a cold sweat

Without even thinking of it, I started singing the Starsailor song “Good Souls” in the shower this morning.

Now, the album this song was on pretty much sucked. The band overall is pretty hit or miss (and more often than not miss). But this song has always been able to sink its hooks in me.

I’ve loved it since the first time I heard it at a headphones listening station at Pure Pop in Burlington. My friend Timmy was in town visiting and said “Hey, this lame ass Britpop is right up your alley. Check out track 10.” I was hung over and had drank way too much coffee that morning, and I think those two factors contributed to the excited jitters I got when I heard this song. Maybe I still get residuals from that every time I hear it. Who knows.

Anyhow, this song is a one-hit wonder for me much along the lines of the Apples In Stereo’s “Radiation”: a standout track on a record I don’t particularly like. But what standouts.  Just try to not air-drum cymbal hits on the downbeats during the chorus to this song.  It cannot be done.

“Good Souls” by Starsailor (from Love Is Here)

“Radiation” by Apples in Stereo (from New Magnetic Wonder)

As anyone with even a shred of livin’ under their belt can tell you, it can be a dangerous thing to try to recreate the past.  Even when all the necessary elements seem to be in place, you inevitably miss an intangible that made what was what it was.

I’ve always guessed that this is why I never hear contemporary soul music that matches what came out in the genre’s golden era.  Even if there were musicians out there who were interested in trying to recreate that sound and feeling, the music that comes out as a result just sounds too contemporary despite itself, and lacks that old production magic.  And that’s not to say that nostalgia alone drives that magic; it’s to say that the old sound was just better.  Even the great contemporary soul artists I’ve heard (like Ryan Shaw) just don’t sound quite right.  It’s like the music is out of context.

Which is why I’m so blown away and thrilled to have stumbled across Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.  Not being the hippest cat around, I hadn’t heard of them until a couple of weeks ago when I randomly saw the video for the single “100 Days, 100 Nights” on YouTube.  Like any other chump who’d fire this video up, I figured it was straight outta the ’60s.  Not so.  This album just dropped in October.

And, thank heavens, they are on eMusic.  I love it when I find a band that makes my monthly eMusic choices so easy to make.  The only frustrating thing about having found these guys: they played at Black Cat last night– more or less right around the corner from my house– but this nasty case of mono kept me from the show.

Bless you, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.  Ain’t nothing like soul music to put me and keep me in a good mood, and I have a feeling I’m gonna be hooked on your music for a while now.

Official Band Site

“Be Easy” by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

“Let Them Knock” by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

Both tracks from 100 Days, 100 Nights.

Photo from the great public radio station KEXP in Seattle.

Being such a big fan of the Vermont blog False 45th, and given their annual Year End Music Survey is a great way to get back into posting here, I figured I’d take a stab at it, despite having not been invited to do so.  (To clarify my Vermont cred, I was born and raised there and lived there after college before moving to DC in 2003.)

1) What was your favorite song of 2007?

There were several songs in ‘07 that earned default-entry-onto-any-playlist status on my iPod for periods of time.  Among them: “Everybody Knows” from Ryan Adams’ Easy Tiger, “Hate it Here” from Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, “Safety Bricks” from Kevin Drew’s Spirit If… (incidentally, have you noticed how the acoustic guitar part on this song is more or less totally identical to the Feist song “I Feel It All”?)… but the one track that has to take the cake would be “Finer Feelings” from Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.  Such a perfect Spoon song.

2) What was your favorite album of 2007?

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.  No question.

3) What was your favorite concert of 2007?

Going home to Vermont in the summer and being able to see Wilco perform outside at Shelburne Farms overlooking the lake on a glorious afternoon was a highlight of the year overall, let alone just concerts.  The fact that the band was so warm and played so well made it especially great.

4) What was your favorite thing about 2007?

My favorite thing about 2007 was writing and recording a country music album with my friend Tim. Neither of us are very good musicians– in fact, we’re both pretty terrible– but we have some friends who are.  We decided it would be fun to use our friend’s studio to record a country album as a joke, and sell it to our friends.  We did just that, and had a CD release party and everything.  We raised enough money to sponsor a child named Paul in rural Uganda for an entire year.  The whole music making process was ridiculously fun.  One day we set a kitchen timer and challenged ourselves to write music and lyrics for 3 country songs in 15 minutes.  What emerged were three totally absurd gems: “My Whiskey Bottle,” “Momma’s Drunk (Again)” and “Roadside Diner.”

5) What are your best wishes for 2008?

That I read more books.

Ain’t it?

