"Ding-A-Dong", by Teach In.
Every year, around the time of his birthday, a man's mind turns to Eurovision. And, in particular, to this past winner. According to Wikipedia, the song is "an up-tempo ode to positive thought". If you ask me, it speaks for itself.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Song of the day
"Pulls Me Like A Tide", by The Nearly Brothers.
For some years now, I have been lamenting the absence of recorded material from Mark Snarski. What I didn't know was, back in 2010 he put a band together, recorded an album's worth of songs and then some (more about that below), and released it under the name The Nearly Brothers, to, as far as I can tell, no acclaim whatsoever.
Such is life, I guess. Snarski is blessed with one of the biggest, most soulful singing voices in modern music (you might call him the Australian Mark Lanegan, but you also might not), and has a great ear for a tune, but seems to be destined to fall forever beneath the zeitgeist-radar. The new album, now I have my virtual hands on it (legal, like), shows no drop in quality or intensity from his days in The Jackson Code, all of whose albums are essential listening, if you ask me. His songs of romantic obsession / jealousy / calamity continue to be matched with stellar playing and clever, sympathetic arrangements. They may not win points for artistic originality, but, as (I think) I have said before, quality craftsmanship never goes out of style.
Did I mention the band? Aside from the Irish guitarist, TB Allen, with whom I am not familiar (and nor is Discogs, aside from this album), all of the crew will be in your collection. Martyn P Casey you know from The Triffids, The Bad Seeds, and/or Grinderman. Mick Harvey, on production duties, hasn't yet been elevated to the sainthood notwithstanding my efforts. And on drums we have one Bongo Fury, who may or may not be the same person as Mark Dawson, known to you, if nowhere else, from yesterday's blog post (he has worked with Ed Kuepper on and off for a long time and was also the drummer in The Jackson Code).
This song, a long, slow-burning number that mostly works its way around a couple of chords for five-odd minutes, is the perfect ending to a fine album. Or it would be. Which brings me to the "and then some" referred to above. This album seems to have fallen victim to the not uncommon idea that, because a CD can hold a lot more than a "traditional" album's worth of music, it makes sense to add a few songs at the end and call them "bonus tracks". Which means that we have four songs tacked on after this ostensible "big finish", which, no matter that they are perfectly good Snarski songs and could just as easily have found their way onto the album proper, serve to diminish the impact of the album. It has never seemed to me like a winning move. Tom Waits CDs in this country have tended to have "Australian only bonus tracks" stuck on the end, to no great purpose (and anyway most if not all of those eventually turned up on "Orphans"). Wilco did it right on their most recent album, some copies of which came with a second disc containing four songs, a couple of which were alternate versions of songs on the album and one of which, "I Love My Label", was a very perky cover of a Nick Lowe song. Oldster bands like Swell Maps and Beat Happening occasionally used to throw in a vinyl seven-inch single or flexidisc with their LPs. (To bring us back to somewhere near where we started, Ed Kuepper's other other band The Aints did this with their ultra-lo-fidelity live album "SLSQ". Which may have stood for Special Low Sound Quality.) So it can be done in a way that doesn't attack the integrity of the thing the bonus songs are supposed to be an appendix to. End of sermon.
Here's some YouTube of The Nearly Brothers playing, it would appear, in Sydney a mere couple of weeks ago, with keyboards replacing the strings of the recorded version, and someone looking suspiciously like Mick Harvey himself attacking a bass guitar in the background. Snarski misses a couple of notes, but that only makes him more human, innit?
(Note to uploader: handheld cameras make some of us woozy. Go easy.)
For some years now, I have been lamenting the absence of recorded material from Mark Snarski. What I didn't know was, back in 2010 he put a band together, recorded an album's worth of songs and then some (more about that below), and released it under the name The Nearly Brothers, to, as far as I can tell, no acclaim whatsoever.
Such is life, I guess. Snarski is blessed with one of the biggest, most soulful singing voices in modern music (you might call him the Australian Mark Lanegan, but you also might not), and has a great ear for a tune, but seems to be destined to fall forever beneath the zeitgeist-radar. The new album, now I have my virtual hands on it (legal, like), shows no drop in quality or intensity from his days in The Jackson Code, all of whose albums are essential listening, if you ask me. His songs of romantic obsession / jealousy / calamity continue to be matched with stellar playing and clever, sympathetic arrangements. They may not win points for artistic originality, but, as (I think) I have said before, quality craftsmanship never goes out of style.
Did I mention the band? Aside from the Irish guitarist, TB Allen, with whom I am not familiar (and nor is Discogs, aside from this album), all of the crew will be in your collection. Martyn P Casey you know from The Triffids, The Bad Seeds, and/or Grinderman. Mick Harvey, on production duties, hasn't yet been elevated to the sainthood notwithstanding my efforts. And on drums we have one Bongo Fury, who may or may not be the same person as Mark Dawson, known to you, if nowhere else, from yesterday's blog post (he has worked with Ed Kuepper on and off for a long time and was also the drummer in The Jackson Code).
