Nurturing Phrenology or Poor Charlie Manson

Hi.


"A consistent number of members from professions amongst the creative arts as a whole, suffer from more types of mental difficulties for longer periods than members of other professions."




I read that sentiment in a medical journal. It referenced the mental health of selected jazz musicians (who were meant to represent all musicians for the sake of the article). The power punch of the thesis involved (and was in my opinion, limited by) the listing of social disorders belonging to a handful of famed artists. The point the author made seemed founded in environmental elements for me, so I had a hard time not having violent thoughts as I found myself angered- but still falling under the audacious spell of their proposition. The fact that my ire was raised probably means that I, myself, am an unstable creative type, but I can think of several worse personalities to have. So.. what of it? The holes in the argument are huge, and I'm sick of presuming I'm crazy, because the beast of opposition prevails. And if you must know I privately maintain that the constructs of Society, in general, are totally fucked up.

So, I started to wonder, "Is any aspect of the musician vs. mental health issue genetic or the product of a learned response?" (nature vs. nurture).I understand the difference between the opposing scientific beliefs, but I was unable to glean a comprehensive conclusion from the article. The author only spoke about one tiny piece of art history – Jazz is, after all, a speck in time. An incredibly important one, no doubt, but what of the rest? What kind of people were the musicians in the dark ages? Was it only the rich cavemen who had spare skins to beat on and were capable of feeding their families and still got the kinky girls? Or were they all burnouts?


There are a countless number of artists who fell into depressing environments. Miles Davis, James Brown, Tina Turner, Charles Mingus, Jelly Roll Morton, Robert Johnson- just to name a few. And I didn't even have to leave the continent for that list, because I'd never make it back to my point before I found a new injustice. It would appear though, that regardless of whatever "mental problems" or social disorders that musicians have suffered, they aren't the members of society running around murdering people. That's what armies do. And, for the most part, mortality by occupation sees most musicians dying from heart failure like everyone else, with maybe an extra helping of drug overdoses, vehicular accidents, suicides and other causes. I jump to cause of death, because it's a natural stepping stone in the pursuit of defining the roots of casualty within the framework of musician vs. the world. And I don't think I am being dramatic.



What I started to unravel, as I looked further into the suggestion that musicians and artists were luckless, sensation seeking nihilists (who were deviant sufferers by extension of their craft alone) and were therefore prone to the "seedy" life, didn't really surprise me. As I departed the present day and started tripping over the carcasses of Harpsichords, I found myself weeding through tangled fields of music record, naming the typical Room 101 Masters as stable examples of how a musician should behave. Try as I might, I could find hardly anything on criminal activity or victimization of our classically-composing Forebearers. I was hoping for some Syphilitic duels or an execution by the King. Nothing! This doesn't mean that crime wasn't rampant among these guys. It just means that I didn't find it or History hasn't documented or preserved it for some reason.


Paganini, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Mahler, Brahm, Wagner, Strauss, Chaikovsky, Bellini, Rossini, Monteverdi, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Paganini, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Philip Glass, Ravi Shankar, Irving Berlin, Ernest Hogan, Fats Waller ... all had parents who were either musical instructors or had their child studying as early as 2. They were either well off or dropped off at some private orphanage that created prodigies. Our "Masters" were bred in golden cages, and these dynamic show dogs became the base of our musical cheer ladder. They probably didn't even want the job, except that their 20 brothers and sisters needed to eat. My partner in music crime, Jonathan, says that Gesualdo wrote weird far-out stuff for his time and was also independently wealthy. To which I say, was he the exception to the rule then? The tradition of selectively cultivating artists continues today, but because Art isn't taken as seriously in our modern world culture (i.e.:no strong presence in curriculums), our "show dogs" are treated as the sickly shadow of their original progenitors. This obviously isn't fair, but until we replace the elitist literary idiots at Macmillan Industries and other Text Book publishing houses, children are always going to think that they have to write overtures from an incubator to be taken seriously. And while I'm rearranging the face of our history books, little girls need to start seeing pictures of women in those books too... The good and the bad of it.


I'm not saying that all musicians who were bred to play, don't deserve credit for their art. I do suggest however, that they were forced into roles by the powers that be, devastating powers that insulated them from the pain and beauty of life, and shut everyone else's pain and beauty out. I'm also not saying that we have no control over our own destinies. I am asserting the idea that we should always consider the complex environments that give us music before judging the music itself, and the bounty hunters of prodigious sound ought to spread the net some. I mean... MORE! Being incapable of separating the anthropology from the archaeology is what draws me to artists who have suffered through the production of their creations, while under more duress than others. It's too bad that billions of men and women have been not only denied access to music, but have also been robbed by all of our ancestors. Of everything they could have left, they left us with a legacy of forced agonies that we could never hope to top. But the true facts of life are bleeding all over us. I mean, shouldn't Little Johnny Leper get to be discovered as the prodigy he is before his fingers fall off? Sure that's philanthropic... but, it's mostly SMART. It's about getting more for all of us.


Since, I don't have the resources to travel the annals of all time looking for a complete and fair history covering every artist's work and their life-story, I can't make a justified conclusion about this theory that musicians are more prone to anything over another. Even though mysterious outsider artists have been flinging their blood Pollock style on cave walls forever, a large amount of historical record is based on assumptions and discriminations. Legend is highly speculative by nature, and I totally believe that the majority of our history IS legend. That was more of a sweeping emotional statement, than something I came up with using beakers and calculus, but I still believe it.


I don't have a conclusion here. Except that maybe, Class War has always been ON. You can't deny it. Stories always start out the same. Born Rich or Born Poor. So how does that figure into the general mental health of musicianship? It isn't a tidy package. Maybe when I have some time, I'll venture back to the places in history, where the crimes against the arts were even weirder. We'll ride our time machine back and spy on the punishments of creative types. We'll watch them having their skin scraped off with oyster shells and then the burning of the leftovers. Or maybe we could even sit in on one of those Gut-a-cow-and-sew-up-a-criminal-inside-to-die-in-the-rotting-carcass-at-high-noon parties, and wonder what their song meant.

I see the World as being full of scores of dead musical ghosts who never had the chance to play music. Maybe, every breath we take is the ether of a musical soul who was hung by the throat for his politics 3 thousand years ago. Maybe, every breath we let escape, is the floundering essence of cheated apparitions. I think it's easier to manage your vision today, but ghettos still remain filled with desperate children, who if given the chance could be that prodigy of this century. I am glad to be a part of this time period, where I have the opportunities I make for myself, but we have to help make BETTER opportunities for kids around us, because History is not that encouraging. And mental health is fucking relative during War time.

Nonetheless, I wondered how all of this related to, or directly affected our numbers amidst the "Mortality by Profession" charts. Because apparently, carelessly-driven, hyper-sensitive creative types can't avoid a party or a pill or any other gateway libation, that eventually sees them face down in a gutter of human disregard, slowly drained of opportunity. A mess of scribbled on napkins in their soiled pockets listing innumerable romantically charged failures.... Or so I figured. I made these two lists as I hunted for Sensationalist stories.

