B12 Solipsism

A few interesting links for December 3rd through December 4th:

• T.R.O.Y.: On Your Marks, It's Funk Marathon Stage 1 - "This is volume one from a six part series. I put these together years ago. The material is mostly 70's funk, with a few exceptions here and there. You'll recognize some well known samples, but there is also a fair amount of obscure music too. The idea with these long-play funk mixes was to fit as many dope tracks as I could onto a 700 megabyte cdr. I wanted all day compilations for driving, working and generally just grooving. There are distinct sections in each volume, so check them out thoroughly."
• ODETTA RIP - "Her 1965 album "Odetta Sings Dylan" included such standards as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Masters of War" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

  In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta." He said he found "just something vital and personal" when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a teenager. "Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar," he said."

• Ethiopian music legend convicted of manslaughter - "Afro first made his name on the Ethiopian music scene in 2001 with his mix of reggae and east African pop. He became renowned for songs paying tribute to the late Emperor Haile Selassie as well as athletics heroes Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie.

  His third album, Yasteseryal, was released in 2005, the year of disputed national elections that saw mass anti-government protests quashed violently by the state. One of Afro's songs accused the government of failing to deliver on promises of change, and his music became the unofficial soundtrack of the opposition struggle.

  Afro was detained shortly after the hit-and-run incident in 2006, and released on bail. He was the biggest local star of Ethiopia's millennium celebrations in 2007, before being arrested again and charged in April, leading Ethiopian bloggers to question why it took the authorities 18 months to decide to put him on trial. A least two journalists were arrested for writing articles seen as siding with Afro."

• Hi, How Are You? | MetaFilter - Austin music scene ~1990-1995 (an unscientific survey)

  Boy, I saw a lot of these bands, even knew several band members. Ahhh, youth.

From Snapshots from a Flounder

Another Quickie review¹

The Name of This Band is Talking Heads

Awesome, if you like Adrian Belew’s electric guitar caterwauling on top of Talking Head classics. To be fair, only on a few tracks. Three thumbs up²

All the tempos have been quickened, and the rhythm section locks in. I posted some YouTube footage from this tour a while ago, the files might still be accessible.

Extended to 33 songs from the original release, spanning 2 hours and 36 minutes of funk, Afro-pop, and quirkiness.

Sean Westergaard of AllMusic writes:

The sound is crisp and clear, with tight drumming, a great punchy bass sound, and clearly separated guitars that allow you to really hear what complementary (and fine) players David Byrne and Jerry Harrison were. Byrne is the über-geek with a totally unique delivery (especially on tracks like “Who Is It?,” “Artists Only,” and “Stay Hungry,” not to mention his nervous stage announcements), but they all play with the raw energy of a young band on the way up. The bonus tracks are all excellent. There is no sense whatsoever that they were simply padding things for a longer running time, and it’s just great hearing live versions of songs like “Mind” (with extended guitar solo), “The Big Country,” and “The Book I Read” that have never been readily available in live form.

As fantastic as the first disc is, the second one is perhaps even more exciting. The expanded band (ten musicians and two backup singers) is amazing, not only adding power and punch to the Remain in Light material, but in most cases surpassing the studio versions (no mean feat). These live versions of “The Great Curve,” “Houses in Motion,” and “Crosseyed and Painless (all prominently featuring Adrian Belew) are nearly worth the price of admission alone, but the bonus tracks here are just as exciting. The original release had no overlapping songs on the two LPs, with the large version of the band sticking solely to tunes from Remain in Light and Fear of Music. Now you’re treated to arrangements of “Psycho Killer,” “Stay Hungry,” and “Warning Sign” as performed by the expanded lineup, not to mention live versions of “Animals,” “Cities,” and “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On).” The band is on fire throughout the performances, and fans of Belew’s guitar playing will practically be giddy with ecstasy. These are some of his finest performances strictly as a guitarist, and although Remain in Light was the only studio album he played on, he beautifully adds his own touches to “Stay Hungry” and especially “Psycho Killer.” Byrne also contributes some cool guitar, sometimes using a great delay sound, and again, the clear separation of instruments lets you really hear the details.

1. for Musebin [↩]
2. umm, well, two thumbs, and your neighbor’s thumb too for good measure, because you will probably want to play this album with the volume turned way up [↩]

“If You’re Feeling Sinister” (Belle & Sebastian)

For some reason, I was humming this song when I awoke today. Probably related to some now forgotten dream, but am passing it along for you to decipher.

