There Is No Reason To Rise Alone: 2011

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Danse Around the Corn of the Macabre (request)

A long flirtation with British post-punk brought me in contact with many a thing. I had promised to share more postpunk on here, but I fear my interest in the genre is fading. Nonetheless, if I was still as fervent a postpunker as I had been just a year ago, these here albums are ones I'd want to share. The Danse Society was one of the first "Gothic Rock" bands. I guess that means they are somewhat "dark" and are associated with those zombie looking people that people call Goths but when I was in High School we called "Wavers." Hard to believe that. Did any other school except my middle school and high school have "wavers"?

I guess this has roots in Bauhaus, but I don't really know much about Bauhaus. I don't really like Bauhaus. (Saying that can still get you killed in Denver.) When I finally went on my punk journey (well into my college years) Joy Division was my dark punk band of choice, and still is.

{The Jesus and Mary Chain, not Bauhaus, Joy Division, nor The Danse Society}
Yet there's some good stuff on these albums. I especially like the opening track on Seduction. Who knows, I might love it again in a few months/years/decades! For an update on the sound, be sure and check out the UK band The Horrors.

Mediafire is weird. The albums are in zip files within a folder called "The Danse Society." If I had my shit together I could probably make it easier for you.

http://www.mediafire.com/?j09f84t93wv6b

Well, here, I give it to you on megaup too for fun.

HERE

Now, if you will excuse me. Back to my Black Sabbath albums.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Yearning for a Unique Ecstasy

I was listening to this the other day while walking through a part of Brooklyn that's simultaneously pretty and bleak. Yep, right alongside the giant construction site where they're building the new stadium. On my right, brownstones and lovely old brick homes; on my right, endless mud and girders. I even found myself standing where Freddy's used to be, the bar we loved and played at so many times. Now it's just an empty spot.

Meanwhile, the sky was overcast but the sun was active. Light was dappling everything, a soft rinse of gray shimmer over the world. And I was listening to this, and it sounded like the finest stoner buddhist chant album in the history of the world.

I was gonna repost, until I realized that the Root Blog link was still good. So, go there and get it. Unless the words "stoner buddhist chant" turn you off, in which case, screw you.

Love, Ero

http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=2790

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

There is Fire, Fire, Fire, Over Me

A wonderful, wonderful aunt gave me this for my (15th?) birthday, along with a Bob Marley cassette and a dub cassette. World-shatteringly weird to me at the time, this was like a book in a foreign language. I couldn't decode the specific anger, the blackness, the dubness, the Britishness (I thought they were British but they're Jamaican. No wonder I was confused), the percolating, throbbing electronic percussion, the deep ass-kicking drive of the Sly & Robbie rhythm section, Michael Rose's keening, moaning, snarling singing style. All of it was alien and offputting and ineffably addictive. I kept listening even though I didn't understand. It wasn't until sometime in the mid-90s that I was listening one day on headphones while walking a long way through a shitty part of town, and finally got it, somehow. (Nowadays I tend to think we never really get it. All music is someone else's prayer to a god known only to them- each of us is an occluded, inexpert eavesdropper and we bring what we need to hear to our shared experience. But sometimes you feel it even if you don't understand it, and, as they say, who feels it knows it.)

I bought this on vinyl the other day from a loft sale in a warehouse, and brought it home excited. Then I realized I already owned it. It's a measure of my love for the album that I don't really want to get rid of either copy. (Want one? Let me know and we'll talk snail-mail options... Duplicate records don't belong in tiny Brooklyn apartments).

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b806wkdxav3vnse/Black%20Uhuru-%20Sinsemilla.zip

Everything Must Change

Everything Must Change- Ero's Spring Mix 4-12-2011
by erogray

A springtime mix.
I've been thinking lately about how there's a moment in despair when you're not really sure that things can ever be good again. And during this time the seeds of new life are germinating but you don't even know it.