The first list is of some musical victims of homicide. I didn't include any Neanderthals, Highlanders, Friends to Vishnu or listings from the Ming Dynasty... (A couple of these guys weren't confirmed murders, but highly suspicious)

Murdered:

Darryl Abbot
Marc Blitzstein
Carlton Barret
King Curtis
Rhett Forrester
Marvin Gaye
Timur Kacharava
Al Jackson
John Lennon
Don Myrick
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Felix Pappalardi
John 'Jaco' Pastorius
Mia Zapata
Bobby Ramirez
Selena
James Sheppard
Peter Tosh
Rick Garberson
Johnny Ace
Sam Cooke
Samuel George Jr.
Cornelius Gunter
Lee Morgan
Terry Knight
Eddie Jefferson
Rudy Lewis
Øystein Aarseth
Jannie Pought
Stringbean
Stacy Sutherland
Tupac Shakur
Notorious B.I.G.
Walter Scott
Larry Williams
Countless rappers
Albert Ayler
Wardell Gray
Don Drummond
Brian Jones
Harry Choates
Lord Buckley
Bobby Fuller

Musicians Who Committed Crimes:

Vince Neil..
Steve Jones
Manson..
Jazzist Rosolino
Phil Spectre
Rick James
James Brown
Lead Belly
Varg Vikernes


Unsafe Sax

In closing, I just want to say that I learned something very significant once that changed the way I look at the world of the arts forever. Still-life paintings weren't always about the skill of the artist's depiction. They were about capturing the exotic fruits that wealth could afford. When fancy pants or "dandies" would come calling, they would marvel at the fruits in the paintings that were imported from far away places and had cost a fortune. So, the art was about it's social value, and the value was in the owner's ability to afford the fruit (and so also control) the artist making the painting. You think those poor artists wanted to waste their short lives painting fruit baskets? I'm not saying every artist lived by a for-hire credo, but Money sure as fuck changes things now doesn't it? So the next time you look at a still-life, don't assume it was painted for practice. How this relates to the mental health and wellness of musicians and artists through history, is obvious I think, but needs so much more attention to respectfully work out the implications. So, I apologize if I have dragged you into my quagmire of criticism only to be unsatisfied with my conclusions.

And, I'm not saying Charles Manson was a good musician by the way, but his mother DID sell him for a pitcher of beer when he was a boy.

Please enjoy this video of Jeff Beck and Seal covering Hendrix's Manic Depression to film footage of Taxi Driver.



Thanks to Kilian for the invite to sub.

My Uzi Weighs an Ounce

All things being equal (yeah right), it might be easy for one to take to heart the ideas espoused by dangerous minds like John Lomax over at the Houston Press. It has been his contention – and I am paraphrasing (to say the least) – that hip-hop has replaced rock as the music that moves the great white masses. It has been his contention for quite some time now that we are all currently praying at the altar of Mark Ecko and stepping in line to the words of Tupac, while forever turning away from the sounds of the angst ridden youth with a guitar and a mission. I love John, he’s a friend and he’s been good to me, but sometimes he spreads the bullshit on a little thick. For one thing, hip-hop has hardly usurped rock in the minds of pasty mall-crawling Hot Topic addicts, as far as I can tell. In fact, guys like Fall Out Boy, and My Chemical Romance, and a whole host of what I call MTV metal bands seem to have done a fine job of capturing the attention of deluded teens the nation over. And let's not even get into the subject of country or pop. Sure white kids buy an assload of rap CDs, and this contributes to the falling sales of the types of music white marketers look to for signs of health in the industry; but to naggingly claim the demise of rock at the hands of hip-hop is more than myopic, it’s downright retarded.

Am I in turn downplaying the role of rap in cracker culture? I’m not saying that at all. But this contention that we should all hang up our guitars and buy a couple turntables and some gold fronts is a little premature, if not entirely half-baked. I know that for rap to have become as big as it has, it needs the cash heavy white audience to keep those sales up, and it strives to promote the negative images of black America that ultimately feed the worst kind of racism, and that’s the kind that works its way into the fiber of white culture. It goes unspoken, but it is so ingrained as to be inseparable from other regularly held views on the world at large. White audiences are lured by the sheen of rap’s flashy stylizations, but they aren’t really interested in who makes this music and what the artists are really like as people. That would require a level of acceptance that is simply not forthcoming any time soon. If white America was so keen to drop everything and totally embrace black culture and rap, then why is it that the only rap you even hear that makes much of an impact on the white masses anymore is the most overstated, misogynistic, violent stuff out there? Where’s the clamor for the intelligent, well-written, and highly creative work that is basically considered underground at this point? There isn’t one. It’s not sexy, so it gets no play. You don’t have to be a racist blowhole like Bill O’Reilly to see the problems inherent in mainstream rap.

This whole thing brings to mind the flap over how downloading was killing the industry and how we have to get all William Gibson about it and recognize that if we don't do something right away, all music will die in an orgiastic frenzy of illegal downloads. This concept, too, is complete bullshit. Sure, downloads have had a very real impact on the industry, but really, who gives a shit about the industry? This is about loving music, and it's about making music. The scum that exist to exploit art for the purposes of commerce above anything else aren't worth mentioning in this discussion. And they are the ones who want you to believe that you must go out and buy tons of CDs and continue to support their efforts to keep things from changing, from growing into something better, because as long as they control the playing field, you don't. A few weeks ago we were treated to John's cover article on the demise of the CD. Now I'm not saying CDs will never die, what I'm saying is that they aren't exhibiting their death throes quite yet. And when this topic was brought up in here (a place full of music lovers/collectors), the CD was still very much a thriving format. Sure we burn CDRs, but we also buy CDs religiously. But there's Lomax out there putting his neck out and claiming the party's over. it's not. It looks cool to claim it in print and be an alarmist, but it's a little irresponsible to be so forthcoming with bad information.

And I chalk this idea up in the same category as the one in which Lomax posits that white people need to pay more attention to the current trends in black music as though it is our obligation, without making a similar claim for black audiences. Can you imagine any black critic telling his predominately black audience that they should take more time to check out the music of Panic at the Disco? Neither can I (try though I might). So why should someone like me make the effort to check out the new Lil Wayne? I’m not into macho posturing and callous indifference to human life, so why should I like his rapping? I read an interview with that clown and he reads like a bad John Leguizamo movie (like there’s a good one). Maybe this white guilt Lomax espouses is a vestigial element of his pedigree. For those of you who aren’t familiar, John Lomax is the great grandson of the infamous John Lomax who was at the heart of preserving the sound of the Delta blues for the sake of American folk history. The work of John’s father (also named John – bit of a theme) is also well known, as he is also a music writer as well as the former manager for Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle. So yes, he knows something about black music, and to be more specific, about the importance of black music. But his passion sometimes gets in the way of reality, because while rap may be thriving, good rap has dropped off significantly in the last decade, and on top of that, whitey still buys guitars. What he should do is become the voice box for his love of music in such a fertile creative environment. This is a huge town, and he must have a fairly large audience, and he should use his soapbox to find ways to get all music lovers to broaden their horizons, to keep music at the forefront of their lives for the rest of their lives. He wastes his time when his column becomes a vent for his delusions on what's cool, what you need to listen to, why Houston isn't down with the self-promotion, and all the rest.