The lyrics are something like:

Make a new cult every day to suit your affairs

Kissing girls in english, at the back of the stairs

You’re a honey, with a following of innocent boys

They never know it

Because you never show it

You always get your way

They never know it

Because you never show it

You always get your way



Have you and her been taking pictures of your obsessions?

Because I met a [boy] who went through one of your sessions

In his blue velour and silk

You liberated

A boy I never rated

And now he’s throwing discuss

For Liverpool and witness

You liberated

A boy I never rated

And now he’s doing business



The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field are beautiful people



Could I write a piece about you now that youve made it?

About the hours spent, the worldliness in your training

You only did it so that you could wear

Your terry underwear

And feel the city air

Run past your body



Could I write a requiem for you when you’re dead?

“She had the moves, she had the speed, it went to her head

She never needed anyone to get her round the track

But when she’s on her back

She had the knowledge

To get her into college

But when she’s on her back

She had the knowledge

To get her what she wanted”

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field are beautiful people

“Outliers: The Story of Success” (Malcolm Gladwell)

I’ve already ordered Malcom Gladwell’s new book, Outliers¹ just on the strength of a few excerpts I’ve stumbled upon. His New Yorker magazine style of writing is easily consumed², and his ideas are usually interesting, if not always perfectly formed. His theories are what they are, but truth be told, I really just like his anecdotes. Speaking of the Beatles, I did not know this factoid about their Hamburg days…

Is this a general rule of success? If you scratch below the surface of every great achiever, do you always find the equivalent of the Michigan Computer Centre or the hockey all-star team - some sort of special opportunity for practice? Let’s test the idea with two examples: the Beatles, one of the most famous rock bands ever, and Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men.

The Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - came to the US in February 1964, starting the so-called “British Invasion” of the American music scene. The interesting thing is how long they had already been playing together. Lennon and McCartney began in 1957. (Incidentally, the time that elapsed between their founding and their greatest artistic achievements - arguably Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album - is 10 years.) In 1960, while they were still a struggling school rock band, they were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany.

“Hamburg in those days did not have rock’n'roll music clubs. It had strip clubs,” says Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles’ biography, Shout! “There was one particular club owner called Bruno, who was originally a fairground showman. He had the idea of bringing in rock groups to play in various clubs. They had this formula. It was a huge nonstop show, hour after hour, with a lot of people lurching in and the other lot lurching out. And the bands would play all the time to catch the passing traffic. In an American red-light district, they would call it nonstop striptease.

“Many of the bands that played in Hamburg were from Liverpool,” Norman continues. “It was an accident. Bruno went to London to look for bands. But he happened to meet a Liverpool entrepreneur in Soho, who was down in London by pure chance. And he arranged to send some bands over. That’s how the connection was established. And eventually the Beatles made a connection not just with Bruno, but with other club owners as well. They kept going back, because they got a lot of alcohol and a lot of sex.”

And what was so special about Hamburg? It wasn’t that it paid well. (It didn’t.) Or that the acoustics were fantastic. (They weren’t.) Or that the audiences were savvy and appreciative. (They were anything but.) It was the sheer amount of time the band was forced to play. Here is John Lennon, in an interview after the Beatles disbanded, talking about the band’s performances at a Hamburg strip club called the Indra: “We got better and got more confidence. We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long. It was handy them being foreign. We had to try even harder, put our heart and soul into it, to get ourselves over. In Liverpool, we’d only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing.”

The Beatles ended up travelling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don’t perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart.

“They were no good on stage when they went there and they were very good when they came back,” Norman says. “They learned not only stamina, they had to learn an enormous amount of numbers - cover versions of everything you can think of, not just rock’n'roll, a bit of jazz, too. They weren’t disciplined on stage at all before that. But when they came back they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.”

[From Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: Is there such a thing as pure genius? | Books | The Guardian ]

The excerpt goes on, click if you want to read more. Or just buy the book!

