CD Jukeboxes Union Meeting 1

Austin is growing at an obnoxious rate and will continue to be populated by tasteless Philistine mongrels for decades to come driven by capitalism’s unstoppable march towards a dead gray planet. Fortunately, a sliver of hope still remains. Sophisticated bars in our city combat this scourge by letting their customers pick tunes for the room to enjoy via the jukebox. This wonderful machine democratizes the DJ role and therefore the mood of the room overall. In our ceaselessly digital world, the music choices for a party/bar happen on YouTube or Spotify. At less reputable watering holes there exists another customer driven digital outlet called TouchTunes, an internet jukebox in the form of a kiosk that customers use to search for songs regardless of genre or era. As is the case with the internet at large, the overwhelming amount of choices creates a pain that is constant and sharp. The pain creates a unique panic that makes it easy to choose lowly dog poo songs like Brown Eyed Girl or Moondance without knowing it.

The Ultimate Balanced Democratic music machine is the CD jukeboxes that charge a quarter per song. The patron usually gets to choose between 40 – 50 albums, which sounds overwhelming, but thankfully most of these are unmemorable trash that has not been updated since 1993. The choices will most likely resemble the repertoire of a mid-table wedding band. Expect infomercial compilations (Now That’s What I Call Music VIII®, 70’s Soul Hits®, Teen Years®, etc), Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, The Eagles, and other chestnuts that invoke deathless drunken singing. They are bullet proof songs on bullet proof albums/collections, so nobody loses when choosing a playlist. At the end of this post I have included a list that should be used as a guide to this outdated hit parade.

My buddy Patrick is similarly fond of these bars and is no slouch fingering the buttons of these gorgeous machines with a fistful of quarters, so he helped me do the research and vet the choices. We went to The Cloak Room, Deep Eddy Cabaret, and Hard Luck Lounge respectively to take photos of each page of the jukebox, drink three beers real quick, and possibly play a game of pool. Then we convened to yammer at one another over what jumped out at us from each plastic page of these oddly well-maintained and challenging CD shuffling machines. I took the Cloak Room since I used to go by myself there in college and Patrick took the Hard Luck Lounge since that is his current solo reflection space. We split Deep Eddy Cabaret in order to compromise and establish a tasteful rapport. I have included the 4 number code from each jukebox so you can just write that down and navigate accordingly with little to no fuss. I feel dirty, but I made a Spotify playlist with all the tunes too. But please… just go to these bars, type in these numbers, and don’t order anything fancy at the bar. This is the first installment of a series of three.

Cloak Room

Bob Marley and The Wailers: I Don’t Want To Wait in (0411)

Frank Sinatra: World On A String (0210)

George Micheal: Freedom ’90 (3004)

Prince: Cream (4506)

Robert Palmer: Addicted to Love (5417)

Boz Scaggs: Lido Shuffle (5909)

Beach Boys: Sloop John B (7307)

Dusty Springfield: Son Of A Preacher Man (9807)

Deep Eddy Cabaret

Beatles: Twist and Shout (9014)

The Flying Burrito Brothers: Lazy Days (5712)

The Rolling Stones: Dead Flowers (2709)

Desmond Dekker: 007 (Shanty Town) (6308)

The Clash: Overpowered by Funk (6607)

Toots & The Maytals: Pomp and Pride (4409)

Prince: Delirious (6903)

Doors: Love Me Two Times (8903)

Hard Luck

Sam + Dave: Soul Man (3701)

Bill Withers: Grandma’s Hands (4903)

Talking Heads: Take Me to the River (6904)

Big Star: When My Baby’s Besides Me (7107)

Howlin’ Wolf: Spoonful (7706)

Tom Waits: Downtown Train (7417)

George Jones: White Lightnin’ (3911)

Cat Stevens: Wild World (3803)

 

Ramesh

He has participated in Voxtrot and currently Ramesh as a keyboardist, singer, and guitarist. 

He listenes to Nicolas Jaar, Punch Brothers, Daniel Avery, Joanna Newsom, DIIV, and looks at a Rizzoli collection of François Halard photographs his mother gave him when he runs out of ideas.*

1. Why does Indian music kick so much ass?

For the majority of Western ears, I think the unfamiliarity of the sound alone is enough to make the listener feel that he/she has stepped into a new world. Much of Indian music relies on repeated rhythms and pedal (constant) tones, with scales and strings swirling around that center. It is less about happy and sad chords pulling at your heart strings, and more about the constant flow, the ever-blooming present moment. It feels like the instant acquisition of ancient knowledge. 

