In that sea of cars, trucks, busses, et cetera streaming from NOLA, is a 3-car mini-caravan containing six of my nuclear and extended family members and four birds. They left their homes on Saturday night and spent nearly 8 hours driving to Jackson. Seeing the news coverage of thousands of cars sitting on the freeways, I wished I could get some sort of audio snapshot of the scene. What were all those people listening to? It would be fun to see a histogram. I wonder in all the tens of thousands of man-hours people spent boarding up their homes and deciding what means most to them, what fraction of that time was spent making playlists for the drive. And what was on those playlists?
So I asked my family:
Car 1: My parents and my nephew - My nephew has hated music since he was old enough to say so (he's 17 now). [side note - I've never understood this - how does someone hate music from childhood? He would cover his ears and scream, no matter what the music. Is this a condition with a name?] They listened to WWL Radio.
Car 2: My sister and her other son (age 5) were driving my dad's car. For a while, they were also listening to the warnings and other "analysis" on WWL until Nikolai demanded something different. My sister had to make do with whatever was in my dad's cd player, which turned out to be Abbey Road. Apparently, Octopus's Garden is Nikolai's favorite.
Car 3: Matthew drove the third car and was the only person listening to music of his own choosing. But even he didn't prepare any special playlists. He said he just played mixes he'd made earlier and had in the car.
So there you go. I wonder if anyone had time to think about their music. Would I think about the music if I were about to lose my house? Probably not, I guess. Somehow that makes it even more interesting what was on those stereos.
They're in Memphis now. I'm watching tv on the internet as I type this, and a song just came on..."Who knows what tomorrow will bring...maybe sunshine and maybe rain..."
Definitely rain.
Addendum September 3, 2008 Half of the merry bunch made it back home to their respective homes tonight. Apparently it was a very smooth drive back into New Orleans from Memphis. I asked my sister again what she listened to on the way back. She said "i flipped radio stations, and wished sorely i'd brought my cds. :) listened to a bunch of stuff i have no idea what it is." I asked, "did you wish sorely enough to think next time to bring some CDs?" "No," she said, ":D - instead, i got exposure to more music. it worked out."
Tom Petty’s in town this weekend and I think it’s a good time to remember one of his most underrated records: his soundtrack for Ed Burns’s otherwise forgettable She’s the One.
I bought the soundtrack because I loved its signature song, “Walls,” which appears on the soundtrack twice. “Walls (Circus)” includes damn near eleventy people singing on it and probably thirty billion guitar and keyboard tracks. But no matter how much Rick Rubin tries to drown it in production, the song refuses to let its simple hook succumb.
I’m not sure why the song so affects me. Petty’s lyric, “You’ve got a heart so big, it could crush this town” might be the key. That little hook takes me in a bunch of different directions. I’ve included it on more than one mix tape for more than one girl, and it’s never meant quite the same thing. But maybe it is the production that lends it such immediacy. The second version, “Walls (No. 3),” is stripped down and features a more relaxed vocal from Petty. It’s terrible. It sounds like a rough mix that never got mastered, and it’s marred by a ridiculous harmonica solo.
That’s not to say the song can’t be treated sparely. Josh Ritter’s acoustic version captures its middling pleasures pretty well:
Much as I love “Walls,” the rest of the record is where She’s the One draws its staying power. Petty’s albums have always been half-filler, half-killer. Since filler is sort of the nature of the soundtrack beast, She’s the One is stronger than it should be, despite the instrumentals and two versions each of the record’s strongest songs, “Walls” and “Angel Dream.”
“Angel Dream” is probably the most direct love song Petty’s ever done, on a record that’s uncharacteristically personal and confessional. It’s impossible to say whether Petty was just trying to channel the movie or whether he used the soundtrack as a bucket for songs that didn’t appropriately maintain his usual distance.
It’s the covers that best capture the hurt and recrimination that seem to color the whole record. Lucinda Williams’s awesome “I Changed the Locks” is the most convincing rocker on the record, although Petty’s vocal doesn’t do much to communicate the vulnerability and bitterness of the original. Here’s Williams and Elvis Costello doing the song together. How’s that for vulnerable and bitter?
Petty fares better with an unexpected cover of “Asshole”, a song from Beck’s now classic One Foot in the Grave (easily my favorite Beck record that isn’t Midnite Vultures). My favorite thing about Petty’s version is the fact that freaking Lindsey Buckingham is singing backup. If I’m Beck circa 1996 and only famous for three years, this blows my Southern California mind.
She’s the One was kind of a return to form for the Heartbreakers. Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers were both great solo records. But sandwiched between them was the Jeff Lynne-produced Into the Great Wide Open. Except for “Learning to Fly,” I hated that record. Although the Heartbreakers were credited, it sounded like Full Moon Fever-lite, and the songwriting was dull, dull, dull.
On my favorite She’s the One songs, “Grew up Fast” and (especially) “Hope You Never” the Heartbreakers sound like they got their balls back. And the lyrics are mean enough for an entirely different mix tape.
I hope you never fall in love Hope you never get your heart broken I hope you never fall in love With somebody like you
I hope you never give a damn Hope you never lose your perspective I hope you never fall in love With somebody like you
I wish you well I wish you everything and more Forgive my ignorance I was starting to ramble on and
I don’t know what Petty was thinking. Wasting all these songs on a soundtrack for some bland filmmaker’s second movie. But She’s the One isn’t a throw-away. It’s got some of my favorite Tom Petty songs ever. Maybe he thought he’d have plenty more classic tunes with which to stock his future records. He didn’t. She’s the One is the last good record he ever made. It’s also one of his most consistent. I can’t think of a single song he’s written since that sounds as good as the worst thing here.
But he crapped out hit singles for 20 years, and that’s a pretty good run. Now I just wish I could find the CD to go with my She’s the One jewel box. I had to download these songs from Amazon just to write this post. Some records, though, I don’t mind buying twice.
