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February 28, 2006
The Year in Music, Part 7
Various Artists/A Celebration of New Orleans Music
Various Artists/Our New Orleans
Various Artists/I Believe to My Soul
Dr. John/Sippiana Hericane
Today’s theme is pretty simple: the proceeds from all these CDs go to hurricane relief. Of course, you could accomplish more by just giving your money directly to, say, Habitat for Humanity, but where’s the fun in that? Anytime you can do a small good deed by buying music, I figure you’re ahead of the game.
This being Fat Tuesday and all, I’ve ingested a little too much single-malt scotch to go into any great detail, but these are all loaded with good music. If I had to pick one, it would probably be A Celebration of New Orleans Music, which is seriously—as they like to say down there—fonky, with an upbeat vibe that feels right on this most auspicious of days. In case you didn’t know, February 28, 2006 is not only Mardi Gras Day and the new moon, but also the last day of The Most Dangerous Month of the Year.
I’ve gone on the record many times with my feelings about February, which in my mind just takes up space between New Year’s and spring. But now that it’s over, I’m feeling generous about the second month, which to be honest was not half bad this year. The groundhog notwithstanding, the weather was mostly gorgeous, interspersed with heavy rain that will no doubt make for a spectacular season. My cats are happy and healthy, I made a few bucks this month, and my orchids started blooming a few days ago.
As I write this, the sun is setting over Oaktown. The few clouds remaining from our last rainstorm are glowing sweetly pink and blue. (You can’t have a top-notch sunset without a few clouds; there has to be something to catch the light.) Meanwhile, the Mardi Gras revelry is in full swing in the Crescent City. Some people thought it was weird to have a big party in the midst of all that devastation, but it makes perfect sense to me. When things are really fucked, that’s when you need a good time most of all. So what the hell: Laissez les bon temps etc. etc. We’ll figure everything out tomorrow, I’m sure.
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February 24, 2006
Happy Birthday to Abe
Abe Vigoda shows off the
smoldering good looks that
made him an international
sex symbol.
Today is the 85th birthday of Abe Vigoda, who contrary to popular belief is still alive. Celebrate by imagining a parallel universe in which Abe played the lead role in Saturday Night Fever instead of John Travolta, and picture him strutting down the street to the tune of “Staying Alive.”
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February 23, 2006
The Year in Music, Part 6
Amadou & Mariam/Dimanche á Bamako
Blackalicious/The Craft
So what do the Oakland hip-hop duo of DJ Chief Xcel and MC The Gift of Gab have in common with Amadou & Mariam, a blind husband-and-wife team from Mali? Plenty, in my mind. I’ve been a fan of Blackalicious since I heard a track from their A to G EP on the radio circa 1998, and of Amadou & Mariam since I heard their song “Mon Amour, Mon Cherie” in the Emeryville Tower Records around the same time. Though they work in very different idioms, both are heavily beat-centric and capable of dizzying, ecstatic heights when they’re clicking on all cylinders.
Which is not always. I’ve found Amadou & Mariam’s previous albums vaguely disappointing, I think because their music depends on a peculiar kind of magic to make the simple, repetitive grooves levitate. The magic doesn’t always work—most of the time, but not always—and when it doesn’t, the songs just kind of lie there.
I was hoping that Dimanche á Bamako, produced by genre- and border-hopping reggaephile Manu Chao, would be that great Amadou & Mariam album I’ve been waiting for. And it is tantalizingly close. The stylistic mix of Chao’s continental melange and Amadou & Mariam’s bubbling African stew mostly works, though at times this threatens to turn into a Manu Chao album—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Many of the songs, like “M’Bife,” “Senegal Fast Food,” and “Politic Amagni,” are minor miracles. If it weren’t for a couple of lesser tracks, this would be the Holy Grail. As it is, the search continues; in the meantime, there’s a lot to enjoy on Dimanche á Bamako.
The Craft is the third Blackalicious album, following 2000’s near-masterpiece Nia and 2002’s Blazing Arrow, which was a bit of a letdown. Not awful, just a little too slick and unsure of its direction. I was hoping that Gab and Xcel, as groovy a couple of guys as you’ll find in the Long Plastic Hallway, would bounce back with a winner.