2. Your music has changed over time since I’ve known you. How?

First of all, I would say it has to change or why go on? Secondly (and I’m gonna break the fourth wall here), as I was saying to you at rehearsal shortly before going on tour, for a long time I went through life with my face turned away, that is to say unwilling to hear, feel, or experience most music. I had so much bitterness about the obstacles in my own career that I programmed myself to see what was bad or unremarkable in others’ music, as opposed to what was good. When you live like that you miss out on a lot. They say that the more you love music, the more music you love, and it’s true. Regardless of genre, most musicians come to the stage or to the studio to communicate something about their life experience; the intention is usually pure. Once I began listening through that lens it became easier to love more and different music. With every type of song, what matters the most is the feeling, and I think when you operate with feeling as your guide, then genre-be-damned, you are on the right path. 

3. What makes playing outside Austin so fun?

#1 Traveling is the greatest thing on Earth and the most worthy use of money. #2 Playing to new audiences and feeling resonance with those audiences within new rooms re-injects purpose and meaning into one’s musical life. It is why we do it and that can be easy to forget. #3 Being a touring musician is a wonderful way to see the world; I am consistently in awe of the way in which people have opened their homes and hearts to me over the years, giving me a wealth of local insight and experience that one could not glean from any guidebook. Through these now-friends I have come to know the intricate personalities of many faraway places, and that is truly a gift! 

Aaj Mausam Bada Beimaan Hai by Mohammed Rafi:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISeOc49n_h4

«One of my favorite Indian songs. It’s used in a couple of movies so might sound familiar. Does a wonderful job of being lighthearted yet simultaneously deeply emotional.»

Bonny (Acoustic) by Prefab Sprout:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pmp1hr8UxY

«Thank you for bringing this song into my life. Never even made it past this one on the album because I love it so much.»

Who Am I? (Rampa Remix) by Argy and Mama:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLldeJhy2jM

«Got this track when buying music for a recent DJ gig. It’s got that rad Euro balance of robot voice, repetitive groove, and impact.»

00000 Million by Bon Iver:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FqojM1TYqo

«The last track on the new Bon Iver album. Even without knowing the words, one walks away steeped in the feeling.»

The Whole of the Moon (In A Special Place) by The Waterboys:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbUmzSu18FQ

«My friend Daniel played this in the car as we were waiting for the sun to come up while shooting a music video in L.A. A true testament to the magic of a demo. Additionally, I would also like to point out the brilliance of the line, “I saw Dundee but you saw Brigadoon.”»

* Halard’s work: 

1970’s FM Radio

This era of popular music is unquestionably brilliant. It represents the shimmering harmonic convergence in music production history where the best analogue recording equipment was used to record the best talent in the world. It’s full of well executed superfluous details like legions of backup singers, saxophone solos, 30 piece orchestras, bongos, disco, krautrock, motorik, audaciously brilliant bass playing (not that superfluous), the birth of electronica, and everyone swung for the fences to achieve radio hits that would take over the world and buy enough blow to bake a fucking wedding cake. It is impeccably arranged, performed, and mixed on massively high budgets. The list of groundbreaking moments in musical history are in such an intense concentration that I will just let the song links at the end of this piece do the talking.

Not to be ignored, history has shown that rock ‘n roll never dies and will in time both outpace and outlive us. It’s inevitable reaction to pop music from this particular decade was giving birth to the duel demon baby twins of heavy metal and punk. These genres satisfied humanity’s original appetite for pure carnal power with the golden age of tube amplifiers and the exact same recording equipment. The “regular” blues-based rock from this era is nothing to sniff at either. The guitar effects pedals developed at this point in history also represent the apex of innovation in this area. 

In radio, the distinction of ‘FM’ means that it uses Frequency Modulation technology invented in the 1930’s to transmit more data over the radio waves using a higher frequency than AM radio. Furthermore, this allowed the music to be transmitted stereophonically over the airwaves, first done in 1961 for orchestral performances. Families at this point had excellent stereo systems in the living room as fashion demanded, which sparked a market share grab by consumer audio manufacturers to make elite hi-fi systems that still definitely kick ass today if found in working order. Those dusty speakers at Goodwill still have some miles in them and if you’re quick enough to grab that equally dusty stereo receiver, pony up the $50 and watch what happens. My dad gave me his two years ago and it is undeniably astounding. The quality of listening apparatus during this era perfectly matched the recording and performer’s quality in lock step, hence the “golden age” label that gets bandied about when discussions of this era arise. 

In the 19th century utopian novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy*, he envisions (along with credit card technology and universal health care) a world where all of society’s best musicians are chosen and trained their whole lives to perform a 24 hour program every day to be broadcasted in real time into everyone’s purpose-built wooden listening room “with the witchery of a summer night.” If that were to one day be a reality, as it could have been in the 70’s, you can sign me up, comrade. Did we get close to touching this in the 1970’s? Just be sure to ignore the awful clothing fashion from this time. 

