Hey, Hey Bartender!

Some video, courtesy of Kahlief's iPhone, of our performance last Sunday at Pete's Candy Store. "Eye" was the only original song we did. The others here are "Hey, Hey Bartender" by Del McCoury; "Pistol Packin' Mama" by Al Dexter, and "September Song" by Kurt Weill.

Just a Shout Away

(then, you might try this:
http://video.filestube.com/watch,fd3d58493e03ba2703ea/Pixies-Debaser-Ukulele-Rock-cover.html)

Wandering

A long dreamy slice of melancholy cello. Excellent for afternoon naps.

The cellist is Alban Gerhardt, playing music by Peter Kuhlmann (aka hyperprolific synth-ambient superhero Pete Namlook). 

Even more than most of the posts here, this is clearly a marginal release, so if you like it a trip to the iTunes store is highly recommended.

I discovered this slice of deliciousness via the alluringly addictive Sleepbot. 

All one mp3, but in two parts to meet upload restrictions. Unrar them to one folder.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/n5s3dwb9jqa3zq6/Peter%20Kuhlmann%20%26%20Alban%20Gerhardt-%20Wandering%20Soul.part1.rar

http://www.mediafire.com/file/m6t8qympzahzqbm/Peter%20Kuhlmann%20%26%20Alban%20Gerhardt-%20Wandering%20Soul.part2.rar

Música Callada

"It is rather difficult to translate and explain the real meaning of "Música Callada" in any language other than Spanish. The great mystic poet San Juan de la Cruz speaks in one of his beautiful poems: "La Música Callada, la Soledad Sonora" [Silent Music, Resonant Solitude] seeking thus to express the idea of a music that would be the very voice of silence. Music retaining for itself its quiet voice, that is, remaining silent while solitude becomes its own music." [Preface, published score to Música Callada]

This is Vol. 4 of a 4-volume set. I also own Vol.1 and love both. At some point I will buy the other two. And pretty much anything else that I find, by anyone, playing Mompou.  

(from http://www.pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=213):

"Federico Mompou, Catalan composer and pianist, was born in Barcelona in 1893. He studied piano at the Conservatorio del Liceo in Barcelona and gave his first concert at the age of 15. However, his shy and reticent nature did not predestine him to be a virtuoso performer, and he decided to become a composer after hearing Gabriel Faure perform his Quintet. Three years later, with a letter of recommendation from Granados, he went to Paris to study harmony and piano with Isidor Philipp and Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix. In Paris, he became influenced by the French impressionism of Debussy Satie. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Mompou returned to Barcelona, where he wrote his first works for the piano.

In 1921 Mompou returned to Paris where he remained for 20 years and became a respected composer. In 1941 he settled permamently in Barcelona. He was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, elected to the Royal Academy of San Jorge in Barcelona and of San Fernando in Madrid, and made Doctor Honoris Causa at the University of Barcelona. He married the Catalan pianist Carmen Bravo in 1957, and died in Barcelona on June 30th, 1987.

Mompou was a modest, quietly spoken, and thoughtful person and this is reflected in his music. He wrote no operas, concertos or symphonies, and some choral works are as close as he got to producing large-scale works. He was predominantly a composer of lyric songs and piano miniatures. The music is imbued with the colours, sounds, and images of his beloved Catalonia, the style ranging from elegantly impressionistic to simplistic and minimal. Here we see the influence of Satie in using the utmost economy of means, doing away with key signatures and bar lines, and occasionally inserting silly comments. As a young man, Mompou worked briefly in a bell factory, and the sound of bells can be heard throughout his works. For Mompou, less is more, and one needs a finely attuned ear and a responsive state of mind to properly appreciate his music."

(I like how they flatter the listener at the end there.)

He sounds like he was an interesting guy: quietly eccentric, and devoted to his craft. I'm not sure the Masó performances are the best-- to my uneducated ears they sound, perhaps, a trifle fussy and precise-- I hope to hear better at some point-- maybe Michelangeli, who I just discovered on Youtube recently?-- but they're certainly gorgeous in their way and make for wonderfully relaxing evening music.