This song, a long, slow-burning number that mostly works its way around a couple of chords for five-odd minutes, is the perfect ending to a fine album. Or it would be. Which brings me to the "and then some" referred to above. This album seems to have fallen victim to the not uncommon idea that, because a CD can hold a lot more than a "traditional" album's worth of music, it makes sense to add a few songs at the end and call them "bonus tracks". Which means that we have four songs tacked on after this ostensible "big finish", which, no matter that they are perfectly good Snarski songs and could just as easily have found their way onto the album proper, serve to diminish the impact of the album. It has never seemed to me like a winning move. Tom Waits CDs in this country have tended to have "Australian only bonus tracks" stuck on the end, to no great purpose (and anyway most if not all of those eventually turned up on "Orphans"). Wilco did it right on their most recent album, some copies of which came with a second disc containing four songs, a couple of which were alternate versions of songs on the album and one of which, "I Love My Label", was a very perky cover of a Nick Lowe song. Oldster bands like Swell Maps and Beat Happening occasionally used to throw in a vinyl seven-inch single or flexidisc with their LPs. (To bring us back to somewhere near where we started, Ed Kuepper's other other band The Aints did this with their ultra-lo-fidelity live album "SLSQ". Which may have stood for Special Low Sound Quality.) So it can be done in a way that doesn't attack the integrity of the thing the bonus songs are supposed to be an appendix to. End of sermon.
Here's some YouTube of The Nearly Brothers playing, it would appear, in Sydney a mere couple of weeks ago, with keyboards replacing the strings of the recorded version, and someone looking suspiciously like Mick Harvey himself attacking a bass guitar in the background. Snarski misses a couple of notes, but that only makes him more human, innit?
(Note to uploader: handheld cameras make some of us woozy. Go easy.)
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Song of the day
"Master of Two Servants", by Ed Kuepper.
And on the seventh day Ed Kuepper rested.
But it was a strange, restless kind of rest. Five years ago he returned from the wilderness with the angry, energetic "Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog" album, reuniting him with Jeffery Wegener and thus activating the pilot light that eventually ignited into the Laughing Clowns reunion tour.
Since then, Ed has been trawling through his back catalogue, releasing his own Bootleg Series to rival Bob Dylan's, thus adding to the disk space taken up with versions of "Eternally Yours". (I've lost count.) But we have had no new Ed Kuepper music.
So it was with much excitement that the news of a new Ed album was greeted a few weeks ago. What we got, though, was "new" in a very Ed Kuepper sense of "new": eleven old songs given a fresh lick of paint and sent off into the world. The cover, with its nod to his first solo album, back in 1985, "Electrical Storm", should have been a clue. What Ed has done is re-recorded most of "Electrical Storm", added a couple of songs from "Rooms of the Magnificent", and called it "Second Winter".
I should emphasise that (a) this kind of caper from Ed should come as no surprise and (b) nothing I have written here should be taken as criticism. Like Dylan, Ed has spent much of his career looking back over his own songs and reworking, or reinventing, them, treating them, indeed, as "standards" to be interpreted according to the mood of the times, and with all that he has learned since their first creation being at his disposal. It's in many ways an admirable trait, but presumably one that wouldn't lend itself to the all-new-all-the-time rigours of the marketplace.
Ah, yes, the song. I have always loved the original version of this song, propelled to within an inch of its life by what can only be described, using two words that don't often get the opportunity to hang out together, as a mandolin frenzy. (It is also one of the songs that doesn't turn up on any of the demo / alternate take / outtake / live recordings that Ed keeps putting out.) So it is nice to be reminded of the song again, even if its new form eschews the mandolin for some of Ed's typically fine guitar playing. It still moves at a cracking pace. It is a great little song, whichever way you slice it.
This one is the original:
And this is Ed and Mark Dawson doing what is more or less the version from the new album, but in a live setting:
And on the seventh day Ed Kuepper rested.
But it was a strange, restless kind of rest. Five years ago he returned from the wilderness with the angry, energetic "Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog" album, reuniting him with Jeffery Wegener and thus activating the pilot light that eventually ignited into the Laughing Clowns reunion tour.
Since then, Ed has been trawling through his back catalogue, releasing his own Bootleg Series to rival Bob Dylan's, thus adding to the disk space taken up with versions of "Eternally Yours". (I've lost count.) But we have had no new Ed Kuepper music.
So it was with much excitement that the news of a new Ed album was greeted a few weeks ago. What we got, though, was "new" in a very Ed Kuepper sense of "new": eleven old songs given a fresh lick of paint and sent off into the world. The cover, with its nod to his first solo album, back in 1985, "Electrical Storm", should have been a clue. What Ed has done is re-recorded most of "Electrical Storm", added a couple of songs from "Rooms of the Magnificent", and called it "Second Winter".
I should emphasise that (a) this kind of caper from Ed should come as no surprise and (b) nothing I have written here should be taken as criticism. Like Dylan, Ed has spent much of his career looking back over his own songs and reworking, or reinventing, them, treating them, indeed, as "standards" to be interpreted according to the mood of the times, and with all that he has learned since their first creation being at his disposal. It's in many ways an admirable trait, but presumably one that wouldn't lend itself to the all-new-all-the-time rigours of the marketplace.