One day you’re saying King Biscuit Time just doesn’t do it for you, the next, you’re at home after work reading the latest Michael Lewis book (which happens to be fantastic… not Moneyball-fantastic, mind you, but fantastic nonetheless… the guy is truly a gift to the American sports fan/reader of this era), listening to your smart playlist of every song you’ve ever rated a 4 or a 5 and BAM!, this song comes on. And then, suddenly, the fact that Clay Buccholz is in the process of giving up the one-run lead that J.D. Drew’s solo shot had to this point provided doesn’t matter too much. (Which is not to say that is doesn’t matter at all, because it obviously does.)

You hear this song and, suddenly, you have a plan to relax those back muscles which have been tensing up daily for the last couple of weeks: you’ll listen to this song on repeat for as long as it freaking takes.

“Rising Son” by King Biscuit Time (from Black Gold)

It’s also weird how, in just one day, your music listening can vary between that King Biscuit Time song in the evening and an old, fierce, Buddy Guy song on your way to work.

Now, the aforementioned smart playlist was also responsible for sending this one my way this morning, and two things jumped out at me when that happened:

1) Most blues vocalists play up the smooth angle. Despite the platitudes you may read about the genre– those that mention pain, anguish, sorrow, etc.– most practitioners of the form have a vocal style that is much better described as just smooth. This is true from Lonnie Johnson* to Susan Tedeschi (and no, I have no qualms mentioning those two in the same sentence). But Buddy, in this song, is pissed. Man, he’s holding something back. I dunno what it is, but he ain’t happy about it.

2) Beautiful girls crossing crosswalks look even beautifuler crossing crosswalks set to music like you hear in the first 10 seconds of this song. She was in slow motion, this one, I’m telling you. (Timing really is everything when you walk to work with your iPod on.)

“First Time I Met the Blues“ by Buddy Guy (from Buddy’s Blues: The Chess Records 50th Anniversary Collection)
* I also just found myself a copy of Lonnie’s Complete Folkways Recordings. Another blues CD that totally altered my musical taste in college. If you like the blues even a little, and you enjoy albums that have the same stripped-down, intimate quality of Johnny Cash’s American Records albums, do yourself a favor and buy it now. This is the guy who inspired B.B. King to pick up a guitar. Need I say more?

Just trying out the WordPress mobile site. Currently in the Philly train station waiting on the train back to DC.

I was here for the XPoNential Music Fest put on by Philly’s great NPR station WXPN. Even though I was working, I was able to catch sets from G. Love, Brett Dennen, The Fratellis, Fionn Regan and many others. The weather was amzing and the stages were right on the Camden waterfront, with the Philly skyline as a backdrop. All the folks from XPN are amazingly friendly and hospitable.

A great business trip, needless to say.

Portishead and the Cowboy Junkies have made love while listening to Leonard Cohen under a dead Giant Sequoia in a haunted forest at midnight during a mild thunder storm, and the resulting lovechild is Brightblack Morning Light.

Man oh man this is the type of music that I’ve been waiting to come into my life for a while now. I went through a heavy– a heavy heavy– Portishead phase in college. Dummy had a huge impact on me, and really did change the way I listen to music. It wasn’t all about epic, soaring, heart-palpitation-inspiring anthems, I realized. It could also set and apply to your mood. It could be theme music. It could calm you down, or make you feel like a character in a movie you hadn’t seen yet.

So this, the second report card in my series on music I just got from my little brother, is about Brightblack Morning Light’s eponymous 2006 album.

Brightblack Morning Light - Brightblack Morning Light

From the Wikipedia entry on them, I just clicked through to the Pitchfork review of this album. This is the first line:

Despite sylvan genuflections and hippy naturalism, the shaggy Alabama-born, Northern California-based core of Brightblack Morning Light are surprisingly redolent of Royal Trux.

Hey Pitchfork: go to hell. Really. That sentence was as far as I made it. Clicking through to Pitchfork is like going back to a crazy ex: you know she’s still nuts, still just flat-out wrong for you, but all your friends keep talking about her and how cool she was– turns out they’ve even been spending time with her behind your back!– so despite yourself you give it another shot, if only (you know in the back of your mind) to reclaim a bit of ownership and feed your ego. But no.

Aside from the sylvan genuflections and hippy naturalism of this album– which, you know, are just the first and most obvious things that jump out at you on first listen– what I love here is the depth and richness of sound. This is definitely an album to be listened to on quality speakers or headphones. You could cut through these thick, dark songs with a knife.

The opening track “Everybody Daylight” most certainly lets you know that you’re in for a listen unlike anything you’ve heard since you quietly sang Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See to yourself on a drive home from high school, covering your mouth with a fake cough as you drove by other cars. Only there is no delicate lead signer a la Hope Sandoval or any psychedelic My Bloody Valentine-like light guitar fuzz. Just thick keys, bass and hushed vocals. And reverb. Lots and lots of reverb.

Have I mentioned that they’re surprisingly redolent of Royal Trux?