Not that it would be a bad thing for any music lover to expand their boundaries regardless of their ethnic background; it’s just that the idea that white music lovers should give equal attention to mainstream rap seems somewhat off base. As I’ve said earlier, you never hear black critics saying that their audiences need to really take the time to get into The Stooges or (gulp) Celine Dion; because culturally, there’s no reason for them to do so. White America has done such a good job of shutting out black America that blacks have been forced to create their own culture, whitey be damned. That’s a huge part of the birth of rap, soul, r&b, funk, and all the rest. If you aren’t welcomed at the table, then you damn sure set your own table, and that’s exactly what happened. And without another deplorable history lesson, let’s just say that we all know what happened from there. Their music was new, it was different, it was deeply emotional, it was hungry, more real, more honest, and often it was better. So eventually we began to make a seat for them at our table, but it has always been an uneasy truce. Sure we love to hear our James Brown CDs, but who ever really wanted to think of him as someone to relate to? White America is still as afraid of him after his death as they were when he was kicking everyone’s ass down at the Apollo. How much has really changed from the days of Sam Cooke and the public guise of his handsome, charming, good boy image for the sake of whites? His life is damn near a template for the current crop of black face showhorses, and until we accept black people as equal, things will never really change.

So how difficult is it to see this through to the present? Rap came on real hard in the 80's and 90's and whites ate it up. And in those golden years so much great music was being made that it was near impossible to keep up. And through this period a funny thing began to happen. With guys like Public enemy, and then NWA, and the birth of the whole gangsta movement, rap began to turn away from its white benefactors and talk about things that weren’t all booty shaking and fun. And guess what? Young white people loved it. They loved the danger of it, and they were drawn into the mythology of street life. This effect wasn’t lost on the labels either, as they were quick to exploit this phenomenon as far as it could go. What the labels knew was that marketing a romanticized image of the young, angry, violent, and ultimately untamed black man was money in the bank. And they also knew that keeping the black artist relegated to a caricature was so much easier to handle than the more creative minded artists like A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul. Those people were more about expression of creative energy than about threatening rivals, or bragging about all their conquests, or trying to get as much money out of the label as was humanly possible no matter the cost. Because after all, there will never be a shortage of disadvantaged black men who are making bad decisions to try and get ahead. So rap evolved into its current state. Rap has come to be defined (at least in the mainstream white audiences) as cartoonish music. The rappers of today seem to have been reduced to the stakes of the modern day minstrel. And to make it worse, because it is so lucrative, the rappers play right into it. It’s the clownish, overly audacious artists that get the most play, and the most sales. Guys like Lil John, or 50 Cent are huge, but they are also representing something no actual white audience will ever really believe and that keeps us all down. The artists cater to what sells, the buyers feed into what is negative about the culture, and the labels get rich by taking advantage of this built in cash flow. It’s like Russell Simmons is the Tom Vu of hip-hop. He’s a busker, a carny who wants you to check out the two-headed rapper sequestered behind the glass where he can do no real harm. So white America gets to exploit the culture of blacks, debase their life experience, plunder their resources, and still keep their nice cars and iPhones without having to worry about ever seeing these people out in their schools and country clubs. Nice.

And all this brings me back to the idea of a black DJ, on air, laying it down over the Bed Stuy airwaves or the Compton airwaves with something to this effect:

“Yo, yo, yo y’all, this is DJ Raz El here rockin’ on the mike and bringin’ you the dopest beats around. You just heard the new MF Doom, a blast from the past with Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh with “Six Minutes,” and a little sumpin’ sumpin’ from Busta Rhymes. And now I want to turn y’all on to a track that I know is gonna’ get your booty shakin’ wherever it’s at. These dudes is straight outta Norway, and they want to tell you all about the strength of street knowledge. Turn it up homey and check out this joint from my homies in Emperor, it’s called “Ye Entrancemperium,” and it is for reals yo.”

I think you get the idea. White guilt is a sad, sad thing. I know that John’s heart is in the right place, he is a music lover and that alone says something good about him for me. I think his mistake is in wanting to extrapolate what he finds so dear in black music into the world of white music lovers. Not that I would ever tell anyone what he or she must listen to, because that’s the whole point. I can suggest stuff, put it into context, and hope for the best. I would never expect someone to oblige me just because I said it was so. And as for rock in suburbia, it’s still out there. It’s always mutating, and it peaked eons ago, but the rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated. So when I think about where Lomax must be coming from, or what corner of the universe shapes his ideas on black and white in American music, my guess is that when you look at what someone loves from a distance - and I say this with full ironic glee - sometimes I think you could honestly say that love is really, truly blind.

ennio morricone

I actually wasn’t planning on writing anything about Ennio Morricone today, but I would be derelict in my duty as a contributor to a music blog if I failed to mention that he was honored last night at the Oscars with a lifetime achievement award. Finally. After writing over 500 television and film scores, you would think somebody in the Academy would take notice. It was definitely my favorite award acceptance of the evening, especially those few moments when he was speaking in Italian and all of the celebrities looked at each other as if he had made some sort of gaff because he couldn’t be bothered to translate it into English. I loved The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly so much as a kid that my parents had to ‘lose’ the 8-track tape so that I would stop playing it over and over.

Once, when traveling in Italy, I stayed in a youth hostel just outside of Siena where I happened to meet a couple of friendly Italian students who were studying composition, in particular that of film music. Being my usual smart-ass self, I quizzed them and asked if Ennio Morricone was their professor. That turned out to be another one of those moments when I everything I was holding fell out of my hands and their response caused my brain to pause a for more than a few seconds. You see, I was only joking. It turned out Professore Morricone actually did co-teach a number of classes at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena. I did briefly consider dropping out of architecture school right then and there.

Below is a list of sorts to inspire you all to start thinking about summer and dreaming about the possibilities of travel and music festivals. I am going to edit and add information about each of the festivals throughout the week, so feel free to check back later. Cheers.

Coachella
April 27^th-29^th
Indio, California (southern California, way East of LA, northeast of San Diego).

Primavera Sound
May 31^st-June 2^nd
Barcelona, Spain

Bonaroo
June 15-17
Manchester, Tennessee (fly into Nashville)
The Police are headlining?

Glastonbury
June 22^nd-24^th
Glastonbury, England
You must register by midnight (Greenwich Mean Time) on February 28^th in order to be eligible to even try to buy a ticket on April 1^st. As you well know, tickets sell out within hours for this.

High Sierra,
July 5-8
Quincy, California (fly into Reno or Sacramento)
5 venues (dude, no djs?!- hmmmm.)

T in the Park
July 6^th-8th
Kinross, Scotland (north of Edinburgh)
It’s sold out already. I’m listing it only to make us aware of what we’re all missing.

Roskilde Festival
July 5-8
Roskilde, Denmark (train from Copenhagen)
Enzo directed my attention to this one. Looks really good.

Umbria Jazz
July 6-15
Perugia, Italy

Exit Festival
July 12^th-15th
Belgrade, Serbia

The Glade Festival
July 21^st
Somewhere in England

Love Parade, Anti-Love Parade
July usually, not happening this year.
Berlin, Germany
The city won’t issue a permit for the parade, probably because a few too many foreigners were caught peeing in the Tiergarten.

