Whom blog?

Why, my wife, of course.

Here is her post commemorating our neighbor Chuck's 95th birthday party, which we attended this weekend.

I know, I know, she kicks my ass at blogging too.

Also, if you haven't seen it already, you need to go check out Kris Tiner's photo-heavy series of posts on the trip he and the Empty Cage Quartet recently took to France. Too much to link separately here, but if you start at May 28 and work forward you'll see what I mean. (Or just click on the May and June archives.) Hot diggity.

If you haven't heard the ECQ, I'll be including something from their great new disc in an upcoming mux.

In the meantime, here's a different American in Paris, just because:

Friday Muxtape no. 9; a new review

Dealing with a hellacious headcold and a number of tour deadlines at the moment -- sorry for the lapse in blogging. I'll get back to it soon, but in the meantime here's this week's mux:

1. Albert Ammons: "Bass Goin' Crazy"

2. Buddy Holly: "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (the demo version)

3. Holus Bolus: "Dirt Track" (This is the great Josh Sinton's band. Holy cow do I love this record.)

4. Soul Brothers: "Indawo Yokulala"

5. Carla Bley "Ups and Downs"

6. The Byrds: "Pretty Boy Floyd"

7. Third World War: "Shepherd's Bush Cowboy"

8. Edmund Meisel: "Die Tat / Fackellichter In Der Stadt"

9. Ray Agee: "From Now On"

10. Golden Arm Trio: "Finster Crumley"

11. Evangelistic Ensemble: "Heaven Belongs to You"

12. Spike Jones and His City Slickers: "Ghost Riders in the Sky" (live)

* * * * *

And the latest review, c/o our friend Craig Matsumoto at KZSU.

More soon...

Friday Muxtape no. 8; tour planning update

First of all, holy crap. For the first time in a long time, I actually have a full five-day IJG tour planned out more than two months in advance. Not sure if it's just blind luck, or I'm getting better at this, or what. In any case, we'll be hitting (and hopefully converting) the Pacific Northwest right after Labor Day this year. Here is the order of events:

September 2: Jewel Box Theater (Seattle, WA).

September 3: Cozmic Pizza (Eugene, OR).

September 4: Le Voyeur (Olympia, WA).

September 5: Mississippi Pizza (Portland, OR).

September 6: Seasons (Yakima, WA).

Times and other specifics TBA. For now, I can tell you that we'll most likely be sharing the bill with the great Baby Gramps in Seattle, and at least one (and probably several) of the subsequent shows will be mutual efforts with our old friends (and fellow dadaists) Reptet. Oh yes, and we'll most likely be doing a live recording at PDX-area jazz station KMHD, probably toward the end of the week. This courtesy of one of our biggest advocates, Mary Burlingame (thanks, Mary!).

So you see, I've been busy.

* * * * *

On to the mux. No IJG-related stuff this week -- but more is in the queue, so stay tuned. For now, here's the playlist:

1. Kria Brekkan: "Gomul Visa um Vorid"

2. My Morning Jacket: "Bermuda Highway"

3. The Rosie Taylor Project: "London Pleasures"

4. The Mars Volta: "Wax Simulacra"

5. Frank Zappa: "Camarillo Brillo"

6. Run DMC: "Slow and Low" (demo version)

7. Clyde Arnold: "Black Smoke and Blue Tears"

8. The Continental Cousins: "Kana Kapila"

9. Gil Scott-Heron: "Lady Day and John Coltrane"

10. Mahmoud Ahmed: "Aynotche Terabu"

11. The Monkees: "Sunny Girlfriend"

12. James: "Destiny Calling"

Google what you like. Ignore what you hate.

Point, counterpoint

(Photo by His Master's Voice.)

More evidence that music PR is not an exact science.

Here's Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby -- somebody who knows his shit -- on getting the Music Director of a radio station to pay attention to your release:

Back in 1997, when “The X Files” was still on the air, a friend of mine who called himself Captain T put out a record called US Aliens that was all about conspiracy theories, Area 51, alien cover-ups, and the Incredible Hulk [...] He wanted to send his album to college radio stations, but couldn’t afford to hire a real radio promoter. When we decided to do it ourselves, I was about to do things in a very normal way, but I thought I should take my own advice, and make his marketing an extension of his art, his image, his message.

(Also, I was thinking about that kid in the college radio station that gets 20 CDs a day, all exactly the same, in boring envelopes. I wanted to make his week.)

So - we bought 500 black envelopes, 500 sheets of brown oatmeal paper, 500 alien head stickers, and the best part : 500 huge stickers that said “CONFIDENTIAL MAIL - DO NOT OPEN FOR ANY REASON”.