I have to wonder why, after a long campaign with rallies which had some good music--or at least had Tom Petty, Obama picked a Brooks & Dunn song to be the punch line for his biggest speech. Sure, I know the lyrics for "Only in America" fit Obama's "living the American dream" theme, but so do lots of songs that don't have a steel guitar*. It's a fair assumtion that this song is not really Obama's type of music. His music leans more toward the Stevie Wonder end of the pop spectrum. Maybe it would have seemed like too much Stevie Wonder to play "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" like he has at many other rallies. He could have picked the will.i.am Obama song. Or he could have picked the even more horrible Dave Stewart Obama song, whose release seems to have been timed for it to be used for this very purpose. Nope, Obama picked a song that Bush used at the Republican Convention. And not only did Bush use the Brooks & Dunn song, he actually campaigned with them, so they are clearly Republican supporters**. I guess Obama should be glad they didn't sue him.
*And if you listen, the steel guitar, along with banjo, sound as if they were added as an afterthought to remind you that you're listening to "country" music.
**Or they just know their audience is likely to be Republican, à la Toby Keith.
This is a secret post. On the surface it looks like it is saying one thing, but really it is saying something else completely. You will read this and think you know what it says, because when we understand the words, we think we understand the meaning, either that or the words make no sense. But these words make sense in that they are put together in a way that is grammatically correct and designed to convey a meaning. But that is not their true meaning, their true meaning is secret, because it is written in a secret language, a secret language that not only can't be written, but can’t even be spoken. Because the consequences would be truly terrible. That’s why it’s a secret.
So I can’t tell you what this post says, but what I can do is point you towards the code. Because like every secret language, this one also has a code. And if you want to know what is being said here, you will need the code.
I will tell you how to find the code, not because I want you to go find it or because I think that you will. I will tell you just so you know that there is indeed a code, and so that maybe one day, maybe years from now, maybe you will find yourself at the right time, and the right place, and then maybe you’ll be able to know what this post is about. Unless you already do.
So here’s where the code is: The code is under the sand in front of Foxy’s Tamarind Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Isles.
On New Year’s Day, on Great Harbour Bay, Foxy himself sits in front of his bar and plays a few songs on his Spanish guitar. Foxy plays most days, around sunset. Barefoot, because I don’t think he has ever worn shoes, he sits facing the sun as it sets over the far end of the bay, and plays for his friends and the few visitors who have made the trip to this distant Caribbean outpost.
However, on New Year’s Eve, known as Old Year's Night in the islands, hundreds of sailboats from around the world gather on Great Harbour Bay. They come for one of the greatest Old Year's Night parties on the globe. The bay fills with boats until you can almost cross the bay from one end to the other just by stepping from deck to deck. And the people sing and dance into the night until they pass out on the sands.
Later the next day, New Year’s Day, after most of the sailboats have left, Foxy once again sits on his chair to play, like he does most sunsets. But on New Year’s Day, instead of facing the sunset, he moves his chair to a different spot right on the shore, and plays his guitar facing the open waters of his lady in the blue dress, as he affectionately calls the sea beyond the bay.
Right next to where Foxy sets his chair, there is a palm tree. It is a very old palm tree. The fishermen at the bay, who know the story of each palm tree like they know the story of the beach, might be able to help you find this palm tree, but fishermen don’t easily share their secrets. I will tell you though that during the terrible hurricane of 1916, this palm tree bent until its crown touched the sand, but it didn’t break, and now still graces the shore of Great Harbour Bay.
When you find the palm tree, sit at its foot with your back against the trunk and, along with Foxy, face the open sea. If the tide is high the water should be licking right at your feet. I sat on this same spot at the end of one summer, and waited for the night to fall, and waited for the storm to reach the shore. And right as I thought the storm would blow me away, I jumped into the bay and let the water carry me away. And I lost consciousness. I woke up on the sand, at the other end of the bay, and covered in seaweed, I walked back to Foxy’s in the dark.
So sit at the foot of this palm tree, and look out at Great Harbour Bay, and listen to Foxy play his guitar, and look beyond the bay at that lady in her blue dress. Then, with your left hand, dig a little under the sand until you find the root base of the palm, and feel with your fingers among the mass of tangled roots, and there you will find the secret code of this secret post.
I can’t tell you anymore than this, but I do hope that one day you’ll get to sit, at the foot of that palm tree with your hand in the sand, looking over the ocean and listening to Foxy play guitar, at the edge of Great Harbour Bay in Jost Van Dyke on the British Virgin Isles.
(No music) Yesterday was my oldest boy's first day of Kindergarten.
We woke up on time though the alarm didn't go off so I'm not sure how that happened.
Then we found out my youngest son has a high fever and will not be going to school, which means I am not going to work. And for that I am thankful as I need a break.
In trying to take his temperature, I dropped and broke the mercury thermometer. So I spent half the morning trying to clean up the glass and little balls of mercury.
Abe, on the other hand, woke up at once, which is very rare. He started to get his clothes on immediately and the first thing he said was that his 'nervous left him over night'.
He ate his cereal and then got his shoes and socks on. He described his outfit as 'super hero.' This was important for him.
He talked a mile a minute all the way there. We parked a couple of blocks away and walked in, dragging all of the school supplies. Then he got in line with his class. We saw our neighbor friend who got in trouble for coming over, and he mentioned that.
Then the Assistant Principal got on the stage and welcomed everybody and had them all wave bye bye to the parents.
I definitely teared up at that moment.
Then we walked back to the van and went back home.
That whole, they grow up in a minute thing, is starting to come true for me, so, thankfully I had the rest of the day with my little one before he grows up too and starts a band and lives by himself.
As part of the Chicago Jazz Fest, both Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman are playing this week for the cost of a couple of CTA train rides.
Sonny Rollins is the deepest tenor saxophonist to come out from under Thelonius Monk's broad wings. And from what I hear, the 78 year old blower still has the wind. If you're not familiar but want to be, I suggest you pick upNext Album which was a come back record for him in 1972 after an apparently self-imposed six year exile from the music business.
Ornette Coleman is, of course, a founder of the Free Jazz movement. His career spans decades but if you're not familiar with Coleman, I suggest you look back no further than his 2007 Pulitzer winning live album Sound Grammar.
I got my free Free Jazz kick started early Monday night - went to see Mike Reed's People Places & Things down at Millennium Park. They had with them some players from back in the day including a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra from their early ground breaking days in Chicago.
And this is where I stop writing and ask you to read this article about Mike Reed, a great musician and a huge contributor to the over all good of the Chicago music scene (this jazz drummer is oddly enough the man behind the Pitchfork Music Festival).