Big Chill
August 3^rd-5^th
Eastnor Castle, England

Sziget
8-15 August 2007
Budapest, Hungary
Erik directed my attention here. 1000 events, 60 stages

Jazz Saafelden
August 23-26, 2007
Saafelden, Austria (train from Innsbruck)

Estate Romana Festival
All of august
Rome, Italy

Clusone, Italy
All summer. I presume this is where/how that fantastic trio with Han Bennink, Ernst Reijseger, and Michael Moore got it’s name.

Creamfields
August 25^th
Somewhere in England, haven’t been able to work out where.
I’m a geezer, way too old for this one.

World Music Festival
September 14^th-20^th
Chicago, Illinois
Kilian recommends this one.

Love Fest
September, 29^th 2007
San Francisco, California
(parade route)

Renaissance Festival
October to November
Plantersville, Texas
John has the most to say about this one.

by the time you read this

I will be on an island.

The island, as many of you already know who read comments, is Great Barrier Island, a four-hour ferry ride from Auckland. I'm going there for the next thirteen weeks to edit a television show.

I'm told I have wireless Internet at the workplace but not much in terms of coverage where I'm staying, which is fine with me. I'll know more by the time you read this, but I don't know how easy it will be to post, which is why I'm writing from the past, to you in the future, which is now ... the present.

Anyway, next week fellow Ultra Hummusian Conor Prischmann will be guest blogging, and if any of the rest of you are dying for a turn at the steering wheel, well, now's not the worst time to speak up.

All of this means that I haven't had much time this week to put thought into my intended blog, which is partly on Smoosh. They're a two-piece band - a 14-year old keyboardist and a 12-year old drummer, I think (somewhere in that neighborhood), and their first album, SHE LIKE ELECTRIC, was a very pleasant discovery for me. "It's Not Your Day To Shine" is featured on this week's podcast, and it gives you a feel for what it's like. Maybe you'll like it. Lots of other people have, and they've gotten a lot of attention as a result.

Their new album, FREE TO STAY, came out this year on Barsuk Records (aka "The House That Death Cab For Cutie Built"), and was simultaneously a better and worse experience. It sounds better, the songwriting's more diverse, there's a wider sonic palette. But there's a sense - to me at least - that they're in danger of getting a little lost in all the machinery surrounding them.

It was hard for me to put a finger on it until the Earl Greyhound video, for some reason, made me think about bands that I didn't have a visual representation of, and I basically had little idea of what Smoosh actually looked like. And I wondered what somebody would think if they first discovered them through video instead of sound. So I did some YouTubing, and was kinda surprised that even when controlling to the same song, the experience can be vastly diverse.

Here, for instance, is the awkward but endearing live on TV Smoosh:


This is bizarre because, you know, they're teenagers playing on a national television show. Despite the national TV stage, you get a real sense of who they are from it as people, from their smiles and stray glances at each other. Which, as already noted, I find endearing.

Then, on the other hand, we have the slick music video Smoosh:


On a certain level, I really appreciate this video. It's pretty clever, some nice technical tricks. I'd probably be quite proud if I had directed it.

But I think back to the live Smoosh, and what I found endearing is pretty much absent. I'm not processing their personality; I'm gawking at camera tricks. Who are they? Dunno. But that subtitle thing was funny!

I'm not sure what all this adds up to, exactly. But I worry that the first Smoosh will be eaten by the second Smoosh, and I'm a little sad about that.

If you're so inclined, you can spend a lot more time on YouTube seeing Smoosh play at live concerts, in record stores, etc., and you can triangulate your image of them in your head.

But I don't have time because, like I said, I'm heading for an island.

Play nice while I'm gone.

NAPCAST VII POSTED

Click on the playlist to go to the Podomatic site and the player.

If you have an easier time viewing the embedded player, go HERE.



Last weeks Name That Tune Challenge was "Baby Elephant Walk" by Henry Mancini.

Clinton provided the music for this week's NTT challenge, because he was the first person to correctly identify the Mancini song, though a couple of you came close. (Thanks!)

Once again, the first person to email me with the correct song name and artist (at nap@podomatic.com or email me through my Blogger profile) will have the opportunity to provide the music for next week's NTT challenge.

Hope you like it.

Two shows, one night, and how two headliners bored me silly.

Given that payday coincided with a show with Sharks and Sailors and My Education, I figured that this was a sign from above to get my heinie out. By now I'm sure you know that I'm a big fan of S&S and My Education. Sharks and Sailors is a band I admire for their musicianship and ability to play off each other. Live I just get sucked into hearing Mike and Al's guitars subtly play off each other as Melissa and Phil provide a brilliant rhythm section. The arrangements never get cluttered despite the busyness of the music which allows the emphasis to moves from player to player. From an audience point of view, that means you can always pick up something different each time which is really nice in a rock band. But whereas Sharks and Sailors work off of complexity My Education builds organically from a simplicity. Layers are placed upon layers much like watching a painter at work and before you know it the violin, bass, keyboards, and drums have sucked you in. It's deceptively simple. Much like Krautrock it emphasizes a recurring pattern that becomes a mantra but try to pull it off with less than inspired performers and you get the headlining act - LA's Red Swallows.

Now I'll admit that when I first saw the tattooed buzz cut guitarists my expectations were a bit low but when I noticed a lap steel player my interest was piqued. The first piece was fair but the lap steel player at least added enough to make the band seem promising. On the second song, the lapsteel player moved to bass and the band then proceeded to make some of the most uninteresting instrumental rock I'd heard in quite some time. The tones were muddled and unvaried, the arrangements were formulaic where by the third piece it was clear when the heavy part was coming in and when it would diminuendo. Worse the riffs they were playing were horribly uninteresting and the interplay between the guitarists was mechanical, cold and calculated. It was truly underwhelming especially given the fact that the first two bands had explored the same exact territory but done so creatively and with musicianship that showed wit and spontaneity. In fact Red Sparrows were so uninteresting that by the middle of the third song I began to make my way out. Given that I don't get out that often, the simple measure is this: if I stay home and watch TV or go to sleep will I get better use of my time? Here, it clearly was not.

So, it was that I bade avoir to both of the opening acts and headed out to Super Happy Funland to catch Rotten Piece, Concrete Violin, and Costes. As luck would have it, I had missed all but Costes but everyone kept telling me that I was in for a treat yet, again, I found myself underwhelmed. For god knows how long, I watched as a man and a woman sang into Sammy Hagar microphones that were so distorted as to make what they were saying unintelligible. So given the lack of context, I got to watch as the two explored various bodily fluids and act out some unintelligible opera. If Meatloaf and Alice Cooper formed a French performance art group, it might go something like this.

"OOOH look at me, I smear fake sheeeet on myself! Look, I peees into a cup, OOOOOH! Look at my penis. Ooooohh I am shoving something in an orifice. "

Sorry bub, I'm a parent with a son and his dog. You know what that means? I see piss and shit daily. It's really not that big a deal. Also, I know you think people fucking is like weird and edgy but you know what, it's not a big deal. People do it everyday. Penises, Vaginas, and Assholes? My main though the entire performance was "Only White people can get away with stuff." When I hear someone using "edgy" used dismissively, I will now reference this performance.

