“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Henry David Thoreau and I would not have been bosom buddies. I go to the woods only if I must, to see which mosquitoes and poison ivy vines await me, and to discover, in the midst of my otherwise comfortable life, that I had not thought to bring insect repellant.
But what can I do? My friend Don loves the woods. He lives surrounded by them, atop a hill in a clearing that contains his farm, three miles outside the tiny town of Amity, Ohio, which is itself as far removed from civilization as can be imagined. This is Amish country, and the vehicles that pass us on our pastoral walks are likely to be drawn by horses. Don is not Amish. He’s a Presbyterian farmer and retired high school principal in a John Deere cap. But he waves politely to people named Enos and Jakob, and they wave back. We walk along wooded lanes on an impossibly warm March evening, and Don points out the signs of impending spring: the forsythia buds, ready to burst open, the year’s first garter snake sighting, the swallows and magpies, back from spring break in Daytona Beach. A year ago, right around the time the crocuses were in bloom, he buried his wife. Joyce died during Holy Week. Her funeral was Holy Saturday, and Don saw the Easter sunrise, not because he was up for an early service, but because he couldn’t get to sleep.
“There is a hole in my heart,” he tells me, “and God’s mercies are new every morning. Look at this. Look at the glory of God’s creation.” But I am a city boy, and I look and see garter snakes. So I pray silently that I might be able to see as Don sees.
Yesterday at lunch I met with my friend Fred. Fred lost his father a little over a month ago. Now his son-in-law, 25 years old last week, is dying of cancer. Fred’s doing okay except for the times when he’s not, and when he’s not he has to stop talking because he’s ready to cry. I understand that, understand the whole bewildering, terrible mess, although I haven’t had to deal with it directly for a while. But there is glory and terror on every side. Don seems to think that they’re not opposites, and that they can co-exist. And maybe they can.
All I know is that by the time I made it to Don’s house I was already tired, emotionally drained, and overwhelmed. “Let’s go outside,” Don suggested. “The woods can do wonders for a tired soul.” “Sure,” I thought, God’s own Nature Boy in business-casual khakis. “Lead on, Thoreau.”
So we walked. And walked and walked; four or five miles on lonely farm roads, past apple orchards with bare branches, past stubbly corn fields, through the woods that caught the golden light of a setting sun. We headed back to Don’s house in the gathering darkness, watched the moon come up over the horizon and the first of the nighttime stars, heard the distant rumbling of thunder, and turned around to be surprised by what looked like summer lighting before an approaching storm.
I felt lonely, and lost, and I missed my wife and kids. And I heard a song. That’s not an unusual thing. I hear songs in my head all the time. They come to me unbidden, out of memory’s vault, and they provide an ongoing soundtrack to my life. This one was by an old hippie folksinger named Garnet Rogers, who can be maudlin and sentimental, but who, at least once, reached out to capture a golden moment and pin it for posterity, and who last night was singing my life:
Tonight the harvest moon
hangs across the valley
I see the hills shine in its silvery light
It's the same old moon
That shines upon you
It'll light my way until I'm by your side
Well, who scattered these diamonds
Through the vault of heaven?
Who drew the curve of the magpie's wing?
Who shaped your face?
What made you love me?
Where is the spark of every living thing?
Who? What? Where? Those are questions still worth asking. Outside of those two conversations with grieving friends, I spent the entire day surrounded by algorithms and rules, in a world that is neat and precise and understandable, where reason and perfect knowledge hold sway. But then, unbidden, the other world broke through, a world that is beautiful and broken, that is not reasonable, where there is glory everywhere but where everything is out of season, where young men die and summer lightning appears in early spring:
We are brief as summer lightning
We are swift as swallow's flight
We are sparks that spiral upward in the darkness in the night
We are frost upon a window
We won't pass this way again
We made it back just as the first raindrops started to fall. I said goodnight to Don, told him that I had enjoyed our walk, and that I would see him next month when he ventures down to the big city. I was tired. I was raw. I don’t always understand these things, but I cried all the way home, playing that song in my head, over and over again. When I got there, I did one of the few unreasonable things I did all day. I hugged my wife and kids.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
What Does Your Drawing Say About YOU?
I love these little Internet quizzes that analyze your personality based on your fruit preferences or favorite Beatle. This one analyzes me based on my artistic talents.
And here are the results of my analysis:
Your friends and associates probably don't know what the hell to make of you.
You are a singularly sloppy person, totally without artistic aptitude.
You like to think about your method, seeking to pursue your goal in the most effective way. But you can't draw worth shit.
You may have a sunny, cheerful disposition. You may be a mean son of a bitch. It's hard to tell. Give it up, dude.
And here are the results of my analysis:
Your friends and associates probably don't know what the hell to make of you.
You are a singularly sloppy person, totally without artistic aptitude.
You like to think about your method, seeking to pursue your goal in the most effective way. But you can't draw worth shit.
You may have a sunny, cheerful disposition. You may be a mean son of a bitch. It's hard to tell. Give it up, dude.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Halleluiah and Other Casualties
Here’s the deal, boys and girls in America: the best rock ‘n roll band in the world these days is fronted by a barstool poet named Craig Finn, and he’s the heir to all the wide-eyed, wild-haired proclamations of outsiders and would-be Messiahs from Kerouac to Dylan to Springsteen to Bono. His band, The Hold Steady, plays AC/DC and Who power chords and Professor Roy Bittan piano riffs. Finn roams the stage, runs his fingers through his hair, and declaims half-spoken, half-sung visionary statements about addiction and Jesus, hopelessness and hope. They are little rock ‘n roll vignettes that are haunted by shadowy characters living life at the edges of the world. Some of them fall off. Some of them walk on back to love and if not wholeness, then at least sanity. He’s easily the best songwriter I’ve heard in the past five years, and he brought his cautionary, desperate, and desperately funny sermons to Columbus, Ohio on St. Patrick’s Day.
I knew that the confluence of The Hold Steady and St. Patrick’s Day was likely to produce some interesting moments. And indeed it did. Whenever you mix a glorified bar band with frat boys and an excuse to party, the results are fairly predictable. So the flying beer ended up in my hair. I did my small part to keep various crowd surfers off the ground. And I got pummeled and bruised a bit. No big deal. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, Bud Light hair and all.
Finn and his band played most of their latest album, Boys and Girls in America, and a few selections from earlier albums Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday. The crowd sang along with every word (and there are a lot of words in Craig Finn songs), pumped their fists, and slammed into one another. Guitarist Tad Kubler made a few rock star moves and at one point played atop a 20-foot Marshall amp. But for the most part, this was Craig Finn’s show, and Craig Finn came across as the quintessential boho poet, part acid casualty and part dissolute English professor, the smartest, most sensitive, and most damaged guy in the room. It was glorious rock ‘n roll, the perfect marriage of music and lyrics, and it left my bruised, beer-soaked self very, very happy.
For what it’s worth, don’t look for the MTV Awards and superstardom to follow anytime soon. The keyboard player looked like a Brooklyn cabbie, Kubler has a beer gut, and Finn, disheveled and, yes, wild-eyed, looked like he wasn’t lying when he sang that the eighties almost killed him. If image is everything, then The Hold Steady will amount to nothing. But none of that matters. Every so often these little rock ‘n roll epiphanies remind me why I even bother to care about disposable, four-minute songs. And I experienced more than a few of those moments Saturday night, and I realized that, at its best, and in spite of crowds who are more interested in getting drunk and rowdy than listening to good music, rock ‘n roll can still carry the seeds of redemption.
“Certain songs they get scratched into our souls,” Finn sang at one point, and he is right. One of them was about Holly, a recurring character in Finn’s songs who first made her appearance Saturday night in a song called “Crucifixion Cruise”:
Halleluiah came to in a confession booth
Infested with infections
Smiling on an abcessed tooth
Running hard on residue
Crashing thru the vestibule
The crucifixion cruise
She climbed the cross and found she liked the view
Sat reflecting on the resurrection
Talking loud over lousy connections
She put her mouth around a difficult question
She said Lord what do you recommend
To a real sweet girl who's made some not sweet friends?
Lord what would you prescribe
To a real soft girl who's having real hard times?
The frat boys in the crowd went apeshit over that one, screaming “USA! USA!” in unison when it ended. Go figure: a song about existential despair greeted by a hockey chant. And here was the best one, another song about Holly, an impossibly harrowing and tender little ditty called “How a Resurrection Really Feels” that closed the concert:
Her parents named her Halleluiah, the kids all called her Holly
If she scared you then she's sorry
She's been stranded at these parties
These parties they start lovely but they get druggy and they get ugly and they get bloody
The priest just kinda laughed
The deacon caught a draft
She crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken glass
She was limping left on broken heels
When she said father can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?
Holly was a hoodrat
Now you finally know that
She's been disappeared for years
Today she finally came back
She said: St. Louis had enslaved me
I guess Santa Ana saved me
St. Peter had me on the queue
The St. Paul saints they waved me through
I was all wrapped up in some video booth
When I heard her say I love you too
She said I've laid beneath my lovers but I've never gotten laid
Some nights she felt protected
Some nights she felt afraid
She spent half last winter just trying to get paid
From some guy she'd originally thought to be her saviour
They wrote her name in magic marks
On stopsigns and subway cars
They got a mural up on East 13th
That said Halleluiah rest in peace
Halleluiah was a hoodrat
And now you finally know that
She's been disappeared for years
Today she finally came back
Walk on back
Walk on back
She said don't turn me on again
I'd probably just go and get myself all gone again
Holly was a sexy mess
She looked strung out but experienced
So we all got kind of curious
Walk on back
Walk on back
“Walk on back,” Finn sang softly, over and over again. After a night of raucous power chords, it was startling in its quiet insistence. “Walk on back,” he sang, his voice, at last, barely a whisper, his right arm extended out over the crowd. And then he walked off the stage. “USA! USA!” the frat boys chanted, and spilled their beers. All the boys and girls in America were too wasted to recognize a gentle benediction.
I knew that the confluence of The Hold Steady and St. Patrick’s Day was likely to produce some interesting moments. And indeed it did. Whenever you mix a glorified bar band with frat boys and an excuse to party, the results are fairly predictable. So the flying beer ended up in my hair. I did my small part to keep various crowd surfers off the ground. And I got pummeled and bruised a bit. No big deal. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, Bud Light hair and all.
Finn and his band played most of their latest album, Boys and Girls in America, and a few selections from earlier albums Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday. The crowd sang along with every word (and there are a lot of words in Craig Finn songs), pumped their fists, and slammed into one another. Guitarist Tad Kubler made a few rock star moves and at one point played atop a 20-foot Marshall amp. But for the most part, this was Craig Finn’s show, and Craig Finn came across as the quintessential boho poet, part acid casualty and part dissolute English professor, the smartest, most sensitive, and most damaged guy in the room. It was glorious rock ‘n roll, the perfect marriage of music and lyrics, and it left my bruised, beer-soaked self very, very happy.
For what it’s worth, don’t look for the MTV Awards and superstardom to follow anytime soon. The keyboard player looked like a Brooklyn cabbie, Kubler has a beer gut, and Finn, disheveled and, yes, wild-eyed, looked like he wasn’t lying when he sang that the eighties almost killed him. If image is everything, then The Hold Steady will amount to nothing. But none of that matters. Every so often these little rock ‘n roll epiphanies remind me why I even bother to care about disposable, four-minute songs. And I experienced more than a few of those moments Saturday night, and I realized that, at its best, and in spite of crowds who are more interested in getting drunk and rowdy than listening to good music, rock ‘n roll can still carry the seeds of redemption.
“Certain songs they get scratched into our souls,” Finn sang at one point, and he is right. One of them was about Holly, a recurring character in Finn’s songs who first made her appearance Saturday night in a song called “Crucifixion Cruise”:
Halleluiah came to in a confession booth
Infested with infections
Smiling on an abcessed tooth
Running hard on residue
Crashing thru the vestibule
The crucifixion cruise
She climbed the cross and found she liked the view
Sat reflecting on the resurrection
Talking loud over lousy connections
She put her mouth around a difficult question
She said Lord what do you recommend
To a real sweet girl who's made some not sweet friends?
Lord what would you prescribe
To a real soft girl who's having real hard times?
The frat boys in the crowd went apeshit over that one, screaming “USA! USA!” in unison when it ended. Go figure: a song about existential despair greeted by a hockey chant. And here was the best one, another song about Holly, an impossibly harrowing and tender little ditty called “How a Resurrection Really Feels” that closed the concert:
Her parents named her Halleluiah, the kids all called her Holly
If she scared you then she's sorry
She's been stranded at these parties
These parties they start lovely but they get druggy and they get ugly and they get bloody
The priest just kinda laughed
The deacon caught a draft
She crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken glass
She was limping left on broken heels
When she said father can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?
Holly was a hoodrat
Now you finally know that
She's been disappeared for years
Today she finally came back
She said: St. Louis had enslaved me
I guess Santa Ana saved me
St. Peter had me on the queue
The St. Paul saints they waved me through
I was all wrapped up in some video booth
When I heard her say I love you too
She said I've laid beneath my lovers but I've never gotten laid
Some nights she felt protected
Some nights she felt afraid
She spent half last winter just trying to get paid
From some guy she'd originally thought to be her saviour
They wrote her name in magic marks
On stopsigns and subway cars
They got a mural up on East 13th
That said Halleluiah rest in peace
Halleluiah was a hoodrat
And now you finally know that
She's been disappeared for years
Today she finally came back
Walk on back
Walk on back
She said don't turn me on again
I'd probably just go and get myself all gone again
Holly was a sexy mess
She looked strung out but experienced
So we all got kind of curious
Walk on back
Walk on back
“Walk on back,” Finn sang softly, over and over again. After a night of raucous power chords, it was startling in its quiet insistence. “Walk on back,” he sang, his voice, at last, barely a whisper, his right arm extended out over the crowd. And then he walked off the stage. “USA! USA!” the frat boys chanted, and spilled their beers. All the boys and girls in America were too wasted to recognize a gentle benediction.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
John Carter Cash and the Family Legacy
I talked on the phone with a man named John Carter Cash yesterday. Consider, for a moment, what it would be like to be John Carter Cash. On the up side, one would have the genetic makeup, the social contacts, and probably the financial wherewithal to make a pretty fair splash in the music world. On the down side, one would have to live with continual comparisons to one’s dad and mom, and when one’s dad and mom are Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, and grandma was a woman named Maybelle, it’s easy to see how it might get tiresome, if not downright impossible to live up to the heritage.
To his credit, John Carter Cash seems comfortable in his own skin. He’s written and recorded his own music, but he’s best known as a music producer and as the keeper of the Cash/Carter family legacy. The immediate context of our conversation was a tribute album that John has just produced to highlight his mom’s music. Called Anchored in Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash, and set for release in mid-June (naturally), it features 12 songs that June wrote and/or made famous, sung by some pretty big names in country music and rock ‘n roll who knew her and loved her. Anchored in love is right, and you can hear it in every note. Elvis Costello, one of the rock ‘n rollers, includes an autoharp on his cover of June’s “Ring of Fire” because that’s the way The Carter Family would have played it. The Peasall Sisters, who were little girls in O Brother Where Art Thou? last time I checked, are just about grown up, and now sound remarkably like Anita and Helen and June must have sounded back when they played the Grand Ole Opry in the early ‘50s. Willie Nelson is here, and Sheryl Crow, two Billy’s (Joe Shaver and Bob Thornton), and venerable country legends like Ralph Stanley and Loretta Lynn. Emmylou Harris, who appears on 38% of all music recorded in the past thirty-five years, is here as well.
The cynical part of me wants to say that because Walk the Line was such a phenomenal hit, and because Johnny sold some five million albums from the grave in 2006, there’s a great opportunity here to cash in on some more financial wherewithal. But you know what? I don’t believe that’s the motivation. Maybe I heard the scripted “I did it for God and family” speech yesterday. But it sure didn’t sound like it. It sounded to me like John Carter Cash is a man who records a tribute album to his mom because he wants to honor her. He seemed like a really great guy. He definitely had a great Tennessee accent. And I’m willing to bet that he loved, and still loves, his imperfect, gracious and gifted parents.
To his credit, John Carter Cash seems comfortable in his own skin. He’s written and recorded his own music, but he’s best known as a music producer and as the keeper of the Cash/Carter family legacy. The immediate context of our conversation was a tribute album that John has just produced to highlight his mom’s music. Called Anchored in Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash, and set for release in mid-June (naturally), it features 12 songs that June wrote and/or made famous, sung by some pretty big names in country music and rock ‘n roll who knew her and loved her. Anchored in love is right, and you can hear it in every note. Elvis Costello, one of the rock ‘n rollers, includes an autoharp on his cover of June’s “Ring of Fire” because that’s the way The Carter Family would have played it. The Peasall Sisters, who were little girls in O Brother Where Art Thou? last time I checked, are just about grown up, and now sound remarkably like Anita and Helen and June must have sounded back when they played the Grand Ole Opry in the early ‘50s. Willie Nelson is here, and Sheryl Crow, two Billy’s (Joe Shaver and Bob Thornton), and venerable country legends like Ralph Stanley and Loretta Lynn. Emmylou Harris, who appears on 38% of all music recorded in the past thirty-five years, is here as well.