Not being a teenage girl, I wasn't expecting to get into Tegan & Sara, but after finding an in-store copy of their CD So Jealous for $1 at a CD store closing sale, I decided to give them a shot. Turns out I already had the album as a CD-R, which I'm sure I had probably never listened to. At first listen, the music seemed simplistic and the singing stilted, but soon I recognized the singing as charming and the simplicity as a sort of positive quality in itself, much like with punk rock or certain Pixies tunes. I especially liked the first four or so songs and often, after becoming annoyed with later tunes (some of which are quite annoying), would start the CD over from the beginning.
One day I was driving in my car, as I am wont to do when I can afford a bit of refined Texas tea, and heard an entrancing dance song on the radio. My gosh, was that Tegan & Sara? The song was something else, incredibly catchy and fun. I noted the lyrics, "I was walking with a ghost", and proceeded to my domicile. I looked on my CD and there it was, a song entitled "Walking With a Ghost". But when I put the CD on, the song wasn't the same at all; though good it was rather more staid, seemed slower and was missing certain things.
Hmm, perhaps it was a remix? I looked through their discography for remixes, but didn't find anything that sounded the same. The song did seem to be popular, though. The White Stripes even covered it. Finally, I came across the source. Turns out it was a mash-up by a San Francisco DJ named Party Ben. Apparently, he's most famous for a mash-up of Green Day, Oasis, Travis and Eminem called "Boulevard of Broken Songs".
In 2005 he made a mash-up of the Tegan & Sara track in question with a track by Mylo (who according to Wikipedia is a Scottish electronic musician) called "Paris Four Hundred". And so I give you the result of my quest, "Walking with a Ghost in Paris". (Confusingly, he also did a different version in 2007, but I don't like it as much.)
BTW, Party Ben's website is well worth checking out. Even if you're some kind of sicko who doesn't like mash-ups, you can't help but be amused by some of the covers he came up with, e.g.:
Picking up a little bit on Justin's post from Friday, I'm reading a book right now called This is Your Brain on Music - The science of a human obsession by Daniel J. Levitin. Levitin is a former successful music producer and engineer who got so fascinated with how people perceive music that he went back to school and got a Ph.D. in neuroscience. If I were a real blogger with a real blogger's conscience, I'd write a proper review of this book because it's awesome and deserves a more thorough discussion. I'm less than halfway through it, though, so a review would be premature at this point. I just want to talk about a few points he raises in the book.
The first 80 pages or so are spent defining the basic elements of music for the non-musician. One of the obvious upshots of this whole first section is that everyone is a music machine, whether they consider themselves to be or not, and that we acquire a sort of musical language and culture in ways that are poorly understood but seem similar to language. He says in the first pages that musicians might want to skip this introductory discussion of the elements of music, but I wouldn't recommend skipping anything here. I have been studying, performing, and producing music pretty intensely my whole life, and I learned things from this section of the book about pitch, timbre, melody, rhythm, etc. that I hadn't ever considered.
For example, the discussion of pitch gives just enough detail to convey the complexity of the issue without being completely overwhelming to the newcomer. I had always thought of pitch in a fairly simplistic way, roughly equivalent to the fundamental frequency of a tone, but apparently this is not the case. Pitch is, according to Levitin, a purely psychological phenomenon, not a physical one. He says sounds have no pitch until our brains get involved. In fact, if I'm reading him correctly, he says there is no sound until our brains get involved - until then, there are only vibrating molecules of air. This is a pretty interesting concept for me and it gets even more interesting when he starts talking about how our brains learn how to group sounds together to form coherent gestalts. Before he gets to that point in the discussion, though, he talks about the special relationships our brains have to pitch. Here's what he says about this:
"After sounds enter the ear, they pass by the basilar membrane, where certain hair cells fire, depending on the frequency of the sounds. The membrane acts like a motion-dector lamp you might have in your garden; activity in a certain part of the membrane causes it to send an electrical signal on up to the auditory cortex. The auditory cortex also has a tonotopic map, with low to high tones stretched out across the cortical surface. In this sense, the brain also contains a "map" of different pitches, and different ares of the brain respond to different pitches. Pitch is so important that the brain represents it directly; unlike almost any other musical attribute, we could place the elctrodes in the brain and be able to determine what pitches were being played to a person just by looking at the brain acitivty. And although music is based on pitch relations rather than absolute pitch values, it is, paradoxically, these absolute pitch values that the brain is paying attention to throughout its different statges of processing.
This direct mapping of pitch is so important, it bears repeating. If i put electrodes in your visual cortex (the part of the brain at the back of the head, concerned with seeing), and I then showed you a red tomato, there is no group of neurons that will cause my electrodes to turn red. But if I put electrodes in your auditory cortex and play a pure tone in your ears at 440 Hz, there are neurons in your auditory cortex that will fire at precisely that frequency, causing the electrode to emit electrical activity at 440 Hz - for pitch, what goes into the ear comes out of the brain!"
He then gets into an even more mindblowing discussion of timbre, wherein he talks about the phenomenon of the restoration of the missing fundamental. I couldn't believe I'd never heard about this, and now I can't stop thinking about it. Apparently if you hear a tone composed of a normal set of physically realistic overtones and you strip out the fundamental frequency (or the note's pitch), your brain will calculate from the overtones the fundamental frequency that should have been there and will restore it into your mental perception of the note. You can even deviate somewhat from the frequencies in the harmonic series and your brain will sort of interpolate to find the fundamental frequency that best fits the series. He then tells of a graduate student, Petr Janata, who tested this phenomenon by putting electrodes in an owl's brain. He played for the owl a version of Strauss's "The Blue Danube Waltz" that had the fundamental frequencies missing from the notes.
"Petr hypothesized that if the missing fundamental is restored at early levels of auditory processing, neurons in the owl's inferior colliculus should fire at the rate of the missing fundamental. This was exactly what he found. And because the electrodes put out a small electrical signal with each firing - and because the firing rate is the same as a frequency of firing (as we saw above) -- Petr sent the output of these electrodes to a small amplifier, and played back the sound of the owl's neurons through a loudspeaker. What he heard was astonishing: the melody of "the Blue Danube Waltz" sang clearly from the loudspeakers: ba da da da da, deet deet, deet deet. we were hearing the firing rates of the neurons and they were identical to the frequency of the missing fundamental."
