Been a while...

I haven't been on here since it's inception. Many factors have contributed.

Gotta say that I feel intimidated to contribute, as much of the music being discussed I know nothing about. It almost seems like you guys are trying to "out-cool" each other by finding rare and kitschy subculture bands. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great and I have to admit I am a little jealous. But, alas, I will always be a sucker for music with a "hook" and therefore relegated to the barbaric and mundane art-form of pop influenced rock/punk music. When I say pop, I don't mean The Jonas Brothers. I mean bands like The Replacements, The Pixies, etc.

Forgive me my over-zealous music lovers for I am a sinner of the "give me instant pleasure" music. Rarely do I find a band that I like that I have had to search for the genius in it. I knew the first second I heard a Ramones album that I would love them forever. I didn't have to listen to Ramones Ramones 25 times to "get it".

With that said, I suggest you put a dose of Surferosa (Pixies), Tim (The Replacements) and Too Tough to Die (The Ramones) on your vinyl record players and wax poetic about how esoteric and ground breaking each of them were in their ownright. To me some bands simply play songs that remind me of times past and captured those times for me so vividly I can't turn away when I hear them.

-40-

MJQ

Just found this later album, it's on Apple Records!? Thought some of you might dig it if you don't have it already.

New Tobacco record features Beck

dropping on 5/25/10! Black Moth Super Rainbow is on somewhat of a hiatus, but Tobacco is as busy as ever. For this new recording, he's teamed up with Beck. Yes, that Beck.
Sure, Beck's a scientologist, but he's a funky scientologist.
Besides, this photo of Tobacco makes up for any uneasy scientological feelings:

Best Song Ever

This is via StreetBoners.com

Oh. (guitars, etc . . .)

Roger Miller (Mission of Burma Roger Miller, not the do-wacka-do Roger Miller, though I am a fan of him as well) tossed off this minor gem on Forced Exposure in 1988. Constructed on a four track, Miller plays all the instruments himself, save an appearance by Peter Prescott on bass.

Miller always had a rocker's heart to go with his avant garde head. Clint Conley had the rep as Burma's hook guy, but for me, Miller's "Forget" is one of the best rock songs of all time. Here as well, the obviously experimental nature of the project is unified by a pop-like structural undercurrent. Though there are the straight up experimental moments (the original recording of Burma's "Fun World" played over and over again, each time sped up beyond recognition and overlaid with record surface noise, seems to be an overt nod to Fluxus), there is a skeleton here often lacking in noise records.

There are voices here, though not a lot of recognizable lyrics per se. Miller applied randomization techniques to Burma lyrics for one song, and sang another in a made up language vaguely resembling Russian or German.

Front and center is Miller's fascination with guitar textures. On all the tracks he stacks up guitars electric and acoustic, tuned and detuned, picked, strummed, and feeding back. This approach matures on side two with a version of Sun Ra's "Space is the Place" followed by a feedback meditation called "The Forrest".

Being a huge Mission of Burma and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic fan, I kept an eye on Miller's output, but most of it was somewhat uneven. This record, though considered by Miller to be more of a sketchbook (from the liner notes: "I consider this record to be a collection of ideas, which hopefully will be felt as unified."), still to me is the best non-Burma or Birdsongs record that Miller recorded. I also had a chance to see him live around the time this record appeared, and it was a fantastic show . . . better than the No Man show I saw a few years later (a show that remains the only show I've seen where I thought a band I liked was actually too loud). I'm not sure if this record is still available through Forced Exposure, or if it is anywhere on the internets, but if you can find it, snatch it up. It's a pearl.

Recent Finds

Laughing Hyenas, absolutely ferocious stuff. This is a twofer of their best albums, I guess there is other stuff on Touch and Go that some might prefer but I think these hold up remarkably well and are worth checking out. You can hear the home town (Ann Arbor) influences and a little Birthday Party flavor. They were killer live.

Also came across this Flying Nun Records box set, most things I've heard from NZ(The Clean, Chills) I thought were pretty great so I grabbed it and so far it's a blast. A zillion bands I've never heard of playing thoughtful and well executed Garage/ Pop/Indie type stuff. A really good set, and it must be some limited edition package or something because it goes for $200 on Amazon. Grab it here.

Snakes For the Divine

If you are feeling a lack of double bass drums and sick metal rhythm sections in your life, try the new High on Fire record.  I listened to it early this morning, and it inspired me to clean the house.  That is powerful shit.   I suggest headphones if you have a cat.

I've also been listening to Moon Duo a bit.