We did a mail-merge to the 500 program directors at 500 college radio stations, so that each one got a personalized letter that said this:

Dear __name__,

You don’t know me, but I live in the bushes behind your station.

I have been here for 12 years and your station has saved my life many times over.

The music that you play has kept me going through my darkest of days and for this I owe you everything.

In this spirit, I must tell you that a man named Captain T found me in the gutter yesterday, and he taught me about what is really going on with the government and what really happened down there in Area 51. This man has a message that you have to get out to the world, because people need to know the TRUTH!

Signed,

Man in the bushes, looking through your window right now

We took each letter out to the backyard and literally rubbed it in dirt, crumpled it into a little tiny ball, then flattened it out a little bit, put the CD inside, sealed it into a black envelope, put the alien head sticker on it, covered it with the huge sticker that said “CONFIDENTIAL MAIL - DO NOT OPEN FOR ANY REASON”, and mailed them out to each station.

We laughed for hours while doing it.

[...]

375 of the radio stations played it.

Every now and then, my friend Captain T gets approached by someone that used to work at a college radio station back in 1997. They tell him they still remember it, because it was the coolest package they ever got.

And then here's John Richards, of Seattle station KEXP (and one of the founders of Loveless Records) -- again, a guy who knows a little something about the music biz --on getting the Music Director of a radio station to pay attention to your release:

Send other promotional items that will help your chances… but use judgment. Don't toss in things that spoil or appear unprofessional. I once received a package with a hotdog in it. I happened to be on vacation at the time and when I returned the package smelled so bad I threw it out…CD and all. Plus, what does a hotdog have to do with getting airplay? Don’t spend time or money or energy on a sweet picture of yourself. Why on earth would you do that? Stations like this one are interested in the music not your looks. I’ve seen more bands get caught up on this…..

There are no guarantees. (That's okay, of course.)

Gee, thanks George

You put the US on a collision course with hell, but before you go, you're gonna declare June "Black Music Month"?

As if you could name a single piece of music by Scott Joplin, Marian Anderson, Eubie Blake, Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, or Ruth Brown.

Cretin.

Friday Muxtape, no. 7

Get it while it's fresh.

1. Glenn Gould: Allemande (Italian Ground)

2. Harry Miller: Orange Grove

3. Howard McGhee / Fats Navarro Sextet: The Skunk

4. Flaming Lips: Free Radicals (live)

5. The Heptones: Message From a Black Man

6. Dimitri Tiomkin: Conway and Sondra

7. Cui Ping: This Precious Night

8. Columbia Orchestra: Tangled Tunes, part one

9. US Girls: Prove It All Night

10. Oliwa: Crooked

[Brief plug: Oliwa is Oliver Newell's group. Oliver has been the bass player for the IJG since late 2005. He's another one of those sine qua non cats -- it's hard to imagine the group without him (he's got musical energy like nobody's business). Also, he's a helluva composer.]

11. Harry Betts: Theme from the Fantastic Plastic Machine

12. The Four Tops: L'Arcobaleno

'Nuff said.

"What is this shit?"

I can't tell you how long I have been waiting for a "legitimate" reviewer to provide us with a heartily dismissive pull-quote that I can display prominently next to more favorable critical commentary in the IJG press kit. You see, not unlike my new friend in Washington (the guy with the faux fat fetish), I too long to puncture through the tedious pleasantries and spin of the indie music media/promotional derby. Not out of spite, mind you, but just because I'm impatient to get past the words, to something real.

You see, dear reader, once you figure out that, to some extent, PR is a game, and that, with a little persistence, a savvy marketing person can always get someone somewhere to write a compelling review that makes [insert the artist of your choice here] sound like they are the next [insert the music god of your choice here] -- well, then, the whole process starts to feel a little empty. Which is not to say that I haven't appreciated the great things that some of our critics have said about the IJG over the years. Au contraire -- I am floored and flattered by every one of them. In my (many) weak moments, I even savor them.

But the anti-authoritarian in me has also always fought against the notion of filters, and tastemakers, and folks whose authority derives from the things they say about art. Idealist that I am, I imagine a world where a listener's inherent curiosity simply drives her to explore and discover new music -- just as much as (if not more than) the commentary of some self-appointed "in the know" cultural observer. Music criticism, in this crazy fantasy-land of mine, continues to be written and read and appreciated, but primarily as literature. And love-of-music happens not because of what someone said about a piece, or how it was framed, but simply because of what it sounded like.

