be the Lord I can't sing right, I can't play right I can't walk right, I can't talk right I can't eat right, I can't sleep right I can't do nothing at all. According to the liner notes I'm looking at, "J.B.'s autopsy revealed that blood from his heart was backing up into his abdomen. His family settled a wrongful death suit against a driver who had hit his car from the rear [three weeks earlier] for $2250. After the lawyers and the court got paid, there was a little over $1,400 for the Lenoir family." Across the pond, in England, John Mayall recorded this eulogy for Lenoir; you can see more of Lenoir on YouTube here, here, and here.
But that's neither here nor there (big love to the Heart of Dixie!) except insofar as "Alabama" by J. B. Lenoir always did strike me as one of the more politically-minded records of the sixties; just a few years earlier, you could stick a microphone in front of any old bluesman, ask all about the hard times, and get no reference to any mistreatments whatsoever:
MONOLOGUE ON ACCIDENTS Alan Lomax & Blind Willie McTell The Library of Congress Recordings c. 1940; first released in 1969 Document : 1995 [Buy It]
Given all this history, it's not surprising that some of the ways folks in Alabama get along is by drinkin':
I AIN'T A BIT DRUNK George Roark c. 1938 Availbale on: Kentucky Mountain Music Yazoo : 2003 [Buy It]
Workin':
OLD ALABAMA Artists Unknown (Recorded by Alan Lomax) Negro Prison Blues and Songs Legacy Intl. : 1994 [Buy It]
And singin' about movin' to Alabama:
GOING TO MOVE TO ALABAMA Charley Patton Paramount : 1930 Available on: Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues Revenant : 2003 [Buy It]
If you're thinking of moving to Alabama, you'll want to print this handy map out. Keep it in your glove compartment. And those of you without a glove compartment, take heart: Alabama is also a fairyland where no one else can enter, and your every valuable is always safe:
STARS FELL ON ALABAMA Billie Holiday Verve : 1957 Available on: The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959 Polygram : 1993 [Buy It]
STARS FELL ON ALABAMA Art Tatum c. 1955 Available on: The Tatum Group Masterpieces vol. 4 Pablo : 1991 [Buy It]
STARS FELL ON ALABAMA The Mountain Goats Nine Black Poppies 3 Beads of Sweat : 1995 [Buy It]Labels: alex, blues, country, geography, jazz, old-timey
posted by Alex
LINK |
Monday, January 28, 2008
Folks, Brian's on deadline today, so I'm pinch-hitting with a few songs I've been meaning to post for, well, for a few years now. Pop songs, about American history. Which, you'd think there'd be more of - and if you do think of more, I'd be happy to post a follow-up. Whoever comes up with the most gets a copy of our New Year's mix (not to be confused with our xMas mix, which you can still download from last month's post). Which, a question presents itself: Does Neil Young's "Cortez, The Killer" fit the bill?
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS Fats Waller Victor : 1936 Available on: If You Got To Ask, You Ain't Got It RCA : 2006 [Buy It]
I've loved Fats Waller ever since I was a kid, but didn't hear this song until I was well into my 30s. And boy, do I love this song - it's raunchy, sophisticated, hilarious - in a way that songs aren't raunchy, or sophisticated, or hilarious anymore. Not exactly History 101, but an excellent intro to any Survey of American Music course.
GIVE IT A DAY Pavement Pacific Trim Matador : 1996 [Buy It]
Great beauty, weirdness, and stupidity, in this song. Beauty:Today the Gods Can't make us quake We see our lives as situations Eyes are eyes, and teeth are teeth But mine are rotten underneath Weirdness:Years and years have passed Since the Puritans invaded our soul Just like those Arab terrorists You never know Stupidity: Increase Mather is a "her," and the whole bit at the end there.
LEWIS & CLARK The Embarrassment Death Travels West Fresh Sounds : 1983 Available on: Heyday 1979-1983 Bar None : 1995 [Buy It]
I don't think I've used my Moistworks Bully Pulpit to adequately convey my love of The Embarrassment. The band, not the feeling. Although, the feeling, too. This isn't really typical of the band - it's slower, and more regal (that soaring, single-note guitar solo, the slow crescendo from "famous, famous explorers" to "famous, pinheaded egotists"). And, to the best of my knowledge, it's the only song about our old friends Lewis & Clark (though come to think of it, I can't think of too many songs about the Mathers, or Columbus, either). Death travels West, indeed.
Tune in next week for the second installment of the Alex & Ben geography show (I'm tackling the great state of Alabama), and later this week for more Ben, and Brian, and a guest post from the excellent Jamaican-American music critic, Garnette Cadogan.Labels: alex, geography, jazz, rock and roll
posted by Alex
LINK |
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
NORTH TO ALASKA Johnny Horton Columbia : 1960 Available on: Greatest Hits Columbia : 1987 [Buy It]
WHEN IT'S SPRINGTIME IN ALASKA (IT'S 40 BELOW) Johnny Cash Personal File Sony : 2006 [Buy It]
ROCKIN' LITTLE ESKIMO Bobby Swanson Igloo : 1959 Available on: Nashville Rockabilly Stomper Tome : 2003 [Buy It]
THE MIGHTY QUINN Solomon Burke Bell : 1969 (Unreleased) Available on: Proud Mary: The Bell Sessions Sundazed : 2000 [Buy It]
STEPHANIE SAYS The Velvet Underground VU Polydor : 1985 [Buy It]
THE MIGHTY QUINN Hopeton Lewis, Henry Buckley & Dienne w/The Gaylettes Available on: Trojan 60s Box Set Sanctuary : 2004 [Buy It]
WHEN IT'S SPRINGTIME IN ALASKA (IT'S 40 BELOW) Johnny Horton Columbia : 1958 Available on: Greatest Hits Columbia : 1987 [Buy It]
Readers of Moistworks!
On this, the twenty-third day of our millennium's eighth January it is cold as stone/ice/witch's teat/Kerouac's liver/someone who's digging for gold, and throwing away fortunes in feelings! But nowhere is it colder than in the United States Internets' 49th State of Alaska, w |
| | |