Ah, yes, the song. I have always loved the original version of this song, propelled to within an inch of its life by what can only be described, using two words that don't often get the opportunity to hang out together, as a mandolin frenzy. (It is also one of the songs that doesn't turn up on any of the demo / alternate take / outtake / live recordings that Ed keeps putting out.) So it is nice to be reminded of the song again, even if its new form eschews the mandolin for some of Ed's typically fine guitar playing. It still moves at a cracking pace. It is a great little song, whichever way you slice it.
This one is the original:
And this is Ed and Mark Dawson doing what is more or less the version from the new album, but in a live setting:
John Zorn 2010 - Fourth and Final Quarterly Report
Finally (feel free to stifle a yawn, or even not to stifle one), my thoughts on the last three John Zorn releases for 2010.
In October, he released "What Thou Wilt", a collection of three chamber pieces written between 1999 and 2007. I have said it before, and I'll say it again, but I just don't "get" this branch of Zorn's ouvre. I will merely observe that the strings in the first piece are so tasty you could eat them. The second, a twenty-two-minute solo piano work, is pretty serious (and again sounds marvellous: one thing about Zorn, he doesn't skimp on sound quality; or artwork quality, for that matter; and he's no slouch at quantity either). If, as the liner notes suggest, the pianist is doing all this from memory, then that's some memory.
For November he gave us "Interzone", the first of a pair of William S Burroughs-referencing works (the second, "Nova Express", appeared in early 2011). This is what Zornophiles would call an all-star line-up: Zorn, Ribot, Wollesen, Baptista, Medeski, Dunn, Mori. Those names, of course, don't tell you what to expect, but if you ran them through your internal processor you would probably imagine yourself to be somewhere between Naked City, The Dreamers, Electric Masada and the more recent series of chamber jazz albums (for want of a better description) which began with "In Search of the Miraculous".
What it is, or what it sounds like, is the 21st century equivalent of Zorn's File Card compositions, whereby certain heads, or instructions, were written on a series of file cards, which he flipped up in some kind of predetermined sequence and which the musicians were asked to follow. The overall length of this album, just shy of an hour, has allowed Zorn to give the individual segments more room to move than on the more turn-on-the-head-of-a-pin Carl-Stalling-with-ADHD adventures of, for example, Naked City's "Torture Garden". The pick-n-mix nature of this method ensures that some bits will appeal more than others, and your own mileage might differ, but I find the middle section of this album frequently a slog, which is a shame given the nature of the players. The upside is that if you don't like something it will be over before too long, and anyway whatever you think of the rest of it the last five or so minutes are a classic John Zorn blast.
What it has to do with William S Burroughs I can't really say, aside from what might be the sound of a gunshot early on, and some fragments that might have come out of a dusty back road in Algiers. But then my Burroughs days are 20-some years behind me, and I have no real intention of ever heading down that rabbit hole again.
And, bringing Zorn's big 2010 to an end (I have my suspicions that it may not have actually appeared until 2011, but let's cut the man a little slack), number 17 in the Book of Angels series, "Caym", this one by Cyro Baptista's own little ensemble, Banquet of the Spirits. Maybe by this point I was suffering from Zorn fatigue, or more specifically from Masada fatigue (although I sincerely hope not), but this seems to have less to offer than many others in the series. I have a theory, admittedly rather dubious, which is: the better the ensemble player, the less striking the ensemble player's own group. (I could give examples. Would that help? I doubt it.) Plus, as I've said here before, I have my own issues with the accordion.
(You should be allowed to make up your own mind. And there's no doubt these cats are all fine players. Here is a clip of them playing live.)
So, in summary, what can you say about a man who releases a dozen albums in a calendar year? I suppose you could say, "Slow down, man." But there isn't much chance of that happening, I expect. For a guy like John Zorn (i.e., for John Zorn), who has so many different strings to his bow, one couldn't imagine too many people liking all of them. Fifty percent might even be a good strike rate. But if someone whose work you generally admired released even half a dozen great albums in a year, you'd be in some kind of a heaven. And even if this was an exercise in clearing the decks (he went on to put out "only" five albums in 2011!) there's plenty of evidence that he has no intention of resting on his laurels just yet. (Word is that he's also planning something big for his 60th birthday, which comes around in 2013. You have been warned.)
Bonus Beats: you don't have to dig too far into this site for a quantity of audience video from Masada's recent South American shows. And I had no idea that he was going to bring the old gang back together. Enjoy.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Song of the day
"Do It First", by The Crayon Fields.
Ah, Autumn. With the leaves starting to fall from the trees, and the colours changing from green to red and yellow, this is Canberra's time of year. One can be comfortably inwardly focused, and yet not be freezing cold. (Today it is actually a bit warm. A bit warm, I tell you!) There might be footy on the telly and you might not yet be sick of it. (Even if, as supporter of a certain team, you are already looking towards next season.)
This song by The Crayon Fields sums up the best things about this time of year, I reckon, just by sounding the way it does.