Abba – Money, Money, Money  https://youtu.be/ETxmCCsMoD0

Led Zeppelin – When The Levee Breaks  https://youtu.be/ErOMQL8PgIQ

Chic – I Want Your Love  https://youtu.be/Xv744Ckqp5U

Steely Dan – Black Cow  https://youtu.be/J7K68GuARf4

Neu! – Isi  https://youtu.be/7VswPaZIuYI

David Bowie – Heroes  https://youtu.be/Tgcc5V9Hu3g

Iggy Pop – Night Clubbing  https://youtu.be/G3OaMZojJRg

Kraftwerk – The Man Machine  https://youtu.be/cQe9eK_4U0U

Ramones – Judy Is A Punk  https://youtu.be/K6GAGdBiJF0

The Clash – Im So Bored With The USA  https://youtu.be/qzrK00UZhjU

Steve Miller Band –  Fly Like An Eagle  https://youtu.be/6zT4Y-QNdto

Buzzcocks – Why Can’t I Touch It  https://youtu.be/L1G0jl0Vc64

Ted Nugent – Stranglehold  https://youtu.be/0c3d7QgZr7g

Black Sabbath – Iron Man  https://youtu.be/5s7_WbiR79E

Here is the playlist link (just copy and paste this shit like a true millennial and get on with it, make love to your partner with one eye on your cell phone and Tinder with care):

*Passage :http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1647, Bellamy, Looking Backward, Ch. XI, (1891)

Patrick

He has participated in Joxxx, Bundle of Joy Division, and the Patrick Jonestown Massacre as guitarist, vocalist, and bassist. 

He listens to Boris, Orlando Julius, Mac DeMarco, Bill Evans, Dirty Projectors, Red House Painters, and Gram Parsons when he runs out of ideas.  

1: As a jazz enthusiast and performer, what are your favorite sub-genres? How are they differentiated from one another?

For jazz, definitely post-bop, which I feel is a pretty token answer given it’s probably the last “great” era of jazz. It spans the late-50s through the 60s, every legend seemed to hit their peak around this time. Stylistically, this was stripping down bebop to smaller bands with an emphasis on solos and expression via improvisation. 

My favorite of this era would be pianist Bill Evans, who is definitely his own subgenre unto himself given his emphasis on expressive chord work and group interplay. He usually played in trios, which I love. I think big band jazz can get a little schmaltzy by nature. He’s an interesting figure though; like a sort of jazz Kurt Cobain, his personal life was legendarily tragic in spite of his huge influence and ability. I’ll spare the details because his music just sounds like a very hurt person peering deep into themselves, especially his ballads and slower pieces. He’s not without criticism though: basically, Bill’s style removed everything black from jazz. Miles ended up liking Sly and the Family Stone. Evans liked Debussy. Both are brilliant at what they did. So it goes.

I also love Latin jazz, which has been unfairly demonized since the 80s due to its crossover into Carlos Santana radio pop territory. I think our generation’s wholesale embrace of 70s West African funk/highlife is maybe a reaction to the Santanafication of Latin jazz, which I am all for. But even going back to bossa nova there is plenty to treasure.

Stylistically, Latin jazz has very “straight” rhythms, which is why sometimes it sounds very “rigid” compared to stuff like bebop, which is “swung.” It can lean back on the beat a little more. Latin jazz never really downsized from the big band era and features large horn sections and often a much larger rhythm section. I’ve always felt it’s a bit heavier than bebop – solo sections are usually just a few chords repeated until the solo is over, with no key changes. It’s more fun to play from a rock background, most people could keep up with it with some effort.

2: What is the best decade of music and who would provide the zeitgeist for this era? 

One of my number one pet peeves is idealizing the past. I always like to think and hope that I am living in the best decade, year, month, and day for music, you know? If I have to, though, I’d probably vote the 1970s. Restless experimentation, great guitar tones, the birth of electronic music, generally excellent production values. The death of all that “If You’re Going to San Francisco” hippie bullshit. My parents were in their early 20s-30s for the 70s, so it was their musical prime and generally what I was raised on. I’m particularly fond of Gram Parsons and all his projects, Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, disco and funk… Even Miles was dropping some very odd stuff, like “On the Corner” and “A Tribute to Jack Johnson,” which push jazz so far into rock and deep funk territory that you’d never believe it was the guy that recorded “Kind of Blue.” Great albums, all of them.