1. Amazon sent me an email today that the book was shipped from their warehouse - I should get it by Tuesday [↩]
2. I tried to avoid using the phrase, breezy, but it does fit [↩]

Another Quickie Review

“Forca Bruta” (Jorge Ben)

The guitar rhythms circle around a moving middle, makes me move my belly button in concentric ovals in my chair. Huge thumbs up.
From the Amazon blurb

First time on CD in the US - and first time in the world in over 15 years! A groundbreaking album from the young Jorge Ben - one of Brazil’s most soulful singers ever - heard here at a pivotal point in his career! Forca Bruta is a record forever transformed Brazilian music with its unique blend of samba and soul - and it features some tremendous rhythm work from Trio Mocoto - who bring in a wide variety of percussion techniques to make the whole thing groove. There’s an earthy, laidback feel to the whole set - one that makes the album feel like a spontaneous expression of genius, even at the few points when larger orchestrations slide into the mix. The album’s easily one of Jorge Ben’s greatest - and it’s a much-heralded Brazilian treasure that’s finally getting reissued!

“Jimi Hendrix: Live at Monterey” (Experience Hendrix)

By now you’ve probably heard that former Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell has died. The Criterion Collection blog mentions an interesting factoid:

Mitch Mitchell, the inimitable drummer featured in all of the Jimi Hendrix material in Monterey Pop, died this week at age sixty-one. A one-of-a-kind player, Mitchell was the perfect foil for Hendrix and integral to the sound of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. His roiling, explosive approach was a rhythmic analogue to Jimi’s redefinition of the guitar.

For the Monterey Pop Criterion release, we had a hell of a time trying to re-create that huge drum sound from the studio records. The great remote recordist at Monterey, Wally Heider, did a valiant job just trying to get anything on tape. The seven-track master we had to work with had mics being moved and repatched in the middle of songs. Drums were an afterthought to the vocals and guitar, so legendary engineer Eddie Kramer had to build much of the drum sound from bass player Noel Redding’s open vocal mic!

[From On Five: The Criterion Collection Blog]

“Are You Experienced?” (The Jimi Hendrix Experience)

The three first Jimi Hendrix albums¹ are essential to any self-respecting rock snob’s music library.

1. Electric Ladyland is my favorite of the three, but Are You Experienced and Axis : Bold as Love are almost as good [↩]

“I Am Trying to Break Your Heart - A Film About Wilco” (Sam Jones (IV))

Wilco emails warning about an upcoming Blue-Ray disc that is not worth purchasing:

Also, we have a CONSUMER ALERT. Without consulting us, the DVD company (not WB/Nonesuch) that released “I am trying to break your heart” is about to issue a Blu-Ray Edition which, no surprise, costs considerably more (nearly 2x) than the standard DVD. We’re unsure as to the rationale for the release, given that the film was shot in beautiful grainy B&W and has a stereo-only audio track… there is, in our opinion, not much to be gained by spending the extra cash. It’s your money… and in this case you should probably hang onto it. [From W I L C O - N E W S]

The film is quite interesting, if you are familiar with the band, but apparently, you can just rent it from Netflix instead of forking out for the new version. Or get the standard DVD.

or just read Greg Kot’s book:

“Wilco: Learning How to Die” (Greg Kot)

Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain Live

Forty years after its recording, “Sugar Mountain”” by Neil Young will finally see the light of day, live Michigan gigs which helped establish the singer as a solo artist.
Young’s solo career launched in earnest with an engagement at The Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Mich. Having left the Buffalo Springfield six months earlier, Young brought just his guitar along to the University of Michigan facility.

The gig was a stealth booking to determine if audiences would accept Young’s music in its most elemental form since he previously was in band.

The night of Nov. 9-10, 1968, he performed his music and told stories between the songs. The performances were recorded those evenings on a TEAC 2 track tape recorder, the tapes kept in storage over the intervening years.

“Sugar Mountain Live At Canterbury House 1968″ will be out Nov. 25 by Reprise as part of the continuing Neil Young Archive Performance Series. The 23-track album will include recordings made on both nights. The album includes songs that were written during his Buffalo Springfield tenure as well as newly written material that would appear on future solo albums. One of the spoken word pieces is a tale of Young’s hapless “day job” experience working in a Toronto bookstore.