“Amber Canyon Magik” by Brightblack Morning Light

Grade: A-

Getting massive amounts of new music at one time can be a blessing or a curse, depending on any number of things: your mood, the amount of stuff going on in your life, the weather, etc. Sometimes I get a fresh batch of tunes and just can’t handle it. I don’t have the time or inclination to explore something new. Or my brain just feels full, and things just seem to be moving too quickly.

But it turns out that coming back to routine after a vacation is a great time to dig into new music. I loaded up from my little brother’s iPod while at Squam and have had way too much fun exploring it all this week. So, to celebrate, and to get back into blogging a bit, I’m gonna grade each album I got from him, and post a mini review and a track up here in a series of posts. Let’s fill this tank.

Gorillaz - Demon Days

Up first is the last Gorillaz album, which I never picked up. I got moderately into the first album the summer it came out. I remember hearing “Clint Eastwood” and thinking that it was unlike anything I had ever heard before… I loved it. I nursed that album during a very low-key summer between college years, and it, along with Beth Orton’s Central Reservation, defined those months spent waking up before dawn to mow a golf course nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

They weren’t bad months. But over time Gorillaz morphed into a very unique entity all their own. Some people went along for the ride, others cashed in their chips and said “thanks for a great album, but you’re not the kind of band I’m gonna invest any time getting really into.” I was of the latter group. They were interesting. Totally unique, over-the-top branded and self-mythologized, and really good. But they were ultimately a side project, after all, and Gorillaz remained relegated to the dusty, neglected corners of my iPod.

Now I’m wishing I had picked up Demon Days when it came out two years ago. I’ll comment on just one track, because it is totally awesome.

“Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head” is a parable about… American politics… or war… or poverty… or… something. It doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that is really, really cool, and grabs me the same way “Clint Eastwood” did years ago. It is primarily a voice-over, and damned if the voice doesn’t sound familiar. I’m sure it’s Billy Crudup or some person like that, but I can’t place the voice. (If you can, or if you know who it is, please do write it in the comments.*)

It is the story of some Hobbit-like people living at the base of a “mountain called Monkey” and their eventual fall at the hands of some shady folk. And it is a spoken word song. Nothing about this description makes the song sound good, I realize. But it is great.

The little bro told me that he likes Demon Days much more than Gorillaz and I’d have to say, even with the limited exposure I’ve had to the album so far, I agree.

“Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head” by Gorillaz

Grade (just for the song on this one): B+

*Postscript: I’ll be damned. It’s Dennis Hopper. What a voice!

“Larry, I just don’t know what country music is these days.”

That’s what Mel Price said to the owner of the Believe In Music store in Easton, Maryland not too long ago. Or so Larry himself told me and some friends as we were passing through town the other day.

We were on our way to pick some old country tunes on the shore for the weekend and had stopped at the shop to discuss tech specs for an upcoming gig. As we strolled around the shop, pickin’ on banjos, marvelling at lovely sunburst-laden arch tops and laughing at NASCAR electrics, I happened on a small stack of home-printed CDs on the front counter top. “Mel Price: Just Me & My Guitar” it read. Below that: “1 man, 1 guitar, 1 mic, 1 take.” Next to the stack of CDs was a newspaper cutout picture of an old guy playing guitar at an old folks’ home, his flower-printed white guitar strap thicker than Hank Williams’ southern accent. I asked Larry (my buddy Tim’s old man): what was the story with Mel Price?

Turns out Mel is an old country artist who spent most of his life (if not all of it) in Easton. He and his Santa Fe Rangers enjoyed some modest success in their day, even opening for Elvis Presley when the 21 year-old King-to-be played his first gig here in DC, on board the S.S. Mount Vernon. Mel still plays music in Easton, and stops by Believe In Music from time to time.

One day in the shop, between griping about the current state of country music and the younger generations’ disinterest in real country, Mel was persuaded by the folks at Believe In Music to lay down some of his favorite songs. Joe Grimaldi of Believe In Music played Rick Ruben to Mel’s Johnny Cash in the production, recording him in one of the back rooms. One man, one guitar, one mic, one take. And one heck of a voice, especially considering it’s coming out of an 86 year-old man.

The CDs sell for ten bucks each. There was a stack of five of them on the front counter when we went into the shop that day. There were three left when we walked out.

“Butter And Egg Man” by Mel Price

“Old Dogs And Children” by Mel Price

“18 Again” by Mel Price

Mel hosts a Sunday radio show on Delmarva’s WAAI. I’d love to hear it sometime. According to Larry– who discovered it by chance, scanning through stations while working in his garage– the show is largely Mel telling stories from the good old days at the Grand Ole Opry and such. I hope to hear it one of these days. Part of me wishes it was a podcast, but that wouldn’t be right. I think there’s something to be said for letting some things stay ephemeral in this day and age, lest we talk (or blog) the coolness right out of them.