I got this link on pitchfork - DON'T CALL THE WEB SHERIFF -

Moon Duo is one or two people from Wooden Shjips. See>>>


Most of the other stuff I've been listening to lately is old/classic/inappropriate for the blog.  That said, I must comment on Moby Grape.  Yes, they are classic, but I had never listened to them before.  One of you guys posted about phrockblog awhile ago.  It seems that they no longer exist, but recently they had posted a ton of Moby Grape, so it inspired me to check them out.  I don't know why I never listened to them before.  They are so bandly.  I imagine them playing live, and I get all excited.  Shit is dope.

After a quick Wikipedia search, I learned that one of them was Alexander "Skip" Spence.  A few years ago, a friend of mine lent me his record "Oar" because he thought I would like it.  He was right.  I did like it, but I never bothered to find out more about his background.  It turns out that Mr. Spence suffered a mental breakdown like others from that era.  Immediately before recording "Oar" he had been commited to a mental hospital.  Sad indeed.  The Moby Grape albums and Skip Spence's "Oar" are fine recordings.



That's all for now.

Eternity

I got this Alice Coltrane Record at Mercer Street Books. That used to be my SPOT when I worked in SoHo.

It's really really good. It was touch and go... 1976 on Warner Brothers, with that cover, and you are on shaky ground. I wasn't sure if I should drop on it. She got into some wacky shit. Did I ever blog about the tape she made for some yoga retreat in 1986? That's actually pretty good. But I don't know, wasn't sure if this would be worth record store prices...

But it's a winner all the way through. The first side has that kind of cheesy organ sound she gets, but fuck it, i like it. The third track is a long funky jam with Charlie Haden on bass, Ben Riley on drums, and "a friend" on timbales.

The real jam/gem is Track 1, Side B, "Om Supreme", it's just a solo rhodes workout all the way throughout, half way through a group of voices join in, and when they build up to the refrain "CA-LI-FORN-IA!! CA-LI-FORN-IA!!", I get goose bumps. I fell asleep to this jam on my couch last night and it was the best. I had to pull myself out of a dream to start the record over and do it again.

Lucky for you jerks I Captain Crawled it and here it is on this dude's blog. Now you can just set that song to infinite repeat and fall asleep to it every night like me.

dc

P.S. What else is good? What's the new shit I'm missing out on? Yeasayer? More like Gay-sayer! OH DAMN! HE SAID IT! That is a band I really really want to like but just not into their music. And Vampire Weekend? Dude, I can't even think of a snap witty enough to properly address their gayness. I like the new Spoon joint, though.

don't call it a comeback...

http://radiobuttmusic.com/

Juju by Gass

I guess Fleetwood Mac was a band before Stevie Nicks was a member, I just recently learned this. One of the founding members guitarist Peter Green later worked with a band called Gass. Found one of their albums Juju, on this musicology blog.

The entire album is enjoyable and it's not overly long, there's not really any songs that do not fit. For me, the album picks up at the title track and continues with some very nice songs. "House For Sale" starts out iffy, but 60 seconds in, I'm glad I'm there.

The second half of the last song "Cool Me Down" goes into this marching-band-esque percussion jam complete with some dude trying to keep up on a whistle. Give it a listen.

Here's the link to the dl.

Here are two songs "House For Sale" and "Cool Me Down":

Gass - Juju - 06 - House For Sale from WWALT on Vimeo.

Gass - Juju - 08 - Cool Me Down from WWALT on Vimeo.

Cool Japanese site with every Blue Note album cover. Via Turntablelab website.

dc

Mountains

I saw Mountains last night at Le Poisson Rouge, they opened up the night as part of the Unsound Festival ahead of Tape, Radian and Tim Hecker. I must really like Mountains because I trudged downtown in a blizzard with a bad cold and split right after they finished, but it was worth it. Mountains is one of my favorite bands at the moment, what they're doing really speaks to me on a conceptual level and really just on a gut reaction level too. I think their music is an evolution of avant-garde experiments in the past, like Terry Riley's "In C" or Steven Reich's music. I would hesitate to call it minimalist music but there is a simplicity to Mountains, a meditative aspect that is like standing in one place while the elements swirl all around you. Both of the guys in Mountains (a duo based in Brooklyn) had guitars, laptops, a variety of effects and percussion. They started the set off both blowing into melodicas, the sound filtering through the laptops and they just add to it. I've listened to their new album "etchings" a lot but it's hard to say whether they were playing music off of that, the music is so transient and changing. In that way it's part of the American Primitive tradition, which is about, in part, never playing the same piece of music the same way twice. I saw Mountains for the first time about a year ago and there were about 15 people there. This was a part of a festival with some other well-known bands (at least in the ambient or abstract folks realm) playing, but I was still impressed that there were around 250 people hovering in front of these guys on a very cold and snowy winter night in NY. I bet at least half the audience or more were musicians, made me think about the quip about how the Velvet Underground never sold a lot of records but everyone who bought one started a band.

