I mean, this obviously is a fucking joke, but the point is it's not intended as one. one two three. four five. six seven. eight. nine. ten.
Fa 2 anys
31.10.08
30.10.08
29.10.08
"why a duck?"
making a mix cd for a friend's birthday, & I got to thinking how great Bill Wells's remix of the pastels' the viaduct is.
I don't really know much about the musicians. the pastels are a band from scotland ( a l b a ) & Bill Wells is a bass player & bandleader from scotland. his mix is gorgeous, I think, just really harmonically lush, & quiet enough to haunt a small, intimate thrill out of the vocals.
click here to hear &/or download the viaduct by the pastels as remixed by Bill Wells.
when I first heard it it was kind of a revelation to me, because a different remix of the song -- kid loco's -- has been a many-years favorite of mine. but kid loco's remix is on a completely different plane from Bill Wells's; his version is totally unadventurous, but Istill find it compelling. he seems to conceive it as kind of a lovely dull song, something static to dance with drums around. but here, for some fun, first listen to just the instrumental track from kid loco's remix, if you don't already know it, & see if you can imagine what the vocals will sound like over this instrumentation.
click here to hear &/or download the instrumental track of Kid Loco's remix of the pastels' the viaduct.
& ok, now click here to hear &/or download kid loco's remix of the pastels' the viaduct vocals intact. what would stop anyone from listening to this song all day? matte!
music is surely one of the best things.
another thing I could do all day is watch that clip of mccain saying it's a tenet of socialism. what a horse's ass. Obama's as shady as any of them (& buying up all that tv time tonight -- while it's sort of a champion moment because you're rooting for him & goddamn -- is a pretty creepo move) but it's surely the case that mccain is a new bottom (not the one everyone's hoping for), a high water mark of cynicism, incredible stupidity, & profoundly incorrigible contempt for america. & that Obama, despite his participation in this depraved system, does have -- & promise to confer on america -- a certain basic dignity.
(meanwhile, on another side of town...)
I am really really really really really really really really really really nervous about the election.
I don't really know much about the musicians. the pastels are a band from scotland ( a l b a ) & Bill Wells is a bass player & bandleader from scotland. his mix is gorgeous, I think, just really harmonically lush, & quiet enough to haunt a small, intimate thrill out of the vocals.
click here to hear &/or download the viaduct by the pastels as remixed by Bill Wells.
when I first heard it it was kind of a revelation to me, because a different remix of the song -- kid loco's -- has been a many-years favorite of mine. but kid loco's remix is on a completely different plane from Bill Wells's; his version is totally unadventurous, but Istill find it compelling. he seems to conceive it as kind of a lovely dull song, something static to dance with drums around. but here, for some fun, first listen to just the instrumental track from kid loco's remix, if you don't already know it, & see if you can imagine what the vocals will sound like over this instrumentation.
click here to hear &/or download the instrumental track of Kid Loco's remix of the pastels' the viaduct.
& ok, now click here to hear &/or download kid loco's remix of the pastels' the viaduct vocals intact. what would stop anyone from listening to this song all day? matte!
music is surely one of the best things.
another thing I could do all day is watch that clip of mccain saying it's a tenet of socialism. what a horse's ass. Obama's as shady as any of them (& buying up all that tv time tonight -- while it's sort of a champion moment because you're rooting for him & goddamn -- is a pretty creepo move) but it's surely the case that mccain is a new bottom (not the one everyone's hoping for), a high water mark of cynicism, incredible stupidity, & profoundly incorrigible contempt for america. & that Obama, despite his participation in this depraved system, does have -- & promise to confer on america -- a certain basic dignity.(meanwhile, on another side of town...)
I am really really really really really really really really really really nervous about the election.
27.10.08
keep on feeding them sugar
until you see their eyes all white.
this greenspan business is really good for a laugh. it's a satisfying moment when Waxman asks him: "do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?" greenspan was palling around with actual time-lapse ideological terrorists (remember: reagan appointed him but he's not a reaganite; reagan was him-ite) like Ayn Rand before most of us were the teensiest eye-twinke. it's infuriating because the idea that markets, by definition governed by greed & narrowly-thought self-interest, function most healthily when left to regulate themselves -- & that's an axiom now to the majority of the idiots running the country -- is as basically ridiculous as the idea that evolution & intelligent idea are two competing scientific theories. it's inane & it has never happened. alan greenspan to me is a maestro as ridiculous as the Maestro of television's Seinfeld.
anyhow, the one thing everyone seems to think is that the economy's in bad shape. I have heard of some persons unemployed. I thought it might be nice to hear some songs about poverty. my opinion is that Lonnie Johnson is one of the greatest musicians of his century. "hard times don't worry me -- I was broke when it first started out". his timing's wonderful & intriguing. his phrasing is wonderful. he has a wonderful sort of sense of line & gets a sound out of his guitar that's almost like a woodwind, almost like a goose in fog. anyhow this song if from 1937 & it seems perfectly current. & it's a fucking jaw-dropper. I suggest opening a BEER when you listen to this.
click here to hear &/or download hard times ain't gone nowhere by Lonnie Johnson.
lonesome for mother's prayer is a beautiful gospel song recorded in detroit in, I think?, the 40s. the name of the group hasn't survived. come on over here is by the same group. they're really just fucking going for it. they have a kind of fervid doom around them, & there's something sort of -- I don't know, pure? -- about not knowing who they are. were. probably men with hard lives. (that's what television's mad men would suggest.) it's as sad as this margarine package, & this is the saddest & most dramatic margarine package I can ever imagine seeing.
click here to hear &/or download lonesome for mother's prayer.
after that, click here to hear &/or download come on over here. the ending of this one's a real killer. brutal.