 I love that so much music from the 70s sounds like the West binged hard on psychadelics in the 60s and woke up with a hangover for a decade that they fought with cocaine and alcohol. The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin embody this better than anyone else. Big props to the Faces and the Kinks as well. I do think the late-90s through mid-2000s were a particularly fucking awful period for American music though. The Bush Era was bad times, man…

3: Who are your closest musical allies and why?

Haruomi Hosono, an utterly fascinating figure in post-war music. He’s incredible, inquisitive, and frequently fucking hilarious. I love that the dude had a massive hand in inventing and reinventing electronic music but always had a sense of humor and adventure in his music. His solo albums “Paraiso” and “Cochin Moon” are Japanese electro-exotica. He’s by turns super tongue-in-cheek, like with an English cover of chintzy American pop song about Japan called “Japanese Rhumba,” and beautifully endearing, like his arrangement of Okinawan folk song “Asatoya Yunta.” “Cochin Moon” is Japanese produced Indo-exotica. Utterly fascinating. 

He worked with a pop singer, Miharu Koshi, in the 80s, whose work is unbelievably forward-thinking. Maybe Grimes, who I think is brilliant, is the closest you can get to his work with Koshi. It’s electronic and sinuous and sexy and often very weird, a mix of Western classical music with then-bleeding edge technology and a very strong pop sensibility. 

Hosono also did the soundtrack to one of my favorite films of all time, “Night on the Galactic Railroad,” which mixes electronic music with Mediterranean folk and classical. It’s a great film. Not a date film. It’s slow, dark, and surprisingly heavy. All the characters are cats, though. I’d say he’s an ally, or someone I ally/align myself with, because he makes incredibly rewarding pop and electronic music while always keeping his sense of fun and adventure close. I like Mac DeMarco for similar reasons in a squarely Western pop sense.
Miharu Koshi – Parallelisme

Haruomi Hosono – Shimendoka

Bill Evans Trio – Emily

K. Frimpong and His Cubano Fiestas – Hwe hwe mu na yi wo mpena

The Flying Burrito Brothers – Wild Horses

Red House Painters – Cruiser

Dirty Projectors – Cannibal Resource

Boris – Farewell

Mac Demarco – Rock and Roll Nightclub

Orlando Julius – I’m Back To My Roots

Greer

She has participated in Dream Hair and currently Mad Comrades as a keyboardist. 

She listens to Durutti Column, Karen Dalton, Black Sabbath, Kate Bush, Arthur Russell, Electric Wizard, Broken Water, PJ Harvey and streams the New Age Rage station on Berlin Community Radio when she runs out of ideas. 

Conversation 

M: Tell me more about your fondness for chanting music and doom metal.

G: Growing up I listened to music from different cultures like Indian music set in a raag. One of the first things I remember liking on YouTube was a Lorena McKennitt video for Mummer’s Dance in the style of Princess Mononoke and it blew my mind. She came last week and that is definitely one of those shows I would attend by myself. Creating that kind of music feels so satisfying. It’s deeply personal and I find it easy to convey certain moods with that kind of structure. It provides a platform for emotions that aren’t easily expressed with words.

M: As an Evergreen State alum, can you recall any good musical experiences you had in Olympia?

G: The winter of my senior year I stuck around for another week after everyone had gone home after the end of the quarter. After being at the bar all night I walked around town since the streets were empty and it was totally calm, cold, and drizzly. The only sound was a big, deep, droning sound somewhere that was obviously someone rehearsing or some kind of gig after hours. When I found the source, it turned out I had stumbled upon a Wolves In The Throne Room secret show purely by chance. It was packed full of very attentive people at a spot called Le Voyeur and it was an album release show. Nobody was talking or socializing whatsoever, only swaying together or slowly nodding their heads. Naturally, I joined right in and it was the perfect thing I was looking for in that setting and I never forgot it. Another good show I remember was seeing Broken Water at the Capitol Theater. The drummer, Kanoko, was so good and she also worked at the best thrift store in town called Dumpster Values on the corner of Franklin and 4th Avenue where I bought 80’s jean jackets and other great pieces. 

M: You’re very stylish, in my opinion. Is there a costume aspect to dressing for the stage, or do you prefer when people bring their casual every day style right onto the stage?

G: It might be more a question about genuine expression. Kate Bush dresses like no one I have ever seen and it’s very theatrical and fantastic. She literally puts on costumes from Wuthering Heights or a soldier outfit, but always with her trademark big dark hair, bright red lips, and smokey eyes. Earlier you asked about the line between costume get ups and just having great casual style and she is someone who clearly incorporates that into her persona as an artist, but it’s probably not her casual style. I’m reading Clothes Clothes Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Alberteen and she discusses getting to know Vivian Westwood In London during the rise of punk. Westwood had a store called Sex and it was expensive, insanely simple, and tightly curated with everything either black, white, pink, or red. You would rather die than be seen wearing brown or beige. Westwood was the first woman to spike her hair into Liberty spikes and brought a stunning visual aspect to punk rock. There was not a whole lot of feminine energy and they got beat up and harassed on the way to gigs, which sounded a little rough, so they had a lot to prove. 