Whoa. This might be old news, but it was new to me. I can imagine all sorts of interesting things you could do by putting electrodes in people's brains, putting headphones on them, and then hooking their brains up to loudspeakers and listening to their brains. I wonder what the output would sound like if you did this with 10 people simultaneously processing the same input. If this were legal, it could be all sorts of fun.
I can totally see why this guy left the world of music to study this stuff.
The other thing that struck me was the story of his interactions with the famous engineer, John R. Pierce, of Bell Labs and an early faculty member at Stanford's computer music center, CCRMA. Pierce is one of those people who is such a badass that you can't figure out which major accomplishment to list first when trying to briefly characterize him. He supervised the team of engineers who built and patented the transistor, and he apparently named it. He is also credited with inventing the traveling wave vacuum tube, and he launched the first telecommunications satellite, Telestar. He co-invented a tuning called the Bohlen-Pierce scale. He was a true innovator. Here's Levitin's Pierce story:
"I first met Pierce in 1990 when he was already eighty and was giving lectures on psychoacoustics at CCRMA. Several years later, after I had earned my Ph.D. and moved back to Stanford, we became friends and would go out to dinner every Wednesday night and discuss research. He once asked me to explain rock and roll music to him, something he had never paid any attention to and didn't understand. He knew about my previous career in the music business, and he asked if I could come over for dinner one night and play six songs that captured all that was important to know about rock and roll. Six songs to capture all of rock and roll? I wasn't sure I could come up with six songs to capture the Beatles, let alone all of rock and roll. The night before he called to tell me that he had heard Elvis Presley, so I didn't need to cover that.
Here's what I brought to dinner:
1) "Long Tall Sally," Little Richard 2) "Roll Over Beethoven," the Beatles 3) "All Along the Watchtower," Jimi Hendrix 4) "Wonderful Tonight," Eric Clapton 5) "Little Red Corvette," Prince 6) "Anarchy in the U.K.," the Sex Pistols
...Pierce listened and kept asking who these people were, what instruments he was hearing, and how they came to sound the way they did. Mostly, he said that he liked the timbres of the music."
I don't know why this story amuses me so much, but it's hilarious to me. Just the thought of having to introduce all of rock music in 6 songs to a genius whose primary experience with music is through physics and perhaps classical music...I don't know. It cracks me up. Maybe because I've worked with old guys like this who are so out of touch with popular culture that I can imagine how this scenario would play out.
It also made me think about which six songs I would come up with (minus Elvis) to "capture all of rock music." I doubt I would think of any of these. What songs would you choose?
Not that I don't like the songs I left off, but I just need a longer break before I can listen to them again. And then, the main reason I like the rest of the songs is the relaxed feeling I get, like I'm going down a country road in a truck with the windows down.
(might take a moment before the player updates)
I remember combing the racks at the old Sound Ex on Westheimer or Vinal Edge to see if Palace had a new record out.
I used to sit down in front of the wall of magazines at the Alabama Bookstop and read the reviews in Alternative Press.
Josh and I went to Cactus at midnight to buy Brighten the Corners. It totally sucked, and it felt like a kick in the belly, but we felt it at the same time.
I can’t count the number of times I stood tethered to a listening station trying to hear a new CD with of one good speaker.
I don’t do any of this stuff anymore, and I miss having that kind of time to kill. But despite the nostalgia I have for those college days in the Montrose, I think finding and listening to new music is a lot easier now. Certainly, I encounter a lot more of it. The reason, of course, is the Internet.
I don’t want to belabor the point, because I think everyone around my age experienced the same shift at around the same time. The advent of the Web and the post-Napster era of broadband means that we can subscribe to feeds instead of magazines. We can download craploads of music for orders of magnitude less than we used to pay—if we pay at all.
So yeah, you know all that.
I just wanted to take a few moments to share my personal music discovery workflow. This is how I get sounds:
Yeah, I’m a huge fan of paying less than 40 cents per download, but part of eMusic’s massive value is their commitment to top-notch editorial content. Their editors of the eMusic magazine review a ton of releases and supplement their reviews with features and interviews. They also have an employee blog that highlights new releases and hidden gems. But my favorite regular feature is the eMusic dozen, which collects 12 signature releases in a given category. For example, there are dozens devoted to labels (e.g., Southern Lord, Sun Records) and genres (More Essential Alt-Country, Scandinavian Jazz). Artists like Brit Daniel, Isaac Hayes, and Chuck D have also contributed their own compilations. Because eMusic is a subscription service and you lose the monthly downloads you don’t use, I’m constantly looking for new stuff. Fortunately, eMusic’s editors do a great job helping me discover new music and classic records I’d overlooked.
Last.fm is best known for its Scrobbler, a software program that keeps track of what you play on your computer and shares it with your friends. You can see my most recently played artists and songs below.
But I think their Web radio service is underrated. Like Pandora, if you visit the Last.fm Web site and enter the name of a song or an artist, Last.fm will play similar tracks for you. You can also listen to a style or “tag,” such as light jazz or black metal, or to the personalized station for any user (e.g., mrshl, or willadams). Most often, I listen to the “My Recommendations” station, which selects tracks based on all the songs I’ve submitted to My Library via the scrobbler. As different songs play, Last.fm will show you crap loads of information about whatever’s playing, including artist bio and similar artists.
Unlike Pandora, last.fm doesn’t force you to visit their Web page and view their ads. You can access the site through their scrobbling software, which is available on Mac, Windows, Linux and iPhone.
Recently, though, I’ve started listening to Last.fm via the Fire.fm firefox add on, which remembers your past radio stations and lets you access them in the address bar. It’s perfect for work, where it lets me listen to millions of songs without having to plug in a hard drive.
Other sites and tools I use
Metacritic Reviews of new releases collected from a wide swath of music sites, magazines, and papers.
Jango.com Another Pandora-like site that I actually like better than Pandora. A lot more control over what you hear, plus a larger library of songs. It’s not pretty, though. Looks like MySpace.
HypeMachine This site aggregates tracks and links from the most popular MP3 blogs around the Web. It’s got integrated Web radio, and it can sync with Twitter and Last.fm.
Pitchfork.tv The dominant Web zine everyone loves to hate is still awfully useful, especially if you want to see high-quality videos, films, documentaries, and interviews. This spin-off site proves that the much-dissed site is putting their massive cache of ad dollars to good use.
