Music Notes
By My musical highlight of the last two weeks was visiting The Big House, where the Allman Brothers and various hangers on lived in the early 70s. I was down in Macon for the only good reason anyone goes to Macon–family reasons. Was I going to miss this? NO I WAS NOT. I have a slightly complex relationship with the Allman Brothers, which is pretty easy to sum up. Basically, I recognize that a lot of the music is drugged out crap, but I actually like it pretty well. They were essentially like the Dead, but with more blues and less vision. That’s fine, still at worst a solid band who could kill it when they were on. The best live performances are really fucking great and, also like the Dead, they were able to write a few songs that are now American classics. So yeah, I had some fun there and bought a CD (been awhile since I did that) of a show they played in Pittsburgh in 71, I think. Here’s a few pics:
Anyway, it was a lot of fun. A bit pricey at $20, but for a house museum, it ain’t bad.
The other highlight I experienced recently was seeing Margo Price at the Paradise in Boston, which oddly was a club I had never been to before. Great venue for seeing someone like that, small and intimate with a long stage but a shallow audience area, meaning that you are inherently quite close to the stage wherever you stand. Just have to avoid the large pillars holding the old building up. This was my 4th Margo Price show and she continues to put on a very good live show. She is moving more and more decidedly away from country music and while there are of course country songs in the show, it’s really a rock show at this point with country thrown in every few songs. The unfortunate thing about this is that she’s simply better as a straight forward country star than as a rocker. But it’s still a good show, regardless if the records might be moving toward some diminishing returns down this path. You are also going to get good covers at a Margo show and that night, she did Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” and Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz.” And even though my original musical opinion that sparked outrage among LGM commenters is that Janis was mostly terrible, “Mercedes Benz” is a good song when sung by someone who doesn’t just scream.
Obviously, we need some links to discussions of the now late great Wayne Shorter. Here’s David Graham in The Atlantic, who notes he was a master of composition. Here’s Giovanni Russonello in the Times, with a list of nine essential Shorter tracks. Richard Brody in The New Yorker thinks he might be the greatest sideman of all time.
We lost David Lindley, who was one of those incredibly skilled guitarists who was just everywhere for the last half century. A few memorials to him too. David Browne in Rolling Stone on how he might be the greatest sideman of all time (maybe the ghosts of Lindley and Shorter can wrestle for the title). Here’s a long interview with him in Acoustic Guitar from 2000. And here’s some reactions from some of the greats who loved him.
I definitely could not tell you the last time I thought about Pulp, but their bassist, Steve Mackey, died. We also lost the long-time country bassist Michael Rhodes.
The guitarist Del Rey asks a pretty good question–why do we worship Robert Johnson with his tiny number of recordings and forget Memphis Minnie, who was just as good and has 200 recordings? The answer is quite obviously a combination of gender and the mythological take 60s rockers had on American blues. But we don’t need to do that now. I mean, I don’t even think Johnson was all the good on the guitar and as for the blues, he’s very good, but he’s by no means a favorite of mine compared to Skip James or John Hurt. I do have some Memphis Minnie tracks, but I need to give her more attention. This will remind me to do so.
My tolerance for electric guitar wankery is not very high anymore. Not that I don’t enjoy a good guitar solo, but the whole bro culture of tech talk and overpraising tasteless solos bugs me. However, a list of the 50 greatest moments in electric guitar history get pretty interesting when they extend back to the 19th century.
Pink Floyd has a few great songs, some very good songs, and many very bad songs. Vulture attempts to rank all 165 of them. Two thoughts. First, The Final Cut is not that bad of an album. It’s not a great album, no. It’s not even really a good album. But it’s not a total piece of shit and this list really goes all in on how that album sucks. I just don’t agree. Second, I refuse to believe that Floyd had like 20 songs worse than “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” which has a case for the worst song of all time. On the other hand, everything Pink Floyd ever did is better than Roger Waters attempting to rerecord Dark Side of the Moon at the age of 132 and in love with Assad and Putin.
New biography of Cousin It Leon Russell.