My fifth 3 song shuffle post, where I rip off the AV Club’s idea and write up a bit about the first 3 songs that come up on shuffle on my iPod, no cheating/skipping allowed. Let’s milk this Holstein.

“Nothing Was Delivered” by The Byrds (from Sweetheart of the Rodeo)

The only Byrds album I own and, from what I understand, the one that is most up my alley. The album came out in ‘68 and was largely the result of newbie Gram Parson’s countrified influence on Jim McGuinn and Chris Hillman. This song– like another of the better tracks on the album (”You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”‘)– is a Bob Dylan cover, though I confess to never having heard the original.

An old friend once wrote a fantastic review of the reissue of Sweetheart for a short-lived web magazine. This Genesee-drinkin’, banjo-pickin’, Shakespere-readin’, blank verse poet buddy summed it up like this:

Where this album really succeeds is that it plays to its weakness. It is country music from an outsider’s view, a portrait of the indefinable soul of an art form too easily obscured by familiarity. Not the static museum-like appreciation it could have been — which defines so much of today’s alt-country, rockabilly, jazz, bluegrass, and soul — it seeks to embrace that which is most strange. This is an album of quirks and oddities and things that should not be. Unsanitized in either appropriation or appreciation, unsullied by the prevailing wisdom of Nashville, the album is rather a love letter of unusual honesty.

Well put, you old bastard.

“Slave Driver” by Bob Marley (from Catch A Fire)

This is a remarkably literate song, one that speaks profound truths about past and present oppression, of far-reaching societal machinations that hold people down and the power it takes to combat and resist those forces. It is for these reasons that I feel terrible guilt when I hear this song, because instead of protesting, it makes me want to put on board shorts, head to the Keys and dance drunkenly with vacationing secretaries from Iowa.

“Dancing With Tears in My Eyes” by the Old 97’s (from Hitchhike to Rhome)

Remember that line above, the one from my buddy about The Byrds album? The part about “the static museum-like appreciation… which defines so much of today’s alt-country, rockabilly, jazz, bluegrass, and soul?” Well this is what he was talking about. I like the Old 97’s when they embrace rock and pop, because when they do that it’s at least genuine and fun. Hitchhike to Rhome, in my personal opinion, is garbage. This song is typical of the heartless schlock you’ll find on it. Rhett Miller’s voice is too good to be forcing stuff like this.

And finally, for Eastern Market,

truly a home away from home for all who visit her:

“We’ll Meet Again” by Johnny Cash

Eastern Market Rescue: Go out on the Hill next Tuesday in support of the Market.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was devastated to learn that the Beta Band had broken up about two years ago, but I was pretty upset. For every agonizingly long, meandering, unfocused mishmash-sound-melange of a song they created, they made two gems. Well, maybe one and a half. But finding the gems was worth the sifting. Neither of the bands to emerge in their wake– The Aliens and King Biscuit Time– have really grabbed me the same way.

The Beta Band has the arcane distinction of being the only band that my two brothers and I have ever gone to see together live. We saw them at Higher Ground, back when that venue was in Winooski, VT. It was probably 2001 or 2002. My only real distinct memory from the show is laying down in the back seat of the car afterwards, probably suffering from a stomach ache, or maybe just drunk, and talking with big bro and little bro in the front seats about the show. I mumbled something about having loved it, but never feeling comfortable at concerts by bands I really like. I guess I just internalize music that affects me, I said, and it’s a weird thing to share music like that with other people.

Now this is a thought that is diametrically opposed to the live music ethos in general, and in different company I’m sure I would have gotten nothing but silent eye rolls from the front seat. But after a brief silence, lying on my back, staring up out the car windows at street lights and phone wires zipping by, I heard mumbled Yeahs and subdued Iknowwhatyoumeans. Ya gotta love family.

“Assessment” by the Beta Band (from Heroes To Zeros)*

“Brokenupadingdong” by the Beta Band (from The Beta Band)**

“Space Beatle” by the Beta Band (from Heroes To Zeros)

“Needles In My Eyes” by the Beta Band (from The 3 EPs)***

* This was on The O.C. once. On a side note, I just typed “The O.C.” without choking up. I suppose this means I am starting to work through my grief.

** This song, arguably one of the best man-on-a-mission, constant-movement songs ever, may sound familiar. It was on the fantastic soundtrack to Igby Goes Down, a movie I really like despite my best movie critic self. The Beta Band had Nic Harcourt to thank for that choice placement; the best damn DJ in America and Morning Becomes Eclectic host served as Music Supervisor on the movie.

*** One of the saddest songs ever, for my money. “Last night I dropped my heart and I never want to see it again”??? I mean, c’mon. (Lyrics) If that lyric was in “Dog’s Got A Bone”– off the same album, the song with one of the saddest bass lines ever– it could potentially drive someone to suicide. I am convinced the band consciously avoided this potentially devastating confluence of musical elements, and for this I am grateful.