And The Craft is certainly an improvement on its predecessor, leading off with the jaw-dropping one-two punch of “World of Vibrations” and “Supreme People.” The latter has shot up right near the top of my list of favorite hip-hop tracks on the strength of its body-slamming rhythm and sharp lyrics:
Supreme people livin’ with their back aligned
Up against the wall cause these days are asinine
Living in a money matrix how cats survive
Some will fade away and wither, others will blast a nine
Kings and queens workin’ nine to fives and makin’ nothing
Searching for a deeper purpose in life
This can’t be life
With all this work this can’t be right
With no money in my pocket I just can’t see right
I used to try to preach to young ‘uns like “Do right, kids”
Nowadays all I can say is “Get it how you live”
Eh, it’s not quite the same without that beat, but never mind. Other highlights include “Powers,” a female-praising anthem laced with electric guitar, and “Lotus Flower,” with guest vocals by George Clinton. Unfortunately, The Craft runs out of steam on what those of us raised in the vinyl age would call the B side. Message songs like “The Fall and Rise of Elliot Brown” and “Black Diamonds and Pearls” are kind of clunky, which is a problem a lot of “conscious” hip-hop artists have—how do you make a serious point without being a drag? Answer: Go back and listen to “Supreme People.” If the music’s right, the message goes down nice and smooth.
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February 22, 2006
Word of the day/joke of the day
On the way to the gym this morning, I found an index card on the sidewalk. One one side, the definition “to annoy; to pester; to puzzle”; on the other side, the word “vex.”
Which reminds me of a joke. I didn’t make this one up, so I don’t deserve the credit or (more likely) the blame.
Mahatma Gandhi, as we all know, was a very devout and religious man. He often fasted, which made him very frail. He walked everywhere, usually on bare feet, and as a result was very calloused. And when he did eat, his diet was very unusual, which tended to give him bad breath.
So you could say that he was a super-fragile calloused mystic vexed by halitosis.
(Don’t get it? Read the last line aloud to yourself several times.)
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February 21, 2006
Who is that mystery lad?
I wish I could take credit for composing this shot—the truth is, I forgot I had the flash turned off.
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February 20, 2006
Caught in an Updraft
Walking down the Avenue today, I saw a gray-bearded African-American guy. He had just finished asking somebody for change, and as he turned toward me I assumed he was about to hit me up next.
Instead, he made a throwing motion with his right hand, out of which flew a paper airplane. A good one, too. It banked upward over my left shoulder and landed well behind me.
I complimented him on this impressive feat of engineering. He grinned and said humbly, "Got caught in an updraft."
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February 17, 2006
Mysterious vegetation #2
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February 16, 2006
Mysterious vegetation
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February 15, 2006
The Bubble Planet
Pages from somebody’s children’s books were scattered all over Pleasant Valley Avenue today. A picture of Simba the lion cub on the corner of Montgomery Street, and near the crest of the small hill near Howe Street, a white sheet containing the following inspirational message:
The Bubble Planet was
not so scary anymore.
Buzz was happy.
His friends were here.
And he was clean!
Posted by bill at 8:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 13, 2006
Alert the media: Monkey Vortex lives!
I am more than pleased to report that after a lengthy hibernation, the multi-headed hydra of audio entertainment that we call Monkey Vortex Radio Theater has returned to the land of the living. The new season kicks off with Part 1 of “The Phone Call,” years in the making and with a cast of several. I beseech you to click here and begin consuming our fresh content right this very moment.
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February 7, 2006
I love spam
OK, not really. I hate it just like you do. But every once in a while something interesting is spit up by the random word generators that they use to evade your spam filter. For instance, one diabolical software peddler has sent me emails with the following names in the sender field:
Mailboxes B. Sideswiped
Emptiness P. Assessments
Occupying F. Negroid
Paradoxes B. Lambasts
Neapolitan M. Ungrateful
Shoddiness Q. Outmaneuvers
Mercurial P. Medicate
Debtor H. Gibberish
Marseillaise S. Recessio
Correlations V. Afield
Typist C. Detestation
Anger H. Ruby
Idolatrous B. Plot
and the winner, the one that I may legally change my name to:
Multiplex H. Misfire
If I didn't know better, I'd think that these names were the product of a higher order of intelligence. It's the middle initials that really make them work.