(by the way, here's a song I'm trying to make up my mind about. it's called jack & it's by the backsliders. I think I like it it sticks to its guns what do you think of it?)
I've been spending a lot of time in greenpoint lately, & hearing a lot of skalpel. a lot of it's really great. flying officer is a lot of fun & makes interesting choices.
click here to hear &/or download flying officer.
this greenspan business is really good for a laugh. it's a satisfying moment when Waxman asks him: "do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?" greenspan was palling around with actual time-lapse ideological terrorists (remember: reagan appointed him but he's not a reaganite; reagan was him-ite) like Ayn Rand before most of us were the teensiest eye-twinke. it's infuriating because the idea that markets, by definition governed by greed & narrowly-thought self-interest, function most healthily when left to regulate themselves -- & that's an axiom now to the majority of the idiots running the country -- is as basically ridiculous as the idea that evolution & intelligent idea are two competing scientific theories. it's inane & it has never happened. alan greenspan to me is a maestro as ridiculous as the Maestro of television's Seinfeld.
anyhow, the one thing everyone seems to think is that the economy's in bad shape. I have heard of some persons unemployed. I thought it might be nice to hear some songs about poverty. my opinion is that Lonnie Johnson is one of the greatest musicians of his century. "hard times don't worry me -- I was broke when it first started out". his timing's wonderful & intriguing. his phrasing is wonderful. he has a wonderful sort of sense of line & gets a sound out of his guitar that's almost like a woodwind, almost like a goose in fog. anyhow this song if from 1937 & it seems perfectly current. & it's a fucking jaw-dropper. I suggest opening a BEER when you listen to this.click here to hear &/or download hard times ain't gone nowhere by Lonnie Johnson.
lonesome for mother's prayer is a beautiful gospel song recorded in detroit in, I think?, the 40s. the name of the group hasn't survived. come on over here is by the same group. they're really just fucking going for it. they have a kind of fervid doom around them, & there's something sort of -- I don't know, pure? -- about not knowing who they are. were. probably men with hard lives. (that's what television's mad men would suggest.) it's as sad as this margarine package, & this is the saddest & most dramatic margarine package I can ever imagine seeing.click here to hear &/or download lonesome for mother's prayer.
after that, click here to hear &/or download come on over here. the ending of this one's a real killer. brutal.
(by the way, here's a song I'm trying to make up my mind about. it's called jack & it's by the backsliders. I think I like it it sticks to its guns what do you think of it?)
I've been spending a lot of time in greenpoint lately, & hearing a lot of skalpel. a lot of it's really great. flying officer is a lot of fun & makes interesting choices.
click here to hear &/or download flying officer.
22.10.08
l'étranger en ville (come alive)
ok, I have a lot of music I would look to put up here, but, real quick, first, because holy shit, did you guys hear about that protester that tried to get Rove in a citizen's arrest for treason? check it out.
& now a post by special request from a dear friend (& blog reader so loyal he actually catches me when I spruce up old posts in the middle of the afternoon -- his diligence is a lesson to us all). Del Shannon has always been one of my very favorite singers.
the song he's best known for is runaway, & there's a lot to be said for it. the song is beautiful, & it's beautifully produced (try to filter out the possibly-too-much horns, & listen instead to the urgent keyboard line & sermonic vocals). it's also a watershed for the tasteful use of electronic sounds in pop music: the instrument taking the solo is a custom-modified clavioline (to hear what it sounds like unmodified, listen to baby you're a rich man by the quarrymen; that instrument that sounds kind of like a bagpipe is in fact in clavioline). the song has a chorus but no verses: there's an introduction, then a chorus, then a solo, then a chorus, & the whole thing's over before you've even found your hanky. & what I always notice most about it, ever since I was a kid, is the peculiar line that hints at brutally dark feelings: I wonder where she will stay. brrrr, that's what I want to hear. sweet horrible lunatic.
click here to hear &/or download runaway.
it was Hank Williams who first made Del Shannon want to sing, & there's a part of how he gets it out -- like he's been cold in a paddock all night -- that acknowledges that faltering alabaman warmth. his 5th lp is called Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams, & is a record of Little Richard covers (no). his version of weary blues isn't as november-evening as the original, but it's still a statement of power. I dig the way he hold the word blues in the third line of the chorus. gets across, no?
click here to hear &/or download weary blues.
another lovely song with beautiful & interesting electronic sounds is daydream. click here to hear &/or download daydreams. this one's not a life-changer, but, I mean, not everything can be.
now. the good stuff. the more Del Shannon you listen to, the greater the role you realize is played by his bugs-under-the-skin neurosis, the same neurosis that seems the source of stark lines like I wonder where she will stay (imagine James Maddalena singing it). his second single, after runaway (& probably his second-best-known, an execrable cover of do you wanna dance notwithstanding), is hats off to Larry, whose lyrics make schadenfreude snappy: "hats off to Larry / he broke yr heart / just like you broke mine when you / said we must part / he told you lies, o it's / yr turn to cry cry cry / now that Larry's said goodbye to you". this song was #5 in a year whose #1s included Brook Benton's the boll weevil song & Pat Boone's moody river. (also another great moment for electronics in pop music, by the way -- check out the quivering glass sound that runs thru the song).
click here to hear &/or download hats off to Larry.