Allmusic.com Blog As if Allmusic weren’t already ridiculously useful, this year they started a blog, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite reads on the Web. They cover a lot of ground, and the lack of focus on a single genre or era of music makes it a particularly useful discovery tool.
Amazon MP3 I can’t stand iTunes, so Amazon was a welcome competitor. Lots and lots of high-bit rate, DRM-free music, and most of it is cheaper than iTunes. The lightweight downloading software will automatically add your music to iTunes or Windows Media Player.
MediaMonkey Not a music discovery tool per se, but this is what I use on my PC instead of Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media player. How good is it? I paid $34.95 for a lifetime license. It’s got features no other player has, and it can handle huge libraries of songs without freezing. Sadly, it’s Windows only.
8tracks Recently, Muxtape (a site I wrote about here) was shut down by the RIAA. That sucks, but the newish 8tracks (review here) is a better alternative. Unlike Muxtape, 8tracks lets you create more than one mix. It also imports album art, and it allows you to add tracks from other users without having to upload them first. Recommended. Here’s my profile.
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From this list, you can probably tell that I’m not scouring the Web for the most obscure shit I can find. The sites and tools I mention above are wide nets that allow me to cover an awful lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time. That’s the point of this post, I guess.
When it comes to finding new music, I don’t work as hard as I used to. But I buy more music now. And I listen to more music. I’m not sure the music is as great as what I loved in 1995. I’m pretty sure it’s not. But I haven’t given up trying to find it.
We are approaching the end of this project. It’s been almost two years since we started putting the songs together for this. And soon we will be doing final mixes, mastering, and artwork, and then finally manufacturing the thing. But there is still a little bit of recording to be done.
Recently Nathan Golub came in and put down pedal steel and cuatro parts on some of the tracks. Nathan is one of those string wizards one sometimes has the luck to meet; give him anything with strings and he’ll make it sound good. He can probably make music out of shoe strings. He played my old beat up cuatro and fell in love with it so he asked if I knew how to get one. A quick call to my mom in Puerto Rico and she was off to see her cuatro maker friend who quickly set Nathan up with a nice new cuatro.
Nathan recorded cuatro parts on three songs, but the bulk of the work he did was on pedal steel. For the pedal steel, we set up a Peavy Nashville 112 amplifier in a sound room, and Nathan sat in the control room, running through the amp and also direct. The session was, like Koko Goldstein might say, smooth. Nathan had already played the songs with us live, so it was just a matter of streamlining the material for the record. And Nathan is not only an attentive player, but also very easy to work with.
The coolest part of the whole session, though, might have been recording with the plate reverb. On the record, there is a crazy transition between Itch and Feet Beat Faster. Neither song has a pedal steel part, but we thought that the transition between them could use some. Well, to tell the truth, at this point we’re throwing everything we got into this transition. Later we’ll have to spend some time editing and mixing it. So when we were about to record the pedal steel part for the transition, Jesse Olley (engineer/co-producer extraordinaire) suggested we use the reverb plate. Reverb plate, said I? What reverb plate? And Jesse said I probably hadn’t noticed it, but it was right against the wall in the room with all the guitars. I had been in that room many times, so I went back and looked again. The reason I hadn’t noticed it is because it looks just like a super long, super tall and super narrow box, almost the size of the wall. I thought it was the wall.
I sent Jesse and email to get some details about the plate. Here’s what he wrote: “It’s an Echoplate II with modifications designed and sold by the guy who originally built it in Chicago in 1983, the last year of production. It's a suspended sheet of stainless steel with a speaker driver and two transducer pickups mounted on the plate. The one control is labeled reverb time scale. It goes from from 1 to 8. It came from the late Wavecastle Studio in Hillsboro where (among others) Zen Frisbee and The Family Dollar Pharaohs recorded their albums.”
Jesse continues, “Here’s a picture of the reverb plate with the side of it removed so you can see the plate.
Note the one cable in, two cables out on top and the lever, top left. The speaker magnet is in the center. The original pickups are the small black things stuck on the plate, the new (modified) ones are the brass disks lower on the plate.”
So we hooked up the pedal steel to the reverb plate, and cranked it up to 7. It was like swimming in an ocean of melted steel. I only wish we could take that monster to a solo pedal steel performance, on top of a mountain, with giant amplifiers pushing the waves of steel down the mountain like musical lava.
Here’s a couple of excerpts from Nathan’s session.
First, the last two minutes of Walk, featuring a steel solo.
Walk excerpt And then some of the craziness going on in the transition between Itch and Feet Beat Faster.
Sunday night the 29 year old experimental Dutch band the Ex played in collaboration with 73 year old Ethiopian saxophonist, Getatchew Mekuria, at Chicago's Logan Square Auditorium while this 39 year old Mr. Mom slept.
Luckily for Mr. Mom (and a certain 7 month old girl), the Ex and Mr. Mekuria also played a noon show at Millennium Park on Monday. Lucky indeed since this the best show I've seen yet at the Pritzker Pavilion.
This line up is doing one more show in the States tonight at 6PM at the Damrosch Park Bandshell in New York City and I highly recommend that any Nappers in the area make their way over there at pretty much any cost.
That is if jangly scratchy electric guitars backed by one of the most trance-inducing drummers known to punk (who also happens to have a lovely singing voice) joined by a line-up of well rehearsed and tasteful horn/reed players all right in tune with one of the most clever and wise saxophonists on the planet is your cup of tea.
You can take or leave the socialist message - I don't think it takes a like mind to enjoy this - but don't miss the "special guest" who I can best describe as the Michael Jackson of Ethiopia if all Michael Jackson could do is dance.
For the rest of you, there is the collaborative album which also comes recommended by Mr. Mom (as does practically everything in the Ex discography). If you like the Evens, the Mekons, the Fall or just Dutch people in general you will not be disappointed.
Why not start with the generous free offerings from the Ex's Official Website? Mr. Mom would start with Town of Stone and It's a Sin.
Update: I forgot to mention for those in Chicagoland this week - come out to the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport Saturday night for an all Bridgeport lineup of artists, with my band churchbus (and others) providing the background noise.
Just reading yet another story yesterday about how we can get the older generations to buy more music, which of course made me nervous because it touched on that thinking that older people only like their music from their childhood or high school days and can't really expand their minds to like anything else.
And maybe that's true. I don't know why I really care, exactly. Maybe I just don't want to get old? Who cares what kind of music you listen to anyway, at any age? It's all so subjective.
