Category: Music

Music notes from all over

Barbara Dane

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I’ve been a near obsessive collector of music since I was 13, and often I accumulate more than I can consume. Case in point, I stumbled upon this album in my collection by Barbara Dane. Wow, what a smoky, husky, sexy voice, accompanied only by herself on guitar. I have no memory of why I own this CD, apparently I bought it in August, 2007, but didn’t really listen to it until tonight1. No matter, I’ve heard her now, and am in love.

Barbara Dane’s parents arrived in Detroit from Arkansas in the 1920s. Out of high school, Dane began to sing regularly at demonstrations for racial equality and economic justice. While still in her teens, she sat in with bands around town and won the interest of local music promoters. She got an offer to tour with Alvino Rey’s band, but she turned it down in favor of singing at factory gates and in union halls.

Moving to San Francisco in 1949, Dane began raising her own family and singing her folk and topical songs around town as well as on radio and television. A jazz revival was then shaking the town, and by the 1950s she became a familiar figure at clubs along the city’s Embarcadero with her own versions of women’s blues and jazz tunes. New Orleans jazz musicians like George Lewis and Kid Ory and locals like Turk Murphy, Burt Bales, Bob Mielke and others invited her onto the bandstand regularly. Her first professional jazz job was with Turk Murphy at the Tin Angel in l956. “Bessie Smith in stereo,” wrote jazz critic Leonard Feather in the late 1950s. Time said of Dane: “The voice is pure, rich … rare as a 20 karat diamond.”

To Ebony, she seemed “startlingly blonde, especially when that powerful dusky alto voice begins to moan of trouble, two-timing men and freedom … with stubborn determination, enthusiasm and a basic love for the underdog, [she is] making a name for herself … aided and abetted by some of the oldest names in jazz who helped give birth to the blues.”

By 1959, Louis Armstrong had asked Time magazine readers: “Did you get that chick? She’s a gasser!” and invited her to appear with him on national television. She toured the East Coast with Jack Teagarden, appeared in Chicago with Art Hodes, Roosevelt Sykes, Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Slim, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon and others, played New York with Wilbur De Paris and his band, and appeared on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show as a solo guest artist. Other national TV work included The Steve Allen Show, Bobby Troop’s Stars of Jazz, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In 1961, the singer opened her own club, Sugar Hill: Home of the Blues, on San Francisco’s Broadway in the North Beach district, with the idea of creating a venue for the blues in a tourist district where a wider audience could hear it. There Dane performed regularly with her two most constant musical companions: Kenny “Good News” Whitson on piano and cornet and Wellman Braud, former Ellington bassist. Among her guest artists were Jimmy Rushing, Mose Allison, Mama Yancey, Tampa Red, Lonnie Johnson, Big Mama Thornton, Lightnin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry.

(click to continue reading Barbara Dane – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

I’ll have to look for more albums by Ms. Dane

Footnotes:
  1. trying to learn a couple of Woody Guthrie songs on guitar, looked for cover versions, and stumbled upon the song, Danville Girl [↩]

Neil Young Album Le Noise and iPad app

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Neil Young knew he wanted to make a purely solo album — just himself and a guitar — when he recruited Daniel Lanois to produce the upcoming “Le Noise.” That it finds him primarily playing electric guitar, however, came as a surprise.

“It evolved from being solo acoustic into being solo electric,” Young tells Billboard.com. The singer-songwriter says that after a few acoustic songs were initially recorded, he pulled out “The Hitchhiker,” an autobiographical song Young first wrote around 1975, and began working it up for “Le Noise.” “Then I thought to myself, ‘This is definitely going to be better electric than acoustic,” Young recalls. “So we tried it and it sounded really interesting and really good and strong…So I went home and got my white [Gretsch] Falcon out…and I wrote a sound or two like that and then brought them in and that kind of opened the door for us.”   Neil Young Announces New Album, ‘Le Noise’   Lanois adds that the transition to electric “was not a deliberate move or anything. Neil was able to go off and write some additional songs, and I think there was

(click to continue reading Neil Young Goes Electric for ‘Le Noise’ | Billboard.com.)