I know, I know: I'm being pretty unrealistic, and there are certain things you just have to deal with when you get into the music business. But humor me for a minute. Those of you who read this blog regularly know that we came close to achieving my bass-ackwards goal of picking up a press-kit-worthy negative comment with "This is a bad joke -- right?" Alas, that one didn't come from a pro, so it didn't serve my purposes quite so well. But now the cranky-but-entertaining Tom Hull (who really is one of my favorite critics) has delivered manna from the heavens in the form of his review of LEEF. Enjoy:

Cheap cardstock wallet packaging, back cover printed white on yellow (glad I was able to lift the credits and track list elsewhere), full liner notes promised on website but not available yet. Started this while driving around Detroit, but popped it out after a few "what is this shit?" minutes. I've played and enjoyed a couple of Andrew Durkin's group's records in the past, but wasn't prepared for this sharp swerve into Zappa-land. (Actually, I flashed on Brecht/Weill cabaret first, which may have been the initial idea -- but Zappa does get a name check.) I've avoided it ever since, only putting it on when there was nothing else left to unpack from the travel case. Played it twice. First, if you bracket the vocal stuff, the musical performance is stellar. Industrial Jazz has always been a catchphrase in search of a concept -- e.g., the analogy to Industrial Rock never fit -- but Durkin has finally managed to squeeze all individuality out of the big band without sacrificing idiosyncrasy. Hard to imagine anything but a machine managing that, or exhibiting such spurious complexity just because it's possible to gear it that way. Clearest case is "Bongo Non Troppo," working off a relatively simple Latin riff, but there's more in "Howl" and "Fuck the Muck" (at least until the voices appear). The vocal stuff is more scattered -- skit and shtick, a bit of "Fuck the Muck" choir, and two legit songs (both optimistically reprised in radio edits at the end): "The Job Song" (on the Brechtian end) and "Big Ass Truck" (more Zappaesque). In Christgau's CG scheme a couple of these named pieces would be Choice Cuts. I don't do that because I'm still stuck in the old-fashioned rut of trying to swallow records whole. B+(*)

There is one factual error here -- the packaging is not "cardstock," and it wasn't cheap by any stretch. But everything else he says is true. Unless you disagree with it, in which case it is false.

(Oh, and as an added bonus, Hull also covers the new Empty Cage record in this same review set. I'll leave it to Tiner to comment if he sees fit.)

While looking for a gig yesterday...

...I wondered: is Craig's List so entertaining in other cities?

It started simply enough:

this is not a joke ive been egg shaking for over 17 years im the fucking jimi hendrix of egg shaking if ur bands looking for that right sound e-mail me im down for going on tour and taking your band to the top,recording, but i can also shred and solo, something not alot of wanna be egg shakers can do. i look forward to hearing from you my influences are slayer,slipknot,megadeth, cannible corpse, id like to join a serious metal band

But it soon evolved into an extended parody of the CL's musician page:

Professional DOUBLE Egg Shaker.

I'm an Egg Shaker, n' damn good too. I've played Egg with Curtis Salgado and lots a guys that worked with Dianna Ross. My forte is double Egg Shakin'...that's one (1) in each hand. I can go from Zep to Allman Brother's to Karen Carpenter, Kenny G; I've even done country (resume on request). 'Death Metal' egg shakin' isn't a true form of the art, I don't care what they say...it's too damn hard ta' stay on top a' the beat, n' that's what egg shakin' is all about. Sure, you'll find other egg shakers in town, but if ya want the best (resume on request), call me first. I play two (2!) eggs at once!

Seeking Qualified Egg-Shaking Teacher.

I am an aspiring egg shaker seeking a QUALIFIED teacher. My last teacher was showing me the modes, but I'm just a beginner! Is there an egg-shaker-teacher who will travel to my home and teach me custom-made egg-shaking lessons? I don't have much money, so maybe we could exchange schnauzer-burnishing instruction for egg shaking lessons. Anyone between 20-35 (no older!) want to help?

Peace out.

Band Seeking FEMALE Egg Shaker.

We're a 2 piece band seeking a female egg shaker...sorry guys..females only. Our sound is somewhat emo/goth.
Leave your attitude at the door!
Must be willing to practice 3 times a week...touring will follow.

RE: Professional DOUBLE Egg Shaker.