The cynical part of me wants to say that because Walk the Line was such a phenomenal hit, and because Johnny sold some five million albums from the grave in 2006, there’s a great opportunity here to cash in on some more financial wherewithal. But you know what? I don’t believe that’s the motivation. Maybe I heard the scripted “I did it for God and family” speech yesterday. But it sure didn’t sound like it. It sounded to me like John Carter Cash is a man who records a tribute album to his mom because he wants to honor her. He seemed like a really great guy. He definitely had a great Tennessee accent. And I’m willing to bet that he loved, and still loves, his imperfect, gracious and gifted parents.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Signposts Along the Road
(With thanks to All Music Guide’s Thom Jurek, who knows a good prayer when he hears one. He’s heard two in the past couple months.)
Here is a not-so-secret secret. I am a Christian, and I despise Contemporary Christian Music. Riddled with cliches, prone to drab loss/cross and grace/face rhymes, and safe as milk, these slick, soulless Infomercials for Christ are usually the last place I look for spiritual value.
But I do look. And I do listen. And sometimes I find the ineffable and the transcendent in the strangest places: Van Morrison breaking free of language altogether and soaring off into one of his otherworldly scats, Miles Davis playing a muted trumpet, Bob Dylan (yes, Bob Dylan) singing any of the raw, open wounds disguised as songs on Blood on the Tracks, summoning up new vistas of loss and regret and longing, Sufjan Stevens quietly mourning the death of a friend to bone cancer. These are all spiritual signposts for me. They crack my heart open, and they point the way home.
The Christ Tree by The Trees Community is one of those signposts, but for more than thirty years it’s been a signpost that’s been buried and forgotten. The album, originally released in 1975, reportedly sold fewer than 500 copies on its original release, and quickly went out of print. Now resurrected and reissued as part of a 4-CD box set, and the recipient of universally glowing reviews, the album may finally win the surviving members of the community the respect and acclaim they so richly deserve.
The story of The Trees Community is part and parcel of the Woodstock era, even if the music is not. It goes like this: a bunch of hippie Christians get kicked out of their Manhattan apartment building/commune, buy a bus, and set off in 1971 to tour the country, explore different modes of Christian spirituality, and make music together. It ends up as a seven-year road trip, with stops along the way at Trappist, Benedictine, Franciscan and Paulist monastic communities, evangelical and social outreach groups of every denomination, and a Hutterite farming collective. An extended stay at Thomas Merton’s Gethsemane monastery results in the two live concerts released as part of the box set. An abortive, early studio album called A Portrait of Christ in Music is never released at all (but is included in the box set). And, finally, in 1975, The Christ Tree arrives as the community’s first and last official album.
Altogether it’s a miraculous thing, as unearthly as any music ever recorded, and as eerily lovely as the post-modern classical music of Henryk Gorecki or Arvo Part; four hours of utterly uncategorizable transcendent beauty. The short summary is that fourteen people play more than eighty instruments and sing. The even shorter summary is that you’ve never heard anything like this in your life.
The 12-minute “Psalm 42,” which opens this collection, sets the tone. It incorporates elements of Balinese chant, American folk song, Indian raga, African polyrhythms, Scottish bagpipes, Tibetan gongs, and something called Mexican bell wheel Sanctus. The voices weave in and out in contrapuntal harmonies, rise to glorious crescendos, recede to whispered pleas, as the words of the ancient psalm reverberate through the recording studio, bounce off the walls, and ascend to heaven. This isn’t world music; it’s universal music: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.”
And it’s utterly outside of time. Everything about this music ought to be trippy and dated. It is not. Cut off from commercial trends, wandering the country without access to a radio, totally bereft of a cultural (or countercultural) context in which to place themselves, The Trees Community simply created music without precedent. Nobody told the nomadic hippies that they couldn’t mix contrapuntal vocal techniques with eastern instrumentation, so they did. And the end result is something brave and lovely and utterly strange: worship music that sounds like it comes from anywhere but planet Earth.
That’s not to say that listeners won’t find plenty to latch on to in the earthly realm. “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me,” Jesus tells his disciples in the Gospel of John. In the impossibly moving “How Long is a Little While?” The Trees Community gives voice to the cry of countless grieving sufferers throughout the world. How long? How much can we bear? This is a spiritual blues that bears, yes, some connection to Mississippi Delta blues. And Tibet.
Like I said, there’s nothing like it in recorded music. Do yourself a great favor and pick up a copy.
Rickie Lee Jones’ new album Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is another of those signposts. Jones has had a long and illustrious career as an unregenerated boho, the female yin to Tom Waits’ Hollywood gutter poet yang. Here she offers a mostly extemporaneous take on the Gospels, inspired by spiritual philosopher Lee Cantelon and his book The Words, a latter-day spin on Jesus’ teachings presented in the language of the hipsters and the down-and-out.
Backed by junkyard percussion, plucked ouds, and distorted electric guitars, Rickie Lee encounters the Jesus of the gospels, stripped of 2,000 years of musty tradition and ceremony, and improvises on a lyric that is the antithesis of all that is safe and antiseptic. Scatting and soaring like Van, repeating her lyrics like rosary beads, she moves into dangerous territory indeed:
I wanted to pray
I wanted to let you go on your way
I wanted to know why they laid there
Dying in the streets next to the restaurant
Where people were eating and yes
I wanted to pray
How do you pray in a world like this
You know, I see the people on TV
And they close their eyes
and they bow their heads
And they say "Let us pray"
And it feels so cold and meaningless
And I wanted to pray
And I said
Tell me father
Tell me mother
Heavenly mother
And they said
When you pray
Pray alone by yourself
In the secret room of your heart
Don't go out into the church filled with people and pray
God hears every secret that you say
See all those people praying on TV and the churches
They like to make a big parade out of what they're doing
They think God hears them louder if they say it
Over and over and over and over and over again
But I say, God, but I say this
You are the prayer
Your eyes are the prayer
Your hand on your cheek
You are the prayer
Those words you want to speak
They are the prayer
That dance you make
When you're by yourself
Just before your mother calls you on the phone
You are the prayer
I tell you what
You gotta take it back from them
Because the prayers belong to you
All you gotta do is say hey hey
I'm down here too, I'm down here too
I'm down here too
And I hear you in the trees
And I hear you
And I'm near you
I wonder why there's so much suffering
I want to say thank you, thank you
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
I wanted to say thank you, thank you
I wanted to say
I wanted to say
You are where I like it best
You are where I like it best
You are where I like it best
That's the Lords' prayer
"You are where I want to be"
So, amen, just amen
Amen, all by myself, amen, amen
I'm so lonely, just amen
And I'm rising, rising, just amen
You can look through my eyes
Hear through my ears
Look through my eyes
It is, as Madonna says, like a prayer. It’s unorthodox, in both the musical and theological senses, and I wouldn’t advise using it to construct any creedal statements. What it is is a cry from the heart, and it will crack yours wide open if you let it. It’s raw and unfiltered. It’s disturbing. It’s beautiful. And it will let you hear an old, familiar story in a new way.
They are two remarkable albums, two new signposts for me. The reason I listen to music is to encounter moments like these. I’m thankful to still find markers along the roadside.
Here is a not-so-secret secret. I am a Christian, and I despise Contemporary Christian Music. Riddled with cliches, prone to drab loss/cross and grace/face rhymes, and safe as milk, these slick, soulless Infomercials for Christ are usually the last place I look for spiritual value.
But I do look. And I do listen. And sometimes I find the ineffable and the transcendent in the strangest places: Van Morrison breaking free of language altogether and soaring off into one of his otherworldly scats, Miles Davis playing a muted trumpet, Bob Dylan (yes, Bob Dylan) singing any of the raw, open wounds disguised as songs on Blood on the Tracks, summoning up new vistas of loss and regret and longing, Sufjan Stevens quietly mourning the death of a friend to bone cancer. These are all spiritual signposts for me. They crack my heart open, and they point the way home.
The Christ Tree by The Trees Community is one of those signposts, but for more than thirty years it’s been a signpost that’s been buried and forgotten. The album, originally released in 1975, reportedly sold fewer than 500 copies on its original release, and quickly went out of print. Now resurrected and reissued as part of a 4-CD box set, and the recipient of universally glowing reviews, the album may finally win the surviving members of the community the respect and acclaim they so richly deserve.
The story of The Trees Community is part and parcel of the Woodstock era, even if the music is not. It goes like this: a bunch of hippie Christians get kicked out of their Manhattan apartment building/commune, buy a bus, and set off in 1971 to tour the country, explore different modes of Christian spirituality, and make music together. It ends up as a seven-year road trip, with stops along the way at Trappist, Benedictine, Franciscan and Paulist monastic communities, evangelical and social outreach groups of every denomination, and a Hutterite farming collective. An extended stay at Thomas Merton’s Gethsemane monastery results in the two live concerts released as part of the box set. An abortive, early studio album called A Portrait of Christ in Music is never released at all (but is included in the box set). And, finally, in 1975, The Christ Tree arrives as the community’s first and last official album.
Altogether it’s a miraculous thing, as unearthly as any music ever recorded, and as eerily lovely as the post-modern classical music of Henryk Gorecki or Arvo Part; four hours of utterly uncategorizable transcendent beauty. The short summary is that fourteen people play more than eighty instruments and sing. The even shorter summary is that you’ve never heard anything like this in your life.
The 12-minute “Psalm 42,” which opens this collection, sets the tone. It incorporates elements of Balinese chant, American folk song, Indian raga, African polyrhythms, Scottish bagpipes, Tibetan gongs, and something called Mexican bell wheel Sanctus. The voices weave in and out in contrapuntal harmonies, rise to glorious crescendos, recede to whispered pleas, as the words of the ancient psalm reverberate through the recording studio, bounce off the walls, and ascend to heaven. This isn’t world music; it’s universal music: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.”
And it’s utterly outside of time. Everything about this music ought to be trippy and dated. It is not. Cut off from commercial trends, wandering the country without access to a radio, totally bereft of a cultural (or countercultural) context in which to place themselves, The Trees Community simply created music without precedent. Nobody told the nomadic hippies that they couldn’t mix contrapuntal vocal techniques with eastern instrumentation, so they did. And the end result is something brave and lovely and utterly strange: worship music that sounds like it comes from anywhere but planet Earth.
That’s not to say that listeners won’t find plenty to latch on to in the earthly realm. “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me,” Jesus tells his disciples in the Gospel of John. In the impossibly moving “How Long is a Little While?” The Trees Community gives voice to the cry of countless grieving sufferers throughout the world. How long? How much can we bear? This is a spiritual blues that bears, yes, some connection to Mississippi Delta blues. And Tibet.
Like I said, there’s nothing like it in recorded music. Do yourself a great favor and pick up a copy.
Rickie Lee Jones’ new album Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is another of those signposts. Jones has had a long and illustrious career as an unregenerated boho, the female yin to Tom Waits’ Hollywood gutter poet yang. Here she offers a mostly extemporaneous take on the Gospels, inspired by spiritual philosopher Lee Cantelon and his book The Words, a latter-day spin on Jesus’ teachings presented in the language of the hipsters and the down-and-out.
Backed by junkyard percussion, plucked ouds, and distorted electric guitars, Rickie Lee encounters the Jesus of the gospels, stripped of 2,000 years of musty tradition and ceremony, and improvises on a lyric that is the antithesis of all that is safe and antiseptic. Scatting and soaring like Van, repeating her lyrics like rosary beads, she moves into dangerous territory indeed:
I wanted to pray
I wanted to let you go on your way
I wanted to know why they laid there
Dying in the streets next to the restaurant
Where people were eating and yes
I wanted to pray
How do you pray in a world like this
You know, I see the people on TV
And they close their eyes
and they bow their heads
And they say "Let us pray"
And it feels so cold and meaningless
And I wanted to pray
And I said
Tell me father
Tell me mother
Heavenly mother
And they said
When you pray
Pray alone by yourself
In the secret room of your heart
Don't go out into the church filled with people and pray
God hears every secret that you say
See all those people praying on TV and the churches
They like to make a big parade out of what they're doing
They think God hears them louder if they say it
Over and over and over and over and over again
But I say, God, but I say this
You are the prayer
Your eyes are the prayer
Your hand on your cheek
You are the prayer
Those words you want to speak
They are the prayer
That dance you make
When you're by yourself
Just before your mother calls you on the phone
You are the prayer
I tell you what
You gotta take it back from them
Because the prayers belong to you
All you gotta do is say hey hey
I'm down here too, I'm down here too
I'm down here too
And I hear you in the trees
And I hear you
And I'm near you
I wonder why there's so much suffering
I want to say thank you, thank you
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
I wanted to say thank you, thank you
I wanted to say
I wanted to say
You are where I like it best
You are where I like it best
You are where I like it best
That's the Lords' prayer
"You are where I want to be"
So, amen, just amen
Amen, all by myself, amen, amen
I'm so lonely, just amen
And I'm rising, rising, just amen
You can look through my eyes
Hear through my ears
Look through my eyes
It is, as Madonna says, like a prayer. It’s unorthodox, in both the musical and theological senses, and I wouldn’t advise using it to construct any creedal statements. What it is is a cry from the heart, and it will crack yours wide open if you let it. It’s raw and unfiltered. It’s disturbing. It’s beautiful. And it will let you hear an old, familiar story in a new way.
They are two remarkable albums, two new signposts for me. The reason I listen to music is to encounter moments like these. I’m thankful to still find markers along the roadside.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Pullhair Rubeye
It was bound to happen. You give some kid the technology and the drugs, and eventually he's going to release an album that is recorded backwards, every lysergic second of an interminable 32 minutes.
That's what Animal Collective singer/songwriter Avey Tare and wife Kria Brekken have done on Pullhair Rubeye. As if song titles like "Lay Lay Off, Faselam" weren't inscrutable enough, Avey and Kria have fun speeding it up, slowing it down, putting it through a sonic blender, and then playing it all in reverse. And it all comes out as something like "Ishneh kooooshi elnaaaah aywaaaaah." It could be Hopi, but instead it's hopeless.
I remember the sixties, sort of, and I remember John and Yoko. So what do you do with a "groundbreaking" avant-garde concept that was a bad idea forty years ago? I say lay, lay off, Avey and Kria. Number nine, number nine ...
That's what Animal Collective singer/songwriter Avey Tare and wife Kria Brekken have done on Pullhair Rubeye. As if song titles like "Lay Lay Off, Faselam" weren't inscrutable enough, Avey and Kria have fun speeding it up, slowing it down, putting it through a sonic blender, and then playing it all in reverse. And it all comes out as something like "Ishneh kooooshi elnaaaah aywaaaaah." It could be Hopi, but instead it's hopeless.
I remember the sixties, sort of, and I remember John and Yoko. So what do you do with a "groundbreaking" avant-garde concept that was a bad idea forty years ago? I say lay, lay off, Avey and Kria. Number nine, number nine ...
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
A Plug for Calvin/A Prayer for Britney
It will probably come as no great shock that I am not a Britney Spears fan. To my ears, she is a talentless hack famous for one and only one thing. To my eyes, she is, well, justifiably famous. And therein lies the American Dream and the American Nightmare. Somehow we have arrived at a peculiar moment in our culture in which image totally overpowers content and substance. And when the image includes beautiful bodies, drug and alcohol abuse, bizarre behavior, and nervous breakdowns in front of the camera, all the better. There are a few cultural outposts that still fly the old, tattered flag of substance and quality, Paste Magazine among them. And I’m thankful for them. But I watch the news at 11:00, and it’s not The Decemberists or The Hold Steady who command the leads-ins to Today’s Top Stories. It’s people named Anna Nicole and Paris and Lindsey and Britney, who self destruct right before our eyes, in high definition video, and who are big enough and dazzling enough to transcend the normal gossip shows and somehow become International News.
In a strange twist of fate that has me smiling, I will be traveling in a few weeks to a music conference at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan to participate in something called Bandspotting. Bandspotting is a variation on the American Idol theme. In this case, two judges (Asthmatic Kitty label head Michael Kaufmann and me) will listen to some musicians/bands looking for their big break, and declare one musician/band the Grand Prize Winner, complete with the opportunity to perform before the assembled conference masses. And if you know me and my antipathy to all things American Idol, you may see the humor in that, too. For me, American Idol is nothing less than the scourge of the music world, a show that contributes like no other to the cultural lobotomization of America, a worthless hour, now beamed into our homes two or three days per week, in which marginally talented Vegas wannabes do karaoke to songs that weren’t very good in their original incarnations, and eventually win enormous recording contracts and sell millions of albums to people who don’t know anything else. So I don’t know if I’m supposed to be Simon or Randy, but it probably doesn’t matter. In either case, there is a fair degree of ambivalence.
What helps is that the music I’m listening to from Calvin College is really good. It’s an amazing contrast. They just planted Anna Nicole in the ground, and Britney may be headed there any day now, and still the American Idol masses scramble to become the next Britney. At the same time, a bunch of kids have recorded some songs in their bedrooms, or maxed out their credit cards so they could spend a few hours in a recording studio, and have written and recorded songs in which their hearts are laid bare, and done their damndest to pin down the ineffable and the transcendent in rhyming couplets and major and minor chords. Michael and I are put in the impossible position of declaring only one of them a winner. And so, before that happens, let me go on record as stating that I salute them, all of them. None of them are losers.