Plus there is supposedly an iPad app or something

“Le Noise” will also be released as an App that Young says “is based on my ‘Archives’ Blu-ray set” with a variety of interactive extras including original lyric manuscripts, photos, a career timeline and possibly alternate or live takes of the songs, the latter of which come from preview performances while he was on tour earlier this year. “What it does is bring you back to the album cover experience we used to get when the album cover was something tangible and big enough to actually read and see,” Young explains. “(The App) creates a version of it for the iPad or for a computer or a smart phone.”

Amazon blurb Le Noise:

This eight-song album is a collaboration between the acclaimed rock icon and musician, songwriter, and producer Daniel Lanois, known for his work with U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, The Neville Brothers and many others. As producer or co-producer Lanois won Grammy Awards in 1987, 1992, 1997, 2000, and 2001.

Young and Lanois have crossed paths musically over the course of many years, including Lanois’ performances at Young’s Bridge School Benefit Concert and Young’s performance at Farm Aid when Lanois was Willie Nelson’s music director, but this is the first time the two have recorded together. Recorded in Lanois’ home in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, ‘Le Noise’ features Young on acoustic and electric guitars with Lanois adding his trademark sonic textures, creating one of the most sonically arresting albums Young has ever recorded. No band, no overdubs, just ‘a man on a stool and me doing a nice job on the recording,’ as Lanois puts it.

‘Neil was so appreciative of the sonics that we presented to him,’ Lanois says. ‘He walked in the door and I put an acoustic guitar into his hands – one that I had been working on to build a new sound. That’s the multi-layered acoustic sound that you hear on the songs ‘Love and War’ and ‘Peaceful Valley Boulevard.’ I wanted him to understand that I’ve spent years dedicated to the sonics in my home and that I wanted to give him something he’d never heard before. He picked up that instrument, which had everything – an acoustic sound, electronica, bass sounds – and he knew as soon as he played it that we had taken the acoustic guitar to a new level. It’s hard to come up with a new sound at the back end of 50 years of rock and roll, but I think we did it.’

African music the actual African diaspora likes

Seth Anderson0 comment

Interesting observation really. When I travel, I try to find neighborhoods and restaurants the locals like, should do the same with music. Worth a listen at least.

 


"Tres Tres Fort (Dig)" (Staff Benda Bilili)

The Troxy in east London, and 2,500 pairs of hands are in the air. It’s been four years since the R&B duo P-Square played Britain. They’re household names back home in Lagos, were named artist of the year at this year’s Kora African music awards in Burkina Faso, and the brothers’ hook-driven blend of western and African rhythms has brought London’s Nigerian community out in force. “They’re just so wicked, man,” says a teary-eyed twentysomething over screams. “Where’ve you been?” she adds, incredulous, when I tell her I’ve only just discovered them.

Lately, I’ve been looking for African artists other than those beloved of the world music scene, which has had the west African colossi Salif Keita, Baaba Maal and Youssou N’Dour on heavy rotation for years. When they – and the likes of the Gibson-toting Malian chanteuse Rokia Traoré, the funky Congolese veterans Staff Benda Bilili and the red clay-smeared Ivorian diva Dobet Gnahore – come to Britain, they play to crowds that are largely white and middle-class, with little sign of the African diaspora. So there must be a whole other bunch of African artists whom Britain’s African communities are listening to.

(click to continue reading African music the actual African diaspora likes | Music | The Guardian.)


"Danger" (P-square)


"Bowmboi" (Rokia Traore)

Hail, Hail Professor Longhair

Seth Anderson0 comment

Loves me some Professor Longhair, and for that matter, vintage Atlantic Records R&B. Such good sides. Highly recommended.

“Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1: 1947-52” (Various Artists)

 

Walk around the streets near my home in east London and the area’s past will soon rise up to meet you – carved above door-frames, etched into glass and painted on awnings and the sides of buildings are the ghost-signs of former industries: shop-fronts and faded adverts for Blooms Pianos and Gillette Razors; fountain pens, glass, stoves and whisky; Strongs Meat and Donovan Brothers’ Paper Bags.

This was once an area famed for furniture and shoemakers, matches and model-makers, but as the industry moved elsewhere many of the names drifted into obscurity, too: Lesney, Bailey & Sloper, Bespoke Shoes, Berger, Jenson & Nicholson, Batey & Co, F Puckeridge & Nephew. As the area reinvents itself with luxury flats and new train lines, galleries and delicatessens, the few names that remain serve as faded, barely noticed reminders of the vibrant history of this part of the city.

I was thinking about these ghost signs and all those lost names this last week as I listened to Atlantic Rhythm and Blues, Volume One. This is a collection of 25 songs released between 1947 and 1952 in the first five years of the label’s existence. It ranges from relatively well-known artists – including Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown – to obscure acts such as Stick McGhee, who pops up playing his only hit, Drinkin’ Wine (Spo-Dee-O-Dee).

(click to continue reading Hail, Hail, Rock’n’Roll | Laura Barton | Music | The Guardian.)

And ‘Fess…

“Fess: Anthology” (Professor Longhair)

Likewise Professor Longhair, who appears here playing two of his biggest songs, Hey Little Girl and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Born Ray Byrd in Louisiana, Professor Longhair was a blues pianist and singer who settled in New Orleans and whose music has proved something of a linchpin of the city: a rolling, rumbling thing, with a rumba lilt, a certain Caribbeanness, and a croaky, lurching gait. You’d recognise it, surely – the dishevelled, tanked-up plea of Hey Little Girl is played often enough. Mardi Gras in New Orleans, meanwhile, has one of the most persuasive whistled intros in musical history.

This was a man who tap-danced for money along Bourbon Street, who was a card-shark and a gambler and a hustler, a one-time wannabe-boxer; a man who tried to scratch a living as a cook and a dancer and a seller of a miracle cure-all named Hadacol. You can hear it all in his music of course – a need and a desperation and a desire for more. But also a charm and a seduction and something winningly ramshackle.

There was some commercial success, for a while, but not much. Longhair’s musical offspring have been plentiful, though: you can’t listen to Fats Domino or Dr John, Allen Toussaint or Huey Smith without hearing his influence. Nor Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley or Lennon and McCartney. After a period of obscurity in the 1960s, when he worked as a janitor and fell back into gambling, Longhair enjoyed a burst of success in the last decade or so of his life with tours and a new album deal and dues paid by Robbie Robertson and Robert Plant. After his death, on the eve of the release of a new record, he was awarded a posthumous Grammy and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Charanjit Singh – Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat

Seth Anderson0 comment

Picked up a copy of Charanjit Singh’s 10 Ragas to a Disco Beat recently, and it is quite hypnotically fascinating. I’ve never been a big fan of House music, despite its origin just down the street from me, nor has electronica been a favorite, though I have a few favorites. No matter, this album is good, despite having similarities with both of those genres.

Charanjit Singh found himself in an interesting position back in the early 80s. Working as a session musician in the Bollywood films industry, he was exposed to a wide variety of electronic musical devices. Two of the instruments he used, which would not have been made so readily available otherwise, were the Roland TB-303 and TR-808 synthesizers — the very same synthesizers that later generated all of those drippy sounds you hear on your acid house records. During the time he spent away from his work, Singh sought to re-contextualize the ancient music of his nation — the Indian ragas — using the most technologically up-to-date methods. So no, Ten Ragas To a Disco Beat isn’t some abstractly titled avant-garde record (which is what I initially thought); it’s actually ten ragas played over a disco beat. And no, it’s not one of those corny gift-shop albums marketed to rich tourists — it’s 10 hissing artifacts that represent an aurally flexible ancient culture.