Lorena McKennit – Mummer’s Dance https://youtu.be/lc7Ke9Org9U

PJ Harvey – My Beautiful Leah https://youtu.be/ql-_j2A-Mmc

Durutti Column – For Belgian Friends https://youtu.be/YDyzOQuBm20

Black Sabbath – Sabbra Caddabra https://youtu.be/noUYAPdLMp0

Electric Wizard – Vimun Sabbathi https://youtu.be/RbmiKvjk-Mg

Karen Dalton – It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best https://youtu.be/EWVcSggT3J0

Broken Water – Hi-Lo https://youtu.be/Fl_9vJgIcIE

Wolves In The Throne Room – Thuja Magus Imperium https://youtu.be/JDrJ5qOyXyg

The Slits – Typical Girls https://youtu.be/ZyXGblps64M

Marcus

He has participated in Holy Romans, International Waters, Ramesh, and currently in Shivery Shakes as a drummer.

He listens to The Microphones, Marmoset, Grooms, and Japanese video game soundtracks from the early 2000’s when he runs out of ideas. 

1: You have always been an enthusiastic singer behind the kit. Any other bands you enjoy with singing drummers? Also, how did you hone this insane full body skill?

I never had any interest in singing anything but harmonies for a long time. I couldn’t be a “lead vocalist”, but I really liked what a harmony could do to a melody. It multiplies it’s effect rather than just adding to it. All through high school I enjoyed hearing someone singing and then joining them to make it sort of explode like I’d heard before, so I was always making up harmonies. I would drum along to what I was listening to naturally, so there I was practicing drumming and singing at the same time. When I first tried to sing lead on a song I had written while playing drums it was a little bit harder than I expected, though. I eventually figured out that singing was simply a fifth limb. I had to take it slowly and move from there. As for bands with singing drummers: growing up I had this bad taste in my mouth about Phil Collins, and then in late high school I realized he was the drummer for Genesis and he was only playing drums. It changed how I heard him. Later, I was pretty into Death From Above 1979 initially for the fact that the drummer was singing. There is a band called Sleeping Bag who I really loved even before I realized their drummer was singing/writing the songs. Seeing Georgia Hubley in Yo La Tengo sing was inspirational.

2: The Microphones qualify as a band that floats between unlistenable chaotic noise and wonderful lo-fi folk. You always show me bands that that take more than a few listens to actually begin to appreciate. What draws you to this type of art? 

I went to a very religious school growing up. Being a bit overweight and bad at sports made me an outsider and I reacted against everything. If the popular kids were into Limp Bizkit, I was into Rage Against the Machine. If they were into DMX, I was into Dead Prez. If they were into Blink 182, I was into Refused and Fugazi. This put me on a path of putting effort into trying to get ‘into’ things. This obviously can lead to some awful pretentious garbage for the wrong reasons, but it made me form that habit of giving things a few chances and putting some effort into understanding why people liked them (especially if those people liked other things I already liked). When I went to college, I finally found friends who were already with me. Suddenly, I had new people to sit around and discuss music in depth with, which led to a lot of details being pointed out by people I trusted. This experience reinforced a habit of pushing myself to not always rely on my gut reaction to art. Now when I hear something that is initially offputting, it intrigues me.

3: You’ve been on the road a shitload. What are your favorite cities to play in when you guys go on your epic treks?

The past two tours we’ve been on, Tulsa, OK has been amazing. The first time we played there, Hanson was playing next door for Hanson Day (they are from Tulsa). We set up and there were a few people there, but right before we went on, the Hanson show got out and, it being Oklahoma, it started storming and tornado sirens started going off, so everyone rushed into the Dead Pony, so we ended up playing a packed show while water flooded in from under the door. After the show was over, they couldn’t in good conscience make people leave, so everyone hung out after hours dancing to Beyonce, standing on the bar, going nuts. We made some friends in town, and crashed at one of the bartenders’ apartments and stayed up throwing rocks at trains until the sun came up. This past time we played, we played with that bartender’s band and had a great turnout, then we got to go see Broncho play at their warehouse. Our bassist is from Cleveland, so we have a really great time there whenever we play. I consistently look forward to wherever I have friends I don’t get to see in STL, NYC, Chicago, the Bay Area.