[From Neil Young's "Sugar Mountain Live" sees light of day]

I’m sure this is better than Living With War…

“At Folsom Prison” (Johnny Cash)

I’ve heard cover versions of Johnny Cash’s famous song, Folsom Prison Blues, and the audience always cheers the line, “…just to watch him die.” Turns out the spontaneity we were celebrating was based upon a studio concoction. Next they’ll be reporting that when June Carter replied to Johnny Cash’s sentence, “I love to watch you talk”, with the great line, “I’m talking with my mouth, way up here”, she dubbed it in the studio! No, probably not.

Anyway, another myth debunked:

As it turns out, one of the most iconic moments in American music history is the result of a razor blade, a prerecorded hunk of hollering and some Scotch tape.

On “Folsom Prison Blues,” the opening track of Johnny Cash’s landmark live album, “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison,” the Man in Black darkly intones: “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”

The 1,000 inmates packed into the California prison’s cafeteria that Jan. 16, 1968, morning screamed, whistled and wildly applauded the musical murder.

For 40 years, music fans have regarded the chilling moment as a key component in the DNA of Cash’s career-making mystique.

But it never happened.

Columbia Records producer Bob Johnston later spliced the crowd response into the song.

Writer Michael Streissguth discovered the bit of larcenous creative license while he was researching his 2004 book, “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece.”

Streissguth was in a studio listening to the master tapes of the concert with Sony Legacy engineers. On the weathered reel-to-reel tape, the moment whizzed past without any audience eruption.

Curious, the writer and the engineers pulled out the edited master. Sure enough, on the final version when Cash’s iconic line was cued up, the spliced in, taped up edit was evident.

[From Boxed set shines light on legendary Cash prison show | AccessAtlanta]

(via)

Oh well, still love that album.

“March 16-20, 1992″ (Uncle Tupelo)

For an evening of alcohol-inspired melancholy, there are few albums¹ as good a soundtrack as Uncle Tupelo’s March 16-20, 1992. In my rudimentary iTunes rating system, ten of the fifteen songs² on this album³ are rated 4 stars, and thus are always on my iPod.

Although Uncle Tupelo usually mixed in punk-rock with their traditional songs and traditional-sounding tunes on their other three albums, the March 16-20, 1992 album is all acoustic, guitar, banjo, etc., and decidedly minor key. Peter Buck of R.E.M. produced, and the emphasis is certainly on mood. I love all of the Uncle Tupelo albums, but this is always the one played the most.

For instance, Fatal Wound, a Jeff Tweedy song, is one of my ten favorites. I’m still a little vague as to the song’s meaning, but I don’t mind if I hear if over and over again anyway, and my emotional response remains constant. I’m sure the song’s target understands the references.

don’t the lights look empty
when the streets are bare
almost as empty
as the look you give me
when I’m the only one

and it’s a long one
so it brings you down
so say you have nowhere else to go
and nothing to do
so you hang around
you hang around

but you wait around until
you’ve received that fatal wound

columns of sunlight
and glorious cities
oceans of opportunity
and all your decisions seem ancient

but you wait around until
you’ve received that fatal wound

Jay Farrar’s version of Moonshiner is also spectacular.

I’ve been a moonshiner
for seventeen long years
and I spent all my money
on whiskey and beer
and I go to some hollow
and set up my still
if whiskey don’t kill me
Lord, I don’t know what will
and I go to some barroom
to drink with my friends
where the women they can’t follow
to see what I spend
God bless them pretty women
I wish they was mine
with breath as sweet as
the dew on the vine
let me eat when I’m hungry
let me drink when I’m dry
two dollars when I’m hard up
religion when I die
the whole world is a bottle
and life is but a dram
when the bottle gets empty
Lord, it sure ain’t worth a damn

You can stream the album at Last.FM, if you are a little bit interested, or just pick up your own copy.

Jason Ankeny writes:

Produced by R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, March 16-20, 1992 represents Uncle Tupelo’s full evolution into a true country unit; with the exception of the eerie squalls of guitar feedback which haunt Jeff Tweedy’s mesmerizing “Wait Up,” there’s virtually no evidence of the trio’s punk heritage. Instead, the all-acoustic album — a combination of Tupelo originals and well-chosen traditional songs — taps into the very essence of backwoods culture, its music rooted in the darkest corners of Appalachian life. An inescapable sense of dread grips this collection, from the large-scale threat depicted in the stunning rendition of the Louvin Brothers‘ “The Great Atomic Power” to the fatalism of the worker anthems “Grindstone” and “Coalminers”; even the character studies, including a revelatory “Moonshiner,” are relentlessly grim. A vivid glimpse at the harsh realities of rural existence, March 16-20, 1992 is a brilliant resurrection of a bygone era of American folk artistry.