Now, ‘hissing’ isn’t usually the word one uses to describe what happens when folks attempt to re-record old cultural music. Usually you’d call it “world music,” and usually you wouldn’t listen to it. But don’t be averted. Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat was originally released in super-limited quantities in 1982, but it’s recently been re-released by the Bombay Connection label, and it couldn’t be better. The melodies mesmerize, the rhythms pulse relentlessly. And the synthesizer… Oh lord, Singh’s synth makes sound that modern electronic producers should envy. Ten Ragas doesn’t come off gimmicky like one would expect from reading over its history, rather, it’s minimal and potent beyond measure. So get

(click to continue reading Charanjit Singh – Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat | DeLorean | Tiny Mix Tapes.)

 

Robert Plant Upcoming Band of Joy Album

Seth Anderson1 Comment


“Band of Joy” (Robert Plant)

Sounds worth a spin, liked the Alison Krauss collaboration, and have been really digging into American roots music, Bakersfield, etc., plus always finding time to rock out a bit to Led Zeppelin once in a while.

Last night, Robert Plant dropped in at a dimly lit bar in the East Village near the end of a listening session for his newest album, Band of Joy, and for a few brief moments, admitted he didn’t know what to talk about. “Should I tell you about the Butter Queen and the Plaster Casters in Chicago?” he said, referencing some of the most famous groupies in rock history. “That’s not quite as relevant now as back then — and penicillin is easily available now.”

Holding a microphone in front of a small crowd at New York’s Back Room, the Led Zeppelin frontman quickly changed the subject to the new disc, due September 14th on Rounder Records. Band of Joy follows the intimate, moody vibe of his Grammy-winning collaboration with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand, but the songs are more powerful, like the blazing spiritual classic “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” and a hard-driving take on “Harm’s Swift Way,” a rare Townes Van Zandt track.


“March 16-20 1992” (Uncle Tupelo)

Band of Joy was originally Plant’s experimental blues outfit in Birmingham, England, from 1966 to 1968, which helped earn him the nickname “The wild man of the blues from the Black Country.” John Bonham joined in 1967. While Plant’s Zep days were often too demanding to allow him time to appreciate American music, one of his earliest singles was a cover of the Rascals’ “You Better Run” in 1966. Plant was 17, playing with the Tennessee Teens for Columbia Records, and says the track went nowhere. “It disappeared without a trace,” he remembered. “Forty-one years later, I finally decided that it was worth working with American musicians.”

Resurrecting the Band of Joy, Plant picked out top-notch roots musicians and session players for the group: multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott, guitarist and co-producer Buddy Miller, drummer Marco Giovino and bassist Byron House. “I’m working with arch-bishops of good taste,” Plant said.

(click to continue reading Robert Plant Previews Upcoming Band of Joy Album | Rolling Stone Music.)

Hmm, don’t know the Townes Van Zandt song called Harm’s Swift Way, have to look into that.

Buddy Guy’s Lament for the Blues in The Backyard

Seth Anderson0 comment

Buddy Guy's Legends - Chicago's Premier Blues Club

[the old Buddy Guy’s Legends Blues Club]

Buddy Guy said he was worried about the blues.

…

When Mr. Guy arrived here in 1957, it was the heyday of Chess Records, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and there seemed to be a blues venue — like the 1815 Club, Theresa’s, the Blue Flame Lounge — on every other corner. Some were no more than tiny rooms that could fit 35 people if no one took a deep breath.

There were so many clubs, Mr. Guy said, “you couldn’t count them all.”

One reason the clubs thrived, he said, was because “back then, everybody had a job.” People could afford to go out, and everybody wanted to hear the famous Chicago blues.

