Music
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hey that sounds (kinda) like
Posted on December 31st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
two more short clips:
"Spooky" by the Classics IV, and "I'm Her Daddy" by Bill Withers.
you don't say
Posted on December 17th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians, Quotes.
As unfathomable as it seems from the distance of over 30 years, for a few months, Gerry and the Pacemakers were the Beatles' nearest competitors in Britain. --Richie Unterberger, Allmusic
For a very brief time in 1964, it seemed that the biggest challenger to the Beatles' phenomenon was the Dave Clark Five. --Rick Clark and Richie Unterberger, Allmusic
taking for granted
Posted on December 13th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
I enjoy Radiohead, but they've never been a special favorite. I like some of their albums more than others, but I don't know their stuff inside and out. I admire their adventurousness, and I find it interesting that a large fanbase has so far followed them where they wanted to go. I think of them as a great band, more objectively than subjectively. I didn't like Hail to the Thief at all, and while I didn't give up on them -- almost everyone has an occasional bad album in them -- they slipped lower on my priority list, and while everything I heard about In Rainbows made it sound interesting, I hadn't got round to it and didn't really intend to anytime soon -- didn't even have it on my shortlist of potential Best of 2007 albums I needed to track down.
Which is a longwinded way of saying, I heard it in a bar last week and was blown away.
eponymous hiphop?
Posted on December 10th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.
It was only when I began actively compiling Eponymous Albums That Aren't Debut Albums -- now up to 86 items -- that I became aware that there seems to be a much lower percentage of eponymous albums in hiphop than elsewhere. Does that seem true to anyone else?
eponymous update
Posted on December 6th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.
The list of eponymous albums that aren't debut albums is up to fifty. A surprising number of them are from musicians who actually had an eponymous debut, but chose to repeat the title.
eponymous but not first
Posted on December 5th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lists.
Over at the useful and fun website Rate Your Music, I have begun a list of eponymous albums that aren't debut albums. I've seeded the list with twenty albums, and am takin suggestions for more (I have to add them myself). I'm only interested in standard albums of new material: not compilations, box sets, etc.
slough of despond - a list in progress
Posted on December 4th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Lists.
Months ago I promised our friend Joy the bartender a mix of bleak, dark, depressing songs, and finally got round to recording it a couple days back. It's far from perfect; in its eventual final form I wouldn't be surprised if I replace half of these:
crooned with no irony whatsoever
Posted on November 29th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Badness, Lyrics.
"Thanks for taking me on a one-way trip to the sun."
--Englebert Humperdinck, "After the Lovin'" (written by Richie Adams and Alan Bernstein)
c'mon already
Posted on November 29th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
Now that Pylon's fine debut album Gyrate has been re-released yet again, can we please get a cd reissue of their fantastic second album, Chomp?
hey that (kinda) sounds like
Posted on November 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
The opening of the Captain and Tennille version of "Shop Around" and the opening of XTC's "Me and the Wind".
cafe tacuba, the repost
Posted on November 26th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Musicians.
(This is a combined version of the two posts I made on Cafe Tacuba at the beginning of the holiday weekend, just in case anyone who normally reads this didn't see them. I apologize to those of you seeing this twice, especially Martin.)
After last night's show at Hammerstein, I am as confirmed in my opinion as I can be: Café Tacuba (aka Café Tacvba) are the greatest rock band in the world: the most exhilarating combination of energy, invention, and breadth of style currently going. I can't imagine that the language difference is that big a barrier to their being better known in the states, but apparently it is. That and the fact that, for all their variety of form, they aren't trying to break or deconstruct any forms, which makes them of less interest to the indie press than weirder foreign-language stuff.
If you remain interested in where rock and roll is going, not just the underground stuff but the bands that play arenas, I urge you to try Café Tacuba. Robert L, you especially. Try Re first if you can, but try anything. Maybe it won't move you, but you should find out.
A few songs, chosen to represent Cafe Tacuba's entire career, and some of their breadth of style. Not all my favorites -- I like some of their styles more than others -- but all songs I love.
from Cafe Tacuba (1992)
Las Persianas
Rarotonga
three consecutive songs from Re (1994)
El Ciclon
El Borrego
Esa Noche
from Avalancha de Exitos (1996)
No Controles
from Yo Soy (1999)
Guerra
from Reves (1999)
3
from Cuatro Caminos (2003)
Eo
from SiNo (2007)
Volver a Comenzar
tacuba! - some evidence
Posted on November 22nd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Musicians.
A few songs, chosen to represent Cafe Tacuba's entire career, and some of their breadth of style. Not all my favorites -- I like some of their styles more than others -- but all songs I love.
from Cafe Tacuba (1992)
Las Persianas
Rarotonga
three consecutive songs from Re (1994)
El Ciclon
El Borrego
Esa Noche
from Avalancha de Exitos (1996)
No Controles
from Yo Soy (1999)
Guerra
from Reves (1999)
3
from Cuatro Caminos (2003)
Eo
from SiNo (2007)
Volver a Comenzar
tacuba!
Posted on November 21st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians.
After last night's show at Hammerstein, I am as confirmed in my opinion as I can be: Café Tacuba (aka Café Tacvba) are the greatest rock band in the world: the most exhilarating combination of energy, invention, and breadth of style currently going. I can't imagine that the language difference is that big a barrier to their being better known in the states, but apparently it is. That and the fact that, for all their variety of form, they aren't trying to break or deconstruct any forms, which makes them of less interest to the indie press than weirder foreign-language stuff.