(I think their first album is great. It is redolent of the kind of innocent charm that pervades many great first albums by jangly, introspective pop groups. The trick is then to take that quality to the next level. You can't be naive and wide-eyed a second time (unless you are Jonathan Richman and can make a credible career out of it) (okay, Calvin Johnson probably managed it two or three times with Beat Happening, although even then their strongest album, "You Turn Me On", came about because they had by then (relatively speaking) "grown up"), which means you have to be something else. The second Crayon Fields album wasn't quite clear on what that something was, or was going to be. It came out in 2009. There hasn't been another record since, and the singer now has a solo album out, so maybe they never figured it out. Which would be a shame, if only because every second band over the last couple of years has adapted the basic sound of "Do It First", and a few of them have probably made some money out of it, or at least gotten recognition. "Do It First" isn't even on YouTube (a live version can be found there, but the sound quality is so awful it doesn't go close to doing justice to the fragile, autumnal grace of the recorded version).
But all is not lost, for you can download it here.
Ah, Autumn. With the leaves starting to fall from the trees, and the colours changing from green to red and yellow, this is Canberra's time of year. One can be comfortably inwardly focused, and yet not be freezing cold. (Today it is actually a bit warm. A bit warm, I tell you!) There might be footy on the telly and you might not yet be sick of it. (Even if, as supporter of a certain team, you are already looking towards next season.)
This song by The Crayon Fields sums up the best things about this time of year, I reckon, just by sounding the way it does.
(I think their first album is great. It is redolent of the kind of innocent charm that pervades many great first albums by jangly, introspective pop groups. The trick is then to take that quality to the next level. You can't be naive and wide-eyed a second time (unless you are Jonathan Richman and can make a credible career out of it) (okay, Calvin Johnson probably managed it two or three times with Beat Happening, although even then their strongest album, "You Turn Me On", came about because they had by then (relatively speaking) "grown up"), which means you have to be something else. The second Crayon Fields album wasn't quite clear on what that something was, or was going to be. It came out in 2009. There hasn't been another record since, and the singer now has a solo album out, so maybe they never figured it out. Which would be a shame, if only because every second band over the last couple of years has adapted the basic sound of "Do It First", and a few of them have probably made some money out of it, or at least gotten recognition. "Do It First" isn't even on YouTube (a live version can be found there, but the sound quality is so awful it doesn't go close to doing justice to the fragile, autumnal grace of the recorded version).
But all is not lost, for you can download it here.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Song of the day
"Matelot", by The Renegades.
The Renegades were a British beat group from the early sixties. Evidently they had some kind of a following in Finland. (Go figure.) I had never so much as heard of them until yesterday, when we went to see "Le Havre", the new film by Aki Kaurismaki. (If you have any spare time this Easter and it is showing in your town, you should see it. It won't last long.)
This song bookends the film.
The Renegades were a British beat group from the early sixties. Evidently they had some kind of a following in Finland. (Go figure.) I had never so much as heard of them until yesterday, when we went to see "Le Havre", the new film by Aki Kaurismaki. (If you have any spare time this Easter and it is showing in your town, you should see it. It won't last long.)
This song bookends the film.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Song of the day
"Jimmy Stynes", by My Friend The Chocolate Cake.
There are not many more words that could possibly be written about the late Jim Stynes. He has deserved them all.
He came over from Ireland as part of an experiment to see if Irish kids, whose football was not dissimilar to our own, could play Australian Rules.
He proved that they could.
He was an important cog in what turned out to be the greatest era of the Melbourne Football Club since their glory days of the fifties and early sixties.
He had one fleeting lapse of judgment in the dying seconds of the 1987 Preliminary Final that might well have cost his club a place in their first Grand Final since 1964 (a Grand Final that they could even have won; at least they would have stood a better chance than they did in the two that they later played in, both of which were effectively over by the ten-minute mark of the first quarter). It is plausible that he spent the rest of his life seeking to atone for that one split second. (But Jimmy, we forgave you for that pretty much as soon as the final siren had gone.)
He adopted this country as his home.
He returned to the club to bring it back from the brink of extinction and would appear to have largely succeeded (although on-field success continues to elude us).
He fought on, improbably but heroically, through the worst ravages of the cancer that even he, in the end, couldn't defeat. Bravely, as if that needed to be said, because Jim Stynes was the bravest of them all.
He even had a song named after him.
There are not many more words that could possibly be written about the late Jim Stynes. He has deserved them all.
He came over from Ireland as part of an experiment to see if Irish kids, whose football was not dissimilar to our own, could play Australian Rules.
He proved that they could.
He was an important cog in what turned out to be the greatest era of the Melbourne Football Club since their glory days of the fifties and early sixties.
He had one fleeting lapse of judgment in the dying seconds of the 1987 Preliminary Final that might well have cost his club a place in their first Grand Final since 1964 (a Grand Final that they could even have won; at least they would have stood a better chance than they did in the two that they later played in, both of which were effectively over by the ten-minute mark of the first quarter). It is plausible that he spent the rest of his life seeking to atone for that one split second. (But Jimmy, we forgave you for that pretty much as soon as the final siren had gone.)
He adopted this country as his home.
He returned to the club to bring it back from the brink of extinction and would appear to have largely succeeded (although on-field success continues to elude us).
He fought on, improbably but heroically, through the worst ravages of the cancer that even he, in the end, couldn't defeat. Bravely, as if that needed to be said, because Jim Stynes was the bravest of them all.
He even had a song named after him.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Song of the day
"Please Be My Third Eye", by La Sera.
It takes about five seconds for me to know that I am going to love this song. Sometimes I don't even have to turn my brain on. Sometimes?