1. the only other comparable album that I can think of is Richard Thompson’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight [↩]
2. actually, looking closer, the track Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down should probably be rated higher, so that’s 11 of 15 [↩]
3. as originally released, the re-release contains a few more tracks [↩]

“Harps & Angels” (Randy Newman)

The new Randy Newman album, Harps and Angels, is growing on me the more I listen to it. I was unfamiliar with his prior work, with the exception of the over-played classic, I Love LA, but I’m increasingly intrigued by his non-film work.

In an apathetic age, only Neil Young among his original peers still consistently sounds any musical alarm against injustice and corruption. Browne agrees with Gore Vidal’s assessment that America’s largest political party is the “nonvoting party”, so such opinionated motivation is nothing short of admirable. Don’t ask me, ask Randy Newman. On the ever-laconic Newman’s new album, Harps and Angels, a song called A Piece of the Pie mischievously measures America’s collective languid self-interest against the undimmed commitment of one man. “The rich are getting richer, I should know,” he writes. “While we’re going up, you’re going down, and no one gives a shit but Jackson Browne.”

So, is Browne the last protest singer? “He didn’t really say that,” he says of Newman’s portrayal. “What he said was even funnier, that no one else gives a shit. Not true, of course, but very funny. My friend Don Henley referred to [the actor] Ed Asner, who’s active for social change, and Henley called it the Dreaded Asner Syndome. I guess I’ve contracted it, and am proud to be afflicted. I don’t think there’s any choice but to throw in with those people who are doing what they can to make the world inhabitable and beautiful. I’m a card-carrying member of hedonists for peace. I just don’t think peace and prosperity should only be for the wealthy.”

[From Jackson Browne: Running on plenty - Times Online ]

I actually was unfamiliar with Jackson Browne’s music up until about two months ago, but his first albums are excellent, and I’m slowly working through his back catalog.

We had mentioned John McCain’s keen urge to steal from artists without compensating them previously, but here’s Jackson Browne’s direct response to the situation:

This is more than benign idealism, as John McCain recently discovered. Browne is suing the Republican campaign, seeking damages of $75,000, for using his 1977 song Running on Empty in an “attack” ad against Barack Obama, in the apparent belief that a lifelong liberal would either not mind or not notice. “They broke two very clear laws,” he says calmly. “That they can’t use your song without your permission, and that they can’t imply you endorse a candidate if you don’t. Either they don’t know the law or they think they’re above it. Either way, it speaks volumes about the style of governance.” Browne has given $2,300 in support of Obama’s presidential campaign, according to public record.

“McCain’s campaign [managers] are trying to say he knew nothing about the ad,” Browne adds. “Do we believe that? It may be that it plays well to his constituency to steal my song, unapologetically take whatever you feel like using, and work out the details later. I’m sure I’ll prevail, because the laws are clear-cut, but I think the Republicans have a culture of impunity.”

Now three weeks off his 60th birthday, a bearded Browne may be looking just a little older at last. As in a similarly long dialogue at the time of his 2002 album, The Naked Ride Home, however, he is likeably low-key. “The inspiration’s not a problem,” he says. “I’m not less inspired, I’m less free to shut myself away long enough to finish a song. I’m also not in a hurry. That’s the odd thing that’s happened, that there’s less and less time left, and I’m less in a hurry. Maybe I’ll get desperate towards the end. You want the things you sing about to be about life and other people’s lives, and if I shut myself away and tried to ramp up the output, it might limit the interest I take in things that are pretty universal.”

“Time the Conqueror” (Jackson Browne)

“Brian Eno’s Another Green World (33 1/3)” (Geeta Dayal)

“Another Green World” (Eno)

A favorite album of mine, and now the 33.3 book is imminent. I’ve already pre-ordered it I believe. As a teaser, here is the opening few paragraphs of Geeta Dayal’s book

When I initially set out to write a book on Brian Eno, I didn’t realize what a massive endeavor it would turn out to be. This short book has taken several years to write. I wrote, rewrote, threw out entire chapters, and started over more than once. Every idea fanned out into ten other intriguing ideas, and eventually I found myself enmeshed in a dense network of thought. Finally, I realized that I had to pick a direction and run with it, or risk never being finished.