Then after the show something amusing happened. For no apparent reason Don Walsh, Domokos, and Olivia (of Organ Failure) began an impromptu Hootenanny outside in the patio. Don Walsh and Olivia played guitars as Dom threw out the most ridiculous rhymes that came to his head. Eventually when Dom would start getting too blue Don would yell at him to "Clean up that shit!" or "Man, why the fuck do you have to do that." But even with Don playing Martin to Domokos' Lewis. they never dropped a beat and just kept it going for a good 20 minutes singing about god knows what. But it was organic, clever, and inspired - just flat out footstomping good (literally). In short it was everything you'd want from a musical experience - something real and of the moment. Something that, without a camera, was just something to be committed to memory as beautiful and spontaneous. And all it took was drunk people with guitars.


I'm not sure what the moral of this story is but I guess it has something to do with the fact that the main event may not be what's worth experiencing.


Links:

The Good
Rusted Shut
A Pink Cloud
Sharks and Sailors
My Education
Rotten Piece

The Bad
Red Sparrows

and the French.
Costes

Turn It Up

I can't listen to a lot of new music; it's just too “loud.” And before you kneejerk with the “you’re too old” response (true as it may be), I don't mean that it's loud, because how could anybody be against loud music*? No, I mean “loud”—music that isn't actually any louder but that lacks any dynamic range. It’s only louder to ears that don’t know any better. Generally these ears belong to people who are trying to sell music and think that the best way to do so is to make them sound like a television commercials, where somebody yells at you to buy furniture while shaking a fistful of cash.

“Loud” music is the product of a “look at me” culture that is in constant competition for attention. It’s a culture that thinks that one bit of quiet, one second of sound that isn't as loud as can be, is going to cause the listener to lose interest. This isn't music that's designed to be listened to; it's music designed to be played in the background while you shop. Apparently the idea is that you go into a shop and you are such a fool that you can be parted with your money for just a song. You can’t make this stuff up.

Audio nerds call this “loud” thing compression. It’s not the sort of compression that lets you turn a full range audio file into a much smaller MP3 file**, no this is the sort of compression meant to flatten music into little more than the sound of a vacuum cleaner. I'm not the only person who thinks so. This territory is well covered, but it's bothering me this week, so I'm going to contribute to the noise.

There is a whole industry making devices to compress music—solid state, tubes, software—if you can imagine it, they are building it. I'm not some purist; sometimes compression is useful when trying to make an uneven performance a little steadier, and sometimes compression is necessary to comply with the law. Radio stations use compression to keep them from crossing over into frequencies occupied by other radio stations. The problem is abuse. Radio stations that once were just trying to stay legal began competing with other radio stations to see who could be the loudest—because loud attracts ears and ears sell ads. Radio started going for maximum "loud" and the result is a generation that grew up listening to over-compressed music. When they hear music, it’s supposed to sound like a vacuum cleaner.

To be honest, I'm one of this generation and unfortunately I can say that some amount of compression makes things sound right to my ears. But even though some compression sounds right to me, the ever increasing use of it does not. Can I do anything about it? Probably not. And even if I could, I don’t want to tell people how they should be listening to music. That’s not going to stop me from complaining, though.

*Unless it's the middle of the night and you live next door to me. In that case, curse you.

**Data compression has its own set of problems.

Week 17: Atahualpa Yupanqui

Also included: Part 5 of The Book of Fables.

To Supay, Lord of the Ucu Pacha.

As much as music may be a universal language, and even without taking into account any lyrics it might have in an unknown language, it is surprisingly difficult for people to get into music that doesn't have a certain degree of familiarity. I have always lived a double life in the most basic sense of the word, having spent most of my life going back and forth between two cultures with very distinct musical traditions. These two musical traditions hardly ever intersect above the lowest common denominators – most Americans know J-Lo and Ricky Martin and most Puerto Ricans know Mariah Carey and Puff Daddy. Even those of us who live in places with strong exile communities, such as New York’s Puerto Rican community or El Condado’s American community, rarely get into the music beyond hearing it out of apartment or car windows. And one of the reasons few of us investigate the music coming from the other side of the tracks is that it's just not familiar enough. Not being familiar means first, that upon initial listenings everything just sounds the same and second, that we have no context within which to familiarize ourselves with it, no friend to introduce us, no blog to read about it, no way to relate it to our lives. It is only when one starts to get familiar with the music that one begins to distinguish the differences between one song and the next and one thus one begins to develop a taste for what one likes or doesn't like about it.

Throughout my life I have made various efforts to familiarize those around me with the music I like. It's kind of a fun game. I play you a song i like, you play me a song you like. Not unlike this blog. The success of such efforts varies. Playing the Butthole’s Sweat Loaf at a family get together was not successful. Playing Piero at my local dive was pretty successful. Playing Sonic Youth for my roommates in 1985 was not successful, playing Sonic Youth for my roommates in 1989 was very successful. Playing Piazzola is almost always successful in most circumstances, so is AC/DC. So here’s another attempt at familiarizing my surroundings with music I like.

Atahualpa Yupanqui is one of the dead guys I’ve listened to most of my life (though he wasn’t dead at first, he died in 1992). This is music I’ve heard since the very first days of my life. Music my mother listened to and her mother listened to. Not only was Yupanqui a great guitarist, writer, and singer, but he was also an archivist, ethnologist, and revivalist of South American folk music. The musical impact of Yupanqui on South American music can probably best be compared to Woody Guthrie’s impact on North American music.

Here he is singing El Alazan, a song about a dead horse.


And these are the translated lyrics for one of the songs on this week’s NAPcast. The other piece on the NAPcast is instrumental.

LOS EJES DE MI CARRETA (THE AXLES OF MY CART)
Because I don’t oil the axles, they say I’ve given up.
But I like the way they sound, why would I want ‘em oiled up?
It’s boring, too boring, following and following footsteps
Way too long the way, without something to distract me.
I don’t need silence. I don’t have anything to think.
I used to, but a long time ago, now I don’t think anymore.
The axles of my cart, I’m never going to oil ‘em.

What’s your experience with either introducing people to new music, or having others introduce new music to you?

And here’s part 5 of The Book of Fables*:
THE TEENAGER AND THE MOTIONLESS BUSKER

The center of the Universe is not the sun, not the Rod of Asclepius, not Mecca, not Mount Olympus, not Toronto, not that place were the Dr. Who ship landed. Some say that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle proves that it is impossible to accurately find the actual location of anything, much less the center of the Universe. Others even claim that there is no center at all in the Universe. They are all wrong. There is a center of the Universe, but like mathematical singularities it is difficult to define and not well behaved and like naked singularities it is infinitely dense and can break down the laws of physics and cause chaos in the cosmos. The children and grown ups will try to deny it, but the truth remains that The Teenager is the center of the Universe.