Thirty years since Living Colour released Stain, which has a strong case to be one of the top 10 albums of the 90s.
Here’s some truth from Jake Blount, who is awesome and also from Providence. Buy his album. Even if he sucked and was from South Carolina though, this is 100% correct.
Audience should not participate in music-making at a show unless specifically asked to. Especially non-musicians. Don’t clap along. Don’t stomp along. I didn’t come here to hear you pretend you know where the beat is
— Jake Blount (@forked_queer) March 3, 2023
Yeah, don’t do that stuff. First, you don’t have the ability. Second, you are hurting the entire show. I once saw a Patterson Hood solo show where some drunk idiot was clapping along to whatever the fuck his own rhythm was in his drunk head, but it was so loud that it really distracted Hood. I also once saw Justin Townes Earle call out someone singing along to his songs, noting that no one paid to hear this dude sing, they paid to hear him sing. I am well on record noting that people who talk through shows are assholes because they don’t care about anyone else. I suppose trying to clap along is less of a crime, but really, you don’t have the ability to do so. I know I certainly don’t.
It is indeed very sad that De La Soul’s music is FINALLY streaming just days after the death of Trugoy the Dove from congestive heart failure.
I find copyright lawsuits over musical licks extremely depressing. It’s like the very worst thing about music. But they are a big deal and here’s a story about how courts figure it out.
The 50 Greatest Songs by Fake Bands
Playlist from the last two weeks:
- Richard Thompson, Rumor and Sigh
- Amanda Shires, To the Sunset
- Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One
- James McMurtry, Walk Between the Raindrops
- Wussy, Ceremony (EP)
- Bill Callahan, Woke on a Whaleheart
- The Carter Family with Johnny Cash, Keep On the Sunny Side
- Jade Jackson, Gilded
- Loudon Wainwright III, Unrequited
- Jane Weaver, Modern Kosmology
- Natalie Hemby, Puxico
- Drive By Truckers, A Blessing and a Curse
- Ramones, Road to Ruin
- The Coathangers, Suck My Shirt
- John McLaughlin, Devotion
- Talking Heads, Little Creatures
- Dewey Redman, Coincide
- Los Caimanes De Tampico, Sones Huastecos
- Mary Halvorson, Calling All Portraits
- Wire, Pink Flag
- Matthew Shipp, New Orbit
- Marianne Faithful, Broken English
- The Highwomen, self-titled
- Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose
- Aretha Franklin, I Never Loved a Man the Way That I Love You
- Run the Jewels, RTJ2
- Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 1
- George Jones, Blue & Lonesome
- Ashley Monroe, The Blade
- Old 97s, Most Messed Up
- Sunny Sweeney, Trophy
- Marika Hackman, Any Human Friend
- Ashley Monroe, Like a Rose
- Robbie Fulks, Gone Away Backward
- Pink Floyd, The Final Cut
- Elizabeth Cotten, Freight Train And Other North Carolina Folk Songs And Tunes
- Old & In the Way, That High Lonesome Sound
- Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, Years
- Buddy Tabor, Writing on Stone
- Robbie Fulks, Country Love Songs
- H.C. McEntire, Eno Axis
- The Regrettes, How Do You Love?