I've had lots of inquiries, and I figure I should make something clear: No, I am not available for "touring"...I've got a wife and seven kids; I want to play with REAL people with REAL day jobs, and maybe just be in an egg shakin' band for weekend fun and to make some cash ($). My technique as a "double" egg shaker means I use two (2) hands ala Eddie Van Halen (I've been two-hand egg tapping since the first time I heard his "Eruption" solo), but this doesn't prevent me from working the lounge circuit, 'cuz I can do the Stanley Jorden stuff too ("Yesterday" "On The Wings of a Dove"), classics, ballads, REAL Book...you name it. Serious only! (Please be over 21 and not any older than 23, or 24 maybe)

RE: Professional DOUBLE Egg Shaker.

Whatever dude! Sitting at home posting on CL all day that you are a PRO does not make you one. Just cause you played an open mic one time where someone bought you a donut doesn't make you PRO. Get a life and go practice!!

But, if there is someone out there serious about needing an egg shaker that REALLY is pro and can play all styles from afro-cuban to baroque, look me up. I only play paying gigs so don't bother with "we're gonna be huge" crap. I show up, you give me the sheet music, I play, you pay me. I might consider rehearsing once if the gig is at the Schnitz or Old Nob Hill Pharmacy.

I also can color coordinate with your costumes for an additional fee.

RE: Professional DOUBLE Egg Shaker.

I’ve sent you half a dozen e-mails and left several voice messages but I can’t seem to get through to you. We’ve got a paying gig on Saturday and my regular egg shaker guy dropped out of the band last minute. The gig is from 7pm to 2am and pays $25 plus 50% off food and drinks. It would be great if you could practice with us every night this week until you learn all the songs. We’re a punk, metal, country, polka group that performs primarily original music. We do a lot of obscure time signatures (2/4 3/4 & 4/4) so I hope that this is within you professional capabilities.

Please get back to me ASAP.

Need sheet music for egg shaker.

I am looking for sheet music for egg shaker for these pieces:

24 Caprices for Solo Egg Shaker by Paganini
Sonata for violin, guitar and egg shaker in A major by Paganini
Stairway To Heaven tab for egg shaker
Foxy Lady tab for egg shaker
Charlie Parker Omnibus for egg shaker (Bb egg shaker instruments)

Also, does anyone know if Korg makes a tuner for egg shaker? Or will the Korg guitar tuner work?

I also have a used egg shaker for sale. These things go for up to $3.99 on Ebay. I'll let it go for $2.99. I'll even throw in a hardshell case. :)

Thanks in advance.

Now back to practice.

***End Egg-pression*** one musician at a time.

For centuries the beautiful and sacred blessing from goddess that is the egg has been desecrated and defiled by oppressive anti-egg culture. Closely linked with the destruction of nature and the systematic psychological enslavement of egg-bearing females, the encouragement of this insidious "egg-shaking" must be stopped. In some cities, children as young as 2 years old are encouraged to shake an egg filled with sand or small rocks--an egg robbed of the gift of its little chicken life, its soul literally sucked out by nasty egg-sucking egg-shakers!

Stop the madness! Free the majestic egg!

MARCH TO END EGG-OPPRESSION, begins this Saturday at Pioneer Square in downtown PDX--just follow the smell of chickenshit to find us.

egg shakers are not that entertaining.

what the hell are all the ridiculous egg shaker posts all about? what the hell is so damn funny about egg shakers? I am all about posting whatever you want in this forum but the egg shaker crap is not funny and just annoying.
morons

CHICKEN SHAKER.

Former egg shaker now available or WORKING band. I now shake a mean chicken. Sure, I still play the eggs once in awhile, but it seems like egg shakers are a dime a' dozen these days, so I started to specialize in chicken shakin' instead. Mostly old-school funk stuff, Jaco, Marcus Miller...but I can pocket-down with the James Jamerson stuff too.

I'm kinda old now, but I've got lots of experience and great contacts. Plus, I sing! That's right...a singin' Chicken shakin', multi-taskin' groove-slammin' "team" player.

And on and on. Most have been flagged and removed by now, alas. (Or thankfully, depending on your perspective.)

Life's Rich Pageant

The business of booking a tour (even a short tour) is long, tedious, and mind-numbing. You never know the sort of response you're going to get when you fire out that "would you be interested in booking us?" email (you never know if you're going to get a response at all, in fact). To some extent you have to steel yourself against the inevitable frustration of interacting with folks who are themselves overworked and underpaid. It's a sure-fire recipe for agita.

Of course, some booking agents are a joy to work with -- I'm thinking of the ones who cut right to the chase, cuz that always makes life a lot easier. And then every once in a while you have an exchange with someone who -- even though they might not be able to help you directly -- approaches the booking dance in such an idiosyncratic way that it makes the experience weird and human enough to be entertaining in and of itself.