Meanwhile, there are the disturbing images of a woman with a newly shaved head bearing the insignia “666,” an unsuccessful suicide attempt in a rehab center, and a media frenzy that simultaneously decries and celebrates the insanity. I truly don’t like Britney Spears’ music, but that’s not the Britney Spears I think about these days. I think about a young woman who is desperately crying out for help, and I can’t help but feel sad for this poor, lost kid who doesn’t know who she is, who has grown up in such an artificial, strange, soul-sucking world that she can’t tell what is real from what is glittering and shiny and empty. And that’s the person I pray for, regardless of whether she ever “sings” again. What happens when image is everything and you look in the mirror and see no reflection? I don’t know. But I hope she finds herself.
In a strange twist of fate that has me smiling, I will be traveling in a few weeks to a music conference at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan to participate in something called Bandspotting. Bandspotting is a variation on the American Idol theme. In this case, two judges (Asthmatic Kitty label head Michael Kaufmann and me) will listen to some musicians/bands looking for their big break, and declare one musician/band the Grand Prize Winner, complete with the opportunity to perform before the assembled conference masses. And if you know me and my antipathy to all things American Idol, you may see the humor in that, too. For me, American Idol is nothing less than the scourge of the music world, a show that contributes like no other to the cultural lobotomization of America, a worthless hour, now beamed into our homes two or three days per week, in which marginally talented Vegas wannabes do karaoke to songs that weren’t very good in their original incarnations, and eventually win enormous recording contracts and sell millions of albums to people who don’t know anything else. So I don’t know if I’m supposed to be Simon or Randy, but it probably doesn’t matter. In either case, there is a fair degree of ambivalence.
What helps is that the music I’m listening to from Calvin College is really good. It’s an amazing contrast. They just planted Anna Nicole in the ground, and Britney may be headed there any day now, and still the American Idol masses scramble to become the next Britney. At the same time, a bunch of kids have recorded some songs in their bedrooms, or maxed out their credit cards so they could spend a few hours in a recording studio, and have written and recorded songs in which their hearts are laid bare, and done their damndest to pin down the ineffable and the transcendent in rhyming couplets and major and minor chords. Michael and I are put in the impossible position of declaring only one of them a winner. And so, before that happens, let me go on record as stating that I salute them, all of them. None of them are losers.
Meanwhile, there are the disturbing images of a woman with a newly shaved head bearing the insignia “666,” an unsuccessful suicide attempt in a rehab center, and a media frenzy that simultaneously decries and celebrates the insanity. I truly don’t like Britney Spears’ music, but that’s not the Britney Spears I think about these days. I think about a young woman who is desperately crying out for help, and I can’t help but feel sad for this poor, lost kid who doesn’t know who she is, who has grown up in such an artificial, strange, soul-sucking world that she can’t tell what is real from what is glittering and shiny and empty. And that’s the person I pray for, regardless of whether she ever “sings” again. What happens when image is everything and you look in the mirror and see no reflection? I don’t know. But I hope she finds herself.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Whitmans in the News
The things that one can do with Google ...
Kate Whitman, the daughter of Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, was injured yesterday when she was hit by a car while jogging in South Africa, a spokeswoman said.
His hefty debut novel, Walk Hard, Talk Loud (1940, Bobbs-Merrill), is about Andy Whitman, a scrappy African-American boxer turning pro.
"Individual style is giving this generation a personality," said Katryn Whitman, sophomore fashion merchandising major.
Uber-yuppie Rachel Whitman worries about the teasing her slow-witted six-year-old son Dylan suffers at the hands of his brilliant playmate Lucinda at the fancy Massachusetts North Shore day care center he attends; worse, she fears that her college drug experimentation caused Dylan's deficiency.
One of these is real. Can you guess which one, he asked scrappily?
Kate Whitman, the daughter of Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, was injured yesterday when she was hit by a car while jogging in South Africa, a spokeswoman said.
His hefty debut novel, Walk Hard, Talk Loud (1940, Bobbs-Merrill), is about Andy Whitman, a scrappy African-American boxer turning pro.
"Individual style is giving this generation a personality," said Katryn Whitman, sophomore fashion merchandising major.
Uber-yuppie Rachel Whitman worries about the teasing her slow-witted six-year-old son Dylan suffers at the hands of his brilliant playmate Lucinda at the fancy Massachusetts North Shore day care center he attends; worse, she fears that her college drug experimentation caused Dylan's deficiency.
One of these is real. Can you guess which one, he asked scrappily?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Hospital Vespers
I’ve been writing about a band called The Weakerthans for Paste Magazine. If you don’t know them, you should check them out. They play loud rock ‘n roll, and they have a lead singer/songwriter who sneers like a punk but who has the heart of a romantic poet. His name is John K. Samson, and I love his songs.
I used to play one of his songs, called “Hospital Vespers,” around the time when my brother-in-law was dying of cancer. Samson’s songs used to be filled with F Bombs, little verbal tantrums that got old pretty quickly. Then, impossibly, he became a great songwriter, and he started writing poetry. But he’s still tossing F bombs, even if he doesn’t use the precise words. “Hospital Vespers” is an upraised middle finger to death, and the impersonal way people die in our culture, and it’s one of the most humane, compassionate songs I’ve ever heard. I thought about it when I thought about my brother-in-law. Now I think about it because I’ve just written about the band, and because several friends are currently going through the same thoughts and emotions I went through a few years ago. I hate death, so I pray for healing, and I believe that God can and does still work in those ways. But if He doesn’t, then I pray for humanity, for decency, for something like a death that respects and honors the individual.
In any event, “Hospital Vespers” goes like this:
Doctors played your dosage like a card trick.
Scrabbled down the hallways yelling Yahtzee.
I brought books on Hopper, and the Arctic,
something called "The Politics Of Lonely,"
a toothbrush and a quick-pick with the plus.
You tried not to roll your sunken eyes and said
"Hey can you help me, I can't reach it."
Pointed at the camera in the ceiling.
I climbed up, blocked it so they couldn't see.
Turned to find you out of bed, and kneeling.
Before the nurses came, took you away,
I stood there on a chair and watched you pray.
What can be said in these times? “Words, words, words,” Hamlet said. They’re all I have, and they don’t help. But if I could, my friends, I would stand on a chair and block the camera. It’s the least I can do.
I used to play one of his songs, called “Hospital Vespers,” around the time when my brother-in-law was dying of cancer. Samson’s songs used to be filled with F Bombs, little verbal tantrums that got old pretty quickly. Then, impossibly, he became a great songwriter, and he started writing poetry. But he’s still tossing F bombs, even if he doesn’t use the precise words. “Hospital Vespers” is an upraised middle finger to death, and the impersonal way people die in our culture, and it’s one of the most humane, compassionate songs I’ve ever heard. I thought about it when I thought about my brother-in-law. Now I think about it because I’ve just written about the band, and because several friends are currently going through the same thoughts and emotions I went through a few years ago. I hate death, so I pray for healing, and I believe that God can and does still work in those ways. But if He doesn’t, then I pray for humanity, for decency, for something like a death that respects and honors the individual.
In any event, “Hospital Vespers” goes like this:
Doctors played your dosage like a card trick.
Scrabbled down the hallways yelling Yahtzee.
I brought books on Hopper, and the Arctic,
something called "The Politics Of Lonely,"
a toothbrush and a quick-pick with the plus.
You tried not to roll your sunken eyes and said
"Hey can you help me, I can't reach it."
Pointed at the camera in the ceiling.
I climbed up, blocked it so they couldn't see.
Turned to find you out of bed, and kneeling.
Before the nurses came, took you away,
I stood there on a chair and watched you pray.
What can be said in these times? “Words, words, words,” Hamlet said. They’re all I have, and they don’t help. But if I could, my friends, I would stand on a chair and block the camera. It’s the least I can do.
Friday, February 23, 2007
You Don't Say?
I've received a lot of spammed comments lately, so I thought I had turned on a setting that would allow me to view comments and approve/disapprove them before they were posted on my blog. Instead, flexing my technological savvy, I managed to turn off comments altogether.
Sorry about that. So now I'm really, really lonely, feeling insecure, wondering if the reason why I haven't received any comments is because a) no one could post comments, or b) no one reads my blog. This is how pathetic I've become. You, and only you, can make my day. Probably my weekend. It's a dull life, I tell you.
Sorry about that. So now I'm really, really lonely, feeling insecure, wondering if the reason why I haven't received any comments is because a) no one could post comments, or b) no one reads my blog. This is how pathetic I've become. You, and only you, can make my day. Probably my weekend. It's a dull life, I tell you.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Surviving Boot Camp
The saga continues.
For those of you following along at home, the backstory goes something like this:
December 5th, 2006 – The Whitman family, weary and sick at heart over the 127 viruses that infect their now defunct Windows-based Dell computer, decide to strike out on a brave new adventure and buy an Apple iMac. Those 50+ Windows-based video games won’t go to waste because the new iMacs have Intel-based processors, allowing the intrepid user to run both Apple OS X and Windows XP, which we already have on the Dell.
Week of December 6 – 12 – Plug ‘n play turns into a week of software installation hell, highlighted by the vagaries of an application called Senuti, which allows one to take one’s music on the iPod and transfer it to iTunes. The music industry doesn’t like this because it’s only supposed to work the other direction, but when one loses iTunes, and the 7,312 songs thereon, on one’s old Dell computer, one works with third-party apps so that one doesn’t have to re-import 750 albums onto Itunes. It’s not easy, but eventually Senuti works as advertised. The jury is still out on whether this process would have been quicker than actually re-importing the 750 albums.
Weeks of semi-befuddlement follow. Where is the Ctrlkey? And why doesn’t it work like it should? Where’s the little x in the upper right hand corner that exits programs? Where is Windows Explorer? How do I create a new directory? Why is it that when I exit a program that it still appears to be running? But eventually we settle into a state of near Mac love. And the 24” display really is nice.
Early February 2007 – Numerous answers to inquiries confirm that I want to use Boot Camp, not Parallels, to run my Windows applications on the iMac. I print out the Boot Camp instruction manual, and discover that I need Windows XP Service Pack 2 to make this work. I search for a good deal on Windows XP, and fine a nice, new copy on eBay for about half the price of what it costs on amazon.com, Best Buy, etc. I pull the trigger and order my copy of Windows XP through eBay. It arrives a few days later, thanks to the U.S. Postal Service. Total price: $94.13
Cut to Saturday, February 17th, 2007:
8:00 a.m. – I begin the Boot Camp installation process, trusty Boot Camp manual in hand. I make sure I have all the latest OS X updates and firmware. I burn a copy of all OS X drivers to a new disc, as instructed. I take off the shrink wrap from the very official-looking copy of Windows XP, and insert the disc when prompted to so. Various files are copied. It’s slow, but it looks like it’s going well.
8:45 a.m. – I am prompted to enter my 25-digit alphanumeric product code for Windows XP. I check the back of the CD envelope. I check the back of the manual. I frantically skim through every page of the manual. There is an intriguing note on the back of the Windows XP manual: “Your computer manufacturer has affixed the 25-digit product code to the back of your computer. Please refer to this sticker when prompted to enter the product code during the Windows XP installation process.”
8:46 a.m. – I am greeted by a wave of nausea, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I realize that I have just bought, and tried to install, a pirated version of Windows XP from eBay. I can’t bypass the product code screen. I can’t exit out of the Windows XP Install screens. I try rebooting the machine. Nope. Won’t let me. I physically unplug the iMac and plug it in again. It magically arrives back at the Product Code screen in the Windows XP install process. This is Not Good.
9:00 a.m. – I head out to Best Buy in a driving snowstorm. I purchase a legitimate copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2, making sure that the product code is clearly visible. I head back home. Total price: $213.48
10:00 a.m. – That ominous “Enter your 25-digit alphanumeric product code” screen still stares me in the face. I eject the pirated Windows XP disc, insert the newly purchased legitimate disc from Best Buy, and type in the 25-digit alphanumeric product code that appears on the back of the packaging. No dice. Product code not recognized.
10:15 a.m. – Phone call to Microsoft technical support. I explain the situation. Apple iMac. Trying to install Windows XP so I can run Boot Camp. Terminally hosed. Microsoft doesn’t support Boot Camp. Call Apple technical support.
10:40 a.m. – Phone call to Apple technical support. I explain the situation. Sounds like a Windows XP issue to them. Besides, Apple doesn’t support Boot Camp. You’re on your own, bud. At about this point, the phrase “booting the machine” has begun to take on a whole new meaning.
11:45. a.m. – Back out again into the snowstorm, this time heading for MicroCenter. The 2-month-old iMac is nicely packaged in its original box. I tote the iMac into the store, fill out the necessary forms, and drop it off at the service desk. Assuming they can figure out how to get out of the Windows XP Install screens, they’ll probably need to re-image the machine, restoring it to its “like new” state, where I’ll then get to relive the joys of Senuti. Total cost for diagnostic evaluation: $64.52
Total time invested in Boot Camp: About 6 hours.
Total cost: $372.13, and still counting
Cost of frustration, aggravation, and inability to get writing done at home: Priceless
Lessons learned:
1) If the price on eBay looks too good to be true, it probably is.
2) When feeling the hankering to play games, buy an X-Box.
For those of you following along at home, the backstory goes something like this:
December 5th, 2006 – The Whitman family, weary and sick at heart over the 127 viruses that infect their now defunct Windows-based Dell computer, decide to strike out on a brave new adventure and buy an Apple iMac. Those 50+ Windows-based video games won’t go to waste because the new iMacs have Intel-based processors, allowing the intrepid user to run both Apple OS X and Windows XP, which we already have on the Dell.
Week of December 6 – 12 – Plug ‘n play turns into a week of software installation hell, highlighted by the vagaries of an application called Senuti, which allows one to take one’s music on the iPod and transfer it to iTunes. The music industry doesn’t like this because it’s only supposed to work the other direction, but when one loses iTunes, and the 7,312 songs thereon, on one’s old Dell computer, one works with third-party apps so that one doesn’t have to re-import 750 albums onto Itunes. It’s not easy, but eventually Senuti works as advertised. The jury is still out on whether this process would have been quicker than actually re-importing the 750 albums.
Weeks of semi-befuddlement follow. Where is the Ctrl
Early February 2007 – Numerous answers to inquiries confirm that I want to use Boot Camp, not Parallels, to run my Windows applications on the iMac. I print out the Boot Camp instruction manual, and discover that I need Windows XP Service Pack 2 to make this work. I search for a good deal on Windows XP, and fine a nice, new copy on eBay for about half the price of what it costs on amazon.com, Best Buy, etc. I pull the trigger and order my copy of Windows XP through eBay. It arrives a few days later, thanks to the U.S. Postal Service. Total price: $94.13
Cut to Saturday, February 17th, 2007:
8:00 a.m. – I begin the Boot Camp installation process, trusty Boot Camp manual in hand. I make sure I have all the latest OS X updates and firmware. I burn a copy of all OS X drivers to a new disc, as instructed. I take off the shrink wrap from the very official-looking copy of Windows XP, and insert the disc when prompted to so. Various files are copied. It’s slow, but it looks like it’s going well.
8:45 a.m. – I am prompted to enter my 25-digit alphanumeric product code for Windows XP. I check the back of the CD envelope. I check the back of the manual. I frantically skim through every page of the manual. There is an intriguing note on the back of the Windows XP manual: “Your computer manufacturer has affixed the 25-digit product code to the back of your computer. Please refer to this sticker when prompted to enter the product code during the Windows XP installation process.”
8:46 a.m. – I am greeted by a wave of nausea, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I realize that I have just bought, and tried to install, a pirated version of Windows XP from eBay. I can’t bypass the product code screen. I can’t exit out of the Windows XP Install screens. I try rebooting the machine. Nope. Won’t let me. I physically unplug the iMac and plug it in again. It magically arrives back at the Product Code screen in the Windows XP install process. This is Not Good.
9:00 a.m. – I head out to Best Buy in a driving snowstorm. I purchase a legitimate copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2, making sure that the product code is clearly visible. I head back home. Total price: $213.48
10:00 a.m. – That ominous “Enter your 25-digit alphanumeric product code” screen still stares me in the face. I eject the pirated Windows XP disc, insert the newly purchased legitimate disc from Best Buy, and type in the 25-digit alphanumeric product code that appears on the back of the packaging. No dice. Product code not recognized.
10:15 a.m. – Phone call to Microsoft technical support. I explain the situation. Apple iMac. Trying to install Windows XP so I can run Boot Camp. Terminally hosed. Microsoft doesn’t support Boot Camp. Call Apple technical support.
10:40 a.m. – Phone call to Apple technical support. I explain the situation. Sounds like a Windows XP issue to them. Besides, Apple doesn’t support Boot Camp. You’re on your own, bud. At about this point, the phrase “booting the machine” has begun to take on a whole new meaning.
11:45. a.m. – Back out again into the snowstorm, this time heading for MicroCenter. The 2-month-old iMac is nicely packaged in its original box. I tote the iMac into the store, fill out the necessary forms, and drop it off at the service desk. Assuming they can figure out how to get out of the Windows XP Install screens, they’ll probably need to re-image the machine, restoring it to its “like new” state, where I’ll then get to relive the joys of Senuti. Total cost for diagnostic evaluation: $64.52
Total time invested in Boot Camp: About 6 hours.
Total cost: $372.13, and still counting
Cost of frustration, aggravation, and inability to get writing done at home: Priceless
Lessons learned:
1) If the price on eBay looks too good to be true, it probably is.