- Buck Owens, The Complete Capitol Singles, 1967-1970
- Butch Hancock, You Coulda Walked Around the World
- William Parker & The Little Huey Creative Orchestra, Mass for the Healing of the World
- Jerry Lee Lewis, The Knox Phillips Sessions
- Torres, Three Futures
- Blood Orange, Freetown Sound
- John Hartford, Mark Twang
- Run the Jewels, RTJ 4
- Tacocat, Lost Time
- Lido Pimienta, Miss Colombia
- Drive By Truckers, Welcome 2 Club XIII
- Iris Dement, Sing the Delta
- Janelle Monae, Dirty Computer
- William Parker, For Those Who Are, Still
- Dave, Psychodrama
- Vince Bell, Texas Plates
- Tom T. Hall, The Rhymer and Other Five and Dimers
- Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out
- Marika Hackman, I’m Not Your Man
- Sad 13, Slugger
- Morgan Wade, Reckless
- Tom T. Hall, Faster Horses
- Bonnie Prince Billy, Best Troubador
- Willie Nelson and Ray Price, San Antonio Rose
- Newport Folk Festival – Best of Bluegrass 1959-66, Disc 1
- Elizabeth Cook, Welder
- Johnny Paycheck, Someone To Give My Love To
- Anthony Coleman, Selfhaters
- The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed
- Oum Kalthoum, El Sett
- Algiers, The Underside of Power
- CLAMM, Care
- Kae Tempest, The Book of Traps and Lessons
- Mourn, Self Worth
- Sons of the San Joaquin, From Whence Came the Cowboy
- Mourn, self-titled
- Chvrches, Every Open Eye
- The Coathangers, Nosebleed Weekend
- Screaming Females, Ugly
- Mourn, Ha Ha He
- Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love
- Mikal Cronin, MCII
- Torres, Silver Tongue
- The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks
- Iron & Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean
- Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom, Glitter Wolf
- Frank Ocean, Nostalgia, Ultra, Sno-Cheetah
Album Reviews:
Freddie Gibbs, $oul $old $eparately
This is a solid album by a soulful hip hop lifer. At this point in Gibbs career, that’s fine. He can combine soulful singer with rapping in a way that works well. This is someone brought down by being a compendium of the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and drugged out. I mean, people’s friends are who they are, but I’m not sure spoken bits by Joe Rogen about coming to Vegas with lots of psychedelics in something that is going to lead to anything but eyerolling, not to mention Kevin Durant showing up in between demanding trades to whatever team has other good players since he lacks the guts to lead a team himself. All of this doesn’t really hurt the album in the end, it’s just annoying. But it’s also an album of self-satisfaction by a guy who doesn’t actually have to work that hard anymore.
B
Natalie Hemby, Pins and Needles
Hemby is one of the great modern country songwriters and so I’m surprised I missed her last album, from 2021. In fact, I had to look it up the other day because I had seen her that year at Newport Folk Festival and she talked about a new album, but I hadn’t seen anything about it. I like this album, but I don’t think I can call it a great statement or anything. There are some very good songs on it–up to her normal songwriting standards. But I don’t think it matches the pure joy that is her Puxico album. It’s a technically skilled album by a total pro, but could probably use a bit more stripped down production. I’ll buy it and listen to it, but it might not be where I’d start someone on modern country music.
B
The Rough Guide to a World of Guitar
The Rough Guide series is useful. It’s a quick and dirty way to get a handle on a musical tradition you probably don’t know well. If you like what you hear, you have a bunch of artists to start exploring more. As a general rule, these things tend to run a bit on the tame side, but that’s not super surprising. But I still like them more or less and listen to a few with relative frequency. So when I found out that in 2019 Rough Guide did a compilation dedicated to global guitar playing, well, I had to at least check it out. It’s fine. I mean, yes, the songs are good. But it does rely a bit too much on the west African material at the core of the Rough Guide project. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that–it’s not like that material isn’t good. But it is predictable. And given the incredible guitar playing around the world, going a bit more out of the box would have done this collection a lot of good. That said though, it’s fine enough on its own that many of you will enjoy it.
B+
Ignaz Schick/Oliver Steidle, ILOG2
As a general rule, I don’t find electronic music all that exciting. But when I do, it’s usually because there is a genuinely experimental nature going on here, people truly trying to push music to a different place. This is a pretty good example of it, with this German duo combining electronics with some pretty interesting percussion and plenty of samples from various pop culture productions to create a good album. Like a lot of experimental music, it goes on too long. It really would be better as a 35 minute album than a 50 minute album. But with a couple of exceptions, I found the tracks all between reasonably interesting and quite compelling. If electronic music can easily become background music in the hands of the less skilled, it ain’t no background music with these dudes.