It takes about five seconds for me to know that I am going to love this song. Sometimes I don't even have to turn my brain on. Sometimes?
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Idiot songs of the day
In which we say "yah boo" to political correctness.
1. "How Sweet To Be An Idiot", a song by Neil Innes. Who is no idiot.
2. "Idiot Friends", by Mr Spongebob Squarepants and his little pink pal, Patrick.
3. "Walk Idiot Walk", by The Hives, as performed live on Mr Letterman's television programme. The Hives are notable for their sharp dress sense and killer guitar lines.
I can't think of any others. Probably because I'm such an idiot ...
1. "How Sweet To Be An Idiot", a song by Neil Innes. Who is no idiot.
2. "Idiot Friends", by Mr Spongebob Squarepants and his little pink pal, Patrick.
3. "Walk Idiot Walk", by The Hives, as performed live on Mr Letterman's television programme. The Hives are notable for their sharp dress sense and killer guitar lines.
I can't think of any others. Probably because I'm such an idiot ...
Monday, March 12, 2012
Song of the day
"Joseph Cornell", by The Clientele.
Joseph Cornell was an American artist best known for his "boxes", containers that he built himself then filled with, well, stuff. There are a few of them in the collection of the National Gallery in Canberra. You should check them out. I associate him with another American artist, Alexander Calder. They both made things that your uncle might have made. But whereas Calder's work is whimsical and inherently likeable, Cornell you could maybe have arguments with people about, along the lines of is this or is this not art. (Calling something art is like calling something jazz. The dividing line is both invisible and always moving.)
The Clientele are (or were, as might be suggested by their web site) a British pop group with a very distinctive, understated sound. All their songs are either in a minor key or feel like they are. The rain-refracted evening (or early morning) lights on the album cover of "Suburban Light" are about right.
Whatever may be the connection between the artist and this song, it says all that needs to be said, in two minutes and 24 seconds. How do they do that?
Joseph Cornell was an American artist best known for his "boxes", containers that he built himself then filled with, well, stuff. There are a few of them in the collection of the National Gallery in Canberra. You should check them out. I associate him with another American artist, Alexander Calder. They both made things that your uncle might have made. But whereas Calder's work is whimsical and inherently likeable, Cornell you could maybe have arguments with people about, along the lines of is this or is this not art. (Calling something art is like calling something jazz. The dividing line is both invisible and always moving.)
The Clientele are (or were, as might be suggested by their web site) a British pop group with a very distinctive, understated sound. All their songs are either in a minor key or feel like they are. The rain-refracted evening (or early morning) lights on the album cover of "Suburban Light" are about right.
Whatever may be the connection between the artist and this song, it says all that needs to be said, in two minutes and 24 seconds. How do they do that?
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Dad joke of the day
Q. Which science fiction writer goes snap, crackle and pop?
A. Edgar Rice Bubbles.
Ahem.
A. Edgar Rice Bubbles.
Ahem.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
YouTube of the day
I am a (the?) person for whom modern music starts and, perhaps, ends with Television's "Marquee Moon". It first captured my attention as a night-time listener to Sydney's 2JJ, where it was on fairly regular rotation back around 1978-9 but, owing to the vagaries of long-distance AM radio reception, I never once managed to catch the back-announcement (by, let's say, George Wayne or Mac (actual-dad-of-Jarvis) Cocker) and so had no idea what I had been listening to. It wasn't until some years later, after I had forgotten all about it, that I heard it again, on 3RRR, and I was very, very careful then to catch who and what it was.
Fast-forward probably not actually all that far, but well after I had picked up and absorbed the original two Television albums ("Adventure" on stunning red vinyl, fetish fans), and there in Missing Link Records, lost amongst the bottom-feeding punk and hardcore 7" singles, was a copy of Television's debut single, "Little Johnny Jewel", from 1975. This being in my estimation something like the Philosopher's Stone, I assumed it must have been a bootleg, but such was my determination to own a copy of it in any form that I happily forked over the ten-dollar asking price.
We now have the internet, and Discogs in particular, and I can confidently say that what I bought looks exactly like it says here, right down to the "white die-cut paper sleeve", so I am inclined to the view that what I bought is in fact the thing itself, in all its monaural glory. (A spruced-up version now appears on the CD reissue of the "Marquee Moon" album, no longer split into two parts, and it gets closer every day to rivalling "Marquee Moon" itself in its epicness. Note also, as an irrelevant aside, that the version of "Marquee Moon" on the reissue has a much longer fade-back-in section than appeared on the original album. All in all, this one of the most necessary CD reissues in the history of mankind.)
This YouTube clip, again thanks to Dangerous Minds, is of Television in the office of the impresario behind Ork Records, playing something that might be "Little Johnny Jewel"* but the sound is so bad it's kinda hard to tell. Actually, both sound and image are way beyond lo-fi, and it might be deemed "for obsessives only", but, well, what are you waiting for?
* UPDATE: Now that I am somewhere where I can actually hear the thing, it's clear that it's not "Little Johnny Jewel". What it is, I have no idea. It sounds like an amalgam of the Velvets and the Stooges, which, given that the year is 1974, and the place is New York, is probably not that surprising.