& now we're all strapped into the Del Shannon cyclone, & Del Shannon coney island is beginning to assemble itself far beneath us, & there is nothing, nothing to be done. stranger in town shows Del Shannon openly sounding against his formidable native paranoia. this is pretty weird stuff. check out the lyrics:
the music has great sweetness & it's inventive on a fantastic scale (listen to that rhythmic vamp that plays while he sings follows me / to every town / & if he gets me &c, & then listen to the 4-bar instrumental bridge, the doofily somber prologue, the shimmering switches from major to minor tonality). also, it's about being incredibly troubled. I think there were few ears in america in 1965 that straddled brains capable of being wrapped around this music. least of all whoever was producing it -- no matter what the lyric, he always sings it like it were as natural as deeliver de letter de sooner de better.
click here to hear &/or download stranger in town.
a more bladerunnerly kind of oppression is being fled in keep searchin' (follow the sun). as Auerbach notes (of someone else, of course), Del Shannon's "speech does not serve, as does speech in Homer, to manifest, to externalize thoughts -- on the contrary, it serves to indicate thoughts which remain unexpressed." (my emphasis.) if crazies were breakfast this song would be one rootin-tootin lumberjack special. here are the lyrics:
click here to hear &/or download keep searchin' (follow the sun).
something characteristic of a great many of his songs is that there's no real verse to speak of: rather, there's a kind of weird introduction, then an intricate chorus, then an instrumental solo, repeat the chorus, & none of them is much more than 2 minutes long. simplify, simplify! what lovely & bizarre & concise statements were his.
Del Shannon continued being more sensitive & crazy than moldy-oldies reunion tours could accomodate. on february 8th, 1990, he killed his face with a gun, possibly in part due to derangement of his condition by prozac, which had been approved by the fda only 14 months earlier & may not have been understood clearly yet.
it might help us understand or remember just how barbarous were the forces at whose mercy Del Shannon's young career placed him to hear some of the radio commercials he made for pepsi. here are two of them. they're kind of even, well, beautiful, & also they are hideous & lame & are crap-things.
click here to hear &/or download a pepsi commercial starring Del Shannon.
click here to hear &/or download another one.
I'd like for Viktor Pelevin to write something about these.
I wish so badly for Del Shannon to have been born in a different age, down a different stream. anyhow, I hope someone loves these songs as much as I do. I love them a lot. I wonder where she will stay. he sang it that creeping line his whole life. victim of infinity. & we really needed him.
by the way, I hope you didn't miss my post yesterday on the musics of georgia. please write comments on this blog! & force others to read this blog! & for the love of god please put a link to my blog on your blog. (I'll do the same.) because that's fun.
& now a post by special request from a dear friend (& blog reader so loyal he actually catches me when I spruce up old posts in the middle of the afternoon -- his diligence is a lesson to us all). Del Shannon has always been one of my very favorite singers.
the song he's best known for is runaway, & there's a lot to be said for it. the song is beautiful, & it's beautifully produced (try to filter out the possibly-too-much horns, & listen instead to the urgent keyboard line & sermonic vocals). it's also a watershed for the tasteful use of electronic sounds in pop music: the instrument taking the solo is a custom-modified clavioline (to hear what it sounds like unmodified, listen to baby you're a rich man by the quarrymen; that instrument that sounds kind of like a bagpipe is in fact in clavioline). the song has a chorus but no verses: there's an introduction, then a chorus, then a solo, then a chorus, & the whole thing's over before you've even found your hanky. & what I always notice most about it, ever since I was a kid, is the peculiar line that hints at brutally dark feelings: I wonder where she will stay. brrrr, that's what I want to hear. sweet horrible lunatic.click here to hear &/or download runaway.
it was Hank Williams who first made Del Shannon want to sing, & there's a part of how he gets it out -- like he's been cold in a paddock all night -- that acknowledges that faltering alabaman warmth. his 5th lp is called Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams, & is a record of Little Richard covers (no). his version of weary blues isn't as november-evening as the original, but it's still a statement of power. I dig the way he hold the word blues in the third line of the chorus. gets across, no?click here to hear &/or download weary blues.
another lovely song with beautiful & interesting electronic sounds is daydream. click here to hear &/or download daydreams. this one's not a life-changer, but, I mean, not everything can be.
now. the good stuff. the more Del Shannon you listen to, the greater the role you realize is played by his bugs-under-the-skin neurosis, the same neurosis that seems the source of stark lines like I wonder where she will stay (imagine James Maddalena singing it). his second single, after runaway (& probably his second-best-known, an execrable cover of do you wanna dance notwithstanding), is hats off to Larry, whose lyrics make schadenfreude snappy: "hats off to Larry / he broke yr heart / just like you broke mine when you / said we must part / he told you lies, o it's / yr turn to cry cry cry / now that Larry's said goodbye to you". this song was #5 in a year whose #1s included Brook Benton's the boll weevil song & Pat Boone's moody river. (also another great moment for electronics in pop music, by the way -- check out the quivering glass sound that runs thru the song).click here to hear &/or download hats off to Larry.
