Man Man. Oh, man, I was just turned onto this group last night courtesy of a burned cd. (Thanks T! Bigtime.) Its a bit of a cumulative pleasure in that though I liked it right off the bat, if only for it being a new sound, the more songs you hear, the more you listen to their music, the better, way better, it gets. Here’s a Pitchfork short film on the group in the studio and loose on the streets.
They put me in mind of Tom Waits (if you took about twenty of him before his voice was ravaged by smokes and booze) and other purveyers of messy music. Love the messy music which for me encompasses the soundtracks of Nina Rota, the jazz compositions of the incomparable Carla Bley especially with her big band, various klezmer bands, circus music and organ riffs from hockey games. Brilliant, all of them.
This particular video was shot in Holland which is appropriate given the not dissimilar music from the Dutch jazz veins of Willem Breuker.
Speaking of Tom Waits…here is the brilliant Chocolate Jesus (roosters and all).
Waiting for the new cds from TV on the Radio, Calexico, Okervill River and B B King. In circulation at the home front is Creature, the latest Elvis Costello, Buddy Guy’s Skin Deep. Creature is a lot of fun; another Montreal band and kind of party disco for people who have issues with Abba. If this doesn’t grab you, something is wrong. (Go here, type in Creature and listen to Sugar Plum; the rest are good too but this one is cool and funny and better than the album version; there are plenty of videos on youtube but they are all disconcertedly retro ).
Taking off for a week to Kelowna. There is a good chance of no posting for the week or so but we’ll see. Not sure of the facilities and I am not a laptop guy.
Little anecdote: for those who worry about the musical tastes of the young, my daughter who is 13 and listens to a lot of music typical of her cohort (I Kissed a Girl, etc..) still gets into some of my stuff. We agree on the the Beatles and Frank Black but the latest little bit is odd. She refuses my offers of teaching her piano except for the odd tune, so without any background or scales or such, she likes to learn songs. Though she kind of avoided the piano for a while, when she wants to learn a tune, she is monomaniacal until she has it down. The first one was Pachelbal’s Canon…not so hard. Then she learned a popular thing I forget the title of but then she was doodling and found a sequence that she thought was familiar but did not know where it was from. I told her it was a Phillip Glass tune from his piano solos. And off she went, and now she is working on her second Glass, and here is what really kills me….her friend now has it on her ipod. Phillip Glass solo piano music is going through the Miley Cyrus crowd.
There is hope.
And then she was singing along toTV on the Radio. Wow!
I am the happy dad, and happy also because the fellows are coming to town in September.
Haven’t put up music in ages but here is a band very suited to this medium; great videos and cool tunes. Love the old animation and they are all over that. Its all kind of Leonard Cohen crossed with Eels crossed with Vaudeville
First, for those friends of mine who are massive Josh Whedon fans (and by being so may have already seen this and then tell me so)..its a teaser for his forthcoming new television show..
Second, here is a picture and then a link to a good version thanks to SuperSpatial of a great metro ad for Madrid.
I saw this one a few months ago but the also did not find a good copy to put up…so still it is the case, there are substandard versions on youtube, and trust me, this needs the resolution. And here you can see the ad in all its glory.
And what is touted as the new Manhattan…In Search of a Midnight Kiss…and the perfect strains of Okkervil River in the background.
Finally saw Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe. I had worried about whether this movie would be good or not and though I had not seen Frida, Titus took me to strange new places and that should have been sufficient to dispel any concerns. This film is brilliant. The interpretations of the songs, the casting (except for Dana Fuchs as Sadie), the freshness of how Taymor solved various narrative problems and the engaging set pieces were all great.
Among the thoughts that went through my mind as I watched this were 1. was there any group other than the Beatles who had the back catalogue to have fulfilled all the requirements of this film (out of the roughly 200 they used about 10) and 2. how clean these voices were.
(I must admit that knowing that this actress, Evan Rachel Wood, is going out with Marilyn Manson had me off in a parallel universe imagining this scene with him as the boy, and that somehow was just not as affecting).
To return to the one reservation I have about this film, the character of Sadie was apparently added after Dana was seen performing and I have to say that that was a very bad move. She plays a professional Janis Joplin type singer in the film and her histrionic style jars with the rest. The others, like T.V.Carpio here sing as though the songs matter.
Its refreshing in this day of where too many singers feel that if you have room for five notes why just sing one. For a more dramatic example of this see Joan Osborne channel these Motown classics.
I just don’t take to mannered singing all that well, whether it is the throatiness of opera, the subdued version of that in jazz, the twang of country, (or its odd cousin, that odd drony singing that seems to be gaining ground in mainstream radio right now), the nasality of English folksongs, or the mock weak whine of bluegrass. Its why I like much of rock and roll where half the plainness comes from lack of experience, much folk (though I’m not a big fan of the actual genre) and the blues where nothing ever veers too far from true.
As well as the clean delivery, the arrangements tend to be sparse as well. And I was struck again, as I am from time to time, by the song writing genius of that short lived group. For here were the songs rather than them. Their songs always seem simple but most certainly are not.
The other thing that crossed my mind is that the Beatles were essentially prophets of social cohesion unlike many of their contemporaries. The message in almost all the songs is one of the worth of the everyman and the foolishness of fame; rather Buddhist really. (Actually quite a few religions follow that line but the Buddhists garnered the spotlight on this attribute). And this takes us back to that singing style again. The problem with much modern singing other than mimicking others who do the same is that it places the person above the music. The singer feels compelled to demonstrate that the attention is on them, not on the music. Or as George Harrison put it “all through the night I me mine I me mine I me mine”.
And I do apologize for re-introducing this ear worm back into your head but they got it wrong here because these should be the frequency ofRick Astley’s not-planned activities..
I can’t believe I ran across this again, having been sure it was lost to the winds of time. Used to own this on vinyl. Then a recent Can collection had it, and then found this youtube version for you all…no video really but worth a listen and just try to imagine how this would sound in 1979. Czukay was a student of Stockhausen until someone played him I Am the Walrus. Truly
one of the leading lights of German avant garde rock. This is melodic world fusion stuff. Just about the same time Peter Gabriel weaned himself from Genesis, and David Byrne was thinking about what lay beyond Talking Heads and before Mr. Bowie was getting those kinds of inclinations.
Might as well throw on the influential moment. Enjoy this very retro hippy excerpt from Magical Mystery Tour.