Fast-forward probably not actually all that far, but well after I had picked up and absorbed the original two Television albums ("Adventure" on stunning red vinyl, fetish fans), and there in Missing Link Records, lost amongst the bottom-feeding punk and hardcore 7" singles, was a copy of Television's debut single, "Little Johnny Jewel", from 1975. This being in my estimation something like the Philosopher's Stone, I assumed it must have been a bootleg, but such was my determination to own a copy of it in any form that I happily forked over the ten-dollar asking price.
We now have the internet, and Discogs in particular, and I can confidently say that what I bought looks exactly like it says here, right down to the "white die-cut paper sleeve", so I am inclined to the view that what I bought is in fact the thing itself, in all its monaural glory. (A spruced-up version now appears on the CD reissue of the "Marquee Moon" album, no longer split into two parts, and it gets closer every day to rivalling "Marquee Moon" itself in its epicness. Note also, as an irrelevant aside, that the version of "Marquee Moon" on the reissue has a much longer fade-back-in section than appeared on the original album. All in all, this one of the most necessary CD reissues in the history of mankind.)
This YouTube clip, again thanks to Dangerous Minds, is of Television in the office of the impresario behind Ork Records, playing something that might be "Little Johnny Jewel"* but the sound is so bad it's kinda hard to tell. Actually, both sound and image are way beyond lo-fi, and it might be deemed "for obsessives only", but, well, what are you waiting for?
* UPDATE: Now that I am somewhere where I can actually hear the thing, it's clear that it's not "Little Johnny Jewel". What it is, I have no idea. It sounds like an amalgam of the Velvets and the Stooges, which, given that the year is 1974, and the place is New York, is probably not that surprising.
Song of the day
"Know Me", by Frankie Rose.
You would think that the first place somebody whose pedigree consists of Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls would look for the sound of their solo record would not be classic 4AD. You would, it seems, be wrong.
The combination of that sound and her innate sense of pure pop goodness is, shall we say, irresistible.
You would think that the first place somebody whose pedigree consists of Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls would look for the sound of their solo record would not be classic 4AD. You would, it seems, be wrong.
The combination of that sound and her innate sense of pure pop goodness is, shall we say, irresistible.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Virtual vinyl artefact of the day
"Shallow" / "Lessons", by Beach Fossils.
Ah, the seven-inch single. A small, flat, circular piece of vinyl, with one song on the A side, another song on the B side. They often come in a nice cardboard sleeve, with a picture on one side and some scant biographical details or product information on the other. You can play one side as many times as you like, as long as you don't mind getting up (or stopping dancing around the room) to put the needle back to the start of the record again. And then, when you get tired of listening to that song, you can turn the record over and -- lo! -- listen to the other song. (Perhaps the analogue, tactile nature of this exercise is a part of the particular sense of attachment one gets with singles. Even album tracks, in the days of vinyl, didn't quite carry the same sense of immediacy.)
Of course, I haven't actually bought one of these things for many a long year. So why this sudden outburst of nostalgia? Because, notwithstanding I acquired these two songs as MP3 files, and can play them one after the other on an endless loop, wirelessly remoted to many devices and/or parts of the house, they seem (to me) to epitomise the very essence of seven-inch-singleness. Both songs are under-three-and-a-half-minute slices of pop brilliance, and both make me want to get up, turn the record over, and play the other one.
Amongst the teeming, bottomless morass of "Brooklyn bands" (many of which probably don't even hail from Brooklyn, except in the sense of Brooklyn as a state of mind) only three have ever really caught my ear: Real Estate, Woods and Beach Fossils. (This might not actually be true: do Emeralds and their countless offshoots count as "Brooklyn"?) These three groups are quite different from each other, but what they have in common is their ability to breath new life into the always potentially moribund form of guitar pop.
When I listen to Beach Fossils, even now that the novelty of their sound has long worn off, I hear strong echoes of the venerable, distinguished, still vibrant Postcard sound (even if it is now showing signs of gray hair around the ears): a singular, effervescent jangle. That they combine this with a flat, affectless, I-might-be-singing-about-love-but-I-don't-really-give-a-damn vocal style doesn't detract from the songs' sparkle. (It might turn out to mark them as part of the class of 2011-12. But we can leave that to the hystorians.)
Now turn to side A:
Now turn to side B:
That's the other thing about the perfect seven-inch single: you can never decide which song you like better.
Ah, the seven-inch single. A small, flat, circular piece of vinyl, with one song on the A side, another song on the B side. They often come in a nice cardboard sleeve, with a picture on one side and some scant biographical details or product information on the other. You can play one side as many times as you like, as long as you don't mind getting up (or stopping dancing around the room) to put the needle back to the start of the record again. And then, when you get tired of listening to that song, you can turn the record over and -- lo! -- listen to the other song. (Perhaps the analogue, tactile nature of this exercise is a part of the particular sense of attachment one gets with singles. Even album tracks, in the days of vinyl, didn't quite carry the same sense of immediacy.)
Of course, I haven't actually bought one of these things for many a long year. So why this sudden outburst of nostalgia? Because, notwithstanding I acquired these two songs as MP3 files, and can play them one after the other on an endless loop, wirelessly remoted to many devices and/or parts of the house, they seem (to me) to epitomise the very essence of seven-inch-singleness. Both songs are under-three-and-a-half-minute slices of pop brilliance, and both make me want to get up, turn the record over, and play the other one.