& now we're all strapped into the Del Shannon cyclone, & Del Shannon coney island is beginning to assemble itself far beneath us, & there is nothing, nothing to be done. stranger in town shows Del Shannon openly sounding against his formidable native paranoia. this is pretty weird stuff. check out the lyrics:
me & my baby been on the run so very long
her folks sent a man to get us, they say we done wrong
so we run, yeah we run, yeah we run from the stranger in town
stranger in town, he's out to get to me
stranger in town, wants me & my baby
follows me
to every town
& if he gets me
he'll bring me down
so we run, yeah we run, yeah we run from the stranger in town
the music has great sweetness & it's inventive on a fantastic scale (listen to that rhythmic vamp that plays while he sings follows me / to every town / & if he gets me &c, & then listen to the 4-bar instrumental bridge, the doofily somber prologue, the shimmering switches from major to minor tonality). also, it's about being incredibly troubled. I think there were few ears in america in 1965 that straddled brains capable of being wrapped around this music. least of all whoever was producing it -- no matter what the lyric, he always sings it like it were as natural as deeliver de letter de sooner de better.
click here to hear &/or download stranger in town.
a more bladerunnerly kind of oppression is being fled in keep searchin' (follow the sun). as Auerbach notes (of someone else, of course), Del Shannon's "speech does not serve, as does speech in Homer, to manifest, to externalize thoughts -- on the contrary, it serves to indicate thoughts which remain unexpressed." (my emphasis.) if crazies were breakfast this song would be one rootin-tootin lumberjack special. here are the lyrics:
no one will understandit's a lovely melody, like a lot of the ones he wrote. the song is all shadow: who are they? why are we hiding? just bizarre. & it ends with what can only be called an utter, dying-of-the-light freak-out.
what I've got to do
I've go to find a place to hide
with my baby by my side
she's been hurt so much
they treat her mean & cruel
they try to keep us far apart
there's only one thing left we can do
we gotta keep searchin' searchin'
find a place to hide
searchin' searchin'
she'll be by my side
if we gotta keep on the run
we can follow the sun
click here to hear &/or download keep searchin' (follow the sun).
something characteristic of a great many of his songs is that there's no real verse to speak of: rather, there's a kind of weird introduction, then an intricate chorus, then an instrumental solo, repeat the chorus, & none of them is much more than 2 minutes long. simplify, simplify! what lovely & bizarre & concise statements were his.Del Shannon continued being more sensitive & crazy than moldy-oldies reunion tours could accomodate. on february 8th, 1990, he killed his face with a gun, possibly in part due to derangement of his condition by prozac, which had been approved by the fda only 14 months earlier & may not have been understood clearly yet.
it might help us understand or remember just how barbarous were the forces at whose mercy Del Shannon's young career placed him to hear some of the radio commercials he made for pepsi. here are two of them. they're kind of even, well, beautiful, & also they are hideous & lame & are crap-things.click here to hear &/or download a pepsi commercial starring Del Shannon.
click here to hear &/or download another one.
I'd like for Viktor Pelevin to write something about these.
I wish so badly for Del Shannon to have been born in a different age, down a different stream. anyhow, I hope someone loves these songs as much as I do. I love them a lot. I wonder where she will stay. he sang it that creeping line his whole life. victim of infinity. & we really needed him.
by the way, I hope you didn't miss my post yesterday on the musics of georgia. please write comments on this blog! & force others to read this blog! & for the love of god please put a link to my blog on your blog. (I'll do the same.) because that's fun.
21.10.08
shvili comma adze : sakartvelo
nunc te bacche canam nec non silvestria tecum
virgulta et prolem tarde crescentis olivae
Virgilius Maro
georgia is a country with fantastic music. also bad. ideal conditions!
as I post some lovely georgian music here, I just want to let you know (are you reading this?) that I'll be trying to make the songs a little easier to find by posting the links in a more visible & dramatic way. you still have to wade thru zshare -- I'm working on that.now. the first georgian music I heard was polyphonic folk song, & the sound was transfixing. like most places defined by mountains, georgia is home to a million ideas about how to get into things. shashvi kakabi is an exampe of the kartlian style of georgian singing, & the recording is from 1912, so be gentle, gramps. I wish I had a lot more to say about the context of & about the ideas underlying this music: I don't. but I'm struck by how gorgeous it is, & by how, again, almost futuristic it sounds. it also reminds me of medieval choral music, the notre dame school (my very very favorite), vox organum with intricate lines baroquing & fixing the space the space over it. there's a tension shared in both kinds of music between the vertical (progression of the music as a series of chords made by all the voices together at any given time) & the horizontal (the line as sung by each individual voice). I'd like to blog more on that soon; Machaut's formes fixes & Albert Ayler, great intersection!
click here to hear &/or download shashvi kakabi.
I gather that shashvi kakabi means the thrush & the partridge. it describes a sing-off held by the two. "a beautiful morning / most difficult war / thrush victorious over partridge".I do not know what a thrush sound like; I do not know what a partridge sounds like.
as'll happen, people who were not from georgia heard this music & became sort of hot-in-the-pants to get comradey with it. increasingly as the soviet union worked to position itself as an enlightened, plural society (good joke about this in a sec), polished, respectablized versions of ethnic behaviors were created for public experientialities. there emerged a so-called "academic" style of georgian folk singing that, while inauthentic, surely deserves to be considered its own thing. the song mravalshamier is beautiful, sung by the rustavi choir, probably the best-known group making recordings in the academic tradition. this
song is in the kakhetian style. but really I'm intending to contrast its inauthentic kakhetianness with the authentic kartlianness of the last song. the musicologist Carl Linich writes that the "Kartlian and Kakhetian styles are commonly grouped together, mainly because the provinces have been united for so long that it is no longer possible to determine which style originated in which province." I'm trusting you, Carl. (are you out there? Carl?)click here to hear &/or download mravalshamier.