Sometimes a good way to begin a drawing is to first carve out all of the negative space. So I will start out by telling you what this book isn’t. This is not a rock biography that meticulously documents the making of Another Green World. Nor is it a book that dwells very much on Eno’s personal life. It certainly touches on both of these things, to the extent that they are useful in creating a larger picture. This is a book about process. How did these songs grow from kernels of ideas into fully-formed pieces? How were these kernels of thought formed in the first place? I attempt to examine the confluence of ideas at a certain time in a certain place in the 1970s, and how these notions helped to shape the form of three records, all released in 1975: Another Green World, Discreet Music, and Evening Star.

My own background is in the sciences, and I approached this book as a sort of scientific experiment. I came up with hypotheses and tested them by doing research. Sometimes these hypotheses were wrong, so I went back to the drawing board. I did a lot of interviews, read a lot of books, and spent a lot of time thinking and listening. I spoke with dozens of people; one of the great gifts of writing a book on Eno is getting to interview some of the very interesting collaborators that he has worked with over the past thirty-odd years. I wasn’t just interested in speaking with those who worked on Another Green World; I wanted to learn more, in a general sense, about how Eno worked with other people.

I read dozens of books on a number of different subjects — from visual art to cybernetics to architecture to evolutionary biology to cooking to tape loops — for inspiration. Of course, I read books about Eno as well. But many of the most helpful books for understanding Eno’s methods are not explicitly about Eno at all. They are books like Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, Stafford Beer’s The Brain of the Firm, and Michael Nyman’s Experimental Music. What these books have in common — besides being books that Eno rates highly — are that they unite a variety of seemingly disparate things, and lay out general principles for thinking about these things. In this book, I look at how Eno devised his own sets of tools for thinking, such the “Oblique Strategies” cards he created with Peter Schmidt. (I used a deck of these cards myself while writing this book, whenever I reached an impasse).

Of course, there is the music. In the chapters that follow, I dig into some of the many unique sounds on these records. This is not any kind of formal musicological analysis. What it is, instead, is an exploration of the sonics–the timbres and layers of shifting textures. I spend more time on sonics than I do on the words. Eno has stated many times that lyrics, especially at this time period in his life, did not interest him very much. But that does not mean that words did not serve an important function. Using some ideas from cognitive science, I probe two different phenomena at play in Another Green World. The first, as Eno himself has pointed out, is that only five out of the 14 tracks on Another Green World have words, but that listeners tend to perceive the album as a “song record,” not an ambient record. Each song with lyrics “bleeds” into the surrounding ambient tracks. How does this effect work in our heads? The second phenomenon has to do with another type of sleight of hand — how chains of words, even nonsense words that do not make any sense in sequence, can nonetheless generate distinct, powerful images.

[Click to read more of 33 1/3: Another Green World]

On a different subject, have installed a Feedburner redirect plugin, so if it is properly configured, you’ll be reading this in your newsreader without issue. If it isn’t, doh! Sorry, and please let me know so I can fix or attempt to fix.

One of my most favorite songs ever is Tears of Rage from The Band’s first album.

The opening track on 1968’s Music from Big Pink is one of the most perfect pop compositions ever. It is a perfectly atypical opening number and a perfect introduction to the intriguing style of The Band. It is also a depressing suggestion as to how much more perfect they could have been had Richard Manuel been able to keep himself from himself.

Co-written by Manuel and Bob Dylan, “Tears of Rage” is the painful lament of a betrayed parent. The first recorded version of the song is the Dylan-sung one that was released on The Basement Tapes. Dylan’s – usually extraordinary – ability to capture the essence of the song was utterly obliterated by Manuel’s on the official Big Pink reading. The extraordinary anguish in Manuel’s voice added exponentially to the already heartbreaking lyrics. The slower composition, Garth Hudson’s haunting organ, Robbie Robertson’s swirling guitar, the unparalleled rhythm of drummer Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko (who also provides backup vocals), as well as Manuel’s own piano work combined for one of those very rare occasions in which Dylan was completely schooled on one of his own songs (ironically, Manuel does it again on the same album with his version of “I Shall be Released”).