2) When feeling the hankering to play games, buy an X-Box.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Indie Roundup
Panda Bear – Person Pitch
My insightful but historically challenged friend Jeremy tells me that Person Pitch sounds like The Beach Boys on LSD, which is an accurate enough assessment on one hand, but which ignores the fact that Brian Wilson spent years playing in the sandbox for a reason.
Mr. Bear (real name Noah Lennox) is a member of acid-folk experimentalists The Animal Collective (naturally), and his second solo album is far removed from both his band’s catalogue and his lovely but downbeat solo debut Young Prayer. Here Lennox drags the Beach Boys chorales kicking and screaming through an acid house/early Pink Floyd blender. The resulting mashup of new millennium beats and sixties flower power is sometimes too schizophrenic for its own good. But when it works, as it does on the spectacular 13-minute aural collage “Bros,” it reminds me of Wilson’s magnificent pastiche Smile. Lennox piles multi-tracked harmonies atop clattering drums, fuzzed out bass, spooky sound effects, and enough backward-masked tape loops to warrant full demonic condemnation from the conservative evangelists of America. The rest of you will probably find it delightfully, lysergically lovely.
Frog Eyes – Tears of the Valedictorian
You should care about Victoria B.C.’s Frog Eyes for one reason: the utterly strange songs and weirdly compelling vocals of Carey Mercer. Mercer’s ocular cohorts whip up a sonic wall of skittering electric guitars, circus calliope, and pounding piano. The music is bracing enough; rock ‘n roll as refracted in the Tom Waits funhouse mirror. But it’s Mercer and his paranoid proclamations, delivered in a declamatory, querulous yelp, that really command the attention. There’s a bit of David Bowie there, a bit of Bowie acolyte and Destroyer/New Pornographer Dan Bejar, and more than a touch of madness:
Reform your countryside! Reform your shafted side!
Konstantine: you are the beggar of the blasted blue light
Oh (rich) Richie’s in the back
He ain’t going to like it when you go
And Howard sells the power to the power-hungry proles,
Incriminating photo shoots that show you wanting gold
There’s probably medication for this sort of thing, but it’s oddly convincing just the same. Even more strangely impressive is the nine-minute “Bushels,” which finds Mercer careening off into one of the more damaged falsettos you’ll ever hear, chanting “The wheat’s got to last/London, you’re cold, but the wheat’s got to last.” Easy there, dude. I suspect the wheat will hold out, but damn if it isn’t alarming to consider the possibility that it won’t.
The Narrator – All That to the Wall
There’ll be a new Modest Mouse album any day, but for those of you who can’t wait, there’s the second album from Chicago trio The Narrator. Lead singer/songwriter Sam Axelrod clearly shares the Portland band’s penchant for angular guitar rock and quavering vocals. “Son of the Son of the Kiss of Death,” “SurfJew,” and “Breaking the Turtle” are superb tracks. The only real misstep here is “All the Tired Horses,” a lousy cover of a lousy Bob Dylan song from an album (Self Portrait) that is usually ignored for a reason. Everything else really is good news for people who love Isaac Brock.
My insightful but historically challenged friend Jeremy tells me that Person Pitch sounds like The Beach Boys on LSD, which is an accurate enough assessment on one hand, but which ignores the fact that Brian Wilson spent years playing in the sandbox for a reason.
Mr. Bear (real name Noah Lennox) is a member of acid-folk experimentalists The Animal Collective (naturally), and his second solo album is far removed from both his band’s catalogue and his lovely but downbeat solo debut Young Prayer. Here Lennox drags the Beach Boys chorales kicking and screaming through an acid house/early Pink Floyd blender. The resulting mashup of new millennium beats and sixties flower power is sometimes too schizophrenic for its own good. But when it works, as it does on the spectacular 13-minute aural collage “Bros,” it reminds me of Wilson’s magnificent pastiche Smile. Lennox piles multi-tracked harmonies atop clattering drums, fuzzed out bass, spooky sound effects, and enough backward-masked tape loops to warrant full demonic condemnation from the conservative evangelists of America. The rest of you will probably find it delightfully, lysergically lovely.
Frog Eyes – Tears of the Valedictorian
You should care about Victoria B.C.’s Frog Eyes for one reason: the utterly strange songs and weirdly compelling vocals of Carey Mercer. Mercer’s ocular cohorts whip up a sonic wall of skittering electric guitars, circus calliope, and pounding piano. The music is bracing enough; rock ‘n roll as refracted in the Tom Waits funhouse mirror. But it’s Mercer and his paranoid proclamations, delivered in a declamatory, querulous yelp, that really command the attention. There’s a bit of David Bowie there, a bit of Bowie acolyte and Destroyer/New Pornographer Dan Bejar, and more than a touch of madness:
Reform your countryside! Reform your shafted side!
Konstantine: you are the beggar of the blasted blue light
Oh (rich) Richie’s in the back
He ain’t going to like it when you go
And Howard sells the power to the power-hungry proles,
Incriminating photo shoots that show you wanting gold
There’s probably medication for this sort of thing, but it’s oddly convincing just the same. Even more strangely impressive is the nine-minute “Bushels,” which finds Mercer careening off into one of the more damaged falsettos you’ll ever hear, chanting “The wheat’s got to last/London, you’re cold, but the wheat’s got to last.” Easy there, dude. I suspect the wheat will hold out, but damn if it isn’t alarming to consider the possibility that it won’t.
The Narrator – All That to the Wall
There’ll be a new Modest Mouse album any day, but for those of you who can’t wait, there’s the second album from Chicago trio The Narrator. Lead singer/songwriter Sam Axelrod clearly shares the Portland band’s penchant for angular guitar rock and quavering vocals. “Son of the Son of the Kiss of Death,” “SurfJew,” and “Breaking the Turtle” are superb tracks. The only real misstep here is “All the Tired Horses,” a lousy cover of a lousy Bob Dylan song from an album (Self Portrait) that is usually ignored for a reason. Everything else really is good news for people who love Isaac Brock.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Snow Day/Valentine
It's a snow day! Actually, it's more like a blizzard day. We have about a foot of new snow, the wind is howling, and the wind chill factor is below zero. Whee. But it's all good, because I don't have to drive in it, and I don't have to go to work. These days occur in the adult world about once every five years or so in Columbus, Ohio, and I'm taking full advantage of it. I feel like I'm 12 years old again. Anybody want to build a snow fort?
Today is Valentine's Day. Rachel (who is off from school; one in a continuing succession of snow days) and I trudged through the frozen tundra, managed to start the car, and slid our way to Flowerama. I figured that if any store in central Ohio was open today, it would be Flowerama. And I was right. Flowerama is the greatest store in the world. Other than the cool name, they also have many beautiful and cool flowers, most of them conveniently bunched in packages of 12, ready for display in the home. This is a good thing.
Kate did not have a snow day. This is because people still get sick, even when there is a blizzard outside. So she will get home later tonight, and be greeted by, I hope, a cheery display of a dozen long-stemmed red roses. And I will ask her to be my Valentine. There's no telling what may happen after that. And it will be okay whatever happens, because I'm married to my best friend, and the kindest, wisest, most beautiful woman in the world. Yes, I really do think that.
Today is Valentine's Day. Rachel (who is off from school; one in a continuing succession of snow days) and I trudged through the frozen tundra, managed to start the car, and slid our way to Flowerama. I figured that if any store in central Ohio was open today, it would be Flowerama. And I was right. Flowerama is the greatest store in the world. Other than the cool name, they also have many beautiful and cool flowers, most of them conveniently bunched in packages of 12, ready for display in the home. This is a good thing.
Kate did not have a snow day. This is because people still get sick, even when there is a blizzard outside. So she will get home later tonight, and be greeted by, I hope, a cheery display of a dozen long-stemmed red roses. And I will ask her to be my Valentine. There's no telling what may happen after that. And it will be okay whatever happens, because I'm married to my best friend, and the kindest, wisest, most beautiful woman in the world. Yes, I really do think that.
Monday, February 12, 2007
PLUG for Paste
For the second year in a row, Paste Magazine has won the PLUG Independent Music Award for Magazine of the Year, beating out the likes of Arthur, Decibel, Filter, Harp, Magnet, Mojo, The Fader, Under the Radar, Vice, Wired, and XLR8R. The awards were announced Saturday night in NYC. You can read the results right here.
It's a nice honor, and I congratulate my buddies Josh, Jason, Reid, Tim, Steve et. al. Way to go, Pasties.
It's a nice honor, and I congratulate my buddies Josh, Jason, Reid, Tim, Steve et. al. Way to go, Pasties.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Favorite Music Books -- Biography and Criticism
Teddy requested a list of favorite music biographies or books of music criticism. Here are mine:
Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love -- Peter Guralnick's 2-volume biography of Elvis Presley. Even if you're not much of an Elvis fan, this is the way biographies ought to be written.
Psychotic Reactions and Carburator Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll -- Lester Bangs -- Even when I don't agree with him, which is about half the time, Lester Bangs is a great writer. The title gets it right. His album reviews were works of literary genius -- funny, irreverent, and wildly creative.
England's Dreaming -- Jon Savage -- A great biography of the life and times of The Sex Pistols.
The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend -- Steve Turner -- The best of several Cash biographies I own.
Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis -- J.K. Chambers -- Exactly what it claims to be, and a very well written, thorough biography.
Chronicles -- Bob Dylan -- Really, you've got to read it if you haven't done so. It's not enough that the guy is the world's greatest songwriter. He's also a great prose writer. It's not fair.
Body Piercing Saved My Life -- Andrew Beaujon -- The best and most objective look at the insular, often bizarre world of "Christian" music.
The Penguin Guide to Jazz -- Various authors -- It's encyclopedic, and at times feels like you're reading an encylopedia, but where else are you going to find 10,000+ reviews of jazz albums in one place?
No One Here Gets Out Alive -- Danny Sugerman -- The juicy, salacious end of the rock 'n roll book spectrum. I don't even like Jim Morrison or The Doors, but I like this tell-all bio.
Dylan's Vision of Sin -- Christopher Ricks -- Ricks, I suspect, is utterly psychotic. He spends close to 500 pages scrutinizing Bob Dylan's lyrics in minute detail, looking specifically for references to sin and redemption. Oddly enough, in spite of the academic trappings, many of these analyses border on freewheeling stream-of-consciousness, and are tenuous at best, and quite bizarre. That's why they're entertaining.
Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta -- Robert Palmer -- The best single-volume history of the blues I've found.
The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1,001 Greatest Singles Ever Made -- Dave Marsh -- As if the idea of ranking 1,001 rock 'n roll singles wasn't strange enough, Dave Marsh will actually explain why single #994 is slightly better than single #998. He's my kind of guy, and this is easily the eighth best music book I've ever read.
Stranded: Rock 'n Roll for a Desert Island -- Greil Marcus -- It's the old musical parlor game. If you were stranded on a desert island, what one rock 'n roll album would you want to take with you? Greil Marcus asked twenty well-known rock critics that question, and each wrote a passionate essay about his or her choice. Dave Marsh once famously wrote, "Rock 'n roll saved my life." Reading these essays, you'll begin to understand why it's not such an outlandish claim.
I could keep going, but I'll stop for now.
Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love -- Peter Guralnick's 2-volume biography of Elvis Presley. Even if you're not much of an Elvis fan, this is the way biographies ought to be written.
Psychotic Reactions and Carburator Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll -- Lester Bangs -- Even when I don't agree with him, which is about half the time, Lester Bangs is a great writer. The title gets it right. His album reviews were works of literary genius -- funny, irreverent, and wildly creative.
England's Dreaming -- Jon Savage -- A great biography of the life and times of The Sex Pistols.
The Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of an American Legend -- Steve Turner -- The best of several Cash biographies I own.
Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis -- J.K. Chambers -- Exactly what it claims to be, and a very well written, thorough biography.
Chronicles -- Bob Dylan -- Really, you've got to read it if you haven't done so. It's not enough that the guy is the world's greatest songwriter. He's also a great prose writer. It's not fair.
Body Piercing Saved My Life -- Andrew Beaujon -- The best and most objective look at the insular, often bizarre world of "Christian" music.
The Penguin Guide to Jazz -- Various authors -- It's encyclopedic, and at times feels like you're reading an encylopedia, but where else are you going to find 10,000+ reviews of jazz albums in one place?
No One Here Gets Out Alive -- Danny Sugerman -- The juicy, salacious end of the rock 'n roll book spectrum. I don't even like Jim Morrison or The Doors, but I like this tell-all bio.
Dylan's Vision of Sin -- Christopher Ricks -- Ricks, I suspect, is utterly psychotic. He spends close to 500 pages scrutinizing Bob Dylan's lyrics in minute detail, looking specifically for references to sin and redemption. Oddly enough, in spite of the academic trappings, many of these analyses border on freewheeling stream-of-consciousness, and are tenuous at best, and quite bizarre. That's why they're entertaining.
Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta -- Robert Palmer -- The best single-volume history of the blues I've found.
The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1,001 Greatest Singles Ever Made -- Dave Marsh -- As if the idea of ranking 1,001 rock 'n roll singles wasn't strange enough, Dave Marsh will actually explain why single #994 is slightly better than single #998. He's my kind of guy, and this is easily the eighth best music book I've ever read.
Stranded: Rock 'n Roll for a Desert Island -- Greil Marcus -- It's the old musical parlor game. If you were stranded on a desert island, what one rock 'n roll album would you want to take with you? Greil Marcus asked twenty well-known rock critics that question, and each wrote a passionate essay about his or her choice. Dave Marsh once famously wrote, "Rock 'n roll saved my life." Reading these essays, you'll begin to understand why it's not such an outlandish claim.
I could keep going, but I'll stop for now.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Lucinda Williams -- West
Let me get this out of the way at the start: in spite of what’s coming, I like Lucinda Williams. I love her music, which I’ve followed avidly since her late ‘70s blues albums on Smithsonian Folkways. I’ve seen her in concert several times. I don’t know her personally, but I wish her well. But she’s still made a near-stinker of a new album. I wish it wasn’t so.
West, due out February 13th, is the latest in a series of gradually declining releases since 1998’s masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. That album, redolent with sweat and dirt, love and lust, captured a sense of place as well as any album ever made, as Lucinda explored the American Deep South with idiosyncratic, finely detailed geographical and personal reflections. Essence and World Without Tears, the albums that followed, were solid efforts, but failed to recapture the magic entirely. With West, the decline is far more precipitous.
To be sure, West has its high points, most of them grouped near the middle of the album. “Fancy Funeral” is a starkly moving ballad, Lucinda mournfully recalling her recently departed mother, poking at the hole in the soul that seems incapable of being filled, her always-fragile voice cracking and breaking in ways that will melt your heart. “Everything Has Changed” is a lovely and bittersweet acknowledgement of emotional hollowness, while “Rescue” is a harrowing 3:00 a.m. confession of existential loneliness. Of the few uptempo tracks, “Unsuffer Me” is a searing slow-burn blues, and “Come On” a righteously pissed off howler and indignant middle finger to a former lover. These songs finally move the album beyond its prevalent downbeat dirge and into full-blown Neil Young/Crazy Horse territory, and they can hold up with the best Lucinda has ever written.
But there are problems. Sweet Jesus, are there problems. Williams has never been known for her hook-laden melodies, but the somnambulant opener “Are You Alright?” takes mind-numbingly repetitious to a whole new level, while the second track “Mama Sweet” fixates on the two words in the title and repeats them like a mantra. It’s not so much “hypnotic” as “nap inducing.” If you’re still awake ten minutes in, you’ll discover a pretty good album. Unfortunately the trend continues late as well, with the ill-advised nine-minute talking blues “Wrap My Head Around That” followed by the laconic “Words,” which actually contains some pretty good ones. Sadly, they are masked by a tune so quiescent and monotonous that you may not be able to remain conscious to hear them. It makes me realize how indebted Lucinda was on her earlier albums to departed guitarist/producer Gurf Morlix, who injected both energy and supremely melodic, chiming guitar runs. The fact is that on at least half these tracks Lucinda commits the unpardonable musical sin: she’s deadly boring.
More disturbingly, “America’s best songwriter” (according to Time Magazine) seems remarkably unfocused and lazy. “Are You Alright?,” that snoozer of a leadoff track, offers such lobotomized sub-Hallmark Card sentiments as “Are you sleepin’ through the night?/Do you have someone to hold you tight?” before the title phrase echoes, ad nauseam, through an extended coda. It’s a stultifyingly dull and cliché-ridden five minutes, all the more shocking because Lucinda is capable of genuinely great writing.
Lucinda Williams has too strong a track record to give up on her entirely, or to think that she might not be considerably better next time out. So I’ll be listening for her next move. But with West, America’s best songwriter has gone south, and this time she’s nowhere close to the geographic or emotional epicenter that gives her best work such deep weight and resonance.
West, due out February 13th, is the latest in a series of gradually declining releases since 1998’s masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. That album, redolent with sweat and dirt, love and lust, captured a sense of place as well as any album ever made, as Lucinda explored the American Deep South with idiosyncratic, finely detailed geographical and personal reflections. Essence and World Without Tears, the albums that followed, were solid efforts, but failed to recapture the magic entirely. With West, the decline is far more precipitous.