Yo La Tengo – Beanbag Chair https://youtu.be/KmUwbR7IPyY

Grooms – Comb The Feelings Through Your Hair https://youtu.be/iBqXXfROenA 

Death From Above 1979 – Virgins https://youtu.be/hsJvN_4GlZ8

Marmoset – Golden Cloak https://youtu.be/vB6QoHPU8xw

The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2 https://youtu.be/kWi4BjzVk6s

Genesis — I Can’t Dance https://youtu.be/qOyF4hR5GoE

Mega Man II – Dr. Wily’s Theme https://youtu.be/WJRoRt155mA

Prodigies: The Value of the Uninitiated

As we have covered in the Twee episode, music can evoke the yearning to reach backwards in time to invent an idyllic past that has never happened. As for the other direction, music can equally serve as an emotional glimpse into the future. It reveals what could potentially become reality from inner hopes, dreams, or expectations. For instance, when I hear an inspirational tune I imagine myself slowly walking in cloak and top hat through the gala held in my honor towards the podium to receive my prestigious Most Brilliant and Insightful Blog Award. Music itself is inspired by these emotions and the performers feel them when they create and compose. They get to choose the direction: past or future.

Prodigies are a breed of artist that do not have that choice. They must barrel into the fog of the future without experience or hesitation. Born with enough talent as a child to compete with adults, they inspirationally convince the world that they have the power to change the foundations of their art entirely. Why not?

They seemingly achieve in seconds what others strive for in the span of a lifetime. Micheal Jackson was a breathtaking dancer and a better singer than James Brown when he was 19. Roddy Frame dazzled the fickle UK music press at 16 with Aztec Camera. Stevie Wonder auditioned for Motown when he was 11 and they made his mother sign a 5-year contract on the spot. Shuggie Otis was drawing mustaches on his face to get into clubs where he would perform with his dad’s band as a guitarist when he was 12. Mozart and Chopin were filling concert halls with original compositions before they were 12. Texas legend Doug Sahm was 11 when he was onstage for Hank Williams’s final performance at the Skyline Club in Austin and released his first record that year. 16-year-old Kate Bush had a demo of 50 songs that impressed David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, who launched her career in the midst of the late 70’s progressive rock fervor. Yo-Yo Ma performed for Eisenhower and Kennedy at the White House when he was 7. The beginning is always quite the whirlwind.

Unfortunately, this takes quite the toll on their little psyches and things generally go sour later in their careers. Kate Bush wouldn’t play live, Shuggie Otis fired everyone from his band and always recorded all on his own, and Michael Jackson redefined the limits of eccentricity. It happens to people when they are constantly adored. This makes perfect sense doesn’t it? When talent distorts the rules of society altogether it does damage rather than serve as a nurturing force. More often than not youth is punished by its own brilliance rather than rewarded. There is some kind of equation that merits study: how much ass-kissing can one person take before they go nuts? When they doubt the motivation behind every interaction they have, including those with their parents? Some made it out fine. Stevie Wonder is humble and eloquent and Yo-Yo Ma exposes traditional music from different cultures with his fame.

The music is astounding. Kate Bush’s album is a powerful work of art that makes you feel like a superhero at the climax of an action movie. Shuggie Otis merged funk, psychedelia, and pop in a way that has never really been replicated. Micheal Jackson is the greatest star the world has ever seen. They are uninitiated and can only push forward with fresh ideas. Their entire existence is a fresh idea and embodies the essence of originality. They serve as heroes/heroines of sorts, someone who is unbound by the chains of trends or specific popular styles.

Kate Bush – The Sensual World https://youtu.be/fsbKeX_ZhDw

Aztec Camera – High Land, Hard Rain https://youtu.be/vMy5V5K50tk

Shuggie Otis – Inspiration Information https://youtu.be/RmrxW06nMtI

Stevie Wonder – My Cherie Amour http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJNbijG2M7OwNLyW_D2BZvZD09X3cOKXi

Trip-Hop: Collage and Refinement

Listeners in the United States of America have grown accustomed to the creation of game changing musical phenomenon for the Western world. Jazz, rock and roll, punk, and hip-hop ushered in entirely new eras of popular music after hours of toil in the clubs, garages, and basements of the land of the free and the home of the brave. Of course, Europe/UK is the veritable “daddy” of the roots of popular music as we know it, ever since it was dancing off the fingers of Joe Bach in the 17th Century. There is interplay: we make rock and roll, they give us the the Fab Four. We make punk and they make punk. We make hip-hop and they give us trip-hop.