Then my thoughts were carried to a different topic as a friend told me that her husband is having some severe health difficulties and has been in the hospital for a week. His heart is really weak and so he has trouble just getting to the bathroom. With only one nurse per floor, she had to hire someone to come help her so she could get some sleep herself so she could go to her job so she could pay for this person to help. This is after the granddaughter helped for quite awhile already.
I told her a story to help her feel better about yet another friend I have whose husband is having similar problems, though he's younger, at 75, while the aforementioned husband is 85, but who had a terrible accident while trying to go to the bathroom. Terrible in that it just was not something you want people to be a witness to, not that it was truly terrible.
Dignity is not around while in the hospital, in many cases, especially if you're old, which of course means you're in the hospital more often than not, or at least have some assistance in daily living, which amounts to a similar experience.
All of that to say, wouldn't it be great if there were some really punky songs that sang about this and made it a joke and we could all laugh about it together? It would be preferable if the band members themselves were at least 60 as to be authentic, but I think this would be a big hit and really helpful.
Maybe all we have to do is wait until the Boomer generation gets to that age as many of them were punk or rocked out. Let's see... that's about now for the first wave of them as they were born from 1945 to 1964. Metal heads came later, so metal aged songs won't happen until about 20 years from now.
Ok, 5 - 10 years from now, I say songs about being old and feeble will be prevalent. That is my prediction - my analysis of an about-to-be trend.
In other news, I'm super busy lately and for the next month as the store gets going, so I'm having a hard time keeping up with the reading of your posts and comments, but intend to and like to.
While on summer vacation in 1995, I interviewed Kiwi (via NYC) space/noise/drone rock band Bailter Space before their show at a coffee house in Moorhead (across the river from Fargo). The text of the interview has had a lonely outpost on my website since that time, but I'm moving it here for greater exposure, and for archival purposes. After not having heard anything out of camp Bailter for many moons, I assumed they had broken up, but just checked their MySpace (how appropriate), and it turns out they're playing the Bowery Ballroom in NYC (though with a new bass player) this Saturday, the 23rd of August!! I expect a show report from any NYC NAP correspondent(s) who happen to be reading.
Bailter Space played at the Coffee Club in Moorhead, Minnesota on July 17, 1995. They all turned out to be extremely nice, and were nice enough to allow this, my first attempt at an interview. j = John, a = Alistair, b = Brent. Transcribing the interview was more difficult than I imagined it would be, and it was very difficult to tell by listening who exactly was answering, but here's what I typed out:
First of all, who's in the band and what do they play, and that sort of thing?
j= This is myself, I'm John, and there's Alistair, and there's Brent, and Brent plays the drums and he plays samples, and Alistair plays guitar and a little bass, and I play bass and a little guitar and sing and that's it.
Ok, when and how did you get started as a band?
j= We started playing together under a different name in 1980.
The Gordons?
j= Yeah. We played for 18 months or so and then sorta kinda went various directions and ended up in 1987 or 88 or around there, we became and worked together as Bailter Space and we've been playing as a three piece.
So, were the Gordons, was the sound the same as Bailter Space?
j= No, that was like... they had some similarities, but it was like a different band, really. It was a different concept, and a different period of history and it was like a new thing. When we formed Bailter Space it was like a new thing. We weren't trying to... in any way trying to recapture the past. It was not an interest.
What is the concept, would you say, behind Bailter Space?
a= What kind of magazine do you have?
It's gonna be a zine, he's just starting it up. He's into philosophy and music and the interrelation and that sort of thing.
a= Because yeah, you know, we can answer in many different ways to the last question, and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't like a --
[rudely interrupting]: Well I guess in a musical way, mainly, or aesthetic or whatever.
a= So, can we have that again?
What is the concept behind Bailter Space, as you see it?
a= [chuckles] There are many. There are many varying and shifting concepts, like something that's in orbit, you know. It changes, you know, the form of it changes, but the concept being the orbit of the star or what, you know, the sound or whatever, and then the sun is in orbit.. [asks Brent] ...does the sun orbit?
b= Well, yeah, but we're kind of orbiting the sun.
j= Yeah, we're orbiting the sun.
a= Anyway, we're in orbit, basically. I was trying to make a parallel, but it tipped out a bit, you know.
j= Is the sun orbiting [unintelligible]?
a= But, the orbit being the main concept... the forces of gravity. We have a concept of sound sometimes, where we talk about how we're going to make a textural sort of production. And, the song kind of speaks for itself more, in concept. It's not like we make a law for a concept, so finite is that it's more like the listener conceptualizes with the song.
j= Every song extends, in some way, the concept. Every song we write is like another step forward.
What initially made you want to start making music?
a= It would probably vary for each three of us.
j= We all started playing music when we were really young, and we hadn't met each other at that point. I'm not sure what it was for me. It was just like hearing music and just realizing I loved it. It had a lot of power. I don't know. I guess it had a lot of influence on my life as a youngster, and I just gravitated towards it. And as soon as I could get my hands on a guitar, I did, and I taught myself and never thought about it from that point. It was just something I loved doing, so I kept doing it.
You're from New Zealand, right? (them: Yeah) And you're living in New York? (them: Yeah) How do the two compare, as far as, in general and musically speaking?
a= Musically? I don't know, it's a lot different, it's like three times the size of New Zealand, so there's three lots of New Zealand there. We're there, and there's a lot of music going on. It's great. Maybe you have to wait for things more in New Zealand, whereas in New York, if there's something you wanted to see and it's not there, then you can probably come up with another idea about something else you might want to go and absorb. So I think that that would be one of the things mainly different.
a= Yeah, time runs on a different kind of... it's a faster pace, really a lot louder. Faster food. [laughs]
b= Faster cars.
j= Not really; we've got pretty fast cars over there too.
How's your tour been going? When did it start, how long will it last, and where are you going after Moorhead?
j= That's like good, good, good, yes, good, and yes. [laughs] It started about two and a half weeks ago and the U.S. part lasts six weeks, and after Moorhead we're heading to Seattle, but I think we've got one show before Seattle.
b= Missoula.
a= Missoula, Montana.
j= And two weeks after the tour we go to Europe for a month, so it's the start of a bigger tour.