Sadly, the mood of “Tears of Rage” was forebodingly symbolic of the pain and suffering that would eventually consume Richard Manuel – who hanged himself in 1986 after two decades of extreme substance abuse. Perhaps the rarest attribute of The Band was the deficiency of a definitive front-man. With three lead singers and all five members’ status as exceptional musicians, there was no member of The Band who was more important to its achievements than the other; but for the first five minutes of their first album, they seemed to revolve around one genius.

[Click to read more of Tears of Rage: Richard Manuel is Dead | Sound Affects | PopMatters]

Robbie Robertson’s greed re: publishing credits probably had some contribution to Manuel’s early death. Anyway, here’s a YouTubed searing live version from 1969.

On the topic of Robbie Robertson, and The Band, Levon Helm’s autobiography is a good, fun read. Highly recommended.

“This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band” (Levon Helm, Stephen Davis)

The Band, who backed Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965 and then turned out a half-dozen albums of beautifully crafted, image-rich songs, is now regarded as one of the most influential rock groups of the ’60s. But while their music evoked a Southern mythology, only their Arkansawyer drummer, Levon Helm, was the genuine article. From the cotton fields to Woodstock, from seeing Sonny Boy Williamson and Elvis Presley to playing for President Clinton, This Wheel’s on Fire replays the tumultuous history of our times in Levon’s own unforgettable folksy drawl. This edition is expanded with a new afterword by the authors.

Music from Big Pink

“Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds and Nigerian Blues” (Various Artists)

A really great collection, well worth seeking out, whether you are a fan of Nigerian music, rock music, or funk.

Nigerian music had a brief renaissance in the first half of the 70s, when the country was temporarily between wars and dictatorships. The scene seems to have exploded with experimentation inspired by sounds from the West, mixed with new interpretations of the perennially popular Highlife. I have no idea if this anthology is a representative sample of the scene, or if the best or most important songs and artists have been collected. But I do know that the anthology is uniformly fascinating and will be a real treat for anyone interested in a deeper exploration of modern West African music. While the collection’s subtitle indicates “Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds and Nigerian Blues,” that will hardly prepare the listener for the musical variety herein.

Collectors and experts might be able to fit most of the tracks here into the long-term development of Highlife, but adventurous listeners will be astounded by the experimentation found in the anthology’s most offbeat tracks. For example, Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National, The Don Isaac Ezekiel Combination, and Mono Mono deliver what could be considered dark underground alternatives to Highlife. Tracks by Collins Oke Elaiho & His Odoligie Nobles Dance Band and Leo Fadaka & The Heroes sound like late-period Bob Marley half a decade before schedule. The selection from The Semi Colon illustrates the distant connections between Afro-Cuban and West African sounds, with some rock mixed in. Bola Johnson & His Easy Life Top Beats deliver a strange acid jazz take on authentic regional sounds, and the selection from George Akaeze & His Augmented Hits is heavily inspired by Bo Diddley.

[Click to read more of RootDown FM: Nigeria Special: Various Artists: Music]

The companion discs are really good too:

“Nigeria Disco Funk Special” (Various Artists)

and

“Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump” (Various Artists)

there are a couple others, but I haven’t (yet) heard them.

“The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” (Michael Gray)

From Michael Gray’s excellent book, the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, about Buckets of Rain (from Blood on the Tracks):

The closing track on the Blood on the Tracks album, this is an immensely likeable, modest song of barbed sanity. A blues- structured work, it also neatly conflates other old song titles within its lyric, as when Dylan sings

‘Little red wagon, little red bike / I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like’.

In a genre so riddled with sexual innuendo and double entendre as the blues, it’s sometimes hard to know whether a phrase or a line belongs in the nursery or the porn shop, and this is a good example. One long-term Dylan collector was told years ago that the phrase ‘little red bike’ was a blues term for anal sex: which certainly puts a different perspective on Dylan’s lyric. But it is not a common blues term: there isn’t a single ‘little red wagon’ in Michael Taft’s Blues Lyric Poetry: A Concordance.

‘Little Red Wagon’ is, however, a recording by the pre-war blues artist Georgia White, and by a happy coincidence the very next track she laid down at the same session is called ‘Dan the Back Door Man’.

I’ll never hear that song quite the same again.

From the official Bob Dylan lyric site:

Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.
I like the way you love me strong and slow,
I’m takin’ you with me, honey baby,
When I go.