If you follow me through the next few lines of controlled ramble I will buy you a beer in addition to one for reading this altogether in the first place. Hip-hop owes its existence to the incredible funk bands of the 70s and 80s like The Ohio Players, The Meters, and The Isley Brothers or R&B legends like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. After enjoying this music as much as their parents, the subsequent generation created hip-hop by taking the catchiest 4 bar snippets, repeating them in a loop, and rapping/crooning over this to create a collage of intelligently aggregated samples drafted from this fruitful garden (like No Diggety by Blackstreet, which nips the opening 4 bars of the Bill Withers tune Grandma’s Hands). This technique bled into club music in England starting with the 1987 M/A/R/R/S hit Pump Up The Volume*. Trip-hop used this very same sample based method, but with a dramatically emphasized downtempo approach. Critics called it “trippy” or “dubby†”, virtually falling in love with it’s use of pop culture collage and ability to make urban tinged music safe to play over the speakers in The Gap. It is slow, beautiful, and cinematically noir. It evokes the image of those who stuck around after the frenetic beats of the dance floor have long been silenced.

Bristol, England is the city where it began. It started with an art collective called The Wild Bunch making beats for the drug-addled crowd at a club called the Dug Out. The first label to extract it out of the city was 4th and Broadway (who also released the M/A/R/R/S cut) and later Mo’ Wax and Ninja Tune. Critics clearly tired of the genre when this production aesthetic was adopted by nearly every mainstream pop act in the galexy in subsequent years well into the 00’s. Just take a look at the awful pitchfork.com reviews for Tricky’s albums, a man who pretty much brought the genre to the world’s attention. As for relevant albums, Massive Attack’s Blue Lines and Soul II Soul’s magnificently named Club Classics Vol. 1 are top works at the beginning of the movement. The peak of the fervor includes Portishead’s Dummy (Bristolians), Björk’s Post, and Tricky’s individual effort Maxinquaye as highlights.

Trip-hop is a beautiful and refreshingly simple style of music. However, the genre’s efficient production inevitably drifting into the mainstream begs the question: is collage the only thing left? We live with our faces pointed into the open end of a media fire hose. Consumers read duplicate news headlines from different outlets, re-share and re-post quotes/videos/events between social media platforms ad infinum, and in the end become collage artists themselves by reshaping their own experience for their own micro-audience and validation. I won’t pretend this blog is anything different, but what can we hope for now in terms of artistic originality? Original filtration?

Massive Attack – Unfinished Sympathy https://youtu.be/PQQ8bVQbxAc

Soul II Soul – Keep On Movin’ https://youtu.be/LEHqOfKeabc

Portishead – Glory Box https://youtu.be/8uciibl0rcs

Björk – Army Of Me https://youtu.be/1_ONSN7ppJU

Tricky – Pumpkin https://youtu.be/oFPW4M93uYM

*This was in the middle of the “acid house” dance music thing that was happening in England involving gallons of drugs that slightly threatened to shove British guitar pop off of the throne of temporary global dominance. David Cavanagh mentions this in his seminal work about Alan McGee and the Cool Britannia phenomenon entitled My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize.

†Dub, from what I can gather, is the same technique of sample grabbing but rather than American funk bands it exploits the equally brilliant world of reggae recordings from Jamaica in the 70’s pioneered by Lee “Scratch” Perry, who is a legend and worth a peek.

Allanah

She has participated in TI-83+ as a keyboardist/vocalist and currently Madd Comrades as a vocalist and guitarist.

She likes Neutral Milk Hotel, Television, Kander and Ebb, Talking Heads, The Jesus Lizard, Nation Of Ulysses, Misfits, Meat Puppets, Beck, and Harry Smith’s Folk Anthology when she runs out of ideas.

Conversation:

M: Theatrical music is something you are always humming or singing. When it comes on the radio or pops up in any capacity you pretty much know the tunes note-for-note and word-for-word. What makes theatrical music so special?

L: I grew up performing in stage productions since I was 6 and the only thing I listened to for the entirety of junior high was the musical Rent, which you should look into. Theatrical music is special because it allows you to inhabit a role written by someone else trying to show you a character, a being, a creature that has a form of expression and a life that the writer has all imagined. Can you inhabit that specific role and express it? It provides the tools to feel the music and feel the moment without thinking about the words as they are already sitting on your tongue and known by heart. So inevitably what happens with original music, personally, is that I similarly try to write some semblance of a role. It has words, a vision, a specific feeling and a space to creatively perform, but it is my own and that is where the expression lies. What is the ‘scene’ trying to be created for the an original song?

M: In terms of words/lyrics, who do you feel like are your favorites?

