Music Notes
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I haven’t really seen much live music in Mexico and Oaxaca is not exactly a town where Mexicans bands play a lot. But I have watched a couple of music documentaries that we can talk about a bit to frame this post, the last Music Notes of 2024.
As I had mentioned sometime ago, I had run across the Folkstreams website and have been enjoying a variety of documentaries from the 60s until fairly recently, mostly about music but certainly not exclusively. One was Blaine Dunlap and Sol Korine’s 1980 film, Uncle Dave Macon, about the first big Nashville country star. Macon was long gone by this time, but his children were still alive and a few other people who knew him, including a bunch of older musicians who were mentored by him. Everyone interviewed in this film is probably long dead by now. So it’s an interesting view at a long time ago. When I wrote up the grave post for the old-time musician Al Hopkins a couple weeks back, some commenters noted that he seemed to be a parody of rednecks, a sort of blackface. I can see why one would say this if you weren’t very familiar with this era of early country music, but it misses the point of what this early entertainment was. Hell, it misses the point of Hee Haw. But Macon, I mean the guy was way over the top. He was a drunk and a religious fundamentalist. He was a modern musician but also a complete clown on stage. He was a good banjo player who also did absurdly silly dances. He was a parody of himself basically, but this is exactly what these early country crowds wanted and they continued to want it for decades. The sheer existence of the odious Ray Stevens and his country “comedy” is a late end part of this tradition. Old recordings of country live shows–especially in the old time and bluegrass traditions–are filled with the stupidest jokes ever and they are basically between every song.
Some of the other interesting but perhaps more minor films I’ve seen on Folkstreams include Susan and Donna Campbell’s 1994 film Fiddlers’ Grove: A Celebration of Old Time, about the North Carolina old-time festival which gives a good insight into the folk and bluegrass revival period that would catch the country by storm a few years later when O Brother Where Art Thou came out but which had been building for a decade before that, and Betsy Newman’s 2018 film Charlie’s Place, about a guy in Myrtle Beach who owned a club on the Chitlin Circuit and allowed interracial crowds to see all these great acts and who the KKK attacked and nearly lynched in 1950 during Strom Thurmond’s lovely governor’s campaign.
The other quite interesting film I want to discuss is Philip Spalding’s 1971 film Til the Butcher Cuts Him Down. This is an excellent film about the last days of one of the last living original New Orleans jazz musicians, Punch Miller, who had his moment in the sun as a trumpeter and drank it away after Jelly Roll Morton hired him back in the day, knew Louis Armstrong and Kid Ory and everyone else. He found his way back to New Orleans toward the end of his life as the Preservation Hall stuff was getting underway and he had a few late performances. This film, despite its very stiff narration by a local historian of early jazz, is a great look at how these old men were keeping this music alive. Miller could still deliver on stage, even though it was between hospital stints. In fact, he’s kind of great still. He died just days after the completion of the film, It’s a window into the very end of a generation and I definitely recommend the hour of your time.
Other news:
Slim Dunlap, who joined the Replacements later in their run and did a lot to revitalize the band on their last couple of albums, died at the age of 73. In case you all weren’t feeling old enough here.
Sugar Pie DeSanto was a lot more influential than famous, but had her day in the 60s and remained one of those musicians who heavily influenced a lot of other musicians across genres. She was 89 when she died.
The producer Richard Perry also died. Perhaps best known in recent years as Jane Fonda’s latest partner, he made his name in the late 60s producing some of the best work of everyone from Tiny Tim (who he basically made a star) to Captain Beefheart and went on to produce Carly Simon’s No Secrets and Harry Nilsson’s Nilsson Schmilsson, among other classics.
Also, the rapper OG Maco killed himself. He was 32.
George Harrison was a big fan of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” when he was driving.
I still have no interest in the Dylan biopic and now we are subjected to yet more Dylan Talk. But you all like this, so here’s yet another article on the night he went electric at Newport.