“When the Beatles started, they came here,” Mr. Guy said. “When the Rolling Stones started, they were on 21st and Michigan, trying to find Chess Records.”

Those days are long gone. The relocated Legends, which opened its doors on May 28 at 700 South Wabash Avenue, is one of the city’s few remaining venues dedicated to live blues. Mr. Guy hopes his club will provide emerging blues musicians with the kind of exposure he got playing at the 708 Club and the Blue Flame.

“If there wasn’t a club when I came here, nobody was going to see me walking down 47th Street and say: ‘There goes Buddy Guy. One day he’s going to be a guitar player,’ ” said Mr. Guy, an energetic 74. “I had to go into those clubs and play.”

Lincoln T. Beauchamp, known as Chicago Beau, is a musician, magazine publisher and author of a book about the city’s blues history. The blues community that once flourished on the South and West Sides, Mr. Beauchamp said, fell victim to changing social and economic conditions.

“Pre-integration, the black community was a lot more vibrant,” he said. “Along 47th Street and Cottage Grove, you had a community that was able to sustain itself, and the blues and jazz clubs were part of it, not just socially but also politically.”

(click to continue reading Chicago News Cooperative – A Lament for the Blues in Their Backyard – NYTimes.com.)

Times are changing, but not always for the better

From a Whisper to a Scream

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“From a Whisper to a Scream” (Allen Toussaint)

Seriously good – pick up a copy if you don’t already have one

Kent Soul has done an exceptional job in remastering and reissuing Allen Toussaint’s classic sophomore long-player — which was known simply as Allen Toussaint — and the “bonus” selection, a vocal-less blues-meets-funk titled “Number Nine.” When these songs first surfaced circa 1970, Toussaint (piano/vocals) had become a decade-long veteran of the New Orleans’ Crescent City soul movement. Under his own name as well as the pseudonym of Naomi Neville, he was a composer, producer, and even a recording session musician. He left a trail of influential R&B titles that would resound back across the pond in the form of cover versions by the likes of the Rolling Stones (“Pain in My Heart”), the Yardbirds (“A Certain Girl”), and the Who (“Fortune Teller”), along with countless others. Toussaint’s uncanny musical malleability resulted in a diverse yet solid second solo outing.

He is supported by Mac Rebennack (organ/guitar) (aka Dr. John), Terry Kellman (guitar), Eddie Hohner (bass), Freddie Staehle (drums), John Boudreaux (drums), Clyde Kerr (trumpet), Earl Turbinton (alto sax), and none other than Merry Clayton (backing vocals) and Venetta Fields — perhaps the most in demand studio voices of the rock & roll era. The dramatic “From a Whisper to a Scream” perfectly captures the synergy existing between Toussaint’s ultra cool delivery and the understated yet piercing lyrical indictment. Other highlights include the pop-oriented, upbeat, and classy “Sweet Touch of Love,” the author’s interpretation of “Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky” and “Working in the Coalmine.”

(click to continue reading From a Whisper to a Scream > Overview.)

Everyone should have a few Allen Toussaint albums around, worn from repeated playing1

Footnotes:
  1. even though CDs theoretically don’t have this problem the way a vinyl record does, CDs still get worn, scratched and discolored from repeated handling [↩]

Nneka: In the Footsteps of Fela

Seth Anderson0 comment

Being in the footsteps of Fela is high praise, and not at all like being labeled as The Next Dylan1

Nigeria has a storied legacy of fierce anti-government musicians, most famous among them the Afrobeat king Fela Kuti (currently enjoying a posthumous popular revival with the hit Broadway show “Fela!”). But since Fela’s death in 1997, there hasn’t been an obvious heir apparent to his musical prowess and political agitations, even among Fela’s two musician sons.

In the magnetic singer Nneka (Nneka Egbuna, 29), the opening act for Nas and Damian Marley’s Distant Relatives summer tour, Nigeria has found another performer capable of drawing global attention.