Amongst the teeming, bottomless morass of "Brooklyn bands" (many of which probably don't even hail from Brooklyn, except in the sense of Brooklyn as a state of mind) only three have ever really caught my ear: Real Estate, Woods and Beach Fossils. (This might not actually be true: do Emeralds and their countless offshoots count as "Brooklyn"?) These three groups are quite different from each other, but what they have in common is their ability to breath new life into the always potentially moribund form of guitar pop.
When I listen to Beach Fossils, even now that the novelty of their sound has long worn off, I hear strong echoes of the venerable, distinguished, still vibrant Postcard sound (even if it is now showing signs of gray hair around the ears): a singular, effervescent jangle. That they combine this with a flat, affectless, I-might-be-singing-about-love-but-I-don't-really-give-a-damn vocal style doesn't detract from the songs' sparkle. (It might turn out to mark them as part of the class of 2011-12. But we can leave that to the hystorians.)
Now turn to side A:
Now turn to side B:
That's the other thing about the perfect seven-inch single: you can never decide which song you like better.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
A few words about "Autoluminescent", a film by Richard Lowenstein
1. Rowland S Howard was fond of cats and worshipped Lee Hazlewood. What's not to like?
2. Listening at close range to Rowland's trademark Birthday Party guitar squall is like mainlining wasabi.
3. If the Pope is listening, can we please have Mick Harvey elevated to the sainthood?
2. Listening at close range to Rowland's trademark Birthday Party guitar squall is like mainlining wasabi.
3. If the Pope is listening, can we please have Mick Harvey elevated to the sainthood?
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Song of the day
"Off The Wall", by Lee Ranaldo.
The evidence is mounting. First, Thurston Moore releases a solo album that, unlike previous dispatches, isn't experimental wotsit but rather sounds like Sonic Youth Unplugged crossed with, say, Beck's "Sea Change" album. Then, Kim and Thurston announce one of the least expected splits in showbiz history (at least, from this distance). Then, if I recall correctly, Kim says she's working with some other folks (although she's done that before).
Now, we have a Lee Ranaldo solo album, this time not a collection of locked grooves and/or etched vinyl, but what promises to be an actual collection of songs.
If Sonic Youth haven't split, they are pulling off a reasonable approximation.
Maybe Lee's album is not all like this song. But my hopes are high. A lot of my favourite SY songs bear his hallmarks. And you can hear those at the start of this song. The more surprising thing is how, as the song goes along, it morphs into what might be the best song REM weren't able to come up with in the last, say, 25 years of their own distinguished career. Heck, Ranaldo is even sounding like Michael Stipe.
Which is interesting. The two bands must have been in some ways in orbit around each other for much of their careers. I wonder how much either of them might at times have wanted to be the other. (The trajectories of the two bands were quite different, but parallels are certainly there. Both peaked in about 1986. Both lasted a similar time (again, assuming).)
The legacy of the last few SY albums is curious. Any one of them is as listenable as any of their crowning eighties / early nineties albums. And yet, because they came later, they will probably never command the same reverence. Which is not to say Sonic Youth were ever just treading water.
It's weird to be old enough to have lived through the entire cradle-to-grave stories of two long-lived, significant bands. I suppose people older than myself had that sense about The Beatles (who got through it all, don't forget, in less than a decade; imagine that).
Excuse the scattered nature of these thoughts. It's Saturday morning. Just enjoy the song.
The evidence is mounting. First, Thurston Moore releases a solo album that, unlike previous dispatches, isn't experimental wotsit but rather sounds like Sonic Youth Unplugged crossed with, say, Beck's "Sea Change" album. Then, Kim and Thurston announce one of the least expected splits in showbiz history (at least, from this distance). Then, if I recall correctly, Kim says she's working with some other folks (although she's done that before).
Now, we have a Lee Ranaldo solo album, this time not a collection of locked grooves and/or etched vinyl, but what promises to be an actual collection of songs.
If Sonic Youth haven't split, they are pulling off a reasonable approximation.
Maybe Lee's album is not all like this song. But my hopes are high. A lot of my favourite SY songs bear his hallmarks. And you can hear those at the start of this song. The more surprising thing is how, as the song goes along, it morphs into what might be the best song REM weren't able to come up with in the last, say, 25 years of their own distinguished career. Heck, Ranaldo is even sounding like Michael Stipe.
Which is interesting. The two bands must have been in some ways in orbit around each other for much of their careers. I wonder how much either of them might at times have wanted to be the other. (The trajectories of the two bands were quite different, but parallels are certainly there. Both peaked in about 1986. Both lasted a similar time (again, assuming).)
The legacy of the last few SY albums is curious. Any one of them is as listenable as any of their crowning eighties / early nineties albums. And yet, because they came later, they will probably never command the same reverence. Which is not to say Sonic Youth were ever just treading water.
It's weird to be old enough to have lived through the entire cradle-to-grave stories of two long-lived, significant bands. I suppose people older than myself had that sense about The Beatles (who got through it all, don't forget, in less than a decade; imagine that).
Excuse the scattered nature of these thoughts. It's Saturday morning. Just enjoy the song.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Song of the day
"666.66", by Weird Dreams.