L: When I first listened to Sleater-Kinney I felt like they were heady, esoteric, but poetically inspiring. One Beat is my favorite album from them. The words are multi-syllabic and intelligent, but as a whole it always remains highly intelligent. The fact that the band comprises of just two guitars and a drummer makes it especially intense and puts the singing right up front. I also get reminded of Nation of Ulysses, who can bleed into actual slam poetry coupled with real punk power. This juxtaposition also reminds me of Misfits because of Danzig’s crooner-type singing coupled with punk makes for a powerful recipe. They have a bizarre doo-wop thing going, too, and it seems like rockabilly bands try to achieve this same contrast but not nearly as effectively.

M: Sometimes you profess your love of very old American folk music. Why?

L: I love the old style of language from another era, the kind of religious language that harkens back to another time. There is a great band that used to be based out of Shreveport called Gashcat and they use this in a song called Leach. When you listen to the old Alan Lomax recordings of regional American folk songs they are all generally biblical/religious in nature and the words are beautifully hymnal and simple.

Neutral Milk Hotel – Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone https://youtu.be/LO-zSxWRSVI

Television – Friction https://youtu.be/RwrCUEMl76U

Kander & Ebb – Maybe This Time (Cabaret) http://youtu.be/8hpUn46oVpg

Talking Heads – Thank You For Sending Me An Angel https://youtu.be/vP7GVC7Dbiw

The Jesus Lizard – Inamorata https://youtu.be/7u7OiIVwur4

Sleater-Kinney – One Beat https://youtu.be/TpLhrLzSaFQ

Nation Of Ulysses – N-Sub Ulysses https://youtu.be/QtPKO1DHo2w

Meat Puppets – Lake of Fire https://youtu.be/1SNqzKfbym8

Beck – Steal My Body Home https://youtu.be/eQkW3rerjoc

 

 

Twee: A Twee Piece

The Almighty Googz defines twee as a derogatory coined by the British to mean “excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental.” It goes on to state the origin of the term as a child’s mispronunciation of the word ‘sweet’. Furthermore, it presents a color line graph depicting its usage starting with the middle of the 19th century which struck me as interesting but excessive and I moved on with my life.

This does a fine job of at least setting the stage for nailing down a clear definition of twee music, if it indeed exists. The term is usually the utterance of guitar music connoisseurs that also love Morrissey or Paul McCartney and boast a high tolerance to sugary pop music in general. I can’t actually tell you what makes a certain style of guitar pop music ‘twee’ other than its overstated accessibility and its understated irony, but as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said “There are known knowns, things that we know we know…” We can start with that, right?

There are towering twee artists that create a sort of “stadium” twee, such as The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart or The Dum Dum Girls. On the other hand there exists the subdued and breathless ramblings of The Softies, who would rather play in your living room on a Tuesday night than anything resembling the Frank Erwin Center in the slightest. Nowadays, charisma gets thrown into the mix in the case of The Drums, Jens Lekman, or Girls (we’ll argue later). This was hot stuff during the 80’s in England with the rise of Orange Juice, The Pastels, the brief run of Close Lobsters, and the genre-creating C86 compilation by the publication NME. The labels that printed this music had pious names like Sarah Records, Postcard Records, K Records, and Slumberland.

I can tell you that it is definitely the best kind of music to play at your retail establishment or seduce someone that was badly picked on in high school. My pal Ryan, a forthcoming interviewee, is virtually an academic in this field and was the one who opened my eyes to this perpetually rose-tinted world while we worked together at a coffeeshop. His technique was to mercilessly play The Smith’s for six months straight until I admitted that they were great. After he was assured of my personal revelation, he began a confident walk-through of a universe that suggests dusty toy instruments, Super 8 footage of seagulls on the beach, impeccable glasses/cardigan combinations, and not a jock in sight for miles.

On the surface, it is out-and-out pop music but with an intelligently sad and endearing angle. The heartbreaking part is how it invokes the feeling of being taken away again, body and soul, back to youth or maybe a youth you never had. The version with yourself as the unlikely protagonist. Isn’t this what we seek out of music? We all use it to escape, future or past tense. Jacques Attali, a French economist, said:

“Music is prophecy. It’s styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future.”

Orange Juice – Blue Boy https://youtu.be/0qz9Uqk55Jo

Action Painting! – These Things Happen https://youtu.be/Fsm-OcDuxFU

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Beautiful You https://youtu.be/eQck_JOB3LY

The Softies – Count To Ten https://youtu.be/lptJScg9wpI

Brighter – Killjoy http://youtu.be/VVmTux3VH9Y

Jens Lekman- Your Arms Around Me https://youtu.be/NIwIAbcLFhI

Unrest – Cherry Cream On https://youtu.be/9M2iRTe6-Tg