To be sure, West has its high points, most of them grouped near the middle of the album. “Fancy Funeral” is a starkly moving ballad, Lucinda mournfully recalling her recently departed mother, poking at the hole in the soul that seems incapable of being filled, her always-fragile voice cracking and breaking in ways that will melt your heart. “Everything Has Changed” is a lovely and bittersweet acknowledgement of emotional hollowness, while “Rescue” is a harrowing 3:00 a.m. confession of existential loneliness. Of the few uptempo tracks, “Unsuffer Me” is a searing slow-burn blues, and “Come On” a righteously pissed off howler and indignant middle finger to a former lover. These songs finally move the album beyond its prevalent downbeat dirge and into full-blown Neil Young/Crazy Horse territory, and they can hold up with the best Lucinda has ever written.
But there are problems. Sweet Jesus, are there problems. Williams has never been known for her hook-laden melodies, but the somnambulant opener “Are You Alright?” takes mind-numbingly repetitious to a whole new level, while the second track “Mama Sweet” fixates on the two words in the title and repeats them like a mantra. It’s not so much “hypnotic” as “nap inducing.” If you’re still awake ten minutes in, you’ll discover a pretty good album. Unfortunately the trend continues late as well, with the ill-advised nine-minute talking blues “Wrap My Head Around That” followed by the laconic “Words,” which actually contains some pretty good ones. Sadly, they are masked by a tune so quiescent and monotonous that you may not be able to remain conscious to hear them. It makes me realize how indebted Lucinda was on her earlier albums to departed guitarist/producer Gurf Morlix, who injected both energy and supremely melodic, chiming guitar runs. The fact is that on at least half these tracks Lucinda commits the unpardonable musical sin: she’s deadly boring.
More disturbingly, “America’s best songwriter” (according to Time Magazine) seems remarkably unfocused and lazy. “Are You Alright?,” that snoozer of a leadoff track, offers such lobotomized sub-Hallmark Card sentiments as “Are you sleepin’ through the night?/Do you have someone to hold you tight?” before the title phrase echoes, ad nauseam, through an extended coda. It’s a stultifyingly dull and cliché-ridden five minutes, all the more shocking because Lucinda is capable of genuinely great writing.
Lucinda Williams has too strong a track record to give up on her entirely, or to think that she might not be considerably better next time out. So I’ll be listening for her next move. But with West, America’s best songwriter has gone south, and this time she’s nowhere close to the geographic or emotional epicenter that gives her best work such deep weight and resonance.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Fountains of Wayne, Joe Craven, Milton and the Devils Party, Jon Rauhouse
Some new or about-to-be-released music that I’ve enjoyed of late …
Fountains of Wayne – Traffic and Weather
Fountains of Wayne frontmen Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood will remind you of the two smirking wiseacres who always sat in the back of the class during your high school years. They’re hip and they know it, they’re cynical, and they’re too clever for their own good. They rhyme “diner” and “Carl Reiner,” “law degree” and “Schenectedy,” “routine” and “Lichtenstein.” They find the ridiculous and surreal in every current cultural fad, and they pepper their lyrics with topical references that will be out of date by the time their next album is released.
That’s okay. These smartasses also happen to write the best hooks extant in rock music, and their delicious power pop is guaranteed to make old farts like me jump on the couch and play air guitar. The fourteen songs here borrow shamelessly from every great band from The Beatles to Weezer, and if they don’t really do anything here that they haven’t done on their previous three albums, songs like “Someone to Love” and “New Routine” certainly reinforce the notion that that there is, and always will be, an exalted place in the rock ‘n roll canon for three-minute songs with clever lyrics and singalong choruses. Best of all is “Fire in the Canyon,” where the smirk is replaced, finally, by some honest, melancholic soul-searching, sweetened by spot-on Simon and Garfunkel harmonies.
Joe Craven – Django Latino
Originally released in 2004 to overwhelming indifference, Joe Craven’s Django Latino is being re-released on Compass Records. Don’t miss it this time; it’s a great album. Craven, a longtime musician in David Grisman’s Dawg Music ensemble, is a one-man band who plays mandolin, mandola, cavaquiño, violin, ukulele and a full range of percussion instruments, including cookie tins and martini shakers. Here he multi-tracks himself to play nearly every part on these wondrous songs associated with gypsy guitarist extraordinaire Django Reinhardt and violin maestro Stephan Grappelli of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. These songs, originally recorded between the 1930s and 1950s, are among the most beloved of the jazz canon. Here Craven adds his own unique spin by adding elements of cumbia, meringue, samba, and tango. Not a jazz or world music fan? Okay, then consider this: Joe Craven’s playing will make your jaw drop in wonder and amazement. He’s a dazzling soloist, his virtuosity matched by his ability to swing. Django Latino is both a fine tribute and a stunning reinvention.
Milton and the Devils Party – How Wicked We’ve Become
In case you were wondering, that’s “Milton” as in “John,” not as in “Berle.” There’s little to laugh at on How Wicked We’ve Become, but enough heartfelt angst and literary allusions to keep even the most introspective, morose English major happy. Or at least as happy as introspective, morose English majors ever get. Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Norman Mailer all make cameo appearances, as does sadsack Morrissey from the introspective, morose musical world.
It’s enough to make you think that these songs were written by an English professor. And then you find out that they were. But if Daniel Robinson doesn’t do much to disguise his day gig, he also does just fine as a part-time rock star, turning out tuneful, spiky guitar pop that is reminiscent of Marshall Crenshaw, The Police, and early Elvis Costello. There are deep undercurrents of longing and yearning in the lyrics, cleverly disguised by the bright, uptempo music. The themes are universally relevant, although it’s probably not a bad idea to keep a thesaurus near your iPod just in case. But if you can handle “The palliative promise of eternal life/Has turned into a stultifying curse” as a jangly guitar anthem, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this little genre exercise in pop existentialism, and probably score better on your SATs as a result.
Jon Rauhouse – Jon Rauhouse’s Steel Guitar Heart Attack
Those of you who associate the pedal steel guitar solely with cry-in-yer-beer country weepers are in for either an unpleasant shock or a delightful surprise. Jon Rauhouse plays pedal steel guitar the way John Zorn plays the saxophone. That is, he thoroughly messes with your head as he takes you on a schizophrenic musical journey. On … Heart Attack Rauhouse covers western swing, Hawaiian music, Big Band standards, ‘60s easy listening schlock, Bing Crosby crooners, the TV themes to Mannix and the Andy Griffith Show, and gunfighter ballads. Along the way, he’s helped out by members of Calexico, Giant Sand, The Mekons, Kelly Hogan, and the incomparable Neko Case, who lends her pipes to the old Sinatra chestnut “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon).” Best of all is Rauhouse’s take on Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” where the pedal steel does a Broadway turn. It’s great, uncompromising, wildly eclectic music.
Fountains of Wayne – Traffic and Weather
Fountains of Wayne frontmen Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood will remind you of the two smirking wiseacres who always sat in the back of the class during your high school years. They’re hip and they know it, they’re cynical, and they’re too clever for their own good. They rhyme “diner” and “Carl Reiner,” “law degree” and “Schenectedy,” “routine” and “Lichtenstein.” They find the ridiculous and surreal in every current cultural fad, and they pepper their lyrics with topical references that will be out of date by the time their next album is released.
That’s okay. These smartasses also happen to write the best hooks extant in rock music, and their delicious power pop is guaranteed to make old farts like me jump on the couch and play air guitar. The fourteen songs here borrow shamelessly from every great band from The Beatles to Weezer, and if they don’t really do anything here that they haven’t done on their previous three albums, songs like “Someone to Love” and “New Routine” certainly reinforce the notion that that there is, and always will be, an exalted place in the rock ‘n roll canon for three-minute songs with clever lyrics and singalong choruses. Best of all is “Fire in the Canyon,” where the smirk is replaced, finally, by some honest, melancholic soul-searching, sweetened by spot-on Simon and Garfunkel harmonies.
Joe Craven – Django Latino
Originally released in 2004 to overwhelming indifference, Joe Craven’s Django Latino is being re-released on Compass Records. Don’t miss it this time; it’s a great album. Craven, a longtime musician in David Grisman’s Dawg Music ensemble, is a one-man band who plays mandolin, mandola, cavaquiño, violin, ukulele and a full range of percussion instruments, including cookie tins and martini shakers. Here he multi-tracks himself to play nearly every part on these wondrous songs associated with gypsy guitarist extraordinaire Django Reinhardt and violin maestro Stephan Grappelli of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. These songs, originally recorded between the 1930s and 1950s, are among the most beloved of the jazz canon. Here Craven adds his own unique spin by adding elements of cumbia, meringue, samba, and tango. Not a jazz or world music fan? Okay, then consider this: Joe Craven’s playing will make your jaw drop in wonder and amazement. He’s a dazzling soloist, his virtuosity matched by his ability to swing. Django Latino is both a fine tribute and a stunning reinvention.
Milton and the Devils Party – How Wicked We’ve Become
In case you were wondering, that’s “Milton” as in “John,” not as in “Berle.” There’s little to laugh at on How Wicked We’ve Become, but enough heartfelt angst and literary allusions to keep even the most introspective, morose English major happy. Or at least as happy as introspective, morose English majors ever get. Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Norman Mailer all make cameo appearances, as does sadsack Morrissey from the introspective, morose musical world.
It’s enough to make you think that these songs were written by an English professor. And then you find out that they were. But if Daniel Robinson doesn’t do much to disguise his day gig, he also does just fine as a part-time rock star, turning out tuneful, spiky guitar pop that is reminiscent of Marshall Crenshaw, The Police, and early Elvis Costello. There are deep undercurrents of longing and yearning in the lyrics, cleverly disguised by the bright, uptempo music. The themes are universally relevant, although it’s probably not a bad idea to keep a thesaurus near your iPod just in case. But if you can handle “The palliative promise of eternal life/Has turned into a stultifying curse” as a jangly guitar anthem, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this little genre exercise in pop existentialism, and probably score better on your SATs as a result.
Jon Rauhouse – Jon Rauhouse’s Steel Guitar Heart Attack
Those of you who associate the pedal steel guitar solely with cry-in-yer-beer country weepers are in for either an unpleasant shock or a delightful surprise. Jon Rauhouse plays pedal steel guitar the way John Zorn plays the saxophone. That is, he thoroughly messes with your head as he takes you on a schizophrenic musical journey. On … Heart Attack Rauhouse covers western swing, Hawaiian music, Big Band standards, ‘60s easy listening schlock, Bing Crosby crooners, the TV themes to Mannix and the Andy Griffith Show, and gunfighter ballads. Along the way, he’s helped out by members of Calexico, Giant Sand, The Mekons, Kelly Hogan, and the incomparable Neko Case, who lends her pipes to the old Sinatra chestnut “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon).” Best of all is Rauhouse’s take on Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” where the pedal steel does a Broadway turn. It’s great, uncompromising, wildly eclectic music.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Cross-Over Matching
I am taking a training course today on communication. I, as an upwardly-mobile corporate American, aspire to the best in non-verbal communication. So I am particularly interested in a technique, first revealed to me today, called "Cross-Over Matching." Here's what cross-over matching entails:
"This is matching the other person's behavior with a corresponding, but different, movement. If a person is blinking rapidly, you may cross-over match by discreetly tapping your finger at the same rate as they are blinking. You could also pace the rhythm of someone's speech with slight nods of your head, or with your breathing."
Wow. This communication business is much harder than I thought, and requires more rhythm than I suspect I have. I don't know because I haven't tried it out yet, but I suspect I'm going to be so busy counting in my head and working out polyrhythmic counterpoint and such that I'm going to have no idea what anyone is saying. Any of you veteran cross-over matchers have any words of wisdom for me?
And can I just say that I love corporate America.
"This is matching the other person's behavior with a corresponding, but different, movement. If a person is blinking rapidly, you may cross-over match by discreetly tapping your finger at the same rate as they are blinking. You could also pace the rhythm of someone's speech with slight nods of your head, or with your breathing."
Wow. This communication business is much harder than I thought, and requires more rhythm than I suspect I have. I don't know because I haven't tried it out yet, but I suspect I'm going to be so busy counting in my head and working out polyrhythmic counterpoint and such that I'm going to have no idea what anyone is saying. Any of you veteran cross-over matchers have any words of wisdom for me?
And can I just say that I love corporate America.
Best Music of 2006
The top 5 reasons to obsess over "Best of" Lists:
1. They contribute to the illusion that messy life can be quantified.
2. Art as science. You can't beat it.
3. Admit it. We all want to be #1. Or at least Top 10.
4. They give us something to grouse about. In fact, I'm considering moving this reason into the Top 3. What do you think?
5. They keep our counting skills finely honed.
So here's the list of the Top 100 albums of 2006 from Paste Magazine:
Best-of lists are notoriously problematic. Despite their flirtation with math/science in the form of numerical rankings, there is a vague arbitrariness pervading even the most meticulously constructed example. The difference between spot #47 and #93 might as well hinge on how seamlessly an editor's fast food breakfast is digesting that particular morning. Still, we make our lists, if only to have an excuse to let our minds wander back over the year and remember which pieces of art caused us to forget the world, or simply appreciate the complexity of it.
Sometimes, after walking into the Paste office's music library and seeing the mailbins piled four-high and spilling over because the vast rows of shelves have filled up yet again (weren't they just cleared off?), I wonder if the world really needs any new music. Maybe every artist should just take a few years off so we can all get caught up on our listening. But then I look over this list and find myself amazed at how many great records have come out in just one year's time. Because it's true: You can never have too much of a good thing. And let's be honest. Some records are gooder than others.
-Jason Killingsworth
----
1. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
2. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys
4. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
5. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
6. Cat Power – The Greatest
7. Midlake - Trials of Van Occupanther
8. Gomez - How We Operate
9. M Ward – Post War
10. The Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed
11. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
12. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
13. Josh Ritter - The Animal Years
14. Beck - The Information
15. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat
16. Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler
17. Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
18. Califone - Roots & Crowns
19. Joseph Arthur - Nuclear Daydream
20. Beirut – Gulag Orkestar
21. Paul Simon - Surpise
22. Mastodon - Blood Mountain
23. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - The Letting Go
24. Mates of State - Bring it Back
25. Luke Doucet - Broken and Other Rogue States
26. Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country
27. Hem - Funnel Cloud
28. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
29. Jackie Greene - American Myth
30. Van Hunt - On The Jungle Floor
31. My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me The Workhorse
32. Kate York - Sadlylove
33. Man Man - Six Demon Bag
34. Johnny Cash - American V
35. The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
36. Damien Dempsey - Shots
37. Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris - All the Roadrunning
38. Roman Candle - The Wee Hours Review
39. Destroyer – Destroyer’s Rubies
40. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
41. Corinne Bailey Rae - Corinne Bailey Rae
42. Nellie McKay – Pretty Little Head
43. The Thermals - The Body, the Blood, the Machine
44. Liars - Drums Not Dead
45. Willie Nelson - Songbird
46. The Roots – Game Theory
47. Manchester Orchestra - I'm Like a Virgin Losing a Child
48. Built To Spill - You In Reverse
49. Phoenix – It’s Never Been Like That
50. Jeremy Enigk - World Waits
51. Damien Jurado - Now That I'm In Your Shadow
52. Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers
53. Pernice Brothers - Live a Little
54. Calexico - Garden Ruin
55. The Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
56. Benevento Russo Duo - Play Pause Stop
57. Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra - Boulevard de l'Independence
58. Junior Boys - So This is Goodbye
59. Ratatat - Classics
60. Josh Rouse - SubtÃtulo
61. Jim Noir – Tower of Love
62. Guillemots - Through the Broken Window
63. Hot Chip – The Warning
64. Nicolai Dunger - Here's My Song
65. Belle and Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
66. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
67. Bill Mallonee – Permafrost
68. Archie Bronson Outfit - Derdang Derdang
69. Danielson – Ships
70. Tobias Froberg – Somewhere in the City
71. KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope
72. My Morning Jacket - Okonokos
73. Ray Lamontagne - Till The Sun Turns Black
74. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
75. John Mayer - Continuum
76. Swan Lake - Beast Moans
77. Brazilian Girls - Talk To La Bomb
78. Peter and the Wolf - Lightness
79. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
80. Ben Kweller - Ben Kweller
81. T.I. - King
82. Be Your Own Pet - Be Your Own Pet
83. Loose Fur - Born Again in the USA
84. Todd Snider - The Devil You Know
85. Starlight Mints - Drowaton
86. Los Lobos - The Town and the City
87. Brightblack Morning Light - Brightblack Morning Light
88. James Hunter - People Gonna Talk
89. Band of Horses - Everything All The Time
90. The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics
91. Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds
92. Girl Talk - Night Ripper
93. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
94. Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
95. The Mountain Goats – Get Lonely
96. Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
97. Figurines - Skeleton
98. Viva Voce - Get Yr Blood Sucked Out
99. The Dears - Gang of Losers
100. The Old Ceremony - Our One Mistake
And here's a fun one: the Blogger Best Of list. Someone with way too much time on his/her hands trolled the web, looking for all the "Best Music of 2006" lists on individual blogs, then came up with a composite rating. And here it is:
1 - TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
2 - Decemberists, Crane Wife
3 - Joanna Newsom, Ys
4 - Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
5 - Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
6 - Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit
7 - Band of Horses, Everything All the Time
8 - Thom Yorke, The Eraser
9 - Destroyer, Destroyer’s Rubies
10 - Cat Power, The Greatest (*)
11 - Knife, Silent Shout
12 - Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not (*)
13 - Hot Chip, The Warning
14 - Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat
15 - Beirut, Gulag Orkestar
16 - M. Ward, Post-War
17 - Bob Dylan, Modern Times
18 - Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones
19 - Midlake, Trials of Van Occupanther
20 - Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I am Dreaming
21 - Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
22 - Camera Obscura, Let’s Get Out of This Country
23 - Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
24 - Grizzly Bear, Yellow House
25 - Muse, Black Holes and Revelations
26 - Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope
27 - Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers
28 - Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
29 - Islands, Return to the Sea
30 - Lily Allen, Alright, Still
30 - Thermals, The Body, The Blood, The Machine
32 - Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
33 - Junior Boys, So This is Goodbye
34 - Girl Talk, Night Ripper
34 - Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/Lovesounds
36 - Peter Bjorn and John, Writer's Block
37 - Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped
38 - Final Fantasy, He Poos Clouds
39 - Josh Ritter, The Animal Years
40 - Silversun Pickups, Carnavas
41 - Beck, The Information
42 - Built to Spill, You in Reverse
43 - Roots, Game Theory
44 - Liars, Drum's Not Dead
44 - Tapes ‘n Tapes, The Loon (*)
46 - Phoenix, It’s Never Been Like That
47 - Flaming Lips, At War with the Mystics
48 - Asobi Seksu, Citrus
49 - Califone, Roots and Crowns
50 - Mogwai, Mr. Beast/Zidane (**)
51 - Cold War Kids, Robbers & Cowards
52 - Killers, Sam's Town
53 - My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade
54 - Mastodon, Blood Mountain
54 - Pipettes, We are the Pipettes
56 - Strokes, First Impressions of Earth
57 - Mates of State, Bring it Back
58 - Lupe Fiasco, Food & Liquor
59 - Mew, And the Glass Handed Kites
59 - Rapture, Pieces of the People We Love
61 - Guillemots, Through the Windowpane
62 - Wolfmother, s/t
63 - Pearl Jam, s/t
64 - Man Man, Six Demon Bag
65 - Bonnie "Prince" Billy, The Letting Go
66 - Snow Patrol, Eyes Open
67 - Scott Walker, The Drift
68 - Love is All, Nine Times That Same Song
69 - Danielson, Ships
70 - Blow, Paper Television
71 - Kooks, Inside In/Inside Out
72 - Margot & the Nuclear So and So's, The Dust of Retreat
73 - Format, Dog Problems
74 - Shearwater, Palo Santo
75 - Damien Rice, 9
76 - Mountain Goats, Get Lonely
77 - Bruce Springsteen, We Shall Overcome
78 - Beatles, Love
78 - Black Keys, Magic Potion
80 - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas/Isobel Campbell, Milk White Sheets (**)
82 - Cansei de Ser Sexy, s/t
82 - Tom Waits, Orphans
84 - My Brightest Diamond, Bring Me the Workhorse
84 - Ratatat, Classics
84 - Scritti Politti, White Bread Black Beer
87 - Sparklehorse, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
88 - Johnny Cash, American V: A Hundred Highways
89 - Scissor Sisters, Ta-Dah
90 - Sufjan Stevens, The Avalanche
91 - Jarvis Cocker, Jarvis
92 - J Dilla, Donuts
93 - Annuals, Be He Me
94 - John Mayer, Continuum
95 - Calexico, Garden Ruin
96 - Keane, Under the Iron Sea
97 - Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, Knives Don't Have Your Back