I do not know... anything at all, about the lovely sad song batonebo. it is sung by a guy called Badri Jimsheleishvili. I'm not sure of the woman's name who sings with him. I don't know what the title means, or any of the lyrics. but it's a beautiful, kind-of-stately-but-not-in-a-farting-way, don't you think? & there's a particular line, they sing it a few times, the harmony in the guy's voice is flatted, blue, & it just hits me with a powerful effect every time they sing it. the line I mean is the one that sounds like it begins with the words moan 'em yeast, like at 1'57", & again at 2'10". heart-stopper, right? I don't think it's a coincidence that that's how the last line of the song begins. well & but don't take my word for it:
click here to hear &/or download batonebo.
I should probably stop now, but first I just can't resist a little rtuli dro. it's a rap song, from georgia. it's very not, I have to say. wish I could understand the words. rtuli dro is translated as difficult time. I mean, even in radiant georgia, I'm certain there's worse music. & this isn't the first cis rap song I've heard aping that one Eminem & Dido did together. go ahead, hear a little rtuli dro. you've earned it.click here to hear &/or download rtuli dro.
17.10.08
good shabbes missus khupelstein
beware of the j-men, bastards:
"bastards came." -- Clark Coolidge. also did you guys see Obama making fun of mccain at the Al Smith something or other? (I love Al Smith; I love the sidewalks of new york; I love the npr pledge drive; the great gray buildings: o pass me that olive-containing thing.) but anyhow, look at cute Obama being funny:
& lastly, for now, let us recall fondly a simpler time:
"on behalf of special needs"
am I the only person who found it high-larious when mccain said that palin was "an inspiration to women and reformers all over america"? (here, enjoy this whole clip, or, for a real laugh, clamber up to 2"27' in:
real good, right?) a tide of reformers is cresting over america like the goddamn buffalo. reformers all over america? what the fuck was he talking about?
I'm working on a blog post that I'm excited about, by special request (тебе, Пчелка) a post on wet & dry kinds of music. I was going to include some really great wet songs & some really great dry songs, & also some electronic alterations of both. but I sprung a leak somewhere, softwarewise, & it'll be at least till tomorrow since I need to call fucking lesotho or wherever & beg one of the row of service technicians heaving in the galley to tell me why my registration's been invalidated.
(by the way, I have nothing but respect for the culture of lesotho. it just seems like a silly route for advice to take since the company that manufactures the software is in albany. & that's why I made up lesotho. Adlai Stevenson House of Pancakes. sour claw.)
anyhow, it might be a while, but here is a great new video of a Mr Lif remix. watch it! trust me! it is good!
turning a certain kind of a corner, Superalisa (Супералиса) is just the perfect thing. she's from tatarstan, one of the autonomous res publicae federated into the russian federation (other notable areas with the same political status include Chuvashia, where the poet Genadii Aigi was from; Chechnya, which apparently is closet russian for don't mention it; & Tuva, the delightful mountain paradise featured in indie filmdom's 1999 charmer genghis blues.) I don't know much about her except that she's doing her own thing. a lot of the lyrics are in tatar, so I can't understand them. others are in roosish. my friends, there is no sense in not watching this:
some of the lyrics:
я -- Супералиса татарская певица
танцуйте если на месте не сидится
ja -- Superalisa tatarskaja pevitsa
tantsujte esli na meste ne siditsja
I'm Superalisa, the tatar singer
get up & dance if you don't want to sit still
полезные советы я вам здесь пропою
не пейте алкоголь и не кушайте свинью
poleznye sovjety ja vam zdjes' propoju
ne pjejte alkogol' i ne kushajte svin'ju
now I'll sing you some useful advice:
don't drink alcohol, & don't eat pork
I wonder what Superalisa is doing right now.
real good, right?) a tide of reformers is cresting over america like the goddamn buffalo. reformers all over america? what the fuck was he talking about?
I'm working on a blog post that I'm excited about, by special request (тебе, Пчелка) a post on wet & dry kinds of music. I was going to include some really great wet songs & some really great dry songs, & also some electronic alterations of both. but I sprung a leak somewhere, softwarewise, & it'll be at least till tomorrow since I need to call fucking lesotho or wherever & beg one of the row of service technicians heaving in the galley to tell me why my registration's been invalidated.
(by the way, I have nothing but respect for the culture of lesotho. it just seems like a silly route for advice to take since the company that manufactures the software is in albany. & that's why I made up lesotho. Adlai Stevenson House of Pancakes. sour claw.)anyhow, it might be a while, but here is a great new video of a Mr Lif remix. watch it! trust me! it is good!
turning a certain kind of a corner, Superalisa (Супералиса) is just the perfect thing. she's from tatarstan, one of the autonomous res publicae federated into the russian federation (other notable areas with the same political status include Chuvashia, where the poet Genadii Aigi was from; Chechnya, which apparently is closet russian for don't mention it; & Tuva, the delightful mountain paradise featured in indie filmdom's 1999 charmer genghis blues.) I don't know much about her except that she's doing her own thing. a lot of the lyrics are in tatar, so I can't understand them. others are in roosish. my friends, there is no sense in not watching this:
some of the lyrics:
я -- Супералиса татарская певица
танцуйте если на месте не сидится
ja -- Superalisa tatarskaja pevitsa
tantsujte esli na meste ne siditsja
I'm Superalisa, the tatar singer
get up & dance if you don't want to sit still
полезные советы я вам здесь пропою
не пейте алкоголь и не кушайте свинью
poleznye sovjety ja vam zdjes' propoju
ne pjejte alkogol' i ne kushajte svin'ju
now I'll sing you some useful advice:
don't drink alcohol, & don't eat pork
I wonder what Superalisa is doing right now.