Nneka pulled herself up from a hardscrabble background in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria and with no family support emigrated to Germany when she was 19 (her father is Nigerian and her mother is German). After years spent struggling to earn a living – including a stint cleaning bathrooms – Nneka found music.

While she has been recording for years in Germany, her first U.S. album, “Concrete Jungle,” was released just last year. Give it a listen and just try not to have it’s hard-driving first single, “Heartbeat,” get stuck in your head.

(click to continue reading Nneka: In the Footsteps of Fela – Speakeasy – WSJ.)

 Sounds worth a listen at least

2010 album from the Nigerian-German Hip Hop/Soul singer/songwriter. Concrete Jungle is a collection of songs that put the singer/songwriter at the forefront. The album is an offering of love, hope and optimism dedicated to the people of Warri & the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Holding it all together is the emotional focus of her beautiful voice, located in a place somewhere between yearning and rage.

Footnotes:
  1. well, let’s hope so anyway [↩]

Bad photo of my new didgeridoo

swanksalot0 comment
Bad photo of my new didgeridoo
Bad photo of my new didgeridoo, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Sleep apnea begone!

Throat Exercises Relieve Sleep Apnea

Seemingly operated on the same sort of principle as a shofar1, but more difficult to get a good solid sound, probably because the mouth opening is wider. Still pretty fun, though tiring.

Footnotes:
  1. Shofar explained at Wikipedia [↩]

Performers to Stay Away From Arizona in Protest of Law

Seth Anderson0 comment

There are some contemporary musicians who value humanity more than dollars.

No Alien is Illegal

A coalition of music groups has announced that its members will boycott all performances in Arizona to protest a tough new anti-immigration law there, and it has urged fans to sign a petition demanding the revocation of the legislation, which it calls “an assault on the U.S. Constitution.” Enlarge This Image

The campaign, called the Sound Strike, has been organized by Zack de la Rocha, the lead singer of the rap metal band Rage Against the Machine, and is endorsed by English-language rock and rap performers like Massive Attack, Kanye West, Conor Oberst, Sonic Youth and Joe Satriani. But the signatories also include Spanish-speaking reggaetón artists and Los Tigres del Norte, perhaps the most popular and influential exponent of Mexican regional music in the United States.

…

In comments published in Spanish on the Los Tigres del Norte Web site, the group said that the law, which is scheduled to go into effect in late July, had already created a climate of hostility against Hispanic residents of Arizona. “We’ve had occasion to travel there twice since it was approved, and you can feel a chilly climate from the moment of arrival at the airport,” said Jorge Hernández, the group’s lead singer and accordion player.

Even before the Sound Strike was announced, some Spanish-language performers had already canceled shows in Arizona or decided to skip the state during tours planned for this summer. According to a report in the music-industry publication Billboard this month, the rap and reggaetón artists Wisin & Yandel and Pitbull, and the Mexican regional music performers Jenni Rivera, Espinoza Paz and Conjunto Primavera, none of whom are listed on the Sound Strike manifesto, had earlier taken that action

(click to continue reading Performers to Stay Away From Arizona in Protest of Law – NYTimes.com.)

Good on them.

So far the musicians who have co-signed include:

Cypress Hill
Juanes
Conor Oberst
Los Tigres del Norte
Rage Against the Machine
Cafe Tacvba
Micheal Moore
Kanye West
Calle 13
Joe Satriani
Serj Tankian
Rise Against
Ozomatli
Sabertooth Tiger
Massive Attack
One Day as a Lion
Street Sweeper Social Club
Spank Rock
Sonic Youth
Tenacious D
The Coup

The petition is here, if you so desire

and reads as follows

Our Petition:

We are calling for fans of music the world over, who recognize that this is one of the most important struggles for civil and human rights of our generation, to stand with us and refuse to lend their economic support to the state of Arizona until this unjust law is revoked.

We can also put some much needed pressure upon the Obama Administration to use his executive branch authority to prevent the implementation of this unjust law:

Mr. President, please take action!