The guitar at the start of this song sounds so much like The Durutti Column that it's almost a shame when the song proper starts. "Almost", because if this turned out to be my favourite song of 2012 I wouldn't be at all surprised. It's a welcoming, breezy take on post-C86 pop with a gentle shoegaze-y fringe. At least, that's what I'm hearing. Kids are getting such great sounds out of guitars these days. Not original, necessarily, but great.
The guitar at the start of this song sounds so much like The Durutti Column that it's almost a shame when the song proper starts. "Almost", because if this turned out to be my favourite song of 2012 I wouldn't be at all surprised. It's a welcoming, breezy take on post-C86 pop with a gentle shoegaze-y fringe. At least, that's what I'm hearing. Kids are getting such great sounds out of guitars these days. Not original, necessarily, but great.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Song of the day
"When I See You Again", by Shimmering Stars.
What happened while I was away? The Jesus and Mary Chain revival.
I found this song at a blog called Sounds Better With Reverb. And, you know what? It does!
What happened while I was away? The Jesus and Mary Chain revival.
I found this song at a blog called Sounds Better With Reverb. And, you know what? It does!
Friday, February 03, 2012
A Summer Place
Well, that was fun. Four nights at the coast, as a kind of farewell to the school holidays. We did it last year. Then, it was hot and stormy. This time, it was just cool and damp, not at all boogie-boarding weather, and only barely pool weather. Still, we gave it a go. The place we stayed at was in receivership last summer, and we got a really good deal. This year, it turns out, it is under new ownership, and we were somewhat surprised (not pleasantly) by the rates, and by being forced to pay extra for two children and four continental breakfasts, none of which (ie the breakfasts) we really needed. (Four days of mini-croissants and assorted Kellogs (tm) cereals is, I now know, about my limit.) Since we were there last year they have fenced the pool out from the bar area, which just seems wrong (although we would have missed it more if it had been pool weather). They have also forgotten how to make coffee. In fact, all in all I think I preferred the place when it was being run by the receivers. That can't be good.
Still, the setting is magical: cabins that face right onto the beach, bushland behind. Kangaroos wandered onto the deck, looking to stroll right on into our cabin. We took a few walks, with and without geocaching objectives (kindly researched by friends of ours, whom we convinced to come with us). (One of the caches was, apparently, the first ever "earth cache", which took us to various geological formations that we had walked over previously without even noticing, and a fossilised colony of bryozoa, or something, like I would know.) We found a snake curled up in a hole in a rock, not entirely in a location that I would have expected to find a snake. I had walked right past it; it's a wonder I hadn't blindly stuck my hand in the hole for grip. Snap.
Wednesday night we drove into Batemans Bay for fish and chips. As you do. The last week of January is a good time for this, as New South Wales is back at school and the ACT isn't, so you can get a table at the fish and chip shop, and look out at the boats or down at the many fish that are swimming around below you (and a stingray, which, I swear, waved to us).
With the weather being as it was, there was time for other things.
Like watching DVDs. And T20 cricket. And "QI".
Or like playing some of the games we had picked up at CanCon the previous weekend. Unbeknownst to me, Adrienne had bought a game called Monty Python Fluxx, which was fun while also being head-splittingly confusing (the game keeps changing), and which might well lend itself to long, boozy evenings, if such a thing were possible. She had also, while I wasn't looking, bought another game, called Escalation, mainly for the cover image of a granny wielding a machine gun. (If I'm honest, I would have bought it if I had seen it.) It is fun, and simple, and fast. These are not always things you are looking for in a game, but sometimes they are just the ticket. The other game, Elfenland, is neither fast nor simple. It may well be fun, but that is a conclusion that will only be reached with further understanding of how the damn thing works.
Or like fighting through my reader's block (it's like writer's block, I think, except from the other side of the page: I have for some time been unable to pick up and start a novel, presumably in some not small part as a result of having very little time or energy (on account of the nature of my day job) for reading. So to make a start on Ian McEwan's "Solar" was a bit like finding a favourite old jumper in the back of the cupboard. (Actually, an old jumper would have come in very handy, given the weather. Did I mention the weather already?)
Lesson learned: if you are going to take your Bialetti on holidays with you, make sure you take a trivet for balancing it on the stove. There is nothing sadder than coffee that is on the floor instead of in the cup.
The dolphins we had seen last summer seemed to have deserted us this year. But this morning, as we were packing up to leave, I noticed some smaller fish jumping through the surface of the water. This, last year, had seemed to be a signal that the dolphins were about. So I said to Jules, who is useless at packing up (fact!), to go out (in the rain) to look for dolphins. Whereupon he said, within a couple of eye blinks, "There are dolphins." And there they were. Possibly (but probably not) waving us goodbye. We loaded the car, in the rain, walked over to our final continental breakfast, in the rain, brushed the sand off the boogie boards, in the rain, and drove back to Canberra, in the rain. We passed a still-fresh car accident on the way back, which is always a sobering thing to see.
Georgie the cat was pleased to be brought home from her own summer holiday adventure at the local cattery. Two issues of the New Yorker awaited us. The house was cold. There were 28mm in the rain gauge.
And thus normal life returns.
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