Anyhow, you'll enjoy this if you enjoy Satie. (And what kind of person doesn't enjoy Satie?)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/kfuctgrktvcrmt4/Frederic%20Mompou_Jordi%20Maso-%20Piano%20Music%20Vol%204.zip

for much more (5 volumes of Mompou playing Mompou!) go here:
http://elrestoesruido.blogspot.com/2008/11/federico-mompou-mompou-plays-mompou.html

Lots of good purchasables (discs and downloads) at CDUniverse.

A Long Way From Home

Lots of miscellaneous Youtube goodness.







Not Youtube, but you'll want to listen:
http://soundcloud.com/rogboy/burn-it-down-los-lobos

Incurable

There's a lot of retro-nostalgia(?) these days for the 80s. Most of the contributors of this blog grew up during the 80s. And guess what!??! It WAS awesome. We just didn't know it at the time. It was a bunch of shitty pre-adolescent sexual frustration and Republican yuppies. And Michael Jackson was big. Except he sucked then. But now he's cool. I guess. I don't know. The first CDs I bought were in the early 90s. Some Cure, some Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Front 242. There's some Cure I can listen to. They have some great singles, Just Like Heaven, Love Cats and what have you. I obsessed over Disintegration when I was a teen. I still like the titular track, but really it's teeny-bopper shit.

For the real Cure, you got to go to Echo and the Bunnymen. Or as an alternative, The Sound, an enduring obsession of mine. The mastermind behind The Sound was a man named Adrian Borland, and succumbed to crippling schizo-depression in 1999 and committed suicide.

My parents always made fun of me when I listened to my Cure records--"Why is that guy in so much pain?" Well, ma, dad, it's an act. For all I know Robert Smith might be the most depressed man alive. But there is a much more profound quiet pain in The Sound. It is post-punk stripped of most of the glam/punk-kid affectations. Quite in the same genius vein of label mates Echo and the Bunnymen--but less cinematic and much more introspective.

And unlike the Bunnymen, The Sound never had a hit single. The first couple of albums are incredibly, Ian Curtis-inspired, austere and dark (and I love them QED.) They were urged to write more accessible tunes; they certainly were capable of it. Listen to "One Thousand Reasons."--a song Bobby Smith could have written--if he had any decency. (And I guess his indecency is his appeal.) But The Sound didn't sell-out their sound. They released another barely commercially viable album Thunder Up and then broke up. I guess Borland had minor success in the Nederlands and released a number of solo albums (which I'm processing now--seems to be excellent stuff). So it wasn't all for naught. Except he killed himself.

I'm giving you some of my most well-worn mp3s: the mid-period 1985 EPs Shock of Daylight / Heads and Hearts.

So, the sound of The Sound: Dark post punk. But not goofy gothic. (Though I like 80s gothic--don't get me wrong.) This mid-period stuff has quite a lot instrumental movement going on it; but on songs like "Longest Days" all the parts mesh like a smooth ticking, bitter-sweet alarm clock. The bass sound is amazing. The guitar sounds great. The keyboards sound great. Hell, even the saxophone sounds great. Enough talk. Time for the delicious pop-pain of The Sound!

ICI.

{Side note, trying rapidshare. Let me know if this is a problem.}


Post Script: I think some of the details of the history are wrong. All Fall Down was the album that Borland wrote in response to his label's request to make more accessible tunes. The EPs here are after all that. I don't know. Go here and figure it out with me.

So, So, So Wrong

High Wolf

Totally digging this album: zoned-out but frenetic haze, like some odd mix of krautrock, flying saucer attack, and minimalist percussion jams. Nice stuff.

Can't You Hear The Wind Howl?

This is the 'The Complete Recordings' set of Robert Johnson's music, which ought to be pretty broadly commercially available (I used to have it on cassette- those were the days...). Only, pitch-shifted down, by me.

I opened each file (working with mp3s, which is audiophile-loserdom, but whatever) in Sound Forge and pitch-shifted to 90%.

I've always thought RJ sounded too shrill and frenzied to be real, and had often wondered over the years if the recordings weren't pitch-shifted. But only recently with a bunch of press about the theory that it actually WAS, did I take that theory seriously. Slowed a little, he no longer sounds quite as bizarre and otherworldly, sure-- but he DOES sound excellent. And human. He sounds like the other blues singers of his time and place. And his guitar sounds like a guitar, not a ukelele.