Sometime around her twelfth birthday, the daughter of María and the Folk Singer became The Teenager. As a child she had lived peacefully in the Basement Hippie Camp the way all children lived at the Basement Hippie Camp, but sometime after her twelfth birthday she began to get the urge to jump. She started jumping as she walked, jumping in one place, jumping over things, jumping all day long. And suddenly she started to feel the constraints of living in the Basement Hippie Camp. She wanted to jump higher than the low ceilings allowed, further than the long tunnels permitted. Finally one day she couldn’t take it any longer; she did like her mother before her, and leapt up the basement stairs and out the basement door. And once outside she took one big leap, the biggest leap of her life. She leapt so high she couldn’t see which direction she was moving, or how long the leap would last. Sometimes it felt like she could land at any moment, but other times she felt like she would be in the air for years. As she moved through the air in her jump she could feel the gravity of the world below her giving way, her own body in motion beginning to create its own gravitational pull until she could feel the earth moving around her instead of the other way around. Her gravitational pull continued to grow until she felt a strange instability that was at once stable, and she was confused. So she looked around and what she saw amazed her. Suddenly she could see the whole Universe revolving around her. From her central position she could see life and death, love and hate, beauty and ugliness, happiness and sadness, good and evil, movement and stasis, fate and choice, flexibility, idealism, horror, peace, madness, all of it. And she realized she was now the center of the Universe. She had become The Teenager.

Meanwhile, the Motionless Busker calmly sat on his spot. It was the same spot he had occupied since he had stopped moving, and that was so long ago that no one remembered a time when he moved. Actually very few people remembered him at all. Even though a multitude walked by him every day, few noticed him. He didn’t mind. He was used to seeing them walk by him as he sat on his spot, motionless except for his fingers moving on his old guitar and his lips singing his old songs. And the passing multitude ignored him. They ignored him cause he was always there, always playing his guitar, his songs never too loud, never too quiet, nothing about him caught anyone’s attention. Occasionally someone, without stopping to listen, would toss a guilty coin in his hat, but the hat never got full, yet it was never empty either. How did he eat, how did he go to the bathroom, how did he take care of the basic necessities of life? No one knew, and no one cared. And he sat there and played his songs and he was comfortable, hidden, and invisible as he sat quietly watching the parade of the world go by him. But that day someone was going to stop and listen to his song.

The newly discovered Universe was a whirlwind of activity for The Teenager. Having the whole Universe spinning around her was a dizzying, almost nauseating experience, so when The Teenager saw the Motionless Busker calmly sitting on his spot amidst the madness of the Universe, she was immediately attracted. Although the Universe seemed to move around her at millions of miles per second, when she saw the Motionless Busker, the Universe seemed to stop and she was able to focus her scattered attention on the static giant. “Hey little girl,” said the Motionless Busker, “Wanna hear a song?” And without waiting for a response he started playing the oldest song he knew. It was a song taught to him by the Mountain Marching Band, and who knew where they had learned it since they had been around much longer than most. It was a song that with long single notes reached into the darkest corners of the heart to let in a dirge-like, percussive guitar rhythm that would suddenly explode with melodic lines that pierced the heart from the inside out as if with cold sharp blades. It was a song that was very sad. And The Teenager cried, and the song forever got imprinted into her memory and she would never ever forget it. The Motionless Busker finished the song and started to say something to The Teenager, but she had already been distracted by something else in that Universe that spun around her and was gone before he could finish a sentence. But he had made an impression on her, and The Teenager started to learn to play the guitar and spent years trying to figure out how to play that song that had made her so sad that day with the Motionless Busker.

However, unbeknownst to The Teenager and the Motionless Busker, someone else had also stopped to listen to the sad song. The Large Head of the Composing Family was walking by when he heard the ancient sad song, and immediately recognized something special in it. Being an expertly trained musician he was able to quickly write the notes of the song into his little composing mini-notebook and even before the song was over, he was gone. That day when he arrived at his Composing Family home, he immediately gathered the family around and played the song for them on the piano, saying “Family, we have a winner here.”

Moral: If you want to make an impression on a teenager, play them a song you like.

*Since this story is actually turning into some kind of thing, I think I want to change the name of this to something else. Book of Fables is just not cutting it for me. Any suggestions?

I know a blog you might like

If to my bar compadre I did say the words in this post's title, I'd be lucky if in return was given a blank stare. Folks I know see blogs as an extension of mundane in the vain "Dear Diary" stuff. No, the people with whom I enjoy a pint of confabulation are completely uninterested in internet communities. Even among cyber-people, I gather few read blogs, especially and cruelly those forwarding every piece of garbage crossing their inbox.

Blogs are oft refered to as shouts for attention. I myself hear whispers, no matter if the rantor uses ALL CAPS AND DOUCHELOADS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!

or not.

Yes, blogs are intimate affairs. Yet a valuable difference between a daily "relationship" with, say, Conan O'Brien and a relationship with a blogger is direct communication. I went to a Robbie Fulks' Secret Country show this Sunday featuring the bluegrass great Bobby Osborne. The show was intimate and more so because a few years ago, Bobby's younger brother Sonny gave me personal banjo* advice. I purchased a four string banjo in Denver while Sonny was in Tennessee holding internet "banjar" court. I felt special communicating with Sonny Osborne. He's a bluegrass great. The Osborne Brothers were the first to record Rocky Top (now the Tennessee State Song) . He doesn't know me from Adam except that I purchased an irish tenor banjo. Anyway, for a while I paid close attention to Sonny's life and soon it became evident that he took ill. He now leaves the touring to those with the energy for it (like his 77 years young older brother Bobby). At the show I mulled all of that and you know, you simply can't get that kind of mullings from the televizzle.



Of course, many musicians hold court online. You'd think these performers think all the world's a stage. Take Gary Lucas of Captain Beefheart, Jeff Buckley, Gods and Monsters fame. He rambles blog-like frequently. A New York musician's musings may indeed be mundane. They are interesting to me though. Cow teets are not interesting to me but if somebody blogs about them than I'm sure somebody reads it. No sir, I am not much interested in milk cows but I am interested in how Sugar Hill Studios is run.



Although I'm a teeny bit less interested in what it's like to be a young nun (Carlos, in Spanish también) or drawing on index cards, I'm interested enough to check them out from time to time.
You know, you can catch up on a whole month of nun time in ten internet minutes.

Music blogs have an especially attractive quality; the ability to deliver the music they write about, like this blog I know you might like. The of Mirror Eye. I was led to this blog by a French friend living in Greece and it took me a couple of months before I realized the fellow is in Chicago. I figured that out when he wrote about my favorite BBQ stand. Anyway he gives fans a little info and a lot of music while not worring about advertisers or timeliness. Which brings me to my point.

The End.

P.S. Attention Ian and "Peel Session" dreamers of indie-land, here's something new to out do, DayTrotter, when simply writing a blog won't do. Holy sh*t, this is good stuff.

P.P.S. In honor of Black History Month, my music entry for this week are the Campbell Brothers dueling "Sacred Steel" guitars, black Pentecostal gospel from Upstate New York with pedal and lap steel guitars. These guys played with Bobby Osborne on Sunday. Also included is one "I have a dream" track from Gary Lucas & Jeff Buckley. This track will be up for one week.