B+
Tekla Waterfield & Jeff Fielder, Trouble in Time
Nice singer-songwriter material here from this married couple. She sings, he plays guitar. Smart songs. Even the political folk song, a genre that can swerve into the ditch pretty quickly without some pretty solid politics behind it, works well at the end in “No Justice No Peace.” She manages to make it anthemic in a way you don’t see much anymore.
B+
Jane Weaver, The Silver Globe
I discovered Jane Weaver late in life, fell in love, and have been working back through her catalog, and too slowly. This is her 2014 album. Some of it is that she brings so much to the table–not only that pop sensibility and a refusal to rest on her laurels–but also decades of listening to music and having her own vision. This is pretty proggy for pop music and that’s a combination that almost never works, but when you hear the 8-minute “Argent,” you realize you are listening to something that in different hands might be pretentious foolishness, but in Weaver’s hands is epic pop that drives you along with a beat and a funky guitar, two things that prog bands have never quite gotten. No need for ridiculous time signatures here. In fact, she is open about her admiration for Hawkwind and even samples the band here. I guess that’s because the prog is the secondary influence here. It’s really a space rock album, which to the extent it’s even a genre, is usually pretty fun.
Another thing super fascinating to me about Weaver is how English she is. OK, that might not be super fascinating actually, but let’s think about what I mean here. The British R&B scene is far and wide, going way back, and totally dominant today. But Weaver sings dance music without any real sense that she is influenced by this. Or maybe she is, but her voice and the arrangements don’t suggest it. This is not Amy Winehouse, for example. Not that there’s anything wrong with Winehouse or the huge British R&B scene, I love a lot of that stuff. But this is more like Sandy Denny doing a dance album. And it works.
A
Etran de L’Air, No. 1
Another of the west African electric bands that have come to light in recent years. Etran de L’Air is from northern Niger, land of the great Tal National. I dislike the “desert blues” genre name because that’s not really what this is, though I grant the need to market stuff to western audiences so the artists can make money. This is the music of everyday life in this region that in recent decades has been adapted to the electric guitar. These bands do tend to sound more or less the same, but what makes this a special recording is that it is live in front of their family and friends in the town of Agadez, which itself is importnat because it is one of the towns in Niger that has long served as a connecting point between the Saharan and sub-Saharan African worlds, which means a huge variety of musical influences.
Now, I mentioned I think that I am going to Big Ears in Knoxville. There are so many acts I want to see, some of whom are playing at the same time, that I am not intentionally going out and listening to the acts I don’t know that are playing there. I don’t need to make my choices even harder than they are. But I am just listening to albums and so of course Etran de L’Air is playing there. So now do I see this band or the Andrew Cyrille/Reggie Workman/David Virelles trio? Should I just flip a coin? Damn, this is hard!
A
Lakecia Benjamin, Phoenix
The playing is fine, the political material really good. I will always take albums that include Angela Davis and Sonia Sanchez voiceovers. The musical guests include Wayne Shorter, Wallace Roney, and Dianne Reeves. I don’t know that the music itself though really reaches the glory of the politics. It’s certainly good music. I just don’t see it as great jazz. It’s real solid post-bop material. There ain’t nothing wrong with that.
B
Screaming Females, Desire Pathway
One of my favorite bands of the last fifteen years, Screaming Females usually gets classified as punk, but that’s not really correct. They are hard rock and they do it better than any band in a long, long time. Marissa Pasternoster is not just a unique vocalist, but she’s a GUITARIST in the way that Jimmy Page was a guitarist. In short, these are major riffs of the classic rock school, not whatever passes for indie rock guitar.
This is a solid Screaming Females release, but it’s not at their peak, I don’t think anyway. Ugly and All at Once are such great albums that it’s a hard bar to meet. Lyrically, this is mostly about Pasternoster going through a nasty breakup and I like breakup albums. What I’m not quite hearing is anything totally iconic here, at least not on the first couple of listens. Instead, I’m hearing a good rock and roll album. And I like a good rock and roll album.