97 - Juana Molina, Son
99 - I'm From Barcelona, Let Me Introduce My Friends
100 - Ben Kweller, s/t
1. They contribute to the illusion that messy life can be quantified.
2. Art as science. You can't beat it.
3. Admit it. We all want to be #1. Or at least Top 10.
4. They give us something to grouse about. In fact, I'm considering moving this reason into the Top 3. What do you think?
5. They keep our counting skills finely honed.
So here's the list of the Top 100 albums of 2006 from Paste Magazine:
Best-of lists are notoriously problematic. Despite their flirtation with math/science in the form of numerical rankings, there is a vague arbitrariness pervading even the most meticulously constructed example. The difference between spot #47 and #93 might as well hinge on how seamlessly an editor's fast food breakfast is digesting that particular morning. Still, we make our lists, if only to have an excuse to let our minds wander back over the year and remember which pieces of art caused us to forget the world, or simply appreciate the complexity of it.
Sometimes, after walking into the Paste office's music library and seeing the mailbins piled four-high and spilling over because the vast rows of shelves have filled up yet again (weren't they just cleared off?), I wonder if the world really needs any new music. Maybe every artist should just take a few years off so we can all get caught up on our listening. But then I look over this list and find myself amazed at how many great records have come out in just one year's time. Because it's true: You can never have too much of a good thing. And let's be honest. Some records are gooder than others.
-Jason Killingsworth
----
1. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
2. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys
4. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
5. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
6. Cat Power – The Greatest
7. Midlake - Trials of Van Occupanther
8. Gomez - How We Operate
9. M Ward – Post War
10. The Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed
11. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
12. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
13. Josh Ritter - The Animal Years
14. Beck - The Information
15. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat
16. Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler
17. Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
18. Califone - Roots & Crowns
19. Joseph Arthur - Nuclear Daydream
20. Beirut – Gulag Orkestar
21. Paul Simon - Surpise
22. Mastodon - Blood Mountain
23. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - The Letting Go
24. Mates of State - Bring it Back
25. Luke Doucet - Broken and Other Rogue States
26. Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country
27. Hem - Funnel Cloud
28. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
29. Jackie Greene - American Myth
30. Van Hunt - On The Jungle Floor
31. My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me The Workhorse
32. Kate York - Sadlylove
33. Man Man - Six Demon Bag
34. Johnny Cash - American V
35. The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
36. Damien Dempsey - Shots
37. Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris - All the Roadrunning
38. Roman Candle - The Wee Hours Review
39. Destroyer – Destroyer’s Rubies
40. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
41. Corinne Bailey Rae - Corinne Bailey Rae
42. Nellie McKay – Pretty Little Head
43. The Thermals - The Body, the Blood, the Machine
44. Liars - Drums Not Dead
45. Willie Nelson - Songbird
46. The Roots – Game Theory
47. Manchester Orchestra - I'm Like a Virgin Losing a Child
48. Built To Spill - You In Reverse
49. Phoenix – It’s Never Been Like That
50. Jeremy Enigk - World Waits
51. Damien Jurado - Now That I'm In Your Shadow
52. Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers
53. Pernice Brothers - Live a Little
54. Calexico - Garden Ruin
55. The Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
56. Benevento Russo Duo - Play Pause Stop
57. Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra - Boulevard de l'Independence
58. Junior Boys - So This is Goodbye
59. Ratatat - Classics
60. Josh Rouse - SubtÃtulo
61. Jim Noir – Tower of Love
62. Guillemots - Through the Broken Window
63. Hot Chip – The Warning
64. Nicolai Dunger - Here's My Song
65. Belle and Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
66. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
67. Bill Mallonee – Permafrost
68. Archie Bronson Outfit - Derdang Derdang
69. Danielson – Ships
70. Tobias Froberg – Somewhere in the City
71. KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope
72. My Morning Jacket - Okonokos
73. Ray Lamontagne - Till The Sun Turns Black
74. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
75. John Mayer - Continuum
76. Swan Lake - Beast Moans
77. Brazilian Girls - Talk To La Bomb
78. Peter and the Wolf - Lightness
79. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
80. Ben Kweller - Ben Kweller
81. T.I. - King
82. Be Your Own Pet - Be Your Own Pet
83. Loose Fur - Born Again in the USA
84. Todd Snider - The Devil You Know
85. Starlight Mints - Drowaton
86. Los Lobos - The Town and the City
87. Brightblack Morning Light - Brightblack Morning Light
88. James Hunter - People Gonna Talk
89. Band of Horses - Everything All The Time
90. The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics
91. Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds
92. Girl Talk - Night Ripper
93. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
94. Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
95. The Mountain Goats – Get Lonely
96. Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
97. Figurines - Skeleton
98. Viva Voce - Get Yr Blood Sucked Out
99. The Dears - Gang of Losers
100. The Old Ceremony - Our One Mistake
And here's a fun one: the Blogger Best Of list. Someone with way too much time on his/her hands trolled the web, looking for all the "Best Music of 2006" lists on individual blogs, then came up with a composite rating. And here it is:
1 - TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
2 - Decemberists, Crane Wife
3 - Joanna Newsom, Ys
4 - Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
5 - Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
6 - Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit
7 - Band of Horses, Everything All the Time
8 - Thom Yorke, The Eraser
9 - Destroyer, Destroyer’s Rubies
10 - Cat Power, The Greatest (*)
11 - Knife, Silent Shout
12 - Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not (*)
13 - Hot Chip, The Warning
14 - Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat
15 - Beirut, Gulag Orkestar
16 - M. Ward, Post-War
17 - Bob Dylan, Modern Times
18 - Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones
19 - Midlake, Trials of Van Occupanther
20 - Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I am Dreaming
21 - Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
22 - Camera Obscura, Let’s Get Out of This Country
23 - Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
24 - Grizzly Bear, Yellow House
25 - Muse, Black Holes and Revelations
26 - Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope
27 - Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers
28 - Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
29 - Islands, Return to the Sea
30 - Lily Allen, Alright, Still
30 - Thermals, The Body, The Blood, The Machine
32 - Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
33 - Junior Boys, So This is Goodbye
34 - Girl Talk, Night Ripper
34 - Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/Lovesounds
36 - Peter Bjorn and John, Writer's Block
37 - Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped
38 - Final Fantasy, He Poos Clouds
39 - Josh Ritter, The Animal Years
40 - Silversun Pickups, Carnavas
41 - Beck, The Information
42 - Built to Spill, You in Reverse
43 - Roots, Game Theory
44 - Liars, Drum's Not Dead
44 - Tapes ‘n Tapes, The Loon (*)
46 - Phoenix, It’s Never Been Like That
47 - Flaming Lips, At War with the Mystics
48 - Asobi Seksu, Citrus
49 - Califone, Roots and Crowns
50 - Mogwai, Mr. Beast/Zidane (**)
51 - Cold War Kids, Robbers & Cowards
52 - Killers, Sam's Town
53 - My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade
54 - Mastodon, Blood Mountain
54 - Pipettes, We are the Pipettes
56 - Strokes, First Impressions of Earth
57 - Mates of State, Bring it Back
58 - Lupe Fiasco, Food & Liquor
59 - Mew, And the Glass Handed Kites
59 - Rapture, Pieces of the People We Love
61 - Guillemots, Through the Windowpane
62 - Wolfmother, s/t
63 - Pearl Jam, s/t
64 - Man Man, Six Demon Bag
65 - Bonnie "Prince" Billy, The Letting Go
66 - Snow Patrol, Eyes Open
67 - Scott Walker, The Drift
68 - Love is All, Nine Times That Same Song
69 - Danielson, Ships
70 - Blow, Paper Television
71 - Kooks, Inside In/Inside Out
72 - Margot & the Nuclear So and So's, The Dust of Retreat
73 - Format, Dog Problems
74 - Shearwater, Palo Santo
75 - Damien Rice, 9
76 - Mountain Goats, Get Lonely
77 - Bruce Springsteen, We Shall Overcome
78 - Beatles, Love
78 - Black Keys, Magic Potion
80 - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas/Isobel Campbell, Milk White Sheets (**)
82 - Cansei de Ser Sexy, s/t
82 - Tom Waits, Orphans
84 - My Brightest Diamond, Bring Me the Workhorse
84 - Ratatat, Classics
84 - Scritti Politti, White Bread Black Beer
87 - Sparklehorse, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
88 - Johnny Cash, American V: A Hundred Highways
89 - Scissor Sisters, Ta-Dah
90 - Sufjan Stevens, The Avalanche
91 - Jarvis Cocker, Jarvis
92 - J Dilla, Donuts
93 - Annuals, Be He Me
94 - John Mayer, Continuum
95 - Calexico, Garden Ruin
96 - Keane, Under the Iron Sea
97 - Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, Knives Don't Have Your Back
97 - Juana Molina, Son
99 - I'm From Barcelona, Let Me Introduce My Friends
100 - Ben Kweller, s/t
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Last of the Breed
The album name overstates the case a little. Last time I checked the entertainment obituaries, George Jones, Ralph Stanley, and Charlie Louvin were still around (the octogenarian Charlie with a great new album, at that). So Last of the Breed, the title of the new 2-CD collaboration between Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Ray Price isn’t entirely accurate. But why quibble? The fact is that these three grizzled amigos represent the best of a brand of country music that hasn’t really been in vogue since the Reagan administration, before Garth Brooks discovered wireless mics and Shania Twain figured out how to charge people to watch aerobics classes.
What Nelson, Haggard, and Price can do is sing, and even at their relatively advanced ages they can still swoop down to nail a bass note so soul-shatteringly lonesome and blue that you will want to start drinking hard liquor again even if you’ve sworn off the stuff. This is 180-proof honky-tonk hokum, full of Jesus and mama and old lovers who are nothing but gone, and if you can get past the schmaltz factor, what you will discover is that it touches on universal hopes and fears. You don’t need to be a hardcore country music fan to appreciate this music. You just need to have a heartbeat.
Twenty of the twenty-two songs here are about as old as the participants. Well, okay, not quite, but Harlan Howard and Lefty Frizzell were writing most of these classics in the ‘50s, and songs like “Heartaches by the Number” and “I Love You a Thousand Ways” would have sounded just as good and just as true in 1907 as they do in 2007. Age hasn’t diminished Willie or Merle one bit, and if Ray Price sounds a little frayed around the edges, that only adds to the poignancy of these sad, sad songs. Nashville old schoolers like pedal steel virtuoso Buddy Emmons and fiddler Johnny Gimble are around to lend their musical expertise. And the Jordanaires, seemingly missing in action since the death of Elvis, drop by to lend their trademark gospel quartet harmonies.
But mostly there is Willie. And Merle. And Ray. I don’t mean to be morbid, but if Johnny and June teach us anything, they teach us that this breed, regardless of their number, won’t last forever. So enjoy them while we’ve got them, still at or near the peak of their powers, still making radically unhip, out-of-time music. And try to avoid the liquor store on the way back from the record shop.
What Nelson, Haggard, and Price can do is sing, and even at their relatively advanced ages they can still swoop down to nail a bass note so soul-shatteringly lonesome and blue that you will want to start drinking hard liquor again even if you’ve sworn off the stuff. This is 180-proof honky-tonk hokum, full of Jesus and mama and old lovers who are nothing but gone, and if you can get past the schmaltz factor, what you will discover is that it touches on universal hopes and fears. You don’t need to be a hardcore country music fan to appreciate this music. You just need to have a heartbeat.
Twenty of the twenty-two songs here are about as old as the participants. Well, okay, not quite, but Harlan Howard and Lefty Frizzell were writing most of these classics in the ‘50s, and songs like “Heartaches by the Number” and “I Love You a Thousand Ways” would have sounded just as good and just as true in 1907 as they do in 2007. Age hasn’t diminished Willie or Merle one bit, and if Ray Price sounds a little frayed around the edges, that only adds to the poignancy of these sad, sad songs. Nashville old schoolers like pedal steel virtuoso Buddy Emmons and fiddler Johnny Gimble are around to lend their musical expertise. And the Jordanaires, seemingly missing in action since the death of Elvis, drop by to lend their trademark gospel quartet harmonies.
But mostly there is Willie. And Merle. And Ray. I don’t mean to be morbid, but if Johnny and June teach us anything, they teach us that this breed, regardless of their number, won’t last forever. So enjoy them while we’ve got them, still at or near the peak of their powers, still making radically unhip, out-of-time music. And try to avoid the liquor store on the way back from the record shop.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Paste #28
Paste #28 (February 2007) is out now. Those of you who want to be happier, wealthier, and more popular should pick it up. Why? Because The Shins are on the cover. The Shins will change your life. You've heard it from Natalie Portman. Now hear it from me. One listen to their new album Wincing the Night Away will result in instant bliss, the removal of any longstanding debt, and almost instantaneous connection to seventeen new soulmates. And exposure to even a few seconds of any Shins song can cure Stage 4 cancer. You don't want to miss out.
There's also a rundown/ranking of the best albums and films of 2006. Oddly enough, I mostly agree with the albums selected and how they are ranked. The list of films makes me realize how out of the loop I am in terms of quality cinema. The only foreign film I saw last year was Borat.
I have three articles in this issue, my Listening to My Life column (yes, it's still there, for the two of you who have wondered; it's just not on the back page), and two short album reviews.
There's also the usual CD sampler, this time with the worst Lucinda Williams song I've ever heard, both musically and lyrically. What's up with that? I sincerely hope it isn't representative of her new album.
There's also a rundown/ranking of the best albums and films of 2006. Oddly enough, I mostly agree with the albums selected and how they are ranked. The list of films makes me realize how out of the loop I am in terms of quality cinema. The only foreign film I saw last year was Borat.
I have three articles in this issue, my Listening to My Life column (yes, it's still there, for the two of you who have wondered; it's just not on the back page), and two short album reviews.