This week’s playlist, again a bit short due to my travel (spent Christmas in Puerto Escondido; is this what Woody Guthrie meant when he wrote “Hard Travelin’?”):
- Jim and Jennie and the Pinetops, Rivers Roll on By
- Dave Alvin, Public Domain: Songs from the Wild Land
- Ennio Morricone, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Soundtrack
- Cecil Taylor Quartet, Lifting the Bandstand
- Drive By Truckers, The Dirty South
- Merle Haggard, Swinging Doors and the Bottle Let Me Down
- Shamir, Ratchet
- The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band, 21st Century Molam
- Wussy, Rigor Mortis
- Buddy Tabor, Abandoned Cars and Broken Hearts
- Ray Charles, The Genius After Hours
- Drive By Truckers, Brighter than Creation’s Dark
- Lone Justice, The Western Tapes
- Grateful Dead, Dick’s Picks, Vol. 5, disc 1
- Ray Charles, The Genius After Dark
- Wussy, Ghosts
- Dua Saleh, Nur
- Marissa Nadler, Path of the Clouds
- Corb Lund, El Viejo
- Jake Blount & Mali Obosawin, Symbiont
- Father John Misty, Chloe and the Next 20th Century
- Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the Garden
- Kings Go Forth, The Outsiders Are Back
- Mitski, Be the Cowboy
- Vampire Weekend, self-titled
- Doc Watson, Doc Watson on Stage
Album Reviews, all from 2024 as I rush to hear as much new music as possible this year:
Mercury Rev, Born Horses
I suppose I’d like this overly lush, aging rock band doing a lot of talking songs over some overproduced music if the talk wasn’t so damn cheesy and the songs too long. A band that thinks it has a lot to say. It does not. I really love the combination of pretension, cliche, and overwroughtness. Really my favorite combination of traits. Probably the album I’ve heard this year that I hated the most.
D+
Swamp Dogg, Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th Street
Swamp Dogg was one of those guys I had largely just never got around to hearing, even though Jerry Williams been around forever as a purveyor of Black Country and in fact has been recording since 1954. He is not in fact from West Virginia (he’s from southeast Virginia) but his musical influences are very well described by this fascinating album. Some of you who will be listening to him for longer than I will probably have more to say, but what I was not expecting here was straight ahead bluegrass picking combined with some near-dirty lyrics that come out of a very different part of the Black musical tradition. He’s an older man of course and brings in plenty of help here–including Margo Price and Jenny Lewis each taking the lead on one song–but he’s still the star of the show, a man who has helped shape R&B and country for seven decades and who has all this brilliance in him and continues to find ways to let it out. I was really struck here and realized I have a lot of work to do to explore his vast back catalog.
A-
Darius Jones, Legend of E’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)
Certainly not the easiest jazz album you’ll hear, but then Jones isn’t here for your easy listening. Working with the always outstanding duo of Gerald Cleaver on drums and Chris Lightcap on bass, Jones continues a project he began with Man’ish Boy many years ago now, the 7th album in what he considers a series, though I’ve never been sure quite how to follow that. Jones just pours his soul into his sax. He covers the Parchman Farm recording of prisoners singing “No More My Lord,” from back in 1948 in a way that those prisoners would most certainly not recognize but which breaks your heart nonetheless. And really, who is going to not like a song titled “Motherfuckin Roosevelt”?
A-
Empress Of, For Your Consideration
I’ve been a big fan of Empress Of ever since I first heard her, which is 4 albums ago. This is now a mature songwriter dealing with something that almost everyone knows–a nasty breakup. The litany of breakup albums is long and, at their best, august. Lorely Rodriguez responds in three ways to her breakup–first is creating her most pop-oriented album yet, second is singing more in Spanish than ever before, and three is to reaffirm how awesome she is, asshole guy notwithstanding. It’s angry, it’s feminist, it’s sexy, it’s confident, and it’s just damn good music. She’s just great.
A
Mabe Fratti, Sentir Que No Sabes
The Guatemalan hipster cellist continues to amaze. This description probably sounds ridiculous if you haven’t heard Fratti’s music, but it sure fits. Based now in Mexico City, she’s a key figure in the city’s astounding experimental music scene and has received global accolades for her releases. She is deeply embedded in classical traditions, but is just as embedded in electronic, rock, free jazz, and hip hop, running this all through a minimalist approach to her compositions. The only way one starts on this path, I guess, is where she did–in a Guatemalan evangelical megachurch playing whatever the pastor wanted. Well, biography does not a album review make (though you’d be surprised how it often it is basically that). But she’s writing more and moving more toward a rock and pop sound. Some of you who really prefer their experimental music to be difficult might not like this; to me, it’s a global star in the making. Looking forward to her Big Ears performance.
A
Shovels & Rope, Something Is Working Up Above My Head
Another example of the fine is ultimately unremarkable roots rock duet from Charleston. Some albums are better than others, this one is about average, which makes it perfectly listenable American music. Might not be much more than that, but works in any number of social settings at least and your friends will probably think you have good taste. Which you will.
B
Amythyst Kiah, Still + Bright
Good roots rock and roll, if the lyrics are often really on the nose politically. Kiah remains the least known of the Black women on the Our Native Daughters project and there’s little reason because she rocks more than any of them. Good banjo player too and yes, banjo and rock and roll can work very well together. Excellent songwriter who says exactly what she means; how you evaluate that depends on your personal tastes, but perhaps for me could use a bit more metaphor.
B+
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.