And when that happens, you have to smile, even if only in confusion.

So a big thank you to the dude from Washington state (he's a complete stranger to me, so I'm not at liberty to reveal his identity) who recently sent me this email in response to a booking request:

You guys are fantastic! You're too good to play here but we'd still love to have you! You also might be too BIG to play here and by BIG I mean LARGE but not FAT, because that would be rude, even if it were true, which it isn't, not that there would be anything bad if it were true, except for the potential discrimination on my part. You'd never fit in our little back room. Again, NOT due to any idividual girth, rather required cumulative elbow-room, which is not some Olympia hippie PC term which circumvents the hatred inherent in the word FAT while communicating the idea of FAT. No one has fat elbows... they taper. God, I wish you could play here. Could you maybe all squeeze? Circular breath? MIDI? No no no. Seriously, how many are you on this tour? Maybe we can butter the walls (no licking them fatty).

Friday Muxtape, no. 6

I gotta start working on these things earlier in the week...

Anyway, hear here.

1. Bootsy Collins: "Bootzilla." I think Daphne would agree: for a while this was "our song."

2. Mendelssohn: "Saltarello-Presto from Symphony no. 4." Performed by 16 player pianos, at the behest of Paul Lehrman.

3. Duke Ellington: "Come Sunday Interlude." From the Black, Brown and Beige album. Ray Nance on the violin.

4. Howlin' Wolf: "300 Pounds of Joy." This is not the Real Folk Blues version. (I love that one too, except for the horrible edit at the beginning.)

Anyone know where I got this? (No, seriously, I can't find the album it came from. Maybe I'm just tired.)

5. The Videos: "Trickle, Trickle." In honor of the PDX weather god's apparent intention to make summer a lot shorter this year.

6. Moondog: "Bird's Lament." Played by the London Saxophonic. And then turned into a car commercial. Fuckers!

7. Guided By Voices: "Chasing Heather Crazy." Dependable? Tuneful?

8. Andrew Bird: "The Trees Were Mistaken." Eerie? Hypnotic?

9. The Chap: "Surgery." Poppy? Quirky?

10. Damon Zick and Friends: "Hill Country." Damon has played every damned saxophone book in the IJG -- and all of them with incredible skill. As such he's often the go-to guy whenever a new sax player needs something about one of my tunes explained. He's a motherfucker, as this track of his will attest.

(Oh, yeah, and his wife just had a baby boy -- congratulations, Zicks!)

11. Duke Ellington: "Rockin' in Rhythm." With Sam Woodyard on the drums, it's not so much rockin' as white-hot burning.

12. Cliff Jackson and Jellean Delk with the Naturals: "Frank, This Is It." Respectfully, this is for HRC. Make of that what you will.

Now that's what I call grass roots activism...

Further fodder for my ongoing love-affair with Portland: somebody took the liberty of mowing the word "Obama" into this field (a few hundred yards from our house). I know it's hard to see -- sorry, I didn't have access to a helicopter.

I'll probably have a lot more to say about the events of this week when I can catch my breath (I've been fairly busy planning the next IJG adventure, which will hopefully come together in September).

Until then, then...

Hey, Bo Diddley

If Chuck Berry is rock and roll's storyteller/comic, and Little Richard its acrobat/ecstatic, then Bo Diddley was its eccentric folklorist. His music was like an anthopology class with a wicked backbeat: instantly recognizeable as something you have heard before, somewhere (on a playground, probably) -- but reconfigured and revitalized in a unique, addictive way.

It's common now to say that punk was invented to get back to the spirit of early rock and roll (after the combined "excesses" (not my term) of disco and, uh, Led Zeppelin). Maybe that's true, but in any case it's worth pointing out that, even in the context of early rock and roll, BD was "punk." For him, the guitar was a kind of drum (in fact, if you're feeling ambitious, perhaps you could argue that he presaged not only the punks but the modern-day percussive guitarists like Kaki King). The result was stripped-down, drone-based, fluid music that succeeded on the strength of its pulse -- though the occasional punctuation of weird effects didn't hurt any.

Okay, I'll just say it: in the end I always felt Bo Diddley was aesthetically closer to the master bluesman John Lee Hooker than he was to any of his fellow rockers. (Maybe that's why he fit in so well at the Long Beach Blues festival when I saw him there back in the 90s.)