85%, which is the number I've seen online, seemed too slow to my ears- it made RJ sound froggy and his guitar thumpy. Having played and sung (poorly) myself for several decades, I'm pretty familiar with the sound of the instrument. And I've listened to a lot of country and delta blues-- so 90% might not be exactly right, but it sounds ok to my ears. Hopefully it'll sound good to yours.

My suspicion, actually, is that each song is probably slightly different. Some songs still sound a little fast, and others a little slow. But this is probably a truer picture of the actual sound of the musician, than the regular version. So, hey. Whatever.

There are lots of odd arguments going around about authenticity and ownership-- was it intended to be sped up? (Apparently Johnson himself may have never heard his own recordings, and they were not much of a commercial success at the time, so many of his peers may not have either, for what that's worth). Did all the early listeners, his contemporaries, think it sounded normal? If Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, et al, thought fast was normal, does that make it right? Ultimately I'm not too interested in any of this. All I know is that the slower version sounds more musical. 

If you haven't heard these songs slowed down before, it's a bit unnerving. It's a bit like seeing an old movie that you'd only watched on a worn-out VHS, in a restored print via Blu-Ray. Suddenly the details jump out and the nuances and dimensions are audible.

Hope you enjoy  this as much as me.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/s37fs1ysbynobx5/The%20Complete%20Recordings%20%28Pitch-Corrected%29%201%20of%202.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/prybm9qo8a885cq/The%20Complete%20Recordings%20%28Pitch-Corrected%29%202%20of%202.zip

A Thousand Miles Away

A million glorious music moments. Dip in wherever. They're all worthwhile, I promise.

Eno in one of his lovelier moments. From Before and After Science.

A short segment of a much longer performance. Debashish Battacharya always has the most glorious sound.

Mississippi John Hurt is unfuckwithable. This song is a particular favorite, for somehow managing to be playful, lecherous, a little sorrowful, and gently optomistic, all at once.

Anytime someone objects to "music today isn't as good as music of yesteryear", shit like this (and the next 5 or so) is good to display. This casual display of utter brilliance, by what looks like a bunch of 20-year olds, ought to make the average 'I know a jazz chord' guitarist weep. (Guitarists should just avoid most of these entirely, unless they need to change their pants anyway).

Also See:

Louis Armstrong --Struttin with some barbecue

www.youtube.com

Louis and his All Stars 1953

Worth the detour to the Youtube page. Armstrong was such a public figure that it's easy to forget how funky, precise and lovely his music could be. This little performance makes my liver quiver.

Any fans of both the VU and Marvin Gaye, will probably be suitably delighted/horrified by this. Good prank. Interesting creation. 

In this clip, a contest is being held to see if music can melt stone. Spoiler alert: yes.

I love the Stars of the Lid. You should not listen to any of their music while driving or operating heavy equipment.

Most of the Chaurasia I've heard has been super-mellow and meditative; this has got some melody and activity to it, and is delightful.

Watch those fuckers' fingers. How do human beings do this?

Popol Vuh is one of my personal all-time-most-revered-musical-units. I could listen to this song every morning for the rest of my life.

Old friends made this song. I'd love it even if that wasn't true.

Someday, I will learn to play the Oud. But, I will never play any instrument as well as this guy plays the Oud.

The delights of this aren't so much musical, as existential.

The delights of this are completely musical. (And, maybe, existential too).

Over & out. Hope you enjoyed some of these.

The Best Show on WFMU and the Tuareg Guitar Revolution!!!!

I have too many mp3s. I'm not doing anything drastic like deleting anything. But I have TOO many mp3s. Yes, many are torrented and many are downloaded from sites like these. I have a subscription with emusic--50 mp3 downloads a month. Bands that I obsess over I try to support that still have available product, such as The Sound, For Against, The Chameleons. (I promise to go more into my post-punk obsession in the future.) I also buy bands that are associated with the Best Show on WFMU. I'm not totally into all the stuff he (Tom Scharpling) plays. But he plays a pretty diverse array of stuff that rocks. I found the Bingo Trappers, Reigning Sound, Black Lips and some other garage-punk that I hadn't really been into before. He also has a profound knowledge of classic rock, and is a convincing advocate of Paul McCartney's solo work, and always throws in some killer psych-rock. (It is really quite amazing how much amazing psych-rock there is.) I also have been buying Ted Leo and Pharmacist albums--and I like them, even though I hated them at first. But he is a friend of Tom Scharpling, and all around cool dude who works his ass off to make incredible dense, hook-heavy punkitude rock.