How do you like touring, anyway? Do enjoy playing live?
a= Yeah, playing live's great. The road runs you down from time to time.
j= It's like the point of our existence at the moment. When we moved from New Zealand, all three of us dedicated ourselves to the band, as being the main drift of what we were wanting to do. So, when we finally get out on the road and tour, it's like we're fulfilling part of what we're doing. That's what we do. We're in a band, we are musicians, and we've had a great opportunity to stay together as a band, and most of the time just be musicians. And touring's a great way to keep playing. I mean, we've been on the road for two weeks, and I feel like we've been on the road for a couple of hours. I think I could do it forever, and probably will.
For some bands, it's kinda hard to tour.
j= Sometimes you can have a bad day, I think, and you go "arghhh", you've had enough, but the next day...
a= Getting tired is tough.
j= It's nice to have a day off occasionally, and have a good sleep and catch up.
a= The driving...
j= The luxury of being in your home, surrounded by things you like doing. But it's a small compromise for what you...
a= We'll be back home in like three weeks. We'll be able to hang out all we want then. But at the moment it's fine.
So what type of venues do you normally play? Is it kinda like this, or bigger, or?
a= It varies. From this to larger warehouse type places. No stadiums or such on this tour.
j= There's been a few larger 500 or 600 capacity rooms, not that we get that many people.
How have the audiences reacted to your show?
j= They like us. We get a lot of people that have never heard of us, never seen us, who just happen to be there that night. They really get surprised and go, "wow, this is really cool". But apart from those people, we occasionally have the hardcore fan thing happening around America.
How big do you think is your fanship or whatever in America?
j= In America? Well, we don't know. Matador has never really told us how many records we've sold.
a= But every night we play, we're playing new towns to new people, and if we play good or people like it, well you're always adding to that. So we're in a way doing the groundwork. But even before we came to New York in '88, was the first time; even before we arrived here there was a pocket of people in each city that were familiar with our music through Flying Nun Records releases. So now that we're signed with Matador, and we have domestic releases, that's really helped us a lot to get through to a larger audience.
How did that signing thing happen? Did they find you, or did you find them?
j= Well, it was a bit of both. We were working with Gerard from Matador before Matador existed. He used to work for Homestead and we were thinking about working with Homestead, but it was really because of our respect for Gerard. He's just a great guy, and he's done a lot of good things for the music industry.
What is Matador like, as far as promotions, and how much creative control do you get and that sort of thing?
j= They're great, as far as that goes. They really give us complete creative control, for one because that's the reason they signed us. They like the way we operated. Before we were working with them, we were largely independent and we managed to survive for quite a few years and build our own thing, and they liked our record covers, they liked our songwriting approach, they liked our overall direction. They don't really tamper with that, at all. They just leave us to our own devices, and that's one of the reasons why we like Matador too, because we don't want to be told how to dress or when to go on tour too much.
How many tours have you done in the past, and how do they compare with this one?
j= Countless. I wouldn't be able to count them. First off, we toured New Zealand too many numerous times to count, and toured Australia three times, and this is our second national tour in America, but we've done a lot of minitours on the east coast over the years, and Europe we've toured I think four times, and we're going back there again very soon.
What's your following like at home, in New Zealand?
j= It's one of our biggest audiences, and it's actually grown out of proportion since we've left the country. From reports that we get, it's like we've become... I think New Zealand is whipping up a patriotic storm about Bailter Space while we've been away; they see us as carrying the flag, or something like that, so they're kind of proud of us. Even though, they think we're a lot bigger here than we actually are. It's grown in their imagination.
How do your live shows compare with your studio recordings?
j= I think they can be pretty close, because we've always recorded in a similar manner to how we actually perform live. We play all the instruments at the same time, except for vocals, which are standard because vocals have to be done separately. Otherwise, you get lots of instruments going through your vocal mic. And occasionally we do a guitar overdub, but we didn't even do that on the last album; there's no guitar overdubs.
Really? Because, it sounds really layered, a big thick sound.
j= We were very pleased with the producer we were working with. He immediately understood what we're trying to do, and he didn't try to change us into some other kind of band, and he just went straight to it and got the sounds we wanted. And we hardly even had to produce it, because it was already sounding good before it was produced. We just got it on the tape sounding good, through careful microphone placement and taking a bit of time before we laid the tracks down. So it's no problem for us to play our songs live. Some people say our live performances are better than our records, some say the other way around.
Tell me about the new album. I've heard it isn't as noisy as previous ones, but I haven't personally heard it. What are your feelings on noise in general in music?
j= Well, I think it has a little more space in it, here and there. Less overdubs. But I think there's definitely moments where there's plenty of noise going on. It's not lacking noise. But it's true, I think some of our previous albums were more layered with overdubs. But we wanted to, with the new album, we just had a quick talk before we wrote the songs and recorded them, about the direction we wanted to take, and we decided that we wanted to get to the heart of what Bailter Space is. We didn't want to do any fancy overdubs or anything like that. We wanted to record the songs directly onto the tape, as honestly as we could, and see how it worked out. And we did that, and we're very pleased with it for that reason, because it somehow catches the freshness of the songs, that were brand new songs, and that were recorded in a lot of cases just as the first take. Sometimes we did a lot of takes to get the right take, but most of them were very early takes. So they're recorded before they had become overplayed and before they been toured ten times and got sick of them, so they're still new and exciting to us, and somehow that excitement was retained in the recordings. That's what I feel, anyway.
Are you more of a texture type band or a song/melody type band?
j= Both, I think. We definitely have songs that are quite melody strong, but are also heavily into texture. That's one of the main elements we play with. That, and harmonic overtones and all the instruments ringing together as a whole.
What's your favorite Bailter Space album and song?
j= It varies on the week. There are times when I just don't want to put on a Bailter Space record. Sometimes it's too close. We're all in the band and you don't always want to play your own music. Sometimes it's hard to be objective and take a step back. At the moment I'm a lot enjoying playing the new album. I like "Retro", I like a lot of songs off that album. But, I like "Thermos" as an album, a lot. Which, actually, it's going to be re-released very shortly, including "Tanker". "Tanker" and "Thermos". And that catalog is going to come out on Matador label.