And by the way, "Mr. Diddley" (as the NYT so politely calls him) also has the distinction of being the first rocker to hire female guitarists -- perhaps the best-known being Peggy Jones, aka "Lady Bo" (who worked with him primarily between 1956 and 1962, and appears on all of his classic recordings from this period, including "Hey, Bo Diddley", "Mona", "The Story of Bo Diddley", and "Road Runner") and Norma-Jean Wofford, aka "the Duchess" (who appears in the clip above, and was in the band until 1966). Given the "testicular fortitude" that is often associated with rock and roll, this openness to having a "chick in the band" (prominently) is a not insignificant detail of the man's biography.

* * * * *

Here are a few (a very few) of the other rock/pop tunes that use the so-called "Bo Diddley Beat," the rhythm of which is helpfully transcribed in DJA's tribute.

Need more evidence of the man's influence? Here are the Strangeloves doing "I Want Candy" in 1965 (with a surprise appearance from Sammy Davis Jr. at the end):



(That's an insipid imitation, I know.)

Of course, at some point it can be hard to follow the trajectories of artistic influence / overlap. Here, the inimitable Dr. John demonstrates a contemporaneous instance of the "BD beat" (i.e., Sugar Boy Crawford's "Jock-a-Mo" -- aka "IKO IKO" -- originally released in 1954):



Sometimes stuff is just in the air, ya know?

Anyway: rest in peace (and thank you), Ellas McDaniel.

My hero

Robert Wexler kicked major ass today in Florida.

Here, at about 7.5 minutes in, Harold Ickes gets his comeuppance:



Here, at about 1.5 minutes in, Alice Huffman gets her comeuppance.



It. Is. Time. To. Move. On.

Friday Muxtape no. 5

This one.

1. Chicago Pro Musica: Paul Bowles, "Music for a Farce" (1)

Classical, farcical trumpet: what's not to like? From the author of The Sheltering Sky. I wonder what kind of blogger he would've been.

2. Tadd Dameron: "Fontainbleau"

For a while, this was a template for me.

3. Todd Rundgren: "Love in Action"

If you can sit through the verses, it's a great tune.

4. Acme Rocket Quartet: "Sleep Waltz"

Pleasantly eerie: like Davis, CA (the band's hometown). And the best band name ever. (And that's the last time I'll ever use that grammatical construction.)

5. Johnny Kidd and the Pirates: "Doctor Feelgood"

This ain't Arethra's "Doctor Feelgood" (same title, different tune), but it's still pretty good.

6. Baby Gramps: "Bahama Mama"

I've never heard a voice that so perfectly matches its beard.

7. André Canniere Group: "Accelerated Decrepitude"

See how spoiled I am? AC is another one of the many uber-talented folks who have played with the IJG. Thanks, André!

8. Bruce Springsteen: "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street"

A bootleg recording from Springsteen's eccentric wacko (i.e., "good") phase.

9. Katell Keineg: "One Hell of a Life"

For Harvey Korman, and also because my daughter has started asking me to explain the concept of death. (Oh shit, how am I gonna do that?)

10. John Lee Hooker: "Onions"

Onions from John Lee Hooker are better than ice cream from Jack Johnson.

11. Erkin Koray: "Hele Yar"

Some call him the Turkish Jimi Hendrix. Huh?

12. The Edsels: "Who Put the Bop in the Bop Shoo Bop Shoo Bop."

Okay, I'll admit it. It was me. I put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop. Can we just drop it now?

And here's last week's.

Now to sleep.

RIP Harvey Korman

My earliest distinct televisual memories are not of Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers or even Warner Brothers cartoons, but the Carol Burnett Show. Yes, I am old enough to have seen the last few seasons when they originally aired. And some thirty years later, I have to say that most of that stuff just doesn't get old.

Given my proclivity for colorful language, and my concern for maintaining a certain level of "cool" cred on this blog, perhaps the foregoing assertion comes as a bit of a surprise to you. After all, Carol Burnett and the troupe did "family entertainment" (yuck!) -- and thus, compared to, say, Lenny Bruce (another hero of mine), they were in fairly tame territory. Certainly they didn't get too far into the "satire as a weapon of social critique" thing that I love so much.

But the way I see it, Burnett was "family entertainment" in a vaudevillian sense. Hers was, essentially, a comedy show for grownups that also happened to appeal to kids. Most "family entertainment" today takes the opposite approach: it is, essentially, kids' entertainment that throws an occasional (usually pathetic) bone to grown-ups. (Dreamworks, I'm looking at you.) Burnett could count on drawing the kids because she never really got into anything terribly controversial (or topical) -- instead, sketch after sketch was about social interaction in a more abstracted and (dare I say it?) "timeless" sense. Sort of like the Marx Brothers. Or Shakespeare.