Scharpling directed Ted Leo's latest video. It's a funny send-up of the Green Day musical:

Ted Leo And The Pharmacists - "Bottled In Cork" (Official Video) from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists

And I recently actually ordered some actually physical product, both from Merge Records: The new Superchunk record, and the three CD retrospective of Big Dipper. Both are Best Show related. Tom Scharpling set the wheels in motion to get the Big Dipper set out, and his comedic cohort Jon Wurster is the drummer for Superchunk (as well as for The Mountain Goats.) I haven't even listened to them yet. I don't even know if I like Superchunk. But I've developed a personal relationship with some of these guys. {Sort of, I mean, they don't know who I am really, but I post on the forums and they are my facebook "friends." [Facebook is really great for stalking minor celebrities. (hint-hint, K)]}

Which of course has nothing to do with my inspiration for today's post. I may have tens of thousands of mp3s, but I really haven't been excited enough to listen to an album over and over again since my encounter with Group Inerane.

I found the album on the excellent blog exp etc, via a google buzz alert from Gary.

The description of the band makes it sound too good to be true:

Group Inerane is the now sound of the Tuareg Guitar Revolution sweeping across the Sahara Desert and inspired by the rebel musicians that started this music as a political weapon used to communicate from the Libyan Refugee camps in the 1980s and 1990s. Spearheaded by the enigmatic guitar hero Bibi Ahmed, Group Inerane has been together for several years and carries the rich tradition of Tamachek guitar songs for another generation. These ten tracks are a combination of amplified roots rock, blues, and folk in the local Tuareg styles at times entering into full-on electric guitar psychedelia.

It's an electric African psychedelic drone-rock blues. My God, man. My God.

Ojos de brujo

I've been loving this band for the past two years. My CD is in the car so here is a clip. Gypsy meets hip hop and tabla....what a wonderful word...their studio albums are great. Go out and treat your self...!! I'll be posting a few more clips just in case any one is listening....I want to see this band live.....

One from the Muses

Muses come in great forms and sizes. This music I first heard (for the first time ever) about three months ago and believed upon the first listen that I have had stumbled across a missing chapter of something akin to a dug up chapter of the Dead Sea Scrolls. My world of funk, disco, jazz and pop music was smashed to pieces. Move over Sly, I thought, this woman was coming in for the kill while recording; she had something to say and she was to making sure everyone heard her.
Then, magically, coincidental, oddly, disturbingly, lustfully, whimsically, I was browsing a book store and came across a bio by Miles Davis' son - Gregory. I flip it open and the first words I see is this singer/song writer, genius, enchantress' name - oh did I forget musician. She was what? - married to him, on the cover of File de Kilimanjaro, too - who is she? WOW! Did he really leave her because she was having an affair with Jimi..or did she leave him? Double Wow. So there are there stories behind the stories? This is not Inception everything is out for you to hear. The growl behind the voice, the shuffle of her vibrato. I never looked her up on the Internet when I first listened to her during the late months of Spring. I knew, eventually, fate would guide me to her -

I use to think Mia Farrow -, Puma- from Black Uhuru - and the woman who introduced Fela to American Political Soul music were the greatest of goddesses of the 20th century music (Mia may still win after all who else married Sinatra went to India with the Beatles and married Andre Previn, Woody who?)..who was with Stravinski?

But then I heard Betty.......and nothing was as it was before.....Betty Davis.......sit back and growl....enjoy your ice tea...your beer and chill....



It's been a quiet summer here so I thought I could bring some life back to this wonderful site....

People All Over The World Are Fighting In The War

Craving some Temptations, without the instruments?


Of course you are.


http://www.metafilter.com/92411/like-angels-on-high