I've been thinking about how all the great struggles for change- civil rights, human rights, etc.- are permanent struggles. You never get to a point where they're accomplished, because in our lives despair is nearly as powerful as love, and no matter how strong your love is, despair makes its resurgences and must be fought back. Every generation does this, and every individual, in every season. Furthermore, death and the fear it generates in our lives is a constant force, whereas love- the creative force in the universe- must create itself again and again within us. So dictators stay with us. Terrorists and crooked cops stay with us. The pettiness and cruelty in our own behavior always reappears, no matter what our intentions. But the love, and the hope love brings, that can defeat all these things, has to be reborn within us through painful struggle. It is always stronger, but it is not a constant. It must be born.

But mostly I've been thinking about what an endless and dreary winter this has been, and how eager I am for spring to come.

Anyway, this is a mixtape for you. Folks who've been listening to mixtapes (or to this blog) for years will recognize a lot of the songs, but whatever. It seems right for the moment.

I hope you like it.

Tracklist:

Al Green- I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
Lhasa De Sela- Is Anything Wrong?
Joni Mitchell- Blue
Yo La Tengo- Tears Are In Your Eyes
Loren Mazzacane Connors- Brigid's Song
Dusty Springfield- No Easy Way Down
Jose Delhart- Cien Pajaritos
Bill Monroe- Gloryland
Echo & the Bunnymen- Over the Wall
Tom Waits- Somewhere
Sandy Denny- It'll Take A Long Time
Nina Simone- Everything Must Change
David Bowie- Fantastic Voyage
Anouar Brahem- Iram Retrouvee
Gene Clark- I Think I'm Gonna Feel Better
Bareh Droma- Sosnitsa (The Little Pine Tree)
Lonnie Johnson- Swing Out Rhythm
Magical Power Mako- Open the Morning Window
East River Pipe- Life Is Born Today
Nick Drake- Hazey Jane
Van Morrison- Starting A New Life
Sly & the Family Stone- You Caught Me Smilin'
Ike & Tina Turner- Feel Good
Super Eagles- Love's A Real Thing
The Beatles- Fixing a Hole

Monday, April 11, 2011

Astral News

A splendid compilation made by a friend, back in Ye Olde Y2K. I played drums on one of the songs, so I'm biased, but I think this record really hits a wonderful cross-section of the best sorts of music made at that time, at the craziness of the millenium and before the Great George W. Bush Disaster: the songs are by turns artsy, funky, willfully odd, sleepily obscure, quirkily fun, dreamy. Probably more adjectives too. There's a Clouddead song, which is always worth hearing. And the song sung by my wife-to-be, with wobbly mallet-drums by yours truly, holds up nicely.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/awk6mo9381c6f18/VA-%2019%20Ways%20to%20Avoid%20the%20Draft.zip

This is also for sale, here, if you'd like to reward the people that made it possible. http://www.elsieandjack.com/marino/mi009c.html

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Have to Change Keys to Play These Blues

Lonnie Johnson was an interesting dude. Among the most brilliant guitar technicians ever recorded, he completely dominated sophisticated blues and ragtime playing (Robert Johnson, among others, was a fan and imitator), and laid a solid foundation for jazz guitar. Literally, that is: if you look at early jazz guitar compilations, he pops up, both alone and in duets with the much-imitated guitarist Eddie Lang. Mr. Johnson's strumming interspersed with tightly-phrased little stingers of single-note playing set up a template for modern blues, r&b, rock, etc., lead guitar. A few other folks did this too, but his style seems to have really been the model for almost everyone who followed. As an instrumentalist, he was, especially early on, astonishingly inventive, and his fingers were precise and freakily nimble. You could compare him to other transformational instrumentalists like Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Smith, Art Tatum, etc. without injustice. And he was, in my unimportant opinion, an absolutely terrible singer, who sang a ton of ridiculously schmaltzy songs. Perhaps this is why, unlike the others listed above, he's largely forgotten today except by guitar nerds and historian types. Luckily, he recorded so many sides that there's no shortage of wheat hidden among the chaff.

