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 r
emix, 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.




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:
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 understand
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
it'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.

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 polyphon
ic 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 wor
ked 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

yellow submarine is a favorite. vivid fun & a reminder of how doofy & sometimes bad the beatles were willing to be. it has the feeling of experiment, freshness. only a northern song is a beautiful & compelling fucking song. et cetera tron.


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 b
uffalo. 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.