Yeah, I just bought them in London for too much money, I didn't think they were available over here.
j= Yeah, they're not available, but however your money is not wasted, because what you would've bought is the original pressing, whereas it'll be a different product by a different company. I mean, it's the same master tape. But, if you're interested in the collective value of it, maybe the import will be worth more eventually. But that's one of the reasons why we like the idea of having a domestic release in America is because the prices are more fair. We don't want to be expensive, we want people to be able to afford to buy records. The more people that buy our records, the more people that get to hear it. It's a good thing for them, it's a good thing for us.
Are you ever going to be distributed through Atlantic?
j= That's always a possibility. It has been loosely discussed at different points, and that could happen, but it's up to both parties. For a start, it's up to them to come forth with the idea, and up to us to decide whether we want that, or whether we want to stay more on the indie type label.
What do you consider your influences to be?
j= I don't think our influences have really been largely from other bands, and I've never been able to understand why that should necessarily be the case. For instance, everyone on this planet walks around, and we're all influenced by common things and by different things and everything around us, being the cycles of the moon or television or makeup or your mother, all make up part of what you become, what direction you take in your life, so I don't see why you have to necessarily be directly influenced by another rock band. Why can't it be the sound of a vacuum cleaner or something like that? All three of us listen to very different music from each other, and undoubtedly different things have influenced us at different times, but I honestly couldn't think of one specific band that we could say, "that's our main influence", it just wouldn't be correct.
Do you listen to music much, and what are your favorite bands?
j= Well, while we've been driving along in the van, we've been listening to John Coltrane, just while we're driving here today, and Can, and we've been listening to some Schoenberg and a little rock stuff. Early this morning we just picked up a big box of CD's from Amphetamine Reptile. We know [? (probably label head Tom Hazelmyer)], so we visited him, and he gave us a box of those. We don't even know what's in the box yet, but we'll probably end up playing some of those. So we're open to listening to anything, any form of music. I know Alistair at the moment is listening to Latino kinda beats, like Tito Puente. We're all listening to an incredible variety of different things.
What makes you want to continue making music?
a= How derogatory is this question meant?
Oh, it's not derogatory. Like when you walk up in the morning, what makes you say, "oh I want to pick up my guitar again"?
a= I love music, and very much enjoy playing and working in a group. You're learning about music all the time.
j= I think you hit on it there, Alistair. I think it's mostly just the personal satisfaction of it more than anything else. It's not so much like a job, even though we have to be professional and work in a professional manner. It's not a job to us; we love it, we like what we're doing. Otherwise I don't think any of us would bother.
a= It's great fun to be in a band.
Do you want your music to affect what your listeners feel, and if so, how?
j= Yeah, we would like to think that people are going to be moved in some way, that everyone is going to be moved in a different way from another. For instance, lyrics could be interpreted any way whatsoever. You can write a song for a specific meaning. One person will take it right, and then someone else will have a totally different idea on it, and sometimes it gets back to us what someone thinks a song means, and some of it can be really interesting. Even just the name of the band, Bailter Space, traveling different parts of the world, people ask us what it means, but just as many people tell us what it means to them, and that's really interesting to find out.
What does it mean, anyway?
j= I don't know. It's an open-ended sort of name. The "bailter" part of it you won't find in any dictionary, so it's kind of like a blank for people to fill in whatever way they've been touched by the music, becomes what the name means to them. It's their space, the "bailter space".
How do you go about writing songs?
j= That varies with different songs, too. They often start with guitar, sometimes just with a simple riff, sometimes they start with a sample.
a= A melody, a harmony.
j= Sometimes with a whistling sound in your head.
a= There's various different kinds of approaches, and various different kinds of inspirations.
j= It's not as though we've got a pet formula, where we know we're going to write a song like "this". We like to approach each song as they come up. Sometimes they just emerge, and other times we're really working on them in a more...
a= Going for a sound, maybe.
j= Yeah, or a concept, an idea, or a kind of a beat.
Do you all work on the songs together?
j= Yeah, as much as we can.
a= We check every song we have as by the band. It's the way that we choose to work, to write together.
~~~~~~~~
At this point, the opening band, Bossk, started playing extremely loudly, and we ended the interview. The crowd was pretty sparse when Bailter Space took the stage. Apparently few in Fargo had heard of Bailter Space, and fewer still wanted to be exposed to new music. I think Bailter Space were a bit disappointed by this and the non-demonstrative nature of the upper-midwesterners who did stick around to see them. They put on a good, albeit short, show despite frequent difficulties with Alistair's Rickenbacker going out of tune and subsequently having to switch guitars after every song.
After the show I briefly talked to John a bit more. For guitar geeks amongst you, John plays his bass through a Marshall guitar amp. He does this so that the chords aren't muddled in the way they would be through a bass amp. He uses a Ratt distortion pedal on a couple songs. When he plays guitar, he mainly uses a Fender Jaguar. Alistair mainly uses a Rickenbacker with a Ratt distortion pedal and a Boss digital delay pedal. He plays through a Marshall amp and a Fender amp at the same time.
Among other things, I really meant to ask more about their use of a sampler, which they didn't use live. After having heard "Wammo" for myself, I can report that it is quite an excellent album, although my favorite remains "Robot World". Thanks again to Bailter Space for letting me interview them.
i'm sorry for the late post this week. i have been without interwebs since last thursday at my studio, and every path i took through the tortuous maze of verizon's "help" line menus resulted in me either being bluntly disconnected or being cheerfully told by a recording that no one could help me.
so i waited till this morning and spent the first hour and a half trying different techniques to find someone who could tell me what was going on. there were good 10-15 minute chunks of time on hold, which gave me an opportunity to read my new tenori-on manual. i like that the manual is mostly superfluous (even more than most manuals). i've had it for 5 days now and i've already written and recorded songs with it. i didn't learn anything from the manual today that i hadn't already been able to figure out myself from the interface directly.
anyway, all in all, i spent 2.4 hours with verizon only to find out that they'd cancelled my service and i would need to re-order. so much wasted time. i will have new service sometime after aug 26.
in the meantime, i tried to imagine a way that instead of horrible hold music, places that keep you on hold forever could have interactive games to play with the phone keypad, like the old Merlin game. remember Merlin?
i don't know about you, but this was one of my favorite childhood toys, not unlike the tenori-on in principle. so wouldn't it be cool if you could adapt some of the audio games to an on-line hold system so people could distract themselves from their anger and frustration by playing games?
i write these posts (apparently) so that you guys can comment to tell me how silly my ideas are. feel free. this was just a little fantasy of mine today.