Harvey Korman was, of course, an essential ingredient in Burnett's comic stew. He was the show's John Cleese -- no one in the cast was better at lampooning bombastic authority. Actually, perhaps the best evidence of Korman's talent in this regard came via a different context, when he played the sputtering bureaucrat Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles (another one of my many favorite films).

But there were other things about Korman's role in TCBS that would make a big impression on me. My favorite (inevitable) moment on any given episode was when the actors or the material would become so silly that the dramatic illusion (they're actors: they're on stage and they can't laugh at what they're doing) could not withstand the pressure. Korman was usually the first to crack (by cracking up), and while perhaps most acting coaches would frown upon such a thing as "unprofessional," to me that was always the high point (and maybe the point) of the show. It meant that the humor had become so important that Korman could no longer control himself -- and what could be funnier and more honest than that? (Needless to say, I would later be drawn to the sort of music that allowed for precisely the same possibility that things could bubble over at any moment.)

Anyway, what you have in the clip above is classic Korman -- physical comedy par excellence, an exquisite portrayal of pomposity (somehow simultaneously suggesting the humility of the actor himself), a hint of Korman's talent for ensemble work, and, toward the end, a brilliant example of the man's skill as an improviser: taking a "mistake" and turning it into an unanticipated moment of hilarity.

The bawdy

Maybe I'm just a little, uh, behind, but I have only recently discovered the This is YourAss Online "network" (or whatever it is).

Now I know that

Emails from YourAss are like a breath of fresh air to your friends and loved ones.

I suppose the possibilities here are, uh, endless.

(Can I really be posting this? Yeah, I guess I can.)

Undeniable

Ezra Klein cites a portion of Obama's Wesleyan commencement address (which I here re-cite for those of you who don't read Ezra Klein):

Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should by. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.

But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt.

It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story.

[...]

You know, Ted Kennedy often tells a story about the fifth anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps. He was there, and he asked one of the young Americans why he had chosen to volunteer. And the man replied, “Because it was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.”

I don’t know how many of you have been asked that question, but after today, you have no excuses. I am asking you.

When was the last time a politician asked you to grow up and give a damn?

Do you think John McCain wants you to grow up and give a damn?

Unconscionable

There is dirty politics, and there is scumbag politics.

I've been laying off the politically argumentative posts, but I feel a rant coming on...

Friday Muxtape, no. 4

How I wish I had the time to fully annotate this week's muxtape. (Or any of them so far, actually.)

Ah well. Here's the best I can do:

1. Oliver Nelson: "The Artist's Rightful Place" (from The Kennedy Dream). The concept here -- audio clips of JFK layered over Oliver Nelson compositions for big band -- seems "quintessentially Sixties," in the worst sense. But then you have to remember that Oliver Nelson really had to go out of his way to make a bad record. Featuring Phil Woods, Hank Jones, George Duvivier, Grady Tate, and others. (Is the current relevance of the Kennedy reference too obvious? So sue me -- I'm a sucker for historical moments.)

2. Frank Zappa: "The Big Squeeze." Released posthumously on The Lost Episodes, this is Zappa's music for a Luden's Cough Drop Commercial (recorded, incidentally, in the same year as the Nelson record just referenced -- 1967). It features the "snorking" of Dick Barber.

(Wait -- Zappa wrote a jingle?!)

3. Alice Coltrane: "Sri Rama Ohnedaruth." So we've gone from strictly commercial to sweeping and spiritual -- it's that juxtaposition thing again. (The album: Lord of Lords.)

4. Ensemble Ambrosius: "The Idiot Bastard Son" (from The Zappa Album). FZ cover, done with baroque instruments by a group of Finns -- giving an oddly monkish, medieval flavor to one of the maestro's more, uh, hopeless tunes.

5. Mike Richardson (as 100% Polyester): "FAILURE." You've heard me talk about Mike before. He plays trombone in the Industrial Jazz Group, among many other bands. But he also does a bevy of solo projects, and this is one of them. Interesting tidbit: we share the same birthday -- which may or may not explain why I consider him a kindred spirit.

6. Joe Jackson: "Invisible Man." Though I found his foray into swing nearly insufferable, I really like Joe Jackson. His Heaven and Hell, in fact, is a favorite of mine. This is from his latest, Rain.

7. Joanna Newsom: "The Book of Right-On." Talk about niche-casting. I don't think I can listen to any of Newsom's albums from start to finish -- but I think she's awesome nonetheless.