8.10.08
the z = the u = the k = the o = the f = the s = the k = the y
I got to thinking about the music I posted that includes speech. it shares a lot with rap music: repetition, electronic sounds, & an ear tuned to the musical possibilities inherent to the ways we talk. increasingly I think people working in both traditions are acknowledging that overlap in trajectory, as when Madlib samples SR's come out on america's most blunted, or when Arnold Dreyblatt writes beats that seem to be in part a hearing-thru of interesting producers like Timbaland & El-P. I thought it might be fun to propose four companion songs to the ones in my earlier post.
El-P is always interesting. his stuff is unrelentingly maximal, a tropics of storming hot sounds. sometimes it makes me wish I were watching seinfeld. sometimes it's just jabberjaw & could use a dose of the neptunes. but I think he sometimes, as here, on tuned mass damper, really gets it right: stupendous stuff happens here. I don't mean at all to say the connection to idle chatter seems strong. but both have a thick, busy sound. & El-P's accustomed logopudding style of lyric seems a good corollary to the indistinguishability of the words in the Lansky piece. (listen closely: "microscopic Sally Struthers with a lobster bib / munching on white platelets" -- sweaty zaum! superhuh! El-P puts it this way: "motherfucker did I sound abstract? / I hope it sounded more confusing than that / cause my clarity was found / under the arm of an economy-sized mousetrap". I would like to say motherfucker more often.) anyhow, like a lot of El-P's beats, I think this works grandly as an instrumental, too.
I also don't mean to suggest any very strong connection between sooner or later & this song, saliva by Viktor Vaughn, with a gorgeous first-snow beat by rjd2 (who has broken my heart just like everybody's by putting out that record where he sings). I guess what I see them sharing (VV & Bob Ostertag, I mean) is an agility, an ability to continue producing amazing & surprising sounds from fresh directions. sooner or later reminds me of Lorca & a little of Clayton Eshleman in its pursuit of the boy's body. saliva is by contrast really humorous, in that word's oldest sense -- the angles of disconnect between lyrics, a sort of thrill of shifting attentions, are at the heart of what's interesting.
one thing flagging has in common with that's life by Killer Mike is a good rough sense of humor. hear, here. they're both a little antic. Killer Mike (I feel like a nerd when I talk about him because his name is Killer Mike, which is something I would never otherwise say) is a really clever guy, & I don't blame him he's angry. I guess I thought too that Steve Reich's political stake was somehow vaguely summoned by the phase-loop stuff in the stock, hausen & walkman song. maybe that's optimistic. a headline you will not see: KILLER MIKE RIGHT ON BUSH! fucking country. I can see honduras from yr mom, Sarah Palin.
& I'd like to match so many little dyings with a combination of two songs. (picture an ellipse.) the first one is we celebrate by Ghostface Killah -- listen to it here. I love the laser-beam sound in the background! it's obviously really different in tone from Kyle Gann's piece, but they both feel sort of candid (what whiteness can add to them?) & sort of tender. also dill pickle = big laughs, over here. but I also wanted to post a turkish rap song called katil, by a guy whose name I might be misspelling as Sert Musselmaner. (sorry, Sert.) follow this link & listen. all I know is katil means killer. the song has a great swirly-alley sound. I feel patient with that, like I feel patient with the simulated-beach sounds in KG's piece, because I think it's true that both sounds contribute to an overall cohesiveness in the recordings -- they're well-produced is all, really. & I think it can maybe begin matching so many little dyings in weirdness, which hooray. hooray!alright alright. hope there is somebody out there reading this blog. I mean, what do you think? write me comments! join the blogvolution!
5.10.08
ฮาร์ปซิคอร์ด (I think I could survive in a cabin)
more Roy Zimmerman. this I guess is, as they say in the restaurant business, not so fresh, but as the sun sets on George W Bush's empire the broader questions it raises feel as pressing as ever.
Sarah Palin recently told donors in Englewood Colorado that Obama "is someone who sees america... as being so imperfect, emperfect enough, that he's willing to pal around with terrorists who would target their own country." what a revolting piece of morning-after-buffalo-wings shit she is. (she's talking about William Ayers, from the weather underground, to whom Obama has failed patriotically to refuse saying hi when they bump into each other around hyde park & at meetings.) I mean, planes don't fly thru hurricanes -- this is a new low, isn't it? meanwhile, in the nation Barbara Ehrenreich notes: "This year marks the 160th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto and capitalism -- aka 'free enterprise' -- seems willing to observe the occasion by dropping dead." I have also been thinking a lot about how sort of unfair it is for bankers to make the world end.
mostly I have been thinking about which records I will bring to my post-democracy cabin.
(by the way, did you hear what lovely Dennis said, in the house of representatives? after he voted in a non-bailout-supporting way? he said this:
one recording I will bring to my cabin is this one, of Pharoah Sanders playing feelin' good. it's played with real force, & I think I'll enjoy that. there is a kind of a distracted quality to it, a lot of mismatching gestures thrown out. but it also feels sincere, & for me it holds together in a kind of hot, diffuse way. I hope my cabin has a view of the mountains.
I know cabin livin' may prove hard, but if there are still sunrises I will want to hear this, the third track from the record LAmmERGEIER, by the various & interesting duo of Richard Youngs & Simon Wickham-Smith, co-presidents of the Society for Guys With English-Sounding Names & really worthwhile musicians. I love the sounds they find, the structures they build out of them. the principles may overlap with those that decide the architecture of cabins.