B+
Jehnny Beth/Bobby Gillespie, Utopian Ashes
Decent indie pop/soul album from this Glasgow outfit. Lovers of the breakup album, they decided to make one up for themselves, a la Loretta and Conway, as opposed to actually going through the breakup needed to really drive it home. I don’t care about the authenticity factor. After all, I don’t listen to Loretta and Conway wishing they had experienced what Richard and Linda Thompson did. In fact, I am glad they did not! The only question here is whether this is more campy than heartfelt. Mostly, it’s not. It’s good enough in the retro styles that motivate a lot of musicians today. That has its limitations too–there’s not much here you haven’t heard in some way before. But it’s fine.
B
Nilüfer Yanya, Painless
Liked this heavily percussive and beat-based album by the British songwriter who mostly works in the depressive range of modern indie pop music. Sometimes, this all starts to feel the same or even self-indulgent (see Julien Baker as an example here). What saves this is a musical palette that extends beyond strumming an acoustic guitar. There are many ways to get messages across. Not all of them have to be strumming that acoustic and whispering into a mic. You can also use beats and whisper into a mic. Somehow, it works better.
B+
Billy Woods, Aethiopes
Really first rate hip hop album. Never afraid to push the envelope or stand out from the pack, Woods gets your attention right away. It’s also interesting that he doesn’t use a stage name, though that doesn’t matter to the album. I also have to respect someone who once released an album titled History Will Absolve Me. Maybe it will sir. Maybe it will. In any case, outside of the trivia, this album should help history absolve him. It’s filled with outstanding sounds. Really, it’s first rate production, with great inspirations, one of the best hip hop albums I’ve heard in a long time on this front (not that I am the world’s greatest expert here). He’s also a great storyteller who is a heck of a lot more interested in politics than in talking about his bling and what a badass he is. No capitalist here. In fact, his parents were involved in leftist politics pretty deeply, which helps explain the Castro references. There’s a lot going on here and I need to hear it more. For now though, I was very impressed.
A-
Craig Davis with John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton, Tone Paintings: The Music of Dodo Marmarosa
A pretty enough set of covers from a piano/bass/drums trio with some nice solos. Pretty is not necessarily a positive in my book, but this is a pretty fine if relatively unexceptional album covering a legend in the pretty fine musician world. As I’ve never been a giant Marmarosa fan, the tribute is also going to rest in that spot for me.
B
Ilhan Erashin/Dave Harrington/Kenny Wollesen, Invite Your Eye
A little dirty louché jazz, like something Serge Gainsbourg might have made if he was a more straight ahead jazz guy. This is one of these albums where a bunch of people rooted in jazz but have spent their lives listening to basically everything just let all the references in. In fact, it’s albums like this that have made me convinced that today’s jazz is right there with the best eras in jazz history. The spirit of music–and what is jazz if not the spirit?–takes things from rock, funk, hip hop, electronica, movie music, various global influences and turns it into a new form of jazz that speaks more to 2023 than 1923. And since jazz should never be a backwards looking music, this is the kind of thing we need. Outside of the larger statement though, it’s also fun as hell and of course the three players are just outstanding.
A-
Charlotte Adigéry/Bolis Pupul, Topical Dancer
DAMN IT ANOTHER ACT PLAYING AT BIG EARS THAT I HAVE TO CHECK OUT NOW! OMG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?!?!?!
Actually, I was surprised to see Adigéry and Pupul were playing there since it’s a very different type of music than most of what is featured there, though there are outliers all over the place to the jazz at the core of the festival. This is highly amusing dance music from a Belgian duo that is sarcastic as fuck, singing and dancing along to the ridiculousness of the modern world, taking shots at racism, poking some fun at the language of political correctness, and making fun of the French. It’s angry, but more fun angry. They both come from immigrant backgrounds, are royally pissed at the racism they face, and then take an unusual method to critique that. Basically, a modern pop art band, the kind of thing that actually makes sense at a festival like this than a more typical dance festival in Europe, let’s say. It works, very well in fact. It’s super catchy, among other things. The song below really made me laugh.
In this case, so long as the “secret show” to be announced doesn’t beat this out and so long as I am not drop dead tired by midnight, this will be the clear show to see at that time slot.
A-
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.