8. MUS: "La Vida." From Spain, they are.

9. Raymond Scott: "IBM MT/St: The Paperwork Explosion." You know Raymond Scott, even if you think you don't -- he's the guy who wrote the "Powerhouse" theme that was used to great effect in many Warner Brothers cartoons. Scott was also a great musical inventor... and maker of commercial music. This is a thing he did for IBM, as compiled on Manhattan Research, Inc.. (Just be glad I didn't include his jingle for Sprite.)

(Wait -- Raymond Scott wrote a jingle?!)

10. Don Byron: "The Penguin." The other side of Raymond Scott -- this actually happens to be one of my favorite tunes (note the parallel between "The Penguin" and "The Frog"). A version by the great Don Byron, from the under-rated Bug Music.

11. Veda Hille: "Lucklucky." Veda and I share the same natal year (1968) -- which may or may not explain why I consider her a kindred spirit.

12. American Standards: "My Bathroom is a Private Kind of Place." From a supremely odd album called "Product Music," featuring nothing but this sort of post-WWII commercial pablum... which is hilarious as all get-out lo these many years later, though I'm sure it wasn't too funny at the time. (Just be glad I didn't include "The Frito Twist.")

Holy cow -- I just googled the Product Music album, and discovered the existence of a thing called the industrial musical: "a musical performed internally for the employees or shareholders of a business, to create a feeling of being part of a team, and/or to educate and motivate the management and salespeople to improve sales and profit. It can be used to train staff in regards to public relations, advertising, marketing or corporate image."

Shudder.

Art & Commerce

Here's a fascinating piece in Rolling Stone about how, in the face of a music economy that is clearly in flux, many artists have been turning to licensing to pick up the slack created by declining CD sales.

And here's the bit that is sticking with me: the piece (by Fred Goodman) cites a slew of bands who have successfully positioned their music for use in commercials (with the implication that there are many more that have gone uncited). Thus we get Spoon shilling for Jaguar, Allison Krauss / Robert Plant for JC Penny, Wilco for Volkswagen, They Might Be Giants for Dunkin' Donuts, The Shins for McDonald's, and so on.

What's surprising about this is not that it happens, but that the idea of getting up in arms about it, from an ethical perspective, seems, at this historical moment, almost passé. (This is perhaps especially remarkable in the context of a genre that can be as -- forgive me -- precious as indie rock sometimes is.)

Obviously, the absence of outrage here is in direct contrast to the kind of "music for music's sake" ethic articulated by Mr. Young in the above video -- for a tune that was, as I recall, a somewhat big deal when it came out in the late eighties. At that point, there was a sense of shame about rockers who "went commercial" (and it was probably related to what I would call the "Milli Vanilli backlash" -- the hand-wringing that accompanied the suspicion that any given musical performance was not entirely "authentic").

In contrast, here's the one fleeting moment of soul-searching in the Goodman piece:

Of Montreal have appeared in a commercial for T-Mobile, composed music for Subway and licensed their tunes for Outback Steakhouse and Nasdaq ads. "When I first started Of Montreal, I probably would have been hesitant to do a commercial for Outback," says the band's songwriter, Kevin Barnes. "In the indie world, there's a holdover from the punk movement that any commercial endeavor will taint your art. But if you care about the band, you won't begrudge us a living."

Of course not. It's a good point. I can no more begrudge a songwriter who makes a quick buck selling a tune to T-Mobile than I can get annoyed at one of my own players when he or she has to take a single gig with Christina Aguilera because it pays much more than a tour with the IJG. That's the nature of the beast.

So I'm not so naive as to throw my hands up in shock at this sort of thing. I know full well the economic pressures involved in day-to-day survival for anyone making a living from music. And I know that, as long as there has been an economically-driven power structure in western society, musicians have had to negotiate with and (often) kowtow to it, in weird and sometimes humiliating ways.

But I also think it's important (artistically and psychically) to nurture the impulse to fight back against these realities. I spent ten years of my life in Los Angeles, and while there I watched talented friends make their way into the commercial music scene, which, dare I say, can impose a few pressures of its own. Those who had the wrong sensibility (even the slightest insecurity, perhaps) found the experience withering. So I'll be curious to see, ten years from now, how many of the above bands come out the other side in one piece, with a consistent handle on their own artistic vision.

I guess what I'm saying is that, when it comes down to it, I'm not exactly sure this "turn your oeuvre into jingles" thing is my favorite aspect of the emerging post-big-label music industry.

(What's that, you ask? Have I ever considering licensing IJG stuff for commercials? You bet your sweet ass I have.)