Some bootleg watch peddler keeps sending me emails with long, strange subject lines like the following:
Her initial defensiveness had been replaced by indignation. It's funny in 1882. And the joke is, it would be a novel, he almost said to Charlie Merrill. Dimly, from the afterdeck, Geoffrey could hear a gang of men singing a shanty in bellowing, off-key voices. It was a gesture of affection, he said. I still care about the book. When they put me up on the stand in Denver. He spoke rapidly, urgently, eyes flashing, riveted on her face — ;he was positive in that moment that his life might depend on what he was able to say in the next twenty seconds. Yes, Paul could suddenly see it — and in an instinctive way he understood exactly how such a scene, absurdly melodramatic as it might be, could be milked for suspense.
And a stock solicitation that I just received concluded with this excellent bit of accidental poetry:
Of talk swim
And spend talk
lie sing change
wrong know fill
them see cough
those swim start
on tell swim
Which travel ask
An borrow close
A spell work
super go make
Super go make, indeed.
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February 4, 2006
The BOC & Me
This picture doesn’t do much to buttress my case in favor of the BÖC. That’s guitar hero Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, resplendent in whitesuit, on the right.
Lately I’ve been deriving a lot of pleasure from listening to the music of the Blue Öyster Cult. I say this willingly and in public, despite knowing that the government is going to put me on some kind of list.
The BÖC doesn’t get a lot of respect—it cost me next to nothing to pick up a copy of their 2-CD collection Workshop of the Telescopes. And to be honest, the first disc is a waste of time, filled with early-period sludge like “Flaming Telepaths” and “Harvester of Eyes.” But the second disc is a whole different story. It leads off with “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” an FM staple for 30-some years now, and recently further immortalized by the Christopher Walken “More Cowbell” sketch. With its chiming, insistent riff, eerie harmonies, and ample cowbell, “The Reaper” is every bit as pointless to resist as the Reaper himself.
From there the hits just keep coming: “Godzilla” and “E.T.I.” are all-time air-guitar classics. “Veteran of the Psychic Wars,” co-written by unfortunately named science fiction author Michael Moorcock, is a landmark in the history of nerd-rock. Unlike a lot of 70s bands, the Cult didn’t go all to hell in the 80s, producing brilliant singles like “Take Me Away” and “Burnin’ for You,” which was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV and still sounds great. My only complaint: whoever put together this compilation left off “Joan Crawford Has Risen from the Grave,” quite possibly the BÖC’s finest moment.
So don’t hate on the Blue Öyster Cult. Not only did they influence everyone from Spinal Tap to the Sisters of Mercy, they were self-consciously ironic in the 70s, two full decades before it became fashionable. If only they’d been smart enough to get Brian Eno to produce some of their albums, they could have been the Talking Heads of heavy metal. But there probably would have been less cowbell.
.
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February 3, 2006
The Year in Music, Part 5
Beck/Guero
Devendra Banhart/Cripple Crow
The year in question, by the way, is 2005, and you may well ask: Do I feel guilty that this thing has now stretched into February, when everybody else did their year-end wrap-ups in December? Maybe a little, but not really; I think summing up the year before it’s actually over is a little hasty, and anyway thoughts take time to filter down. It’s like collecting rain in a bucket—it takes as long as it takes, so why be in a hurry?
Anyway, on with the music. I’m hard-pressed to explain why I’m putting these two albums together. I’m sure there is an affinity between them, it’s just hard to put your finger on. Beck is an established veteran, Banhart a relative newcomer (albeit a prolific one). Cripple Crow is spare and acoustic, with a sound that could have been achieved just as easily in 1969; Guero is all Pro Tools and the Dust Brothers, with an ultramodern low end and every note in digitally perfect position.