& I think I'd like to have this lovely & strange recording of Andrej Vinogradov singing a song called uzh kak po mostu-mostochiku (уж как по мосту-мосточику, which you might understand to mean something like going now, beginning to go, across the bridge, the little bridge) it's a lovely snow-sounding song, & the harmonies are rich & a little surprising. times will be hard. I will probably be glad that I have a cabin.
so, by the way, has anyone got a nice cabin to sell? all offers heard...
Sarah Palin recently told donors in Englewood Colorado that Obama "is someone who sees america... as being so imperfect, emperfect enough, that he's willing to pal around with terrorists who would target their own country." what a revolting piece of morning-after-buffalo-wings shit she is. (she's talking about William Ayers, from the weather underground, to whom Obama has failed patriotically to refuse saying hi when they bump into each other around hyde park & at meetings.) I mean, planes don't fly thru hurricanes -- this is a new low, isn't it? meanwhile, in the nation Barbara Ehrenreich notes: "This year marks the 160th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto and capitalism -- aka 'free enterprise' -- seems willing to observe the occasion by dropping dead." I have also been thinking a lot about how sort of unfair it is for bankers to make the world end.mostly I have been thinking about which records I will bring to my post-democracy cabin.
(by the way, did you hear what lovely Dennis said, in the house of representatives? after he voted in a non-bailout-supporting way? he said this:
it is not as tho we had no choice but to pass the bill before us. we could have done this differently. we could have demanded language in the legislation that would have empowered the treasure to compel mortgage servicers to rework the terms of mortgage loans so homeowners could avoid foreclosure. we could have put regulatory structures in place to protect investors. we could have stopped the speculators.in the house of representatives he said this! as if anybody'd be listening there!)
this bill represents an utter failure of the democratic process. it represents the triumph of special interest over the public interest. it represents the inability of government to defend the public interest in the face of great pressure from financial interests. we could have recognized the power of government to prime the pump of the economy to get money flowing thruout society by creating jobs, health care, and major investments in green energy. what a lost opportunity! what a moment of transition from democracy and towards domination of america by global economic interests.
one recording I will bring to my cabin is this one, of Pharoah Sanders playing feelin' good. it's played with real force, & I think I'll enjoy that. there is a kind of a distracted quality to it, a lot of mismatching gestures thrown out. but it also feels sincere, & for me it holds together in a kind of hot, diffuse way. I hope my cabin has a view of the mountains.
I know cabin livin' may prove hard, but if there are still sunrises I will want to hear this, the third track from the record LAmmERGEIER, by the various & interesting duo of Richard Youngs & Simon Wickham-Smith, co-presidents of the Society for Guys With English-Sounding Names & really worthwhile musicians. I love the sounds they find, the structures they build out of them. the principles may overlap with those that decide the architecture of cabins.
& I think I'd like to have this lovely & strange recording of Andrej Vinogradov singing a song called uzh kak po mostu-mostochiku (уж как по мосту-мосточику, which you might understand to mean something like going now, beginning to go, across the bridge, the little bridge) it's a lovely snow-sounding song, & the harmonies are rich & a little surprising. times will be hard. I will probably be glad that I have a cabin.so, by the way, has anyone got a nice cabin to sell? all offers heard...
3.10.08
beautiful men sing of their honeys; also, voices speak
I'm really excited about the blog entry I'm about to write, but first I have something I'd really like to share:
Steven Mithen writes that neanderthals thudded around in a prolonged act of song-speech, a high-pitched inflected vocal line (contour music!) that was both song & speech. the poet Louis Zukofsky famously wrote:
but I wanted to post this, a piece called idle chatter by the composer Paul Lansky. Lansky's work is varied, & ambitious. it's had some influence (ooooh) on radiohead (aaaaah). I love his work with recorded speech for its rich textures, ever reconfiguring each other, & for the ways it seems to invigorate the hearing of language by denuding it of semantic content (since you can never understand any of the words) & so bringing attention to the steam-shovel urgencies encoded in our usual speech at the levels of pitch & cadence. it stays weirdly true to the cluttered sound of depots & television: there's a kind of a naturalism to it. & I really enjoy the way it reminds me of playing with sk-1 synthesizers in the 80s -- in a dash to keep pace with the rise of samplers in pop music, casio put out a line of magnificently chintzy sampling keyboards on which, I & every 9-year-old of 1989 quickly learned, one could play mary had a little lamb as a peal of weary-circuited burps. (now I have a blog to satisfy the same impulse.)
something closer to the spirit of Steve Reich's early experiments with recorded speech guides Bob Ostertag in sooner or later, a piece he made on audio tape in the early nineties. here, give it a listen. all of the sounds in the first movement come from a recording of a kid in el salvador burying his father. what happens to that recording reminds me of Bach -- the most exciting part is hearing the whole russian garden of phrases Ostertag is able to extrapolate from the single original material, subtly differing patterns that emerge from & trellis up each other. samenesses bearing difference. what end up getting exposed are subtleties in contour, a tremendously moving topography of the boy's surge, rich in cadence, toward the horizon of Zukofsky's music.
here is a song called flagging by the enigmatic electronic band stock, hausen & walkman. I assume the text clips are just recordings found somewhere. this is what pop music sounds like to grass, sped up many times. mebbe. but it's interesting to hear how even a stock recording of times-table recitation comes to sound sung when other sounds are pulling its ends in the right set of directions.