We are asking you to do everything within your power to protect civil rights in Arizona. Throughout our nation’s history, there have been times when the federal government has had to take swift action to stop states from shredding bedrock Constitutional protections and to ensure the safety of targeted minorities.

Arizona’s new law is an assault on the US Constitution and and an affront to the civil rights that were earned by generations who came before us. When states disregard the Constitution, when they sanction mistreatment of communities, it is the imperative of the Executive Branch to take the lead in defending the U.S. Constitution.

While we wait for Congress to act, we implore you take necessary and appropriate action to ensure that our brothers and sisters in Arizona do not continue to suffer.

(Emails will not be made public on the petition – privacy policy)

————– ESPAÑOL ————–

Nuestra Petición:

Esto es un llamado a nuestros fans por todo el mundo, cual reconocen que esta es una de las mas importantes luchas por los derechos civiles y humanos en nuestra generación, que se unan con nosotros y que se rechazan a dar su apoyo economico al estado de Arizona hasta que esta ley sea revocada.

Tambien podemos presionar a la Administración Obama que utilice su autoridad Ejecutiva para prevenir la implementación de esta ley injusta:

¡Sr. Presidente, por favor toma acción!

Te pedimos que utilices todo tu poder para proteger los derechos civiles en Arizona. A lo largo de la historia de esta nación, ha habido momentos donde el el gobierno federal ha tomado acciones rapidas en poner un alto a estados que han querido eliminar protecciones constitucionales y garantizar la seguridad de minorias discriminadas.

La nueva ley de Arizona es un attaque a la Constitución de los Estados Unidos y un insulto a generaciones pasadas que lucharon para obtener los derechos civilies. Caundo los estados ignoran la Constitución, cuando autorizan el maltrato de comunidades, es el imperativo del Poder Ejecutivo a tomar la iniciativa en la defensa de la Constitución de EE.UU.

Te imploramos que tomes la acción necesaria y adecuada para asegurar que los derechos constitucionales sean respetados y garantizados de nuestras hermanas y hermanos en el estado de Arizona.

(click to continue reading SIGN PETITION TO STOP SB 1070!! | www.thesoundstrike.net.)

The Rolling Stones forbidden documentary

Seth Anderson0 comment

We’ve discussed Cocksucker Blues before,1 but apparently if you are wealthy enough2 to purchase the Super Deluxe package release of Exile On Main Street, you’ll be able to see snippets from Cocksucker Blues:

Exile On Main St Dlx

It’s hard to know what the Stones expected from [Robert ] Frank, whose previous films, including the Beat landmark “Pull My Daisy” (1959), showed little interest in conventional narrative of either the fiction or nonfiction variety. (At one point, Frank theorized he was chosen because his friend Danny Seymour, who appears in the film, was adept at procuring hard drugs, which made him a valuable commodity in the Stones’ circle.) In any case, the Stones didn’t like what they saw — or at the very least considered it unwise to release. According to one account, Jagger told Frank he liked the film but worried that “if it shows in America, we’ll never be allowed in the country again.” The band successfully sued to prevent the release of “Cocksucker Blues,” with showings limited to those at which Frank was physically present (a requirement that has been slightly loosened in recent years as the 85-year-old Frank’s ability to travel has been curtailed). Video was verboten as well, of course, although VHS bootlegs and now Internet downloads have always been within the reach of the curious and determined. It’s also made appearances on various streaming video sites, although its tenure is inevitably short-lived.

“Cocksucker Blues” is infamous for its scenes of debauchery, like an incipient orgy on the Stones’ private plane where women shriek as their shirts are pulled off and Jagger and Richards bang instruments like a satanic house band. (Carefully edited snippets appear on the “Exile” DVD, although the Glimmer Twins now seem to preside over a mild outbreak of tickle fighting.) But such spectacles would hardly have damaged the reputation of a band whose image was based in excess. And besides, the Stones are absent for many of the movie’s most notorious scenes, including those in which unidentified hangers-on stick needles in their arm and a sperm-spattered naked woman sprawls on a hotel bed and fingers her crotch in postcoital reverie.