Anyhow, this here is a pretty random collection of older stuff by him, not from any album in particular (to be honest, this is the result of me googling for free mp3s, then cramming them all in one folder)... There are some guitar duets (the ones with Eddie Lang are pretty amazing), some with singing by him, some sung by others, some solo instrumentals. Some of the instrumentals are insanely great. I recommend especially 'Swing Out Rhythm' and 'Playing With The Strings' to your attention. Just listening will give the average guitarist blisters.

I recommend looking around for more- there's lots of it, and much of it is excellent. Some of his more traditional blues recordings even sound like country blues, and can be pretty great. (The guy had range- down-home on one end, suave and genteel on the other). He was an interesting arranger and actually wrote lyrics (as opposed to many blues singers' practice of slapping together as many couplets as came to mind). Avoid the 1940s stuff, in which he croons jazz standards in a nasal, minimally inflected voice, while strumming flatly. Some of this is neat but it gets dull. (I can't get through three songs in a row of the Folkways compilation, for instance). The early, hot-jazz, ragtime flipouts, and the rootsy acoustic blues songs, are where he's at his best.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/h3htnsv7mysi7u8/Lonnie%20Johnson-%20Misc%20Early%20Tracks.zip

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Didn't It Rain?

Bob Dylan: greatest DJ ever?

From Wikipedia:

Theme Time Radio Hour (TTRH) was a weekly, one-hour satellite radio show hosted by Bob Dylan originally airing from May 2006 to April 2009. Each episode was an eclectic, freeform mix of blues, folk, rockabilly, R&B, soul, bebop, rock-and-roll, country and pop music, centered around a theme such as "Weather," "Money," and "Flowers" with songs from artists as diverse as Patti Page and LL Cool J. Much of the material for the show's 100 episodes was culled from producer Eddie Gorodetsky's music collection, which reportedly includes more than 10,000 records and more than 140,000 digital files.^[1]

Interspersed between the music segments were email readings, listener phone calls, vintage radio air checks, old radio promos and jingles, even older jokes from Dylan ("My grandmother is so tidy she puts newspaper under the cuckoo clock"), poetry recitations; taped messages from a variety of celebrities, musicians and comedians; and commentary from Dylan on the music and musicians as well as miscellanea related to the themes. The show was not live (Dylan taped his portions at various locations and while touring), and the studio location at the so-called "Abernathy Building" was fictitious. Most of the "listener phone calls" and emails were also fictitious, although at least one email read on the show came from an actual listener.^[2]

Below are links to most of Season 1.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

All My Days

Two beautiful old blues and gospel compilations from Mississippi Records. Buy them if you see them, Mississippi Records releases tend to become collectors' items immediately.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9jbo63cjxalszwj/Been%20Here%20All%20My%20Days_%20Selections%20From%20The%20George%20Mitchell%20Archive.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/vvjqvrv8ohdcwcp/Oh%20Graveyard%2C%20You%20Can%27t%20Hold%20Me%20Always.zip

Monday, February 28, 2011

Echo Waves

Rigorously disciplined and also a free-form freakout.

I think that every sound on this album is guitar-originated.

As a guitarist, I often dislike listening to guitarists. Especially rockers. Especially rockers who use a lot of pedals to adjust their sound, and frequently zoom into needly-noodly squealy land. Fuck those jerks.

This guy is an exception. I'll listen to him any time. Something about the krautrock rockers that is especially true here: they knew how to play guitar solos in such a way that they actually sound ego-less. They're not showing off, they're blasting off. And they're taking you along.

Often this almost sounds like techno, only guitar-based. Intense krautrock jammy techno.

Enjoy!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/5s64e7yuvkj5lv8/Manuel%20G%F6ttsching-%20Inventions%20for%20Electric%20Guitar.zip

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Strumming

Would you like to spend 52 minutes vibrating to intense, vigorous, one-chord piano drone?
I should think so.