lastly, here is a piece composed in 1994 by the inspired critic & inspiring composer Kyle Gann. it's called so many little dyings, & the voice is Kenneth Patchen's. Gann has followed a vitally restless ear that seems to tear -- like Monteverdi's did, like Machaut's did, & maybe like Gershwin's, too -- thru every musical form available to it. working with computers enables him to interact with recorded speech in audible-but-tiny intervals, calling to & meeting with equal complexity the minute melodic heaves & eddies of the voice in its saying. when I first heard the piece, I was bowled except by the tone of the lead instrument, that toy piano sound that seems to crinkle up all the ambient space around it. but when I listen now, I realize that there's a certain deadpan about it that helps offset the possibly itch-enducing seriousness of the (nevertheless probably lovely) text. & there's a gravelliness to it, a strained-circuit quality that comes to feel sort of gutbucket.
anyhow, I really hope you're reading & enjoying this, if you are someone. why not email me at hudbahudby@gmail.com with feedback & requests? & thanks to Jon, for writing kindly & getting me going.
also, are you having trouble hearing the songs I'm posting? I guess it can be a little tricky but you should definitely be able to hear, & download, all the mp3s I'm discussing in these posts (& the sundry extras that are poison-donuted thruout the ramblings). I'm looking into alternatives to zshare, but in the meantime, please email me if you can't do what we all want you to do.
also, if you didn't see it, please check out my posting from earlier today, on the chiki chiki dance!
lastly, I wanted to post this, which I remember fizzily from my years as a tender sprout. seeing it now, I kind of have my MIND BLOWN by it. beautiful! my heart is a pinecone. I like that it is about love. I like that it is set in the desert.
I'll blog more soon.
they don't make them like these follows, not anymore. what this is is a commercial from soviet estonia encouraging citizens to comply with a legal mandate that they sell their agricultural surplus to the state. beautiful, right? beautiful!
Steven Mithen writes that neanderthals thudded around in a prolonged act of song-speech, a high-pitched inflected vocal line (contour music!) that was both song & speech. the poet Louis Zukofsky famously wrote:
I'll tell you.technology allows for speech sounds to be put to musical use in new ways. Steve "Stevie" Reich is of course famous for his grand voice-on-tape compositions, come out & it's gonna rain & later on city life.
About my poetics --
music
∫
speech
An integral
Lower limit speech
Upper limit music
but I wanted to post this, a piece called idle chatter by the composer Paul Lansky. Lansky's work is varied, & ambitious. it's had some influence (ooooh) on radiohead (aaaaah). I love his work with recorded speech for its rich textures, ever reconfiguring each other, & for the ways it seems to invigorate the hearing of language by denuding it of semantic content (since you can never understand any of the words) & so bringing attention to the steam-shovel urgencies encoded in our usual speech at the levels of pitch & cadence. it stays weirdly true to the cluttered sound of depots & television: there's a kind of a naturalism to it. & I really enjoy the way it reminds me of playing with sk-1 synthesizers in the 80s -- in a dash to keep pace with the rise of samplers in pop music, casio put out a line of magnificently chintzy sampling keyboards on which, I & every 9-year-old of 1989 quickly learned, one could play mary had a little lamb as a peal of weary-circuited burps. (now I have a blog to satisfy the same impulse.)
something closer to the spirit of Steve Reich's early experiments with recorded speech guides Bob Ostertag in sooner or later, a piece he made on audio tape in the early nineties. here, give it a listen. all of the sounds in the first movement come from a recording of a kid in el salvador burying his father. what happens to that recording reminds me of Bach -- the most exciting part is hearing the whole russian garden of phrases Ostertag is able to extrapolate from the single original material, subtly differing patterns that emerge from & trellis up each other. samenesses bearing difference. what end up getting exposed are subtleties in contour, a tremendously moving topography of the boy's surge, rich in cadence, toward the horizon of Zukofsky's music.
here is a song called flagging by the enigmatic electronic band stock, hausen & walkman. I assume the text clips are just recordings found somewhere. this is what pop music sounds like to grass, sped up many times. mebbe. but it's interesting to hear how even a stock recording of times-table recitation comes to sound sung when other sounds are pulling its ends in the right set of directions.
lastly, here is a piece composed in 1994 by the inspired critic & inspiring composer Kyle Gann. it's called so many little dyings, & the voice is Kenneth Patchen's. Gann has followed a vitally restless ear that seems to tear -- like Monteverdi's did, like Machaut's did, & maybe like Gershwin's, too -- thru every musical form available to it. working with computers enables him to interact with recorded speech in audible-but-tiny intervals, calling to & meeting with equal complexity the minute melodic heaves & eddies of the voice in its saying. when I first heard the piece, I was bowled except by the tone of the lead instrument, that toy piano sound that seems to crinkle up all the ambient space around it. but when I listen now, I realize that there's a certain deadpan about it that helps offset the possibly itch-enducing seriousness of the (nevertheless probably lovely) text. & there's a gravelliness to it, a strained-circuit quality that comes to feel sort of gutbucket.anyhow, I really hope you're reading & enjoying this, if you are someone. why not email me at hudbahudby@gmail.com with feedback & requests? & thanks to Jon, for writing kindly & getting me going.
also, are you having trouble hearing the songs I'm posting? I guess it can be a little tricky but you should definitely be able to hear, & download, all the mp3s I'm discussing in these posts (& the sundry extras that are poison-donuted thruout the ramblings). I'm looking into alternatives to zshare, but in the meantime, please email me if you can't do what we all want you to do.
also, if you didn't see it, please check out my posting from earlier today, on the chiki chiki dance!
lastly, I wanted to post this, which I remember fizzily from my years as a tender sprout. seeing it now, I kind of have my MIND BLOWN by it. beautiful! my heart is a pinecone. I like that it is about love. I like that it is set in the desert.
I'll blog more soon.
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