Why, then, do I think they’re two sides of the same coin? For one thing, both of these guys like to sing in Spanish, although Banhart—who grew up partly in Venezuela—is a lot more serious about it. For another, while Beck’s folkie side is not much in evidence on Guero, we know it exists from albums like One Foot in the Grave. Again, though, the resemblance is fairly superficial. Beck approaches folk music from the bluesy, Mississippi John Hurt side, while Banhart is most definitely a disciple of Donovan; his brand of folk is spacy, contemplative, and unapologetically hippiefied. The former is whiskey-drinking folk, the latter dope-smoking folk, and while in one sense that’s splitting hairs, in another sense the two are worlds apart.
In the end, I think the connection has less to do with style and more with personality. To really get to the point I’m trying to make, I have to once again invoke the name of that eternal touchstone, David Bowie. In the last 15 minutes I’ve started developing a theory that a big part of Bowie’s appeal has to do with the fact that he grew up in public—or, more to the point, continually evolved without really “growing up,” that is, losing his youthful elasticity. In the 70s we saw him trying on different identities much as a teenager might. His vaunted androgyny was really not so much gay as soft and unformed, innocent, but suggestive of a sexuality that could develop in any direction. In subsequent years we’ve seen a more “adult” Bowie: sometimes a shrewd, successful careerist; sometimes a damaged man struggling to shake off his addictions and recover his creative spark. Today’s Bowie is a happy, productive family man who’s finally showing signs of mortality—a face that’s starting to look worn and a heart that’s given out on him once. But even so, he’s never lost a certain boyishness, which is quite in evidence on that TV ad where he steals Snoop Dogg’s medallion and smiles impishly.
Both Beck and Devendra Banhart have that same man-child quality. Beck, at 35, is just beginning to look like he might be old enough to drink. Artistically, he’s not so much settled down as integrated his many facets into a style that is now identifiably his own. Guero touches on the playfulness of Odelay, the psychedelic lyricism of Mutations, and the haywire-robots-on-coke vibe of Midnite Vultures, and while you could call the results schizophrenic, you could also just call it a Beck album.
Banhart could be his younger brother who’s just dropped out of college, sporting a noticeably Jeebus-like beard and shaggy curls. You don’t have to look very hard to see his childlike tendencies: Take, for instance, Cripple Crow’s eighth track, “I Feel Just Like a Child.” Or its fourth track, “Long Haired Child”; sixteenth track, “Chinese Children”; or penultimate track, “Little Boys.” On this last one the obsession turns a bit disturbing, as when Banhart sings “I see so many little boys I want to marry.” But the effect is less perverse than willfully provocative, as when Bowie was telling journalists he was gay, milking suggestiveness for all it was worth. Which begs the question, can you be consciously childlike? If you know you’re doing it, it’s not really innocent, is it? Well, never mind. Why ruin Cripple Crow by overanalyzing it? It’s a great listen for a rainy day, anodyne for gray skies, crunchy and comforting as five-bean chili. No more analysis for today.
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February 2, 2006
Groundhog Day
Well, the results are in: That goddamn rodent saw his shadow again, dooming us to six more weeks of winter. Not that winter in the Oaktown is anything to get all worked up about, although I am kind of tired of the rain. It’s just such a tease; every year we’re promised the possibility of early spring, only to have it cruelly snatched away by an animal with a lower IQ than the average NASCAR fan. When was the last time the wretched creature failed to see its shadow? Why must we go through this charade year after year? And why on Earth did we empower this lowly beast—not even a primate, barely a mammal—to dictate our weather to us? Doesn’t it violate one of the commandments? Oh Lord, I beseech thee, smite the groundhog and deliver us from its tyranny.
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February 1, 2006
Minor insight of the day
Separated at birth?
In the last week I’ve watched both Casablanca and Star Wars (the original one—I can’t stand to call it “Episode IV” or “A New Hope”). And all of a sudden it occurred to me that Han Solo is Rick Blaine: the cynical mercenary who turns out to be a big softie. It’s so obvious I can’t believe I never thought of it before. Did everyone else already know this? If so, why didn’t anyone tell me?
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