What was perhaps more damaging — and, to the outside observer, most intriguing — is just how dull the life of the world’s biggest rock ‘n’ roll band could be. At times, Frank goes out of his way to portray the drudgery of life on the road, as when he intercuts footage of a couple shooting up in a hotel room with scenes of Keith Richards quietly playing cards. In one sublime sequence, included on the “Exile” DVD, a lugubrious Richards makes a slurred and unsuccessful attempt to order a bowl of fruit from a woman in a Southern hotel.

…

There’s concert footage as well, much of it astonishing; many fans regard the 1972 tour as the Stones’ finest hour. It’s a shame the “Exile” DVD only shows us the second half of their duet with Stevie Wonder, who toured as their opening act, picking up with “Satisfaction” but omitting the segue out of Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright).” But the vividly colored stage performances only heighten the dolorous feel of the black-and-white behind-the-scenes footage. In his novel “Underworld,” whose third section is named for the film, Don DeLillo described it thus: “The camera phalanx in the tunnels. People sitting around, two people asleep in a lump or tripped out or they could be unnoticeably dead, the endless noisy boredom of the tour — tunnels and runways.”

(click to continue reading The Rolling Stones’ forbidden documentary – Documentaries – Salon.com.)

Footnotes:
  1. Wikipedia entry [↩]
  2. or a big enough Rolling Stones fan [↩]

Pat Metheny discusses Kenny G

Seth Anderson0 comment

Duly noted. And, ouch, that’s gotta sting a little.

Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track “What a Wonderful World”. With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can’t use at all – as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.

This type of musical necrophilia – the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers – was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on “Unforgettable” a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him – and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis’s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture – something that we all should be totally embarrassed about – and afraid of. We ignore this, “let it slide”, at our own peril.

His callous disregard for the larger issues of what this crass gesture implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only reason he possibly have for doing something this inherently wrong (on both human and musical terms) was for the record sales and the money it would bring.

Since that record came out – in protest, as insignificant as it may be, I encourage everyone to boycott Kenny G recordings, concerts and anything he is associated with. If asked about Kenny G, I will diss him and his music with the same passion that is in evidence in this little essay.

(click to continue reading JazzOasis.com – Pat Metheny on Kenny G.)

Louis Armstrong is an American hero, Kenny G, not so much…

Via Aaron Cohen, Kottke guest blogger.

Mick Jagger and Internet Piracy

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Mick Jagger is quite right about this: look at the finances of Muddy Waters, or Blind Lemon Jefferson, or The Carter Family, or even someone like Fats Domino. Being a career musician was about being a live musician, because that’s what paid the bills. The records themselves were not how most musicians paid their bar bills.

In an interview with the BBC, Jagger is asked if he is worried about sales of his back catalog in the days of internet downloading

He replies:

Music has been aligned with technology for a long time. The model of records and record selling is a very complex subject and quite boring, to be honest.

BBC: But your view is valid because you have a huge catalogue, which is worth a lot of money, and you’ve been in the business a long time, so you have perspective.

Well, it’s all changed in the last couple of years. We’ve gone through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and we’ve gone into a grey period it’s much easier to pay for things – assuming you’ve got any money.

…

I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don’t make as much money out of records. But I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone! Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone. So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.

(click to continue reading BBC News – Sir Mick Jagger goes back to Exile.)


“The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. (33 1/3)” (Bill Janovitz)

Exile On Main Street has long been a favorite album of mine, probably the last Rolling Stones LP (chronologically speaking) that I really like. The re-issue is currently a bit too pricey for my taste, I’m more interested in the remastered version of the original album, presumedly this will be available eventually by itself.