Previously:
http://noreasontorisealone.blogspot.com/2010/01/manifestations.html

http://www.mediafire.com/file/78hgl6jl4h3w34q/Charlemagne%20Palestine-%20Strumming%20Music.zip

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Don't Judge Me

Insanely good gypsy music compilation. Haven't managed to find out anything on the interwebs-- really, I don't know a thing about this, except that it will make your moist parts a little throbby, and your brain will overload and shut down for a while, which will be good for everyone. Stupid brain causes all sorts of problems.

Raise a glass, sob a little sob, smash it on the floor, now dance with the ones you love. Tomorrow we die.

Can be purchased online at Asphalt Tango (if you don't mind the international shipping) or (one copy) at Amazon. Not on iTunes, though I just requested that they carry it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1dken25i1ocqv6x

Monday, February 21, 2011

Improvised Guitar

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Winter Solstice Mix

Don't miss this one, it's insanely good.
http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=4458

Friday, February 11, 2011

I Was Caught In The Storm

An artist I only discovered a few weeks ago. I can't stop listening to her. Lhasa De Sela was a Montreal-based singer with roots in Mexico and the U.S. as well as Canada. She sings in three languages, in a voice about as sultry and smoky and rich as I've ever heard.

That is, she did sing, while she was alive. She died last January, of breast cancer, at age 36.

This is, I think, the second of three albums. A few years old now and the production is possibly a bit mid-oughties sounding, if you mind that sort of thing. You shouldn't though- her preference was for spare, unorthodox, Leonard Cohen-style arrangements: unexpected trumpet solos, spare harp, an occasional drifty slide guitar, an upright bass wandering forward and then back again.

All in all either I just have a music crush, or it's genuinely amazing stuff. I think the other albums seem amazing too, but haven't heard them in full. Check this one out and let me know what you think.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9g49s9d5pe029ug/Lhasa%20De%20Sela-%20The%20Living%20Road.zip

Also:

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Ca-Caw

Feeling claustrophobic, chilled and bored?
Tired of dirty snow and long days coughing in an underheated office?

Adjust your bikini, swim up to the bar, avoid the parrots and monkeys trying to steal your mai-tai, and tune in:
http://www.exoticaproject.com

Monday, January 24, 2011

Leaky

Fans of MIA may be interested in her December 2010 mixtape.

http://vickileekx.com/

Rain Don't Fall

Many of you know that I'm a fanatic for old country and blues. And a fan of Mississippi Records, whose reissue compilations releases always are about as good as it gets.

Here are three I love, posted elsewhere. All the links work.

http://zambonisoundtracks.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/va-mississippi-records-oh-graveyard-you-cant-hold-me-always-2009-compilation/

http://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2010/05/va-been-here-all-my-days-selections.html

http://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2010/12/va-rain-dont-fall-on-me-country-blues.html

If you ever see these in stores, grab em. They go fast.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Against Perfection; Sunshine Smile

This is the first album by a less famous Creation records band, Adorable. Despite their name, apparently they were assholes, and really fucked up their career. Despite this, they made some great music. For me it connects cerebral pop post-punk to cerebral pop shoegaze. What I've assembled is a facsimile of the UK release, that included the PERFECT single "Sunshine Smile" along with the 10 tracks off the original album. (The original album of ten tracks appears to be available, but not the single. So I don't feel a whiff of guilt about sharing this. Well, maybe an iota of a whiff. But fuck it.) Plus some extra shit. Anyhow, this rocks and has melodies and only dives into the relentless NOISEGAZE only when musically appropriate. If you're tired of My Bloody Valentine, or never were into them, give these guys a chance. Top notch, and doesn't seem dated at all to me. I've done the two folders thing. Hopefully all the tagging worked out. If not, let me know. I've relented and have gone totally iTunes, despite my hatred for it. What I'd do is just drag the folders over to the library, make sure "copy files to iTunes library" and "manage folders" are ticked. Or do it your own way.

part 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?firf86nnxzpxc2c

part 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?dotppcy76b4hs2v

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Homelessness

Don't know much about this. Just found it. After someone on facebook linked to this:

I think I have just entered a whole new wonderful world of music.

Komitas.

Now I just got to figure out how to find more of this music.