The Campbell Brothers - Morning Train.mp3

The Campbell Brothers - Walk With Me.mp3

Jeff Buckley & Gary Lucas - Mojo Pin.mp3

*In light of recent comments, I just want you to know that I am not going on a banjo bender. Plunk tiddly plunk plunk. PLUNK PLUNK.

This is a Cave-In

When I was but a wee, I knew this guy who never took a bath. Ever. Or at least that’s the way I remember it. He had a roommate, and that dude was also a little skint on the soap usage. But what they lacked in sanitary rituals, they recovered in droves with their respective tastes in the auditory arts. Without these two unsavory characters I would have taken that much longer to discover bands like Captain Beefheart, the Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth, and countless others. Their home a hovel, their souls forever corrupt and bankrupt, they were none the less the lords of all that was just out of my impoverished creative reach; and one of them adored, absolutely fucking adored, Godflesh.

If you know me – and god knows I hope that you don’t – then you are more than aware of my taste for distorted guitars. But for some reason, while I was always wont to take the musical suggestions of the pungent duo, I never took the time to get into Godflesh. The idea of super distorted guitar coupled with the (at the time) doofus-ly hip “industrial” that had dork wangs at full mast was more than slightly repellent to me. Don’t forget that this was the cusp of the Ministry and Nine Inch Nails explosion that I worked so hard at ignoring for so long. And just for the record, having a drum machine and guitars does not make your music “industrial,” it makes you a rock star with a control complex, (or in the case of Al Jourgensen, a drug problem).

If we were tracing the arc of this story from mote to badly realized idea, then we might be able to make a connection between my Godflesh disconnect and my growing concern with said friend’s admiration of a relatively new band at the time by the name of Soundgarden. Keep in mind that at this time, their presence on the scene brought about a debate that swept the tempestuous hot air of the underground press on the merits of classic rock versus the DIY appeal of punk and indie. Fools on either side of the argument lined up to pledge their allegiances. Me, I never bought that if/or bullshit; I just knew that I thought Soundgarden blew donkey ass. So when my friend gave up his Soundgarden shirt for a Godflesh one, I was in no mood to take heed. He was off the list, a wayward youth, as Mike Gunn used to say; and his opinions were rendered moot in the process. And I returned his betrayal of taste by getting him loaded on Quaaludes and laughing as he passed out in the middle of the floor and became our table for the night. Long story, and I’ve already said too much.

Had I stuck it out, I may have been treated early on to the music of Justin Broadrick. As it is, my intro to his music was through Napalm Death. He signed on as their guitarist, and quickly helped establish them as the leaders of a brutal, lightning fast brand of metal called grindcore.

Okay, so, end of history lesson. Let’s just say that Broadrick split Napalm Death, formed Godflesh (and numerous other projects), broke that band up, and ended up forming his current project, naming it after the last song on Godflesh’s last album: Jesu.

So what is Jesu? Well, if you’ve heard last week’s podcast, then you have heard them. If you haven’t, check out the podcast for fuck's sake. They’re a three-piece band with Broadrick on guitar and vocals, Ted Parsons (ex Swans) on drums, and Diarmuid Dalton on bass. As for the music, it’s crushingly slow and heavy, a sort of blend between the hyper-distorted shoegazing crunch of My Bloody Valentine and Codeine, and the methodical brutality of doom metal and early Swans. Parsons sounds like he's playing with hammers. And while they are undoubtedly massive and heavy, Broadrick is smart enough to bring elements of melody and texture into the murk. It's dense, moody and thoughtful all at the same time.

So if you go back into the electronic ether and look up this Broadrick guy, what you come up with is a dude with a dramatically well-defined depressive sensibility. He’s made a pretty successful career out of playing music that touches almost solely on the darker recesses of our lives, and it’s this sort of music that often makes me irrevocably… happy.

It doesn’t make me happy in the poppy-hopping, rose-water-snorting sort of way. I don’t hear this and rejoice at the wondrous beauty of mankind. No, instead of all that, I enjoy when someone is able to take a subject as common as pain, or loneliness, or even confusion, and express it so clearly, and so honestly. I find it comforting when it's done right. It’s this sort of music, above all, that makes me get the inner warm-and-cuddlies. Because seriously folks, if you really did spend any quality time with me, then you would find yourself enduring a guy who not only sees the bad in humanity, but also can’t seem to avoid seeing the bad. Maybe it’s a curse, but it could be a gift too. My vote is on gift, and I think I know what yours is.

And I’m not pulling a “look at me, I’m Peter Murphy,” move here or anything. If I’ve learned anything from my years of soul crushing errors in judgment, it’s that if I want to have any chance of living to see the next year, then I’d better start microfocusing on my environment. I’d better begin to appreciate the miniscule and the mundane, because before long, I could be a dead man with an eternally tiny picture of the world. And that philosophy seems to work for me. But I will never shake the general disdain I have for the way people can be, the absolutely base and animalistic ugliness that we all too often share for each other. What I have a really hard time dealing with now is the fact that most people don’t seem to care too much about this. The prevailing wind says, “So what, sure we’re an ugly bunch, but at least we still have our rollover minutes.”

So, Jesu? The band is fairly adept at expressing these sorts of feelings (at least to me), and at the end of the day, it's this sort of thing that can really make me happy. There's just nothing worse than trying to keep up the game face when you really feel like you may have been set adrift. Maybe it’s just not quite so bad if you have someone to share the burden.

So instead of being weighed down by the sheer mass of dark music, and instead of falling prey to the lures of depressive subject matter, I alternatively find myself uplifted by much of this sort of thing. It's not a morbid fascination (though I've passed through that one as well), it's more of an honesty. So go back and listen to Jesu on the podcast. Hear them sandwiched by the more familiar sounds of happiness, and try and hear what I'm talking about. Forget being cool, or playing it safe, or whatever usually leads you away from this sort of thing. And if you're impressed, go out and buy Jesu's new record, because it just came out today.

an s.o.s. across the universe

Nostalgia still sucks, unless one is referring to the serious medical disorder, and in that case, it may be giving us insight as to how our brains require some sense of place, community, and everyday stability. Is it possible to have a nostalgia for the future that never happened? I don’t believe that all bands recalling music from the 70s are actually ‘channeling’, ‘paying homage to’, or merely imitating their predecessors in a nostalgic way as if to appeal to our rose-tinted view of the past. For me, the hippie critique of our modern lifestyles remains extremely relevant.

I missed seeing Mr. Scruff this week because I worked close to 80 hours and then somehow managed to sleep through the entire gig, when I only meant to take a nap. It didn’t help that my compatriot, Scott, was still working in one of the many corporate law office cells in midtown past 2:30am and, presumably, couldn’t leave because one Wall Street company was trying to eat another, as usual, otherwise known as mergers and acquisitions. We had purchased our tickets a month in advance and had both been looking forward to it as a break from the usual grind. This has to lead to questions of work/life balance, or how the hell did this state of affairs come to pass?!

It doesn’t help that everybody in New York is starting to have this homeless look about them- bedraggled and weary, unwashed with few options for changing clothes, and a few of us even look as if we’ve been cutoff from the medicine keeping us from teetering over the edge. What used to be pretty fluffy snow is now just grime-collecting residue. I have to stop moaning now, because I know Claire and Kilian have it much worse.