There's also the usual CD sampler, this time with the worst Lucinda Williams song I've ever heard, both musically and lyrically. What's up with that? I sincerely hope it isn't representative of her new album.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
One Day When The Weather Is Warm
When I was nineteen years old I fell on my knees and gave my life to Jesus. It was the culmination of six months of impassioned 2:00 a.m. arguments in overheated dormitory rooms, of feeling alone and isolated, of being shaken to my core, of watching my family unravel to the tune of adultery and alcoholism and suicide attempts. It was based on an inarticulate groaning, a wordless acknowledgement of the inadequacy of my little storehouse of optimism and self-assurance. It was, in fact, surrender: I can’t deal with this. Here, you take it.
That was, wow, thirty-two years ago, and in the meantime I’ve learned precisely nothing more about optimism and self-assurance. All I know is that some people die tragically young, and other people grow old and die of the usual, horrific suspects: cancer mostly, but also heart attacks and diabetes, strokes and good old pneumonia. I’m no expert on these things, but I think you’d have to be a fool to feel much optimism and self-assurance about your future, at least on this planet.
I have diabetes, and in addition to swallowing four pills each day, I get to stick myself with a needle every night before bedtime. The insulin keeps me alive, and I’m grateful for big favors. But when I read about the long-term prognosis for this disease, I learn that what I have to look forward to probably includes heart disease, stroke, blindness, amputation of limbs, kidney failure, and nerve damage. It’s a nasty little fucker. Sorry if my language offends you, but if you’re going to swear, what better thing to swear at than the notion of your bad self becoming a blind amputee? So about the only thing I know with much certainty is that it’s going to get worse. Here’s that little piece of paper inside my personalized Chinese fortune cookie: “You will be Stump Man on a dialysis machine. You don’t have time to screw around.” So I’m trying not to screw around.
When I was a student at Ohio University I used to hang out with a goofy, Napoleon-Dynamite-looking guy named Jeff Treffney. The day I met him he told me that he had an enlarged heart, and that doctors didn’t expect him to live past 25. He was 21 years old at the time. Sure enough, right on cue, four years later he died, and his funeral was the first time I think I truly experienced that great, aching void that accompanies the loss of someone you cherish, and will never see again. I was a new Christian when I met him, and Jeff had been at it for, oh, two or three years, and he told me to memorize the following Bible verse: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” Had he lived, Jeff would have been approaching “ancient” status by now. He would have been in his mid-fifties, old enough to start worrying about the big C and diabetes. But he didn’t. He died tragically young.
At his funeral a well-meaning pastor assured us that Jeff was in heaven, that his pain and suffering were over. I certainly hoped he was right. I prayed he was right, and I believed, as best I could believe, that he was right. But I wasn’t sure he was right. Jeff probably would have been disappointed in me. But then again, I’ve never quite understood the apostle Paul in that passage Jeff loved so well, either. If you’re absolutely sure of something, why do you need faith? I don’t need faith to believe that an exploding car bomb in Baghdad can end the lives of innocent men and women and children. I do need faith to believe that God can work good out of it anyway.
It’s ridiculous, this thing called faith, if I think about it logically. On one hand we have the vastness of space and the microscopic tinyness of my individual life, one of six billion people on one of the smaller, inconsequential stars off in an obscure corner of a galaxy, surrounded by billions of other galaxies. On the other hand we have the Creator of the universe, who is said to know and care about the most intimate details of my tiny life, including the number of hairs on my balding head. Impossibly, I get intimations that this is so. What are the chances? Only an infinite God would place bets given such infinitesimally small odds. And so I choose to believe, and acknowledge my uncertainty and doubt, and hope and pray for love and mercy. It’s what I need. And it’s what I hope I will believe even if I am lying in a bed, blind, without my legs. Then, if that dire day comes to pass, I will recite the same old mantra I’ve recited, sometimes faintly and halfheartedly, sometimes desperately and pleadingly, for the past thirty-two years: I can’t deal with this. Here, you take it. Hour by hour, day by day.
I recall with some sorrow and embarrassment what I experienced during my college years at Ohio University. I wish I knew then what I know now. And I wish I knew now what I’d like to know. But I’m holding on to the notion that I might know just enough. And, as I am wont to do, I play a song that mirrors my mood, one by the great Joe Henry, whose songs resonate with me regardless of current meteorological conditions, but which seem particularly appropriate on cold, dreary Midwestern winter days like this one:
One day when the weather is warm
I’ll wake up on a hill
And hold the morning like it was a plow
And cut myself a row
And I’ll follow it until
I know better, by God, than I know now
The apostle Paul states the same thing another way: “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” But I like Joe Henry better, and I believe, although I’m not entirely sure, that warm weather is coming.
That was, wow, thirty-two years ago, and in the meantime I’ve learned precisely nothing more about optimism and self-assurance. All I know is that some people die tragically young, and other people grow old and die of the usual, horrific suspects: cancer mostly, but also heart attacks and diabetes, strokes and good old pneumonia. I’m no expert on these things, but I think you’d have to be a fool to feel much optimism and self-assurance about your future, at least on this planet.
I have diabetes, and in addition to swallowing four pills each day, I get to stick myself with a needle every night before bedtime. The insulin keeps me alive, and I’m grateful for big favors. But when I read about the long-term prognosis for this disease, I learn that what I have to look forward to probably includes heart disease, stroke, blindness, amputation of limbs, kidney failure, and nerve damage. It’s a nasty little fucker. Sorry if my language offends you, but if you’re going to swear, what better thing to swear at than the notion of your bad self becoming a blind amputee? So about the only thing I know with much certainty is that it’s going to get worse. Here’s that little piece of paper inside my personalized Chinese fortune cookie: “You will be Stump Man on a dialysis machine. You don’t have time to screw around.” So I’m trying not to screw around.
When I was a student at Ohio University I used to hang out with a goofy, Napoleon-Dynamite-looking guy named Jeff Treffney. The day I met him he told me that he had an enlarged heart, and that doctors didn’t expect him to live past 25. He was 21 years old at the time. Sure enough, right on cue, four years later he died, and his funeral was the first time I think I truly experienced that great, aching void that accompanies the loss of someone you cherish, and will never see again. I was a new Christian when I met him, and Jeff had been at it for, oh, two or three years, and he told me to memorize the following Bible verse: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” Had he lived, Jeff would have been approaching “ancient” status by now. He would have been in his mid-fifties, old enough to start worrying about the big C and diabetes. But he didn’t. He died tragically young.
At his funeral a well-meaning pastor assured us that Jeff was in heaven, that his pain and suffering were over. I certainly hoped he was right. I prayed he was right, and I believed, as best I could believe, that he was right. But I wasn’t sure he was right. Jeff probably would have been disappointed in me. But then again, I’ve never quite understood the apostle Paul in that passage Jeff loved so well, either. If you’re absolutely sure of something, why do you need faith? I don’t need faith to believe that an exploding car bomb in Baghdad can end the lives of innocent men and women and children. I do need faith to believe that God can work good out of it anyway.
It’s ridiculous, this thing called faith, if I think about it logically. On one hand we have the vastness of space and the microscopic tinyness of my individual life, one of six billion people on one of the smaller, inconsequential stars off in an obscure corner of a galaxy, surrounded by billions of other galaxies. On the other hand we have the Creator of the universe, who is said to know and care about the most intimate details of my tiny life, including the number of hairs on my balding head. Impossibly, I get intimations that this is so. What are the chances? Only an infinite God would place bets given such infinitesimally small odds. And so I choose to believe, and acknowledge my uncertainty and doubt, and hope and pray for love and mercy. It’s what I need. And it’s what I hope I will believe even if I am lying in a bed, blind, without my legs. Then, if that dire day comes to pass, I will recite the same old mantra I’ve recited, sometimes faintly and halfheartedly, sometimes desperately and pleadingly, for the past thirty-two years: I can’t deal with this. Here, you take it. Hour by hour, day by day.
I recall with some sorrow and embarrassment what I experienced during my college years at Ohio University. I wish I knew then what I know now. And I wish I knew now what I’d like to know. But I’m holding on to the notion that I might know just enough. And, as I am wont to do, I play a song that mirrors my mood, one by the great Joe Henry, whose songs resonate with me regardless of current meteorological conditions, but which seem particularly appropriate on cold, dreary Midwestern winter days like this one:
One day when the weather is warm
I’ll wake up on a hill
And hold the morning like it was a plow
And cut myself a row
And I’ll follow it until
I know better, by God, than I know now
The apostle Paul states the same thing another way: “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” But I like Joe Henry better, and I believe, although I’m not entirely sure, that warm weather is coming.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Post-Rock Roundup -- Yndi Halda and Six Parts Seven
I am a sucker for post-rock serenity and bombast -- the slow, dirge-like buildups, followed by the cathartic payoffs where massed guitars create sonic tsunamis that threaten to wash away the winter snows that tend to dominate the landscapes of these morose, deadly serious musicians. The three best-known bands who work this genre -- Mogwai, Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black Emperor (formerly Godspeed You Black Emperor!; you know the winters are long when you find yourself playing with exclamation marks) have created a handful of masterpieces. Not surprisingly, they've inspired a horde of imitators, some very good (Explosions in the Sky, A Silver Mount Zion, Do Make Say Think), and some that try a little too hard to be different (Labradford, Trans Am, Cul de Sac). But give them credit for trying. Eighteen years after Talk Talk kickstarted the genre with Spirit of Eden, post-rock is still one of the most interesting and vibrant musical genres, and new bands are continuing to push and prod at the boundaries.
Two of them -- Canterbury, England's Yndi Halda and Kent, Ohio's Six Parts Seven -- have just released new albums. Both fit comfortably under the "post-rock" umbrella. And, not surprisingly given the amorphous nature of a label that has come to mean little more than "mostly instrumental music with electric guitars," they sound nothing alike.
Yndi Halda's debut album Enjoy Eternal Bliss will readily appeal to Sigur Ros fans. Four tracks spread out over sixty-six minutes should tell you all you need to know. These four lads not only have time to slowly build from whisper to wall of sound, but they have time to get quiet again, and then crank up the sonic fury again. Guitars and violins are the primary instruments, with cameo appearances from glockenspiels. Yes, this may be the glockenspiel's finest hour since Mike Oldfield recorded Tubular Bells. It's pretty and contemplative, then very, very loud and bombastic, just the way I like it. Although the lads go in for a bit of chanting, this is for all intents and purposes instrumental music; there is no accompanying Jonsi whalesong to liven up the proceedings. To that extent, it's a little monochromatic. But just a little. Enjoy Eternal Bliss is an impressive debut.
Even more impressive is Six Parts Seven's latest offering Casually Smashed to Pieces, the band's sixth proper album (not counting a split EP with The Black Keys). This is post-rock by way of the Applalachians, with banjo and lap steel vying for prominence with the usual guitars. I find the Americana influences particularly bracing, as is the fact that the band manages to squeeze eight songs into a little more thirty minutes. That's virtually unthinkable in this genre. Hooks? They must have used 'em all to go fishing in those mountain streams. These aren't so much songs as pastoral dreamscapes, and they float by so effortlessly that you'll be tempted to relegate this to full-time background music status. Don't. Instead, listen to the way the motifs weave in and out of this music, taken up first by guitar, then by pocket trumpet, then by lap steel. Listen to the contrapuntal layering of the instruments, the Bach Goes to County Moonshine vibe of these tracks. And then just sit back and let it wash over you and enjoy it. It's lovely music.
Two of them -- Canterbury, England's Yndi Halda and Kent, Ohio's Six Parts Seven -- have just released new albums. Both fit comfortably under the "post-rock" umbrella. And, not surprisingly given the amorphous nature of a label that has come to mean little more than "mostly instrumental music with electric guitars," they sound nothing alike.
Yndi Halda's debut album Enjoy Eternal Bliss will readily appeal to Sigur Ros fans. Four tracks spread out over sixty-six minutes should tell you all you need to know. These four lads not only have time to slowly build from whisper to wall of sound, but they have time to get quiet again, and then crank up the sonic fury again. Guitars and violins are the primary instruments, with cameo appearances from glockenspiels. Yes, this may be the glockenspiel's finest hour since Mike Oldfield recorded Tubular Bells. It's pretty and contemplative, then very, very loud and bombastic, just the way I like it. Although the lads go in for a bit of chanting, this is for all intents and purposes instrumental music; there is no accompanying Jonsi whalesong to liven up the proceedings. To that extent, it's a little monochromatic. But just a little. Enjoy Eternal Bliss is an impressive debut.
Even more impressive is Six Parts Seven's latest offering Casually Smashed to Pieces, the band's sixth proper album (not counting a split EP with The Black Keys). This is post-rock by way of the Applalachians, with banjo and lap steel vying for prominence with the usual guitars. I find the Americana influences particularly bracing, as is the fact that the band manages to squeeze eight songs into a little more thirty minutes. That's virtually unthinkable in this genre. Hooks? They must have used 'em all to go fishing in those mountain streams. These aren't so much songs as pastoral dreamscapes, and they float by so effortlessly that you'll be tempted to relegate this to full-time background music status. Don't. Instead, listen to the way the motifs weave in and out of this music, taken up first by guitar, then by pocket trumpet, then by lap steel. Listen to the contrapuntal layering of the instruments, the Bach Goes to County Moonshine vibe of these tracks. And then just sit back and let it wash over you and enjoy it. It's lovely music.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Music Headine of the Week
The music publicists are working overtime. Here it is:
Lesbian Comes Out This Spring
(for the April release of the debut album from Seattle heavy metal band Lesbian -- four flannel-shirted, bearded dudes, by the way)
Lesbian Comes Out This Spring
(for the April release of the debut album from Seattle heavy metal band Lesbian -- four flannel-shirted, bearded dudes, by the way)
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Holmes Brothers, Elliott Brood, Paula Fraser, John Reuben, Mas Rapido!
Other than the upcoming Graham Parker and Grinderman (Nick Cave) releases, these are the new albums that keep me pressing the Play button on the iPod.
The Holmes Brothers – State of Grace
The Holmes Brothers’ play a brand of country blues/gospel that really hasn’t been in vogue since the glory days of The Staple Singers. Here the brothers, along with guests Joan Osborne and Levon Helm, apply their trademark harmonies and funk rhythms to several sparkling originals, as well as covers from Lyle Lovett, John Fogerty, and Hank Williams. It’s not that difficult to imagine “Bad Moon Rising” transformed into a gospel vamp. But how about Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me”? Believe it. The wonder is that they pull it off, and pull it off marvelously.
Elliott Brood – Ambassador
Canadian sadsack trio Elliott Brood sounds like Being There-era Wilco – all banjos and ragged feedback – and writes songs about loners, drunks, and dead-end love affairs. Hey, I miss that side of Jeff Tweedy, and it’s a lot better than ten minutes of A Ghost is Born-era amplifier hum.
Paula Fraser/Tarnation – Now It’s Time
Paula Fraser was one of the last of the great 4AD artists, and like her old label mates Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and Lisa Germano (Dead Can Dance), she had a crystal-clear soprano that was generally used in service of ethereal, misty soundscapes. Tarnation, her alt-country band, added some needed heft, however, and after a decade-long hiatus to pursue an unappreciated solo career, Paula’s back with her old bandmates. She still has a gorgeous voice, and she has a morbid streak to rival Nick Cave’s, but this time she has a great band to serve as a gritty foil to her macabre but airy songs. It’s beautifully spooky stuff.
John Reuben – Word of Mouth
Okay, John Reuben isn’t doing anything Beck hasn’t done for the past fifteen years. But Beck has his pasty face (as seen in Paste Magazine) plastered on the covers of music rags worldwide, while John Reuben is a relative unknown. But I love the musical mashup that Reuben concocts, banjos colliding with John Lee Hooker samples, strutting, in-your-face rhymes backed by Bootsy Collins funk bass and the most saccharine of Mantovani strings. And although Reuben is a sometimes hilarious smartass, there’s no denying the weight of his lyrical themes, as he wrestles with image versus reality, the hype machine versus the mundane and far more significant tasks of getting along with spouses, friends, and enemies.
Mas Rapido! – Pity Party
Mas Rapido! is NYC-by-way-of-Seattle duo Frank Bednash and Donna Esposito. Frank and Donna alternate songs on this noisy power pop outing. Frank is clearly enamored with second-generation Beatles knockoffs such as Badfinger and The Raspberries, and his half dozen originals are fine homages to those bands. But the real revelation is Donna Esposito, whose breathy, little-girl voice masks a sarcastic wit and edgy, suicidal sentiments. The killer riffs, courtesy of the aforementioned bands, The Kinks, and The Who, help to make the doom and gloom more palatable.
The Holmes Brothers – State of Grace
The Holmes Brothers’ play a brand of country blues/gospel that really hasn’t been in vogue since the glory days of The Staple Singers. Here the brothers, along with guests Joan Osborne and Levon Helm, apply their trademark harmonies and funk rhythms to several sparkling originals, as well as covers from Lyle Lovett, John Fogerty, and Hank Williams. It’s not that difficult to imagine “Bad Moon Rising” transformed into a gospel vamp. But how about Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me”? Believe it. The wonder is that they pull it off, and pull it off marvelously.
Elliott Brood – Ambassador
Canadian sadsack trio Elliott Brood sounds like Being There-era Wilco – all banjos and ragged feedback – and writes songs about loners, drunks, and dead-end love affairs. Hey, I miss that side of Jeff Tweedy, and it’s a lot better than ten minutes of A Ghost is Born-era amplifier hum.