If you remain interested in where rock and roll is going, not just the underground stuff but the bands that play arenas, I urge you to try Café Tacuba. Robert L, you especially. Try Re first if you can, but try anything. Maybe it won't move you, but you should find out.
puzzled regrets
Posted on November 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
Why, when I was nineteen years old and obsessed with the strange avant-funk of the first, eponymous, 1983 Golden Palominos album, did no one tell me that I really needed to hear Miles Davis's On the Corner?
another contender
Posted on November 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
Richard at the Existence Machine was right: I love Person Pitch, the 2007 solo album from Animal Collective co-leader Panda Bear. It's sonically beautiful, and it keeps opening up the louder I turn it; as with Feels, the tunes are memorable, and there are long hypnotic riffs, and it's alternately goofy and sublime. I see that Richard is also a little tired of people making Beach Boys comparisons, and says "The comparison is more conceptual, I think, than anything else. People are more reminded of the Beach Boys than really claiming that Animal Collective actually sound like them." That's probably true, and it's true of Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes, too, but there's still something in the sound that brings the comparison to people's ears before they start analyzing the music, I think. I hear the Incredible String Band in Animal Collective and Panda Bear's music as well, and that's also probably more a conceptual similarity than really sounding like them. As far as sound goes, has anyone compared this to Popul Vuh? The long meditative riffs with the echoey, otherworldly production sound more like Florian Fricke than Brian Wilson. I also hear the big hollow early Magnetic Fields sound in places, particularly on "Ponytail".
hey that sounds like (a continuing series)
Posted on October 24th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
"Sweet Love" by the Commodores (1976) and "Best of My Love" by the Eagles (1975).
musing between floods of work
Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Musicians.
I wonder how Rufus Wainwright feels about being the baby-subject of his father's "Rufus Is a Tit Man".
hey that sounds like (a continuing series)
Posted on October 22nd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
The piano in Herb Alpert's "Rise" (1979) and Billy Preston's "Will It Go Round in Circles" (1973).
another candidate times two
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
I wrote, briefly, several years ago, a quick reaction to hearing Cafe Tacuba for the first time:
Wow. Listened to this twice on headphones yesterday. Very occasionally, no more often than once a year (probably less), I hear an album for the first time that I immediately know is going to be one of my very favorites, an album I return to with pleasure for years. It's a warm feeling, mixed excitement and gratitude. It's usually with an artist I've never heard before.
I only found out a few days ago that there was a new Cafe Tacuba album due, their first in four years, and of course now I have it. "Of course" because I didn't think of them when I was ruminating the other day about who my favorite rock band was now that Sleater-Kinney have broken up, and the new album reminds me that there's no doubt that it's Cafe Tacuba. Sino, the new one, isn't their best -- that would be 1994's sprawling Re, one of the ten best albums of the 1990s -- but it's good enough to be almost certainly a top five album for me this year. It's not as experimental or as big as their last couple of albums; they've stripped the instrumentation back down to the basics, and the songs are rock songs. In a way, it reaches back to their earliest work in its straightforwardness and simplicity. The big difference is these days there is no part of the rock palette they don't try, and they're good at everything they do. There are modern rock influences in their sound -- a few years ago Pitchfork, flailing for a comparison, called them "Mexico's Radiohead" -- but they like the arena rock sound too; in fact, what I hear most in Sino is Who's Next (and Velma hears U2).
I've only listened to the album a half dozen times, so I haven't learned it yet; but I feel compelled to note it now because Cafe Tacuba remain unjustifiably off the radar of great rocknroll. I don't say "inexplicably", because it's perfectly explicable: their songs are entirely in Spanish, and they make no concessions to the American market. (They don't have to; they are huge in Mexico.) But I urge you, if you want a complete picture of what is going on in the world of rock music, you owe it to yourself to try them. Start with Re; it's consistently great, it's all over the stylistic map, and you'll know whether you need to hear more.
They're playing Hammerstein in November, and Velma and I plan to see them live for the first time. Excited!
seventies survival, update twelve
Posted on October 12th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, The Closer I Get to You
These sappy part-switching duets never seem to go away, or change. This one gets more than a little incoherent: "Sweeter and sweeter love grows," Donny sings, "and heaven's there for those who fool the tricks of time, but the hearts of love define true love in a special way." I think the key to singing lines like that is to not think about them at all. Roberta Flack only gets to sing the chorus, which barely changes and that's probably just as well. They only sing one line together, at the very end: "Pulling closer, sweet as the gravity". O-kay.
"The Closer I Get to You" is awash in long synth notes that are gated or pitch-shifted or something -- vocabulary help requested -- to produce a changing effect in the background that is weird for a pop song, and is one of those things that becomes very noticeable once a record gets a little warped, or on almost any cassette recording, which will give it an unignorable warble.
Eddie Kendricks, Boogie Down
Perfectly pleasant disposable bouncy pop-funk. One solid groove (with its eight beats divided into a nice 1-2 1-2-3 1-2-3 pattern), no especially interesting structural changes (though a lot of decorative changes in the arrangement), completely pointless repetitve lyrics. There's some buried horn that sounds like it's trying to burst out into a KC & the Sunshine Band song, and some strings that escaped from Silver Convention. It does have a nice extended transition from the chorus back to the verse, albeit with synthesizer farts.
I'm curious about the history of the word "boogie". In pop music it's associated both with funky disco and with danceable southern guitar rock (e.g., Little Feat). How did that happen?