Saturday, I had to stop by Beacon’s Closet to trade some old clothes (and clothes that my well-intentioned mother bought for me) for newish and vintage rags. The cashier was playing Witchcraft on the store sound system. Somehow, it didn’t strike me as nostalgic at all, even though they cover Pentagram and the singer has an admitted fondness for Tony Iommi. It struck me as necessary.

Living in New York and putting up with a meatgrinder existence could seem like a life-style choice from the outside. Some of us can’t imagine how we could ever escape from it, though. So, we try to make it bearable. Thankfully, someone at BAM had the fortuitous sense to book Earl Greyhound in the café this weekend and I managed to overcome my desire to remain under the covers. They’re fantastic and they’re from Brooklyn. I’m going to leave it to you all to make the comparisons and decode their influences, as I think you’ll do a better job than I would. In the Bullinga household, it was my brother who was the Led Zeppelin fiend, and no matter how much I loved that band, my brother loved them more. Same with Pink Floyd. Don’t think he was ever into AC/DC, though he tried.

On a sidenote, I have an ex-boyfriend in Italy who had memorized and sang the lyrics to most of Led Zeppelin’s cannon, but didn’t bother trying to understand what the words meant in English. He would blast the stereo in his beat-up shit car, doing his Robert Plant imitations while the car groaned at the inclines of the Appennini, and not have any idea what “If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, It's just a spring clean for the May queen” could possibly be referring to. Come to think of it, maybe neither do I, but at least I thought I knew what the words were indicating at that time.

It looks like Mr. Anaconda and Mr. Crane could have the opportunity to see EG live very soon, provided they don’t crash their van again. I would recommend seeing them now, because I think they’re going to be big. Some folks are wondering why they’re not signed to a major label yet. I’m hoping they don’t get too big too fast. Something was lost between Kasabian's first and second records, and that Empire video seems a bit gratuitous and melodramatic- like they take themselves as rockstars way too seriously. I love this video, though, of all the fans streaming out from a concert in Glasgow singing the tune to Empire- gotta love it when crowds that do that.

As a reminder for those of us who habitually fail to notice when tickets go on sale for events we’d like to attend, Bonnaroo tickets go on sale this Friday, February 23^rd. (I'm not quite sure I want to go yet, as hard choices will have to be made). I had thought it might be nice to go see the Arcade Fire at one of the five shows they were performing at Judson Memorial Church, but the tickets sold out within the 9 o'clock hour of January 5^th. Just as well, I probably would have slept through it.

Thanks to Jennie and Son of Ravyn for subbing in for me for the past two weeks.

You can listen to Earl Greyhound's entire album here.

i had a dream.

this is a true story.

A couple nights ago, I had a dream about the NAP. Specifically, someone commented that our posts were too long and self-indulgent. This in turn spawned hundreds of comments. These comments, as was the standard, were published in booklet form, on a daily basis. I remember being flattered because Deerhoof commented, as did Goldfrapp. (I don't actually like what I've heard of Goldfrapp's music, but I find her attractive in that Weimar Republic decadent/indolent kind of style that would be impossible to deal with in real life but it's not like that's an issue anyway because there's nothing real life about it. See also: most Fassbinder female protagonists.)

But that's not the point. The one comment that I recall ever-so-slightly in detail from this daily booklet was by Kilian, who trenchantly pointed out why each of our posts are so long. I forgot most of them, but for mine he said "DD always writes about what he's thinking about trying to figure out what he's going to write about instead of writing about something."

I don't know how objectively true that is on a post-by-post basis (and if it's not, don't blame Kilian, blame Dream Kilian, but anyway), but it definitely made me rethink my post this week, which was going to be on The Mountain Goats.

The Mountain Goats (who are always John Darnielle and sometimes other people, most currently and regularly Peter Hughes) have historically, as I think I've mentioned before, been My Favorite Band. I've followed them for over a decade, re-routed road trips and crossed state lines to see them play, sought out obscure releases, interviewed him in copious detail, put on a show with them, put him up at my house, forced them on anyone who would come into ear's length, put together a 3xCD compilation for someone who wanted a "best of" because I couldn't tighten it further, etc. ad infinitum.

(That interview, by the way, single-handedly coerced me into checking Mos Def's "Fear Not Of Man", which is on this week's podcast and is definitely awesome.)

But explaining why The Mountain Goats are my favorite band and defending against naysayers and - most pressingly to me right now - dealing with my frustrations with his latest album (described in detail, by the man himself, at that link) are things that would be thinking about trying to figure out what I'm going to write, instead of just writing the fucking thing, because often writing is how I think.

My only advice is this: it's not just all about the lyrics, but it all comes from the lyrics, so if you habitually don't listen to lyrics in music, you should probably bail here.

For the rest of you, I offer you some (arguably too much, but hey) evidence in favor of The Mountain Goats, starting with a song recorded in a great Chicago venue, here's "No Children" from the highly recommended TALLAHASSEE:


While we're on the Chicago tip, a song about Chicago sports (at a show Justin was at, if I'm not mistaken), badly framed but anyway, here's "Cubs In Five" from NINE BLACK POPPIES:


In addition to being an amazing song, this is from a show that my ex-girlfriend (and still very good friend), who I introduced to The Mountain Goats, decided to cross the Tasman Sea to attend, so I'm including it despite its PixelVision qualities (that other pixelated blob sharing a mic, by the way, is John Vanderslice) because it's the awe-inspiring "Palmcorder Yajna" from WE SHALL ALL BE HEALED:


This one is bad fidelity, but it's the song that got me into The Mountain Goats, illustrates the near-fanatical fervor that some fans have for his work, and bizarrely features him wearing a Batman costume, so here's the old classic "Going To Georgia" from ZOPILOTE MACHINE:


Are you sick of these yet? If not, my second favorite Mountain Goats love song ever, after "Twin Human Highway Flares" (which isn't on YouTube near as I can tell) is "Going To Queens" from SWEDEN:


And its sad counterpart about love dying is "Minnesota", from my favorite album, FULL FORCE GALESBURG:


And finally, a professional-style video for a great song even though the video itself is kinda cheesy and not quite in sync, this is "This Year" from the powerful THE SUNSET TREE (with the intro from that same album's "Dilaudid" weirdly edited on to the beginning, but so and anyway):


Do I expect anyone to watch all of these? No more or less than I expect them to read a heavily footnoted interview about obscurant trivia of a band. But hope never dies, as it says on a wall at KTRU.

NAPCAST EPISODE VI posted

Click on the playlist to go to the Podomatic site and the player.

If you have an easier time viewing the embedded player, go HERE.



Last weeks Name That Tune Challenge was "Right Down The Line" by Gerry Rafferty. It was easy, because I failed to remove the song and artist name from the track when I imported it into Garage Band. So, if you were using the player from the Podomatic site, it would have listed it for you.

Mr Anaconda has provided the music for this week's NTT challenge. (Thanks!)

Once again, the first person to email me with the correct song name and artist (at nap@podomatic.com or email me through my Blogger profile) will have the opportunity to provide the music for next week's NTT challenge.

Hope you like it.