Pitchfork: Google Shuts Down MP3 Blogs

I'm extra pissed because all the ones they mention I've never checked out!

Empty The Sun

Here's one I've been meaning to blog about for a minute. I stumbled on this at Academy Records in East Village, never heard of it. "Empty The Sun", music by Six Organs of Admittance, including a novel by Joseph Mattson. Not bad for $15 bucks.

Meh, "novel" might be laying it on a bit thick, but it is a substantial story with blurb from Jery Stahl and James Greer on the back. Haven't read it yet, but the LP is nice, good Six Organs acoustic guitar stuff, a little more mellow/mainstream than their (his?) other stuff, although a couple songs have that weird pseudo satanic weird spooky voodoo vibe. Seriously, sometimes when I'm listening to Six Organs of Admittance I feel like there is some satanic mojo in the air, like it would be perfect music to do a OUIJA board to. But this one is pretty listener friendly and has been getting a lot of play in my house.

D-Nice

P.S. I hate Vampire Weekend 10 times more than EJ hates Dirty Projectors, but the new Spoon is a'ight.

The 'Mats

So emusic recently added a ton of catalog, included was almost everything ever put out by The Replacements. I'm a pathetic homer when it comes to this band, having grown up in Minneapolis in the late 70s and early 80s, but good golly are these some great records. I've been skipping around: Let it Be, All Shook Down (I know it was fairly hated, but frankly I can't see why), Pleased to Meet Me. As soon as my credits reset, I'll be grabbing Sorry Ma and Hootenanny.

I think my reaction to these records is profoundly personal. These were the days sans internet. Luckily, mpls., was rather lax in terms of ID'ing, so catching them live was rarely an issue, even for a 9th grader. But, and I hope this isn't too saccharine, music was such a process of discovery then. It took so much work (two bus rides on any given winter night... brutal).

Obviously at that time I was in their demographic sweet spot ("stupid hat and gloves," "on the bus," etc. ad infinitum described my existence). This only comes along once for music fans and I'm guessing we all are bonded to those bands. I've always been jealous of the few Brits I've met who had a similar experience with the Clash.

I very much doubt, at 43, one can re-obtain the same sense of feeling from music (especially good old rock music). It's this catch-22: if some fuck wrote a record about living in suburban jersey in their 40s I'd immediately hate--trust me, I'm trying to write that record--but when I try to like records by the youngsters, I feel a little smarmy.

Shit, this post is sounding maudlin (but I suppose that's one of Westerberg's song writing gifts).

UNSOUND festival, NY

Excited about this festival going on in NY right now, if I wasn't knocked out with this damn cold I would have been at the opening at Lincoln Center, sounds cool. Really psyched for Mountains opening up the show at Le Poisson Rouge Wednesday night, can't stop listening to their latest album, "Etchings".

Dirty Projectors

listened to "Bitte Orca" again...still don't like it. Sorry.

RJD2: The Colossus

This 2010 release bounces from instrumental hip hop jams, R&B pop stylings, layered beat driven sampling. Games You Can Win borders on r&b pop. I actually heard this track on KCRW. A Sons Cycle is one of my favorites. It features a hip hop beat, synth, and 3 rappers. Let There Be Horns sounds like it could have been on a Shadow release. I'm not really sold on the D2 vocals, and he plays drums on a few tracks. There are 5-6 really solid tracks out of 14 for me. 3 out of 5 guitars for the rating.

Avant-Hillbilly: Henry Flynt

Wow! How have I missed this guy all these years? Equally well known as a philosopher and musician, Flynt is a self-taught, outsider genius in both fields.

Aesthetically/philosophically, he was primarily known for his anti-art stance, an aesthetic which filtered down to art punks here and in Europe (art strike, anyone?).

Musically, he moved in the Fluxus orbit in the 60's, though he was not aligned with them on a theoretical level. He was also friends with, among others, LaMont Young, an association which shows on these two gems.

Flynt is a minimalist in the classical sense. What makes him interesting is that he uses American Hillbilly vernacular as the language of his minimalism. Like most minimalists, he relies heavily on repetition. Unlike most minimalists, his musical gestures are bluegrass tropes. You Are My Everlovin'/ Celestial Power is a raga-based (and heavily Indian influenced) solo violin exploration, a completely tranced out little treat. New American Ethnic Music Volume 2: Spin Dizzy is a collection of shorter pieces spanning the years 1968 - 83. There are solos and duets, fiddles and guitars, and tons of fun.

If you could imagine a musical crossbreeding that screams NO COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL, a combination of bluegrass and twentieth century avant-garde art music would have to be at the top of the list. For that reason alone, Henry Flynt is worth a listen. Myself, I've been pumping Spin Dizzy in the car for the better part of a month.

As per usual, the peerless Bigfatsatanist is responsible for these wonderful sides.