Paula Fraser/Tarnation – Now It’s Time
Paula Fraser was one of the last of the great 4AD artists, and like her old label mates Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and Lisa Germano (Dead Can Dance), she had a crystal-clear soprano that was generally used in service of ethereal, misty soundscapes. Tarnation, her alt-country band, added some needed heft, however, and after a decade-long hiatus to pursue an unappreciated solo career, Paula’s back with her old bandmates. She still has a gorgeous voice, and she has a morbid streak to rival Nick Cave’s, but this time she has a great band to serve as a gritty foil to her macabre but airy songs. It’s beautifully spooky stuff.
John Reuben – Word of Mouth
Okay, John Reuben isn’t doing anything Beck hasn’t done for the past fifteen years. But Beck has his pasty face (as seen in Paste Magazine) plastered on the covers of music rags worldwide, while John Reuben is a relative unknown. But I love the musical mashup that Reuben concocts, banjos colliding with John Lee Hooker samples, strutting, in-your-face rhymes backed by Bootsy Collins funk bass and the most saccharine of Mantovani strings. And although Reuben is a sometimes hilarious smartass, there’s no denying the weight of his lyrical themes, as he wrestles with image versus reality, the hype machine versus the mundane and far more significant tasks of getting along with spouses, friends, and enemies.
Mas Rapido! – Pity Party
Mas Rapido! is NYC-by-way-of-Seattle duo Frank Bednash and Donna Esposito. Frank and Donna alternate songs on this noisy power pop outing. Frank is clearly enamored with second-generation Beatles knockoffs such as Badfinger and The Raspberries, and his half dozen originals are fine homages to those bands. But the real revelation is Donna Esposito, whose breathy, little-girl voice masks a sarcastic wit and edgy, suicidal sentiments. The killer riffs, courtesy of the aforementioned bands, The Kinks, and The Who, help to make the doom and gloom more palatable.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Elvis Has Left the Building
I’ve just completed Peter Guralnick’s massive, two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. At nearly 1,200 pages, these books are clearly intended for the serious Elvis fan. And as music biographies, they are simply superb. Guralnick, without casting moral judgments, simply chronicles Elvis’s meteoric rise, long sojourn at the top of the cultural summit, and precipitous descent from the mountain.
By the time I started paying attention to music in the mid-1960s, Elvis was already past his prime. Upon his release from the army in 1960, he returned to the cultural spotlight as a romantic crooner, a schlockmeister, and the principal actor in a long string of bad movies. And, with the exception of a handful of worthwhile singles, he continued that way until his death in 1977. I missed the whole King of Rock ‘n Roll hype, and I never really understood what all the fuss was about. As far as I was concerned, Elvis was a cartoon character. He was Redneck Stud Man. He wore capes, like Superman and Batman, sang ridiculously over-the-top, embarrassing Vegas swill, and made middle-aged women squeal. Okay, I briefly considered the cape angle as a way to become a Chick Magnet, then dismissed it out of hand as absurd. And that’s the way I viewed Elvis. He was a buffoon, the surreal fantasy stud of a million bored Midwestern housewives. And I didn’t think much more about him.
Eventually, of course, I heard those fifties records. And I discovered, at least in part, what all the fuss was about. The guy had a voice for the ages, and when he used it on great material, as he did for most of the first four years of his career, he was a force of nature, a miracle. And his influence on popular music is incalculable. He was the great dividing line. After 1956 the musical world could be conveniently encapsulated as B.E. and A.E. All shook up was just about right. He was the earthquake that changed the way we heard music.
And all too soon he became an embarrassment – to those who loved good music, and, perhaps most profoundly, to himself. Guralnick’s books help to unlock that enigma, and show an enormously conflicted man – alternately kindhearted, mean-spirited, humble, self-absorbed, proud, and deeply ashamed. Elvis was capable of acts of great generosity, and he was also capable of the most flippant, uncaring insults. He believed his own hype, and yet he never quite felt comfortable in his own skin. Most disturbingly, he was a man who was defined by both his faith and his addictions, belting out “How Great Thou Art” in concert as if he meant it (and he probably did), all the while blasted out of his mind. His life was one big contradiction – the biggest star in the world circling the drain, watching his life become smaller and smaller with each passing year and each passing tour.
Elvis left the building quite a few years before he died. He checked out emotionally and never came back. I see parts of myself in him, and the contradictions that defined him are not unfamiliar to me. But he saddens me, this enormously gifted man. If I didn’t particularly like him before reading Peter Guralnick’s books, I like him now. His story is a peculiarly American tragedy, focused on the Bible Belt and conspicuous consumption, on the gaping hole in the soul that no amount of stuff, and no amount of adulation, could fill. He died as the King, seated on a porcelain throne, choking on his own vomit. No one has really worn the crown since him. I’m not sure why anyone would want to.
By the time I started paying attention to music in the mid-1960s, Elvis was already past his prime. Upon his release from the army in 1960, he returned to the cultural spotlight as a romantic crooner, a schlockmeister, and the principal actor in a long string of bad movies. And, with the exception of a handful of worthwhile singles, he continued that way until his death in 1977. I missed the whole King of Rock ‘n Roll hype, and I never really understood what all the fuss was about. As far as I was concerned, Elvis was a cartoon character. He was Redneck Stud Man. He wore capes, like Superman and Batman, sang ridiculously over-the-top, embarrassing Vegas swill, and made middle-aged women squeal. Okay, I briefly considered the cape angle as a way to become a Chick Magnet, then dismissed it out of hand as absurd. And that’s the way I viewed Elvis. He was a buffoon, the surreal fantasy stud of a million bored Midwestern housewives. And I didn’t think much more about him.
Eventually, of course, I heard those fifties records. And I discovered, at least in part, what all the fuss was about. The guy had a voice for the ages, and when he used it on great material, as he did for most of the first four years of his career, he was a force of nature, a miracle. And his influence on popular music is incalculable. He was the great dividing line. After 1956 the musical world could be conveniently encapsulated as B.E. and A.E. All shook up was just about right. He was the earthquake that changed the way we heard music.
And all too soon he became an embarrassment – to those who loved good music, and, perhaps most profoundly, to himself. Guralnick’s books help to unlock that enigma, and show an enormously conflicted man – alternately kindhearted, mean-spirited, humble, self-absorbed, proud, and deeply ashamed. Elvis was capable of acts of great generosity, and he was also capable of the most flippant, uncaring insults. He believed his own hype, and yet he never quite felt comfortable in his own skin. Most disturbingly, he was a man who was defined by both his faith and his addictions, belting out “How Great Thou Art” in concert as if he meant it (and he probably did), all the while blasted out of his mind. His life was one big contradiction – the biggest star in the world circling the drain, watching his life become smaller and smaller with each passing year and each passing tour.
Elvis left the building quite a few years before he died. He checked out emotionally and never came back. I see parts of myself in him, and the contradictions that defined him are not unfamiliar to me. But he saddens me, this enormously gifted man. If I didn’t particularly like him before reading Peter Guralnick’s books, I like him now. His story is a peculiarly American tragedy, focused on the Bible Belt and conspicuous consumption, on the gaping hole in the soul that no amount of stuff, and no amount of adulation, could fill. He died as the King, seated on a porcelain throne, choking on his own vomit. No one has really worn the crown since him. I’m not sure why anyone would want to.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
New Blog
No, this one isn't going away. But I'll be contributing to a new blog on a fairly regular basis at Paste Magazine's web site.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Calvin College Festival of Faith and Music
Let me put in a plug for the upcoming (March 30th - 31st) Festival of Faith and Music at Calvin College. The 2005 conference was an absolute blast, a wonderful, thought-provoking time, and a great opportunity to hang out with several hundred artists, journalists, academics, and uber music fans, and to think collectively about what it means to be a Christian involved in the arts.
This year's conference promises to be even better, with musical performances by Anathallo, Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case, and Emmylou Harris, and many fine opportunities for conversation/dialogue with those folks, as well as David Dark (Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons), Lauren Winner (Girls Meets God), Steve Stockman (Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2), Paste Magazine editor Josh Jackson, and many more. And me. Along with Michael Kaufmann, head of Asthmatic Kitty Records (Sufjan Stevens, Halfhanded Cloud, My Brightest Diamond, etc.), I'm going to be playing a Simon Cowell-like character, judging new music from a bunch of musical hopefuls, and awarding the lucky winner a slot onstage with Sufjan, Neko, and Emmylou. It should be great fun, and I'm practicing my scowl in preparation.
This year's conference promises to be even better, with musical performances by Anathallo, Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case, and Emmylou Harris, and many fine opportunities for conversation/dialogue with those folks, as well as David Dark (Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons), Lauren Winner (Girls Meets God), Steve Stockman (Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2), Paste Magazine editor Josh Jackson, and many more. And me. Along with Michael Kaufmann, head of Asthmatic Kitty Records (Sufjan Stevens, Halfhanded Cloud, My Brightest Diamond, etc.), I'm going to be playing a Simon Cowell-like character, judging new music from a bunch of musical hopefuls, and awarding the lucky winner a slot onstage with Sufjan, Neko, and Emmylou. It should be great fun, and I'm practicing my scowl in preparation.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Lowbrow Protestants vs. High Church Aesthetes
In the circles where I run, it's been stated as an axiom so many times that it's virtually unquestioned. But I confess that I find myself perplexed by the whole lowbrow Protestant vs. enlightened Catholic/Orthodox/Episcopalian view of the arts that is often set forth as indisputable fact. I just don't see it. It may have been true at one time, and certainly Reformed theologians such as Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker wrote a lot of books several decades ago that were intended to counter a dismissive view of the arts that probably once characterized Protestantism. But is it true now?
Yeah, yeah, I know. On one side of this debate we have Michelangelo and Bernini and Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy, and on the other side we have Carmen and Jesus Over the UN posters. But we also now have Marilynne Robinson and John Updike and Sufjan Stevens, artists of the highest order who are operating from a distinctly Protestant perspective. In other words, I don't think the assumed dichotomy is true now, and I don't think it's been true for a long time. We're now more than a generation removed from Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker, and there is some evidence that their message stuck with the now balding, aging hippies who first heard it, and their children who have taken the pretty ball and run with it.
It's worth noting that many of the po-mo/emergent churches that are now all the rage take a very high view of the arts, and that art is an integral part of their worship services. The Cornerstone Music and Arts Festival (among others) attracts tens of thousands of (mostly) Protestants every year, who groove to their favorite bands and listen to lots of lectures about, you guessed it, the value of art. On a local, personal level, I am surrounded by church members and friends who have recording contracts, who display their paintings and sculptures in art galleries, who sponsor poetry slams, who own concert venues, and who write for national publications. And they are Protestants, and yes, even Calvinists to a certain degree, one and all.
Are there still more Protestants who don't give a rip about art than those who care about it passionately? Probably, but I'm not convinced that theology has much to do with it, and my guess is that there are also more Catholics, Orthodox, Episcopalians, Buddhists, and good old-fashioned Capitalist Consumer Materialists who don't give a rip about art than those who do. The solution, as always, is to look for and hang out with the people who do. But I'm not convinced that you'll find them more easily if you also look for candles and incense in the sanctuary.
Yeah, yeah, I know. On one side of this debate we have Michelangelo and Bernini and Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy, and on the other side we have Carmen and Jesus Over the UN posters. But we also now have Marilynne Robinson and John Updike and Sufjan Stevens, artists of the highest order who are operating from a distinctly Protestant perspective. In other words, I don't think the assumed dichotomy is true now, and I don't think it's been true for a long time. We're now more than a generation removed from Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker, and there is some evidence that their message stuck with the now balding, aging hippies who first heard it, and their children who have taken the pretty ball and run with it.
It's worth noting that many of the po-mo/emergent churches that are now all the rage take a very high view of the arts, and that art is an integral part of their worship services. The Cornerstone Music and Arts Festival (among others) attracts tens of thousands of (mostly) Protestants every year, who groove to their favorite bands and listen to lots of lectures about, you guessed it, the value of art. On a local, personal level, I am surrounded by church members and friends who have recording contracts, who display their paintings and sculptures in art galleries, who sponsor poetry slams, who own concert venues, and who write for national publications. And they are Protestants, and yes, even Calvinists to a certain degree, one and all.
Are there still more Protestants who don't give a rip about art than those who care about it passionately? Probably, but I'm not convinced that theology has much to do with it, and my guess is that there are also more Catholics, Orthodox, Episcopalians, Buddhists, and good old-fashioned Capitalist Consumer Materialists who don't give a rip about art than those who do. The solution, as always, is to look for and hang out with the people who do. But I'm not convinced that you'll find them more easily if you also look for candles and incense in the sanctuary.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Indie Superstars, and Other Conundrums
The morose, black-clad, cappuccino-sipping legions are about to get happy, or as happy as morose, black-clad legions ever get. Three of the biggest indie bands in the world are set to release new albums in the next few weeks. And soon the fiercely independent masses will genuflect in unison and proclaim their everlasting hipness. It’s a public relations dream and a logician’s nightmare: selling mass-marketed music to people who guard each shrink-wrapped disc and downloaded song as their closely guarded secret treasure, along with several hundred thousand other people who fit their demographic niche.
There was a time when “indie” was synonymous with “under the radar” – virtually unknown and unheralded. But a funny thing happened to “indie” in the early ‘90s. It became big business. Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the bastions of a very visible underground, sold a few million albums, and ever since then “indie” has been as prominent a marketing label as “Nike” or “Apple.” So when The Shins, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and The Arcade Fire drop their new albums in late January and early February, expect to witness some puzzling behavior. Hundreds of thousands of Zach Braff and Natalie Portman fans will rush out and buy the albums, secure in their knowledge that they and they alone (okay, along with one or two of their buddies) will have discovered the musical equivalent of the Holy Grail. They may even head to Best Buy or Wal-Mart to search for the treasure.
Don’t get me wrong. I like these bands. All three of them. And I don’t even wear black. But I am increasingly bemused by the lemming-like nature of “indie,” which used to stand for “independent.” So let me suggest that, along with your prized copies of Wincing the Night Away and Neon Bible, you pick up a copy of, oh, Merle Haggard’s Greatest Hits. How radically unhip would that be? I say go for it.
There was a time when “indie” was synonymous with “under the radar” – virtually unknown and unheralded. But a funny thing happened to “indie” in the early ‘90s. It became big business. Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the bastions of a very visible underground, sold a few million albums, and ever since then “indie” has been as prominent a marketing label as “Nike” or “Apple.” So when The Shins, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and The Arcade Fire drop their new albums in late January and early February, expect to witness some puzzling behavior. Hundreds of thousands of Zach Braff and Natalie Portman fans will rush out and buy the albums, secure in their knowledge that they and they alone (okay, along with one or two of their buddies) will have discovered the musical equivalent of the Holy Grail. They may even head to Best Buy or Wal-Mart to search for the treasure.
Don’t get me wrong. I like these bands. All three of them. And I don’t even wear black. But I am increasingly bemused by the lemming-like nature of “indie,” which used to stand for “independent.” So let me suggest that, along with your prized copies of Wincing the Night Away and Neon Bible, you pick up a copy of, oh, Merle Haggard’s Greatest Hits. How radically unhip would that be? I say go for it.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Italy
2007 will mark two important milestones in the life of the Whitman family. Kate and I will have been married 25 years. And Kate will experience one of those big “decade” birthdays, and since she was neither a teen bride nor a late-blooming wallflower, you can probably figure out which one. Thus, part of the holiday break was spent poring over travel guides and working out a tentative itinerary for the big blowout trip to Italy, which will coincide with both of our birthdays, and will be close enough to our anniversary without having to worry about snowstorms in the Alps. So, assuming ongoing employment and continued good health (knock on wooden prosthetic devices), we will ship the last kid off to college in mid-September, catch our breath for a bit, and then head out for a 16-day extravaganza. All by ourselves. No, you can’t come, but we’ll think fondly of you as we’re sipping vino and saying words such as “antipasto” and “gelato.”
This is where we’re thinking of going:
Venice (3 days)
Ravenna (1 day)
Florence (3 days)
Vernazza (Italian Riviera) (2 days)
Siena (1 day)
Assisi (1 day)
Rome (3 days)
Plus two days of travel time, and there you have it. This is something I’ve dreamed about doing all my life. And I can’t tell you how excited I am (although my kids can, and they’re ready to gag me if I utter one more word about it). I want to immerse myself in the culture. I want to take siestas. I want to talk with my hands. I want to have all my stereotypes blown to bits. If any of you have experienced Italy, I’d love to hear your recommendations, warnings, etc. We’re still in the preliminary planning stages, and it’s a long way off, but I’m already counting down the days.
This is where we’re thinking of going:
Venice (3 days)
Ravenna (1 day)
Florence (3 days)
Vernazza (Italian Riviera) (2 days)
Siena (1 day)
Assisi (1 day)
Rome (3 days)
Plus two days of travel time, and there you have it. This is something I’ve dreamed about doing all my life. And I can’t tell you how excited I am (although my kids can, and they’re ready to gag me if I utter one more word about it). I want to immerse myself in the culture. I want to take siestas. I want to talk with my hands. I want to have all my stereotypes blown to bits. If any of you have experienced Italy, I’d love to hear your recommendations, warnings, etc. We’re still in the preliminary planning stages, and it’s a long way off, but I’m already counting down the days.
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